Living on the Witchy Side

The Next Step

2011-03-04T08:26:00.003Z

I guess it is probably time I posted here again. Just to say I have a new home. While one path may end, the Path never does, it just moves on, as paths do....

Follow me or not, but don't expect it to be exactly the same as here....

End of the Road

2010-02-24T07:36:00.002Z

I guess this is a good bye post.

Not just a good bye though but the consideration and explanation that has developed since I actually went....

I am a Libran. I have two distinct sides of everything within my personality. I am mostly one thing but every so often my balance flips and I am something completely different. Sometimes those things are complete opposites and people can find this a little bewildering. Heck, I do to sometimes.

I am scientist. I am rational, logical, analytical etc etc. In being that, I think I had neglected the other side of me for a while, the spiritual, creative side. The logical bit hadn't got me where I wanted to go either, life had not quite worked out the way somehow I thought it should.

Last was, I think a reaction to these facts. That other side of me needed to come out and play. To be top dog and the number one focus. It was long over due and I was pissed off with being logical and blah de blah, where had that gotten me?

So that was what last year was all about, creativity, nature and spirituality. It was a lovely year and I learnt a lot. But something was missing, some spark of excitement, some something. The lists helped carve my life into what I wanted it to be, a more perfect me, with a perfect life. All very worthy and lovely. And it was great....

But I can not stay in that spiritual place, not all the time, my logical side can't live there, so I can't either. Now you might think this means everything spiritual has gone. It hasn't. it is there but back held close. I still see magpies and read their omens but it is just a part of me. My logical side can ignore it, just part of life. All of the little things are just there now, they have been assimilated back into me.

I may find my self rhyming a few words and saying them with intent on occasion. Last year that would have been a spell and something to really think about and pore over. This year it just is.

Last year I wanted to become things other than I was. I wanted to be a witch. I wanted to be a crafts person. I wanted to be so many things.... well read, well traveled, well everything. I am not a witch, I am nothing with a label apart from my name. My spirituality is my own, even if it is not on overt show any more.

And being a Libran I can affect this shift with little more than a blink of an eye. I could feel it coming though, but I had no idea what it was exactly. but I am back to being the person I was before, almost....

It leaves me a little uncomfortable with some aspects of last year. Some of the directions I was going are ones I would shy away from very heavily right now. And i can't but help think this is the way things are supposed to be for me. All the things where I was going to make some commitment, have some real deep starting on this path, just never quite happened....

The witchy friend who visited was not able to spend any real time with me as I became very ill. The shamaness who was going to start tutoring me via email a little, never quite got round to beginning. The group I started to pursue such things and look at doing the Witch Alone book failed, in part due to the actions of a friend who could have supported it but chose instead to detract from it. All these little things, now seem to me to be lifes way of stopping me from traveling a path that is not really mine. And really, it isn't...

It was like a holiday path.... A time away....

Apart from time to bring my spirituality out and play it gave me a few other wonderful gifts. Most notably, writing....

As I have mentioned before, I pay the highly adictive World of Warcraft and I roleplay my character. My new character has developed an entire story and personality of her own. She grows of her own accord, like my stories do. Every so often I reach a part of her story which sings to be written down and I do. I never knew where my writing would take me and that same spirit lives in her, I never know where she is going to end up either.

i love this story side of things. Chance events and interactions with other characters alter her life. A friend choosing not to date someons and persuading her that she should go out with him instead has somehow ended up in her capturing the heart of one of the most notorious womanisers on my server. Not something you could predict. (they are not a womaniser in real life, it is just this one particular character that is)

So writing lives on, I am creative, I am spiritual.... Just not in the same way as last year. This blog is a slightly uncomfortable place for me now. It doesn't fit me well any more, not at all.

I love all the dear people I have met through it and my rejection of this blog, may feel like a rejection of you. It isn't (but it may well look like one *sigh*). I just think that with this side of me, sort of going back in it's box, so many things associated with it have gone with it...

I will try and keep in contact with some of you via email but I have to admit I am pretty bad at keeping in contact....

And some of you may think this a strange way to be, but it is not new to me. I walk through a door and i tend to let it close behind me... New jobs, new homes, new areas of the world to live in. Maybe there is alittle bit of gypsy blood somewhere in my soul.

So I wish you all the very best *hugs*

Playing Games

2010-01-01T21:26:00.003Z

Two days in a row!

I think my re-immersion in the world of gaming is waning slightly. It is no secret to me that I have previously had a gaming addiction. When you game it can take over. There is always something interesting to do. There is always someone around.

I stopped playing because I got bored. Because I wanted my life back. Things had happened and we had left our friends and gone to a different server where we were unknown. On returning we returned to our old server and found many old friends. The ones we liked less seem to have vanished and certainly have no impact on us now.

I am avoiding progressing through the game too quickly because my issues stemmed from that. Raiding is an activity where a whole bunch of people get their characters together and go fight together. The people in the group take different roles, they have different strengths and weaknesses. For instance healers spend their time healing. I was a warrior and my role was tank. I had huge amounts of armour and my job was to make everything angry so it attacked me and not the less armoured people who could do lots of damaged. The healer would be tasked with keeping me standing and everyone depended on me.

A lot of tanks have big egos and at the very least they have enough certainty in themselves to lead the groups they are in. I wanted others to lead but was happy to tank. I never pretended to be an amazing tank and never wanted to be part of big raiding guild and be their main tank. A lot of people would love that. Not me.

My trouble began because I found myself in a guild (a group of people affiliated with each other for things such as raiding) that wanted to raid and wanted me to be right up there with them. I was not up to it and slowly crumbled under their attentions.

So now, here I am again and the initial grip of the game is waning. Enough so I am back in control. I can turn that computer off or do other things on it. Like read books and things. Go for walks. Whatever I want.

I happily put myself back into this. With everything going on, a little immersion and avoidance seemed like a good thing. It has been a good thing for me right now. I wish I was so sure this return was a good thing for F though. I am not sure being sat at a computer in the same room as him, also sat at a computer is really together time. Things will turn in their circle though.

I have found my time blogging and all things I did because of it has helped my game playing though. I do roleplaying. My characters are separate from me, with their own stories. I am finding that their characters and stories are flowing far more easily, they have a life of their own. My current character is different from previous ones because she is not just a version of myself. She may draw on previous experiences of mine but her story is her own and I have no idea where it will take her.

I just want my life to be balanced and I see no reason why a little gaming can't be part of a healthy life.

This year I am asking for nothing. I have no expectations. I am not trying to do or be or achieve anything. I did lots of that last year. Not that that was wrong but this year is a very different year and the path is going to go some very different places. I am not saying it is going to be a bad year. The past few years have been a bit samey, but everything in me says this year is not going to be the same. I think many things are going to happen this year and I don't know what or why or anything but there is something about this year. I have the sense that this year is going to be different. A little gaming will not interfere with my path but it might make things easier. Wonder where I am going. Maybe nowhere. Maybe to Timbuktu.

2009-12-31T21:23:00.003Z

I still don't know what sort of page I need. My sense of where I am and where I am going is still undefined but not an issue. My foot is on some path but as yet I don't where I am headed. Things are happening but I am not doing much.

I have been ill again. I think my lungs are weak from last time and this latest cold has settled a little in my chest. I have little voice but feel alright really and have been at work. I actually got to walk Little Dog yesterday as I snuck out of work early, I desperately needed some air and that hasn't felt so possible recently.

So here we are on New Year's Eve. The New Year starts tomorrow. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. It feels as if this year has already turned into the next for me. As if it has been in a pause waiting to get going maybe but that the old year has passed. Christmas has also felt lacking this year.

I know it sounds as if i might be direly unhappy but really, everything is just ticking along nicely. The redundancy thing is not resolved but I don't think I will be going. I am not sure many people who don't want to go will be going as it happens. I am not sure staying will be a happy thing long term but let's just wait and see.

My creative juices have receeded as well. Fallow is the word. I find whenever I look at Amused Grace's blog, that I am very, very much feeling the mood of each new goddess of the week.

I want to say a big thank you to all my lovely blog friends and to give a huge apology for being so out of touch, both in not reading their blogs and not being forthcoming in my own communications. I am sure I will be back at some point but so much on this blog feels like baggage. The list of things to do will be gone but I like the list of books read.

So lets just sit back and see where my feet take me. So here I am, stepping in to the future.

A Fresh Page

2009-12-13T17:16:00.002Z

Thank you all for your lovely words that show that you truly get it... It is I think all about needing a fresh page when your life turns a corner. This blog carries with it a whole weight of things, thoughts and tasks and it is time to start afresh. Or at least to shed the things I no longer need.

I do miss you all but I am not quite sure where I am or who I am right now but I am also not to fussed by that. When it all starts anew, you shall of course know where and when and how.

I am not the only one being hit by this turning. SO many things I love seem to be turning too right now....

The Seasons Turn

2009-12-12T15:39:00.002Z

People often complain that so many companies do the whole redundancy thing in the run up to Christmas. That it does not fit the season. I am coming to disagree. The timing feels perfect, if you let it. The year is ending and so is this phase of employment. As winter progresses, I am in a lull, waiting for decisions to be made. With Spring I find myself growing into something else and by Summer I shall be grown into a new role or a new job and place. Things change and turn and what will be, will be.

I am finding that other things have changed as well though. Suddenly this blog feels dead to me. As if it's time is done. Maybe a new blog will start with the turning of the year. If it does, it might be somewhat different to this one. This one might not be ending, it might flower anew. Suddenly I am not feeling so witchy. Not that I lost my faith, just that it is showing s different face. I just am at the moment.

Don't be worrying. I am just walking a different path, listening to a different tune. I have yet to see what way it will take me. I am not unhappy, I am just going with the flow..... In fact there is a pleasure and contentedness all of it's own that comes with that.

Update

2009-12-08T21:15:00.002Z

It all sort of sucks and is a little on the rotten side. Maggots roil under the surface and an information vacuum allows lies to spread. It is an ugly process at the best of times but it doesn't fell as if it is being well managed which just makes it worse. They should let us grieve the loss of our security and our family group with dignity and truth.

Outside of work, I am practicing avoidance and quite enjoying it too. World of Warcraft is fun all over again. Old friends, fun things to do and roleplay - story telling and acting on the hoof. I have even put my story telling to good use with some rather altered fairy tales adapted to the world of Azeroth.

Work is hard. Some people are angry and not entirely playing nice. Others are miserable and bring you down too. Others show good spirit and are still able to have a good laugh. I think you learn a lot at times like this. Mr Nice is not neccessarily so nice when he feels his back is against the wall.

In addition my role feels hard. My work seems to have gone through the roof and normal delays have been longer. I shaer my role with the Little Princess who is a temp which means she will be out the door sooner than any of th rest of us. Not a good motivational tool.... The last two nights have seen overtime and tomorrow will too.

Not sure what I need right now is more time at work but hey ho..... At least I have F. I don't have the worries some people have. I am so thankful for that. So unbelievably thankful.

An Ugly Word

2009-12-03T19:38:00.002Z

The way things have been up and down at work began to make sense this week. My Boss's strange moods suddenly make more sense.

Things have gone bad. Very bad... and they are going to get ugly...

My company is ditching part of it's business that has been making a loss and this involves redundancies. It involves a lot of them. 40% of my team will go. We are one of three areas to be hit but other individuals have also been targetted and some have already gone. So now we get scored, given the opportunity for voluntary redundancy etc, etc.

Thing is, once you announce such things to customers, things tend to pick up speed. Those who may have been shown the door after Christmas, may now be shown the door before, who knows?

It is a nasty process. Friends go, teams get broken up and you face either job loss or a role that will likely prove hellish for a time.

I suspect I may not post here for a bit. I don't want to think or dwell right now. I want distraction and avoidance. I have more than enough time to be miserable at work and much of what I would have to say would not be appropriate on an anonymous blog....

I love you all dearly and will be back, so never fear. And I am alright, I think I am one of the lucky ones, whatever happens to me.

Anger

2009-11-27T19:14:00.002Z

The other day, the lovely Leone mentioned a few things that correspond with ear problems. The one that resonates with me is anger as I know I have long had an issue with it.

When i was seven i changed schools. I hadn't been happy in the previous one but I was even less happy in the new one. I started to have problems with my temper. Something would happen and I would see red and completely lose all control. My arms would windmill and I would hit anything in my path. Immediately afterwards I would be devastated and cry a lot.

This went for I don't know how long. Some of my classmates were amused by my temper and would deliberately try and make me lose it. I hated it. Eventually I got it under control. So completely that I just stopped getting angry. In fact I took it further than this.

I was desperately unhappy and decided that hard decisions were best made using logic rather than emotion. That life should be lived by doing whatever caused the least hurt. An ethical and moral thing I guess but one that tried to let me distance my feelings from my life. A little odd I guess for the average teenager.

I am not sure I was overly successful at this. Hard to say really. Certainly it didn't last as I was firmly emotional by the time I was doing my A-levels. Some of this philosophy has remained with me I guess and by thinking about these things, it helped me realise that giving people what they want is not always what is best for them, balance is the key.

Later on I began to realise that anger was strangely absent in me. I began looking at myself quite seriously because of other things that happened. I had counselling. At the end of one session, I was soooo angry, for no apparent reason. I went home and my man assisted. We took broken things outside for me to trash. Much fun. It wasn't enough though. So we had a a shouting and insulting row. It was so vile sounding that one of our housemates came from the ground floor extension up to our attic room to make sure we were OK....

A friend did an exercise with me where different seats in the room were different aspects of me and my anger so that I could in effect have a conversation with my anger by changing seats. This was a very powerful exercise and it really worked.

I remember that my anger was sad and it had been trying to protect me. It had been the anger of a young girl and it didn't understand that it was causing me more pain. I think I welcomed it back and tried to make peace with this part of myself.

It still isn't something I do very well.. I do grumping very well. I do frustrated very well. I do sad very well. I do happy pretty well too. But anger isn't something I do well, even now. I am not the most assertive. I can grumble behind peoples backs but actually getting proper angry with them, to their face.

Yes right now i am angry and frustrated with my Boss, but do I actually want to act on this? Not really. What is the adult way of allowing your anger to breath? Not sure really. If I am still repressed, then I am not as repressed as I used to be.... Maybe it isn't repression but control?

Signs of Hope

2009-11-26T17:51:00.002Z

I know I have probably said this before but, as much as I hate my job right now, I still don't quite think the time has come to jump. I have had a habit of jumping ship rather easily in the past. Sometimes of necessity as a habitual temp, jobs do end and new ones begin, but I have also prematurely left a lot of positions....

In my younger days I had a habit of leaving jobs after 4 months cos I started to get bored. My longest length of time in a single position is a year. There are one or two places where I have been for longer periods but in different roles at different times. Places I have gone back to.

Sometimes my jumping ship has in effect cut off my nose to spite my face. Looking back I wonder why I did that, why I left there before I had drained it dry of benefit, before I had a real peach of a job to go on to. When I graduated I had a job, one of the places I kept going back to but my Boss left as they finally had enough of their Boss and had a very nice job offer. Without my buffer and friend I was the direct target of the Over-Boss and after my first tongue lashing I decided that I was not going to stick around. I think leaving that job and not pursuing the links I made signed a death warrant on any hopes of a career in Environmental Science I might have had, at least so far it has...

I feel as if I have something to prove by staying put, by enduring, by demonstrating that i can put down roots, that I can.... That it is needful somehow, although the whys and wherefores have not been made clear to me. I might be completely insane in this but I feel as if I will know when it is time to go, that something will happen, there will be some sign.

All the signs right now are suggesting hope and future happiness while saying now is not quite the time.....

I left the house to find a pair of magpies eating on the pavement opposite. I got to the shop to find a beautiful and vivid rainbow in the sky. Marc Coen's song Walking in Memphis came on and this always speaks to me of hope and tells me I am in the right place. Then at lunch, two more magpies, in a bush nestled together. I got to and from my car inbetween hale showers, yay for not getting wet! And afterwards there was another rainbow in the sky.

Hope springs eternal and maybe soon my dreams with be able to blossom..... Maybe it is nearly time. Maybe....

The History of Ears

2009-11-25T18:14:00.002Z

When I was a little girl I often used to get ear infections. Every cold bought one. I have been told I missed a lot of school. I was also told that i was lucky to live in an age of antibiotics because otherwise i would very lucky have ended with impaired hearing.

One day I was told I was going to have my adenoids out and i would have to go into hospital. I was not a normal little girl and I was very, very excited to be going into hospital. So excited that when i felt some strange bumps in my hair on that all important morning, I didn't tell my Mum.

Once I was at the hospital and settled in, the bumps started to become noticeable and spread all over me. My Mum being a nurse, knew what they were as soon as she saw them. Chickenpox. The daft thing was they wouldn't let me go home before I had seen a doctor, so my infectious body remained in the ward full of pre-op children for some hours. My Mum felt very, very awkward about this....

The next time, I was not nearly so enthusiastic as my op was scheduled for the time in which my school was going to the East of England Show. I had never been and I was going to miss it. I was a bit cross. That is about all I remember of it to be honest. Not half as memorable as my first attempt....

The ear aches and colds and sessions with the nurses syringe became less frequent but didn't vanish. I remember some nasty ear aches. Falling asleep with my ear on Oswald, the crocodile hot water bottle. I remember being a young student in a flat in the city, doped up to my eyeballs on painkillers being woken by drunk flatmates who had brought some young chaps home. That was when i discovered that any painkillers with the word co in their description tend to zonk me out.

The next big thing was when i first moved to Cornwall. I decided to satisfy a life long ambition and learn to scuba dive. We had completed weeks of training in a swimming pool and it was the day of our first open water dive. We had not been down very long and we were not particularly deep when it happened.

My head went boom and then I felt the inrush of water. Everything went very, very strange. I couldn't tell up from down. I focused really, really hard on something, a rock I think, trying to ignore everything else around. Without closing my eyes or looking away, the rock would suddenly be somewhere else. Everything must have settled pretty quick because i was still with the others and no one had noticed a thing.

I signalled to one of the leaders that I wanted to go up. Once there, i couldn't tell them what was wrong so reluctantly I went back down. We rejoined the group and completed the dive. Once up, i explained what had happened and then my mate and I went to buy a woolie hat to keep my ears warm.

I was lucky that I was not sick. I was lucky I did not loose my respirator. I was in shock.

I went to watch a rugby match that afternoon and then when i was back in my room I found my ear was starting to bleed. I found a sober student who had a car and off we went. I guess the diagnosis shouldn't have been a shock but it was. A burst ear drum.

The next week was very fuzzy. Noise hurt. I slept. My ear produced some interesting things. I later learnt that the hall cleaners had been keeping a close eye on me. Not sure any of the other students were mature enough to really understand what was going on. I had four lots of antibiotics in total, each with a longer and nastier list of possible side affects than the one before.

It took nearly a year for the ear drum to repair and for the hole to be gone. A year of no swimming and care with water. I did go to places with loud music so I probably did damage my hearing a little....

So here I am again and this time, it is not so bad, six weeks to mend apparently. so only a little hole. Noise doesn't hurt and there was no catastrophic event affecting my balance. In fact I have no idea when it happened exactly. Not too bad really....

I have a long time to get used to the fact that i will probably have some hearing difficulties later in life.... I have them right now though too.... One ear has an ear plug and the other has a large dose of ear wax. All just temporary....

Fear

2009-11-24T20:36:00.002Z

Fear holds us back and makes us miss opportunities. Then we get cross because we are missing out....

Some friends took an opportunity to join a larger group. I held back because I had some not so good experiences in a similar group. In fact some of the people I like from the old group are in this new group. So I held back and my two buddies jumped on in and now I feel a little left out. There they are having experiences and coversations and fun that I am not.

Of course, any time I want I can go for it and join to.... But I don't really want to, I just want my mates back, all to myself. Greedy.... Selfish.... I don't want to share them. I don't want to open myself up to all that. I also don't want to get that involved. I am dabbling a toe. Trying to be half involved.

I am not sure this is an old theme for me either. I worked on a few projects while at Uni. One of these was a contract that bought me in contact with potential employers. I had to finish graduating but I had a couple of people in different organisations interested in employing me. When I graduated there were a coupld of lecturers who suggested sending CV's to a couple of places. Did I do any of these things? No.

I worked some dead end jobs instead.... Some opportunities do evaporate if you let them, but friendship, if it is true, never should.....

Chain Reaction

2009-11-23T20:33:00.002Z

So many little things......

Some good, some bad.

A beautiful tea, Marks and Spencers Enchiladas. Lovely. I am completely stuffed and happy right now. Sated.

I had to go to the pharmacy late and the only one open was on a retail park, With a Marks and Spencers next door.

I went to the Doctor and he looked at both my ears and said the reason I am not hearing so well when I put my ear plug in the ear with the burst drum is that the other one is full of wax for which I can use drops.

Work insisted last week that I go back to my Doctor to make sure I had the correct information regarding my ear and noise.

When I booked the appointment, i booked it for out of work hours as I try to do with all my appointments.

Later on i had a dentists appointment which was in work time. I was two hours late but my boss knew the time and place of my appointment so should not have been surprised.

Later, my co-worker got sent home an hour early to enjoy an early start to the weekend while I got a telling off for being so late and was informed I had to make up the hours.

As I was going to the Doctor, I stayed late at work and did the first half of my time making up.

At the Doctor's I explained that work was insisting I came back for further guidance, i explained what I was doing, all of which he agreed with and he wrote a letter to my work to, in his words, 'shut them up'.

When my Boss returns there will be a note booking annual leave for my next dentist appointment. Once bitten twice shy. The rules change and I am not going to play that game.

*********

Writing this, what do I see? Bad has to have a source, it constantly renews itself from something. Bad needs effort and work. Good on the otherhand reproduces if you let it, from a little starting event you get a lovely enchilada tea, but only if you are open to it.

Love is....

2009-11-22T15:54:00.002Z

Writing about love last night made me think about a book I was shown once. It was a book of wedding photographs taken in a American registry office following the legalisation of same sex marriage. I believe, from what I remember, that people queued to get married as soon as possible.

People in their twilight years who had lived together all their lives were there. People dressed up. Men. Women. Young and old and everything inbetween. The one thing these photos show is that love really has nothing to do with looks or age or anything else. Oh and another thing, all of these people were happy. Some of them had never expected to be able to marry. It is a book of what love looks like. It looks like people.

Love comes in so many forms. We only have one word for it in English but I remember from my Latin lessons in school that they had more, it might have been three, because I can remember three. Eros, or passionate love, Phileo which if spelt right, is friendly love and agape, which is sort of a love for everything a more spiritual sort of a love. Except when I look it up these are actually Greek, not Roman, and there is another one, Storge which is the love a parent has for a child.

I think all of us would recognise these different types of love, so why don't we have more words for them? Why do we lump them all together? What sort of love do I have? Eros, sometimes but it is not the dominant form. Phileo, definitely. Not sure if this describes how I feel, but hey...

So why did the Greeks have such a desire to define different types of love and we don't? Well they had a love of philosophy and thinking but I guess I don't know enough about their society to know more than that... Why don't we distinguish so much? I think as a society we can be a little confused about love.

It seems to me that I spent a large part of my teens and twenties thinking that mere eros was something other.... Is it any wonder though with the lack of distinction we make and the portrayal of love in the media? Love in families also seems warped at times. Parents spoil children and children grow up thinking they are the centre of the universe and the rules bend around them.

I am not saying children should live without love or praise or anything positive but I also think they shouldn't be just given everything. I think a bit of work and effort helps them to value what they have. I think children should be allowed to climb trees and scrape their knees. So what if they fall and break an arm? The chances of it happening are slim and we have the technology to deal with it efficeintly.

But family love seems to be all about smothering in so many instances these days. About children ruling the roost and not about balance at all.... I am thinking of my niece and nephew here a bit and I know it is a common thing...

I like love though. I think everyone does.

Love

2009-11-21T21:23:00.003Z

I am not sure what to write tonight, except that I feel sad.

I miss F, who has been at work since early this morning and won't return till tomorrow morning. These strange shifts he does, sometimes I miss him more than others and right now I miss him a lot.

We always watched Strictly Come Dancing together and loved it but this year, so many times our viewing comments have had to be communicated by text as he sits at work (if he is lucky) and watches and I sit at home with Little Dog. The texting is fun and amusing but not as nice as having him here.

I have spoken with him three times by phone (and no that is not be being a clingy woman that was him calling me *laugh*). And we always talk at bedtime. But right now I want a hug.

Life feels tough right now. It was never going to be easy going back to work, not after being ill like that. It was always going to leave me drained and low, and it has. Things just feel so tricky right now though....

I have no idea where I am on a few things. One day i think one thing and the next it is all different. I think i currently have a difficult Boss / Friend thing going on. I think they have some feelings towards me right now concerning my having been off for so long. I think also that they feel they have to be a certain way but they keep over stepping the mark. They did so again on Friday and I wasn't overly surprised to receive a text about how fantastic I am with lots of good wishes.....

Tuesday I received a half hour phone call.

To be honest it is a bit unsettling. I like to know what the rules are and play by them but right now I don't feel as even I know. It seems they keep changing and different rules apply to different people. This is hard when the friend is also your Boss.

I am so glad I have F. We have a solid sort of a relationship. I am not saying the rules never change but we meet as equals so any rule changing can be talked about. Things do not flip all over the place. He is my rock and I love him. He is the only one I need. All my other friends are luxuries and all of them added together could never replace him in my life.

I am not sure if I have said much about how we got together or anything like that but I am a firm believer in love at first sight these days. I didn't used to me. To be honest it is a slightly scary thing, or it was for me, who had allowed myself a number of relationships with less than pleasant men. You have to trust and see where it takes you and hope.

Can everyone fall in love at first sight? No idea. I think you have to be open to it. Someone has to have faith and follow it up. I have to say, it wasn't me that did that, it was F, and I was busy running off in the other direction...

Just watched a program called Misfits. A bunch of teens do community service for deeds against the law but get hit by a storm which gives them and others strange abilities. One of them meets a volunteer and has a wild night with her. Only it turns out she is actually an old lady, made young by the storm, but part way through she becomes old again. Being a callow youth he turns away and the lady, now old, dies alone. He gave her one last experience of not being alone before her final end and the experience taught him not to be so tough on his Mum and her new partner. How many people out there missed their match? They walked away at the last minute or neither plucked up the courage to go and talk to each other?

I used to be bemused by those 80 somethings talking about having met one night at a dance and having known from that time. Does that really happen? Yes. But love has no schedule and we don't have to see it when it does come. It is a beautiful thing to never be alone even when no one is with you.

Letting Off Steam

2009-11-20T18:45:00.002Z

Things are still very mixed and when F picked me up from work, he found a stressed and unhappy me.

As we drove home, I said 'Take me to Godrevy'

'no, I don't want to eat chips'

'nooooo, I need to get out'

So off we went to the headland known as Godrevy. As it so happened he had put Little Dog in the back to come assist with the collecting of me, so she was overjoyed at the diversion.

The very last of the light was still in the sky, along with the tiniest sliver of moon. Just enough light to cast the huge waves in silver and navy. Huge sprays were sent up by the rocks as a glimmer of white in the gloom.

The sky was clear except for a band of cloud on the horizon above St Ives over the other side of the bay. So from silver and navy sea to the darkest mauve of the clouds, lit with the jewel lights of the towns, then above to the last light, nearly gone in a sky turning darker with each minute.

It was lovely. It will be cold later, as it is so clear. But then, with little wind, after the recent gales, it felt relatively mild. Most people didn't want to go out on such a night, so only one or two cars were up there and no other walkers. We were all by ourselves with no need to worry that we couldn't see what Little Dog was up to in the dark.

Nature is always there when I need breathing space. She is always there when things feel too much. When I am sad, or angry. She is also there when I am happy too. She always makes me feel better. I love her for that. So why, on such a wonderful evening, with so much beauty, were we alone?

Horses for Courses

2009-11-19T18:09:00.002Z

Dogs have been breed for a very, very long time so that we have different breeds for different purposes. They are all still dogs and can inter-breed but their strengths and weaknesses are more obvious....

Collies and German Shepherds herd sheep.
Sight hounds hunt, from deer (deerhounds), wolves (wolfhounds), greyhounds (rabbits and hares) and so on
Jack russells and other terriers are used for ratting and going down burrows
Some dogs were bred looks, others to keep people warm and others as guard dogs.

Humans have a habit of doing this. We did it with horses, cows, sheep and anything else we domesticated.... No one would dream of asking a Jack Russell to take on a wolf, although it would probably have a go.... No one would expect a shire horse, such as a Suffolk Punch, to win the Grand National.

We humans did this but yet we still expect other people to be equal and have the same strengths. I am a brain rather than a brawn sort of a person. I got my current job on the basis of my ability to sit behind a computer and do all that stuff with efficiency and accuracy. I did not get this job on the basis of my physical fitness and stamina, and anybody who employs me for my physical fitness in my current state is frankly barmy.

Why does everyone have to be equal? Can't I just sit behind my computer and do that well? Why is the fact that right now, I don't feel like running around, which isn't really part of my job, an issue for some people? I am fit to be at work doing my job. I am not fit to be doing the things that no one would give me a job that focused on them anyway....

I am not saying I am being given a hard time but when people are stressed their private views become a little more obvious. if I had a broken leg or some such, no one would expect me to run around, although I might be able to with adjustments such as crutches. Being fat is a disability, most of the time I heft and buzz around with the rest of them but right now my disability is affecting me more strongly.

Let me. Let me be a brain right now who works a computer real good.... It is after all what you actually need me to do...

Sleeping Beauty

2009-11-18T17:59:00.002Z

last night I had the perfect nights sleep.

The two nights previous I had been without F and I was cold in the night and didn't sleep so well. Little Dog did her best to keep me warm but well, there just isn't enough of her....

Last night I learnt and i got out my pink velour M & S pajamas. Bliss. I went to bed before F, which is fine. I get to sleep quicker without him. If he is there, I have to wait for him to be asleep and making his sleeping breathing sounds before I can sleep. Of course we don't always resist the temptation to chat either and right now maximising sleep is the name of the game.

So the night was warm and snug. And when i woke I had F to snuggle up to before we had to venture out of bed to the world of work....

Before Big Dog died, we only had the dogs up for cuddles, not to sleep but that all changed when Big Dog went to the big garden in the sky, the one that contains sofas and lots of warm snug places to sleep. At first Little Dog came up for that last snuggly quarter of an hour before we got up. Then sometimes, at the weekend we wouldn't get up at that time and she would come up anyway.

Over time she just got up onto the bed earlier and earlier until we could no longer pretend she wasn't sleeping with us. What put the nail in the coffin though was that she just couldn't understand the difference between the nights when F was working and those he wasn't.

At first it was awkward in some ways. You would wake up part way through the night and find dog where you needed to move your legs to, because you had cramp and just had to move. She has learnt though, exactly where to sleep in order not to get kicked or moved and all is rosy in and on our bed.

So tonight, I have to put up with the lack of F, but Little Dog will appear at some point after I have gone to sleep, probably as soon as I have gone to sleep. And i shall be snug and warm in pink velour. But last night was the perfect nights sleep.

About Face

2009-11-17T18:51:00.002Z

I am not sure what to believe or which way to turn right now.

Work is downright bizarre. One second I don't feel valued, the next I feel like employee of the month (maybe slight exageration but you get the picture). I think there is just so much going on that what I see is the tip of the iceberg. I think it is going to take a while for me to really catch up with everything that has gone on. Possibly months... *laugh* I think the word confusing could be used and I am goignt o try and stop thinking and let it just be for now.

I am tired and there are changes and lots of work round the corner. There is possible overtime and possible redundancy. Such is the joy of working for a company with multiple divisions. In good times you all benefit and in bad times you all suffer - even if you have more work than you can manage and are turning a profit....

But yes, I am tired. my social life is trying to take off but I am stubbornly digging my heals in because I know I can't take it right now.... Not this weekend. Not yet. I also can't face reading blogs right now and am planning a catch up at the weekend. I want to curl up somewhere warm and practice being rather than doing. Little Dog is providing an extremely good example of this right now and I think I shall go join her.....

Friend or Foe?

2009-11-16T18:50:00.002Z

Today... The things I expected to be bad were not and some of the things that were hard took me by surprise.

The H & S back to work thingy was fine and I have all the ear protection I could possibly wish for.

People's reaction to my return varied, quite a lot. One bad tempered chap from outside my department saw me and all the words shared were hello, but he looked sympathetic. One person from inside my department didn't hear me the first two times I said hello and when I said louder he responded but didn't look at me.

The people in my department who I thought were my friends, apart from one, proved themselves to be so. They didn't say a lot but they looked pleased to see me which to be honest, was all I needed them to do, big long conversations are not really my thing right now.

My best friend at work has always been my Boss and she is the one I feel has let me down. I can ignore some of the grumpy things she said to me while I was off. I can ignore the fact that there was way more text messaging than there needed to be, if she just paid attention to what I told her the first time. (no I can not tell you anything right now because, as I already told you, my appointment is for much later today and I already said i will call yoy as soon as it is over....)

The thing that really got my goat though wasn't even direct. It was very much indirect. Someone else is off right now with a chest infection but they have a named serious chest infection. They have not been off long as yet but there was my Boss arranging for someone to go pick up their sick notes and arranging for a whip round for a get well card and boys mag to cheer them up.

It hurt. I pride myself on being honest. I wouldn't expect a Boss to necessarily see and respect that but I do expect a friend to. So I guess the end result of this is that perhaps they really arn't much of a friend. The grumpy comments I could forget as there has been a lot of stress in their life but the lack of trust and faith in me, i can't.

The company I can forgive to, their procedures are not bad but the way my Boss sometimes implements them on a personal level is not so great.

So i am sat here feeling pretty tired and yucky and a bit down. I shall go in tomorrow and slowly people will forget I was off sick and things will return to normal. I am not sure I will forget that my Boss may pretend to my friend but that when it comes down to it, they are not.

Small Mercies

2009-11-15T18:13:00.003Z

So tomorrow is back to work. No symptoms left now except for tiredness and gurgly ear, so I know it is time. Going back will be tough but will help me get my strength back now. I have barely been out of the house in four weeks. I have done nothing physical beyond the every occasional bit of washing up. So work is going to hit me hard. This week will consist of work, eat and sleep and not much else. I may not be on here much.

So there is that and then there is the fact that I get the impression my Boss thinks I should have worked through it and I suspect this will be a common attitude. Then there is my meeting first thing. Add on to this the fact that there will be a considerable back log. My colleagues have been doing overtime all weekend and there will still be much to do. They will be tired, grumpy, stressed and will see me as not really having been much help at all.

I know I will go back and probably not feel much a part of the team for a bit. But then, to be honest, I just want to drift into the background right now anyway. Not sure I will have the energy for much else.

I have often thought that if I ever did win the lottery (yes I really do spend a lot of time working on this dream *laugh*) that I would dish out some to colleagues. This month has persuaded me that no, I perhaps wouldn't want to. I don't actually have an out of work relationship with them and now there is a little distance, I suspect, very strongly, that if I left there are not any friendships strong enough there for me to carry forward. If I did get lucky, I might give them a treat but I wouldn't make them fellow millionaires.

I am not really dwelling on going back however. It is at the point where there is nothing I can do, I don't know what will happen, it is just too darn scary to think about and I have to do it anyway. Instead today I had some WoW time with F and our old friend. It was good working together to solve puzzles and have a little fun.

This is a team we have found ourselves. A team that has stood the test of time and been a real source of strength. Of all the people we have met and befriended while playing WoW, this friend is the one who has become a real part of our lives.

We were pushing it today. We could have minced around obliterating everything in our path but we decided to have a go at something a little beyond us, to be honest. We didn't suceed but having a go taught us so much about these new characters we have made. We looked at their abilities and how to use them, we specialised our characters to allow them to work better together. We took different roles. We made plans, tried them and then changed them. Each death was a learning opportunity. Each mistake an opportunity to laugh or learn or both. No one was the leader but we all led. All equals. Friends.

Being given jobs, getting stuck in roles... When people worked in communities, did they chose their preferred teams? Was their choice? Did people naturally gravitate towards what worked best and most happily? I suspect they did. Why would they not? Roles would change with efficiency, so as people aged and become less energetic, they would find themselves as advisers or deposed by challenges if they held on too tight.

I work in a dysfunctional team... An overly emotional Boss who can be quite confrontational. The Lady of Lies who is very capable but also pretty lazy. The Little Princess who is not so hot, except for very brief spurts if someone stands over her with a whip. An older person who is in a position of responsibility but the precision required is slowly slipping away. I personally feel that I carry more than my fair share of responsibility within the team and do more than my share of the work, for lower pay than most as well. I bet my being absent has made things tough.

So no, going back won't be fun. I won't have an easy ride as I catch up on my work. I shan't enjoy team spirit, as least for a while. I shan't enjoy feeling well for a little while either. But I shall enjoy friendship and I shall enjoy love and have fun, just maybe not in work straight away. But then maybe I won't have to be there to long. Even if I don't get to change jobs there is our plan - the one where in the not to distant future, I get to be a stay at home Mum.

Creative Update

2009-11-14T18:02:00.002Z

Another night when I am not sure what to say. I am not sure I have much in me right now. The last few weeks have been draining and the things on my mind are things I have already written about. I am tired. Work next week is going to be horrendous. Work, eat and sleep will be the name of the game next week.... Assuming all works out that is.

I have not done anything much creative. Luckily the grand Xmas making was well in progress. The nasty necklace I was stuck on for the future m-i-l is a non-starter, with her preferred length and it being a slow grower and all but I have decided to just make her the one necklace this year. This just leaves one for my Aunt and one for my Mum.

My Aunt's is in progress. It is a series of beaded beads that will be strung onto a piece of satin cord. While ill I have made about 6 beads and I shall stop when I get bored or run out of time.

My Mum's remaining necklace doesn't need to be finished until the end of January and will be a silver loom lariat to match her bracelet.

My Great Aunt and my Gran are getting silk scarves this year. One is done but the other is in progress. I have done the base colour and now I need to trace the design on using clear gesso before finishing to add colour. Nothing to complicated really....

I was going to do other things for Xmas but money is now going to be somewhat tighter than anticipated and I still have the men to buy for. I also now have a lot less time and energy for all the crafting. I have more silk scarves I was planning on painting but I think I need to go gently now.

The rest of this year is going to be about taking it slowly, gently and very, very easily. Then in the new year I am going to hopefully be fitter to attack life again a bit. My house certainly needs attacking...

I still have blog candy and pass it forwards to finish. I am determined to finish these but I am not going to take on anything else like this for some time. It occurs to me that most of my crafting is for others and my house could really use some craftiness. Very, very badly. And some decluttering. A lot of that really....

I still want to learn to crochet and felting looks like great fun and then there are rag rugs, curtain making and other bits of sewing... I could use some matching curtains, table runner and mats for the dining room for instance. I want a beautiful home....

WoW

2009-11-13T20:06:00.002Z

A while back, some years ago in fact. F was talking at work with someone and that lovely person recommended a computer game called World of Warcraft. This game is a curse and a blessing as far as I am concerned. I made some fantastic friends and the best times were great, really great. It takes over your life though and sometimes you find yourself at odds with groups of people and things go awry.

in WoW there are loads of servers and you pick one to play on. They are like parallel worlds, each populated by different gamers. F started on the server of his mate but I felt that it was a boys group and wasn't sure of my welcome so joined a new role play server.

I found myself in a golden age of RP on that server. There were two rival guilds and the plot line between the two allowed for some fantastic game play. It felt as if most players on the server knew the plot and were bit characters. I remember one night when our political cause took a down turn and I, along with the other members of my guild, found ourselves hunted through the streets of Stormwind by a raging mob. Fantastic times...

The political purpose of the two guilds slowly spent itself and a small group of friends formed a new guild, a very small guild. We were quite well respected though. Some of our members played with some of the major guilds of the time and we all have roleplay friends doted around. Our guild may have been small but it was well respected and we were all very good friends within. F had seen how much fun I was having and came and joined in as well....

Good things can not last though. Life got in the way and different people disappeared for various reasons and our tiny guild was too small to sustain loss like that. What is the point of being in a guild if you are always alone? It disintegrated and some of us spun off into the biggest RP guild on the server. Others remained independent and others vanished from the game.

The new guild wasn't home. Too big, too many politics, too ambitious. Now for a boring bit. My main character is a warrior, a tank. This is an important role in any group and I wasn't bad at it. The problem is that the tank tends to be the one who leads the group. I just didn't have an ego big enough for that job and I didn't want it. I found myself brow beaten and unhappy. A lot of good people refuse to play tanks because of the pressure...

Unhappy, F and I flitted off to the initial server and joined up with his mates. This was fine but different. One of our good friends joined us and to be honest their wasn't many of us left by that time. i got bored of the game and got a life. F and friend carried on, changed games for a while and then went back.

I havn't played in about two years.

All of a sudden F and friend have been looking at the RP server again and our old friends. Some of them have returned! And F and friend are going back and I am going to join in too.... i will not become an addict again, I will not! I will not lose my honnies and blogging and all, but... I want to go reminiesce a bit. I want to do some play acting. I want to chat with old friends.... Time for a bit of a change to tide me through the dark winter months....

Feels Like Trouble

2009-11-13T13:57:00.002Z

I was feeling pretty happy. I am feeling better. OK, so I am going to tire easy for a bit and sometimes my ear gurgles and itches. But basically I am going to be fine to go back on Monday as far as I can see.

Each visit to the Doctor's I have updated them. I had agreed to speak to my Boss on Sunday to confirm that I could definitely return to work. Since telling them about my burst ear drum on Tuesday I have been thinking about the fact that a lot of the building I work in is pretty noisy. So much so that if you spend more than fifteen minutes in some areas you need to use ear protection. The company also regularly conducts hearing tests on people working in those areas.

I don't work there. I work in a quieter area, there is some occasional noise but I basically spend 90% of my time sat behind a computer. Given there is two of us doing the same role, it wouldn't take much to adjust things so I was behind a computer 100% of the time for the next few weeks. OK so maybe I would need to walk outside to go to the facilities, maybe they might need to buy me some big posh ear defenders, like headphones.

It is doable. Having told my boss about my ear, they should have been thinking about things. Thing is my Boss is a physical type who doesn't shy away from a fight, who speaks before thinking, wears their heart on their sleeve and feels emotions very strongly, negative and positive. So when I spoke to them and pointed out about my ear and noise and asked them to talk to the H & S person, they weren't best pleased.

They did and they called me back, so now when I go in on Monday, before I even get to head to the place I work, I get to meet with my Boss's Boss and the H & S person. My good mood has evaporated. I think my Boss would quite happily see me gone right now. Four weeks off sick is more than they can really deal with and not being fully able to do everything I did before doesn't sit well either.

Thing is, they lack a certain amount of education. They are a get it done person rather than the sort of manager who knows all the rules and regs. Sometimes they react and then discover that legislation ties their hands. I do wonder if this is a bit like that. I also wonder, given my company is announcing redundancies, whether I will find myself faced with constructive dismissal or just paid my notice and gone. So now I am pissed off and stressed and all the good feeling I had from watching Bride and Prejudice has evaporated. So my Boss may have expressed emotion that the company would deem inappropriate but it has still been expressed.

The way I feel towards them right now, I am actually hoping that they do get rid of me and I can sue their butts. I do think I need to get armed with some data about what noise levels I can and can't be exposed to right now.... I actually was sat here thinking up nice happy, non-whiny posts for today too... *snarl*

Being

2009-11-12T19:51:00.002Z

After four weeks of barely leaving the house, i find I have little to say. I have rediscovered the pleasure of midday naps and this has led to the discovery that I like watching the clouds from my bed. My house has huge sash windows and is perched on the side of a hill so that the opposite house sits a foot or two lower than mine. I can watch the clouds, or the sky change colour, or the seagulls soar. I particularly like the seagulls.

The way they fly is soooo, full of grace. Their huge wings change shape very slightly and they harness the wind. They soar, using the wind with pure instinct. At one ment.

It reminds me of a programme I saw on Leonardo da Vinci once. He made so many incredible drawings of machines that were never made. It was decided to gather a team and try and make some of his inventions. The one I remember particularly was the hang glider, except it wasn't a glider. It flew but was so dangerous, even in the hands of the most experienced pilot.

The machine worked like the wings of the seagulls, subtle changes in shape in reaction to changes in the wind. What made it dangerous was that the pilot could not straight away have those instincts of how to use the winds. In addition, birds can feel the wind under their wings, pilots can not, so there was no feedback. I can only imagine such a machine being successfully piloted by a computer with a battery of sensors and lightning quick reactions.

Each and every animal out there has a precise function, purpose and home. They are at one with their environment. They are part of it. Their complex inter-relationships are vital to the whole system. The salmon in the river need the trees to maintain their habitat but so to do the trees need the salmon for it is the salmon that bring nutrients back up the catchment.

Why did we leave our niche? What did nature design us for? What is it that brings us into at one ment? What was our niche? Until we discovered how to manipulate our environment and make tools, I don't think we were the most successful of creatures. Few others survive on our evolutionary branch with the closest being monkeys, gorillas, chimps et al. So not the most successful design of nature then, not really.

So I know these questions have been asked so many times before... How did we jump from being animals to what we are? and what exaclty are we? Because I refuse to believe that we are a mistake of nature, a virus, planet killer. There is something more to us.

I believe.

Bits and Pieces

2009-11-11T20:21:00.002Z

Not much springs to mind to write tonight. Just little snippets...

No reply as yet from my Grandfathers friend.

I saw that Saving Grace was on tonight. This made my heart leap as this is the name of the film in which my dream house stars. I went to look at it but it is a series and not the film at all....

I came over feeling tired earlier and had to retreat to bed for a nap but other than feeling weak and tired, I am feeling OK.

I spent some time talking to my Boss last night and things are not so bad. I will be walking back into a stressful place but the stress isn't directed at me. Redundancies have been announced now though but across the group, no breakdowns released as yet.

I ordered some arm warmers and leg warmers from Etsy. They have been custom made for me and are a, um, slightly larger size than normal so they were not cheap. With postage as well... I have been awaiting their arrival for a while as first they were made and then shipped, with all the postal strikes going on here as well. Today I received a Royal Mail note saying they can not be delivered until I have paid a customs fee. Personally i think it is a wee bit exorbitant at £21 but hey, i want them so I guess I have to go pay.... I hope they are comfy after all this....

I also today received a lovely little envelope from overseas that more than made up for my lack of wooly items... It came from a special young lady of blog candy fame and contained some beautifully crafted drawings! Thank you oh sweet Savannah! XXX

Now I am sat here with a dog draped across me. Greyhounds are very flexible. If you ever watch one run then you can see how strong and flexible their bodies are. My old Big Dog was also terribly bony and things like sitting on his behind were uncomfortable for him. Little Dog, although thin, isn't so bony, but she is still very flexible. I have never known a dog to adopt such a wide range of bizarre positions. She makes a lovely lap warmer...

Update

2009-11-10T18:01:00.002Z

Not back to work this week but should be back Monday. I just really, really hope I am all better and up to it then. Going back is going to be hard - i think my Boss is running out of understanding and my pocket is going to be hard hit at the end of the month....

Seems my viral infection thingy has been attacking my whole respiratory system including my ears. The gurgle I thought might be a bit of extra wax is actually a burst ear drum. so cotton wool in the ear for a while when I wash my hair.

I previously burst my ear drum while diving, some years ago. I had an ear infection I knew nothing about and that infection was nasty. I took two courses of oral antibiotics and two lots of antibiotic ear drops and they had the longest list of side affects of any drug I have ever taken. My ear bled to start with and then well, the less said the better, but green featured quite strongly. And the pain... It took the best part of a year for my ear drum to fully grow back. For the first few weeks, sound hurt.

So to be honest I am a little surprised at what I have done and very, very relieved that it isn't painful, merely a little irritating and occasionally uncomfortable.

Any one fancy giving odds over my job? Let's say I last a week back there, still there at Xmas, my contract gets renewed and still there in a years time? *laugh*

Unexpected

2009-11-10T11:31:00.002Z

My Grandfather's story is very much a story of the unexpected and the unclear. I guess I shouldn't expect it to change now, just because I have tried to find out a few things.

My Mum always talks of him with great love and it is clear from what is said that he was well liked and respected by many. He stands tall in my families memories even though as you begin to look, there is a lack of concrete facts.

His father was a cabinet maker and I believe he died when my Grandfather and his brother were pretty young. The family was plunged into poverty and the boys spent time in an orphanage because there just wasn't the money to feed them. This is where the first hint of possible (as oppose to definite) tragedy comes in as there is the vaguest hint of possible abuse suffered in the orphanage.

The brothers grew up and my Grandfather went to war in India. He didn't talk about the war much but my Mum remembers that he said he helped build a road. The allies had pretty much finished their road building by the time the war started it seems. The Japanese however used Prisoners of War to build roads in the jungle and many, many died. The Japanese just couldn't understand that the West thought differently, it was duty to survive to fight another day whereas the Japanese committed suicide rather than be captured. The POWs were without honour as far as they were concerned and this tragedy of misunderstanding resulted in horrific treatment of the POWs.

My Grandfather met my Gran and my Gran tells a story about how she had to marry him because they went on a day trip with friends but left it too late to leave. She found herself in a position where she had to share a room with him and honour required she marry him. I don't think this was at all what she wanted. I don't think she loved him.

Two children later and my Grandfather moved to another town with work. My Mum always believed that they were to follow but the family never did. Instead a divorce came along and eventually a Stepfather who they did not enjoy living with. He was a man who liked to be alone and was best off in his garden. When we went and stayed he would manage for a day or two and then retreat to the garden. He had a brilliant smile and was not a bad chap but I can not imagine he ever wanted to live with someone else's children.

My step grandfather did something silly which caused my Uncle to spend a lot of time in hospital. Because of this my Uncle missed out on the last few years of his Father's life. For my Grandfather became ill. The added tragedy of this is he was to be married to a widower whose first husband died of exactly the same, not so common, illness. They didn't marry because he wanted to ensure my Gran carried on receiving his pension.

On a visit to see my Gran, she told my Mum and I a story. Knowing my Nan and given the way she told us, I have no idea if the story is true or not. My Grandfather was caught doing something that was still illegal at that time. It apparently resulted him losing his job and having to move and also resulted in the end of his marriage. The planned move had been a lie, told to ease the ending. It is possible from what was said that my Grandfather was gay or bisexual.

My Great Uncle didn't step in and help the family at all. In fact he was a headmaster at my Mum and Uncles school. My Mum was not academic but she had a dream to be a nurse. In his position of Headmaster, you would expect him to support them, no matter how he felt about things. He told my Mum to give up her dreams as she was not good enough and he put it in writing in her school report. Luckily she didn't listen.

So a life full of suspected tragedy, abused child, Japanese POW and society outcast... but yet he walks tall and all of these half guessed things might not be so.

There isn't many people to ask about him. My Gran is vague and not necessarily inclined to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Asking difficult questions of the lady he nearly married seems a way of just causing hurt and upset. He did however have two good friends that my Mum remembers. One I have no idea how to track down but the other is pretty well known, a celebrity.

So after not doing it for a looong time, I finallys ent him an email. I didn't say much, just who I was and why I was writing. Today I received a very nice and polite reply. Not the one I expected at all. It seems in those circles that there was another gent of the same name. The email apologised for not being of much assistance but said that he didn't really know him and suggested I look in a different circle.

I sent back a brief and equally polite email explaining that this man was not my Grandfather. I gave my Grandfathers profession and nickname as well as explaining that the eminent celebrity had in fact crafted a celebration of my Grandfather following his death but that all the information I have is second hand.

And now I wait.

It was 50 years ago after all. Could he really be forgotten? This man who walks so tall? Whose genial shadow comes down through time... My Uncle moved to the last town my Grandfather lived in and went to a pub one day. A man at the bar went into shock as he looked the spit of his father. All those years later, surely the celebrity can not have forgotten?

Expect the unexpected.... *sigh*

Moon Whispers

2009-11-09T18:17:00.003Z

What can I say?

I am not really ill any more. Not really well yet. Very soon I visit the Doctor and I am sure he will give me the all clear and then I shall be back. Chances are it will be pretty miserable. The days will be too long and will leave me drained. The weekends will be just enough to patch me together to go back for another long week.

And for what?

I don't do an important or worth while job. I don't help anyone and neither does my company. I don't do anything real, I just alter fictional numbers. I work pretty hard for a pretty low wage. This money mostly just goes to pay for me to live and to sort out finances. It doesn't get me anything I really want because what I really want feels so far beyond my reach.

My life is all about things that keep me from living, as are most peoples.

Things are not all bad though. We have a plan. Next Summer, thereabouts things will start to get better. Instead of sorting out old things, we might finally be able to start moving forward. It just all feels so far off. Seems to be taking so many years. Sometimes hope wears low. Particularly when you are put back by illness and don't want to go back to work. Would just much rather quit and never have to go back.

I really don't need my hormones leaching away at me right now. I guess at least I know that in a day or two balance will resume. How much our little feminine hormonal imbalances affect us! I guess the only question I have is when do we see clearest? The rest of the month or when the moon draws us close and whispers in our ear. Sweet lunacy?

Rememberance

2009-11-08T13:27:00.002Z

It shamed me today when I watched the proceedings at the Cenotaph that i couldn't remember what my family had done during the war. So I made some phone calls. Some things I had known but forgotten while other things I had never known. My family was lucky, it escaped the war relatively unscathed

My Dad's Dad was born in 1903 so he was not old enough to fight in the First World War. Although he was in his late thirties when the Second World War broke out, he didn't escape. He was too old for the frontline thankfully. He was a driver for the RAF based in London and he drove things everywhere and drove everything. Hampstead Heath was full of anti aircraft guns and a lorry compound. He escaped being posted abroad to North Africa due to a severely broken ankle.

His wife gave birth to my Father towards the end of the war and my Dad grew up with rationing and reminders everywhere. A family friend had an elbow that wouldn't bend because he had been shot at Dunkirk. They lived in London all through the war and survived the Blitz.

My Mum's Mum was one of those ladies who was suddenly allowed a much more independent life than otherwise she might have expected to have lived. She associated with officers and when she talks of the war, you can see it is bittersweet. Parties and fun times with friends who let go as if they might not come back and of course the memories of the ones that did not come back. My Nana was a very beautiful lady and she was based in London. The spirit of the Londoners at this time was a bright and shining thing in the face of adversity and she was one of them.

My Mum's Dad didn't like to talk about the war much at all. He was in the army posted in India. He at some point rode a horse and he also helped build a road. From this we suspect he was a Prisoner of War but we are not sure. As he and my Gran later divorced, finding out about him has always been tricky.

Family history is a valuable thing and I need to make a concerted effort to write more down... Least it be forgotten

A Quick Note on Mazes and Labyrinths

2009-11-07T12:49:00.002Z

I have been having a little look at penance labyrinths online. It seems that there is a great deal of controversy about the uses of these mazes and their origins. Some claim them as central to pagan fertility rites and that the patterns have been preserved in the dances performed around May Poles each spring. Others claim mazes and labyrinths as the province of catholicism.

With Christianities habit of adopting existing traditions and the existence of labyrinths before Jesus - think Perseus and the Minotaur - it is likely that both are true. It is likely that an ancient labyrinth in Cornwall was pagan, then Celtic Christian before being forgotten and excluded from religious practice.

It is an area of much conflict. I found one site advising people to only visit mazes and labyrinths that they knew for certainty to be both ancient and Christian. To not encourage this pagan belief in them connecting us to the earth.

Why do things have to be one thing? Why does one thing have to be correct? Like a diamond with many facets, all views can be true, the more we see, the more we understand the true nature of something. No one side is more valuable or important.

It seems to be a labyrinth to celebrate fertility would be a perfect tool to make people go round on their knees in penance....

My Dream Home

2009-11-07T11:18:00.003Z

In my dreams I have been long torn by the prospect of an old house, full of history and time, and the joy of a new eco house, custom built for me. Last night I became decided once and for all what I want because I found it. I lost my heart completely. I couldn't sleep last night for thinking of my new love. I read all I could on the internet as well....

It is a little on the expensive side at 2.75 million and it is rumoured that celebrities have been to view it. I feel quite strongly that it shouldn't go to such a person. I have a strong feeling that this house shouldn't belong to a Trust or be open to the public. It should be looked after by a follower of the Goddess.

It should have children and life and not be frozen as a museum or primped into a flash showpiece. I should be first and foremost a home - both for a family and for the spirit that inhabits this place. Maybe it could be used as a retreat. It needs to be safeguarded as a sacred place, not have it's power leached away by a parade of families with unhappy children held behind a rope and not allowed to touch. Stonehenge has not lost it's power but the rules in place there make it a shadow of what it could be...

I personally think the current owner feels this too. This is an excerpt from an article you can read in full here.

It's an incredibly feminine house," says Richard. "It has a good feeling. You could sleep on the floor, all on your own, and you'd be perfectly happy."

Those who have watched the film will recall the sweeping lawn between the front of the house and the lake, and the sloping beech woodland behind. "All the wildlife gets condensed in the valley. Every day we see deer, badgers and owls and at night, there is total darkness, just stars. We never experienced that in Sussex," says Richard.

He will miss the woodland the most: "The trees are enormous up there. But you're only ever a custodian of a house like this – you have to pass it on to someone else."

Nevertheless, he is determined to be choosy about who buys it – no property developers, for example. But there is a chance it could sell to a celebrity, given that several "high profile" people have viewed it already, according to Jonathan Cunliffe of Savills, who is handling the sale. "It doesn't surprise us. Every other house like this is owned by the National Trust," he says.

The site has been inhabited at least since Saxon times and it is believed that the current house is built on the site of an older house with part of an older building possibly being the kitchen. In 1564 a lady called Alice Reskymer left the hosue to the church and it became a rectory. A succession of religous folk from London bought architectural ideas to the house. In the early 1900s a retiring rector built a new rectory rather than leave his beloved home.

In recent years the history of the hous has been troubled. In 2002 the owners went bankrupt and the house was in disrepair. Things had become rather unpleasant all round as shown in this article. The new owners pumped in money and the external rennovations have been completed and inside is a blank slate, requiring more money and time.

The house is huge, far, far bigger than I would ever, ever really need.... Downstairs there is a drawing room, reception room, sitting room, dining room, family room, kitchen, boiler room and an octagonal music room. There is a courtyard and then a coach house with three bedrooms. Oak panelling abounds and the ceilings are impressive shapes. Upstairs there are eight bedrooms with the master suite including a bathroom, dressing room and morning room. The attic hasn't been included as bedrooms and includes a further five rooms.... Then there are outbuildings....

But it isn't the house itself that draws the most, despite it being an undisputed beauty, featured in the film Saving Grace where the lady of the manor fights to save it from the bank by growing cannabis. (very funny) Just outside the house there is a hexagonal walled garden and at the centre of it there is a well. It is hinted that the well might have had a previous religious importance but I would say that that is pretty undoubtable. To add to this there is an ancient turf labyrinth in the mature woods around which wrongdoers would crawl on their hands and knees in penance.

Go have a look at the house here. Once the house is off the market, this link will vanish....

The house is private and situated within mature woodlands. It has a front and rear drive, 38 acres including a five acre field. It has a mill pond and the river appears to run through from the map.

Maybe I can win the lottery tonight... A seven million jackpot would possibly enable me to buy it and restore it but I suspect I wouldn't be left with millions afterwards but I could do it, if I won... Short of me winning, pray that this place falls into the right hands, for Wetherham is a gem, unique.

Spark of Memory

2009-11-06T17:38:00.003Z

I have been thinking about memories a bit recently. Some memories are like a bright spark, a moment that is so distinct and strong while others are like a flickering candle light seen at a distance, longer but fuzzier to, the emotions that preserve them are less intense.

For me, emotion seems to be at the centre of memory.

One of those little sparks is an isolated thing but the thing that defines it was the realisation that at that precise moment in time, I was happy. I can not remember why I was happy or how old I was. Just the emotion and where I was. It was an Autumn day and I was in the grounds of my school, on the way to music. The dew was heavy on the grass and so were the craneflies, as I walked through the dewy grass I left footprints in the silver coated grass and shook up storms of daddy long legs all around.

People say that smell brings things back for them, or a place or something else. For me it is emotions I think that anchor. Smells are linked to things but less specifically... fresh mown grass or creosote or hot ink and paper, linked to tasks and non-specific memories. I think for me these smells are linked more with emotions than of specific memories.

Avebury

2009-11-05T17:29:00.003Z

I like this reminiscing thing so we are going to have some more tonight. We are going to go back to when I was 18. I had moved out of home for a gap year placement. There were other teens on the same scheme. It is a strange time for people our age to be away from home. Everyone has gone off to Uni and suddenly everything is different...

I became friends with a chap on the scheme who was local. We often used to go to the cinema because he was a fairly silent sort of a chap and my constant chatter used to get a bit much for him sometimes. He was a bit of a hippy sort and had an escort van with a mattress in the back, little cupboards built in either side of the wheel hubs and multi coloured scarves all over the sides and as curtains between the seats and the bank and over the windows.

Back then neither one of us had ties or responsibilities, if we wanted to go off and do something we could and somehow money was not an issue, even though we were not paid a great deal. We had a lovely ground spread across the region and we met on training courses. We would travel to picnic and play frisbee in the sun in one city, go to a house party with vodka jelly somewhere else, get the train into London and go shopping in Camden, whatever we fancied.

My friend wasn't single, she lived off near the coast and sometimes we would go off for a house party at hers. I remember setting off on a trek to try and watch the sun rise over the sea, wrapped in a sleeping bag. Unfortunatley the sea view wasn't to the west and it was a slightly dreary morning. We got a few sniggers on the way back, wrapped up and bleary eyed... i got on with his lass anyway so there was never a problem with me going out with her chap.

One Friday night he called me and set he wanted to get away from here, did I fancy going off? I did and so with a couple of sleeping bags and probably a bit of food too, off we went. He took me too Avebury. We parked up in the dark in a layby near Silbury Hill. It was dark as the moon either hadn't risen or was new but clear. We climbed Silbury Hill.

Afterwards he lit his parafin lamp and we played crib. Unfortunatley the lamp was pumping out some nice fumes. We realised after a little while and spent some time outside....

The following morning, nice and early we went up to the barrow. We discovered a new age type who had slept in the barrow overnight. He had very minimal gear. We got talking and gave him a lift into Avebury. He had a ratty deck of cards, all dirty and creased with no pictures. He had the names of animals on them and he got us to draw a card for our totems. I was an otter and my friend was a deer. My friend was a little cynical about such things...

We then wandered around he stones before returning home.

It is over a decade ago and the memories are thin, as if I have not taken them out often enough and refreshed them. I wish I had had a blog back then because then i could go back and see. This blog is my rememberance of the things I do. I wonder how much I have forgotten... This night though still shines in my memory... But Silbury Hill in the dark shines the brightest...

The Crow

2009-11-04T18:45:00.003Z

It is strange somehow how many little things take you back to another time, another place.

My niece wants to become a goth and I have offered to look out a few bits for her. One thing I know I have is a special poster, that I loved (and still do) so much.

I have been thinking of this film recently, remembering how I loved it but have only seen it once.... I am sure there was another reason I was thinking of it but I can't remember now, obviously I wasn't supposed to share it....

Then today, I found an ex of mine who is a film buff with an incredible brain and pretty much perfect recall and often puts quotes as his status update on facebook, put these few words 'it can't rain all the time'. Most of his quotes pass over my head but that one didn't.

And it takes me back in time. I had a beautiful boyfriend, my first love. Almost exactly the same height as me, he was lithe and trim and moved with cat like grace. The moves of someone who must have done some martial arts, a fighter, not to be underestimated. He was a biker type in his jeans and leather jacket and black silk shirt. Arms full of arty tattoos - apart from the spider...

I was a voluptuous goth girl, with long black hair, all fledgling woman with a body built for badness. In my maroon skirt with black tie dyed bits that was more than a full circle if you laid it out, my black cross over top, boots and leather jacket.

That night we had been to see the crow and it was fantastic. The only thing was i didn't want to leave. I had seen a group of people arrive just as it started who I didn't want to see. i hadn't really done anything wrong but it wouldn't matter how much I thought and felt that, it would not convince them.

Two of the girls were best friends and i was friends with one of them. The two girls had done something or another, stayed out with some boys they barely knew or something and a nasty piece of gossip was being put around it. The one I was friends with told me what had happened so I knew it wasn't true and thought nothing more of it.

A while later she comes in really upset having just heard the gossip. I admitted I had known and that was it. I had fallen foul of some rule of friendship no one had ever thought to tell me. Apparently I should have gone and told them the second i had heard it, not merely discounted it as false and put it to bed in my own mind. I don't think it helped that I wouldn't say who told me. It was actually the other girlss ex who she was good friends with.... *laugh* he offered to go put the record straight but I said no, there was no point, it wouldn't mend things.

That was that.

So back to the Crow. My first love got fed up of waiting and persuaded me to leave. It was one of the best things he could have done. The group were stood outside chatting and without saying a word or sparing them a glance, we walked on by. We looked so good, so in control, so capable. They couldn't touch us and they knew it. Together we were more than we were apart and they knew. They stopped talking and all eyes followed us. I felt a million dollars.

I must watch the crow again.

to say we looked good together was an understatement. At least that is the way I remember it.

The Crow is a dark film in the way it appears, the story, the music and of course the legend... Brandon Lee was killed during filming. Very appropriate in so many ways for right now. The two main characters are murdered the night before their wedding and the man comes back to avenge their deaths and to say good bye to the girl they took care of. Brandon died from a faulty blank in a gun used in the film which shattered his spine. He was soon to have been married shortly after. His father also died during filming and believed he had been given this knowledge in a premonition and that there was a curse.

Despite all this, the film is uplifting. The evil that caused their untimely death is beaten back and those that remain get to live as they deserve.

So in one fell swoop we have spoken of my first two loves and my most serious relationships before the lovely F. They both sit with fond rememberance in my heart. I guess that is another theme of right now, rememberance of the dead, both on samhain and on the 11th November for rememberance day when we remember those lost in war.

I think I need to watch this film again...

Shaman

2009-11-04T17:25:00.000Z

We westerners have a talent for taking words and concepts from other cultures and using them for our own ends.

Not surprisingly I am reading about Shamanism right now. I have just come across this website all about Tengerism. This is a website written to promote and preserve Mongolian and Siberian Shamanism. Except it isn't. Tengerism is the religion and Shamans are the priests of this religion.

When anthropologists traveled to the new world they found similar beliefs amongst some of the tribes and so they lumped them all together under the term shaman. The different tribes do not apparently share the same beliefs.

Steps have been taken in some countries to ensure that Shamans are registered so that people can not claim to be what they are not. You can not become a Shaman in a weekend and apparently, according to Tengerism, you are chosen by the spirits at birth and this is made clear later in life. Another Shaman should recognise the potential and seek to train the new Shaman who then progresses through nine degrees, although few reach the ninth.

I can see how if a term that refers to your holy people is hijacked and now refers to people of many nations and beliefs. I can see how different tribes would become offended by being lumped together. How it would be offensive when people assume that because they have read a book about shamans that they therefore know what the believes are of someone who belongs to a specific tribe somewhere else. Ignorance is no excuse.

But what do you do when that word has come to be an umbrella term for a bunch of tribal believes that share certain things?

We all love a label don't we?

I guess the problem is that we carelessly lost our own tribal faiths that would have fallen under the shamanic umbrella. Except it wasn't careless. Just as empire making has spread the word shaman, so it was empire building which took our original pagan beliefs and turned them into something else. They were swallowed up somewhere within Catholocism, wewll parts of them were....

So maybe we need a new word. A new classification. So that we can talk about what we believe without giving offence to those that we seek to learn from. Using our own words, from our own languages. Any ideas or suggestions?

The words we do have Witch, Wicca, Druid and Bard all have meanings of their own...

Aim of the Game

2009-11-03T14:47:00.003Z

It started with a little whisper of an idea and my fingers were able to spin it out into a story. Nearly 10,000 words on my first day of NaNoWriMo. All spun out by my muse.

Yesterday I wrote nothing and lay under a mantle of icky feelings. Today I have turned back to it and it is a different ball game altogether. I made the mistake of allowing my eyes to linger on what had previously been written and someone how it doesn't seem to shine so bright. The effect of the morning after. We lose the moment.

I also have the problem that that tiny idea has taken me far further than I had expected. My main character has, within those 10,000 words, changed the world completely and utterly and also by accident. Now she has to figure out to live in it. I don't have much idea where she is going or how she is going to get there and the words no longer feel alive as i write them.

What do you do when you lose the plot? You keep going, one word at a time because even the plot just doesn't matter, all that matters is writing those 50,000 words. One word at a time... How slow it will be if they don't start to flow again...

I guess it is kind of appropriate that my main character is a lost soul too.

How Long?

2009-11-02T11:56:00.002Z

Time for another whinge about being ill....

I had my nasty chest infection and the doctor continued to sign me off but didn't renew my antibiotics because he felt it was viral and wanted to give them a chance to work. I was starting to feel a little better when F comes down with a bug.

Suddenly I have snotty man with a temperature lurking about. Of course my immune system is shot. Not just from my own bugs and chest infection but also from the antibiotics. I am not sure if the antibiotics were damping down my own bugs or if F's bug have now come to visit.

Yesterday I had to visit the shop to get some food for Little Dog and I felt dire when i got back. A twenty minute excursion was all it was. Today my chest has bloomed and is sore etc. Work call because they want to know if they need to get some cover in or not and to try and get me to get an appointment as soon as possible.

Feeling a bit harassed I tell F, who is a little stern with me about money and so forth. Then I call the Doctor and find that they are snowed under and obviously have sickness too. So I am off to the Doctor next week and not even to see my own. Apparently the Doctor will be backdating my certificate.

I feel miserable now. I feel as if I have been backed into a corner of being off all week, whether I need to or not. I feel as if F is losing sympathy a little (I suppose at least one of us a constitution made of sterner stuff but I guess it makes it hard for him to appreciate where I am at). I now know that whether I need drugs or not, I can not get any.

I think the term for my position is snookered.

Things that go BANG in the night

2009-11-01T18:34:00.002Z

I am sat here as per normal with Little Dog lolling on my legs having a nice cuddle. What is different tonight though is that she has a little shake on. Apart from the shake she seem is fine. She will do this most nights now until after Guy Fawkes is over and done with.

To be honest I havn't heard or seen any fireworks yet. But she has far better ears than I do and the merest hint of that explosion boom and she knows it is that time of year again. Teenagers probably letting them off somewhere.

I remember as a kid that Haloween and Guy Fawkes were separate. Guy Fawkes was the biggy and everyone went to their local display. We went up to the village and ate sausages and burgers in buns with hot onions and tomato ketchup. No pinky hot dogs back then. We had to wear hats, gloves and scarf as it was cold. Before and after the display you socialised with the other village folk and of course you knew plenty of them. Everybody was there.

When you were cold you took a spot near the bonfire and a rope held up by pegs kept everyone at the proper distance. On top of the bonfire would go the guy. I seem to rememebr competitions to see who could design the best Guy with prizes and all. They all went up in flames though.

Now it seems as if everyone has a display, although so far this year seems far far quieter than any recent year, thankfully. I remember when I first got Big Dog they started as soon as it got dark and just went on and on. Walking him on my return from work was a fraught affair. How did mothers with babies ever get them to sleep either.

There is another side to fireworks of course. Pollution. Dust and smoke containing heavy metals are released into the air. Of course people claim that this pollution is small compared to other sources like fossil fuels, but surely fireworks are an easy extravagance to be rid of? Can't we go back to each town having it's one display? Then there is the light pollution, what effect does that have on nocturnal insects and animals?

I am not saying ban them, just all things in moderation. A time and a place for all things. the 5th of November should be it, in nice professional displays to ensure safety and that everyone knows when and where to be.

While writing this Little Dog has gone back to sleep and now the only movement is the flick of paws and ears as she dreams.

Tarot

2009-10-31T21:20:00.002Z

A little Samhain tarot, using Arthurian Tarot.

Prydwen's Anchor
1. What is happening right now - Sword Five
Defeat, slander, cowardice, unethical behaviour, divisive means, thwarted plans, sloppy or malicious thinking causes things to go awry. I guess the question is, who is making things go awry, me or someone else...

2. Current direction - Stone Knight
Responsible and trustworthy, patient and methodical, may seem dull but is stubbornly committed. So I guess that is where I am heading right?

3. How am I preventing the free flow of my life - Spear Three
Established strength, controlled intention, intuitive understanding gives an expansive outlook and resulting opportunities, scrupulous responsibility, enterprising initiative. I always find this spot a hard one to read, is this what I am doing or what I need to be doing?

4. Current opportunities - Merlin
The impulse of creation, imaginative insight, mastery through disciplined skill, initiative, self confidence, perception on all levels, alignment to and free flow with one's life patterns. This is precisely the opportunity I want!

5. Home / Family - Spear Queen
Deeply committed to healing the earth, deeply attuned to its needs and has suffered in it's service. Her grief is well hidden and she is generous and friendly to all.

6. Job / Vocational - The Wounded King
Wisdom gained through hardship and experience, spiritual insight, commitment to inner principles, a changing of one's life, inner healing, meditation, purification, stripping away inessentials, self sacrifice. I think this fits with work...

7. Relationships - Sword Nine
Suffering, grave doubts, guilt, premonitions, nightmares, cruelty, despair, depression, inability to take personal responsibility for one's path, the need for a disciplined lifestyle and commitment to logical thought. I don't like this one bit.

8. What should I become self aware of - Stone Nine
Accomplishment, enjoyment of solitary pursuits, love of nature, aesthetic pleasure derived from one's belongings, relaxation and leisure, ease, fulfillment of physical needs.

9. The Past - Sword Three
Sorrow, separation, deep disappointment, loss, the possession of the thoughts by jealousy, brooding on personal slights, it is necessary to analyse one's receptivity to the tide of events and acknowledge one's responsibility for others pain. I can go with that.

10. Possible future outcomes - Sword King
Giver of justice, a wise counsellor, analytical judgements, severity tempered by impartiality, shows how love of self-analysis and truth ay govern one's life.

A mixed bag for next year then. I hate the court cards, I find them so hard to place in a reading. I can't say as that reading feels me with joy, there are some difficult things in counterpoint. It completely agrees with the feeling of impending upheaval that seems to be circling me. I don't think it is going to be an easy ride at all.

Let's look at self limitation with Mabon's Gate...

1. What I would like to achieve - Taliesin
Tradition, revelation, inspiration, insight, preservation of heritage, initiation, advice or counsel, transformation of the mundane into the spiritual. Pretty spot on I think.

2. Blocks - Sword seven
Unstable effort, little progress, plans fail as a result of confued thinking, self-deceit, passivity, over-defensive, the need for proper conceptualization. Harsh but fair I guess.

3. Unconscious blocks - Arthur
Leadership, authoritative energy, the weilding of power for the good of all, will power, organisation, courage, responsible love, fatherhood, dynamism. Eek. Not sure how this fits exactly. Maybe it just means I worry to much about others.

4. Already achieved - The Sun
Innocence, purity, enthusiasm, warmth, a loving heart, joy, freedom, enlightenment, wholeness, health, intolerance of shadows in any aspect of life, clarity, directness, true vocation realized. A nice card to get, perhaps overplaying things a little....

5. What helped me - Stone four
Earthly power, conscientious ambition, material gain, possessiveness, selfishness, spiritual miserliness, time to be generous with others.

6. How have I helped myself - Grail six
Rediscovery of one's roots,ancestral memories, the pleasure of remembered links, a sense of tradition and continuance, atavism, karmic recall. so digging around in the past then...

7. The way others see my idea - Spear six
Victory, advancement realized through steady growth, pride in achievement, recognition, intuitively self-confident, ceremonial honours.

8. Who will benefit - Stone hallow
Incisive energy, the dispelling of illusions, conquest, championship, strength and power, love of truth and justice, the power of the mind, rational deduction or perception, light in dark places. Who?

9. How I can revisualise my idea - The Flowering of Logres
Restoration, culmination, triumph, attainment, perfection, rapture, spiritual healing, creative growth, the new aeon. What? Really? *blush*

10. The next step - The Spiral Tower
Reversal of energies, withdrawl of old customs phases and concepts, shocking change, liberation from outworn concepts, humility, the realization of limitations, natural forces at work, a curative illness, loss of cosy security, transfiguration, self-awareness. Oh dear, so much for a peaceful life...

11. The key to unlock achievement - The White Hart
Love, both sexual and spiritual, the vision of inner beauty, emotional ties, trust, the marriage of hearts and minds, friendship, fulfillment of desire. I guess the other reading was being a bit mean about my relationships then....

I don;t know why but prydwen's anchor has been mean recently, not that I have done many readings using it.... Mabon's Gate was much nicer and offered much more hope.

Spirit

2009-10-31T12:50:00.003Z

Pinkfairygran asked a question about the difference between spirits and ghosts. I did a little reading....

We all have a soul. Our soul exists before we are born and will continue after we are born. Our spirit is more connected with us and grows in strength with us. So some people have stronger spirits than others. It is our essence, what makes us us in this life. Spirited people have stronger essences.

Lots of things have spirits if you believe in animism. Trees, rocks, whatever....

A ghost is the spirit of someone that has died but tends to be used to refer to an apparition of a dead person. They haunt the place that they died. I have heard them described as the emotional energy left as a sort of tape recording of traumatic events. Some ghosts are more than mindless reinactments of past events. I think it is these ghosts that are a little more that are more truly spirits because they still retain something of the original person.

I remember ghost stories from my childhood being all about ghost horsemen and people seeing some traumatic event being replayed. It doesn't seem to be so much like that these days. Maybe it is because of programmes such as Most Haunted. Most Haunted would definitely be all about contacting spirits rather than watching ghostly apparitions. The spirits of Most Haunted might be able to move things, talk through a medium, affect the temperature or appear as an orb but they don't seem to be able to appear as ghosts. Do you ever hear of ghosts in this way any more?

All i know is that I have never seen a ghost. Have you?

I did a ghost walk once of an old market town. He had made quite a study of the ghosts in the older buildings around the market square and had some interesting insights.

Ghosts respond to their own culture, not the culture of those trying to get rid of them. A Chinese restaurant in this town became haunted by a hanged person. They were very superstitious and tried every thing they could from the considerable wealth of lore they had from their varied homelands. Nothing worked and eventually they had to admit defeat and call in a local ghost expert who exorcised the ghost and it was never seen again.

Ghosts in that town appear to have a time delay. They start to appear so many years after their death and then so many years later they fade away. So all the ghosts appearing in that town came from the same era. The earlier ghosts reported by other past generations had faded away and were no longer seen. The energy fades. The recording stops. The ghost fades. The spirit moves on?

A shaman called Reya who writes the blog The Gold Puppy wrote about a war memorial in DC that suddenly seemed to have become a doorway for the spirits of the dead from the Vietnam war to start moving through. Maybe their delay was over. Maybe we all sort of stick close to this realm when we first die. Maybe it varies from soul to soul. I don't know.

But also it seems to me that the behaviour of ghosts has changed over the years too. Maybe the way the ghosts behave depends on how they believe they will behave. Maybe those spirits who died horrible deaths, just wanted to show others how they died. Maybe some spirits just don't want to leave their homes. Maybe some want to scare people because they like to do that. Maybe the mother visits the child because that is what they want to do. Maybe the spirits that Most Haunted find don't want to appear, maybe they can't.

I grew up in a very old cottage. Over four hundred years old. It used to be two tiny farm labourers cottages but at some point they were made into one. The house had no foundations and creeked and moved as it heated and cooled, dried and sucked up moisture. I grew up used to all te noises of wood and brick moving. Two staircases with one splitting half way up to go to my folks room or my room. If someone went to my aprents room i would not wake but if they set one foot on a stair in the fork to my room, i would instantly wake. Those noises were the house and were familiar and known. Not scary but comforting and familiar.

I never saw a ghost or felt a ghost there. Many people must have died there over the years but I never felt anything other than happiness and quiet support from the house and garden. At one point in my life I attracted some nasty thing. A black blob. For a while i had to make a circle to sleep in. A witch friend I spoke to on the phone about it felt an echo of it that night and had to sleep in a circle to. It followed me, like a black dog from Cornwall to my parents house (maybe it went because I got Big Dog... hmmm....). And there it had to stand at the gate, it couldn't step onto that land. I have no doubt some powerful folk lived there and they set up protections that still remain. Maybe their spirits linger and protect it. Who knows. I can't remember how but the black thing one day went....

So I guess we shouldn't be scared of ghosts or spirits but we should treat them like we would people. Don't take sweeties from strangers (*laugh* except at haloween) but allow them to gain our respect and trust so they can be friends, if they deserve it. Just cos we can't see them, doesn't mean they are not there. And just because they are there doesn't mean we should pester them.

Come Again

2009-10-31T11:52:00.002Z

So here we are on Samhain. On the outside we are not going to be looking very haloweeny. We were given to signs by the police, one say trick or treaters welcome and one saying not welcome. I think we shall be sticking up the not welcome one with a little note underneath saying we have the lurgy. I might stick a bowl of sweets on the doorstep, not sure.

I will light candles for my dead. Big Dog. Uncle D who died a few weeks a go. My Gran, even though I never overly gelled with her. Her husband who I never met and know so little about because my Dad isn't very talkative about him (or anyone else). My Nan's two husbands (although she is still alive) my Grandad and my Uncle R. B who was a family friend who died of cancer when I was in my late teens. B who was a cousin's wife who died when I was very young and who was my first experience of death. I remember vaguely having that conversation with my Mum.

I think I will also do a reading by the candles tonight. I like tarot. I like reading others readings to. Eco Yogini posted hers today but blogger wouldn't let me comment....

I guess what I really wanted to write about was the dream I had last night. I dreamt I was pregnant. Very pregnant. I realised something had happened to the baby as it had not moved in some time. I told F and he took me to the hospital. We knew the baby was dead and needed to come out but we couldn't find the casualty (A & E) department in the hospital. It seemed it would appear at the time it was due to open. I kept walking around the hospital trying to find it so I could be rid of my dead baby. Shortly before I woke up, my waters broke. No one cared about finding me the A & E any more, the first nurse around was grabbed instead....

I guess my interpretation of it is that not all things that begin are meant to be. Something has begun with me that is not supposed to be and although I know it is not meant to be I have to wait for it's time to end. That time is close. There might be some pain. No caesarian for me, the department that would have done that wasn't there, not for me. I have to do it the painful, old fashioned way but the people to help are all around.

I know I don't write and remember my dreams as often as I should, only when they really want to be remembered. I have no bedside lamp so i can not write them down in the middle of the night easily. I probably should sort this. Sometimes my dreams are very.... I am convinced I had a dream warning that I would lose Big Dog.

Anyway, Happy Samhain!

Ghost Story

2009-10-30T19:27:00.002Z

Some of my new books came through the door today. One of these was The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint. As well as the second of the Fionavar books, why couldn't it have been the first one that arrived first?

So I start reading The Mystery of Grace and discover it is the perfect book for Samhain. It is all about a lady who dies and finds that she can come back on Samhain and Beltaine when the veil is thin. The first time she comes back she meets a man....

I loved this story. So appropriate and a lovely take on this time of year. Not a scary ghost story or anything halloween-esk.

I love how sometimes i find myself, by chance, doing something appropriate for the time of year, quite by chance. Beltane found me drinking mead on a stag do with the Summer King waving a wand and wearing pink horns. Samhain finds me reading ghost stories. Yule found me standing in a hill fort watching a balefire being lit following a masked procession.

My birthday found me being gifted with rowan witch wood for a wand and a staff. Pure chance.

Chance happenings. Quietly becoming more in tune. How often are we in tune but don't notice it? The world turns whether we watch it or not. We are creatures of this earth no matter what we pretend.

The veil thins tomorrow whether people pay attention or not but unless we are listening or have a particular talent for it, chances are we won't come across a spirit who will make their presence felt. I have never seen a ghost and don't think I have felt one. Doesn't mean they arn't there and doesn't mean I won't remember my dead tomorrow.

Happy Samhain

Standing Still

2009-10-30T12:41:00.002Z

I have had a go at journeying twice more and I havn't had anywhere near the same results as I did the first time. Beginner's luck maybe or just that there was some stuff desperate to make it's way through.

I just enjoyed the drum rhythms the first time. They took me nowhere at all. The second time I did travel but it was more of a visualisation than a journey. I started in the clouds again before plummeting downwards into a huge river delta with the sun glinting on the water. I fell in to the river and found myself on the bottom. Then there was a shark and I was in the sea and we were going down. Not much happened down there except it got dark.

The only spontaneous thing was the sharks appearance, the rest was very much me and offered no insights at all really to anything.

Maybe this really isn't my home or my way. Maybe I have another way I need to learn. I don't know but I shall keep trying I think. if only because it is nice and relaxing.

Apparently sharks stand for never being still, protection, remorselessness, ability to defend, connection to past knowledge and they guard the family.

In My Mind

2009-10-29T13:04:00.002Z

So I decided to do a little reading about shamanic journeys as per Sam's suggestion. She is not the first person to suggest a shamanic path to me. It also seems that my experiences of dealing with energy in the workplace are a shamanic thing in some ways too.

I found some shamanic drumming on line here. It is only just over eight minutes long which isn't long - I think they want you buy their CD. It wasn't long enough to have much happen but it is amazing how much my mind did manage to cram in.

Things like this tear me between the scientist and the witch. Is it all in my mind, made up by me, the scientist asks. The witch says, who cares, your mind has a lot of great things to say to you.... Who cares if it is coming from your mind or somewhere else.

So here goes. i was listening to the drumming and I could feel it making me move slightly. Somehow just idle listening isn't enough. You have to feel it an be it. I know this sounds odd but this was something i realised when I did the TAW exercise on drawing to music. Listening is an active thing, not a passive thing.

And then I thought, I want to fly, so I was up in the clouds, doing swan dives and running. I reminded myself of sonic the hedgehog completing levels. Then I thought no, this isn't flying and I was gliding on the winds above mountains with huge wide brown wings. High, high above. Then I tipped to one side to bank and the world tipped and I was no longer there, I was a blue parrot eating a nut in a tree.

I know the blue parrot. I did some visualisaion work years ago on my basic and higher selves. My basic self is a mole called Scrutius who likes to find things and wears some pink winged glasses a la Dame Edna Everidge. My higher self was Anyol, the blue haired, blue parrot spirit.

I called to the parrot and she transformed into the blue haired woman, naked. We hugged and then I fell from the tree. I landed in a river as a rock. Not moving. I remembered that rocks only move in rocky rivers when a storm comes along and then they get swept somewhere completely different. Change hits them completely.

So I asked if a storm was coming and looked up and I could see the sky was turning that bronzey colour, not just a little part of the sky near the horizon but all of it.

Then I was a bear and I was with another black bear and we hugged. Then I clearly heard 'this is not your home either'. The drumming on the computer reached that pitch that calls you out and I was back here.

Maybe I need a drum...

Thoughts on a postcard...

I did find the drum helped. I have done a fair bit of visualisation over the years but quite often it feels a little stilted and forced. This felt far more fluid, flip oh I am somewhere else. I came out feeling better and grounded....

OK so these are my thoughts on it.... The computer game feel of the beginning, I think reflects how my life has been in the past. Study this, progress to this, level up. you can fly, but fly like this.

I expressed unhappiness at this and moved out of it. I am not sure what the bird was, except that it was huge, brown and lived in the mountains. Maybe a golden eagle, who knows. but the whole world was laid out beneath me. These sorts of birds represent seeing things clearly, from above, even things that are hidden, courage, power and blance.

The forest was full of tall trees, forest giants and I remained in this forest for the remainder of the journey. The blue parrot didn't fit and i felt as if i was saying good bye to Anyol.

I think the thing with the rock in the river is fairly clear. It was a warning, an advance notification, that change, when it finally comes will be sudden and complete for me. It wasn't meant to be scary because the rock is still a rock once the river has flooded and moved it.

The bear hugged me in friendship and welcome. Apparently the bear is the animal of shamans and mystics, transformation, healing and introspection. I had been watching a programme last night about black bears in Canada's forests....

The comment about this not being my home, I think, goes back to homes of the heart. Charles de Lint talks of these in some of his books. They are that little corner of the other world which is ours and ours alone and reflects us as we are. The eagle above the mountains, the blu parrot in the tree with the nut, the rock in the river and the bear in the forest, none of these are me, they are not my home. But it is slightly bizarre....

the joy of having time at home ill is that you have time to seize interesting things and do them there and then.... Oh and the animal stuff was from this website.

Would still love your thoughts and insights....

Down but not Out

2009-10-28T17:36:00.002Z

I went to the Doctor and got myself another nice little piece of paper. No more drugs though as he feels my chestiness is viral. No mention of bronchitus or pneumonia or any other such thing. Swine flu may have been present but it doesn't matter whether it was or not because there is no way of proving it one way or the other now.

I am just ill and I have another seven days off work.

I am in no hurry to get back. I don't want to go back. I am restless and waiting for the wind to blow me on somewhere else. All the politics and difficulties and struggling colleagues. I just don't want it.

I must admit, before I got ill, that last time. On the Friday when I felt rough and had had enough of everyone. I prayed to the goddess to not make me have to go back. I guess you should be careful what you wish for. It also doesn't stop me from having to go back. It just delays it and gives me a breathing space (*laugh* with a chest infection*).

So where do I go from here? Is there any way I can avoid having to go back but still have money? I have to give a months notice. I have no other job to go to and there are not that many about right now. If I didn't go back I would get a bad reference making it harder to get another job.

I guess I just need to accept the inevitable and keep praying that I win the lottery.

I guess not liking your job is pretty common.

Mostly Down

2009-10-27T18:44:00.002Z

Not so good last night and today. The nasty bug has retreated but the chest thing is settling in despite the antibiotics. I am going to book another appointment. That is all I have to say tonight really. No thoughts. No activities. A day of sleeping and being over-sensitive.

But I am going on holiday next year! To the lovely Lake District with all my family and F and S. Will be lovely!

Update

2009-10-26T20:44:00.002Z

I have to say I am beginning to feel a little more human. Any exertion such as walking to the kitchen still leaves me out of breath but I have got to the stage where sitting on the sofa all day isn't making me feel dreadful.

I spoke my Mum this evening. She is a nurse and talk obviously turned to my being ill. She does wonder if it might have been swine flu and to be honest, it could well have been. Without a swab, there is no proving it and it doesn't really matter what label it has. It made me look rough enough that the Doctor gave me nice bits of paper. Being able to tell others that I had swine flu would probably gain more sympathy just because then they understand that I have been really ill....

She suggested I should try and get out and start going for some very short walks. Partly to help build myself up and partly to get some nice healthy fresh air into my poor beleagured lungs. It was as if my lungs were full of gunk at the bottom. Not so they hurt or made me cough, just so that I had less lung with which to breath.

Tonight F is out. He has gone for food and then to a big and, most probably, astoundingly good concert. A fantastic singer who accompanies himself with his guitar. Who with his second album has broken into the charts and become well known, the fantastic Newton Faulkner. I doubt he would make it into the top ten, he is far to good for that in many ways. Go listen to this... i would love to have heard him sing it.

I am obviously disappointed but I couldn't face going and out and about for a few hours. Breathing and walking and talking and lots of noise.

What does make me glad though, is that my ticket has gone to someone who was desperate to go and had missed out on getting a ticket. They had tried everything they could think to get a ticket and failed. And then today, suddenly, at the tenth hour, there it is. That does make me happy.

What makes me sad is that I seem to have this chain of bad luck with going to good things....

I have a dream to go to the Minack Theatre. This is a beautiful little amphitheatre on the cliffs above a cove. One year I saw they had on War of the Worlds. I love that musical and I love the book. Perfect. The weather only stops them for a couple of performances a year. Of course we booked for one of those. Horizontal rain....

Flashdance in Plymouth. The leading lady and her understudy fell prey to illness and injury. I can't remember which had what but they cancelled the show.

My friend Red coming down and giving me the opportunity to go to witchy places with a fellow witch and I get ill....

The only theatre trip we had booked this year and a really good one at that and here I am.

I do feel a little doomed. The big things i really look forward to, those special one off treats... The things that are not on long enough that you can rebook. One offs. Opportunity missed due to the intervention of fate.

So there we are...

Fate did do something nice for me though. f had a nasty full on week when despite me being here all the time, I would hardly see him. Suddenly something got cancelled and he has some time to spend at home now. Lovely!

Who Do You Think You Are? Part Four

2009-10-26T10:57:00.002Z

Exercise 7 - The Themes I Have Already Seen

I find contact with animals very rewarding both as pets or in nature. I am curious about them and enjoy assisting them.
I find certain physical activities really draw me. They are sports more concerned with outdoor exploration than competition. I keep coming back to them but never quite devote the money to them to make them sustainable.
I like using my body in a way that requires strength and movement but not speed.
I like focused activities requiring a high degree of precision that allow me to make something. I particularly like making things with a strong geometrical aspect.
I enjoy learning, each thing has to be different. Variety is the spice of life.
I love a good story. Although I like writing, it is not the words that are most important but the story itself. I don't care how the story is put across so much. My dreams often take the form of stories.

Who Do You Think You Are? Part Four

2009-10-25T13:00:00.003Z

Exercise 5 - Selecting 8 Key Achievements

Junior Reading Cup
Climbing Trees
Befriending Collie
AutoCAD and the lightbulb puzzle
Beading
Rescuing Big Dog
Making animations
Making a papier mache mask

Exercise 6 - My Eight Achievements

1. Junior Reading Cup

What was the achievement?
I won a prize for the best reading of a selected passage of text.

How did I get involved?
this was an annual competition held by my school, divided into several age groups. All you had to do was put your name on a piece of paper and then turn up at the time you were given. I always had a real have a go sort of an attitude, if someone gave me an opportunity, i would do it for the heck of it.

What did I do?
I turned up. I think while we were waiting outside we were given the book with a marked passage to look at and practice. I would read it through to myself a few times. Make sure I knew how to say any difficult words. Look at all the clues in the passage about how to say it, like punctuation and the emotion of the piece. Then I went in there and I read it with all my heart.

What did I find satisfying about it?
I love reading stories out loud. I always did from the times my Mum and I would read to each other. I loved reading to classes at school and I could hold them in the palm of my hand. I would do all the voices and really feel the story. We did a workshop as part of teacher training on reading out loud and using puppets and things. We had to read the opening page of a book and I chose Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. Not only had I chosen a fantastic opening piece but was one of the best at reading it too. I love the stories and I love bringing them alive.

2. Climbing Trees

What was the achievement?
I was the best tree climber in my year at school.

How did I get involved?
We had extensive grounds at my school. It was old manor house and a lawn stretched away on one side leading to woods with paths between and a lovely big pond. Climbing trees was something we all did. There were no adults watching us and telling us to be careful, we were on our own.

What did I do?
I was able to look at a tree and plan a route up it. From this branch to that. I could just see how to get up. I was big and strong and tall and I liked using my body to go up.

What did I find satisfying about it?
I loved the feel of using my body. I loved being able to escape where nowhere else was able to reach me. I loved the view and the peacefulness. I loved the trees themselves to. The textures of the different barks, the way different types had different arrangements of branches. I felt part of the landscape by interacting with it.

3. Befriending Collie

What was the achievement?
As a child we had a collie. We had been given him when a relative moved from a farm and no longer had room for such a big active outdoor dog. He lived in our garden. If it was cold and we bought him in, he would get to hot and ask to go out again. He was a clever and independent sort of a dog. A man's dog.

How did I get involved?
The collie didn't like me much and I can't say as I blamed him. When I was little I used to do all sorts of nasty things, like pull his hair and push him around. One time I hit him over the head with my space hopper, I remember a set of teeth zooming towards my forehead. He didn't leave a mark, he just wanted to scare me. He was always a dog who felt the punishment should match the crime. As I got older I regretted that he didn't trust me and endeavoured to do something about it.

What did I do?
I did everything I could to take care of him. The nasty things obviously came to an end. I made sure I was the one to feed him. I gave him lots of fuss, when he would accept it. I would brush him.

What did I find satisfying about it?
He did begin to trust and like me. He never forgot, I could see it in his eyes. he never forgot the child he was but he accepted the person I wanted to become. He used to get matted fur, being outside and being a long haired dog. If you pulled his hair while brushing him he would turn round and pull on of your arm hairs. He would only let my Dad brush his back legs but eventually he would let me do it to. Being worthy in the eyes of an animal is a good thing.

4. AutoCAD and the Lightbulb Puzzle

What was the achievement?
I gained my City and Guilds in AutoCAD and had to complete some tricky geometrical puzzles in order to do it.

How did I get involved?
I did A level Design and Technology and as part of that we had to do a little CAD. I enjoyed it. The college decided to offer a City and Guilds and we were able to sign up to do it. I did, that old have a go mentality.

What did I do?
In our spare time we would go and work through exercises and finally some test pieces. I really enjoyed them, the trickier the better. We were not always given all the dimensions of the piece we were trying to replicate so we would build up a series of construction lines and use geometry to work out how to correctly draw each object. I remember a light bulb in particular in which we were not given the dimensions of many of the curved sections and had to work them out.

What did I find satisfying about it?
I loved it. I loved breaking the drawing down into layers, deciding where to put construction lines in order to know where to draw. I enjoyed planning the drawing and breaking it down so I could build it up on the screen. I enjoyed the puzzle.

5. Beading

What was the achievement?
Learning how to make beaded jewellery. I learnt a variety of stitches, such as peyote, herringbone and brick. I learnt how to begin and end pieces. I learnt to make freeform pieces. I learnt to make complicated pieces involving different sizes of beads and stitches. I learnt to use wire. I learnt to braid and use a loom. I unleashed my creativity which had not had an outlet in over a decade.

How did I get involved?
I worked for a group of glamorous ladies who always wore nice clothes and had lovely jewellery. I couldn't afford to buy all the things they did but it occurred to me tht I could learn to make them myself. Jewellery didn't seem to threatening so i signed up for a course. I learnt enough of the basics to carry on, using books and such. One of my local beading shops has a weekly class with a new design each week. If you don't go to the class you can still go in and look at the patterns and buy ones you like. I eventually went to the class as well. I learnt through making.

What did I do? I consider myself able to follow any pattern. I am even able, given time to work out the stitches, able to come up with complicated designs of my own.

What did I find satisfying about it?
I had not done anything creative in years. There wasn't time when i was studying and everything creative had slowly anished from my life after I left school. I enjoyed the creativity. The following of complex patterns. The colours and shapes. Having something nice at the end of it was a bonus.

6. Rescuing Big Dog

What was the achievement?
Big Dog was a mess when I got him. His wounds and health had been seen to before he was placed up for homing. He was still covered in scare and had a bare patch on his side where an M had been burnt with cigarettes. His jaw, tail and ribs had all been broken at some time in the past. Although his ills had been seen to, he was still a broken dog. If you uncrossed your legs, he thought you were going to kick him. If you raised your voice, he wet himself in fear. He was terrified of people. I had him for 7 1/2 years and when he died he had had a long and happy life. His early beginnings were long behind him. He was always a little odd but he learnt not to be terrified of everything.

How did I get involved?
My lodgers wanted me to get a dog. They promised to share in walking and feeding and costs. I knew they wouldn't. I knew they would forget as soon as I got a dog. I knew it would be my responsibility. I loved dogs but I wasn't sure I was ready. I was more than a little broken myself. I knew if I got a dog, it would be my responsibility and no one elses.

I was going home for a few days and during this time there was to be a greyhound fundraiser. I didn't tell my folks what I was thinking of. There were a few dogs there for rehoming and I nearly chickened out. Towards the end of the day there was an announcement that there was one dog left. I went to see it. It was already with the couple who were to take it home as a foster dog.

This black shiny dog and I stood and looked at each other. i have no idea who was more nervous. My only words were 'he'll do'. The foster folks had an interesting expression at my words but the charity rep knew my family pretty well, my Dad still works for the charity. So I had no need of a home check or any such. And just like that Big Dog was mine.

What did I do?
I walked him twice a day - quite a thing for a girl of my age to be walking a big dog who was looked like they had been thoroughly abused. Particularly as he was so obnoxious with other dogs when on the lead. i don't think anyone ever thought for more than a couple of seconds that I might have been the one though.

I fed him and gave him a roof. He could always retreat to my room if he was scared and he often did. People could come in the house when i wasn't in and never know there was a dog because he was hidden away. I gave him lots of love. I didn't abuse him. and I was very, very patient. I accepted him as he was and loved him and in time he grew into an almost normal dog. there is something about dogs who have abusive pasts. They are somehow more grateful and loving because they know they are lucky. They have more personality and quirks. The relationship is somehow more rewarding and deeper.

What did I find satisfying about it?
What isn't satisfying about helping a broken soul mend itself? What wouldn't be satisfying about loving and being loved? I didn't try and make him other than what he was and he loved me as i was. He stopped me from being lonely and alone.

7. Making Animations

What was the achievement?
Learning to make simple animations using a web cam and software. I made two - some playdough worms running around and a group one of Moses parting the dead sea.

How did I get involved?
A requirement of my teacher training course.

What did I do?
We made models and for the Moses one we made a simple paper set as well. Plasticine and playdough. Then when you shoot the it, you have to take a picture and then move things very slowly before taking another picture. Making a short animation takes a fair bit of work and a systematic and careful approach.

What did I find satisfying about it?
I like working on things slowly and thoroughly that give me a nice rewarding concrete thing at the end. I like being precise and thorough.

8. Making a Papier Mache Mask

What was the achievement?
I made a papier mache mask from scratch in one morning.

How did I get involved?
A requirement of my course.

What did I do?
I had an idea in my head. I didn't want to work in a pair so I didn't, even though I am not sure my lecturer was too impressed. I got there early so that I could start straight away. I carefully cut out my card base with eye and mouth holes. I carefully made the features of the face with card and wire and masking tape. Then I covered it all in newsprint and cellulose paste. Once this was done I added small pieces of different colour tissue papers. I then sprinkled bluey greeny glitter over the top and left it to dry.

What did I find satisfying about it?
I liked realising a creative vision. I liked what I made. I like having my mask on my wall.

If you have made it this far then I am really impressed. This really wasn't written for an audience. I just find writing things on my blog helps them to get written. They somehow have more purpose and meaning behind them. I also find it easier to complete things if I blog about them.

Who Do You Think You Are? Part Three

2009-10-25T12:18:00.002Z

Exercise Four - Telling my Story

Childhood
Ace tree climber
Junior reading cup
Learning to Ride
Catching crickets with my bare hands
Matchstick model of a playground

Teenage Years
Progress in Gym Cup
Learning to Kayak
Diving off a boat
Scuba diving through a wreck
Catching birds in order to release them
Befriending collie
AutoCAD and the lightbulb puzzle
Learning Tai Chi
Picking fruit for my Mum
Making a working group model of crane

Twenties
Returning to riding and learning how to tell horse to go sideways
Learning how to scuba dive
Learning to bead
Laying flooring
Moving to Cornwall
Rescuing Big Dog

Thirties
Completing kayaking course on River Fal
Making animations
Making a papier mache mask
Learning how to silk paint
Learning how to use a bead loom

I don't remember to much of my childhood really but i did loads as a teen. I competed nationally in stock judging and public speaking and did pretty well. I did a group project to design and make a building energy management system. I was part of a sound and lighting crew for several college productions. I spoke on the radio for my college. I completed work experience in engineering for an airline. I won a prize for an electrical engineering project. I am not saying I didn't gain pleasure from these things but it was the doing not the achieving and they were 'interesting' more than pleasurable. It was also during these years that I came down with glandular fever.

My second bout of glandular fever began at 19 and turned into Chronic fatigue that took up all my early twenties. Once well I moved to Cornwall and did my degree. I loved studying. Really loved it and it took over my life a little. I made some fantastic friends I still have and really, really enjoyed it but the achievement of it, the first class honours, the final awful year of slog, all empty. By the time I had finished I was tired, run down, exhausted and depressed. My twenties finished better than they started though, much better and I was beginning to get my life together again.

2009-10-24T22:05:00.002+01:00

Just a quick update really and maybe a slight whine.

I feel like I am missing out on so much by being ill. I missed spending time visiting spiritual places with a fellow witch. I missed meeting my girl friends for a meal at a lovely bar on a beautiful beach. I am probably going to miss going to see a gifted musician on Monday, one I have long been looking forward to as we bought the tickets some time ago. I may even miss a meal out next weekend, mostly because I can hardly go out with colleagues if I am off sick.

Yes I am getting a bit done but really not a lot. I have done a little reading. A tiny bit of beading, maybe about 3-4 hours total. A little meditative art to music. Some soul searching on career paths. A lot of vegging in front of the TV. A fair bit of sleeping. I literally find myself with so little energy that i can barely do the things I normally do in the quiet moments of my day.

If I bend over I feel dizzy. If I do anything that my body considers an exertion, which is any movement pretty much, my breathing goes a little funny. All I look though, is tired.

On Thursday I went to the supermarket on the way home to stock up on food a little. I managed to drop food on the floor as I picked up my bags. As I walked out a packet went flying past me, it had dropped out my bag to meet my foot...

Yesterday I got to sit around in the doctors for a while before receiving my precious bits of paper. I went to go and get my medicine and discovered my bank card was not in my wallet. I quickly realised that I must have left it in the card machine in the supermarket. I left my prescription and went to go get my card. Luckily they had it and I had enough ID to convince them it belonged to me.

Back at the Pharmacy I paid my money and proceeded to wait and wait and wait. People who had come after me, went. I sat and felt worse and worse and worse. I just wanted to burst into tears. I went and said something to the assistant, which is very unlike me. She went and spoke to the pharmacist who had done it but not realised I had come back. The assistant had told them when I returned, I had heard her.

So feeling a little sorry for myself.... I am not quite well enough to be bored and that in itself is slightly depressing. I can't remember the last time I saw so much day time TV....

Who Do You Think You Are? Part Two

2009-10-24T11:31:00.001+01:00

Exercise 3 - My First Thoughts on my Achievements

I was the best tree climber in my year at school. I was bigger than a lot of the other kids and although I wasn't quick, I was strong. I loved climbing trees. Up there I could escape. I knew the best trees in the school grounds. Some trees I could get so high up, I could see over the woods. I would sit up there and just enjoy.
I won the junior reading cup. This involved reading a selected passage and the one who read it the best, won. I still love reading stories. I loved this part of being in school most. I could hold a class in the palm of my hand with a book. My last school felt I spent too long reading stories, that I should rush through them and onto the next thing. My Mum and I used to read to each other. She would buy a book and come snuggle in bed with me each night. We did this long after most parents would have stopped because we both enjoyed it. I remember when we were younger my Mum used to make up stories too, the hippo that lived in the drain by the bus stop and lived on the rose hips from the bush in the field behind.
Gym. Being a larger kid, it took a little longer for me to gain control of my body, but I did, eventually. We used to have to do gym and make up routines on a theme. The very last term we did gym, my group did a fantastic routine. Our teacher considered it perfect and we nearly got to go in the school's honours book but one of the girls couldn't do the final head turn right, she kept forgetting. I had made the most progress of all of us and I won the Progress in Gymnastics cup. I loved that I had finally gained control.
Riding. I decided at about the age of 7 or 8 that I wanted to ride. My Mum is terrified of horses but let me go to the stables at the end of our road anyway. I loved it. I still do when i get a chance. I love the whole feeling of it. The speed. The horses themselves. Getting out and about. Learning to do things well. I was a good rider for my age but I stopped. The stables shut and it was harder to get anywhere to ride. I went back to riding a few years ago and I loved it, cantering across the top of a hill on a windy day, figuring out how to tell that beautiful horse to step sideways.
One of our PE teachers gave us the opportunity to learn to kayak in the schools pool. I was the only one from my year that did it and found my self with a group of younger girls. I loved it. I loved that the power in my body gave me the ability to move swiftly. One time I was ill and missed a session introducing new strokes allowing finer movements. The next week the teacher set up a course for us to get through. I had a go without the new strokes and I did it, very slowly and carefully and thoughtfully. I went on a camp in Scotland and went for day kayaking on a loch. Suddenly having space, I was able to develop a paddling rhythm that I never could in the small pool. I loved exploring. More recently I did a kayaking course on the River Fal. The Fal is part of a flooded river valley and the sea causes it to be tidal as far as Truro. It is very beautiful and there are many little tree lined creeks. We got to explore some of these. I never got to buy a kayak but F and I have been looking at some with speculation more recently, the sit on ones for playing in the surf.
I went to Malta with my family and one day we went on a days boat trip. For lunch the boat stopped in a cove and we were able to swim and explore. I spent quite a bit of dive diving of the side of the boat. It was a long way down. I had never been able to persuade myself to dive off the high diving boards in a pool but here I was with no one watching, diving from just as high. My Mum tried to persuade me to jump but I soon discovered that that hurt and diving was far, far safer.
On the same holiday I went scuba diving for the first time. I loved the feeling of freedom of movement. I loved the quiet. I went several times. Didnt see much. A sea slug I think was about it. The last time though was through a little wreck. I always wanted to do more and I did eventually. Unfortunately I discovered my ears are a real weakness. I had always been prone to ear infections and this was still an issue, even if I had no idea I had one. One day I went diving and discovered in the worst possible way that I had one. I burst my ear drum. Diving isn't a risk I am willing to take any more. I had a hole for nearly a year, I couldn't swim and had to be so careful washing my hear. And the pain! It is a regret because I truly loved it.
As a child I remember being on a beach and picking up handfuls of sand. I was most surprised to find I had picked up a tiny flat fish. I am not sure my folks understood why I spent the rest of our time there intently picking up sand. I had a similar encounter with a bat. My parents were bell ringers and I spent a lot of time fiddling with things I shouldn't. One day I picked up some mould from the bottom of a vase and it untucked its head and looked at me before flying off. I have also had fantastic encounters with a seal and a badger. In primary school I was a loner and spent a lot of time catching crickets with my hands. I also used to catch birds as they would sometimes fly into my parents bedroom or our conservatory. Then there were my encounters with an Adder and a Slow Worm. i never did anything nasty to any of these animals, i was just fascinated by them, they were special moments of curiousity.
I remember spending time building things as a child. Extravagant constructions of paper, card and toilet rolls. I remember spending a lot of time making a model of a playground out of matchsticks for guides. I could become very absorbed in my projects and spend a long time happily alone doing them. Knowing my Mum was elsewhere but nearby should i need her.
I remember loving David Bellamy. From an early age I was fascinated by him and the things he spoke of. I love bogs and mud probably because of him. I was one of his books before I could even read and I still have it, well thumbed and adored.
Carrying on with bogs. I love bogs, mires, swamps, reed banks and fens. I adore them. One branch of my family originates from the fens. Maybe love of bogs is in my genes. I love willow carr, a type of habitat found hereabouts. Low willow trees growing out of shallow mud and water. Lovely woodland bogs. Green and verdant and wild. I feel a connection to them. For me they are sacred places.
While on my teacher training, I learnt how to make animations. I really loved this. Only simple things. As a group we had to do a cross curricular animation in English. I suggested RE, because it is full of stories and we did Moses parting the dead sea. It was so simple but so effective. I also did another animation of some blobs of playdough shaped into worms wriggling around each other. Simple but fun.
I find beading satisfying. I particularly love using beads to form 3D shapes. Changing sides of beads to make a simple stitched piece curl into a spiral. Making hexagons, squares, triangles. I loved the way combining two stitches created the eggbox bracelet i made recently. I love freeform pieces. Funky shapes.
Actually my love of geometry goes deeper. I always loved it. I liked geometrical constructions in Maths. Not surprisingly I loved CAD. The planning of breaking an object down into shapes so you can logically form it on the screen. Some of our tests in my City and guilds required a good geometrical understanding. I think the most satisfying test was to draw a lightbulb. We were not given enough dimensions to make it simple, drawing it correctly was quite a lovely little geometrical puzzle.
When I first went to Uni in the city I did a Tai Chi course. I loved it. She didn't just teach us Tai Chi but other forms of meditation as well. I remember losing myself in a lovely walking meditation one time. In the short course we didn't get very far throught the forms and I got glandular fever and wasn't able to do it the following term. My most powerful memory of it though, was one of the last sessions. I connected with something inside myself. I guess those forms blasted me open. I left class feeling like I could touch and feel everything. I was so sensitive. It was such a high and so beautiful. Maybe I connected with some past life stuff, there have been many hints I have a far eastern connection. Maybe I was a master of Tai Chi and practiced it every morning with the rising sun in more than one life. Maybe I opened up to much and it in some way caused my illness because I didn't have the training to deal with it. I don't know. Do you?
My parents garden always made me happy. Not just because of all the trees to climb. My folks have some currant bushes and even though i would never touch the currants (I was very pernickety bout fruit and veg as a kid) i loved picking them. I would go and take a stool and the big orange bowl and sit in the sun. My Mum hated doing it but loves making jam and things so this suited us both fine. Dogs would litter the grass, basking in the sun and when they got too hot they would move under the shade of the apple trees.
I love watching the environment. My folks had a veg patch but it wasn't really there thing and it got left. Because it wasn't mowed, all sorts grew on it. Now nearly thirty years on, it's nickname is the copse. Full of low trees such as buckthorn and hawthorn. There is however a very special tree that I have watched grow and feel a special connection to. A grand oak. In the roots of this oak sit the dreams I held when i moved here and they came true. I always sneak off and give it a hug when I go home.
During my teacher training we had to spend a morning making a papier mache mask. We wers upposed to do it in pairs. I was so excited about it and wanted my own just made by me. So I did (not sure what the teacher thought). I had to shift my tail to get it done but i did. I had an image in my head. The teacher felt we should make big oversized and exagerated masks. Mine isn't like that. she was the most delicate in the class. Elegantly shaped cheek bones, forehead and chin. A dainty nose. Covered in little squarish pieces of tissue paper in blues with glitter sprinkled over. She is a sea sprite, an elemental of the water.
Once upon a time I was on an engineering taster course. We had to make a crane as part of a team. It had to be able to move loads along and up and down. Ours was a truly elegant design and I loved it. We won a little prize.
I love stationary and paper. My Dad was a printer before he retired. I would raid his sack of paper offcuts for nice coloured strips of paper. His stationary cupboards and catalogues were fair game. Every visit to the factory and i would be there, nose in cupboard. I love pens and pencils. I love the smell of hot ink on paper. I have lots of pens and pencils and papers now. I love the tools of craftiness. I like power tools as well. I like my drill. I liked cutting flooring with a jigsaw and laying it. I liked soldering when I did electronics.

You know what, writing these things has bought a smile to my face. It surprises me a little that I havn't written abou my first class honours degree and gold medal. My music exams and prizes. Other competitions and prizes for a wide variety of things. I guess these things are achievements in most peoples book but they are not the ones that made me happiest, in fact I am not sure they made me happy at all, they felt pretty empty.

I did this exercise before and it is strange how different the two lists are. This one makes me smile. The other is full of things I felt should be on it. There are also so many things I have forgotten... The time I climbed down to an isolated cove for a skinny dip. The set of runes I made from clay i dug up and baked in the oven.

Who Do You Think You Are? Part One

2009-10-23T13:52:00.003+01:00

Went to the doctors today and it seems my virus as well as laying me low generally has gifted me a chest infection. I had noticed yesterday that my breathing felt laboured and today that has only worsened. I feel week as a kitten. The nice doctor has given me a precious piece of paper signing me off work all of next week and entitling me to statutory sick pay.

So here I am for the next nine days, unless I suddenly feel better and develop an overwhelming desire to return to work early.

Sitting here thinking about my path, I remembered a book I had bought. Another lovely self-help book called Who do you think you are? by Dr Nick Isbister and Dr Martin Robinson. It is all about identifying what motivates you, your abilities etc. The perfect book for someone trying to work out where they should be.

I started this book before but never got all the way through. I have found doing these sorts of books on my blog very helpful, although not necessarily very exciting for others to read.

So here goes.....

Exercise One - Hopes for me
What are you looking for from the 'Who Do You Think You Are?' process?
Although I like the people I work with, i don't always overly enjoy my work itself. I also don't enjoy working full time, 9 to 5. I don't think it suits me. I want to do something else but i don't know what. I know I have a tendency to get bored, so to do it for a living it has to be something that really suits me.

What's been prompting you to think about this?
It is an old question for me and one I have never really found an answer to. Work is in a rough patch at th moment. I am not sure how healthy my employers are in the current climate. I am not sur ehow healthy any employer is at the moment. Being ill and not wanting to go back, mostly cos I felt ick, has given me a kick. I don't like not being able to listen to my body and take time out when I need to. I knew nearly a week before I came down with this bug that things were not right. Left to my own devices I would have withdrawn and chances are I would not be sat here right now, being this ill.

What do you hope to have at the end of working through this process?
I hope to have a far better understanding of myself and my motivations and enjoyments at the very least. At best it may give me a new direction in life which will help me to get some where better for me. I also think figuring out what you should be doing helps to walk the right path. The path with heart.

Exercise Two - My Dreams and Aspirations
I did a whole page on word of clouds filled with dreams aspirations. Stronger ones in bolder clouds but I am not sure I could bring it onto blogger so here is a list instead...

Grow Food
Preserve food
Home brew
Husbandry
Edible flowers
Herbs
Be fit and healthy
Tai chi
Kayak
Ride
Thin
Eat healthy home cooked food
Live in tune with beliefs
With the seasons
Celebrate
Family
Get married
Children
Dogs
Learning
History
Explore land around me
Crafts
Live sustainably
Build eco-home
Own land
Conservation
Land management

That is all for now, my head is hurting....

Finding The Path

2009-10-22T15:59:00.002+01:00

It is often hard to find the right path in life. My path has taken me all over the place. Highs and Lows. The reasons for some of my twists and turns are not obvious. I think my path has been a little more twisty than some but not as turny as others. Finding the right path in life is tricky sometimes. Synchronicity plays a huge part as does fate and chance and luck.

I have sometimes felt that happiness of knowing I am on the right path and at others I have felt in a holding pattern. Right now I am in a holding pattern. Not sure why I am where I am. What it is I am supposed to gain or do here, wondering how long I am supposed to be here. I have some sort of feeling that it may not be much longer, or is that just a misguided hope?

I thought you might like to read of some of the twists and turns....

All girls Christian school. youngest in year. misfit tomboy and geek.
Sixth Form College. Cool goth chick. Had a ball. Physics, Design and Tech, Maths and Electronics. I had an opportunity to do a City and Guilds in AutoCAD, said yes and loved it.
Left home for gap year. Worked for a utility company at a prestigious site. Not the right place for me but discovered I was good at technical drawing. Think I was underappreciated because I won a prize for my project... Got hooked up with unpleasant man at work and the ripples of him spread throughout my life.
Summer traveling and visiting friends and partying. Turned down lucrative contract work in order to get away from nasty ex. Visited Ireland.
Uni in the city. Became very ill and slowly fell apart during the course of the year. Was studying Physics but found it somewhat detached from real life at that level. Asked Mum what she could see me doing and she said something environmental.
Dropped out due to glandular fever. Dark unhappy time full of sleep.
Joined a company as a trainee engineer doing lots of CAD. Left because I fell apart.
Darkest time of all dark times.
Returned to city and started temping. It allowed to me to work till I was too tired then quit, take a couple of weeks off then start something else. Learnt lots and met some interesting characters.
Split with boyfriend. Parents pointed out that I didn't have to stay in the city and could go anywhere I liked.
Synchronicity took me to Cornwall. Big move so not suprisingly synchronicity and fate really got shouting.
Worked on several contracts for my Uni following a chance comment from another student.
Met the wonderful F.
Did a few environmental contracts after graduating. Missed out on a supervisors job and eventually had to give up and go back to temping.
Temped and ended up somewhere working with teachers.
Tried to get in with Environment Agency. Got put in a staff bank and stayed there. Went for a temp job with them. Got tangled up in an unpleasant scenario and left.
Did some temp work for an organisation involved with teachers.
Decided to apply for teaching. Got put on waiting list.
Worked for a public body as a temp. They were about to keep me when teacher training announced I could start in a weeks time.
Started teacher training and loved the feeling of going back to school. Of studying the whole curriculum, not just the sciences. Loved art and craft. It opened some doors in my life.
Failed final practice and had to accept I didn't have the right personality to be a teacher in the current climate.
Went back to temping and got guided away from things to do with children and care and ended up where I am now...

So I have spent time in sciences, focusing on environmental science. I have worked with children and developed a love of art and craft. Fate took me towards working with children and then away again. Where is it going to take me next? Why have I worked for so many companies on so many things? Why is this my path?

Hope

2009-10-22T13:06:00.003+01:00

Last night F made it clear he thought I should give work ago. So I did and it was dire. I felt awful. It is one thing to feel well while sat on a sofa gazing gormlessly at the TV but quite another to feel well when you have to be up and moving about, dealing with people and working. I felt very fatigued, physically exhausted and slightly fluttery.

I lasted 1 hour and 45 minutes before meeting with my Boss and coming home.

I went via the shop to stock up on easy food as I probably won't be going anywhere much for the next few days. Then I went home and called the doctor who i shall visit tomorrow.

So why am I going to the doctor? I have a virus which has knocked me about a bit and although the coldy and stomachy symptoms are gone it has laid me low. Nothing they can do about viruses... I do want to talk a little about my hormones though as this whole thing really began last week. But really I am going to the doctor so I can say to work see, I went to the doctor.

Isn't it dire? In order to feel justified in taking time off work, I have to go to the doctor knowing they can do nothing for me and I am wasting theirs and my time. This probably seems a very, very bizarre situation to those of you in countries where health care is not free. Not uncommon here though. I can't say if this says more about my feelings about being ill or whether it is a true reflection of employers attitudes to sickness.

I don't get paid for being off sick though. I have not worked there long enough. I guess that is a point in my favour... It does mean money is going to be tighter next month for me but I have lovely man... I have been good this month though. I bought my beautiful socks, which arrived today. I have bought some leg and arm warmers paid for by an unexpected payout for some previous work. The troll bracelet was paid for by birthday money. No wild excursions. No visits to friends with bottles of wine. No meals out. So hopefully it won't be too bad. Next month there is a whole bunch of overtime coming my way so December will be fine for finishing off present shopping, for those I havn't made.

I left the house and found a rainbow glinting in the sky in front of me. I caught it three more times in different places before I got to work. It is a blustery day with little showery clouds scudding across the blue sky. Rainbows to me signify hope and beauty. To see so many in such a short space of time.

When I left work I saw two magpies and then a third as I drove away. A time of change, a promise of hope and beauty. I do feel that this year in this job, I am trying to prove something, that this is only a temporary thing. Something I have to do. To not flit about. To stop searching and let my life come to me, until I know what it is I am searching for, until fate and life and synchronicity take me on somewhere else. A time to be patient. To hold down a job.

The other night I was feeling pretty down so I dragged out my tarot. Over the last few days I have done three different spreads. The onw about my life and the one about the general situation were not very interesting. Little I didn't know. The other was a spread called merlin's Mirror which is all about identifying the real you.

I had six major arcana in my reading. Most of the more mundane cards were about where I am currenly at and what I am currently doing. I had Gawain (Strength), the Washer at the Ford (Death), The Cauldron (Temperance), Sleeping Lord (Judgement), Fool and the Green Man (Devil). In my other readings I also had Merlin (Magician), White Hart (Lovers) linked to relationships and The Spiral Tower (Tower) linked to my future.

That is a pretty heavy lot of major arcana to get. Things are moving in my life under the surface and change is on it's way. I hope it is time for my dreams.

Escapism

2009-10-21T13:14:00.002+01:00

I still feel icky. Not sure why. Maybe some nasty little virus has snuck into my system and lying it low. Maybe it is psychosomatic. Maybe I just don't want to go back to work. Maybe it is all of these. I have no energy and I feel like a limp lettuce.

It makes me nervous because last time I felt like this, I had Chronic Fatigue. I have been clear for some time, which makes me one of the lucky ones. It scares the bejeesus out of me, the thought of going back where I was. I suspect everytime some bug lays me low, that fear will be there.

I think my dalliance with that nasty bug has always been about my life not being as it should be. I think the further we get from the way we should be living, the more open we are to these nasties. Once in our bodies they make themselves at home.

School didn't make me happy. University (the first time round) didn't make me happy. I am not happy now. So what would make me happy? Is my idea of a perfect life really so perfect? Is it a delusion? What is it I want?

So let's focus on that. That dream. Just for a little while. It sure is a nicer place than my achy head for starters.

*******

I am, when in the best of health, an early riser. So I would get up and leave F and Little Dog happily snoozing for one is not an early riser and the other is not a quick riser. I would go downstairs and brew up a nice cup of herbal tea. I would take it through to another room and leave it to cool.

If it is warm I would go out onto a patio or verandah or deck and practice some tai chi. Say it is Summer and the sun is still low in the sky. I would feel the warmth of the sun on my face as I connect with all that is.

After, I would pause and drink my tea on a chair and watch the birds at the bird table, mostly blue tits. I would hope that a wood pecker would visit. Little Dog hearing that I had finished would appear, all bleary eyed and graciously accept some stroking. Then we would move off for a walk.

I would maybe take a wicker basket with me. Little Dog would lope around sniffing things as we move through the morning with quiet enjoyment. We would go let the chickens out and give them some food and maybe find some eggs for breakfast. Little Dog of course would want to get in and visit.... We would stop and say hello to the pigs and the goats and the cow and sheep and horses and check their water and maybe give them some food although they probably wouldn't need it this time of year so much. If we have some goats or cows producing milk I would have taken a pail and stool with me to milk them.

We would walk down by the river first and pause there before turning back up through the forest garden where I would pause and gather a few berries maybe for breakfast. Then we would go to the veg patch and greenhouse and I would turn on the water and check the plants and maybe pick some herbs for the eggs. Some rosemary maybe.

Finally we would return to the house, I would top up Little dogs food and then hop in the shower before cooking breakfast. The smell would lure F from bed and we would eat together on the verandah. It would still be early

I would then maybe do a couple of hours in the gardens, weeding or hoeing, planting or pruning or maybe some harvesting. Or maybe spend some time in the green house. Whatever needed doing. Maybe the pigs needed moving from one enclosure in the woods to another to give the plants a chance to regrow. F would be pottering to and doing man things probably.

After a few hours work, as it starts to get hot, we would return to the house with some food for lunch. Things for a salad maybe. Maybe I would have some things from a full harvest. Things to spend the afternoon pickling or jarring or jam making.

After lunch I would potter a little in my studio or maybe sit with a book for a bit. I love harvesting fruit. I always have done. I used to climb trees for the plums or sit on a stool picking berries.

What I would do would depend on the seasons. The morning routine of tai chi, dog walk and animal care would be pretty consistent but the rest would vary. More arts and crafts in the winter. More garden graft in the spring and early summer. Much harvesting and preserving in the autumn and late summer.

Some days we would escape and go out. Others I would go to a class. Some evenings friends would come over and we would eat and be merry. Sometimes we might go and find some culture, take a picnic to the Minack and see a play.

Maybe one day there would be children. A baby snoozing in a play pen with a sun screen as I pick berries. A toddler asking constant questions and chasing the goats, before they chase him back. A child going off to school (a school without SATs and pressure) and then returning to climb trees and build dams. A teenager maybe fishing in the river or giggling with girl friends over something on the TV.

Maybe F would go out to work. Maybe I would be a world renowned author, writing in the winter and living off the royalties of a train of books. Maybe I would be an artisan with all sorts for sale on etsy, supplementing an income. Maybe I would be rich and have no worries about money at all. It is the living closer to the land I dream of.

Cultural Variation

2009-10-20T14:23:00.004+01:00

I am still ill but I have whined on enough this past week, so time for something else.

I have been thinking about this one recently. The links between the US and the UK culturally. And the thingd that don't quite link...

This has been caused by my TV watching habits. Not surprisingly I watch a fair few US series. We have some gems on the BBC but the US TV machine is so much more vast and some real gems travel over to us. They are already proven, often big budget.

Some of our little BBC gems get taken over to the US. I am currently watching Dancing with the Stars (the latest series - yes I know you all have already seen it and knows who wins, but I don't.). This was started in the UK as Strictly Come Dancing. The format is pretty much the same but there are some differences.

You have two of our judges, Len and Bruno but Len is nice on the UK version but a little mean on the US version. We have a judge called Craig who plays the mean role over here.
I don't know who on earth the US stars are. Apart from Kelly and Donny. They are not part of my news background, they just don't feature.... You would never have heard of most of the stars on our version either...
Most of the pro dancers are like old friends now after so many series but the US pro dancers are strangers. I have no idea of their personalities or strengths.
We have doddery old Bruce Forsythe who tells very unsophisticated and dreadful jokes that make no one laugh. Your chap, no idea of his name, can be very sharp and quick witted and is probably famous in his own right?
There was a decision on the US version to include loads of news dances, Lambada, Charleston, Texan Two Step.... The UK version likes to balance the old fashioned dances with the more modern and latin dances. It is a two way balance. The US balance feels a bit more three way between modern, latin and ballroom. Ballroom is less what people expect to see I guess?
There are other differences in the production that I just can't put my finger on. Are there more cutesy montages? Is that canned laughter? No idea. It just feels different...

Then we have Life on Mars. The UK version revels in the back in time aspect in order to allow very politically incorrect humour. Gene Hunt is so rude and obnoxious but in a way that nobody would have thought twice about back then. And it is hilarious. He has some fantastic lines. We get to remenisce (eek! sp!) about old bits of culture. We admire old cars and clothes and music. But the humour is just so sharp, there is so much repartee and wit between the characters. The two supporting police men are so funny as well, they add so much. The wierdness of what is going on is sort of there in a subtle way.

Not so in the US version. The cultural references are vastly different and I just don't have the same contact with them. They arn't what I grew up with. They are labouring the wierdness. Sam Tyler is struggling so hard to get to grips with it that ahrdly any attention seems to be paid to the team around him and their characters. It maybe humorous to Americans but it isn't to me. It has no relevance to me. I shall keep watching but, for me, it is falling flat...

This takes me onto the next series which was on a while back, Little Britain USA. Little Britain was an irreverant romp. The US version was irreverant but it lacked something. And the awful canned laughter - they eventually took it off the episodes they aired here. It was as if they had to tell us which bits were funny, and they were not the bits that I thought were funny, which were few and far between. It crossed a line best left uncrossed....

They often say that Americans do not get the British sense of humour all of the time. I suspect this may be true. I have heard that sarcasm is not something they do in the US. Is this true? I luve a bit of sarcasm....

I guess what I am trying to say is this. As much as the world thinks we are slowly becoming part of the US more than we are Europe. It isn't true. Culturally we are different. We gloss over this a lot of the time but those differences are there.

America had the worlds unwanted masses, slavery, the American Dream and the right to bear arms. The UK had lords and ladies, history and the downtrodden poor and servitude of a different sort. We started from different places but our differences add spice and flavour. I suspect that there is more flavour within the US than we are aware of over here.

Cowboys, bible belt, deep southern soul, Californian beach thing, New York style. I suspect there is far more variation than even this. This is just the tip of the iceberg.... When I watch Dancing with the Stars I catch references to things that have no meaning for me, like Donny not being welcome in Utah after kissing Bruno.... I see it but it passes me by.

Pleading Guilty

2009-10-19T13:32:00.002+01:00

Still feeling icky today and so is F. The gutting thing is we both arranged to have today off. Some friends are down and we spent yesterday afternoon with them and were supposed to spend today with them to. We were supposed to go visit standing stones and burial chambers and holy wells and all sorts of lovely such things.

I know I can go anytime but not to have to go by myself. To go with another witch. To have F there with another non-witchy bloke to talk bloke things to. It would have been lovely.

I havn't been ill this year really. Except for a bout of IBS after Big Dog died, I have not been ill enough to consider being off work all year, until now. And F is ill at exactly the same time as well. Do you ever get the feeling that something just wasn't meant to be?

I need to pop out though for food and to post a present to my niece for her birthday but I just don't want to get off my sofa. I have a duvet and I am warm and snug in my jim jams. There was a bit of a drizzle outside last time I looked. I just don't really want to go anywhere.

I guess it also explains why this moon has been so hard. Not just hormones but my body fighting off some nasty icky virus. F had been at work from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning so for us to get ill at the same time means we both had it before Friday.

I can't say as I am really ill, I just fel so icky and tired. I always feel guilty when I am ill, as if I should have more symptoms and a giant flourescent purple rash to justify my telling people I am ill. I lived with this for years with first glandular fever and then ME. Invisible illnesses.

Maybe I should go get a card and then crawl back to bed. Maybe I should make her wait for her pressie with a little explanation of illness and such. Maybe I can persuade F to visit the post office one day before work. Maybe I can cram it into an envelope so it sits nice and flat and can go in the post without a visit to the post office. Maybe I can take it into work, get it weighed and then just pile stamps on until I have paid enough. I just don't want to go out today.

Maybe I shouldn't push myself through guilt. And I do feel guilty. I had such a lovely time yesterday. I don't want them to think we stayed home for any other reason apart from illness. I don't want my niece to feel bad on her birthday.

Guilt seems to go so closely with illness.

Bed Bugs

2009-10-18T19:56:00.002+01:00

I have no idea what to post tonight. My head hurts. My nose is snotty. My throat is a wee bit on the sore side. My body aches. I have had a lovely day though and I am so hoping that I am not really ill because I have a lovely day planned for tomorrow.... I suspect bed is close by in my future.

Can tell something is up because I havn't felt inclined to find any food for tea....

My hormones have given up and gone away.

I just am not sure I care much about my little blog tonight. Night, night, sleep tight....

Dusk

2009-10-17T19:56:00.003+01:00

People are scared of the dark.

No really. They are.

People linger outside their homes, on hill tops, cliffs, anywhere with a view. They watch the sun set. The second it has been sucked below the horizon they vanish. They bustle off home as if the last rays of light leaving the sky will cause them to turn to stone and they must be behind closed doors before that happens....

Dusk is one of my favourite times of day.

The clouds turn charcoal grey, high in the sky. The sea turns the colour of slate. Hills in the middle distance turn inky black, the more distant they are, the less inky the black and the more gently they stand in the gloom. Flowers sprout across them, orange, white, yellow and red. Flowers that outcompete the stars and shine more brightly. They glisten.

It is still light enough to see the path. Walking slowly and steadily with care, rough paths don't pose a threat. The sun shines up from beneath the sea and paints the underside of the clouds. red, crimson, amethyst, dusky pinks. More beautiful than the sunset.

All those people leaving, miss this. They miss this gentle time. Caught in the inbetween. They run from the dark and miss the best of it.

I am not scared of the dark. I am sometimes a bit nervous of the people that hide in it. Tonight there is no moon. The moon won't rise until to late to be seen. And it is a new moon too. But walking under the full moon can be so well lit! Tonight it was always going to get dark but not as dark as people seem to think, nor as quickly.

Time Passes and The Circle Turns

2009-10-17T09:52:00.004+01:00

Things still havn't really gotten going. I don't think they are going to either. I think this one will sort of stay as it is before fading away and that will be it for this month. Being fat really does affect your hormones and I know that mine have been affected. Maybe this is my body making progress towards getting back to normal, who knows. Hopefully as I get thinner and thinner my body will become as regular as clockwork with predictablity and stability and fewer hiccups.

My energy is fragile at the moment. I am happy as I wake and go off to work. I have enough energy to see me through the first few hours but then things go downhill. I run out of energy. Suddenly I am sick of everyone, grouchy, tired and fed up. If I had my way, I would not go to work on such days. I would spend them mostly alone, doing soft things at a speed suited to me. I wouldn't become overtaxed.

Last night on the way home I decided to throw the diet out the window. I bought a trashy box, some bath treats, lots of crisps and chocolate and some new brushes. I got in the bath and stayed there for four hours with my purchases (except the brushes). While I am going to stick to a post a day, i am no longer going to insist I boot up the laptop at such times...

The weather is stunning. definitely cool, with the mornings shrouded in thin mists. The skies are pastel and soft, blurred round the edges. By lunch everything feels pleasantly warm but the nights are cold. Perfect Autumn weather. Things are changing but still lovely.

I have decided that I need gloves for work. Not yet but I find that even if I am warm, cool drafts can make my joints ache. I will need to take care of my wrists and hands at work. I can't use full gloves at work because I handle plastics that get staticy and stick to me but I have seen lovely tubes which go up the arm and over the wrist with a hole for the thumb. This leaves all the fingers free to work but keeps a lot covered and warm. I think I might visit etsy...

Maybe I should invest in wooly tubes for my ankles and knees to wear under my jeans to make sure those joints stay nice and toasty as well?

Oh I lost 2 pounds this week. I wasn't so very chuffed with this because it is exactly what I gained the week before and because I was feeling grumpy and rough.

Mothballs

2009-10-15T17:43:00.002+01:00

Not much of a post tonight. I have to go to Fat Fighters and I feel rough as rats.

My moontime still hasn't gotten going. I don't why this happens sometimes but I get a period of time when everything is saying I am ready, even a little light flow/spotting but my heavy beginning of my period just won't materialise. Until it does I will feel awful. The longer it takes the more yucky I will feel.

I wish I could just crawl in the bath and then off to bed.

I made my porridge and smoothie as usual this morning but I just couldn't face eating them. I think I had one mouthful. The chocolate and sugar cravings were very strong and I gave in. It hasn't been a red or a green day but a brown day.

I just want it to start! What is my body waiting for? The New Moon?

I am actually a New Moon person. I like this time best in the month. I think the darker more mysterious side of the Goddess is the one for me and had decided this before I realised that that tends to be my moontime. Coincidence? I am not a bright shiny person much of the time, although I have my moments. I like to step back and think more and I have been known to brood a little. Anyway time to go see if I have lost or gained. *glower*

The Colour Red

2009-10-14T19:17:00.003+01:00

So much seems to have happened at work today but i can't really talk about it. The bizarre thing is that I didn't really care. Well i did, a little bit, but it just didn't impact on my happiness. The sun was shining, I was feeling good and nothing was going to take the pleasure of the day away from me. Certainly not the world falling apart from people I don't know or like and the knock on effects it might have on others. People have to take responsibility for the results of their own actions. I played no part in any of it.

So let's talk about hormones. Mine seem to be changing. I guess this is to be expected. Being obese has meant my hormones are a little less powerful and predictable. Last Friday I found myself in possession of a lot of annoyed energy. so I went and employed this energy usefully in a working fashion.

I think I am about to start my period. Last month it was about this time, just after the waning moon. Normally I retain water and get really heavy for about the week before and feel even more sluggish than normal. I normally get very weepy a couple of days beforehand. I put on weight last week, I havn't been feeling quite as good as I did a week or so ago (but still pretty good).

So is all that aggressive energy thing my new emotional symptom of impending hormonality? I liked feeling like that. I didn't have to stay in the office and be grumpy with people, I was able to use that energy for positive things and that felt good. It feels good to feel up to using my body a little more. And I work somewhere where there is the opportunity to.

I am not convinced that you really need to know all this... Everytime I get to this point I find myself thinking about diva cups and cloth pads. I want to use them. I want to do it, to change, to be more environmentally friendly and more skin friendly too. I need to take the plunge and just do it. I guess sometimes the thought of trying new things can be a little daunting. What if it goes wrong and I find myself with a leaking divacup at work? How long can you wear cloth pads for, do you use them just like other pads?

Did anybody else get the eek feeling before changing?

Feeling the Love

2009-10-13T20:35:00.002+01:00

First of all I have to say a huge thank you to the lovely Lady Mel. I received a lovely letter in the post along with a very lovely picture and a very lovely and apt pressie to pass on to a special young lady. Thank you Hun! You have a wee habit of lifting my spirits at the right time in unexpected ways... XXX

***

Then we have the saga of the socks.

TAW Week 7 has an exercise to buy a little luxury for yourself. It suggests a lovely pair of gloves or socks. Socks resonated with me instantly. My socks cause my ankles to swell, they bite to hard. A couple of years back I was with my folks at Christmas and my Mum, Dad and Sister received a present from a family friend. I didn't. OK so I wasn't overly close to this person and I hadn't given them a pressie.

I was very jealous of the socks my Dad got though. They were hand knitted. No seams. No nasty biting elastic at the top. Not quite my colour, being manly and all, but a lovely variegated wool had been used.

I must admit after that I started making her a little something for Xmas. I must admit though, I was kind of hoping I might get a pair of socks though. It didn't work because she got very busy at work and I got some nice handmade bath things instead. They were lovely, but I did really covet those socks.

So, the suggestion of treating myself to a luxurious socks kind of bought an image into my head. Beautiful variegated purple wooly socks. The sort that you darn when they get holes.

I tried hunting for local knitters but sometimes the internet makes such things tricky. It is far easier to find companies than it is to find lone artisans for hire. I pondered how to find such people and etsy sprang to mind. I have never used etsy before...

I searched for local etsy sellers and while there was some beautiful things and talented artisans, none of them were knitters or crocheters. So I started looking a little more broadly and I looked at lots and lots of socks. And of course slipper socks and sock slippers. Crocheted mary janes. Lace up crochet socks. Felted boot socks. So much variety. But not so many variegated purple sock.

I did eventually find a pair.

I fell in love.

I contacted the seller regarding sizing and established that they would fit.

I tried to buy.

I failed to buy.

Her shop didn't include shipping outside the grand old US of A. Which isn't where I live.

I contacted her and asked her if I could get them here or if they could maybe go to a friend in Canada....

She added the UK to her postal list. And Canada.

I purchased socks! And they are on their way.

***

I wrote a wishlist a little while back for another TAW exercise and I posted it on my blog.

I have a lovely friend who reads my blog, although she doesn't have one of her own and comments via email. We met once, years ago. A friend of a friend. Somehow we got chatting via Facebook and then became Facebook friends and then email friends and soon, we shall also be face to face friends. For she is visiting Cornwall....

It is a slightly odd thing, remeeting someone in this sort of a way. We know each other so well in some ways. But I just know it will all be fine. We connected because we have similar interests and values. It will not be like the recent visit of an old friend I used to be very close to, who has chosen a radically different path in life to me. We have similar religous paths and have spoken in depth of things that I know I seldom share with people I know in the flesh.

OK so the reason this all fits in this post is that when she comes down, she is bringing a gift. One listed in my wishlist. She happened to know of an artisan making such things, in a truly beautiful fashion. She saw one that spoke to her of me. She then gave me a choice. I could have chosen any of them, but I want the one that spoke to her. So I have a surprise coming my way, which even though it will be beautiful, will be all the more special for having been chosen for me by a friend.

***

So i guess it is fairly obvious what the theme of this post is. Presents and the art of giving. The best presents are those given freely, with no strings, no expectations. Where the person giving has taken the care to personally choose or make something that they thing the recipient will like. That care and attention is the thing that makes a present special.

Giving with the expectation of receiving something in return is likely to lead to disappointment. You are unlikely to get what you want. Even if you get something truly lovely, it will not be the thing you coveted. The expectation of receiving something ruins the gift of receiving care and attention from the giver. Giving from obligation feels empty in many ways. As does receiving a present given from obligation.

If there is something you truly covet, value yourself enough to give yourself that something as a no strings attached gift. That is not to say you should go and buy yourself hugely outrageous and epensive things. A true gift is made more valuable by care and attention. Notice that little thing you covet and give yourself the gift of getting it, of caring enough about yourself to allow yourself to have it. A pair of socks really isn't a big thing is it? But yet it is....

I believe the care and attention I put into the hand made gifts I make for my family increases their value. I personally select what to make. The colours, style, everything. I don't like all the things I make as gifts, some I adore and have trouble parting with. It doesn't matter, it isn't about me. I get so much from that giving. I get something everytime I get to see them wear it. I get something everytime they tell me of another compliment they receive for it. Little gifts that come back to me unexpectedly.

Gifts do not have to be big to have a huge effect. In fact I think the little things often have the biggest impact and meaning. Thought counts more than showy consumerism in my book. Thought equals love while flashy consumerism equals money.

So thank you to all those lovely people who have given me gifts because they thought I might like it, or just wanted to give me something. Thank you to those who signed up for swaps with me and made something so perfectly designed and created for me. Just thank you. I can feel your love.

This all ended up a bit long.... But I guess what I am saying is that we should all look for the little gifts in our lives. Gifts of spirit. A rowan branch. A beautiful sunny day. A glimpse of the moon in a break in the clouds.

Baking the Cake

2009-10-12T20:32:00.003+01:00

Work today was not good... Not really.

One of my colleagues is stressed and has with stress become increasingly inept. The result of this is that he has become less skillful in his tinkering with the figures. Suddenly we are all wise to what he gets up to. His methods are in question and decrees passed to improve them, which he then ignores. Suddenly he is no longer the all knowing guru. Not that he ever was, it was just an act, with little substance underneath.

When he has to do certain jobs he would rather take the Little Princess than me. She doesn't question him whereas I do. She doesn't find his mistakes, I do. She does exactly what she is told, i don't.

He had been told not to use her for a specific job because she didn't do it very well. Basically because when she does it with him there are mistakes because she is not on the ball enough. Today he took her (when the cats away, the mice do what they damn well please). He knew he shouldn't but he did anyway.

When they came back, he worked on the figures. Maybe he cooked them a little, who knows. I did a lot of work recently on one of the classifications. I catalogued them and labeled them and had them examined and so on. He had the emails. He was notified of the new procedures. He is supposedly in charge of such things after all.

There had been no notifications of changes to this classification according to the new procedure but yet his figures wildly differed from those previously verified. I went and checked and found no change and confirmed with someone who looks after them that there had been no change. The cat sent me for a further check with the two mice. Suprisingly enough, the figures we got this time were exactly as they should be, given there had been no change.

Lead mouse didn't react to well to all this and had a blazing row with the cat. Myself and the second mouse quivered nervously. Instead of accepting that he had been making a hash of it, he insisted on a new procedure. Which is fine, but it meant my afternoon was spent with more labels. There was nothing wrong with the old ones. They were legible and had all the required information. The new ones just have a letter and a number.

Why didn't he suggest this the first time I did it (which would have saved me a lot of time)? Give his job title and pay, how come he had never noticed that his figures for this classification varied a lot? That things would appear and then vanish only to reappear, suggesting they had never actually gone anywhere? How come he never ever got to the bottom of this? How come he never improved his own procedures? How come he earns so much?

I guess the other thing that really annoyed me, was that I later was alone with him and he gave me a little talking to. Not very subtle. About team work and so forth. Trying to make me say the old labels were bad and the new ones better. Maybe they are, but the old ones should have been good enough, given he used to claim it was done perfectly accurately before there were any labels at all.

I was cross but there is nothing I could say. I can not criticise him and how he does his job to his face, it is not my place. It is my Bosses. He seems completely oblivious to the fact that he isn't doing his job and is making a lot fo mistakes. That people have started double checking his work. That faith has been lost. He really believed the finance person wouldn't hve noticed the figures had mysteriously changed over the course of a week? The finance person he believes his victimising him? (although they have just lost faith in him and are being very, very careful)

The net result of all this is that somehow I felt to blame for it all. But I am not the one who made the mistake. I am the one who saved a bigger fish up the ladder from finding it and causing all manner of problems for us all. So who is to blame?

Why should anyone have to be to blame? I don't want his job, he is safe. Surely any mistake I spot is one I have stopped from going to far? Surely that helps him?

To Do or Not To Do

2009-10-11T20:16:00.002+01:00

I wanted to make stars but I got distracted and instead painted a scarf for my Great Aunt.

It has been a grey and rainy day out but I have been content in the house, pottering.

I slept strangely last night. I went to bed while F stayed up. I woke when he came to bed but went to sleep again. Later I awoke suddenly, as Little Dog came up, and drank lots. I was so hot! I was hot for ages. F was hot to but he stayed asleep. Eventually I took the duvet off and replaced it with our much thinner quilt. Of course later in the night, when it was cooler, I was cold. But I just pulled the duvet back over... And I slept.

Unfortunately F had to get up and go to work. Each time his alarm went off I would fall straight back asleep. He woke me up three times in ten minutes and then I got a bit grumpy.

So today has been a relaxed sort of a day. I got up late. I am beginning to realise that each bit of creativity takes time. Plenty of time. The scarf I did today was pretty simple but all the preparation of pattern and the drying took time. I still want stars but it is too late for today. I might do some jewellery in front of the TV but that will be it.

It is all very well having a list of things to do but if you work chances are you won't have time to get very far with the list. But does it matter? Not really....

TAW Week 7

2009-10-10T18:17:00.002+01:00

Time to step on a week but first I want to make a short review as this is the halfway point in my slow meander through this book...

Since starting this book my life has altered. It has stepped forward and I have learnt things. I don't think I would have learnt quite the same things, or as quickly if I hadn't been following this book. While I am not to hot on my artist's dates, I have had a few and will continue to do them. I don't really do the morning pages but I have come to see that this blog performs much of the same function. Not always as clearly but it does do it.

Each week has exercises and activities and my reaction to these is varied. Week Five was interesting. Looking back on the things I wrote is always interesting too. I have bought a warm winter coat - not waterproof but nice, warm, stylish and it fits. There is even room because of the style to wear extra things underneath. I wished to never feel cold, to have a faster metabolism and better circulation. And what do you know? *grin* I also know that one wish is going to be fulfilled soon by a rather lovely friend. I am contemplating making stars to hang from my ceiling above my creative table tomorrow. I am more joyful and more happy now I feel I have a bit more energy. My bed is warm and snuggly and that little bit of weight seems to have made a difference to how I sleep in it. I am not so uncomfortable so maybe I don't need a new mattress. So of my 16 wishes, 6 have come true in some way and 2 are in progress. Leaving 8 unfulfilled. So far. I have the rest of my life....

Maybe this was the lesson of Week 6. I didn't like week 6. There wasn't enough writing. There was too much stuff I didn't want to do. Why would I want to pick up yet more stones to go in my house? I have so many bits picked up on walks... Instead I got the raw materials for a wand and staff. I have cleared my wardrobes and put lots of things in bags to go although they havn't gone very far yet. I don't bake but I do cook and I made a whole pot full of root veg soup spiced with pepper, fennel seed and smoked paprika. So things have happened but they are harder to quantify than written exercises....

So here we are at week 7.

Jealousy and perfectionism....

Jealousy Map

F has more money than me help him spend it (*laugh* I hope he reads this!)
F enjoys his job more than I do mine get better at enjoying mine, learn to stress a little less.
LP everyone likes her even though she is vapid and not of much use appreciate my own worth more and understand that much of it is about youth and beauty in a place full of men (most old enough to be her Dad)
Sister For living closer to our parents make them all move down here

OK. I am finding it hard to do this one seriously. I am not someone who feels jealousy very strongly. I might desire things for myself but I don't tend to desire the taking away of them from others and this is what jealousy is. I want it so you can't have it, not I want it as well.

Archaeology
As a kid, I missed the chance to play sports. (I suffered from rheumatism due to my knee joints getting cold while wearing stupid gym skirts in all weathers. If they had let me keep my knees warm by wearing tracksuit bottoms then all would have been much better)
As a kid, I lacked support. ( I was a little misunderstood, tomboy geek in a girls school)
As a kid, I could have used a friend.
As a kid, I dreamed of being a Vet.
As a kid, I wanted a horse.
In my house, we never had enough books. ( There was loads, but you can never, ever have enough)
As a kid, I needed more fun.
I am sorry that I will never again see *** (a friend of my parents who died of breast cancer when I was 16. I loved her and her husband. He becmae a different person without her and we lost him to)
For years, I have missed and wondered about my Grandfathers (both dead before my parents even met)
I beat myself up about the loss of my virginity (*blush* do I?)
I have a loyal friend in F.
One thing I like about my town is all the beautiful, solid granite.
I think I have nice friends.
Writing my morning pages has shown me that I can deal with any ghosts from my past.
I am taking a greater interest in losing weight.
I believe I am getting better at being happy.
My artist has started to pay more attention to light.
My self-care is a lovely long bath with a beautiful bath product and a good book.
I feel more energetic.
Possibly my creativity is a little tired. (It has had a bit of blossoming and it had to pause for a little bit to take breath but it is there waiting...)

Again the exercises are a bit on the doing side rather than writing but they appeal a bit more than last weeks. I like this week better. I love the idea of buying a lovely pair of socks. Handknitted in a lovely colour, maybe lots of colours. With no elastic at the top to make nasty marks when my legs swell. A pair of socks to keep my feet warm in my boots this winter. A pair of socks to slouch around the house in....

I can do the smell.... I can go to a sacred space and breath in the solitude and sounds..... I can write out 'Treating myself like a precious object will make me strong' and make it all pretty.... I certainly managed to wear my lovely new (and slightly expensive) troll bracelet round the house today. Did I mention how close I came to not 'wasting' money on it? But my folks gave me some cash to buys omething nice for my birthday and the extra I put towards it didn't take so much courage.... I can listen to music and doodle....

So all good really....

The Trolls Are Back in Town!

2009-10-10T12:31:00.002+01:00

You may have guessed from the title of the post that my recent purchase has arrived. A Tiny parcel with more paper than trollness. A lovely little catalogue of beauties, a form for returns and a little flyer of new additions to the collection. Then there, a tiny little black bag. Inside lay my troll bracelet. It had already been assembled for me. Chain with two ends linked by my troll tree lock and my safety chain. I tried it on and then had to take it off, take it apart and reassemble it.

I love it. It is a lovely chain. It is a series of little v's made up of two bits of silver. All the v's interlink somehow and it is like a lovely silver snake. It is beautifully supple bracelet with a solid, sturdy feel. Although it is currently just a plain bracelet, it still has some character in the form of one lovely little tree troll.

I am lusting after troll beads though. I made the mistake of looking at some peoples collections online and there was boxes loaded with beautiful beads. There are one of a kind beads which are one offs made by Trollbeads that are mistakes, have a colour variation or are prototypes. There are artisan beads made by people other than those emplyed by Trollbeads. There are retired beads of varying rarity, with some so lovely, you wonder how they could discontinue them. Then there is the current range of loveliness.... Then there are other companies and ranges that are compatible with troll bracelets.

All of this leads to a vast range of beautiful beads. Once you have a collection you can wear something different everyday that matches your modd, your clothes, the season, whatever you fancy.

And I have to lose more weight before I can buy any more. And instead of losing I am gaining. Next month there will be some overtime and I think I shall buy myself the purple set when I get paid for my endeavours. Hopefully by then I will have lost enough weight to justify it. I shall want all the beads in the purple kit anyway and the price means they are cheaper in a set of six. I shall also continue to buy direct because the exchange rate for euros to pounds means that it is cheaper...

I am considering making a few beady beads to put on it so that I have something!

On another theme.... I know I am a creature of enthusiasms and that I havn't been creating so much recently apart from some jewellery... I think it may be because I have allowed my creative room to be a dumping ground. I think it might be time to go make something..... I am NOT going to allow myself to spend all weekend doing nothing on my laptop while watching TV.

Snuggling Habits of Small Dogs

2009-10-09T19:55:00.002+01:00

Not sure what to post about today....

I did have an idea the other day and so that will do...

The Snuggling habits of small dogs...

Little Dog likes to be warm and she likes to sleep, inbetween barking and eating that is. She sometimes curls up in a little ball and sometimes she likes to stretch out. When I sit on the sofa, I like to sit with my legs up and she likes to lie between my legs keeping warm. She will use my leg as a head rest and then go to sleep. Her eyes do odd things at this point.

At night, when F is working, she appears on the bed at some point in the night. She lies close alongside me and hooks her foot over my ankles. Everytime I move she moves too and resnuggles. When I wake she does too but it takes a while for her to wake up properly. So I give her some fuss, and some more. At some point she wakes up fully and all of a sudden she flips and all four paws are in the air. Time for stomach stroking. When I get up she lies perfectly still and watches me intently. As I move towards the door she suddenly moves and beats me to the door.

Hmmm... When I wrote it in my head the other day, it sounded much cuter and funnier. Just much better... Oh well... I have nothing else to write about tonight.

A Tale of Two Halves

2009-10-08T20:33:00.002+01:00

This week I have started to feel quite a bit better. My sleeping has reduced. I havn't had to be in bed at ten to cope the next day. I have been waking earlier. I am no longer the person that feels cold but the one in shirt sleeves. I have been feeling bouncy and full of energy. My boss has said that I seem happier. My jeans are looser, not just on the stomach but all up the legs....

So I expected a good evening tonight at Fat Fighters. How wrong can you be..... I gained two pounds.

Maybe I am paying for last week when it was my birthday and we ate lots of bad things. Maybe my body gains and loses weight in a delay. Maybe my moon time is going to hit soon and I am retaining water. We shall see over this next week.

Still I can't very well give my troll bracelet back, it is on it's way here and I want it....

Maybe next week I will lose loads....

A Little More Rewriting....

2009-10-07T21:21:00.002+01:00

I am still thinking on this subject at the moment and I guess i am moving on a little to remembered social history and international relations.

When I paid for my troll bracelet, I go to choose which country from the EU I lived in and I was intrigued to notice that although the UK was listed, individual parts of the UK were listed as well. How bizarre, that a foreign country should be so careful of the social boundaries within my home land. How bizarre that they should be so much more careful than perhaps we sometimes are ourselves.

Maybe countries on the continent do not have the same relationship with all parts of the UK. Ireland is cool and funky and has the shared link of catholicism to many other countries. Scotland, I learnt recently, actually fought with France against the English. Cornwall has strong links to Brittany on France thanks to celtic blood and pilgrammage routes. It is odd when you think about it....

England chose to become Christian through political necessity in many ways. It meant they were part of catholic Europe and shared the protection of the Pope. somehow though we have always been separate and not entirely popular, despite our desire to be in the club. The nations England conquered and forced into our form of Christianity are often more catholic than the English are now. Strange how the wheel turns. They are also more popular with those we saught to join our fates with.

So why does Europe dislike the English and I do mean English, I don't think they feel the same towards the Scots, Welsh, Cornish or Irish. is it because Britannia ruled the waves? Is it because had a huge empire? Is it because of past battles with Napoleon? The Spanish Armada? Hitler? The Cold War? Is it because of trade? Is it because we sit between Europe and America? Why?

England has joined the European Union in an odd way. We do everything by the letter, implement all the laws, pay lots of money. But we are not part of the family. is that just because we didn't take the currency?

I have looked at a few threads online and it seems that it is football hooligans and tourists not interested in learning anything of the place they are in or adapting to it's culture that they dislike. I have never found any problems abroad really... And I don't like hooligans or ignorant tourists...

I guess the thing is, although the continent is only a few miles over the sea, i feel closer to Australia, Canada and America than I do to Europe right now. I guess blogland hellps this - not many Europeans on my blog roll. I feel close to the other celtic nations though as well, their blood runs in my veins too after all. Am I Celt or English? I am both.... My blood left and moved to Australia, Canada and America too. How much of my blood moved to the continent or came from it?

Perfect Weather for Trolls

2009-10-06T20:01:00.003+01:00

The days have changed, the circle is turning.

All of a sudden it is dark when I wake up. It isn't properly light until a little while after I have staggered out of bed.

The rain has come. After a glorious September, the weather has turned. It is still warm for the moment but there is rain and mizzle and mist. Mizzle is a Cornish word for the rain that is whipped apart by the wind and flies sideways. The roads are wet. The hill appears through the cloud occasionally.

We have had our thermostat set really low all Summer and Sunday I found the heating coming on. Time to reset it for winter. The heating is definitely on now. Temperatures are still at about 14 here but next week they are apparently going to drop below 10.

We are heading towards Samhain and Yule.

The dark is winning. I havn't even been able to see the full moon...

I am not feeling cold though. Something has changed. My metabolism seems to have sparked. I am normally the cold one, wrapped up in jumpers while others sit there with bare arms. It isn't a one off, otherwise I would think nothing of it, I am feeling warmer. I am not the cold one suddenly. I am noticing that I have to keep covered though, otherwise my joints get achy.

I have been losing weight. 8 and a half pounds since starting the new regime so i get to buy a troll bracelet now. Yay!

Trolls like dark and Winter which is why they are so common in Scandinavia. They also have no problem with the wet because many of them like to live under bridges. Very appropriate really....

Not sure I ever mentioned before but I am Troll royalty. The Troll Queen in fact...

It started when my niece and nephew were a lot younger. My niece came creeping along trying to startle me while I was in the bath. I called out 'fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an English gal!' She liked this a lot but got giant and troll a little mixed up and it all developed into a long running game. My Troll Boy and Troll Girl would go and find me special Troll food, dragons blood ice cream and the like. F got to be the Troll King when we met....

Rewriting History III

2009-10-05T20:47:00.002+01:00

I am finding this an interesting theme for thought and there is a little more to come... Most of us rewrite personal history as well.

My first experience of this was with My Gran. She was a difficult lady. Widowed before my parents met and with only one child, she was never going to like my Mum, no matter how much she did... When I was about twelve, I very innocently caused a family row. My Mum, Gran, Sister and I had all been out and about. Things hadn't happened quite as my Gran would have liked and she went home stewing. By the time we next saw her she had convinced herself that things had happened slightly differently. She proceeded to complain to my Dad about what happened. I spoke up and contradicted her view of events.

It occurs to me in recounting this that she may have known she wasn't telling the truth. Who knows.... It always appeared that she brooded on things. With each telling she appeared in a slightly better light until she had the story just right, and of course, that was how it had been....

We all do this to some extent. The memory of pain vanishes, to become a memory of a memory of a memory. I think this is the minds way of protecting us. I think the same happens with things we do wrong. Imagine if we had to remember in 20:20 clarity every single wrong we had done. Imagine the weight of all that guilt. It would cripple us as people.

Thing is, I slowly rewrite the good stuff too. I just forget it. I have an awful memory. What did I do when i was 14? Where did I go at 17? How did I feel after my first kiss? Which one exactly WAS my first kiss? I am not sure everyone has quite as bad a memory as I do, but I think the principle is the same...

Shame, pain, fear, love all gone. A memory of a memory of a memory. A memory of the story I once told myself about how it happened.

Do we really want to live with the painful truth, every second?

Sometimes things happen that pierce our minds and we can't forget. A memory so strong, A pain so deep, a love so profound... Even they fade one day if we let them (or if we have a truly appalling memory). I have a piercing moment of memory from my childhood. Walking through wet grass in Autumn with flurries of Daddy Long Legs leaping out of the grass. It was a moment when I realised I was happy. When I just felt happiness and was present and there... No context, just that image.

Families write history too. Why did Grandma fall out with her sister? The polite fiction. What you tell the children. What is misunderstood by future generations. What is left out.

Tara in Buddhism

2009-10-04T13:16:00.002+01:00

She was adopted from Hinduism in the 6th Century which explains many similarities she has between the two religions. Tara is a set of aspects of the same quality within Buddhism and is commonly found in Tibet and Japan but less so in China. She is still very popular in Tibet and Mongolia. There are stories of her assisting escaping Tibetans.

One story of Tara tells how she reached a high level of spiritual attainment and was advised that she should ask to come back as a man on the next turn of the wheel so she might progress further. She was incensed and declared she would only incarnate as a woman and when she does transcend she will be a woman. She was also saddened by the lack of those working for the enlightenment of women.

Even the Dalai Lama has spoken of a true feminist movement within Tibet, led by the followers of Tara.

She is the Mother of Liberation. She is compassion and action. She is a saviour who hears the cries of those in misery. She is playful and manifests in the lives of those who are too serious or those who denigrate the feminine.

She has a number of aspects which are more common but there are sects which recognise 21 Taras but there is another Tara known as the 22nd Tara. These aspects are approached in practices by yogis so that they can gain those aspects within themselves.

Green Tara
The buddha of enlightened activity she protects us from fear and anxiety. She can grant wishes and brings happiness. She can save us from eight specific disasters: lions and pride; wild elephants and delusions; forest fires and hatred; snakes and envy; robbers and fanatical views; prisons and avarice; floods and lust and demons and doubt.

White Tara
Known for compassion, long life, healing and serenity, she counteracts ill health. She is the embodiment of the emotion behind compassion and shines as bright as the moon.

Red Tara
More fierce but associated with magnetizing all good things. She is discriminating awareness and shows us how to turn raw desire into love and compassion.

Black Tara
Associated with power

Yellow Tara
Associated with wealth and prosperity

Blue Tara
Associated with the transmutation of anger, her ferocious, wrathful female energy she destroys obstacles and brings good luck and swift spiritual progress.

Cittamani Tara
A green Tara found in the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism

Kadiravani Tara
Tara of the Teak forest.

To be honest, the information I was able to find on the web made finding out much factual information quite difficult. It wasn't easy to separate things out in a way that made sense to me. These Eastern religions use words and concepts that are not familiar to me. I think I would need to do a fair bit of reading about the religions themselves as well as about Tara herself (herselves?) to be able to piece together it all. And it would need to be from books rather than the web. On this subject the web skims and gets lost inbetween the Taras a little. I hope the things I have written are correct!

Rewriting History II

2009-10-04T11:41:00.002+01:00

I wanted to write a little more about rewriting history because I have had a few more thoughts and rememberings.

I grew up when the IRA terrorist activities were at their height. When bombs went off in England. When there was daily trouble in Ireland. There was no avoiding the fact that there really was trouble in Ireland and they were cross with the English.

One day our English teacher decided to get us to have a debate on the Irish situation. I actually went away and researched it, unlike my class mates. I got the encyclopedia from the library and I read. I was pretty horrified by what I found out. I discovered, in short, the potato famine. I had never, ever heard of this before. No mention of it had been made in my presence, despite the troubles. And I was a teenager.

So I put together my argument and I was proud and passionate about what I had to say. And off to class I went. I didn't get the reaction I expected.

When I mentioned the potato famine, the class laughed. They had never ever heard of it. Not one of them. My opponent thought I was making it up and egged them on. The teacher and I locked eyes in horror and sympathy. My opponent won the debate.

Most of our history is taught in school but certainly when I was there, it was a sanitized version. All the bad nasty bits taken out. All the things we did wrong removed. The crusades were not an attempt at religious genocide. The Romans persecuted Christians but no mention of the start of the Roman Catholic church.

We are not the only nation guilty of this. I know that a lot of people won't like this next comment... but the whispers about how the IRA funded itself suggested US ex-pats. After 9 11 it all changed that's for sure. The IRA lost it's bite and learned to talk very quickly.

We all reinvent things. Sometimes it is reinvented for us, marketing, spin, political secrets, non-disclosure agreements, trade agreements. Where do all those warring third world countries get their weapons from?

When my descendants look back on these times, how will history have been written? What things will have been exposed as documents become unclassified? What events will be forgotten? Which shameful things will be left out?

Tara the Devi

2009-10-03T21:00:00.002+01:00

I want to investigate Tara, the Goddess. She is found in Hinduism, Buddhism and is a Celtic Goddess of Ireland too. I have also found some references to her as being found in Chinese culture but also in Native American culture as the Star Woman. Depictions of Tara have been found in caves and there is a believe from these that her worship could go back as far as 30,000 years. this goes some way towards explaining how she appears in so many cultures. In Latin she is Terra, in Scandinavia she is Tar, to a South American tribe she is Tarahumara.

I am going to start with Tara the Devi of Hinduism...

A Devi is a Goddess, an aspect of the divine feminine known as Shakti.

She is the second of the ten Goddesses of great wisdom which are aspects of the feminine ranging across the spectrum. She is guide, protector and saviour. She offers knowledge as salvation. She is the star that self combusts. She is the unquenchable desire that propels all life. She is the words and the mantra and the music. She can englamour you. She is the supreme creator and mother of all buddhas and bodhivistas. She is the mother of liberation. she is the virtue of success from work and achievements. She embodies womans ability to survive terrifying times. She can be fierce and wild. she helps us centre and be at one. She helps us journey through the depths of our minds.

She governs the underworld, the earth and the heavens. She has power over birth, death, love, war, regeneration, the seasons, the lunar cycle, all that lives and grows

Kali is the foremost of the wisdom Goddesses but there are many similarities between the depiction of the two Goddesses. Lord Shiva actually forbade seeing any difference between them, that they were aspects of each other. In the hymns which list there names they both have each others names listed. Tara is more maternal and approachable than Kali

Tara is blue with a tiger skin shirt and a necklace of severed human heads. Her tongue lolls and blood oozes from her mouth. She has four arms and carries a sword, scissors, a lotus and a severed head or skull cap.

The Hindu Gods and Demons were churning the oceans which created a poision which the Lord Shiva drank. He saved the world but turned his throat blue. In his unconscious state Tara came an laid him in her lap and allowed him to suckle. Her milk saves him.

She has a liking for blood and practices involve depictions of her having sex with Mahakala which were engraved in copper and then smeared with menstrual blood.

An old lady made a statue of Tara but then realised she had made it facing the wrong way so that is faced away from Mahabodhi (I think this is a temple?). She felt awful but the statue spoke to her and turned the other way out of compassion to the old lady.

She is a Goddess to help us find our lost feminine.

Rewriting History

2009-10-03T12:24:00.003+01:00

History is written by the winners.

Nowhere is this more (or less) true than the British Isles. The 'English' version of the history of these Isles is the one that has been taught but there is a resurgence. This history is no longer seen as threatening to Great Britain and people are interested so the tales are being told more widely.

Most British people have blood drawn from the four quarters of the Isles so as the history is explored so we are able to explore some of the less English aspects of our family history. I definitely have Welsh and Scottish blood. I have a Liverpudlian branch of the family so given all this, I am likely to have a little irish somewhere in there too. Much of my English blood is fenland and Suffolk based.

Britain is a set of islands, many, many islands. This enabled the many tribes to remain distinct in many ways. Waves of invaders did not settle equally across the islands. The Celts remained strongly present in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Cornwall. I have also read that the fenlands, being an impenetrable, undrained bog retained a lot of Celtic blood as well.

The islands remained a hodge podge of tribal feifdoms, slowly united. England, Cornwall, Scotland, Wales and Ireland emerged as separate nations of united tribes. Slowly they all came under the sway of the English. The history of this integration is not really taught in schools. A little mention of the whole Scottish Kings and Queens is made perhaps, with Mary Queen of Scots.

My Scottish ancestor was a MacDonald from the Cairngorms who moved to Suffolk to work at the Naval College, as a bursar I think. He must have been well educated for the time but all connection to his Scottish ancestry seems to have been cut. He changed his surname to Donald and married a local farmers daughter. I think he was my great great great grandfather maybe an extra great in there too. My Mum was often told that we were directly descended from Robert de Bruce. This is all I know of my Scottish Ancestry.

Nothing of the Scottish history was taught me. I learnt of Robert de Bruce in films such as Braveheart. Now there is a series on TV about the History of Scotland. I have just sat and heard for the first time, the story of how the MacDonalds and the Stewarts divided Scotland into Lowland and Highland. How the MacDonalds ascended and descended in power. How the Scottish identity became divided. How the Lowlanders became Scots and the Highlanders remained Gaels.

Cornwall is a land of forgotten history as well. I wish more of this had been taught... Good job it is never too late to learn! I am truly British, not English. I am Celt, Angle, Saxon and Dane. I am no one thing. The English didn't win in me, they are just another part... They only won in history. Time makes us complete. Things come full circle.

Downward

2009-10-02T20:29:00.002+01:00

I had lots I wanted to say last night. I lost three more pounds and we went and picked up F's new car. But yesterday has gone and those things and the excitement that went with them has waned.

So today. Today has been an odd day but I am not sure I wish to talk about that either. Talking about work gets old.

I am going to talk about food though and this has been sparked today....

At school we had to eat all our lunch. Our main course with it's two veg and our desert. If you wouldn't eat it, you stayed there until you did. If your parents gave you permission you could gain a green card which was a get out clause that let you not eat the foods listed on it. The only food I got out of eating was prunes.

There was a girl in my class who wouldn't eat the meals provided. She took to not going to lunch to avoid eating the things she didn't want to eat. She would have different people sneak food out for her, but only the things she wanted to eat. It was all a high drama. A game between student and staff. Hide and seek with a lot of sneak thrown in.

It was however all about attention and control. I can't remember a huge amount about the girls life but I do remember she was powerless between her divorced parents. Desperate for love and attention. She had a huge crush on her cousin. She used to say he was her boyfriend but I am not sure how true that was. He killed himself. Shot himself with a gun. I think it was after that that the whole food thing picked up pace.

She eventually became anorexic. Playing games like this with food for love and attention doesn't tend to take people anywhere good.

I know I have different tendencies. I comfort eat and hide behind my blubber. It isn't that I don't understand the whole control thing though but the attention craving thing is somewhat alien....

So I know someone at the moment who is not sleeping properly, not eating properly, loosing weight and generally looking manky. Lots of comments are made about looks, appearances, how she feels. She is overly focused on it all. I get fed up of hearing about it. I am not interested in all that stuff at the best of times and this isn't it.

Having had my own trials and tribulations, I know no one gets help until they are ready. Too much attention and focus on it all is counterproductive, it is aiding and abetting her self-destructive behaviour. I can't make her eat properly, or sleep for that matter.

It isn't me the behaviour is aimed at anyway, it is aimed at her family and her boyfriend and the lack that she has in her relationships with them. It is nothing to do with me. I don't want my energy sucked away in that aiding a negative habit thing, I have been there before. I don't want to be involved in someone destroying themselves. I can't give her what she needs. I don't even like her. But I do feel sad about it all, sometimes. The rest of the time it makes me frustrated and cross.

2009-10-01T22:13:00.002+01:00

This award was ceated in response to the following post 'Telling It Like It Is' by Sue at The Creative Spirit.

WE ARE Honest Blogger!
the Sisterhood of
SHIfT HAPPENS!

As honest bloggers we:

(Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Add To...As You Wish)

* Speak our truth from the heart and tell it like it is.

* Share openly and honestly our true feelings without fear of judgement, Blame or shame.

* We write to share our achievements so others can also share our joy.

* We write about our bad times too, knowing that the love and support of others is around us and perhaps heal another’s pain in the process..

*We are human beings will real feelings and emotions and REFUSE to hide behind a mask.

* We dare to be different

* We are Free Spirits

* We realsie that by spilling out, we lighten our load.

* We acknowledge our strengths and weaknesses and don't see them in terms of success or failure.

* We laugh together and cry together

* We are all following our own journey in our own unique way

* Above all else, we may lie on the floor, screaming and kicking, or feel like life is collapsing around us once in a while….but at the end of the day, we drag ourselves up, dust ourselves off and rise to fight another day.

So Sue has given me this lovely, lovely award. I do try and be honest. I do try and let it all hang out. I shall try and think of some people to award it to tomorrow for I should be in bed!

Home Sweet Blog

2009-09-30T21:18:00.003+01:00

I am slowly coming to realise that I miss updating my blog each day. I find that by coming and writing here, I come to unusual subjects, thoughts and ideas. Sometimes when I have nothing to write about, a post appears from nowhere as I sit with my laptop. I think this is what I miss most, those things that come when I have nothing.

I never started writing this blog for others. It was always about me. The fact that others find it interesting is a bonus. Maybe I am ending up back where I started.

When I first started I didn't read other blogs because I hadn't found any. I slowly found interesting blogs and started to follow them. Some of the writers became good friends, a real part of my life. Others were blogs I read in passing, some were busy blogs I admire greatly and read voraciously but commented little, others flooded my life with visual beauties.

Eventually it got too much. I couldn't keep up. Slowly I stopped reading the vast majority of blogs that I follow. I had overdosed on other people's lives and needed to spend a little more time living my own. So I did and then I stopped writing a daily post because that got too much as well. I had done it for months and months and I guess i needed a break from that too.

I think it is really important to think about what you want and need when getting involved in things online. I am part of four yahoo groups, three book groups, a writing group and four social networks. I have email and facebook correspondence with friends and relatives. I have online games such as My Fairyland and Wordscraper which I play against my Dad. I have too much!

I have collected all these things and slowly I am finding that they are crowding out the things that blogging first bought to my life. I can spend the whole day online trying to keep up with it all. My crafting has dropped to a little beading in front of the TV. I havn't painted silk, art journaled or anything else in quite a while. Little Dogs explorations of new places have become less frequent. I research fewer topics to write about on my blog. Most of the activities I do are there to try and make me better or to increase my creativity and assist with what I produce but they have gotten to the point where they are stopping it, not helping it....

So what do I want? I want to write my blog. I want to play My Fairyland and Wordscraper and chat via email with my mates. I want to make social networks work for me, not I for them. I want to slowly and gently work on A Witch Alone. I want to slowly finish The Artist's Way. I am not sure it is the right time for The Joy Diet, I am actually pretty happy in myself! Do I want to reset my yahoo groups so I don't get all the email updates? not sure...

But writing, here, has come to be pretty important to me. I think it is a gentle form of the Morning Pages. A lot less brutal than them but things still come out....

So the ride will continue and perhaps a little more frequently than recently too....

Drain

2009-09-28T21:07:00.003+01:00

I have come to realise why I stopped making jewellery. I have come to realise why I have been known to have a hobby that one day I suddenly turn round and never, ever do again.

I like taking a little extra time over The Artist's Way. I like giving my subconscious time to get messages through. I like having time to allow synchronicity to provide a few answers and ideas.

I am not sure where this bit came from, I am sure I read about it in there somewhere. Sometimes we create in such a way as to drain ourselves. We force ourselves to keep going. We drain our souls. We have to give ourselves time to replenish our creativity and we have to respect ourselves and be true to our muse...

I don't enjoy creating jewellery for certain people. The sorts of things they would wear and enjoy don't inspire me. They are neither challenging or interesting to make and I don't find the finished product inspiring in any way really. Some people are easy to make fun things for, they love colour and they have a funky sense of style.

Last year I had a few weeks off after crashing out of my teacher training. I also had a few weeks off just before Christmas between jobs. I made beaded artwork after beaded artwork. I had so many things I sent a handful off to be sold (two did sell!). And then before I completed all my presents, I crashed. I couldn't face another bead.

I have been making a few things again for this years pressies and suddenly I have hit the second piece for a certain person... It is in translucent and pale peach beads so there is hardly any colour to it. It is a simple spiral so there is nothing challenging or exciting about it. I am finding it difficult to make. It is draining. It is work, not fun.

But having started, I am going to continue.

I like making gothy chokers for my niece. I like putting together funky shapes and colours for my Mum and my Aunt. But I seldom enjoy pieces I make for some others...

A Rant

2009-09-27T19:35:00.008+01:00

Cornwall is a beautiful place. It has a rich and varied history that is different to the rest of the UK. Important events in Cornish history are largely unknown outside of Cornwall. To the UK it has always been a far outpost, rural and backward. They like to forget it's history and have long chosen to disregard the social identity, although this has changed to a large extent now.

When I moved here I was ignorant of the different culture and history of the area but I didn't move here with a no-it-all attitude. I came, I listened, I read and I learnt. I still continue to learn about Cornwall and I imagine I always will be. As such I didn't irritate the Cornish and most of them don't suss me out as being non-Cornish. I can feel those who have integrated and those who havn't when I meet them these days. There is a relaxed, easy going sort of an attitude to those that fit here, a sort of what will be will be. many people from up country just can not relax enough to fit here.

The landscape is a small landscape. There is a lack of room and it is full of little valleys and rivers and coves and villages. If you stand on the right hill or headland the landscape can be seen on a different scale, looking at the vistas and not seeing the things hidden below.

We only have one good dual carriageway road and even that isn't dual carriageway all the way. Many of our roads are only wide enough for one car, edged with plant covered granite edges, sharp bends and passing places. This is fine, the locals are laid back enough to just get on with it if they are on a road where they can't overtake the tractor that is going exactly the same way as them. It isn't that we don't get frustrated, we do, it is just life...

People buy second homes here and bump up the housing prices. They don't pay full council tax so don't contribute as much to the services down here, police, fire etc and then they fill their spare house with a stream of people some of whom will have paid a lot of money to be in here in the peak of the summer season. I know people who grew up in villages they will never be able to afford to live in, even though their family lived there as far back as the ark. Some places are so exclusive and so unlikely to have a single local person living there.

Then there are the tourists. They come and fill everywhere up. Drive very slowly. And go to tourist attractions. They pay lots of money to do so but a lot of the time they are disapointed by what they find. Up country there may be grand castles you couldn't explore in a day but down here things are on a smaller scale. It is a place to go and relax and explore. To have the best time you don't want to go anywhere much you have to pay to go, except parking fees. The best places are the beaches, exploring little fishing villages, exploring the landscape. Surely that is why Cornwall has a tourist industry in the first place?

So you have places like Padstow which is very exclusive and dominated by Rick Stein. You have St Ives where you can barely move in the summer and can purchase a wide variety of arts and crafts. You have Newquay where the chances of you seeing a sober person is considerably reduced. These places havn't been made this way by the locals. If you don't like a place you go to, then chances are a lot of the locals won't like it either....

So it really bugs me when people come down here and comment on Cornwall in vast sweeping terms. When they visit tourist places and complain that they are touristy. When they pay a meagre £3 to see something and expect the earth. When they call it claustrophobic and arrogant. arrogant? The cornish are not arrogant as a rule but many of the middle class non-local enclaves are very arrogant indeed.

So why am I so pissed off exactly? An old, old friend I havn't seen in years came to visit and we spent a few hours together. When they went home they commented on Cornwall and their holiday and I found it somewhat offensive....

For years they had wanted to visit Tintagel. A ruined castle on an isolated headland linked to Arthurian legend. We warned them that there were treacherous stairs down the cliff and then back up the other side to the castle. I said that I did not feel fit enough to go myself. We said they were brave going with a baby carrier. We gave them a leaflet on the place which certainly would also have explained the difficult access. They went anyway and then complained a lot about little they enjoyed it. One couldn't carry the baby because of issues with heights. They were too sweaty to relax once they made it there.... We did warn them, they just didn't want to hear and we didn't want to annoy them by being to forceful about it....

I guess what I have to remember is the friends I knew before I moved down here have made very different life choices to the ones I have made. They may travel the world, drive fast cars, have prestigious jobs and generallyhave a fair bit of cash. I may have chosen a less exciting looking path but I am content (mostly) with my lot. I love Cornwall. I love my friends down here. I may not have heaps of money but I have time to appreciate the beauty of the place I live. I have time to be connected....

If ever you visit me here, please, please don't insist on going to all the tourist traps. Take a quieter, softer, more relaxed route. Chances are we will both find some new and beautiful place to explore.

Magpie

2009-09-27T00:00:00.000+01:00

I like Magpies

I have for as long as I can remember. I am a little superstitious of them.

I guess it all starts with that rhyme. And there are so many versions....

One is for sorrow
Two is for joy or mirth
Three is for a girl, a funeral or a wedding
Four is for a boy or a birth
Five is for a silver, heaven or a fiddler
Six is for gold, hell or a dance
Seven is for a secret never to be told, the devil his own self, old England or tale never to be told
Eight is for a wish, to live or Old France
Nine is for kiss or to die
Ten is for a bird you won't want to miss, a time of joyous bliss or to eat bogey pie!

I remember hearing that in folk music each new version allows them to estimate the age of the song. so a song with four versions would be twice as old as one with two. By this estimate this makes the magpie rhyme very old. I have no idea where I got that from though....

Some of the things in it make me smile - the heaven, hell and the devil his own self version is just so Christian influenced. The boy and girl bit is much from a time when women were pregnant all the time.

Other things have grown up around magpies, mostly do with getting rid of the bad luck of seeing one. Saying hello Mr Magpie and saluting them were both things my Mum told us. We thought she was joking but they are there on wikipedia.... It also says that if a magpie looks you in the eye they respect you and you don't need to worry about bad luck....

I see magpies.

I have become very sensitive to them. I can recognise their calls. I recognise their peculiar flight. The merest hint of magpie and I am on it. The flash of black, or white or that wonderful irridescent blue green....

I can't remember when all this started but I already felt strongly linked with them by the time I was 18. The Wiccan friend I made was aware of it. She found a dead magpie in her garden and remembering my tendency to use them for omen telling, was very disquietened by this. Later that day she found out a friend had died. I never forgot that.

I don't know that I stick to a rhyme, I just kind of feel my way through it.... It depends not just on how many, but what they are doing.

My watching them has taught me a lot. The juveniles stay and help their parents with the next batch of kids. They live in extended family groups and work together. You can identify their territories and once the chicks are raised they seem to get a little less defensive of their territories and you are more likely to see them socialising in larger groups.

They have become very common because they are generalists. At work we have a carpark surrounded by mowed lawn. The magpies can survive using this lawn where other birds can't. Smaller garden birds live in the hedgerows and scrub just beyond the fence but the magpies are the ones who survive best in the artificial domain we create. Meadow that is mown once or twice a year is so varied and beautiful. Why do we have to have lawn that is mown regularly and consists of one type of grass maintained with chemicals?

The magpies are to me a bird about balance - black and white - good and bad. They are tricksters, magicians and thieves (they like shiny things). There dominance is a sign that things are out of balance. I love them though and am glad that something can survive in these places we have created...

Celebrations and Jubilations

2009-09-26T11:19:00.002+01:00

Yesterday was my birthday. It didn't begin as I had hoped. The alarm went off at seven because the boiler man was coming to find out why it keeps switching itself off and flashing little lights at us. I would much rather have had a lie in but hey...

It turned out to be a little corrosion on the sensor that tells it the pilot light has gone out.

After some pressies and some breakfast lovingly cooked by F, he forced me out the door and into the car. I knew he was taking me to a far away wood. It started to drizzle as we drove there. hmmm

We ate our food and then wondered over to the map. He asked me which trail I wanted to do and I chose the nice easy one the went a long one side of the river, over a bridge and back down the other side. It had easy next to it and I suspected it would be lovely and flat.

Cardinham Woods is situated in the Glynn Valley. A lovely valley that is just so beautiful. Full of little rivers carrying water away from Bodmin Moor. Steep sided valleys run into each other. Covered in trees. The woods are mostly pine because they are Forestry Commission plantations but there are some broad leaved areas here and there.

Little Dog met and socialised with a few dogs including a Collie that swiped her side for no reason leaving her with a cut. She danced in the rivers and ran backwards and forwards and was generally joyful. The only times she was bad with other dogs and even growled was when she got bitten and also when I went to stroke another dog who had jumped up at me. I think growling is a fairly minor communication really. I doubt the Collies owners even realised their dog had drawn blood.

We happily trundled along until we reached a point where another trail left our nice easy route. F pointed up the trail. And yes I do mean up. This trail snaked up the side of the valley, clinging precariously to the side of the hill. I went pale and said no. It soon became clear that F really wanted to do this and that i would feel bad if I didn't, even though I didn't want to climb hills...

I had to stop a lot. The Mistress of Pain had taught me a couple of stretches to help with problem parts of my legs. I had to stretch out my ankles most times I stopped. At the top I knelt down and leant back to stretch out some other muscles, somewhere in my legs that hurt. It helped a lot but not completely!

Once up the side of the hill, the path wound around the hills at a steady height with only minor slopes. Once I stopped glowering at F i actually enjoyed it. The only person we saw up there was a Ranger doing an annual check to ensure there were no dangerous fallen trees endangering the path. And he was driving.

Amongst the pines were other things. Many dung beetles. The occasional fungus. I could hear buzzards calling. And there were other trees, oak, beech and then, suddenly, a little cluster of Rowans. These are not trees I see very often, in fact I can not remember the last time I did. They are not common in the areas I have lived. I have often wanted a piece of this wood for different things while reading witchy things. It has always somehow seemed the last obtainable. When I thought about making a tree oracle, this was the one that was going to be hardest for me to find. It is one that is recommended for wands and stangs.

So I see a little cluster of the trees and I say to F that I want some of their wood. Neither of us willing to chance the steep slope to get to them. We continued on. And there, at a fork in the path was a cluster of them, within reach. I begin looking. It was pretty hopeless. I told F that I wasn't willing to take living wood from the tree itself but the temptation was of course huge - to break one little twig. F got bored and carried on. I spotted a cluster of berries that had fallen and was caught in a branch. I took this as a gift, even though it wasn't what I wanted. Preparing to give up, I turned to move on.

And then I saw it. It was not a twig. It was probably a little tree, or maybe a branch of a larger tree. It had somehow been broken off and a couple of the twigs had started rotting. At it's base, a section the length of a think wand dangled. I broke the thick length at the bottom off to use as a wand but I didn't want to just leave the branch. I called F and he helped me strip the the twigs. I was bemused to find that I was left with something looking very much like a forked staff. I discovered that for all it's lack of thickness and the gently bowed nature of the branch, it made a very, very good walking stick. I gave silent thanks for this gift and moved on.

We descended the hill back to the easy trail and saw many beautiful spots. It seemed that most dog walkers took the opportunity to cross the first bridge and loop back so this far section of the easy trail was deserted. We found a little path that led down to the river and here I took off my socks and boots and dangled my poor sore feet in....

We continued on, past a beautiful old fashioned granite bridge. Past cottages. Past all sorts...

My exclamation halted F. I was a bit surprised that he thought such an eclamation might relate to the siting of another dung beetle. I had seen something on the path and I knew what it was. I had never ever seen one before and this was a very special moment. We have three 'snakes' in this country. The Adder is poisonous and has a distinctive V, I once had an encounter with one and it was beautiful. Then the Grass Snake and Smooth Snake. This looked like a snake but I knew it wasn't, it was a legless lizard, a Slow Worm.

It was a beautiful copper colour and it glistened. Reading about them online, it would have been a female that we saw. We took many photos. We watched as it decided we were not a threat and moved across the road to the verge where it nimbly moved through the moss and stones. It was lovely. A real priviledge.

We returned to the car and I squeezed my new stang in before collapsing in a tired aching heap. I dreamt of nice hot baths all the way home and couldn't wait to use some Lush treat I had purchased the week before. Little Dog actually lay down all the way home.

So we pull up and F announces I have an hour and a half and then we are off out.... I had my bath and it was lovely and then we bustled out of the house.

He took me to Carn Brea Castle. I posted about the hill this castle sits on here. I have wanted to go there ever since I moved to Cornwall. It was originally built as a medieval chapel, possibly to St Michael but was later rebuilt by the Bassett family as a hunting lodge. It isn't considered to be a proper castle because it is built on top of rocks and is classified as a folly. I think most importantly in terms of last night, it is now a restaurant. A tiny restaurant but a lovely one.

We ate Jordanian food that wouldn't fit into our diet plan and later the owner played his drum. It was a lovely intimate evening. Lit by candle light in a tiny, relatively bare room with rock walls, we were snug and happy and well fed. Afterwards we walked up to the monument in the dark....

A beautiful day. all thanks to my lovely F.

A Month of the Moon

2009-09-25T09:39:00.004+01:00

I said for a book I am doing that I would pay more attention to the moon for a month.... So this post is my documentation of the moon for a lunar month...

It was new on the 18th. I hadn't really been out at night so I didn't spot it until....

24th - The moon was a quarter sitting high in the sky as we came home from Fat Fighters. The sun had just set, turning the blue sky a whole range of colours and dusting the belly of the little powder puff clouds in the sky. Away from the sunset in the darker sky, the moon sat and watched all going on beneath it. The moon had risen, unseen at 2.08 pm so by 8pm it was pretty high. I think it would be lovely to watch a full moon rise one day...

I have just been looking online at the times of the lunar rise on full moons and it seems I will not see one this year because it is rising too early.... Maybe next year....

25th - It was there again as we drove out. Hanging half full in a clear sky that was still light. When we came to leave it had clouded over and the only sign of the moon was a glow in the clouds. The clouds stopped the light vanishing into space and yo could identify the towns, even those hidden by distant hills by the orange glows on the underside of clouds. It was very clear and we realised we could see all the way to Penzance and Mousehole.

26th - saw the moon half full in the day sky again. Forgot to look for it later (probably the red wine!)

30th - As I climb the stairs to go to bed I feel the light of the moon wash over me. We have a very big window at the top of our stairs making our landing one of the few bits that gets lots of lovely light, despite our huge sash windows as they point the wrong way... It was lovely and growing and I remembered I had seen it a night or two ago briefly. I couldn't see the face but the two children that the Scandinavians see were right there.

1st - We had to go for a drive but the moon was too high in the sky to do anything more than catch a glimpse of it. The face was clear tonight and as we drove the moon scudded between fluffy clouds, getting fuller and brighter. We got home and F grabbed his camera so we could go find a hill and photograph it. Typically the clouds decided to take that moment and hide it. The moon vanished with it's only trace some nice bright clouds.

10th - The moon has been hiding behind clouds this week. Last night I woke in the middle of the night and went downstairs to get a drink. On my way back up the stairs. I could see it shining. A perfect half. Then it vanished again. It came back but it's brightness varied a lot. Little clouds skidding by, sometimes just wisps, but sometimes more substansial.

This week the moon has slowly been rising closer and closer to the time I get up. Each morning I have seen it hanging in the dark sky outside my landing window as I get up to go to work. Each day it has become smaller and smaller. Friday I got up later and I could not find it. The sky was light, the moon shrunken to nearly nothing as well as the likelihood it might be hiding behind the large tree. Tomorrow morning the moon will be made new.

I like this cataloguing of the moons movements. The stopping to take time to seek her out.

Explorations

2009-09-24T10:27:00.002+01:00

I know I am not blogging much. It is a flurry of activity here at the moment with much jewellery making. We have been out a few times as well...

Black Cliffs - This is part of the long beach of Gwithian Bay. Black Cliffs is the part close to the estuary mouth which faces out to sea. It was a beautiful day and with most people at work and few tourists around, the few people about were separated by huge areas of sand. The sky was blue and so was the sea. A gentle frothy white surf and a warm breeze.... I really do mean huge expanses of sand as well. It was around about low tide and the sand went on forever. The beach is so long that at low tide there are acres and acres of sand. You could clearly see the sand bars around the mouth.

We walked out to the sea and along then back into the cliffs and back. The sea was beautiful, the sand unmarked. The cliffs were interesting with water seeping through and interesting rock structures on view. There were faults and folding a plenty, along with an arch, pools lying beneath the cliff in the sand and raised beach platforms (the old rock cut base of beaches from times when sea level was higher.)

Restormel Castle - We took a little trip to this castle. Cornwall doesn't have the grand huge castles you find elsewhere up country. Instead we have little castles that were all about defence and not much about grandeur. Hill forts are one of the most common archaelogical remnant down here. People needed to see what was coming, from the sea and the land.

The castle is a ruin on top of a hill. It is circular with a circular courtyard in the middle. There were two bits that stuck out of the circle - the chapel and the gatehouse. The green moat is still there and you can still walk the battlements. All the floors have gone in the higher rooms but you can see where they were. The castle has a well in the middle but unfortunately they decided to widen the access to it and used it as a latrine as well.

The views were good from the battlements and it was very pretty.

St Erth Pits - Most of the nature reserves I have visited in Cornwall have been stunning. This one wasn't. It was a small overgrown wood with some evidence of nefarious goings on, probably at night and not during the day as there was no one around at all, despite the many child sized tracks going off into difficult to reach places. It felt as if the brambles, honeysuckle and ivy were strangling the life out of much of it. We were not overly enamoured.... The landscape was pocked and it had obviously been well worked at a past time but you couldn't see much of it or get to it. You could see the remains of a tramway in one place.

Reading about it now I guess it makes a little more sense. The pits were used for quarrying sand and clay used for mouldings. It was used by Harvey's Foundry in nearby Hayle and taken by rail all over the country. Apparently these beds are the most diverse yet described in the world with over 350 different ostracod fossils recorded as well as a huge array of other animals and plants. Why would they want this geological wonder open to plundering?

It was worked until 1950 so the woods are young and still establishing themselves in places. The brambles and honeysuckle will eventually be smothered by trees, except where one has fallen and light comes in.

I guess this one nature reserve they don't want to become too well known. To be honest you get that feeling about a lot of the nature reserves in Cornwall. They are places protected and not highly advertised. Known to locals and people who are interested enough to search online or look at maps, they are safe. Kennal Vale with is treacherous paths would cause the Trust to be sued if it became famous and the wrong person was hurt. St Erth Pits would be at risk to plundering by collectors if they opened it up. All these treasures are there if you want to go find them, but they are not going to shout out loud for your visit.... Not like the dramatic coast or the tourist attractions of the county.

Proper Job Pictures

2009-09-22T12:07:00.002+01:00

The delectable F has decided to start posting his photos on his very own blog. Now he has the posh camera he takes hundreds everywhere we go.... So the ones he posts are the best of the bunch. If you want to see more of my Cornwall then go have a look!

Week 6

2009-09-20T18:18:00.002+01:00

Money Madness
People with money are lucky
Money makes people lazy
I'd have more money if I won the lottery
My dad thought money was precious
My mum thought money was easily spent
In my family, money caused secrets
Money equals fame
If I had money I'd travel
If I could afford it, I'd buy some land
If I had some money, I'd learn lots of crafts
I'm afraid that if I had money I would never leave my house
Money is evil
Money causes unhappiness
Having money is not selfless
In order to have more money, I'd need to be career motivated
When I have money, I usually spend it
I think money can bring happiness
If I weren't so cheap I'd do up my house
People think money is evil
Being broke tells me I should look at my bank balance more before spending

I don't like this week. There are no easy written exercises. No thinky things. Just doing things. I havn't done my morning pages much recently either. Do I really believe I can be prosperous? I don't think I do. Not every day for sure.

Clearing out is something we have planned anyway... F and I have decided as we are both off work this week that we should gather things for a car boot. I am always picking up pebbles at the beach... Now I need to pick and dry flowers. Say yes to freebies? What freebies - I havn't noticed any - does that mean I didn't notice or that there weren't any?

hmmmm

Nothing

2009-09-19T19:30:00.003+01:00

Nothing is a negative word to many, but I think it is a grand word. From nothing is born everything. It is the first week of The Joy Diet with Jamie Ridler and nothing is the word. And the action to.

We have to do nothing for a minimum of at least fifteen minutes a day. Maybe not precisly meditating but something towards it. A first step perhaps.

I have a history with meditation. I remember clearly the first time I came across the word. I was pretty young and I was having a conversation with my Mum about how we got to sleep. I don't remember why we were but we were. She asked me how I got to sleep when I was struggling and I told her.

I focus on my feet really hard till they become tingly and then I move the tingle up my legs before I start on my fingers and do my arms. This focus completely relaxes me. My limbs feel like I can't move them. And they tingle. I have never been able to make my main body tingle and I no longer try. I am not sure if it is the focusing or the relaxing of my body that helps me relax but it has always worked. I seem to have come up with this technique out of nowhere... Anyone else come across it anywhere?

My Mum informed me that this sounded a bit like meditation so I asked her what that was...

Many years later I was trying to learn to meditate. One day I actually managed to switch off my inner voice and look within. I didn't like it. It was black and quiet and still. I don't know if this is what you aim for, if there is something more, a mistake or a reflection of where I was at that time.... I have never tried to hard since.

So I can do 15 mins a day but I am not sure how rigorous I shall be with it. I would love any meditation experts out there to tell me more about my experiences...

I am looking forward to filling my life with joy. Truthfully I have been horridly grumpy since yesterday lunch time and my 15 minutes today did bring me out of it somewhat....

Troll Beads

2009-09-19T14:38:00.002+01:00

A Troll bracelet was a type invented in Denmark. They are generally made of metal and the original ones look like they are made of woven strands of wire. They are flexible and have a circular cross section. At one end of the bracelet the catch comes off so you can thread on troll beads.

Troll beads are round like polo mints or rubber rings. Some are beautiful glass with metal lining the hole. Others are metal charms. There are many designs...

You can go to Troll Beads or Lovelinks to see quite a lot... There are other sellers too...

Stuff

2009-09-17T21:24:00.002+01:00

Yay! After my first week of the new regime I have lost 4.5 pounds! And that was with a few bits of chocolate here and there and a few other naughties... Troll bracelet here I come!

I havn't found it easy adjusting because suddenly when you start weighing and measuring things you discover there isn't enough of them to base a meal on them. We will settle into it I feel and I like the group support thing....

Tomorrow is the full moon and it feels like some sort of changing time tipping point. Lots of things start tomorrow it feels. I have things I need to get done tomorrow evening. I also have thoughts zooming....

It has been an emotionally draining week. There seems to be a lot going on at work (understatement) and with my reduced free time due to cooking alterations I just seem to have even less time than normal.... eek!

2009-09-16T20:41:00.001+01:00

I am still here and in a much better mood..... Not got time to post a full post and I have some ideas that still need to ferment some more anyway....

2009-09-14T19:17:00.001+01:00

I am tired, grumpy and hungry. I don't think I have anything nice to say. Nothing that is properly me. I have spinach and riccota canneloni in the oven and I made the filling. I don't t hink changing diets is a nice happy thing.... I hope I adjust soon...

Treasure Map

2009-09-13T19:53:00.003+01:00

I like looking at maps. Sometimes you find out really interesting things about the places around you. Sometimes you find cool places to go.

Today was one of those days when we went to a new and good place because I spent some time looking at the map.

There is a bay called Gwithian Bay which stretches from Godrevy Ligthouse at one end to St Ives Island at the other. The villages of Gwithian and Lelant as well as the towns of Hayle, Carbis Bay and St Ives sit along it's length. In the middle is the mouth of the Hayle Estuary. If you could stand at the mouth you would look along cliffs to Carbis Bay and St Ives and along sand dunes past Hayle to Gwithian and the headland of Godrevy.

Hayle is an unusual town. I admit I didn't think much of it when I first went there. A long road stretches parallel to the dunes along one branch of the river from Copperhouse to Foundry. This road isn't the most exciting but it is the part everyone sees. Copperhouse and Foundry were iron founderies and their social effect on Hayle was huge. People worked for one or the other and they lived at the appropriate end. Huge rivalries developed between the two groups.

The industry had a very marked affect on the geography of the town as well and there is a good map here. The river flows past Copperhouse parallel to the dunes to Foundry and then it turns towards the sea and out. A number of quays are found at the Foundry end and one of them leads into the Copperhouse Canal which allowed ships to make it to Copperhouse.

Parrallel to the dunes you have first the old railway (no longer running) then the river then the canal and finally the road with all the houses of Hayle beyond. There are three large pools, Copperhouse Pool between Copperhouse and Foundry, a lovely duckpond inland from Foundry and Carnsew Pool the other side of the Foundry from Hayle.

Carnsew Pool is separated from the quays by New Pier. New Pier extends nearly all the way into the mouth of the estuary and separates the river that flows through Hayle from a second river that exits here. The pier also has a second leg that goes all the way round Carnsew Pool.

We walked from Foundry along past one of the many Quays and onto new Pier today. This took us past Carnsew Pool which tumbled over a waterfall and under a bridge in the pier. I expect at high tide the water flows the other way. I loved this. The water was clear and you could see all the stones of the fall. The bridge was all blocky and old fashioned with the many of the stones of the arch protruding outwards. From here the view across the pool to the far arm of the pier was fantastic.

We walked along the pier to the end where we sat on a bench. We were only a couple of hundred yards from the beaches on either side here and we could hear the conversations of others but we were separate and alone. Those to our left basked on a beach backed by dunes and those to our left walked dogs on a beach backed by cliffs and rivers flowed out to sea on both sides, glittering in the sun.

The pier is like much of the quays - faded industrial glory. Much of the buildings here are gone leaving that strange post industrial landscape. Gravel and hardcore compete with gorse and scrub. The pier has been built using all sorts of waste and more has probably been dumped over the years. Bricks, glass, bits of quartz.

Much of the quays are derelict as well, bits of wall demolished stones missing here and there. Anyone thinking this is a sadly declined fishing harbour is wrong, fishing was not the cause of this harbours complexities but it is now the only benefactor. Piles of lobster cages lie on the quay here and there.

F took lots of pictures but i don't have any to post right now, but I shall. I would also like to show you more of this bay because I like it very much and it would be good for me to explore more of it....

Things

2009-09-12T16:29:00.002+01:00

So many things seem to be happening right now. So many things seem to be about to start. So very much a time of change.

The weather has suddenly decided to go all summery. Beautiful clear skies. Air so fresh it tastes sweet. A beautiful gentle warmth cooled by sea breezes. Lovely. And I like it even more because it isn't Summer. There is a slight nip to the air at times that lets you know this Autumn. The night is lasting longer and longer. This is September at it's best.

The last few days I have been stuck in work of a day and to busy of an evening to make it to the beach. So I promised Little Dog we would go first thing today. And we did. 8 am found us stepping onto Perranporth Beach with a fairly low tide giving huge expanses of golden fluffy sand. And I do really mean fluffy because the beach cleaning tractor was there sifting sand for trash and laying it back like a fluffy powdery stuff.

Little Dog was pretty good and I got a better balance today between her desire to chase after the ball and her need to not run herself ragged. As we left the beach it was just beginning to get warm enough to make running risky for her. She cooled off in the stream before we headed back to the car.

A good start to the day. I then spoke to my Mum and discovered she is also trying to lose weight right now for her diabetes. She has decided to give herself a treat with every half stone. She is going to buy a troll bracelet with her first milestone and a troll bead or charm for it every one after that. We are going to do this together now because it is such a lovely idea. By the time I am thin I should have a beautiful collection of beads that I would have trouble justifying normally.

The diet is going OK. I have planned the meals for the rest of this week now which seemed to take ages. It doesn't feel easy yet. Last nights tea was a glitch though.... Now I just have to make myself cook it all and stick to it. I need to make myself go out shopping really... I left lunch to late and let myself get hungry. This is something I do and then I go and get all the wrong foods....

The new TV has arrived but I can not unpack it until F gets back. It is our first real big purchase of something new together and as such we will enjoy it's first moments together. I would love to be able to watch it tonight though... Oh well....

Work has gone a little odd in some ways but in others it is fine.

Jewellery making is now progressing at a snail's pace. I am making a bracelet for my Aunt (thankfully she has tiny wrists) using tiny delica beads sewn into tiny squares and then sewn together. The way it sits is a bit like an egg box sort of a shape. F's Mum's necklace has ground to a halt because I ran out of beads. My sister's earrings have swelled in number to three sets but I got bored of earrings and stopped for a bit. My Mum's bracelet is done. This just leaves my Neice, who isn't turning gothy after all. Of course this is only the first round - they all need birthday and Christmas presents....

On other crafting - I need to do some silk painting and some sewing (eek) and some how neither seem to be getting started. It is just a question of making myself get started really... *sigh*

Some major decluttering has been accomplished while I was safely out of the way at work. F has removed a wardrobe and now I can actually see all of the width of the window from the bed. The room seems so much brighter suddenly!

I think I am putting off going shopping....

Fat Fighting

2009-09-10T20:55:00.003+01:00

Tonight F and I joined fat fighters*. We received books telling us how to calculate what we should eat and how much. It is a diet of choice, so many things form option A, so many from B and all the healthy things we can eat till they come out of ears.

I was left feeling a little panicy. How do I digest all these books in time to get food in tonight so that I have something to eat tomorrow? I am out tomorrow for a roast and some alcohol, how on earth can I justify falling off the wagon before I even really got on?

I at once have too much info in my hands and not enough because what I have, I have to make apply to me and quickly. I also am going to have to adjust my intake of calcium pretty radically. Being a non-milk sort of a person, I top up on calcium rich foods when I have cravings and not generally before. But now cheese and milk are going to be forced into my diet whether I much like it or not.... Or at least, having not read much, that is how it seems...

Anyway, I have many books to read and a pizza to eat(it starts tomorrow).

*not the real name of the group in question but a fictional name taken from the TV series Little Britain...

Wishful Thinking

2009-09-09T21:04:00.002+01:00

I have dreams, just like most people. A couple of days ago, i found the embodiment of those dreams. 42 acres, with 6 of woodland, 32 of fields, a couple of gardens and the rest of sundry areas including a nice long private drive. A beautiful old house with bags of charm and character. A barn converted into three letting cottages, another barn, a garage and an external study. With a river running through and plenty of watery-ness. Perfect.

So in the interests of manifestation I have decided to spend a lot of time picturing myself living there. Manifestation is a big topic in the Artist's Way for this week. Putting your dreams out there and allowing the universe to fulfil them is what it's all about. Now I would love to see the universe give me the means to buy a mini-estate with a value of over a million pounds, but short of freak accidents to everyone I am related to or the lottery jackpot coming my way, I can't see it happening. Losing my family would be too high a price to pay for any dream. At the root of this dream is the desire for place and family afterall.... And with a family like mine I already have so much to be grateful for.

So I have a dull job that I can do and let my brain take me off to other places. This week I have been living on the estate and to be honest, I have really, really enjoyed it. I am not finding it easy picturing everyday like, mostly because I don't know whether we would be working, or me at home with a fledgling brood or what. I picture walking with Little Dog through the woods and to the river. I picture vague shadows of other unknown dogs cavorting around but I don't know them, how they would come to us or when and I certainly have no fixed ideas of what they might look like.

To be honest, what I seem to be spending most time on is my wedding. Or rather the party to be held afterwards on my mini-estate. The complex details of families and festivities have sucked me in. I have struggled with the idea of a venue for my wedding and suddenly, here it is.

Now you might think I am getting my hopes up about nothing and to be honest, maybe I am, at least a part of me is. The rest of me however has discovered that dwelling in this lovely dream is a beautiful place to take my mind away from the dullness of work. I feel happy. I have spent the the last couple of days in the place of my dreams and no one can take that away from me. Fancy joining me tomorrow?

TAW Week Five

2009-09-07T19:37:00.002+01:00

Time for another TAW session! I am sure you all enjoy reading these *laugh*

The Virtue Trap Quiz
The biggest lack in my life is fitness
The greatest joy in my life is F
My largest time commitment is work
As I play more, I work less
I feel guilty that I am fat
I worry that I will never realise my dreams
If my dreams come true, my family would celebrate
I sabotage myself so people will feel comfortable and less threatened by me
If I let myself feel it, I'm angry that I have no career
One reason I get sad sometimes is boredom

It seems my life doesn't actually serve anyone....

Forbidden Joys
Beautiful clothes that fit!
Horse riding
Walking long distances
A good warm and waterproof outdoor coat
A pair of fur lined boots from the Celtic Sheepskin Company
Doing a jigsaw
Live on a large plot of land with a stream or river, woods, fields for animals, room for gardens and food growing and a forest garden, with a beautiful old or eco home.
Take a Tai chi class
Become confident at sewing
Make a rug

Wish List
I wish for joy and bountiful happiness
I wish for stars to dangle from my ceiling
I wish for a warm and snuggly bed
I wish for a new mattress
I wish for a newspaper sanded floor
I wish for another dog
I wish for children
I wish to have no need to 'work' in a dull job
I wish for butterflies to hang from my plants
I wish for a green man face for my garden
I wish for a door from my lounge into my garden
I wish for more light in my house
I wish to never feel cold
I wish for better circulation
I wish for a quicker metabolism
I wish for dragons

I guess if I had to list my desires, most of them, the deepest ones, centre around where I would like to live. I want land. I want to grow my own food. I want to have sheep and goats and pigs and maybe a cow or two along with some horses and chickens. I want a forest garden. I want a wood with bluebells. I want some wild boggy land and a river and a pond. I want a home, either an old on or one I have designed and built myself. I want a home for the family I want to have. I found the perfect place online last night for the bargain price of £1,250,000... 42 acres with 6 acres of wood and a river, a lovely old stone house, three letting cottages converted from an old barn, a barn, an external study and a lovely long private drive..... I want it!

Five Imaginary Lives
Trapeze Artist (? *laugh*)
Farrier
Crane Driver
Mother
Vet
All a bit random really, except the links to animals and the wanting to be a Mother....

If I were twenty and had money....
At 20 I didn't want children, I wasn't ready and it wasn't anywhere near time. So my wishes for me back then are so different for what I would wish for me now...

I would travel and have adventures. Dive the Great Barrier Reef. Climb Uluru. Go to Borneo and travel up river to visit indigenous folk. Explore cave systems in the middle of rainforests. Walk the great wall of China. Travel across the Mongolian desert. Visit exotic ruins in Egypt by moonlight. Stay in a cliff house. Visit Machu Picchu. Fly over the Atacama desert. Travel around the Grand Canyon everyway i can. Ride horses on a ranch. Go white water rafting. Watch crocodiles in mangrove swamps. Glide down river at dusk watching fire flies. Visit the North Pole at the Summer Solstice. Cruise along the Nile. Climb Mount Kilamanjiro. These are the things I should have been doing at 20....

If I were 65 and had money...
My children would have left home and be exploring their dreams with our loving support and generous trust funds. Maybe one of them might have returned home, ready to settle and to begin, slowly taking over some of the land, maybe living in one of the holiday cottages. F and I would begin to holiday more. A little charity work maybe and a lot more crafts and maybe a few grandchildren.... A balanced life that reflects our bodies gently decreasing ability for hard labour...

Ten items I would like to own but don't
A good warm and waterproof outdoor coat.
sheepskin lined boots from the Celtic Sheepskin Company
A TV (arriving on Saturday! Yay!)
A leather corner sofa
Weebles ( a fantastic toy from my childhood...)
More music that I love from my teen days - particularly grunge and alternative rock
A wedding ring
A decent mattress, preferably memory foam
A SMART roadster (a sporty looking eco car)
A horse

In The Garden

2009-09-06T09:49:00.004+01:00

The garden has a small museum which I didn't stay to look at for long. I have looked around before and the only thing I stopped to really look at were the quotes written above the displays. It seems Barbara loved Cornwall for it's pagan landscape and St Ives for the sense of community it gave her with other artists.

Upstairs some of her smaller creations are on display along with a glass jug and a huge quartz crystal which look in need of a good scrub. And then outside!
The garden isn't that big and is in the middle of a busy town but for the most part it is quiet inside. People are driven to talk in hushed tones. There is a meditative feel to it. A small green oasis...
The garden itself is lush and green but then being blessed with Cornwall's warmth and rain and St Ives sheltered position, this isn't surprising. A path snakes all the way round the outside of the garden and a tiny network of two or three paths snakes across the middle. Along one long side is a high wall against which sits her workshops and a conservatory. Where this wall meets the bottom of the garden is her house which was not particularly big. The bottom of the garden is also walled with a seating area that acts as suntrap and a little summer house containing a bed. The other walls are lower and topped with vegetation.

So it really, really isn't very big!
And everywhere, of course, there are sculptures. Some bronze. Some stone. Some sit huge within the garden and can be seen from several points. Others nestle in a corner or an alcove and you suddenly find yourself there, on top of them, as they appear from nowhere.

They don't compete with the plants. They all sit there together in harmony. The sculptures don't even compete with each other. And they certainly don't just look good from one angle...

Her complex geometrical shapes appeal to me. They are not sharp and angular in the main, they are fantastically curved. The garden has a lovely deep energy to it. It feels feminine. It feels healing. It is very calm and grounding. I can imagine though, that Barbara bought the garden alive when she was in it. I suspect the energy of the garden changed with her moods.

I lingered in several spots, soaking it all up....
I learnt that although she died in a fire, caused by a cigarette she dropped when she fell asleep after drinking a little whiskey, that it wasn't the fire that killed her but the fumes from the plastics she she worked with to coat some of her works. The dirty jug and crystal have never been cleaned from the fire. The calendar still sits on the date that she died. Her clothes sit on the back of the big door in her workshop. Unfinished works sit around, in progress. Fresh lumps of granite lie, awaiting her touch. It as if she might return any moment, as if she had just gone for a snooze. The careful work of conservationists keeps it just so, stuck in a bubble of time.