'F' is for ... FRIENDSHIP

Throughout my life, I've encountered many, many people, some of whom I found a special connection and became friends with. Hubby says I gather friends like flowers. I like that analogy. They are all little flowers.

Over the years my friendships have evolved like the stages in my life. Friends have come and gone with changes of school, new jobs and house moves, some fading along with the memories. My children found me friends – mum’s I was in hospital with when I gave birth. Mum’s from the school gates. Their best friend’s mums. The bus stop mums. Mum’s from when I went to mum’s and toddlers groups. Other friends I’ve gathered have come from my many trips into hospital. A couple of friends were from when I did my little craft business. I’ve made friends with several people in our village. A few years ago, I joined the Purplecoo online community and I have forged some wonderful friendships with several of them. Then there are the people I’ve met in the last few years; mainly aspiring writers from writers courses – My Arvon friends, My Caerleon friends, my Blogging Friends.

I recently found my best friend from school through Facebook. It was nearly thirty years since we had been in touch and yet despite that, when I found her and we started communicating, it was as if it were just yesterday that I last saw her. Back then, we used to sneak off just away from the centre of our village to privacy of the rear of the primary school and church where there was a track through to some woods, and we would sit by a gate on a stone, sharing a cigarette and coughing together while we discussed our latest crushes or what we were going to wear to youth club the following week.

It turned out she had looked for me many times over the years. We both pledged when we found each other we would never lose touch again. Health permitting, I’d love to get over to Leeds this year to meet her and for us to spend a weekend reminiscing and giggling like silly schoolgirls again.

Some of my friends remain constant. They are my true friends. What I mean by that is I know they will be a friend for life, even if we are separated by years or miles apart. I have a handful of my dearest true friends. They care about me as much as I care about them. They really are the best friends anyone could ask for irrespective of whether I have known them ten, twenty or thirty years.

My closest friends are as different as a tin of Quality Street. One is groomed and gorgeous, (looks a bit like Julia Roberts,) constantly on the go, highly strung, analyses everything, but is practical, pragmatic and superb in a crisis. One is a tea and sympathy kind of friend, wonderful listener, serious and thoughtful. One is dippy and charming, reminds me of a red-setter how she can be all over the place. One is timid and quiet but the most selfless person you can imagine, and kind and reliable. One is ever so slightly self-absorbed but great fun and totally solid. I could guarantee if I rang her in the middle of the night, she would come to me like a shot... See what I mean about a mixed bag?

We need different friends for different things. We lean on them, or look to them for light relief, dependent on our own mood and situation. I know I can depend on them all, as they depend on me. We may not speak every day (or every week for that matter) but when we do, it will be as if we were never apart. We can be ourselves, be unguarded and open, and show our vulnerability. We are in good hands when we are in each other’s company. They love us the way we are, faults and all. We understand each other. We trust each other. Implicitly.

At this point, I'd also like to mention my friend Carmen, (I met her on Purplecoo originally.) Sadly she is no longer with us. She died on New Years Eve 2010, aged just 42. Her support, enthusiasm and zest for life will never leave me. I miss her very much.
Her darling husband Jimmy is running the London Marathon next week so if you can help even in a small way, please click on her photo to sponsor him and help him raise £5,000.

Despite all my personal problems and health problems, my true friends have stayed with me. We have laughed and cried together as we have been together through good and bad times. We are all there for each other whenever we need someone. For some of us our children have now become friends. Hopefully they too will have friends for life.

I tell my eldest son who has been with his first girlfriend for nearly a year, don’t forget your friends. As well as a romantic relationship, your friends are the most important people you will have. You never know when you might need them. But it has to be a two way thing. If you give lots of kisses and hugs. You will get many back in return. We might be lucky enough to have family we can talk to and depend on, but our friends are always there for advice, comfort and inspiration.


So there's my word for today. 'F' is for Friendship.

Until another day
Bye for now

xx

'E' is for ... EXERCISE

Exercise is a four letter word, isn’t it?

Well, some forms of exercise are ;)

- L-e-a-p, j-u-m-p, lift, flex… :)

Sound too energetic? How about swim? Or walk.

We all know that exercise increases fitness levels and helps you lose weight. But did you know for many chronic pain sufferers, exercise can improve mood, give a general feeling of well-being and actually help control pain levels?

The reason for this is Neurotransmitters, remarkable bodily control and functioning mechanisms. One of these neurotransmitters is endorphins - powerful hormone-like substances produced in the brain that function as the body’s own natural feel good chemicals and painkillers. And scientists have discovered that during physical activities - including sex -but exercise in particular, the body releases endorphins which can produce feelings of euphoria and a general state of well-being so powerful, it can actually mask pain to the same extent as morphine can.

In addition, exercise releases adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine which work together to make you feel good, and it decreases stress hormones such as cortisol.

The problem I’ve had recently and alluded to in recent posts, is that I’ve lost my mojo and I need motivation to exercise. I won’t beat myself up that I’ve let it slide recently because I had a good excuse having major surgery. But it's time to get back in the saddle, so to speak.

This A-Z challenge has given me a bit of a buzz again for the first time in months. Positive thinking and laughter provoke the production of endorphins, the same as taking a walk during a sunny day or meeting an artistic person does. And I can see it’s the endorphins, my natural feel-good hormones that are kicking in. The challenge has got me focused and motivated, writing again EVERY day, and with the encouragement and support I’ve received from fellow bloggers, it’s really spurred me on. THANK YOU.

I believe in exercise and the power of endorphins. Exercise has kept me out of hospital for the last ten years. And it helped me tremendously last year while I waited for surgery. TMJ pain was the most incredible pain, like no other pain I've ever suffered. And I’m sure one of the reasons I coped so well and have recovered from major surgery so quickly was because of my level of fitness and the positive outlook.

My next step is to get exercising again. It can't be a marathon, or a run at all for that matter. I can’t do anything high impact - it must be strictly non-weight bearing or it causes flare-ups - and I can’t push myself too hard or too fast for the same reasons. I can’t afford to mask pain so I will listen to my body. I know from experience that all it takes to promote those endorphins is moderate amounts of exercise to get effects.

Swimming and cycling are my thing, and Yoga is perfect as it reduces tension and stress and focuses on stretching, breathing, and motion that release negative emotions in the body.

So, there you have it – my‘E’ is for Exercise... and Endorphins.

Until another day
Bye for now
xx

D is for... DETERMINATION

Sperm are determined. Salmon too and how they travel upstream to spawn. And swallows; any time now they will fly in the thousands of miles from South Africa to make a nest and raise a brood in the eaves of our barn simply because it’s where they nested last year. That’s because it’s their natural instincts to do so. They travel to whatever lengths, face whatever challenges, and jump whatever hoops to achieve their goals.

As humans, we’re just as determined in the way we live our lives – sometimes driven by instinct, but more often by our upbringing, or our goals and plans for life. Determination is in my makeup, my instinct for sure. I’ve always been the same - stubborn, determined and driven.

You can’t imagine how it affected me when my body stopped cooperating with my mind, ambition and dreams. It was like the ultimate betrayal. How dare my own body let me down? I’d always treated it pretty well, eaten my vegetables like Nan told me, exercised, looked after myself like I was supposed to do when I was pregnant. Yet still my body betrayed me.

It was never meant to be like this. Learning how to live with Behcets disease has been the biggest challenge of my life. Never a day goes past without my frustrations bubbling up over something or other; cancelling holidays! (Thursday's blog) Despairing at the state of the bathrooms that need cleaning, knowing the beds haven’t been changed for three weeks, not being able to go and weed the garden. I have never played football or had a play fight with my sons. And of course, I had to give up my job to cope with everyday life and the pain.

There are days when I wonder how I ever had time to fit in working. I was so organised, I would prepare the dinner the night before and simply stick it in the slow cooker in the morning. Now I’m at home all day, we’re lucky to have a good square meal on the table. Often it’s an easy ready dinner compromise or takeway. Shocking eh? Again, you can’t know how difficult that is for me because I used to be a fab cook. I enjoyed experimenting and found it easy.

Luckily, as well as having an understanding family, I’ve learnt how to live with my illness. It has meant adapting. Adapting means I survive. And it also means compromising my dreams and what I’d really like to do, understanding my limitations. I’ve learnt the ‘be kind to myself’ strategy. Living with an auto-immune disease and being in chronic pain means if I do exert myself a little, I need to rest afterwards, then I can do a bit more. For example, if I do the beds this morning, I’ll sit and read or write this afternoon, and leave the bathrooms until tomorrow. Instead of hand-crafting birthday and Christmas presents – the things I used to love doing - I not only have to buy them, but I have to plan well in advance as I’m slower than I used to be and usually, I’m working around some flare-up or trying to be organised, just in case of the next one.

Not going out to work means I can lead life at this pace and not push myself too hard. The day is a series of stop, starts and compromises. Work, rest, rest, work. I get the balance wrong at my peril, and the whole family pays for it. And flare-ups are not necessarily self- induced. Sometimes auto-immune diseases just happen. Flare ups have no rhyme or reason. It’s a strange journey. Me and this lodger of mine.

Being as stubborn and determined as I am, I’ve learnt this the hard way, through pain and suffering. Like those salmon I still go upstream every day of my life, often knocking myself up in the process. But I have a hard head and don’t listen to others as I should. This is one of the lessons I still need to learn.

Knowing my limitations will always be part of my life now. The frustrations go with the territory. But this is where I have a problem as I always do things the hard way. Like Winston Churchill, I ‘Never, never, never give up.’ And he won a war, didn’t he? Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

There you have my 'D’ – DETERMINATION

Until another day

Bye for now
xx

C is for...my children

How can you have two children, (whose names both just also happen to start with the letter 'C') bring them up the same, yet their characters are completely different?

Where do I start with Cameron, Trainee Chef and eldest son
Well, there’s only one Cameron, that's for sure! His character is his strength, and he really is a character; one of those once seen, never forgotten types. Despite his lazy tendencies, he’s razor sharp and has charm in abundance. He’d make a wonderful salesperson and is a natural leader. It wouldn't surprise me if he ended up famous; maybe a captain of industry or on the TV as a celebrity chef.

He appears strong, invincible, and occasionally madcap to the outside world. However, as his mother I know he’s often wearing an invisible shield, the one with feigned self-confidence and bravado. He’s at that age, nearly eighteen, (it must be hormones) when I wish I knew what was going on in his head. I try to talk. Sometimes he doesn’t want to. Sometimes he can’t. Sometimes I can’t shut him up. Sometimes he hates the world. I try not to nag or push too much but I can’t win. I’m a mother, which means on occasions I’m his emotional punch bag. My love is unconditional. He knows that, and that I’ll always be here for him. He tells me he loves me several times every day so I’m luckier than many who have teenage sons.

Cameron’s character will be the making of him. Everyone who meets him says he’s special. I hope in time he will see it for himself and make the most of it.

Chef Cameron; my crazy, characterful, Cancerian clown of a son

Then there's litle Callum, light of our lives. Callum, constantly cheerful and co-operative is still at ten years old considered cute. And thankfully, he’s also very cuddly although he can be cool with strangers. He's altogether quieter, more reserved than his elder brother, never crazy. He’s far too busy being cautious, sometimes fretting unnecessarily. He’s sharp too; intelligent and how he surprises us as the comedian.

Underneath the quieter façade, he’s the one with the confidence. He has a smile that will light up a room. He’s kind, loves animals, and is considerate. It’s a rare quality in one so young. Perhaps it’s my illness that has made him that way. And he has his own health issues to contend with. They think he may be showing signs of developing my Behcets disease. The tests have started. Only time will tell. When he has flare ups we lose our little ray of sunshine for a few days/weeks. His effervescence flattens like a bottle of pop left with the lid off. But most days he is chirpy and bright.

Cheerful, chirpy, Callum the cuddler, confident and calm.

So there you have my C words - Cameron and Callum. My Children.

'B' is for...BLUESTOCKING

I considered writing a bodacious blog about books. Books are my life. But then I had a thought. After all these months of blogging, Hubby asked me last week, why is your blog called ‘Bluestocking mum.’ So today, on the second day of the A-Z challenge, ‘B’ is for Bluestocking.

According to the Oxford definition, a Bluestocking is a woman with strong scholarly or literary interests.
The Bluestocking Society was founded in the early 1750s by Elizabeth Montagu (2 October 1718 – 25 August 1800.)

Being from a wealthy family, she had strong ties to the British peerage and intellectual life and when she married Edward Montagu, a wealthy man with extensive holdings she became one of the wealthiest women of her era. However she devoted this wealth to fostering English and Scottish literature and relief of the poor. And along with her friend, Elizabeth Vesey and several others they organised a women's literary discussion group - The Bluestocking Society - a revolutionary step away from traditional, non-intellectual, women's activities at that time.

The story goes that they invited various eminent men to attend, including the botanist, translator and publisher Benjamin Stillingfleet. Stillingfleet was not rich enough to have the proper formal dress, which included black silk stockings, so he attended in everyday blue worsted stockings.

They may have been fashionable glamorous people, but their work focused on the life of the mind. Through their correspondence, parties and meetings they rebranded the idea of sociability to embrace women's right to education and enlarged the boundaries of what women could think, write, and do. And thus the term ‘Bluestocking’ came to refer to the informal quality of the gatherings and the emphasis on conversation over fashion.

Until the late 18th century, the term referred to learned people of both sexes. However it subsequently became applied primarily to intellectual women. In time the name Bluestocking was applied solely to women of pedantic literary tastes. For a period, Bluestocking was a denigratory term, an insult, so much so, that it helped create a climate for generations of women who lived in fear of being labelled a 'bluestocking.' In the 19th century, the Brontë sisters and Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) felt it necessary to hide their genius under male pseudonyms; in the 20th century the word conjured up images of desiccated female dons. The original 'blues' were much more various than this stereotype suggests, but their dilemmas about intellect, fashion and femininity are still with us today.

When I was researching, I discovered a couple of points from the archives that might to make you smile:
"Women don't become bluestockings until men have tired of looking at their legs.”

And, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was described by the BBC in 1957 as "very pretty, and dresses most attractively. Very feminine ... her main charm was that she does not look like a career woman."

This is where my own experiences are relevant. Smart women have always had a problem. If you're clever and plain you can be dismissed as a bluestocking; high-minded but unable to get a man. If you're clever and sexy you're ten times worse, a bitch, you sleep your way to the top – perish the thought - a career woman. Fifteen years ago when I was appointed Branch Manager of Lloyds Bank Newport, Shropshire, there were very few women Bank Managers around. There was a fair amount of bitching about why I was given the role; I’d never worked in a bank before and goodness, I was only twenty seven. I was a woman. And oh yes, I was blonde.

I knew my appointment was controversial and had a huge desire to ‘prove myself.’ Intensely conscious of my image, I toned down my appearance, reverted to my natural brown hair colour instead of blond and had it cut in a bob and dressed in dark, business-like suits, wore tights/stockings on my legs(never bare-legged,) and natural peachy shades of makeup (no bright coloured lipsticks.) These were all attempts for me to be taken seriously.

I took over the role from a fifty seven year old dinosaur of a Manager who used to intimidate his customers and throw things at his staff. His lending was exemplary (no-one would dare default!) but he was not the future of Lloyds Bank. And in the fullness of time I was able to show why I got the job; on merit, because I was good with people. My role was about customer service, developing the staff, and sales, sales, sales. The bank was changing. The organism that adapts will survive.

Intellectual women have increased greatly in number since the Bluestocking days. Some 55% of new entrants to university are women and outnumber men at every level up to PhD. But from my own experiences I see how the struggle for the right to be clever, sexy and feminine goes on. The original 'Bluestockings' were our foremothers, the missing link in an unbroken chain of female creativity. Their work should never be forgotten.

So there’s my ‘B’ word. ‘B’ for Bluestocking.

Until another day

Bye for now

xx

A is for ...

Having just visited the lovely Talli Roland I noticed something strange is going on out there in Blogland starting today - An A - Z challenge for bloggers.

Well, I’ve joined the merry bandwagon.

Thinking about where to start isn't difficult. I want a positive start. You may see from recent blogs, I haven’t been feeling too positive lately, I've rather lost my mo-jo. Sometimes living with chronic health problems can get you down. And the last eighteen months have been more of a challenge for me than the last twenty five years. However, as someone who’s maxim is, ‘There’s no such word as Can’t,’ it’s time for me to try and get it back.

Nan used to tell me I could achieve anything if I wanted it and worked hard enough. So my word to start the A – Z Challenge is ACHIEVE.

I am going to achieve my short term goals;

- To finish my novel in time for the RNA New Writer’s Scheme.
- To get 100 followers on the blog.
- To blog every day during April.


What do you aim to achieve today/this April?


Until another day

Bye for now

xx

Another holiday bites the dust

I should be on my way to New York today. But I’m here, sitting at the island in our kitchen, looking out at the emerald green fields to the front of the barn.

A nearby farm house is cradled in a dip as if to keep snug from the elements. Outside the wind buffets the double glazing and shakes at the bird feeders on the trees until they slide off and scatter peanuts over the ground. The cat, his fur ruffled, darts across the garden like a thing possessed and pleads with urgent mews to come in. He cosies up alongside the dog that is at my feet. We all hide away.

I haven’t been well for weeks. I thought it was the after effects of my recent surgery. Then I supposed it was my age. Eventually I went to the doctors. An enlarged uterus was diagnosed. What now. More blood tests, an ultrasound showed nothing serious although I have to see a gynaecologist and have more investigations. Sometimes I get so sick of always having something wrong with me.

It got worse. After spending most of the weekend in bed, I woke on Monday morning with crippling stomach pains. Hubby had to rush me to A & E where we spent most of the day. Inflamed ovaries. As well as my Behcets disease, I’m now a menopausal old bag. No, that’s a little melodramatic - I’m not quite past it yet - I’m still producing hormones, they are imbalanced. It’s the peri-menopause. Great. It might go on for years.

We’re delighted to hear I will be allowed home with pain killers, as long as I rest. But we’re supposed to be going to New York on Thursday. It’s been planned for months. We had to cancel twice last year with my jaw problems.

'I’m afraid I can’t support a trip to New York.’ The doctor frowns and in a few short words shatters our day.

All I wanted was to go up the Empire State Building and re-live the moment in 'Sleepless in Seattle.' To see the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island ferry. And meet my cyber-friend Frances who I’ve been acquainted with for several years.

The hubby is brave and philosophical. We can't take the risk if something goes wrong while we're out there. And the insurance would be invalidated if the doctor won't support us going. The boys are stoic and cheerful. In the scheme of life it’s not important. It's just a trip. There will be other trips. But we all know I’m not really robust enough for city breaks. Better in the future stick to sunshine, pool, and writer’s holidays. When I come through the disappointment, I will bounce back as I always do, and tell myself there are people far worse off than me. And there are.

Something crashes outside. A garden chair has flipped back in the wind. Callum’s goalposts are strewn upside down in the neighbour’s garden. All I can think about is in the bedroom the clothes are all still draped over the clothes horse, ready to pack in the suitcases. Sometime today I shall have to put them all back in our wardrobes.

I’ll get over it. I always do. In the meantime, I’ll write - push on with the novel for the RNA New Writer’s Scheme. I won’t be having a few days break from it after all.


So until another day

Bye for now
xx