If I were a fairy

If I were a fairy, my season would be autumn, my flower would be sunflowers, I would magic in the harvest and paint the leaves of everything in the autumnal colours and I would play tricks on mortals around Halloween by tickling their ears with my breath!

I would smell like spices and apples and have autumn leaves hairclips in my hair and spiders looping their webs into my earring holes and dangling there as fashion models.

I would help the stork deliver babies in big pumpkin carry cots and corn husks as blankets.

Because, why not?

My familiar would be a fox or raccoon and I’d throw peach pits at people who disrespected nature and magically create an instant tree where it lands to serve them right if they walked right into it!

I love faeries; I could get really into writing a book all about fairy culture etc.  it would be smashing if I could do the art I see in my head as well.

But never mind.

I am overloaded with other projects right now that one can wait.

Thanks for reading!

Spider porn

My entire immune system is going through a major crash in the past few days as well as my internet connection!

Though I have done nothing but sit staring at a corner most of the day, it was quite interesting; I spent two whole hours staring at a spider in the window that has lived in my lemon tree for the past six weeks. 

It was quite interesting and a bit of an education, because she had two male visitors gently tapping her web in the hopes of becoming her mate.  I thought this odd because spider mating season is usually in the autumn, not early summer! 

Anyhow after two hours one of them, the biggest one, finally got approval and the other one went scuttling off down the radiator when he found out he was rejected.

Thinking that spiders will mate less than five minutes (as that is what I have seen on TV) I was surprised to see that it lasts around 45 minutes with this couple.  She also wasn’t very aggressive with him either, he got away unscathed and when he ran away she ran after him, they kept running backwards and forwards from each other a lot for another hour before he slipped and fell into the radiator and didn’t bother coming back.  He is still alive though, I checked. 

She on the other hand has settled back in her same old position in the web just 6 inches underneath the rim of my lemon tree pot acting as though nothing has happened.

Although I am scared of spiders because I am allergic to their bites, I love them.

Happy reading!

Learn to improvise tried and tested themes

There is one thing I dislike about reading stories and that is, I get confused about whether it was a movie or a book years later.  Sometimes there is a movie and a book out and I get confused because the actors are different to when I visualised it when reading. 

I also have the same problem about my own novels I write; were those my ideas or did I see the movie somewhere before?   Sometimes I have to actually make notes about where I have seen other things that I am imagining for my own stories, because I am paranoid about coming across as a copycat, I often google even characters and fantasy creatures, just to be sure.

Funnily enough, doing this has shown me how unoriginal many seemingly original stories are by other people.  At least I have learned how not to be cliché.  For example, I had an idea about a giant spider in a forest for one of my dragon novels, but then this has been done many times before, not just Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings! 

Let me tell you the others;

Conan the barbarian – the tower of the elephant

Arachne in Greek mythology

Arachnos from Dr Who

The Cthulu mythos

The wonderful wizard of Oz

Arachnophobia

There is a whole lot more – in fact giant spiders are overdone in three genres, horror, fantasy and sci-fi.

It is reasonable to think that it would be a popular choice along with rats, wasps, snakes, being buried alive because all of these are mankind’s greatest fears, so it can be a useful if overdone tool for creative writing.

But does that mean that you can’t include these overworked themes in your own writing?  Maybe not, but no one is going to write it like you, you can put a unique stance to the story, something that certainly hasn’t been done.  Maybe instead your spiders are friendly, vegan, mages, aquatic, who knows the options are many!

For your information, there is such a thing as aquatic arachnids, spiders that can live both on the land and in water, they can breathe under water, now your nightmares can really begin to grow!  What will you do with it?

So, although it is good for me to be paranoid about originality, originality in fact does not exist.  Only your stance of what already exists can feel unique to those who may never have come across something like that before and the likelihood of finding people like that is at least 33%, well I am not mathematician, so I wouldn’t really know, but the chances are, people will like your perspective on the subject or theme.  So get at it, but always be aware that you are not as original as you think – this shouldn’t stunt you, in fact, it should help teach you to think outside the box, improvise or innovate, you know?

Happy reading!

Anne Stokes Aracnafaria

Anne Stokes is one of my favourite Gothic artists; if I had money I would try and decorate my house with more of her work.  As a Christmas present in 2012 my nephew Carl and his daughters gave me a 1000 piece puzzle of Aracnafaria, one of Anne Stokes masterpieces.  I finished the puzzle in just 10 days.   I am so proud of it, it’s still wrapped in cling film around a board that I had intended to use as a backboard in order to eventually frame it, but I have never got around to doing that and it’s stored on the top of my wardrobe.

As an artist I aspire to do work as great as Anne Stokes, however, in my own opinion it’s just an airheaded dream, because I am nowhere as good as Anne Stokes and I specialise mostly in what I think are cartoon dragons and animals.

 

 

Rozzy 2009 – 2016

My rabbit died today. His name was Rozzy, a masculine version of his original name Rosehip because Pets@Home thought he was a girl and I took him home thinking OK girl name it is then, well my husband and I at the time was obsessed with herbal teas particularly rosehip so we figured that would suit him; it didn’t occur to us to call him anything else even though he was snowy white with tiny pale flecks of grey and big floppy ears, he was a dwarf rabbit they said.
Well anyway, this was in October 2009 and I was two months pregnant with my soon to be son Henry. Around Christmas time I decided that Rosehip was in fact male, because I had rabbits before and they were usually male and chosen by accident not design and he showed he had the stuff down there for being male – I double checked, yes, he was male alright, so Rosehip became Rozzy. Rozzy means fuzzy hair, which suited him a lot as his hair between his ears stuck up like some Mohican.
He also didn’t turn out to be a dwarf rabbit either; he was as big as a cat when he died.
He hadn’t had a good life in comparison to my other pets in my life, in my personal opinion.
His first few months was excellent, he was a house rabbit and I didn’t want anything else to happen to him, I wanted him indoors with us all the time, being that it was impossible to have a dog at that point in time. He was well trained, let loose in the lounge most of the day and locked in his (recommended by the pet shop) 80cm cage!
When I was 7 months pregnant the pregnancy didn’t go too well for me, in fact I became almost physically disabled, I couldn’t bend or crouch down, particularly when I got to 32 weeks, an old lady out walked me with her Zimmer frame and asked if I was alright! That’s how bad I got, I was so embarrassed! I was 27 and outwalked by a granny with a zimmer! The baby kept lying in difficult positions. My mother was coming to stay, I thought, to help me because I am having a bad time with the pregnancy and was warned that the baby might be premature – well little did I know but she had planned to turn my whole world upside-down, she insisted the rabbit be moved into the utility room, so we did this, because she bought her dog with her and he is a terrier breed.
I could barely get out there to visit my rabbit. Eventually when the baby was born, mother left the day after I went home from hospital – she had no intention of keeping her promise to me and teaching me how to bathe the baby, change the nappy, etc, I had to learn all of this from midwives!
I could never understand why she lived with me for seven weeks during my pregnancy and then went back to London the day after the baby comes home! What was the point in coming at all?
To top it all, the baby was in hospital for the first 5 days of his life with an infection, so I was at my wits end and I was calmed at the idea my mother had nursing experience. She didn’t look at it that way and went anyway. She redecorated my house when I was in hospital without permission, things were moved from places they should have been kept and it took us ages to find them all again.
I was wrapped up with the baby for the first 2 months and then I started to go and see my rabbit in the utility again; Paul looked after him for me. I decided that I would like him moved back into the lounge but the midwives and other people said it would be unhygienic for the baby and that the baby might develop allergies or asthma because of the straw.
I wasn’t happy.
I said to my husband that I was about to play bingo online and that if I won anything over £50 I would get a hutch and have the rabbit outside as I would take it as a sign. I won £150! So out he went, reluctantly, to live in the garden, just before autumn of 2010.
Pauls family, my dad, and Paul himself did a lot to try and make the garden decent for my rabbit. But then I got ill and Paul got tied up with all of my chores as well as his own, raising the baby, caring for the pets (as I have more than just a rabbit, I have guinea pigs too), so the garden wasn’t kept good, the utility room became a hoarders haven and because of that, I couldn’t get out into the garden myself unless Paul was there for support as I have chronic vertigo and other disabilities. So I personally only got to see the rabbit to touch him about four times a year.
I promised the rabbit that if I came into any more money, I would buy a large cage on wheels and bring him back in with me, but that didn’t happen until last week. I won £300 last week and I found that a cage 120cm was being sold on ebay for £40. I got it and it was delivered Monday – unfortunately the whole household has flu, I still have it, but I needed to write about this today. I feel so guilty about his life and I feel this is the biggest example of SODS LAW I’ve ever known. My husband had promised that even though he had flu, he would have tried today if it wasn’t raining to get the rabbit moved into the new cage – well it rained today, but the rabbit died this morning and I am so sad, angry at myself, angry at sods law and I just wished he knew I kept my promise to him!
Poor Rozzy. He is buried under the ash tree in the garden with his 5 siblings. 3 guinea pigs and 2 hamsters. Scrabble, Checkers, Autumn, Donald and Bella. His sister Rowan was told and I don’t believe any scientist that tells me that animals don’t understand people, because she shed a tear! She knew him, she was put into a play pen in front of his hutch in the summers with her sister Autumn, Ruby never knew Rozzy her big brother (Ruby is another guinea pig that is companion to Rowan, she is tiny and Rowan became her mum when she moved in as I believe the seller sold Ruby too young, because Ruby had toilet trouble when she first moved in and Rowan helped lick her to help her).
My little boy wants another rabbit. But his dad says no, not yet, he also asked me if I would like to get the girls (my guinea pig duo) another one to two girls to live with them or a boar? Paul used to be a guinea pig breeder (hobbyist) he once had 50 guinea pigs all to himself, he said he misses it.
I only ever had the 5 guinea pigs since I lived here with him. I would love to see baby guinea pigs. They live indoors and they are not the sinus problem, because I had them moved out for a few weeks and it made no difference to me whatsoever.
I love pets. I don’t have much money right now to have more than just 2 cages of guinea pigs, approximately 6 guinea pigs. But if I had more money, I would be like my godmother, Gina. She is like the female equivalent of Ace Ventura! In her glory days (as I call it) she had this amounts of pets = 9 cats, 6 dogs, 6 rabbits, 2 ducks, 6 terrapins, 2 guinea pigs, 6 cockatiels, an aquarium of fish, 3 rats and 3 budgies, she also whilst having all of these to herself, had a donkey for 2 months but had to give it up due to expense and unruly behaviour! Her eldest daughter would also get her mum to babysit her pets for her from time to time, two more dogs.
I would never keep birds though, but chickens or ducks are OK. Cats don’t like me generally and Paul don’t like cats – I am loved by most dogs though, the bigger the dog I’ve noticed, the more likely it chooses me for its pal! I don’t know if it’s because I look like I can handle them and they think, PERFECT the mama is big! I am 5ft 7 and large and prone to gaining muscle when I exercise too easily!
I can see me having 12 chickens, 3 dogs, 30 guinea pigs, 4 rabbits and 6 hamsters, maybe if I had room goats or pigs and always a large aquarium. Well, that’s my dream.
I would like lizards and snakes, but my husband can’t do them, or rats. I don’t mind any animal, as long as it isn’t spiders. I would even love a fruit bat!
People cringe at me, because I will kiss any animal. Trained my guinea pigs to kiss me, kissed a rat, kissed a snake, and kissed a camel. I am very kissable!
I don’t have parrots sitting on my shoulders, I have Irish Wolfhounds. That was typical when I visited Gina, her Irish wolfhound Amy loved me so much she would use me as a chair. Some fete for a huge dog! A lot of pain for my shoulders! I had to sit back on the sofa, rigid so the dog wouldn’t lose its balance!
I nearly worked with animals on 4 occasions, when I lived with my mum. Every occasion she made me forget the idea. I even had job interviews with vets to train as an auxiliary nurse. I had been accepted to become a police dog trainer, as I am very good at training dogs to do almost anything I want them to, I have a knack with them. I also applied to work for the dog kennels but mum wasn’t happy about that either as I would only be earning £100 a week. The other job was to train to be a dog groomer.
Anyway, I should wrap this up and stop the trips down memory lane of all the animals I ever knew, as the list would be astronomical! Seriously, had too many pets in my experience, too many animal friends instead of people friends. So, I hope you enjoyed this post.
Rest in peace my little bunny xxx

The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

Wonderfully written and not very well known, some people mistake this horror classic for being a rip off of “The Black Widow” which is a different story set in a different scene.

I loved everything about this story, the scene that was set, the history, the events, the magic and the demise of the main protagonist.
A great example of a wonderfully vivid and innovative imagination!

Obviously, as the title states, DO NOT read if you are an arachnophobe as there are some pretty gory and detailed scenes in this story.