The First 1 1/2 weeks...

THE TRIP

Sept. 14th 6pm Vancouver time, to Sept. 15th 11:05am local time and then staying up until 8:30pm local time to try to ‘adjust’.... I left on Friday the 14th surrounded by a glow of good will, best wishes and all the farewells. The community support and going away parties were lovely, terrific, touching and made me not want to leave !

*It was a long uneventful plane ride (thankfully the man trying to smoke unlit cigarettes in the airport by hyperventilating through the rolled tobacco product who was threatening to ignite his lighter if someone didn’t tell him where he could smoke was NOT seated beside me. I didn’t stick around to see if the RCMP were going to let him onto the plane.)


*And I got through security without having my overweight carry on bags weighed –doing my best to mime ‘this is really light, it’s not ripping my shoulder off at all!’ & ‘ignore the blood and the shoulder blade on the floor!’ *I sat beside a nice older woman returning home to Manchester who wanted to sleep most of the time and only ate fruit during the 9 hour plane trip. *none of my baggage got lost, just a little hole-ier


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MANCHESTER
Sept. 17 (warning –still in a bit of a jet-lag, sleep-deprived daze!)


My mind is amazed, not just at the differences, but of the sameness of it all.

There are places where I could be anywhere in the world that has embraced the character erasing neon packaging of capitalism….


“Another load of bunff!” old uncle Jim declares of the mail just shoved through his doorway which lands with a loud splat on the floor. I am in my Great, Great Uncle Jim’s 12 foot wide, 42 foot deep, two story, side by each brick house.

It is so similar to all the other brick houses built up in circles upon circles upon circles that I am a-feared to wander out by myself that I should get lost in the homogeneity of it all Brick, brick, brick…. I’ve never seen so much brick. There are no wooden homes. I rather like the brick. It’s solid and fireproof and feels very permanent.

Even the new homes look like the old homes and so a foundation of visual culture is established. Brick is King. I have ‘slept’ upstairs for two nights now… we are near to the airport take-off runways. The turbulence created by the planes is so intense that the airport will pay to have the slate and clay tile roofs replaced on a regular basis!

The window-rattling proximity of the planes, so low that the wheels are still down as they blast overhead have lead to some interesting dreams! I don’t need an alarm clock, the 6:45 quadruple launch pattern works quite efficiently.

I am surrounded by blue and white doilies with old china figurines carefully placed, probably purchased by my great aunt Irene and kept in place by my great uncle Jim… Lovely Irene has been dead for 14 years now,The last time I saw Jim and Irene was 15 years ago

There’s only a few roses left in the neat dirt planting border that is meticulously weeded, but unplanted.

It’s hard to imagine that all this time since I last saw them that Jim has gone on alone, all on his own in his tidy house he has had for over 45 years. The place he raised his children. Beside the airport he spent his whole life working at, with the planes that made him deaf. Life is so short, but there can be so much to endure in that brevity that a lifetime surely can feel like an eternity There is something about being in the home of an 85 year old that the sense of how time can slow down once more, when there is all the time in the world to eat tea and toast. Will I accept the peace of my end days?

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I got to meet 'Nana' on her 96th birthday!!!!

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I may ramble a bit, (NO ! -REALLY????) after all I did not sleep much before my departure, I was too caught up in the work getting ready to go...

Currently I am on the getting to know the relatives leg of the journey, which is a strange middle part of the plan, an unorganized 6 days of possibilities, and attempting to get over jet-lag: a mysterious nagging ghost of an affliction. I’ve been preparing for Wales for so long now, as much as one may prepare for an unknown future. I can only hope that I have chosen wisely for myself once I am there and that in reaching for what I have wished for that I have chosen wisely.

Glossy brochures really are just that. School really is school. I hope that the marking is reasonable and that I am as enthralled to be in school as I was at Emily Carr, I’m sure I will be just as jaded at some points, but hopefully, overall, just as happy.

In leaving Bowen Island I was overwhelmed by the amount of support I received from the community. Not just the well-wishing, and the cards….it was extraordinary how much support I got, but all the people I know well, know a little and who know me but I’m not sure what there names are, although their faces are familiar… waving and well-wishing me as I went around and about Bowen… all the hugs and excitement for me, and those who were jealous and wishing that they could do something similar.


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MANCHESTER
Sept. 20th

so.... hold off the painting pants! I don't need them mailed to me! After I couldn't find any thrift-store pants that were inspirational enough to paint in, I decided to make a quick quilt for my bed (well, you know me ...) I went to a thrift store and they sold me a bag of rags meant for the ragman for 1 pound (but I wasn't allowed to see what was in the bag until after I dragged the 45 pound garbage bag home) (hoping it wouldn't be filled with PINK! (or orange or yellow or pastels, or weird prints –not that I am picky!-) It was mostly denims... and I found a perfect pair of painting pants, a pair of snow-pants, a pair of light sports pants that fit perfectly!I managed to operate Uncle Jim's electric sewing machine -an ALFA from 1952 that hadn't been used for 20-30 years.

I oiled it, put a new drive band on it and wheee.... for half an hour and then I blew the house circuitry twice and the third time I got it going again the machine itself blew up in a puff of black smoke with a loud pop! Uncle Jim was all right about it, as I told him, at least it had a good gallop around the field before going out with a bang! I finished the quilt at Uncle Kev's and Helen's on a newer, reliable Singer sewing machine.

I'm fine and things are progressing in their own slightly unscheduled way and I'm trying to just let the days entertain themselves and not worry about scheduling things -as soon enough my schedule will be very busy! Everyone has been wonderful and generous with their time and everything else -I may be kitted out with a full set of second hand items before I even make it to a charity shop! Every time I mention going to one someone says -oh, I've got something like that, it's 2nd hand but you can use it!

I've been out of contact because I don't have my computer hooked up to the internet yet.

There's no available wireless service at Uncle Jim's. Tomorrow we may go into Manchester City... as mostly I've hung out at Uncle Jim's and poked around Styal and Wilmslow. I've figured out enough to be able to walk into Styal by myself and that the horses in the field will come running if you sing a bit of a tune... and discovered Gnome Corner. ...and I now await to see if the gnomes are going to write me back! I spent four and a half hours trekking around the ancient woods/parks by myself…

I followed the River Bollin and walked through Arthur’s Woods and over the Giant’s Castle Bridge. It’s after tourist time and I was on the ‘lesser used paths’ so I had the entire forest to myself –apart from the odd cow, sheep and 3 joggers.

In Arthur’s Woods, in a glade under massive old oak trees I bounced around on many layers created by hundreds of years of falling acorn shells. Grey squirrels (squizzles, my nephew Mattie calls them,) zipped around in the trees.) Don’t worry mother, my map reading skills have improved (not that signage is popular over here) and Uncle Kevin gave me Mattie’s old cellphone and stuck a pay as you go card in it, so I have a mobile in case of emergency.


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ABERYSTWYTH
Sept 26th Wed. 8:30am

IT’S AS BEAUTIFUL AS IN THE BROCHURES!!!!!!!!!!!


I finally have internet connection! The STUNET disk wouldn’t work until after registration which was yesterday.

I’m hanging out in my wee upper floor room… the ceiling is partially slanted owing to the pitch of the slate roof I am under. I have a small window that peeks out from under the eave that looks out over the sea so I can stand in the dormer and admire the horizon and the STUNNING VIEW!

My window is an old wood one on a weight and pulley system. I asked to be on the upper floor with a window view and was lucky enough to get what I asked for, (many of the rooms look at a hill, or worse, into another residential building!)

The four and a half flights of stairs will make me a stair-master by the end of the year!

It’s very romantic, in all variants of the word. The beauty, thrill and adventure of being in a new place is lightly shadowed by missing all that I have left behind, the job I loved, people I care for, my dog and my island… the cabin I built with the nice, big bed…

Student beds are only slightly smaller than the bed in a nun’s cell and I keep falling off in the middle of the night!

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Sept. 29th 2007

Just past the 2 week mark, of being in the UK, and almost at a full week of being in residence and it’s hard to believe that I haven’t been here for months.

Things are different here, yes they are.

After a week filled with induction meetings, information meetings, being driven mad by chasing all over town for bits of paper to sort banking out, NOT getting a studio space, being overwhelmed by Fresher week!

Last night I went to the Breton dancing evening (another type of folk dancing, less vigorous than Morris dancing, more like medieval dance,) at a church hall beside a 14th C. stone church up on the hill, on the map it looks as if there’s ONLY a church up there, I guess the school didn’t feel the need to put anything un-school related on their maps! Standing in the church archway comprised of over fifty tonnes of arched stone shaped like a massive koi's maw about to gulp one up is enough to make me feel something inspiring, even if a belief in God still isn't on the menu for me.

Nigel , a silver-streaked, black haired gentleman who was one of the event's organizers- was nice enough to give me and Ziggy a ride to the Aber Residences. Ziggy is a tall, blonde, black-denimed Celtic studies student from Germany who had the coordination of a 1 wheeled alley way shopping cart pushed down a cobble street. He was there to 'study' the Celticness of us, I guess. To be fair, he’d never danced before, but he also almost pulled my little finger off. During one dance my right hand and my left hand (the one on which the experienced dancer was) were doing completely different things so I felt like a manual turn crank with one person making coffee and the other grinding meat, instead of a folk dancer, which made me lose track of my feet altogether!

Oddly enough, many Breton dances involve linking pinky fingers. I thought perhaps it was some subtle form of eroticism allowed to them. Pinky fingers only on the first date?

We danced from 7pm-almost 11pm with one break for potluck nibblies.

Some of the dances were quite a bit of fun and I picked them upeasily, others challenged my sense of right and left and ability to follow directions so I alternated from grace to looking like a one-eyed lame pigeon trying to cross a Welsh road on foot...

Speaking of pigeons -2 of my flat mates have a sort of terror-revulsion of pigeons! There was talk of keeping water balloons around to throw at them (instead of the inebriated, indiscriminant defenestration that was occurring last night when I returned home !

I’ve never met anyone who disliked pigeons, I don’t mind them, many of them are larger than the local pigeons and have lovely markings.... Although one did fly into the kitchen yesterday... Pigeon Pot Pie anyone?

I keep dreaming of Bowen, and of course of being at Betty's farmhouse (I've had farmhouse dreams since I was a young child.) This time my dream of being at the farm house was set in the future, another woman was living there, but still I’m looking for something at Betty’s farmhouse in my dreams! This time there was a sale of only the saddest and most neglected leftover items of Betty’s and yet still I was still picking through them, looking for some connection to Betty, something that shouldn't be lost... and I was still walking about the place as though I own it.

Perhaps I dream forever of the farmhouse because I have never been in a place where I have felt so at home. The painting studio upstairs, the old funky house, the ability to walk to town or to friends, yet still feeling isolated enough in the fields and the woods… perhaps one day I can get my cabin to be a bit more like that. The living space WITH a studio space and more than one room. I don’t need too much, but I need a bit more than what I have at my cabin right now....

...and a bit more than I have in Wales as a student! But I am content to be a student for a year.

Fifty weeks until I come home! I am enjoying every moment of Aberystwyth, really soaking it up. I'm walking everyday, looking at EVERYTHING and LOVING it. But I don't think I'm going to fall in love with the place, not like I have with the island, or did with a certain special town on the East Coast.

It's a THRILL being here right now, but I don't think I'm going to be one of the people that try to stay here. It's a bit too city, and a bit too much like a university town... I hope to find more of the locals though... I'm planning to try the Welsh dancing and the Scottish dancing!!!

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: on my way to my first pilates class I saw Sam Wakeling on his 36" unicycle beginning his attempt at a Guinness World Record. For more info: http://www.aber.ac.uk/aberonline/en/archive/2007/09/uwa11707/

GO SAM GO! only 18hours left to go!

Right, back to my Art History homework now!!!

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