Mother’s Day … I wonder?

I’ve been in two minds whether to blog about this. Truth be told, I’m still not sure so I’m typing word by word with no idea if I’ll hit publish at the end of this or not.

Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand recently, you couldn’t have missed the fact that it’s Mothering Sunday this coming Sunday.

The history of Mothering Sunday is believed to have religious roots.  Most Sundays in the year churchgoers would worship at their nearest parish or “daughter church”. In Victorian times it was considered important for people to return to their home or “mother” church at least once a year, which was commonly thought to be the nearest Cathedral. So each year on the fourth Sunday of Lent, everyone would visit their “mother” church. The return to the “mother” church became an occasion for family reunions when children who were in service away from home returned. The majority of historians think that it was this return to the “Mother” church which led to the tradition of children, particularly those working as domestic servants, or as apprentices, being given the day off to visit their mother and family.

Of course, nowadays, much like Valentine’s day, it’s largely a commercial holiday with retailers telling us to buy everything from hand sanitising lotion (thanks for the heads up on that one Amber) to fossils and every last thing in between as a token of our appreciation for our parents. Turn into the local stationers and you’re bombarded with saccharine sweet cards declaring our love for our Mothers. And most people I know will be buying one with a gift for their mothers and doing something special this Sunday.

I won’t be.

You see, while most of the people I know are pretend moaning about buying cards and presents for their Mums but secretly thinking it’s kind of sweet, I can’t do that. And every time I hear someone talking about what they’ll be doing with their Mums, my heart lurches a little bit, because I know it’s unlikely that I will be able to do that, and that Mothers day, for me, is likely to be the same non-event that it has been for a decade or so.

You see, my Mum suffers from a mental disability. An addiction that led her to make a choice between me and another big love in her life and in my youthful, hot-headed way a number of years ago I decided that I couldn’t spend my life playing second fiddle to her addictions. It’s not a choice I regret but it makes me feel a little sad and a little wistful knowing that while other sons and daughters are celebrating what their parents have done and have sacrificed to give them a decent start in life, my Mum wouldn’t do that. That I wasn’t reason enough to battle for and  to know I will never be able to celebrate her in that way. While it was my choice to walk away from it and chose to live my own life, it’s a twist of the knife to know that I had to make that choice, to know that I couldn’t have my own life and a loving mother, and to know that I will never be able to join in the celebrations.

I won’t rant about how wrong it is to celebrate Mother’s day just because a minority of us can’t do so. It’s a day to celebrate your Mother (and historically your family) and that’s a joyful thing. So I say go wild. Remember every damned thing your Mother has ever done to make you happy and then mutiply it by 10, because that’s probably closer to the truth. Forget the arguments, the niggles and the tiny things that annoy you about your Mum … because they don’t matter. Imagine what it would be like to spend every single day for the rest of your life without her … and the emotional devatation you can imagine is the the mirror to how much you really love her. Hold onto those thoughts and when you see your Mum on Sunday, don’t just give her a bunch of flowers and a hug … TELL HER how much you lover her, how much you appreciate her and how much she’s one of the best things in your life. Don’t let her go without knowing all the things you love about her from the way she smells to the way she dances when she thinks no-one’s watching .

But being in the situation I am, makes me consider other people, who through no choice of their own don’t have a Mother with whom they can celebrate either. People who’ve lost their family through any kind of tragedy. Being subjected to the endless barage of advertising is going to hurt  as much as the knowledge that the day is one that we are now and will forever be excluded from that special relationship and celebration. So as you consider your maternal relationships on Sunday and spend a little time with the ones you love, just spare a little thought for those of us who won’t be.

Tags: Blood Is Thicker Than Water, Emotion Is A Rollercoaster That's Jumped off The Tracks

At Long Last … It’s Bedheads and Broomsticks

Well, now it’s up! I think the bed needs a whole load of sumptuous pillows underneath (sumptuous is so my favourite word right now) to really carry it, since it’s sitting quite high up but nonetheless … isn’t it fabulous?

UPDATED to include pics with more pillows and closeups of the bedhead:

Tags: I'm not quirky

Exceptional People Hide In The Most Unlikely Places

Yesterday afternoon, I found myself in a pub in Wolverhampton, celebrating a friend’s birthday with a couple of old friends, and was absolutely STRUCK by how EXCEPTIONAL they are.

Looking at our table of laughing, joking, gesticulating you wouldn’t have seen anything out of the ordinary, just a group of fun, happy, well balanced people. And so they were but also SO very much more. They are people whose spirit not only has triumphed against adversity but people who work hard daily to ensure that EVERY DAY they continue to triumph.

They are inspirational by virtue of no more than who they are. Their triumphs daily inspire my own and they themselves are such lovely people that they inspire help and support from the rest of us whenever they are in need of it.

They are the sorts of people who walk into a room full of strangers and SHINE. They can’t help it. They believe in life taking it by the horns and giving it a smacking kiss on the forehead. They make the world a brighter and more interesting place just by being in it.

While many of us get stuck in our ways: they are an education. They make a lifestyle out of constantly growing, changing, learning and consciously evolving. As their perspectives change, they challenge my beliefs and perspectives and I grow with them.

I know plenty of people who try too hard to be exceptional or extraordinary and by trying so hard, they miss the focus they were aiming for. Extraordinary comes when you know the ordinary intimately. Exceptional comes once you’ve embraced and appreciated the mundane. It comes when you stop trying to be who and what you’re not and be who you ARE to the best of your ability. It comes from having experienced both pain and hardship so that you can truly offer compassion.

They find joy in the smallest things and find wonder in everyday spaces. They know who they are and they know where they come from. They might not know where they’re headed but they make the journey a hell of a lot more interesting.

Tags: You Can Choose Your Friends

Dude, I’m meditating here …

If ever there was a sentence that I couldn’t imagine myself thinking, this was one of them and yet it’s the one I could hear running through my head at approximately 8.45 this morning. I had to travel across the county for work on a bus that should have long ago been condemned to the scrap yard and some little spark in my head raised the little thought in my head … I’ve got an hour and a half to kill, I could do a little meditation on the bus. Genius.

Each slow breath I took was immaculately timed with the lurch of the bus and my intense focus, entirely detracted from the horrors of the journey, even to the extent that I didn’t notice the youth who looked like a young Richard E Grant who got on the bus shortly after me, smelling quite strongly of marijuana (Dude, seriously, it wasn’t even 9am – what gives?) at least until I’d finished.

Sure, it’s a hazard of doing something that is best performed in peace and quiet in crowded, public spaces but that’s the thing. This is life and life’s not perfect. Sometimes you need to take those moments wherever you can find them and if you can find them for ten minutes on a bus, amongest the noise and chatter and smell, then you can find them anywhere.

Sometimes it’s easier to settle yourself away from the world and blissfully trip away to a calmer, more transquil headspace and we all need that from time to time, however we find it. But sometimes we don’t get that time and space. Sometimes life gets a rush on and we’re ‘too busy’ to be thinking about taking those ten minutes for ourselves.

But you can always carve out a little time, whether it’s meditating in front of a slot machine in Vegas or on a bus in the middle of Somerset, sometimes you’ve just got to take a moment and find your centre while the craziness whirls and eddies around you. It’s still going to be there in 10, 20 or 30 minutes time.

As for maybe looking a little crazy … hell, I live near Glastonbury. No-one’s going to bat an eyelid!

I’m Big, I’m Bold, I’m 30 and I’m Beautiful

Ya, you read it right. It’s like a miracle that came out of nowhere. Or more specifically came out of a conspiracy between my sister and a photographic studio in Cheltenham. After finishing at the 9-5 (or thereabouts) I grabbed the dogs, leapt into the car and whizzed through torrential rain and snow (snow!?) to Cheltenham for the viewing of my birthday photo shoot from last week.

I was nervous. Being in front of the camera is not my favourite location. I feel naked and vulnerable, and having consoled myself with chocolate brownies after my Dad passed away, was more than aware that I’m not currently looking my best. I was expecting to look acceptable but I’d figured beautiful was an option that had leapt out of the window to save itself a long time back.

The first few photos that came on screen were family shots of us and the hounds, and were lovely momentoes of the day. They were bright and bubbly and fun. Pictures of a family that were happy and loved each other. It couldn’t fail to make you smile.

… and then the photos seagued into the individual shots. I was dreading it. My hands had already crept up to my face, ready to cover my eyes and my heart was beating ten to the dozen. And then THEY appeared and my breath stopped for a moment. I blinked. I shook my head and I heard myself say ‘Oh My God, I never knew I could look like that’ and there it was. There were three. One was cute, and cuddly and wintry and warm and one was all wild eyes and sexy (Me! Imagine that!) and then there was THE ONE. It didn’t have the definable fun factor or sexy elements that the other two did but it had a something that caught me perfectly. It was slightly sultry, mysterious with a hint of my mind’s on other things. It looked on the outside the way I felt on the inside. It’s a work of art.

THEN we got to sis’s shots. Christ she’s photogenic, although she’d never believe me. She had a couple of stunning shots but she too had a ONE and it’s fabulous. Despite her preoccupation with being perfectly coiffed all the time (Joan Collins, eat your heart out) her amazing picture had a really grungy, moody element to it. Almost slightly dark and dangerous. Like you could imagine a classy Courtney Love in a ballgown, leaning against a brick wall in an alley on her way to the Oscars, ready for a dangerous rendezvous. It’s the sort of image that seems to talk to you; it challenges you to try and take her on, provokes you to try with the knowledge she could squash you like a bug. It suits her. It suits the conversation we had over dinner after the shoot.

As well as a beautiful reminder of a fabulous day, the pictures are more than that. Amongst them, there is not only a tale of our relationship but a reminder to us, of who and what we are. Lest we ever forget.

Tags: Blood Is Thicker Than Water, Emotion Is A Rollercoaster That's Jumped off The Tracks, Things That Are So Beautiful They Make Me Want To Sit Down And Cry

Dude, Where’s My Life?

At the end of 2008 I decided to take a break from a manic life and downsize my life. I was exhausted, had bags under my eyes that could house a small family and I felt that no matter how much I slept, I would never feel anything but bone-deep weariness. I was working endlessly, and feeling constantly frustrated with it. My home life was no more satisfying: constantly on the edge of being homeless, short of money and that sad, lonely person you see sitting in a coffee shop, pretending that they wanted to be alone for a bit of ‘me time’ … was me. I’d lost track of the meaning in my life and all I was doing was helping greedy corporations make more money. Things had to change.

I gave up my job and moved a couple of hundred miles to the depths of Somerset. I decided to take a step back and take a simple job that didn’t require me to stay late and engage in business bureaucracy. Something that would be simple and give me a chance to get my life back  and concentrate on me. So that’s what I did.

This last year has taught me a lot. I discovered myself, and it’s not the same as my old self. I’m fiercer, I’m softer,  I cry more, I smile more, I’ve remembered who I am when I’m not pushed to breaking point. I actually meditate. I’m not afraid to voice my REAL thoughts (and not just the ones that people of my age are SUPPOSED to have). I’m not so afraid that people will think of me as quirky – I’m creative: quirky is what we do best. I’m slower to anger, even if my temper is as explosive when I get there as it always was, but the most important thing I learnt in this last year is that my life NEEDS to have meaning, and it has to be TRUE to myself.

I’ve done all manner of different jobs. I’ve been a stablehand, a barmaid, a waitress, an account manager, an editor, a designer and a bookseller and more besides. I’ve never minded putting in the hours or putting whatever I had into it, no matter how lowly or important the job was. It doesn’t matter as long as you not only enjoy it but you GAIN something from it. It has to MEAN something to you.

It’s got me wondering about my next steps in life. I’ve built my home. I’ve made some friends and I’m making more. I have people in my life who like and respect me for who I AM and yet there’s something missing … and I don’t know how to find it. What I’m doing is a decent job. It’s fairly respectable. I can even find enjoyment in it but it’s not THE ONE.

So, how do people find it? This elusive career that makes them happy and satisfied? I’m 30 and I’ve never found it. I’ve had a couple of wild ideas that nearly took off, and as I gave them careful thought and consideration I realised I could make them succeed but they wouldn’t be enough to fulfil me and leave me happy. I don’t have IT, the vision of what it is that I want. I have a list as long as both of my arms and legs of what I DON’T want, but it’s not getting me any closer to what it is I DO want.

I don’t want to answer to someone else’s rules. I don’t want to compromise my life and my happiness for THE JOB. I don’t want to wear a suit and say things like ‘pushing the envelope’. I don’t want to spend my days promoting something I don’t believe in. I’m fed up of saying ‘I don’t care’ to mask the fact that I care FAR too much.

I want something big, something bright, something bold. I want it to affect people profoundly, I want to MEAN something to the people I work with. I want to inspire, I want to BE inspired. I want it to MAKE MY HEART SING! I want to educate. I want what I do to have so many different elements, I will never be bored. I want it to be spiritual, I want it to be practical. I want to be flexible and dependable. I want it to REFLECT me. I want to live with INTEGRITY.  I want to do something that will make me look back on my life and think that what I did MATTERED.

Career development consultants and recruiters couldn’t give a damn about those things, the ones that really DO matter, so where do I turn? What’s my next step?

For that matter, what’s yours?

Tags: Peter Pan Syndrome aka When I grow Up, What Am I Going To Do With My Life

Mismatched Socks and Secret Quirks

Today I went to a photo shoot with Venture Studios, which was a 30th Birthday present from my sister (she’s such an inspired wee genius!) and had the MOST fun and the doggies were SOOOO well behaved. Getting dressed this morning was a thought provoking experience and I’ll tell you why.

The studio had suggested wearing and bringing along props that were reflective of your personality and interests. So as I was dragging on my clothes this morning, I automatically reached for a pair of odd socks (can you say that?) for good luck and that got me thinking of the small, almost unconscious, things that we do that make unique in ways we don’t even notice.

My odd sock habit has its depths in my University days, when I would catch the bus in to lectures when the weather was grim and I didn’t fancy a four mile hike in the rain. The bus stop was a five minute walk away across a field, and the buses were often double deckers or bendy buses that jammed us together like sardines. At any rate, I had a spate of bad luck on the buses in my first year, when I consistently fell down, got pushed over or some other calamity (see reasons why I hate buses, many of these ocurred during that fortnight) would befall me whenever I was on a bus. It lasted about 2 weeks, and at the end of the fortnight, I had bruises on bruises and could cheerfully have done without seeing a bus ever again. I was, in fact, on the verge of turning in my bus pass completely.

One fine day, I overslept and when I woke up and realised the time, I grabbed whatever clothes were to hand (I must have made a fine sight!) and threw them on including a pair of odd socks and headed for the bus stop and found, to my undisguised delight, that I had not only an uneventful journey but that I made my lecture with minutes to spare. I could only put this unlikely ocurrance down to the odd socks (or blind luck) and ever since, if I’ve felt the need for a little extra luck, I’ve worn mismatched socks. (Clearly I should have remembered to do that on evil, everything sucks Tuesday, shouldn’t I?)

What quirky habits do you have?

Tags: I'm not quirky, it's perfectly rational, My Dogs Would Give The Hound Of The Baskervilles a Run For His Money, The Good Ole Days

Shifting Sands

I woke up today and decided my attitude needed a shift.

I had a rough few weeks a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been feeling a little sorry for myself on and off ever since. Self-pity just isn’t my bag. Like flourescent yellow, it just doesn’t suit me. Some things I wanted didn’t turn out how I hoped and because I really DID want them, I grumped about it. ‘I want’ piled on top of ‘I want’ and the wants got drowned in the ‘you can’t always have what you wants’. Life became an emotional laundry hamper, and I was all set for a turn through the wringer… until I woke up.

The wake up call was a couple of friends who were going through respective tough times, and it made me realise that whatever was going on in my life, I only had to look back a couple of years to see how far things had come for me. Financially, emotionally, spiritually. It had all changed, and for the better. Myself of three years ago was a shadow of who I am now, and an even fainter imprint of the me I will be in a couple more years.

I’ve regained much of the strength I had and lost. The strength that is perhaps still missing has been patched with courage, and perhaps holds stronger as a result. I once again have faith, and hope. I have belief, in MYSELF where once I had none and my patience and tolerance grow incrementally every day. Slowly I am finding my voice. Sometimes it’s more raucous and louder than I mean it to be, and sometimes when inside my head is screaming for a witty riposte, my voice is less than the quietest whisper, but somewhere in the Universe I’m finding my place.

There was a time in my life, where I was the eccentric one. I wandered about with flowers in my hair and cameras in my hands and little else seemed to matter. I turned up to parties in bare feet. I wandered streets at night because they were different then and I needed to SEE. But my inner and outer selves didn’t mesh. I was a walking example of Cartier Bresson when he called artists liars by omission. My life was a lie of omission because what I was on the inside wasn’t what sat on the outside. My exterior was creative, interesting and eccentric but it didn’t begin to express the complexities that sat under the surface, waiting for a voice.

For a period, at my lowest ebb, I denied those complexities not only their voice but their existence. I was told that I couldn’t be that person and for a while I tried to forget that person I’d been and those things I’d felt and known so deeply that they were a part of me. But I couldn’t always deny them and sooner or later they would surface again and needle at me until one day early on last year, I made a conscious choice to express the elements of me that had lain so far under the surface, and to have faith in myself and my direction in life. I’m now a qualified Reiki Practitioner and I practice all the time. I’ve never had so much fun and being able to express myself in a new way is a constant surprise and delight to me. I speak about experiences and emotions I would never have touched on before. I’m not afraid to try things that are a little unusual.

My current profession, with all it’s irritations and frustrations has also been an eye opening experience for me. It has opened me to people who believe all sorts of things with varying degrees of vehemence and cynicism. It has given me time and space to realise that my own perceptions are not so far removed from reality as I feared and I have learnt to speak of them in a way that is approachable and balanced. Slowly as a child building a vocabulary for the first time, I am building my own vocabulary and learning to speak without fear of mockery but with confidence, assurance and faith in myself.

Last week, I was looking at my life and wondering why things never seemed to go my way, but when I look back and see how far I’ve come, I have to admit that my life is pretty damned amazing right now. No, it’s not perfect. I don’t have much money and I’d rather be working for myself doing something jaw-dropping but all in all it’s good. It’s somewhere I can be happy and something I can build from to make my dreams, gigantic as they are, a reality. There is magic in the air and beginnings sit like a fizzing taste on my tongue. I wonder what this year will really bring?

Tags: Emotion Is A Rollercoaster That's Jumped off The Tracks, What Am I Going To Do With My Life

Precioussssss….

Image borrowed from here

Sometimes, right out of the blue, something happens that forces you to open your eyes to yourself, and when that happens, sometimes what you see isn’t what you’d like it to be … and sometimes that hits you like a fist in the solar plexus. It’s not a good feeling.

Yesterday I got sucker-punched by the Universe (and by Christ, it packs a punch, I can tell you!) which reminded me that sometimes, I really suck as a friend. Oh sure, I remember birthdays, I turn up when we hook up as much as I can. I offer a listening ear and occasionally, when asked, a bit of advice. But there are times when a friend has to be more than that. Sometimes a real friend looks behind the calls and texts that go unanswered and instead of assuming that  you’re busy, follows hunches and connects the dots, knows that you’re not as ok as you claim and stands up and calls you on it. And that’s what I forgot to do.

I got blindsided by my own worries and troubles and forgot to look out at my friends and see how they were doing. I became blinkered inside my own head and left my friends to fight their own battles, without picking up the phone and BEING there. It doesn’t take much, it’s a small thing to pick up a phone and let a friend know that you’re there and you care, and sometimes it’s the smallest of things that make the biggest difference.

We all have our highs and we all have our rough patches, it’s life and we deal with it but sometimes the highs are exceptionally high and sometimes the lows are so low that they almost require a new word and those are the times we most need a friend … to hold out a hand, to give us a hug, to just BE there.

It doesn’t matter how we make them but those connections are what make our lives, rich, fulfilled and wholesome, regardless of whether those connections are friends, family or lovers. They brighten our days, inspire us, support us, define us and occasionally frustrate the bloody hell out of us but for all their intangibility, they are the most REAL things we possess and we owe it to ourselves and each other to remember that and to put our friendships ahead of all those other distractions we indulge ourselves in, because one day long after our jobs are a distant memory, our friendships will remain and our memories of them will be more precious than any amount of money could buy.

Tags: You Can Choose Your Friends

Mutants, alcoholics and waaaay outta town

I was working out of town today. Waaay out of town and it  required catching the BUS (Oh yes, capitals are very necessary … read on)

Now, I HATE buses. Loathe them and not just for the fact that they make you feel like you ate 15 donuts and then invited a small child to play trampoline of your stomach while simultaneously hitting you over the head with  a brick. On top of the fact that once you’re ten minutes into the journey and feeling like a barely contained nausea whirlpool, there seems to be a tacit agreement that rather than open the windows and circulate a little fresh air, it would be infinitely preferable to sit squashed up together with condensation streaming down the windows and share the fetid and stale odours of BO, urine, sweat, leftover food and drink and numerous other smells to unpleasant to contemplate. It’s an unrivalled olfactory experience.

I could sense that I was being given an opportunity for sensory exploration today so, it shouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest that my driver was a non English-speaking version of Lurch from the Addams Family, with a propensity for taking sharp corners and narrow one-track country roads at a minimum of 60mph and braking violently and swerving into hedges and shallow ditches to avoid colliding into oncoming vehicles. I’d be preared to swear that I saw a woman and her dog leap into the hedge for safety as the bus roared around the corner of an otherwise quiet single track road. A parked vehicle has never made me feel more scared.

As people piled on at the first stop, there was the inevitable bagging of double seats as you pray quietly to yourself that the bus isn’t going to fill up and someone doesn’t want to take the spare seat next to you. But naturally, you find that as the other double seats are taken, options become more limited and new travellers are examining the spare seats and evaluating which of you is going to be the least unpleasant to sit next to and you know …. you just KNOW that you’re coming up on the relatively harmless list and in a very short space of time, you’ll end up with someone plonked next to you. Sometimes you get lucky, and it’s a nice old lady or gent that you can pass the time of day with but you know that more often than not, it’s going to be someone else. I have an uncanny knack of attracting those ‘other’ sorts.

Historically, they’ve included:

• The one who sat across the aisle from me and kept twitching who took umbridge with my looking out the window and appeared to think I was staring AT her. So she started hitting me with her umbrella and then spat on my head. Which was lovely. She got dragged off the bus by her carer and then JUMPED BACK ON to hit me again!
• The drunken man who spent an hour and a half roaring football songs at the top of his lungs, belching out lager fumes and calling me an uptight bitch for not joining in
• The woman with the endlessly screaming baby that puked all over the bus floor. (Imagine the noise and the smell for an hour and a half, while you yourself are fighting the rising tides of nausea)
• The woman who, offended by my large bag on a crowded bus punched me in the stomach and kicked me in the knee.
• The ‘larger’ gentleman who took up a seat and a half so that I was wedged on one hip into a small gap to avoid his excess bulk resting on my lap, while he stuck his elbows in my face because he had to hold the newspaper up to read it.
• The ubiquitous chav or chavette, who always makes for a pleasant companion, especially those with the loud and tinny speakers for their music and my personal favourite:
• The achoholic, who at 8.30 in the morning is swigging gin from a hip flask and isn’t overly cautious about spillages, as you’re praying that you don’t arrive at work soaked head to toe in gin and smelling as if you came in straight from the pub you were in the night before.

Maybe next time, I’ll cycle, or hitch a lift. Or perhaps I’ll just dose myself to the eyeballs with a sedative and sleep all the way there and hope they chuck me off at the right stop. Perhaps if I offer to tie myself to the roof ….?

Tags: Some days I wish I hadn't got out of bed

When I grow up, I want to rule the world…

I can’t really deny bring a grown-up for much longer, despite my enduring fantasy that I am four years old and have been for the last 26 years. The evidence is beginning to mount up. The stripes of grey hair winging their way out from my temples, the lines fanning out from my eyes when I smile, the fact that I don’t bounce as much when I fall over (although it doesn’t seem to stop me falling!) and irrefutable fact that I haven’t climbed a tree in five years. Not to mention my last birthday (no really, don’t mention it!)

When I was a kid, I could not wait to grow up: All that freedom, all that space to grow into, to travel through, to make a mark on. The world would be mine for the taking.

The little village where I spent my youth with its small minded inhabitants and endless gossip wouldn’t hold me. The villagers weren’t big enough. They didn’t see big, think big, feel big. They weren’t like me. We were different sides of a line that none of us knew how to cross.

When I grew up, I was going to be free. I wouldn’t be the sort of woman to be held back by a partner’s ambition or to be used for another’s gain. I wouldn’t be stereotyped, pigeonholed or belittled by people who were smaller, petty and jealous. None of that shit would touch me. There would be nothing that would hold my dreams in check. I was bursting to be unleashed on the world and shine like no-one ever had before. I was going to shine, I was going to love and living was going to be my art form.

We passed from year to year, being faced with choices that defined and limited our paths: Which GCSE? Which A-level? Which University? I fought against the restriction. I wanted something bigger, something broader: A single focus was too narrow and I fought against it like a caged animal.

I didn’t fit a model of success. I didn’t have a particular aim, a particular ambition, a single direction. I dipped a toe in every puddle, retraced my steps, fell down and got back up again only to discover that what I had was endless possibilities and a depth of feeling I didn’t know what to do with.

I wrote. I photographed. I read voraciously. I walked outside the lines. Until I realised that what I was searching for couldn’t be satisfied with separate, compartmentalised things: a job, a career, a hobby, religion. No. It was too bold, too wild, too yearning.

My direction had to tie together the thoughts and emotions that lay deep within me. I had to find a way of making what was inside me a physical reality, with all the challenges that demands. My direction is spiritual, emotional and physical. It’s multi-faceted, sparkling, impossible to define and MINE.

I don’t know how I’m going to find it, how I’m going to make it or where the hell it’s going to take me. It’s going to be a wild journey, with some money, some  poverty, some love and some loneliness but I know that wherever I end up, I’ll be looking at the stars and thinking that my wild adventure begins and ends with me. My happiness and my destination doesn’t rely on promotions or shiny shoes, whether I travel first class or stuffed in a cargo plane with a herd of llamas but it relies wholeheartedly on my perceptions and my willingness to take whatever life throws at me and make something bloody awesome out of it.

In my world, now that I’m grown up, I know that nobody has it better than I do. There is not one single person I’m jealous of … because those other people, they’re off doing their thing and I’m doing mine … and no matter how small my steps, every single one I take is taking me that much closer to that incredible destination I dreamed of when I was a kid and the journey’s a patchwork kaleidescope of wonderful things and desperate disappointments that make up a wonderful life.

Tags: Peter Pan Syndrome aka When I grow Up, What Am I Going To Do With My Life

Working it out

This morning, I was woken by a wet nose in my ear as my dog decided it was time for me to wake up, and I’d been lying in for far too long and I found myself springing out of bed like a gazelle. Not, for once, for fear of what the dogs would do if I didn’t but because I felt energetic. I don’t know about other people, but I find that whenever I am overcome by emotion, be it for good or for bad, once I have settled a bit, I always have a lot of energy left over, and being a practical sort, rather than go out for a ride or a walk, I chanelled my energy into some of the things around the house I’ve been meaning to do for ages and somehow never quite got round to.

Post snow, Somerset decided that a nice winter storm was clearly the way to blow out the cobwebs and provided us with an enchanting performance on Friday night around midnight as I huddled in bed listening to (and feeling) the howling wind and listening to the rain splatter against the windows. It really opened my eyes to the draughts in older houses. After draught proofing the gaps in the doors and windows, I decided the gaps at the bottom of the door needed serious tackling and a draught excluder was called for.

Being a thrifty sort, I was loath to pay for one, so I looked up ideas on the internet, and decided that it looked so painfully simple that even I could tackle it without hesitation. I had a hunt through my fabric chest and noticed a couple of old pillowcases that didn’t match anything and decided that it was the perfect lazy woman’s solution. I took the pillow case, turned it inside out and sewed a line stright down the middle. Since I was using gingham, I already had a straight line mapped out for me so it really couldn’t have been easier. After stuffing it with old bits of unused fabric, I sewed up the end et voila:

Blue Gingham Draught Excluder

Since I was in a sewing mood, anyway, I decided that it was about time I got around to making cushion covers for some more of the cushion inserts that were lurking in my trunk so I picked out a few choice scraps (see if you can guess which one used to be a pair of curtains) and made up a couple, using the envelope technique from Kirsty’s homemade home, which is much quicker and easier than bothering with zips and the like.

Handmade Cushions

After all the hauling around of furniture that occurred on Friday, I have a serious yen to get my bedroom finally finished so tomorrow will be a mad whirling experience of smartwear buying (ick), painting and general creativity but I promise to post some pics as soon as we’re all done.

I’ve also finally sanded back and waxed the windowframe I’ll be using for my headboard and am just waiting to hear from a friend with a handy drill and wire locating device to give me a hand putting it up (it’s big, okay?). Hang fire, the end result is a secret until it’s up and finished but seriously, it looks FABULOUS. I’m so proud.

Tags: Emotion Is A Rollercoaster That's Jumped off The Tracks, Some days I wish I hadn't got out of bed

Friends & Furniture

I’ve spent the last few days feeling very up in their air and not myself at all. I’ve felt reckless and constantly on the edge of doing something unusual. My sleep patterns even went a little awry, and with a day off today, it clearly culminated in my failsafe solution to all emotional troubles. Yep, reorganising the furniture, and the books, and my clothes. I’m a fairly relaxed person about the house as a general rule. I like things to be fairly tidy but I am not by any stretch of the imagination a fastidious person but it was a sign of my emotional wranglings that I woke up and looked about the place and thought something had to be done.

Somehow rearranging the furniture never fails to soothe me. I don’t know why exactly. It might be the order of it, or the process of organising and clearing that I find therapeutic but I can guarantee that if I need to think or to settle, you’ll either find me out walking or inside hauling furniture. Old trunks and chests found new uses and new homes, chests of drawers moved as did their contents and as the contents of my bedroom changed, the very shape, atmosphere and nature of it also changed and there it was, the peace and tranquility that I’d lost in the turbulence of evil ‘everything sucks’ Tuesday came flooding back as I watched my space take shape around me.

But my general dissatifaction with things got me thinking about other things too, and one of those things was friends (once again). I’m the sort of person who really likes their own company. I have so much to do that I am rarely bored and in those relatively short spaces of time when I’m not doing things, I like being able to kick back and enjoy my space, quietly and without interruption. Generally speaking, I’m happy with that.

And then I fell across Caroline’s 21st Century girl post and combined with my sartorial requirements for next Tuesday, I think it must have flipped a switch, because it got me thinking about my different groups of friends. I’m not short of friends, despite the fact that I don’t always make them easily thanks to a combination of shyness and slight overcompensation but I have relatively few that are local, being as I’m new to the area and all.

It reminded me of my University days, where for the first real time in my life, I was part of a group. I could wander up a floor and hook up with people for a cup of tea or wander down for a bit of my own space, if I had a sucky day, someone would roll up and either hear me out, tell me to snap out of my mood or drag me out somewhere to take my mind off it. It was the first time I’d known the comfort of real friendship. Real friends are the ones you never expect yourself to be friends with but seem to end up being friends with despite that, they’re the ones that you can go without seeing for years at a time and conversation still flows like time never passed. They’re the ones you remember having one vodka too many with and being hopelessly indiscreet and they’r the ones you know won’t let your secrets out on pain of death. Real friends turn up without being asked. They know you well enough to know whether to push or leave it alone. When you’re excited about something, they don’t just support you but join in.

We all keep in touch with phone calls, letters, emails and sometimes facebook and twitter but there are some days when you an email doesn’t cut the mustard. Sometimes you need friends around you, be they living down the hall, down the road or a half hour drive away.

I miss having that instant support network on my doorstep, and feel slightly ashamed that when I had it, I took it slightly for granted. I assumed that we’d always be there, always be close, and that things would always be easy. But none of our lives are ever easy, they’re fraught with difficulties, obstacles, diversions and endless demands on our time. It means more to me than I should probbaly admit that these people I care for, admire and love see enough in me to want to carve out the time to spend it with me.

Goes to show, that despite it all … as long as there are people in your life who love you … Happy Days.

Tags: You Can Choose Your Friends

With wild and reckless abandon

Yesterday was a a monster of a day, otherwise known as evil ‘everything sucks’ Tuesday. It was one of those days where everything I touched turned to dust. I broke unimaginable amount of crockery by accident (and felt like breaking more on purpose by the end of the day!), the website I’m working on broke for no discernible reason and the new project I was working on got shelved from lack of funding. In short, it just sucked.

As a result, this morning I was feeling just a little bit wild, unpredictable and devil may care. I have these moods from time to time, and they most commonly come upon me when I’m bummed and feel like I have nothing left to lose, however far that may be from the truth.

These are the sorts of moods that often precede me doing something indefinably stupid, including for example:

• Pointing out to my boss that he’s an idiot (Done that)
• Quitting my job when I have nothing to take its place and not a lot in the way of savings (and that)
• Taken off to a new city or country just because I bloody well can (yep to that on multiple counts)
• Wandering the streets alone and unprotected in the midde of the night and into the early hours of the morning (umm, that too)

Well you get the general idea. So when I woke up feeling slightly wild, irresponsible and ‘damn it all’ this morning, you can imagine my trepidation knowing I had a full day of work at the emporium of mad metaphysical delights. It’s the sort of mood where I could have some real fun, share some of my own metaphysical insights, randomly hug customers or grab them as the mood takes amongst others and generally inflict upon them the insanity they inflict upon me from day to day.

The temptation to tell the lady who thought she was a mermaid, who told me she’d been electrocuted by God that she was (a) crazy and (b) that I quite like fried fish … absolutely overwhelming to the point that I REALLY don’t know how I contained myself.

I’ll pass through it soon enough to do the sensible thing and fight my way back to take my dreams and , as Dolly Parton says ‘shine, design, refine until they come true‘ but for now I’m battling the desire to spare the tact, tell people exactly what I think of them with added vitriol and ride off into the sunset eating the biggest chocolate cake you ever saw.

Tags: Rant

Yummy yummy yummy, I got love in my tummy

Cold weather calls for good solid warming food. A gorgeous tuna bake does the job: pasta, sieved tomatoes, creme fraiche, herbs, tuna and cheese. Delish!

Snow Days

I have to admit, when I saw the flakes begin to fall yesterday, it was with a resigned cynicism. I’ve become accustomed to seeing the odd flake fall and for it not to settle, or hearing rumours of snow elsewhere in the country while the sky here just looks threateningly grey and rainy so you can imagine my surprise when I pulled back the curtains this morning to see 3 inches of snow lying on the ground outside.

The dogs and I couldn’t wait to get outside and have a play …

Murmurations

The Somerset Levels is an area of reclaimed wetland around Glastonbury and Wells, which as well as being wonderfully pretty countryside is home to one of the most spectactular natural events I have ever seen. They begin to fly southward for the winter and arrive here at the end of October or early November and stay until March. We have a small flock living just opposite, who wake us up at around 5.30am singing at the tops of their voices, but they are very small in comparison to the murmuration that flock together on the Levels of an evening.

This evening, we gathered at approximately 4pm to watch them gather as the sun went down, and as we slowly lost feeling in our limbs, it was more than made up for by the sight of tens of thousands, if not more, of starlings swarming through the sky like a giant amorphous cloud. The photos don’t do the experience justice but they may give you the beginnings of an idea …

Tags: Things That Are So Beautiful They Make Me Want To Sit Down And Cry

In a Nutshell

It’s been a turbulent and interesting year, 2009. It fairly kicked the ass of 2008, 2007, 2006 and indeed 2005 but deviated from the finishing line at the end of it … but to recap, here’s my 2009 in all its homemaking glory:

January

I took a big step and moved away from the area I had grown up in and what had once been my family home and moved several hundred miles away to a place I had no friends and no job on no more than a whim that it was the right place for me. I took a trip to the USA and went roadtripping through California with my friend Dragonboy, where we had fun and played with pirates and had earth shattering revelations about Life, The Universe and Everything. 42 may or may not be part of it. I’m not telling.

February

The Great Renovation project got started, thanks to Martin and Sue at GECCO and I spent several weeks in a state of slight panic as I watched things get sawed up, chopped up, people falling through floors and walls coming down until a miracle occurred and all of a sudden I had a house that resembled a house. Clearly, I didn’t have enough on my plate at the time so I adopted my second dog, Sascha from the Dogs Trust. She caused all manner of chaos but it made life interesting.

March

I got myself a kitchen finally, after a couple of months of not having a cooker and my relief at finally being able to turn on the hob was palpable, and after a wealth of swearing, frustration and cursing of the Misrosoft team who created IE6, my freelancing web design website went live

April

I got myself a part time job, doing something I could have guaranteed would magnify my freak beacon to a point beyond any kind of help. I was right. On a more decorative and creative front, I started trying to decide on what colours to paint the cottage, and entered a mad panic about whether painting the insides of cottages interesting colours was considered in poor taste. Meanwhile maniac demon bought the house next door, moved in and attempted to make my life a misery.

May

Having decided that since it wasn’t a listed building, I didn’t care what other people thought, I started to paint the kitchen and add flourishes and finishing touches around the house. There seemed to be a lot of painting and getting whimsical with flower fairies and not feeling any need to restrain myself or be grown up about things. Being a grown up doesn’t mean killing of the child inside you.

June

I finally started to be able to take some time to take it easy and kick back and relax, until I realised that my lazy assed bum of a surveyor cocked up my survey and it was going to cost me a small fortune to repair the roof. Several heated letters later … no response. You really have to love England sometimes, but this was not one of those times!

July

My patience came to a head over a lack of personal responsibility (what could be worse?) in my soon to be ex-flatmate and inspired by Lauren at A Typical Atypical, I mused over attitudes to drinking.

August

Went falconing for my sister’s birthday. Discovered halfway through said birthday that due to a burst pipe, the house was flooding and it was raining through the kitchen ceiling. Crisis ensued.

September

Spent a lot of time without a kitchen ceiling and a permeating smell of damp as the house dried out from the flooding incident, and it finally got through to me that no matter the cost, you have to follow your dreams. Invariably caused uproar at work by leaving a cup in the sink and my blog went wibbly wobbly and disappeared for a fair while due to an incident with my hosting provider.

October

I got rather domestic and had some time to spend indulging some of my hobbies, and went and caught a lot of shows at the local theatres, before reacquainting myself with a paintbrush and attacking the front room.

November

Had a whirlwind of friends visiting and house makeover-itis before my 30th un-birthday weekend, a month before my real birthday weekend, which seemed to result in a lot of general fun and hilarity and mortifying embarassment when people kept singing to me in my favourite local restaurant.

December

A lot of things happened very suddenly around the following a dream issue, which ultimately collapsed a couple of days before Christmas leaving me very disappointed. Christmas itself perked me up a little and here I am ready to bounce my way into 2010.

So, Happy New Year to You All. Here’s hoping all your dreams come true ….

Seasonal Insanity

My lovely sister left our post-Christmas celebrations this afternoon, and the house is obscenely quiet. I keep expecting to hear an unlikely crash, thud or squeak as a reminder that I’m not crashing about alone in the cottage. Instead the silence is tomb-like and oddly magnified. There may as well be a giant neon sign in the kitchen flashing away saying “you’re on your own now“. I feel slightly empty and the have that end of Christmas comedown, where the tree and decorations, instead of seeming cheerful, charming and festive, now seems gaudy, over the top and slightly ridiculous.

I’m trying very hard to remind myself that it’s a time to prepare for a new year and a new start and a time to be very positive. 2010 is potentially a very exciting time for me and will hopefully be filled with the opportunities I have been dreaming of and am hoping to put into action this year.

It’s not a time for me to be staring at myself, complete with chipped teal toenail polish, untamed frizzy hair, empty house, comfort clothes that would give Gok Wan nightmares, and a pile of dishes and think, well darling, what the fuck happened there then? Nor is it a time for thinking that I’ve just turned 30 and work in a shop doing something I’m not passionate about while I watch my finances demand that I live less on a budget and more of a shoestring.

This is a time for PRIORITIES, woman! Appearances can be tidied as can houses and it’s not outsides which are to be remedied but dreams that need to be bolstered. It’s a time to remember that every disappointment that was visited upon me in 2009 may well have happened for a reason and can only serve to drive me closer to actually achieving my dreams. It is NOT a time to lose heart, to stop dreaming, wishing and hoping.

Every dream has a rough path and the sleepless nights and moments of wondering if you’re crazy for wanting this instead of a more traditional ‘normal’ path, but overcoming these things is what makes the achievements all the sweeter. I suppose to an extent, it makes me feel like a heroine upon a quest, proving myself worthy of the prize by succeeding at the challenges I’ve been set. Since I rather like the idea of being a heroine in a story of my own devising, I’ll be carrying on with my quest in search of my treasure … but I’ll be buggered if I’ll be doing it without RUM!

Tags: Blood Is Thicker Than Water, Hide The Minced Pies and Crack Out The Champers: It's Christmas

Blood is thicker than water

I’ve been meaning to write a post on my un-birthday weekend for the entire week, but for reasons many and various it just doesn’t seem to be happening. It will soon, I promise. What has been on my mind though is family.

When everyone left last weekend, after heaving a sigh of relief that everything was all in one piece and I could flop on the sofa and recover from the weekend, I felt a bit of a wrench at seeing all these people I loved leaving, and found that it was a bit more of a wrench than I was expecting, which I can only attribute to my sister.

Many of my friends often view families and siblings in particular as a test of their patience, and as something visited upon you by fate that by and large you just have to tolerate for most of your life. I suppose that in that respect I am exceedingly lucky. My sister and I grew up very close, and seemed to have grown more so over the years. We seem to have weathered many of the worst bumps that life can throw at you and know each other inside out.

If ever I receive news of any description, the first person I ring will be my sister, knowing that she will instinctively understand my reaction and will talk me down from whatever state of madness I have found myself in, encourage me or give me the boot in the backside I (quite often) richly deserve.

She’s the one person from whom I will unconditionally accept criticism, because she knows me so well that there’s little point to pretending that I had or would react in any other way than the one she expects. She knows how to draw me out of dark moods and when to be silly and remind me of the small things that can make me laugh until the tears run down my face and my ribs ache from laughing so hard. She cringes madly when I sing along to tunes in the car and yet I know if I sneak a sideways peek, she’ll be mouthing the words too.

She reminds me of all th incalculably stupid things I have done during my life and when I feel down about them also reminds me that in the short time I’ve been alive that I achieved some absolutely AMAZING things too. She reminds me that it’s okay to be the person I am and the person I want to be, and that it’s okay not to want to be ordinary but to strive for the impossible. She helps me to believe that I can make the impossible happen every single day.

She drags me out of my comfortable shoes and into shoes I wear once a year so that we can look pretty when we go out. She doesn’t insist on hanging off my arm to prove that she loves me. She understands the value in knowing when to shut the hell up and give someone space and when to stick her oar in.

She’s generous, intelligent, educated, articulate and hilariously funny. She doesn’t take herself too seriously and she doesn’t take me too seriously either. She’s ridiculously beautiful and never realises how much.She’s my best friend who I could rely on to be there for me if I was dangling off the side of a cliff in Outer Mongolia. I cannot imagine that I have ever done anything in my life to deserve having a sister tso wonderful that thinking about her makes me teary because I miss her so much. You’re my rock. This is just to say – Lu, I love you.  Merry Christmas. xx

Tags: Blood Is Thicker Than Water