Piggy market

This little piggy Teresa made her own costume round at my house for the jumping the fence float. She made it all the way to Taiwan as I found out later she was in a magazine over there. This photo is from the Mardi Gras magazine. I hired a photographer but something went wrong with sorting out copy's of photos with everyone. Contact William if you want photos.


Mardi Gras Sydney 2000 Lambsy lesso's and the woolly woofters jumping the fence float. Photo taken by William Smith. I am an ozzie kelpy dog in this one, spent months making the costumes and ended up with a full farm yard with farmer family and truck. Marilyn did the make up. Kath kelped with props, and everyone helped decorate the float. Lyn helped sort it all out and it was for a counseling hot line.

I just did a weener bit of research on the net to find out more about swine flu. First check was surgical masks, sold out completely and be a week before they can be imported.

The pharmaceutical industry due to the global economic change of thought, has a depletion in sales. So share holders are a bit annoyed, so what might they do.

Create a big porky lie, to sell loads of vaccines and disposable plastic stuff.

This is not the first time we had this sort global consumer shift. Everyone fell for the 1999-2000 invisible bug. Which I made a survival suit for and bought a couple bottles of water with the few dollars I had, but other people spent thousands on bottled water and many other things.

So the pharmaceutical company's have just won over tourism and travel industry.

Personally I don't really like the idea of being vaccinated against swine flu by being given a bit of swine flu.

I am sure the pharmaceutical company's now want to burn me at the stake, like they have always done to Women, who said there hair growing lotions, didn't work. Back in the old days.

I wish they would stop all these health scares as people begin to believe they have it and then get it, from believing they got it.

All this money on plastic disposable masks etc, could have been spent on other more important causes.

List of scares in the last few years, foot and mouth, mad cow disease, 1999-2000, Tb from poor little badgers, bird flu. Seal flu.

Majority are to do with mass factory farming. The way of solving this is to stop eating meat.

Strange I just over heard someone saying that keeping a pig in there backyard as a sign of poverty and dirty living conditions. I would say living next to an enormous factory farm, dirty living conditions. Norfolk I am sure has lots of factory farms so were living in dirty unethical living conditions.

The site I linked is 2005 old news, new news is Norfolk pig farmers have won recent awards for keeping there pigs happy. Well thats a blissing.

Unfortunate that mass panic has started happening and some countrys are slaughtering all there pigs and some are moving there piggys out to the countryside away from citys.

A good place to put a pig is back is in the woods, where they are happy. Pigs would make a good pesticide and fertilizer if they lived on friut farms and ate windfall fruit before it rots. They dont like a lot of sun.

Found a webby with abandoned pig food processing farm photos. Great photos.

Boooby Bread

I am up all night again, painting illustrations and made some bread. A winning shaped bread or does it get the Booby prize. I am thinking now do I go all the way and find a really big oven and bake a full lady and gent.

Pigs can fly as we are finding out the pig flu that is actually a human, pig and onion strain of flu. Has Spread globally and does stem from a pig farm that breeds billions of pigs a year, an American company that also does not deal with the pig manure problem. The locals have complained about the fly's for years from the pig manure poo lagoons.

So yet again this mass farming has backfired on its self. When is the world going to wake up to being a vegetarian and giving up on this piggery.

In Norwich every house hold is allowed to have a few pigs in there back yard. Which I discovered on the deeds to my parents house. It was not long ago when people had pigs in there back yard. Even Dennis the Menace had a pig called Rasher in the Beano comic.

Pigs are really handy for eating all your vegetable and poo waste, but they still like to eat a lot and need insects and things to forage on all year. My garden would love a pig, it has lots of trees and weeds or old fashioned edible foods. But sadly a lot of peoples gardens are lawned and concrete slabbed and potted up with inedible plants or houses have extended into the garden. The outside use to be more important then the inside of the house.

My friend Rebecca and her family in Ireland are successfully having a few free range pigs a year in there wild garden and they have plenty of hams and salami.

Organic free range farming should be top of the list on the governments new system of getting teenagers jobs.

Anyway the pig strain is still unknown of how it spreads, so maybe we can't wash are hands of this one.

If you need a fancy washable mask to wear for piggy plague. Just send me a message.

County council in Norwich has decided to have a nature conservation around it which they think might come from not mowing the lawn all summer. Very strange thinking, it might need quite a lot more then unmowed lawn. Like removing the lawn and planting wild native seeds and hundred years of no human activity.

Turtle pencil holder

As an artist I will use all these pencils in one night and sharpen them again. I like Hb pencils, but in the end it doesn't matter what thickness the lead is. The hand, mood, brain does all the work to make the picture turn out. Pencils are nearly one pound each in price. Its an expensive business this art business. A computer programme that would have all the drawing tools would cost me thousands.

I made a whole family of these turtles they carry all my materials on the table.

Turtles are paper mache.

day 2 illustrating with two hours sleep. About to have another coffee. My work has been seen in China this week. Does it mean I can officially call myself an International Artist and not a local one.

The hospital has gone into emergency pig stations. Hold ya breath. Pigs are genetically 96 percent human. Humans have been murdering piggys for a long time the last few decades they have been locked up in confined conditions for breeding to eat. Pig revenge is on its way. Or is it because the whole world feeds pigs, the same product pig meal with a strange idea of a balanced diet. When they are more refined then that they like truffles and fresh organic vegetables and cheese and wine in France. In Ireland they like parachute mushrooms, watercress, shamrock and woodland fairies.

Swamped blog #BlogNor09

We caught the last one. By Eloise O'Hare 2007

Blogging Norfolk and I got put on the Map, I didn't realise I had to name a place to be put on the map. I thought as I am living in Norwich, I would be put on in the Norwich area. I got pinned to the map out in a swamp between Great Yarmouth and Burgh Castle. It took me hours too find me out there in the deep dark cyberspace. But now pleased I found myself and really pleased I am near a castle and the Norfolk broads and the sea, maybe I should move there.

While looking for me, I found lots of other bloggers and discovered bloggers that I already know in person, but didn't know they were secret bloggers too.

I think the general feeling of going on blogging Norfolk is that we have been outed of the blogging closet. The other great thing is seeing everyones side of Norfolk and seeing we go a lot in common as well as living in the same area and seeing so many great things that are happening. 

 

Emergency! Crayfish and sewage Norfolk!

Shit Cleaning Products by Eloise O'Hare 2007





Animal rights activists. By Eloise O'Hare 2007

Emergency news alert to everyone living Norfolk. Please switch to using ecover products or ecoballs for washing and cleaning your house. The normal chemical products and washing powders are effecting all the waterways and killing off all nature. Norfolk is the only place in the world with English crayfish and there habitat the waterways is getting clogged up by all the shit we put down the drain. If we use eco-products maybe there could be a chance of reusing are sewage to put on the land as fertiliser.

If the waterways is effected by are cleaning products imagine what the sea is like.

This is a real emergency please switch today. If you live in the countryside please build a composting toilet too. As more people move to Norfolk or come here over the summer the sewage farms are not able to cope, so please help by doing something. It is up to the individual to make this change don't wait for the government, there not likely to do anything about it as there not a green party there a pre-historic party from another planet, that is only concerned about there own pocket linings.

You can get green ecover products from your local greeny type shops.

Also beware of all the chemical sprays such of perfume, underarm stuff, creams, shampoo's that you put on your body they also get washed down the drain when you have a shower, bath. Have you checked out what is in them, things like bits of plastic, not a nice thing to put on your body never mind killing off halve the planet with them. I am begging you on behalf of all the animals in Norfolk. 

Foxy lady #blognor09

The hunt is on for the foxy lady. Hunting is band in Norfolk, so they hunt foxy ladys in fur coats instead to keep the tradition going.

Over the hill jogging bloggers in Norfolk #blognor09

Over the hill jogging bloggers in Norfolk, escaped from the naturist camp site.

Nearly all the nude models we had at Yarmouth art college were retired naturists. There body's showed what they had been through in life, like an open book.

Barbie Weather #blognor09

There is always a few vegetarians at a barbie or more. Here is the answer to all your problems, marinated tofu and veges kebabs with peanut satay sauce and rice or bread

Buy hard tofu from a greeny grocer shop. cut into cubes put on stick with random big cube veges and whole mushrooms. Marinate over night in fresh grated ginger, garlic, chili sauce, dash of sesame sauce, oil, tamari. 

Fry onions, chili, garlic in pan, then cool and mix in a blender with peanuts and coconut milk or yogurt and a dash of water to make smooth. 

Put the vege and the barbie the next day till slightly charred and reheat the peanut sauce and make some rice or toast some pitta bread.

Linconshire sausages are also great for the barbie and just a slab of tofu.

My old favourite is potatoes in the ashes of the fire and once cooked a spaghetti squash whole and then cut it in halve after cooked and eat with a fork. In Oz I have a friend who can bake cakes on a barbie. So its up to the imagination and practise.

Another favourite is witches teeth a corn on the cob on the barbie.

I am working on my vego cook book, just need more time and hands to illustrate. 

Composting Norfolk #blognor09

Van Gogh's composting toilet. 

I have come across a few composting toilets, they come in all sorts of different types, but most people go for outside toilet with a view. The compost can be composted a 2nd time mixed in normal vege waste. Always take a spade camping and bury your compostable waste or take it home with you in a little bag. Like a doggy doo bag.

International Collaboration. #blognor09

Norwich pole dancers.

Working table

Over the last few years I have watched all the businesses in Norfolk and the UK move out to India as there only way of saving there business. Norwich Union was one of them they use to be a huge employer in Norwich. People left school and either went to college or got a job at Norwich union.

Since I have been living back in Norwich after being in OZ for nearly a decade. I have struggled to get anything happening. I even designed ideas to fit in with the local community. Like my plastic bottle green house in schools. You would think that would be perfect for schools it teaches carpentry, reusing, and growing veges all in one. When I got in contact with all the schools after doing a Neat business course,  there was not the enthusiasm that I imagined. They said we only get funding for digital things like DVDs.

So the government has complete control over what the teachers teach. So the chance of a kid in a rural farming area growing a tomato is very slim. So the infrastructure in this country is completely set up to fail. 

As a desperate measure to find work in Norfolk I went on line, to search outside Norfolk and to find the like minded enthusiastic people.

I searched the whole planet all over. Starting with a websites, I have 3 at the moment and 10 I helped with the design and layout of writers and artists sites.

Then I went on Facebook, joined over a hundred groups. Then my friend Rebecca in Ireland started her sustainable living blog and I got hooked on the idea of having one. 

Then I started my own art related groups on Facebook. 

Then Anand found me on my cartoonist group. Anand lives in Mumbai India and has a animation porthole website called animation xpress. He knows all the animation studios and has been to Norwich for an Animation conference. He is also a journalist and writer and has joined forces with me to collaborate on a children's book.

The story I like a lot it sparked my imagination straight away. After absorbing the information and exchanging messages with Anand. I then draw lots of sketches and made up 3 paintings for the story and emailed them off to Mumbai.

I am trying very hard to get the pictures to be the best. The book is set in Indonesia so I have drummed up the imagination for being there. 

The illustrations have been accepted as brilliant, so this week I painted another page and have weeks a head of me to carry on painting. 

I wish I had a grant to do art all day I haven't seen a check since last year. I seem to work very hard yet no one wants to pay me in the UK. So I have joined the large boat of businesses moving to India, where they seem to be very on the ball, enthusiastic, embrace and use talented people. 

Ireland had the same problem in the 1970's of talent leaving the island. Francis Bacon, Samuel Beckett, to potters, traditional artists etc. The government acted on this straight away and let all artists be tax free. Then art and the music scene boomed, there was one year at my school that had six bands including U2 . When U2 started earning large sums of cash the first thing they did was repair Dublin, starting with a theatre at the school which was built.

So the best way Norfolk and the UK could start getting things going would be to support the talent instead of letting them rot in the gutter. A tax break would make no difference as artists don't earn anything. But grants  and management teams would be a good idea, to get the potential earnings working.

Or a basic government salary.

Maybe this country has come to a standstill because of all the rules and regulations, which fill up peoples in/out trays.  A sample of this is if I want to borrow a ladder, I need insurance, a letter of permission, public liability. A car with a roof rack, traffic permit to park. Health and safety certificate and a police check and a certificate course in how to go up and down a ladder, ow and someone to hold the ladder at the bottom.

I don't remember all these show stoppers in the first 2 and halve decades of my life. 

In the old days you just got up the ladder did the job and came down again. Falling off the ladder is down to pure circumstance and all the show stoppers listed cant stop or help fate.

When I was teaching stilt walking in Little Snoring a little boy said to me, my mum said I am going to fall of these stilts today, it was affirmed by his Mum that is what he is going to do. So I showed him how to fall safely. So he could fall off his stilts over and over again, like his Mum wanted him to. 

The same applies to everything, the news is constant failings. More jobs going to go this week. etc. then the I told ya so afterwards.

All I want is a life that I can get on with and not have boulders put in the way or hoops to jump through.

Best get back to painting, all this writing is eternal. Will keep you posted on my Mumbai/Norwich collaboration.

I 

Twitter twitcher Norfolk #blognor09

The healthy bird is twittering to the unhealthy bird letting the unhealthy bird know where the nearest organic farm is located. An organic worm and small insect detox diet.

The a constant flight of twittering from 3am in the morning outside my window in the trees.

Once the organic farms in Norfolk multiply so does are range of wildlife and birds. All the more nature to paint pretty pictures of.

I just made a cause page on facebook for Auntie Janie's, Chauncy Maples hospital ship renovation on Lake Malawi in Africa. Robert built her website for the charity to help fund raise for the cause. 

Eco Norwich #BlogNor09

My first attempt on making normal bread look like fruit, experimenting with different herbs and spices. Kiwi turned out well with dried parsley coating, oranges and Mandarins were spot on with a turmeric coating. Just need to work on the banana and going to use blended spinach for the apples next time and make the bread have the fruit flavors adding zest. 

Norwich is so green that people can grow plants from the tips of there fingers. Its all greening off this week. Its the Queens birthday today and Prince Charles her son and heir as brought out a book called Harmony, the Prince says were all loosing touch with nature.  Well I am looking forward to having a greener future when Charles becomes King. Maybe he should be King now, to speed things up a bit. 

Sandringham gardens should be open for the summer, they grow a lot of produce at Sandringham and are turning organic with a percentage of organic produce.

Norwich has several organic shops, the Green Grocers, the Greenhouse trust shop, Anna's farm shop, Rainbow and the main city markets, where stall holders are out right through the winter selling vegetables, when it is freezing.

The Veg shop on Gloucester street, Fred & Yarham veg shop is my nearest veg shop and they have plants and small trees. I have a big blueberry bush now, which can grow up to 6 ft. They also have paper bags and fish.

There is also a new little coffee shop on the corner across the road, so you could if smart, give a list of veges you want to the veg shop and butchers and bakers then go and have a coffee at the cafe and pick it all up when you have read the paper.

There is also quite a few organic delivery services in Norwich. 

I like fresh herbs so I always have a kitchen garden on the window ledges of Rosemary, oregano, sage, coriander, mint and chives. I would like my wild strawberry's to spread this year so I have composted around them and live in hope. 

End of summer I get baskets of windfalls from my Mum and its apple pie season. With flour from Letheringsett flour water mill. 

Last summer I went on a big bike ride with friends out to find the oldest tree in the Uk a Hawthorn at Heffal. Instead we found buckets of blackberries and Lotus car factory. At the moment I got wind that there is a wind energy fast car being made there by a team of experts.

Ecotricity are on to it, the power company that reinvests in green energy and matches the bill with other power company's. Norfolk is a good spot for windmills being flat and coastal.

This summer I plan to go out walking in Norfolk and take with me a book I have just been lent by a friend called "Free for All" a wild plants as a source of food book. I will then have ago at cooking with nature.

Wild oats for breakfast!

Outside there changing the street lamps one would hope there going to make them solar. I wonder if a sensor system would work. a light switch for pedestrians to turn on the street lights when walking home in the dark or as you walk past the light or drive past the next light gets turned on. Just ideas.

I ride my bike everywhere and take it on the train. I have two bikes an inner city posing bike with big basket and a country rides one with gears.

I could rabble on all day about all the Eco things in Norfolk. I got my green party posters this week from my local green councilor. They want to go for sending one of our green councilors to Europe so voting Green is a good idea this year.

All Norfolk needs now is lots of funding to start up more Eco enterprises, that could create more jobs. I have lists of ideas if your stuck for one.

Must get back to making my art money to send off to Denmark. That's another story will tell you later.

Keep reading my blog today I have put out a new blog page every hour as a Norfolk Spring special show and tell. 

   

Blogging Norfolk 2009

Wow! I am truly honoured to be accepted as a writer by the BBC and the Writers centre Norwich and the arts council for this unbelievable amazing collaboration to put Norfolk bloggers on the map. I can feel an enormous overwhelment that is going to bring on writers block. Its like being watched by your boss suddenly I have forgotten what to write about.

This reminds me of an idea had for a public sculpture I want to put in Norfolk, because there are so many writers hidden away in the woods, writing away through the night alone, night after night. Then when they finish there book there brought out into the daylight to meet the public in a book shop and sign there name over and over and again on the inside cover.

So getting out is hard for a writer as the pen and solitude keeps them in there own imaginary world. but occasionally they stumble across writers block on able to drum up a few words or tap into the imagination.

My idea for a Norfolk public sculpture would be a writers block "big white concrete block". Writers then can come out and sit on the writers block for reflection and inspiration and write a few words on the block, to get them back into writing again.

I better write about whats been happening in Norfolk today. I been listening to future radio all day. The fringe festival was mentioned with all the acts, performances, bands, shows happening. Quite a lot is going on St Gregory's art centre in Pottergate.

Also Art on the railings is on again this year at St.Peter mancroft church. Come along and buy some art, become a collector of local artists work. Collecting art work is going to become a national thing this year. As in you don't have to go to London to collect artist work, you can collect it from an artist here in Norwich, added bonus there is one right here on line with her paintings for sale have a browse through my past pages or look at my website.

I have decided today I am going to Indonesia this year to help Kath Ellis build something huge from bamboo, it is a voluntary job for a month creating an arts festival. All I need is my fare and food and my rent paid for here, plus take 5 other Norfolk artists with me. Fundraising starts from today, any painting sales go towards getting there in October.

I have hundreds more pictures at home if a buyer wants to see more then whats on line.

All day I have been painting an illustration for a collaboration in Mumbai India. It was one of those pictures where I impressed myself and patted myself on my sore hunch back.

Tomorrow I will go out to the front pavement to photograph the illustration, where I usually draw a crowd. The neighbours come up behind me when I am just in focus to take the picture.

They are all fascinated with my artwork and want to know why I am doing each picture.