John's Quavering Pencil

For about a week I have been trying to find an electrician to fix a faulty light in my kitchen and one way or another it seems to have proved rather difficult. The people who had previously fixed my washing machine claimed not to know of anyone they could recommend. My guess is that they did not want to be held to account should the job be botched in some way. I doubt very much that they were genuinely ignorant in this regard. Anyway, I managed to find the phone number for a guy who rewired some lighting into my garage and he will come and sort things out next week.

The point of this story is that I sometimes allow relatively minor and mundane matters to weigh heavily on my mind, even though I know that they should not. Edmund Spenser, a poet writing in the latter half of the 16th century puts things into perspective in the following verse from The Ruines of Time (of course, he wasn’t talking about light sockets since they didn’t have them back then)…

High towers, faire temples, goodly theatres,
Strong walls, rich porches, princelie pallaces,
Large streets, braue houses, sacred sepulchres,
Sure gatres, sweete gardens, stately galleries,
Wrought with faire pillours, and fine imageries,
All those (O pitie) now are turned to dust,
And ouergrowen with blacke obliuions rust.

Although this does put my mundane electrical problem into perspective, I’m not sure that it offers much by way of comfort. Furthermore, I do not believe it is a reason for not sorting out the minor hassles of quotidian life. I do not like cooking in the gloom.

There is also a higher principle involved; if I let one thing slide, then why not the next and the next after that, and so on. Quite swiftly, one could find oneself in a pickle. Life is a problem-solving activity, at least to some degree, and laziness in solving the problems that fall within one’s bailiwick amounts to a secular sin, assuming that the desire for a reasonable quality of life exists. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Today I went to lunch to celebrate my friend Costello’s birthday… and here she is.

My friend Costello

We had a lovely meal at our friend John’s pub, within walking distance from where I live. Having sunk a couple of pints, I pottered off to the Gents toilet and was there struck by how wonderful the verdigris looked upon the copper piping in the urinal. How acidic we blokes must be.

Excellent virdigris

I am making this post in mid-afternoon. This evening I go to see the opera La Traviata at my local theatre. Before that, I shall take a nap to sleep off the excellents pints of Abbot ale that I quaffed this lunchtime. Speak to you later my dear blogophiles.

I have been feeling in rather a blue mood lately and yesterday I wondered whether I have been getting enough exercise. I even began to suspect that I might have a deficiency of daylight hours, shutting myself up so much in my windowless studio. Today I therefore determined to go for a walk on the beach. I was lucky enough to catch a beautiful sunny morning for my seaside adventure.

Sunny Whitburn beach

I was mildly perturbed to discover a couple of large paw marks, firmly imprinted in the sand. My thoughts immediately turned to the Hound of the Baskervilles, and I swear I heard the most blood-curdling howl, on the wind.

Foreboding paw marks in the sand

As you can see, my anxiety was well well-founded, since the huge black beast pounded towards me at an alarming rate.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

I was knocked to the ground by a glancing blow to my solar plexus as it rushed past me in pursuit of a white, gallivanting poodle. My head hit the ground and the sun appeared to be temporarily switched off.

The moment the sun was switched off

By the time I regained consciousness, light had returned to normal but I appeared to be lying in a drift of sea coal dust. Was I about to fall down a disused mineshaft, perhaps obsolete since the Victorian era, unknown and now uncovered by the pounding waves? I asked myself this question, rhetorically.

The black sea coal dust

I had no idea where I was. I staggered up the beach. Somebody had obviously anticipated my difficulty, and had conveniently put up a sign saying “You are here”. I suddenly realised that they had even drawn the points of the compass so that I could orient myself to the real world.

You are here!

I remembered being here early in the morning, with the sun coming up strong and low over the horizon. And in England, the sun rises in the East. I turned to the sea, raised my arms up from my sides, scarecrow-wise, and desperately tried to remember which was my left and which was my right. Then I recalled that I wore my watch on my left hand. I turned my head and took sight along the length of my right arm and with confidence stepped South. At the lighthouse I swung West and within a couple of blocks I had found my car. And here I am, my dear blogophiles. Talk to you later.

There was a police helicopter hovering in the air over my house today and I took a pic of it through the skylight window in my studio. I was working on some lyrics for a new song so, obviously, they must have been trying to zoom their camera in to steal them from me.

Somebody trying to pinch my song lyrics?

I made a birthday card from one of the watercolour micro-paintings I did in art class yesterday. I really wanted some mounting board for it but I could get nothing but thin card from two large stores I visited. I guess I shall have to make a trip to a specialist shop at some point. I need to build up a small stock of card covering a range of colours.

Well, this is no good, I must work out my songlist for my gig at Ragged Edge tonight. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Here is another example of my attempt to get to grips with compression curves in clothing. I present to you a pencil sketch of a pair of trousers.

Pencil sketch of compression curves in a pair of trousers

Today is pancake day in England and I think I shall make some later in the day. I prefer to have mine rolled with lemon juice and maple syrup, although savoury with slices of camembert tucked inside can be equally satisfying.

The piano seems to be progressing very slowly at the moment. As for guitar, I am doing some rather boring right-hand practice to improve the accuracy of my picking. I think it is generally acknowledged that one needs to get the accuracy sorted out before going for speed.

I have opened up the preview of my autobiography to cover the whole book. You can get to that from a link off my homepage. That seems to be all for now. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Today I cooked a vegetarian lunch. I made bubble and squeak with some fried leeks blended into the mashed potato patties. I also cooked some dumplings, made with vegetarian suet. I par-boiled some carrot matchsticks and then fried them in butter and honey, serving them with a liberal sprinkling of chopped fresh corriander. To add a little colour, I also served a spoonful of little Brussels sprouts. I got some of my inspiration from a bunch of recipes on the BBC food pages (bbc.co.uk/food).

Vegetarian Sunday lunch

My planning could have been better. I tried to fry too much simultaneously at the end and I possibly overdid the burnt effect on the bubble & squeak. I think that could easily have sat in a serving dish in a warm oven for 10 minutes while I focussed on the carrots. The dumplings were very tasty; I put a veggie stock cube in the cooking water in the pan I used to cook them. The kitchen needed some clearing up afterwards, but that is all done now and things are ship-shape. I was hoping to draw some more drapery this afternoon but I think a long nap might be necessary following the expenditure of so much culinary energy. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Today I had the full English breakfast with my friend Tom, and a very good one it was too. On returning home, I noticed a few yellow croci had come out in a border near my kitchen. Apart from the white snowdrops, this is the first splotch of colour I have seen in the garden this year. Roll on spring.

First sign of colour in my garden

In my blog post for 14th February I showed you my drawing of compression patterns in a close-fitting woollen sweater. This was kindly posed for me by one of my friends. I moved on today to work on the compressions in a smoother dress material, based on some random pic of a clothes model.

Compression folds in a fashion dress

I have started to notice these patterns as I move around in First Life. For example, the young woman who served breakfast this morning had some brilliant patterning across the back of her blouse as she turned from us to pour the coffee from the machine on the counter. Also, a young man who was waiting to be served had some very intruiging folds towards the cuffs of his jeans, above his shoes. I still do not have the courage to approach people to ask if I might photograph their drapery folds. This is because I cannot shake off the belief that, were I to do so, the probability of my ending up in a prison cell or a mental hospital is significantly greater than zero.  Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

I am studying a very interesting book by Michael Massen on how to draw drapery. This is making me look at clothing and the way it hangs on bodies in an entirely new light. I present my first attempt to get to grips with this, below.

Patterning of compression in a sweater

Even something simple like a close-fitting sweater seems to be full of compression patterns. I feel there is much to learn in this domain.

I shall be playing gig #822 at Terra Fyrmusica this evening in Second Life. If possible, I need to check a couple of things in terms of my sound, later this afternoon. But before I get down to that I have to practice piano. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

It is time for me to tell you a little about my autobiography. It is entitled:

Autobiographical Shards: Part One (1945-1980)

So, now you know my age!

I have been working on this project for about two years. Anyone familiar with my website will know that I have previously written two academic books and I wrote them while I was working as a psychology lecturer at Sunderland university, in the UK. I was not a professor but, for many years, I held the post of Reader in Social Psychology (that is a somewhat quaint job  title to be found mainly in English universities, I believe).

I am thus not a novice when it comes to writing books, especially academic ones. I have also previously written roughly half a novel, featuring a hero by the name of Harold Hake. Pulishing fiction is an uphill struggle. It is difficult to get hold of a literary agent; it is almost impossible to persuade a major publishing company to commission a book. I never attempted to get HH published.

However, those of you who come to my Second Life shows may remember that I read Harold Hake in about six instalments, roughly four years ago. I read in character, as Fyrm Fouroux, and integrated my reading of the text with some semi-structured improvisation in the form of Fyrm’s comments on what Harold (the main character in the book) was getting up to. I also integrated song into these readings. I found this to be a very exciting thing to do from a creative standpoint.

This, then, was my literary background as I approached my autobiography. I felt certain that my book would not be published in the normal way, since I am not a celebrity. However, software exists on the internet to facilitate self-publishing. Self-publishing used to be called vanity publishing, but I really do think the stigma has been taken out of this activity since the internet has opened up alternative avenues to publication.

With helpful advice from my friend Tom Young, I decided to craft my book using the software from blurb.com. This software has been developed especially to serve the needs of people who wish to publish photo books (for holidays, weddings, family stories, and so on). It is thus ideal for handling images (basically, one just whacks in the jpegs). I therefore decided to go beyond writing a textual manuscript; I was determined to illustrate my autobiography.

Apart from a photograph on the front cover and three small black and white photos within the text, the book is illustrated with about 40 sketches that are my original work, crafted mainly from reference pictures (most of which I took many years ago). Some of my illustrations were created digitally and some used conventional artistic methods such as pencil drawing, pen & India ink, watercolour, and acrylics. I also made some monoprints.

The period I cover in Part One runs from my birth until I am in my mid-thirties. At that point, I met my current long-term partner and subsequently we had a daughter. I have not included this period in my book. In principle, this could form the basis of a second part. However, I have to say that I have no intention writing Part Two at present, and possibly never will do so. I think that it is highly likely that I shall want to look for another creative project in the near future, but this will probably be tied to music, art, or fiction; I am through with autobiography!

I have now placed a link on my website to a page where you can preview the first chapter of Autobiographical Shards and, if you so desire, you can go to the blurb.com pages and order the book. I have to say that both the hard back and soft back versions are rather expensive. Because of the illustrations, I have decided not to produce an electronic or downloadable version at blurb.com.

One final word to my music fans in Second Life – this book is entirely about my First Life and, obviously, the point at which the narrative stops (1980) was many years before the advent of Second Life. It follows from this that I do not feature as Fyrm Fouroux in this autobiography. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.