"Yoo hoo, gorgeous!" said Mr Zebediah Bullshittin "Four for a pound."

Mrs Minxalot pulled her hat further down to cover her perplexed countenance. Mr Bullshittin and his foreign coconuts were probably not to be trusted on such a morning and she clutched her list to her bosom and hurried on to the inner sanctum of the febrile market.

The smell of fried dead cow and doughnuts assaulted her sensitivities and the call of "Get 'em while they're hot" nearly stopped this small and fragile creature in her tracks. Not a moment could be lost and she neatly side stepped the bargain slippers with their jovial snowmen toes and the stall that held the delights of 'Mr Patel's London Fashions' (she was slightly distracted here here by the lure of a very gaudy, lacy undergarment) and hurried on to her goal.

"Yes, darlin?"

Mrs Minxalot ignored the overly familiar greeting and the overly large, bulbous nose that accompanied it and hurriedly fished in her carpet bag for her eyeglasses with which to decipher her list of purchasing.

"Umm, two genuine velvet flashing Santa Christmas stockings, please, and three of those luxury hats with the cross-eyed reindeer, thank you very kindly."

With her seasonal shopping done, Mrs Minxalot, wended her weary way back to the Gin House for a pint of Mr Gordons' finest and twenty televisual repeats of the X-Factor final.

It was the best of times.

The First,

First,
hair that clouded any thought, the
skin that met upon this bed,
desired touch, slowly brought, to
hands that clasped and stroked and fed

First,
lips that met in sealing concert, then
grazed upon the flesh and heat.
Trembled breath so hot , so thieved,

on afternoon so sweet.

 

First,

for finding greenwood land,

from cliched lives that lost the core.

Spread a blanket on life's demand, in

hopes of finding something more.

 

 

 

Will you still love me tomorrow?

You say you love me. Can you know what love is for one so young? Can you possibly know what wars will be waged in the name of this love in the years to come. A battle where neither of us knows if there should be a winner or a loser?
Should you think about this first, before you let those words pass your lips?



Will you love me even though your mother wishes that I would die young, or that I run off with that man in the garage who is nearly as common as me? She can only manage to speak my name through a small gap in her lips and I will never be as lovely as the last, or as good as the next.



Will you love me when Janie Jones points her magnificent nipples in your direction? She wants no unwritten contract of her own, only wanting your body squeezing her up against the photocopier on the third floor. Your mother won't like her either, but Janie Jones doesn't need to care about that.



Will you still love me when our baby rips through my body causing damage that will scar me for a lifetime. Will love hold out against the intruder that is of our own making? An invader who will steal our bed, only leaving it under sufferance to make way for the next?



Will you love me when I am failing at life? When work, children, and running a home have sapped me dry, leaving behind a slippered husk that cannot see past the next pile of ironing. When my idea of heaven is a cup of cocoa and an early night, and I have long replaced the satin with flannelette.



Will you still love and want me when my body is betraying me? Gone is the tight bum and firm breasts, replaced with a muddle that can only be sorted by some lycra scaffolding and an industrial strength bra. Will love remember what once lay beneath?



Will you love me when there is only you and I again? When our only aim in life is to gain control of the remote control and to decide which micro-meal we shall eat? Will love carry us through as prescriptions fill the cupboard and exercise has become a gentle walk in the park?


So will you still love me tomorrow?

The Waiting Room

The febrile dream was a constant.
She woke with the remains of a half-remembered passion sitting among the beads of sweat that adorned her top lip.
Pushing aside the damp sheets she found the bathroom mirror that told a story that was only half true.
The deep brown eyes still held the nights passion but the rest of her face had failed to catch it.

Water only made the fever worse, a cleansing that started a whole new day, but the same old story.

As the coffee stirred itself into action, small snapshots of the night invaded her thoughts.
"Was this really so difficult?"

The day passed in a heaviness of deft organisation, global conversation and more coffee. The business lay in her capable hands, nurtured by a life un-interrupted.
Lunch produced another perfume laden suit, crisply starched with facts and figures. Totally un-suitable.

The 'ping' indicating that supper was ready was wedged in between soft tones that calmed a client and shouting at Boston to get their finger out before the close of play.

Midnight sent the last of the emails hurtling into the ether and then it was time.

The ache often found her here before sleeping, the emptiness of her world, devoid of touch and grace and the intense pain of invisible love that covered the sheets in the waiting room.

Sir Ted of the Bed

He is nearly bald, has an eye with a tendency to play home and away and his innards make a bid for freedom every now and again. He smells a bit as he and the washing machine don't get on - he would never survive the spin cycle.

He is Ted.

Sir Ted of the Bed.

He has outlasted all my bed partners (all?)  and doesn't mind at all about my choices in scary bedtime wear. He doesn't mind the crumbs, sharing with the cat or ending up under the bed because I changed the duvet and forgot about him.

He is my friend, my confidant, my hankerchief when none are to hand. He has kept the monsters at bay since 1963.

Simply, I love him.

No one made you do it

Go on, admit it. you didn't mean to but it just slipped out. There you were minding your own business and you clicked in here, looked at the picture above and.........smiled!

I love that, don't you?

Life is full of the mundane, the dull, stuff that unknowingly furrows the brow. Full of trolls, munchkins, clowns and fuckwits that you can't avoid. They pull you down (yes, you, you miserable bitch of a nurse) and they spit you out with a grump that you didn't even know were doing.
Looking for the positive is, well, let's face, bleddy hard work sometimes, like squeezing that pimple that you can't quite get at, like reaching for the last tin of beans on the shelf and finding that they out of date. Grrrrr.

How simple it is to smile, and yet sometimes so elusive. It raises the seratonin levels and makes us feel a little bit good but we rarely put it to good use.

I therefore demand that we devote ourselves to....

Randoms acts of smiling

Let me know how you get on!

Absolutely yes

So, yes, where was I?
Oh, yes,
I have been wrestling with the munchkins, bitch slapping the trolls, hot wiring demons on the dark side of the wardrobe and for a little while they were on the winning side.
Life has a funny way of sorting itself out without you having a hand in it. It dishes out the sennakot when you can't get past something and offers a kick up the backside as a reminder that you are not superwoman, that you are fallible, and that it was about time you started looking at those neon signposts that are flashing in front of your eyes..

It took a health issue to re-start the engine. After surviving the best attempts of the local hospital to rid themselves of me, I am now home with idle time on my hands and very itchy fingers. I have purchased a brand new shiny laptop as I cannot move off my increasingly spreading ass for a couple of weeks and I am here, waiting for some breathtakingly, divine interference to pass over the keys to opening the floodgates to blogdom.
I wait.
In the meantime, I content myself that Steve (above) is managing my household.

Do I mind the wait?

Absolutely not!

Rubbish poem

Crow sat above fields of corn
A black knight of local kin
Surveyed his kingdom all alone
Bereft of crowish, larking din
I sat and watched his bi-valved form

Crow dipped his head to spy a thing
Cornfed cricket, or fieldmouse, husk
Carriage bent with beaded eye
Feathers mussed by a sailing gust
Caught his mizzen masted wing

I smiled to see his Fagin rags
tatty head and spoiler beak
He turned, caught me, laughed aloud
at glasses, lost, and ego piqued
The crowing was a plastic bag

Knight out at the Meadery

In a world of fast-food outlets and expensive restaurants it took some time (well, up until now actually) to realise that the chain of 'Meaderies' in my part of world are a little unusual.

They are no-frills eateries, mostly set in old church buildings, with a basic menu of chicken-in-the-rough plonked on a wooden platter and brought to your long wooden table by wenches. The menu does stretch a little further to fish and a standard veg platter but a night at a meadery is not really about the food!

A Meadery = mead, and most local people will give you a hundred stories (none of them clean) after drinking the local honey based brew. It comes in different flavours, blackberry (me fav), elderberry, strawberry and original, err, mead.

Half a flagon (a half litre) will cost you your legs and after that it is advisable not to expect to be coherent, or manage to reach your bed without the help of a close friend.

So if you are down in Cornwall with a bunch of friends, a bus and a teetotal driver, please give me a shout as by next month I may just have got over last weekend!!

Ibiza - more than just dancin'

Mermaid me!

Old town

Waiting for the sun to go down

Sunrise - Es Cana

Pujols - Formentera

Spanish steps!

Portside - 3am
Cala Nova

Jacaranda Lounge - strawberry daquiri por favor

Day hits the beach

Portinatx

From Dalt Vila looking over the newer town

Sunset - San Antonio

Pool days

6am - Cala Nova

Rob Chambers

Many people would sniff at the idea of making friends via the interweb. How can you possibly get close to someone that you haven't met in the flesh?

Well, you can, and I have proved it to myself on many occasions.

I first came across Mutley in 2006. I loved his blog at the first read. It was right up my street - the 'fictional' town of Birdpot was crammed with the oddities that fell out of Mutley's brain regularly. He was saucy in the cleanest way and never failed to answer all of his commentors.

He mailed me with some questions about writing and sent me some of his more serious 'Allotted Span' stories to 'tell him what a pile of crap they were (they weren't).

I sent him a copy of my book and a couple of cheer-up cards and in turn he sent me an ancient copy of Ballads which I loved and checked in on me in my own time of crisis. We talked about our children (whom he loved deeply) and how shitty life could be sometimes.

He was a good man. We shared an age but not politics (you Tory dingbat) and we shared a love of writing. I nagged him about getting his short stories out there, and he just nagged!

I was delighted when he found love , sad when he lost Mutley, his crazy asbo dog, and loved popping in to his continuing mad blog.

At the beginning of the week I opened my comments to find a message from Merryweather (his love) to say that he had died in his sleep last Friday.

I am devastated.

The blogworld has lost a talent and Merry and his children have lost a true soul - my heart goes out to them.

Rob, wherever you are, please have a pint of Old Lesbian No6 for me and know that you were loved and adored by hundreds of people who had never met you but knew that you were a true friend.

Waking at dawn, a primal time,

little death, then the rise and shine.

Bellicose barking, blackbird alarms the

sun, who rips you from my arms.

Milk train rattles, postman swings,

The gate against the bin – again.

Eyes stay shut to daily trial,

Willing the darkness to stay - awhile.

Were you here, were you now,

did I feel you at all?

Your body inside me,

embrace like a shawl?

Breath on my neck?

Pulling me close,

‘gainst fear of losing

What I want the most.

You are the night , stolen to here,

kidnapped by dawn, a constant fear.

Dreams mislaid, to wake with dread, where

nothing is left but your heat in my bed.

(painting by Susan Strand)

The Magickal Woo

Reading a few Merkan blogs lately has renewed my fascination with their state of religious being (or not). Their argument for and against organised religion reminds me that England has become very laid back about your God/Goddess and you can worship at the altar of Small Pixies as long as you don't interfere with Sunday lunch! Labels don't matter much any more - you be be who you want to be as long as you leave the gun at home!

I feel the same. You have a free mind - you can think/do/say what you like especially if you are at peace with who you are.

So, my personal woo, my belief system - it frightens the shit out of some people. When you mention Paganism (especially to the two sweet little Mormons at me door) they imagine spells, magick, nekkid dancing and sex with horny devils. Are they wrong?

Yes, and a definite no!

I don't like labels, let alone false ones, but Paganism is so misunderstood - so can I put you straight?

Right from our cave days men went out and bonked the meat on the head and the women (generally) looked after the brood. Women had the knowledge of herbs and healing and were revered as the mothers of all life.

Life was hard and revolved around the seasons building into a belief system based on what they could see around them - sun, stars, weather etc.

The Sabbats mark eight festivals through the year, four that mark each solstice and four that celebrate the land.

For instance Litha (21st June) is summer solstice, the middle of the year when night and day are equal and Imbolg (pronounced 'imolk') on the 2nd of Feb celebrates the coming of new life after winter - a sort of 'thank fuck we survived' kind of thing!

Paganism celebrates the male and female in all of us, interpreted as a God and Goddess, and the Calender of Being also represents the death and renewed life in the land each year.

When Christianity came into being it was male based replacing the sabbats to fit with the teachings in the bible.

No one is right, no one is wrong - the bible fitted its time and was a good manual for living peacefully (what happened there then?) but like all ancient documents it was open for interpretation.

Propaganda attacked the roots of Paganism - the male side of paganism is often depicted as a stag and he became a 'horned devil' . The female side (Hecate) is depicted at the end of the year before winter as an old woman, a hag, and it was easy to use this image as typical of a witch (wise woman).

Some terms explained...

Spells = wishes= prayers

Magick = a meditation to focus on your prayer

Ritual = symbolic focus to meditation

Witch = a wise woman with knowledge of herbs and healing

Pentacle - a five side star representing 'never ending light and good'

So, in essence, Paganism is as natural as it gets. Based in love and light and getting on with your fellow humans. We like eating, dancing, getting together and a bit of drinking!

Paganism is not stuck in the past or glued to some ancient manual - it is fluid and it is NOT a religion - it is a way of living.

Hope that explains a bit - any other questions can be fought over in The Inner Sanctum below!

St Mawes - castles and coastline

St Mawes lies on a funny little spit of land that, along with its sister castle across the bay, used to defend Cornwall from the invading foreign hoards!

It is about 20 miles from where I live but the journey is shortened by taking a ferry across the very deep, deeper than deep River Fal.

A beautiful day only served to enhance this rather expensive boat owners paradise but you can have a nice meal in the Rising Sun pub and the walk up the coast is only disturbed by a sheep that should have reported to the noise abatement council!

Busy water traffic

The coastguard is hiding!

St Mawes harbour

The King Harry Ferry (costs an arm and a leg!!)

The dinky canon protecting the bay

The massive St Mawes castle

Lil bit of beach

Ships waiting for work

The ferry cottage - I want it!!

.

Shoot em up

I suppose I shall have pull up the duvet now while the children fight it out for the future of my country.

My letterbox is already moaning under the onslaught of paper akin to a small rainforest (but thank you Mr Cameron and Mr Brown for your 'personal' letters to me. Mr Clegg, I am awaiting yours with anticipation - lazy git!).

After the first major TV debate, I am already sick of the posturing, the puffed chests and the thinly veiled insults. The political devotees are throwing meaningless figures at me, showing me graphs and charts that have more work done on them than a plastic surgeon would ever admit to.

With the Three Horsemen of the Apocalyse trading more and more pathetic insults I am beginning to wonder if we should just chuck them in a ring and let them punch it out - that would sort the men from the boys.

Perhaps a Political Deathmatch?

Gun fight at the Westminster Corral?

So, boys, come on. Stop fannying around with the 'my knob is bigger than yours' quotes - lets see some blood!

Gordon Brown refused to show his hand until the last possible moment!