The pig wot flies

New year, new thinking

2012-01-13T20:32:00.003Z

Hey there! I said I was going to blog more and then I went quiet. Oops.
Without further apology, here are my resolutions for 2012.

Read more
OK, so last year did contain a fair amount of reading (you can't do an English Literature MA without reading a few books) but most of it was study reading rather than fun reading. I seem to have got out of the habit of reading novels for fun. I want to get back into that.

Write more
I like writing. Sometimes I think I might be OK at it. But I rarely do much. Also, when I do, I tend to just write and call it done. I rarely go back and edit. I noticed while writing my dissertation that although to get something done initially, I just had to write something, ANYTHING! just to get some words on paper. But if I then went back and refined and rewrote and generally buffed and primped up my sentences, the finished result was much better. My blogging is usually of the just-get-something-written variety. Maybe if I thought more about what I wanted to say, the result might be more thoughtful, better expressed and more worth reading. If I really do want to find a job that involves writing on a daily basis, I'd better actually develop some writing skills. Which brings me to...

Find a job
I need something to do on a day-to-day basis. Our family finances would benefit from a little more income. I don't seem yet to have settled on a career. Maybe I never will. But it would be good to have some goals to aim at in work. I'd like a job I can actually get my teeth into, one that will stretch me some and get me learning new things or digging out old skills and polishing them up again. What that is, I'm not completely sure yet. But I'm looking, my CV's up to date, I'm checking the job pages and trying to work out how to network. Anyone want to employ me?

And finally...

Get healthier
I've been pretty sedentary in my habits since I got married. And that means I've got much heavier. I need to get back on my bike and get some healthier eating habits. My GP keeps telling me to go swimming (good for my back and general fitness) and I should probably start listening.

So, my 2012 goals. How do I make them happen? Got any tips? What are your 2012 resolutions?

Why I am a bad blogger

2011-11-22T09:29:00.002Z

"Twitter - it only works if you reply."

I can't remember who said it, but it's true. I'm not very good at the replying bit. The same goes for blogging. It's better if you actually interact with the bloggers you read and leave comments. I'm not very good at that. It doesn't help that I do most of my blog reading via Google Reader these days. That means an extra click at least to get to a point where you can comment. On most of the blogs I read, I'm a lurker who never comments. I suspect this is bad blogging etiquette.

My problem is, I'm shy and I don't like networking. Twitter particularly is like one big public networking event. To get anything out of it beyond shouting your witticisms (or more likely, that weird dream you had and what you ate for lunch) into the aether, you need to reply to other people's tweets and start an interaction. I find it intimidating to reply to people I haven't actually met. Even the people I've been following for years via their blogs and now Twitter. I'm too shy to say hello.

Of course, I should know by now that good things can happen when you interact on the internet. That's how I met my husband, after all. My sister started a blog, partly on my recommendation and it changed her life. She lost weight. She went to the US for 3 months to stay with someone she'd never met. Crazy! She still spends time interacting with other bloggers and etsy-ites on forums. I think she reads fewer blogs than I do, but she interacts more.

So, what I am to do? Learn from my sister and my past good experiences. After all, Rob was a random internet stranger when he made that first comment. Now he's my husband. I'm so glad he commented and even more glad I replied. Who knows what other good things might happen if I say hello to people I read and follow more often?

hello there!

2011-10-28T10:38:00.002+01:00

I'm not dead! I've just been a bit busy. In the last er, 6 months since I last posted I have been mostly finishing my MA dissertation. It's done and I handed it in a month ago. Now I'm unemployed and should have a little more time on my hands for blogging and generally being sociable online.

Things I could blog about:

We've been married over 18 months and I still haven't finished blogging through our wedding pics. Anyone still interested?

Pretty pictures from our holiday in March, Portmeirion in April and my birthday trip to Colchester Zoo (where I met this gorgeous giraffe).

Spending time at L'Abri at the beginning of October.

Church ups and downs.

Knitting.

Auntie-dom (soon to be doubled).

Life, moods and reading.

Any requests?

Compare and contrast

2011-04-23T19:39:00.002+01:00

contrast, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Here we are on holiday in Cornwall last month. This was a particularly foggy day towards the beginning of the week, when I made Rob drive all the way from our cottage near Helston to Penzance (which was less exciting than I thought it would be) then to Land's End in the fog, and back again and then go on a (short) muddy walk to find an ancient village. He was not impressed. But I enjoyed myself.

More pictures from our holiday here .

underwater

2011-03-30T10:53:00.002+01:00

fish please? a video by the pig wot flies on Flickr.

Last week we were on holiday in Cornwall, celebrating our first wedding anniversary. (yay!). I have lots of pretty pictures and a few videos to show you. Here's a taster.

zesty

2011-03-11T17:53:00.003Z

Today's good things include this plate of fruit. I made St Clements cupcakes (from Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache) and these were the oranges and lemons I used. Shown after I zested them for the cake mixture and before I juiced them (actually I only used half a lemon and half an orange) for the juice.

The cupcakes are coming with me tonight when I go out to meet up with knitters and spinners and spend the evening being knitty and friendly.

There's roast lamb roasting in the oven, along with roast potatoes, butternut squash and carrots.

Rob's been working at home and it's been good. We've not got in each other's way, but it was good to have lunch together.

The living room is a little cleaner than it was this morning. I bleached the sink (which I should clearly do more often).

I saw an image I liked - the fruit on a plate - and I took some photos. I like doing this.

good thursday

2011-03-10T18:49:00.003Z

Today's good things:

The day started grey but ended sunny. Spring is coming!

I got some useful admin stuff done before lunch.

This afternoon's group therapy session went well. We had a new person in the group, which can sometimes be a bit unsettling, but I think the newbie will be OK. I had a wonder again about why I go to therapy and whether I still need it. I think I do. If nothing else it gets me out of the house and talking to people. :) I find it a good place to talk through things that are stressing me out or making me sad. There's also the rest of the group - I turn up for them as much as for myself. I'm going to keep going for the next while. It's good for me to think through whether it's still useful or whether it's time to stop. One day, it'll be time to stop.

Rob's working from home tomorrow. (This is a mixed thing. Sometimes I find it hard when he's here during the day when I'm used to being on my own. But sometimes I spend the day looking forward to him coming home so I can have some meaningful human contact.)

I started reading A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker. It's a typical Baker book - little vignettes in one life. I think I like it. I like the duck, Greta. Rob's talked in the past about wanting a duck. It might be fun to have one, one day when we have a garden.

ETA: I'm getting my lost hat back! I lost my favourite handknit hat (this one) a few months ago. Someone at church thought she'd seen it. (In fact, I did't realised I'd lost it until she asked if I'd lost a hat. I knew I couldn't find it, but assumed it was at home somewhere). I finally followed it up with an email today (with the pic) and she has my hat and I'm going to get it back on Sunday. :)

good stuff

2011-03-09T15:45:00.002Z

I've been a bit down in the dumps recently. When that happens, it's easy for me to view everything negatively and forget all the good things in my life. I'm much better at remembering negative things than good things. Rob keeps pointing this out to me and suggested I blog about what happened today, so that I remember it. I then thought it would be good if I did that _every_ day so I remember the good things. We'll see how long that lasts, but it's a good idea.

So. Today I had a meeting with my supervisor. Beforehand I was nervous and felt braindead and stupid. Actually, it was a very useful meeting, she was really pleased with what I'd written and gave me loads of ideas for how to extend and improve on what I had written. My supervisor is in fact lovely, always encouraging and really interested in my dissertation topic and in what I have to say about it.

So, yeah, good things. :)

time flies like a banana

2011-02-20T22:27:00.004Z

My mac screen saver is set up to show me pictures from iPhoto from the last twelve months. It seems to do this in order, starting twelve months ago, which means I get a reminder of what I was doing this time last year (right now, lots of pictures from my hen night and our wedding :) ).

Today I noticed this one:

Taken 28 February 2010 and titled "We love you!". I assume Debs took it on her phone and then messaged it to me. It reminded me of this, posted ten days ago. Compare and contrast! Same grin on Debs' lovely mug, even bigger in the more recent one. But Sophia's gone from cute gormless baby stares to big cheeky toddler grin.

I love my (not quite as squeaky but still sooo cute!) cheeky niece!

I think I've forgotten how to blog

2011-02-02T19:52:00.002Z

I can manage serious pre-planned posting like the wedding story (albeit intermittently) but I've not done regular off the top of my head blogging and thoughts for ages. Little things that occur to me go usually turn into tweets. Big philosophical/anxiety/depressed thoughts go into emails to my husband (mostly) and are too painful to share publicly. (Mostly they're momentary panics which I don't necessarily want to be on the interwebs for the rest of time. :) So that leaves, er, not sure.

I do have things to say sometimes. I think I could do with the discipline of writing more. If only to get in practice for the dissertation writing that IS GOING TO HAPPEN this year. So I thought I'd try.

It occurs to me that different places/means of writing have different psychological weight or depth of meaning to me. I'm supposed to be writing a list of things I want to talk about at a meeting with my supervisor on Friday (hence the procrastination of blogging). I could write this however I want. However. Typing into a Word document (well, the Open Office equivalent, I am a Mac person, after all) is too definite for notes. I have to mean what I say on a properly laid out page. Writing on paper is less scary, especially in biro. It's a scribbled note, noone expects it to look finished and the words are therefore less final, more tentative. I can be tentative in biro. Probably more so in pencil. The computerised equivalent is TextEdit. I find myself using TextEdit a lot to make notes on papers I'm reading, or to-do lists, or notes to myself. My desktop is littered with them. They're the computer equivalent of the reams of scribbled notes that are the precursor to a first draft - some complete sentences, mostly scraps, nagging questions, instructions to myself. It intrigues me that I find the scribbled note, in hard or soft form, easier to write than the finished paragraph, or at least anything that gives the appearance of a finished piece.

I think it's about confidence. If I don't have confidence it what I'm writing, I'm reluctant to commit it to something that looks finished. So, if you find me writing on newspaper in wax crayon, then I've lost it completely and have no confidence in my work. Although, at least I'd be writing. So maybe, even if it's a displacement activity, blogging is a good sign.

The pig wot got married - the entrance

2011-01-25T10:00:00.001Z

When you attend a wedding, you seem to be waiting around ages for the bride to arrive and things to start. When you are the bride, it all happens very quickly. You stand around outside for a while, then in the entrance waiting for the music to begin. Then suddenly, you're walking up the aisle, trying not to go too fast but also wanting to get to the end where your very-soon-to-be husband is waiting for you.

This bit of our wedding is definitely a blur to me. I remember waiting, I remember suddenly realising the music had started and it was time to go.

I remember standing next to Rob and him whispering in my ear "You look wonderful!". I whispered back "So do you!" and he did - a tailcoat, waistcoat and cravat suits him. :) I barely remember the walk in between. This isn't the best photo technically of our walk, but it best captures the feeling - smiling so hard with happiness, looking forward to catch my Rob's eye, my Dad smiling beside me, everything else a blur.

This photo is from during the first song, I think. Barney said some opening words and then we sang. My bouquet was handed over to my bridesmaids, my Daddy flipped back my veil and we praised God together singing Come People of the Risen King.

Photos by Dave Routledge.

The pig wot got married - arriving

2011-01-24T13:08:00.002Z

It's been a while since I wrote any wedding recaps! We've now been married for just over ten months and I'd like to get the story of our wedding day blogged before our anniversary. When I last blogged about the wedding, we'd just set off from home in a lovely white bug called Billy. We had plenty of time! I was keen to get going and get married. We took a good leisurely route from home, detouring a little (by accident) and still managed to hit town much earlier than we needed to. I didn't intend to be late (in fact Rob had threatened not to marry me if I turned up late!) but in this case, I didn't have much choice. The party of bridesmaids, brothers-in-law, small niece and mother of the bride took longer to get to the church than expected. My dad and I in the bug waited in a layby outside Trinity, fielding phoned updates as to where they were and being photographed by passing tourists. We also met My Granddad, aunt and cousins who were a bit lost and directed them to the church.

At last, they were there. It was time! We had the roof down by then and drove slowly along Trinity Street, round the corner and slowly down the shopping street leading to the church, with smiles and waves and the odd camera lens click all the way. It's so much fun being a bride and arriving in style!

Hayley helped us out of the car and said she'd see us later. I think I was too busy grinning and wanting to get things going to remember much of what was going on.

Dave lined us up outside the church for a few shots of with me and the maids. We're all grinning, even Barney, waiting in the porch to lead us in and get us married!

We lined up outside the church porch (a couple of really late-comers had to squeeze past us - you know who you are!) and Barney led us in a quick prayer. I took my Daddy's arm and waited for the music (the Prelude from Bach's 1st Cello Suite) to begin.

Photos by Dave Routledge.

The end of 2010

2010-12-31T08:35:00.003Z

Its the last day of the year. How did that happen? Before it's gone and another year begins, I want to capture some good thoughts from this year and some things I'd like to leave behind.

Good things

We got married! Probably the most exciting thing that happened this year. I will finish the story of the day soon, promise.

I got my reading back. That was pretty huge. It means I feel a little more like myself and I have some hope that my MA will get done.

I came off my anti-depressants. That was huge too!

I picked up my MA again, with the determination to finish it this time. I still have bumps and panics. The last few months haven't been as productive as I wanted them to be, due to colds knocking me back and shaking my confidence. I want to get back on it and finish it, properly and well.

Things I'd like to leave behind

I've been quite ill several times - pre-wedding concussion, a post-wedding crash (apparently un-blogged), the blood clot I had in August, the excruciating sciatic back pain I've had over Christmas, my ongoing CFS. I'd like to be healthier in 2011. I know I'm unlikely to return to my pre-post-viral fatigue state. CFS is for most people a lifelong condition, but I'm learning to live with it. I'd like the lows to be less low, even though that may mean the highs being less high. I'd like to learn to manage my health, rather than be subject to it.

I've put on a fair amount of weight since we got married, mostly as a consequence of the above. I've not been able to do much exercise and I've been stuck inside feeling sorry for myself a lot. This led to lots of comfort eating and the feeling that I didn't care about myself and didn't deserve to be healthy. I want to change that, take back control, get a healthier attitude to food and lose some weight. This should also help me to be healthier in other ways too.

Things I'd like to do

Learn more about loving my Rob. These first 9 months or so have been good ones and hard ones. I like being married. I love that Rob looks after me and I couldn't have got through some of the things that happened without him. I know there's so much more I can do to learn about him as a person and to love him more. I think that'll be a goal for the rest of my life.

Learn more about loving God. We couldn't have got this far without God and without the support of our church family. I'd like to know God better, to spend more time in prayer and reading the Bible and to let God change me more. Sometimes it's easy to look good and be able to give 'right answers' in difficult circumstances but underneath, I'm lost and drowning. I want to know God better and have a closer relationship with him.

Blog more. I now have three blogs - this one, Pigwotknits and a LiveJournal blog which so far is a copy of this one plus some silly memes. I'd like to blog more on all of them, and work out whether to use this and my LJ blog differently. I can make the LJ one more private, so I may end up using it for the things I don't want to broadcast to the world, but write only for myself, or myself and Rob. We'll see. Pigwotknits definitely needs some love. I still knit, but less stuff seems to make it to the blog. Possibly because I'm more likely to use Ravelry.

Return to paid work. I need to get the MA out of the way first. I may or may not be able to handle full time work, we'll see. But it would help our collective finances if I were earning too. I'm trying not to put myself under too much pressure, but I do need a little pressure to get on with and finish my dissertation and work out what the next thing to do is. (Not a PhD, that's for sure. Maybe children, but earning some money before that happens sounds like a good idea to me).

I think that's enough planning to be going on with. Enjoy the last day of 2010. May 2011 bring you wonderful things!

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T06:54:00.002Z

It's early Christmas morning. Rob's not awake yet, but he will be soon, as we're off to spend the day with his family. Just time for me to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and to post the verse that keeps coming back to me this year.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 (ESV)

May you know Jesus, the Word become flesh, and see his glory this Christmas.

off my meds

2010-12-06T10:10:00.002Z

I've been on anti-depressants (fluoxetine) since May 2008. They helped a lot. When I was initially ill with post-viral fatigue, they took the edge off. That summer when I was properly depressed, they helped me feel a bit more alive. I stayed on them because I needed them. Of course, not everything about being on fluoxetine is great. I wanted to come off it before I got married because my main side effect was super-vivid dreams and being very restless in my sleep. I wanted to avoid subjecting Rob to that, if possible. But about a year ago, it was clear I was depressed again, I think due to all the changes that were happening in my life, and rather than decreasing my dosage in the run-up to our wedding, I increased it.

In the months since we got married, I initially crashed in mood and energy levels, leading to a referral to an ME clinic and the realisation that I most probably do have ME/CFS. But in the last few months, I've been feeling much better, in mood if not always in energy, and so I decided it was time to come off fluoxetine for good.

On Sunday 28 November, I took my last dose. It's been over a week now and I'm ok. I'm not depressed or blank or weepy as I was this time last year. I'm still easily tired and a little frustrated with getting so tired, but I'm not depressed. As for the side effects, well, you'll have to ask Rob if I'm any less restless. I still dream, sometimes they're vivid, but I seem to be losing my least favourite dreams - the ones that come just before I wake up, where I'm endlessly trying to break out of dreams into reality.

Fluoxetine was a useful drug when I needed it. I don't think it in itself solved anything, but it lifted me enough to take the edge off depression, to make the lows less dark and help me cope. I hope I won't need it again in the future, but I won't be a failure if I need its help again.

silly

2010-11-15T15:56:00.003Z

In the absence of anything sensible to blog, here's a silly video.

Made on Channel 4's Twist Our Words site.

excuses

2010-11-10T12:33:00.002Z

The reason I didn't blog on Monday was mostly that we spent all evening at Addenbrooke's A&E. :S

Don't worry, I'm actually fine. I've had a cold since Friday and was feeling pretty grotty. By Monday night I had chest pains and was breathing fairly heavily. The last straw was coughing up mucus with blood in it (TMI? Sorry!) at which point I got a bit panicked, as it was all a bit too much like what happened back in August when I went into hospital and they found blood clots. So I decided it was probably wise to get checked over and Rob took me in.

The doctors I saw agreed I done the right thing, given my history, did some blood tests and gave me a chest X-ray. Fortunately, all was as it should be, no evidence of blood clots, nothing wrong except an upper respiratory viral infection (i.e. a cold). They sent me home again with instructions to rest, take paracetamol and see my GP if things got any worse. All of which took around 5 hours, from leaving home at 5.30 to getting back again about 10.30pm.

So, that was Monday evening gone. I'm grateful to Rob who took it all in his stride and didn't moan at me for wanting to go to hospital, yet again or panic. I don't feel too silly for getting things checked out as the staff did take me seriously. But I do hope that, apart from a couple of scheduled clinic appointments in the next few weeks, I won't be seeing too much of Addenbrooke's in the near future.

let me read it to you!

2010-11-09T13:21:00.003Z

let me read it to you!, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Trying to make up for a few days of bloglessness by showing you a cute photo of my niece. :)

This was just over a week ago when I went to visit Debs and Sophia in London. Sophia's just walking so we had fun with her showing off her new skillz and enjoying some books. She likes lift-the-flap books and she's good at finding the things hidden underneath.This is a board book about babies.

trees

2010-11-07T17:02:00.000Z

carpet, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Cheating slightly by back-dating this to Sunday, but I did promise pictures from Saturday. Here's one and there are more on flickr if you click through.

Saturday productivity

2010-11-06T20:36:00.003Z

Once again, I get to the end of the day and realise I've not blogged. I should keep a list of blog prompts so I can write more interesting posts.

Happy Saturday!

ETA: I was going to tell you what I did today, before I got (pleasantly) interrupted.

I came home from Grandma's house with a bag full of apples from her tree, so I made caramel apple jam and Autumn Apple and Cider Cake (with perry instead of cider) from Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache.

I went for a walk in the woods and took photographs (will share some at some point). I don't think I'd ever been to Beechwoods at the end of an autumn day before. The light was amazing, making long shadows across the leafy floor.

I cooked sausages with onion and apple and we ate them with mashed potatoes, sweetcorn and gravy. Yum!

urgh

2010-11-05T16:25:00.001Z

Yesterday's tiredness has turned into today's achiness and general grogginess. Yuck.

It's Bonfire Night, but I suspect I shall not be going out to see fireworks. Instead, I'll be curled up in bed and going to sleep early.

Today I...

2010-11-04T18:56:00.002Z

...am quite tired. A few days of travelling about and seeing family does that to me.

...am enjoying the warmth of the sun, when it shines.

...experienced the chaos that is the Cambridge bus system when disturbed by sewage works in the town centre. Not pretty. No-one seems to know what's going on.

...cooked pasta with beef sausages and tomato sauce. It was yummy.

...couldn't think of anything very enlightening to blog about.

on becoming domesticated

2010-11-03T19:35:00.002Z

Once upon a time, I found kitchen shops boring, though occasionally necessary. Once upon a time I had very little interest in gardening and had never managed to keep a plant alive for longer than a few days.

Then, I got married and and we moved into our first home together. Now I find a new kitchen shop recently opened in Cambridge is somewhere in which I can browse and covet shiny things for hours. I have a window box in which I'm growing herbs and look forward to one day having a proper patch of earth to cultivate. Admittedly, I'm not much better at house plants (Rob has bought me 3 so far and I've killed 2) but my orchid is surviving and looks as if it's growing a new flower spike. What happened?

I think I grew up a little more. Most importantly I had my own space for the first time. Our space, though Rob doesn't have much of an opinion on kitchen things, beyond the colour of the plates and the quality of the food that comes out of it. My domestic housewifely side has space to flourish and express itself and I'm enjoying it.

positive data

2010-11-02T07:40:00.001Z

One of the things that's happened in the last few months is that I've been having some sessions of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). I've found it really helpful for thinking about how I think and changing things, little by little.

The biggest thing it's helped me with is reading. I virtually lost my ability to read when I was depressed in 2008 and though the depression has gone and my concentration had come back a bit, I still found it hard to read anything longer or more involved than a magazine article or blog post. I wanted to return to my MA, but for an English student, not being able to read properly makes studying impossible. I was pretty sure the main blockage was psychological rather than physical. I got my eyes tested in March, just to make sure and all was fine (though I discovered I needed glasses for distance). That left the non-physical barriers - partly I didn't have the stamina for reading that I used to, but more than that reading, especially reading related to studying, made me panic. I avoided books and then was sad because they used to make me happy.

It didn't actually take many sessions of CBT to make that change. My therapist encouraged me to start by sitting down with a book, to look at it, feel it, explore the feeling of holding a book, maybe read it if I felt like it. Somehow, it didn't take long before I was reading again. Small bites at first, then longer chunks, until now I can read at something approaching my old pace and appetite again. It feels good!

The reading problem is cracked and we've moved onto to a few other things now, like tackling how I think about myself as a failure and jump to panic and disaster too quickly. We're coming to the end of our sessions together and we've been working on a toolkit for the future. One of things I've been exploring is a positive data log. I seem to have no trouble remembering the bad things that happen to me, but the good things can get lost. I've been trying to remember them better. I have a book to record good things in, though mostly I forget, but it helps me just to get to the end of the day and go through all the good things in my head, just before I go to sleep. Even if I don't remember them too well the next day (which makes me think I should use the book and write things down more), it relaxes me at the end of the day and helps make a positive feeling when I remember that day. Try it!

normal service will be resumed shortly

2010-11-01T08:00:00.001Z

Hello there! Sorry, I didn't mean to leave such a dramatic post at the top of my blog for so long.

I am feeling much better. I have to be on Warfarin for 6 months, which means blood tests to check my blood clotting levels every couple of weeks. I still have occasional pain in my right lung when breathing deeply, but it's getting less and less. I have a heart scan scheduled for later November, but I'm not anticipating any problems. I think it's just to check that everything's fine with my heart and the clots didn't make their way there.

CFS/ME is continuing. Well, I don't actually have an official diagnosis, but as far as I can tell, I fit the symptoms for moderate CFS. Basically that means I get tired easily and need lots of sleep (should have been in bed about 1.5 hours ago. Oops). With not enough sleep or not enough rest from doing active things, I get very very tired and physically drained. But most of the time I can manage it by keeping to a schedule and not trying to fit too many things in. Well, in theory. In practice I am prone to do too much and get bored by always having to be in bed early, but I'm getting better at it.

Should go to sleep, but I'm posting this as a reminder to myself that I plan to do NaBloPoMo this year. That means blogging every day in November. I'm hoping it gets me back into the blogging habit. No promises on what I'll write about. Inevitably my health will get a mention, I might blog about books (I'm reading again, yay!) or MA progress, or I might juts post pictures, if I take any good ones. If you've got any suggestions or things you'd like to hear about, leave me a suggestion in the comments.

Right, I'm going to set this to post in the morning, so that's my first post of the month. Happy November!

hospital drama

2010-08-23T20:30:00.004+01:00

The last few days have been more dramatic than I expected.

I had some pain in my rib cage last week, which although pretty excruciating, I assumed was just a muscle strain. (I'd had similar pains a couple of weeks before that I'd put down to an awkward bike skid). However, on Thursday morning, I was coughing up blood and thought maybe we'd better get it checked out. Rob drove me to Addenbrooke's A&E and by lunchtime I'd been admitted with what was either a chest infection or a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in my lungs). An initial x-ray didn't show up any clots, but a CT scan later that night showed definite clots. Thursday night was pretty painful and I didn't get much sleep, in between the pain and the worry.

Friday morning I was put on a heart monitor, just in case. I wasn't allowed to walk anywhere and had to be wheeled to the bathroom, which made me feel pretty helpless. Although the first day's events had been pretty scary, things quickly improved. I was put on anti-clotting drugs as soon as the possibility of a clot was raised and continued to have injections over the weekend. I had plenty of pain killers to help me be more comfortable. The last couple of days have mostly been about starting me on Warfarin and getting the dose right. I've got to go back for more blood tests over the next few days and weeks, but these will get less frequent as things settle down.

I'm home again, as of this afternoon. I'm very tired and looking forward to getting some good sleep in my own bed. Rob's done a very good job of looking after me, keeping everyone informed and making sure I have everything I need in hospital. We've had lots of support from friends and particularly from Eden (our church) and feel very loved and looked after.

It all felt pretty scary for a bit, but it was very reassuring to know I was in the right place, being looked after by people who know what they're doing. I suspect it'll take me a while to get back to full strength, but I'm going to take it easy and not rush anything. I'm still achey, though it's not the terrible pain I had last week. I'm very thankful to God for all the support we've had from friends and for modern medicine and the easy access I have to it.

chrysalis

2010-08-05T13:46:00.002+01:00

chrysalis, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

A few days ago I noticed one of the caterpillars had climbed up into the eaves and wasn't moving. Today I looked up there and saw (s)he'd transformed into a chrysalis. I'm very excited. I shall keep checking on his /her progress.

very hungry caterpillars

2010-07-31T12:53:00.002+01:00

flower munch, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I've been growing nasturtiums between the herbs in my window box for colour. I discovered a few days ago that they've been infested with caterpillars. The gardening websites I looked at told me they were pests and I should get rid of them, but I decided I actually preferred growing butterflies (Large White in this case) to growing nasturtiums (too fluorescent), so I would leave them alone and hope to see them pupate and hatch. This morning I've taken a few pictures so you can appreciate them too. I'll keep watching and snapping and see if I can document their development into adults.

The pig wot got married - off we go

2010-07-13T14:26:00.003+01:00

I was soo ready to get married! My mum, the bridesmaids and their various hangers on left in their cars. (I was too cheap/disorganised to ever sort them a car - sorry guys!) My Dad and I waited for our transport to arrive.

Now, if you know me IRL or have read this blog for a while, you'll know I'm a big fan of VW Beetles. I've owned 2 and while I don't think I'm likely to do so again unless I somehow become rich and leisured (hah!), I still like to think of myself as a bug person. So, when it came to hiring a wedding car, it pretty much had to be a bug.

This is Billy, seen here waiting outside the church later in the day. He belongs to Hayley of V Dub Rides who was our awesome chauffeur for the day (and took these pictures). (She's lovely and also made the whole process of hiring a wedding car really easy and efficient. If you're looking for a wedding bug in the Essex/Hertfordshire/Cambridgeshire area, I'd definitely recommend her).

See how smiley we are, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

My dad had sent his camera on with my mum, so we were left to Hayley's devices for photos at this point, but she did a lovely job. I love how happy we both are in this picture and it's also one of the few in which I'm wearing my veil down. We settled ourselves in Billy, put the roof up to protect us for the journey and set off for the church.

The pig wot got married - nearly there

2010-06-03T11:45:00.001+01:00

The thing about weddings is they can turn into an endless series of photo opportunities. I'm not a huge fan of posed pictures and I wanted people to be having fun, not standing around waiting all the time. Even so, I wanted a record of who was there, what happened, who wore what. So, some posed portraits were inevitable.

The first set was my and my bridesmaids.

We had fun, squished onto my bed, with just about enough room for Dave to take pictures. The original plan was to go outside for pictures, but with not much time and not much sunshine, it was easier to cram us into the bedroom. These are my lovely bridesmaids: Liz, in red, who being local, did most of the running around and organising things; Debs, in purple, my middle sister, mother of Sophia; Hannah, in pink, my little sister, now the furthest away, living in Exeter. Both my sisters were married last year and I was a bridesmaid for both of them. Now it was time to repay the favour.

Of course, with four girls bouncing around on a bed, it was bound to get silly.

I can't remember who said what, but it must have been funny. I made this face a lot over the course of the day. It's my roaring with laughter, don't care how unattractive I look, I'm happy face. :)

I'd hired a car to take my Daddy and me to the church, but the bridesmaids, my Mummy and brothers-in-law had to make their own way. That meant they set off around 12, leaving the two of us alone to wait for the car which would take me on my less journey as an unmarried woman.

Photos by Dave Routledge.

The pig wot got married - getting ready

2010-05-12T17:21:00.004+01:00

Our wedding day dawned. Finally! After years of wondering whether it would ever happen, months of anticipation, weeks of stress, it was here.

Having gone to bed a little stressed and tired, I woke up calm, refreshed and excited. I remained that way, even as our flat began to look like this.

My parents were there already, my mum fetched Liz soon after she woke up, Hannah and Steve arrived next, then Debs, Menard and Sophia and finally our photographer, Dave and his wife Nicky. It was a pretty full and chaotic place to be. People spread themselves and their belongings around our living room and began to get ready. Steve had marking to do and set himself with a pile of books in the corner. The girls fussed around with dresses, hair and makeup and the men entertained the baby.

In the middle of the chaos, I sat on my chair by the window and calmly went through the process of doing my hair and make-up.

I remember other people's last minute panics, but I was calm. The caterer couldn't work out how to open the gate to the venue. I think Liz talked her through it. One bridesmaid's dress, which had been altered at the last minute, needed emergency repairs, which I did, in my dressing gown. Other people had my phones, my keys. All I needed to do was put on my dress and show up at the church. Eventually, it was time.

Liz laced me in. I was ready!

Photos by Dave Routledge.

The pig wot got married - the lead up

2010-05-11T15:41:00.004+01:00

It's all beginning to feel like a dream, but I want to record my memories of our wedding day and the lead up to it while I still remember it. We'll start with the few days beforehand.

The weeks leading up to our wedding were made even more stressful by my having a fight with a green bin and giving myself concussion with about a month to go. I spent a week with horrible headaches doing very little and a further week with less pain, but feeling very tired. I couldn't ride my bike, as when I did, I made myself sea sick. This is not ideal when you're preparing a wedding. Fortunately, I had help. The big things were done. My hen night turned into a mellow afternoon and evening of silly games and a take away and friends pitched in to help make decorations. Rob ended up having lots of time off, in theory to work on his dissertation, but in practice, to look after me. I don't remember much of the last week, apart from lots of naps and early nights and a few last minute panics.

My mum arrived on Thursday and starting baking the top three chocolate tiers of our wedding cake. This was pretty last minute! I think it was still being iced on the morning of our wedding and the final decorations didn't get added until the reception. The knitted elements of our decorations weren't quite finished either - the knitting was done, but running things through the washing machine only happened on Thursday morning and I spent Thursday afternoon smoothing out little scrunched up felted hearts. In the evening, we picked up glasses from Sainsbury's and I had a last minute rehearsal of the songs I planned to sing at the reception.

Friday, was mostly spent decorating the hall for our reception. Liz and I spent most of the day draping pillars with purple and white fabric and making table decorations. Our fabulous caterers turned up in the afternoon to lay tables, as did Rob. That afternoon is a blur of vases, sticks, fish tank gravel and little knitted hearts. I was really pleased with the results. The hall sparkled with glasses and colour and looked smarter than I've ever seen Brickfields (which is essentially a large shed) looking. Various essentials were delegated at the last minute: Alex made maps and directions from the church to the reception; HB prepared the cards for printing by my dad; Liz's fiance Andrew helped my dad get the orders of service into a printable state.

Friday night was our rehearsal. I was feeling pretty tired and unreal by this point. It was good to get everyone (bar my sisters and the best man) together to practice what we were going to do for real the next day. My dad arrived, together with orders or service and name cards. We delivered bubbles and noisemakers to the church and hung up our aisle decorations. We practiced walking and down the aisle and saying our vows. The rain was pouring down outside and I feared the worst for the next day's weather.

The night ended with lots of people back at our flat for fish and chips and champagne. That felt sane and special and informal and relaxed all at once. I was a bit dazed though, with things still to do. I spent most of the evening fiddling with name cards to produce a table plan. Wonderful Liz took my piles of cards, wrote all the names on a large piece of card, decorated it and made table numbers and suddenly we had a table plan. I think I got sent to bed about 1am. I was still feeling stressed at that point and wondered if I would sleep, but I think I dropped off pretty quickly.

married!

2010-04-30T19:41:00.002+01:00

I want to blog all about our wedding, because I want to remember as much as I can about it and having spent large portions of my pre-wedding time reading wedding re-caps on Wedding Bee and the like, I want to join in too! This might get a little tedious, so I'll try to break it up with pretty pictures (of which there are many). Here's a little taster.

will blog soon

2010-04-21T15:21:00.002+01:00

Hi there! Well, I've emerged from wedding-land and honeymooning and New Word Alive (an evangelical Christian conference held in Pwllheli, North Wales). Rob and I are trying to work out what our new normal is as we settle into married life. I'm job-hunting (again) and gradually getting on with post-wedding tasks like incorporating new stuff into our flat and writing thank you notes. Our wedding photos have now arrived, so soon I shall start blogging about the wedding day.

In the mean time, Rob and I went to a bloggers meet up at New Word Alive, organised by Adrian Warnock. Adrian collected a list of the blogs and twitter feeds of the people who came, so if you want to read some New Word Alive bloggers go and have a look at the list. I'm going to go and read some myself.

honeymoon

2010-03-22T15:30:00.001Z

I'm on honeymoon with my Rob! We're tired and happy and having fun.

You can follow what we get up to (well, some of it) here: http://community.livejournal.com/robandbekkiwed/

Wedding!

2010-03-20T08:55:00.003Z

Today I am marrying my Rob! I'm so happy and excited. It's been a hectic couple of weeks and I'm pretty tired. But today I shall float on a cloud of happiness and adrenalin!

Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!

good things

2010-03-04T07:29:00.002Z

I've been feeling a little sorry for myself for the last week or two, thanks to concussion and backache and general tiredness. I thought I'd remind myself of the good things in my life right now.

The state of being a bride-to-be. It won't last much longer and it's rather lovely. :)

Sleeping alone in a king-size bed with a super-king-sized goose down duvet. I'm looking forward to when Rob will join me, obviously ;), but I'm enjoying the luxury of space right now.

Winter turning into spring. The cold and snow is going away and being replaced by sunshine. There are snow drops and crocuses and even daffodils popping up.

My lovely fiance, who's doing a very good job of looking after me, making sure I get enough sleep and don't wear myself out.

Lovely family and friends who are doing and making things for the wedding.

Babies! All over the place my friends and family are producing babies, who are all adorable and a pleasure to knit for and cuddle.

After years of being single and wondering if I would ever get married, there are now 16 days to go until I marry my Rob. :)

eventful

2010-02-28T07:38:00.002Z

Lots of things happened this week. The first of which was that last Sunday morning, I managed to bang my forehead with the lid of a wheelie bin. It was very painful. I didn't pass out, but several hours later I was still in pain and feeling wobbly, so I got Rob to take me to Addenbrookes to get checked out, where they diagnosed mild concussion. Ever since then, I've had a constant headache with feelings of nausea that come and go and a general feeling of tiredness and wobbliness. I'm even more tired than usual and I can feel that my brain doesn't work quite the way I want it to - my short term memory's a bit dodgy and I can't concentrate for long. :(

Rob's been doing a good job of looking after me and, headache aside, it's been a good week.

OK, I can't remember Monday much, apart from somehow getting into work, typing up minutes and then coming home and collapsing in a heap.

Tuesday was better. I rested at home and didn't try to do much. Rob's church small group came round in the evening for pancakes (yes, a week after Shrove Tuesday. Lots of people weren't there last week and missed pancakes, so they decided to have a repeat performance) and Bible study. Many pancakes were consumed. :)

Wednesday I wasn't feeling great and was a little worried that I was still feeling the effects of concussion. I rang NHS direct and was advised to see a doctor. In the afternoon, one terrifying cycle ride later, I got checked over and told all my reflexes and responses were normal, I just needed to rest and give it time. Reassuring on one level, but a little frustrating that was nothing much I could do. I felt far too wobbly to cycle home, so abandoned the bike and called a taxi. We retrieved the bike later and went out for burgers at GBK.

Thursday Rob had the day off work, so we hung out for the day, went out for lunch with some friends and distracted each other. In the evening we had an amazing meal out at Alimentum which was probably one of the most wonderful meals I've ever eaten. I had a starter of pork belly, fillet and black pudding terrine, served with slivers of apple, apple sauce and a small ball of apple sorbet. The main course was slow-cooked sirloin of beef, served with snails and mushrooms and some delicious mash. For dessert I had chocolate and carrot gateaux with carrot sorbet. The starter and main course were both utterly delectable. The dessert was good, though a bit disconcerting: you expect an orange-coloured sorbet to taste of orange, but to taste carrot instead subverts your expectations. The thin slice of dried carrot garnishing the sorbet was gorgeous though: it had a gorgeous carroty sweetness. I'd love to eat there again, though I suspect that's only going to happen if, as this time, someone else is paying. :)

Friday we had a house warming party in our new flat. I was amused that the party started off with mostly my friends and finished with mostly Rob's friends. It was a fun time, sitting on our new sofa, chatting with friends and eating cupcakes and pigs-in-blankets. It felt good to have the flat full of people, as it had been on Tuesday.

Yesterday was my hen party. Originally this was going to end up with karaoke at a local Japanese restaurant, but since I was still feeling the effects of concussion, we decided to cancel that and have a chilled out afternoon and evening with silly games, cake and Chinese take away. Bridesmaid Liz did most of the organising, with help with Debs and Hannah. The main game involved me guessing what Rob's answers had been to a series of questions about the two of us and then putting on knitted items to create a woolly wedding dress. If I guessed right, I could chose what to put on; if I guessed wrong, the questioner decided. I ended up swathed in blankets and scarves, with a long train of blankets behind me. I was stylish, but very warm! It was a lovely day. Debs brought Sophia, who was very well-behaved and charmed everyone with her smiles.

It's been a busy week. I've also been plugging away at my wedding to-do list and knitting a couple of things. I'm still not feeling very well though. I wish this concussion would hurry up and go away as I've plenty to do in the next few weeks. Still, I know that firstly, most of the important things for the wedding are sorted and secondly I had lots of lovely friends and family who are happy to help me. I suspect I'm going to need them!

a year ago

2010-01-29T08:16:00.003Z

A year ago, a comment on my blog changed my life. I didn't know it at the time, but the man who left that comment is the man I'm going to marry in 50 days time.

Thank you Rob for a year of wonderful things. You have changed my life utterly and forever in ways I never thought possible. I'm so happy to be your Bekki, to be the woman you're going to marry, to love and serve you for the rest of my life. I'm looking forward to our bright future together and I thank God for bringing us together.

I love you, my Rob. :-*

looking back

2010-01-19T08:13:00.006Z

Last year was a crazy year. Let's see what I can remember of it.

January

I moved house on New Year's Eve and saw the New Year in at a party with friends from church. I can't remember much of the month, apart from a fun Gaudy at Corpus, until that momentous week when my life got turned upside down. On Sunday 25th January I wrote this post, bemoaning my lack of a man and wanting to know what I should do about it. A few days later I found a comment from this character, RobHu. Hmm, I thought, he sounds friendly. After a few days of enchanging thousands of words by email, we met at the City Church Ceilidh and the rest is history! The other thing that happened that week was that I found out Debs was pregnant. She wasn't married, or even engaged to M then, so this came as something of a shock. Those first few days of realising there was going to be a baby, of Debs trying to work out what to do, were somewhat surreal.

February

On 1st February Rob and I officially started going out. The rest of that month is a blur of happiness and sleepness nights - I often couldn't sleep because I was so excited about seeing Rob the next day. We first kissed on the 13th, managed to upset each other horribly on the 14th and sorted it out over the next few days. At the end of the month, I met Rob's family for the first time. I was nervous, but it went well. So well, that Rob's mother (while I was out of the room) offered to find Rob her mother's rings so he could propose. :) Which was probably a little premature, but not much.

March

Also a blur of happy things. Rob met my family en masse for the first time when he came down to Exeter to see Hannah in 'The Yeoman of the Guard'. I think he survived :). He certainly enjoyed the songs and spent the next few weeks playing them repeatedly on spotify. At the end of the month, we went to New Word Alive. I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. We both loved the teaching and the worship. We went with a group from Eden, which was the first time I'd actually spent time with Eden folks. They were a friendly bunch, which made me better disposed to the place than I had been.

April

The weddings began. Debs and M on the 5th and Ben and Jude on the 25th. Debs's wedding was organised in rather a hurry! We had about 2.5 weeks notice, but everything came together in time. Ben and Jude's wedding was rather more organised, but no less fun.

May

May started and ended with not very successful weekends away. On the first bank holiday, Rob and I went camping with a bunch of his friends near Hay-on-Wye. It was one of those weekends where we were both tired and grumpy and fell out over silly things. Hay itself is beautiful and ordinarily one of my favourite places, but with my brain still not functioning properly, I wasn't reading much, making visiting a town full of books either a pointless exercise or a cruel joke.
On the second bank holiday, we went walking with some of my friends in Wales. Rob, it transpires, really doesn't like walking, even with the accompaniment of sermons on his iPod. The combination of wild weather, rocky paths, borrowed boots and steep slopes made him miserable and the fact that I knew people and he didn't probably didn't help. I love walking, but I suspect I may be better off walking without Rob, especially if I'm going up anything steep.
These weekends may have been a factor in my sudden attack of getting married panic. Rob had been saying 'Marry me!' for ages. I had just come round to the idea that a) he was serious and b) I might actually want to. Then, all of a sudden, I wasn't ready. I'm not really sure what happened. Perhaps realising the seriousness of the decision I was making made me draw up short. Poor Rob. I went from maybe, to yes definitely, to argh, not not yet, in a very short space of time. Thankfully, he had patience (well, some) to wait until I was ready. It was only a few weeks between that panic and my being so sure that I was asking him 'When are you going to propose then?'.

June

We got engaged! First we went ring shopping in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham (this was on 6th June, according to the progamme for the final event of that day, Rob's first opera: The Magic Flute (in English), a fun student production at St John's). Then, in a memorable weekend spent mostly cleaning Rob's flat, he asked and I said yes! I wrote about that here, so I won't repeat it.

July

I think this month mostly passed in a whirl of newly-engaged happiness. I moved house, we started to plan timescales and maybe even book wedding-related things. We went to Keswick, which was a tough week. It rained, I didn't sleep well, we argued a few times, I cried a lot. The teaching sessions were good, but I didn't really enjoy camping, or the rain. There were good times though, meeting up with Hannah P, the sun when it decided to shine, a trip in a Viking long boat. We're going again next year (please God, can we have better weather?) so it can't have been too terrible. I think we learnt a lot about each other and how differently we function. I also spent lots of my time sewing bridesmaids' dresses for Hannah's wedding.

August

More weddings - Pete and Stacey (although we managed to miss their wedding and only make the reception) and, a week later, Hannah and Steve. I stayed in London for the week in between, helping with last minute wedding prep, making garlands, attaching pom poms to name cards and icing the cake. The wedding was wonderful! A gorgeous hot day, Hannah was beautiful, Steve was suitably love-struck, the dresses fitted and a good time was had by all.

September

September was full of unbloggable drama which is probably why I've forgotten it. I had a wisdom tooth extracted, which also dramatic - I nearly swallowed the tooth when it finally came out! Wedding planning began in earnest and I went to my first wedding fair. I didn't get much sleep, according to my blog, probably due to said drama and tooth. I officially went back to my MA course, planning to have my dissertation done in time to hand in by the end of April 2010. Rob resumed his degree course, also working on a dissertation to be handed in around the same time. Rob's dissertation is progressing and is likely to be done on time. Mine is not. :(

October

Debs' and M's baby, Tiny aka Squeaky aka Sophia was born. I remember intermittant updates from Debs during the day before she gave birth as contractions started and got more regular and more painful. By the time I went to bed, she was in hospital and labouring away on the birthing ball. At 3.33am, Sophia was born, announced to me by text message a few minutes later. I went to see Debs and her, then-unnamed, new baby in Chase Farm Hospital and took lots of lots of pictures of the new arrival and her tired but happy parents.
This was also the month I turned 30. I had a lovely birthday, traipsing round St Ives with Rob, eating at what seems to be our favourite pub (The Bridge in Waterbeach) and hanging out, just being us. A few days later, I had a birthday party, with lots of people and lots and lots and lots of food - chocolates and cheese, mostly. Happy times!

November

A mixed month. I went to a CLSG conference in Oxford, which also meant I caught up with Chris and Caroline and as Rob came too, he got to meet them. At that time I was still feeling like my MA might be do-able and left the conference with some useful leads. This was also the month of the Saturday School of Theology session which left me in tears and very confused. I was just totally lost and befuddled by the idea of truth. I felt stuck in post-modernity, unable to find a rock to stand on. I still feel like that in regard to my MA work - I have things to say, but it feels like there's no solid place from which to start. I don't know enough literary theory to be of use and I'm lost when it comes to finding a Christian approach to literature. Add to that post-viral fatigue and depression and you have a recipe for a sad Bekki and a dissertation that feels impossible. One good thing was that we made some contacts with interesting people connected to Christian Heritage, and started going to a group on Friday nights which was watching a series of documentaries by Francis Schaeffer. I'm still not sure how I feel about Schaeffer. I think he was right in that the church has neglected tackling the big ideas of philosophy and the arts, however I also find his analysis too glib and too tidy. However, I suspect that's a topic for another post.

December

This wasn't a great month for me. I was feeling pretty depressed, partly the time of year, I suspect, partly needing a break, partly just being overwhelmed by life. Rob looked after me, in between working hard on his dissertation. I decided to increase my medication and put my MA on hold again. Not quite what I wanted, but probably a good idea in the long run. Rob, as ever, is loving and supportive. We didn't see each other over Christmas much, but he did join my family for our family Christmas: my parents, their daughters and their respective partners, the attention-stealing baby. We ended the year together, eating steak, talking about mortgages and seeing the New Year in with cake and champagne at the ToothyCats.

9 weeks to go

2010-01-16T10:25:00.002Z

Goodness, I haven't posted on here in ages! I am well, happy and busy. I have several posts I plan to write, just haven't got round to it yet.

The short version is I'm feeling much better than I did before Christmas, I'm excited about getting married, and a little bit daunted by all the things we need to do in the next 63 days, but mostly happy and looking forward to all the wonderful things 2010 will hold for me and my Rob.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T13:30:00.002Z

Merry Christmas to all my family, friends, lurkers and random passers by.

I can do no better than copy my beloved and direct you to this film about the meaning of Christmas, made by St Helen's Bishopsgate.

That's Christmas (Short Film) HD from St Helen’s Church on Vimeo.

May your Christmas be full of love and blessings and the presence of Jesus.

this weekend by the numbers

2009-12-14T10:31:00.003Z

Christmas present induced panics: 1
Christmas presents bought: 6
Wedding dress related clouds of despair: 1
Baby nieces snuggled: 1
Cats stroked: 3
Curries eaten: 1
Sunday morning related panics: 1
Floods of tears: 1
Hours spent fiddling with invitation design: eleventy million (estimated)
Hot chocolates drunk: 2
Pieces of cake eaten: 2
Fiances kissed: 1
Hugs and kisses received: Too many to count

on tears

2009-11-11T08:42:00.003Z

Thanks for all the lovely comments, thoughts, virtual hugs and prayers. I'm doing OK. The dissertation's going a little better (I actually wrote something yesterday). I'm still feeling a bit mixed up and confused over stuff, but I'm plodding through it.

I've noticed in the last year or so I cry more than I used to. I didn't use to cry much. Maybe once a year, at most, if I got really upset or angry about something. When I was depressed, last year, I couldn't cry for months and months. I wanted to, but the tears wouldn't come. There was one weekend that broke that. I want away with my church for a regional weekend away over the August Bank Holiday. There was one seminar on that weekend (on singleness) which had me bawling by the end and I then spent rather a lot of the worship times of the next few meetings howling with sobs. Somehow lots of dammed up emotions and tears came out that weekend and I felt much better, if exhausted at the end of it. That made some difference to my ability to cry, but not as much it seems, as Rob.

I've noticed since I've been going out with Rob that I'm much more likely to cry when I'm upset than I was before. That's not as negative as it sounds. Yes, I have cried about him a few times, but more often I'm crying on his shoulder rather than at him. The former is because he's so important to me that something going wrong between us makes me very upset and the latter is because I can be vulnerable with him. I feel safe to cry in front of him and know that he'll comfort me. I know he doesn't like it when I cry and he doesn't always understand why I'm crying about something. (Sometimes, neither do I). But he'll always hug me and tell me he loves me and that it's going to be all right, and I feel comforted and safe and loved.

I love you, my Rob. Even, or perhaps especially, through my tears.

should be happy. Am not.

2009-11-05T08:26:00.002Z

In so many ways, life is great at the moment. I'm getting ready to marry the man I love. My family are mostly all well and happy, my sisters are newly married, one's just had a lovely baby. But I'm not really happy.

I'm panicking about finishing my MA. I'm not sure I want to do it anymore. My dissertation seems irrelevant and too hard. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. The plan I had of a PhD and research seems impossible now. If I can't do the MA, how can I do anything else? I lost the habit of reading while I was depressed and so far it's not really come back. Reading makes me anxious. I read faster and faster until I get to the point where I can't read any faster and it's too stressful and I give up. For someone who used to read constantly and have several novels on the go at any one time, this is weird and uncharacteristic. It feels like I've lost a large part of my identity.

Identity is probably the biggest thing that's making me feel unsettled. Everything is changing. I'm not sure who I am now, or who I'm going to be. I just turned 30. I'm working part time in a job that pays the bills, but isn't something I want to do long term. What job should I be doing? My potential academic career seems to be over before it started. I'm going to be a wife soon. I want to be a mother. Will that be satisfying? What will I do?

I'm seeing a counsellor again, which is useful in helping me tease some of these things apart, but oh so painful. Everything gets stirred up and I feel so much worse after our sessions. I don't want to confront all this stuff. I just want to curl up in bed with knitting and chocolate and stay warm and safe and away from the scary world. I thought this was just a simple problem of getting over the psychological barrier of panic I get when I try to read. I thought I'd dealt with this stuff in getting over my depression last year. It seems not. There's more to be sorted and more to understand. I know these things take time, I know I shouldn't be so hard on myself and expect everything to get sorted overnight. But oh mouse, I am so tired of swimming in this pool of tears.

I am being looked after. Rob's love and acceptance and hugs are wonderful. I just want to feel sorted and not confused anymore.

Prayers, kind words and hugs much appreciated.

Autumn contrast

2009-10-29T16:03:00.002Z

Autumn contrast, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I love the colours of autumn.

I am 30!

2009-10-13T10:35:00.002+01:00

It's my birthday today! And so far it's lovely. Rob came round and brought me yummy breakfast in bed. In a bit we're heading out to St Ives for the day.

Thank you my darling monster for making me so happy! I'm looking forward to being your wife in 158 days. :)

I am an aunt!

2009-10-07T09:15:00.004+01:00

Tiny was born this morning at 3.33am. She weighed 8lb 2 oz. She doesn't have a name yet. Debs and Tiny are both very sleepy and at the moment still in hospital, but my mum thinks they're likely to send her home later today as everything's fine.

Yay! Well done my Debbie-sister! Bounce! Bounce! Bounce!

wedding fair

2009-09-23T17:23:00.001+01:00

I went to a wedding fair a couple of weeks ago. It was much as I expected - lots of pretty things I couldn't afford (dresses, flowers, hats, cars) and some I wasn't really interested in (chair covers, make-up artists, John Cleese impersonations). I went with some friends: J, who's recently married, E, who's getting married in December and L, my bridesmaid, mostly for the fun of it and to look for ideas we could use. What I didn't expect was to be slightly freaked out by the experience. All the people I spoke to were lovely, very friendly and obviously keen to promote their particular product. That's fine by me, that's what they're there for. It was more the pressure to create a perfect day, but not my idea of perfect - someone else's. It's like there's this identikit wedding template which everyone has to fit into. Expensive dress, perfect flowers, big car, everything covered in bows and flowers and tulle. I felt a bit lost.

Rob and I are semi-side-stepping the wedding industry. We chose our venues (our respective church buildings) without doing the trawling round halls and houses some of my friends have done. I was going to make my own dress, but actually have bought one from eBay, along with my bridesmaids' dresses. I intended to go dress shopping anyway, but having been to a wedding fair, I don't think I want to do that. I'm quite happy with the dress I've got and don't want to spend any more time being told what I ought to be wearing. I suspect we will end up with a wedding that fits most of the cliches and conventions of people of our age and class and that's OK. I just want to be in control of the cliches, rather than having them control me.

I suppose I'm probably falling for my own set of cliches. The wedding ideas I love have mostly come from US-based wedding blogs - OffBeatBride, Wedding Bee. Some of the things I want have come directly from things I've seen on blogs. There are very few new ideas in weddings! Still, finding an idea on a blog and turning it into reality ourselves seems far more fun than paying for someone else to package it up for us.

can I have some sleep please?

2009-09-18T07:39:00.004+01:00

I've not slept very well this week. I'm not entirely sure why. OK, a little of it might be to do with late night eBay hunting for bridesmaid dresses, but I also keep waking up far too early. I also seem to be unable to sleep in, or at least sleep as long as I want and be relaxed. If I try to stay asleep as long as I can, I sleep lightly with vivid dreams which take a long while for me to break out of. This means I wake up disoriented and not very rested. I blame fluoxetine. I've reduced the dose I'm on, but still get vivid dreams sometimes, especially in the morning.

The solution is probably to go to bed earlier and not spend any time online when I'm winding down to go to sleep. Trouble is, I don't like this solution! I see Rob most evenings and want to make the most of our time together, so I'm often not home til gone 10. Maybe I should make a point of trying to get home by 9.30 for a while and see if it makes a difference.

Oh dear. I don't like having to go to bed early. What happened to the teenager who used to be the last to bed, got up at 6.30 for school and caught up by sleeping in on Saturdays? Or the student who often missed Book at Bedtime and was regularly lulled to sleep by Sailing By and the 12.30am shipping forecast? :( Sometimes, I don't like growing up.

countdown

2009-09-01T10:46:00.002+01:00

Days until I become an aunt: ~35*

Days until I turn 30: 42

Days until Christmas: 115

Days until Rob turns 30: 199

Days until I marry Rob: 200

*Debs' due date is 6th October, but you never can tell with babies.

my engagement ring

2009-08-27T10:21:00.002+01:00

my engagement ring, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Here is my beautiful engagement ring. It's made of palladium, with a swirling engraved line all the way round. The stones are white and pink diamonds and blue sapphires, three of each. We went ring shopping in Birmingham a few weeks before we got engaged. I had some idea of what I wanted (palladium, engraving, small stones) but I would never have thought of this on my own. We saw this design in white gold, a little thicker (6mm, rather than 4mm) with 9 coloured diamonds - white, pink, a turquoise blue, yellows. I loved the line, but wanted a different metal and no yellow stones, so we had this one made.

I've never really been a fan of traditional one big rock engagement rings. This is much more my style. It's beautiful, and even more so because it was given to me by the man I love as a symbol of love and commitment.

happy Bekki

2009-08-03T10:19:00.002+01:00

Hello there! I'm not dead, just busy. I do have things I want to post - like pictures of my engagement ring, happy pictures of fun things I've done, soon, I hope, wedding planning. At the moment, HP's wedding is coming up fast, so I've not really started planning ours. Though we have booked the church and reception venue and a photographer and our honeymoon! I'm sure I'm going to become a wedding bore - but I am very excited! I'm not sure how much to post though. I want to make lots of wedding things (invitations, decorations, bridesmaids' dresses, my dress) though I'm not sure how much is actually practical and how much to blog about beforehand. I expect some wedding crafting will appear on pigwotknits.

Rob and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary (half anniversary?) this weekend with good food, flowers, chocolates and anime. We are happy!

This week, I have bridesmaids' dresses to finish for HP's wedding on the 15th and we're going to another wedding on the 8th (my cousin Pete). It is definitely wedding season.

excitement!

2009-06-29T08:20:00.003+01:00

I have news - Rob and I are engaged! :-) I haven't stopped grinning since Saturday morning when he asked me. We've spent a lot of the last few days cleaning Rob's flat as he's just moved out. On Friday night, we were cleaning until very late and I was pretty exhausted; I even curled up to sleep on the bathroom floor. So Rob suggested I sleep in on Saturday morning and he'd pick me up at lunch time and take me for a walk.

On Saturday, he turned up at my house at 10.30, when I was just awake and dressed and insisted that we had to go for a walk now, as it was going to pour with rain later. I rushed out, half awake, but happy when he suggested going to Beechwoods, my favourite spot. We wandered around the woods, holding hands, enjoying the peacefulness (and spotting dogs) and Rob began telling me how much he loved me and lots of other wonderful things. As we kissed, he complained that I'd smooshed up his glasses (as usually happens) and pulled his glasses cleaning cloth out of his pocket. As he did, out fell a ring! He went down on one knee and asked if I would marry him. Delighted, I said "Yes!"

We stood in the woods and hugged and kissed and then got jumped at by an over enthusiastic Labrador, which made me laugh out loud. Who knows what the dog walkers thought.

Rob's proposal was a surprise in the timing, though not completely unexpected. We've been talking about marriage for a while. We went to the jewellery quarter in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago and chose an engagement ring, which was being made for us. I thought it wasn't yet ready, but it was, and Rob drove to Birmingham early on Friday morning to collect it. He was even more tired than I was, so after going out for lunch, we spent most of the rest of the day sleeping and generally lounging about. Sunday was divided between church (and many congratulations) and more cleaning and packing. Somehow, that seemed appropriate - a weekend of romance and hard work, being lovey-dovey and being a team, working together. I hope it's a good sign for the years to come.

It's Summer!

2009-06-24T09:04:00.003+01:00

It definitely is. I haven't worn socks for days, the sun is shining, HP and I got very hot traipsing round London doing wedding shopping yesterday. Her wedding is less than 2 months away now and there's plenty to do. I've now got fabric so I can start on the bridesmaids' dresses (four of them). And we need to make lots of pom poms.

I'm moving house in 10 days time. Rob's moving house today. He's moving into Cambridge, so we'll be living much closer together, which will be lovely.

I'm getting little bits of dissertation reading done. It's slow, but I'm beginning to regain my enthusiasm for writing the thing. And next week, I'm going to an event at the Corn Exchange with Ian McEwan in conversation talking about the influence of Darwin on his work. Perfect dissertation research!

sunshine and rain

2009-05-28T08:27:00.003+01:00

It's sunny again this morning. Which makes me happy, but will probably make Rob pray for rain. He doesn't like sunshine, though as he's very fair and burns easily, that's understandable.

Over the bank holiday weekend, we went walking in the Lake District. We had sunshine and rain. I like wandering in the hills, Rob doesn't like outside. Poor Rob. I don't think we'll be doing any more hill walking together.

Rob likes rain and I like rain too, especially being inside and warm and listening to a thunderstorm outside, though I'm mostly sunshine powered. Rob survives sunshine, armed with a big hat and 50+ SPF. We'll weather the weather together.

Eurovision!

2009-05-16T13:08:00.002+01:00

Tonight is Debs' annual birthday celebration and Eurovision party. Since her birthday is on 18 May, she almost always organises a party to coincide with watching the Eurovision song contest. I haven't been able to make it for years for one reason or another, but this year, I'll be there.

Everyone who's coming gets a country to represent by wearing a costume and bringing food to represent their country. My country is Israel, so I'm taking falafels and hummous and wearing a tea-towel headdress and carrying a sheep (think nativity play shepherds). Should be fun. I'm sure there will be photos.

baby steps

2009-05-12T13:05:00.003+01:00

I went to the library and it was OK. I haven't done any proper studying in ages. I've been meaning to ease myself back into it for ages but this was the first time I've actually managed it.

Today I set myself three goals:

To spend at least an hour in the library doing useful things (i.e. not facebook, email etc)

To read through the last pieces of work I did (dissertation proposal and a critical review essay), including my tutor's comments (I handed them last September and even when I got them back I didn't have the courage to look at anything beyond the numerical marks).

To find two articles or books to read which would be helpful.

I managed all three. My dissertation proposal actually made some sense to me, which was comforting, although it was different from the way I've been describing my dissertation to people for the last year or so. The project I've outlined looks do-able and is less focused on Dawkins and his ilk than I'd remembered. (This was one of the things I was dreading about getting back to it). My tutor had made some useful suggestions for things to read, so I came home with Bahktin's The Dialogic Imagination (which looks pretty dense, but I should have a go) and a Foucault Reader, including his essay What is an Author?, which is relatively short and I think I may have read it before.

It may not sound like much, but it was an achievement to get to the library at all, let alone read things. I felt a bit panicky before I went and I'm still a bit tense now, but I feel like I've made the first, very tiny, step towards completing my dissertation. I am setting myself the goal for the rest of May of doing an hour's work on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, either in the library or reading at home. This afternoon I'm going to make the wall planner I promised in my last post, so I can tick off the days and see how I'm progressing.

plodding

2009-05-07T10:12:00.003+01:00

Plodding is what I aspire to at the moment. I seem to be rushing rather than plodding much of the time. Today, I have some unexpected extra time thanks to my usual Thursday afternoon activity being cancelled. I think I shall do what I've been meaning to do for a while and go to the library and do some lit searching for my dissertation research.

I should also make myself a wall planner so I can see the upcoming weeks and months and make plans for them.

monstering

2009-04-21T09:06:00.002+01:00

Me and my Rob, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

Me and my Rob in the sunshine.

surrounded by weddings

2009-04-20T20:03:00.003+01:00

Here comes another one. Debs' wedding is barely passed and I'm getting ready for another one. My landlord, Ben, is getting married on Saturday and the house is a whirl of activity and packing. His parents have arrived to stay for the week, there are wedding cakes to be iced and all sorts of things to be done. I'm not complaining. It's fun. I'm going to at least two more weddings this summer, but not until August.

I've got a dress to finish if I'm going to wear it on Saturday. It's mostly done, just the (time-consuming) hand-sewing bits to be done.

HP was here over the weekend. I think she had a good time, mostly. We did a little bit of wedding planning and made plans for what we should do with all the pom poms we've been creating. Many more needed!

I am tired again. (Is that news? Maybe you just take it as read.) I'm gradually cutting down on the fluoxetine I'm taking since I'm feeling much better and I'm fed up with the sleep disturbance and vivid dreams I'm having. So far, there's been little discernible effect on either my mood or sleep. I'm hoping for slow but steady change.

catching my breath

2009-04-17T22:12:00.002+01:00

Life's been a little hectic recently. There was New Word Alive, there was a wedding, there was Spring Harvest. This week, well the last three days (after getting back from SH on Tuesday afternoon) has felt like a breathing space. Before what, I wonder? HP's coming to visit for a few days tomorrow, I'm going to another wedding next weekend, going camping the weekend after that.

One of the things I thought I'd learnt last year was how to do less and be more. Reflecting on the last few months, I seem to have forgotten that lesson. I'm as busy as ever, and failing to find time for things that I want to do but find scary, like thinking about my future and preparing myself to go back to my dissertation.

On the upside, I am mostly happy. There are the odd blue days, like Thursday when I woke up from confusing dreams and felt grumpy and befuddled all morning. But I do know ways to cope now - like taking myself out for a bike ride to Beechwoods and talking to people. And there's Rob: just the thought of him makes me smile. :o)

I'd like to slow down and enjoy the ride a little more. Lots of lovely things are happening in my life and the lives of those around me and I want to spend time enjoying life and thanking God for all the good stuff. My resolution for 2009 was to have more fun, and so far, I'm keeping to that! I just need to make sure I take time out to breathe, reflect and be thankful.

Debs and Menard

2009-04-05T23:51:00.002+01:00

Debs and Menard: first dance, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

It's been a lovely day. Here are Debs and Menard in their first dance. Ah!

Must sleep now!

wedding bells!

2009-04-05T06:58:00.002+01:00

No not mine! My sister Debs is getting married today and I'm being a bridesmaid. Actually, bells are unlikely, as she's getting married in a cinema, where her church, Jubilee Church, Lee Valley, meet every Sunday. Debs and Menard and getting married as part of the Sunday morning service. It's going to be fun!

Saturday, saturday, what shall I do today?

2009-03-28T10:23:00.002Z

Morning world! It's Saturday morning. It's raining. Rob's coming round soon. I need to go food shopping, Rob probably needs to go suit shopping. We're off to New World Alive on Monday. I need to make cake by then (probably chocolate brownies).

This has been a long week. I was ill-ish at the beginning of the week - a cold, probably caught off Rob, but it made me feel awful and very tired. Still, I managed to go home to London to do useful things like buy bridesmaids' dresses for Debs' wedding on 5th April.

I feel in need of a break. I hope Word Alive will be that, though I suspect it will be very tempting to go to lots of meetings and get no sleep. Not a brilliant idea, really. I shall have to make sure I get enough sleep. Still, I'm looking forward to spending lots of time with Rob and learning from God together.

I'm trying to think of some aspect of my life that isn't connected with Rob, but apparently I can't. I didn't want to become one of those girls who gets a boyfriend and suddenly has no time for anything else, but it seems I may have done. I'm sorry, my lovely friends! I do still love you and once I'm back from Word Alive and Debs' wedding is out of the way, oh and maybe Spring Harvest too, I shall try to plan in more time with friends. :o)

Wednesday again?

2009-03-18T08:57:00.002Z

Hello there! It's Wednesday again and I haven't posted for a week. Life is going by in a bit of a blur at the moment and will probably continue to do so, what with a part time job, a boyfriend, two sisters' weddings to help organise, an MA dissertation to think about (if not actually start on yet), post viral fatigue still making itself a nuisance and umpteen other things to do. I need to practise saying no to stuff!

Still, I like having things to do, even if I get tired. I'm having fun. (And I am getting to bed at reasonable times, mostly.)

Spring has arrived! Hooray! And the clocks change soon. The time change will probably throw me out for a while, it usually does at the best of times, but I know that and can prepare by getting plenty of sleep.

On with the day.

My Rob!

2009-03-11T14:58:00.003Z

Blogging has been a little quiet of late, and this man is the reason why.

This is Rob. We 'met' when he left a very long comment on my post about dating. We exchanged many many long emails, I found and read his blog and liked what I read. We met IRL for the first time at the City Church Ceilidh on Saturday ~~30th~~ 31st January and got on very well! So well, that we started going out the very next day.

So far, it's lovely! I met Rob's family the weekend before last and they like me. Rob met a lot of my family all at once this last weekend and not only survived that ordeal, but enjoyed seeing HP in Yeoman of the Guard. My family like Rob too.

We are in love and very happy! :o)

Is this thing on?

2009-03-03T15:55:00.002Z

My blog seems not to be showing anything on the front page. If this appears, it's working.

ETA: Now all is well again. Weird. Oh well, it proves I'm not dead.

Friday things

2009-02-27T22:47:00.002Z

Today I had a meeting with someone who pronounces innovative in-NOH-vat-ive. Weird.

Today I ate peanut lasagne for the first time. It was pretty good, though Ben thought it would taste even better without chickpeas in.

Today, I didn't get to bed very early. Not that I exactly tried very hard.

Tomorrow, I am meeting some people on whom I would to make a good impression. Possibly I should therefore have made more of an effort to get good sleep.

Today, I am happy. Tomorrow I expect to be happy, if a little nervous.

Happy weekend!

lazy sheep

2009-02-18T09:38:00.001Z

lazy sheep, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I had a lovely Valentine's Day. I saw sheep and pigs and donkeys and rabbits and cows.

It was a good day.

sometimes life trumps blogging

2009-02-09T22:33:00.002Z

This is one of those times. I am happy. Lots of lovely things have happened in the last week and a bit. Maybe I'll tell the blog about them, maybe I won't.

Today has been a cold sort of Monday. Cold and damp. I spent the afternoon tucked up in the warm reading Permutation City which, so far, is interesting. Tonight was Rev in a freezing cold Trinity chapel. Singing is always fun, but we were all fairly chilly by the end of the evening.

Tomorrow is a day off, which will probably get filled up with useful things like washing, with a fun evening to look forward to. Yay for friends!

the weather continues fine

2009-02-04T20:24:00.003Z

Actually it doesn't, we've had snow and cold and nastiness. But yesterday was sunny and gorgeous and full of lovely things.

Today I saw a fox on the way home from work. I went the back way from the station, over the cycle bridge and then down the alley ways parallel to Mill Road. The fox was ahead of me in the last alley way. I thought it was a cat at first, but then I saw the ears and the white-tipped brush tail. I think it's the first fox I've seen in Cambridge. I used to see (mangy and unhealthy looking) foxes around the streets of Walthamstow (like the one Debs saw) but this one was rather more glossy and alert. Cambridge is obviously a nicer place to be a fox!

Where is this week going? It's flying past! I'm looking forward to lots of fun things this weekend and, I hope, in the days to come. Right now, life is good!

sleepy Monday

2009-02-02T16:25:00.002Z

I've had a lovely weekend. Though I could do with a little more sleep. The ceilidh I went to on Saturday night has left my legs achy and stiff. I'm clearly not as fit as I could be!

Still, aches and sleepiness aside, I am very happy. :o)

paint box

2009-01-29T22:20:00.002Z

Today I discovered that I prefer painting in watercolours to painting in acrylics. I like the subtlety and delicacy of watercolours to the brashness of acrylics. With watercolours, you can lay down washes and build up colour slowly, or let colours seep into one another. You don't have to be definite, if you don't want to, and you can easily wash one colour off your brush and pick up a new one.

I used to paint a lot in watercolours, usually drawing an outline in pencil and then colouring it in with paint. Today, that seems too definite. I'd rather start with the brush and a pale colour and see what happens. I can always make it darker, or wash it into even paler, or even wait until it's dry and paint over the top.

I am wondering what this says about me. Perhaps that I like subtlety. That I like starting small and getting bigger. That I like to be sure of the direction before I move, rather than jumping in with both feet. Hmm.

drifting

2009-01-28T23:29:00.003Z

I feel like I'm drifting along through life at the moment. I'm not planning anything, it's just happening. I'm not sure that's a good thing. I'm drifting through work. It's OK, but I don't want to do it forever. I don't know what I do what to do though and I'm not particularly doing anything to work it out.

My course is drifting. It is officially on hold, but if I want to finish it, I need to get back into the habit of studying, starting by teaching myself how to read properly again. And if I'm going to finish my dissertation, ever, I probably need a plan of how that's going to happen.

My weight's drifting upwards, gradually, but inexorably and I don't seem to be able to muster the will power to do anything about it for more than half a day at a time.

I don't feel able to plan. I'm living week to week, financially, never quite sure how much work I'm going to do and therefore how much money I'll earn. I'm just about OK, but it's easy to imagine sudden emergencies for which there's no slack.

There's no end goal, no time line. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm fighting wars on several fronts at once, trying to deal with stuff the last year has brought to the surface. It feels like there are too many things for one person to deal with all at once. Plus there are plenty of other people around who need looking after.

Oh dear, I seem to have made myself sad. :o( What on earth am I doing in this mess and how do I find my way out of it?

Monday morning strikes again

2009-01-26T08:23:00.002Z

Ben loves Mondays. He's always happy and excited about getting back to work.

Poppy loves Mondays. She has a day off since she works on Sunday.

Bekki does not love Mondays quite so much. She has to get up and go to work. It is, however, only a morning (10-2) at work. And there's Rev to look forward to in the evening.

on dating (or the lack of it)

2009-01-25T19:50:00.005Z

So, I'm single. (You don't have to read this blog for very long to find that out). And I'm thinking I'd quite like to do something about that. And I haven't got a clue what to do. In yesterday's Guardian, there was a guide to dating (which, cynically viewed, is an extended advert for their Soulmates site) which made some interesting reading. I've never done 'dating'. Well, I've never really had a love life which existed outside my head. No, that's a bit harsh. But there's been a lot of unrequited longing and the occasional attempt to do something about it, all of which ended in disappointment of one sort or another.

I tried speed dating in October 2007. It was an experience. Not necessarily one I wanted to repeat. I'm glad I did it, but it's not exactly fun, trying to make a decision on a bloke in 3 minutes and knowing he's doing exactly the same with you. It probably didn't help that I was among the youngest there and most of the guys were a good 10 years older than me. Not that's necessarily a problem. I just didn't hit it off with any of the guys I met.

Last year, I wasn't terribly sociable. Being single was one of the many things that bothered me, but I knew I wasn't really in a fit state to do anything about it. Now, I'm feeling better. Mostly. A bit more confident on a good day, at least, and wanting to do something. Yes, the fact that both of my sisters are attached probably has something to do with that. And the fact that I'm not terribly good at waiting and want to make things happen. But, what can I do?

I feel like I have no idea. It's the eternal cry of the single Christian woman that there are no single Christian men, but I don't think that's entirely true. My main problem is not so much finding a man, but what to do if and when I do find someone I'm interested in. I have no idea how to go from being friendly and smiley to making it clear I'm interested in seeing if there's something more between us. I suppose I could say it in English with words, but I'm so expectant of rejection that that feels too scary. (Yes, I know that attitude's wrong, I'm working on it with God's help.) I can do friendships with guys (mostly. Occasionally there's had to be some negotiation of the boundaries. Mostly when I'm interested and they're not. (I can't think of a single successful friendship where it's been the other way round. I can, though, think of some guys I wasn't interested in who I put down pretty ungraciously. If any of them are reading, I apologise. Hmm, I think I've got a lot to learn from some of my lovely Christian brothers)). Anyway, you can't survive as a female physicist without learning to be friends with men. But I don't know how to go from friend to potential girlfriend. I think the idea of being attractive scares me.

So, right, where does that leave me? With no idea of what to do. Any suggestions? Any single male Christian friends you can set me up with? (Preferably local, rather than say, across the Atlantic). Anyone out there want to say hello?

learning to read

2009-01-24T22:36:00.005Z

I don't remember learning how to read. I just did. I remember reading Spot books to myself before I went to school and I remember coming home from school with my first reading book ("The big red lorry went up the hill..."). I've always been a book worm, always the one tucked away in a corner, lost in a book. I read voraciously, anything and everything, had the usual phase of finding a book I loved and then seeking out everything by the same author. I think when I went to secondary school, my first method of assessing the school library was to find out how many P G Wodehouse books they had that I hadn't already read.

I carried on reading. I didn't plan to take English Literature A-Level, but when I picked it up a month into sixth form, I discovered I'd read more over the summer than people who had planned to take it, which made me wonder why I hadn't thought of it in the first place. I loved English and the lessons kept me sane through my A-levels. They were discursive and thought-provoking in a way that Maths, Physics and Chemistry just weren't.

I read less during my Physics degree. There just wasn't time in term, but I did still read lots in the holidays. I wrote some poems then too, even got elected JCR Poet Laureate for a year.

Jump forward a few years, and I started studying with the Open University while working. At first, just for fun, but as I started to find my feet and get into the course, studying literature become something I loved doing and was good at, something I wanted to pursue more seriously.

But something changed as I studied. By my third year of OU, a sort of panic was beginning to set in whenever I had to read for study, especially text books. I'd look at a page and find myself speeding up, getting faster and faster and more panicky, wondering how much I much I was taking in. I rarely read anything that wasn't for my course, and when I did, I felt guilty about it. I dismissed the panic as pressure of time. After all, I was also working full time and studying had to get squeezed in between working and the rest of life. I'd work in short bursts, often relying on the pressure of an approaching deadline to get myself motivated to write.

When I left work to start my MA, I initially enjoyed the freedom to read. My course texts were varied and interesting, especially the 20th century ones. I tried reading Ulysses in one day (didn't make it, but got quite a good way through), read in the library, at home, in bed, at work while waiting for videos to process. It was fun. But the panic was still there, especially when I sat down to write an essay. I sailed closer and closer to the wind with my deadlines, producing things at the very last minute, and always conscious that they weren't as good as I wanted them to be.

By the time I got really ill, books just weren't working anymore. Although I did read (and love) Bleak House during a week in bed, that was probably the last time I managed to read something complex. A few weeks after that, I couldn't read, couldn't think coherently, couldn't do anything much. Somehow, over the summer, I managed to read and write enough to produce an essay on The Water Babies, a review and a dissertation proposal. I'm not entirely sure how. As my ability to concentrate came back, I read a bit - mostly detective stories, old favourites, the odd bit of fantasy fiction and not too taxing comic fiction. I'm not sure how I'd define it. Not quite chick lit. The sort of novels with tragi-comic families and adolescent heroines. Lots of Kate Atkinson. I didn't feel up to tackling anything big, say, Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy, which I've wanted to complete reading since I studied The Ghost Road in my OU course, or Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day, which has been sat on my to-read pile since I found it second-hand, or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which I've been halfway through for over a year. There are lots of books I've started and failed to finish - Nights at the Circus, Lud-in-the-Mist, A Confederacy of Dunces, all of which sat by my bed for months, waiting for me to feel up to reading them again.

I still don't. There are signs of hope. I read Coraline in one go on a train journey at the beginning of January. I'm slowly working my way through Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, when I'm not feeling too sad to read it. But I haven't yet approached anything relevant to my MA, or even re-read my dissertation proposal, or properly read the marker's comments. I'm scared. Scared that I'll never re-capture my love of reading. Scared that some part of my identity is gone forever. Scared of pushing myself too hard and becoming ill again. I know I need to retrain my brain to concentrate and that I can't go straight back to tackling big serious books again, but I don't quite know where to start. I'm also not very motivated to get back to my dissertation. The topic is too close to my heart. There are too many aspects of it that are important to me, that I want to get right and say something worth saying and thought-provoking about, and yet I'm also sick of it because I've been living with those same issues for the past three years and I'd really rather do something else, that mattered less. I don't know whether to give it up; pick another dissertation topic (if I can) or just plough on through the difficulties. I feel like I could do with a reading coach. My supervisor, I suppose, might fulfill that role, but I'm scared of her. And I'm not good at asking for help.

I don't really know what to do. Pray, and live and try to do what I can. And ask God to help me conquer my fears.

mellow Friday night

2009-01-23T18:01:00.004Z

It's been a funny week. I was in a pretty bad mood for most of it. Sad and not really sure why, if not actually bad tempered. Today I'm fine, happy even, despite a pretty long day of taking minutes for meetings. No idea what made the difference. Which probably proves just how subjective feelings are and how little relationship they can have to reality.

I was going to go out to see some contemporary dance this evening, but I'm not really awake enough. Instead, I shall stay in and relax.

Nothing very profound to say.

I love the sound of a guitarist's fingers squeaking on frets.

29 going on 30? 17? 22? 5?

2009-01-21T22:32:00.004Z

I've been watching 13 Going on 30, which is very silly, but got me thinking about what it means to be grown up. It was rather comforting to be watching something where 30 is the ultimate age of sophistication and grown-up-ness. I'm going to be 30 in October, and it's scaring me a little.

There's all those things you expect to have done by the time you're 30. Got married (nope), bought a house (er, no and not likely to, judging by current house prices), had a child or two (see above), launched oneself into a glittering career (not really. Unless by career you mean headlong out of control rush with no clear direction). In the film Jenna Rink wishes to be "thirty, flirty and thriving!" And she gets what she wishes for. Of course, one of the points of the story is that the person she's become to get exactly what she wants isn't someone she recognises or even likes. She's dumped her best friend for the in-crowd and built a career out of back-stabbing and bitching. All that apparently good stuff came at a price she comes to realise wasn't worth it.

So where does that leave me? What did I wish for aged 13? I honestly don't think I ever thought beyond going to university, meeting my husband and starting a family. I thought there'd be a job somewhere in there, probably in physics (aged 13, I think I wanted to be a quantum physicist) but I wasn't really bothered about what it was, or whether it paid well or not. Sometimes I feel like I've failed on all fronts. I didn't meet the man of my dreams at university (not the first time, or the second time or the third time). I didn't get a job in physics and right now I'm a temp, with no clue where she's going next.

On the other hand, I'm still me. I think my 13 year old self would recognise me and like me. Maybe she'd be surprised at my confidence (on a good day) and some of the things I'd done. Maybe she'd be sad that I'm still single. I don't know.

I do know that jobs and possessions and husbands aren't the measure of maturity. That's a pretty hard thing to hold onto when rather a lot of the world around you is telling you that they are. I'm not always sure what is. What do I mean by mature? Do I mean being taken seriously as an adult person? Yes, probably. Sometimes I feel about 15. Or 21, newly graduated and applying for my first job. Or 7. (Especially when choosing clothes. I think I have the dress sense of a small child. When I'm relaxed and happy that's a good thing: when I'm trying to look professional for work, less so). I don't quite expect people to think of me as an adult, when an adult in my mind is probably someone with a proper job, a spouse, a house, a car. But actually, lots of 'proper grown-ups' I know don't have all or any of those things. They do have the ability to take on responsibility for themselves and for others and confidence in who they are.

I'm reading Hebrews at the moment and this morning I got to this: "But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil" (Hebrews 5:14, ESV). That's a totally different definition of maturity. Not about stuff, not even about how old you are, but about how tuned in you are to what is good and of God and what is not. Am I mature in that sense, the one that counts? Like everyone, I'm a work in progress. Am I more mature than I was? Yes, I think so. But I've still got a long way to go.

So, how grown up am I? Sometimes, not very. At my most vulnerable, hardly more than a kid. When I'm relaxed and happy, a giggly teenager. Sometimes, on a very good day, a sophisticated 20-something, soon to be 30-something. Mostly, I don't know. But I'm still growing and still learning to love being me.

time for new music?

2009-01-19T17:53:00.003Z

I have not bought any new music in over a year*. My CD player broke in January 2006 and somehow I never got round to buying a new one. And there wasn't much point buying CDs with nothing to play them on. Then I got a laptop, but little tinny speakers aren't the same as big ones. And then I got ill and depressed and wasn't interested in much. But now I'm feeling better and I have a CD player again (courtesy of the previous inhabitant of my current room) and the hi-fi system in the living room has a handy audio cable to connect up laptops to. So, I'm thinking it's time to buy music again. (Not that I have any money, but we'll let that go).

So what should I listen to? Any recommendations?

Things I like:
Belle and Sebastian (I'm a sucker for stories and vignettes and I love the way their arrangements are sweet without being twee.)
The Divine Comedy (I could listen to Neil Hannon sing anything.)
Interesting 20th century classical music. I had a bit of a Kurt Weil phase.
Ella Fitzgerald (I'd love to sing like her)
Blur (and most things involving Damon Albarn)
Ben Folds (more vignettes and wit and piano amazingness)
Bjork (bonkers but brilliant. Medulla is spine tinglingly beautiful)

Things I don't like:
Twee female singer/songwriters - Joanna Newsome, Feist, anything involving skipping and fluffiness and fragile blondeness. (Not quite sure why. I think it just sets my teeth on edge like too much sugar)
Europop
Dance/trance/all those sorts of music that sound computer generated and moronic but I can't keep track of their names anymore. Maybe to dance to in the right setting, but not to listen to. Not that I'm opposed to electronica, more that I don't like the sort of things that get called 'club anthems' and boom out all summer from boy racers' cars.

Things I thought I liked, but got sick of:
Sufjan Stevens (I bought and initially like Seven Swans, but after a while got completely sick of it)
Guitar bands. Maybe I'm growing out of them. I have in my collection and sometimes still listen to Athlete, the Bluetones, Space, Franz Ferdinand. (Though FF probably should be in the top list).

Things I think I like, but don't know much about:
Northern soul
Jazz - the sorts of things that involve tunes. Not trad, not dixieland, occasionally big band and swing, anything singable, I can just about recognise a Miles Davis track on a good day. Jazz is like poetry, in that I'm intrigued, but a bit intimidated by it.

Random CDs I have in my collection but am not sure if I like or not:
Tom Waits - Alice (I listened to it once, it scared me, then my CD player broke)
The Fall - 50000 Fall fans can't be wrong (Bought under the influence of watching The Manchester Passion)
Aimee Mann - Lost in Space (I can't remember why. After watching Magnolia probably)
Tori Amos - To Venus and Back (Bought for Cornflake Girl, but very rarely listened to)

*Almost true. Actually I bought a Guillemots album on iPlayer just before Christmas. And a few random songs I was learning for a gig in October. And Tchiakovsky's Liturgy of St Chrysostom in about May.

hmm

2009-01-12T19:35:00.003Z

Might have spoken too soon about the back. It's hurting again. But something was happening when I was being prayed for.

Work's OK, though I often feel like I'm bluffing my way through. Still, it's going well. Someone told me today they were bit a scared because they'd heard I was very efficient. So I must be doing something right. The people thinking I'm efficient bit, not the people being scared of me bit. I'd rather people weren't scared of me.

I do need more sleep. Is it too early to sleep yet? Maybe I'll curl up in bed with a book. Or a radio play. Or a DVD. Or some knitting.

good things

2009-01-11T20:43:00.004Z

Thursday's depression lifted after a great prayer meeting and lots of prayer and hugs. Friday was a bit fraught in the morning, but got better once I'd got through work, rushed around packing and got on a train to Oxford.

I went to Oxford for a Gaudy and had a lovely time. It was odd to be back in college; I haven't really been back since I left, well apart from my two graduations (Yes, Oxford's weird. That's why we love it.) But all the other people were familiar faces and the whole evening was about catching up with what everyone's been doing for the past few years and being nostalgic for our student days. In some ways I felt just the same, but in others I knew I'd changed. I felt more confident and more sure of who I am. I didn't really mind what people what of what I was doing now, it just good to see them again. (And I was wearing a gorgeous dress, which is always a confidence booster!)

The moon on Saturday night was surrounded by a beautiful rainbow halo.

I had lunch in G&Ds on Saturday. I was supposed to be meeting up with a friend (V), but the thing about G&Ds is that there are now three of them. (There was only one in my day, the second opened up just after I left and the third about a year ago). I suggested one, but we hadn't finalised it. So I went to the first (and oldest) one. No V. So I sat inside and had a hot chocolate to warm up, but after half an hour, still nothing. So I walked down to other end of town, reasoning that maybe if she'd gone there and realised I wasn't there she might have started off towards where I was and we'd meet up on the way. But I got all the way there and still no V. I have idea what happened (and now her facebook account seems to have disappeared, so I'm puzzled. V, where are you?). So I decided to give up and have lunch alone. And then I noticed that sitting next to my table was someone I'd met once and had been sort of trying to arrange to meet. So I introduced myself and we chatted and it was fun. So I dunno what that's about, but coincidences are a lovely thing.

I went to Emmanuel this morning, which was great - really friendly and just felt like home. (And several people seemed to know who I was before I introduced myself, which I suspect is a direct result of telling the legend that is Bryan McGill that I was planning to visit). And I got prayed for and I think God might have healed my back! Wow! I'll see what it's like over the next few days.

C and I went for a walk in the grounds of Blenheim Palace on Saturday afternoon. Everything was covered in frost, every blade of grass, every twig of every tree. It was magical. Too beautiful to photograph. In fact I failed to take any photos this weekend. Sometimes it feels like fishing around for a camera would spoil the moment and I'd rather look around carefully and remember. There were lots of moments like that this weekend.

:o)

today's things

2009-01-08T18:27:00.003Z

I wish I listened to myself more.

It's easy to feel better for a few days, decide I'm fine, do lots of things and then find myself back to collapsing in a heap again.

Which is what happened. I did a whole day at work yesterday, which wore me out and I've been tired and low all day as a result.

I am feeling very single today and not in a good way. It didn't help that I was all alone last night AND there was a power cut and I got to eat my dinner by candle light. All alone. :-( I didn't even have a friendly housemate to share the fun with. And I read more of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which made me want to cry*. And it would have been lovely to have someone to give me a hug and make it better. I did have a chat on facebook with an old friend, which was a good thing too. Not as good as a hug, but friendly.

I am not doing at all well on the eating front. Not really trying. It's not like I haven't got a pretty good reason to lose weight (HP's wedding in August) I just can't get myself convinced I can do it. I need to kick comfort eating for a start. I know this. I've got a strategy for doing it. I need to convince myself I can do it, with God's help. And that I want to.

Am I stopping myself finding a man? What's wrong with me? I'm still trying to deal with one of the strategies I think I've been using to keep myself safe from the prospect of a relationship. (The pig and her hook. I'm not going to explain more than that.) I want to be in a relationship, but I seem to be too scared or too afraid of hard work or too something, (I don't know what, on a bad day too weird and ugly, on a good day I know that's not true) to actually make that a reality. I say there are no men. Is that really true? Do I need to look harder? Be less picky? Chill out and stop scaring them away? Arrrgh!

Today, insects seem to be waking up. There was a fly buzzing round the room this afternoon, which was pretty annoying. When I got home, there was a small winged thing crawling around on my computer. I think it might actually have crawled inside the keyboard. Grr.

It's been a bad day. I hope tomorrow is better. I'm doing another long day at work, but I need to leave in time to get home and then get to the station to catch a train to Oxford. I'm off to a Gaudy (college reunion) and catching up with some old friends. I'm planning to go to Emmanuel Church on Sunday morning. Look out for me if you're there!

*Which is, I suppose, progress in a way. I used to be a little proud of never crying at films or books, but after having had several months of being unable to cry, broken by a weekend of howling, I'm beginning to think I was actually very cut off from my emotions and that I'm now able to be touched by other people's sadness, even fictional sadness, is a good thing.

bored = getting better?

2009-01-06T09:01:00.001Z

Well. I got bored yesterday. I didn't know what to do with myself in the afternoon, after a morning at work. I ended up doing some tidying and watching stuff on iPlayer. Which was a short term solution, but perhaps I need to find some better solutions.

My work hours are going to be fairly regular for the next few months, so I should be able to get until a routine and do some useful things as well as work. Like getting some exercise and maybe even doing some reading. (I read a book in bed last night! 15 pages or so of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.) I'm trying to get myself back into the habit of reading. I'd like to start doing some dissertation relevant reading, though the idea scares me a bit at the moment. I don't quite know where to start. But there's no hurry and if I can do a little bit now and then, all the little bits will add up.

I feel a lot better than I was a few months ago, though I still seem to need lots of sleep. (Though I'm probably still catching up from the weekend). I need to be careful though and not try to do too much. It's easy to feel better for a few days, decide I'm fine, do lots of things and then find myself back to collapsing in a heap again.

I suspect January doesn't help. It's so cold! The biting wind doesn't make one inclined to get out of the house. Must wrap up warm and brave the weather. And look forward to spring.

goodbye 2008, hello 2009

2009-01-01T01:28:00.002Z

Bye 2008. You were interesting. Pretty horrible in bits, too much depression and sadness and serious introspection. On the other hand, I did learn a lot about myself and about God. And there were good bits too - friends and holidays and fun and laughter.

2009 - I'm looking forward to good things in you. This year, I would like to have lots of fun and laughter!

Happy New Year everyone! May your 2009 be filled with wonderful and awesome people, events and experiences!

home again and about to move

2008-12-30T22:22:00.002Z

Whew! I'm back in Cambridge after Christmas with one set of grandparents, followed by a few days with the other set. I got back this afternoon with Debs and HP who graciously agreed to help me pack and move house. I'm moving again, not too far away. Some of my stuff got shifted this afternoon, but there's still at least a couple of car loads to go. I hate packing, but fortunately Debs likes it (and is very good at it. Thanks for the a-sister-ance!). I do like unpacking. I'm looking forward to organising my stuff into a new place.

Before that, sleep, New Year's Eve celebrations, a New Year's day walk. Funness!

Good night!

Christmas Eve Eve

2008-12-23T20:46:00.004Z

That was cryptic, wasn't it? No, I'm not explaining. Just things that popped into my head that I wanted to record.

Today was been a good day. I spent most of it working through steps to Freedom in Christ. Lots of praying and renouncing stuff and forgiving people. It feels like God's lifted a huge weight off me and I feel relaxed and free. And very tired. :o)

This evening I've been out to run errands and meet knitters in the pub. Now I'm sitting in my room listening to carols on the radio and contemplating packing. Tomorrow I'm off on the train to join my parents and sisters at my Grandparents' house and the day after that, it's Christmas day!

Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas!

tales I could tell but probably won't

2008-12-22T21:03:00.002Z

The frightened pig and the man who peeled mushrooms

The confused pig, the sea urchin and the egg-head

The pig, the acrobat and the Tigger who saved the day

The pig who walked by herself and fell over

The pig, her hook and how she got unhooked

The pig and her friends

How the pig learned to fly

well well well

2008-12-22T16:06:00.002Z

So here we are at Monday again. I am really very tired. Too much fun. I went to a party Friday night, Nathan was here over the weekend, church carol service was last night.

I'd happily curl up and go to sleep, but I'm hoping the anti-squirrel man might turn up soon.

I had my hair cut. Maybe I'll show you.

I've been watching repeats of the last series of Doctor Who. Christmas special soon, yay!

what day is it?

2008-12-18T09:11:00.003Z

I'm losing track of what day it is. I keep being a day out. Last night I was fairly sure it was going to be Friday when I got up again. Alas, no.

I do know it's a week until Christmas! And that this is my penultimate day at work before Christmas. And that the weekend (beginning with Friday) will be filled with fun things.

This cold's still dragging on. I think it's contributing to the feeling of timelessness. I slept through the night last night which was a lovely thing. For someone's who's recovering from post-viral fatigue and also has a cold, I think I'm doing pretty well. There were almost tears between work and an evening do yesterday, because I felt so tired and didn't want to go out again, but when I did, I enjoyed myself. And I got home at a reasonable hour and went straight to bed with hot lemon and honey.

These diary posts aren't exactly thrilling, are they? I wish I had more exciting/profound/amusing things to say, but I just don't at the moment. I'm not reading any books, not doing much other than sleeping, eating, working, knitting, seeing friends.

Talking of books, can anyone lend me Little Dorrit over Christmas? I loved the BBC version and would like to read it. Or try. I'm hoping Dickens is escapist enough (and unlike Ian McEwan enough) for it not to cause me to panic.

Wednesday

2008-12-17T08:44:00.003Z

Yesterday went OK. The people who were supposed to turn up, turned up. There were no panics. Today I don't have to be in til lunch time.

Yesterday, the beasties in the loft were identified as squirrels. Which is sort of better and sort of worse than rats. I'd rather not have rats running about above our heads, but squirrels are harder to eradicate. Still, knowing your enemy is progress, I suppose.

Today, a man is here to fix the bathroom floor. Hooray! We've only got the one loo, so he's going to do his best to put it back in before he goes today. I do hope so. Eek!

Today it's not raining, though it looks cold. I am still coughing. I am not surprised, having learnt last week that the average cough lasts 21 days. I wish it would hurry up and go though.

what a girl wants, what a girl needs

2008-12-15T21:01:00.005Z

Things Bekki needs:

sleep

a haircut

food to take to a picnic (indoor obv.) tomorrow night

Things Bekki wants:

her cold to go away

her throat/ear/head to stop hurting

snow at Christmas

everything to go well at work tomorrow

chocolate

this week I have been mostly sneezing

2008-12-13T08:36:00.002Z

At least, that's how it feels. I've got the sniffly lurgey that's going around and I've spent the last couple of days lying on the settee feeling sorry for myself, producing large quantities of snotty tissues and watching stuff on iPlayer.

Last night, I slept well and didn't wake up at 3am like I have the last few nights. Hooray! I'm feeling a bit more alive this morning, though I'm still coughing and sniffling. I hope by tomorrow morning I'll be feeling even better and be ready to sing at church.

Christmas is coming up fast. One good thing about being ill is that I've had lots of time to knit, so my gift knitting is under control. Christmas shopping on the other hand, hasn't happened at all. I don't think I'm going to attempt any today - town will be packed. Maybe Monday.

And there are Christmas services next weekend to sing at and invite people to. And then it's Christmas proper. Yay!

frost and sunshine

2008-12-07T18:19:00.003Z

frost and sunshine, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I've been away for the weekend with lots of lovely people from my church. It was a wonderful time. I wasn't feeling very happy on Friday night and expected to spend a lot of the weekend crying. But God had other plans and instead I spent lots of time smiling and relaxing and being filled with peace.

This morning the frost was beautiful. I went out and took photos around the grounds of the place where we staying; details of leaves and views across the valley below. More on flickr.

splinter birds

2008-12-05T14:11:00.004Z

There's a tree in the next road over that's often full of magpies and sometimes jays. I like jays. They remind me of the Splinter Birds in Rebecca's World by Terry Nation. The splinter birds are extinct at the beginning; they're an almost mythical species of birds with long beaks who can be called upon to remove splinters from fingers. It's been a while since I read Rebecca's World (Memo to home: Can someone bring it when you next see me? It better not have gone in the great book clear out.) but I remember bits of it very clearly, especially the illustrations; Rebecca with her long curly hair and long ruffled dress with pockets, the shiny Mr Glister. At a time when I was far too scared to watch Dr Who, I think I read a Dr Who novel I found in the school library because it was also written by Terry Nation. (I wonder what it was?)

I still love fantasy stories. Not everything, but well crafted novels which draw you into a parallel or surreal world. Gormenghast, The Never-Ending Story, The Box of Delights, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (though probably the former more than the latter), Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams. (I think a taste for HHGG probably helped me survive years of male-dominated physics lectures and practicals. If you share geeky humour, you can fit in by being an honorary bloke.) I briefly considered doing an MA dissertation on Neil Gaiman and Hope Mirlees' Lud-in-the-Mist but decided I didn't really know enough about either.

I'm fond (possibly too fond) of escaping into books. I didn't like 'teenage fiction' when I was younger because it was to much like real life. I wanted my books to be unreal worlds, to take me away from the life I knew. In the last few months, I've gone back to that feeling. I've been avoiding serious hard work books (i.e. anything that might be relevant to my MA) and instead reading silly ones, detective stories, fantasy, children's books. Anything to escape. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

Footnote: While googling to find some explanatory links, I found this page which suggests Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris as a similar book. Er, how, exactly?

almost midnight

2008-12-04T23:57:00.002Z

I should be asleep. I'm sitting in bed, blogging. I was trying to be asleep, but too worked up about stuff to relax.

It's been another rollercoaster of a week. Yes, I know it's not over yet. But my working week is over.

I wish I were different. I wish the world were less screwed up. I wish people didn't hurt each other.

I'm going to lie in bed and read Psalms to get some perspective.

today I finished a camel

2008-12-02T17:25:00.002Z

completed camel, originally uploaded by the pig wot flies.

I didn't make the camel, but I did make the saddle and all the cargo.

It's December!

2008-12-01T22:35:00.002Z

Hmm, shall I stop this daily posting thing or not? Let's see how long it lasts.

I've been doing more singing at the Rev Christmas concert. Twas fun.

December always seems to creep up on me. I forget that it comes straight after November (despite the fact that it happens every year) and suddenly get surprised by the fact that it's December and not many weeks until Christmas. Yay! I like Christmas. But I do have a few things to do before then, like Christmas knitting and present shopping. And packing to do, and a conference to help organise and lots of other things too.

Better get to sleep then.

ooh look

2008-11-30T16:11:00.002Z

It's the last day of November! And I managed to post at least once every day. Yay me!

Though I don't think every post was exactly wonderfully contentful, I have enjoyed the challenge of finding things to write about. I'm going to aim to continue blogging regularly. Maybe not everyday, but more than the once a week or so I have been doing.

There's been rather a lot of soul-searching/moaning going on in the last month. That's because that's rather the way life is at the moment. Good things are happening too. I'm moving house sometime after Christmas. This is because my landlady's leaving the country next year, which is both exciting and sad, 'cos I'll miss her. I'm moving to my church small group leader's house, which feels like home already since I've been there at least once a week for the last 2 years or so. I have a temporary job at least until Christmas, possibly on into next year. It can't last forever though. I need to find something more permanent. I'm unlikely to go back to my MA in January. At the moment I'm assuming I'll restart it in September 2009, unless there's a good reason not to. My GP suggesting starting to limber up for study again by trying to read useful things for half an hour a day, or maybe half an hour a week at first to get my brain back in the habit of studying. There are lots of exciting changes happening or about to happen at church. Even if I don't know what I'm doing careerwise, I think I'm in the right place at the moment with church and friends.

I don't know what 2009 is going to bring. I hope it's going to be good.