Days of Gratitude - The Music of Greenbelt, Belts and Beliefs

Some more gratitude to take me to the end of August.  Eight months of keeping a gratitude diary every day apart from the nine that I missed.  Nearly 250 days to look back on and see the happy things in the good days and the hard days.

These three days cover the later parts of Greenbelt and then a day of being back home after all the excitements and sleeplessness of being away.  I'm looking forward to Greenbelt 2017 even though I still don't do that theistic God.  I wasn't converted by the God festival but enjoyed all the nice people who do God in a pleasant way.  Possibly this week I'm going to attend a humanist meeting.  I'm not sure how that will go.  It might clash with dancing though and if that's the case then dancing might beat secular humanism.  It'll be a tough decision - both events are happening in the same building, a building where lots of good things happen and where I should probably be more often.

Onwards!  Greenbelt.  As the Bible would put it - in my basic Hebrew lessons at college:

And it came to pass that ...

29^th August

Grateful for even more freebies - including ones from some people who knew my mother. The first from them came (this belt) on the second anniversary of her death.

Grateful for a storytelling workshop.

For three trips to the theatre which were the best three of the weekend.

Grateful to relax at The Wee Sing - songs from The Wild Goose people from Iona.

Grateful to have accidentally found myself right by the stage for more loud music. This time from Tankus The Henge. Awesome. Again. With more point, click and hope photos.

Grateful for the music question. And to experience some of the answer. I was incredibly smiley and happy flappy afterwards when meeting Amanda afterwards - she had been making an icon - and heading to see a cabaret show by Bourgeois and Maurice on how to save the world. Hilarious. I actually cried laughing at one point.

And grateful for a day of lots of noise, lots of people, lots of unknown things - but almost zero panic or meltiness. Yay!

30^th August

Grateful for the all night cafe not far from us in the festival campsite. Cheapest place on site for tea - including spicy chai that we drank lots of. At 6am after a night in which the temperature attempted winter and zero sleep was gained, it was so much appreciated.

Grateful to have spotted Kate by the entrance as we left. She's an MCC minister and volunteers there with the access team. Turns out that we qualified, because we had signed up for access to the access team, even though we hadn't actually remembered to do it!, for a free taxi to the shuttle bus back to Kettering station. Very grateful for that. And for the nice shuttle bus driver who waived the fee because we pleaded bus pass with him.

The weekend was brilliant. But:

Grateful to be home with my bed. With that luxury of a shower. After so little sleep and a ten hour journey - via Manchester - I was very happy for comforts.

No photos were taken of the day. But that only partially compensates for the ones I've shared from the festival.

So much happened. So many good people. So many stories. So many blog posts to write! And we plan to return next year. Grateful for an offer of easier transport in 2017.

31^st August

Grateful to have woken up in my own bed. Because it was my bed. And because "woken" implies sleep.

Grateful that the GP did everything I wanted her to do. My posture is awful and I often have rotten pain and have just gained a new determination to sort it. The NHS may be able to help. Or maybe there is a good yoga for people with almost zero flexibility, bad posture and pain and muscle knots gained over years of holding everything in. The yoga must be VERY cheap. Rather than the cheap most people talk about which is generally more than I can afford with a personal income of zero.

Grateful to be able to look back on Greenbelt and spot that Clare can do more than she believes. Sometimes.

The height difference between my normal standing and my standing up with better (but still very imperfect) posture.  It's a bit more than two inches.