And so, dear reader, there is no music playing as you attend today's Sunday Spinster Sermon as everything I have to say is in this musical piece to follow. It begins thusly: There I was in outer space passing through a portal that magically closed behind me. Today I am attending a private gathering of the silly creatures who are performing a musical ritual which I find fascinating. I shall take many notes and report back soon love, your friend, travelling Al x
'And if you're paralysed by a voice in your head It's the standing still that should be scaring you instead Go on and - Do it anyway - Do it anyway
There will be times you might leap before you look There'll be times you'll like the cover and that's precisely why you'll love the book Do it anyway - Do it anyway
Tell me what I said I'd never do Tell me what I said I'd never say Read me off a list of the things I used to not like but now I think are ok
Sometimes it's not subjective: wrong and right Deep down you know it's downright wrong but you're invincible tonight So you - Do it anyway - It's done - You did it
Despite your grand attempts the chips are set to fall And all the stories you might weave cannot negotiate them all Do it anyway - Be honest, anyway
Read me off a list of the things I used to not like but now I think are OK.'
Jim Henson wisdom at its finest. Following last week's bafflement at the cards the universe chose to deal me, I have picked myself up, brushed myself off, started all over again. Or returned to where I started. The interesting loops of life. Back to Hong Kong I go. Older and wiser. Or older and more capable of gratitude for all the wonderful things HK had to offer that England does not. I can't wait to see all of my friends again. I can't wait to get working on exciting projects. I can't wait to live in my own place. I can't wait to be free at last! I leave you with a wonderful object of affection. The divinal Ursula Andress in SHE.
SHE who must be obeyed! ...SHE who must be loved! ...SHE who must be possessed!
If you want something ridiculously indulgent this Sunday. You can't go far wrong to watch this. I mean look at the synopsis! An Edwardian archaeologist and two companions stumble upon a lost city in East Africa, run by a beautiful queen whose love holds the promise of immortality. OR Eternal love. Gone wrong.
And as someone finally finding some of her own... peace be with you everyone.
Hello and welcome to a slightly melancholy spinster sermon. It's not Sunday but as we're not in church either, I think it's OK. Getting Away With It by Electronic sums up the mood quite well. I used to listen to it on repeat in my Sony Walkman, on a battered old tape I'd copied from someone at school when I was 14. I listened to it tirelessly when on my first holiday away with mum after the divorce. It was a terribly gloomy affair in Jersey with mum crying because she missed her new boyfriend. I was similarly lovelorn but with Anthony Kelly, the object of my affection who had snogged someone else at the last disco as I hadn't been allowed out due to excessive naughtiness (I'd cheeked my parents or some other travesty admitted to at the Saturday confessional at my local Roman Catholic church).
Now is an odd time of comings and goings. The 'Fall' rather than Autumn is quite apt. The highs of Bacchanalian delights in the desert followed by 'I'm going to make a change!' followed by a last and final, for now, rejection into the worlds of suitable employ in England. I have grown quite accustomed to romantic rejections. I even advanced to level of rejector over recent years after almost falling in love, but the work world was always quite kind to me. I was always offered an interview upon application and then a job following interview. That has not been the reality in England.
I landed in England on the 1st August 2010 and merrily began my applications. I applied to retrain as a teacher. With over 4 years experience in Asia, I thought this would go fairly well. I was rejected as my degree was not in English but Communications. I applied to run the membership and events for the Salopian Club for Shrewsbury School but did not receive a response. I was offered work at Stokesay Court where Atonement was filmed, but there was no money so I'd have to find a way to make profits. In Heritage, this can be tricky, so I had to keep applying. BBC North were recruiting so I spent days going through their application processes, watching videos and saying what Bob should do next. I still receive helpful emails saying they're still mulling things over. I applied to look after studies for Berlitz in Manchester, but was told I needed to have done the job already to get the job. I signed up with Michael Page in Manchester and am, I believe, still on file. I joined Monster, Hays, Total Jobs, Page Personnel and Office Angels. Nothing.
I applied for a Christmas temp job at Waterstones bookshop in Shrewsbury. After a two hour interview, I was awarded a 10 hour contract. That kept me busy over snowy winter. I met a likely bunch of lovely Shire folk and proceeded to drink until 4am at every given opportunity at the local gay night. There I would meet folks I assumed in fancy dress, having been here for 2 years, I now know this is how country folk dress. They really do attend pheasant shoots, wear red pants, padded gilets and flat caps. Then it was the New Year and my contract was over.
I signed up with some new agencies in January of 2011. Mercia Recruitment, A&D Recruitment, Absolute Personnel, Travail Employment Group and Proactive Personnel. Nothing. I spoke with an ex-boss who tried to set me up with a three month fundraising assistant role, but I was foreign to Derby so not eligible. I was offered an interview as Marketing Consultant on a not bad wage. The main portfolio was of property, but then there was the abattoir. I thought that rather flew in the face of previous animal rights projects I'd helped out on so politely declined.
My money has run out. I am about to sign on. I see a sign in the local pub/hotel's window for barwork. I pop in. I get my minimum wage on and work for three months as an illegal immigrant. I do lose a stone though with 60 hour weeks. The abusive French managers and Geordie chefs is a new sensation.
Then I am saved. I get a six month contract working for the National Trust, as Assistant Visitor Services Manager at Powis Castle & Gardens. I know this is my foot in the door. I shall soon be leapfrogging through the charity, garnering accolades with every pirouette I make around the castle. Mais non.
By Christmas of 2011, it is very cold. Mum and I are no longer on speaking terms having lived together in a teeny house for too long. I move out to a lovely Tudor house in the countryside. I can only afford a room on NT salary (and Waterstones salary - I am working every day off from the castle to make rent). It looks like a chocolate box. It is not. The landlord has mental issues and is having an incestuous affair with his sister. He has not worked in two years, hence renting his house out. Everything is filthy. There is no heating. The water is cold. It drops to minus 17. A new lodger moves in with no neck, little language and heavy neck scars. He starts dealing hospital grade methadone to the other residents. I leave. I don't get my deposit back.
I move back in with mum for a few weeks but things are tense so I move out to much more modern and clinical apartment in Shrewsbury. This owner seems to have mental issues too. She locks her two new baby kittens in the flat while she works on 24 hour shifts. I come home to a litter tray every evening. There are no tables. The TV is on the floor. Cats roll around in her hair extensions and their sick. I leave.
I move back in with mum and am told I have a couple of weeks til I must find alternative lodgings.
Meanwhile, I've been applying for other jobs with a desperation I never thought possible. I am becoming slightly unhinged. I go for an interview at Sissinghurst in Kent. I am told I do not have enough local knowledge. I go for an interview at Dunham Massey, they hire the recent grad. I go for an interview at The Lowry, they go for someone with more experience. I am sending two applications a week out, with no response. Not just a CV and a covering letter, mind you, but a full online, question answering application. I am tired. Really tired.
I saw a lot of these:
I just want to start by saying how much we enjoyed meeting you yesterday. Your enthusiasm was very evident - and infectious!
As you know, we had almost 400 applicants for this one role so being shortlisted was an achievement in itself. But I am afraid that, on this occasion, you were unsuccessful.
and these
Whilst we were pleased to meet with you and hear your ideas and we were impressed by your thoughtful approach in preparing for the interview, I regret to inform you that you have been unsuccessful on this occasion.
Sounds of laughter, shades of life Are ringing through my opened ears Inciting and inviting me. Limitless undying love, which Shines around me like a million suns, It calls me on and on across the universe Across the Universe - The Beatles - Lennon & McCartney Good evening. Apologies for my tardiness. Sunday was spent nor sermonising but being potential vomcano while at work following a wild night on the Welsh borders while simultaneously planning a rather magnificent wedding in the castle grounds this Saturday (and watching Downton Abbey). Monday was Cheshire Constabulary's Traffic Light Re-education Camp (and XFactor). Today is the day. I write this on the train to Liverpool. I'm off to the Northern Tate. Today's sermon was going to be entitled 'Pillow Talk.' It was going to play you Doris Day singing the film's title and wax lyrical on the two leading men in my life. As I lay in bed last night, I had mused on the solace of the spinster and how my two best friends in the Shire are both 12 years my junior and male. They are also polar opposites. One shall be named Middle Wallop, after the army ball he invited me to. The other, Minimal Techno, due to his preference for such sounds, preferably in Germany where his big gay mohawk stands out less. I was going to extol their virtues. How Middle Wallop rescued me from an incestuous, crossbow toting, crack house with no heating in the snows of February. How Minimal Techno performed the same function in less dangerous but equally revolting cat litter mixed with hair extension hell, flat of filth, but no! This must wait, perhaps for some emotional, misty, nostalgic sermon when I've gone. Today's sermon is DISCORD.
The Judgement of Paris - Rubens
Paris ran off with Helen of Troy. That's the famous bit. The one with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom and a Trojan horse. But was what it's cause? Helen's beauty? Ish. The actual cause came from Eris or Discordia (the Roman version). She'd been snubbed from a party and was not amused. So, she arrived at the party, and as all wonderful baddies do, introduced an apple to the proceedings. It was not any apple however but a GOLDEN apple from the Garden of Hesperides (a very nice garden which was known to have lots of apples and lots of snakes). Upon this apple was the inscription καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "for the fairest one").
Three goddesses claimed the apple: Hera with her peacock, Athena with her owl and Aphrodite with her dove. They then engaged in a somewhat misguided beauty contest, seeing as Aphrodite was the Goddess of love and beauty. They asked Zeus to judge which of them was fairest, and eventually he, reluctant to favour any claim himself, declared that Paris, a Trojan mortal, would judge their cases, for he had recently shown his exemplary fairness in a contest in which Ares (Aries) in bull form had bested Paris's own prize bull, and the shepherd-prince had unhesitatingly awarded the prize to the god.
Each goddess wanted to be judged the fairest, so they each undressed and presented themselves to Paris naked, in hopes of appearing more sexual than the other two. While Paris inspected them, each attempted with her powers to bribe him; Hera offered to make him king of Europe and Asia, Athena offered wisdom and skill in war, and Aphrodite, who had enhanced her charms with flowers and song, offered the world's most beautiful woman. This was Helen of Sparta, wife of the Greek king Menelaus. Paris accepted Aphrodite's gift and awarded the apple to her, receiving Helen as well as the enmity of the Greeks and especially of Hera. The Greeks' expedition to retrieve Helen from Paris in Troy is the mythological basis of the Trojan War.
This is why Eris is also known as Discordia, the upsetter of apple carts, the giggler, the chaos causer.
She's my favourite Goddess.
She doesn't toss that golden apple about for nothing. She's upset and angry and is balancing the scales. She wasn't invited to the party. The world is in imbalance and must be righted. An Old Testament eye for an eye. Tooth for tooth. Hurt for hurt. Not terribly New Testament or Buddhist. No turning of cheeks or feeling compassion for the suffering that caused the behaviour. Just good old fashioned smiting. With an apple.
Disney understands. In Sleeping Beauty, Malificent wasn't invited. If the organisers of the christening had simply popped a welcome in the post, all the later pricked finger, blind prince episode could have been averted. Cause and effect. Flora, Fauna & Merryweather could have saved their magic.
According to the star stories, I was born when a new dwarf planet named 2003 UB313 was right besides the sun if you were to look up from my bed in Stepping Hill Hospital. This heavenly body was only found 7 years ago and was called Xena for a while. There's lots of discussion about the how and whys of how scientists name things here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_(dwarf_planet) I'm glad she kept her Greco Roman title. It may only be a dwarf planet, but it's important to me. As you can imagine. I have Erisian tendancies.
As much as last week at Burning Man was all about the love, this week has been throwing those apple bombs and asking people how they like them.
On Monday, I resigned. Upsetting the castle applecart. I have new dreams to follow. This morning's discord was brought to you by the letter M and the number 9.
Mother enjoys arriving early with 10 minute buffers around each activity. I told her last night, that I would meet her at the front door at 9am. I hadn't slept til about 3, musing Pillow Talk sermons, so I was snoozing when I heard her march up the stairs to militant strains of Classic FM.
'Have you decided not to bother?' says she.
'No, I'm going to stay in bed all day............
I'm only joking........
I thought we said 9 o'clock'
'I need to buy tickets and a coffee'
'It's a ten minute walk to the station'
'It's quarter to nine already!'
'I learnt how to tell the time a number of years ago.'
'Do you want to go on your own?'
Complete silence for the following 15 minutes. At 9, I'm at the door with mother waiting as a impatient bull. She's a Taurean Ox. Immoveable. Immutable. A mighty monument.
We set off. I put my headphones on. She walks 5 paces infront. At 9.05, she says she'll rush ahead to make sure there's time to collect tickets. At 9.12, I arrive and meet her at the gothic railway entrance. At 9.13, I'm buying my breakfast coffee and muffin. Train arrives, on time, at 9.24. We are on the move.
'I don't know why you're always so angry with me,' says she.
'Because you nag me all the time!'
'No I don't.'
'You do.
'I don't.'
'OK. You are wisdom and reason and perfection. I am irrational and wrong.'
'Good.'
'Good.'
Our lovely day out begins. No spinning wheels required.
A trip out does you good
A new British band called Bastille will sing us out with a perfectly apt song named Flaws.
'You have always worn your flaws upon your sleeve And I have always buried them deep beneath the ground Dig them up. Let's finish what we've started Dig them up. So nothing's left unturned.'
Hello and welcome and a good Sunday to you all, spinster or otherwise.
We are gathered here today to celebrate the Bacchanalian Fiesta named Burning Man and best understood through myth and faerie:
Titian's Bacchus & Ariadne - Wild men & dryads dancing to the flute & horn
Paton's A Midsummer Night's Dream - Victorian's excuse for naked ladies nibbling one another
'Let us read and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world!' Voltaire
So this year, it was not all dubstep and the need to be rescued by a burly American, it felt more like this:
The
affection began with beloved friends from Hong Kong
and flowered as I met their friends and my heart opened and expanded, making
room for just about everybody. The Hawaiian Thundercat. The EastEnd Unicorn.
The Suave Eurotease. Friends would bring fairytales to me. The faerie. The elf.
The dwarf. The mythical creatures. I may have begun dancing on my own but soon
my arrival was heralded by inhabitants of Narnia and my bellini in the horn was
known across the land.
The happy couple
Singing
Rick Astley, Never Giving You Up, lying on couches glowing with liquor and soft
blankets. Brushing lips. A Titian painting. Rich and opulent. Redolent with
sunshine. Men with flutes. Men with fur legs. Men in leopard print. Horns.
Excess. Bacchus. Ariadne. To be wiped clean again by the grey of playa sand. Pulling
everyone into soft focus. As children. Horny, deviant children. The island of
lost boys. Carefree and smiling. Sometimes skipping. Pandora’s dressing up box swung
wide open, allowing hope and depravity to fill the air.
Pandora's Breakfast
Meanwhile,
in tents, and RVs and deep playa orgiastic delights await. A young man
resplendent in raven feathers and sequins thrusts into a young Adonis with
supposedly legal ID. A tent door falls
down to reveal a lusty ringletted maiden’s maidenhead being brought to
rapturous spasm by a tall, dark, handsome stranger. In the deepest playa, a
hand is broken following a misjudged Icarus flight to the sun via an unexpected
perimeter fence. His beloved tends to him in way all husbands must when in the
deepest playa.
Aslan rabbit hybrids
Lay on
giant marshmallow pillows, a seductive sun god delights in watching nymphs
swoon as he pours wicked delights into their ears while filling their vessels
with intoxicating nectars and laying no finger upon them. A goddess dreams of sensuous
oil massage followed by feather light kisses for an hour and a day that build
to orgasm that rumbles through the dusty desert air.
Of Unicorns & Men
A leopard
skin wearing Moor warrior with whirling planets in his eyes battles rhetoric
and philosophy with a goat-faced Hun in the shade of the camp’s storage. Erotic
mosquitoes flash their golden pink eyes and head valiantly into the sandstorms.
Mystical monkey juice is sipped and mind bending forest gifts are nibbled.
Plato
Dogs & Mozzies
Nibble.
Gulp. Snort. Lick. Swallow.
The moon
itself is intoxicated and pulled by strange gravity to land, moments from the earth
itself. There to be transformed to her red warrior brother, Mars or so her glowing
ruby orb would suggest.
Bless me Father, for I have sinned
Amongst it
all, a noble creature appears, a magical vision. He approaches, looks into a
heroine’s eyes with deep pools of obsidian and utters the age old prayer, ‘Oi,
rutress! We should totally make out!’
Oi! Rutress!
Mermaids
draw pearls from their deepest parts as the play dust creates these rare gifts
usually only found in the sea. Lesser souls’ feet and hands crack in the face
of the storm. Mermaids know how to use their materials. Pearl strands adorn
every tent.
Transformations
abound under this red moon.
Maidens
return as snow queens. Altered by sights of seawitches tipping the velvet as
they devoured tiny sapphists and muppets losing their minds.The desert is a dangerous place at night. Simple
travellers may fall prey to deaf impersonators when asking directions. Particularly
when sampling the forests’ bounty of magical mushrooms. Sampling unicorns is
imperative to keep oneself safe. As are talismen worn in the safety of camp, ‘If
you can read this, I will lick you!’
The things I saw that night whilst lost in the wilds...
One must
not be surprised if a flaxen haired Legolas appears at your tavern, nor
muscular Thor. Even Absolutely Fabulous finds purchase in this land, with star appearances
from Saffy’s cousins, the Swahillihotties.
Gimli commits to BM
Elven & 21 last week
Absolutely Fabulous Cousins
To reach
this mythological, high fantastical tableau, Herculean tasks have been
completed. People have travelled across many seas and through many skies. Some
have used parachutes. Mighty structures have been erected. One of these closest
to our camp is Anubis, the God of the Underworld, the Pluto, the Hades, the shadow
side. Anubis holds the scales which weigh the heart against a feather. One must
remain light hearted or risk soul destruction. He reminds us of renewal. Of
death to be reborn. He was met at the beginning of our trip and then again as
we left Reno.
We pulled our RV into a small reststop to see signs banning the feeding of
animals. To the far right we saw an animal, a dog, and laughed at how
ineffectual the sign had been. As we got closer we realised it was not a dog,
but a coyote. The American equivalent of the Jackal, or Anubis. The trickster
animal. The scavenger. The one to remind you not to take life too seriously. To
laugh at it before it fools you.
Anubis burning
You can just see the coyote's eyes to the right. Mirroring Anubis.
Or maybe it’s
all a reverie. A hysterical fantasy induced by falling 13,000 feet through the Nevada skies. I’ll allow
the pictures to speak for themselves.
If we
shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest
Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
Puck – A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
Remember to
keep flying. Keep adventuring. Keep questing.
