This Weekend (12) ...

I WAS SOBER!
Hoorah!

But I was also a bit poorly.
Boo.

Just hayfever, I think, which I am suffering from in a "Biblical Plague" kind of a way this year, so I'm dosed up on, I think, four different types of tablet which give the world a pleasing blurry fugginess.

Anyway, the weekend panned out like this ...

1) Before my usual appointment at the pub quiz this week, I had to go to a meeting regarding the Artist's Open House event that we're hosting in October. Nothing amazes me like the ability of artists to stray from the point. At 8pm, having been there for an hour and a half, and having debated whether the event should be called "Open House" or "Open Studio" for around an hour, one of my committee co-members rocked back on his chair and asked if we should break for a cup of tea. I wept quietly in the corner. But I also managed to bagsy a walking tour, and a techy "press the red button now" type tour for my patch, so it was worth the effort.

2) Pub quiz. Diminished team, but we didn't embarrass ourselves. A question for you all, however (no prizes for getting it right this week): Only three Mr Men have teeth. Name any one of them ...

3) On Friday morning, I felt like poo. Poooooo! And with 100 jobs to do this week, I felt that I'd be cheating to not keep going anyway. But I sat down on the sofa to think about what to do first, and woke up an hour and a half later, feeling much better.

4) Which meant that on Friday afternoon I could order my new bedroom carpet, buy a power drill, buy a new wall unit for my dining room, go to Sainsburys and return a mistakenly purchased bra to Marks and Spencer. Rock and roll!

5) On Saturday my parents came to visit. Before they arrived, I had time to have some cakes baked and iced, so I could give the illusion of being a domestic goddess. But they came, they brought plants, we planted them, Dad broke stuff (it's a habit he can't shake when he's at my house), we ate, walked on the Common and I waved them goodbye. A nice compact, bijou kind of a visit. Perfect!

6) Today was the seventh birthday of my neighbour's son. I bought him a little Lego game which he was disproportionately pleased with. As a six year old, seven was all he could think about, but I was struck by what a very little boy he still is. When I was seven I thought I was quite the grown up. I wonder if that's a Girl vs Boy thing or a Big Sister vs Only Child thing, or a Me vs Him thing. I can also remember that, for my seventh birthday party, I wore some slouchy pink dungarees and thought I looked ace. So probably I wasn't half the grown up I thought I was. Probably I was a very little girl still. Odd how you remember things though, no?

7) Whilst I was baking some (more) cakes to take to a friend's house this afternoon, my phone pinged a message from an unknown number. "Tooting, is this your no. still?" "Yes it is! Who's this?" It was someone I had a very lovely date with about five years ago, and never heard from again. I've no idea why he's chosen now to look me up, but we've had a pleasant afternoon exchanging messages, so I chose not to ask him, and enjoy the chat.

8) There was some football on the telly. 'Nuff said.

9) I spent a very lovely afternoon loafing in my friend's back garden, enjoying the sun and the company and lots of food and some food and a bit more food and chatting the unspecified chat of friends. I told them about the flock of parakeets that are currently living around here, and they looked at me as if I were mad. Ten minutes later, a flash of green shot across the garden. "See," I said. They nodded.

10) I have thirty followers! Whoop de doo! I'm going to have a little party RIGHT NOW!

This Weekend (7) ...

I feel a little like I've just bowled from one "This Weekend" to another this week, such has been the franticness (franticity? Francosity?) of the week. Still, here we are again ...

1) A rare thing. A Thursday night with no quiz. Calamity!! But it means that I can accept a request from the lovely Amelia to babysit for her little boy for a couple of hours. I collect him from a mutual friend's house, where he and her husband are perched on the sofa, wrapped in a game of Super Mario. Unable to distract either of them, I settle in the armchair to wait, and realise after a while that I'm equally absorbed. "Try spin jumping on that box," I suggest, and realise that I've become one of them!

2) Having wrestled Small Boy away from the Wii controls, and home, I successfully cajole him into his pyjamas and then into bed. When his mother gets home, we are snuggled in bed together whilst he reads me a story about talking crocodiles. I'm not sure who's more surprised by the scene of calm - her or me!

3) After a good gossip with Amelia (we specialise, when together, at setting the world to rights in record time), I run home to meet gorgeous Gillian to talk over a new crafting project that she's got in mind for us. A quick yak-yak-yak, and we settle to the job in hand, and quickly agree a rough format, some early promotional activities, and points of action. (Nothing more on this for now, but watch this space!) How lovely to work on a project with someone of the same no-nonsense attitude as me!

4) Last week was a fairly busy one, and made more tiring by having started the week on a terrible Sunday night's sleep. Normally Friday mornings have a strict getting-up time, but this weekend I treat myself to a lie in. What luxury to wake up after normal work start time, and be able to dig down under the duvet for an extra mini-doze. When I finally haul myself out of bed I feel fully rested for the first time in a week. Bliss!

5) After a quick breakfast with a friend and her husband, we discover that we all need a trip to the local DIY and garden centre, so I offer them a lift. My car, a Figaro, is technically a four seater, but the back seat is really little more than a shelf. The trip there is cosy. The trip home however is nothing short of farcical - three tall people, three sacks of compost, one large potted begonia, five empty plant pots, one pair of long-handled tree loppers, and assorted other goodies all get stacked, in strict order, in my tiny car, to the huge amusement of others in the car park.

6) As soon as I'm home, I pull on my mucky old jeans and a floppy t-shirt, and hit the garden. With the radio on, the time flies, and weeding seems like no kind of chore before the more interesting digging, potting, planting starts. I now have four tomato plants, two pepper, five beans and four strawberries in pots and beds, ready to be coaxed into baring fruit. Plans for fruit trees and raspberry canes next year abound! Has anyone ever been truly self sufficient from a terrace house garden, I wonder? Would a couple of chickens be a bridge too far?

7) Early Saturday morning I head south for a weekend with fab friends in Arundel. Last week was my dearest friend's birthday, so a trip has long been on the cards. It's a familiar journey on a route that the car can almost do for itself, and it strikes me on the way that going to visit them is almost as much like coming home as going to my own family's home.

8) The planned birthday celebration is a trip to the Drive In. Yes ... you read correctly. Plumpton Racecourse, for one night only, is turned into the All American drive in, with a showing of Grease being the main attraction. Five girls pack into the car to watch a film that we've seen 100 times before, and we chat amiably as we watch. Once in a while someone sings a few bars, or comments on fashions, or the fact that a school of 17 year olds all look around our age. After a time, H. observes, "this is definitely the most random thing I've ever done." All parties agree.

9) For the first time in all my trips to West Sussex, this morning we head for Arundel Castle. My friend's husband explains, "these days, the family only live in that wing," indicating a building which my whole house would comfortably fit inside about thirty times over. "They had to scale down," he says, with no hint of humour. We speculate on whether we could cope with a life living in a castle ourselves, and whether we can recreate the image of the dining hall in our own dining rooms. The idea of this building having been a home for nearly 1000 years is wonderfully overwhelming.

10) The first open meeting for this year's Wandsworth Artist's Open House took place this evening, largely to drum up support and participants, but also to gauge feeling about more promotion of local events this year. Three new attendees got the buzz going - how lovely to have found new people in our wee community to take part in such a lovely event (and selfishly, how lovely to have found three new potential friends!) and enthusiasm for this year's even abounds. I've found myself wondering this evening how to tone down the enthusiasm for a couple of weeks yet (the event isn't until October) but also that having too many ideas is a fairly lovely problem to have!

Have you got the time?

time /taIm/ noun - the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present and future, regarded as a whole.

When I was a student, we went on a field trip. Imagine it. Thirty or so like-minded, bright, optimistic young things being shuttled away on a day trip. When you're studying property at Reading University, trust me, a day out is a fine and glorious thing. I imagine that we all hopped out of bed that morning with the giddy excitement of a child on Christmas morning, put on the uniform appropriate to our social set (jeans, trainers, and a holey jumper for some, chinos, deck shoes, and Ralph Loren with the collar flipped up for others) and skipped onto campus to pile onto a coach and hit the M4. In my mind, the sun was shining and there was Cliff Richard style singing in the aisle.

Oh yes. You can't beat it. The open road. The route set for an educational, but light hearted day out to see a case study in the flesh. That's right folks. We were going to a new housing estate in Essex.

Oh dear.

I don't recall much about the housing estate in question. I don't even remember what it was called now, or why it was a relevant that we were shipped there to loaf around carry out important research all day. I don't believe that, as housing estates go, it was in any way exceptional (which makes a girl wonder why we were driven through four counties to this particular specimen).

What I do remember is that, in the middle of said estate, there was a green, and around the edge of the green there were nine huge boulders. Each one had a smooth side, and in large, foot high letters, a word was etched into the face. Standing in the middle of the green, and reading around, they said "take time while time is, for time will away".

Something about the phrase resonated with me. I googled (is "google" a verb?) it today. It's an old Russian proverb. Quite a nice sentiment, don't you think?

And never has it been more pertinent than recently. Time is in short supply!

My office days are flat out at the moment. I don't know if you've heard, but there's this recession thing going around, and it makes my work doubly hard and half as financially rewarding. I'm not complaining. I've got a job, which is more than a lot of people can say, so please consider me grateful to be over worked and under paid (well, perhaps not grateful exactly, but you know what I mean). But it doesn't half take a lot of time.

And there's this new house. It's great! My own little set of walls, and I love them! But MY WORD! they take a lot of loving! As we all know, just the cleaning, cooking, washing, ironing is enough to keep a girl busy, without the sanding, wallpaper stripping, hole filling, hole drilling stuff too. Time, time, time!

Then there is Loulou Workshop. It's my passion. I would give my arm to spend more time on it, but the time it takes is already significant. I always have a hundred more ideas for pieces, than I have time to make and I really want to have the time to be a bit more creative. I'm bursting with inspiration at the the moment, but you know what inspiration takes? That's right. Time.

And now there is a new project. With a group of friends from the Open House event, we are planning a BIG local contemporary art project. I think that I'm too much of a craftsman, and not enough of an artist to be an exhibitor, but there's talk of management committees and workshops and educational projects. It'll be a long term commitment. Yesterday, at the latest meeting about it all, I heard myself saying "I'm happy to dedicate time to this," and wondered as I said it where I thought this time would come from.

This weekend was the first one in four months in which I had nothing in my diary. I didn't have to be anywhere with anyone doing anything, with the exception of the quick art project meeting yesterday. Three days to myself. Heaven!

So, I went to the supermarket, viewed a shop for the art project, had friends for lunch, viewed another shop, had an impromptu brainstorm about the project, went into the West End for a leaving do, had the planned art project meeting, went back to the supermarket for all the things I'd forgotten, bought and hung curtains in the spare room, baked cakes, went to a friend's house on a tea-and-sympathy basis, dropped some books to another friend, went on a fruitless boot shopping mission (more about this another time I think), cleaned the house, did three loads of laundry and spoke to my mother.

Isn't it nice to have a bit of spare time?

Three Beautiful Things

Tonight, inspired by the lovely Clare I bring you Three Beautiful Things ...

1) I have been delivering prizes to people who entered the competition which we ran as part of the Open House event. One lady won a print that she had been coveting, and another won a necklace with a pearl pendant which she said was her birth stone. It was lovely to deliver such personal presents to people.

2) I'm plotting lunch on Friday with new friend, and fabulously talented artist, Amelia Critchlow. We will set the world to rights, graze on delicious food, and discuss a private commission ...

3) Ham, egg and chips for my tea. 'Licious!

A Weekend Of Two Halves

This was been a weekend of some length. Weekends are so much longer if they start on Friday, don't you think?

Actually, all of my weekends start on Friday. I only work Monday to Thursday, you see, and I have Fridays off to flex my creative muscles, and make jewellery. My Fridays usually end up being pretty chilled out and not wildly productive (that's our little secret). But this week, I had lots to do to get ready for the second, Open House weekend, as well as the prospect of a lovely house guest to look forward to.

So. I got up bright and early and got all my domestic drudgery out of the way, AND got to the caff for breakfast, AND dropped around to see Gorgeous Gillian (my Open House hostess with the mostess) all before the talented Mr London Street (and the most sophisticated crass man I know) arrived.

So, my Friday started with feelings of productivity.

There ensued a day of hard core jewellery making, cake baking, tea drinking, and conversation of the meandering kind that you can only enjoy with a good friend. (There was also an incident relating to the European Cheese On Toast Mountain, but the less said about that, the better).

My day continued with feelings of achievement (and mild indigestion).

And then a wonderful thing happened. In a moment of inspiration, MLS got on the dog and bone to his Mrs, the fagnificent Baglady, plotted and planned, and within a couple of hours, we were walking up to meet her off the train with an evening of high jinks planned.

The evening started with feelings of anticipation.

Aren't impromptu visits lovely? So much more, somehow, for their slightly cobbled together nature. Fun, I can report, was had. We managed to secure ourselves the last table at a fabulous local bistro and we ate and drank and ate and drank and ate a bit more, until it was coming out of our ears. Nom nom nom.

The evening ended with feelings of warm, satisfied fullness and well being (and a little bit of booziness).

Of course, evenings like this, which are a good idea at the time, sometimes seem rather indulgent the next morning, and so it was that our Saturday morning started slowly and carefully and with a bacon sandwiches and tea.

Saturday therefore awoke with a sense of wonder at the magical qualities of bacon and Earl Grey.

Saturday and Sunday was spent on Open House, which was, as last weekend, terrific fun. It's a pretty rare thing in London, in my humble opinion, to find myself a part of a thriving and vibrant community. I had no idea that there were so many very creative people doing such very diverse things within a mere hop of my front door.

And so it was that Sunday evening saw me feeling positive and inspired, optimistic and bright, upbeat and happy.

Until I checked my Blackberry when bad, but unspecified work related stuff happened (see comments below).

I went to bed last night feeling down trodden and worthless, agitated and unappreciated, foolish and naive.

After all the positivity of the weekend, I feel sad that one ill considered email sent by one man has killed my spirit. I feel sad that I've taken it to heart. I feel sad that I mind.

So, with this flatness in mind, I am collecting career suggestions. Answers on a postcard please, folks!