The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Six

Fascinating first reading. In essence, when the dust storm rages in at 4pm and you're probably off your face, here's how you protect your lungs, your eyes and your body. With Particulate respirator, hipster scarf and goggles... Sweet Jesus. The horror!

Last year's Burning Man was a bit more this:

Dawn at the Temple

and this:

Lady Flamingo Faun

and this:

Tent exploration

Needless to say I am a little terrified. My ladies who lunch on acid look could take somewhat of a beating.

My precious

Perhaps we best break for a song. Or even better, a movie clip:

Aha. So elegance can indeed save the day. If Rachel Weisz can handle it, so can I. You may trip out a bit and see imaginary faces in the sandstorm, but as long as you kiss the first man you see it all goes away... Smashing advice. I'll let you know how it goes in THREE weeks when I return to the land of normal. The castle of Wales. I hope it is a less bumpy ride than last year. So the sermon begins...

It's all very well going down the rabbit hole but how do you come out the other side? Fairytales deal with this magnificently. The prince saves the princess. The dragon is slain. And you all live happily ever after. Unless you're the dragon, or the wicked witch or the evil stepmother. As I slope further and further away from princess opportunities due to lifestyle choices, I realise I am more inclined to side with the villain than the heroine. I recognise Ursula the Seawitch and Malificent. I find Ariel and Snow White a bit slow and a bit whiny. Maybe it's the ageing process, or the Spinster growing within, my own silent passenger.

Part of me likes this deviation. I like the friends that side with it too. The wild raucous ones I play with who encourage the badness. Those who find me positively prudish due to their wilder sides or reward my tales of excess. There is a part of me however, that struggles with this abandonment of meeting a nice man and settling down and having babies.  It affects family relationships. I found myself spitting venom at my brother for some seemingly long forgotten slight about me swearing too much and having little in common with him. It seems sides begin to be taken. 

I feel guilty for not fulfilling the princess role, for not finding my prince, for being too much to settle down with. Is it my perception or how my family really sees me? Perhaps it is a case of learning to live with this person I've become, of embracing the Elphaba, green faced misunderstood witch and realising my ruby slipper days are behind me? Or maybe I'm just ramping up for the wedding of the century when my beautiful, best friends Andrius Paskus & Janis Latvels get married at the Bellagio in 6 days time? And I jump out of a plane, and go fight dustdemons in the desert?

In summation. At present, I work in a castle and pretend to be a Princess while living in a desert of my own making. Next week I'll be in the actual desert, where the wild things are. Then I must return and pretend to be normal again. It perturbs me. Fuck it. Let's look at pretty things instead :)

Sunday worship is brought to you by the groom and the groom.

My beautiful boys - Janis & Andrius

BOBFOC? Oh no, he's pretty up top too. Mr Janis Latvels :)

I know this is the campest follow up to that statement, but I can't resist. To defying gravity :)

Peace be with you.

See you on the other side.

xxx

The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Five

Hello. Sorry to be so unSunday in my approach but this spinster has been living it up with a 4 day weekend full of sugar and spice and all things nice. Still Untouched but full of plans and high fallutin ideas. I hope you enjoyed the Veronicas, this track's a cross between Don Henley's Boys of Summer and Divinyls' I touch myself. J'adore. Spinster anthems.

I'd now like to read you a short excerpt from Angels & Insects by A.S.Byatt, one of my favourite authors, as she so concerns herself with Victorian art and poetry. It is a wonderfully bumbling spoken piece by a Mr Jesse to Miss Tennyson (sister of Alfred Lord).


.....................


'You don't seem to understand. I didn't mean to speak so much so soon, but there I go, rushing on, like the North Wind, can't stop - have you ever felt that someone was to do with you, when you saw them, quite simply, just that, that there are people all over the place with noses like dough-buttons and eyes like currants and other people like Roman busts, you know, and then suddenly you see a face that's alive - for you - and you know it's to do with you, that that person is a part of your life, have you ever felt that?'

'Once,' said Emily. 'Once, I believe.' Had she? They stood in the street and looked at each other. Richard's bland, amiable brow was crumpled with his puzzled attempt to make her share what was perfectly plain to him. He made an awkward movement with his arms, half a salute, half the prelude to enfolding her, and drew back.

'I'm crowding you, Miss Tennyson, I'll go now, I hope you'll talk later and not hold my awkwardness against me. If I'm right, we do have things to say to each other, and if I'm not, it will become clear enough, no bad feelings, wont it? So I'll bid you goodbye for he present, Miss Tennyson. It's been a pleasure.'

And he strode off, very fast, down the street, leaving her not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

.....................

It's no 50 shades of grey, but I much prefer to hear talk of dough buttons, currants and Roman busts than strong men, weak women and bad porn.

I had my photo taken with this book on Sunday. Other books titles strewn around included: The Psychology of Romantic Love by Robert A Johnson; The book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould; Basic Bhagavad Gita by Sravaniya DiPecoraro; John Keats, The Complete Poems; Mythology by Edith Hamilton; The Dictionary of the Occult by Andrew Nataf; Guenevere, the Queen of the Summer Country by Rosalind Miles; Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy and Tales of Power by Carlos Casteneda.

I hadn't heard of this link yet http://hotgirlsreadingbooks.tumblr.com/ but I think that's the general gist. Sunday was photoshoot day. My ego had been supremely flattered when I'd been offered a free photoshoot. I hadn't really thought through the likelihood that I'd be encouraged to buy photographs afterwards. After spending an hour in make-up and being told the shoot would last about 5 hours, I figured there was likely to be an element of sales pitch. There is NO sales pitch. There is just wonderfully clever lighting and make up and your vanity does all the rest. I want these photos so bad. I want them over my imaginary kingsize bed. I want selections of some in my imaginary study. I want a giant coffee table book made with them placed on my imaginary coffee table. Alas, or luckily, depending upon your perception, I have no rooms of my own, so have no place to put these pictures, so am not purchasing. For now... But they're out there. About 50 lovely photographs. I'm strewn across a fake fur on the floor with green satin gloves and black veils. I'm pouring Chambord as if a wicked love potion into a gilded vessel. I'm twirling a parasol in a pastel sheath dress with an overstated hello boys wink. I'm Pre-raphaelite wicked with curious books, statues of buddhas and peacock feathers fresh from the castle lie in my wake. It was egomadness. I was in heaven. I was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. I recommend you all do it. Boys included. With beauty being in the eye of the beholder, having professionals help you control your image is quite wonderful. Of the many photos taken. The photographer has posted 3 on his site. If I want to revel in my beauty once more I must pay for the privilege. Nifty business model. Relying on the seven deadliest of sins.

Here are the three I can share:

Elaine, my beautiful friend who came to join the egotrip.

Me looking somewhat jilted

The pair of us, busy subverting the male gaze, or posing :)

So Sunday was pretend to be a model day. Saturday was pretend to be a sailor day. This lucky little spinster was picked up at the castle by the House Steward in his smashing red sports car and whisked off to Lake Vernwy to get my Wayfarer on. I was imagining self as Lynne from Howard's Way. The epitome of grown up cool. Alas, as the grown up on the boat was used to racing yachts, I spent three and a half hours getting bruised while exposing my knickers due to far too much tacking and far too little drinking. Fun though.

Monday was yoga nidra with friends, which led to yoga snoring with mat and waking up late in the afternoon. I then drove to Blackburn to visit the faery wood.

Faery writing pod where pacts were made

By Tuesday strict covenants had been drawn up to ensure the blogging grows to novelling and then it was time to go home, back to teenworld at Hope Cottage, Number one Cleveland Street, Cherry Orchard, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, Great Britain, Europe, the Earth, the Milky Way, the Universe, Infinity and beyond. Which is where I am now. Which is why it is bedtime. I leave you with the dulcet tones of the theme tune to the finest drama before Sunset Beach.

Oh and your Sunday worship, in honour of Tom Daley and his bronze...

Peace be with you

xxx

The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Four

Hello and welcome to the fourth in the series of Sunday Spinster Sermons. 


We open today with the 1988 hit, Need You Tonight by INXS. 


Most of today's sermon will focus on that year. As it's the year I was 12. A children's TV programme in the UK uses this as a format to look at history through the eyes of celebrities. Some speak of the perfection and freedom of being 12, usually the ones who were good at PE while others talk of the realisation they were different and escape into a more creative world of music, literature or art. As discussed last week, I'm not one of life's PE winners.


I was inappropriately reading Riders by Jilly Cooper and dreaming of being fabulously rich and successful and a million miles away from Wilmslow, the off licence I lived above and All Hallows Catholic High School. I was enjoying getting turned on by Michael Hutchence with his raw sex appeal and George Michael with his new album, Faith, and his declarations that he wanted my sex. I didn't quite understand yet that really he didn't.


Not that I was much of a Lolita. I was hiding behind my glasses and curling up with my nose deep in a book. This was the year Matilda by Roald Dahl came out, I would have enjoyed her every bit as much as the strong characters in Riders, here was a little girl who could outdo her teachers and perform magic. Wonderful. At the cinema, I was watching Tom Hanks in Big, working magic through the mighty Zoltan. Dreaming of being a grown up and controlling my destiny.


This was the year Kylie Minogue and Bros bounced onto the pop scene so I was singing along about being so lucky and dropping boys, all the while desperately seeking a hat with no top on so my hair could poke out like Kylie's album cover, the ultimate pineapple. 


I wonder what 12 year old me would make of 36 year old me? She wouldn't be amused by the fact I still live at home. She would probably tut that I still bit my nails and ponder that maybe that's why I wasn't allowed to wear a sparkly engagement ring? She'd be happy that I'd been on adventures and had written and had fallen in love and had sex with strange men in strange places. She be surprised that so much remained the same. That the same yearning would exist, dreams of another life and the constant escape to the arts. 


Caliban sums it up rather well.


Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd,
I cried to dream again.


I leave you with Sunday Worship. Olympically themed of course. The first is safe for work. The second. Depends where you work.


http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-best-tom-daley-gifs-of-all-time


http://www.buzzfeed.com/stacylambe/olympics-or-gay-porn?fb_ref=recbar


Enjoy Caliban's song.


Peace be with you.


x