Do you remember Marble Run? Old computer games

H and I had a bit of a nostalgia session thinking about his first contact with computers and the internet. After a bit I googled and found a lovely thread full of people helping each other out with names and links to old games.

I love love love seeing people read - Loud swearing

I love love love seeing people read

because they are being themselves and I can just watch and see. It doesn't matter that I can't understand the words sometimes.

It's a bit like watching runners coming to a crossroads in a long race, they each have their own gait and way of responding to the flurry of applause as they approach the bend.

Loud swearing

My brother called and I relaxed into a lot of swearing about perhaps turning up one day with luggage and maybe even the hamster too.

I can swear, but I can't do anything else at the moment. Though I did put on load of laundry and I had a brilliant perceptive thought about Tesco being the place where I could buy woodchip and special bedding fluff for the hamster.

'Not so much cars, more tanks' - On stage at the Wantage Betjeman Literary Festival

'Not so much cars, more tanks'

I had asked what the film 'Fury' was about, and suggested 'guns and cars?' That phrase was the answer. Then we both watched the trailer. I wonder when IS will be safely enough in the past to be filmed? Though what could be a good angle on something that brutal?

Today I was at the village shop, post-hospital-visit and not feeling myself. The lady asked me if I'd like a bag and I answered with 'No, I want a miracle!'

On Stage

A wonderful feeling to be there with a whole room of attentive people, just 5 short poems to read out and instructions to give a bit of chat as well. The reactions were amazing, a little 'mm' after each one. I have never heard that before in any readings I have been to, or maybe I am not that perceptive? The things I read were as different from each other as I could choose. I ended with a high energy one.

Wantage Betjeman Literary Festival

2 people I know are performing this coming Sunday, Nic May and Cathy Dreyer: includes vegetarian lunch and is upstairs at the beautiful Shoulder of Mutton pub in the centre of Wantage, at midday.

My quote is on the school website :) - LVS-Oxford

Go to the bottom of this front page...at first I wondered who had said this positive comment, then it seemed familiar, and my name right there confirmed it!

I don't know what to say. When a new situation doesn't match with any previous experience, because it is good and is in a different league, that lack of a match is the clue that tells me I am in a good and healthy situation. Maybe other people are better at spotting good situations and bad ones, but it is new to me. This neutral reaction is all I have to go on. I am getting used to it and trust it more now.

After Royal Holloway, fit in a visit to London

H and I worked together to put all the sheets on T's bed for him
After the moving in process we all went off in different directions.

Turned my coffee order into a takeaway when my mother crossed the road to say she was in
Little lunch with her, glass of wine to celebrate this momentous day

Walked to the Tate, decided on some Turner
A lot better with my glasses off, just colours and placing of pictures on the walls

I love the different colours on the walls of the rooms
Each one brings out a different colour in the pictures on the wall

One room has very detailed glitzy gold frames, my favourite
Another has such plain, simple gold frames, my favourite too

I know I dislike pale pictures, but one has snow on mountains I peer very closely at
The bits of white paint are so very simple, I can't work out how it is so effective

a film which looped of French nuns chatting in a provincial accent I couldn't place
such  pleasure to listen to their voices and see their smiles, expression and body language

no arabic guide at all, how annoying, I could do with simple sentences with photos
ask the centre pompidou in paris instead, they are bound to have a guide

book on freud by david sylvester, interviews on working

2 pigeons walked and jumped down a complete series of steps outside the Tate
I was so taken by their plan that I just stood and watched them

parked in ovington square, house has blanked out windows, no glazing yet
basement still sealed off, renovation continues

knightbridge might have an arabic bookshop, with children's board books?
harrods might have a section...no, but bukowski instead, a surprise

all the jewellery sections in harrods, I had forgotten how it is there
so very expensive, shiny, so varied, so much to look at,

qatari cafe with filled and decorated dates, never seen anything like it
20£ for 3 sweets or 30£ for 6, I felt totally out of place

beautiful golden table tops/trays, men sitting there with their phones
tables so close together, I wouldn't want to be there as a stranger

maybe with a friend and at an end table
very luxurious and perfect, a special smell in the air too, the tea?

2 cars driving very fast in the left lane then turning left through a very red light
I guess chasing each other, no one hooted at them though, all very patient with them

I read some Arabic written on a car in the fast lane next to me,
I read it all bit by bit, a business delivering Lebanese food quickly, 'express'.

--

This is from a draft from the 20th September, the day T left home to go to University.

Translating something for real, asked by a friend

Terrifying and humbling. I peer at my dictionary, looking for the exact spelling of the word somewhere in the long paragraphs of slight variations. I hope there are no typos in the original I have been emailed. Do I have just enough familiarity with modern Arabic poetry to know the rough way that the thoughts are laid out? Do I know the starting text well enough, against which/because of which the piece was written?

I need to look at that starting text in Arabic to see if any of the words are being reused here. I need to use every trick I can think of to get my best version in English before I approach someone to help me with the remaining queries/question marks. I don't want to look a total fool to the person I ask.

I could look up some of the writer's other work online, see if it has been translated, are there any key words or concepts which are likely to be buried in this one?

Why does the very word Arabic lead others to assume I have much of it between my ears? If only they knew the dreadful lack of certainty. I have vague 'oh, I have seen that word before' happy thoughts, but they are not precise, just half recognitions.

There are words which come up which I know I have never, ever seen before. That is a nice feeling, because it implies that the others are somewhere in my continuum of familiar.

I'd forgotten how hard I can work if I want to.

Sitting in the JR car park, writing haiku

That's it. After the JR visit I processed it, actually that's a joke, I made a tiny start on processing it, sitting in my car.

Then I got out of the car and paid for my ticket.

Then I got back in and found the exit.

Then I drove, I think a bit erratically, back home via a garage.

I put the right fuel in the car, but forgot to pay for the litre of milk.

I turned round and went back to pay.

My brain is moving one step at a time.

Short Films - New book on Prose Poetry - this is my 1000th published blog post by the way

I have just found a blog which is no longer being updated. It is full of links to short films in Arabic. I have added it to my sidebar, but that is not a logical action. Today has not been filled with logic.

Getting a dense book on Arabic prose poetry was not a logical move either. The quickest way to gain from it is to read the notes at the end of each chapter. Actually, there is no hurry, I can read what I want when I want. It is all fine.

My new library - Theatre Day Productions - ايام المسرح

My new library

I have a new library, but no more time. It has a tree with waving branches outside, and is the right temperature. I can wander in there and work with my dictionary on my knee.

The search system allows me to look right through all the Oxford Libraries, but I can only borrow or look at items in my own. That was an unpleasant shock because I'd already found a thesis I really fancied skimming through in an afternoon, but no go. So I have discovered that it had been worked up into a published book, that's now on its way via amazon, but I hadn't planned on being nixed by the system. It has been a while since I have been let down like that.

As a result I am just borrowing one short book each week. This week's has just 58 pages in all. I'll be down to succinct articles soon.

Theatre Day Productions

ModPo is still amazing even though I am on time out from it. I looked at the forums and saw that some one I like to read and chat to has a website on her Theatre Company:

http://www.theatreday.org/

2 Festivals to try from a distance: Arabic Film and Documentary Festival & Aldeburgh Poetry Festival

The first is the Arabic Film Festival in London from 31st October. Look right through all the links to find the 1 or 2 minute trailers. The names of the films can be worked at for learning a bit more vocab. This is the first festival of its kind in London.

The second is the unpteenth Aldeburgh Poetry Festival on the Suffolk coast. Very bleak and bracing. There is a festival blog. It will be written by Anthony Wilson, so there's a way of being there without moving a muscle.

I deleted the first version of this post by accident, so this is my second go at it.

Arabic Study Group - Oxford Area

That is the name of a Facebook group I set up as a place to post links.

My aim is to encourage myself when I am fed up with vocab, endings and verbs. All that remembering and forgetting again. Whenever I come across something interesting I post it there so I can find it again easily. This blog covers any topics I want, but the study group is just for Arabic.

Can't get away from Godzilla and now Blake

Ehat's all this/ This is an experiment, to keep all typos in and leave the sentences as they are. The Ican do an edited version, to show the huge diffenrece betwen what I start with and what is the resutl. This is a very odd sensation, not correnting as aI cgo along. It almost hurst!!

So: Godxilla cartoons by someone call Janis Ian s all over one of my facebooj skteeams. Ouch this is awful.

And: Blake is in ModPo Plus. Singing in a nasel voice and twanging away on his guitar. I am going to have to get the book. I hadn't realised that oh roase thou ae t sick is a Blake song, set o f words. I have been lsistening to te the Pater Pears and Britten setting of those words for years, decades. Those perfecty sung words, such difficult moves between notes, incredibly specific orchestra, a piece which stands by itself .

---
That was a painful experiment.

Godzilla is a meme of some sort, cartoons appear on one of my facebook streams. Aha, it is a facebook person called Janis Ian, who has got the haiku bug and is applying it to Godzilla. Full explanation.

The name also appeared in a poem I came across in the Pinsky course: How I got that name by Marilyn Chin

Blake has turned up in the Pinsky course too: The Fly, and Rose, Thou Art Sick. A search for the texts made it clear that they are only half alive without the pictures.

Whole series of little pictures with the poems written within them: Songs

Info about the beautiful dark blue room at the Tate near my parents' house in Pimlico which has intense little prints on the walls. I do feel a twit for only going to have a look earlier this year. Better late than never.

Last of all, Allen Ginsberg singing The Garden of Love, go down to item 5 in the Songs of Experience section of that link to PennSound. This is part of ModPo Plus. The singing is strangely enjoyable, I think because it ends without resolution, just hanging there mid-air.

Jude Cowan Montague has a blog

How did it take me so long to find it?

Jude

I look forward to trawling through the archives.

Fiona Sampson - More late maths - A34

Tonight I was read to by:

Jennifer McGowan
Paul Surman
Fiona Sampson - Roehampton Poetry Centre - Poem Magazine
Pat Winslow
Jane Spiro
at the Albion Beatnik

Jane had written something specially for all of us, which was moving and just what I needed. As the evening went along I got all sorts of ideas for what I might want to write about. That must be high praise for a reading.

The one problem with a reading is that I can't see the words, or how they are laid out on the page. I am so used to seeing and reading them that it is a big jump to simply have to do without. They just flow past and are gone. There is no custom of posting a playlist afterwards, as it were, of what a poet had read out on the night.

Maths

When I got back H needed me for an hour of subtraction and long division. He still thinks I am a bad teacher, but I say that you learn anyway, because of and also in spite of your teacher. It's just a tricky business. A real teacher will be grumpy and tired, particularly coming up to midnight, and may well lie back in a chair and shut her eyes and say 'Yes, that's right' without looking.

A34

The A34 is the whole of life in microcosm. We see pheasant in a field, a motor boat, a huge span of steel girder, many mobile homes going southwards, trucks with tied on loads which I now overtake as carefully and quickly as I can. The ambulances flow through blocked traffic like butter, we all shift over like a well oiled machine, then shift back into position.

If the traffic is terrible I go to the pub beside the school for an hour from 9.15am. I always take work to do, so I can sit there in peace with a coffee. It is the Royal Sun. Very welcoming.

Films about families

Here's another one for our small Arabic Film Club: Ghadi, reviewed on Blog Biladi. When will it be out on dvd?

I love this trailer

Mysterious, hypnotic music, shall I go to see this show? It sounds scary.

Our Fathers - by theatre group Babakas

Well, well....weight lifting to all sorts of music

Our household has turned into a centre for weights. H has even got me involved. Prior to this there had been some discussions starting and ending with 'No' and 'I insist on another adult taking responsibility for all this, preferably your father.'

One independent credit card transaction later and things moved ahead, the way they tend to!

So now H's weekends are spent partly at the gym with S and we have been listening to music and doing reps in the kitchen after school and our good cooking times. Proof is up there.

My grandfather was a boxer and had those metal rods with the metal discs under their bed. The genes will out.

The moon is blowing from a new direction

That must be it.

I have sent off my first submission of 6 poems.

I am sewing my first skirt, all by hand.

I have 2 and a half weeks until I am on for 5 minutes at a pub in Wantage. People will have to pay to see all of us.

I met someone in Didcot today who explained what ahlan wa sahlan means, so I used it there and then.

H made supper for me last night and washed up. I took lots of photots for him and then took a video of him at the sink. I hadn't realised how elegantly he moves about. Now I do. He put his music through the kitchen speakers and I cleared our end of the table to look nice. We had a candle too...

A Book - Flat-lining emotionally

My book has a title and I think I got round to a first line. The title is 'De-Escalate' as in 'all you need to do is lower the emotional temperature' or 'calm down' or 'go limp' or 'just stop fighting'.

I can't really see the point of writing any more, either people get it or they don't. How can my extensive words here and elsewhere in real life, arguing on the street, saying too much in pubs, be put any better in a few lines? If people haven't understood my reasoning, then I can't help them. Writing any more would upset my apple cart all over again.

Other people write about home education already.

Cranky and tired.
No weekly meet ups with my friends.
Too many changes all at once.
New groups and ways of doing things.
Cold weather.
Still flat-lining somehow, in spite of all the Poetry Festival and wall to wall studying.
Maybe I need a cold and many hours with day time tv and Al Jazeera documentaries about feel good topics.
Other stuff, that's the real problem area.

So -- go away and write about it or make an anti-Ebola donation to the UN, or both.

New Arabic conversation class

The second one is tonight. I'm in the middle of writing out my homework. This is new, having to finish work to actually hand in to be marked.

usrati fi lundun.

 اسرتي في لندن

My family is in London.

ana sara wa akhi j...

انا سارة واخي ج٠٠٠

My name is Sarah and my brother is J...

The course is assessed, so we might get a certificate at the end? Or all do really well and go on to the Arabic 3 class next autumn?

Being a terrible maths teacher

I refuse to have a session.
I then insist it is just 10 minutes.
I get all enthusiastic and write out the solution way too fast and am demonstrating, not teaching.
I use unusual words to describe what is meant to happen.
I make up rules like "If it isn't written down, it isn't maths."
I yawn.
I make myself a cup of tea.
I eat apple, which H hates, while he shows me what he's doing.

He tells me I go too fast.
He tells me I should be helping him.
He tells me I should be explaining better.
He want to do maths when I just want to do my own stuff online.
He wants to do maths after 11pm.
He won't let go graciously.

We argue.
I want to see very neat handwriting and carefully laid out lines of maths, one alteration per line.
He wants to hold the pen from the wrong end and do it all in his head and expect me to follow it.
He rattles off some numbers and I can't follow what question he is on, so he has to start again.

Determined to get an avatar for a forum

I loved this one by Anish Kapoor, but couldn't make it small enough. It is getting a home here.

I don't have anything to add. The picture says it all without words.

So: the Swindon Poetry Festival 2014

The list of the fabulous things I missed is longer than the list of things I saw.

So many people, chatting, how did you get into poetry, who are you reading, where are you published, are you in a regular workshop, what is your writing like, what has changed for you since this afternoon? How tired are you? Where is my key? Come over here and talk, I am going to sleep now, I had a thought and my shoulder suddenly started hurting, checking out the new men in an instant, going outside to confess our reactions, get it out of our systems. Hmm, my household is so like yours. Wow, I love what you wrote? Instant writing, reading out what we have written, deciding which collections to buy. Showing someone the Arabic alphabet, shoot me, I can't help myself. Endless talking and being with people we already know from sharing our stuff over these past months. A word game out in the sunshine. Sleeping on the sofa, warm blanket, hearing the people talking past me, no internet, just our little, huge world, endless tentacles of other links. Faces, expressions, saying, writing things we didn't know were there.

Reading: Michael Scott and Emily Harrison (wonderful titles)
Reading/Performance: Mohan Rana/Jo Quail and SAPAC dancers
Workshop: Cliff Yates = 2 new poems
Workshop: Jackie Wills = 2 more new poems
Reading: Allison McVety
Reading: Cliff Yates and Jackie Wills
Reading: Battered Moons prize-giving and readings/David Morley/Cristina Navazo-Eguia Newton/wonderful guitarist

I have just looked at the full programme, I can't believe all the things I missed. Just note down all the names and in time recognise them when they appear in your world. I am shaking my head.

Back from the festival, high as a kite

What can I say? Poleaxed by poetry and people.

Off to a poetry festival with my bikini

I hope I get to use it! This is the worst time to go away for a few days, Arabic has just started again, home work to do, ModPo Plus is steaming ahead regardless and Pinsky has started. Arrgh. Too much good stuff.

My library card is ready for me to collect, but I am driving off in the opposite direction. There's a thesis I want to borrow and read. I never, ever thought I write that sentence. I have no time, apart from Facebook and blogging and algebra at 11pm.

Issue 2 of The Broadsheet

It has been launched and is nearly ready to be ordered online.

Buy here using Paypal

It only comes out once a year. My first copy has been on my wall for months and months. I turn it over every so often so I can endlessly re-read the other side.

I can't wait, but I will have to.