Oh, My Days!

Tomorrow heralds the start of 'World Craft Week.' And that has to be a good thing, yes? Especially if you compare it with other national days in the coming week which include: Chocolate Covered Raisin Day, Tolkien Reading Day, Nougat Day, Spinach Day, Manatee Appreciation Day, Something on a Stick Day (yes, really), Triglycerides Day, and Lemon Chiffon Cake Day. Anyway, if you search World Craft Week on the interwebbly, you'll find a free craft magazine download which contains many craft ideas including papercraft, crochet, cross stitch, sewing, quilting and drawing along with some articles about the benefits crafting can have on health and well-being, which those of us who craft already know, but it's always nice to proved right, isn't it?  The idea is that you try something new and if you like, attempt the 7-daily challenge where you share what you have crafted on Facebook or Instagram. Each day has a focus: Day 1 : Create with colour Day 2 : Inspired b...

This week, on Thursday, Camilla died and went on to the Great Hen Party in the Sky where, no doubt, Misses Bennet, Miggins, Slocombe, Pumphrey and Poo, and Primrose, Daisy and Nora were blowing up the balloons, hanging up the bunting, making cakes and cocktails and popping a CD of 'Greatest Dance Songs' in the player in anticipation of a right good welcome. I can see it now, can't you? Camilla is the ginger hen on the right of the photo. She was almost 7 years old, which is pretty darn good for a hen. She laid many eggs and never gave us a moment of trouble, not even when she made the move with us from Kent to Shropshire and had an exciting pit-stop at a supermarket where Andy carried her and Primrose inside to buy some grapes. And no-one said a word! Well, it was a hot day and it would have been irresponsible of him to leave two hens alone in a boiling car, wouldn't it? Anyway, Camilla was fine at the beginning of the week but a couple of days before she died, sh...

'I've always found that the changes I feared would ruin me have always become doorways, and on the other side I have found a more courageous and graceful self.' So said Elizabeth Lesser, the co-founder of the Omega Institute, the largest adult education centre in America, focusing on health and wellness, spirituality and creativity, which sounds exactly like my kind of place, how about you? It has been a week where I have been connected with several friends who are making changes in their lives, who are taking risks, making leaps of faith, acting on feelings that they are no longer willing to tolerate their current situations for one reason or another. Is it the arrival of Spring that has instigated these feelings of change, I wonder? Or some form of fortuitous planetary alignment? The next Full Moon is still 10 days away so it can't be that. Maybe we have just all been listening to the small voices of our personal Universes and nodding and agreeing with...

"Would you like an adventure now, or shall we have our tea first?" from Peter Pan by J.M Barrie, illustration L.M Atwell As you know, I do like a cup of tea, especially if there is cake involved. Has that what has stopped me from having adventures, I wonder? Too much tea and cake? Too much comfort? Anyway, I think Wendy was referring to a nursery tea, you know, what a certain class of children used to have in olden days before they were grown up enough to have dinner with the adults. Children had breakfast, lunch and tea; adults had breakfast, luncheon and dinner. Oh, semantics, eh? Especially when mixed with middle class domestic etiquette. Anyway, Wendy was thinking of a repast before her adventure, I am thinking of a cuppa. And cake. Although nursery tea is rather appealing...eggy bread, toad in the hole, suet pudding, jam roly-poly, a selection of sandwiches, scones, toast with stuff on, mug of cocoa... I'm waffling, aren't I? When all I should be sa...