“I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.”

Leo F. Buscaglia and me both.

Yesterday I was deliriously happy. For weeks now, I've been meaning to go up into the roof space above our shower room. There, we had put some of the children's toys and also my precious teddy and donkey (a soft toy, not a real one!) given to me when I was born and loved to bits.

We have been having a lot of trouble with mice in the larder, lately. (real ones, not soft toys!)

 Each time I thought about looking in the roof space, I lost my nerve, fearful that my lovely animals would be shredded and, then, so would my heart.

 A leak in the shower meant Peter went up there to see if he could locate the offending pipe.

Joy of joys! The mice were living in the toy farm! The bag of soft toys, miraculously, was untouched and so was Donkey...

and so was Tessie Bear

and I was SOOOOOO happy.

It reminded me of the song by Sigur Ros which absolutely sums up how I want to grow old.

Watch it and smile!

"What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor."

Allow me to translate, for my British readers - you know - the ones who can spell.

Humor = humour

Someone called  Bern Williams is attributed with the quote. I think he is probably NOT the Puerto Rican baseball player but that's about the best I can do.

Anyway - there was something on the news last night which really appealed to my sense of the ridiculous - and made Peter boil with a sense of outrage...

An artist in Liverpool (of COURSE it's in Liverpool!) put out huge blank sheets of musical manuscript paper on the ground in parks...

...and waited for pigeons to ...errrm...poo on it.

Then, composer, Jon Hering, used the markings to create a 20-minute musical score.

The result, called 'Bird Sheet Music' is to be performed by an orchestra at the Tate Liverpool today!

I love it!

I haven't heard the music - but I love the crazy inventiveness of her mind.

WE NEED MORE OF IT IN THE WORLD!

Although, having said that...

“The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.”

 The resigned and cynical view of snow, from e.e.cummings...

 The magical. joyful view, from Lewis Carroll:
 
“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.”

Now, just guess which one I share...

Yaay, let's all have a good roll in it, like the horses!

Such fun!

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them."

 "I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

I can always count on Mark Twain to make me smile!

Feedback on one's work is sometimes hard to take. Partly because the feedback doesn't very often dwell on the bits that the reviewers like (if any) but only the bits that they want to chew up and spit out...and also because it can show a very limited understanding of what one is (I am!) trying to achieve...

So I've written, following the brief (I think) a quite poignant and gritty drama. I get this feedback: "There is not much humour in it. We think it should start with a joke."

 Oh how I laughed!

But I'm a professional writer. I can take it. I can rewrite according to their wishes.

I'd hate to think that my skull was in danger of being beaten with my own shin bone...

Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.

I wonder if Sinclair Lewis (American novelist) had horses?

The very same thought about winter was running through my head this morning as I broke the ice on no fewer than seven water tanks across the fields and wondered why I'd chosen to wear fingerless gloves.

The ice was the result of a very heavy overnight frost, not even any snow.

(Please note, I am not AT ALL complaining. With two of my boys living in Canada, the cold season in Sussex is just a pathetic excuse for winter.)

I know how lucky I am.

Beautiful animals. Beautiful scenery.

And beautiful weather!

As Robert Byrne says “Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours.”

Good old nature.

Life is a journey. Choose well those with whom you travel.

An adapted version of something that someone called Lorraine Heath once wrote.(Don't ask. There aren't enough hours in the day...)

By Walter David Pullen

Sometimes, you don't choose but it just happens. More of my synchronicity.

Let me check WAAAAAAAAY back in my blogs...

Yes, Monday, December 12th, 2011. (You need to look at this blog...) (and then click the back arrow on your tool bar to come back here!)

Daria Kudla (look at more of her fantastic work here people) and I have been virtual friends from that day. I bought, from her, a print of my favourite picture. It has pride of place on my stairwell wall.

Last night, we met (actually not virtually) for the first time, since she's moved from Berlin to London - though it didn't feel as though it was the first time.

Following my serendipitous talk with the animator the day before, I handed her the wolf story - working title...(changes by the minute)...Little Red Riding Hood and the Granny Confusion...and she likes it and asks 'How do you want me to illustrate it?'

I'm so honoured.

I've chosen well!

“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic"

"...the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we're alone.”

by Fran J Scott

Me and someone called Charles de Lint, Dutch fantasy writer, think the same.

So - at the moment one of my commitments is to stop doing the idiotic thing I do. Moi? Do idiotic things? Surely not?

Believe me, I do PLENTY of idiotic things. One of them is to write scripts and stories which are well-reviewed and then I don't anything about getting them out there.

Why?

Fear. Of rejection.

ANYWAY, I have a number of animation scripts. Last night at my Living Powerfully seminar (oooh, more irony!) a guy sat next to me whom I'd seen around but not conversed with, as far as I can remember. Certainly not for ages.

He was telling me about a breakthrough he'd had at work.

"What IS your work?" I asked.

"I'm creative director of a company that specialises in digital storytelling and animations."

I laugh and say, jokingly, "Oh, I'll have to send you some of my animation scripts then!"

I wait for his expression to shrivel.

He smiles. "Oh, please do. We're always looking for new ideas. Here's my e-mail address."

SEE!

Carolyn North