Sound Studio

Sound Studio

In the up and down of my seventies, I had a special experience at Ignite at Somerset Film in Bridgwater Somerset.

I was lucky enough to be given a free run of the sound studio to record my children's stories to put as audio books on Amazon.

I try in my stories to give children hope.  Hope for the future and hope that they will succeed and be heard.

The stories are:

Miss Flimp's Destiny
Miss Patch
Miss Posey's Garden
Miss Flimp and the Celebration of Light ( This last book is free on Smashwords.)

They reflect my integrity from being a Quaker for thirty years.

I thank Somerset Film very much for this opportunity and hope that in the future I can do more work with them.

Sad Times for Britain? plea to young people.

Sad Times For Britain?

It is very sobering after all the dross of referendum campaigns that we now are faced with the reality of building our country and our economy in a very different way.  Hard times are on the way I fear.   I believe in democracy and will accept the majority view.

If there are any younger people reading this blog please, I would like to let you know that both myself and my husband are members of the Green Party and part of our commitment comes from wanting a better world for our children and grandchildren.

We were part of the 40% of older people that voted to remain, Please,please do not have a knock on effect of ageism  which is difficult for us as it is.  My husband delivered 500 leaflets on behalf of the remain campaign.

To young people out there, please don't let this referendum be divisive in society. Believe me, there are a lot of responsible older people really on your side.

Solidarity and Sorrow for Jo Cox - A personal tribute.

Tribute to Jo Cox

I have walked the talk.

In the past, I have campaigned

Your sacrifice is not in vain.

True socialism is not about

Party politics and being cut down

It is about protecting

The isolated, the poor and

People like your aggressor

Mentally troubled and insane.

I am a Quaker and believe

What you stood for.

We all have equal worth

When the world wakes up to equal rights

We will have peace on earth.

God Bless your family,

God Bless your part,

Your life’s work will remain in my heart.

Zoe Ainsworth-Grigg

Spondylosis and The Write Day

Spondylosis

I have been suffering for the last two weeks with this.  It has affected my balance and I feel that I am falling over quite often staggering about as though I am drunk.  I looked it up on the internet on google and found that a lot of GP's do not recognise that spondylosis can cause vertigo.  So no help there what a surprise.

I am getting accustomed now to helping myself through alternative treatments. I have a very good chiropractor called Mark Cop who practises in Bridgwater somerset and through his help the tight muscles in my neck relaxed and I had relief from the symptoms.

Has anyone reading my blog had similar experiences and that have they done to alleviate things?

I also put a wheat pack mildly heated on the affected area as advised by Mark.

Hopefully, I will be back in action.

I had a .very awful experience also with a person who organises The Write Day.  It was advertised on Creative Somerset.  She charged me double what I should have paid and an extra £20 for food for my husband.  I am afraid her advertising wasn't clear enough and through that I didn't realise that X2 meant two nights for one person and I thought it meant one night for two people.  I lost out by £65.  I am a little peeved. 

As I get older I find that I am taken for a ride over money matters more and more. I have to remember to check and double check.

Having just bought my specs for £225 I want to be sure I get my money back from Simply Health.

There are no easy answers, even when my husband and I put our heads together, things seem much more complicated these days.

Sixties Shift as per British Sewing Bee

Sixties Shift

I really enjoy the BBC2 Sewing Bee programme and last night they had to make a shift from a sixties pattern on a sixties sewing machine.  well my sewing machine in the sixties was my Grandmother's old Singer and didn't do zig zag stitch but I made a shift . The sixties were not sw

inging for me except that I married young and had three children in quick succession.

Here is the dress. That's me holding Tim's hand as Nigel rides a horse top left.  /the dress was of cream linen, I was still quite old fashioned then and had few contemporary friends but I made most of my own clothes and also my daughter's clothes. the biggest treat was when I bought something from a shop for her. this is Liz aged three at her party.

I remember when I bought a sewing machine for myself when I was about twenty-five because it did zig zag.  It cost £40 and I got it on HP.  I thought it was very extravagant. I recently had some inheritance and have just bought a and it cost over£400.

I do love to stitch and I do love fashion.  I like Prima patterns and hopefully I have a free weekend this weekend and will make a jump suite that are back in fashion. I hope to customise it, watch this space.

Meanwhile I have added more of my instructions for my craft on Etsy.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/BackYardBooksandArt

Specs

 Spectacles


If I had three wishes, I think one of them would be to not wear specs.  I hate them on my face all the time and the inconvenience of them. Despite real advancement in styles, they still make me look older than I am.

This week sees me going for an optician examination at Boots.  I did go to Specsavers and I can't say that they have done me proud.  Despite being cheaper they are not a lot cheaper when all is said and done. the optician there last time got my prescription wrong saying that I needed less magnification than the time before.  the glasses that I was recommended as the second pair which I paid as prescription sunglasses were too wide for my face and fall off even before perspiration in the sunshine. so both pairs were defective in some way and found me struggling to read food packets.

This time, I went to Boots Opticians and there weren't the crowds of people queuing up which is commonplace in Specsavers.  I was given time and consideration.  However the glasses that I chose despite being a cheaper pair , and with the lenses, came to £300.  I got 25% off being a Boots card holder and I contribute to Simply Health so that makes the one pair of glasses come to about £125.

That means that one pair of glasses at Boots costs the same as two pairs of glasses at Specsavers but then they are far better quality and I had much better service.

Isn't the performance of buying specs a minefield. I have tried other ways around this problem and can't get on with anything wlse.

So I have made a decision and am not going to take my Boots prescription to Specsavers and I going for the expensive option.  they say you get what you pay for, let's see. Ha Ha.

Sweet Sixteen - Neil Sedaka

Seventy and Superb

Highlight of the week is to go to Wyvale Garden Centre and have coffee and a sausage roll with our vouchers.

We by cat food, a plant for a present, netting for the strawberrie sna trellis for the raspberries. Plus they were selling off CD's of 50's music so I bought one for the car.

Opening the windows wide aping the young we put on the music of Neil Sedaka and play it lud.

Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen comes on and memories flood back of a young girl sitting on a wooden bench in Great Wyrley net petticoats starched with sugar scratching at my legs, waiting for a boy to ask me to dance. Rock and Roll, the crazy dance craze and Elvis Presley girating so that parents are shocked.

Was it really 54 years ago, anybody's lifetime.  I am so lucky to have lived so long with such good times. There were bad times but Hey lets celebrate positivity.

Stitching is Satisfying

I have been stitching all my life.  I am eternally grateful to my Grandmother ( Nanna) for teaching me how to use a sewing machine when I was eleven.

I really enjoy the quilting courses with in Ilminster Art Centre.  The technique is very interesting and I am always surprised at the novelty of the achievement of something which takes me an age to get right.

This week sees me starting a shop on Etsy where I can sell my copious amount of craft things that I have made.

BackYardBooksandArt         https://www.etsy.com//BackYardBooksandArt

Anyway here are a couple of photographs which says it all.

Salmon and Substitutions are Slimming

Seventy and Superb

I dont know about you but I hate looking up a recipe when I dont know what to do for dinner only to find I dont have all the ingredients. So this is my recipe for today.

Poached Salmon and Salad

Salmon steaks
New potatoes

steam the salmon over the potatoes

Salad
Fresh lettuce
thin beans (Kept in Freezer and steamed then cooled)
cucumber
olives ( I always keep freeze packed olives in the store cupboard)

Prepared and drizzled with extra virgin olive oil ( said to be the best way to help your heart if uncooked.)

Followed by poached fruit (anything you have got in the fridge poached with apple/orange juice plus left over any kind of alcohol.)

Served with low-calorie creme fraiche( I always have this in the fridge as it is so versatile in cooking. e.g. fry some mushrooms in frylight and creme fracihe and serve on crusty toast. Voila!)

I recently went on a slimming course organised by NHS staff in my area.  It was designed mostly for people with an IQ of under zero, and made the assumption that in our age group and wirh our weight problems we spent 12/7 in front of the television.  There was a lot of five a day trotted out as though we haven't read about it in magazines, newspaper etc.ad nauseum.

However one interesting tip was substitution .  My weapon of mass destruction is Tomato Juice in the fridge.  Whenever i get a sweet tooth craving, if I have a glass of tomato juice ( luckily I quite enjoy it), then my cravings cease and tomato juice is very low in calories.

There you have it my tip for today. I have lost one stone so far so Keep on trying and I will too.

Exra store cupboard advice
tins of lentilsand chick peas are a good standby- low calorie and can go into any vegetarian recipe to improve protein content.

Sudden Attack

Sudden Attack

The thing about lists is that although they are useful to get things in order, they also put a lot of pressure on.

I get a lot of satisfaction from completing a list of To do, crossing through each task with gusto as it gets done.  But I forget I have Fibromyalgia and have to pace myself. I finished my to do list and was looking forward to going out with my friend Pauline and had a fog brain feeling.  This is a kind of fuzzy head ache that Fibromyalgia sufferers get.  I knew I had done too much but I had not seen Pauline for two months and missed her company so off I toddled ignoring the warning signs.


The exhibition of Quilts from Apple County Quilters was Wonderful, I voted for number 25 because it had a connection of words and writing and authors in the design but I also particularly loved this one: It appealed to me because I do a lot of bird studies and I liked the free embroidery combined with the quilting and found objects.

When I got home I had a full fibro flare.  This is when your muscles tingle all over and feel like lead, your head feels clogged up and all I could do was sleep from 6.00 until the next morning.  I woke up and then had an attack of laberynthitits.  I couldn't walk from my bed to the en suite with out holding onto something and losing my balance. I knew what was happening because the last time I had an attack was in Paris soe years ago when we went to see Monet's exhibition.  Needless to say I did not see the exhibition.

Needless to say that will be a couple of days when I cannot complete my next To do list.

I am hoping to be well enough for a course at Ilminster onTuesday which is already paid for.  This is the downside of being seventy. The only poisitive thing I  can  think of  in this whole sorry story is that it teaches me patience.

Supporting our local libraries.

Supporting our  local libraries.

                          I have been writing for about four years now.  I trained in Person Centred Art Therapy Skills.  I certainly think that any creative endeavour is a form of self therapy.

 I am both an artist and a writer and I think that one complements the other as often I am painting and a story emerges and then when I am writing a paiting is thought of in my mind.  That is how I have developed writing for children.

When I started the writing group in Tauntn Library,on behalf of the Friends of Taunton Library in order to raise funds, my writing certainly expanded in strength and  became far more ecelectic.

 The last session we wrote a poem on Friendship and explored a number of writing competitions via the "Writer's Forum" and" The Writing" Magazine.

I had already written a number of short stories and I decided to enter the Writer's Forum competition. I am now in suspense, I would love to win, who wouldn't? and you never know if we keep trying one of us might win a prize which will be good publicity for the library.  Libraries struggle in the present economic climate and need all the support they can get

More about my writing groups at www.zoeainsworthgriggbooks.com
 

Scarlet Woman

Seventy and Superb


It seems like my body is like a failing charity project that needs lots of cash injections to keeep it going.  Things get more expensive and my pension pot remains static, therefore all of money soon will go into keeping me alive!

Today sees me trying to put my body back into shape .Eye test  (cataracts and dry eyes.) Dental exam, (cavaties), Chiropractor ( Fibromyalgia.)

Due to an unexpected invitation I have bought a new dress.  I am a Quaker of over twenty years and though I believe in all Quaker principles the trouble is that I become more and more sober with the passing years While really I am a scarlet woman and enjoy writing erotic fiction.

When my fibromylgia kicks in I rest on the bed and indulge in my sexual fantasies which I write down.  Fortunately, all that kind of thing is beyond me now, even a cuddle is painful.  But fortunately my memories are good. I embellish a little I confess.

My dress has red poppies on it and I shall on Sunday live up to my name.

This Sunday I shall go to the Unitarian Church in Taunton.  It has a history.  It is wonderful to think as I take part in a service that Coleridge walked over the Quantocks to preach here all those years ago. I go because I like singing Unitarian hymns which have very special words to the traditional tunes.

Then afterwards off to the cricket club party in Scarlet Woman attire.

Seventy and So Superb

 Seventy and  So Superb


On May 28th, 2016 I became seventy years old.  Gone are the sixties and the 1960's and the fab four,when I was a young Mum and danced with my kids to Beatles "When You're sixty-four" All long gone.

And yet I am more creative now than I have ever been.  I paint, I blog, I write and publish, I create video books.

For me, the internet and all the technology has begun too late.  I would have loved it in my heyday, when I was fit and capable of energised delivery.

But I do not despare, I keep going and my latest masterpiece is below.  I used the book "Paint on Paper." which I borrowed from the library after I had facilitated my writing group.



The Writing Group at the library is another story.  We are a collection of would be authors and there is some keen talent. the proceeds go to little embellishments to the library that they can't afford because of cuts.  I am a Friend of Taunton Library and fund raise to help keep these facilities going.

 Anyway I borrowed the book and had fun with many layers of  textured paint.

The only one that didn't work was the leaves on paper left in the sunshine, any tips?  Then because I am a stitcher, see my craft blog, I then stitched into the paper.  When I held it up to the light, I noticed that the stitching has caused an intricate pattern that lets the light through.  I may make a lampshade.  I will try ot buy a lamp from a charity shop and replay it with my masterpiece. Oh and yes I sprayed gold paint through a lace doily, sorry Nanna.

This time next week I shall post again. Seventy is the new forty!