The return of the light and a spot of editing

The days are lengthening and it's such a relief. Like something slipping from my shoulders. I thought I'd coped well with the dark afternoons but it's only as they start to disappear and are replaced by daylight that I realise winter steals my happy chemicals.

I also edited my last few posts. Maybe rewriting takes away from the authenticity of a blog but it was getting even more self indulgent than usual and that's not what I set out do. In the end, I had a super moan to a manager I know about how stressed up the staff felt regarding observations and have ended up as a part of a group looking at management-staff communication and the interface between maintaining professional standards and supporting stressed out 'worker bees'.

I've also decided to join the March for the Alternative on March 26th with a friend and two of my colleagues. Stand up and be counted as they say. I just pray to God that I don't get 'kettled' somewhere where there are no toilets! Or worse being threatened with a knock on the head by a police officer: 'Listen mate, I'm very peaceable. Honest!"

The government's turn around on the selling off of our remaining national forests is a real victory. We need to make sure they honour this but with groups like 48 Degrees updating supporters on the net, they won't get away with doing anything on the quiet.

Tuppence a bag

This morning I spotted three rather than the usual two dunnocks. A new male wanting in on the act? Dunnock's are notoriously promiscuous, if such a description can be applied to the natural world, and a male dunnock will follow a female around to ward off other interested parties for weeks.

Two new blackbirds, male and female, have been shown the door by our usual pair, who are now into their second year in our back garden - a fine looking male and a female with a sideways on crest of speckled white beneath her chin. The goldfinches flock in increasingly large numbers and two greenfinches spent time on the new stainless steel feeder this afternoon.

According to the RSPB, our five feeders (peanuts, two black sunflower seed, nyger seed and yellow sunflower hearts, plus occasional fat balls) represent a 'feeding station', which sounds very efficient and useful and makes me feel like I'm in Eritrea rather than Lancashire.

Reasons to be cheerful 1, 2...

Not the most jolly of weekends having to put the final touches to the paper work. Why am I allowing this thing (Internal Inspection) to drive the light out of my life? No smart arse positive thinking ripostes please...like 'Because you're letting it.' When this is over I plan to walk part of the Fylde Coast, feel the cold breeze on my face, smell the brine, watch the waders fly across the estuary and blow half a tun of bureaucratic bollocks out to sea.

Meanwhile, my little bundle of joy is 24 on Monday. As you can see, he likes wrestling heroes. This one, Mick Fowley is also a respected fiction writer.

 

The birds of the air and a spot of real life

Visits from siskins and bullfinches put a smile on my face and my mind off the state of the nation. Went back to work on Thursday but it was quiet and empty, maybe not a bad way to get back into the routine, which kicks in properly tomorrow.

During last week I visited 'Ship of Fools', where I learned that the main boards editor Erin Etheredge had suddenly passed away. The response has been quite overwhelming. My nephew was rushed into hospital with what turned out to be a blocked bowel and I've been helping keep him occupied with a Harry Potter text quiz. Today I caught up with a ex-colleague's blog in which she gives a candid and unindulgent account of living with lung cancer. Earlier in the week we had a book group meeting, where I had a chance to have a good chat with the organiser who also has cancer and is coping well. All of which puts stuff into perspective somewhat.

Another Year

In the bedroom, my wine purple velvet dress hangs from the wardrobe door, draped with a sparkly scarf that glitters in the lamplight and my long black cardigan, scattered with hundreds of tiny silver threads is drying across the radiator. A little make up and I'll soon be ready to help make the party shine, like they did in the war and the depression that preceded it.

What would I like in 2011? The ability to stay calm and keep a sense of perspective; a good sense of humour and enough money to keep the wolf from the door and maybe, in some small way, to make a positive difference. I'd like my friends and family to keep well and for reading ages to improve across the world and for everyone to have access to clean water. Oh yeah and for this blinkin' government to abandon their plan to sell off the forests. It's not that much to ask is it?

Research

I am tired now. I've just spent hours researching and preparing background information for the poetry unit options to post on Moodle. I wrote a handout on romantic love (one option) and spent quite a while putting up links on some of the references in Carol Ann Duffy's The Kray Sisters for another option. And what a brilliant poem it is.

You don't have to be gay or even a feminist - though I was and possibly still am the latter - to appreciate it. It's as feisty as feck. Mixing references to suffragettes and Violet Trefusis and Vita (Orlando) Sackville West with Lulu, Barbara Windsor, Bridgette Bardot, Shirley Bassey and Germaine Greer takes some leaps of the imagination but with its final quote from These boots are Made for Walking, its evocative presentation of London and its in ya face wit it all makes perfect sense.

November

November started wet and got sunnier and colder and featured perfect, endless winter skies. Skies to die for: big, fat, massive, huge, magnificent skies in pale winter blue splashed with orange, red, pink and turquoise and puddles of gold for the sky gods to bathe in. Skies to keep one sane on the way to work in the morning. Hyperbolistic.