The start of things new

William went to school with our lovely Sue, his personal health care assistant, today so, for the first time since he was born, I had a free day to myself! I say free day, but, of course, I have work to do but it was nice to be able to get my head down in peace and quiet and get on. This is really exciting for me, the start of a new phase in life when I can get some hours in the day back to give my full attention to things I should be doing and have time to do some things I want to do.

Before getting down to work, I had my first hair cut in over a year! The pictures are not great, or flattering. Paul has only just come home so it is late and our nice soft and homely lighting is less than ideal. My attempts to do a self-portrait at arms length resulted in me being blinded by the flash and looking asleep (which is not far off what I look like in these in any case) and the girls tend to chop part of your head off, not ideal when showing off a new hair do. It would have been better to take some tomorrow, outside in the sunlight but I am sure my hair will not look as sleek and professionaly straightened after a night asleep on it. The girls were most impressed with the new look. Paul has bee typically uncommital. William didn't even seem to notice.

Having had my hair chopped, I caught up a bit with Brompton Fountain work and sent a submission off for the writing course I am chugging along with. I am still on the non-fiction bit and am doing and submitting bits and bobs anyway so being very slow with the assignments. I am looking forward to getting to the fiction part but am only too aware that freelance features and articles will be the bread and butter work as I try and build something that could resemble a career in writing.

Last night, I watched the 'Transplant' DVD that accompanies the installation. This has a lot more on it than selected for the installation itself. I am now reading through the book and managed to some time today to reflect on this and think about some creative work I could do in response to it. I take loads of photos and never leave the house without my camera. I know I could use this medium to record our life in a different way to the obvious snapshots I take. I also want to write in different ways than the straight forward diary writing that I use in this blog. I am going to experiment and am going to share the results in another blog, a companion to this one. This way, I hope that people will look and read and offer criticisms and comments that will help me shape my work. So, watch this space...for a shiny new blog linked to this one. I hope to have something up as a starting point on Wednesday.

A little note - My laptop died last week and my saved emails and addresses with it. If you haven't heard from me for a while, could you please email me so I have your address again.