Day 628: Flit

Stalker

If I hadn't blogged, the kingfisher would have been forgotten. I saw it this morning, flitting like imagination above the surface, flashing green-blue sheen at the world. Just by being the colour he is, he lifts my spirits right up. I still don't know if he's a boy or a girl, but it seems sloppy, and I think of him as he. 

It wasn't this cold

Yesterday, I was startled by the stillness of the heron. It was my first time in the water for a few days and the temperature had dropped a degree or so, so I was fairly concentrated on noticing the different sensations in my body, and the disconnect because of my gloved hands, when I saw him. Still as stone - I even thought someone might have put a garden centre heron there for a laugh, and then the gentlest angling of his head helped me notice the intensity of his stare into the water. He was stalking like cats do, only with more elegance, no waggling of bottom and a completely different tale. 

Actual stalker

He struck me as a stalker, though right now, everyone does. I've been watching The Fall, see. It makes me think that everyone's about to kill me horribly, especially warm-eyed, handsome men with beards and lilting accents. Or just men. The other day, when the taxi driver announced he was taking me a different route because the roads were too foggy, I looked at his very intense eyes in the rear-view mirror and seriously considered sending a few texts to say goodbye. He dropped me off beautifully and helped me with my bag, of course, but even that could be a sign!


The Fall is well worth it, if you like thrillers. Of course there is nasty violence against women. Of course there is. It's a police drama. And there are some intensely brilliant characters, fine performances and some ace writing. You decide. And Gillian Anderson is entirely mesmerising, like an actual hypnotist. When she's on the screen, I have to be looking. She is poised and elegant and real. I kind of want to be her. 

TEDx joy with Kate Faragher

I'm full of thankfulness for The TEDx Brixton people, especially Stephanie Busari, for sorting this shit out. A bit like when I went to Australia, I'd wanted to for so very long, it was 'a dream come true' just doing it. If it had been the worst thing ever, it would have been amazing. Actually, it was quite nice. I found orchids and bull mastiffs, discovered permaculture and Denny's and lots of dangerous bugs. So now I've done a TEDx talk. I think my job is do some more research and testing and make something tangible out of these ideas... experiment. 

Ha: google images result for 'a call to dance'

Thank you to Sue Rickards - not only is she the best, most down-to-earth 5 Rhythms teacher I know and a lovely creature, she's also a committed brilliant person (and she's got an ace face and a very pleasing demeanour). She holds space like no other, is grounded and playful and runs monthly Spuds for North Korea nights after the Saturday wave, to raise money for Amnesty's work there trying to get people out of prison camps and trying to improve human rights in the country. You can support it too, if you like. Give that there link a click and find out some more. If you want to hear a bit more without reading stuff, watch this clip. It's not the easy option, though. It makes a tough bit of viewing, though well worth it. 

It's such a great night, too, the post spud thing. People bring music and stuff to perform and they hang out till late. I'm getting there. By next time, I'll have something to sing and I'll learn to accompany it on the guitar, and I'll do a thing. This time, I chatted with a few people and then went home (very much needed). They raised lots of money, though, and it was an all round bag of brilliance. 

I had another fight dance with one person. I loved that, I did. Didn't know I was in the mood for it, but it turns out I was. Lots of snarling and a little bit of gnashing of teeth. Mint! I also had a massage dance with lovely Oliver, who went straight for the bit of my body that is the most painful when touched (my right instep) and landed a thumb right on the point that makes me cringe - good energy, though, so I breathed through it/sucked it up. It was just what I needed last night - some epic hugs and some crazy stomping, and then some focus on other people. Big love, Sue, and thanks. 

There is so much more... THIS is why doing this daily is the way to go. 

Day 627: Covet, Covet

Is it by chance that this holy gentleman is
hot as all shit? I think it's not. 

Ooh, 627 is a nice number, isn't it? It has the fat, even solidness of six and the slim, niney slickness of 27. I like it a lot. 

I am roundly grateful for the opportunity to speak at the Sunday Assembly in Brighton yesterday. It was lovely. I wasn't allowed any profanities because of children in the room, so I had to change my slides. The profanity was near the bottom of the scale of such things, but a profanity nevertheless. Good job they caught it in their swear net. I'd have looked like a right nobber if I'd sworn. I like what they do there and I loved speaking for them, and I'm so grateful that my poorly head (I wasn't very well Sat or Sun) kept at bay for the duration of the talk, and only rushed back up on my way home, where I got to go to bed for a bit. 

I haven't spoken in a church and I was aching to jump up into the terribly earnest-looking pulpit. Before I went to the secret toilet in the building, someone said 'Don't be tempted to put on the cassock that's hanging up in there.' I wanted to shout 'Are you the Devil? Are you Temptation in helpful Sunday Assembly Person form?' I didn't don the cassock, but I looked at it with desirous eyes throughout my wee (which is Wrong, surely). It was white and yellow and embroiderdy. I coveted it. 

Bzzzzzzzzz

I am reminded of lovely John Helmer every time I say the word 'covet'. I worked with him about 15 years ago, quite briefly, in the back of someone's house. He once came in and looked at something I had and cooed 'covet, covet' and I have loved that ever since. He also once lifted his black bike helmet to his face and pretended to be a bluebottle. The third pleasing thing I remember about him is that he used the word 'bereft' in my goodbye card. The drama of it, and the sweetness! Delicious. Some people are just good value. He is most definitely one of them. 

I continue to be blessed with a raft of good men and women in my life. I'm very, very grateful for them. They are all so different, too. I'm grateful for the support I get, and the honesty that's offered up, and for people being themselves, in easy situations and in hard ones, and being honourable, creative and frank. 

This is a roasted guinea pig. Food with hands.

I loved the coaching group call that I ran. I'm doing them every Sunday at the moment (and one Monday, 1st December). It's a very pleasing thing to do. I'm really enjoying that, and the speaking. I love a good speak. I always get a bit nervous and I often feel less prepared than I'd like to, but I understand that this is part of the adrenalin-mustering process and that this is part of why I love it so much. I'm a sucker for a Q&A session too. Can't beat not knowing what's coming next. 

Time to perform more, I think. Time to play. Thank you. 

Day 626: Oh, Peas

Oh, how pleasing to work with those frank Frank people again. That Mr Bett, he's a good one. And he does make me laugh. My lunch, courtesy of some accounting people, was delicious as anything. Two types of peas! (not two types of pea... there were peas cooked as peas and peas cooked as fat mush. They are different types of pea, but I remain unmoved by this naming... well moved by the peas). I fucking love peas, I do.

Mist rising on the pond this morning, or rather hanging out. Hanging in there. The cold made my face make shapes today, stepping in. No noises at that stage, but a few involuntary phoos on the way round. Happy ones. Exhilarated ones. Sensation-filled exhalations and a dog-like head shake after going under. 

The gull was unnervingly silent. No shouting or name-calling, or chest-chrushed cawing, like a teenage boy trying to whistle or blow smoke rings. My dive felt ungainly and surprisingly plungey. The lady watching called it 'magnificent'. Hearing that made the unexpected depth feel like a fine thing rather than a mistake. 

Sweet Laura filled my morning with richness, stories and groundedness, and a trip to Marks & Spencer. Chai, apparently, is hard to come by in Madrid. Not in M&S. 

I'm all excited for this evening and tomorrow, and I'm working with those lilty-clear voices in my ears and a whole load of bubbles in my belly. Sweet!

Day 625: Joyous Fuck-up

Oooh, how delicious: tonight [Thursday], I done a talk at ImpactHub Kings Cross and it was ace. It was called Fuck-Up Nights and it's part of a thing that started in Mexico City where you talk to an audience about a failure you did. And I now know how much I love to talk to an audience, and how scared I am of failure, and how good it is for me to risk some. The routine is often very similar. Leave it a bit late. Have a structure but not many specifics. Shit it a bit. Get round to doing the first bit (in this case, putting the slides together) enjoy it hugely and then realise how much else there is to do.

It always comes together, partly because I love a good bit of pants-seating and I especially like things when they move over to questions. I am much more at ease with that bit. And I like talking to people and finding out what it is they're interested in. And I like watching faces in audiences. 

It was lovely to meet that Annick Rau, finally, who has been a figment on the Hub ether for a number of years, but who turns out, in fact, to be an actual person, and a fabulous one at that. 

She can manipulate soup. And sing!

And then I had a bit of a Ruth & Eddie feeding frenzy, which was lovely and playful and a bit like having a tasty, healthy snack for the soul (though it also involved filthy noodles). Theatre in Greenwich on Friday, and some comedy DLR take-out consumption (including Ruth's Outstanding Two-pot Soup Manipulation Technique TM) and then on Saturday, a chilled evening with Eddie's mum too and the blessed presence of Greg and Aristotle, some beauuuuuuuuutiful music (of course), lots of ease and laughing and brains and youtube, and a bit of fruit juice. 

Their voices are still with me, not only in my head now, but on their CD! Voices like birds flying around each other, dipping and soaring, dancing and sweetly preening. And Ruth solo singing: I never knew so much music could be contained in each note; I have heard angels breathe through her, and it's clear they love to do it. 

In between, a marvellous healing session with Natalya - bowed down with gratitude. It comes at a good time and it was lovely to see her. My ovaries are dancing. They're doing something, anyway, possibly Ceroc. It was a deep one. Thank you thank you.

Thanks, Greg, for a lovely gift - a charity shop mirror of perfect dimensions. I love it and the thing he said that made me cry. I'm a crier, me, and it was lovely too. Thank you, Macarena... you know things that can help me stop being such an easy weeper, maybe.

I have swum in that water every day and every day its healing richness gets richer, the dive is fruitfuller. Today was topped off with tea and toast and kumquat jam in the lifeguards' hut thanks to beautiful artist Jane, with whom I may dance on Tuesday. 
I've got a leaky henna patty on my head. I just thought you should know. 

Day 624: Head Up, Buttock Off

The water has been hovering at around ten degrees for the last five days or so. It's amazing how quickly it becomes normal. The first day that it was ten, having dropped from eleven and a half, I felt the pinch on my fingers and toes all the way around and for a good while after. Someone pointed out that we all looked pink like sausages on most body parts, but yellowy-pocked like plucked chickens on any part that's been in a glove or a neoprene sock. I'm still pink. I'm not a ninja, I just don't know where I've left my gloves. it's cold enough. 

I'm enjoying it though, and now some days have passed, I've got used to the presence of the water's nip and the ice cream headache I get after diving in. It doesn't last. I'll delay the digging out of gloves until the water tells me to. 

Today, I went late. Fighting off a cold, I'd stayed in bed first thing instead of rushing up and out. My sloth paid dividends, on every front. By afternoon, the sun was out, picking out tree tops and lighting up the leaves. I wasn't sure if I'd missed my boat - it closes early in the winter - but there it was. The changing room was full and buzzing with some kind of conspiratorial giddiness. We talked racing and diving, buttocks and the lack of them, The Nation's Favourite Sandwich, insults (you cheeky mare, you effing boozer among today's favourites) and whether we're ladies, women or, god forbid, females. There was all sorts of ungainly cackling and joyfulness, culminating in a decision to hold a collective buttock-off to find the Ladies' Pond's Favourite Buttock, or thereabouts, and a commitment by me to annoy someone in the hope of getting a better insult from my target than ever before. 

I've never once regretted swimming, although with the cold I'm carrying and the cough, I'd almost planned to today. Not a chance. That place is balm and balsam for my soul - I'd say for any soul and I'd believe it, but perhaps for you, it's something else or another place that gives you the wonderful community and calm that I get there; the humour and the love; the bodies - our nakedness is a joy to me. And the thing is (a thing highlighted by my search for bum shots, which threw up loads of porn and women posing sexy whatever they are doing rather than just getting the fuck on with it) that I love the variation of bodies. They are ALL beautiful in their very difference, in all their range of shapes. I don't need to see anyone 'doing' sexy, thanks. That's not what's hot to me, male or female.

I've been blessed with some wonderful, kind comments over the last few days. Thank you, Vic, for building up my heart with being funny and brilliant and direct and for championing me beyond all requirements.  A twat, always, and a most beloved one. Thanks, Carey, for your sane and compassionate support, for a cup of coffee and for saying something so lovely to me that you then rushed off 'to be sick' (your words). Thanks Eddie and Ruth - every time - for delighting me with your rich and vibrant selves and with your dance. 

Macarena, your juicy wisdom and presence. Margaret from afar, with the sweetest words. Fiona, unfailingly astute and supportive - I aspire to be as skilled and heartful as you are. Thanks, N, for your lesson. I am humbled and gratefulled by it. Thanks, Ruth, for unfailing love and concern. Thanks, Rob. Your honesty and care is fuel to me. Thanks, Abdou, for your patience and your challenge. Thank you, Ned. And Nick. Thanks, Cuphead, for telling me my arse is lovely as a place to be while I need to be there. I stayed up there for a while. I think I'm back now.

Anyway, anyone who says my arse is lovely in such a sweet and funny way is my friend forever. 

I have to sleep now, or this cold will get the better of me. Remind me, though, to tell you about Pronoia and that Tiu de Haan. They rock. 

Day 623: A Banquet of Friends

Look at this sweet fruit!

Macarena was a delicious, juicy pleasure to behold and be held by. Clever clever clever clever and discerning and listeny, direct and flowing. She filled me up with nutritious wonderfulness. She was a gift. 

Sweet, rich angel Ruth made her music, and she blew me away, with that and with her playful loveliness before. Eddie was magnificent as always (Ruth's apt word) and I loved seeing his rapt attention on her every breath as he drummed for her. Poetry, that was, written by two sweethearts, sweet hearts. 

Look at these lovely faces!

Each one of these fine friends is a pleasure through and through. All together (especially as they now know and like each other), they fed me so much fuller than any meal. And still I caught my train and was (almost) in bed before midnight.  

And oh, those pond ladies! About 45 of them on Halloween morning, in hats and costumes, bearing pumpkins, waffles and sweet roasted potatoes (like little eyeballs, warm and giving between teeth). There were spiders and cobwebs, shivering and so much laughter. There was hooting and howling. There was bobbing and scaring. I did quite a lot of the scaring in my very pleasing, very terrifying rubber mask. I swam at a couple of ladies while wearing it. Unsurprisingly, they swam away. 

Doing scaring

There was tea and there were buns and fruit. There was conversation between people I've seen time after time, but never together, and lots of new people too. Beautiful artist Jane (who I'm scaring in the picture) made a wonderful tree-bark hat. Full up with love and warmth and affection, despite so much cold water. 

Next, a dose of (Esther) Lilley Harvey and her beautiful Tulsichild. We drove, we walked, we had a go on dogs, we played, we talked, we read, we ate toast. It was short and very sweet indeed. Nourished again. And then...

A tasty little Ned-hit. Ned who I haven't seen since, what, late August? Ned who showed me the building site that is the house he's bought to renovate, explaining this trench and that brickwork, this structural wall, those beams. I even got to go on the scaffolding! I loved the whole experience. I'm just a little disappointed that I missed the 'constructive destruction' phase. You can't beat a swinging mattock, in my opinion (makes me think of you, Clubba Hollenbaugh - you gave me a birthday mattock all those years ago - only a true friend would know to do that!).

I am a creature equipped
with a mattock. + 1! 

Lunch at a Portuguese cafe delivered rich conversation and chips like you have never tasted in your life - fat, hot, crispy and floury soft on the inside. Thank God for Ned and his help - I'd have made myself ill with eating them if he hadn't taken a few off my hands. Oddly easy, the whole experience, and very pleasing indeed. All this wrapped up with a dose of dancing, coaching Geneva Kim. Mmmmmmm. A girl can't take much more goodness in one day. 

And oh, to Saturday. More cold, crisp water and upside-down ducks and shouting gulls and blipping fish. And then work in Rustique, where I bumped into an old yoga friend, first met in the Austrian mountains. I had a surprise date with Libby's lovely boyfriend, Doug, who turned up too to talk shelving. It's ending in bikes and dinner (all of us, not just me and him!). 

Bleeeeeeeeeeeeesed

And then... Ruth and Pam and Rob and Greg and Aristotle and me! A dinner party. I hate dinner parties, but we did one and I loved it. All those beloved people in one place doing that thing where everything becomes bigger than any of the relationships I have with any of them (and I find it delightful that I do have relationships with each one separately - they are all people I adore). Phew! Rich times. And today, just me and the pond, then J, Emily, Greg, Will Steele, hopefully Macarena before the day is out. 

I've had conversations recently with people who have the experience of spending time with friends (or acquaintances) they don't really click with. Fuck me, I'm lucky and blessed that the people I have in my life are really lovely. The only challenge is finding enough time to spend with all of them, and the fact that many are relatively far away. And still, if there was ever a second of doubt, ever ever, I am truly, richly blessed. 

MATTOCK! (I really do love a mattock)