Making space and going slow — wisdom

Leaving margins of every kind in life is beneficial — some money in hand, some time in case things take longer than expected, some room for an extra guest to sit down and a child to spread a game out on the floor.

I love minimalism and simplicity for several reasons, and a big one is so I don't overtax my personal system. The less stuff I have to fall over, clean and curate, the less likely I am to get frustrated and lose my temper. The less there is in the diary, the less anxious I am about being late or when commitments overrun. The less cluttered my house is, the greater the possibility that I will, at some point, get round to cleaning something (although it most probably won't be today).

This has been a very wet winter, and a lot of people are facing issues of mould in their homes. Doubtless this is exacerbated by the misguided enthusiasm for UPVC replacement windows and insulating cavity walls and attics, but I'd better not get started on that. If you've made your home into a Tupperware box, well it will get condensation and the mould that goes with it, no?

Off our kitchen is a small pantry. The previous inhabitants of the house used to keep their fridge in it. Consequence? They couldn't get at it to monitor the reservoir at the foot of the fridge (at the back), so it grew a slime mould, overflowed, leaked consistently, and now the joists have rotted and need replacing. So we removed a cupboard in the over-fitted kitchen to create a space for our fridge. But because the kitchen is over-fitted, there's nowhere to put a bin (in fact two, for separating recycling from trash). So we put the two bins in the pantry. The over-fitted kitchen includes very high upper cupboards, for which we needed a little stepladder. There's nowhere to store it but the pantry. We take the compost scraps out to the garden compost heap every other day or so, which requires plastic clogs because the garden is wet because it's been raining all the time. My husband and I have different size feet. I don't mind wearing clogs that are too big, but he does, and my feet are bigger than his. So we have two pairs of clogs. There is nowhere to put them but the pantry. A family member returned a folding garden table I'd given her, as she was no longer using it. It's very useful, but only on an occasional basis. I couldn't think of anywhere to put it but the pantry. Did I mention, this pantry is very small?... As you can see, it was getting smaller by the day.

The window in that pantry doesn't open and has no trickle vent (a new one with a vent is on order), and the pantry is an enclosed pocket of cold, so it gets condensation. It has been steadily proliferating mould, which is a health hazard. Eventually, earlier this week, seeing the mould getting long and green and fluffy, no longer just making grey patterns on the walls, I concluded the time had come to tackle it.

Why hadn't I done it before? Well the walls and ceiling in it are plastered with that textured Artex that trashes cloths and sponges, and when I tried to do it with a brush it got bleach everywhere without getting rid of the mould. And also, the pantry had got so full I couldn't get into it any more.

So this time I rehomed the table (erected) into the hall, I relocated the bins, also into the hall. There was nothing in the hall and they are easy to move for cleaning in their new situation, so — good. Now I had only the stepladder and clogs to house in the pantry, and they're easy to move. Ha! Win!

I decided to sacrifice a washing-up sponge (bleach disintegrates them) and forget the brush. The pantry now being empty there was room to get into it, and the sponge was effective at wiping the lunar surface of the pantry free of mould, once sprayed liberally with bleach.

It made me realise that I need to leave myself more space, more margin, otherwise I'll never clean that pantry again. I need to not clog it up with stuff to store and bins.

My whole life is like that pantry.

I used to notice it when our kiddies were little — the difference between winter and summer. In summer, wearing shorts, T-shirts and sandals, we'd just hurtle out the door and go. In winter, I had to get them all lined up in the hall, make sure each one had a coat and a hat and a scarf and boots and her gloves, and the baby had her big muff thing to sit in (for the stroller). At that point, almost invariably, one of them would decide she needed to use the bathroom, and everyone had to wait under threat of death while I unravelled her weather-proofing then bundled her up again. I'm surprised we ever got anywhere at all.

A day or so ago I shared that video, which compared civic unrest in Minneapolis with those families whose child melts down uncontrollably in the supermarket and suggested that mothers would accommodate while fathers would 'bring discipline'. Hmm.

I think he was right about the need to restore order swiftly and firmly in Minneapolis, which is why I shared the video, but I had reservations about it. Because I think — refocusing away from the civic unrest and onto the domestic meltdown — you need to start before you get to the store if you're going to take kids there. A child needs both a job to do and something to look forward to. So each child needs a task — to look out for a particular brand for cereal, for example. And children like to choose not just watch, so each child needs the chance to pick a snack to add to the trolley. 

Only last week when I was in the supermarket, I saw a father with his little girl. He had her sitting crouched inside the trolley as many parents do. She wasn't fooling around, how could she be? She was cooped up in the trolley. But even so she managed to do or say something he thought was out of line, so he started reading the riot act at her — you know, "RIGHT, THAT'S IT! YOU'RE NOT HAVING ANYTHING NOW" etc etc, and snatched away a little toy she'd chosen, which he dumped on the bread shelf. She was distraught and started to cry bitterly. I noticed she was wearing school uniform, so she'd already had a whole day of self-restraint and tedious requirements before he started with his nonsense. As it happens, Mother re-appeared carrying a large toddler, swapped kiddos, gave the toy back to her daughter, and peace was restored. 

I didn't think it was the child's fault. I didn't think the mother made things worse. Although the little girl cried, I didn't think it was actually her meltdown.

But how to do better? Include the child more in making choices, or one parent stay home with the kiddies while the other takes a list to the store, or only buy a few things at one go, or send the dad into the café for a hot drink and a snack so he doesn't create havoc with his contagious meltdowns. Just get some more space and breathing room into the scenario. Whatever it takes — but prune out, don't add in.

Something I notice about chronic illness and growing old is that I need even more space. If I want to go to the store to buy some milk, gone are the days of just nipping upstairs to get my bag and off I go. Now I have to dismantle the TENS machine and put it on charge and pack away its sticky pads, and by the time I've done all that the cat will have woken up and decided if I've appeared it must be time to be fed. And my feet are fairly shot so I need to wear lace-up boots (in the winter, summer is OK for sandals) which are a struggle to put on. And this morning when I did that, the bootlace broke because it's old and frayed because I buy my shoes secondhand. Things seem less simple, less straightforward — I mean, it's even a bit of a mission getting out of the bath!

So in this season of my life, more than ever, I give myself space, and time; I create margins, look for ways to take off the pressure. Minimalism and simplicity were always good practice; they're my survival kit now.

The buddhist monks walking for peace

Did you hear about this? Probably you did, and are one of the two and a half million following it on Facebook, or the one and a half million following on Instagram. By now it's nearly concluded, but it has been a very beautiful peace testimony.

Twenty-four monks, and a dog called Aloka, connected to the Huong Dao Temple in Fort Worth in Texas have been walking 2,300 miles through the United States, passing through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the through the Carolinas and Virginia to finish up in Washington DC. They began in the last week of October, and they expect to arrive in Washington on February 10th.  

The purpose of the Walk for Peace is to promote the buddhist values of peace, compassion and non-violence.

What a lovely thing.

The video below is a song arising from the Walk for Peace and expressing its values.

Someone else with thoughts on Minneapolis

I think many of us find all the political stürm und drang going on a drain on the spirit, so having shared on this video I'll move on to thinking about other things for a while. I'm about to start sewing box pleats by hand into a black skirt with black thread in the English winter, so I'll probably be along to complain about that before long.

Please notice, these videos I've come across and am drawing to your attention don't all promote the same point of view. That's because I'm not picking sides in these issues, I'm just interested in listening to sane and thoughtful voices — I'm more interested in the approach than the objective. I think whatever your politics might be, whether you incline to the Left or the Right, whatever your thoughts on immigration, whether you are based in the US or the UK or elsewhere, it's still helpful for each of us to think through the approach we bring to civic and/or personal encounters, and try to get the balance right in establishing boundaries with a view to enhancing compassion. If we can hold in place an approach that is calm and promotes safety, that should offer the framework to air differences constructively and find a way forward that works for social justice and the common good.

Feel free to just pass this over if you are well weary of trying to tease apart the tangled threads of right and wrong in civic unrest. But I think what Nick Freitas has to say here is realistic and constructive.

I have one reservation about Nick's video — by this time I am getting tetchy about this constant denigration of women, this ever-recurring assertion that in any situation where things go wrong, the woman is the problem and she can either shut up and sit down or the man will leave. I am here to tell you that it can be one almighty big relief when he walks out of the house for the last time. 

In my own life, I have seen plenty of situations, up close and personal, where it is the man who has been the spoilt brat, and both the woman and the children have needed to be the adults who together repaired and rebuilt after he trashed everything. With that corrective, I do recommend what Nick Freitas has to say.

Resentment

 In writing the other day about women and men in society, and the attitudes I saw emerging toward women among young men on the political Right, it struck me that resentment is a serious social toxin.

There will, of course, always be inequality in the sense of difference. The determination to pursue gender fluidity to make all aspects of human opportunity available to all is likely to plough into the ground at some point, because reality will be too adverse for the project's sustainability. So I think we do have to get used to the idea that we can't all be, and have, everything.

I notice this more as I grow old, watching the magic life ingredient of potential gradually atrophy. There are things now that I can see I will never have, never achieve; I have run out of vigour and time, the chance has gone. 

On our way to church on Sunday we parked the car near a house I especially liked. I thought about the houses of other people who have written books — C.S.Lewis and Agatha Christie, for instance — and the houses they lived in. Rudyard Kipling! What a lovely home he had! Batemans, in Sussex. It's beautiful. I thought about what they achieved, and the acclaim that went with it, and the homes they were able to afford through their endeavours. 

But that house we walked by as we went to church will always be out of my reach. I know this as a matter of certainty, because however much money came my way, that's not how I'd spend it. There are other people who don't even have a home to call their own at all; I'd rather fix that than move up the property ladder.

So, though other writers have done better than I have, in ability and recognition and financial success, I don't resent their achievements as writers or the fruits of their labours. I've been doing my own thing, following my own path, shaping my own life which overflows with blessing and brings me great contentment. I've prioritised my own values in the choices I've made, and that makes me happy.

Sitting by the 'fire' in our living room the other night, I was reflecting with my husband Tony on how perfect everything has turned out. I never expected to live where we now do, it just came about through the unfolding of events, but as it happens I really love the street where we live, and in that street I like our house the best, and it has the exact layout I would choose for a couple of our age and requirements. On the sofa beside me, dozing on his heated blanket (!) was Clarence the cat. I had no plans to acquire a cat when we moved in here. But Clarence had no home and just turned up needing somewhere. Yet, as it happens, if I had deliberately gone looking for a cat, Clarence would have been exactly what I hoped for, what I was looking for. I even like his nose, which is long and aristocratic, not one of your snub-nosed pug-faced squashed-up ones. It seems to me that the great I Am, the Ancient of Days, has the exact measure of me, his lowly creation — my longings and even my preferences. Everything is just right.

But what about those young men, looking resentfully at women bosses, and denigrating the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and resenting the (admittedly spiralling out of control) preferential treatment now offered to people from overseas, arrived on our shores in rubber dinghies?

I think establishing and maintaining firm boundaries is essential for the health of either an individual or a country. I think position achieved by merit is a better way of proceeding than positive discrimination. I think there will always be inequalities and aspects of life that are hard/easy to access because of your gender or race or religion or colour or age or class or health or income or natural abilities or whatever it is. Some hurdles can be surmounted with effort, others are set too high. 

But, I tend towards the view (this is more of a suspicion than a certainty) that what undoes a person, what corrodes them, what ruins life, is not the adversity but the resentment. I'm not saying we should be indifferent towards serious persecution, like (for instance) the murder of Nigerian Christians by Boko Haram. I think society should always address violence to stop it. In the same way, I think exclusion of minorities is wrong; by which I mean things like not letting someone attend a school because of the colour of their skin. I think the legal framework of a society should defend equality, but I don't think we should try to micro-manage the delivery of equality. There will always be adversity because of cultural norms, though I wish this were not true. But in a reasonably democratic society where we're not talking about danger to life levels of adversity, I think resentment poisons more people than the adversity does.

I came across a little flurry of videos by Jordan Peterson a while ago, that he made with his wife Tammy about the principles they follow in their married life. They had quite a bit to say about resentment. It's something they have identified as being like (this is me saying this, not them) what the Bible calls 'a root of bitterness' — something that needs weeding out as a matter of priority. If they sense within themselves resentment arising, they talk it through and they examine it and they take responsibility for doing whatever it needed to remove it.

I think that's very wise. 

There's that bit in Max Ehrmann's Desiderata:

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

This is wisdom. 

Of course, as part of bringing in the Kingdom we should do our best to see that each and every one has the chance to pursue his or her dream, to flourish and excel. Of course we should take the trouble to see and address the adversities some people struggle with, be that a disability or a geographical disadvantage or something bad happening like a redundancy or a house fire or whatever. Our job is to help one another, to lift each other up, not just turn away and leave other people to cope on their own.

But in one's own life, it's worth staying vigilant about resentment. It has a tap root that makes it very difficult to eradicate once it's established. Resentment pretends to be about other people, to be their fault, caused by them; but it absolutely is not. Resentment in me is my own issue, my responsibility, and mine is the life it will ruin if I don't address it clearly and directly and get rid of it.

If you look up what the Bible and the church teach about resentment, the general consensus is that the antidote to resentment is forgiveness. I see why that's thought to be the case, but I don't think I agree. Forgiveness is needed when someone has hurt you, on purpose. I think resentment is more allied to envy, to wishing you had what someone else has, to thinking action is required because their advantage means your circumstances aren't as good as theirs, or your voice is ignored while theirs is heard.

I think the antidote to resentment might be gratitude, or contentment — something more in that ballpark than forgiveness. But I'm not sure. What do you think?

Recommending a YouTube channel

I'm just sharing this along because I think this YouTuber is wise, calm and very sane. He has made only a handful of videos, so it's very easy to catch up with his perspective and what he's proposing.

His personal background and history seem to me to particularly qualify him to comment on the present political landscape in America. I'm not 100% sure about this, because I find all the rage and chaos in my own country (England) bewildering enough — the poor blaming the rich, men blaming women (and vice versa), the Right blaming the Left (and vice versa), citizens blaming immigrants (and vice versa) — but I am very attracted to his approach of calm and intelligent thought, learning from past mistakes, supporting the human, and staying within the law.

Here's his video, watch his others if you have time, and let me know what you think.

Eating aeroplanes

 There's a person recorded in the Guinness Book of Records for eating an aeroplane — a Frenchman called Michel Lotito.

He is said to have consumed quite an array of hardware, starting small with hinges, metal chain, bolts and razors, and working up through medium-sized objects like a waterbed, some chandeliers and a coffin (with handles), to arguably more chewy items like shopping trolleys, a computer, a waterbed and a telly. But his pièce de résistance was without doubt the light aircraft he ate, a Cessna 150 which took him a while to consume.

The Guinness Book of Records people awarded him a brass plaque in recognition of his remarkable digestive achievements, and he ate that, too.

But I was thinking about him today because of mushrooms. 

Opinion on eating mushrooms is divided. Apparently, people who inform us about how to survive an apocalypse say there is no point eating mushrooms because you don't get much calorific value from them but they might kill you. They either are or aren't safe, but are never very nutritious. So it is said, and yet some varieties of mushroom (Lions Mane, Turkeytail etc) reputedly have marvellous healing benefits. They are in the fruit and veg section of the supermarket, but they aren't vegetables — they aren't animals either, but they're said to be more like animals than plants.

But why eating aeroplanes reminded me of eating mushrooms is because (are you the same?) when I eat mushrooms they pass through intact. I probably don't chew my food as assiduously as I should.

There's a very interesting man on YouTube called Lee Copus — his channel is called Kent Carnivore. Lee had ulcerative colitis, followed all the medical dietary advice for managing it, and ended up losing his colon altogether. He had been advised to eat lots of fibre and fruit and vegetables, but the anti-nutrients and plant toxins won the day, and Lee had to have a colectomy. As a result he has a bag attached to the stoma created on his abdomen to collect the digestive material that would normally pass on and out through the colon.

This means that Lee has an unusual opportunity to assess the extent to which food is digested and processed in the upper gut.

If he eats any fruit or vegetables, they pass out into the bag exactly as they went into his mouth — a bit chewed up of course, but clearly recognisable. But he found that all animal products he ate (meat, cheese, fish, eggs) never passed through as discrete objects; they were always digested and just came through as chyme. No lumps of meat or flakes of fish or pieces of egg, ever.

This is what put Lee on to first realising that fruit and vegetables were pretty much going through him like Michel Molito's aeroplane parts; he ate them, yes, and they went through him, but they came out as they went in, they were not in any real sense part of his food.

This is how I am with mushrooms. They are one of the things on the short but enjoyable list of food I can eat, so I have re-integrated them into what I have because I like the taste of them and they create variety; but they may well be entirely pointless beyond those motivating factors. Like eating aeroplanes.

Now, Lee believes he would still have his colon if he had latched on to this earlier and taken plants off the menu before he needed surgery. And surely most of us who attempted to eat a bicycle or a television would end up in the emergency room.

So I'm not sure now to what extent it's a spectrum — ranging from people who can only manage animal products, through those who can manage a few fruits and veg but not mushrooms, to those who can even eat the supermarket trolley itself — or if it's more that we should all really only eat animal products (what Dr Ken Berry describes as the proper human diet), just adding in broccoli and shiitake and chandeliers as an idiosyncratic quirk to satisfy a longing for variety.

Women and men

 My outlook on life was conditioned by my upbringing. I grew up in Hertfordshire, but my family were all Yorkshire people, and I think that made a difference; they were independent, forthright, and practical.

My father was an unusual man; looking back I see that he was neurodivergent, but had to create compensations for that in a world where it was not yet understood. He was very solitary and rarely stayed in one place for long, travelling all over the world. So he wasn't at home much. Our household much of the time was my mother, my sister and me. We had friends of course, and plenty were male, but it was a very female household. 

I wouldn't say we ever considered ourselves as feminist; that wasn't part of our vocabulary at all. But my mother came of a line of self-employed people; her mother had managed the accounts and poultry on their family farm, her grandmother had managed the accounts and bakery in her family shop, as well as having trained as a textile designer because her family owned a mill. So, like her family before her, my mother didn't want a job as such, she wanted a holistic life that was organically integrated. She wanted to care for her children and her home. So she made her money buying and selling property, and made the money stretch by growing all our fruit and vegetables and herbs, and raising sheep and chickens. 

In consequence, I grew up not really connected to the workplace mentality of bosses and underlings, and the associated hierarchies of men and women. Furthermore, there wasn't such a hierarchy in our home since my father was mostly not there, and we were all women.

I'm glad of this, because it was a quirk of circumstances that of itself left me free from the resentments and bitterness that can exist between the sexes. The women in our family were strong and felt empowered, but without the need to attain that by denigrating or dominating men.

The feminist movement of the 1970s didn't make a great deal of difference to me personally, because the women I knew growing up never felt the need of liberation. They were never under anyone's thumb, they generated their own income, they took pride in their own areas of responsibility, and they pretty much let the world go by and did their own thing. They worked alongside their menfolk in strong and integrated relationships, both the men and the women having a vital contribution to make.

As a young woman, I strongly espoused Leftist politics, and stayed with that inclination until about five years ago. My family of origin were all on the political Right (though my great-grandparents were not) but I went Left because I felt certain that whatever life threw at me I'd find a way to make it work, so my vote was always for those people who couldn't manage, who needed a safety net to catch them when they fell. 

In the last five years, though, I think society has changed. Cynically opportunistic immigration has sky-rocketed, creating cultural and economic problems. The conversation about homosexuality and gender identity has moved from being a reasonable desire for inclusion to being an aggressive ideology challenging the family as a basis for society. The politics of envy have gained a hold that I consider detrimental to freedom. I do not warm to the socialist vision of society — what people often call 'the nanny state', though God help anyone with that kind of nanny. 

I prefer the greater informality and possibility for self-determination we left behind after the 1970s. I don't like the grid of laws closing in around our lives.

In consequence, after voting socialist all my adult life, in the last five years I went off-piste, exploring what people on the Right in UK politics had to say.

There are aspects of it, and personalities within it, that I like very much. Among those I admire are Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Ayaan Hirshi Ali, Senator John Kennedy (of Louisiana) in America, Winston Marshall and Connor Tomlinson on Youtube in the UK, and Jacob Rees-Mogg in UK politics. And I liked Peter Whittle of the New Culture Forum, who died very recently.

There are others I admire less, and some I liked at first but found disappointing over time. I don't really like publicly running people down, so I don't want to say who I've gone off as time went on, but I'd like to say why.

Among speakers/pocasters/Youtubers on the political Right in the UK, there seems to be a disappointing level of misogyny. This outlook seems to thrive among young men on the political Right. Though they are deeply suspicious of immigrant cultures in general, their attitude to women would be right at home in Islam, I'd have thought. Let me give you a sample of comments from viewers of the Youtube channel of one such prominent influencer of the political Right, on a variety of his videos. These comments fairly represent the flavour of the group gathering around him because of his own outlook.

If a Woman can't park a car why would you let them fly a plane, it's madness.

They try steal the white mans lands, give his job to women who betray him and to outsiders who hate him, and start wars with those who hate him so he will die. . .and yet the white man endures.

Remember when your little sister would see you playing army and wants to join in but only wants to be a princess and cries and ruins everything and your mum sides with her and says you have to include her or else and so no one has any fun.

Imagine that but an entire society. That's us.

Women secretly like Toxic Masculinity, despite their complains.

You know At this point , i'm convinced that ninety percent of the problems we have in the west can be solved by telling women no

    Replies included:

    A woman's worst enemy is often herself.

    I need to rewatch the "How women; destroy civilizations" video

Women when given power they mess everything up every single time 

“Women In Charge - Chaos Assured”.

It does rather feel like western civilization went into decline after female suffrage. . . . 

women use to play hard to get, now they are hard to want 

Women have destroyed this nation never forget that.

Disappointed by the extent to which Methodism and the Church of England have been dominated in their thinking by the modern version of Leftist thinking (what is generally described as Woke), I have wondered if I would feel more at home in the Catholic or Orthodox wings of the church. But again, I was dismayed by the extreme nature of misogynist attitudes expressed when Dame Sarah Mulally was chosen as the Archbishop of Canterbury. I think these could be summed up by the person who commented on a podcast by a Catholic Youtuber, saying that 'there was a reason Satan targeted Eve rather than Adam'. It felt as if we were regressing to some of the more depressing attitudes prevalent among the Church Fathers — John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, and Jerome, among others — calling women weak and fickle, and the devil's gateway, and created purely for procreation and nothing else.

The thing is, though I find the traditions and liturgies of the Catholic wing of the church beautiful, I would only be pretending if I lined up behind such attitudes.

As to priesthood in the church, and whether it should be extended to women or limited to men, I personally think — neither. I lean more to the Quaker testimonies of peace, equality, simplicity and integrity; but though Quaker meeting is wonderful, it is less and less Christo-centric in the UK (and that matters to me), and I think worship without hymnody is missing something vital, and I don't feel drawn to the political activism of the Quakers.

I would like church to be a circle more than a pyramid. I would like leaders to emerge rather than be imposed. I believe in the priesthood of all believers and the high-priesthood of Jesus; I'm not sure about having a priestly caste within the church. But I could live in peace with it — I don't feel the need to agree with everything; to some extent all institutions are one-size-fits-none. I am still exploring and searching for a way to fit in, a community to belong.

I feel queasy about designation of gender rôles. I do believe that in general women tend towards different occupations from the men. I do think that in general men are more competitive and women more collaborative. I think there are generalisations one can make. But I would want to stop there. When I heard Dr Gavin Ashenden opine that men can be priests and women can't, in the same way women can have babies and men can't, I thought that was a false dichotomy — ideology and biology are not the same thing. 

Looking back in the history of England, at Hilda of Whitby, Julian of Norwich, Queen Elizabeth I, Susanna Wesley — or coming to modern times, such figures as Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II — regardless of whether one shares the outlook of the individual woman, how could one credibly say that when women are given power they mess up every single time, or that women are weak and fickle and created purely for procreation? The evidence simply isn't there, the ideology has no inherent logic.

So in all, I find myself truly at home neither with the Right nor the Left politically, neither with the Low nor the High when it comes to church.

I think there is room for anybody's opinion, but I can go along with neither the idea that a man can become a woman, nor with the idea that a woman is the gateway of hell. I think a woman, like a man, is just a person, and that each of us is individually and personally called by God, not according to our body but according to our soul.

The Inner Child

 Do you have problems with your inner child?

I surely do.

For background to what I'm about to tell you, I should mention that I have a modest income and that I recently joined a choir with a performance dress code of white top, black skirt or trousers, and black shoes. There's a performance in March and I have no black skirt. Each month I can allow myself small personal purchases, and with this in mind I have some black fabric on watch to make the sort of skirt I like.

The skirts I wear, all made by me, are 34 inches long, and are made from fabric 60 inches wide — double, so 120-inch width at the hem. I reduce the width at the top to about 40 inches in total by stitching down from the top about five inches to create box pleats all round, and I add a waistband channel on top for one-inch elastic. So I end up with a skirt that looks like this on the hanger. 

And this is what they look like worn.

So — if I want to take part in the choir concert it's imperative that I buy the black fabric I have in mind, or I won't get it sewn in time. I have enough money to do this and I will enjoy the project.

Now enter the inner child.

I occasionally amuse myself looking at ladies' clothes on eBay, which is where I buy my sweaters and shirts. Under my skirts, incidentally, instead of ladies' briefs and a petticoat, I wear cropped jersey pyjama bottoms, which work as what they call pettipants, ie do both jobs in one. I buy those on eBay too.

So when I was pottering around on eBay, looking at dresses just for entertainment, I saw this dress.

It's a good make, it's viscose crêpe (a nice fabric) and is the right size and length for me, and the colours are small pink flowers on a blue background which I like. But the thing is, as my inner adult and my inner parent both know full well, I will neither wear it nor keep it. To be wide enough for my hips and shoulders it'll be loose enough at the waist to look saggy and sad in wearing. It'll be long enough but because it's a one-piece garment and I am hypermobile — so I'm round-shouldered and very slouchy — it'll look like a sack and make me look like Auntie Vera from the Giles cartoons of my teenage years. I have a long back, so the top half will be too short and make me look as if my bust is trying to reach my knees (and I hate those cantilevered iron bras with a passion). I look way better in a skirt and top than in a dress. Plus the skirt on that dress is only about half as full as I like my skirts to be.

In addition to that, I already have two dresses, and two is plenty, given that I usually wear skirts and tops.

Still, that didn't stop my inner child from melting down as I went to delete it from my eBay watch list and basket — oh no, it was all I want it! I want it! Let me have it! Why can't I have it? Sigh.

And not only that, but having — finally — understood what's been ailing my body and implementing the dietary changes needed to solve it, without being so radical as to stick to only meat, I have allowed myself (in addition to some low-oxalate vegetables) at afternoon teatime to have a biscuit or a piece of cake. Just one, once a day, because I don't want diabetes or dementia on my list of fun occupations of the future.

So what happened at breakfast time? There's my inner child, screaming Cake! I want cake! I want cake now and at teatime!

You know what? I raised five children, and not one of them gave me as much trouble as my own inner child does. And the worst part is knowing that, as long as I live, she will always be with me. She will never, ever, grow up and leave home.

How about you? Is your inner child well-behaved or as wearisome as mine?

Attitude, Tone, Confrontation, Public Discourse

My husband Tony is a borough councillor. For friends not in England, a borough is a town or a district. Ours is Hastings borough, which includes St Leonards as well as Hastings since they're effectively the same place. Within the borough we have wards, smaller residential areas, and each councillor is elected by the residents of the ward s/he then goes on to serve.

Because of his involvement in local politics I take a little more notice of what's going on around me than I might otherwise. So today, after a (local) meeting last night to do with the (national) government requirements for housing targets in our borough, I read carefully through the comments on a social media post giving a report n the meeting.

 

People said things like this: 

What they mean is more backhands in councillors’ pockets… 

 and in reply

 nothing beats the brown envelopes the council love them.

We can have our say but................makes no difference as its already decided amongst themselves. Just makes it appear that they care !!!

You most probably have made your minds up what you are going to do, how about the people of Hastings getting a vote to who they would like on the council.

Spend the money to re-elect all council, planner members and elect actual local people who live in Hastings to make decisions, get rid of the current people who have been doing nothing for years. We need people with common sense, hearts and brains.

This is what you get when you for for the left…

Share our views and then totally disregard them and do whatever they want anyway!!!!

No one's listening, so it will go ahead no mater what we think !

So issue we keep having reoccurring - water mains failure for large portions of the current town. Service provider claiming that they can't provide internet to houses/flats due to no space in cabinets with no plan to expand. Road ways that are some of the worst in the country struggling to keep up with current levels of traffic. A town that routinely floods due to poor drainage. A hospital, GP surgeries and dental practices that struggles to meet the needs of the local area due to expansion already exceeding limitations of what they can manage.

To put it simply, don't invite the town to a BBQ when you've got one pack of sausages. Don't even expect you to fix the issues, just start making a damn plan.

And how many of these so called homes go to people on the waiting list in hastings and surrounding and how many go to people that live no where near or of boats every year uou build houses and every year thoes that have been on waiting list or homeless get over looked cus there given to people from London and such like seriously its about bloody time you lot woke up and thought of your OWN people in your OWN town befor others 

 

I'm sure you get the drift. In case you were wondering — no, there are no "backhands" or "brown envelopes". Our councillors neither give nor accept bribes, nor are even offered them. 

They work punishingly long hours. The meeting under discussion by those commenters had a preparation document running to 400 pages, which each councillor had to assimilate and understand, ready to answer questions; and that's just one meeting of many similar, in addition to ward responsibilities and heavy correspondence. 

Today my husband has gone to meet with a local group focusing on mental health for men, and will go on from there to meet with two women who have had huge success in organising and running a volunteer group to manage the rose gardens on the sea front, securing a partnership with the David Austin Roses that provides new plants and information on their care. When he gets home, there will be the day's crop of emails, typically about 150, to read and respond to before his evening meetings.

I know several of the councillors personally; they are serious-minded, courteous, committed, intelligent and astonishingly hard-working. They won their seats in fair elections, and have made admirable wins in improving things in our borough — most notably the finances, which were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and now are not.

I am no longer surprised but still always disappointed, to see instance after instance of ignorance, rudeness and contempt in the comments people leave about the council on social media; the unquestioned assumptions, the sourness, the cynicism. I wish we could do better.

Looking beyond our borough to national politics and civic life, I see more of the same thing. An example is the recent choice of Dame Sarah Mulally as Archbishop of Canterbury. Leaving aside entirely whether she would have been my choice, I have been taken aback by the spite and vitriol poured out by her fellow Church of England priests — many of whom have been quick to call the election and the woman herself satanic (because she is not a man).

Another example (take your pick, there are so many) is the instance of self-styled citizen journalists using their phones to film in sensitive areas (eg around asylum hotels) or in sensitive encounters (eg with the police or with TV licence inspectors). 

Concerned by reports of police aggression and incompetence, and intrusive inspectors overstepping proper boundaries, I have watched a number of such videos, only to conclude that the "citizen journalists" brought their problems on themselves — provocatively rude to the police, to the inspectors, to officials of every kind.

Perhaps I've just been unlucky in the videos I've seen and the comments I've read; it is always possible. But it seems unlikely.

I think we have reached a place where a reset of attitude and tone would be helpful. Yes, it is responsible to speak truth to power, to counter injustice, to take seriously our rôle as citizens; but with courtesy, with respect, and bringing the assumption that people in public office are doing their best. 

With this in mind, I came across this video (inset below this paragraph) about the troubles in Minnesota and the shooting of Alex Pretti. I haven't so far watched any of the video footage recording what happened (though I will), but that's not exactly what the video below is about. It's more about extrapolating relevant principles to apply in the way we conduct ourselves. I found it very sane and sensible, and I hope you will, too.

Winter

 It's cold in England, even here down on the south coast where we don't get the worst of the weather. 

Thanks be to God, we've had days of cheerful sunshine interspersed with the grey drear, but we're in the middle of a few days of rain.

I'll tell you how wet it is here! Right opposite us — and bear in mind we live in a housing estate — there's a house with a tall evergreen tree at the back of it. You get a glimpse of it from our front room. Can you see what I mean in the picture? A tall, sparse, shaggy-looking tree, the same sort of shape as a redwood. But not that big. I don't know what it is.

Anyway, yesterday when we met up for our morning prayers, Tony (my husband) was sitting with his back to the window, telling me about some relevant and important thing, when what I took to be the top of that shaggy tree moved around a bit and I thought  . . . wait . . . no . . .  that's a bird! Is it — it's not a heron?

And then I thought, oh no, I was mistaken it's a seagull . . . no, it's  . . . 

Then it stretched out its long neck, and yes it was a heron, sitting right on the tippy-top of our neighbour's shaggy tree. And in no time at all seagulls were bombing it and pigeons watching it in horror, thinking it shouldn't be there. A heron. Not standing knee deep in a pond somewhere but sitting on top of a tree in the middle of a housing estate, no doubt looking for signs of Noah's Ark.

Yes. It's that wet.

Clarence, who by now owns the entire house and spends his nights snuggled up close to me, purring loudly whenever he surfaces from sleep, takes a very dim view of any ideas I might have of him going out in the garden at all, to exercise the various need of his constitution.

But spring will come, and summer; it always does. "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." And so it will be this year too.

Meanwhile every day I'm writing, writing, writing, and I hope very soon my story will be finished for you to read. It's about three-quarters complete.

I had the sense to get my heated blanket off my bed before Clarence curled up to sleep on it, so I've been able to put it on to keep me warm while I write. That helps a lot. 

It's too wet to go out most of the time, so every now and then I walk round and round the house like the Brontës walking round their dining room table because the weather on Haworth moor was so bad you wouldn't even think of venturing forth.