I Rose

My rose was blue

I stepped beneath the arch

My rose was gold

Or peach

Softness incarnate

Never crimson

Never bold

Tentative like my

Steps.

I rose beneath the arch

To meet four faces

Framed with snake

With sea

With sinister teeth

With chains

With all the keys I need

To break free.

I rose and took

The proffered seaweed

Tiny bladders ready

To pop with salty sweetness

A shoreline promise

Of things to come.

I rose, hands out

Filled with light;

Stepping into darkness

My rose was black

Ashen; withered

Suddenly alive again!

Gold and glowing

Snakebite antidote

Starlight flowing

I rose; I gasped; I smiled.

David Cameron: Spambot

David Cameron, David Cam
You are a robot
Made out of spam
You hunt the foxes 
And kill the poor
And that’s what Tories voted for.

At Eton you were just one of the chaps
Burning money in front of tramps
I guess you must have been easily led
To stick your cock inside that pig’s head
Now you’re the one that calls the shots
We’ve got nowt while you’ve got lots
You’ve drained our country; our will is sucked
And now it’s us that’s really fucked.

David…

IDS is an STI
A wart on the UK’s inner thigh
Jeremy Hunt: what a… Guy!!!
And the less said about Osbourne,
The better

David…

Now he’s quoting some nice old dame
Who once had to use her middle name
She told him she’s a big fan of Jez
And doesn’t like the cut of Dave’s Jib.
So Davey wants to knock Jeremy out
See the spambot become a lout
Smearing shit better than the Sun
Does he really think we’re all that dumb??

No, David Cameron, David Cam
You are a robot
Made out of spam
You hunt the foxes 
And kill the poor
And that’s what Tories voted for.

Go Sober for October: Day 6

So Day 6 commences, I’m sober and surprisingly OK! Had a bit of a moment last night when Jim​ enjoyed our homebrew, but I woke up clear headed which is always a bonus 🙂 Please sponsor me, every penny helps keep me motivated and goes to help those with cancer all over the UK. Thank you all!

Sponsor me HERE.

I’m Going Sober for October!

Please sponsor me to keep my liver clean in October! All pennies go to Macmillan Cancer Support.

This is a hard challenge for me as I love my wine, particularly at this time of year. My fund raising page is HERE.

Pm Questions Today

Interesting to see that David Cameron didn’t actually give a direct answer to any of the questions Mr Corbyn posed to him, from us, today. Cameron gave, at best, evasive waffle about policy, and at his worst used the questions as a platform to attack the Labour party. People, that is the respect the Tory government has for your words.None at all.

Today I am mostly…

…stripping elderberries off their stalks. Tedious but worth it in the end! What am I going to make?

  

Help.

I see many posts stating that there is no need for us to feel ‘shame’ or ‘guilt’ about dead children from other countries because we didn’t cause the crisis. You know what? Who cares? 
How far back are you going to go? How many countries who didn’t take them in will you blame first? How about the warmongers in the Middle East? The governments that refused to aid them and sent them and their families on their way?
I say again, who cares? They are suffering, they are struggling, they need help. 

It doesn’t matter whose fault it is.

It doesn’t matter how or why they are here.

It doesn’t matter that we can’t accurately place blame, shame or guilt.

We have the means to help, so we should do so.

We have the means to help. That’s all that matters, here and now.

Ocarina

  
Definitely in my top ten of gifts this year. An ‘ocarina of time’ from my beloved. Now I just have to learn how to play it…

Meadowsweet

   
 
My friend took me for a walk around New Galloway, and amongst the brambles and cow parsley we found beautiful meadowsweet, also known as mead wort or Queen of the Meadow. Although a useful herb, especially to a home brewer like myself, we didn’t pick any, as the bees were enjoying the flowers too much.

Vice: Depression

No, I don’t mean a vice like smoking, or drinking, although I do succumb to those from time to time. Today’s depression is like an actual vice, the kind you had in wood work class, and my brain is the substitute for the two-by-four.

Gradually someone is winding the handle, bring the jaws of the vice closer together, gripping the tender greyish pink of my poor brain ever tighter. To make room for this, my eyes are starting to bulge out; my sinuses are on fire and throbbing; my ears pop and my own blood pressure and heartbeat are the only things I can hear.

My brain held tight, unable to move; no flashes of inspiration or leaps of fancy. No jumping for joy in these jaws of judgement: judged unworthy, hopeless, helpless, hapless; judged a joke, a waste, a failure…

Yet I know none of it is true. I, the owner of my brain and therefore my destiny, knows I am not a failure. I am, even, marginally successful in my chosen field! I am certainly successful as a mother and as a partner, and have happy people around me to prove it. But these convictions and the reminders thereof do not free me from the vice.

I thought, for the first time today, what it would be like to have someone loosen the vice. I can’t do it myself. I’ve tried. The doctor has tried with tablets; my CBT specialist has tried with words and pamphlets and apps and appealing to my spiritual side. So who turns the vice? Who can unwind this apathy?

I don’t have an answer, not today. Some days, it feels close. Close enough to touch. But not, I fear, today.