Enter February

So, one day left of January. Or . . . less than a day, I should say.

Normally this would mean little to me, but because I'm crazy and seem to be asking for some kind of early life-crisis or mental breakdown, I've chosen to do NaPoWriMo (the poetry version of NaNoWriMo, where you have to write a poem every day for a month instead of the usual 50,000 words of prose in a month), while I have coursework deadlines up the ying-yang, a family member in hospital on the other side of the country, and various other time-consuming chaoticnesses going off like fireworks all around me . . .

This won't be an official NaPo thing, though -- it's more of a pact between a friend (whose blog is: HERE ) and I, as we both feel we've kind of run out of steam with poetry and need something to help us get back into it. Devasaurus would also like to win the Foyle Young Poets Award this year which would be epic, as we were both commended last year, and for her to win this year would be awesome, especially considering the amount of work she's going to. And I'm very happy to be like motivational support for her, or whatever the term is *readies poking stick*. Normally it's held in April (we'll probably be doing one then as well, but were eager beavers, and this is a slightly shorter month than normal, so . . . we'll call it like a practice round, in preparation for April. And as a warning: they'll all be various shades of awful, unedited drivel.

I'm looking forward to it, I must say. I think some of my more imaginative poetry came out of last years' (April) NaPo and the weeks afterwards. It was the first NaPo I'd ever done, as before that point I hadn't really been into poetry and only dabbled when the feeling struck and I didn't feel like writing something long. It started off a kind of poetry-revival on a forum where Devasaurus and I are both members and got lots of people who hadn't tried poetry before, really into it, so it'd be awesome for something like that to happen again. It'd also be good bonus to get out our lovely threadbox filled with some fresh work and revival-ness. I'm not expecting any good work to come out of it as I suck, but I do think I'll enjoy it nonetheless.

Eh, this post is rubbish, so I'm going to wind it up quickly. I ramble too much and yikes . . . run-on sentences and comma splices galore! Someone save me! D:

Anyhoo, as I've noticed the stupid 'page' thingies on here only allow you one 'post' in them and don't like update or show notifications like regular with posts, I'm going to add a thing on the end of a regular post every time I update in Snippets or Artynesses, because I'd rather have art and longer prose separate from the bloggy bit so I can easily find and edit/delete them if needs be. Currently there are two updates under Artynesses, jus' so you know. :3

So yeah, over and out!

Lego, Old Toys, and Serious Nostalgia

Today (actually, the day before yesterday now), I spent two hours moving Happyland figures over my desk and building Lego walls around them for my stop-motion thingummywhatsit that's going to be in the music video I'm making for my Media Studies coursework. It was more fun than I thought it would be as my teacher and some people who’d done it before said it was a chore. So I surprised myself at how my inner child found moving yukky chemical-smelling plastic toys half a centimetre after every picture, very thrilling indeed.

See this grin?? 

Those are the colours of happiness, nostalgia, and that freaky smell of new plastic.

Nobody would lend me any Lego though, and weirdly, my family never actually ever had any 'proper' lego, just the huge Duplo stuff. So I had to buy some proper Lego of my own (who knew it was so expensive?) and make up a story about my actually-existing-but-not-yet-anywhere-near-four-year-old-brother's fourth birthday coming up next month for the nice checkout guy who commented on my age and my obvious wide-eyed childish excitement (I'm guessing I was smiling too much?) at finding myself in a toyshop . . .

Anyway, yes. Lego is awesome, and I'm totally going to build houses and ducks and have mummy invasions (two mummies holding scorpions are the only people I have) to relieve college/life stress.

[caption id="attachment_153" align="aligncenter" width="535" caption=""My Scorpion will kill you even though you're already dead! Muahahahaha!!""][/caption]

*smiles happily*

Anyway, the awesome thing is, I actually have lots to talk about for once! Rediscovering Lego has made me remember all my favourite old toys from when I was a kid. I still have a few, and some I think must be in the loft somewhere, but I'm very saddened now that I sold so many. Ebay's helping me find old favourites I've lost though. My bank account doesn't like toys, though, the boring old fart.

So this is going to be my List of Most Awesome Toys from my Childhood.

First up is my Polly Pockets:



I got the wedding set (big purple heart) for my fourth birthday, I remember opening it and everything. It's always been one of my favourite toys, and though I don't have as many of the pieces as I used to (I was always really careful about bits, but we moved house a lot), it still looks new and plays the sounds and everything. xD The other one was one my dad bought for me when I was about eleven from a toy fair – I was a bit too old to play with it, so it’s in much better condition and the bits aren’t so . . . obviously nineties, if you know what I mean.

Second is the Teeny Weenie Families Grand Hotel:

Apparently this series of toys are quite rare now, and I'm gutted to say I used to have many more. There was a teapot cafe (I still have the characters and some of bits for it though, so it might be in the loft), a sewing machine tailors shop, a little tiny flower shop, and all sorts. They were like Polly Pockets but so much more awesome and cuter. The furniture and accessories, though . . . geez, some of them were so tiny it's hard to believe they could be made by machines and that the dreaded HealthAndSafetyDemons actually allowed them to be made for four year olds. Anyway, it's an adorable set, and I hope my (future, maybe) daughter might like them as much as I did. I’m currently stalking eBay for the other sets. :3

Third is the Pound Puppy Diner:



I had a huge Pound Puppy addiction when I was a kid. I can still hear the TV adverts in my head, word for word. I pined for the Pound Puppy Play Van for a long, long time, and was absolutely thrilled when I got it for Christmas when I was five/six. If I still had the Play Van, it would have the No.1 spot, purely because it's so awesome. It had a little Pound car and everything. However, I sold it to one of my brother’s friend’s little sister, who I reallyreallyreally hope looked after it.

The only Pound Puppy toy I still have is a miniature diner set (no original bits, though). The bits in the picture come from a later version of the Pound Puppies toys, when the dogs and cats stopped being steamrolled flat and gained normal animal shapes. The reason I kept these ones was because they were my favourites and it was these guys that I wrote my first 'proper' story about, when I was six. I don't have the story anymore, sadly, but can still remember it well as it was a game I used to play over and over again. I can still remember all the characters' names: (in order, left to right) Charlie, Maddy, Gregory, Bright-Eyes, Angel and Shiloh. (I was apparently much better at thinking of names when I was younger, too . . .)

Also, the last one, because I can’t find all of my Micro-Machines, here’s a picture of my awesomely pretty marbles. Don’t they just make you feel like a seven year old again?



. . . if you’re thinking, ‘No, they make me think you’re a seriously weird eighteen-year-old,’ then you need to go spend some time with your inner child . . . now.

Anyhoo. So yeah, if anyone ever reads this, and actually cares about my rants or whatever, then I’d really love it if you commented and told me what your favourite childhood toys were. Nostalgia is good to share, don’t you think?

Dragonflies

She made paper birds on the porch
and once she’d given them eyes to see,
she shut them away in soap boxes
and stacked them beneath the steps
like old toys growing dusty in the attic.

Sometimes she’d use tissue instead,
and sometimes those birds tore their wings
and managed to fly up and away, taken
by wind and clouds with no love for paper,
or they’d catch the horizon and swoop.

On sunny days, the sand would shine
and she’d make parchment horses
to gallop the distance home again, scattering
paper crumbs between the seashells
and breaking their legs in the fall.

Sandals left out in the rain fall apart
as those birds watch the dune grasses grow
longer through their breathing holes.
They witness the dragonflies dying
when it rains, sinking with origami flowers.

It’s the paper-cut that makes her stop
– the slice of blood that makes her consider
Science at work – and wonder if she is God
to the boxed birds, and to the dragonflies
she burns, wing-tips first.

Rose Heads

Bring me the rose heads
from last summer and let me feel the fibres
of their decay beneath my fingers;
brown confetti floats down and sits
on the surface of a puddle.

My thumb presses a thorn, skeleton
to skeleton, and here’s to flat champagne
and the petals you picked and scattered
like ashes in the flowerbeds — you still think
they follow the sun?

I liked the red roses best; an old cliché.
They grow like nettles between rocks, now,
and their heads float, decapitated as buds,
face-down

in the pond.
Where I left you
wanting an answer I couldn’t find
when it mattered, there grows
a daisy, breaking all the rules,
and I think I’ll let it grow.

 

/awfulpieceofdrivelyesIknow

The Red Bicycle

When I was six, I unwrapped a bicycle
as red as the goo in a Jammy Dodger.
My feet were unwilling to pedal, still connected
to the ground like webs between windows
in the wet. The day was grey,
and the world still
small. You never taught me about gravity;
that going down
-hill always means lonely circles.

The treads lost their definitions at the weekends
and the bare screws pock-marked rust
between the years. Spiders wrote of
old words and choruses in their webs,
wise words I couldn’t read.

Later you saw me racing like a child
twice my age, fearless and perhaps a little
fictional? Sometimes when the clouds rained
reality in grey, you told me about the Amazons
and their feather-tail boats.

The bicycle, growing smaller, kept collecting
spiders between its webbed spokes,
spinning through years faster than a storm
through Neverland. You’d forget
my ABCs, paint the letters back into your greyscale,
and like bad songs on the radio,
blame it all on how ignorance breeds
among the young and stupid.

Your face fell into photographs
and late birthday cards,
rather than days with capital letters.

I remember a tower made of satellite dishes,
watching with a swollen smile amid blink
-ing lights, red and green, through the car windows,
and I remember you said you’d race me
one day in the past, long before
I knew how big the skies could be,
and when it rained and rained and rained.

(Revised: 25/01/11)