Seriously, a whole month since I wrote my last blogpost!?? How is that possible? Well, there is no time to work out how it has gone so fast so I will just accept that it has gone. As June came to an end and I stopped doing the free and live Instagram classes, I felt that things were about to change and they were!
I knew that big changes were afoot for our family, especially for my daughter and me. With passes in all her exams at the end of her final year of secondary school (she's 16), she had met the conditional offer given to her by the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and therefore would be going from Spain to the UK to continue her studies. And I would be going with her for at least the next few years.
In the meantime, I would be taking on some Engish teaching with Nottingham Univerisity - in fact I started today! For this reason, I set up a video channel on my website to offer weekly classes, in response to the lovely group of people who said they enjoyed my Zentangle teaching. If you haven't joined, it's called NowZen and there's also a premium version called NowANDZen and although the concept is simple, the delivery has been excruciatingly complicated! All technical problems that should exist and that still have not been resolved. I have become an expert in workarounds! It has, however, been great fun to try and think of new and different classes on a weekly basis, record them...only to have the video recorder jamming mide way or the electricity suffering a brief cut, or a loud and impossible to ignore interruption from one of the many folk who share this space with me - some of which have made it intact onto the video - some of you may remember the mouse that ran across the floor and gave me a bit of a start at one point! And in the latest, there is a repeated tapping that goes on for ages and ages in the distance - husband making a typical Spanish dish called 'ensaladia rusa' (Russian Salad) - which was very welcome but doesn't usually require anything being repeatedly hit but his mix had got a bit sticky and he was hitting a metal spoon against a glass dish...over and over and over and over again! Ho hum.
I spent 10 rather nervous days as I agreed to let my daughter visit someone she had met on the internet late on in February. He's Spanish but lives with his family in Germany. He was going to come here for a few days at Easer but that was scuppered by the virus. They were both totally engaged with each other from day two...so much so that we were invited to a parental video call with his parents because they were not really quite sure what was happening. However, they have continued to speak almost all day every day during lockdown and as things have started to return to something more like normal. It has become my nightly routine to say goodnight to Romy and also to Marc without really thinking about it as they are always talking. I think it has been the best thing every under the circumstances but they were both desperate to meet in person. As he and his family returned to Spain for the summer holiday, I sort of agreed that she should meet him an after more discussion with his parents, I bought her a one-way ticket to Barcelona (just as the spike in virus numbers began to rise there...) on the understanding that if when they met in person, it didn't feel right, I could buy a return ticket for sooner rather than later. I mean, they could have not liked how the other smelt!! To cut a long and very sweet story short, she stayed 10 days and floated home on a cloud. It's just so lovely to see her (and him) so happy together - they really did 'find' each other! And yes, it's back to hours and hours of facetime videos again and a bittersweet feeling that they know how much they want to be together again... Oh to be 16!
And in the last few days, I have been contacted by Heidi Kay, a fellow tangler in the States who does some amazing classes full of colour and movement. She has come up with a very interesting pattern that has a deep emotional connection for her. I think she must have liked what I did with her pattern Spynes in one of my classes because she has asked if I would 'debut' a new tangle for her! How exciting! So my NowANDZen monthly class on Friday this week will be focussing on this new tangle. It has a name, Mymuze, and it has a lovely back story which I will be sharing in the class. I am just delighted that other tanglers reach out and are happy to collaborate this way. Heidi has already shared some of the pictures that I did of her tangle, so I will put them here too. What do you think?
