August 24th: Spent most of the day in Cornwall, Ontario, visiting an old uni friend of Wally's, Henry. He and his wife Bev made us very welcome, filled us with barbecue and home-made wine, and told the girls to make sure they go there again before they leave Canada. Henry is a Mohawk Elder and has lots of interesting stories, some of them involving 6-day-old meat pies in Huntly. Yes, that Huntly. It's Pride Week here, and we're marching tomorrow. Wish I'd brought something more colourful to wear. If only I'd known...

August 23rd: A lovely sunny day at the Agricultural Museum and Arboretum (sheep! goats! horses! pigs! cows in stalls!) including personal encounters with a miniature Sicilian donkey (cute!) and a turkey (not so cute!), and lots of squirrels imitating Scrat. Followed by the most entertaining open mic. ever. Highlights: a retired opera singer singing 'Summertime' while accompanying himself on guitar; several pretty good performance poets; lots of singers who can actually sing (not always a given); one who sang so quietly to himself that the MC turned up the mic and we were treated to bonus feedback; same singer followed up with 'Que Sera Sera', to which we joined i the chorus (as you do); at least 4 short stories; a young man channelling Nona Simone and Beyonce in a rather fine falsetto voice; bongos; a rhythm-challenged man with a tambourine. I wasn't quite sure what decade I was in. My poems were greeted with blank expressions and polite applause (just like when I read at Thirsty Dog, so at least I'm used to it), though they said they liked my accent. I was 17th of 25 performers , and only the second woman, of three.

August 22nd: So it's hot and humid in Ottawa. Met at the airport at 11.30pm by my girls in t-shirts, shorts and jandals, which is a LOT less than I was wearing. It rained today so not so bad for a while. Bought a mountain of groceries and then went to the local version of Savemart (thrift shop, for my international friends) and only bought 2 things, and I needed them, honestly. And since I just offloaded a year's supply of Marmite, scorched almonds, Whittakers chocolate, and mallowpuffs, plus a single loaf of Vogels, there's space in my return luggage. Post script: what I bought were a fancy jacket made of all different fabrics - my favourite style - and a ridiculously heavy (what was I thinking?) but really gorgeous raincoat that will keep out the worst Wellington can throw at me next winter. Bright yellow, with comfy royal blue fleecy lining.

Rats.

Still struggling to come up with an idea for the next poem. It's about a rat, and none of the free rat images I have access to really works, I can't find a photo of one in my own collection, and I'm damned if I'll try to draw one. The art books are much more visual than I need, but I'll keep at it. Sooner, rather than later, an idea will form. I think I need a new technique to try out, rather than a specific image, so I'll try some other books I haven't looked through yet.

Falling behind - again

It's been over a week since I last worked on the book. By the end of the 2 plus weeks that Kyle was here, I was going quietly crazy with his sniffing and the constant presence of the PS3. By Tuesday last week I was ready to burn the house down with him in it, but he moved out to his new flat on Wednesday and took Sylvia with him. It took the rest of the week to regain my equilibrium and then it was the holiday weekend, and then my birthday. On top of that I've been raising a baby quail, now 4 days old and still not strong enough to be independent in the aviary, so still needing half-hourly visits through the day. All excuses aside, I haven't a clue how to work with the next poem, so I'm going to spend some time leafing through some art books tonight, for inspiration. Watch this space.

PS I actually like Kyle very much, and am very happy he's with Sylvia. She's laughing a lot more than she ever did with the last boyfriend.

Tough week ...

... dealing with mental health issues. On the plus side, I had a great evening with Helen Rickerby, confronting InDesign. Haven't completed a page all week, but I did a preliminary design for the cover of the print book (thanks Helen) and had a recce at PrintStop to see how much it was going to cost to print. Ridiculously manageable.

And, thanks to having sent out some submissions earlier this month when I was in an energetic getting-things-done phase, I have 3 poems in Shotglass Journal #6, on an internet near you soon.

Back to the Bach Remedies, and normal service will be resumed in due course.

Learning stuff

Bum. Turns out gel pens aren't waterproof. I wrote over the text of my blue poem, as planned, and it looked awesome. Then I moved on to the next poem page overleaf. The painted surface needed touching up, and I managed to find the right colour amongst my collection of test pots (Resene Moulin Rouge), but I was careless (what's new) and let it go over the edge to the previous page. No biggie - it's quite hard not to do that - and I knew I just needed to dab at it with a wet cloth to lift it off while it was still wet. And I figured that it added to the texture of the page's backgound anyway. Unfortunately, the wetness spread to the gel text and smudged it rather badly.

I patted at the smudgy blue with a dry Chux and that prevented it from spreading too badly, but then of course the writing was faded and a bit blurred, so I had to go over the affected parts again. Interesting effect: now the text has different intensities of blue, which I quite like!

I've added a page warning at the top that the page isn't waterproof. It seemed sensible. I thought about spraying it with a fixative, but the one I have is meant for charcoal and pastels and I don't have a sample of the appropriate surface that I can test it on. So I'll just leave it be, I think.

Tomorrow I'm going out in the afternoon, so work will be interrupted. I'll try and get back into it in the evening, but Friday night's got some good tele, so I might not get back to it until Saturday. The weather forecast for the weekend is a bit scrappy, so I won't mind being inside.