Most flaunted

This evening I have taken the plunge and entered the Tate's 'How We Are Now' photography competition (sort of). Basically the Tate in conjunction with Flickr are running an exhibition which will include ordinary joe public's photographs. One can upload up to 4 pix to the group in the categories Landscape, Portrait, Documentary and Still Life and they will pick the best 40 to be included in the exhibition. All very exciting isn't it. I probably don't stand a chance, there are hundreds of outstanding photos on there. At least I can say I've tried anyway and its nice to be inspired by other folks' art. I'm hoping to enter the Countryfile photography competition this year too. I've been meaning to do it for a while. This year's title/category is 'All Creatures Great and Small' and so far I've taken some very mediocre shots of the deer in Tatton Park and a bee on a flower (which is in my mum's urban garden so doesn't count). It'd be nice to do something original. There is a llama farmer on the other side of Bolton but its not really a rural location and one of the rules is that the pics are of the countryside. Ah well. I've got a few months to get inspired yet.

In other news I participated in more art recently, this time a production of Adrian Mole: The Musical. Sadly I wasn't singing and you could have blinked and missed me but it was all good fun and lots of people said it was the best thing they'd ever seen us do. Fab. Saturday night saw the usual drunken party shenanigans you get after the plays are over. This time a few of us were in there until 5am! Boy, I haven't done that in a long time. I thought I was past it. We were having such deep and meaningful discussions though that we didn't notice the time. Talks about sexuality, paranoia, depression. It was better than it sounds, honest. I came out to one of the other women but it turned out she knew anyway. Someone had blabbed. She was ever so lovely and gave me a big hug. Then got a bit flirty. God I love it when that happens. Midway through the evening we took it upon ourselves to go ghost hunting in the theatre. A few of us have had spooky experiences there and one chap's photos the other week came back with orbs on. I took a few pix but only a couple came out with orbs and there was nothing else untoward on them. We even sat in the dark and called out to the ghost to communicate with us but to no avail.

It was so surreal leaving the theatre to a beautiful, sunny though chilly morning with no-one else in sight. Just the sound of the birds singing. Lovely. Such a far cry from the chav haven it usually is.