Josie Henley-Einion

Single Christmas

2011-12-23T03:51:00.000-08:00

Okay, maybe I’m over-egging the ‘single’ but this is the first Christmas I’ve been single in 22 years, in fact except for the age of 19 it’s the first single Christmas in my adult life. So I’m feeling it a bit. But I’m not completely beaten down. I’ve had a bit of help with the decorations:

And for the first time ever I’ve made a Christmas cake. It’s the first cake I’ve baked in at least 13 years and possibly more. I’ve never made a Christmas dinner on my own either and although I’m not planning to cook a turkey considering I’m vegan, I am planning to do the stuffing and veg and I’m doing plenty so that I have lots left over for bubble and squeak which is one of my favourite aspects of Christmas food. I’m working on Christmas Day itself so the dinner will be my Christmas Eve dinner. (I volunteered to work a shift so that I wouldn’t have to spend the day alone.)

So, the Christmas cake. I used vegan margarine and egg replacement, and took photos as I was going along so that I could provide proof in case anyone didn’t believe me!

And this is the point where I admit that it was made using a kit, where everything except the fresh ingredients came in little packages.

I made a special little hood for the cake as the instructions dictated.

When I cooked it (four hours!!) I decided to do some slow roasted veg at the same time to use the oven to its fullest capacity. I also didn’t need to put the heater on that evening and the whole flat smelled fabulous all night.

Icing it was fun. I love marzipan but get bored with the decorations people usually put on their cakes so decided to use blueberries and lemon to make a snowman face.

More or Less

2011-12-14T03:21:00.000-08:00

Since writing the previous blog post requesting lots of things, I’ve now managed to acquire most of what I need thankyou! I’ve also done a video of my flat which is on the CastingPods youtube page (and also posted below), and immediately had a phonecall from a friend checking I was ok because it seems quite sad! It isn’t very sad really, it’s just that I was extremely tired when I shot the video because I was moving boxes and boxes of stuff all by myself for two solid days with a bit of help on the second day! I hadn’t had a chance to edit and upload between moving and now (10 days later).

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to settle in it doesn’t look quite so messy and I’ll probably do another video after the New Year. Today I’m defrosting the fridge which I hope will reduce the noise as well as the electricity consumption. I’ve had some time to think of another inventory of things I still need:

Iron

Ironing board

Bookshelves (narrow shelves for books rather than wide for storage boxes which I already have)

Blankets and throws

I could of course buy these new and will probably have to if I can’t find them second hand soon. The cheapest iron I’ve found is £3.97 at Tesco and yes, this would be a very sensible option. However it has probably been made by slave labour for the price to be that cheap. I’m trying to stick to my ethical principals but just can’t afford to buy something that isn’t dubious hence my reliance on second hand. It’s also been suggested to me by several people that I dump my current clothes and buy only clothes that will dry creaselessly in a tumble dryer and then I won’t need to iron. I can’t begin to explain how far removed from my life this concept is! I wish that I didn’t have to iron at all but unfortunately I live in a world where a person’s appearance is directly related to their perceived worth which then has an effect on the way they are treated by society, in particular by work colleagues. So if I haven’t been able to find a second hand iron between now and when my clothes run out, which may be some time in January, I will have to bite that particular bullet.

On a lighter note, I was very pleased this week to hear Brenda Dayne of Cast On mention me in her podcast about sock knitting, as I’d put a comment on her previous show with a link to my recent blog post about extending the toes of Aran’s socks. My Christmas knitting and spinning is all on track and I’m managing to forge ahead with a social life, new friends and old.

Lots of really heartbreaking things are still happening but I’m not going to go into those here, I’m just going to say that I’m staying safe and taking care of myself. I think in many ways I’m managing to be in better mental health now than I have been for years, simply because I know that I’m the only one that can make changes to my life whereas before I was working under the erroneous assumption that it was someone else’s responsibility.

New Flat, Some Things Missing

2011-12-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

This evening, as I was sitting eating my dinner out of a saucepan, using the lid as a side plate, I decided it might be an idea to put out a list of things I still need for my new flat. I’ve had lots of offers of help, thankyou very much, and have managed to scavenge quite a few things. But here are some things I still need:

Crockery – plates, bowls (not mugs, got plenty)

Cutlery insert for drawer (got cutlery)

Washing up bowl

Food storage tubs

Chopping board (preferably wooden but beggars can’t be choosers)

Frying pan (griddle or wok will do)

2 small bins with lids

Dustpan and brush

Bedding – single sheets, duvet cover, pillow cases (currently got one of each)

A basic phone handset – nothing special – in time for my landline connection at the end of Dec.

I may well add to this list as it is an ongoing adventure, whereby I don’t realise I need something until I go to do something and find it not there.

Please don’t be insulted if I turn down offers of furniture or kitchen equipment, as it is a *very* small space and is already mostly taken up by my books and my yarn stash. Oh dear.

I am asking for your old stuff that you don’t use anymore and can spare for me, and also to keep an eye out for these items in charity shops. I’m not asking for new things to be bought for me! I am trying to be as eco as possible here, but if I can’t find what I need after weeks of hunting and begging then I may well abandon my principles and make a trip to Ikea!

Things that I don’t *need* but would make my life much easier:

Visitation rights to somewhere warm with free broadband, preferably with tea. Only needed till January.

Any old food you might have in your cupboards that you probably won’t use before the use-by date.

Preliminary photos before the piles of stuff began arriving:

Now I will do some more packing and then fall into bed. Bed goes tomorrow after which I am officially a flat-dweller. Email me for my new address if you need it.

Extending the toe of a sock for a boy with huge feet

2011-11-27T13:46:00.000-08:00

I worked out how to do this myself, though it’s probably in a book somewhere too as there’s nothing new under the sun and especially in knitting! These are a pair of the subversive socks I knitted last year for my boy, and I had been telling him that if any of these needed darning he should let me know. He said that this particular pair have become a bit small for him so I told him I could extend them. The sock ‘neck’ is also tight so I’m now unpicking that to knit it on a larger gauge and cast off more loosely, so these socks have taken some attention but it’s still faster than knitting a new pair (two afternoons of work compared to a week).

I thought I’d share the benefit of my experience in case anyone has a similar scenario on their own or more likely their children’s socks.

Step 1: before cutting, pick up stitches all around the sock

Step 2: snip the yarn of one stitch in the row *below* the pick up row and begin picking up the stitches that this exposes, on the row below that (so you’re losing one row)

Step 3: pick up backwards as well as forwards (using circs or double-pointed) so that there is a length of yarn on either side rather than a tiny bit. This may get difficult if there has been some felting going on.

Step 4: continue to unpick the row between the two pick up rows, so it’s like you’re unzipping the sock

Step 5: put aside the top part (if it’s a toe-up sock, or the toe if it’s a bottom-down sock) and knit from the toe (or top) in the direction that the original sock was knitted, knit your one lost row plus however many inches you need to extend the sock by.

Step 6: once the extra bit is knitted, graft (kitchener stitch) the toe and top back together, wish I was better at grafting.

Step 7: Remember to knit the same number of rows for both socks. Using a contrasting yarn here cos that’s his way, but if the same yarn is used it’s possible to do it relatively invisibly, if you were better at grafting than me.

Points to remember: The top row of stitches will be the bottom of the ‘true’ stitch as it was knitted in the original direction, so it will need to be treated carefully especially if a stitch is dropped (this is why it’s recommended to add rows in the direction of the original knitting). If the socks are striped like these, start at the ‘jog’ i.e. the point where the previous row ends and the next row begins, to avoid getting confused as to which needle the stitch should go on.

Feelings

2011-11-03T14:41:00.001-07:00

Here is my new personal mantra: I am responsible for my own feelings. I will not expect or rely on anyone to make me feel positive and I will not blame anyone for making me feel negative. I will behave respectfully to others as I expect them to behave towards me and in doing so I will not need to take responsibility for anyone else’s negative feelings.

Why I decided to avoid facebook for a while

2011-10-29T03:00:00.001-07:00

Although I didn’t think I would need to put more explanation than I already had done on facebook about not posting publicly, it looks like I may need to outline a few things after all. Several friends have commented or sent me messages and I’ve got into contact with them privately, and I thank everyone for their support at a difficult time for me. However it may be that my wider group of facebook friends deserve an explanation and I don’t want anyone to feel that I’ve simply dropped them for no good reason.

I’m not going to go into a great deal of personal detail because that would defeat the object of not posting publicly on facebook, and I do feel quite uncomfortable when I see people ‘washing their dirty laundry’ in public. But I accept that an explanation is needed. Someone I care about very deeply has decided to unfriend me – that’s the official facebook term so I’m using it although I prefer de-friend. We are still talking privately but have made a mutual decision to avoid each other’s facebook streams for various reasons. However, as we share a number of mutual friends, this has proven to be impossible unless one of us takes the decision to step away from facebook altogether for a while.

I don’t expect her to say nasty things about me, as she is a lovely person and has shown that she values integrity, and I won’t be saying nasty things about her either. I made a decision a long time ago to only put positive or neutral comments on facebook, never personally negative comments. But it is quite difficult for me to see things that she might say about her life that no longer includes me. Even if we are not facebook friends, I still see these comments in my stream and I am not comfortable with changing privacy settings just yet. It has also disturbed me quite a bit that some mutual friends (I’m sure a minority) have reported back to her that I’ve been on facebook and things that I’ve said. Even the most innocuous things about housework I’ve done, or when I’m trying desperately to present a positive face to the world even when my heart is breaking, these have been twisted and returned to me as evidence that I’m not suffering or that I’m lying.

In the past I’ve made attempts to step away from facebook because of the amount of time I realise I spend on it in comparison to other aspects of my life. When I’ve been incredibly busy I’ve still managed to log in for five minutes every few hours and swoop down on the stream clicking like-like-like and making the occasional clever, funny or political comments and status updates (I take pride if a single comment can be described as all three of these adjectives). However, even this has been returned to me as me not really being busy at all but spending all day on facebook. It now seems that facebook is more of a burden to my life than an asset and even though the last few days sans facebook have felt as if I’ve lost a limb, or perhaps more accurately, my second voice, this is something that I believe I have to do to preserve my sanity.

I’m very hurt by the insinuation that I might have lied on facebook or anywhere else because I’ve never consciously told a mistruth or misrepresented myself publicly, either here on the blog, on my podcast, on social networks or in real life. I’d also like to say that everyone has a public face they present to the world which may be very different to how they feel on the inside. This is not about lying, it’s about preserving one’s privacy and sanity.

I would appreciate it if friends didn’t try to stir and gossip between us as we are communicating a lot and carefully. I can’t speak for her because she has always been a wonderful person but I am probably more communicative and caring now than for the majority of the time we’ve known each other. I know that I’ve taken her for granted and this is one of the main reasons she’s decided to take this step. The precepts of the poly life are really helping me to work through my feelings and behaviour right now, such as ‘just because you care about someone it doesn’t mean you have a right to dictate what they do with their life’. I’m hoping that this experience will help me to grow as a person and improve my relationships rather than turning me into a bitter, angry and ultimately lonely person.

There are a number of social networks I am going to avoid for a while so that I can give her space and have some space away from her. These include online and offline social networks. Please be reassured that I am not isolated, I am surrounded by people who care about me and I am taking care of myself. I still have a number of online and offline places that are my own and never have been shared with her, and I am planning to spend more time in these places. I’m not planning to simply replace facebook with another network, though, as what I said about the amount of time it takes away from other things still stands. At some point I may come back to facebook and other social networks as myself or under a pseudonym, depending on how things go. Whichever it is I will still be me but will definitely be more cautious as I feel very let down by people in general and have drastically reduced my level of trust.

I am never going to criticise her publicly and am never going to try to make myself seem to be the injured party. I am confident that she will treat me with the same respect because she really is a lovely person.

I still have a public presence. My podcast is still available and this blog. I’m not currently planning to talk about all of this on the podcast as it still hurts too much but at some point in the future when things have settled down, I may well mention this on the podcast. The latest podcast episode is already recorded and edited and waiting in the wings for me to set up the new libsyn feed.

As for facebook, I will be popping in occasionally because there are some people who only connect with me via that network, but am not planning to make public status updates and will only post links for things that are very important to me. I will scroll through my feed when I can brace myself for anything that I might see, so there will be times that I occasionally click ‘like’ or make a comment, just so that I can stay in touch with my friends.

Watch Me Spin!

2011-06-20T23:26:00.000-07:00

This is a ‘how to’ video for spinning with a drop spindle, including my own unique brand of humorous commentary (loving the opportunities for innuendo that a spindle offers).

I videoed it on my laptop and then did a separate commentary while watching the video so I know it was in time originally, but my software is a bit naff and I can’t get the two to match, even after much editing. When there’s a cut it goes back into synch and then out again. It looks like the video is slightly speeding up (except the obvious bits where I speed it up on purpose), so the sound gradually gets more and more delayed and what I’m saying doesn’t match what’s on the screen.

Introducing, by public demand, the knitted boobs!

2011-05-26T10:22:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I was knitting some boobs for my partner, who is a lecturer in midwifery, to use in breastfeeding classes. Well I’m done with that batch so here’s a photo.

The pattern I followed is this one from the Lactation Consultants of Great Britain site, with a few changes for sizing (I wanted to make a variety of sizes and skin tones as you can see from the photo). I made these because Alys has mentioned that there was only one latex model to teach a class of students the various different positions that can be employed for breastfeeding. I thought it might be good if the students could actually get their hands on some boobs themselves, so to speak, as well as watching a demonstration.

Since I started knitting them, I’ve found all sorts of other possible uses. A few people have suggested making them as stress balls (here are my breasts, given unto you, squeeze them in memory of me), but there is also a less facetious possibility such as replacement breasts for mastectomy survivors. Apparently the ‘chicken fillet’ style prosthetic is itchy and uncomfortable, whereas a knitted, breathable boob is lighter and much, much cheaper. There’s a charity in America called the Knitted Knockers that supply boobs to people who can’t afford the prosthetics. I’m currently having a bit of time off from boobs but I have had an idea for my queer and trans friends who like to gender play – a boob and beard party – which means I have to find a beard pattern or make one up, and of course knit more of the boobies.

I Unintentionally Came Out as Polyamorous on Live Radio!

2011-05-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

This is the iplayer link (available for a week so till Friday 27th May) – it’s a 2 hour program but the section I’m in starts at about 1.16 and the discussion on poly comes in around 1.40. The discussion was on infidelity and I was trying to talk about polyamory theoretically and that didn’t work because it became personal. I am an out lesbian and have talked about that on the radio before but this was different! At one point I realised I’d said too much and started trying to deny it but then decided oh well the cat’s out of the bag. It was really strange because it’s been a looooong time since this happened to me with coming out as a lesbian.

It did make me wonder, why am I so concerned about other people’s judgements? Why are any of us concerned about this? My main worry is our son, that he might get teased/bullied or feel uncomfortable. No young teen wants to think about his or her parents sex lives. Although in Aran’s case it might be a situation of his friends being very interested, he is most definitely not interested and we respect that.

On the same day as the radio show (it had to be, didn’t it?), Alys sent a ‘relationship’ request via facebook and I clicked to approve without looking. So when it came back as ‘open relationship’ it threw me a bit. I mean, we’ve discussed this together and with friends, but facebook? My mum and other family, work colleagues, friends of friends, parents of Aran’s friends.... the endlessness is unimaginable. Then again, not many people log into facebook as often as I do and see their news feeds as regularly, and not many people read the blurb at the top of the facebook page but even so.... Even so, if this is a lifestyle to be proud of then why hide behind the assumptions people make about ‘marriage’ (or ‘civil partnership’ in our case)?

One of the things that has got my head exploding on this is that it’s still only theory for me, and I’m not looking for ‘secondary’ relationships, so this makes me feel like a bit of a fraud in terms of being an advocate for the poly lifestyle. Who knows where all this will lead? It’s definitely got me talking anyway, which has to be a good thing.

Apologies if this all seems a bit TMI to you folks!

Remember I’m on stage at Gwdihw Cardiff next Wednesday For the LOLs. Hope to record it for the podcast too so if you miss it live you won’t have to miss my geniusness and impossible improv.

Mass Observation and More

2011-05-12T06:14:00.000-07:00

Today I’m participating in the Mass Observation (click here if you’re interested in donating your diary). So it’s a good day to write a blog because I’m including everything I’m writing today. Lots of PhD work on at the moment, and lots of business! I’m currently keeping a dream diary and detailed daily diary so that I can work out what the commitment is for my new study (go to http://dreamstudy2011.blogspot.com/ if you’re interested in participating in the Dream Study 2011 which requires that you remember dreams at least 5 mornings per week). I can’t include my own diary in the analysis unfortunately but I wanted to be able to give samples and find out about the time commitment – so far my estimate is around an hour per day depending on how much you do and how fast you type!

Comedy news: my next stand-up routine will be For the LoLs again at Gwdihw in Cardiff on Weds 25th May, click here for the facebook event page. I’m hoping to record it again and if it’s good enough it’ll go on the podcast.

I’ve been invited to speak as the after dinner speaker at the Knitting and Crochet Guild event coming to Cardiff this summer as well and I’m bricking myself about that because I hadn’t realised that after dinner speaking was not stand-up comedy, but I will pull through with the help of google and youtube educational video!

I’ve also been invited back onto the radio at some point in May or June, but don’t have a date yet. It’s the BBC Wales Friday panel discussion program again. I must be doing something right if they’re inviting me back!

Current knitting project is boobs. Yes, breasts. No I’m not a knit perv, they’re for helping to teach midwifery students how to teach women to breastfeed. Click here if you’re interested in the knitted boob pattern. Pictures will be posted once they’re stuffed.

Barter a Bowl for a Book

2011-03-06T06:06:00.000-08:00

I recently engaged in a bit of bartering. This was suggested by Donna, splendiferous creative owner of Junkitlove when I bought one of her lovely sexy necklaces made from recycled rubber. She mentioned that she’d rather like a copy of Silence and if I had any to spare, how did I fancy swapping for a recycled rubber bowl? An excellent proposition!

I’m selling copies of Silence, published by Legend Press in 2008, for £5 per time (including post and packing). I don’t make a profit but I’m competing against Amazon and it’s more important to me that my book is read than making any money out of it at the moment. Come back when my next book is picked up by Random House for a mega advance and see if I still feel like that!

If anyone else has any handmade items that they think I’ll like (oooh, I don’t know, hand dyed or hand spun yarn maybe?) that is/are worth approximately £5 before p&p, let me know if you’re up for some bartering. I love anything handmade, recycled, purple, creatively sexy, edible, anything really! Or if you just want to buy a copy of Silence from me for £5 let me know and I’ll email you a paypal invoice.

Drive By Blogging

2011-02-03T01:25:00.000-08:00

Having a huge ‘to do’ list, I only have time for some drive-by blogging today. But I quite like it. Going over my tweets and facebook postings of the last week or so, and selecting a sample is a nice little nostalgia in our sudden and immediate world. Was it really that recently that I was obsessing about X? Am I that shallow that most of my posts are about TV??

Sometimes I do get political but this week has been mostly about my son, my cats, my workload and TV. The most important tweet I would say is: "Alive in Egypt http://egypt.alive.in/ pass it on." So please do.

Boy’s joke du jour: I watched a scary film about some campers. It was full of tension. It was very tents.

Questions to bug your mother with while watching Jaws: Do they kill the shark? How come they kill the shark if there’s a Jaws 2 and a Jaws 3? Does he die? Does *he* die? Are they trying to shoot him? Does the boat capsize? Is that blood from the shark? How do they kill the shark? Why are they putting him in the cage? Can he swim? Why is the shark attacking the cage? Why doesn’t the shark eat him? Do sharks have mums?

If anyone heard me shrieking with laughter then, it was the Marigold script I was reading on the BBC Writers’ Room website. “Fill me up with your love custard” omg.

How to explain PhD to your son: it’s like three years of homework and then a year-long detention at the end of it, and by the time you get there you can’t actually remember why you’re there

Omg just did a google scholar search on my name so I could get the reference for my article, and an extract from my novel popped up! Not only an extract, but a sexual innuendo one. Way to go professional status!

Crucial question of the moment: lifetime supply of bacon or lifetime supply of cookies? For me it would be bacon. Hams down.

"Congratulations Josie Henley-Einion! Your Paper proposal titled Assessing The Day-Residue Effect Using Ratings from Independent Judges has been accepted for the 28th Conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams ..." WOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Laugh of the day. Aran: You know this coke isn’t fizzy, right? Alys: That’s cos it’s iced tea.

Driving day today. So podcast listening. Latest Craftlit on the way (woot! Joy! Listening again now!!), some Brass Needles and a couple from the Cast On archive. Always leaves me *itching* to knit.

Just raided cupboard for Aran’s homework. He has to make a list of ingredients. We have sauces and tinned beans, everything else is an ingredient itself because we make most things (oops, correction *Alys* makes most things) from the nekkid raw. Rice: ingredients = rice; Pork: ingredients = pork; Butter: ingredients = butter; Apples: ingredients = apples.... you get the picture. His homework is looking quite tedious.

Can’t begin to describe how excited I am about new Hawaii Five-Oh! Will be singing theme tune all week. Du-de-du-de-dum-dum, du-de-du-de-dum

Pilot episode of ER on Sky Atlantic. Think Alys’s head might just explode. Amazing how dated it looks now.

How to cook in the age of austerity on BBC breakfast TV just now. Saying things that we already do, like using up your leftovers, adding lentils to meat dishes, stretching the food for as many meals as you can, cooking double amounts so you can make your own ready meals etc. So what are we supposed to do to reduce spending when we’re already as reduced as we can be?

Phew. Managed to get the application in for Open University lecturer bang on the deadline. Go me!

Oh my giddy god! Now Dallas is coming back on TV. Is it reinvent the eighties time? Is there really nothing new under the sun?

Want more of the same? Befriend me on facebook and twitter! Have a listen to my podcast, Casting Pods.

Children of the Resolution

2011-01-15T05:24:00.000-08:00

Here’s a new book by a fellow Legend author: Gary William Murning’s Children of the Resolution. Click here for Gary’s blog with links to his books and interviews etc. I did a reading from the beginning of the book on video. Watch the youtube vid here.

Last year Gary and I did a blog interview swap. Here’s my interview with Gary on my old blog. In reciprocal fashion, Gary then interviewed me. I went on a bit so it was divided into two separate blog posts, part one here, and part two here.

Less is More

2011-01-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

I did say less blogging this year, didn’t I? Well, maybe it’s the novelty of having a new blog or maybe because I’ve transferred my http://www.josiehenely.net/ url to this site so this is now automatically my home page in therefore IN MY FACE, but I seem to be here more often than usual lately.

I think that it might be the different format of the blog which forces me to write in narrow columns and makes me feel that I can come here and post some micro-bloggingness in a similar way to facebooking or tweeting. So rather than spending half a day once in a blue moon writing a ponderous and detailed essay-sized blog post with lots of pics and links, I am adopting a drive-by blogging attitude.

My facebook and twitter links are in a permanent box on the right, incidentally. For some reason I can’t get the twitter feed to work here but will continue to attempt it. In the meantime, I am pasting below some nuggets of wisdom from my twitbook which might encourage you to befriend me if you haven’t already.

Boy likes to wind me up about potential celebrity status when I’ve been on the radio. E.g. tonight suggesting that I should go on celebrity mastermind and asking what my specialist subject would be. I said sausages, because I would have to research for months on that topic.

Had Worces sauce on my soup & the taste took me right back to vegetarian school days when the veggie option was called ‘don’t eat the meat’ so I would pile my plate with rice or pasta and smother it with Worces sauce as the only available method of combating the blandness. Ironically tho’, Worces sauce is not vegetarian as it contains anchovies in the ingredients.

Boy just described himself as ‘all the fun of two six-year-olds’. Oh joy. Yes indeed. Two six-year-olds WITH MOUSTACHES!!!

No, I did not learn Mavis Beaton touchtyping on a Mac LCII so I could tYp3 LyK tHi5. It is not cool, just very tedious.

As I got her name wrong in my last tweeting, I feel compelled to post this link now http://www.mavisbeacon.com/

I have abandoned the zero tolerance campaign against the Christmas Chocolate epidemic and embarked on a harm reduction policy.

Why does the woman on the dishwasher detergent ad sound like she’s talking about a sex toy? Did I miss some crucial point about dishwashers?

Phone-In Show Listen Again

2011-01-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

Listen to me chatting with an MP and magician on live BBC Radio Wales (it was recorded live, but is now available on ‘listen again’ iplayer for the next week). Scroll through till you get to about 1 hr 13 mins and then listen for the next 45 mins or so. It was great fun on the phone-in show, talking about bankers and their bonuses, and the lovely Charlotte Church’s opinion about our queen.

Although I didn’t get to stick my oar in as much as I usually like to, I enjoyed the banter and managed to insult everyone nicely. ChaChaChurch is a chav, the queen might be out of touch considering she’s older than my gran who died last year, and we all know what ‘banker’ rhymes with, don’t we? Job done.

I’m on the radio again – it’s becoming a habit

2011-01-07T02:42:00.000-08:00

Listen out for me today at 1.15 to 2pm, BBC Radio Wales. I’ll be on the phone-in show as a guest. Second time on the phone-in show but first time on a Friday, which is the coveted position of the round up for the week. Once the program is available to ‘listen again’ on the iPlayer I’ll post a link, but otherwise, click here to listen live to BBC Radio Wales.

My first recommended book of the year – Cleo by Helen Brown

2011-01-06T04:58:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading Cleo, the best memoir ever, and it turns out the author is a knitter as well as a cat person. Hmm. That figures considering knitters are the best people in the world, and the combination of knitter, cat person and writer is unparalleled.

I recommend this book to anyone who likes heartlifting tales, but be sure to keep tissues handy. Cleo sounds like an amazing cat. I wish I could have met her.

The link to the right, under ‘recommended book’ links to Amazon.com. Click here for Amazon.co.uk version of Cleo by Helen Brown.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-04T05:59:00.000-08:00

Here is my sparkly new blog website to replace the old codger that’s been hanging around for over ten years. My old blog is still available on wordpress but some of the images for older posts might not appear because they were hosted on the old static site. Most of my current images are hosted on my facebook personal page. I am in debate regarding what to do with the old pages on the static site. They still exist on my laptop but have now been wiped off the web. At some point I may set up an archive for posterity but don’t hold your breath. Onwards and upwards!

New for 2011. Lots of work on my PhD (so less blogging); fairly regular Casting Pods podcast updates; loving my cats; always available on Facebook, what would we do without it? Lots of knitting and writing as usual.

New Bloggingness!

2010-11-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my lovely new blog. Over the next few weeks I will be uploading some pages here, from my old static site currently residing at http://www.josiehenley.net/. Once that’s completed, the website address will transfer here so that the old static site will disappear and that url will point to this blog. Meanwhile, if you want to find out more about me, you might want to befriend me on Facebook, where I regularly post, check out my podcast at www.castingpods.co.uk, or visit Legend Press, my publisher, to find out about my novel Silence, and the short story collections which have featured my stories. I also have a youtube channel, also called Casting Pods, which today features a new video of the snow in Cardiff.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

2010-11-22T12:26:00.003-08:00

Do not adjust your set.