Here, I am, in probably my favourite place in the world, my mother’s house, on my own.  What joy!

Twisty is here, and is very kindly looking after mother, whilst I have a moment of utter selfishness, taking stock over the last nine years.

Nine years ago, almost to the day, my mother had a stroke whilst her other two daughters sat and watched it happen.

Nine years ago, the day before, the Banking Consultancy job ended because the banks went to the High Court to prevent them having to give people like you money because they had not done business properly.  I laughed as a room full of people wept over their lost mortgage payments, since they had given up their normal jobs on the basis of getting twice or three times the money they normally get.  Yes the class renegade was right, as usual. The world is a muddy, murky place.

The night following this, my sister called me to tell me that a random blood clot coming adrift was my fault, and that she was entitled to my home.  Apparently this is acceptable behaviour in my family.

The day after that, the other sister was let into the house to await news, and used the time to get keys cut to my home so that she could go through my belongings, threaten me and invent spurious stories to back up their claim to my mother’s money. You would think there was lots of it.  There isn’t.

Four years later, after a corporate scandal in which I earned my brother quite a bit of money by being honest, he ‘took control’ in order to attempt to take all the family money.  I was to live in a rented flat. My family are poison, and they tried to use me to rob their own parents.  I was so ashamed. You cannot really invite a gentleman to share a life like this.

I like to attribute my 160lb weight loss to David Wolfe, because by some irrational quirk of fate, I loved him, despite his many obvious failings.  I regarded him as someone who lacked, and needed the very thing he was trying to avoid.  I had no other reason to want to go on living, after finding that my family, who had never been very great shakes, were utterly worthless, self- obsessed and inadequate people who would cheerfully kill me for a tenner.

The reality was somewhat different.  I had a great deal of knowledge, gained over a lifetime, and I just happened to like him for a variety of deeply emotional reasons.  There was something about the pain that he inadvertently expresses that I plugged into very readily. My relationship with Twisty is along similar lines.  We share pain, and we share tolerance of things that most people cannot even touch in the course of their relationships. It does not always go well, but altogether it is a very healing and healthy relationship.

It is a strange thing, to pick your knight in shining armour on the basis of their ability to deal with pain, but life gets complicated as you get older, and you are fortunate if you can find someone as special as David or Twisty. One has been blamed for nothing at all, on the basis of spite, and the other has been blamed for the state of the world, on the basis of plain, old-fashioned motivation. Life is always chaotic, because it is life , and chaos is the nature of life.

My current focus is on Boris, because Boris has gone as far as he can go without me. Boris will be shocked, but Boris will not be hurt, because hurt is not the nature of my work. I have enough love to give Boris, because Wolfe does not understand what I do, and neither does Twisty.

To clarify this rather abstract concept, I am positing myself as a kind of wireless extender.

I love, therefore so can you.  Go forth and love.

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Fluffety fluff fluff

So, after our uncharacteristic booze discussion in St Andrews, Twisty Headed Man, my uncollaborative artist chum, and I have chewed over a few things and are now recovering from some very complicated cocktails with strawberries and ice-cream.

I have been asked for a post specifically on Scotland and Brexit, so you may get a bonus one  shortly, although I think I have covered my initial responses to the problems popping up in the news so far.  Those who want a nice concise thousand words or so may wish to tune in later.

The first email asking whether poor Boris is my new muse has arrived.  Twisty and I, since we were sitting in a restaurant which had papered its walls with Boris pics, surrounded by English visitors to St Andrews who all appeared to be big fans of his, tentatively discussed this last night.

My objections to this obvious and worthy development are as follows:

Do not mess with the foreign secretary.  The Secret Service can be really quite annoying. (long story)
Boris is very married, and my methods can be a bit intrusive should the recipient choose to allow it.
Boris does not particularly require dissecting.
The balance is not right in terms of benefitting both parties.
There are far more relevant artists out there doing much the same thing.

In my case, the process is quite holistic and emotional, and so I do not think this would be a good idea. Whilst I can see that the ‘strange hair, sane head’ thing fits with my modus operandi, I do not think that copious public speaking and quirkiness is necessarily the entry requirements, although from an intrinsic self-acceptance perspective, this could work out really well for me.

I do not do my thing entirely for me, however.  Somebody else can explain that one to poor old Wolfe.

Anyway, there is at least a year before I have to make a decision.  In the meantime, I think we are looking at someone who does a lot of talking, by the looks of things.

I know this is probably going to be unpopular, but I rather like Boris.  Boris shares many characteristics with my former muse, David Wolfe.  (you knew I would sneak you in somehow)

I have mentioned before that I managed to have an argument with his sister Rachel some years ago, as she is so far removed from everyone else’s functionality that she lacks the ability to converse or accept advice from anyone.  I was attempting to assist her in finding a new identity for The Lady magazine, a publication which I used to carry in the belief that I would be identified as someone who rated integrity above the usual concerns of self-aggrandisement and remuneration.  Little did I know that these negative attributes also apply to people who should really be above them due to their significant advantages in life.

I imagine that this gives me some insight into Boris.  His career to date would make anyone without an inflated sense of self and importance blush, but not Boris.  Boris cruises through life, is extremely well paid for being himself, and still we continue to forgive and encourage him.

I was considering a comparison with Dick Whittington, but I think Boris has now exceeded poor Mr Whittington’s achievements, and is likely, despite some unpopularity with certain Conservatives, to continue to exceed them.  Apparently the sky is the limit for this flawed but charming chap.

And now, it seems that our own dear Boris will be running for PM and leadership of the Conservative Party.  I have my doubts as to whether he is capable of dragging the party back to a position of popularity with anyone but the slightly more fortunate, but given his position, slightly outside the prefecture we have not enjoyed in the slightest, I am sure he would make a popular and entertaining PM, were the party to consider it.

Alas, the Conservative party like their candidates a little grey, and so I wonder if they will select him.  He seems to be a tad abrupt with those who actually work with him, despite the pleasing dishevelment and quick wit.

So, in order to endorse Boris, despite his repellent and extremely rude sister, I would like to suggest to the Conservative party that in order to be considered for any further terms, they should appoint the adorably grey Gove as Chancellor, ditch the appalling trio of Cameron, Osborne and Duncan-Smith to whichever Tory hellhole that most closely resembles a jobcentre, complete with terrified and hostile staff.  There they can enjoy the fruits of their own labours.

I am of the opinion that Boris planned to lose the referendum, and this is another in a long list of charming accidents.  I said in my previous post, and I will say it again IT IS NOT NECESSARILY A BAD ACCIDENT.  Like Boris, Britain is dishevelled, inventive, and fast on its feet.  Like Boris, Britain is well capable of making the best of a difficult situation, and like Boris, Britain is not always nice to those assisting as the country blunders its way through history.  He represents the country perfectly, and short of Scotland rescuing England from the risks involved in Brexit, he is the ideal solution to a problem voters created by opting for a risky but optimistic future.

In a future where the population is likely to become considerably more engaged and educated about politics, it will take a strong, charming person who admits and learns from mistakes, not a blustering, arrogant pair of giggling twits like Osborne and Cameron.  Whether you like it or not, we are well rid of the pair of them.  I move we go for the entertaining option, with a side order of sensible economic policy which benefits the people who have suffered most under a system which has bled small and medium sized business and domestic spending in favour of fat savings, fat business, and skinny prospects for most of the people in the UK.  We now have an opportunity for optimism, and I would like to see this optimism, this vigour and stimulation for growth which touches real people as soon as possible, so I say, let us encourage the wise fool. Boris is the best option England has got.

Hi David,

Have no idea how long ago you blocked me on Twitter, assumed you weren’t lowering yourself to look at my thousands of hours of work anyway.

yada yada bitter and twisted shite

Ina

Hi,

Just a note to say Amazon is causing me some problems with getting the stolen book removed, and I am busy at the moment developing the marketing side of things, and getting the blog onto youtube, minus a few strategic posts that are really just here for Google and Wolfe rather than tag generating publicity.

Studio work progressing and I need to focus on the programming languages if I want to get ahead with the digital side of things, which requires a different mindset than writing and sewing.

Made a video for Wolfe yesterday, for the first time in about three or four years, so evidently I am feeling better about myself.  Hopefully he now understands me a bit better, but who can tell? If not, no loss in trying I guess. Am thinking of doing a series of more general comedy nagging posts.  Unfortunately, nagging requires a face, and Ina has no face, so if I do it, it will probably be under my Second Life name. (my real name is even more ridiculous than Ina Disguise)

Have entered one of my once a decade randy (horny) phases, so who knows what mischief is going to ensue with the creative work, since I tend to pour it all into that.  I will probably be looking a bit different shortly, as I usually metamorphosize during these phases.

The blog will return shortly, when the workload is up to speed, unless something dramatic happens that I feel the need to notice.

Thank you so much for all support so far.

Ina

It strikes me that one of my cats and I have a lot in common.  She doesn’t really go out much, as she bothers the hunting cat by clinging to him, and she checks in with me every hour or so to verify that she is still alive.  I now check hits on things to verify that I still exist.

This is an improvement on ten years ago.  Ten years ago I was having to accept that my life was over, after having done nothing but work for years, since that was all I really cared about.

Ten years ago, I imagine Harry was still coming here, although he had probably starting seeing someone else at the time.  Our relationship ended about two years before we actually split up, which is the opposite of Twisty and I.  When we were together, fifteen years or so ago, we split up long before our friendship ended.  He was so stressed that I felt I would have been killing him otherwise.

Not being able to talk about your actual skill is a very unhappy state to be in.  It was not until a week or two ago that I finally lost my tolerance for small talk. Small talk is great fun, but when your mind is actually working on something much bigger, it eventually causes you to become extremely stressed. Even if you do get them on topic, they tend to run off with a different ball, and you lose interest in redirecting them.

I became intolerant of my sisters at around ten years old, whereupon it was decided that I was weird and not one of them.  My mother did not help at all with this, as she is highly suspicious of anybody who is not like her.  It was not until she had her stroke that she exclaimed that I was more like her mother.  Us creative intellectual types don’t have much interest in making other people do things for us, or dressing snappily.  We are busy doing something else, so it is wise to either get us to actually do something, or leave us alone.  My mother was fortunate to have her mother, my father and then me in her life, as we were/are all pretty much the same, grumpy, positive introverts that apparently exist to do things for her.

Still, it gets very lonely when you have nobody to talk to about the subject that interests you.  I have had to listen to years of ranting about immigration, and as a former ethnic minority specialist, I have quite a lot of counter argument to people who rant about immigration.  Nobody has noticed that I have not bothered to respond to this.

The most intense egomaniac I was with, the chef, only learned what music I liked about two and a half years after I met him.  Either I am a very quiet partner, or I have picked people that swither between self interest and not being particularly interested in me.  I think I deserved better, on reflection.

Maybe we should be less tolerant.  Make way for the optimists, and shed our skin more often when it comes to people.  Maybe we should all be more like Wolfe, and ignore everything that does not instantly gratify.  I have coped with too much, most of it for other people, and now I am left thinking that I will never get to discuss anything real with anybody.

This could be a good thing.  It might lead to some interesting work.

I’m tired, and I do not see an end to being alone.

Ina Disguise Statistics update

For those who are interested, here is my statistics update.

More than a million readership hits per year does not translate into actual readers, so do not be deceived if somebody tells you they have X million hits.  It probably includes some bots, some accidental hits etc.

Overall, Ina Disguise attracts about 5,000 people per year via the artwork, from all over the world, although I seem to be particularly popular in the Far East, Eastern Europe and the USA.

Ina Disguise has about 25,000 readers, the blog is set to overtake the books this year unless I put out the unfinished works I have on the go, which depends on how I feel.  Like the pervert I am, I am having a sewing moment in the course of designing the game so I have not felt like writing for a while.  I have also been building computers for the last month or so, and I have other commitments apart from this project.

95 people have so far this month come to the website looking for information on Wolfe, which is a bit bizarre as statistically speaking, he only gets about 20 percent of the posts.  He is one of many threads, and if you take a look at the tag cloud, ironically not the most significant one.  I have just let it happen, rather than concentrating on one thing or another, so I guess I am a bit inattentive. Some posts were strategic, and I see that my subversive PR is extremely effective. (no, I am not going further into that, but David would not be displeased at the level of naughtiness that goes into this blog)

300 people have got to the products page so far this month, which is good considering that I almost never plug it.  I am the laziest marketer in the world so I figure this is OK.  The website is actually doing slightly better than Etsy in terms of the artwork, so I guess spreading myself around a bit in the form of article writing is the next step.

I figure this is not bad for a part-time entity.  I need to get the game nailed down and the books and stories out, and I need to work on some articles whilst I get some more artwork done.  The sooner I have the non-Ina Disguise work out of the way the better.

Again, if you are reading this because you plan to do something similar, take the slow approach where possible.  You can waste a lot of money if you try to rush it, and the personal approach ALWAYS wins.  It is also considerably cheaper to put hours in than money in the early months.