dusting off my little black dress

i am now officially single and i have to say its pretty good this whole dating malarkey, been out on a few  hot dates and its great fun! Why haven't i done this before?

life feels pretty darn good at the moment

its amazing as soon as you kick something which is bringing you down out of the door - you feel alive again. I feel the dark cloud has well and truly disappeared and i just feel totally content and happy.. life feels great!

hope you are enjoying it too! xx

i'm back - have you missed me????

perfect winter nights with friends

last night i hooked up with 2 of my lovely girlfriends, H and Amy - we headed to silver apples for a good old natter, glass of vino and a yummy scrummy pie! a perfect evening indeed with good old chums.

i'm going out on a date - first time ever, eek!

Poppy is back!!

Yay, poppy is finally back with my for good in our lovely new home!

Zoe sent me this song a while ago, and thought it was appropriate .. enjoy x

em and mrs b came round for tea

mummys perfect birthday weekend

miss edgars birthday celebrations

We headed into town to see super furries to celebrate miss edgars birthday, it was such a hoot and a giggle and we danced into the early hours! Here are some fun songs here..and here. enjoy x

this morning i went for a lovely run....

... to explore my lovely new area, and I was blown away... so happy to be back in the countryside!... pure bliss!... i feel very much alive!

I had a lovely chit chat with my beautiful zoe last night...

..... and she followed it up with a gorgeous email, which was a lovely surprise this morning... I thought I would share:

Dear my beautiful Sian,

I'm super proud of your latest adventure. Well done you for being so brave and taking the next step to feeling completely happy, independent and in control of your next chapter Sianloveslife! Sending you the very biggest hugs. As they say do the thing and you will have power. This is your time now and you have the power to make the most of it, live life to the full and reap all that it has to offer. We only live once and it's important you remember how special and amazing you are. There are so many exciting times ahead of you! You can achieve anything. Just stay positive, put out to the universe what ever you want in life and it will deliver, no matter how crazy it may be. You are here to realise all of your dreams, and make them happen; only you can do this, no one else.  I know you will be fine, you always will be, never doubt that. You have loving, supportive family and friends by your side who will always be there for you. What ever comes into your life is an added bonus.

 And more importantly i'm so happy your mum is all o.k, what a big weight off your shoulders that must be. Please send your mum and dad a big kiss and cuddle from me. Your mum is one very brave lady to have gone though all she has and to keep smiling... remarkable.

I'm sending big love to poppy she will be just fine. You both have a lovely new home town to explore. I will be up like a shot so get your wellies on!

Hope the move goes well darlin. I will be thinking of you and will give you a bell sunday. eeek how exciting!!!! new pad, new adventures, new everything! yay!!!

Anyway, here's of a couple of tracks to sing and dance to. Make sure you and Sioned have the first dance in your new home to Sugar Me. Shortly followed by a jig to This is how we walk on the moon. A classic! (track 2 will follow in second e-mail)

Love you beautiful keep your chin up, the sun is always shining on you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxyeeeeeeeeeexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

we are on the move.....yay!

... i have found my new dream home! i move in on saturday! the start of an exciting chapter!

i'm thinking of a change to my hair.....

...i am a bit bored with my new hair do.....shall i go for it??

got the green light, i am going for it....

... watch this space, poppy and i will hopefully have a new place soon! (fingers and toes crossed!)

nos da, cysga'n dda

i'm looking forward to kendal film festival this year...

for the build up of kendal mountain festival, alistair lee has released a teaser from his new film featuring leo houlding.... it looks like its going to be an amazing film and incredibly inspiring too, i cant wait! Have a butchers here

i am learning....

i feel like i am learning so many things at the moment and really embracing EVERYTHING! Today I’ve really learnt to appreciate the little things in life which help you through the day, for example your trustee car getting you back from a-b. tonight my poor little car decided to stop working and everything just stopped, plans had to change and my usual routine of driving back from work turned into a mammoth task and half.... but the main thing is that I am safe, healthy and well.

zoe has a great pool of knowledge of simply great things...

...she introduced me to mark gonzales, also known as "gonz," who is a pretty amazing and special professional skateboarder and artist. Apparently he is known in the skateboarding world as the pioneer of modern street skateboarding, currently skateboarding's most popular form. zoe tom showed me a great video he featured in for coconut records, check out the clip here, i know you will like!

ps/ also just spotted this short clip of gonz, have a butchers here

blimey what a tough week....

 ...but all is well now, I am at home,  safe and sound away from the rattling wind and rain with a glass of wine and a yummy concoction I created, thought I would show you.. it is so easily to say after a tough day, sod i will get a take out, but no no I thought I would be a good girl and create something scrumptious! I threw into the oven a yummy selection of veggies, beetroot, pepper, celery, courgette, butternut squash, halloumi and herbs... and server with wholemeal pasta, delicious and so easy and effortless to do!... Go on try it!

just had a nice message from my old chum rob

I just saw your profile on my facebook and realised just how long it has been since we saw each other. You look so well but when did your hair get so long!
 It is high time we met  up. I miss you very much.

Have a great weekend.

Me
xxxxx

artist: dominic pote

a few years ago i was visiting my little cousin mrs b in kentish town and we went to a lovely pub which featured the artist dominic pote, i instantly fell in love with his work and actually bought a print (this one) for my my ex as a present, secretly i wish i bought it for me, as it was such a beautiful piece of work. So if i win the lottery i would like to treat myself to it again. if you like his this, please go and see his portofilo on his website.

Here is a snippet from his website:

My work is attempting to free photography from the conventional static image which freezes a specific instant in time. I am in the process of exploring the possibilities of representing the dynamic of time and movement. This work is not constrained by the photographic frame, instead it is expressed through a sweeping panoramic image which portrays reality in flux rather than a fixed entity. While to an extent preconceived, these panoramic images embrace an element of spontaneity, making each image unique.While the negatives are scanned and digitally printed, they are not digitally manipulated. The effect of these works is greatly emphasised by their scale, ranging between 1 and 3 metres in length.

Adopting this experimental technique, I photograph landscapes where there is an aspect of transformation or metamorphosis between two, often conflicting elements. While in Prague I became increasingly interested in the city boundary, an environment witnessing the confrontation between urban architecture and the open landscape. In the series Industrial Landscapes, I focused on power stations, factories and quarries located within open landscape. Despite their ominous presence, these industrial structures become aesthetic, almost sculptural forms within the fleeting thrust of the landscape. In all of these images, geometric architectural forms merge into the landscape, blurring the distinctions between the built and the natural environment. Strong structural shapes and lines become softened and colours become muted into pastel hues, creating an almost painterly rather than photographic image quality.

In a recent project, Shorelines, I have documented the volcanic coastline of a Greek island. In this environment, where land meets sea, there is no sign of man, only an abundance of water, crashing relentlessly against the white rocks. Using the panoramic format enabled me to capture this vast horizon while the added dimension of time reveals the dynamic force of the ocean. During exposure the camera scans the horizon, much as we do with our own eyes, resulting in a fusion of land and sea. Through this process the shoreline is recorded onto film as an actively moving and transforming environment rather than a static fixed entity.

I am crushed.......................

found out my lovely poppy poos had a cancerous tumor, fingers and toes crossed its all gone and she will now have a happy long life with me!

I am looking to move again....

i am a busy bee looking for suitable places for poppy and i to live... we are wanting to be as close to the countryside as possible and we are so excited about the new chapter ahead, so watch this space!

i am so so happy!

yesterday we got the news we wanted! I feel like I can breath again - the best news I've had this year!

just had a lovely message from the lovely mrs b

love the new picture. So beautiful, you look so happy.... I'm wishing I could take you back to sardinia, to beer o'clock and the sunshine. It's good for the soul.....x xx

last night i saw..... andy cave

my parents treated me to see andy cave latest tour 'learning to breath' at caernarfon. It was a true inspiring talk and it has topped me up again to do more and more, so watch this space! He is one remarkably chap. Check out the promo for the tour here

Also here is a snippet from the promo site:
Andy's show will bring to life his best-selling book of the same. He takes the audience on a tremendous human journey through his experiences of the miner’s strike in 1984-85 to his traumatic expedition to the perilous North Face of Changabang in the Himalayas in 1997 - an expedition in which his climbing partner paid the ultimate price. His inner-turmoil and eventual decision to return to the mountains is one of the most stirring tales of modern mountaineering. Set against a backdrop of the Himalaya, Patagonia and Alaska, Andy explores some of the severest challenges modern Alpinism can pose in his understated but humorous style.

artist: richard long

the other night i spoke to zoe on the telephone and she was telling me about a photographer who she thought I would like called richard long. And she was certainly right, he uses space around him whilst walking in the countryside to create sculptures which he captures through photography.

Here is a description of his work:

Nature has always been recorded by artists, from pre-historic cave paintings to 20th century landscape photography. I too wanted to make nature the subject of my work, but in new ways. I started working outside using natural materials like grass and water, and this evolved into the idea of making a sculpture by walking.

Walking itself has a cultural history, from Pilgrims to the wandering Japanese poets, the English Romantics and contemporary long-distance walkers.
My first work made by walking, in 1967, was a straight line in a grass field, which was also my own path, going 'nowhere'. In the subsequent early map works, recording very simple but precise walks on Exmoor and Dartmoor, my intention was to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: walking as art.  Each walk followed my own unique, formal route, for an original reason, which was different from other categories of walking, like travelling. Each walk, though not by definition conceptual, realised a particular idea. Thus walking - as art - provided an ideal means for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks are recorded or described in my work in three ways: in maps, photographs or text works, using whichever form is the most appropriate for each different idea. All these forms feed the imagination, they are the distillation of experience.
Walking also enabled me to extend the boundaries of sculpture, which now had the potential to be de-constructed in the space and time of walking long distances. Sculpture could now be about place as well as material and form.
I consider my landscape sculptures inhabit the rich territory between two ideological positions, namely that of making 'monuments' or conversely, of 'leaving only footprints'.
Over the years these sculptures have explored some of the variables of transience, permanence, visibility or recognition. A sculpture may be moved, dispersed, carried.  Stones can be used as markers of time or distance, or exist as parts of a huge, yet anonymous, sculpture.  On a mountain walk a sculpture could be made above the clouds, perhaps in a remote region, bringing an imaginative freedom about how, or where, art can be made in the world.


Look at some of his work here, I hope you enjoy!

don't let others take your light away

zoe introduced me to dallas clayton

This is all you need to know to understand what goes on here :
I try to make things that are beautiful.
Sometimes these things are written down.
Sometimes they are drawn.
Sometimes they are wrapped and plastic and sold in important stores
for more money than they cost to manufacture.
I love making most things.
I am most interested in making people happy.
I have a son who is five years old.
I enjoy making him happy most of all.
I would like to do this more and more every day forever.
This is why I write for children.
When I am not writing for children I am writing for adults and the
companies adults run, drawing pictures for those adults, and reading things out loud to crowds of strangers.
I love strangers.
If you need more please contact-
Dallas@dallasclayton.com

had a lovely email from zoe

hello beautiful, how's things? sorry we haven't had chance to have a proper catch up yet. it's all been a little crazzyy don't really know where the tickiety tock is going but must time be going some where...... how's life up in alderly edge treating you?  well i hope as you deserve all the richess there is to offer.
i checked into your blog yesterday and love it, it's a real real calm space full of love and good times.
i'm working on a website at the moment (well my friend is) so I can maybe sell my drawings, need to really get back into it, so hard to motivate when there is so much going on all the time. i checked in with a guy called dallas clayton - you should look him up - and he seemed excited about my drawings. i'm thinking maybe of starting a kids book too which should be fun. going to set aside a weekend to start working on it some time soon.

em and i had a blast in portland, i'm sure she has probably filled you in already. we are thinking of going back next year starting in vancover and ending up in portland around my b'day. going to invite all, would love you to come as you would have such a good time. we are long over due a big girlie holiday and this will be the perfect road trip. will work on the e-mail to everyone soon.
hows your poorly foot straping up? can you do a 360 yet? i've discovered eggs are very good for everything.... quite a revelation infact. my friend sam made me eat one when she came to visit and i felt as if i had just bungee jumped off my roof (that probably also had something to do with her force feeding me multi vitamins that she had in her bag all weekend).
anyway i will leave you with this track. set aside at least 10 minutes to dance star jumps and hug the air.....

hope to chat to you soon lots of love xxxxxxxxx

what I am listening to: horse feathers

a beautiful band called horse feathers, described as indie/folk. I am really enjoying listening to them, and I hope you will to. Listen here and here and here, enjoy x

the last word by my grandfather d.wyn edwards

the editors of 'y gorwel' have kindly allowed me the privilege of having the last word in this, our first number of the magazine, and I do not intend to bore you, dear reader, with a long essay on this and that. Enough will it be for me to make but one point, which is this.


The time has come for all of us to start taking pride in ourselves and our actions. By pride i do not mean haughtiness or arrogauce, but pure, innocent, simple pride, which is the grand feeling one derives from anything well done and honestly accomplished or achieved. If only every one of us, even in our little club, could really find the right place for pride in our lives, I feel sure that we and everyone connected with us would find life much happier and richer. We could start by taking pride in our personal affairs- in ourselves, our homes, our clubs, our friends, our town, our country and in our poor, troubled,, suffering, nervous world. Let us take pride in our work, our play, our manners, our language, our traditions and our Christian civilisation. True pride is not the stuff that breeds bullies and bores, dictators and disheartened dead-enders, but s the spirit which captures all those who have discovered the richness and the beauty and the thrill of a full life, however humbly and simply they live or however complicated is the pattern of their circumstances.


My plea is that all of us who have anything to do with the club and its activities may do so with pride, to our own satisfaction and as an example to all others.

blimey what a week!

smile and have fun

i went for a lovely swim today

listen to the child thoughts inside you

what i am listening to: emiliana torrini

I am listening to emiliana torrini, some of favotite songs which makes me smile. Listen to them here, here and here

enjoy x

just let go and be happy and free

a bright, wonderful and glorious future ahead

believe in yourself

today is going to be a good day!

look what i found today

george mallory

George Herbert Leigh Mallory (June 18, 1886 – June 8/June 9, 1924) was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s. On the third expedition, in June 1924, Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew Irvine both disappeared somewhere high on the North-East ridge during their attempt to make the first ascent of the world's highest mountain. The pair's last known sighting was only a few hundred metres from the summit. Mallory's ultimate fate was unknown for 75 years, until his body was finally discovered in 1999. Whether or not they reached the summit before they died remains a subject of speculation and continuing research.

Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "why do you want to climb Mt. Everest?" with the retort: "because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering". Recently some questions have been raised regarding the authenticity of that quote, and whether Mallory had actually said it, with the likelihood that the quote was invented by a newspaper reporter.

Chris Bonington's assessment

Chris Bonington, the widely respected British Himalayan mountaineer, summed up the view of many mountaineers all over the world:

"If we accept the fact that they were above the Second Step, they would have seemed to be incredibly close to the summit of Everest and I think at that stage something takes hold of most climbers ... And I think therefore taking all those circumstances in view ... I think it is quite conceivable that they did go for the summit ... I certainly would love to think that they actually reached the summit of Everest. I think it is a lovely thought and I think it is something, you know, gut emotion, yes I would love them to have got there. Whether they did or not, I think that is something one just cannot know."

- from wikipedia.org

i am currently reading... the lost explorer: finding mallory on mt. everest

On June 8, 1924, George Leigh Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine were last seen climbing toward the summit of Mount Everest. Clouds soon closed around them, and they vanished into history. Ever since, mountaineers have wondered whether they reached the summit twenty-nine years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.

On May 1, 1999, Conrad Anker, one of the world's strongest mountaineers, discovered Mallory's body lying facedown, frozen into the scree and naturally mummified at 27,000 feet on Everest's north face. The condition of the body, as well as the artifacts found with Mallory, including goggles, an altimeter, and a carefully wrapped bundle of personal letters, are important clues in determining his fate. Seventeen days later, Anker free-climbed the Second Step, a 90-foot sheer cliff that is the single hardest obstacle on the north ridge. The first expedition known to have conquered the Second Step, a Chinese team in 1975, had tied a ladder to the cliff, leaving unanswered the question of whether Mallory could have climbed it in 1924. Anker's climb was the first test since Mallory's of the cliff's true difficulty. In treacherous conditions, Anker led teammate Dave Hahn from the Second Step to the summit.

early morning stroll

be the voice inside of you

I must try to re create this fabulous hairstyle

i like this look

what i am listening to: the doves

having a blast from the past by listening to the doves, they are such a great band! i forgot how good they were, it's stirring up fond old memories!

here are some of my favorites, listen to them here, here, here, here and here. enjoy x

so so blissful