A Detour To Jesmond Cemetery, Newcastle - Photo Blog Part One

It was August.  Four months ago.  I had attended a little social group that day at the cafe in Exhibition Park.  It was run as the Sunday Assembly Newcastle event on the grounds that the assembly wasn't able to meet that month as usual.  So some of us met up, shared drinks and food if we wanted them and chatted for a while before going our separate ways.

Afterwards my only plan had been to get home.  I would walk to Jesmond Metro station, catch a train, go home, drink more tea.  Simple as that.  I felt I needed to be somewhere quiet pretty quickly because although I had enjoyed seeing good people I was pretty shattered by being there among them and having to focus so hard.

So I walked.  Briskly.  Out of the park.  Under the main road.  And into Jesmond.  Just a couple more minutes walking and I would be at the Metro station and could get home.

That's when my plan went wrong.  Or went right.  I saw this path.

I've seen it before of course and have wondered where it led.  I wondered again.  And decided to find out.  It led here.  Or rather the place it led to led here:

I think I've found the houses where I'd want to live in Newcastle.  I'd have one of these.  They would be pretty expensive though because they're nice houses in a very desirable area of the city.  There was no way we could have afforded a house anywhere in Jesmond when we moved to Newcastle.  Not even a very scummy house.  If such houses exist in such a location.

I walked on and decided that I might as well keep walking to West Jesmond Metro instead of turning back on myself and heading for Jesmond.  On the way I passed the entrance to Jesmond Cemetery.

When I used to walk my child to and from school everyday I would sometimes walk on from the school into the city centre.  At my pace it would take another 45 minutes from the school gates to Haymarket.  I walked a lot in those days.  To the school and back twice a day - four miles.  And I would often go to Mass on the way back which took it up to five-and-a-half miles.  That's before shopping trips and those walks into town.  On the walk to the town I would pass the gates of Jesmond Cemetery and every time I would think to myself, "I really should go in and explore sometime."

On that day in August I decided to do it.  I needed a quiet place.  A cemetery would be appropriate.  Now I am thinking to myself, "I really should go back with my book about the cemeteries of Newcastle and explore sometime."  I will.  Sometime.

The following are photos taken in the cemetery.  I'll be posting again with more photos taken there and also photos taken in the community orchard that adjoins the cemetery.  You will spot that I like cemeteries - just as you would have done if you saw my posts, some months ago, about a wilder graveyard in Durham.

I found my quiet.  And I found that my thought on all those walks from school had been entirely correct.

The Special 250th Post: The Way Things Are Now. Seven Joys.

This is the 250th post.  That's an important milestone for me though, objectively, it's just another number.  I decided a while ago that I wanted to write something more out of the ordinary for this post.  Or at least more out of the ordinary for my blog.  I didn't want it just to be some days from my gratitude diary.  I didn't want it just to be some photos from an enjoyable day out.  I love both of those things and they're going to get another mention later.  I wanted something more.

The trouble was, I didn't know what that more should be.

Should I give a rundown of everything that's happened in the three years since I began posting?

Should I give a rundown just of this year?

Should I state some of the things that are important to me?

Should I list the things that bring me joy, the things that are providing meaning and centre and direction to me at this point?

I didn't know.   I'd written the 249th post - one of those with photos from an enjoyable day out.  And I didn't know what the 250th post should be.  Not yet.

Tonight something happened.  Something that only filled a few seconds of my life.  Literally.  A few seconds.  And now I know.

This evening I attended a free event at the Literary and Philosophical Library in Newcastle.  The second I've attended this week and the third I've attended ever.

I was pleased to be at this one, a talk by Laura Bates, who started the Everyday Sexism Project and wrote and compiled the excellent book Everyday Sexism.  If you haven't got a copy of that book then get one and read it.  It's worthwhile.  It doesn't matter whether the book is a real eye opener for you or whether you know it all already.  Either way it's worthwhile.

Yeah, I was pleased.  She spoke at Newcastle University a while back and I missed hearing her and was glad to be free to hear her tonight.  She spoke well.  It was clear, eloquent and highlighted many of the things that the project has expressed both through hard evidence in print, and in soft evidence of anecdotes - evidence that becomes very hard when the anecdotes are piled on top of each other, thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands.

Laura Bates is great.  She is.  The project is great.  And the work that she's found herself doing since the project began is great.  I don't think she could ever have predicted it when she started what was planned as a tiny thing.  I am glad I attended her talk.

But something happened.

And it happened less than fifteen seconds before entering the library to hear the talk.

It was this:

Two women passed by me in the street.
One of them pointed at me.
She said "What the fuck is that?" (exact quote)
And they walked on.

I was surprised.  That kind of thing doesn't happen much to me.  Not recently.  But more than anything I was amused to receive such a transphobic comment when almost at the door of a talk about sexism.

Now.  I could write this 250th blog post about this incident.  About transphobia.  About the pressures on transgender people to look a certain way.  About the quest - which I confess I followed somewhat - to pass.  About the privileges a transgender person gets if they pass.  About the privileges they lack if they don't pass:  Namely the privilege to be able to walk down a street without being abused for being transgender.  I could write a lot about the meaning of this kind of abuse, about how those women were saying in effect, "I believe that a woman has to look and be like this and you don't fit the picture in my head and so, as a lesser human being, it is acceptable to insult you."

I could write about how all that fits in with sexism.  With gender stereotyping.  With sexual stereotyping.  How women are pressured to look a certain way.   How men are expected to look a certain way.  How trans women and trans men are expected even more so to look a certain way.  How non-binary people get stuck in the middle of all this and how that in itself raises a whole load more issues.

I could.  I could write lots of thoughts that are in my head - thoughts that have been developed over the past three and a half years since I realised that I absolutely needed to transition and started to tell people and live as the woman I am.

I'm not going to write all that.  Not today.  I'm not.  Because all those things are out there for you to read already.  Some of them are in posts on this blog expressed with a greater or lesser sense of clarity or coherent development.   But mainly because this is my 250th post on this blog.  And I want it to be a happy one.

I thought back to three years ago.  Three years ago my life was different.  Three years ago such verbal abuse was almost a constant in my life.  Because I didn't pass.  (And had worse dress sense and less confidence)  For a while, almost every single time I left the house alone I would receive verbal abuse of some kind.  It was really very bloody horrible.  At times I didn't know how I would be able to do this transition thing.  Perhaps without the support I had - from family, friends, Metropolitan Community Church, and the local transgender support group - I would have backed out and said it's too hard for me.

That was three years ago.  Abuse.  Abuse.  Abuse.  When alone in the street, abuse.

Things are very different now.  Abuse is rare.  I was talking with someone about this today.  About how far I have come along this path of being me.

Things are very different now.  Mostly, any abuse doesn't affect me.  Water off a duck's back.  I was feeding ducks today.

So.  My 250th blog post.  Isn't about abuse.  It's not really about the three years since starting this blog.  A blog I started in order to write about being transgender, about transition and which hardly turned out to be about that part of my life at all because, let's face it, it's actually quite dull!

My 250th blog post.  Is about some of the things that help me.  Right now.  Things that have developed during the last twelve months.  I have found this year very difficult at times.  But I am blessed in so many different ways.  These are a few of them.  Not all of them.

One year ago none of these things were in my life.

Three years ago I hadn't really thought about the possibility of these things ever being in my life.

Thing the First

This autumn I joined a choir.  Not just any choir.  A brand new choir in Newcastle.  This is SHE Choir, something that already exists in London and Manchester.

It's a women's choir.  A women only space.  And it's the very first time that I've managed to be brave and confident enough to put myself forward to be in a women only space and part of a women only organisation.  The first time.  That's massive for me.  Massive.

A friend who has never got to the choir - a friend from another singing group I attend sometimes - posted about the first rehearsal on Facebook.  I thought it sounded good but normally I might have scrolled over it.  A designated, explicitly women only space.  I'm not ready.  For some reason, probably relating to wanting to sing some more, I clicked on the group and took a look.

The group description began like this: A community choir for women, anyone who identifies as a woman, or anyone who identifies as gender fluid/gender queer.

Yes!  Yes!  That's the reason why I felt able to get to that first rehearsal.  A group description that was specifically trans inclusive.  Without that sentence I would probably have stayed away.  Afraid of not being accepted.  Afraid too of the perceived horror of possibly having to drop an octave sometimes when I sang.

I got there and found that I was completely accepted into that space as a woman.  And I cannot tell you what a relief that was, how good it felt, and how much it meant to me.  I am crying a bit while typing this paragraph because it has meant so much.  To have such a welcome and warm acceptance as a woman among a group of woman none of whom I had ever met before that evening.  It blew me away.

I've loved having that choir in my life and seeing those people each week I've been able to be there.  I love that I'll see them again this weekend and during next week and that we'll be having a little performance very soon.  I love that there is never even the slightest sense that anyone might be looking at me a bit weird for being transgender.  I love that.  Because I looked at myself a lot weird - and much worse than weird - for most of my life.

Yeah.  SHE Choir has helped me a lot.  Every week.  Plus singing is fun and I need to do more of it next year as my mental health continues to improve.  Plus there's the added bonus that I am singing the lowest of the three women's parts without yet having to drop down an octave.  Not once!  It's a push sometimes but I've hit every note without even switching to head voice.  Does that make me happy?  God yes!

I'm not the only one the choir has helped.  Someone at the rehearsal this week was saying just what it had meant to her to be there.  And there are others too who have found something that satisfies a real need they have, whatever that need might be.  It's been a force for good for all of us.

Thing the Second

I quit church this year.  After twenty-six years.  That's been very good for me.  Not because my church was a bad place filled with bad people.  Far from it, and I've already mentioned how I might not have made it through to this point without the support I found there from the moment I first walked in the door and happened to be greeted by the then pastor who within three short sentences let me know that I was in a safe space to be myself.

I officially joined that church.  Two years and a few days ago.  Much to my own surprise.

I officially left again this year.  Which was also much to my own surprise.

I am very glad I did.  Quitting, putting a definitive stop to my church going, has given me a great deal of freedom to explore more about who I am, what I believe, how I want to live and so on and so on.  I'm still exploring.  That will never end I hope.  And in the exploration I am finally learning what it truly means to live as myself and finally learning what it is that I can be passionate about without it being a self-destructive passion.

Thing the Third

I have a bus pass.  An autism diagnosis may not have brought me many practical, physical benefits.  But it's brought me this one.  A bus pass.

And it has changed my life.  In a staggeringly big way.  Especially once I got it through my thick head what having it could mean.  That didn't happen until April 22nd - a date I've written about in this blog.

I can now go places and not worry about us not having spare money to afford to go places.  Today I went to Morpeth - a Metro ride and a bus ride away.  I wouldn't have done that without the bus pass because of the cost of getting there.  Last week it was Woodhorn museum and a park.  Since April I have been out exploring and visiting places more than I have for the previous five years put together.

The bus pass has removed a worry and enabled a better life.  Which leads me on to 

Thing the Fourth

Photography!  I had taken photos before this year of course.  But I've taken far more this year and developed a love for it that may develop further as the next year progresses.

I have quite a cheap phone and it's the source of all the photos I've taken since replacing an even cheaper phone.  I'm counting the new phone as thing the fourth even though that's slightly cheating.  Oh well.  It's my blog and I make the rules!

Photos have brought me joy.   Taking them.  Posting them.  Remembering them.  A record of all the places that bus pass enables me to go and of the places I'd have gone to anyway.

Thing the Fifth

Blob Thing.  Yes.  My small pink soft toy has unexpectedly helped me.  He was made on New Year's Eve last year and I didn't know what to do with him.  The way he has become an important part of my life has astonished me.  His blog currently contains 119 posts.  And that way that's developed has astonished me too.  I love my soft toy dearly.  And I love his sister too who was added to the soft toy family in July.

Thing the Sixth

Writing.  Yes, that's new too.  It's not that I wasn't writing a year ago.  I was.  Sometimes.  It's that my whole relationship with writing has changed in the past twelve months.  I want to write about that more at some point.  A year ago I would write a blog post.  Every now and again.  I'd written a few not-good poems in the previous couple of years.  This year it took off.

After an enthusiastic beginning in December 2013, between 2014 and 2015 I wrote 57 posts on this blog.  This one will be the 176th this year.  That doesn't include the 119 posts on Blob Thing's blog.  That's 295 posts so far.  In 336 days.

But that's not all.  This year I've found the confidence to go along to something called The Writers' Cafe, a regular meeting for writers that takes place in a cafe.  The clue was in the name.  I've known about it for ages but would never attend myself because hey, I'm not a proper writer.  How could I ever hope to fit in among all those other people who must be proper writers because they go to The Writers' Cafe?

Just before the summer break I plucked up courage.  And why?  Largely because that friend who had clicked "Interested" about the first She Choir rehearsal clicked "Interested" on a Writers' Cafe session.  It sounded interesting and seeing her interest was enough to spur me to be brave and attend.  Was she there?  No she wasn't.  And I have never seen her there.  She's a very busy person and can't be everywhere she wants to be but has greatly improved my life through not turning up for things!

I found a warm welcome from the "proper" writers and was amazed to find that I did fit in, that the free written exercises we did were good for me and that what I wrote didn't seem to be total crap compared to everyone else.  In fact nothing I heard that day sounded like total crap.  We produced very different results to each other and some other people were also worried about sounding like total crap.  Aren't we a strange bunch of people.

So I went back and when time and mental health have allowed I've kept going back.  I've met good people and hope to get to know them all more next year and to meet more people connected with the many writing events that happen here.

The blog.  The cafe.  But that's not all.  I've written more at home too.  Stories.  Little bits of prose.  I wrote a 9,500 word story for Amanda's birthday and will one day return to it, improve it, and extend it.  I've written shorter stories, quite a few short pieces from prompts, things that won't ever see the light of day too.  I've written a 7,500 word monologue from an unrepentant killer.  I have nearly finished the draft of a Christmas story that will head towards 10,000 words.

In short I have written far, far more this year than I ever have before.  And I have loved it.

And that's not all.  Last month I had a moment of total clarity and as a result of that moment I gave up something in my life that could have been very good.  I gave it up and gave it away.  Because I knew that it wasn't what I was meant to be doing.  What am I meant to be doing?  Yep.  Writing.

I am very excited for next year because I know that I will allow myself to write more.  My skill will improve and I'll learn new writing skills.  I'll work through a course or two too.  I'll meet people and share the writing experience.  Perhaps I'll even find the bravery to get up and read things I've written, to perform.  And if I see something that looks exciting perhaps I'll even submit writing to publications or competitions, without caring much whether it is every published or prize winning because I'm writing it for my own joy.

Yeah.  Writing is big in my life right now.  And as I head into 2017 perhaps it's the thing that is bringing me most excitement and meaning.  I am loving it.  I find I am gradually releasing a passion into being.  I believe that writing will take me somewhere.  Somewhen.  Those unknowns are exciting too.  But if writing just leads me to my own joy and satisfaction then that's fine too.

Thing the Seventh

The Sunday Assembly.  Especially the Sunday Assembly Newcastle Gratitude Group on Facebook.  If you read this blog with any regularity or irregularity you'll have seen it and seen how I got a bit obsessive about trying to post in that group every day.

Thing the seventh is really this: Gratitude.  It's finding the joy every day.  Even on the days that are pretty crappy, the days on which I want to give up.  It's trying to look past all the rubbish bits and find that blessing in everything.  The group has encouraged me to do that and I've only missed nine days in eleven months - most of them because I was too busy doing good things and forgot to post.

Gratitude has helped me greatly this year.  As the song by Tankus the Henge says, "Smiling makes the day go quicker."  I could link that into another of the good and unexpected things this year has contained for the first time.  There's been a lot of crap in the last twelve months.  A lot of crap.  But it's been a great year.

Seven things.  That's enough.  A 250th blog post filled with happiness.  My closest friends and family might point to my list and say "What about this?"  "Isn't this thing new and important?"  My list of six isn't exhaustive.  I know full well that this year has contained many other brilliant things, some of which will come round and hit me with their meaning next year. 

The list is joyful.  It's positive.  And it all looks to my future with confidence.  This is part of me.  Now.

This is my life.  It's not quite what I expected.  But it's mine.




[3292 words]

Days Of Gratitude - Mistakes, Challenges, Adventures And A Wonderful Time

I write this having been at home all day.  The weather hasn't been the best and I'm not particularly well.  That doesn't mean it's been an awful day of course.  I had been able to rest.  I've been able to catch up on some rubbish television watching.  And I've been able to write.  I've also cobbled together a makeshift cover for the hatch to our loft (or roof space) which has been open for a few weeks.  The noise of the wind over the roof was impressive from the hall this morning and now the weather has got colder having a large open hole in the ceiling isn't the best idea.  My plan worked so now we have a cover made out of a piece of kitchen work surface and an old kitchen shelf.

The days I'm posting about today were amazing.  Each day had another photographic challenge - and I've posted about all of them so most of these photos have already appeared on this blog.

Ten days in a row I've gone out in search of things.  I didn't succeed yesterday in finding a gorilla in a tutu.  I won't say I failed.  Just that I haven't succeeded yet.  The giver of the challenges did succeed in my non-successful challenge.  And she found a pink flamingo too today.  And a winged unicorn.  She has amazing finding skills.

Today I had to take a day away from photo challenges - although the challenge has been set I am leaving it a day.  Instead I've written from a writing prompt I asked the giver of the challenges to give me yesterday.  That's been an enjoyable pastime.

Okay.  Some amazing days.  A writing prompt is a little thing.  It doesn't contain a story.  And for each of these days the photo challenge acted much like a writing prompt.  The challenge was a seed but it wasn't the story.

What story will arise tomorrow from prompts and challenges? - and from my first cinema trip of the year, at a little 51 seat independent cinema.  Looking forward to it.

29^th October

Another day. More challenges! Photos of a butterfly, a pink flamingo and a marble run.

I completely mucked up the thing I was meant to be doing in Sunderland with nice Christians and so wasn't there at all. But that gave time for challenges and getting distracted.

By bedtime I had completed the three challenges. But on the way in Sunderland I'd walked down a few streets I'd not walked before. And there was art. Lots of art. (It's all on my little blog)

All that art made me happy. Just as playing a little in that water and getting a bit wet made me happy.

And the shelves of the liquorice shop made me happy.

Even spending a good half an hour discussing things with three of the fundamentalist preachers in Sunderland city centre couldn't bring me down, and they were of a particularly vile variety!

30^th October

Grateful to have been able to be at a certain event and to be mentally well enough to get to the end and still feel okay.

Grateful for going for lunch with SA people afterwards. It was great.

Grateful for my hunt for a robot and taking enough photos on the hunt to fill another blog post.

31^st October

Grateful for a really good morning, spent alone, on a quest to take a photo of a duck. This simple challenge transformed my day completely.

Grateful for free museums. Grateful for walking into random buildings I didn't really have any business in. Grateful for the fun of a slide in the play area. Grateful for dinosaurs. Grateful for swans. And trees.

Grateful to have taken enough photos to fill two blog posts.

And grateful to have photographed a duck!

1^st November

Grateful for having a lot of fun on a dog related challenge.

All I had to do was photograph a white dog. And I knew where it was before I began. But the adventure has turned into three blog posts! In part because Newcastle is such an awesome place.

2^nd November

Grateful for a moment of absolute clarity when standing at the top of a cliff. I wrote a sentence about that moment and it turned into a blog post.

Grateful for another silly photo challenge because without the challenge there would have been no adventuring and without the adventuring there would not have been the clarity.

Challenged To Take A Photograph 5: A Robot

Another day led to another challenge.  Photograph a robot.

I made it harder for myself than I needed to.  I responded, "Not a droid."

That would have been too easy.  There is a droid in this house.  Too easy.  In any case, my challenger has somehow managed to avoid absorbing information about Star Wars.

Our house also contains a Clockwork Man from Doctor Who.  There are probably other forms of robot too.  One thing we don't have is the robot from the Magic Robot game, the one that pointed to all the answers to general knowledge questions because it was so clever.

I remember in primary school I would be a little jealous when people brought that game in for the last day of term.  Briefly jealous.  Only briefly, because after five minutes the game started to get a bit dull, the novelty of the robot having worn off.  I never had that game.  It wouldn't have helped me either for this challenge because the BBC pointed out that it "is not a robot" so it would have only gained a false success by photographing it.

I wanted to find a robot when I was out.  A proper robot.  Preferably one that looked like a proper robot.  Like Robbie, or the one from Lost in Space or Metropolis.  A proper honest-to-goodness robot of the kind someone of my age would have drawn at school if asked to draw a robot.  There are so many kinds of robots - one of our local hospitals was the first in the UK to have more than one robot surgeon.  But I wanted a proper one.  The kind you might have found on the cover of Isaac Asimov sci-fi novels.  A robot with three laws.  Not a welding robot from a car factory.

I caught the Metro into town and made my way to the Sunday Assembly, all the while looking for robots.  As I left the Metro station I encountered three artificial men.  Here's one of them.

This is one of the potential selves of a man.  He is artificial, sculpted from bronze in 2003.  But he's not a robot.  I walked on.

I deliberately passed another creature and was sad to see that some attractive graffiti I'd photographed a few months ago had been totally spoiled by horrible graffiti.  The original had added to a wall in a back alley.  Now it was just ugly.

Even had it been unspoiled, this would not have completed my quest.  Because a cyberman is not a robot.  It is a cyborg and that's a very different thing.

On the other side of the back alley I spotted that a homeless soft toy had been sleeping rough.  Homelessness - of humans, not soft toys - is a big problem here just as it is across the country.  I read this morning that the number of homeless people has doubled since 2010.  Another example of the results of the policies of our caring, sharing Conservative government.

I walked on and approached the venue for the Sunday Assembly.  This is The Core, the first of many buildings forming an area of the city being redeveloped mainly for scientific enterprise.  A science place.  Maybe I would find a robot there.

But no.  There was no robot.  Death was there though.  Also attending the assembly were a witch, a zombie, a vampire and a range of other curious people.  After the assembly I went for lunch with some people.  An uncharacteristically social thing for me!

I was among geeks and so asked if they knew of any robots to photograph.  Inevitably the conversation then descended into definitions of robot and also to complaints about an exhibition held at the Centre For Life here earlier in the year.  It was called Robot.  It included Iron Man.  Not a robot.  An alien from Mars Attacks.  Not a robot.  An Imperial Stormtrooper.  Not a robot.  The Borg Locutus.  Not a robot.  There was some justification for the complaints.

After lunch I went on to the geek shops of Grainger Street.  Surely I would find a decent robot to photograph in one of them.  But no.  They are full of superheroes, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Warhammer.  Robots aren't the big thing and there wasn't a decent robot anywhere.  I did spot this though, which has made me want to reacquire a copy of all the books and read them again for the first time in many years.

I seemed unable to find a robot.  It was tempting to fall into despair and agree with these two droids - who would have meant the completion of my quest had I not banned droids from my challenge.

I walked on and spent some time having my eyebrows threaded.  I used the time to consider my quest.  And also to consider spirituality and religion because that kind of thing is in my head a lot of the time.  The threading location didn't have a robot.  It had some attractive Hindu deities but no robot.

Leaving the salon I looked up at this.  The Emerson Chambers.  Surely a building such as this one might contain a robot.  Especially as it contains a bookshop with some toys and a children's section.  I entered, full of faith that my quest was nearing completion.

As I walked around the children's section I had another thought.  What if I could find something in addition to a robot.  What if I could find and photograph something like this:

Yes.  That completed the second challenge from the previous day.  To photograph a pink flamingo.  I found these in a gorgeously illustrated book, Midnight At The Zoo, by Faye Hanson.

But it wasn't a robot.  I couldn't find a robot anywhere in the children's section and was beginning to give up hope as I explored the rest of the shop.  I had already worked out in my head how to create a robot of my own when I got home.  But then, a miracle.  A blessed miracle.  [Okay, so it wasn't a miracle in the strict sense of the term.  There had been no suspension of the laws of nature as a supernatural being stepped in to override the universe on my behalf.]

I found this.  A robot.  And nobody could ever tell me that this isn't a robot, because it says "ROBOT" on the front.

I also found this creature but he would not have counted as a success for the challenge.  I could only photograph the box, not the robot inside.  I asked him whether he would agree to come out but he was a particularly shy robot and said he preferred to stay inside.  I explained to him about the photographic challenge and that he would be helping me a lot.  After some hesitation he did agree to come out of his box.  But he would only do so if I agreed in return to give some money to some people standing behind a counter.  Bribery!  I wasn't going to give in to that.  And so I only photographed the box.  It was fortunate that I had already found the other robot.  A robot who was only too glad to have its picture taken.

I left Emerson Chambers happy.  I had completed the quest.  And I walked through the city centre with a new spring in my step.  It was quite uncomfortable as the end of the spring dug into the sole of my left foot.  It also made it quite difficult to walk.  I only had one new spring.  My right foot was springless so I was quite unbalanced and I must have looked even stranger than usual stepping off one foot gently and bouncing three feet into the air from my other foot.  It's a wonder I didn't cause an accident.  As I approached the end of the street I sat down on a bench and removed the new spring, carefully placing it into a recycling bin.

I had time to wait for my bus so I spent the few minutes wandering.  I was tempted to walk to the hospital and see if I could take a picture of someone smoking in front of a no smoking sign - the photographic challenge I had refused.  But I wanted to get home so just took a couple of pictures from the university campus.

It had been a good day out.  The Sunday Assembly.  Yay!  Lunch with nice people.  Yay!  At the bun shop.  Yay!  And an enjoyable and successful robot quest.  Yay!

Days of Gratitude - Desolation, The Sunday Assembly, And A Touch of Skulduggery

I am typing this on August 1st.

It's been a rubbish day in my head.  I've done my best.  A Blob Thing post got written.  A Clare post got written.  Something got read.  Puzzles got solved.  Furniture was rearranged.  But it's been very difficult indeed.  Some days are like that.  Leaving the house was not an option today and for a while I was physically shaking.  Yeah, it's been bad.

And that's one of the reasons I keep this gratitude diary going.  It's one of the reasons why I have posted in it one 204 out of the first 213 days of the year.

Because on the crap days, on the days when it hurts even to budge off my bed, I can look back.  And see how good the good days can be.

Maybe today was so bad in in my head because of yesterday.  For Clare, I did amazingly well at the Sunday Assembly.  By Clare standards I was bloody brilliant at social and at dealing with it all.  Hey, I rocked!  But even on that good day it was hard and tiring and maybe it wiped me out more than I realised last night.  Or maybe today was just one of those things and the crap isn't related to yesterday at all.  Maybe.

And that's another reason why keeping this gratitude diary has been good for me.  Quite a number of the days have been difficult.  It's sodding hard to live them.  The best days are hard, but the difficult ones are sodding hard!  But the diary is a discipline.  I want to post things I am grateful for on every day if I can.  I've missed nine days.  But not because they were all bad.  Some of them were very good indeed.  To find the gratitude on the tough days is worthwhile.  Because then a day that I could just mark down as bad can be shown to not be all bad - and often can be shown to be pretty good apart from the sodding hard bits.

When the idea of a gratitude group was suggested by someone from the Sunday Assembly Newcastle I readily joined.  It's become important to me.  Even if I was described yesterday as the person who keeps the group going.  Sometimes it does rather feel like the Clare show with a few guest stars popping up.  I wonder, if the group ended, whether I would manage to keep up the diary on my own.  I hope so.

So here we are, it's August.  I have much to look forward to this month.  But it's got off to a very rocky psychological start.  Never mind.  The final three days of July contained a heck of a lot of awesomeness.

29^th July

Grateful to get out and have lunch with someone today.

Grateful for sunsets, this from my front door tonight.

Grateful to have finally started to read Desolation, by Derek Landy.

And grateful for what I coincidentally read on Facebook just before getting on a Metro and starting that book. Derek Landy announced that Skullduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain will return. Isn't that exciting? A whole year of waiting, of anticipation. So awesome.

(Everyone should read Skulduggery. Everyone. Except the strong evangelical Christian I know who found the first book to be so evil that it became the only book she ever burned. Yes, it's THAT good. It's worthy of burning!)

30^th July

Grateful for the surprises on today's walk:

A deserted play area.

A graveyard. And a found accidental poem on a gravestone that may one day become a writing prompt.

Stepping stones. I got a bit happy flappy. Okay, a lot happy flappy.

Free strawberries, cream, shortbread and tea. And a quiz and some music too.

Also for trees.

And for the way a river changes so much in just a few miles.

And for this phone and its camera, bus routes, bus passes, and the book of stories bought in a charity shop.

Yes. It was a good day. The list of positives could get very long.

31^st July

Well this is an obvious one.

I am grateful for the Sunday Assembly.

Guess what Blob Thing will be blogging about in the near future.

I wrote this on my Facebook wall:

The Sunday Assembly was great today.

I wasn't overwhelmed. I could deal with it and actually talk with people and not rush off quite quickly afterwards. That's so much better than I've been in a long long time.

A wonderful talk about science and art.

A person talking about writing and that was an encouragement to plough on and get enthusiastic about writing for myself.

A person in amazingly cool clothes complimented me on my clothes.

 

A conversation about names and I said I had dreamed my own and they hadn't had a clue that I would ever have changed my name.

One of these days I'll get properly involved with the Sunday Assembly and do something useful rather than just drinking tea, eating cake, and occupying a chair. Perhaps it should be soon.

It is what it is. I think enthusiastic people will build it into something better. A true community rather than just a group of people meeting for an event sometimes - something most churches don't manage to become.

Maybe the Sunday Assembly in Newcastle can do church better than the church. I hope so.