Reading is Fundamental

It's also about all you can do when your bronchials go manky. I have read through everything I had on hand - fortunately I had about four novels from the library. I can't really recommend any of them. They served their purpose - I was completely able to avoid daytime TV - and without exception they were well-written. Yet they lacked a sort of satisfaction to them, a certain sense of vigour. Perhaps the old-fashioned writer as egoist is lacking. Writers are trained to be nice now. Balls-out confidence used to be many writers' essential spirit. Now it's excellent research, thanking everyone and using a dozen editors. So civilised.

Actually, there is a book you should avoid, Robert Ryan's Death on the Ice, a fictionalisation of the 1912 attempt on the South Pole. First of all, everyone knows how the damned thing ends so there was very little dramatic tension, secondly it had some howler typos - real typos, as in "atttempt" and "property" instead of "properly" - hitting the wrong key typos, not the author's fault (I assume the author did not typeset it). I actually don't mind real typos, shit happens, they don't detract from the story the way poor writing does. But it was surprising to keep finding them in an otherwise blameless, if dull, book.

Anyway. Now that I cough only every other breath instead of each one I take, I'll see if I can't apply my right brain to some designing. Oh look, an unfinished bag - good place to start. Need to fumigate it when I'm done though... this chest infection is VILE.

Back in the Saddle

In order to claw back some integrity after a life spent mindlessly shopping, I propose to do more of what I'm good at and less of what I stink at. It seems to produce less carbon... might be a methane thing.

Hence, the bags: www.folksy.com/shops/PennyFancy

These bags are packed full of goodness and delight and other stuff that might otherwise end up in a landfill. Let's face it, doilies as a design element have it all over doilies, um, anywhere else. Please view all the other kind people at folksy.com. We UK crafters and we're proud! BTW it's nothing against Etsy, they just have a lot of bag sellers at the mo and shipping to the US is 'sepnsive.

I also propose to try and blog about the things that make ol' Mara tick, without giving away TMI. Now there's a challenge! But it's part of the integrity thing - it is unfair to whinge about those who cannot defend themselves on the spot. However, Worst Bus is in for a good spanking, and I may have a go at people who elbow me in queues. You've been warned, Elbowers.

I was going to spead all kind of didactic wisdom about ...didactic wisdom... but I have the most horrific cold. Perhaps when more of my skull cavity is taken up with working brain cells instead of green stuff I will be able to philosophise.

Reinvention is my middle name

I've got that song stuck but good in my head, "It's a mistake, it's a mis-tay-ayke" who the hell was that? Aussies, I'm sure of it. 1982. Working Men Without Hats? Men at Work. I think. Anyway. Must be. Whatever happened to them? They must all be like, 50, now. Still jammin' on the digeridoo I expect. I may Google later to find out.

Back to the task at hand:
The new blog was a mistake, having it one click away was no good I hardly blogged although there are a few gems. I may cut n paste them for you delectation.

The new job mentioned below was a HUGE mistake. Suffice to say I'm in ANOTHER new job, after nearly going round the bend from the other one. It made me so crazy I took this other job, then found out I'd have been made redundant, so they did me a favour, in the end.

Jammy, me. Yet exhausted and mentally drained.

So.... whatcha been doing? Blogger's still chuggin' along. Looks good, those little blue and orange buttons. We've been having sunsets those colours lately. Wild, stormy sunsets and huge pink encompassing sunrises, like waking up in a flamingo's tummy. That's what I think about on the way to work, what kind of tummy am I being digested in today? Some mornings are grey with fuzzy black shadows, those are tabby cat tummy mornings. Others are wet, gritty and smelly - I'm riding the bus with Jonah those mornings, cheek by jowl in the whale's rumbling guts.

The other day, not long ago but I hope I'm not called to be a witness for anything cos I'm damned if I know what day it was exactly, it was just gorgeous, Autumnal in a way that made me want to be a pre-raphaelite rather badly. I'd give a toe to not go to work that day, but make a pearly-white man and woman pose for me under the incredible gold of the lime and ginko trees, and drink in the play of light in their eyes and hair and velveteen trewsers. What a gas that would be, living by and for beauty, soaking in it like Palmolive dish soap. For an hour or so. Then we'd knock off and get pissed in the Pipe & Goiter and spend the afternoon chucking chips at the pigeons and contemplating the shoes of passers-by.

Another Saturday night well-spent. I hope I can find more energy soon for this sort of thing. I like to maunder. I'm a maundery sort of person. Soaked in beauty, of course, that goes without saying. I'm drowning in the stuff. But it's not worth observing Beauty if you can't have a good maunder afterward.