Asi se baila ZUMBA....

Classes will start in January in Marlborough, Ramsbury and Great Bewdyn. Venues and schedules TBC.

The unpublished diary of a PTA mum/ The Story

Once upon a time , I started a blog...to avoid killing someone. Not this one, no. You can stay sitting overthere, I have moved to the country since, I'm ok now. In these dark times, the times of the first blog, I had just become a PTA Chair for a really nice state of the art primary school in a wealthy part of Greater London . The first meeting looked nice enough, great show up ( we had cakes), smiling faces. By Xmas, ball, fair, postcards and all, the dark side of the force was out lurking for me and I wanted to scream every morning and I was indeed every night, by Easter, Summer Fair count down has already started among various movies club, Race Night, teas, picnics, and I wanted to run away. And did not. I'm such a wuss.
Instead, I sent my own message in a bottle and poured my heart into sharp yet humoured, of course, posts. Lately, I exhumed from the depths of my computer a stack of unpublished posts and I will now reunite them under your sorry eyes. I am definitely not the other Skywalker but probably Adrian's Mole long lost twin sister.

Are you ready to ZUMBA?

...Si,Si! Thanks to the three very brave and very lovely ladies who went through the trial session this morning, this blog is from now on the official home for ZUMBA in Marlborough.

Classes will start in January in Marlborough and Ramsbury. Venues and schedules TBC.

The Nativity Play List

I have attended last Friday my eighth Nativity Play and as amazing as it can be it's far from being my last one...fortunately. I just love it. I love the singing, I love the story...how many stories can keep you interested when you know the end and you have heard it like 2010 times, I ask you...I love the mess, the noise of the younger siblings...yes even that.... I love the waving and the improvisations but mostly I love the endless imagination of British teachers all over the world in order to give a role to each and every kid of a class of 25 when the original story is about pretty much a young couple and a donkey.
Each 1st of december there is a very strange excitement when I dig in the bottom of the school bag for the slip of paper announcing the role my Nativity kid of the year would have landed, and requiring various items intended to shape the adequate costume.
So, so far my kids have, regardless of gender or size or age, played the role in a Nativity play of : Spiderman, a lion, a sheperd, a sheep, a driver, a sheperd, the mother of a sheperd, a narrator, a sheperd. No lobster so far but one can only hope....and a special tribute to the teachers this year as after all these sheperds in my pre-Xmas life, I only learnt this year that the best way to really keep the tea towel ( checked please) on the kid's head is to tie it with a pair of nylon tights. I know my fellow Nativity mums here will appreciate the tip.

On the Beach.2.

"And Summer? Pretty much the same drill"

Oil on canvas 50x70

On the beach.1.

Since you always need shoes to go down on the beach in Brittany, yes, even in the summer( actually, for most of people in Britain, it's quite a normal thing to do, but the southerner I am had to learn the hard way that you also need jeans, sweaters... don't even start me on this)...sooo, I was saying, since you have to keep away from pneumonia, every family house has a collection of wellies, every size, every colour ( well, actually always the same colour which is kind of the problem). My father in law's cottage does not miss an inch of the family house and the collection of wellies is amazing in many ways, but probably mostly because in fact there is always only one shoe for the size you require.

That deserved of course a tribute.

"on the beach? When I'd found my size" Huile sur toile 50x70

The Zumba Instructor Training List

For this day which was going the first day of our lives as a Zumba instructor, we had to bring:
-a bottle of water, two in fact;
-a towel;
-a good night of sleep: 8 hours of zumba in a row is not for the hangovered or fainthearted, it's serious stuff;
-change of clothes..as truly the first outfit was soaked by 10.30 and it was snowing outside;
-our hips : no surviving zumba without them;
-a pen and paper...still so many where like "oooh I don't have a pen...how did you know? The list d.., you should read my blog.""
-any paraphernalia dance and fitness teachers have come up with since Jane Fonda;
-our credit card : it's a business after all and a damned well rounded one,
-the right pair of shoes : the ones you can turn, twist, swing not your regular running shoes only meant to move forward....which is life should be actually not only move forward but stray on side and even face back when rythm makes you.

Crazy in Love

Buri's Atelier. Amsterdam 2003.

Since my non husband was not doing nude life modelling for a living at that time, the only explanation for this work is the title.

No excuse and no solution on the other hand for the flashlight but it gives a harry pottery feeling I quite like.

Acrylic on paper, 80x100cm

The Thanksgiving List

Thanks for getting out of my bed every morning when my first move would be to call in sick ...but since I have stopped working 12 years ago, I can't call anyone so I have to get up all by myself,
Thanks for Arpoador Beach, my encounter of the year. I now know for a true fact what I suspected for years : I was a Carioca in a previous life.
Thanks for the pair of Repetto tango shoes which lives now in my closet. So equipped, I have been able to consider my next leap, or rather step of faith.
Thanks for having finally decided to stop dieting after 25 years and immediately regretted it, but you have to stick by your decisions once in a while...
Thanks to the usual suspects, guilty as charged for laughter and love.

Liste a la Prevert List

I love lists and I love Prevert, a bit of an egg and hen story really...and I don't have time to make this very useful tool for artist, I have named, the sketchbook. It might be the evident sign that I am not an artist. Real artists produce these very beautiful spontaneous books/diaries/sketchers with watercolours and nice little gimmicksg glued everywhere in between pages and everything matches perfectly spontaneously because they are artists.
seeing that I an usually losing a tube ticket as soon I have bought it round the corner from my house, there is a fat chance I'm going to secure one from a very big trip overseas...and don't even start me on the availability of glue whenever you need it.
Sooo I suddenly decided, because I am that brilliant sometimes that I will do my sketchbooks with the only thing I never miss i.e my words ( which does not mean I am using them properly particularly in English...well as a matter of fact in French too). My sketchbooks will be in writing and it will be a list, well lists...and sometimes or hopefully more than that it could become a painting...When I feel like it and when it is not -2 in my studio which is also the garage by the way.
So today's post will be my first list and because I am a very simple cheerful girl very much in touch with the rythm of seasons, it will a Thanksgiving list. On Thanksgiving Day, that's right.

Nigella's fan

Madonna is still the one but at some point I have to feed my family and here comes the other half Italian strange named woman of my life...I have to confess I sometimes dream about her pantry, it's colourful, it looks delicious without even being cooked and it seems to fill itself effortlessly... it's enough to feed a fantasy when you have to go shopping every two days...

Life Savours. Oil, fabrics and collage on canvas, 30x20cm

Cursed artist

At one point a real artist has to face her addictions and speak to the world.

Life savers, Oil on canvas, 30x20cm

You can't size up love ( Love exercise)

yes, the V was made with one of these rigid meter things the builder use as I was out of "V" in my shop when I made this. Ending up giving the name to the whole exercise...

Wooden letters and pastel on paper

Time exercise

Galerie Contre Temps,

Paris

Woden letters and pastel on papers.

it takes two to tango.5.

La viruta was and still is one of the most famous tango halls in Buenos Aires...

it takes two to tango.4.

because bandoneon and tango are so intricated that you don't know in fact which one created the other...

it takes two to tango.3

Asi se baila is usually the way tango dancers and aficionados salute a good move or entire dance

it takes two to tango.2

El tango (esta ) une poesia loca, a crazy poetry...El choclo, a very famous piece illustrates that well....

It takes two to tango.1.

El tango es..un pensamiento triste que se baila. It's the first of a serie of 5 works on tango and milonga. The idea was to get close to the old tango ad posters.

Oil on paper 50x35cm