I'm trying to lose my new best friend.

   I'm trying to lose a cold at the moment and being a typical man that means lying on the sofa watching TV to the very early hours and wearing the same sweatshirt for several days on end. Yes I know, you're as surprised as me to learn that after taking these surefire measures I still haven't managed to shift it.
    My flatmate woke me up at 4 this morning to see if I was alright. Slightly puzzled by this, I asked why wake me at 4 in the morning? "well I hadn't heard you coughing for a couple of hours, so thought I'd check". I'm still confused over that one.
   We had a blue sky here for the first time in an age.So I decided to get out for a walk in the fresh air. Unfortunately the "fresh air" was freezing and while I was wrapped up warm. Parka, furry hood, long scarf and gloves this didn't protect my lungs from the cold air and all that breathing left my chest aching. The blue of the sky was so clean and fresh, with the odd white fluffy cloud to add a little depth and contrast. After my recent visits to various galleries I wondered what the artists I'd admired would make of it? Turner, Soutine, Monet and Cotman all agreed it was indeed a wonderful shade of blue but it was bloody cold, so please could we all go and have a warm drink. We all traipsed  home, me and my imaginary artist friends, they arguing the merits of brush stroke over palate knife. Me stuck at the back with my cold for company.

Onwards and upwards in pursuit of fulfillment and happyness :-) 

I'm feeling ok about not being ok :-)

   More of that later.At the weekend a friend and I strolled along the Portobello Road Market. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular market. It's a street market held on Saturdays. It sells a mixture of things, food, fashion and Antiques. for the rest of the week it's just a pretty ordinary general market. It's situated in  Notting Hill Gate, West London It's popular with tourists and locals and gets very busy but with the snow this weekend there were less people and more opportunity to see stuff. I like the clothes and the people watching but most of all it's the antiques and collectables I really like looking at. There was some interesting bits and pieces which fired the imagination, something that hasn't happened for a while. I need to get out more don't I  :-)

   OK back to todays title. First let me say. My being not ok, is more a case of getting over frustrations with relatively small things. Lets say something happens, I forget my keys for instance. They'll be no one home when I get back. No problem, I'll work a little later, pop into the pub on the way home and read a book and enjoy a pint. No big deal. So why then do I  spend the rest of the day chewing over this :-) and I shouldn't smile here. It just make me more mad. I mentioned this to my old mum and she said it would make her mad too and then went on and on about it for 20 minutes. I'm starting to think I don't suffer from the blues at all, it's just "inherited madness" that I have. However there is light at the end of the tunnel. I've come round to accepting I get mad at stupid stuff, or I get stupid mad at stuff.and now I'm learning to be OK with it and I'm hoping, accepting it is the beginning of dealing with it. There, said it, lets move on.
   On and off over the last year and very much in the last three months I have been very focused on me. My problems and feelings. Now is the time to get some balance. It's time to look outwards and be interested in others again. That's not to say I've been ignoring people but I have come to notice that there are times when I'm waiting for someone to finish so I can say something. That's not good. The bills aren't getting paid fast enough either. So I need to put the hours in and get paid for those jobs quicker. I've now got my daily list thing into a useful format for me, so that should help things along as well.

    Finally I miss MissG, she's crept into my thoughts a bit lately. The relationship wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't balanced so it's all for the best but I wanted to write it down today. So it's here when I look back over these posts.

Onwards and upwards in the pursuit of fulfillment and happyness :-)

Pictures and secrets

   I went to Dulwich Picture Gallery on Saturday. It has been holding a small exhibition of an English artist, John Sell Cotman. I saw this picture on a poster. Now I'm no expert but I do enjoy looking at pictures and it reminded me, of the early stuff the Impressionests were knocking out around the 1870's. It also has a slightly cartoon look about it. To give you some idea I've included a painting by Sisley below, from around 1870 and a Tintin cartoon from about 1959. So I was a little surprised to find out Cotman died in 1842 (1782-1842) and the picture on the right was painted around 1812. The exhibition mostly concentrated on Cotman's drawing and painting trips around Normandy, France. The same places the later Impressionests would visit. Dulwich Gallery is fairly small but an important landmark in the Art World. It's the oldest public gallery in England (1817).
     Cotman was good buddies with William Turner. The blurb on the walls next to the paintings hint at both painters having a big influence on each others work and development of their own particular styles. It also suggests that Turner came to Cotman's aid later in life when work and money started to get a little scarce. It was a wonderful couple of hours and I learned a lot. If Cotman wasn't totally happy with the view in front of him, he'd draw or paint it the way he'd like it to be.                                                                                  

The cliff and rocks in Cotman's picture are a case in point. They didn't look like this. Their angle was different but Cotman decided it made for a more interesting composition his way. I've been delving a little deeper into Cotman's life and came across a chap called Laurence Binyon (1869-1943). Binyon was a poet (a very good one) a dramatist and art scholar. Now while he was the keeper of the nations watercolours or some such arcane post, during the mid 1930's, he wrote a book  In it he stated that "Modernism" wasn't a habit of the French but Cotman was leading the way and flying the flag for the Brits some 50 years before. I must admit that it did make me smile to think that someone with an actual background in art had come to the same conclusion as me. I must try my hand at a bit of poetry and the odd play :-)

   Gareth Thomas (right) isn't a painter he's a former Welsh rugby star. Who hid from everyone (well almost everyone) that he was gay, for a whole 20 years. Firstly, what a shame someone should have to keep such a secret for such a long time. Secondly, he's not exactly a little fella, I'd like to meet the fool daft enough to call him names to his face.
   We look across the oceans to the intolerance of others, towards people's religious and sexual preferences etc etc but still it exists within our own communities ??? what a shame we're so crap at something so easy as understanding and tolerance.
   Well that's enough from me for now. I'm off for a walk in the snow (does it bring out the child in you as it does in me ???)

Onwards and upwards in the pursuit of fulfillment and happyness    

Goodbye 2012 Hello 2013.

   New Year was a restful time, not too much thinking or reflecting just rest and fresh air.
   So now a short reappraisal of 2012. It was probably the worst of my recent years but not the unhappiest. The lows all provided insights  What did Churchill say. Something like "It's always darkest just before the day dawns".
   I guess 2012 was the year I listened a bit more, not just to others but my inner voice too.  
   I learned there are right and wrong times to discuss certain subjects (mystic customer no.1). Other ways Dyslexia affects ones life (mystic customer no.2) and I started to find ways of not letting my mood drift from light to dark
   I spent 2012 being too easily swayed and spent too much time measuring myself against others. The sway bit I have no answer for, yet. Measuring myself against others however stops now. We are all individual, our circumstances are different. So comparison is pointless, time consuming and lets face it, more often than not we choose to compare when we are down and they are up.
   2013 has a better ring to it than 2012. So no New Years resolutions, I only need to smile one more time than last year, earn one more pound and make one less mistake for it to be a better year. I plan to do more than that though :-)

Onwards and upwards in the pursuit of fulfillment and happyness :-)))))    .