Facebook Meme – A Question of Age (by sarah)

An interesting Facebook meme caught my attention - I was given an age an a list of questions which I had to answer for then and now. People who liked the update were given their own ages to do by me 🙂

When I was 21:

I lived: In shared rooms in Everlyne Gardens in South Kensignton with many other students discussing science and philosophy and art into the night.

I drove: myself on work, working harder and smarter for my degree - finally I felt I knew how to do this academic stuff.

I worked: at the student union stewarding events during term time with Tuesday afternoons given up to sieving out bats teeth from cave sediments at the Natural History Museum. During the holidays I was an Outdoor pursuit instructor and site mantance bod at Thriftwood Campsite -sometimes they left me in charge.

I feared: Failure, the dark and other people, but mainly that the Drs said I possible had two chronic conditions one degenerate and the other with a age cap of 30 on average.

I wanted: to change the world, be an astrobiologist or look at human origins.

I wanted to write stories that captured the imagination and be a TV science documentary person. I wanted to show the world the wonder of science, to sing and dance and perform on stage. I wanted things to work out with this guy I'd just met...

Now I'm 32:

I live: in Gloucester with that guy I met and our two kids and our cats and our rabbit... there is lots of purple and butterflies and books and rocks.

I drive: when the instructor calls but am finding it hard.

I work: mainly snuggling little ones but also blogging, writing fiction, performing poetry, running craft workshops, baking cakes, creating science-art and trying to save the world one bit of inspiration at a time.

I fear: loosing my family

I want: to be well, to have a body that works but failing that just to do as much as I can.

Poetry Riot (by sarah)

Unfortunately we only caught an hour or so of the final night party Poetry Riot of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival - but what an hour with Trevor Meaney (yes not good photos but light levels were really low by this point as was my energy!):

And the sadly hilarious Clayton Blizzard with his whispered poetry and folk/rap songs that you are either going to laugh or cry or both too.

It was great fun though we sadly missed Mark Neil performing though I almost crashed into him at the top of the stairs and said my normal hello and he responded with his (I can't remember who you are) smile like normal 🙂 - Alaric appears to have transmogrified into Luke Skywalker from Return of the Jedi.

No really look!

I took embarrassing photos of the interns 🙂 (who should start a comedy show up!)

And I took arty pics of people taking much better pictures than me!

Other photos of events can be found at Write Out Loud and Bilt Photography (which is where my current profile picture on FB comes from!).

You can probably tell that I really really enjoyed the festival 🙂

Felix Winkelmann interviewed in Atomic Spin (by alaric)

Here's an interview with my favourite Scheme implementer!

The Frist Salad of the Year (by sarah)

It's been hard to get the veggies going this year but yesterday thanks to turning our dinning area into a make shift green house, we had our first home grown salad of the year.

Mary has been helping me pot out seedlings most of which actually survived the lovings of a two year old!

I have courette and pumpkin plants planted out in grow bags - I am in dispare over getting an allotment at the moment, there just simply is not enough space to grow what we want. For a start I didn't want to really be growing stuff in the 'grassy' area, for a start it is supposed to be a nice garden area and secondly we can not make it look nice whilst I am growing things on it.

At the moment we radishes almost ready for first pickings and various salad leafs, there are peas and beans and root crops in various containers. The apple tree and blueberry bushes have all survived the winter though the new redcurrents and black current bushes did not survive a late frost much to my upset.

Jeany is being very good about watering the pots and has her own little butterfly corner developing, also I shouldn't moan as the salad was very tasty and Mary eat the bowl of it I was going to put in the fridge for today's lunch!

And also we have been enjoying the sunshine and having summer cocktails and everything 🙂 Still no BBQ this year yet though 🙁

The Month of May (by sarah)

This month I am gearing up for Festival season proper as well as doing my normal two challenges - this months are National Picture Book Writing Week (NaPiBoWriWee) in which I will be attempting to write 7 picture books in 7 days. I have already completed the first draft of number one. This is obviously only the first week of May so I normally then follow it with a month of working on my kidlit stuff. The aim is an hour a day working on editing, redrafting and illustrations.

The second challenge is a month of writing flash fiction - the aim is one a day. Flash fiction are stories under 1000 words. I wont be posting them daily but rather getting ahead of myself for the Friday Flash postings I take part in.

Apart from that I have a lot of blogging to catch up on and editing of short stories to be sent off there is also the processing of festival photos to happen this month!

Children book and illustration stuff appears on Orange Monster

Poetry Festival write up stuff will be on here and Turquoise Monster

Flash Fiction is Magenta Monster

Photos in general go out on Salaric Photography