Good grief, this appears to be my first blog entry since April. In my defence, I’ve had a few things to deal with.

As you may know if you’ve been following me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, there have been yet more shenanigans with my stupid spine. Some problems I’d been having with my neck turned out to be more serious than they first appeared, and I ended up having urgent surgery to free my squished spinal cord.

Of course, given that the NHS is underfunded to the point of collapse, ‘urgent’ doesn’t necessarily mean next week, next month or even this year. When I spoke to the surgeon in April, he said, “this should be done before the end of the summer”; I immediately asked, “which summer?”. Thankfully things did move quickly, and I had the surgery in July.

I won’t go into detail (although I’m very happy to chat to anyone who is interested or going through something similar) but I ended up having a multi-level laminoplasty and foraminotomy, which was… not fun. In fact, it was spectacularly painful and I was stuck in a neck brace until my ‘six week’ post op appointment at the hospital, which actually happened after seven weeks just for the sheer fun of it. I am now sporting a new neck-length Frankenstein’s monster scar right on time for Halloween. Should have just gone all out and given me bolts.

Yes, I was properly grumpy but look at the actual state of me:

On the bright side, I’m glad it’s over and everybody at the RJAH in Oswestry was lovely as usual. Recovering from this one has been tough and frustratingly slow, but I can confirm that I am now able to put on my own socks, drink coffee (or, let’s be honest, wine) without a straw and sit at my desk long enough to type a few paragraphs at a time. Sketching comfortably is a little way off, but I’m confident I’ll get there soon.

Obviously, I haven’t been having many other adventures lately. Before my neck intervened, Luce and I had been hard at work on our somewhat neglected garden. We managed to sort out the weed covered patio, clear the paths and flower beds nearest the house and do some replanting, which was quite the achievement! My mum bought me a small greenhouse for my birthday last year, so I was able to grow (or attempt to grow) pretty much everything from seed this spring. Some experiments were more successful than others, but I really enjoyed myself and I’m already planning for next year.

As a joint birthday present/reward, we decided to upgrade our outdoor drinking experience a little… 

Yep, that’s me on my birthday in June sipping rum cocktails at our ACTUAL TIKI BAR! What could possibly go wrong? We’ve acquired solar disco lights and several flamingos since then, which has rendered the whole thing approximately 35% more hilarious. And that’s two photos of me, which is more selfies than I’ve shared in ages (February 2020. I checked).

Speaking of hilarity, we finally had to have our ancient gas boiler replaced in June. We’d been putting it off for ages, mostly because of the expense but also the upheaval. Our crumbling Victorian house never makes anything like this straightforward. Sure enough, leaks sprung up all over the ancient pipework and it became obvious that we were also going to have to replace most of the ancient radiators, so the upheaval extended through the whole place, and we now have an efficient new central heating system with six-inch sections of peeling 1970s wallpaper above several of the radiators because the new ones were a different size. Goodness only knows when I’ll be able to get up a ladder to hang wallpaper. I might just have to style it out for now and call it a feature. Old wallpaper is ‘retro chic’, right? Maybe I’ll start a trend. Also, although we now have a working thermostat for the first time in twenty-odd years, we still feel the dog’s ears to decide whether it’s cold enough to turn the heating on. Because nobody wants cold ears, especially not this dog:

Now you know why I’m skint, perhaps you’d like to have a look at all the lovely t-shirts, posters, mugs etc. in my shiny new online shop? After the customary amount of coffee and swearing, I’ve added a spooky seasonal section and everything. Please order soon if you need stuff in time for Halloween, as everything is made to order and delivered direct by the printer, not the ‘weasel.

I will try and be a more regular correspondent from now on. I know I’ve said that before but this is the first time since 2015 I’m not on a surgeon’s waiting list, which is encouraging. Fingers crossed, eh?

Bonus Music Video

Ok, I admit the title of this blog entry is a bit tenuous. Is it because I talked a bit about gardening? Am I a flower trying to turn towards the sun? Or was it just a flimsy excuse to share this beautiful song at the end?

Yeah… it’s the last one, obviously. But you’ll thank me once you listen to it.

Ok, so it’s not a mystery but it was that or ‘Stairway to Heaven’, which was not appropriate for this story.

Why haven’t I blogged for a while? Well, my dodgy back occasionally affects my balance and a few weeks ago it caused me to miss my footing at the top of our (steep old Victorian) stairs. I tried to correct myself with my dodgy leg, which promptly gave way under me and… crash, bang ‘weasel. I was stone cold sober at the time, honest. Maybe that’s where I went wrong?

It was one of those accidents that went in slow motion. My first thought was ‘where’s the dog?’ but she’d scarpered as soon as she heard my first swear. Then I thought Very Bad Things about the horribly underfunded state of the NHS and those responsible for underfunding it, because I’m still waiting for two rescheduled hospital appointments at the spine clinic and the foot/leg clinic. Then I thought of certain sympathetic (…*ahem*…) friends and decided that if this was how I was going to go I wanted to be laid to rest in the exact upside-down-and-backwards pose in which I’d landed, because they would find that hilarious. Then I just thought ‘Ouch’. Thankfully, I avoided serious injury; my legs took the worst of it and I already had a pair of crutches in the house, but it’s slowed me down and bits of me are still various shades of bruised.

In more cheerful news, I’ve been having great fun with the 100 Day Project. I’ve added my drawings so far to a gallery page here and there’s now a ‘comments’ section on all my galleries for anyone who fancies a chat. I’m using the hashtags #The 100DayProject and #ImaginaryMenagerie if you’d like to follow along on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. I’m ‘@poochweasel’ everywhere.

Also, my short stair-related break means I have FINALLY got around to building a new website shop so you can now buy prints, mugs, or t shirts of anything you like! Adding all the products is quite painstaking so it’s still a work in progress but I’m so pleased it’s up and running. I really want to get it right first time, because my old website was a headache to maintain and I was forever tweaking and mending things. Technology has moved on a lot since then but my 56 year old brain has not. I’m having to learn new technical skills, which is not really my brain’s thing. A typical afternoon at Poochweasel Towers goes something like this:

Me: Right then, brain, we need to create some new product templates.

My brain: Ok.

Me: Then we need to… *something about pricing, mock ups and uploads*…

Brain …

Me: Are you still listening?

Brain: What? Oh yeah… of course. Templates.

Me: Yes. Templates.

Brain: Have you ever noticed that when wombats yawn, they look like they’re doing karaoke?

Me…

Me: Stop it.

Brain…

Me…

20 minutes later:

And in case you were in any doubt, here’s a little story I should probably call ‘Reasons I Am An Idiot Episode 437’.

I have a good friend called Ritu, who is amazing DJ and broadcaster. You should take a minute to check out her website and follow all her socials. We met in the late 1980s, when I was working for Our Price Records and struggling to find the time to be creative, and she was DJ-ing evenings and weekends around her ‘day job’. We bonded over (among many other things) music and art and she was pretty much the only person I knew who was supportive of my ambition to be a full time artist one day. She gave me a beautiful Rotring pen set for my birthday. Artists just did an intake of breath… those things are not cheap. Shortly after that I changed job and moved house. Awful grown up stuff happened and I downed my art tools for many years until I met Luce, who encouraged me to pick them up again and start arting full time.

Fast forward to 2019 when I set myself the challenge of getting back into ink drawing. I quickly graduated from biros, my old standby, to fineliners. As I remembered how to draw(!) I also remembered the struggle to find the perfect pen. I bought better pens, with finer nibs that didn’t blot. Then more pens, because I was getting through them so quickly. I fretted about the environmental impact of disposables and researched pens that would last longer, might be refillable, might have impossibly delicate nibs that wouldn’t break. I talked for hours to other people who obsessed about pens and were constantly disappointed.

Fast forward again to last month when, after three years of pen-related frustration, my brain (see above) finally stopped thinking about wombats and 1980s song lyrics for five minutes and went “hang on”… Sure enough, about 20cm away from my battered little knees, carefully placed in a drawer of the desk I sit at Every. Single. Day. was the Rotring drawing set, in prisine condition after 30 years. I just needed new ink, which cost me £5.99 with free delivery. Take a bow, ‘Weasel, you absolute lemon.

On the plus side, it was a lovely surprise, I’m now using this glorious thing every day and I’ve probably just given Ritu a laugh.

There’s almost certainly a lesson to be learned from all of the above. Don’t ask me what it is though, if my life wasn’t a constant parade of nonsense and bobbins I’d have nothing to write about.

Bonus Music Video

I will always love Siouxsie. Can you tell it was 1979? The clues are there… Kids, ask your mum.