Days of Whines and Rosé

Whines

  • Less a whine, more a howl. Stolen girls, stolen lives, stolen education. Bring Back our Girls. No other words.
  • I’m disappointed, ashamed, by my inability to cast a vote. A century has not yet passed since people like me got the right to vote.  Elsewhere in the world, girls can’t even go to school. People are fighting for their right to vote and for free and fair elections, but here democracy seems to have dwindled to taking your pick from posh boys in all their bland similarity; fine heads of hair and strangely wrinkle-free foreheads.  They spin us spineless lines. Taunting one another with rhetoric worthy of the playground, they offer us nothing of substance. I still want Jed Bartlett to rule the world.
  • I know it’s natural for cats to kill, but it is heartbreaking when they take down a butterfly. 

Rosé

  • May’s amazing.  Yesterday, everything was promise, and now it’s here -buzzing, vibrating, green, overwhelming life
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  • Drinking Rosé with old friends, met when our first children started primary school. Joined together at that moment of severance. Now, we are mellower, wiser. We’ve left the playground.
  • Despite a disappointing showing in recent competitions, I am writing lots (so piss off internal critic).  This, courtesy of another series of inspirational Writing Events Bath Workshops. Meeting some interesting folk too, including the curator of Still Points Moving World which is part of the Bath Fringe Festival.

Diversions

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Everywhere I try to go at the moment, I meet a sign.  The road is closed.  There is a diversion.  Sometimes I disregard the signs and go along anyway, only to find myself executing a fifty eight point turn between someone’s garden wall and a series of strategically placed plastic barriers. Is this a metaphor?

There is something important I’m supposed to be doing.  I was all set to get on with it, key objectives in place, planning to commence after the Easter holidays.  On the first day of term, driving back from delivering one offspring to school, six hours ahead of me, vibrant with potential achievement, my mobile rang.  It was the school of offspring 2, to say she was ill – half an hour into the school term.

I collected her and took her home via the doctor’s surgery. With her pain and my anxiety levels escalating, I spoke to the doctor again over the phone, returned with her to the surgery, and then onto hospital….suspected appendicitis.

Thankfully it wasn’t, but if it had been, I would almost have been grateful.  Twenty four hours on a children’s ward makes you appreciate what you’ve got, I can tell you.

Meanwhile, the thing I had to get on with, something writing-wise I’ve been building up to for a number of years, didn’t get done.  There are times when these things are out of your hands.

Still, once everything was resolved, everyone healthy, did I get on with it? Nope. Doubt danced in, hand in hand with the internal critic, diverting me from the righteous path. Watching me flounder and generally give in to the vagaries of life, the IT Director set me a deadline for the important thing.  That’s what I need, a deadline setter.  It works.  I have made significant progress with three days still to go, and that is saying a lot when you see who has moved in:

photo barney

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