annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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Jan 4th

I'm going to have to think of better titles for these entries. The best titles, for future usefulness, would be like the chapter headings in eighteenth century novels, "In which our heroine ponders the usefulness of her blog titles before moving on to express her dismay at the current state of the world and her horror at forgetting to even mention it in previous posts." That kind of thing.

I couldn't believe it yesterday when I clicked 'publish' just as I remembered that I wanted to comment on global events a bit, not to say anything useful or profound, but to make it clear that I am aware of what's going on.

Fucking hell, there's been a thing going round from Celebrity Mastermind the other night where an actor was asked to name the Swedish climate change activist who had written the book "No one is too small to make a difference". She had no idea, shrugged and said, "Sharon?" I was appalled and tssed loudly - I thought everyone knew about Greta Thunberg - or would at least hazard a guess with her name when asked for a Swedish climate change activist. Ha. Then on Twitter the next day, I see that Greta, who I follow, has changed her name to Sharon which made me smile, but I'm still fucking appalled at the lack of awareness, because this shit fucking matters.

I mean, look at Australia - here we are - climate change is happening now. There have always been bush fires - some Australian plants need fire to initiate germination. but never like this - this is spreading due to unprecedented wind. It's beyond words. Other places have heat, rain, cold whatever - it's all extremes - here this year it's rain. There's a local thing where the professional football club bought a big chunk of land near the river and have got Ikea interested in having a store there. It's on a flood plain so the planning application hasn't been passed yet - they want 600 houses there as well - but they already started building. It's illegal, but not in the sense that the police will get involved. It's all waterlogged now - ach this is a side issue.

Trump - what the fuck? Can you imagine if the retaliation was to have a drone take out a top US politician? Can you imagine? Jesus fucking Christ. The indignation would be beyond belief. And where's Johnson? Still on his fucking holiday. No word from him about anything, the fucking useless bastard.

These are such scary times. I cannot imagine where we are heading or how we will pull the world back into some kind of sense. The greedy and unscrupulous have all the control and although I'm still convinced that most people of all nations and races and whatevers are fundamentally decent, we're in the fucking shit.

In personal news, same old.

But I did go to local yoga this morning with my pal D, which was excellent. I did sun salutes for the first time in forever and just about survived though I am so not nimble - what's the opposite of nimble? Lumbering? This is where my weight increase impacts on my life. I'm not strong enough to move a weight as big as I am as quickly as I would like, as quickly as I used to be able. Let alone gracefully. I need to eat less and do more, especially weight bearing things. The other people at the yoga class were mainly pretty old, apart from D who is 25 - I was kind of surprised. We were at the front so I couldn't see how good they were - this is my preferred placing.

Later I met Son and we mooched about, ate a lot, drank coffee, chatted non-stop, laughed frequently, then he caught a train back to London and I went to the beach to walk my miless and catch the starlings doing their murmuration but they bloody didn't do it! What's that about?  Fuckers. They had a bit of a fly around the old pier, but none of the swooping in formation that they usually do at sundown in winter:

But the light was lovely and it was all good really.

We saw this too:

Just a shop window with all those lights. It looked amazing in proper three dimensions.

In the car on the way home I heard someone talking on the radio about gratitudes and science - how we are hard-wired to be dissatisfied but can override that by consciously being grateful and looking for things to be grateful for, just ordinary things. She writes down thirty things every day and has done for four years as it keeps her steady.

I know I am dissatisfied a lot though I try not to be as I know 'stuff' ain't gonna make me happy. I've been doing five gratitudes a day. Thirty sounds a lot, but she said it gets easier and focuses your mind in catching good little things that happen. I'm going for ten tonight. So. Today I am grateful for:

1. Bloke cooking dinner


2. Son wanting to spend time with me


3. Me and Son really laughing a lot this afternoon


4. It being a beautiful clear, crisp, sunny day


5. Finding a place to park


6. Staying past the time I paid for and not getting a parking ticket


7. Spending time with D


8. There now being a yoga studio just down the road


9. There being a programme on TV this evening about who is the best British comedian that went on for hours and was mildly interesting and funny in places, though I'd have given top place to Billy Connolly not Stan Laurel


10. I found some cooking apple slices in the freezer that I'd forgotten about and made a quick crumble for pudding that was delicious

Thanks for reading if you made it all the way down here. Happy tomorrow. xxx

ps can anyone help me replace the page photo on Diaryland? I've lost all confidence in my ability to do such things. Thanks xxxx

12:13 a.m. - 05.01.20

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