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[02 Feb 2010|05:54pm] ix., originally uploaded by heyoka. because I have been wrapping myself up in knots lately, here is a short and incomplete list of good things, shiny things 1. an invitation to be part of a show in London in the spring--just one picture, but wet plate, and for something that means a great deal to me 2. an invitation to be part of a show in Edinburgh, with pinholery, also in the spring. 3. Kitsune, at the window, talking to a crow yesterday. Not the usual "omg omg going to eat you little bird" cat-chitter-chatter song of over-excitement. This was a conversation. The crow was sitting on the railings, 'sune on the desk. Crow said "raark, raark, raaaaark?" and this was repeated back, with variations, for a good five minutes, as the crow turned his face side to side, watching the cat, and the cat did not do the pre-pounce arse-wiggle, but radared his ears and shivered his whiskers. What it was about, I don't know, but the crow strutted up and down a bit, and the cat was curious and involved, and not at all cat-meets-bird-like. It was a baffling piece of magic. 4. Seeing friends. Drinking wine. Playing games. Hanging out. 5. snarl just got home. 6. I am digging the reading, and, more, really digging the thinking that is starting to kick into gear on the new art history course. 7. Snow on the fields, glowing gold and blue in the low sun seen from the train. 8. Marmite toast. I am about to eat some. 2 comments|post comment

[28 Jan 2010|02:01pm] Ma Jian, originally uploaded by heyoka. More of the Book Festival pictures are up on Flickr now. This is the novelist Ma Jian, author Beijing Coma, The Noodle Maker, Stick Out Your Tongue and Red Dust. He was kind enough to sit for me, even though he'd not had his breakfast yet, and we had very little shared language. Other pictures are from various press calls: Val McDermid, a particularly strange one of Will Self, and a particularly grainy one of Neil Gaiman. 4 comments|post comment

the perils of being at home [22 Jan 2010|12:56pm] The cats are driving me CRAZY today. Zot is either sharing lap with laptop and swaying weirdly, or licking the table. Oh, and singing. Mymble, if she was a kitten, I would be sure she was teething, as she has to bite everything...particularly my pen. I have just discovered her secret cache of my hairsticks...all with pointy toothy marks on them. And she has to be right on and in everything I am doing. Kitsune, fortunately, is just sitting around like a big fuzzy puffer fish, looking appalled. ETA: aaaaand mymble eats flower, and throws up. Zot thinks this is a magnificant thing, and does same. Copiously, complete with backwards walking and revolting noises. Zot then helps me study. Little blue inky footyprints now adorn my text book. Stand on my page, JUMP onto text. Repeat. And she wants to be held very tightly NO NO NO SHE DOESN'T. wait. Don't stop. CLOSER. I put my whiskers UP YOUR NOSE. Mmmm...tasty flowers. That's a good idea. Etc. Etc. Et bloody cetera. And kitsune covers his face with his paws and, I swear to god, tuts. 6 comments|post comment

never could get the hang of thursdays [21 Jan 2010|05:41pm] Except, that I was always fond of Thursdays. I still associate them with iced buns at break, with double art, double biology, and no bloody P.E. (Even though this was 26-30 years ago. Strange, though, how the associations hang around, far beyond the point where they have any connection.) Today, though, is a particularly bad case of the pale blues...not the dark and stormy ones, where you feel that your world is ripped apart, just insipid and rather pointless, like it can't make up its mind to be a proper blue. The sort of blue that fades into nothingy almost white when you shoot it with wet plate. The "doesn't seem to be much point" blues, but not so little point that you just decide to skip the day and go back to bed. The "make sort of an effort but wonder why" blues, because, it's not really getting anyway except into another few files where my details are being kept. The "not really sure what to do with myself" watered down, wet brush in a fresh jar of water blues. Bah. Pub? 18 comments|post comment

Characters for an Epic Tale Print [19 Jan 2010|06:29pm] Characters for an Epic Tale Print, originally uploaded by tom gauld. Dear writer pals, I would have liked to have bought each of you a copy of this. But I didn't. So, anyway. Here is everything you ever need if you run out of characters. love, K 4 comments|post comment

[19 Jan 2010|01:01pm] luck cannot be worn around the neck, or summoned by wishing, originally uploaded by heyoka. I have signed up and paid for my next course. If I don't land at least half a pay cheque by February's rent, we are in deep, deep trouble. But, if I didn't do this now I'd have to wait a year. Perhaps I am tempting fate, but, it would be so very hard to abandon this this path now. I don't believe in fate, but I am neurotic about not tempting it. Hoping, but never assuming. I touch wood. I cross my fingers. I fear I will go to hell for not believing in it. Aye. Really. Figure that logical twist if you can. In Glasgow yesterday for a sort of interview--for a particular job, but with the recruiter rather than the company. Interesting, but complicated (in that they would have to want me enough to up the salary or sort something out about the transport costs or the location, because that commute would cut my salary from where I have been these past two years.). Another job to apply for today, though with little confidence as I am missing one slice of background that they seem overkeen on (not finance this time, but statistics.) I have the course guide and assessments booklet for the new OU course, and it's utterly terrifying. A whole new language and way of thinking to wrap my brain around. But if I want to go on and study on the art side, I need this. On with the mental crampons as I haul myself up another learning curve that is insanely steep. Hurrah! 6 comments|post comment

[17 Jan 2010|10:28pm] originally uploaded by heyoka. Sometimes it's when everything seems to goes wrong that it comes together. I tell myself that a lot, along with "everything will work out, it usually does." First session in months making plates. Couldn't be bothered to wash glass, so used some of my small stock of black trophy aluminium (what tintype are made of these days, unless you dig japanning tin, which is not something I want to do in the flat.) Shame, really, because I'd really like to be able to print from this, but one can't plan happy accidents that go pretty much along these lines: Pour plate. Bathe in silver. Load holder. Put it in the camera. Expose, for four minutes with a UV boost because this is Scotland in january. Go to replace the slide...realise I left it in there. Remove slide. Do the dance with the hot UV light again, for another four minutes. By which time, of course, the wet collodion is no longer wet. Wet plate collodion goes, er, strange when it's not wet. Bits die, change, peel, dissolve, vanish. Pouring the developer over the plate? Doesn't pour so well because it's no longer smooth and wet. Result? Strange patches of crunchy texture. You might want to look at the bigger version of this. 4x5" wet plate collodion aluminotype, four minutes exposure, f8, chemigram in the background, dried lily petals from ten years ago, perfume bottle from twenty, no, more... silver wire, and chemistry post comment

phew [15 Jan 2010|09:56am] DONE. Submitted it with 2 hours to spare. 2 months till I get the results. 5% over length (here's hoping the 10% leniency applies) with 84 in text references and a redonkulous bibliography. I think it might even make some sense, too. I'm off to bed. 4 comments|post comment

[14 Jan 2010|04:11pm] Xiaolu Guo, originally uploaded by heyoka. This is film maker and novelist Xiaolu Guo, the author of UFO in Her Eyes, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, and A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers and director of the award-winning films She, How Is Your Fish Today and We Went to Wonderland" She's fab. My essay is currently a big, sprawly mess. It's still about food. Srsly. Snarl reckons it should be about scissors, paper, stone instead (and, though I do have cutting things, lithics, and writing in there, i'm sticking to production and storage of grub.) Somehow I have to cut, er, 800 words, and make it less baggy. Hey ho. I have bits with too much detail. Pass me the scissors. 20 hours to go. 3 comments|post comment

food, flapping, and fair Alice [13 Jan 2010|10:38pm] fair Alice, originally uploaded by heyoka. I have a couple of extremely late nights ahead of me, if I have any hope of getting this essay in in time. And I have no choice: don't get this essay in by friday noon, and I fail my course. Am currently attempting to argue that everything in the world EVAH including religion, war, and empires, is about food (particularly surpluses and storage thereof) but that could be because I've not eaten enough today. Twiglets, bananas, coffee and cigarettes are not a balanced diet and clearly my brain is wonky. Anyway, rather than inflicting stupid theories on you at length, I give you a picture so you can admire the lovely aliiis instead. (And here is Alice in a black and white dress 2 comments|post comment

[11 Jan 2010|10:21pm] China Miéville, originally uploaded by heyoka. This is China Miéville. I wanted to steal his earrings (cast form real tentacles!) and his fountain pen (mmm...pretty striped parker vac). He was awfully bloody nice about being photographed, too. You've read The city & the city, haven't you? No? FIX THAT. (But you might have read Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council, or Un Lun Dun,.) 24 comments|post comment

[11 Jan 2010|02:18pm] 1. Still no news. Argh. 2. Firing a single lime kiln in Ancient Greece required 1000 muleloads of juniper wood. 3. Still can't work out what the significance of a lack of metallurgy means, except for thousands of Incas in padded cotton armour getting trounced by a a couple of hundred Spaniards with pointy sharp weapons, fast horses, and a few guns. 4. Cooking your food by dropping hot stones into baskets was clearly rubbish. Hurrah for pottery. 5. Still trying to find the bloody thread in this essay (due friday). Damn tangle. Too complicated. Everything causes everything, except when it doesn't. 6. I hate waiting for the phone to ring. 7. Here, have a picture of Tom Holland at the Edinburgh International Book Festival instead. Tom is the author of the magnificent narrative histories Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic and Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom. You've probably read at least one of these. If not, I recommend them hugely. 9 comments|post comment

[09 Jan 2010|10:37pm] Joey, originally uploaded by heyoka. Joey is the first small child I've photographed in, er, ever. So one day back in August, when she and blearyboy dropped round to hang out, and I had some film in my camera, and inbetween chasing the cats around and dancing like a penguin, we made some pictures. Jo is seventeen kinds of cool. (I got one sneaky snapshot of her with lilaanne than more a year earlier, but I'm pretty sure she's the only little un I've ever got on film.) I'm finally starting to catch up on the pictures I took last summer that I either never developed, or never posted. Expect more soon. (If you were photographed, and don't want them to see the light of day, please do say.) 2 comments|post comment

[08 Jan 2010|06:20pm] no news gah 2 comments|post comment

this evening? [07 Jan 2010|04:02pm] anyone fancy going out for a pint this evening? or coming over and watching bad movies with wine? this whole not going out to work thing is giving me a spot of cabin fever... 26 comments|post comment

cold and light [07 Jan 2010|09:53am] It's bitterly cold, but, like yesterday, the sky is blue and the low sunshine is golden and bouncing off the houses across the street. So, craving light, I've opened up all the double shutters. To find ice on the inside of the panes. Yesterday, wearing two pairs of tights, long johns, and an insanely thick wool skirt, my legs were still cold. I seem to have lost my ability to shrug off scarily cold temperatures. This is the problem right now: I can have light, or warmth, not both. There are serious downsides to having a 16 foot ceiling and double height windows. But man, those shutters really make a difference. Wrap a blanket around me, and carry on. Perhaps I can entice a cat or two to sit on my feet. Except they are performing the little-seen trick of the three cats on the bed truce. Proof, if nothing else, of how bloody cold it is. (The picture is almost four years old. Found it yesterday, while procrastinating madly on my end of course essay, due next week. River reflections bounced from the old french windows onto the wall of the sitting room. Trees blowing and the river running inside my house.) post comment

cat spam. oh yes. [06 Jan 2010|05:01pm] Whenever I attempt to do any college work, this is what happens: Someone insists that he is the only thing in the house worthy of study. (Sorry, lousy picture) But, almost always, within 30 seconds of me sitting down to work, he comes flying across the room, skidding on the paper as he lands. Helpful cat is helpful. He is not fooled by the pieces of paper I don't need to read *right* then. There is only one alternative to the page I am reading, and that is the page I am writing. Sometimes he is particularly helpful, and inspects each word I write. As I write it. But today, the desk is the coldest place in the house, and cats are Not Stupid when it comes to cold. Cats are sleeping in blankets. ( cut to spare you the cat spam, the bad pictures of curled up cats. Even the elusive mymble. ) 14 comments|post comment

dear self, read the small print before making plans [05 Jan 2010|03:51pm] I had a grand plan. I was going to do two art history courses to finish off my OU stuff, leaving me with a lovely BA in Humanities with Art History. Except, no. The credit transfer of "general humanities" points doesn't let me off the compulsory interdisciplinary course. The one which I have absolutely no desire to study at all. (This one: http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/aa300.htm ) I'd been fretting about this since I, um, scrolled down and read the extra pages on the credit transfer statement on Christmas Eve, and finally got to speak to someone just now as the office had reopened. So, unless I add at least a year to my studies, on something I don't want to do...change of plan. Open degree or nothing. Damn. 8 comments|post comment

onwards and upwards [31 Dec 2009|03:52pm] Home from work. That's it. I have wine, I have chocolate. And I am unemployed. Spent the entire day typing at very high speed to get the last of my handover notes all done...unloading my brain into other people's inboxes. And filing two and a half years of email. Done. Though I am sure there is Something Important I have forgotten. The snow earlier was beautiful. Movie-perfect snow. Fat feathers cascading down. And the cat in the window across the road was dancing, trying to catch the flakes through the glass. 2 comments|post comment

[29 Dec 2009|09:45pm] Pale as love flashes, beams and darts, originally uploaded by heyoka. I've been having a mad wobble this last week about whether to do the Roman Empire course, or the twentieth century art history course. Things got tangled. I realised I'fa failed to read the small print: I can't get a BA in humanities with art history, can't even get a BA in humanities with no special add on. Not unless I take a couse I have absolutelyh no interest in. So, the obvious choice of the two art history course suddently because less obvious. Then I realised: the classical studies courses? Exams, rather than hefty essays. I'm far too old to choose to take exams. I'm far too self aware to PAY to take exams. Decision made. Leaving my current job is weird. On some levels, I've loved it. I've worked closely with some very cool people. I've delivered some cracking projects. But. yeah. Huge huge fat wobbly buts. Two more days. And I have way too much to write up in handover materials, for people who may never read my beautiful joke-ridden-footnotes. Bah. I really wish Edinburgh salted the pavements. They are sheet ice. I walk in the road, and get yelled at. i yell back. Someone else at work pointed out, unprompted, that the costs of the ice are being loaded towards the NHS rather than the council. Salt or broken bones. You choose. Writing back to front with fountain pens, to make your words come out right way round on a tintype? Not so easy. This final essay is breaking my head. It's HUGE. It has no limits. ETA: ugh. sorry. typo hell. sozz sozz sozz. In mitigation: a) post pub, and b) can't find my glasses because I'm not wearing my glasses. 3 comments|post comment

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