F is for Funnymen

I realise that quite a few of my posts will probably confirm what an important influence my mother was on me. Her love of comedians was certainly one that I will always be grateful for. As I am going to see another great stand-up, Eddie Izzard, tomorrow night, it seems only right to talk about three of the comics she introduced me to.

At the easily-embarrassed age of 12, I was the youngest person in the audience at the Waverley Market during the 1972 Edinburgh Fringe, watching The Great Northern Welly Boot Show featuring Billy Connolly.  

If you've never heard the famous song, here's what you've been missing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SguYlpm3ffQ I have to admit, the song wasn't the most memorable part of the show for me. What I remember most was my ears burning under the scrutiny of an audience shocked by the fact that my mother would take such a young child to a show that included a live striptease. But how was she to know?

Nonetheless, despite that early trauma, my admiration for Billy Connolly has survived 37 years. Tapes of his LPs went with me to Greece when I first went to teach there. My students learned to understand and appreciate his immense wit and charm. As my husband is English, he initially struggled with the Glasgow accent too, but soon became as big a fan as I. So, it was a well-judged surprise gift when he took me to see Billy again just a few weeks ago at the Usher Hall. A dream come true.

On the other side of my Billy Connolly tape was a very different but equally irreverant comedian, Tom Lehrer. His biting satire may seem relatively tame now, but he was banned at about the time my mother got hold of his 45s. Pictured on the cover of Songs and More Songs as the devil himself, he was a Maths professor at Harvard with a wicked alter ego.

One of my favourite songs is Clemantine, which I love mainly for his brilliant mimicry - scroll down to the Youtube clip in this link to hear a live rendition: http://www.uulyrics.com/music/tom-lehrer/song-clementine/ 

And finally (though there are many other early funnymen that I still like), I have a tremendous soft spot for Jacques Tati and his eccentric creation, Monsieur Hulot.

A quiet, understated humour based on his observations of life. So I am delighted that there is to be a Tati season at The Filmhouse in December and, for the first time, I will be able to watch Mon Oncle on the big screen. http://www.filmhousecinema.com/seasons/jacques-tati/

My mother would have loved that. See you there.

F is for Frugal

Frugality is not something I ever used to think about.

Having said that, living off a grant at university meant having to manage money pretty carefully. After graduation, I taught English in Greece, where I worked for five years and was appallingly badly paid. I kept my earnings in a jar in the bottom drawer of my desk. When it was empty, there was no more. In my second year there, I had to take on so many extra lessons (just to pay the rent and living expenses) that I dropped 15 kilos in weight in 3 months...the second best diet I ever went on. And if you're teaching 41 hours a week and commuting around 3 hours a day, you don't have that much time to worry about how to spend your money.

This all changed when my mother died and I inherited enough money to buy a house in Greece. By this time, I was married and the money financed our adventure in Tinos. Even there, we spent very little - we ate seasonal food bought in the local markets, stocked up on new clothes about once a year on our return to Britain and limited our travelling to within Greece or back home.

Probably my most extavagant years were when I worked in the centre of Edinburgh. The school was situated near some of the most interesting designer shops in the city - coincidentally, the dress code at work was 'smart'. Plenty of excuses then to pop out at lunchtime to buy a pair of French enamel earrings when I realised I had forgotten to wear any. Or to buy a cashmere scarf when the weather turned chilly. Or, best of all, purchase a silk shirt to replace the one my board pen had just leaked all over.

But I suppose money isn't everything. The job in the city turned sour and we took time off to travel. On our return we landed reasonably well-paid jobs but something still wasn't right. So here we are, back to being self-employed (and doing jobs we'd never dreamt of doing before) and skint. Learning to be frugal again. Not a bad thing.

One of the most important people to come into my life over the past year has been Nicky Orr. Not only does she provide a market place for designers, artists and crafts people, she is also passionate about sustainability, recycling and, well, just thinking about how to be less wasteful in our lives. Being frugal isn't being mean. It's just stopping to think. Now that I have less money, I have to look for ways to maintain the lifestyle I want: recycling what I have, buying from charity shops, even comparing prices...

Being frugal is cool and I am very proud to be participating in the first Eco Crafts Market next week. http://www.frugalcool.co.uk/ecmmainpage.html 

Here's to everyone's success.

F is for Flower

So, obviously, Heather is the name of a flower and that could be why I've always loved having plants and flowers around me. Maybe, but I doubt it.

The thing is, at school I was obsessed with Enid Blyton's tales of boarding school and the ultra-cool lifestyle of all who went there. You never heard of anyone with my name (it didn't occur to me then that she was English so a Heather or a Morag or a Siobhan would never figure). Instead, what I most wanted was a nickname (the best being the male-sounding abbreviation of the female version of a boy's name - Bobby, Jo, Billie, Sammy). Not much you could do with Heather, which more usually was rhymed with bad weather.

No, I think the more likely reason for loving flowers came from my mother. Every summer was spent in the countryside (or "in the field" - the subject for a future post), surrounded by wild flowers. We would pick them (I guess now I would hesitate to do so) and press them between the pages of a magnificent hardback wild flower book (the edition pictured could be it, but I'll have to check to be sure). Back at home too, the garden was colourful for most of the year and there the vases in the house were always kept filled.

Throughout my travels, I have always fallen for the places with the prettiest flowers - we first went to Tinos in Greece in the springtime. By the end of our week there, we had bought a house. That is the most extreme reaction.

In terms of holiday destinations though, my greatest surprise was Colorado. We went in July and, used as we were to the Mediterranean, we had no idea the meadows would be quite so breathtaking. They revelled in the most dazzling array of colours I have ever seen. The colombine is the Colorado state flower and is in evidence everywhere, but there were so many species I couldn't name that I had to buy another wild flower book - when I return I will be prepared. 

Enough now. Flowers are fabulous...and if there are none in the garden, at least I have my photos (and those I have felted, of course).

F is for fencing

 

Change just a couple of letters in felting and you have fencing - my passion from the age of 12. Well, I didn't actually get to join the after-school classes till I in was my third year of Secondary school. Boys could start in first year; girls couldn't, making me all the more determined to get going and to be good at it.

There were plenty of compulsory sports at school, all of which I was pretty useless at: hockey, tennis, netball, swimming, basketball. The great thing about fencing for me was 1) very few other people did it (or at least stuck at it after the first couple of weeks - it's not an 'instant' sport) and 2) my parents hadn't been trying for years to get me to take it up and be like them. That had been golf.

I was very competitive and found fencing a thrilling sport. In the end, I won a few trophies and medals and represented Scotland in competitions in Belgium and Germany. But the highlight for me was winning the Scottish Schools Under-18 Championships.

This is a tricky competition as all the preliminary rounds take place during the week, with the final on the Saturday. It's difficult to recreate the excitement and adrenalin of the qualifying bouts in the short, sharp final. There's a pool of six fencers, each of whom you fence once (each fight usually only lasting 3 - 4 minutes). My main rival was at another competition that day. However, there were 2 others (left-handed like myself) that were always going to be difficult.

In the last fight, my opponent was so keen to win that she warded off a hit by bringing down her back arm and deflecting my blade. Foul. Warning. If she did it again, the point would be awarded against her. And that's how the last point was won. My point either way, but a clean fight would have made the victory sweeter.

Never mind, fencing is a wonderful sport and, although I no longer participate (thanks to another F in my life), I see it is still going strong in Scotland http://www.scottish-fencing.com/default.asp as is my inspiring coach, Prof Bert Bracewell. En garde!

F is for felting

It all came as a bit of a revelation about 3 years ago. Whilst travelling in New Zealand, I came across the website http://www.creativetourism.co.nz/index.html
Through it, I was able to book into classes in wood-turning, glass-fusing and felting. I had the least expectations of the felting, having an image of it as being a little bit rough around the edges and anything but sophisticated. How wrong I was.
On our return to Edinburgh, I started looking around for courses that would build on the 2 days I had spent with Mary Andrews. I booked onto an evening course at the Edinburgh College of Art before I even knew how I was going to pay for it (luckily we did manage to get jobs fairly soon afterwards).
Since then, I have followed other courses at the Art College and in Newburgh (a hugely active community including the fabulous http://www.twistfibrecraft.co.uk/) and now hold my own classes. Felting has become a huge part of my life; more than just a hobby.
But it's not the first F-word to have held me in its thrall. More in the next post.