Dodo Au Go-Go

In September 2024, while I was on the west coast of Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, I saw an unidentified flying object (UFO). My LittleOne and I were on a rooftop balcony. We were staring idly above the tops of the trees to the west, where there was still the faintest leftover pineapple glow in the sky. Then, we shifted our gaze slightly to the same tops of the trees, but in the south-west, where the sky had already darkened to a soft, purpley-crimson.  There were three stars in the sky. One of the stars, just above the tree line was smudged. As though it had a faint mist around it. The other two stars, by contrast, were perfectly clear. In the above photo ( not taken on the UFO evening), if you look closely, you can see two stars. The third, smudged star was to the left of these two stars. I pointed out the smudgy star to LittleOne and wondered out loud 'why was it smudged?' There were no clouds in the sky. As we stared at it, we realised the smudgy star was actuall...

I wrote a tiny snapshot story  a while ago and did an illustration to go with it. This was the final drawing. It was a surprisingly long journey to get to this final image. This was where I started. A rough sketch of the image in my head, hand-scribbled in a scrapbook with my watercolour brush pens. I got LittleOne's help to add water to the image. (Shout-out to LittleOne for the skill in making the puddle look so reflective!) Time to play in the phone photoshop express app. Do I like the mud splotches? Not sure yet. Let me try without. Actually, let's feel free and experiment. Interesting, but not what I want. Oooh, I remembered I can draw in the photoshop app now. Can I get the sky to be the shade of dark I want? Yes, I think I can. Let me try darkening the figure. Adding more detail to the dogs. While I'm at it, let me get rid of some all the white/uncoloured bits. Make the vineyards more...

Sometimes, there are pieces of music which grab you. Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes, not so good. Mostly they don't want to let you go.  Earworms , they're apparently called.  Burrowing into your auditory subconscious and causing you much frustration/bewilderment as you realise you've been humming the same piece of music for hours (days). During which time, your brain also becomes incapable of remembering any other piece of music exists.  The worst ones are those songs where you don't know their titles, who wrote/performed them, or even how to sing the tune out loud. How do you chase down earworms? Yes, there's an app for that. Several, in fact. But they don't always help. Sometimes, they give the wrong info. And don't get me started on the wordless tunes which are impossible to sing. One of my earliest experiences with solving an earworm was accidental. I had heard a piece of music I liked in the middle of a fan compilation of di...

It's a Saturday morning. Under a wide blue sky, the big-hearted autumn sun warms up a world which had cooled off overnight. Everyone is asleep. Hubby, my not-quite-two-year-old Little One, and my Puppy-Girl. I'm standing at my laptop at the kitchen counter, a hot teacup at grateful hand. I could take my laptop and go and sit on the couch and curl up beneath a warm rug. In fact, I'd like very much to go and do that. But then Puppy-Girl, who's sleeping at my feet, wouldn't be able to follow me through the child-proof gate. And I don't want to lessen our little pocket of quiet time together. Just me and her. Not to mention, she will then move to sit at the gate so she can regard me reproachfully. So I tell myself that standing to type is good for me.  In this little oasis of time, I breathe and my thoughts start to settle. I can stop having to react to everything, and let my thoughts slow and stretch. Think a little bit. Mull. Be introspectiv...

I don't remember how the bag came into my possession. Suffice to say it got well played with over the Christmas season, and is now cumpled, tatty and generally, quite the worse for wear. I was trying to decide whether to throw it in the recycling or do something crafty with it before chucking it out. So I decided to try drawing a flower on its crumpled but blank innards. As you do. There was a logic to my madness - which was that I'm not very good at drawing flowers, and doing a doodle inside a hidden and soon-to-be-thrown-out bag is as good a place to practice as any. I grabbed one of my LittleOne's colouring-in pens.  Again, it reduces any expectations and pressure. (I think I've previously mentioned that I have a pretty savage inner critic?) Anyway, I came up with this. Photo taken in the kitchen with as much fluorescent light as I could get into the gift bag with one hand, while holding my phone with the other. Actually, you know what? I thought to mysel...

 The whole household has been down with a bad bug (not the pandemic pest) for these past two October weeks. There were sniffles, sore throats, coughs and fevers aplenty.  It's all pretty exhausting, so on the weekend, LittleOne and I did some drawing to cheer ourselves up. I pulled out a roll of brown packing paper (greater novelty factor than your ordinary sheet of A3 white paper) and suggested we could draw a streetscape with some shops for LittleOne's toys and cars to drive and walk past and go shopping. Welcome to PonderBananeMangoSweet Street. (I contributed the Sweet. LittleOne authorised it to join the original.) Let's take a stroll. Here is, IMHO, one of best shops I have ever seen: The Fashion Explosion Rocket Shop.  This is perhaps the greatest name for a shop ever, in the entirety of human existence in the universe. Ever. 100% LittleOne's concept. I love it. It's for - and I quote - "fashions you wear when you go into space." There i...