I'm back from drum village - and things seem so quiet now!

Well in true camping style..it rained..and rained..and rained even more! tents got flooded, sleeping bags got wet and i thanked the lord for wellies!

I took my djembe but only drummed about 3 times! so busy trying other things that i left the djembe in the tent most days (and even that got a little wet too!)

The days were filled with open workshops that you could just turn up for at the time they started, i tried as much as i could fit in! I learnt how to play the balafon, i tried the m'bira but it didn;t agree with my nails!

M'bira





I did african dancing, which is great fun, it's great to just let go and dance a completely different way you usually dance! (oh yes i did gumboot dancing too) those wellies of mine got used every minute! and i did lots and lots of singing in several african languages! Shona and n'debele songs, a fab malinke song and even the click song...which i have so not mastered...oh and its clicking your mouth while singing, not clicking your fingers!!


this is a vid of the click song i found on youtube...it is hard work but fun.



my favourite of all workshops was grassroots, a group from zimbabwe, they blew me away with their vibe and energy, they taught me how to sing, dance, play games and i learned a little about their country and culture too. i cannot put into words how fab they are! so good that i think i'll do a full post about them next time, especially as i'm seeing them again next week and hopefully doing a concert too!..more to follow on that one.

It was very noisy (as drums are!) but not all the music was loud drumming, i absolutely was hypnotised by this guy playing the kora (african harp) so haunting and beautiful.

Seckou



This is Nansady at his Bolon/singing workshop, a bolon is a bass kora (african harp) i didn't try the bolon as i was happy enough singing and watching.

As soon as i got home, i sent away my deposit for next years drum village and i cant wait!!

camping (what about my my straighteners!!)

Yes that is my hands!!

well, this is me getting ready to go away and spend a week in Glen Isla, Angus at African Drum Village. A week of african drumming workshops/singing/dancing and hopefully getting the chance to learn some new african instruments, like Balafon, m'biri and kora!
I'm excited, tho i've not been camping since i was about 8 years old, now i'm an old Tog (see other post for explanation) and set it my ways..will I cope? I'm halfway through packing (pack light my friends say) er..i'm onto my second holdall already..oops.

How on earth do you photograph the moon!

After getting over the shock of a friend (male) visiting me after I'd just gotten out of the shower and plastered myself with a huge amount of moisturiser..think shocked lady, greasy red face and wearing a huge granny style dressing gown! I settled down to watch a bit of TV before i went to bed.

Then i saw the moon, wow, it was really beautiful, and as i am so so so far north it doesn't really get dark here in summer so the sky was still light, i grabbed the camera, but of course i still haven't read the instructions and after taking about 20 shots this is the best out of the lot!

Touching Sea Creatures!

Had an unexpected trip out yesterday, and it happened all by chance.

My neighbour phoned to say she was taking her kids out shortly to the North Atlantic Fisheries College http://www.nafc.ac.uk/ as there was a kind of open day where kids can go and look at all the sea creatures and have a feel of them.

I had seen something about this in the local paper weeks ago, but presumes it was organized with schools and I thought it would have been finished by now, but I was wrong, anyone could go, it was free, and it was the last day and would be closing in less than 2 hours! Luckily it was only a 10 minute drive away.

When we got there, we went to the Hatchery Building, and we had to wash our hands with anti-bacteria gel before we could go in, then the kids shot off, straight to the huge low rise tank that was filled with all sorts of mysterious looking things! The staff were really friendly with the kids and started bringing things out for the kids to hold on too. Sea urchins, sea cucumbers, sea anemones, hermit crabs, velvet crabs, star fish, lobsters, huge linguistines! scallops, buccis (i think the proper name is buccinum). The kids had a great time holding and touching all these things, and I had a great time too! there were only a few kids there and 3 members of staff so we could ask all kinds of questions.

And of course there was the comical moment of the day, when i went to pick up a scallop shell and in true 'cartoon' style it snapped itself shut and shot off about a yard along the bottom off the tank, giving me a fright and causing me to scream (sorry kids for embarrassing you!)

They had some other tanks too, with skate, eels, dogfish (i like to call them sharks!) and all kinds of things that i cant remember just now, and the best of all is they were all found locally, so these are the things we can really find in rock pools or in the sea.

Great unexpected day out!

Banksy - the guerrilla artist

Until Sunday i had never heard of this guy, then news item caught my attention, as they were discussing if 'banksy's' identity had been revealed.

I went online to see what all the fuss was about, well 'Banksy' is an anonymous graffiti artist, who paints/stencils his artwork all around the world, although it seems most of it appears in London, Brighton and Bournemouth.

I took some time to look at his work and it's very interesting, satirical i think would be the best word i know to describe his work.



I don't want to go on too long about this, i just found it really interesting, that some man goes out in the middle of the night, undercover to paint his artwork..it's done him no harm as it's made his artwork very expensive too, judging by some of the articles written about him, Brad Pitt is even a big fan, paying thousands of dollars for Banksy art, and i just love these pieces written at wikipedia about him;


At London Zoo he climbed into the penguin enclosure and painted "We're bored of fish" in seven foot high letters

In August/September 2006, Banksy replaced up to 500 copies of Paris Hilton's debut CD, Paris, in 48 different UK record stores with his own cover art and remixes by Danger Mouse. Music tracks were given titles such as "Why am I Famous?", "What Have I Done?" and "What Am I For?". Several copies of the CD were purchased by the public before stores were able to remove them, some going on to be sold for as much as £750 on online auction websites such as eBay. The cover art depicted Paris Hilton digitally altered to appear topless. Other pictures feature her with a dog's head replacing her own, and one of her stepping out of a luxury car, edited to include a group of homeless people, which included the caption "90% of success is just showing up".


For more photos of his work visit http://www.banksy.co.uk/

Its the simple things in life

Its been a mixed day really, my arthritis has been particularly bad today, but life goes on, i had to work today for a few hours and kids are off school on their summer holidays, so they came too.

I decided on the way back home today to take a different route (in fact i've only been down that road once!!) i'm glad i did, its just such a deserted single track road, the kids saw loads of wild rabbits and at one point i stopped to take in the view and a bunch of lapwings flew up from the field..i was pretty chuffed at that as lapwings are becoming more rarer these days.

When i got home, i just wanted to relax, but the littlest one had other plans..she wanted to play the Wii with her friend (but i was watching a rerun of desperate housewives!!) i felt guilty for saying no, so i changed my mind and they were delighted and i suffered by having to look interested in how many coins supermario had got.....

Later on when my O/H (other half) came home from a hard days work, i offered him his tea, which included some very burnt roast potatoes and he never moaned once..he even ate them! I was so hot at tea time from running around in the kitchen and the pain i was in, i went to get some fresh air outside...shock horror...thats when i noticed the compost bin lid had blown away!!!!!! i searched, but it has been a gale all night and day, and i knew it was long gone..probably in the sea by now....panicking...as the contents of the compost bin were getting drenched in the pouring rain, i asked my OH to 'go and cut up some wood from the garage' to make a temporary lid, and he did.....its just the simple things like that, that i'm grateful for.

To finish off the day i had a nice long soak in the bath, something i rarely get chance to do as kids are visiting or the OH is working and i don't get the peace, but the bath was wonderful. I poured in great handfuls of radox bath salts (not used them in years!) and lit some candles, soaking away the aches and pains while listening to the howling wind and lashing rain outside. So just an ordinary day for girlonarock, but the simple things made it especially nice today.

And as i'm writing the sky has gone that strange yellowy way it does when thunder is just around the corner...oooh...and i remember that my washing is still on the line...oh well i hope it doesn't end up in the sea too!

Life by the loch

I got quite excited today as I glanced out the window and saw this! lovely ducklings! Not 100% sure what these are, but we seem to think this is a red breasted merganser. (sorry the pics aren't great but you can click to enlarge)

I've only lived by this loch for a couple of months and I spend ages looking out and seeing what I can see.

When we first moved in there were swans, but then they dissapeared and I was a bit worried, until someone pointed out that they would have migrated! silly me!


We have little creaky old wooden steps that lead down to the shore, and on nice days me and the girls go down to see what we can see, as this part of the loch is salt water (as its fed by the sea) we see lots of starfish and jellyfish and even whelks, which the girls like watching.

I've seen otters a couple of times but they are so hard to photograph..but I live in hope.

We tend to see a lot of crabshells were the otters have had a good feed anyway! A couple of times we have seen fish jump out of the water, we dont know why though? maybe salmon? or maybe just something under the water trying to eat it, as I did see a seal in the loch once!!! it had swum in through the tiny inlet from the sea, I got a real shock.

We cant wait to get a little boat then we can go and explore the tiny islands in the loch, there's even a ruined castle on one of the tiny islands that dates back at least 300 years. We've seen a couple of canoists and a bunch of boys in a rowing boat too.