Ready

00.20 and I am finally ready. Ten  hours until take off. Slightly apprehensive about my capacity to concentrate well enough to catch eight planes in twenty days, but I did at least realise when  I checked in online just before I left the house, that my passport was still in the photocopier.  And I did eventually make it to Maidenhead despite driving 20 miles the wrong way up the M20.

Time to sleep now, to wake up soon and catch an early morning taxi. If you want to come with me, just follow ...

Carol's Five Year Diary

Over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of getting to know Carol better due to her washing machine breaking down, beyond repair. It has brought home to me how much we take for granted the machines that are now necessities and that, when you cannot afford to replace these expensive items, life becomes a losing battle.

In the course of discussions about the whys and wherefores, Carol produced her Five Year Diary. And then her Overflow Diary. Both were made from lever arch files carefully covered in hand stitched appliquéd pillowcases and bulging with the record of her everyday life.  Every event recorded, memento stored, letter filed against a daily paragraph on the progress of her life.

The theft of her handbag containing credit union loan, her phone, bus pass and other life support resources was documented alongside visits to the singing group,  poetry class and the knit and knatter lunch club that break her isolation.

Carol is disabled, depressed and dyslexic. Her handwriting is difficult to read, her spelling creative yet her words so carefully chosen, her life so full of challenges that this and other volumes are unique masterpieces. The journal   describes in expressive detail a slice of life our Chancellor should be forced to experience before he slashes benefits any further.

After two months trying to resolve the washing machine crisis without plunging Carol further into debt, the chapel committee decided to cover the cost of a bargain new, but slightly scratched ex - catalogue Swan machine.  There were tears in her eyes when I told her she didn't have to squeeze the cost out of her benefits.

So tonight she will have written in her diary that she has a shiny new, if slightly scratched,  washing machine in her kitchen. For me that is worth all the things I haven't done before setting off on my trip to the other side of the planet this weekend.

My reward was a glimpse of the inspiring but overwhelming, Five Year Diary, one of many under Carol's bed. A collection that should be published..

The slipstream of history

The Liverpool skyline widens until the stump of the Anglican cathedral, the shining pierhead towers and the slowly spinning blades of the wind turbines shrink into the past as the fastcraft flies along the alarmingly arrow channel out into Irish Sea. Sunlight catching the spray and showers rainbow fragments across the foamy wake.

Leaving of Liverpool

The fabulous Liver Building, gracing Liverpool pier head,  was the departure point for countless thousands of emigrants over centuries. We are only sailing to the Isle of Man, but for me too there was a sudden flash of  apprehension.

To Liverpool with love

Tonight I am lying in bed, wide awake, like a child waiting for Christmas to come.

Tomorrow I will be back in Liverpool and I will be Granny Penny pushing a buggy, feeding the ducks and eating ice - cream. On Saturday I will be on a boat, sailing to the Isle of Man. Four days to explore an island. How very exciting.

Technology has moved on and now I can post from my pretty smart phone so I need neither netbook nor laptop. 

But first to Liverpool to see my lovely family. Lizzy has a little brother Seth now. Tom and Fran are engaged.

Everything moves on.

Hope

This image has self-selected and the text is self centering And underlining itself.   I shall choose my words with care so as not to waste any.  This is Liverpool. The field of Hope in Sefton Park. I have hope.

Another Journey

The book that is yet to be

Once more I am keeping vigil thorugh the early hours. Although I am many miles away I am conscious that later today Peter's archive starts its journey from Kent to Beirut and that in some strange way he will be travelling with it.

How could he not be?  Life for him was an ongoing journey - the imagery runs throughout his work. He collected ideas, information and inspiration from around the world, even sending himself a postcard from China with his thoughts and observations.

Early journey - 10 years old.

The fascination with travel and transport started early and stayed with him. The little blue truck with the sign "Rea's Contractors" in his early painting is almost empty.  He spent his life making sure his truck would stay full and he trundled the tools of his trade - books, pens, computers and large quantities of paper - from place to place.  He kept every sketch, tracing, rough, proof and spare copy.  He brought back his teaching plans, magazines, examples of his students' work and many hundreds of photo transparencies.

In his final doodle he described himself as the journey man on the road, an apt pun as he was not ony an international traveller, but a journey man artist - available for hire by the day.  While at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1960 with "The Circus"a show he devised and wrote with Mary, he managed to pick up some additional work for Edinburgh Gateway Theatre designing their posters and programmes.

Alongside his design work ran his career as a teacher and   writer.  There are articles in books, journals, reviews in newspapers, papers for universities.  He coined the phrase Advanced Typographical Design and used typography as a medium for stunning artwork.

In the twelve years of Windows on Design and the Profile Intermedia conferences he relentlessly argued the case and place for graphic design in the new digital world, conscious that with the advent of desktop publishing and computer technology, the skills of the typographer could become redundant. He did not have the answers but he brought together a dazzling array of exciting and influential designers to inspire the next generation



In the Pickford's container with his life's work will go a box of Letraset, his set square and rulers, a small cardboard box of cars, trucks and trains, a series of typewriters, the ARD sound system that he designed, a music system and some of his favourite jazz LPs.
But the VW Campervan is staying with me, right here on my mantlepiece.
And his Amerikarma book is still on the list of things to do...