MARCHES ON

We're the best part through with March already and there have been so many To DO's on my To Do list that I've had no time to update my blog. Probably also, none of this busy-ness was this least bit interesting to others. However, just in case... I'm in the midst of having a full new website created which will include, not only a page/pages devoted to each of my three books, but pages also of a selection of my sculpture and a few paintings and drawings.

Many of the sculptures I managed to complete in the years when I was still involved with three dimensional work were life-size figures, and many, if not most of these have been left behind in one way or another. Sculpture, unlike your two dimensional stuff, is hard to store. You can't slot it into racks or put it up in your loft. It's heavy. It's bulky. And reluctantly, I had to leave several of my figures behind over the years in gardens or fields, or other people's sheds. Some of my earlier 'oeuvre' were stolen from the studio I shared in London during the time I was away that year in Rome ('58/59'). I guess I was shocked for a time when I returned and found them gone, but life was all movement in those days, and I soon moved on. So, in short, I now have only bits and pieces, a handfull of small bronzes and ceramics plus a couple of life-size figures.

However, gathering the remains of my stuff together has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster. A piece here, a piece there, and what surfaced was a sense of a lifetime's work being drawn together. One charcoal drawing, e. g. was done at the British Museum while I was a student at the Royal College in the mid-fifties. An aluminium figure which was cast on a trip back to Sheffield visiting friends who were teaching in the sculpture department at my old college in Psalter Lane. My friend Derek had invited me to try out their facilities. I'd brought a couple of things with me carved from polystyrene blocks, and we decided that sand casting might be a good way to tackle them. Sand casting bronze was a traditional craft in Sheffield, and I'd often watched the men at work there in my student days, fascinated by the process. We'd never had this facility in the old Art College, but the building had since been extended and modernised, and money lavished on all kinds of equipment. I was eager to try some of them out for myself and get to know how this 'new' material worked. You don't often get chance to play in a sand pit! We set the blocks, plus runners and risers in the sand mix, tamping it down in the old familiar way, then melted the aluminium. When it reached the right temperature we poured it into the cast. Happy days!

BANANARAMA UPDATE

YES, WE HAVE BANANAS!

AND on my birthday, too! Not only 'A' birthday, but my 3/4 of a century day.

What a golden gift. And what's more, they are delicious! Wowee! I'd love to share them with you, but you know how it is ....

I hadn't expected them to come through that winter, certainly not to ripen. Not until we had some good sun, anyway. But early Spring! Pure gold.

STRANGE THINGS WITH ATLANTIS RISING

This Saturday, 21st Feb. saw my debut appearance on the shopfloor of Waterstones, Bath. Here I am seated at a small table in the act of signing books. The delightful lady joyfully examining one of the copies is my daughter Sandhya, whose unexpected arrival took me completely by surprise. It was a day of surprises and the unexpected.

There had been a write-up in the local paper a couple of days previously. I was in good company; I spotted the cover of my new book at the bottom of the page below an article on the Bath Literary Festival featuring its artistic director, Sara LeFanu; a cover picture of The Other Half Lives, 'an edgy thriller', by Sophie Hannah; ditto of Sir Menzies Campbell in conversation with Don Foster; and ditto of the forthcoming appearance of Melvin Bragg at Topping & Co with his latest autobiographical novel, Remember Me. Was inclusion in all this illustrious company pushing my luck just a bit far? And what about that headline for The Strange and Precious!; ''Miracle' author weaves love and sci-fi into her new novel." Some header! Well, I though, that's the Bath Chronic, for you. Hope no-one comes along on the day expecting blue smoke and a sparkling magic wand. But something even more extraordinary happened.

It certainly amazed me, anyway.

I had been told by Claire on behalf of the management at Waterstones, to expect people wanting to come up to talk to me about the book. I had to think about that: it's such a complex story I wasn't sure how to approach it. I wrote an Outline, printed out some reviews, compiled a sheet of background scientific research, and wrote an 'About Me'. On the Friday morning I did a few last-minute posters to pin up and took them into town. My write-up in the Chronicle had begun one paragraph; The Island, (which Plato claimed to be the last remaining tip of lost Atlantis,) is the setting for this many-layered story. This gave me an idea; something interesting, not to mention important, to talk about. I enlarged that quote, put it in context, and printed it out ready for the morrow. I'd also checked my emails once or twice in case anything important had come in. It had been a busy morning: I called it a day and had a lunch break.

Later in the afternoon, around 3.30 I checked my emails again. As I opened my BT/Yahoo page a 'breaking news' announcement popped up. I don't usually take much notice of popup news, but there at the top was this item headed; Has The Lost City of Atlantis Been Found? Astonished, I quickly printed it out in economy, b&w print, thinking, Here is something I can definitely use at the signing. The Island is certainly a place where Strange and Precious Things happen; I had already pointed this out when I gave my little talk at the launch, and here was yet another example - the universe presenting me with this last minute gift. But why not splash out and print it out in colour, I told myself. I opened up Yahoo again, but now, only minutes later, it had gone! The news item was no-longer there. I stared in disbelief, realising that if I hadn't opened it up just when I did, I wouldn't have seen it at all!

I felt quite miffed at not being able to have the colour version, but it occurred to me later that there was a way to go back onto the news archives, which I did. I'm so uninterested normally that I'd never looked this closely. But the synchronicity of the thing appearing at the exact moment I opened up and then disappearing again was amazing.

In the version I've managed to upload here the image of the sea floor grid is unfortunately difficult to decipher. And the text impossible to read. (I'll search for a better one later.) But, briefly, is says; "A perfect rectangle of criss-cross lines has been found 620 miles off the coast of West Africa. Is this the lost city of Atlantis? Bernie Bamford from Cheshire, UK found the figure while using Google Ocean to explore the sea. Its existence is even more perplexing as the grid is about 3.5 miled down.

Some believe it is the city of Atlantis, a great civilisation that Plato believed sank around 9.700 B.C. Dr. Charles Orser, curator of historical archaeology at New York State University and an authority on Atlantis said, "The site is one of the most prominent places for the proposed location of Atlantis. Even if it turns out to be geographical, it definitely deserves a closer look."

After the Big Freeze, comes the thaw: after the cover, comes news of the book itself.

Everything seems to have been at a standstill for weeks, frozen and snowed in , and to top it off a bad cold which just wouldn't go away. Sore throat and fits of uncontrollable coughing just when my Waterstones 'signing event' was coming up. People would want to come up and talk to me about the book, the management told me, and here I was unable to croak out a simple sentence without red-in-the faceness, streaming nose and eyes, and the need to dash to the loo to be sick. However ...

Fingers crossed (all of them and toes too,) I shall be there at Bath's major chain bookstore this Saturday Feb 21st from 11.00 a.m. to 1.30 ish. If I hold out that long. AND at the same time, I shall be appearing on the pages of the Crimson Circle Shaumbra Creations site for the month of February. Here is a link:
http://www.crimsoncircle.com/Newsletters/CC-Newsletter-CurrentIssue2009-cover.htm
I hope it works.

If it does and you decide to investigate, it should take you to the Crimson Circle Newsletter Home Page. Look down the left until you see; Shaumbra Creations. Click on it and scroll down that page. Half way down is a picture of Esme Ellis and another pic of the book cover, PLUS a piece about the book itself.

Everything is suddenly on the move. A bit in the local paper and an interview for BBC Radio Bristol on the horizon, too.

* Crimson Circle is a world-wide organisation for Quantum Leap, and New Energy teachers and creators.

COVER STORY

It's time I said something about this book, then. I thought I'd begin with the cover. That would introduce it nicely. In visual terms there were two main characters I wanted to portray, but they needed a background. I thought first of all I'd try to paint one myself, or maybe take a few photos and piece them together. But then this idea came to me to use a piece of fabric which I had in my possession. It was silk, it had the right sort of colours and was already hand painted. But to make it more my own I wanted to change it in some way, so I scrunched it up and flattened it by placing a piece of glass over it. The result was 'ripple'. My friend Skip, (Robert Palmer,) came in at this point and together we took photos of it, which he then transferred onto the computer where, side by side, we gradually pieced together my ideas for the cover.

Then I made images of my two main characters, the boy and the girl. All good stories have a boy and a girl. But in this case at least, Finn, the young male character, was a boy with a difference. For one thing he arrives on the scene after having spent a few hundred years surfing the Multiverse. He has been summonsed by Gaia, Mother Earth, just as Humanity is on the verge of a major transition, a crisis point in World history, and plummets down through the stratosphere just as Annya, our main female character is floundering in the sea, close to drowning.

O

O

The fabric I used for a background has just the right touch of ambiguity. It suggests the sea, while at the same time it is a metaphor for 'the veil' which certain esoteric writers speak of as that which separates us, the living, flesh and blood humans, from those they speak of as being 'on the other side.' These are not terms I feel comfortable about using myself, and I didn't consciously choose a piece of silk with that term in mind. But once in place it felt right, and almost as if someone other than myself had had a hand in its choosing.

O
O

And this is something else which deserves a mention: there was, on many an occasion during the writing of the book, a sense that 'my uptheres' as I call them, were constantly dropping in from time to time, not only with encouragement, but with vital pieces of information at the very moment when I was floundering myself, or felt as if I had come to the very edge of a precipice and didn't have the slightest clue what I was going to say next. I have acknowledged this at the front of the book, crediting figures such as Adamus Saint Germain, Tobias, and the voice of The Reconnections, via Daniel Jacob.

WORD FOR THE DAY

IN-AUGUR-ATION. I just heard today that this word comes from 'augurdre' meaning reading the omens from the behaviour of birds. This was a Roman custom where a chosen priest and a highly placed politician consulted the auguries who spoke on behalf of the gods. These two illustrious representatives of the people would scan the skies looking for the sacredmost spot, the temple in the sky, where it was decided the birds would appear. Then after prayers and incantations were finished they would watch for the very next bird to appear in that space. Thus spoke the gods.

Keeping well in mind that I'm now speaking of We, The People, three days before the Inauguration in Washington a great bird appeared in the sky, and was brought down to earth by a company of its fellow avians -- following me, are you? What transpired a second or two later was by any standard, a miracle.

WE, THE PEOPLE

Well, I watched and listened - listened carefully, and for myself, I can now come off the fence and say, he IS the real thing. WE, THE PEOPLE, means it's roll up our sleeves time. We are the Hope of the World; we are The Dream we have been dreaming. And we just elected a great guy to stand for US, but not to carry all our expectations that he'll do the work for us.

I think I felt the Earth shift once more. Gaia felt it too, and rejoiced. And in my own humble way, this shift - both the shift in consciousness - the acceleration of the expansion of New Energy, and the actual material reality of the earth beneath our feet - is what I have been writing about in my new book, This Strange and Precious Thing.

If you want to read more about it visit my webpage at: http://www.esmeellis.co.uk/ That is until I get more detail up on my blog.

Having just posted this I discover that the said, D Jacob has put up another of his own which seems to contradict my 'roll up your sleeves time' comment. Not the first time we've disagreed! However, I don't think we actually have. The way I see it is: We, the People are beginning to take the power into our own hands and arrive at the realisation that WE, INDIVIDUALLY have the power to change our reality. That phrase itself is becoming a cliche, but what does it actually mean? If it simply means acting out of the past; acting from the good old, narrow old, self with its grab it all and hold onto it, devil take the looser, mentality, then nothing will have shifted. But neither will the world have changed if we go on adopting the victim role and expect our leaders to magic the solutions to all our problems and inadequacies. So, the question is still; what is our reality? Well, maybe reality is much more than we think it is. And our power to activate change is also greater than we have dreamed of before, because WE are also much more than we think we are. And, again, this is what my new book is about.

OBAMADAY

Today's the day, but everything's been said, and I can't come up with anything new. From around the world, anyone who's anyone at all, or no-one at all, have been asked their angles and opinions, and we've heard them all, so many times by now that the comments already sound like cliches. Maybe we can only wait and watch now - and hope. Yet as I say this an email has popped in which may have something new. I've quoted from my friend at The Reconnections once before, but I might just squeeze him in again. Here is an excerpt:---

From Daniel Jacob of The Reconnections.
"Everyone has at least one passion. Every heart harbors some secret joy. Many of us have simply lost hope, or forgotten. NOW is our time to remember! NOW is the time to move towards that passion. Step by step. Little by little. Don't worry about doing what you "should." That's a paper tiger. What is it that you REALLY WANT, deep down in your soul? What makes your heart skip a beat, and your blood flow faster in your veins? The more you follow after that, the more ENERGY you attract to yourself.........FLAMES, which have power to warm your spirit, and lift it higher and higher. Do what you can, right where you are. Begin by TELLING ONE PERSON what your passion is. Take a risk. Passion shared is passion multiplied. Step to the line. If you can't speak it, write it. Once the energy is given a chance to breathe.......it takes on a life of its own. If you encounter obstacles in realizing your passion, don't give up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MslbhDZoniY Step back, give the situation time to "breathe".......and go do something easy.... something fun. The Reconnections call this "HackySack Wisdom." Play. Doodle. Do something "pointless," to restore a sense of FLOW. Or do something simple, that carries no resistance with it. When you feel relaxed, replenished, go back and check on your passion again. Still stuck? Keep flowing. Let that situation be. Go inside and reaffirm your desire......letting go of doubt. If your brain is screaming "Try harder!" ........let your body play,instead. Don't push. Don't let yourself be pushed. Life is no longer about pushing..... Though there is plenty to observe, as we move along life's journey,sooner or later we must come to grips with the fact that LIVING IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT. And neither is re-birthing a country. The central focus of Barack Obama's Presidency has always been: "This isn't about me, it's about YOU." Many people on the Capital Mall today were seen wearing t-shirts that read: "This is OUR Inauguration." This is something we must all do together. Divided,we fail. United, we will rise to become more than we ever imagined ourselves to be! "

2009 AND ALL THAT

And we all seem to be back in the land of the Eyeless (and Toothless) in Gaza. How long does it take? An eye for and eye; a tooth for a tooth, and this is where we end up. Again. Again. Again.

"Promise was that I should Israel ..... deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now,
And find him Eyeless in Gaza ,,,"

"But what is this strength if it has not within it a double share of wisdom?" from Samson Agonistes: John Milton.

The Augument
Samson made Captive, Blind, and now in the Prison at Gaza, there to labour as in a common work-house, on a Festival Day, in the general cessation of labour, comes forth into the open Air, to a place nigh, somewhat retir'd there to sit a while and bemoan his condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certian friends and equals of his tribe, who seek to comfort him what they can; then by his old father Manoa, who endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his liberty by ransom; lastly, that this Feast was propclaim'd by the Philistins as a day of Thanksgiving for thir deliverance from the hands of Samson, which yet more troubles him. Manoa then departs to prosecute his endeavour with the Philistian Lords for Samson's redemption; who in the mean while he is visited by other persons; and lastly by a publik Officer to require his coming to the Feast before the Lords and People, to play or shew his strength in thir presence: he at first refuses, dismissing the publik Officer with absolute denyal to come; at length perswaded inwardly that this was from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the second time with great threatnings to fetch him, Manoa returns full of joyful hope, to procure e're long his Sons deliverance: in the midst of which discourse an Ebrew comes in haste confusedly at first; and afterward more distinctly relating the Catastrophe, what Samson had done to the Philisins, and by accident to himself: wherein the Tragedy ends. John Milton; Samson agonistes; first published 1671

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

I just heard Gillian Slovo being interviewed by Mariella Frostrup on Open Book, say, "Fiction gets us closer to the truth. You have to really inhabit your characters - live them deeply however loathsome they may be on the surface. Non-fiction obfuscates the truth because it is loaded with facts."
This was a discussion about writers' relationship to their characters, often members of their own families. Gillian Slovo appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Committee along with the men who murdered her mother. She came to know them intimately.


THOUGHT TWO (Same day, but can't remeber who said it.) The consolation of the Imagination is NOT imaginary consolation.

CHRISTMAS WAS ...

Queens Park, London. A Blazing fire. Watching Wallace and Gromit with the three grandchildren plus mum and dad and daddad Mikey -- and oh, the new dog: the black kamikaze whirlwind with eyes like saucers and blood-drawing needle teeth. A manic pint-sized pooch name of Tet Suya (hope I've got that right.) Pushed in face; inch-high legs with a wagglethumb of a tail; thinks he's a bull fighter. That's because he hasn't been out of the house yet and has nothing to measure himself by, except soppy humans who minister to his every need -- at the moment, anyway, and when he's not taking leaps at the baubles hanging on lower branches of the Christmas tree or chewing the electric cables. This activity, he's learning, triggers wallops with rolled up magazines.

The tree, an 8 footer fills the bay window space, and is knee-deep in pressies and decked with lights.

Then there was the goose-feast. The bird had been brought up from the Devon/Dorset border by Michael three days earlier, and now, cooked to a turn by Sandhya, it reposed on a dish of fresh bay leaves, its golden-brown breast topped with bouncing and glistening cranberries and succulent slices of quince in a red wine gravy. Squeezed between the crackers and the glasses were its companion dishes; crisp roasted potatoes, a dish of roast pumpkin, onion and chestnut, and another of thin green beans with shitake mushrooms. There was a strong Japanese flavour to the whole day. From the cups of green tea, to a new DVD of Spirited Away from the wonderful creative imagination of the Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki who made Howles Moving Castle and Laputa, to the minuscule Tet Suya; name meaning Arrow of Philosophy. At least the arrow bit was fairly accurate.

That was Christmas. What more do you want!

MIRACLE BIRTH

VERY LITTLE TO REPORT LAST MONTH, not because there wasn't anything going on, but because there was too much - a lot of family stuff including older generation illness and death. But also more work than I could cope with around the business of finding eager buyers for This Strange and Precious Thing, i.e. my new book. Marketing! That's the last thing I wanted to let myself in for, but it seems to be the inevitable consequence which follows writing a book.

And now it's December. And Christmas rushing up. Lordy, Lord! Which brings me to ... BANANAS

Late last Spring I noticed a strange bump. We have this banana tree in the house - we've had it since it was a baby, and almost lost it at the old house where we kept it in our conservatory which went unheated through the winters. Twice it almost gave up the ghost. But three or four years ago we downsized, and moved to a two floor cottage in Combe Down. Small as you enter it from the street, but amazingly spacious when you get inside - and, it included a built-in conservatory at the end of the sitting room. So our plants, as it were, live inside with us.

Discovering this bump one day, I took a closer look. A strange growth! I had to look closer. Hard to believe what I was seeing. Hidden under its great green leaves was a purply flower and a couple of mini bananas. My friend Kirsten, who was with me at the time and heard me squeal in disbelief, rushed over, camera in hand. (She just happened to have a camera in her hand.) Maybe this is everyday stuff; maybe everyone has bananas growing in the corner of their rooms, but for me it was sheer magic.

UPDATE 1: MIDSUMMER SURPRISE

Throughout the dreary summer -- remember it? -- it rained -- but the flower flourished and the nanas kept on growing. Today I fondly inspected it again, wondering if it had taken fright at the frost on the windowpane. But the bananas are still defiant. A proper hand of half sized fruit, and I'm beginning to hope they'll go on growing through the winter.

UPDATE 2: WINTER WONDER

A LITTLE VERSE for November 4

This verse by the poet Rumi was sent to me by a great friend in the U.S. Daniel Jacob, on the morning Obama was elected.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you;
Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what
you really want: don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

More WORDS FOR THE DAY

EAT YR HART OUT, KIDS. U DIDNT INVENT IT.

My grandmother, when she was a child, and that was way back in the eighteen-whatevers, was handed a piece of paper by her grandmother, (and that was even wayer back in Victoria's glorious reign,) on which she'd written :----
YY U R, YY U B, I C U R YY 4 ME. Get it! (Too wise your are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me.)

DRAGONS ON THE MOVE!

What's all this dragon business, then? Scary, or what? Well, let's have a look.

Dragons have appeared all over, from Wild, Wet Wales to China. And in this part of the world they've got a bad press, eating all those virgin princesses - well, princesses in general, I suppose. A complex and universal symbol, according to the Illustrated Encycolopaedia of Traditional Symbols; J.C Cooper. A book I highly recommend. ...combining the bird as spirit, and the serpent as matter. ... the breath of life, and the life-giving waters. In those long-ago days the beast represented the Sky gods and their earthly embodiments: emperors, queens and kings.

Breathing fire and lightning, they symbolised the four primal energies combined into One: the earth, the waters, the fire and the air. But also, in the good old days, they embodied male and female in a balanced whole. But like all good things this original state didn't last; they became ambivalent and finally they split. In our neck of the woods, the Occident, they came to be seen as dangerous, negative, evil. The fearsome powers of the dark beneath the Earth; monstrous, chthonic, undifferentiated, destructive. While in the Orient they continued to streak the heavens as beneficent celestial powers.

Yet, at some point inbetween, in Greece for example, they were regarded as guardians of the gold within the earth against whom a creator has to strive for mastership, and which the hero must fight and conquer. Or as the poet Rilke says, 'Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasures.'

Will that do for starters? I wish I had a picture. Maybe I should try to paint one.
_____________________________________________________

I sit down with my materials, sketch book, pastels, paints, with this picture in my mind, but I soon I realise that the image is beyond me to put down on paper. The colours aren't like anything I've seen before, and I don't think pigment paints can capture them. The dragon I see is gold, but purple violet incandescent earth-red all together - all at the same time. In fact it's more the colours than the dragon's form that I'm aware of. Its shape is the usual thing - prehistoric lizard sort of head with fiery, bulging eyes you can't meet and can't look into. Its body, scaly, spiny, massive and heavy - powerful, thrashing its tail - so you can't catch it -- hold it in your vision long enough to paint it. It doesn't say still. It changes and shimmers, and moves so lightly, as if it is made of silken thistledown. So transparent that you realise you're seeing into it, and it's like looking into a cauldron - molten streams of metal, different metals all swirling, mingling their various colours, which as your eyes are drawn further down into the maelstrom, become everchanging streams of water, pouring into fathomless, underground lakes and seas.

It's all still and silent down here among these unnameable blues and greens - a silence like a long-held breath - - 'til you begin to wonder, how long. You're transfixed by a tension - a building pressure - and then you see bubbles rising to the surface - bubbling, boiling - and the pressure mounts, forcing jets of steam up and out.

They come roaring and rumbling like thunder, out from the dragon's nostrils in clouds --thunderclouds, dark and ominous, rolling and filling the sky - until, watching them, it seems they're starting to soften. And the thunder in the deep cavern belly which had been shaking the earth, begins to turn to a purr. The dragon's breath mists, silver and shimmery, releasing pearly scales of honesty, luminous moonpennies, and snowdrops glinting with a million frozen crystals - falling soft and quiet, covering the Earth.

So, I just couldn't get it in the right place, so here's another! Two for the price of one. You can never have enough of a good thing, says Grandmother Dragon.

What's all that about? This dragon thing? More on that later.

THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT?

Look! I've got to say something. All this time it's taken - gestating - and then the launch a month ago, giving birth, getting it out there, and I haven't said anything yet about This Strange and Precious Thing, my new book. But what's really itching me just now is the little preamble I decided to give at the launch. I'd already read excerpts from it to different small groups of people in the weeks and months before it was finally printed, and not wanting to bore people by reading the same again, I thought I'd try to tell them what I thought the book was about.



I know, I know. If a book doesn't speak for itself, then what's the point of it. So, maybe that was a mistake, but I really wanted to clear a few things up. This categorisation thing, for a start. What kind of book is it, Fact or Fiction? That was easy. It's fiction - but what kind of fiction? Straight, literary fiction, or, as one reviewer had said, sci-fi? Or yet another - two actually -had declared, fantasy? Then yet again, is it a love story? Is it a man's book or a woman's? As far as I was concerned it was all of the above.



And then I wanted to go further and give some indication of the wider context in which it is set, and the underlying and deeper significance of the background without making it sound impossibly complex or serious - which it isn't. So, on the 17th of September I came out with this statement: WE'RE LIVING IN STRANGE AND CHALLENGING TIMES - YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED. All this stuff happening about us at the moment. A whole load of new characters about to hit the stage, dramatis personae. Last year it was the devastating Caterina. This year it's Gustav and Ike. Then come Freddy May and Fanny Mac -- seasons topsy-turvy, credit crunches escalating to financial meltdowns. Famine, flood, war and pestilence - you know - the list goes on and on. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping towards the abyss! -- Are we about to get flushed down the pan? Is this The End of Civilization As We Know It? Well, YES! Why not? As far as I'm concerned, CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT is well past its sell-by date.



Well, you may also have noticed, that two or three days later.... .... Perhaps you'd all better sit up and take notice!



But that still leaves a few more of my prophetic utterances to come. My take on Fantasy, for instance. Fantasy, in my book, is another word for Potential. But perhaps I'd better leave that for another time. Today, after all is a day to celebrate another of my granddaughters birthdays. The middlest one this time is ten years old today! Three granddaughter's birthdays in three weeks - the eldest one come next. I wonder if I can find pictures for them too.

WORD FOR THE DAY

I heard this only today - on Today, as a matter of fact, radio 4. Some incredible geek has read and digested all 20 volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary and come up with this --

Onononoflab--- or was it Onomonoflaph .... Hells bells, what was it? Blast! I've forgotten it! Anyway, I can tell you what it means: it means some blithering old duffer who starts spluttering with frustration when he just can't recall the word he's searching for.

Odd, that! Been my problem all along, that.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

That little angel sitting inside you - oh, yes, everyone has an angel inside - but did you realise it is a child?

Watching some old footage of the violinist Pinki Zucherman last night, what impressed me - apart from his incredible mastery - was - well, it wasn't just youthfulness - he was young in those days, after all, (I mean this was maybe back in the 60s and 70s) but it was something else, something I couldn't put my finger on. And it wasn't just him. I noticed the same thing in his flautist wife and the other friends playing with him - particularly Jacqueline Dupres. He was on fire! incandescent with some undefinable spirit.

It wasn't until I watched him playing with the English Chamber Orchestra - brilliant musicians all - but - none of them had this thing. Impish, Puck-like, Pan-like. And then it struck me: the spirit, the angel inside is always a Child. That's where the miracle comes from.

JUMPING IN

Written September 26th 08

Well, you have to begin somewhere so I might as well blaze in on a wave of glory, riding piggy-back on this picture which Crysse took last week when she graced the occasion of the launch of 'This Strange and Precious Thing.' That is, as soon as I manage to crack how to paste up pics. I might even start with a picture of my youngest granddaughter who is celebrating her 7th birthday today at Leggoland.

This is the one with the comic teeth which she was wearing on her 5th birthday, and perhaps paste in another, a really nice one of her without the teeth.

She's got teeth in that one, of course, but her own, and demurely not on show.

Just ten days ago I was celebrating the birth of my third book.

Bath writer, Esme Ellis, is how Crysse (Morrison) on her Sept. 21st blog, described me. Writer! But I've never been able to see myself in that role. Words, either in speech or on the page, don't come as easily to me as they seem to come to others. For the best part of my life I've communicated with my fingers - No, I don't mean sign language - I mean through my art, and in particular, my sculpture.

Any formal education I missed out on when, come the eleven plus, way back then, I opted, or rather my mother, bless her, spied in the list of tick-boxes for all the secondary schools on offer at the time in Sheffield, one we hadn't known about; Junior Art School. We did English and maths, and all that, but minimally, and I left at the age of 15 for a full-time course at the Sheffield College of Art. So, That's it. I've begun.