Jo pulls out the stops

One area I have always struggled with is staying focused or even being a single focused spot as I tend very much to be overwhelmed when it comes to stimulation and sensual input so tend to oscillate  around ideas so the tight circular focus  I might  need  becomes at least more oval shaped.
This at least when it comes to getting things done is never a good thing with me especially when it's been very warm as it was for part of last week with a greater risk of me me running low on spoons and wasting the spoons I have to get things done  by not going with the greater needs first.
I think it speaks volumes for how in the last few years I have come on since I recognized I had certain life skills issues that I needed outside help with, their preparedness to be really firm with me and your support too that for all of that and I felt rough for a chunk of last week, I did stay on top of everything that actually mattered and didn't lash out at people.
I'm just sorry I drifted off to sleep during chat.

Thank you.

Things come together eventually

Phew, what a scorcher,eh?
It's been a two steps forward and one step back kind of a week with me probably not  helped with the recent extremely warm weather that just seems to sap my energies for most of the day and leave me at night  adhered to my night attire.
This said between the god awful Grenfell Tower tragedy that just leaves me feeling like crying all the time that claimed so many lives in way that leave adjectives such as terrifying feeling inadequate to describe how in minutes the entire tower block was on fire and being unable to walk having sprained my lower left leg in a sickly pain  there wasn't so much get and go start with.
I have been taking in plenty of liquids and covering up when I've been outside because I tend to burn easy from the sun.
I had a reversal at the weekend where with not getting to sleep I crawled around on all fours at three in the morning looking for my laptop and having food was up. Trouble was I was flat tired by 9AM so I got caught out by it and ended up with a well paddled bottom and being told to go to bed to get the sleep in  as I was just yawning and dozing off to sleep.
Not good at all.
As seasoned persons know I'll be off to littles camp at the end of next month and as I volunteered (!) to do the music quiz I got that all done across the weekend and into Monday although for one question you *may* need to read a certain blog entry for a clue which is pretty good as I tend to be a 'sudden death' kind person but at least it's done and ready for printing off.
Also as you'd there was some mithering around Father's Day with my younger brother trying upstage everyone  and while here totally ignoring me as if I'm total rubbish messing everyone up.
I managed to tune that out even through I felt like throttling him.
I've been working through a number of identity issues across the last three weeks or so so while this blog isn't about them I'm glad I took time out to look at and resolve to my own satisfaction.
I think overall I did well this last week even if it should of been better.

Jacqueline

In a week where events that have been dominated very much with a national tragedy, the full nature of we are still very much learning of as well as trying to come to terms with emotionally, I need go back in time to what helped and still helps the adult-child me.

 Jacqueline is a dolly I had now for over fifteen years, that I like to handle, feeling the fabrics and generally care for who has a soft dusty complexion and isn't so obviously pretty pretty with her blue eyes.
She has however seen me  through a number of less than pleasant experiences and situations, steady and reliably very much the girl in what was the equivalent in UK terms to Juniors who looked after me she was named after.
While not being particularly fussy her dress has a simple country print and just a hint of lace and a bow which is more where I'm at not being heavily into lace, frills and 'sugary stuff'.
I always found back then getting back to a bit that regular child structure when such awful things happened did help more than just going over and over the events and involved your dollies and teddies.

 

The M.I.A. Edition

Hello again! I've come from the darkest recesses of the littles blog to talk about something that seems to be endemic on online  communities and that is the curse of the disappeared ones.
They come in a number of forms such as the enthusiastic poster, who sends a good dozen a day from the moment the sign up, the one that encourage you join up but only posts a couple of times or the one that's been on the site for quite a while.
The thing they all have in common is they just leave, no Custer's last stand style rants or kiss-offs with no trace at all. Not even a last past or personal message so you are left wondering had you or anyone offended them or they're actually okay especially when they alter their username to Gone and that.
I think the most important thing for us to realize is as much we enjoy social media and websites, people or even the sites themselves are always in state of flux and the relationships that really  matter with them or those that went to personal ones through emailing or face to face encounters and that we can't restore things to how they were.
Sites do go over time - I can think of five of the top of head I belong to between 2005 and 2009 that are no longer with us - that we may miss but they are either replaced as a good few have for all intrusive social media or that we replace by with real life activities such as munches or play meets.
Sometimes the best response we can make to such situations is to simply move on.

Wave Me Goodbye

It was just about three months ago that I was given by a kind relation who enjoys reading, a gift voucher for a well known book and stationery store and in early June, a new book by a favourite author of mine came out so I called in and used it to buy this book.

Entitled Wave My Goodbye, it is about the world of one Shirley L. Smith who lives with her Mom who works in an office and Dad who has joined the Army in the centre of London in Nineteen Thirty-nine.
It has been decided all the children need to be evacuated as the threat of war with Nazi Germany for their own well-being from bombing and it is being done on a school by school basis.
The whole of Paradise Road Junior School is called up, so Shirley has to have a suitcase packed with a change of clothes including night wear plus her favourite dolls and  books before her mommy sees her off at London Victoria railway station which after some fuss she is allowed to sit with the girls of the St Agatha's Convent School of whom it transpires seem to get the best of everything, enroute to Meadow Ridge way out in the countryside.
Arrangements for billeting the children and staff seem very rushed as nothing had been prearranged between the W.V.S. and W.I.and the children are taken around the village until someone claims  them. Unfortunately Shirley plus two east end boys, Kevin and Archie appear to stuck with nowhere to go until with some reluctance Mrs Waverley and Chubby who is her assistant at the Red House, decides to take them in although it appears they hadn't enough food in for them straightaway nor beds .
The children are bought new clothes which for Shirley includes a School Tunic and tie as she only had a pleated skirt with attached bodice and a party frock to change into plus Mrs Waverley also loves reading so they have something in common.
The story sees them attending school in extra classes of the villages local school with lessons by  who is brisk, kind in some ways but not opposed to strapping misbehaving children.
They appear to get on although life has it's ups and downs not least with one of the boys having a problem with bed wetting that creates a lot of work but following an accident  when Kevin follows Shirley who can look at Mrs Waverley's dolls house from the end of the war and to which is a kind of model of the life who had hope to have until her husband was killed in the Great War (W.W.1) and in the course of playing with it breaks the arm of the dolly of him, she gets upset and Kevin and Shirley run off back to London where she is met by her dad for a few days.
He returns them and smooths over the misunderstandings with Chubby and Mrs Waverley so they feel at home and so stay there until the war is over.

The story is one that is undeniable moving, based on what happened across much of Great Britain during the build up and shortly after World War Two, when our major city areas were deemed to unsafe for children and they travelled often more in hope that everything would work out being without their parents.
It is also true that some didn't want 'city children'  and their ways around and others only wanted them for much more for what they could bring them on say farms for labour rather than providing a safe place to live and yet for others it did bring changes for the better in their lives having access to fresh air and countryside.
As a book I found it highly enjoyable although a bit sad in places, telling an important story about the social history of being a child caught up in the storms of war having to adjust to vastly different realities.

On restoring our faith in ourselves

As unfortunately events in London this Saturday showed only too well it isn't too difficult to disrupt, injury or even take lives in seconds even if thank heavens it only took 480 seconds which is near enough 8 minutes to draw the incident to a safe conclusion although its effects live on for longer not least in our hearts and minds and for a period when it comes to just getting about a major city such as our Capital.
The bigger part of this was touched on in my post of May 24th when I spoke about how such events affect us either as people who were present at such an outrage or as people, often from that area who feel other peoples loss and feel less than secure.
While I can't and maybe we all can't criticize the mass media for talking often at length about such incidents, all too often what we get is extended speculation and sheer impact rather than fact and this easily plays into our insecurities.
I think one of the things we need to bear in mind is what news is: it is the exception, that appeals to sensation and it can play very much on such understandable emotions as fear, anger, disgust and hatred when that is all we see and feel.
It can be a only too real form of mental contagion replacing what we know to be right by a sense of paranoia and in the light of such  recent events we need to arm our minds against ideas not least actually  that we are all interconnected.
One of the things people such as so-called Isis rather like others such as the I.R.A.  like to do is to play a game of dividing us us into groups by our nationality, ethnicity, religion or politics as if our belong any combination of such group somehow means we do not see the others as fellow human beings, not feeling  and caring for and about them.
We are all members of one human race who share the same values of love, compassion and respect for one another that are written in the overwhelming majority of world religions and if you subscribe to one you know that is something that is at the core of our lives.
It is what we owe each other.
We need to replace in our minds that fear which is too easily transmitted, that hate even by love affirming the universe truth which is love conquers hate but also will meet every human need coming from our common humanity and it starts sharing with the person next to us.
We need to arm ourselves too against the demonizing of entire communities, communities that would hold those actions by people claiming to act on them as shameful, devoid of any part of their beliefs and practises.
No one ever kills or injuries civilians especially children with the approval of God or Allah ever, for this is not endorsed in our great religions and anyone who suggests as much is lacking in the understanding of the faith they mistakenly link their wicked  acts to supporting or justified by.
A part of making it possible, however hard it is to come to terms with such awful inhuman acts, is that very support that comes from love when we act on it, and we need as much in love to act on it as it is to be prepared to allow others in to help us through showing us their love in practical ways.
We are not alone and we have a responsibility to help those who may feel alone and lost as best we can recover.