Inner landscape....

This will be a VERY swift post - I need to get ready for the Quiz Night in the Griffin in twenty minutes...

My inner landscape on this journey mirrors the geography of Nepal...

We've been enjoying some utterly WONDERFUL weather. Sunny, hot, humid... a real holiday feel to most days (if I get out walking!). OK, maybe not the best weather to WORK in, but I hate to complain about good weather...

Which is why the total plummet of the last week has been so difficult to process. I suspect down to several things - the new supplements, on top of pushing myself damned hard last weekend and on Monday to get a grip on all the admin of my life AND keep up my training (TWO walks on Monday - nearly an hour before work, and over an hour after work; I was chuffed to bits, and making an extra effort to stretch myself - doubling back to do the slope three times, the sort of terrain I'll have to cover on the trek won't be the gentle undulations of Somerset, so the more hilly stuff I can practice on, the better...)

Tuesday was a real struggle - I was totally knackered. Slept in. Struggled to put in a full shift. Warning light - need time off... so I booked Wednesday. Luckily (or maybe not - I could have had the time off sick!) IBS kicked off Tuesday night and continued through to today (Sunday morning) though at least the ulcers seem to have healed over now... I slept most of Wednesday - haven't done that in an age! so must have needed it.

My class in Swindon was OK, but I was practically nodding at the wheel on the way back - this is NOT good. After two hours work? So I was quite badly rattled to be so low on resources - after a day's rest. Managed a visit to a friend - but indulged in several fags while I was there, so I felt pretty grim by the time I got home.

And Friday, between visits to the loo, my least painful position was stretched out on the sofa. Couldn't really sit, couldn't really stand - and I couldn't really drive, either. So a day off sick, which I always feel rotten about...

I finally managed a 'proper' walk today - maybe four miles, much slower than usual - and with interesting visuals, I think maybe I was a little hasty in donning the walking boots! My temperature plummeted on my return so much that I pulled on a fleece to drive to Sainsburys (I was too dizzy to walk, even though I only needed a few things)...

All of which has been accompanied by the most unsettling emotional leakings - unexpected tears, temper flare-ups and the worst 'downers' I've experienced in a long, long time.

The downers don't even feel necessarily connected to the low-level background anxiety about what happens once my contract ends, and about what's best to do with the morass that is my finances. Although I guess they are.

They feel chemical. Biochemical. Like there's a way to adjust that balance...

Which there will be. It's called eating properly, and exercising regularly, and getting enough rest and sleep, and not smoking and MANAGING STRESS.

Which sounds sensible and practical - and not nearly as bloody hard as it IS.

Maybe I just have to accept that I swing wildly between the poles of exultant elation and quiet desperation. Sometimes not so bloody quiet, at that.

The one I don't like to dwell on too much is that maybe it's the virus proliferating in my brain, inducing mood swings over which I have very little control at all...

Time to go - hope the quiz is fun...

next event...

TARGET NOW REACHED & SURPASSED!!!!!

Well, I know Crysse devoted great tranches of time to chasing up classy treats to put on the list of bids for the auction. We shared mounting excitement and delight as the list began to stack up... and up... and up...
I know that she tirelessly publicised the event, and generated a lively email traffic in bids, because she copied me in on all her mails...
I know there is a substantial reserve already as I arrive at La Strada on a gloriously sunny evening, after a day of dashing about. It's a rush to set up, distributing the Trust's leaflets and my poetry competition flyers as Crysse lays out the fantastic goods - many people have arrived ultra-promptly.
Which is probably just as well - I have no time to obsess on the fact that I have actually no idea what I'm going to say. I muddle through somehow, and then Peter takes over as auctioneer extraordinaire.

I'm utterly awestruck (& guess those who weren't there will be too) that Crysse's amazing creative energy has generated an incredible response, which is picked up on the night and extended...

The total surpassed the entire fundraising so far

- £1,872 !!!!!!!!

With £1,740 already raised, my fundarising target has now been topped.

With our trek training weekend rapidly approaching at the start of July, I can relax about whether or not I'll reach my target... and get on with training and dealing with the rest of my life (like sorting out work during September and October... and to come back to!)

The ball will keep rolling with the other events planned - a quiz, another poetry night, another clothes swap, and possibly a lunch...

I am so lucky to have friends who create joy and generosity around them, and who so open-heartedly invite me into that space to request support for this venture of mine.

And to share in family, too - Crysse became a gran for the first time last week, and I met the gorgeous Florrie on the morning of the auction...

Poetry Workshop on the theme of Dreams...

The last Thursday of the month is when the Grove Road poetry group meet.
Stepping Out financed my delivering a workshop to the group, payment to be added to the trek fund.

The reason I was facilitating this month's group prompted a short Q & A session about the virus, and then we got down to writing. Appropriately enough, our theme was dreams, both sleeping and waking. We had as much fun sharing our efforts as writing them - as always the diversity of ideas which came out of the afternoon was a real delight to us all.

Many thanks to all who participated, and to Steve for requesting the workshop.

trek training back on track

I open my notebook, and it falls open at Rainbow's number. I feel guilty; I promised to ring her next time I was here. Perhaps I should have rung her before leaving Bridport...

No. I need to savour my solitude, recover from having an unexpected observation (! that was a bit of a shocker), and have a play with words before walking.

Yesterday, after half an hour, I was shaky and nauseous. Not so fit, then... It was only six-thirty in the morning, maybe Crysse was right and the time of day had more to do with my physical struggle than fitness per se...

All the same, I take things pretty gently today, with lots of rests.

It's colder today than my last visit. In the - three? - weeks since I was last here, clumps of purple pompom flowers have colonised the cliffs' edges. I want to call them sedge; it sounds right, but of course I have no idea what they ACTUALLY are.

I have always loved basking in summer silence, broken only by the ocean's background murmur and bird calls. Voices drift over on the wind, and cattle crunch contentedly, systematically cropping the hardy thin stems of grass.

The few trees are sculpted by the elements into Marge Simpson hairdos caught in high winds. A dual-rotored helicopter - are they Chinooks? - putters below me, scanning the water's edge for incident or just practising low flying.

How lucky am I?

Being paid to facilitate a workshop with a wonderful group - I was moved to tears earlier while driving through the vibrant landscape, hit by the realisation (while driving through West Coker) that I wouldn't swap this minute of my life with another living soul.
Not for all the money, prestige, or power in the world...
And the Dire Straits track, Why Worry comes over the airwaves...
I played that album to death when I was pregnant (Brothers in Arms and Billy Holliday were practically the only albums I owned!)

My own journey amazes me sometimes. How did I get from the edges of Edinburgh, nestling by the foothills of the Pentlands - to its Gothic centre, out to its sink estate margins, then deep into its black heart... yet end up in a sleepy Somerset market town for twenty-odd years? (recently Frome was featured by the Guardian!)

Trainspotting at the Theatre Royal on Friday was interesting. Ducking and diving in desperation... I'd say the interpretation only hinted at that. Forgoing depth for too much indulgence in ranting; predominantly cursing. While I know only too well how authentic the language is, too much of it is just tiresome. And some dialogue would have been a welcome rest from the lengthy asides.

From a half-life in Scotland's then-impoverished capital, to these riches, this wealth - a miraculous journey. Largely accidental - or should I say synchronicitous...
Now this dreamer, this lazy girl greedy for dreamtime, this rebel who bit off more than she could chew when she entered the city's underbelly (and nearly didn't emerge at all, at least three accidental ODs that I remember, plus a few deliberate ones), now this misfit can roam the South West in her battered peppermint green polo to deliver workshops that are a delight and a privilege to facilitate.

I have a handsome, incredibly bright and nearly-grown son (when do we hit 'adult'? - not sure I have!), a first-class honours degree - and roots in two countries...

Today, I have a guide called Eve who navigates the least steep slopes - saving those knees this time! - to deliver me to the foot of Golden Cap. I think of Jean breakfasting there on her walking retreat, and remember my promise to John that we tackle it together. At the pub, I munch through a bag of crisps and knock back a virgin Mary; should keep me going...
... til hot doughnuts and a welcome cup of tea back in West Bay. And a fag on my return to the car. After at least seven (strenuous!) miles, I feel like I deserve such simple pleasures.
A little of what you fancy...

Duck-egg blue airbrushed with cloud, intense green slopes in the setting sun.

Time to go.

Coastal town flaneur...

I sit in the weak pre-noon sunlight, sipping Italian coffee from a corrugated paper cup. The plangent sound of classical guitar soar above the market day and traffic bustle. A Strauss Waltz - Blue Danube - this is no wayfarer but a professional musician, supplied with breakfast and coffee by his attentive girlfriend.
A flock of pigeons congregate around the dappled trunk of a plane tree, fussing with dropped fragments. Sun reflects bright mauve iridescence, shimmering mantillas with bright scarlet finger-feet like brazen sandals on demure senoras.

This scene could be Anytown across Europe; I recall leisurely breakfast writing in Southern France, Barcelona and Majorca. However, the portly bearded traders in their plaid shirts and baseball caps are unmistakeably English.

It's a sunny May Wednesday in Bridport. Later, I will head off for my fix of the sea; for a few moments I am a flaneur, soaking up the sounds, sights, smells of now...

Lots of media coverage...

Hardly hitting the broadsheets, BUT I'm chuffed to bits that the Auction of Promises and Dreams was in the Frome Times last week - plus a review of madabout... AND a piece about the poetry comp!
Cracking support from the FT - just hope my fellow Frome folk don't get thoroughly peeved at my phisog in the local pages!

ANOTHER OVERWHELMING FUNDRAISING SUCCESS!!!

I'm trying to catch my tail here... 31st of May already, and this event was on the 20th!

ANOTHER £300 added to the total!

Jill and John Miller hosted a cracking fundraiser supper - it was a lovely gathering, and we all had a great evening; there was stacks of delicious food, plenty wine (for a donation) and entertaining conversation with a variety of lively guests. The evening began very auspiciously when it turned out that the woman who'd contacted me because she saw the Kerouac piece in her local paper knew Jill from years back, when Jill led a women's group that Claire was part of... a lovely piece of synchronicity for us.
Claire lost her husband to hep C a couple of years ago, and she's so thrilled that awareness-raising is happening at last, and campaigning for services and treatment is becoming more evident.
It was indeed a nurturing evening of lovely energy, and I was profoundly touched by the effort both Jill and John had made to make it all possible - I have to say, skills that are beyond my organisational capacities and catering expertise. Which makes them all the more precious.

madabout words...

Another triumph for Crysse as spoken word co-ordinator - performing in the Merlin Theatre foyer on Friday 12th May, part of her madabout words event.

Not a trek event, but Crysse took the opportunity after my Twenty- first Century Trenches poem to give the Auction of Promises and Dreams a plug - listings on the www.wychhaz.co.uk site, brilliant Mike, thank you! Although my collecting tins hadn't arrived, we collected nearly £10 from just that passing mention during the show (aren't people round 'ere supportive!).

and here's the poem:

Twenty-first Century Trenches

I’m still too young to remember how

after the war

everyone was glad – but still cautious

not yet free from rationing

or fear

there was nuclear war to beware now

before

it was all much more immediate

you could dodge

targeted devastation

bomb-dropped from above

run from

strafing tank turrets

if not

storm troopers pouring through ghettoes

pursuing hiding, hidden Jews

slip-sliding trench warfare

howitzers and diseased mud

culling humanity

a massive mincer chewing through nations

nuclear warheads upped the ante exponentially

I’m still too young

will always be too young

to remember that

we have our own war

our own 21^st century trenches

where drugs and blood-borne viruses

alcohol and anxieties

cut swathes through society

sick with cancerous debts

our young men stripped of vitality and dignity

our women rendered bereft of self-respect

by dependencies

shame hides with cowardice

in dark and lonely places

Not a 19th nervous breakdown... Shirley Holmes and the Body in B Ward

I may have missed the Bristol run, but I made it to Cardiff for Stepping Out's nineteenth production. A thoroughly entertaining evening - and overheard while leaving the auditorium: 'So glad I came,' 'Wonderful!' 'Really makes you think, doesn't it?'
Another huge success, I reckon!
Read more about it on their website www.steppingouttheatre.co.uk/
And for one night, I was Steve and Cheryl's 'madwoman in the attic'...

Back to blogging soon...

I tried to do a quick blog entry on the Friday morning following posting Lena's memoriam piece, before I realised that I couldn’t fill the space above that with my usual inanities…

I needed to craft this one more carefully, out of respect.

‘…pearls of time/strung on life’s narrative/iridescently unique.’

My last post (before Lena) took us up to my meeting with Jean on Chesil Beach. That was a pearl of time; we walked together, talking of our lives, to the glade into the Othona community. We drank tea and then sat in the chapel together.

It was a gift to be warmed by her strength and inner peace, share the sacred space with her.

She emailed me today, with news of her weeklong walking retreat, ‘treading on sacred ground’.

I can still see in my mind's eye that fabulous vista down from the retreat out to sea – and feel the white peace of the chapel.

My walk back to the car that day was really special - I went along the cliffs as the sun was setting, lifted by the joy of our unexpected meeting. It seemed as if I was ascending into the sun...

It was about 8 when I got back to West Bay, I was starving – so I treated myself to supper in the pub…
I left West Bay under a crescent moon hung in indigo-black skies…

Memories of Lena by Ngaire Ruth

LENA

She was warm, smiley, up close and direct, firm to the touch, but she was equally scary, a slightly threatening creature of intent. She put the heel of her stiletto into the head of a junkie taking liberties in the bathroom of my Camden council flat. She meant well. She told me then how she had been a junkie herself, a Cheltenham runaway, adopted, alone. It was a bottle-of-vodka-edge-of-your-seat type of herstory. I knew all this anyway. She was damaged, so that it showed.

She had rejected the stuff completely, for over a decade, by moving location and becoming absorbed in parenthood; giving her boy the life she had never had, as best she could. I believed her. She had turned her life around, without God, without a miracle of patience, 'other half'; without replacing her addiction with something else.

Then the anger came. It came from her feet all the way to her heart and she burst before it got to her head, before the thinking part.

Then the tiredness crept in. It seeped in to her bones and then into her very being. The doctor said to her that there were plenty of 'options'. She tried a few. She tried to talk about it to me, to other friends. It was difficult to respond without the experience or authority. It was difficult to grasp the seriousness when Lena was putting her beautiful all in to getting your complete attention: arms waving to greet you, eyes daring and teeth sharp, smile fixed and that chuckle in her voice.

Around five years ago she moved to Mexico to live the life she had left to the full. It must have been great to feel the hot sun on those aching bones and to be allowed to sleep in the day, like everybody else. I heard she died last year - in her sleep. We said goodbye long before that. Autumn 1999.


In the summer of 2006 I am just saying: 'Hello there girl. You are remembered.You made a difference. Thank you.'

I feel that Lena gave up and I feel it was her friends fault this happened. We had relied on her enthusiasm and encouragement for ourselves but when she needed it from us, we didn't know how to give it; how to help. Make sure you tell your friends how they can help you and give yourself the passion and committment you have always given others. That is why I have relayed Lena's story.

by Ngaire Ruth

Present time

I have about ten minutes over my morning dandelion latte (with half soya milk) to pay tribute to yesterday...
I had, of course, intended to do a dummy run to find out how long it would take to get to Bridport. Last Thursday evening, when Crysse and I went to see Aisle 16 in Exeter (check out their website www.aisle16.co.uk - they were excellent, but I think our use of visuals will be far more interesting), we were calculating timings for Taunton and Exeter to see if working in either of those towns was going to be at all feasible. It's about an hour to Yeovil - which I should know by now, my life has looped to Yeovil on several occasions, but it's obviously not a place I've embraced unreservedly in my heart... Ath spent nearly twenty-four hours in the police cells in Yeovil, and there are other 'previous life' associations - mainly as a hard-drinking wild child before motherhood...
I've delivered WEA courses in Montacute and East Coker (don't you just love that link to T.S. Eliot?), so I'm not opposed to the area... I do love when I get the chance to 'reclaim' a place in a positive way.
There wasn't time to do a dummy run to Bridport in the end. Or at least - I spent the time doing other things, like typing up the draft of the writing for Stepping Out which is part of the blog sponsorship. I didn't make the last night of the Bristol run of the play - which I'm really disappointed about, but if I'd struggled there on Saturday night, I'd have been enduring rather than enjoying. No matter how brilliant it was. Of course, I still felt I'd let Steve down - I haven't quite got the hang of guilt-free self-care...
What a preamble - all to say I allowed two hours for my drive to Bridport. Panicking on the day in case that wasn't enough... it took me about three hours to get back from our break in Lyme Regis, but I did take a very circuitous route - plus I was resisting my return to a smothering, claustrophic relationship, having enjoyed my freedom as much as my women's studies summer school away from Ath and his dad... always a death-knell, when you feel your heart leap as soon as you kick up the traces...
Digressing AGAIN.
I arrive yesterday in Bridport with nearly an hour to spare, plenty time to grab a coffee and a toasted teacake. It's a pretty little town - not as close to the coast as I'd assumed.
The Fisherman's Arms is a lovely centre - a converted pub! I have an immediate affinity with Lesley, the co-ordinator - and it's not just the music in her Northumbrian voice, or her warm manner; although of course those things help. It's to do with her passion for words - her passion for her service users being able to access the therapeutic and enabling power of language. When I later discover she's worked with writer John Killick on his writer-in-residence project with people with dementia, I'm not at all surprised.
The workshop is great. The group is lovely - friendly, sparky, witty and very keen. I'm feel very privileged to be sitting with a bunch of people, being paid to encourage them to write and then to share fragments of themselves and their lives. This particular group collectively overcome difficulties which make hep C seem fortunate by comparison.
I'm invited to stay for lunch with Lesley. As I type this, I think how much she reminds me of Karen; though why that should be... The friendliness, perhaps, that open-hearted approach to people. And the immediate affinity.
Anyway, Lesley is keen for me to do more with the centre after these two workshops are complete. She's worried about the travelling, which I'm not... The time, and the money side are more important. Wednesdays are not good at the moment because of college. And if I get a new job, time could be tricky... And if I don't get a job, I might not be able to afford to deliver WEA workshops...
But outcome is not my responsibility...
After lunch, I drive to West Bay, park up and get changed.

from my notebook:
trilling birds on my right, soft cushiony sea grass hummocks below me, powerful sea breaths before me, gentle rolling hills behind me, with what looks like a botannical garden - exotica and firs - planted round a house on the slope.
All under a hazy May sky.
I find a pottery fragment - worn smooth, all jagged, broken edges healed
My Montacute workshop led to today and next week's workshops at the Fisherman's Arms
(at the time, I didn't think Montacute was wildly successful)

Bridport is just along from West Bay, in turn just along from Abbotsbury, where I went on my only solo bike trip - an artist's date, staying in a B&B with Louise de Salvo's Writing as a Way of Healing, borrowed from Helen (and on the way home, melted my pannier and stained the book, which became my copy when I replaced Helen's).
I walked along Chesil Beach both at sunset and not long after dawn the following day, it was wonderful. I still have the notebook, the one Carole gave me when we went to Lyme; it has little sketches as well as my usual wordy ramblings of that and other journeys.
Chesil Beach I remember as being much harder work. I must be getting fitter after all. Shifting pebbles are quite strenous - as we know from Durdledoor (not that much further along the Jurassic Coast...)

After my scribbles, I check out some of the jobs in the Guardian. Chilling slightly, I'm trying to figure how far Abbotsbury is, and if I have the energy to walk there and then back to West Bay for the car. Sensibly, I begin to walk back. I'm emptying my boots of beach to continue walking in comfort, and a white-haired woman with a warm voice strikes up conversation.

Here, I have to stop. I have a bath run, I have a reiki/reflexology in half an hour, the washing machine is about to finish - and I wanted to walk to Pippa's...

Time runs away with me again. To be continued...

POETRY COMPETITION

‘Harnessing the Power of Dreams’ - Poetry Competition on the theme of realising dreams (max 40 lines).

Judge: performance poet and creative writing tutor, Crysse Morrison

1st Prize £50
2nd Prize £30
3rd Prize £20

This competition is a part of a fundraising initiative for Hazel Stewart’s trek to the Himalayas in Nepal, to raise funds for The Hepatitis C Trust Awareness Campaign.

The 100km trek at altitudes up to 4000m is organised by the Hepatitis C Trust (registered charity number: 1104279) in conjunction with Community Action Treks. All the would-be trekkers have, or have recently been treated for, the blood-borne virus Hepatitis C – and this is where the realising of dreams comes in. The commitment to train adequately for the trek is a huge undertaking – symptoms of the virus can include chronic fatigue, muscle and joint pains, fevers, chills, headaches, night sweats, blurred vision, dizziness and poor quality sleep. Other trekkers include a woman whose partner has hepatitis C, a hepatitis C specialist nurse and a woman who provides hepatitis C awareness training for agencies in the drug field.

If you are a poet, why not support this venture and take your chance at winning one of the small cash prizes on offer?

Anyone wishing to find out more about the trek, log on to http://www.hepctrust.org.uk/ and anyone wishing to sponsor Hazel can check out her donation page at www.justgiving.com/wychhaz .

Deadline 31st August 2006
Entry fee £5 per poem, £10 for 3. Entries must be in English, single-sided, single-spaced. Entries must be the work of the entrant and must not have been published.
Cover sheet required with name, address, email, telephone number, and title(s) of poem(s). No identification should appear on the manuscripts.

Critiques £10 per poem – enclose an sae and write ‘critique requested’ at the top of each poem you would like critiqued, and beside the poem title(s) on your cover sheet.
Please ensure correct postage on your entry – regretfully, we will be unable to retrieve entries which languish at the depot with inadequate postage. Only those entries being critiqued can be returned.

No corrections will be accepted, and no refunds will be given.

For acknowledgement of entry send an SAE marked ‘Acknowledgement’.

For a list of winners, send an SAE marked ‘Results’.

Entries not complying with competition rules will be disqualified.

Cheques should be made payable to The Hepatitis C Trust Awareness Raising Campaign, with your name and address on the back.

Post your entries, with cheques and cover sheets, by 31st August, to:

Harnessing the Power of Dreams Competition Secretary
H. Stewart
16 Marston Mead
Frome
BA11 4DU

No entry form required.

The judge’s decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

notebook jottings..

19th Jan 06:

…something in the atmosphere, something of the rarified air of Nepal perhaps,
leaching from the slides of gargantuan mountain ridges, clear, pure skies… that called out ‘yes, yes, YES!’

…why do I want to do it?

Because I may never have another experience like it.

Because I need to know if I can.


14th April 06:

Orbiting the closeness of couples often intensifies loneliness when solitude is regained – at other times there’s a deliciousness about indulgence…

16th April 06

isn’t the breathcloud of a horse the most fragrant exhaled air in the world?

17th April 06

Under the yew tree
the ground is Easter damp
putting steam engines
vie with reverberating generators
bass lines to the dissonances of children
shrieking Bank Holiday wildness
conversations weave around the gravestones
and avenue of solemn box yews
linking church to lychgate

the outer perimeter
a snaking collage
of car boot stalls and classy traders
sculpted mirrors reflecting
the bronzed warmth of amber
next to tatty paperbacks
and tarnished silverware

the bells in the church tower
add melodious markers to the sliding afternoon

stylish fundraising... £182 to add!!!

Here are some of the pix Crysse took from our fantastic clothes swap evening last night. It was great to see some of the clothes I never get the chance to wear on other people... and of course, I got some choice pieces myself!
Some absolutely gorgeous colours (and women, of course!) as well as some fabulous clothes...
and lots of fun - which of course is obligatory! my thanks to all who supported the evening and made it so special.
it's always good to have a stylish 'dresser' to help accessorize the outfits...
I'll try to get some copy run off for the papers - 'Kind of Kerouac' got coverage in both the Frome Times and the Standard (& the Standard used pix, which was great given that it was the first issue to publicise this year's Frome Festival...) so fingers crossed!

SPONSORSHIP! www.steppingouttheatre.co.uk

News today - Stepping Out Theatre Company are sponsoring my blog! For details on the sterling work Stepping Out do, log onto www.steppingouttheatre.co.uk

The Easter break has been - and gone...

It's past the witching hour, so I should be heading back through the dream gate rather than firkling about in cyberspace, but so much time seems to be slipping through my fingers... I wanted to do justice to the NHCN conference, rather than merely mention it in passing - particularly as there were some very special moments, with deep inner resonance for me... I have a sheaf of notes jotted in bed on the Friday night, scrawled in the car on Saturday night, and more on my return, but... work and life intervened. Maybe there will be time before October! Or maybe some experiences are not to be shared, but simply hugged close to the heart.

No surprise that by Easter Sunday's walk, I'm thinking in lines of poetry - writing time squeezed down to words rather than pages...

today I walk with sadness
a leaded feather mantle
the Easter sun cannot warm
memories of a night-long lover's hug
on journeys through the dreamgate
tantalisingly incomplete.

Easter Monday - Mells Daffodil Day - Crysse and I walked over this year; last year we cycled. We sat with Siegfried again, and wrote a few lines.

The walking, the walking over the last four days has been wonderful. In bright hopeful Spring sun, therapeutic and grounding, energising and mood-lifting. Walking allows me to stay with my emotions, and release them naturally back to the earth, in safety and solitude.

I met a woman yesterday who has lost a close friend to hep C. Forty-seven - only two years older than me... I've asked her to write some words about her friend for me to post here, and give me something symbolic to take on my journey to Nepal.

My life seems to abound with such synchronicities at the moment. I'm continually touched by totally unexpected offers of support - an email from a haiku poet tonight offered performance at any events we have in the pipeline.

Tonight, I met two women who live and work in Shetland. I've always been intensely jealous of the writers who go there for months on end (though I don't fancy winter there - I'm too much of a sap!) I took one look at the photo of the view from Jill's window and just dissolved - such an idyllic coastline vista... Maybe I'll get there yet - what more perfect place to write...

Tonight's posh dinner at the Pump Rooms in Bath was pretty cool, too. Drinks around the hot spring pool, meeting some of the conference speakers... That too, felt like a gift. The food was delicious, and the company at our table varied and entertaining. Much more fun than I expected.

And so to bed - or I shall be too tired to enjoy the conference!

The regenerative power of creativity...

I had a great day yesterday.

The start was a bit wobbly - I managed a reiki self-healing before Ath was up and on the computer playing some of the vast library of sounds he's downloaded since I got MY (note that; MY) new computer... (is it men and male children in particular that have the compulsion to colonise - or am I just a jaded single mother?) To be fair, that wasn't an issue yesterday - he's managed to get Lowell George for me, I've been after that for twenty-odd years, and figured how to get it into my files from his. And yesterday I was in a hurry to get the the media arts centre. I'd hoped to walk - but it was a wet day, and I had tremendous sweats, so I had to have a quick sluice to be fit for 'public consumption'. No time to wash my hair - it would still be sopping wet for the filming.

With the music on, missed Crysse's text and call - so missed synchronisation, and was a bit late. Over coffee to liven us all up, Howard played us Crysse's 'Onomatopoeia' track which he'd done visuals for last time, and which he's made a funked up sound track for since we last met. It's just brilliant - and it's so energising to work with Howard's enthusiasm. While he got set up in the studio, I had time to jog my memory on my lines (having totally neglected to take on board that I should have learned them again for our session - life at warp speed means not being able to be as conscientious as I'd like, a great deal of the time I racket about like a bagatelle ball... even missed an acupuncture Tuesday - hadn't written it down and so it totally slipped my mind - I swear having a life as well as work makes for far more chaos than we ascribe to full-on addicts).

Four takes of me standing on a chair not speaking to Crysse's previously filmed head (the two-dimensionality of film is really weird) and we had a reasonable version. At least, it looked OK played back on the camera's built-in screen - proper screen-size, I might change my mind... Christies for coffee (via Raves from the Grave to get me a ticket for Pee Wee Ellis), lunch, a bit of tinkering with poems and trying to squeeze in some new writing.

A lovely few hours, in short. And productive.

I dropped Crysse and decided I was going to go for a stroll through the lanes. Just to see how it felt. By Little Keyford I get a text 'GET A STANDARD' so detour down to the Mount to pick one up.

They printed my review and pics.

One of me and Crysse, and one of Steve. Placed opposite the telly listings - so damn good positioning, too. I'm chuffed to bits.

And as I meander down under the railway bridge across the bypass into the Longleat Estate, it occurs to me perhaps I shouldn't feel I'm not doing enough. Perhaps I should just accept I'm doing what I'm doing, and that it can't necessarily be compared to the efforts of others. It's not measurable, it just is.

It's a beautiful day now. The dark clouds have gone, just cottonwool drifts in blue, and the landscape looks glorious in the Spring sunshine. I feel as if I'm playing hookey - which I am, in a sense; there are so many chores and such a pile of admin awaiting me - but this is sanctioned. I'm allowed to be wandering the Somerset countryside, filling my soul with the joys of freedom and Spring when there's work to be done - it's trek training!

Maybe the lesson I'm supposed to be learning is to junk that ethos; the ethos drummed into me all my life that always, always chores come before anything else - before enjoying being with family, taking care of your health, and certainly before any pleasureable stuff...

Two hours go by. And I'm not too knackered... Time to grab a quick snack, have a quick bath and dive in the car downtown to meet Crysse and Peter in the Granary for Pee Wee’s gig.

Home at the same time as (a very tipsy) Ath. He puts on the music and crashes out. I watch ‘Lost in Space’ for a bit until I get fed up and retire to bed.

Yes, I had a very good day yesterday.

One step forward, seventeen back

All right, maybe not quite that bad. But that's how it feels.
I walked yesterday, the first decent walk since the 3rd April (and that was only 3/4 of an hour). Crysse and I managed a very short walk on Sunday (9th). So I've had nearly ten whole days of no time for a decent 'training' walk.

When I left work yesterday, I knew that by the time I got home, I'd probably be too hungry and tired to walk. So I took a wee detour to find Chew Valley Lake, parked up in the picnic area, and took a stroll along the Grebe Trail and then the Bitterne Trail - neither circle the lake, unfortunately. So I thought I'd try the other direction. It was a lovely blue-misted evening - a chill breeze blowing from the lake; good walking weather. Birdsong and wind in the trees muted the faint traffic noise from the road.

In the end, I wasn't so disappointed that I couldn't go all the way round the lake - by the time I got back to the car, I was knackered.

And by the time I got home, I managed an hour or so telly-gazing before I was zonked on the sofa - for the second time this week.

And I went back to bed this morning after I'd dropped Ath at work. (sleeping in on Tuesday obviously didn't catch me up completely with my sleep quota).

So much I wanted to do today. The idea was - an extra day off work to 'get things straight' as well as have the shiatsu treatment I'd had to reschedule on Tuesday because I was running so late.

There's a pile of admin to get through, 50 or so emails to respond to, I'm overdrawn again and need to transfer funds asap... there's piles more washing, I need to hoover - and as for the kitchen and bathroom floors... I don't want to think about the work I left to be sorted out back at the office on my return... I've got a couple of workshops to prepare for the WEA - I need to find out if the book club is going to run, and get my reading done if yes (Jane was on Grand Designs last night - mum rang to let me know, she'd remembered I said Jane was going to be on, how did she remember that? or is it just me that can't remember anything I don't write down...)

I've managed to wash up, get just one load of washing done, go to Carla for my (first ever) shiatsu (wonderful!) and sleep. I've fallen asleep three or four times since I got home this afternoon.

It feels like a shameful waste of a day - very like I used to feel when I snoozed my study days away.

I need to be much more self-nurturing when I'm timetabling work. No more training people on two days in a row - nor the marathon spread I've just had; two training days, a conference, a day's training, then a workshop, and another day's training. My external supervisor raised her eyebrows and commented 'that is full-on' when I told her...

But I did it. Even when there's a sense of thrashing yourself to the limit - maybe because of that? - there's a huge sense of achievement when you do get to the other side...

And Crysse and I are filming for the DVD tomorrow.

I need to draw up a proper trek training schedule, too. Stretching and walking - every day, even if it's only 15 minutes. Five minutes would be better than none... (I did swim twice at the conference - but I also drank gallons of coffee and (to my shame) smoked half a small packet of tobacco...)

I'd like to write about the conference, but now is not the time. Believe it or not, I'm tired and need to sleep (again!). So, more for another time.

Perception is everything - target on track!

If we break down the fundraising to March - September, that works out at £500 a month.
(as I only signed up around the end Feb, all that 'do I, don't I, will people support me to make this possible, am I completely crazy to even think of doing it?' during the end of Jan/beg Feb is largely irrelevant as 'decision time').

So, March to September it is. At £500 each month - 500 x 7 = 3,500

Which means we start April £213 up on our target (and there's £45 so far on a sponsor sheet at Lyn's, bless her heart, which we won't add in until the sheet is complete).

Perception is everything.
(a quote from one of the workshop facilitators at the Mainliners Conference - he's so right...)

Ruth's advice was 'do what you normally do, and incorporate the fundraising into that.' A tricky one - what do I usually do apart from write? (and these days, precious little of that - writing needs time so if there isn't any... It can't happen. I try to just take notes, things I can copy up or develop later - but as that begins to pile up, it just becomes distressing because I feel the lack of time even more acutely.

And really, what use is writing? If it hasn't generated an income for me by now... it's hardly likely to be a means of generating funds for the Trust and Nepal...

I'll tell you what use writing is; it has the potential to save lives, and to enrich them beyond measure. You can't put a price on that. I'm not saying that my writing has saved other people's lives, or enriched them - I may be a bit dramatic, but I'm not that grandiose (although people have been known to enjoy some of my readings). Writing has saved my life, enriched it, and been a tool for positive change...

And I think this blog is an extension of that.

Perception is everything.

And what it might do is keep up interest and the creative energy to keep things bowling along...

If I just follow what I'm compelled to do, somehow the universe will provide what is needed, as Goethe said - it's not for me to predict outcome, it's my task just to do the work...

In performance mode... pix courtesy of Jill Miller

For those of you who weren't there, hope this gives a flavour - hoping to post up some more soon of our supporters that night!
Watch this space!

Kind of Kerouac Review - and £162 pounds to add!

Kind of Kerouac was wonderful.
Christies is a perfect venue for a relaxed cafe-style atmosphere with an intimate gathering. Once Steve opened the evening with his gravelly-velvet vocals (including Dixie Chicken and the Norah Jones number Turn Me On, which Crysse fell in love with), it began to feel far more like a private party than a 'performance event'. Crysse and I had chosen our set carefully, with slightly darker material than usual to fit the Beat Generation theme, and it seemed to be well enough recieved... Everyone certainly seemed to enjoy the evening immensely. Peter read extracts from Thigmotaxis - he reads so beautifully, and so does Skip (aka Robert Palmer). Skip's sets framed the interval with his thought-provoking and lyrical poetry, and included a piece from Kerouac. Peter, Crysse and I also had another slot before Steve rounded the evening with another selection of songs.

£162 towards the £3,500 target.

The evening was such fun, it was so lovely to hear Steve play again - having a musician open for us nervy poets creates a whole different ambience, we can be much more relaxed than if it's simply words...
All in all, to be part of the wonderful energy of the evening was absolutely intoxicating.

Well, for every peak, there has to be a trough...

Mainliners Mentoring Conference in Glasgow

I get up at 6am to catch a train from mum's in Prestonpans to the Waverley, and then one to Glasgow Queen Street. It's a beautiful morning - bitterly cold, yet not frosty. There's a strange music to my journey... I'm so accustomed to English voices, being surrounded by this old/new harmony is strangely dislocating.

It feels like an adventure; now that's interesting. That's about enthusiasm and joie de vivre - and energy. If you have no energy, everything is too much effort.

Carlton Hill looms on the right, Salisbury Crag on the left. Quick train change, and I'm torn between writing and looking - the familiar crenellations of Princes Street edging the gardens between Waverley and Haymarket, the looming grandeur of the castle rising atop its rugged outcrop of rock.

Linlithgow next stop - this music, I miss. The naming of place; there's a sense of my history encapsulated in the syllables of the names of the landscape I grew up in.

The three tower blocks at Sighthill, by Stevenson College, remind me of Barton Hill. Looking at the roads on the industrial estate, there are vague associations in my memory to something unsavoury but somehow surreal. False memory, dream wisp? This close to Cathcart Place, it's unlikely to be that kind of memory...

The cuttings are a bit boring visually - too fast to take in much of the detail of the plants, although you do get flashes of colour. The cuttings represent the determination of the human will, though - 'we want a train to go this way, so we'll cut our way through if we have to!'

Polmont, Falkirk High, Croy (dozing a lot now, such an early start) and into Queen Street. Underground from Buchanan Street to Govan. Walk from Govan to the Southern General Hospital - a straight road past (Elder?) Park, with emergent crocuses to gladden my heart, and past the maw of the Clyde Tunnel.

It's a great day. Meeting Petra after email and blog exchanges is tremendous fun- neither did justice to the 'in the flesh person'! It's a day about connections and updates. And passion.

There's a lot of passionate people. people motivated to change things, to improve services; provide training, education and advocacy. (these don't come from nowhere, somebody has to fund them...)

Talking of funding, there are a lot of generous people. £195 worth of generous people! Split between the three of us - me, Petra and Sam from the Trust - that's £65 each towards the trek. Petra and I are delighted (by the time she tots up our total, Sam has had to leave).

During the day, we meet people spread along the emotional continuum - but a great deal of anger in particular, which is not a surprise, as the liver is associated with anger.

A lot of inspiration, too, from those who have moved through their anger into a different place, offering help to others...

Again and again, links between services are highlighted, that supporting each other is crucial. We can share so much expertise in networking...

And then it's time to hurtle through the now soggy Scottish landscape on the train, wondering where the day went.

I remember coming to Glasgow for counselling and full body acupuncture, courtesy of my ma... I was really lucky, she was quite a pioneer of alternative therapies - years on, experts in addiction are beginning to advocate their effectiveness in treatment.

I came with my boyfriend for a hit once (what the specialist nurse today referred to as a 'charge', never come across that before - but all the language has moved on, I don't remember 'clucking' or 'rattling' back then either) and was ripped off with cocoa powder (hence the line in 'In the heat of high summer').

Much, much later - twenty years or so - I came up to Glasgow to consult with C-Level, when we were setting up C-Change... I was in a very painful and fragile space then, what little confidence I had shattered post-diagnosis, and yet the timing was lovely; it was mum's birthday that weekend, and we spent some time together... I was delighted with the gift of being able to tack a visit to her onto the Glasgow trip . During the Glasgow part of that trip, my colleague was going to an NA conference, and I was too scared to leave our room at the youth hostel (apart from scuttling to a supermarket for some food supplies) in case I got into a drinking spree in some pub. (Not a weird paranoia; a strange place, on my own, at that time triggered 'autocoping skills' - i.e. seeking company in a pub because I didn't know any other ways of seeking out company - I hadn't learned how to be on my own in the world without alcohol; and Scottish drinking culture is legendary...) I scribbled a poem about being sat in the window like an Amsterdam tart - but up in the Gods of our high-rise hostel, therefore more like a modern-day Lady of Shalott...

This weekend, it's Mother's Day - I'm back in Frome on Sunday, but will have spent unexpected time Friday and Saturday with my mum.

Life has a habit of these odd psycho-geographical cyclic turns. It's disturbing but also somehow healing - as if you reclaim the territory with healthier, more positive memories.

One of the results of undertaking this trek is I have to confront my self-stigmatisation. It's painful, I keep resisting - and maybe combining that with giving up smoking was a little over-ambitious, even for me.

Challenges are good for the soul.

Dark & Dangerous Cabaret/Sunday Scratchings

No time to write a comprehensive post - suffice to say the Frome Festival of Media Arts was hugely inspirational for Crysse & myself - both separately and together (and virtually together...) I love working with media. A facsimile Crysse was tricky - a techie rehearsal is crucial!

Experiencing the energising effect of positively channelled creativity - the refilling of the well - is intoxicating. Working with other performers, dancers and digital artists at the weekend was very lively and interesting.

Quite marked the contrasts between cutting edge art and just venting of negativity... Lindsay Clarke had a very salient point when he spoke of the responsibility of the writer (& artist, musician - any creative practitiioner!) for ethical representation... We live in an exploitative society(capitalism is by its very nature exploitative, greedy, unsustainable), and some people don't seem to learn that exploitation drains rather than energises... they're so locked into their own tight prism of obsession.

Or maybe they just can't see it - I guess that's one of the beauties of working with a creative partner, it can help you shed the destructive negative compulsions in your themes. Crysse and I worked on our set for 'Kind of Kerouac' tonight - very interesting process; synchronicities abounding... Far longer than we expected to take - but so glad we took the time.

Bed calls as I've got to be up early AGAIN tomorrow (the candle burns at both ends for less than half the time... )

KIND OF KEROUAC SOLD OUT

Over a week to go - and Crysse's event is SOLD OUT!

Not the late, great - the great LATE

Work has been incredibly pressured this week. A presentation at a rehab - which I hadn't had time to prepare - for an all-male group, staff and clients whose problem has been alcohol, explains the combative energy... Very tough to engage in a 'learning experience'. (Come back to work, Nige!) A session with the vaccines manager at Bristol Prison - very useful. A lot of work to incorporate her suggestions... I think about going in early Wednesday, but decide I need to catch up more. Reiki, writing, a walk, and the housework I didn't manage to do at the weekend - laundry, hoovering, cooking, cleaning the loo.

Surely only a bulimic would understand my definition of a clean toilet - it would be a pleasure to puke in it.

At the office - which is manic with calls and emails, impossible to do any sustained work on the pathway - I check with Simon what my deadline is for the strategy meeting on Friday. Friday morning (my day off), so Thursday evening. He mentions a client he's concerned about, and I pass on the relevant info to Russ. Then it's college - which is fun; I'm late but arrive as the class are watching a clip from Educating Rita. This is what I like! Home, deal with my emails, bed.

By Thursday, the pace is up again. I wake from dreams about work - bad sign, stress levels getting to me... I have a meeting at 11am, so I have to be there by 10.45. (She's late, and I've knocked back an interview with 3TR in case she arrives. Botheration. Oh well). No time for lunch - or even a loo stop - before charging up to the BRI to see the locum consultant. As he's offered me some time, it would be very churlish to be late... He's running late (of course), but when I do see him, he's extremely helpful. I'm so relieved - and delighted he's gone to such trouble. It's very useful to have a consultant's eye cast over the pathway - one from a different area, too. Now I'm running hopelessly late... 3TR ring back just as I'm about to get clear of a lorry holding-up the traffic in a sidestreet. I pull over and do the interview. Or panicked gabble. Urgently need the loo.

When I set off again, I'm in a rush to reach a loo as soon as possible, and unsettled from being 'caught on the hop' with 3TR. I assume this chap with two full buckets of water on his handlebars will be turning into Brunswick Square. I give him a wide berth, but have to swerve over again to avoid the panda car pulling up to the junction - narrowly missing said panda, and nearly knocking cyclist off his bike. The policewoman is incensed - understandably, it was a stupid and very nearly a horrendously dangerous mistake. I know I shouldn't be on the road in this state; overstressed and overwrought - but what's the alternative? You've got to take me home because I'm dangerous until I've had some rest. I don't think so - that's not how the world works. 70% of us operate like this all the time - it's just that most aren't conscious of it.

People don't discriminate against adrenalin junkies - without them, the world would grind to a halt.

I'm trying to stuff my lunch down my throat when Sue arrives to do the training track recording... By 4.30pm, I finally get down to the pathway adaptation. Finish at 8.30pm. Can't resist the compulsion to have a fag. Very late for Pen. 9.40pm instead of 7pm. The work world can be as bloody chaotic as the drug world - it irritates me that we talk about chaotic clients. I find employment makes me chaotic just to fit everything in... Lovely to catch up with Pen and John. Drink more than I should.

Up again in the morning to charge over to the strategy meeting at Blackberry Hill Hospital - but well worth it (I was even, miraculously, on time - considering I didn't get in the bath til 8.20am). I hoped to get away early... but of course, more tweaks after the meeting, recirculating the tweaked draft. I slide in an acupuncture session. To combat the smoking yesterday. The liver point pin falls out. Too much wine last night!
I get round to preparing for Monday's training. Only four days late. It's interesting - my work schedules get so tight that if I'm off sick, I need to work extra to catch up. The same used to happen at MGML, and IBD, so it's something about my style of working.

Lyn cancels meeting up this afternoon/eve, so I check out the cinema, knowing I need something to de-stress (even though I shouldn't really take time out for a film). I've seen the only two movies I fancy at the Showcase. I might need time out, but I can't afford the extravagance of seeing a film I've already paid to see!

I drop in to Annabelle's on the way home, having remembered I'm supposed to bring someone on Saturday night. She's setting up for the Fair Trade Directory Launch... so I shoot down to check it out, intending to get changed and walk back down for the start.

As my mother is fond of saying, 'The way to hell is paved with good intentions.'

By the time I've checked that my broadband red bill isn't really a red bill as I did pay it last week, and set up a direct debit for it while heating some tea and answering my e-mails, I haven't got time to walk down. This is why I find timetabling in exercise such a challenge. It's a time thing. There just aren't the hours in the day.

It's a great evening, lots of synchronicities and support. I write an email update for mailing out on my return. And a blog entry. Toddle off to bed about 2am. I was up at 7am, but it's now nearly 10am, and I've done nothing I intended to - except caught up with my blog! So, today, I'm running very late already...

Private yet Public

In La Strada on Sunday, talking to Crysse about some of the conflicts and difficulties of this whole venture, she gave me sound advice (as always), 'You're a writer, Haz - you can write your way through this.'

She's right.
A large part of what writing is for me is that making sense of 'from there to here', and facing 'from here to there'.

My own, private journals strive towards revelation and illumination, telling and re-telling myself the stories of my life, past and present, divining their meaning for me. Working out where I am, where I need to go next.

However, I have pledged to write this blog, so that those of my friends and supporters can keep up to date with how it's all going for me. That involves a high level of honest self-disclosure. But there are other tricky issues, because I'm not in isolation - particularly not at the moment, having asked for support, and being given so much... Just keeping that energy going involves a lot of social interaction - which I'm not used to, and I find it easily unsettles me.

Walking the field circuit the other morning before work, it struck me that writing this blog is like being naked in a communal shower.

But if I'm not careful, and confuse my own private journal process with the blog, that will be like being naked in a communal shower - but with all my orifices beginning to leak.

Some of my inner processes will be plain boring, others too painful, others terrifyingly self-revealing. I have to be careful how I write about and represent other people - particularly when they've unsettled me and I need to write back to my core.

Already, I've posted much that is, in retrospect, too banal to be boring people with.

This is not really a 'heppie trekkie journal', because it's for public consumption - which is not a creature I'm familiar with, although I do a lot of writing with others that I'm happy to share.

I've written a great deal this week that I can't share.

What I can say is that I can't always ask for help when I'm down. Once I've begun the climb up myself, I can. Insensitive help risks me falling off the edge... Which is why it's so tricky to ask - if I ask the wrong person, things get worse rather than better!

This week has led me to examine minutely my motives for doing this.

Of course it's about awareness and combating discrimination - putting my money where my mouth is, given my job - but there's a great deal more involved than that for me. That's the - rather uncomfortable - add-on.

It's about physical endurance and challenge. If I can get to the top of the world, maybe I'll feel brave enough to do treatment. Courage is contagious - and Jeff is tough. He knows about hep c, he knows about treatment - and he knows about mountains. I couldn't be in safer or more inspirational hands.

I'm an extremist, and I'm cyclic. I have to learn to harness that for my training.
Somebody said to me 'Yes, but you're grown-up now. You have to do it differently.'

But they're wrong. Trying to change my inner nature, go against my natural cycles, is where failure lies. You can't tell a dolphin it should be a pony to survive.

It's about learning how to harness my natural inclinations to make them work positively for me.

For example, I woke this morning feeling grim. (As if I'd had about three bottles of wine - you know, that sick, toxic, poisoned feeling we call 'hangover'? - which it wasn't, I had a glass of wine last night. One glass does not a hangover make - and I'd have felt the same this morning if I'd been abstinent last night, it's been such a full-on week). Getting immersed in writing, I forget how crap I feel.

So maybe it's just about creating the relevant distractions!

Number games - after 11 weeks

I've walked 142 miles overall since I began.
By my calculation, a daily average of approx 1.8 miles, up from an estimated 0.5 miles.
Up to 10 to go....

and this week, of course, I'm back to a 0.5 mile average so far...

I've consumed 72 units of alcohol, which is a weekly average of 6.5. Within my weekly 'allowance'.

Of course, that's not how it's actually been consumed at all - some weeks are way over, some weeks are substantially under.

It will settle once I get used to being a non-smoker.

I've had about 18 fags since the 1st Jan. A daily average of 0.23 by comparison with 15-20.

Not the Lady of Shalott

A week since I made a very quick post on a busy Friday morning...
If twenty-four hours can hold a panoramic sequence of events, how much more is a week capable of...
That faith I spoke of... Utterly indispensable. Lots of reconnecting to that in the space between last week and now.

The story from there to here... is an ongoing process.

I have made enormous changes in my life. Stopping smoking is one. Greater food intake - knock-on effect of not smoking! - is another. Exercising as regularly as I can manage - which means squeezing that in somewhere, despite not being able to find the time to work AND exercise for the last sixteen years. Consistently every year, my New Year Resolutions have included 'EXERCISE!!!'

I can build up my fitness easily enough - if I don't have regular work to go to. Put work into the daily routine, and exercise time is squeezed out...

So, there are big changes to be assimilated. I have hep c. Change and hep c are an argumentative couple - the liver gets very easily out of kilter during such spats. So I'm symptomatic. My IBS is aggravated (had what I call 'baby poo' for weeks - more or less since giving up smoking), I have the most embarrassingly offensive wind (makes me feel sick!), I'm experiencing sudden mood swings...
My periods aren't irregular, they're regularly early at the moment - a tidy three week cycle; if the body is metaphor, then mine is expressing my speeded-up lifestyle - and very, very painful cramps (though the duration of the whole nonsense is thankfully short - but roll on menopause!).
Lots of joint and muscle pain this week, noticeably worse night sweats. Brain fog. I learned my sprite poem the week before last, but on Sunday, I lost it altogether. I know it again today - with no additional memorising (I'll forget it again tomorrow no doubt).

Not being able to recall 'sprite' after such a lot of care with it really depressed me (among other things, like pain, chronic fatigue - I slept most of Saturday, but had no trouble sleeping on Saturday night after being up only for a matter of hours). Slept 50% of Sunday (although at least I manage a very short stroll with Crysse to Las Strada for a latte - which has no noticeable effect; as I'm not caffeine tolerant, I must have been wiped). I probably snooze away the same proportion of time on Monday. The price of driving myself too far, too fast...

It gets to the stage that I remember Angus's assertion that 'On a bad day, if you can do just one thing, that's a big plus.'

I manage two things on Monday. I wash the dishes and have a bath.

My concentration is very erratic - right at a time when I need to be focussed and on the ball...
I've had terrible sugar cravings which I've been unable to resist. My gums are bleeding copiously, I wouldn't be surprised if I haven't got a mild urine infection, and I'm breaking out in spots all over the areas that sweat. My scalp itches and my eyes burn most of the time. My face and hands are dry (but that's time of year as well).

The headaches are better. So that's a plus. When I'm not knackered, my libido is increased, so the energy and creativity surges from that are pleasant and very useful.

BUT - people I haven't seen for months are commenting on how well I'm looking. And I know that I'm healthy by comparison with - well, most people, really. I'm really very lucky because I know why I'm underperforming, I know what's causing all these niggly discomforts. They should actually be less worrying now than pre-diagnosis - it's my natural anxiety and catastrophising which makes them an issue. And takes precious energy that I can ill afford.

This past week has reminded me of the fragility of my plans. I have not been 'in control'. I can't be 'in control' - really, we are none of us 'in control' - we just often manage to construct that illusion for ourselves.
Positive visualisation is hugely powerful, but it's not control.
I conflate influence and control, expect predictable simplistic outcomes x + y = z
something like
a x (b-c) + (d x d) - (b + c x 29.174%) = f squared
is probably more characteristic.
I need to try to be less reductionist, remember there are subtleties and complexities to all this - delicate neurochemical, physiological fluctuations that I can't bludgeon into submission.

There's been psychic conflict with number one son this week, too. Particularly over the weekend and start of the working week... That's a huge contributory factor.

I had a couple of nicotine lapses. Quite fascinating effects - dizziness, nausea, lightheadedness, that weird circulation thing in my legs again, and racing heart. Scarily nasty, in fact.
But the mental effects - it's like I pull myself together, like gathering disparate and scattered threads up into a cohesive entity.
After the first lapse, I change from being an amorphous fatigued, depressed mass into an ill person who is nonetheless focussed and motivated.

Feeling like shit from something I have chosen to do, that I'm familiar with - and I can deal with it, I just go into autopilot.

I watched a body art programme this week which was compulsive yet repulsive - people staging performance body art involving pain and mutilation. One of the artists explained how she experienced incredible adrenalin rushes afterwards, sensations of invincibility and power - not that surprising, she was suspending her weight in a sitting posture from hooks inserted into her shoulders and knees. She would get an enormous adrenalin buzz from inflicting such trauma on her body.
We're back to this pleasure and pain thing, the inextricable nature of the two in our biochemistry... (apparently, just WATCHING such activities triggers the same response in the audience - maybe that's why I'm wide-awake after a long day at work, but I incline more to being pretty paid-up at the sleep bank after the weekend!)).
Why is body art so different from extreme sports and mountaineering, which also often create altered perception through pushing the body through adverse conditions, often creating damage in the process? Yet we almost certainly do all view them in different ways - and generally, find some more acceptable than others. Why should that be?

Things to ponder - and I've only got to the end of Tuesday 14th so far (& it's Friday now).
But I must go to bed. I'll catch up as best I can over the weekend... (in between performances...)

Keeping the Faith

You could say this week has been the swingback week, the one where the doubts have set in big-time. I've looked at funds so far, funds to go, the energy I've had left over from work for fundraising efforts (none), the trouble of sychronising diaries with supporters (Herculean)... it's all feeling pretty much impossible...

So it feels crucial to note little synchronicities, such as pulling into the car park in town the other day and realising I had no change. I looked around - and a young man was scanning the car park for someone to donate his ticket to... I passed it on to a woman, too.

A voucher for a Thai foot massage throws up anomalies this morning - inherited from my leg break. The therapist advises me to get a Bowen Technique treatment to sort that out before I create more problems... This feels like a gift from the gods...

So maybe I just trust.

Maybe that's all it needs.






...

Inclement Weather

This is the third day in a row I haven't walked (enough to count). Yesterday and today I was at the BRI, and it struck me that aside from the air pollution, around that area is actually pretty good for 'Nepal practice' - steep inclines, many of which are pedestrianised (which cuts down traffic fumes at least a bit). It looks interesting territory to explore - old, sort of cobbly streets, obviously an old part of town by the look of the tudor-ish (not that I would know genuine from faux) architecture and the way space is occupied. I wished I'd had more time free (and an umbrella). Particularly yesterday, when I was 'smart' for my meeting with the specialist nurses. Why are smart clothes always so bloody useless when it comes to keeping warm and dry? Who decided that to be smart you must suffer? Or stay indoors? - that's the thing, smart clothes are for being confined inside... Neither wonder I don't like them much.

Today I was in more practical togs, and anyway it's been very mild today, so I was in far less of a hurry to get into the car out of the wind and rain; was able to take in the fabulous view from my free parking spot. Even in the fine drizzle, the cityscape grey-cloudmisted, the panorama somehow reminded me of Barcelona... looking from Parc Guell down to the sea... Funny how you don't notice things for ages - and then they make an impact just when you least expect it.

I think today is the first college day I've had no early commitments, so been able to go to work at lunch-time instead of my usual (it is hardly an early start, but all the same...). Pippa and I had already decided last night to take note of the forecast and walk together on Friday instead of today. Number one son felt grim this morning, so he took the day off work - and I had my first proper lie-in since I decided to do this trek...

It felt absolutely wonderful to drift back to sleep until I felt fully rested, no listening for alarms, or resetting mobiles to make sure I didn't oversleep. I just allowed myself the sheer luxury of freefalling dreams, finally creaking out of bed between ten and eleven.

I know I can't sleep as much as I'd like, time is at such a premium - so much to do, so little time... but I did enjoy indulging myself today. Interestingly, my digestion finally settled, and I didn't get a headache until after college...

Petra emailed me an extract from Allen Ginsberg's website tonight - I had no idea he died of 'complications of hepatitis'.

That's something I am noticing - I'm even more divorced from the 'real world' than usual; my admin has sailed through the ceiling again, so I'm not watching TV news, and I certainly don't have time for a Saturday or Sunday paper any more. You can't really call the radio news bulletins proper 'news' - they're kind of a bare minimum, headline style soundbites... I'm back to relying on people telling me what I need to know, when I need to know it!

Bugger - talking of radio, that's one of my things to do, contact the local radio stations. Not tonight. In fact, I think it's time to log off and grab some grub and collapse into bed.

See what dreams await me tonight - names seem to be favourite right now. Retreats and writers. Though this morning I was back in that labyrinthine house where I'm often living in dreams, just not fully occupying - but for once, there was a woman living the basement; she came to investigate my footsteps on the circular stairs... I wonder what that was about?

Sorry, Martin Amis opinion-sharers - at least I think it's Martin Amis who believes other people's dreams are tedious beyond measure...

Comfort Food and Concentration

The sixth day of the third month of the sixth year of the millennium; 06-03-06 - if you're into numerology, today is an auspicious day (not that I know anything about numbers, being practically numbers dyslexic - or should that be number-phobic?)

Yesterday's walk leaves me very tired. Mind you, jumping the stream and finding myself ankle-deep in sludge, and then continuing over the fields with half a ton of mud attached to my trainers isn't the easiest of Sunday strolls... I have a stubborn streak a mile wide right up the middle of my psyche. Probably just as well, really. Where I found the energy to go to supper at Pippa's, I don't know...

I do know, actually. I expected a lovely evening, with great company - which, of course, it was. I am finding (selected) social occasions restorative again - at one stage, I much preferred to stay home if I was feeling jaded, which is not always a healthy way to be... you can end up more and more reclusive and isolated.

But this morning, I struggle to get out of bed, even after a reiki self-healing, and have real problems getting my act together for work. Another bout of the squits - maybe the result of all that delicious chocolate dessert the previous night? - which makes me later than ever, but at least excuses me from walking before I leave Frome... Good lord - this is the first morning I've been grateful for an excuse not to walk, rather than frustrated with time restrictions! I must be low on resources...

Driving to Bristol, I'm almost falling asleep at the wheel. Which is always slightly worrying.

It's March. The trek is October. I have eight months to work up to this gently. It'll be fine.

Although I'm not exactly bursting full of the joys of spring, after an ear acupuncture I do get some more focussed work done. (liver and lung points very painful - figures...)

I also trough two-thirds of the choccy biccies Maya left for me - not so good. If my digestion is sugar overdosed, I won't be helping myself by compounding the situation...

But there are actually two ways of looking at this.

One is that my body is really struggling with everything I'm inflicting on it.

The other is that people are falling like flies with various viruses and stomach upsets, but my immune system is keeping me going extremely well under the circumstances.

Guess which I'll opt for?

I'm even home slightly early, so that I arrive early at Annabelle's for the second organisational evening - this time with Crysse joining us.

The sharing of food, the 'breaking of bread' together is an interesting one. When I eat alone, I always read. I always had a book under the table as a child... Eating with others can give me terrible indigestion - until I'm relaxed enough in their company to be able to take as long as I need (I'm always last to finish, I'm the slowest eater I know - probably the reading habit!).

I can relax here; relax and enjoy the nurturing... and the spoiling - pressies for an (almost) birthday girl! On top of all the emotional and practical suport I'm being showered with - when you're lucky enough to live life in such generous abundance, being 'rich' in more material terms pales into insignificance.

Between them, Crysse and Annabelle launch into sparking the next round of ideas, listing possible dates for the next events, volunteering for various tasks. Their energy is infectious; it all feels perfectly do-able...

I come away with a manageable list of things to do, and a date for our next meeting.

Tomorrow is my birth day. Tuesday. I was born on a Tuesday. So tomorrow will be an auspicious day, too.

Donation Site

If I can't manage to get the link to Sue's Blog on my sidebar, I doubt I'll be able to get my donations page on there. So I'm putting it on as a post instead.

The photo is from Jeff Frew's collection, taken on previous treks.

I think I'm getting the hang of at least some of this!

You know my major worry before deciding to go for it? I needed to know if we'd have to carry our own tents... That would have knocked me out of the running... I gave up on the idea of walking the Pennine Way for just that reason (and, em, I couldn't give up smoking at that point. I tried and failed miserably - after a week I was back to my usual intake...)
I'm happy to risk altitude sickness and whatever else might jump up and bite me - just to try to get to the top of the world.
Looked at in some ways, you could say it's self-harm gone slightly underground, I suppose (yes, I have seen Touching the Void, and under those circumstances I'm sure I'd just give up!). Maybe it's seeking altered consciousness in other ways - it works with reiki!

Anyway, if you've enjoyed my blog so far, but haven't already made a donation, please visit my donation site.
www.justgiving.com/wychhaz (originally, the idea of my blog was for sponsors and supporters to keep updated with my progress - now it makes sense to have it work the other way, too!)

Kathmandu or Die!

Nothing if not a drama queen - of course, I have no intention whatsoever of dying in the attempt, but I liked the 'Do or Die' echo (wasn't that Human League?)

'When you are aligned with your soul purpose, your sole purpose, effortful living becomes effortless effort.'

I truly believe that.

And that if you ask for help, you get it - you can't predict what form it takes, and you can't predict outcomes, but you do get what you ask for.

The morning before the first fundraiser, the sky is unusually beautiful. Cold, crisp and clear - just the sort of February day to bring snow later (which it does!). I have to skywatch several times, literally stop in my tracks just to breathe it in.

The flock of magpies Crysse and I disturbed on our walk at the weekend skyburst as I go past - one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... I knew it was a lot, but I wasn't quick enough to count them that day. John's version of the rhyme is Seven for a story yet to be told. I experience an energy discharge, like a current passing through me.

Maybe this is that story? Or maybe it's reassurance that I will get to finish Dreaming with the Driftwood Mirror one day...

Work is a struggle - it's been such a full-on week, I'm kind of dazed. Brain fog or just plain exhaustion?

After I pick Lyn up, we get stuck in traffic. Which turns out to be more than the usual rush hour snarl-up - no, there's been what looks very much like a pretty fatal RTA. The worst hit car is neatly scrunched up into a much smaller version than its original 4x4 incarnation. I feel sick. Stressed? What's my first reaction? A fag. So what do I do?

Then I remember we did see an ambulance, maybe the occupants did get taken to A&E. They might not survive, of course, but at least they probably weren't eaten by their car as I feared.

It's such a blessing I have Lyn to take care of a quick snack, open the wine etc. when we get back. I'm not sure I'd be able to function on my own.

Jeff Frew's CD images open much easier on Crysse's fabulosa ibook than on my computer at work (now, of course, on my new machine, I can watch them as a slideshow! - even if I can't get Macafee to let Outlook Express operate...)

Crysse has bought wonderful nibbles - smoked salmon, cracked black pepper crisps, white and milk choccy biccies... she's made melon balls, and there are pistachio nuts, cashew nuts...
...and wine of course. Bottles and bottles of wine. And she's not been well!

I'm really nervous.

I have asked these people here to support this mad, mad, venture, this crazed and crazy notion, this possibly delusional ambition...

Other people can make their dreams come true. Other people have delusional notions that become reality.

On the morning of the event, it occurs to me that for a long time I've boosted my sense of self with the label 'writer'. I've considered myself a writer who happens to be a bit mad - like many other writers.

But this day, I realise I am a mad person who happens to write.

So that's how I open the evening.

I tell people about the trip, about why I want to do it. I read the full version of the Goethe quote, and my poem Harry and She.

I'm glugging the wine a bit now - but this is a very special occasion. Mike and Fiona have to leave early, so after offering help with local press promotion, Mike puts a twenty pound note on a clean paper plate and hands it to me. Pippa pledges £100. The ideas begin to flow... Peter Mac offers to oversee the fund and keep everyone updated. Carole suggests she run a fashion show. Peter P offers to organise an auction of promises. Crysse says Paula has offered help although she can't be here. Mike W offers a web site. Annabelle offers at this point to takes notes...
...so I don't have to...
...and the evening rolls on, a magical snowballing of support and goodwill...

I feel supported and safe.
I bare my soul, ask for support for my dream - emotional just as much as practical and financial.
And these good-hearted people 'hold' me, and listen to me, don't laugh cruelly or dismissively at me, they don't taunt me or poke fun at me, but offer me love and compassion alongside support that I could not have dreamed of.

I am overwhelmed. Emotional and touched to my core.

I am truly, truly blessed.

Trek Website

The trek website is just about up and running, Mike has put loads of work into it (and he's been ill this week - thank you Mike, I do appreciate it!!!).

I have done little more than give him instructions, like 'Get the DDN article put on! - here's the website,' (http://www.drinkanddrugsnews.net/) and other such peremptory instructions... I'm such a charmer sometimes.

Time is so precious - so much to do... as soon as we're happy the site is ready to be veiwed, I'll get the link on - embedded in a post if I don't sort out the sidebar link business.

According to Peter's calculations, I've raised 15% so far. 95% to go (put like that it sounds horrendous! & that's because your sums are rubbish, Haz - it's 85%). You can see why I'm so grateful Peter offered to manage the funds (and arithmetic) part.

OK - enough for now - going to start a post on the first fundraiser.

Kind of Kerouac

The date for the second fundraising event has been set and I haven't written up the first one yet...
So you can safely surmise there's a bit of a logjam for me to sort out. Doing my best - though it does feel as if it's gone beyond firefighting already! I'll just have to stop being so garrulous... (like the moon should change its cycle...)

Kind of Kerouac is the event, and I thought I'd give uploading the flyer a go this morning. I've found out how to upload images onto posts, but the format of the flyer must be incompatible with blogger settings. Have tried three times now. Oh well... I haven't got time to shoot to the bank before going to Ali's - dodgy tum again this morning, which also means I'd better drive to Great Elm rather than walk which is a great shame as it's a glorious day. Maybe I'll get a walk later.

Kind of Kerouac - music and poetry on the theme of journeys and dreams...
27th March, at Christies in Frome, with Beat poet Robert Palmer (not the one famous for being addicted to love, although I guess this one could be too) and musician/songwriter Steve Loudoun (website www.lepromo.freeserve.co.uk/sl.htm : the site may to be experiencing problems - the link to it can be tricksy).
With Crysse, Peter and me, too. Tickets £6, with glass of wine included (bargain).

Contact Crysse on crysse@cryssemorrison.co.uk and her website is
www.crysse.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

Links - or not

Thrilled with myself, have managed to get a link on my sidebar for Petra's blog.
Cat with two tails, or what?
But can't figure out why Sue's link can't find her blog. She's on http://suetoronto.blogspot.com - which should be what's on my sidebar, but apparently isn't. Oh well - Petra has a link to Sue's blog...
Computers, logical? I don't think so. Modern mysticism, more like.

Looping back to fill in the gaps...

Or maybe not.

After Valentine's Day, there's a gap until the first day of Spring... which is such an eventful period, it doesn't feel right to skip it all. Given the immediacy of these blogs, neither does it feel right to just type in all of the handwritten stuff I kept while I was off line... which includes this paragraph:

'I remember this pace of life, this treadmill, this constantly chasing my tail, never having time to think, to dream... to draw breath! Always late for everything... when I worked full-time and number one son needed more maternal input, and I was studying, and trying to write... and had a partner to help shoulder chores and share childcare, which he did very willingly (though he did have two of his own - triple the workload of one!) Around then, I had the diagnosis of asthma hmmm... suffocated?'

And I wrote that before my computer decided it couldn't cope. Which, historically, tends to happen when I actually need a break...

So it's lovely to read:

'As dusk creeps over Frome, the birds liven into the twice daiy aria which marks the cusp of night and day. Sitting in the Dissenter's Cemetery, nibbling a snack from the deli while I begin Ian McEwan's Saturday, it's growing colder. I must move before I chill. But this delight is down to 'trek training'. Any other time, I'd have gone straight home.'

It's not all pressure to squeeze everything in - or is it?

'This waking early is both gratifying and worrying. Great to be keeping up with the pace of my life, but as I've got no prospect of timetabling rest and recuperation in until after October, there's anxiety, too - that I can't sustain it. I've always been cyclic - full-pelt followed by crash.'

I manage a lie-in today. Nine thirty - which is kind of laughable for somebody who used to be able to sleep happily until lunch-time at weekends!

An old friend called today. She's just had a tumour removed. She's younger than me, too. News like that these days just makes me think, 'so I've got hep C - so what? People die of all kinds of things. My hep C might not be the thing that kills me anyway.' My attitude to it has gone through so many changes since my diagnosis...

Enough for one night.

The Mad March Hare's First Day of Spring

1st March 06

This morning's walk through icing sugar snow and trilling birdsong is just glorious. Such a sense of elation - now, isn't that the way to start day?

My physical resources are pretty low at the moment, I seem to be spinning in ever increasing circles, getting ever more decentred and ungrounded. Where normally fresh air and being uplifted by exercise sets me up well for the day, after only a mile and a half or so, I feel sick and dizzy, my eyes feel like somebody else's, and I get alternating hot and cold sweats. I feel slightly panicky on the way home about not being able to get there before I run out of steam completely.
It's a long time since I've felt like this so quickly. After seven miles, or strenuous exertion, I can understand it - but a wee morning stroll? Then I remember I took a couple of ibuprofen last night on the way home, so I'd be able to have a short gentle walk in spite of the pain in my knees. I feel ill after taking the tablets, maybe they've triggered this somehow, too... I really don't feel like driving to work - but I have an acupuncture session booked before the start of my day, and I always feel better after that...

Looking back through this journal, my aim was half an hour walking each day, with more at weekends. I've pushed through that to one and a half hours plus some days - I suspect because I've had a couple of weekends which haven't been geared around trek training. No surprise I'm having to rack back a bit.

My natural mode of progress is to seesaw, and I have plenty time to find a level that builds my stamina but doesn't exhaust me.

The mood swings are a bit more of a worry!

The pains in my knees (which this morning is much better) are down to Saturday's scramble from the top of Beechen Cliff to Manvers Street and back (for the Hep C Trust's Health Day Workshop), carrying a very heavy knapsack. That and hours perching on my kneestool engrossed in my new computer... (trying to figure it out!) (the Trust workshop was very useful, saves me checking out the Expert Patient initiative in detail as it's a hep C adaptation of the EP! Good to see Jane again, and meet Nick and Theresa. And the FOOD, the food was delicious... pity my digestion was a bit too dodgy to fully enjoy it!)

The journey to Bristol this morning is interesting - glorious winter sunshine alternating with the whiteout of snowshowers. At one point, I wonder if I'll make it on time for my treatment, it's so thick. But none of it lies.

Work is over very quickly - lots to do, and I leave early at 2.30 to go up to the Media Arts Studio to help Crysse record her bit for the 18th March. I get aeriated because I can't find my poetry book, then keep forgetting stuff I need and having to return for it, so that by the time I finally get organised and out the door, there's actually no time left to walk, so I have to take the car.

I'd have made myself feel ill if I had walked. And actually, knowing that is part of the problem... I'm a dab hand at displacement, which I proceed to do in style. It makes complete sense at the time - don't we all get frustrated with computers which don't do what you want them to? - although I know I'm sounding a little unhinged. To change metaphors - and why not? we're not talking rationality here - now I've wound the spring, it has to discharge somehow, which means continuing the rant...

After the recording session, Crysse tweaks the 'Kind of Kerouc' flyers, ready for mailing out. I call Mike and ask him to put the DDN article - in this week's issue - on the website, along with the KoK flyer. Then it's up to the book club at the Merlin, Ali's and my research for the book club holidays... Home via Tescos Express for some sarnies and snackie bits... and to chat to Mike about the website - and the stramash I've got myself in with password access, email accounts and my blog accounts etc. A certain erratic typist seems to have been even more inaccurate than usual... Not all the problems are down to poor keyboard skills. Some are faulty memory (brain fog? Acupuncturist tells me it's age - I hope not; if I'm like this now, I'll be like Iris in few years... which maybe wouldn't be so bad if I'd written a few books, like she had - but I haven't written any yet, and if my brain goes to mashed potato I never will!)

Petra's link to my blog on hers made me even more determined to crack the blog difficulty - I can't have a blog up that hasn't been updated in days!
hers is http://journals.aol.co.uk/parkness/MissionNepal/

I don't know if that will work as an active link, but people can always cut and paste... (it's well worth it, please do!) As soon as I find out how to embed links properly, I'll link to hers and Ron Metcalfe's, and Sue's - I'm actually a bit bemused, there's this great virtual publishing pool of hep C journals, which mine is part of at the click of a couple of other people's mouse buttons. I knew a blog was in the public domain - of course I knew that, I'm not a complete bozo - but I kind of expected that no-one would go to mine unless I told them it was there... as if I had in mind some kind of virtual ivory tower, I suppose!

Enough for one night. More soon!