Evening all.

You know, being ill is a funny thing. Especially when you are technically ill all the time, disabled even, but dont feel ill. I mean, I am disabled and I have M.S but most of the time I feel O.K (for a given value of O.K anyway...)

Unfortunately for the the last few weeks I have most definitely not been O.K. I've been pretty lucky since I was diagnosed in '02, I have had several "blips" when the symptoms became more severe, but the main effects have been weakness and fatigue. My mobility is limited and my ability to be active is pretty curtailed (my wife on an uncharitable day might say "no change there then...") but within certain boundaries, most of the time, I can manage.

I used to be a psychiatric nurse working with street homeless people in Oxford, England a job I loved ambivalently but passionately. Within a year of my diagnosis though I had been retired from the NHS and had been forced to move to a less expensive part of the country (couldnt pay the mortgage on one income...) Every cloud has a silver lining. We traded a pokey modern boxy house we never really liked (it was all we could afford in that notoriously expensive area) for a detached 19th century cottage in the country. And it is beautiful country. Despite the circumstances and the ongoing problem of finding my wife a job she can love I have no regrets about moving to Shropshire at all.

Anyway, I moved up here and rather than continue the trend of slumping into human compost I got myself onto an art course at the local college which has now become a BA in Illustration at NEWI in Wrecsam (or Wrexham as its spelled in English.) So thats a pretty solid silver lining!

So back to my current gripe. About a week before Xmas I got into a blip. The blip has developed into a full-on, down and dirty no holds barred relapse. My immune system is in open revolt and waging war on my central nervous system. For some reason it thinks the myelin (think of it as the insulation around the wires which form the electrical nervous system) is an invading force and is currently trying to eradicate it. This is causing a series of unpleasant effects to manifest themselves.

Firstly, PAIN!!! and lots of it. Mostly in my left forearm, fingers and legs. I have no idea why this should be but its like having ones bones replaced by molten lead and all the hairs on ones skin turned into super-sensitive pain transmitters. Just brush against them and POW, thats it for the next ten minutes... Add onto that grinding fatigue and physical infirmity which mean I havent been able to walk beyond the house for three weeks. And dont talk to me about the medication. Despite a lifelong aversion to having to take the crap I so glibly dished out to my poor, poor patients (I was never a good nurse but thats another story) I am now on a whole medly, a veritable cocktail of drugs. I inject Copaxone every day which stings like a bastard but is supposed to reduce the frequency of relapses (unfortunately this one seems to have slipped past the net.) I also take modafinil which shuts down the part of the brain which lets you sleep, this helps me get through the day, and now pregabalin for the pain. Unfortunately (or perhaps not) this latter makes me feel stoned. Ah well, its an ill wind.... Finally, I am also starting cipramil which is an antidepressant. M.S causes my mood to flatten and this last year this has been a major problem, so I have finally succumbed and decied to take medication for it. This should help to bolster my mood during the worst of it. I hope so anyway.

So whats this got to do with deviantArt, or at least my part on it then? Well, basically at the minute I am unable to hold (or at least to use effectively) a pen, pencil or brush. My fingers wont work at that basic, delicate level at the moment. So thats it. Ho hum. Th... ]]> *Pylo http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/7369527/ http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/7369527/ Wed, 21 Dec 2005 03:03:08 PST Wishing you all a Cool Yule & a Super Solstice!!

Mood: Cheerful
Listening to: The JCB Song
Reading: American Gods
Watching: Its A Wonderful Life

OK, OK, so Christmas has become an excuse for frantic commercialism and the exploitation of both children and parents but that really IS only a veneer over an older and much more important substance beneath.

Christmas is older than shopping, its probably even older than that Jesus fellow. Its deeper, much deeper, bone deep. Strip away the glittery paper and those fragile baubles and the ribbons and bows that make our purchases a little less dissapointing and you'll find a core of truth or at least of reality.

Evergreens and feasting, celebration and remembrance. Holy and ivy, white ice and blood red berries.

The feeling you get when you rip open or even give a gift isnt what its all about. What its all about is the feeling you get after all of that flim flam, when you look through your curtains and double glazed windows at the cold dim light of the world in winter and you know that you and your people have survived another year and are turning their faces to the spring sun.

The feeling that those who you have loved or known who have passed this year are laying at rest while the memory of them lives in the warmth of your hearth and home forever.

The feeling you get when you know that one day you too will pass into rest and warm memory and that that is ok and better than ok.

So if the weather is cool or cold, warm or hot where you are this winter, may your spirit be rested and your eyes be open and may all your people walk, smiling into the spring. And may all the shades of your mothers and fathers rest easy at your hearth and bring warmth and joy to your homes.

In love,

Phill

Ho Ho Bloody Ho! ]]> *Pylo http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6873496/ http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6873496/ Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:28:17 PDT Welshampton Festival of Fire 2005

It was my great pleasure to be involved with the Festival of Fire this year which, in keeping with the Big Theme here in the UK was a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar. This was the fourth annual bonfire which had previously been shaped as a castle, a huge clock and a 60' tall rocketship.

After a VERY convoluted creative process, it was agreed that the main bonfire would be a pretty much lifesize three masted sailing ship. I drew the intial design drawings (to be included in my Deviations gallery when I get the original back for long enough to copy it) and handed it over to the Artistic Director who took the simple illustration and transformed it into a three dimensional object.

The Build:

The main stucture is built from old palettes constructed into a series of chimneys which form the basic shape.



The outer skin of the ship is covered with planks from broken up palettes and discarded timber. The chimneys are filled with scrap timber. The Art Director is a skilled pyrotechnician who uses his skills to ensure the bonfire burns well and, above all, safely. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME KIDS!!

The Performance

Each year the bonfire is accompanied by a small performance written and produced exclusively for this one-off event. This year saw our eponymous hero Very Rear Admiral Captain Sir Mike of Welshampton (its a long story but he has been in most of the previous events...) taking accidentally to the high seas to support the great Lord Nelson at Trafalgar. Whether Nelson would have wanted such dodgy support is neither here or there!

As part of the preparations for the even, I took on the task of coordinating a series of three workshops for local people and their children to make candle lanterns. These lanterns are made of willow withies and tissue paper which is soaked in latex glue and stretched over the frames. The children (and their proud parents) kick off the evenings entertainments with a lantern parade down through the crowd and they also take part in the performance right in front of the main bonfire.



The Sea Serpent

As part of the performance I constructed and controlled a sea serpent, who was the narrator of the piece. The serpent was made with bamboo and withies held together with gaffer, duck and masking ape as was most readily available. The long neck, midsection and tail were covered with white cloth and the head with old newspaper layered and coated with latex glue (we used about five litres in all.) The jaw was controlled by string and the whole head was animated by using a 3m bamboo pole.



*Pylo http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6477112/ http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6477112/ Sun, 11 Sep 2005 13:24:08 PDT I built my own printing press!!





I built myself this printing press as a summer project. Its made out of sycamore and held together with glue and 4" coach bolts. I found the plans for the thing here.

I'm leaving it a day or two to let the glue well and truly set and the varnish well and truly dry before I use it in the hopes that this will help prevent it falling apart when I tighten the screw! In the meantime I am working on some lino- and wood-cut designs to test it out on

Phill



It's time that deviants had a voice. Write about *your* for

]]> *Pylo http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6419230/ http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6419230/ Mon, 05 Sep 2005 02:15:37 PDT A country is judged by the methods and processes it utilises to meet the needs of its poor and dispossessed.

Mood: low
Listening to: Gordon is a moron - Jilted John
Reading: Dark side of sun-Terry Pratchett (again)
Watching: House of Flying Daggers

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus."

In a week when America abandoned its poor, elderly and sick to die in a natural disaster which was no surprise to anyone who had access to a radio or TV, there is a certain tragic irony in seeing the Red Cross here in England making public appeals for support for poor people in the richest country in the world.

A few weeks ago, whilst London was being bombed and "media celebrities" (whatever THAT means) were waging a war on poverty aimed squarely at Africa our Glorious Leaders were haggling over how much/little/anything they should cream off of their national profits to meet the needs of these anonymous huddled masses. When it came to climate control Gee Dubya said he would do nothing to damage American prosperity.

And today? The tired huddle poor of the southern states are certainly yearning to breath free (and eat, and drink clean water) and the teeming shore on which these tempest tossed homeless are huddling is that of the gulf coast. Left to face an environmental upheaval so unprecedented that the last such is recalled only in native legends.

Abandoned by a civil government which never considered that "major evacuation" might include the confused elderly, or the sick or those too poor to own a car or even buy a bus ticket. Or simply those whose social position is so tenuous in the richest country in the world that they felt they had to stay put in the face of disaster rather than risk worse disenfranchisement in some poorly planned refugee accommodation. It is no wonder that people are looting, after all what can they feel they owe to a nation which has left them to starve up to their necks in shit? It is a salutary image to see a group of police officers corner a looter with a TV which cost maybe $100 to make while on the other side of the street a large group of American refugees stand waiting for help. American priorities...

I cannot be the only person to notice the socio-ethnic disparity in the media images of this disaster? TV shots from refugee camps outside the disaster area in the first two or three days showed a diverse but overwhelmingly white sea of faces. The people wading in sewage or waving "help us" banners from the roofs of flooded houses were ALL black people. I recognise that British media is as partial as the next countries to pointing out the flaws of its friends and allies so I will admit that seeing such a clearly defined delineation smacks of editorial decision making but even so I suspect that this is an event whose repercussions will echo down the decades in America.

It's time that deviants had a voice. Write about *your* for

]]> *Pylo http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6257760/ http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6257760/ Sun, 21 Aug 2005 06:16:14 PDT
NB. My gallery is back up. Partly because I feel I/we have made our point over the °jark/°matteo issue, partly because as I am proposing the ~devianTimes community magazine I should be more tied in to this community than having a dead gallery has allowed me to feel and partly because I missed posting and getting comments about my work which is, after all, what it is all about eh? I reserve the right to withdraw my gallery should there not be a succesful resolution to this issue soon.

Now, back to the satire....

Mood: vague
Listening to: Oh your red scarf matches your eyes - Spike Jones
Reading: Siege - Tad Williams (again)
Watching: Midnight Cowboy

In the last century there was a group of people who had been having a Bad Time with history. They felt that history hadn't treated them too well and that they deserved better. In fact, they decided, they were chosen people picked out by destiny for Great Things. Scholars and the Wise among this group looked at their history books, and they looked at the way things had become and they sifted out those bits of history that proved Beyond Reasonable Doubt that they were chosen and that they had a destiny and they began to tell other chosen people that this was the way Things Should Be.

Some of these people looked around them from the airy moral vantage point of being Chosen Persons and saw that around them were other, different people. These others were clearly not among the chosen. They were pressing in upon the chosen on all sides, infiltrating their towns and cities, writing un-chosen books and making un-chosen music. Some of these others just couldn't see how Important the chosen people were. All in all they were strange, smelly and other and as far as the chosen people could see they really were no better than creatures. Something Had To Be Done.

As often happens, the chosen people decided that the best way to solve their problems was to blame Someone Else, so they chose to blame firstly history (which by now they had rewritten so that all of the chosen people knew The Truth, whatever anyone else said) and then they blamed the creatures that lived all around them, the people that before they had realised they were Chosen People they had called neighbours.

While all this had been going on, chosen people from all over the world had been coming together into one big group so that they could all stand together on top of the mountain of chosen-ness and look down on all of the un-chosen creatures around them. After a while it was getting pretty crowded up there. So the chosen people looked at the land around them which was infested with un-chosen people and saw that it was good, and realised it was their Destiny to inhabit this wasted, barren land which was currently being mismanaged so badly by these un-chosen creatures.

And so the chosen people made war machines and weapons and they Rode Out in triumph, overwhelming the un-chosen creatures around them, taking their land making it into a place that was Fit for the chosen people. Of course, there was still rather a lot of these odd and subhuman un-chosen people floating about, so the chosen people forced them together into camps and ghettos. It was much tidier that way and anyway their sort didnt really appreciate the land, or freedom, or wealth, or education the way the chosen people did. I mean, just look at the way they live! Many of the un-chosen died, or were forced to move many many miles away from their homes and the land they had so criminally mismanaged for centuries.

Now the un-chosen people were unhappy. They gathered together in small groups and muttered and plotted. They made Art and sang songs. The small groups gathered together slowly, like trickles becoming streams becoming rivers. Whole nations of people who had never even heard of the Chosen People suddenly realised that they were un-chosen and that the chosen people had, by making themselves believe they were chosen, become Terrible. And all the un-chosen people in all the world roared in their anger and their dismay at what the chosen people had done to their un-chosen neighbours.

The sound of that roar gathered slowly at first and was unheard or ignored by the chosen people. But the sound of the anger of the world kept growing and growing until the cutlery and crockery on the clean and well provisioned tables of the chosen shook and rattled and still they coul... ]]> *Pylo http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6184939/ http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6184939/ Wed, 10 Aug 2005 04:42:24 PDT Answer: When it is a bullet lodged in someone's foot.

Mood: Optimistic, cheery:)
Reading: The Stone of Farwell - Tad Williams (again)

There is a new Llama emoticon, I find. I have no idea why other than that it was requested and that it was provided today. See the mention in °jark's Journal here.



So anyway, its a llama. Its a cool (if somewhat large) emoticon (although what emotion it is portraying I have no idea, I am neither cool nor in so I am not in on the joke...)

My thoughts on this obscure and puzzling subject are that the important word in °jark's journal is "fleece" I reckon.

Well......Llamas are valued for their fleece. To "fleece" someone in British vernacular is to rob them so thoroughly that they are left only with their skin.

From the Concise English Dictionary:

fleece:- to shear:to plunder:to charge (a person) exorbitantly......

n fleecer one who strips, plunders or charges exorbitantly.


Semantics are important and in this internet media visual semantics equally so. I HAVE to ask this...how many bullets can this management team fit into their foot?????

Support !!! and °matteo

Read `justthorne for a thoughtful and cogent point-by-point analysis of the situation.
<<<<<justthorne COMING SOON!! THIS MAN IS WORTH LISTENING TO

(And forgive all those capitals...I really must get round to finding out what HTML is acceptable n these things.) ]]> *Pylo http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6155843/ http://Pylo.deviantart.com/journal/6155843/ Sun, 07 Aug 2005 04:16:20 PDT Altogether now..."WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW DEVIANT COMMUNITYYYYY!"

Mood: Optimistic, cheery:)
Listening to: Yellow Submarine
Reading: The Dragonbone Chair - Tad Williams (again)
Watching: Hero

To all my friends here, to all those who may (or may not) pass through my page here or my gallery and to all of the dedicated administrative staff who have made deviantArt such a cool and creative place to come to I wish a swimming pool, a veritable ocean of deviant love on this, Yellow Day, deviantArt's fifth birthday.

I would especially like to send a big Happy Yellow Day to °jark, °matteo and all hundreds, possibly thousands of deviants who have supported them and their colleagues who'se careers at dA have been disrupted over the last few weeks.

Its amazing to think that in the short have been coming here that I could feel so involved, so moved by the recent disturbances and so focussed on achieving a positive outcome.

Support !!! and °matteo

Read `justthorne for a thoughtful and cogent point-by-point analysis of the situation. ]]> *Pylo