Sunday? Not church.

The fever wore off. I mananged to crawl out of bed an hour behind schedule then got progressively slower and less competent from that point onwards. I don't take long to get ready, I'm not yer typical girlie, I just don't move fast and I can't get dressed very easily on my own. I should apologise to taxi drivers now. There have been very good days when I knew I'd be able to get out - but not if I used up my strength getting dressed and finding my shoes (or finding my feet). It wouldn't be the first time I've tried to get dressed in the back of a taxi or just left it till I arrived somewhere there was someone to help me. Believe me, if you're mostly housebound and suddenly have a chance of escape, nothing can stop you. You'd go naked if you had to. Like I said, sorry to all taxi drivers...

Fortunately I am a stranger to hair-straighteners, hairdryers, curling tongs and styling products so 'doing my hair' consists of sticking a clip in it. Although I admit to an indulgence of crimping in my dark past. I know I own a hairbrush. Its probably in the same cupboard as the iron.

The taxis are slow at this time of year of course, but the delay allowed me to finish getting dressed then do my eye paint. Quite frankly, contact lenses were beyond me tonight, but who says cats can't wear specs.

Anyway, It was fab to be back at the Big Red Door for Kinky XXXMas Cabaret. My dazed and confused state wasn't really noticed as anything different from normal. I became one of her ladyship's three household cats, via a panda, not sure what happened there, in rubber corset, velvet ears and fishnet tutu, then promptly forgot to stay in character when so many folk came up to talk to me, oops. And the best bit? I don't think anyone knew I was very ill, because I was a blue cat, not an invalid. Attendance was low, but the atmosphere was fantastic nevertheless, and those who came along were a great crowd of talented people. It was good to see them all again as I know most from elsewhere around the city over past years.

I read my dodgy wee christmas story and it seemed to go down well. The Spanish girl said she didn't know all the words but I said that was probably just as well. Ooh andI finally had photos taken of me! The Arctic Zombie Xmas Elves have been exposed to the world. I might try to sell it to a zombie athology next and completely ruin my literary reputation in advance.

So, event review contd: plenty of good schmoozing time during the dance breaks, each of which proved so popular they were soon done between acts instead of as intervals, and quite frankly with that dancing it was an act in itself. We had top juggling totty, trapeze totty, stilting totty, pole-dancing totty, hula hooping totty, musical totty, serving wench totty and door totty. Basically everyone looked damn fine and was more than reasonably bendy. It was a completely immersive night - those have returned! - and this particular group of gorgeous guests had brought their own toys to play with too. Oh my! I can safely say I never knew what was going to happen next.

*

Starting immediately after the new year: weekday classes at the BRD for yoga, stretching, meditation, juggling, poi, circus, aerial, belly dance, Bartitsu, clowning, drumming, life drawing, magic and stilting. Please come along!

where do artists and writers go on Fridays?

I'm not a misanthrope, honestly. I have been inadvertantly 'networking' over the past few years into places I know and with friends of friends of friends, but have now leaped electronically three times into new groups in this past year. Of course, in Edinburgh there is no such thing as an entirely new group, not even if they are aliens. Someone will have worked with your mother or gone to school with your brother or recognised you at a party or renovated your neighbour etc. So I know certain connections in advance, but it is still a good feeling.

I should keep an eye on this one. I rather like their style. 26 indeed, this is interesting. And they have a new project that comes right to my door.

Doors, doors, Hidden Doors is the one in January that I've been asked to read at but as all meetings were held downstairs I have not met any of the organisers or performers/ artists/ entourage. Apart from the ones who I will inevitably already know. This is a bloody creative city, so I thank the deities of technology daily for being able to connect, collaborate and diversify - from my bed. Now we need some accessible meetings to really get to know each other!

My laptop informs me that this is in fact Saturday.

*Update: In January Hidden Doors decided they weren't going to include the wheelchair performers after all and access wasn't advertised.

Boxing day - wanna fight?

If you made it through midwinter/ yule/ xmas eve/ xmas day/ hannukah of the Winterval season, you're probably asleep anyway - or out skating on black ice. Goth skating! We had our wonderfully white xmas here in Edinburgh's outskirts, in a snowed-in village where snowmen lined the white beach, gesticulating across the slushy semi-frozen waves to a white-hilled Fife. The snowmen I mean, not us. It was safest to ski, horse or sledge around but thanks to some generously shovelled paths I was able to trundle too. Sunset over snowy beach and frosted water is still one of the most beautiful views here.

I've just had a revelation. If the sand is frozen then I can finally FINALLY trundle down the sand to the sea for a paddle! Oh dear gods and little fishes, at last!! Fuck you, City of Edinburgh Council and your Disinterested Development Planners for the Riviera, delay all you want in equal access, in any beach access for wheelchairs, I can get myself down onto the beach to sit on the sand, make sandcastles and go for a swim in the sea whenever its below freezing.

Oh wait.

Arse.

Excuse me while I put my electric blanket on.

So, its boxing day. Box Wars at the Big Red Door, 10 Lady Lawson St tonight 8 - 1. I'm not going though. I do have a shedful of boxes to dispose of but they are designated tinder for the next beachy bonfire/ campfire/ fire sculpture. Unfortunately I don't have any other interested sculptor in the Portobello area with whom to hit the beach. For this, I definately need a collaborator. And a bigger shed.

Ahhh the perils of the festive season when ill. Knowing that each of the special tinsel days is either a bad day or - if good enough to be enjoyed to the (comparitively) full - a good day is going to cause a bad day. So if there are several events/ days/ prospects together, then basically you're buggered in the social department. And if one of them is by definition a long-haul expedition (ok, I'm thinking of hogmanany now) which part of it does one aim oneself at? Could you choose a five hour section from an all-nighter with your favourite people and be sure that was the right part? It won't be. Be prepared to crashland into everyone else's marathon bonding session and not feel like an outsider? Be able to leave early when you don't want to and your beloved partner or prospective partner-if-only-you-could-get-another-couple-of-hours-schmoozing-together is staying on for the rest of it? Enjoy your visitors when they are clearly in between fabulous events, all dressed-up and somewhere to go but you've been stuck in bed for three months? Choose between each of your friends and all of your family because you can only manage one visitor? Yeah, I know that applies to lots of folk for family and work commitments, but at some point they chose the family and work, and could in theory run away (albeit via the therapist/ solicitor/ bank manager) so its not the same deep deep down, only in surface appearance.

My surface appearance is grinning like a loon (well, a quine) when out because its so fecking fantastic to be upright and outside. Pain is relative, you don't always have to express it.

It changes character and perspective to know life is now like that; don't underestimate the effect it has on a person's soul. I can neither make definate diary dates nor keep them, so its essential for morale to have an open menu, no, a buffet, of options to select from as I hit (or miss) each part of each day, places where I will fit, people who will welcome me but not expect me or sulk if I am absent. And understand whenI say I love this time of year but aspects of it hurt in unreasonably large ways.

Invalid. Which syllable do you emphasise when you say it?

Maybe all this is why I write so much more than I used to. I create, communicate and release my thoughts, daydreams and observations in inky streams of consciousness. I have to, I can't not create. I'd burst, but now there are more words than there used to be. Are they replacing the sculpture, the anatomy, the music and the art-in-landscape? The escaped ink will trickle into people's eyes, into their ears, into their thoughts. They might feel it on their skin, feel it grabbing them round the throat. Some of the inky streams will return to me as a shimmering river of shared creativity. If I'm asleep or too ill to stamp out through the snow to grab them by the bollocks, I can still float downstream in that magical river. The world will have moved on while I was away but so will I. I'll be somewhere new in my head when I land.

funding

I love this, in a really masochistic way. Unfortunately it will probably apply to much of Edinburgh's arts in the end...

http://www.dsc.org.uk/NewsandInformation/News/CampaigningCashCuts?dm_i=6S7,27Z2,N8VXU,8835,1

Campaigning Cash Cuts

by Ben Wittenberg, Director of Policy and Research, Directory of Social Change

The Office of the Third Sector is already one of the lowest rated statutory funders on http://www.governmentfunding.org.uk/ so the recent decision to cut funding to support campaigning after issuing grant letters this week should not come as a huge surprise. However, it rarely happens that a single decision from government highlights all eight hallmarks of statutory funding. OTS has done it perfectly:

Government funding hallmark 1: Misunderstand the need
In April this year the OTS announced a £750k fund to support research and innovation in campaigning. DSC challenged the underlying assumption that innovation was the problem, instead calling for government to work hard at improving access to decision makers for smaller charities.

Government Funding Hallmark 2: Outsource fund administration to QUANGO
Then the process started, managed by Capacitybuilders.

Government Funding Hallmark 3: Try ever so hard to do the right thing
A four person panel of experts was set up to make final decisions on awards.

Government Funding Hallmark 4: Take a long time to make a decision
In October, 32 organisations were informed that they had been successful and would receive grants.

Government Funding Hallmark 5: Take very little time to change your mind, without consultation. On Friday 13th November Angela Smith announced that funding had been withdrawn, and instead would be allocated to the £16.7m Hardship Fund. This was apparently done without consulting either the applicants to the fund or the panel of experts.

Government Funding Hallmark 6: Communicate your decision as badly as possible
The decision to withdraw offers of funding was “…taken because of the pressing need to support the sector through the recession.” This is perfect as it gives no answer at all, whilst at the same time allowing any number of possible real reasons. Did Angela Smith only just notice we were in a recession? Were OTS unhappy with the shortlisting they had outsourced? Could it be that somewhere, someone had the thought that arming the voluntary sector with greater campaigning skills eight months before a ridiculously tough general election could be politically naïve? Either way, leaving it open for people to assume either conspiracy or incompetence is probably not a sound PR strategy.

Government Funding Hallmark 7: Impeccable timing
No, not announcing it on Friday 13th, but doing all of this in the middle of a consultation on revising the Compact. Priceless.

Government Funding Hallmark 8: Underestimate the sector
Spend six months finding 32 of the best and most innovative campaigners. Offer them funding and then take it away. They surely can’t expect this to go away can they?

tardy

I seem to have let a week slip by without blogging helpfully access thingies. It was a pretty good week too, as despite being stuck indoors, I had very interesting and enjoyable visitors.

However, this online tardiness fades into perspective on receiving an email rejection this afternoon, of a short story I submitted to an anthology - in April 2007. What?