Welcome to Helen’s World

Welcome to ‘Helen’s World’, this is the first Friday email for you. 
I want to make a little overview of sensory input and output that have been shaping me this weather. Whether it be the last week, month or even all my life. 

There’s a button at the bottom for suggestions, please send me some, this is an idea and I want it to grow into a little tribe. 

When I was fifteen, I realised that being the middle child of seven in a small council house was cramping my style, so I asked my mother if I could build a shed in the back garden. She said yes, please, yes, as I had been taking a lion’s share of space with my books, CDs, paints, and guitar. Having a vastly creative child can be a burden on a small household.
I started working in a chip shop when I was eleven. It was before child labour laws, and I was delighted to save my five pounds a week in my Henry the Hippo bank account. I saved for university but spent a good chunk of it on a shed. 
My family supported the whole project, and my cousin, the apprentice electrician, wired the whole thing up for me. My brother was in Letterfrack at the time learning to make furniture so he made me some cool space-saving pieces.

When it was built, everyone in the whole estate and all my friends wanted to hang out in the shed. It became known as Helen’s World.
It was the first place I had where I called all the shots, all three squared metres of it. 
I listened to so much music from the summer of love in the sixties, I painted with oil paint for the first time and fell in love with it. I got to practice my guitar every day without being told to whisht. (whisht is what my family say for ‘be quiet’ – it derives from the Irish language ‘bí i do thost’ which means ‘be in your silence’) and I wrote and read copious amounts of poetry and stories and met for the first time James Joyce and Billie Holiday. 

I’ll start Helen’s World by going back there. This mistle will have 6 things in it in the IN section. All the senses. Click on the underlined bits for the links.
Then some things in the OUT section. These are the things I have made to share. 

Your feedback would be much appreciated. 
Lots of love and light, 
Helen x
FEEDBACK
IN

Year: 1996/ / senses from the shed. 

  1. Ears- Ken Kesey’s Magic Bus Ride introduced me to The Who. The Who: The Magic Bus
  2. Eyes- In art class we had to recreate the work of a modern artist. I chose this Wassily Kandinsky — Composition VII, 1913
  3. Nose – Every few months I would sneak on a coach from Lisnarick to Dublin to discover the city and to sit outside The Abbey Theatre in the hopes that Yeat’s ghost would say hello. It didn’t, but I did go to Temple Bar and learn about meditation and discovered Nag Champa 
  4. Mouth – Sushi was a revelation  In 1996 we went to Dublin with the scouts and went for dinner South Great George’s Street to a new restaurant called Yamamori. I couldn’t remember the name and always called it Yummymummy. 
  5. Hands – My uncle worked in a clay pipe works and told me that Fermanagh had great clay. I hunted for it but never found it, so ended up buying it in Ken Ramsey’s art shop. Clay, and all its wonders came and stayed forever. 
  6. Mind – My teenage mind was blown apart by Nostradamus and the notion that anyone could predict the future. Interestingly, Nostradamus was a plague doctor and wrote poetry about the plague. Apt for our times. Here are some Quatrains that I spent my teenage evenings reading in awe and confusion.
OUT

Year: 2020 – Some Covid (Voicd) work from Lockdown I 

  1. Writing- Bushwhacking – a poem 
  2. Reading – Bumbus Bumbadae – A children’s story I wrote in 2016, still a work in progress.
  3. Painting – Self Portrait 1. Covid Lockdown Portraits. 
  4. Helping/ Teaching: Make Your Message
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