Ann Perrin

An award winning blog     for ‘a blog that brightens our day’!

    ‘Finding my feet in Brighton’     

Posts about Brighton – but also London and sometimes France – local events – reflections - homespun philosophy - shows – art exhibitions –  reviews  - photo posts - poetry in progress  - films as they are made and put on youtube.

  I steadfastly avoid ‘what I had for breakfast’ and  most entries are mercifully short.

Blogging is brilliant, after all there is only so much knitting one can do in retirement and I don’t knit, play bridge or croquet. Croquet reminds me  of  the Red Queen, hedgehogs and flamingos for mallets in  ’Alice in Wonderland’

Here is all the background stuff – film links etc.

The latest posts please click on -

http://annperrin.wordpress.com/finding-my-feet-in-later-life

The latest poetry or verse please click on

http://annperrin.wordpress.com/poetry-only-2/

for latest film on youtube – please click on

https://www.youtube.com/user/Brightonfilms?feature=mhee
 (then click on videos under by name to get the whole range -they have changed the format and you just get latest three and the most popular)

72 films – mini documentaries, etc. some with 7.000 hits and others with 17!

Poetry - The one and only advertisement on this site follows  -  But you can always slide further down the page to some more interesting bits and bobs.

  ‘Don’t Throw Away the Daisies’  gift wrapped  - B/W version in the Open Arts Cafe in Rottingdean - copy available to view too.

John McCullough says Ann’s poetry covers the big topics of love and death with originality and satisfies the reader’s  heart as well as their head.  Take for instance  the title poem which is full of surprises yet also wonderfully poignant.  The energy of her work leaves you feeling revitalized and seeing the world afresh’.

John was my  tutor at a creative writing course at Sussex Uni. and is author of The Frost Fairs.

Kiersty Boon says – This collection of poems, fully illustrated by the author, is a wonderful journey from a magical childhood of puppets and seaside towns,  The delicacy of the difficult stages of life and memories experienced are offset with humorous anecdotes and magical tales for the young and old alike’ - Kiersty Boon poet and author

My book in b/w  is available from The Open Art Cafe  Rottingdean – gift wrapped at £7.00 as above. Laminates – mainly poems for children including ‘The Old Dry Stone Wall’ and Ego available @£3.00.

Any poem from the book in colour  - can be laminated to order within two days.  Both b/w and colour versions also available from Lulu or  Amazon and as an ebook.

1. Click here for the  black and white version with illustrations

      

2. Click here for the  colour version with illustrations

        

    The West Pier – pen and ink   – Robin  - oil on heavy paper.

From Amazon. Black and White Edition 

Colour Edition        

This book is however available in colour as an ebook on Lulu.  

   

Brilliant value at £5.00 – with great illustrations (although I say it myself) some illustrations were oil paintings,  prints or pastels and others especially designed for the book.

My poems are in various styles –  I think I lean towards Wendy Cope in range of subject but that’s a bit optimistic because she is famous and dead clever!  This one is one of my beach poems, written in Hove and featured in Writing Magazine March 2012 .

Others have been published.

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Colour print I did for ‘Weaving Spells’ in the colour edition – prints were done at The Mary Ward Centre in London.

Our links with Brighton

In the sixties our family made and performed with specially adapted marionettes for the feature film ‘Oh What a Lovely War’  on the worn wooden boards of the West Pier in Brighton.   Our marionettes were directed by the great Lord Attenborough, no less.

Years later when the West Pier was burning down, I rushed down from London to sit in silence with hundreds of others. One  such observer was a well known composer Paul Flett,  whose grandmother had performed  gypsy dances on the pier in her youth.

A year or two later,  I spent two days watching the clearance of the site – see  ’The Dance of Destruction of the West Pier’  on youtube.

In 2010 I wrote a poem called ‘The Fall of the West Pier’ it was  bit like ‘treading the boards’  a sort of love affair. But poetically I think I have moved on.

Please click on arrow in centre of the film to watch it.

My partner had a flat in Hove for several years, we had a beach hut the grandchildren spent happy days there!

Finding my feet in Brighton  - the wisdom or not – of retiring to the sea.

I moved  with my long-term partner to the south coast six years ago.  I think we were heading for Hove,  but had no sat nav and are both rubbish at map reading.

The move came after caring for my mother, who had died, giving up my third and final  career as an NLP therapist, selling the tiny house that I had lived in for 30 years and starting a new life.  We found a house, lost it, found another one, lost it. We stayed in our camper van for three weeks in November in the rain on Brighton’s Municipal camp site. Finally we found another house and carted everything out of storage.

I joined things, too many things, reading groups, writing groups, art classes, the gym,  tried to make new friends but soon felt overwhelmed!

I decided to stop working so hard at ‘making a new life’ and to slow down. I created a cottage garden out an overgrown patch at the seaside,  gathered up my poetry paintings/illustrations,  went on a part-time course at Sussex Uni and published my book.

This led to starting this blog  because everyone said that’s what writer’s do! Mine soon became idiosyncratic comments on my efforts to create ‘new life’, including, visits to London, photos and even films.

One of  joys of blogging is getting followers and comment from people  all over the world which makes it all worthwhile!

I confess that I  spent two years trying to hang on to the past. I was still travelling up to The Mary Ward Centre in London where I had been used to taking part in shows at The Welsh Centre.  I made a decision to stop, so the following clip was a bit of a ‘swan song’.

Alan was not used to the camera,  so rubbish lighting, but I like to think it makes me look even more lovely!!  Oh! and unlike the song well over 40, and 50, and…..

Stand up comedy  – By the  third year, I was even more confused. Who am I? What does life still have to offer? In this mood I signed up for Jill Edwards stand-up comedy course. Later I  auditioned and got into the ‘New Acts Night’  at the Komedia.

Wow! A highlight for an oldie!

This is  one of my more chaotic gigs at The Greys in Hanover. where the whole show raised £700 for Martlets.w

Please click on the arrow in the centre of the film.

Writing  - I have always written things, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, scripts, articles for teaching mags, pieces for Radio 4′s ‘You and Yours’ and I once surprised myself with an article on divorce published in the ‘Sunday Times’ supplement.   I photocopied the cheque and framed it!

Many moons later my play ‘Travelling Nowhere’ was performed at the Young Vic. I write about what I feel passionate about.

I admit that I had editors and proof-readers when I was writing professionally, which was just as well as I am slightly dyslexic. Currently my partner scans most of my posts,  but inevitably mistakes can creep in!

 ’The old dry stone wall’ - the picture book that never was!

The drafts jumped over several  hurdles at the Oxford University Press,  but a year later an editor changed and they didn’t proceed. So now it’s a poem for children in my book and I made it into a little film just for fun!

Please click on arrow on centre of the film to watch it.

Now available as a laminate for a child’s bedroom or for teaching purposes from the Open Art Cafe Rottingdean and a modest £3.00

Pelham Puppets –  connections and our Play Book

My mother and I wrote plays for our marionettes but also plays for Pelham Puppets. in the 1950′s.We knew Bob Pelham and every time he created a new puppet he wanted a new play. This play is one of her plays from Book 1. I filmed them  them all and made a DVD to go with a facimile on her book. Excellent present for ‘oldies’ keen on nostalgia.

I sometimes put the book and DVD  on ebay, but a  copy can also be found in ‘The Trading Post and Coffee Shop’  in Kemp Town in Brighton.

Book 2 – the film for the DVD  has been waiting to be edited for seven years – how time flies! But may get round to it one day!

Music - Alan, my partner found retiring quite stressful too  He has grade 8 in classical guitar, but once in Brighton (this place can have a strange effect on people) he learned the banjo and calls a violin a fiddle!

‘A flurry of seagulls’ are his tentative fiddle skills, with the help of the seagulls! Click on the arrow in centre of film to watch. It lasts a whole minute.

Luckily, Paul (youngest son) plays the penny whistle and the dobro s0 Alan is in his element when they get together so in this film adds his banjo to the mix – the goats wisely ignore the whole proceedings.

Additional pages on this blog – click  on the header.

Youtube updates – films include

 Virginia Woolf”s Garden.

Monet’s Garden

Rottingdean Smugglers.

Scenes from Alice in Wonderland was made before we moved down here.

Puppethouse Mayhem - This page is dedicated  to updating our puppet history. Our dedicated website is  - 
http://www.puppethouse.co.uk/
 developed with my youngest son Paul Perrin, 15 years ago)

Our puppet history in brief  as follows - Our family were one of the earliest touring puppet companies after the Second World War. We were rich or poor depending on the sun and the season. However we did several interesting things, satire for Granada TV, made and presented two   T V puppet cooks for a programme for deaf children, we appeared on Cliff Richard’s Saturday Spectacular with newspaper marionettes and we all did the pilot for BBC’s ‘Telegoons’.  Later I did  a further 15 episodes. The show was a puppet version of the ‘Goon Show’. Our marionettes appeared in ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ on the West Pier. Although did much within family, I was a puppeteer in my own right and toured in Variety.

Re-constructions of our marionette performances on film and mini documentaries.

The film I am really pleased to have made  was one with my mother eight years before she died ‘The story of our magical marionettes’.

We usually included small extracts from  ’Alice in Wonderland’ in our marionette musicals, particularly in both Blackpool and Scarborough in the 50s and 60s. In those days there were ‘wakes weeks’ when factories and mills closed and the  workers had their annual holidays. My father prided himself in putting huge marionette musicals together, these programmes  included the puppet circus and fun,  but also extracts from classical stories and both modern and classical music.

I am still working towards gaining lottery funding to  display  our 200 historical marionettes with 20 films of recontructions to go with them.  

The  film that follows is based on different scenes that we would have used in our shows. Filmed in London, partly in my garden and partly in my loft. My mother  clambered up the ladder to the loft well into her seventies. It all became a chance to create something new out of the chaos of all of our lives. We regarded it as a labour of love.

Re-creating the Puppet Circus was another marathon, no crew, just my mother and I. Unfortunately it has none of the repartee of the clowns. Although I have recently found an audio tape of my parents doing one of their shows, it has proved to be a bridge to far listen to it, and to put it on film!

I still get ‘pulled out of the woodwork’ for guest appearances .  Ann and Eccles at GSPS event 2011!

Eccles insisted on pulling the cord for the Goon Show Plaque although a special personality had been booked to perform the honour!

Link for most of our puppethouse films as follows -

https://www.youtube.com/user/puppethouseuk

The Weald = for love of my allotment – is a brief update although there is a dedicated site too

New Poems – often put new poems up, but sometimes competitions state poems must not have been put even on ones own blog. If likely to enter a competion sometimes hold poems back for a while.

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Mother and Grandmother – Yes I am both!

One of the joys of life is to be a mother and for me a grandmother. I adore my sons and  grandchildren, now young men. I seldom write posts about any of them. I simply don’t want to invade their privacy. Two exceptions follow -Robin is the eldest son, Paul the youngest.

Robin  is a qualified sports injury and  holistic masseur -  a professional racquet ball coach  and a qualified hypnotherapist specialising  in  gastric band hypnotherapy – the commercial is as follows:

Robin’s consultation rooms in Biggin Hill.

Contact details - robinoftatsfield@googlemail.com

This film that follows is simply Robin showing me how to make lavender bottles,  the only one in the family who can remember how his grandmother made them!

Paul has an IT company - he developed our historic PuppethouseUK site – 15 years ago, is active in politics, and is a Punch and Judy Professor  performing  in and around Brighton when he can fit it in – the commercial as follows:

Contact details –  paul@idltd.com

See the highlights from his show on the terraces in Rottingdean 2011

For those in and around Rottingdean

Cafe Poets ’Pop in and write a poem workshop’ take  place on the first Wednesday morning of every month – except July and August – and completely free!

The Open Arts Cafe Nevill Road Rottingdean 10.30 to 12.30. Aimed at new and apprentice poets.

I bring in  warm ups, inspiration – we write, we share, (if you feel brave enough) but no crits.

Best wishes

                     Ann Perrin   BA. M.Sc. 

My other  blogs 

1. For love of my allotment -a starter Plot on the Weald -a small field with a leaky pond gets some tlc. There is a page with a link on the header. This is part of the allotments ours is tiny

h
http://forloveofmyallotment.wordpress.com/
   

2. Tips for seasonal affective disorder – SAD.  I am a mild sufferer myself but am also  a Master Practitioner in NLP (Neuro linguistic programming) which is also used as a basis for CBT.

The ideas run from October to April once a week and are in ‘the spirit of physician heal thyself’.  But as this site has became quite popular with people with mild depression the rest of the year. add posts all year at the rate of one every two weeks

I worked for PCT’s, The Croydon and Sutton MS Centre and The Cancer Support Centre in Purley so have quite a lot of experience in the therapy world.

Link is here 
http://tipsforsadandserendipity.wordpress.com/

If you are feeling poorly for other reasons you might find – Relaxation and self hypnosis for positive health -useful. It was originally a CD and very popular when I had a practice – but I added some images last year, so there are two options - you can close your eyes and just listen, or watch the images.

Good too for stress – maybe for carers – I know about the stresses of being a carer I was one was one myself – twice!

Lastly please take a minute to read the following

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If you like a post please press ‘like’ – it ties you into nothing – and is encouraging for the author –  me! 

Acknowledements

Poetry

Ian Duhig, Jacob Polley, Jean Sprackland, John McCullough, Keisty Boon, Jane Maker, Janet Cameron, John Davies and Simon Wrigley – support with poetry

Film making

Orpington Film and Video Makers,  Spring Park Film Makers, Tom Hardwick for support with film making.

Life in general

Robin, Paul, Alan for support and encouragement and to all those who bother to read my blog!

Many thanks for looking

Ann