Sunday Selections

Zen Gulls


Well lovely people,

My plan for regular updates from my trip to Australia has pretty much died a thousand deaths, due to the absence of wifi in most places I'm staying at. And the lack of editing options through my phone.

This hasn't helped my feeling of isolation I inevitably experience everytime I come back to oz, more specifically, back to my parents home. I love seeing them but their lives are so far removed from mine that it takes me a good week to remind myself that life is what you make of it. And that I'm only visiting them, not moving back there. They live in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne, beautiful, but not for me.

My resolve to move back to oz wavered the first few days of arriving here, shrouded in the mists of jetlag, rain bucketing outside and watching the news coverage of the dreadful floods throughout the country. And no wifi. I think I may have mentioned that elsewhere.

My visit was originally going to include a visit to Brisbane to visit a few friends, and to see how I would feel about living there. Well, needless to say my plans changed.

Instead, I have been catching up with my family and friends in and around Melbourne, and counting on my fingers lots as I try and convert dollars to pounds. It's like a mantra of sorts.

I'm very lucky that my aunty lives bayside, so I had some wonderful moments of solitude (isolation with options) walking the beach and just, well, sitting quietly to gather my Australian thoughts. With the help of an iPhone app 'inception' , it's an adventure in sound where any outside noise gets incorporated into your listening pleasure and changes the mood of the music you are listening to within the app. It senses rapid movement and explodes into action beats, and recognises when you are still and tones the experience down.

The seagulls invaded my quiet time app and their calls echoed in my ears, in such a trippy way, I couldn't help but feel enlightened. :)

This photo, taken on my iPhone is a pretty accurate representation of what was going on in my head at the time. Brooding with uncertainty but still seeing the positive.

Frustratingly, this is my only contribution to this weeks frogpondsrock's fab photo meme.

Edit: I can't seem to link, so please visit www.frogpondsrock.com

Much light x

Sunday Selections

Welcome to Sunday Selections, a perfect little niche for posting up a set of random photographs every so often from my vast bank of computer (or in this case, iphone) files. This is part of a new photograph meme created by the lovely frogpondsrock . I think this is a fantastic idea to share photography with people from all over the world. 

So, this little series, called 'crimbo limbo' was shot on my iphone, in the middle of that festive christmas/new year period. 

crimbo limbo...

...i don't think you are supposed to say you didn't really enjoy christmas. limbo takes over. between holidays, between lives. and this set of photographs taken today in complete solitude within the fog really illustrate how i feel right now. the odd colour cast i chose to shoot with lends to the already surreal atmosphere that was out there on the fields today. but rather than dragging us down, we both really enjoyed it. the rockstar bounded like a puppy. as for me, i liked walking through the thick tangible silence. a parallel universe. a crimbo limbo....

norwich, norfolk, england. wednesday 29th december 2010

  To view the whole set click here 

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2011 is kind of a big deal for me...

I don't particularly want to set myself up for failure by resolving many a wish that may fall by the wayside come february, but 2011 is a big year for me. It is (will be) a pivotal point in my life. We always strive for the best that life has to offer, and we always moan a little when we wander off the path and find ourselves lost in a forest of confusion and self doubt. Then we swear off the cakes and up the exercise a little, for a month or two, and things go back to normal. That is an acceptable enough cycle. But, sometimes, we get that feeling, right deep in our bones, that there is more to life than i am chosing to live right now. And giving up my cake just isn't enough to make things better again. 

I have had a couple of pretty crap years, not worth rehashing here, but suffice to say, it culminated in spending christmas alone. With my dog and my cat of course, but, alone. My parents and aunty are on the other side of the world from me, in Australia, so there is no 'safety net' over the christmas break, all of my wonderful, gorgeous loving friends over here in the UK, were with their families, as is the natural order of Yuletide. It pretty much cemented what I had already been cooking up in my head for the past few months. After 17 years of living in England, I decided the time was right to move back to Australia. With my dog and my cat of course. And the thought terrifies me.

This is one of the reasons I began this blog, I needed somewhere to record how I am feeling while I take the necessary steps to move the last little vestiges of life here in England, back to Oz. The other reason I started this blog, is I wanted to record my journey through mamahood. If, and when that were ever to happen. Which realistically needs to happen in the very near future, but seems quite unrealistic to me at the moment. You see, I am single, and I turn 40 this coming March. I guess, you can begin to see my potential (read, very real) problem.

Anyway, I have gone slightly off topic for this update, as I wanted to make some resolutions and see how I do by the end of the year. so.

1.   Drink more water. An easy one. And free.
2.   Get more pedicures. Also an easy one. I only need one to tick this baby off.
3.   Celebrate my 40th birthday with laughter and a nice big party full of my lovely friends.
4.   Move to Australia
5.   Spend quality time with my family (to make up for the last 17 years of absence)
6.   Concentrate on making my trinket shop succesful
7.   Establish myself with some new massage clients in Australia.
8.   A better quality of life. (i know. this is quite sweeping.)
9.   A house with a big wide veranda and fly wire doors.
10. A big studio space in that house for all my glitter and shizzle.

Um. This is actually not much of a 'resolution' list, but rather an 'i want!' list. And you'll notice i have played it very safe and not even gone for numbers...

11. someone to share my life with, and
12. a bubby.

Why complicate an otherwise attainable list?

I read someone's fantastic '30 things to do before they turn 30' list the other day, and I LOVE the idea of making one myself. I have so many ideas. But, I would have to turn it into a '40 things to do before i turn 40' list, which gives me, like just under 3 months to cram it all in. Hmm. So, I guess i'm just going to compile the mother of all '50 things to do before i turn 50'  lists, and that way, I can get some real doozies on there as i'll have a ten year window to play with. Vegas! here I come...

I would ask some of you to share your resolutions with me, but as it stands, I know that pretty much no-one except myself reads this, lets alone knows of its existence. But, if/when you come across this, i'd love you to share :)

Much light, 

Mama Flamingo xxx 

Testing testing...

from my 'crimbo limbo' series

Hello little lizards,

I'm simply testing Mail2Blogger so that I can email photographs from my phone, straight onto my blog. I'm really excited about this as it will make my blog much more spontaneous.

In the past I had a tendancy to keep drafting, and editing and planning my blogs (i've done it here, right now! some of  this has been added in an edit.) And then the moment would pass, the post would become irrelevant, and it became more like homework. The longer I left it, the more I avoided it.

What spurred me to do this now rather than later is that I fly to oz next week and I won't have access to uploading images through a computer, and the thought of posting without photographs... well, what a barren wasteland that would be...

Diditworkdiditworkdiditwork???

X

I've got my eye on you Flash Harry...

Well, the deed is done. Happy New Year little monkeys! 

This was my parting FB update for 2010...

..."well. what can one say about pesky, little 2010? hmm. best left unsaid. can't wait for 2011 to whisk me off my feet in a storm of glitter and utter thrill for life! show me what you got flash harry, better known as 2011! X"...

And I have been referring to this brand spanking new year as Flash Harry ever since. I quite like this amicable, much more personable view to the year ahead. I want Flash Harry to wine and dine me, cover me with glitter and send me on wonderful adventures. I want him to shower me in party favours and sup bubbles from his shoe. (eww. ok, scrap the latter) Last night was a wonderful start I must say, we danced together for hours upon hours, until my feet were quite numb. 

I've got my eye on you Flash Harry, bring me the moon on a stick. I expect nothing less. 

(pleaseandthankyou) 

Mama F x

New Year's Resolution

Well. Here I am. Hi. How are you?

Late last night, whilst tucked up in bed, I got this nagging feeling that I had to mark the end of this shitfest of a year (i'm sorry, but it's true), with something positive.  Something that required some creative effort, a vessel to be filled with all my thoughts and words and pictures. A blog.

Actually, I used to have a kick ass blog with lots of followers, on another social networking site, but circumstances changed and I pretty much gave it up. I found myself saying stuff like 'oh, if i still had my blog i would write about that...' and i did that all the time. I really missed it. It was very therapeutic for me. 

And so, this morning, (late last night) I decided that I would simply create a new blog in the New Year. Which of course spans from tomorrow onwards. But then I decided that putting off till tomorrow what could be done today, was no way to start this fresh new year. Nope, not good enough, and so I find myself sitting in front of the computer, right now, at 2.00pm, still in my pyjamas and hungry as hell, determined to get this first post up and live.

Look ma! no hands. And so the deed is done. I am now Mama Flamingo. And this is my blog. I think I will grow into my meme. I love it, but it doesn't sit right with me yet. I love Flamingos, and I hope to be a mama one day. I guess that sums me up right about now. 

Much light,

xx