In September the Arts Trail comes to Walthamstow and a wonderful world of creativity is opened up to the public.
August 14th sees the Warm-Up taking place in Walthamstow Town Square, see their website for more details.
The Arts Trail is an opportunity to see art and creativity that you may not normally come across. The Arts Trail Blog has some lovely previews from the participating artists and details of events and how you can take part. Fancy sketching a garden? Why not join in with the activities in the Vestry House Museum on 3rd September?
Full of hidden gems, the Arts Trail is one of my favourite Walthamstow events every year. You invariably find things you’d never look for and have some most delighful surprises. Download the guide and go and explore!
We kick off with Anonyma, made up of Anne Lister and Mary Mc Loughlin, two fabulous singers. Anne Lister is the author of wonderful songs such as Moth and Icarus. Here’s a clip of Anne at a festival last year to give you a taste.
Martin Simpson also does a version of Icarus and as he’s at the club in early October I thought I’d share this:
Waltham Forest libraries are under threat and a protest has been organised in Walthamstow Town Square for Saturday 13th August from 4 pm. You should be able to get the post from here: harrow green poster for 13 august. Please come along and support this cause.
Libraries are a vital resource that deserves full public support. I can’t put it better than Piers Crawley, who wrote this song and performed it at Walthamstow Folk in February this year.
You might be interested in the Heavenly Discources conference being organised by the Sophia Centre and the University of Bristol.
This takes place from 14th – 16th October in Bristol. There are also pre and post conference events which look fabulous.
On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. 2011 sees the fiftieth anniversary of that event. In almost every human culture the sky functions as a backdrop for mythical encounters, employing the celestial environment as a stage set for narratives of human and divine experience. That moment when human beings first left the planet gave us a different perspective on the sky.
This conference will bring together scholars to examine the relationship between the heavens and culture through the arts, literature, religion and philosophy, both in history and the present.
The Astrological Lodge of London’s annual History of Astrology seminar will take place on 23rd October 2011 and I will be one of the speakers together with Nicholas Campion, Kim Farnell and Anna Estaroth. Full details will be up on the site very soon.
My lecture will be on Astrological Symbolism in the Greek Magical Papyri.
The Astrological Association of Great Britian’s annual conference takes place in September, starting on Friday, 16th September and finishing on Sunday 18th September.
My lecture will be at 5 pm on Saturday 17th.
What goes around comes around
Astrology is based on the idea of cyclic time but what are cycles, and what do their different phases mean? We will also look at how to weight cycles, matching the shorter with the longer and consider how this information can be used on both a mundane and a personal level.
My MP, Stella Creasy, is pushing a motion to bring in extra controls to credit lenders, or should we say loan sharks. The motion includes things like displaying an accurate APR and full details of the problem, and suggested measures, can be found here: http://www.workingforwalthamstow.org/2011/01/everything_you_need_to_know_ab.html
This motion deserves widespread support and as Stella is my MP I can’t sensibly petition her to vote for her own motion. But I can spread the word so you can pention your elected representatives. Please do so!!!
I came across this article in the Guardian today and it gave me an idea: my top five kitchen gadgets. Enjoy.
Number 1: Wonder Whisk – well that’s how Lakeland refers to them as.
This little whisk is great for making salad dressing and for getting lumps out of gravy.
If you mix oil and vinegar in the salad bowl with the whisk you reduce your washing up and you cut down on wastage transferring the dressing between bowls. Once you get the feel of this you don’t have to measure the oil and vinegar so saving even more washing up!
If you make gravy in the meat pan then this little gadget will let you mix in flour with some liquid and the meat juices. I start working the mixture together in one corner and once you have a smooth paste you can start working in the rest of the lovely crunchy bits from the meat. Fabulous!
Number 2: Really good knives
Good sharp knives make everything easier. Sharpen them often and keep them away from lots of clutter in drawers.
These are the knives I’ve got, they were a Christmas present and I didn’t realise quite how much they cost until I just searched for the link! But worth every penny.
Here’s how to keep them sharp:
Number 3: Vegetable Peeler
You don’t have to get these from Lakeland, you can get them from most cookshops or just from the market. This makes peeling vegetables very easy and you only peel a small amount. This cuts wastage and leaves all that goodness that you find just under the peel for you to eat.
This gadget also allows you to get wafer thin strips of root vegetables to make your own crisps.
The design makes is easy to peel vegetables quickly and neatly. You don’t need to spend as long again tidying your veg up with a knife when you’ve finished peeling.
Number 4: Hand held liquidiser
A hand held blender allows you to blitz something in a saucepan without having to decant hot liquid into a food processor and then into another bowl. Not only does this avoid juggling your dinner between various appliances – creating mountains of washing up in the process – but it gives you a lovely smooth texture to your soup/sauce.
You can also use it to blend in extra liquid. For instance if you’ve pureed your veg but you’ve not added all your stock. If you just stir it in the texture can be a bit odd. If you add stock gradually while gently liquidizing you get a beautiful velvety texture.
Number 5: Pestle and Mortar
Fresh spices make all the difference to your cooking and to get the most of your spices you need something to prepare them in. Get the biggest pestle that your kitchen can handle and get two if you’ve got space. For dry ingredients make your pestle heavy so it doesn’t move around while you’re grinding and you don’t have to worry about using too much force. If you want to mix wet ingredients in a pestle and mortar use one that isn’t made of a porous material – you don’t want it picking up the smells of everything you’re mixing.
I missed the Singing Loins when they played Tunnel Vision in the summer as I had deadlines the meet, but judging from everyone else’s reaction, they are something to see and I’m really looking forward to Sunday when they play the folk club. Here are a couple of You Tube clips so you can see what they’re about. The second is louder than most of their repertoire but gets right to an extremely pertinent point. Enjoy.
to the public.
