Monday...

I've managed to buy two volumes (the first and third, irritatingly) of what looks like being a very good fantasy epic - one where the characters are strongly drawn and credible and no-one speaks pseudo-biblical or pseudo-Tolkien-esque waffle instead of real english. Believe me, I've looked at so many book jackets with titles like "Gryphon in Gyres" or "Warlocks and warmongers" or "A Princess of the Felalackhit'ii"... So "King's Dragon" very nearly didn't merit a glance, purely for the predictability and banality of the title. However, it has turned out to be well-written, original (not easy, this, in a genre packed to the gills with tripe [forgive the unpleasant anatomical mixed metaphor!]) and gripping.
So - if anyone has the second volume or the fourth onwards of the "Crown of Stars" series by Kate Elliott, and doesn't want them, a) you don't know good fantasy when you meet it, b) can I have them, please?(!)
I've also discovered, sideways from this, that one of my favourite SF authors, Orson Scott Card, has a personal website full of his thoughts and opinions. I've tried to list it as one of my fave bloggs but I don't know if I did it right (given my general hopelessness with computers). If it's there, tho', do have a look. His review of "Mamma mia!" is quite something.
Hurrah for this, too:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-outsiders-johnny-marr-on-the-misfits-and-mavericks-who-make-music-magical-1017107.html
Even if you have to cut and paste to get that into the address bar, do have a look at it. Johnny Marr of The Smiths writing incredible inspirational common sense.

Another Friday evening...

Sneaking onto Blogger at the end of a fairly busy day; at least I think I've dealt with everything I meant to do, which is always a good thing. Except I'd intended to write to a penfriend and now finding myself with just time to do one thing I've plumped for this... So - it's friday already, ect ect and so on about time flying by and where did this year go...
Off to see Femi Kuti at the South Bank tonight, then another quiet weekend - but I must sort out some things before I go on holiday next sunday. My trip is just beginning to seem real now that I've had my jabs (yow!). I need to get a couple of good books and a new pan of ultramarine blue for my watercolour box. I wonder if I'll have time to do much painting during the first week? - it's one of those move-on-every-other-day tours. Followed by four days sitting on my backside on a beach, swimming in the Caribbean and drinking fresh mango juice (& stronger stuff in the evenings...)!
I've never had a long-haul flight before and this is the one thing I'm really NOT looking forward to at all; the boredom of air travel is horrendous. The bad movie, the staggering view of the back of the seat in front of me, the stiff butt, knees and ankles, and, if I am really lucky, the half-a-pocket-handkerchief sized window on my left, showing a totally featureless cloudscape for ten hours... But hopefully it will be more than worth it!
Have a good weekend, everyone.

Friday evening...

Slightly tired after "Aida" last night at the ENO - wonderfully OTT production, embracing the fact one cannot make a revisionist statement about what is certainly one of the silliest but also vocally lushest pieces in Verdi's ouevre, and in effect saying "The hell with it, let's field elephants and trumpeters and tumblers, and dress everyone in brilliant colour, because we may waste a lot of time if we try to find an intellectual core buried in here". (ouch, sorry; pun not intended). A temendous Aida in Clare Rutter - dare I say her voice reminds me of recordings of the young Tebaldi? Absolutely gorgeous singing, from her and from Iain Patterson's Amonasro in particular - the latter overcoming a severe burden in the form of his costume...
Have also now had a fairly busy afternoon at work, and some fairly odd enquiries. But I have a completely clear weekend and am looking forward to doing some STUFF, finishing my latest sewing project, and possibly going to the WWT in Barnes for one of their indulgent veggie sunday lunches and a damp afternoon with (hopefully) lots of lovely migrant birds to sketch. Of course, I also have to do my grocery shopping and run the washing machine, and I need to find out where in Shepherd's Bush Kerry's film is screening on Monday night.
Have a good weekend, everybody!

Happy Celtic New Year, everyone!

Samhain greetings, and may peaceful spirits only haunt your path tonight.
Talking yesterday to Katie (next office along) I found that she too is an enthusiast for reworking second hand clothes. Yet another exciting (to me) scheme springs forth (hmm... fully armed from my brow, like Athene). A new fashion house! Operating out of Kew!(OK, perhaps not that last - or if so, then very much on the QT). Recycling second-hand clothes and producing amazing, tailor-made one-off garments. Call it Weaver and Dent? Or Weaverdent? Somehow I don't feel our names combine to great effect. If my surname were Bird that would work better - but on the other hand Weaverbird perhaps doesn't have quite the right connotations... Also maybe Katie is too busy to have a whole third career (on top of Kew and motherhood). Or how about calling it something rich and bizarre like Heartbreak House? "Polly's dress - unique piece by Heartbreak House, prices on request" - I can just see it in the picture credits to a magazine fashion photo shoot...
Down, girl. Too many new ideas and not enough follow-through. Not enough follow-through, of course, becasue not enough capital (ie none at all). And now is not the time to seek venture capital funding for my dream of a vegetarian bistro and guest house with artists' studios and artist-run gallery set in a private nature reserve and organic smallholding on a Greek island. Sadly.
There was a television programme about this (rehashed fashion, not my bistro/gallery/greek island fantasy) a couple of weeks ago, but I was pretty disappointed by it. I wanted serious how-to tips, not Twiggy cooing over how wonderful people looked.

Thursday before Samhain

I realise looking back over this that my enthusiasm has slackened somewhat over time. I suspect this is normal, but still a little embarrassing to reflect on how madly keen I was at first to strew my thoughts on the web. However life goes on and I'd always rather be busy than bored. I've been doing a bit more printmaking for greetings cards, and some more sewing - I'm now onto a shirt large enough for the late Luciano Pavarotti, which I am brutally cutting to make a shirt that fits me. I am rather enjoying this big clothes sewing binge. At times I wonder if I should take it further and run a business on the side producing interesting new clothes from old. There are so many wonderful things in charity shops, sitting doing nothing and getting dusty hems - beautiful fabrics crying out to be re-imagined, dated styles crying out to be pruned and jazzed up. What with charity shop buys and old things from my own cupboards, at the moment I have enough hand sewing jobs to last me all winter. But if I were to buy a sewing machine, that would mean I could whip through them in a few evenings...
I've also been having some totally non-creative but interesting fun with an online dating agency... A couple of guys have messaged me but nothing more; all rather bizarre. But I'm tired of waiting for interesting men to surface near me; face it, there aren't many at Kew and those there are seem to be either already taken, weird, or very weird.
Trying to describe oneself without sounding either big-headed or terrifyingly insecure and self-deprecating is tough going. At least I have a few pictures of myself - the same ones I have posted here at some point (Imogen the student radical beating her doumbek on a demo, Imogen on board a sleeper to Barcelona, Imogen looking quizzical in an orange suntop, Imogen drunk but very happy at her graduation ball.) I'd love a decent current picture of me on my bike, just to counter the decidedly indoor feel of most of those. When one has an old-fashioned 35 ml film camera and a mobile 'phone that predates mobiles having built-in cameras, getting photographs in an electronic form is surprisingly difficult.

Wednesday...

I'm a very happy woman today as I've just acquired a big packet of Merquén, the wonderful smoked chili and herb mixture a friend gave me from Chile, which I have become addicted to and almost run out of. And I'm going to see Cav&Pag at the ENO tonight. So altogether a pretty good day. Last night I finished what was in the end a very extensive amount of darning on one of my new-second-hand jumpers, which turned out to have had moth in it at some point. A real challenge to my skills in the old home front wartime field of "make-do-and-mend".

Monday...

A busy weekend - running loads of washing (machine fixed, hurrah), going to British Museum, buying loads of nice things in charity shops, cooking, writing, turning out winter clothes and putting height-of-summer gear (flimsy cottons and suntops, etc) away for the winter. Sigh. Winter is coming. I know that if winter comes can spring be far behind, ect ect moleworth he sa, but as I look out of the office window at the thick grey sky I feel a certain mild depression creep in at the thought of HOW FAR spring is behind, as in a good four months from now. Boo hiss. The last few days with clear skies have been glorious, but now the autumn has struck back and we are deep in mist and dim gloom; it looks like dusk out there already. I am not a winter person, it's no good pretending. Boo hiss, boo hiss...
At least I have three new jumpers now - as well as a leather waistcoat, a new shirt and no less than four evening frocks (two of which need adjusting, so more sewing for me). All for the princely sum of £53 in total, going to the British Heart Foundation, the PDSA and Cancer research. I'd have been lucky to get one sweater from Marks and Sparks for that!
Going to reheat and eat my leftover stir-fry and then get back to work.