It’s not just August which has been wet. Apart from a few sporadic days of tropical heat that coincided with the first week of Wimbledon, this summer has delivered more and heavier rain than was needed by my garden. Luckily I’ve had lots of things to keep me busy. College finished in the last week of June but college projects have been ongoing ever since and if you take a closer look at my website you may notice the results of one of them – including some better photography.
Given the choice I’ll do pretty much anything rather than sit in front of a computer screen (which accounts for the random blog postings) so I wasn’t best pleased when Delyth (course leader on my MA in Contemporary Crafts at Hereford College of Arts) suggested that I should rebuild my online presence for the Professional Practice module. She was right that the website was looking a bit ‘tired’ and that was because ever since it had been created (thanks to a grant from the Arts Council of Wales in 2014) I had done very little with it and certainly didn’t mess about with the tricky bits behind the front page. She was also right that the content didn’t reflect my current practice, though to be honest this is her fault because – thanks to the MA course – I have gone from using felt to creating mixed media work, lino cutting, hand-made paper and making maps with techniques as diverse as photography, poetry, video, bone carving, weaving and drawn illustration.
Trying to find a way to get all of those activities to sit on a website without the result looking like the aftermath of a jumble sale was going to be a challenge but then, just before the end of term, our MA cohort was treated to workshops with Pete Mosley (coach, mentor and author of The Art of Shouting Quietly . At the end of the four days Pete told me that I was a ‘multi-potentialite’ and a ‘multi-faceted person of intent’. He might have just wanted to get rid of me because my allotted tutorial time was up by using words I didn’t understand but I prefer to think that he was helping me to join up some dots. It turns out that there are lots of us ‘multi-potentialites’ in the world and this is just Emilie Wapnik’s term. Barbara Sher uses ‘scanners’, Roman Krznaric says we are ‘wide achievers’ and my late Aunty Phyl would have called us ‘Jack of all trades’. In Welsh the term is Wil naw swydd which translates to ‘Will of the nine jobs’. How lucky is Will to be able to restrict himself to just the nine!
I’ve always been able to turn my hand to lots of different things, not brilliantly but with competence. The only skill which escapes me is music – including dance, singing and even the enjoyment of listening to anything other than Gregorian chants. I find music at best irritating and at worst, discomforting. Apart from that there is virtually nothing that I’m not interested in or nosy about. I followed Pete’s advice and made a list of all my activities and interests: it took up two sheets of paper and I only stopped writing because it was getting silly. It got me thinking about whether I could combine all of my various activities into my new-ish website and use it to keep an eye on all my spinning plates. Whilst I was thinking I popped up to Craven Arms for the launch of the new Wales Rail Trail which is going to create a long distance footpath that links to the stations along the Heart of Wales line.
For once the weather was good and the scenery was stunning. What made the day truly memorable for me though was that as I walked to the station to get the train home, I noticed a road sign that was almost covered by hedgerow growth. Pulling the leaves away I found this and ticked something off my list off my bucket list – and you will only understand why if you are a history (in particular, Roman history) nerd like me.
Early July saw 13 children and four adults from Llangan Primary School coming to visit our garden. In order to maintain some semblance of control, I’d sorted out the activities which included a tour of the garden, produce tasting, a quiz, observational drawing and the very popular ‘Cake Idol’ competition between Truly Cake and Thunder & Lightning Cake. It was great to hear Harri (aged 10) telling Max to “be serious because every vote will count!” Democracy is safe in their hands. As usual Thunder and lightning cake won and if you follow the recipe I’ve attached you’ll realise the reason.
Meanwhile I was still wrestling with the website and wondering how many wrong buttons I’d press before the whole thing collapsed before my eyes. Distraction came by way of a few days in Aberystwyth during which time I managed five exhibitions in a single day. The first was ‘Lives of the Celtic Saints’ at Llanbadarn Fawr Church and very lovely it was too. I followed that with ‘Fallen Poets’ (poignant), ‘Arthur and Welsh Mythology’ (jaw droppingly good) and ‘Legends!’ (amazing) at the National Library of Wales before getting to ‘Radical Crafts’ at Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
One of the things I like about Aberystwyth is how esoteric some of the street entertainment is. This was the scene at a free concert of folk music on the promenade.
Lorraine (my website guru) lives in Aberystwyth and gave me some ‘calm-down-and-get-on-with-it’ advice about button pressing. On the way home I walked walk part of the Aberaeron to Lampeter trail to visit Llanerchaeron and apart from advising you to be very sceptical about the information which is given to you there about where the nearest bus stop is, I heartily recommend the place. It is beautiful.
Eventually I got to the point where I couldn’t put off interacting with the computer any longer. Even the weather conspired to get me into cyberspace as rain, more rain and then, yet more rain fell. Stuck indoors one damp afternoon I pressed my first button and found that nothing catastrophic happened either to the world in general or the website in particular. Buoyed by (probably misplaced) confidence, I pressed button after button removing redundant tabs and inserting new, relevant ones. Whereas activities used to be crammed into four sections, my website now has 18 different pages and all my interests are arranged in a logical and integrated whole with lots of bits and bobs embedded – just because I learnt how to do it and wanted to show off.
Hopefully you’ll have a tolerant attitude to any bumps and wobbles in my newly realigned website. It’s not only Sylvia Plath’s time which is odd and uneven.