Memories of my bedroom

" I still see my childhood bedroom exactly as it was, the pink walls and floor with the swirly patterns, the bedroom window looking directly out onto the garden. The little inlaid wardrobe to the left, the old brown wardrobe to my right. There's  that little shelf near the door my mother kept my night light on. My single bed faced the door. A dressing table complete with mirror faced the window. It was so cold in there, sometimes when I daydreamed I lay on the bed with my old auntie's bedraggled fur coat over me, my smoky breath coming out in quick bursts as I pretended to be someone else, or pretended to be somewhere else. When I rose I left an imprint on the bed like a criminal chalk outline.  The room was arranged exactly the way my mother wanted, it couldn't be any other way. Sometimes there'd be the glow of a two bar electric fire when the nights were really cold and a hot water bottle tucked under the various shaped blanket cut outs and shapes that decorated my bed. You had to be imaginative to stay warm.

I go there inside my head all the time and it is always as I remember it. I can't imagine how it must look now, I'm not sure I want to. I'm sure it conforms to the designs currently in fashion, maybe a wood panelled floor, oak floor boards if they can afford it, or linoleum if they can't, a cheap substitute but popular these days. Whitewashed walls and oak effect shelving, a minimalist dream. All a million miles away from the bedroom I remember. I can only remember it the way it was, that's the way it has to be.

I now have a better understanding of the word 'hiraeth,' a Welsh word that has no exact translation, it is a word for longing, a craving for the past, a place, or someone. In Levels of Life Julian Barnes had found a German equivalent 'Sehnsucht,' "a longing for something" (p.112). I wonder if someone has to die before you feel hiraeth or Sehnuscht, or maybe a broken love affair or a falling out will suffice. I do not have the answer."

Playtime

When I was a child I played with old celebration cards, mainly old birthday and Christmas cards. They became corners in which to hide from unseen enemies and they could be changed to create different shapes, rectangles, squares and triangles of adventure, whole houses with their own rooms and corridors. A labyrinthe of mystery and chaos. My characters were interestingly shaped rubber pencil tops. They were characters in my stories; and they had their own monsters and shadows to slay. They would weave their way in and out of white card doorways and swirling patterns of festive baubles and pastel flowers.

I spent hours playing this way, sometimes not speaking for several hours unless one or both of my parents asked me a direct question. When I wasn't doing that I was reading. I could do that for several hours without speaking too, I was already becoming proficient at self-sufficiency in a small yet important way.

Beaumaris

Red Boat Ice Cream Parlour

 While strolling around the street of Beaumaris I had to visit my favourite ice cream parlour – the Red Boat. What can I say, if you love ice cream then you will need to come to the Red Boat in Beamaris, never have I enjoyed sitting in an ice cream parlour more, and it’s not just because of the ice cream either. I love the décor; the bright red fifties feel sofas and oak effect tables. The glass cabinets are bursting and teeming with ice cream of every flavour imaginable, puffins sitting whimsically on the shelves and the smell of fresh coffee in the air. Pictures of boats adorn the walls and there’s the delicious whiff of coffee.

 

 

Yes at Red Boat you don’t have to choose ice cream if you don’t want, although why you wouldn’t baffles me, there are at least 200 flavours to choose from and all hand made on the premises. It’s made of gelato which is Italian and meant to be less fattening than more conventional ice cream, so you can have a guilt free bowl of ice cream dream while you watch the world go by. Gelato dates back to the 16^th century and those cheeky Italians are responsible for spreading the word across Europe as to the saucy delights of the miracle that is gelato. What’s not to like?

 However, as I'm trying to cut down of late; on this occasion I chose a new item on the menu, fresh salmon, scrambled egg on brown bread and a generous mug of Americano coffee. A most congenial atmosphere as usual with customers of all ages chatting cheerfully away, some with a rather attractive plateful of those dinky little sandwiches, others with their young children ordering from the generous amount of ice cream from the glass cabinet.

 Did I mention the ice cream?

Well, there are 200 flavours to choose from all made on the premises; the ones in the glass cabinet are only a nosegay of what lies within the walls of the Red Boat Parlour. Sea Buckthorn and orange, orange and peach sorbet, organic apple sorbet, pineapple and basil sorbet, pear sorbet, crème brulee, strawberry and cream ice cream, pure vanilla, mint choc chip, banana and custard, heavenly chocolate honeycrumb crunch. Oh and they also have a delightful bara brith flavour. For the uninitiated of you that don’t know what a bara brith is, it's a cake type loaf that comes with currants and sultanas. Imagine that as an ice cream.

I don’t think I can recommend the Red Boat Ice Cream Parlour enough, it’s just about the sweetest, most delicious ice cream parlour you're likely to find.

 

Did I mention the Ice cream? Oh yes….

Find red boat ice cream parlour here...
www.redboatgelato.com

Gillian is a fulltime copywriter
providing web and blog content, brochures, leaflets, newsletters, and marketing SEO 
www.taith.net/
www.ysbrydion.blogspot.co.uk
email: Pandora.77@hotmail.co.uk

Beaumaris

tinkers & belles

I left behind my office desk and ventured out into the wilderness more commonly known as “outside” yesterday. This endeavour was intended to give me a little fresh air, introduce me to potential clients, and allow me to see that the sky is still blue and the grass is still green. That’s how often I go out these days as I’m so busy trying to build up business; you know what it’s like.

 Anyhow, I ventured out into the fresh air and decided that I would visit what has to be one of my favourite towns, Beaumaris. A small town full of quaint little shops, warm and inviting pubs and candy coloured houses, it’s flanked by a large castle complete with moat. It has to be one of the sweetest little towns in North Wales. What’s more important is that this town, unlike a lot of towns, is full of small local business struggling to survive a recession. The kind of local business we should all be supporting before we all end wind up living in another soulless town with a concrete shopping mall we’ve seen a million times before. The sort of shops where the owners remember your name and don’t have automatic email alerts that remember your name only because some stranger typed it in.

 

 

As I walked around casually taking in the scenery I ventured up a side street and accidentally fell upon what has to be one of the most delightful little shops for young children I’ve ever come across. It felt like I’d entered another world, and what really impressed me was that unlike one of those larger stores you find on industrial estates, the owner had clearly taken time to arrange everything in such a way that it made walking around it a real pleasure. Long eared cloth bunnies sitting prettily on brightly coloured shelves, long legged clowns peeking out from the side of a cupboard, rocking horses and books and sweet candy coloured petticoats all in a row. There were shelves of books and animal cars, stacks of brightly coloured clothes and knitted elephants. And what I absolutely loved were the animal shaped bicycle helmets. It made me want to be the mother of a small child again and I don’t say that often.

 

 

 

 

It made me reminisce about my own childhood; those bygone days when toys were toys and you were less likely to plonk the kids in front of the TV, and children were forced to use that mysterious thing they call “the imagination.”

 All in all a really delightful shop with a friendly and engaging owner, a shop that caters for young children and toddlers and is definitely worth a visit should you be passing, and the good news is that they have an online store with brands such as Bob and Blossom, Belle and Boo, Frugi, and Moi Kidz with free delivery all for orders over £30. www.tinkersandbelles.com

 

Gillian Jones is a full time freelance writer/copywriter.
Competitive rates: Web content/blogs/articles/marketing/SEO
White papers/reports/proofreading/CV Resumes/Brochures/Leaflets/Newsletters
www.taith.net/

www.ysbrydion.blogspot.co.uk
Email: pandora.77@hotmail.co.uk

Sometimes people really disappoint me......

I hate the way people have to diminish each other in order to feel better about themselves - everything you say has to be belittled, everything you've done has to be made to seem worthless. Every holiday you have, every car you drive, the other person has a bigger, better version. The way they outdo each other on every aspect of daily life - searching your eyes to check they've registered envy and misery.

You can never have a conversation with them, because it will always evolve into a one sided display of bragging.

The most odious breeds are usually found in local councils, NHS and police offices. They poison the  the very air you breathe with their venomous bile. Looking at you as if you crawled out of the sewer.

Their houses are clinically clean, minimal, always decorated according to the latest interior trend, no dust, no books, a strategically placed dinner table in the centre of a dining room, a churchillian war room with table, where they can do battle with the opposition, where they can out brag their guests.

They usually live on a housing estate, a private housing estate where all the houses are identical, ghettoised from the rest of society.

"Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,¹
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same."

My mother always used to sing that song every time we went past those pretty, samey houses.

They  carry on with their day, safe in the knowledge that another person has been diminished and made smaller in their eyes.  They triumph every time they sense a wining shot over some loser in a smaller car, they are bigger, better, shinier people. They can get back behind their desks and smile smugly, read their copies of the Daily Mail and tell themselves they're higher up the food chain.

Thatcher's children.

And that's why I bailed out of middle class life, the office, the politics and the "dress from Next" brigade.

Soulless people with no reflection.

Here endeth today's sermon.

"...a lack of art is really bad for the brain."

"There are abundant examples of reactionary, loony, virulently prejudiced artists and art lovers, so one can hardly insist that art is definitively good for the brain. But I believe that a lack of art is really bad for the brain. Art itself is inherently subversive. It's destabilising. It undermines, rather than reinforces, what you already know and what you already think. It is the opposite of propaganda. It ventures into distant ambiguities, it dismantles the received in your brain and expands and refines what you can experience."


Deborah Eisenberg, The Art of Fiction No. 218
Paris Review Spring 2013

Best definition of love I've read for a while....and I wanted to share it

"You put together two people who have not been put together before; and sometimes the world is changed, sometimes not. They may crash and burn, or burn and crash. Yet sometimes, something new is made, and then the world is changed. Together, in that first exaltation, that first roaring sense of uplift, they are greater than their two separate selves. Together, they see further, and they see more clearly."

Julian Barnes, Levels of Life 2013