Rock Around The Clock…

“…When the working day is done, girls – they want to have fun, Oh girls just want to have fun!”

There’s something about old vinyl that makes me want to start jumping around, singing into my hairbrush – perhaps it dates me but those shiny black discs make me come over all nostalgic.  Sigh. In my search for scratched records to cut up and recycle into jewellery I’ve found many 45′s that I couldn’t bear to break up, and until now they’ve sat there in a forlorn pile, gathering dust. There just had to be a use for them, and now I’ve found it! I’ve been making them into clocks.

What could be more appropriate? As a way of listening to music they may have been overtaken by other formats but as objects they are deliciously evocative of time. Where were you when the above record was released – were you even born then?

I still listen to my old vinyl and cherish it as I’m sure many do, and I would never recycle a record that is still playable – to someone, I know, that record is an old friend and I’ll leave it in the second hand shop so that they can find it. But any distressed beauties come home with me -  a pretty centre, a great title, a cool band or song or just something that’s funny or seems evocative, because these lovely, scuffed old relics deserve a second chance.

Want to buy a record clock? Just click on the pictures above and you will be taken to the appropriate part of the shop, or click here… Rock Around The Clock

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Visa Swap weekend – swap and enjoy!

Come and meet The Birds In The Meadow in London next weekend and get a whole new wardrobe for free! The Birds In The Meadow has been invited to be part of Visa Swap’s second clothes swapping event held in Covent garden Piazza on 19th & 20th July 10am – 6pm. How does it work? Donate clothes and accessories (in good clean wearable condition, of course). When you drop-off your pieces you will receive a special Visa Swap card loaded with points relevant to what you have dropped which you can use at the final event. That’s when the fun begins – you can then “buy” anything you like as long as you have enough points! There isn’t much time left to drop off your clothes, so if you want to take part you can donate at :-

• 13th July 12 – 6pm No.1 The Piazza, Covent Garden, London, WC2

• 13th July 2pm – 4pm Visa Swap Van Outside Hammersmith Traid, 119 Kings Street, Hammersmith, London

• 18th July 12 – 4pm Final Drop-off at No.1 The Piazza, Covent Garden, London, WC2

You can only take part if you have donated so don’t forget to check your wardrobes and make the drop-offs! The swapping fun commences on the 19th-20th July.

• Final swap week, No.1 The Piazza, Covent Garden, London, WC2 19th & 20th July 10am – 6pm

The Birds In The Meadow will be there along with a whole bunch of other up and coming designers at the Visa Swap Market, eager and ready to fulfill your environmentally friendly accessory needs. You don’t want to miss out on this, so get digging around in your wardrobes and come and join in!

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Good Omen

I’ve been working hard on the website; coding for the shop, and making things to sell there. It’s been pretty intense; I can barely see beyond my nose. Any meagre chance to escape the computer screen is a blessing, so last weekend was blessing indeed. Two whole days in the countryside, visiting my partners’ parents to celebrate his fathers’ 70^th birthday. We ate cake, had a barbecue, messed about in the long grass. In the hay-meadow beyond the house, just minutes before we had to go and catch our train back to London, we found this:-

Only the panicked, explosive flight of the mother pheasant as R. nearly stepped right on her gave the game away. The tall, rank grass completely obscured bird, nest, eggs and all, peering into it felt intimate; secret. It felt like a gift – a gift from the birds in the meadow.

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Why “The Birds In The Meadow”?

As a child I was a tomboy. I spent entire summer days belly down in the dirt of the local pond, scrabbling for tadpoles and sticklebacks and dragonfly larvae. Other days would be spent looking for skylark and lapwing nests in the meadows near my home – not for any destructive, nest robbing purpose; this was pure fascination and the thrill of discovery. One day I went to the pond with my plastic bucket and jamjar to find it being drained – living things drowning in air and mired in mud flopped helplessly at my feet. In the coming months a housing development laid waste to the meadows with the birds in them; the pond had been drained to ensure none of us kids would fall into it.

As an adult I am still a tomboy. I’ll still spend an entire day crouched staring into any gnat infested body of water if you’ll let me, and I still notice the little things. Sometimes I’ll write about what I’ve seen, just to try to make sense of it all. I may appear to think small, but my aims are big important ones. I want to make sure that there will always be ponds for kids to fall into if they want, and I think there should always, always be meadows filled with birds.

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The Birds In The Meadow

Don’t be fooled by the wobbliness of this site, young and green as it is. I want nothing less than to change the world; for the better mind you. I have no way of doing this other than to walk my talk and prove that doing so isn’t rocket science; it’s as simple as giving a damn and setting out to do something about it. Want to know what I care about? Keep reading, we can find out together.

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