Rather a lot of anxiety and a regular grrrrrr.

So much going on mentally I do not really even want to talk to people -

One the countdown to Brexit is getting more and more tense.
Two, and maybe it is connected to the above, for some reason I am very anxious about my forthcoming trip to Greece,
Three do I stop doing long hours and just sit back a bit and do the minimum or is that economic suicide, but have I got the energy to keep going. Just want to stop work, yet know in other ways work keeps me going.
Four - I have finally taken the plunge and put the house on th emarket, but like it more and more living here and it is useful and I like the way the flat functions and even if I move may still have to go on working - the reason for making the move is a potential offer of somewhere to live which has sort of gone around in circles and may land up with me having something I am no longer sure I want.

So as all that is too much to think about instead I will go back to my default gggrre  gree that having carefully ensured that I left an online organisation on exactly the day my contract with them ended I have had renewal money taken from my bank, from my point of view with out my permission. The people involved have elite in tehir name but are not elite in their manner. They say that I signed something several months ago that confirmed I would cancel 7 days ahead of the end date. Had I known let alone remembered then I would have made sure that was exactly what I did, but much to my annoyance and disappointment they have refused all requests for the money back, but they have not evidenced that I owe them anything at all.  I never spend money I do not have to spend, I am furious that despite me cancelling on what I understood to be the correct date they are not responding to my requests to get my money back. They have said that I can have the subscription forwarded to a friend, but I would no do that to any friend as they could find themselves in the same situation. So I let them know that all my readers would be informed about the situation. I will of course never recommend this elite organsation to a single person young or old - so for more information speak to me.  -   I was recommended by somone to ask for information held by the company about me, to evidence that what they were claiming was incorrect and got my money back suddenly. Yippee.
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A bit mushy and gushy.

 Happiness gurus suggest community work as a way to happiness and it is certainly has been a great week cos of all the community involvement this week. 

M is back from the Caribbean, this woman introduced herself to me about 6 months ago at the Tuesday at 2.  We talked and she mentioned that her grandson had been at HRC., As the last stint of work there was so awful this was a bit concerning, but to my horror it turned out that her late grandson had been the only ray of hope in one of the groups, so we bonded over her sorrow then she had to hurtle off to the Caribbean to sort out family things.  So catching up with her again was great.  So that was Tuesday.   Then on Wednesday as per usual it was art group. This group has turned out to be not only a great source of inspiration artistically but it has turned out to be a source of help and humour.    Having had lots of problems with the plans and other legal things connected to the flat it has been incredibly helpful to have professional guidance from husband's of members and members.  But the laughs are just silly. Who knew us oldies could be so funny.

Then today with the Big Local community worker it was great to be in discussion with Broxbourne Borough Environmental Services to get a heads up on possible ways to set up a community garden in the area.  I felt like an intelligent human being again.    It was really useful to get their input into what works and what doesn't. Then from there it was onto further training for the project being held in local churches after Christmas to provide temporarily shelter for the growing number of people classes as homeless in the Borough.  4 years ago despite always being a deprived area there were virtually no homeless people in the area but now over 43,236 nights are paid for at £6000 a night to try and keep people off the streets.    Broxbourne Borough does try and get local landlords to rent out to people on the housing list but most rentals are done through agencies as you get more money.

I feel that this project has sort of brought things in the Borough together as one of the main coordinators is the father of the woman who ran the gospel choir I was a member of and several of the gospel choir are part of this project. I guess when one has lived in a place for over 20 years at some point things do come together.     So why have I just put my house up for sale when it is finally coming together.  Feel so torn. I had always meant to rent this place out via the Broxbourne scheme but of course from the minute I moved in things went wrong mainly because virtually everything that I was told about the place by WH Brown was incorrect and that is unfortunately still playing out in the problems that I still have with the place.   This flat has its moments I love that all my art work is about the place and the place actually works in many ways.

O2 and WW1

Sometimes London is so much fun and sometimes it can be moving.   The visit to see live tennis for the first time in forty years was the former, whilst the Shrouds of the Somme was definitely the latter and definitely worth seeing. All set against the weird backdrop of Teresa May fighting to see if she would still be PM by the end of the day.

Murray and Soares about to go into action. 

The O2 was not that welcoming when I went before to a concert - which was just okay - but it was much more alive for the  World tennis tour. .  My seat could not have been further up and I still do not know how most people just ran and up and downstairs that looked like they would fling one to the centre, but the view was brilliant.  Poised over the net, whilst most of the tennis was not of the greatest quality, (Thiem beat Nishikori, but after a poor performance Murray and Suarez surprisingly won), it was just wonderful to be able to focus on all the detail and just see everything.   It was also interesting to be able to look down and see Sue Barker a dot far below, spending quite a lot of time not watching the match as she sorted out her paperwork.    Food there is astronomically costly, but it goes with the territory.  Having just found a venue where I can see tennis it is disappointing to realise that the future of the event at the O2 is not guaranteed, so maybe this year's visit will turn out to be a one off.

The last four years have seen some astonishing reminders 100 years after WW1,  from the poppies at the Tower, to special films, special broadcasts and haunting figures appearing in unexpected places like Alnwick.   Shrouds of the Somme started out as a therapeutic act for the creator of the first 19000 or so action men laid to rest to represent the fallen on the first day of the battle but then Rob Heard found he just could not stop until he had honoured all those who died on the Somme.   Apparently he got no funding for his "art work" but now in one of London's most modern locations - the revamped Olympic Park a silence falls as people take in what his work signifies.   It is very powerful.  And the once white figures are turning greyer and muddier in the elements.    Each of the names are read out Gledhill (one of my friends relatives) Goodall Groombridge, Christmas,  and in a separate tent the day they died and their age is detailed.    WW1 ended just 20 years before Krystallnacht, a pause in the fighting, rather than the war to end all wars. There have been so many genocides in my life time - we did not learn from the carnage of WW1 yet somehow it speaks to people incredibly powerfully still.   

Well done to Greek railway, but Lego has just creeped me out a bit.

The Greek railways have been kind enough to more than sort out things. It seems that there no reply button got my reply! opps.


Meanwhile having checked a range of Lego sets I missed the range of characters that I was able to buy in Duplo many years ago, I especially wanted to find sets that might have more than one none white character. A friend suggested I write to Lego about it.  Their reply was not what I anticipated.

Dear Helen,

Thanks for getting in touch with us.

I’m sorry you’re not happy with the LEGO® minifigure. We know we’re lucky to have so many fans all over the world and we’re always happy to get feedback, especially when it’s about something you think we could do better.

We want to inspire the builders of tomorrow – that means kids from all around the world. Like you, we want every one of our fans, wherever they live and whatever their own skin colour, to imagine themselves as part of the action. When we invented minifigures almost 40 years ago, we chose yellow because it’s the most neutral “skin colour” – nobody in real life has bright yellow skin, so LEGO minifigures don’t represent a specific race or ethnic background and nobody is left out.

While we’ve made some minifigures that aren’t yellow, they’re usually based on characters we didn’t create. We try to make them look just like those characters so kids can play out the story at home.

Here at the LEGO Group, we’re some of the biggest LEGO fans you can find anywhere, and it’s great to hear how much you care about kids from all backgrounds having fun with LEGO bricks.  I’m happy to hear that you think of us as a company that listens carefully to what fans have to say. It’s what helps us get better and better all the time and I’ve passed your feedback on to our Design teams. They may not make any changes to the “classic” yellow minifigure any time soon, but it’s important to us that you know your opinion counts.

We want to make sure we're doing a good job for you, so you’ll always find the link to a four-question survey in our emails. Please tell us how we did today:

Lots of Grrrr moments and perceptions, but also something life affirming.

There have been so many grrrrrrr moments it has stopped me getting online,  tonight my grrrrrrrr is about not being able to book my train for a trip in Greece. I had to get a friend to help translate a lot but neither booking to travel by bus or train seems to be functioning at present. GRRRRRRRR or is that GRRRRREEECE!    Life is much easier with the net but sometimes getting nowhere takes hours.


Another GGGRRRR moment has been a totally failed attempt to provide solice to someone which resulted instead with me getting so mad with them I just wanted to scream and scream and scream. Sadly telling me something I do not think I am tends to really pXXX me off.   For instance it is the first time I have been told that I have an easy life.  I definitely do not have the worst life, but I had not realised being a lone parent fto a child who never met his dad was considered easy or that losing one's mum at age 21 was considered easy.   True the person telling me this is definitely in a position I would not want to be in, a position which currently seems absolutely impossible and so from that stance yes being alone maybe is much easier.

But I am not down and out, at least not quite yet.  And yet that is what happens when one becomes homeless, what the homeless folk of Broxbourne may not realise is that they have unexpectedly become the catalyst for something wonderful.    A project is underway in Broxbourne by a number of local churches to provide a night shelter and over winter and today in preparation some 60 odd people crammed into the Red Cross provisions in Hertford for a hilarious and brilliant introduction to First Aid, so I spent the morning lying around pretending to be concussed and learning things like arm, palm, leg and roll, and listening to the wonderfully funny yarns of the trainer!  Totally life affirming somehow.

The Schumacher Experience - a fun and moving experience.

Today it has poured with rain all day.  The internet went off mid class and took another hour to go back on and the radiator is pouring water.   I am trying to dig deep and retain some of the calm and charm that I returned home from Devon with. 

The Schumacher experience is something that I am still processing but for a few days I have lived in a lovely lovely location, I have eaten brilliant food and I have had the company of some wonderful spirits and in a addition at times my brain has been stretched to the moon and back and my heart filled with love for those around me.

A sort of spiritual place with educational facilities for long and short courses on holistic themes,  Schumacher college also has extensive gardens as part of the Dartington Estate and grows almost all its own food and is now offering education in that area too.  The college that was on this site previously has connections for my family for various reasons so it also has  a great emotional attachment for me, but given that I have not been there for years perhaps that overstates the case, but that was one thing calling me.  The idea of living in a community and seeing how that was also was calling me but the other thing was the idea of the garden which has been calling me for some time. I know I can green my car park, but in many ways it would be lovely to have my own garden again but one that needs virtually no looking after so all these things called me to Totnes and the course. I also hoped it would shift me in some ways so that I could decide what to do with my life. Some and of these things happened, but   so did lots of other things.  However, how to describe them that I do not know.

The first night was not a promising start, after having seen round the kitchens in which we would assist variously with cleaning, preparing and cooking,  we had a lecture on economics which left us all a bit puzzled.  Despite a few comments it was a rather desultory affair.      But the positives of the location and the food all made up for this but the biggest and best delight that carried us all through the first day was the wonderful mix of participants on the course. I had no idea that people from as far away as Brazil, Argentina, Europe and Japan would be sharing the experience with me.    So first day over we shared a bottle of wine (organic of course ) a conversation about education and then headed to bed. 

The next day could not have been more different, enter Stephan Harding an extraordinary and charismatic and funny lecturer.   Theme for the week, I did not totally agree with all he said, but the he was too inspiring to care.  His duty was to take us on a deep time walk ( or warp) for 4.5 kilometres around the Dartmouth coast and river.  Not only was it sublimely beautiful but every now and then we would stop for a mini lecture to learn this was when the moon emerged from the earth or the sea arrived or small creatures came out of the sea and onto land, and lets not forget oxygen and iron one love - rustafarai. .    By the time people had stopped to swim, or dawdled in the trees, we were very late for our bus back but we had to get to the point in history where humans had entered into the picture and then the last two hundred years where they had caused climate change before we could head back to the Totnes, shattered but well and truly bonded.

The next two days were based in the college and were a mix of self exploration and just being outdoors either walking or talking or both.   We had a talk by an eco activist with two Phd's! and more importantly had a talk by the spiritual inspiration for the college Satish Kumar.  I will admit I had not heard of him, but he was the reason some had attended the course  but he is a 28 year old in the body of an 82 year old, just lovely and despite the concerns for the environment full of hope. 

Then before we knew it the week was almost over, a sort of party followed, which included some stunning songs by one of the Japanese participants, some great stories by the facilitator and one of the English participants, a very poor rendition of a Joni Mitchell classic by me, as despite all my efforts I still get too many nerves to deliver, and lots of lovely songs by the Brazilians.

Stephan Harding proving lectures can be fun, interactive, yet led from the front. 

Our last day we used a nice way to decide what to do, small groups suggested things, out of which emerged a plan. The majority of us would head to the river, send a flower downstream with our blessings and then we would return to the fire to share our last thoughts and our farewells.   The walk through the red woods is stunning, We stayed in reverential silence until the river, where a number of us bathed in the cold cold invigorating water. 

We were only together for just over 4 days, but in four days people can share, get very close and be inspired.    WE were all emotional by the end. We had shared truly wonderful veggie food together, had communed with chickens, and trees and each other on a deep level. One of the participants had very little English but her summary and farewell was most effecting, what she had seen every day were the smiles of all around her and she was happy.

Some will return to the college for further studies, some will never get to England again, but for one short time, we were altogether for a lovely experience and we are all grateful for that.   A unique week, in glorious Devon.

Snippets from the classroom 1.

I get so much from my students that for some time I have been itching to share some of it, but how to respect their privacy and confidentiality?     Well hopefully using a sort of twitter technique and offering only snippets and keeping to generalities it will be okay.    I learn so much from meeting people from all over the world, so everynow and then I will share snippets from them.   Their comments are, I hope factual, but that is not guaranteed as I may have misunderstood them or they me or their answer is just to use the language for example.


PM2.5  ( a new expression for me)  and heat reflection from glass, but pollution is going down in Beijing.  In turn the student found out that China is not alone with pollution problems and that we have a lot of pollution in the UK

60 men 55 women - retirement age China.  Many younger people help their parents financially.

Big eyes and a round face are considered beautiful features in China.

Chile is linked to the world through its shipping.

In Pakistan one of my students, a woman, had a much better schooling than I did, a much more rounded affair.     Good to hear positives re education for girls in Pakistan.

Just taught a person going home from work using Uber and did the whole lesson whilst  on the way home!  The student posed a great question querying how do people in countries like the UK or US plan for things long term when governments and policies and plans keep changing.     The student is from China, but knows both the UK and US well.    At the end of the conversation we discovered we had both studied in Manchester!