Bare Bones

I don't know why today feels so good. It started at 6.30 with a smashed bottle of white vinegar to clear up while making the children's lunches and objectively you could say, continued in that strain.

Early morning I went to interview an American women for the ACE project. The camcorder packed in half way through and I'm guessing has given up the ghost for good but what she told me has provided such a contrast to previous contributers, (and I was recording the sound on another piece of equipment), that the time was well spent. In her small council house, with teenagers music blaring in the background, she shared her night time memories of a mostly motherless childhood in her homeland of Michigan, USA and of fearful nights awake as a new wife and mother in the UK.

Efforts to engage an innovative local children s' centre in a rundown area have been frustrating me since Christmas. I finally got in the door today, (emblazoned with 'You are now entering a smack free zone' in the window), offering a free workshop in return for some discussion with the women attending. Despite lots of positive noises they were so absorbed in the middle of a move to a new building that is was clear that their time scale wasn't going to fit mine. Yet another dead end.

On a positive note though Rachel, the American women, wants to put me onto more friends of different nationalities, who live in their small council estate, and who grew up in distant countries. Despite my efforts to organise the research, I love the organic way women and circumstance s are leading me from one persons story to another. Perhaps this is a more interesting and 'true' route to take.

Caught in a timeless kind of snow world this week, where normal life seems to have been suspended in place of endless sledging and a house full of wet children, wet gloves and wet boots. School has been closed for four days now, it’s too hairy to get out of the village and the shop has run out of milk. In addition to our four children we had two Ugandan children staying from www.watoto.com, who had never seen snow before! A treat worthy of stopping work for a while.

I’ve been reading Rachel Howfields blog and wondering how she gets so much done. Perhaps working with four children is just a bridge too far. But I need to do this. I’ve spent time organising my interviews with local women, chasing links given by the health visitor, fiddling with recording equipment and purchasing a bat detector. The aim being to perhaps record some sounds unheard by humans at night and overlay them with words and recordings from the women interviewed. 

 On a really positive note, the studio is just about finished – now the pressure’s really on to make all that hard work and funding worthwhile!