Wednesday 1 April 2009

A wave from Mystery City

Hello! Gosh this is so weird. I am updating ny blog via the Internet connection on the hotel room's television - which means I have a wireless keyboard on my lap, two buttons that are 'left click' and 'right click', and some sort of whirly button, sort of circa a spectrum joystick, which tells the cursor which direction to go. It is like updating my blog via etch-a-sketch. In a minute not doubt all the words will disappear and all we will see is a shaky flat drawing of a house outline.

Did anyone manage to draw anything else other than a house outline on Etch-A-Sketch? The cover of the box promised so much, almost like a Leonardo Da Vinci technical diagram was within my sweaty eight year old grasp. And what did I get, after ages sat twiddling dials? A wobbly house. And when I ran with it to show ny mum, the whole thing had disappeared anyway as I had accidentally shook the box. See yer, Etch-A-Sketch. Magna Doodle was more my sort of level.

So here I am, in Mystery City, home of the 24 hour party people. Not that I am one of them, as i sit here in hotel room drinking a nice herbal tea. It's all go. I've just watched The Apprentice (poor Rocky!), and am going to do a bit of editing before bed beckons. Apart from missing J, it is a shame in a way that my surjourn in Mystery City is drawing to a close. I have been working with nice people, got to stay in hotels in the centre of town, and had a nice chance to explore in the evenings. I've also been introduced to Bikram Yoga - which is yoga done in a hot room until the sweat pours off you. Am I making that sound good or what? But it really is brilliant - ok, the first session felt like torture, but apart from that I have now been four times and can really feel the benefits. And now I find it, I have to wave it goodbye... the nearest studio in London to where I live is probably Camden... the chances of me slogging my way over there and slogging my way back with a bright red face are slim, to say the least. Darn it.

You'll have to excuse me if this post is typo galore - it is really tricky to manouvre around the screen. I see the typo, and watch as my giant cursor slowly lumbers upwards to correct. I think my time on the Internet would run out before i get there, so tonight we'll let everything hang. Now you see why editing is so important for me - this is the sort of state my first draft would be in!

And thanks Joanne, Bruno and Ben for your comments on my previous post - I did try and get there to answer but this weird set up just wasn't having any of it. Good point about not getting over-zealous with editing - sometimes I wonder if perhaps I am just delaying official response by finding reasons not to send it away. It's scary to leap into the unknown, but I'll get there!
Right, let's see if this will save and publish, or if the screen will shake and it will all disappear...

4 comments:

music obsessive said...

Oh dear! Etch-a-sketch! What a waste of time those things were. Like you say, the only things you could draw were made of boxes that never quite matched up and with spurious lines that shouldn't be there.

I don't know whether you saw a TV prog some time ago about old toys but some smart-ass artists got hold of an old E-a-S and produced some mind-boggling pictures with curvey landscapes and no spurious lines. How did they do it? Damn them! Oh well, back to my son's Magna Doodle...

Jayne said...

Did they really? Was the camera on the artists the whole time, or did they go away and return with 'one they had made earlier'? Curvy landscapes on Etch-A-Sketch were nigh on impossible - at least for me. Even a box was pushing it a bit.

Magna Doodle on the other hand, was a toy of genius, especially the noughts and crosses. Sheer minutes of fun.

Rose said...

You're in Manchester aren't you! well you were... now you're in Italy.

I do Ashtanga yoga... well less often than I should. Can't imagine doing it in a sauna really, it's challenging enough as it is. Probably very good you though. I don't buy all the chanting at the beginning and the end but do find I get a little high afterwards.

Jayne said...

Yup - Manchester it was! I really enjoyed my time there. The shops were less crowded so nicer to go out and browse (although I wasn't there at the weekend, so maybe they are packed then!), Bikram Yoga around the corner, and I worked very near where Dodie Smith (writer of 101 Dalmations) lived as a child - which was a nice link to literature!

I have never tried Ashtanga Yoga - chanting sounds a bit odd! I don't think any yoga I have done involves chanting actually, maybe it is unique to Ashtanga?

Yoga is such a deceptive exercise - it looks like a bit of light stretching but my word, what a work out! I'd like to keep up with Bikram Yoga, but the studios are such a long way from me. Oh well, perhaps I can work one in around the commute!