Chim Chim-in-nee, Chim Chim-in-nee ♪

Every time I go to Chamchuri Square I start singing. I’ve only been three times but that’s probably good a good thing. It's the singing you see; I could send myself mad. I don’t sing any old song, just once – I sing ‘Chim Chim-in-nee, Chim Chim-in-nee, chim chim cher-ee.’ ♪♪♪♪ And I sing it over and over and over. 

I only NEEDED to go to Chamchuri Square for the visa renewals each February which was kind of doable. We can all put up with 24 hours of me warbling like a discordant Mary Poppins or Dick Van Dyke once a year but now I’ve got another reason to go which is a bit worrying. Someone told me about a stall where you could buy notebooks that they would personalize for you (at no extra charge.)

*Gasp* I think it might be worth the pain of the singing.

Look at my new notebook:

On being really irritating

I was tucked away working in my office last Saturday. All the rooms in our new apartment are arranged off the central communal space so no one is ever very far away. (This can be a good and a bad thing.) Everyone was home pottering about. I was unaware of them. Later, when I thought back to what had happened, I realized I’d heard this:

Setting: In the distant subconscious of Jenny’s brain.

Husband: *singing* Little boxes on the hillside-

Son: Dad. Shhh: Mum!

Husband: *singing* little boxes made of ticky tacky;

Son: *urgently* DAD! Shhh. Mum’ll start…

Husband: Huh?

Me: *singing* little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same…

Son: *tutting* Oh never mind. It’s too late.

I sang Little Boxes aloud to everyone’s irritation for approximately twenty four hours until after lunch on Sunday, this happened:

Setting: the dining room table. Son is doing homework. Jenny is working. Husband is doing something; it wasn’t the tax returns… though it probably should have been.

Son: *Looking up* How do you spell ukulele?

Me: *bursts into song* ukulele; ukulele, ukulele me!

Husband: *bursts into song in the style of George Formby* I’m leaning on a lamppost at the corner of the street in case a certain little lady comes by… (He actually does the ukulele actions: that must be doing air ukulele?)

Son: Grrrrrr

Me: U-K-E-L-E-L-E (I even spelt it wrong)

It’s now Wednesday and I’m still singing Ukulele; ukulele, ukulele me!

I even irritate myself sometimes but at least I’ve learned to spell ukulele, ukulele, ukulele me! ♫

♪ "I Have A Dream" la la la ♪

The mentoring thing is going ahead.

I had a conversation with the coordinator yesterday. This was to give her an idea of what I was like … so she can match me to the right mentor. She said ‘when we talk of a mentor, do you think male or female or doesn’t the thought occur to you?’ and I said ‘female.’

When I was at Art College a lot of my work was labelled ‘women’s art’ in a snotty, derisive way. Our lecturers (mostly male) were lovely, and tried to explain if I made work that was gender specific, I was wiping out half the potential viewers. I tried to explain to them that I couldn’t take my femaleness out of my experience of making art. I don’t accept that that makes my work less important, less good or less anything and I won’t apologise for it.

I am fairly sure my writing will be the same.

Let’s look at the evidence: the main character is a woman; of the next five characters four are women. There are two other main male characters and they are both dead! Hmmmm, interesting. The mentoring coordinator has read my first chapter and agreed with me.

Anyway this won’t do – I don’t know where that soapbox moment came from - I must pull myself together and do some work.

I should really turn off the soundtrack to Mamma Mia. I can’t write with music on … and particularly not when I’m warbling enthusiastically but tunelessly along with it. It’s most off putting.

But I’m rather enjoying it. In my dreams I sing so well ♪ ‘Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight…’ ♪ although the snorting, mocking laughter that Husband’s just emitted might pour scorn on that idea.

Tagged by Liz

Liz has tagged me. Phew, I'm less bad tempered today, but feeling a bit dry of inspiration, so thank you Liz.

Rules:
Link to the person that tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Liz said: ‘These tags are tough because it is to find things I haven't said before so I repeat myself forgive me.’ She’s right; I can’t think of a thing I haven’t already shared on my blog … so hmmm, let’s see, without mentioning my love affair with tea...

1. I’m obsessed with the colour orange. This started when I was at Art College and did a piece of work on me, myself and I and I realised that I was orange. Because my ‘office’ is actually our dressing area I write facing a mirror, which is quite horrific, so I’ve decorated it with the bits of orange stuff that I, family and close friends have bought for me. You can see it somewhere on my blog but I can’t remember where.

2. I thought it was normal to want to make a patchwork quilt out of old teabags? No? Well, it was a relief then to get to Art College and realise that there were other people in this world who wanted to bathe in paint, print with teabags and make sculptures that look like bodily functions. Phew, I thought I was on my own there.

3. I LOVE potatoes. When I worked in York there was a little church that had been turned into a café and resource centre. It had a yummy wholefoody café that I frequented with another potatophile, and we always ate Homity Pie (this is potato pie) and potato salad.

4. I’m a repressed vegetarian. I love veggie foods: particularly lentils and chickpeas and mostly I’m not bothered by meat. But I like roast lamb, (English) sausages, and the odd steak when out, so you see I wouldn’t be a very good veggie. I also blame my family who are all dreadful, confirmed meateaters (apart from daughter who’s tried to give up meat because ‘it’s wrong’ but mostly gone back to it because she loves it.)

5 I sing all the time – it’s a very irritating habit because mostly I sing (badly) only two lines of the same song over and over, or a deeply embarrassing song (Fireman Sam was a big favourite and my children used to sing this to me deliberately so it get stuck in my head and I’d sing it ALL DAY). Or worse: both of those things. I’m not very good at looking cool but still I sometimes try and it often goes horribly wrong because of the singing. In the first few days of Art College, I was sharing an easel with a woman called Sally and as I started to relax, I must’ve started singing because Sally peered round from her side of the easel, and said ‘Are you actually singing Pat-A-Cake, Pat-A-Cake, Baker’s Man?’ Then in Koh Chang for Skyros this Christmas, after my group had gone home, Husband, Yogi David, Julia Bell, and I went off scuba/snorkelling for the day. For lunch we got put down on this perfect desert island, and after lunch it was so hot that some of us went into the water. So as I start to relax, floating about in the warm shallow water yup, you guessed right, I start to sing… until eventually, Julia swims towards me saying: ‘Are you really singing ‘Jingle Bells?’ (It could’ve another tacky Christmas carol, but anyway, you get the picture. And look, it was Julia Bell, and really, I didn’t want to look a total twit. Still, I think it may’ve been a bit late by then.)

6. (Ho hum … What else?) Uhm, I often run out of energy for finishing things?

Tag six people... Pacha, Helen, Yvonne, Cally, Leigh and Angie. Or not if you don't want. I shan't be offended.

Too many parentheses

Well, they’ve gone.

I had a little look at the map on my blog this morning to see whereabouts they might be. I reckon they’ll be flying over Europe – hope they wave.

They land at 6am ish UK time. For the next nearly three weeks I think I will be doing a lot of translating clock times in my head, imagining what they’re doing.

For one weak and self indulgent second I thought about them all alone up there (oh how the imagination works… do go and look at this post!) And then, I realised that for all the ferocity of a mother protecting her young, I am not superwoman, and I’d be pretty much buggered myself in an aeroplane doing something unpredictable.

So now, I’ve pulled myself together and started thinking about showering, packing, PICKING UP MY BLACKBERRY (HURRAH … Who? My children are …where?)

Then, then, the excitement of today (apart from being footloose and fancy free with my Blackberry to play with, and getting ready for Skyros (HURRAH)) I’m going with a group from the British Women’s Group to sing Christmas carols at a Bangkok Hospital (this is something I did last year, and I’m sorry but drinking sherry, eating mince pies and singing carols in the sweltering heat of Bangkok doesn’t do anything to persuade me it’s December the something. BUT, it’s lots of fun – I love to sing (the same stanza over and over, and probably badly, mostly, but tough. It’s MY singing and it’s good for my mental health!)).

If you’re very (un)lucky I may see if I can make the technology work to upload some of our ‘singing.’

(When I’m over-excited I use too many brackets – it’s the digressions.)

Woo hoo: carols, BLACKBERRY, Skyros …Children are safe, happy and being looked after … I am a good mum.

PS. I LOVE blogging. I am so glad to be back (I never really went away: I lurked. I just didn’t post!)