annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Art and dad Here I go again, trying my best to stay afloat. Today I was allowed to drive again - or at least I assume I was/am. I was told four weeks ago to not drive for four weeks and that the stroke clinic would give me all the details. No word from the stroke clinic, but no repetition of stroke-like symptoms, so fuck it, I drove to Brighton for acupuncture and we all survived. If you read this last time, how does it work with the pronouns changed? If you didn't see it before, what do you think? Thank you Stairs We recorded them all, the written pieces, me and Daughter, in the evening when it was dark. I sat in front of a white wall, wearing black clothes and she sat in front of a black curtain, wearing white clothes. When we spoke we turned our light on, shining on us from the side. When we finished each piece we turned it off and sat in darkness till our next turn. She's going to edit it and make it mega-fabulicious and I'll try and make a link for when it's done. The next project I am involved with is for the mental health charity Mind, which has bought up my Tuesday Recovery Centre and is having a fundraising/awareness raising week sometime soon called Moving Minds and we're making kites with art work or written work on them. Most for a pop-up gallery in the town but also some that we hope will be flight-worthy and the plan is to fly them off the beach at a low tide and film it. I made my first one today and it came out all wonky, but that's OK. I've had my windows full of paintings for The Great Big Art Exhibition, which is a national thing of putting paintings in your windows so people can see them, as the galleries are all closed, but I'll replace them with kites when I've made enough, and the big poster about it. I feel I'll have to make quite a few before I get one that will stay together in even the gentlest of winds, but you never know. I haven't flown a kite since the day before my dad died. I'd been on the rec near my house flying a kite with the kids, and dad came round to drop off some veg from his allotment. Spring cabbage with holes on the outer leaves, muddy-as-fuck celery and tomatoes. You had to clean his veg really well if you didn't want to find caterpillars and worse in your dinner. When we were kids, if we found a creature in our food mum always said, "Shut up or they'll all want one," which wasn't quite the response we wanted. Anyway, as I came round the corner I could see his bike propped against the lamp-post and he was just coming back out of my driveway. He stopped by my car and asked if I'd been cleaning it - I hadn't, of course I hadn't, but it had been raining very hard that morning, so we had a laugh about that, the very idea of me cleaning anything - it was cool, no subtext of disapproval, just acceptance that this is who I am. The kids told him about the kite and we all went off to our dinners. The next morning he took his dog for a walk along the beach, came home, ate his breakfast and went out the back to sort out his runner beans - collecting the seeds from the pods he'd saved, to sow the next year. Mum thought it had been very quiet so went out and found him dead on the floor, surrounded by beans. He was a nice man and I still miss him sometimes. I'm glad he didn't see me have my big breakdown and lose the plot so loudly, comprehensively and publicly, though maybe it would have been different if he'd still been there. I'm glad he never knew Sammie got MS and that my brother got MND and they both died so young. But he missed Grandson, and he'd have liked him. Three Good Things Keep safe xxx 11:43 p.m. - 29.03.21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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