Tag Archives: Disney

Hippy child & hedgehog invasion

A lazy day today, real lazy, I slept something like five hours longer than normal and didn’t realise the time at all when I woke up – it’s frustrating because I went to sleep four or five hours earlier than I normally do because I want to get into a new routine!  Ironic really!

Though I think I’ve caught the cold Paul and Henry has, as I am achy and bleh!

If I could dress however I wanted to today how would I?

A light cotton dress made useless by a hugely thick knee length fleece cardigan, white dress potentially and rainbow cardigan – I want to wear large beaded jewellery, so I would probably have three different length necklaces on, wooden beads with copper or brass and bracelets to match.

It’s not summer and it’s not a warm day, but I am crazy enough to wear sandals with this because I know I will be warm with that cardy. 

As lazy as I feel I’d actually make more effort with my hair today and have them done with curling tongs, so I have a cute but scruffy rainbow dolly look to me.

I may even do something I really love and wear one of my knitted plaits in my hair and maybe attach a couple of feathers to it.

Basically I want to look like a child from Peter Pan’s lost boys or like something that fell out of my all-time favourite TV series, The Tribe, today.

It’s an OK day to be gardening, dry at any rate – so I’d have probably have been out there today if it wasn’t for the bad neighbour.  Especially as I seem to have window trained a great tit to befriend me in the last few days, I have a feeling he’d actually sit on my lap or something if I were outside he doesn’t seem afraid of me when I am at the window and he has come up to look at me within 3 inches and I move and he doesn’t flinch.

As I said before, when it comes to wildlife, I am a bit of a Disney Princess.

Talking of which I had a dream last night that six hedgehogs came into the garden one after the other and walked into the house and wouldn’t leave and as I was trying to encourage them to get out, they hid.  When Paul felt that they can’t live in the house, he went to chase them out and as he did so they all slowly morphed into porcupines instead and aggressively tried to defend themselves from being man handled. 

Paul was so upset in the dream he phoned up a specialist to get rid of this very problem, the man came and said that the hedgehog/porcupine problem is down to him not remembering things for me and not taking care of me properly, so the porcupines are trying to fill in his duties.

Paul sarcastically said what like doing the washing up etc?  This made the entire four little baby porcupines become bigger than their largest parent and they all chased Paul – I don’t know what happened to Paul in the dream after that, but I was confused and went into the garden.

I nearly trod on a frog and the frog was sitting in a crack in the patio looking at me.  When the hedgehog/porcupine specialist came out into the garden and was on the phone to somebody – he then turned to me and said that someone special has arranged a party for me and that they are going to be coming soon.

I was confused because nobody visits us.

So, when people started letting themselves into my house to set up the party in the garden I was amazed to find loads of people there, mostly celebrities, like Queen, Whitesnake and a bunch of others.

I never did find Paul again in the dream.

I woke up when someone behind me kiss me on the cheek and cuddled me from behind, whilst Brian May was about to start on his guitar for me.

Weird dream, but fun!

I think that the hedgehogs is something to do with my inability to do art because of my art table being used for other things – hedgehogs are one of the main animals I tend to paint and draw with confidence.

Thanks for reading!

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Top 10 dreams or imaginings

Top 10 of dreams or things regarding my imagination

Top 10 favourite scenes to imagine

Anything with caves or subterranean

A world made of candy

Dark street scenes

Scenes with rain

Scenes with fire

Vampires

Lost souls fighting against the odds

Spooky children

Circuses and carnival life

Ballroom and parties

Top 10 favourite movies to imagine replaying in my head but differently

Charlie and the chocolate factory with Gene Wilder

Disney’s Funny little bunnies

Rise of the guardians

Mad Max movies

Tank Girl

Hook

Batman movies

Labyrinth with David Bowie

Mr Magorium’s wonder emporium

Alice in wonderland with Martin Short as The Mad Hatter

Top 10 favourite books or stories to imagine and do differently

Gregor the overlander series by Suzanne Collins

Fool by Christopher Moore

The man in the picture by Susan Hill

Smoke and mirrors anthology by Neil Gaiman

Tales of the peculiar by Ransom Riggs

Charlie and the chocolate factory by Roald Dahl

James and the giant peach by Roald Dahl

Engelbert Sneem and His Dream Vacuum Machine by Daniel Postgate

The spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien

Top 10 repetitive dreams I have at night – whether I like them or not!

Going back to my mum’s house in London packing over and over again!

Being chased by something but all it is, is love

Reptiles protecting me from something or shepherding me into places

Swimming in clean water and being pulled out of the water by crocodiles or alligators

Walking or running through a woodland with large lake and streams that is situated behind an army barracks

Sitting in a car talking to the man in a black suit

Putting up or taking down Christmas decorations, usually Christmas is cancelled

Visiting the dentist who takes out the wrong tooth or did something wrong

My pets in the garden falling into a muddy pond or being swept away by floods

Visiting a candy stall in a market but it’s all free because a mysterious person paid for it for me

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Anthropomorphised animals

Since a child I have loved anything that anthropomorphised animals, I got into this after seriously becoming a mega fan of “The animals of Farthing Wood” TV series and being an avid collector of their magazine and other merchandise; it wasn’t until I was an adult that I discovered that “The animals of Farthing Wood” was actually and originally a novel. 

I think I was one of the first children in this country to fully understand the impact humanity has on the environment and the animal kingdom, because I remember being commended in one of my schools for a poem I did about pollution and its effects on animals when I was just seven (that’s 1989).  I was a child, who was raised in the suburbs of North London, but I was often shipped out to other relatives around the country who lived rurally and on farms, so being a natures child in every sense of the word, I saw the massive changes humanity did to the world.

Every other month as I grew up my heart broke time and time again as more and more of my favourite outdoor places became new housing estates or had a railway track inserted through it and the dead animals that lined the tracks were heart wrenchingly numerous.

As a mostly isolated child who was ignored unless needed, I was often made to play in the large gardens with the pets I had, usually dogs and a rabbit, but squirrels and various birds became very tame around me as I was growing up that they became extended outdoor living pets.  I grew to empathise more with animals than with people.

To me, the animals seem to speak to me and we had an understanding, I learned their habits as much as they learned mine and we respected each other and each other’s ways.  This is why I found it easy to fall into shamanism, because it wasn’t so much as I wanted to be a shaman, rather than, I flowed into it without realising and it wasn’t until a high school friend said to me she thinks I am a shaman because of my ways, that I accepted that maybe she was right and I am that. 

So I read some books on the subject and I was laughing at how basic the training was in it, been there, done that was my response to a lot of it.  It was just so natural to me, that it seemed ludicrous to think people need courses on these things – whereas if they weren’t so involved in being human and doing modern human things, they’d all be like this too – it’s natural.

I know as I was growing up, cousins and even my own mother would be frustrated at how the squirrels and the crows won’t go near them, when they wanted to pet them right then and there like I could… I would tell them, you need to do this and do that before they come to you, you need to respect them and do it like this because they see it as impolite if you don’t – “you’re mad” was often the response as they grumpily slump off back inside, hating nature for rejecting them!

“The Animals of Farthing Wood” were not the only inspirations however, there were many others such as “Blinky Bill”, various Disney movies, “Rude dog and the dweebs” and so much more! 

So animals in some way or another are a regular feature in my stories.

Happy reading!

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The Gnome Mobile By Walt Disney

The following review contains spoilers.

The gnome mobile

I loved this ever since I was tiny – I don’t know how old I was when I first watched this movie but I do know that it was before I was five years old and I watched it a lot!

The gnome mobile is unfortunately one of the Disney movies I talk about a lot to people who ask me about my favourite Disney movies and I get the response of “never heard of it”.  I am always stunned but I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but I am every time I get that response!  Why?  Because it’s super magical that’s why!

If you are like most people I have told about Gnome Mobile then allow me to enlighten you to what the movie is about! 

The movie is based on a lumber tycoon of Irish descent harvesting wood from an (unbeknownst to him) special magical woodland where a community of gnomes live; Because of the deforestation the gnomes are developing a disease called “fading” which is killing the community off and the whole race is in dire straits and at risk of extinction. 

So Jasper (a young gnome man) and his grandfather (Knobby) set out to track down the man responsible for cutting down the forest that is their home!  Knobby has caught the disease “fading” and his last and dying wish is to see that his grandson Jasper marries a nice young gnome girl before he dies, so he is sure his line continues!

The storyline is much more than this and there are many funny twists and turns in the movie; my favourite scene is the scene near the end where Jasper is presented with several eligible and beautiful gnome young ladies to choose from – but it is not as simple as that, because as per the tradition of gnome culture, the marriage is determined by what happens during a special kind of sporting event that helps determine who Jasper is fated to marry.  Jasper has to run away and find the one he wants and hopes that she can pin him down without being wrestled off him for a count so that they can marry; but there are many other gnome girls all fighting for the handsome catch which is Jasper and Jasper has to literally run for his life to get the shy Violet he wants! 

It’s very beautiful and I love stories where they show massive ecological concern and so forth, especially with magical twists like this one.

The tycoon as it happens learns what he is doing and turns the forest into a reservation.  Sorry for the spoiler, but he is encouraged to do so by his grandchildren who had befriended the gnomes at a picnic.

This is a very inspiring movie and I have always loved it, as a child I watched this more than once a week and it was my biggest pacifier.  Unfortunately when I was around eight years old, my mother gave this movie to a childminder of mine so I could watch it during the day when I was with her and the childminder kept it as payment after an argument they had where my mother fired her.

My parents never could find this movie again throughout my whole childhood, so I was absolutely thrilled when I moved in with Paul in 2009 to find it as a DVD on amazon and yes!  I bought it!

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Reading and writing past and present

I have always wanted to be a writer since I was ten years old when Mr Alistair a therapist/teacher told me that I had a gory imagination and extraordinary talent; back then my specialism was horror and it has only been in the past seventeen years that my writing has moved onto fantasy, comedy and poetry.  I started writing stories about alien invasions, vampires and alarmist ideas about climate change, El Niño and the end of the world.   I have for most of my life been a dedicated environmentalist, but since I talked so much in a spiritual forum about my concerns I lost confidence to continue writing this journalistically (is that a word? if not why not?), because I was accused of being a doom-sayer and me being a very uplifting positive person this accusation hurt me enough to stop me.

My first ever short story of any real length was based on Persephone in the underworld that I wrote when I was eleven.  I imagined how life must have felt like living in the underworld and even when I was that young I had a good clear understanding that not everyone is 100% evil or good, so I wrote about Hades in a positive form and it was very much influenced by my passion for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.  This is a theme that has followed me through my writing life; if there is a misunderstanding in something, I am always willing to show another side to it – determined to prove to everyone that nothing is just black or white; it is a multitude of colours.  I can do this to the most indigestible of subjects too, according to a few people who have seen my handwritten work – thus I am sometimes known as an excellent mediator and diplomat, as long as the subject doesn’t get me too personally hot under the collar. 

One friend recently told me that they see me as society’s apologist, whatever that means.  I looked it up and I am not really that religious enough to be considered an apologist, though I suppose if you were to watch me answering questions whilst I am watching many quiz shows on religion, you’d say I seem to know an awful lot about religion for someone who isn’t interested in being religious.  You see I think this is where people misunderstand me – it is not that I am not religious, I am more humanist because I think that religion by and by causes division and I am all for world unity.  However I am a deeply spiritual person who literally believes in anything until it is absolutely solidly proven not to exist – hence why I leave milk and honey next to the stove at night for the house spirit (Nisse/elf) and ask permission to the tree itself before I prune it and honestly believe in various ancient customs and ideas – though I am still soul searching, but I will make this abundantly clear now, this is not an invitation to be converted to anything.  My ancestry history is so mixed, whenever I feel I should dedicate myself one way or another, I feel like I am upsetting some ancestor on the other side, so I don’t bother myself with dedication of that sort.

Anyway, this post was going to be about how I started writing and what I started with and where I have ended up.  I have written a lot of comedy and comic themes recently that I have noticed I have more and more of the fantasy and sci-fi comedy genre, if that is a genre.  I told Paul the other day that I feel like I am being possessed by the spirits of the deceased members of the Monty Python gang and Terry Pratchett, I try and write serious high fantasy and I can’t help putting in some silliness into it and I am seeing corny puns in everything!  The more I fight it, the funnier I get.

Unfortunately the comedy themes are rarely if ever posted on here, because I have made this mostly into a life update and poetry blog, rather than the intended fantasy blog, because I worry that my worst writing might be my best and my best my worse in the eyes of the world.  So I never really know which short stories and snippets to risk posting here.

I have decided to make this blog more of a writing diary, but again I have fears that I might reveal too much of my plans.  Fear is a major factor for me not posting much lately.

I have a handwritten diary I update about once a week on average because I keep forgetting to add to it – this diary is purely about my writing, my plans and any strange themes I have noticed that day or week.  For example, I have noticed I get a story idea in my head, then a book falls off the shelf in the library of a similar theme I was thinking about – weird coincidences like this happen a lot to me.  Then whilst television flicking, subjects of things I have been thinking about or themes of the day seem to be found everywhere, even on my sons chocolate wrappers as adverts at times!

I was thinking about sharing these day to day themes and the weird occurrences they have been discovered as part of my day to day blogging, as these things often develop into story ideas for me as I sit back and wonder what the universe wants me to do with these supposed signs?  What story is she prodding me towards and I believe this is why I have more ideas than actual work – I am never without a new idea, the problem for me is writing them down fast enough and concentrating on less than three at a time.  This is extra difficult for me because I am an attention deficit sufferer, I get bored doing the same thing or thinking about the same thing for longer than twenty minute bursts – hence why my current reading list on Goodreads usually has around twelve current books on the go!  It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a book, it just means I really can’t concentrate for more than twenty minutes.

Thinking about my reading list on Goodreads has actually just reminded me to make a point here on a matter a friend recently said to me the other day – she noticed that I have all these books on Goodreads I am currently reading but I only manage to read between ten and forty pages a day of maybe two or three books and she said that as far as she understands I am always reading but the Goodreads activities doesn’t prove it.  I said it is simple really when you consider that Goodreads is not designed to update magazines and newspapers and out of print books that are not listed on their site at all as well as local pamphlets and guides, game back stories, research websites, other people’s blogs and so forth. 

Here is a list of my magazine subscriptions and I do mean, I read them every time they are published either weekly or monthly;

Writing Magazine

Garden News

Sci-Fi Now

Gardeners World

Tesco

Yours

Pets @ home

Total TV Guide

Amateur Garden

Kitchen Garden

Lego club magazine

WWF membership news and stuff

Bibliophile

BBC History

New Scientist

Focus

Classic Rock

When I pick up a new magazine, that is the only thing I can read from beginning to end and it takes me around an hour to two hours – the reason why I can do that with a magazine rather than a novel is simple, the subject changes every few minutes.

Honestly, I am addicted to reading, I am addicted to downloading new information into my mind on a constant basis and I am a person who doesn’t enjoy sleep – I see it as a waste of time, but being ill, I have to sleep more than most and it literally drives me crazy!  All I want to do is think learn and do.

So there you have it!

Hello, I am Tina Cousins and I am a reading and writing addict and I don’t intend to cure myself of it, goodbye.

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Inktober Day 15 – The Muppets

Inktober Day 15 – The Muppets

 

I didn’t think I could do anything like this, I am surprised, I know some of the colouring is wrong, but I am trying to get used to sharpies not being the colour of the lids!

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Inktober Day 14 – Kermit

Inktober Day 14

 

I realise the colour scheme is wrong, sorry about that, got confused between pens.

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Inktober Day 9 – Tigger

Tigger for Inktober Day 9

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Inktober 2018 – Day 5 – The Mermaid

Mermaid

 

Yes today is the 5th day of Inktober and as you can see I have chosen a mermaid for my theme of the day!

Everybody knows what a mermaid is, but do you know what they are really like?

They aren’t what you see in Disney movies according certain world folklore and that’s for sure!  They don’t go around singing at mortals and wishing they were humans and fall in love you know, well actually they do sing at mortals and when they do it’s a sign you really should block your ears and get out of that ocean and according to some legends, they do sometimes fall in love with mortals too, but it’s not all pearls and coral – oh no!

Mermaids from Ireland were called Merrows and they were supposed to be ugly creatures, with green hair, scales, and claws and were evil critters by all accounts.  They had a penchant for falling in love with beautiful human men and would often kidnap them to take them into the sea to drown them so their spirit could live with them in the other realm or they would take on the appearance of a beautiful human woman and breed with him on land and disappear with or without her offspring and the groom.

In Russia they have the Rusalka which can be either benevolent or evil depending upon the individual, you could never tell what a Rusalka would be like if you saw one, so it was best to keep away from them.  It is thought they were the spirits of young girls who were horrendously killed or had violent accidents, if their death was caused by a rape and a murder it was said that those would be evil spirits to men, as any man who goes near her in her transformed self would be garrotted to death by her long hair!  Sometimes women who are in danger would become protected by the Rusalka from any man nearby who is about to harm her!

The Fin Folk of Norway and the Orkney Islands were often considered using humans as slaves and they only way to escape them were to throw coins of silver into the sea to distract them as they loved silver a lot!

So, the next time you think that mermaids are sweet endearing ladies of the sea, with shrill beautiful voices and you fancy taking your chances to get romantically involved with one – think again! 

 

 

 

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My fantasy knowledge

My to read list is huge on Goodreads.com, and I have one book left from the library that I must read before the 4th of July, it hasn’t been read thoroughly yet because I tend to borrow the maximum each time I visit the library, note bibliophile present. The last book I have from the library that’s half read at present is “H.P Lovecraft’s book of horror” an anthology of 21 classic short horror stories which includes with my personal rating;

Supernatural horror in literature essay/introduction by H.P Lovecraft 9/10
The signalman by Charles Dickens 8/10
The house and the brain by Edward Bulwer-Lytton 8/10
The body snatcher by Robert Louis-Stevenson 2/10 (low rating yes, shock horror)
The spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers 10/10
The foot of the mummy by Theophile Gautier 9/10
The horla by Guy De Maupassant 8/10

The rest have yet to be read and they will include;

The fall of the house of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
The dammed thing by Ambrose Bierce
The upper berth by F. Marion Crawford
The yellow sign by Robert W. Chambers
The shadows on the wall by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
The dead valley by Ralph Adams Cram
Fish head by Irvin S. Cobb
Lukundoo by Edward Lucas White
The double shadow by Clark Ashton Smith
The mark of the beast by Rudyard Kipling
Negotium Perambulans by E.F Benson
Mrs. Lunt by Hugh Walpole
The Hog by William Hope Hodgson
The great god Pan by Arthur Machen
Count Magnus by M.R James
Followed by the afterword by Lovecraft and the literature of cosmic fear:

Yesterday I finished Coraline by Neil Gaiman and other stories. Which were very compelling reads and I am what a readers quiz calls a polygamous reader, therefore I started reading H.P Lovecraft’s anthology before Coraline’s anthology, but I was so much more taken with Neil Gaiman than I was with H.P Lovecraft’s compilation, that I literally abandoned H.P Lovecraft until there was no more Neil Gaiman to read.

If I am having a good day with my health on the days I visit my work advisor I usually treat myself to a book or three at the local charity shops on the way home, it’s a habit I can’t get out of; unfortunately yesterday there were quite a few I liked, in fact, I would have by choice bought home five books, but I only had enough money for two. The ones I found and bought home were books three and four of the Eragon series (the inheritance cycle) by Christopher Paolini. I have never watched the movie Eragon and nor have I ever read the books. I had the first two books at home, never read and abandoned on the shelves until I could get the complete set and now I have them I am thrilled. Unfortunately, knowing me, it will probably be 3+ months before I start reading them, because I am currently reading 26 books according to my goodreads.com currently reading list.

That doesn’t need to get any longer does it? I am I have to start on the fifth to fourteenth book of the Wizard of Oz series before I can think of moving onto another series, also I have the last book of the Fifty Shades of Grey to read as well.
Oh the life of a bibliophile is far too short!

It’s stupid to think that I get through an average of 1 to 4 books a week and that my “to read” list is currently 4647 and that expands by no less than 20 books per week. It’s ridiculous, even if I was immortal and glued my arse to a chair and read 24/7 I would never ever catch up in reading unless there was a total ban for thousands of years of new material being published!

I hope in the future there will be a little chip inside people’s brains where you can download information immediately by the press of a button; I would opt to be a literary and historical know-all and I would also want to be proficient in all creative mediums and telepathy.

I get huge bouts of depression because I can’t do more than one thing at once. I want to read, but I have to go through a painstaking process of choosing which book gets my attention at that precise moment; but then I want to paint or write and I am sitting back thinking, well one things has to be put on hold, which will it be? What shall I do? I have so many things to write about and so many ideas, that I can never knuckle down and write them, because as I am writing I am being flooded with too much future work, that I surrender and do nothing.

I don’t suffer from writers block, I suffer from writers flood and because of that, I don’t write a majority of the time. Because it sends me mad, I write gibberish and I lack focus, because I think as I concentrate on other things, many things at once.
You can probably see this problem in my updates here.

I am a huge fantasy fan, but I don’t know much of the most commonly known fantasy books and movies because I refrain from watching or reading them if they’re popular, because they normally end up being frustrating commercialised entities that are constantly pushing out new material every few months. When I sit down to read a book and it’s a series, I like to think I have the whole series ready on my shelves before I start. If there are more books in that series coming out months later, it infuriates me, because I don’t always remember what happened in the books in great details and I do not like re-reading books if I can absolutely help it; (too many books and so little time).

The books I have not read and the movies I have not watched so far, that are popular in fantasy and family genres.

Eragon series books and movies
How to train your dragon books and movies?
The books after Harry Potter’s Goblet of Fire haven’t been read yet
The movies past Harry Potter’s order of the phoenix
Once upon a time TV series
Supernatural TV series
The lion the witch and the wardrobe book
Narnia books
Final fantasy games
World of Warcraft games
Game of thrones TV series and books
Blood ties TV series
Twilight movie and books
True blood TV series and books
Nanny McPhee and the big bang
The Terminator movies
Maleficent movie

So as you can see, I have not watch nor read the biggies; but I do know a lot of fantasy that gets people scratching their heads at me and wondering what the hell I am talking about.

Those include;

The Gor series of books
Diary of a wimpy vampire books
The Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman (though they are becoming popular)
The weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
The play your own adventure books and fighting fantasies of Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson
Nightmare TV series
Raven TV series
Highlander TV series
The fact there are 14 stories of OZ from the Wizard of OZ and that nobody knows the world completely, that is a complete bafflement for many
The Deptford mice books
Troll movie 1986
Critters movies
Tremors movies
The Disney movie – the gnome mobile
Shirley Temple’s movie – the blue bird
Angels in America movie
Dogma the movie

So, go feast yourself on these so-called unheard of books and movies.

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