Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.

I am hoping to spend more time out in the countryside. It does me good and I feel better for it.
There are connections for me that strengthen me.

I count my slef lucky/blessed that I have worked this one out.

All Joy

I had a conversation with Mr Man where we considered how many of our friends we might consider 'normal'. Of course normal is a loaded word because it is such a relative kind of thing, we know really that our shared version of normal will not be familiar to many people.

It may be no surprise that we struggled for quite some time and still drew a blank.

Why would that be?

Do we attract odd people?

Very possibly, we try to approach life with openness and a benign attitude of curiosity which may delight those who are used to being rejected by others who think them odd.

People become odd from hanging around us?

Again it seems likely that the fact that we aren't too distressed by strangeness means that people feel able to express their oddities more comfortably.

Becoming close to people means you get past the 'normality' masks, and see the foibles within. ?

A bit like the one above it seems very likely that if you enter into a close relationship with a person this allows you to share the not so normal bits and be accepted and cherished without judgement. Hence none of our friends are normal, at least not the ones we know well.

The flip side of this might be all those people who have 500 friends on myfacepage thingies, the onus is to 'know' lots of people and yet never be close or open enough to expose any oddities, hence remaining 'safe' and generally unseen, to achieve this it's best to have lots and lots of people that you 'know' but share only the most superficial part of life with.

I begin to see that I find that very difficult and don't really have the skills to do it successfully. My favoured approach of a few close people is dangerous but mostly all I can manage.

Happy thoughts

There have been several things I have been thinking about.

The way some friends have morphed into people that I really am now a bit worried about, and that general unhappy feeling that pervades me when I think about how they are really closed to me now.

The thing where a new image of desirable woman hood is being modelled on porn stars. The overly long stick in eye lashes, the teeter totter heels, the need to eradicate all body hair and go for a kind of matte effect face to achieve perfection, or rather acceptability.
I sigh. Women gave up their lives to drag womankind towards an idea of equality and respect for their rights, I don't feel we are there at all. And I really don't think buying into all this is the most useful choice that I, or most women can make.

Sometime maybe

Oh Lordy, have hit a patch of inertia, I resist the crushing guilt of calling it depression, but that feeling that many things are just so big and unappealing to be doing that nothing can happen until that is done, and so nothing gets done.

The pile of washing to put away threatens to declare Independence and move out. The professional development file moulders away in a crate looking half finished and pitiful, and very little of it fills me with purpose and enthusiasm.

The answer will be to make and list an reward myself for the little achievements, to take exercise, eat well and spend time with positive people. Just starting and finishing something would be useful. Especially as I shall be seeing two clients tomorrow and will be there to engender hope and nurture their desire for change into action, me? Yeah right.

So now I really really should make my way over to the shop and buy some food, because every great journey starts with the first step right?

Hmmmmm.

No No NO

I think as someone who actively adheres to a system of faith I am supposed to have strong views about homosexuality.

Today I bumped into a program on TV about homophobia in the black community, a comedian Steven Amos was 'exploring' the phenomena, and it was an education.

I guess I thought that homophobia was not just the preserve of the black community, but now I know how it seems entrenched, but when he was talking to some church representatives in Jamaica, I had to cover my eyes.

I felt that my views would probably alienate lots of the people who I'm supposed to be in community with. How I may have completely failed to develop a sense of moral outrage and condemnation about homosexuality. There you go. Amongst all the heinous things that people do, and think and say I have failed to be offended by that. I might even rate my sorrow as somewhat less than if someone tells me they spent £40,000 on a car.

I may have to repent when someone gets round to showing me the error of my ways.

Wildlife

I live in the broad, grubby embraces of a large city in the north of UK. It is...it is what it is. This week a coupe of things happened to me which make me smile about big city life.

I had a voicemail message left on my phone, a softly spoken man left a long message in a language I really didn't recognise, though it could have been an African west coast sort of language, some of which I listen to at work amongst the patients, and on the bus, because there are bus journeys I make where I am the only anglo-saxon/celt descendant there.

Which is alright.

Then on Sunday about lunchtime I set off to protest in another suburb about plans to ''develop" a Green space into football pitches, and walking along the pavement I say two young, very young women, one pushing a toddler in a pushchair, both women wearing pyjamas, slippers and an overcoat. It was a particularly grey, damp and chilly November afternoon.
I do live in a somewhat strange place, and I'm experiencing somewhat odd times...where things seem to be happening according to rules and traditions which I have very little grasp of.

Or perhaps that's just my age.

SO how are you?

It has been hard o keep walking the line. Not to give in, or give up, or stray into the territory of the people I'm trying to resist.

Malevolent forces in my work place. It can be hard when I work in such a small group of colleagues to swim against the current of what goes on. Nothing new, but I think it has probably been a tough year and I haven't been in a place where I've had excess energy to make this easy.

That's where the knitting has come in.

Something peaceful and absorbing which allows me to get absorbed in something else for a while. It satisfies the parts of me which like colour and texture, the bits which enjoy feeling, squishy, soft, shiny and smooth, the creative bits which relish producing something, a sock, a scarf, anything, made from nothing by my own hand.

The process is often like a kind of meditation, rhythmic and repetitive.
It's also currently helping at work, as I take in the current sock for a few minutes knitting at lunchtime, and it helps me keep out of the toxic conversations which wash around me.

PLus if I get it wrong, nothing too bad happens.