Normality returns.................

Paston Windmill in Norfolk - came up for sale a few weeks ago for £500,000 - need a lottery win please!

Only now do I feel as if I have returned to a normality (well normality for me anyway!). Both the trials and tribulations of welcoming the new dog into the home, and the mad rush of the new semester have exhausted me and sent me into a parallel universe where the only things in existence were traffic jams, an office, a bed, bunting and a virtual world with which I have been engaging to research, teach, facilitate learning and deliver a 24 hour virtual knowledge exchange for Occupational Therapists around the world together with my esteemed colleagues in OT4OT.

I seem to have a finger in so many pies at the moment that I think I have possibly  grown a few more upper limbs - just wish they were functioning so that more tasks could get completed! And whilst I am very pleased that people are beginning to hear of my bunting exploits and orders are slowly arriving - finding the time in the evenings and weekends to make them is challenging - particularly as I seem to spend an average of 2 evenings on skype or in the virtual classroom with PG students or working on a few national/international collaborations with colleagues or delivering a series of masterclass sessions to a small group of UG students on using online social media for professional development- phew if I wasn't so exhausted I might be impressed :-)

Skip and Bruno

Skip the dog - or Mr Moo as he is often called (he really does moo! ........and looks like a cow) has settled in. Still a few rough edges that we are slowly addressing but he is learning slowly - although a stubborn streak often gets in the way. It is the human element of this family that now needs to gain confidence to leave both dogs alone in the house - we have not been out as a couple since July 31st!!! The only time we leave the house together is to walk the dogs or to go the vets. This has been compounded by the fact that when they have been left for a short while whilst gardening or garage work have occurred (not by them!) then a number of things have been chewed including a stair post, sewing "ingredients" and a cushion. A cage has been bought for just such an occassion - but the human element has anthropomorphised(?) to such an extent that caging is rather difficult. Needless to say we didn't have a very restful summer.

This new world that I have been inhabiting for the last 4 months has not allowed for any contact with real world friends or family and even virtual contact has been sporadic - so to you all who expected to hear from me or had hoped to meet up for a social occasion - I apologise - but I am back! Until the chaos that is Xmas, marking and semseter 2 preparation kicks in over the next few weeks.

A new addition...........

We have a new addition to our family .....and I am exhausted!! I have spent the last three weeks:
a) placating a five year old who isn't keen on sharing his toys
b) using eyes in the back of my head to make sure that the "new addition" was where he should be and not where he shouldn't be
c) trying to second guess signals - is he hungry? Does he need to pee? Can he understand what I am saying
d) listening to others who are keen to give advice - however the often conflicting advice has made things even more difficult to points where I have felt completely impotent and deskilled.

Needless to say I have spent the last three weeks  exhausted, guilty, frustrated, anxious and constantly checking for reassurance. Questions constantly run through my mind:
a) are we being fair to the 5 year old?
b) have we done the right thing?
c) will we ever be able to leave the house together as a couple ever again?

They tell me that this is exactly what mothers of new babies go through - I wouldn't know - our new addition is a dog (as is the five year old!).
His name is Skip, he is a twelve month old Staffy and is a rescue dog from the local Dogs Home. Whilst we have discussed getting another dog for about a year now, and always come to the conclusion that we do not have the space, the time, the energy to committ to another dog - but we went and got one anyway.
So far he has learned his name, learned to sit for food/treats and mostly learned to ask to go outside for necessary functions. He has added scratches to the front door started by our other dog, jumped the wall of the front garden into the main road (:-0) and disgruntled many of the wild birds who come every morning to be fed (mostly by eating the food I put out).
Apart from that he is one of the most good natured, placid and loving dogs I have known -and I predict will be a great addition to our pack!
Watch this space!!

Tradition!!!!!!

Yesterday was a wet and windy Sunday so I decided to do very little at all and had a bit of a film fest. The History of Mr Polly - a great John Mills black and white film, Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats and then I watched Fiddler on the Roof . I had seen this as a young teenager and remembering that it was one of the only musicals I didn't like, but it was a wet Sunday and I did have an easter egg to finish and needed a film to finish the trilogy before tea. Now, for those of you not familiar with the film I copy here the synopsis from the link above " In pre-revolutionary Russia, a poor Jewish peasant must contend with marrying off his three daughters while antisemitic sentiment threatens his home." So, not many laughs there then! However...............

I was glued to the TV from start to finish - and I will admit to the odd tear (and maybe a sob or two!) as the film progressed. What I realised is that as a young teenager I possibly identified with the daughters in the film, and not being enough romance in it clearly decided it was a boring film. Now older, I am much able to put the film into context both socially, politically and from the point of view of the father who tries through the film to stick with the traditions of his faith, his generation and his culture whilst constantly met with change (both socio-political and generational). He meets each problem the same, denial, anger, reflection and then compromise and states at one time " what is tradition? Our ways were new once".

I often describe myself as a tradionalist, but what does that really mean I wonder? Wikipedia defines as "A tradition is a ritual, belief or object passed down within a society, still maintained in the present, with origins in the past.^[1][2]"    

^{I am comforted to have many family traditions that have been passed through the generations (a watch for your 10th birthday, a signet ring for your 17th birthday and the secret recipe for Harvo when you are 21! to name a few). I also like to engage in the traditions of Easter - no meat on Good Friday springs to mind as a recent ritual. I like to know that certain things I do have origins in the past but I realise from watching the film that many of my traditions focus on material things. At the end of the film, the whole village were displaced and all had to move on to other places. They packed up what they could with an air of resignation, leaving behind many items of furniture and even livestock and yet keeping their strong sense of self and community through their traditions - I wonder if I would be as resolute faced with similar circumstances - maybe I could learn of few things from this film?}

Of Ghosties and Ghoulies and Things that go Bump in the Night

As a child I frequently suffered with night terrors. Periods of waking through the night with inexplicable intense fear and dread which led me to scream out until pacified. My parents, after a while, subscribed to the "she'll grow out of it - just leave her to it" philosophy, leaving my older sister, with whom I shared a room, free reign to exacerbate the fear even further by telling me such things as the bogeyman lived in the airing cupboard in our bedroom! I can't blame all of it entirely on her, I will admit to an interest in, even a fascination (possibly macabre) for the supernatural from a very young age. I read innumerable ghost stories, loved Tom's Midnight Garden and would sit for hours in my Grandad's shed listening to the older children in the neighbourhood relating ghost stories.  During daylight hours these were all fascinating and would spur my imagination - which would return with a vengeance in the dark hours before the dawn and scare me to death.
I have never quite left this fascination behind but now have a healthy open mind about such things. I believe in ghosts, I believe that there is energy around us that cannot be rationally explained by the scientific amongst us. Some of that may of course be wishful thinking that there is more after this life - but I have had experiences and been in situations that have led me to this belief.
So, when the chance came to engage in a Ghost Hunt recently at Bygone Times I couldn't say no. The experience promised "a ghost hunting night to remember" so Dad and I arrived in good time. I was unsure what to expect and wondered if a return of my childhood fears may return - stating that if I got scared I may go back and sit in the car - then realising that I would be on my own in the dark - so quickly gave up on that idea!
Once inside we were given food and drink and introduced to the team: a TV minor celebrity paranormal expert, a medium, an historian and a Romany witch. We started with a talk on ghosts and what this term may mean. Apparently there are three stages of manisfestation, orbs (which are rare and not of the kind seen on digital photographs and so beloved of Derek Acorah!), vortex and then full visual (I think). In fact there were quite a few derogatory comments about TV paranormal investigations (including Most Haunted which I love for its theatre rather than its scientific content).
We were shown some photographs of paranormal incidents that were we assured had been checked by Kodak and the relevant societies and passed as authentic. Very interesting.
We were then split into smaller groups to engage in a number of activities, our first was a tour of the Mill floors with the medium and historian and a number of gadgets measuring temperature and disturbance in environmental stuff (can't remember the exact term). With the aid of a torch and just a few low lights we were taken on a tour and shown areas where there had been "experiences".
Now, those sceptics reading this will easily be able to offer any number of logical explanations to the events that I experienced - all I can say is that I know what it was like - and in the words of the expert - my job is not to convince you either way. There was one point in the tour where I couldn't actually put one foot in front of the other - my legs would just not move - at this point the medium picked up a presence that was hostile to us being there and who identified that he had walking problems (found this out after my experience). Dad and I, whilst splitting from the group slightly, watched as lights flickered on and off at the end of the room and saw a shadow go across the light (there was no-one down that end at all!).
One rather funny experience was in the main room not long after we started the tour. We heard a noise coming from one of the aisles - like a voice over a CB radio or walkie-talkie, very faint but definitely heard by a number of the group. We heard this on a few occasions and each time it was the cause of some excitement. However, at the end of the evening as we were engaged in a silent group circle, it sounded again. "Oh no, it's 1 0'clock" said the voice - it was a novelty alarm clock on one of the stalls in the room (Bygone Times is an old Mill that has been turned into a retail antiques and collectables warehouse). That certainly instilled a bit of reality as we were preparing to leave .
Other activities through the night included a Ouija Board experiment and a Seance (more of a healing circle than a seance).
It was not a scary experience, the team in charge were approachable and "normal" with no intentions of indoctrinating their audience or indeed making interpretations of what was experienced other than to support and engage with us. It was a great evening's entertainment which has made us come away with food for thought bearing in mind I live in a haunted house and opposite a cemetery- fingers crossed my night terrors don't return.........