Sniffy's Righting:

Uncle Fred, Paras and Badgers

2012-01-23T18:06:00.000Z

It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind of a week in one way or another. My Uncle died last Saturday and it will be his funeral tomorrow. There has been lots of to-ing and fro-ing and telephone calls and a lot of sadness. He would have been 85 this week and in March he and my Aunt would have been married 60 years. It feels like they were cheated out of that milestone. The Paras are sending a standard bearer, which my Uncle would have been immensely proud of and which is going to prove a choker on the day.

Lots of memories have been coming to the surface for me and a very comforting feeling that my Dad has been shining through me for my Aunt’s sake and for mine. For a man I knew for less than a third of my life he seems to be exerting a big influence right now. I feel like I’m there for my Aunt on his behalf and acting for him in this troubled time. He was their best man at their wedding and he’s present now too.

I keep remembering other things in my life too. It’s funny how one set of memories can set off a train of others.

Some things from about 1985/86:

- Being stung all over my head and round my ears while mowing grass in the churchyard at Stow Maries with a petrol mower. I think the bees in the hives at the bottom end of the churchyard took exception to the petrol fumes or to the noise and came out to protest. I fell over as I ran away flapping my arms to get them off me.

- Lying on my side and on my back painting in the names of the fallen on the War Memorial in Wickham Bishops because they had worn away over the years. I was using black enamel modeller’s paint, probably Airfix, and had trouble deciphering some of the names. I was on a back to work programme with the Job Centre at the time and got paid extra for attending community work. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I remember people stopping to talk to me about what I was doing, including a woman on a horse who showed interest too. It struck me at the time that I was doing something that meant a lot to people in the village and that there would be people who remembered some of the names on the memorial.

On our way home from Mum’s last night we made out a small animal in the headlights ahead of us in the road. At first we both thought it was a rather corpulent cat waddling along in the road. It turned out to be a badger running lazily down the middle of the road. We braked sharply and it carried on running, looking over its shoulder at us and used our lights to find its way into the verge a little way further on. Apart from being bitten by a badger some years ago, I’ve never seen one so close. It was also a first for Stephen.

Rambling Discourse

2012-01-08T13:03:00.001Z

I don't know what I want to write, so here goes ….

Stephen moved in on December 14th and brought a Luton van full of boxes and bags. After the removal men had gone we were left standing amongst the mountains of his belongings wondering where on earth we were going to put it all. A small 19th century cottage wasn't built to accommodate a department store sized delivery. Needless to say, 3 weeks later, we now have room to move.

It's been quite amazing how these Victorian walls have soaked up vast quantities of accumulated personal property. The cathartic act of removing unnecessary and duplicated goods has been … cathartic. There is still a goodly amount of tweaking to do but the old house is starting to feel comfortable and habitable. At least Stephen is here and the wonderful realities of living together are sinking in. The dream has changed; what was once a dream is now real and the new dreams now begin.

As I write, we have a fire in the grate, a cat curled up on the sofa, a glass of rum in hand and a curry on the go … almost - Stephen is about to put that together. Homely and comfortable is how I would describe it. In fact, things are starting to feel so together that I'm feeling the urge to write again; surely a sign of feeling settled.

I do love using the semi-colon, I'm just not always sure whether I'm using it in the right place. A quick check on Writing Forward reveals that I'm pretty much headed in the right direction. You will have spotted the abrupt change of direction there; the swerving, tyre screeching leap from one topic to another. That's because I'm writing what comes into my head rather than a flowing discourse that is designed to be story telling. This is a rambling narrative, much like the posts contained herein.

And now … wouldn't you know it? … it's the next morning. We've eaten our parsnip curry and dahl, fallen asleep on the sofa (that was me not him) and had a lazy lay-in before getting up near midday.

It's a grey old day outside and we need to think about what we're doing today. Literary discourse is not on the agenda methinks, not today anyway. Sorting the recycling, making breakfast cereal and bread are though.

How cute

2011-12-08T14:04:00.001Z

Some time back, not long after I met Stephen, we were walking hand-in-hand to see friends of his. A young girl of about 13 shouted from across the street, 'Excuse me, are you two gay?' We paused and I said, 'Yes, why?' She grinned and replied, 'Aww, how cute.'

I thought that was lovely and we went on our way with big grins on our faces.

I'm happy, You're happy

2011-12-08T14:00:00.001Z

I was a bit concerned at how I was to tell my elderly aunt about Stephen and that he is moving in with me. The morning I went to visit her recently I texted my cousin and asked for some advice. His reply was, 'She'll be happy because you're happy'.

He was right.

Food Waste

2011-11-18T19:16:00.001Z

Waste food feeds 5,000 for lunch at Trafalgar Square

My God! Are we in the West really able to be so choosy about our food that we can afford to throw almost one third of it away? How much expendable income do we have in these times that we can afford to put such a large percentage of it in the bin? That's what it amounts to - throwing money away!

It is an obscenity that such a large part of the world goes hungry through no fault of their own while we can afford to quite happily send food to landfill. I can only presume that most people are happy to throw money away while complaining about low wages and rising prices, otherwise we wouldn't have a situation arise where 5,000 people can be fed from food that would otherwise have ended up in landfill. And when was the last time you got indignant about the size of that landfill site on your doorstep?

Did you know that a misshapen carrot tastes exactly the same as its perfectly straight counterpart found on your supermarket shelf? Did you know that an apple with blemishes on its skin tastes just as good as its perfect same-sized counterpart? In fact, the misshapen carrot and the blemished apple probably taste better because they are more likely to be from a small local producer or a back garden and not mass produced to fit some exacting standards laid down by a large conglomerate who wish to present uniform characterless food.

Some years ago I used to deliver chickens to supermarkets and got talking to the drivers of the articulated lorries delivering fruit and vegetables to the big supermarkets. They used to dread the checks on their consignments when they arrived at the delivery doors in case some fault was found in one of the pallets because this would mean loading the entire consignment back on the lorry and rejecting it all. It would then all be returned to whence it came. This is obscene in itself, but it points to the root of the education we have been given as to what we expect our goods to look like. When was the last time you chopped up a carrot that was twisted or appeared to have grown legs? When was the last time you shopped at a farm shop or high street grocer?

Food Waste Facts
Source: Waste & Resources Action Programme (Wrap) - (the italics are my responses)

7.2 million tonnes of household food waste is thrown away annually in the UK
How big is your local landfill site and when was the last time you (or anyone else) complained about its size?

4.4 million tonnes of food binned annually could have been eaten
Try telling this to the starving people of the world.

The environmental impact of avoidable household food waste is around 17 million tonnes of CO2e - equivalent to the emissions of one in five cars on UK roads
That's over 6,000,000 cars! In 2010 there were almost 32,000,000 cars on British roads. And how many miles are driven each year to buy food that ends up in landfill?

The average family wastes £680 of food a year
I didn't know so many people had so much expendable income. And we all seem to complain about low wages and rising prices. Why?

The total value of food wasted in the UK each year is £12bn
How many mouths would that feed in the world?

See also:
Lovefoodhatewaste.com
.

The Deepness of Being

2011-11-16T22:50:00.001Z

Just recently I found myself saying that the words ‘relationship’ and ‘love’ weren’t adequate for what I felt for Stephen. I always thought I knew what they meant and, for previous relationships, they were sufficient. Not now though. As my feelings for Stephen go deeper and wider than I’ve ever felt before I thought I’d try and work out what it all means to me. After all, that’s what this blog is for!

I hesitate to call it love at first sight (why do I hesitate? - see last paragraph) but I truly think I fell in love with him by the time we got home from the station - a journey of about 30 minutes! Something clicked between us straight away and I believe there is something we can recognise in another human being without the use of words. Call it instinct if you like. We’d felt relaxed enough in our online chats and emails to meet in the first place and it was evident from the start that we shared a lot of thoughts and interests, but a connection was made between us almost instantly. He immediately felt relaxed and easy to get on with and he has progressively felt more easy to be open and honest with as time goes on.

Openness and honesty seem to me to be two of the most important aspects of any relationship to be had with anyone. It has to start with self. The openness and honesty I express to another person is first limited by how open and honest I can be with myself and secondly by the restraints of the relationship. For instance, I wouldn’t necessarily tell a close friend my deepest sexual fantasy but I might tell my lover.

While I have often explored my own openness with myself and investigated thoughts and feelings to an extreme, I have often limited that expression with another. I found after the end of one relationship that I’d placed my own limits on the capability of my partner to understand and accept. In conversation with him one day, after the end of the relationship, I mentioned something I thought might have been taboo between us only to find he wanted to know more and shared a similar interest. The reason we hadn’t discussed it when we lived together was more about my insecurities than my perception of his acceptance of my thoughts.

Discussions with Stephen have already encompassed insecurities and acceptance. We have both talked about withholding things from others only to find this causes some difficulty further down the line, or to find there was no reason in the first place and that the other person would have liked it mentioned. Consequently, we have vowed not to censor any thought, fantasy, or idea until after it has been mentioned. If we don’t give each other the chance to say, “no” how will we know we want to? So far, the answers have been resounding, “yes’s” to anything we’ve talked about.

It is this flowering of acceptance between us that enables me to be more open with myself and then with him than I’ve ever felt I could before. When I can talk about my deepest fantasies and desires with him I feel more and more that he is part of me. I described him once as the part of me I didn’t know was missing. I can say absolutely anything to this man and not fear rejection.

I’ve already written about finding that we shared similar values, interests and ideals. As that first week moved on we both discovered there was more to life that we shared; lying on the sea wall gazing at the sky and then another night looking at the stars, walking in the rain and fog, nature, food, books, self-expression, and much more. This gave us much to talk about and I found very quickly that this also deepened any feelings I had for the man.

We learn from each other. We learn about how the other has experienced the world and experiences it now. I’m fascinated in the difference between his experiencing and his philosophy on life and mine and want to absorb it and learn from it. He expands my mind.

He recently wrote:
“I love your mind as much as all of the rest of you. You expand my mind and touch my heart. What more could I ask for? I relish every little tiny part of you my love. Your body is where your heart and soul reside, so how could your every physical expression not be magical and sacred to me?”

He also has a way of putting things that mirror my own thoughts and feelings and this was one of them. I include this not to boast about the way he feels about me (although I think I am entitled to boast and sometimes I want to) but because it is an instance of like-thinking. And like-thinking runs through us like a thread. When ALL aspects of our experiencing and sharing and partnership are inextricably linked perhaps that is where the separateness of us begins to blur. This is how I feel with Stephen. Separate but one. I value our separateness and I celebrate and cherish our oneness.

I want to celebrate every aspect of him and me. There is magic and sanctity in our physical, emotional, sexual and intellectual expressing, which is why the word relationship feels inadequate. In accordance with his Pagan take on life and my own, largely eastern philosophy on life, we both understand the importance of ritual and celebration and it feels important to both of us to celebrate all aspects of our being together, whether this is about the simpler acts of life and love or the deeper insights we have into ourselves and each other.

His words are rich and expressive and give me insight into his mind and soul. I love listening to him talk. I love reading what he writes. I love hearing what he has to say. Someone once said, "We read in order to know we are not alone." Maybe it is as much about knowing there are people there accepting us, as well as knowing we are not the only person to experience things in the way we do. Reading and writing create and generate empathy.

On top of all this I love looking at the man. I love the sight of him. I love his looks. I love watching how he moves. I love the way he performs actions and the positioning of his body as he does so. I was attracted to his looks in the first place but I don’t know when I became attracted to the rest. Did this come about because of how I began to feel about the rest of him or what? One seems to arise from the other. I could look at him for hours and this is also a first for me. I’ve never found anyone else so physically attractive, let alone so intellectually, emotionally and sexually attractive. I’m also interested in the physiological aspects of how I can go weak at the knees when he scratches his ear or when he walks or when he looks at me - but another time for that.

So, have I discovered why the word relationship is inadequate in describing what we have between us? I don’t think so but I think I have gone some way towards it. What I am describing is love, deep love. It is deep enough to not be able to see the bottom. It is frightening in its comfort and comforting in its fear. I feel safer than ever in exploring myself and exploring another person. I feel supported, understood and encouraged. He holds me up and is there ready should I fall. Why would I not want to enter into life with this person?

Note: Why did I hesitate to call it love at first sight? Perhaps because I’ve been conditioned to think of this as a romantic ideal that only the likes of Mills & Boon authors write about or was the subject of romantic films. In talking to others I have found that we’re not alone in our situation. I’ve talked to a couple of people who met their partners and fell in love pretty much straight away and at least two who decided to move in almost immediately. This gives me strength.

Sharing Life With Another

2011-11-14T20:06:00.000Z

One month from today I will be sitting down with the man I love in this house, our home, drinking tea or coffee - or maybe champagne - and looking at a pile of belongings that need a place of their own. There was a time, until fairly recently, when I would have found this a daunting and frightening prospect. Not now. I can’t wait.

More than ever in my life I feel that I will be sharing life with someone rather than living alongside them. We each have similar thoughts about what life could be like and we both know we have to work at it. We both seem to operate from a nurturing angle for the benefit of the other. I am at my most open and honest with Puck and look forward to the challenges and possibilities life will bring to both of us. I feel everything I give returned to me.

Something I read recently sums up quite nicely my own thoughts about relationships. More than anything I wish to see Puck become the person he most truly can be and the most happy he can be and I know he wishes the same for me. Marianne Williamson wrote the following about relationships:

"Our relationships can be trips to heaven or trips to hell, depending on how we ourselves choose to interact with another person. Knowing the principles of loving relationship— recognizing the spiritual lessons afforded us by each encounter — gives us skill and even mastery at this basic human experience. It is through relationships that we either rise to our most creative possibilities in life, or fall into the patterns of fear that would consistently hold us back."

We have already discussed patterns of fear and vowed to tackle them between us. With Puck I do not feel afraid to face my fears for I know he will be there to keep me safe. Just as I want someone to feel safe and comfortable with I also want to protect and comfort him. He is the dearest thing to have happened to me and the most profoundly loveable person to have entered my life. I don’t just love him - I am in love with him, deeply and totally.

The things we look forward to doing in our lives match so well too. I can feel days coming on of cooking, pickling, baking, gardening, cycling, walking, meditating, ritual, writing, reading, pursuing passions and ideals, staring at stars, watching sunsets and sunrises, decorating our home and making it truly ours, learning and teaching, dancing in thunderstorms, protesting and becoming involved, and generally wondering at life and our life together. This list is by no means exhaustive.

In short I want to share everything with him that life has to throw at me. I am ready for more change than ever and I am ready for change with him.

He will be pleased to know that I have finally phoned a chimney sweep and left a message asking for a return call. It’s getting chillier at night now and a fire in the grate would be far more preferable to the electric heaters. For years I have meant to go to the woods where I used to live to collect fire wood and never got round to it. That is about to change as are many other things.

…… slight pause …...

Slight pause there to phone him and hear his voice. I love him more than anything and anyone I have ever known. I love talking to him and listening to him. I love hearing his laughter and the tone of voice when he tells me he loves me. I love knowing what he is doing and what he is thinking and I get the warmest, most tender feeling when I think about him and see him and hear him.

He’s just told me his mum bought him a card recently because it reminded her that we both love clouds. She must be the most romantic mother I’ve ever come across. She talks about our love for each other, barges between us so she can hold our hands, and accepts me as Stephen’s boyfriend/partner rather than his ‘special friend’. This is a bit of a revelation to Stephen. It means I am free to express my feelings about her son to her. I even thanked her for giving birth to him the first time I met her.

…… end of slight pause …...

I have not looked forward to change in life so much as I do now. In my previous 2 relationships I thought of ways to keep my own space so that we would not get in each others way. In this relationship I want him in my space, I want to learn from his presence and I want to absorb him. I know there will be times when both of us need our own space for one reason or another but it doesn’t feel like we’ll have to work at it. Even the word ‘relationship’ seems the wrong word to use. We are symbiotic even in our separateness. The word ‘organic’ springs to mind.

Interesting to think that the word “relationship” felt wrong. It is surely a relationship we are in but it feels more than that. I can’t voice what the ‘more’ is yet but it will come to me I am sure. We are together and that’s that. I never want this to end. He feels so right in my life that not being in it would be so wrong. It doesn’t feel right when we are apart now. It feels almost as though he has been around for most of my life already and will be around for the rest of it. He exists alongside me and with me and I feel I belong with someone more fully than I have ever experienced before.

But then, everything with Stephen is more than I’ve ever had before.

Roll on December 14th.

Power and Fear

2011-10-28T20:08:00.001+01:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. It is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous. Actually who are you not to be. You are a child of the universe, your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of the universe that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us; it's in everyone.

When we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others"

Nelson Mandela quoting Marianne Williamson

Marmalade and Roots

2011-10-23T13:45:00.000+01:00

More from Sept. And so to the marmalade fountain, but we couldn't find it so had to make do with buying various delectations from the shop instead. Hog heaven? More like marmalade and jam heaven. Stephen looked like a kid in a sweet shop and I fell in love a bit more.

We breakfasted on toast and Tawny Marmalade and tea, visited the museum and spent probably more than we intended in the shop. Still, we had a lovely time and Stephen got to see the place that supplies his favourite breakfast spread. If we'd found the office and reception I think he would have thanked them for past letters he's exchanged and just for being there.

A walk in the woods gave me more reason to fall in love. I seem to be continually falling for this man. The seasons and rhythms of nature seem to run right through him. A connection I mislaid long ago is becoming stronger because of him. Understanding is an understatement with him; I feel he knows me and I know him.

The continuum of lust, love and intimacy grows stronger and we weave a richer tapestry because of it. We are painting a picture together, writing a story together, singing a song together. My roots grow stronger and go deeper than ever. Home is in him and with him. Home has become a person rather than a place.

He once said, "The more I lose myself in you the more I find myself." The same applies to me Puck. It is through you that I am finding myself. It takes time but we've got loads of that ahead of us.

Ancient 'Paint Factory' Unearthed

2011-10-13T19:22:00.002+01:00

"Twenty or 30 years ago, there was a view that Europe was really the place where all the big action was taking place - wonderful painted caves 30,000-35,000 years ago, and people decorating their bodies.

We now know that this behaviour goes back far further in Africa; it goes back to 100,000 years, perhaps even more than 100,000 years.

People were starting to express social identity in completely new ways. And there is a view that this behaviour is linked with complex language. So, it may indicate these people were communicating in a fully modern way."

Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

I'll Be Your Four-Leaf Clover

2011-10-12T20:51:00.001+01:00

I've just been listening to 'Crystal Night' from Attacco Decente, a not-well-enough-known group from Brighton who played between 1984 - 1996. Geoff Smith has a disturbing raw power in his voice that has the ability to tear apart your emotions without even knowing what the words are. When you listen to the words they cut even deeper. One of the tracks, 'Turn The Magic On' has me in tears every time I hear it.

"..... 'Cos now is forever
Now is all there is
So let me kiss you all over
I'll be your 4 leaf clover
Flesh and blood
For fields to feed on
I think its time
To turn the magic on
I think its time
Before our chance has gone
And we return to
The soil where we came from
So let me lick you all over
I'll be your 4 leaf clover
You can pick me
You can press me"

Wikipedia has this to say about the title of the album and the title track:

"Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, also known as Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on November 9–10, 1938.

Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and villages, as SA stormtroopers and civilians destroyed buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in pieces of smashed windows—the origin of the name "Night of Broken Glass." Ninety-one Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jewish men—a quarter of all Jewish men in Germany—were taken to concentration camps, where they were tortured for months, with over 1,000 of them dying. Around 1,668 synagogues were ransacked, and 267 set on fire. In Vienna alone 95 synagogues or houses of prayer were destroyed."

Clouds Over Tenerife

2011-10-12T18:59:00.000+01:00

This is a beautiful piece of time-lapse photography of clouds over Tenerife. There is a similarity in behaviours of things on land, sea and in the air and it is quite evident in places in this clip.

Life

2011-10-07T14:40:00.001+01:00

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

Steve Jobs

Stargazing in Ancient Australia

2011-10-06T10:08:00.002+01:00

This is a very interesting article. Makes you re-think who we think we are .... Aboriginal Stonehenge

Fear and Understanding

2011-10-01T21:45:00.007+01:00

At the risk of repeating myself, I write again about my love for a man I never expected to meet. A man I fell in love with on day one. A man I wanted to be with from day one. And what an amazingly sexy man he is.

We can talk about anything under the sun and discuss topics previously felt taboo with other people. I feel like I’ve met the part of me I longed for from childhood and throughout my adult life, the part that felt unattainable and a deep fantasy. He is my soulmate and life partner, my lover and boyfriend, my best friend and companion.

There is no place where I may go and not there see his face, not know I am his sower and his sown. We feel as one in our similarities and separate in our individuality. I love him deeply and without exception. I’d gladly drown in his eyes and in his soul. I find words I didn’t know I had to describe him and my feelings for him, and I see possibilities in life I didn’t know existed. I look forward to spending life with him.

The intenseness of my writing is matched only by the intenseness of my feelings for him. I feel as though everything else this blog is about is on hold for the time being, even though my righting is still deeply exploratory. I want to understand my feelings and the intenseness of them and to understand the deep, primal lust for life and Stephen that I now feel. It is as though something surges up in me and threatens to overflow and I don't know whether to allow it to. Something deep within me tells me I should let it overflow and erupt; that it will not harm me. It is something known and unknown to me and I am at once afraid and not afraid.

Life seems full of paradoxical situations and ideas lately and I love that duality of things. I feel safer in exploring them than ever and take comfort in being able to share them with someone who enables me to go deeper in my understanding than ever. He is my comfort and my safety net and he understands me to a point that no-one else has ever reached. I feel invaded and possessed by an aspect of me that left me long ago. He is my completion and my teacher and my pupil.

If allowing him to understand himself will allow me to understand him more richly then so be it. My desire is to allow him to become the person he can truly be more fully than ever. This I am not afraid of. Strange that there is some fear of what I allow myself to experience and understand. I feel that I can contain the strength and depth of him more than I can contain my own. Is it because it comes from within me? Perhaps what is known is more to be feared than what is not. This contradicts the saying that 'the only thing to fear is fear itself '.

Is it my own fear that is known to me?

Perception

2011-09-27T23:00:00.002+01:00

Theories do not give final true knowledge, they give a way of looking at something. The very word “theoria” in Greek means “theatre” so it is the theatre of the mind which gives insight into the thing.

David Bohm on Perception

Getting Old?

2011-09-26T19:40:00.000+01:00

Saw a blackboard menu outside a pub the other day that said, "Over 55 Specials"!!! I'm going to have to go along just to see what they've got. I wonder if my driver's licence will suffice? Or can you go on wrinkles alone?

Choirs and Jam

2011-09-26T19:34:00.002+01:00

Spent a week in Brighton and a week at home over the last fortnight. It feels almost as though we've moved in together already. We've both become accustomed to being around each other constantly for the last two weeks and now that the fortnight is over we both feel 'wrong' being apart. Life together just gets better and better and better.

The house feels empty and flat with only me in it. Stephen's presence brought a life to this house that I never thought I'd feel here. It felt more like home than I ever thought it would. I can't wait for move-in day.

So, just over a week ago I met some of the crew in the Rainbow Chorus and what a lovely bunch they are too, went to an evening with the Conversation Cafe (some of which was treading dangerous ground with topic and subject matter - like questions you always wanted to ask a woman/man! - sexist or what), attended the evening 'do' for Michael and Richard's Civil Partnership where some of the choir sang for them (lovely), walked along the sea-front, ate Indian food, made breakfast cereal, listened to lots of music and generally got on with getting on with each other.

Last week we came home and visited Wilkin's jam shop, cafe and museum, went for a sunset walk and lay under the stars on equinox night, made more breakfast cereal, went to Burnham Carnival and had Chinese take-away with friends.

I'm sure there's more but it was such a full week there would be too much to list here anyway. The upshot is that I want Stephen to move in more than ever and can't wait for December. It seems like a long time to go.

My Songline

2011-09-08T16:18:00.000+01:00

Bruce Chatwin wrote a book called ‘Songlines’. It is about the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and how they believe that everything was sung into existence. If you know the song you know where you are and where you are going. These people are so in tune with their environment they can find food and water in the desert and make their way from one place to another even though they have never made the journey before.

Puck, you are my songline. My world is being sung into existence with you and because of you.

His name is Stephen.

He is inspirational, passionate, intelligent, inquisitive, sensitive, understanding, funny, serious, playful, encouraging, friendly, warm, accepting, sexy, horny, loving, responsive ….. and I’ve only just started.

He is open and honest to a degree I have never experienced in another person before. In getting to know him I feel I can truly get to know me. I have never felt that ALL my barriers were down with another human being to the extent I do now. I stand before him naked, exposed and unashamed. There is nothing I don’t want him to see or hear, nothing he can’t explore.

We play each other like a musical instrument or orchestra, complementing each note and chord and resonating together in a sweet harmony. He is the final piece of the jigsaw that I never dared hope existed. I feel complete and yet open to completion.

I wrote the following in an email to him recently and it sums up how I feel. And yet the feeling changes and shifts; it stretches and becomes stronger and more yearning, it expands and focuses itself to a pinpoint, it sears and soothes. This is like nothing I have ever experienced before:

“I want to love you like there’s no tomorrow and only this moment in time. I want to grow strong with you and give you my strength. I want to stay in bed with you for ever and walk under a bright moon and dance in the thunderstorm all at once. I want to perform ritual with you, awash with incense and love and lust. I want us to worship each other’s bodies. I want to drown in you. My mind and body are your mind and body. My soul is yours for the taking. I offer myself up to you completely and unconditionally.”

Put simply, I love you.

Spirituality and Understanding

2011-08-26T22:04:00.001+01:00

There is something spiritual in me that stems from past experience in the great outdoors and particularly from a very beautiful place where I used to live. It is something I never thought another person would fully understand, something spiritual about the land I live on and live in. Lately it feels dormant and in need of awakening and I have found the person to help me do that.

With 100 acres of woodland around me I couldn’t fail to feel connected to the earth. I knew the woods like an old friend. They protected me and kept me company and entertained me and cared for me.

Walking out through the woods there were times when I fancied I could feel the presence of the spirits and of the god that oversees them. Something unseen and powerful lurked just beyond mere vision; just as the force of nature seeps through the earth and into the soul. As I walked, and as I felt the growing heat and power and electricity of that presence, a primeval urge soon began to filter its way from the ground beneath me and leave me breathless in its magnificence.

In finding myself in the moment of my surroundings I began to be aware of the understanding that comes from acceptance. I was becoming the woods and they were becoming me. I was feeling a part of the world I am in and realised I only had to let go of myself to experience this divine creation in a way I had never dreamt possible. I felt I was about to fall into something unfathomable and at once completely understandable; something that meant shedding layers of me that had hugged my life too tightly and letting go of any inhibition and preconception I ever held.

In meeting Puck I found the person who understood this completely and without explanation. He understands it in the same way I do. My understanding is his understanding and vice versa.

It is a rare thing to meet someone who feels so much a part of you in every way but that’s what I am experiencing right now. Being apart from him is painful and the longing threatens to tear me apart, but the knowledge of him and the love I feel holds me together and soothes the pain. I didn’t know I could love so quickly or so intensely.

I feel as though I have found the part of me I never knew was missing.

Puck

2011-08-20T03:22:00.001+01:00

I guess the question in my last post was aimed more at the other person than me. I had to question it for my own understanding. I know what the love of friends and family feels like and I know what it is to love them back. As far as is possible as a human it feels unconditional both ways.

The love I crave from another person, as a lover, would be the same but more intimate; not necessarily deeper, although deepness comes about through intimacy. I don’t feel as though I am expressing myself very well here but then that’s what this rambling is all about.

Friends and family love is different to loving a significant other but it is the same. They are all significant others but there can also be a special significant other and I may just have found him.

My heart and my intellect tell me two different things at the moment but there is also an agreement between them. My intellect tells me to hold back and not go too quickly and my heart says jump in with both feet. My intellect also says, “Would you miss this chance for the thing that holds you back?” My intellect and my heart both agree that it is fear that holds me back most of the time. My heart and my intellect both seem to want to face that fear and dispel it. The fear is delicious and dispersible.

I’m confused but I’m not.

Everything about this person clicks with me in a way I have never felt before but have dreamed of a hundred times and more. And I’ve only known him for a week. When he speaks it might as well be me speaking. When I speak it might as well be him speaking. We both understand and share each others passions and love of life. We both laugh and cry at the same things. In the last week I have felt more complete in his presence than I have felt with anyone – ever.

If I was asked for my definition of a soul mate it would be him.

From day one I felt as though I had met the person I’ve been looking for most of my life. Within a week we had shared things that mean so much to me, done things that mean so much to me, and talked about things that I thought only possible with someone I might have known for much longer. In his presence time seemed to stand still and the world went away. There was only me and him. My mind and my heart have not felt so poised and in the moment for a long time; a state of mind and being I have only attained through meditation before. I felt refreshed and I still do.

In short, I have stars in my eyes, I’m completely bowled over and I’m reeling. Since he went home all I want is to see him and touch him and hear him.

The words we write to each other and the phone calls we make contain a yearning I can hear and feel both ways. Don’t ask me how I know but I know he feels the same. I could answer that question if I explored it more but I’m not going to now.

For now I just needed to write and now that I have written I am going to bed. I will address the title of this post at a later date.

A Special Day

2011-08-14T11:30:00.000+01:00

11:29am.

Today I met Stephen and life changed.

What Is Love?

2011-07-24T15:40:00.001+01:00

If this journal is going to be a full reflection of my journey then I must stop excluding aspects of my life. I did it once before and realised later that subsequent posts made no sense, even to me.

I left out the relationship I was having at the time and the effects it was having on me and the other person involved. I did this because I thought the other person might read this blog, after all I had told them about it, and I didn’t want to hurt them.

Since this is a personal journal and meant for me then other people have a choice as to whether they read it or not. They can also choose to understand this is my own slant on life, not theirs.

I decided to write this journal online because it is a way of saving it when my computer might go down, of being able to access it from wherever I might be in the world, and in the hope that something I say might touch another person’s life. It has done once so far and that makes it more than worth continuing to write in my view.

It is not meant to be advertised and found – more stumbled upon.

In the last couple of years I have been through another relationship of sorts. The person I met made me very happy. We could talk about anything under the sun and we shared a lot of interests. For a long time I had a lot of fun and went to places I might not have got to otherwise. I was happy.

The problem, for me, came when I realised I didn’t want a full-on relationship and still needed my own space in the aftermath of my previous relationship. A distance sprang up between us, mostly of my own making. This then caused difficulty for him and his obvious deep feelings for me.

While I was happy to talk to him about his unrequited feelings, I also found it extremely difficult in times when he became very depressed and lonely. There were times when I found myself anticipating another bout of depression and was reluctant to pick up the phone. The only 2 real blow-ups came about because of this.

There is only so far I can go in trying to help someone and then the rest is up to them. I didn’t see this happening. He seemed to prefer to live an insular lifestyle, becoming depressed about being lonely and not being able to get me out of his head. Whatever the reasons behind this I got to the point of feeling my help was limited.

In hindsight (if only it wasn’t a retrospective thing) I should have had my doubts about his feelings long ago. There were the times I was accused of being boring; the times that resulted in him going home because my life-style wasn’t to his satisfaction. One such occasion was during a heavy snowstorm with 75 miles to drive home. I was angry and worried at the same time. I was once accused of being critical and making him nervous. I began to feel the same.

About a year ago I received a telephone call while in the middle of a school paying field during a friend’s daughter’s school sports day. He was depressed again and needed to talk about his feelings and mine. Not the ideal situation for me to enter into a deep conversation there and then. It resulted in him becoming extremely angry and saying some very hurtful things when I wasn’t willing to talk to him at that moment in time.

When he threatened to involve my friends I went ballistic. I can’t remember the last time I felt so angry. I told him later that had he been standing in front of me at the time I would probably have punched his lights out. I have only ever hit one other person in my adult life - a man who was being physically violent to a female and there were children involved.

I feel now that I should have given more thought to what his feelings were really about. I still don’t understand them but to be like that to someone you say you love deeply and can’t do without seems a contradiction now. That’s not the way someone behaves when they love you in my book.

To give him his due he understood how hurtful he’d been and regretted his actions. As is the way of life, it was too late by then. The harm was done. I eventually forgave and was prepared to try and forget, but I couldn’t. I always had this nagging doubt about his motives and reasons for ‘loving’ me and it put more distance between us.

So when a similar thing happened again a couple of months ago and he became angry again, I chose to let it go. I can’t be doing with behaviour like that in my life. He once told me that someone had told him that he often only thought about himself. On these two occasions I think they were right.

I didn’t respond to the angry emails and the texts, because that’s what I did before and it resulted in us coming back together again. This time I didn’t want that. There is no room in my life for people who can be spiteful and hurtful towards me and my friends. Again, this is not what I’d call ‘love’.

So, if you are reading this you will know who you are. You may not agree with what I have written here and I have no doubt you won’t. But then, this blog is from my perspective on life and not anyone else’s.

Life

2011-07-15T20:18:00.001+01:00

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

The Hazards of Spellcheck

2011-07-14T13:05:00.001+01:00

Run this through your spellcheck:

Eye have a spelling chequer,
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss Steaks I can knot sea.

Eye strike the quays and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am write oar wrong
It tells me straight a weigh.

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in its weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.

Reading and Writing

2011-06-11T14:06:00.001+01:00

I seem to have been reading avidly recently. One good book after another. After almost nodding off in front of the TV last night I went to bed and then decided to dip into ‘Mr. Rosenblum’s List’ by Natasha Solomons before I went off to sleep proper. With only one-and-a-half chapters to go I could surely read a bit and then finish it today.

Not likely!

I began to cry half-way through chapter 8 and then sobbed and laughed my way through chapter 9 to the postscript at the end. You’ll have to read it to see what I’m talking about, but item 151 on ‘Jack Rose-in-bloom’s’ list had me sobbing and laughing at the same time. The duvet got wet and I used the t-shirt I’d been wearing yesterday to mop my face and blow my nose. I had to come downstairs at 2:30 this morning and drink warm milk with mixed spice and eat custard creams before I could go back to bed.

The more reading I do the more I want to write. I’ve written short stories over the years but mainly for my own benefit and sometimes for my friend’s children, but I’ve never written anything seriously – apart from this blog (and that’s been intermittent).

I latched onto the title ‘The Silent Sun’ for some reason and began to write down some thoughts. The title has a feeling about it that I can’t describe at the moment. Keywords might be: observer; warm; mirage; sunrise/beginning; sunset/ending; relentless; oppressive; refreshing; life-giving.

The theme so far seems to be about family; perhaps because it is a subject that has so much meaning to me at the moment. I also want to inject a sense of mystery into it and I have a glimmer of an idea. So far the story seems to be writing itself, so I may just go along with it and continue writing and see where it leads me.

The scary bit is the amount of time an author can take to write a book – years in some cases – but considering I’ve been thinking about this for some years without doing anything about it, I might as well persevere and see where the next couple of years takes me and the story.

Curry, Gin, and Harems

2011-06-06T23:08:00.001+01:00

My new cookery bible has to be ‘Miss Masala’ by Mallika Basu. With easy recipes, cooking tips and tricks for healthy Indian food, it also has to be one of the funniest cook books I’ve ever read. Think recipes interspersed with blogs. She writes about aspects of her life with great humour and gives gorgeously yummy recipes she has learnt from colourful aunts and family. When you can describe stirring a dish with the line, “Don’t make love to it. Fuck it!” you can begin to get what I mean. She’s also quite gorgeous and has to be the new love of my life alongside Nigella Lawson. I’m starting to build a harem. Strange, if you know me well enough!

So, with a larger-than-I-meant-it-to-be gin and tonic I sat down with ‘Miss Masala’ to find an accompaniment to last night’s chicken curry and kitchen wipes (the curry was rather hot and the sweat ran round my ears and down my neck). When I found ‘Jeera aloo for nutters’ I drank the gin rather too quickly and set off to try it out. A delicious way to use new potatoes is all I can say.

I’d also have to include Jason Isaacs in my new harem. Have you seen ‘Case Histories’ on BBC1? He takes his shirt off quite a lot and went very well with my chicken curry and jeera aloo. I can’t help wondering if all my sweating came just from eating hot curry! With four more episodes to go I’ll have to find some more good food to go with him (perhaps something a little more cooling next time). Next episode is on Sunday 12th June at 9pm – I’ve already set the reminder.

Yin and Yang and DNA

2011-06-05T15:08:00.001+01:00

I wrote previously about the relationship between the formation of the eight trigrams in the Book of Changes, which form the 64 hexagrams, and the DNA sequence. At the time I did not have a reasonable explanation to hand, but I’ve since found this one, which puts it in better perspective.

Although the trigrams can be understood through exercises, and can help you to understand your states of consciousness, they can not help you with existential decisions and choices. This requires the doubling of the trigrams into inner and outer worlds. Now six lines are used to create a Hexagram. There are sixty four possible combinations of six yin or yang lines (two to the eighth power). For example, one possible combination is a hexagram known as PEACE where the top three lines are all yin, and the bottom three all yang, Heaven below the Earth:

                    ___   ___  6
                    ___   ___  5  Outer Trigram
                    ___   ___  4
                    _________  3

Inner Trigram _ 2 _ 1

The lower Trigram shows the attitude to your inner world, the upper your attitude to the outer-world. The Chinese sages who created the I Ching understood the duality of life and its existential problems. They knew that it in order to change your external situation -- your outer fate -- you had to change your inner mentality. Since the I Ching was created as a kind of pragmatic guide, they knew that the Trigrams would have to be doubled to reflect the dynamics of the inner-outer worlds, of external situation and internal attitude. The system of 64 hexagrams which make up the I Ching resulted from the necessity of doubling the eight combinations of three.

In a dramatic example of the fractal recursive nature of reality, nature follows the very same system to create the genetic code. The eight trigrams correspond very closely to the DNA and RNA code of our genes. This is the genetic code which is responsible on a cellular level for all self organization, growth and reproduction in life.

DNA is the blueprint for every protein made in every cell. It is the Yin, spatial structure which stores the information. RNA is the reverse copy of DNA which carries out DNA's instructions for protein production. It is the Yang, active catalyst which actualizes in time the information in the DNA. The DNA and RNA have eight different base combinations, each made of three chemicals, just like the trigrams made of three lines. The chemical "triplets" as they are called, combine in double triplet code, just like the hexagrams. The maximum total combinations of DNA/RNA triplets is thus 64, just like the I Ching. The 64 triplet combinations control the twenty amino acids and other cellular generative-structural activity.

Out of the combinations of the 8 triplets or trigrams, the 64 "words" of the genetic code of life are formed. All life, from bacteria to Man, is directed on a cellular level by the same language of the 64 Codons of RNA and DNA, based on the doubled triplet, or Hexagram. For example in genetics one of the 64 three letter Codons is: T.A.G. - C.T.A. (Thymine, Adenine, Guanine - Cytosine, Thymine, Adenine). The first gene detected by Watson was equivalent in structure to the I Ching hexagram number 42: Increase.

….….. As we have seen, there is a striking similarity between the I Ching and the genetic code, the 8 trigrams to the 8 codons. This can be understood as recursive self similarity over scales. There is a basic identity between the genes and the hexagrams because their numeric structure is the same.

Martin Schoanberger, a German scientist, recently discovered that the two Codons which contain the genetic-chemical message "to stop" have the same numeric structure of hexagram 63, After Completion. All lines in this hexagram are said to be in their proper place.

Moreover, Schoanberger discovered that the Codons which, so to speak, act to say "Go" on a genetic level, correspond to the opposite hexagram 64, Before Completion.

Extract of article by: Arnold Keyserling & R.C.L taken from: School of Wisdom.

Wedding Ring

2011-06-02T23:03:00.000+01:00

Today I’m wearing my mother’s wedding ring.

When I first saw it again at my niece’s it drew me in and seemed to signify more than just my mother. This was the ring that my father put on her finger nearly 60 years ago.

To wear it means to celebrate the happy times they shared; to celebrate the union between them, to celebrate my parents.

It fits perfectly on the little finger of my left hand; so perfectly I can’t feel it after wearing it for only a few hours.

The Silent Sun

2011-03-05T11:10:00.003Z

I read an article recently entitled; “Scientists baffled by silent sun”. It’s about sun spots, but I got to thinking "The Silent Sun" would make a great book title.

A Sentient Cluster of Cells

2011-01-27T22:48:00.000Z

It’s amazing how human beings take it for granted they are alive when the chances of you and me being born are so slim. How did I come to be born? Was I predetermined or am I the result of random DNA sequences started long, long ago? One iota of difference in the formation of the universe and you and me wouldn’t be here now.

This sentient cluster of cells that forms me also possesses the awareness that I am me. I am only here once in the entire history of the universe. There will only ever be one of me and one of you. That’s quite a sobering thought.

I often used to wonder what it would have been like had I been born as someone else. The fact is I was never going to be. I was always going to be me and I will always have been me. It’s what I do with the me that I am that is important.

I have an effect on the world as much as it affects me. That is what being human is about. That is humanity. I’m part of something limited and timeless and I only have the one chance to experience it.

It’s not so much the physical contact we have with each other that is important, but the spiritual contact. Touching somebody else’s life is what makes a difference and determines the present and the future. It’s also what makes us feel that we belong to something, that we are a part of life that matters.

Family & Friends

2010-12-16T01:35:00.001Z

Okay …. I’ve not only met my sister-in-law and niece after a gap of about 20 years but I’ve also discovered I have a great-nephew too. He’s 9! I’m a great-uncle. I’ve never been a ‘great’ anything!

And my brother wants to get in touch after all this time. My first feeling is one of doubt, suspicion, but I also feel compassion. I also think I’m ready to be friends of sorts. That’s something both of us will have to work hard at.

And then there are the friends from long ago who keep appearing.

And all this in the space of about 2 months.

I’ve had some pretty profound moments around family and friends recently. No wonder it gets overwhelming at times.

Wellies

2010-12-14T02:32:00.001Z

A friend emailed this to me yesterday. I laughed so much when I read it I nearly stopped breathing ……

The "Wellie Boots"
(Anyone who has ever dressed a child will love this one!)

Did you hear about the Pre-School teacher who was helping one of the children put on his "Wellie boot's"? He asked for help and she could see why.

Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little "Wellies" still didn't want to go on. By the time they got the second "Wellie" on, she had worked up quite a sweat.

She almost cried when the little boy said, "Miss, they're on the wrong feet." She looked, and sure enough, they were. It wasn't any easier pulling the "Wellies" off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the "Wellies" back on, this time on the right feet.

He then announced, "These aren't my Wellies." She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, 'Why didn't you say so?' like she wanted to. Once again, she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting "Wellies" off his little feet.

No sooner had they gotten the "Wellies" off when he said, "They're my brother's "Wellies", my mum made me wear them.'

Now she didn't know if she should laugh or cry. But, she mustered up what grace and courage she had left to wrestle the "Wellies" on his feet again.

Helping him into his coat, she asked, "Now, where are your gloves?"

He said, "I stuffed 'them in the toes of my Wellies".

She will be eligible for parole in three years!

Keeping People Alive

2010-11-25T23:23:00.001Z

I held something of my mother's the other day, for the first time in over 20 years. Having had nothing of hers in all that time it was quite a profound moment.

I remember a conversation we had one day, years before she died, about what happened to us when we died. One or the other of us suggested that whoever went first would give the other one a sign if there was life after death. Over the years I have felt that she came back to me in so many different ways, sometimes small ways, sometimes big ways, but I wasn't prepared for how big she came back this time.

Something returned to me and I'm not sure what it is yet.

I realised that life after death isn't about whether there is actually some kind of life after you die. Not for the living anyway. It's about keeping people alive to those left behind that really matters.

My mother lives on through me but she becomes more alive when I hear how she lives on through others who knew her. That’s another thing I haven’t had in over 20 years! At the moment it’s all a bit over-whelming, but in a very nice way.

I now have a closer family than I could have wished for to get used to, and I'm looking forward to every bit of it.

Wedding Day

2010-10-17T21:04:00.001+01:00

I remember coming back from one of the regular summer barbeques by the river late one evening. It was getting dark and 15 or 20 figures were silhouetted on the sea wall against the darkening sky, like marionettes in a shadow theatre. Figures carrying boxes and bags and pushing bicycles and pushchairs, all laden down with the necessary equipment for the evenings barbeque. A friend who was visiting at the time remarked that it was “.. like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel”.

Yesterday’s wedding in the village was a bit like that too. Take away the modern equipment and utilities and the spirit is the same. The branching tree of individuals, relationships and events still feeds upwards and downwards to give life to the community as a whole.

Take away the speakers in the church grounds for those of us who could not get into the church and there is no difference to those who stood before us 100, 200, or even 400 years ago. Most of the men had beers in their hands, after all it was the local landlord getting married, people were coming and going during the service, children played and conversations continued, despite the service being played out from inside.

Festivities continued in the pub afterwards, during which all the speeches were made, amidst friendly cat-calling and calls for the important people who figured in this event. A huge feast was provided and there was free beer and wine. A convivial atmosphere abounded with groups of friends and acquaintances brought together in one common goal; to wish the new bride and groom a long and happy life together.

I have a commonality with others who stood before me. I have a place I share with others and where I feel I truly live. This is what makes me feel that I belong here.

Afghanistan's Child Drug Addicts

2010-10-15T08:59:00.001+01:00

I watched the report by Ramita Navai on drug addiction amongst the population of Afghanistan last night (Channel 4’s Unreported World). Difficult to watch at times, it was a brilliant piece of reporting about a desperately tragic subject.

Children as young as 3 are addicted to morphine or heroin and the problem is widespread. The drug is often cheaper than food and eliminating pain, hunger and the psychological effects of war must seem an appealing alternative. Entire families can be addicted.

Children on the streets will beg, steal and prostitute themselves for money to buy the drug. For child prostitutes this brings about its own dangers. Apart from life-threatening STD’s the males among them also run the risk of being shot if caught, in a country where homosexuality is taboo!

A combination of war, the rise of warlords, and poverty are to blame. Morphine or heroin were often the only available drugs to treat injuries sustained in bombings and suicide attacks and it was cheap.

Because of the shame and dishonour brought on the families with addictions, the problem is difficult to treat. There is only one treatment centre, and that is in Kabul. The problem is nation-wide. The doctors and staff who work for the Nejat Center have been heckled and beaten up on their visits. Their visits can bring problems to the families as well, as close communities want to know what the doctors are doing there.

The taboos inherent in this subject made this a brave piece of reporting. There must also have been courage among the people who spoke out in this programme.

Extracts from Wikipedia >>

“As the Afghan government began to lose control of provinces during the Soviet invasion of 1979-80, warlords flourished and with it opium production as regional commanders searched for ways to generate money to purchase weapons, according to the UN.”

“In July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns. As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91% from the previous year's estimate of 82,172 hectares. The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this area, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.

“War, economic instability, and poverty caused changes in the way villagers maintained their villages. Competition for scarce land and resources resulted in unsustainable practices, causing soil erosion and therefore making the land less productive.

The cultivation of poppy, however, generated greater profits than wheat farming for the farming villagers due to the higher yielding possibilities with less land (less irrigation of poppies than wheat is necessary), and greater demand for the profitable drug trade of the highly-valued opium, prepared from poppies.

Many migrants to places such as Pakistan and Iran witnessed the profitability of poppy cultivation in land development, through association with local landowners and businessmen, and were inspired to bring about the same economic improvement in their own lives and villages. Also, opium trade proved to be more cost-efficient than livestock trade, since large amounts of opium are easier to transport than livestock. Local shopkeepers used capital, which was acquired from buying opium resins from farmers and selling them to dealers at the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, to invest in their own small shops thereby generating further income.

Poor villagers saw this as a good investment opportunity, as it meant more efficient farming of one product, with the possibility of creating economic stability in their villages.”

Sources: Channel 4, Nejat Center, Wikipedia,

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Shopping For a Living

2010-10-11T23:10:00.001+01:00

I spent the morning shopping in good company, stopped for coffee and a bacon butty, had some intelligent conversation, and got paid for it.

How good is that?

Help Ex-Offenders Back to Work

2010-09-24T07:28:00.000+01:00

Change the Record is a new campaign from Nacro, the crime reduction charity, to help ex-offenders back to work by tackling discriminatory practice and laws that prevent them finding a job. The campaign focuses on amending the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is widely accepted to be out of date. It discriminates against ex-offenders and is compounded by CRB checks which are often used unlawfully to expose spent crimes or non-disclosure where people have been to worried to admit their past.

A Government Review of the act published in 2002 stated: “There are no winners...not those with a criminal record denied the opportunity to put their past behind them. Not employers who lose out on committed and conscientious employees, and on resources and skills that otherwise may not be on offer. And certainly not our communities, because denying employment opportunities to people with a criminal record increases the risks of re-offending.”

Change the Record

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Family: Gaps and Connections

2010-09-15T20:28:00.000+01:00

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." Dr Suess

I found this quote by Dr. Seuss ages ago. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it but it seems quite apt at this moment.

I was at my aunt and uncle's recently for my cousin's 50^th birthday. It's coming up for 2 years since the first contact I had with them after 35 years, since my father died in 1974, and I started to piece together the emotions and events of the day.

I hadn't put much score on having family since I don’t know when, until I met my aunt and uncle again. They, my aunt in particular – his sister, were a very close link to my father; a big step towards filling a gap in my sense of who I am.

So what happened to that gap, the hole, in my life that was ever-present though I wasn't always conscious of it; that space left behind when those closest to me – parents – weren't there, that loss of a sense of identity, my (shakey) solid foundations gone? I think I may almost have left a bit of it behind.

Connection My other cousin died about 3 years ago and her son and daughter, my second cousins, were both at the party. I’d met one before but not the son. The man she was about to marry was also there. I discovered that not only did he have a boat about 20 minutes drive from where I live and that he and my cousin went there often, there is also a bench on the path overlooking the marina where she liked to sit and look at the boats. It’s dedicated to her. It’s somewhere I can go and sit and feel closer to her.

It was that sense of a link to her that led me to thinking about those links elsewhere in life. I lost touch with my mother's side of the family in 1988 after she died. Somehow that wasn't quite the same, she had been around longer for me to identify with as a person. There is still a gap there – the gap of loss. Loss of mother and loss of any blood connection to her. The sense of loss for my father feels bigger and deeper. Any connection I might have had with him seemed to have been severed long ago - during some of my most defining years as an adolescent.

I can't speak for my brother in any of this; he would have handled it very differently to me from an emotional perspective. It wasn't something we ever discussed as far as I remember.

The breakdown of my parents marriage seemed to shatter an illusion that I'd taken for granted. My world seemed to fall apart in shards the day they told my brother and I that dad was moving out. I felt like I'd been hit with a sledgehammer. I was 13.

Although my brother and I were both well aware that there were problems and our parents weren't getting on; the heightened emotion, the rows and silences, from both of them, that often started after we'd gone to bed, I never contemplated the absence of one of them from the family home permanently. My parents were just that – my parents – they would always be there. Wouldn't they? I think it was one of the first times the full realisation that my parents were … people! People ... human beings like all the other human beings I saw every day around me. People ... like my teachers, like my friends parents, like the shop keeper up the road, like me! They had problems and difficulties just like I'd been having.

Gap I don't know how long it took to get used to the absence of my father. That's a big word, isn't it? A-b-s-e-n-c-e. My brother and I saw dad regularly for a while and then visits began to tail off. We were getting older and finding other things to do with our teenage years. It still hurts me to this day to think of the times I got out of seeing dad and the ways I did it and how he might have felt at the rejection of those moments. It wasn't often I did this but it must have hurt him. I don't ever remember him talking to me about it though.

Gap A similar thing happened with my mother when I left home to go into the RAF. I had left the family home too, just like my dad. Mum was obviously not coping well with either me or my brother up to this point and even threatened to give both of us to social services once This was after dad had left. The impact that statement had on me has stayed with me for over 40 years! Perhaps she meant it at the time, perhaps not. Either way, I think it was a measure of how she wasn’t coping with us on her own. I’m not surprised with 2 adolescents on her hands, one following hot on the heels of the other in terms of age.

Life with mum was good and she did the very best for us but there were some things that put distance between us. My reaction, on leaving home, was to almost pretend it wasn't there. I often didn't call my mother for months at a time. I went home on leave but really used the house as a base, I guess.

I didn't have much contact with my father during that time either. He wrote to me a few times but after a while I neglected to write back and then I wasn't writing or phoning at all. He wrote to tell me grandma had died but I don't think I even replied. I wouldn't have known what to say. I didn't go to the funeral. Just over 2 years later he was dead. I was 19.

I remember feeling a sense of love for him once, something that continued at first after he'd left home. That feeling seemed to tail away and I realised I couldn't have him in the way I wanted to. He'd started to live a very different life-style by now. The love faded to indifference and some of the first bricks in my walls of defence went into place. I started to keep people out as well as keeping myself in. I also had other good reason to have a wall of defence as I was, by then, growing up gay in the attitudes, prejudices, and lack of understanding of the 1960's and 70's. I was terrified of being 'found out'. Being in the RAF didn't help and the walls grew stronger because of that as well. Drugs helped numb me from having to think about it or deal with it.

As the years went on and I started to realise I missed having my dad, I recognised even more the traits in me that came from him. It was my only sense of connection to him. I had no photographs and I was increasingly unsure of my memory of him, particularly of what he looked like. However tentative a connection it was, the sticky tape, not the first, was being applied to the holes, the gaps, in my life.

I was using bits of flawed memory to shore up the gaps in my sense of identity and belonging. To some extent it worked but I had no-one who knew dad anymore to talk to about him. All the real connections had gone. Gap 3 Perhaps part of my roaming life-style came from this as well. With no sense of belonging to a family, I also didn't really feel I belonged anywhere. I'd moved every few years from the age of 10 and didn't know which place to call 'home'. I had no roots to speak of.

Connection I built up my own roots in my own way but it was an all-encompassing root called England. Moving to Goldhanger changed all that. It felt more like 'home' than anywhere else I had ever lived. We made friends very quickly and lived through some of their trials and tribulations with them, cementing relationships quite firmly. After the break up of my relationship with my partner I realised I needed to move back to the village after spending a year away. I was very fortunate in securing somewhere to live and have been here ever since – I don't want to move away again. Not yet.

Gap My partners family very rapidly became ‘my’ family. i really felt a part of it with him and with them. I looked forward to them having children, I discussed things with them that they didn’t want to take to their parents. I was like step-dad, uncle and big brother rolled into one. But I was always aware I wasn’t part of their family. I was transient and sure enough I left in the end.

A big part of me has wondered whether I really did the right thing. If I can get on with my ex-partner as well as I do now and can discuss things openly and without any fear of damaging things, why couldn’t I stay and work it out? These are questions I’m going to have to ponder later. Suffice to say I didn’t.

Coast – A Settler Welcomed

2010-09-07T20:54:00.002+01:00

The closing lines of Coast (BBC2) this week were:

“Our coast welcomes settlers and repels invaders.”

There’s something special about living by the coast. The big wide skies, the reflection of light on water, the smell, the sounds of the birds, the movement of air as the tide comes in and goes out again, the stillness at high tide on a calm day.

It is also the first place where I have ever felt ‘at home’. A place that welcomed me and helped me to settle. The village I live in plays a major part of that sense of feeling at home but then so did Maldon when I moved there over 20 years ago. 18 of those years have been spent here, in Goldhanger.

That’s the longest I have ever lived in one town in my life. I feel I can finally say this is where I belong and that it is also where I come from – placewise. I’m finding out where I really come from through my aunt and uncle – from family.

All the Time in the World

2010-07-24T13:01:00.001+01:00

Yaay!!!

2 weeks off work starts here. I’m looking forward to not knowing what time of day it is or even what day it is. I just want to be.

RainyMood.com

2010-07-22T21:10:00.000+01:00

RainyMood.com

This is wonderful if you love the sound of rain. Open the webpage and just leave it to play in the background.

Altered State of Mind

2010-06-20T03:04:00.001+01:00

When I was aged about 9 or 10, I discovered I could do something that I later realised changed not only my perception of the world outside and inside me, it also altered my state of mind in the moment of it happening. Or was it me altering my state of mind that changed my perception of the world at that moment?

It was also something I brought with me when the family moved when I was 101/2. It was a familiar comfort amongst new and strange surroundings.

I would lie in bed staring at the closed curtains aglow with the last light of day or the light of the night-time world outside. I suppose it all started by going into a day-dream (a trance-like state in itself) and I realised the window seemed to be going further away from me and becoming smaller as it became more distant. At the same time I felt a sensation in my back teeth as though they had swelled like balloons and were now too big for my head but they were still inside my mouth. The sensation spread through my head to the rest of my body. My whole body began to feel larger as if I were growing or expanding.

So now I felt as though I was very large and the window was very far away. I knew it was an illusion and eventually I could switch quite quickly between seeing it 'normally' and seeing it in that strange circumstance again. I wasn't doing this consciously at first, it just started to happen. It was shortly after that I learnt I could induce the state of mind consciously.

Over time I learned that I could also bring about a 'double' state of seeing the window small and distant and feeling very large and of feeling that I was very, very, small and the window was very large, both at the same time.

I now realise that one of the first things I had to do to produce this effect was to still my mind. It was what had happened as a result of going into a day-dream state and now I found I could do it at will. I could fade out the chatter in my head as though I had walked into a large, quiet room and left all my thoughts outside with the door open. I was aware of things going through my head but could keep them at a distance. It was like reaching a point where everything stilled itself. I felt as though I was floating and had almost no feeling of lying in a bed. My whole being was poised on a pin-point. A breath either way and the experience would start to crumble. Sometimes I could get it back, sometimes I couldn’t.

In later life, when I investigated the delights and tortures of visualisation and meditation, I used similar techniques to the small boy in me to bring about the right state of mind. It enabled me to gain the mental and physical poise required for the exercise in hand.

Life’s Truth?

2010-06-08T18:23:00.001+01:00

"Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive."

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749-1832)

New Moon over Abberton Reservoir

2010-01-17T19:47:00.001Z

This evening a new moon hung low in the sky, reborn after a 3 day absence, a sliver of a crescent sinking until it appeared hazy and almost red. I stopped as I drove across Abberton reservoir to drink in the view. To the left of it hung Mars, shining brightly, their reflections glowing in the almost still waters like smudges on a painters canvas. The sky was clear and Orion to the South, the Pleiades overhead, and the Milky Way were clearly visible. Behind me the glow of Colchester, like a distant fire, lit the sky and the shores of the reservoir.

It was one of those sights I could have gazed at for hours, but the moon was sinking fast and as I neared home it was so low in the sky it disappeared now and again behind the gentle undulations of the Essex countryside.

The Wisdom of the Ancients

2010-01-15T11:24:00.000Z

As far as I understood it in “The Secret Life of Chaos” (previous post), a simple mathematical theory explains the simplicity of the order of the universe. The universe may start out as dust but it is the external influences on all things that make them different. The external influences feed back on the order of things and brings about change. This is what makes chaos out of order, what makes one thing different from another. It seems to me that chaos and order are one and the same thing operating in a cycle.

We humans are here for the same reason a zebra has its stripes. It is the external influences on the order of all things that brought about the formation of our individual cells, our flesh and blood, our ancestors, our world, our universe, in the way we exist in it now.

Not for the first time I began to wonder if I was listening to something from the philosophy of the ancient Chinese rather than to modern science. I got the same feeling when learning something, in my own humble way, about quantum physics.

I was compelled to look through the I Ching (Book of Changes) and I came up with the following extract:

“There are conditions of equilibrium, in which a certain harmony prevails, and conditions of disturbed equilibrium, in which confusion prevails. The reason is that there is a system of order pervading the entire world. When, in accordance with this order, each thing is in its appropriate place, harmony is established. Such a tendency towards order can be observed in nature. The places attract related elements, as it were, so that harmony may come about. However, a parallel tendency is also at work. Not only are things determined by their tendency toward order: they move also by virtue of forces imparted to them, so to speak, mechanically from the outside. Hence it is not possible for equilibrium to be attained under all circumstances, for deviations may occur, bringing with them confusion and disharmony.”

Taken from the Richard Wilhelm translation, Book II, Part I, Chapter 1, p.282

The passage seems to me to explain the science behind chaos and order in a parallel way. The chapter begins by saying,

“the Book of Changes makes a distinction between three kinds of change: nonchange, cyclic change, and sequent change. Nonchange is the background against which change is made possible. For in regard to any change there must be some fixed point to which the change can be referred; otherwise there can be no definite order and everything is dissolved in chaotic movement”.

So are we here because of an ordered chaos underlying and forming the universe?

To take the ancient wisdom further, there also seems to be a relationship between the formation of the eight trigrams in the Book of Changes, which form the 64 hexagrams, and the DNA sequence (see here on Wikipedia).

Don’t ask me what it means but,

“the codons of a gene are copied into messenger RNA by RNA polymerase. This RNA copy is then decoded by a ribosome that reads the RNA sequence by base-pairing the messenger RNA to transfer RNA, which carries amino acids. Since there are 4 bases in 3-letter combinations, there are 64 possible codons (4³ combinations)”.

This is where it starts to go a bit beyond my comprehension.

What I can see, though, is the parallel between this and the explanation of the formation of the trigrams and hexagrams of the I Ching:

“From the doubling of the two polar primary forces (yin and yang), there arise four images corresponding with the four seasons. Through the addition of another line, there arise the eight trigrams. This in turn gives us the 64 hexagrams”!

The Chinese aren’t the only people who seem to have had knowledge of things only now being realised in Western science. In ancient India they had knowledge of Fibonacci numbers, which underlie the Golden Ratio (see here on Wikipedia) . . . but that’s another subject matter.

The Secret Life of Chaos

2010-01-14T23:50:00.002Z

Broadcast: BBC4 Thursday 14 January 2010.

The Secret Life of Chaos.

Chaos theory has a bad name, conjuring up images of unpredictable weather, economic crashes and science gone wrong. But there is a fascinating and hidden side to Chaos, one that scientists are only now beginning to understand.

It turns out that chaos theory answers a question that mankind has asked for millennia - how did we get here?

In this documentary, Professor Jim Al-Khalili sets out to uncover one of the great mysteries of science - how does a universe that starts off as dust end up with intelligent life? How does order emerge from disorder?

It's a mindbending, counterintuitive and for many people a deeply troubling idea. But Professor Al-Khalili reveals the science behind much of beauty and structure in the natural world and discovers that far from it being magic or an act of God, it is in fact an intrinsic part of the laws of physics. Amazingly, it turns out that the mathematics of chaos can explain how and why the universe creates exquisite order and pattern.

And the best thing is that one doesn't need to be a scientist to understand it. The natural world is full of awe-inspiring examples of the way nature transforms simplicity into complexity. From trees to clouds to humans - after watching this film you'll never be able to look at the world in the same way again.

Useful References: Alan Turing (Wikipedia); Alan Turing (by his biographer); Benoit Mandelbrot (Wikipedia); Mandelbrot Applet.

Steps on a Profound, Perfect Journey

2010-01-12T00:19:00.001Z

I advertise myself as “Past the half century mark. Still growing up and still getting it wrong.” Somebody very kindly left a comment on "Look Well To This Day For It Is Life" to tell me I’m not getting it wrong and that life is just a series of steps along the way. I’m very grateful that they took their precious time to read my entry and to write a response. Thank you, whoever you are.

While I realise they are right, I like the “… still getting it wrong” bit. It has a mischievous ring to it. So I decided, after some deliberation, to keep it.

I kinda like the idea of never getting to the point where I have life sewn up and getting it right. I’m here to learn and I want to continue to learn right up to the end. It’s half the fun of living. I know it’s not about getting it wrong either. It’s the ‘ah’s’ and ‘ooh’s’ and ‘aha’s’ of each step of the way that makes life exciting and helps me to grow.

So, Parker's Pen, whoever you may be, thank you for being another step along my way, part of my ramblings and wonderings and for making them matter. And thank you for sharing your story about your friend. I never found the poem you mentioned but I will continue to look.

Here’s to many more steps on my profound, perfect journey.

Reading & Meditation

2010-01-10T19:27:00.002Z

I’ve just managed to hear the last part of Open Book on Radio 4. It seems I’ll have to wait a while for it to be available on iPlayer. Mariella Frostrup was talking to Edmund White and it was interesting to hear him say that part of him would have liked to have settled down and to have had children. Coming from a gay writer it’s nice to know I’m not alone in that sentiment.

Listening to the programme made me realise how little I’ve read lately and some of what the act of reading means to me. I’ve loved reading since I can remember. My mother always encouraged it and I could read very well by the time I started school. I would often take home the book that was being read in class and finish it at home that day, eager for the next book and impatient that I would have to go over it again and again. In hindsight, this allowed me to learn more and more about the language I use, and the subtleties of language used in any written work.

My English teacher in senior school encouraged me to look at what I was reading even more. Through him I learnt that Shakespeare and Chaucer weren’t just old writers who didn’t make any sense, they were accomplished authors who managed to convey a great deal in the language they used.

Reading is another way of looking at the world. The use of words that sometimes have little to do with the subject matter can vividly describe the subject matter itself. Poetry is a classic example of this. Reading and writing helps expand the mind, opening it out like a flower to encompass experiences and situations that I have no knowledge of and allowing me to grasp what they might feel like and look like.

Writing is the same. I must think about how I am going to describe a thing or a situation in a way that others will begin to grasp my meaning. This necessitates analysing something to find the deeper meaning in order to be able to describe it. This exercises the mind. As with physical exercise our brains need exercising too. This is what keeps us fit, healthy and strong.

So, reading and writing help us to learn about ourselves and the world around us. They promote conversation, bring people together, and stimulate our minds. They are the stuff that anarchy, religion, philosophy and science are born of – and give birth to.

Reading must also have a physical effect. I can laugh and cry at a story or written account and I can feel enormously happy or incredibly sad or angry. While I am reading something these emotions are very real in the experiencing, even though the situation is artificial. It is well known that emotions have a physical effect on the body and mind because of the production of hormones and chemicals.

I saw a programme on TV a while back that explored what reading can do to somebody’s brain. For a process that is not naturally learned, like speech and walking, it has an enormous effect. It exercises and increases memory, brings about empathy through glimpses into other people’s lives – however real or fictional, and it encourages a continuation of learning through trying to grasp the meaning of what is written.

Apart from reporting on the experiments carried out on the brain, the programme talked to people who were formally illiterate, or who may have not read much in their lives. Once they had found the right encouragement they began to read more avidly. All the things I have mentioned above were increased after time. One chap, a formal criminal, had even said that the more reading he did the more it made him think about the effect his former actions had on the people he carried out crimes against - something that had never entered his mind before. A clear example of empathy.

Tanya’s Flowers early this morning

2009-12-20T09:41:00.001Z

Sitting in a shaft of sunlight.

Denver King

2009-08-10T20:28:00.000+01:00

Please get in touch if you read this. You can contact me here: http://www.learncalligraphy.co.uk/contact.html (it’s my own website).

I’d love to hear from you!

St. Benet’s Abbey

2009-07-14T22:42:00.001+01:00

– Sunday 12th July 2009

The plaque telling you all about it.Inside looking out. The arch of the gatehouse inside the windmill tower.

Relief on the archway. Part of the tower.Inside the windmill tower.A boat on the Broads.The other archway to the gatehouse. Side on. The archway through the windmill.Underneath the arches.

Barbequed Bananas …

2009-06-01T21:46:00.001+01:00

We’ve just had the hottest weekend of the year.

Mick & Carole and Rick & Siewkeen came over for the afternoon on Saturday. We sat in the garden, talking and eating and drinking. It was one of those afternoons I love; surrounded by friends having a good time together.

On Sunday we spent the afternoon at Heybridge Basin and came home to barbeque some burgers and onions, and bananas stuffed with rolos for dessert. Pure indulgence and heavenly.

The whole weekend seemed to last and last, until Sunday evening came and Ian had to go home. Apart from that, I didn’t have a care in the world and didn’t have anything to think about but the moment to hand.

Fundamental Truth

2009-05-22T22:20:00.001+01:00

It seems odd now, finishing that last post with, “… And I’m happy”. Squonk had not long died and I was, and still am, very sad. But I’m also happy. I’ve got someone to look forward to every week. I’ve also got someone to miss every week, in Ian and in Squonk. It’s all a bit of a mixture of contradictory emotions: sadness and loss; excitement and belonging; contentment and disbelief.

But then,

“Life is not the way it's supposed to be.

It's the way it is …..

The way we cope with it, is what makes the difference”.

A statement that goes well with another fundamental truth,

“No-one ever said life was going to be easy”.

I read both those statements somewhere and they struck me for the simplicity and truth contained in each of them. Life isn’t easy, it’s rarely how we would like it to be, so what’s the point of trying to assert ‘control’ over something we seem to have no control over? Now and again it’s good to let go of any sense of control and take a chance. You will never know what the result might have been if you don’t.

Once we’re born, we’re destined to die ; that’s the only absolute certainty in life … death! If we only get one shot at life maybe we really only get one shot at everything in life too. Weigh up the odds by all means, make sure you believe in what you are doing and then go for it. What have you really got to lose?

More importantly, what have I got to lose?

Ups, Downs and Happiness

2009-05-13T23:19:00.001+01:00

My beautiful little mate, Squonk, was killed on the road a fortnight ago. I miss her and so does her sister. Squiggle’s now coming to me more than she used to and sitting in my lap. I’m getting the head-butts Squonk would have got. It still seems empty putting one lot of food down and seeing one cat in the window when I come home. Much of Squiggle’s miaowing seems to me to be asking where her sister is. That makes it feel emptier.

On the ‘up’-side I met Ian a few weeks ago. We get along really well. Similar sense of humour, both talk for England, both enjoy a pint or two, like similar foods, enjoy cooking, love wandering around the shops and stopping for coffee and cakes, laid-back and easy-going …. What more can I say?

I’ve been more open and honest about myself to myself and to him than I think I’ve ever been in the past. And I’m happy.

Life

2009-05-05T20:53:00.001+01:00

Life is not the way it's supposed to be..

It's the way it is..

The way we cope with it, is what makes the difference.

Taxi!

2009-04-27T18:15:00.001+01:00

I followed a taxi home from work today.

It had the registration BU5 2 PUB

I thought that was rather neat.

A Saturday evening walk

2009-04-05T23:27:00.001+01:00

Plane Language?

2009-04-02T23:15:00.001+01:00

I was watching BBC News this morning and there was a report on the tragic loss of another helicopter in the North Sea off Aberdeen. The spokeswoman for the Coastguard detailed the resources they had out searching for wreckage and survivors. This included “fixed wing assets”. I can only presume she meant aircraft.

The word “aircraft” is 7 letters and 2 words less than “fixed wing assets” and is far more understandable.

Why, oh why, do we invent unnecessary terms for words that already exist and which already adequately describe the subject matter to hand?

Whatever happened to the Plain English lobby? While leaflets and posters are now required to be written in plain English so that the subject is plainly understood by all and sundry, it seems there are sections of society who are determined to expand our language for their own sense of self-importance and at the cost of understanding to the rest of society.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Life-like walking female robot

2009-03-17T22:15:00.001Z

It’s not quite life-like in its gait but it’s spooky.

Life-like walking female robot

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Life-like walking female robot

Oldest English words Identified

2009-02-27T23:33:00.001Z

Some of the oldest words in English have been identified, scientists say. Reading University researchers claim "I", "we", "two" and "three" are among the most ancient, dating back tens of thousands of years.

Their computer model analyses the rate of change of words in English and the languages that share a common heritage. The team says it can predict which words are likely to become extinct - citing "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" as probable first casualties.

"We use a computer to fit a range of models that tell us how rapidly these words evolve," said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading. "We fit a wide range, so there's a lot of computation involved; and that range then brackets what the true answer is and we can estimate the rates at which these things are replaced through time." Sound and concept Across the Indo-European languages - which include most of the languages spoken from Europe to the Asian subcontinent - the vocal sound made to express a given concept can be similar. New words for a concept can arise in a given language, utilising different sounds, in turn giving a clue to a word's relative age in the language.

At the root of the Reading University effort is a lexicon of 200 words that is not specific to culture or technology, and is therefore likely to represent concepts that have not changed across nations or millennia.

"We have lists of words that linguists have produced for us that tell us if two words in related languages actually derive from a common ancestral word," said Professor Pagel. When we speak to each other we're playing this massive game of Chinese whispers Mark Pagel, University of Reading "We have descriptions of the ways we think words change and their ability to change into other words, and those descriptions can be turned into a mathematical language," he added.

The researchers used the university's IBM supercomputer to track the known relations between words, in order to develop estimates of how long ago a given ancestral word diverged in two different languages. They have integrated that into an algorithm that will produce a list of words relevant to a given date.

"You type in a date in the past or in the future and it will give you a list of words that would have changed going back in time or will change going into the future," Professor Pagel told BBC News. "From that list you can derive a phrasebook of words you could use if you tried to show up and talk to, for example, William the Conqueror."

That is, the model provides a list of words that are unlikely to have changed from their common ancestral root by the time of William the Conqueror. Words that have not diverged since then would comprise similar sounds to their modern descendants, whose meanings would therefore probably be recognisable on sound alone. However, the model cannot offer a guess as to what the ancestral words were. It can only estimate the likelihood that the sound from a modern English word might make some sense if called out during the Battle of Hastings. Dirty business.

What the researchers found was that the frequency with which a word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that the most common words tend to be the oldest ones. For example, the words "I" and "who" are among the oldest, along with the words "two", "three", and "five". The word "one" is only slightly younger.

William the Conqueror (Getty) Time-travellers would find a few sounds familiar in William's words The word "four" experienced a linguistic evolutionary leap that makes it significantly younger in English and different from other Indo-European languages. Meanwhile, the fastest-changing words are projected to die out and be replaced by other words much sooner.

For example, "dirty" is a rapidly changing word; currently there are 46 different ways of saying it in the Indo-European languages, all words that are unrelated to each other. As a result, it is likely to die out soon in English, along with "stick" and "guts". Verbs also tend to change quite quickly, so "push", "turn", "wipe" and "stab" appear to be heading for the lexicographer's chopping block.

Again, the model cannot predict what words may change to; those linguistic changes are according to Professor Pagel "anybody's guess".

High fidelity "We think some of these words are as ancient as 40,000 years old. The sound used to make those words would have been used by all speakers of the Indo-European languages throughout history," Professor Pagel said. "Here's a sound that has been connected to a meaning - and it's a mostly arbitrary connection - yet that sound has persisted for those tens of thousands of years."

The work casts an interesting light on the connection between concepts and language in the human brain, and provides an insight into the evolution of a dynamic set of words. "If you've ever played 'Chinese whispers', what comes out the end is usually gibberish, and more or less when we speak to each other we're playing this massive game of Chinese whispers. Yet our language can somehow retain its fidelity.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | 'Oldest English words' identified

Positive Feedback

2009-02-21T21:00:00.001Z

There seems to have been some positive feedback from the radio show last week. I got a text from Kath in the week to tell me the manager of Saint FM gave a ‘fantastic report’. I think he was also talking about the 2 extra ad hoc hours we did. A couple of the other DJ’s also gave positive feedback. It’ll be interesting to hear the CD recording.

I’ve yet to see Kath to talk to her about it some more and find out what has been said. I’m still seriously considering doing my own show if there’s room on the airwaves. At the very least I’d like to help Kath with her own show again.

Radio Debut

2009-02-17T20:45:00.000Z

Today I was on local radio. Saint FM to be precise. Broadcasting to the Maldon and Dengie area from St. Peter’s School in Burnham.

Kath persuaded me to go on her show, “The Universal Therapy Show”, after I’d talked to her about my re-union with my Aunt and Uncle and Cousin. She thought there would be an interested audience out there so I obliged.

Much of what I’ve written about here was talked about; finding and meeting Uncle Fred and Auntie Joan, what impact that seems to have had on me and relationships in general, researching family trees. I felt relaxed and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

It got to the end of the hour and the 2 people who were supposed to take over the next show didn’t arrive. Kath asked me if I was alright to hang around while she took the show, I said yes.

We bantered and bounced off each other and I found horoscopes on the internet and read them out and got the hang of the sliders and buttons that control the microphone and the music.

By the time we finished I felt I really could do my own show.

Saint FM is an independent community radio station licensed by Ofcom, governed by a board of directors and based at St. Peter's High School in Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex.

Burning Bridges

2009-02-17T19:10:00.001Z

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”

-- Tom Stoppard --

A Question of Attraction

2009-02-16T20:42:00.001Z

What is about some people that causes an excitement, an instant attraction?

A man came to the office today to drop in a quote for some work for us and I went down to answer the door. He was tall, roughly my age, rugged with slightly pock-marked skin, and fairly good looking. If I’d passed him in the street I might not have thought much about him. But it was his manner that instantly attracted me the minute he started talking.

He stood close, reached out and touched my shoulder in an inclusive manner, smiled a lot, asked my name, smelt of a nice aftershave (which was at odds with his jeans and Hi-Viz jacket).

I wanted to stand closer to him when I felt that tingle go through my stomach and my arms and legs. Of course, he may have just wanted to endear himself to me, and in turn to the organisation, because he hoped to do the work he was quoting for. He would have known he was in competition with at least 2 others.

But I felt more than that. I wanted to ask him more about himself. I wanted to ask him to stay longer. I wanted to call him back and ask him about his terrier that was perched on the dashboard of his van. I wanted to say I was an animal lover too. I didn’t want him to go.

It all seems unreasonable now but the memory has lingered in my mind and in my gut – that hot rush you get when you are attracted to someone. It’s that feeling that has lingered all day.

He may not even remember me now. He may not have taken much notice of me when he stood there talking to me. I may never know.

It’s not something I’ve felt often and it was unexpected. The thing I’m curious about is what causes it? What made me feel that when he may well not have done?

Short Trousers

2009-02-14T00:32:00.002Z

I just heard on QI this evening that to save cloth in the second world war turnups on trousers were banned and boys had to wear shorts until the age of 12. This idea obviously carried on beyond the war as I can remember (like all other boys) having to wear shorts until I went to secondary school. And I was born in 1954! It seemed quite grown up to eventually move on to wearing long trousers. I don’t remember when turnups came back into being though.

Look Well To This Day For It Is Life

2009-02-11T13:14:00.001Z

I seem to be reading books I need lately. I seem to be choosing books I need. Books about love, life and how to move forward. How life springs from death but more importantly how life springs from allowing yourself to mourn death … the death of loved ones and the things you love. It can only be through mourning these things that you can truly allow yourself to live.

Mourning/Morning = a beginning which comes about through an end. How odd that two words that seem so far apart can have similar meaning to me now.

There will be moments throughout the rest of my life which I will long to tell my parents about – when I will have to love them and leave them over and over again (acknowledgement to Julia Gregson – ‘East of the Sun’). I’ve felt those moments throughout my life but chose to block them out as they got too painful. The pain is many things; the love I had, the love I never thought I had, the love I lost, the love I chose to throw away. I never allowed myself to really mourn those losses and move on. It would have meant feeling a sense of belonging and loss in a world I was determined to live in on my own. But I’m coming to realise that the desolation of living on my own is more painful than the desolation of losing someone close to me and acknowledging it.

How can I move on if I don’t acknowledge that lost love? And is it really ever lost? I carry it with me in many ways. It seems now that to carry it forward with me is to allow myself to love and live.

I thought it strange that when I finally got the pictures of my father that I had longed for that I missed him more than ever. 35 years later! Perhaps it’s not so strange after all. Looking at the photographs was like facing up to him and facing up to the loss of him. I can see in the pictures of him holding me, without a shadow of a doubt, that he loved me. I can see that my mother loved me too. It’s written in their faces. After all these years of wondering, now I know. With the pain comes comfort and I hope it is the comfort that will ease the pain.

East of the Sun made me weep uncontrollably towards the end because it touched so brightly on something that flared inside me.

Look well to this Day
For it is Life...
the very Best of Life!
In its brief course lie all
the Realities and Truths of Existence
the Joy of Growth!
the Splendour of Action!
the Glory of Power!

For Yesterday is but a memory
and Tomorrow is only a vision
but Today if lived well makes
every yesterday a Memory of Happiness
and every tomorrow a Vision of Hope
Look well therefore to this day.

(Ancient Sanskrit Poem)

Time for Contemplation

2009-02-08T19:46:00.001Z

I thought it had been a lot longer since I last wrote anything here. I was surprised to find it was only early January. The times I’ve sat down to write and then closed the page without writing anything. It’s like wanting to approach something and then shying away from it when I get too close.

The meaning of life I’ve been looking for has been becoming more apparent lately but also becomes more elusive the closer I get to it. I can only liken it to chasing a kite that has caught the wind and I’m running after it, grasping at the tail.

The revelations of finding family and finding a sense of belonging have started to cement some of my identity for me. I feel like I know who I am and where I came from more than I ever did before. But there are still unanswered questions that I think only I can answer now.

Trawling the internet today I came across the blog of Alistair Appleton; a TV presenter, Buddhist and therapist.

This page in particular struck a chord with me http://alistairappleton.com/blog/?p=609 and I would like to quote excerpts from it. It describes in a way that I would find difficult to put into words what I identify with almost absolutely:

“For me, aged 6, I made a decision to deal with the singular fact of my sexuality. Knowing that I was gay and my desire was contrary to everyone else around me, I made a decision that I would have to survive in the world on my own ….. always alone, always under threat, and only the most extreme fearful self-consciousness will protect him …… that paranoid thought (”It’s me, alone, against the world, for ever”) ran like a scarlet thread through my entire life, colouring every stage of my teenage, adult years. Obviously, at some point, I let go of it as a literal belief but - because it remained unconscious and unquestioned - that sense of fear and distrust and that extreme, paralysing self-consciousness became the fundamental building block of my personality. It totally pre-programmed my relationships to failure, of course”

I couldn’t have said this before I read it but I knew instantly that it was me!

Sometime way back when, I decided I was on my own in the world. I think fear of being found out and anger – that those closest to me couldn’t see the fear - were mixed up in the decision. I distanced myself from my parents and it adversely affected every other relationship I’ve ever had.

Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, when homosexuality was not only a taboo subject but also illegal meant I was outside the scope of what I saw as ‘normal’ life. ‘Normal’ being the illusion created by me, and for me, by everyday input and perception.

I had thought I’d come to terms with my sexuality completely. I’ve been quite open about it for years and all my friends and the people who matter to me know about it. They also know it’s never been the defining part of my personality. I’ve always said it’s as much a part of me as having brown hair and hazel eyes and being level-headed and understanding.

I’ve never been a part of the ‘gay’ scene and still don’t want to be. There isn’t a ‘straight’ scene and I don’t see why I should scream to the world that I’m gay when there is no need for the rest of the world to scream they are straight.

It’s only one aspect of me as a whole person but that aspect has kept me lonely and apart from a closeness I crave. It even surprises me sometimes that I have friends who’ve been around for over 20 years! It’s also a very comforting thought in contrast to other relationships that haven’t lasted. But then I can keep my friends at bay to some extent. The question is, ‘Do I need to?’

Friendships have often been like being on a piece of elastic for me. I get close and draw back, get close and draw back. I can keep my friends at a distance that a life-partnership can’t be kept at. The solidity of a life-partner is something I’m not used to and have always been guarded against. It’s a bit like being as close to my parents in a way I couldn’t be when I was much younger.

And now I’m running out of steam and need to finish for now. I’ve touched the nerve I never thought I’d touch and it’s a bit raw.

Time now for contemplation ………….

Ice Circle

2009-01-17T19:19:00.001Z

From: www.dailymail.co.uk 13th January 2009

A disc of ice, measuring 10ft across, was spotted in Devon during last week's freeze, swirling on the River Otter near Honiton.

Ice circles are known to appear in the Arctic, Scandinavia and Canada, but this is thought to be the first seen in Britain. They occur at bends in the river where the accelerating water creates a force called 'rotational shear', which breaks off a chunk of ice and twists it around. As the disc rotates, it grinds against surrounding ice - smoothing into a perfect circle.

Both men were amazed by the slowly-rotating 10ft-wide and perfectly circular phenomenon which was stationary in the current. It was about 6ft from the bank near where a stream joined the river.

'It was about 10ft in diameter and, on timing it, we discovered it was completing a revolution in four minutes and ten seconds."

Having Family

2009-01-17T19:11:00.001Z

Since meeting Auntie Joan and Uncle Fred again I've been back for Boxing Day and spoken on the phone a few times. Joan will ring and say, "It's your Auntie Joan," with a little laugh that I know means how happy she is to be able to say it. I feel just as happy hearing her say it and it gives me a huge warm feeling and makes me smile all over.

I spoke to them (well, I spoke to Joan as Fred doesn't hear on the phone too well and leaves phone calls to her) this afternoon and we nattered about the beauty and wonder of the world. She was describing an ice circle that formed on a river in England somewhere recently and told me how it is often found in Scandinavian countries but not usually over here. I could hear the wonder in her voice and she said she thinks this attitude must run in the family. Steve is fascinated by the beauty of the world, as am I. I get the feeling that my dad was too.

Fred is 82 on Monday and from what Joan said she is finding ageing a bit frightening. But then she changes the subject and moves on. It's not the first time she's mentioned it. I think both of them are older than my grandparents were when they died so I guess the course of time is making itself felt. I don't know about Fred's parents yet. I remember how anxious I got in the run up to my 44th birthday. Dad was 44 when he died. And now I'm approaching the age at which my mother died as well. It makes you aware of your mortality.

I must ask Fred about his family when I go over next. I don't know anything about his side of the family and it will give me the chance to concentrate on him and his history rather than chattering on about my dad. It will also give me more to add to my family tree.

A Bagful of History and the Best Birthday Ever

2009-01-09T22:52:00.001Z

My father died in 1974. That's nearly 35 years ago! I'm not sure what happened to all the photographs but I haven't seen his face since then. All I've had is a memory and I've often wondered how accurate that memory is. Do I really look like my father? Or at best, do I bear a passing resemblance? I was never sure.

I also lost touch with the rest of my family at the same time.

For the past couple of years I've been researching my family history on Ancestry.co.uk. I use a friend's login and last year we received a message from someone who said that his friend (the friend is my cousin) recognised names on my family tree and was I related to Christopher Smith? Well, that's me. So I sent a reply back and never heard anything from them. Just before Christmas I phoned my friend and asked if she could send a message to Ancestry and ask for the original message so I could try replying again.

As she was typing the message she asked me if I'd tried looking up my cousin or my aunt (my dad's sister) and uncle on BT.com or some such directory. I'm sure I tried it before but decided to try again. An address appeared that looked vaguely familiar and I decided I had nothing to lose by writing and asking if this person was my uncle. On the 12th December 2008 I posted a letter at 12 noon. On the 13th December I had a message on my answerphone from my aunt. She started by saying, "Hello Christopher. It's your Auntie Joan." I gave a triumphant whoop and burst into tears.

I had to phone my friend and cry all over her before I could muster myself to phone my aunt back and the following day I went to visit them.

It was almost as though 35 years had never passed. Both my aunt and uncle are now in their 80's and have all their faculties about them but they are still my aunt and uncle. They'd often wondered what had happened to me. My cousin came over as well. He was about 13 the last time I saw him and he's now 48!

My aunt brought down the obligatory boxes full of photographs ... and there was my father. My father as a young man. My father with his parents (I hadn't got any photos of my grandparents either). My father and my mother on their wedding day. My father with me as a baby. We only went through one box of photographs and there are many more to look through yet.

I came home with a bag full of photographs and I haven't stopped looking at them since. When I left my aunt and uncle I told them I felt as though I'd had a hole in my life that I'd covered in sticky plaster and sellotape and didn't really know it was there but now I felt as though I had something to fill the hole with. I felt more complete. I feel as though I have an identity, some solid foundations.

The day of the visit was the weekend before my birthday and 2 weeks before Christmas. It was the best birthday and Christmas present I could have wished for. I went back on Boxing Day and have spoken to them on the phone as well.

I've kept 2 of the photographs of my father in my wallet and must have shown them to everyone I know. The VERY BEST part is that everyone I've shown them to has said how much I look like my father. They'll never know what that does for me. I can feel myself swell to bursting with pride.

Mind Boggling Thought ...

2008-12-22T01:16:00.001Z

If the Universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? And what did the Big Bang expand into before the Universe was there?

A Lovely Winter Poem

2008-11-22T22:34:00.001Z

I found this beautiful winter poem and thought it might be a comfort to you.

It was to me, and it's very well written.

ENJOY!

-----------------------------------------------------

WINTER
a poem by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

F**k Me!

It's Cold!

BBC - Radio 4 - Afternoon Reading

2008-11-21T16:11:00.001Z

The Mural At Frau Krausers by James Hopkin, read by Tom Goodman-Hill.

The narrator stares at the green mural at Frau Krausers - a seedy tavern under an iron railway bridge in Berlin. He knows he should leave, but one beer leads to another.

Producer Rosalynd Ward.

Listen again for 7 days from today.

I was listening to this on the way home from C & P's. It was brilliantly written and wonderfully read. The narrative had an almost poetic feel to it, with phrases like the description of the man at the bar with "... a grey beard thatching the place between his longing and his loneliness." While the narrative sounded natural and free-flowing, I suspect that every phrase was worked on for wording, rhythm, descriptive power, and naturalness. The whole story was dripping with brilliantly engineered prose.

A Bit of a Ramble

2008-11-20T23:20:00.000Z

Got coffee and a fag (I know, I know) and I'm ready to rumble. Not that I know what I'm writing about, coz I don't. I just thought I'd go through a ramble of today's thoughts and stuff.

Counselling last week and yesterday was interesting, to say the least. All sorts of stuff came up about what I would have wanted from my parents and didn't get. I felt really quite sad at the end of yesterday's session and didn't want it to finish. It was quite touching how my counsellor stood at the door and watched me leave. Almost as though she had felt my sadness. I must remember to feed that back to her next week.

The upshot of the 2 sessions I've had is that I feel less depressed. I was going to focus on getting me back to work yesterday but felt like I rambled through past stuff instead, but it seems to be working. I'm feeling more like going back to work. Perhaps the focus is on 'parenting' in relation to work. I feel there are things I'm not getting from my managers that I would like to get.

In the news lately is much about baby P. While the case itself is horrific I'm rather alarmed by the media focus on Haringey Social Services. What about the rest of them? There were numerous agencies involved and they are all accountable. This child was seen 60-odd times in his short, pathetic life by hospitals, doctors, the Police. That amounts to almost once a week, presuming he was seen from birth. If he wasn't seen by anyone for some months after he was born then he was seen by somebody more than once a week. If there were failings on the part of one agency it should have been picked up by another and acted upon. There are ways of forcing the hand and the fact that that hand was not forced is inexcusable.

Lord Laming's inquiry into the Victoria Climbie tragedy highlighted the need for better coordination of services. He also said that there should never be an excuse for this happening again and that those responsible for any further instances such as this would all be held to account. There is now better coordination of services but the services themselves don't seem to apply it. A public enquiry is surely the next step to take. The public have a right to know what went wrong and why.

I've just been listening to a 'comedy' on Radio 4. I'm not sure what happened to the old school of comedians but I think it's closed down. Most modern comedies are a load of crap and contain childish remarks and phrases that are supposed to pass as funny. I can only presume the audience are paid to laugh at the right moment. Short bursts of sound that come and go at the right moment. They certainly don't sound like they're particularly enjoying it. Talk about canned laughter. It resembles laughter but could be something engineered in a phonics workshop. Needless to say I turned it off.

I'm running out of steam already. It's late and I'm tired. Why do I usually feel like writing late at night? I wanted to write yesterday but nothing inspiring would come to me. Maybe because I felt like writing about the counselling but was still a bit raw from the session and wasn't sure about approaching it all again. I went for the keyboard a few times and then put it off.

Hiram B. Redfern

2008-11-02T23:28:00.001Z

"Hiram B. Redfern was a brave man until he dropped down dead." So wrote the man's wife in a reporters notebook as his body was carried from the auditorium on a stretcher.

There are few dreams that stick in the mind but this was one of them. The name 'Hiram B. Redfern' seemed so real to me after the dream that I was convinced he existed. For some reason it had a profound effect on me and I couldn't get it out of my mind for weeks. I can't even say what the effect was. It felt as though there was a deeper, almost hidden meaning that I could not quite grasp. Although the dream must have taken place over 20 years ago I still expect to come across the name one day!

We were gathered in a large hall with a curved roof that may have been domed but may not have been. I got the impression the structure was temporary. There were a large amount of people present, perhaps 500, and they all seemed to be reporters or scientists observing an area of grey rocky landscape on a huge screen at the front. The landscape was dark and pools of light dotted the barren ground like spotlights from some unseen gantry.

On the surface of the moon a small group of astronauts were bouncing in and out of the pools of light in the slo-mo manner of low gravity. It was obvious that the pools of light were sun spots and this was a scientific gathering to observe the phenomena. While I know what sun spots are, in the dream these were sun spots.

Hiram dropped dead somewhere in the middle of this event. The strange thing was, his wife was more concentrated on writing about him dying than she was about him dying. There was no indication, either, of what Hiram had done that was brave or why he had died.

And what Mrs. Redfern was doing there in the first place is unclear.

A Station Masters Son or a Mid-Life Crisis?

2008-11-02T00:09:00.001Z

Just after I moved into the house I live in now, I sat quietly one day to see what would come to me. Emptying myself and opening myself up to be receptive has worked before. It's amazing what you can find out and what you can find out you already know! It didn't take long before I had the distinct impression of a boy of about 11 or 12, whose father had something to do with a railway station. He was wearing shorts that reached to his knees and a sleeveless jumper over a shirt. There was a definite connection with this house but I can't say for certain whether he actually lived here. The nearest railway stations to here, in their day, would have been either Maldon or Tollesbury or Tiptree. The last of these, Maldon to Witham, closed in 1963 with the Beeching cuts so it must have been before that. The feeling I got from the boy was a period around 1930's - 1940's.

I looked on the internet to see what I could find out about the houses and any past inhabitants. The coastguards who lived here are listed on a website (http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/Coastguards/Table.html) but I haven't been able to find anything about railway stations or stationmasters. I happened to mention this to Grant next door one day and he said it rang a faint bell. The hairs on my neck stood on end. He couldn't place what it was but recommended some reading. Again, I looked the books up on the internet but no mention of railways or stations.

Chris suggested a trip to Essex Record Office. She wants to do some research and Doris wants to go along as well. I could do some research of my own. I'll need to sign up to ERO to start the process but that's no problem ... it's free. I think there is certain information I'll need in order to have access to any documents.

I seem to be concentrating on the past a lot lately. I've signed up to Harringayonline and delved into my long-forgotten memories and I'm fascinated by the history of the house I live in now. I think the latter is quite normal for the resident of an old house but overall, the 2 taken together and my recent state of mind make me think there's more to this than meets the eye. I'm 53yrs old - nearly 54 - I've just split with my partner and he's moved out, I'm off work with stress or depression (I'm not sure what it is sometimes), and I've had time to evaluate some of my life. Not that I've done much evaluating. My brain seems to have frozen over most of the time lately.

"If only hindsight weren't so retrospective."

Am I looking back along the road to see where I've come from?

By what route did I get here?

Will it give me any clues as to where I'm going?

So many questions, so few answers. What, after all, am I expecting by peering into the distance behind me when the way forward is, well .... forward. I've learnt in the past that acceptance is often more enlightening than trying to understand.

That's not to say I've got nothing out of this searching. I've brought to the fore memories I thought had gone forever about where I lived from the age of about 1 to 10. It all seemed inaccessible or forgotten to me. Like I'd blanked that part of my life out. Part of the reason could be that the move was such a wrench at that age that I blanked my past in order to survive the present. I had no contact with any of my old friends from Harringay after we moved so there was nothing to refresh what memories I might have had. Moving from the city out to the country was such a contrast in life style too, that I guess there was little room for remembering. I've always been good at shutting things out - forgetting places and people - ignoring, or disassociating from, situations, events, relationships.

Dad was now commuting to London every day and didn't get home til late. I can remember waiting at the stile by the railway line waiting for dad's train to pass. He would be leaning out of the window as the train slowed for Witham station, waving at us. We'd often cycle furiously down the road and wait by the little footbridge over the river for him to appear down the hill from the station.

Three years after we moved, my parents split up and dad moved out. This was to have a profound effect on me, one that echoes still today!

Dad moved to Braintree and we were on our own. And it really felt like that even though there was me, my mum and my brother. I guess that being children we looked to mum now that dad had gone and she had relied on dad until then. There was a lot of bitterness splashing around and most of it came from mum. There were some pretty awful times.

All the more reason to shut things out. My imagination flowered and I found places to go in my head that were better than where I was in life. I was able to still my mind and feel that the 'stilling' itself was balanced on a pin head. As long as I kept it balanced I was able to maintain the stillness. With it came a sense of being large and inflated and tiny all at once. I was large and I was small depending on how I thought of it at time (Quantum meditation?). I also had 'lives' in my head that I 'lived' throughout the day, whether at home or at school. I often wondered what my school mates thought of me.

Was it riding above the storm or escaping from it? You tell me. Perhaps some of each. Probably some of each, actually.

Once I went into the RAF I really lost touch with dad. He moved in with an antique dealer in Brighton, wrote to me a couple of times and I didn't reply. I think the last letter I had from him was about Grandma dying. I found that difficult enough without the blame I put on him for things that had happened and I shut him out too. When he died a few years later I put that behind me rather rapidly too. What did it mean to me anyway? He was dead and gone now and I couldn't do anything about it.

I've learnt over the years that these things come back and bite you on the arse from time to time. I think I've just been bitten again!

BBC Radio 4

2008-11-01T22:37:00.004Z

Iconoclasts

Illegal drugs can be good for you

Wednesday 29 October 2008 (rpt: Saturday 1 November at 22:15)

The scientist and writer Dr Susan Blackmore argues that drugs can be good for you. She says most of the problems of drug abuse are really caused by drug prohibition. It would be much better if we decriminalised drugs and taught young people how to use them properly and safely instead. She says that our society doesn't take the "dangerous wonder" of mind-altering chemicals seriously. As a psychologist Susan wants to understand the mind. She has experimented with hallucinogenic drugs because she wanted to learn "how to face demons and terrors, how to let go of self, how to explore the further reaches of human experience." She wants a society in which adults are free to take drugs for their own reasons: for comfort and delight, to ease pain, to inspire insight or creativity, and even to face death. Just as we can distinguish between alcohol use and alcohol abuse, so should we accept that there's a place for positive drug use.

Panel: Dr Axel Klein A lecturer in the study of addictive behaviour at the University of Kent, Dr Klein has a particular interest in the cultural contexts of drug use, the interplay of drugs and crime, and the development of drug policy at national and international level.

Dr Ken Checinski A psychiatrist and senior lecturer in addictive behaviour at St George's University Hospital, Dr Checinski has both clinical and academic expertise in the effects of drug abuse.

Sarah Graham Sarah Graham has a Priory Professional Diploma in Addictions Therapy. She works for the charity In-volve – counselling children in schools. Previously, Sarah worked in the media. She faced her addictions in 2001 and is an expert in holistic treatment models and communicating with young people. She advises Frank – the government drugs service and The Recovery Network.

..........................

I was only half listening to this but Susan Blackmore's argument sounded balanced and well thought out. To some extent I'm inclined to agree with her. The argument for decriminalising, or legalising, drug use has been put before. If it was legal and controlled there would be no need for the blackmarket and crime might drop dramatically. By controlled I mean from a health and safety point of view - quality would be controlled.

Of course, there would still be those who would abuse substances and cause themselves and others problems but there always will be. The crime that goes with drugs and selling would reduce and the sub-culture would evolve and change - hopefully for the better.

Paralympics vs Olympics

2008-11-01T17:22:00.001Z

Why do we have Paralympians (if that's the right word)? Surely, they are all Olympians? The tag immediately sets them aside as different.

TV coverage was different as well. First we had the Olympics and then we had the Paralympics. Only the latter didn't seem to get as much coverage as the former. Surely that's a form of discrimination.

I realise there will be some differences in the equipment used but I'm sure everybody, regardless of ability, could be integrated in to the Olympic Games. No difference, no separate games.

Somewhere I have the email address of the Paralympic Association, the Olympic Association and the BBC. I keep meaning to ask some questions of all of them.

Later....

I've just emailed the BBC and the British Paralympic Association. Responses will be interesting.

All About Nothing

2008-10-31T22:26:00.001Z

A blank page to a writer or an artist holds the same potential and the same fears. It has the potential to hold everything or nothing and the fear is of the first stroke you make on the page. That first mark is as important as the last one. This paragraph is my first mark.

I have no idea what I'm going to write about. I just feel like writing. All sorts of ideas keep flashing into my head so I thought I'd see where this went. I'll begin with the thing that is foremost in my mind. I'm listening to something quite jolly on Radio 3. The cats are asleep on the sofa. It's warm and cosy in here. And I've got a beer in the cupboard that I keep forgetting about.

Just after my 50th birthday I had one of those revelations that come to you through life now and again. You know, those bursts of insight that don't quite solve life's difficulties but can help with them. Once you've had one you know that it highlights the difference between knowing something and knowing something and understanding it fully. The supernova of revelation feels quite life-changing at the time but like any other burst of energy it wanes and loses its radiance. Doubt and uncertainty can creep in and you might have to remind yourself of the effect this insight had on you. Your own levels of confidence in yourself and your sense of self-belief eventually affect those revelations you have about your self.

My revelation was about me. I recall a poem about growing old disgracefully. I can't recall the title of the poem but it involved things like dragging your walking stick along the railings, spitting in the street, jumping in puddles, etc. The message was really about being yourself! Just because you're old doesn't mean you don't want to do those things. I love jumping in puddles now - and I'm 53. The content of the poem fits in with the realisation, for me, that I could do and say as I liked.

As long as I wasn't being deliberately hurtful, malicious, or criminal I could say what I liked and if somebody didn't like it then it really was their problem. I've always considered myself outspoken but I might not have been as outspoken as I thought I was. I often feared what others would think of me if I said or did what I was really feeling like doing or saying. If it damaged their perception of me would it, by default, damage my own self-esteem or self-worth? The answer often seemed to be yes. Like I give a shit anymore.

There are ways of saying things that can be as kind and thoughtful and diplomatic as you like. It's often how what is said is taken by the recipient that can cause the problems. I'm no longer afraid of the possible outcome like I used to be. Things are never as bad as you fear them to be. I realised one day that I'd overcome the fear of a result that might not happen anyway. That result certainly needn't damage my self-esteem or self-worth. It is only me who can do that.

If that sounds a bit arrogant it's because it is. That was another thing that came with being 50 - more arrogance. It's not at a dangerous level and I can't be classed as an arrogant person, it's just that I don't care. It's part of the development of my Grumpy Old Man phase, I think.

The impact, or causal effect, to stimulus external to our self is a subjective phenomena. It is our personal history, our genes, our primal instincts, that contribute towards our understanding of the outside world. In effect we all have a unique picture of the world and how it works. My picture is similar to yours but it will never be the same and I will never understand or experience it in quite the same way as you.

So I'm getting on with living in my world and experiencing it in my own way because it's comfortable and exciting to be me. I can't be anyone else anyway.

Not bad for having nothing to write about, huh?

And I still forgot about the beer! I'll have it now.

The Sound of Speech

2008-10-28T16:55:00.001Z

BBC Essex on the radio, playing some nice music.

Why do so many local radio presenters sound so alike? Particularly the men. I used to be convinced the same guy dashed from one radio station to another to present shows under different names. Their voices sound similar and they have similar patterns of speech and intonation. Perhaps they all went to the same DJ school.

And that Robert Preston! BBC business editor or something - often on Breakfast TV and Radio 4. He's on a lot lately because of the credit crunch and the recent business with the banks running out of money. He trips along in his speech in quite an awkward manner. His inflexions, tones, pauses and emphasis come at the most unexpected moments. I find it annoying and fascinating all at once.

Listening to him is like trying to negotiate an unfamiliar obstacle course. I'm constantly stumbling to keep up with his flow. I've suspected there's evidence of some sort of past speech impediment overcome, or a learned, practiced, way of speaking that seems to him to fit the purpose.

There's often a young woman in tow on these radio shows. Think Terry Wogan (he's pc though - he has a man as well). They seem to be in the background to provide some back up to the presenter, and read the weather and travel news - a kind of afterthought or second-rate presenter. Perhaps they're in training. There's one who mumbles something now and again on whatever I'm listening to at the moment.

I find the way most people speak fascinating. I love listening out for their quirks in speech and expression of speech. I love listening to their traces of accents, their inadvertent windows when their real selves show through. People also leak emotion in their manner of speech and in Freudian slips. Are puns Freudian slips? I've often wondered where the connection comes from in the train of thought that leads to the pun. There's always relevance to the initial subject of conversation.

Dawn over the Blackwater Estuary.

2008-10-28T15:56:00.001Z

28th October 2008. 05:59. Barely getting light. Couldn't sleep and it started getting light with a clear sky so I decided to go for a walk with the camera.

This is the church with a pale lit sky behind. It got colder as I walked down Fish Street and I could just make out frost on car windows in the half light. The grass on the playing field was pale and crisp underfoot. By now my ears and nose were going numb. I was glad I'd wrapped a scarf round my neck as I went out.

The view down the Estuary from the bench at the end of Goldhanger Creek. I thought it would be interesting to lean the camera on the arm of the bench and catch some of the bench in the photograph.

Across the sand spit towards the oyster shed. I loved the sky and the pools of water in the mud here. The cloud in the centre of the picture is partly reflected in the main body of water. The band of orange provides a great contrast.

Approaching the church from the field behind at the end of the walk. You can see the frost on the ground. I'd just passed the first person I'd see that morning, out walking her dog.

The stile post at the back of the church, covered in frost with a brightening sky behind. I focused this one on the sky so it darkened the foreground. You can just see the line of frost on the top of the stile post.

The same post but looking down at it so it caught the light more. Although the two pictures were taken seconds apart there's quite a difference between the two. This second one looks almost as if it were taken some time later, when it was lighter.

The church again. On the way back at the end of the walk. 06:55. Again, there's a striking contrast between this picture and the one of the back of the church above. I was ready for a nice hot cup of tea by now.

Road Map (or lack of)

2008-10-28T01:19:00.000Z

Tuesday 28.10.08 01:00

I'm not who I thought I was, am I?

I'm not what I thought I was either, am I?

I'm not the spontaneous, happy-go-lucky, accommodating, laid back person I thought I'd been. I can be all those things - and more often than not - but it can be selective at times.

If I've had a road map of life I haven't considered it. I think I've always had this picture in my head of where I want to be and strive for that. But just up the road and I come across a No Entry sign. The road's blocked and I haven't got a clue where to go now. Niadh has his side roads mapped out, but he was always good at reading maps anyway

It was something I didn't even consider before speaking to Niadh tonight. I hadn't really thought about the 'who am I?' question in depth either. Oh, I have in passing. I've felt it at times when I retreat into my home (my shell?) and just be indoors. It's like I can't get enough of being here but it gets a bit lonely and claustrophobic at times and I don't know what to do about it. The solution at the time seems to be to stay here even more because that might make it better. But that doesn't work either.

Consequently, I become more withdrawn and less adventurous and spontaneous, etc. Deep down somewhere I'd be quite happy at home with me slippers on and me cup of tea and the paper. I've turned into an old fogey!!

That's not to say I haven't got a sense of adventure. When I've done something exciting in life I've loved it. Whether it was being fired into the air on an elastic catapult in Bulgaria, camping in the Brecon Beacons or on safari in Africa, I loved it all. Whatever happened to the day out Mick and I and Rick talked about? We need to do something. I need to do something.

Solution?:- Get out and do something then. You'll appreciate being at home more.

Respite

2008-10-23T06:30:00.000+01:00

I've been signed off sick for another 2 weeks. I was getting a bit nervous about the thought of returning to work as this week wore on, so I phoned the surgery and asked if Dr. Roper would extend my certificate. I picked it up yesterday afternoon. It's amazing the amount of comfort it gave me to hold it and see the dates.

I'm not due back to work until about the 10th November.

Friends and Warmth

2008-10-22T19:43:00.001+01:00

It was only about a week ago I was moaning about none of my friends seeing if I was OK or contacting me. It's probably a bit narcissistic of me to expect them to. They show their warmth in other ways.

Like Paul asking me if I wanted to stop for something to eat one evening. Then in the middle of dinner announcing that his wife had said I was looking a bit underweight. When I asked if that was why he had asked me to stay, Chris said that she'd merely remarked I looked like I'd lost weight recently.

Then about 10 days ago Siewkeen phoned and asked me over on Sunday for a walk and a roast. It was a lovely day and we walked down to Creeksea and along to Burnham, where we stopped for a pint and a bowl of chips.

Mick's mentioned coming over to theirs and stopping the night a couple of times and I took him up on it weekend just gone.

They all know I'm going through a difficult patch and offer their help in different ways. I like being with all of them and they give me a warm feeling when I think about the times I've spent with them all. In my last post I mentioned being with them and having a laugh. That's the sort of warmth I appreciate. It makes me feel happy.

And now Mick's got in touch to say he's going to pick up the dragon's tail tomorrow and install it in Mike Springett's garden. I'm going with him.

Friends & Conversations

2008-10-21T14:15:00.001+01:00

I'd already thought about doing some visiting over the weekend but I'm not sure I'd have got round to it if Nile hadn't been here. And then Mick turned up on Friday afternoon out of the blue. I didn't know Nile was coming at that point. I was on my way out to get some shopping and he'd just pulled up in the car. We had a good chat and then I went to get Nile from the station. Mick invited me over on Saturday to spend an evening with wine or something.

Called up to the Gaffney's after getting Nile but they were out so we popped own to Doris's. I hadn't even thought that it was Friday evening and she would be working. However, JC was in and we stayed for a while.

I was leaning against the kitchen door frame chatting with him as he put the kettle on. I went for a wee and the toilet seat nearly came off. I remarked on this when I came out and JC jokingly blamed it on the kids. In his own inimitable way, looking quite serious, sounding very matter-of-fact, he launched into a diatribe about how plastic toilet seats weren't quite the ticket compared to wooden ones. He felt sure that they went skewiff after a while and there was always a line of shit down the side of the pan where you couldn't take a dump straight into the water. It used to go straight into the water but to get it to do that now he has to sit at a funny angle. I even had a vague demonstration of how he sat.

The conversation was typical JC but had a slightly surreal feel to it as well. Between him and Rick they manage to brighten any day with their honesty, openness and 'basic-ness'. Last week I had Rick talking about his piles and how they tuck them back in these days instead of cauterising them.

Saturday afternoon was spent at the Gaffney's. Doris was there as well and Susie arrived just before we left. I was relating the conversation I'd had with JC on Friday evening and couldn't get my words out for laughing. The same thing happened later when I was telling Mick & Carole about it. We also remembered that when Jack was quite young, JC was in the bath with him and lifting his legs to fart (JC that is!), only he followed through and Jack ended up scrambling frantically out of the bath as his dads turd floated towards him. The poor boy was probably only just getting over that when JC decided it wouldn't hurt to show his kids his piles!!

Saturday evening we had a Chinese take-away and some wine and sat in the conservatory most of the evening smoking. Mick took Nile to the station in Burnham when he went for the Chinese. I slept on the settee and woke about 10:30 the next morning when Carole appeared and asked if I wanted a cuppa. The rest of the morning was spent lazing about and Mick and I went for a walk along the sea wall at Mayland in the afternoon.

Following a dull overcast morning, there was blue sky and the sun was shining. The wind was a bit keen and had a definite autumnal feel to it. Our ears ached. Ozzie kept running off in the wrong direction and we simply sat down where we were and chatted while we waited for him to come back.

Disassociation?

2008-10-20T14:16:00.000+01:00

By the end of last week I'd switched off to the extent of not even knowing what day of the week it was. I seemed to be immersed only in the moment and had no thoughts of anything else. The empty-headedness wasn't a meditative state however, it was just empty-headedness .... and it was wonderful.

I kept forgetting what I was doing and as long as it wasn't dangerous it didn't matter. I must have had my wits about me somewhere to be aware of the things that did need doing, such as feeding the cats and feeding me.

Time became immaterial and irrelevant. It was like stepping off the planet again.

It was interrupted when Nile came down. He'd initially said he might come down this weekend or next. I didn't expect a phone call Friday afternoon to say he was on his way. By the time he got here I was in my own little world and wasn't very welcoming. I think I just wanted to be left alone. My focus didn't really come back until Saturday and that was only because I had someone else here.

We had a nice day Saturday, visiting friends, and he went back to London that evening. With hindsight I might have asked him to stay away if I'd known he was coming. Part of me just wanted to carry on that empty-headedness.

Tanya had tried phoning Thursday and Friday but I ignored the call. By the time I spoke to her on Saturday she was quite worried. Apparently I'd promised to phone her on Wednesday but I was so into my own little world that I forgot. I had to pull myself up a couple of times when I got talking about work - something I hadn't wanted to do but it just seemed to get hold of me and come to the boil. I started feeling angry and my face began prickling.

I'm not sure I've ever had a physical manifestation of a subjective feeling before. The prickling in my face came about more when I thought about returning to work.

More Memories

2008-10-19T21:56:00.001+01:00

It's been quite amazing for me since signing up to Harringay online. I have always had a lack of memories about school, particularly, in London and I have trouble picturing friends and classmates but I've been regaining memories I thought were lost to me. Partly, it's because I'm writing about them and exercising my memory anyway. But it's also about feeling re-connected to a place I left behind a long time ago. The responses to my blog posts and to my discussion have been warm and welcoming. Thank you Harringay.

I have to wonder, did I 'wipe' the memories of London in order to handle the separation from long-term familiar things and people? I can remember wondering how I was going to cope without my friends and familiar places. At 10yrs old it was slightly traumatic to move so far away and yet it was exciting too. I suppose the only way to handle such a move was to become part of the new life quite quickly. After all, it was all there was and there was no choice.

I have always been able to adapt quickly to uncomfortable and/or unavoidable situations. Is this where it comes from?

Texts and Intrusions

2008-10-15T11:42:00.001+01:00

I've been getting used to doing nothing. I've slept about 8 - 9 hours the past couple of nights and it's great not having the alarm clock on.

Yesterday it took me all day to do most of the washing up. Not that there was so much of it but rather that I did a bit, stopped and had a cuppa or went on the internet, or pottered somewhere else, and then went back to the washing up. It doesn't matter how long it takes me and it's a wonderful feeling.

This morning I had a text from Tanya asking me to phone her about the 23rd. I'm supposed to be helping her present some training that day. I don't normally mind her contacting me about anything but this made me feel angry. I don't want to discuss anything to do with work at the moment. I've ignored the text so far and am wondering how to respond. Maybe rather than wondering I need to respond to get it out of the way.

I've also got to phone Vernon by Friday for my weekly contact - and even this feels like an intrusion. It's something I don't want to do. Or is it something I don't want to be bothered doing? I'd just like to shut off and not have to make decisions or be committed to anything at all.

Don't Give A Shit ...

2008-10-10T16:47:00.001+01:00

Well, I'm feeling a bit calmer in myself. I keep getting bursts of work invading my mind but generally I feel like I'm letting something go. The kitchen's a tip, hoovering and dusting need doing, I've got letters to open, but I don't give a shit at the moment. I'm not doing anything for now.

Went to meet Tanya for lunch in Chelmsford. Had a good talk, which was half about her for a change. I think I've been all me .. me .. me lately. Tanya seems happy enough to let it be that way but then that's the sort of person she is. She was letting me have time to express myself .... but maybe she was avoiding her stuff as well. I don't know. We had a good chat today. She's leaving Paul and now has the ups and downs of moving out, leaving a village she loves, and moving on. I'll have to find the room to give her some space for a change. She'll need it.

The cats are outside enjoying themselves. They haven't left the garden yet and keep running inside chirping and squeaking. They seem to be loving it.

Stress and Outings

2008-10-09T18:38:00.001+01:00

I've been signed off work for 2 weeks and referred for counselling. Dr. Roper was lovely as usual: warm; gentle; smiling; calm - I always want to cuddle him. I felt quite a sense of relief, not only time off but the offer of something that could help me afterwards as well. It might be a 6 week wait before I can be seen but it's the light at the end of the tunnel. I should hear from them during my 2 weeks off.

The girls had their first outing today. It seemed as good a day as any. I'm going to have a few days relaxing so I figured it was about time.

I'd not long got back from C&P's, it was a nice afternoon and I was going out to hang out washing, so I opened the back door and encouraged them out. It took a little while to venture further than the back door step but eventually they were up the end of the garden with lots of sniffing stops on the way.

When another cat appeared at the gate at the end of the garden they really weren't sure what to do. Squiggle suddenly appeared twice the size when all her hair stood on end. They both took turns staring the other cat out, withdrawing now and again so the other one could take over.

When a second cat appeared they were more than curious. I think they were both Patsy's and had just come to see who the newcomers were. There was no hair on end, growling or hissing on their part. When a sound startled them both they shot indoors and growled from the safety of the back doorway.

A few times I came indoors and forgot about them. When I went outside they'd appear quickly or I'd find one of them behind a plant pot.

They can have another outing tomorrow.

Something's Got To Give

2008-09-25T01:22:00.001+01:00

Not focussed, lack of concentration, irritable, angry, sad, lack of motivation - do I go on? Stressed? Maybe.

Just when I think I'm getting myself together I find I'm not. It hasn't helped not being well for the past couple of days. It started at work yesterday and then I felt incredibly tired and irritable in the afternoon and I think it showed. Last night I felt sick and nauseous and eventually threw up. This morning I felt achey and tired and spent half the day sleeping on and off. Needless to say I didn't go to work. I was reluctant to phone in sick as I thought it would be seen as a reaction to the way I behaved yesterday but eventually I couldn't care less. I wouldn't have been able to work effectively anyway.

I've been toying with the idea of going to the doctors and seeing if I can get myself signed off. I know all the symptoms of stress and think I'm actually suffering with them anyway. I've had nothing back from my email to Shelagh a few weeks ago regarding a de-brief meeting and still feel I am hanging on to all the stuff from Stevenage. I know she read the email but she never replied.

The friends I've known the longest have been no bloody help. None of them have phoned to see how I am. Tanya, Loretta and Maxine are more likely to do that. I'm not always very good at asking for help and think I can manage by myself. I seem to close down and keep it all in. Not good. Something's got to give - or is it giving already?

What Next?

2008-09-12T16:58:00.001+01:00

So I'm getting a bit more used to the place as it is. I've re-arranged the bedroom and am going to make a start on the kitchen next. Then there's just the back room. I've been in there quite a bit lately and got more used to it as it is as well. It's just becoming a junk room ... my junk room. One I want to turn into a functioning room, where I can use the desk, or put someone up for the night. I might have to buy a nice, small, chair to sit and read in.

I've also found that my little idiosyncrasies are getting more settled. I can use the place as I like and when I come back to it, it's as I left it. All the time!

I'm not totally used to it though. It still feels like something is missing. It feels like there is a presence missing as well. Nile's stuff has gone and so has he and it's going to take a while to get used to that.

Endings

2008-09-01T20:09:00.001+01:00

Nile moved out on Thursday.

There was no rush as far as I was concerned but Nile decided (quite rightly) that it might be better for both of us if he moved all at once. Steve and Barbara came down with a van and moved him up to Yas's. Was I trying to lessen the impact by drawing out the process, or would I have been trying to stave off the ending? His things would have still been here ... so he would still have been here. Fear of endings? Sort of. But from endings spring new beginnings, they just come quicker when the ending is short-lived.

It was more difficult than I thought it would be to look in the back room when I got home from work and see it empty of all his boxes. I'd looked in the back room when he was packing and saw all the boxes piling up but I'd pushed that aside and largely tried to ignore the process. Somehow it seemed more real to see the room empty. I didn't go to work the following day and ended up completely rearranging the bedroom. I needed to take out my frustration somewhere and I felt the need to make the place feel like mine. It would also be a contrast to the empty room at the back.

I could prattle on about how pleased I am with the bedroom now but I'm not here to do that. I'm not going to work anything much out at the moment apart from the fact I've identified feelings of failure, loss, sadness, relief, liberation, peace, loneliness and anger. I think that will do as a list for now. To put it bluntly I don't know if I'm on my head or my arse much at the moment.

I'd been aware all along that I hadn't helped him pack and I couldn't. Every time I thought of it I felt as though it would seem I wanted him to do it quicker and I didn't. I would also feel as though I was packing him up and sending him on his way and that wasn't my intention either. It felt difficult to step forward and I'm not totally sure why yet. The day he took it all away I was working a late shift and left home just after Steve and Barbara arrived. Nile sent me a text later to say they were on their way to London. Luckily I was working on my own that evening as I got more uptight with the anticipation of going home as the evening wore on. I took it out on the office by tidying up and doing some admin. I think I had a drink (alcohol ... of course) not long after I got in.

Finding A Way Of Being

2008-08-23T19:09:00.001+01:00

Goodness, is it really that long since I write anything here? I've been mulling that over in my mind and I think one of the main reasons I haven't written anything lately is because I've been feeling a bit raw emotionally and writing here would be exposing myself and making it feel even more raw.

I have taken control of my life and Niadh is now leaving. It seemed to be a mutual agreement but it was me who brought it up. I'd been feeling unhappy and unsure and got to the point where if I didn't do anything about it the situation could have just continued and not gone anywhere. At least we were able to talk about it sensibly and maturely (what does being mature mean?).

Now I have to find my own way in the world once more, something that isn't new to me. As Cary said the other day, "You always were a bit of a loner". It's just the getting used to being on my own that may be difficult after all this time.

I seem to adapt to situations I find myself in quite quickly though. I always have done.

Sense And Sensibility?

2008-07-20T01:33:00.002+01:00

Well, I'm not sure how much sense that last post makes. It all seems a bit vague and veiled. I know what I'm talking about so I suppose that's what really matters.

Come to think of it, the veiled theme has run throughout this writing. I've never really alluded to my relationship, or it's progression to be more exact. I made brief, happy reference to it last September when I started these writings but not after that. Things have changed and you'd have thought I might have written about it here. So why didn't I?

I guess because the world can read this if they like and I didn't want to bring other people into this other than in a superficial way. I was quite prepared to be deeply personal in my writings but only where my thoughts and feelings were concerned. I wanted to preserve other peoples privacy.

Now I think about it, what's the point of leaving things out when all of it is important here? I need to be honest with myself. The fact is this blog is not public and is unlikely to be found unless by chance (this has now changed - this blog is public). These are my own personal and private writings and are not listed as in the public domain (they are now).

The chances of someone finding this who knows any of the people involved are very remote (this still stands).

Feelings

2008-07-17T23:32:00.000+01:00

Tony did really well at driving. He took the bull by the horns and went for it. There was the inevitable stalling but it wasn't long before he'd changed up to 3rd gear doing about 35mph!! I could sense he was feeling a bit out of control but let him go for it for a while. In the end he drove up the airfield and back, doing a 3 point turn, and only stalled it once. He's really keen to go again and now he has his licence we can do road driving too

I'm beginning to feel like I'm really at home now. I've pottered and sat and shopped when I wanted to. The house feels clean and fresh and tidy and I don't even mind emptying the cat litter. I've had the windows open all day and it was even nice enough to sit in the garden. It got quite hot in fact and the other evening was positively Mediterranean; warm breeze late into the night

I feel much calmer.

Things took an unexpected turn today though and although it's a contradiction to what I just described, it's all part of the changes in life and the growing that I/we do.

Yesterday I felt completely fucked! I was having a good day and didn't expect to feel like that. Don't know what that was about. It was an unexpectedly nice feeling though. But today I felt melancholy, distracted and agitated all at once. At times close to tears. A wave of uncertainty came over me: uncertainty about myself and my worth; my actions; my thoughts and feelings. The agitated bit felt like 'charlie'. Raised pulse, deepened breathing, pounding sensation in the gut but without the speedy effect. It's gone now. It came on unexpectedly and suddenly and wasn't supposed to happen.

Now I feel more settled and certain. So where did it go? All that upset and turmoil.

I had the 'conversation' early enough to remind me I am OK and pretty much on the right track. Once I knew that, my mood started to lift. Now it feels warm and settled inside ... metaphorically speaking. Literally speaking, I feel bruised in the gut as though the earlier sensations were very real ... and the tops of my legs ache (but that could be because of my back).

So that's all OK now then

Or is it? Is it all a consequence of my relationship with Niadh. It's all a bit uncertain at the moment and I feel it is now Niadh's decision to make. He needs to know where he wants to be and who he is. That's my judgement alone but I think he would agree.

There's a lot of uncertainty around now I think of it. Me and Niadh and the future that holds and then there's going back to work. I know what I'm going back to it but not what it's like there now. Were my feelings yesterday and today related with this? The answer has to be possibly, or is it probably?

I guess it was all a result of how I have been feeling and how I acted upon that. I think I've been trying to get on with my life in a constant manner even amongst the inconsistencies. I just get into a routine and Niadh comes home. I'm not blaming him but it's not easy sometimes adjusting to having someone in the house who doesn't seem to be there a lot of the time. He's probably here more then he isn't a lot of the time, but it feels like it's the other way round at times.

So what I've been doing lately, it seems, is living independently of Niadh. The 'track' I was talking about. A bit of doing what I want when I want but also trying to include him when I can, but he doesn't always seem to want to be included. Trying to maintain my own routine amongst the adapting to his.

I think that might be where some of my 'niggles' have come from in the past. I've tried to maintain my own routine for some time and possibly got a bit obsessive about it. Wanting things done in a certain way otherwise it would wind me up. Even having friends round grew to be a bit of a chore even though I wanted them there! There's nearly always a mess when visitors leave.

I clear up as I go along and Niadh doesn't. He clears up afterwards so why does that wind me up? I guess it's because he's not doing what I'd do!

Ho Hum. The battle of trying to keep control when you haven't got it in the first place . If I didn't know what was going on I'd be worried about myself but I know I can calm this down and find the middle ground I need. I have to relinquish control because I've never had it in the first place. I mean the feeling that I have control over life - something common to us all. Truth is, we have some control over where we can take our lives but not over the events and changes that go on around us.

Ergo: I have no control over what I cannot control. So get on with it!

[ergo (Latin) conj. & modif. therefore, hence, consequently, thus]

I've also been ignoring phones a lot lately. My mobile has been switched off a lot when I'm at home and I haven't always taken much notice of who might have rung if I haven't heard the home phone. That part feels great ... not having to think about the phone, any phone.

Now I think of it, the unexpected events of the week probably weren't that unexpected. If only hindsight weren't so retrospective. I wouldn't have been so surprised!

Osteopathy, Driving, and Home

2008-07-09T23:04:00.001+01:00

Off to the osteopath today. Just what I wanted to be doing on my holidays! My back got progressively worse last week until the weekend when it eased up a bit. Now I'm a bit freer but a bit sore in places and I've got to go back next week. He said I'm pretty much locked up on one side. There was bounce in my left hip but not in the right when he lay me on the table and pressed down on my hips. Now I need to stick to the exercises he gave me to do. It kinda puts the kybosh on going away anywhere at the weekend. I don't want to drive for miles and not be able to get out of the car at the other end!

Bumped into Tony while I was at Chris & Paul's. He wants to learn to drive so I'm taking him over to Bradwell airfield on Saturday. He says he's never taken control of a car before .... so that should be fun then . I'm still not quite sure what he meant when he said I was the ideal person to ask about this. Did he mean I'd have the patience, or that I was 'sensible'?

Years ago I was the one who let go of Simon's push-bike seat and off he went for the first time under his own steam. He didn't realise he was on his own for a minute while I ran alongside as if I was still holding the bike up. My dad did the same thing to me. Now it seems I'll be first to take Tony for driving lessons.

It's been nice pottering around the house and not having to rush anywhere. I like having the time to clear up behind me and keep things tidy. I like being here when it's quiet; when the radio, the TV and the computer are off and I can hear the sounds of the village and the birds and the rain.

It's rained a bit in the last couple of days and thunder is forecast for Saturday. I love having the windows open and listening to the sound of the rain. There's something quite soothing about it. And the smell ..... clean, fresh, washed. I love it!

I like being here when it just feels like home. Not when it feels like somewhere to be in between being somewhere else. I like sensing it and experiencing it. I like coming back to it from wherever I've been. I like looking at it. I like sitting in it. I like feeling like I've got time to do things in it. I like being in it.

Here It Begins

2008-07-02T13:24:00.001+01:00

The Holidays Start Here. A 4 week break all bar 2 days. It doesn't seem possible. I'm obviously not in the swing of it yet as I keep feeling there's something I should be doing, or somewhere I should be going.

But there isn't.

I need to keep telling myself that.

This break could be the space I need to find my balance again. The space to balance my inner core. Balancing my spirit and soul. Continuing the journey of 'Righting' myself.

I thought some of it was coming back a while ago but it all seemed to come undone again. I couldn't get work out of my head and I felt full all the time - full in the head, that is. There didn't seem to be much room for what I wanted. I found Stevenage harder to get out of my head, at the end of a day, than CHAC. I guess there was the added responsibility in my post and the overwhelming nature of it at times. Let's face it, I had more jobs on the go at any one time than I was used to. I nearly always felt that there were numerous jobs not completed, that I was often chasing my tail and getting nowhere. It was the days when I started jobs and actually completed them that I felt good about the day. At CHAC I didn't have so many threads on the go at once.

Right now those threads don't matter. I can cut them and get on with my holiday. I still expect it to take a few days to really feel like I'm relaxed and at home and not having to go to work.

3 and a 1/2 weeks of freedom and relaxation. I intend to take it as it comes and be as spontaneous as I can. I'd like to find a cheap, short break at a moments notice. It sounds quite exciting. Or I may just nip off to the Brecon Beacons for a visit for old times sake. I haven't been there for years, apart from driving through them on the way down to Tim & Sues'. I'd quite like to spend some time there again, walking and sitting and looking. I could go on to visit Tim & Sue if they're at home.

Or I may just do both. A few days in the Brecon Beacons and a few days somewhere abroad.

Or I may go somewhere else entirely. Or I may not go anywhere at all.

The world's my oyster.

And then there's Dorset and Cambridgeshire .... and family. I now have the time to research local parish records and see what I can find out. There are the graves of the Dings in Fen Stanton and Fen Drayton and living family in Dorset. I've got enough to make some kind of inroad on more of the family history. And possibly catch up with some of them.

Would I feel more grounded, more aware of my roots? I don't know what I'll feel when I meet another member of my mothers family or my dads family come to that. There was that email from cousin Steven's mate a while back but no reply when I answered. I don't know who's dead or alive. That's one emotion I know I will feel ... sadness at the absence of people I'll never have the chance to see again. There are people I remember more than others ..... Philip, Barbara and Lorraine particularly. The last time I saw any of them was at mums funeral over 20 years ago. There will be others I haven't seen since I was a child. Likewise on my dads side. Last time I saw any of them was at his funeral 34 years ago!

I might try looking up cousin Steve. I miss my dad more than I miss my mum but I think that's because he hasn't been there for most of my life. He died when I was 18. I feel like I don't really know him and yet I do. Part of me is him, yet I didn't have much chance to get to know him properly.

Perhaps this is something I need to do in my own journey - get to know myself through my parents and family. It'll put another perspective on life and things. It will certainly supply me with the roots .... or will it?

Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2008-07-01T00:54:00.001+01:00

ONE DAY TO GO