Ramble

  London, United Kingdom
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Well I haven't left just yet. Babysitting for my bro.

Dolly loves music.

That's his oldest son having a chee chee... For those of you who haven't guessed that's Spanish for pee pee, though I must admit the spelling is all made up. Really this entry is an extended welcome and is designed to draw you away from Facebook as the place to check up on me. I very rapidly discovered that the format on facebook was useless for what I wanted. Which is quite simply to be able to weave text and photos.
That's enough with boring info....
I have something much more fun to tell you. I have a travelling companion who will accompany me all through my journeys. She has already met my family in Devon, where she got a few cuddles from the girls and a night out at a fireworks display. Now she is in London and today was flung high in the air and swung about by her hair. Who is this? I hear you say. You told me you were travelling alone. Well let me introduce you all to my friend Dolly. She's very excited about this journey and can't wait to see what sights will come her way and she's ever so looking forward to meeting a wonderful variety of people. Along with a few select crystals she will be my travelling companion. Dolly decided to come with me because she wanted to help me do something special for Iria. She knew I'd been racking my brains about how I'd keep in contact with my daughter from so far away, and as Iria is still so young something playful and clever was needed. She nearly went to be with Iria on her first Birthday, but she decided to wait a little longer till she introduced herself, besides she felt that there was a reason to hang out with me for a bit. Dolly's mummy is Nora my brothers wife, who so thoughfully created her, originally Dolly wanted to go straight to Iria, but she soon realised that she wanted to imbue herself with more of lifes essence, and get to know me a bit better before she introduced herself to Iria. Oh yes and I mustn't forget to mention she only discovered her name very recently. It wasn't even a week back in time that our Dolly was nameless, she was beginning to realise that something was missing and it was my delightful niece Ilse that found her name. At first I thought ... huh that's too plain and simple and boring and not too far off DOLL ... huh....I thought......But it stuck and my complaint whittled to evaporation and Dolly sounded forth. So thank you Ilse for tilting your head and saying with a cute smile Dolly.

And as soon as I understand how to get pics from my cam to any computer you'll get to meet her for yoruself....Well as good as...unless perchance our flesh comes into close proximity on my journey. then you will have a chance to feel her fibres and stroke her hair...and if your really lucky pose for a snapshot with her.....Ha ha such fun. I'm glad Dolly decided to come.

Ok that's me done for the night. I guess for the record...as I almost officially on my travels. I'm staying on Belvedere rd in Crystal Palace....for those of you who like to get a birds eye view google earth or maps or whatever will help you out. Not too familiar with it myself but I hear it's a pretty cool thing....and some of you just can't get enough reasons to go hunt something down....by the time you find me I could be vamoosed away ....

Well I hope you have enjoyed my intro. I enjoyed writing it. Hopefully it's a taste of what's time to come, a bit of creative writing, something a little quirky, I've a feeling Dolly will inspire me to be playful and will start whispering in my ear or using her telepathic powers to help me tell some fun stories.

And finally....I know some people can't be bothered to read.............yes yes I hear you loud and clear...............I'll get the techie thing sorted as soon as I can..........hmmm or as soon as someone helps me. and then I'll dazzle you all with my

Dolly is ready to go!

amazing photos.....Careful after all that hype he might just end up sending pics of various different carpets ...from houses buses planes....Sounds kind of wacky and cool project doesn't it........Nahhhhhhhh not for me. alright before I lose my noggins I bid thee farwell.

19-11-2007.
As you can see I'm tentatively working my way into the technical side of things hopefully as time goes by I'll make a few improvements here or there. I'm now on the very eve of leaving. Wahoo!! Chee chee photo has now vanished, swift censorship from the parents! That's cool I was going to take it down as soon as I had grabbed a few other pics. Sebastians chee chee will have to remain in the myths unlike the unfortunate prince who had his chee chee pic spread all over the tabloids.
I've read three books so far.
The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. A superb novel set in India, Malaya and Burma. It covers three generation from the late 1800's to the late 1900's. The British empire invades Burma and kicks out the royal fmily who are depoisted in a small town in India. I discovered that Burma was a very prosperous country until the second world war broke out. It was one of those countries where it didn't matter what class one was or where one was from to be able to make a go of it economically. Many Indians travelled over there to make a fortune...or be treated like crap at a rubber plantation. Anyhow it got fucked over ... and then fucked over some more and now is in the terrible state it is today. Vicious military rule and very extreme censorship. Extreme is putting it mildly. Another interesting angle of the book is exploring the headspaces of those Indians who signed up to fight for the British Empire. Some of which broke off and created an Indian National army. They ended up fighting both the Japanese and the British. Blimey...I had no idea how wift the Japanese invasion was. Malaya was devastated in no time at all...saying that the british empire was taken by suprise is a major understatement. They couldn't believe the strength of Japans armed forces or the amount of tanks they brought into play. The writing is beautiful, the characters wonderfully human. A beautiful tale with some wonderful history involved.
The next book took me two afternoon sittings to fly through.
Humble Pie an Autobiography by Gordon Ramsey.
It's a pot boiler.
Bold and brash. I found many scenes quite hilarious. The guy came across some real arseholes and seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in working obscene hours and beeing pretty much brutalised by various chefs along the way. For goodness sake the guy had a pan of hot stock thrown at him...at his face! Anyway now he earns millions which I think is fairplay. The read was inspring...his passion for food and what he does is immense. The speed at which he went from being skint to what I would term wealthy is quite phenomenal. I have to say the book portrays many many arseholes and Ramsay is not exempt from it. He came from shite, violent dad and all that, nearly made it into professional football but injuries prevented any real chance then he discovered his passion for food, proceeded to meet several more assholes who were very talented. They treated him like shit.....verbally and financially but he learnt a lot....he got some kind of pleasure out of being able to withstand all that shit, refers to his father a lot. It gives him his justification for being full on with people now...he went through it..so in his view so should others...makes em tough and all that!! Yeh I'm sure you've heard it all before.
Honestly the amount of chefs that were fucking each other over is phenomenal...stealing each others staff...threatening to ruin peoples careers for good..treating the up and coming chefs appalingly....and if you can't cut the mustard your a fucking wuss. It's macho simplistic but also honest and therefore human. I guess at the end of the day I aqppreciated that...it's human there's inspiring stuff and real cringey stuff we can all relate to that can't we!

The other book is tiny and will accompany me on my travels.
Uri Geller's little book of mind-power.
He's an interesting guys, he's been studied by a huge amount of scientific labs, and folks have written about him describing him as anything from unexplainable to a fake. Me I've got an open mind, I'd wait till I read a whole lot more about him before I stuck judgements on him....And all the same then one would never really know, perhaps even meeting him would stil leave one in the blue....anyhow that's all by the by. This little book just contains a few ditties. A few of Uri Gellers tricks mixed in with several cute quotes. I guess it is inspiring in helping to create a few self hypnotic scripts...you know talking to your own mind once you've taken it into the slowed down state where suggestion is meant to be much more powerful..
Here's a few cutesy quotes:

"The one who ways it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it" The Roman Rule

"A laser is a weak source of energy. A laser takes a few watts of energy and focuses them in a coherent stream of light. But with a laser, you can drill a hole in a diamond or wipe out cancer" Al Ries

"If there is no wind, row" Latin Proverb

And one of my all time favourites by the wonderful Albert Einstein
"Imagination is more important than knowledge"

... ... ...

The Latin one explains exactly why I'm off to Australia. I was not feeling the wind in old blightey...it came upon me that I needed to row,,but my oars wouldn't even materialise and quite frankly I was getting those old depressive feelings....and a few little warning signals the kind I was getting in my days of chronic fatigue. those warning signals told me I had to do something, couldn't risk going back to that....My recovery process was very much about listening to the bodymind...signals that the body gives you.

www.reversetherapy.com.
Here's an extraction.

"In communicating to us, Bodymind uses a different language from Headmind. Where Headmind uses images, thoughts and rules; Bodymind uses feelings, emotions, intuitions, moods and (as a last resort) symptoms. You can use the Bodymind Awareness Test to check how good you are at reading the language of Bodymind.

The wisdom of Bodymind consists in picking up information about the experiences we are having and then sending emotional signals through to us to tell us what to do about them. Different emotions require different actions. For example, sadness can be a call to seek comfort from other people, fear a signal to take steps to raise confidence, and anger a signal that we need to start asserting our rights.

When Bodymind notices that we are not acting on emotions (because Headmind is ignoring, denying, worrying about, or 'de-pressing' them), it eventually presses the alarm button on the Immune System and the Sympathetic Nervous System. This puts the whole organism on red alert and the resulting symptoms also signal to us that it is time to do something about the blocked emotions.

As soon as we 'open the door' to Bodymind and listen to the message that it wishes to convey to us through the symptoms, and act accordingly, then Bodymind has no further need to use symptoms to communicate to us. The mechanisms in the Emotional Brain that are used to create symptoms are switched off and Bodymind goes back on standby, continuing to monitor the environment until some other issue comes up that requires our attention. It then goes back to creating another emotion, to tell us what to do about it."

I have no idea how it sounds to you as the reader but let me tell you. I was ill for a long time at least three years though with hindsight I can see that for five six or even seven years something was starting to really drift. Doctors family and myself had no idea what was going on. Various labels were slung at me. I even tried antidepressants I never thought that they would but what the hell...I'd try anything to get my life back. They did diddly squat..made me high for a weak..but no extra energy...then when I stopped taking them I felt agoraphobic for a couple of weeks...but over all I'd say they did very little except for acting as a bit of a dampener on emotions. I tried Shiatsu, homeopathy, chinese herbal medicines and Pacing( Nhs stuff) they all helped but my energy just wouldn't quite come back. However after just four sessions of this of this bodymind stuff....
Bingo...Sam was back..
And now let me tell you, when I start getting headaches, belly aches...or a fuzzy head....when I get angry or loved up I view things very differently. I can't say I always know what to do but my outlook is certainly different. It was a bit frightening getting warning signals again, particularly when going to work....I had been wracking my brains since January and it wasn't until July whenn I finally found an idea where my body said "Yes boyo. That's the one for you"
It was a real relief to run into the idea of going to Australia. So thank you Demian for getting married, for having a wonderful hand fasting in the Wooplaw Community woodlands outside Edniburgh. Introducing me to many cool green fingered fols and a host of travellers...It really shook me up..woke me up.....made me hunger..and gave me an idea.

I have no idea if I'm making any sense it's getting late. The kind of late when evaluating what you've written is useless. I'm wired on coffee and ready for bed, but also dead excited and not conviinced that sleep will easily come...though I'm rapidly becoming more convinced that sleeptime is nigh.

I'd like to give a big thank you to everyone who I have spoken to or communicated with in the past few weeks particularly my family Julian and Liz all of you have helped me immensely. Each one of you directing different questions (some very challenging) at me offering your heartfelt opinions and ultimately giving me a lot of support and encouragement. I am very grateful.