It's September...

and I can smell the change in the air. The wind has an edge to it, cutting into the end of August.

The new month when school is back. A new term. The kids and life is structured again. A semblance of control within the loosely organised chaos.

When I was a school kid, I looked forward to the new school year. Each new term. The new start. The wiping of the slate and the turning over of the leaves. I felt I had another chance to do it well. To do good. As an adult I miss the having of new beginnings. I have to forgive and forget myself. We all tend to ring in the changes at New Year. A celebration which always leaves me cold. Cold as the winter. Too bracing to embrace the new.

Autumn is a time when the trees wear a brightly coloured coat of an orange, brown, yellow and gold mosaic. A dream coat. They drop their technicolour leaves. Divesting of the year long journey. They stand naked and vulnerable in the wind and rain. A rebirth. Renewal. Reinvention. In the humdrum of routine. The monotony of the familiar. The everyday.

Welcome the opportunity in our life of adulthood, to do better with each and every new day.

(written a year ago....the song remains the same huh?)

Revisiting - Only Yesterday

(June 2009)

It was only yesterday you would run to me when you were upset or hurting. It was only yesterday you held me tight. Rib crackingly tight. For no other reason than that you felt like it. Only yesterday would you share every discovery. Every happiness. Every fear. Every dream. Good or Bad. Every new step. Each fall.

Was it only yesterday you kissed me goodnight for the last time. Telling me gently, but firmly. It wasn't necessary any longer. My heart missed a beat. It isn't? Where is that written? Show me. I wish to silently protest. I'm not ready. Not yet.

I think it was only yesterday when I listened furtively for your each sleeping breath. One to follow after another. So then I too, could breathe.

It was only yesterday you tied your shoes. You buttoned your shirt. You zipped up your coat. First times. By yourself. Beaming with pride. You. Me.

This week you have been on work experience. You've been surprised by the joy and the satisfaction you felt. A class of six year olds called you Mister Watson. Three little giggling girls told you through trembling hands they loved you. A boy asked you if you could be best friends. Life learning. Experience. It has begun.

It was only yesterday I stood paralysed and cold. My eyes following your every step. Every fall. Trip and tumble. On a frozen concrete playground. I stood. On duty. Seemingly, ignoring each other. Balancing the thin line. Secretly comforted by each others presence.

Only yesterday you played in your band for a parents 50th Birthday. I watched you try to hide the emotional squirms and flinches. You asked if we were going. I knew we could not. It is your time. (shhh! I can catch you on youtube)

Your wide dimpled smile sits comfortably in your malleable face. Daily it appears to morph towards manhood. Giraffe like you saunter. Finding you way. Over six foot you tower over me. Man child.

Next week you go away with your history class to WW1 Battlefields in Europe. To the Somme & Ypres. Then a few days later you leave again. For the Duke of Edinburgh award trials. Overnight. Four lads. On the Lakeland fells. Alone. Now I squirm and flinch. My skin itches. I waken suddenly from my thin sleep. My mind is pacing. Across the ceiling. Back and forth. Your bed is empty. Your room is still. My hands sweat and I blink back tears. I try to swallow the fear. My throat tightens. My breath catches deep in my heart.

How do I let go? This is the hard part. The part I have kept boxed away. How not to see them. Nor touch them. Not to reach out every day. I will dehydrate. I will shrink. Visibly smaller. I am less. Lost. To thirst for the smell of them. To breathe them in. Let them go. I know. I must begin. Or else they will tug and pull and rip themselves from me. I am told they will return.

I will sit on the periphery of their lives. On the edge of my own. Watching. Wanting. Waiting. For morsels and cake crumbs. I will drink deep from the well of memory.

She is seventeen. He is almost fifteen. How fast it goes.

And it was only yesterday...

(..and how it has changed in the 12 months since l wrote this post,
 if only l had known, would anything be different now?)

The Halls of my Yesterday

When reading someone's latest post, I often feel that they must have been inside my head and written out my thoughts for all to see! But in a more succinct and beautiful way than l ever could. Some time ago the wonderful Erin posted about our yesterdays and talked about living with one foot in the past and one in the present.  

I let her post wash over me. I questioned myself and then l sighed. I inhaled her words.  

I felt that she had walked the halls of my yesterday. 

I do seem to live with one foot in the past. I tend to hanker after a simpler life, a world where I felt safe and sound, without a whiff of responsibility. Although I surround myself with furniture and bits and pieces I feel I can't part with. This is I think the way I fill the hole inside, it may replace the missed feeling of security that we children have when young and are rotected by our families, by our environment and by our parents. Some of us have been lucky enough in this world to live with the two parents who gave us life and in the bosom of a 'happy' family life.  

Those early summer days and evenings, were often spent wandering aimlessly but happily along the small lanes,the soft downs, the beaches and the coastline of my childhood. Talking with strangers without fear, nothing innate or infected to make us wary. 

Just passing the time alone, with siblings or friends or with friendly elders. Being offered a sweet and accepting without hesitation or inhibition. Then come the Saturday nights at the disco's, the hoping, the yearning, the excitement of not knowing. The anticipation of the unknown, the temptations laid bare, innocently ignored. 

I know this to be true, whenever I see my folks on one of my almost quarterly visits down to the 'homeland', I can relax totally. I can breathe without any sense of worry over the kids,-as their father is with them and if he isn't he wouldn't be fretting the way l do!- I can go to sleep without a care, for a few days. My Dad has checked and locked up the house, I needn't double check it. I don't have buy or prepare any food, no need to do a wash, to see to the dog and all that whilst being as a wife, mother and employed house-frau dictates. I can just be a daughter and for that all I need do is relax and breathe deeply of the soothing waters of mother and father.  

I believe this is a healthy activity, the appreciation of things past, their value and their position in a time and place. I do not feel it is maudlin, nor melancholic, although not to confuse, it can have a tendency to be emotional. When I hear a certain song or tune unexpectedly, I do sometimes find that my throat tightens up and I feel it raw with emotion, the tune riding my mind and breaking free, a hidden memory of a day when I was free from wisdom, knowledge and experience. The lost innocence of our childhood cannot be regained. It's intense magic stored away until our own children are drinking of our well, we relive it through them and it tastes just as fresh and oh the clarity! It's value is then appreciated fully now we are long grown, we then fill up with a longing for the simpler times.  

Regardless of our age, our decade or our journeys, I'm sure many of us feel that getting older isn't all it's cracked up to be!

p.s. I am enjoying this third period of my life, it is just that being a grown up is really tough and hard work, you know!?

Running on empty...

I am empty

At first I couldn't sleep, then l couldn't read, now I fear I cannot write. I have ideas for new posts everyday, but I cannot seem to string the words together in an appropriate fashion. I ask myself if this is another phase on my road of 'recovery'. I don't know and to be honest I am just going along with this and I have given up looking for answers. It is exhausting, all these questions, most of which I know I will never find their truths.

So, as I have been reading over previous posts. Some are quite interesting and telling and perhaps prophetic in their honesty. In their innocence in terms of how, when and why I wrote them, back then. Rather than leave this blog alone as a wasteland , I have scheduled a few posts which now speak to me on a new level, with a deeper relevance and resonance than when they were first written.

I hope those of you who are more recent visitors here enjoy them, and for those of you who dread  'repeats', l ask that you bear with me...

...as the man says, back soon with better stuff!


Healing Powers
originally posted 11 November 2009



I have been pondering over our personal healing powers.

The inner strength, we all have. We find it deep, deep within us. Often at times, when we would least expect to dredge up another vat of determination and energy.

Other times it is within the things we cling to when we are in need of succour and comfort. The things we collect or unwittingly keep beside us. Around us. We feel secure within the blanket of our own surroundings. A haven.

This shoring up of personal warmth, that keeps the fear at bay and our sanity in a suitcase by the door.

The shopping bags of cheap tricks, to sustain and fill us when relationships sour or times are hard.

Our personal favourites. Our hot water bottles of love.

Casseroles, chunky soup and bread, chocolate.

Smells pungent of memories.

A tray set with a pot of tea and antique cups and plates. To warm.

Crackling fires, a seat by the hearth,

gazing into the flames of a sunset, that lasts as long as it is fed.

To me, healing powers are in meals, prepared with love by family

food which is a constant friend. Or foe.

The clutter that chokes our homes, spills from the drawers, vomits from the shelves

but which serves to warm our hearts, effuse our minds, confuse our hearts,

we choose the wallpaper of books and other detritus, which fixes us

to the floorboards of our daily lives.

The books read and kept, are friends that we cannot bear to part with,

they are like the memories that hold stories of love, strength, misery, fear and hope...

and so we hold onto the physical, as well as the emotional warmth.

Happy Birthday Moannie!!

It's Moannies Birthday today!

Hope you have a relaxing day and Dad/JP spoils you to bits!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA!!

Saz & Moannie c1961

eat, pray, love

I have had the book, 'eat pray love' by Elizabeth Gilbert by my bedside for the past year or so, after watching an interview with the author on tv. I was immediately drawn to her story; a combination of heartbreak, separation, divorce, her spiritual search and her love of food!   

I began to read it and immediately found it was resounding within me with such accuracy, especially the eating section!

Then came the run up to Christmas, all the prep, the festivities and my work and l put the book aside as l knew l didn't want to devour it block buster or bonkbuster style. I wanted to breathe it in slowly, with concentration and thought.

Then, soon after the new year I came to a place where I found I could no longer read, at all. I am still in that place. Although the road has taken many twists and turns, six months later I still cannot read even a magazine article I just lurk and read the images and titles.

As well as the book on my bedside, which haunts me every time l glance at it. I have also been given a copy of it by a friend who told me, 
'Read it. I thought of you as I read it and it will speak volumes to you'  and even my Counsellor pulled it out of her Mary Poppins style bag held it out to me and said,
'This book will help you. I recommend it to you.'
Serendipity. Fate. Destiny. God. Happenstance. Intervention. I am so meant to read this book.

But I still cannot read.

And l continue to visit book and charity shops and libraries and I return home with armfuls. Only to trudge back wearily to the library returning them again and again. As a voracious reader this in itself is torture. Last week, in the library browsing for something to open this closed door to the wonders of my book land, l noticed a new stand of MP3 audio books. A small unit that is preloaded with an audio book, no cd's to juggle or upload. And there it was 'EAT PRAY LOVE'. 

I excitedly ran home with it. I lay on my bed in my now solitary bedroom, suffused with the beloved possessions, art work, prints and books which speak to me and feed me; l closed the curtains and I added my earphones and turned it on. I picked up my copy of the book from my bedside table and started from the beginning.

The words sprang to life, I began to take the words from the page and they stayed within me, instead of flowing right back out again as they have been for the last ten months or so. Like the author's journey of recovery and renewal, her words and her ability to communicate with humour and truth drew me right in again. This time it isn't just her love of food and it sensuality that speaks to me, it is the entire book; which is a fountain of light, wisdom and hope.

As l lay in my bed, snuggled down with earphones in and book propped up on my thighs, I notice the pencils marks and comments in the margin from the last time I started to read it. I wonder! Did l stop reading before the split with Larry, because something within me was precipitating these months to come? I know so. Since my life changed in February l have ridden on a storm of shock, adrenaline, coping and then BANG l hit the 'bathroom floor'. My doctor signed me off work and for the first few weeks l fought it, but now l have relaxed into it, I find I have made such progress I am actually quite pleased with myself.

I have now turned a corner; crossed a line; perhaps even begun on my new path. Understanding, breaks the shell of confusion and conflict into the core of resolution and forgiveness. Thus opening up a path towards tomorrow.

Many issues have not changed since February mostly in terms of the practical and logistical. But I have come to realise that acceptance on some levels is achievable. On other levels it is so innately woven into the core of  my being that I am sure they will remain with me always, although hopefully on some lesser level of sorrow.

I feel like this book is a friend who is helping me understand more of what is happening to me! Although at 52  shouldn't I know this already? Heck, why should I!

I have finished the 'book' and I am slowly moving through my own journey.

I am not lonely. 

I am most certainly not alone.

I have just heard today that this will shortly be released as a film, hope it isn't too Hollywood!

Introducing Rumer

Last week as we were driving home from the IOW, this tune was playing on Radio 2 on Ken Bruce, I was mesmerised by the melodious, crystal clear voice which immediately reminded me of Karen Carpenter...

I have just found it on Youtube and the song is her/their debut single to be released 28 August

I hope you like it....I luv it!

under the skin

On Sunday evening I met up with Fhina and her husband, we had tickets for Peter Green and friends

and  l was living in deep denial and certain that Carlos Santana would turn up as a said 'friend'.

And I was more excited the whole week before because Fhina and I would get to chat and catch up with each other. Not sure how this would happen as concerts are historically LOUD and you will know how hard it is to hold any conversation! However Peter Green cancelled due to illness and Fhina emailed to say they would still come over to visit! Yeah! We chatted in the bar, drank lots of wine, ate tapas and l delighted in her company.

Fhina and I met through our blogs and then our first meeting was in Newcastle in May 2009 when Fhina and I arranged a rendezvous for coffee. Neither of us wanted to end our meeting, so she then accompanied me to the French consulate, to support me in my nervousness. As l had an appointment with The Consul General  for my application and as it turned out, an interview for my french passeport. She acted as chief navigator en route, with husband on the phone as our GPS.

We seemed to have clicked and are most certainly...

                                                                 'seours sous la peau'

She makes me laugh and laugh

she makes me cry

she gets me and l believe l get her

she has empathy and compassion

by the bucket load

she says it how she sees it

with tact and kindness

she has the words

of a true friend  sister