Something I need to get off my chest before I go on...

I’ve been struggling with what to say next for a while now.  These are my thoughts.

This health scare I have been having.  It’s not over yet.  The docs think I may have something serious.  They are testing.  Endless, invasive, nasty, scary tests.  There’s been a lot of hospital lately.  Soon there will be an answer, and lets hope it’s a good one: that they jumped to the worst case scenario, tested backwards from there and will conclude I have nothing wrong with me at all that a damn good holiday wouldn’t fix; or an injection of cash to pay the bills without worry and loss of sleep.  Several other things that would help.

In the meantime…

I have been thinking this.  You know how when people have had a near death experience, or recovered from an illness, and they say: ‘live every day as though it were your last’, ‘treasure every second’.  The treasuring I can get with, I see that.  But I think it anyway.  But you can’t live every second, every day as though it were your last.

For instance.  If I knew, rather than thought, there might be something awful wrong with me, and I had little time left – I would be quite selfish with it.  I would demand that I go and live with my mother by the seaside, because I have been craving seaside for a long while now.  That spaciousness, the call of the gulls high up, so free and speaking of blue expanse and long journeys.  I would ask for that, and I would get it, because my mother is lovely at the best of times, and would move heaven and earth to help me if she could.  I would go, Lil Fluffhead would go.  This would completely mess up mum and Fry’s living arrangements, but it would be bearable, because everyone would know it would be for an unspecified, but limited amount of time.  I would sit in the sun a lot, get loads of babysitting and generally try and ‘come to terms’ with mortality, while listening to the sea and watching it glitter.  Possibly Stanley would get some kind of leave off work and stay as much of the time as he could – ‘compassionate leave’ it’s called.  I would make him come.

But that is just a scenario.  It’s not now.  What am I supposed to do, in the hinterland, the no man’s land of I Have No Clue What Is Wrong With Me, The Symptoms Persist, But No Diagnosis Has Been Reached, Nothing Ruled Out.  ???

How do you fit that in to your life??  How do you live with any kind of joy, any kind of ability to look forward and see a momentum, see a life stretching out in front, see the point of making any plans at all…etc?

Also – life is not normal anyway, at the moment.  Roughly once a week, there is another test.  Sometimes I have to fast for the test, or be quite ill to clear things away so they have a clean slate to look at.  So the test intrudes beyond its actual time.  A half hour test can ruin three or four days of the week, as I start to feel ill-er and ill-er, weaker and more headachey.  I have to ask for help with Fluffhead; mum loses money she could have gained at work (that she badly needs) to come and help me (because Stanley has used up all the time his work will charitably give him short of a diagnosis).

That last makes me wonder:  where are my ‘friends’?  I’m the first one to admit that I was Push Away Girl after my dad died.  But its remarkable how easily people let themselves be pushed.  How easily they disappear into their own lives.  How in one case, I actually felt dismissed after I left my last job, from someone whose friendship I thought I would carry with me.  Or one woman, endlessly at sea in her own life, I had been writing to for many years, and met up with 2 or 3 times.  I felt we were sisters; she said she did too.  But we drifted.  I made one mistake, born of confusion, and lost her trust, never to be let back in.  Now I hear from her once every few months; the same light small talk.  I have apologised till I am bored of my words, but she cannot say anything to me that isn’t light and funny and meaningless – while I know from others that she still rages beneath.  I wish her well.  But I can’t be friends with people who can’t trust me with their actual selves and their actual lives, as I would wish to trust them with my thoughts on mine.  Who cannot forgive a mistake earnestly apologised for and understood.

Or the friend I have known for almost twenty years, who has disappeared into her own life since she restarted work with such a pop of totality, it’s as if she never existed.  There’s a tight vacuum of absence.  Now: she loves a crisis and always has done – indeed, I have often referred to her (privately to myself) as my Foul Weather Friend.  It took me 2 tellings of her about this little peccadillo I am experiencing for her to even connect.  Then there was a small facebook flurry, then nothing. 

Others are there at the end of email, more or less consistently.  Again though – its amazing how terrified people are of the first hint of unwellness – they do vanish…Some of my erstwhile mostly virtual friends are doing their damndest to completely avoid this issue of mine due to their own health phobias; and ignoring me as a result.

It makes me wonder what the POINT is, of having friends.  I think I may expect too much.  But that will have to be the case.  I have read words of people who say unconditional love is the way to go, expectation is always wrong.  I disagree.  I expect someone I count as friend to be here for me when I am in crisis.  I would be there for them, if I knew about it.  If I couldn’t go in person, I would be on the phone, I would be there by email; snail-mail; facebook message.  If I was late or not as consistent as I said I would be, I would explain why, as soon as I could.  But I would want the person to feel not alone when they were frightened and weakened.  I would help them stand up and face what was in their lives – if only by my words of encouragement, if that was all I could do.  I understand we all have our own lives going on – but it is an easy thing to send a morning text to someone, or a quick ‘thinking of you’ email; or a note in the post, and to keep it up.  Many things I would do, and have done, for people: are matters of moments.  But they count when you are scared and facing deep uncertainty.

The only person who has the right to laugh at all this prescriptive (and rather judgemental) sentiment is Troubadour – as he can say, as ex husbands do, that I left him in his hour of dire need.  And I will always bow my head to his interpretation of events and say: I’m sorry but I had to.  I will accept the blame, always, for what I did there.  And anyone who wants to say it’s my karma to be mostly alone in this situation now – go ahead.  I bow my head to that too.  I accept the responsibility.

But still.  One small ray of hope: I met a woman recently, quite by chance.  I won’t say much of her.  She seems as odd as me; whilst not being as insane as the last person I met as a result of the blog (one day I’ll tell you all about that, but not now – I wish that insane person well too: we both messed up, there).  From the first, conversation with her was easy, honest and real.  She doesn’t hide.  She answers questions.  She seems to take me at my word and not read between the lines and make up her own story (you can’t really deal honestly with people determined to do that).  I discussed her with Fry.  He suggested I should call her friend.  I said, ‘it’s too soon, its needy, it might scare her away’.  He shrugged, as he does, and said, ‘you women – you take everything so seriously – you talk well with her, you know how rare it is to find someone whose brain works even a bit like yours, just call her friend, honey kitten’ (which is what he calls me when he thinks I am being small and stupid and rather ignorant; but cute).  So.  So.  Alias TimeTraveller: you’re here.  Be assured, I am not expecting you to answer for the sins of anyone else.  You are you, and I am happy to have met you.  Long may our pleasant talks continue…friend.

But still.  Again.  Further.  How to live life while all this is going on?  While I have this health scare, while money worries pile up almost to intolerable levels, while trying to make a happy home for a small, innocent and blameless person.

It’s these times when you need your philosophy, your spirituality, your religion, whatever.  Existentialism helps me in moments.  Some days I bravely face the day and make my choices, looking whatever current truth there is, in the eye.  Some days I can’t.  Those days I choose distraction or spirituality.  Distraction is when I decide I am part of a story – as only stories make sense, really.  If I were Dr Who, I would be in the marooned on Earth phase, without my Tardis and my freedom, at the mercy and doing my best to cope with all the Earthbound problems; while trying to deal with my own issues at the same time.  (So apparently I’m Jon Pertwee – well, here’s to being astonishingly well dressed).  If I were in the novels of Sherrilyn Kenyon, I would be in that unlit and scary period before I am made a Dark Hunter and have my purpose; that time of cruelty and torture before the gift of vengeance and protection, and way before the redemption of love…Sometimes I am not in a story, but simply preferring to be surrounded by one: these are the times when genre fiction is what you need.  Series of romances, or science fiction epics, or fantasy quests.  Action, feeling, MOVEMENT, choices, consequences, change…Inspiration to stand up tall and deal with life from wise cracking space commanders, or detectives; from strong women with groups of supportive friends as clever and kind as they can be.  (This is where I get my ideas of friends from: and why NOT aspire to the heights of fictional loyalty, why the hell not???)

Spirituality, well…As you know, I incline toward the green earth and its smells, its wet grasses.  I feel free in the woods, tramping through dried orange leaves.  I feel clear on a hill with the wind on my forehead and blossoms blowing by me.  It is horribly hard to hold on to this when you are in a strip lit windowless room, lying on one side, with a tube up your arse in your intestines causing you the most excruciating pain.  You whimper (yes, actually whimper) as the mad scientists work away above you, occasionally opening your eyes to see what they see on the screen – never have you felt so strongly that insides should be left alone, inside, where they belong, and not interfered with.  You screw closed your eyes again.  The nurse says you are breaking her hand, and takes it away, refusing to let you hold it anymore.  You hold the side of the metal bed instead, unable to see any images in your head that will take you away from all this, because all there is is now, and now is pain.

Yes.  Well.  There was no journeying on the Lands of my mind for me that day.  And it’s difficult to not dread whatever is next, and worry over it.  Science and medicine are cold.  My Christian friends (yes, astonishingly, I have 2 of them, despite me being unkind about their God, repeatedly) are praying for me.  This is kind and I want them to carry on doing it.  I have an odd belief in Other People’s Beliefs.   Their faith may well send helpful emanations my way.  But nonetheless, I still can’t be doing with their God.  One of them suggested to me that all would be eased were I to ‘Accept Him’…but I maintain that a God that needs me to believe in Him and Worship Him or He will Send me to Hell and punish me, is not as loving as advertised, and I don’t appreciate the emotional blackmail.  I accept this responsibility too (so that Christian friend: please be assured, you did your best, you shan’t get the blame for failure). 

It would be wondrous to have a mighty God to look after me and see that this all works out ok, wouldn’t it?  But what I have in the heart area of my mind…is still the green green grass, and the call of birds, the petals of flowers and the fur of cats, the scales on fish.  Beauty.  Decay.  Destruction.  Rebirth.  My Asatru correspondent phrased my query on how to cope with this sort of thing this way:

In Heathenry our future is not known until we make it. Even divination through runes and seidh only gives guidance, not specifics. While death is accepted as inevitable when and how is not.

As I see it one can draw great courage from this uncertainty. To me it means our actions have meaning and impact no matter what happens. The simple courage of living in spite of loss, fear, and hardship is a powerful thing. It shows what you face that you will not let it rule you. 

(~ by Ryan Smith, one truly coherent thinker, in private mail; my italics)

Now…considering a good portion of the best and most famous Gods die at Ragnarok in Heathenry…they are damn good at living with uncertainty, and the death of their heroes, the dream of these larger than human yet so human creatures.  And all that about being brave in the face of the unknown, of trying to live your principles, whatever they may be, IN SPITE of not knowing, in spite of anything and EVERYTHING…this all brings me back to the existentialism I spoke of in posts past.  Personal Responsibility.  Do the best you can – even if it feels pretty poor that day.

Its cold comfort.  (Not as cold as the mad scientists, but then I am biased by their recent well intentioned meddling about with me.)

It would be less cold were I less alone…But I’ve had that rant.  If any of you reading this at any point feel like you know me in real life and I am having a go at you – you know what:  I am.  I could have been a better friend to several people; I have made bad mistakes myself in the past.  But I try to correct them, I try to repair.  If I can’t, I leave and walk away.  (It’s questionable whether the door is still open, as Troubadour would have said, as I am not good at forgiving and forgetting, though I persist in trying).  But I very rarely just abandon people. 

But anyway.  My anger, my disillusionment, they are all part of this big thing going on with me at the moment.  Stanley actually feels it too.  He wonders where his friends have gone also, since we moved away from London.  I will try to remember to NOT do this to someone else one day.  I will try and learn to support even the people who have pushed me away, because of something I knew about.  I will keep trying.  This is what I will learn.

And to life.  Well, right now, I have dyed my hair again (deep warm brown – I can’t afford a haircut, so this will have to do for a smarten up), and now I will go and plant soft pink petunias and geraniums outside.  They will carry on going despite this summer of rain, despite the masses of slugs. They will keep going even if all their petals are eaten away, or soaked to colourlessness.  They will not die and they will exist still, in a different form, as a green plant without flowers or leaves.  Their roots will be whole, and fine.

Somewhere, it is always summer.

Personal Notions

After that rather dodgy story I fed you last post, here is a return to my general waffling.  I said I’d have a later post about my idea of ‘Notions’.  So here it is. 

You know when people say: ‘I believe in…God/Christianity/mermaids, etc’?  You know how they often ‘passionately believe in [whatever]’ – especially politicians, they love to use the passionately prefix?  It really annoys me.

It really annoys me, because people usually mean, when they say they believe in something, that they had some information a long while ago, liked it, it felt right (note I’m not saying they thought about it a lot, though they may have, its true).  Then they decided that this bit of information on this particular subject was it.  The last word.  The only other bits of information that would subsequently be given air time, were those that supported (in whatever way) the original information that led to the believing.  Other information would be rejected/attacked/mocked/ignored.  It isn’t always the case that this is how things go.  But it is quite often.  If you speak to anyone much who is habitually of the inclination to say they ‘believe’ in things…the chances are, you are speaking to someone who hasn’t thought any of these things through at length, for possibly quite some time.

This is how the Cambridge British English Dictionary online defines belief:

the feeling of being certain that something exists or is true:

E.G. All non-violent religious and political beliefs should be respected equally.

E.G. [+ that ] It is my (firm) belief that nuclear weapons are immoral.

E.G. His belief in God gave him hope during difficult times.

E.G. Recent revelations about corruption have shaken many people's belief in (= caused people to have doubts about) the police.

E.G. He called at her house in the belief that (= confident that) she would lend him the money.

That’s all fair enough, right?  Being certain that something exists or is true?  I don’t think it is, when it comes to non-checkable things.  I can check why the sky is blue; I can check why it rains and when its likely to.  I can check lots of material world things.  A lot of other things – matters of religion, of conscience, of political slant, of like or dislike – all these things are matters of opinion, cultural bias/input and personal taste.

So, when we disagree about the Good Thingness of puffball skirts, or that fashion for wearing your jeans halfway down your arse, for teenage men; we can feel free to disagree about their merits, as we know it’s a matter of opinion – we aren’t going to end up hearing on the news about a stabbing that occurred over in St Martins College of Fashion that happened because a disagreement over whether the colour shade deep fuchsia pink goes with the other shade hot orange got out of hand.  I hope.  (I think it does, by the way; very nice sunset type combination.)

On the other hand, when people disagree about politics and especially religion, it tends to get violent sooner or later.  Because despite God, or god or goddesses being an uncheckable thing, and therefore in the realms of opinion, people forget that opinion isn’t fact.  Or they forget that belief is only opinion.  (And therefore just personal to them.)  People start to want to apply their personal opinions about which they are FEELING so CERTAIN, to everyone else.  The opinions clash.  There is trouble.  My parents met in missionary school.  I was shocked when my mother told me this, when I was 12 or so.  She had always told me about the importance of good manners and being polite.  And yet…she and my father were training to Go and Be Really Rude, Globally, by charging about and telling far away peoples that their way of life and opinions were all wrong, and should be replaced with my parents’ views[1].  This was when I really started thinking about belief, and what a dangerous thing I thought it was.  What a divisive thing, often used like a weapon.

The thing is, I quite liked to believe in things.  I crave certainty, like everyone else.  Every thing less I have to think about is a bit more room for my brain to feel mellow, right?  True.  But it’s a sacrifice of good brain cells.  Over the years I have realised that I have started to react really strongly to the word ‘belief’.  I try never to use it, except about purely personal things (‘I believe my back would improve again if I could go back to the osteopath’).  Even then, I’ve realised these things can be equally substituted for the word ‘think’.  I don’t adopt anything much without thinking it through, and like I said in an earlier post – things don’t remain adopted indefinitely (remember the poor Loch Ness Monster and the evil Stanley?!).  (So: ‘I think my back would get better if I could go to the osteopath regularly again, for a while; because when I did last time, and I had exactly the same trouble, it did improve.’  Better thought, more thought out – but it’s a thought, not a belief.)

This isn’t a Things That Really Annoy Me post, because I sorted out my own personal solution to this.  I really liked the Loch Ness Monster, remember?  I have Notions now.  ‘I have a Notion that the Loch Ness Monster is a ghost of a dinosaur’, I told you before.  Yes!  I like that idea.  That’s what a notion is, to me.  Own personal terminology: A Notion is an Idea.  (I heard an Irish comedian use the word notion in this way ages ago and never forgot it, though very annoyingly indeed, I clean forgot who the comedian was, or what he was talking about – but that’s where I got this idea of using Notion in purely this way.)  But an Idea is all it is. 

See:  I have current religious and philosophical  Notions I like to live with.  (Despite  also living with an atheist and reading lots of science books, I would irritate Mr Dawkins with my desire to have it all and the fairies at the end of the garden too.  He was being sarcastic about the fairies.)  I think, and like the Notion of modern neo-paganism.  I like lots of things about it, and a few of the things clash, and it’s all very hard to explain as its more or less dogma free.  I can’t quote you a Bible of ‘the movement’ as there isn’t one.  If there becomes one in the future, I may well leave. 

I like the notion of Animism.  I like the Notion of Pantheism.  I like the Notion of Reincarnation.  I like the general pluralism of Gods/Goddesses; the duality of the Female/Male principle.  I love the Notion of Balance as a major goal.  I like the Notion of Magic (and have experienced it for myself, so am on board with this concept also – go ahead and laugh, its really quite ok).   I like the Notions of Personal Responsibility and taking care of others I find in paganism.  I love the Notion of honouring, reverencing and taking care of Earth as much as we can (I’ll unhippify that for you: don’t shit where you eat – sound more sensical now?).  I’m no particular neo-pagan strand, I’m drawn to several.  I like the Notions of many different strands in paganism, and I unselfconsciously read lots about each thing and take from them what I find useful and leave the rest to anyone else who may find it useful for them instead.  I’m eclectic and unashamed of this.  I have personal truths for now, and they may stay, they may change.  I have personal morality, and that moves too, dependent on experience and further learning. 

There are Creator myths in paganism, plenty of them - but I adopt none of them, and I am so utterly unfussed about the Notion of Who Created All This I can't quite express it to you.  I feel its completely irrelevant to how we live our lives here.  Lets try and do some good, have some fun, learn some things.  I also find the Big Bang a perfectly reasonable explanation; I have no argument with science at all.  Science people tend to argue with me, till they realise I am quite agreeing with them about having no proof for anything I Notion about, and these things are purely for me to think with, act with, experiment with.  I tend to look at science as finding out the processes, and labelling things for which I have Notions about [E.G. - this!].  Sometimes my views change altogether after reading or talking some Science.   Treehugger and Proud of it (but not loud about it, generally).

The most important thing about any of it, is that absolutely no one has to agree with me.  No one has to come and join with me and have my Notions.  It doesn’t bother me at all.  This is all quite personal to me.  (Note me not going into great detail about my Notions – if you ask, and you’re interested, I’d tell you and we’d talk about it – till then, why would I talk about it uninvited, and at great length?  A lot of the trouble we have with people’s 'beliefs' is that they think everyone should hear, at any time, what moves them to do what they do how they do it.  They don’t ask if people are interested; they stridently assume the role of teacher and by extension: corrector.  How presumptuous.  Arrogant.  Rude.) 

Note: I would stand up for my right to have the free speech to say any of my Notions should I want to, to not be persecuted for having these Notions and being public about them (as I am here).  Also, I would stand up for the right to gather with others who thought similarly and talk or act with them (the funny thing with the pagans I’ve met and talked to, corresponded with, is they think similarly but never really the same, so endless disagreements prevail and are accepted as the norm – and very healthy too, I think). 

So if you hear me say I have a Notion unicorns may well be real but in another dimension which we rarely get access to – you feel free to laugh if you want.  Totally your right.  (Of course, having Notions which other people find funny is ANNOYING, don’t get me wrong.  I’m a sensitive flower, and being laughed at hurts my feelings.  I wish people wouldn’t mock; but they do.  I wish my mother wouldn’t think I may well be going to Hell [it’s rude of her!], but she does, so that’s that.)  And I will laugh at your views if I find them equally outlandish. 

What – you think there’s only one way to enlightenment, and despite all the varied experiences of people over thousands of years, only this one way and one God exists????  Everyone else is doomed, and damned…?  That makes no sense to me.  I do not hold with this unfriendly and oddly childlike Notion.   

And that’s all it is; an uncheckable personal Notion that got out of its box and started bullying other Notions.   

Actually, not funny.  Worrying.

---

[1] (A form of evangelical Christianity, unnamed in father’s case: he was a bit of a backward-looking maverick in terms of belief, he never found a church that felt right for him, he wanted to run his own, I think; my mother was brought up strongly Pentecostal and rebelled down to a gentler from of C of E, where she remains very happy).

Why I am Bothering Your Brain With This Blog...

Last Saturday

So.  Intro.  I want it quite clear I was nagged into this.  I lost a blinking contest and fell victim to some reverse psychology.  The thing is, you can’t go about the place ardently telling your friends you ‘want to be a writer’ for a very long time, occasionally show some of them your stuff (to mixed reaction), without someone piping up and asking you why you don’t blog.

To these friends (and one in particular), it doesn’t matter that a blog is more like a public diary entry, or an email, in tone, than a novel or a short story (which is what I write).  (Heh, heh, lets more accurately say – short stories, is what I write; a novel is what I want to write when I (a) get an idea that’s both long enough and I don’t get bored with after Chapter 6, and (b) when I get more than half an hour a day to myself to concentrate.)  (I am further aware, that many people will sniff and say, ‘excuses, excuses, my Uncle Popple wrote a huge, massive book with two minutes a day in 1941 while being bombed, in a shelter’ etc etc.  That’s as maybe – as my partner Alias Stanley Kubrick [SK, or Stan] would say.  But I’m not Uncle Popple.)

The person who irritated me into this will soon see the error of his ways, I am sure.  In the meantime, I will bore you – all, er…2 or 3 of you who may pop by to see what I am waffling about on any given day.

I wish it known, I shall be waffling about myself (oh, there’s plenty of irritating introspection to come, fear not).  Also about Things That Annoy Me and Things That Please Me.  I shall waffle about things I am into (e.g. modern neo-paganism – I shall be wonderfully vague about this), or things that worry me, like established religion (I have strict views on the necessary vagueness of this).  Food, animals, astronomy, history, books, music, pub quizzes, TV, films, philosophy, psychology, and my feeble beginner attempts at gardening.  If I have help, I shall not disgrace myself discussing science sporadically.  My arguments with grammar will on occasion be covered.  My disagreement at having it pointed out to me that the word ‘alot’ doesn’t exist. (Piffle – words change, and I say it, write it, and prefer it to the two-worded boring version.)  I really like words.  Not necessarily long or rare ones.  I quite like having lots of them in a sentence; I have a great fondness for adjectives and adverbs, and probably not always in the currently considered correct places.  Stuff will be spoken of.  You know, the usual. 

This is not to say that I know with any degree of certainty or teacherliness, anything about any of these subjects.  It’s all, ‘like, my opinion, man’.  You probably shouldn’t let anyone, ever, lecture-ise you and tell you in a Certain and Concrete Type Way, about anything.  (Except things like: ‘That’s hot!  Don’t touch it; you’ll get burned/scalded!’  Etc.  Then you put your hand near it, to check, and it would likely be giving off heat, so you proved that to yourself anyway, without having to get burned.  But you know what I mean.)  I’ll say what I say, if you haven’t gotten bored and wandered off; and you’ll read it, think about it and then…wander off.  And check for yourself.  Make up your own mind.

This is the main point, really.  Why I said it was a daft idea for me to blog.  I don’t have set in stone opinions on much at all.  Quite a few bloggers seem to.  It seems to be a very opinionated game, from what I’ve seen for the last few years.  Whereas I like for new information to come in and annoy the old information and embellish it or rout it.  (For instance, I had a long and well-cherished notion – we’ll get to ‘notions’ at a later date – that I liked the idea of the Loch Ness Monster.  Why not?  That wasn’t a literal question.  I have partner Stanley for telling me exactly why not for 3 hours, thankyou very much.  I had, after those 3 hours, to regretfully let go of the original idea of the Loch Ness Monster as a possible as yet undiscovered dinosaur, due to some incontrovertible logic.  I was a bit sad, as I didn’t have an idea to put in the place of this.  So I mourned my old idea, and made scrunchy-eyed faces at Stanley for a few days. Then I saw Men Who Stare at Goats [1].  And was cured!  Of course, it’s a GHOST of a dinosaur!!!  How can I possibly be argued with now?!  I am currently unassailable on that one issue.  Then again…it’s still not set in stone.  I may be all wrong about my ideas about ghosts, or imprints, or manifestations of universal consciousness or collective unconscious or whatever we shall call them….plus, yes, it could all be my big wishful imagination.  But I like the idea.  And I will defend it as far as to say – ‘yes, I may be wrong, tell me a better story, I’m listening’.)

There will be footnotes going on here and there.  I know it’s all the fashion to link to everything you speak of in blogs, but I intend to do some book quoting.  And no, not every book known to man or my little collection is on the web.  Or available as an e-book.  (Which are all very well, but bloody hell, don’t you want to hold your books, smell them??  I have a beautiful copy of Charles de Lint’s Moonheart  that I got from a 2^nd hand bookshop, in the 90’s.  The Orb edition, with the lovely artwork.  It must have come from a really damp house, as the pages were not only the usual tan, but a bit warped too.  But the smell.  It’s a book about a forest, and the book smelled of the forest.  All the way through, every single time I turned a [magical] page, I got this marvellous foresty smell.  Let me say, there may be a million worthy reasons for getting a Kindle or suchlike: larger print for eyestrain, or free classics to name but two…but they will not, as yet, give you surround forest smells.  Just remember that.)  Anyway.  Specific page quoting from books.  I got into this tiresome habit while doing an Open University  MA a few years back.  My thesis drove me bonkers: talk about a game being played, the whole thesis process; but by the end of it, I was wedded to the idea of checkable footnotes.  Also, if you’ve ever read (especially early) Terry Pratchett , you’ll know footnotes are great fun, too; home to many a spurious and tangential aside.  (Almost as good as brackets.  I like those also.)

Oh yes, the obvious.  I live in England.  I’m a girl.  I should probably say woman, being 40 now.  I have two children. The now 20 year old Son Number One; and the now 18 month old Wonderful Fluffhead/Tetchyhead (depending on mood), Second Son.  I’m at home at the moment, looking after The Fluffhead, and attempting to convince him some things really shouldn’t just be randomly grabbed/ torn up and so on, though the world is clearly a marvellous and much curious place.  Stanley K goes and does the bring home money thing, in a weary way.  Thanks to many factors (some our own fault, some not) we aren’t very well off at all at the moment; so I shall likely moan about money here and there (as well as a good moan about many other things). 

And this is actually how I talk.  I’m not putting on a tone here.  Apart from the footnotes, which can’t really be replicated in speech.  I can, however, do brackets, in speech – it’s all a matter of simple hand gestures.  (When Son Number One was tiny, it was also a matter of special bracket noises.  We still do them sometimes, one of many things that really make us laugh.)  I am quite grumpy, even though I think the world is brilliant .2  This will come across in my tone.  Some days I get very sad.  But we’ll see how it goes. 

The reason this blog is called BlackberryJuniper and Sherbet is twofold.  BlackberryJuniper was the result of a conversation with a sadly now lost ex-friend and fellow blogger  who one day changed his facebook page and suddenly had a brilliant nickname he’d decided upon in the middle of his name.  (You know, like American stuntmen being Joe ‘Slugger’ Hawkins or whatever.)  We chatted away about this excellent and silly development and I decided I wanted to give myself a stupid nickname too.  And came up with BlackberryJuniper, which isn’t stuntman-ish or literary (as his was) at all.  But I liked it, and it’s me in a goodish mood.  Sherbet is me in a sad/bad mood.  That just came into my head one day: sherbet is so prickly and unpleasant and immediate on the tongue (to me – you go ahead and like the taste, good for you).  It seemed to me that was how my sad/bad moods felt.  I do feel like these two are almost separate people in my head.  No, not in a scary literal way.  In that when I am in one mood I have very little understanding of the other mood at all.  Each moody me views the other as stupid and deluded. So that explains that.

Anyone who got this far, in this post that really went nowhere and rambled something terrible, I thankyou.  About time I wrote a proper post now, eh?

Which must mean its lunchtime.  It is 1.30 after all.  Nice to meet you.  I really do hope you’ll come by again.

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[1] Apparently, Jeff Bridges films are a major tool of thought provocation.  Try one and see what you think. 

2 I think Paul Whitehouse himself is brilliant, too.  What a versatile comedian.  Apart from those adverts.