Freedom was once the Summer holidays,
Stretching boundless and unimaginably rich after the end of term
But the reality, constrained by over-protective mother,
Grew into a desert of boredom till I longed to be back amongst the society of school.

When I was fourteen, in 1968, we went to Australia and returned again by ship
And reassured by the bounded world of decks and rails
My mother granted us the freedom of abscence from her side
But to a young mind even the novelty of oceans and landfalls palls after five weeks.

University was the great bid for Freedom
Yet faced with a surfeit of opportunities others had long since been jaded by
A full diary bursting with commitments
Left no room for even the F!

A live in relationship
Full of the promise of pleasure on tap
But replete with ready made family
Soon became a web of shopping and bills and complication.

And when the tap seemed suddenly and permanently dry
Affairs offered new freedom
But soon enough proved to be
Double trouble, twice the binding.

We joined a Naturist camp
Spent weekends free of clothes with the sun and breeze on bare skin
But a barbed wire fence circled Five Acres
And at the end of the day you still had to dress to leave.

Time passed and I surpassed my father
Who also never left Her side
For any solitary reason other than work
But I - I went flyfishing in a concrete bowl at Walthamstow!

Twelve years in we went to live in Ireland
Where I tasted moments of freedom
In the hills, by the rough sea
But moments only because even in Paradise you have to earn a crust.

I never lost the habit of moments though
Drinking in the landscape wherever I llive
Striking out across country, up hill and down dale
Going to work as the crow flies.

So at the end of the day
Still seeking freedom
I arrive here
open a blank text window, engage the mind...

Where shall I go today?

Dear All

I have been missing in action for some time now but we move into our newly converted house tomorrow! Hurrah! The bad news is it may take some time to get broadband set up so this is a quick message from work to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Normal service will be resumed in the New Year when I hope to catch up with all at cre8Buzz!

Frewin

Dear All

I have been missing in action for some time now but we move into our newly converted house tomorrow! Hurrah! The bad news is it may take some time to get broadband set up so this is a quick message from work to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Normal service will be resumed in the New Year when I hope to catch up with all at cre8Buzz!

Frewin

I have been experimenting with a design that would work well on screen but is also suitable to print out even on a domestic printer.
I asked for submissions of creative content over on Mo'time - the blog site that Jackal came from and invited me to follow. I have designed pages of the photos and creative writing that came in including from Jackal.
See whether you think it works at either

http://ripple.motime.com/
or
http://www.artscastle.com/Motime%20Miscellany/

Frewin

I may be mistaken but my first impression of cre8buzz is that it is populated by an above average number of women and dare I say, of great attractiveness. Call me old fashioned but I do prefer to see the real face of my fellow social inter-acters, interesting as some abstract avatars may be. I guess that in these early days of cre8buzz, many of the people have been invited rather than happened along so any bias in sex ratio may be down to those who have done sterling work in setting up the site. But if the faces are representational, then the names tell us more creatively something of our member's identities, The Farmer's Wife, ohthejoys, wornoutwoman and Suburban Oblivion, for example. If these titles suggest the stress or limitations of any particular niche in life, then you quickly feel that in this place, alter egos will use creativity to step beyond their circumstances and flourish.

On a different note, we in Britain were treated to the first part of "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" starring Billie Piper in a dramatisation of "Belle de Jour's" book. Originally a blog and then a book, the author of this account of life as a call girl took her name from Luis Bunuel's 1967 film starring Catherine Deneuve as the bored housewife who turns to eroticism for "stimulation". I am not sure where this third incarnation of the story is going and what to make of it yet. It was polished, sassy and implicit rather than the explicitness that would have made it pornographic but whether there is a point to be made...?

Something brought to mind another fictional worker in the sex trade this week though I can't remember the train of thought leading to it. As a teenager I was an avid reader of Steinbeck and I still remember the shock of being introduced to the character of Cathy/Kate - the psychopathic brothel owner. I might have a different understanding if I reread the book now, but the sheer unexplained nature of the evil nature of this woman had a powerful impact on me. Steinbeck was such a painter of character that you completely believe he must have based Cathy on someone in real life.

Another tale that I always felt must be based on life is the title short story from Nobel Prize winning Doris Lessing's "A Man and Two Women". The story tells in a very deadpan way, of two couples, the husbands doctors who set up in practice together but one of whom has an occasional dalliance with the other's wife for the rest of their lives and indeed, even after the innocent doctor dies. What is strange about the story, if fiction it be, is that the lovers do not overly seek out the occasions of their infidelity, they take their opportunities when they safely occur and seemingly never let their affair impinge on their marriages in any way. Indeed the only threat to the status quo is when the other(innocent) wife confesses an affair to the guilty wife. I know human behaviour comes in many varieties but I find such a stable and controlled infidelity hard to believe in except that as Doris Lessing tells it, it IS believable. So if I ever met her, that would be my question to her, did you invent these two couples or were you relaying a story from life? Likewise Steinbeck and Cathy? Unfortunately I don't believe in the afterlife so that one will remain a mystery but to Doris, Congratulations on the Nobel Prize!