The mindful way through Chinese food...

This week I ar mainly been eating a lot of very nice Chinese and Thai food at the lush Real Chinese Garden restaurant in Cheltenham, with my friends from the crazies club...not my words! We met at a local NHS-funded mindfulness course, all there for different reasons, and all there for the same reason. Hard to explain mindfulness, it's a sort of humanist-style meditation practice, and it's life changing. Hard, but worth it. This kind of sums it up but not:

If I had my life to live over, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.

attrib Nadine Stair

Cakey pigs

Today I made a cake. My first EVER cake since rock cakes, 1981 Home Ec lesson, when Miss Patrick shouted at me. Can't be sure as my memory is not quite that good but she usually did (forgot apron, forgot to put oven on, forgot to bring tin to take cakes home in - take your pick). Anyway here is something I learned - making one 9 inch, iced Victoria sponge with buttercream filling took nearly THREE packs of butter, three-quarters of a jar of raspberry jam and a vast amount of icing and caster sugar. Jeez. I preferred it when I didn't know and shoved my mum in law's cakes in my gob in blissful ignorance...

Sketchy

Blank page of doom. Maybe 5 minute doodles are the only way in....?

Mostly obsessed with Mary Oliver

This week I have been mostly obsessed with the haunting, lyrical poetry of Mary Oliver. Her poems feed the soul. Here is one I love:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
published by Atlantic Monthly Press

First jobs....

I read a column by a famous person this week about their first howwid job, in McDonalds. Boo hoo poor you. Pfft. My first proper job after college was demonstrating hairbrushes in Debenhams. I had a small table/prime pitch located between the wigs and the Clarins counter. The brushes were round with a sort of spring thing in them. The idea was that if one had a short curly perm (aka the 'cauliflower head') then twisting this brush in yer matting in a tricksy certain way would restore bounce and body. Which it totally did. I would entice the cauliflower heads with a shout of 'come and have a free hairdo madam'. A cheerful old lady would take a seat and I then demo'd the brush. I sold 150 in 2 weeks. This was rubbish according to the promoters and I got the sack. But 150 brushes to Gloucester biddies who had no idea what they were buying and how to actually use it when they got home was pretty damn good in my book. Selling cheeseburgers? Hah - easy.

Things I like this week are:

Mark Ruffalo in The kids are alright, yum
Twiglets
Mindfulness

Warning. Do not drink and Amazon one-click...

I have a thing about shopping, to me it's like a job. Sometimes I research intensively on the Internet for the best possible product at the best price - I don't quite compile a price matrix in a spreadsheet but I'm not far off. Other times I just buy impulsively - you know who I'm talking about Amazon one-click. I'm hoping, one day, to convert my compulsive behaviour into something more useful, if I could get this obsessed with exercise I'd be a size 10. Here's hoping I don't get hooked on baking...

Here are some things I know about shopping:

• Why is there only ever one lift working in Debenhams at a time?
• The Edinburgh Woollen Mill - er, why?
• H&M clothes are rubbish quality.
• Mothercare is overpriced and the baby clothes are frumpy.
• Clinique freebies are lush.

Climb every mountain

In the last month I have gone back to work after maternity leave, settled my daughter in at the childminders, my mum fell down the stairs and bashed her head in (she survived), my cat died (old age) and I have been learning how to meditate and how to crochet (not at the same time). Only one of these things felt easy, and that was my daughter going to the childminders - she loves it. Being a naturally nosy nelly watching the other kids play is her new best thing, and they in turn are lovely with her. So phew. It still feels weird taking her to someone else's house to learn and play but needs must and it's only 3 days a week. Well done her, and well done me - may as well slap myself on the back cos no other bugger will.

From bass to crochet

I used to be in a band you know... Best band in the world. No not Creme Brûlée but close. This week I have been mostly learning to crochet. How did that happen? One day I was playing bass on stage at the Hope and Anchor, the next I'm struggling with double crochet stitch. Actually it wasn't the next day it was about 7 years. And that double crochet is a bitch.

(pic Mary Green)