Creativity

I consider myself to be a creative person but usually when I consider creative pursuits such as writing. I love to be part of a musical, book-loving and generally very artistic family.

 

But creativity comes in a variety of forms such as ingenuity when solving problems; being able to juggle time and budgets and simply balancing need and resource so that everyone's happy.

 

I think too many people hide behind the creative label when they're really just talented at a particular aspect of the arts, rather than being more fundamentally creative with the general challenges of living.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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Despair and Joy

I was reading in Metro this morning about the little boy - Joe Geeling - who was murdered. His young life had been beset with physical hardship through Cystic fibrosis which had obviously also been a tremendous strain on his family. But how do you begin, as a mother, father or younger brother to come to terms with events like this. Obviously healing will only ever be skin deep.

 

And yet, I found myself feeling first relieved that it was somebody' else's family and, when the guilt of that feeling had passed, strangely positive. Almost nothing in my life has ever been so tragic as this and our family has everything to live for. Truly each new day is an opportunity to shine in any darkness.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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Planes and trains and automobiles but no mobile 'phones

I recorded this film from Sky a while ago but it wasn't until last night that Hayley, Sam and I found time to chill out and watch it.

Starring Steve Martin and John Candy I enjoyed it more for the humankind message that was eventually allowed to come to the surface. I've never found Steve Martin as funny as other people do and the children remarked that this was definitely 'made in America for America' which I thought was quite astute of them.

They also asked why the lead characters had to keep finding payphones to 'phone home. It hadn't occurred to me until then that they weren't using mobile 'phones but, given the film was made in 1987, if they had existed they probably would have needed an extra train carriage to transport them.

Isn't it amazing that transport and the mobile 'phone are required to be couples these days. I can't remember the last time I left home without my own 'phone.

I do recommend this as a feel-good film and have found DVD copies at Amazon for anyone who hasn't seen it:

Development or estate?

My wife, Michelle, and I spent our lunchtime looking round a new housing estate in the local village.

 

If the local village is more of a town, then this estate is more of a township. It already stretches as far as the eye can see and this is only the first phase of just over a hundred houses. The sales agent expected a further five hundred houses to be built, taking at least five to seven years. She was personable and very knowledgable but drew the line at the word 'estate.'

 

"This is a development" she told us politely but firmly.

 

We had to agree on one level. Estate houses like these are from a different world to those built in our Sixties childhood. It seems as though 'developers' have finally understood the need for individuality and sense if not reality of space.

 

All in all it was very impressive and most definitely a step forward, hopefully bringing prosperity and diversity to the area. Years ago I would have preferred to see prime farming land in its place but I'm thinking now that agricultural decline pulls whole areas such as ours down. When we left the 'development' we both felt a sense of achievement rather than loss.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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Compartments

Why do we compartmentalise our lives? We think of work and home; leisure and domestic grind; ambition and the daily drudge? Is this the only way we can deal with our busy lives, ensuring that we devote enough of our time to keeping everything 'progressing'?

 

Or is it an insecurity that is in all of us whereby we need to have nails to hang life's pictures on, simultaneously as though in a gallery and making sure that dream adorns the same wall as requirement?

 

I am striving to create a continuous flow where boundaries just aren't important. This is more of a mindset issue than a practical obstacle. How often do we get exasperated with those who don't conform to a silo mentality and yet really I think we admire them and wish we could break out and be free.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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You are joking

It's a good job that we don't listen to the linking bits of our conversations with other people and just leave them behind as conduits through which we go to the next section of our daily pipe.

 

I was walking along the station platform this morning when I overheard one guy saying to another "I had my bike stolen from here this morning." The other chap nearly fell off his bike and responded with "You're joking!"

 

The conversation continued as you'd expect "no, straight up, was chained up and everything..."

 

Why we would ever logically doubt such a thing? I remember someone having to tell their boss that their mother had died and her response, very definitely and without feeling was "I don't believe you."

 

Why would people initiate such conversations if they weren't true and why do we rely on speech joins without joined-up thinking?

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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Rainbow High

Passing posters on the London Underground at the weekend about rediscovering Evita all over again, I was reminded of my favourite song from the show (yes, even more so than Don't Cry for me Argentina) which was Rainbow High. I never saw the original production in the West End but hope to see this one.

 

Yesterday the children and I saw a rainbow over the back fen; in fact there were two, one almost a reflection of the other. Our daughter Hayley asked me what it would look like from above and I have to say I wasn't sure what the answer would be. Would it look like a prism or would you only see the Red as the outer colour and therefore the colour at its peak?

 

I answered that even if you couldn't see all of the colours, they were always there and only rain or moisture showed them to us. So, even on bad days when you might even cry, all of the colours of the rainbow would be there in the sunshine that would be sure to follow, to dry your eyes and take you as high as you wanted to go.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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Many ways and motorways

I was thinking this morning that life is very much like a motorway: we can go quickly or slowly on our various journeys to different destinations. We can take an exit at any junction and only really other people get in our way to prevent us getting there or frustrating us and slowing us down.

 

The one big difference is that we can always make plan to make the same journey again or return on the opposite side to where we strated. With life we make plans all the time but sometimes put those journeys off until one day we can't face them at all. With life we can't ever go back to where we truly started.

 

And finally: with life we are often so busy speeding in the fast lane that we fail to appreciate the beauty of our surroundings or our fellow motorway users.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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Winnie the Pooh will always wait for you

My wife and young daughter have gone down to Covent Garden this morning. Hayley, who is nine, has a fortnightly class at the Royal Ballet School as part of their Junior Associates Scheme. She is quite the sophisticated traveller these days and trains and tubes pose no problems for her. Even the regular disruption caused by railway maintenance cannot ruin her Saturdays in London.

 

I was collecting the dirty washing from the childrens' bedrooms and went into her room. The first thing that struck me was the stillness, the quiet where usually there is music and singing and endless chatter (often to herself). I was also aware that I was not alone. Winnie, her treasured teddy bear was carefully tucked under the bedsheets so that he wouldn't get cold while she was away. He watched my every move with his ready smile.

 

Hayley may forget him over time but I know that he will always be waiting for her to come home; wherever that may be.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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Jack Straw's veiled threat

So Jack Straw is gearing up for a Deputy Leadership contest?

 

Obviously, he has little to replace in the loathsome John Prescott who has brought embarrassment on all of those around him, compounded of course by his refusal to resign honourably.

 

If nobody will miss Prescott leaving, Straw ran the risk of nobody noticing him arriving or being resident in this peculiar Cabinet post. However, his dourness may well sit well with the insecure Gordon Brown who will see glamour in any of his colleagues as a sure sign of competitiveness and requiring of the appropriate action.

 

What is most insidious is that Straw has instigated a debate over Moslem women wearing their veils in his constituency of Blackburn where this has been going on for generations now. So, that's it. Why now?

 

I happen to think he's right on content but wrong on timing and non-existent on sincerity.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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The real David Cameron

I was reading on BBC News Online this morning about David Cameron's kitchen video blog - webcameron - being hijacked by spoofers. Is this about satirical opportunists having fun with a public figure? Is it about political opportunists trying to savage his populist strategy? Is it about web cyber squatters showing us the opportunities and insecurities of a wired world?

 

Perhaps it is really about personalities over policies, in which case Cameron is probably delighted with any coverage?

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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Jesus is like water

I was driving the children home this evening. The sun was setting in the west and casting its golden shadow on the trees along the riverbank. The beauty of it warmed us all and Sam, our eldest son, told me all about the difference he'd just learned between coniferous and deciduous trees. He told me that God was like a coniferous tree because he would never lose his leaves, whatever the weather.

 

Hayley, his younger sister, then remarked that God was like water really. Whether water, as in the river, or ice or vapour it was still water and He was still present whatever the conditions. I felt that this was an interesting reflection on the Science verus Nature debate and wondered again why people see it as a competition.

Fen Creative: Writing for People, Pleasure and Profit at http://www.fencreative.co.uk

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