As you might know if you have read previous posts, I will be giving two Talks at the Rye Arts Festival this year. I am very excited about this but have been waiting with bated breath for an email to drop into my in box from the gentleman who does their IT stuff and publicity etc. It came a few days ago. Why do I view this communication with a certain amount of trepidation?? Mainly because he will want me to make a short video that he can put on the web site. I have been putting off the task but today it had to be done. The first obstacle in my way was the fact that my iPhone point blank refuses to do “selfies” let alone a video. Try as I might I cannot fix it and so have given up, telling myself that I don’t want selfies anyway because that is not how I see myself and passing a mirror is traumatic enough without having a series of pictures of myself to remind me that I have greying hair, wear glasses and a face that speaks only of age! Where should I record this video then. In previous years I have used my iPad but that is now ancient and will not “support” the relevant software neither will the email function work properly, and the web page to transfer the video won’t work either! Perhaps I could record it on my Mac book? Sometime later and several googles later I had had no success. I have downloaded some stuff that is supposed to help but I can’t make it work. What was I to do? I had promised the video. Then I spotted Himself’s iPad. Much more up to date than mine and bigger too. I fortuitously know the code to get into it and soon did so. But how did it work? Was it the same as my old one? More or less. Video camera on, me sitting in front of it pondering the lines on my face and concluding that I am no “oil painting”. My computer set up with what I want to say. Press the red button and begin – after a couple of false starts I succeeded in recording a video. I played it back and there was a picture and I was clearly talking but no sound. More googling and pressing of buttons but still no sound. I sometimes marvel at my sheer stupidity. At the top of the screen there is a symbol for the sound – it was muted!!!! I played the video back and although not overly pleased it wasn’t too bad. Then I noticed the length of it! The chap who contacted me said he wanted only approx 30 seconds – mine was 1 minute and 50 seconds!! (Friends who know me well have commented that I can “go on bit”.) Clearly they are not wrong. Back to do another recording then. Could I actually remember what I did? More or less and a bit later I had a video that was 40 seconds long. Success. But was it because now I had to send it to the chap who had requested it. Last year and the year before I had used a thing called WeTransfer. Brilliant. I actually found my log in stuff and set too. I uploaded the video and pressed send. It said it had gone. Not really entirely believing that I had actually made a video and sent it I wrote an email to the recipient – I asked him to get back to me if it hadn’t arrived. It had and it is OK. The whole process only took me a bit over an hour and a half!!!!!!! If you want to see who I am pop over to the Rye Arts Festival web site in a while and it might be there.
For those of you who would like to come and hear me speak – I hope you will come along because it is absolutely lovely to see you all and catch up if we can. The first Talk will be the next in the series of Talks on Romney Marsh Writers. This time I shall be looking at those who wrote about this unique landscape in the 1960s through to the 1990s. There will be some authors in the mix that you will have heard of – most notably Rumer Godden – and some that may well be new to you. I shall also be dipping into some of the poetry of Rye’s poet of the time, Patric Dickinson. My second Talk is a kind of follow on from my Hops talk last year. This time I shall be looking at four generations of a hop farming family who lived in a local village from 1796 to 1986. I shall be looking at their lives and the changes they will have seen and experienced. They were men and women who were strong, resourceful, brave, skilled, hard working and entrepreneurial. Their lives were in many ways unremarkable and reflect the lives of so many country people of the eras in which they lived – I am fascinated in my endeavour to try and get to now them, to understand who they were etc. If either or both of these Talks sound interesting to you please keep an eye on the Festival web site and look out for the Festival Guide too. Please book as quickly as you can once the booking goes “live” because I know that last year some people were disappointed because they were unable to get tickets. I look forward to seeing you there. Oh, by the way I forgot to say, this year I will be in the Tudor Room at the Mermaid Hotel and both Talks will begin at 3.00pm.
It is hot here but not too unpleasant – I did a bit of work in the garden too this morning. Now the “water feature” is working on the Well head I need to turn my attention to the border around it. There three Clematis climbing up the side of the wall and one has a beautiful lilac blue flower. The others are newly planted and may take a while to get going. In the very dry, not too good soil, I have planted some herbs. I need to get more. I suspect they will thrive there – it is in full sun. Before I can plant anything else I need to dig out the violets that are taking over. Some beautiful self seeded Poppies have sprung up on the edges of the border and I am hoping to gather seed in due course. I noticed from the bedroom window a scattering of feathers on the lawn. Some poor bird had met its Waterloo. Upon further investigation it proved to be a small brown bird – the remains were some way off from the feathers. If it had been caught by a cat or some other predator I know not. Like all gardeners and probably many farmers I am never totally satisfied with the weather. Yes I like the sunshine and the warmth but the soil is bone dry and I would also like some rain – preferably at night!!! I don’t really want it to be too hot either and I think it is a bit too much on the warm side at the moment.
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