BIRTHDAY BUNNY BUNTING

Tomorrow my Grandma will celebrate her 90th birthday. Unfortunately I will not be in England to celebrate, but I received an email from my mum asking me to draw a picture and write something I associate with Grandma to use for bunting for her party. The idea is that everyone will contribute a flag each and Granny will receive something a bit like a decorative photo album. For anyone unfamiliar with bunting, it's that cute flag stuff you see in Laura Ashley magazines and village fetes. 

(Here's some I made during my art foundation, decorated with an illustrated poem I wrote about Hungarian museum exhibits coming to life one night, venturing out into the city and, realising it was no longer the Medieval fairytale kingdom it once was, deciding to head back stay in the musuem after all)

I had lots of ideas about what to put on my allotted flag, but I went with this bunny puppet and a short story on the back.

"On summer evenings we used to walk down to the Beefeater pub with Grandma and Grandad. One night I left my toy rabbit, Cottontail, in Old Mother Hubbard's shoe. When we got home Grandma called the Beefeater, but nobody had handed my rabbit in. Seeing how upset I was, Grandma spent the next day sewing a near perfect replica of said bunny rabbit. I called him Flopsy. He had whiskers and everything. Grandma made the best stuffed toys. She always got the eyes just right."

I hope she has a wonderful day. HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA! 

Secret Garden Party

Kodak Colorsnap 2, a handful of friends, a tent, a straw hat and I took a break from reality and cavorted about in a flag-filled field for five days and nights. In other worlds, this is Secret Garden Party 2010.




Sometimes, something is so wonderful that you completely forget it will ever end. It felt like I had never arrived there, and like I would never leave. It just... was.



A melancholy kind of happiness, appreciating a moment only after it has passed. Sleeping on bales of hay and dancing long past dawn. Dry ice and survival cups of tea. One morning about six we fell into a tent, layered floor to ceiling with rugs and carpets, a lovely cool softness, like arranging yourself on a king-size bed on the yearly family trek through the M and S sale. Disrupting the hushness is a man being asked to move on. "But you can't make us leave! This is our Home!" Floundering and pleading he is escorted from the premises. We return to quiet breeze and the stillness of the Beach Boys. Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder).



Then there are the more sinister moments on piss-soaked knolls behind dancefloors. Lumberingly squeezed into a leather-zipped PVC two-piece suit, an aged member of the press dribbles above my head. "I've just taken three pills, and I'm waiting for them to kick in." Those little jabs of social conscience when you know life can't be like this forever. When shuddering back to reality you remember you're moving house in two weeks and the car has three days left on it's MOT. But that there are the unremitting jaunts of happiness on the wayside. Music, films and dogs. Tea, bread and penguins. Oblique rabbits.