On the opening night of Barry Lewis’ Monsters exhibition 13 out of 40 pieces sold, which is pretty impressive. Sadly all the ones my hubla fell in love with went within moments, but I managed to get a red dot onto a rather lovely one of a pegasus, very similar to the horse of spoons, but with an elegant pair of fish-knife wings. I can’t wait till the end of Feb when I can take it home.

The exhibition gained loads of media attention, partly, I’d like to think, due to my press releases. I picked up a copy the Evening Post and found that one of the journalists had used paragraphs from my release word for word. Nice to know I’m making life so easy for them, but odd to see my words credited to someone else…

A selection of my words are also currently taking part in an art and poetry exhibition called Exploding Poetry. It’s being held at Bank Street Arts Centre, and is on the topic of women and warfare. I wrote short piece called Not War, Nor Peace, inspired by my time in Israel, and it got accepted! Love it when that happens – it almost makes all the rejections worthwhile.

Sabre tooth tiger by Barry Lewis

Last night’s preview of Barry Lewis’ Monsters exhibition was the most bubbling I’ve been to for a long while. I barely got to say hello to Barry as folks crowded round him, eager to meet the great creator of so many magical beasts. I’d seen countless photos of his work, but never come face to face with the animals until the event, and I was intrigued by how many I fell deeply in love with. No wonder red dots were springing up all over the room.

Sadly, Horse of Spoons, sold early on, as did my hubla’s favourite, Codzilla, a huge glimmering fishhead made of fish knives and other reclaimed materials.

There’s something about the combined elegance and unpretentiousness of the scultures that really appeals to all kinds of people, including those, like my hubla, who occasionally complain about not getting art. There’s a playfulness to the whole collection that’s hugely appealing, as people crowded round, identifying old coffee pots, forks, engine parts and gas canisters. It was like a version of Where’s Wally for grown ups.

The menagerie was populated by enough creatures to put Bristol Zoo to shame, with seagulls hovering overhead, gigantic scorpions, spiders and dragonflies, lobster, crabs and vast coppery fish, an alligator with a body woven from bike tyres, as well as more abstract works such as a heart made from spoons and a satellite dish - ideal for Valentine’s Day.

The one serious undercurrent running throughout is the message of reclaiming, restoring and recycling, the three R’s of our era. In taking other people’s rubbish and transforming it into art, Barry works magic on several levels. The animal-heads mounted on plaques  made from old table tops take this a step further, by poking fun at those who still believe hunting is a good, honourable hobby.

I’d rather have a sabre-tooth tiger made from cutlery on my wall than the head of a dehydrated, stuff dead animal any day, and the hordes of people at the Grant Bradley Gallery yesterday seemed to agree.

Horse of Spoons by Barry Lewis

The latest artist on my radar is Barry Lewis, a Welshman who trained as an engineer, worked as a carpenter, became an ice sculptor and finally put his passion for South Wales’ Rhondda Valley together with an eye for aesthetics to create his own, uniquely eco-friendly kind of art.

The result is an exhibition called Monster, which begins tomorrow at Bristol’s Grant Bradley Gallery. He describes his work as a means of letting “nature get its own back”, and meanders through the countryside, reclaiming parts of the rusting cars and bikes dumped in rivers and on mountainsides and transforming them into wonderfully peculiar beasties.

“Someone might chuck dump a bike on the hillside, then I’ll bring it home to pull apart and turn into a sculpture of some weird animal, making it into art and clearing up the countryside in the process. I use all kinds of things - some of my sculptures might include six types of metal, from a bit of stainless steel cutlery to an old petrol tank from a motorbike. A bit of metal might resemble a nose and the animal grows from there.”

The curious creatures range from immense scorpions to alligators – one of my favourites is a horse made entirely from junk-shop cutlery. There are also dragonflies with tea-strainers for eyes and a dragon made from an old car seat with fence-posts for teeth. The scale of some of them is immense – a true zoo of the bizarre.

Around forty of the recycled beasts are taking residence in the Grant Bradley Gallery for Barry’s Monsters exhibition. I can’t wait to see more of them for myself at the open preview tomorrow, and maybe even take a small one home, though my landlord might protest – there’s a no pets clause in our contract.

© Stock.xchng

Ah, Sunday. I do love Sundays. Even though my hubla is slogging away at work today, and I too have spent, oh, maybe an hour working this morning, there’s a gorgeous sense of relaxation hanging over me. Plus I have fun plans for later, which means I actually had a reason to get dressed before midday - hurrah!

It may seem slightly ridiculous (and possibly verging on disturbing) to celebrate having cause to change out of PJs on a Sunday, the one day when most people remain firmly glued to bed-wear, but as any freelance writer knows, when most of your week in spent inside with only a vase of white roses (aw, thanks, hubla!) for company, any activity involving leaving the house becomes a novelty.

Yesterday was very exciting because I had reason to leave the house not once, but twice, and not just to empty the recycling bin! The first time was to got to a lunchtime end-of-show party of my pet photographer’s art exhibition, and the second time was long after nightfall and involved cocktails and lengthy discussions about a friend’s torrid affair with a married man. So a good time was had by all (apart from, perhaps, the married man’s wife).

Today’s adventures involve meeting up with my entire immediate family sans hubla, and attending a local cheese fair. I’m not exactly sure what that entails, though I assume it will have more to do with sampling tiny cubes of locally reared cheeses than riding waltzers made from cheddar.

I’m slightly disappointed that it’s not a chocolate fair, rather than cheese, but, whatever, it’s a reason to go out, talking of which, I’d better go and surgically remove my slippers in order to don more outdoors-worthy footwear.

© Stock.xchng

As I get into the swing of the new year, I’m finding my week is naturally dividing itself into patterns, with two days devoted to creative writing, two days to the website and two days to sourcing and carrying out the freelance writing work that keeps a roof over my head.

Yes, that does add up to around six working days a week, but while I’m doing what I love, I really don’t care. Besides, some days that simply means logging on to check in on the forums (which are currently suspiciously quiet – where are you all?) and delete spam, while creative writing days can include long strolls and longer chats with like-minded people who inspire me.

This week has been particularly fruitful creatively, as I completed a short story yesterday, sent off an entry for a short story competition, submitted a short story to a literary magazine and sent off some query emails to agencies offering support to selective mutes, as the protagonist of one of my novels suffers from that particular social disorder.

Ooh, and then today I found out that a poem I entered for a creative writing competition run by Sense has been shortlisted, which is fab news!

The stipulation for the poem was that it had to be written from the point of view of someone who is both deaf and blind. It was an interesting challenge, but one that meant a lot for me as Diabetic Retinopathy is something that’s looming alarmingly on my horizon.

So I engaged all my other senses and wrote a poem about a deaf/blind person being taught about colours by their lover. I enjoyed the challenge, was pleased with the result, and am now tempted to go through some of my old short stories and see what happens if I remove one of the protagonists’ senses. It could alter the whole slant of the tale, which might utterly revitalise some of them.

So 2010 is looking (and sounding) good already. Now all I need to do is maintain the momentum…

Daniel's Arabian Nights pic

This Saturday I’m heading to the Grant Bradley Gallery in Bristol. There’s an interesting photography event happening there from 10am till 4pm, and while I’m too shy to take part, I’d love to see what unfolds.

The man behind it is Daniel Moncur-Sime, a photographer I’ve been doing a bit of PR work for recently. He has a background in commercial and fashion photography, and is now branching out into art, capturing exuberant explosions of movement and colour with the help of models with backgrounds in ballet.

This Saturday he’s putting out an open call to anyone who fancies a chance to become part of the show – all you need to do is turn up with an imaginative outfit (anything from a clown costume to a fabulous gown to, erm, your PJs) and be prepared to move around for the camera.

I think Daniel’s hoping for some grace and elegance, but he’ll be happy anything with a bit of energy behind it. Juggling, dancing, hop-scotch and Moonwalking will all be welcomed – I have a hula hoop anyone’s welcome to borrow. Just don’t make me take part. As a writer I’m there as a voyeur, not a performer!

As a writer I’ve been warned against making too much use of coincidence as a plot device. Early drafts of my stories and novels quite often have characters fortuitously coming across the one piece of information or meeting the one person they needed to move things forward.

I think it’s partly because I see my own life as a series of coincidences. I always have to make sure that in the next draft I make the main character more active, less wafty so that they choose events rather than events choosing them.

But in real life, coincidences often crop up in ways that would never work in a piece of fiction.

Take yesterday, for example. Yesterday afternoon I had the excitement of going to the diabetic clinic to be fitted with a blood testing monitor that will take continuous readings for three days and then, hopefully, present me with a graph to let me know what my body gets up to when I’m not paying attention. Could be interesting!

The weird thing was that while I was waiting for the diabetic specialist nurse to see me I could hear a baby crying and I thought to myself, How funny, all babies sound just like my nephew. I suppose all babies sound the same.

Then when I went into my appointment, the nurse said, “Did you know your sister’s here seeing the other nurse?”

So it was my nephew!

I managed to get linked up to the monitor in time to catch my sis before she left and we went for a coffee afterwards, which was nice as we hadn’t caught up since Christmas. I suppose there are some curious advantages to both of us having diabetes.

The nurse seemed surprised that I hadn’t known she’d be there, but we don’t often discuss such boring things as diabetic appointments, so even if I’d seen her yesterday we probably wouldn’t have known we’d be at the hospital at the same time today.

My plot-lines may have a propensity for swinging from one coincidence to another, but one thing I do know is dialogue, and we have much more interesting things to talk about than that, at least, most of the time.

© J Darley

Unexpectedly, I got my wish. After lamenting the end of the Christmas break and return to reality, snow sailed in and brought most of the UK to a halt.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but if I’d known at that moment that I was to have a wish granted I might have chosen something a bit grander, more life changing, such as, ooh, I don’t know, a nice fat book deal.

The snow has been rather remarkable though. We southerners quail at a few flakes, buses and trains are cancelled, minor roads closed while ambulances howl endlessly along the bigger roads.

I had plans for every night last week, and all but one failed to happen, one because the bus I needed to take to reach a birthday party was cancelled, one because a friend lost her nerve about venturing out onto the ice, another because another friend came down with a cold and lost her nerve. The one that did take place had no excuse not to, as my hubla and I went to the house of our next-door-neighbour-but-one (next-door is a glaciers) for dinner. Even then, I almost slipped and fell, and wore a woolly hat for the two-second journey.

My cousins in Colorado would laugh at so much fuss for a few inches of snow, but I think it’s all about what you’re used to, and, according to the news, to how much grit your council has on standby (not much, it seems).

In desperation, I’ve headed out each day, and lost myself for an hour in the vast Victorian cemetery up the road. It made seem like an eerie place to go, but for the resting place of so many generations of dead people, it boasts more life than any local park. At this time of year the basking adder is hiding away, but there are still plenty of birds flitting from headstone to headstone, and holly and ivy runs more rampantly than on any Christmas card.

In the snow the cemetery was even more impressive than usual, with stone angels sporting fluffy white highlights and tombs encased in glittering shrouds.

With schools closed many local kids were exploring the woods that grow across the cemetery, and as I wandered through one morning, two bobbies marched towards me, each hailing me cheerily. What on earth could they have been guarding there?

Being amongst wildlife always seems to bring out the friendliness in people. While we strike past each other stony faced on the streets, we nod, smile and say hello in parks and, in this case, cemeteries. It’s as though being surrounded by trees prompts inherited memories of earlier times when people really did greet every person they met.

So, 2010 has begun and with it the return to reality. I’m already missing the joyful limbo-days of Christmas. As a freelancer, it’s the only time of year when I feel truly in sync with the rest of the world, as regularly 9-5.30s are forgotten and hours are suddenly rudderless and whim-focused.

In fact, it was pure heaven, with daylight hours devoted to long country walks and dusk-onwards to lounging by my parents open fireplace, tap-tapping away at my first event theatre-script. The fact my parents don’t have wifi was an unexpected delight, setting me free to concentrate on fiction writing without the distractions of emails, twitter, facebook and, um, EssentialWriters.com.

Once I returned home, the internet did holler for attention once more, but even then, with most media offices closed until yesterday, there was little to disturb my happy creativity.

I also managed to make three trips to the cinema in little over a week, and saw three excellent, very different, films.

The first was Nowhere Boy, the John Lennon story which could have been about any young lad with dreams of being a rock star. Sam Taylor-Wood’s vision of John was both beautiful and very real, and while she steered clear of too much Beatle-mania, the hints of what was to come gave the story a hint of a rosy ending without the Hollywood sheen that could so easily have tarnished the whole affair.

The second film was Where the Wild Things Are, a raucous reimagining of the children’s book by Maurice Sendak. With Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze taking the few words provided bySendak and transforming it into a full-length screenplay, the evocative pictures I remember from my childhood took on life and emotions.

Max, played by the fabulously named Max Records, is a desperately unhappy child dealing with the break up of his family, who runs away one night and breaks all kinds of health and safety rules by sailing off on a lake that transforms into a sea and washes him up on an unfamiliar shore. There he encounters a tribe of disconsolate monsters who make him their king on the proviso that he makes their sadness go away. It’s deeply moving, and definitely not one for kids.

The third film was James Cameron’s Avatar, which I was unsure about seeing, having heard that the storyline was beyond daft. However, the visual affects, aided by 3D glasses, are incredible, and to be honest I would have been happy to spend three hours simply exploring the planet of Pandora without a single event or story-arc.

The world imagined by James Cameron and created by Weta is beautiful, brutal, and utterly encompassing. Seen through the eyes of marine Jake Sully, it becomes even more astonishing as he knows no more than we do about the creatures and plants that surround him. Yes, there’s a bit of a mushy love-story, some tree-hugging stuff and lots of explosions, but really, for me, the planet itself is the attraction.

But now, sadly, it’s time to get back to reality, take off the 3D glasses and do some work.

I like to think I’m a relatively intelligent and organised person. I keep my receipts, file my invoices and generally keep an eye on my finances. So filling in my tax return should be a doddle, right?

A few weeks back I registered to complete it online, activated it and filled in half the pages, then, realising I wasn’t sure I was doing it right, saved all the pages and booked myself onto one of the Government’s free Self Assessment courses.

The course was excellent, and with so, reassured that I knew what I was doing I returned to the Government’s online gateway and logged in.

Only, I couldn’t find my way back into the Self Assessment section. In fact, the screen stated I didn’t have access to it and suggested I register for online services.

Which I thought I had already done.

Bewildered, I phone up the online helpdesk, who told me in no uncertain terms that I had clearly de-registered myself and needed to start again from scratch. I was almost in tears by this point, and politely asked how I could have managed that, to which they had no answer.

So, unable to do anything else, I reregistered and am now waiting for another activation code to reach me.

Only, I just received an email with the subject line “Please remember to complete your tax return.”

When I opened it up, it stated: “We note that you have not yet submitted the Self Assessment Tax Return that you started to complete using our online service. Please remember that you must submit your tax return on or before 31 January 2010.”

What?!? When I phoned them to find out what had happened to the form I’d begun to complete, they claimed it had never existed, and now they’re emailing me to ask why I haven’t finished completing it.

Well, the answer is probably because I was told it doesn’t exist.

Turns out it takes a lot more than intelligence and organisation to complete a tax return, especially when the Government who are asking me to do it seem hell-bent on making it as confusing as possible.

Government: 1; Judy: nil