starbucks breakfast and blogging..at my desk..

granola bars are good, is my conclusion..
its the way they make you feel, man...all healthy and smug..
there's no way you could have a brownie or bit of rocky road with you misto for breakfast and feel this good about yourself.
ok have now finished both eating and one-handed typing
so harry potter six came and went...
i was done in a few days, and then cried..and cried..still don't believe its true.
ok, also i've..ooh watched pirates of the caribbean for the first time..whatever is meant to be wrong with jonny depp in that film, he plays it so well, i've never seen him funny really before...horribly attractive as ever...at one point with him and orlando bloom fighting it was all i could do to keep on looking at the screen, too much beauty at once can be overwhelming..
y, que mas...?
went to london..saw friends..felt funny...not quite at home
and now decisions must be made, about august, about september, about greenbelt and dublin and devon and santiago and manchester....and i just want someone else to decide for me...i frankly can't be bothered...but i know i'lll regret it come mid-september if wherever i am, i haven't actively chosen to be there...ie, if i just end up still being here, or if i just end up in manchester with an ill-thought-through plan and an ill-fitting job...
i need to work now..more in a minute..

a strange thing, when at last it happens..

i don't quite know what to say. i really don't want to exaggerate, it is, after all, a good thing..
but i feel odd..i've just sent my article off to the magazine....and now i feel a bit ill..! such exposure...
anyway i haven't all that much more to say on the matter, i just felt i should share..and also to thank sal, my editor-in-cheif...

narrowing the odds..

gosh look at the time.
i went out this evening, to crackers, which on a saturday night is like the shire's answer to jilly's rock world..
i love that place, no one gives a shit about what anyone thinks of them, which, round here is worse than a rarity. and people laugh, alot, and shout along with music that to most other people sounds just like people shouting..
i went with my sister and two friends..and we laughed, drank and danced
i saw some boys that were dear friends of mine at school..
and a boy was there, who last time i was there, months ago, i found myself with a big crush on and he liked me too and it was this whole thing
anyway i watched him tonight, dancing..i love watching boys dance...and with this guy, exuberant doesn't even get there..but unlike most energetic boy-dancers, he's good at it too..
and it was lost on me
i think i've learnt alot of things lately about what i desire in a man...and that guy there tonight used to embody it, but now..not so much
its being known, you see..fully known..and not just for who you are once you let out the girl within on a saturday night, but who you are when you can't sleep, and when your clothes don't fit like you want them to, and when you cry at the freakin oc, or at god because all of a sudden you remember how wonderful he is, and when you can get giddy about someone else's sunglasses..
i mean really, is there anything finer than a life of knowing god and being known by another..?
that's what i want...
so if any man can love god and simultaneously understand me and follow the guidelines found within annabegins and princes familiar then i'll know i'm somewhere close to it..

i've liked this guy for ages, and i now can confirm, that if i could write like anyone, i'd want to write like him
such powers of description and gifted storytelling
and what a story..

on behalf of the shire..

london, we love you...

nightmare..

man, trying to track down breaking news isn't as easy as you'd think
the tube seems to be a bit under siege
can't believe it, or how awful it would be to be in there
the national grid says there have been no power cuts or surges this morning, so the authorities have already been rumbled on that one
my lord, quelle nightmare..

challenge anita..

hey did you know, the maximum numbers of posts blogger will allow you in any given day, is 999....
this is my third, and that's already my personal best..
i wonder if anyone has ever done 999 and then been vetoed from further blogging until they jolly well went to bed and waited til tomorrow...
imagine..!

self-raising expectations..

contrived
affected
absurd
unnatural
dull
impersonal
cliched
predictable
uninquisitive
unoriginal
uninspiring
unanswerable
hard work
crap
can you guess what it is yet...?
that's right, folks, it s a job application form
why oh why are they all the same....!??
i started completing the form, typing away, thinking i'll go for it anyway, and try and make it to the post..then i lost all my typing
sometimes, i guess you just have to know when to quit!

i have a sensation that my next job, hopefully in manchester, is going to be really quite different (perhaps even better...?!) than the jobs i've had in the past...so today's contender wouldn't have really fit that bill anyway..
time to learn how not not just settle for the easy, dull ways of life..

i wonder how one goes about that...
i wonder how one goes about dreaming the dreams of god...?
answers on a postcard, s'il vous plait, mes amis..

a veces, la vida es mala..

which is wierd, because i guess i don't believe that life, by itself, can be cruel..but times like right now, you can't help but wonder who is..

i just found a great job...working for shelter, in manchester

the deadline is one pm tomorrow. in london.

the only way i can get it there on time is to sit at my desk all afternoon filling the form in and probably get yelled at by my boss when he catches me...
and then ask if i can leave early tonight to make it to the post office.
and then find some money on the path on the way to the post office, since i have none of my own right now and it will cost to get it there by one pm tomorrow.

see, la vida es malissima.

sod a dog........................................

five-sixteen and counting..

i am almost literally crawling my way to the end of this working day
being on reception in the afternoons sucks..you get to watch everyone else leave before you...really, everyone..
its taken me two days of this week so far to figure out that working with katie was the best thing about working here. and she's gone - after we agreed we'd leave on the same day! and then she did and i didn't...
its because i'm not brave, and i'm scared of going back to not having money.
well, something has simply got to be done..
manchester beckons, and i can't safely say it'll be no sooner than september...just need to find a job..
any ideas anyone?
wierd thing is, i sound like i'm miserable, and i'm not...or sure won't be in.......one minute!!
hurrah!
see you pals...x

the faithful dressed in white..

making poverty history is a seriously good passtime
as a hobby, i think it has lots of levels. extreme making poverty history took place in edinburgh en masse this saturday afternoon.
the splendour of seeing more people than you would ever sit and count wearing any old white clothes they owned, (or making them specially, you know..) was something i won't forget easily.
we had no bob, no bono, no bush no blair
eddie was there. as were some oddly chosen bands such as "who's this again..i recognise this" "texas" "oh of course" it was like that.
apparently merry or pippin was there too.
there was a big dress.
some riot police.
a march.
lots of kids.
yellow cranes.
too many whistles.
lots of placards kindly donated by the mirror...who's signature white writing on red background was hastily torn off every placard they had kindly donated..everywhere you went you could see their sponsorship scattered round..
hellicopters.
no drunk people.
some lovely old people.
lots of palestinian flags.
drumming.
always someone from the group missing.
lots of white sash plastic ribbon stuff that made everyone look like miss world.
and other measurements as well.
you will be hearing more about the matter from me, here

can you smell it...?!

there's something in the air....its anticipation i think, and the battle of cynicism vs idealism raging stronger than on most ordinary days..
i'm referring of course to the weekend that lies ahead, and the subsequent potential drama of just eight people sitting in a room for a few days talking about the poor countries of the world as if they were underacheiving schoolchidren.
i've been trying to figure out how that must feel..to be the premier of a small, poor but striving nation in the developing world..knowing that they are talking about you, weighing up the various merits and perils of giving you money that would save the lives of your citizens..but all the while looking at you and determining how far gone into seedy corruption you are..or maybe daydreaming about how corruptable you could be if you had something they wanted..imagine being talked about that way...
its rage isn't it..?

its time for the truth..

i know most of my (two) readers already know about this particular truth, but the notion of my moving back to manchester has retained a bizarre, dream-like quality for far too long now.
its time, i think, to just admit that it is actually what i want.
there, i've said it. and i'm excited, too.
i love the idea of loving the place i live in. and not waiting everyday for a chance to leave. i've lived thinking like that for quite a long time..except forty days in barcelona..but now that god has stormed my barricade of no ways, nevers and under no cicumstances, and brought to me the reality of him getting to choose, and me learning to love his ideas, its all looking rather new..

i don't want to be the kind of person who only agrees to something or gets excited about it if they think it was their idea first. some people would say that that sums up most of the world's men, but i say it is one of the cunningest ways that god has to get us on board. well, maybe its just me.
the fact is, i want it, now. and he wanted it first...but he has allowed me to swan around for the last two months dreaming tiny day dreams and thinking it was all my idea. these things never are though...there isn't a single heavenable dream on earth that he didn't dream first..

i was there this weekend...and oh how i laughed..i fear i may have been slightly raucous..a bit like tom p after four months of living in spain with no-one to think he was funny and then i turn up on his doorstep and he's saved up months' worth of showing off...i felt a bit like that..
..a bit like an uncaged bird..
there was cord, and beer, and old friends..and tefl friends..and rageful shopping..and new nero's..and a party full of new friends and add ben to that..kat's feet...kat being the most grand embodiment of all that kat always ought to have been but never quite was...and now she entirely is..and the sick mallowdale twins and emma and her capers and claire and her man..i lacked little...or nothing, in fact.
and then thought.....i want this, now..

la terra gallega..

well yes, happy birthday to me..
and what a birthday
i was in santiago de compostela, and you may see the feast o'photos for yourselves..
i laughed a lot, ate a lot, drank a fair bit and laid in the sunshine.
we were slightly at a loss to know what to do with our time in a rainless sdc....it struck the three of us one sunny afternoon that we'd bascially been forced into hibernation that year that we lived there...life became a daily series of scuttling from one place to the next, trying to keep the bottom of your trouser legs off the ground, avoiding getting swept along on rivers of rain, and cursing the lack of heating anywhere....
no such horror this time, the sun shone, alot alot...
i ate pulpo..still not convinced about it but i tried it. twice.
we went for another slightly less harrowing but still fun coastal drive..ended up at the naked beach..we always do, somehow it just happens...i just kept my head down, read my book and tried not to watch the overly-active strange beach tennis going on sin ropa..
my birthday was a day of being happy. i had cards over breakfast at the chicken sandwich place..then afternoon in the park..with sprinklers..and beer..
then sleeping..then eating - oh! that was the night forrest was going to arrive at midnight...just in time for the end of my birthday...so he made us swear we wouldn't be drunk when he got there. this meant we ended up having supper three times, because we ate, then went for wine, realised it was working a bit too well, had to go eat somewhere else...three times we did that..plus one time having birthday cake..and it still didn't work..we were in the weeds when the boy arrived. ah well. we went and danced in asbestos..particularly on the stage at one point, as i recall..meandered home at about six in the a.m..had a nice lie down on the ground outside..you know..
oh and timmo you will be pleased to hear i went in the cathedral
i thought it horrid. but i went.
when returning home via london i happened upon a spanish tapas place right next to where i had to wait for my bus home..happy coincidence...they served estrella galicia..and the old barmen were from galicia and they thought i was too and confusion ensued...
and i've now got that lovely feeling of knowing that the old place is still partly mine...
no rush.

makes you feel small..

stopped in starbucks on my way to work earlier for a misto and a spot of first corinthians.
look what i found..
"we speak of god's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that god has destined for our glory before time began."
what on earth...?!
sometimes the whole thing is just....baffling.....

the barfly and the scream..

ooh you just know, some days, don't you, that it'll be unlike any other..its the feeling you wish you had everyday, although if you did it would be lost on you..
anyway
yesterday hewo and i went on a ramble over to cardiff...enjoyed the *new* bridge, the car showed its low on fuel light for what claire assured me was the first time ever (imagine that catelin..!) and the signs telling you precisely when the speed cameras of the good old m4 were coming up were much appreciated..the reason for the very last minute and probably quite impractical trip was of course our dear stoney+....
and they did not disappoint..they were wonderful..
the fact was that claire and i both knew that god was about to finish us off this weekend..both had had a strange and often unpleasant six months, and both felt assuredly like it was to abruptly end, at least in its present form, but knew nothing more than that..
we dodged him most of the day today..ate good food chez mr+mrs hewo, slept, pottered about..then he cornered us.
we met with him on a hill, it - not surprisingly - was spitting, the day was grey and felt not at all like we were about to re-start 2005..
but we did, or rather he did, in a genius way. like only he can i suppose..i can't speak for hewo, but i know that for my part, i stood on a hill and he made me love him again...
and then we screamed.

today i fell in love, part two..

this evening i arrived home from work giddy, knowing that in my inbox would be a gift waiting for me..
it was a (yes, stealing, i know..) file packed full of magic numbers songs, all winzipped together like a bundle of joy
and i heard them, and it was exactly like i imagined it would be
thank you phil

unobtrusive tones..

do you know, sometimes i am struck by the way we talk to each other. this isn't negative. its just, spending time with people i know from manchester, there or somewhere else, i really notice now after six months away that there is a casual and easy manner in our voices and our words that the het-up and still relatively formal culture around us hasn't yet wholly made room for.
the life at home, with family and with friends, is somehow not as free, in vocabulary, tone or sentiment. but i received an email today which i think can highlight my meaning here. other than a greeting and ending, this was the email's entire content.
>>>>Thanks sweet pea. Come and hang out any time – knock on the door and sit your ass outside in the patio for a brew and some tunes when you’re next up.>>>>>
see? maybe you don't. this tone is normal, now, i know...but equally its not, we all like to think we are this unstructured and untempered now, but there are social codes and airs and graces that remain. i like to speak freely. that's why i like it here.

posts appear before your very eyes..

so i just went to wales. i'm always taken aback with how much i love wales, but its like the border is some kind of magic portal that absorbs some of the memories when you cross it and go back into england, so that every time you return its shocking how beautiful it is.
me and sal cleaned the house on saturday and then left, had the funnest drive we've had in years together, took a wrong turn at wrexham (ah well) and ended up going the slightly longer way to our holiday...but the hills, i daresay mountains, were wonderous..we sang like ginny, smoked like old women and were quiet when appropriate..see, sa is one of those few people whose appropriacy when it comes to silence so often coincides with my own. and when the two of us are silent, its not as surprising and outsiders would imagine. i can see their problem, two of the most chatty people they know, in a car, for hours, mostly quiet. never. but yeah, and it works and its good for us. i think it got me ready for the days ahead.

my favourite single minute of the holiday was the last morning, communion just ending, mrs p singing like it was 1965, about the united nations letting my people go, rusty playing his drum like he's heard the song a hundred times before, and people singing. just singing, making up their own words, no acetates around, just singing about people being let go.
and then after that the jollities of BH Monday ensued, monday lunch at the pub, laughs with dan cate mrs p me and rusty, then more beach with lying around.
the beach on saturday was so much fun. the deep well of a sand dune we found ourselves secluded in was perfect..we had enough space to be friends together or friends in corners or up hills on our own. the time on the very top with mrs p telling her life story, what an epic, then emma cowan telling hers and people sitting around suddenly realising they did understand her...is there anything finer than a life story told in an hour that is so honest that all it takes is an hour....well done indeed girls...
the first night i was hugged more than i can remember being hugged before.
garden state with duvets at 2am on the sunday night was such a treat.
midnight frisbee with sal in the middle was hilarious on the saturday night.
peeling potatoes with emma and claire in the kitchen was a definite highlight for me.
and finally the drive home with rusty and the tired beer drinking that followed in the shire was the nicest way to finish it all..more stories, alot more laughing, you know, following the general theme
friendship is marvellous.

a well-masked past..

last night my dad went up in the loft to find something, and came back down with boxes of things so familiar to me, it was as if a 13 year old na had been hidden up there, and he'd found her.
oh man, the hours that followed i spent reading, laughing, really laughing, viv-thornton laughing....
the box of letters, notes, secrets and epic sagas written and passed between myself and friends in class.....talking about what we'd do at lunch...or what we had done at lunch..mainly involved finding the best vantage point from which to stare at certain boys..naming not one name here..they had code names anyway...journals covered on one side with the beatles' picture and the other thom yorke's...mixed tapes...ballet shoes...dt coursework...school tie..earrings...oh lord..but there is one thing that has left me giggling inwardly all day..ok..i'm not sure how to tell this one..bear with me..it was primarily on the part of my sister (the box was half her stuff too) but i believe i had initially led her into it.....and the evidence was all uncovered in that one box.....we sat on my bed last night, in pyjamas, laughing until we felt sick......i can't believe i'm about to blog this..it was 1994 man, there's no excuse for it i know, but well it was a boyzone thing.
i hid it, really quite well, i think.....i loved blur, i was at mile end.....i screamed country house at anyone who was rooting for roll with it, i looked like the hippy my mother had been in '72...i wore my hair in two plaits and a doctor marten on each foot..(yeah yeah they were still cool then). and yet this secret lurked, all the while, threatening to expose me as a fraudulent 'alternative' type. i loved shane lynch, he was my favourite...fiona loved keith duffy....well, at least my one isn't now in coronation street..
so there you are, i could elaborate. i won't
it passed, by the end of fifth year...then sixth form came along with all the boys, cigarettes, essays on the cuban missile crisis and virginia woolf you can imagine...they were happier days, i had no musically-criminal secrets to keep guarded any longer. it was 1997 and we only knew good music. as miss w will attest, music has not been that good since, so i was safe from having to look elsewhere, i mean not only was the music good, those indie boys were lush.....man, hands up who's favourite year was 1997..

vertigo

"uno, dos, tres, catorce..."
this means
"one, two, three, fourteen.."
why is it that we hear what we want to, or perhaps what makes the most sense to us, our assumumptions must make up a large part of what we hear or think.
anyway i've been assuming god was gone, or cross or not arsed. turns out he meant four.

today, i fell in love..

with these people..
i've never read an article about a band and loved them so immediately
haven't heard them yet..
even so, this morning, on the 94 bus, thanks to the friday review, i fell in love..

es mas de una senda que el camino..

flights are now booked to santiago de compostela..if you want to look it up, just google it for images, and look at the wonder that is a really beautiful city, dare i say it, even in the rain..
i'm so excited to be going back - and with celine! and for my birthday!
thanks god

empathic understanding..

This evening I attended Session 3 of my Introduction to Counselling Skills course..Regular readers will know that Capitalisation is not usually part of my blogging register, but I just feel like them today.
We studied empathy this evening. Its such a strange thing to talk about - something so vastly abstract and so indefinable, it was good for me linguistically if nothing else. It really did make me wonder though, why the word doesn't really appear in the Bible. It seems to me like such a Godful emotion, and surely a founding principle in so many things such as mercy, compassion, love and also intercession. How interesting that we live in such a time as this, that psycho-babble and spiritual principles can overlap in such a way that so much of what we believe actually is being expressed in places like the seminar room this evening, just without anyone actually talking about Jesus.
Am still enjoying God's company.
That's about all for now, I think.

who knew..?!

ok look, if you have ever heard me say "who knew?!" in response to something i've not heard/known before, please let me know. hewo was insistent all weekend that its like one of my pet phrases, and that it always reminds her of me when someone else says it. is wear i have no recollection of saying it ever, let alonge all the time..
bizarre
but..i'd like to say it now..!
who knew weetabix actually tasted of anything?
in the new world dietary order of me, weetabix are the essential start to everyday, and without sugar, it turns out they have a taste all their own..who knew? not me that's for sure, this morning i was like, mum, did you know!? yes darling...good one na
so things with me and god are good. no, no weetabix related analogy. give me time..
i think i get him a bit more, like i can see now that loving him is the most important thing, and that stages of the journey with him are about gradual discovery and slow but steady increasing obedience and commitment....i think i tried for years to catch up, like everyone i knew was so far ahead of me, so i always had these standards, like points to reach before i could know a certain thing, or understand another. but always in the light of other people and how they related to god. and so often living my life with him, in such close connection to the lives and loves of others, that i never quite knew what was my understanding of him or what he was telling just me, blurred in the community of believers that share thoughts and walks. but now its like we're just friends, like i want him around and i don't care if we don't have a chaperone. i know he knows what he's doing with me.
don't be mistaken, dear reader..i sound giddy, but i'm not.
just quietly glad, and steadily figuring that staying still in him is what i want to do with my time just now.