10,000 reasons

" 10,000 reasons for my heart to find." Matt Redman's song always acts like having one of those defibrillators you see on casualty applied to me! It was one of the songs chosen at my friend Carol's funeral.  Despite the fact that she hated it - I sat through services when we'd sing it with passion and it seemed to occur almost every week for a while when it was "newly minted".  I'd be aware of a very well mannered but inwardly cringing friend, who was slowly dying from liver cancer having to sing "and on that day when my strength is failing/the end draws near and my time has come etc"  And I hated having to know that's how she felt.  Personally I liked the song.  Now it comes with the memory of crying at her funeral.

Songs act like that. I said goodbye to her and played the awesome Kate Bush song "This woman's work" which I now can't listen to.  It is such a powerful song. And Ronan Keating, "you say it best, when you say nothing at all".  When I was 19 year trying to process depression and anger and totally unable to pray I used to listen to U2 live at Red rocks album.  I've got the CD in the car; it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up (metaphorically) Annoyingly, I find, for a non singer who really really struggles with the embarrasment of "sung worship" God has a way of getting under my skin through music.  Massive Attack "protection" a fairly dubious song I'm sure, was God reminding me he would "take the force of the blow" when I was stuck working for the blokes in Transplant.  Not sure what the soundtrack of my current job should be: we listen to radio 2 and I'm no "pop master" like Dave/Dave/Kev and Jan - but I am getting re-acquainted with some old favourites.

Signs and Wonders

No no not a homage to John Wimber or an overdose of Acts of the Apostles - oh I wish - I am far too "plain vanilla"

But today I got to see the fruit of two months work!  I have spent a lot of time ringing and emailing housing managers patiently explaining what a diameter is (no not measuring around the circumference of a post nor the distance between them) and being super patient when they find additional signage hidden by bushes (which means I need to send the visual packs back to the graphics shop to be redrawn, re approved and then signed off - tedious) or they just say they didn't mean that and can they have a bigger sign saying Private Car Park?? It's hot and sticky in our office and I have grumpily exploded a couple of times as yet more "can I have this one too photos arrive by email.  We have KPIs and the whole project needs to be signed (literally) sealed and delivered by 31st October.

When I'm not liaising with housing managers, I am sending production instructions to the factory.  This makes me intensely nervous: yes, my manager signs off everything and double checks but basically our factory will make whatever I send through into production.  So it needs to be super accurate, all measurements checked, all quantities correct and no room for errors at all.  Certainly not for saying the sign comes with angel and colour matched screws. I was reluctant to change it to angle and colour matched screws, thinking that it would be fun to have a sign with it's own angel.

So when my boss said "oh I need to take some more photographs for the project team" I trailed along like an over excited labrador.  My hands are the hands holding up the signs in the photos sent to the customer's project team, and we carefully checked the production bench didn't have any lewd drawings that would appear in the photos!  Some of these signs are big!! I felt like all the nit picking work of the last couple months was worth it.  I would so love a full time job and the insecurity of this one makes me nervous and derails my joy - if only I was a little more solidly trusting, but there are bills to pay and planning ahead into a fog of uncertainty is super scary.

End of summer walkies

Annoyingly I can't tile or arrange the photos - cheapo Blogger isn't up to it.  Rather like me at the start of yesterdays walk which should have been Goodrington Sands.  Except that the driver - me - wasn't awake!  I picked Sandy up at 8am insisting we went for coffee first - me with hooded eyes and wearing a hoody and apparently "not connecting or listening" oh dear! (I get cold when I'm tired!) So we went to Exmouth with the car windows wide where a medium cafe nero was dumped in front of me.  Way to go when all I wanted to do was sleep - but sleep escapes me at the moment.

And walked. Exmouth to Budleigh in overcast, billowing breaks of bulging grey clouds and sticky humid air, which cleared as we dipped down into the pebblebed heath part of the walk.  I thought we'd done 6 miles but apparently there and back is 10 miles according to our tech.

I tell Sandy summer is fast ending - the flowers - thistles, daisies, dandelions are heading to seed and summer nights are drawing in.  She didn't want to listen.  Deep roots I might have but my eyeore tendencies are annoying!!

My chore of dead heading Sandy's mum's flowers was because I refused point blank to paint the "should be in the dustbin long ago" gnomes.  It's a summer ritual, keeping them looking spruced up in this mad house of a family that I call my 2nd home.

Paint and sticking plaster

It's too hot to paint.  That's what Dr Google says after I check why my windowcills look dreadful - streaky, oily, patchy. Crap. It's good paint, Dulux weathershield but like me it doesn't work well in heat and humidity.  So that's another coat to put on in September when it's a bit cooler. Serves me right for trying to smash my way through the neglected chores list and to smarten up the place before the surveyor measures up for my replacement kitchen window.  I've had the house 22 years and the window is knackered - rotten cill, rotten frame.  The sash windows, antiques at 150+ years look on in disdain.  Little do they know I'm planning their demise in the next couple years.  I'm fed up with painting them - badly - they rattle, they don't shut, are draughty and don't open too well. Not exactly fit for purpose.

Like a lot of antiques, they look fabulously classy.  I don't have the heart to tell them their replacements are not upvc sash but top hung casement.  Snooty lot, they wouldn't forgive me but I'm not made of money.  Sitting through 2 1/2 hours of Anglian windows hard sell when oh surprise, the price drops the more times I say "no" and resist hard sell, I am glad for local, honest companies who don't inflate the price and push finance at me.  Sticking plaster finance is more my style: replace what's rotten and save up slowly and hopefully not too painfully for the balance.

I thought basic DIY was something everyone does - until I talked to my hairdresser yesterday, who told me that sanding, filling and undercoating sounded very technical. She tells me she can't go through me losing another job: she cut my hair the day I walked out the call centre that was Taylor Wimpey.  Not sure she's recovered!!!  I'm hoping that one postponed contract doesn't mean what I dread it does as I'm loving being the Lord of all Databases: I was the Lord of the Filing Cabinets in the bladder and bowel unit - same thing, just more hi tech! (see Lord of the Flies or if you prefer "Lord of all the pots and pans" which I think is "practising the presence of God" - Brother Lawrence - always struck me as a fun phrase for an ordinary worker)

pontcysyllte aqueduct sheep

There's a sheep theme to this holiday.  The hotel had sheep in the field behind me and thanks to being totally wired on steroids I spent a lot of time trying to sleep and listening to BAAing from the field. A nicely soothing noise and it was fresh and clean air, not a hot hotel thank heavens.

We walked to Llangollen, through a lovely wooded valley and along a limestone scree escarpment path and lumped up a hillside to Dinas Bran, with glorious views and a blowing a hooley breeze. It's a knocked down and about castle, which a recent TV programme tried to associate with King Arthur.  It was probably one of the worst history programmes I've seen so no idea if Arthur actually existed or is still a mythical figure!  Welsh ice cream and a well deserved cuppa followed in Llangollen. It's always weird getting into civilisation after a day out walking. Pontcysyllte aqueduct the next day was my own personal holiday highlight.  It was a really nice dry day, we had an hour to explore the canal basin, with good sculpture and moored boats and somewhere dry for once for our picnic. Oh and a shop that sold kit kats.  Steroid hunger.  I jumped on the scales after the holiday and regretted the nice hotel food...oh dear.

And then I found this sheep!!  Walking the acqueduct is very exciting due to the canal boats driving alongside you and the height as you look down to the river below.  So tall, so imposing yet walking along the narrow path, I didn't get any sense of height or drop, unlike the glass floor in the tower at Stratford on Avon theatre!

Offas Dyke

It's taken me nearly a month to look at the photos from one of the wettest walking holidays ever.  And they are not bad, taken mainly on the first day walking from Prestatyn and thinking that, with the sun, we had escaped the devastation the rain was causing down south.  But not for long.  Walking when you are actually feeling dreadful due to not being able to take a deep breath, held together by the sticky tape of a combination of duoresp and steroids asthma medication and with fairly zilch energy is not great.

The next day featured rain in stair rods, sheets, driving rain, the sort that soaks your jacket, finds it's way down your neck and into your sleeves.  I lasted 6 of the 8 1/2 miles and baled out when offered a minibus back. I've never done that in my life.  Wales is a beautiful place but oh it was miserable in the rain!  I had a whisky and a hot bath to warm up and spent the next day in Chester drinking coffee and going round the cathedral.  I love sculpture and there is the nicest of modern bronze ones of Jesus and the woman at the well.  I was so struck with this that I spent an age staring at it and enjoying the sound of the water, the cool of the air.  Inside the cathedral, an art installation of panels of scripture and the story of Jonah and the theme of water kept me very happy.  I stuck my head round into the main part of the cathedral but the strong incense kicked me out after 10 minutes, love the smell, love that it's a symbol of prayer, hate what it does to my dodgy lungs.