That old 'Feminism gives women a bad name' chestnut really can do one.

Women who show a willingness to accept nasty or sexist comments about other women, and sometimes even actively support them via social media likes, or laughing at sexist jokes in the pub drive me absolutely up the wall and I have no time for them whatsoever.

Just because they never confront the behaviour they think it isn't relevant to them, that it somehow doesn't apply. But it does. It does! Every time they toss their hair and laugh when a man says his girlfriend is nagging, or 'like' a post on Facebook where a man is condescendingly telling a woman she's said enough what they are doing is tacitly accepting that women should accept and willingly embrace the control and domination of men, and that men have the final say in how much a woman can communicate.

These are the same women who say they hate Feminism because it gives women a bad name. It's sad that they exist but what's even sadder is that they exist in the derby community - a sport so fundamentally female that even the recent influx of boy derby has brought a delightful fashion for men in sparkly shorts.

There is no place for female on female hatred in derby. There's no place for anyone on anyone hatred, it's fucking derby for fuck's sake, where's the derby love? But if you are female and feel the best way to self-identify is by how much the boys think you are one of them - all to the detriment of the women around you I genuinely have no idea why you have chosen to be part of such an inclusive and welcoming sport.

Somebody I really respect said to me once that the thing she really admires about me is a willingness to stick up for what I believe in even when it gets me into trouble myself. But I am weary of always being embroiled in dissent because I insist on sticking up for the underdog.

Husband thinks I am brave.

I think I am stupid.

More not making of the roster. I don't care anymore. I don't care so much that I'm writing about it on my blog.

Collectors

I collect rainbows. I've been doing it for a while. I haven't got very many, perhaps five, but the ones I've got are beautiful, including one over the Stones of Stonehenge and one at the Sunrise festival over all the tents. I'd like some more but the opportunity seldom arises.

I also collect vintage boxes, and champagne boxes and boxes of variousness in general. It's something about being able to put things neatly away inside them and keep the lid shut on the mess.

My friend collects friends. She has many and she knows them all well and spends quality time with them all. This impresses me greatly because number one, it involves phoning people and I am particularly rubbish at doing that. Number two it means socialising regularly and I don't do that very well either. I know a lot of people but I don't have many real, actual friends, those are particularly rare and I try to hang onto them carefully. So it makes me tremendously sad to lose one, especially one I had invested so much time into.

I don't know why people say 'Misery loves company', my feeling is it's best left on its own to sulk, actually.

Today I have made gold wedding rings that look like tree bark, designed a beautiful ring based on Sumi E Sakura or Japanese black ink paintings of cherry blossom and I have started making another tiny Russian doll.

I have generally spent most of my time making beautiful things for people and yet when I stop I realise I have a black heart and I'm harbouring a sort of quiet roiling fury. It's a good job that the art of Goldsmithing allows me to switch off from the world, especially if you believe as I do that you transfer your energy into any object you are making. Today I have really concentrated on closing my mind off to everything apart from how much I like the couple I am making these rings for, and how pleased I am that they chose us.

I can't skate. I feel sad and miserable but I am so sick of feeling like that I've channeled it into anger instead. Anger is just as worrisome but less painful inside, and I'm sick of crying.

On Saturday I've got my MRI to see if the consultant's diagnosis of a tear in my Lateral Meniscus is correct, and if it is I will be fast-tracked for an operation. I am terrified that it will be and I'll be off-skates for months but what's almost worse is, what if it's inconclusive?

I'm most scared of being left like this, hurting inside and out, can't even skate.

Heart breaking.

Sometimes I say really stupid things to people, principally because I am socially inept and nervous. Usually it's to someone I really like and they give me a really strange look and then I feel like I've failed.  People make assumptions about me being all outgoing and confident but the reality is, lots of people who come across as really outgoing are actually the most shy of all, they just disguise it with chronic over-exuberance.  

Mince pies and seasides.

On Christmas Day once when I was a teenager, instead of doing traditional Christmas things my Dad took my Step-Mum and me to the Norfolk coast for the day. We went, all bundled up in hats and scarves, with tomato soup and mince pies for our Christmas lunch, and we sat on the totally empty beach and watched all the sea birds. It was wonderful, even though at the time I'm sure I had a little teenage strop about doing something 'weird' and 'embarrassing'.

We walked and played and found an unexploded Second World War bomb, so we phoned the local police and they came out to the beach and we all shared our mince pies . It was quite the occasion.

My dad was like that, we quite often did unusual things and vaguely annoying ones too; at the dinner table we were never allowed to sit in the same chair because he didn't want us to become 'creatures of habit'. I think he liked to think of himself as impulsive and reckless even though the reality was different; he also did things like have careful financial planning, which isn't very reckless at all, if you ask me.

Anyway.

As I have previously written, today is the tenth anniversary of his death. If I didn't have to work I would drive to the Norfolk coast and toast him with tomato soup and mince pies. Perhaps I still will, at some point. I might sit on the sand and and say, 'Ten years but not forgotten Dad' and ask him what he thinks, what I should do.

I'll say, 'What shall I do Dad? Because I'm lost. Sometimes when I'm driving alone at night on an empty road and the road turns I deliberately don't turn the wheel and then at the last minute a kind of innate sense of self preservation takes over, and I do after all. Why does my brain ignore me?

It's not supposed to be like this. I don't know where to turn or who to ask, or even what to ask for, I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going and I don't know how to make anything right, or even if I want to.'

Yeah. I'll say, 'I'm lost Dad, and I need help.'

I don't know what he'd tell me. He'd probably tell me to do the exact opposite of what I think he'd say, but since I don't even know what I think he'd say I can't work out the rest and I'm no further forward.

Much easier to have him here to ask, and then I wouldn't have to do all this guessing.

Stupid dying.
Stupid living and stupid dying.

In a kind of weird meta strangeness NSOing at skating is keeping me from crying.

Indebtedness

He bought her a Kindle Fire but she put it away in the cupboard. She doesn't want to like it, because if she likes it she's going to feel indebted to him; she'll have to move one step closer to liking him and she's decided to definitely, definitely not do that. So now it sits inside the cupboard, dusty, whilst she sits outside, bored.

She might do some cleaning.

Things I know to be True List Number 2.

Another late night list. The rules for the lists, by the way, are that they must contain things I know to be true (they can't be suppositions) and each list must contain ten points.

1. Smoking is bad for you.
2. I feel more comfortable about my body now that I ever did in my twenties.
3. The last month of pregnancy feels as long as all the previous months put together.
4. The art of Goldsmithing is a dying skill.
5. Cheap shoes are a false economy.
6. Roller derby has brought me the most amazing friendship group.
7. Spending all our savings on a really good mattress was an excellent idea.
8. There is always an interesting story in someone if you look hard enough.
9. Some people's eyes really are windows to their souls and those are the people I instinctively seek out.
10. Climbing any sort of hill is always worth it.

True love.

I think that true love is like tides and the sea.  Sometimes it is all around you, you are immersed in it.  Other times you have to walk a mile in the sand just to reach the shallows.

But you know it is, and will always be still there.

Painting dark lilies.

On Monday it will be ten years since my Dad died and I still can't really look at a seldom seen photograph of him without crying.   I wish he was still here.

Ten years though is a long time, the normal grieving process is apparently three, and I am past weeping into my coffee and running away to Thailand.

I am past divorcing my husband in a depressed and desperate search for something, I am past staring silently at the wall in the mental hospital and painting pictures of dark lilies.   I don't even think about him all that much anymore and yet not a day goes by without him being in my mind. I don't try and call him like I did when he first died, and I can look at the photograph of him in my living room because I see it everyday and it has become almost unnoticeable.  But love is a strange and wonderful thing and sometimes even when you have forgotten about it for a while it can suddenly overwhelm you again.

I'm still angry with him for leaving us all, too early, too selfishly.  Addiction is a terrible thing and it stole my father from me just when he was about to begin a delightful part of his life.

So if you still smoke, you should stop making excuses and just stop.  My Dad made excuses. ' I love it, it feels like losing a member of the family when I stop.  I'll quit next year.  Next month, next week.'

Next day.

Not now.

And then he fell off a ladder and broke his collar bone and that was the beginning of the end, because  he found out he had a brain tumour.  A great, big, fat brain tumour, that was messing his brain up and making him fall over.  When he found that out, he quit smoking, right there, right then.  But it was too late because that brain cancer was secondary cancer;  the primary cancer was in his lungs and had already started to kill him.   So he started smoking again.

Might as well when you've only got a year to live.

Place your bets.

I'm not a gambling kind of person; I've not got a very good poker face and I don't know the rules. I don't see the point in guessing what might happen when someone throws a dice, or a tiny ball. I can't make a sensible judgement on that and if I had any money I'd probably keep what I had rather than try and make it somehow magically double. Or treble.

I'm not great really at playing any sort of games, because I'm not speculative and I'm not wily enough, I don't have the ability to personally manipulate people and I'm far, far too naive. I never believe that people are lying to me, even if they are. You can tell me anything and I will happily go around telling everyone else about the new 'fact' I've learnt. (N.B. - Several friends actually occasionally do this to me for the comedy value.) It doesn't seem naive to me, I genuinely don't see why anybody would want to lie.

Yeah, I can't gamble, not with cards, not in a casino and certainly not with any kind of emotions either; poker or life related.

So why then do I feel like I'm watching the wheel going around and around and around inside my mind, and why is it that all I can hear is a little voice going,

Black or red?
Black or red?
Black or red?

Verbally morose. Morbidly verbose.

Haiku number 41782

At first, she waited.
Finally, she translated.
Now she's retreated.

On being rubbish at really hearing.

Since I was a little girl I have never been able to hear the nice things. There could be a million nice things in a sentence someone said to me or wrote to me but if there was also a horrid thing, a criticism of something I did, of what I said - of who I am, then all I would hear is that and I would just go to bed and cry about how much people dislike me, and how crap I am.

As I have grown older I have learned not to instantly respond, not to lash out in defence of myself, and have learnt instead to listen to what people have to say. I know now to put myself in their position, and think about how they might feel about me and my behaviour towards them. So now I do that. I can just about do that.

The end result though is that instead of wanting to go to bed and cry because everyone hates me, I just hate myself as well, because they're basically right; I am utterly rubbish at being a nice, normal person and instead am a complete emotional disaster.



So that's good. Self awareness.

Hurray for that.

The 1-10 scale of true, deep connection.

Here is a relatively easy but incredibly complicated task, born out of a conversation I was having (with myself) today. 

On a scale of 1-10 rate how deep your connection is with other people in your life.  With 1 being most  important and 10 being...still really important.  What you end up with is a list of the people who are most vital to you. The 'top 10', if you like.

Seriously.  Do it.  I think you might surprise yourself.  

The criteria for selection is this:  If they called you in the middle of the night and asked for help, what would you do?  

My definition of true friendship is that someone could ring me and say, "Hey Bella,/Izzy/Lula/Whatever,  I am in Glasgow.  Can you please come and get me?" And all I would do is find out the postcode and get in my car.

I wouldn't ask why, how, what happened? I would just drive and get them, and then probably shout, "What the very FUCK are you doing, calling me in the middle of the night from Glasgow??? DICK. "  once they were safely in the car.

So do this.  

(Note:  Children don't count.)

1.  L
2.  L
3. O
4. A
5. B
6. B
7. M
8. D
9. B
10. C

N.B.   I have randomly coded mine, just because it's easier to be truthful and for the purposes of this exercise because you'll all be checking for your own initial or whatever.  (It's not initials).  You can code yours if you want, or write them down on a piece of paper and screw it up and throw it away.  Burn it.  Do whatever the fuck you want with it, I don't give a flying toss-monkey.  

The point is to be honest and true to yourself.  Who would you drive to Glasgow to get, without having a shitfit, if they really, really needed you to?  

I think a stream of consciousness would be a beautiful place to sit beside, a little cosmic brook where the water is perfectly clear and if you look into it you cansee through to the stars.

The internet isn't mine anymore.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/leigh-clark/facebook-statuses_b_3043482.html

I have quite a lot of issues with this.  

In the early 2000's people that posted on message boards were cool.  There weren't that many of us, really, compared to the millions of people that use Facebook now, contemporary, rubbish, messageboard replacement that it is.  We used to use words like 'nom' all the time, but hardly anyone else did so it wasn't an overused word.  Or rather it was, but only amongst a tiny, worldwide, online community, who thought it was funny and cute.   But then gradually as the internet became more mainstream and Facebook grew it became a little bit like having a tiny LSD gathering which is crashed by hundreds of drunk people who have accidentally come across your address and want to pee in your pot plants.  You know it's not quite the right vibe, (they should be pouring Ribena into the carpet to watch it sink in) but you just stand there with really big, round eyes surveying the damage and being completely incapable of fixing it.

So when people say that Facebook has gone down-hill I don't think they mean that.  What they mean is, everyone is on the internet these days and snobbery about the internet dictates only certain people should have access to it.  If you're not counter-culture then what are you doing here?  Being mainstream and normal is now the mainstream internet norm if we use Facebook as a yardstick for message boards as they used to be, and old school people like me are a bit sniffy about it.  They don't like places where they don't have to write their own A=HREF links, it's 'constricting'.  And all those funny pictures of kittens and TEH cutest baby animals?  Everyone's doing that now, it's not so sweet anymore, not so quirky.   

And when you know your next door neighbour Jan is there updating her status about The X-Factor, and her bunion and chatting with her long lost sister from Australia who she found via a genealogy site, what is there left for you to feel cool about?  The internet isn't yours anymore, 'Hunni'.  It's everyone's.  

Horrible spelling and grammar and all.

Lists

I wake up in the middle of the night so lately I've taken to making lists of things I know to be true. It's therapeutic and takes concentration because there is less truth around than you think.

1. Money makes you happy when you haven't got any.
2. Dogs don't judge you.
3. People all feel better when there are more daylight hours.
4. I am a size 38 shoe.
5. There is something about the city which makes me lose touch with the natural world and its rhythms and cycles.
6. Keeping a car on the road is expensive.
7. My Mum should be living nearer to me, or me to her.
8. Everybody snores sometimes.
9. Bread from the supermarket is full of sugar.
10. Drinking water is good for your body.
11. Eventually there will always be daffodils, however dark the Winter.

Dreams

I want to make complicated, intricate jewellery for people who are willing to pay for it because it's beautiful and they appreciate an artisan's time.  I want to make things,  any things.  I want to make beautiful lacquered boxes with silver hinges and line them with incredibly time-consuming, hand printed silk. I want to be a writer.  I want to be a sculptor. I want to be one of those people that absails in trees to lop off branches, or failing that, the ones who absail down buildings to wash the windows.  I want to fly hawks around skyscrapers to frighten the pigeons.

I want to read all the books.

I want to live by the sea in the mountains and I don't even know if that's possible.  I want to live in a city in the country where I can walk the dogs in the quiet and still be part of a vibrant community.  I want to garden. I want to grow my own vegetables and have time to give to them.  I want to sing to my flowers.  I want to teach my children how to identify different seedlings. I want to drink coffee in bed on Sundays and talk about the newspapers without worrying whether what the newspapers say will affect the rest of the day.  I want not to have to cry about money.  I want not to have to care about money because it isn't important and doesn't make me happy.  I want a car that works.  I want access to an amazing library.  I want to live near a second-hand bookshop that is open at odd hours and has interesting smells.  I want to make cakes and eat them whenever I feel like it, without worrying if it will make me fatter.  I want to be able to say, "What shall we have for tea?" and it already have been decided.  I want not to worry anymore.   I want never to be suddenly terrified again, when the second before I had no idea anything was about to be frightening.  

I want to talk about complicated, confusing ideas right into the early hours.

I want to be able to hear the sea from my window.  

I want to feel real again.  I want to feel again.

I keep collapsing into the gentle easy arms of depression, thinking that somehow, someone will look after me. I am finally realising that no-one will and that the person who has to look after me...is me.

It's all very well lounging around in the soft pillow of nebulous, undefinable, not-very-serious mental health problems, it's an easy excuse, depression. 'I feel so bad, therefore I can be excused from X and I cannot do Y.' But then X doesn't happen and Y is never done.

Someone has to step up and it appears to have to be me.

Spoken word.

I'm writing poetry and it's shit.  Or rather what I'm actually writing is spoken word poetry, which is a different thing, and I'm trying to practice it, but I don't want to learn it because I feel like it's not very good. So I've got to read it which is rubbish because spoken word is best when you know it, and it's coming from inside you and it's your heart and everyone is basically just listening to the beat of you living, breathing, being alive.

Reading is like - some duffer poem on Radio 4.

What's the point in learning it if it's rubbish?  But you need to practice.  So you're reading it and you know it's shit and....you should have memorised it but you can't because you don't think it's very good, etc, ad infinitum.....

Cheating.

The human brain is a very adaptable thing. I have somehow managed to circumvent my own no-FACEBOOK-on-my-phone embargo by logging in via Safari instead of the app, which I threw away.

It's a horrible addiction. I am going to have to block myself or something.

"A boat is safe in the harbour, but that is not what a boat is for."

The terror of happiness.

You are so frightened of being loved.

Maybe it's because when you were little once your mother didn't give you a biscuit when she did your brother.  Or maybe it's because at school you had a friend that stopped being your friend when you started liking Batman, and liked someone else who liked Spiderman instead.  Or maybe it's because somebody once loved you, and then stopped loving you and that fucking hurt and you couldn't cope with the pain and you didn't know how to move on and you don't really want that to happen again.

Maybe it's because sometimes people fall in love with you and you don't like their politics, or their dog, or the spot they had yesterday on their nose.  Maybe it's because sometimes people love you and you don't know why, because God's Sake you're annoying and boring and your feet smell and you've nothing to say after work so you've no idea how they could possibly love you, and maybe it's not right; they're not the right one, because what's the right one? Who? How do you know who the right one is and what if you end up with the wrong one and there's someone else more right around the corner and what if you had children and then you realise it was all wrong and then...

SHIT.  

You're 90.

Lies.

Daniella sells the Big Issue outside the Co-op in the area I live.  She's Algerian Muslim I think. She wears a headscarf, she has several gold teeth and chronic Arthritis.  Sometimes when we used to do the market she would borrow painkillers from my husband and they would discuss the horrors of Arthritic pain in the cold.   I like her a lot, despite the fact that she's very religious (I don't tend to generally get on with religious people, I usually want to hit them for being stupid, in my tolerant Atheist way) and she has many children, one of them the same age as Solly.

Solly adores her.  When he sees her he shrieks, "DANIELLLLLLA!" and runs towards her and hugs her, burying his head in her folds of skirts.  She also adores him and we talk a lot about how quickly all of our children grow.

I can't afford to buy the Big Issue every week.  I can afford to buy it some weeks but if I did that then she would think I was going to buy it every week and then if I couldn't afford it I would feel bad and she would think I had let her down. I don't want her to rely on me, for me to become one of her regulars because what if I don't have the money sometimes?

Instead what I do is, I give her money in a Christmas card each year, because at Christmas I usually do have money, owing to basically being a Christmas elf and making all the things for people to give each other.  So I give her 20 or 30 quid and anyway, I also give to several charities directly once a month and when I see people on the streets I try to give them what I have in my pocket so not buying the Big Issue off Daniella isn't that mean a thing to do.

****

Actually, this is all a lie.  I could afford to buy the Big Issue each week.  It's £3 out of my budget which isn't that much in the greatest scheme of things.  I could afford to buy it and don't, telling myself that I give elsewhere already and I don't want her to rely on me and all of the things I've just said.

But actually it probably wouldn't make that much difference to me, whereas it would to her.

I suppose that just proves I am basically shit.

Standing on the edges of Winter, contemplating the jump.

Creatures

I feel like a mole in the sunlight , I've got no idea how to function,

Or possibly a goat in the lions enclosure, knowingly about to be pounced on.

I can't work out how to fix things or even if I really want to,

My thoughts are messy, buzzing flies and right inside it all is you.

My dogs keep smelling my clothes and me, the fear is seeping from my pores,

I've no idea how to do this anymore. All I want to be is yours.

I wake up every morning feeling sick, I'm not pregnant or likely to be, I think it's all the anger inside of me, dripping corrosively.

Doors to automatic

Sometimes someone says something to you and it hurts so badly it rings in your ears. It makes your eyes smart, your nails make marks in your hands from the tension. It makes you so angry you can't speak and you just want to scream but somehow your voice has been taken away and who's going to hear it anyway?

Probably you're shaking.

Look out for that feeling if it happens to you. You'll know it when it comes. You'll feel hurt and angry and righteous and affronted. Look out for that feeling, and welcome it because its called the Truth.

And you don't like it, you don't believe it, because how the fuck do they know what you're thinking anyway? For a while too you're in denial, you just want to stay in your bubble, because its much easier there with your calm lies and gentle reasoning. (If someone screams in the bubble and no-one is there to hear it was there really a scream? )

Without the bubble the world is a horrible scary place full of...thought. Rawness. Picking at the sores of love? Elation. Devastation. Or even just emotion, which is bad enough because you've tried long and hard to shut it down, to close it off, doors to automatic and cross check.

You see, without the bubble you might actually have to do something. Be something, change something. Paralysed with indecision isn't the place to be when the soft walls are no longer there to support you, when you don't have your blinkers on anymore. And you know that if you step outside you might discover an inner melancholia you didn't even realise you had.

You might.

So you stay there, Lalala with your fingers in your ears pretending not to hear, desperately pretending not to hear and not to believe it because if you do you might actually have to start living, breathing, really being.

And stop just existing instead.