Adur Festival 2014: artwork and writing competitions

Hello and welcome to my blog. It's lovely to see you again but if you are new, c'mon in and join us. There’s plenty of room for all.

As you know, last week I started a re-run of the popular 2010 blogs on, “A day in the life of.”  However, before I re-publish the second one, I wanted to bring you news of two Adur Festival 2014 competitions.

Closing date for Artwork Competition 20th February. 
Closing date for Writing Competition is 28th March.

The artwork competition is new to this years' festival and I asked Mella Faye Punchard, Adur Festival's Coordinator for the Ropetackle Trust, if she had any tips for entrants.

"Don't limit your imagination," she said. "Create anything from a tiny drawing to something that's so big it only fits in the garden. Just make sure it keeps to the theme - Strange Creatures and if it's a huge sculpture, take a photograph and send it in.  Use any materials you like and you can mix them up too. If you need some help with ideas, we have workshops running now. We've got a great prize for the winning four artists; a trip to see the Just So Stories performed by the exciting Red Table Theatre at Ropetackle on 1^st March.  

If you prefer writing to art, then how about entering the Wordfest story competition instead? It’s on the same theme. Perhaps you could even make a strange creature and write a story about one of its’ adventures."

Adur Festival runs from 24^th May – 8^th June and this is Mella's second year as the Festival Coordinator. Mella explained that her aim is to “build on all the good work done in the previous festivals and grow it so that all the schools, local communities, families and children across Adur can celebrate together. We're starting with a big Adur wide street party on 24th May with Carnival hotspots where nationally acclaimed street performers will appear.”

I’ll be keeping in touch will Mella to find out when and where you can get involved.  In the meantime, good luck with your entries and if you would like to help shape the festival, pop over to Ropetackle on 26th February at 6.00pm.
Thanks for dropping by and ta-ra for now. 

A day in the life of Councillor Liza McKinney

    Hello and welcome to my blog. It's lovely to see you again and how are you getting on with your New Year's resolutions? I moved onto my second one this week when I started Jujitsu at the wonderful Shin Jin Dojo in Brighton. It wasn't as tough as I anticipated but boy, did I feel sluggish. After an hour of dodging swords, punching, blocking and throwing bean bags, I felt surprisingly calm, refreshed and reinvigorated. I didn't expect that. I expected to feel knackered.
     Now this year, sees the return of the,  "day in the life of" series which was first published in 2010. At that time I featured four local personalties, Councillor Liza McKinney, PCSO Maireadh Knight, Rev Gail Souppouris, Vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd, and John Bradshaw, former Chair of Shoreham Beach Residents Association. This time I'm focussing on professions or vocations, but to whet your appetite, I thought I'd republish these popular blogs.
     It felt natural to kick off with Councillor Liza McKinney, as Ropetackle Arts Centre will be holding their version of Question Time called, Tackle the Issues, on 31st January.

Liza McKinney has been a Shoreham Beach Residents Association Councillor since 2000. She lives alone and has two sons, Damien, 50 and Julian, 49, eight grandchildren and 3 step-grandchildren.

“As a Councillor, I’m afraid to say I’m a very early riser, so I’m normally up around 6 o’clock in the morning. I suppose that’s from the days that I commuted, when I had to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning to catch the train to London. I used to cycle to the station, put my cycle on the train and then I’d cycle from Victoria to the Treasury in Whitehall. People have often said to me, “How did you dare to ride in London?” In actual fact I only got knocked off my bike twice.

      By 7 o’clock, I’ve had breakfast and then there are papers to be read. I’m afraid to say that the paperless society, as far as the Council is concerned, is a laugh a minute. The size of some of our reports are absolutely gynormous. Sometimes my dining room table looks more like an office desk. I then turn on my computer and see if anything has come in.

      I re-read the papers for meetings that day with a fine toothcomb. It takes up a lot of time during the morning and I sometimes have to seek briefing because you’re not an expert on everything just because you’re a Councillor. You need to understand what is being suggested and what it will mean in reality to our residents out there.

     I’m not one to have lunch to be honest. Coffee and a biscuit will do me because I have a serious weight problem so I struggle to keep the weight down. I do go to the gym. I go three times a week so if it’s my day to go, I’ll go roughly at 2 o’clock. I will spend at least an hour and 15 minutes. Once a week I go to Pilates which I find absolutely wonderful.

     About 5 o’clock in the evening I will listen to all my telephone calls. I have an ansaphone and there could be residents with problems. Then, of course, Council meetings are held at either 6.30 in the evening or 7 o’clock. Sometimes they’re short and end at 8 or 8.30, sometimes, like on one particular day recently, they didn’t end until half past ten. There is many a week when I don’t have an evening at home.

     I’m Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and alternate Chairman of the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee for Adur and Worthing as well as on a number of sub-committees.

     As Chairman, our Committees have the right to look at most of the decisions that Cabinet Members are going to take. This is important because if you’ve got individual Cabinet Members making decisions, as you might say, behind closed doors, you need a backstop to say, “Hey wait a minute we don’t think this is a very good thing”, or “Look at the money you’re spending” or “Is it economical?”or “Is it in the best interests of the residents?” We are, if you like, the voice of the residents making sure that what is being agreed is right.

     As well as being Chairman of the two Committees, I also attend Cabinet meetings, not just as an observer, I can speak up to defend whatever recommendations we might have made as a committee to the Cabinet.

     I also attend Joint Strategy Committee meetings which means that where there are joint services between Worthing and Adur those come before a Joint Strategy Committee where Councillors from Adur and Councillors from Worthing sit together to decide on policies and strategies. Again reports that go to them, come to the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee giving us a chance to put our five pennith in. We have also just completed research into facilities for the disabled throughout Adur.

     They are important meetings so when I come home I have to turn on the television otherwise I’ve found that when I go to bed, I’m going over the matters discussed and what should be done about them. 
     Before I going to bed, I check my emails to see what’s new or if a meeting's been cancelled.

You always hope that on Saturday and Sunday you may have some peace. But very often, particularly in the summer, I’ve got residents ringing up on a Saturday or a Sunday evening. Sometime because the street light outside their house hasn’t been on for a time and they worry about security; others because rubbish has been scattered all over the road or the bins haven’t been collected round the shopping areas. Also, of course, in the summer I do get a lot of calls if people on jet skis have been encroaching into the swimming areas. I have been called out because a party’s been going on and it’s got rather noisy. Against advice, have tended to put my clothes back on, if I’ve been in bed, and go down. I’ve found that whenever I have been called out late at night, and at 1 o’clock in the morning on one occasion, if you go down and speak kindly to the people concerned you can get the noise turned down. If there is a problem with noise, which is, after all, the most common thing we get called out at night for, you can actually do something about it. Very rarely do you have to resort to getting the council and the police involved.

      I do have long days. Most of the time, I don’t get to bed before 11 or 12 o’clock at night. No matter how late I get to bed, I have to read and I’ve always got books on the go. At the moment I’m reading “The Cobra” by Freddie Forsyth which I can recommend to everybody. It’s absolutely fantastic. I can’t put it down. So I probably read until 1 o’clock some nights, which is really not very good for me but I don’t need, like a woman Prime Minister not so long ago, a lot of sleep.”

    
   Liza McKinney is still one of our ward Councillors.

Next week, I'll re-publish another "A day in the life of.." but until then, have a great week and thanks for popping by. 

Miami's got soul

Hello and welcome to my blog. It's wonderful to be back and Happy New Year. To date, I've stuck to some of my New Year resolutions, but I hope you're doing better than me.
       Well, we've had a spate of calm and sunny days here so, if the smallspotted catsharks have any sense, they'll hot foot it to deeper waters before the storms return and hurl them back onto the shore.
       Now, you may have noticed that we spent Christmas in Miami this year, thanks to Airbus Training UK.

View of Bricknell and Downtown Miami from the airport area.

Street entertainment in Little Havana

Miami is in Florida which is on the eastern coast of the United States. To the north lies Fort Lauderdale, (location of Sawgrass Mills Mall), to the west, the Everglades, to the east, the Atlantic Ocean and to the south, the Keys and Cuba.
     It's a city of over 400,000 but each neighbourhood has its own feel. For instance:-
South Beach. THE must do site. It feels like an expensive posers paradise.
Coconut Grove . A self-contained community with a relaxed, but expensive, street cafe culture.
Coral Gables . A wealthy residential area. No pubs, just the opulent Biltmore Hotel.

Biltmore Hotel 

Little Havana. A poor area which seems rich in community.
Downtown. An impressive international business district
Bayside . A small, busy tourist trap with some pricey little boutiques and a free live music scene.
Biscayne Bay. A strip of family beaches with superb views of either the Atlantic or Miami.
        It's easy to get around on public transport although a car is crucial if you want to visit the shopping Malls.  These are a bargain hunters paradise and we left the largest, Sawgrass Mills Mall,  fully laden.
       Officially, Miami has a typical tropical monsoon climate, so it's warm enough to swim outside on Christmas Day, but that's probably the only typical thing in this major city.
       Miami is over-flowing with charisma but to only view it through the prism of South Beach, would, I feel, be to miss its soul. Personally, I think this lies not in six packs and skylines, but in its big Latin American community and their sequins, strip lights and confidence. It's in evidence on the streets, in the shops, hotels and particularly amongst groups of Hispanic ladies.
       These sassy, sexy ladies, of all shapes and ages, with their bright, tight-fitting clothes and high heels, are party princesses. They never walk, they swagger, and it's done as naturally as breathing. Remember West Side Story? That's the attitude I'm talking about.
       Would we return?  Yes, but if we don't, my most lasting memories are of the Science Museum's young tour guide whose enthusiasm for science lead him to sneak us backstage for an unauthorised show with liquid nitrogen, and a plump Hispanic grandma, her daughter and grand-daughter strolling across the hotel lobby, and all dressed to the nines.
        Well it's time to go. Thanks for dropping by and I'll see you again in a couple of weeks. 

Ta-ra for now.