Ma Barking

Saw Ma. She is very well, apart from gashes on both her legs, one of them very bad. She is walking, and talking, but will be in hospital for at least the weekend and some days. I did not talk to any medical staff but from from what she said to me, and my brother as well, it seems that she needs a skin graft, and there is also a danger of thrombosis.

It is strange being in this house when empty but for me; although there is also the budgie, which I am trying to teach to say: I want a shag!; because that clearly is the thought that fills most of his waking hours; proved by my mother’s claim that she has to clean his sticky squirtings off the plastic budgie she put in (against my advice).

So everything is up in the air, and for all of the family for different reasons.

In the short term it could be a chance for me to get work done. Tomorrow I will try and get stuff sent to the listings organisations about Walburgas. I also need to make a start on the Walburgas card. After that I could do some decorating, and try and start on a website.

In the longer term it should be a chance to change some of our mother’s habits. Nothing like tagging or installing cctv and a loudspeaker so she can be shouted at when she starts something daft and dangerous (Step away from the ladder!), but I may use that as a threat.

 

Ma update

I am writing, and hopefully posting, this on a train. The first time I have done so. The reason being that WiFi is free on Grand Central.

Ma seems OK, although I will not be seeing her until tomorrow. Hopefully I will then be able to get an opinion as to how long she will be in hospital, and what aftercare she will need. Until we get that almost all plans, apart from the Walburgas show on the 25th Feb., are on hold.

Having said that I will definitely be signing off in a fortnight to start on the New Enterprise Allowance scheme. It could be a big change for the better, but even if it is only more of the same I will be able to respond to changes and opportunities without having to worry about threats from the dole.

It has just started hailing, so has the train. I am sat under an icy air conditioning draft.

As for me: I am waking up during the night and having to work out where I actually am.

 

Wild pensioner in hospital, again.

I am trying to link this page to the Walburgas Day page so the first paragraph is experimental. If I cannot then it makes my life even more awkward than wordpress.com already does by not having message or paypal code facilities.

http://walburgashow.wordpress.com

Walburgas Day page

Journey back was nice and relaxed, and had a chat with Jessica who is studying the poetry of Canada and Australia (who was surprised that Banjo Patterson was friendly with Rudyard Kipling) and a bloke who knew Lea Green (Blackheath’s pikey neighbour, where I once tried to do a show).

I was back for a few hours when I got a call from mother’s GP saying she had tripped and cut her leg (I bet it was on the bloody trolley I should have destroyed like I promised here the last time she ripped her leg on it).

She was sent to East Surrey hospital trolley park. No danger but she will need plastic surgery on the tear. Basil was near by and held the fort despite having a full plate himself. I could have set off straight away and got down after midnight but it would have cost in many ways.

I am sorting my tax return. I did it once yesterday and discovered I had done the wrong year! I am also trying to make sure I am not caught out when I sign off, which might be tomorrow.

So another trip down soon. Bev is also busy with things in her family. Strange times.

 

Catch up

The info about Walburgas is below this blog.

This cold is a right Librium of a dose. Sleeping on sleeps. No sneezing or fever, almost no coughing, and other functions normal or better, but still totally koshed.

The journey to London on Tuesday (was it ? I cannot for the minute work it out) was on Grand Central, which actually had a train this time. The frost was deep enough to make some of the fields look like they had had snow. Spent most of the journey talking to Mike, ex-army, ex-express dairies, who was full of interesting stories.

Got the train to Farringdon. I called at the Betsey Trotwood but also did a lot of walking around for a possible Little Britton Festival (celebrating Thomas Britton the musical coalman of Clerkenwell Green) linked to the London Festival of Architecture (LFA).

Quite a lot has changed in Clerkenwell since my last Festival there, but I still have access to one of the posterboards, and also have some kudos from what I did before.

I also am getting the feeling that the Walburgas Show may fill up, seeing the capacity is fairly small. I talked to a gloriously mad bloke called Geoff, or perhaps Jeff who was getting excited at the prospect of see my show. He even offered me a drink, which I had to turn down to get to the meeting at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

My last Little Britton Festival was loosely attached to the 2008 LFA, and I have been getting mails ever since. This meeting was only really an introduction and outline, but being there may make a massive difference. I announced I was looking for help with bringing Hat Throwing to London, and have been offered opportunity.

The bar at the event was selling small bottles of beer for £4.60.

Went to the Masons Arms (which I had found out about in the lift up to the event) with Chris, Louanne and their barge owning mate.

Then back to Kings Cross to use the cheap Thameslink ticket I had bought the day before, only to find that I had to get a replacement bus to London Bridge. I helped a Russian from St. Petersburg (f.k.a Leningrad) called Alexander, which is a coincidence as my uncle Alexander spent time firing Finnish artillery shells at Leningrad during the last world war. We spent the trip talking, or I spent the trip talking, about the history of the places the bus passed, which is mostly of whores and stumpets.

On the train at London Bridge a bloke got on, use the toilet, and got off. As I said to the lass behind me, it showed good thinking. That served as an intro. It turned out she was a sound engineer working on Ghost. She knew about the hardware shop I blogged about a few weeks ago, and took a flyer and promised to put it up on the theatre corkboard.

 

Quick

I have been ill. Yesterday I slept for probably 20 hours. Will catch up with stuff soon. Will be getting New Enterprise Allowance, and my reaching a much higher level with hat throwing.

 

This is still Tuesday 17th in my world

Looong day. Met lots of nice people. Spent many hours in London. Clerkenwell and Portland Place. Will try to fill in about it tomorrow, which will be today.

Walburgas &c will be at this URL soon, but not today/yesterday.

 

Blog changes

For about a year now this blog has been where I have been directing traffic wanting www.bradwan.com and www.bradwan.co.uk. That will change in a day or two.

Anyone typing in the above two URLs, or using a link that uses either, will arrive at another wordpress blog I have set up for the Walburgas show. If you want this blog instead you will need the URL http://bradwan.wordpress.com/ .

This will last until probably the end of February, or my URL’s may go to a new site altogether, it depends on whether I can put message and paypal buttons on a wordpress.com site; and how much time I can make.

 

Testing frozen laundry

My ma also says that the best smelling laundry is laundry that has been hung out to dry and then freezes, and I am sure I have heard elsewhere that it will then dry very quickly.

I have been doing a massive amount of washing and ironing today and yesterday. I deliberately left some out overnight in a very hard frost.

Sure enough it was all frozen this morning. Trouble is that my garden is surrounded and this time of year the washing line only gets the sun for 40 minutes in the afternoon.

The experiment failed. Maybe everything was too wet; maybe it needs direct sun to sublimate the ice, or maybe it is just not true. When I finally brought yesterday’s in it was damper than what had been hung out this morning, and this morning’s smelled better.

 

Walburgas 12 flyer test

I have done a very quick flyer for my next Walburgas Day Show. I intend doing a ‘artyer’ one for a meeting of arts professionals next week. Trouble is that I only have Appleworks draw and gimp. The former is basic and I am not up to speed with the latter, so this may have to be it.

 

Sun rise, sulphur set

At Three Bridges station this morning I would have seen the sun peep above the horizon if it had not been for a narrow cloud band at the horizon.

The 07.34 to Bedford is not a bad train for St Pancras/Kings Cross. It does not stop at London Bridge which means I can usually get a seat, and while it is very slow going past Crystal Palace it gets in with plenty of time for the 09.15 train to Nottingham which forms the first part of the Megabus route to Bradford.

The coach from East Mildands Parkway was not full but poor otherwise. It was going via Huddersfield and Halifax for a start, which was no surprise, but the fact the heating was full on was, suggesting the passenger heater was being used to cool the engine, and the sun was shining. The M1 was blocked at Barnsley but the drive knew this and came off early and we came down Denby Dale, which I enjoyed. The child crying or talking very loudly was less fun.

I had already decided to get off at Halifax for a beer and then make my own way home by bus, but got off at Huddersfield instead, where I finally made it to the Sportsman Bar after many recommendations.

The Sportsman is a great boozer, and Hannah the barmaid is a treasure. She is studying stage and costume design in London so I told her all about Walburgas in the hope she may come and see it.

The only thing I would say against the place is that some of the beers they brew in the cellar are perhaps too sulphurous. A few famous beers from Burtons had this taste in the old days, and I do not mind it, but given time the effect of today’s was explosives, even by my standards!

As a note on travel costs for my own reference. An anytime single from Three Bridges to St Pancras using only Thameslink is £12 odd (as opposed to £16 for a ‘London Terminus via any permitted’; or the £20 the machine at Farringdon last Thursday claimed was the cost of a single to Three Bridges from there, despite it being closer than St Pancras!).

The Megasbus ticket was £1.50. So £14 is the minimum fare between me and my ma; although it is rare I can get Megabus so cheap.