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...
Friday, 27 July 2012
Thursday, 26 July 2012
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
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...
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...
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
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.
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.
Monday, 23 July 2012
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!
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!
Sunday, 22 July 2012
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...
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...
Saturday, 21 July 2012
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.
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.
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