You know when your bush needs trimming ...

You know when your bush needs trimming when someone knocks at the door and offers to do it, as happened on Saturday; I declined and immediately regretted it, thinking of the hours of getting twigs in my face and of the mess of clearing up which is often worse than the task itself.

Well, the embarrassment of the unsolicited knock at the door combined with a sunny autumn day after a wet Bonfire Night, got me going: ten minutes into cutting down the laurel bush separating us from the neighbour, I chewed through the Alligator cable and shorted all the fuses.  Forty minutes later I was back in business after rewiring the cutter with its shortened cable, that is after going to the shops to buy new fuses, of which there were naturally none in the house.  Some hours of dirty work later and with the onset of dusk the chainsaw dislodged and Alligator had to be taken into the garage and I had to discover its entire construction to access the chain positioning and, for some reason, one securing nut was fractionally larger than the other, hence one fitted neatly into the ring spanner and the other didn't and I chewed off the corners ... grrrrrr

With darkness approaching I sawed the last few branches but retreated before it was too dark to see as I value my fingers and eyes.

So it turned into two days' of work and totally at the mercy of the weather - one weekend lost, not to speak of the damage to my back and hands ...

Artist: Years Around The Sun lyrics

Title: Failing At Art
Set your heart at ease or it will hold you under
Set your heart at ease and your soul
We got to believe in last chances we can't count on the world today
We'll listen to the radio and sing to the songs we hate
And we have been on the road all day
And we are still on the road tonight
And we'll listen to the radio as we stare in the Devil's eyes
We'll sift through the ashes the embers burn bright
Collect all we stole vanish in the night
We'll sleep with the masses, but stay out of sight
We stole our wages
Send "Failing At Art" ringtone to your mobile http://ace.jamster.co.uk/c_red_v2_dyn/?pid=19&artist=Years+Around+The+Sun&title=Failing+At+Art&tduid=38fe5d1e5e3779d144bf7f73c5da64ef&affId=1568252

It is with regret

Dear Anna-Marya,
Re: Christmas Temp.
Thank you for attending the interview for the above position, it was good to meet you.
It is with regret that we have decided not to offer you a position with Waterstone's at the present time.
Although we were impressed with your skills and abilities, we have seen candidates who more closely match our requirements.
May we thank you for your continued interest in Waterstone's and wish you every success for the future.
Yours sincerely,
Branch Manager
HEMEL HEMPSTEAD Marlowes

nadir

So maybe yesterday was another turning point: another job refusal (and for a crappy one at that, poorly paid and temporary), over the 'phone this time.  I was able to say 'thanks for letting me know' with sanguinity and considered that a moment of moving on had arrived.  Yesterday I had two conversations that centred on not exerting energies where effort was wasted.  Applying for jobs has become a waste of energy; I can easily dispose of 3-4 hours a day, opening e-mails from job-sites, filling in application forms and writing letters of application.  In 18 months of trying, I have had three and a half interviews; I say a 'half' because I cancelled one as it was for an internship and I really had to take myself to task not to go down that route, I had already made the decision that on no account would I do unpaid work.  The current trend for this is a scandalous exploitation of skilled labour invariably of little or no benefit to the participant.  My energies will be better bestowed creatively  ...

o one one one one o

what a terrible Samhain - barely a visitor - almost totally a failure despite baking and decorating

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

prosthesis

In London yesterday at the Welcome Collection, looking at the collection of prosthetic limbs, I was put in mind of my godfather (he of the white glove).  He died in 1976, leaving me £100, quite a large sum at the time, and a fortune saved from his meagre income.  I was not able to enjoy this small windfall; my parents decided it would substitute their parental contribution to my maintenance at university that year; I had just started at Leeds. 

But I am ashamed that he even remembered me: I would not visit because I was appalled by the prosthetic leg he left propped against the furniture in his tiny room in a house in Cromwell Street.  The house was filled with displaced Central Eastern European aristocracy, countesses and dukes of imaginary kingdoms.  My godfather, Lajos Kultsar, and his wife, Olga, were born under Hapsburg rule into refined homes and hoped to enjoy a life of privelege; they came to England as displaced persons and put their knowledge of etiquette and cooking to use as hotel staff. 

This picture is taken in Spring 1944 around the time the Nazis moved into Hungarian territory and engaged the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie to carry out their plans, which they apparently did with gusto.  Why? In the belief that a German victory would restore the lost territory of 1921.  It's easy to look on this as misguided from the perspective of 2010 but yet it is still an ulcerating wound in the Hungarian psyche.  

My godfather  was long-time chair of the Mindszenty centre in London when that still existed.  He didn't lose his leg fighting; he got a bloodclot in the late 60's, and amputation was the simplest cure for difficult conditions for poor people.  In other photos I have of him, he bears a striking resemblance to Max Beckmann, especially with the cigarette in hand, carrying off the urbane elegance that characterised the early C20th.

My godparents were the nearest thing to extended family that I experienced.  Olga, my godmother, was my mother's last really close female friend, a mother figure she needed.  After Olga died of cervical cancer aged 46 my mother's last pretence at domestic nomality failed.

delighted to be acknowledged

Unfortunately your application for the internship position was unsuccessful.
However, we will keep your details on file and will contact you if any other opportunities arise that we feel maybe of interest to you.
Regards
__________________________
University of Bedfordshire