Over Scorchio

Sorry it’s been a while since posting but, well, no excuses, just rather flagging.

How’s the summer been treating you? I’m a one for the heat, used to love driving the highways and byways, singing out loud, window down, just basking in the brightness of the days, feeling the sun kiss my pale skin. But you see I’ve become a ‘woman of a certain age’ and hormones have come into play.  

It’s been a very long time since we have had a summer like it, some seven to eight weeks without rain, only a couple of overcast days, others have afternoons and evenings of uninterrupted strong sunshine. Temperatures regularly hitting and staying in the high eighties.

Now for those unfamiliar, I have a serious lordosis. My spinal curve is more < than (. To stop painful discomfort I wear a support. Imagine double thickness granny girdle elastic, along with a foam pad covered in a suedette type material, tight against the skin from waking to falling back into bed. All too frequently I have trickles of moisture running down to my ordinary unpretty undies, I am constantly wet. I feel like I am cooking my kidneys wearing what feels like a heating pad.  It’s a dreadful sensation of a morning putting the dank cold pad back on, until the heat warms it up and cooks me for the rest of the day.  

Use a fan, I hear you cry, well that brings a new issue, cool drafty air movement does things to me, how to put it delicately, it accelerates my digestive transit, quicker than I can transit my delicate self to the loo!  Off to ASDA tomorrow, the coldest store in town, that might be fun, hope it doesn’t freeze my damp back pad. 

It truly pains me to say it – but I am so over the hot summer. Still kids break up from school next week, cue the rain!

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Plastics Parasitical Paradox

The plastics industry does not want you to stop needing plastic products, it stands to simple basic business reason. Until such time as scrap waste has a commercial value, on a global scale, there will be no drive or strive for improvement.  Also, the reliance on plastic is a global issue, we may be doing our bit by putting our empty bottles in the recycling bin at home, but what about when you are out and about? Do you bring your empty bottle home to put in your recycle bin or bung it in the first available everything and anything trash unit?  Whilst we in the UK are ‘doing our but’, what about some of these emerging, growing, economic countries, we’ve seen the photos of the Mayan river choked with discarded rubbish.

Think it’s not such a big deal? Back about a couple of decades or so ago, before home recycling really took off, many charities would collect old newspapers, when they had a car full off they’d drive to a centre who would weigh it and give them a cheque – it became a highly lucrative income stream. Paper had a commercial value, it was worth collecting. Then all of a sudden it became worthless, a happenstance that could be attributed to the following. American was in an economic depression (what’s that to do with me dog eared copy of Pigeon Fanciers Gazette). Well you see folks, because the jolly US of A peeps weren’t out spending, there was less being imported, significant quantities coming from China, therefore less cartons, boxes and packaging were produced which were made from recycled paper. Old paper and cardboard was exported to China from many corners of the globe, for recycling and then used to produce more boxes and packaging.  

So you see, so much of things are commercially driven.  Currently there is a commendable movement to reduce ‘single use plastics’, there is hardly a product in our home now that doesn’t have a plastic element. It will take decades, a lot of joined up thinking and action before anything will change.  The general public consumer is being told to choose the non-plastic version, take your own country cup to the coffee shop, recycle your old/used items, but unless those items are readily available at a comparable price, it will be slow going, and incredibly minuscule in the grand scheme of things.

Many more of our daily use items (I’m envisioning toothbrushes, food containers, picnic sets, children’s toys, garment hangers etc) are made of an un-recyclable plastic. This is where business needs to do its part, research and develop a recycling method for that plastic, find the market for the recycled plastic to be used or switch to a recyclable plastic version. All this is beyond the realm of we mere consumers. 
Until everybody, everywhere, gets onboard, we will still continue choking.

 

15 seconds of …..

Oh I say! One’s been interviewed!! A proper pukka author type lady who read my blog approached me and asked if she could feature me as a guest because apparently I’m interesting.  It’s been a week for it, another online bud referred to me as awesome and extraordinary.

I’ve been on tv (well a tv audience twice now), I’ve been in the press (local press, a couple of times), I’ve been interviewed on the radio (only local radio onboard a tallship) and now I’m a blog topic. I think I’m eking out my fifteen minutes in 15 second spurts.  Too much of me all at once surely cannot be a good thing.

Do we ever really consider how others perceive us? I know I don’t. My perception of myself is that I’m nowt to talk about, I’m muddling through, one step infront of the other, not achieving much. I’ve found myself in odd situations, with interesting people, but am I interesting … not to my myopic eyes.

You can read the result at … Pauline Barclay’s Blog

Fear not faithful readers, I shall not let this go to my head, I’ll still make time for you lovely minions, if you’ll just contact my social PA I’m sure I can squeeze you in between my daily hot stone massage with oils and lunch at The Ivy.

 

Lost All Logic

Once upon a few decades ago I was an avid puzzler, except crosswords I’m hopeless at them. Occasionally I’d buy a compendium of puzzles and eagerly work my way through the searches, fits, join the dots, silhouettes etc and logic grids.  With the World Cup taking over all sanity for the next few endless weeks my eyes were drawn to a book of logic puzzles to exercise the brain and fill some time.

Only thing is, I’ve lost my logic. I even made a mess of the three grid when once upon a decades ago I could handle a five grid with ease!  Maybe my concentration span has shrunk, or atrophied like my muscles, or am I just more easily distrac…….oh look, a red arrow trailing blue smoke just flew by, wow (for real, there’s an air show today at the beach).

Okay, okay, let’s get to trying again ……… do I need a pee ….. concentrate woman ….. hmm, I could go do the dishes ….. no they will be done while you’re poaching the salmon ….. concentrate ….. okay, humbug is kept in the sock draw, Peter asked the weetabix eater if he’d seen any sugar lumps.  Hmm.

The tennis at Queens starts tomorrow :o) 

 

30 Seconds or 30 Minutes, it’s timeless

Could you, dear reader, try and do something for me.  You see no matter how strong the desire, how consuming the craving, I am physically, totally, completely unable to do it, and that denial of free choice chips and nibbles at the strongest resolve and will to ‘make the best of it’.

So, on this glorious June afternoon, take a step outside, sit on your patio chair or door step, or stand barefoot in the grass; take a deep breath, observe what’s around you (don’t just see it), feel the sun, the breeze, the air on your face, listen to the natural sounds about you (don’t just hear them), and take another breath, slowly in and slowly out.  Don’t think, don’t fret, don’t stress, just be present in yourself, in that moment.

It doesn’t take much time, it can be the time it takes a kettle to boil or the microwave to ping, or child one to clump child two and start screaming, lol. But man oh man, that briefest moment of calm can do so much good to the mental health if, as busy humans, we do this regularly.

It’s truly a gorgeous day today, one I’d love to sit outside and read my book, have a (albeit one sided) conversation with a passing cat or chirping black bird, cogitate my thoughts or feel the day fresh against my exposed skin, even just to put my bare feet in the grass.  But for many that’s the stuff dreams are made of. 

I’d open the window as wide as it will go but, hmm, ‘things’ of a buzzy, bitey, stingy nature will be too tempted by my tastiness, and Signor Four-Paws might be happy to come in that way but will want out via the front door. Not to mention opening/closing the window is fast becoming a ‘can’t do that’ task. It’s not the same and being completely the same as full enveloped by outsideness. 

My limitations are feeling quite pointed today, it will pass.

I’ll attack my hard toe nail with the clippers instead…..

 

Jaggedness Destroys Average

Have you heard of the Jaggedness Principal? Essentially given a group of humans, not one will fit the average.  Celebrate, there is no such thing as ‘average’ so you cannot be ‘below average’.

Author Todd Rose wrote that “The principle holds that we cannot apply one-dimensional thinking to understand something that is complex and ‘jagged.’ What, precisely, is jaggedness? A quality is jagged if it means two criteria. First, it must consist of multiple dimensions. Second, these dimensions must be weakly related to one another. Jaggedness is not just about human size; almost every human character that we care about – including talent, intelligence, character, creativity, and so on – is jagged.”

Take your work place, or church group, or such, note down each individual’s age, shoe size, height and eye colour. Work out the average of each and then see if any one in that group fits that average. Strong likelihood is, you won’t.  The principal forced the US Airforce to come up with the adjustable cockpit seat, because no single pilot could fit in the averaged one.  Not everyone the same height, will have the same weight, not everyone the same weight will be the same dress size, not everyone who is the same dress size will have the same shoe size.  One size will never fit all, so stop trying to make us fit.

So, as we try and equalise, even-ise, level-ise, everything in our post-truth, open opportunities, global world, remember no-one is average, we are individual uniqueness, with similarities in same areas. 

While I’d never say I was average, I would say I am weird (that’s Western Educated Industrial Rich Democratic country).

Maybe I should stop watching QI re-runs, lol.

 

She’s Wrong/He’s Right

Ain’t social media fun!  Recently Kirstie Allsopp was lambasted in the media, which the Twitterarty then jumped on the bandwagon and went fully armed negative, because she has replied to a question. But as ever the media and rwitterees only cherry picked the tiny bit that they objected to and bashed away madly.  In a nut shell Kirstie said she flew “Premium Economy” (that’s not first class nor business class) but her tweenie and teenage children went economy because they needed to understand that a privilege should be earned.  Okay, what wasn’t taken onboard, well, often the distance between the rows may have been about 4/6 roes, the kiddos were accompanied with adult step children, when boarding Kirstie introduces herself to the cabin crew and adults seated near children and let them know where she is, during the flight she regulars walks down to check on them.  Her children are not annoyed by the seating arrangements, infact they prefer it as Mum isn’t constantly overseeing everything they do. She’s never been called back because of unruly behaviour.

As for people’s comments, you’d have thought she’d let them play on the motorway, swigging vodka, juggling razor blades! They were truly rude, condemning and highly critical of her parenting ability, I’m sure threats to call Social Services were made.

Her tv presenter partner Pip on the other hand remarked “We leave the kids at home to look after the dogs!” … Has he been called the demon of dads? Has he been bombarded with comments of how disgusting he is? Nope.

To me, it’s yet another example of gender hypocrisy.  Mum’s are wrong, Dad’s are applauded.

It’s the ‘men sow ya oats, women be pure and virtuous’, double standard.

There never will be equality across the sexes.