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Posted Jun 21, 2005
Highest yet, ever!!
Radio 2 and FiveLive have just joined us, which explains it, but it going up, up, up! 
Discuss this Journal entry [71]
Latest reply: Jun 21, 2005
Mollie Senior
Posted Jun 8, 2005
My children's grandma died the other day. Not my mother, but my ex's mother, called Mollie. 
Mollie was a fantastic woman (so cool I named my daughter after her). She was a brilliant professional artist, who turned her hand to many artist skills during her life. She was born in Yorkshire, but as she said, escaped, because she couldn't bear the twitching net curtains of a rural village.
She won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London during the war (her escape route from the net curtains!), and spent part of the war helping the effort by retouching warships and things out of photos. She was offered a scholarship to an art college in Florence, but had to turn it down, because by then she was pregnant with her first child, not going was always one of her big regrets.
She went on to become one of the group of professional Chelsea Potters in Chelsea in the sixties, and also sold handmade silver and enamel jewelry, which she made, along with pottery, in the kiln that she kept in my kids' fathers bedroom when he was a lad.
She took up printing, and etching - when you carve the picture into metal and produced prints from the etchings.
Later in life, when she was really getting on a bit, she took up glass engraving, and within a few years really mastered that too, producing the most beautiful glasses, and other engraved items. She had a cottage in Cornwall, and in the door was a swirly blue glass circle, with a dolphin swimming in the glass that she'd engraved. She also produced items like tigers in caves, so not names on glasses type engraving at all. She was so naturally talented that she was invited to become an honourary member of the Guild of Glass Engravers, whose patron was the Queen Mother.
Throughout her life Mollie painted in oils and acrylics. As she became very old she took on watercolour painting, and again was so skilled at that, producing paintings of all sorts of things, teddies for the grandchildren, and bowls of grapes that glistened with drops of water, with added nasty wasps, just to give them a bit of the evil edge - she wasn't a conformist in any way!
So here's to Mollie. 
A totally extraordinary woman, a woman's libber before there was a womans' lib. A non conformist, a lovely woman, and an incredibly talented artist. I'll miss her...
Discuss this Journal entry [16]
Latest reply: Jun 8, 2005
Accident! :-(
Posted May 27, 2005
I had a bit of an accident at work yesterday. 
There's a big balcony/terrace on the floor above me at work. I'd been up there earlier in the day as the sun was shining and wanted to make a couple of phone calls before I rushed off out for a drink with Pete, one of the BBC lawyers.
As usual I was thinking of other things, and rushing about. I strode towards the sliding patio door, thought 'It's open isn't it? yep!' and then wham, I went straight into the glass door with my head. It knocked me back a bit, and then these guys sitting by jumped and said 'Are you okay' and I said 'Yeah, yeah, fine, bit stunned' and they said ' Er, no, you're not, you've gashed your head - you need stitches!' and grabbed me.
I'd hit the glass and split my head open! Ow, ow, ow! They dialed the emergency number, and called an ambulance, and the first aider rushed up with the box and bandages and wrapped up my head which was spurting blood impressively all over the place.
I felt so stupid; what a stupid, stupid thing to do. I really thought the door was wide open as it was earlier in the day. 
I was a real wuss and called my boss Richard and said 'come up and find me! I'm hurt!' and he legged it up the stairs.
So, the ambulance came and took me to Hammersmith Hospital, Richard came with me and called Mark, who rushed back into London and met us there.
They gave me the choice of stitches, or glue. I went for the glue, because it sounded better cosmetically, but apparently some people *prefer* stitches - weird old world, huh?
Anyway, no work for me today. I've got a huge (well I think it's huge, but I said I'm a wuss!) gash on my head, a lump like a walnut, a bruised nose and a wonderful swollen shut black eye.
So much for a nice night out having a drink with Pete and friends!
Discuss this Journal entry [33]
Latest reply: May 27, 2005
Sixth h2g2 Birthday!
Posted Apr 27, 2005
Tra la la! It's my 6th h2g2 birthday today!
I signed up just after middday, after jumping across from DouglasAdams.com.
Now what would I do without h2g2? 
Discuss this Journal entry [28]
Latest reply: Apr 27, 2005
Test to find out if you a racist or homophobic...
Posted Apr 21, 2005
I found this really interesting. I found it via the 1xtra site.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/uk/selectatest.html
It's a test to find out if you are racist, homophobic, ageist etc
I did the homophobic one...
The tests are all about your reaction times to various images and words. I found it quite hard to do, because I think that initially I was confused and was trying to associate the words with one group or another - it's actually based on your reaction times.
I'd be interested to see what anyone else thinks, do you come out of it how you think you are, is a good test, or not? I think I'll try the ageist one next, I *surely* can't be ageist!
Discuss this Journal entry [33]
Latest reply: Apr 21, 2005
Peta
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