How to begin?

I have been feeling…

The world is now full of….

It has all been a bit much recently.

I am also REALLY tired of hearing about and thinking about how it has all been a bit much recently. So I have avoided writing anything more than a short shopping list or desperately upbeat diary entries (for me to read next year and spot how much of a brave face I was putting on) but all that has to end because people…people who write wonderful stuff and people who stay sane longer than I can manage and people who are braver than I…are still doing what they do and my brain is finally catching up.

Chuck Wendig at Terribleminds has been writing a series of disjecta membra – so here’s one from (almost) middle England. (Which should in no way be taken as average or normal).

Gardening

‘Stuff’ has been planted. I have not labelled most of the pots so please don’t ask me what stuff is where but I’m pretty sure there are beetroot, peas, basil, cape gooseberry, cucamelons, lettuce and onions in there somewhere….somewhere….hmmmmm. Most of them are in pots (small garden) and a lot of them are visible from my living room or bedroom windows.

I am now spending an extraordinary amount of time staring downwards from my ground floor windows, desperately willing small green shoots to appear.

Turns out that baby rocket leaves are really nice on home-made pizza, if you’re too impatient to wait for them to become adult rocket leaves.

Video games

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a ‘gamer’. The last time I really played anything (properly – to win) was Spyro the Dragon on the Wii (circa 1998) and I had to stop that when I stamped my foot so hard in frustration that I injured myself. But recently (again, hmmm, is there something going on?) I have found myself watching someone else playing rather a lot of the game Skyrim. I can understand now why people sit and watch other people play video games on YouTube, it’s somewhat relaxing…until the dragons arrive, of course. Murdering peasants for their limited amounts of gold is not really my thing though, so I requested a game that involved running around the countryside, but with less plundering and marauding if possible.

We found Yonder. Yonder is basically Skyrim for childern. You run around and go on quests but people hand you tools from the generosity of their hearts and you don’t have to kill anyone!

I am now spending far too much time playing video games, which is a sentence I never thought I’d write.

Cooking

I’m pretty sure the pefect Sag Aloo is at my fingertips. I just need to be braver and add more spices than the recipes (written by white English blokes) say.

Also…portion control is a thing now. Days spent grazing are days spent putting on weight.

I have also succesfully managed to avoid baking so far, but I love baking so this may well be a battle I lose. Millionaires shortbread is calling to me….

Blogging/Writing/Reading

This one is a little more difficult to talk about without referencing what is happening to all of us. When the world is turned upside down and people are so scared that they act out and endanger others does spewing inanity onto my blog count for anything?

But then I saw this (Imperfect Patience) and this (Virtual Brush Box) and I remembered why I started this ridiculousness in the first place.

My shouts into the void may be small and quiet and not really achieve much, but MY brain feels better for it and if that is possible – without causing harm to anyone else – then that’s what we should be doing.

To answer the question in The Sixteen, my last post – the shout-out – was aimed at a blogger in Australia. They had written posts that moved me, spoke to me and made me think, all of which I really appreciate and they had also recommended a book to read.

I have not been able to pick up a book of fiction since all this began and I miss them. I have managed to order lots of them…just not read them when they arrive. I did, however, manage to read this particular book.

It is so well written I finished it in a day. It is eye-opening and thought provoking and made me happy, sad, angry and sympathetic and I wanted to talk about all those things with the person who pointed me in that direction. I also wanted to ask if they would like it as their own hardcopy as my minimalist tendancies desire an empty bookcase whilst still wishing for beloved books to end up in good homes.

But that blog has now been closed and I don’t have their email address. So in a desperate attempt I wrote a blog post about it. Mysterious and vague…yep, that’s me.

That post still stands, as do the offers of book posting and book discussing, should it ever been seen by the book recommender.

As for the many works of fiction sitting by my side? I am going to (one day soon) FORCE myself to pick one of them up, just to see what happens.

I might reward myself with millionaires shortbread…