People are strange.

One day they think one thing, the next, another. At least you think they do. But you never actually know what someone thinks, do you? It's all guesswork, based on what they tell you and to a certain extent what their body language looks like. And it would appear, at least from this perspective that we are designed never to be able to actually know for sure what another person thinks, to attain the ideal of perfect understanding.

So I wish I could somehow do an 'in head' survey of everyone just to see what they really think and how they really feel, to actually be them for a short while and see if things are really as I imagine them to be. Climb into someone else's thoughts and just let them flow around me, through me for a few moments in order for things to be clear.

Only we spend such a lot of time in this life trying to work out how other people feel, trying to make sense of what they say and apply it to ourselves when really it would be so much simpler and more efficient to do it my way. Then all the time wasted on wondering could be used constructively elsewhere and no-one would ever need to feel worried or concerned about another person's feelings, because all it would take would be a quick visit, a quick 'feel' of their thoughts and everything would be alright.

That's what I think anyway. And it really is what I think. I'm not just telling you that.

Rule number 1 of life: Snowmen never last.
Rule number 2 of life: Neither does anything else.
Rule number 3 of life: People that say they never lie should still not be believed.

On why living in Wiltshire makes a person musically uncultured.

I used to be quite good at finding new bands I liked, hearing new music. Obviously not as good as my sister who has the excellent and enviable knack of discovering new bands long before anyone else does, bands which then become huge and she is able to smugly say, "I've been listening to then for ages." But I was still quite good. I could hold my own in a music conversation as long as I wasn't asked to name lead singers, and I sometimes surprised my musical friends by giving them something they hadn't heard.

But I have just discovered that this is no longer the case.

A friend of mine is giving me a compilation CD in order that I have something groovy and new to play in my groovy and new car, and he sent me the playlist to see if I liked it, or had any of the songs.

A/I hadn't got any of the songs.
B/I had only heard of three bands on the list.

Now this is good in one way because it means I get to hear completely new stuff, but it's also slightly embarrassing to admit to. Me: Thanks for the CD list, I haven't got a clue if I will like any of it because I have never heard of most of the bands on the list. Love, your friend who used to know a bit about music, but now clearly doesn't.

How can this be?

I know the older you get the more frequently you comment on the fact that you've never heard of most of the bands in the charts, but my personal opinion on that is that there are a lot more crap bands around these days and it's much easier to get a one hit wonder record in the charts, especially if your band's name is something like Charles Charlie Charles featuring E Z J. Or whatever.

So this musical unculturedness can't be my age.

I can only put it down to the fact that because I don't live any where near London anymore I can't get XFM on the radio.

Instead I am forced to listen to stations like the lovely local 3TRFM which doesn't really cut the mustard on the new songs front, and indeed is SO local that when my dog went missing they announced it for us and people were ringing up with sightings of him. "Hello? Is that t'radio? It is? Am I live on t'radio? I am? It's about that missing darg, see, Pickles, aye. Only I've just been down Safeway car park and I see 'im running acrass it. Little thing 'e is. Aye."

In fact the only good thing about 3TRFM is that it serves to remind me that I live in provincial England, and it's funny when the headline news story is about Mrs Jones' dead budgie.

Having access to XFM on my computer doesn't really help because the place that I listen to music is either in my front room, where my computer isn't, or in my car, where my computer isn't either.

I think I need to face up to the fact that listening to local radio is doing my street cred no good whatsover. And even though they're expensive I think the time has come to buy a digital radio; then I could get XFM and I would be less of a musical know-nothing-at-all-anymore, my friends could stop laughing at me and all would be right with the world again.

Either that or rely on everyone to keep me updated with compilation CD's.

In a newsletter I got this morning from the Care2 website there was some advice about how to run a magical kitchen. Some of it's excellent advice, such as this:

2. Organize to meet your real needs. Take some time to think about what you need, enjoy, and want in your kitchen and then make it happen. For example, if you're a tea-drinker like me, you may want to keep mugs, teabags, and honey in one cabinet rather than in three different places, so all you have to do is open one door. And let your kitchen reflect your passions and beliefs by displaying artwork, quotes, or objects that are meaningful to you.

And also, to a certain extent, this:

3. Be willing to be wacky. Play and spontaneity are deeply nourishing, but many of us don't even consider having real FUN in the kitchen--instead, we feel drudgery descend like a thick fog the minute we set foot in it!

However, I feel deeply troubled by this next paragraph of advice, and I'm sure I can't be the only person who finds this scarily appalling. They say:

Liven things up by allowing yourself a little creative freedom: why not paint a magenta sun on your backsplash, or hang a rubber whale from the overhead light, or sew yards of fringe and rick-rack on an apron and wear it with pride.

A magenta sun on my backsplash. Yeah right. Do I look like the sort of person who paints any sort of sun on her splashback, let alone a magenta one?

And rick-rack. Fringing. STOPPIT STOPPIT STOPPIT.

I just don't understand why this so often happens. Why is it that the people who like to talk about good and interesting things like making a magical kitchen all too frequently let themselves down by have a leaning towards painting magenta suns on their splashback?

It's the patchouli oil, rainbow jumper syndrome gone mad.

Doesn't anyone realise that honestly, these things don't have to be synonmous?

Six years ago last night at 3.36am in the morning I finally gave birth to the kicky, hiccuppy baby who was in my tummy, and now he is six.

And hurrah for being six.

Hurrah for being six and actually truly believing that when you get up on the morning of your birthday you need to get your Mum to measure you to see how much bigger you are. And hurrah for the glee you feel when you're given an 'I am six' badge, just because you'll get to wear it all day in pride of place on your school jumper.

Hurrah for actually looking forward to the fact that everyone will sing Happy Birthday to you in assembly, and hurrah for being overjoyed with presents like Hot Wheels cars with glittery paint jobs and polyester Power Rangers outfits and Roald Dahl's book of Revolting Rhymes and pens that change colour when you go over what you've drawn with the special magic one, and strangely fascinating Bionicles monsters and flimsy plastic swords.

Hurrah for the look of expectancy you get on your face when you see the lady at the garage because you think she's going to wish you happy birthday even though of course she has no idea it's your birthday, and hurrah for shrieking with delight simply because Grandma has sent you a skateboarding Tweetie Pie card "so that's two things in one because I like Tweetie Pie and I like skateboarding, don't I Mummy!"

Oh, I wish I was six.

And hurrah for having the total infallible belief, the certain knowledge that when you come home there will be cake and candles and balloons and more presents and a birthday tea and more cards and kisses and cuddles, because that's what Mum's do, don't they. They make things nice.

Spooky Goings On And Why My Cat Is Not To Blame.

Weirdness prevails here today; three strange things have happened.

1/An image was scanned into my computer as a gif file.
2/The grill was on but nobody used the grill.
3/Barbelith is up the proverbial spout.

Weird thing one: This morning I sat down at my computer and found Outlook Express in OS9 open, and a message onscreen saying 'You cannot send this message until you have entered your SMTP details. Attached was a gif file entitled scan.gif. This is weird for a number of reasons. Firstly, I never use OS9 or OE, I use OSX and Entourage. Secondly, I never scan things to .gif files, I scan to .tif files and then convert them. Thirdly, I never scan to an email, I always save the file onto my hard drive and then email it if I need to. Fourthly, I quite simply didn't do it. I left my computer open in Dreamweaver last night after uploading some songs to my site for my brother in law. (And BTW, if you like Coldplay and you want to hear some unusual tracks you can find them here.)

The only unweird thing about it all is that the image scanned in was a 'thank you' doodle I drew a while ago on an envelope, which I scanned in yesterday and had left in the scanner.

Now, it's impossible to open up my scanning software without using the mouse, so it couldn't have been my cat walking on my keyboard. Could it?

Maybe it was the cat...

Weird thing two: The grill was left on. But yesterday nobody used the grill. Yesterday my son had leftover lasagne for tea which was heated up in the oven (not the grill) and husband had pasta which was made on the gas hob. (I didn't have anything as I still feel Christmas fat, but that's irrelvant to this story and I shall save it for another day when nothing interesting has happened.)

So, nobody got up in the middle of the night and put the grill on, but nevertheless the grill was on this morning.

I know for a fact it wasn't the dog as a/he's wearing a lampshade collar at the moment due to a rather painful testicle removal and b/this means he's sulking and does nothing except sit on the sofa looking cross. Plus also he doesn't like hot food.

So, this is pushing it, but I guess it could have been the cat - in a very dextrous mode since you have to turn the knob clockwise to turn the grill on, but still.

Maybe it was the cat...

Weird thing three: Barbelith has gone a little bit mad this morning, you can't post to threads, the whole board is covered with MySQL errors and rather disconcertingly my total number of posts has gone down to two.

This certainly can't be blamed on the cat unless she is a/computer literate and b/has access to the Barbelith servers. But even if she was, and did, since she's too fat to get to London and back in the space of one night she is entirely exhonerated.

So this leaves what?

Leyline spookiness?
Shifts in the planets?
A slip into another dimension?

It's all very strange indeed.

But hey, at least I know it wasn't the cat.

On things frequently not being what they initially seem.

Three facts:

1/My hair is pink.
2/My dog is timid.
3/


Are these things related? Yes indeed. They are related because they are all not what they initially seem. It goes like this:

1/ Since I had bright pink streaks put in my hair people have started to look at me differently. At my son's school I no longer conform to the normal stereotype 'Mum'. In public people look at my hair, look at my clothes and then look at my hair again. You can actually see them thinking, "Well her hair is weird but her clothes are normal. How can that be? What is she?" I don't fit into any box that they want to fit me into. I'm not a 'weirdo' or a 'freak' because my clothes are 'normal' but I also can't be classed as 'normal' because my hair is pink. I like it. I like the fact that people feel uneasy and can no longer make an instantaneous judgement about me. But I am still me. I am still exactly the same person as I was when my hair was brown, or blonde or red or whatever. But for the people who don't know me I am no longer a person they can categorise easily, and that's cool.

I am not what I initially seem.

2/My dog appears timid. He's tiny (half the size he should be) and he doesn't like strangers, he's a scaredy dog. To the general public he appears to be a boring, frightened, shy little thing. But he isn't. When he knows you, he is lary and stupid and ridiculously funny. He dashes round and round in ever expanding circles in the park. He comes to fetch me if my son is calling and I don't hear. He tries to play all the time, with anything he finds. If I put my boots on to go out he steals my walking socks and runs away. He can do trick after trick after trick and people that do know him think he's hugely funny and very clever indeed.

He is not what he initially seems.

3/The picture above of pavement art is the best example, but there is more here if you want to see. I don't really need to say anything about it now because you can see if you look and look at the images.

They are not what they initially seem.

So three silly things. Three irrelevant unimportant things, so simple, so everyday. It makes you think about the huge number of things that we come across or people that we meet that we make initial snap judgements about, but that are really nothing like we first think.

And maybe, it's quite likely that nothing is what it seems.

Don't you think?

It feels very menacing here today. The clouds are black, rolling and boiling and full of storms, and there are fighter jets roaring overhead every few minutes, flying round and round in circles.

They do this playing at war sometimes, and I like it. Well, not the playing at war but the fighter jets themselves and the unbelievable noise they make. People write to the newspaper all the time complaining about the sound (...it's disgraceful. Angry from Wiltshire...) but I find it thrilling. That deep, deep rumble that fills your chest up and then explodes as the sound goes past you, through you.

It makes me feel a bit more alive for the brief moment they pass.

Just for that brief moment.

'I feel like Beagle,' he said.

'Stuck in the crater sending out pictures, but nobody is listening.

Forlorn little Beagle going "I've even got one of little green men here, look! It's really good, it's just what you wanted.

Hey...Can anybody hear me?" '



I think I might cry.

To get to Neverland you turn right and then go straight on 'till morning.

But it's very underpopulated now; since the gloriously good Wendy took all the lost boys home with her in a misplaced fit of philanthropy (Daddy, Daddy, can we keep them pleeaaaase?) there is only Peter Pan and Tinkerbell left, and although "I do, I do, I do believe in fairies" as far as I'm concerned they can have each other.

Still. There's always the ticking crocodile to befriend and I quite like the idea of him. At least you'd know when he was about to attack.