Life (and why this blog is as it is)

After last week's past in present post, I felt like writing a bit more around what being this girl means and why it is this blog is the way it is.

Given this Covid thing we're going through has cut a hole through what normally would be happening around this part of the year, I feel it's a good idea to remind ourselves about it.

 I am somewhat more visual but in may respects this illustration sums a whole chunk of it up really well and in case you were curious some people can see "the music" in record grooves.

The first thing is we all dressed differently, showing that how we feel expressing our inner sense of being is different, I veer more toward the girl on the far left, others in this context might choose a party dress. It's all good!

We are all having fun, sharing chit-chat, sucking our Pop through straws. That sharing is what we do when at meets playing with each other and letting each other play individually with our dolls, stuffies and other toys. I am grateful my little/middle friends let me share things as it means a lot allowing us to build our friendships. 

There is music playing that we are sharing. It may be my home stereo component system is more technically 'better' than their phonograph, which I had a similar model when I was in my tweens but it is being used to share music, to enjoy it's playing so we have our records out.

That's the function of music in my life and there are 'places' I share it; it's not about the 'hifi', it's about the joy of listening to it which is why on this blog I do write about it, tossed in with the dolls, stuffies and other cute stuff.

There is also grown up supervision about keeping everything safe and ensuring we behave because it's easy for things to get out of hand and you mightn't see it and I sure don't!

The biggest thing in all of this is just innocuous fun!

Just being younger than my years me

As we enter a new month I thought I'd post something around what it means to me.

 This time of year reminds me so much of the largely unchanged way that I am no different in many ways around the ages of these children and even the fuzzy warm lack of focus of it might as well be a metaphor for both how I am and the prism I see things through.

Any of them could of been me and certain respects more mentally sharper and alert too.
Our world compared to today's was a good deal simpler for just reading, playing and watching tv more often than not together and communication was mainly face to face by phone with parental approval so we'd sure know about it if anyone had been mean.

  We read comics, often joining fan clubs whose paraphernalia come through the mail and talked about them during school recess  and in many ways that remains what I loved and within reason love to do even now cos in my head I'm still the same.

There times I love to explore more of the natural world  although the current Covid restrictions are something of a pain setting out how far from home we can go and the number of times you are allowed out even.

Water has always fascinated me.

I may be a girl but I do love model railway villages to the point there's a small one in the front garden, playing with it putting new trains on the track, buying the odd new building or domestic animal to put on it

However you wish to wrap this thing up, I'm really a child on the inside who needs to go out to play as that's our work.

Nap time

Nap times are important to me so to cuddle up to my stuffies really matters as it keep me happy and get the rest in so I can get things done.

Being 'there'

Sometimes you just might wonder why things happened the way they did.

That was one thought I was left with just listening to various people as they talked about their lives and experiences in completely random way with no real script or anything not that I usually do much of that and today I'm reflecting on something happened a few years ago.

I mean the only time I really talked much would of been the first week at my boarding school where Miss Howes asked me to speak about myself to the class, most of which had known each other for at least several months probably because of believing my family life was just so embarrassing with no real "small talk" and in part cos I felt much younger than most of the class.

It was kind of odd to feel able to share something that was actually about rather than of me and that was I had done something for the first time albeit with supervision.

I had managed to make cakes.

Truthfully the way things were at home, you might as well of put up "Keep Out" signs on the kitchen cos that was off limits when it came do doing anything at all like fixing a hot drink, a sandwich or whatever.

I'm not really sure how much it was fear of risks and how my perhaps of been subconsciously dealing with guilt by providing everything but what people might call 'life-skills'  where not things I knew as much as anything else no one had ever really taught me them. They just assumed I'd pick it up and duly noted "Does not".

Equally I was never expected to help out making meals even if you'd though for one thing I rather feel more a part of a family unit and actually it would help me which was  part of the reason why it the person I was staying with had me in the kitchen learning and actually doing with supervision and direct hands on assistance at times preparing vegetables for a cottage pie, sealing the minced meat and such like.

One of things they are helping with is learning to contribute directly and understand what sorts of things society expects you to when you're with people so I can co-operate better whereas to a large extent disengaging had been my norm.

That meal was the more tastier for having made a substantial contribution to its creation by labouring even with my limitations. 

In so  many ways then, that weekend was quite a important one for and the better for being shared with friends.

Contact?

How many littles are there out there?

You often hear it said "there's more than you might think" and certainly there have been places when it was obvious to me some one was even if they didn't realize it or engage quite so openly in expressing it.

I can remember the first time I discovered a works colleague I spent a few years working very closely who shared much of the same traits as I do skipping up and down the corridors like a couple of kids high on candy talking about our favourite cartoons, stuffies and so on even though we were super good workers and we had a caring male supervisor who was a bit more like school teacher to the two of us.

Equally sometimes we go online and find their are people who do share much of what we do who wouldn't see it that way being more an adult hobby or interest even if it may of started as a run on from their own childhood and it has a clear link to their sense of having an inner-child.

Sometimes it seems to me I see more littles away from what I'd call niche sites set up expressly for them in other communities where there is more around being more 'child-like', regression or other kinds of persona or even fursonas talking away about much the same thing as I an many others in our own unique way are doing while certain sites and even events may struggle.

In 2020 it is hard to escape all embracing social media be it all purpose such as Facebook or Tumblr (although I don't regard that a substitute for full on blogging) or adult sites such as Fetlife for making contact with others or even just knowing what's happening in your State or Province as that's where information is being increasingly posted although the public nature of it may not be ideal for anything personal and easily identifiable about you to be posted that may impact on family relationships or your employment.

One thing is for sure the World I encountered online in the early 2000's is very different than today's and places need to adapt to changed times.

Burrowing time

I don't know about you but I'm really taken with super cute things as well as plushies so what would happen if you mixed them?

Taking the rabbit theme your braids are in rabbits, your foot wear and your plushie as you sit licking your lollipop. I'd just love that!

While we await the reopening of more shops, people seem to be confusing terms like rules, guidance, legislation and law.

Laws set out by way of legislation what people may not do or may be permitted to do under certain circumstances and require legislation which itself is in accordance with the Constitution and comes from the State.

While setting out what it expects from people typically it allows for exemptions where it feels to have a blanket restriction would be unreasonable by adding phrases such as "where possible", "in exceptional circumstances..."  or "within reason".

Guidance within that suggests what exemptions may  be accepted so long as the general aims of the legislation are met and they exist because most things cannot be met by a "You can or you cannot" response and so require people to consider a situation and exercise judgement.

Acting against the legislation is actionable though legal action while going against guidance of itself is not so while a official may request face to face you comply so long as you do not breach that law or any other that is it. He can only fine, arrest or issue a summons so long as he has "The Power" under a specific act to do so.

Guidance is the simplified explanation of what it is a person is required or expected to do in most circumstances that derives from that and doesn't go into possible exemptions or it did, not into all the whys and wherefore of. 

In general you cannot be tried for breaches of any guidance only breaches of the actual legislation.

Rules as all of us who lived under them in boarding school might recall are the locally agreed conventions that may curtail things that are legal but of themselves rules are not enforceable in law by such means as court action provided another law hasn't been broken.

For instance not meeting a uniform requirement or if  not running own social media accounts is a condition of your contract being freely agreed and entered into then you could be said to be "in breach of contract" by not keeping to it.

If you don't like the rules of the Blogtown Tennis Club then you free to join or form another.

Thanks

Sometimes you end up looking at the past and with both this Covid-19 business an a few other issues on my mind  it's no that surprising I'd be looking at the comics I read as girl which as I wasn't well for a chunk of that time kept my spirits up.

 

Minnie The Minx as a favourite of mine in the era she'd be a minxing and Dennis really was the menace and like us they'd both pay for it in the end in this classic October 19th 1957 edition in a novel way.

It also references the popularity of Calypso music which was coming in after a decade of immigration from the West Indies to Great Britain.

Cartoon strips such as that I find have always helped lifting my spirits and also thanks for those who have send me their love recently.