Ten Things That Amaze Me About Me (by sarah)

1. My six year old daughter has a spelling age that is the same as I had at 18. Though my vocabulary has always been massive as in exceeded what is expected for an average adult in the UK in primary school.

2. I am obsessed with reading and learning things though I still do not have an adult reading age. Reading at all didn't really happen for me until about the age of 12. I am still a slow reader - I read text books for fun.

3. I got glandular fever and failed my first year at university - then had back and mobility issues involving painful weekly hospital trips plus a side helping of IBS with ulcers. And I still have a degree from one of the best Universities in the World and it was so close to a first it's painful.

4. I am so shy it is classed as a medical issue compounded by C-PTSD but I have a solution - it is called performing - as in stage.

5. My hearing needed sorting yet I have always been obsessed with music and probably because of this it is a thing I feel with my body and not just something I hear. I still struggle with comprehension if I can not see a persons lips moving.

6. Shyness and stutter plus the remnants of things like lisps mean that I like diction, languages and singing.

7. I am dyslexic, and I don't mean just a little bit - the educational psycologists said he had never seen anyone with such severe dyslexia even sit GCSE's let alone get the grades I got. The natural reaction to this for me? I have always had the ambition to write stories. I managed to get published before I was eighteen.

8. I am scared of heights and used to get bad vertigo, was the clumsiest kid around (called dyspraxia and is a cousin of dyslexia) - I became a climbing and archery instructure.

9. I almost died and was crippled by having a baby, I willingly decided to have another and do not regret it.

10. School and even university bullying made me feel that I was going to be single forever and never achieve anything. I have the most loveliest husband, intelligent and cute to boot and I have been 'going out' with him since I was 21. He supports me and seems to actually fancy me too.

Forgive the egotistical post but these things really do amaze me.

My new workshop (by alaric)

I took the day off of work on my birthday, to do something I'd been dying to do since we moved in - get my workshop set up to a state where I can actually use it.

To begin with, I had a load of things to put away. The floor was covered in boxes that needed unpacking, but as soon as I'd cleared enough to get sufficient access, I put up my big shelf.

It goes on the wall above my welding bench:

Drilling into masonry can be a pain, especially coarse breeze blocks like those, which are comprised of a load of tiny stones joined together with cement; the bit will tend to wander into a convenient gap between stones rather than ploughing through the wall where I want it to go. So the only thing to do is to break out my serious drill. Which I call Vera:

Vera is an SDS+ drill, which means it has a special chuck and takes special bits. The chuck fixing is actually designed for hammer drilling, unlike standard drill chucks, which means the drill can apply a much more significant and reliable hammering force. As such, it glides through walls like this in the way a normall drill glides through plywood.

As such, in no time I had each bracket mounted with 6x40mm screws into 10mm diameter wall plugs:

I could then life the shelf into place:

However, Vera's SDS+ chuck can't drive ordinary bits (although I do have an SDS+ to ordinary chuck adapter, but Vera would really be overkill for the next step), so I used my cordless drill to predrill holes for the screws into the bottom of the shelf. I like to think of this drill as Vera's filthy little sister, as it's fast and easy. The observant will also notice that it goes up to eleven:

Having done that, I screwed the shelf onto the brackets so it won't budge:

With the shelf up I could then put even more stuff away. I've made a little guided tour movie:

There's still more to do - I need to get Ethernet cabling down there so I can get Internet access, and I need to fix the leaking flat roof, and do something about the draughty eaves and the ivy creeping in. But now that the floor is clear and things are in useful places, I can actually use the workshop, which is great.

So two days later, I performed my first project. We needed a coathook for children's coats and bags, and we found the perfect design in a shop, except it was made to hang over the top of a door rather than to be mounted on the wall.

Not a problem when you own metal working tools.

First off, I used the angle grinder to chop the bits that go over the top of the door off, then with them out of the way, went in and neatly chopped the long metal bits off close to the part we wanted:

Then I used a center punch to mark where I needed to drill at each end:

To begin with, I drilled a 2mm hole, as that's a lot easier to drill accurately by hand than the 5mm hole I need:

Then I drilled it out to 5mm:

And then the screw could fit in:

And it was done:

What An Amazing Week! (by sarah)

Friday I went off to Not The Oxford Literature Festival were I read out stuff from an upcoming collection called Political Converse including the song Shit Creek.

I gave out my new business cards which I am very happy with from Moo. Each card has a different picture on either of my art work, photos I've taken or me being arty. I have rationed them to one per person as some people want to collect the pictures 🙂

I came home on Friday feeling great especially as I'd worked out the old guy at the festival was infact the guy who's stories I'd been obsessed with as a child!

He's called Dennis Hamley for those of you who are interested 🙂

Then I checked my emails and.... I've won a Bronze Medal in the Gloucestershire Creative Olympics! For my song Windy Gloucestershire. So I am going to to an awards thing at Battle of the Winds in Stroud at the end of the month!

Then Sunday I went off to Art Tournaments No Hoax where I read out more of my Political Converse including another song 🙂 This was all whilst wearing my flashing corset!

Sound quality is naff and I am competing with the band in the other room! But you get the idea 🙂

I enjoyed watching the other acts and knitting whilst Alaric crotcheted - this was then topped off by winning a place in the finals for the Gloucestershire Poet Laureate! Which will take place at Gloucester Cathedral in August 🙂

So with all this I thought I should start working on my web home/hub, somewhere were all the bits of me are collected - I'm still working on it but here it is 🙂

Then I got an email saying I had made the long list for Flash Fiction South West.

I then made a cake with Alaric and Jean for Al's birthday - it didn't quiet work but tasted brilliant!

I feel I am on a roll at the moment and that I may even have reached the 'tipping point' with getting my work out there etc...

The only iffy thing has been that my SponsorMe account will be closed if I don't get some sponsors soon! People keep saying they will sponsor me but haven't yet - so if you're going to do it now please otherwise it will be too late!

Help me bring science art to all 🙂

Purple Poet Prepares to Perform Political Poetry Perfectly (by sarah)

I'm off to Oxford tonight for The Not The Oxford Literary Festival at the Albion Betnik. This marks the beginning of a hectic and creative few weeks for me.

Tonight I perform political pieces such as my No Wage Slave poem and Shit Creek song.

I decided as part of this I needed to re-dye my hair - it has not come out as purple as I'd hoped but will probably be more purple after a few washes. The lipstick is also not my favourite but was the only decent one I have so far unpacked and I thought it gave a nice contrast. I've added in my festival hat as well it is a festival and here we go!

I Spy… (by sarah)

Last night we went for a walk with the kids, we were playing eye spy - as any parent will know eye spy with kids is always interesting 🙂

We spent ages trying to guess what began with H and falls off of trees and is a seed with spiky bits (we allow glues if you get stuck in eye spy). The answer was of course Haycorns!

Of course - silly mummy and daddy - Jean has had the whole collection of pooh and piglet and all the other random poems read to her several times.

As it is she thought they weren't acorns and they weren't pine cones but those little almost pine cone things you get on some succulent looking spikey trees we see growing in various places.

She showed us one - and yes it does look like a cross between a pine cone and an acorn 🙂 Felt a bit sad to have to tell her they weren't haycorns and that it is just piglet can't say acorn as he's too little.

The game then progressed and Jean began introducing things like 'I spy with my little eye something beginning with COT' the answer to which was Cut Of Twigs. There was also SWNCII - Sky With No Cloud In It.

She then began to get more and more abstract so we changed the game to 20 questions. But Jean tended to just repeatedly ask if the answer was Horace her House Dragon (a series of stories I've written for her).

When me and Alaric got distracted she announced 'You Guys! Come On Focus, we are trying to play a game here'.

So we then ended up playing word association which was lots of fun though had a tendency to end up in loops of characters from various stories or films - namely Mysterious Cities of Gold and Harry Potter.

It was a fun outing though we did have to keep telling Jean she couldn't whack the bushes with her stick as they were peoples fences but then we found a lovely set of park and tree lined lanes to walk through right near our new house!