secrets

I'm up to something, and it involves this photograph. I don't want to say what it is yet in case I jinx it, but I'm sick as a dog with the wait. IF it comes together, I'll tell you. Well probably crow very loudly from the roof, if not I'll go away and lick my wounds in a dark corner.


It's been a funny old morning. A comment I put on i still shoot film yesterday has resulted in me getting slightly noticed overnight. Suddenly my tumblr and flickr have had a big increase in traffic, faves and followers. Isn't it weird how you can amble along in the slow lane of the super information highway for donkeys years, and then a chance happening means you get to pull out and overtake for a brief moment, then it's back to chugging along in the slow lane again? 

the pursuit of perfection

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything,

That's how the light gets in.     

Finally, I have allowed that light to get in. 

When you read about other peoples' lives out there in blogland, everyone else seems to be living perfect lives, in perfect places. They have us believe they look beautiful, cook beautiful food, sew a fine seam in their gorgeously decorated home and never a cross word is spoken. Of course, it's all crap.

I was born and raised a townie, and I've been so envious of urban dwelling have-it-alls from my monitor-shaped window in a crumbling stone house. My townie sensibilities have been niggled by rural life. I wanted to move into a big town and then our lives would become perfect, the cake neatly iced by the fact that my man-child and later the girlies would be able to come home every night instead of boarding Monday to Friday.

2010 must be the year for epiphanies for me. After going to look at yet another falling down, dark, poky and noisy house with a small courtyard in a town last weekend, I had to get back to show a prospective buyer round mine. Then the penny dropped.

Our home is crumbling, odd-shaped, leaky, messy, rural, and in dire need of a wheelbarrow full of 10 euro notes being spent on it. It also is big, comfy, quiet with a rampant garden backing onto apple orchards and hills. A place were guitars, music, rows, shrieks and our stupid barking dog provoke no irritation in our neighbours. Where we can live as we like, do our own thing. Hell, I can even slob around my village in joggers, the old man's t-shirt with my hair in a scrunchie and no-one raises a gallic eyebrow.

We all agreed. No-one wants to go. The girls were squealing with delight at not having to move yet again. Joe said a new house would never become home for him. For them, this move would make house no 7. Yes, travelling into the city takes 45 mins.......but we will cope. No school on Wednesday afternoons means the girls can come home midweek for a night, when that bridge needs crossing and Joe couldn't give a shit anyway.

Maybe we will get the roof fixed, renovate the barn, do all those much needed jobs. Maybe I'll become a proper country bumpkin in the end and learn to love sewing and cooking. But I doubt it..... life's too short to stuff a mushroom.

And I could spend ages on my blog waffling on about how great life my is, waxing lyrical about all the lovely things I get up to. Designed to make you jealous and wish you lived my life, it's so damn perfect! But you and I know it would just be pretty wallpaper over the cracks, cracks I would rather let the light get in through.

This is our home. Imperfect as it is, it's perfect for us. You can't have it now, we're hanging on to it for a bit.

from me to you

I have just been browsing my tumblr, which to be honest, I don't look at too much these days. It seems to me that the majority of folk on there just reblog other peoples' posts, or lift things from flickr to post. In fact, my own photos have often been reblogged via flickr by a popular and much followed tumblr-ite. For example, like this here. It then gets 50, 60 or more comments, whereas my original flickr upload is largely unnoticed. Be gone, the fickle finger of fame. But I still like to keep my account as a virtual scrapbook for everything I find on the interweb, not just tumblr and flickr, that floats my boat visually. The 'inspiration' folders on my computer are so chock-a-block  I can never find what I'm looking for, so I thought this might work a bit more efficiently. Well it would if I remembered to use it.

One of the few people on tumblr I love is Jamie, happily a non-gratuitous re-blogger, but an original and extraordinary photographer living and working in Manhattan and keeper of from me to you. And yes, I'm jealous. Of everything. She has a Hasselblad for god's sake, she lives in New York, she can cook ...........

Just look at these photos she has taken at a  small urban fairground

I've only added some of her pictures, to whet the appetite. But go and have a look at the rest of them for yourself, they will make your day or I'll give you your money back, no quibble.

post event analysis

Here's a run down of my show

weather: shite
venue: small but very cute
visitors: many
sales: pretty respectable
feedback: very positive + a realisation that the French love books. Excellent news.
french language skills: 100% better than they were last wednesday. I can now whitter on quite adequately about layers of tracing paper and papercuts, scanning film, issues about animals in circuses and how I owe Tim Burton a thank you for making Alice so popular right now.
opportunities created: yes
questions raised in own mind about future directions: many
exhaustion level: medium

And I must just say merci beaucoup pour votre aide,amitié et gentillesse à Constant & Laurence, who looked after me + fed me gorgeous vegetarian food for those 4 days.

I shall now spend some time catching up on blogs, flickr and indulge in some catching up/pottering around/navel gazing for a while......well until I get bored which will probably happen at around 11.23am wednesday.

Before I pop off, I must share this quote with you.....if you are one of us poor souls who are racked with self-loathing after reading the blogs of the artistically beautiful, creatively overachieving, vintage-adorned  superchic. This came via le petit oiseau, via Lou's comment, via Jezebel, and said by Titania (told you I was going to read a lot of blogs!)

 "If you ever get the urge to start photographing your shoes, go volunteer at a women's shelter for an hour and see if that still seems like a good use of your time".

looking forward

click for source

To getting a life. I won't be around much for the next week, but after that? I plan to do a little or a lot of the following: Tackling my garden jungle, planting up for a summer of tomato-y bliss. Selling my house and finding the perfect new one. Making a run for the girl's guinea pigs (I promise). Taking lots of photographs, messing about with coffee developer. Catching up with friends and family. Starting and perhaps yes, finishing a book. Going to Les Abbatoirs. Making apple oatcrumble (one of the very few things I cook really well). Staying up late.

But for now, here's this morning's to do list

and I must tell you about photographer and bookmaker Stephen Gill. Bloody brilliant.

See you next week

I ran away and joined the circus

Well, I use to dream about doing just that as a child at least. Now I'm all growed up I still find it magical (his best work, no shadow of a doubt) and inspirational.
Here in France it's different, not that I've been to one, and I don't suppose I will.
Circus season is well under way now, primary-bright posters stuck to every lamp post, bridge, fencing.
These wild animals bother me. Perhaps it is ridiculous, is it any better when the circus has performing horses and dogs?  Abuse is abuse, let's not go there, eh?

Anyway, a few years ago we lived on a busy street. Our living room was on the first floor and our windows opened straight onto the road. During a traffic jam on a blazing hot day one of these huge cages was stopped right outside our window, 3 feet away a huge lion just stared lazily in at us, yawning while he waited to get moving again, very surreal.

But the charm of the Big Top never fails to get me in a flap. Driving along the other week I leaped out of the car when I saw this beauty, and knocked on the door of a caravan to ask to take some pictures.

Then some gorgeous and very bendy looking young men asked me if I wanted to take some pictures inside le chapiteau. Mais Oui! 

They had it all set up for the big cats, the lion tamer had just finished rehearsing his act. Sadly the light was so crap most of them didn't come out.

I took a sneak round the back, and there were the lions and tigers in cages. Well it had to be done.

At this point the lion tamer caught me snooping around. I told him I had asked permission but he said he didn't give me his permission to photograph his animals. He said he gets a lot of trouble from animal rights activists and what did I want pictures for? (Too right he gets into trouble if you ask me) I told him I was an artist, I didn't want to cause him trouble but he insisted I gave him my card and I was not to exhibit any photos of them without asking him first.

But blogging doesn't count does it? If it does, I'm very sorry Mr Lion-tamer.

And unfortunately, I 'lost' his card.

(I later found out he has often been in trouble with the authorities for lack of shade & water for the animals)

organised chaos

I'm working flat out at the moment, getting things ready. I've made 4 shadow boxes, and while I've been in a flurry of sketching, papercutting, glueing and assembling I sniggered to myself at how I ridiculously trumpet on my website that I sell my work directly from my own studio.

Truth is, I work mostly on the dining table right here

........then I have to move to the office to cut the paper as there's no space left on the table, with all that stuff spread all over it

......then a quick pit stop at HQ command post

......the typewriter is perched precariously on the edge of the dining table, for typing the text on the first layer. Please don't sneeze or it might fall off

......and then to assemble the boxes I have to kneel down and use the wooden chest by the front door, the only available space left.

Oh yes, a super-efficient set up I have here. Who needs a studio anyway, eh?

Unfortunately it also means we haven't sat down and eaten at the dining table for about 5 weeks. We've all become expert at balancing a plate of tagliatelle on our knees.