Plinth

picture from here

Plinth is such a good word.

Trafalgar Square in London has 4 plinthes, one at each corner. Or is that plinths? And can I be bothered to check?

3 of the plinths (I didn't check, its just my instinct) are occupied by 2 generals and a monarch, but the 4th has always been empty and has been the subject of much discussion over the past 10 years or more.

Since about the turn of the century the plinth has been used as a temporary exhibition space.

I really liked Mark Wallinger's statue of Christ "Ecce homo", though I don't know if it would have such impact in a different context. Well, different context different impact maybe. But in Trafalgar Square I thought it was impressive. It was such a small statue (life-sized) in relation to the hugeness of the Square with Nelson's unfeasible column towering above, and the immense lions and military figures. And it was so quiet and still amidst the hustle and busyness of London. Its silent and understated presence effortlessly threw into question the oversized celebration of British power and militarism.

It was impressive almost through being un-impressive.

I also really liked Marc Quinn's statue of Alison Lapper - beautiful, maternal and also disabled like - but also very unlike - Nelson. Another statue which worked so well in this particular context.

So....the current project on the 4th plinth was dreamed up by the wonderful Anthony Gormley, possibly most well known for his Angel of the North.

For 100 days members of the British public (or anyone living in the UK) can apply for the opportunity to spend an hour on the plinth. Doing whatever they like. Anything within the limits of what is lawful. A living portrait of the UK.

You can watch what is going on - Look here. As I write this, there is a woman sat there who appears to be setting up a teddy bear's picnic. She's reading a book to them.

There have been people singing or playing music. People sitting reading a book, or blowing bubbles. One man sat and made and dispatched dozens of paper airplanes. Another took a canvas and spent the hour painting his view.

And so it was that last night, on my way to meet a friend for an evening at the theatre, I saw a womble being delivered up onto the plinth for his hour of glory.

Click here for more info. on the Wombles of Wimbledon common.

And keep watching this blog...... my name has gone into the draw to get a place on the plinth in September or October. Its about a one in ten chance.

I used to be shy and retiring. I sometimes hardly know myself these days.

ghosts

This face-in-a-wall is just down the road from where I live and it reminds me of two ghostly things.

Firstly, it reminds me of a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper published in 1891.

The narrator has been confined to a yellow room which she hates, in an isolated country house where she has been taken as a "rest cure" for her "mental fragility". Denied contact with family, friends, even her baby - and denied the chance to work at her writing - she begins to see movement under the wallpaper, a figure writhing around the room.
"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit."

A woman, trapped under the yellow, creeping like the women who creep around in the garden outside. Were they ghosts? or were they figments and symptoms of her growing madness?

Its a great story which you can read here, based on the writer's own experience of being prescribed a "rest cure" for her post-natal depression. It was a critique of the way Victorian women were treated as hysterical and unstable because of their biology. She sent a copy to the leading doctor who had pioneered this treatment and though he never replied to her, he did actually change his practice after reading the story.

Which also reminds me of Gaslight, what a great film, with similar themes of haunting and female madness.

Secondly, thinking of ghosts and creepy women reminds me of a night when as a child I was sleeping in my sister's room and woke to see the figure of a woman, standing motionless in the doorway. Her hair up, in a bun maybe, her arms crossed in front of her. Not my mother. Not anyone I knew. No one who belonged in our house. She didn't respond to my whisper. She simply stood.

My sister, sleeping the sleep of the unhaunted, would not stir.

The woman standing there would not stir or speak.

My terrified whispered calls to my mother must have become quite loud in the end. I recall the agony of needing to cry for help but not wanting to attract the attention of this silent, still but threatening figure.

After an interminable period of fear, my mother appeared and, pushing open the door, revealed the ghostly figure to be a dressing gown hung on the doo

I can still feel and remember my frozen panic.

a Thursday Theme post

I'm really wanting to be a more regular blogger and have so little time and head-space at the moment..... its frustrating.

So here is Logan, I hope he will provide some entertainment while I try to make time and clear head-space.

Pre-cat flap. Nowadays he can come in and out at will. But doesn't he look svelte in this picture?


but not so svelte in this one...

hmmmm, is there something interesting in here?

now there is!

funky...

... dillo

At least in my view, this is a funky dillo.

We have a lot of armadillos in our house. None of them real, you understand.... it just became a bit of a "thing" for a while.

In my early blogging days, I used to post a dillo a day, just for a while. Though I'm not sure I ever got through them all.

We have little armadillos and larger ones. Cuddly, hand-made, ceramic, flowery, tiny and cute and slightly weird...

I think I posted once about the origins of the armadillo theme... hang on, if I can find it, I'll link to it here.

But this one - this is the funkiest of them all.

changing seasons

The question is, is this a Christmas cactus or an Easter cactus?

I can't remember when I bought it or the "season" when it is "supposed" to flower. A friend told me a few years ago that cactuses flower much more prolifically if they are put outside in the summer, and so I duly put mine - some Christmas, some Easter - outside in the garden. What I neglected to do was to bring them inside again last autumn.

This one survived our unusually cold winter - a little battered and forlorn. But look at it now! It has become a Summer cactus.

Is it flowering from the sheer exuberance of being still alive, despite its winter trauma? is it trying to remind me of its existence to avoid future neglect? Or maybe it was too worn out to flower at Easter and this is a deferred unseasonal glory.

I have also been feeling the sheer exuberance of being alive after prolonged stress of various life-changing kinds. It feels like a change of season which I've felt hints and warm breaths of for some time amidst the storms, but which is finally flowering and settling.

My work trauma seems to be sorted out. I'll not, after all, be leaving the University but I'll be moving into a new area of work supporting students through transition into higher education and helping students with a history of failure. This is an unexpected change in direction and I'm hugely relieved to be leaving my School within the university and taking on something different. I'd never have expected such change at this stage in my life, but I'm really welcoming it - especially at this stage in my life. Change is good.

Its not a guaranteed long-term future, but its promising. And its quite enough for now. I am now looking forward to the start of term in September, rather than dreading it.

M is leaving the University for good and following up a recent new work opportunity and theres some uncertainty and financial anxiety - he'd not ever have chosen such radical change, but he's also welcoming it.

ch-ch-changes...

And made4aid is still new and exciting and I have no doubt that a big part of why I acted on my 'good idea' [rather than just mentally shelving it] was because of the antidote it offered to stress at work. Far better to think about made4aid at 4am in the morning than to be worrying at the intractable sticking-in-the-throat mangey old bone of work-misery.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3

We had an extreme and extremely unseasonal storm yesterday afternoon.

It broke rudely into our blazing June, hurling gobbets of ice which ricocheted around like frozen popcorn.

And afterwards the air smelled and felt clear and wonderful.