Excuses and stuff

I know you think I could not be bothered to blog, but in fact I have a lamer excuse.

I was too busy.

(Embarrassing, I know.)

This is the kind of excuse that might be anathema to REAL bloggers as REAL Bloggers scoff at those who say 'How do you find the time?'

But last week, I was hard pushed to find the time.

(Pathetic)

It is a bit like hardened runners who roll their eyes at people who are asked about how they find time to train. For some what is a way of life (blogging, running), is to others an interruption on the smooth running of other things (work, family).

But my blog has started to become a way of helping me think about and get into order the other aspects of my life. It has also become a ritual in my day and one which I move towards as the day goes on. I think about what to blog. Similarly runners use the running time to empty their minds; to think; and they feel uncomfortable if they do not run. It becomes a real need that involves guilt if it does not happen.I even feel like I have let people down.

Strange.

Although I did not post anything here since last Tuesday, I have thought about things I wanted to post (and indeed there are a myriad of things gone by in the past, that I regret not posting about.)

here is how my week went:

Last Wednesday I did post here .

On Thursday I thought I would post about the amzing coincidence of meeting Alyson Simpson who works with Anya who I met in Miami the other week. How much of a coincidence is that??

Alyson came and spoke to Jackie and myself about her research and our research and we agreed that it would be great if Alyson came and did a seminar sometime next year when she is on Study Leave.

And I had not noticed at first that she is a co-author of this book which she and Anya both contributed to:



(I have not read this yet but will let you know when I do.)

On Friday I thought I would write about this strange phenomenon.

Have YOU become a lensmaster yet? ,

................................................ my brother asked me. ......


Well I registered and so on, but have not really got my head round what a lensmaster is yet. I think you must proclaim yourself to be an expert in something, and that is the trouble. Then people use you as a portal to grab related information to your expertise. As I did not want to be fraudulent I chickened out half way through. I had identity problems. Am I an expert on anything?

Doubt it, somehow.

And anyway I suppose you would have to keep writing endlessly about the same thing.

Maybe.

Then at the weekend I went here. Salt's mIll. Home of David Hocney paintings etc etc.

Interesting stuff.

Set here in Bronte Country:



It is an Old Textile Mill which was once filled with the working classes.



Transformed into a showspace for the middle-classes and their educated children. The cafe sells fusion food that people first experienced on their foreign holidays.



It is all very bizarre. It also sells books and upmarket designer gadgets for the kitchen. It also has stuff (artefacts) to clutter up your house - if you want your house to look like a stage set..... (which I don't.)

What can it mean?

I think it is strange, these transformations of working class Hellholes, into shopping areas.
I do like going to Salts Mill and have been LOADS of times to look at pictures; but it is a weird phenomenon.
We, (and I am talking for myself here), romanticise the past, filling it with cultured artefacts and positioning ourselves in that contemporary space, yet re-posditioning ourselves in relation to times gone by. By re-articulating the present space, we somehow see the past differently. The place is like a stage set, a new arena, and we envisage the past as peopled by actors, who pose in our minds, in stances that pictorialise history.
The past becomes infused with the present, a kind of comfortable pastiche and we think about industrialsed England almost as a small chapter in a cultivated story of the place.

(I wouldn't buy those lemons though.)