revampings

have decided to change the apperance of the blog in light of my new approach to incoprporate all elements of life...

it has pink instead of dark black - maybe about to have a girly phase (slightly unlikely) but is lighter and brighter - hoping for a lighter and brighter new year too (well it may happen).

working my way up to doing a top ten tools and technology entry a la steve wheeler's blog covering a range of elearning top tens (so high fidelity). actually must say I wanted to hate the film cause the book was set in the UK and I have lived with that guy (or I may be that guy) however John Cusack did convert me somewhat; )

must warn you though i do not have an ipod (well of course I am still into vinyl) or an iphone and therefore do not understand half of the tweets I see. my list is likely to be a bit low tech and not very geeky.

I am resisting getting an ipod and an Asus eepc but have alot of photogtaphic technologies on my list of must have technologies. have just got a fabulous rollei 35 and an olympus pen camera. so old fashioned of me - but I do scan from film and store and share digitally.

Haven't got any prints from these yet but in the spirit of keeping the analogue alive here is a holga toy camera 120mm shot...

double exposure with doris day

reworkings

I was on the verge of starting a few new blogs - one for my photography, one for the home learning and one for my education consultancy work...

but wait a minute - that was the old lou (the librarian who wanted to classify and compartmentalise her life)...

so I've decided to stick with this one, tag like a demon and hope that the whole comes together...

I have spent the last few years banging on about an holistic approach to learning... so let's see if the pudding is good.

I mix all these aspects of my life together and each enriches the other - so this year I'm going to give it a try...

I'm not fully convinced yet (with serious control freakish tendancies) - a big part of me wants to add classification (of the faceted kind of course) and labels...

why am I taking this approach - well it's partly to do with the twitter discussions at james clay's blog

I'm of the lets mix it all up variety - yes I want to hear great brains thinking hard but I like to know that those great brains drink coffee, go shopping, and play bingo.

now I'd like to add a photo of me playing bingo but I haven't got one - yet... so I could show a photo of a coffee cup but I haven't got one - yet... so here is a fisheye lens lomo 35mm film shot of the window in my office...



and if you haven't got twitter yet - you are not alone but spend a day using twitterfox and you'll probably get it...

and if you do come along and follow me... but not in a stalking way of course...

revivings

here we are again. doing a mad catchup. so in short. finished job. didn't sell flat. still in glasgow. doing home learning. being an eLearning consultant and wedding photographer.

have been very busy. still not got back onto flickr. now have several websites for various compartments of my life. jump off point is www.loumcgill.co.uk

just published my first photography book (as opposed to wedding, party or Laurie book). it has a pic of my dad on the cover that I really like.

same horizon.d...

By Lou McGill

Book Preview

restartings

But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking?
- the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in,
in to the central catacomb;
the self that took the veil and left the world - a coward perhaps,
yet somehow beautiful,
as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.
Virginia Woolf



well I thought the last few years had taught me patience and they have - but there is always room for more - yes great goddess I've got the message...

So we put an offer in on a lovely flat in Dunoon in February.... yes that does seem like such a long time ago.

Then I gave in my (3 months) notice (which is nearly at an end)...

Our flat goes up for sale and after endless cleaning and perfecting we get a reasonable offer (considering the current climate).

so we accept the offer and all seems to be proceeding.

Then the day after the bank holiday (memorial day to you US folks) we find out that our buyer has withdrawn her offer.

hey bloody ho..

actually Ifeel really sad for her cause it's not her fault at all ( and we would have waited) so sorry that she must be feeling so bad.


we're just moving on and waiting for the next offer. hoping that the dunoon people can be patient for a bit longer.

but in the end it's all so unimportant. They found a dead body in our park this morning- happens everywhere all the time and we moan on and on about meaningless stuff.

I'm thinking of taking the veil...

exhibitings

Over a year ago I made a series of images for a flickr group called das kabinet which was one of my favourite groups. Some of these images are now actually in an exhibition of contemporary landscape photography entitled Open Range. The exhibition is in Battle in East Sussex at the Independent Photographers Gallery. I couldn't get to the preview night due to difficulties getting there from Glasgow.


Shame to miss the preview night of your first ever exhibition so I haven't even seen what the photos look like on the walls. However I have sold two of them so I am very happy about that.

This is a great start to my new life which begins very soon! I can't wait to spend more time with my son and my photography. May even get back onto flickr to play a bit and blog alot more regularly.

The flat is sold and the Dunoon property still going ahead so by the end of July we should be moving 'doon the water'. Hallelujah for that!

perfectings

Well if I'm not an aspie then I guess I'm a fairly obsessive perfectionist. This seems to be affecting most parts of my life.

In my work I get quite stressed out if I can't do my job really well - which I often can't due to the sheer amount of what I need to get done. This does not make me happy. I see Laurie having the same reaction to his homework. If every letter of his sentence is not technically perfect then he has to rub it out and start again. requires the patience and understanding of a saint...

At home we've been preparing our flat to put up for sale (for six months!!!!!!!!)

so how come even with a for sale sign up outside the bloody bath surround was still not done...

so with the prospect of viewings tomorrow I had to find a fabulous hero to come and fix it at no notice and godammit I found one on the internet.

now I know why I got rid of the telephone directories.

I rang the number at about 11.00 and got a lovely woman who understood my plight, got her man on the case and by 4.30 today it was done. Here are the details for my hero joiner and handyman who did a fab job...

so now at 9.30pm I feel that I need to prime the wood, and give it two coats of eggshell... what part of 'you don't need to do this' can't you understand Lou?

I also made Tim spend the whole weekend painting, tidying and cleaning. I even re-stained all the floors in the flat (no mean feat at all).

But at last the flat is looking splendiferous and is up for sale. So if you know of anyone who really needs a fantastic 5 bedroom apartment in the upcoming, and very trendy, southside of Glasgow then please call in and have a look.

Just give me enough warning to

• clean the floors, cooker and mirrors
• put all the rugs down which have been taken up because tammy still hasn't sorted out her bladder
• put new cream duvets with no dog hairs or paw prints on the beds
• put the air freshners on and then turn them off in time not to be overpowering
• turn all the lights on
• carefully position all the shiny display type things to make it look as if we are actually really interesting

At least I didn't give in to Tim's idea of leaving posy design magazines on the coffee table - a step too far for me....

the picture of my fab kitchen (designed by me and supplied by ikea) links to the estate agent website - for those who'd like a nosey...

resignings

I resigned from my job yesterday... and I'm feeling very lighthearted. From June 2008 I'll be 40K a year worse off and 100% free to pursue a wide range of things I want to do...

very odd but on the same day I made my first sale to a publisher for one of my photos. A small step (and not a brilliant sale in terms of renumeration) but significant in many ways. I'm taking it as a sign of very good karma about this big decision....

even more interesting is that it is one of my photos that I really like and hadn't even thought about selling. it's from my trip to china a few years ago and is a wall painting in a daoist temple of the eight immortals - so also significant content in relation to losing some of the more material aspects of my existence... and it's for a book about world religions so I'll get a free copy to add to my collection on spirituality, religion and philosophy. Here is the photo and the quote that went with it on flickr...



If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
Lao Tze

Tim thinks I'm barmy of course seeing significance in the coincidences but I'm enjoying them alot...

so the first steps are taken - the fool on her new journey....

preparings

We're off 'doon the water' as they say in Glasgow.

We've had an offer accepted on a house in Dunoon, which is in Argyll and Bute on the West coast of Scotland.

We are all fairly excited but it isn't planned to happen until the end of May.

This allows enough time to sell our fab flat in Glasgow and for me to work out my notice.

So the home education plan moves on... I will contact the Argyll and Bute council to discuss the possibilities offered by the local grammar school but it does have over 1000 pupils and I personally cannot imagine that this would be OK for Laurie.

There is some debate about the optimum size for a school community to thrive and I'll try to find some and point to it later. However this is largely academic to us as most of that research would not take into account the need for schools to support children with autism by generally minimising the amount of sensory overload they might encounter. It seems logical that the more students there are the more noise, distractions, potential for hidden bullying and chaos there are.

Well we'll see when I talk to them. For now I need to concentrate on working my notice, selling the flat and organising the move.

Worst bit of course is all the damn cleaning in preparation for people to come and look around. That and pretending that we don't have two large smelly dogs...

new beginnings

frozen in time

It feels like we are coming out of hibernation...

So much has happened that I don't have time to do write it all down, but I think we're coming back to the blogging and soon to the home education...

laurie is due to start secondary school this year and it has focussed our thoughts for a long time. I have spent hours looking for a school small enough to replicate his current small primary school in Govan. Shame we can't replicate the head teacher and her staff because he is still doing fantastically well at that school.

We are just not prepared to set him up to fail in a large secondary school where people have no concept of him and his needs. The fact that he is so high functioning means that people just do not see how differently his brain does work. He has also got much better at masking things (like when he doesn't understand the instructions, etc.) He just works it out himself eventually and quietly and then completes the task. He is desperate to start learning 'real' things. He wants academic challenge.

So I am going to do this with him. We will be interpreting the term home education broadly to encompass a wide range of activities, both academic and practical. We will be doing solitary and social learning and sometimes it will be well structured (because he likes that) and other times we'll let our hair down a bit. Our home education won't just be happening in the home but it may include rearing chickens and growing some of our own food.

I can't wait....

We contemplated us both giving up our jobs and moving to Orkney (yes a bit drastic but very nearly happened last September but didn't work out). The plan is now for me to finish work in time to start the secondary education phase while Tim stays in his job. We'll sell the grand flat in Glasgow and downsize. We 're planning to move to the country (maybe in Argyll & Bute)...

I am going to try to make some money with a bit of elearning consultancy and my photography. I've been working on a new website and not had any time for flickr or the blogging. Maybe I can start to catch up again with my non work life!

the new photography website...