Pensieve

I wish I had a pensieve, for those of you who aren’t fans or readers of Harry Potter, you won’t know what I mean. A Pensieve is a wonderful object, it is a bowl of your thoughts, wishes, fantasies, wonders, passing ideas. When your brain is over loaded with many things, you put your wand point to your temple, remove the thought (it comes out of your temple in a silvery strand) and pop it into the bowl, to be mused and thought through later on. Fantastic. I only wish it existed in the real world and not one of J K Rowling’s imagination.

This is a long winded way of stating that I have a lot to say. I want to write a blog that is dedicated to the BACubed exhibition that is currently showing at the Glass Tank Gallery and the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes. I will write a proper review of this show and credit the artists who are showing work next week, but for now, if you are anywhere near Oxford in the next week then I urge you to go and see this show. It is nothing short of gob smacking in so many ways.

I’ve been mostly concentrating on my teaching course this week, as well as taking a bit of time off before things start to get very busy again. The summer school that I lead at Oxford Brookes will kick off with aplomb very shortly, as well as assignments to hand in, Bucks Open Studios to take part in at St Tiggywinkle’s and I am thrilled to announce that I will now be associated with The Tube Gallery (Once the gallery manager and I have managed to meet and I can show her some work!) and will be taking part in two Travelling Tube group shows shortly. There are more group shows and auctions to come and I will say more about that soon.

For now, I continue to feed the birds who are now becoming used to my presence in the garden. I’m thrilled by this, it’s also led me more to muse on how our relationship is so mutually beneficial. The birds are relying on me for food that they desperately need at this time of year to feed their own young and keep themselves going. I am relying on them for joy in the most simple of terms, the joy of being close to them and being able to observe them and their behaviour at such close quarters. Laughing at the wood pigeons wobbling about, the sparrows taking their chances and the gorgeous starlings dominating everything that is going on. They’re eating me out of house and home though, no sooner have I filled up the fat feeders with home made fat balls, the seed feeders, the peanut tray and the bird table they are empty again. (Some within half an hour!) I don’t care. I get immeasurable joy from helping them. It’s mostly left overs that are going over, old cheese, old apples, stale bits of bread!

You too, can have this.

Please feed the birds.

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