All is calm...

Christmas wrapped up!  New Year approaches....nothing like stepping outside to observe, in the greyness of the morning that the daffodils are shooting tiny green barbs into the light of day.  That makes me happy.  Currently they fight their way through the greenery of the last of the winter pansies, which were a pretty mixed effort.  Some pots flourished, some languished and it was the same for the ones planted at work.  I guess it's light or water or maybe just a poor batch - Somewhat lacking green fingers, I like to watch them emerge blinking into day sleepy faces on a ruff of colour.

Walking home from town I pass my favourite beech hedge.  It's been fairly brutally pruned lately and the curls of crunchy bronze leaves cling to the clean chopped edges.  I love the soft cotton, silk feel of the new growth as it pushes out the old dead leaves in spring and can't resist stroking the leaves!

There are left over leaves to sweep this afternoon and the Christmas tree to put to bed for another year.  Yes I know it's not 12th night but the coloured lights and nativity scene will stay in their fireplace places. Our "over Christmas shutdown" list from our manager included the instruction to take down the tatty tacky and thoroughly illegal lights and tinsel.  Don't tell the management of the NHS apparently as the lights haven't been checked for a while.

Clearing the clutter in the bookshelves is booked in too.  Setting a reading target on Goodreads of 50 books will give me an aim.  It's an aim I usually achieve and getting the mix of books right depends on the library and charity shops as well as the spiritually more deep and chewy books of church and lee abbey. I know someone at church who reads in a disciplined fashion - biography, spiritual book, novel, non fiction.  Truly impressive! Far too orderly for me: my friends know that planned spontaneity suits me better!

Turkey and Tinsel

I can't say I am a fan of roast dinner.  I usually think and am told that I am a reasonable cook but producing a turkey dinner complete with pigs in blankets, veg and good roasties is a bit challenging with a smallish oven whilst trying to play host.  It's usually at Christmas that I feel the lack of a partner.  Or maybe a butler? Someone to do the social stuff while I cook - or cook while I talk?

This Christmas, my dripping past it's sell by date kitchen tap decided to go on strike, necessitating running upstairs to get a bucket of cold water to cool the washing up water.  My lovely, elderly, very very deaf dad tries to "help" and I give him the tea towel.  I usually spend a while trying to figure out where he's put things, so he gets to pile them on the kitchen table.

Rather deaf and equally lovely mum has forgotten not only her medication (overnight stay) but her hearing aid.  I didn't know the television could go up to 42 - or do subtitles!  Strictly is not my favourite but hey, they enjoyed it.  And that's the point.  I wanted them to have a good, warm hearted Christmas and a nice premier inn breakfast with me the next day.  Because otherwise I sleep under the Christmas tree, which is not fun. It took me a while to explain the complexities of the premier inn breakfast system but pain chocolate and a full breakfast with coffee refills? Lovely way to start Boxing Day.

They are so tottery.  It's tough to watch.  I wish I was a more compassionate and gentle person; I can only take so much before I need a break, a book, and another couple of friends with similiar-ish older parents to smirk and swap stories with.  It's our way of coping.

Buying stuff

My manager has a yearly cull of clothes.  I think if I did that I would walk around rather chilly! I treat buying clothes as the same sort of chore as buying car tyres - I know the car needs to be kept in good order so I "love" it with an MOT, service and maintenance - and the occasional proper wash which has to be better than the one I give it!  So with clothes.

I'm not always a lot better with gift buying.  I think shops are a bit overwhelming!  I would like to be thoughtful so I want to give something that will "fit"and that's a bit stressful somehow?

Back in early December, the bit I remember of the very visual advent weekend teaching, was the thought that the wise men gave their gifts but not their hearts.  I watched a programme about the "real" Noah's ark last night - nothing like a good history programme after a week at work.  And it drew on Babylonian culture and boat building.  Fascinating stuff.  I started thinking about the song "I would walk 500 miles" by the Proclaimers. Yet another sermon scrap - and song link - it was about 500 miles from Jerusalem to Babylon. I remember hearing that!

So, I  thought it would be good to be like the wise men.  They prepared for a very long, arduous journey.  Thorough. They were intelligent, searching men.  Looking into records and stars.  And then following, keenly, as envoys, to go seek out the new king they saw foretold.  And they recognised him as prophet, priest and king.  Thoughtful gifts.  They did worship him as best they could.

Thoughtful.  That is something I very much would like to be.

Facebook

I've spent nearly a month off facebook.  It's been a useful Advent practice in making life feel less cluttered.  I have had chats with people whose commitment to friendship and the genuineness of one on one interactions makes me question my sanity in being part of facebook. I like to talk, I like to listen.  I also quite like social media - I'm no hermit.  But - I get drawn into the "likes" circus and some of what appears, I really don't "like" or want to fill my brain with.

I choose to select my own level of brain cluttered rubbish! After all, I am very happy watching trash on TV when tired and I love a good box set and feel they are necessary to winter.  So I will be sharing my photos and blogs, taking time to talk to friends and not feeling left out or in any way over ordinary if my life doesn't have the level of social glamour of some friends.  After all, I am someone who haunts costa and reads several books at once and regards parties as a hellish practice.

And if you know me too well, I have just done that ridiculous time saving thing called buying two shirts in different colours!  It's hot in our office, and a pink and a blue polo shirt will sit alongside their navy counterpart quite nicely. I guess that we exhibit our values in our clothes: I cannot be bothered and just like to look neat, groomed and clean: cotton suits me rather than stretchy anything and I've spent 11 years wearing corporate polo shirts so I quite miss them.  I promise to have a more considered approach in the New Year.....

Bleary days

It's the bleary pre Christmas week, when the light is short and the mornings dark and the duvet is cosy.  An ideal time to plan a walking holiday I thought, having spent lots of the summer trawling the Ramblers holidays website.  I seem to have a growing fondness for ditch or wall walks - having done Hadrian's wall, I'm planning to walk Offa's dyke, all the way down the length of Wales

It's in three sections so that should keep my next few holiday plans nice and simple!  I think it will link together many of the individual walks I have done - walks in the black mountains, bits of the Wye valley trails.  I am hoping that June will be stable and warm-ish and not the monsoon season we seem to be having now. A friend asked me why I don't drive to holidays if I can help it, knowing how simply I have to pack travelling by train, but I quite like the excitement of trains even if the current reality is crowded, fraught and fairly frantic at times!  I can switch off and read even if my legs get cramped being clamped around my rucksack.

Flint sounds a tough station.  Flint headed, I think that's in Jeremiah, where the prophet has to set his face "like flint" or maybe it's gospel?  I don't know!  I imagine a grey, shiny polished little town.  Or maybe it's a town where one of our leadership team's husband hails from?  Who knows?  I find I need some plans on grey soggy days.

I made a discovery about sprouts this weekend at our works Christmas meal. Where have the hydrogen sulphide, volcanic hot springs tasting stinking bullets gone?  Genetic engineering is a good thing in the case of the sprout I think.  They were small, sweet, dinky little things.  Having spent a lifetime dutifully eating two or three at Christmas, under sufference, I had seconds.  Unheard of!

It was a lovely festive, relaxed meal, despite having to shout over the disco and large corporate party in the same room.  I feel so very privileged to be working with people I actually quite like to talk to!

Waiting

Advent is for waiting.  I went to Lee Abbey last weekend and came back with a piece of straw to remind me that laying down everything you have and receiving Jesus is gain.  A big prayer in an atmosphere of God's love.  Not sure if it feels so easy or straightforward in ordinary life where these things happen a bit at a time. But I liked the idea and the straw!

I've always been a bit ambivalent about Christmas.  It's always seemed a game of two halves to me.  Secular Christmas - which in my childhood family was relatives, trifle, turkey traumas and the circus.  And Christian Christmas, which was magical. I treasure a fondness for fairy lights and lanterns in church which days of health and safety seem to have banned.

So it's oh so appropriate that this weeks' reading has been Jesus in full turn the tables pre Palm Sunday confrontational mode.  I wonder what he'd make of Christmas?  I am sure he would be truly appalled and angry that his birthday makes debtors of the poorest and embarrases the faith with such crass commercialism.

So I wrote a little rant.

Christmas is to come
And I wait. Today it's still advent.
The time for a second red candle to flare into flame.

This year, I want to honour Jesus
Walking in the city speaks of the hollow, shallow extravagance
that Christmas can become

An empty shell of Christmas wrap.

This year I hope that hearts will search
Including mine.

This season I hope I reflect the hunger of the shepherds to see glory
This season I hope I give more than the wise men, who only gave what they could afford

May I not be a choreographed religious show
But may I have a genuine, generous heart
of welcome.

40 Days Mark

I've been working my way through Mark's gospel using a journal format book by Scripture Union. It has blank pages - for stick men drawings, lines for text and space around the scripture passage.  I love it.  More importantly, I've loved discovering the compassionate, questioning, thoughtful, exasperating Jesus in its pages.

So many very human encounters.  The disciples have an argument.  Why were they afraid to ask Jesus about his teaching?  The most considerate, thoughtful, direct and compassionate of men?

Maybe they didn't want to admit to being bewildered by what he'd said?
In over their heads?
To look like the second rate scholars they so obviously were.
Not deep thinkers, but men of work and action.

And maybe they didn't want their shabby, competitive me-first, Alpha male powergames revealed.
Each wanting to be top dog.
Not trusting like a little child - someone bathed, dressed and fed by another.

What had they to lose?
Power, independence.
They might not have liked Jesus' answers. 
But hiding from him?  Secrets fester.

A rucksack of bricks

Several years ago I watched SAS recruits running up and back down Pen Y Fan mountain in the Brecon Beacons.  They carried a rucksack of bricks.  Or at least a heavily weighted pack.  It's a tough slog up there - I have walked up this hill in rain, mist, sun and don't particularly want to do it again.  It slowed these fit young men down a little but not noticeably.  But I am neither young, a man or particularly SAS fit, although I am pretty good at hill walking.

I can visualise a rucksack of bricks.  I lifted an infantryman's belt kit in the Gloucesters museum - that was enough for me! I know it's weight and drag.  The way it bends the back and makes your every step into a heavy plod. It's been a very apt metaphor for the stress and pressure I have felt over the last year of financial and working uncertainty and the previous few years in a working environment where everything teetered on the edge of financial chaos.  With an unhealthy dose of competititve male argumentativeness thrown in.

I am very slowly learning that I can lay down a brick at a time, and feel my back straighten.

Hooray for DSE

DSE: another NHS acronym!  I've just had a display screen equipment assessment as I have been talking about having back and neck pain prior to a lovely much appreciated holiday.  I waded through 6 pages of nonsense and my supervisor and I have concluded 1) I have very short legs (!!) so I need a footrest and 2) I have the worst chair in the world - no surprise, I am the last in....

So I stealthily carried out a chair raid in the IT room next door and have a battered but serviceable one with a proper back and a seat that is actually level! We laughed that the form asks if the floor is solid and stable - it bounces and shakes as anyone walks across the room. The walls are strawberry icecream pink and splattered with ex blue tack stains. Delightful!  Frankly the whole building is hardly fit for purpose but the trees in the grounds are worth the location. 

I have just listened to radio 4 with breakfast and the scandal that is PIP assessments was highlighted. It seems typical of our government to target the most vulnerable instead of providing support.  It was an interesting way to start a rainy day whilst eating banana oat pancakes with blueberries. I am not a politician but surely there are better targets?

 It's raining so hard that the winter pansies are standing up and cheering!  I haven't the heart to wonder if they will still be around later or a bit too damp and wilted! I am writing to put off the thought of going out for a swim and a flu jab later - exciting stuff.  It's a good "domestic goddess" day as my friend calls it.  And there's more than enough work for the proverbial domestic goddess to do.  If she wants to come round that would be fantastic - otherwise sadly it will need to be me!

Ice Cream days

It's a good photography technique I think, to add an object to give an idea of scale and majesty.  So here's the half eaten banana and toffee icecream against cirrus streaked blue Derbyshire sky.  It was really cold up there - a windy spot for a picnic on our first walking day.  A day that really called for hot chocolate I guess.  But it's the back end of Summer shading into Autumn proper and holidays call for ice cream.

Ice cream days fade when I come back home to the stink of broccoli as I'd forgotten to take the bin out before leaving for the holiday.  And although it was a beautiful holiday, I always feel a bit lost afterwards.  Several of us on the holiday were either long time single/divorced or widowed - though not all.  And that sense of not wanting to come home echoed.

I love my home, but next time, I think I will make a welcome home box with a bar of chocolate, library rented DVD and a beer..I actually came home to a card from a lovely friend with a note saying "go have coffee and cake" She knows me too well.  So I did. Next time I will remember to leave the house tidier and take painkillers before a four hour cramped seat on a train, huddled with my rucksack.  We diverted via Newport but at least I got home.  A couple of swims and the tedious back exercises are stretching out the cramps and a return to work will help with the transitory feeling which a week of company for breakfast and walking group banter leaves.  I am grateful for many things but singleness is my choice so I will find ways to carry it - at least it means that I can save viciously because I want to book another ramblers holiday next year!

Dales walkies

I've spent the week walking in mostly golden sunshine in Derbyshire.  The accents are gentle and I was called "dook" which is "Northern" for Duck!  Such a lovely accent.  I've managed to pick it up a little I think.  The holiday was a Ramblers walking break in the Peak District - which I have been to before but apparently only on the Dark Peak side.  The White Peak, where we stayed (Cromford) is in Limestone country and we walked amidst glistening towers and pikes of white which apparently look like an Italian Dolomites in miniature, against the clear azure sky.  According to our walks leader anyway. 

I was tired. It has been a long summer, learning a new job.  My neck took about 5 days to unstiffen - a group of us came in from the 10 - 14 miles walks each day to swim in the small pool in the hotel grounds, which was so nice and refreshing. But you had to go as soon as you had taken your boots off or there wasn't any motivation. It gave me a good appetite - cake, ice cream and Eaton Mess featured in my nice-moments of the holiday file!

The dales were silent in many places, peopled by some majestic wind turbines.  We got very close to them and I am amazed at the magnificent proportions of them.  We heard and saw buzzards overhead and one day someone asked if there was an owl in the tree.  It was a resting kestrel, which then flew past and gently came to rest on another tree, whilst a buzzard mewed overhead.  Definitely my highlight of the holiday.  Walking in Lathkilldale, we saw harebells, sheep, and many more people and went down a little abandoned lead mine, with a long metal ladder and dripping, fern festooned walls.  It must have been such a hard way of earning a living and so very dangerous.

Dovedale contributed takeaway coffee, dippers and grey wagtails and half the schoolchildren of Derbyshire.  It's definitely a honeypot.  We finished at Ilam.  I looked in the church and there was a large stone table of prayer cards, written by people who might not normally pray.  The hearfelt grief and honesty made me feel more than a little ashamed when I have been so lacklustre and routine in my own prayers.  I guess it makes God weep for the world.

There was a lot of industrial past on show.  We walked past tracks and cogs, an abandoned engineering workshop, now a nice informal museum, lots of chains and rusty irons bits and pieces.  The Monsal and High Peak trails are former railway tracks axed by the infamous Dr Beeching.
It's been lovely. I spent my thirties and forties climbing/walking/scrambling up big hills and testing my dodgy lungs, but gentler walks with lovely scenery and some fun banter from my walking holiday companions strikes me as a much more lung friendly and interesting way to go forward.  I need to make sure I save hard as I come alive walking outside.

Shining?

Yesterday my two most extravert colleagues were organising the work Christmas meal.  It's a hotel affair with a disco and a magician.  I heard the words "it'll be great to dress up" and my heart sank.  I can't think of anything I like less than parties and dressing up!  Maybe fancy dress? I feel such a fraud and so very awkward for so very many reasons.  I never was a dress up child and I am not a dress up adult.  Yet, I am not confident enough to just be even after all this time, in such situations.  I've done it for a family I really love and an evening of politeness and feeling awkward was worth it - they were worth it. I had a laugh with one of the managers when I admitted I shopped like a man - if I like it and it fits, I will buy either two of it or in more than one colour - on the basis that you will never see it again. Hence I have two navy polo shirts, two short denim summer shirts and body warmers in two colours!  I know!  She told me her friend was like that - favourite shops were mountain warehouse and M and S.  I had to concur.  To a general chorus from the office of "oh I love shopping" I had to admit I would rather buy books than handbags any day.

I have just finished "customising" my recycling bin and dustbin with the reduced price stickers of squirrels and kingfisher my friend found for me in retaliation for the cats stickers I gave her one Christmas for her wheelie bin.  It was a frustratingly crafty thing involving scissors, but I hope now that squirrel nutkin and friends will alert the bin men so I don't have to play "hunt the bin" down the street most Fridays.

Ordinary life.  It's humdrum.  The morning was errands for parents, including wielding a lump hammer to break up the collapsing wooden garden furniture to take to the tip.  I discovered that this was my great grandads hammer and that he wasn't the farm labourer I thought he was (that was nans side of the family) but a master mason, or "brickie".  He was part of the team that built the Middlemoor police station apparently.  Great grandad, if he followed the family traits, would have been short and solid to swing that lump of wood and metal.  It was fun for a very short time.

I wonder what relevance all that is to God sometimes.  But I'm reading the bible book of Kings, and something jogged my memory - God cared about poisoned stew, a broken (loaned) axe and a desperate widow whose hospitality was strained to the breaking point

When it's easy to be grateful

Today I came home from work to the chitter of the back garden sparrow squad.  I thought nothing of it - they are usually noisy.  Going over to wash my hands, I looked out the window - to see a large, brown and beige bird of prey with a nice bright eye and an intentional looking curved beak perched on the brick wall at the back of the house, eyeing up sparrow surprise for tea.  I assume he or she is a sparrowhawk but would be very pleased to be proved wrong!  I would have willingly sacrificed several sparrows to keep my newest acquistion on the wall, but, before I could find either camera or phone it had taken flight, scattering the sparrows ahead of it.  Lovely unexpected thing as the usual birds are blackbird, occasional crow and annoying seagulls.

I have a habit of "making" gratitude quilts - basically hatched lines in a notebook, filled with prayer or thanks for good things, in as many colour biros as I have.  They are a good reminder on a dark morning when my heart is a little rusty.  I think I will have to take my camera to work, too, to photograph the changing colours of the beautiful mature trees where I work, and the way the light shines on the colours of the victorian brickwork, to make up for the drab, draughty huts we work in!

Practising Gratitude

I'm not sure where in my continous walk of learning to be a bit of a follower of Jesus I picked up the habit of gratitude.  When I was truly bored - and it was a horrible time at work - I tried to find 50 things to be grateful for at a time.  Lists usually included coffee, chocolate, books, Jesus, the bible and disintegrated into duvet, the bin men, buttercups and just about anything else I could find - 50 is a big list! A friend of mine said (rather cynically) that finding 3 things a day to be grateful for over 365 days would be very challenging.  I'm tempted to try it.  An excuse for a new notebook.  I'm fairly convinced that habitually looking for things to be grateful for is doing interesting things to my brain and rewiring this natural pessimist into a slightly more sunny and positive version - although to be fair, this may be the work of God's spirit! Certainly I did it through gritted teeth when I had a puncture and found the spare tyre also had a screw in it and the repair man took an hour and a half on a very sticky day!   But I was grateful I didn't have my new manager in the car, which would have been the case a week later for a scones and cream motivational afternoon.  I am not sure about the management blather but scones and cream can motivate me any time!

Walking on the edge

I've had eight weeks of cramming new information and forming good working relationships and my head is tired.  I need a mental holiday and the best way is to dig out my rapidly failing boots and camera and take a walk.  I had fun hauling up and down the hills around Ladram Bay, reading the signs stating that "happiness is a holiday home in Devon" and that "this is a cliff edge - thank you for your consideration". That one made me laugh - consideration?  999? Rescue helicopter? It's a long way down at this point.  I agree that having a home in Devon is a happy thing and walked to Otterton for a cheese scone.  I found myself grousing on the way back as all the cars seemed to take the Devon lanes wide, making me want to yell "you are not driving a tank" although fair point, some were pretty large and the lanes are overgrown.  I've been reading a couple of books by Matthew Johnston "I had a black dog" and one lovely one of his mindful photographs.  I would so like to be a better photographer.  His beautiful simple books remind me to make sure life is less frills, more happiness, to beat the black dog with exericse, to learn to be gentle.  I find the last really really hard. I have set myself a target of doing 150 miles to get a medal with "race at your pace" but someone suggested this was too easy, so I upped it to 200.  With the reaction that I then started worrying and knew in myself that that's not good.  I ate humble pie and am doing 150 miles walk challenge in September, which, with a peak district walking holiday should be fairly straightforward for me.  I think it will be the first sporting medal I have ever achieved, although somewhere I have a certificate my good friend bought me for walking up either Snowdon or Ben Nevis and a swimming towel for the herculean effort that was a pool based, 12 week "channel swim" that my friends had to help with as my doctor banned me due to ear infections.  Challenges are great, but I am learning that they need to fit properly.

Lost - searching for home

This weekend I watched the film "Lion" in someone's garden, with a retiring collection being made to Tearfund.  I need to watch it again as for the last half I was fighting neck cramp that put me in bed for a couple wasted hours of Saturday morning.  Waking early and ramming breakfast so you can take painkiller is not my favourite way to wake up.  It's a beautiful, aching, well told, fabulously acted story of a boy who loses his family, his home, his roots and has his new roots in another place soil-shaken out so that he is compelled to find his background, his source.  Being a curious sort, and having missed half with poor concentration, I've ordered the book "a long way home" on which the film is based, from the nicely accommodating library.

I've just read about the importance of home on a friends' blog.  I'm a long time Devonian.  I used to have a beautiful photo on my wall which was taken by someone I loved - a photo of the stone marking a first war cemetery where so many of the Devons gave their lives.  The person I loved remarked that Devonians don't travel well far from home.  Which is true for me. 

I love the pinks of Devon.  "Red" Devon, with it's sandstone cliffs that feed into the pinky soil, the reddish tinge of brickwork, the crumbly browny reds of the Roman walls and the colour that cattle pick up when they are shin deep in Devon mud.  I grew up with a dad whose burr is nothing compared to the deep dialect richness of his mum and dad.  My Kentish mum couldn't understand them first off.  I know the ways around East Devon, the free parking, the hills and back ways, from childhood walks, school run/walks and a lifetime of being adverse to more adventurous travel!

I have been thinking about photographs this week.  My new manager trusted me enough to share her stunning photographs.  She has totally awesome talent and technique.  It took guts for me to share my not so good photos after that but I wanted to.  It inspired me to make a photocalendar for my newly acquired desk (after six rootless work weeks) for the new year.  And I realised how few I have taken this year.  Low photo count is usually a sign that I haven't prioritised any time and space.  And I am feeling dull and dry. About as dry as the yellowed grass was.  I could do with a season of rain. Time to get outside behind a lens and leave my books for evening joy!

Rain

It's raining hooray!!!  I never thought I'd say that. I should be praying and I'm sitting watching grey marbly clouds solidly filling the window.  Rain on glass sounds like rice krispies - sort of crackle and the popping sound as it slides off the glass.  I can hear it drumming on the flat roof and rippling down the drain and the swish of wet car tyres this morning through the open window told me it was damp before I opened the curtains.

The air feels fresher, the plants look bedraggled bless them and I am hoping my colleagues wedding tomorrow won't be a soggy disaster. I've heard a lot about it in the six weeks I have worked there - and the grotty work carpet is strewn with the heart shape confetti we gave her. I think this year I will need to make friends with Autumn.  Last and previous years bouts of depression spoiled my appreciating it and I want to revel in the colours and cools anticipating walking in the Peak District.

Today is the day I get a desk after said six weeks!  Not sure what we will do while the team are trundling around with furniture but it will be nice to have a home.  My colleagues are all wanting to pick desks so, as they are young and I'm not that fussed, I guess I will let them fight over them.  At least I am getting a desk, and my random clutter will have somewhere to go.

A is for Astronaut - the joy of reading several books at once

There's a stack of books sitting on the stairs.  They look at me reproachfully as I bought them back in June celebrating a permanent job.  Since then, they have sat there.  I waded through the "for and against" books on christians and homosexuality and ended up more confused and certain only of the fact that 6 -7 passages in the bible weigh against a fat volume of verses on social ethics and justice.  All of which I probably tramp over on a daily basis, as a comparatively - and that feels a bit of a joke - fat cat westerner.  A wiser friend tells me both sides of the argument sound convincing which is very true.  There is also a book on "cold case christianity" which I leant to someone and wanted to read,  so re ordered one night and so haven't got round to yet

The actual reading is the leaning pile in the front room, cosily sandwiched between the gas fire and the sofa, which accumulates bookmarks, coffee cups if I am not careful and junk if I am miserable - I am tidy to a fault so I am starting to realise that when paperwork and admin pile up, I need to listen to my heart and say hello to what's going on in there!  I know - I want a holiday - it's starting to be good walking season and the peak district walk is 6 weeks away.

So I am actually reading "ask an astronaut" by Tim Peake, which is truly lovely.  I would have adored it as a teenager - child/adult questions to an astronaut : how do you go to the loo in space, what do you eat in space, what happens to the rubbish, lots of more technical stuff and pictures and diagrams.  What's not to like? I've also just finished the railway detective which is about murder in Victorian times; a dastardly plot to blow up the Great Exhibition and take on the train builders.  Extremely enjoyable feel good fiction.  And I have on order from the library "living with a black dog" by Matthew Johnstone and an autobiography of Professor Dame Sue Black whose more serious work I will struggle with but whose views on death I look forward to reading!  A life without reading can't be much fun.

Waterproof Skin

This morning I woke to cool, and huddled under the duvet with the nice sensation of cold feet. 
It's been a long time coming, but today we had solid, grey, drifting rain.
Beautiful with fat bulky clouds, puddles on the pavement, the lights and brights of jackets and umbrellas. 
I didn't prepare. 
I came out the swimming pool, with damp hair to summer shorts and a walking top over my polo shirt.  And was grateful, walking up to see a temporarily hospitalised friend, that I could walk, swim and had waterproof skin.

I practiced the luxurious essential skill that is making a multicoloured patchwork quilt of written thank yous.  Coloured pens and a journal and a lengthy sheltering from early cool and damp.  It makes life sweet and I am grateful to have God to thank but I guess it is still a good life skill to have anyway.

Stop, look, listen, be (a)ware (of trains!!)

I've felt in need of a bit of space and quiet after a busy week of trying to build up my knowledge at work:

This morning I walked along the exe estuary trail - intending to go from Exmouth to Lympstone and take photos and maybe carry on, but I was stopped by barriers and signs explaining the "furry dance" was happening.  I'm guessing this involves morris men and not prancing cats but it meant lunch by the river looking out at the boats and listening to the gentle wash of the water, admiring estuary side washing lines festooned with washing and paper fish! Walking along the trail in the morning, I did the stop look listen as mentioned on the sign.  It was morning quiet, with thin robin song, the creak of my left walking boot, water in the plastic bottle splashing around and the hurtling racket of the occasional train.  Ripple patterns on the water, and the evidence that nature is storing up for Autumn.  There are ripe orange berries, blackberries in the hedgerows, thistledown, sloes and teasel heads.  Every flower seems to have gone to seed and there is a hint of mustard in the air from one yellow plant whose name I sadly don't know.

I realise I've had a brilliant summer.  Barbecues - even ones that don't light, picnics, coffee out, swimming in the sea, walking with friends, sitting in the garden reading.  But I have missed the chance to simply walk and notice what's around me.  That's a solitary pursuit for me and I love it.

Black Dog

Today we have had mental health awareness training at work.  Such an interesting and enlightening day and so well taught.  It was a privilege to learn a little more and I felt a congruence between my values and role rather than having to always wear a tough front, working in a male dominated industry.  The tutor played a beautiful Youtube clip called "I had a black dog, his name was depression"  and I had the experience of being found out by a cartoon! Sometimes simple heart felt advice can be best presented by means that stealth under the logical radar. I am so glad that I had mentioned my journey with depression at my supervision session the previous week as it led to an offer of help in being aware of how winter vulnerable I can be. 

Summer Rain

Saturday night I drove out to see a friend for tea.  It was the most bizarre drive, wearing sunglasses against the glare, with windscreen wipers full on, dipped headlights against the lorry kicked up spray, and watching the thunder clouds build ahead as I drove through the heaviest rain we have had all summer. By the end of the evening, sitting in the car again in shorts, my feet were freezing and I had to wear a sport top with long sleeves for the first time in four months.  Now it is sweaty, muggy weather again and spit spattering rain with a dark menacing line of gray advancing over the tops of the budleia and treetops. My friend and I watched the rain from the kitchen door, fascinated and glad.  I guess it has been many summers since I have been happy to have it rain!!  Usually it thrashes down in Devon, which is why it is so beautifully green.

It's the end of July and I think nature is doing the end of summer is approaching, conserve and change thing.  Seasons don't always correspond to school holidays.  My garden begins to look tired and exhausted, despite lashings of recycled bath water (no aphids stand a chance) and semi religious dead heading to make sure the plants flower their hearts out. The plants are getting wild and straggly.   I've invested in some tins of paint and brushes as I also get the urge to batten down the hatches and make sure everything is shipshape and winter tidy in late summer and I like painting and decorating as a nice time wasting/money saving hobby!  I think it is because the days are still long and the heat dissipates in later summer sufficient to make swinging a paint roller for a few hours a day a less sticky and more appealing prospect. And I also got a 10% discount which makes me happy!!

Reset

I have survived the week on the "Our Path" nhs sponsored programme for those who either want to lose weight sustainably or who like me hate having blood sugar that isn't consistent and want to learn what decent nutrition is and untangle the ball of knots that is dietary advice from the myths, TV rubbish and supermarket marketing.

It's been enlightening.  Each day I have had articles to read, mainly on CBT - positive thinking, magical thinking, mind reading.  All useful and things that I should know anyway from my reading but it has been helpful to have a reminder. I've mainly discovered that lunch is a key meal for me and that tea in the evening can be light.  And that a strong breakfast includes some protein, fat and complex carbohydrate.  The old adage of breakfast like a king, dine like a lord, sup like a pauper seems to be true!  I can truly say I haven't felt hungry and I am embarrassed to realise that having a sandwich lunch plus lots of fruit/low fat yogurt was probably unhelpful.  For me it is a little like turning from ordinary petrol to a higher grade performance fuel!  Not being constantly hungry and fighting the horrible feeling of imminent blood sugar crash is very nice.  I felt like I was always trying to prevent the crash and rein in the appetite!

However, it's been an interesting week for the truly unexpected side effects of long term cheap simple carbohydrate and caffeine intake.  I spent two days feeling truly dreadful - tired, irritable, low mood, and a crushing headache and inability to concentrate.  Caffeine is a pick me up and my advisor and I have agreed to two caffeine shots in the morning - which is fine by me - and the rest of the day is as it always was - decaff plus water/peppermint tea.  The peppermint tea is a leftover from a previous employee at work with a taste for interesting tea bags.  My colleagues have made various rude remarks so far!!  That's their problem, not mine I realise.

I've re bonded with dark chocolate as a good friend, and certainly can't quite believe that this is both easy and cheap - less fruit, no rubbish, lots of cheap fresh and frozen veg.  Next week I move onto "restore", the long term sustainable way of life plan!  And I will be making thai fish cakes......and a coconut dhal......

Our Path

I've signed up for what describes itself as a lifestyle change.  I am wary of pretentious labels but I can see why it calls itself this rather than a diet.  I'm little and only a little bit chunkier than I should be so why bother?  It was designed for diabetics, and, with this in mind, and with both parents in the at risk category and me with the unstable crash and burn of truly dodgy blood sugar regulation, it seemed sensible.  It features dietician advice, online support and the cheapo version I signed up to makes me recycle the step counter I used for the cancer charity step challenge last March.

The handbook and recipe guide arrived in the post.  Two smallish spiral bound blue notebooks crammed with good advice and some nice sounding recipes.  I have had a lifetime so far of eating what I am given and am now considering that the "healthy eating" industrial marketing machine has sold us down the river. Sensible guides on eating whole, unprocessed and low glycaemic index (complex carbs, no sugar) foods, restricting fruit (which I love) and maxing out my vegetable intake along with full on greek yogurt.  The plan starts on Monday and having to curb my carbs makes me nervous.  I had a fear it would be expensive, but the advice is so simple and basic, that, like setting a budget, I assume - which will need road testing - that I will find joy within effective basic "rules"

I think I will miss lots of fruit and milk chocolate.  Dark chocolate is great, but really too "saintly halo" for this newly "converted" non drinker and life time non smoker.  I want at least one good vice somehow.  Apart, of course, from coffee drinking!  We were encouraged to go through our fridge/freezer and cupboards and throw out anything that didn't correspond to the new guidelines.  I am not entirely sure what I think about the fact that I have complied.  It is my health after all, but it just feels a bit worthy some how.  But, if I stay health for longer then I think it will be worth it.

Building with Lego

When I was little I had a red, square biscuit tin full of assorted lego.  As it was the early 70s, there were blue, yellow, red, green, white and opaque plastic (window) bricks.  They came full size, half size and some little infill sizes like corners, I think.  I seem to remember bits you could use to top out a roof or a wall.  There were little red wheels of lego brick with rubber tyres that annoyingly came off in the bottom of the tin, and various grey and green base boards you could use to build a tower or a rocket.  They weren't very hi tec and part of the fun was digging around in the tin for the different bricks and colours.  At least for me.  I wasn't a great builder - my dad certainly was, and a very patient man too!  I think he probably got as much fun out of it as I did, if not more. I guess he never had anything very special in an extremely poor working class childhood.

So today, I was reminded of the lego tin.  My patient new colleagues are helping me to scrabble around in the multi coloured tin that is a new work situation.  Little collections of blocks are appearing on the baseboard of my experience.  A new project, working out some of the systems, learning names, trying to figure out why there are two dead plants outside the door that no one seems to notice! I am encouraged.  I am trying very hesistantly to learn to "speak tenderly" to my tough on me self and remind said self that my "hard service" in another chunk of my life is finished and a tiny bit of hydration is filtering through the clods of clay

Waiting for an MOT

Candle flame flickers for someone I barely know
I stand before Jesus and hope the guttering light will continue my prayer
I'm sure that's not orthodox evangelical thinking, but I know Jesus listens anyway.

It's hot outside and this building is dark stone cool and echoing.
I sit with a chunk of local pebblebed stone, smooth against my hand
"building a cairn of hope" says the information board above the pile of similar stones.

I turn it over and around, it fits against my fingers and palm; it's a good fit.
Brown clay, it reminds me that I am mortal, that life is limited here.  I realise that I've stored up the sadness of leaving and new starting so it's a good place to be a bit reflective.

Silence is a friend sometimes - however, the stone starts to look a bit like a chunk of soda bread or a pasty.  I've never been good at being serious in a sustained way - a black sense of humour has got me through most situations and taking the rise out of my intensity is advisable or I become horrible company.  I was always a poor drinker - it brought out the iceberg depths that surprised me and meant I had no shell to crawl back into.

Happy Mondays

It's going to take me a little while to get used to working part time.  I have worked full time since I was 19 and that's a long time ago, a lifetime of the colleagues I work with plus a couple of years! I am not entirely comfortable with the idea though two part time working friends assure me I will get used to having an extended weekend and that I can eventually pick up additional work.  They laughed when I told them I set my alarm clock and prepped overnight oats for breakfast, just as if I was still starting work at 7am on a Monday morning.  Short memory I think.

Having taken the car for its MOT and spent time drinking coffee in my favourite hideway I hit the pool for a burst of lengths.  It's strange being with the leisurely pensioners and young mums and dads instead of the thrashing up and down the poolers and kids doing swimming classes.  My friend tells me I am practising for retirement, working part time.  I am uncomfortable with the thought - I have many years to go, hopefully!

I spent 11 years endlessly, workingly, competently, with a bunch of "boys" who called me "one of the lads" and the words "work life balance" didn't enter their heads or the head of the boss, bless them.  I'm not entirely sure but I think that working so solidly didn't help me and that learning to be and to be balanced is going to take immense practice.

Thunder and Lightning

It's not often I long for a nice long, loud thunderstorm.  Today is one of those days.  It's sticky and humid and somehow I have lost my enthusiasm for endless summer sun!  I don't recognise me with my tan and stripy feet - and a proper "T shirt" suntan.  The air is sucked dry of all breeze and my head feels full of cotton wool.  Perhaps it is - I've either got an ear infection or it's solidly blocked up.  The flipside of being a swimmer who is only sometimes compliant with wearing a swimming hat.

Jellyfish appear on my new journal.  There's a jellyfish invasion on my favourite beach and I'm a little reluctant to haul back into the water.  There's a band playing in the pub at the end of the street and so I'm getting free live music.  They are good!! Taken together it's reminding me of 1976 when I was young and carefree and at my first guide camp.  Reservoirs drying up and cracking and water rationing threatened.  Ah the benefits of having a long memory...

Swimming in the sea with my dear friend, trying every stroke I have to swim round three buoys, slapping the buoy sides and ducking under the chop of the waves with open eyes.  Cheese scones and icecream, cream teas on the lawn to celebrate the NHS 70th birthday.  Good summer memories of the best weather we have had here in Britain for many, many years