annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Busy
I made it through my busiest of busy days.
- Singing - good. We're performing tomorrow and Saturday - I found myself volunteering to introduce three of the songs, Wellerman, People Get Ready and Next to Me. I know nothing about any of them so need to look them up...
- One to one session on cold water swimming safety was really good. We sat in her (very clean) car and chatted through loads of stuff. My big takeaways are about really getting in and out quickly - buy a cheap waterproof watch to be sure - and lots of tips about how to avoid getting anywhere near hypothermia, some of which are a bit counterintuitive. If your hands and feet are very cold you need to make sure your core is well covered as under duress your body will abandon feet and hands to keep the core warm. Also lots of stuff about local conditions which was most useful
- Then in we went. The air temperature was 2C (35f), the puddles were still frozen solid and the tide was quite low but it was lush, really great. Bright blue sky, bright blue water, smooth and flat. Gulls squawking and swooping above us. I love it but I do hate all the fannying about with getting the clothes on and off - I've been pondering whether I can make a multi-layered long dress that I can just pull on over my head and bung a belt round - job done.
- Came home and made a pot of soup out of all the things lurking in the fridge, mainly leeks, broccoli, a carrot or two, a potato, some celery, a courgette, some home made chicken stock, a dollop of miso paste, a pinch of garam marsala and an onion - I started with the onion - put that on low to get good and sweet while I peeled and chopped all the rest. Blitzed it up and it was delicious.
- Yin yoga, in front of the fire, very meditative and soothing. Though with one bit where she asked us to rise up, leaning on one arm, repeatedly. I can't bear my weight on two arms, never mind one. I decided to do some strength building then decided not to, I'm doing shit loads of stuff already.
- Song-writing - man, I nearly didn't do this as I was tired but I'm so glad I did. We started with free writing, just keeping going, then doing it with some music and out of nowhere I found myself remembering the dream I once had about dancing in hold, a long drifty dance, with Mel, who used to blog on diaryland. At the time she was wheelchair bound, coming to the end of her MS journey. We'd never met IRL but we'd bonded early on in my blogging career and sent each other all kinds of things through the post - pictures, books, art works, knitted things. She sent me a link to the song Alice's Restaurant back before everything was available to us all. In the dream we both had long hair swirling around in untangled loveliness and floor length dresses which also swirled as we danced together, on and on. After doing all the preliminary exercises I came up with the first two verses which I really like and which got a great response from the others. I hope to actually finish it. She said if we finish them and send them to her she can play around with tunes, sing them and send them back - she used to sing with Massive Attack - can you believe it? I have to get a song to her to get it back!
- Then I ate my soup while watching Traitors - oh how I love Traitors - and now I'm going to bed. Night night.
12:32 a.m. - 09.12.22
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------