Bad Faery

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

More snow leopard love!

Congratulations to fellow Snow Leopard enthusiast Jackie Morris! Her book The Snow Leopard has been shortlisted for the Highland Schools Book Awards!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

A Grisly Desktop

This is my new desktop graphic. What do you think? It’s a little gruesome, I’ll grant you, but I love it!

It’s for Neil Gaiman’s new novel, The Graveyard Book, due out this October.

This is how the author describes it:

Lots of scary. Some funny (some of the funniest stuff is also the scariest, though). A fair amount of action. Some drama. No kissing. Late nights. Fish and chips. A werewolf, a vampire, an Assyrian mummy and a small pig. A knife in the dark.

And here’s where Neil blogs about Dave McKean’s great bookslip design

Monday, March 17, 2008

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

It is far too lovely a day to go into town to watch the parade. I’d rather stay home and enjoy the sunshine. It’s been a rare commodity of late. So, in lieu of partying and the drowning of shamrocks, I thought I’d share one of my favourite Irish poems. 

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lads and hilly lands.
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

W.B.Yeats

The Song of Wandering Aengus was inspired by one of my favourite Celtic legends. Caer Ibormeith was the ‘glimmering girl’ who appeared to Aengus in the poem. He does eventually finds her only to learn that she and her maidens, 150 in all, must spend one year in swan form, the next in human. He turns into a swan too and he and Caer fly off together, singing such sweet music that all around them are lulled to sleep.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Then we must be bold

I missed the lunar eclipse on Wednesday night. After experiencing several days of clear blue skies, the weather took a turn for the worse. Rain, strong winds and heavy cloud cover ended any chance of seeing it.

However tonight I did have a lunar encounter another variety. I watched the documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, an account of the Apollo moon missions in which the surviving crew members tell their story in their own words.

Watching them talk about their experiences, what it meant to them, so much more than beating the Soviets to the landing, the sheer human bravery of it all, I found myself thinking of this poem, written by a World War II fighter pilot who lost his life in a mid-air collision during the war. It has become a favourite amongst both pilots and astronauts:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never Lark, or even Eagle flew –
And while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

John Gillespie Magee

Tonight the clouds cleared just enough to allow me to see the moon, barely past full and I thought of those 12 men, still the only humans to set foot on another celestial body.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

Wolves, vampires, Shakespeare…a normal week in the life of a bad faery

“The snow falls, and yes, the hand stretched into the
flakes’ path is a hand asking back a season now lost.”
Nadeem Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers

This week:

This photo by persistingstars made me inexplicably happy.

I saw a fantastic production of The Taming of the Shrew

I watched a lovely documentary about Arctic Wolves. I had been following the film makers’ diary on the BBC website last year so it was great to finally see the playful Lucy in action.

Above: an Arctic wolf, image © Mark Smith

Am reading The Historian, a novel about some scholars researching the legend of Dracula and discovering it’s more than mere legend. It has helped provoked all sorts of odd dreams that I’ve been having almost on a nightly basis involving schorlarly research, vampires, the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of course wolves.

Watched some art journalling vids by the lovely and informative Kira

I had to miss the first tutorial for my new course due to the snow, heavy frost and gales we had over the weekend. Bit bummed out about that. But I’ve made a good start on the course work and am spending today compiling definitions for the glossary words I need to learn for this Unit.

The glossary is a big part of the course. When October rolls around and I have to do my exam the first question (worth 20% of the marks) will present me with a choice of six terms, four of which I must be able to define, hence if I know my glossary words off by heart it should guarantee a good start in my exam. There’s only (!) about 250 terms that I need to familiarise myself with over the course of the next nine months. So no worries there then!

Friday, January 25, 2008

Today I Made Potato Bread!

As a child one of my favourite afterschool treats was hot potato bread straight from the griddle. Any potatoes left over from dinner the night before would be kept to make these delicious buttery treats!

Today you can buy (well, in Irish shops anyway!) ready made potato bread but I don’t recommend it. It’s made from dried powdered potatoes (I think it’s called ‘reconstituted’) and it’s horrible stuff.

However, real potato bread is really easy to make...

Saturday, January 05, 2008

Happy Birthday!

Elizabeth, you have me completely confused on the 12 Days of Christmas issue but if I understood your last post then today is the 12th Day of Christmas and therefore your BIRTHDAY!!!

So Happy Birthday to you! I hope you spoil yourself rotten today!

Thursday, January 03, 2008

A day full of petty little annoyances

My first day back at work was stupidly busy, full of countless interruptions meaning that I got very little actual work done.

I cut my finger, nothing major except that it’s at the optimum location to be chafed when holding pencils. Very annoying.

Started emptying the dishwasher this morning only to discover that the drain is blocked.  I have had no luck at unblocking it. Grrrr!

I managed to burn (and when I say ‘burn’ I mean incinerate) the potatoes I was going to have for dinner. Consequently dinner ended up consisting of three McVities chocolate caramel biscuits and a peanut butter and jam sandwich instead. That’ll teach me to NOT put off going grocery shopping.

I’m now risking fate by taking my sketchbook to bed. What are the odds of me spilling a whole bottle of Indian ink over my very attractive if rather impractical white duvet? Fair to middling I’d say!

But the wolves are calling me, demanding to be drawn! 

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Happy New Year!

May the year ahead be full of good living, good thoughts and creativity.

Be wonderful!

Monday, December 31, 2007

Books, books and more books!

“I can’t reach. You know, I had no idea books had such different personalities.” Helena (Mirrormask)

I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions and my upcoming OU course is enough of a challenge to be getting on with, thank you very much, but there is something else that I really, really need to get to grips with. And that’s the ever growing pile of unread novels crowding my bookshelves.

There are a number of reasons (feel free to label them excuses) as to why I’ve amassed so many. Firstly and most importantly, reading has always been a stress release mechanism for me. When I’ve been worried or upset about something, escaping into a good book has been my main coping strategy. So I suppose in a way the fact that I don’t read as much as I used to could be seen as a positive indicator that I’m a happier person than I used be. Or so I hope.

Read more and see the book list!