Musical Mary (by sarah)

Mary has been gifted Jeany's old Uke that my aunt gave us - mainly due to the colour thing 😉 Mary loving pink and Jean detesting it these days. At two events we have been involved with recently there has been miniature music which is something my friend Zaphire is involved with. They give out ukes to the kids and sing songs - that is were the ooo ooo eee bit comes from that Mary is singing.

Mary has always been really musical - I know she isn't really playing this and it's out of tune and stuff but I'm still impressed! I need to dig out some other vids we have of her including air guitar when she was tiny and recorder tutting when she could sit up and stuff.

Growing the Good Stuff (by sarah)

Yesterday saw the first ripe strawberry from the plants Alaric bought for £12 a few weeks back - he had it as part of his FathersDay Brekki.

I have been making salads out of the various leaves I am growing inside and out at the moment and tonight we went to the allotment. We haven't been able to do a proper stint there for 2 weeks so there was a lot to do. I quickly filled my giant blue bucket three times with weeds - the first bucket load as always was roots and all!

We've found the broad beans have a bit of an infestation and that nature has started to rally the troupes in the form of ladybirds (ladybugs if you are from the US).

One the plus side we still got a good crop of beans and there will be more, I have a second crop already in and some runners waiting (bought from Prinknash Abby on Sunday).

The radishes are doing well though no where near as epic as the giant ones my bro bought me from his back garden. They were a mix of white, black and pink and in round and suasage shape. Alaric is very pleased about this - I only took enough for the next few days as am hoping to be back on Thursday to do more.

Jeany worked hard picking the broad beans and the raspberries 🙂

There where epic numbers of the soft fruit - easily £10 of supermarket peak season money. Of course I think Jeany may have been eating as she was picking too 😉

There was a spiders nest in the lemon-balm so I decided not to harvest any of that today!

I finally got around to putting the rainbow chard seeds in as well! The girls both ate their dinner on site and I think it is starting to come together - especially as this year we consider to be the hard graft for little reward year due to just getting the ground prepared and stuff.

Camp Nano (by sarah)

I am going to be taking part in Camp Nano next month - a sort of more informal version of the National Novel Writing Month - I am going to use it to try and finish some more of the Punk stuff off - I have simply labelled it as The Punk's Universe - here is the round up of it:

The Punk's Universe is the over all title to all my previous nanos and script frenzys which are based in the same worlds and timelines. Currently it sits at about 9 novels, a couple of hundred pages of comic book scripts, one film script (not complete) and dozens of short stories. A lot of it is 70-90% complete (of first phase and some is even on 2nd phase ie the getting ready for publishing bit) so I thought I'd work on them collectively and hopefully bump a few more into phase 2.

The premiss is that there is a group of long lived Aquatic Apes who where the first people and they run human society in the back ground. There are three waring factions and humans where genetic slave stock made from the defeated other first humans who lives in the forests and deserts. Due to a eugenics war the Aquatic Apes or Masters are almost extinct and can not bred but rely on tech to clone themselves. Punku and a few others are hybrids of the slaves and aquatic apes and have been given life extention tech and other adaptions - they can pass for humans but have been alive for 1000's of years.

The timeline for the world currently spans from the pre-history of the Aquatic Apes where they evolved and created their own civilizations (Alantis, Heva and Pacifica) to a 1000 odd years in our future set in space with upload and where the singularity may finally be possible.

p.s. my user name is 5affy and I will attempt to put updates on here and Purple Monster.

Concept Sketches (by sarah)

I've been working on concept sketches - don't worry I know there are huge problems with the proportions and stuff - the drawings are just for design and figuring stuff out in my own head and of course drawing practice! They are all based in the universe of The Punk.

Starting with Punku herself in her Babel outfit.

And Jesu her brother with his sacred fish spear.

An Aquatic Ape fishing with their manta ray plans.

The Lady also known as Chaos and the moralistic bad guy.

I also now have emblems for all the main characters of the first part of the story - today also saw me write a short story that is based in the Punk's World - not bad as I have post festival workshop running fatigue and possible mild food poisoning so lots of ouchy and I did a four hour stint of weeding at the allotment today.

Music, Muse and Marvel (by sarah)

I am 33 yrs old - for my 30th it was decided that I would attempt the music I had never really had the chance to do. Al got me the Purple Vin and a tone of plectrums. I was going to and indeed started singing lessons. But really I have not done as much as I had hoped.

I've sung 4 times, five if you include my own birthday bash (not including campfire singing here) and my guitar practice is sketchy at best.

Alaric got me a microphone for the valentines just after we moved in here - so 2012 - and I have been producing songs which are slowly ending up on my bandcamp page - this really got going when I got a place on a song writing workshop with Paul Murphy. To date we have:

Windy Gloucestershire which I won the creative olympics bronze medal for song writing:

I Want To Know About Everything - which is about science:

Shy - which is actually my poem set to the hammond organ we accidently bought instead of a bed settee.

Bubble of Bone - where I muck around with the echo and zynergy charms

Ivy - I kind of wanted this one to be a dance track but it kind of is a fragment instead - a ghost of what it could be.

I knew Him So Well - where I experimented with putting a half there narrative over the top.

Flowing - a song about war and one I sung at the open mic at Wychwood

Firey Redemption - a song and painting I produced in response to the homophobic attacks and discrimination in general - both voices are me and I wanted it to sound similar to Billy Holliday in a little shake recording naked sound - I know most people do not like this song - I however am happy with it - it says what I want.

Hey You - I actually wrote this whilst at school as a 'protest song' when I found out in GCSE business studies that women could expect to earn less than men for the same job - plus general teenage punk 'where do I fit in society' - I decided to add in a disjointed thrash/death metal voice as well.

Love Song From The Gutter - what it says - about childhood discovery of love that can't happen. It is a twin to Bubble of Bone and I think it still needs a backing.

Little Ghost on Parade - which is about prostitution and living on the edge but still fighting for a future.

Summer Sun - a love song for walking around Gloucester with my husband 🙂 It needs guitar backing or something still.

I have a couple of other songs to come yet that involve drums, me singing three parts and the guitar etc... But there is a real issue - I have lost my ability to sing one my own in front of people - ok so the on my own has always been a bit of an issue but I swear it's a lot worse now :/

I went and did a couple of lessons and joined a group at Centre Arts but things where too complicated at the time as it was around when we were trying to move and I was still on crutches and stuff.

So you can imagine Al's surprise when I started to sing and sing and sing the song Let It Go from the Design Film Frozen. I announced that I was going to an audition for the Gloucester Pride with the group Jean does her drama with. And I got the song sound LUSH - really dam hot. My throat kept closing up when I thought of people though, so I got Jean to sit and be a staring audience and at first I struggled and then it was good and then I got Al to join in and the same. I even worked out bits of it for the guitar - gave up looked on the internet and amended someone elses chords until I was happy with it but discarded the guitar as I'm not at the point where I can sing and play well enough at the same time. I focused on singing it my way...

And it was fab.

And I have the perfect outfit.

Then I got to the audition and I was shaking, I stared at the page of words and could not look up and I squeaked my way through the song. And I mean squeak - the power and depth had gone, most of the notes where in tune (I think though wobbly). I think I croaked on one of them though and so on.

I apologised and they were lovely and put on backing music and I sang it lower in my 'camp fire' voice and they said I was much stronger in my lower register (not as low as I sing Firey). But I'm sure I don't sing in tune in camp fire voice - my mum always used to moan about it when I sang like that and it kind of doesn't take any effort and is almost talking. I'm also still not sure I'll be able to sing it infront of people.

SO it was a bit of a flop - on the other hand I am singing with other for the event and that is great 🙂 I have missed MTSoc (Musical Theatre) since leaving Imperial and until I moved to Gloucestershire I was always singing. I can't read music and I don't understand the technical side of things - I have confidence issues over it all due to being told in primary school that real musicians do not play by ear and having started off thinking music was something you felt as I initially could not hear as a small child and so on.

Anyway I have been trying to sing the Frozen song lower with the result of a scary Nick Cave style version earlier that made Mary very cross - she didn't like my high version of Let It Go either - she likes the Camp Fire voice as long as I don't hit and wrong notes - she sulks if I do and starts singing over me.

For a 3 yr old she is amazing at tonal stuff.

Anyway I have always gone with confronting my fears - scared of heights become a climbing instructor, dyslexic - become a writer, social anxiety? chronic shyness? - get your bum on stage.

The photo at the top of the post is my new plectrum collection - or rather what has already arrived - I broke my second to last one at the weekend and kind of found that you can now get really amazing ones - they are all the different Marvel Comic book character ones 😀 I am still awaiting, shiny, sparkly ones, space themed ones and dragons. I kind of didn't realise how many there were but am happy especially as Jeany has asked to start learning again so she can have a plectrum - good job I got an extra pack so it wont break my set up then 😉 Also this means Comic Book Plectrum Jewellery - three of my past times in one thing 😀

(Don't worry Clare the last plectrum is the wonderful engraved silver one you got me!).