Not Once in a Lifetime

It is not there. 

It never is. 

It never has been. 

I look but it is not 

And never has been there

So sad that it has never been. 

Not once. Not ever.

No Change

I have no friends on any social media site I hope I'm polite but I'm not friendly I treat professions of friendship with deep suspicion.

Here's a list not a long one after the first I'm going to stick to the most serious criminal attacks.

Attack by professionals so serious it trended on Twitter and was mentioned on Sky News, my bewilderment, pain and concern for the rag concerned was obvious, during that attack only one attempted to intervene he was ignored. There was no friendship or common courtesy.

Hacked. Not by some thief but by the one who was desperate to retrieve evidence in hundreds of emails and he did indeed delete hundreds of emails. How unfortunate for him that I am a hoarder and because I was fairly new to the internet I had as instructed saved everything on the laptop to disk.

Stalking

Voyeurism

They shared my address, stalked my home and by someone with a key and who knew I had gone out invaded my home it can only have been one person/family although they may have had accomplices.

Illegal filming and the sharing of the film/s with an unknown number of people.

Death threats so many I've lost count.

There are no friendly warnings from such people

I don't care about the outraged screeching of those who are afraid of how much I know. Nothing any of them do is for a good cause they do it for the love of celebrity and howling that they knew this but didn't know that is irrelevant to me they did nothing when they could and should have done so much.

First it was one

Then it was six or seven

Now its hundreds and they can have no idea how many copies of the appalling film are still held somewhere.

I have no friends in social media there is no one who would dare use his or her own name unlike me their lives depend on their image I am the one who has refrained from the kind of character assassination they did to me.

Don't any of you dare talk to me of friendly warnings its years too late.

They almost destroyed me I don't think I will ever fully recover certainly not here where my every move is known and all I was doing was playing with the wonders of the internet. One email would have solved the problem but that would identify one of them so instead he deleted hundreds of my emails and stole some writing I had been toying with trying to figure out which type of writing I felt comfortable with, too late now I know.

126 - Shakespeare & Me & a Sliding Scale

I'm not a huge fan of Shakespeare but I couldn't possibly leave him out of my truly greats. So I thought I would combine him with another memory from the old days.

In my youth we had a kind of scale. In the middle,the balance as it were, we used to say Friday and Saturday night were plebs nights out, two days for the workers to play. At one end Thursday was no good for the chosen few they would be preparing for their weekend in the country. For them Monday was also out of the question, that's when exhausted they tottered back to town. To be different, and by inference better, the chosen few had Tuesday and Wednesday to be out and about wining, dining, theatre disco, whatever. At the other end of the scale were the unemployed and disenfranchised for them Friday through Wednesday were no good at all. In their case the only day to be out and about was Thursday for that was when the dole paid out.

I think, in the eyes of some, Shakespeare is a bit like that: from one end to the other with a huge gulf in between. You can love Shakespeare and be anyone but if you only love the sonnets Friday and Saturday are your nights out.

I have, there is no denying it, aged, and I hope with age I have grown. Here is one of my favourite sonnets. Its so beautiful, even hundreds of years later and all the changes in between, aaand, (Shakespeare should be spinning in his grave!) I don't care what day of the week it is and I don't care if it was actually written by Shakespeare or Bacon or whoever. Nor do I care for all the analysts (spit) and their explanation of the meaning, like anyone needs that. If you can't read the meaning in this: you can't read!

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

---
Written on 11th August 2011 and updated by me today for Shakespeare is some four hundred years dead while the beauty of his art is immortal

Silent Stress

Blood red sky

Silent trees

Nothing lives

Here

Cats and dogs

Live here and

Are reason enough

For me

For now

Happiness

It used to

I laughed at the joy of the day

I walked in the rain for the joy of walking

I watched the birds fly for the joy of freedom

I laughed out loud at the wind in my hair

Then you came

Happiness died slowly

And in pain

FORTY SEVEN - Long ago and Far Away...

In a country too beautiful to describe:

If it rained and your shoes were new you were one of the lucky ones. If it rained and your shoes, as so many were, were old hand me downs or cast offs, your feet got wet. Not so bad in the summer when the squelching cold was easily dried and warmed, but oh it hurt in the winter when you sat in class with the fire warming the teacher who stood, toasting his rear and blocking the heat while you froze a mere few feet away.

You walked or ran home and didn't notice the beauty through the rain. At home it might be happy or it might not and for a few it definitely was not, but either way it was drier and warmer than outside and sometimes if need be there was the barn to shelter in. For a few going home was fraught with danger but not going home was worse, sure you could be thrown to the church who knew how to deal with recalcitrant youth.

The Kitchen was the main room, there the fire burned with the turf that on summer days you had helped to cut. No radio or tv back then, families talked and laughed or cried together in the steaming, smoky kitchen with the windows and door shut tight against the draught.

On happy nights, how a child remembers! stories were told of other times and strange events, of chains rattling on empty stairs, young eyes would gaze fearfully at the stairs and wait for someone else to go first.

When it was time for bed you got changed quickly in the freezing bedroom and if the blanket on the bed was not enough your Mum took your dried out coat and threw it across the bed for extra warmth. Sure it would come to no harm there and in the morning you would put it on to go to school.

For some people and especially for some children this was Ireland not so long ago.

---

This is an old one written about 2010 when I was on a course. I've always liked it so I thought today I'd give it an airing.

---

I Watched Three

Not all the way through of course but I did give them a go, there's something funereal about solid black curtains.

The table and chairs were nice.

I don't for one moment believe the shows, I'm going to call them shows, were done in a big posh studio and that could be a very good thing.

I think the idea is for a sense of intimacy, I don't know probably I lack experience in these matters but I think black curtains are to conceal rather than reveal or establish a sense of intimacy. I don't believe anything intimate has ever happened behind black curtains except possibly during the blackouts in world war two.

What's wrong with a study? Not everyone has a study but almost any room can be made to look like a study and a couple of men having a chat and a glass of something that might be alcohol could be an invitation to relax and enjoy. Cranberry juice can look very like red wine and almost anything can look like whisky or gin.

And that's it for the setting I strongly recommend a change of scene.

I realise some people take a long, a very long time to understand what friendly is but it should be possible for adults to have a conversation without making it sound like an interrogation.

As I understand it the trick to a good interview is to get the person being interviewed to relax enough to drop certain restraints and inhibitions, to do that the interviewer must relax and create the appearance and sense of relaxation and that's a toughie but its important. 

I could say more but do you know I'm still reluctant to deliberately wound. I must get over that, but evidently its not going to happen today, unless I'm goaded. and after all I did like the documentary. 

What Can I Tell You

I don't like grey. I don't know why but I don't like grey Its one of those things I don't hate grey I just don't like it

There are as many shades of grey as there are of every other colour and I don't like grey In theory its fine I'm right there with those who declare grey is a good useful colour

Grey goes with almost everything, grey suits are common as mud its probably true to say more men wear grey suits than any other colour, hmmph they're hiding something I look upon them with suspicion and disdain.

Its not as though I like flash colours and clothes I really don't most would describe the way I dress as conservative, nothing too bright, quite a lot of tweed which to be fair I hardly ever wear anymore, well that's what happens when you hardly ever go out.

I've noticed there is an increasing amount of grey in home decoration I don't mind it a tin of paint is cheap enough and what's wrong with magnolia?

Grey has its uses it probably goes better with dandruff than black, navy or brown, but I don't like grey.

I just You see even the spelling is interchangeable its either grey or gray depending largely upon whether you're in the USA or the UK and who the hell cares. 

Nope I just don't like grey 

Calamity!

Disaster and woe is me. I have a major right index finger problem. Its not working, hardly at all I can't bend it, I can't brush my own fucking hair with it and my choice of clothing has shriveled to whatever doesn't have buttons, and its my own fault.

Last evening I opened the kitchen window to let Trixie in this is not unusual I often open the window for Pippa and Trixie, unfortunately and no one regrets it more than me this time I made a mistake, I caught a bit of Trixie in the window I don't know if it was tail or paw but she went potty and even though I corrected the mistake almost immediately both hands are pocked with claw and teeth marks and the right index finger has been holed around the knuckle.

It hurts to the elbow I tell ye.

I maybe reduced to going to the doctor. I got up early not because I'm going to do that but because as everyone knows sleep is impossible when you are in pain and I'd had enough of tossing, turning and trying to find a position that didn't hurt my right index finger.

You will be pleased to know that when I screamed, howled and whined all three dogs and Pippa went for Trixie, she took off it took me ages to find her I finally spotted her under the sofa. The good news is after about three hours she came out of hiding and graciously deigned to sit on my lap and as a little token she had a go at licking my wounds. Anyone who has cats will know that cats tongues are not particularly comforting they're more sort of rasping.

I think the pain is attacking my shoulder or possibly it was brought on by the bad posture produced by being bent double in fucking agony.

And for those who maybe thinking 'how come she can type' let me tell you its hard work and basically involves the left hand and the right ring finger

Memory

Yesterday someone commented on one of my old posts I don’t often look at old posts too much has happened between the writing and now.  One of the things that’s happened is the way I write has been so abused for so long I almost apologise for writing at all and that’s wrong.

I read the post with a kind of pleasure and pain it was what I had hoped and intended to write when I started blogging. I didn’t expect m/any readers indeed I recall expressing stunned astonishment on Twitter when someone visited my blog.  I don’t know if they read anything or if they did read if they understood what I was saying, somehow I doubt it understanding is very much a one way street for that mixed up first visitor.

I regret the loss of that time and the loss of the feeling that I could say what I liked no one would look or care.

If only that had been true.

Depressing thought but then for some the past is a blood red desert.

Here is a copy of that old post:

===

Do places and memories grow rosy across the years? Perhaps.

Quinns Buildings, Popham Street, Islington, London doesn't exist any more but for me its a place of happy memories. Islington was a great area for the Irish to settle, on the edge of the City and West End so there was always plenty of work for those prepared to get their hands dirty.

After the war my family moved to England, not enmasse, in dribs and drabs over several years. one would arrive tell the others and they would save up the fare. Some of my Mothers family had settled in Islington. I remember visiting my grandmother, two aunts, two uncles and six cousins, they all had their own families in separate flats in Quinns Buildings. I would stay for a week or two for a holiday.

I must have been, oh seven or eight years old and I thought those flats were amazing! completely enclosed and full of interesting, friendly people. You stepped through the big arch into a long courtyard and immediately everyone knew everyone. The flats were four or five storeys high in a long wide oblong, once inside the arch each block of flats had a separate entrance.

My Grandmother had a friend, an English woman with three children and no husband. In her flat there were gas lights there were two of them above the mantel piece. The local shop which was a converted flat in one of the blocks, still sold those flaky, gauzy covers that you put over the flame to light the room. You would turn the old fashioned key thingy holding the match close, but not too close because the covers were fragile and cost money! The women made tea and told stories, such stories! and all the while the lights would flicker and the gas would hiss.

There were two toilets on each landing and they could be used by as many as four families and yet, as I remember, they were always spotlessly clean and smelled not of urine but of bleach. Each landing looked after their own toilets, the families cleaning them every day sometimes a couple of times a day. In those days climbing the stairs was easy, which is just as well because lifts had not reached Quinns Buildings I don't think they ever did.

There were several quite large families in the flats. To accommodate a larger family all the landlord did was knock the wall down between two flats. Four of my cousins lived in one such and I thought it was a grand place. I remember sitting on the roof with them on hot summer days. As far as I knew those flats were the only ones where you could do that they were definitely the only ones where I could do that.

It must have been hard for them, leaving all the heavy belongings behind: all the treasured furniture, linen and so on. or it would have been if they had owned such luxuries. In most cases all people had were the clothes they stood up in and, if they were lucky, one change. Oh how they all loved Ireland but the truth was Ireland was not just an absence of opportunity it was an absence of hope.

Most of my family would say the days in Quinns Buildings were the happiest days. It was a real community, mostly English and Irish but there were others I particularly remember an Italian family their daughter was one of my friends. It actually made no difference, we were all in the same boat, and believe it or not happy to be there. It was better than where we came from. Our families were on the ladder and climbing and that was something they would never have been allowed to do in Ireland.

Days of Stress

I don't know they say some days are better than others and I can see how that must be true but it doesn't feel like it today.

Today is full anger, real almost solid fury if its going away it doesn't feel like it it feels like I'm going to have to do something about it very soon.

Some would say I left it too late but they're wrong, as they so often are. For so long there were two paths one was crowded with laughter the other almost silent with determination.

I don't and never have wanted any of them to go to prison although its still a very real option. I wanted a different kind of evidence, cumulative a proving of character more than a proving of deed. I have that now and failing any agreement I must use it.

Gender Neutral

At a rough estimate I’d say at least 90% of women prefer womens toilets to stay women only. So when did the screeching, miniscule minority become more important?

Its actually a really big and dangerous subject it encompasses the way we’re being told not to encourage our children to see themselves as male or female, to encourage them to believe their sex is their choice its actually not its a fact of birth and any every change is purely cosmetic, and I think involves potential grave physical, emotional and psychological damage to children.

A very few children do have identity problems those children should be raised with the certain knowledge they can change and be accepted just as they are, but they, like all of us, must wait until they are old enough to be sure and to make their own decision. It is without doubt the biggest decision of any persons life and it must be their own carefully considered choice made when they are old enough to know what it really means.

In my time I’ve seen men with hairy chests at the theatre wearing womens evening dress, men in womens evening dress and hob nailed boots. Its their choice and it should remain so but should those men be able to use the womens toilet just because they put a dress on, what happened to womens choice?

Its not simple its very complicated and until no more women are raped or molested all women should have the option of women only toilets.

Source of picture http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/19/trans-life-benefits-of-urinal-free-world

Feet

Regrettably this is not about any kind of fetish, not a bit but it is about feet, and legs,

I have been reduced to remembering all those wonderful homely pictures we see of people with dogs and sometimes cats at their feet. The pictures always look so comfortable, nice warm house, very often a huge log fire is burning merrily in the grate, there's rarely any mention of fires singing but fires do sing and always in front of the fire there is the dog resting next to his master/mistresses out stretched and very comfortable looking feet.

Not in this house.

In this house the mistress dogs do indeed lie at her feet, well not at so much at as on and such is the doggie desire to be close to his mistress aka doormat, said dog is not resting his chin on her ankle or even a toe. Oh no, dog is so close her legs and feet are scrunched up practically under her chin and yes its possible to move dog but he is snoring and is waking an elderly cankerous and would be Alpha male dog the right thing to do just to stretch ones legs?

I think not - for now