The Spotless Mind

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to take all my clothes off and lie down in a very strong magnetic field. You?”

Ah the joys of an MRI scan. At least I suppose there is one consolation from all the scariness, the heart rate acceleration, the sweaty palms, rigid fear and the thought I was going to 1. Pass out   2. Pass out and fall off the table and   3. Pass out, fall off the table and DIE! Yes it is that I had a reason why my hair looked like this on waking this morning…

Usually I don’t have half that excuse. No less scary when looking in the mirror though. Anyway like everyone else I did survive the procedure. Mad thing is I had this procedure about nine months ago and I remembered thinking then it wasn’t as bad as I thought. This time is was worse than I remembered. I was terrified. Then I woke this morning after a bit of an unsettling dream.

I suppose it didn’t help that I came home after the scan and watched the movie Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind as a way of trying to relax and let my heart rate settle. I find it quite a sad film and it made me think that in a way it is exactly what I have been unconsciously trying to do over the last year or so. You know, remove every memory of my relationship that ended and caused me so much heartbreak. Of course I didn’t do this consciously but more it was what I felt I had been forced to do, to recreate a life. Some of it has been deliberate though.

My life is in many ways unrecognisable from that previous time. Almost everything that I see on a daily basis is either new or remodelled in some way. I have gutted this house that I bought in my distress, making it modern, white and adapted to suit me down to the very inch. Newly painted and spotless walls maybe but what about the mind?

On thinking about my dream I remember that at my last module of my training course in NLP we were told that everything in our dreams is about us the dreamer. People in our dreams just represent certain aspects of ourselves or some issue we are dealing with. Also I’ve been told it is a way for our subconscious to make contact with us, sending us a message if you like. Hmmn.

The dream had me revisiting my now ex partner and finding she was living a single life of sorts and still had some habits I used to find very annoying. Although we didn’t discuss it in the dream I understood that her last relationship had ended and that there would never be another big, real and meaningful relationship again. She also had a dark house with a very nice garden and because I had spent time with her I was now going to be late for something that was important. I’ll make of that what I will bearing in mind my neurotransmitters had been scattered somewhat by the magnetism and yet, it could all really be me!

The premise of the film is that a couple have the memories of their relationship that has now gone sour removed so that they can ‘move on’ from it without all the attendant remorse, hurt etc., etc. Of course one of them begins to regret it during the removal procedure and tries to wake up from the process to stop it. He realises that he doesn’t want it all removed and finds instead a taste of a universal truth that it is better to have the memories, painful though they are, as how else are we to learn? (The movie illustrates also in the back story the consequences for not learning from our mistakes). I had seen the movie before and couldn’t quite remember the story but knew I had thought it was good and that I should watch it again. I guess there is also a message about the enduring power of love.

Back to my new, real life and my memories are still intact (except when the menopausal fog descends and I look at notes I’ve written the day before and realise I’m reading them for the first time…) There is a message for me here somewhere. Oh yes and I am trying to write up another of my interviews of inspiring women who have gone through big changes – keep a look out in the next couple of days. In the meantime Happy New Year to the blogging world – I’m off to comb my hair and get the iron filings off me!

Open Plan Living

I heard on the radio recently that latest research has shown when we physically walk through a doorway the brain effectively refreshes itself and does a kind of reboot. This in turn means we can sometimes forget what we were thinking about previously. It explains that particular problem of walking into a room and forgetting what we came in for. For me like many things I take it to the extreme – I obviously walked out of the room and forgot I had a blog!!!

In my defence (here we go again…) my house has been ripped apart (well the kitchen this time), I have been decorating the part that is still intact and I have been to London twice since last posting, completing two more of the modules in my NLP Practitioner training course. The course is beginning to make much more sense to me now and I am really enjoying it. And oh but walking down the Marylebone High Street to Oxford Street on a crisp dry night with all the festive lights twinkling away was just magical…

It is six days until Christmas and at the minute I have a makeshift kitchen in my dining room. The new kitchen is sitting in the hall and the fitters begin tomorrow. I am hosting Christmas lunch for nine people and hopefully on Christmas Eve I can walk through the kitchen door and ‘forget’ that the oven was still in it’s box five days earlier. I live in hope!

Taking Stock And The Three Things That Have Captured My Heart.

I’m taking stock. It’s that time of year. Almost exactly a year ago I felt my life couldn’t get any lower, slower, more black or painful. I was about to realise that wasn’t exactly the case as I went on to sign for a new house purchase and on walking in the door disappeared down a previously unseen black hole in the floor.

My posts on this blog have documented my journey both before and since then and I find myself today thinking about how I am feeling in relation to that dark place all those months ago. I can document on a list my achievements – bought a house, got radioiodine treatment for an ongoing thyroid problem, started a blog(!), began a training course in London, travelled to New York for my son’s wedding, have begun swimming regularly in an outdoor pool, started volunteering and then working on a social farm project where I have made new friends and on and on. Not bad for a broken hearted thyrotoxic singleton.

It’s not really that kind of stock I’m taking though even if sometimes it is good for me to do that. To record on paper all the things I have actually achieved over this time is a reminder when I need it that my day to day life has changed a lot since this time last year. A reminder too that all these things felt like I had to take a huge leap never mind a first step to begin them. As I walk along the coast today (a very welcome relief in the form of weak autumn sunshine after a period of relentless rain) I find myself really reflecting on how I was feeling, inside where it really hurt when I fell down that hole. To remember and compare how I feel today, inside, in my heart.

Truthfully, at times it feels like little has changed. The hurt still resides somewhere deep within but it has a less all consuming presence. Somehow my heart has expanded around the hurt to allow little pockets of joy to swell up and three things seem to increase that joy for me like they have captured my heart, are holding it protected and bathing it periodically in rhythms of music, meaning and hope. If you will allow me to indulge in a little Apple advertising those three things are this...

and this…

 

And this!

Let me explain. When I feel a bit of a black mood coming over me and start that old familiar thinking of “What is the point?’ ‘This is not the life I want’ and ‘It’s all going to come crashing down around me and I won’t be able to do anything” I realise one of the only things to pick me up from it is to listen to music that I love. Loud and again and again. Particularly in the car but also in the house and even while walking. It changes my mood and nourishes my soul somehow.

You all know I blog. I love this connection and it feels like a calling – yes blog I hear you, calling. It has changed my life, it really has. I feel like I have an outlet for all the connections I am making in my head and heart that I have been doing for years. I also know I feel a bit out of sorts if I haven’t written anything for a few days. I enjoy having my own space and quiet again and when I get this I enjoy the creativity that sparks and flies from it. The blog is a work in progress. I’ve even added a new bit to it – check out the first of my interviews. I am a work in progress.

Then that little dog who needs care and company and greets you like she was dying while you were away. It really has captured my heart and although only really on loan to me from time to time, I feel she has been a big part of me getting back to me. What and how it is exactly I do not know. A sense of companionship perhaps, something to take care of that somehow gets reflected back as care of myself. A little reminder perhaps that love is best shared and needs fed and comforted.

So these three things feel like they are building my heart up to really connect with other people directly again and not just through connecting with their words either through music or blogging. To build a relationship, one that is real and true I know has to begin with building a relationship with a dog, an ipod and a Mac  yourself.

There, my stock is accounted for. Lets listen to some great music (worth getting through the advert for)…

The Kindness Of Strangers

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the runaway blogger. Tenerife this time. Clearly this is now a travel blog. Well obviously this is now a travel blog. I’ve brought you the delights of the North of Ireland, London, New York, Belfast and now the latest Tenerife. Five days roasting our backsides off sunning, sea-ing and sanding on the volcanic island that is bathed in the warm Atlantic waters…

Interesting iron artwork here…

Interesting nightlife…oh no that’s me sorry. As you can see something attached itself to my neck on the day we arrived and remained there the whole time…

I’ve exorcised another ghost here on this journey of mine.  Do you know there is actually something a little annoying to find that all the things you thought you would/could never do or enjoy again you can? Nothing to be a drama queen about any more – i.e. there is little left on that list of things. Life does go on and I guess there really is absolutely nothing you can’t enjoy again in a slightly different way when you just allow the possibility in. I’m making a new list of all the things I want to do, things I thought I would never want to do and it is growing longer with the passing days.

On this holiday we experienced the kindness of strangers, a re-enactment of a similar experience of a kindly German man who helped us pitch our sun umbrella. When we returned to our spot after lunch he had left us sand mats and another umbrella to use.

I watched a father staying in the same resort as us patiently lift his disabled son in and out of the pool and his wheelchair and attend to him all the hot day long.

The droll sense of humour of the reception staff at our hotel brought smiles to our faces every time we asked them something. “Do you speak English?” “No” “Can you order us a taxi?” “No” “Did your cleaning staff run off with my thyroxine tablets?” “What?” Actually that last one I knew, I really knew there was some explanation for the disappearance of my tablets. It took me a day to work out that the bedside table was not actually attached to my bed headboard and that it pulled out to reveal the thin strip of tablets behind.

Even the generosity of McDonalds with it’s policy of free internet WiFi wherever they are in the world felt like a gift to us travellers.

There’s that foot again taking those tentative first steps to a new life. A life that is altered but not without good company, humour and love. I’m still readjusting, living life with a future yet to unfold.  I now know though that future needs to be filled with other people, some of whom I may not even have met yet.

Growing Blogs, Seeds and Children

Another little trailer for you!

I am starting a new feature for my blog – I’m going to do a series of interviews with inspiring women who have stories to tell about making and moving through change in their lives. Terrifyingly, I’m going to say this will be a weekly feature and I have a number lined up already beginning with this week’s which will be with you shortly (tempted to write ‘if you believe that…’)

Stay tuned for inspirational reads…

PS In the meantime here is a photo of what was growing under my sink when I came back from New York. I think it started life as birdseed.

On a happier note – this started life 23 years ago- isn’t she gorgeous?

Well slightly less stringy anyway. My own birthday next week – have decided I shall be 51 for ever more so there!

Being Part of Something Giant

 

No sooner am I posting about the sights in New York and surrounding environs but I am off visiting our own little claim to world heritage fame that is the Giant’s Causeway along the North Antrim coast. An unexpected trip this time as I had offered to help out a friend who in turn had a friend over from England to stay but who had to go to a funeral so her friend was semi abandoned. Still with me? Anyhow Julie (new friend) who hails from Sheffield in England is on her first trip to Northern Ireland and was keen to see the Giant’s Causeway so off we set on a 170 mile round trip.

The causeway coastal route itself is a mesmerising drive taking in some pretty dramatic rock formations and sculptures formed from an ever crashing tide that never fails to almost hypnotise you with its swell, noise, bubble and foam. The light changes as you drive north out of Belfast and the sea becomes a crisper cacophony of colour and sound with the beaches and chalky cliffs gleaming white in the low September sun. Beautiful.

I have been up to the Giant’s Causeway twice before in recent years and each time I could feel the excitement rising in my belly like a child going on a trip to the seaside. Both times I felt sheer enjoyment, pleasure, a communing with the natural world that seemed to fill my boots as I stood gazing out at the constantly moving ocean or walked over the footsteps of the giants and the world famous basalt columns that make up the causeway. Both times I also had the people I love most in the world stepping over those stones with me but on this day I felt a different feeling, less the lightness of before and more an internal churning and that old familiar tug of loss bubbling up within.

As I look at myself standing on the stones I realise I look like any other tourist enjoying the outer landscape all the while my smile belying my inner sadness. Julie and I stopped for lunch at a nearby pub and on the windows were photographs and an appeal for more information about the whereabouts of a 47year old woman who has been missing from the area for over a week. She had parked her car at a local Gaelic Football Club and hasn’t been seen since. I notice too the smile on her face in the grainy black and white photo.

The Giant’s Causeway and surrounding area is steeped in mythology and folklore, the tourist board desperate to widen the appeal as much as possible. I have heard and learned the stories of the feuding giants, one in Ireland the other in Scotland and the potential breaching of the causeway between the two. I have heard and learned about the geological explanation for the unusual rock formations  involving the cooling of molten basalt, cracking to form the hexagonal columns now exposed after millions of years of erosion. The National Trust who manage the site are midway through the building of a new visitor centre due to open in 2012 and no doubt the visitor experience of the rocks will be enhanced further.

For me it remains a personal reflection of my life. Even a rock solid base with time cannot escape the changes brought about by the swirling, lashing, ebb and flow of a life. To walk in the footsteps of the giants, even to stand on their shoulders requires the courage to know that everything changes, hearts do heal and that I need to be thankful for the small life I have and the opportunity to just let the wave wash over me once again.

Julie was the perfect companion for me that day with her understanding that she wasn’t in the presence of the most sparkling or enthusiastic of tourist guides and that she didn’t need to be. Rather we seemed to match each other’s need for a bit of company, a bit less conversation and a shared appreciation of hot tea from a flask.

On our return journey back to Belfast via the less circuitous route, we heard on the radio that a woman’s body had been found washed up on the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland on the eastern shore of the sea we had just been looking out on. It had obviously given up it’s bounty, no longer needed and my heart went out to her family where that wave would continue to crash for a long time. May she rest now in peace.

Driving By Instruction

I’ve earned another award. It’s called the Most Abandoned Blog Award and when you get it you have to list all the excuses  reasons why you have been so remiss. In alphabetical order. I’ve lost my dictionary so I’m doing it chronologically. Here follows my ten days in New York taking in my son’s wedding in Connecticut…

Three thousand miles due west, disorientation due to high altitude and several time zones, heat exhaustion due to low altitude and a series of ‘mind the gap’ verbals, group travel disorientation due to complete pack of adult children speaking in tongues, group travel murder plot attempt, abort and fail. Sun, sand and complete sunburn on Atlantic side of Long Island, sitting in a plastic bag for 4 hours waiting for tennis to begin in Flushing Meadow – hold on we are in New York aren’t we? Rained off? Did you say RAINED OFF?

Only people from Northern Ireland would attempt that same plastic bag thing again a second day so yes sitting in plastic bag again for slightly less than 4 hours this time. Did see Serena Williams come out, knock up and then skip off to get dried off and go home presumably. We left about an hour later. The mini individual steam room thing we had going on helped us to develop the skin peeling horror that developed several days later – why, one daughter had to buy a completely new outfit for the wedding to cover her now hilariously patterned (usually white) legs.

Next came an episode from Lost hiring a car in Connecticut – me driving. We were given a GPS and made the first journey from the house where we picked up the car driving by instruction. I was so focussed on driving on the right side of the road and avoiding causing a multi car pile up that I literally followed every instruction without taking in any sense of direction so when we came to make the same return journey later in the dark and where we had a GPS fail (didn’t know there was an antennae that needed to be up – doh!) all I could do was ignore the 4 other voices in the car giving complete opposite directions and keep making right hand turns in an ever decreasing circle until we ended up in someone’s driveway.

Helpful phonecalls from our new extended family only made matters worse as we needed “get on to 35 South” translated to “in 0.2 miles turn left” etc., etc. To this day I have no idea what direction we were either in or should have been going. We arrived about 2 hours late and not sure how we managed even that – the GPS must have got going at some point – can’t remember! Imagine if we had missed the wedding…

But we didn’t. Stress that morning built while trying to work out how to get 9 people to the wedding venue on time and in order of their importance (Best man, mother of the groom, siblings of the groom who were doing a reading, father of the groom etc.) in a 5 seater car with a directionless driver. Again managed it somehow, explanation escapes me, no arrests made. My other stress was due to lack of technical ability and North America’s lack of digital projection equipment. Actually their lack of electric kettles is another intriguing thing about the US but I digress.

Wedding venue found and corresponding bodily parts retrieved we each set off to have a fab day. Much alcohol, food and merry making was had – that Happy hour thing is hilarious at a wedding – and I think I escaped with my reputation intact even though even I took to the dance floor to while away the afternoon…

After the wedding it was back to New York and just time for a little sight see-ing from the Top of the Rock…

Going home of course included 3000 odd miles in an easterly direction, altitude disorientation blah blah, the wittiest pilot I’ve ever experienced – announced just off the Eastern Seaboard that someone had left their teeth in one of the toilets and could they please collect them. I laughed my pants off at this all the way across the Atlantic whereupon he announced just before landing that they still hadn’t been retrieved!! Me thinks it was a little ploy by the pilot to amuse the passengers… Anyho it worked. Just as well – arrived home to find my plumber’s sense of humour not so funny – no toilet in the bathroom. Happy to report it is now installed but that is definitely on this list. What is this list again? Oh yes the reasons why I haven’t been blogging…

Highlights for me? Having a day on the beach on Long Island with all three of my children and my now extended family, getting to the US Open even though I saw no play and seeing my son so happy on his wedding day where my daughters read beautifully two readings I had selected, one of which was a poem I had written. Aw.

Just as a little aside – what is going on with editing posts? I can’t save, preview or it seems publish although if you are reading this it must have published – what is that all about? I think I might have jet lag as I am less able to edit my photos, add captions etc. than when I first started blogging.

Where Dreams Are Made Of…

Yes the concrete jungle – I’m in New York!!

No sooner am I posting about why I haven’t posted in a while when I really have no excuse, but I have to post that I really do have an excuse because I’m in New York! Five days here then up to Connecticut for my son’s wedding. Am going to try to at least get a little photo post out – here’s todays…

First me and my gorgeous son and wife to be, sisters and friends outside their little apartment…

Hurricane Irene damage nearby

‘Brasillians Day’ in Times Square

Bit more Northern Irish than Brasillian maybe…

Back soon I promise!

Under The Belfast Clouds

That’s where I live. Not under the Tuscan sun but under the grey weather that is Belfast. Recently heard: “I love the summer in Ireland – it’s my favourite day of the year!” Lord. Can you believe that I am so under the weather that I had started this post (according to the last edited note) on 19th August and I had forgotten all about it? Couldn’t remember it at all when I opened my dashboard up and there it was all two lines and a title of it…

Well, I’m back again. Hopefully I will actually finish this post all the way to publish and you will get to hear what all I have been up to. Not a lot. A whole lot has been going on and then that thing that happens to me happened – so many words and stuff swirling around in my head unable to find the route out onto the keyboard and then things start getting backed up in the visceral pathways and I end up in a bad mood!

Not really sure when all this latest congestion started except that I have had a change in my routine. In fact I have had a change in several of my routines. On a very basic level the house was turned upside down by the installation of my new wood burner. Fireplace removal does mean complete clearing of main living area which in turn means complete take over of the entire downstairs by Sooty and Sweep (cheeky) which again in turn means a change in situational writing. I know these things are meant to sit atop your lap hence you can write anywhere said lap finds itself but it turns out I am more a creature of habit than I care to admit and that threw me completely.

Then of course the pallet that the kiln-dried wood came in had to be taken apart, the wood split and the nails removed…

Gone are the ghastly shelves either side of the fireplace that I so disliked…

There they go off in the trailer yay!

Think it was all worth it…

It will be nice when I get the room painted. Have to wait for the re-wiring to be done before I can get to that but it is beginning to take shape I think. Did you notice the sun was out in those photos? Yes it was summer!

Also I have started working in a new venture (new for me) on a social farm project about which I will write more in a future post. This is actually quite a big thing and I have been going regularly now for a few weeks working with a group of people who already feel like new friends. Outdoors, physical work and a whole other perspective on life reside within this project which has been leaving me much more tired physically and for the purpose seeker that I am slightly more muddled. But wait, confusion is good remember and I really do feel that something bigger for me is emerging from the gloom.

Which leads me to the next thing. I have written an entry in my writing journal that reads the following and I quote ‘on the 5th August 2011 I started my own company. At the moment it is called Life Re-Connected and I am developing Personal Change Resources for Women‘ It is true, I am finally going to do what it is I want to do. In fact I am already doing it. I am developing resources for women going through change in their lives. I have so many ideas it is ridiculous. Could it be that I really am in the room of renewal? We’ll see but for now I am going to develop my ideas carefully and with structure. I feel I have finally found a way to connect all the things that I feel passionate about.

I have removed the mantle, the cover, the canopy to let out the heat and light and the heart that was held in the recess. The flue has been swept, the dirt and soot swept away. Chim chiminy chim chiminy chim chim cheree, A sweep is as lucky as lucky can be……

Did you miss me?!!

Awarding The Stars. Seven Times.

Okay so this has proved to be the hardest post so far to start and only because I have accepted the award so generously awarded to me by Kathy over at Reinventing the Event Horizon! Such an honour to have been added to her blogroll never mind added to her list of whom to pass the award on to. You can read more about the award from her here.

Anyhow in so doing I graciously accept and here are my seven posts that I have managed, as a fairly newbie blogger, to draw out of my not so large back catalogue. For those of you who have read some of these posts already you might be more interested in the 8 other blogs that I am paying the award forward to.

As I get ready to give you my 7 links I just want to say a bit about Kathy’s blog. Before I began blogging I characteristically took a lot of time reading around blogs that interested me and from a fairly dark place at the time, both geographically (I’m in cloudy Northern Ireland) and spiritually, I began to discover a way into worlds that seemed so much bigger and brighter. Reading has been for me a life time’s passion and I know I can recognise great writing very quickly. Kathy drew me into her world and her experiences living in Veitnam and later Haiti with her partner, who is a disaster-response specialist, not only because of a fascinating backdrop to her world.

Kathy is also an artist. Creative to a fault and it is the way she reveals the very full experience of her life through writing the most eloquent prose, sometimes excrutiatingly painful, with her descriptions of recovery from bipolar disorder, sometimes pure poetry and her stunningly colourful and expressive pictures and illustrations that just make for a brilliant blog. It was one of the first blogs that I so admired from afar and now do so from what feels like a much closer place. Thank you so much Kathy.

My 7 posts for your perusal then are:

1. Most Beautiful – for goodness sake this is difficult! My most beautiful post? Hmmn. Has to be Layered Sensory Stimulation as my commenters seemed to find it so. This is a post that is so full of emotion for me, emotion and truth that I have felt needed to be expressed and so here it is.

2. Most Popular – still difficult mainly because I don’t have a great number of readers and I have never been freshly pressed! Anyho technically this one is the post with the most comments – or should it be the one with the most views? I don’t really get how these stats work – wish someone would do a freshly pressed on that topic… A Hundred Million Suns was the post I wrote about me and my daughter taking my boat out of the water and driving it to a boatyard for repairs – not too significant I hear you say but actually this was overloaded with emotion for me and you probably have to read the previous post to understand why (all necessary links are there!)

3. Most Controversial – me controversial? Ha! Maybe my future posts about women’s experience of men at private swimming pools? Or the unbelievably biased and sexist reporting of thirty odd years of the Northern Ireland troubles or even culture generally? Or maybe even more controversial a discussion about why so many women spend their lives needing….sorry I’m off on one and haven’t written any of those rants posts! What I have written though is a post about my own experience of homophobia you can read in It Was Just My Creative Mental Ability, Running Away With Me Why is that controversial? Well the culture I live in finds anything about sexual orientation controversial and homophobia can even be internalised which is what I am alluding to here. Heavy!

4. Most Helpful – ooh another tricky selection. They are all helpful to me but my few readers seemed to enjoy the model I described in June, June, Gone Too Soon which describes the importance of confusion when moving through change.

5. Most Surprisingly Successful – Has to be Flight Patterns when I had no idea what I was writing about other than my scattered thoughts!

6. Most Under-Rated –I Can’t Come To Your Wedding, I Don’t Know Who I Am Yet. Sorry. was clearly the best article written about the Royal Wedding. Should have been pressed. Freshly.

7. Most Pride Worthy – I’m sneaking in two here (it’s my blog and I can do that) one full of heartbreak It’s Coming On Easter and one full of humour Forget Bliss, Follow Your Napoleon’s Nose I’m very proud of both of these 🙂

Now the much easier bit – forwarding links to other blogs (my Seven Links Awards recipients) whom may or may not wish to take part in the award:

1. Pissykittyslitterbox. One of the first bloggers that I connected with in the world wide web! Lou’s honesty, humour and ability to make almost anything entertaining just has to be read to be believed. She can take the big issues such as depression and suicide as well as descriptions of her kittens and dogs and deliver a knock out post that will linger with you long after you finish reading. Prepare yourself for a riot of verbals all of them colourful!!

2. Stepping Out Of History. Likewise Jennifer was one of the first blogs I enjoyed reading and her ability to tell a story around events both global and personal always speaks to something deep inside me. Check out her recent video too.

3. Backonmyown. Of all the blogs there are out there of people facing breakups, divorce or heartache of whatever sort I find Pat’s the most balanced, humorous, intelligent and inspiring.

4. The Literary Horse. Belly aching humour, great writing and the most fabulous photographs of my favourite animal. One of those blogs that just makes me so glad that someone sitting in Northern Ireland can access a little window into a life like theirs. Love it. (Also from Jane’s blog I was able to access this link to a very interesting article about the recent tragedy in Norway. Makes you think)

5. Countingducks had me from the first post I read about him losing his blog! Hilarious. These posts have a charm all their own – taking what sometimes seems like the threads of an everyday event to a woven picture, unintended. I just love them.

6. Deborah the Closet Monster who has probably received loads of these awards (and has been freshly pressed which I was trying to avoid. Linking to a blog that has been freshly pressed that is, not that I am avoiding being freshly pressed. Stopping now.) but I had to mention her. What can I say other than brilliant writing, amazing insights and a warmth that flows across the sphere that we call bloggo! You will be hooked in the best possible way.  Update – and I can’t believe I haven’t already mentioned her piece of perfection that is her toddler Li’l D!!

7. Jo Bryant. Again I just love to be able to peek into worlds of other women, on other sides of the world. I find Jo’s blog, which she writes in New Zealand (although I understand her to be Australian), fascinating to explore. She calls herself a bit of a rebel and her blog is well, different! Combined with intelligent writing, what more could you want? Just updating – Check out her post on What makes New Zealand Kiwi!

8. I can survive – Although Caroline is not her real name I feel as though I have got to know her a little through her very honest charting of her journey through divorce. I don’t know why but this is the blog I often want to respond to the most – sometimes to agree, sometimes not!! But me thinks Caroline likes a little controversy… 🙂 Also I think she shows a fantastic ability to keep searching for her truth and she deserves to find it, painful though it has been.

So there you have it my seven links awards. Hope the links work and I’m looking forward to reading those that take up the challenge!