Sorry to keep going on about it but I am now the proud owner of Vashti Bunyan's new album 'Lookaftering', and it is soooooo beautiful, it washes over you like a mountain spring that has been warmed in the heat of the summer sun, honestly, you can practically smell the pine forest when you hear it!

Happy Halloween to my fellow bloggers! I adore Halloween, it's one of the oldest festivals known to man and it's always seemed very special to me. It's a time to think about loved ones that have passed on, as the veil in between this world and that of the dead is especially thin, also pay special attention to your dreams tonight as they could hold alot of symbolism as to what the coming year will hold for you (oh dear I'm sounding like Russell Grant!). I'll be celebrating tommorow night as I'm off to see a brilliant (and a little funny) psychedelic folk band called 'Circulus' with my best pal, we have a traditional halloween jaunt every year and it is always such fun! Every year I get too excited and carve a pumkin too early so that by Halloween it has gone all mouldy, this year was no exception but luckily I took this picture the other day so you can see it in it's full glory! Hope you all have a marvelously macabre and wonderfully insightfull Samhain!

I just read back my previous post and had to laugh, I'm not sure I got my point across very well. I'd try to explain myself a little better but it's far too late and I'm too tierd. I've got a busy day tommorow, in the evening I'm traveling to Chester to see my friend and celebrate her 31st birthday (and Halloween), so I'll be spending the day preparing, I'm going to cook a saag paneer, mmmmm, spinach and cheese curry, you can't beat it! Their just aren't enough hours in the day at the moment, could do with some time out to just sit and read, I've got about 5 books on the go and none of them seem to be getting read. I really want to go for a bike ride too, I need some country air, at least I should get some of that in Chester. Time for bed said zebedee! May you all have a wonderful weekend full of pumpkins and apples and treats without too many tricks.

I posted these pictures cause I think they are wonderful photographs. This one actually appeared in Vogue in the 1930's, so it's incredibly a head of it's time. The one I posted yesterday is of course the beautiful Jean Shrimpton (I like the anti-car stance, if I had even half the good looks of good old Jean I'd travel to work in the same manner, instead of cowering in the guttering on my bike!) One thing I did notice looking at these and more photos from Vogue from the 1920-1960's is that the women in them have such a strong image, amazing strength of personality comes across in the photos that you don't seem to get these days. I think that nowadays women are expected to look just how men want them to but are tricked into believing it's there own desision, though the media. We are just as repressed as we've always been only we are fooled into thinking otherwise, the intuitive, powerful nature of women is no longer nutured. Women are so obsessed with self image, (enough to have plastic surgery for christ sake) that they miss the point half the time! This has reminded me of one of my favourite jokes (it's only a favourite cause it's one I can actually remember.)
Q. Why do women wear make-up and perfume?
A. Because they are ugly and they smell.
That doesn't actually help my point but it's quite funny.

I just planted some snow drops in my backyard and I'm already getting too excited, I can't wait to see them come up. It will mean the winter is nearly over, a sign that it will soon be spring again, hurray! As I was planting them I also decided that when they grow so will my need to grow more! (if that makes sense) For along time I've been thinking about getting an allotment, as I really want to grow my own food, trouble is I have no idea where to start. I wanted to get my Dad involved as he doesn't get out the house much and he's an excellant gardener but for various reasons I don't think he'd agree, pity cause I think it'd do him good, but there you go. So really I just need to get my act together and do it myself, then hopefully get him involved at a later date. So anyway the plans is that when I see my snowdrops come up I will start to sort out getting an allotment , if they don't come up at all I shall leave it till next year. I've planted the seed now I just got to hope it will grow. I can be so bloody unmotivated sometimes and my plan probably sounds like I'm just putting things off again. But it's not, I have a book I carry pretty much everywhere and if I think of something I really want to do I like to write it down, then it's down on paper, it's official. Blogs are even better because you have witnesses too.
I've had an incredible urge to listen to Neil Young recently and Shooey just had a burst of psyhicness and put him on.
"Tell me why, is it hard to make arrangements with yourself
when you're old enough to repaint but young enough to sell"
I love that line, the first part is what I've been talking about I suppose. This song now reminds me of the Glastonbury festival last June as one night we were sat in the green field and we borrowed somebodys guitar, because they couldn't really play it, and we showed them how it was done, well thats how I remember it , I thought I was in the Mamas and Papas to be honest, but I was quite off it at the time! People were clapping to begin with but we just ended up clapping ourselves. It was such good fun though, I think it was the only taste I've ever had of performing!
I'm going to go now cause this is real rambling, I've had a hard day, that my excuse anyway!

I just wrote this poem! It's only really the first draft, well sort of the second as it taken from bits I wrote down while I was in the Lake District in the summer. It was the first time I'd been to the lakes and it really blew me away. Anyway I don't profess to be any great poet, I think my poems sound like they've been written by someone at primary school, but I enjoy writing them and I was excited about being inspired so had to post it up!

Conversations with trees, thorny leaves,
Clarity clinging to the morning like dew drops do,
Melodies fall into empty spaces,
Messiah stood atop highest hill.

Dreams of stealing from familiar houses,
Waking to the cuckoo's call,
Walking in the blue bell wood,
Dawn beside the waterfall.

Branching doorways of the grand old oak,
It's benevolent arms inviting me in,
Causing my heart to beat as fast,
As a hare, in moonlight, in early spring.

Greens and purples and pinks and browns
Turning golden and then back again,
Breezes sweeps through the Venus trees,
And through the hearts of men.

The shepherd guides his flock home,
Burn bright, the campfire, burn.
So fast the days go by for me,
So fast the seasons turn.

Moonpie

The following is an extract from 'Watership Down' by Richard Adams.

The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with it's light. We are not concious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us the natural condition of the earth and the air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as we think of a rabbit with it's fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take the daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls apon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable, flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself was ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech-woods at night. In moonlight two acres of coarse bent-grass, undulant and ankle-deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that even the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And it's low intensity - so much lower than daylight - makes us concious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvellous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again.
As the rabbits came up by the hole inside the beech-wood, a swift gust of wind passed through the leaves, checkering and dappling the ground beneath, stealing and giving light under the branches. They listened, but beyond the rustle of the leaves, there came from the open down outside no sound except the monotonous tremelo of a grasshopper warbler, far off in the grass.
'What a moon!' said Silver "Lets enjoy it while it's here"

I've posted it here as Richard Adams describes moonlight better than I ever can. Thankyou Richard.

Not sure if my information about the eclipse was totally accurate. I've spent the whole evening looking out for it but it just wasn't happening .I even persuaded a bunch of friends to go stand in a field in the dark for an hour and a half. Oh well, it didn't matter too much as it's a lovely warm evening and the moon is so bright you can see your moon shadow. I just had a lovely dinner, in fact a Sunday dinner no less, and on a Monday too! It's far too late and I really should be in bed, work was a real trial today as it was. I'm sending my love on out to Shoeshine as he is far away! Night night!

There is a lunar eclipse tonight according to the inconstant moon website. I'm not sure if it will be visible.

I just listened to excerpts of Vashti Bunyan's new album on her record label website and it sounds wonderful!

Go here to listen to it:
http://fat-cat.co.uk
There is also a great interview with her here:
http://www.furious.com/perfect/vashtibunyan.html
Just found this one too, at the end of the article there are some MP3's:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/10/13/derk.DTL

She has some fantastic people playing on the record, members of Espers, Vetiver, Devandra Banhart, Joanna Newsome and the Nick Drake sessions collaborator Robert Kirby. So pleased she's stayed quite true to the style of 'Diamond Day'. The production is beautiful too. I don't think Joe Boyd has had anything to do with it but the've definately captured the 'standing in the middle of a forest' sound! Some times life's so good to me!

I was just thinking it would be great if your blog could have music, like a soundtrack, then it would be more like being in a room, I like posting pictures because of this. It's like wallpaper or pictures you'd put on your wall.
If you do have music though, it would have to be dodgy cover versions that you've played yourself on your casio so you don't break the copywrite law. Actually I could do it on the recorder, that would be pleasant (I'm being sarcastic by the way my recorder playing hasn't really improved since I was at junior school even though I do like the odd toot! ) But if I could have a soundtrack (preferably the real version of the songs) I would have;
Meadow by Espers
Tom Courtenay by Yo la Tengo
Two Step by Low
Rose Hip November by Vashti Bunyan
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack
Bee Swing by Richard Thompson
Our Love Was by The Who
And Your Bird Can Sing by The Beatles
Come On Lets Go by Broadcast
Tam Lin by Fairport Convention
Shady Lane by Pavement
Gallows Pole by Led Zeppelin
Oh god I've got to stop this could just go on forever!

Luckily yesterday a good dose of the Small Faces played very loudly and an invite from my friend to go and eat lamb caserole was all I needed to cheer up!
The pictures above are by an artist I only discovered this afternoon. They are by the daughter of one of my heros, Vashti Bunyan. I was just checking out her website as she has a new album out on the 17th October, her first in 35 years! The painting of the hare is on the front cover and there is a link to one of her daughters exhibitions (here: http://www.portal-gallery.com ) her name is Whyn Lewis. I think her work is lovely, slightly out of my price range though! If you've never heard of Vashti Bunyan follow the link on my blog she has such a great story, it makes you want to take off in a gipsy caravan, although I keep thinking it might be too dangerous these days and that a barge would be better, she's certainly an inspiration anyway. Glad to see her creative streak runs in the family.
Happy John Peel day!

Goodness me, I feel so miserable today. I've been feeling totally uninspired, I haven't posted for nearly a week. Had two extemely late nights at the weekend, going to bed at dawn for two nights running doesn't usually effect me so much, I think it's cause I can handle it in the summer as I have so much more energy however it has very nearly done me in this week. And today is so grey, I just feel tierd and depressed.
My tree has started turning yellow today too (I say my tree, it isn't actually mine, it's a large Oak I pass everyday) yesterday I saw it and I proudly remarked to myself how green and strong it was still looking, today it has small patches of yellow leaves, it'll still hold onto them for a while yet but it is giving in to the draw of winter and that makes me sad. I said I wasn't going to let winter get me down this year, my plan was to learn how to meditation and sit in a beautiful green field inside my head until spring comes. I haven't learn't meditation though, I don't know where to start and when I feel like this I don't feel inspired enough to learn. I just want to sleep. Then even my dreams seem to be exhausting at the moment. I've started to read 'Man and his Symbols' by Carl Jung which is really interesting but I found myself trying to analyse my dreams while I'm still asleep!
Oh woe is me! I really should try and shake myself out of it, I only need to watch the news to see how lucky I am. The awful things people go through, my heart goes out to the people who have lost there families and friends in the earthquake in Pakistan. And my boyfriend has just read 'The Railway Man' by Eric Lomax, it's a true story about a japanese prisoner of war, even the brief outline of the story he gave me choked me up. The strength the human spirit, through the most terrible circumstances, is just astonishing. And here I am moaning cause the weather is a bit crap, it's ridiculous. I'm going to go home now play some music loudly have a good sing, possibly a dance and shake this melancholy (hopefully!)

Below are pictures of a Victorian graveyard I pass everyday on the way to work. Almost everyday when I go passed I just want to bunk off work and go and sit amongst the graves. I get spellbound by the place. It is so beautiful, particularily when sun is shining, it seems alive, like all the trees having taken on the spirits of the dead buried there. On some rainy days ,like yesterday morning, it gets shrouded in mist and dew drips from the ivy and it looks so mysterious and macabre. Sometimes it looks straight out of a Hammer horror. It makes me wonder about life and death, and nature, and trees and all the things I like to think about, it makes me want to become a poet, instead of going to work but I enjoy that little flash of inspiration in the morning it puts me in a good mood for the day.
This cemetery also has added mystery for me, as I remember my grandad, when I was little girl pointing it out and saying 'Your great great grandad is buried in there' now really this is very doubtful as I come from a long line of peasants and gipsies, and I've mentioned it to my dad and he'd never heard it before and my cousin did our family tree and there was definately no one rich enough. However the family tree revealed that my great grandad was a bastard (the single parent sort) there was no fathers name on his birth certificate and that my great great grandma gave a false name presumingly because it was such an awful thing then. My cousin didn't go any further back on this side, I think because my grandad was a complete bastard (the arsehole kind) and they didn't really care too much where he came from. But to this day I wonder if what he said to me was true, maybe he knew who his grandfather was and he entrusted me with the information. I do like to romanticise things, even though the idea of some old mill owner or MP knocking up my great great grandma isn't particularly romantic, the idea that I have a relative buried in that grand old graveyard some how is.
The cemetery also has a wonderful view, well it would have been wonderful a hundred years ago, now its a little cluttered by industry and housing but you can see a good way never the less. At the moment they are building a visitors centre there and I'm not sure if I like that idea or not, diggers make me nervous but I think they are just building on part that was cemented over anyway. I'm keeping an eye on the trees too, they did trim a few but I don't think they've cut any down.(Does anyone know of a job where I chain myself to trees to stop them being cut down, I think I'd be good at it) I really hope they don't ruin it, it is a special place.

P.S As it is National Poetry day I was going to write a poem about the singer songwriter James Blunt but I thought better of it, as I don't want to offend anyone.
P.P.S Started reading Watership Down for the first time and I think it's already my favourite book ever.

Whence did the won'drous
mystic art arrive,
Of painting speech, and
Speaking to the eyes?
That we by tracing magic
lines are taught,
How to embody and to
colour thought?

(from 'The medium is the massage' by Marshall
McLuhan & Quentin Fiore)

'Land of the Dead' was pretty pants, (read my Sunday blog if that seems like a bizarre statement) I should have read the reviews before hand then I probably wouldn't have had such high hopes for it. It was reasonably entertaining and it did make me turn my head and exclaim 'oh my god' quite involuntarily at one point, it involved zombie fingernails but I won't give it away cause it's probably the best bit. ( I Still want a zombie party though!)
Still finding my feet with this blogging thing, I'm trying really hard not to delete any of my posts, but it's been very tempting. I think it cause I'm a Gemini, a dual personality, I can never quite decide on anything in particular (one side of me doesn't even believe in astrolgy) and when I read my blog part of me just wants to delete it, but I've stopped myself cause it's part of the fun. Feeling a little lonely out here in blogland though. My boyfriend was in a chatroom once and everybody was just ignoring him, so he kept saying 'hands up who like me' they just carried on ignoring him, it's sort of been an on going joke ever since, kind of feeling like that. Still getting adverts too, does everybody else get these? Oh well can't complain at least the only message I do have is from Pete Townshend!
I watched Don't look now' last night, now there is a good scary movie! Julie Christie's charismatic personality really comes across in all the roles I've seen her, she's really lovely, pity there aren't more female role models like Julie, she quite a one off really. It's a bloody great film though and HMV are selling it for 2.99 at the moment. ( Oh dear I'm advertising things now.)

The picture below is by Remedios Varo I only discovered her recently when somebody brought some postcards of her work in to where I work to be laminated. A lucky discovery I think! I still don't know much about her other than she was a spanish surrealist who married a surrealist poet and escaped the war in 1942 by moving to Mexico where she did most of her work untill she died in 1963. Her work is full of symbolism showing an interest in dreams and jungian heroism as well as in science, feminity and the occult. She sounds really interesting but I can't particularly find any other information on the internet about her. I really love her work, and its not my usual sort of thing but it's got something magical about it. I particularly like this one, wonder if it is her representation of the 'music of the spheres' also seems to have associations with the 'language of the birds'. You can see more of her work at http://temida.free.ngo.pl/varo1.htm

Solar Music by Remedios Varo

My friend was telling me the other day that she was out in her garden watching a squirrel, she's very fond of wildlife and feeds any creature that so happen to cross her garden. The squirrel was busily burying a conker, then all of a sudden it stopped perfectly still, it eyed her nervously out of the corner of it's eye and began digging up the conker and ran away with it.
Today I went out into the countryside to find mushrooms but instead found beer, some kids had obviously been out camping in the woods and had made a right bloody mess so we proceeded to tidy up and in doing so came across some bottles of beer! We didn't find any mushrooms but I did read an interesting book on them in the car and learn't that many of them have names like 'dryads saddle' (this one attachs itself to trees) and 'fairy's club' I suppose these are the old 'folk' names for them. The English countryside is full of folklore, when you start looking for it, in the names of flowers, trees, mushrooms, place names.
I just watched 'Dawn of the Dead' as this evening we are off to see 'The Land of the Dead' at the cinema with some fellow zombie fans. (God thats so nerdy). I love zombie films especially George Romero's films, a good bit of social commentry. My local shopping centre looks like a scene from 'Dawn of the Dead' every Saturday. The only complaint I do have about D.O.D is that the make-up job on the zombies is appauling, my boyfriend and I did a much better job last year at Halloween as a zombie bride and groom, well we scared our friend's dog and ourselves a few times when we looked in the mirror. I would love to be a zombie extra, it looks so much fun. We've been talking about having a party where everyone has to get zombied up, I could get some great film footage from it and Halloween is coming! Off to cinema anyway, going to give myself nightmares!

The following are quotes from people who have heard music during a N.D.E.

"And the whole garden was singing. The flowers, grass, trees, and other plants filled this place with glorious tones and rhythms and melodies"

"And then I heard the MUSIC. It was a tone so sublimely perfect that remembering it still brings me to tears. I knew then, and know now, that I was hearing the symphony of angels, the song of the universe, what some have called the Music of the Spheres. All thoughts melted in its melody and everything else ceased to be of any importance. I closed my eyes and began to dance, moving to the resonant vibration that coursed through my essence. The melody seemed to issue from a single point and was composed of one verse, a song whose mystical tone my entire being knew and sang. I bathed in its melody as utter joy filled my being, and as the sound washed over my spirit, I felt all confusion purged from my consciousness..."

 " This time we were audience to a choir of angels singing. Angels were totally outside my reality at the time, yet somehow I knew these beautiful beings to be angelic. They sang the most lovely and extraordinary music I had ever heard. They were identical, each equally beautiful. "

Go to the webpage http://www.near-death.com/experiences/research29.html to read more.
Pete also descibes it in the 3rd part of his story 'The Boy who heard music'

‘I heard it in the air, between the stars and the trees.’

‘It was sometimes like singing, sometimes like grand orchestras playing Beethoven’s symphonies. It was always very beautiful.’