My creative journey on my sabbatical in India and beyond
I love to make these dreamcatchers and photograph them before I give them away. This time I used buttons from Sarabeth, a rubber of a unicorn in pink that I sliced up, various pens, and paintbrushes using ink and puff paint as well as a box of wooden bugs and flowers that I painted purple. I used handmade paper using old fabrics made in India. It was able to get really wet as it is 300 gm in weight.
I love this museum. It is such fun and so inspiring. They have this special section to help accommodate those with disabilities.
There were a load of rubber families of 6 colours. Firstly they went and stood up in the wooden village.
I have this wonderful if rather tatty orange bag. I only brought red/orange/pink and purple clothes for my 2 months trip to the UK. I am looking forward to mending this bag. Especially the straps. Here the bag is to host the colourful rubber family members.
Finally, I set all these rubber families on a Victorian radiator. I tried to make the interplay between primary colours to make secondary colours as well as looking at opposites on the colour wheel.
Following an adventurous trip with Carlos around Puebla and London, Carlos came with me to a short but wonderful trip with my daughter Betsy to Padua before he returns as Rafi’s pink mascot.
And 2 short videos of Carlos enjoying himself.
Carly is a bit ’out there’. She has been a paediatrician for a long time now. She does enjoy working with children, but she finds most babies rather dull. Give her an adolescent any day. At work Carly loves to muck around. She can be idiotic, but not stupid. Sometimes this can be a problem, as of course not everyone shares her love of pranks. She feels that being silly can reduce the stress at work. It is done with grace and humour. Well, so she believes. She will often start the ward round with everyone introducing themselves. They say their name, their role and what area they are working in for the day. This bit is compulsory. Then they can say their favourite colour, or a game they liked playing as a child. This bit is optional. But most people join in and for sure it is a great ’leveller’ as the NHS is extremely hierarchical. Whether orange or blue are your favourite colours does not say anything about where you are on the pyramid. Maybe liking chartreuse could be perceived as pretentious. Carly does love this yellowy/lime green colour. She once had her front door painted this colour. Now it is purple. Anyway, Carly feels that by everyone revealing a bit about themselves they relax, and others learn a bit more about them. Sometimes Carly imposes a rule that you have to be original. Of course, this is easy for her as she starts off. Then she has to decide if they are going to go round clockwise or anticlockwise, thus scaring the person to her right or left, who will be last and might find it hard to think of an original answer. But most people enjoy this, and Carly is mindful to ensure that everyone knows that the last bit is voluntary.
These are everyday quirkinesses that most staff don’t mind. However, there are other times when Carly really does go overboard. Looking back at them she wonders when she could have stopped herself from getting so utterly carried away. Maybe she couldn’t have, and for sure, some do find it funny and really cannot see what all the fuss is about. Going forwards, Carly needs to be more mindful when it comes to choosing whom she plays her shenanigans on. Yes, that is what is needed. She considers which are the best to illustrate her point and five incidents come to mind. She will go through them from shortest to longest title. This seems as good a way as any to show others her antics.
Bra incident
This was a very long time ago. Carly sort of winces when she remembers this one. Of all the incidents, this is most well remembered. Even by those who weren’t working with Carly at the time. It is a bit like an “’annals of history’ incident. Carly remembers it very clearly. She is sure all the others who witnessed it do as well. She needed to speak to a member of the team. They were standing on the ward round outside a cubicle with the notes trolley between them. Carly sighs. Those were the days. Physical notes and writing entries by hand. Not all this running around using keyboards that are wipe clean with no keypads sticking up to make typing not only easy but actually possible. Instead, now you have to hammer away hard in order to make the letters appear on the screen. But at least there is no wasting of time reading illegible handwriting. Anyway. Carly needed to interrupt the ward round. Dianne, one of the rather officious senior nurses, pointed out gleefully that Carly was not bare below the elbows but also wearing a watch. Diane continued to reinforce this by telling Carly she was only allowed to wear short-sleeved shirts. Carly was incensed. She retorted whilst taking off her watch flamboyantly and rolling up her sleeves assertively, “Well maybe I should take my bra off then?” Which she proceeded to do. Carly was an expert at doing this internally, so nothing was revealed apart from a bra coming down her sleeve at the end. Later on, she was hauled over the coals. Luckily this wasn’t in front of any patients. But Diane was furious. And Carly’s clinical lead, Jeremy, was exasperated. He told Carly off, hoping that Carly would never do such things again. Carly sighed. She clearly wouldn’t do the bra removal incident a second time, but Carly was the sort of person who was amazing and was great a lot of the time, but at the expense of very occasionally getting it woefully wrong. Ho hum. Carly would reflect deeply on this matter and resolve all the issues in her head. She surmised that whilst she was sorry and didn’t really want to infuriate staff she had to work with, taking off her bra like that is a skill that is useful. Although it isn’t one of those transferrable skills. Well, probably not…?
Wedgie episode
During the pandemic all staff in her hospital took to wearing scrubs. This was not mandatory, and Carly was dismayed that so many people had to act like sheep and not wear interesting and individual clothes. One of the main issues is that scrubs are pretty much ’one size doesn’t fit all’. Consequently, people never really looked either comfortable or professional. So, Carly only wore them the few times she did shifts on the adult Intensive Care Unit. She thought the wearing of scrubs was just plain lazy. Fellow healthcare professionals couldn’t be bothered to think creatively about what they were going to wear each day. So, they sloped into the hospital wearing clothes that could pass as pyjamas and changed out of them into scrubs as soon as they got into work. The additional problem was for the larger man. They would often have their pants showing, especially when they bent over which happened commonly as children are small and babies even smaller. This meant Carly had had her fill of people wearing scrubs where their underpants showed. Did she really want to know that Dr X bought Calvin Klein underwear rather than Tommy Hilfiger? She would rather they saved their money and bought cheapo ones from M&S and spent the rest of their salaries on shirts and chinos. So, one day she told one of the men that if she found him again with his pants showing she would give him a wedgie. The whispering masses translated this as Carly had actually ’wedgied’ this member of staff which counts as assault. Carly had merely threatened him. But the officious ’powers –that be’ used this as a way of getting very heavy with her. And, therefore, Carly cried. Which is a commonplace event. She wishes this didn’t happen so easily. But when you get to your mid-fifties and you are still a snivelling wreck every time someone so much as gives you a look, then this isn’t going to change.
Knocking knee event
At about the same time as the wedgie episode Carly was told off for another incident. This time it had actually happened. She was working with new staff whom she wanted to feel welcome. She stood behind one new member of staff and knocked her knees gently into the back of this person’s knees. They crumpled. Only a bit. Again, the murmuring anti-Carly staff accused her of flooring this person. This wasn’t true and although some staff thought these incidents were hilarious, the top brass felt it was important to haul Carly over the coals about this too. How she cried. For England. She looked like a toad. She had to hide away for at least an hour for her facial puffiness to settle.
Bra over scrubs affair
This incident is one Carly remembers fondly. It was over a decade ago. It was meaningful as she didn’t get into trouble, but it did make her realise that she needed to move on to the next stage in her career. She was asleep and her bleep went off telling her to get to the Emergency Department Resuscitation Cubicle as soon as possible. It was probably a child with a fever having a seizure, thought Carly. This was a common occurrence and usually by the time Carly arrived it had stopped. Carly was speedy enough, but common things are common and seizures usually abate quickly. Phew thought Carly. But you cannot predict that, so she rushed along and got her badge out to allow herself into the right door. As she looked down, she realised she had put her bra on the outsides of her clothes. Phew. She caught herself. What would those parents have thought? Or the other staff members. Not appropriate for the most senior member of the team. But Carly did realise that still running to crash calls in the middle of the night in your forties is beyond the call of duty. Time to move on!
‘Sukey take it off again’ as a title for a burns lecture
Carly often taught on a course about how to teach. One of her favourite slides was about choosing a good title for your teaching session to really encourage attendance and engagement. Carly prided herself on being original. But this time she got carried away. She knew the nursey rhyme ‘Polly put the kettle on’ with the second line ‘and Sukey take it off again’. She was giving a lecture about burns and scalds. But really the jump was too enormous for those coming to the teaching session to work out what on earth was going on. The goal had to be clarity. Not a ’guess what is inside my head?!’
There are more examples, but these are the most illustrative and some have gone down in the annals of history as examples of Carly’s ‘out-there’ behaviour. Part of Carly is embarrassed but for the most part she is proud of who she is. Mostly…..
I go to Tova a lot. Like really a lot! And this last time she commissioned a table cloth (plain purple rectangle) and 6 white napkins with a purple elephant or two. Always delighted to have another project I set about completing this one. I did offer Tova a choice. She could have had a flowery blue and white cloth and napkins or purple as she chose. At the same time I used my hand carved elephant block from India for a bolster (found a feather one on the street) and a cover for the end of my bed that I had sewn with the kantha stitch whilst at Limoges with my good friends Fran and Phil in July 2024.
When I was preparing for my exhibition from the items I had made on my sabbatical in India (a year late because of Covid) I brought home some bottles that are used to store expressed breast milk from work. They had purple lids and purple writing and I placed a wooden purple star or flower on top. There were 19 and they contained the following items all painted purple; cotton wool make-up remover pads, collapsed balloons, treasury tags, string, silk cocoons, thread, feathers, tubular support bandage (Tubigrip), gauze elasticated bandage, cotton buds, strapping, chenille yarn, Indian embroidery embellishments, a single blown up balloon (still has air in 3 years later), blood collection tube, enteral feeding syringe, nail varnish and acrylic nails. They were shipped to Israel when I immigrated here and live in a wooden brief case with fabric bowls I made in London.
I went with Eliot around the Shuk in the old city of Jerusalem to his favourite fabric/carpet supplier. I bought 5 different pieces of handmade Bedouin embroidery that are part of the front top of the dress traditionally worn by Bedouin women. I had already adapted a piece of driftwood that Talulah my dog had found on the beach as a way of Tsipi being able to hang her necklaces. This was for earrings. I bought a stiff mesh so she could see the earrings but was strong enough to hold them. In the end she used a stick and 2 nails to hold it up and we removed the ribbon which could make it twizzle.
Purple cars go ape was made to fill this space. It was a beautiful cabinet to hold pathology specimens. But as always the powers that be said it was not to remain for health and safety. Grrrrr. So I designed this project where purple cars could use various means to go about their business of climbing between the shelves. It was a take on the Go-Ape Out Bound adventure places I had been to many times with my children. There were some monkeys too hanging off the shelves. I used the box frames for the cars and painted the trees with purple nail varnish that only dried using UV light – shame it never did dry!
I have wanted to get back into dreamcatchers for a while. Lucy continues to give me her parrot (Paulo’s) feathers. I used beads that Nita and others in Jaffa have given me to decorate it. The hoop is covered in alpaca yarn from the Farm in Mitzpe Ramon.
I decided one day to go mad and take out all my purple acrylic paints and pour and them on this old grey cushion cover. I then directed the paint into spirals on the cover. It is really hard and uncomfortable!
Using the same paint as the cushion I repurposed this ceramic dish. So much nicer. I used PVA glue to “varnish” it. Good job!
I had a spare afternoon and had access to a Brompton (scooters aren’t allowed on TFL) and anyway it was raining. I cycled from High Barnet station to Cockfosters to find I was the only one doing a Bubbly Mosaics Evening at Little Crafters. But that was fine. I loved the piece I made and it should hold the 2 candle holders I made in Hook on a glass fusing course.
I went to Hook in Hampshire with my parents and made these fused glass candle holders. In Ikea I found 2 different types of candles – enormous tea-lights and church candles. Both look lovely. My favourite photo is one of Moses with the candle holders on their mosaic tray! Always curious. Especially if it involves food. Sorry Moses – it doesn’t!
Dee gave me a jacket that was too big for her and I loved both the fabric and the pattern. When I was in Limoges, July 2024, I set about making it into a bag for me to take on my walks around Jaffa with Talulah. I sewed on a border and put in the tassels at the corners and Phil suggested I put on a circular patch around the shoulder which works well. I even put in a key holder and 2 internal pockets. A good repurpose!
I had some spare purple fabric and needed to wash the table cloth I usually have on this circular outside table. I used the paints I had brought a while ago in Ra’anana and had fun using my favourite flower stamp. See my feet!
I went to a very strange art exhibition in a hotel (the rather tired and dated Imperial Hotel). It is now in it’s 3rd iteration but I only went to the first one with Rebecca. Here I am in a furry purple room with my purple scarf. See how taking the photo with and without flash makes such a difference!
I went on a course at my sister-in-laws synagogue in Ra’anana to make a ceramic Israel. We had to roll out and decorate the clay using a map. I had time to make 5 and as I had a friend to dry, fire, glaze and fire them I only decorated them by using fabric and rope to indent the clay. I made 5. One with a doily, one with rope, one with squashed flowers and pins, one with fish and one with serpents. I glazed them all differently.
I then decided to imprison the rope one. You can see the process below. I used lots of different coloured threads to ensure each one was different with a unique message. And I gave this one to Michael. Then I took it back! I want to make a collection to sell! I will make him another one a bit later.
Here are the four other finished ceramic imprisoned Israels.
I tried to make the maps of Israel with self-drying clay but they didn’t really feel right to me. So I made 17 at my friend CFC. Quite a few broke. Here they are in progress……some were broken but that is ok!
Some more for market
I bought these 7 barbies as they were wearing purple clothes for my sabbatical exhibition in September 2021. One day they were hiding behind my TV in my flat in Jaffa and my neighbours commented on them and I thought they would make a nice album of how they went around Jaffa to see and experience the sights. On one of the days Tova helped me. We had such a laugh. Particularly telling the light railway train driver to wait whilst we photographed them. All in the name of art!
I spent 7 days in my usual writing and yoga retreat in Limnisa, Methane, Greece and 3 days riding 50cc scooters around Aegina when I made 43 dreamcatchers on card. I have used buttons Margery gave me from when she was a diplomat’s wife in South East Asia and had to have clothes made to fit her tiny waist, lots of different flowers and leaves from anywhere I could find them, pebbles, pins, shells, stickers and small incense stones (which I tried at first to erroneously eat!). I used purple pens, puff paints, inks, PVA glue and embroidery thread. As well as doilies and empty tea lights as well as some stamps.
The top layer needed further work and the second version is seen below the first one.
So it started with my neighbours. Now, it has become a full blown Barbie obsession. Here Mermaid Barbie goes to Limnisa (Limnisa for writers) where I go twice a year for a writing retreat. Purple Mermaid Barbie really does have a fun time!
Of course, like everything, there are lots of reasons, Carly muses. It is warm and different from home and not too far. The light of the Mediterranean is magical. When Carly thinks of Greece, she always thinks of this colour combination.
Fuchsia pink (of the bougainvillea)
Bottle green (of the fir trees)
Bright white (of the houses)
Deep blue (of the sea and sky)
Four colours. You may not know this, but Carly is obsessed with prime numbers. And four is a good number but not a prime number. Oh yes. Carly realises it is two times by two. 22. This is good as two is the first prime number. And the only even numbered one. Carly used to think one was a prime number, but her son Haz disabused her of that fact. One is a special number. She isn’t sure how or why it is special. But Haz knows about mathematics, so she has to respect that. Haz also told her that her blog and sabbatical theme weren’t true either. How time goes faster as you get older. He claims this just isn’t true. Unless you go to another planet. And Carly is sticking with planet Earth thank you very much for the time being.
Back to Greece and its charms. So, there is also the food Carly enjoys so much. Particularly the pale pink dish taramasalata. It goes so well on Zoe’s bread, secretly toasted at work for a yummy lunch. Carly is very pleased with herself for bringing a toaster to work. She hides it out of site behind the microwave in a little used kitchen. Carly is only too well aware of all the ridiculous myriad of rules regarding health and safety in a hospital. No toasters allowed. At all. Because if a smoke alarm goes off, three huge red fire engines come roaring in and the toasting perpetrator gets a roasting and possibly a fine. Consequently, patients have to suffer with bread that tastes of cardboard and has the texture of a limp sponge. How on earth will they get better with such poor incentives to improve their nutrition?
Actually, Carly has been told off for setting off a smoke detector. It only signalled an internal alarm. No arrival of fire engines. Phew. It was for burning incense. Now she is more careful and places the marble holder on her window ledge so it is technically “not inside” her office.
Carly considers what other Greek food she loves. Feta, particularly in Greek Salad, grilled halloumi, as well as Greek coffee with baklava. Of course, you can eat all this at home but it is so much nicer when you are away.
Carly loves to visit Greek Islands. She’s been to Rhodes, Mykonos and Lefkada. They were all very different experiences. Rhodes was several decades ago. She and Ades went on scooters all around including a visit to the oldest synagogue in Greece, the Kahal Shalom. Carly always makes a point of vising synagogues wherever she is in the world. She knows that irrespective of where they are, the layouts are similar and it is good to meet fellow Jews. On Mykonos, some 30 years later she was not allowed to ride a scooter. She did a test and failed. Oh no. How very embarrassing. For being too old and too crap. She consoled herself that really it was far too mountainous to scoot around anyway.
She went to Lefkada several times in between Rhodes and Mykonos with her children and their all-time favourite babysitters Piotr and Karina who helped looked after her kids to attempt to stop them fighting a great deal of the time. This meant Carly could actually have a holiday. Loads of happy memories, considers Carly. Trying really hard to enjoy them despite her subsequent divorce from Ades. Nope she says. The memories were good, and they will stay good, determines Carly.
More recently, she has gone to a remote yoga and writing retreat on a promontory of the mainland in Greece. It is near the sulphurous waters of Methana on the Peloponnese peninsula. Carly has been to Limnisa three times. She totally loves it there. You have to be silent until lunch – and surprisingly Carly can manage that. She wakes up to a class of either yoga or qi gong, looking out over the sea. Then it is writing for most of the day. Some swimming and walking too. Lots of well-meaning friends have suggested she gets her stories edited. Or put them into competitions to see how they fare. But really Carly writes because she wants to. It is a way of dealing with this difficult time in her life. Getting an editor to pour over your very personal work seems to be following an arbitrary set of writing rules. And Carly isn’t really in the habit of following rules. So why start now? She plans to self-publish her work and buy lots of copies herself and give them to people. This is a sort of charity which begins at home! Maybe this is really egotistical, but Carly is too old to care too much what others think of her. Funnily enough this used to be called ’vanity publishing’ but this name has been dropped as self-publishing has now become so very popular. Carly also doesn’t follow rules on giving money to charity. She gives money only to people who are doing sponsored thises and thats. Unless she really doesn’t want to support a particular charity. But this is rare and indeed this way she gets exposed to all sorts of charities she had never heard of and can see what they do. And she doesn’t have to choose them. Someone else does that for her, as well as the hard work of some sort of challenge.
On these retreats in Limnisa she is looked after by a very special couple. They have both been married before and this is like a beacon of shining light to Carly in her dark hours of her recent divorce. They are so respectful of each other, and it is a joy for Carly to be contained within this wonderful and nurturing relationship. She also meets lots of other participants from all over the globe and they have so many wide-ranging discussions – but only from lunchtime onwards! She also goes on silent walks, enjoys sunset mindfulness meditations and eating tip-top food. One time, someone led a mandala ceremony. The premise was to let go of feelings that were no longer helpful. This was done with intention and also to mark what was good to take away with you when you left Limnisa. For Carly, she tried to throw into the sea all the negative connotations of being a newly-divorced woman. She wanted to acknowledge the wonderful camaraderie of the fellow writers she had met at Limnisa. She so enjoyed being with all these creative women, to celebrate this and take the essence of it back with her. The ceremony took place on a promontory overlooking the sea at sunset, with 11 women. They were all told to bring items of nature which were laid out in a pattern. This was like a temporary art installation as most things would blow away by the next morning. Carly had gathered seven figs during her run earlier that morning. She placed them on the right half of the mandala. She squished them into place with her bare right foot. Afterwards, a couple of the women commented how poignant it was. That Carly had used figs which in texture and shape represent scrotums. The humour was not lost on Carly who had unwittingly chosen these fruits. She laughed and cried about this at the same time.
On her most recent trip to Greece, Carly stayed in Athens. Wow what a revelation. She had breakfast looking out at the Parthenon and loved all the graffiti and street art, as well as the shabby chic of many buildings and the equally dusty but friendly cats. Yes, Greece has many cats. And this pleases Carly who is a feline fanatic.
Probably the most significant reason that Carly loves to go to Greece is that it reminds her of her beloved Israel. She plans to emigrate there on Sunday the 2nd July 2023. This is an auspicious date. It is three prime numbers 2, 7 and 23. Sunday is the beginning of the week there – so it mirrors her new start. To Carly, Greece looks, sounds and feels like Israel. Just without the Israelis. This makes Carly chuckle.
Addendum
In the end Carly went to live in Israel in September 2023. She really wanted to mark her ex-husband’s first year anniversary (grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr) on 4/9/23 (42/32/23) sort of prime numbers but her brother persuaded her to come a day earlier on 3/9/23 which still fits Carly supposes (3/32/23). Carly is still really pleased with this attention to sort of prime detail.