Sometimes It's Personal

My [not so secret] life ambition

2011-03-01T11:38:00.002Z

I'm building a village. Making a start - however small and slow - in the field with 'studio bedrooms' for the older children.

What do I mean by 'village'?

A group of families - extensions of my own family, I hope - living together on their own land, each in its own private unit. It has some communal outdoor space, with food growing in and around it and places for children to play together, etc.

Why do I want to build one?

Because it's the key thing that's been missing from my life, and it seems to me like the most sensible way to live. Labour doesn't have to be bought in - it's exchanged and shared freely, especially amongst people who love and trust each other. Childcare in particular is pooled, but I don't think it can rightly be called childcare unless there is that deep, familial bond of love involved - ditto the care of old people. And each other!

Isolated, nuclear family living can be a lonely and stressful business, as can living, traveling and working amongst strangers all the time. I think it does take a village to raise a child, and to educate one, and grow food, and build houses and throw parties and work out ways of becoming collectively safer and stronger. We all probably want to leave the world a better place than we found it, don't we? This is one of my ways of doing so. If I know my loved ones are well provided for physically and psychologically - by means of them having the option of living in this village of mine - I'll die happy.

How on earth does one go about building a village?

Well, I'm not calling it a life ambition for nothing - it seems to be taking my whole life to achieve it. First, I think you probably need to have as many children as possible - which doesn't leave a lot of time in the early years for village-building. So the shared childcare element is a gift for the 2nd generation, not the first one!

Next, home educate all the way: it's great for village building on the principle that wherever you spend your days is the place where you put your energy, which is the place you choose to strengthen. When everyone's out elsewhere all day the family's energy is dissipated - therefore weakened.

Thirdly, a village needs land for building on. This doesn't necessarily need to be *with planning permission*, though we're finding that it's useful to start with at least one pre-established residence which in turn enables the others.

But we've lost our birthright in this country [birthright = enough free land to build a house and support oneself in one's country of birth IMO] so houses, land, living are all expensive things to pay for. The solution to that problem? I can think of a few, though none are perfect:

Squatting, though it's probably not very stable/permanent. Ethically justifiable in most cases though, IMO, due to the theft of birthright.

Buying, though in most cases this means a mortgage for the first generation which are increasingly difficult to come by and pay for. Also, you usually pay back (over 25 years) at least twice as much as you borrow, though this is mitigated by times of high inflation and low interest. (Like now!) Borrowing so much money (or having to pay so much just for somewhere to live) is never a good thing, but if only one more generation does it (the first one of the village) it can be seen as the lesser of all evils. Plus, village-dwelling adult children will work to help to pay it off so the load is shared between more people.

Renting, though again it's not stable. But I guess the village could be a mobile one. Actually yes, traveling together could be another way of building a village. Not my choice, due to the prejudice and uncertainty from which such people suffer, but another way.

Central and local government doesn't really want people to be building villages, I don't think. Strong families make weak governments and vice versa, so it's in the interests of anyone who wants to control and exploit a population to be constantly separating and weakening the family unit, not enabling it to use its own strength and be united. Also strong families do things for each other for free (childcare, plumbing, electrics, computer repair, decorating, building, entertaining, cooking, cleaning, taxiing, admin work) instead of paying other people to do it. So The Man can't get in there and either extract taxes or insert regulation, both of which pay for and justify his own existence.

Governments need to break natural social bonds (the kind that naturally arise between friends and family members - village dwellers!) and build artificial social bridges (what happens in contracts between strangers) to strengthen their own position. But they do this at the expense of their own people, who thrive better (I think) with natural bonds. In villages.

Single parenthood: not a problem!

2011-01-22T06:52:00.003Z

Some elderly relatives and their friends were dropping heavy hints to me about my single status recently. Apparently I need to be married to give my children stability, even though they've been a hundred times more stable since my divorce than they ever were when I was married.

Being single means I can be in control of the family finances and make sure the bills and mortgage are paid. It means I can focus exclusively on the children and house. We've lived in the same house for fourteen years: two of my children were born here! How much more stable can they get?

They're home educated, so they don't have to change classrooms or schools or deal with a new teacher every year. They've attended the same home ed meeting with the same crowd of people, give or take a few, for as long as they can remember.

Stability was what I wanted for them, and is one of the main reasons I choose to stay single. Single doesn't mean promiscuous, or weak, or fickle, or vulnerable. On the contrary in my case and in most other cases, I imagine: to be a single parent you have to be strong, independent and self-reliant.

I can't see how moving a stepdad in for my children is going to enhance their stability at all.

The people in question used examples of people who "got married eventually" (to any old taker, as far as I could make out!) "So they were alright in the end." But I can't for the life of me work out why being married makes a person "alright" and being single makes them "unstable". These values went largely unquestioned by the group in the room and I wasn't given the chance to ask my questions and demand answers. They just wanted to get their message across to me: I should be married.

I still don't know why.

Message to my 'Off-Blog' readers

2010-04-27T09:29:00.003+01:00

That blog's settings are now on 'private' instead of being a public blog with passworded posts, but of course you're welcome to keep reading. If you aren't registered with Wordpress, you can get a name and password here. Email your registered Wordpress name to me and I'll add you to the list of readers. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Natural living, natural learning

2009-08-04T08:18:00.002+01:00

Events have conspired to largely keep me away from the computer in recent weeks, which I originally viewed as a curse but now see more as a blessing. Certainly, it's been an education. We've been very busy: two of the teenagers have been away on camping and hiking trips with their friends and the business has been growing as usual. (I must blog about that - I see that I haven't for quite a while!) and the children have been as active and inquisitive as ever.

We settled into a natural rhythm of living, learning and just getting on with things together. I can understand why most people don't bother with blogging or any kind of online social networking: when you've got a few children and an offline social life to keep up with, as well as all of us doing our own studying etc, it's enough. I could withdraw very easily from the online world, though I'd miss the many friends I've met here.

But I don't, because I like having the outlet when I've got something to say! And what I'm trying to say here is that learning, like life, does not need to be externally regulated. This is what's kept coming back to me as I've been cleaning, playing, reading, cooking, washing, chatting, wrestling with tents and so on. Everything gets done, even though nobody is standing over me with a big stick, making sure I do it. Educating my children is a natural instinct, just like wanting to learn is for them.

But it's more than that: this unregulated family life that so many people seem to be so afraid of, is far from degenerative chaos. It's not always peaceful, perfect and harmonious but enough of it is to make the whole thing precious and special, to keep it safe and to protect it from invasion.

"It's like magic falling from the sky!"

2009-02-03T05:10:00.007Z

So said Lyddie about the snow. We get so little of it around here that the younger two have never seen it before in any real quantities.

It's the fine, powdery stuff - very beautiful, but no good for snowman making. Good for sledging though!

The baby seemed bewildered. Very quiet and contemplative. I took her down the hill on the sledge, sitting in front of me and going quite fast and she still kept quiet, until I asked her if she liked it, and got a definite "Yes."

We went shopping for essential food supplies, but struggled to get the car back up the last bit of the hill, which is uncleared and ungritted, so I think we're staying put now until the thaw! Not that I'm complaining.

I've been tagged

2009-01-25T08:38:00.003Z

..by the Baroness, to tell you eight random facts about me.

Hmmm. I've done this before (here and here) so will try not to duplicate.

Here goes:

My hair is falling out! It happens with every baby and carries on until I stop breastfeeding. It's always grown back before. Here's hoping..!

I always wanted five children - specifically two older boys followed by three younger girls, and that's exactly what I've got.

I love to ice-skate, swim, do lots of physical things like that, but rarely get chance nowadays. Hopefully when the younger children are a bit older..

I'm a complete Tolkien-head. Tell me you didn't know that!

I'm drinking a lot of red bush tea and Barleycup these days instead of tea and coffee. Fascinating!

Err... three more... struggling... OK. I can play the piano, but don't, because I'm not really interested in doing so.

I have a few (ahem!) childhood issues, related to things like number 6!

I write better than I speak.

Now for the rules and my turn to tag:

1. Each blogger starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

4. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged and to read your blog.

5. For the recipients, leave a comment for the person who tagged you, so they can go and read your answers.

I'll be tagging...

Mrs Darcy - just because she's lovely!
Min - because we've missed her while she's been offline!
Clare - because she might need a quick change from all her valliant home ed-based blogging!
Lotusbirther - because I suspect she might be a tag-virgin ;-)
Grit - what reason could I need? Gotta love Grit.
Mamacrow - because it's bound to be fascinating.
And Allie and Dani because hopefully at least one of them has time for this, and they count as two!

Things it's taken me 40 years to learn

2009-01-08T08:45:00.004Z

How to use a solid fuel stove, without relighting it every day.

I am not a car mechanic.

My mother will never change.

Some other people do and can change, but not all that much.

Being supremely tolerant is not always the best strategy.

Moderation.

My body is too fertile to ever have sex again.

Men do not, by and large, want children. Until they've got them (sometimes), which either therefore never happens, or is often too late.

Even if they deny the above, it's still true.

Other people can do the washing-up.

Yes, I really do need to keep the place tidy, at least sometimes, and am not ashamed to admit it.

I can no longer stay slim and live on mince pies. With brandy butter.

Sometimes people are friendly for the wrong reasons and actually, those people aren't usually worth keeping as friends.

Things I learned more quickly than that:

Money can't buy you love, or much else except stuff that all needs tidying up.

It doesn't matter who does the work, as long as it gets done.

Antidepressants, antibiotics, contraceptives and other Smarties-from-doctors-that-make-drug-companies-rich, are not for me thank you very much.

Homeopathy works, but some people will never be convinced of that fact.

Health and happiness go hand in hand.

Sleep is good.

Some friendships last forever.

Time and freedom are worth more than money.

Debt is bad.

Children are the most valuable asset a person could have, but only if you commit to them instead of your career/social life/travel plans/religion, etc.

World of Warcraft is addictive. (I broke the habit 2 years ago.)

When my middle daughter tells me it's time to stop blogging and get ready to go out, she's usually right.

Unconscious mutterings

2008-12-29T10:54:00.002Z

Here is a great meme from Lunanina:

Free association is described as a "psychonanalytic procedure in which a person is encouraged to give free rein to his or her thoughts and feelings, verbalizing whatever comes into the mind without monitoring its content." Over time, this technique is supposed to help bring forth repressed thoughts and feelings that the person can then work through to gain a better sense of self.

That's an admirable goal, but for the purposes of this excercise, we're just hoping to have a little fun with the technique. Each week I'll post ten words to which you can respond to with the first thing that comes to mind.

"Rules are, there are no rules." There are no right or wrong answers. Don't limit yourself to one word responses; just say everything that pops into your head. AND you don't have to have your words up on Sunday. Take all week if you want! Read the FAQ for more information.

Destined :: to be free

FAIL :: not interested

Camping :: fun

Only you :: would say that

Incessant :: nagging

Tomorrow :: is another day

Impressive :: action

Riches :: dispense downwards

Dislike :: sugar in my tea

Speaker :: turn up the volume

Weekends

2008-12-15T07:27:00.002Z

In single parent, autonomously home-educating households - well, this one, anyway - weekends aren't really any different to any other day.

I'm still up at 5am, and asleep by 9pm.

All the usual jobs still need doing: cooking, cleaning, washing-up, etc.

Education goes on as normal, 24/7 unless the children are asleep.

But it seems that for the rest of the world, weekends are different and this does permeate our consciousness from time to time..

The Internet is relatively dead! I can receive upwards of 100 list mails on week days, but next to none at weekends. Ditto blog posts and comments. Sometimes I wonder why my inbox/RSS feed list is so empty, then I remember what day it is.

Supermarkets are closed on Sunday mornings. No early, quiet shopping for us then.

Everywhere is phenomenally busy, so we tend to stay at home.

I see a bit less of the teenagers because their schooled friends suddenly have spare time.

Maybe all this will change when Tom starts his business in January, but I suspect not much.

Future me

2008-10-14T07:19:00.002+01:00

Seen this? You can send an email to yourself to arrive at any point in the future that you want yourself to receive it.

I've already written to my Summer 2009 self to remind me to keep planting seeds, and water the plants.

But I suspect other people are using it for less pragmatic purposes.

Goodbye Halifax, we loved you well

2008-09-18T07:51:00.010+01:00

I know, it hasn't been the Halifax since it merged with the Bank of Scotland (Why? Why??) But to us Halifax people its name never changed. It put us on the map and most of us stayed loyal to it. We were proud of its success. And now it's gone! Twelve billion pounds. A pittance in these crazy money days.

Who do I owe my money to now? Lloyds TSB? Hmm.. nicer building, though (in Halifax anyway):

I've always thought so, compared to what we still call the new "HBOS" head office (even though it was built in 1973):

Ugly, isn't it? I always thought that no good could come from such a silly, top-heavy structure.

They should have stuck to the old place: we were all fond of that.

My mother worked there when she left school in 1959 and had to leave when she got married in 1963.

I never thought I'd take this financial crash at all personally, but I'll really miss the Halifax.

Resemblance meme

2008-08-23T17:40:00.012+01:00

Seen on Sew Q and Handy Crafty Woman.

Hmmm. Which famous people have I been likened to?

In my 20s it tended to be Susanna Hoffs:

And in my 30s, Keeley Hawes:

Friends are kind, aren't they? ;-) But I've been in my 40s for two months now and so far, nobody has ventured an opinion as to who I resemble nowadays. If they did, I suspect it might be Nora Batty.

I don't have the rollers or the stockings, but I do a mean scowl and sweeping brush routine.

I sneaked out of bed

2008-07-30T07:01:00.002+01:00

.. past the sleeping baby. Is this the morning she's going to let me get up by myself? So far, so good. I don't mind when she gets up with me, but it's luxury to go to the loo on my own, without having to defend the loo roll from being thrown into a sink full of water.

My body is a bit weary. Yesterday I cleaned out our workroom, which used to be called our bikeroom, but hasn't housed bikes now for over a year. It's the front part of the garage and has become a bit of a glory hole. There's a car full of rubbish to recycle today now, and we can get to the workbench to build wind turbines and so on. Maybe!

I seem to spend a lot of my time clearing and sorting heaps of stuff these days. In the field, in the house and elsewhere. Good job I enjoy it, once I've got started. I find things we'd forgotten we had, and produce more of that increasingly rare commodity: space.

My early morning brain

2008-07-25T09:03:00.007+01:00

- which is the only one I can safely rely on for blogging - is nowadays being hijacked instead by our toddling baby, and her love for books. Even as I try to write this, I've had this

thrust in my lap, and I'm obliged to intersperse my typing with roars "like a tiger" and agreements that it is, indeed, an apple. ("App!") And glasses. ("Gass!") And a hat. ("Hat!") And then I have to perform Tinkywinky's hat song, and open and close my mouth like a fish when she repeatedly points to the picture of a fish, so amazed is she that I'll do that. Hmm. I'm pretty amazed about that, myself, come to think of it.

But if you were wondering about my lack of blogging, that's why. I seem to think I didn't even start blogging until the end of 2004 when Lyddie was nearly 2 and a half and I'm starting to realise why. I'd wanted to do it earlier, but didn't have the brain space - too busy making a mouth like a fish, no doubt.

Re-post: House stuff and brain development - Feb 05

2008-06-21T15:59:00.003+01:00

From Thursday, February 24, 2005

I've spent most of the morning cleaning and tidying - mainly tidying. I love my toddler and my teenagers but they need a *lot* of facilitating. I'm not complaining about this, it's not something I resent doing at all, especially since I read of some published research about development of the brain, which said it looks as though the part of the brain related to tidy living doesn't mature properly in most people until the age of 25! It was previously thought that all of the brain was fully mature by a much earlier age but a lot of brain scans have now been done of people of all ages and areas of the brain mapped WRT their different purposes, hence the recent conclusion.

This makes sense to me in the light of my own experience, the way my children are and what I've observed of other people I've known well for a long time. Babies and toddlers have such a short attention span, living very much in the here & now to the extent that when their interest moves on they'll just drop whatever they were previously doing and forget all about it. This was demonstrated to me this morning when, tidying up, I realised many of Lyddie's DVDs were missing from their boxes and I couldn't see them anywhere. They're expensive and easily damaged, so I was concerned and I asked her where she'd put them. She honestly didn't know the answer, because, for her, they'd ceased to exist the minute she'd finished with them. She'll have stuffed them underneath something or between something or behind something or even just thrown them - out of sight, out of mind, quite literally.

The older children are different again. I've just filled a laundry basket full of crockery from their rooms, and another one full of dirty clothes - and it's only about 3 days since I did this last time. They're helpful, intelligent children who understand the consequences of their actions, but simply can't function all the time to the level required to live tidily. Zara came in from the snow yesterday and stripped off wet jeans, boots and socks onto a heap on the cloakroom floor. "Can you put those to dry?" I asked. "No, " she said. "My legs are numb with cold. I've got to go and get warm."

I can remember being like this. It's NOT laziness, it's to do with a way of thinking. I can remember the next thing being of supreme importance, or my hunger or comfort being far more urgent than tidy living. Tidy living requires a presence of mind not usually found in young people, I think. You have to create a template for how you want things to be. "A place for everything and everything in its place," was my stepfather's mantra. In a house full of everything we need and use, this is a very complicated thing to do. Maybe toddlers' sorting games help to develop the function. (Rosie?) I struggle with it myself sometimes.

Also, in the modern world there's too much stuff. I sometimes feel like I'm forever sorting through mounds or heaps of stuff: keep or throw? Landfill or recycle? We have hundreds of little bits of toys, audio cassettes, CDs, books, comics, files, folders, bits of paper, jars, ornaments, odd socks, packets, boxes, wrappers, cheap toys, notebooks.... the list of manufactured stuff that comes into a modern family home on a regular basis is endless. Most of it never gets used, but if you just throw it all away you're both adding to the landfill problem and risking discarding someone's vital receipt, favourite comic etc. So it all needs careful sorting and thinking about, which I find to be very taxing on the brain! I can only do it properly and consistently when I've had enough sleep, good food and a bath. Otherwise I put it off and then it mounts up and becomes more of a problem.

Even when I think I'm on top of it, there'll be a little seam of chaos somewhere that I've missed. This can be the garage (usually), or one or more of the teenagers' rooms (usually), or Lyddie's toyboxes. Even areas under furniture attract chaos. There's a 6-inch gap under the bookshelves in the dining room that's rarely clear of little bits of junk. I could spend all my time sorting through things and tidying up and there will still be some place in my blindspot that I just don't see.

I think our personal spaces are perfect reflections of our inner selves, because they result directly from how we think, because how we think dictates how we live. Just as there are little areas (or sometimes big areas) of chaos in our houses, there are also little (big?) areas of chaos in our minds.

Blog-writing is also a great method of procrastination when there's lots of tidying-up still to be done.

posted by Gill at 11:21 AM 12 comments

Re-post: Epiphany & field plans - Jan 05

2008-06-21T15:59:00.002+01:00

From Tuesday, January 04, 2005

According to Wikipedia, Epiphany was set on the 6th January because Chanuka, the Jewish Festival of Lights is on that date. Chanuka, I went on to read, is the time when Jews mark the renewing and/or rededication of their temple, by burning oil lamps and candles. I think the theme of renewal fits in with the other days we observe at this time of year, like New Year's day, Christmas day and the Solstice. Also it makes sense to have fire/light/candle rituals in the middle of Winter, just to keep people's spirits up when the days are so short and everything seems cold and dark. So the tradition, at this time of year, is to focus on renewal, before the seeds start sprouting and life begins again.

I can go with that, it feels right to light fires & candles and think about the year ahead. It's also a good time to plan which seeds to plant and where, and to start preparing the land for them before the weeds take root again. Early in November I cleared 2 of our raised beds and dressed one with manure (for potatoes) and the other with well-rotted compost from the bins. I'll probably try to grow brassicas in that one, but in previous years these have all been eaten by rabbits. This year I'm planning to construct metal cages over the brassicas and the crucifers too. The rabbits don't eat potatoes or the leguminous crops. The field is Northwest-facing and very exposed, so more crops do better if I start them off under cover and only plant them out when they're fairly strong.

But the thing I most need to be doing in the field in Winter is land-clearing, because it's easiest when the land is dormant. I usually do a bit just before Spring, in February - I widen the paths a bit and maybe surface some of them with grit or cinders and do any restructuring work that needs doing then. There's an area by the entrance where I want to convert a deep border into path and an overgrown brambly area into... I haven't decided what yet, and I'll have to decide before I clear it or it will just revert back to overgrown brambles. Nature has a way of doing what she wants.

My main aim regarding what I do in the field is to work with Nature rather than against her - which is why my field looks so unkempt compared to my neighbour's neatly-mown grassy haven! But I don't want to dominate the earth, I want to learn about it instead - there's an amazingly intricate system of chemical balance going on, when you leave ground to it's own devices. Weeds don't just grow in any old place; they all have a function, which is to replenish the soil with the nutrients it's missing, amongst other things. So, for example, nettles will grow where the soil is lacking in iron and after quite a few years, that soil will be iron-rich and something else will grow there instead - to replenish any other missing minerals. Of course, nettles are a valuable crop for us humans because they supply us with iron too, and huge amounts of other vitamins and minerals in early Spring, just when we need them. They've also got a lot of medicinal uses and you can make a powerful liquid plant food out of them. I'll always allow nettles to grow on my land, in fact I think long and hard before removing any plant that's put itself somewhere. I've never yet come across one that isn't performing a vital function, so I only pull 'weeds' when I *really* have to.

posted by Gill at 8:51 AM 0 comments

Re-post: Dry stone walls - Mar 05

2008-06-21T15:59:00.001+01:00

From Friday, March 11, 2005

A long ramble, vaguely related to dry stone walls

I slept last night from 10pm until 8am this morning and am feeling much better for it. Still full of cold, sneezing etc., but the sun's shining and Blogger comments are working again! So I'm a lot happier. I'm wondering how best to spend my day today. There's so much that needs doing.

Ideally I'd like to work out in the field. The dry stone walls all around the field are broken, and I noticed something really interesting last week. A little band of boys had come up the hill to grass-sledge down the public footpath. I had a chat with them, told them about the deer. They seemed like really nice kids. The eldest (about 8) was doing a bit of a tough-boy routine, but when I told him about the deer he said he'd be frightened of them! How far away from natural living have we come, when strapping young lads are frightened of deer? I put him straight: "Oh no! The deer are much more frightened of us. They'll run away and hide as soon as they hear or see you."

Eventually I got back to my path-digging and the boys sledged a bit more, then started to wander back to their homes again, through the top fields this time. They were a bored-looking, straggly group, kicking grass and bickering a bit as they went. Some of the walls around the top fields are in need of repair too, though these fields are owned by the dairy farm and hence, not my problem. But as they went past a broken bit of wall the boys, in their boredom, started breaking more off it and throwing the stones around. They soon tired of this too and carried on their journey without having caused a lot of extra damage, but it started me thinking about a couple of things:

Chaos attracts chaos and decay attracts decay. The boys weren't interested in damaging the walls that were intact. It just wouldn't have occurred to them. But if something's damaged, it appeals to bored young minds to speed the process up, by adding their own bit of damage. Why? I think I've got some tentative reasons. Young lads are full of physical creative energy. If they can't put it to productive use, they'll put it to destructive use instead. That kind of energy has to go somewhere.

Once upon a time they'd have been employed, quite legally, to labour for stone-wallers at their age. They'd have been well-supervised by the adult, taught how to repair the walls and they'd have gained satisfaction and pride in the end results. Nowadays, we have to pay someone £500 per week to repair stone walls (not that I can afford to) and about as much again for the amount of new stone they'd get through in that time. It's highly-skilled labour. Children are of no use to us except to sit in classrooms 5 days a week and be 'taught' how to read and write. What are they supposed to do at the weekends? Not society's problem. Except that it is society's problem, because society is having its walls and everything else wrecked by bored, frustrated kids.

My walls will stay broken for now, because there's no-one to look after my children for the 200 hours it would take me to fix them. And there's an interesting thing. I've got 3 potential workers here myself: one to babysit, and 2 to help me wall-build. I haven't asked them to help because I don't like to influence their decisions about how they spend their time. I'd much rather one of them thought: those walls are collapsing: I'll fix them. Why doesn't that happen? 2 reasons: it probably doesn't occur to them they CAN fix them, and they actually don't care whether they're broken or not.

I recently asked Ali what he'd do with the field if it was his. The answer? "Sell it." I was stunned! "You can't sell land! It's for your children, your grandchildren! You can't sell it!" He just shrugged and walked away.

What's the point in keeping land for your children if they don't even want it? Maybe it's a teenage thing. Or maybe the landowning instinct has had its day, and the way of the future is virtual living, in virtual space.

There are proper answers to all this somewhere, that will make it all make sense and fall into place - just waiting for me to work them out.

posted by Gill at 8:22 AM 7 comments

Solstice sorting

2008-06-21T07:58:00.005+01:00

Happy Summer Solstice to everyone. I love this time of year - it was broad daylight at 10pm last night! We were outside, enjoying the smell of Lyddie's Night-Scented Stocks, which do smell incredibly sweet from about 6 feet away, and generally admiring the late Solstice sunlight.

Today, I'm doing some major blog sorting. I feel like I should erect signs everywhere:

The last time I had a major sort out was in November 2006, when I deleted my original main blog and completely - and very selectively! - rebuilt it with some little drop-down menus at the sides. Then in July 2007 I started creating additional blogs to further tidy things up a bit, but I neglected to sort the old re-posts out and allocate them to their new rightful homes. I've thought for a while they looked a bit odd, stuck on the side of Sometimes It's Peaceful, which is now essentially only about home education and recently the coding started to look odd as well, when the words didn't even fit their little boxes, due to some obscure browser changes I think:

This has been bugging me for weeks, but I've been too busy with other things to find the time to sort it out. Anyway. Today's the day, hopefully. And possibly tomorrow and the day after, judging by the amount there is to do. I've done some already, but there is much, much more to do.

Sounds that take you back

2008-05-08T06:28:00.003+01:00

I'm not starting a new meme or anything (though feel free to pick it up if you like the idea) but I did want to write some more about the sound of those wood pigeons, because it takes me right back to a certain point in my childhood.

The place was Zeist in Holland: the house of some of my parents' friends in which we used to holiday while they were away. It backed onto woodland and the wood pigeons' whoo-whoo was the predominant noise. I remember it as being very calming, but so was the house itself - I'd never been anywhere like it.

Nowadays it might seem quite ordinary, but coming from England in the 1970s as I was, it was an oasis of wholesome common sense. The floors were tiled and topped with jute. Things were stored intelligently. There were pictures on the walls the children had done 30 years before - a real family house.

The people cycled everywhere, and recycled everything. I loved the cycle paths through the forests, loved to cycle to the shops. Loved having to think about what to do with each item of rubbish even. They had a real fire and board games I'd never seen before and countless excellent jigsaws.

The chairs didn't match, but were substantial and comfortable. The bathroom smelled of washing soda - it was where their immensely fascinating top-loading machine lived. I can still remember the smell. The bedrooms all had balconies and there was an attic - a proper one, with a staircase. Mmmmm and there was Chocomel...

But the main thing I loved about the Zeist house (apart from the call of the wood pigeons) was the pleasure of living with clean, natural furnishings and decor. My house will never be as clean as theirs was - they had a daily cleaning lady - but nevertheless that feeling is one I've always try to recreate at home as an adult. It's hard to describe, but even as a seven-year old I knew it was the most comfortable way to live.

I haven't done the house justice in this piece, which was just a tumble of childish memories provoked by the recent arrival of our own wood pigeons. It's hard to put an adult description on something you only knew as a child, though we did visit one more time when I was about nineteen. I still loved the house then, but I was painfully conscious that we didnt belong there. I felt the owners had extended a kindness to us that we didn't deserve, because we didn't appreciate it properly. As a child, I'd ran through the place shrieking and giggling, but as a young adult I just thought of the mess we must have made. I wondered if the inhabitants had felt their space to have been at all violated by our presence in their absence. I felt their abundant generosity as a heavy weight, knowing I could never be in a position to return it.

I never even met them, but they taught me how to live.

On blogging - public, private, pictorial..

2008-04-19T10:37:00.002+01:00

So I built this blog hub a few weeks ago, and it has transformed my blogging and made me think more about doing it 'properly', instead of - as usual - just brain-dumping into one of my passworded blogs every day. Because of the hub, I'm rethinking what blogging is for and why, where and how I do it.

Because bloggers are increasingly influential. By my estimations, at least 50x more people read them than ever comment and from what I read in the newspaper and casual, throwaway comments I hear politicians and commentators making on the radio, the blog world is very closely monitored and considered. It's like Speaker's Corner just magically multiplied itself and plonked a version in every study of every house in the country. A traditional establishment politician's nightmare. Orwellian, but with a delicious spicy twist.

Blogging is empowering. It's good for the soul to be able say what you think and publish it to the world, with little or no censorship. Like Wikipedia, it's a fantastic basis for autodidacticism on a national level. Networked, interactive, powerful and free.

And, as well as growing explosively, it's evolving at a rate of knots too. Almost everyone I know now is capable of picture-blogging and most can create a hypertext link - at least of the WYSIWYG variety. I recently learned how to link images to other sites and I love that concept, having used it extensively to build the hub. Picture links use a different part of the brain to text links of course, and I still feel a little frission of delight when I come across real ones that lead somewhere else. So that's the way blogging might go next, I think. It's very exciting.

But there are problems with blogging too. If you splurge everything publicly (as I sometimes did) then of course you're exposing yourself and your vulnerabilities to all those silent readers. I was shocked and dismayed to find that some people who knew me in real life were silently reading, taking it all in and never commenting. I wasn't blogging just to other bloggers and possibly a bunch of faceless, nameless strangers. I was also saying things to people who did know me - and I was supplying the kind of information that those people would never give me in return, making for some very one-sided connections. I didn't like that. It made me increasingly uncomfortable.

I'm an open kind of person, and so I resisted the temptation to go passworded for a long time, but in the end I found it was the only way to say what I wanted to say in that kind of totally transparent and confessional way, including personal information, pics of the family and the house and so on, without constantly wondering who might be reading and what they might be thinking about it. But then I don't want to disappear. I still want that public forum: the soapbox, the random connections that come from public blogging. The mental discipline of trying to present my thoughts and opinions in a clear and interesting way.

The hub brings it all together, but presents a dilemma. Do I link to the private stuff too? All of it? (In the end I didn't link to all of it.) It was the result of several requests I'd received to link all my writings in one place and it was in the back of my mind to buy some webspace and link it all from there, until EF showed how it can be done from a blog instead - much simpler, and really all that's needed.

I've been blogging for nearly four years now and have got to know several people through it very well. It's caused me some upset (not all comments are nice ones!) and challenged my thinking. It saves me writing thousands of pages in paper diaries! It saves me from finding a priest, or a therapist and it saves my physical friends' ears quite considerably(!) freeing me up to concentrate more on them than my own issues. It can be a bit of a cop-out.. I'm thinking of some occasions when I've possibly blogged some opinions that should have been said instead. But when you're using your own identity and not hiding behind any other, that's perhaps justified. I've always found it easier to write than to speak.

I'm fascinated by blog comments - on other blogs as well as my own. Have you noticed how some of the blogs of well-known public figures never ever receive any comments? They're obviously widely-read, but it's as if the readers are so awe-stricken that they daren't speak, or the chasm between 'normal' and 'famous' is too wide and deep to be bridged by a blog comment. I can't just find an example of that, now I want one. Maybe it's less common than I thought then.

If you want to increase blog traffic and fill up your comments box, saying certain very controversial things will have that effect. Having a baby, moving house.. all those life-changing activities do seem to be of special interest to people, moreso than day-to-day stuff. And of course there's the schadenfreude factor. Some people take great comfort from reading other people's bad news. That's the underbelly of the blog world, isn't it? It's there, but we don't like to dwell on it.

But it makes me feel very good when people tell me they found out about home education, autonomous learning, or frugal living or something, from one of my blogs. Or even, that they worked out how home ed would be possible for them by reading the many home ed blogs that are 'out there'. That's excellent news, IMO.

Superhero meme

2008-04-17T00:35:00.009+01:00

Grabbing happiness by the handful

2008-03-14T22:24:00.003Z

The smell of cooking popcorn drifting up the stairs, and knowing some is for me.

Closing the kitchen last thing at night, knowing everything is finally in its place.

Giggling toddler shouting: "'eady [ready].... go!go!go!" and racing across the floor to hug me.

Going outside and not nearly getting knocked off my feet in the wind!

Hearing a teenage son laughing at his computer screen.

Playing a bit part in a five year old's roleplay. ("Mum. You don't see me because I'm human. Then you feel someone nudging you.")

Making space where there was clutter and then basking in it.

Seeing signs of spring, everywhere.

The 12-9-6-3 NOW meme

2008-03-04T11:53:00.003Z

As tagged (and created) by the lovely EF.

TWELVE YEARS AGO, ME: LOCATION: Tall victorian terraced house in Todmorden CHILDREN: Three, aged 3, 5 and 7 JOB: MD of leisure company. Manager of roller skating rink. Mother! TRANSPORT: Car - one of a series of many. Can't remember which one, but it'd be a big family car. Estate or similar. Many seats. EMPLOYEES: Staff at rink, part time nanny, mother's help. All good friends FAVE DRINK: Herb tea LOVE INTEREST: Husband. Still trying to make it work after 8 roller coaster years CONTRACEPTION: Probably not needed by then. WISH FOR FUTURE: Eek. I think I wanted to be divorced. SPONSORS: Customers. Creditors. Parents, to some extent. HAIR: Hair?? Goodness me, I can never remember that. It'd be black and quite long, probably. UNDERWEAR: EF!! I don't know! Erm.... think think.. probably black lycra type stuff. I was working out in gyms a lot at the time. FAVE OUTFIT: Black leggings, silky tops. Good for skating and rushing around. Busy busy busy.

NINE YEARS AGO, ME: LOCATION: This house, on the hill. Sold the Tod house and moved here the year before. Bliss! CHILDREN: 3, aged 6, 8 and 10. JOB: Kung fu/ T'ai chi teacher and loving every minute of it. TRANSPORT: A nippy little VW Polo. EMPLOYEES: Er - none! Bliss, after years of trying to keep track of way too many. FAVE DRINK: Herb tea. LOVE INTEREST: Two or three that year I think. Colleagues, mostly. CONTRACEPTION: Condoms + panics. Then IUD coil. Ugh, hated that. WISH FOR FUTURE: I think I had it all that year. SPONSORS: Students, topped up by government money or the other way around. UNDERWEAR: Just cotton stuff. FAVE OUTFIT: Training gear.

SIX YEARS AGO, ME: LOCATION: As above. CHILDREN: Three, aged 9, 11 and 13. JOB: Home educator. TRANSPORT: A nippy little Peugeot 205. EMPLOYEES: None. FAVE DRINK: Tea. Coffee when living on the wild side. LOVE INTEREST: None I can mention. CONTRACEPTION: Still that IUD coil, but it was on its way out. WISH FOR FUTURE: More children. Was very broody that year. SPONSORS: Dole Office. HAIR: Same as ever. Long. Dark. Maybe a bit shorter than usual. *Shrug* UNDERWEAR: Yep. FAVE OUTFIT: Yep. Oh. Jeans, leggings, whatever.

THREE YEARS AGO, ME: LOCATION: Here again. Still. CHILDREN: Four now. Ages: 2, 12, 15 and 17 JOB: Home educating. Good, innit? I think I might have been running a Warcraft guild by then as well, which was actually a hobby, but felt like a job. TRANSPORT: By foot, by bus, borrowing friend's car. EMPLOYEES: none. FAVE DRINK: Still with the boring old tea and coffee. I didn't suddenly take to drink! Running a pub all those years ago put me off booze for life. LOVE INTEREST: Hmm. None. Maybe. CONTRACEPTION: None. WISH FOR FUTURE: To finish Molten Core and kill Ragnaros. You'd have to be a WoW fan really, to know what I'm on about! SPONSORS: Dole Office. HAIR: Yes. UNDERWEAR: Yes. I'm not really getting into the spirit of this, am I? FAVE OUTFIT: My little WoW priestess had some pretty cool armour...

TODAY, ME: LOCATION: Still here. CHILDREN: Five! Ages: 19, 17, 15, 5 and 1. JOB: Home education-ing. Still loving it. TRANSPORT: This month? None. We're staying put. When it's working: Renault Espace. EMPLOYEES: None. FAVE DRINK: Tea, coffee, yada yada. Ooh: chai. LOVE INTEREST: Absolutely none. I'm far too ruthlessly independent for all that now. CONTRACEPTION: None. WISH FOR FUTURE: To build our new off-grid house and keep on living happily ever after. SPONSORS: HM Govt for now, but not for much longer. And The Green Parent magazine, bless it. HAIR: Yes yes. It's getting many grey streaks now. Should I start dying it? UNDERWEAR: Yes indeed. FAVE OUTFIT: Depends if the heating's working or not. Able to wear black again now, after 11 months of not being able to. Weird thing that - the day I last gave birth I suddenly couldn't wear dark colours any more!

If you haven't seen this before, consider yourself tagged.

Time meme

2008-02-17T12:19:00.001Z

As seen on Merry's and Jax's blogs. Fun quiz :-)

Computer mooching

2008-02-04T17:55:00.000Z

Surfing is a good name, but mooching is a better description of what I do at a PC sometimes. I can just mooch at it. Not doing anything. Not getting anywhere. Not really thinking about anything useful. I was reading my Thoreau book the other night and I came across this:

"You can't kill time without damaging eternity."

I suppose I'm talking about the difference between doing things mindfully and doing them absently: mooching.

It also reminds me of that TV programme that was on when I was a kid: "Why don't you?" AKA: Why-don't-you-switch-off-the-TV-set-and-do-something-less-boring-instead? (Answer: because you'd all be out of a job if we did!)

I shall stop, and switch it off. Got books to read.

A little game from Shukr

2008-01-23T19:05:00.000Z

Shukr found this little game here. I've been meaning to post it ever since.

Here's the meme, you design the cover of your band's album using these links:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. You then take the pic and add your band name and the album title to it, then post your pic.

So. My band is ‘Helen Humes’
Album title: Conformity to Thy Will (!!)

And here's the cover pic:

Which is called 'three new sheds and one old' and which is semi-spooky, cos we might be living in three new sheds and one old for quite some months in the near future, while our new house is built!

Thanks Shukr - that was fun.

It's a while since I've been blog-surfing but...

2007-08-17T19:59:00.000+01:00

I've found a new favourite:

Grumpy Old Sod. Just what I needed to make me feel cheerful today (as well as a few other people - you know who you are! xx)

Beatrice Kilner, 1898 - 1982

2007-08-11T08:19:00.000+01:00

This is my maternal great grandmother, Beatrice Kilner:

We share the same surname because I adopted it after my divorce. My birth name would have upset my stepdad, whose name I took when he married my mother, and my maiden name would have upset my dad, because it was my stepdad's name.

I never liked the idea of paternal surnames anyway: it seems to me that male love can be possessive enough, without encouraging it with labels of ownership. But I did want a name that felt like it belonged to me, and I to it, so I thought about which family members I liked and respected the most and Beatrice came out top of the list by far. I took her maiden name so that, having never met her father, I didn't feel owned by a man that I knew.

I liked her because she liked me. It was rare, in our family, for adults to actually like children. My mother didn't and nor did either of my grandmothers. My step-grandmother was mildly fonder of us, but not overly. But Beatrice looked at our faces, gave us eye contact and addressed us as real, individual people. I think she was 70 when I was born, and I was 14 when she died.

She lived around the corner from us in Halifax when we were very young. We spent a lot of time at her house because she wanted to be with us, and my mother didn't. Her house was like a living, working museum. I wish I had photos of it, but sadly I only have 2 photos pertaining to her - the one above of a very young Beatrice, and this one of her when she was very old:

In the intervening years she was an elegant and stylish woman, although even my mother (who keeps the family pictures) doesn't have a lot of photos of her.

In the picture above, she's holding my Christmas present - one of the first affordable portable cassette tape players - and wondering what it is and how it works. It must have been a wonder to her because when the first picture was taken in around 1910, the only music in her life would have been from live sources: church music mostly, I would imagine, although Beatrice was never much of a church-goer.

She was one of three daughters of a cottage weaver who lived in Skelmanthorpe. I know of three anecdotes about her childhood:

There was so little communication between her parents that her mother would send one of the girls out into the road, after their father had left the house in the morning, to see whether he turned towards the market or the pub. If it was the market, she knew to put the furniture back and get the loom out because they would be working that day. If he turned to the pub, she knew that she and the girls needed to get on with general housework instead.

A young coal miner lodged with them for a while. His bed was under the kitchen sink. One day he and his friends were sitting around the kitchen table laughing and joking whilst Beatrice's mother Ann did the ironing. The lodger's choice of language must have been quite unsuitable in the company of her daughters, because Ann gave him several warnings and finally branded him on the back with her flat iron!

Beatrice's household was by no means affluent, but some cousins in the village were even poorer. They would bring their dry bread supper to Ann and she would add beef dripping to it, to nourish them.

When she grew up:

She married a journeyman tailor called Herbert Higson and became a seamstress herself.

They had three children: Lesley (who later emigrated to Canada), Geoffrey (who became a locksmith I think) and Marian, my grandmother.

In common with many young adults throughout history, they hit financial trouble early in their marriage and had to 'flit' to Blackpool in the 1930s depression. This must have been a harsh lesson to learn and Beatrice was very careful with her money in later life.

Coming back to Halifax, they rented Stump Cross fish and chip shop and helped Marian to care for my mother as a baby during WWII, when Marian's husband George Norris Flather was away in the army. My mother remembers Beatrice as being kind and attentive and Herbert being extremely strict. Beatrice must have been about my age when my mother was born. The two of them were always close.

Widowed in her early 60s, she lived in a tiny 'one-up, one-down' near to my parents house afterwards. she was fiercely independent but suffered from arthritis, which stopped her from earning money by sewing, and osteoporosis, all of which conspired to cause her many bone fractures in later life.

I remember her being very popular and friendly with the other inhabitants in her street. I remember the feeling that, even though we only lived a few streets away, the children in her street knew her better than we did. They would stop by and offer to get shopping for her. She baked a lot and always had homemade biscuits to offer people. She still did some sewing and took in laundry to help make ends meet, even though her laundry system was archaic! (She would certainly have known what goffering was - in fact she reminded me of Mrs Tiggywinkle in lots of other ways besides!)

I remember her teaching me how to butter bread, with her hand over mine on the knife. Nobody else took the trouble to teach me how to do such things when I was so young.

I remember her letting me play with her things - especially the contents of her amazing button tin. And her tailor's dummy, and the little ironing board, that was just for doing sleeves.

I remember her falling down her cellar steps and breaking her leg. And falling off a ladder when she was cleaning her windows, possibly breaking it again. One icy winter's day, she went shopping for bread but fell and broke her arm. She went on to get the bread, but stopped in at the doctors on the way home.

I remember some of the last words she said, confused and dying in a hospital room: "Marian, we must get them rafters fixed afore winter," motioning up to the perfectly-plastered white ceiling. This said a lot about her life and the lives of many working class people of her age. But I know the feeling: I've had broken roofs too in my time and been greatly preoccupied with worrying about how to fix them.

I remember her babysitting for us every day, any time at the drop of a hat. She would often meet me from school instead of my mother and she didn't come to our house just to sit, but cleaned and washed and ironed while she was there. She thought nothing of doing this and needed no gratitude for it.

Above all else, I remember her being the only person in my childhood who was always (ever) pleased to see me, and who made me feel that I was good enough, just being myself.

That's why I took her name and why she'll always be alive in my heart.

Fun fun fun..

2007-07-24T19:09:00.000+01:00

From Tech

Now I just have to build that temple ;-)

You are The High Priestess

Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.

The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluxuation, particularily when it comes to your moods.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

My plan for today:

2007-07-12T09:52:00.000+01:00

To remember that tiredness, in my case, comes from eating/drinking the wrong things - too much coffee! - and not the amount of sleep I get. And maybe also the way I think sometimes.

To catch up with things that need doing in the house. Cleaning, mainly.

To blog a lot. Hey, that makes a change.

And do some pressing paperwork stuff - and run some errands.

That might be enough for one day.

Personal resolutions for July

2007-07-10T15:10:00.000+01:00

Read things properly! I get myself into all sorts of trouble by not doing that.

Try harder to find the golden mean between cynicism and gullibility. In my eagerness to avoid the latter, I do tend to err sometimes too far towards the former.

Water my flipping plants! Tomatoes/potatoes/onions/all the stuff I have in pots in our yard, cannot live by air alone!

Cook more. Buy less. Eat less.

Hmmm. Apart from the above, I'm obviously practically perfect in every way. *Rolls eyes.*

I should be adding loads more to this list, but have forgotten what the other things are. Maybe our perception of personal perfection can be directly attributed to the state of our memory?

Single and fine, thank you! ;-)

2007-07-04T17:38:00.000+01:00

Someone judged me today - prejudged me, I mean. Yes, it was prejudice! This person barely knows me, but had me on a little pedestal straight away, you know: long-standing home educator, devoted mother, happy person, fairly eloquent, seems calm. Oooh, I must be someone wonderful. Then I was asked about my marital status and Whooooosh! I felt the pedestal being whipped away from under my feet even as I spoke the reply. Dear me, you could see the thought process on her face: "So.. if you were married years ago and now aren't, then who...? and who....? and how...?" as she looked with mild panic at my two younger children. Then the warmth in her voice when she'd adressed me previously dropped to chill factor and she made her excuses and walked away!

It's quite amazing - this person still doesn't really know me from Adam and yet I'm now far, far less worth knowing, in her eyes, than I was before. I don't understand this marriage-status thing. What's that all about? I'm sorry, but I tried marriage for 10 years and it sucked. It just basically meant that I had another person to cook and clean for, who did very little in return except mess me about, keep housekeeping money from me, make decisions which concerned me without consulting me and yet expected to be consulted in every little decision I made, and demanded sex twice a day, regardless of how I felt or whether I was free from my mothering duties to provide it! Oh and who criticised me almost constantly, even though I never criticised him! Well, I once asked him to move his van away from the front of the house because it was blocking the daylight out of the house again - not that there was much daylight around in the house we used to live in - and apparently that was so horrendously awkward and hyper-critical of me that he's still recounting the 'shocking' incident at family parties even now, 10 years after we separated.

I mean, in all honesty, why would I want to do that again? As a single woman I can devote myself 100% to my children. I can be completely responsive to them and live a thoroughly relaxed life with them, without that empty pointless hopeful feeling I used to get, along the lines of: "Oh great, their other parent has come home - I can kick back and have some time to myself! Maybe even a bath? I could eat a meal with two hands instead of one!" Nope, it's all for me to manage and that's the way I like it, nowadays. My children are much better for it too. They know I'm here for them whenever they need me, not spending my precious time and energy on massaging someone's male ego instead.

So why is it deemed 'better' to be married? It's just not, in my experience. It's.. just.. not! There, Mrs Prejudice, put that in your pipe and smoke it ;-)

Yesterday someone gave me some pics they'd taken of me and some of my brood. I love these pics, because they show us as a complete family (minus Lyddie, sadly, who was sulking in her room at the time, and wouldn't join in the photo!)

Hehe, we're a scruffy bunch, aren't we? Can't think why she bothered with the pedestal in the first place! (I can't be the only one who hates being put on pedestals - they tend to be extremely flimsy things, I find.)

39 today and therefore entitled to ramble on a bit.

2007-06-30T08:25:00.000+01:00

It's my birthday today, and I'm happy about it, because I'm where I wanted to be at this age. Five children, house, land. I think I even wanted to be a single mother.

I'm not showing off - most of the children weren't planned, and it's not always a walk in the park. The house needs expensive work and the land is great, compared to nothing, but not as nice as something more useful, if you see what I mean. Like a south-facing, more level piece. With a stream.. and a little bridge... stocked with trout..

Yes, it's not that. But you have to be glad for what you have, and for what you have access to, which amounts to the same thing.

Flying kites, for example. We're on the top of a hill here: you'd think it'd be easy, but the thermals aren't right, according to my teens. And we uncovered our old (newish) picnic basket the other day in our manic clear-out and knocked the spider webs off it. It's the real deal, with proper crockery and cutlery and little napkins. I bought it in a closing down sale a few years ago - for about £5! But we've never used it.

So the plan for my birthday celebration is this: a very posh picnic, with home-made pies, pasties, pop, salad and cakes, and we're off to Castle Hill with big tartan blankets, footballs and all the kites.

But not today, because the ground is soaked and we're due more rain. We'll go and do it when the weather has cleared up and summer has properly returned. Today we'll just chill out at home. I might watch a DVD. I've got some smoked salmon marinating, some decent coffee to drink and a lot of reading to do. Oh and I'll get big children to look after little children and have a long bath.

I was telling my teens last night - who had asked how I felt about approaching 40 - in that (un)appealing morbid way I have, that one of my best friends died when we were 17, so now every year is a bonus to me and definitely something to celebrate. It's good to feel grateful. I think when someone close to you dies at a young age you often kind of feel like you're living for them too. Blimey, she loved life. Such a vibrant girl. She wouldn't be celebrating her 39th with a DVD, a book and a bath! We'd be talking helicopters, champagne and celebridees! Mind you, they'd have thought that about me when I was 17. Maybe Kimby would have changed beyond all recognition too.

As for the grey hair and wrinkles, bring it on! I'm going for a dramatic hag-type look. When I reach a certain age I might start wearing velvet cloaks, like my friend Morgy. Ah but no - they're a bit impractical for me: you can't do the gardening in them. Well she does, but I wouldn't like her laundry pile. Hmmm... must get in touch with her too. Though if she doesn't get in touch with me on my birthday, it's a poor do.... Did I remember her last birthday..? Maybe not..

*Wanders off, muttering....*