Changes

I am struggling to eat and sleep properly, not sure really what’s wrong with me; I am barely able to eat more than 900 calories most days now and I am sleeping an average of 5 hours per night.

This is why I am going quieter than normal again.

I am trying hard to keep my activities up but I am just zoning out a lot during the day because I am tired and uncomfortable and there is this strange feeling as though, something in my life is going to be turned upside down… whether for good or bad I am not sure…

I know something big has already happened in my life, I have gained two new freedoms in this past month – one could be life-changing, the other was kind of predicted by me a few years ago.

Paul and I are living together but we are no longer in a relationship – we have our separate rooms and we are starting to kind of get separate lives too – but we’re still friends.  He is more of a guardian of me now, really.

The other change is my personal finance, I have paid off one of my personal debts which helped us get by Christmas to Christmas over the years and soon another debt will be completely gone too.  This will make my £25 per week treat money go up by another £15 in January!  Now that’s not all, because Paul is now officially retired, it means I have the option of self-employment without the guilt of cutting family funds down if I fail.

So Paul is trying to help me learn how to use technology in order for me to do the YouTube channel I am interested in doing and to also learn how to monetise Pinterest, Instagram and this blog.  So for the next month I may be quieter than usual, only doing one to two posts per day whilst I get educated about what I need to do for self-employment.

I am trying to write a business plan out to see where I could potentially earn an income and how; whilst improving my creative outlet, because ultimately I want my job to be creatively based – not just promoting and advertising.

Paul has a good concept I am thinking of running with – putting my poems on Instagram with royalty free videos as one of the things to do. 

As I am getting healthier and able to do more things physically, I think I may be able in a month or two to start going for walks at the local wildlife reserve again and take photographs to sell as postcards and other things.

I particularly like taking photos of dawn and dusk – the twilight hours, I love twilight!  I am not talking about the sparkly vampire novels and movie; I am talking about the time of day!

Our wildlife reserve has a very high hill that is perfect for landscape photography at those times of day for you can see for miles around you – the problem is getting up there when you are sick and not as fit as you used to be!  Five flights of stairs over a twenty minute walk; each step is a different size from 2 inches to 2ft!  Some of the steps you have to hoist yourself up or jump down!  They are wooden and rickety and look like something in a fairy forest because they are covered in moss and lichen and go through the darkest depths of the woods, which can be spooky at times!

Especially as these woods have something the locals call “Screaming deer” a small deer that sounds like a woman being murdered from time to time, unnerving when you get to the shady depths of the wood and you get to see the glimpse of one in the darkness scurrying out the brambles and hopping over the dark stream away from you!

They are a kind of muntjac, not native, but escaped into the British wildlife a few years back!

There are quite a few things I am planning to do, unfortunately a gardening blog and vlog will have to wait until I move away, because the bad neighbour practically lives at his window waiting to see me do anything in the garden before he comes out and harasses me again.

I had thought the garden blog and vlog would actually probably be 50/50 with my writing up until 2yrs ago when that horrible man move in next door!  He is so unpopular in the village he has been more or less banned from three of the local pubs for his obnoxious behaviour and nobody will employ him as a handyman either!

The dog he has he has made vicious lunged at Paul the other day and Paul fell into a dog rose bush and has really nasty gashes all up his forearm – Henry has a phobia of big dogs like that Dalmatian because of what happened when he was a toddler when he was playing in a park, a dog jumped at him and bashed his head hard.  He is OK with little dogs though.

Henry and I don’t use our garden path anymore because of both the man and the dog, we cross to the left and use an alternative neighbours path, which takes us about 300ft out of our way whenever we want to go out to the right side of the street, but at least we don’t get harassed! 

When the dog is in their back garden we can’t be in our back garden either, because it uses their outdoor dining table as a means to jump over the fence to try and attack us yet still Paul won’t complain to the police about it all.

So we are one of the lucky families to have a garden that is bigger than 20ft by 20ft which is rare in this country and area, but we can’t use it because of one neighbour and his dog!

My child stuck indoors all day every day summer or not – just so he is safe!

I am only thankful that I have a washing machine with a dryer, I would hate having to go into the garden risking all sorts of things to hang clothes up like how we used to a few years back!

You know this neighbour has affected my mental health so badly that whenever I so much as think about gardening, I have nightmares of him doing things to sabotage my efforts or hurt me or the family, that night?

Something as simple as a flippant comment about wanting to grow Blue Himalayan poppies as a goal, made me have a horrendous dream about him last night and no doubt today I will have a worse one!

What really ticks me off is that the man isn’t supposed to be living next door, he is a tenant – so it would be easy to have him moved on, but Paul is too nice and passive, just because he is fond of his nice step daughter.

Paul is trying everything he can to appease me about the situation whilst not solving it – he is doing everything he can to try and get me an allotment so I can garden again, but that would mean I have to go 10 minutes down the road to grow my flowers, fruits and vegetables on land that isn’t my own whereas I have a 50ft by 30ft back garden and a 20ft by 30ft front garden which we own!  Not only that but it will cost us around £80 a year for the privilege and we’re limited to what we can and cannot grow there!

Before this bad neighbour became a problem, I gardened so much it saved us £60 a month in fruit and veg, right now we need to garden more than ever – but we’re going hungrier than we should be, because of peace sake.

I’ve never known a man like it and I am talking about both Paul and the bad neighbour here!

I do know one thing – if an apocalypse was to happen Paul won’t help defend me against other men and that’s a scary thought!  Very scary! And I know my fears aren’t unwarranted because I first learned of Paul’s cowardice when Henry was 3 months old, when a man tried to attack me when I was pushing Henry in the pram – Paul was walking several feet behind me, whilst I dealt with the man myself, Paul walked right past us like he was pretending he didn’t know us!

I called after him about what happened when I chased the guy off – he claimed he never saw a thing!  I said, you heard shouting and roaring though didn’t you?  No.

So when I say I literally do a lot by myself, I mean it.  I can’t rely on Paul for anything, the house is falling apart – shrug, too tired and busy to do anything oh and play the poverty card too!

Very convenient for him!

So in the past few weeks in particular, he is becoming less like the Paul I know and more like someone I don’t want to.  He has changed a lot since he felt he could reject me and then reclaim me at the drop of a hat without ramifications… he had a shock when he learned I don’t work like that.  You reject me for someone you haven’t met yet, and then you reclaim me when she turns out to be a fake… on your bike!

So that’s why I am going self-employed and this is why I won’t be giving any of my money to Paul to help with anything.  I will give to my son and for us to eat, but that’s about all I will do –  I have had enough of him sitting pretty thinking I am totally helpless and I want a life – I can’t bare this mediocrity any longer, even I or this lifestyle has to die – one of us and I would rather it not be me!

I would rather not be lonely either, but hey ho, sometimes we’re lonelier when we live with people!

To say I am not heartbroken by how my life has turned out is an understatement; I had hoped I would do better than this!  Much better!

Thanks for reading!

Got to be grateful

I have a bunch of friends, mostly online but there some friends that I once knew offline when I lived in London, but maintain contact with them online only these days.

Quite a few of these friends are new age, hippies, gothic, artistic or writers of some description or another and at least two thirds are part of the LGBTQ community – nearly half of which believe in doing one thing regularly;

Being grateful or finding gratitude in things, no matter how hard they might be.

This is something I have never really thought about for myself.

Ungrateful cow, eh?

But some of my friends are encouraging me to become grateful even for the hard times, because it will result in healing old wounds.

They have claimed it has helped them somewhat.

Becoming more self-reflective is key to understanding the pains and turmoil’s of the past, so you can then sweep the negative space clear and put in a positive vibe via gratitude.

Nobody has ever really taught me to be grateful, not in the way I have always tried to encourage Henry to be.

It’s funny that – how I’ve always made a point in ensuring Henry is always grateful for what he has, yet I never practised what I preached there for myself.  Well, to tell the truth, I am grateful for what I have now, even though it is much less than what is comfortable and much less than what I used to have – but I am grateful I am not in a worse situation than this, I’ve always have been.

I am very grateful for living in a country that cares for its poor and sick like they do, I am very grateful not to be a situation of many other people in the world.

I am also grateful for no longer being in situations I used to be or having certain people in my life anymore.

But that’s just generalising and in order to do this properly I shouldn’t generalise, I should be more in depth about what I am grateful for.

Things from my past;

I am grateful that although my mother wasn’t the best, she at least had one personality trait which stopped her being much worse than she was – that is the fear of what others thought of her.  This always held her back from doing the things she really wanted to do to me, because she would often tell me exactly how she felt, but how she wouldn’t do it, because of so and so.

But she was still who she was, despite this.  Imagine if she was more self-assured, what my life could have been like if she had been more confident to be herself.

I am grateful for the situations my family put me into, living amongst addicts and drunks and domestic abuse temporarily and then moving me onto more stable homes, so I learned to appreciate what my true home life was like in comparison!

I think that’s why my mother did that – move me around a lot to different people for weeks on end, to show me, that in the scheme of things – or in the scheme of what is available in the family, our house was a haven in comparison.

Even if it was a prison, it was quieter, more predictable and physically safe if you did what you were told.  In some of the other homes I spent time in, it didn’t matter if you were good as gold, if they were inclined to hurt you, they’d hurt you!

I was always grateful for how clean, organised and fresh the main house was in comparison to some places I was sent to live, where their houses were infested with rats and beds weren’t made, they had no bottom sheets and in the winter in order to keep warm you had to snuggle up with the kids you shared the bed with and the dogs just to keep warm!

It’s funny looking back at how those places were actually considered my happy places, my favourite places to go to, to get away from mum.  The people were nice, but poor, much poorer than Paul and I – this is something to be grateful for.  I don’t have to scrounge around at neighbour houses begging for 50p for the electric metre like the mother of the house did and then go to her dad’s house to get them fed, because her husband drank away the food money for her and her 5 children and an extra to boot!

It’s one of the reasons why I am tired of sausage and beans, it was a staple there.  My mum tried to teach me to be grateful by showing me we are much better off, because we would also have sausages and beans, but with chips and fried eggs and buttered bread and double portions to them around twice a week on average.  Good living, she thought, though she could afford more, it was laziness more than anything when she was home cooking. 

This is why from the age of 7yrs, she insisted I would be the main cook of the house as she had night shifts to do and couldn’t spend the time to cook for everyone, so left it to me – because it’s normal I her family that the eldest or only daughters are fully domestic by 7yrs old and can take a mothers place at the drop of a hat.

I learned by 9yrs old, there is one thing you should never do as cook of the house and that is ask dad what he fancies for dinner as it will almost always be steak and chips, pie and chips, fish and chips or a full English breakfast!

By the time I was 11yrs old I learned lots of recipes from other relatives and I diversified our diet a lot, mum pushed against it for a while, until she learned that some of the food I was making was actually nice.  She never had a Bolognese before I was 11 and it became one of her most favourite meals of all time ever since!

As time went on the diet got healthier, for them.

I am very grateful for the freedom I had in choosing what I cooked in my main home.

Always had compliments throughout all the family over the years about being “the proper little housewife”, someone who didn’t laze around, always willing to help, someone reliable and dependable.

It’s why it’s hard being here now, where I feel like I am not needed by anyone and if anything in the way!  Its poles apart from the life I used to have, where I’d skip from relative to relative, living with them temporarily and cleaning and cooking for them.

Everyone was happy to have Tina over for any length of time, I was a treat for them, I even remember my mum setting up rota system, and it was almost like a bidding war to get me to stay with them at times!

My maternal grandmother, Uncle John, honorary aunties Gina and Anna (which turned out to be distant cousins), Cousin Jenny and neighbour Debs, honorary granny Esme, got me the most though!  Seems a lot of people but actually weren’t a lot to me.  Mum wouldn’t let me stay anywhere more than six weeks in case I bonded too much!

I am grateful that I had that kind of life, shifting from person to person, it made me broadminded and adaptable, it also taught me how to change like a chameleon – I suppose it taught me acting skills.  Because each household was different, some were really poor and I mean this in the best possible way – but common, others were posh, others middle row and you had to adapt your behaviour and speech to where in the country you were going and the class of people you are going to socialise with the most at the time.

It really was adapt or die, or at least have a hard life there!

This even meant my religion had to change to whom I stayed with as many of these people went to church, the cathedral, the JW meetings and so forth.

I remember going to stay with some relatives where egg and chips is a luxury, you wear jog suits and hoodies, you have to be into RNB and rap and you have to play console games and learn how to talk about football.  If you didn’t you didn’t get to have friends, you were ignored in the corner as the weird posh girl.

I also remember going to other places where I have to groom horses and talk about horse racing, horse breeding, dog shows, dog breeding, gardening and sitting in watching cousins learn gymnastics and ballet – I wanted to join in but my mum wouldn’t give my relatives the money for me to participate.  Do you have any idea how humiliating it is seeing your thin beautiful cousins doing all that, whilst you are the fat girl sitting on a bench watching grumpily whilst the tutor tries to talk you into making your mother part with cash so I can join in for the benefit of my health and being told umpteen times at the age of 9yrs old that I am responsible for my weight, not my mother?

It’s really humiliating actually! 

Just as embarrassing is being the only fat person in a household of half-starved poor kids, especially as I was the most vocal about being so hungry all the time!  I feel bad for them now, back then I was very selfish upon reflection and didn’t have much empathy for them, I was entitled I guess.

I sometimes wonder if the universe is cruel enough to punish people for their lack of insight as children when they are much older… like living here in poverty like this with Paul is some kind of karmic debt?

But I was never mean or rude about it; I was just self-absorbed that’s all – I mean, isn’t every child?

I know I was ungrateful back then for a lot of the kindness I got.  I remember thinking sometimes that their dog ate more than we did in some of those homes.

I even remember saying this once half-jokingly and the mother said, we have to feed the dog he works!  The dog belonged to her husband who was a security guard and the dog went to work with him every night!

It’s a funny contrast too, when you are with the richer families who are super posh and they seem more self-absorbed than you – but on Sundays they go to do charity work as a family at soup kitchens etc. and you tag along to help them.

You try to tell these people, you know the soup they need should contain noodles, meat chunks or vegetable chunks, not be pureed within an inch of its life, it’s not filling.  They look at you and rightfully challenge “what would you know”?  Because they didn’t think I had other lives with other people who were like the people they were helping, they thought I was like them and they didn’t know any better!

I remember telling them once about what I have experienced, they laughed raucously and told my mother about the funny little stories I make up and how I definitely will be a writer some day!

Mum never told them the truth, just laughed along with them agreeing!

I will always be grateful for whatever food or shelter I get, whatever warmth I get, whatever attention I get and whatever help I get.  My life has taught me never to take anything for granted, because you never know how long it will all last.

You can be the richest person ever and lose it all over night due to a storm or a thief or anything, but you can also be a pauper and strike it lucky and find your feet and soar.  I’ve seen it happen to the best and worst of people – I am grateful for having such an enriched life full of varied experiences, no matter how painful they were.

I learned a lot.

I have learned what I am comfortable with and what I am not comfortable with and the types of people that make it better for me in the long run.

I’ll admit I prefer the comfort and mindlessness of buying a whole bowl of fruit without pinching the pennies, I would love to go back to the place where the idea of choosing blueberries or pomegranates this week is laughable, just stick them both in the trolley, don’t be silly, we’re not that bad off!

Of course, anyone would! 

I remember spending £25 a week on just a handful of different magazines, £50 a week on take outs, £20 a week in lunch money, £20 a week in bingo with gran and anything up to £75 a week on books and clothes – this is a dream these days!  Those days died out for me fourteen years ago! 

I can’t buy any magazines anymore, not even once a month.  Take outs never more than £14 once a month if we can afford it or cut back on other things for the treat, we can’t spend money on the lottery anymore let alone bingo – £40 is our average food bill for the whole household and there is nothing spare for books and clothes, clothing money goes to creditors through catalogues if we’re desperate. 

I suppose I should be grateful buying things on credit is an option, especially as there are rumours the government wants to ban those sorts of enterprises. 

Thanks for reading…

Bored of sausage & beans

It’s likely that in the next two weeks that my YouTube could be set up, still struggling to understand the technology behind it all, but I am hoping that I will have it up before December now.

I am totally not confident about showing my face on there right now, because I still have that missing tooth and the dentist hasn’t given me an appointment for the braces we’ve discussed yet as she has a backlog of appointments to get through.

I did try to remind her, but I seem to be lost in the paperwork somewhere.

So until the braces come I am not confident about showing my mouth in particular.  The tooth was pulled July 28^th and though some of the gap seems to have closed itself with an exercise I found online to move teeth without braces, it isn’t happening as fast as I would like!

Stupid tooth would go and break on a chicken bone though wouldn’t it?  Gosh that makes me sound like a Neanderthal with chicken wings doesn’t it?  I guess I am though, lol, pretty crazy about wings.

I forgot to have my medication last night so today is pretty painful to eat for me and I may not keep things down.  Especially as the planned meal is a rare treat of a steak pepper pie with salad, can’t change my mind as the alternative is worse – Chicken Arribiata, I have problems with that at the best of times without having it when I’ve missed medication!

I love Arribiata but it’s too acidic for days like these!

I took the medication by now, but it won’t work in time for dinner.

On a positive note my size is slimming down faster than I expected, even my smallest clothes are getting big on me now.

Although I love it I am scared of it, because I can’t afford to replace clothing and at the rate I am losing the weight I will need a full wardrobe of clothes once every six to eight weeks!

To be honest with you, it’s why I am bringing forward the YouTube set up, I am hoping to try and get some money in order to replace my clothing so I don’t have to stall my exercises for a while, like I have been doing, just because I can’t afford the transition! I don’t have much choice over the diet, we can’t eat much lately as it is.

I am not confident I’d earn enough with YouTube alone, so I am going to be posting things in Instagram and putting my blog up for monetisation soon as well, because I need to try and get some kind of income coming in now that Paul is officially retired and our money looks cut again.

We really can’t stretch our money if there is another cut; we have lost £60 a week from this past Monday, so things are getting awful right now.  But Paul assures me it is temporary, The Royal Navy will give him a pension by the end of the month that will boost us again, but we have a whole four weeks of having £60 a week less than normal, we may not be able to pay our utilities this month.  Probably going to be the hardest month of my life!

I am just so glad I am not like my cousins who ignored my grandparent’s stories about how they coped with rationing during the war and actually partook in their lessons to learn how to stretch things out.

How that just because you opened a can of beans yesterday doesn’t make them inedible today – you just pour them into a pot with leftover veg and hey presto a vegetable soup, ok not ideal, but least you won’t starve!

But I’ve learned a lot from them, you see, I learned that those can of beans you open yesterday can be mixed up with fried sausages, onion and dried herbs with mashed potato as a lovely sausage & baked bean casserole – which is a family favourite!

I think every poor family in the UK was raised on sausages and baked beans; it seems to be the go to meal for the poor here.

To be honest with you I hate sausages, had them so often I actually don’t like them anymore, same with baked beans – I like them sometimes, but I am getting to the point I will be happy never to see sausages again!

Unless of course its garlic sausage, chorizo, salami or saveloy – gosh I miss having those!  But economy brand 60% breaded sausages are, well they are just ew ok?

You can more or less tell who is poor in the UK by their weight, if you are fat; you are probably on the tight budget – as healthy food comes at a premium here.

It’s a strange world when the fat is the poor and the rich are the slim.

You know we can go days without vegetables and that’s not a choice!  Meat and potatoes keep the poor fed!

You have no idea the trouble poor people have with their kids, because we’re taught that meat is unsustainable and your kids are like, but we heard eating meat is killing the planet mum; you don’t care about the planet.  Oh my gosh have you tried to explain to a child that it costs £20 a week to feed us in our 5 a day plan but it is only £12 a week for the meat and £5 for the potatoes?  When you are on a £30 – 45 a week budget, you can see why we’re not healthy, the poor!

I’d love to have fruit and veg every day, I don’t believe in the 5 a day plan, I am more of  anything over 7 is great kind of woman, before all this started to happen in my life!

Before our money got cut in 2017 for the first time, Henry was waking up to vegetable frittatas and carrot muffins, lunching on tuna and avocado pasta and dining on Roast lamb salads and we always had soup before dinner and a dessert after it!  Not anymore, often times we go without breakfast and lunch to help Henry at school and our dinners are rarely over 900 calories! 

I have to skip the protein shakes this month to survive!  Or dip into my £30 savings?

I already told Paul, leave that Christmas savings alone, we barely have £50 for that so far and its so hard telling Henry we just can’t do the Nintendo 64 you want love, we aren’t like your friends who can have that! Anyway, that’s a old console, weren’t that out when I was a teenager? Anyway Henry definitely said that’s what he wanted! He does like vintage stuff, so I am hardly surprised really!

Anyway, rant over, thanks for reading!

Pixies, pores & chores

Yesterday, I missed an old tartan dress I used to have and I kind of wanted to wear tartan clothing for some weird reason, preferably though, a trouser suit.

Today I wanted to wear green velveteen or something similar; today was a sort of extra glamorous day for me where I wanted to make more effort with myself, but I kind of also wanted to be a pixie as strange as that sounds.

Usually I try to weight myself on Thursdays, but I got my days mixed up and did it today to find I have lost another four pounds in weight – that’s made exactly 9 pounds and 4 ounce weight loss in three weeks, despite online saying I’d only lose two pounds a week on average.

The face yoga is doing my face a treat, I can tell you, there is a noticeable difference in my face, and I feel I am getting prettier, but there you go; my eyebrows still have issues, I have a sense I should leave them alone as I feel like whenever I touch them I make them worse!

My new moisturiser burned me a little the other day and it makes me look like I have acne, but it’s not, it’s just little spots that came up with the reaction around my chin, there’s about five, my pores bled!  That’s the thing with me; I have very sensitive skin I have to be cautious with new products.  I am severely allergic to two thirds of all depilatory creams; the reaction is so bad I break out in huge grape sized hives all over my body within a minute that takes two weeks to fade!  So I have to pluck or shave or sugar wax instead.

Shaving isn’t ideal because I get goose bumps easily, whenever I am touched, so I tend to get a lot of nicks.

Before our financial crisis I used to lay back and read a book whilst Henry plucked the hairs out of my legs individually with tweezers, I paid him £3 per leg, he loved the job.  Weird kid!  Though it was oddly relaxing for me and I got a lot of reading done back then!

Henry was so duty oriented when we had the money, he was often getting chores for lots of other things around the house and paid per chore, he was clocking up an average of £8 a week from me alone – that’s without his regular £3.50 from his dad which was just a given!

I tried to instil an excellent work ethic in that boy, but since we’re not paying him anymore, he has become rebellious about most chores!

I suppose you get your money’s worth.

Though when I can afford a little I still say to him “Henry, fancy cleaning the bath for 50p”?  And he is up there like a shot and doing it happily!

Thanks for reading!

Gold digger I see you!

Ching ching through the bling

I see you don’t love me

But my things

I see you don’t want my love

Just want me to sing

So I can give you more bling bling

I am a puppet for your stadium

I am your profit, your delirium

Without me you have nought

Look at the presents I have bought

Gold digger I know where your heart is

As you are chugging down the fizz

This is quite amiss

Gee whiz

I won’t have it anymore. I’m through

I am going to get rid of you

Out my life and close the door

So you aint gonna be rich no more!

Whore!

This song is reminiscent of my college days, where I was lead vocalist and lyricist of a rap rock group; though this song didn’t exist back then, this came to me today (22nd August) when I was thinking a lot about my former music style and poetry.

But also I have experienced being used for money by my mother, an ex and I know someone in my life currently is clinging to the hope that I will someday become some kind of mega rich super star author – lol. But I know how it feels to be used and then lose it all, because you loved and trusted the wrong people! Believe me when I say, it’s hard to pull wool over these eyes! I don’t truly believe the DMs are from genuine sources, but if they are, my apologies. You must understand my point of view if you are genuine?

The vulgar subject

People sometimes ask me if I ever became successful, what would I spend my money on? 

I have answers to that, but first I want to ask why do people believe that just because someone has become rich for whatever reason, that for the rest of their lives all they will ever do is try to spend it and that they must and often do so? 

It’s just puzzling, because for me, I have known rock bottom poverty and the idea of squandering money when I get it, is not something that I am comfortable with!  Though saying that, I do resent having money when I know someone else is suffering and I tend to give generously when I do have it – never privately, I do it through charities and campaigns, because I wasn’t always poor you know?

It’s a weird thing about life and me, my relationship with money has always been boom and bust to both extremes.

Now for what I tend to do when I get lucky.  I tend to gift people I haven’t been generous to for a while, such as close friends and family if it is a special occasion and I tend to splash out on a nice group meal either cooked at home or out.

My next tendency is to buy things to improve my pets quality of life and things for my garden; then books in my “to buy list” and then little curios from spirituality shops, like crystals, mythological ornaments, tarot cards and Feng shui specific things.

I reckon if I won the lottery in life or literally win the lottery, my ideas would be to get myself a bigger menagerie of pets (domestic and small farm ones only) and a property with a lot of land so I can practically live outdoors in my edible forest garden, whilst playing with crystals and tarot cards and making miniature worlds with miniaturisation hobbies, I can never afford to get into currently.  I love miniatures!

I am also with Henry in the idea of all these train sets, purely for the joy of making miniature worlds for the trains to go through and little towns scattered here and there – if I had the room and the money! 

I don’t intend to grow up, I am and always will be childish and playful and for me its bills first, then fun then education then I will contemplate other grown up things like clothing and furniture. 

Weirdly enough, clothing is something that is way down on the list, despite my love for fashion!  I love fashion, but only if it’s not too expensive and only if it’s comfortable and I like it – comfort is essential above everything else, I don’t like to suffer whilst looking good!  I do like big brand names like Moschino and Alexander McQueen, but I look at the price tag and I think… well… don’t be stupid, the amount of beautiful giant crystals I could get with that or a lovely playhouse for the rabbit in the garden for the summer, or Henry a lovely trip at Severn Valley and yet another Hornby trainset special edition I could buy instead!

I’ve never understood the people who say enjoy your life, spend 10k on a dress and get yourself a yacht and go on five holidays a year mind-set!   A yacht would be wasted on me as I get home sick after five days away, after two weeks of being away I have more or less rooted myself elsewhere and don’t want to go back.  It’s the gypsy in me; my maternal grandmother was half Romany, hence the love for crystals and tarot –she taught me when I was 7yrs old – they say don’t teach kids that before that age as they are not strong enough to fend off spirits who may try to make changelings out of them!

This is the same grandma who watched horror movies with me and wrestling, as I was growing up – she was a cool gran, but completely and utterly non-domestic, couldn’t cook to save her life, in fact she’d daren’t cook, it was safer not to!  A complete anomaly to her gypsy roots, where every woman polished their brasses daily and knew umpteen recipes off by heart!

But I think the most lavish thing my money would ever be spent on is lots of temporary homes everywhere I am likely to visit regularly, just so I don’t get home sick, if that makes sense? 

The second elaborate thing would be 5k on giant crystals or getting a new pony or a goat, but other than that – I am pretty simple in my hopes and dreams for life.

All I really want is The Garden Of Eden; a lot of love from lots of close relationships, good food, lots of snuggles with animals and wildlife in the garden, freedom to be myself and peace.

Once I have that, I will feel in paradise and I won’t need to die.

I’m a natures child who is very kooky, playful, childish, sensitive, have too much love to give and who needs a garden of organic edible wonder, an animal enthusiast and a tardy creative, because I get side-tracked in my daydreams.  But I am also fierce and passionate and I hate injustice and ignorance and I was the kid who got beaten up because she saved the other ones who weren’t strong enough by taking the blows for them – that’s me, nothing more and nothing less!

Happy reading!

Price of ink and financial rants

My situation is such that when I write I will print off as I go along, because I don’t trust clouds and data saving technologies, because they have failed me numerous times before.

Recently my finances have become worse and this has affected my novel writing more than anything, now I am able to get back into novel writing since I had Covid, it has meant that because of the decline in my finances I can no longer print the seventy pages a week I used to, I can only afford to print twenty a week at most and one week in the month, nothing at all.

If it is novel writing, I will print it as I go along, because of two reasons – I do not trust data saving technologies and I find it difficult to read and edit from a screen, whether I create a blue background to read from or not.

It’s frustrating because I want to write towards four ideas immediately and I can’t write by hand anymore because my arthritis is getting bad.  Every time I write more than an A4 page of handwriting, my hand swells up to the extent I can’t properly hold the pen anymore and if I ignore it, the cramps come on.

My arthritis has meant I have had to give up my knitting hobby altogether, because not only does it exasperate the arthritis, but it has also reawakened my carpal tunnel problem too!

I miss knitting, because of the style of gloves I used to make for myself and the scarves – because the style and colours I like can’t be bought cheaply, like it can be made!

I don’t have the money to buy a knitting machine or else I would do that, I also liked making toys for children I knew, but now I have been thinking about learning felt crafts or sewing the toys instead – because for some reason or another sewing doesn’t affect me.

At the moment we have a printer that is breaking down, because it appears not to be getting a hundred pages per cartridge anymore and we can’t afford to replace the printer for at least a year.  The cost of the ink is always £15, cheap in comparison, but for us it’s three days meals.  We’re near the brink of needing food bank help again – and no Lee Anderson, I can actually cook thank you very much, in fact I cook most things from scratch and manage left overs very well so there is never food wasted here!

Amongst my cooking skills are homemade pies, cakes, soups, casseroles and pasta dishes, not to mention the fact that I have been fakeaway cooking at least ten years before it became “fashionable”!  But when your colleagues Mr Anderson insist that because I have a bus stop outside my house which is within the walking distance I can do without an asthma attack they cut my mobility money by £100 a month, which meant that I could no longer afford to manage the finances which included getting medical help to try and get me back on my feet (in order to work), because you took the money I needed to travel to the local hospital 20 miles away in another town, which costs me £20 a time and I need treatment around twice a week quite a lot of the time – which meant I had to decide to become anorexic and get treatment, or just give up fighting to get my life back and make sure my family doesn’t starve to death!  Which one would you choose? 

Because when I had to do the above we had £10 for the week for food and I often had to cancel at last minute the doctors, because I couldn’t afford to get there – because doctors don’t house visit anymore, no matter how poor you are!

Along with this, we’re still not getting a lot of free stuff sending our child to school.  We had to cancel his eleventh birthday last year and all household birthdays and have the crappiest Christmas ever just to save up to get him school uniform for his new secondary school, because you can’t get it free here and there was no way in getting second hand, we checked.  The child gets reprimanded at the school if their uniform is not complete, whether you can prove poverty or not!

We would love to give up the internet in order to get £6 a week more in our pockets to eat better and maybe get some medical attention – but that would mean my son can’t do his homework so losing the internet is not an option for us!  The irony is, they say that they are doing more and more for kids in poverty these days, honestly I don’t see it!  His meals aren’t free at school; it costs him an average of £3.50 a day for a hot meal in winter.

Don’t you dare blame the poor for poor management!

Free schools, meals in schools, the NHS was all originally created for the poorest in the community, but these days the poorest in the community are not reaping the rewards of yesteryear, it basically is slowly turning back to how it used to be.  Everything is slowly privatising again and they think we don’t see it!

I don’t normally turn my posts into political rants, but this Lee Anderson has a lot to learn and remember about the society he is trying to lead!

Funny thing is, despite being bed bound and housebound sick for around twenty weeks of the year, I could work, at the pace I can.  There is some work I could do, but the problem comes with practicality – I’ve tried slogging on looking for a job outside of the house whilst managing my sickness and nobody wants me!  No one wants someone part time three hours three days a week, even on a check out, because I have ailments which embarrass the company!  I have what appears to be a permanent streaming cold!

No one wants to work alongside someone who is sniffling all year around and then needing three weeks off four times a year because she can’t even get to the bathroom she’s so sick!

So I told the benefits OK, there are other things I can do, I can write, I can do art, I can upcycle things to sell, help advise me in how to set up my own business to do that and teach me what I need to know to run a business from home.  They won’t.

But understood only this… you said you can work?  OK we’re taking your ESA away and making you go to job search centres five days a week all year around and if you don’t turn up for three consecutive days because you are sick, we’ll pull your benefits again and it will take six weeks to reapply for benefits again, meanwhile there is no transitioning money…

So, who is going to opt for all their amenities to be switched off and starving your family for six weeks solid?  What sort of incentive is there to actually get your ass off benefits if you are sick?  What kind of incentive do they give the sick to try and work out their own ailments in order not to be a scrounger?

Because seriously, this is how it is here!

So people who call sick people on benefits scroungers, talk to your government about their crackpot schemes, and don’t go attacking us!  It’s not our fault!  Most of us would love to be independent and work and get even £5 extra a week in their pockets, because no one likes going through those humiliating interviews every year!

Paul and I had thought about going to Ireland as they take care of artists and writers on sickness benefits more than they do here in England – but lately we’ve seen the news, there are political issues cropping up – will we be welcomed in Ireland?

I know my great grandfather was Irish (from Roscommon) and I know that genetically I would be accepted with opened arms, but it’s still looking complicated…

I am very frustrated, because there are lots of things I need in order to get myself a job and there is absolutely not help at all and the money is being cut again and again, to the extent, that I haven’t impulse bought a thing since 2017 and I am losing a huge amount of weight, but can’t afford to replace my clothes as the weight falls off and I am looking ridiculous!  I have lost four dress sizes in nearly a year.

Doctor says that they don’t find that a worry because I was so large to begin with.  I was a size 28, I am now nearly a size 20, they won’t worry until I am a size 12 potentially – potentially I might be dead by then, before they investigate why!

They know I have an IBD because of my high markers, but they won’t investigate until I literally start screaming in pain at A&E, seriously, been told that, NHS is so badly stretched financially that they are now only dealing with life threatening conditions as they appear, cancer not one of them, government recently warned the UK that if you get cancer now, you are more or less fucked if you rely on NHS!

Also, I have a new cholesteatoma growing in my left ear, but my ENT specialist said his department is in so much debt right now, he will not deal with it until it is life threatening! I have been through this before when I was a teenager, I really don’t want to go there again, but I have no fucking choice, because he won’t help me! That means, if the worse comes to the worse again, I won’t be able to physically care for myself bathing wise for nearly three years again nor bend down! I will also be 100% deaf!

Anyway, I am going to close this rant up, because people are home now.

Happy reading everyone… if it was that kind of experience, which I doubt. 

P.S sorry for being an Eeyore today!

I’m about to fall

Have you ever had a bad mental health day where you feel so down that when you walk around, you feel like you are about to pass out or that whenever you hear yet another bad thing turn up in your or your loved ones lives, you feel like you are about to drop where you stand?

I’ve been living in this kind of state for about a month now and it’s getting worse.

 I suppose if there has to be a positive note about it, at least I am not as suicidal as I was between 2013 and 2017, I suppose that is something.  But I can’t describe exactly why I feel on a constant state of near fainting, just because of mental stress…

This is one of the major reasons why, in spite of being physically ill, I have struggled to put words to paper for a while.

I have had two nervous breakdowns in the past, this is not like that, it feels different and the difference is scary!

It’s scary because it feels like I am so down in the dumps that my own heart is starting to pack up – because I have palpitations and my blood pressure is sky-rocketing even on Ramipril!

No I haven’t spoken to a doctor about it, because I don’t want therapy (of the mental kind), it makes things worse (experienced it, thank you).

The thing is, I have identified my problems, I have acknowledged what they are and worked out a method of overcoming them, but it is totally impractical right now, when I am too sick to do those necessary self-care essential things and what is more, I do not have the money to make one major difference possible.  You might say that money isn’t everything, but you know, for me, right now, it is a matter of if I have more money; I have a means to move out of one home and into another.

Now this is where the big Catch-22 comes into play!  You see, I know I need the money to do the major thing that will uplift me, but I am too sick and depressed to motivate myself to do it.  So until I decide at some point that I must suffer through the work in order to get some money, I won’t get through this!

I don’t have a support network that I can lean on and say… remove myself for a respite break from my current situation and get my thoughts together, then come back to it in a month or two – otherwise that would be exactly what I would seek out right now, someone who’d tolerate me for a month or two.

Because I don’t have that reprieve, I am more or less stuck, until my depression allows me to do the work I need to.

I am not using my depression as an excuse not to do the work, but if you knew how my depression is presenting itself right now, you would know that I am sleeping thirteen hours a day because I dread waking up each day, I wake up with the instant thought of “oh fuck it, I survived the night, how delightful” with the most sarcastic stance you can think of!

“Why, oh why, couldn’t I have drowned in my COPD mucus during the night?  What other kinds of shit experiences does the universe want me to experience today?”  Yes, I wake up with such enthusiasm.

Then I am made to feel guilty at 8:00am when my son bursts into the bedroom full of smiles and love for me and wishes me a great day, as he skips off to school!

Conflicted – much, I stay alive for him you know…

I think he knows it, he has planned as soon as he leaves school to become a father, so I must care for his grandchildren as a glorified unpaid babysitter for him.  Oh joy, no that’s not sarcasm, that is sincere, but then when can I feel that nobody needs me so I can just die?

That’s how I feel these days, I am literally plodding on like a zombie, one that is about to falter at any moment and it’s scary, but it is also exciting because… have I gone so far in my depression my body is finally going to give out?  Because, though I want things to get better for me, I feel hopeless, so in a big way, I am excited about death.

For those with a dark sense of humour you may find comedy in the fact that despite what I am saying here, I am drinking eight glasses of water a day, reducing sugar and fat wherever possible and has a mostly plant based non-vegetarian diet, meaning I do eat meat but it’s like 25% of my diet.  On good physical health days, which are not often, I do try and partake in high intensity interval training (HIIT) on my exercise bike and jogging or skipping on the spot five to ten times a day for 3 minutes a time.

To say I am not at war with myself would be laughable.

But that’s how it goes.

Thank you for reading!

Art & life

The update of my art practises and production has become non-existent as you can tell for nearly two years now, if you follow me on my other social media platforms, you would realise that I haven’t updated my art gallery on DeviantArt and similar websites since late 2019; this is purely because of the lack of supplies, not the lack of will to produce art.

I simply cannot replace art supplies as often as I want to in order to produce what I want when I want; I simply do not have the funds to do so.  However, saying that, there is a silver lining to the cloud recently, I have a small increase in my monthly budget for personal use which will be used for art supplies henceforth.  This means that shortly I will start updating my art social media again and I will also be creating a website specifically for my art, so keep a look out on that!

Practising art has had to be purely a pencil thing only, sketching has improved a lot, but it’s the painting, shading and blending I want to practise as I am not at all confident in that area yet!

I will be aiming to produce art to saleable quality by the spring of 2023, I know it’s a long way away, but it is my goal to do that.

This is why I am mentioning it on here, because soon, I will be showing some of my art here and discussing my style development as it goes along and also I will be discussing what kind of artist I am becoming, because I am not really sure yet how to categorise myself, because of the lack of practise and socialising within the art community.

This too, will change, I aim to join a couple of online art clubs soon, to try and learn more about art, but also about myself and my style – there are several clubs on offer out there and I am excited to say that this is on my agenda before the end of this summer!

I will also be making use of my patreon account finally, I have had a patreon account for around two years, but didn’t really know what to do with it, so that will be made use of by the end of the year too, not sure what I will offer on that yet, but I am thinking about that a lot!

Also as Henry is learning more and more about design technology, web building and robotic coding at school at in his after school clubs, I will be more confident in actually setting my YouTube channel up finally, again, it will all be for the end of this year!  So the end of 2022 is potentially all go for me!

I have not been writing anything towards my novels since 2^nd February because of tiredness and general home and family commitments, I will be honest with that, but all of this should have blown over and settled down by the end of summer.  The main problem in the house is that our boiler leaked and ruined two of our walls with water damage and mould, which we’re having cleaned up and redecorating, that is the major thing right now.

The boiler is fixed so there will be no further water damage, Frank has been a wonderful help with things recently, and he really is a blessing to us, so glad to be reacquainted with him!

With a confirmation that the bad neighbour is most definitely moving within the next couple of months, I am so excited that it seems that life is going to get better quite soon, it’s all very intoxicating!

So with all that going on, there should be a lot more updates on here for you to read, so that would be nice wouldn’t it?

I have been too quiet recently and I owe you more than that!

Thanks for reading and take care!

What is luxury to me?

I have always loved reading books about cosmic ordering and creating your own reality and yet still I haven’t mastered my own mind enough to make the realities I want – happen.  I am not at all surprised at my financial status for two reasons, I am sick and don’t work and therefore live on benefit handouts, I do try and do something to help change this, but sometimes it can become too much to handle with all the daily symptom managing – also I am not at all surprised at my financial predicament because of another matter… the fact that I find money one of the biggest evils in the world, so therefore, it keeps away from me because of that mind-set.  Well that is what cosmic ordering experts would say anyway.

So it is my own fault for two reasons.  One I believe that money is a source of evil and two I am too sick therefore can’t work, therefore the universe adds more sickness to keep me in that reality.  It is pretty screwy stuff, but I actually believe it to be true, which makes it all the worse for me I guess?

I am in what I call a ground-hog day of sickness and poverty and I have the knowledge that my own beliefs can change that.  So, why can’t I favour money in a more benign light?  Because I would be lying to myself, that is why and for me, lying to my-self is an even worse evil.

I have always been by nature a very philanthropic person, therefore I have tried to think about who could benefit from my future wealth, when I get it?  There is always someone in need and I always want to help, but I am not a sucker for a sob story unless there is evidence for it first.  So I have tried to concentrate on benevolence regarding money, because as evil as money is, in the current social climate it can be a blessing for many.  I have another belief about finances too, whether or not it contradicts my former belief that money is evil or not, remains to be seen.  But I have always lived by this financial code of conduct (before benefits came into my life) that 33.3% of my earnings go to me and my needs, this includes bills and essentials and fun, 33.3% goes into savings and 33.3% is invested in some way.  Now to me an investment doesn’t have to go towards a personal gain for me, it can be an investment for a charity of which I will not benefit from – to me, it is a social investment, bettering the society I live in, I deem an investment.  Not many people can understand where I come from stating this, but to me it is quite simple, the more money you put into your local charities and amenities, the more you will benefit and future generations will benefit.  It is a shame people recoil so much from taxation and donating, they just don’t see how it can benefit their local area, and they can only see what benefits them, unfortunately they don’t always see it as a positive circle which could include them eventually.

Currently we live in a world where the idea of a no money system is a non-starter; as much as I hate it, I have to come to terms with it and work out a system for my-self which will make me and others around me happy.

I have never really wanted huge extravagances, but I have wanted comfort and happiness – I mean, who doesn’t?

To me a luxurious life would come across very basic, plain and simple to a lot of people of today.  My main desires for a happy and indulgent life is determined by how big a piece of land is that I will personally own in order to grow my own food, raise my own chickens and geese, build an adventure playground for my children, entertain guests with lovely BBQs or alfresco dinner parties, a very large area for rewilding, as I love wildlife and want to save it.  I have thought if I ever became rich that I would buy woodlands just to make them a nature reserve, stopping logging companies and housing from using the land. 

For me a luxurious life means I would be able to afford natural fibres for my clothing, I dislike all the plastic in my clothes.  I would be able to afford a very healthy allergen free semi-paleo diet – why semi-paleo?  I like legumes; I like vegan cheeses and gluten free grains that’s why.

My idea of true happiness is the ability to care for animals too.  To have the pets that I desire, though I will not be one of these horrific pet hoarders like most people who know me personally think I could be if my finances were better, I am not like that; I will never take on more than I can manage.  Despite my dreams about running a small holding or a farm, I know and realise it is just a dream, even for when I am better off, because I know my physical limitations, and unless I can afford staff to help me run things, then I can’t live exactly how I want to.

For me, luxury is being able to go out to town and choose something to eat without worrying about the cost.  Without worrying that my trip to town on a bus and a lunch would actually take half of my week’s food bill away – which it currently does, hence why I rarely see the doctor, despite needing to see them more often than I do.

Luxury also means that a zoo trip won’t be negotiated with Henry about whether or not, if we go to the zoo, we may not be able to go to the Severn Valley this year or have a birthday party, and to me luxury would mean that we can do it all that year and go to other places too, such a beach – we’ve never been to a beach as a family before.  I haven’t been to a beach since I was fifteen years old!  I have only visited the beach twice in my entire life!

I have never had a proper holiday, the only thing that came close to it was a four day camping trip in Yorkshire with some spiritual friends, but that is the only real holiday I have ever had.  I am curious about a few places in the world, but I wouldn’t say I have a strong desire to travel; I am very boring regarding this.  I get home sick by day four; I can’t be away from home for more than four days at a time.  I am a home stayer and lover.  For some reason people think this makes me a recluse?

Unfortunately the places I would like to go to are so remote, it will take four days to get to them, I have researched, and so by the time that I would have got to those places, I would be pining for home again.  I find it a struggle to be in hospital for more than three days.  I know that isn’t exactly a holiday, or a hotel, but the ten day stay at hospital when I was having Henry was very emotionally difficult for me that they felt the depression was postpartum and very nearly kept me in longer because of it, until I had almost broken down and burst into tears explaining how I have never coped being away from home for too long.  Then they had to release me.

I think I know why I am like that.  In my past when I have been away from home for more than four days, I have come home to big changes that were always uncomfortable.  Also after around two weeks of being somewhere something strange happens mentally, where I feel like that new place is a new home and unless I leave that place quickly, I will start to pine for that too.  There are many places in the UK I pine for, even to this day, because of stays longer than four days.  Not holidays, family visits that were prolonged.  I don’t include a six week stay in Cheshire with an aunt as a holiday, funnily enough.  As a child being sent to this person and that all the time for varying lengths, I guess I have a nomadic heart, but I have always been bought back to base as it were.  I get itchy feet, but I don’t like to stay away for long.  It is all rather difficult to explain.

But generally the longer I stay somewhere the more I will pine for my actual home, then the longer I stay in that place, the more likely I will start to pine for that, like home.  Basically going somewhere new will be difficult for around ten to fifteen days, and then I readjust and think that this new place is another home.  I have homes everywhere in my head, but none of them are actually my homes.

Shrugs* I am mad I guess?

But yes, I miss a lot of places.  I miss a few places in London – Burnt Oak, Hammersmith, Hendon, Brent Cross, Wembley, Barnet, Finchley, Whetstone, Enfield, Northolt, Kingsbury, Edgware, Portobello Road, Camden Town, Kentish Town, Swiss Cottage and Kensington.  I miss Luton (I know who misses that?  Well – me), Dunstable, Aylesbury, Leighton Buzzard, Wickford, Basildon, Margate, Crewe, Leeds, Market Drayton, Telford, Manchester, Halifax, Sheffield, Sunderland, Scarborough, Derby, Seven Sisters, Maidstone, Barnstaple, Battle and whatever that little village on the Welsh border was (I never knew I was a kid when I was there for a while) same as a small village in the Scottish Highlands too, Crawley, Radlett and Slough.  Imagine if I did have houses in all those places, I would need to be rich just for them!  It would be ridiculous to purchase houses in places like these though and selfish.  But for me there would need to be three homes in specific locations, because of how long I know I would stay in specific areas for, because to me they are too much like home.  A house somewhere in Barnet or Hammersmith & Chelsea, London; and a house somewhere in West Yorkshire or Cheshire, as well as something suburban or semi-rural around Rugby, Warwickshire.  I could stay at either of these areas until I start pining for the other, then, instead of constantly pining for places I can’t even afford to visit for the day, like I do now.

I make do with wherever I am put though.  I get on despite my pining’s.  I don’t mean to sound depressing or down-hearted, but I have got used to disappointments and discomfort, as my mother always made sure I never felt settled in any regard in life.  Therefore, she has made me resilient to change and adaptable to most hurtful and life changing situations – by making certain things happen so regularly I eventually became numb to certain types of sentimentality.  In a bad way too, in one particular thing; that I have learned that nothing is permanent, I must always expect things to change drastically and quickly, things such as people dying.  Don’t get too attached to organic things such as people or animals, because they can die.  I will mourn an animal more readily than a human, despite how much I may deeply love that human and I have always been afraid of losing Paul or Henry, because, I am not known to cry for human passing’s.  It could be because my mother was very aloof about it all when I was growing up and if I was to shed a tear she would berate me and make me feel humiliated for being sad about a person’s death.  It could also be because I am clairsentient, a strong clairvoyant.

I don’t usually talk about that part of me.  It weirds people out, but it is a true part of me.

Some people when they die can take ages to visit in the spirit world, some people don’t understand that.  There is a cleansing process for spirits when they first die, some can visit us literally within minutes of dying because they don’t have that much baggage, others can take years before they start visiting the living again.  My grandma, Dolly, took nearly nine years before she started visiting me, whereas grandad only took a few weeks.

But generally to me, luxury is comfortable natural fibre clothes, the ability to travel across the UK whenever I like without financial strain, to eat a healthy diet, to have a lot of family time, gardening organically and for wildlife on a large scale, the financial ability to fund continued learning in desired subjects, charities and pets.  That’s all I really want.