Its been a long time.......

Well its been six months since my last post and what a change.

The operation to remove my gall bladder was a most wonderful success and though it took longer than I expected to feel better,what a difference. It would seem that it had been giving me grief for a lot longer than the first six months of this year as now we are parted I feel and look so much better than for the past two to three years. My gallstone, a rather perfect 9mm marble now lives in a jar in my bedside table (its standard to get given the contents I gather - mine was prettier than some).

This has proved a great boost to the ego and although it has been a bit of a nuisance having to buy new clothes to fit me its really nice to be proud of the woman who looks back at me in the mirror. Another change which wasn't planned to be permanent was my hair colour. For the past few years I have been palest ash blonde but just every now and then its good to ring the changes. I had some "purple passion" permanent colour in the bathroom from a previous "moment of madness", I tried it, I liked it, so I am still purple headed. It makes me smile the reaction it gets or doesn't as people try to pretend they haven't seen what they have. General consensus is that is suits me but more importantly I am happy with it and that is all that matters so I'm the "mad bird with the purple hair". I gather in the cities it is quite in vogue to have pink or purple hair this season but I hasten to point out I never do things cos I've seen them in a magazine, I do them just because I can and I feel like it :)

Once my recovery was well under way, I was lucky enough to be treated to my new DSLR camera in June when my parents came to visit. That led to a whole summer of taking photographs with renewed passion, early mornings to catch the sunrise, an almost indecent obsession with cereal crops, clover on the front lawn, anything I could take photographs of I did, just so I could begin to learn how the camera worked and what I could potentially do with it.

Some of the results I have been very pleased with.I am my own toughest critic and although I take lots of photos, I work on the principle of taking the right photo in the first place, rather than relying on editing software to provide the result. Next hurdle is to get some printed professionally and see if they are saleable.... almost there but still needing a bit of push.

Similar with the artwork really, lots of ideas but little enough time to actually put anything down in hard form. I do know I definitely have a "thing" for pattern, be it the pattern of ploughing lines in a field or a weir. Lots of photographs are taken for use in my art in the future and I will get there.

I am still doing book keeping & haulage to pay the bills but a couple of book keeping jobs have or are about to disappear and 'Im quite relaxed about this as it will allow more time for the art/photography, a gentle transition of power is probably not a bad thing.

As for travel and music, I was finally well enough to go to see Mumford & Sons in October at Rock City, Nottingham - even got inspired to some artwork that night by their music. In a couple of weeks I'm going to see Scissor Sisters again in Birmingham, that's my treat to me. I also love watching the live streams on a Sunday evening at www.cafenoodle.ning.com .I've this desire to own a mandolin..... at least if I get one they look pretty standing in a corner. In October I headed up to Lancaster and got to meet up with some of the lovely people I have got to know via Twitter, it was a great weekend and I plan to head up again next spring. In the meantime, I'm taking advantage of offers for cheap hotel rooms to go for overnight weekend breaks in random places.
Places I have never visited and where I can get the best bargains, gets me out of the village which can get a bit claustrophobic - its good to remember there is a whole wide world out there. I just wish I had more time to explore it- definitely something to work towards.

I'm still as poor as a church mouse financially but feel so lucky to be feeling so much better I am really high on life at the moment, long may it continue, I like feeling well. When there are so many people who have dreadful illness, often life threatening, it makes you realise how short our time may be and not to waste a minute of it. That doesn't mean travelling the world or trying to save the world, it just means trying to wring every last ounce out of every day.

That's enough for now and in lots of ways its hardly touched the surface, better not to leave 6 months in between posts methinks....