Results tagged “art” from Looking Up

This weekend, I got to tick another box on the 'Bumper List Of Unusual Experiences.'

It was quite tricky finding the box marked 'Played tennis in Trafalgar Square', hidden as it was between 'Pickled a jar of ants eggs' and 'Pleated home-made kilt'. Some say it is pointless keeping such a list, but as I demonstrated on Saturday, you never know what opportunities life may present.

The event was the Liberty Festival 2010, an annual event in Trafalgar Square which celebrates all aspects of disability arts. Sadly, the event suffers from a real lack of publicity, as can be seen with a quick web-search. The top hit is a hotel group website that announces,
"The Liberty Festival provides deaf and disabled people a golden platform to expose their instinctive talent in front of British people."

Though we sadly lacked a 'golden platform', I took part in the event as a part of the Wheelpower presence. We were there to demonstrate wheelchair sport as part of the wider move to publicise disability sport ahead of the Paralympics in 2012. It was great to play a a little 2 on 2 basketball, which reminded me of the fun to be had with the sport. I have great intentions of joining the training with my local team, should I ever get around to it.

Following the basketball, we attempted to demonstrate wheelchair tennis in a space that was 10 meters square. With a small net and transition balls in an attempt to reduce injuries among the crowd, we ran through some drills and got some of the kids in the crowd to have a go in a sports wheelchair. Luckily I only walloped one person (who was part of the staff) when we tried to demonstrate the service action. The rest of the event passed off peacefully and the response from onlookers was really positive. I felt proud, having 'exposed my instinctive talent in front of British people.'

An exciting extra dimension to the Wheelpower contribution was provided by Rachel Gadsden, who set about capturing the event in dramatic style on a huge canvass in front of the National Gallery. The coming together of art and sport in this way was really inspiring, and has led me to add a number of other boxes to my Bumper List...

You, dear reader may never have seen our house. So in order to better help you add your own mental pictures to this mental drivel, I thought I might include a wee picture. With this in mind, I asked R to get busy with her pens, and she has knocked up this handy, helpful diagram:

I must confess I was very concerned when R came back from nursery a couple of weeks ago professing to having, "A secret."

She went on to tell us that she saw two men fighting by a building.
"One man hit the other man and it was on the other side of the street by a window and it's a secret and I mustn't say anything because it's my secret."

P and I looked at each other aghast. After R was in bed, we tried to unpick the 'secret', but we were puzzled. Had someone been taking R to see some bare knuckle fighting?  Had there been an altercation in the street when she was in nursery? Or at the nursery itself? Maybe they are secretly hothousing the children into martial arts? Creating a gang of tiny Ninja assassins disguised as toddlers...

Well, today the mystery was solved. The secret bit was just R trying to grasp the concept of a secret after a reference in a children's book. Obviously she's as crap as her dad at keeping secrets, because she insisted on telling us repeatedly that she had a secret and then what the secret was.

And the men fighting? A picture of some boxing on the window of the bookies we go past on the way to the nursery.
I shudder to think what 'secrets' she's been blurting out at nursery. No doubt Social Services will be kicking our door down any time soon.

I was kidding myself. Delusional. I honestly thought that me, collector of ailments and virtuoso of the gentle, pitiful moan, that this time I would not succumb, despite R and P both going down with it.

And it's real, 100% guaranteed influenza. I know this not because I have been snogging geese, but rather that my temperature today has been up around the 40c mark.

Sadly, the extra bonus symptom that I have to contend with when I have a fever is a sensation akin to having knitting needles driven into my thighs every few minutes. Coincidentally, P has taken up knitting, which makes me a little suspicious. But that is mainly the combination of the fever, the heady mix of various pharmaceuticals and a lack of sleep last night. I actually started hallucinating this afternoon.Sadly it was all rather mundane, peripheral vision a bit wobbly as I sat Buddha-like, cross legged and wearing virtually nothing. At one point I imagined myself to be sitting atop a mountain. But then the phone rang, and there was an audible 'pop!' as my revery was replaced by someone asking if my name was Nisnad, or Nangtod or something.I became very confused. Maybe that too was an hallucination, but of an auditory kind.

Luckily I didn't receive any guests, as I'm sure I must have looked shocking.

That was until R came back from nursery and blew raspberries on my tummy. Surely that's the way to reach enlightenment. I began to imagine monasteries full of Buddhist monks blowing raspberries on each other's tummies. There could even be a surprise hit CD in it, too. Well, if the Gregorian/Benedictine mob can do it... Although I'm sure producing a very strong liqueur must have helped them break down Monastic inhibitions.

Sorry for all this drivel. I'm going to stop now and chase a sleeping tablet into bed.
I leave you with R's insghtful portrait of me. Kind of sums it all up, really.

Just finished an interesting book. It came up in conversation two weeks ago, and I hadn't heard of it...

It's called The Homemaker by Dorothy Canfield. The book tells the story of a mother of three who is a desperately unhappy housewife. She spends her time obsessively cleaning and intimidating the children while her husband works as an accountant who has no hope of promotion and spends the day thinking about poetry.

Anyhow, he falls off neighbour's roof and breaks his back leaving him paraplegic. She goes out to work, he stays at home and looks after the kids, etc. OK, so I've rather brutally filleted the story, there is a bit more to it than that. But what makes it really stand out is that The Homemaker was written in 1924. In that context, there is as much emphasis on the shock of the married mother going out to work as there is on the shock of the father's accident.

It also made an interesting read as R started nursery last week. Oh, they grow up so fast/where has the time gone/seems like only yesterday etc.

One thing that children do provide is more of a sense of time passing. Having lost count (a little) of time passed since I broke my back, the fact that R was born four months later rather means that I can see how far I've come. These moments of reflection usually start with me thinking of her and end up being all about me. Isn't it always?

But time passing since my accident needs to be acknowledged every so often. How far I've come. How accomplished my wheelchair skills are. How I still stubbornly refuse help and end up upside down in people's hallways (sorry Gabby!). How much fitter I am. The hills I can now push up. And, inevitably, how much pain has become a part of everyday life.

That last one is depressing most of the time, although there is a slight upside, which is that on a good day I can congratulate myself on dealing with it so well. On a bad day I berate myself for being so spineless (ho ho) and not just going under the knife to get that sucka sliced and diced once and for all (See previous entry, if you're at all puzzled).

Still, how did we get on to that again? Never mind.

I am also throwing the odd brush at canvas again for the first time in 5 years. I'm not sure where I'm headed, but it's good to be taking that particular journey again. We are planning another open studio at the end of the month.  So I'd better get a move on. I can't sit here all day and night writing this rubbish, so be off with yer. Go on, shoo!

The weekend Open Studio event drew to a close yesterday with a set by Cambridge-based band Delphi playing in the yard. The great and the good of Stoke Newington society turned out in numbers, and it was nice to catch up with a few people we haven't seen in a while. But what's the work that you've been showing? I hear me ask. Well, there's a website for the studio that gives you an idea of what we're about, but I have taken the liberty of shoe-horning in a few out of focus snaps taken in haste.