I just wanted to share a photo of my little christmas tree.
The spinning wheel that I have mentioned previously is behind it.
Tiny christmas tree
Christmas Tree
Winter Gathering
I recently went to the OBOD winter gathering in Glastonbury with a friend of mine. It’s the second time I’ve been along. It was really good and I met up with several people whom I’d met last year and from a workshop held on the Easter weekend.
On the Friday night we went down to the hall to help bring in supplies for the party and hang up banners. Damh and Ceri had seen to it that most things had been taken care of by the time we had arrived. From the banners we could see that some people had come over from New Zealand. Later, we went to get some food. Most of us ended up in the George and Pilgrim. It was there that I was spotted by Neil and his friend Quinn from the Catuvellauni Grove (I was pretty much adopted by Catuvellaunii last year). We saw Neil a lot from that point onwards over the weekend!
The saturday was a full day, with an early start in the drizzle at Chalice Well, talks and stalls in the afternoon and a fantastic party in the evening, featuring a pantomime performed by the Appleseed Grove, performance poetry, storytellers, music and dancing at the end of the night. By the end of the night Daru had become unforgettable, Shaun’s back had righted itself, Neil had won the big prize in the charity raffle and Scott had worked out where he knew me from. I gave him some mistletoe before he left.
On sunday I went back to the Chalice Well with Kim. She was feeling more settled than at the beginning of the weekend. She is currently working with the element of earth. I slowed her something I thought might help. We looked at the plants for a while, collected some water from the red and white springs, then walked up the tor – the steep way – extra kudos to us! We felt some achievement when we’d reached the top, but it was a little bit cold and blustery up there so we didn’t stay there too long. I walked back with my hood up, trying to warm my ears back up.
That Seagull
I never did mention the seagull incident to the landlord, and as for the bird itself, waste not want not:
Seagull Feather fan!
I think that the seagull might have liked it’s alternative future, being detested less than when it was alive. His first outing was in a Samhain group ritual and for the rest of the time the fan has been sitting next to the fireplace at home.
The fan is made from the longest wing and tail feathers, soaked overnight in a strong Virkon solution [Virkon kills bacteria for foot & mouth, e-coli etc.]. The filaments don’t bind together as well as they used to but at least the feathers are now safe. The handle is made from an old wooden spoon, some leftover linen and linen thread, a leftover leather scrap and a larger rectangle of chamois leather.
Birth and Death
Birth and Death
Today has been a bit of a mixed one.
I was woken up at 5am by screaming from the chin room. I went in there and had a quick, half-awake look around but couldn’t see anything wrong in particular, nothing obvious. Nobody had run out of water, no calls fro room service while I was in there. I put the calling down as being from Bramble the ultra-violet, probably screaming at the misbehaving triplets she is currently nursing. Later, in the early afternoon, whilst I was cleaning the cages out in the chin room I realised what it might have been. Zia was sitting awkwardly. As I looked closer I realised she’d had a baby earlier in the morning. It was her first. The baby was female and a black velvet, quite big and with silky dark fur. She looked sleepy but healthy and Zia was doing everything right.
As I continued to clean the chin room I could hear popping sounds. Next door had set up a firing range along the back wall of the garden and had started shooting at pottery and cans that had been lined up with and air rifle and what I can only assume must have been lead shot. I watched for a little while from the upstairs window not feeling particularly pleased, but it’s their garden, and I didn’t want to intervene at that point. I sometimes do archery but only with blanks (rubber stoppers on the ends of the arrows) and only at a pretty big target. The boys next door chatted for a while, then aimed just above the wall of the neighbours the other side of their house and started tracking, pausing for a while. I walked away from the window and and heard a sound which could only mean that they’d either hit something or come pretty close. Then it went quiet for a while. They must have gone inside.
Eventually I needed to take a break from cleaning the chin room and had to take 3 binbags downstairs and outside. J offered to carry the first and I followed downstairs with the second. I caught up to him in the kitchen. “There’s a seagull outside” he said. I heard what he said but it didn’t completely register. Was he suddenly afraid of gulls? I opened the door and indeed there was a gull right outside. It was lying on its belly on the floor spread-eagle, awake, alive, trying weakly to flap with one wing and then the other in order to get up but it was unable. Its breathing was strained, anaerobic breaths. The boys must have shot it down.
“I just said, there’s a dead gull outside,” J said.
“It’s not dead,” I replied.
One of the boys from next door came out of his kitchen into the back.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“What do you expect me to do with that?”
“What?”
“That.”
I signalled to the floor and he looked over the wall. He was pretty embarrassed by the situation, and the fact that the gull was in its death throws and not dead yet made it worse. He went to get a bag to put it in to get rid of it but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do while the gull was still alive. It was on its way out, beyond help. I folded its wings towards its body, scooped it up and carried it up some steps and laid it on the patio table in the long grass. I could not find an entrance wound. The lead shot was poisoning its blood. It lay there in the sunlight until the warmth of its body seeped away.
I told him to stick to shooting cans.
We will be mentioning this to the landlord.
Oh, what’s occuring? Barryokie!
Yesterday evening Scott Mills was down Barry Island with Radio 1.
I went down there for a little while and it was a bit busier than usual. I hadn’t been down to the island for a little while. They held the radio show in the Dolphin to a small audience of pink-wristbanded public that had been hanging around since the early afternoon. I had come home early from work but had arrived there too late to pick up a pair of wristbands. I didn’t know what Scott Mills looked like but once I had seen the photos I realised that I had walked past him, another guy and a photographer a little earlier in the afternoon. They had taken some good photos for the Radio 1 website. The pictures gave the place a sort of glossy-magazine look. Barry Island doesn’t usually look as nice as that to me, but maybe that is down to familiarity.
Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?
SAN FRANCISCO MAN BECOMES FIRST AMERICAN TO GRASP SIGNIFICANCE OF IRONY – Jay Fullmer, 38, yesterday became the first American to get to grips with the concept of irony. “It was weird,” Fullmer said. “I was in London and, like, talking to this guy and it was raining and he pulled a face and said, “Great weather, eh?” and I thought “Wait a minute, no way is it great weather.” Fullmer then realised that the other man’s ‘mistake’ was in fact deliberate.
Fullmer, who is 39 next month and married with two children, aged 8 and 3, plans to use irony himself in future. “I’m, like, using it all the time,” he said.
“Last weekend I was grilling steaks and I burned them to shit and I said “Hey, great weather!”.
(This joke was copied from Cardiff City FC forum, ’cause it was funny!)
A fantastic weekend
I took Friday off, and although I was a but nervous before I went to the show in the afternoon, inept, but I was really glad I went and came back feeling inspired. I had stopped doing what I loved because of bad things happening to me and around me, but as it was pointed out to me, I have grown up a lot since I was in college. I’ve had to. You take some knocks, get a bit damaged, and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, at least once you’ve shrugged off your complexes. Ok, it’s taken a while but I feel more happy with myself than I have for a long time. At the party afterwards I got to catch up with some old friends, re-establish a few ties, and although I haven’t had a lot of luck recently I am actually not that bad at what I do and I actually left feeling quite appreciated. I’m afraid I had to do a Cinderella, leaving when the night was still young in order to catch the last train home, but in doing so I was spared the mother of all hangovers.
Saturday was a relaxed day. I browsed round the charity shops, bought some magazines, cleaned out the chinchilla cages, went to PC World because my new Mac software required an operating system update, went to Blockbusters, 2 DVD’s, chips on the way home and a quiet night in. Fantastic!
Sunday started with a lie-in, followed by a long walk around a car boot sale in glorious sunshine. I caught the sun on my arms and nose a bit. I brought back a rough surfaced tray for trying felting on, a few candle sticks, a book, some small glass bottles with cork stoppers, and… a spinning wheel – I am so excited over that! I will take a photo soon. 
Mac’s-ed out
My Powerbook is now completely full to the point where there isn’t much space left for updates. That’s what I get for adding all those mp3’s. I’m trying to copy the contents off onto an external drive so I can wipe it and then start again. I’m using Tiger, not Leopard, so no Time Machine. The problem is that copying the files off is turning out to be a bit of a pain in the backside, because I am having to transfer files via a PC. The external hard drive is NTFS, and that has caused some accessibility problems. It would probably be so straight forward otherwise. Whenever a long file name is found everything stops. It doesn’t give you the option to skip that one file, everything comes to a grinding halt and then you don’t know what has been copied over and what hasn’t. Start again… Grrr!
Earlier I watched the Big Brother launch. I probably won’t watch the rest but this evening’s telly has been quite entertaining.
Up in smoke?
On Wednesday a O’Neill’s pub in Cardiff burned down in a fire started by a chip pan. People didn’t realise there was a fire straight away because there has been a lot of dust kicked up from the building works nearby. Most of the staff were on a trip that day so only skeleton staff were manning the pub. Thankfully the pub hadn’t opened for lunch yet by the time the alarm was sounded. The nearby shops, indoor market and department store were all evacuated. Business has been closed in many places today because their stock is smoke damaged. The structural integrity of the shell of the building that burned down cannot be checked yet. I haven’t been into town yet, I will be there tomorrow, and apparently the area still smells a lot from the smoke.
I’ve decided I will go to the exhibition tomorrow, I signed up earlier this week and I’m taking a friend with me. I’ve taken the day off, it’s going to be ok and I’m going to enjoy it!
I do have a bad habit of obsessing over relatively small and unnecessary things, stressing and blowing them out of proportion.
Website Update
I’ve put a new stylesheet on my website and given it a quick update with larger images. I’ve also uploaded my AutoCAD work. I’ve been feeling a bit better recently.
