Lisa's Little Lensography

My Musical Offerings on Squidoo 

So I started by writing some mammoth creative lenses! They threw everything out in one fell swoop! The thought I might create 50 such lenses was just not a runner. I hadn't quite realized that lenses tend to be more specialized? Recently I have started to produce lenses that specialize more

Lisa's Christmas Music

This lens features new Christmas songs I have composed myself. It also features new arrangements of old favourites, lesser known carols and music I genuinely enjoy playing. You can listen to music, follow links to buy sheet music online or even Chris...

Jingle Maria

As a child, I often suffered the glooms in October and November. These were only lifted by the coming Advent season. The school plays, making decorations, Mum making her own Christmas puddings and most of all the preparation for the Carol Concert. Ou...

Lisa Gabriel's Choral Music

Although I have sung in various bands over the years, it is a long time since I actually sung in a choir. In fact, the last choir I belonged to was the college choir at Bishop Grosseteste College. Although I love choral music the time factor has alwa...

Celtic And Other Folk Influences

For many years I enjoyed singing and playing in folk clubs near home and further afield. I had a couple of gigs, but nothing major. This was before Celtic music bounced into the charts as a fashion statement and I often would sing unaccompanied Scot...

Guitar Music From Photahsiamirabel

This lens is about my guitar music. I love composing and arranging music and modern technology enables me to publish it too. Although e-books certainly seem to be the way forward, and some are proving very popular this Christmas, I still like the fee...

Guitar Lenses 

I hope to add to these over time, and maybe also add some other instrumental lenses for bass and percussion!

Guitar Music for Free

The aim of this lens is simple. I want to introduce you to my website. On www.guitarlincs.com you will find free music for guitar in pdf and MP3 format. These are materials that I use with my own students and set out to share with colleagues. I am te...

Band In A Jam

Normally when I compose music I am happy to get it out there on Lulu, Amazon and Sibelius music and let it take its chance. It is enough for me to have finished the creative process and have a product I can use without restriction in exactly the way...

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome - The Musician's Nightmare

In a world where young musicians, especially guitarists, are judged chiefly on prowess it is all to easy for the young player to develop serious injury that stops their career in its tracks overnight. This is a problem that is completely avoidable an...

How To Compose And Write Music 

My main pleasure is to compose music. I also arrange a great deal. Sibelius software was my way in to sharing this more widely.

Composing Music with Sibelius Software

As a young student, the only way to write music was with pencil and paper and the only way to hear it was to know the right people. Then we got computers! This lens is about my own journey into Sibelius and music technology. It links to work I have...

Practical Advice For Parents And Musicians 

I started to teach guitar at age 16 on the advice of my own tutor (who was a good tutor in the old fahioned style) My background in education spans nearly 40 years. What use am I if I have learned nothing I can pass on? These lenses are written to help others.

Buying a first guitar

A shot taken today in the storeroom. These are all old guitars well used and abused by students. If I could tag them I would, but I just chose the picture as it represented quite a selection. As a first time guitar buyer you are faced with a huge var...

Choosing a Music Tutor for Young Children

Music is something we all have in us - even the so-called "tone deaf" can be taught by a good tutor! We practise sport maybe for twenty or thirty years, but music we can carry from cradle to grave. So many people give up music as children and then re...

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome - The Musician's Nightmare

In a world where young musicians, especially guitarists, are judged chiefly on prowess it is all to easy for the young player to develop serious injury that stops their career in its tracks overnight. This is a problem that is completely avoidable an...

World's Worst Music Tutors

Well, this lens is meant to be both useful and amusing, so I chose the old school phrase to start it off! My expertise is as a music educator. I have spoken elsewhere about the qualities of a good tutor for very young children. My belief is that we a...

Music That Rocks! 

I hope to do a few lenses about the sort of music I grew up with. Nothing analytical, just fun! I hope you enjoy them too!

Kate Bush - A Retrospective

Kate Bush is a real musical heroine. I attempt to sing her songs, I wish I had half her studio skills, and she was one of the few rock stars to make me sit up and say "Wow!" on first hearing. Unlike many singers, Kate was never in it for the fame and...

Summer of 69

I really like this song as the Summer of 69 was when I played my first electric guitar, so the words of the song really meant something personal. Here I will show you TAB and chords to the intro which is the best known part of the song, and direct yo...

Different Strokes for Famous Folks 

Writing a straight biography would be boring, somebody else has probably done it much better than I ever could anyway, so I like to look for an angle that fascinates me! On Wenlock Edge has another twist to it as it showcases a book I have written about Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Grey Owl - The Indian from Hastings

Recently my parents moved into a sheltered flat and many rich memories started to flood in with this new window on adult life. These memories we take for granted at the time but they prove so valuable through the looking glass of loss. My grandfat...

Vaughan Williams Songs

I have published a book about Vaughan Williams. The book "On Wenlock Edge 100 Years On" is the result of a lifetime love of Vaughan Williams' music, particularly the songs, and represents my own personal celebration of the 100th anniver...

Tennyson Country

I am so privileged to live where I do! Lincoln is a perfect city, surrounded by land you can see for miles, and close to some of the prettiest hills and villages in England. Much more than this, the countryside so often inspires me to poetry - bu...

Just Crazy About Chopin

Welcome to all of these and just a hint of craziness. This is a lens for the slightly touched and mildly deranged music lovers among us. Chopin's music is eternal. This lens takes us beyond the traditional solitary confinement of the 19th century Bro...

The Music of Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr KBE What can one say? Actor, Comic, Director, Screenwriter, Composer - all these, and an icon of the 20th century! His working life spanned 65 years from the Victorian stage and Music Hall in England, t...

Caring for Our Pets 

Our relationships with animals in the home should be as good (if not better) than thise with the human people we love. These lenses are about understanding, empathy and compassion in pet care. They are also practical I hope!

Problem People (By A Cat Esq.)

...but cats have staff! So goes the saying, but in my experience of Furless Ones, they don't all seem to take the job seriously! This is by way of a good natured Meow to give you all the Fish Heads up about how we should be treated. Please do...

Build Your Own Cat Tower

My cats have two towers and two scratching posts. One scratching post is wall mounted and they never show any interest. One is a heart shaped pink fluffy thing which keeps Miss Amberleigh content. The other two are more robust affairs. About twenty ye...

Pussy's Little Problem

Cats are the most fastidious animals in the world. Beautiful and intelligent, they are loving and loyal but above all they are sensitive! So how do we handle it when soiling and marking threaten a beautiful relationship? The picture heading this len...

Persian Guitar Playing

As the Dire Straits song says "Anyone can play guitar!" Do you really have to shift those microwave ovens? Those refrigeray-ay-ay-ay-ters? Why you gotta move them colour TVs? Why indeed? This is not a lens about a new and exotic guitar style,...

Cat and Mouse Mats

Nimrod is one of the Enigma Variations by Elgar, he is also a hunter - and Nimrod is a feral cat. This is his picture and I thought he should head up this lens on Cat And Mouse Mats. Nim, as he is known to his admirers, will not allow human touch but...

Respect and Compassion 

We all know we should treat animals with respect and compassion. That is my firm belief anyway. Our reward for this is twofold - anger hurts us as much as others and the trust a loved and respected animal gives every day is the nearest we get to unconditional Love!

Guthram and the Hedgehog Hospital

Guthram, as he was known to Ed and Nigel the Vets, or Guthrie Hog as he was known to the family and our tribe of cats was a special hedgehog baby. In this lens I will tell the story of how he came to us, what happened, and what we learned. It is a...

Froglodite in Dryworld

  ....and a digital camera. What more could anyone ask? Animal curiosity? Trust? A frog Prince? A froggy kiss even? This story has them all! This is the story of Froglodite, (rhymes with Aphrodite) a beautiful amphibian, told in pictures for...

Guthram's Safe Garden

Do you love hedgehogs? Would you like them to visit your garden? How do you help them survive and encourage them to stay? Here we continue the story of Guthram the Hedgehog and give a few pointers about the care and rescue of hedgehogs. In Autumn...

Living, Learning and Sharing 

It is easy to get recognition if you are famous. It is easy to be more beautiful if you can afford help with make up and surgery. It is much easier to learn if you have someone to show you. It is easy to get a lot of things if you're rich and famous, but you get most in this life by respecting and cherishing others. In these lenses I try to do a little of that!

Diabetes - Myths and Prevention

In an era of zero tolerance some patients are receiving little or no help for serious and potentially fatal medical conditions on the grounds that they are self-inflicted. Smoking and cancer maybe? Alcoholism and liver failure perhaps? No, the geneti...

Froglodite - The Movie

Froglodite is a home movie in its truest sense. The photo images from the garden pond, the musical arrangement are all homemade. If you have never made a movie on your computer, this lens aims to show you the basics. The rest is up to you! Old Guthram...

The Secret Garden

This is the story of how one man put his dream of urban art into reality. It is also a tribute from friends who have known him for years, respect and appreciate his work and feel he deserves credit. Welcome to the Secret Garden created in Liquorice P...

The Secret Lives of Eyebrows

  Did you know that the camel has eyebrows? Her eyes are at the side of her head giving virtually all round vision, but she also needs protection from the sun. Thus nature has bestowed lovely, long, curly eyelashes upon her - which she might...

Helping On Squidoo 

Writing For Readers

Anyone who has visited my About Me lenses will know I have some political history. I gained a lot from this and also learned a few media skills. In this lens I hope to apply some of these skills to Squidoo to help any New Squids who might not know w...

Talking To An Angel

When my friend Willow says make a lens, we make a lens! This lens was to be about Squid Angels and the blessings they rain down on us, but I want to make it a little more than that. You see, I am named after an angel (specifically, one of the arch va...

Plug Into the Twitterverse

Everybody is talking about it. Last year it was the plaything of a few geeks and students, but now everybody in the world claims to know how to "monetarize Twitter". Well, guess what, I'm not going to tell you how to do that because everyone else is...

Beautiful British Columbia 

The nearest place to Heaven on Earth!

The Butchart Gardens

I love Victoria. If I could live anywhere in the world Victoria would be very high on my shortlist. How I wish I were there right now in the vibrancey and warmth of a Vancouver Island Summer! I am not generally a very gardeny or flowery kind of pers...

Golden Ears and Alouette Lake

As the John Denver song says "Almost Heaven" - but this isn't West Virginia, it is British Columbia, the Westernmost Province of Canada. BC is an area of temperate rainforest and Golden Ears Park is a fine representative of that rainf...

A Guided Tour 

These are some of my very favourite places. Places that hold happy memories and draw me back again and again. I will share them here with you!

Mablethorpe, Home of the Bathing Beauties

Mablethorpe, fondly known by its inhabitants, or Meggies, as Meg, is a popular and quiet seaside town in Lincolnshire. It is smaller than its near neighbour Skegness (a.k.a Skeg) and the beach and dunes give it greater intimacy in my experience. I v...

A Summer Day In Cleethorpes

Cleethorpes, fondly remembered from my youth, is so much more than a Northern town with a funny name. People come from all over England - and even wider afield - to enjoy the golden sands and traditional English seaside hospitality of this friendly...

Fossils and Fishermen

I first saw Robin Hood's Bay in 1983 when I went on holiday with a friend to nearby Whitby. We went fishing, enjoyed evening sessions at Whitby Folk Festival and put on stout new boots for the cliff top walk to the Bay. After many, many ups and downs...

Lincoln Cathedral

Some of you already know I live only a few minutes away from one of the greatest examples of Gothic architecture in Europe. Others will have seen it in my photos on music lenses. What a wonderful time of year to see Lincoln Cathedral! The decorations...

The Wonders of Whitby

W hitby is one of my very favourite places in England. There is truly something for everybody in this small Yorkshire fishing port which is easily accessible by train, bus and car. In this lens I hope to share some special photos, the memories are pe...

Books I Might Read To The Cat.... 

and other mildly amusing notions

Or even just to myself, if the cat is busy....

Teacher Teacher

Then slowly reels you in! This lens is about a book that I recently borrowed at work and have thoroughly enjoyed. I would like to get the word out about this book because I think you might enjoy it too! If you like Yorkshire, its dialect, its peop...

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

What triggered Mary Shelley to write the novel Frankenstein? Simple - a dare between friends! Just imagine the scene. You are 18 years old, just a teenage girl, home educated, staying in a spooky old building with your (newly eloped) poet partner, Pe...

Archy and Mehitabel

Oh! Sweet was the day when first I met Archy and Mehitabel. I see that they are not here yet and it is such a shame! I shall start a lens so that the young at heart can rediscover the poetry and the humour that Don Marquis gave the world so long ago.....

Russian Remix

Make a selling lens? Well, that was what Mickie said. So I read the how to lenses and thought “Hmmmm. I have sold a few downloads of my books a tie, a couple of stickers and a T-shirt, but my sales here still read zero so the sales ca...

Arts And Crafts 

Things that are fun to make and do!

A Mugs Game

Everywhere around you, you see mugs. They are all shapes and sizes, but generally rather ordinary! We see the mugs we are presented with in the superstores. I like cat mugs and have designed some of my own, so I thought a lens about mugs would be coo...

Tadpole's Virtual Gallery

Poet, Tragedian and Musician Oliver Tadpole has a second string to his bow that few people outside our immediate local neighbourhood are aware of. As an artist trained in fine arts (yes, not graphics, I do those) he produces original and sometimes st...

Making A Green Man Mask

The Green Man is a figure of mythology and European folklore and has quite a spooky appearance. We thought it would be fun to do a lens about the Green Man and how to make a special mask of the Green Man in time for Halloween. This little project gre...

Being Myself 

Sometimes I just play - that is what being a poet or musician is about. We play a little, get ideas up ladders or driving the car and note them and work on them later. Sometimes I play a little to an audience - all musicians are performers in some way or other. I hope you forgive my indulgence and maybe enjoy some of my offerings...

A Whisper Of The Romantic In The Eye Of God

The first step to freedom, happiness and full self-actualization is to love ourselves as God would, with total acceptance. Without that step we are not fully capable of loving others. When you read through the poetry in this book I hope you will be s...

In a White Room

If you want to experience life as a blank canvas, try living in a White Room. Preferably try painting a White Room white.... This is almost a Koan in action. I know what happened when I tried. Ideas flooded in and I had to put the brush down and pick...

A Secret Everyone Should Know

Who else wants to look years younger? This is the secret of a longer happier life. Here is a method that is helping thousands find real happiness! Learn little known ways to influence people around you. Get rid of depression once and for all! Here's...

Living My Life to the Max

I have spent the first half of my life wondering about the answer to that question. My only conclusion was that I should just stop wondering and get on with it! I am a firm believer that we all spend far too much time running around wondering who...

Persimew Designs

To be honest, I had never even heard of Zazzle until I joined Squidoo. I was just to busy trying to promote my music and poetry I guess, but soon I noticed how some lenses were brightened by original artwork that was for sale and a spark was born! I...

Poetry and Books 

Here's where I get my chance to show off!

Books and music from Photahsiamirabel

The Realm of Photahsiamirabel produces beautifully presented books to print on demand customers and suppliers. We produce original sheet music and arrangements including some with guitar TAB for beginners. We have original music, band projects in bo...

In a White Room

If you want to experience life as a blank canvas, try living in a White Room. Preferably try painting a White Room white.... This is almost a Koan in action. I know what happened when I tried. Ideas flooded in and I had to put the brush down and pick...

A Whisper Of The Romantic In The Eye Of God

The first step to freedom, happiness and full self-actualization is to love ourselves as God would, with total acceptance. Without that step we are not fully capable of loving others. When you read through the poetry in this book I hope you will be s...

Persian Cats and Poetry

A ctually this is really poetry for and about cats, but Persians have taken over my life, so Purrrrsian Pawtrrrry it is. I am a musician and I am also a poet. I write about many things but my focus in poetry has usually been positive. I want to make...

My Hub Lenses 

Big Topics, many links....

Living With Cats

This lens is about my cats, my love for cats, the part they play in my life. It is a lensography for cat lenses by myself and other lensmasters too! I thought it would be good to make a hub where lensmasters could post their cat lenses too. Plex...