Lettuce not panic

In between all the Trump coverage and Beyoncé's twins there slipped a devastating piece of news for the British public. It appears that the salad crops are failing in Spain (due to the rain on the plain) and henceforth all iceberg lettuce will be rationed and courgettes will be sold on the gold markets due to their new value #courgettecrisis.

Supermarkets are only allowing you to buy three, yes that's right a meagre three  lettuces per person per day! My goodness disaster is upon us. Apparently the rationing is to stop Gordon Ramsey and friends raiding the supermarkets when the wholesalers run out in case they have a run on prawn cocktail.

Everyone knows what a rich source of fibre and vitamins the iceberg is - we will have scurvy and rickets before the week is out. I fear for the nation and the nation fears for itself. Callers have been flooding the Jeremy Vine show with horror stories of rabbits and tortoises starving to death... and apparently it portends the first of many Brexit disasters.

Let's just pause a moment shall we...

Aside from the obvious suggestions of eat carrots, cauliflower, kale, onions, parsnips, cabbage etc... instead... Why doesn't anyone focus on the poor sods in Spain whose livelihoods are presumably at risk because their crops failed? Isn't that the story? It's bloody winter anyway - who wants to eat salad when it's barely two degrees above freezing outside? Bring me my carrot soup at once!

Day 2 in the Big Blogger house: Chaos Theory

Well, second day in and I'm already wondering what to write about... Hmmm.... shall I wait for inspiration?

Hang on, what's that scratching my wrist? A piece of crumpled paper edging out from the pile of mountain of what only be described as 'stuff' cluttering up my desk. I look and sigh. It seems that no matter my good intentions, I simply cannot keep a tidy workspace.

Right now I can see a Batman cat costume (best not to ask), several notebooks, letters and parcels (parcels opened but brown envelopes studiously ignored), an empty cloth bag, a cuddly toy (this is starting to sound like the Generation Game...), a scarf, heat cushion, pens, a book on animal medicine cards, an orange USB and numerous scribbled notes - and that's just the top layer. Goodness knows what lies beneath, a veritable treasure trove of intriguing surprises no doubt!

Maybe that's why I let it get into this state or am I just a lazy, messy slob who will one day be swallowed whole by her junk mountains.

It's no good. I have to do something about it! Tomorrow I will try and write something a little more intellectual but no promises. I've been working hard all day and frankly the creativity is runnething a little dryeth!

I leave you with a little quote to ponder by mathematician Edward Lorenz who knows a fair amount about chaos theory:

Chaos: When the present determines the future, 

but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

In other words... the present is a pile of things that shouldn't be in a dangerous pile on a desk but stored in an organised fashion. By approximating such storage by use of a pile and not a filing system I am setting myself up for a chaotic future!

Bungeroosh

My friend Moyra introduced me to this word today on her Facebook page. I think it will fast become one of my favourite words for saying aloud - alongside rhubarb and bunting!

But what on earth can it mean I hear you ask. Did Moyra make it up, or in fact is it ...

a) An Australian 'delicacy' of the type favoured by men of the bush like Crocodile Dundee? Bungaroosh is a simple dish made with the root of the Bunga bush and ground, dried witchetty grub. Delicious... (if you've got no taste buds!).

b) A form of bribe. Bungaroosh is the poorer cousin to Baksheesh. It's a bribe made by offering a promise rather than hard cash or goods. It can be found in the original Aladdin story within 1,001 Nights when Aladdin offers bungaroosh to the sly shopkeeper in return for his freedom.

c) A building material used only in houses in Brighton. Bungeroosh is a mixture of bricks, cobblestone, pebbles and other hardcore which is set  in lime and used in construction. It is liable to erosion from water and never really caught on outside of the Brighton area.

Answers on a postcard to the usual address...

A mermaid's tale

Slippery things mermaids, not keen on having their photos taken though they are more than happy to pose to have their portrait painted.

This is Tess. She lives off the coast of Brighton and has been known to sneak into the Zap Club on the seafront for a quick boogie when the lights are low and the crowd too drunk to notice.

I saw her though - tripped over her tail.

Oi Southern Hemisphere...

Now look here you lot; every year we graciously lend you Summer so we can have a bit of snow and frost, allow the vegetation to rot away and rest, that sort of thing. However, come April/May we want it back. We know it takes a while to arrive, so don't really expect much before June, but COME ON...

Just what do you think you are you playing at? It's bad enough that you lot regularly beat us at cricket and rugby, but now you're stealing our Summer. It's bad form.

Wimbledon starts in a couple of weeks - the strawberries aren't even ripe yet. Today I even saw a whole flock of starlings flying south (not entirely sure how far south, but it was in your direction...).

Enough is enough. You'll have to man up and pay the courier charges now - get it back here pronto ... OR ELSE...

X is for Xylem

Now it's time for a little game. There used to be a show on TV that used this format, but I can't remember its name. My sister and her husband would know - they both have a remarkable memory for 80s trivia - but they are not somewhat inconsiderately not answering their phone!

Anyway, the rules of the game are as follows. I present to you the word Xylem and three alternative definitions for said word. All you have to do (without cheating and using a dictionary, Google or calling Auntie Doris) is pick the one you think is correct!

Ready?

Xylem is a character from Marvel that acted as a sidekick to Captain America in four episodes of the 1960s' TV series. Although never fully explained, it was assumed he was of extra-terrestrial origin.

Xylem is a short piece of music composed specifically for the xylophone. It originates from 4th Century China where the instrument was used in water divination.

Xylem is a tissue in plants that conducts water and dissolved nutrients upward from the roots and also helps to form the woody element of stalks and stems.

Just send in your answer written on the back of a homing pigeon to the usual address by last Tuesday and you would win an amazing prize! Yes, you could be the proud owner of a Xenopus which is either:

a) an African clawed frog with an unusable tongue

b) an extinct species of cat which hated all others of its species to the extent that they wiped each other out in vicious battles.

c) the world's largest musical cloud hypervisor


***

I don't know about you, but I'll be glad when this Blogging from A-Z challenge is over...

J is for Jargon

J is for jargon also known as a characteristic idiom. A collection of words or phrases that mean diddly squat to anyone outside their spheric influential.

At work we bandy about a great deal of jargon about clouds - but these aren't of the cirrus or nimbostratus variety, nor indeed cumulonimbus. No, we're dealing with hybrid, virtualisation and public versus private. I'm proud to say I'm actually Cloud certified, or possibly just certifiable - that issue remains for debate.

BTW did I tell you I used to be an online gamer? Us gaming geeks have our own language. BRB need a bio...

Sorry, where was I?

Ah yes, writing about jargon - laying down my hero's journey, building a character arc and heading for resolution.

It's important to conclude one's post by leveraging learnings from best practice and touch base with one's readership.

Did you get all that?

Word nonsense

What's this thing with having a word of the year? I mean, 2013 will be 365 days long. Why only one word when language is bursting with adjectives and adverbs, verbs and verbosity? 

True, the last couple of years I have joined the flock and chosen a few letters to set the tone for the coming 12 months, but it was all rather restrictive and, frankly I should have chosen 'forgetful' as it turned out to be far more appropriate. I had to hunt back to discover that my word for 2012 was supposed to be 'complete'. 

Pants to that. I am instead going to break with tradition while still joining in. My word for 2013 will therefore be...

Chosen initially for the delightful way it rolls off the tongue but also for its nonsense connotations and links to slapstick comedy involving Eric Sykes.

I have a whole heap of other words scribbled in notebooks outlining my ambitions for the coming months. I'm being very efficient with SMART goals and enough mind-mapping to plot a course to a parallel universe - speaking of which... Will I ever start that book?

Left hand drive

I couldn't figure what to paint so I stuck the brush in my left hand thus allowing my right brain to take over the driving.

As you can see we swerved around quite a bit while we figured out just who was behind the wheel and which way to turn to avoid total disaster.

We ended up here. It's a river, not a road (by now we had parked and were moving more slowly on foot).

I wasn't actually painting with my foot at this point, it's just a figure of speech to give you the impression of a more careful consideration of subject matter.

I'm typing with my right brain too. Well, the fingers are using the left but both hands are on the keyboard to get the message all right. All right?

I should maybe think about going to bed... I sleep on the right if there's any left.

Once upon a postcard swap

by Elizabeth Burton

There was a girl with golden hair who lived in the land of Hoobiddy Doobitty where the people spent so much time smelling the flowers that that had begun to look just like them.

by Tracey Fletcher King

It was just as well really because all was not as peaceful as first appeared. For this land had recently been invaded by the Lemon People who terrified the poor Hoobiddies with their sharp wit and hard-wired electrical appliances that stormed across the rocky landscape led by legions of pointed pencils.

by Angela Vular

The Hoobs as we shall call them for ease (though I should stress that they are not the same ones that neighboured the Grinch... some distant relatives perhaps), banded huddled together under the roses and the golden-haired girl taught them to make dresses from the fallen rose petals.

by Elise Ann Wormuth

This wasn't terribly practical, given that a large mixer was just spinning into view with blades whirring in a most threatening manner.

The Hoobs began to panic and fled the scene tripping over the unfinished hemming of their floral dresses.

The found themselves backed up against a wall. But hold on, what was that on the floor? It was their salvation. For years Hoobs had wondered what the mysterious planking was doing set into the concrete of their thoroughfares, but now all was revealed.

[note - I do know the postcard is not the right way up - it's called artistic licence!]

by Kat Sloma

Their combined weight, together with the sticky atmosphere of fear awakened the magic and the wood began to rise revealing...

by Tracey Fletcher King

A large quantity of heavy-bodied acrylics. No rose petal armour for these guys. They marched smartly out of their barracks and began to take on the Lemon people, the pointy pencils and the kitchen utensils.

by Elaine Millar

It was carnage as the blood of crimsons mixed with lemons and blues. Eventually the life was squeezed out of every tube but the invading army had retreated.

Now every year the Hoobs celebrate their great victory by painting the town red... green and orange... and sending arty postcards to their friends.

Think the above was a load of old nonsense? Well, you try writing a work of fiction featuring all six (+1) of the postcards you received in Kat Sloma's Liberate your Art postcard swap!

Thanks to the generous-hearted artists and the wonderful Kat for sharing their work across the globe this summer. If you click on each picture you will be transported to the artists' websites. Special thanks to Tracey Fletcher King who sent me an extra one!

You can visit them all via the blog swap

When will I know...

...when I am good enough?

I am going through a frenzy of painting over old canvases. Not much is safe and paintings I once adored are rapidly disappearing under a thick blanket of gesso as I wonder how I ever thought they were worth hanging on a wall.

Will the pieces I created fresh this week meet the same fate this time next year? Will I ever be satisfied?

Mind you, didn't many of the great Masters do the same thing? Aren't there instances of restorers finding older paintings hiding underneath those prized today? I wonder what lies beneath the Mona Lisa? I think it might be something saucy - which possibly accounts for that enigmatic expression she's been wearing for the last five centuries or so.

Maybe one day the experts will apply the digital thermal x-ray techno wotsits and see the large eye that resides beneath this mermaid. I'm pretty certain there's something else below that one too!

If you own a masterpiece and another is found underneath, does that make it twice as valuable? Imagine rubbing off Venus because you preferred the 'still life with old shoe' underneath! I wonder if there is a law against such things?

I am starting to talk nonsense now! You should really read yesterday's post where my philosophising was of a more intellectual nature - and I won't be painting over the art I share there either anytime soon (particularly as I no longer own it)!

It seems appropriate that this piece I am sharing for Paint Party Friday this week is very much a work in progress and, given the number of paintings underneath her, I assume she will remain so for many years to come!

Tune in next week for the next version!

Postscript: Carol just left me a comment mentioning the male figure behind the siren. Well, I thought for a moment she was seeing things, for I never painted a male figure. But then I looked again... and what do you know... there he is! How spooky is that?!! Thanks Carol. Namaste!

What's a Stook?

Today I thought I'd created a new word. I was very pleased with myself in an intellectual kind of way. It amused the left half of my brain to think in terms of dictionaries and alphabets.
It all came about from a simple typo (of which word, I'm afraid I forget). Anyway, Bill Gates drew his squiggly red line under my word informing me I was a spelling numpty. However, before I corrected, I stopped and stared. For was this not a great-sounding word? Did it not conjure up images of West African birds with enormous iridescent wingspans or mysterious doppelganger spirits that feed on the souls of those they resemble?
Sadly it turns out that a stook is already a word. There's a picture of one at the top of this post. Some kind of sheaf of hay.. Hang on though... there's more than one, and they are identical And, if it was black it might look a bit like a Dementor from Harry Potter. Watch out! It's after your soul....

stook (stook) Pronunciation: /stʊk, stuːk/

British

Definition of stook

noun

• a group of sheaves of grain stood on end in a field.

 

Bunting

Do you like my new background? I should perhaps mention that I chose it for several reasons.

Firstly, because it makes me think of beach huts and let's face it, who wouldn't want one of those? I imagine myself creating a mini art studio by the sea, painting all day while watched by nosy seagulls, then selling my works to wealthy tourists who flock to my beach just for my art! (Don't knock it... this is MY daydream!).

Secondly, it has bunting. Bunting is one of my all time favourite words. There's just something about it that conjures up Britain and parties in village halls and school fetes and second-hand car lots as it rolls off the tongue. I also like the word rhubarb. Go on, say it ... slowly mind ... let your tongue savour the tang of each syllable. Delicious eh?

My favourite place name is Ouagadougou (that's the capital of Burkina Faso). I seriously love exercising my cheek muscles over that one.

What are your favourite words?

Lemonade Mermaid

Ever wondered what happens if you don't drink your lemonade by the 'use by' date?

Well, usually not much. It might go a bit flat and lose a bit of zing... but did you know that if you add 147 strawberry seeds and a pinch of fairy dust, you might just find one of these little ladies taking up residence?

It's true. Nobody knows if they grow or just appear, since none have seen it happen. They just find her there swishing about in the bottle and singing of the sea and lemon meringue pie.

They are quite the conversationalists. This one is called Flossie (something to do with her hair I'm guessing, rather than her teeth). She told me that her sister, Svetlana, was once mixed with Vodka and ice and nearly drunk. Well, actually, she was drunk but in the inebriated sense, rather than swallowed whole.

I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do with her now. She seems quite happy swimming around the bottle, but the cats keep showing her more than a passing interest and there's only so many renditions of Bye Bye Lemon Meringue Pie that a girl can take...

Be careful what you do with fairy dust I say - and always consume your lemonade well before the 'use by' date.

Flossie is for The Summer of Ice Cream Colour - this week it's Strawberry Lemonade Punch.

Supermarket cruelty

I'm on a diet and fitness regime. It's going pretty well and I've lost 5kg already. As well as consuming the obligatory rabbit food, I've also cut down on the carbs (particularly the evil white refined ones), turned cakes and biscuits into once a week treats and (almost) weaned myself off chocolate. I do nibble on the occasional square of the dark stuff, high in cocoa solids - particularly nice when combined in the mouth with dried fruit.

It hasn't been easy. The sugar-cravings were the worst and things got to the state where I was dreaming about cupcakes and sniffing any discarded mars bar wrappers I found blowing down the street.

However, the worst is over; the fitness levels are rising and I'm actually enjoying the healthy diet and can walk past pizzas, chips,crisps, biscuits, ice cream and chocolate in the aisles of the supermarket with ease. Imagine my consternation this morning though when I realised that Tesco are onto me. They have clearly been studying my Clubcard buying patterns and noticed an alarming dip in my monthly purchase of sugary substances.

Coupled with an increase in wholegrain cereal dropping into the shopping trolley, they came up with a dastardly plan.

"Let's put a display of chocolate hanging down in front of the healthy cereal section" their dastardly marketing manager doubtless suggested in their revenue-generating meeting. The rest of his team rubbed their hands in excitement. It would surely work. The mean man was about to pick up the phone and call Cadbury to see if they'd offer a discount, when an over-ambitious fiend had an even better idea.

"Make it Lindt" she whispered, holding the rest of the team in awe... "Looking over her purchase patterns, I've a sneaky suspicion this may be her favourite".

And so it was that at least 20 bars of mouth-watering Swiss chocolate hung temptingly in front of the no-sugar, many grain, actually pretty tasty granola.

Would our heroine give into temptation.

NO SHE WOULD NOT!!

GOT YOU TESCO... NAH NA NA NA NAAAAAAAHHHHHH

Verification

Source

So, Blogger has changed its word verification again. Instead of having two blurry words to decifer, now we just get one plus a photo of somebody's house number.

This has me seriously perplexed. Did Blogger have to send out one of their Googlers with a camera to wander the streets snapping randomly? Were they instructed to shake the camera slightly each time? Have they captured any famous doorways?

Are spammers not then capable of reading house numbers? Given the amount of junk mail I receive, I beg to differ...

Pomegranate ice cream anyone?

The Pomegranate is a strange fruit. So pretty, but I can't be doing with all those seeds...Such a palaver to eat when really it's just crying out to be subject toan artistic still life (or the juicer).

Saying that, it has taken me 42 years to get arround to attempting to capture on canvas its 'paint me' insides - and the task proved much harder than anticipated, a bit like eating those seeds...

I've been playing with a new technique I developed on my eCourse. My students may recognise it... Nigel for one has been experimenting quite successfully with 'the Britannia Coconut Dancers' (you really need to google them...).

Unless you're in 'the circle' though, it is all top secret. I mean I could tell you, but then this post would go in self-destruct mode and seriously you don't want pomegranate seeds flying out of your screen at you...

This is all actually in aid of the Summer of Colour baseball flavour ice cream (I'm sure it was called something like that...). Anyway, it was pink, white and nuts, which between them I do believe this piece of art and writing has just about covered.

FRAIL LOOP

When you really try hard at something it is truly amazing what you can accomplish. Take this sketch. OK, it looks simple, but I spent hours searching deep within myself for the meaning of me. I stripped away flesh, bone, hair and everything recognisable to reveal just my essence. This is how I see myself. A moon head on sticks balancing precariously in blissful ignorance of the fragility of my situation.

Notice how one eye is deliberately slightly larger than the other - representing the hemispheres of the brain and my right side predominance. The smile too lacks symmetry - a focus on my wry sense of humour.

I think I might experiment with this new direction further, maybe exploring the cycles of the moon with a crescent head or lengthening the sticks; dotted lines perhaps? I think it's the birth of something truly special and unique. I will call it FRAIL LOOP, a take on physical impossibility in a metaphysical playground of dogma. This is me becoming intellectual, upping my game...

Sharing for Sunday Sketches on this, the first day of a new month also known as ... please think about THE DATE....

***

Some time after I originally published.

OK, I 'fess up. This was supposed to be an April Fool... but I can see how maybe you could take it seriously... as the joke was really me taking myself far too seriously... FRAIL LOOP is an anagram by the way...

Christmas traditions

There are some Christmas traditions we could all do without... Like the best pantomime villain, I have had an evil cold waiting in the wings for a few days now. It was lurking there hoping to make an entrance stage left, but I positioned a chorus line of fruit and veg mixed in with a couple of early Knights to keep him at bay.

Regrettably though, the Knights let their attention wander (such dreamers!) and the villain sneaked up behind them - he would have his stage time. So he's here now... hanging about in my nasal passages causing discomfort in my sinuses... Oh yes he is...

I am hoping that I'll still be able to make the Christmas Ball. The Good Fairy Sudafed is helping, though she has been unable to tackle the build up of housework...

This is quite an insane post.... perhaps I'd best find another early Knight (a more reliable one this time...)

Dressing for dinner... well lunch actually...

Do you always know what you're going to write when you start a post? I don't. Many's the time when I just start typing and hope the Muse turns up.

She's been out dancing. She's taking Flamenco lessons. I worry about all that Latin passion and what she's going to have me do with it. In fact, I've just got my clothes out for work tomorrow and the whole ensemble couldn't look more Spanish if it tried. The neat pile draped over the banister includes a ruby red rose corsage; a black, embroidered full skirt that swirls out when you twirl; and red jewels.

We're having our Christmas lunch out with work tomorrow so I thought I'd make the effort. We're only going to a local pub - rather than enjoying paella and tapas as you might expect with this outfit. I don't doubt I'll be over-dressed, but frankly once a lady reaches a certain age and station in life she likes to have a little fun; and if she wishes to temporarily change her name to Lisabeta, click her heels a great deal and shout "Olé!" at passing waiters then that is her prerogative.