Category: Uncategorized

Noise nuisance

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I just read a post on Facebook about a friend who’s neighbours THREE streets away are constantly playing loud music with a strong base beat. I suggested this and remembered a time a long time ago when I had similar problems…

“Can you reply by sitting outside his house in your car with your speakers on full blast playing Mozart?”

“When our old neighbours years ago used to play loud pop music I would wait till it went off late at night then play Mahler or Brahms through the wall at them, full blast…. Talk about passive aggressive. In the end it was so bad it kept the neighbour on the other side awake and she was eight months pregnant. I finally snapped and took my personal alarm, pulled the pin out of it and put my hand through the neighbours letterbox. (it was a terraced house). No one came to the door, so I went to the other neighbour and explained what I’d done. I was just coming out of there and my student neighbours started to come out to catch a taxi to the city centre. I stopped them and asked if they were at the local polytechnic. When they said yes, I asked if that meant they were intelligent. Because wasn’t it obvious that the noise they were making was disturbing their neighbours? They said it hadn’t mattered in the halls of residence, so I politely pointed out this was the ‘real’ world. A bit later the police arrived. I explained what I’d done and they decided to take no action!

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70’s toys

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Clackers.. Two balls on a string you waved up and down, with a little ring in the middle. They were meant to bounce off each other top and bottom. Many a broken finger….

Made of hard plastic, some luminous green, other colours too. I remember them being quite heavy. The cord holding them together was made of nylon. The string was tied round the ring at the halfway point. You moved your arm up and down fast, the balls would be sent flying and bounce at the top and bottom of their arc, making the characteristic ‘clacking’ noise. Hence the name.

As with other toys from the 70’s I doubt they would have been approved by health and safety now!

My friends book…

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Image by N. F. Mirza from her book.

I don’t do reviews…

But (you know one was coming). I just sat down to read ” Swinging Sanity” a book of poetry by my friend N. F. Mirza, who I know as ‘stoneronarollercoaster’ at WordPress.

I’ve known her for a while and found out she was a writer and now a published poet. Her book is a small volume. But it’s full to bursting with poetry full of emotion. As she moves through life, using it to discover her mental health and wellbeing.

The poems are forceful, I’m no poetry critic, but I found them easy to read. Some of them touched raw nerves, and you can see her heart torn open in many of them. I particularly liked Ocean and I become one.

ISBN 9798618202992.

Whale

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One of the animals I regret never having seen are Whales. I know they are endangered but I hope as life resumes that they will be left alone. I have the same feeling about Tigers and Elephants. But there are many creatures that most people have never seen that also are endangered. It doesn’t matter whether its the smallest or largest animal, each have their place in the Web of nature.

As lockdown is reduced, humans are going out and dumping fast food rubbish from their cars. Do they even care? It makes me really angry that eople have no consideration for the environment.

Anyway, rant over. Stay safe.

X

In happier times

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I haven’t been to my studio for months , I’m keeping away from people as much as I can. That said, it was lovely to come across this photo. I was at tge studio at Spode. It must have been cold because I was wearing a hat. I don’t know where the jumper went to…..

It is clear I was happy in the photo, something had made me chuckle. Someday things will get better. Some of the paintings have been sold, but I can’t do craft fairs or exhibitions at the moment so I haven’t been replacing them. Maybe I will have a go again soon. I have got a course that I’m taking which starts in June. Hopefully that will get me going again.

Texture

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Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent challenge day 34. Texture. My hubby sitting on his armchair on a black throw and leaning on a multi coloured knitted cushion cover.  The floor is covered with a blue textured and patterned rug.

I also tried to accentuate my hubbies smooth skin.

I used Faber Castell, goldfaber aqua pencils and Grafix coloured pencils. The Faber Castell ones are bendable with water. Only four mour days to go.

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using my PC

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Its been three years since Iv’e used my PC. I am very rusty at this, even trying to type on a keyboard again feels very anachronistic, and its a big lumpy keyboard. My mouse? An old wacom tablet I used to draw on and as a mouse. So I’m struggling. I’m surprised a little paperclip hasn’t popped up to tell me I’m doing things wrong, and I had got used to my keypad auto-correcting, so there’s lots of underscored red warnings about my lack of  ‘s in words like wasn’t for was not…..grr.

So why the haste to go back to the PC?

I’m trying to set up to do an online course which will need communication via a website that is more complicated than my phone. after spending the day trying to sort out spaghetti cables , leads that run to nowhere, and a monitor that doesn’t want to play I’m going to give it a rest for a while .

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