Literacy

Despite himself, Oz had a good time at Port Eliot. When I explained that we were going to a Literary Festival he exploded,

"No way am I going to a LiteraCy Festival. It will be just like school."

It was interesting. Great to be out in a field, but I felt a bit odd - so much 'festival-ness' has become too generic. A bit going through the motions. There were many lovely people there. It was fun, even though we were astonishing in our propensity to arrive at every tent just as an act was closing...But where's the element of surprise and randomness gone?

The real reason to blog about it - I feel old.

Festivals played such a part of the past 20 years of my life that I worry about my state of cynicysm. I'm more used to being here but that' all changed beyond recognition. Tidied up and sanitised. Eeew. Despite a last min desire to go this year, I know I'd just look around and mourn the halycon days of the past. Not that I want to deny anyone the fun I had, but I do know, they won't know what they missed.

Half the fun was always climbing over the fence, and the best party was always in the travellers field...

I spent about five or six years working at a bundle of other smaller festivals that are now much bigger.

Am I just becoming part of a sad generation. Castle Morton, free partys... Am I just one of the many who is still looking for the party, even tho I might just be too old, too cynical to even enjoy it when I got there? Nature abhors a vacum, so there must be the same old same old going on somewhere? Yes? No?

I don't know.

Perhaps it's time I just took a big sigh and admitted that I should just raise my hands gently in surrender and enjoy, literacy...

Yesterday

Three things of note occurred yesterday.

1) Tink decided to talk to me again, after we fell out over her walking around with a small bird in her mouth.

She then promptly went and caught a small mouse.

What does she think she is? A cat or something?

2) I ran in the 'Mum's race' at Oz's sportsday.

I was barefoot - realised I was clearly unprepared when I saw the serious contenders in trainers and taking a 'proper' starters line stance. When the race started I got elbowed in the face by a proper 'runner' and nearly stopped, in astonishment. But I ran. I did not fall over. I did not finish last (in fact I was faster than my roll-uphabbit might lead people to believe).

I only ran cos Oz asked me to. When I asked if he was happy I'd run he didn't believe that I was in it as he hadn't seen me. Had to get one of his friends to 'prove' it. I'd even removed my faux fur leopard print coat so that I didn't show him up, and he didn't see me, let alone cheer...

Next year, I'm going to win. So 'deal with it' all triainer-wearing-elbow-pushers.

3) I finished Act One.

This last point is clearly the only one of real significance. However, it does lead to...

TODAY.

Act Two.
Oh.

Once

upon a time, as all good stories start, there was a girl who realised that it was easier to bend like a tree than to be rigid. Probably some Chinese proverb said that first, but never mind. Yes, it's easier to move and flex and change, because then things can never quite catch up with you and you can dodge other things that might be hurtling straight towards you, particularly those things thrown by other people. It took a long, long time to discover this trick, but, once she had found it life seemed much easier and much more full of laughter.

So, she learned to become rather like a lump of clay or playdoh. Not quite as poetic sounding as a tree, but it still worked. And, in clay form she was able to just about dodge and trick herself away from too much of her past ever quite catching up, or too much from anyone else being able to stick about for too long. You know, the kind of things that others often try to jettison from their own waste disposal units onto the world around them. She also managed to keep a little less of the stuff from her own waste disposal landing too heavily on anyone else. Things seemed to be going along just about fine. After years and years of being the one who seemed to attract bizarre amounts of 'stuff' and to crumble and crack at the first sign of trouble, she finally got what some stories call 'a bit of peace'.

The trouble with clay, is that you have to keep it wet, but not too wet or else it will simply become sludge. The bigger trouble, of course, is that tears are made of water. The salty kind.

Now it came to pass that there were just too many tears about. On top of that it rained and rained and rained, for days and days and days. Oh oh.

But our heroine figured a way to trick the too many tears and too many rainy days in summer. So she managed to find a patch of sun. Look at me now she thought. I can dry myself out and get strong again. So she did.

It was a bit harder, as the new shape was kind of fixed. But it was just about OK, if a little unwieldy compared to the flex and flow she'd found before.

But the problem? Ah yes, the problem. Now she was all died out into this strong shape, was the danger of stuff landing on top - it builds and builds and builds. There will come a time when the littlest bit of fluff, the littlest word, the littlest thing, will tip the balance. Crack.

Crack and crumble, and there you go. All broken up into a million little pieces.

At last

At last I can blog again.

Apparently I had some 'invalid html' [painful] so everytime I've tried to go to new post the 'nice' blogspot in the sky booted me back out again.

Feel quite smug to have fixed my html all by myself. Three weeks of frustration, and then I remembered. Doh, can't blog on an Apple. Mr Firefox has fixed me up.