The Getting Of Wisdom & Good Companions

The Getting of Wisdom - The Guardian 26.03.08
Article on a Lorna Martin who documented her Therapy in the Newspaper and some interesting Therapy memoirs at the end of the Article
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/healthmindandbody/story/0,,2268066,00.html

Good Companions - The Guardian 26.03.08
Befriending Scheme for adults recovering from mental health issues
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/mar/26/mentalhealth

Earth Hour 2008

Well, Cardiff announced that it was supporting tonight's Earth Hour. I wondered whether to go into town to see the effect, but then I read that they were marking it by turning off all non-essential lighting in their offices. Well, those open between 8 and 9pm anyway, so I decided the effect might be less than spectacular. Good for them for signing up, though. Not many cities have yet.

So instead of walking in to see the unbright lights of the city, I turned off my own lights (two 7 watt low energy bulbs) and the computer (probably the larger contribution - must remember to look at the rating plate once I switch it off), poured myself a glass of wine (enough light in the kitchen from the street lights to see to do that), lit three candles and settled down with a book for an hour.

It would be nice if the energy saving propagandists would occasionally point out that some of us are already doing our bit, rather than tar the whole nation with the same brush. Even if one of our contributing factors is insufficient income to be profligate!

Anyway, I enjoyed reading by candlelight. Used to be a more frequent event out in the wilds of Ceredigion. But I wondered just how many other people were sitting at home in the same way. Next year, let's get together and bring some friends as well and have a candle-lit Earth Hour party. We needn't limit it to the hour, of course!

The Real Alternative Therapy

I enjoyed the Kathy Sykes program on Reflexology. Fascinating that she couldn't find any scientific basis for the undoubted success of the therapy, but like a dog with a bone kept gnawing away until she came up with the conclusion, obvious in hindsight, that what we miss is the touch of another human being, and reflexology and massage give that in spades.

However, reflexology and massage come in specifically defined chunks of time, unless one is fortunate enough to live with the practioner. What happens in the gaps between? Our need for that touch, even just a quick hug, can come unbidden at any time. Especially when going to bed at night and on waking up in the morning, in my experience.

The lovely Professor Sykes took it a stage further and joined a 'cuddle party' in Los Angeles. From her face when she was describing it afterwards, she was rather bemused but clearly enjoyed it!

There has been a lot of negative reaction to the program by self-appointed sceptics and assorted besserwissers. I don't want to argue with them until they have lived in a pokey hole somewhere for a couple of years or more, each alone except for the constant nagging of clinical depression. Then we can talk, if they still haven't seen the light.

But I'm left with a thought - instead of spending fortunes on drugs and CBT, mightn't it be better to set up a nationwide network of introduction counsellors whose remit is to help depressed people get out of failed relationships and into loving, cuddling ones? Maybe for a short time to see if the new relationship works, with no criticism if it doesn't?

Or why not keep it simple and just train a nationwide army of Cuddle Party facilitators?

Ugh - the unlikeliness of Brown or Campbell signing up to that is bringing another bout of depression on. Maybe Nick Clegg would, though.

Me blog.

Being appropriate for today, I have posted the lyrics to Tom Waits' Chocolate Jesus on my (shh!) blog. Beware if you are someone who takes your Jesus seriously. Tom Waits, apparently, takes his with ice-cream.

Happy Easter!

Would you believe me if I told that you I didn't eat chocolate very often?

Chocolate. So many people, hopped-up on the sweet, mythical clay. Augustus Gloops, pulled back from the brink, now grown up. I've seen them, slumped on sofas, coming down from the high of a cacao spree. Twitching like dope fiends. Some go for the cheap stuff - get that slant-caffeine into the bloodstream, quick. For others, it is far more serious: they refer to their dealers as Chocolatiers; they put trays of exquisite bronze globes on a par with symphonies due to the practitioner's mastery of the ingredients - all in accord, rising to a crescendo of flavour once placed on the tongue.

I knew someone who used to put packets of chocolate buttons on the radiator, and when it had begun to wobble she would cut the corner, tilt with glee, and drink the contents. I would sit and watch, amused, sipping tea, smoking umpteen cigarettes, thinking, 'You've got a problem.'

On Sunday, when the day draws to a close, there will be thousands of giddy kids, overfull with cut-price, oversized chocolate eggs.

And the parents will be left with carpets of foil and walls of tiny eyes, fizzing with mischief.

Sun, snow and chocolate

Imagine a sunny day in the Sierra de Guadarrama, north of Madrid, early in the summer so the stream we picnic by is still rushing the melt water from the snow further up in the hills to the river below. Imagine jumping into a pool in the water - too shallow to dive - and splashing around like children, trying to catch the trout around our feet. Then before the cold of the water chills us to the bone, climbing out onto the bank and stretching out on a smooth rock in the sun to bake dry. Repeat several times, and it is a taste of heaven.

But the real taste of heaven came later, after the sun went down. At that time of year in the mountains, once the sun goes in the air grows chilly as it drifts down from the snowline. So we drifted down too, in the car, to an inn at the roadside where we sat under the pine trees drinking cups of steaming chocolate, rough woollen blankets supplied by the inn around our shoulders.

Whenever I see stars through pine branches, it takes me back to that night. Rough blankets, hot chocolate, stars and my love... Heaven indeed.

Good UK Site for writers

Browsing around, I came across explorewriting.co.uk, which claims to tell you How to Write Almost Anything. I haven't been able to check their claim exhaustively, but there is indeed a load of good stuff there both for beginners and for established writers, and no adverts!

The picture, The Bibliophile, has nothing to do with exploring writing, but how would the poor chap fill his time if there hadn't been armies of writers producing all those books...

Can Blogging Boost Your Social Life?

Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, looked into the psychological benefits of blogging and found that bloggers tend to feel a greater sense of connectedness to a particular community.

And some bloggers feel that they have a larger social support system behind them than those who do not blog.

The researchers also found that using social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, "lifted the mood of all participants (of the study) in some way."

So maybe we really can blog away the blues!

An Average Night

Had a good day. Stories in the Millennium Centre, Breton dancers, relaxed time with good friends, brisk walk home to read a little more of Writing Down the Bones before cooking a (very) late lunch. After an evening pottering, I was in bed by 10:30, aware that the wind was picking up.

Couldn't get off to sleep but too whacked to get up, I eventually stretched out an arm and felt for the radio button. The Shipping forecast was just beginning:

There are warnings of gales in Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth, Fitzroy, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle, Faeroes and Southeast Iceland.

What a list!

Vaguely wondering how Cromarty, Forth and Forties were missing out, I dozed off. It was, after all, a familiar bedtime story and I was under a duvet, warm and dry. I crossed the North Sea in a storm Force 10 once, and I didn't want to think of what they might be going through out there. I dozed off again.

Some while later, I woke with a jump to the sound of a whistling kettle in the bedroom. I don't have one, especially in the bedroom. It was the gales. They had reached Splott at just the right angle to whistle through the frames of my double-glazed draught proof windows. If I had left one open as usual, it would have been torn off its hinges.. OK, lift the eyeshield and take a quick peek at the clock. Ugh. 3:15. So I went into meditation mode to slip under the whistling, and dozed off again.

Until about 5, when a freight train passed along the track at the bottom of the garden. I don't normally notice them, but this one had a sticking brake or something that clanked as it rolled. In fact, it was quite pleasant lying there hearing the clanks gradually getting louder as it approached, then fading into nothingness as it receded. But 5am! Neither one thing nor the other. I adjusted the eye shield to total blackness and lay there debating whether to get up.

Success at last! While debating, I went into a proper sleep and when I woke up at 8:30 the sun was streaming into the room. So, ten hours in bed and I woke exhausted but lying in the sun, thinking that a whistling kettle in the bedroom mightn't be such a bad idea, if I had a box of teabags and a mug...