Internet’s a lemon!

I wanted to bring a lemon cake to my friend’s house the other day. You know, one of those really yummy moist ones. And while the internet and I have always gotten on like bread and cheese and I’ve been able to find recipes for anything from Ethiopian stews to stain removals in carpets, I have to say that the lemon broke the internet. I trawled through pages and pages of recipes only to find that no one seems to bake a bloody lemon cake from scratch anymore. Ingredients were limited to lemon cake mix and lemon jello mix. And then I also found one that had no lemon at all in the lemon cake. It was an ugly thing. Even my cooking books didn’t provide any help. Eventually I made up my own mix and as we sat there coming up with puns like the internet can be a bit ‘unrind’ or ‘citrus shits us’, we wondered why you can buy everything pre-made but no one will sell you preserved lemons for your tajine. The tradition of keeping recipe books through generations, with domestic goddesses that recorded the beautiful successes that a bay leaf could bring the irish stew, is in our minds such a beautiful one. So rather than chewing through the new age, we’d like to fill our bellies with history and Mum’s quiches.

just as weather happens to us...

We all made our way into the galactress. She was going to bring us to Germany in less than an hour. But not just any Germany. The Germany we wanted her to be. I clutched my dress, feeling the thin cotton and looked around for a coat. My Germany would be cold. In that warm way. With all the rooftops in cold colours. Like greens. And aqua blues that reminded you of tears. I was thinking about feeling the cobbled stones under bare feet, though white socks would complete my picture a little better. You would look good in my Germany. I tried to catch your gaze and transmit my image but you were already on a different course of your own. And before you could see the rooftops crying in Germany, I quickly closed my eyes.

And so it goes.

I’m not sure why I like writing to you on Mondays. Perhaps it’s a clinging to a more-me when I find myself dumbfounded at work in the morning. I salute all you people who have had the courage to quit your day jobs in pursuit of what makes your fire truly burn.

I had one of those weekends, you know where all your plans fall through and you had the wrong dates for things and the cluster of busy-ness that was making you feel tense burst and you’re left with that miraculous little thing called time.

And whilst there was plenty of the good dorky stuff, like getting up late and putting your pyjamas ON

to make cups of tea and creamy scrambled eggs and you go about being what you are away from public where no one sees you mimicking the dog or watching fantasia 2000 with sleep still in your eyes at 1pm.

But there was also productiveness and that feeling of achievement that makes you a little high when it’s your own stuff you’re working on with no pressure from anyone else.

It took a wee while for Michael and me to let lose creatively around each other when we moved in together, both of us being pretty shy about our stuff and how we work. Though with all guards down and closer than I possibly ever imagined I could be with someone I shared a bed with, we’ve become a tight little cluster of creativity. There was cooking, hair cutting,

camera swinging

and singing. And rather than just inviting me in to his world of music where every instrument he picks up spins magic, he’s given me the confidence to join him. Over the last few months and many, oh, many a bottle of wine, we’ve forged a little twosome band, called ‘Hey, Swampy’.

If you can handle my chipmunk voice you can have a little listen here at a few of the demos we’ll be recording sometime this year hopefullydopefully.

I also managed to squeeze in a meet up for another commissioned shoot where for the first time I was honest about my anxiety about working with and for other people and was supported about it rather than brushed off . I bounced home with a flower marking my ‘up-to’ page in my Vonnegut novel and a spring in my step.

Wishing you all a fantastic week!

x

Mar '10 feature in Rojo & Garabato Magazine issue #1

Rojo & Garabato Magazine is a monthly and polyglot on-line mag about art, design, illustration, photography…Rojo & Garabato are graphic designers & photographers based in Coruña, Spain and they have been lovely enough to feature me in their first edition.

rainy day tries to shoot the stars

Tracy McNeil shoot on the day of the storm from hell. We took those lemons and willed them into lemonade.