Month: April 2018

Posted on

Van update

A full half hour this morning, 10 minutes yoga and twenty meditation. Quite calm in the meditation too, not so much rumination, more focussing. It’s a good thing. Eaten breakfast, even did a bit of tidying up in the kitchen, and it’s only 8.15. Lino printing this morning so I will try to get to McDonald’s for breakfast. And the virus thingy isn’t running today so I can see the word count.

I hadn’t got any clean pants because they were all in the washing basket (post-washing) which was down in the kitchen, so I put my jeans on and have been walking around without them, but just went to the loo and put them on. Funny this whole thing of writing and posting every day but putting in things that I wouldn’t really want anyone to read. It’s there, anyone who wanted to could read it if they knew the address, but hardly anyone ever reads the other blog where I do share the address, so I feel quite safe.

I called the man about the camper van yesterday – I can’t remember what I said in yesterday’s post, but this was the note that got shoved through my door two years ago when the van was broken into and he left me his number. I spoke to him and he was very interested and went down to the garage and saw it, and Charles at the garage was very helpful (so he told me, when he rang me back as I was just walking home from Sainsbury’s yesterday afternoon. Actually it wasn’t just Sainsbury’s, I mean I hadn’t just been to Sainsbury’s, I went to the seafront and walked along though the wind was really strong, blowing up sand from the beach in my face. The temperature was supposed to be 11, I don’t know what the wind chill was but I’m guessing it was in single figures, which compared with last week’s 25 plus is bizarre – well, to be honest it’s last week’s temperatures that are bizarre, this is more normal).

Anyway, it looks quite hopeful about the van, I think he’ll buy it but he wants to get some other mechanics that he uses to have a look at it, which is fair enough.

So that may be one crisis resolved in my life. Other things are worrying but I will have to hold on to them for now. I texted the lady I rent the garage from and she replied straight away. The guy who’s buying the van asked if the garage would be available as well, she said it’s not automatic, which I knew anyway, and that she wants to meet him etc etc which I half expected because she is a bit of a stickler.

Well that’s the situation this morning, nothing very deep today, I guess I’m feeling quite upbeat and that is why. Looking forward to lino. I might even post some pictures from my lino on here. On here rather than Facebook I think, for now.

Posted on

End of the road?

Why does my computer say it’s ‘running a virus’ scan and refusing to show me my word count for this document in Word? I mean, I’ve hardly written anything, but as I’ve done the thing of copying and pasting my horoscope into the document, I want to know how many words that is, so I can subtract them from the total and see whether I’ve written 500 or not – only now I’ve written so much that if it shows the word count it will include what I’ve just written as well…

Aha, so that was 91. It’s still not showing me the overall word count though.

I’ve had a stressful 24 hours because yesterday I had to go to the garage to find out why my camper van failed the MOT and it’s not great. They wouldn’t even give me an estimate of how much it will cost and to be honest I just want rid of it. It’s sad, but realistically it’s not like I’ve used it much. I didn’t go away with it at all last year, other than out for days at the country park, well there was a reason for that, but with going to visit the kids such a lot I can’t see myself going away in it this year either. So I just have to say: it was a nice idea, but it just didn’t work out, cut my losses and let it go.

My son in law originally said he’d like it to go fishing with when I didn’t want it any more, but this is not a great time because they’re focussing all their time and money on the house at the moment, and also they’ve just bought a trailer tent, so don’t want a van as well cluttering up the drive. I wondered about SORNing it till he wants it, but who knows how long that would be, and I don’t want to keep paying rent for a garage for it every month.

I was thinking, if I walk to the seafront I can get some exercise, sunshine, fresh air and maybe fish and chips, but it’s just started raining so maybe not.

Keep watching the stupid Yoda/Seagull Song bad lip-reading video that someone posted on Facebook, it just makes me laugh, it’s so silly. Shared it with Geoff, who I used to work with at Granada over 30 years ago, because I knew it would make him laugh too.

I just don’t want to write. Didn’t do my yoga/meditation this morning because I came on the computer and started looking up the Romahome Owners Club site to advertise it on there. There is a guy who’s interested in it, it’s a bit of a story but two years ago, when I was living in Beach Road, it got broken into and this man put a note through my door saying he also had one and his had also been damaged and did I want to chat about finding spares etc. Anyway, it turns out I still had the note (amazing!) and I rang him this morning and it sounds like he might be interested. I told him I wanted £500 because honestly I don’t know what it will cost to MOT it and I just want rid. He said he would go to the garage this afternoon and have a look at it so I’m waiting to hear.

I think it might have stopped raining, so if I’ve done 500 words I might go out after all.

Posted on

The Crystal Space

I went to my first kundalini yoga class last night. When I walked in, the teacher said:

‘You must be Lynn!’

‘LinDA’ I corrected her. ‘My name’s Linda.’ I’ve always disliked beng called ‘Lynn’. When I was a kid, I hated it, because I knew lots of Lindas and lots of Lynns in my school, and, well, if I was called Lynn I wouldn’t expect anyone to call me Linda, would I? These days I’m a bit more tolerant, but I still prefer being called by my actual name.

‘Oh, okay, Linda’ she said, with emphasis on the second syllable, but a smile on her face. Then the next time she addressed me she called me ‘Lynn’, and continued to do so right through the class. I didn’t bother arguing, but at the end, one of the other ladies said: ‘Are you Lynn or Linda?’ and I said, ‘actually, it’s Linda’ and the teacher said: ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been getting it wrong all the way through haven’t I? My memory’s terrible’ and I smiled and said: ‘that’s ok’ because what’s the point of getting arsey about it?  But I was glad the other lady had brought it up.

The class itself was a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar but definitely worth doing. There was quite a bit of chanting – which I don’t mind – and breaks between postures, but the poses themselves were pretty tough and held for quite a long time (I always went for the easy versions). Also some of the breathing was different from what I’m used to and quite hard to get right. The meditation wasn’t as guided as I’d been expecting – I may have to find another group for that – but it was all nicely balanced and the 90 minutes went surprisingly quickly.

And I did my half hour this morning, as well as going to tai chi later (actually I need to go in a few minutes so probably won’t finish writing and posting this before I go.)

I think the kundalini is going to be good for me. The thing it reminds me of most of all is the original yoga classes I went to from 1990 onwards, back in Turvey when Laura was a baby. That was Iyengar, and we didn’t do any chanting, but there was a lot of emphasis on the breath and also a long relaxation at the end – and it was an hour and a half.

So, now back from tai chi, and supping tea with my friend Ali. Sometimes, you know, I think my life is pretty amazing. Other times, not so much – but why not? What makes the difference?

I was thinking last night about an idea that came out of the meditation group in Bedford, years ago when I was first separated from my husband – I wrote about it in my blog and will have to look it up to be sure, but it came from a mishearing of something said by the teacher. I think it was ‘the crystal space’ – I thought he said it, but when I spoke to him later he didn’t know what I was talking about. It seemed to be a space of possibilities, where everything was open and life could lead in any direction, but the whole thing was about liberation.

Posted on

Why I’ll never make it as a writer (or anything else for that matter)

I really don’t like Oscar Cainer. He writes this twaddle that really doesn’t mean anything, it’s so mealy-mouthed. Not a patch on his late Uncle Jonathan.

What has happened the last few days and what is my excuse for not writing? Today… slept in late, did my half hour of yoga and meditation, had breakfast… now it’s lunchtime and I’ve done bugger all. Every day the same.

It’s a nice day too. A friend came round to mow my lawn for me yesterday afternoon, and I thought: the garden’s a mess, now the fence is up I should get on with it and sort it out, but oh well… take the laptop and go to the Coffee Cup? That was sort of the plan. I really should go to the sea this afternoon instead of sitting around here, or if I’m going to stay in I should get on with some jobs.

You see, they say: ‘…don’t get caught up with all the “shoulds”…’, but seriously, if you keep on ignoring the ‘shoulds’ then everything goes to pot. Well, what would make me happy? Should (there I go again) I do something that will make me ‘happy’, and if so, what? I do neither. I sit here ruminating (that’s a good word. My therapist used it a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to describe these thinking patterns, and I thought: yes that’s it! Of course I’ve heard it before, but not used it lately, and now I’ve sort of latched on to it).

I rang the lady who does the kundalini yoga and meditation at the community centre – it’s literally just round the corner – been going to check it out for months and putting it off. She sounded really friendly and happy that I was interested. It might turn out to be a bit new-age and hippy-dippy, how do I feel about that? Well, I’m conflicted, aren’t I?

This came up with the therapist. When I was looking after the dogs, I went to see her in Guildford, where she works some of the time. I was sitting where I could see out of the window and I kept seeing magpies, so then I had to explain about why I say ‘Good morning sir, how’s your wife?’ when I see them. She was intrigued by this, and at the end of the session (and again since) she commented that I seem to be almost desperate to find something to believe in. Which is a not-unreasonable observation. But… and there I go, reading my horoscope every day and having tarot readings, while simultaneously thinking: ‘this is all such a load of bollocks!!!’

Yesterday I had reading group in the morning, that’s why I didn’t write then, I ran out of time. Haven’t even been posting my daily haiku, but that’s partly because the memory stick is in the laptop which is downstairs and I’m up here in the study. Sorry, just realised I wrote: ‘reading’ group, not ‘writing’ group, that’s really strange, I wonder why? But yesterday afternoon, after getting home and before Richard came to cut the grass, I set up a Twitter account for the group (and Instagram, though no idea what I’m going to do with that), and did a few things to the Facebook page, but now that has died a death again, I mean, I can’t get any enthusiasm for doing it.

I followed something from Twitter about ‘Nine Daily Habits You Should Get Rid of to Become a Better Writer’ and of course  I do them all – well, maybe not all (I don’t do 6), but 1, 2, 4, 8 and 9 are pretty much intrinsic to my personality and lifestyle – so clearly there is no hope for me.

1.       Not sticking to the writing plan – PLAN??? Moi? You must be joking.

2.       Giving in to procrastination and self-criticism – Ermmm… enough said.

3.      Thinking over some paragraphs or dialogues when you are not writing –  when they come to me I can’t always wait, I sort them out in my head and write later;

4.     Writing without enough sleep – definitely – it’s unavoidable, that’s how I live;

5.    Giving someone to read your unfinished book – I did that once and it set me back 4 years – these days I read bits out at group but I think that’s helpful;

6.    Limiting yourself with one place for writing – no, I do vary that;

7.    Dividing your time to 2 or more storylines at once – oh god, yes – currently there’s sorting out the sequel to ‘Single To Sirkeci’; maybe doing something about Prague; trying (not very hard) to think of stories for the two groups; and the great novel which is still on the back burner, where it’s been for about twelve years (or arguably twenty five);

8.    Isolating yourself from family and friends- ditto 4;

9.    Having bad nutrition and drinking too much coffee or energy drinks – also ditto 4.

Posted on

Trying

Why is it that I don’t want to write about happy things? I have just come back from four days on a narrow boat with Simon and Dina and the dogs, the sun shone, the river flowed, the scenery was pretty, on the first night there were owls hooting and I read and crocheted and watched the ripples and the ducks and laughed. But I come back and don’t want to write about it, can’t think of what to say about lying in my bunk with the gentle motion of the moored boat and the lapping of the water. I can still feel the motion even now, even sitting in meditation this morning, trying to be clear, trying to be focused, but the world moving underneath me such that I started to feel queasy, even though all is as it should be and the sun is shining, and I was planning to listen to Saturday Live in an hour but maybe I should forget it all and walk to the sea, but it will be crowded, a sunny Saturday, or maybe not, maybe it’s early enough to just be me out there, perhaps I should just do that, just walk and be there and have breakfast (I haven’t had breakfast) spend the day in the garden, because there’s so much that needs to be done, or in the house, in a way it would be easier if it was raining like the forecast said, easy not to go out, just to stay here and do what needs to be done. But the sun is a temptation, and this isn’t getting on with any of those things, isn’t getting anything done.

And I’m not writing about what I’ve been thinking about, finding myself and understanding myself and accepting myself and loving myself. How about just being myself? Laughing at myself, I read a blog post from 2013 recently about the bloke at the ‘School of Philosophy’ group in Peterborough, saying ‘why can’t you learn to laugh at yourself?’ That’s important, that’s one of the ways I’ve tried to do this in the past, to see my incompetence and stupidity as a kind of joke, I felt that when I was a student, that I was just someone who was here to be laughed at, in my late teens and early twenties, that’s how I felt about myself, I remember that now, but it wasn’t a happy thing, I wasn’t glad to be that way, I despised myself just as I despise myself now.

Because what happened when I was away? I did so many stupid things, made so many mistakes. I know for a fact that I’m more forgetful than most people, that’s a given, but I have this strong sense that I am also more incompetent, clumsy, awkward, not good at understanding what’s required of me and even worse at doing it, so that I must be a nightmare to have to deal with and this is why I’m so useless and worthless.

Posted on

Wet Sunday

No blogging this morning. I am now at Simon’s, ready for our narrow boat adventure tomorrow. It was a rainy, nasty drive, with road works on theA3 – or rather, no evidence of any actual work going on today, but one lane was closed either side of the roundabout that goes to Selbourne, and that was enough to mess the traffic up.

Southsea Soup meeting this morning, a new lady called Claire who seems to know a lot about marketing and is full of ideas, like giving people money to buy copies and then getting them to write reviews on Amazon. To me it seems that the flaw is that we have bought the books ourselves, but I kind of see what she’s getting at about the reviews.

It feels like it’s been quite a long day already – well, admittedly it is five thirty – almost dinner time.

Think I did okay with the packing, the only thing I’ve thought of (so far) that I haven’t brought is the Destination Portsmouth game. I even charged up the mini-wifi and found the card with the password on it. I got a sales call from Virgin yesterday asking if I wanted to buy one, and when I said I’d already got one she asked how much I was paying and I said £10.99 per month, she gave up and sounded quite sad because evidently she couldn’t compete with that. The stupid thing of course is that I’ve been paying that for almost three years and I never use it. So I thought, this would be an ideal opportunity. Even if we run out of data and have to pay more, well, I’ve been paying all that time for nothing, so it seems like I might as well use it.

I didn’t really think I was going to be able to find the password, I’d convinced myself it was a lost cause, but there was the box with the card in on the unit in the study, and I tested it and confirmed it worked.

I didn’t do much packing and preparation till the last minute again, I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to get started on this top-down crochet jumper (third attempt). I will crack that eventually. But as I found last week, it seems that leaving things to the last minute is actually less stressful than spreading the stress over several days – which is not what I would have predicted.

Reading the Why Buddhism Works book, this morning (when I couldn’t sleep) there was something really interesting about the relationship between feelings and thought. I will have to read that further.

I came up with a haiku before leaving home as well. I’ve actually got a few in hand now – two or three, anyway. One is quite dark so not sure whether I am going to share that one.

I mentioned at the Soup meeting about putting more on the Facebook page, like the idea I stole of getting people to add lines to a limerick. Trevor was quite scathing and said that no one had responded much to things he and Steve had put on there. I said that’s why we need to get some traffic, and he said, but nobody responds so there’s no point, and at least Claire and Freya backed me up. I mentioned about opening a twitter account and again he wasn’t enthusiastic but Freya was and she said Instagram as well, so as she uses Instagram a lot (being an artist, unlike me) I’ll do that as well. See if we can get some social media buzz going. And write some more stories as well, of course. That’s another matter.

Posted on

Sitting on a cushion on the floor

New blog day 2 – aha!!! Not sure why I said that but I had to start somewhere.

Got up okay this morning, did my yoga although I got stressed out at the start because I was trying to light incense sticks which kept snapping (or rather, an incense stick which snapped in half, then I tried lighting the halves, then I got another one and lit it and every time I tried putting it in the holder it snapped again so I ended up with about five pieces and I’m running out of matches and the windowsill in the meditation room/spare bedroom is a mess of ash and dead matches and snapped bits of incense stick because I never clean it up, excuse being that I never remember to put a clean bag in the bin…) Well, that’s how my life is, even when I’m specifically trying to bring serenity into it.

In the end I sat for the extra ten minutes at the end of the audio file because my mind was such a mess during the yoga and the sitting, though when it’s like that I’m not sure whether sitting for longer actually adds anything to what happened in the first place. It’s hard for me to distinguish ‘meditation’ from ‘sitting and thinking about crap’, although I’m pretty sure that most of what I do is the latter, and that can happen at any time, not just when I’m sitting in my meditation room on a cushion on the floor. So is it worth persisting even when you feel that way? Most of what I read and know about meditation implies that it is, and that that happens to everybody, but I think: ‘well, they don’t know exactly HOW crap my mind is, and I’m probably much crapper than them, they just don’t realise…’

I think that’s why I give up such a lot. But there again, I give up on everything – and probably for the same reasons.

I think I’ve got to a good place in terms of letting go of the idea that happiness is to be found ‘out there’ – in material things, external circumstances, other people etc etc. I don’t do the: ‘I’ll be happy when/if…’ thing any more, but there again, I don’t think I’ve taken that seriously for years. But… my therapist, B, talks about being kind to myself, doing the things that make me happy – and how is that not looking to external things? Maybe it’s a matter of degree – a world cruise vs popping to the café for a cream tea to improve my mood for an hour or so, something like that. Are café-sitting, cream teas and crochet forms of addiction? The contentment they induce doesn’t always last that long, but at least they’re relatively cheap, non-damaging and easy to reproduce. And I’ve yet to start escalating on to a harder version of any of them (interesting to contemplate what that might be).

Side-tracked again. What was I going to move onto? The idea that happiness is found in getting to know ‘one’s true self’. Ah, that’s a lovely can of worms for another time.

Posted on

Killing time

Good title. Could even be a title for this blog.

I seem to have spent most of today faffing about setting up this blog. I’m sure it was never that difficult in the old days. Either I’m getting more stupid (quite likely) or creating blogs has got a lot more complicated (ditto).

Not sure what (if anything) I want to say here, now. But I’ve already broken my first rule of blogging by typing this straight onto the page and not into a Word document which can be kept, checked, edited etc etc.

Whenever I restart blogging it’s customary for me to say, well, I used to blog every day, but got out of the habit, so this is me starting again, blah, blah, blah, let’s see how long it lasts.

I wonder?

I used to write 500 words a day, you know. Just thought I’d point that out.

My therapist (yes, I’ve got one of those, of the psycho and not physio or any other-o variety), whom I saw yesterday, thinks it will be good for me to write again. Or keep writing. Or whatever. Despite the fact that I’ve given up because, well… I always give up. That’s just something about me. As that American humourist who’s really really famous but my mind has just gone blank – aha, yes, Mark Twain, that’s the fella – as he allegedly said about smoking, giving up is easy, I’ve done it dozens of times. Starting again seems to be getting progressively harder, however.

It’s been a funny old day. I skipped writers group this morning with the excuse that, well, they were doing a competition today and I haven’t written anything for it and I thought I could find better uses of my time than trekking over there and listening to everyone else reading out their contributions, but really it’s just because I’m lazy and couldn’t be arsed, and indeed I didn’t find a better use of my time. But the blog is here now and I’m two-thirds of the way towards that 500 words.

In fact I wrote 500 words this morning before I even started on this crazy let’s-start-another-blog thing, and I haven’t used any of them, or rather, I’ve almost certainly used at least some of them, but not in the same order, if you see what I mean.

Some days just get you like that. I haven’t even been for my customary go-and-sit-in-a-cafe-somewhere-and-drink-tea excursion to bump up the total on my step-counter (which is a whole other can of womrs which I’ll probably get back to some time).

Choir this evening. I haven’t been for a month. I ducked out of the last concert and the last two preparatory rehearsals. I really ought to go. I’ll enjoy it when I get there.

Somehow I’ve managed to miss lunch altogether. Cafe time? It’ll be dinner time in a couple of hours and I really should have some dinner, cook something, I mean. Yesterday I went out and had fish and chips at the beach cafe. Yum

I’m sure I’ll have something more exciting to write about tomorrow.