Scheiterhaufen

a little dance of semantics: my mother threatened me often with ending up on the 'Scheiterhaufen' and I thought it meant being part of a heap of failure, which was pretty well also her meaning.  I didn't realise until much later that it actually means a funeral pyre such as that used for burning witches.
In celebration of Hallowe'en I am baking a Scheiterhaufen which is also applecake.
my apple trees have performed so vigorously this year that I am threatened with complete failure to deal with the produce and we are eating apple with everything; nature's plenty, my challenge.

failure of failure

http://www.severalpursuits.org/?page_id=78
I submitted this blog as work dealing with failure but failed to get it included
I therefore submit this failure to the symposium for consideration

Pascal Bruckner

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/09/tyranny-of-guilt
political correctness not in our own interest

case note

the sun is shining
I am in a cafe in Brighton
I have a baguette of bacon and brie
it is delicious and biting into it suffuses with pleasure, the bread is fresh
and in my mind I feel utter terror, complete fear of the total downfall of society, terror at what my children (or even I) will experience and witness in the time yet to be
where does this fear come from? absorbed from the endless media orchestrated rhetoric of times of terror(ism) or is it post-memory? I don't know when my parents ever felt secure; the sense of 'needing to move at any moment' permeated every action, defined the way we lived.  I think it was the actor Sanjeev Bhaskar who I heard describing the 'suitcase on top of the wardrobe'; this is exactly where our suitcases were stored.  Just in case ...

Falling off the Face of the Earth

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-07-08-hankiss-en.html

do I just suffer from a national characteristic?

Dear Compatriot

I wonder whether I qualify?

Dear Anna

Three Rivers District CouncilThree Rivers HouseNorthwayRickmansworthHerts WD3 1RLTel: (01923) 776611Fax: (01923) 896119DX: 38271 Rickmansworth
My Ref :Your Ref :Date :Contact :Tel No :Email Add :Department : ADO/UIArts Development Officer22 October 2010Charlotte Masters01923 776611charlotte.masters@threerivers.gov.ukLeisure and Community Services
Dear Anna
Temporary Part-Time Community Arts Development Officer - Interviews
Thank you very much for showing an interest in our Community Arts Development Officer post here in Three Rivers and spending the time with us at your interview. We had a very strong field, in terms of experience of prospective candidates and on this occasion you were not successful in gaining the position.
The panel appreciates the time you put into undertaking the various tasks and for preparing and presenting your presentation.
If you would like any feedback on the day please do not hesitate to contact me.
I wish you all the best and success with your future career.
Yours sincerely,
Charlotte Masters
Active Communities Officer

feeling successful

Both my parents had an unassailable conviction in their own success and , in a way, this was indisputable: they, both of them in different ways, quite literally had nothing when they came to Britain.  Whatever they came to possess in the way of a house and a lifestyle, albeit a skin-of-the-teeth one, was theirs.  They owed no-one.  They never borrowed.  They dutifully paid off their mortgage.  Therefore what they had was acquired in a direct cause and effect relationship. 
For me they had ambition, and, in their terms, I failed constantly, and continue to do so to this day.  No matter how successful any individual venture of mine, most of what I have done has existed outside the direct capitalist model of investment and return.  It is uncountable in financial return.  I've put more in than taken out, ergo negative returns, ergo failure.

Tinsel and Twinkle

Hi Anna-Marya,
Thankyou so much for taking the time to submit your work.
There's been some really interesting pieces submitted and it was a difficult choice, however we have now made a final decision and unfortunately your work has not been selected for the exhibition.
Many thanks and best wishes for the future,
Tinsel and Twinkle

Twisted Thread

Dear Anna,
Thank you very much indeed for responding to our announcement about Anna's impending departure on maternity leave and our consequent hunt to find temporary cover.
We were trying something new in contacting our visitors to alert them to this vacancy and what we have had confirmed is that we welcome some amazingly talented, enthusiastic people to our shows!
Quite simply, we have been inundated with offers of assistance and we are extremely grateful to everyone who responded. However, I am afraid we did feel that there were others who were perhaps better suited to this particular role. Nevertheless, thank you again for your interest.
With kind regards
Andrew J M Salmon
Managing Director
Creative Exhibitions Limited
www.twistedthread.com

still with me

I got around to clearing the garage this past week, glad to have managed it between precipitation and the onset of frosty autumn.  The garage is still full of relics from my father's life, his goods and I, his chattel.  This is a picture of his patent screw storage shelf.  He was good that way, my father, inventive.  The lids are screwed to the plank and the jars could be unscrewed as required.  Simple.  It hung around my garden, fell over a few times, the jars broke, the screws rusted.  It had to go.  Sorry, father.  Of course he knew and I cut my hand.

nostalgie de pays

I was wandering away from the local chemists this morning and found an old Ricola sweet in my pocket, slightly macerated but still suckable, a comfort for ear ache.  I remember my mother being much taken with a TV advert for this herbal sweet - a man on a Swiss alp shouts "Ricola"  and it reverberates across the mountains; it impressed my mother enough for her to think of buying Ricola.  And in small ways like this my mother (and my father) would reveal glimpses of a nostalgie de pays under the surface of adaptation to being British - ah yes, they were British, not English.

The Aesthetics of Failure

http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors3/casconetext.html