The cruel scent of Autumn - and free stuff! Yes, free stuff.

The cruel scent of Autumn is in the air.  No, not roast chestnuts and woodsmoke but smelly socks, fetid trainers and singed ironing.  There’s a week left of the summer holidays and really I should be Getting Things In Order. Once again (see posts around this time for the last however many years I’ve been writing this fecking blog) the boy has gone feral and unpleasant (only this time with raging hormones to add to the unsavoury mix). 

Twitter fuels my guilt. It seems like the whole world (apart from the sexbots, men, life coaches and carpet fitters) is sewing in uniform labels and booking itself into Clarks for shoe fittings.  It’s worrying about projects and colour-coordinating stationery.  Actually, even the sexbots are getting out their irons.  I, meanwhile, am wandering around Amazon getting dejected as I realise I now have more books out of print than in print.  L

‘We have to do something,’ I told James firmly over breakfast.  When I say 'breakfast' please don't for one moment imagine some cosy Waltons scene around the large farmhouse kitchen table. I was yelling from bed while he was scarfing a cinnamon Danish on the stairs. 
‘Get dressed and, once I finish this chapter of Lilith, we’ll attack your room.’

Aside: the book is by George MacDonald. Have wanted to read it for years and finally found it had been reprinted. Unfortunately the publisher turns out to be totally illiterate so you have to fill in the meaning on your own a fair bit.  Let me just read you this from the back cover blurb, to gain a flavour (so to speak):

“She then meats (sic) and falls in love with a young man who is already engaged.”  Er, right.

When I read this to Adrian he laughed, in a smutty schoolboyish sort of way and went off muttering, ‘Meat as a verb eh’…  Hmm. If you don’t get that, all I can say is good and that you probably didn’t share a flat with a bunch of Northern lads at university.

Anyhow.  I got up.  Sighed sadly at my shorts and T-shirt from the beach forlornly abandoned at the end of the bed and jumped swiftly into jeans, two jumpers, thick socks and UGG boots.  Yup it’s autumn alright.  The August thing is just a smokescreen.

‘Right, we’re getting Neolithic on your room, mate,’ I said.  James looked worried.

‘Yes, that IS way worse than Medieval, if you were wondering.  Do you KNOW when the Neolithic was?’

He shook his head sulkily and I rolled my eyes. ‘You’ve got a current affairs quiz when you go back to school; this is fecking ridiculous.’
His eyes brightened.  ‘But Neolithic isn’t current, is it?’

‘Er, good point. Okay, how many goals did Arsenal let in?’
‘Eight!!!!’
‘Ha!!! Losers!’  We fist-bumped and heard the distant sound of a man banging his head rhythmically on a desk. 

Well, we threw the entire room up in the air and then tossed things into various mounds and then he sprayed and dusted until I started sneezing so loudly I nearly didn’t hear the postman who delivered a HUGE parcel.

Uniform?  Uniform!  Oh yes. Thank you, gods.  Or rather thank you, Tesco.  Once again, bless ‘em, they’ve come up trumps. Trousers, shirts, t-shirts, Top Gear pencil case and assorted stationery.  If there’s chocolate in there, I’m going to spontaneously orgasm….but no.  Sadly (or perhaps fortunately, given the postman was still lingering around the door) not.  There’s even a nifty notebook that says:

At which point I got quite excited (no, not THAT excited) and thought someone had finally figured it out but no, you (or presumably your child) are/is supposedly supposed to come up with the plan your/his/herself. Which is a Tall Order.   And then that reminded me of something and someone else, but I’ll save that for another day…

Anyhow. Tesco. Good for school uniform.  Saved my bacon anyhow.  Now I only have to sort out the shoes (and I’m sure we could just cut a hole in the front so the old ones fit) and invest in the new tracksuit (this school is getting a bit FA on us, frankly, we’ll have new home and away kits each season at this rate).  Which reminds me...Arsenal again...remember *that* away kit? Vomit.

Oh, and because I’m all heart (and because they offered it), I could nab you a new school uniform for your child too (or, hey, for you, if that kinda thing rocks your boat)… I’ve got a £15 e-voucher to spend online for the Back to School range…and, let me tell you, you’d probably kit out a family of ten for that… So, just leave a comment (and please make sure I can get hold of you – if you don’t have a blog leave an email or, hey, your postal address and where you leave your spare key…). I’ll close my eyes and stab the screen (making sure I get it that way round) to pick a winner by the weekend. 

Karma and The Cold

There are times when I have absolutely no idea who I am.  I catch sight of my reflection in a mirror and am simply perplexed.  I look down at my hands, typing, and think 'whose are these and whose words are they tapping out?' So many people seem so sure of themselves; so keen to bestow their certainty on everyone; to tell you what is right and what is wrong. How lovely to be so sure.  Even if you’re not right.

Right now, I feel buffeted.  It feels like I’m standing at the front of a fast-moving ship with the wind forcing air into my lungs – so hard that I can’t breathe out. Signs and symbols and synchronicities are crashing into me so fast, so furious. I try to bat them away like flies, but there are simply too many.

It’s nearly June and I’m cold, so cold, so freezing cold.  Or is it just me? Is it an inner cold, an inner ice, a soul cold?

Is. Ice. Isa. The rune that is one straight line. I. Id. Idol (ego).  I’m in here (but where/when?).

Isa imerges again and again.  Standst(ill). (Cons)t(r)aint. That which impedes. Ill(us)ion. 

‘”The winter of the spiritual life is upon you.”
The I, the eye and the ei. Funny, innit – egg in German is Ei.  The divine I. Eggo. Egg-O.  This last bit, by the way, from a little book Adrian gave me on his return from Russia – on Euphonics.  ‘I and O are sounds which link the solitary self with the totality of things, as in I alone, or I all one. At one are those who can atone; For the All One revolves alone.” 

Sorry…(I can see Milla rolling her eyes) but I just love the way words have deeper, core, universal, sometimes hidden,  meanings…

And I dunno. I have no right to feel frozen. I am lucky, I keep reminding myself. I have family, friends, health, not wealth (but that is small in importance – as I was strongly reminded the other day, I would rather live in a bedsit and be free than in a mansion and be bound in hell).  So why this freezing? Why this soul sadness that creates such a deep ache in the heart?

I asked on Twitter, as you do.  Yeah, you can ask about deep soul sadness on Twitter – it ain’t all about cupcakes and sexbots.

‘I’m getting a strong hit for Yellow Rattle karmic essence,’ said Jackie Stewart (@JSFLowerspirit).  So I checked it out.

“Those in need of this essence carry an innate sadness and melancholy from previous lifetimes that they are often unable to express, and which causes recurring and apparently unfounded feelings of hopelessness and despair to surface in their current lives.” 

And welled up a bit.  ‘Are you alright, Mum?’ said James, curled up on my sofa (home ill from school).

‘Of course I am, love. I just felt a little sad. You know – you do too, sometimes.’  

Swallowing the tears – sometimes one is never alone when one needs to be.  He hugged me until he made me smile, his warmth thawing the chill.  But it returns, it always does and then all I can do is run, run, run.  Go to the gym again and race against my self to get physically warm, pushing my body, punishing it really.  I do get warm, eventually…but only on the outside.

I ordered the remedy.  I wonder what it will bring.

Do you believe in karma? Can we carry *stuff* over from one lifetime to the next?  My family believes so.  My brother always said that, as a family, were carry bad karma. My sister goes further. ‘We did bad, bad things,’ she said once. ‘And we will pay and pay…’  Will we? Do we?