Avoiding electrical garden machines

Imagine sitting in the garden to listen to nothing but the birds and reading a book. 

Imagine having that superseded by next door's power mower starting up, then another beginning to strim back their unkempt area whilst someone else strikes up the petrol hedge/tree cutter plus associated chipper to "do something to the tree" that obviously restricts their sunbathing. 

Meanwhile, the local aerodrome sends up its usual plethora of single engined airplanes to loop the loop and practise engine off manoeuvres whilst large jets power down ready to land at Gatwick or City airport.

Then the children come out, screaming and shouting setting off the dogs which bark alongside creating a cacophony of noise before the next door's children on the other side come out to hurl loud abuse at a passing stranger before mother screams equal abuse at her children.

Oh, I forgot the drills and planes doing some construction or other somewhere close by with the workmen shouting to each other some banality.

Welcome to a standard weekday afternoon.

Ok, much of this noise is part and parcel of living on the outskirts of a small town, but some of that noise is unnecessary, stemming more from convenience and laziness.

Gone are the days of that clack-clack-clack as the human operated rotary mower gently trimmed the lawn and a snipping of secateurs or loppers attended to their functions. 

That sound of someone sawing through a branch or other, all complimenting the blackbird song.

Now the blackbird has to shout (scientifically proven in dB studies) to be heard. 

With growing pressures on electricity world wide and the need to reduce our fossil fuel usage, wouldn't it be sensible to reduce the unnecessary power hungry appliances? 

My garden uses no power tools. I have hand held shears, secateurs of varying sizes, the usual array of digging implements and an array of buckets. My garden is lush from growth and I benefit from the physical workout.

I save on gym membership, running in the park, sitting on a static bike or staring at the TV as I do exercises to the game I prefer. Instead I'm out side in the real weather enjoying the natural world at every stage. I get hot, cold, tired, exhausted, soaked but relaxed, elated, contented and generally at peace. I go in knowing I have completed something and stand in the kitchen admiring the handiwork.

Isnt it time we all started doing something for this world which has supported us so well this far? How about baby steps; start relying on our own innate strength and tend what plots we have. 

Start growing plants and watch nature return, start engaging with the natural world without relying on every electrical or motorised gadget to maintain that ever growing distance and find a level of mental wellbeing people seem to have lost sight of.

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Body dysmorphia and a swimsuit

Seems crazy but a life time of really hating my body and working hard at curbing my foodie tendencies has been the bane of my life. Let me explain.

I have always found swimming easy and it springs from the fact I was in the water paddling around before my legs had worked out how to bear my weight let alone take meaningful steps.

I preferred the water, I felt at home there so when I started secondary school and found I was in the school team and winning everything it didn't seem such a big thing. 

Streaks ahead of anyone in my cohort I was invited to join the local swimming club and try out; excited I wanted to join and be around people like me, water babies (well more like young people bordering on merman and women).

It was a tough routine but I thrived; an hour or two swim training before school then two hours after school,  with an extra session on Monday from 7pm until 9pm. Saturdays were either training days or swimming meets where the team went off competing.

I was 11 years old by this time, held many records via inter-schools championships and dearly wanted to be part of the squad. 

To me it was the pinnacle of success to travel around GB and compete for the county and perhaps the region.

One day it came, the lilac costume. I learned many years afterwards that the ongoing spat between my mother and the trainer had not ingraciated me with him and he treated me as no more than a "make weight ", that extra female needed to make numbers, to fill in for those precious swimmers who were under the weather or being raced too hard. 

Although talented I wasn't a golden girl in his eyes, not even bronze but useful because I loved swimming the longer distances no one else in the squad wanted to do. 

My wins were never acknowledged. In many ways I was the outsider who never shined but, it appears, shined as a potential light for the GB squad.....I never realised.

However, I got a piece of swimwear from our sponsor, Adidas. 

Everyone had blue, I had lilac but I didnt care, I still had one. My mother sewed it to fit and I wore it every day, twice a day from that moment.

But I was 11 years old and puberty hadn't been reached yet, that didnt happen for another year and that's when my problems began because the beloved lilac costume started to feel tight and I was told by a very disgruntled trainer that I was getting fat. 

The other girls had new costumes and I was given one but he overestimated my 'fatness' and it was really loose; falling to pieces and getting a little tight, I stuck to the lilac one.

As hard as I tried, the body of a pubescent girl failed to remain the same shape she'd been at 11 years of age and the further from that time I went, the more I wanted to crawl into a tent and hide. In my eyes, trying so hard to get the trainer to say, 'well done',  was creating a monster which would haunt me all my adult life.

Pleasure was leaving my world of water to be replaced with one of fear. I swam out of terror not desire and when the scout came to look at the "top" swimmers he chose me not them. 

I was terrified. 

I wanted to hide in a corner. 

If the scout hadn't approached my mother directly she would never had known. I really didnt understand as it wasn't really explained why.

No one said, " you swim so well we think you have a shot at the Olympics and can do it even though you'll be the youngest in your class".

My mother only said, "do you want to go?" presuming, I suppose, someone else had explained it all to me. They hadn't and terrified of more people ridiculing me for my size somewhere else and not being able to run to hide in my bedroom, I said no ( a decision I still regret and would have taken of it had been explained properly).

From that day on my swimming became unpleasant. The trainer went out of his way to criticise and even when I set records he failed to acknowledge them but kept the silverware.

In the end I took a decision, my lilac costume and I needed to part, I had to stop swimming and feeling like a failure. 

I hated my body as I blamed it for robbing me of the success I should have had and from then on any failures in my life I took out on my "fatness".

All because of a proud moment when at 11 years of age I was given a lilac swimsuit and how that pride of belonging was slowly stripped away by non-acknowledgement of my successes (and losses) and the bullying to be thin once puberty began.

Shame that, but a fact of life and now I see it for what it is, I maybe able to enjoy the autumn of my life back in the water where I belong.

It's official; coffee shops are go

Seems odd to think the last time I ventured past Finch House coffee shop, the only service was take away with tables pushed back, chairs stacked and tape keeping you away.

Now, they're open for business and people are flocking back in large numbers. Tables sanitised between customers, they remain empty for minutes before the next cohort take their place.

Nice to be back; they do have an excellent coffee blend.

So yes, my first coffee in something other than a takeaway cup and it was delightful. 

Tomorrow it's a picnic, thermos and go somewhere to enjoy the countryside. It's a Bank Holiday weekend so I'll have to pick my spot carefully if I want peace and quiet. 

Ok, so that's me on Gaia.com, where can I go and get peace? Mm, I wonder...

Realising lost passion

Funny isn't it how Life takes over and we often lose sight of what is genuinely important to us. 

I did, tilting at windmills so quickly I prevented myself from sitting still and really thinking.

The pandemic forced me to stop and as the year dragged on I had little or no choice but to think and really decide what is important and what I am really passionate about.

It's interesting because I don't have family. I never had children, I taught those who were just a child allowance number on the gyro each week. I was their Aunt, confidant and disciplinarian. It was a hard job and with a nine form entry ( minimum 270 pupils in each year and 180 pupils in the sixth form), it was large too. They were my family and the house, Battle, was my close family where pupils and staff all worked to be the top house each year.

So now, I am solo. 

Please, I am not looking for a "poor you" response, being an only child in a single parent family, I learned from a very early age to entertain and please myself. 

Now I have returned to those early years; I have my equivalent of my old playroom now transformed into arts and crafts, I have Spotify to gently play jazz as I work and a house I call home.

But my house is not my passion, nor the arts and crafts; they are a pleasure, a delight, a wonderful distraction when the weather outside is miserable and uninviting.

watercolour created as final piece for art course 

My passions haven't really changed from childhood.

When I was very young I listened to a nature program and they talked about cross pollination using a feather to transfer the pollen. 

Fascinated I pulled a feather from my pillow and proceeded to discover just how many colours I could get from bluebells. My mother ended up with every shade of pink, purple and sky blue you can think of as well as pure white ones. 

Now it's my greenhouse and discovering the fun of creating a permaculture garden.

starting off the seeds for French beans, hollihocks, echinacea, sunflowers, mold, mixed leaves for salads, rocket, peach and many more.

So the pandemic gave me that time to reconnect and work hard on changing paths, borders and planting, adding composting areas and flooding the place with really good compost I imported by the ton.

early Spring was a delight with pansies, tulips, daffodils, snowflakes and all the other Spring bulbs you can imagine.

But I still missed travel and it became more and more clear, my second passion is travelling. 

airport bus depot in Tenerife; always an exciting destination and delightful starting point

I have photos pasted on the walls of my house showing a selection of the places I visited during that heady year of 2019 and itchy feet want to do and see more and more.

Within that passion is exploring; that, "what's round the corner" syndrome which spurs me forward sometimes resulting in ludicrously long walks. Scratching that itch of nosiness and my impulsive tendency of 'why not?' Its the thrill of finding hidden gems up alleyways and along the seafront, past the end of the path and round the headland, past where most people will stop.

In Lanzarote the desire lead me to walk 18 km in flip flops one day. I can tell you, my feet were on fire when I got back and I sat with my feet in the swimming pool whilst drinking a large glass of water with ice and a coffee. Much needed.

I do have a third passion, that of the natural world and the changes we, as a species are putting it under.

As our numbers increase and our demands for food, shelter and water increase, that natural canopy which has sustained us and everything else living, seems to be disintegrating before my eyes and I know something is going to have to give.

As a young girl I remember standing on the top of a ridge looking down over the local farm whilst Mr Shaw turned the stubble into the ground. He was accompanied by flocks of birds eager to pick the freshly turned roots and find the grubs they deemed a delicacy. 

Today I watch and the soil is dead, sustained only by the chemicals we plough in each year. That natural ecology is broken and our desire to produce more and more of the same crops year on year produces a toxic mix that flushes its waste into the streams, lakes and rivers. We seem deaf to the information we are slowly poisoning the very water we drink. Instead? We rely on plastic bottles full of water whose structure leeches its chemicals into the very water we drink.

So sad and still we do not listen even after this world pandemic. 

Bats are known to harbour many diseases none of which we need. Whilst they had their forests and we left them their habitat we rubbed along fine. People travelled to watch the bats roosting, feeding, bringing up their babies. But demands for more land means we creep ever closer, robbing them of their habitats and they enter our world in search of food.

How can we blame them for their stress and their shedding of viruses into our lungs?

I realise there is nothing but change; nothing stands still unless its inanimate and even then it is changing as it degrades, but we really are like locusts, devouring everything in our path.

So, I have probably 20 or 30 years left in me and the road travelled is far longer than that road around the corner, but it's still exciting, and between loving the garden, enjoying cold days in the craft room and travelling wherever and when I can, it'll be a great climax to my ever changing journey.