Days of Gratitude - Birthdays and bubbles, cakes, cafes and cameras. And a vagina?

I am very behind.  I haven't posted from my gratitude diary in a few weeks.  There's lots of catching up to do.  Lots more than just posting the diary.  I've been using my bus pass quite a bit in the last week and have visited places I've never been to before.  Bus routes go to pleasing places to walk.  Even some places I'd never heard of before.  Many photos mean many blog posts to come.

So here is a week of gratitude posts from the Sunday Assembly Newcastle gratitude group.  A great week, most of which was spent in Greater Manchester.  I love living in Newcastle.  It's a great place to be.  But I'm loving visiting Manchester too - and my very special friend there.

Oh yes, the word vagina appears in the title of this post.  It does not appear in any of the diary entries.  It's only in the title because the last post, which contained the word vagina in the title twice, got far more views than most.  It's currently the fourth most clicked on post on this blog, having overtaken my post that contained the words breasts and fucking in the title.  Obviously vaginas are popular and my vagina is certainly winning, even though I don't have one.  I can't help thinking that there must be people who click on these posts and are then very disappointed when they find out what they're actually about.  No sex here.  No porn.  No naked genitals to look at.

The most popular post ever on this blog is the address I wrote for my mother's funeral.  Although I doubt every one of the people clicking on that was real as soon after that was the week that quite suspiciously large number of Russians were reading two posts.  In second place is the post with the words "Dunston Staithes" in the title, words which perhaps won't attract entirely the same set of people as a vagina post.

So this post has vagina in the title.  I wonder if it will get substantially more views than the other gratitude posts.

9^th April

A great day celebrating a birthday. A little quiet party with good people.

A day with my magic friend and Into The Hoods in the evening.

Lots of party games. The morning found us making this one: Pin the cross on the Desmond Tutu.

10^th April

Grateful for the sunlight on the water in the park we visited.

And for the total joy that bubbles can bring.

11^th April

Grateful to have had the ability to go to a swimming pool for the first time since I began to use the name Clare. It's a scary thing. I can't swim but this was about overcoming fear not swimming. Another step to freedom.

Also grateful to find a quiet place for a drink afterwards and to learn that away from the main shopping area there is a more pleasant area of Stockport.  (It's true.  I actually look forward to going back on a day that isn't a Monday so the market and the shops around it will be open.)


13^th April

Grateful for a day containing too many things to be grateful for to ever fit them in a post like this.

Surprises, a good lunch, time with a brilliant friend, smiles, and wishing Bury a happy bubble day.


So much in the day. Clare is a fortunate woman.

The photo is one of the bubble machines we bought. Newcastle needs a happy bubble day too.

14^th April

Typing this on the coach home.

Grateful for the wonderful friendship I share with Amanda. For the days I spend with her. Grateful too for cake like this, from the first of two cafes this morning.

And grateful that home awaits. Wife, child, my bedroom, and quite a lot to look forward to. Newcastle in an hour!

15^th April

Grateful for the technological marvel that is the smartphone. Grateful for WhatsApp and the ease of communicating with someone from a distance. I found all the letters and postcards Beth and I sent each other years ago and wonder how things would be with Amanda if we had to do things the old fashioned way rather than being able to communicate instantly whenever we wanted.


Grateful too for having a tech knowledgeable friend on facebook who recommended a phone to me that got ordered. With all this Whatsapp use it will be an excellent thing to have a bigger screen, a better camera, and a phone that has enough memory.  (And I only realise when blogging this that the photo is not of the model of phone I bought.  Never mind.)

My Nokia Lumia 530 was the cheapest in the shop at the time, has served me well, and after a quiet start has had to work very hard for the last eight months. Very hard. But today a new phone is on order.

Writing when preparing the blog post:  Since it arrived, only ten days ago, a lot of photos have been taken.  There are quite a few posts to come, with lots of pictures.  Loving that it has a much better camera than the old phone and I've been enjoying playing with it a lot.

Days of Gratitude - Freedom and Friends. Failure and Falling.

It's time for another blog post with entries from my Gratitude Diary from the Sunday Assembly Newcastle group.

There have been good times and tough times.  Today my head has rather fallen apart and just getting through the day feels much like swimming through quick drying cement.  I need to be doing things.  And I just can't do them.  On days like this it's important to be able to remember the good things and to know not only that there will be good things again but that even on the bad days there are good things.  If they are "good" and "bad" at all - are those words just value judgments or are they objective realities?

What a difference from yesterday when my brain worked and I was able to be out and pretty free and even the noise in the pub and cafe and main street was not too much.  It took some work but I could do it.

And what a difference from a month ago.  A month ago today - as mentioned in the gratitude diary - this happened.

It was a day on which we did nothing very special together.  Ordinary things. And it was very, very wonderful.

A day on which just being together and holding each other on a beach as it snowed and the tide came in was a heaven.

But not every day can be heaven.  Many of my days are like this one when my head can hardly function.  These are days of "Yes, this is really very hard, I really am disabled, and I do need support."

Thankfully, not every day is like this one and there are the days and moments of wonder and free joy too.

Image from http://emilysquotes.com/

9th February

Tough day mentally.

But grateful to have had the spoons remaining to get out to something this evening.

And grateful for a feeling I had while I was out: Freedom! It's a commonly used image - but it is like a massive weight and burden has been lifted.

Yes, that's related to yesterday's grateful post which I copied as a blog post yesterday too. Get the word out! Tell people what's going on. And get pretty much no reaction (yet) from church people. (Eight words from the pastor and a response from someone I specifically asked about it)

10th February


Grateful for the little things on random doors, walls and windows at Broadacre House. Anyone else read the haiku on the 5th floor?

Also felt grateful last night because the days countdown until I am with Amanda dropped below 10. At last. Single digits are easier to cope with. 9 1/2 days to go by the end of yesterday.

These words are on a wall by a lift door at Broadacre House.  Sometime I need to do blog some photos taken there during the last six months.

11th February

Get in early today. Grateful that in the next hour this lot will be collected for charity. Loads went to the tip at the weekend too.

Truly we have a super-abundance. What we are clearing is far more than a lot of people could ever dream of owning.

Maybe it's time to learn to use this abundance better. For joy, people, relationship, love, creative passion, for being all we can be. All the things I think God is, rather than god being an omnipotent bloke with impressive facial hair. My heresy has very much in common with committed atheism!

12th February

Totally failed to get to a social event tonight. Not for lack of trying. She left a crucial piece of information out of her address.

But the view over Newcastle from the Trinity Square student accommodation was worth seeing.

 
And though the lights and escalators are too loud in different ways, it was good to look at the art at Gateshead Metro.

For anyone interested, the mosaics are by http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/keith-grant

13th February


Grateful that somehow I mustered up some extra spoons today and got out when all I felt like doing was sitting on the bed.

Grateful that when I was getting severely overloaded in town I decided not to go straight home but to go and see if a cafe I'd passed was quiet enough for me to cope with.

Grateful that it turned out to be a very cool place. Very cool.

(My grateful post contained more photos but since I've already written about the cafe I'm only including two photos here.)

14th February

First Sunday of Lent. No church. Because this is my Lenten fast. Not just to stay away from church but to explore the physical, temporal and inner space created by no church. To learn to walk more in my own freedom.

No church, but the Shamanic Sound Journey tonight was quite stunning. Grateful for the person who said they were going - which meant I spotted it - even though they couldn't get there in the end.

And making that conscious choice to let go of church, at least for a while, possibly much longer, feels so liberating and absolutely the right thing to do.

It was the last of these journeys because the person leading it moves away tomorrow. I could moan and say "Why didn't I know about this sooner?" The truth is, if I had known, I wouldn't have been ready to be there.

Anyway, grateful for tonight. And grateful, so grateful, for being able to intentionally choose
differently than the circular habit of so many years.

The lovely changing colours light at The Vault, Wallsend

15th February

Having a day when my brain was deciding to behave and shine and smiles could fall out and even the noise and haste was reasonably easy to cope with.

Meeting a friend at Tea Sutra. Great time. And I spent rather longer with her than planned discussing all kinds of things.

Also great that she's a stunning Christian friend of the kind who cheers and gives big hugs when she learns I've given up church at least for Lent. Glad and fortunate to have met her last year in unlikely circumstances.


(Tea Sutra addicts will not that this picture was not taken yesterday. But it was taken from the spot I was sitting yesterday.)

Days of Gratitude - Hard Times, Tea, Zentangles, the Sunday Assembly, and The Perfect Rainbow

The month of January draws to a close and the Sunday Assembly Gratitude Group continues.  Whether it will survive as planned until the end of the year remains to be seen.  Half a dozen of us post every day or nearly every day - out of fifty people who signed up.  I hope the others are being able to celebrate gratitude in their own way or are being encouraged by those of us posting random and non-random good things from our days.

The last week of January has been really difficult for me, largely due to the quite debilitating psychological effect of a certain appointment that will be mentioned later.  But there are always still things for which we can be grateful.  While this diary mentions some of the hard things I want it to focus on the good, even when that gives an unrealistic picture of my life as if it's some mental health paradise where I can do anything and power through like the most flawless superhero.

It's been tough to do anything much.  So tough that I haven't even begun the book pictured below and I really want to do that.  But finding the mental energy to do anything has been a real challenge.  I have to begin the book - she's written a follow-on course which is published next week.  Does anyone want to buy me a copy?!  (Also "Exposure Anxiety" by Donna Williams, "Meister Eckhart" by Matthew Fox, "The Nine Degrees of Autism", books on the Morrigan, "The Tain", and the poems of Rabindranath Tagore all of which have expanded my Amazon wishlist in the last week.  Slight book addiction even though just lately they have been very hard to read at all.)

One day of January remains.  I am fragile inside so will do only what is wise for me to do.  The current plan includes attending the Sunday Assembly.  If you ever feel like attending a Sunday Assembly and there's one near you then go along.  You won't be turned away - they are explicitly radically inclusive.  And even if you decide you hate it, at least you will have had the chance to sing some songs, listen to some interesting people, and eat some cake.  I recommend it - and I say that knowing the apparent paradox of me liking to be both at the "godless assembly" and at my church on the same day.

 24th January


Quiet day. Yesterday wiped me out more than I thought last night.

But grateful I found the energy for church and even for a few of us to get to the pub afterwards. Soooo worn out now but they are people I love.

And grateful that this book arrived and I can begin it tomorrow. Looks to be much fun.

 25th January


I have focus choices today that could lead to depression or to calm acceptance and gratitude:

A. How hard it's been to get through the day due to what my head threw at me. How bloody awful some of the moments have been and how hard it's been to deal with anxiety and other things. Yeah, I could choose to see this day as terrible.

Or:

B. I have got through the day. That is an achievement in itself.
C. The wonderful person who helped me back to the light today. Twice.
D. The light bulb moment and idea this morning that is actually rather good and quite exciting. And which, if it can happen, will benefit people in a way that currently does not exist.
E. I have a home, family, friends - including a Facebook anniversary with Ellie - food, a piano and guitar to play, soft toy friends who got named today, and so much more.
F. Saturday had such smiles and unicorns. And the previous Saturday included someone who could be the Saint of Unicorns. And there will be many more good days, some including unicorns.

26th January


Written on the 27th

A really tough day.

Grateful for Amanda's words to me. Grateful that I wrote something that makes a big project feel less like an amorphous blob.

And grateful that even on bad head days I can be quite good at a Sudoku on Puzzle Nikoli. Yep, I am showing off about a meaningless skill!

27th January


Grateful that even though I had a panic attack at the bus stop and had to give up I still made it later to sit in a certain cafe where nothing matches and drink tea.

And for a certain joy for a little while earlier because no matter what tomorrow brings, life is awesome.

28th January


Well that was horrible! A word that could express anyone's experience of an ATOS assessment.

Grateful for the very good woman who took me there and sat with me in the appointment, without whom I would never have managed to get there or get through it. Grateful for the awesome people in my life.

I'm actually grateful to have felt so rubbish for the assessment because it meant she got me on a bad day without me having to say "Yes, I know I appear stupendous but sometimes I fall apart." I was a mess and that's probably a good thing under the circumstances.

Grateful that it's over, for better or worse.

Grateful to be back home, safe, with hot chai, and that I have very good friends here of a type that really confuse ATOS assessors when in part of your answer to "Do you live with anyone?" you say "... and eight friends. One of them is a unicorn." The photo is not the unicorn!

29th January


No photo today - because I haven't got permission to share the image.

Grateful for the card that a very good, close friend made and sent to me this week and for everything that it means to us. For memories of what she has drawn on the front of the card - a perfect moment in a day that's already featured in the month's gratitude. I really am most fortunate that she is a part of my life.

And - in a more shallow but equally valid way - grateful for the charity shop sale which had a cool Per Una coat and a cute posh party dress for a Pound each.

Added afterwards:

Come to think of it. I am grateful for this morning's rainbow, right across the sky.  And then it became a double rainbow. Gorgeous but my phone couldn't fit it all in the picture.

30th January

Grateful that, as it turned out, I was buying a little present for a friend at exactly the same time as she was buying me a little present, 100 miles away.

Found Fiction, Thomas Merton, a Railway Murder and a Laughing Cat in Newcastle City Centre

Plans changed today.

I went into Newcastle with planning to sit in a cafe for a while, reading.

It wasn't a major change of plans.  I did sit in a cafe.  It just wasn't the cafe I'd expected to visit.

First I visited a Catholic Church and from their book stall picked up a couple of little Christian books, readings from Thomas Merton and Bede Griffiths, two Catholics who wrote much on contemplation and became greatly influenced by Eastern religions, Griffiths especially by Hinduism and Merton by Buddhism.  I'll say no more, because elsewhere I promised a spirituality free post!

I also grabbed a few journals of local history - Tyne and Tweed, which covers the history of Northumberland from, as the name suggests, the Tyne to the Tweed.  Here I learn of a murder on a train from Newcastle to Morpeth and learn that Barras Bridge, a road near the biggest shopping street in the city, is probably named after a barrow - a mass grave for plague victims.  I'm sure I'll learn of happier things too as I browse the journals.

And then to today's first cafe of choice.  At which point I decided not to go in.  The person serving was not the usual man but instead someone who I know has severe problems with me being transgender.  I'll say no more about that too, because I promised a gender free post!

So I walked to the Anglican Cathedral.  Alas, my favourite seat - the only comfy sofa with a table - was taken.  So after absorbing the organ music playing in the church I left.

Instead I decided to visit "The Laughing Cat".  It's very quiet in the morning as it's tucked away up an unappealing ramp near the library.  You wouldn't go up that ramp without good reason so most people don't know the cafe is there.

I haven't been there for a few weeks.  The last time was with a friend and there was much joyful singing along with the music playing, by staff and customers, that music being a version of The Rocky Horror Show.  It's a friendly place and a good spot to meet people for a drink or food - the pesto pasta is great, the home-made soups are filling and flavorsome, and the bacon is high quality.  And my friend treated me to take-away cake which was an enormous portion of grand chocolate cake.

I treated myself today.  Not just a drink.  But a cookie.  I know that's not much of a treat for most people but for me it's not usual.

I sat, relaxed and read the newspaper provided.  And looked at the cafe which had an entirely different set of things on the walls than three weeks ago.  Someone has used the cafe as an exhibition of his work, which is a regular thing there and in certain other local cafes.  To my left there was this picture:

Ahead of me was the counter, covered with cake and with a pot of little fig filled cake/biscuits that they call "nun's tits."

And to my right, the cafe window, looking out towards the Laing Art Gallery.

Just to complete the set, here's the wall behind me and the seat I'd chosen.

As you can see, The Laughing Cat is not busy in the morning.  I've been there for lunch with friends and there wasn't a spare seat but at 10am on a Friday morning it's often almost deserted.  All the art on the wall behind my chair was from this man's exhibition of his work.  It's well done and I can see the care and creative expression but to be honest most of it is too surreally macabre for my tastes for home.

My cafe visit had an unexpected pleasure.  Sitting on the table was an envelope.

READ ME!  I'm ever curious and obey words like this.  I thought it was probably going to be some left-wing political tract or something about gay rights (The Laughing Cat is known for being very LGBT friendly) or someone had left some sort of religious tract behind for the next unsuspecting customer.  Or perhaps someone had left an envelope by mistake.

Perhaps some of you would have had no surprise about the envelope.  Perhaps you've seen the letters "F F" on an envelope somewhere else and explored the contents.  As I explored I discovered that the letters stand for "Found Fiction".  People write a story, submit it to the found fiction group and their story is left somewhere.  These envelopes exist elsewhere in Britain and there are quite a few in the USA.  What a good idea.   So I read a story called "At the Stake", a less than jolly tale.  I don't know if you'll be able to read it too by clicking on the text but here's the story.  If you save the picture and then open it then it should be readable.  And if anyone from FF reads this and thinks these photos shouldn't be here please let me know and I'll remove them.

And so, full of drink and cookie I left the cafe until another visit calls to me.  A quick walk across the square to look down and across - the cafe is above a main road, gallery to the left and the city library to the right.

The Laing Gallery is free and is certainly worth visiting if you're ever in Newcastle.  It opened in 1904 and houses local glass and pottery and a range of paintings, with permanent and temporary exhibitions.  An exhibition of portraits of the Queen by Cecil Beaton was surprisingly interesting and an exhibition of drawings by the author Mervyn Peake was rather enjoyable.

The city library deserves a blog post of its own.  It was opened by The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh in 2009 and replaced a structure that the broadcaster John Grundy called "a monstrous concrete blob."  It's a pleasant place to choose a book or to read a book.  I'll photograph it sometime but there are plenty of images online for anyone curious.

And then I looked up.  The Laughing Cat is on a balcony above the road.  And it's below this:

It's Bewick Court, a block of 133 flats completed in 1970.   There's a musical about Bewick Court.  I've often wondered what it would be like to live in one of those flats.  I know it would be a very convenient place to live but I suspect it wouldn't be an ideal quiet life there - given that last November there was a court case concerning a rape there and just a few weeks ago someone was arrested for an arson attack there which luckily was controlled quickly and without anyone being hurt.

I think on reflection I'll stay where I am, in our quiet house, and know that we're fortunate to be able to afford to live here rather than in a small flat amid the noise and haste.  I'll just pass it by unless I get to know anyone who lives there.

I'll just visit The Laughing Cat and enjoy it.