Letting go and giving up

I believe the universe talks to us – we just have to listen.  Sometimes it’s incredibly clear – someone gives you the message you need right here and now; you turn on the radio and the lyrics of a song jump out at you and smack you in the chops.  Sometimes it’s more subtle – signs, symbols, associations.  Okay, I can hear you – is it really the universe or just our subconscious finding links, meaning? Are we filtering out the bits that don’t fit the puzzle and focusing in on the bits that do?  I dunno.  And, really does it matter, anyhow? 

This is the ethos behind medicine walking – that when you go out in the world you watch what wanders across your path. You take notice of the signs, you follow the flirts. 

Lately I’ve felt like I’ve been wading through mud. Whatever I do, nothing seems to make any difference.  I’m just fighting, fighting, wrestling with the world and with myself… shadow boxing.  And my path through the woods echoes that – the Cauldron has been deep in mud lately, hard going.

Once again, I met the dentists this morning – sliding down as I was climbing up.  ‘You always go the hard way,’ they said. Again. 

‘Honestly, it’s easier going up than coming down,’ I said. Again.  And we smiled and passed.

I take my phone with me on my walks with the SP – not because I can use it (no signal) but for taking photographs.  Only today, as I came to the hill-fort and paused to watch sunlight filtering through trees and glancing on the field beyond, it suddenly beeped at me.  How strange.  I checked but no messages – no surprise there as nobody has my number.  But it snagged me so I checked on Twitter and there it was – a message.  A sad message.

‘It never ends.’ 

meanart.deviantart.com 

And I came down along the path through the woods and found someone had built a circle and someone had covered the hut with bracken.  I looked down and I looked up – from earth to sky.  A circle in the woods.  A place of safety in the woods.  And I thought about the weary despair in that tweet.  What never ends? Torment. Anguish. Misery?  And no, it doesn’t – if you let it claim you; if you clasp it close to your heart and dance with it, a tango of obsession.  But if you release it, if you let it go…

It’s interesting, this idea of letting go.  A couple of days ago I was looking for a heart opening meditation on YouTube for a friend. And I found one but figured I’d better try it out myself first and it was pretty amazing – and the words were spookily, scarily accurate – like it had been written just for me.  And, maybe for that reason, I didn’t send it.  Then yesterday I played it again and – I swear to God – the words were different.  There was a whole passage missing.  Weird huh?  But anyway, I stood by the circle and felt my own sense of ‘It never ends’ and did a bit of heart opening and – wham! – back I went again, to Jerusalem and that unconditional Love that sweeps absolutely everything aside.  It’s the One Thing that will sort anything, everything.  That makes everything alright. Truly.

So, after I recovered my equilibrium, we went on, the SP and I, and we chose to go the long way.  And, as we came to the fork in the path, down by the river, there was a piece of red tape fluttering in the breeze, like a crime scene. 

Path Closed

What?  Except, this being Exmoor, someone had pulled it aside.  We went on.  And climbed the steep hill to our bench, to our vantage point and…and… there was no path.  A huge tree had given up and slid down the near-vertical bank towards the river far below. 

Landslide.  Land Sidle.  Lands Lied. Island Led. Sin Ladled. I’ll Sadden.  I’ll shut up now, yeah? 

Turn back?  Hell no. You can let go but don’t give up.  Never give up.  If the path disappears, you find a new one.  If something blocks your path, you find a different way; you go around it.  You don’t fight it; you don’t smash it; you dance it.  The SP danced the lands lied with a flourish, a flamenco of a dance. Mine was more of a wobbly waltz.  And there was a moment where I thought, okay, this is it, I’m going to tumble down like the tree and smash my skull on the rocks and float off down the river, a lumpen log (wearing James’ new coat, for which he would never forgive me).  But no.

We descended and joined the big wide easy path by the river.  And met a couple of exceedingly elderly women walking exceedingly slowly leaning on their sticks.  I said hello and went to move on, then thought I’d better warn them that the path had gone.  ‘Maybe best to take the Middle Path,’ I said.

They looked at once another and then back to me. ‘That’s very sweet of you, dear, but we’ll be alright.  We’ll just take it very slowly and very carefully.’

Messages eh?  What you reckon?  I’m thinking this…take it slowly, take it carefully...

Let go but don’t give up  

No, it's not an oxymoron.  Hmmm...oxymoron eh?  Moon oryx.. Moor onyx... Om or Onyx?  The onyx is a stone of - well, well, letting go; of centring oneself with the Higher Power. How about that then? And the oryx?  I dunno, what comes to my mind is Margaret Atwood's novel, Oryx and Crake.  In which Oryx was a prostitute, a teacher, a lover, a guardian of the animals. 

'It's not even her real name, which he'd never known anyway; it's only a word.  It's a mantra.'

Hmm.  

My love affair with Autumn and, er, my book

I’d forgotten how much I love autumn.  The SP and I took our walk along the river today as even I am not quite feckless enough to wander through the woods when bits of tree are whizzing past my nose.  The wind was wild and crazy and the SP went crazy too, leaping like an impala over the long grass, spooking at things that weren’t there (or at least not visible to the eye) and leaping up at me as if to say, ‘Isn’t this the best fun in the entire world ever?’ I had to agree it wasn't half-bad and, with The Black-Eyed Peas blaring in my ears, we danced our way round the big field.

The hedgerows were stuffed with berries and hips – blackberries, rowanberries, hawthorn, rosehips, big fat sloes – and the scent of wild honeysuckle drifted on the breeze. And it all reminded me that the wondrous Kim Jewell had gone a bit nuclear on me the other day.  See, many many years ago (so many years in fact that, as was kindly pointed out on Facebook, most of the original readers are probably dead!) I wrote a book called The Natural Year, all about living in tune with the seasons.  

Anyhow.  I'd been thinking for quite some time that I really ought to get my old books out there as e-books.  But, to be honest, every time I started looking into how to do it, I felt a bit queasy.  So, I was whinging in an unattractively pathetic way on Twitter about all the things that were stopping me self-publishing, like lack of a cover, not being able to format etc, and Kim said simply, ‘I’ll do it for you.’ 

And she did.  Just like that.  24 hours later The Natural Year was up on Amazon and available for sale. I tell ya, that woman is scarily awesome.  You wouldn’t want to meet her down a dark alley, that’s for sure. 

Anyhow, here it is and here you go.  It seems I have self-pubbed my first ebook (or rather, Kim has).  You can find it here. if you're in the US and here if you're in the UK.  If you're in Germany, you will have to find it for yourself as it seems a direct link is verboten.  And if you're anywhere else you are entirely free to buy it from wheresoever you so desire.  Kim interviewed me for her blog and you can read that here. Incidentally you can also find links there to her own wonderful YA titles (James is a huge fan of the Justice series).

Sooo.  What did I say, way back then in the mists of time, about Autumm?  Let's see....an abridged snippet (love the word snippet). 

Autumn – Season of the Mind

"Autumn shouts ‘wake-up’ to the psyche - it's time to dust yourself off after the languor of summer and take life head on once again.  In spring you started to ask yourself lots of questions about your life, your path and your desires.  Now is the time to get them going, to take action, to shift your external world.  Autumn is the season of the mind but it also concerns our relationship with the environment, with the world outside, the bigger picture. 

Autumn is a perfect time to decide what you want to make of your life; what you want to achieve; where you want to be; how you want to work.  It is the key time for deciding on your life path or making moves towards it.  That may sound frightening, even off-putting, but it needn't be.  Often we automatically find ourselves making changes, shifts, in the autumn.  We may not be totally instinctual beings any more but deep within we are still moved by the rhythms of the year. Our hearts and souls still beat to the ancient drum.  It is no real surprise that schools and colleges use the beginning of autumn as their starting point for the academic year.  What better time to make a fresh intellectual start? 

This is the perfect time to get your life in order.  It's the time to start looking for answers to the questions you posed yourself back in spring.  If you need to shake your life around a bit, this is the time to do it.  Don't feel you have to change for the sake of it - it's more a case that if you have been looking for a change, this is a good time to think about putting things into motion.  As always, if the time doesn't feel right, don't do anything.  I'm certainly not suggesting that everyone should go out and get a new job or a new relationship or move house or emigrate on September 1st!  Simply that if you feel there are changes in your life (however small) you might want to make, the energy at this time of year will help you make those changes.  It's like a car being given a dose of high-octane fuel or a horse being given a feed of oats - you should be feeling frisky and full of energy."

Hellfire, did I really write that???  Shit.  Think I need to read the book.  :-)

Oh, and while I’m here, keep an eye on those rosehips…. A couple of recipes from later in the book...

Wild rose hips abound during the autumn and early days of winter - pick them (best after the second frost but before the birds get a chance to eat them all) and use them as a cold-banishing tonic, jam-packed with vitamin C.  If you have an abundance of rose hips you could make rosehip syrup as did all wisewomen and good housekeepers of old.  If not, try a simple tonic drink.  The famous herbalist Culpeper said that rosehips are ‘grateful to the taste and a considerable restorative, fitly given to the consumptive person, the conserve being proper in all distempers of the breast and in coughs and tickling rheums.  It has a binding effect and helps digestion.’  In all a wonderful free tonic. 

ROSEHIP SYRUP

Crush around 450g of rose hips and put them into a pan containing 900ml of boiling water.  Bring them back to the boil and then turn off the heat and allow them to stand for around twenty minutes.  Strain (preferably through muslin), and then put the fruit which will now be pappy and mashed, into around 300ml of fresh boiling water.  Once again allow to stand for a further twenty minutes and then strain again. 

Mix the two sets of strained juices together and return to the pan.  Boil on a low but steady heat until the juice has reduced down to around 600ml.  It will be syrupy by now.  Allow to cool, sweeten to taste with wild honey and bottle in sterilized bottles as you would with any preserve. 

ROSEHIP TONIC DRINK

Simply chop up two teaspoons of rose hips and add them to around 300ml of boiling water.  Allow to steep for fifteen minutes and then strain and sweeten with honey to taste.  You can make larger quantities and keep in the fridge for up to three days.  It tastes lovely too.

It's not all about size zero, you know

‘It’s not all about being bloody size zero, you know, Jane,’ said the woman in the pub, stabbing her finger at me. ‘All this diet and exercise stuff you do; it’s not where it’s at. It doesn’t make you happy, you know.’ 

Now, admittedly she was very VERY drunk but it did rather take me aback because she sounded really angry. And it got me thinking.  Yes, I’ve lost a lot of weight over the last year – nigh on fifty pounds.  But it was never about being stick thin; it certainly wasn’t about being size zero (not that I’m anywhere close).  It was simply about not killing myself with food anymore.  I’m still not totally balanced out but I’m getting better; I’m trying.

The exercise stuff I just found I liked. I tried a lot of things and some worked for me; some didn’t. As my pal and fitness instructor Trisha always says, unless you find something you enjoy, you won’t stick with it; it won’t become part of your life.  I enjoy walking the SP cos it frees my head and gets me out in the fields or up in the woods, stroking the trees, kissing the sky, whispering to the river.  And I love yoga cos it shifts my perspective and makes me feel sooooo stretched.  Zumba, oh Zumba, I adore because it’s tough but fun and I can lose myself in the music and, shit, it’s just sexy as hell - plus I haven’t had a day’s backache since I started (cos it shimmies you out like nothing else).  When it comes to the gym, let’s be honest, I spent most of my time chatting with Trisha and when the house is cold, the gym is warm and I can scribble notes on the exercise bike.  Kettlercise?  Well, slugging kettlebells around just  makes me feel…strong.

Yeah, strong.  I love that I have well-defined muscles now – that if I flex my arm I can see those twin mythical beasts, biceps and triceps; that my quads ripple a bit when I walk.  Let’s be very clear here, I’m not talking muscle-bound Ms Universe stuff – just a bit of toned lean muscle.  I’m not entirely there yet and I’m pretty sure my stomach will never be a washboard but I’m starting to feel comfortable in my skin for the first time that I can remember.

But that word - strong.  It took me back to Israel and a woman we met at the Daniel Rowing Centre in Tel Aviv.  Her name was (and, as far I know, still is) Moran Samuel. She was an athlete (a talented basketball player) and a student.  Then, when she was 24, she had a stroke, clean out of the blue, and became paralysed from the chest down.  Suddenly her life was turned upside down and she headed into rehab. Did she give up?  Did she hell.  She went and qualified as a physical therapist, working with children with disabilities.  She returned to playing basketball (in her wheelchair) with the men’s Paralympic team and then, as if she hadn’t already achieved enough, she took up rowing and has recently won a bronze medal in the World Rowing Championship and has a ticket to the 2012 Paralympics. If you want to read her story in words far more eloquent than mine, do visit the Vibe Israel blog here where Sally Whittle tells her story. 

She was wearing a t-shirt when we met her that said simply:

Strong is the new beautiful. 

I like that message. And it struck me it’s one that might not be bad to impart to our children.  Because, while I may not be after a size zero body, a helluva lot of teenage girls are.  And boys aren’t immune either.  They’re trying to disappear, to vanish somehow. Young bodies need to grow strong, they need the nutrients a good healthy diet gives.  We ain’t gonna stop the glossy magazines and fashion designers peddling anorectic models, however much we may wish they would – so it has to come from us as parents.  How do you do it?  I dunno.  Be careful about the messages you give out maybe?  I just wish someone or other had gently nudged me into exercise when I was fourteen, instead of sticking me on a starvation diet.

So no. I know that a size zero body doesn’t bring happiness to anyone.  I know that dieting and exercise doesn’t make one happy per se either.  Happiness is a curious concept and not, to my feeling, a process so much as a glimpse - a moment, a song on the wind, a tug in the heart, a tingle in the gut.  Or maybe not even a noun but a verb – a happying.  But while I wait for my lovely happyings – and come they do – I think I’ll settle for trying strong.  When I'm not feeling weak.  :) What you reckon?

btw, if you live around Exmoor you might like to come along to a day's bootcamp I'm doing with Trisha and another local fitness instructor, Nicola.  See here for details...

Adrian is sitting on my head

Back to school.  Back to reality. Back to my new classroom. 

Backtrack to the barmy days of summer (okay, poetic license).  Susie and I were lugging kettlebells on the grass by the river (watched by ducks, laughed at by small children, copied by Stalkerish Stretching Man) and I was lamenting my parlous finances (again).

‘You…need…to….see….Helen…’ Susie gasped.

‘He…len?’ I gasped back.

‘Yup.  Is…feng…shui…’

Eh? But we launched into a brutal series of cleans and so I had to wait until we went down on the grass for floorwork to find out more.  Turned out Helen was a feng shui wotnot (Master? Mistress?) and had ‘sorted’ out Susie’s house and, lo and behold, Susie had got herself a pretty stunning high-powered new job before you could say "bagua".  

‘I don’t want a high-powered job,’ I said, slugging the kettlebell over my head while scissor-kicking my legs feebly.  ‘I just want some straightforward money.  Living on freebies is all very good but it’s…limiting.’

‘Helen will sort it,' said Susie firmly. 'I’ll bring her over tomorrow.’

Tomorrow?? You think it’s bad getting your house ready for viewing by potential buyers? Pah! Let's face it, your average house buyer isn’t going to suck his or her teeth and go, ‘Gawd, crap energy flow’ or ‘Will you take a look at that cutting chi?’  I’ve learned enough about this stuff to know we had ‘issues’, to put it kindly.  Once again I’d managed to fall head over heels for a house that was, shall we say, challenged, not only in its structure and underpinning but also in its wealth corner.  But hey, what can you do?  It’s not like you can shove your dirty chi under the beds and disguise your pathetic tai-chi by grinding coffee beans, is it?  

She walked around, sighing softly.  In a dispirited sort of way.  I trailed behind, heels dragging, like a child that knows it’s going to get told off.  And I did what every naughty child does – shifted the blame. 

‘I’ve told Adrian again and again about the clutter in that room,’ I pre-empted. She gave me a beady look. then looked at my office. 

‘Oh dear.’   

The three of us sighed in unison. My office was too big, too cold (no kidding), had too many doors and way too much frenetic energy.  When Helen found out that Adrian’s office sat directly above mine, she shook her head.

‘He’s sitting on my head, isn’t he?’ I said mournfully.

She nodded. 

‘Well?’ said Adrian, after they’d gone and we were sitting at the kitchen table having a post-mortem. 

‘Well,’ I said, prodding a chocolate biscuit.  ‘Seems I can’t work cos you’re squatting on my head.’

‘Okay. And what do we do about that?’  You have to hand it to him. How many men would react like that?

‘Umm…well apparently I need to move my office into the guest room.’

'And this will bring in some work?' he said. Hopefully. 

'Apparently.  Allegedly. Whatever,' I said.

'Let's do it.' 

So the next day we dismantled the guest room and moved it downstairs into my ex-office which, frankly, does look a bit weird, like we’re getting ready to install Uncle Fred (if we had one) and a bedlift.  

And here I am - up in the guest bedroom - feeling…curiously light-headed.  

New relationships can be difficult...

Our kitchen is pretty Spartan.  *Long pause………………………………….*  

Sorry, went off into a reverie about the real Sparta then…just pretty beautiful really.  Right. Back to the kitchen. We have a cooker and a fridge and a kettle (my mother’s old one, bogstandard white, mind of its own, boils itself up every so often just for the hell of it) and that’s it.  No really, it really is.
‘But, but, but….don’t you have appliances…’ stuttered someone on Twitter.  And the answer is, simply, no.

We did have a toaster but it blew up.  Okay, it didn’t blow up (I must stop exaggerating) – it just sort of went sulky and wouldn’t play.  Alright, let’s cut to the chase, it turned all coy virgin on us and wouldn’t open up its flaps to allow the bread in (and that may well be the first and last sexual metaphor for a toaster you’ll come across in your lifetime – and thank feck for that, you’re probably thinking).  We also had a popcorn maker which lasted all of a month before making a nasty smell and dying.  Umm, no, let’s not go there eh?

Maybe, I pondered, this is why I don’t really like cooking.  I simply don’t have the *stuff*.  But nah. I just don’t like cooking because, fundamentally, I can’t be arsed. At the risk of shocking a fair few of you foodie types, food is fuel, pretty much (apart from anything coffee-flavoured for which I make a lip-smacking exception). But generally I’d rather gaze into space than baste and stir and get my knickers in a twist over timing all for something that vanishes in under five minutes. And recipes are so bossy, so regimented.  Anyhow, I keep a perfectly good cook in the house and you don’t keep a cook and baste yourself, do you? ;)  

Would I be any different if I had a KitchenAid mixer or a Dualit toaster?  Highly unlikely - but, hey, if anyone cares to send me them I’m more than willing to give 'em a go. And Adrian is mad keen to get a posh coffee machine (hmm, coffee)....*sigh*

Therefore, when the nice PR asked if I’d like a crock-pot, my first reaction was to laugh.  And my second reaction was to snort.  ‘Nooo; they’re great,’ he said (I made up the nooo bit cos it improves the flow of the speech and, if I'm being very honest, he didn’t use a semi-colon either). ‘You just shove everything in and let it do its thing.’  Hmm.  Freeform. Laissez-faire. This sounded more like my idea of cooking.  ‘Oh, go on then,’ I said. Or rather, typed.  ‘Send it on over.’

Well. A few days later, I undid the parcel (having totally forgotten it was coming) and got it out.  I looked at it and it looked at me and we both had to hide our disappointment in one another. Isn’t the dream so often better than the reality? 

‘Shit, I’ve got the crap cook,’ I could hear it thinking.
‘Shit, you’re one ugly bastard,’ I thought to myself (not wanting to hurt its feelings by saying it out loud). 
But, honestly, it was; it is.  Really.  White. Plastic. Functional. Reminiscent of the 70s.  This, I thought, is why I don’t like gadgets.  They are just soooo fecking ugly and take up soooo much space.  So it sat on the kitchen table for several days, looking both mournful and accusatory.  Yeah, I've got a passive aggressive crock-pot.  We ate and tapped on our laptops around it, ignoring it, collectively hoping someone would take responsibility and do something with it. 

Outside the temperature was diving and it crossed my mind that, if nothing else, it might make a good chamber pot.  I tell ya, if ever an inanimate white plastic object could look hurt, that one did. ‘Okay, I’m sorry, alright. It was a crap (sorry again) idea.’

Then Adrian went off again (Brussels this time: yes, the man is single-handedly drinking his way around the world) and I figured that – this time – my child really shouldn’t live off pizza and the chippy.  Aha, I thought, winking suggestively at the crockpot. You. Me. Kitchen. Now. Hot date.  It looked wistfully hopeful. 

‘Vegetable chilli,’ Sessha had said firmly on Twitter when I asked what a vegetarian could cook in an implement designed for simmering meaty stews.  And I had vegetables aplenty thanks to Sarah Diggle’s organic veg box.  I checked the recipe.  Okay, so basically chop everything up and toss it in.  Yeah, even I could manage that and not lose too much staring time.
So I chopped and tossed.  Added chocolate (the only cooking tip you'll ever get from me).  And then I went off and forgot all about it until, around four hours later, instead of going ‘OH SHIT!’ as the smell of thrice-burned carbon gagged me, went 'Eh what the hell?' as something fragrantly and - um – distinctly edible – wafted up the stairs.  Who’da thought?  There it sat, smug and proud as anything, simmering its little white plastic heart out. 

‘What’s this?’ said James, looking suspiciously into his bowl and prodding.

‘Chilli,’ said I. 

‘Did you cook it?’ he said, furrowing his brow.

I paused. Pondered the right answer.  And then decided it was only fair.  Credit where credit’s due and all that.

‘Nope. The crockpot did.’
‘Oh, that’s alright then.’  And he stuck in his spoon and tucked in.

I raised an eyebrow at the crockpot as if to say ‘Pax?’ 

In return it made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a triumphant fart. 

Okay, seriously now.  I think CP and I may have some kind of future, I really do. Like all relationships, we just need to work at it and appearances can be deceptive, can't they?  But you foodie types will fall blindly in love, you really will.   Check out the website here.

And, get this, if you can come up with a seriously good slow cooker recipe you could win up to £3,500 of prizes. All you do is load up your recipe (plus pic) onto the Crock-Pot Facebook page here (before October 21) – and hope people *like* your recipe.  Relax, I won’t enter CP’s chilli – it wouldn’t be fair on the rest of you. 

What?  You want recipes?  Is there no end to your needs?  Sigh.  These are the ones CP really wants to cook.  We’re at a stand-off right now.

Beef Bourguignon (serves 6-8)

3 tablespoons flour
Sea salt and pepper
3 pounds beef chuck (bleugh, sorry, that sounds disgusting) – cut into 1-inch cubes
3 large carrots (peeled and sliced)
1 medium onion (sliced)
6 strips of cooked bacon (cut into pieces)
284ml beef stock
475ml red wine
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 crushed garlic cloves
3 springs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
450g mushrooms, sliced
2 large potatoes (cut into chunks)

Coat beef in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.  If you like, you can sear the beef on a skillet2.      Place meat in Crock-Pot® slow cooker and add remaining ingredients.
Cover and cook on Low for 8-10 hours or High for 5-7 hours, or until meat is tender.

Lemon Herb Roasted Chicken (serves 4-6)

1.8-2.7kg roasting chicken
1 onion
1-2 tablespoons butter
Juice of one lemon
½ teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
½ teaspoon dried thyme (hmm why dried, when fresh is nicer?)
1 teaspoon paprika

Place the onion in the cavity of the chicken and rub the skin with butter. Place chicken in Crock-Pot® slow cooker.
Squeeze lemon juice over chicken and sprinkle with remaining seasonings. Cover and cook on Low 8-10 hours or High 4-5 hours.

X-rated Kindle? Should e-books come with warning stickers?

Should e-books come with warning stickers?  Well, should they? 

I bought two books on Amazon for my Kindle the other day.  One was The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore. The other was Django Zoon: The Straightener by Jobo Pooks.  One was for James; one was for me.  Because, see, James has sort of purloined my Kindle, having consumed Kim Jewell’s YA books, Invisible Justice and BruteJustice.  And I tell you, if you have a recalcitrant reader, try him or her with an e-reader…while adults may baulk at the lack of a ‘real’ book, children seem to feel quite the opposite.

Now then.  Here’s the thing.  Zoon is huge fun – I read the first few chapters on Authonomy and it’s a wild roller-coaster ride, totally crazy and, in places, laugh-out-loud funny. Incorrect in every which way but that’s part of the charm. However  it also has a high filth level and some pretty fruity language.  Is it the kind of thing even a feckless liberal parent like me would want their twelve-year old to read?  Umm, no, not really. 

It kinda crossed my mind at the time whether I should say anything about it to James but I figured that doing so would only draw his attention to it, thus making it quite quite irresistible. So I kept schtum.  But I joked to Jobo, on Twitter, that my son was enjoying it – and he didn’t think it was remotely funny; in fact he was pretty perturbed.  And we batted it back and forth a bit – this question of books being available to buy online.  I really hadn’t given it any thought and, okay, I thought he was overreacting a bit.

I just don’t think children will be out there buying books for their Kindles in the first place by and large – they’d be getting their parents to spend the dosh, won’t they?  But, stop right there – James did order himself a copy of the Stig’s biography the other day.  Hmm.  Then again, even if a child did buy x-rated porn, the parents are going to get the email bill, right?  They’re going to see what little Bob or Kylie has downloaded and, unless Bob or Kylie is a speed reader, could nab it off them and lock them in their room to think about it before you could say ‘wildly inappropriate tits and arses’.  Anyhow, how is it an e-book any different from a paper book?  A lot of ‘normal’ adult books (I’m not talking erotica here) have scenes of sex and violence. Some have pretty ripe language.  If you have anything other than Barbara Cartland on your shelves (in which case we have a whole other conversation to have), surely your children could get a dose of adult material if they really wanted?

But then I thought again. It’s  not so much what they can buy but what’s already on there. And it is different because, with a paper book, you’re going to spot ‘em, aren’t you?  If James wanted, he could climb up on a chair and grab any number of explicit sex tomes (left over from my sex columnist days, of course). But I’d notice him thumbing through Extreme Tantra, wouldn't I?  Whereas Kindles are secretive little things.  Someone I know (I won't out her) says she loves her Kindle because she can be cruising the web, chatting on Twitter or Facebook while everyone thinks she is quietly reading Jane Austen.  Sneaky little baggage. 

Cos, think about it, there’s no cover to act as a giveaway, is there?  There’s no physical presence, no hard evidence. 

And I got to wondering.  Has James looked through the contents of my Kindle?  My tastes are pretty tame on the whole but a few of the authors I know from Authonomy write saucy stuff and I’ve got a couple of Poppet’s raunchy tales stashed away there.  And some of Jake Barton's crime stuff is pretty graphic in a blood and guts way. Not to mention Sessha Batto's intense homo-erotica!  We get so worried about children not reading that maybe we've lost sight that perhaps there are books they shouldn't read. Not yet anyway. 

Hmm, I said to Jobo.  Maybe books should have stickers – like they put on rap records – warning that they have adult content.  Absolutely, he replied, and went off to get Zoon reclassified.  ‘Amazon should categorise stuff,’ he said firmly. ‘I don’t want children reading it full stop.’ 

But that’s just looking at it from one end and I still don’t think it’s actually the major problem.  However, if you share a Kindle with your child, have you thought about what they could read?  Would it worry you?  Should it worry you? Ought e-readers come with some kind of parental lock that you could put on certain books?

Bottom line: do you know what your children are reading? 




btw, going back briefly to Jobo and Zoon - it's an interactive project and the music is pretty cool too (and, as far as I can hear, there's no filth there)... check it out here.  You can download tracks for a donation to charity- or see/hear the audio/visual on YouTube. 
  


PS: I'd like to point out that I do also know plenty of people who write nice books which aren't full of filth... :)

Pathetic waves and the wondrous Jackie Stewart's Barefoot Breathing

So the boy and I set off for the sea, driving down the link road, singing loudly and badly to Adele and Snoop Dogg and Rihanna and The Wanted, as you do.  James wanted to ‘catch some serious waves’ and I just wanted sand between my toes and the swell of the waves around me.

‘You’ll have to get a wetsuit, Mum,’ he opined as we had a pause after Bruno Mars. ‘Now you’re taking up serious swimming.’ 
‘But I like feeling the water on my skin.’
‘You’re mad. It’s cold. You’ll freeze.’  He was probably right.
We got to Saunton early, parked and wandered onto the beach.
‘No.’  Twelve-year old shoulders slumped next to me.
‘What?’
‘Look.’ Arm flung dramatically at the sea. 
‘Oh.’

No waves.  Well.  Just small little flirty ones that slapped in a desultory way onto the sand.  Not the big sexy whoppers that the surfers love. 

I tried my ‘Never mind, in the scheme of things, this is small fry’ speech but he just glared.  I tried getting him to compare this Slight Lack of Surfing Waves with Real Humanitarian Crises in the World but it wasn’t washing. So we sat in the café and read the papers and then we went to the shop and bought a tent and chocolate because by now the sun had vanished and the wind was whipping up.  Every sigh and scuff of the heels told me this was Not Good.

But then Jackie and her son turned up and the sun came out.  No, really, it did.  I’ve been wanting to meet Jackie Stewart for ages.  We stumbled over one another on Twitter (as far as one ever stumbles over anyone by chance) and I fell in love with the way she blends elfin spirituality with earthy humour. 

She works with flower and crystal essences which I love as gentle healers.  I was introduced to the Bach flower remedies when I was a teenager and many times I’ve been surprised by their healing powers.  So when Jackie suggested I try a remedy for deep sadness, I immediately sent off for it.  And when she sent me her meditation for healing emotional wounds, I instantly did it – again and again - and found it taking me to very strange places, not seemingly from the here and now or even the familiar past.  Powerful and, yes, healing or at least helping.

And now I was hearing that gentle Scottish burr for real, and not via a recording, and seeing the wild corkscrew hair for real and not via a photograph.  Which was oh so lovely.  Her boy ran off, happy as Larry, for his surfing lesson, not remotely fazed by the poor quality of the waves. His optimism rubbed off delightfully on James who grudgingly admitted that the waves were a bit bigger now and maybe it was worth pulling on his wetsuit and tugging the board out there.  Which left Jackie and I able to talk.  But not enough.  Nowhere near enough.  Because when you’re a mother and your child, however big and tough and independent he may seem, is in the big wide open sea, you never truly relax.  Your eyes are always scanning the waves, looking for the right seal-like head to bob up. 

But it was a start, and I know I’ll see her again.  And, in the meantime, I’m suggesting you make her acquaintance too.  And take a look at her new e-course, BarefootBreathing. 

Barefoot Breathing by Jackie Stewart (in her own words)

‘I used to find myself advising clients to have a regular meditation practice and spend time outdoors every day because I think both are essential for inner knowledge and healing.  Barefoot Breathing is a combination of both - 100 barefoot breaths in nature with your eyes closed every day. I'm really blown away by the shifts in myself in the time I've been doing it - it's opened me up to so much more energy, inspiration, creativity and inner knowing. It's easy and you can do it anywhere - genius!’

The idea to take 100 barefoot breaths outdoors emerged really instinctively and it turns out all these clever sciencey people are writing about the benefits of it. Who knew? I love the synchronicity of it. Here's a site where clever sciencey people talk about the health benefits: http://www.earthinginstitute.net

And here's the page on our site where I shite on [sorry, slight interjection here but don’t you love the phrase ‘shite on’? See – she’s not off with the fairies, not entirely] about the 30 day e-course we've created where 100 barefoot breaths are the core practice. Each day of the course there are gorgeous processes to get in touch with nature, emotions, creativity, inspiration, inner peace and all sorts of goodness. I think it might be bloody brilliant...'  [er, I do too, Jackie]

Sooo [me back again], what are you waiting for?  Away with you…leave this confused mess of a blog and go bathe in crystal waters, stick your nose in dew-drenched flowers, tip-toe barefoot over the grass and tantalise the fairies. There is so much beauty and delight in her sites - you can listen to meditations, drink in beautiful images, even print off gorgeous Earth messages to inspire and entrance. Seriously, time shifts there - like when you fall into Tir na nOg.  

You know what?  I might join you.  J