Designs of the times

I've not seen all the sculptures on the trail this year but I'm thinking of stealing this one...isn't it wonderful? I give thanks for every single bit so that's my quota for the day...or maybe the year, ha ha!

Actually, I do give thanks for some other things today...For not getting the usual text re a more precise delivery time that you usually get for a Tesco order. This meant I could abandon filling and sanding and mucky work clothes and sit clean and waiting, playing with a crochet hook! I give thanks that after some yarn I ordered on the internet was nice, but not for the job intended I found a ball of something else bought also on the internet for another job and not quite right for that...would actually do very nicely for this project. Even more thanks for finding that it had been discontinued...BUT there were a few balls for sale on ebay! I looked for a flower pattern to try with it but couldn't find anything that was just what I wanted so, as I was itching to get on with actually crocheting I made one up. Couple of goes...getting there and great fun in the way. Also, as it's a multicoloured space dyed yarn I've been experimenting with where in the colours to start for a pleasing random effect rather than absolute chaos. A lovely way to spend an hour or two...

Batteries not included

Today I'm giving thanks for peach and lilac clouds at sundown yesterday. Isn't it strange how we can appreciate colour combinations in nature that we wouldn't want in our wardrobes or home decor?

For red lentils...I love those pulses to pieces! I buy organic ones that come from Turkey and a bag makes bags of dinners. I'm sure many people would prefer the turkey but not me! 

I wanted to go for a bit of a walk first thing but my body needed rehab after sessions up the step ladder with a filler knife and said no, no no! So I give thanks for not listening to it and hobbling off up the sea wall a little way and for getting wet in a heavy rain shower and then warm and dry again in the sunshine. Love that! Felt too tired to do anything when I got back but watch extremely fit people do totally amazing things with their bodies ...but hey, I don't have a problem with that...in fact I'm grateful for that too! What could be nicer than to take it easy when you're tired? And though it might seem to the untrained eye as if I didn't go so very far to get tired...well, it's the furthest I've gone since my operation so I'm not complaining. As for those fit people...It's just such a shame it has to be a competition...that they can't just all have a big round of applause and go home. Don't suppose they'd bother if that were the case though would they?

Oh, and I give thanks for finding a mouse. Not a rodent but the pc variety. I'd forgotten I'd bought a plain old plug in USB mouse a while back after regretting forgetting to take the batteries out of the wireless one. I'm click happy now!

A day with words

First thanks of the day for the refreshing rain showers. I wasn't out in any but I love the smell of rain on dry ground and foliage...

Thanks also to those of you who appreciated yesterday's post. So often on life I've stated what seem to me to be obvious, if unstated, truths only be told I have the wrong end of the stick - if not metaphorically beaten with it! Perhaps I'm just ahead of my time sometimes...as a teenager I was thrown out of A Level English Literature for the heresy of asking how the teacher, or indeed anyone else centuries later, could know for sure exactly what a writer meant to convey with a certain word or phrase. Forty years later studying for my OU degree I was delighted to find it is now the norm to accept that each reader creates their own individual meaning by virtue of the way their own social and literary background colours their interpretation of certain words. Also as a writer myself, I would feel I'd failed in some way if my work didn't say different things to different people. Also, inspiration doesn't arrive with a preprepared with a bunch of exam notes you know? Sometimes we don't know ourselves where the things we say come from actually!

Thanks for the delight of seeing the Murray brothers playing doubles together which I never have before. It didn't really matter to me that they didn't win as that's just the final score - as I said it was watching them play that I enjoyed. Jamie always seems to have a warm rapport with his partners, and it was great to see Andy having the opportunity to have a rapport with anyone on court! Always good to see siblings doing stuff together anyway...and good that Andy won his match today so won't feel too down on himself.

I give thanks for taking it easier yesterday. Sometimes building up your stamina can feel a lot like wearing yourself out! I had a much needed long lie in and an early night doing remarkably little in between and have been a bit more energetic today. I've been having a go at making a false window frame surface out of wood filler as the one I have is not fit to paint. I've also been sewing up the cardigan I knitted. I give thanks I find these kinds of tasks pleasant...and that they're going well so far.

Thanks Danny & Co

I'm not a tremendous fan of patriotism...national pride can be a few short steps from genocide even though what constitutes a nation or a border is often so arbitrary. The map of the world is always changing and its citizens have always moved from one place to another and mingled blood but (apart from psychopaths) we have a natural desire to feel we belong so we tend to divide everything into 'us' and 'them'...changing the usses and thems as context requires. Racial purity is becoming increasingly rare and in sport allegiance can be altered for money and/or in reference to a single forebear but nonetheless, because of the fierce way we divide ourselves up, there is something rather amazing about two hundred and four groups that currently believe they are separate countries coming together to be pleased and proud in doing something together (plus independents...see, those lines are getting blurry already!). I don't think I've ever seen an Olympian procession where the team members looked quite so delighted to be taking part so maybe that sense was especially prevalent this year...the wonder of it! Also the wonder of all those diverse volunteers who constructed and performed the show...I loved that they were celebrated for their endeavours too.

I'm always up for a bit of a spectacle and celebration, me. I love to 'ooh' and 'aah', and as you know laugh, cry and clap with the greatest of ease so an Olympic ceremony is always going to be fair game for some entertainment. What surprised me about this one was how much I enjoyed it. I expected to be impressed by display, by co ordination, technology, vision and skill - that's the norm for these events these days - but I didn't expect to be impressed by what was displayed. I didn't expect there to be so much for non team players to enjoy. I loved that it was funny and quirky and encompassed what wasn't pomp and ceremony. That the 'establishments' featured weren't the ones you might expect and that it celebrated the 'every day' and how the current 'everyday' came to be. Like some others I wasn't overwhelmed by the final choice of act but it did make us want it to stop, and it was getting rather late!

So, yes, 'proud to be British' is a minefield for me but I give thanks for currently identifying myself with the place where the Olympics are being held and to Danny & Co for making me feel so!

I also give great thanks that a Swedish Wallander is on tonight. No, we don't do everything better than everyone else...let's have some rationality here.

High life

I give thanks for Rude Tube. I suspect I'm not the intended demographic but am not sure a) I'd fit in one or b) they'd make TV programmes of viral videos for it if I did. No need anyway...there's Rude Tube!

For the wonderful post accupuncture feeling. It is the best!

For another deliciously sunny day...I thought the weather was due to break, but not here just yet anyway.

For great carnival fireworks last night. I was too tired to go down to the point and see them properly...in fact I'd actually fallen asleep when they started around 10 pm. Through the thick summer leaves I could glimpse pin points of flashing colours so it looked almost like fairy lights, and at the end they had some whopping tall rockets that burst so high I could see them just fine. That's how I know they were great fireworks...only great ones do that!

I gave thanks that Laura was unexpectedly free to do a couple of hours decorating. At first I was 'Oh no! I'd planned much lounging about today...' but it's been so long since she's been able and there's still a lot to do that I cannot, so I got myself (and the furniture) moving, and was grateful with the progress. Afterwards I went down for another spell in the communal 'park life' gardens and had them to myself again to have that lounge in the sunshine peacefully. Great thanks for the luxury of living somewhere originally designed for much higher flyers than me...

Frog days

I give thanks for the sounds of that rooster crowing somewhere near...not, as far as I am aware, at break of dawn though, thank goodness!

For making potato salad for my tea before I went out.

For tea and cake half way up the stairs on the stair where I sit.

It's a staircase going nowhere so draw your own psychological conclusions if you so wish...but it does mean no one goes up it but me and I can sit a little removed from the teeming hoards but only a couple of feet from the walkway. It's also rather pretty don't you think?

You have to watch out for pirates though...this ship passed as I sat there. On its way to the carnival I think.






For getting my letters written and forms filled in and posted.

For some interesting new summer sculptures on the trail...and surprisingly attractive municipal floral displays.

For great acupuncture and being home now ready to be Miss Piggy and flollop in front of the TV.

Park life

First thanks for the smell of summer night. Isn't it wonderful? Doesn't it make you want to...well whatever it makes you want to do, I hope you got to do it or if not you can remember it well enough to remember why you did! Me? I'd like to be sitting outside sharing food with friends. I don't get to do that much and I think remember pretty much every single time ever. Killerton Park with Jared and Ross and Fran and friends, cover bands and fireworks and a HUGE picnic. Excellent!

Secondly I give thanks that my bedroom is so small. Even when technical arrangements mean it's easiest to stay in bed I can reach almost everything within its walls

Thirdly for a programme about being in care by someone who had been. That was what made it so special, because if you haven't been you can give all sorts of advice and opinions but you don't really know. This was someone who'd got a degree and been in a boy band and was doing pretty well considering so many of us end up drunk or on drugs, in jail, with our own kids in care, dying young from crime or suicides. Oh yeah so I'm doing pretty damn good too, I know! A brief round of applause I think, don't you? But the thing is you have a bit of a hole inside where safety and security should have been that never really heals. You're put into care because people don't, so you're damaged already, and what happens next, even if it's supposed to be 'for your own good' will feel like it's punishment for your own bad, and you make bad choices because you have no idea what good should be and people getting exasperated and cross only makes it worse. Anyway, it was so sad for me to think about things but very moving to hear kids and adults talking about stuff I really understand...instead of hearing people talking about their childhood memories and having to just whistle a tune in my head til they are done...

Fourthly I give thanks for doing my Shiatsu meridian stretches this morning for the first time this year! I used to do them pretty much every day, and Salute to the Sun and so on and when they were first talking about operations and bags I couldn't imagine how that would work with some of the positions I used to get in. But with all the other things that went on it got so I lost the knack somehow anyway.

Fifthly for just thinking to myself...gosh, I can't remember what happened in CSI last night...and then remembering that I'd fallen asleep part way through. Duh! It's recorded so I can catch up this summer night. The beach trip was quite exhausting so I went back to park life today. There are worse places to be...

Shore thing

Isn't it funny how some names or addresses or numbers stay in your head for years and years. Like Ernie Harbourne...There was a thing on someone's Facebook status about cricket commentaries and it came into my head that my mother's first husband was something to do with cricket. His full name was rarely spoken when I was growing up and my older half siblings, his children, had long since changed their surname to my father's by the time I was born. It's many years since I have spoken to them, and many more since he died, so I was wary of my remembering until I idly googled what I thought it might be... and of course,  he's all over the internet. There's even a Wikipedia biography of him with surprisingly detailed information on his wives and children. What a strange thing for an estranged sister/daughter to come across over her morning cup of tea!

What can I find to be grateful for in this? Well, the fact that family relationships can survive family break up, they can even be enriched. I know my sister and brother loved and respected my father but they also had one of their own they were proud of and maintained a bond with. I'm also slightly embarrassed that my blog seems to be littered with vague connections to celebrity but that's my life I'm afraid...only very vaguely connected full stop!

And...isn't it funny how dreams disappear from your head? I'd had a good one and forgot it when all of the above happened. Something will remind me, I thought, and when I looked at Facebook again someone was talking about Glastonbury and I remembered that was what the dream was about...they'd moved the perimeter fence and I didn't have to go to the festival as I was on the site already! I give great thanks for the subconscious where it all makes so much more sense sometimes...and for this quote which sums it up so neatly 'the subtle mechanism of knowing the truth does not originate in the brain'. I like it best of all because it was a quantum physicist who said it not a spiritual leader.

Today, I had more pain than energy and wanted to just lie in bed and read my book but I also truly madly deeply wanted to go to the beach...so I dosed myself up with all manner of medications and remedies and packed a trolley with paraphernalia determined to drag it and myself down the hill somehow. I can't remember the last time I've been to a crowded beach on my own, and I'd forgotten that unless you have screaming kids and barking dogs of your own it's best to have some good companion to make a bubble with. Never mind, I give thanks for a lesson learned. For sun and sea and sand and samosas and strawberry ice cream... and for all the fun everyone else was having.

Force of nature

I was writing about the FORCE centre somewhere else today and I thought I'd write about it a bit more here as there are so many reasons to be thankful for the work that it does. There are similar local cancer charities around and about, and hospices with the same kind of things going on in day centres and outreach services and I'm grateful that they exist of course but this is the one I give thanks to personally. I found it an invaluable haven in the hardest times, not having anywhere anywhere else to go for nurturing or support, and somewhere to share good news too as before I started my blog there was often nowhere to spread that about either! They provide a hundred and one different sorts of tea, with or without sympathy and biscuits as required. You can have counselling or relaxing therapies or join various groups and they have a great little garden too. Here I am there with Robert and a lovely lady volunteer whose name I've forgotten. Apologies lovely lady!

Mostly, as you know, I'm quite happy without humans around and I saw a programme about some great animals last night! There was a skateboarding bulldog. I don't mean his owner put him on a skateboard and pushed him down a hill. No, this dog had watched his owner and decided to have a go 'doggy style' running and jumping onto the board, speeding himself along with a spare foot (or feet - more options for a dog's body!), steering with his body weight etc. Brilliant! it reminded me of a dog I saw paddling a boat once...no not in my mind altered youth...it was a rowing boat and there was a man rowing it but a collie in the bows leaning over alternate sides and dipping a paw in and...well, doggy paddling!. I've seen footage of an orangutan doing the same thing in a boat without a person in it..

There was also an item on wartime pigeon messengers. I know about them as I used to work for the British Homing World and somewhere I've probably still got an army issue leg box. And I give thanks for dear Ernie Harbourne, who gave me my first full time job and didn't seem to mind at all that I was 'different'. Of course he might have minded but the fact that he didn't let it show was invaluable to a troubled teenager.

There some very clever parrots, whales and corvids. Of course all animals are clever in some way but often, it's only when we see them doing something we might do ourselves we remember. Perhaps my favourite were the trained dolphins who had learned to do tricks to signals...nothing new there but wait...they learnt a signal that meant to create a trick of their own, to improvise. That signal involves the trainer in a semi lotus position including the hand mudra. If two of them are shown it they come up with a synchronised routine. When you see stuff like that you remember that we humans are actually, mostly, not very clever at all!

Sunshine and rain

I've been trying to increase the number of days I go out to three or four a week instead of one or two. As a weather god the first task was to make the climate even more appealing and I've done well there I think, don't you? Plan proceeding well on the going out front too, but I don't have any extra energy so there's been a lot of nothing in between. No housework, craftwork, diy chores...it's more pleasant avoiding some of these than others so today I'm cleaning the bathroom in instalments. I've done the loo and the washbasin and the mirror so far. Gleaming! I love it! I give great thanks for clean.

How blessed I am to live somewhere where it's relatively easy to make things so with a little elbow grease. I was watching someone sweep a dirt floor on TV last night and I'd really rather not! It was in a programme about persecution, murder and mutilation of albinos in Tanzania. Very sad and troubling in many ways but as is so often the case within grim accounts there were some inspiring people and moving tales as well. I give thanks for Josephat Torner and all who suffer yet campaign and struggle for change. And for the uplifting sound of African choral singing...there's something about the harmonies and rhythms really stirs my soul. You've probably heard it yourself even if it doesn't make you feel that way but I looked for a good example on Youtube to share and instead found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNY3DLDH2Ms&feature=related...
The first few minutes are so wonderful they made my breath catch in my throat and tears come into my eyes.

I give thanks for the wonder that is Youtube..just like real life if you look search among the things that make you go 'what?' with a cry of despair you will find others that make the world seem right again.

Well, I've decided the best way to keep things clean and tidy is to have another little doze! May you all have a sunny Sunday in your hearts if not outdoors...

Putting my feet up

That's what I did a lot of the first part of yesterday. Oh well, it's better than turning up your toes! And I'd been pottering about quite a bit on mine on Thursday. I couldn't get my fingers mobile enough to work on finishing my cardigan and kept dropping stitches...needles...hooks. So I began doing some research for the yarn for my next knitting project (sometimes the yarn comes first, sometimes the design...or even sometimes the 'yearn' as I just typed!) and caught up with some recorded TV until I felt ready to do a sewing job - partly dismantling one of a pair of damask pillow shams I bought in a charity shop to make a cover for my sleeping bag bag. The firm cylindrical shape makes a great leg rest but the black nylon's not really in keeping with my living room decor. I give great thanks for having so many ideas and sometimes being able to put them into practice without too much hassle. 

I'd thought various people were coming over to do various jobs the last couple of days but I actually quite content with them cancelling as sometimes I get very comfy inside my own head after acupuncture. I can think of the money I've saved...and if I get fed up with that there's all their work to get on with!

I give thanks for a sunny morning...getting a cab down to the library and getting various odds and ends done very amiably, including buying a bit of a picnic from the produce market and nibbling it on the seafront before getting another back home. The tide was low and hazy flat. One of those days when the pier looks like it's paddling, and all manner of water craft are scattered between sand and horizon from body boards to tankers. My favourite was a day cruiser with a brown dog standing centred and stable on the prow deck, nose pointing straight ahead.

I'm grateful for being able to go out and about and for being home for the rest of the weekend now. Time to put my feet up again and get some more training in for the snooze olympics.

Vision on

I'm grateful for my new spectacle frames in which I fancy I look rather good...but especially for the new lenses through which I see rather better which is brilliant (and may even mean the first statement is true, ha ha!)

For being summoned off the street to stop for a chat by idling shopkeeper therapists having a quiet day yesterday...

For Rachel for her therapeutic treatment and conversation even though she wasn't having a quiet one herself.

For charity shop books at bedtime...a novel in a style I enjoy and one with women talking about their relationships with girlfriends, partners, families and so on. These are deep unknowable mysteries to me so it's informative rather than affirming but I thought I might be less infuriating to females I know if I studied the subject a bit.

That it's rather cool and cloudy today as I'm whacked after going out yesterday and need to rest...it's also rather dark so I might just have to abandon sedentary creativity for a while and watch TV. Fine by me...

Oooh yes, and get this...I JUST TIED MY HAIR BACK!

Plenty of fish

OK, first thanks of the day is for my tea last last night...it rocked! Cheese on toast and a big salad of sprouts and leaves with black olives, red pepper, celery, butter beans etc etc... dressing made with left over oil from some sundried tomatoes and a LOT of garlic.

I'm grateful for the dainty pattern of the water stream just as it leaves my bathroom sink tap. It's like a faceted crystal...

For a trouser button moving session. Inwards not out. It's just as tiresome whichever way but psychologically more pleasing!

That I'll get to pick up my new glasses later. I'm looking forward to seeing them and even more to seeing out of them. It's sun and showers here so I can try both pairs!

I'm grateful to talk to delightful doctor Beccy who informs me GFR has dropped on new meds and creatinine levels climbed but this we all knew was likely, and to be honest I can feel. It's within reasonable limits though to carry on for the aspired to long term benefits and I'm still in the stage above the danger zone. She's OK'd self medicating for arthritis too so watch out little fishes everywhere...

I could do better than that!

You know I've been thinking and I've decided it's carrying the good weather round that makes me so tired! I'm in an advance state of creaky today and give humungous thanks that, although I have stuff to do of course none of it's pressing except the ironing...and that's a joke before someone tells me I don't have to!

I shared some of the sights that pleased me yesterday but the enduring memory of a feeling that lingers is the wind in my hair on the boat. Anyone who tries to keep their hair tidy will think this is mad...actually, probably anyone who hasn't been unintentionally bald for over a year. So you'll have to just smile indulgently and accept...to me it feels fab!

I'm grateful for discovering that something I thought was partly someone else's mistake, was really totally mine. For discovering this before I said anything to put them/me on the spot. I don't mind being wrong...but I don't like telling other people they are when they're not. It's so easy to get all self righteous and smug (bad enough!) but then you have further to fall to pillock level after, don't you?

I give thanks for strawberries and Elmlea for afternoon tea...and for finishing the first chair pad and a bibbity bobbity fringe for the scarf I made earlier, inspired by (though not exactly following) some of the patterns in my new books. Yes, in the image the seat cushion does look a bit as if someone had an accident...but it was an experiment on the otherwise plain reverse of the print side and in real life looks much better. Obviously the scarf would go nicely with a bibbity bobbity hat...readers of a certain age and musical disposition will understand perfectly, I'm sure! Even the title of the post...

Final destination

Well, today I thought I'd take myself out somewhere for lunch to try to lift my spirits... a change of scene, a change of headland... The motivation was there but not the mobilisation, if you catch my drift and though the taxi, the train, the bus and the boat were fine, the waiting and walking in between exhausting. The bus didn't stop where I thought it did, nor the boat set off where it used to and by the time I got to my final destination, I practically needed air sea rescue to bring me home! Never mind, I give thanks I tried and, as I'd been hankering after a recuperative break somewherel I'm grateful (I guess) to realise I'm really not well enough. Not completely delighted though, you understand...but I've been thinking maybe another time I could go somewhere for a trip out if there was just one vehicle involved...or two that were closely connected. Or take a trolley with a picnic down to beach here and pretend I'm on holiday. When I've recovered from this appetite attempt...which may take some time...

Anyway there were some things I saw that made me smile...

All the tourists enjoying the sunshine, everywhere bustling and busy. (I prefer quiet and empty myself but the economy needs the bustle and the tourists need the sun!)...Lots of couples holding hands, some young but many older...Swifts swooping round the bus top...

And my favourites of the day...

A dog with tail up and nose down on the scent of the shopping bag being carried by someone just in front and a chubby boy chasing empty crisp packet down the beach...

Sand and deliver

I fell very sound asleep last night, was very wide awake in the night and then slept soundly again til late-ish in the morning. Wonder if that's why I keep thinking it's Tuesday! Whatever the day I give thanks for...

The feeling of getting dirty and then getting clean again (this is a diy ref...nothing to do with sex or drugs!)

That sanding without covering your head makes your extra soft and shiny when you wash it!

That finally, today, I painted the last few feet of skirting in the flat. Yay!

Seeing the evening sunlight on the trees outside my living room window, and the unexpected places clouds may turn pink or orange as it sets...not necessarily anywhere near where it sets. This was taken facing north...



A large white seagull feather slowly spiralling down...

Giving up on Radio 4 exasperated by the politics...and finding the nostalgic Cocteau Twins on 6 Music. Fave tunes of once yummy mummies with flowing hair...

Oh yeah, and get this: 'Stan, it's my liver!'According to the laugh aloud book of Mondegreens I was dipping into whilst dipping in the bath yesterday this was what someone thought Adam Ant was singing...

Any driven Sunday

Not very chatty today. Hope you're all feeling fine and dandy and that fine and dandy are enjoying the attention so to speak! I hope that the Truro Race for Life went well and that Pat feels very proud of herself for having done it (if she has, of course...I know no more than you!). I give thanks for all the people who did anyway...all amateur fundraisers everywhere.

I give thanks for, if not exactly keeping the proverbial pecker up, at least getting it back again from half mast earlier and for remembering that even though it makes me sad I don't get to spend as much time as I like with people I love...at least I don't have to be with many I don't!

For the sound of a steam train special chuntering along the railway not far away and blowing its whistle. For a bit more diy work under and around the bedroom window. What I did yesterday made me very tired and probably didn't enhance my mood so I scaled things down today but have still made a little progress. It's good to make yourself busy and useful especially when you feel you are not. For a few words strung together. Oh and for the very pleasant weather. I give thanks for people going out and about and the traders getting some trade.

For what I have received

A good meditate last night...
Funny dreams afterwards...Anthony La Paglia and I were smuggling refugees and witnesses needing protection out of the country underwater! Not sure if this was in a TV series or 'real' life...
A happy balance of busyness and idling today...
Getting the wall under my bedroom window to a less unattractive state. My building is old...if you try to give it a facelift it looks a lot worse for a while (same would probably be true of me!)
Giving the frame and sill outside a bit of a clean up...seems much brighter inside now!
Having a long hot soak in the bath
Great supper yesterday and lunch today of cottage cheese, apple chutney and salad. I *heart* cottage cheese!
Boats in the bay...triangles of sails and the streaking of wakes of motors...

Hair raising

Wow! I give thanks for meeting someone else who can find good things to say about the weather, can remember the sunny periods and think of the bright sides of many showers/storms in between them...who also says 'Well to be fair we had a great winter...' It was the taxi driver who brought me home yesterday. We were both totally astonished! For me the constant rain between appointments was ideal as I really needed to spend a l-o-n-g time in Specsavers choosing frames. It's so hard to find ones I think suit me but I THINK I've found a couple of styles I like for distance and distant sunlight. On spesh with an NHS voucher and my Simply Health cashback I'll have change from a tenner for the two! I give great thanks for all of the above!

I also give thanks for great acupuncture that set me up for cooking a big pan of restorative red lentil stew packed full of fresh picked (at the greengrocer's!) goodies. That book I've just read really reminded my how much rubbish I eat and how much I enjoy simple wholesome food. If I could afford a 'member of staff' I'd have a chef! Of course some people marry sometime willing to cook for them and trade favours....might be up for that, haha!

Gratitude for discovering the existence of baby doll sheep. Look them up...they're like teddy bears with hooves. I'm immune to the charms of many miniature animals but these were bred not to be delightful to the eye but to feed a family with no wastage. Personally I think eating lamb is close to eating kitten, and I haven't a lawn for a couple to graze so I reckon they'll have to go on the silly list along with a chef or a husband...

Gratitude too for a good night's sleep, for waking early enough for the things that had to be done...the trick now being to stay awake for things I'd like to do!

Dot, dot, dot...I did! I went out for NO good reason...woohoo! Well, there were reasons but none of them medical or in any form health related, or urgent in any other way. I went to get some things from some shops and I got the things and am grateful for being able to do so on many, many levels. But the best thing of all, was a thing that was free...feeling the wind blowing my hair about. Absolutely blooming priceless! Good job too really, as now I'm home I don't actually have the energy to unpack my bags!

Drug of choice

I give thanks for red dogs - for Megan the liver and white drug sniffer spaniel at Gatwick with the waggiest tail stump (no, I don't give thanks for the docking and yes, I only know her from TV!) I know they've been talking about having sniffer bees but bees are not as obviously cute and characterful, are they? And yay! Red Dog the movie is available on Sky Store! Jared and I were talking about how watching a film on your own seems a waste but if I wait til I have someone to watch one with I see none at all! And that's not good...a good film is my 'drug of choice'!

You have to be careful with choosing 'cute' though don't you? There's a poem going round the internet written by, or in the voice, of an old hospital bound man asking people to remember all the stages in life he'd been through to get there. Sometimes it's hard but it's a important realise how much you don't see, how much even the most 'ordinary' of lives will have hidden depths. On Come Dine With Me the other night a young female executive dismissed an older woman, less interested in the superficial, as a 'librarian' (apologies to librarians - it was her being dismissive, not me!)...anyway, young one nearly fell into her dessert when she realised older one was a qualified pilot! You know, sometimes if you're at the librarian end of life it's worth remembering that all young bright and beautiful things become old one day...if they're lucky!

I give thanks that I feel up to getting up and outdoors (slowly) today as I have to go to the doc's for bloods (at lunchtime) and then a little later I have acupuncture which I hope will restore me further after shopping and chores. I reckon anything that can alter your body chemistry so drastically you need bloods done after a week to check that it's not doing more harm than good could possibly affect the way you feel physically, don't you? Anyway I seem to be adjusting now...though I give thanks for all the rain so I can treat myself to cabs both ways...

I give thanks for the the different sizes of raindrops on my window pane. It's hard to get a photo of this with my cheapy set up I find, but I shall keep persevering. This is the best I've managed so far...

I give thanks for the way sometimes you can't turn off your thoughts and meditate but you come up with a bright idea instead! Anyway, no time for bright ideas now if I'm not going to go out in my pjs. Apologies to people I've not replied to...Carol, Bob and Ivor...later if I'm still awake!

Magically transformed

Well I'm feeling a bit better for fasting and resting. I've even got dressed in a slippy sloppy duvet day sort of way and been down to check the post. I can't think of ever being so pole axed before without an obvious cause. It's on a par with flu, chemo and acute renal failure...but a lot of the time I haven't actually felt particularly ill (for which I'm extremely grateful) just non functioning. My money's still on the meds...

Anyway, I give thanks for the peacefulness to recover, for the weather not being reliably good so I don't feel I'm missing out on anything, though its changes have been entertaining me. I'd been planning to spring into all sorts of action when the tennis finished so I'm grateful that none of it was urgently required. Even thinking about knitting, sewing and crochet seems far too energetic, let alone anything you don't sit down for! I'm grateful for the book mentioned yesterday. It's a novel by Paul Theroux (Louis' dad) and wasn't at all what I thought it was when I started. I've mostly read his travel books before starting with the Great Railway Bazaar when I was a young girl...this is about a magician but about other things too including eating good food. And even though I've had no appetite I've thought I might find one if someone provided some plain and simple home cooked things...so when I get off my butt maybe I'll do myself the favour. In the meantime great thanks for a plain oatcake! Also for, black rooibosch tea which is forever now associated in my mind with Mercy who nursed me so wonderfully on the ITU and whose 'therapy' included tracking down my bags and the tea bags within so I could move on from sips of water...

I give thanks for the kind of daytime TV that makes you grateful you're not one of the people on it - even those spending loads of dosh! And for ebay...and all the great people supplying the little things I want or need that don't cost much. A new charger lead for my Streak today...woohoo!

Those were the doze

I give thanks for a comfy bed, a good book, for running water and sewage drainage...pretty much all I've needed today...

For the shifting patterns of clouds, sky and light glimpsed through my window...

To Jared for treating me to a lush veggie pizza to takeaway somewhere with a beautiful view yesterday evening. I thought this might help me to eat... and it did but after two or three slices I looked down and realised I'd only eaten one! I was full up already. I was so tired I went straight to bed when he left, propping myself as upright as I could to sleep without falling over so I didn't feel so nauseous...and gradually late this afternoon after much napping I felt ready to move. Not far...only to the sofa to write this. I'm grateful I don't feel sick any more but I still have no appetite and only fancy drinking water so far. I thought I might have a shower and get dressed but it's so snuggly lying here under the throw I'm not sure that I shall. I'm fine really and very grateful for the opportunity to take things even easier than my normal current slow pace as clearly that's what needed right now.

Smart move

I give thanks for a gap in the cloud that seems to have been wandering the country the last few days. We had it here yesterday and I saw from the TV that it hovered over Silverstone and Wimbledon now and then, and from virtual friends that it's been seen elsewhere... I give thanks for all the weekends it enhanced.... but also for the sporting sight of umbrellas bobbing up and down in salute when outdoor spectators realise their image is on screens around the world...and the thundering sound of heavy rain on the Centre Court roof! I give great thanks for Andy Murray sharing his emotions so movingly after the match. I've often thought he doesn't come across well in interviews but after his match defeat, he was so gracious and charming.

I give thanks for being able to be useful by doing some mending on the sewing machine for Clive, and to him for undertaking various tasks about the place including frying the fatted pig for for our lunch...two chunky sausage sarnies were enough of a meal to last me most of the day. Perhaps I should consider becoming a full time carnivore to save on cooking? Nah, once in a blue moon suits me best and the piggies I'm sure!

I'm still struggling with what I think must be side effects from the new medication as they start a few hours after taking it last thing at night.  As I usually feel pretty groggy in the mornings anyway it seems best to deal with it all at once and I usually perk up by the late afternoon. I suppose I could start taking them in the morning to see if I feel worse later but I'd rather not and I'm hoping the problems will wear off in a few days anyway...meanwhile I'm grateful that my body is aware of chemical changes and alerting me. I think I get a gold star for gratitude for coming up with that one, ha ha! I also give thanks that no one's relying on me to do anything but look after myself...

Plan A when I don't feel well is to stay in bed and wait for someone to come and pat me...so I'm grateful for plan B which is to get stuck into something physical and see if I can work through it! I've done a bit of sanding where I've filled around the newly exposed bit of skirting board and wall underneath the bedroom window. I dug out two wall plugs where the heater was that hid this area and vacuumed up the debris...and I think that might be it for the day though as I'm now flattened on the sofa without the energy to lift my laptop. I give thanks for smart phones, definitely!

Thankyouautocorrect.com

I'm grateful that although I didn't feel well in the night again I managed to get back to sleep in the end.

It might be the new medication...I'm grateful they're trying to save my kidney with it but I've got to have a blood test next week to check it's not making things worse...I'm grateful they're doing that too ha ha!

I'm grateful for an astonishingly bright warm sunny morning...and for a giant rainbow in my path to the kitchen from the crystal in the living room window...

I'm grateful that Clive's coming over soon as it'll make me get myself up and dressed...and that he's someone who won't mind if I haven't brushed my hair...and that my phone just suggested 'haha' for 'hair' because whatever you think a 'haha' might be the idea of brushing it makes you smile!

I'm grateful I found this to keep you all busy and informed when I'm in a hurry to write my post...http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/10_things/

Good heavens!

Fond as I am of Jo-Wilfred I give thanks that Andy won his semi as it seemed to me he needed to more...and it would please all our patriotic sports fans too. He is not expected to win the final with Roger, on his own emotional mission and on such form, so what a great position for him to face the match in knowing that if he loses people will be still be pleased and proud of him! Being a British tennis player is often a pretty thankless role I think as you become the target of all that pent up national negativity. I'm also grateful that the match didn't start til 4...on behalf of a certain Miss Edwards who couldn't leave work til half past 3...and that as we hadn't communicated for so long, tournament chat was an easy opener!

I give thanks for being someone who enjoys the sound of rain and wind. I only recently realised that some people don't. It's hard to imagine liking something you don't take pleasure from and vice versa isn't it? One of the more innocent reasons we ostracise or turn upon the 'other'. Which reminds me (I wonder why?) of the excellent Strictly Kosher documentaries I caught up with the other day...much thanks for the way they transferred a sense of community and belonging and love. Which also reminds me of a fascinating list I came across, of differing beliefs regarding heaven and hell. It was quite a long list...but just covering sects and churches within Christianity! I give thanks for the eye opener but I did find it rather sad since I'm pretty sure they don't all get together and exchange views and say 'How fascinating!'... Spiritual beings having a human experience, eh? Gotta love them for trying...'heaven' knows it's hard!

I give thanks to Laura for painting my bedroom door. It is a VERY dark cream, you'll not be surprised to hear knowing how much blue there was in the tin. A creamy toffee/coffee colour actually...very pleasant actually even if not plan A! I give thanks again to Mark the stoma for being so reassuring and encouraging and making me feel like we are on a voyage of discovery together (rather than I keep falling overboard) as while Laura was shut in the bedroom with a paintbrush I had a sudden need for clean clothes. I'm grateful there was laundry on the rack in the kitchen as though it was damper than I would have preferred it was dryer than what I'd taken off!

Is everything as it seems?

I give thanks today that I live alone and can grunt and groan at my aches and pains as much as I like without anyone feeling either I'm being annoying or that they ought to offer to help with the chores. Obviously, if someone was here and wanted to help that would be wonderful but this is supposed to be a record of what I'm thankful for not what I wish I had!

I give thanks for those presumably unconscious puns that slip into the head of the reader... For instance I just saw that Arthur Engel who runs Bjorn Borg's underwear company has a list of corporate values... number one is 'we have to be transparent in everything we do...' and a recent article on regarding water companies had a light sprinkling (that was me and intentional) including concern 'going off the boil' between drought and flood crises and that the government had 'washed its hands' of tackling vested interests.

Also I give thanks for the unexpected shafts of inspirational light that sometimes come your way. I was leafing through the Exeter Express and Echo while drinking my tea and the Force centre yesterday (Mmmm...pause to savour the delight in someone making me a cup of tea!)...when I found a column that mentioned a quote that I've since looked up the author of...but never mind about that just now... it was 'We are not human beings having a spiritual experience we are spiritual beings having a human experience'. I LOVE this and I don't care tuppence that both my religious friends and my 'realist' ones will be shaking their heads at the error of my ways. I have a Cheshire cat smile of my own every time I think of it...

I'm grateful to Debbie from Cancer Research for being grateful to me for the bladder cancer material reviewing.

That this paint, which looked and sounded like dark creamy colour in the brochure/on the tin, did not still match the match box when it was stirred!

Don't knock it

First thanks of the day was for waking up before my alarm...don't mind setting it when it's important I'm up and about by a certain time but it's still nicer if it's not the first thing you hear in the morning.

Second was that my knees didn't hurt too badly after yesterday's exertions as I knew they'd have a hammering today. Well, not literally...it's the neurologist who hammers my knees and it was the stoma nurse I saw today...boom, boom! Sometimes I get a bit fed up that necessities take up all my going out energy but then I look around the wonderful area I live in and give thanks that even a trip to the hospital and back is a scenic treat. Particularly pleasing today was coming home on the top deck of the bus with low cloud still hugging the hill tops but sun breaking through in the sweep of the bay, sparkling on the ribbons of foam here and there on the wave tops.

I give thanks for the random things that catch my eye... little everyday miracles and marvels. A small child's delighted smile as they sucked a drink through a straw...a man painting the top of a high retaining garden wall leaning over from within, whilst on the pavement below, seated on a little stool, a woman painted the bottom...a bed of mesembryanthemums so close packed with blooms it was hard to believe they were real.

I give thanks for stoma nurse Mark's reassurance and confidence building. He was the one who attended to me in hospital and is amazingly patient and kind. For a cuppa at the Force centre afterwards and a few minutes of Robert's time, plus their brilliant idea of a basket of yarn and needles to encourage you to knit a few rows of some squares. For a few interesting balls of wool for my collection from Fran's mum's shop and some 'posh' sausages and chunky sliced bread from the Co op by the bus station for sporting Sunday sarnies. For a refreshing nap on the way home and for being so tired and achey now I could almost have been on a big boot hike. I don't particularly like being tired and achey, you understand, but I am grateful for at least being able to recapture the aftermath!

What's afoot?

Hmmm...so let's see, what have I been grateful for since my last post?

Little cress size punnets of sprouted peas and radishes delivered to my flat by Tesco. Nutricious, delicious and sensible size portions for a single person's fridge. Of course I could grow my own and I'm thinking I might just do that when I work out where in the my flat the indoor garden could be...

Laugh out loud passages in the book I'm reading. Whoever that Julian is, he is very droll...

Lovely snuggly warm wet baths!

The mild weather...even the rain has been 'soft'

Having a spare carrier bag to sit on so that when it stopped I could have a take away cup of tea by the sea

A jolly time on the doctor's waiting room talking with staff and patients about how people don't talk to each other...

A great reflexology session. I had a yen for an alternative alternative therapy and booked this for today...and then due to my appointment at the hospital, it would have been hard to get to acupuncture tomorrow so was especially glad I did.

Janet's instructions to get plenty of rest afterwards...there's tennis in TV and some new knitting yarn arrived to play with...how could I do anything else!

Letter to Julian

Dear Julian Clary,

I've been trying to think of a way to start this letter that isn't 'I hope you don't mind me writing to you’, but I hope you don't so it will have to do. I'm writing because I’m hoping maybe you or someone in your family could shed some light on something that’s been puzzling me since you first walked on to my TV screen on Friday Night Live rather a lot of years ago.

It concerns a memory from 1969/70 when I was 11 or 12 and living in the ground floor flat of a big double fronted house on Avenue Elmers, Surbiton. My mother, Margaret, and I hadn’t been there very long but my father George Minnis had stayed in digs in the area during term time for several years as he was a lecturer at Kingston College/Poly. One day we had a visit from a family I’d hear of from time to time that I remember as being called Cleary. They had a daughter just a bit older than me and she shared my given (but no longer used) first name Beverley, and there was another older daughter and a boy slightly younger than me called Julian.

We had some kind of meal together and then the grown-ups retired to the lounge area which could be separated from the dining room by curtains pulled across a large oblong ‘arch’. My mother was always joking to visitors that we should put plays on using these curtains to make a stage, and we four children decided to do just that. I don't remember the details but I remember much laughter and particular delight in the costume and make up side of things from Julian. He was definitely the ‘star of the show’...but cute and funny enough to manage it without being obnoxious and, though it's mostly a vague but pleasant childhood memory, one bit is clear... sometime after the show was over and the rest of us were on the audience side of the curtains talking or whatever, Julian stuck his head through the gap holding them shut underneath so that his face was floating Cheshire cat like and when we saw him we all burst out laughing. That image became a snapshot in my memory the way things sometimes do...but filed away and forgotten until...

...someone the spitting image of that lad started appearing as the Joan Collins Fan Club. When I first heard your real name I thought I must have misheard it, or maybe you’d changed the spelling for some reason. And then I heard your father was a policeman and I couldn’t see how my dad, who didn’t drive, would have got to know a traffic cop so tried to dismiss it as a bizarre coincidence. Recently I’ve been reading your autobiography however and I realise you are indeed a little younger than me, with a sister Beverley a little older, and another sister older than that, and that you lived not far away in Teddington during the time in question after having lived in Surbiton before.

I think it's fair to assume there must be at least half a dozen camp and theatrical 11 year old Julians on the Surrey/Middlesex border at any one time...but the Cleary/Clary/Beverley thing and your remarkable resemblance to the Cheshire cat boy... Can you tell me could it possibly have been you or was there a doppelganger family down the road and does this happen all the time? My own parents have been dead for many years so there's no one else I can ask for ‘clarification’.

With best wishes anyway...whoever ever you are!

Mixed media

Well, I went to sleep with one pain and woke with another so my first gratitude of the day was for variety! It's always good to try an alternative perspective... I also give thanks that when I've had a bad night I can sleep late and slow start the day...

When I'm having my morning cuppa I check to see if I've had any messages since I went to bed (pretty much never!) and then I look at the BBC website for inspiration. Not in the news section of course...that would be silly...but in the 'magazines' and pictures and random reports. There's usually something to amaze and delight. How about this for example? A ship that flips...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18684075

I give thanks that Carol may be what they are looking for in the TV programme I mentioned before. Well, in some ways not as it's about dying of course, but I think she might enjoy a bit more of a chance to have her say. I like the premise of the programme anyway to break the last taboo. I also like the fact that they are considering including someone not 'normal'. I mean this as a great compliment to you Carol, as I'm sure (I hope) you realise! Now as she was writing her latest blog post she had a call from the woman she had been dealing with (the lovely Nas I wonder?) and while I was writing this paragraph I've had an email from someone at Positive News asking if I'd like to write a piece... You remember I approached them some weeks ago saying I can't prove I have any journalistic skills but look...I can write positive news: look at my blog. So the piece is to be about the experience of keeping a gratitude diary and how it has affected me and others. You have anything you think I ought to say? I'll come and interview you if you like and you can give me your opinions, ha ha! Carol and I will be sending out signed photos soon I'm sure!

I'm grateful that I've finished my Green and Black's butterscotch bar as it's been pestering me mercilessly since it arrived yesterday...

...that it looks as if there will be mainly only play on Centre today as it makes it easier to watch matches if they are on one by one!

...and that I've finally written to Julian. I'll attach a copy so you understand... Coincidently, whilst tidying up this morning I came across a poem I had printed in the 'young' Observer at just that time.

Catatonic

I give thanks for...

Cherries

Cherry coloured cat with rose coloured paws

Sea roar

White gulls against a dark grey sky

BBC programme about 'super smart' animals. Don't let the title put you off...I caught the end of it while channel hopping and was so impressed I went back for more...

That a Professor Lean is designing nutritional pizzas...

Julian Clary writing in his autobiography of a somnolent pet cat who 'died of kidney failure eventually, probably brought on by lack of use'. Descending into a zombie phase again I can relate to that! There'll be more on Mr Clary later...

I'm also grateful I've finished my reviewing for Cancer Research. I found it harder than I thought I would. They suggested that people who had early cancer might not like to read about the advanced sort for instance but for me it was reading about the initial stages - diagnosis and early treatment - that caused some post traumatic stress. Most of you reading this didn't know me then but I went through some horrendous things, mostly due to insensitive or inattentive staff and there were a few times when it seemed as if fighting the cancer was the least of my worries! I have been careful not to bring my unique and potentially terrifying baggage into the review but some of it had to be unpacked anyway if you know what I mean...

Drop out

Well you know I was feeling a bit sorry for myself yesterday afternoon. I wanted to go out somewhere but lacked energy or an amenable chauffeur. But then I finished a late lunch and made a cuppa, and thought 'I'll just get comfy on these cushions and watch some tennis...' and the next thing I knew it was an hour later. Even though I got up and made fresh tea to replace the cold one I couldn't really wake up and get going again and stayed dozy the remainder of the day. So I'm grateful I couldn't go out as I clearly needed some rest...

I enjoyed some more snatches of air borne live music and gave thanks for all the good gigs I've attended over the years and the regular entertainment there is here... There was a punky set in the early evening when we had a short sharp shower, and a glowing rainbow actually got me upright to take a snap as although I could see it from the sofa my camera couldn't!

I yawned my way through more matches and a little half hearted craft work giving thanks that there was nothing else I needed to do, not even be company, though I did feel having some might have done me good it was a selfish wish in the state I was in. I gave thanks for the Centre Court roof and the excellent timing of the players in bringing the evening match to a close...and that my afternoon nap meant I could stay with it til the end!

This morning I give thanks for church bells. I know the sound annoys some and the connotations do others but I enjoy it...both the peals or carillons or whatever they are called and a simple 'calling bell' of one bell rhythmically sounded. I like the sound of a muezzin's call too but there's not much call for that round here... Much harm to both self and others is done in the name of organised religion but the principles of all tend to be fine and I give thanks for the solace and renewal communal worship can give in individual lives. I also give thanks for the sound of a young family outside in the gardens with the child talking to 'mummy' and 'daddy'. Much harm is done in families too and I'm always grateful when I remember they can be warm and safe and whole.