a bit more and so

of March so far

making something according to and on days

this is a new type of making even though it is has the whole gender thing about it, it is also good because it is lots of rows of all the same, and at the same time there arent any rules and it takes a long time and it is also easy partly because it doesnt have to be perfect and if stitches get dropped then you can change mediums from wool to cotton and pick them all up, especially the red cotton which is for joining then also you can write in red cotton and probably also draw pictures but i am not sure what it will all become but it doesnt matter i am just collecting these things and one day they will tell a good story hopefully and then i will remember and also forget so the word being written is march, same again, March is for Marching. sometimes it is good to just repeat things cos it makes things feel better. this is not proper art. but it doesnt have to be. it just is.

the rituals

the always sunday night phone call

about the topic Dont Major in the Minors

I am starting again

Update on the Boring Blood Story and the Tree

there is a sun

operation red

A LOT OF PICTURES

South Africa fights again or doesn't now

some writing of something or other

the upside down tree that is also going a bit astray

the lightning is a true story, that is what it looks like in real life, of course it is more dramatic at night, thats whey they took the photo at night. usually the thunderstorms and the lightening happen at about 15.30pm until about max 16.15pm(but it can also happen at other times) so its in the middle of paper rounds, so iether you can deliver the papers before hand and risk getting shouted at cos the papers get full of rain, or you can put the papers in plastic and try to ride really fast and miss the storm and if it arrives hide in someone's garage during the storm and then carry on after the storm, that way you dont get shouted at. Also you miss the dogs because they go inside when it rains cos their owners really care about them. But there are lots of things a kids gotta do other than do a paper round which is why its not always an option to put all the papers into plastic it takes a long time.
the pictures are not about paper rounds at all, thats why there is some writing, it just reminded me. Like for example, if you live in a house made of corrugated iron then the hail would make a lot of noise and also probably the sand that the corrugated iron is in, would get quite full of rain and the corrugated iron might tilt a little.

A Saturday and Others

The Oxbow Lake of London within the tube map

South Africa Fights

this is the last book left for sale on Amazon at the moment by my grandfather, who was called James Stewart Machonicy (I dont know how that word is spelt) Simpson.
The one that is still left was printed in 1947. I bought the other one that was printed in 1941. I probably need to find out if he changed it for the (possibly) 2nd edition, but probably no one will know or say and the person who would know is dead.
he also apparently wrote another book which revealed the Afrikaner tribe, and how they were actually a very mixed race tribe, ironically, but it never really got to print partly because it was too subversive, obviously, it would have debased the entire (Arian) Apartheid concept. Maybe also it never got finished, I dont really know. So basically I cant buy it off Amazon which is a bit of a pity but not the end of the world. It is interresting that James, who was called Grandpa Pop, even though I dont remember him, was actually from Scotland and moved to SA when he was about 16, and he never wrote books about Scotland. I have to see if, in the book, he writes about Scottish imegrants or something, or at least a hint at Scottland, just out of interrest, not that it is necessary.


The UK Amazon link
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B0007J0SQU/ref=sr_1_olp_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201982528&sr=1-3

The Australian link
http://www.antiqbook.com/boox/oldc/42147.shtml



there is stuff about General Jun Smuts, he was the Prime Minister at the time, and he was friends with my grandpa pop (we had to call him that because my dad had to call him pop because he liked Italy and Greece and so that was more his style, excepet he only met 3 of 6 of us because he died) and I heard he wrote the intro to the book, so i will soon be able to read that. Luckily Jun Smuts won the election at the time, because it was between him and Hertzog, and if Hertzog had won South Africa would have been on the side of the Nazi's in the 2nd world war, because SA was supplying weapons to the Germans at one stage, apparently. Jan Smuts was considered liberal at the time. Also his daughter was my English teacher in JHB and she let us read banned poetry during Apartheid which I remember thinking was very brave of her. Except I never told her about my Granpa as it might not have been appropriate.


the title of the book is like a family motto.

also here you can see one of J.S.M's sons on this web page:

http://www.news.uct.ac.za/mondaypaper/archives/?id=2903

the herb gardens

the Kirstenbosch Herb Garden was probably not the size of Greenpark in the grownup world, but it was at the time, which was good for me as I had to wear this silly green dress all day, so that helped and didn't help in digging in sand, and I dont have time to explain, as it was South Africa in the 80's. It is good though, to find a useful and I could even say good memory of that time, which makes the green dress inconsequential now. sort of. something will now happen, surely. by.

I just also quickly wrote something else

some of us and how the names came about

this is a picture of me and Stewy and another one of us.
It goes like this
Stew, or Stewy, or more recently Stew Simpson (Stewart Andrew Simpson, perfectly very Scottish, the entire intention, and my mom said she got told that her first son would be called Stewart, because something to do with the Scottish clan. she said if she knew she was going to have so many sons she would have saved the name Andrew.)
then me. I am Maureen, but I have a nice second name it is the name of my Gran, Lucy. She is my favourite person in the whole world except she died, but no one else is called Lucy, only me. it would be nice if I could swap the order of my name, because Maureen was the sister of my father's friend.
Then Glenn John Simpson (Glenn with 2 n's is so that he is not like a Scottish Glen, because my paternal grandfather was scottish and apparently he thought that was important, all my brothers have Scottish names, and I dont know where John comes from, probably my father's side. Glenn has lots of nicknames. then he died but the scottish thing was intrenched)
then
Jummy (James George Simpson, George is i think my mom's grandfarther. Jum lives in Scotland. We gave him the name of Jum, because too many James's get called Jim and Jimbo and other boring names. Jum rocks, no one I have ever met is called Jum. Jum is also called Jameson Raid, after a South African historical event to do with England)
then
Dindsy (Belinda Vera Simpson, but she's called Belinda Vera Bouwer now. She is called Dindsy by most of us cos when she was small she couldn't say Belinda , she said Dinda, so she's called Dindsy. Brucey calls her Balla because when he was small he couldnt say Belinda he could say Balla, and we weren't all around for him to learn Dindsy, and little kids make their own minds up, so she has lots of names. Her second name is from our other gran, but still its a pretty name, and she was misunderstood, the gran that is, i think)
then there is Moose, Aka, Duke of Greenwich. (he is called Bruce Charles Simpson, and Bruce comes from my mom's uncle from Durban who was awesome, and Charles comes from my grandpa on my mom' side, he was called Charles Ross-Spencer, but he was known as Jack and no one knows why, his family was related to Princess Diana Spencer but somewhere along the line someone added Ross, because that was a great friend of someone, so it was an honour. it has stayed. he was born near the bells of bow apparently except i also heard from a certain cousin that he was born in Kensington, I prefer the bells of bow because that is near where i live. my favourite paint shop is across the road and there is a museum about the bells and its one of the only buildings that hasn't been turned into shared ownership) Bruce is also called BruceMoose, one word. the Moose idea comes from Canada, because Stewy's wife KateyKates is from Canada, and she has pictures of Moose's and when BruceMoose was small he liked the Mooses so we called him BruceMoose, and he is ok with that. he just got a very high mark in a law exam, he is only young and he is studying law and my big brother Stew is a famous lawyer in Dubai and maybe Moose will be too, or at least he will find something. He just left his IT job so I was very happy that he did because he is not naturally inclined towards Configuration Management.

In the picture it is iether Stew age 4 me age 2 and Glenn age 0, or it is Stew age 6 me age 4 and Jum age 0, but I dont know as I cant tell ages of children. It is at my grans house because i remember the chair in her lounge very much. She used to read us stories but not really, she just counted to 3 in Zulu over and over again, Gunye Gubile Gutatu... she didnt want to be a baby sitting Knitting Gran, she wanted to be her own way. that was ok for me, I didn't realise till someone explained. I had my gran, that was the important thing.