Chantelle Smith
First Stirrings Of Spring (February News)
Monday, 13th February, 2017Despite the fact it was desperately trying to snow over the weekend, the first signs of Spring are starting to appear in the form of primroses and snowdrops (and the odd, enthusiastic daffodil), and buds on the trees. Winter has, for the most part, felt like a time of preparation (as it should do) but now, with the visible lengthening of the days, it feels like the right time to put those preparations into action.
The end of January saw me leading the Secret Garden wassail in Swindon followed a little over a week later by the launch of Wonderwords, a wordy event which I hope will bring together the various wordsmithing communities in the town to share with and be inspired by each other. Check out my blog post on ‘Creativity in the Community‘ to read a little more about both those events.
Having done a lot of outwardly creative events, I’ve needed to spend some time this month working on my own creativity. To that end, I used up some of my annual leave from my day job and spent a week having a bardic staycation. In addition to working on my harp and guitar playing, I managed to work on the arrangements for the last two tracks that will be going on my EP and I also managed to write the lyrics for five songs which will be appearing in the show that Kevan and I are putting together – the eponymous ‘Bríghid’s Flame‘.
I still have some rehearsal to do before I start the rough recordings for the EP tracks I haven’t done that for yet (so I can check the arrangements sound ok) but it feels good to have made some progress. Hopefully I’ll have some news on that, and the progress on turning my new lyrics into fully fledged songs, next month.