On being woken up by cows

My first week at university has been rather interesting. I was worried before because when I came here on the open day, the part of the building I’m living in that we looked at had very tiny, dark bedrooms, and though I can deal with small, I really hate dark rooms. They’re suffocating. But it turns out, I actually have a really nice room that’s bigger than I thought, and has a wonderful view, which I have posted below. Yes, cows. There are cows outside my room, and actually, they’re everywhere. My university has a farm, I think. The fields all around campus are full of cows. They come right up to the fences around the campus. In spring, they are replaced by sheep.

The view from my bedroom window :)

My flatmates are great. I don’t know all of them very well (there are nine of us) but there are four I get on really well with, and for the first week they kind of watched out for me. I should mention the first night, when we all went out together to the Student Union bar, I got lost and went home by myself because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t go out every night after, but on the nights we did go out after that, they looked out for me which was nice as I’m really not the going-out type and noise and crowds scare me, especially both together. So that makes going clubbing an interesting experience.

Most of the people in my block, as well as the building, seem to be doing performing arts. I didn’t realise before how creative my university is before I came. My flatmates (it’s not really a felt, but it’s hard to explain otherwise) are all very flamboyant and interesting, and I’m glad of that. I do feel rather boring in comparison though. But it’s great and everyone’s friendly and, so far, I think I’m doing well at making friends and not being antisocial.

In my last post I said I didn’t want to leave home. I still don’t really, and I miss home a lot, especially my family and my best friend, but I’m so busy that I don’t get to think about it much, and that helps. My mum and aunt have called me several times since I got here and they told me that my grandma, who’s been in hospital since May, is coming home next week, which is great. And I think it will help everyone because my family need something good right now. I wish I was at home too, but I think that after a while I’ll really love it here, and it’ll feel more like home. I love the city and the uni, and the people are nice, but I do really miss home.

I haven’t written anything since I got here unfortunately, but I’m determined to get back into it. Been reading lots, though, which is something I haven’t had the chance to do for a long time. I mean like reading books that are my own choice, not for school like the last couple years. My new story’s still bubbling away and stewing nicely. :)

Next week I might post some prose here and start something about my holidays. We got an assignment today to write a page-long story inspired by one of the book titles on our reading list. I’m not good with limits, but I think it’s an interesting first assignment anyway.

So umm, yeah. My first week at university.  I can’t really think what else to write.

Update on the Life of Me

Ha. Blog got forgotten. Oopsie.

Anyway, this is only a small update. I’ve actually been back from my adventuring for over a month now, but life since then has been a rather hectic mix of packing for university, cataloguing books, trips to hospital, funerals, and a new story.

I’ll write a longer post on my holiday, including some pictures, once this week’s over and I’m settled at university, because I need to go through the journal I wrote while I was away (ha, and actually find it) and sort out something that won’t be a terrible day-to-day monologue of all the amazing stuffs I was determined to never forget. It was amazing. And I know I meant to blog while I was away/when I got back, but eh. Better late than never? And besides, I only know of three people who actually read this blog and you guys will forgive me.

Anyway, on Saturday I go to university. Yayyyyyy . . . kinda. Every time I start to feel excited, I become that six-year-old who didn’t want to go camping because mum wouldn’t be there to make me a hot chocolate (‘milkies’) before bed.  It’s big and there’s still so much to do and I suck at making friends and my bike’s still broken and I’ve not found a church (not that I have a way of getting to one because of the bike) and I hate that almost all my books are going to be left at home in boxes. Right now, I feel I need to be at home. Not just because of being scared of leaving home, but because it's just a bad time to leave, I think. We need to be together, and I also don't want to be alone so far from home at the moment. It might not be the other side of the country or the world, but it's still far enough.

But anyway. I’m a wimp so this is probably all just stupid panicking and over-emotional-ness. It’s been a very bad week.

On a more happier front, it was my birthday a couple days ago. I got some cool orange headphones, a tin of rice pudding, £50 of book vouchers, a pretty notebook and a CD, and my aunt took me out for a pub meal. And my dad sent me a card, a facebook message, and an email, which is pleasantly surprising. :)

I also started a new story recently. In the first week I spent an hour brainstorming the spark of idea, and the rest writing, like non-stop. I reached the 12,000 word mark. That’s more than what I write during a NaNoWriMo week, so it kind of blew me away with excitement. I’ve never had an idea that got me writing so much and so fast. That was about three weeks ago, and since then I’ve slowed down a bit (verging on 20,000 now) to brainstorm more, so I don’t get stuck and burn out.

When I first started out, all I had was a scene and two characters. Now there’s a circus troupe, a brother, a pet elephant, a bratty fairy, and a host of magical items I’m having serious fun making up, as well as a half-worked plot that’s unravelling as I explore more characters. So all’s going well, and it feels amazing to be writing a children’s story again. I was afraid I couldn’t write them anymore after so many attempts at ‘grown-up’ stories that are still floating in the periphery of ‘to research/planandbrainstorm/actuallywrite’.

Poetry, as seems to always be the case whenever I get back into prose, has taken a liking to the cupboard of my mind to play shadow-butterflies on the door with a torch. It may be there a while if this story keeps going as well as it started, so this place (now I’ve remembered it) will probably be full of ramblings and holiday photos rather than the usual poetry-dumping.

Anyhoo, I’m done. Be back next week sometime to tell you about my first week in university and Berlin.

After the Poems

I have immersed myself in poetry for hours,
and now my head wanders like a traveller
with a broken compass, through loves
and lives and the things people collect
to make themselves happy.

Every word is a picture of someone –

the electricity between thoughts and colour

– and every ending is a breath of cloud

plucked from the place dreams sneak out from

like naughty children. They are loosely tied

together and rarely double-knotted.

I wonder what happens to them once

they are done and forgotten,

whether part of the magic is that mystery

of forgotten things and the words

we write with our fingertips in their dust.

We can touch someone else’s scribbles in a margin

but like a mirage, we waste the play

of imagining who they were by stepping so close

that we see the sand falling between the pages.

At school we analyse and deconstruct

these glimpses into the swirl of another’s iris,

forgetting they are more than captions

beneath photographs, clinging to context.

We pull them apart like the same old

Lego bricks, and restack them again and again

in different shapes. Sometimes we create

windows. Done, miss.

But after the poems I see an ocean tossing

up the colours of a hundred choirs,

the light of a mid-afternoon fracturing them

like stained glass projections throughout a room.

I’m dizzy. Read me again, they say,

and look through a different moment,

in a different time, and see the reflections

of a thousand voices and shadows in a rainfall

which once filled my poet’s mind.

*

More of a musing than a poem, but whatever. I've been reading lots, writing less, and have spoken to some inspiring people about poetry and all the strings people tie it with. Found a love of graffiti poetry - I love the idea of writing on walls.

Also, Tumblr is to blame for the neglect of this blog. :3

And hello to my Russian readers - you're now the greenest place on my readership map, congrats. :)

Expression?

Today's been a rather dull day. It’s funny, I only noticed today that I’ve never actually posted anything personal, about me, on this blog, whatsoever. Sure, my drafts are full of musings I’ve begun about Life or Specific Crisis or the occasional Unfairness Rant, or just Rants in general. None have been posted longer than four minutes before I’ve deleted them, most never even got posted in the first place.

So here I am, with something personal, sort of. My mum said something today about expression. She wanted to know why I write poetry about things that don’t matter to me, or are about me. I told her that my poems are all, in a way about me. They come from my mind, so I guess they must be, anyway. She didn’t press for a further explanation, even though I don’t think she thought my reply actually answered her question, but it got me wondering about my expression of myself.

I personally, don’t think much of myself. The world is bigger than I am. Muchmuchmuch bigger and people who think the world is small always seem to end up bitter about their life, or disappointed that they didn’t live enough. Nobody can live in a space that’s too small or live enough in a space that’s too big. Look at the stars, look to the horizon – the edge of sight is flat, the curve of the earth so subtle in its extent that we cannot see we are on a sphere until we no longer stand with our feet on the ground – remember how small you are, explore the vapour you’re apart of before the wind blows, and be happy. It's as simple as that to me.

People, however, seem to think a lot of me, which I can never really get my head around. I find compliments hard to deal with. My friends say I’m smart. I’m not. I absorb things that interest me, bits of stories, ideas, quotes, poetry, history. But I struggle every day with lessons and understanding. Odd that I find I can understand people far better than I can understand what they say. I don’t like speaking out loud and I don’t like it when people think more of me than I am, it means I’ll always end up disappointing them.

Expression, though, is not something I’ve thought much about before. Art, in itself is expression. I paint, write, isn’t that expression? But if I’m expressing myself in these mediums, then what is it I am expressing about myself? My mum thinks it’s nothing. Just meaningless, hollow poems about things and stuff and nothing. Yet there must be something of me going into them -- I spend hours writing just one, and while I’m writing, I do find myself thinking about things that do matter to me. The people in my life, the past, my childhood, worries, regrets, the usual ‘stuff’ I suppose. How much does content reflect the writer, though? I’m pretty sure that Stephen King, though he writes about murder and horrific-nesses, isn’t actually a murderer. He’s probably a really nice guy. So what does his writing show about him?

I’m studying William Blake at college at the moment (I’ve had readings of his poems on a loop for the past four hours . . .) and Blake, is one of those people who always seemed to write about things that really mattered to him. If anyone’s read his work, a lot of it is about how children were treated in his time, the corruption in the church, poverty and other such issues that not many people in the upper classes at the time gave much thought for. His opinions on these issues are very strong and apparent in his work, which shows a lot about the kind of person he was and, supposedly, that he was a caring person who thought a lot about people below the poverty line.

One theme in my work a couple people have mentioned to me is fathers. Several people who’ve read my work have told me I must have a good relationship with my father because I write about good relationships with fathers or have some kind of nostalgia thing going on. The irony is, I haven’t seen my father for well over a year and I really don’t think much of him at all. Fathers aren’t important to me. So, how true is it that Blake really thought much of the issues he wrote about? Did he perhaps just think they were good subjects to write about in a similar way I think father-child relationships are? Or maybe it was a kind of absent thing? Or perhaps he really did just write about what meant a lot to him and this is a bad example. Who knows.

At this point I’m aware there has probably been some big Blake-inspiration research-y thing and comparing my vague inspirations to a famous poet's who was part of a movement, probably is a seriously bad idea . . . Also, I don't believe Blake’s writing came of absent ‘what shall I write today’ musings like most of my stuff does. So yeah, bad example.

Anyway, my point was simply that, how do we know what we read in poetry is actually important to the writer? How much of ‘you’ do you express in your work, and how?

In prose, I think it’s maybe easier to express yourself. What kind of person you are might depend on how well you treat your characters, the kind of relationships they have, how morals are presented, the way people communicate and how actions are used to illustrate stuff, what angles and biases you may purposefully or absently use to make something seem good/bad, etc, etc. But then again, these might also not be expressing ‘you’ (such as horror writers), especially as everything that is written – prose, poetry, whatever – can be interpreted differently by whoever is reading. So what do we express about ourselves when we write?

Ha, rambling is fun.

Finding your Perfect Writing Forum

Lists of ‘good’ writing forums on the internet always seem to have the big bustly websites listed first like a popularity contest. As the list goes down, the size of the forums listed usually gets smaller, most of the forum-world gems being lost, save to those expert Googlers or those who chance across the whispers floating around the interweb grapevines.

As an amateur writer myself, and a forum-er of four years, I've found smaller forums  with closer critique values work much better for writers, especially ones just starting out or who are interested in actually getting better (believe it or not, there are a surprising amount of writers who don’t seem to want to get better at all). Absolute Write's 35,000 members may be seriously daunting to someone inexperienced with forum life, and unless you're already a freaking awesome writer and have a flashing sparkly avatar or something, you are not going to get noticed among the crowds.

If you’ve never been a member of a forum before, regardless of how long you’ve been writing, you may find it a rather different experience than you may have initially thought. Some forums can be nice happy places full of friendly people and others can be a cut-throat world of surviving out the older members. Some can be writerly havens and others can be abysmal lairs of ego-stroked pre-teens waiting for you to tell them their Twilight fanfic is fantastic literature . . . it happens. Telling the difference is easy, though, so no worries, but the main concern is what you want to get from a forum.

I joined my first forum when I was fifteen, knowing nothing about them, and I know that I certainly wouldn't be the writer I am today without that forum and the others I joined. I dread to think of where I'd be now if my first stop-off had been the Young Writers Society (YWS) which, unfortunately falls under the category of a far from constructive forum. So getting the right one for you, is crucial. If you're a young writer in your early teens, concerned with meeting writery friends, then YWS might work for you, but keep in mind the doors - if you want to be a writer you need to always be learning. There is no such things as the perfect writer and if you’re serious, you’re going to have to convince more than just your parents and friends you’re good.

If you're perhaps a bit older (should I say mature?) and more serious about being critiqued by people who seriously know what they're talking about (and not afraid of receiving constructive criticism) then Critique Circle are fabulous. However, I wouldn't recommend CC to a newbie writer - these guys mean serious business. You’ll need a backbone and decent amount of knowledge in the craft to return the favour to whomever critiques your work. Critiques for critiques, fair game, right? You don’t get something for nothing.

Also, as I’ve jumped in the deep-end with the ‘best’ sites (in my opinion) I’ve had the experience to nosey around, this one’s for poetry-peoples:  Tin Roof Alley Poets, which, though has a few downfalls in some members being utterly awful human beings, is great for receiving genuine, honest and very detailed critiques (have a backbone, though or you’ll probably find your poetry crippled at the knees rather than manning up) and will certainly help you improve your work and educate you in poetry-ness.

Another thing I always find with lists of writing forums is that they never seem to include are forums for younger writers, which, as I’ve been a member of about twelve different forums, possibly even more, and witnessing the births and deaths of some, I think I can comment on a few.

Young Writers Online and Teenage Writers are both excellent forums (Dear any possible readers hailing from either forum: I LOVE YOU BOTH SO NO ARGUING *coughs*) for young people. Though very different from one another, in both atmosphere and community, they both offer a great community of mixed ability writers focused on helping others improve through critique. The latter also has camps where more experienced members teach others about the different crafts, and the former has many competitions and events throughout the year. There are no better forums for young writers (age 12-25) on the interwebs. Trust me, I’ve been on almost all of them. I should note that these two are *coughs* rivals, though that may be an understatement.

When it comes to forums, as I think I’ve said before, the best thing you can do it ask yourself what you want to gain from joining them. If it's just to make friends with like-wise minded people then smaller less critique and more discussion-focused sites will work better for you as you won't get lost in the struggle to be noticed, as in bigger forums. People on those forums are generally friendlier and for lack of a better word, spammy, so it’s usually very easy to fit in to these kinds of places.

Some examples:

Poet's Graves Workshop (all ages)
Legendfire (mostly younger writers, but appears to welcome all(?))
Fictionpost (all ages)
Hortorian (mostly younger writers, but appears to welcome all(?))
Kids' Writing Club (young writers, only)

Also, if you’re already a member of a critique-heavy forum, sometimes it’s just nice to pop by places like these for a little breather. A slower pace, new faces to talk to, teach, and learn from. There are many kinds of writers and you should always be looking to learn from others. I personally, like a balance, but that might be just me. I’m a member of both critique-heavy forums and more lax ones, and I find that this works for me. The thing is to find out what works for you.

If what you want is to get better at writing, learn something and be critiqued, then you need to look carefully before joining a forum. Many forums may boast awesome critique prowess, but rarely do they deliver *sigh*. A swift glance through some of a site's fiction and poetry forums is usually enough to confirm whether or not they are worth your time. Questions to ask yourself: are the 'critiques' mostly/all one-line comments or a couple sentences, do they say anything constructive or just stuff like 'zomg I love your work, post more!', or even worse . . . do they tolerate chatspeak? If so, these are the places to avoid posting your work, for you will not improve, and the people there are probably not overly interested in improving or already think they’re the best thing since Marshamallow Fluff. So it will be a waste of time joining. Look for places that more often, or even always, give good, detailed and honest critiques. By ‘honest’ I also mean, harsh where necessary.

I have little experience with bigger adult forums such as Absolute Write, so I don't feel I can accurately describe their services. I know YWS is lost in its own size, which, though is nowhere near as big as AW, comes under the description of a site filled with prospect, but saturated with no learning, no effort, ego-stroked members, and generally awful critiques, meaning that their prospect is mostly sadly wasted (can you tell I'm biased? :3). I guessed this could be the case with super-sized forums such as AW, but after joining and having a poke around I found the critiques were mostly helpful, and most work did actually get looked at, though navigating that place was interesting. It wouldn't be my cup of tea, but I suppose it depends on who you are. Size shouldn't be a deciding vote one where you join though.

Look around before joining somewhere that will get you nowhere despite years of posting, unless you want to join a forum more for the friends and discussion than for betterment and helping others. On that note, I must say, most of the places I've linked will require you to do your fair share of work to receive critiques in return, even the less critique-focused places require you to comment on others work - but critiquing, especially detailed critiquing will help you grow as a writer, too, so that shouldn't be a problem, should it? :)

Anyhoo, this is getting rather long and rambly. Feel free to contribute your opinions or any info you have on sites mentioned, or any others.

EDIT 12/12/12 (ha): Someone asked me for the link to this today, and reading it back, I'd like to just unreccomend teenagewriters.com (TW). Unfortunately last summer the place was taken over by a businessman who kicked all the staff and older members off, killing the site. There's still a lot of useful stuff in the archives I recommend looking for, if you want to learn about writing, but the site is no longer active and has nobody moderating it.

#7) Untitled III

Sometimes I stand on a haystack and imagine
the prickles are coals on a dark jungle floor,
and I’m walking barefoot, testing my skin.
They say that the mind controls the body,
and that an absent mind is more than a dream
with fairies, but a cave where water drips
in the air; every sense feels far away
until one lands on you, cold, like a fever.
I think the sheep watch me and wonder
what it’s like to be higher than the fence.
I would tell them I don’t feel the hay anymore
and that the wind gives me pins-and-needles
in my hands when night rises and I still
haven’t caught a cloud. The jungles grow
around me and they become blank eyes
staring from the undergrowth. I meet
them all and stare back until they turn away,
the coals flickering in the grass, growing cold.

 

(One day left, only . . . twenty-two poems to go . . . :S )

More old toys and much more nostalgia

So my mum and I decided our loft was a disgusting pigsty and needed to be sorted out, and seeing as none of us have felt like doing much outside the house this week, we decided we’d have a crack at it and waste some time. Needless to say, we got rather dirty.

Our loft is rather . . . ancient in decoration, in the sense that the cobwebs are probably as old as the house, the spiders on their 561st generation or something, there are chinks of daylight coming from above . . . which is worrying . . . and the once-upon-a-time insulation has been turned fairytale-style into dust, though hopefully not by some wizard or ghoul-thing, hiding in the dark. O.o

Huzzah, but out expedition into the depths of the loft-space held surprises as well as cobwebs and othersuch . . . lovelies. So I’m doing another Old Toys and Nostalgia post, just because.

We found my old Lucy Locket Dream Cottage, which I swear we sold at a bootsale years and years ago (I always thought dolls were kind of freaky), but wallah, there it was was, boxed and everything.

Next was some more of my old Teeny Weeny Families collection. The Brown’s Mini Market was bought a lot more recently than the others, at a stage where I wasn’t really into playing with plastic playsets and was into the whole tomboy-moodiness and treehouse-building thing, so it never really got played with, sadly. It is one of my favourites though – got to love tiny fridges. xD

I also found some of my mini storybook Teeny Weenies which made me very happy as I thought I’d lost them years back. They are each only 6cm tall, so you can do the maths for the size of the lollypops . . . xD I used to love playing with these – the dad from the toy shop and the mum from the flower shop always had a thing for each other, I thought, and he’d by flowers from her shop and then give them to her (he wasn’t good at surprises), and then they’d go to the restaurant in the Grand Hotel set together while their kids played with the mouse twins. 

I also had another two sets – a duplicate of the flower shop where it was a father and son, instead (bought from a bootsale) and they had little pitchforks and yellow flowers instead of red ones.

Also, there was an ice cream parlour which I never really liked because the ice creams were blue and blue ice cream just didn’t make sense. The little kid in that one was cute though and was friends with the little rabbit in the sweet shop. xD

There was also Waddle’s Boutique, which is a rather poor state as it was in a rotting box beneath one of the worrying chinks of daylight that really shouldn’t be there. The stickers are peeling on the inside and it’s very dirty. For some reason the bits for it have been living safely in the Grand Hotel from my last toys&nostalgia post, so as least they’re not wrecked. The little bobbin from the top is also with them. I didn’t find my teapot, though, which was my ultimate favourite, even before the Grand Hotel, and was my first Teeny Weeny set. I also have the bits for that one in the Grand Hotel though, so I guess it must still be somewhere in the loft. *sadface* EBAY will save me! :D

These next ones were *technically* my brother’s toys, as if I remember correctly, they were a fifth birthday present. However, he never liked them because he said they were too much like Polly Pocket and they were a girl’s toy. I my terrible sixes and sevens, my tomboy-ness was getting the better of me, so I decided I liked them and they were not a girl’s toy, so that was okay.

They are pretty cool sets though – the blue ones has this whole ‘rocks on the railway line’ thing which I always thought was cooler to play it out that the rocks actually fell on Thomas instead of in front of him so the little orange digger could quickly get them out of the way, so Thomas died a lot and the little orange digger lost his job. The other one wasn’t so cool, though it had the helicopter (I forget his name) which would usually crash or end up rescuing Pollies from the WRATH OF JAMES.

The next one isn’t technically a toy, but it’s something I absolutely loved, and I can probably relate it in some way or another to my love of stories and books and writing, later on in my life. If anyone remembers Tot’s TV, these tapes were a kind of magazine-collecting thing that was made to boost ratings before the show was sadly culled. :’( I have no idea what happened to the magazines – they basically just had the story from that week’s tape in them with illustrations. These magazines and tapes were how I taught myself to read before I went to pre-school at about two and a half years old. Writing didn’t catch up until I was about seven or eight though.

Anyway, I used to listen to these tapes all the time with this toy tape player (which is in the shed at the bottom of the garden) that was multicoloured and had a little yellow microphone and everything. I have all the tapes but two, but I do remember one got brutally butchered by my dad’s old tape-player and the other might possibly still be in my tape player in the shed at the bottom of the garden.

This next one is possibly older than me as it belonged to my late stepdad when he was younger. It was one of the first game consoles or something, I’m not really sure – but it still works and it has the most addictively awesome theme tune ever. Last I knew it had 100-200 games on it, we never really found out how many exactly, or what they all were, though I’m guessing Google would find out all this in an instant nowadays *sigh*. Space invaders, pac-man, frog-crossing, Othello and this awesome tank-tunnel game were my favourites, though. :)

When I was a kid I used to ADORE Disney, like most kids do. Lady and the Tramp was one of my all-time favourites along with Winnie the Pooh, and every time my mum or my uncle Tony went up to Norfolk or came to visit from Norfolk, they’d bring me and my brother back a stuffed Disney toy. We had the whole collection of Winnie the Pooh ones, and I swear I never got rid of mine, so I have no idea where the others went. *sadface*

On the expedition to the loft, I found Lady and Eeyore. I remember Tigger being my favourite, though, so I was very sad not to find him.

When I was about five or six, we went to visit one of my mum’s friends and their kids who lived in Bodmin, near the prison. I was absolutely terrified of Bodmin at the time, having been told in advance by my wonderfully lovely peers at school about the murders lurking in the moorlands the bodies under the grass and even more murders and evil men (Rasputin was mentioned by name) locked up in the prison. So Tigger came with me for moral support.

My mum’s friend had two sons, one a bit older than me and the other about three or four, so roughly the same age as my brother. The older boy was nasty. I didn’t like him as all. But when he saw my Tigger he decided he wanted him, and that I had no choice in the matter. All day we shot daggers at each other behind our mum’s backs. In the end, I lost the battle and my poor Tigger ended up having his tail ripped off.

Lady also has a story, as she’s technically Lady the Second, but it’s not as entertaing as Tigger’s story, and this is getting rather long . . .

*
Almost last up is yet more of my Polly Pockets, which are all complete with the original bits (I was a weirdly careful child about keeping things together) and . . . aren’t all that interesting, so I won’t say much about them. The Polly Pocket animals are seriously freaky, though, don’t you think? Like fluffy lumps . . .

And some Disney ones (Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Lion King) which have a few missing bits as I let some kids play with them as school once. *sadface*

Also, I found some of my Micromachines this time. :) I used to have a lot more, but I don't know where they drove off to.  Some of them are newer than others – the green/yellow Chevy, the pink Cadillac and the orange Vee-dub are recent Ebay purchases. :3

Anyway, this is really long, so I’ll save my old Harry Potter stuffs for their own post sometime, oh and I’ll do a Pokemon post, at some point, too, but because my brother has most of our old Pokemon stuff, I need to bribe him to let me borrow them. >.>

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.

Cast List - Sins of Jade House

I haven’t written a blog post in almost a month . . . O.o
I can give excuses: coursework, homework, life, Christmas, but heh, they’re just words and don’t really mean much from the other side of my screen, so I’ll just write something and make the snow look useful or something.
I was reading through a friend's blog (all my friends seem to have blogs, it’s cool) and saw she’d done a cast list for her characters, and thought that it was such an awesome idea, that I thought I’d steal it and do one of my own. (Sorry!)
I thought about this for a very long time, because I have lots of stories and lots of ideas of who would play my characters if they were a film or something. But my newest story is hardest, because the characters are all new, except for my main character, Will, and I have had less time to think about it all. So three hours of Googling later, here I am:
William Chance
Will is my main character and was hardest to cast because I’ve never seen anyone that looks completely how I imagine him, and the ‘completeness’ is important because he’s my main character. BUT I found some pictures that work with my imagination and fit him, though the actors themselves may not suit him or look like him in other pictures/films, etc  . . . *sigh*
Ryan Gosling . . . yeah, he looks kind of like (younger) Will in this picture, but not in others, except he’s not got coppery-brown hair, but ehhhhh, I’m a perfectionist. There’s also Paul Bettany, who normally doesn’t look like Will at all, but does in this picture, so I’m going with that.
I do have some drawings I’ve done of (older) Will, but I’m too much of a wimp to post them, and I have issues with all of them.
Issues already, how fun. Moving on . . .
                
Roderick Chance
Will’s brother (younger) isn’t as hard – Andrew Buchan, for sure. He’s got the nice-guy look but can play someone a bit more complicated and mixed up, as well as do the whole banter/argument shebang. Needs to be red-haired though.
Older Roderick is harder, because I figure he’d have a kind of weathered/serious look to him that Buchan doesn’t – my possible idea was Damien Lewis as he’s got all that, plus the gingerness. xD













Isabella Chance
Not an actress, but some picture I found from a bridal magazine. However, this is exactly how I imagine (younger) Isabella to look like. She is beautiful and her hair is amazing, and she’s got the whole sensitive-with-hidden-spirit kind of look, which is great, if that even makes any sense.

Annalie

She’s the hardest, because I still haven’t found someone who looks like her, how I imagine her. However, I saw the BBC’s new Nativity adaption before Christmas, and Tatiana Maslany grew on me, mainly because of her hair. Her voice is all wrong though and Annalie is taller and has a thinner face, but I’ll compromise.

Lady Francesca

After seeing Romola Garai in Emma, it’s without a doubt that I think she’d be awesome playing Lady Francesca. She looks like a lady, can act and speak like one, and carry great emotion. Can just imagine her throwing a riding hat at Will and telling him he’s a pig-headed clown.

Uncle Anton
I spent absolutely forever trying to find a match for Anton, who is currently my favourite character, and thus, has to be perfectly cast. I scoured IMDB for all the cast lists of films where I could remember there being an old man or something in them, and eventually, found Jim Broadbent from the Chronicles of Narnia, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, (though finding out his name was difficult) and he is PE RFECT. :)

Just look at the expression and the hair and the costume and the glasses! Geeese, I should just steal Digory Kirke, add some madness, alcohol, bad eyesight and hearing, and have done with it.

Lord Chance, Will’s Father (doesn’t have a fixed name yet)

He absolutely has to be Michael Caine, because he’s awesome and hardcore and everything. Seen Harry Brown? Yup, terrifying, right? Michael Caine is one of Britain’s very best actors (in my opinion) and could play Will’s father easily. He’s got the voice, the seriousness, the fierceness, the look, the everything.

Michael Garrett

Annalie’s husband, and my main bad guy for part one, Garrett has to be played by Richard Armitage. He’s one of my all-time favourite actors and can do both the merciless terrifying-ness at the same time as deep sensitivity, and certainly makes an awesome complex character with little to lose, or maybe I just love Spooks wayyyyy too much. xD

Anyway, he’s perfect, without a doubt.

Tomas
Tomas is a minor character, so I wasn’t originally going to put him on here, but I have two actors for him. The first is Matthew McFayden as the younger Tomas and Martin Freeman for the older Tomas. Both of them look, I think, surprisingly similar . . . kind of anyway, and Martin Freeman’s voice is just how I imagine Tomas’, but a bit more whiney. xD
      






The next few are mainly from the second/original story which I haven’t written yet except for a couple really bad and very different drafts two years ago, but I am in the process of planning so it makes sense with the first. The first is:
Adam Chance
Will’s son would definitely be played by Barney Clark if he was still as young as he was in Oliver Twist, but *sigh* this is all make-believe so a little time travel won’t harm me. He’s cute and looks perfect, has the right voice and is the right age (or was), and I can’t imagine Adam any other way. :)
      

Derek Garrett

Hugh Dancy is almost perfect for Derek, though I think that maybe he looks a little too old. I’ve never seen him in anything so I can’t really comment on acting skills or comparisons to character or anything, but he looks how I imagine Derek, so all’s good. :)

Jesse

Jesse is Adam’s accidental gypsy friend, and was very hard to cast as I have a very good picture of what he looks like in my head, and I couldn’t find anyone who really looks like him. He’s supposed to be a bit older than Adam, maybe twelve or thirteen, and more mischievous-looking than quiet. William Miller was the closest I could find, but heh, not really happy.

Hettie Cairns

This is one of those pictures that doesn’t look how the person normally looks in other stuff. But ah well. Amber Heard, as she is here, works for Hettie, but I guess that’s another spell of time travel owed here. xD She and Hugh Dancy would be a cute couple, though.

And, I know it’s not a character, but it’s one of the most important paces in my novel, so I feel I should include it. This is how I imagine Jade House, just with a much larger garden, near a cliff and behind a coastal road:

Woot, all done! Now I really must do less procrastinating and actually do some work . . . *sigh*

"You cannot map a desert, for it is breathing."

A travelling man with straw hair gave me a map
of the desert and later turned out to be a hallucination.
the map contained my feet, bare and blistered,
as spots in sector A7, though I felt a rock nearby
would do better in blue than dried-out green.

I ask the map for names, though it cannot trace her
contours or find the water she cups in both hands,
and it tells me she is a desert with the syllables
of her name spoken with every step gravity rejects.

Sometimes the night tells me I’m going west
and other times it tells me the horizon awoke
in the east or south-by-north, lost in its own compass
because they forgot to turn the highway lights on.

In the daytime, the sky moulds to her curves, shaping
a horizon from twisted rhymes and broken poetry.
Planes (like pilgrims) find their wings clipped,
feathers dropped into watercolour tattoos
for artistic licensing, and nothing more.

Somewhere in the weedy fictions that populate
my mind, I see her lying belly-up, breathing
like the sun will melt her skin and make her as sand,
the sort that sweeps between the sable doily skies
and hugs a new landscape, turning it yellow.

I could tell you the nursery rhyme I first heard
from her lips; of a travelling man who never knew
her name, burning in the sand and passing on
a map that rewrites itself too slow and leads
me around in circles until flames follow my feet.

Heh...

Balloons tangle in the sky; they're red
and green, like the halves and wholes
of a voice singing to me while I’m sleeping,
with the blush of headlights combing
my duvet. Someone drew strange faces
over the curves and shadows, and I
can’t make out if they’re smiling or staring,
singing in red murmurs, or watching the olive
trees sway outside my window.

Nautical Optimism

barely awake it seems
the sun forgot to bring coffee
or a fogless breath
to her window –  
but that blue’s a fine glow,
she thinks – is it dawn
or the tread of a storm
colouring over the divide
of sea and sky?

she waits and sighs and asks
of the beasts she colours
in daylight and picks apart
when the ease of splitting weaves
where oceans cohere and forbid
an easy return,
 
if prayers count when thrown
to fishes, day after day.

The Old House

I know I was meant to do one a day . . . but yeah, I failed at that. Done . . . three. So I'll edit up the other and post is in the next couple days. This one's more of a musing than anything else, and is going straight on my 'to edit' pile. :/

The Old House

The wallpaper peels itself back,
stringing decade-old glue
like party streamers, made grey
by the rain, over the carpets
we scuffed black and blue,
and then ‘till the colour wore away
and our names were revealed,
etched into the bottom stair.

This house pretends
that ghosts play in the eaves,
weaving banners between the beams:
the children who lived here smile
and draw crayon wishes on the ceilings,
the walls, and unravel their way
to an attic where laughter
filters through the dust
like sulphurous whispers.