So much has happened this month.

And because I am a good witch, I shall leave this message:


Let us spread more joy and luck around for the future. Persevere and stay positive! :D

Weirdest weather ever. Last night, while the sky was clear and blue everywhere else, a dark cloud loomed directly above my house. Today was similar, but it hailed for one minute, then snowed the next. Twice. In April. Like a witch's curse. Britain is messed up :0

What a fantastic, fulfilling April I'm having this year! One reason being I'm spending more time in my local library, going to both creative writing and shared reading group meetings. It's great to meet new people and share book recommendations, interests and opinions openly.

Current Song Obsessions:


'Broken Pieces' by Apocalyptica feat. Lacey Sturm

'Sick' by Evanescence

'Before the Dawn' by Evanescence

'I Want You Here' by Plumb

I've finished all three seasons of the 70s 'Wonder Woman' TV show. Now I know why it is well loved and has staying power. Lynda Carter IS Wonder Woman. She embodies everything the character is meant to be and what she represents: spirit, love, kindness, optimism for humanity, displays of physical and emotional strength without them being mutually exclusive or either compromised. Above all - she is compassionate. She is competent, she is an ally who helps and inspires women - even the villains. One other surprise? Men are not threatened by her. No one questions how a woman can be in any way heroic; she just is, and this is seen as normal. Seriously, why is this so hard for modern superhero writers to accept? Original Wonder Woman inspires hope, and makes you feel good and want to do good things. That is part of what feminism and female empowerment mean in my book.

An excerpt from a comment I made today on Goodreads:


Being ungrateful is one of the attributes of being an arsehole. You do not just ignore and/or abandon someone who's dedicated so much of their time and effort to helping you, loving you, and has made such a difference in your life - has maybe even saved your life in so many ways. It is beyond heartless and selfish to turn your back on them; to just decide they're unwanted/inconvenient to you now; to throw them away without a thought for their feelings and needs. 

Sorry, I've been waiting for a chance to vent like this. I f$*^$%king hate ungrateful characters in fiction (and reality too). Really I just hate people who treat others (like those closest to them) like sh*^%t.

Scribble #30

I'm having nightmares I can't wake from in time. Of being on a plane and it's dipping in the sea - how can I ever fly again? And of being in a slasher film in a red hotel room and I'm the final girl, petrified in bed, and receiving calls and messages of support from my... friends? Family? The killer? There are other scenarios, ones I can't remember, but their impact is felt. Why do I even want to remember them? Is doing nothing but reading making me like this? Then I'm glad of going out and socialising a lot more now. Glad of getting out of the house for fresh air, for short walks. Where there are clouds, people, dogs, cats, flowers, blossoms so beautiful they don't belong in this country.

No choice. No fairness. Nothing in life comes without a price.

I remember dreaming of being in a ghetto gang club or in a dark rambunctious something, and I smoked my first ever cigarette (never going to do that in reality!). I stubbed it out after two inhales but deep down I kind of liked it. Oh and I dreamt of family and house-moving troubles, with me at the bottom of the stairs. I am disturbed by my own weird psyche.

You are always stronger than you think you are.

Scribble #29

Creeks are great. Trickle, trickle. Creeks are great for jumping across, to hang onto tree trunks and branches, and land in mud on the other side. To slide and step carefully down the slopes by the streams in the stinging, prickling, twiggy, leafy woods. An adventure!

I leaned against a tree down by the neighbourhood pathway that's fenced, where a stream flows/ It was late afternoon, and so peaceful. So warm, and magical. It was nice to just relax on my back, and face the sky, in the wood. I didn't care if it was messy or untoward; I only felt like doing it, so I did it, and I am wonderfully glad of it.

Oh look, a magpie and a pigeon have made friends.

Just been walking, out in the cloudy day. I went down a different neighbourhood than usual and saw a house with a nice, neat front garden. I thought of just knocking on the door, asking to be invited in, feeling warm and welcome and comforted somewhere. Not a stranger anywhere.

Scribble #28

There are so many people out with babies. It's baby boom era. Buggy season.

People always look for one person to blame for everything. But life and people are far too complex, too bit-by-bit in account, for such a simple generalisation.

Conversations about politics, death and tragedy tend to upset me, I find. Maybe I resent life for its truth, its unpleasantness; that my comfy illusions are being shattered before my eyes and made complex as crystal fragments. Humour cures my lingering depressive episodes. Maybe I'm not as thick-skinned after all; I'm as much a victim of circumstance, a human meat sacrifice, as everyone else is. To lose control and meaning in life is horrible. Bleak. Black. Hollow. Fragile.

You don't know fear until you stare death in the face.

The eyes are the windows of the soul, of the mind. If that is true, then dreams are the mirrors of one's soul and mind.

The first time the freedom figurine on my bedside drawer was knocked down, a wing of the bird in the girl's cupped hands broke off. We glued it back on. The next time the figurine fell the whole bird came unstuck. We glued it back on the girl's hands, but in a slightly different direction. It faced west-north instead of straight ahead along with the yearning girl. It's almost as if the bird is trying to fly to another destination for its freedom. Might it be knocked down again? Try for another flight away from its ceramic prison? Or will the tiny bird fly too close to the sun like Icarus, and burn? Or smash into smithereens the next time, or the time after that?

Scribble #27

There was a schoolboy on the bus today, and while all the other children from school made a ruckus and gossipped, he sat quietly and read a book! He was very tall too, and didn't talk to anyone. He was just like me when I was at school. It's a shame I didn't meet another like him - a boy at that - back then.

I had a dark and cloudy dream, when last night there was supposed to be an eclipse. I think I was a young WWII evacuee, in a green field and a big house. I think I was also a video game character being controlled by my brother. There were time limits and I kept getting killed in battle. In the game  I had an evacuee younger brother and sister. Inexplicably on a game level my brother was a snake and he kept biting me as I explored the big old house, searching for my little sister. I caused the time limit to move backward to seconds to spare, yet I kept going. A male in school uniform followed me around as well, telling me confusing things - about my life? My alarm went off before he could tell me more

I dream I'm walking. And being directed, and walking. Someone is speaking to me off screen. I'm walking towards someplace I know, and there's a voice over narration. And another that's angrier and full of vitriol, as if I'm a controllable character in an online video game. I'm being led astray by different gods towards different directions.

It's so beautiful out today. The sun is free from its cloudy fortress for the time being. Cosmic alliances, planetary rotation, the silver moon and golden sun, and just plain crappy British weather make the day shine bronze or blur and fog-up coldly. Wind is the force that physically decides what your day on earth will be like.

Scribble #26

Why can't I see well? The world's out of focus. Rubbing my eyes makes it worse. It's a terrifying thing, becoming short-sighted, suddenly needing glasses or surgery, just to find my place in the world that's focused once more. Assuming I knew where my place was to begin with.

Everywhere in my weakening body hurts. I can't lie down to sleep. When I do I'll have bad dreams.

You're forgetful of the important and obvious things in dreams.

"Okay, could you clarify a few parts of that? Like, the beginning, middle, and end?"

The Starbucks in this area is more private than I had anticipated, despite being really spacey. Anyone could find a place to stand and sit here. Rich London coffee shops would be proud. Yet it has a feel of respecting customers for their own space. Even their time; they can stay and sit and chat for as long as they want and would get in nobody's way. It helps that the endless chatter, as usual in cafes but prominent in large ones, serves as ominous background noise, thus making it easy for everyone to mind their business. This Starbucks, where I am sitting and writing about now, is as white (walls and ceiling) and grey (floor panels and leather seats and benches) and brown (wooden tables and bar counters) as a posh office in an executive's 20th floor in big cities. Picture frames of African bean farmers line the walls as decoration. There is a meeting room with glass walls and a door in the corner, like an office. The walls inside are blue and, like the white brick walls of the main cafe, are ingrained with Starbucks' top slogans. For a respected good cause, I am sure. You can sit and drink at the windows overlooking the whole town square, out of sight of others, including the baristas. And the smell of continuously grounded coffee beans gets stale through your nostrils and throat fast. At least there are fans in the ceiling. Metallic fans. Sleek yet homely, this Starbucks is the private place (and space) to be.

There are so many babies in town. Babies everywhere in public. So many prams, carrier seats and buggies full of bouncy, bewildered and boggle-eyed babies. What do they think about? Anything much? Are they, like everyone else, individual thinkers? Or merely wonderers and wanderers in a new and bizarre life? They do marvel at the big, ever-changing world so. All their little chubby cheeks, chins and big new eyes are enough to make me feel broody. They are overall helpless and dependant on warm, kind elders for attention and love.

Scribble #25

In one charity shop, they sell naked Barbies.

Babies like peekaboo. They're also bouncers.

Pigeons are everywhere.

Reading is not a hobby, it's a necessity. I love to look at books on shelves, polished and worn with love; adventures continuously visited in their pages. I drink them in before I dive into the pages myself.

Plot holes - fill with the cement of careful planning.

Do you remember how you felt upon seeing your own reflection for the first time? Or when you first saw a shadow?

Ideas are like magic, as I'm certain you know, and you have to write them down - the words forever stuck on paper like flies trapped in spiderwebs - before the enchantment, their glory and power, ebbs away and disappears back into the mind's lazy oblivion.

A ladybird sounds like a miniature helicopter as it whizzes by my ear. It always lands on my hand and shoulder. Is it lifting my spirit with the essence of its own?

Friends lost, friends found. Friends remembered.

I refuse to give up hope, and my dreams (the good ones, I mean).

A brilliant yellow moon, like an orb-shaped streetlight, a beacon in the foggy night sky.

Book Review - 'Go the Fuck to Sleep' by Adam Mansbach (Author), Ricardo Cortés (Illustrator)

A lullaby for adults on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Very funny, very clever. I don't know if I'll have kids in the future, but I see how this would be relatable to so many parents, and to anyone who knows what most children are like.

Final Score: 4/5 

Scribble #24

"The butler didn't do it. The plumber did."

"Time moves so fast when you don't want it to, and too slow when the reverse is true. Sometimes it happens simultaneously, and catches you off guard before you know it. Time is a cosmic bitch, a universal mockery that may not even be real to begin with. Is the sense of time something invented by the fearful and pushy man? Oh the mockery. It runs full circle."

"Literally living on the edge - of a countryside cliff."

"Sudden, sullen dreams and awakenings. A quick, mundane resurrection."

"Rainbow soap suds in the sink; the sunlight hovering through the window. How abnormally sparkly, this washing-up day."

"Here; now is forever."

"Flower petal cheeks."

"Sunset-shade complexion."

"Corpse complexion."



Did I dream, or simply but very vividly imagine, of a man screaming twice in succession outside my house last night?

I once dreamt I flew a kite. It actually stayed off the ground and floated and shifted in the air high above me. And in a childish, carefree glee that I thought I had forgotten about so long ago, I loved it. I wanted to fly with the kite, aimlessness and all.

Believe in others, but most of all believe in yourself.