What has happened to the Meme? You know - those things that people used to tag you with and you had to list anything from three to a hundred random things about yourself that could include anything from your favourite colour to embarassingly personal revelations about underwear and sexual preferences. Well you can forget about any of that. Apart from my fidelity to the purple chav trousers (they have never let me down) the preferences of Signs are nothing if not fluid and changeable. But I do like a good List. If nothing else, they do away with the need to think about having anything of import to say in a post. Put something in the context of a List and it becomes strangely eloquent. You can also get away with making pronouncements about things you might otherwise be wiser to shut up about. With no Meme, it all begins to sound humdrum, but there is so much I could have told you:
Wearing a bra with wire underneath might make your breasts look glad and uplifted, but at the end of the day you will have a red rim underneath them.
Eating a lot of vegetables for several months is almost certainly a very good thing but it is unlikely to be a cure for M.E.
Solitude is a fine thing, but when you find yourself having many serious conversations with a stuffed bear it is time to review the situation.
Giving up cigarettes doesn't necessarily mean that you will ever stop wanting them. Giving up sugar, though, probably does.
I seem to use the words 'probably' and 'perhaps' a lot.
My Dell laptop has suffered a clutch of Blue Wall attacks and is probably dying.
I want a Mac Airbook.
I am going on holiday to France.
Meanwhile I wish you the serenity of the season. We need serenity, without it we get into deep trouble. That's So Pants says something about this. It is the fifth birthday of her lovely blog today.
Be seeing you.
**
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
doth make my soul to thrive
Came back from Brighton yesterday evening to find that our apple tree had fallen down. It was a good friend. The children used to climb it, fruit made lovely jelly. With us for nearly twenty years, it was always precariously connected to the earth as its other half had fallen, years back, in a storm. Something had been eating away at it - the honey fungus, perhaps, that has been stalking our garden for a few years.
There are riots in London, and lootings and burnings, everyone talking about it on Facebook. I am uneasy. Daughter says there is a siren a minute. Another shop burned down. Someone said that the youth of the Middle East riot for freedom, the youth of the UK riot for 42 inch HD TV. But the sickness goes deeper than that, I think. Certainly it is opportunistic. What is it saying to us, though - that they are disconnected, alienated and don't care? It goes further back than the Cuts. Kids on barren housing estates with what kind of culture?
Mercury is in retrograde, someone said. This means little to me, but apparently it is significant. In the words of the I Ching, it does not further one to cross the great water. Stay at home and put the kettle on, keep an eye on the news.
I lay on the trunk of my apple tree, palms against its skin. My first tree hug - my last, perhaps.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Life Goes On - Bra (2)
It is that time again – why? It is writ in black and white that I bought enough bras in December 2009 to last me several years, but now they are all – how can I put it? – unsatisfactory, and they make my bosoms look sad. You may think that I have more pressing issues than sad bosoms at this moment, especially if you have been reading my blog this year; for it has been something of an annus horribilis in the health and vitality department, and no mistake. But sometimes attention to the small (38 double D, if you want to know) details in one’s life can bring uplift of several kinds, and Mr. Signs and I have a short holiday planned. Unlikely as it seems, we have been invited to stay on someone’s boat in the south of France, and I need a few glad-rags. Even my knickers have holes in them and look miserable.
So back I go to M and S, this time in Brighton, which is convenient. I get white linen trousers, summery tops, cotton nightshirt, multipacks of knickers. I have to be focussed and not get diverted into Primark or any of the more interesting Brighton boutiques because after an hour or two I will turn into a pumpkin. The woman in the bra department says she is run off her feet and has no time to do a fitting. I say, that’s ok because I know my size. She asks to see what bra I’m wearing and when I take my top off she says the strap is riding up my back, which is a very bad thing. I have chosen to try on something called a T shirt bra, not the kind of thing I would usually get as it is padded and has wire underneath but I have been reliably informed (by someone whose bosoms looked glad and uplifted) that they were just the thing for wearing under summer tops, and they are only £16 for a pack of two. But the wire rides up and presses unkindly, the padded bit perches above the bosom and I can’t see how anyone manages to wear something like this. Moreover, between the time it took to get the bra and try it on, I have turned pumpkin and have to sit down. From the other side of the cubicle door, the bra department woman asks how it’s going, I say I’m not sure and she says ok and not meaning to rush me but there’s people waiting to get in and would I like to make an appointment for a fitting later on or tomorrow?
Never mind. I did not get all the things in one day. I have taken the best part of the week to do the shopping thing because I know how it goes – and the sandals I bought (not M and S but Birkenstock) needed to be taken back and exchanged because the leather cut into my ankle (and yes I know about Birkenstocks and how you need to wear them in).
But the sun has properly shown its full-on, beautiful face; I have done a bit of writing; second root-canal treatment seems to have done the trick and it almost seems as though, for a short space at any rate, I will not have to visit the dentist again; two good writing friends visited today. Apart from that, I have been on my own since Monday, and will be until the weekend. Twilight. A great canopy of lilac sky. The mew of seagulls.
Tomorrow – Bravissimo!
So back I go to M and S, this time in Brighton, which is convenient. I get white linen trousers, summery tops, cotton nightshirt, multipacks of knickers. I have to be focussed and not get diverted into Primark or any of the more interesting Brighton boutiques because after an hour or two I will turn into a pumpkin. The woman in the bra department says she is run off her feet and has no time to do a fitting. I say, that’s ok because I know my size. She asks to see what bra I’m wearing and when I take my top off she says the strap is riding up my back, which is a very bad thing. I have chosen to try on something called a T shirt bra, not the kind of thing I would usually get as it is padded and has wire underneath but I have been reliably informed (by someone whose bosoms looked glad and uplifted) that they were just the thing for wearing under summer tops, and they are only £16 for a pack of two. But the wire rides up and presses unkindly, the padded bit perches above the bosom and I can’t see how anyone manages to wear something like this. Moreover, between the time it took to get the bra and try it on, I have turned pumpkin and have to sit down. From the other side of the cubicle door, the bra department woman asks how it’s going, I say I’m not sure and she says ok and not meaning to rush me but there’s people waiting to get in and would I like to make an appointment for a fitting later on or tomorrow?
Never mind. I did not get all the things in one day. I have taken the best part of the week to do the shopping thing because I know how it goes – and the sandals I bought (not M and S but Birkenstock) needed to be taken back and exchanged because the leather cut into my ankle (and yes I know about Birkenstocks and how you need to wear them in).
But the sun has properly shown its full-on, beautiful face; I have done a bit of writing; second root-canal treatment seems to have done the trick and it almost seems as though, for a short space at any rate, I will not have to visit the dentist again; two good writing friends visited today. Apart from that, I have been on my own since Monday, and will be until the weekend. Twilight. A great canopy of lilac sky. The mew of seagulls.
Tomorrow – Bravissimo!
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