Holy Cow! Its Christmas!

Holy Christmas Baubles! It's a homemade Batman advent Calendar!

When the shops start filling up with Christmas things at the start of November, I feel all blasé, sure in the knowledge that this year I can keep spending at a budget. I laugh in the face(s) of  Lindt Christmas chocolate bears, give the tinsel a withering look and cock a snoot at the toy catalogues . I am not going to let the commercialism of Christmas get the better of me, I lie to myself, quite convincingly actually.

But it is there in blue and white, on the fridge since, I dunno, June? My son's wish list:

1.  podracers
2.  TOXICREAPA
3.  RattLecopter
4.  Goßes Wettreee
5.  Ewokattack
6.  Mandalorian (scribbled out)
7.  Bounty Hunter
8.  Nijagospil
9.  Blokhaus (scribbled out)
10.

You are not alone if you do not know what half of these things are, despite my son's spelling errors. If you do, then you are also living and breathing the world of teeny tiny little bits of moulded plastic, which enter your home innocuously in neat packets of cellophane, and end up flung in all far corners of the flat.  The world of lego.

I love Lego, especially when I find a 1, 5 centimeter laser sword under the sofa, managing in the nick of time to save it from the hoover, and reunite it with its owner, the honorable Yoda from star wars. Or seeing out of the corner of my eye a 5 millimetre long Vendmari Fang Blade which I put back in the Ninja's weapons cabinet  from Ninjago. There are 32 other weapons in the collection that you can order, by the way, see here to view the full collection and see animation on how they are used on an unarmed combatant.

But I feel I am allowing my obsession with miniscule weapons get me off the subject of Christmas. You see! I am doing it again, trying not to think about it. But, by the way, think how great the world would be if all weapons were the size of lego ones. The cold war would have been a bit less tense.

President of the US: The Russians have got 200 nuclear weapons pointing at us!!
Defence Minister: Oh, don't worry. They are only 2 centimetres long. In fact they are also made of plastic.
President of the US: Its not fair, why didn't I get any nuclear weapons for Christmas?
Defence Minister: But Mr. President. What about that box you got for your birthday?
Presendent: But that was ages ago. I want some now. Now . Now !!!!Screams. Throws himself to floor. Beats floor with fists.
Defence Minister: Naughty step. NOW!!!


or drug wars might be a whole lot different:

Gang member 1 " I blew him away with my 0,000000000000001 mm shotgun"
Gang member 2 " I blew your gun away just by blowin' it, sucker"

Again, I feel I am talking about everything except for the inevitable. Just as I am enjoying my lego trains of thought, along comes my son and asks:

Can you buy me the Lego Starwars Advent Calendar, please?

Now there was a time, at least I think there was a time, when advent calendars counted down the days until Christmas and you got a teeny bit of chocolate for your trouble.

Containing collectable lego figures and at 30 Euros a pop, I could only justify giving this calendar to my son as a Christmas present, by then it would be obviously redundant.

So I decided to get all Blue Peter and got me scissors and glue out and made my own, out of a Weetabix packet. My son helped me by sticking batman stickers all over it , just to give it that Christmassy finish and to remind us all what Christmas is really all about. Ridding the world of psychopaths and keeping them behind bars in Arkham Asylum, of course.



Now I have got the task of buying what goes inside it which will probably come to 30 Euros anyway in the end, and the worry that it will spontaneously combust by day two, if the Joker has anything to do with it.


And its only November the 22nd. Holy Satsuma! What a run up to Christmas its going to be!

Haunted House

I meant to write a post about the brilliant Mumsnet Blogfest that I attended on Saturday sooner, but had been unable to put down Sarah Waters' chilling tale of a decaying way of life called The Little Stranger. In some ways, though parallels occurred to me between the book and the Blogfest. Bear with me, though!

In the book the decaying way of life is the life led by the relatively few, the upper classes living in their country estates. A family, mother, daughter and son try to keep their dignity as the estate in which they are living is slowly crumbling and they can do nothing to stop it. The narrator is a doctor who befriends the family and represents the new order, coming from humble means. His mother, in fact, served at the house in question and he has childhood memories of the house and family's glory days. He tries to help the inhabitants of the home, he falls in love with the daughter, but there is a growing sense that the more he tries to help the worse their situation grows. The books brilliance lies in its ambiguity. There is something 'queer' a foot in the house, an evil perhaps that is slowly destroying it and its inhabitants. Could it be a ghost, a former maltreated servant perhaps taking revenge or an inherited family madness, or hysteria brought on by isolation, the world moving forward leaving them behind. All ideas of the supernatural are at first quashed by the level headed doctor, who in turn questions his own involvement in their demise.

At the Mumsnet Blogfest there was a very real sense of two worlds. One, moving faster than anyone can imagine and no one can gauge, that of the internet and the blogging world. The other of print publishing, which some have already called dead. Nevertheless, at the Blogfest there was a keen sense of the ongoing struggle between them. A question was raised by Graceunderpressure about the feeling that she had, although she had published, of somehow being perceived by the publishing world as second rate because she was a blogger. For me that sounded like a snobbery akin to a class system. A blogger might empathise with the good doctor in Waters' story then, romancing the squire's daughter, only to be spurned, and feeling the sting of the old order and put in ones place.

In the story the family house develops a spirit of its own, and by the end of the book even a rational man like the doctor is prone to believe it. Only when he has claimed the crumbling house as his own, which nobody wants to buy, does the spirit that has tormented its inhabitants fade.

I watched too, with growing trepidation, the old order on the keynote panel Private Lives on a Public Stage: How much should you reveal online at the Blogfest. Liz Jones truly cut a tragic figure amongst the other speakers, appearing to have dug herself into a hole of her own "spilling your guts" style of journalism to the point where she has no relationships. When asked what she wouldn't blog about I remember her saying - her nieces and nephews - she has no children of her own. Suddenly my neighbour made me aware of a groundswell of twitter criticism directed towards her. It felt suddenly eerie to me. Liz Jones, up there on the stage, straining to hear what the interviewer was saying while the silent majority was mobilising online.

The house of publishing is haunted, just like  Hundreds, the stately pile in Waters' book. And the cause is ambiguous too, but unhalting, just like in Waters' book.

But Liz Jones aside, how much do bloggers need the shoulder of print publishing to lean on anymore or to react to?  In short, do we still have to look up to it or feel affected by it to justify ourselves?

The 'family' who dwell inside the house of print publishing and all its grandeur are asking themselves if they can survive this new era just as bloggers must ask themselves why they wish to take over the crumbling house that is left behind.

creative quandary

dining table with printmaking equipment

It feels slightly ironic that I have come here to the Mumsnet Blogfest when my two kids and my husband are back in Germany! Still, it is the first time I have been away by myself for ages and I get precious time to spend with my friends and family back in London. But the question remains: How do you balance your creative ambitions with family life.

I am staying at my mum's who is a printmaker. Her studio is in the house. When I was growing up it didn't strike me as odd that there were trays of acid in the bathroom (for etching ), for example. There were plus and minuses from our perspective that her work space was in the home. Us kids were encouraged to make lino cuts and etchings, which was fun. On the other hand, I felt it was hard for my mum to switch off from the work, especially if a print wasn't going her way. That is the problem of having your work space at home. It is hard to create a divide between your home and work life.

If your job involves being creative like an artist, where the measure of your success is not so easily defined and the output is more personal then this can be even harder. You may also have to justify to yourself and to others that what you are doing is valid, especially if you are not earning much money through your art. If you can manage that, then you may need to find the headspace in order to be creative. I have read with admiration about authors who have written books during their babies naps, for example. (I was napping through my babies naps, though!)

litho press and bookshelf

I would like to do a survey amongst people who are artists and who have families. How do they strike a balance with their art and family life? Can they involve their kids in the process, or do they need for "a room of ones own", like Virginia Woolf. Also, how do they manage between creative thinking, where you really need the luxury of time to develop ideas and the hectic schedule of family life. A female friend of mine organises family life as well as teaching at a University and developing her own art work. Her husband, who is also self employed, is away with work a lot. She said she doesn't touch the housework until the kids come back from school. It is the only way she can get things done.

Another artist friend of mine has recently taken a self imposed sabbatical. When she originally told me this I said, rather insensitively I think, I"ll believe it when I see it. I meant it in a positive way, because she is one of the most dynamic and energetic people I know. She came to Bielefeld and in less that two years embarked on a PHD, attended conferences and formed an art group. This kind of drive is often what helps you to survive as an artist, even when you have two young kids and are a trailing spouse with an uncertain future. I can imagine that it may be difficult to put aside this drive to focus on other priorities. You can read about her sabbatical here.

It is very hard to strike the balance between work and family as a freelancer or an artist.

I  discovered this when I was working from home as a translator. If you don't respond to requests and opportunities from the outside then you may kick yourself for missing out. But if you take everything on then it can easily get too much, and your health suffers and this effects your family.

printmaking table arial view

I question myself on a regular basis. How much is too much? Will I overstretch myself if I take on this job.  I also love writing my blog, which I see as being a creative outlet for me. I also question the time taken to write it, as I now question the time I have taken to come to London on my own. 

At the same time I am glad that I have a mum who has followed her artistic career, despite being a divorced mother bringing up four children singlehandedly  and can see if you fulfil your own creative ambitions then you can still be a good mum or precisely because of that you are a good mum. 

prints in progress