Day Four

Last night I discovered two things; that the radiator in my room which was not working up until now had a secret button on the control, and when I pressed the button and turned the dial, glorious heat came pumping into the room and that if I inserted the overpriced earplugs into my ears the wrong way round, ie. fat end first, they were much more effective at keeping noise out (which was just as well, as there was some sort of helicopter grandprix going on above the roof of my b&b last night). So, this combined enlightenment lead to a much better night's sleep. Nothing too exciting happened at breakfast, I was back on my original table, with no Australians, in fact no one joined me at all. I realised that the rowdy dutch couples were actually Swedish or Norwegian which is probably why they were obeying the noise level rule, although they were pretty much the only people talking in there anyway. Another bored looking staff girl was guarding the hot drinks machine and even the the addition of hash browns to the hot plate had not caused her to show the least flicker of excitement. (They appear to have had the same training as the guards outside Buckingham palace). The snow had arrived, about 2 inches which, even though I was wearing hiking boots, had made everything very slushy and slippery. I took my time walking, knowing the old dear was on all day today and yesterday she had constantly talked about the weather and having an easy start, not expecting anyone to get there in time, so I knew there was no rush. I carefully waddled my way through the streets wondering how I kept being passed by people wearing their normal posh work shoes that should have had them flat on their backs. Today we were doing experiential workshops all day. We started by making a piece of art about a bad relationship in our lives - work, social, family etc. I felt much calmer today than yesterday and decided to use something I had more control over than paint and so chose pastels, drawing the image out first in pencil (pic to follow). Then we got into groups (different people to yesterday's) and talked about what we'd done and why, also commenting on each other's, asking questions etc. I noticed that I wanted to talk more about everyone's work than they did. Then thinking about that bad relationship and the comments from the group, we were asked to draw a self portrait. Again I wanted control but something different, so used oil pastel. Its is very weird in that all the time you think she's analysing you and the slightest decision becomes very big, like if you don't have a particular colour in your pile of materials, do you go and get something else, or do you just do it a different colour. Its odd, it feels like everything matters and yet she doesn't talk about, or do what you expect. We were allowed quite long periods of time for each of these projects and I was finished way before the end, and felt like I did a lot of waiting around. I made the mistake of asking if I could take a couple of general photos of the group at work, but was told that she would have to discuss it later and see how people felt, of course a few minutes later I saw one of the girls from Hong Kong merrily snapping away. At lunch I spoke to a girl from Vancouver who's come over just for this course!? my train ride from lancaster paled into insignificance. After lunch we had to get a long piece of paper and fold it 3 times to make 8 'boxes', then open it out and in the first box draw a picture of any event, just a line drawing. We then passed the paper to your left (we were in groups of 7) and then on receiving the paper from the person next to you, draw a response to their first picture in the second box and kept passing it round, kind of like chinese whispers with art, a cartoon strip really. It was supposed to be fun, and you formed a kind of narrative, at least I was very conscious of trying to. When the paper made it back to you there was only one box left which was your response to the seventh picture, completing the whole thing. We then looked at them, but no one really got a chance to explain or ask questions. Then we cut up our paper into the individual boxes and gave them to the people who had drawn them, so you all ended up with your own drawings from other people's papers. We were supposed to look at these and the other work we'd done from the rest of the day together and see if there were any similarities or things of interest. I thought it was a bit obvious that there would be, because we had to make the portrait taking the relationship piece into account. I don't know if I realised anything from it. I didn't like the cartoon pictures and I realised it was cos they were out of the context of their narrative, it felt almost as if they weren't mine. It felt almost as if the story is more important than the art for me - which was a bit of a shock and something I've never thought of before. The rest of the time was spent listening to old lady talk and she was interesting in a scary very upper class way. I think she has actually been one of the most influential figures in art therapy in this country, so I'm sure has a wealth of experience and understanding, but she sometimes is a bit abrupt and a bit difficult to pin down. There were a couple of things she said that I liked, although I wasn't sitting near my bag so couldn't write them down, I think one was "in therapy, the client and therapist have to become something like friends, something has to happen between them like friendship. Also that there is a certain amount of faith involved" and there was something else, but I can't remember what. It had snowed great huge chunks of snow for most of the afternoon, so she decided that we should finish early, and interestingly the way back home wasn't as slippery as the way in. At 7pm I met my friend Phil and wife QinQin who live in London. I haven't seen them since they got married 18 months ago. It was a nice time and we sat talking till we got thrown out of starbucks then moved to some pub type place and talked some more, I had that familiar feeling that I'd said too much but on the whole it was good to see them and hopefully most of my blabbering will be forgotten. The temperature had dropped noticeably on my walk back and the slush was freezing. Apparently the country is in chaos because of the weather and I'm blissfully unaware although starting to wonder if my train will be there on friday.