Friday

The honour crimes campaigner Jasvinder Sanghera has just been talking on Desert Island Discs about her life and her relationship with/estrangement from her family.  Extraordinary and moving, and I was caught up in her story of how fear and inflexibility can close hearts and what grace and forgiveness entail. Both, in their way, equally terrifying. She chose a couple of memorable tracks, too.  Losing My Religion by  REM and Moonshadow by Cat Stevens.  Blasts from the past.

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A chill wind still blows from the east, cutting through however many layers of clothing one happens to be wearing when venturing outside.  The birds seek shelter in the evergreen bush in the garden, only emerging for food when they must. Soup simmers in the stockpot in the kitchen and I have been comfortable in the armchair listening to the radio and admiring this week's daffodils in their vase.  After emotional storms yesterday, anxiety has retreated to low-tide level.  But it is lapping away on the horizon, too distant for me to hear this morning but I know it is there.  Ebb and flow. 

Waiting

The back is a bit stronger; the camera has been dusted off; the new PC/printer installed, and there's been a totally satisfying decluttering of my little office. I'm doing more. 

But decades of comfort eating and stress have caught up with me of late, brought to a head by the last three years of opiate painkillers for the back and glucose energy drinks.  Plus a couple of courses of antibiotics for good measure.  Grappling with some horribly tenacious digestive issues and a very inflamed and temperamental gut which triggers migraine-like headaches.  (If you're reading this and you're prone to both stress and overdoing the sugar, don't be like me and think it won't catch up with you ).  The positive news: I've been able to stop the painkillers and hospital tests show nothing dramatically nasty in the stomach.  So for now I'm  living on good quality protein, home made chicken bone broth as recommended by the naturopath I'm seeing, and lots of vegetables, probably the healthiest diet I've been on since mother's milk.   And vitamin supplements plus a probiotic at night. No sugar. No yeast.  No grain.

There has been improvement. But it's taking a long time.  Some days (quite a few actually) are distinctly yukky.

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Three weeks of Mercury retrograde finishes this coming Sunday, so maybe more of a sense of movement.   Looking forward to spring. 

Flowers. Daffodils - pale cream this week.   They come to my door each Saturday during the season with the online groceries.  Last week's were an intense egg-yolk yellow, standing straight and resolute in their blue vase.

   
Taken a few years ago, this one.  National Museum of Wales coffee shop, Cardiff.