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...