Life today

I suppose I should set the scene. I am sat, in my pyjamas, at the dinning room table eating crumpets and honey for breakfast and wondering how long I can put off getting ready. This afternoon we are heading up to London, where we're staying until Sedona's flight on Tuesday morning. Not one of us has packed, and I am not dressed.
Life generally is better. Getting up every morning to take Sedona in really helped, and, amongst other things, I now have an amazing (rusty, fourth-hand, but mine) bike, which I've finally managed to fix up enough to be rideable, and which now has an exciting old-fashioned bell and wicker basket and all sorts of wonderful things! I am looking forward to taking it out and about (read: pushing it up hills) in Exeter.
I fixed up my dance kit, and made myself new wavers, which I think I'm going to attempt to do purple trimming on (possibly maybe). I've personalised it all a lot more: my buttons are now very subtly green and blue and orange, and I have little polka-dotty ones on my sleeves and my wavers are edged in red, green, and blue. All good stuff.
Friday night we went to watch Sedona perform in three concerts at Dartington: a solos performance, an 90 minute operatic extravaganza, and in the Gospel Choir. She was outstanding, particularly when singing gospel. I spent the 5 or 6 hours we were there thinking: about everything and anything, but mostly about feminism and the different moulds of woman. Also giggling a little at some of the more extreme opera faces sported by a select few performers.
Yesterday we danced, and we danced, and we danced. Beltane Border celebrated its tenth anniversary (babies, H&G has been going for at least 25) with a day of massed morris around Topsham. We caught a boat up at 9.45, and danced until 5, when we returned to Teignmouth for a hog roast and ceilidh. The ceilidh was surprisingly simplistic for a morris ceilidh, and the band suffered from a lack of driving percussion, but it was still generally wonderful. Sedona and I danced almost every dance, messed around in Rosa, and sang I Will Survive down the cavernous corridors.

I need to go. Honey is sticky, and I really must pack soon.

On Writing and Thoughts

I really want this post to have a message, a purpose- an underlying theme which seeps through every paragraph and concludes nicely at the end. Every morning on Radio 2 they have a thought for the day segment, where some religious leader comes in and gives a mini-sermon on 'love your neighbour' or 'communicate with your family' or whatnot, and it always starts with something seemingly unrelated, like 'I love [TV show / Food / Activity],' and then ties it all in. My minister-in-training friend Vicky does something similar in her sermons, where she's able to talk about something going on her own life and then tie it neatly into a Bible verse or a globalised phenomenon. I like the idea that once a week I could sit down to Write Something Important, and phrase it in such a way that any readers would spend the rest of the day going 'wow, I never realised before just how much x, y, and z," rather than sending me a Skype message pointing out that I misspelled globalised and also wrote the beginning of the 10th sentence down twice.
At the same time, though, I do enjoy reading (stalking? Never), my friend Lyn's blog, which is a little like a combination between my rambles, a yearly round robin Christmas letter, and a wedding-planner's diary with some cooking thrown in. So I don't know. I do keep this blog 90% for my own sake (without it, all of this would end up on FB, and god help us all if that ever happened), so maybe I shouldn't worry so much.

If we're sticking with writing with a message, though, let me tell you about my amazingly clever younger brother, who picked up his AS results today, and can no longer avoid the fact that he has to go on to take a degree in Philosophy. Our relationship has improved ten-fold since I went to University (although I imagine part of this coincides with him reaching the later half of his teens), and I still find it utterly amazing when we pass a car journey alternately plotting out surreal play parodies, discussing games (please don't judge me) and arguing about politics. But I digress. I went with him to pick up his results, and, well, going back to school was just weird. I'm so not a sixth form student any more. I'm not bitchy enough, I'm not flimsy enough- and I seem to be lacking in the leggings and pumps area. I stood around awkwardly while Josh chatted with his friends, and then went ahead with the whole nervous talking to old teachers thing. What is it about schools which make me act so clumsily and talk so stuntedly?

Words are sticking. There is no message to this, other than that I think too much.

A picture

Because I forgot to put one in the last entry, and on here posts are like buses.


That's me and Vicky and Kerensa in the sea at Sidmouth on Vicky's birthday, I believe shortly after Martin proposed. There is sea and hats and friends, and I love everything about it.

So many hippies

I've just returned from a day at Glastonbury, showing my cousin around and meeting a friend of her family's. Sedona isn't really a cousin, rather one of the many 'children of best friends' I have dotted around all over the world, but we consider her family. I always find it weird when these assorted 'cousins' don't know each other- and very exciting when I actually find a cousin by blood. But I digress. I love Glastonbury. I love it in the way I love all deeply beautiful, historic spiritual sites, by which I mean that I hate having to acknowledge that other people go there, and god help you if you try to talk to me. I wrote a poem on the Tor, but somehow managed to remember paper and not pen, which was daft. I shall have to run away somewhere quiet and try again later. It was weird going back. I put on a super-Sidmouth hippy dress in anticipation of seeing crowds of wizards again, and then felt very out of place when I ended up walking through crowds of tourists in very boring, sensible clothes. Weird looks are well and good, but to stand out that much I'd rather be in my own town. And then we went down a back alley and found a 'Reader,' and dear god I thought Josh was going to explode. Being confronted with that level of spiritualism- well, it made me realise the flaws I have in my own faith (I read tarot, but believe that it's influenced a lot more by projection and generic counselling than anything else), and why I get so defensive when people ask me what I believe in. Like I said, I love Glastonbury. But I think I love the idea of it. I have never, ever, had someone completely blank me from the moment I said that I was a lawyer- and I have never before felt the overwhelming urge to pick apart someone else's beliefs at the seams. It was an interesting day.

Last week was spent at Sidmouth, Folk Festivaling. I had an amazing time, not least because it meant I once again got to be with friends. And sure, I was annoying myself by midway through the week, but we worked through it. I am now an expert at parking cars (minus the dramatic pointing, alas), have a flying pig henna'd on my forearm, and am still hearing the 'diddly-diddlies' wherever I go. And I fear we may have traumatised the lovely Phil, who is a FS associated member, so to speak, and who was silly enough to not make for the nearest exit when three of us first started singing "Oh! Darling." Phil, we are truly sorry, and would really like you to talk to us next year.

Aside from that ... I don't know. My life is kind of falling apart. I never seem to get anything done while I'm at home. I have a list- nay, a timetable- of all the important things which I need to get sorted, but every time I try to enact it something else happens: Sedona, Sidmouth, 'can you tie up the broken down barrel?', etc. Dona does start a week (read flat out 7 days) of vocal training at Dartington tomorrow, which may help. I've volunteered to take her in every day, which means decent o'clock rises, and then long, empty days. The list includes my parents' accounts (to pay for trains and contacts!), FS stuff (ARGH ICBINI ARGH), and emptying and repainting my room. I can't help but feel it would be much easier to do this if I was actually allowed to get rid of half the random crap I have in my room.
TL;DR version: I am bad at Doing Things and Projects. Money isn't behaving itself either, and there are other things happening, but they do not make for interesting whinges.

Oh, and I have awesome hair (red! and blonde! and dark brown! multi-tones!), and am excited because in just over a week I get to go up to London and then to finally visit the 'E' house of my friend Iain. I can't help feeling that, having invited myself, I am more excited than he. I may take a good book. And Joshua is back, which is amazing, because now I Have A Brother, and this is wonderful.

And one of my best friends has just announced her engagement, and this is terrifying and yet so exciting, and she's the same age as me, and dear god relationships are weird.

I need to phone a caterer. And I talk too much. Until next time.