Welcome to 2018. (Yes I know it’s been underway a while. I was giving it all time to make sure it was actually the new year happening, and not just 2017 in a loop.) As you will notice, the website has had a bit of a refurb. Hopefully you like what you see.
A change that may not be quite so obvious is that I’ve added an enrolment page to the workshops menu – called Current Classes, it will be updated with a contact form whenever I have a new class open, so that people who want to sign up can do so. It even has its own QR code, which I’ll add to posters and so on – scan the code with your smartphone and it will open that page in your web browser. I’ve also done an overhaul of the Workshops page to streamline things a bit, and make it easier to find the information you need.
I’ve added a couple of new Poem Commentaries – Rhian Gallagher’s lovely poem The Walnut Tree, and Karen Zelas’ In Camera. My plan is to add commentaries more often – given that I do them all the time anyway (not least in every Reading for Writing class) it seems silly not to. Not entire sure how to balance those with my usual blog-waffle about poems that I fall in love with, which I do enjoy doing. Never mind, it will sort itself out eventually. I hope.
But for any of this to happen, I need to do some writing. Which may be where my plans fall over. As I type, there are men in high-vis vests and hard hats re-errecting scaffolding around me. (Not just me personally. Christmas wasn’t that bad.) My little house has just begun the process of being reroofed, which is exciting and terrifying and stressful all at the same time. Not least because this is the scafolders’ fourth attempt to put the scaffolding in the right places – only some of this is down to the house’s quirkiness. Our roofer has been quite inventive in his language regarding the job(s) so far. Perhaps scaffolders and roofers are natural enemies, out in the wild? Not sure if one is predator and one prey, or if it’s more a case of two different creatures that occupy the same evolutionary niche, and are therefore in regular conflict, if not outright competition. (I’m aware that this places me – or possibly the house – in the role of prey … )
Anyway, when it’s all over I will either have an amazingly warm, dry, well-insulated and freshly painted house, or an invitation to model a very fetching Camisole de Force whilest sojourning in Hillmorton.
A Dark Feathered Art 