WTF?

Blogs
they infuriate me.

35 readers in 12 hours (excellent for me) then not a single bloody glance since Elevenses!

SOMEONE TELL ME THE RULES!

(or lie and tell me that my STATS have a whatsit in the doobrie)

Confessions of a Royal Mail Operative

I am a Royal Mail operative and very proud!

 I am the owner of a hi-vis vest. Oh, yes I am.

 Not to mention fingerless gloves,

 5 red polo shirts and 2 enormous pairs of trousers, which unfortunately fit.

 I'll not dwell on the fleece, everyone is allowed a mistake. No boots as yet, but will keep you posted.

 And I have saved the best till last -
 a bright orange waterproof coat which I love with a passion. I only take it off to get into bed.
What's the weather? Rainy? It's a day for my coat. And today -bright and sunny? Well, best forgo the fleece and wear..my coat!
You'll be seeing me in the summer wearing nothing but the coat in order to keep cool. OOOOO I luvs it!

Yes, I used to be a consultant... but the arse dropped out of that at approximately the same time as my arse started to get bigger.
 Yes, I used to earn at least 3 times as much , but I can honestly say that I wasn't any happier for it. I love the fresh air, the weather -any weather- the people, the exercise and even the occasional dog.
Dogs are definitely a problem; it's not an old wives tale.
 Dogs are territorial and posties invade their territory.
Dogs bite and posties are hospitalised. Caution needs to be employed.

On my first day with a shiny face and brushed hair and the Ready Brek sponged off my jumper, I presented myself to the boss expecting him to be as relieved to see me as I was to start work. I had tried 6 times to get this, my dream job.

Instead there were embarrassed, blank stares all round as they hadn't known I was coming, followed very swiftly afterwards by panic as I had arrived at approximately the same time as the posties were leaving on their rounds . If The Boss didn't do something quick, he'd be forced to play dominoes with  me till they all came back.
 So they chucked a hi-vis vest at me and a bicycle helmet, introduced me to a very nice woman who looked exactly the same as me and told me to pick a bike cos I was going to shadow her on her round for a week.

Now Royal Mail bikes come in 1 size.
Large.

I am 5'2".

Once mounted (arf arf) I could not even nearly touch the ground and my crotch was under enormous strain from my feet which were, for the most part, dangling. Occasionally they touched a pedal when the moon was in ascendency.
If we had to stop at all on the mile-long cycle, for - let's say for the sake of argument - a level crossing , then I would have to use my upper body strength to lift myself off the seat and drop down like a Chinese State gymnast onto the road IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD and wait for the train to pass.
This would leave me with the dilemma of getting back on without the aid of a small donkey or a milk crate.
 In the event, I plumped for a weird shuffle where I pretended to cycle but in reality was running across the level crossing with 1 leg either side of the bike in the manner of a car full of circus clowns, but without the comfort.

And my hat was wonky.

As the week progressed, I got a bit more proficient on my bike but unfortunately, never mastered signalling. So I nearly got articulated.

 No wolf whistles for Postie Pam not surprisingly. But the upside is should I ever wish to, I can now join Uniform Dating.

PS. If anyone can explain why anyone should want to join Uniform Dating, it would save me from furrowing my brow in puzzlement and the cost of a facelift.
Do you have to wear a uniform, want to wear a uniform or just fancy anyone at all who is wearing a uniform? Is is a fetish thing or a profession thing?
 Is it full of vicars and tarts?
 Do you know anyone who has joined, are they in full possession of their marbles? 
Do they hold a valid hi-vis vest?
 Honestly, I am baffled.

stop making sense

Terrified

I am
terrified
Filled with panic so overwhelming
that it makes my brain skip hither and thither like a frog on a lily pad.
It doesn't want to rest, lest the standing still will result in being SWATTED like a teensy wee fly.

It's in danger, my brain
because its ears are listening to the stuff it doesn't want to hear

And its eyes are looking at a face it loves that it simply cannot afford to listen to
because
if it does
The World will end

My brain knows this as it has happened before.

So, it decides to filter . It's been doing this for 46 years so it comes easily
-sore neck, bad knees, shift position,

What else? what else? what else? Quick!
Change the topic.

GIVE COMFORT

Change the topic

LISTEN

cup of tea?
let me go let me go let me go!!!!


a tiny thing to lend -an ear
costs nothing

It costs me... it really does.

Billy and Pamela - A Love Story

My New Year's resolution was to give up TV for the whole of 2012. Secretly, I am hoping that by the time 2013 comes along, I will no longer need to make the resolution as I will have severed that tie.
I will be wickering baskets, or rugging rags or macheting papier or (Heaven help us) talking to the kids or even breaking the seal on the hoover - who knows?
My home is my lobster.
That Nobel Prize-winning novel will be with the publisher, my band will be topping the charts just as it enters the Guinness book of Record for being Oldest Band Ever to be Knitted down to its Underpants!

So, with my new found hours of evening freedom, I fired up the ol' iplayer!
Yes! A loophole!

To be fair, I was going to listen to a Radio 4 play that I missed on Saturday. It starred two of my all time favourite men; Billy Connolly and Brian Cox. I'm a teensy bit in love with them both. It's the accent (which is weird since I have the same one) the openness and the kindly demeanour. I find honesty and straight talking very attractive. And jings, do they make me laugh !

However, the iplayer went on a circuitous route and promoted 'Billy Connolly on other networks' which led me(I am very glad to say) to 4OD's 'Shrink Rap' where Pamela Stevenson - addressed her husband as though he were in a therapy session. When he became emotional about his experiences, you could plainly see how much pain it caused her and hear how proud she was of him.
 I won't go into it too much as my Bob Geldof  fawning gush-fest was just plain embarrassing for us all , but what I really saw was that she loves him on a level that most of us will never reach. Here is a marriage that really works. What was amazing was that, as she was asking him questions, his answers often took her completely by surprise .These were stories/feelings/experiences she was hearing for the first time and yet they've been together for, what? 30 years?
They live without the need to be in each other's pockets.
Trust? That was a stranger to my marriage.
 How lucky they are to have found each other. I'm a bit jealous.
So, I watched but didn't inhale and I think that the terms of my resolution allow that because
a) technically speaking it was not a TV
b)I was in no way comfy whilst watching it
c) I am a part-time Buddhist and they are incapable of cheating.

Everyone knows that.

Goodbye Gary

I don't know what to say. I don't know how I feel, apart from numb and tired and weepy and terribly, terribly sad. So for now...

"Goodbye my Dear Old Friend

There during each other's mistakes

There during each other's entrance into adulthood

There at too many weddings to count

There at The Bevvy; there in the pond!

There in the pub, 

There up Falkand Hill then there at the Races

There only a few months ago buying me a meal 

And there at a funeral, the last time I saw you

And now I will see you for the last time, there at your own.

Afterwards, there in your place will be memories of your laugh, your walk, your temper, our You.

Bye Gary, life won't ever be the same xxx

My Boobs Have Shown Me The Way!

Yes indeed they have and the gist of what they say is this:

If you were free to do anything you wanted, anything at all - would you really use that opportunity to show your boobs in public and eat enough chocolate to choke Macclesfield?
Would you? Would you? Or as Short Shorts would say,  'Would you really, though?'

I thought I would to be honest.

 Hello, Uncle Brian!

 I am a lucid dreamer. That is to say, I know that I am in a dream and  use the opportunity to behave rather badly and to do things in public that would get me into the pages of The Sun, if not leading that issue out to press. In my dreams, I am not the pillar of the community that you read before you today.

Obviously, I remain a reality-pillar because  I do not want to embarrass my children or my parents .The latter is easily remedied - wait till they're dead (btw Mum and Dad, hopefully not for a very long time as I still need babysitters.) But, the children are another matter.

Whereas in real life, I might worry about the direction and consistency of my boobs, as I see it a bus load of bored and completely imaginary commuters wouldn't be that picky.


.
Why am I bringing this up?

Well to cut a long story short:
Mondays night's dream was the first dream in my own bed after a wonderful weekend of meditation in the Northamptonshire countryside. Unusually, I could not control what happened as I slept and so felt terrified and helpless within the dream because I lost someone very important to me. Bad behaviour was all around me but appeared....well...seedy. In fact Well-Seedy.




 This dream sent me down the path of self analysis.( I am quite good at dream analysis now. If you imagine that everyone in your dream is representing a part of you, then you go back there and imagine it from that persons point of view, it becomes very enlightening and often changes what you perceive to have been happening in the dream. Go on, give it a go and then let me know what happens)


Well, it turned out, that no-one in my dream (and therefore no part of me) meant anyone any harm whether they appeared seedy or not. Yet I still lost the most precious thing to me. I was baffled.

So this morning, when I woke up tired and couldn't shake it at all, I went back to bed for an hour and dreamed. The lucid part of the  dream brewed a concoction of the usual bus, boobs and fancy-dress parties and the regular part culminated in not being able to get out of a filthy public loo. I awoke knowing exactly what the problem was and where I have been going wrong.



So
Fledgling Buddha Pammy (certainly looks like one at the minute though not necessarily this one)  asks:









 If you were free to do anything you wanted, anything at all - would you really waste that opportunity by showing your boobs in public and eating enough chocolate to choke Macclesfield?

 Would you? Would you? Would you really, though?' 







What would you do as a lucid dreamer?

Alternatively, if you have blogged about dreaming, post your link but remember to link to Postcard Pam in your current blog entry so that your readers can access all our links.

Bye Bye Elf

I have just had the most awful nightmare. I actually don't want to recount it because I can't bear to revisit the pain of it. Neither do I want to re-traumatise anyone who has been through it in real life. Suffice to say though, that there are some things that you don't actually have to experience to know how cripplingly devastating they would be. Thank God that so far in my life at least, I only have to endure having my guts ripped out for the length of a nightmare, because that was truly shit.

It has made me get up in the middle of the night and try to write it out - to try to dispel the stinking fear of it..the irreversible helplessness.  At first I was reluctant to accept that life would move on, but because a dream can last a lifetime, I came to accept it, reluctantly and despite myself whilst all the time trying desperately to hold onto what I had lost. I felt so guilty about moving on, that I kept retraumatising myself with the memory. The moment of loss was so much stronger than the fantastic memories of our life before it. In fact, it completely smothered them. It seemed treacherous for things to be otherwise

All the omens had been there, I knew the horror was going to happen and I fought to stop it with every fibre of my being whilst everyone around me was conspiring to make the unthinkable change happen ,but all I managed to do was to delay it a bit. I was furious, terrified and helpless in those moments.

So, what's going on with me?
First of all, it may surprise you to know that I am happy. I have a new job , one that I have wanted since I was a child. I have had a lovely Christmas and New Year. Old frustrations have melted away and I feel optimistic and settled. I have made new friends and found some spirituality. My New Year resolution is to give up TV and I feel as definite about that as I did when I gave up drink.  I am not usually big on resolutions but it coincided with a natural shift in me that brought some clarity and so it seemed the perfect time.

When I was driving to my New Year retreat, in the glare of the headlights on the A14 and in the rain, a 7 foot shadow crossed my path and I saw it quite clearly for it had a definite outline and an umistakably mischievous gait. It was a large Pixie, or maybe an Elf... with a touch of Mr Tumnus ...possibly even a bit of Iain Anderson; I have really not been a source of expertise on mystical creatures since  Enid Blyton's 'The Folk of the Faraway Tree' kept me awake well past my bedtime, night after night as I devoured its pages.Once I got to the end, I'd start all over again. But this was no tree dweller. All the same, in the hazy, rain-sodden headlight darkness, it seemed to me that it was there.

So, this all makes me wonder if what I was really being prised away from in such a horrifically painful way was the often all too present child in me? It cannot be coincidence that I saw an Elf, have an Elf and dreamed I lost the Elf.

When have you known unhappiness, the child lingers there, waiting to be consoled always.
 I once dreamed that my Elf ran off the edge of cliff. Again, I was bereft, hollow, horrified and scrambled hysterically to find the body on the pebble beach of my childhood below. The lack of a body was so distressing because I had nowhere to  nail my grief to. Yet, when I imagined myself as the running child, I was amazed to discover that she didn't fall at all, she kept on running, there was solidity under her feet, she was happy and calm and joyfully free - and so it made perfect sense that there had been no body to find.
This time however, I cannot imagine myself the child, except to say that I have the impression that she'd been trying to escape for some time and I had no idea.
Thankfully, shortly after I began writing this last night, as if to allay my fears, the Elf crept into my bed to escape  the noise of the storm that has seen off my party tent (which is lying prostrate and helplessly pegged to the ground -not for it the freedom of running with the wind)  I have never been so pleased to see her.

I met a fantastic young woman over the weekend who has lost her brother in the most violent of ways and she was coping with grief and guilt . I think she was the most inspiring person I ever met. I was knitting blanket squares for relaxation in my room as I thought of her and her little brother and realised as I got to the end of it, that the square I was knitting was for them and so I gave it to her for those strand were woven with  all that she told me of them both and with my admiration. I am not a gifted knitter and I have a feeling, that  6" square was the peak of my ability - possibly it was even what all the rough, baggy and ill-shapen practise had been leading up to. Maybe there never was a blanket.