Zing Things

opera on wheels

2007-04-04T12:19:00.000+02:00

As you’ll see if you scroll down my first attempt was an Easter craft WFMW. Now I know I should have done cars, so to help out, the girls have reminded me of this hilarious way to lighten the mood when it’s all getting a bit tedious for them in the back seat and life’s a bit frazzled in the front.

I usually start this off by singing what I see in my best ( or worst, says Rhianna) operatic diva singing style – like this…..

we are passing a vandalised bus stop… but look.. there are some buds on that tree –ee –ee

… the car in front is turning right without in-di- cat-ing.. and can you be qui-et in the back there…...

the shops on this street look in-ter-es-ting…do you like that dress in the wind-ow……

black and white zebra crossing coming up….yes, yes, yes we’re very nearly there…

The more mundane the things you sing about, the funnier it is. You have to do trills plus low and high notes. Sometimes the girls join in with the singing. Sometimes they just laugh. Very definitely at, not with, me.

I got this idea from Michael Rosen's poem The Car Trip - specifically the lines.

Mum tries to be exciting again:

'Look out the window

there's a tree.'

and please..can anyone help out with the twinkies? or scroll down.

I shouldn't be allowed out

2007-04-04T11:43:00.000+02:00

As Rhianna approaches teenager-dom (tomorrow), family conversation is rather dominated by discussions on her need and desire for more freedom of movement. These discussions have taken on new meaning, since it has become clear that while I exhort them to ‘take care’ just as my mother did, they have good reason to doubt that I am capable in that regard myself.

I am writing with one arm in a sling, - fortunately the left -, complemented by the most terrific array of bruises all down my left side, in all the usual stomach-churning shades .

Although it’s an incomplete fracture, the injury to my arm is causing pretty complete chaos round here as well as a (temporary, believe me) role reversal the girls are thoroughly enjoying. They nag me to put on my sling to rest the joint and time me at my computer keyboard. They cook meals, bless them! and they are now loathe to let me out on my own. Me, a forty something woman who manages to fall up stairs in the middle of the afternoon, of course in a public place, while no more intoxicated than in the enjoyment of an absorbing conversation with a friend I hadn’t seen for a while? Well, maybe they have a point.

While my girls, your girls, your boys help around the home and take on chores at school and in the community, have a look at today’s entry for Absolutely Speechless Wednesday on child slavery. Sobering. Outrageous. I for one am going to join an anti-slavery organisation today and start speaking up and out.

Here's my it works for me Wednesday - a very easy, quick Easter egg craft.

Hard boil as many eggs as you feel you need. Cool them in a bowl of cold water to stop the yolks turning grey, (discoloured yolks always puts my children off eating them. )

Raid your sewing or junk box for items small enough to stick onto the eggs. Try out tiny flowers, poppers (press studs), even bits of sewing or embroidery thread. For a 'robots' approach look in the tool box for tiny tin tacks, screws, whatever. You can paint or not. Try offering prizes for 'alien' eggs pretty eggs, ugly eggs, geek eggs - friendliest egg, most appetising, most colourful, so that everyone is a winner. This project puts the fun into fiddly plus gets away from the pretty pretty approach, so may appeal to boys too.

The girls haven't made their eggs for this year yet, but when they do and I have a photo, I'll post it. In the meantime, Spring has sprung.

Absolutely Speechless Wednesday

2007-04-04T03:13:00.000+02:00

Not quite wordless Wednesday – more speechless.

Today in in the year 2007, 8.4 million children are believed to live in slavery.

For more details on Dalyn, (right) who was sold as a slave for $150 - and other children like her -go to the BBC website pages This World.

Works for me Wednesday - Not this week!

2007-03-21T14:09:00.000+01:00

We’ve been listening to the radio a lot this week, (see yesterday's post) and Beka was inspired to do some sewing by a discussion she heard on BBC Radio 4's Woman’s Hour bemoaning the fact that sewing isn’t taught in British schools any more.

Beka likes her craft projects short and sweet, so we came up with the idea of making a little drawstring bag in paper, with minimal sewing and a bit of gluing for maximum impact.

We found some gift wrap, stronger than tissue. You could use felt, or other fabric to suit, bearing in mind that flimsy fabrics are harder for children to cut, glue and sew.

This is where I have to tell you that I’m in Works for me Wednesday this week under false pretences. From now on It Doesn’t Really Work Very Well.

It took Beka several days to draw round a dinner plate and cut out a circle. During that time the plate was in and out of the cupboard several times. However, once one circle drawn and cut, Beka was pleased to see that there was enough paper to fold over and cut out two circles. She can make herself and her sister a bag each without too much extra effort. Except that’s enough effort for today thanks Mum. She decides to do something else.

Two days go by. Today, as she knows I want to post about this project today, she thoughtfully finds the paper hole punch and make holes around the edge – as far in as the punch will let her go.

Still with the paper/fabric flat, Beka’s going to decorate her bag. She hasn’t decided yet whether she will sew or will glue shapes/buttons/sequins. I don’t want to put her off, but might offer to show her how to sew on a small button or two for a ‘funky’ bag. Simple random crosses or stitches in bright embroidery thread will work well too. Or she might choose a star pattern that radiates out from the centre of the circle.

But no, all things considered, she decides she likes plain best. No decorating. Not even gluing. She finds some yellow ribbon. It’s too wide really, but she likes it. It’s to hand.

This is what you do with whatever you have to hand. Cut two lengths of (thin) ribbon or contrasting embroidery thread or cord to weave through the holes round the edge of the circle. Start each length at opposite sides of the circle. Work round the circle and when your thread meets, knot it, leaving a short length to pull on. Keep the circle of paper or fabric flat. You end up with short pull handles at opposite sides of the circle. Pull apart and the threads neatly gather and close the neck of your bag.

I did take photos of each step, but as I was downloading them from the camera got distracted and have filed them to such an obscure place on my computer that my search facility can’t find them. So roll on Thursday.

I’m going to read Beka a bedtime story now. It feels the best thing to do all round.

I think, given the right creative mood of course, this activity would be good for as a party activity – the children can make their own pretty bags for their party favours. (Good excuse to keep them small!) Depending on the age of the children, you may want to do the cutting and hole-making before the party, leaving the children to decorate the circles before you gather them up. Older girls – from 9 – should be able to cope with all the steps themselves if you show them step by step first and stay on hand for the knot tying.

Beatrix Potter, author, illustrator and scientist.

2007-03-20T06:22:00.000+01:00

During a favourite radio programme this week, the presenter made an aside about the children’s writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter having discovered the biological process of symbiosis. As a seasoned reader of The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggywinkle and Jeremy Fisher, and someone who collects stories of artists with second strings to their bows, my ears pricked up (like the proverbial rabbit!) and, soon as I could, I hit the Google search button.

Beatrix Potter didn’t, in the event, discover the process of symbiosis.

Symbiosis is relationship where two organisms or creatures offer essential or life-enhancing services to each other. Think of the tiny fish that pick clean the teeth of sharks. One eats, the other gets free dentistry.

What Beatrix Potter did do, even though an amateur, was to design and conduct a series of experiments whose publication in 1897 put her at what scientists now recognise as cutting edge of the biological sciences at the time.

Beatrix’s work as a scientific illustrator of fungi and lichen for Scottish naturalist Charles McIntosh prompted her to do her own research into the subjects she drew in such painstaking and accurate detail. Setting up her own experiments and reading widely on in the field of mycology, she became fascinated by a theory advanced by mycologists in Europe that a lichen was not a single living organism, but was in fact composed of two organisms – an alga and a fungus.

She did much to explore the exact nature of their mutually dependent – symbiotic – relationship, and although scoffed at by the predominantly male British scientific establishment at the turn of the 19th century, to the extent that she withdrew her paper, scientists today give her credit for advancing knowledge of the process considerably.

The rejection of her discoveries came just before her success as an author. Her time and attention moved on from the study of lichen in such detail, but the fortune she made from her smash hit books for children did allow her to become a significant benefactor to science and the preservation of the natural environment in Britain.

Merchandising tends to stress the ‘cutesy’ factor in Beatrix Potter’s drawings, but the Potter tourist attractions in the Lake District and in Perthshire in Scotland (home of Peter Rabbit, Mrs Tiggywinkle and Jeremy Fisher) pay tribute not only to her art, but to her scientific and observational acuity.

I haven’t seen it, but Renee Zellwegger plays Beatrix in the film Miss Potter, released at the very end of last year and pictured above.
There’s a new biography by Linda Lear recently published too.

To read more on Beatrix Potter’s achievements as a scientist, which should fascinate our daughters in their science class –try The Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Other Potter sites are:

http://www.bpotter.com

http://www.beatrixpottersociety.org.uk

http://www.peterrabbit.com

Twinkies anyone?

2007-03-15T10:36:00.000+01:00

I love being a mum. Full of unmissable opportunities to improve my general knowledge. Here’s a random selection of just a few of the brain benders the girls have tossed me today:

Why must you get a fever down?

Why does Beth March (in Little Women) have to die?

What sort of animal is a wolverine?

Tell me some rivers beginning with the letter E.

And the letter G?

What’s the past tense of this French verb?

How did people in the Stone Age paint pictures?

What is an ultrasound?

Why can’t I watch T.V?

I've managed all those: the one that has me stumped and is really the point of this post, so all American readers can help out is:

Please don’t hold this against me.... but I need the definitive answer:

What exactly is a Twinkie?

Wordless Wednesday: Suffolk Walks

2007-03-14T04:05:00.002+01:00

Beka's taking her turn to choose the picture.
She's revisited last year's summer holiday remembering those walks on heath land and seashore along the Suffolk coast with our friend Chrissie and her black Lab, Bunty.

If you visited yesterday to find it was Picture-less Wednesday, here at Zing Things thanks for alerting me to a Blogger glitch. The photo was here when I posted it orginally- and I hope it's here to stay now.

Works for me Wednesday: Texture & Pattern

2007-03-14T03:43:00.000+01:00

Equipment for this week’s art activity idea is simple:

sheets of paper, pencils, wax crayons

The idea in a nutshell:

Find objects with a rough feel to them – walls, tiles, baskets, tree bark, leaves, coins

lay the paper down on top

firmly, but gently, rub with your pencil ( blunted is best) or side of your crayon

watch the pattern made by the texture appear on your piece of paper.

Indoors - track down the most ordinary of household objects and discover the secret patterns they hide.

You could suggest each child rubs in one particular room with everyone joining in at the end to guess which object made what pattern. (Once they've got the hang of this, use stubby white candles instead of a pencil, and then paint over the top revealing the inverse of the pattern.)

Outdoors – tree bark and the backs of leaves are obvious candidates here. Paths, pavements, tiles, grids, drains are fascinating too.

We’ve used this activity with Rhianna and Beka to make shopping more interesting for them, and it works well once the thrill has worn off when sightseeing or ‘doing’ a castle or museum too. Just keep an eye on where they scribble. Use a pencil!! + a small spiral bound notebook you can bend backwards. Tell the curious this is a ‘project’ and wait for them to join in finding textures. It is contagious!

The patterns here are from - top to bottom - a child's step and the metal frame of a mirror; my plastic kitchen step; the side of a cabinet. Even the very ordinary can produce interesting patterns.

What do you do with all those rubbings?

Make a touchy-feely record of a day out in a scrapbook or for display on the wall. Add real leaves, stick in coins, bits of grass, dried flowers, other found objects.
Tear the pattern into shapes to make a collage picture. Basket weave patterns look like flowing water, for example.
Try to copy some of the marks you rubbed in another technique: straightforward drawing, or with a paintbrush or other types of markers. Make your marks much bigger than life size or make them teeny-tiny.
If you’re really ambitious you could use the images to prompt some writing. Divorced from the objects themselves, what do the patterns remind you of, make you think of? Is there a poem in there somewhere?

Older children might be interested to learn of ‘real’ artists who used this technique, which is called frottage. The index entry for it in just one of my art books led me to Leonardo da Vinci via Max Ernst and C18th painter Alexander Cozens.

Warning: Googling frottage on the other hand, is not something I would recommend you let your kids do!

Instead try this link to Surrealist Max Ernst at London’s Tate Gallery.

Behaving Badly in my Bookshop

2007-03-12T11:20:00.000+01:00

A couple of days ago I was caught out by the store detective in my local bookshop. He didn’t march me off in handcuffs for purloining books, but did ask me to put away my little notebook and stop writing down details of a book I had been browsing. I have to say I had no intention of buying the book, right there and then, though if I’d been able to get the title down, who knows in the future? But a bookshop is hardly a library is it? Chastened, and blushing to my roots, I put my notebook away and left immediately. (Who's the loser though?)

The handicraft book I had been looking through attracted my attention with unusual photography and an intriguing title – which I now can’t remember. All I can share with you is the one word I got half scribbled down – temari.

Not the Japanese manga character Temari, who apparently can summon an instant beheading charm with the swish of a fan, but the ancient and aristocratic art of making and decorating small hand-held balls. When this craft was introduced to Japan from China five or six hundred years ago, the royal ladies used wadded up strips of old kimonos to start the ball shape, which they then wrapped round with silk threads. Over the years they added elaborate needlecraft stitches and wrapped patterns to the surface of the ball, while putting little bells inside. These exquisite decorations and playthings have always been highly prized objets, and while making temari is an increasingly popular handicraft in the West, in Japan modern day temari artists must study for years and pass grueling tests before deemed worthy of the name.

Traditionally, if you are given a temari, you cherish it for the affection and loyalty woven into it by your friend. If a child, your mother gives you a temari at New Year, made very special by the carefully written wish for your future happiness she encloses in the ball as she wraps and sews the complex design in brightly coloured threads which also express her hopes for your vibrant future.

The temari in the picture here were made by Diana Vandervoort at www.diynetwork.com.

As kimonos are in short supply, crafters tend to use styrofoam balls to get a perfect shape. I think that's far too prosaic, much prefering the suggestion that you recycle old papers or even old socks - at least then I could tell my husband I do know where the odd ones end up!

A slipping Glimpser

2007-03-09T11:02:00.000+01:00

Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning was a better painter than he was a poet, I think you’ll agree, but if, like him, you find yourself off balance what seems like most of the time, then take heart - as I do when I read his description of what it takes to find your way to inspiration in everyday life. To slip, to fall, to be unsteady & uncertain might just grant the odd insight or two.
Or at least I find it helps to look at life that way!

Each new glimpse is determined by many,

Many glimpses before.

It’s this glimpse which inspires you – like an occurrence

And I notice those are always my moments of having an idea

That maybe I could start a painting…….

….the real world, this so-called real world,

is just something you put with, like everybody else.

I’m in my element when I am a little bit out of this world:

then I’m in the real world – I’m on the beam.

Because when I’m falling, I’m doing all right;

when I’m slipping, I say, hey, this is interesting!

It’s when I’m standing upright that bothers me:

I’m not doing so good; I’m stiff.

As a matter of fact, I’m really slipping, most of the time,

into that glimpse. I’m like a slipping glimpser…..

(Wllem de Kooning, Sketchbook1: Three Americans, 1960)

Wordless Wednesday: Beka and the Bunny

2007-03-07T06:09:00.000+01:00

Craft is not top of Beka's list of favourite things to do with her time. But she wants to make herself a bunny like this. All it takes is a simple square of knitting.

For the instructions on how to create your bunny, visit Jackie at Heartstringsfibrearts.

More on arts and crafts with children in today's Works for Me Wednesday posted earlier.

Dough Far, Dough Good

2007-03-07T05:44:00.000+01:00

Last week I posted a simple sculpture dough recipe. This week, in what I plan as a regular slot of arts activity ideas, here's a more demanding dough recipe – this time aimed at older children. It may also appeal to the infirm and elderly; I know several older people and their carers on the look out for absorbing, meaningful and motivating activities you can do in a chair and which help stretch fine motor skills during recovery from surgery or stroke or similar.

This dough produces colourful biscuits that are lovely to look at, so satisfy that creative urge and, added bonus, they taste great too.

(I’m just sorry that this week there’s no time to organise a baking/photo session here at home so you can see. Will do better next time!)

Here are the ingredients:

1 ¾ cups whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

¼ teaspoon salt

½ baking powder (baking soda)

½ cup margarine/butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla

½ cup diary sour cream (you could substitute silky tofu here)

3 ounces yellow or red or green boiled sweets (hard candy) – crushed

start off by combining the flours. baking powder (baking soda) and the salt
in another bowl – use a fairly big one - beat the margarine/butter until soft. (medium on the hand mixer)
add sugar and beat until fluffy
add vanilla and egg and beat again
add the combined flours and the sour cream/tofu – alternately, a little at a time – keep beating
halve the dough – cover and chill in the fridge for a couple of hours
on a floured board, roll half the roll out to a thickness of about 1/8 inch.
cut out shapes using card templates if you’re feeling arty – cookie cutters if you’re flagging!
cut out holes and fill with the crushed boiled sweets
Get creative:
add features, decorations etc from smaller pieces of dough
you can make stained glass style designs – look at Tiffany for examples!
cut large ovals , remove the centre, fill with the crushed sweets for ‘Faberge’ egg cookies this Easter!
When you're done - place on an oiled parchment sheet on a flat baking tray and bake for 6-8 minutes at 350 until the biscuit dough browns.

This recipe makes about 10 large biscuits.

Hint: don’t make the dough areas too narrow or you won’t be able to lift the biscuit in one piece.

Shame to eat them really!

I learnt this recipe from Mudworks: creative clay, dough and modelling experiences by MaryAnn F. Kohl.

For a similar, simpler version of this you can use shop bought puff pastry.

Rhianna and I had a great time doing this when she was in nursery school and mothers were asked to send in themed ‘Insect’ lunchboxes. (I ask you!!) We did some very colourful butterflies with iridescent jammy holes in their wings, which still managed to be appetising and edible! No pictures of those available either.

What you do is: roll into 1/8 thickness and cut two of each shape you want. Lay down the first shape and in the second layer cut out holes. Place the holey layers on top and fill the holes with jam. Follow the instructions for baking the pastry, being careful the jam doesn’t catch.

Eyes in art eyes up mothers

2007-03-06T05:24:00.000+01:00

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve stared into and at these eyes: they belong to Barbara Durer, mother of Albrecht and I’ve drawn them over and over again.

Copying the drawings of others is a fabulous way to learn to draw or improve your drawing skills. It’s very practical too – you never have the excuse that you don’t know what to draw or don’t have time or space or, let’s face it, the energy to set up a subject.

I have drawn the whole head from time to time, but usually I concentrate on those marvellous eyes. Durer walks me through the process as I study each meticulous pencil stroke and mark. I work very slowly and really look.

The girls have watched me do this all their lives, and copy what I do. Now, if Beka wants to draw an apple, she goes to the fruit bowl and studies one carefully, looking from fruit to paper and back constantly as she works. If I’ve done nothing else for their art education, that willingness to look afresh, to look and what’s actually there, will help their art along enormously.

Betty Edwards is one of my drawing gurus. Author of Drawing on the Right Hand Side of the Brain, her approach to teaching and learning drawing is straightforward and brings instant results, improvement and satisfaction.

“People feel that they shouldn’t take a drawing course because they don’t know already how to draw. This is like deciding that you shouldn’t take a French class because you don’t already speak French…”

If you’ve always wanted to, but never thought you could, make today the day you surprise yourself! Betty Edwards makes use of a technique I always find surprises, encourages and delights.

Find a drawing you want to copy.

Don’t study it closely.

Turn it upside down. You stay the right way up.

Now start drawing.

Just pay attention to the lines.

Where do they start from? Where do they go? How do they get there? And what lines to they meet on the way?

That’s it. You’re drawing.

You’ve tricked your mind out of its negative “I can’t copy this drawing my a world-renowned artist. What sort of fool do I think I am?” You’re assessing, measuring, evaluating. You’re absorbed, you’re meditating on the line. You’re drawing.

Michelle at Scribbit is collecting our ‘guilty pleasures’ – be great if you could list drawing as from today!

And I feel it’s only fair to mothers in general and Durer’s in particular, to include this earlier portrait by her son, some 24 years earlier than the 1514 drawing.

Tomorrow in Works for me Wednesday I plan another post on arts activities for children - this time suggesting a kitchen art idea for older children and teenagers. And prompted by Mrs Durer here, maybe this suggestion would appeal to older people in recovery from illness, stroke etc., looking for a meaningful and absorbing activity to encourage motor skills and concentration.

Join me here. I'll bring the biscuits!

scribbit: What's Your Favorite Guilty Pleasure? | A Blog About Motherhood in Alaska

As if I needed an excuse..celebrate World Book Day!

2007-03-01T11:48:00.000+01:00

in honour of World Book Day today, thousands of British readers were polled to find their Most Precious Reads - an imaginative choice of question to pose in a headline grabbing survey like this. It certainly gets people talking: as I try to write Rhianna and her dad are sitting in the family room behind me arguing over the top 100 list of Precious Reads I've just printed out.
My husband is spluttering over the inclusion of The Da Vinci Code. Rhianna at 12, is pleased that she has already got a handful of titles under her belt, although she doesn't share my enthusiasm for Anne of Green Gables which hits the list at #.46

[I adored Anne Shirley (with thanks due not just to the books, but to Kim Braden in the '70's TV adaptation who was the perfect, quintessential Anne.) My mother loved Anne's admonitory phrase 'There's scope for the imagination, Marilla', so much, she named her home Marilla Cottage; she did the imagining to my father's scoping!]

Here's the list - prefaced - because who could resist? - with a handful of my most precious reads. As soon as I log off, more will come to mind, but these will do for starters. Add yours in comments. And pay a visit to the World Book Day site, who, as part of the celebrations want your list of Top Ten Books You Just Can't Live Without.

These are My Most Precious:

Xinran Sky Burial

Barbara Kingsolver Small Wonders

Rose Tremain The Colour

Anne Tyler The Ladder of the Years

And the Top 100 -

world book day – 1.3.2007

voted most precious reads

1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

=8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

=8 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens

11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy

13 Catch-22 Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare William Shakespeare

15 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis

34 Emma Jane Austen

35 Persuasion Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin Louis de Bernières

39 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne

41 Animal Farm George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney John Irving

45 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies William Golding

50 Atonement Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi Yann Martel

52 Dune Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck

62 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens

72 Dracula Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Alborn

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks

94 Watership Down Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl

100 Les Misérables Victor Hugo

The choices I don't get are few - but include The Da Vinci Code and Bridget Jones's Diary.

I'm so pleased to see To Kill a Mockingbird riding high; it was a set text at school and I don't suppose I've reread it since I was teenager, but its characters & images have certainly been a part of me for many years. Jane Austen I came late to; but now treasure. (Although I still really don't like Emma.)

Do add yours most precious, and your comments on favourites and surprises in this list.

Doughing Places: the artist in your child

2007-02-28T09:31:00.000+01:00

Even without taking the Blog-o-sphere into account, when you add up the number of children you and your friends have between you, it does point to a fair degree of expertise in all things knee-high.

When mine were small (– how I love that phrase now they’re approaching me-high-) friends and I expertly agreed that there were really only three essential toys for our children, whether playing alone, with brothers & sisters or in mum-get-together size groups. (Books don’t count here – but should everywhere else. )

All three in our list bring out the artist in your young ones.

Performance Arts

1. A sit-upon car. Best and easiest car purchase you’ll ever make!

A worrying number of people queried our buying a toy car for our girls, but I relished the moment when Rhianna, in full flight as Snow White, refused the prince’s offer of a horseback ride to his castle with a ‘No thanks’ (brandishing plastic car keys) ‘I’ve got my own car. See you around!’

Design, Engineering, Architecture

2. Cardboard boxes/tubes – big, small, any shape.

A 7ft high rocket lived in the recess under our stairs for weeks and when Rhianna finally came down to earth and wanted a bike, the very first thing she did was fix round cheese triangle boxes to a plastic chair to make a tricycle.

Sculpture.

3. Play Dough. Kids just adore this. Great for motor skills and superb imaginative play.

Use your judgement about when to let little ones loose on dough; but it can’t do much harm if they do put some in their mouths, and they should be supervised anyway.

Provide spoon, forks, lollypop sticks etc for moulding and cutting; a garlic press makes great hair.

This dough dries out if left in nooks and crannies – there’s enough salt so it doesn’t go mouldy. But it isn’t so good smeared on your soft furnishings. Don’t let that put you off - lay down some rules!

Expensive to buy in decent quantities, but you don’t need to. Breaking my own no recipe rule – here’s a tried and true, worked for me:

Zing’s Play Dough

2 teaspoons Cream of Tartar

1 cup plain flour

½ cup salt

1 tablespoon oil

1 cup water

drops of food colouring

Mix all the ingredients in a non-stick pan, over a steady medium heat. Stir.

As soon as the mixture comes together, remove from the heat, tip the dough onto a board or plate.

Fill the pan with water immediately, as the dough hardens very quickly on the hot metal.

When the dough is cooler to the touch, knead it for a while – you may need a little extra flour if it feels a little greasy.

Cool and it’s ready to go. Keep in a plastic bag or snap-top container when not in use and it will last a while.

There’ll be many more ideas for art activities with children of all ages in Zing’s Works for Me Wednesdays from now on.

Join us next week or sign up for the e-mail so you don’t miss a thing.

Meanwhile, add your top toys to the list in comments.

Wordless Wednesday: Seeing Teapots

2007-02-21T11:42:00.000+01:00

This is what I've been working on this week - a wallpaper style print from popular Art Deco ceramics designer Clarice Clift.

Great Golden Pancake Awards

2007-02-21T11:08:00.000+01:00

When the girls were little, friends and I used to take it in turns to hostess a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Party for our children, featuring pancake related activities. You know the sort of thing – toss the pancake, draw a pancake, three-legged race with a pancake, dress up as a pancake, eat a pancake or ten, and as you might expect of me by now, once the kids and I were exhausted with all that pancake tossing, I liked to sit the hordes down and read them a story.

Now the girls have reached the age where, thanks to excellent and far-sighted parenting, we get to the sitting down bit much sooner. Last night they made the pancakes while I lorded it at the dinner table actually chit-chatting with my husband.

Over (just a few) pancakes we recalled past parties and the best read aloud stories. And so we give you -

Winner of the Golden Pancake Award for Best Story featuring pancakes:

The Elephant and the Bad Baby

Reginald Briggs and Elfrida Vipont.

The beautifully illustrated story of a kleptomaniac elephant and a baby who never says ‘please’. They rampage through the town collecting a conga line of irate shop-keepers, returning home in time for tea and pancakes.

The repeated refrain of ‘….and they went rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, all down the road.’ is etched in our family memory and comes in handy surprisingly often.

Winner of Best Story with a fun and memorable refrain:

Tikki Tikki Tembo

Arlene Mosel & Blair Lent

“A long time ago in China, first-born sons had very long names. One day Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo fell down the well…..”

This is a fabulous book. If you don’t know it already and have children under 7 – rush out and find a copy. Great fun to read aloud and you’ll soon have that name off by heart!

You can read a short version of Tikki Tikki Tembo with a slightly different refrain at this a treasure-trove of a site for all story tellers and their listeners where retired Pittsburg professor. D.L. Ashliman generously shares a lifetime’s collection of stories from all over the world. There are different versions of favourites loved by Europeans, Americans and Disney, as well as a host of stories dear to cultures other than our own.

Lions & Tigers & Bears. Oh my!

2007-02-18T08:46:00.000+01:00

Last week the girls were away on trips with their school and while I didn’t have the trouble filling my time in their absence Rhianna would have found gratifying, I did organise some spring-cleaning. So (some of) our book cases are now neat, clean, orderly, dusted. Sorting bookcases is a job I enjoy, but it has its downside, taking three times as long as it should because you always find some long-lost gem you just have to curl up with right there and then on the carpet, and one chapter leads to another, which leads to a quick cup of coffee to enjoy it all the more and so it goes on until the children ring the doorbell and hand you their dirty washing.

As I’ve already done a top ten reading list this week, I’ll save my spring-clean procrastination list for another day and share a behind-the-bookcase art find instead.

I found a stash of art postcards, and one particularly intrigued me. The description on the back reads:

“A huntsman stealing a tiger cub by throwing a glass ball at the tigress, which sees her reflection and mistakes it for her cub, from a Bestiary. England, probably Lincolnshire c. 1200.”

I wanted to know why a huntsman would think this apparently fanciful method a worthwhile strategy for outwitting such a ferocious prey, and we all know exactly how fierce a mother is in defence of her young. I didn’t exactly find out the answer, but here is where I got to.

A Mediaeval Bestiary is a beautifully illustrated – illuminated – catalogue of animals.

It’s through the writings of St. Ambrose that the story of the tigress and the glass ball found its way into the bestiaries of the time. Provoked by the theft of all her cubs, the tigress chases the huntsman at lightning speed. The wily hunter throws down a glass ball, and seeing herself reflected in miniature, the tigress is fooled for a crucial few seconds into thinking the ball is her cub. Disappointed, she resumes the chase, only to be fooled repeatedly by more glass balls, until the hunter reaches safety or the poor mother is exhausted. In some versions of the story, the hunter might also distract the mother by throwing down the runt of the litter, while holding fast to at least one other prize cub.

Bestiaries were not put together by the C12th equivalent of David Attenborough or Steve Irwin; the point about bestiaries was that while they collected what was known about animals at the time, the information was a mix of the fanciful and hearsay taken on trust with no reference to the actual observed behaviour of the creatures themselves. As the authors and illustrators were monks and churchmen, their main purpose was to use the apparent behaviour to exemplify a Christian trait or literally, illuminate a point of doctrine. Lions and pelicans for example, were just two of the animals whose behaviour was seen to symbolise aspects of the teachings or incarnation of Jesus Christ.

The real creatures described ranged from the everyday, such as dogs, to the more exotic like elephants, crocodiles & tigers. As their descriptions were not based on close observation, so the line between the actual creatures and the purely imaginary was blurred. Dogs and lions are described alongside stories and pictures of fabulous fish representing the Devil; the pure and innocent unicorn was identified with Christ.

Bestiaries were extremely popular reading matter in their day, with their compelling and highly coloured illustrations of dragons, griffins and hippogriffs. So it turns out, that while the scholars of the Middle Ages themselves eventually rejected the bestiaries as inadequate and misleading descriptions of the natural world they were increasingly eager to understand, the bestiary itself has actually survived and is thriving in the 21^st Century. Down the ages artists have drawn and painted their own menageries of the real and imagined eccentricities of the animal kingdom. Now, modern gamers create and inhabit their own fantasy worlds populated with beasts straight from C12th illustrated manuscripts; and J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books has brought the basilisk, the hippogriff and the enchanting song of the phoenix alive for a whole new generation of children.

(The illustrations here are from the British Museum and from the Aberdeen Bestiary.)

Poetry Party 2: Wearing Purple

2007-02-16T11:54:00.000+01:00

Take a poem with the lines

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

(Jenny Joseph. Warning)

add one thrift shop impulse-buy red hat and what do you get? Just to show you the power of the pen, you get the Red Hat Society.

Founder Red Hat Queen Bee Sue Ellen Cooper bought the hat, read the poem and now The Red Hat Society boasts thousands of members, its own credit card, online shop and travel perks. There are few rules but you have to be over 50 and you must wear red and purple at Society functions.

Not being over-50 I can’t describe it as well as they can:

"The Red Hat Society began as a result of a few women deciding to greet middle age with verve, humor and elan. We believe silliness is the comedy relief of life, and since we are all in it together, we might as well join red-gloved hands and go for the gusto together. Underneath the frivolity, we share a bond of affection, forged by common life experiences and a genuine enthusiasm for wherever life takes us next."

- Sue Ellen Cooper, Queen Mother

Their website continues:

While visiting a friend in Tucson several years ago, Sue Ellen impulsively bought a bright red fedora at a thrift shop, for no other reason than that it was cheap and, she thought, quite dashing. A year or two later she read the poem "Warning" by Jenny Joseph, which depicts an older woman in purple clothing with a red hat. Sue Ellen felt an immediate kinship with Ms. Joseph. She decided that her birthday gift to her dear friend, Linda Murphy, would be a vintage red hat and a copy of the poem. She has always enjoyed whimsical decorating ideas, so she thought the hat would look nice hanging on a hook next to the framed poem. Linda got so much enjoyment out of the hat and the poem that Sue Ellen gave the same gift to another friend, then another, then another.

One day it occurred to these friends that they were becoming a sort of "Red Hat Society" and that perhaps they should go out to tea... in full regalia. They decided they would find purple dresses which didn't go with their red hats to complete the poem's image.

The tea was a smashing success……

Read Aloud: the Hit List

2007-02-14T09:36:00.000+01:00

As promised, here is my family’s list of Read Aloud favourites.

To qualify these titles were:

sung out instantly when I asked for nominations
leapt out of the shelves as we craned our necks on a book spine survey to check we hadn’t left anything out
are battered and dog-eared from repeated re-readings
& have contributed to family catch-phrases and coded communications -

having passed those stringent requirements, we honour the following!

Harry Potter J.K. Rowling any/all volumes

Reading aloud let our younger daughter join in the Potter related games and discussions our elder daughter enjoyed as she read them, and allowed us to monitor/soften the impact of some of the darker and scarier episodes.

The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark - Jill Tomlinson

We’ve read this one aloud so many times we know it by heart. We love it so much we have the audio tape too, and still it has us smiling.
This story of Plop the young owl with an empty stomach and fear of the dark is written for younger readers, but we all pause to listen. Soothing, funny and wise. A delight all round.

White Boots (or Skating Shoes) Noel Streatfeild
Streatfield is a bit dated now, but this story of a young girl who takes up skating and finds she has the stuff of champions is a perennial and down-the-generations favourite. My own mother loved it and bought a copy for me on a market stall when I was only months old. I loved it too, but have to say the world has moved on so much that although it’s a well-crafted story, I was very surprised when my daughters clamoured for more after the first chapter. I’ve read it out loud cover to cover 3 times now, which I think is my limit.

I ice skate like Mary Poppins, say Beka and Rhianna, but thanks to White Boots they have poise, balance and fun on the ice.

J.K Rowling is a fan, and so is Kathleen in You’ve Got Mail!

Ramona - Beverley Cleary any or all, in any combination

Beka says Ramona the Pest is her favourite, but we love them all. Again, from a ‘simpler’ time; the lack of tv, mobiles and toys ‘r us clutter lets the inventive ingenuity and endearing personalities of Ramona , big sister Beezus and cast of supporting parents, friends and neighbours shine through. Like The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, this story enchants young and old alike. My husband is a particular fan.

The Mennyms – Sylvia Waugh a series of 5 books

Inventive, fun and a little bit different for that 6-9 age group it can be hard to suit.

The Borrowers - Mary Norton

These booked have been turned into a film and BBCTV has made a lovely classic serial of the stories, but they are best of all read aloud.
We never make pancakes without saving the tiny ones made by a splash of batter on the pan for the Borrowers who live in our house.

The Perfect Hamburger - Alexander McCall Smith

Although he hit the headlines with the No1. Ladies Detective Agency, polymath Prof. Smith has been writing for years. This story of a boy, a man and a mixing bowl against big business is heart-warming and funny. (And short!)

His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman

This is definitely for older children ( thoughtful 10 year olds up) and a harder read aloud experience, but not to be missed. The writing is superb, the storyline inventive and memorable, but always plausible. The heroine Lyra is intelligent, tough and feisty, while for the boys, there’s Will –sharp, resourceful, determined.

Be prepared for, but not put off by, some challenging questions on family, life, loyalty, science and religion.

Pullman’s stories of Victorian era woman detective Sally Lockhart are marvellous reads too.

Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen - Garth Nix (a trilogy)

While I have read the whole of the His Dark Materials through back to back, starting the next book hard on the heels of the one we’d just finished, I found I couldn’t do that with Nix’s trilogy. Good, absorbing reads,though, but not for the faint-hearted.

Stravaganza Mary Hoffman http://www.stravaganza.co.uk/

Another parallel world, and like His Dark Materials, very well done. Touching, memorable, atmospheric with strong and good-hearted female and male ‘leads’. There's a website too.

Poetry Party

2007-02-12T09:26:00.000+01:00

On Saturday we held our version of a Burns’ Supper – a Poetry Party.

The rules are simple. You come, you eat, and in the company of friends, you recite or read a poem.

Any language, any topic, any poet, any time.

This year our guests represented Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Turkey and Australia and we read and listened to poems in English, German and Turkish from thoughtful through witty to downright hilarious.

For the first time our daughters joined us, and I was particularly impressed by Rhianna’s 13 year old friend who’d come along with her parents and who had not only found a poem, but was eager to read it to us. (Beautifully.)

Beka, the youngest, wanted to do the Mulan ballad we’d found a few weeks ago, but as it is a just a little bit long, performed instead ‘In the Dark, Dark Wood, there was a Dark, Dark House……” followed by T.S. Eliot’s Jellicle Cats, gamely read by the recovering Rhianna.

Although inspired by annual dinners in honour of the Scottish poet Rabbie Burns, a haggis and a tartan tablecloth was our Poetry Party's only concession to the man who penned Auld Lang Syne. Grown up guest Don was, however, handsomely kilted for the occasion, for which I thank him. He had Beka and at least one of the adults present snorting with laughter as he delivered, totally straight-faced after years of story time practice, Roald Dahl’s cautionary tale of Goldie Pinklesweet from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

(Over the years we’ve been giving these parties, Roald Dahl is a consistent Top Tenner. Friends who find the idea of reading a poem terrifying, find Dahl well within their comfort zone and then they're on a roll....)

My husband chose Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ – his personal credo really, and Claudia hit a similar note with a German poem on singing out to the best of your ability even in the face of darkness.

Hit of the evening for me was Turan’s poem in Turkish; no, I don’t speak a word; but his reading and the sheer well, poetry, communicated powerfully. I let him leave without getting hold of his translation but as soon as I do, I’ll post it.

The evening was convivial and low key. We aren't into the technicalities of writing poems, or any one-up-manship on favourites, but we each paused for a moment to enjoy words and word play; the profound and the troubling, some wit and some wisdom. And prior to the party we spent a couple of enjoyable hours locating old favourites and finding new voices.

Until I track down the diverse poetry my guests chose, to share with you later , I’ll leave you with the one I read, which the BBC says is Britain’s favourite post-war poem. That’s not all I discovered about it while researching for this post. More tomorrow.

Warning by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Read Warning online at www.poemhunter.com

Eyes in art Goes Fishing

2007-02-09T08:12:00.000+01:00

This striking eye is from a glass bottle in the shape of a Nile tilapia fish. Which will probably be the give away clue that although this eye could be modern, it’s actually ancient, dating from around 1390BCE (Before Common Era). It was found hidden under the floorboards of a house in Egypt and may have been used for cosmetics or prized oils.

The fish the artist chose for this lovely bottle is significant; the tilapia fish hatches and shelters her young in her mouth and so the tilapia was frequently used in amulets as a symbol or renewal and rebirth. I don't know anything about making or blowing glass - so if you do and can add your expertise to our appreciation of this artist's skill, then please comment !

Yesterday’s mention of the beginnings of the British Museum's collections sent me there today and that's where I found this particularly striking eye.
The Museum's site is marvelous; well-organised and with excellent search facilites under the heading Compass. It includes a well-thought out children’s section featuring short slide show ‘tours’ on historical topics ranging from the Trojan Wars and Anglo-Saxon history to thematic approaches such as pattern and time. If you read my post Delighting in Dragons, you’ll remember how Beka was inspired by the book Dragonkeeper. Apparently made for her, there’s a Museum ‘tour’ on dragons featuring art from the Museum collections, drawings by children and stories and myths focusing on dragons. That takes care of our weekend!

As the links to individual pages at the British Museum are very long and don't lend themselves to hyperlinking, here's the link for more convenient virtual gallery going: http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass

Read Aloud: thanks for your positive reactions to my Read Aloud post in It Works For Me Wednesday last week.
As this week’s IWFMW was themed, I’ll be posting my family’s top Read Alouds this coming Wednesday. Gives us time to make sure we don’t leave one out!

Kill or Cure. Or poisoning my children part 2.

2007-02-08T09:37:00.000+01:00

Possibly as Rhianna is still in bed with sore throat and ears, blocked nose and a headache, my mind is running on remedies today. We’ve seen the doctors, we’re taking the tablets, but the nose and headaches persist, so I tried her with that old-fashioned remedy – a salt-water inhale. We giggled together that I was encouraging her to sniff white powdery substances, but having gamely tried to inhale the heavily salted water, she now thinks this is the second time in a year I have tried to poison her. Her headache is worse and she is barely speaking to me.

I retreated to the shower with a bowl of sugar and a bottle of lemon juice for a bit of body buffing – another old-time household standby for cleaning and softening rough hands and elbows and which I extend top to toe. So I’m scoured and unpopular, but it beats the hair shirt.

As I stood in the shower I didn’t sing, but, & exactly in the manner of old Carpenter’s songs, there are two words repeating themselves ceaselessly in my head this morning: anti-scorbutic and antimony…. anti-scorbutic and antimony….anti… you get the idea.

And they are? Yes, yes, I’m rushing to the dictionary, and can now confidently tell you antimony is a toxic chemical element while scorbutic means to do with scurvy, so an anti-scorbutic is a treatment or regimen to prevent scurvy.

Why are these my apparent mantra for today? I’m reading on the history of science and last night’s chapter dealt with how C17th scientists commonly dosed themselves with noxious substances including antimony and mercury in search of a therapeutic dose. They took acid precipitate of amber, they drank hot steel ‘quenched in wine’ and explored tobacco, opium and anti-scorbutics as potential cures. It could literally be a kill or cure option, and aren’t we glad that the idea of purging the humours has given way in orthodox western medicine to a more symptomatic approach?

Many of these same men of science (women were deliberately excluded) were also avid collectors of animals and plants from the far flung climes the European powers were then “opening up” for trade. The medical men got very excited over Chinese rhubarb and cocoa, and not just because they sold them for a fortune. They were prized for their comforting and of course, in the case of rhubarb, purgative qualities.

The first chocolate marketed in England made the fortune of Sir Hans Sloane – he of Sloane Square, and was sold as an aid to the digestion. Not mixed with honey and pepper as it was taken in Jamaica, but mixed with milk and “Greatly recommended by several eminent Physicians especially those of Sir Hans Sloane’s Acquaintance, For its Lightness on the Stomach, & its great Use in all Consumptive Cases.”

Sloane, also imported quinine bark from Peru, sold as a cure for ‘tertian ague’ or malaria, which modern travellers will be surprised to find, was widespread during C17th English summers. A keen collector of all types of botanical and scientific rarities and curiosities, Sir Hans’ fortune made as merchant and fashionable society physician allowed him to collect on global scale and to acquire the collections of others as they came on the market. That, to cut a long story short, is how the collections of British Museum and the Natural History Museum in London began.

It is almost uncanny then, that although for the last 3 days Rhianna’s normally healthy appetite has deserted her, she moans now and then, “Chocolate, I need chocolate.” Maybe I should ditch the salt water and let Sir Hans be my guide.

The book I’m reading? Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits

Fascinating material, but I’m not sure she makes the best of it. 5 out of 10.

Wordless Wednesday

2007-02-07T15:24:00.000+01:00

Rhianna is sick. She's miserable. She's bored. She's reading the screen over my shoulder. We have spent many of the last 48 hours in doctors' waiting rooms when she just wanted to be in bed. I let her choose today's picture. Her aunt's garden, last summer. Colour therapy?

Eyes 2: body parts in art

2007-02-04T12:12:00.000+01:00

I really have to do something about that sub-title -'body parts in art'!

Today's part 2 of Eyes is not quite what I had planned, but having come across it, I couldn't not include this amazing collection entitled 'plastic body parts' jewellery featured on Kstyle's excellent design showcase site.

What do you do with all those left-over Barbies once your kids have graduated to Bratz and My Scene? If you're Margaux Lange, you cut them up into little pieces and skewer them into bangles and bracelets, earrings and necklaces, that's what. Eyes, hands, torsos, even the dinky little shoes, feature.
Rhianna and I both cackled gleefully when we saw Barbie (& Ken) treated this way.
The global fascination with Barbie is not once I share, having held out against Barbie until Rhianna reached the ripe old age of 4, at which point I was rebuked by other mothers who took pity on her and bought her Barbies as birthday gifts from their daughters. Of course we ended up with trillions of the things, including a pregnant Barbie-look alike, from Turkey I think, complete with revolving bump and tiny baby inside.
Way back in the '60's, Ihave to admit that my Tressy doll ( I only had one; what is it with these hoardes of Plastics?) was my idea of fun though. Her hair grew when you pushed a button in her back and she came with tiny little hair clips so I could back-comb like crazy then pin it all up. The optimum time for playing with her was when I was around 9-10 years old. It's such a shame that the Barbie brand has been allowed to slide down the age range to take over the play of tots who have the motor skills to take the clothes off but not to put them back on again.
I'm delighted to consign ours to the bin or the boot sale, but am not sufficiently eco-concerned on this one to cut them up to make jewellery. Rhianna might, though. Which I think is a healthy teenage subversion a thoughtful and supportive mum should encourage.
And as we're on the topic of promoting healthy body image and well grounded self-esteem in one's children, do read Planetnomad's award winning post on Beauty; not just in the eye of the beholder anymore.

Eyes: body parts in art

2007-02-02T11:55:00.000+01:00

In this second in my informal mini-series called for want of a better title, ‘body parts in art’, I’m focussing on eyes.

I’ll probably do several blogs on this topic as my art books are now frilled with post-it notes book marking thousands of years and a global community of the quizzical, the mendacious, the delighted, the introverted, the desperate, the sublime, the resigned, the dejected, the transported.

In Sofonisba Anguissola’s 1555 painting The Chess Game, the players are Sofonisba’s sisters Lucia and Minerva.

They’re watched with great delight by a third, younger sister, Europa. It’s the expression on this little girl’s face that repeatedly draws me to this painting. She’s facing forwards but looking sideways at Minerva, who’s just about to lose the game and is raising her hand. Perhaps just about to protest against Lucia’s taking of her queen. Young Europa gleefully anticipates a sisterly spat? A lovely little girl’s pudgy face too, with a smile just becoming a laugh – but nothing at all cutesy in this joint portrait.

Off to one side, the girls attract the attention of an older woman. She’s plainly dressed and, given the lavish nature of the girls’ costume, is unlikely then to be their mother, who must outshine them. So a maid or nurse. Her expression is remarkable, her gentle personality conveyed in the tenderness of her gaze.

Sofonisba’s painting of her sisters tells more than of a happy family. Anguissola is billed as one of the greatest female painters of the Renaissance. Let’s make that one of the greatest painters. The Chess Game has a serious point to make. Look, it says, women, girls can be logical, rational, can think ahead, play and enjoy strategic games.

One of six sisters, 5 of whom became painters, Sofonisba worked at the court of Spain’s Phillip II for 13 years. Her first husband was drowned when his ship was attacked by pirates. She married again, but without Phillip’s permission or her father’s permission, countering apparently, that “Marriages are made in heaven and not on Earth.”

View The Chess Game with more of Sofonisba's paintings at the Web Gallery of Art. It’s fabulous online resource. Take a tour.

The Web Gallery address is: www.wga.hu

For other posts in this series see: lips

Just One More Chapter, Mum!

2007-01-31T05:31:00.000+01:00

For the first time I’m joining in with the Works-for-me-Wednesday carnival hosted on Shannon’s RocksinmyDryer blog.

The carnival features blogging mums sharing their experience on family life; a great global Kaffee Klatsch, on the self-explanatory, ‘It works for me’ theme.

My first suggestion is: Try reading this blog aloud!

Books always have been and are still central to our family life. Of course we’ve spent hours reading to the girls virtually since they were born, but even now they’re getting older (going on 9 and 13), reading aloud is still hugely important joint activity.

I had to call a halt to a readings of a book each, catering for their different reading ages, when I realised that by reading both of them a bedtime chapter I was spending close to two hours a night ‘on stage’, and now we usually have just one book on the go.

Read-Aloud Ground Rules:

Reading ahead by yourself is forbidden. I have resorted to hiding the book if we’ve stopped at a real cliff-hanger.
No reading when one child is not around, without special dispensation and a promise to re-read the chapter/s later.

Choosing something that appeals to everyone can be a challenge. Harry Potter is a great family favourite. Yes, we really have worked our way out loud through all six volumes, some of them twice. I do a mean Prof,. McGonagall, if I say so myself, while my husband has Umbridge’s “ahem” to a T. We are all world-beaters on Harry Potter trivia, but it’s really our youngest who shines at these family quizzes. That’s another plus for sharing the books as a family, since the 4 year age difference could so easily have meant that Beka would be left out. Instead she’s the greatest HP aficionado of all.

When children are small you can usually keep up with what they’re reading and what they’re watching on TV. You get the references, the allusions, even sometimes the jokes. As they get older and their horizons expand, it is much harder to stay on top of what they’re learning about the world.

Reading aloud has allowed me to enjoy some of the great fiction for young people that’s around today and deal with some of the questions any good book must provoke. As Rhianna looks forward to hitting 13, sharing books we read aloud is providing us with a way of discussing challenging and emotional issues - drugs, divorce, sex, HIV, bullying, bitchiness, friendship, terrorism - coolly and objectively as we comment on the behaviour, choices and motives of the characters we love and those we love to hate.

Colin Firth and a prize cabbage in the same blog posting

2007-01-29T08:22:00.000+01:00

Regular readers know about my coffee break habits.

I let my fingers do the walking round some online galleries for a ten minute refresher at my desk.

So far, January’s gallery gazing recommendations have taken us to inter-war Germany courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York –attitude, character, expression – it’s all here.

And from the distractions of inflation-wracked inter-war Germany to the privations of the 30’s Depression as experienced in the States. A collection of - unusually, colour - photographs of farming communities couldn’t be more of a contrast to the Met’s offering. Visit The Guardian’s online gallery.

For the last January selection my choice was influenced by the Jane Austen Fest my family – well maybe not my husband – enjoyed over the weekend. We watched all the episodes of the BBC TV version of Pride and Prejudice and followed that up with the film version, provoking lively discussion on the best Darcy, Eliza et al.

Colin Firth is the clear Darcy winner, naturally.

Opinion is divided between the beautiful Keira Knightley and the spirited Jennifer Ehrle for Lizzie, but Miranda Frost wins hands down as Jane.

Alison Steadman’s mother is just too silly to be credible, we think, while the film mother is completely convincing as a women driven to utter distraction by 5 dowry-less daughters.

So two Austen-ish suggestions for Gallery tours:

For anecdotes from the rural life try the largest collection of British Folk Art in Britain, held at Compton Verney in Warwickshire and on display online at www.windowsonwarwickshire.

I like visiting the collection for the immediacy of its stories. Several of the oils on display show comic incidents straight from life.

Pictured here are:

'An Instance Never Known Before': during an attempt to slaughter a horse in July 1811, a butcher came to the farm to kill an old cart horse. The horse got away, and tried to run down the butcher until eventually distracted by a comely mare. There’s graphic chaos amongst a field of 9 bulls when they’re panicked by a pop-up hare, and here’s one dear to the heart of Zing Pictures.

In 1802 a Mr. Williams commissioned this picture of his prize bull and his prize cabbage. He liked the lady and the house and the dog enough to include them in this picture of his life’s treasures. You want your prized possessions to be captured for posterity too? Contact me at Zing Pictures. It’s what I do!

Not much is made of fans in Austen’s writing, but these are certainly from her era. You’ll have to be quick to catch this exhibition, courtesy of the Royal Collection.

Some fans were intended specifically to shield the lady’s face from the heat of the fire. Not so much, apparently, to prevent unsightly heat spots, but to stop the wax in her make up from melting. Now there’s a situation Jane failed to exploit.

There’s a slide show on the language of the fan too. The fan gestures for I hate you and Do you love me? seem confusingly similar. Perhaps discretion is the better part of valour; adjourn to the Queen’s 10 drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and take refuge in the unambiguously glorious.

Eco-concern is the new thrifty

2007-01-26T03:50:00.000+01:00

Looks like recycling is finally getting sexy. Eco-concern is the new thrifty.

The craft book section has suddenly got hip, with glossy new volumes vaunting oven gloves reclaimed from your mother’s vintage dresses or conjuring stunning gift wrap using old cinema tickets and a string of dud Christmas tree lights.

Not only does The Times have a self-styled Eco Worrier Blog, but it's ok for her to write in a daily broadsheet about saving energy by making a sausage dog draught excluder from scrap fabric to mop up the 20 per cent of your heating that escapes through doors and windows.

I’m in good company then, to confess to two long held recycling ambitions of the crafty kind. And, I have decided 2007 is the year the hoard of scraps will come out from their dusty plastic bags under the bed, although my plans are a little more exciting than a new-for-old oven glove.

Since I was a teenager, I’ve hankered after a handmade patchwork quilt; not a cool ambition through the 80’s and 90’s, I admit, but nevertheless, once my daughters were born, I started saving all those lovely little dresses as they outgrew them to make what I believe is quaintly termed, a ‘charm quilt’. Full of memories and literally, a part of the fabric of your family life.

Last weekend my soon-to-be-a-teenager, and great crafts-person daughter, Rhianna, asked me for access to this carefully hoarded fabric stash to start on her own quilt.

This is the now-or-never starting gun I need.

The quilt I’ve been promising myself since I was Rhianna's age is now underway. I promise to spare you regular progress reports.

Project number two is slightly less long-in-the-tooth. I once had a Nicole Fahri knitted jacket – that's it in the photo - a prize find in TK Maxx years ago – which was plunged by a well meaning friend into a sink of soapy water. Very hot soapy water. I can report that method of shrinking and felting works extremely well. Matted, shrunken, yes; but I decided to hold onto it -the savvy, hip eco-worrier in me reluctant to part with all that potential.

Last night on one of my favourite design blogs, the never less than inspirational blog K Style.,
I heard, or rather saw, the starting gun for that project; sassycrafter Kim Taylor’s handbags made from cast-off sweaters felted and constructed with style and imagination.

It’s going to be a busy weekend.

The most hardened creature I ever met.

2007-01-24T13:30:00.000+01:00

Our investigations into the real woman behind Disney’s cartoon account of the adventures of Chinese heroine, Mulan, reminded me of some of the heroines suggested as role models in the Girl’s World Annual I used to be given each Christmas.

Alongside Violet Szabo and Nurse Edith Cavell was featured a Dr. Barry, who served a long and distinguished career as James Barry, a male doctor in the British army who was discovered on death to have been a woman.

Dr. Barry died in 1865, after a 40 year career that would bring credit to anyone, regardless of gender. Posted across the globe with the British army, Dr. Barry performed what is regarded as the first ever Caesarean Section in Africa in 1826, and is credited with saving countless lives with innovative public health initiatives from South Africa and Mauritius to Jamaica, the Crimea and Canada.

Dr. Barry wasn’t popular though, with an instinct for rubbing authority up the wrong way. He suffered ridicule and scandal in personal life, as well as professional demotion and side-lining. Florence Nightingale certainly didn’t warm to Dr. Barry, nor recognise a kindred spirit when they met for the first time:

“I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – than from this Barry sitting on his horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square with only my cap on in the sun. He kept me standing in the midst ofquite a crowd of soldiers, Commissariat, servants, camp followers, etc., etc., every one of whom behaved like a gentleman during the scolding I received while he behaved like a brute . . . After he was dead, I was told that (he) was a woman . . . I should say that (she) was the most hardened creature I ever met.

At the time of his death, Dr. Barry was certainly regarded as male by all who knew him, although many felt that he exhibited what they described as effeminate traits. His voice as high-pitched as an old lady’s, and some colleagues report being asked to leave the room while Dr. Barry dressed.

Dr. Barry died in 1865 and the story that Dr. Barry was in fact not a man at all, but a woman, and moreover, a woman who had had a child, began with Sophia Bishop, who laid out the corpse. She told Dr. Barry’s own doctor of her discovery, hoping apparently to trade her silence on the matter for financial reward.

But Barry’s doctor, McKinnon, who’d known Barry for many years, seems to have been remarkably incurious, not to mention rather off-hand about the matter.

“I informed her that it was none of my business whether or not Dr Barry was a male or a female, and that I thought that he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man.”

The Manchester Guardian of 21^st August 1865 commented.

He died about a month ago, and upon his death was

discovered to be a woman. The motives that occasioned,

and the time when commenced this singular deception

are both shrouded in mystery. But thus it stands as an

indisputable fact, that a woman was for 40 years an

officer in the British service, and fought one duel and

sought many more, had pursued a legitimate medical

education, and received a regular diploma, and had

acquired almost a celebrity for skill as a surgical operator.

It was a supreme deception. How could it happen?

The notion that Dr. James Barry was indeed a woman gained currency over the decades, perhaps fuelled by the less than fond recollections of those who’d known the doctor, and sadly, obscuring the achievements of a talented and visionary person of whichever gender.

Modern scholarship has looked again at the story, and the summary I’ve given here is by A.K. Kubba, Specialist Registrar in General Surgery, Professional Unit of Surgery at the University of Nottingham and M. Young, Senior Librarian with the University of Glasgow Library. In their very readable paper, they conclude that Dr. James Barry was in fact a hermaphrodite, defining the term as “an individual where both ovarian and testicular tissue is present. Male genitalia, feminine breasts, testicular feminisation syndrome, absence of body hair and considerable variations between individuals exist among hermaphrodites.”

I went back to the story of Dr. Barry expecting to read a quite different account; one of a woman’s fight against all the odds for professional success and satisfaction at any personal cost. The revised story wouldn’t make it into the Girls World Annual, but what a remarkable and painful life.

With thanks to the authors of A.K. Kubba and M. Young

THE LIFE, WORK AND GENDER OF DR JAMES BARRY MD.

www.rcpe.ac.uk/publications/articles/vol31_no4/R_The_Life.pdf

Delighting in Dragons

2007-01-22T08:57:00.000+01:00

Last week I flippantly linked January, season of coughs and colds, and my children, in the same paragraph right here on this blog. That very same night my younger daughter went down with a cold, missed 3 days of school and is still fighting an annoying cough. As a work-from-home Mum, I’m fortunate to be able to be with my children when they’re ill. I know I should banish them to bed and make staying home as boring as I can for them, and I do ban TV at least until after lunch, but I enjoy these serendipitous, rare one-to-one times when we read together and sometimes manage an art project.

As we did while she was off school last week. My daughter, who’s chosen the blog name Beka, is a voracious reader, but we often have a book that we read together – mostly me, out loud, doing all the voices.

Our current out-loud book is Carole Wilkinson’s Dragonkeeper. The first in a series set in ancient China, it’s the story of a young slave girl and a world-weary dragon. As we’re only on Chapter 9 I can’t tell you much more than that, but such is the power of an imaginative story, well-told and backed up by solid research, that the spin-offs are a joy to behold.

Excited by this book, my daughter has so far:

travelled to The Great Wall of China via Google Earth.

looked up the Han Dynasty in the encyclopaedia

compared different ways of depicting dragons

made and decorated a Chinese style fan –with a picture of a dragon of course.

OK so she’s a paragon. Of course not. I just want to share her enthusiasm, my delight in the online technology I would have loved as a kid, and lead in to the next stage, because by now she’s definitely earned some TV. Still on the Chinese theme, she re-ran Mulan and soon we started wondering about the ‘real’ Mulan, which was, of course, a prompt for a quick Googling session.

Disney tells the story of Mulan as a daughter who serves in the emperor’s army in her aged father’s stead. Accompanied by the obligatory comic companions, Mulan disguises herself as a youth, has many misadventures, but can usually turn disaster to triumph against the invading Hun. She single-handedly saves the Emperor and to top it all, snares a good prospect for a husband, as a good Chinese daughter should.

Google brought us to the anonymous Ode Of Mulan, dating from 500CE and told in a Ming dynasty anthology, The Legend of the Very Sad Ape, according to which Disney hasn’t taken too many liberties with the basic story. The real Mulan served for a decade in the emperor’s army, successfully hiding her identity all the while, and did indeed come to the attention of the emperor. We both enjoyed the contrast of 1,500 year old poem with the sugar and anachronistic comedy of the cartoon version. It’s long for a blog, but here it is, courtesy of http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2805.html---------

Jie Jie, and more Jie Jie
Weaving, Mulan facing the front door.
Heard not the sound of shuttles,
Heard only her own sighs.
"Who you are missing?
Who you are recalling?"
"No one in my heart.
No one in my mind.
Last night I saw the army enlistment bulletin.
The emperor called for an army for a coming war.
Twelve scrolls of bulletins,
My father's name listed on every scroll.
Father has no grown up son;
Mulan has no elder brother.
I want to buy a saddle and horse,
And Join the army in the place of my father."

Bought a spirited horse from a market in the east,
Bought a saddle from a market in the west;
Bought a bridle from a market in the south;
Bought a long whip from a market in the north.
Said good-bye to Father and Mother at dawn,
Arrived on the shore of the Yellow River in the evening.
Heard not the calls from Father and Mother;
Heard only the crushing sound of water in the Yellow River.
Left the Yellow River at dawn for the north,
Camped atop the Black Mountain in the evening.
Heard not the calls from Father and Mother,
Heard only the crying sound of the nomad horses on Yan Mountain.

Travelled ten thousand li for the war.
Crossed the passes and mountains as swiftly as flying.
Sound of army watchman's knocker brought with cold winds.
Chilly moonlight reflected on iron armor.
Generals died in a hundred battles,
Great fighters returned in triumph after ten years.

Summoned to see the emperor,
The emperor sat in a splendid Hall.
Promotions granted in twelve ranks,
Gifts bestowed a thousand and more.
Emperor asked what else was desired,
Mulan not interested in a minister's post.
"Would like to have a swift horse
To take me to my hometown".

Father and Mother heard of the return of the Daughter,
Came all the way out of city to greet the Daughter, leaning on each other.
Elder sister heard of arrival of young Sister,
Took care of her make-up and dress, facing the door.
Young Brother heard of coming of elder Sister,
Whet the knife and went for a pig and a sheep—a feast for Sister.
Opened the door to the east chamber,
Sat on the bed in the west chamber.
Took off the army gown,
Put on the old dress.
Combed cloud-like hair, facing the window,
Rubbed cosmetic powder on forehead, facing the mirror.
Went out to visit her army comrades,
Comrades all surprised and perplexed.
For twelve years together in the army and fought
knew not Mulan was a girl.

He-hare walks with hops and skips
She-hare sees with muddled and fuddled eyes
If two hares run side by side
How can you tell which is the she and which is the he?

Thanks to 47th Carnival of History, hosted by Progressive Historians, this February, for thei comment on this post.

I do NOT believe in dragons.

Sen. BIDEN: Well, maybe you should! Kaye at Zing Things has a delightful post up called Delighting in Dragons, discussing both dragons in folklore and the historical narrative that Disney's Mulan was based on. It's an excellent and informative read.

Luscious Lips are hot at Zing Pictures

2007-01-19T11:36:00.000+01:00

Continuing our look at lips in art, here are some of mine.

I love this snippet found this morning when googling on lipstick, but think it can’t actually be true – or at the very least the date has to be out by a couple of hundred years.

A 1999 edition of the Chemical & Engineering News, published by the American Chemical Society claims that, in 1770, the British Parliament passed a law condemning lipstick, stating that "women found guilty of seducing men into matrimony by a cosmetic means could be tried for witchcraft."

I'll try to find out more. You'll read it here first.

Luscious Lips.

2007-01-18T11:57:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I blogged about the near-miss poisoning of my children with the nutritious sea kale that turned out to be poisonous sea poppy.

Today I’m dishing up lips. Lists of lips. My top 3 lips in art. Other body parts will probably follow, so you may want to bookmark me now!

What prompted this swerve from the vegetable? I was going to do great things with carrots today. They started out purple, my daughter told me last night. Well, the blogosphere is a marvellous and accomodating place - actually it would be if I could access my favourites in a zippier timeframe than Technorati or Firefox or the gods responsible seem to give at the moment. My 10 minutes of blog-catch-up time went like this today: 3 minutes reading Scribbit on Motherhood in Alaska. A one minute wait to be told “huh?” by Technorati, telling me a blog I’d read yesterday and favourited doesn’t actually exist. And the other 7 minutes waiting for pages to load.

Ok first vegetables, then indigestion, so working backwards we’ll we get there eventually - lips.

In first place, and these stopped me in my tracks and prompted me to research this initial “best of” survey, is Portrait of a Lady by Rogier van der Weyden, the leading lip artist in the mid-C15th Netherlands as far as I’m concerned. Pursed, plump, perfect.

Albrecht Durer was a fabulous artist, and will definitely feature in other body parts in art blogs; hair, moustaches, and great hats, for starters. Today, I nominate his lips from the famous series of self-portraits completed in his late 20’s.

To finish today’s list, Russian Expressionist painter, Marianne von Werefkin. She’s described in my guide to Great Women Masters of Art, variously as ‘muse’ and as ‘a sort of priestess’. I, for one, want to know more. She painted on cardboard and didn’t date many of her works. This wonderful red-lipped Self-Portrait is from around 1908-1910.

Add your contenders in comments.

Blossoming and Burgeoning

2007-01-17T06:18:00.000+01:00

Why on earth am I going to post on vegetables?

Because my children plan to inscribe their mother’s headstone with my mantra “Eat your greenery” and I’m reading Jane Grigson’s English Food, that’s why.

In last night’s chapter on vegetables Jane got in impressive cultural references to Shakespeare, W.S Gilbert and the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, who wrote of his ‘vegetable love’ to his coy mistress at a time when vegetable meant the whole burgeoning and blossoming natural world and not a shrivelled grey green knob nestling in a plastic bag at the bottom of the freezer.

Only two vegetables are actually native to Britain, sea kale and samphire, both found on sea shore shingle and cliffs, and both of which most people now would find harder to recognise than kohlrabi and celeriac.

We usually holiday on the Suffolk coast, and on one of our walks along the beach last summer I suggested picking and trying to cook some of the seakale, which looked to me pretty abundant on the shore just above the tide’s reach. Dismay turned to triumph when my girls learnt from their dog-walking companions that sea kale is a protected species so no nipping along the beach instead of to the Co-op. Oh, and by the way, it isn’t sea kale anyway, it’s sea poppy. So there, Mum. Can we have fish fingers and peas?

But the coast still isn’t clear; I’ve discovered sea poppy is good for coughs, so here we are in January, flu and colds everywhere. Maybe I'm on to something.

Pictured: sea poppy. Nasty. Poisonous roots. Don't feed to children.

Cabaret time

2007-01-16T07:00:00.000+01:00

Today's break from peering at my own art work on the computer screen, to peer at other peoples’, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which has just opened an exhibition featuring German art between the wars. Some great faces, poses and clothes plus one of my favourites, Otto Dix.

There's a long link but it should be painless if you run them together:

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?

OccurrenceId={AA365F9E-5F3E-441C-AD87-171A3A9D7AA4}

If you liked the movie Cabaret, then I think you’ll like this.

Virtual Star-gazing

2007-01-10T14:47:00.000+01:00

Going to galleries has always been one of my great spare time pleasures and online I like to do the same –virtual gallery gazing – where you can take your coffee in with you. Don’t know why I hadn’t found this particular gallery before but tonight, while my daughters were watching a movie we’d all seen (shall we say, several, times) before, I sidled up to the computer in the corner and instead got hooked into The Guardian’s online picture slideshows.

While the dvd swirled across its Bollywood fantasy (Bride and Prejudice, for the record and 3 0ut of 5) I visited an exhibition of photographs taken throughout the States during the Depression, then surveyed a collection of pictures found in people’s attics, including Rockwells and Pollocks. (Mental note to explore my own glory holes. Might find something I can get a few pounds for on e-Bay- just like everyone else is trying to do). Next up a selection of really very good UK graffiti, collected in response to John Reid’s move to crack down on street art, followed by a photo-survey of Madonna’s career from schoolgirl to eye of the storm. Elvis and The Beatles are there too.

Now hot-foot to you. & oh, dear reader, she married him.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/gallery/front

Hot new reads for the beach.

2007-01-05T10:49:00.000+01:00

Sri Lanka uses child fighters.
‘ Air attacks kill 16 civilians’ claim Tigers.
Sri Lanka minister in blast.
Familiar headlines we ignore daily on the ongoing and escalating fighting in Sri Lanka.

Would these alternatives encourage you to read on?
2006 Man Booker Prize winner, Kiran Desai absconds to tropical paradise with travel writer William Dalrymple.
Writers flock to Sri Lankan World Heritage Site to celebrate life and love.

And if you did, you’d discover that Sri Lanka is more than a series of doleful statistics. As Mark Twain said, “it is beautiful!” and yes, it is “most sumptuously tropical.”

I know this first hand, as I lived on the outskirts of Colombo with my family for the year 2002- 2003. Today my Colombo-based friend Sue sent me an e-mail about her plans for next week – big surprise, attending a literary festival based in the southern town of Galle.
Just two years ago Galle was hit horribly hard by the Tsunami, but even as reconstruction continues and the civil war escalates, Sri Lankans are trying to make life there worth living. Starting on 10th January, Kiran Desai, Mark Tully, Madhur Jaffrey, Victoria Glendinning and my favourite, William Dalrymple, join with many other writers internationally known as well as local, to put Sri Lanka on the map for all the right reasons.

Sri Lanka’s not all bad news.

The Mess and I

2006-12-30T06:32:00.000+01:00

I have this obsession about coffee tables. I wonder if you share it, because no one in my family seems to.

You see, I like to be able to put the tray with coffee pot, cups, perhaps even a plate of biscuits, down directly onto the coffee table without detouring via a precarious perch on the sofa or even down as far as the floor first, while with the non-tray holding hand I clear off the newspapers, the books, the half- finished craft projects, the tree decorations that have fallen off, the homeless dvds, the …well, you get the idea.

Coffee tables are for coffee cups, say I. And I had a little tantrum to that effect on Christmas Eve as I brought a tray of coffee, complete with mince pies and had to fight to land them safely in the living room. My family, even including visiting Grandpa, who should hardly have been included in my tirade, jumped smartly to it and lo! the coffee table was bare.

I was a little shame-faced though about stamping my foot over such a minor irritation, and next time I was online I felt a New York Times article called “Saying Yes to Mess” was calling out to me. It made me laugh out loud and I even showed it to Grandpa so we could chuckle together about January 2007 being Get Organized Month (in America.) and about the $5.9 billion, yes, billion dollars, the US spent on ‘home-organising’ products in 2005. Coffee table incident aside, I will not be joining in. For at heart, I go along with some of the people quoted in the NY Times article, to whit:

Life is too short and there are more urgent things to worry about. As Rabbi Irwin Kula says “Order can be profane and life-diminishing.” My daughters would agree with that, and so would the Rabbi’s own daughter. He tells how he and his wife were freaking out about the state of their 15 year old’s room. “Suddenly, I see in all the piles the dress she wore to her first dance and an earring she wore to her bar mitzvah. She’s so trusting her journal is wide open on the floor and there are photo-booth pictures of here friends strewn everywhere. ‘I said, Omigod, her cup overflows!’ And we started to laugh.”

I also liked the quotes from a self-styled (and one hopes tongue-in-cheek) ‘mess analyst’, that mess “has resonance; it can vibrate beyond its confines and connect to the larger world. It was the overall scumminess of Alexander Fleming’s laboratory that led to his discovery of penicillin….Mess tells a story, whereas, neat – well, neat is a closed book.”

My daughters still quake as I approach the coffee table, and race to clear the clutter off it, but with my new improved approach I shall now watch the narrative of the rich variety of my family’s hobbies and personalities resonate before me and plonk my coffee cup elsewhere.

The first list of Christmas. Self-Portraits

2006-12-20T11:22:00.000+01:00

In the run up to Christmas I’ve been working on more portraits than usual.
Portraits are always intriguing to work on as well as demanding; who’s the subject listening to or flirting with such a cock of the head? What’s provoked that smile playing at the edge of the lips, or the outright laugh in the eyes?
With portraits and raw personality much on my mind, and as it’s the season for lists and best of compilations, I think I’ll join in too:
So here is the first of my Christmas lists - Self-portraits Through Time.

1. Yes, yes, got to put Rembrandt in the top spot.

2. Durer next. Such vanity too. Love the hair.

3. No surprises so far, but perhaps Sofonisba Anguissola is not such a familiar name.
Her dates are c.1532 – 1625. and I’m looking at three portraits she painted of herself, first as a teenager, then as an assured and highly skilled 30-something. She lived well into her 90's and most moving is a portrait she painted of herself when in her 70’s. Assured, dignified, unflinching.
Sofonisba has been described as the greatest female Italian painter of the Renaissance, with her work compared to that of Titian with one of her portraits – that of the Infanta Catalina Micaela – long mistakenly attributed to El Greco.

Diamonds in the Desert

2006-12-14T04:10:00.000+01:00

Perhaps you've seen the new movie Blood Diamonds? I posted on conflict diamonds in November last year, and shared my concern about the forcible removal of the Kalahari Bushmen from their desert environment, ostensibly to provide them with improved health and education facilities. More cynical souls felt the interests of diamond mining companies might have had something to do with it.
Rare good news then early in December, as the Bushmen from the Kalahari desert won the court case in which they accused Botswana's government of illegally moving them from their land.

The court said the bushmen - or San people - were wrongly evicted from their ancestral homeland in 2002.

There's more detail on the story from the BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6174709.stm

Plus a sequence of pictures: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/6176093.stm

Read my earlier blog on conflict diamonds and see the diamond ring Zing Picture that prompted those thoughts: Diamonds are a Soldiers Best Friend and With This Ring in November 2006

Killer Shoes

2006-12-13T02:28:00.000+01:00

I’m mortified to discover I’m below average.
It’s time to come clean and admit just how low I score on the yummy mummy shoe count index.
Only 17 pairs.
Yes, I’ve just been round the house and counted them. According to The Times, the average 40+ woman owns 19 pairs of shoes. 5% of British women own more than 100.
I used to think my indifference to shoes stemmed from being more of a handbag person, but I can’t even get into double figures on that count. So I’m definitely a dud.
Maybe I should have bought that copy of 100 Things to Buy Before You Die I saw in my local bookshop yesterday.

One of my recent clients, Heather, who lives in Cambridge, England, does have a thing for shoes. She doesn’t go overboard she assured me, but did ask if I could help her with her addiction!
She has this great pair of beaded slippers. She loves them. They kill her. They live in the wardrobe.
Not any more.
She took a photo of them looking rather forlorn and unloved so that I could take them under my wing and with a little artistic TLC, give them a new existence.
Here they are.

Ice rocks

2006-12-11T10:21:00.000+01:00

My daughters saw Happy Feet yesterday, which reminded me of a marvellous blog I came across completely by chance last week. If you're fascinated by real live penguins - and many, inspired by last year's March of the Emperor, clearly are - this is the place to go.

Artist David Ruth has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to study ice textures and forms in the Antarctic. He's there until later this month and is posting photos every day of ice, snow, glaciers, lichen, clear blue sea and skies, penguins, birds, seals, playful dolphins. His no-nonsense blog clears the head, and certainly focuses the mind on the fragility and vulnerability of this stunning environment.

http://davidruth.blogspot.com/2006/11/glacier-walk.html#links:

Updating this now in January, the Natural Environment Research Council is offering fellowships to writers and artists based in Britain to do something similar -

" The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Arts Council England are pleased to announce this unique opportunity available to Artists and Writers across the art forms. Two individuals will be invited to spend up to 8 weeks in the Antarctic between November 2007 and March 2008. Working alongside Antarctic scientists and support staff on ships and research stations, the successful applicants will develop new work in response to this remarkable, frozen continent, a place of scientific challenge and a wilderness of great beauty."The application form and further information are available on the British Antarctic Survey website www.antarctica.ac.uk

Golden Gift for Afghanistan

2006-12-07T10:13:00.000+01:00

Another in my ‘virtual gallery’ recommendations. Today, the Musee Guimet in Paris, which is has just put on display the treasure of Tilya Tepe, the Hill of Gold, from near the Oxus river in northern Afghanistan - and it has quite a story to tell – fantastic wealth, burial, rediscovery, plunder, looting, despair, triumph.

Unfortunately, the actual gallery site offers no images from the exhibition; www.guimet.fr – although it looks a fantastic bricks and mortar place to lose yourself in. So, you’ll just have to read on:

This golden treasure hoard of more than 2,000 necklaces, beads, crowns, even golden sandals, dates from around the time of the birth of Christ and was found in 1978 by a Russian team of archeologists working in an area which had historically been at the crossroads of trade routes radiating out to China, India and the Mediterranean. The gold on display literally reflects all the diverse influences passing through, setting up camp and staying awhile in this then cosmopolitan region.

Soon after the unearthing of this treasure, Afghanistan found itself mired in war; the Soviets invaded, the country suffered years of civil war, and the national museum in Kabul, home to the treasure, was looted and vandalized successively by mujahadeen and by the ruling Taleban. Those who knew of the existence of what came to be called the Bactrian Gold were unsure of its fate. Plundered; melted down; smuggled out of the country. No one knew.

But in 2004, the treasure hoard was found intact and gorgeous.

I read about the rediscovery of the Bactrian Gold on the BBC website in a piece by Lawrence Pollard, who makes what is obviously a heartfelt plea for the international community to rethink its ideas on the nature of Afghan civilization. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6215002.stm

Pollard wrote: “ Afghanistan ..is not just about camels and Kalashnikovs, it's about a fabulous mix of cultures and has a genuinely significant heritage.

And the real pleasure is that you do not need an expert's eye to spot the influences. There are column capitals from Ai-Khanoum - a Greek city in northern Afghanistan - which anyone can tell look as if they are from a Greek temple.

There are ivory tablets and sculptures of wide-hipped and large-breasted dancing girls, which you know look Indian. A coin bears the Buddhist wheel, one buckle bears Roman dolphins, another a Chinese-looking devil... and on it goes.

Among all the glitter and the simple thrill of seeing such beautiful objects, there are also some sobering thoughts. One is that for nearly a quarter of a century, Afghanistan's culture has been systematically looted by illegal digging.

Ai-Khanoum has been stripped. If there is other stuff as gorgeous as the Bactrian gold, it may already have been stolen and smuggled.

When it returns from its brief tour (which looks like taking in Holland, Germany and the US), Afghanistan's golden treasure can not be shown to the Afghans for security reasons. They have never seen it, and they will not now.”

See my blog on the history of The Great Game, played out in Afghanistan - Afghanistan in Pictures: 2.11.2006

Rub my tummy and I'll tell you The Meaning of Life

2006-12-01T05:50:00.000+01:00

I read magazines from the back page to the front. Don’t know why, but unless you want to read this blog like that, to make sense of today’s, read yesterday’s first.

The many names of the fun-loving “ fat guy” attest to the widespread appeal of the Buddha of the Future, the Maitreya: he’s big-bellied Buddha, the fat Buddha, the broad smile Buddha, the rich Buddha, the giving- children Buddha.

In addition to material goods and fertility, he also offers comfort. In some South East Asian and East Asian temples his statue is accompanied by the following lines: "His belly so huge as to accommodate everything unbearable; his mouth so wide-open so as to laugh at everything ridiculous.”. As affection for the fat Buddha grew in agrarian societies that certainly knew the realities of scarcity, so the well-rounded body promises abundance as well as symbolising happiness and good luck. Chinese mythology takes the stomach to be the fount of the soul and centre of life energy so Hotei’s massive girth is interpreted as corresponding with his boundless compassion and open-heartedness.

Hotei’s accessories carry important messages too. The sack never empties and is filled with not only the woes of the world, but with precious things. Some statues show the children at play over the ample slopes of the monk’s reclining body. ( See yesterday’s picture too.) In some representations the monk carries a fan, a symbol traditionally indicative of the granting of wishes or petitions by rulers.

Basically, the Laughing Buddha is there to tell you to ‘lighten up’, take a cheerful approach to life’s vicissitudes. He takes under his wing the weak. He has a soft spot for children and looks out for fortune tellers and even bar tenders. One story, at odds with the legend of the goodly monk, explains Hotei’s frequent appearance in the windows of the goldsmith’s shop by asserting that in an early earthly incarnation he was in fact the first goldsmith. He worked in the palace of the historical Buddha but stole ingots of precious metal, forcing the Buddha to have him pursued, bound by a magic cord and fetched back to the palace, where he presumably reformed.

For over a thousand years now, the fat, laughing Pra-Maitreya been one of the most popular subjects of veneration in East Asia, and as such he has, perhaps inevitably, spawned a wealth of superstition. He is a giver of gifts, so rub his belly and wealth and good luck will be yours. One strand of Japanese tradition has it, that if on New Year’s Eve a group of strangers ask Hotei for identical blessings then Hotei will grant what they ask.

Now, here’s the promised thought for today, the Zen parable on the meaning of life, for whatever attributes believers, interior decorators and garden designers (remember the Buddha water feature?) choose to lend him now in the early 21^st century, this story, from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones takes us back to his fundamental philosophy of life.

“Once, …..another Zen master happened along and enquired [of the fat guy], ‘What is the significance of Zen?’

Hotei immediately plopped his sack down on the ground in silent answer.

‘Then,’ asked the other, ‘what is the actualisation of Zen?’

At once the Happy Chinaman swung the sack over his shoulder and continued on his way.”

If just one person relaxing in their garden gazes idly on their newly purchased novelty Fat Buddha water feature and finds happiness and contentment and sufficiency for even a moment, then maybe the end justifies the apparently demeaning means.

Who's the fat guy?

2006-11-30T11:05:00.000+01:00

“Who’s the fat guy?” one of the participants in a study group looking at South East Asian art asked me recently. All the statues and images of the Buddha we had discussed in the hour or two before had been slim, svelte, highly stylised in, mostly, traditional Thai representations. Buddha images aren’t ten a penny in Britain, but all I had to do to find the “fat guy”, it turned out, was take a trip to my local garden centre. There he was, rotund, jovial, wide-smile, big belly – the laughing Buddha as water feature, a stream of water pouring from the monk’s bowl held over his head.

Throughout Asia he goes under a whole host of names I won’t confuse you with here, but the one that casts most light on his identity is Pra-Maitreya. While the (slim, stylised) Buddha was a real historical figure - Prince Siddhartha Gautama - the “fat guy” Pra-Maitreya is the Buddha of the Future, the successor to the historical Buddha. So the ‘fat one’ is a real Buddha; but one whose coming we await.

If this figure is the Buddha-to-be then why is he invoked as a guarantor of material possessions, bountiful harvests and female fertility as well as patron of variously, goldsmiths, fortune tellers and bar tenders? The answer is that the Fat Buddha encompasses not one, but three personas. Which means three blogs for the price of one:

He’s the Buddha of the future.

He has an earthly incarnation as a monk, Qi Ci, who is believed to have had real existence in 10th century China.

He’s a bodhisattva, - a saintly being dedicated helping others achieve peace and enlightenment.

The concept of the Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, arose soon after the death of the historical Gautama Buddha and has exercised a strong hold on Buddhists over millennia. It’s possibly comparable to the Second Coming of Christ for Christians.

This “fat guy” personification of the Maitreya came long after that. The bulging sack, the fat belly and the wide smile date from around the 10^th century CE and are based on stories of a real Chinese monk of the Buddhist Zen tradition. He carried a cloth bag filled with precious things – rice plants, sweets, even and especially, and benevolently, children. The sack gave him yet another name – Hotei – which translates as ‘cloth bag’

This monk, who called himself Qi Ci was known, appropriately enough, for his contentment and for the simplicity of his life. Legend has it that he had no permanent home but was somehow protected from the elements; he slept in drifts of snow, but was never soaked through or felt the cold. Villagers came to assume that if the monk with the cloth bag slept in the open the weather would be good. If he wore sandals or sought shelter, then villagers expected rain. On a grander scale, he was credited with the ability to foresee the future. Perhaps this is why the Laughing Buddha was adopted as a sort of patron saint of fortune-tellers.

Blog on tomorrow to find out what happens when you rub the Fat Buddha’s tummy and – we aim to please – a Zen parable on the meaning of life.

Success in maths starts in the art class.

2006-11-29T02:56:00.000+01:00

Yesterday my elder daughter was having some difficulty with her algebra homework. I’m sympathetic, but it’s all Greek to me, despite my father’s best endeavours with quadratic equations when I was a teenager.

Maths was always a struggle, but while I put off doing my homework until the last minute, I do remember being repeatedly drawn to a TimeLife book on my parents’ bookshelves focusing on the beauty of numbers. Its pictures of shells in cross-section, graphs, diagrams and geometric fantasies of real beauty and fascination held me entranced. Usual lament – why couldn’t they have taught maths like that in my school?

Perhaps the question should be instead, why didn’t they teach art like that in my school?

The way to my numerical heart could be via Fractal art – a growing genre, enhanced by digital technology. Here’s what Wikipedia says to define it:

“Fractal art is created by calculating fractal mathematical functions and transforming the calculation results into still images, animations, music, or other art media. Fractal images are graphs of the calculation results, and fractal animations are sequences of these graphs. Fractal music maps the calculation results to music pitches or other sounds. Fractal art is usually created with the assistance of a computer, in order to speed up the process of calculating the fractal function.”

Take a look: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fractal

They say most adults are still trying to prove something to their parents; I’m looking forward to showing my father my first piece of art using a (correct, and particularly fiendish) quadratic equation. He told me I’d get it in the end – it’s only taken 30 years. Watch this space.

For the record, I do Sudoko quite well. (My dad doesn’t.)

Of Lice and Herring. All things considered.

2006-11-23T11:01:00.000+01:00

Zing Things so far:
I tend to use this blog to follow up intriguing questions that come to me as I work, or that crop up during reading, watching TV and movies. Putting together the blog about them means I take the extra step and find out more.

Click the archive button and have a look at some previous posts on such diverse issues as -

How many herring does it take to change a light bulb?

The bedpan in my attic has definitely saved your life already.

Spiritual homes.

Afghanistan - centuries of conflict - a brief history with pictures.

Head Lice by Old Masters

Conflict Diamonds

for a 'best of blog compilation' shortcut and time saver subscribe to Zingzine - visit www.zingpictures.com and click on the subscribe button. All it takes is an e-mail address.

Diamonds are a soldier's best friend.

2006-11-20T11:44:00.000+01:00

Everyone might be talking about the new and shapely Bond in Casino Royale, but this weekend my family enjoyed Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day. The film’s mention of ‘conflict’ diamonds reminded me of the complex political and ethical issues you still run into when it comes to buying a solitaire, or a ‘right hand ring’ for that matter.

‘Conflict’ diamonds are diamonds mined in war zones which are then illegally sold on the international market to finance further war and atrocity, mainly in Sierra Leone, Angola and Liberia. It’s a trade banned by international treaties dating back to 2000. However, a recent report from the U.S. Government claims that ‘conflict’ diamonds are still getting through to unwitting American consumers.

Since the UN approved Kimberley Process, which was designed to prevent conflict diamonds entering the market was broadly agreed by the diamond industry, the press has been intermittently interested in the issue; it was disappointing to search the BBC website and find their last reference dated 2004. The entertainment industry is doing a little better: rappers Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kweli have all recorded songs around the topic.

Meanwhile, the new Warner Bros. movie Blood Diamonds, starring Leonardo DiCaprio is already making headlines ahead of release in early December. Press reports claim that although during filming in Africa the studio promised funds for new artificial limbs for children and young people injured in violence funded by conflict diamonds, no money has yet been forthcoming.

The case against diamonds is growing with this week’s appeal by Survival International on behalf of the Kalahari Bushmen who, they allege, are being pushed off their land by diamond mining interests.

Read for yourself at http://www.survival-international.org/news.php?id=1872

Ethical alternatives to a girl’s best friend? suggestions please

With this ring

2006-11-17T11:51:00.000+01:00

Following on from the wedding cake I was working on earlier on this week, I’ve just finished the artwork for a wedding and engagement ring ‘Zing Thing’. There are over thirty separate elements to this image – all carefully drawn and coloured, and as I spent the day with these jewels I naturally began to wonder about the origin of the traditional band of gold and the diamond solitaire.

A plain ring in some form or another has signified the lifelong promise of marriage for centuries. No surprises there. The impulse to a diamond engagement ring, though, is a more modern custom, and wouldn't you know it, is the creation of a successful marketing campaign by de Beers at the end of the Second World War.

I didn’t know it when I got engaged, and I don’t think my husband did either, but there are even guidelines on how much a guy should spend on the ring to be taken seriously. In the early days, two weeks’ wages would do the job. Now, it’s three months’ salary. Another jewellery industry marketing campaign I expect.

Two weeks after her wedding my mum was doing the washing up and lost both her rings down the plug hole. I have been luckier with mine, but then I do wear rubber gloves.

Some people of course, object to wearing a ring as a sign of their married status, but apparently some singletons envy couples their domination of the jewellers windows, with the result that a Swedish company has started selling ‘Singelringen’ you can wear on your right hand, to show your availability. So now you know.

Visit my handiwork at www.zingpictures.com

Let them look at the cake.

2006-11-15T12:00:00.000+01:00

I’ve spent most of today working on a wedding cake commission.

You pay all that money, and usually invest considerable heartache in the design and working out or fending off who’s going to actually make and ice it. Then it’s cut into tiny pieces and that’s it, it’s gone.

‘Zinging’ the cake is a fun way of making it last forever.

The cake I was working on today was fairly straightforward and traditional as you can see from the picture here. Also quite restrained – only two tiers. Apparently the idea of a tall cake grew out of customs reaching back hundreds of years, to a time when each guest would bring a small cake and the bride and groom would attempt a good luck kiss over the top of the mound. Cakes were also thrown at the bride – supposedly an extension of throwing rice grains, then wheat grains, to signify hopes for fertility.

Fashions in cakes change just as in wedding dresses; people want their favourite flavours, so ways have to be found to support a heavy tiered structure on a lighter base than the traditional fruitcake. Cheesecake, chocolate cake, Baked Alaska are all popular. Earlier this year I worked on a 3-tiered pavlova, complete with forest berry topping, ingeniously put together by a creative Mother of the Bride.

A French alternative to the traditional iced cake is rapidly gaining popularity. The croquembouche is a pyramid of delicious profiteroles, smothered with fresh cream and decorated with caramel, peanut brittle and a veil of spun sugar. Although the cutting of the cake by the bride and groom is an important part of traditional wedding ceremonial, signifying the first task they carry out jointly as a married couple, it’s impossible to cut the croquembouche. Instead the bride and groom attack the brittle with a hammer. Not so auspicious.

You can see more of my wedding cakes at www.zingpictures.com

Bedpans of Note

2006-11-13T11:41:00.000+01:00

Apropos the unusually distinguished history of the bedpan in my cupboard under the stairs, I went searching for more information on the scientists who, following up on Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the antibiotic action of penicillin mould, managed to stabilize the bacteria sufficiently to begin commercial production of the first generation of life saving antibiotics. The range of images I found was fascinating; there’s even a library photo of one of the original bedpans used for growing the mould in quantity. You can see why I don’t keep it on the sideboard.

http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?W=4&F=0002&Step=37

This image is on the files of the Science and Society Picture Library. Their science and technology related holdings hold a fair number of black and white photos of the production of penicillin in wartime and post-war labs, giving a good sense of time and place. Some idea of the impact of penicillin on real lives comes over in an image on Wikipedia’s penicillin entry. American posters urge sufferers to seek treatment for gonorrhoea – now – this is 1944 - curable in just 4 hours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin

Fleming, Florey and Chain all received the Nobel Prize for their work, but Dr. Heatley, donor of my treasured bedpan, received no formal public recognition until 1990, when he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Medicine from Oxford University,the first given to a non-medic in Oxford's 800-year history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Heatley

As you might expect, London’s National Portrait Gallery holds several portraits of Sir Alexander Fleming. The only other member of the team to appear in the collection is Sir Ernst Chain, in a lively and energetic portrait by Lotte Laserstein.

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?search=ss&sText=Chain&LinkID=mp05144&rNo=2&role=sit

A bedpan, a bedpan, my kingdom for a bedpan.

2006-11-09T11:51:00.000+01:00

Amongst my prouder possessions is an autographed standard issue British hospital bedpan (male ward), dating from mid, probably even pre, WW2. The pan itself is made from, I think, rough unglazed clay; it’s not particularly fragile, but it would break if you dropped it; it’s most definitely utilitarian in design, and no, I don’t have it on public display. But the public do owe this bedpan and some few others like it, their lives.

Bedpans are a breeding ground for germs. My bedpan was critical to the development of the germ, the mould in fact, that in 1928 Alexander Fleming, discovered as the first of the life-saving antibiotics - penicillin. Although Fleming had made this discovery in the late twenties, by the outbreak of war no progress had been made on turning his discovery into a viable drug suitable for use on humans. Once war did break out, the need for easily administered life-saving drugs became all too obvious. Not least because of the ‘collateral damage’; venereal disease claimed a huge number of number casualties amongst Allied forces in the desert campaigns, for example.

While British servicemen were flying the flag in the brothels of Cairo , Oxford-based scientists Florey and Chain headed the team working on this hugely beneficial variety of germ-warfare. The human body, they found, proved remarkably stubborn when it came to ingesting and processing penicillin, peeing out quantities of the substance before it could properly take effect. The scientists realised that they needed much more of the penicillin mould than they had previously realised so they could dose patients with large enough quantities to fight infection. And initially, they just couldn’t produce enough mould.

I learnt of this, standing on the roof of the Oxford University labs one bright autumn day, from one of the scientists in that team, Norman Heatley, the man who donated and signed the bedpan.

Dr. Heatley recounted a vivid story showing just how frustrating this shortage of raw penicillin mould was, a story that still chills me with its sheer mundane bad luck, and emphasises the fragility of life before antibiotics. A policeman and keen gardener was badly scratched by the thorns on his rosebushes. The scratches became infected and the Chain/Florey team worked with the doctors at the local hospital to treat the infection with the new wonder drug. To no avail. They couldn’t get enough penicillin and what they did have, they couldn’t get to ‘stick’ in the patient. Despite their best efforts the poor policeman died. The work to produce more and to stabilise penicillin as a drug went on.

These were the darkest days of the war remember, and Dr. Heatley remembered the scientists discussing what they would do in the event of invasion. The penicillin mould was absolutely critical to the war effort, and of course, had to be protected. They hit upon the idea of rubbing the penicillin mould into the lining of their ubiquitous and unremarkable tweed jackets, which of course by that stage of the war were pretty ancient and nicely populated with all manner of food for all kinds of living organisms.

It’s a charming story but standing on the roof of that Oxford lab. listening to Dr. Heatley, and looking out over our ‘green and pleasant land’, you could sense the grim and dogged determination behind the scientists’ ingeniously simple contingency plan.

My bedpan’s heroic role in this story was as one of many out-sized Petri dishes. In a time of wartime shortages, the bedpans were used to grow the penicillin in the quantities the research scientists now realised they required. And it worked. In 1945 Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the Nobel Prize.

Fishy

2006-11-08T11:34:00.000+01:00

I ‘googled’ Herrington and Lightbown (see yesterday’s blog) today. There’s very little on them at first glance. My online search taught me that herring scales are to used industrially to pearlise nail polish and lip gloss, while some varieties of herring are tinned and sold as sardines. No wiser about the Herrington and Lightbown team though.

As an added bonus, I inadvertently chanced on a site that can help me with the fishy shopping list conundrum. The Monterey Bay Aquarium site has a list of environmentally pc fish purchases in their “Seafood Watch – Choices for healthy oceans.” http://www.mbayaq.org/

It's electrifying.

2006-11-07T11:20:00.000+01:00

I'm thinking about fish and wondering whether to strike seafood off the shopping list in my contribution to the regeneration of declining fish stocks, as we are warned this week that within fifty years there will be no fish left to fish. And so I remembered a fascinating piece I had read in W. G Sebald's discursive journal of his travels on the East Anglian coast, The Rings of Saturn.

At this point of the journey, he's discussing glut and famine in the North Sea herring industry over the centuries, vital to the economies of the British east-coast fishing communities from Buckie to Lowestoft, and to parallel communities in his home country of Germany.

Sebald's brief survey of the industry leads to a consideration of the herring itself. Known in the north-east of Scotland as 'the silver darlings', herring in life shimmer with shades of iridescent blues and greens and orange. Once dead their colours change - the back becomes blue, while the gills, filled with blood, are now red.

Here's the bit of the story that intrigues me. Not only does its colour change once it's on the fishmongers slab, the herring begins to glow, a glow that lasts for several days, fading as the fish decays. In 1870, intrigued by this property, two English scientists, wonderfully named Herrington and Lightbown - and you couldn't really make those names up - did investigate this phenomenon further, in the hope that the glowing herring might provide the key to an organic, and therefore renewable, source of light. Their experiments came to nothing. As, apparently, will the 'silver darlings'.

Spirited Art

2006-11-06T11:47:00.000+01:00

One of my recent commissions has been to work on a spirit house photographed by a diplomat client during her tour of duty in Thailand.

Now posted back home to Europe, she commissioned this reminder of exotic locations for her office wall.

What’s a spirit house?

Although most Thais are Buddhists, animist and Hindu elements are very strong influences in everyday life. Thais believe each plot of land has its own spirit of the place and so to placate the spirit whose land they have built on, when Thais build a house or shop or office block, they also build a house for the spirit of the place. These houses are tended daily with offerings of food and drink, colourful flower garlands and sweet-smelling incense.

A solo version of this spirit house is in our gallery.

www.zingpictures.com/zp/gallery

Afghanistan in pictures

2006-11-02T09:42:00.001+01:00

Oh, dear. This is blog eat blog. I'm passing on a recommendation from someone else's blog. It's good stuff though.

Alerted by Sunday Times Foreign correspondent Christina Lamb’s blog, where she wrote about a day out with her son, I followed her link to The National Army Museum in London where I found a superb digest of the history of British wars in Afghanistan, complete with then- (19^th century) - and now photographs, drawings and paintings.

The Great Game continues. Learn more at:

http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/exhibitions/afghanistan/index.shtml

The National Army Museum also has a superb picture library which they show case as a slideshow.

They describe the collection like this: “people, places, weapons, medals, uniforms, equipment, topography – from two world wars, Britain’s nineteenth century global empire, and four centuries of British India.”

It’s atmospheric and sometimes witty, with the slideshow format juxtaposing historical and contemporary images. Again, as in the online exhibit on Afghanistan, ‘fine art’ on show beside superb photo-journalism.

http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/pictureLibrary/

Now all I have to do is take my own advice and find time to read the whole thing through, not just look at the pictures.

Nit Nurse as Muse.

2006-11-01T10:55:00.000+01:00

At least once a year when the children were younger, the school sent home a note about the inevitability of head lice. So we would wash and comb and scream and shout as the tiny nit comb was scraped across the scalp. I only wish I’d known then what I know now; I would have felt so much more positive about inflicting such pain on my long-locked, tangle-prone daughters if I’d only known that searching for and dealing with head lice has been validated, glorified, even immortalised in art.

It turns out that the Dutch were particularly fond of the nit comb as a symbol of moral rectitude and physical beauty. Engravings and paintings from the 17th century with titles such as It Purifies and Decorates (1614, Roemer Visscher), Looking for Head Lice (1653, Gerard Ter Borch) and The Toilet (Michiel Sweerts) show mothers patiently searching their children’s hair, in a literal and metaphorical depiction of the mother’s duty to rid her family of impurity, corporeal as well as spiritual.
And so thus legitimised in my quest for cleanliness at least, I can – having hopefully, passed the wee beastie stage in my children’s development, - tackle its current equivalent, the weekly wrangle over the bedroom tidy up, with renewed vigour, maybe even zeal. Gerard Ter Borch’s painting Looking for Head Lice is at the Dutch Mauritshuis Museum. The museum’s home page is http://www.mauritshuis.nl/index.aspx?Chapterid=2295 Use their search facility to see the painting.