Flowering

Thanks this morning for the pastel stripes of the calm flat sea. For having my Streak back and working...my much loved pre multi app smart phone infestation Streak with its ancient Android system that Adobe Flash will work on. I went straight on the BBC website to look for some bit of video footage to watch (just because I could!) and found a short film about a quest to find Britain's holiest sites that visited Penant Mellangell. I was wondering if it was the place I remembered...which had a sort of semi circular chapel extension lodged in my mind from a single visit many years ago. It makes no difference what or if you believe...some places feel very special in a way hard to express in words, and this is one of the most special I've ever been to. No sign of it in the first few minutes and then they went in to it...talking about how special it was. Lovely bit of serendipity!

I'm grateful for having worked out what the ends of the ties on my jumper will be like. It was all made and sewn up and I started at the top of one tie with no idea what the bottom would be like. I was even crocheting the flowers with no idea how they fitted into the scheme of things! 'Tis a funny thing but I've knitted myself four things since my diagnosis with cancer and all have had crocheted flowers on them. I knitted many more things before my illness and they didn't...very bizarre! Much thanks to Ainsley Harriot for providing me with a cup-a-soup at lunchtime so some headway could be made... And for giving up on trying to get the photo centred!

It's five years almost to the day since I first realised I was ill. The doctors took some months longer, of course, as is indeed often the way. They can't take a patient's word for it as many people are not at all patient and insist they are far more poorly than in fact they are! But anyway, I knew and thus I consider myself to have passed the five year mark now, which is a bit of a milestone and I give thanks for that. I'm grateful for the handful of friends who have been with me on my journey...well, not even a handful really...more like a pinch! And I'm grateful that the ones who couldn't hack it wandered off so I didn't have to be looking after them as well as myself. And for those I'd never have met if I had stayed well. Especially today for Carole. I think of her often and hope all her family but especially DJ and James have fared well this passing year since her passing. A fine lady. Honoured to have known you Carole...