Its 2016!

I have not been here for a year and now it feels much much later.  Bucking the trend of blogging a post every odd year I'm taking 2016 by the horns and catching up with myself.

Have just finished OU - not going for the degree, too engaged with writing.  The idea of learning 'stuff' and being examined on it fills me with horror.  Poems is for me!  I'll come back with one, don't know how to attach it yet.

I'm sitting at the upstairs front room window looking out at a steadily growing pile of earth and rubble and at the house of rods behind.  At the working men's club it was said that Keeley Donovan, off the weather, was having it built and now its all over the village.  Don't know when it will get built, they're never here and now its raining.  Anyway there's another floor to go on which will seriously block my view.  Who needs 5 bedrooms?  There's 3 more to be built and I suppose the pile of earth and rubble will get closer to my front door and bigger...............

There is a cat now, joining the dog on my bed in the morning.  We snuggle away our ailments - cat flu, arthritis and diabetes - one each and are very fond.  Monty when he first arrived 18 months ago.

The sound of wild hearts beating

I am part of this, whatever I do, say, believe, feel or deny - I am involved.  My heart is wild and it beats delight and pain and love and loss.  Wild calls to wild and exhilaration and joy rush and merge and join.  Without going anywhere it happens.  Through the veneers of propriety and social acceptance it bursts wide-eyed and laughing into the ether to the wild outer places of our imaginings. Beginning again.

Next steps

I'm back to the OU again to pick up the writing course I had to abandon at the beginning of the year.  I was fretting about maybe losing my home, ill health and assorted other 'challenges'.  The course was a challenge too far - maybe especially because I was writing with such intimacy.  First assignment 'banked' and I'm off again  ( Home safe! Important anyway but I'm a nest building taurean)

I wonder if anyone stumbling across this blog can relate to this situation and how difficult it is to keep or regain track, whether in learning or other aspects of life.

Hiding from the storm

I've taken the laptop to bed with me and the dog and am warm and snug now.  Been battered and soaked most of the day and pity the poor souls who are afloat.  Also just inadvertently came across a Sky News report that Nelson Mandela has died.  Desmond Tutu, looking like a spring chicken, talking about him and how he needed the Robben Island years to mellow from the angry young man who was arrested to the statesman who emerged to be president.  He continuously carried out small acts of defiance in prison - amazing that he had such reach from often solitary confinement.

I have been busy with the course.  Current assignment is fiction story.  I have been chosen by a protagonist who is losing words, she cannot find them, some of them when she needs them and using words has been her identity.  She mourns this into unconsciousness and is due to re-emerge from the detritus of decay as the bones of her, her essence which she has to spend most of the piece getting to know. (yet to be written) Its mad, "sounds wacky" said a friend today - too true!  But I do feel gripped by this tale, impelled to 'do' it if not propelled!!  I'm only beginning and I've got writers block.

We haven't copped the worst of the weather yet so I'm keeping my hatches battened. I shall send you a supanova

Missed the hurricane in Yorkshire

Rack has gone back down to Cornwall to dig in for the winter so is probably floating in a cave somewhere. I think of him as the undead so he'll be fine.  Shan't imagine I'll be seeing him til spring.  He might send a floppy wet tattered piece of paper as an email attachment with a shopping list on for when he wakes up but that's about it.

We are very wet here and a bit windy but nothing much.  Into therapy again this afternoon to pick up where I left off five years ago.......hoping for inspiration for my writing, feel bland today!  Have to get the first OU assignment in by Thursday - short story which will be based on a trip I took into the depths of Jesmond Dene in Newcastle years ago in the dark and upcoming eye operation.  Working title 'The long night walk' anticipating blindness!  Sounds really weird when I put it like that but I'm having fun with it......

Todays pick of the pics:

Getting ready for the Night Walk.  Fat lot of good glasses will be in the dark but I need them to type.

I wonder where I am......?

Did not sleep at all last night.  I was staying at a local community college for a 3 day 'creative writing' course (fun) in accommodation in stable block (not fun).  It would have been fine except for the other pesky students who decided to get drunk, play guitar and stomp up and down stairs till 3.30.  Possibly dropped off when there was a fire alarm so we were all hustled outside (not raining) to grump away.  Back to bed too wired to sleep then it was breakfast and packing and back to study.   These little interludes at this amazing college are my holidays when Mossy goes off with his red spotty handkerchief to stay with a friend and have loads of walks and I get fed and learn (possibly) and sleep - only not this time.  Think I'll walk the Cleveland Way for my next holiday and just write about it........and Mossy can pull me up the hills.  I wish I had the wit to write about this adventure but I'm too tired

Night night!

Good evening from the backroom

I cannot believe that I have just spent 2 hours trying to find this blog in the tangled everglades of google.  I now have several accounts, numerous passwords and resets and finally got back here which I think is a real achievement.

No-one is posting on my OU course forum and I'm getting cheesed off. Would much rather make things up over here - well maybe I will now that I can get back!

When I download it I shall upload here (hooray) pic of best friend in Whitby.......

 we shared fish and chips!