I’m stirring milk into my lovely cup of tea.
 
I love when the definitive line between white and dark is blurred and they seemingly run into each other, the way all good things should.
 
Quite beautiful really, the way some things just mesh perfectly together.
 
Like soulmates who’ve finally found one another.
 

I want what Pam and Jim have in the Office -Season 4 Episode 10.

My uncle spent 6 months in Boca Raton FL about ten years ago. There was a local watering hole -the Crab Shack- that specializes in draft beer and tequila shots. Every Friday night a guy would come by with a long table, equipped with 3 alleys and set up shop inside the pub.

Accompanying him was 6 rough ‘n’ tough racers… crabs of course. All marked distinctively with different shades of food colouring. How it worked was there were 2-3 people per team and of course the crab of choice. The table was sectioned off and marked by feet, 8 in total. Bets are placed and then they’re off! A whirlwind of little pinchers and rainbow shells begin to clumsily make their way down the track in an almost psychedelic manner.

Once the first little champion makes it to the 1 foot marker the losing teams not only have to down a tequila shot and chase it with draft beer but also pay that round of the bar tab. This occurs every time a crab makes it to the next marker! Now, you can imagine as the wee crabs near the final stretch (2 hours later) the folk involved are reasonably sloshed as are the remaining bar occupants -side bets are also made throughout the duration of the race.

You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced such an event. After all wondrous things happen at crab racing.

A bunch of us had seemingly won a trip to New Zealand. My Mom, brother and I (my Sister had ventured off with friends) were climbing a winding staircase up a massive mountain. We reached the top and a lovely lady let us walk through her home to get to a secret route back down the mountain so we could avoid the masses of people coming up behind us. After admiring the lovely wooden table her Maori husband had hand crafted, we made our way back down. While descending I began to play with a bottom tooth that had been bothering me. After wiggling away it came loose and fell into my hand. I was disturbed, mortified and was worried others would notice.

I woke up and, of course, checked it out:

“Oftentimes, it is not the dream of the teeth falling out that creates the disturbance to the psyche but the feelings that accompany the dream. There is often a feeling of helplessness, of powerlessness–the teeth are coming out and there is nothing the dreamer can do to stop the process. Whichever way they make their exit, the dreamer is left with not only a gap in her smile, but a hole in her heart when she awakens.”

“Dreams of tooth loss coupled with anxiety reflect a fear of change, fear of transition. Ask yourself if there is some transition that you are fearful of making.”

“Sometimes tooth loss dreams point to a fear of failure or embarrassment. In waking life, when people lose teeth, they often cover their mouths when talking or smiling. Is there something you want to do but are afraid of undertaking because you fear you’ll look foolish if you fail?”

VERY interesting indeed. I do believe that secret messages are relevant in dreams like these.

Where do shower songs come from? Should shower songs be three minutes long so we don’t waste water? Are these songs we have heard recently? I seem to have a repertoire of songs that have stayed with me for a while. The songs I sing in the shower aren’t even my favourite songs. So where does this come from? What part of the relaxed state of mind allows these dulcet tones to spring forth?

In no particular order here are the ones that come to mind:

Sweet Harmony – The Beloved

Broken Stones – Paul Weller

Hey Jude – Beatles style,

Pennies from Heaven – originally by Frank,

American Pie – McLean version

and my all time favourite for bass baritone – Songs of Love originally by The Divine Comedy (the music is the theme tune to a comedy series called Father Ted). Looking through this list I fear I may be a crooner, but then that’s what singing in the shower should be all about. Queue the imaginary music in your head…

Last year I went to stay at a positively ancient house in deepest darkest Somerset with about 30 of my friends. I’ve been there about 8 or 9 times and I love the place. It calms me. The fireplace has been there since about 900 and the ‘newer’ part of the house since about 1400. Like I said, ancient. On the Sunday morning I came down to breakfast a little late and everyone was eating and chatting. My friend looks up and asks in a very loud voice “Ah there he is, any ideas who was belting out Suspicious Minds at the top of their voice this morning? Apparently the redness of my face answered his question and was greeted with a room full of laughter. My excuse, I was hung over and had simply forgotten where I was and how noise travels in old houses. Happy Days.

Songs of Love

Pale, pubescent beasts
Roam through the streets
And coffee-shops
Their prey gather in herds
In stiff knee-length skirts
And white ankle-socks
But while they search for a mate
My type hibernate
In bedrooms above
Composing their songs of loveYoung, uniform minds
In uniform lines
And uniform ties
Run round
With trousers on fire
And signs of desire
They cannot disguise
While I try to find words
As light as the birds
That circle above
To put in my songs of love

Fate doesn’t hang on a wrong or right choice
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice
So sing while you have time
Let the sun shine down from above
And fill you with songs of love

Fate doesnt hang on a wrong or right choice
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice
So lets sing while we still can
While the sun hangs high up above
Wonderful songs of love
Beautiful songs of love

http://www.mixwit.com/widgets/645a6fd0cfaa2763093ff1b0a8b62b2f

Some amazing music to see you through the night…

Chet Baker, Chet Baker Sings and Plays – “Let’s Get Lost”

Jackson Browne, Running on Empty – “The Load-Out”

Cesaria Evora, Miss Perfumado – “Sodade”

Miles Davis, Bitches Brew – “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down”

Stan Getz, Getz/Gilberto – “Corcovado (Quiet Night of the Stars)”

Massive Attack, Blue Lines – “Unfinished Sympathy”

Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On – “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)”

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong, Best of Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong – “They Can’t Take That Away From Me”

Air, Moon Safari – “Sexy Boy”

Van Morrison, Astral Weeks – “Cypress Avenue”

Imagine that life is like a holiday. We arrive at our destination screaming as we’ve lost our luggage and we don’t speak the language.

We get a hotel that’s constantly under construction (our bodies). We try out all the entertainment and explore as much as we like. If we’re lucky we have a holiday romance.

It tends to get a bit sad when the holiday comes to an end but you’ve taken some super photos and have some lovely holiday memories

My mother was born in 1940, just after the start of World War Two. My grandfather was at that time an aircraft mechanic and shortly after my mother was born he spent the bulk of the war in a Portuguese prisoner of war camp after his plane was shot down. My grandmother raised my mother by herself for the first 4 years and it was a tough time as you could imagine. Following the war my grandfather was a printer on Fleet Street for The Times, they lived in West London and if the photographs are anything to go by they had a happy time as the world healed its wounds.

 My mother was an only child and throughout her life she loved attention, as a young girl and young woman she was a chorus line dancer, with newspaper clippings from the local papers of her in fanciful costumes in My Fair Lady or something similar. She stayed living at home as her mother was stricken with Multiple Sclerosis – which scars the nerves and left her immobilised – and she needed a great deal of support. She sadly died when my mother was 21 years old. My mother was on an overseas holiday and was not contactable. They had to bury her mother before she returned home. I don’t think she ever really got over it. My grandfather re-married after 3 years.

 Some time later my mother married a handsome man who was a mounted metropolitan policeman, one of those coppers who rides around on a horse, a far more high profile job in the early 1960’s than it is today. All was fine until one day she returned home to discover another woman wearing her bathrobe. She turned her back on her husband and his mistress, walked out of the house and never saw him again. She went to her father’s house and pulled her life back together. Whilst she was waiting for her divorce papers she met another young handsome man. She was working on Harley Street as a dental technician and her boss introduced him to one of his friends, they had a whirlwind romance and fell in love. That man was my father.

 An often quoted story is how my mother learnt about the age difference between her and my father. On a flight to Paris before they were married my mother looked at my father’s passport and was shocked to discover that she was eight and a half years older than he was. This never bothered my father one little bit and we always used to tease my mother that she had a toy boy.

 My mother fell pregnant before she and my father were married, they had a little girl who sadly only lived for 3 days, it was terribly upsetting, her name was Emma Louise. A year later my mother gave birth to a bouncing baby boy. He had dark hair and green eyes. He was healthy. Two and half years later at 38 years old my mother gave birth to a little girl, Emma Charlotte. Life was wonderfully happy and they all lived in a little house by the sea.

 The 1980’s were pretty tough in England, it was the Thatcher era and we were plunged into recession. My fathers businesses struggled and money was tight. My mother was extremely creative and could make something from nothing and often did, be this clothing or toys, or whatever you can imagine. Our house bustled with activity, there was always laughter and I had a ridiculously happy childhood. My father worked a great deal and left the raising of children to my mother. Every summer for as long as I could remember my mother, sister and I would spend 3 weeks of the 6 week school summer holiday away from home. One week on the Isle of Wight at my Aunt’s house, she was an honary aunt and it was only in more recent years that I discovered she was in fact the sister of my mothers first husband. The other two weeks were spent house sitting for one of my mother’s old friends in London. They had a fantastic house with a swimming pool and we took their dog for a walk every morning. The dog was literally and figuratively dotty, an insane Dalmatian. It was during one of the house sitting breaks, just after I had turned ten years old that life took a dramatic change.

 I remember this night extremely well, my sister and I had secretly watched or attempted to watch through clenched eyes An American Werewolf in London, we had freaked ourselves out and had gone to bed quite late. At some point in the early hours of the morning my mother came into my room and something was wrong, the right hand side of her body had stopped working, from her face all the way down to her leg. She was very scared and between us we called my mothers friend, Anne. I’m not entirely sure why we didn’t call an Ambulance but I think she lived fairly close by. The rest of this is a blur. At the time it was thought that my mother had a stroke, in reality it was the first strike of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). It is said that MS isn’t hereditary which I really want to believe, but my mother had it, her mother had it and her great uncle had it. That’s a remarkable co-incidence. From this point on in my mothers life she needed a lot of support and she knew exactly what was going to happen to her as she had seen it happen to her own mother. As a consequence the family was drawn together very closely and I still remember a lot of happiness and laughter.

 A few years later, I would have been 13 years old, my mother was crossing the road and due to the MS was a little slow in getting safely to the pavement and was hit my a speeding car. She was clipped on the side of her body and hit her head on the pavement which left a large scar on her forehead, which for a pretty lady was terribly sad. During the time in hospital she was having a full check-up and they discovered that she had cancer of the womb. The cancer was quickly removed although they didn’t get it all. Through poor procedure something remained within my mother, it travelled up to her shoulder and was close to her spine, it got into her bone marrow and spread extremely rapidly. For the last 18 months of her life she was in and out of hospital before spending her final 4 months in an intensive care clinic where she passed away due to cancer on 2nd May 1991.

 My mother and I had a wonderful relationship and she was my world. We said all of our goodbyes and it was all carefully thought through. We’d often discuss what would happen to her after she left, would there be heaven? We had both gone to church together for about 8 or 9 years and were confirmed on the same day when I was 13. We agreed that if there was a way to contact each other, we would. I have since lost any faith I might have had, but my views on religion are another matter all together. By sheer luck my sister and I have always spent the 2nd of May together as it falls on an English bank holiday, even this year, I am 12,000 miles away from her and through sheer dumb luck we will be together in Sydney on the 2nd May, it’s 16 years later and we’ve been apart for longer than we were together. I still miss her and my life is influenced by these earlier years although I’m slightly numb to it all and I have found that I have stopped missing people. An example being that I haven’t seen any of my English friends and family for 7 months and I don’t miss them, they’re just not here. It’s borne from an emotional detachment that comes as a result of survival tactics. If you have ever lost anyone close to you I’m sure you’ll understand.

 What have I learnt from my mother’s life? I believe that life is too short and too precious too waste. Be happy. Love and be happy. Be decadent. Don’t settle for second best. If something upsets you, change it. If you want something with all of your heart, make it happen. Put things in perspective. Be creative. Don’t listen to negativity. Be extraordinary, because life can be taken away at any moment. Live for now, live for today. Be passionate. Be positive. Dream, because if you don’t have a dream, how are you going to make your dreams come true.  

Have I ever been in love? Perhaps, yet nothing compares to the evening I truly, madly, deeply gave up my heart to the stars.

“Suddenly the sky collapsed into darkness and a dozen bright stars appeared.”

Moreton Island, Australia: Midnight

My dreamy mind became instantly saturated by the whimsical production above me. The milky way summoned my attention and I was immediately lost within it’s vastness. The moment so surreal, laying on that desolate beach, consumed with the feeling of being alive and seeing everything I’d ever wished for dancing above me. It was a rare moment of immense perspective.

If I were conventionally creative and able to execute my thoughts to canvas, in that moment of frenzied inspiration, I probably would have created Van Gogh’s Starry Night.