No idea what leads to this regular but not-particularly-bloggable state of thinking anesthesia, but there’s a found-through-experience remedy for such things and it has been boiled and drunk so all will be well shortly.

And if not, I suppose I could always come back and annoy Mr. Bunny by thrashing a few more hyphens around until sleep comes.

No, on second thoughts lets hitch a ride on one of those extremes of emotional energy that have been flying around lately. I’ll do something useful and boil up a second dose.

I lost much of it thinking of friends and family who had passed away, and not just of their passing but the manner of it, the paths they had chosen which ended so abruptly, the little differences which could have kept them alive. There had been no sense of inevitability, no good reason for these lost lives and in each case the simplest events could have made so much difference.
In every case I had the power to effect one of those little differences; calling a different taxicab, suggesting a different destination, just being there. Such trivial things, each of which could have saved a life.

But lost inside this solitary and futile reflection I failed to see that it was actually a way of coping with the failure of a marriage I’d strived to make work, and with the sudden shock of loneliness after thirty years of almost continuous companionship.

And there was the sting. Knowing that if I hadn’t stubbornly dragged every last futile possibility from that inevitable failure, if I’d allowed the relationship to expire naturally, I could have been there for some of those lives.

It’s been hard to write, to acknowledge the simple pain of failure and of loneliness that I’ve been trying to hide from for all this time. It’s been hard to reach the point of decision.

But it’s another year, a new year. Neither lightly nor regretfully, it’s time to release the dead and forgive myself.

It’s time to choose life.

For such a very small thing this is proving to be deceptively difficult. Strange that happiness should be so elusive.

But let’s struggle to finish by being upbeat here as well. After all, I am writing again and that can only be a good thing.

Actually the birthday is on Friday so I’m a day early. You don’t mind do you?

Is that a confused glance I can see? Perhaps I’d better explain. Unusually attentive blog readers who knew me at 20Six might think I’ve finally lost my marbles, because I didn’t start blogging there until June 13th. Now while that’s true, what you might not know is that I started off (in this furry incarnation anyhow), at WordPress before ever going to 20Six. So you see, it is my blog birthday really, well kinda.

Anyway, I’ve decided to celebrate by starting a new blog.

What? Where is it? Well, just to completely confuse you, it’s over at Little Stitches, where you came from, to get here. Yes, yes, it’s still in the same place, with the same look and the same me; in fact nothing has changed at all except … in a flurry of frantic filing, I packaged up the WordPress bits and the 20Six bits, including all the lovely comments you left, and squeezed them into this place. I say this place but I haven’t really worked out what to call it yet. Suggestions welcome.

The past year has been fun, and it’s been a real challenge. I started writing for the first time in my life and along the way I met some great people, and made some wonderful new friends. But I’ve gone and got myself into a panic because this blog birthday is knocking hard on the door of my blogging inability. When I started off, the stuff I was writing was a weird, and a little paranoid, but it was fresh and had some life. It’s quite funny and instructive to go back there now. But it feels like I’ve fallen into a rut, into a kind of comfort zone which doesn’t feel the least bit comfortable. In fact let’s face it, my blogging is complete crap and it has to change.

But, but, but, I’m going to use this blog sometimes as well, mainly for stuff that feels more personal and that I’d prefer to keep away from the Googles and Technorati’s of this world. Some manage this by making their blog private, some password protect selected posts and those things are both cool but they don’t feel quite right for what I want to do. I like the fact that anyone can stumble in here and pick up on this stuff, although it is a worry that they might need urgent psychiatric help afterwards.

Meanwhile Little Stitches, will be a blank slate, a new challenge, an empty space to fill, and I do very much intend to go on filling it.

I’ll keep links to each blog in the sidebar so you’ll always be able to find your way here from there and vice versa, and you’re perfectly welcome in either blog, whatever takes your fancy. You can even opt out and decide I’m far too boring to visit anymore. Shame I can’t do that myself huh?

In other parts of the world, there’s a phrase for this, it’s called re-inventing yourself. Where I come from though we don’t call it that, we call it giving yourself a bloody great kick up the arse.

Now then, anyone for a glass of carrot juice?
 

note: Just to prove that Bunnypeople are nothing but trouble and spend their time going around breaking things, I’ve gone and broke all those links that are rather unfortunately referred to as permalinks in blog-speak. This won’t mean anything unless you had linked to a specific post over at Little Stitches. If you had (sorry, Goldfish and Diddums) then it just means that the link will now be broken because I’ve moved the post here. Soon, very soon, I will stop being such a pest, promise …

oh, and the one limitation with this new place is that I can’t change the layout or font-size or useful stuff like that, sorry, it’s a WordPress thing. If anyone has a problem reading, let me know though and I’ll try and cook something up.

It’s funny, blogging like this with crusty, bleary eyes, first thing in the morning.

D’you reckon malnutrition or even outright hunger might kill me by morning?

Hang on there’s the drawer underneath, let’s rummage through these empty plastic food containers, not much hope really, but wait! Hey-hey, an old half-eaten packet of ginger biscuits. Eureka! Sit back on the floor, rip it open, oops, crumbs flying, four left. Okay, best work on priorities, save a life, get the first down faster than a can of Fosters in the outback. Munchkins, whoosht, guuuulp!
Ah, that’s better, isn’t the world just such a wonderful place?

We can take a moment now to chew on the second crunchy victim, he-he, (burp), oops, sorry, must have been that sparking water I drank earlier. Now the third … the … hang on – why did the second taste of fizz rather than ginger??

In fact I’m just noticing a kind of bitter aftertaste from the first.

What does this packet say? Is there a date? Um, numbers, yep here are some numbers,stamped on the back, can’t quite read. I’ll just move over to the lamp, let’s see … 26-Apr-00

Oops!

Now there’s definitely a taste of fizz on my tongue and these remaining two biscuits smell kinda funny, (burp). Oh dear. Death by mouldy ginger? No, no, surely two biscuits can’t do any harm? Maybe I’d better drink some more water?

Burping again. Hmm, I’d better post this just in case; wouldn’t like to go without saying goodbye to blogland or to my friends. Stomach is rumbling a little now, still I’m sure it’ll be okay. Just to be safe, is there a doctor in the sphere?

No? Okay, don’t worry, I’ll post something in the morning. It’ll probably be fine, really. Night all.

Weeing yourself, pooping without a scooper; it happens when you’re young, because you haven’t learned; it happens when you’re old, because your mind forgets.

It’s a laugh, a giggle kids have at someone else’s expense. It can be a mortifying experience, shuffling shame-faced to the loo, trying to hide the signs.

Yesterday, I drove an anonymous friend into town to change his incontinence pads. He didn’t feel he could ask his usual pals. A couple of days previously he’d tried, regretted the memory and had been rushed into buying too large a size in the process. This is all quite a new challenge for him.

It’s a dysfunction (is that the right term?) I don’t yet suffer from. Mind you I did have an operation on the waterworks four years ago and most days since then, I’ve had to stick a sixteen inch plastic tube up me willie (you weren’t having lunch, were you?). It’s a curious activity that I’ve come to refer to as pipe-cleaning.
No, of course that isn’t sixteen inches long, best measured in quite small milli-metric units in fact. Sometimes I wonder, if I pushed too far, whether it would pop out between my teeth (the tube I mean, not my milli-metric protrusion). Really though, it’s a minor inconvenience and it helps keep everything in working order.

No doubt one day, I’ll be peeing and pooping myself with inevitable regularity. And I won’t mind joining in, having a laugh, sharing the ridiculousness of it all. I won’t even mind if the kiddies laugh at me rather than with me, because then I won’t feel quite as guilty for having been so childish as a child.

It’s hard to be as forgiving when older kiddies snigger at someone else.

The thing that continues to let Scottish politics down is this unfortunate quality ministers have, of consistently mis-managing political affairs. I was beginning to put the embarrassment of the Parliament building behind but now it seems we have an election that’s a complete shambles and which has left the Scottish National Party one single seat in front. I have nothing against these SNP newbies but there a minor drawback in that they have no real experience outside of local Government, combined with the fact that they’d like to lead us into economically uncharted waters by forming a new country, well perhaps it’s just me but that leaves me with a slight case of the jitters.

Last Autumn, our existing MSP’s, the ones who are supposed to have some know-how, couldn’t even rehouse a few pigeons without a fuss.

So over the next two or three weeks, we may see fragile coalitions whose sole commitment to each other is to ride the parliamentary term one issue at a time; we may see court challenges to the single seat lead of the SNP; we may even see Labour take back that seat, who knows. Meanwhile our councils, the ones who sit smugly behind their desks while we individually try to navigate local bureaucracy to survive, they can breathe easy, out of the political spotlight. None of it inspires confidence.

How did I vote? I voted Labour and kicked myself every step of the way back from the polling station. Labour offers me absolutely nothing, but the alternative, the possibility of independence, is something I understand only as an esoteric, romantic theory. No one has taken the time to explain it to me any other way. Perhaps full independence could work, perhaps it could be a great thing, but risking the economic well being of a few million Scots doesn’t seem a thing best done over the roulette table.

Maybe it’s time to move South of Hadrian’s wall again? Ah, except what’s this? Another blinkin’ Scot about to take over the county of England? Oh bugger it, I’d better get my swimming trunks and snorkel on. I hear they’re close to a revolution in France. Sounds like a darned sight more fun than a recount!

 
Listening to: Alice Cooper “Elected” (he should have been a candidate)
Okay, I apologise for this slightly coloured view but me tubes were blocked and it was time for a long overdue snort!

And it’s all because of work. Work, work and more work, I’ve been working like a zombie, except that zombies are supposed to eat flesh and I’ve only been eating tins of reconstituted vegetable-bean thingies and the odd slippery, scaly fish – not a good zombie diet at all. Working the hours is so easy to do, but it’s energy sapping and such a waste of creativity, not that the little I have is much of a waste.

And now it’s left me with a mini blog crisis. You know, one of those what-am-I-doing-here crises, wondering about the purpose of it all, whether my semi-colons are working and why I’m still a pumpkin.

I almost cut my hair. It isn’t quite as long as this gent’s although it’s quite tempting to take a copy of the CSNY song along in a few days time, to soften the blow when it does get the chop. You see, being somewhat curly it’s much more manageable at a length that’s just shy of feather-duster. It’s hard to look like a rebel though, with short hair and no piercings. I had some jeans once, my mum was throwing out old curtains and I’d just bought Neil Young’s After the Goldrush album, and of course I just had to have those jeans. She wasn’t keen but she taught me how to use her sewing machine, and after a few mistakes and one minor injury, I produced my patchwork masterpiece.
Except I threw them out a decade or two ago, shrunk from too many hot washes and too small even for a miniature me to wear. Should have got the scissors out and kept the bum, silly me. Too late now. So I can’t even dress like a rebel any more.

Marvin broke again. It wasn’t really his fault, it’s his innards you see, another disk. Are disks like light bulbs, do you think – all blow at the same time? Took a few days to mend him again, but although his body’s letting him down, he’s still got a good memory (much better than mine), so he hasn’t lost anything. Touch a solenoid, he should be okay now although he’s still got a couple of disks that haven’t ‘blown’ yet.

And I’ve been on medication for a stomach problem too embarrassing to mention, but if you asked me if I was sitting comfortably I’d have to say no. This would have been posted yesterday but it’s quite awkward to use a desk-height keyboard while kneeling on a hard floor.

It’s been over ten days since my entry, and that’s a worry seeing as a friend said she’d hire a hit-man if I didn’t blog at least once a week. So I’ve bolted all the doors, drawn the curtains and I’m sitting here with Marvin and a loaded pea-shooter. It’s been a bit wild outside though, hail-stones and driving rain – not good weather for a hit. Better press the publish button just to be safe …

Edit: I’ve just had to exterminate two rogue semi-colons; little buggers keep creeping in everywhere.

I can hardly believe it after all the technical hassles of the past week, and things are working so much better too! Still can’t remember what I was going to write about though, so I’m going to bore you with video talk instead.

The first video I tried to watch on youtube, a link another blogger sent me last year, produced: “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.” Ouch! Wonder if the those CIA people will have logged my IP address for whatever horrors that might have contained?

Anyway disregarding this minor upset, I decided to follow my nose, or my ear to be more precise, and here’s where it led. A special little something I wanted to share with anyone who has a spare minute, a super-duper whizzy computer like Marvin, and access to youtube.

The video isn’t great, although it does have a certain something. Just close your eyes and have a listen though.

A contentious song by Leonard Cohen, but a long time favourite of mine. Does it make any difference to know he was singing about his one night stand with Janis Joplin?

As I’m on a roll here having embedded my first ever video, let’s get really quite carried away and share another. This is Matha Wainright’s version of the same song. Now I’m a fan of Martha, but somehow she doesn’t quite catch the essence of the moment in the way Cohen does. What do you think?

I don’t intend to make a habit of this video embedding business by the way, it’s just that boys do have to play with their new toys. Well don’t they?