ein kleines nachtlicht

puppy training

1. On thursday evenings I go to puppy training classes with my puppy.  The only thursday it isn’t on is the second thursday in the month.  Nevertheless I went yesterday because I have lost my functioning mind and even though I write these things down I forget that I have and don’t look.
2. Still it’s an interesting drive along narrow country roads without street-lighting but also without traffic. I passed but one vehicle. It is Extremely Dark. That is until the village of Bishop’s Canning where they illuminate their church and the spire suddenly appears on the right (going to puppy training) and it’s horribly eery.
3. It giveth me the heebie-jeebies and I have to drive with eyes left so I can’t see it, so affected by its loominess and malevolence am I.
4. Because there was no puppy training last night (must have been the second thursday in the month), and the village hall was occupied by elderly men with important looking folders all sat in a ring (no idea, you?), I had to about turn and head back home.  The church is not so spooky this way.  In fact isn’t it funny that the same road looks completely different going the other way? This is true of all roads in my experience. I can’t find my way back from somewhere just because I’ve got there.  It looks nothing like the same in reverse. Anyway said church doesn’t bother me so much going home and I don’t get that awful adrenaline rush that catching sight of it engenders going the other way. It is a huge church though, for titchy village and it would put me off living there.  Perhaps they light it like that to keep the inmates inside at night.
5. I don’t have a 5.
6. For the fun of it ...

Extremely Dark (NASA)

Photo taken by Cmdr Hadfield aboard the ISS

You should all follow him on @cmdr_hadfield

incredible photos and an extremely interesting man.

I am sailing ...

So busy have I been, clinging to the wreckage of my previous life, that I failed to realise that what I have here is a pretty good raft. 

Furthermore, I, and only I, have the tiller. 

It was quite a light bulb moment. 

So without further ado I shall be sailing my raft just where the fuck I please and there's no-one  (ha!) to stop me! 

Look at me will you, past 2 in the morning and I'm up. And only the dogs are confused. (Poetic licence for have gone to bed without me).

(Why didn't anyone tell me I was allowed to be free?)

🎶

...

Melvyn Bragg talks too quickly on the radio. Funnily enough it's not so noticeable on the television, nor is the annoying timbre of his voice. I must remember to turn him off next time and not just listen getting annoyed. It's not good for my SW!

soul less ... is more ...

Sorry, I haven't really moved on with this preoccupation with the business of spiritual wellbeing and souls.  Please just ignore me as I think, a tricky business, aloud.  While my subconsious mind machinates on the concept of "I think therefore I am" where the assumption "I am" is a different entity to the physical me, let me ask you if you watched sex-on-legs Prof Cock explain the Wonders of Life? I'm quite happy to believe I'm just a cascade of protons but what about that dragonfly eh? What is the point of metamorphosis?  I'm not talking Kafka here I'm talking caterpillars, tadpoles and the like. They exist happily in these states, successful life achieved, why the change into something completely different?  It's bound to be something to do with sex, it always is, but it must surely have been as easy to evolve reproductive capabilities as a caterpillar, as the massive change to a dragon/butter fly? Well obviously not ... Think I'll have a look what Prof Google has to say about the evolutionary process of the dragonfly.  Excuse me just a moment I will return...

Ok, not so much sex as flying, try telling that to the amphibians.

Here if you're interested.

So back to this, my naive outlook on souls /spirits. I have to take you round the houses a bit here because this thought process involved a conversation I was having with the lady who very kindly drives me to the hospice where I have art therapy - this is therapy not because I'm about to croak, but because I was and now I'm not, well not in the immediate now unless I fall under a bus, the kind of thing that can happen to anyone careless enough to be looking the wrong way. Although living as I do in a small village, buses are a rarity, it would more likely be a tractor...

... I was describing to this kind and long-suffering lady a soulless building. Not devoid of people, but devoid of character, faceless, dead and cold. Ah ha! Thunk I, I can apprciate the concept of soul - less, so by definition and logical conclusion I must know what I think soul is! It's an uphill struggle I know, I feel your pain.

I'm going with 'soul' incidentally because 'spiritual' is too intertwined and messed up with religion in my head and I can't convince myself that a set of rules and practices invented by mankind can have anything whatsoever to do with life, the universe and everything.  And Tim who knows everything and uses long words says they're the same. Where was I? Oh yes our internal, if not eternal, souls.

Back to the beginning then, where we were thinking therefore we were, what were we? Well for want of a better word, a soul. Our thoughts and emotions expressing themselves as our character and personality, shaped by external influences for sure, but in essence apart and separate and making an individual, individual.  So I think this ... If I am allowing negative external influences effect my thoughts and emotions to an extent that I can hardly control them and they are spiralling downwards, then my spiritual wellbeing is frankly shite. If, on the other hand, in spite of any malign influences and with the help of all the good floating about out there, I am what is underratedly termed content, then my spiritual wellbeing is good thanks, as is my soul.

I know this is pathetically simplistic but my mother was catholic, need I say more?

tell me the answer (42)

In the course of my recent life I see at least one or two medical professionals each week. Not just doctors, but physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychologists, my current favourite the art therapist, dieticians, radiologists, you get the picture? My life is governed to a great extent by visiting or being visited by *ists. And a jolly lovely and life saving lot they are too. Indeed in about half an hour I’m off to see the physiotherapist termed with some affection the physioterrorist and she is a hard task master. But 18 months of not doing a great deal and being opened up front and back has left me wobbly.  She leaves me achy and wobbly a win win by her standards. 

What all these lovely people have in common is a clipboard or pc or some such device to record my progress each week / month  etc and one of the questions they ask besides the most obvious is “how is your spiritual wellbeing” and this one stumps me every time because by the time we get to this one I’ve already answered the aches and pains and mental and mood questions. I have no conception of the nuances of spirituality. In my (no doubt limited) mind it conjures up those people who find their strength in believing in something for which I can see no evidence. When I have asked what it means I am told various sort of woolly things like it’s my love of my fellow man, or a sense of togetherness with one and all. And in a woolly sort of way I get that, but is that spiritual? In an effort to explain more fully one of the hospice staff pointed out a young vicar type person and asked me if I couldn’t tell that he was spiritual because he spent his time caring for the wellbeing of all these cancer patients. To me he seemed a very kind and compassionate young man and that was it - no added extra and frankly he didn’t need it he was good to go as he was. 

So no, I still don’t get it and I’m sick of being asked because I don't know the answer - but I better go now because I don’t want to be late for my *ist.