Pelting Slowly

33 - 1/3 of century

2008-06-07T08:39:00.000Z

Thanks to you all for my lovely cards, texts, calls, messages and pressies. I felt truly valued and joyous surrounded by almost all fishy cards with the exception of the sheep poo card! I had an amazing day. I have said it before, but since turning 30 and deciding that single middle aged people should do exciting things on their birthday that don’t include children the plan was made to go kayak surfing. I love kayak surfing. Anyone who has seen the autoerotic asphyxiation marks around my neck from the Croyde weekend of surfing knows just how much. The strangulations marks incurred through cag wearing in saltwater were just beginning to fade, so time was to tune them up a little. I think it gives the patients confidence to see their acupuncturist looking as though she indulges in strange sexual practices (hmm is that what fuels the thriving patient population, is that why I am sat emailing not puncturing???).

Anyway so decided to got down to Bournemouth to kayak surf because after all I had braved Nottingham’s radioactive white water course when I should have been listening to the Dalai Lama but skived off for the afternoon and anyway there were no coaches to teach and too many stoppers to brave a lone trip. I woke early to great to start of my 33rd year, came downstairs and opened my cards and present from Sylvie (many cat/rat Chinese horoscope beautiful jade bracelet) before a session of power yoga (thanks Lisa an enduringly useful bday present from when I was living in NZ!) before heading to the 6.30 BNI breakfast meeting. Joyfully greeting the other fellow members of the breakfast club I managed to cause chaos to the president who twice dropped everything, in astonishment perhaps, at my unaccustomedly cheerful demeanour.

Anyway to the surfing Warren picked me up and we headed down to Bournemouth reefs collecting a few picnic things on the way. We arrived to find no surf. A mill pond. So making the most of it we headed up the cliffs and had a picnic in the sunshine. Picnic over we decided to do a little fossil hunting and clambered around across very strangely crumbly rocks finding what are probably limpet fossils and stashing them in my handbag. I was doing a bit of a toddler destructive thing and ripping up rocks with my bare hands and throwing them down the cliff when I realised that what I was standing on, 40 feet up a cliff, was the same stuff I was trashing with such ease. I nervously and cautiously, causing only a small landslide, slid down the cliff. Finally we saw a wave and so headed back to grab the boats; past the barbed wire, past a sign saying watch out for landslide and then past a “these cliffs and very dangerous don’t climb” sign.

We got onto the water and paddled to where the wave had been, but nada. We paddled along the coast and found some more waves breaking in the middle of the sea and so we tried to catch them but wherever we went the waves weren’t. Elusively slipping further and further away from us. It was like Greek gods tempting us further and further out to sea, come hither small paddlers, a little further, a little deeper. Before we got sacrificed to the sea monsters we decided to give it up and paddle back in. It was gorgeous, the sun was shining, sky blue, crazy steep rocky cliffs towering above with their deposition lines clearly showing transporting you back through the ages. The elusive waves rolling up in the sea and pulling great strands of kelp from the beds with sun shinning through the wave made the most incredible picture. It was glorious but surf free. As we paddled back we saw a lone surfer catching waves so we enthusiastically paddled over to join him but as we arrived the waves went. We left him bereft of waves and paddled back to shore. There we met some sea kayakers who were paddling all the way round the coast to raise money. One of them was a one legged, ex Santa Claus, sky diving Aston villa mascot Para and it was his journey, but this was relayed to us second hand, and somewhat fragmentally, by his South African support driver. He (the support driver) was from Wilderness on the Garden route. Lovely place with wild ocean, white sand beach, stunning emerald forest with lakes and mountain. All in a single place. Love to live there. Saw a giant jellyfish there being eaten by land snails. Not necessarily connected to this story. Let’s face it the description of the day is pretty random. Anyway to wrap this up as the tangents are getting steep, we finished off the day by having a delicious Thai dinner with my sister and her funky new beau in Southampton.

Just wanted to share what a lovely day I had and love to all the world but especially my friends….oh and any prevarication to delay getting back to writing my dissertation.

Generic hard drive update

2008-02-28T13:13:00.002Z

My hard drive had a failure I never really fixed it as I used a generic drive. Needs a firmware update that doesn't exist. Lenovo own Hitchachi why should they be compatible?

Black eyed peas turned into skwonky crunchy nose. It will never be the same and there is only one person to blame. He who would be rescuer.

I boarded at New Year and got into the half pipe, dropped in on the vert.

I have been at Kew doing research and I may well be rejecting the null to accept my H1 for those of you not in the know that means I WAS RIGHT.

I have been treating patients of a wide variety, I have had my first conception and my first death. All in the same month. Life and death part of a cycle.

I study I teach I don't pay council tax and still get student rates at the movies. Now is that a great reason to defer or what? Oh plus an extra year of slacking and pretending to be working very hard.

I have an allotment after 5 years on the waiting list and planted my first crops - garlic, shallots, bergamot, mint, basil, chamomile.

I climbed a tree, paddled bare sea toes in Feb, paddled a kayak in Jan, blew bubbles in the park.

So that is me, what about you?

Oh but best of all off to Monaco to see a friend, St Maxime to see my pares and Auron to play in the snow. I was going to go and study - write up results but now I have too many fun things planned. Oh bugger.

Black eyed peas

2007-09-19T16:02:00.000Z

I can't even remember my last post it seems a long time and most probably is. I have been enjoying the summer. I have had a couple of kayaking trips the most fun being the surf one. I have been out to France to stay with my parents for 10 days which was wonderful First time I have been out there not working just enjoying myself. It was wonderful lots of sunshine and good food, nice people.

We spend a few day on the Isle D'Or - Port Cros - a national park. We took long strolls across the island scented with Mediterranean herbs and accompanied by the sounds of the cicadas. We snorkeled the first day but the weather was choppy and so we did not make it all the way round the underwater nature trail which was a shame. I did a dive in the park without doubt one of the most beautiful dives I have done. Enormous wrasse, a half foot nudibranch (I know the goggles make things look bigger but they were still huge). As we descended to a very deep depth it became incredibly cold and was not prepared for it. We were down at 37m with some beautiful corals. As we ascended back towards the surface you could actually see where the thermocline was, a shimmering haze in the water like a mirage. It was a great relief to pass through it from water at 13 degrees below up to 24 degrees above. I was the only person on the dive along with a dive master. I panicked when I got in, first time I had been like that really close to just swimming for the surface I didn't think could breathe could not get enough oxygen in. But I stuck it out forced him to make eye contact with me, must of thought me a weirdo but hey who cares. Sadly I think we had descended too deep and a few hours after the dive I realised I had again perforated my eardrum. This necessitated a trip to the french docs who took it all very seriously. Ahh oui oui oui you must see the specialist today. Well I didn't as I was due to go home the next day and thought I would visit here. Saw my GP here and he was very dismissive as expected. I think my hearing is returning! Hmm must get back on here and finish off the point of it which was the black eyed peas or the post won't make sense but I am off kayaking in a minute so more later...

Oh and so I don't totally forget http://www.herbalacumen.com/ my new website.

So back to the black eyed peas and giving them a run for their money. This weekend was spent at the Tryweryn a grade 3 white water course with dam release. It was great we spent two days there the first was with teacher Tom doing a lot of breaking in and breaking out and trying to make the right eddies or at least those that we had planned to do. A useful exercise. the last time we came here Nick led us and we just paddled down without worrying too much about eddies. The second day we decided to paddle alt he way from the top of the course back to the campsite so having appropriately juggled the yaks and cars we set off. Spent a lot of time at the top of the course practicing what we had been taught the day before but then set off down to the BIG features. I was extremely anxious but as usual also exceptionally determined. Not to be outdone by the 3 strapping big men I was paddling with I endeavoured each of the features. I didn't try and do the breakouts down the big features but just rode them. Down the ski jump where Arthur has been trapped in a stopper the day before going round and round like in a washing machine. Down the massive feature under the bridge that I have done twice before but never upright and I rode it with my head out of the water the whole way down and broke out at the end hoorah. Down past the standing wave and through the drops below. There was just one last feature chapel falls which has a very dangerous stopper that must be avoided at all cost. I made a beautiful breakout just above and pleased with myself dropped down right away from the dangerous side. I got through the wave at the bottom and then tipped over. I was trying to roll back up but had got wedged against the wall and on my third attempt to roll I started to come up and in charged Arthur at full pelt to rescue me. His boat made firm contact between my eyes and I dropped back into the water, shocked and dazed I abandoned my boat. On emerging at the surface began yelling Arthur Gorton you have battered me again - this is not the first time a rescue attempt has left me with injuries. I began to swim for the side and spotted a tree trunk I could grab but as I reached out something hit the back of my head and I turned to see a throw rope just out of reach, turned back to the bank and the tree was out of reach.A Canadian canoe was in front of me and I reached that just as we began some more small drops and so I was carried dazed further down the river leaving boat and paddle and other paddlers far behind. Luckily the Canadian canoer had presence of mind and dropped me off beyond the falls, fortuitously just opposite the camp site. Sadly on the wrong side. The other paddlers did finally joined me as a sat in a bewildered battered heap. They had my boat and Arthur had managed to rescue my paddle and leave it with the Canadian canoes further up. I set off with my boat and ended up hiking all the way back to the falls, the site of my shame and back along the road.

Outcome, despite little sympathy at the time and even the occasional protestation that there was no sharp blow between the eyes the twin black eyes that occurred in the next days have proved beyond doubt the guilt of one rescuing destroyer! (although I do appreciate it was well intentioned)

Wet and wild in Wales

2007-06-28T21:57:00.000Z

So Monday, day of freaky weather and where do I head Wales. Through storm and rain I headed out towards the River Dee for my first white water kayaking lesson with a super guy called Matt. Sadly I opted to take the toll road which meant I missed the M54 and it was not until I arrived at the end of the M56 that I realised my mistake by which time I was running 30 minutes late and had lost my blue tooth headset. I did finally arrive in Langollen in the pouring rain about an hour late. We pretty fast got on the water accompanied by storms and wind and driving rain and started with some simple break in and break out on some fairly gentle stuff before moving onto the rapids. My first upset, read upside down, resulted in what can only be considered an absolute stunner of a roll appreciated mostly by myself but also by my coach – fast and effective and as first roll on true white water very impressive. It was shortly followed by a more abortive capsize where I swam and the boat shot off without me as my coach dragged me to the shore. The water levels continued rising from 4 on the gauge when we arrived to 14 when we got out for lunch as more and more logs came flowing down the river. We went back and practised some more with another successful roll and then set off to a grade 3 rapid where I upside downed again. This time I rolled beautifully and then found myself stuck in a wave and then swum again. By this time the water was really powerful and I scarcely got to the edge and Matt set off after my boat with instructions not to leave the bank but to follow him down stream. I did follow but got to a junction and tried to cross the shallow water but got swept away and finally managed to cling to a tree and haul myself back out. I made my way backup the channel to fin Matt with a boat on either shoulder ploughing through the water that had swept me away. He expressed great surprise at my roll halfway down a grade three rapid and apparent surfing of the wave. I was unaware I was surfing – something one tries to do. I thought I was just trapped. By this time I was covered in contusions from rocks and scraped, stung and scratched by brambles and at this point we stopped for lunch.

By the time lunch was over the water gauge has disappeared completely and we decided to head off to higher valley with aim of paddling some calmer rapids. After about 20 minutes and driving through two big floods we came to a stop in a village where water was pouring through a hotel and the fire brigade were present and turned back. The Dee at the centre was far too chaotic to try when we got back and so we headed to a canal to work on some other skills such as preliminary cartwheel. The canal has a viaduct over the river so we were able to sit and watch the flooding beneath and chew fat while dicing with canal boats as Matt showed off his skills to the clumsy great boats chugging past. I had requests to perform as he did but was not able to oblige. By this time it was 7opm and shattered I left the river. Matt unzipped his dry suit and stepped out in his bone dry fleecy under suit much to my envy as I peeled off wet layers.

It was a good day although I did not prove my prowess on the river or even tackle any of the rapids I had hoped to in an upright position but Matt was lovely and claimed to be impressed by my first attempt on white water. I took the more direct route home through more and yet more rain. I am left wondering just how I will get on with my first white water trip planned for next weekend. I hope I am up to it; I would not like to spend as much time the wrong way up this time. I am practicing hard all the things he taught me in the vain hope that I will spend less time on my tail and more time with my head above water and body clear of the rocks. Hoping also the battered legs will have healed and will not get re abused on my next adventure on white water. Wait for next instalment!

NB specially for my monther - feedback from coaching
:
I was pleased at the speed in which you picked up new ideas and concepts, your other sporting
experience and natural agility helped with this.

1 day 4 32 on 5-6-7

2007-06-12T08:49:00.000Z

This year I decided more to escape it than celebrate it and went to Milton Keynes. Not the obvious place to escape anything but actually a place of much fun. I went to AirKix where you launch yourself into a tunnel with air circulating at up to 170MPH and fly. I was a buzz. When you hold the right position you just stay suspended in the air. It you lengthen you move up the tunnel and arch you come back down. If you set your hands slightly as an angle you start spinning. The flights were only 1 minute each and I got only 2 but it was worth it for every second of this unique experience stretched out. I wish I could afford an hour in there. It is the equivalent of three free fall sky dives and you don’t have the unpleasant sensation of the ground rushing up to meet you. That is the part of the whole free fall experience which has so far not yet appealed.

Having free floated in a tunnel my friend and I rushed onto our next activity which was wake boarding. I can snowboard I thought I can probably wakeboard. They set us off first of all with a knee board – very different to a snowboard. You kneel down on a platform on the board you are then handed a piece of tow rope with handles and you wait. A clicking sound comes from above then you are yanked viciously from the platform, saturated with water as you scream and hauled off down the lake at high speed. As you approach the corner you aim for the between the buoys with dire warning of dislocated shoulders should you allow the rope to go slack. It does and if you had any sense you would let go there but pride has you holding onto until the snap comes and you are ripped from the board, dragged along the water a short way and mercilessly dumped. There follows a very long swim in a stinking lake then a long walk back to the starting platform again. I did actually get eventually around 3 corners but the fourth continued to elude me and when the wake board landed on my head after one hour and fifty I decided that was as close to my two hours as I was going to get. My friend had long since sensibly disappeared into the warm showers.

The egg on my head was complimented by the dullness after excessive wine consumption that evening whilst reliving the days fun and watching the flight DVD a couple of times. The ripping pain served to remind me of my birthday treat for several days and the cold which was clearing up before hand lingered on another week but it was worth it. I am 32 childless and making the most of it!

Surfing - UK!

2007-05-08T09:16:00.000Z

I have never really surfed before. I body boarded at 14 years old in San Francisco which was fun. I body surfed with no board in Brisbane which was like being thrown repeatedly in a washing machine, which was not fun. Kayak surfing now that truly was fun. I am a coward particularly so about cold water so when I woke at the allotted time of 5 am I looked out into the half darkness and having arrived just 5 hours previously decided to get my bearings before committing to a icy dunking. I got up and wrapped up well and found my way to the beach. It was just getting light, the waves were pretty big and it was quite chilly. I had the entire beach to myself and I began to walk, to pick up shells and to study the rock pools. I found a spot on a rocky ledge that had a perfect chair of sea moss and sat down high up on the end of the beach to watch the sun come over the dunes. As I watched the kayaks finally piled down and I was relieved that I was just too late to go back and get changed and haul my kayak down too. This brief respite giving me time to observe what on earth one was meant to do in a kayak on the sea and to obtain a bigger, thicker, longer wetsuit. I had purchased one that arrived 3 hours before departure for Croyde but sadly it was too big. The waves in fact had settled down a great deal before the kayakers got on and it was beginning to look like it might be fun.

After breakfast we set off into Woolacoombe to look for wetsuits for me, kayak boots for Andy and supposedly that was all but everyone left the shops with a bag of funky surf clothes. Oh apart from me who managed to find a single wetsuit that fit and was HOT pink not I looked hot in the wetsuit you understand but that the wetsuit was hot pink, not panels of pink but virtually entirely pink. Neon, bright, stabilo marker pink. Knowing that this item was to be worn with a black spray deck in an orange kayak I had visions of a giant baby coming and hoovering me up as through I were dolly mix floating on the sea. We took a long and gorgeous walk back along the coast before preparing for the afternoon surf.

Afternoon surftime and somewhat apprehensively I hauled my kayak the mile to the beach and was very nearly too knackered to get in. I did though and started really relaxing into just being on the sea and bobbing over the waves. Andy took me under his wing showed me how to pick a wave and the turn around and paddle paddle paddle. It was such a buzz when you got on that wave it was the most out of control I have felt in a long time. Shaking, scary, exhilarated out of control. As the afternoon went on that I started too feel I had some small measure of control, just digging the paddle in a stern rudder and holding it fast you could feel the massive power of the wave thrusting you shoreward. I had multiple abortive upside down experiences. I had been quite freaked because I can't roll outside a swimming pool and I thought I would really have trouble but it turn out I don't mind so much bailing and swimming to shore and emptying the boat and beginning again. It would be easier to roll but it was fine. Everyone pretty much got dunked and bailed at some point. Well probably not Andy but everyone else.

Next morning I was up at 5 and raring to get back in the surf. Having nearly killed myself getting the kayak back and I really mean I was ready to leave the great hunk of plastic to whoever would be kind enough to steal it from my weary shoulder. I had hatched a cunning plan when visiting the burrows for a BBQ the previous evening as there is public car park right by the beach so I strapped my kayak back on top and drove it to the beach much to the amusement of the burly strong people who heaved it onto one shoulder and laughed in the face of pain and exhaustion. Hey well two of them just paddled in 24 hours Devizes to Westminster and are truly superfit. The rest I don't have an excuse for it except just strong nutter people. Anyway kayak was driven to the beach than dragged across the sand down to the sea which two hours after low tide is a long way. The waves were big. Really big. It was a buzz, I just hung out near shore just getting through the waves that was enough, that took everything. One of the kayakers came over and said well done to me. I wasn't sure why, maybe just surviving this long the right way up. Then I looked back and saw how far out I had come and when I looked around I suddenly saw I was out wit the big boys and far too terrified to turn around and surf back. I was getting to go over really huge waves but before they had broken which was very cool fun just riding up so steep and throwing weight forward to go over the top. Until a really big one got me. I rode up the wave and saw it break just as my tip got to its tip and I toppled backward and swam. I was conscientiously trying to follow all the instructions offered two slightly conflicting items. First never get between the shore and the boat (it is heavy when full of water) and two let the boat get washed back in. Only problem was the boat getting washed back in was slower than me getting back in and both of us were being fast washed onto the rocks. We did make it out and then back into the water where I hung out keeping close the dead seagull shore marker for not getting washed onto the rocks. The only real surfing I did was backward and oh my that was thrilling, completely unintentional of course. Just when not paddling fast enough forwards you get caught and taken back to shore backwards. Sadly did not have the presence of mind to put in a bow rudder. Oh well, I didn't topple again and remained snug and warm in my rash vest, fleece jumper, wetsuit and dry cag.

That afternoon after a morning on the go karts where I won the kiddie race and came pretty low on the adult one I headed back to the sea this time with a body board and surf board, well between myself Dave and Peter. Body boarding I quite got and had a lot of fun with, the surfing I caught a couple of waves and I even managed to kneel up a couple of times so I was proud. After that though I was too tired to go paddle as well and the waves were choppy and not much doing. Got showered and warm and observed a while instead. I had great diligent plans to go at 5 the next morning last opportunity and all that but when I woke at 4 there was a gale blowing and the trees and caravan were being buffeted so rather than re enact a mini version of the perfect storm I nestled back into bed a slept a while more.

I may only have paddled twice but I have the aches and bruises of a more intense encounter and enough pleasure to last. Fab weekend, booked to go back again next year.

Powderking Wow

2007-03-23T06:40:00.000Z

They call it powderking and king of powder it most definitely is. I have never seen so much powder; I have certainly never tried to ride so much powder. Turns out it is a rather different skill to the kind of iceboarding I am used to. Now give me a foot of powder and i can ride the powder as good as the next chick but this was not a foot of powder it was several feet of powder and if you slowed down or leant forward or took a turn too tight or if your legs just gave out you were buried. You were digging yourself out from the piles of snow and god forbid you got lost in a bowl or as my sister did in the powder under a tree. Well board stuck in the pile of powder round the tree, head stuck in the snow free section under the branches in a compromisingly upside down fashion. Amazing mountain, very few groomed runs and free reign to go through trees and carve out your own path. I mostly watched people do that on unfortunate occasion I did loose the less deep tracks of others and find myself in deep misfortune carving fresh tracks for a short period before plunging headfirst usually down the slope and spending a sweaty 10 extricating myself. I did daringly attempt some seriously powdery ungroomed runs and took over an hour to get down what would take ten minutes well for anyone there but me! No to be fair the weekdays I was there were populated by locals and other super competents who rode powder like they were born to it and most probably were. On the Saturday when I went with niece and sister we were amongst other less able snowboarders and I was delighted to watch people struggling down the ungroomed slopes and was able to shout words of encouragement from the chairlift. I was determined not to stoop to the low comments such as I had shouted at me like keep you weight back and your nose up - yeah I get that in theory it is the implementation I was struggling with. In fact going downhill on powder was absolutely fine could get moving at high speed downhill without much issues the only trouble came when I got freaked out by my speed and tried to turn or stop. As the week went on I did improve greatly although still preferring to ride the groomed slopes and play in the extensive powder just off those slopes so that when your thighs burned so bad you couldn't adopt the stance any longer you could shoot back onto groomed slope and make some gentle curves back to the lodge. So much more to say about a fantastic 10 day break in Prince George but the powderking thing had to be first out.

The New Year, New Life, New Stuff

2007-01-17T20:22:00.000Z

New Year well, went out to France to my pares pad in St Maxime - wicked. Went with Ed and we arrived late on the 31st. Walked into St Maxime town centre only to discover well nothing. The French don't really do New Year. Prior to departure I had said to Ed I don't think we will go to the Irish pub, no way I am travelling all the way to France to go to an Irish pub but nothing else being open we called in. It was open and lively. We spent a Bonne Annee drinking with French people and the Annee itself kissing French people. I enjoyed it more than Ed I think. There was a medieval feast going on with a French speaking jester who I presume from the laughter was jesting in French about well who knows what, love maidens and ladies I suspect from my limited French. By the time the Bonne Annee had occurred we were hungry so in stilting French I requested some food and was told une assiette de viande was an option. So yes people I welcomed in the New Year gnawing on wild boar sausages, legs of wild turkey and well lamb, pig, beef.... wish I had a camera so could display the ex veggie chowing down on just about every animal known to the French as food matter except horse, perhaps that was not medieval?

Spent a lovely rest of the trip drinking eating and lazing in the winter sun. Glorious.

Since then been to the snowdome boarding, cirque du soliel and the craziest up a mountain. We decided to take a stroll up Pen Y Fan. My second trip up there thank goodness because otherwise I would not have known there would have been a lovely view at the top. On this occasion we did have a camera but the idea of extracting it from its waterproof case whilst holding on for dear life with both hands to the rock in hurricane strength wind on a rocky outcrop in the sleeting rain seemed perilous to say the least. It was MAD. Lots of waterproofs, a running nose and luckily a guide who knew where he was going. It was exhilarating but crazy to be on top of a mountain in those kind of storms in January. Surprisingly as, if not more, enjoyable than being up there in the summer sun which was my last visit. Shorts and t-shirt on this occasion would have been considered suicide.

Ages and changes

2006-12-14T19:14:00.000Z

It has been ages since I last blogged but now I have a little time so decided to update. I have had a few cold little holidays since the last Thailand trip. Meditation sadly has gone to pot - all that effort in the summer and lost it all. Partly because busy and partly because I dunno life has been busy and also because the meditation I did out there was so different to what I was doing here before I now find myself most confused about exactly what to do whilst I meditate. Which path to follow, I know which I choose but I need to begin again with what I was doing earlier in the year. I will begin again. Archh back to the start., I guess you have to do that lots.

So holidays - went out and spent a glorious week in France with my parents, all very lovely relaxing on the med. Went snorkelling a bit loads of jellyfish. You know the scene in finding Nemo or maybe you don't but it is like woohh man, mind the jellies and they bounce off them. It was like that with smaller jellies and no Dory to follow. It was also extremely cold. The med is just not that warm this time of year. Since I forgot to take my super new you are Advanced Open Water now I couldn't dive but considering the temperature I really wasn't that sad.

I went to Dublin on a working / exploring weekend. I did training for one of our now ex companies out there. Exhausting but fun to meet people you have been chatting with for the last 4 years by phone. Dublin is a pretty city with lots of shops and old places to admire saw the river that features in all those sad tales of growing up poor in Ireland (Angela's Ashes and the like). I met a man in an old bookshop who was up from Kilkenny for the day. He was about 80 and had hair growing right on the end of his nose. I mean really hairy end of the nose job. I think his dear wife must shave it for him periodically because it was rather stubbly but she had been neglecting her shaving duties lately. He was like a proper chap from fantasy tales and very charming but slightly batty. He helped me to find books about travel. All wholly inappropriate but it was great fun nonetheless. I did find a very interesting book about exploring Iran which I bought and brought home to show my parents. They lived in Iran many years ago and were able to point out places they had visited.

Speaking of which I also went to Egypt, Sinai - diving. Man it is scarily close to troubled places. It wasn't until we were on the bust and they said hah get your passport ready we are at the border crossing for Saudi, Israel and Egypt that I realised just how close. I went out for a week with my baby sister who is 5 months pregnant. I spent my days diving in the rather cold Red Sea whilst she lounged by the mountains of the Sinai. I think the 29 degree waters of Thailand may have set a standard for warm diving that will be hard to beat. I ended up buying one of those hoods and looking even dafter than a diver usually looks which is pretty daft.

It was filled with fish life but the coral was a graveyard and the diversity of the eco system seemed to have been somewhat messed up! I did see lion fish, scorpion fish, lizard fish, cow fish, box fish. Well anyway loads of fish, an octopus and a sea horse as well as Spanish dancers. Sadly last dive but one I perforated my eardrum luckily at the end of the trip though.

So since then I have been sacked, well company sold really and so am unemployed. Well self employed but not doing much. Catching up with friends and babies and this week Christmas shopping and decorating y tree. It is amazing just how much time you can fill doing very little!

This is an incredibly brief update of the last 3 months but I hope to be more diligent again soon. I also hope to make it to Aikido, kayaking, maybe jog or cycle or something again soon. Winter is just no conducive to exercise now is it?

Island dreaming

2006-09-13T12:38:00.000Z

Oh me oh my, there is nothing like deprivation to make luxury seem all the more fabulous. I went with four other meditators and spent time on a beach in Koh Pah Ngan.

We stayed on Tong Pai beach at the Dolphin resort and hung out in hammocks, drank, swam, snorkelled, ate and chattered. It was heaven. All too soon was time to make a move and I headed to Ko Tao. I didn't stray far from the Lomprayah ferry. Got in, tripped to the Crystal dive resort and there I stayed. The room they gave me was so filthy I complained and they put me in a new room. Also filthy but modern so I went and bought a sponge and cleaner and cleaned it myself.

The diving standards were infinitely higher than the cleaning and I embarked on my PADI Advanced Open Water. Myself and a Denmark guy who was friends with the instructor were doing the course. He turned out to be the biggest buddy wanker you can imagine. I finally confronted him about the staying close to your buddy just before our first deep dive - he kept swimming off and the instructor kept telling us to stick together. Damned if I am going to swim after some wanker buddy who is constantly trying to get away from me and the instructor and who says he is there just for fun and gives not a toss for the rules. Anyway him aside did some amazing dives, saw very cool fish, sharks, squids and sea cucumbers.

Met with the most vicious fish, a triggerfish. You don't expect vicious fish especially when the sharks were so peaceable. This fish defends his territory. Luckily dive instructor was out in front and it went for him. Myself and new non course buddy stayed well clear whilst the fish repeatedly attacked him. Eventually having chased us back about 30m he desisted and we endeavoured to swim past going a long way out of our way over his territory or so we thought. As we swam over Mr Trigger found us and started attacking again. He finally backed the instructor into a rock whilst myself and the other diver watched from a safe distance. It was slightly amusing once you were safely above to watch the instructor on his back, fins up for defence with a rather beautiful but large and aggressive fish threatening us clumsy divers out of his epoch.

My last days were just of pleasure diving, no training, no exhilarating but scary night dives just four dives a day swimming about with cool people seeing cool underwater thangs. Met lots of South Africans and hung out with them a while. Why are these people so attractive to me? Once the blisters got so bad and I shattered from diving I said goodbye to the islands and headed back to Ko Samui to get a flight.

I ended up at the airport a day early my flight, was not until the following day but I went anyway. Having got that far I might as well carry on. I went and spent a few days in Bangkok. I had not originally intended to go there and I was quite right. Big, smelly, dirty city with lots of people and far too many temples. I stayed in China Town and was able to look in the shops and know what many of the strange substances to be found there were for which was fun. Reminded me of home and the year to come. I did a bit of shopping and reflected on my time. Thailand surprised me with how much I liked it. I was right about some of the things I had thought and the scary back packer trail and the small children fresh out of nappies exploring the world (yes jus like I once was). It is an easy place to be, fun to travel not like Africa but lovely. Amazing food the best I have ever had anywhere and I am still cooking the Mussaman curries back home. Wonderful people, so friendly and accommodating often attached to particularly unattractive older British men but if it works who is to cuss?

Yeah I had a fab time. Tough meditation but very worthwhile and a proper relaxing time diving. Weird but true I was quite glad to come home. I loved being away but I am getting rather middle aged. I don't need 5 star luxury and maybe it was partly about the meditation but I did not want to have meaningless conversation with people I would never see again. I did not want to expend all of that effort. The people I met at the Wat Kohw Tahm were amazing people I was glad to meet. I had some nice chats to people on the boats but as to spending my nights hanging out with them in the bars. No. My scene has changed baby and I am ready to embrace that.

Terminal chatter

2006-09-11T12:09:00.000Z

Just as I was steeling myself for the last standing hour of meditation with bargain making like if you get through it and you really are tired you can bunk the last walking. I didn't actually ever bunk any sessions (oh no there was one, day 6 laxative disturbed night unable to make first meditation - the bowels require more than meditation and food to keep moving you know!). So standing meditation headed into the hall for it and learned that WHOPPEEE it was off and SHOCK we were going to talk for 3 hours instead. I sat in stunned silence, differing slightly from the usual meditative silence only by the puzzled expression on the face. What the hell was I meant to say?

I didn't take long to get back into the swing of it of course and soon was chatting nineteen to dozen which was when the conversation with the cougher occurred - waste of good talking time. We talked and talked all the way to the end of dinner - pah dinner waste of good talking time. I was able to talk to Sonja and we both exchanged the views that we had assumed that the other had become and completely devoted Buddhist nun during the period due to outward apparent devotion. Utter relief to discover that we were both desperate to get out of there and beer was the first thing on the agenda.

Talking time swiftly ended and it was a surprise just how much those conversation then governed the mind when you tried to go back to silence. I thought my monkey mind had been getting louder and louder and it surely had, but it was just because the external conversations which invade the mind had been gradually fading away. I didn't get back to the kind of meditation I had had before but I didn't mind because I knew that Sonja and I were going to drink beer soon. Oh and that I had learned some very important lessons that were bound to change much of my behaviours and ways of thinking from here on. I say that like it is sarcastic but it is true - the beer and the behaviour.

all the meditators, nuns and teachers

So the next day when it did all end there were lots more fab conversations, photos and donations. A posse was organised into a pickup taxi to Tong Sala and beer was ordered. Myself and the English lad particularly keen on the ice cold large singha NOW kap punk kaaaaaa. We drank and chatted and made plans to reconvene to celebrate Loeki's birthday on the other side of the island at a particularly nice beach.

Sshhhhh

2006-09-09T11:55:00.000Z

This blog is going on forever but there is a lot to say, a lot to think. In summary I should like to say how for such a chatter box 10 days silence was a great achievement. For a control freak to submit to such a rigorous schedule was however the greater challenge. Silence was beautiful. There was no pressure to make small talk, no polite and unnecessary conversation with people you did not want to speak to. Many social conventions were irrelevant. You could not comment on or be commented upon which left you somewhat freer than normal.

Despite the fact that we were not allowed to speak, make eye contact or physical contact on the whole we did form and incredibly mutually supporting community. There was a bond of support that preventing outward communication could not hinder. Maybe we really did make a compassionate loving kindness thang run through our little group.

Apart from the cougher. The cougher lived one room down from me. She had been to the retreat many times before and knew it all. Yup she got my back up by being condescending to start with. She was also a bell ringer which I felt was a position of superiority controlling all our moves. She also wrote in her diary lots, snacked on roasted sunflower seeds every night, had electrical things in her room; not that I ever figured out what they were but no doubt they were contraband. As if all this weren't enough she coughed. She coughed through meditation sitting, standing and walking. She coughed at night and every morning I awoke to her coughing. Sometimes when her coughing was bad she would move from her prime spot at the front of the hall by Buddha and the teachers to come and stand and cough and snivel right behind me.

I tried to have compassion, I hate having a cough, it is so uncomfortable, how difficult it must be for her etc. etc. But basically I hated her for it. I hated how it grated and shattered our silence. I would spend much time thinking about the sign on the notice board which said any one with a chronic cough would have to leave and wonder why she was not gone. When we were allowed to talk she came and apologised for her coughing, I managed a half snarl.

Then we ended up arguing about the Buddhist monks and my surprise at their noshing on roast chicken whilst our diet was strict vegetarian. It escalated and I did possibly become a little sarcastic. The next day I found a little anonymous note under my door saying from a fellow meditator who hoped I would overcome my sarcasm and reach peace and enlightenment. Unsurprisingly she got a visit and thanks for the kind wishes. She rushed to assure me she truly meant it. Yeah snarl no.2, more a full snarl I like to think and backed out of there. Huh.

Impermanence and suffering

2006-09-07T10:48:00.000Z

Everything changes, that was a lesson you could not fail to learn. We were on a strict regime of meditation, the bell rang and a new session began. Like dogs even our salivations were controlled by the bell. We sat and meditated, we walked and meditated, and we even stood and meditated. In fact we ate, washed and stretched meditating.

The worst sessions were the afternoons. It began with an hours walking in the hot sun dreading the upcoming standing meditation. Then you stood for an hour. I made a pact on the first day if I could stand for an hour I could do the 10 days. Then on each of the 10 days of course, I had to complete the hour. There were no other chick novice meditators who made the hour, I showed extreme stubbornness. I would like to say I reached divine levels of enlightenment but I didn't, I suffered. My entire body hurt and I could hardly meditate at all because my feet ached so much and my legs ached and I was so consumed with the obsession to stand for the whole hour that it was my only focus. The breath be damned I focused on the pain and the goal - to last the hour.

So, when the next hour of walking came, I was delighted, it was sheer relief to be walking again. Once that was done it was sitting and after 3 hours on your feet you were soo glad to be sitting down. All the while aware that soon enough you would be back on your feet for the last drudge to suppertime. The last hour of 5 hours straight meditation could be heaven or hell but guaranteed your feet were always sore.

The physical toll was as hard as the mental in the first few days. The body does not like to be suddenly put into a totally different routine and use muscles it is unfamiliar with and it will ache at you. No more does the mind like to have its shield of endless thinking observed and not in a reverential way.

I do rather make it sound like the whole thing was hellish and at times it was, but it was also amazing. There were times in walking, sitting, standing where you reached such a level of contentment with the present, the footstep or the breath, that nothing beyond or before could interfere. There were hours that just flew by, disappeared whist you remained content with just exactly where you were. The long hours were the ones where you piled on the Duka (suffering). The ones where you counted up the hours done and hours to go; or got miserable about the crap dinner you were going to have; or the fact you would rather be looking out into the jungle than walking seemingly endlessly up and down, up and down the track. It is incredible how many layers of suffering you can create of of what begins as just impatience and modest dislike of a situation turning it into a pure hell of mental torment, all of your own creation.

view of the jungle

Everything changes, good or bad but the idea I think, is that by maintaining a core of contentment it doesn't matter too much what happens. That is not to say you stop caring, just that you are less attached to the physical. That is the physical self which will grow old, wrinkly and die and that is if we are lucky and don't get knocked from the perch early. Also the physical world and we aren't just talking butterflies here we are talking universes.

I thought I had found something permanent the seasons, not individually but all together, there will always be a season and one that I enjoy. Always there for me to be happy about. In an interview Steve quickly slashed that one the world will end and with its seasons as will the universe and with its sunrises. Impermanence is not just on a me level it is so much bigger.

Silence is golden

2006-08-27T20:08:00.000Z

Walking meditation.....

It truly was golden... the silence; it was not nearly as hard as the meditation for 15 hours a day. There were times though when you really wanted to talk to someone. Like one morning when I woke up to the 4 am bell and as I left my room I saw a toad trying to get in so I removed him from the door. All respect to all living things no mosquito killing- well trying not to, you would catch yourself slapping at a mossie and then look around to check no one had seen you splat the little bastard on your leg. I turned on the light to see what I was doing and discovered a scorpion in the middle of the room so I swept him out and went to brush my teeth. When I came back the toad was trying to get in again. I decided to remove him again and then brushed my hair only to find he was trying to get in again. I let him in to see what he would do. He went under the beds. The first bell for meditation was about to ring so I tried to find him to remove him not wanting to leave him in there until 1st nap and whilst looking under the beds I found another scorpion. I swept the scorpion out and then had no time to deal with the toad and went to meditation.

Instead of meditating I obsessed about the toad and the scorpions. Do toads eat scorpions? Maybe there were entire nests of scorpions the toad was coming for a feast. Would I come back to find my room riddled with scorpions. Maybe the toad was my protector toad sent to save me from the scorpions. This continued in various convolutions until breakfast which I bolted down and virtually ran back to the room and checked every corner of rucksack and clothes but could not find the nests of scorpions which had been so fruitfully multiplying in my mind all morning so I ran back to clean up from breakfast. After all that stress and no meditation I then fell into an exhausted nap no.1.

That day I had an interview with one of the teachers and still obsessed by the scorpion and the toad had my most useless interview so far asking what to do about the toad. He said take it out. I explained I had done so but he came back in. He said it was fine for the toad to live there. I was worried that he might get hot or hungry or thirsty and maybe this too was a cruelty to animals. Steve patiently explained that the toad would be just fine. I was also worried about all the clean it up ants who cover the breakfast table. What if I was killing them by wiping them up? What should I do?

Gosh I felt an idiot, had my brain slowed so bad I couldn’t work it out. How about sweeping the tables before I wiped them, it seemed reasonable. Never actually did it as my washing partner did a lot of the wiping after that. I guess he just wiped and killed those clean it up ants. Later that night I went back to the room and the toad was at the door ready to leave. He left and I was sad to see him go my friend, someone I could talk to, my protector toad.

I did not see him again until the last day when I discovered him living in my boot under the bed, perhaps he had been coming and going the whole time. I had to break the no body language rule taking my boot and sidled up to Sonja who was cleaning the toilets and indicated the presence of the toad in my boot. She got filled in on the whole story over beer later in the day.

One morning after the initial toad incident another toad leapt in through an open window during an early morning meditation. I became extremely paranoid and started searching, scanning incessantly for more scorpions but none were to be found. In between meditation sessions I tried to catch to toad and get him out, but he was not my friendly toad and did not want to be picked up. I watched him crawling towards the other meditators and wondered what they would do if they saw him or if he crawled on them. I eventually managed to make him a tunnel of meditation cushions and stools, a tunnel to freedom. By the time the early meditations were finished I searched the tunnel and realised he had made a safe exit.

There were a lot of creatures in the meditation from bats flying round the hall at night, to the beautiful "sense desire" butterflies by whom I was distracted by in the daytime and the crazy calls of the birds at dawn and dusk - more sense desire. Any of these distractions from the focus on breath or step were to be observed and then let pass. I don't know what was harder ignoring the big biting ants on your legs, the mossies nibbling your back or the beautiful butterflies. I was often relieved to be thinking about anything but the breath or footstep. It was one of the lessons I struggled with. It absorbed a lot of my time both thinking and in the interviews slowly making progress through the days finally coming to an understanding.

I felt that if I were to stop loving the world around me and all the wonderful things it had to offer then what would be the point? It seems it is not so much about stopping loving them but being able to separate yourself from them. The good is fine and getting happiness from them is fine. What about the bad? Do I want to feel miserable when there are creatures I don't like about or when the creatures I do like are absent? It is about being able to observe and appreciate or dislike something without it upsetting the internal balance. I suppose it is about hovering above to rollercoaster not being strapped tightly to it.

Post retreat post 1

2006-08-26T17:30:00.000Z

View from my bed....

Yikes ow let me out of here, bursting forth from silence let me back into the world. Beer please. Funny didn't miss it but glad to be back to it. Sonja (the German girl from the pickup) and I both made a pact not to look or speak to each other and sometimes it was soo hard. I was lucky I got allocated a modern concrete bungalow. I was devastated when they said you are in the concrete block but when I got there it was a lovely clean modern building with a sea view, tiled floors and bunk beds and all to myself. What a relief, some of the boys were 6 to a dorm. I chose breakfast dishes for my working meditation which also turned out to be a bonus. We all had jobs to do, sweeping, cleaning, and washing up. I started off choosing sweeping but each job was given a number and it turned out the sweeping I had chosen was the least important job anyone would do so I swapped to washing up no. 2 job. It meant that after breakfast I had to clean up but then during working meditation 8.15 - 9 am I could go back to sleep and sleep I did. A 4am start to meditation meant I was shattered. Back to bed at 8.15 for a 40 minute nap before getting up for morning meditations. After lunch - bolted down as mindfully as possible and then back to bed for another hours nap before the long haul to bed time. Great thing about meditating so much. You sort of never woke up so falling back into napping was easy. That and being shattered. Even the devastating uncomfy bed could not stop me sleeping. Half a mat on a wooden platform. Ouch. I eventually managed to roll up bits of clothing and blanket to pad my extremities sufficient to wake up un bruised. Little did I know, had I complained which I thought would be a bit pathetic to do, I would have got a full length comfy mattress. I felt that spending my precious interview time complaining about my bed would not be worthwhile. It may well have been. Sonja poor girl did complain and got a big mattress. But then she was allocated a small wooden hut where gecko’s poo'd on her at night and bats wee'd. Her neighbour had a snake in her hut and Sonja was freaked about snakes. Hot and stuffy huts and she had toilet cleaning duties. She deserved a mattress. Not that we spent much time at all in the huts. Very little time, and all of it was spent desperately getting some sleep.

Nervous as a quivering bean

2006-08-15T19:42:00.000Z

So arrived in Thailand. Trip over was fine, night on Koh Samui and then an early ferry across to Koh Pah Ngan. Party island lots of fresh young thangs out for the full moon, half moon, quarter moon any possible moon party time. A few of those fresh faced young thangs asking how to get to the parties. I at 30 ish was able to say I believe you will find them at Haad Rin I am heading to silent retreat. I felt very old. Got off the ferry and found a pickup heading out to Ban Tai where the Wat and the bungalows I was to stay at were. Another girl close by heard me say I was going to stay at Dew Shore and said to me "I was going to stay there but now I am going to another place close by". She got into my pickup and quietly declared she was off to do a retreat at Wat Kohw Tahm. I was delighted to find someone else doing that and not out to party and we chatted all the way there. She went off to her bungalows and I to mine and we said we would find each other later. Just an hour later I was wondering about trying without success to find her bungalow and met her on the road as she was trying to find me. The place was very quiet and I think we both needed someone to chat to. We spent all of that day together and the next. Drinking beer, dreading silence. She had a copy of the book accompanying the retreat and was able to show me the timetable. Up at 4am and then 15 hours meditation until bed at 9. I cannot believe that is going to be true. No way. Cannot accept that fact. We met up to register for the retreat and it was true - oh my what a rigorous timetable. More beer urgently required. We went back to Tong Sala to buy sufficient clothes to cover the socially unacceptable shoulders and knees, drink beer and worry more about just what we are getting ourselves into. We have agreed to meet for breakfast tomorrow to spend those last few minutes of precious conversation with someone as terrified as each other.

A mini adventure, maxi challenge

2006-08-09T10:48:00.000Z

Yup I am off for a short trip to the country I doubted I would ever visit. Thailand, where every Uni friend I had visited at some time in the last 12 years as I was baking under African suns. This trip is thanks to Kerensa who has been mostly out of my life since Uni and has for the last several years been living and working in a Wat in Thailand, Koh Pah Ngan. Each time I talk to her she tells me of her Wat and the retreats she both helps with and participates in. I know you will all think me mad as a hatter, mostly because those I have spoken to have said so. I am going to spend 10 days on a silent retreat. Now, 10 days of silence for a chatter box is not going to easy. Little did I realise at the time just how silent we would be. There is no reading, writing, body language or music. I will be spending 10 whole days and nights with only my monkey mind for company. If my sanity and I re-emerge from this retreat however I will head to Ko Tao and spend some serious amounts of time with the fish, hammocks and sunshine. I will take my new clean mind to explore the clean waters.

Life is at a cross roads where my time with Absolver is coming to an end, my great desire to have children currently come to nothing, my trying to buy a house similarly so. What is left now is a huge opportunity to launch myself into my chosen new career as an acupuncture. Having been studying it enough years now it is time to sink or swim. I shall sink into silence and then swim beyond returning ready I hope to face this next challenge. It is very exciting but also very frightening both the immediate silence and longer challenge of TCM.

Keep a check, I may update the blog and let you know how it went.....or if not someone go to Full Moon Nutters Hospital and retrieve me from there.

Endless fascination

2006-04-08T08:07:00.000Z

It is the babies man, endless fascination. Since all my friends are either growing them inside or outside. As this spring comes I am making the rounds and visiting each new one as it arrives and once its mother has emerged from the utter shell shock of their arrival. Going to see each one and their unique ways of shaking, jiggling, rocking, juggling baby, bottle and nappy. I love it though. Best of all I love to see the faces of my friends and their behaviors reflected in their offspring. You have to wheedle it out from the partners influence but in a very yin yang sense you see that which has come male line and that which comes female. Today I am in Cheltenham and my friend's new baby was introduced this morning. First thing that I see as he is passed to me is that look of consternation I have seen so often in my friends face. There is the slender nose, face much chubbier eyes wrong colour but the look is the same. Daddies eyes, mummies pursed lips.

Just last weekend I was out with another friend and we were sat in her car and her daughter was sat in the back in her car seat chatting along endlessly to herself. I don't know where she gets it from said she. Hmmph I thought to myself and was unable to resist mentioning. For the last several years when daughter was pre and early verbal mother was the one chatting endlessly to daughter informing her of all that was going on and all that she was doing and seeing. Where I wonder could this ability to chat in an endless stream of babble been learnt from? Not from Daddy who is more of a stoic character. His son takes after him sat happily quiet and self contained while mother and daughter compete for verbal airspace.
Yes though I want one of my own, until which time as I have my nest ready I am delighted to share in those of my friends who do offer endless fascination and a the opportunity to leave behind nappies and head for the peace and toy free sanctuary of my tiny clothes free home.

Mountain Love

2006-01-24T15:11:00.000Z

Oh heaven on earth! I love the mountains. Thanks to peltyG for introduction to Snowboarding, a legacy I shall keep me thinks. I just got back from my week in Whistler, home of boarders extraordinaire and après ski that rocks. Well I didn't rock much with the après it has to be said. I more chilled in the hot tub, by the fire and with the civilised people at the chalet but then I am older and more boring but perfectly happy.

So the boarding though, I did rock with the boarding. Did lots of lessons and found a boychick to hoon around the mountains with - cheers Iain. Oh and thanks Iain’s girlfriend for the loan. We really did hit the mountains, decided that Blackcomb was our favourite and we roamed far and wide. We went on crazy mogul runs, down race tracks, through trees, up glaciers and off to far reaches of wild deep powder.

I had one day of private lessons before I met the marvellous Iain where I chased an instructor around a mountain. I think he just got paid to have fun and to torment the foolish snowboarding beginner. I fell in powder, fell down slopes, and fell on cat tracks whip lashed my neck and ended up so pained that even my armpits hurt. I don't know when I could possibly have strained my armpits but then I tumbled pretty wildly at times so I guess it could have been whilst rolling like a hedgehog without prickles down the slopes.

A few days in the pain subsided and I did learn from experience and bought a helmet, adds weight to the neck for more effective whiplash in future but protects whilst in the trees. We had a powderfest whilst out there. There was over 1.5m in the 6 days I was there. The weather was cloudy but therefore snowy and not too cold and not at all icy. A fab combination, not so great for the pics but hey who goes boarding to take pics. Well I did take one or two so here is one of me in a moment of blue sky high above the low freezing clouds.

Ages almost a lifetime

2005-12-20T17:40:00.000Z

It is so long since I last blogged and well who could blame me. It is winter, it is cold and I have been writing exams and assignments. But, now, finished. Last weekend I did my final exams, very different to those in 96, ay back in the good old years at Sussex when exams were about long weeks of study time lazing in the sun of campus. Mind you the exams were a whole different game then and the only thing you had to do. No one cleaned the house much anyway so the neglect was less obvious. That was to be my first plan for post exam, clean the house but as it turns out I am busy rebuilding servers. Best to get these things done whilst Christmas looms and the users who would otherwise need helping are helping themselves to mulled wine and mince pies all around the country. Leaving me to get this swanky new laptop functioning nicely. I am now able to do support from sitting with my feet up on the table as exchange theoretically does its stuff on the desk. The information store has said it has been installing for about the last hour and a bit and to be honest I think it is lying, I think it has hung but I would rather it failed of its own volition than I kill and try and clean up the mess. The point of this really was whooooo celebration time the butterfly is emerging but maybe not this week.

This week well today really and probably tomorrow too I am sitting around in a fleece and my camo PJ pants doing techie tasks. A very nice change from all this airy fairy qi and pathways stuff that I have spent so much time and money and effort pursuing. I think the emergence thing might come about more in the spring. Post my HOLIDAY. Yeah not to be deterred from the master plan I shall be heading out to Whistler for a weeks boarding in January. Watch this space for pics come end of Jan. I have, because I deserve a treat, booked myself into a luxury chalet where I shall be taking up residence in the master bedroom and alternating my home time between the hot tub and the open fire. Mostly though I plan to be out on the slopes with big blue the coat and long blue the board. A perfect moment to pop in a pic to explain both of those....

This will be me in less than a months time on the other side of Canada from last year but planning on having just as much of a ball. Probably hanging out in bars significantly more often, which may mean later starts in the morning I suppose.

Yup so Acupuncture BSc hopefully to be awarded in Feb- Mar time although I have an interim license to practice in the meantime and am seeking willing volunteers. I do have insurance and the required skill level of course.

So Merry Christmas one and all, I shall be ensuring that this first Christmas without Jan exams to cram for will be celebrated in some sort of style although I really do need to catch up on Herbs which I have lagged behind a little on during the first few months. The plan is to drink red wine through Xmas day and spiced rum post sun down! Maybe a late start on Boxing day too.

Crux

2005-10-25T09:08:00.000Z

Yup crux, the core, the heart, the bottom line - studying. In 8 weeks time it will all be over, actually part of it will all be over. The big part. The next few months are likely to be a tragic time socially so I wanted to take a moment to enjoy the sociable weekend I just had. On Friday night we went to a party. Gosh it is a long time since I last went to a party, such good fun. All the girly hanging about glass of wine, doing makeup and trying on clothes. It was fancy dress which made it extra fun in my opinion. Chinese theme no less. It was the graduation party for people 6 months ahead of us several of whom we made friends with in China. Lovely to see them let loose and feeling free and knowing that it is not long until we will be doing just that. It was a great party with plenty of drinking and dancing and playing pool until the wee hours.

Then on Saturday night I went round for dinner with my friend Rich and his Mum and was cooked an absolute feast. Most of you who read this will know I am not exactly a feast loving creature but this was a meal filled with taste sensation. Texture sensation and even scent sensation. I had a lovely evening of fine food and even better company in a delightful conservatory in a quiet part of Bucks. A real contrast to the previous night and just as wonderful.

I shall be taking these two lovely social experiences and keeping them close to my heart to get me through the next few months of serious nose the grind stone time. I sometimes sit in bewilderment and try to work out just which of the many bits of work I should tackle next. Slowly but surely I am wading through it though. I hope to emerge like a Acupuncture butterfly from the cocoon of study next spring into a joyous world where my weekends are my own.

Not forgetting though that myself and all my lovely sisters are doing Tea at the Ritz baby, this Friday. Roll on 'ats 'n 'ambags as the biggest one said.

Home and Dry

2005-09-02T17:13:00.000Z

Home is great because we missed the plane. We got to the airport 15 minutes before the plane was due to take off. They had already filled our seats with people on standby and were happily taxi-ing as we arrived at check in. Not an auspicious end to our trip although you do tend to think of beginnings as requiring auspice. Through the generosity of Virgin and the hard work of our esteemed group leader who had chosen not to take the bus that had missed the flight we were booked onto a plane leaving Hong Kong that night. All other planes out of Shanghai were booked for some days. No relaxing in a Shanghai hotel for us we bundled to the ticket purchase desk and handed over our credit cards and a rush trip down to Hong Kong. Hung over from the previous nights revelling and half starved because of the early but not early enough trip to the flight we all gladly lay down on the half empty plane to Hong Kong and headed three hours towards the South Pole. Hong Kong from the air at least is delightful a spread of South China Sea islands in a glorious turquoise sea. The airport was lovely too. We looked around in appreciation on the colonial aspects mingling with essence of China. Menu’s, signs and even papers were in English as well as those Chinese characters that had been so bewildering for many a day. We went to Poppa Something’s Italian restaurant and feasted on Mediterranean delights and fine new world wine. We eventually boarded a very full plane heading North again at midnight.

Dry for the time in the mountains. Oh my word what glorious mountains they are. You know or you may not, the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, well on the first day we were in the place where they filmed it. Bamboo forest lining and gushing waterfalls connecting a myriad of pools of varying colours. We mad Laowai ignoring the rain stripped off (to bathers) and sunk our weary already wet bodies into the clearest mountain springs. We frolicked and played, jumping off rocks and sliding down the rock slides. We actually became a tourist attraction in our own right. Sylve got very upset when she got out and found herself changing to be the focus of a Chinese chap and his video camera. We got soaked in the rain then wet from the pool and that was how we remained for the rest of the trip. Somewhere between soaked and damp.

The next day we headed up to mountains proper. We climbed and climbed and climbed. Three hours of non stop steps in an upwards direction. Basically a long row of people all climbing heavenward. On arriving at the “top” we met up with the rest of our group and proceeded to visit a number of Chinese tourist attractions. The theme of these attractions remained much the same throughout the days up the mountain and I have to admit I don’t think we got it. We would trail after our tour guide and her flag listening half heartedly to the Chinese information about the attraction. Pushing and shoving with the other 1000’s of people and their tour guides with flags and megaphones and broadcast systems. We went to see a pine tree. It was a perfectly nice pine tree but very similar to the other pine trees. There was the pine that a tiger sat under. The pine that symbolised young love with a split trunk. The pine that welcomed visitors to the park oh and the goodbye pine that waved them off. There were rocks likened to well, I lost focus, but a lot of different things the only one I slightly saw was the fish on its head sort of shape in the rock.

We began to loose enthusiasm and were tired cold and grumpy and came upon a delightful looking hotel which we thought might be the one we booked into. On enquiry it wasn’t, ours was several hours more up steps and was of a somewhat lower standard and we were booked into rooms of 6 bunks. Now we had had enough by now of the people and the wet and the walking and so with great difficulty aided though by a beer and some lunch we communicated to our guide we would be checking into and remaining at this hotel and would meet her tomorrow. The hotel of the previous night had been truly horrible so much so that Sylve and I had to lay plastic on the floor and play island hopping to get from cold shower to insect infested bed. This place was much nicer. We checked up and had a hot shower before exploring the area sans guide, megaphone, other 1000 tourists. We spent a very pleasant evening playing poker and drinking the hotel dry before heading up to sleep much later that we really ought to have done.

5.30 came early the next morning, definitely not at a respectable distance from the night before but the sunrise was glorious and we set off to meet our guide and group. It was incredible. Islands of mountain top emerging from the cloud below and the kind of peace you only get at sunrise. We made it to our rendezvous a few hours later and many steps on with time to spare. Time to stand 1800m up and look down on what surely should not be witnessed by mere mortals; truly a kingdom of heaven. I wish I could describe it or that the battery in my camera had not gone flat and I could show you a picture. It took my breath away; it made every step and megaphone well worthwhile. Once we had re-established connections with our group we set off in search of higher peaks, steeper steps and more pine trees. We scaled huge peaks, precarious steps always thinking I cannot walk up the one ahead and then a few hours later looking back and thinking wow that is where I came from. It was amazing, you kind of got on the conveyor belt and were just moved on because that is what everyone was doing but it got quieter the higher and steeper we got. All around you could look down on mountain valleys and see the paths and the tiny rows of people making their way through this incredible scenery. After about 7 hours walking we stopped and reconvened with the group and elected to take the cable car down the last couple of hours of steps. It was a worthwhile trip both for the birds and eye view and for the foot relief. At the bottom we headed to the hot springs that had been the carrot tempting the donkeys on garbed in swimming costumes since the start of the walking.

The hot springs as it turned out were not the carrot we had yearned for but a mouldy building with a very poorly maintained swimming pool in which lacked chlorine so may have been spring water. Dave got in griping heartily about the fact that we had made him spend 50Y on coming into the springs that were so horrible until conquest number 2 of 3 for the day decided to join us. There were a number of spiky balls floating unloved at the deep end of the pool but we decided to have a go at playing volleyball. Turns out we are all pretty crap at it and descended into just trying to hit each other with the balls. Then conquest got involved, conquests mother and then slowly but surely all sorts of members of the group we had been walking with appeared in the pool and began to attack. From a peaceful couple of people floating in an empty pool absolute chaos broke out and the whole pool was filled with people on the attack and spiky balls flying everywhere. It was amazing, all these people we could not talk to because of the language barrier were there and we were all playing together and just working out the stiff and ache of the days of walking. It was an wonderful end to an incredible trip.

Final Thoughts before Ascent

2005-08-26T05:07:00.000Z

Yup today is the last day in the hospital. Tomorrow we head out with a coach load of Chinese tourists to climb en pac up a mountain. Sleeping at the top in bunk beds with more Chinese tourists. The people we booked with are very concerned that we do not speak Chinese. Tried to explain that actually not many people here speak English so it is a problem of which we are already intensely aware. We go to Huang Shan mountains, the Yellow mountins and they are reputed to be the inspiration for many of the Chinese poets and painters. Really looking forward to it. I don't think it will be the peaceful and tranquil experience we envisioned back in the UK. More on that when I get back.

Today I am in hospital it seems the time has just flown by. We have shopped every market in town and now face the packing challenge. We have eated so much rice we now run to Starbucks for a sandwich at lunchtime although we persevere with rice and cabbage for breakfast. We have drunk the enormous bottles of Chinese beer so weak and big you get full long before you get drunk and popped into the Irish pub for Guiness and Hoegarden. We have wandered, cycled and taxied much of the town. Been for massages with blind men and seen dawn at the West Lake whilst doing Qi Gung. In fact we got down there at 5 am and the Chinese were stopping to stare at these crazy foreigners out doing bizzarre exercise at such a time. By half 6 they were out doing Tai Chi and we got stared at for being the crazy foreigners watching their perfectly normal exercise.

So this afternoon it is the closing ceremony and banquet at the hospital, probably a beer or two more then packing and an early start for the mountains. We head to the bottom of Hangzhou towers and appearntly someone will come and find the 4 laowai (foreigners) and pack us onto a bus and from then you follow the guy with the big yellow flag. Yeah right if they think we are going to play happy chinese follow the leader they have another think coming. Bring on the laowai and lets play! Oh and don't forget the phrase book aka lifeline....

Gold Leaf and Bitter Stem

2005-08-21T13:03:00.000Z

Hey holiday! A couple of days out of the hospital to explore Hangzhou. This weekend has been a frenzy of activity and laowei sightseeing. We have been to temples gallery they are all temple like. TCM museum was ace lots of interesting herbs in bottle, well say herbs but there was cordus umbilicous hominis which is strictly not a plant but belongs in the materia medica. They have sea sponges and tiger teeth and fossilized remains. Anything goes in Chinese medicine. Went to a Chinese herb market too which was very interesting saw how they make up pills - quality control is of a somewhat different standard to UK. Another lady was sat drying whatever plant or animal part with a hairdryer. Very conscientious I thought. Apparently there were lots of donkey penis and a few inside out hedgehogs but I have to admit I failed to recognize them. We visited the LongJing Tea village and a lake on an island on a lake but sadly most was shut for August renovation.

Today we got up early early and headed out to Lingyin temple apparently one of the biggest Buddhist temples around. Got there early to beat the crowds. Even at 7.30 I could see what they meant. There were multiple large gold buddhas in various incarnations and with friends and relatives and descendants and well who knows who else because it was all in Chinese. Like everything else pretty much - China what can you expect! One of the temples right at the top was incredible I loved it, very calm and three big non gold buddhas looking very serene. A lot of the lower temples seemed to be be filled with menacing and disturbing images. According to my learned friend Sylvie it represents the demons that the buddha fought on his path to enlightenment and the top temple is where it had all come good. Makes sense. Still liked the top one best. Very amused to see a monk getting agro on his mobile in front of one of the lower temples. He too I think had demons left to fight. There were however many caves and within the caves walls were many carvings, row and rows of buddhas worked right there up on walls and poked in crevices. Those were incredible. Such intricate work in place within the natural environment and not a gold leaf in sight.

Starving, as we were an unable to find the vegetarain restaurant (which we later discovered is closed for renovation being August - ferme le Aut!), we struggled to communicate to the taxi driver we wished to proceed in a straight line (looked up in the dictionary) along Lingyin road (pronounced well) to the gardens (looked up in the dictionary) however he remained unhappy and keept on looking at us and the map with some doubt. We did get to the gardens and a joy it was. Away from at least a million of the Chinese we were able to explore the bamboo groves, exercise tables (their name), chrysanthemum gardens and a herb garden before seeking lunch. We found what ought to have been a restaurant on the map and asked if it was. The danger I have found with being able to say a few words in Chinese is that people talk back and that is much harder. We walked into the supposed resteraunt to be confrounted with golf clubs so we walked out, the chap then mimed eating and led us in and through to a table where we collapsed. We realised we had got ourselves into some swanky resteraunt. The menu was produced all in Chinese and so out came the phrase book. What do you have in vegetable, answer something spoken in Chinese. Ok so how about something aubergine, no aubergine, beansprout? no bean srout, mushroom? no mushroom. Ok so on which page are the veg dishes? lucky dip and give us those. It turned out to be very nice apart from one dish of bitter stalk with rubbery bits added in. Argh China.

Middle Earth

2005-08-17T14:27:00.000Z

Well I am here in China and boy is it different. The people are different, the language is different the food is VERY different. Everywhere I look I see signs. Above shops, on doors, on menus and each time I look in anticipation of the signs delivering to me some much desired information and each time it fails. I look and the pictures give nothing away. The language I have so struggled to learn has not exactly stood me in good stead although it has provided amusement for the locals. I try my best to please! The hospital is a whole nother lesson. The way they do it here is very different to the way we do. Tongues and pulses they say what do you want those for. Privacy, patient practitioner interaction? not likely it is more patient, practitioner, students, observers, grandparents and cleaning lady interaction. The whole melee seems to work together in order to diagnose and treat. It truly is a community based hospital. I did go and visit the wind stroke ward where patients who have had strokes lie on western drips with their limbs in herbal poultices and acupuncture needles stuck in their heads. They even walk about in the hospital with the needles in their heads. No wonder the scalp acupuncture was not working for me I left them in for 20 minutes they leave it I for 10 hours. Slightly off on timescales. Never mentioned that in the books! I did actually have treatment today and was able to experience scalp acupuncture myself. Apparently my hair is thin but my scalp is tight. That from one of the doctors able to communicate a little in Chinese. I did also go and buy an English Chinese medical dictionary so I can at least point at the words and ask the question and they can look up the English reply for me. I think it may be a life saver, a sanity saver at least. My diet has been primarily rice and aubergine although tonight I did get to watch one of the others devour bull frog. Such sweet little leg bones. Offered to make one into a necklace for her if she sucked it clean. The shopping is ace, the weather muggy but hot and sunny. Basically having a ball.

Zhonguo

2005-08-10T11:27:00.000Z

Yup countdown clock says only 3 days until we go to China. Hangzhou here were come. Unsuspecting sick Chinese people here we come. We being myself and Sylvie from my course and a few other people we have not met yet but have some sort of affiliation with LCTA (college). I am very excited whether more about the silk markets or the acupuncture is difficult to decide. Oh and the bamboo forests not so much about deep fried chicks or dog stew. Mind you I think that tends to be mainly further south. Hangzhou is close to Shanghai up in the top right hand corner although not as top right as Beijing. Hangzhou is said to be an incredibly beautiful green city built around the West lake. So enough about the scenery with any luck my next post will be from that beautiful city.

Giant what?

2005-08-09T10:52:00.000Z

Yup Giant puffballs. Today I was strolling along on my usual walk round through the woods and back over the fields and I as I stepped over a stile I saw some bizarre looking shiny, round, white things nestled in the grass. Being attracted to shiny things I wandered over to see what they were and immediately recognized the edible giant puffball. I gathered a few into my arms, not even the biggest ones which were huge, Art and I may go back for those later, and staggered back across the field inhaling their delightful mushroom scent. As I got to the playing filed some kids yelled at me are those birds? No I replied mushrooms. To the question of where I got them, oh a long way away. On my return home I checked each of my books on mushrooms and on edible foods and there is no doubt these are giant edible puffball mushrooms. I just can't wait for lunchtime so I can fry one up in butter and devour it without mercy!

PS phone is for scale!

7/7 our 9/11

2005-07-08T23:26:00.000Z

Bombs blasts across London brought the same sickened feeling throughout the day yesterday as that awful day of the twin towers. Although the death toll was not as high the proximity made up the rest. Throughout the day and the evening I have recieved and made calls and texts just checking everyone I know out there is ok. Arthur was very close to the bomb blasts at Kings Cross and although I spoke to him during the day I worried until I heard he was back in Welwyn after going out for dinner and splashing Japanese dignitaries with prawn head juice.

It frightens me that we live in a world where people deisre to harm others with such random selection. Not even targetted hate at a person or person who have harmed them but lashing out at as diverse a population as the people on the streets of London at 9 am on a Thursday.

30< =me

2005-06-08T07:07:00.000Z

Well it is true the big three O has come and gone and I am settling nicely into middle age. The birthday celebrations were a joy - a long weekend filled with friends, family, champers and pressies. What other way to do thirty. I dressed up in full evening regalia including brand new diamond and white gold earrings (thanks Gemma) and went out to dinner on the Friday night with my family. Then down to Brighton, well more Seaford actually, but with Brighton crew to camp out on a windy night and get a little langered on the beach. More champers and lots of pals so thanks to all of you who entertained me at my chilly party. My mother did say how very grown up camping was as opposed to going to pubs or clubs. I beg to disagree it was like pre 16 getting pissed in a field or on the beach cos no one would let you in!
This is me in one of my grown up pressies which is glittery with feathers and utterly gorgeous - thanks Catherinexxx

Introductions

2005-04-13T15:06:00.000Z

I hope that most of the people who get to this blog will be the people that I send the link to who are my friends and who want to check up on what I have been up to when I have been neglecting them and failing to send personal emails with the regularity that I ought. That said introductions should not really be necessary but here it is, Becky or when in trouble or trying to feel grown up Rebecca Clarke. Should be feeling more grown up since my 30th yes indeed the big 3 0 is just around the corner. I shall be celebrating my 30th in the cold, wet country in which I was born and the country in which I currently reside. This blog for the most part goes out to the people I met in my time in the other warmer countries around the globe rather than those ole friends who I left here and now have theoretically returned to but have actually not since I have now emmersed myself in a college course. You all know the course of which I speak and I am now in my third and final year of a BSc in Acupucnture. Who knows what will happen once that is done I will admit quietly here I have begun to look at places to study the herbs part of Chinese medicine which was actually the whole reason for coming down this line of training since Acupucnture is a stepping stone on the way to where I want to go and that is herbalism. De herbs man dey draw me to dem!