Tag Archives: family

Feeling lighter and more motivated now – hope it lasts!

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This is the 4th spread of my Junk Journal, I have turned this image into a 2 part slideshow so that you can see both sides of the smaller ‘apple flap’ in the centre (that’s how we spell it in the UK) of the page and also read what is written on both pages.

I’ve been having a bit of a rest since we got home from our visit up north. I still need to sort out the base for the new greenhouse and then construct the greenhouse, but the weather has been a bit colder again since we got home, and I don’t want to spend too much time outside when it’s cold. T keeps asking me when the greenhouse might be up and usable, but to be honest I’ve no idea. I suspect it will take a while to sort out the base as I’ve got to make sure it’s level. I think the weather will warm up soon and when it does I will get back to it, so the job should be finished by the time I go to the south west of France at the end of August.

In the meantime I have been sorting out and booking my travel arrangements and accommodation to get to the art retreat. I am going up to London and staying one night in a hotel on Friday 28. Next morning I will get the EuroStar to Paris Gare du Nord, arriving at about 1pm. Then travel across the city to Paris Montparnasse to get my next train at 4pm from there to Angouleme in SW France. My brother (Mike) who lives in Paris is going to come and meet me from the Eurostar and make sure I get to Paris Montparnasse in time for my train to Angouleme. I will stay Saturday night in Angouleme and have a wander around that town for most of the on Sunday. A taxi has been booked to collect me from that accommodation to get me to the location of the Art Retreat in time for check in at 5pm.

Then 4 days of enjoying the Art Retreat in a lovely location with a fabulous artist, David Shillinglaw and the other participants. We get 4 days of tuition, core materials, 5 nights accommodation, breakfast, lunch and evening meals. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.

I was intending to take T with me, but it all got a bit complicated and it was causing both of us stress, so I’ve decided to go alone. It will be an adventure for me, especially as I don’t speak any French, but I am really looking forward to it. Once I get to the Art Retreat I will be amongst English speakers – David (the artist) is English, Jen and Nick who own and run the venue where the Retreat is are also English and if the other participants are not English they will at least speak English.

On Friday 4th September the retreat finishes in the morning and I will get another taxi collect me at about 10am to take me back to Angouleme station in time for the 11:30 am train back to Paris. Once I get to Paris Montparnasse station my bother will come and pick me up again and take me back to his home in Paris where I will spend a couple of days with him and his lovely wife. Murial is French and they have lived in Paris for many years, but I’ve never visited them before, so it will be lovely to spend time with them. Finally on Tuesday 8 September I will get the Eurostar back to London and from there make my way back to the Isle of Wight and home to see my three boys (T and the 2 cats).

Well the weather has now warmed up (hooray!) but now it’s far too hot to be working outside with no shade. So I am trying to put up a temporary awning to protect me from the blazing sun while I work.

It’s the next day now. I have rigged up a tarpaulin to provide me with some shade while I work.

Several days later and I can report that I am making progress with my project but it’s slow. We are still a long way off getting the new greenhouse put up, but at least we have a small temporary greenhouse where T is growing the usual greenhouse crops. So the pressure is off me to complete the project immediately. The weather was very hot for a few days but it’s now cooling down again, I expect at some point there will be rain and that will definitely slow down the job even more, but all I can do is work at my own speed and as I’ve just had my 71st birthday that means I’m very slow. Hopefully it will be OK once I’ve finished it.

That’s all my news for now.
Take good care of yourselves and I hope to see you again soon.
Big love from me
AJ

We had a little holiday!

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This is the third spread in my now finished Junk Journal, made from scraps of paper and ephemera all stitched and stuck together to form a book. The black paper in the bottom left hand corner forms a pocket that has two hand made tags that I’ve doodled on and two more quotes on the backs. I’ll share images of those further down the page. If you click on the images you can see them bigger.

We had a little holiday from 1-5 May for a trip up north to visit with T’s family to celebrate his nephew, Paddy’s, Surprise 50th Birthday party. It must have been a surprise for Paddy as his actual birthday was in January so he would hardly have been expecting a party in May. The lovely event was organised by Paddy’s wife Nicola and there were lots of people there and we had a great time.

We left home on Friday morning, got the car ferry to Southampton and then I drove us up to Coaley in Gloucester to Mike (T’s younger brother) and Emma’s house. The drive took about 5 hours, twice as long as it should have done because my SatNav was avoiding the Motorways. I did realise fairly soon after we set off that this was happening but I didn’t want to stop and change it. Besides the English countryside is much more beautiful than boring motorways and horrible service stations.

We had a couple of stops along the way and arrived in Coaley just as Emma was getting home from work. Mike had been working from home that day so was already there. Emma made us a lovely vegetable curry for tea and after a catch up chat we went to bed as we had to leave early the next morning.

Emma drove us and the dog, Maggie, up to Cleethorpes in North Lincolnshire where she had booked accommodation for 6 of us in a large house. This drive, which was mainly on motorways, also took more than 5 hours with a couple of comfort stops. When we got to Cleethorpes we met up with T’s sister Jenny and her husband Paul and we just had time for a quick lunch before check in time at the house. The house was very nice we all had good rooms and there was plenty of space.

We had to leave as soon as we dropped our bags off at the house because we had to be at the party by 3:30pm as Paddy was due to come at 4pm. He had arranged to meet up with a friend from the army he hadn’t seen for a few years, I don’t think he was expecting to be welcomed by so many people.

T’s parents, Bill and Edna (both now deceased), had lived in West Yorkshire when they got married and they had 2 children – T born in 1952 and Pam born a few years later. Bill and Edna separated when the children were quite young and for a while Edna brought them up on her own. She eventually met another man called John and when T was 16 they (Edna, John, T and Pam) moved from Yorkshire in the north of England to the Isle of Wight in the South. Some time later Edna and John had two more children Jenny and Mike (so they are half siblings to T and Pam).

Pam and her daughter Emily arrived at the party at about the same time we did. Pam was overwhelmed with emotion when she saw T as she did not know we were going. T and Pam speak regularly on the phone but the party had never been mentioned. Pam knew about the party but she didn’t know if we had been invited or if we had if T would be well enough to attend anyway.

Paddy and Nicola arrived on time at about 4pm, by which time he was beginning to get suspicious that ‘something’ was going on, but he still wasn’t expecting it to be a huge reunion of old colleagues, friends, distant and close family – people of all ages! It was a fantastic party with lots of food and drink and we all had a great time. It was so good that we decided to have another and smaller, close family catch up the next day at Paddy and Nic’s house.

Jenny and Paul had to leave early on Sunday as Paul was due to start a 12 hour night shift at 6pm and they had a 2 hour drive to get home first.

But here is a picture of the rest of us except for Nicola (who didn’t want to be in the photos) and the younger members of the family who were probably fed up with us all invading their home by then.

L-R Paddy, me, Mike, Tony, Kate, Emma, Emily and Pam.

Tony, Jenny and Paul at the Party on Saturday

Tony and Pam

On Bank Holiday Monday May 4th Emma drove us back to Coaley another drive of over 5 hours with a few stops on the way. T and I stayed with them one more night and had to get up early the next day to drive to Southampton. I had booked the 12 noon ferry to the Isle of Wight. This time I did set the SatNav so it didn’t avoid motorways. We made good time and arrived in Southampton just after 11am and in plenty of time for the ferry and we got home at about 2pm.

I apologise for the long post about this but, to be honest, it’s so nice to be able to report that we actually got away, met up with family and had a great time. Rather than the usual updates on T’s poor health and associated problems.

Anyway here are the two tags from the pocket of my Junk Journal:

That’s all my news for now, hope you are keeping well.
See you soon
Big Love AJ xxxxx

PS I used to send my blog posts out by email to my subscribers but I’ve changed the settings now so it’s only posted on my blog. I don’t want to annoy anyone with unsolicited emails filling their inboxes. Hope that’s OK with you all?

The Long Wait is over!

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I’ve been away for a while again because, out of the blue, I received a phone call from Southampton Hospital on Friday 5 December advising me that T’s operation was scheduled for 17 December. T had just gone out to see his therapist when I received the call so I had to wait until he got home to tell him. I was really pleased that it wouldn’t be necessary for us to travel to a foreign country to get it done now, but he immediately went into shock and subsequently through the whole spectrum of emotions before we got to the hospital. By the time he went to the Theatre for his op on 17/12 he had come to terms with everything and was mentally in the right space.

His operation went really well, he spent one night in Intensive Care, then a couple nights in the High Dependency Unit before returning to a normal ward. He had to be put on a 12 hour drip because he was so dehydrated and they also sorted out a couple of other problems. Although the op went well the surgeon accidentally broke one of T’s ribs (he apologised when he did he ward rounds and saw T after the op). The new valve has settled in nicely and his heart is functioning better than it has for years. Unfortunately the pain from the broken rib is delaying his recovery a bit, but it gets slightly better every day. He was discharged from the hospital on 24 December and we got home at about 4:30pm. The trip home (which involved a half hour taxi ride from the hospital to the ferry terminal; a short wait then a half hour fast cat ferry ride to the Island – the sea was rough that day which caused T more pain and caused me to feel sea sick!; then a slightly longer taxi ride home) he was exhausted by the time we got home and in need of more pain relief then went straight to bed for a rest.

The lovely cats were pleased to see us and we were pleased to see them.

Christmas Day was very quiet, T slept and rested most of the time. I took the opportunity to go and visit my Mum and when I got home I cooked a ‘sort of Xmas Dinner’ in the evening.

Each day things are getting better and we are optimistic that he will be healthier and able to do more in the future. However he is still in heart failure, that will be treated and hopefully improved by medication, the pace maker, exercise and diet.

While T was in hospital I was able to stay near to him in Heartbeat House again. I am so grateful that place exists, it’s clean, warm, safe and full of other people away from their homes and caring for relatives who are heart patients. Some of the people I made friends with at HBH had to stay there over Christmas but I know they will have supported each other and it’s important that our loved ones are looked after and helped to recover.

So because of all of the above I haven’t had much time for creativity again in the past month. Today I am sharing a small project I did earlier in the year – a birthday card for my friend Claudine. It’s called an Explosion Book (or Squash Book). The two images above show both sides of the book/card ‘exploded’ but it all squashes down to a small square. I forgot to take a picture of it squashed!

Here is a quick YouTube tutorial on how to make one There are longer and more detailed tutorials available if you search for them.

For anyone who is reading this I hope you had a lovely Christmas. People who know me well know that I’m really not a big fan of Christmas but nevertheless I hope you all enjoyed it. I do however wish you all the best for Good Health and Happiness in the New Year.

Big Love from me
AJ xxxxx

See you next year!

We are Well and Truly back on the Roller Coaster Ride now!

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My life’s been a bit chaotic again recently – Sometimes good, sometimes really not so good, but at least never boring.

I am managing to get some creativity in and that is good for me. I’m unsure about the results of my creativity in terms of success, but I know that even if the result is rubbish the act of being creative is definitely good for me. The image above is another page from my Paint and Doodle journal. Maybe next time I will remember to show you a before and after image, we’ll see.

T’s mood swings seem to be back with a vengeance and changing quite fast. When he’s up and happy he is being very creative and doing lots of music and writing projects. It is lovely to hear music filling the house again, it’s been a long time. He gets very little sleep at these times and that can trigger mania which currently presents as him being angry and ranty and then that is usually followed by a depressive episode. When he’s down he just switches off, shuts down and spends days in bed. It’s not lazyness but more like paralysis. It’s been the pattern for much of our lives together for the past 55 years … Still can’t quite get used to it although I think/hope I understand it better now.

On top of that T’s physical condition is not getting any better so there’s very little he can do around the house or garden, even when he is motivated to do so. Still no news as to when he might get his heart surgery! But all that aside his cognitive function is so much better now he is not taking all those psyche meds and if I catch him at the right time (when he’s not completely down in the dumps or so ‘up’ he can’t stop talking and ranting) we can now have fairly reasonable conversations. His memory is still shockingly bad but doesn’t seem to be getting any worse atm, and, to be honest, my memory is also not as good as it used to be. I guess that’s what happens with aging 😦 We make a right pair of confused seniors!

I hope life is treating you well.
Big Love
AJ xxx

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Hello… Am I back? Who knows? Anyway, if you do happen to be here, then welcome (or possibly welcome back) to my blog.

Here are some Twirly Ball things I made recently from recycled book pages and broken jewellery (English spelling 🙂 )

This blog has been dormant for a long time and I am going to TRY and reactivate it. The truth is I haven’t been very creative since my last post (in August 2019) and I’ve missed it a lot.

My (spare room) “studio” turned into a dumping ground for all the stuff I didn’t know what to do with, there were precarious piles of stuff on every surface and all over the floor leaving just a small pathway from the door to my computer, there was still a high risk of an avalanche, so the pathway had to be nagivated with great care. Earlier this year I decided I had to do something about it and it has taken months to sort it all out. I’ve got rid of loads of stuff (don’t worry I still have more art supplies than I need), reorganised everything, sorted my art supplies into smaller and lighter boxes, and labelled everything. It seemed to take for ever but I finally got it done and my studio now feels spacious and airy (for now). Unfortunately I don’t have a good track record for keeping my space tidy, but I’m going to try!

A lot has happened in the past 6 years or so and TBH it’s been, and continues to be, really tough.

Here is a summary of some of the challenges I’ve faced:

We all had to deal with the Covid pandemic and lockdowns in 2020.
Around about that time T’s health was in serious decline with multiple issues – he’s had 5 surgeries (2 of them redos of previous operations that went wrong)! and many hospital admissions.
He developed cognitive problems that took well over a year to be sorted out with a change of medication.
He’s still physically unwell but at least now we can have sensible conversations again.
He currently has memory and mobility problems and is now in advanced heart failure. He’s been waiting for heart surgery and hopefully it will be done sometime in the next year, we are hoping it will be sooner rather than later because we were told it was urgent a year ago.
My Dad’s health also declined and he had to go into care during the Covid lockdown he never returned home and passed away in Feb 2022. Mum and I were with him when he died.
Mum has been lost without him and I really miss him too. They were married for 72 years. Because she knew I was dealing with a lot of issues too, she decided to move into a retirement home where she knew she would be looked after. That happened sometime in 2023 she is in a home that is close to where I live so I visit her whenever I can.
I spent a lot of time last year sorting out and emptying her home so that it could be sold. She tried to help me at first but it was too upsetting for her going back to her old home. In the end I did most of it on my own. I spent hours in that house on my own crying, packing things to be taken to chatiry, sorting and cleaning, it was heartbreaking and exhausting!
The house finally sold a year ago.
I retired from work in August 2020 after working for the same company for almost 30 years. In all those years I had attended, and even organised some, retirement parties, they tended to be lovely events. However Covid regs meant my retirement party was restricted to just 6 of us meeting outside and having a picnic. Fortunately it was a lovely sunny day, the location was lovely (on top of a reservoir site) and the people I shared it with were some of the favourite people I worked with, but it still felt a little bit flat and disappointing.
We both caught Covid in November 2023, ironically when we went to Southampton hospital for T to have a brain scan. I wasn’t too bad but was positive for 2 weeks, T was very poorly and had to go to hospital. He was discharged on Christmas Eve but he was still unwell and had to be readmitted on Boxing Day. It wasn’t a good Christmas!
Then last year T spent about 5 weeks in hospital over Christmas waiting for Heart Surgery that (for various reasons) never happened.
In May this year I had my 70th Birthday!!! I’m definitely beginning to feel a bit ‘creaky’ now but on the whole I think I’m in good health which is fortunate because I am now T’s main carer. I do get help – he employs a lovely lady C (who previously cared for my Dad and then my Mum) she comes for 10 hours a week. She is a fantastic carer, for both of us, and now she has become a close friend.

So with all that above (and more) going on in my life I haven’t really had the time or the inclination to be very creative. Recently I’ve begun to realise how much I miss it and have decided to try and re-establish some sort of creative routine.
The ‘Studio’ is finally sorted out, organised and doesn’t feel so claustraphobic so I’m hoping to get back to being a ‘creative person’ again.

While I was tidying and reorganising the ‘studio’ I found loads of projects that I had started with enthusiasm but never finished. So I’m going to try and complete at least some of those before starting anything else? I don’t think I’ll ever have to buy any more art supplies for as long as I live (but in all honesty I probably will – it’s an addiction)!
One thing I did finish recently was the Tikis and Totems Journal I started in 2015 as part of the Artstronaut’s Club run by Teesha and Tracy Moore. Here are the images from the completed journal: If you have followed my blog before you will have seen some of these images and if you follow me on Facebook you will probably have seen all of them recently. You can click on the arrows to see all 12 pages.

  • Front Cover
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • Page 5
  • Page 6
  • Page 7
  • Page 8
  • Page 9
  • Page 10
  • Back Cover

I’ve upgraded my blog and now have my own domain name
ajs-art-journal.com I’m not sure what difference that makes but you can find this blog by using that link or the old one (I think) AJsartjournal.wordpress.com. Actually I am struggling a bit at the moment, I’ve been away from this site for so long I’ve forgotten how to do lots of stuff. So if it all looks a crazy jumble I apologise, I think I will have to watch all the training tutorials again! But please let me know if when you view it things are not right and I’ll try to sort it out.

That’s all for now folks I hope to be back soon definitely sooner than 6 years next time.

Big love from me
AJ xxxxxxx