Month: February 2015

9.22 am ( Feb half term holidays)

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I was up in the night again with Naoise, though only once. He woke me at four. An accident. Undress. Shower. Dry with a towel. Count all toes, smile. Put on clean Pajamas. Fetch warm milk. Glass of water. Ripe banana. Feel head for fever. Medicine in mouth. Sympathy, words of kindness. Tuck him back into bed. Arm over his little body. Back to sleep cuddles.

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The shelves are emptying of the valentines tit tat, scented candle in ceramic holder, wicker shaped heart, heart shaped keyring, mug, all at knock down prices more than eighty percent off. Baby pink cava still positioned at the front. Even love is repackged and sold back to us as commodity.

Having a lazy Sunday, wondering aimlessly around Clitheroe with Patrick and Naoise. Naoise is still under the weather, pale and needs to be carried in-between short bursts of walking. We sit on a bench and eat our supermarket sandwiches, Naoise barely touches his, he takes just a few little bites. I worry when he eats like a fly. He is more interested in the little robin who is on the look out for a piece of bread. I throw a small piece to him, and Naoise delights in him snatching it up cheekily in his beak and then disappearing quick as a flash back in to the bushes behind the bench.

We walk up and around the castle. Its a small, partly ruined but a castle no less. From the top you get a great vista of a view, over to the left The Trough of Bowland , to the right the hills of the Yorkshire Dales, below Clitheroe toy town and in front the fields of Lancashire working there way up to the pregnant belly of Pendle Hill. Its enough to make a five year old boy smile.

He runs down the stairs at a dizzying speed and I shout don’t go too fast, you’ll slip, but he is nimble, agile and sure footed, probably no need for my words of care and caution, as a child I would have pegged it just like him. I am not sure I am a very confident mother, I fuss and worry and perhaps protect the children too much. I see danger everywhere. I do want to wrap them in cotton wool, I do. If I could, I would lay a field of cotton down to prevent the hurt of their fall. Instead I avert my eyes when heights are scaled and inevitable risks are taken.

Its hard to write this, to get a flow of thought. Syd is sitting at the living room table, completing his geography homework, he keeps interrupting me asking for assistance with information or an ear to hear what he has written. I am thankful that he is just getting on with his work, and that he is no longer listening to music escaping through his ear plugs. 

Clitheroe is mainly shut up for Sunday. There are a few charity shops open, the odd cafe and the newsagents. Patrick takes Naoise to the toyshop to spend some pocket money. I go to the hardware store to buy some wooden pegs, I want to make a family of dolls with Naoise. We visit another supermarket this time to buy some local crumbly Lancashire cheese that the children adore. Naoise enjoys ordering the cheese at the counter, watching a piece being sliced, weighed, wrapped in paper.

Syd: Right mum, I’ll read this to you: St Ives is a small sea side town on the south coast of Cornwall………….

 

 

 

8.00am

Skin all porous, breathing, scaring, encasing our bodies, protecting, a thin barrier against a cruel world. Always war, always. Always love, always.

Snow drops, such brave little flowers, the first to push through. Heads of white bells. The orchard in my dream house was full of them. I would dance between the frost and the white and wish the spring sooner.

He has completely turned ninety degrees in the bed, his legs and feet lie across my body. He is resting and softly breathing. At the dinner table he blew out the candle for Syd. When it is just me, him and his dad he plays with the magic of threes. The undivided attention.

The new Whitworth Art Gallery is beautiful, all air and light and art. A political strength present in the talks. Creative people speaking out against the poor, the working class, global warming, the threat to our planet, human existence. Clapping. Comradery. Passion.

I wore the green wool dress, back tights, red leather shoes, blue earrings, a wash of lipstick. I felt great. Walking out on pavement stones and through the vibrant city, looking and looking at all the people. Couples celebrating valentine. People waiting to meet lovers with bunches of flowers.

Jeanette Winterson announcing her engagement to Susie Orbach.

Feeling confident to ask a question to Cornelia Parker, especially after making a connection in the toilet que! What is the relationship between your photographs and your sculptural practice ? Not sure that it was answered. What is different between capturing and recording an image and making a reproduction of something real, physical? The cracks in the pavement, the negative in-betweens. The photograph a positive, light captured in pixels or film. I was drawn to two photographs that sat side by side. Oil Stain (Bethlehem), Milk Stain (Jerusalem)2012-1013. What is it that I thought as I looked at these ? Stains, blood, food and oil to sustain life, politics, divided people. Is this what she was thinking too ? She mentioned the Jeruslalem Syndrome in regards to the works. Art asks questions ? Sometimes there are no answers just more questions.

I loved the title of the Sarah Lucas installation Tits in Space. I wonder if Spilt Milk is strong enough a title for an exhibition.

My feet are sore, all covered in blisters, the shoes were not practical for walking miles in the city. I noticed kisses and chewing gum stuck on pavements. I remembered the passionate kiss with a boyfriend  I loved when I was 17. We kissed by the derelict building in the northern quarter which is now luxury flats. I wonder where he is now, what he does, how many children he has. I will never forget the excitement of that kiss. I noticed the evidence of people sleeping rough. I past two sleepers sheltering in bags under the railway arches on Oxford Road, I just walked by. Am I sleep walking through life. What to do ? What to do?

 

 

 

7.50am

Sipping tea, can hear some movement upstairs, probably Syd getting up, hopefully so, he is off to his dads for the weekend.

Syd was woken by the drunken men in the night. I was too. Bad enough to be woken by an ill child but by drunken men stumbling around in the half light thats just really really annoying.

Syd is now watching The Mighty Boosh.

Me: How do you spell boosh Syd ? 

Syd: Are you going to write about me ? 

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I have found some photographs on the internet of a house that I lived in as a child. Everything has changed. Everything has been white washed and modernised and the garden carved up. The conservatory to the back of the house has been replaced by a sun room, where once a beautiful grape vine that grew.The vine that bore fruit, extraordinarily large grapes, bitter with pips that stuck in-between your teeth and had to be spat out. The conservatory was the place where we kept scooters, wheelbarrows, footballs, old pieces of furniture and where the cats kittens were born and raised.

Stone steps from the conservatory led in to my dad’s study. A place that was out of bounds. An orange carpeted room, covered in piles of paper work and a record player, a collection of albums in a plastic case, mainly classical and some Abba. Abba was about as exciting and mainstream as it got and I think that there was one New Seekers single. Dad seemed to spend hours in the study. I can remember being allowed  to ‘visit’ him in the study if I sat on the carpet and was quiet. I remember watching him work, make notes, type furiously, occasionally smile. He wore wild shirts of shifting pattern and colour and cords.

The garden was amazing, the sort of garden you could completely disappear into. A front garden, side garden, and the orchard at the back, a gravel path that swept from front to side to back joining it all together. A snake. Two walnut trees. Firs at the front. Apple, pears and damson trees in the orchard. I have written something about the Orchard, I’ll dig it out, maybe publish it here.

I spent a lot of time up the trees, watching the world below. When my little sister was born I got stuck up a tree and my poor mother had to climb up to help me down. She still recounts the story. She must have been so sore and tired. Climbing a tree is really not the sort of thing for a woman to be doing days after giving birth.

My baby sister was fretful, she cried and cried and hated to be put down. So desperate was my mother for some rest that she would push her pram to the end of the garden and leave her there.

She was a beautiful little baby all small neat features, peach skin and rosy cheeks, my brother named her after his friend at school who had died too young of leukaemia.

My sister was born at home. All I can remember about her birth was staying over the night at a friends house. All I can remember is a green carpet, an unfamiliar smell.

The garden barely exists.

Back then to the front there was a high bank, a rockery, a large lawn, a privet hedge, firs, a red brink wall and stone gate posts with a name and number carved in. The lawn was soft and mossy, me and my elder sister would practice our gymnastics cartwheels, foreword rolls, my brother would play cricket or kick a ball. The privet hedge provided food for our stick insects that we kept in old plastic sweet jars from the newsagents.

The garden to the front is gone, and the firs, its all gravel and garage, and looks ugly.

The side garden has been cut of trees and life. Nowhere to make a den out of kitchen chairs and blankets, no soil to make mud pies, no walnuts to toast on a fire. The side garden ends at a fence and a full stop.

There is no beyond the side garden, the coach house is now another home, and the orchard just a lawn. All the fruit trees have been slayed. The allotments are still there, so maybe the trough is too. The trough where we would race newts on pieces of bark across the water surface deep in lime coloured pond weed.

Time is up…the beep on the buzzer has sounded, The mighty Boosh has ended, Syd is in the shower. Time is up…..

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Me and Naoise played drawing Monsters together and we held hands watching films on the sofa. Naoise got very annoyed when I was working, and pleaded for my attention. We eventually got to watch The Princes Quest.

In the evening me and the children watched Pride, the film about the gay activists raising money for the welsh miners in the 1980’s. Thatchers cruel years. Such a great film, I recommend it. I need to be more proactive, join marches, sign petitions, there is so much to be angry about. Austerity Britain does not seem quite as bleak as it was growing up as a child in the 1980′. But then again perhaps it is, maybe its worse, we have food banks, bedroom tax, cuts to public services, dentists bills to pay, unfilled holes in our teeth and the road, a lack of affordable housing, mistreatment of vulnerable and disabled, a worn away welfare system, student fees, debt and the NHS, always under threat of privatisation, there are few jobs and the rich seem to get richer…..the gap between us and them grows wider.

Don’t mention the environment, the lack of fossil fuels, global warming, the eradication of the rain forests, denial is easier. Don’t think about a future for our children.

I remember being on the picket line with my mum (she was a nurse), toasting my hands around the sides of a burner outside the cottage hospital where she worked. Nurses, coal miners, bin men, strikes, power cuts, bags of uncollected rubbish, the Falkland’s war, and the disappearance of corn beeth hash from the dinner table, the scary aids advertisement’s on prime time TV, Nucleur weapons……..and the year my dad lost his job and we moved from away from my dream house to a council house with an outside loo.

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7.00pm (oops didn’t make the morning writing slot)

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Writing after 3 days of sleep deprivation and two glasses of red wine is probably not a good idea, but what the hell, motherhood is one long rock and roll go with the flow journey.

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I was up many times in the night, wet bed, shower, life story, calpol, banana, water, warm milk, too hot, water, calpol, get up, make breakfast, school run…..something like that, it all seems a bit blurry now.

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Today somehow managed to achieve writing one art application in-between school runs and nursing a poorly  Naoise who is dressed in a very cute Gruffalo onesey. Best part of the day was spent cuddling Naoise on the sofa and watching The Princes Quest by Michel Ocelot.

AND NOW……Syd my eldest son genius is treating me to his calm and beautiful guitar jamming…..I enjoy Friday nights in alone with my beautiful boys, nights out are so overrated, I am happy to be a stay at home woman.

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Last night a conversation about Naoise’s worry dolls:

I asked Naoise “Do you have any worries”

Naoise “No”

This made me feel so proud, as I was a very anxious child and could definitely have assigned a worry to each of his seven dolls.

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Patrick is out for the night, Naoise is feeding me half portions of Maltesers and flying around the water in Mine Craft, I feel quite drunk after two glasses of red wine, I’m a cheap date. I normally feel resentful about Patrick going out, but not tonight, I just feel relieved and so pleased that I have made it to the end of the week, and considering that I haven’t slept properly in three days to have written anything in this space is a big achievement. Well done me.

AND almost forgot HORRAY for the half term…………….and family time….and freedom tomorrow I get one whole romantic day on my own to attend the Whitworth Art Gallery open.

Love does exist.

 

ILLNESS

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8.49 am (up throughout the night nursing a poorly Naoise; 11pm, 1pm, 3pm, 6am)

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It is as if Naoise isn’t here. He wakes occasionally has a drink of water, maybe watches a little television, takes some infant paracetamol then falls back to sleep again. In the night he had a fever, I lifted him to a seated position in the bed, propped him up with my arm against his back and held the cup to his mouth so that he could drink. There is little else that I can do for him, other than make him comfy, make sure he drinks enough water to avoid dehydration. He has been a little sick, but its just bile and water, he hasn’t eaten a thing in twenty four hours. He is pale, lethargic, and complains that his stomach hurts, poor little Naoise. I held him on my knee and it was as if he was a baby again.

We watched many many episodes of Abney and Teal and then Peter Rabbit, I managed to keep him from endless Power Rangers, though mainly because the thumps grunts and rapid choreography was even hurting his head. He must be really ill !

He must be really ill because after a long stretch of sleep from late morning to mid afternoon, he woke up all confused and disorientated thinking that it was the next day  I don’t think I am well enough for school today mummy. I gave him a hug and explained that it was still the same day.

I’m not the best nurse, I lack the patience of my mother but then she was a professional. Calm, attentive, nurturing, present, relaxed. I used to love the way she stroked my hair, sat on my bed, took my temperature with a glass thermometer, just looked at me with kindness. I remember me and my brother and my sisters all having chicken pox and her tucking us all into bed together. I remember her smothering me with calomile lotion and lots of warm baths and itching and itching and itching. I itched too much and some of my pox became infected, I have many dints and scars. I guess that there was’nt  any magic anti histamine medicines or infant paracetamol then.

I’m not the best nurse, I hate being confined to the house, unable to leave, to be always present. The walls start to draw in and I feel so claustrophobic. I am not keen on the inside at all. I managed to negotiate some release time this evening when I explained to my partner that unless he worked from home this evening then I would be subjected to spending over 78 hours inside the house without a break. Now I am moaning, I ought to think myself fortunate that I have a partner to give me a break.

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LACK 

Its Valentines day on Saturday, I am not one to conform, but I like the cheap pink fizzy alcoholic pop that arrives on the shelves of the supermarket and I think that it is a good excuse to try and rekindle some passion in the bedroom. I’m spending Valentines Day at the Whitworth Art Gallery opening celebrations in Manchester so I thought that I really should make some effort to be proactive and romantic in the evening. Its good to plan these things, being a parent of two children , one young one a teenager, there seem few opportunities for romance, adult love, spontaneous sex, so with this in mind, I started to make plans to try and redress the balance and I requested that all my Facebook friends make  Suggestions for sexy/saucy films for a saucy Saturday night in with my lover!. 

I share here with you my friends film knowledge and generosity, there were even ideas for music (Prince, Get Off) Its good to share the love, perhaps this will be a helpful reference for all parents out there needing to rekindle their fires, I know mine definitely needs re- igniting, I am all burned out coals.

I usually fall asleep watching films, one friend recommended that I skip the film altogether, very wise advice, and if I can get my lovely Naoise to sleep that is exactly what I will do. I think though in reality it may be that little Naoise will be sharing the romantic night with myself and my partner, though you never know with his current illness he may be so sleepy that my luck/our luck may hold strong.

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Sexy/Romantic films for a Saucy Saturday night in with your lover 

Rita, Sue and Bob too

Amelie

The Notebook

The Time Travellers Wife

Nymphomaniac

Anything by Pedro Almodova

The Secretary

Crash

Boogie Nights

Realm of the Senses

9 Songs

Porn or Gone with the Wind

Jackie Brown

True Romance

White Palace

Eyes Wide Shut

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Its hard to be spontaneous with sex when you are in the presence of children all the time, the opportunities to be intimate with each other are lessened. I guess I just need to be more creative with the little bit of time we have, but mostly I just collapse asleep in bed with Naoise once I have read him stories. I am not a night owl, I am a morning person, and my partner is a night owl. So when is it that I am meant to be sexy with him? When do I fit that into the routine ? I can hardly keep the house straight let alone consider slotting sex in. This is sad isn’t it.

(Note to self read this article from the Family section of the Guardian  Sex: “Whatever you’re doing, double it”  about the working couple with young children who managed to have sex every day for a year, perhaps there is something to learn from them, they look awfully smug in the photograph, but I am probably just very envious)

I seem to have completely lost my libido. Is it something to do with my role as a mother ? I know loads of gorgeous sexy women who happen to be mothers too. Why is it that I feel so lacking in sexuality?  Desire ?  Attractiveness ? Its not just that I feel tired most of the time, its not just that. Its as if mothering has taken the passion out of me. I don’t seem to be able to see myself as both sexy me and sexy mother, but I would like too, I am working on it, trying to loose weight, get fit, make an effort, paint my lips red. When I look at photographs of myself with the kids I don’t see one image where I think there is a sexy mum. Why not? I need to look again, look a little closer, maybe there is one among the hundreds. Ok so there are a couple, I don’t want to publish them here, they are too intimate, I want to keep some of my life private. In the photograph, I am breastfeeding, my breasts are full, I am looking happy, smiling out from a sea of sheets and contentment. Yes I can be a sexy mum.

Perhaps it is that the children supply me with so much affection, tenderness, love, hugs and kisses that I simply don’t need any more touching. Often I would rather drink a cup of tea and get in bed with a book  than contemplate a night of passion. Oh dear dear me, what a sad state of lacking. I’m sure I am not alone in this, am I ?  This lack of desire. Does some of this insecurity in my body, my sex, this lack of sexuality come from the outside in? Is society prudish about sex, about mothers wanting sex, about mothers exploring their sexuality ? Are mothers not aloud to be sexy, is my sexuality being repressed? Is it all me ? Is it ?

I do remember feeling sexy when I was mid pregnancy, I felt that I was budding, all full of life and joy, but that was six years ago now.

Maybe it would help to revisit the books that I read in my sexy twenties; american beat generation fiction stuff like Love Me Tender ( Catherine Texier), Slaves of New York (Tama Janowitz), The Story of the Eye ( Georges Baiaille), perhaps these books will respark my imagination, help me to find the sexual me, dig down deep into my unconscious. Just act, have some fun with mind and body. I picked up Love Me Tender, the book opened on page 14, this is what I read;

Lulu lifts up her head from Julian’s crotch, a hair on her tongue that she peels off between two fingers. He’s got strawberry-blond pubic hair that smells like honey, a long cock turned upwards. What are you doing? he says. Go on. Nobody’s ever done it to me like that. Never ? Never quite like that. He pushes her down on his white skinny thighs. He says, J’ai envie de capoter aver too, a phrase he told her he learned in Montreal. She floats over him, her wide skirt hovering about his face like a black raven, Then his weirdly bent cock makes her come screaming out loud. His dark eyes stare at her so intensely she thinks she touches something deep in him but maybe it’s only her, a chinc in her own armour, it must’ve been her.

I found this article from Bomb Magazine: Motherhood and Sexualility by Bette Gordon and Catherine Texier. Need to read more about the subject of Motherhood and Sexuality, need to make the time and space to draw not just write. Need to escape to the studio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6.28 am

I have lost a  Field guide to getting lost (Rebecca Solnit). It will turn up eventually, probably slipped down the back of a bed or it will be hiding under a pile of unsorted paper, plastic and electrical cables. Without a guide to lead me I am flaundering around not sure what my focus is, perhaps loosing it is good, no words of orientation so I have to create all my own ones.

Naoise seems to have caught the dreaded virus that has knocked out all his boyfriends. Poor little Naoise he has a soaring temperature and a sore throat, I have given him water and medicine and sent him back to sleep. I agreed he is too unwell for school today. I was hoping that he wouldn’t get ill, its half term at the end of the week, and I have three deadlines to compete and a home to order before the ensuing holiday brings with it more chaos.

Naoise didn’t go back to sleep. There were feet on the stair and calls of mummy, mummy and now he is lying on the sofa on a bed of cushions, lambskin, fleecy blanket, woollen blanket. He is sucking his thumb, clasping his hands and watching me type.

The gas fire is making a strange smell, but I have risked turning it on regardless, a permanent chill hangs on the air of this front room, its good to at least take the edge off it. I am sitting with my back to the fire, kneeling on the red rug.

Went to a meeting about Syd’s upcoming French trip to Paris last night, it all sounds so exciting but going through the long checklist and parental/child agreement was so dull. When did teachers mostly become younger than myself ? A strange phenomenon. Yet even though they are younger in years, sitting here in the school hall next to my teenage child, I am reduced to a juvenile myself. Compliance, obedience, manners, fitting in. I am pleased when the meeting ends and we are released.

I am pinching myself now that I didn’t go for a walk yesterday as I am going to be stuck in for the next eight hours looking after Naoise. I had planned a long circular walk to make up for my lack of exercise the day before. I will just have to walk in my imagination through the woods and the path that runs by the river. My head feels groggy too, hope that I haven’t gotten ill, mothers never get ill, because they just cannot, there is always another to look after.

Prior to the weigh in at the Health Centre, I had spoken to the weight advisor about feeling like the diet had beaten me, but astonishingly I am down another four pounds. I put the big loss down to the draining of water retention after my period. I am at the lean point of the month. I probably shouldn’t have celebrated by finishing off a slice of birthday cake that Naoise had been given, but it was heavenly. See the food really does have the upper hand still, need to be much more disciplined, need to think about how I reward myself. Replace the food with anything else, lipstick, flowers, making art, staring out the window Food is not the answer for comfort.

Naoise is pleading that I watch a film called Box Trolls with him, oh the joys, oh the joys. I am just so rubbish at watching kids films, I end up staring into space, vacant. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy the cuddling and the chance to sit still, to break myself, but my mind just wonders onto better things that I could be doing with my time.

Naoise: Cats are a type of human because they have two front legs like arms and two back legs like our legs. Thats what makes them human. 

Me: But they do not walk upright.

Naoise: Cats can actually walk like us but they have to balance a lot. 

Me: What made you think about cats ? 

Naoise: Frida (Frida was our pet cat). Frida is on our shelf isn’t she

Me: Yes she is (She has been cremated and is in a small cardboard box on the book shelf) 

Naoise: Frida is just black and ashes and tiny winy bits mum

I would love to take some photographs of the parents waiting to collect their children, but I think that would definitely spell trouble. I had thought that I may take a low shot just of feet standing, but perhaps I will just keep to the safety of the empty yards.

Naoise loves to feed  Chocolate and Vanilla, the school guniea pig, he pokes little bits of dandelion and grass that he finds growing between tarmac and concrete into the bars of their cage.

Naoise: You know what mum I have got x-ray vision because I can see through my arm

Cannot concentrate I am beaten by my little boy and his words of interruption.

 

 

 

6.20am

Should I be concerned that I keep looking back ? I keep looking back over my shoulder, I catch the person that I once was. I keep looking back, wanting to be the person in the photograph, not the person that I am now. I want to be the young woman with her first child with all the future before her, all the uncertainty, all the unknown. I want to be the pregnant woman, the stay at home mum. I just stay at home, but there is only the before and after not the in-between. I cannot justify my stay at home status any longer. I am a rubbish house wife anyway. I have absolutely no interest in tidiness or ironing or managing my children’s lives. I am happy that I get to drop them off and pick them up after school. I am happy that they have a parent to come home too. I had my sisters and brothers and the TV and my pets. My parents did come home but not till gone six. I loved the freedom that we had before they arrived back. Lots of toast eating and being slobs, and fitting in the chores at the very last minute before the sound of their key turning in the lock of the door.

I should probably stop looking back. I should stop looking back because Naoise has become obsessed with the grunts of Power Rangers and creating an alternative home  for me and him in Mine Craft and all Syd wants to do is watch the IT Crowd. Too much staring into electronic screens. Its as if I am not here. I am not really here. I am fictional mum, living inside my head not inside the world.

I should stop looking back, but it is part of the process of making my work. I am currently gathering information together to make a film about breastfeeding. I have been drawing together all the images of me breastfeeding both of my children. There are more of Naoise than Syd. There are more of Naoise than Syd because of the readiness of a camera on a mobile phone and because I fed him for twice as long as I did Syd. Syd was such a robust baby, Naoise is an elfen child. They are so different, one brown haired and hazel eyed the other fair haired and blue eyed. They are polar opposites. They fight and scrap like tiger cubs.

 

The photographs that I am gathering together are simply family photographs, nothing special, just ordinary, is it ok that they become art work, or do I need to do more. Do they need to be transformed and altered. I am not a photographer. I am interested in them, but are they at all interesting to anyone else, to an audience, is all this simply too personal. Where is the art in all of this. Is this just me loosing it ?

I should stop looking back because its contagious. Patrick has started doing it too. He found some old footage on his sky drive, memories hanging around in a digital space somewhere. We were all fascinated by Syd’s long hair and rocking guitar playing, he must have been about eight in the film.

I should stop looking back else I will miss what is happening now. I am not sure if I can stop looking back, there are often flashes, when I read to Naoise, the books that my mum read to me, Where the wild things are, The Magic Fish, Zeraldas Ogre, William the dragon, maybe this is all just nostalgic and sentimental.

I should stop looking back, but there is something that is pulling me there. I should have a look. I want to trace these tracks back to the past. Trace my walk to school as a child. I can do that, I can do that by going on google maps. I had a look at my childhood home in Etwall, the trees in front of the house had changed and there was a new road, a main road running in front. I only got as far as virtually standing outside the house. I stood and looked. I wanted to walk up the drive, climb the steps to the front door and go in. If this was Mine Craft, that would be possible, I wished I could go in and all would be the same as it was when we left. All my parents crazy bold patterned curtains and non existent decor. I don’t remember much wall painting, I think they just moved in and got on with things, home improvement is a modern phenomenon.

I should stop looking back because in the 1970’s we had no central heating, there was no internet,social media, mobile phones and digital cameras to record every moment of life. I liked growing up in the 1970’s there were bin strikes and power cuts and polyester t-shirts and there were places to hide and dens to build, trees to climb and records to buy in Woolworth’s. I should stop because this is becoming nostalgic and sentimental and I am not aloud to talk rubbish and it is almost seven and I should be getting the kids up and making breakfast and rushing my family to school and work.

 

 

 

6.20 am

Freezing fog, thick, impenetrable. The sort of weather in which you could get easily lost if you strayed from a path. The fog makes everything close, claustrophobic. Amazing how a day can shift  so quickly from one weather front to an entirely different one. It was bright, sunny, frosty and clear in the morning, and then the slate grey forbidding cloud of fog descended.

Despite this fog, I walked out onto the moors with Syd and Patrick, we rarely get time together. Just us three. It was us three for seven years. Life is richer and busier and more complicated now that we have Naoise , but it was lovely to bestow our eldest child with all of our love and undivided attention for a few hours.

I walked up front away from Syd and Patrick , just for a little while and saw a crow perched on a rock, only ten feet away from me. He remained for a while staring. Both of us motionless, staring. Then raised his wings and was gone, enveloped by the fog.

Another failed attempt at reaching the Bridestones, as the fog was far too thick and far too menacing. The fog was bad for Syd’s asthma and so so icy cold. The pub meal was called us, so we took a right hand fork down the hill, through the woods, back along the noisy main road.

All in a line tucked up cosy in Naoise bed, we watched Intersteller, a tense, apocalyptic, peaceful, thought provoking film. As I slipped into sleep, I whispered to the children, hope to meet you in my dreams. Perhaps we all jumped down a worm hole together, floated in space for years, just breathing, suspended in non-time.

As I write this Syd is lying on the sofa, fully dressed in uniform and wrapped in blankets. He didn’t sleep well and woke in the night. I slept through but woke around  5.30am.

The fog is thick around my head. I feel tired. The film we watched made me feel anxious. I hold my sons close. The film made me think about time. The shortest time. Our lives together. The shortest time. I bit my nails, I cried.  I thought about writing this, my desperate need to record. To record for what ? Is it an attempt to hold back time ? The days run shorter now I record each one passing.

I have piled the lamb skin and a coat on top of Syd, he has fallen back to sleep. It is bitterly cold in this front room, the stone floor sucks the life out of everything. The gas fire is broken, so I cannot take the edge off the cold. More reason to find some paid work.

The clothes tumble in the dryer and the cooker buzzer sounds beep beep beep beep ….beep beep beep beep

 

7.50am (Heavy frost/dry bright morning)

The hawk gently glides. All is still. Occasionally it bats its wings, circles a little. It hangs in the sky, there is no wind. The sun is warm, but not warm enough to melt all of the snow. There are still patches here, here on the moors. Patches topped with diamond ice, and bog grass cutting through. The hawk spots something, you can sense that it has found its prey, it hovers, and as its head juts deeper, downwards.

Footsteps on the stairs, Naoise has smelt me awake. How will I write now ?

He has growing pains in his hands and he remarks about how cold it is down here. I wrap him up in blankets on the sofa and get out the screen babysitter.

The babysitter (teach your monster to read) is very efficient, albeit noisy sound affects and word pronunciations.

Hair, air, ear, air, ear, air, chair, ch, ch, chair, ear,ow, air, air, ow,air, air, ear, ear, can you find your friends next letter sound, lets learn a new sound, can you say, your…….

I walked on a Saturday, with my dear friend, each without our children, how decadent this felt. We walked a path that neither of us had trod previously, our destination the bride-stones beyond table top mountain, but it didn’t really matter where we were walking, where we might end up. We talked about our children, where they were born, ex partners, old jobs, how we felt when we were apart from our children. How things are different. A conversation that can go on uninterrupted. We had a laugh, pulled off pieces of moss and stuck them on our jumpers over our nipples, and I made a moss muff ! So much fun. No primal screaming just giggling and laughing. I see so much potential in all the moss.

I mentioned to her my conversation that I had with Syd whilst he was in the shower. Whilst he was naked. He must have read something I had written about aiming to make a naked performance. He begged me please mum don’t take your clothes off. I am such an embarrassment to him. I tried to talk about how taking your clothes off wasn’t such a big deal, it did not convince him. I can see his point of view, but I’d like to think that it won’t prevent me from making my artwork. Its only propositions, it is only skin on ground, its only my body. He must feel anxious about his body, his body changing ? My body is ageing, sagging, hanging on. I confess that I don’t feel comfortable getting any of my clothes off in front of a camera unless I can loose weight.

Naoise is off to duck world in his space ship, put all the ducks in the ur pond, put all the ducks in the your pond……

How is it possible to go for a walk on a Saturday, is this not a family day, the weekend ?  It is possible because Patrick has taken Naoise swimming and Syd is old enough to play out alone. He has gone to the park, to play football on the astroturf pitch. Syd roams a long way from home now. So here I am on the moors and he is down there in the park with his boyfriends. The distance between us grows wider.

Mum can you read this ? The babysitter turns out to be not quite as efficient as I had planned. There are constant interruptions, I am now battling to write these words, its hard to get a flow of thoughts.

I found an old CD in the studio containing family photographs from 2003. During that summer, I went on holiday with my brother and his family to cornwall. Syd turned two, and we had a big family reunion with all my extended family at my uncles house. Amongst these images was a photograph of me holding Syd on the beach. I am so thin and slender and I seem happy and relaxed. A photograph can lie. It captures only a short moment. I am smiling out from a sad time. This was the year that I separated from Syd’s father. Not an easy time. A cutting time.

The relationship I was in with Syd’s dad was very destructive and the stress and confinement that I felt within it was unbearable. I am smiling out with relief, but with uncertainty. I am smiling out as I felt free, unburdened, being away, far away from the north, I remember not wanting to return home. I remember imagining another life in this place. A fictional life free from Syd’s father in the sun of the south.

Mum can I please watch a Power Ranger, oh Naoise please no, I cannot stand it, I cannot stand Power Rangers. Naoise is sweet and good and agrees on Octonauts instead, the sound of which is soothing as opposed to the crazy inducing fighting thumps and urgggghhhhhs.

The buzzer on the oven cooker sounds…..

 

Written yesterday between 1pm-2pm in the afternoon to post today 07/02/15  (broke my rules, need to rest, need a lie in)

How can we see in our dreams when our eyes are closed ? : Naoise to his Dad (4th february)

Patrick attempts to explain dreams and the unconscious on the walk to school.

I have been walking with my eyes closed. I need to really see, not just in my dreams but in the day.

 “My art is grounded in the belief of one universal energy which runs through everything: from insect to man, from man to spectre, from spectre to plant from plant to galaxy. My works are the irrigation veins of this universal fluid. Through them ascend the ancestral sap, the original beliefs, the primordial accumulations, the unconscious thoughts that animate the world”
― Ana Mendieta

I am thinking of you Ana Mendieta,  I am lying down in a bed of snow with you. Whispering in your ear. Asking you to help me. How do I find my location. I am quite enjoying being lost. I am enjoying just exploring, touching, feeling. Finding a spiritual self in the landscape. Perhaps I should make love to mud and ice and stone ? Or just go home and do the washing up, hoover the floor, make the dinner. The house is looking just a little too chaotic and unkempt. The house has gone wild and it is crying out for love and order. It is not good when the creativity takes over. Slow down, slow down.

I screamed. I screamed out loud, but it seemed too polite, need to practice again. I felt too self conscious.. I liked the sound reverberating through out the valley. Perhaps, I need some partners in crime to scream with me. Any one out there want to join me on a primal scream walk ?

Puffing and panting up the hill, I thought about deep breathing whilst having sex, whilst giving birth. I am getting a little sick of recording these actions. Perhaps I just need to do them without the pressure of recording. Do the actions for there own sake. Rehearse, Rehearse. Its ok to fail, remember that. Its ok to fail, to ask questions, to find that there is no outcome. Nothing profound, nothing new, just old ground. The earth.

Perhaps when I take the actions back into the domestic space of the house, present them inside. The outside,inside. Is that about taming, trying to understand nature ? Its frightening. You cannot tame nature or humans. Humans need to walk free, and nature is free. Can you find a primal female universal self through making art ? Can you Ana Mendieta ? I will meet you in my dreams Ana, have a chat, a cup of tea, put the world to rights.

The snow is a field of diamonds.

I am writing this now as I need a rest. I don’t want to wake up in the morning. I need to sleep and not feel that I have to wake and write and stare at screens and constantly interact and communicate.  I don’t want my life just to be words drifting across electronic screens.  There is more to life than this.

 

 

6am (awake at 5am)

Freedom is a state of mind. I must appreciate my freedom. The freedom of my feet to walk the earth. The freedom of my mind to wonder, and think, to question. The freedom of art to express my inner feelings, insecurities, failings, rumblings, mumblings. Be mindful not to suppress actions that explore unconscious thoughts, silly thoughts, mad ideas, things that make no sense now, but might in the long term. Freedom of actions that are informed by watching the children play, skipping, jumping, frolicking, being naughty, pushing the boundaries. Dissenting and saying NO.

I get up. First day of my period, so the substantial lack of weight loss was probably down to my cycle and water retention, this pleases me. The moon is still full in the sky, I watch its light through the kitchen window. I put the kettle on to make tea, get out the small bowl of defrosted forest fruits and dollop some organic bio blueberry yoghurt on top. I make sure that I put soya not cows milk in the tea. I think the fat of the cows milk does affect my weight. Although as my friend said I do need to question the oestrogen in it. I drink water, take vitamin D, cod liver oil, vitamin C and iron supplements. Its routine now, makes me feel like I am improving, transforming my body. I think that my waist is starting to reappear. This desire this work towards weight loss is about personal freedom. Dropping the weight, loosing the mother load.

Motherhood is constricting, but motherhood can free the soul. A pull this way, a pull that. A tug, a hug, a tearing of the heart. Naoise hit me in the face with his snuffly comforter, a king sized duvet cover that he cherishes. I was so appalled and shocked, I just stared at him, then I averted my eyes, he said sorry. It really hurt. You hurt me. He is forgiving, I am forgiving. You can’t always get what you want. Freedom takes time. Waiting, always waiting. There are moments and gaps and spaces in-between the interruptions, and within the interruptions the mind is jolted out of place. A clear thought is brushed aside by a demand for milk, or a cuddle, or some help to work out how to operate a toy, or a coat to hang up, shoes to take off.

Waiting again behind the privet bush in the Hare and Hounds car park. I am waiting for my eldest son. I take a book and read. I am beginning to enjoy the waiting. Giving myself a little more time to breath between work and children. Time to think, to put on lipstick, to look at my reflection in the mirror. To breath, to be me, not a mother, not an artist, no something, somebody, a role that another wishes me to carry out. Just me on my own with my own thoughts, beginning and ending.

I walked bare foot about 200 yards in the snow. It connected me with the earth, the birds, my body, this place. As I walked I listened to the sound my feet made in the snow and the caw caw caw caw of the crows. It was silly and mad and yes made me feel all ug and primitive like the first woman ever walking in snow. The video is clumsy and messy, occasionally my trouser legs fall into shot, I should really be naked, but naked ramblers get arrested and put into prison. I will get naked but higher up, much higher up and at a time of day when there is less of a risk of bumping into a dog walker. I cannot see many police men so hey less of a risk. I see through this very simple and brief action what the naked rambler is fighting for. It is sheer madness that in a land that proudly proclaims its freedoms and its rights to say and do what we please, that we are barred from walking without clothes in our landscape.

I want to be as naked and as alive and as free as the black crow in the field.

 

6.25am (awake at 5.30 am)

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NON-COMPLIANCE, DISSENT, NON-ACCEPTANCE, NO

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I am helping Naoise into the forth school jumper. They are all red, they all look the same to me. Maybe they are a little different, some are a little larger than others, some carry the school emblem, some not, some were Sydneys, some are from school sales, none are new. Each jumper for Naoise causes a different set of uncomfortable difficulties. Patrick is still at home. I momentarily give up and go for a wee break. I tell Patrick that he is doing my head in. He has already taken dad through this ritual and Patrick is not getting involved, though he does offer some sympathetic words. Naoise is so so stubborn. I am guessing the jumpers are nothing to do with the actual issue they are just a manifestation of some anxiety, some worry. He was up in the night, so perhaps this is just exhaustion.

I try again. This is taking my mother patience to the limit. What about a fleecy, nice and comfortable. No, No, No, NO.

Patrick is loitering, getting impatient, getting later and later for work, he had wanted to walk down the road with us to school, well probably more for Naoise than me. I tell him to go. He just makes me feel more stressed, when the children are difficult, rather than sharing the challenge, I find it much much easier, just to deal with it myself.

Things get worse, I bribe him with a chocolate roll, unfortunately Sydney has eaten the last one. Ahhhhhh

Now Naoise is holding on tight to the stool in the kitchen and saying to me  I am not going to school today, I am staying at home. I am not going. I am not going to go. 

I try sympathising, I try being stern, I try asking him what is wrong, I try bribery again

I just want to stay at home with you he pleads.

Somehow I get him into the front room, I cannot remember how, but he just repeats the same behaviour as acted out in the kitchen. I am at my wits end, and call on the fairy god mother of all knowledge Facebook for help. The first two answers back were my initial thoughts.

Take the chair with you!!!!!

Stay at home!

Though I am not sure we would have got far carrying the chair and staying at home was not an option, I need to work and rest. Keep sane. The next response touched my heart strings, so funny and what a clever boy. His mum is pretty darn cool, I can see why he would want to stay home with her

Lego play all morning at school? This is how my school tackled my sons refusal, though he did write ‘I want my mum’ in lego bricks first time. 

We did get to school in the end. Patrick spoke to him on speaker phone and promised him ten mini samosas, he got distracted, I swept him up in my arms and ran out the door. Job done. We were in reality only fifteen minutes late for school. The teacher was kind, calm and understanding.

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NON-COMPLIANCE, DISSENT, NON-ACCEPTANCE, NO

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Need to think of the above words. I love each of them. I love that my son said NO. That he can say NO. Its important to say NO. It was hard to parent, but I am glad that he is determined and stubborn and clever. He can stand his ground. I need to be more dissenting. I need to be more like him.

Why do I stand for one minute in the same place each day filming myself ? 

Today I stood for what I thought was one minute, and I closed my eyes. It was a much better experience. I wasn’t watching the time go by. I was breathing, counting in my head, this was closer to the meditative experience that I had wanted to experience and to evoke. It is good to break rules, it is good to dissent.

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The shadows are long, the sky is all blue, the mud is still frozen, all is clear and calm and peaceful, the birds are singing and singing and chattering and chattering.

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