Hello everyone, so sorry to be away from all your lovely blogs for ages.  Please
know I do think about you all, but been feeling particularly 'grotty', in bed or sitting
in my chair and trying my best to stay positive and send myself some healthier days
now Spring is here! I seem to get a little improvement and then slip back again.
I hope you are all enjoying the lovely Spring flowers and sunshine wherever you are
in our beautiful blue world!

Heartfelt hugs dear friends.
Jane x

                    Muse

Will your passion shimmer here surreal and young?

Vividly in the psychedelic music,

This masterpiece chiselled on jewelled glass

Creates my impression of beauty.

Soft abstruse silhouette questions, how wild imagination and rhythm

Throws you a bold song,

Then is our best sense of harmony.

Sing,draw,dream,free art,

For we dazzle with real aesthetic here,

Imagine eclectic genius,

You, me and a mad blue angel dust, composing. 

I bear no form or symbol,

Yet am filled with joy and sight to see you...

Dream you-  in my world.






Photo:- 'Orion Nebula'   Smithsonian Institution.

The past lies over and within everything. When my eldest daughter was two years old we lived in Scotland in a farmhouse called Yonderton for just over two years.  'He', there to work was absent a good part of that time, leaving the two of us behind each day.  I would stand at one of the windows to catch a glimpse of his car flashing between the trees, whilst behind me the enormous house groaned and creaked and blew icy breaths even throughout the summer days.  Yonderton stands on a flat piece of ground.  Before it, the fields drop away to the road and behind the hill gently rises towards the white-blue sky. Of the three sparsely furnished rooms upstairs the master bedroom would have made four of this room I write in now.  We never slept in it.  It was just too cold and too enormous.  The furnishings supplied by our landlord farmer, comprised of two dining chairs, a bed so high you practically needed steps to get into it and an old dressing-table. So...not cosy then.  I chose the smaller room at the front for us, overlooking the meadow, so we might hear the bleating of sheep and catch sight of the sea glistening in the distance or watch the Ardrossan-Brodick ferry sailing out for the Isle of Arran and coming home to port six times daily.
Tarbert hill, four hundred and fifty-three feet of tough, sheep cropped grass stood between us and the beautiful misty blue, Isle of Arran.   Like a massive sleeping dinosaur the hillside towered across from Yonderton  at the bottom of the lane.  We climbed up one Sunday afternoon to stand at the summit buffeted by wild winds yet entranced by a view across the sheltered waters of the Firth of Clyde to the magical blue and mauve island and it's snow-capped mountains.
I can't remember being lonely, but I must have been, knowing nobody and with no neighbours close-by.  I only remember loosing my heart to this wonderful place where it was quite likely some of our Viking descendants roamed and lived.  One winter's morning we went walking and staggering up the hill just to the left on the photograph.  There were young bullocks in the field higher up so we were skirting around to enter the garden when they all came over to investigate who we were.   This woman and small child.  They weren't large beasts but never-the-less towering over the small form of my daughter, and budging and shoving me with their bulk, blowing out sweet misty smoke from black nostrils into the frosty air.  I picked her up to swing her on my hip and grabbed a small branch to poke them away, beginning to feel intimidated by a bunch of curious teenagers it seemed.  Lowering my voice an octave and hoping to sound bold and commanding,
"On with you...away with you beasts!" just as I had previously heard the cowman shout I hoped.
I never thought that I could feel in the least threatened by a herd of cows.  Not so.  They gathered behind us pushing and shoving each other as we scrambled over the fence into the garden only to find ourselves in a carpet of massed snowdrops in a part of the garden we hadn't noticed before.

'The moment you first  wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours.  No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen.  And the fact that it practically always doesn't matters not a jot.'   -Monica Baldwin-

'Sunshiney' winter Sunday mornings are so uplifting, when I first awaken to the sounds of bird song and tinkling trills of a wind-chime singing-ringing in the cold morning breeze.  Glistening white roofs and road and cars iced with frost and for some, thoughts of a whole day free to do as they please.  No work and little pressure, chores to do but no particular time-frame, even babies seem to sense that today is of a different hue, with everyone quietly still in bed at past 8am.  I can hear sounds of children's laughter behind the party-wall, our neighbours are a young couple with a small baby.  Outside now too, a car going past returning from early Mass and a whistling paper boy.  He's walking slowly home, his canary-yellow delivery bag hanging limply from his shoulder, the 'Sunday Times' all delivered, his thoughts distracted by the aroma of frying bacon escaping from nearby houses as he passes.

I'm thinking how daft I was not to cherish those days when I could eat with abandon whatever I chose. I received no less than five different recipe books as Christmas gifts this year, I think I'm being steered or rather dragged towards the kitchen.  I need to be innovative with my choices having decided to eliminate wheat and dairy from my chewing life!

This little chap has reached into his bag of tricks and found them gone, we can all be a bit like that don't you think? 

Thought you might like to see my new snazzy socks and red pyjamas everyone!!
Biggest, brightest, happiest New Year to all my lovely blogging friends wherever you are.
Hugs XOXOXO
Love Jane

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year!
Hoping you had a tremendous Christmas too!
Sorry to be SOOO long in posting, I'll be back as soon as I'm feeling better, hopefully really soon.

Hugs to you all, and I really appreciate all your LOVELY comments and thoughts, I can honestly tell you they have made such a difference to me.
Love Jane x

Thinking...thinking...what would this describe?  What memories, what event?

It feels like all energy is sapped, all but completely spent, as though a battery has wound down, as though each beat of the heart struggles, as if each pulse falters before it manages to pound.   The whole entity dithers and trembles and the brain jerks.   Coldness forms on body parts, ears, cheeks, the tip of the nose, lips, the shins but the knees burn.  The mind tells me crisis point.  You must lie down, be still, be quiet, breathe.  Calm -