Campaigning

An email. Just to show that I think about more than what I'm having for tea on any given night ;-) I sent this at the weekend to the organisers of this year's local arts festival.

I am writing with some thoughts about scooter hire for future festival events. I was hoping to come and see my sister in a choir performance at the museum and art gallery tomorrow at 4pm. A phone adviser informed me, incorrectly, that the art gallery has scooters. They don't but they do have manual wheelchairs. Unfortunately as my son is quite young he is not able to push me in a manual chair.



I have my own mobility scooter but it is not allowed on public transport. So I called Shopmobility. Their closest centre is closed on Sundays so couldn't help me get to my event. I called the other Shopmobility across town, and they are open but only til 4.45pm. Luckily for me my sister has another performance outside a pub at 1pm so I am hiring a scooter at 12 noon and coming all the way across town and hoping it doesn't rain.



Here are some thoughts for next year:



Could you hook up with the company who provides shopmobility scooters and help fund the opening of the closed shopmobility centre for the whole weekend? Shopmobility is a charity, independently funded. But I am sure a deal could be struck, given the positive publicity that would result.



Could the festival provide a central designated scooter hire location - perhaps hooking up with a major scooter manufacturer in a sponsorship/advertising deal?




I am certain that a press release publicising scooter hire for people with disabilities would lead to many more visitors to the festival from the disabled community next year. It has proved difficult this year for me to make the necessary arrangements to attend, but I hope in future years that it won't be so hard.



I look forward to hearing from you

I Want Something's Flesh

Yes, okay a shameless Withnail and I quote. I don't do it often but it really fits the occasion as yesterday I had my first red meat for a long, long time.

I did years on the theory that red meat exhausts the chronically sick body and should therefore be avoided. Then I read the opposite just before the weekend and thought "Sod it."

So yes, another post about what I'm eating. But the joy of savouring a lamb shank slow cooked with onion, leek, sweet potato, garlic and rosemary with roasted butternut squash on the side just had to be recorded.

Adventures in...

Slow cooking.

I won't go on at length but we've been stuck in a rut food wise for quite a while. The less energy I have the less imaginative I become. I needed a kick start and found this, which takes you to a goldmine of slow cooker recipes. And within this site, there's another link to even more recipes.

There are two advantages to slow cooking. One it's incredibly cheap (a slow cooker consumes about the same energy as a lightbulb, if not less) and two it's ridiculously easy. Other than a quick browning of vegetables and meat all you have to do is bung everything in there in the morning and leave it for six hours.

Things I'm going to try include meatballs, meatloaf, a whole gammon, various chicken and pork recipes, sausage and bean stew, thai veg curry, lamb knuckle (cheaper cut) and a few self-created casseroles.

I just couldn't stand the prospect of the same old stuff all winter. And I think my son, as he's growing a foot a week, needs some good fuel inside him.

Greenhouse

Much excitement all of a sudden. Due to not doing much at all this summer I have managed to save enough for a small greenhouse. The one that I uncovered from the undergrowth last year proved to be beyond my capabilities where renovation is concerned so I gave it away on Freecycle.

Now, there are several things that get me very excited about resurrecting my greenhouse project. One, we will pay for it in six months if we utilise it properly and never buy crap bags of salad, EEC compliant cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers or French beans ever again.

Two, it will be fun.

Three, it will mean I can finally use my half price seeds bagged at Woolworths earlier this year.

Yes, I'm still feeling like death on a stick, but I figure that if I start eating properly maybe that'll help? It will give me something to do on the days that I can do things, and I can instruct my son in the art of acquiring green fingers for the days that I can't lift a watering can, which it has to be said is more days than not. He has no choice. Anything heavy or out of my reach will be his domain. And he will get to eat whatever he manages to grow. No more trips to the corner shop for fluorescent bootlaces. God, aren't I awful? Stupid old hippy mother with her Good Life notions.

To be frank though, if a school can get kids growing prize orchids (saw it on Gardener's World) then I figure I can get mine interested in tomatoes and suchlike. She said vaguely. This is new territory for me I have to say.

If anyone still reads The Beauty Offensive and has experience in these matters could you tell me if I can get away without a concrete base? Basically it's cheaper to get my tattooed gardener to put it straight on soil on it's steel base and infill with gravel.

I await responses with interest. But having been away for so long I won't hold my breath. Oh. Just scrolled down and forgot I worked out how to blog from my mobile only a day or so ago. Won't be doing it often though. They haven't worked out how to centre pictures, and that's not on around here.

A Global Matter

This is exciting. I am blogging from my phone. Only a couple more days til i return to the big screen though. Can't be doing with texting at length!

We're all going on a...

Jungle safari. Just to prove the sun did shine in August in the UK! No, actually this has turned into the month where there's been a collective and yet independently arrived at summer holiday from blogging. A stupendous notion. Lots to tell on our returns and a break from late nights and eye strain (in my case anyway) in the meantime. And if it becomes regular, I feel that September will have something of the excitement of a new term at school about it. Love to everyone else who is having a rest. I do miss being in touch with people online and wonder how my friends are doing.

When I came back from my Mum's, the crocosmia were out all around my pond. So pretty and zingy, so here's another one.



And a striped beast of the jungle was drinking silently from the water with one eye roving for a frog...

Breather

Hi all

Away for a few days but okay.

Rollercoaster

I'm not going to try and predict the future but I do have to say that things may be a little unpredictable around here for a while.

The highs and lows are really draining me. This is typical benzo withdrawal behaviour. Sometimes I even question my quest to come off the nastier of my prescription medication. Why not just have a quiet life? I also question being in therapy as I think I'm hitting a rough patch. Then I realise I only have my therapist to talk to and I chicken out of stopping. So I swing from mania to exhaustion and back again, punch drunk and directionless.

But I do remember what a quiet life was like. A living death. And I realise that even though days like today leave me feeling utterly defeated, exhausted beyond crying and as emotionless as a zombie, that I must persevere. Ride out the nightmares, breathe through the panic, rest my eyes from exhaustion. Ride out the nightmares, breathe through the panic, rest my eyes from exhaustion. Ride out the nightmares, breathe through the panic, rest my eyes from exhaustion. Repeat ad infinitum.

The highs make it worthwhile for one thing. Going out, or even staying in, and feeling alive and happy is something I haven't felt for a long time. Now there are windows of it.

And I hope that even if there are more bad days than good for a while, the end result will be more good days than bad. More feeling in my life, more clarity in my life. More life in my life. Better writing.

Today I cooked an ommlette and a baked potato. And I wrote this about how I am feeling. And a friend came over. I could barely concentrate but I wanted to see her as she's having a baby anytime now. Loved her bump. And yes, I did pat it. I tried not to, as I remember just how bloody annoying it is. But I couldn't help it.