My hubla is celebrating his birthday today. Not that it’s his actual birthday. Because why should the commemoration of such a momentous event last just a day? Medical professionals these days recommend that due dates for births are broadened into likely ‘birth weeks’ and I believe birthday celebrations should follow suit.

With our birthdays falling just a week apart, that would mean 14 days of revelry for my hubla and I, which suits me just fine.

But this year there’s more to my demands than sheer self-indulgence. My hubla has been on an NHS waiting list for over a year, desperately waiting to have a painful varicose vein treated (yes, he’s young for that, but a few years ago he had testicular cancer, and there turned out to be some unexpected side effects).

After hobbling around for several months, he thought about going private, but £1,500+ versus free is an easy equation to make, so he waited, and waited, and waited some more.

Then he got a phone call – a cancellation meant that he could be treated in the next few days! The downside? It was to be on his birthday…

On the one hand, a horrible way to spend your most important day; on the other the best birthday present in the world. So at 11am on his birthday he headed off to our local hospital, gowned up and settled down to wait, and wait and wait some more. He finally got treated under local anaesthetic at 5pm, having missed his birthday tea with our niece and nephew, in favour of spending six hours of his birthday in a hospital ward all alone because relatives weren’t allowed in (we take up too much space, apparently).

But now the waiting game is over, he has a pain-free future to look forward to and doctor’s orders to eat cake, drink beer and party. So the celebrations are back on. Hurrah!

Andrew Beierle

The longer I work as a freelance journalist, the more obscure the publications I discover. I’ve written about all manner of curious things, and have come to realise that the more niche the magazine’s subject, the more successful it’ll be in these cash-strapped times.

With limited spare money to throw at new, exotic possessions, traditional hobbies are hotter than ever, especially when they don’t cost more than the price of, say, a skein of yarn and a mag subscription.

However, I just come across the best yet. My daily Gorkana fix has alerted me to the rambunctious world of Only Doormats (www.onlydoormats.co.uk), which I initially mistook for a witty site about unhappy spouses, but turns out to be “a niche, destination site focusing exclusively on doormats: coir doormats, cast-iron door mats and contemporary, designer doormats…”

Fantastic. And I didn’t even know doormat fancying was a sport.

After the emptiness of January, I’ve suddenly been hit in the face with an influx of work, from days in-house on publications to feature commissions and requests from a clutch of artists and galleries to produce their press releases. I even had to turn down work for the first time, because I noticed my sanity slipping as I tried to meet an excess of deadlines!

It’s all good - money coming in, lots of interesting things to do, but I really think the biggest challenge of the freelance writer is surviving the extremes. Forget sub-zero temperatures and searing heat, the vacuum of an empty inbox (if you ignore the spam) in contrast to the one that’s bursting at the seams is more than most fragile journalist minds can handle.

Today it’s Saturday, which is completely irrelevant from my point of view, as I will be slogging on, coffee within in reach and TV remote firmly out of reach, in an effort to tick a few things off my growing list of priorities.

Funnily enough, this blog was top of the list, followed closely by reminders to update Twitter and Facebook. The key is to updte fast and get out before you discover you’ve been sucked into the social networking vortex and an hour or more has passed.

Once that’s achieved, however, I’ll have the satisfaction of scrawling a big fat tick, and feeling a sense of progress, however small.

© Stock.xchng

However much people tell me that it was invented by greetings card companies, however much I tell myself that it’s a shamelessly sentimental holiday, there’s a big part of me that just adores Valentine’s Day.

I come from a family that like to celebrate every possible occasion, from Christmas to Diwali to the Chinese New Year. As a child I was used to associating Valentine’s Day with receiving cards emblazoned with hearts and signed by mystery suitors with handwritng uncannily similar to my mum’s. It was a day when my parents would sparkle at each other and there would usually be something especially nice for tea.

These days, two years into my marriage, I’m glad to say that romance is still on the agenda, and it really doesn’t have to cost a lot. I’m lucky that my hubla ensures I always have flowers (currently gorgeous purple irises), but our Valentine’s tokens to each other were personal rather than expensive - my hubla graciously accepted wonky homemade card from me, just as he will accept a wonky homemade card for his birthday.

Not being blessed (or cursed) with an overflowing imagination like mine, he buys his cards, avoiding anything padded or sporting a printed poem.

Often we celebrate Valentine’s over a special meal eaten at home, but this evening we’re going out for dinner, partly because January was particularly grim this year and partly because the recession has led to some fab restaurant deals (hurrah for a positive-side to the credit crunch!). We feel in need of an excuse to get dressed up, eat some good food and smile at each other in a candle-lit setting.

Actually, that latter bit is the part I love best about this day. It’s not really about gifts and cards and flowers, its about being given a nudge to devote some time to the person you love, and a candle-lit setting isn’t a bad place to do it.

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.