The Long and Winding Road, with pink and red emotional highlights...

Well, the official invitation to the Palace Garden Party arrived this morning.   This means my ol' mucker and me have passed the official checks and scrutiny!

We shall await the Invitation Proper from the Palace "in 6 - 4 weeks time", according to the letter...

Honestly, the Civil Service Departments have gone down the pan since I left!   Sheesh!

What else has happened.   Ummm...   I seem to be procrastinating about how much work I have to do on my course over the next three weeks...   I've conducted or officiated at a number of weddings, and observed a wonderfully sweet Civil Partnership...   My kitchen and utility room are more or less finished, but not the flooring, blinds or decor just yet...   We've had GJ's successful and intimate 50th Birthday celebration.  

...And, Grizzler has turned 20 - Yikes!   Where did that time go?!

I haven't heard back from Alnwick Garden yet, which may indicate that my enjoyable assessment day there has not been a fruitful one, work-wise...   Tant pis.

In other news, I met up with a wonderful dear friend, Elle, for morning coffee last Sunday.   I was trying to persuade her to turn some of the fabulous stories she has told us for years into a blog.   She is the funniest woman I think I know, and beautiful to boot.   I love her to bits, ever since we first met when I moved back to this northern region from the Highlands of Scotland in the year Grizz was born.   That means we've known each other 20 years.   Amazing.   She hasn't changed a bit.

Through and outside of therapy, I've been reflecting on how our lives take the paths that they do.   For without being pushed from my nested job within government by that cuckoo, David Cameron, and his poodle Master Clegg, I would not have my lovely little job in counselling, albeit as yet unpaid.

Without the trauma therein, I would not be witnessing and celebrating weddings which are such joyous occasions for me, albeit stressful;   Without having to move with my husband's job back from the Highlands, I would never have met Elle, or possibly even Sara of THIS blog and this wonderful PHOTO...  

My life would not be as rich without them and other valuable friends in it, such as Karina, who makes me laugh on FaceSlapBook and whose bags are to die for...   Recently, she's been channelling her inner patriot to make some beautiful things in celebration of the Queen's Golden Jubilee Year, using vintage scarves and ephemera.   Stunning.

And, not to forget, other bloggy friends here and abroad, that goes without saying...

Elle took her own decision to depart from government a year before I did.   She then fell into a number of little jobs to keep her going, but has been sorely let down by a less-than-honest employer.   She now finds herself in the place I was in several months ago.   Trying to find what it is she wants to do at this stage in her life...   I feel for her;   It's an odd, and somewhat scary position for anyone to find themselves in...

Finding who you are.

Do we ever stop, do you think?   Looking out for that little girl, who wants to hold on to those balloons, but doesn't want to take her feet off the ground?

p.s. I don't deliberately intend to miss things out of my blog which have international reverberations, like developments in world news or the tragic death of WH, with whom I share my birth year.   I was personally saddened by her loss, although I did not know her, nor was I a particular fan of her music but I know she did touch hearts with her voice.  

Perhaps that's all that any of us need, to love and be loved and to touch hearts?

And hold on to those balloons!

Stuck...

It's that time of the year, although I've never found myself in this place before...

I am well and truly stuck - For blog material, for words to describe where I'm at - I'm at what we call in Therapy an impasse.

I am enjoying reading your words out there in Blogworld.

I am thinking of Christmas and what I have left to do.

I am contemplating having some time off from therapy and work over the holidays to re-charge my batteries.

My lovely son, Grizz, has broken up with his long-term girlfriend and I worry about them - I do, but I won't interfere...   Will she want the rattykins back, when we are so ensconced with them now?

I have no weddings until mid-January.

I need to read some books to catch up on therapy work.

I am contemplating taking the counselling course forward for another year, so I can call myself a Psychotherapist.   I have to make that decision in January.

Today is my birthday and I spent it in College, although I met my lovely cousin, David, whom I call "Coz", straight from Shakespeare, for lunch.   He was sweet.   He always is.   Sweet and wonderful and clever and slippery.    He likes to be slippery!   I think it's a quality I need to cultivate.

Perhaps if I were more slippery I'd not get as stuck as Pooh in the wooky-hole, or honey-tree, whatever it is he gets stuck in?!

A bientot, mes bloggy reves...

Soon, with better stuff, greater inspiration and less stuckiness!

The seasons shift...

Thank you those of you who have made comments about the wee Ratties.   Yes, they are adorable, yes, they 'oui oui' everywhere but everything they touch gets washed very regularly.   Yes, they have stolen my heart.   Well, what was left of it anyway!   And, Chairman Bill, when I Googled 'Dumbo Rats', they look suspiciously like my wee beasties, so I think that's what we're caretaking for the lovely Lisa B.

And, for what it's worth, Chairman, my views on rats as pets are such:   When thinking of A Rat (Singular) for your son as a pet I would recommend Two Rats (Plural - Male - Slower and easier to catch than the Female of the Species - so I am reliably informed.   They do seem to like the company of other rats to cuddle up to, play with, scrap with, and so on...  Already this morning, they've been doing synchronized skritching!

In other news, I think the Ratties are brain-washing me.   Or something has shifted in me. 

Perhaps it's the seasons, who knows?

I have started to clear my house.   Yes, after many years months of being a bit of a slattern Bohemian, I am starting to fill skips boxes with shit treasures and I'm also just chucking other rubbish out...

What, you may ask, has happened to me?   What has made such a difference?   What's caused this shift in fact? 

This week it's half-term in England and, rather than having to be some place doing some thing, I have been mainly lying on the sofa at home.

Therefore, I've had a bit more energy; I've also had more time than usual for ME and I've finally felt like tackling a number of the areas around the house that have been neglected while I recovered from a number of things:   From my back injury, and the surgery aftermath that first brought me to blogging, as well as a fug of grief that descended upon me following the death of my beloved Dad four and a half years ago.  

So, I am taking things in hand...   I won't say that I've won the battle yet.   No. 

There's still much to be done.

I could open a bookshop.   I have managed to donate around a dozen bags and boxes of clothes and other stuff to charity, which I am permitting myself to feel quite glowy and virtuous about.   The cheery chappies rolled up in their van this morning and took it all away.   Painless!

...You may know that charities are currently suffering a severe lack of interest in their business and a dearth of donated goods, reason being that we're probably in the worst depression since The Depression. 

This time, the British Heart Foundation has benefited.   It  is a charity I care to support, given that both of my parents suffered heart disease. 

I do support other charities, including the vitally important Great North Air Ambulance service that covers our rural area, but I do try to share the bounty as far as possible, between home and abroad...   My husband sponsors a doctor in Africa through VSO.

What has helped me most perhaps, in deciding to make way in my home, is the therapy - Through it, I am beginning to gain some insight into my rather 'stuck' behaviour(s).   Also I've acknowledged (if only to myself) that I was waiting for someone to 'rescue' me from it all.

This is unlikely ever to happen, let's be honest.   I have to rely upon me.

I've also begun to recognise how much all this clutter and stuff is holding me back from being wholly comfortable with my surroundings.   The ensuing feeling of shame is not a good one to hold to me.

I think I've also held on to stuff as a barrier to/defence against having guests over.   ...My out-laws mainly.   I'm not ashamed of that.   They're not easy people...   p.s. it worked!

What has also spurred me on is watching episodes of 'Hoarders' on TV, and realising how easy it is to tip over into those kinds of horrific states...   And also noticing just how 'stuck' these people are - With grief, with loss, with bitterness, with sadness, with loneliness, with anger...   Or just plain stuck.   Recently, it's been like holding a vaseline-smeared mirror up to my face, seeing a gauzy reflection there.

I've also been reading this book by former Monsoon singer, Sheila Chandra, on my Kindle.   It's full of common sense, and a 'been there, done that' mentality, rather than preachy words.   It has helped although I haven't worked through the programme fully to date. 

I'm just scratching the surface at the mo'. 

One of my next blog-posts will be a Bucket List of stuff that remains to be done, or accomplished, or realised by me.   (p.s. The Kindle has made me think about letting go of some much-loved 'physical' books too).

I've also been reading some blogs about Minimalism.   Not that I'd ever subscribe to being a minimalist, I must admit.   I'm not that radical:   Reading of how people have given animals away as if they were unwanted possessions saddens me, I have to say... 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on aspects of how to live life in a lighter way? 

Lawdamussy, how I've rambled on today...

Anyhoo, back to the clutter-busting.   I feel it's time.    I think I owe it to myself...   Don't you?!

This video shows Sheila Chandra from her Monsoon days with Ever So Lonely (1982):

Welcome To My World...

Welcome to my two new followers, and those of you who have chosen to come and read my words and share parts of my journey with me.

I sense that in Blogland things have gone a little quiet recently.    I noticed some time ago that some of my favourite bloggers, who became firm friends, left the Blogosphere altogether and we communicate now on FaceSlapBook instead.

What is to become of us in the outer reaches of Blogworld?   Will we wither on the vine or, cut back against the coming of winter, will we all bloom once more in spring?

I know not.   I am no sage or oracle.

More's the pity!

I tend to use my blog as therapy these days.   Perhaps I have always done so.   Without blogging would I have ever selected therapy as my next career step?   Blogging for most of us seems to be an outlet for venting our spleen, for exploring our sense of humour, for sharing things of beauty in our lives - whether pictures of our children, grandkids, pets, our passion for knitting, our love of all things vintage, our hints and money-saving tips, or just our divine common sense.  

Blogging has its place in our universe.   Whether we're hoping for a book-deal (unlikely these days!), ou non...

Without reading your blogs I would not be as erudite (blows on fingernails and rubs them across shiny blouse!), as learned, or quite as humble.

Blogging is not without its irritations.   I balk at the relentlessly self-obsessed writers, who rant and rail against stuff that I can't be arsed to get arsed about, like plagiarism, for example.   ...I want to say 'Get a grip!   Don't take yourself so seriously.   Life's too short, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - I think someone big once said that.'


But, I also want to live and let live.   I think that's important.   I'm fed up of others wanting to dictate how we need to live our lives, who strive endlessly (and hopelessly, in my humble opinion) for perfectionism and want us all to fit into their restrictive, but perfect, pigeon-holes.  

One of my relatively peaceful neighbours in my rural terrace is being harassed by another neighbour who wants to complain about his log-pile and how untidy it is.   I'm just waiting for them to complain about our new house-mates, three fancy rats that we're temporarily care-taking for our sweet son's lovely girlfriend.


On reflection - without writing my blog I might not be as self-aware - or quite as sane.   (Believe it or not!)

Thank you for sticking around.   Thank you for your writing, those of you who write.   A big thank you to those who comment in Blogworld.   I may read widely, but I don't always have time to comment - My hubby, GJ, does complain about my capacity to endlessly tippy-tappy against the key-board.

Nuff said for one day.

More soon.   Now with added rats!

 

Dear Blog...

Dear Blog,

As much as I love you dearly, please recall that I am entitled by European law to some time off from time to time...de temps en temps as they say en France.

It is to this end that, horreur de horreurs, I shall not be scheduling any postings during my petit absence.

For I am also giving my lovely readers and fiends here a little time off too.

Because they're worth it!

They've done loads lately to bolster me when I was feeling bleu, (which encompasses a lot of the year, really...)

Their recent kindnesses to me after I wrote while I wept a well of tears about deeds I have procrastinated over and the loves that leave their mark in grieving, I shall not forget...

You lift me up. I hope you know it.

Thankyou, kindly. I am most grateful to you.

Je vous aime...

And isn't love everything?

Yeah, I'm mushy!

A bientot, mes amis... See you soon. Take care.

Yours, de tout mon coeur,

Fhina xxx

Ode to Joy...

So proud to have my 350th Follower -Welcome fiends!


I have been a bit quiet this week.   Some deep therapy was done in class and I have been sitting mulling on it.   I was helped through my learning thoughts by a wonderful lady who lives in the close orthodox Jewish community here in the north.   She is to become a firm friend.   She exudes warmth and care.

I pick my friends carefully these days, having had my fingers burned and my trust not returned in the past.

More news - I've been staggered that more people actually want to come and see me at the surgery where I'm a trainee counsellor...   Wow!   I hope I can do some good work with anyone who makes the choice to step over my threshold...   Although clients can never become friends, I care about everyone I have the privilege to see and their stories form part of the richly coloured patchwork quilt that I'm sowing to keep me warm over the long winter nights to come.

This weekend, I'm also privileged to be attending three weddings - Yes, three!   This is the start of my training to become a casual celebrant of weddings, civil partnerships and general facilitator of baby-naming ceremonies...   What joy!

Finding joy in the small things, like the number of daisies there are to be found craning their heads along the roadside after rain and sunshine, is the order of my day.

Things are looking up, mes mecs.  

I hope with all my heart they are for you too <3

Discombobulated...

They say a week is a long time in politics...

It feels like I've been living through some long weeks of late.

I know I'm not the only one, as that's what others have been saying all around me since the start of the year.

How about you?

I said on Friday that I was knackered - In other words, cream-crackered, tired out, plum tuckered, shattered, drained, emotionally exhausted.

...I think it's because I'm finding the process of leaving one job this month, while trying since October to make myself indispensable in another post; At the same time, I'm attempting to write bids for the funding of said post, while also aiming to keep my new and very dear colleagues afloat; All this whilst undergoing training as a therapeutic counsellor, having to find a voluntary placement in a GP Surgery as a trainee counsellor, whilst simultaneously completing all the due assignments of said coursework correctly.

All of this is doing my head clean in.

...This, and starting Group Therapy, as a further requirement of the course, while undergoing supervision of my clinical practice with clients, obviously, and waiting to be matched to a suitable supervisor.

I didn't say I was complaining, did I?

And yet sometimes I get to feeling as if a wheel is coming off the wagon...

For me, it's probably down to having to open out the very core of myself to others, after sitting with it hidden safely away, as if inside the furled petals of a particularly recalcitrant flower.

The requirement to expose what has kept you going for so long, that which you have coped with, suppressed, stifled, quietened - Revealing to others the strategies and ruses that have kept me together for 47 years on this planet...

Rightly, or wrongly, it's difficult and discombobulating...

And being knackered is also about worrying whether I am going to be able to put all the pieces back together again, so I can be 'Adult' enough to offer therapy to other folk in need, when I do succeed in obtaining a blinkin' placement at a doctor's surgery!

Does anyone know of anywhere that might take a trainee counsellor - Nice smiles, only slightly used, dinted and sullied. One careful owner?!

L'avenir...

'The time comes near for me to embrace my fears...

To wander out into the world, shackles loosed'.

You might remember that I have been rattling on, ooh for almost a year now, about the Posh Boys and their plans to do me out of my livelihood by closing the network of national offices that I have served for ten years this year... I am looking back on a career overall that spans twenty-five years this September. My job will end before that milestone, however, in March.

Such thoughts of loss to come, filled my mind initially with real fear. What would become of us? What should I do? Would I lose my home? Who would have me? What should I do?

The months rambled on, as the Government's plans to do us out of our rightful redundancy packages sauntered gaily through Parliament. From one day to the next, we veered from paranoia to elation, gallows' laughter to outrage. We fought, we wept, we wrote letters to Lords and Masters, we tried to continue to give of our best - This was all that we had ever done...

Finally, last week, we were informed of our future and the plans to enable us to flee the nest, now soiled and sullied, fragile and no longer home...

Some of my colleagues have found other jobs in other departments, continuing to make ends meet as it were - Travelling far and wide, they are, but they are also choosing to go on in much the same world as before. For a time, I think, before the axe swings their way again too.

Others have chosen to retire earlier than the alotted age. Electing to take their pensions earlier than they might have done, they are throwing their fates into the winds waiting to see where the fragile bones will fall that foretell of the future. For them, this is time to spend with grand-children, somewhat earlier than expected - Brave hours to devote to themselves and their chosen pastimes - More reading, writing, travel - Even choosing a dog...

Many, like me, are opening other doors, leading perhaps to parallel universes.

We are exploring our dreams - We are the musician, the artist, the maker of cakes; The talented designer, the fitness trainer, the handful of minds with a novel or two wrapt within their mists; The marketing guru, the PR specialist, the consultant on climate change; The painter, the craftswoman, the florist, the new doctor's receptionist... I hope to be the therapist.

We few among many. We are creating our own futures. Or rather trying to.

I think we may be the brave ones. On the other hand, we may not.

Who can say what the future will bring?

Sometimes, all we have is hope.

I hope you have a beautiful day.

What's in your future, mes bloggy soothsayers?

Murder In Mind...

I feel a few words of explanation may be in order after my Six Word Week posting - Explication, as les Francais say...

I have a chequered history with my in-laws, or out-laws, as I prefer to think of them.

Father-in-law in his eighties, still giving us grief. Treated mother-in-law badly, started an affair with the mother of my husband's friend the month she died. She was then pregnant to her husband. She's still with him, her husband that is... He left his first family for an affair with my mother-in-law whom he never married... All this remained hush-hush in the family for around forty years. He never saw the children again. They were left saddened, we found out from an aunt years later... Silence. Pictures in their grand-mother's photo albums cut in half, that kind of thing! He has lived all his life in pursuance of the better deal, woman-wise. Chauvinist. Charmer. Intelligent. Greater-than-thou attitude. Politics-crazy. A pain in the proverbial.

Sister-in-law I met in College - Two husbands, three kids. Chronically depressed, occasional alcoholic. Doom-monger and stress-giver. It's all someone else's fault, never hers. Has never sought counselling. Probably addicted to anti-depressants. Never divorced from her second husband, now a legal citizen of this country after marriage to her. Pays no upkeep towards his little daughter - But takes three holidays a year to his and his fiancee's countries... Not holidays, to his mind. He works illegally, and fails to pay tax in this country. Drives a car without licence or insurance... Sister-in-law whines but never acts on any advice, especially from me. Is a right royal pain in the proverbial with everyone but men through whom she lives her life.

She has ruined all but my last three Christmases with her histrionic breakdowns and selfish demands. Sectioned once. Many crises, many drink-related. The week I lost my dad she drank herself stupid in public and almost lost custody of her daughter. Never allowed me to have a decent relationship with my niece or nephews even though I wanted to be a decent aunt to them.

Never says sorry, or apologises. For anything. Not especially self-aware.

Things have been quiet for a time. She is now in another relationship and, until it breaks down, will be out of our hair. Temporarily.

'Phone rang on Friday night - It's mid-winter January. I hate the phone ringing late. The 'phone ringing late is a portent of death and disaster to me, experience shows... She could have rung at any time, chooses not to. I answered the 'phone.

She always makes me feel awkward and so I stiffen my reserve. She eventually tells me that her father has ruined yet another car through his reckless and devil-may-care attitude to what he owns, and needs two thousand pounds to fix the engine. Wonders if we can help out? He doesn't know she's asking us.

I have no ready cash. I am no cash-cow. I am in debt to my late father's house and its upkeep. It's not yet let to tenants or on the market to be sold. I have a son in College (so has she, her eldest). I am about to be made redundant from work with no real or full-time employment option in sight. I am paying my way through part-time College and the therapy course... My own home needs repairs and maintenance - Badly. I have no kitchen ceiling, or kitchen to speak of, and wild-at-heart electrics!

I tell her so.

She feels no empathy with anyone but her own concerns, and her silences speak volumes, "I do not believe you. You are hiding the truth from me. How can you not comply. You are more well-off than I have ever been. You are a liar. This is our right! You owe us..."

I cannot yet forgive her yet, for she will never, ever let me be. I owe them nothing.

Advice please?

Fhina is in her Therapy Room... Rocking.

Knock gently, s'il te plait?