Revised 6B460 Review

Revised 6B460 Review (written in August 2020)

 

My first 6B460 review was meant to include a review of a visit to Belfast, but because of the Covid19 Lockdown all my travel plans got altered. I still plan to visit Belfast, but my thinking has led me to plump for a prefered alternative travel goal instead.

1. Enjoy 25 holidays with mum and Amy

I organised our first holiday to Goring in 2006 following a family wedding. After that I organised one or usually two holidays a year for us. In 2020, for our 25th holiday together, we visited Cromer in Norfolk at the end of the Covid19 Lockdown. I look back with fondness at all our times away despite all the ups and downs.



2. Work in libraries for at least thirty years

I celebrated thirty years as a librarian in February 2020, just before the Covid19 Lockdown, by visiting the British Library’s Buddhism exhibition. I was pleased I celebrated my three decades of library work with some style. At the end of March I started working from home. I hope I will keep working well into this decade.

3. Keep a blog going for ten years

I started my blog in 2013, the year my dad died. My blog is now seven years old and I have scheduled posts until 2023. So hopefully, even if I don’t write so much in the future, my blog can keep going for a full decade.

4. Play classical piano pieces in public for ten years

I started playing classical piano pieces in public in 2010 shortly after starting as a semi-professional piano teacher, teaching my daughter’s friends. After facing a crisis of venues in 2018, I managed to keep playing until January 2020. I don’t know how much public (or private) piano playing I will do in the future.

5. Practice Buddhism everyday

Living through the Covid19 Lockdown has made mindfulness feel even more important to me. I am getting better at mindfulness, meditation and ‘il dolce far niente’. I go for a walk everyday and enjoy slow tea and food, listening to music, watching films, drawing, gardening, reading books and poetry. I find I am much calmer and try to be kind and patient.

6. Live a good enough life

Luckily we managed to celebrate my mother’s and my daughter’s birthdays in February 2020, before everything shut. It was a time when appreciating a slower, simpler life was becoming more of a priority. I feel that I have done what I could with what I have and hope that will continue.

Shadow stories

I was writing my magazine 'Shadow' when I was around about 11 in 1979. In 2017, when I was 49, I concentrated on four of my favourite 'Shadow stories' to see if I could develop them into anything more substantial. Two of the items 'After the rain' and 'As the cat meowed' became two pieces of flash fiction, 'As the cat meowed' changed its name to 'The midnight cat'. 'Last Bus Home' developed into a serialised short story which I published on Wattpad. Nothing much became of 'The girl on the pier', so I shall have to develop it further in the future.

Blog Therapy

 

I have enjoyed writing since I was little. I have been fascinated by blogging and blogs since I first encountered them in the early noughties. I was too busy with my young daughter and my poetry group to start blogging at the time. When I found out about craft and creative blogs in 2010 I was quite eager to start a blog myself. I started my blog finally in November 2013 after spending much of that year thinking about what I would put on it. Now I find blogging a good way to organise my mind and my ideas and get my life and times into some perspective. Below is my working list to inspire blog posts for each month of the year.

Autumn Term Therapy

September is traditionally the start of a new school year. Even when school is but a memory, September can be thought of as a chance for a new beginning, of developing ourselves, starting on new paths of self realisation. You can begin therapy at any time, use it to help you. You have one life, you didn't ask to be here, be kind to yourself and do what's best. Therapies for the Autumn Term involve writing, whether working on my blog or writing poetry, facing fear through horror, Edgar Allan Poe or Dr Who, or just contemplating higher realms through tea or spirituality.

4by4 Book2Film Titles for Autumn Term

If not much else, 2020 has been a good year for reading. I have read 9 Book2Film titles from January to August and now feel ready to tackle 4 more from September to December. The stories seem a bit heavy but maybe the new addition of the Time Traveller's Wife will lighten things up a bit.

Sweet dreams

The above picture is one of my favourites from Amy's story 'The Legend of the Dream Box'. It hung above her bed for a few years before being replaced by one of her abstract teenage paintings, shown below.

Enjoying 25 holidays with mum and Amy

I organised our first holiday to Goring in 2006 following a family wedding. After that I organised one or usually two holidays a year for us. In 2020, for our 25th holiday together, we visited Cromer in Norfolk at the end of the Covid19 Lockdown. I look back with fondness at all our times away despite all the ups and downs.

Comfort TV 2020

Films and TV have long been a comfort to me. I produced a list of film therapy films last year and thought I would attempt a similar list for TV programmes this year. I found my favourite TV shows fall into 10 categories.

1. Arts and Culture
2. Comedy
3. Drama
4. Gardens
5. History
6. Homes
7. Mindfulness
8. Sci-fi and Fantasy
9. Science and Nature
10. TV dinners

After a little thought I came up with 52 programmes, enough for contemplative TV shows for every week of the year.
 

   

Cromer 2020 - an eat, pray, love holiday

 

It was difficult getting away in 2020 because of the Covid19 Lockdown, so this made our week away to Cromer feel very precious. It was also special as it was the 25th time me, my mother and my daughter had been on holiday together.

   

London parks of the central line

I have been exploring different places in London throughout my life. In the Lockdown we have mainly been exploring parks, which has led me to this reflective post on London parks of the Central Line.

1. Holland Park

The nearest big London park to us is Holland Park. I was very keen to visit this park in Autumn 2019. We were looking for a waterfall to help with a bedtime visualisation meditation. We found one in the beautiful, Japanese, Kyoto Garden in the heart of Holland Park. The waterfall flows into a pretty pond full of goldfish. Elsewhere in the garden are wonderful trees, architectural planting, rocks and lawns. It was well worth visiting.


2. Hyde Park

Hyde Park is so vast it is served by three Central Line Stations (Queensway, Lancaster Gate, Marble Arch). We have visited it on numerous occasions over the years. One memorable occasion was January 2011 when we visited Winter Wonderland, we also spent some time around the Princess Diana memorial fountain by the Serpentine. I think it is good to visit parks at different times of the year.

3. Mile End Park

Mile End Park is a surprising park in Tower Hamlets. My favourite parts were the Arts Park and the Eco Park. It also includes a lovely walk by the Regent's Canal. I wasn't sure what this park would be like in real life so I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

4. 2012 Olympic Park

It took 8 years for us to visit the Olympic Park at Stratford. When we first wanted to visit it, in 2013, it was all locked up. It was wonderful to finally visit it in July 2020. There were still bits that remained unfinished and bits that were closed due to the Covid19 Lockdown. I really liked seeing the Olympic rings, the West Ham football stadium and the orbital spiral podium up-close and personal. It was also good to stand on a bridge and take in a breathtaking view of the River Lea.

A year of nature walking

  

My daughter and I discovered the walled garden a short bus ride from our house in August 2019. Since then I have been a regular nature walker. It was to be something we could do every week and sometimes daily; a New Year goal for 2020. During the Covid19 Lockdown, nature walking has been closer to home, but with lockdown easing we hope to get out and about more, visiting a glade near Uxbridge and other natural beauty spots. Nature walking is mindful, taking in trees, clouds and streams. Appreciating flowers and gardens has been good as has walking by rivers and through woods. Picnics in the park took over from cafes and pubs, however we have been really looking forward to the cafes and pubs reopening. August 2020 marks a year of mindful nature walking; I hope this relatively new activity will continue.
 

  

  

  

Upside-Down World

Upside-Down World was a SubVerse poem, it was meant to highlight the paradoxical nature of finding strength and control in acceptance and surrender. I found it also came in handy when discussing difficult and potentially contradictory concepts in Christianity.

Visiting the three capital cities of Great Britain

I have loved cities for most of my life. One of my big life goals was to visit New York City. It was one of my 5B450s, I spent a week there in 2017, it was one of the best weeks in my life. I have visited Paris five times in my life, it is always lovely, vibrant and exciting. A newish life goal is to visit Belfast, the fourth UK capital city, but unfortunately this has been postponed because of the Covid19 Lockdown. Therefore this blog post celebrates the delights of the three Great British capital cities that I have been enjoying in the years 2010 to 2020. I hope to visit the fourth UK capital city sometime in the not too distant future.


London

I have lived in London for over fifty years and my relationship with it is always changing. When my dad was around and my daughter was little I made a point of visiting all the major attractions, although Madame Tussaud's really was the last straw. From 2015 to 2019 I made a point of visiting London's hidden gems in Secret London and London Interrupted. I now put wellbeing first and seek out the most therapeutic places. Kew Gardens is great for nature therapy as are the great London parks and London Zoo. Art galleries and museums are therapeutic in their own right, I particularly like the V&A and Tate Modern. The Tower of London is great for time therapy and the Greenwich Observatory for space therapy. I find walking along the Thames path is also very healing.

Edinburgh

Our one week in Edinburgh in 2012 was the last holiday I had with my dad before he died. He was born here, near Edinburgh castle, he grew up in the Portabello district. Edinburgh is a wonderfully Gothic city, the weather was quite miserable when we visited, which I think is quite normal. The Fringe Festival was going on, there was a lot of street entertainment and that made our time here even more special. One of the most memorable things for me was me, my mother and my daughter going on the Edinburgh ghost walk, it was the ideal time and place for a ghost walk and was notably spooky and quite disturbing.

Cardiff

Cardiff was our fist city break after my dad died. We spent just over a long weekend here and had to get used to being three rather than four. Despite these difficulties we had a great time. I think it is a tribute to Cardiff that I have such fond memories of this holiday, it is a very pretty city, very green and blue, with the beautiful castle and park area and the barage and bay area, by the sea. We did a lot of walking here, I think we were walking our troubles away. The BBC is a big presence here and every time I watch Torchwood I am reminded of our lovely 2013 trip.