I tried singing to you!

I did! I tried last week.
I find it odd that you can make a home video and upload it into a blog but a teensy wee sound recording? Apparently I have to join some new-fangled online community first - You Tube I think its called. Half thought of asking all 15 of you for your phone numbers and crooning down the phone individually. I could manage the technology involved in that.

Well, it's been an eventful few weeks. Here are the highlights.



1. Had a Couchsurfer (to visit! To visit!) He is a fantastic young environmental artist -take a look! Apparently, one of his drawings was bought by Chris Packham! Despite this, he is modest and gentle, brought his own muesli and made the house calmer just by dint of him being there.
Couchsurfers are strangers that you lend your couch to. 

They get a rating -a bit like eBay- so you know whether you can trust them or not. They don't take your couch away with them or anything, they just borrow it for the night-in situ.
It's a fantastic way to meet people from other backgrounds and countries and then you can couchsurf in return and it doesn't even have to be with the same couchsurfer!! Anyway, Jethro made me a meal and I was able to have a bath then come down to delicious food. It was bliss.I took him out to orientate him around the town, ready for his conference and my kids were so stunned at seeing me leave the house that one gave me a torch and another asked whether they should wait up. I'd forgotten that it had been months since I had been out and in an actual pub and I enjoyed myself. We met up with his friend who was around my age; a Scottish artist Kate Foster. another fascinating and gentle soul with fabulous taste in knitwear.


 2. Went to Huddersfield

This had never struck me as a destination of choice and I have come to realise that, to a large degree, this was mainly due to their being a lot of udder in Huddersfield. The name comes with a large mental image, and a bit of a smell.  Cowever (see what I did there!) I was wrong. I didn't hear so much as a quiet moo. I did see lots of terraced chimney-scapes because of the very steep hills, and I found those rather beautiful and reminiscent of my youth in Welsh valleys and a Scottish childhood. This is apt because I went to see my old flatmate and bandmate, Rachel who hails from there. To be honest, she really sold the place to me because she is so passionate about the town and all it had to offer culturally and personally. I was all for moving the kids there and finally meeting my Heathcliffe*

We took a trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield which has a special place in my heart for one large and squaddie-shaped reason though I had never been to either place before.
Here I must thank lovely Rachel for reintroducing me to culture which is so much part of her, and has been too long absent from me. The YSP was hosting a Jaume Plensa ** exhibition which had the most striking and emotional impact on me. It reached inside my gut then pulled me inside out and gave it all a cuddle. When someone knows your truth and invites you to look at it because it's their truth too, it is a hugely nurturing experience.The installations knew me and I knew them. I had entirely forgotten that Art could do that to you. I immediately had very physical and emotional reactions. I urge you to go to an exhibition if you have the chance


The gallery was also hosting the most marvellous knitting exhibition I've ever seen. Donna Wilson  knits landscapes and fantastical animals  and they were so beautiful to look at and soft to the touch that I am going out this very day to buy some wool and start being creative. Luckily I bought 3 million or so, knitting needles from a car boot sale and a Kaffe Fassett's Glorious Knitting and if I ignore the 80's styling, I can really get going on a scarf! (One has to have realistic goals) Maybe, if successful, I can progress to that extension I have always wanted..

But this sense of being looked after is a theme running through the past couple of weeks and it's made me a bit wobbly if I am being honest. I am used to doing the looking after, I am rarely looked after unless I do it for myself with smelly candles and a clean house and a hot bath and a roaring fire and lovely music or a good movie. This is all lovely, but so much nicer when someone else does it.

Rachel really looked after me by cooking for me and putting out guest towels and buying face packs and chocolate and reintroducing me to my beloved music (she has always been great at doing that)***
It was wonderful to see her.


Unfortunately, midway through the weekend my I-Phone completely died and on my last morning when we were due to go to Last Of the Summer Wine town of Holmfirth before I headed home, not only was there a real pea-souper and no phone, but there was something different about my car which I couldn't quite put my finger on for the longest time. Finally  'fucking gits!!!!!'  seemed to be an appropriate response since my quarter light on the driver's passenger side was covered in broken glass and the main passenger window was missing -there was mud over the back seat , an open glove compartment and a missing sat nav. Shit!!!!
Fog, no phone and a gaping hole in the car. After calling the police and insurance, I was advised that there wasn't much to be done except to drive home having first cling- filmed the entire door, both ways (and that's not something you hear very often ) to effect an double seal scenario.After a mile, it became apparent that this in itself was worth nothing if it had no discipline from parcel tape - cling film is surprisingly flighty and badly behaved on a dual carriageway.
Against all the odds and after 2.5 hours, I arrived home.  Autoglass was baffled by the relative lack of glass shards before he tried winding the main passenger window up and finding it entirely in tact. As the lovely Yorkshire policeman said to me when he called to give me an update "You have given us a chuckle down the station". My daughter reminded me that I often give policemen a chuckle and I wondered who had been gossiping before she reminded me of Nibblesgate!****  
 Anyways, that Sunday my daughter made her first Sunday Lunch very successfully, so that was 7 meals I hadn't had to make in 1 week! This was to become 8 because.....

3. On Wednesday, my friend Liz invited me to her use her time share. She made me a cooked breakfast before leaving me there to spend the day writing and overlooking beautiful Rutland Water (regular readers will know that this is my favourite place) I got loads done and felt very cosseted and relaxed. Liz was very insistent that I am normally resistant to letting myself be looked after and it had to change.

4. 2 people who work with me in various capacities have refused to take payment from me this week yet continue to provide services because I am apparently a lovely person (nope I am NOT back on sqauddie territory here! You should be ashamed!!)
The world is looking after me
Apart from that 1 woman and her daughter at the Christmas Fair -least said.....

So, this week, I have been feeling rather weepy and confused. It seems that I need not be an island after all.  It'll take a bit of getting used to...

* (and btw, there could be no finer and more gusset wrenching Heathcliffe than Tom Hardy in the recent ITV adaptation before he got huge in Hollywood (narf narf). Something about his mouth...)
** Spanish Sculptor
***Post to follow- remind me
**** Interested parties can apply for more information