metal casting workshop beinn eighe nature reserve sunday 20th may.

Bristol comic convention with the futureQuake stall ..

Aaand relax, feeling mighty stressed about the next two weeks maddness, & trying to organise what i need packed for where & when & what i've forgotten.. we went off camping for the night. no kids, late, just stopped up the glen near a river , may midgeys, magic. stuffed our faces campfire stylee.

then headed across to the east today for viking show thingy that some friends are involved in, much fun. partying with them tonight.

up in the hills , above applecross.

another weekend to Ireland, flew there, stormy ferry back, to collect another load of stuff, and the official 'moving over' weekend. home late sunday night, then i disappeared & leave everyone early monday

for a weeks intense HGV driving course with the fire brigade. it was hell ! see more over at myspace blog. ( link to right > over there > )

Ishies birthday trip to london, easy jet flight cancelled, overnight sleeper train to meet Rich. camden town shopping, london zoo. home. busy work.

ouch. a treat, friday; tattoo in progress.

passed LGV theory test on wednesday.

last saturday, passed breathing apperatus refresher course.

passed 6 month probationary period at work thursday.

then the animation project organisers are demanding the equipment back two months early for no reason, with 2 half finished films, so i've a battle on.

Derailed train , no its not a description of how i've felt this last month... altho But yesterday i seem to have slept through yet another storm of the seemingly constant storm that rages, 8.10 instead of my snooze alarm my pager went off; leapt into jeans, couldnt find shoes, chest still all knackered with this cold i've got & in t-shirt i slept in sprinted to car & station, finding the road all the way there knackered with mounds of gravel washed from who knows where my some deluge in the night.

Athe train had hit a whopping great tree in the dark, reared up, derailed, dragged tree parts 30m, headed the sea side of the rails, buckled the wheels before driver stopped it. Nobody hurt thankfully. 

two slurps of tea, phone my boss & negiotiate a half day since by now i'm very late for other work & don a warm cardigan on over stinky same t-shirt, and the bloody pager goes off again. Electrical problems in olde ladies house, render scene safe & check out her roof tiles for her, call electrician, home again, breakfast ( its now lunch time ) shower & head to work.

..

tals blue 18th birthday cake
Ish tank girl
ha ha ha my christmas presents !!

Christmas photos;
Ish the warrior princess demonstrates her Christmas pressie to me.
Nath & Bruno out for big walk on Christmas eve.
Lochcarron Christmas day.
Tal & ish Christmas day.

Christmas ufo & general unconnected wierdness
merry xmas everyone.
a load of us saw an UFO last night.
god i hate this time of year it gives me an unexplicable migrane every year despite me wanting to enjoy it & having low expectations, wether its S.A.D, family dramas, my inability to not-work, chocolate allergy. exhaustion or the constant demands of children....
however enough moaning ive got more interesting things to say.
now i long since shifted my brain out of spooky woo cosmic conspiratorial freaky psychicness, too many new age manipulative mentally ill people have hijacked all the interesting subjects & sullied the interweb with their nut-job agendas, which is a shame , cos i would like some answers to interesting questions.
friday i went to bed with no injuries, in the middle of the night i woke with one foot hurting my leg so i moved it, when i woke that moring the pain was still there, there on my leg is a 8cm long large raised blister inexplicable burn, its like a rope burn, or the edge of an iron. absolutely no explanation.Oh well.
then i flooded the kitchen, but theres a rational explanation for that disaster, and no Christmas presents were damaged.
christmas eve i took my son out for the day we went walking middle of no-where up the hills outside inverness, he chatted at length about conspiracy theorys, which i attempted to de bunk & shed info on, of course when it comes to global war mongers, he's probably, sadly correct.
today on net i found out that theres been big cat sightings where we were walking, kiltarity.
Then coolest, late Christmas night, a fire brigade collegue, phones me up, tells me he's watching a ufo with his sons above the village, i run outside, and sure enough there below the clouds on a flat calm night is a light, i shout my girls & tell them to grab camera. It was brighter than the brightest jupiter or venus gets, but a yellowy, orange colour, i assumed a helicopter, it moved towards us, at height like a search helicopter would, except there was no engines, and it was slower, the speed varied, its course was wobbly the light strength wobbly too, i phoned my parents, they couldnt see it, "a satellite?" below clouds, wrong colour, " hot air balloon?" that bright? on christmas night ?! my phone camera wouldnt get it and as tal struggled to get the night settings on her camera & we stared at it trying to work out what we were seeing, too bright to be a reflected light or light bouncing off clouds, weather balloons seem to be white it would have needed to be a huge mirror to be so bright; it started to pulse, fade, flicker, until high above us, it either faded away or went higher or disappeared into the clouds til we could see it no more.
reasearch finds some earthlight photos that colour, and this certainly is a sesmic activity area, but its all a bit mad... then tal had that ball of light at her feet when she was a child.... but thats another story.
oh bugger the other computers crashed again.
xmas photos another day.

further info, just spoke to other witnessess, apparently there was another previous light, it came from low in the west & moved in a zig zag pattern, eratic, moved upwards & faded out before the one we saw emerged from a similar direction.

it looked the same colour as some earthlight photos from norway.

news, theres been a boxing day earthquake in south scotland, dumfries & galloway, 3.5 on richterscale. the earthlight theory looks compelling at this stage.

Birmingham comics convention 9th & 10th Dec 2006.

Bolt 1 & Rich at the futurequake table.

the lovely page of sketches that various artists did for the kids at work.

had a great weekend, all be it very short & involving lots of travelling, brum being protected by a barrier of impassable roads & imobilised railways. lovely to catch up with people & also lovely being accompanied by my youngest juvey, who also enjoyed herself. She is completely bowled over & chuffed to bits by a tank girl drawing that Rufus Dayglo has done for her, brilliant !
heres Rich on a manga panel with artist Yishan Li, Ilya, and erm... i forget their names, sorry

meanwhile prior to this weekend, ive been working all the others taking my work kids to various Christmas respite trips. The worst being the 4 days to edinburgh trip which was very very hard going, but hopefully we'll see the gains thru the year with the youngters behavior...well it can't get worse !

and lo the film was finished, the premiere was endured and peace could now descend upon the land.
and back to firetraining on sleety freezing nights with lightning,
and then getting uniforms all deer musky, & muddy in a rescue mission, a hit & run bambie, the police said just leave if for the next car to hit, the Christian said i'll strangle it , the game keeper loaded his rifle, & Ollie, Dave, Ish, Jon & me said stuff that & rescued it, after a night in jons shed she was fully recovered & returned to a local woodland.
and then its been back to work & endless pre-christmas respite outings for 'my' kids. Over the bridge to skye 3 times a week, in foul skye weather, seen 5 car crashes in 3 days, kindof slows one down.and the snows getting lower n thicker on the hills...

at last its over ! its been a nightmare project from hell, 8 weeks with no training , no payment, no time off work, crappy equipment to make my first attempt at animation... it fact it was worse cos the organisors and person supposed to be training me were the pits of rude & incompedent.
I'd been hunched over the computer so many hours that last monday, with one scene & 11 days to go, my back, neck & shoulders seized up & went into spasm. So i been off my jobs this week mashed on diazipam & grud knows what other pills, depression & dispair soon followed. poor poor poor Richmond & Iseabail & anyone else who got caught in my mental cross fire.
what the hell is it that one invests so much into a project, when really , its hardly going to save the universe ? another disposable set of images, so what ? & its near bloody broke me or my back at least. I'm completely exhausted, hope to feebly get back to work tomorrow. shall be partying tonight on cake, chocs & watching tele.
and of course a big thanks goes to FRIBO also found on myspace for the music sound track at the last minute.
the premier is going to be VERy interesting with all the back stabbing thats gone on, i'm looking forward to the question & answer session....
and yes i've missed everyone !