Tina Rath's Blog: A Writer's Diary, page 7

Apple Day

I shall, hopefully, be telling stories here:

Waltham Forest Apple Day 2014

Saturday 11th October, 11 am – 4 pm

Vestry House Museum, 11 Vestry Rd, London E17 9NH

Donation £1 (children go free)

This annual event is a celebration of the healthy, humble, handy apple  –  and

all the other good things that Autumn brings.

Highlights include:

– Apples for sale, as well for tasting, pressing and bobbing by Organiclea

– Food by Norman Loves

– Crafts for all by Significant Seams

– Tea and Cakes by Eat or Heat

– Snow White by Grow your own Theatre

– Plants and gardening advice by Vestry House Museum Gardeners

In addition there will be fruit trees and local produce for sale, live music,

poetry, dance, a childrens’ area and a raffle, as well as access to the Vestry

House Museum exhibition,  Raids, Rationing and Riots: Waltham Forest and the

Great War and the We Love Low Cost Living Campaign Ration Challenge!
Proceeds will go to Vestry House Museum Gardeners and Eat or Heat.

Fantasycon

I will be contributing to the poetry event on Friday 5th of September at 730, and reading from some work in progress at 1.20 on Saturday.
Do look in if you are coming to Fantasycon.

Fantasycon

I shall be contributing to Allen Ashley’s poetry event at Fantasycon on Friday 5th of September at 7.30 and reading, either from Zamorna or Alured the Mage on Saturday at 1.20.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Poetry at the Vestry House Museum

Here I am at the Vestry House Museum Poetry Evening performing A Village Romance – a love story based on HP Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos.

A Cherub in a Cage

Over the weekend I took delivery of a fancy cage that now contains a small, winged angel sitting on a swing. (I already have a full sized budgie cage housing a harpy), and a plastic charity shop doll now personalised as a Vampire Lady. Both quite charming. I shall try to put up some photographs later.

 

More on my Dressing Table

I have started to search charity shops for suitable items for my proposed Sinister Dressing Table.

Yesterday I acquired a small black and gold heart-shaped trinket box from Scope, which I am sure can be made suitably ominous – perhaps a tiny gilded skull mounted on the lid? And I remembered I already have a candle-stick which has been suitably customised (the cherub face decorating it was given red eyes and tiny fangs). So I am well on the way.

Now I am looking for small coloured cut glass bottles, which could contain perfumes – or poisons…but also look pretty…

A Lovely Surprise

I arrived home late, sunburned and footsore last night to find a friend had sent me a lovely parcel of Gothic whimsy – including a skull-shaped bottle of vodka, such as I have long wanted. I am inspired by a sudden wish to – when the contacts have been suitably dispatched – transform it into a perfume bottle, and use it to create a Gothic Dressing Table Set to include the perfume bottle, a jewelled crucifix, a dagger, and such bijoux and bibelots as seem suitable – black or red velvet and black lace might feature too…

I think it would look so charming…

New Things

Today I had my first serious singing lesson and on Friday I will be giving my first solo performance as a story teller at the Vestry House Museum in Walthamstow for their Museums at Night Evening. I will be telling the story of how Epping Forest was saved from enclosure by an act of Parliament that laid down that the Conservators of the forest  “shall at all times keep Epping Forest unenclosed and unbuilt on as an open space for the recreation and enjoyment of the people,” thanks very much to the courage and determination of Thomas Willingale of Loughton, his family, and fellow holders of Lopping Rights. So perhaps Old Dogs can learn new tricks after all.

The return of the Little Chimaera

My short story collection, A Chimaera in My Wardrobe is once more available in ebook on Amazon in pristine format.

Strange Tales

I have now established the origin of one more of my mother’s weird sayings – I had already decided that her ‘He’d complain if his behind was alight’ – a circumstance which, I always thought, would certainly be a legitimate cause for complaint in the most balanced individual must have been a shortening of the phrase ‘he’s the sort of man who’d sit on the fire and then complain that his behind was alight’ which makes sense…and that found that ‘in and out like a dog at a fair’ is a genuine idiom.

Now, by sheer serendipity I discovered that the little verse she used to say: ‘Hide me, cherry tree, hide me, for fear the old witch should find me, for if she do she’ll break my bones and bury me under the marble stones’ – is from a genuine London folk tale, apparently, a little known variant of Mother Holle which I came across in London Folk Tales by Helen East, published by The History Press and a very nice collection it is.

Now if anyone can speculate on the origin of this strange phrase, muttered on seeing a long haired man, of whom, in the seventies, there were many: “Head of hair, will you marry me daughter?” I would be a happy bunny. The rythm sounds Irish – even Gaelic… but… I don’t know.

Now if only I could