Postcards from anywhere...

Advert for Sleep (Haruki Murakami), illustrated by K. Menschik

Well I told myself I would eventually get round to putting together some displays of my postcard collection, AND I also promised I would put up some more pics so this brief post is going to do just that.

I've collected these postcards from a variety of places, but mostly during trips around Europe - France, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, etc. Sometimes, I've bought them from tourist places, sometimes I've picked them up from exhibitions like the Tate Modern in London, or the Reina Sofia in Madrid, some I just picked up for free in bars and cafes. I like all of them for different reasons, some because they're funny or clever, some because they remind me of something or someone, some simply because of the colours - in fact some of the free ones I didn't even know what they were supposed to be until a while after picking them up. Most of the time the free ones are adverts for new music, bars, artists, or even therapists!

Postcard bought in France, either St Malo or Dinan

Some of the postcards are ones I've been sent by others. Quite a few are from my Dad (you can always rely on him to send a postcard even if he's only away for a very short space of time), but I've also got a handful from uni friends and friends I used to live with in France.

Star no. 1, on the theme of love and relationships (caption of bottom card reads 'Love Rat')

I really love the idea of using postcards as a means of decorating your house, though I have to confess I didn't come up with it myself, although this particular format is my own. Back when I was living in France, I went to dinner at a mutual friend's house, and her and her husband had kept loads of postcards and hung them from wire (as if they were on a clothes line) in their downstairs bathroom. Some people might not like the idea of having pictures of your travels on display like that, I suppose in some situations it might come across as pretentious, or showing off about how well travelled or worldly you are, but I find it motivating and thought provoking, and, at least from my perspective, aesthetically pleasing. As I mentioned in my previous post, it reminds me of fun times, but also it reminds me not to forget the bigger picture. No matter what problems I might be having at work, or at home, it reminds me that there is always something bigger going on in the world. It also reminds me not to get too comfortable and complacent - I definitely want to do more travelling, so this will be a constant reminder of what else there is to see out there.

Star no. 2, on theme of people

Clockwise from top: 'Hello' by Per Jose Karlen, 'Woman with Matches' by Francis Picabia, 'Nude Descending a Staircase, no 2' by Marcel Duchamp, 'Masque de Greta Garbo a la meche' by Pablo Gargallo, album design for 'Ein Geschenkte Tag' by Max Herre, 'L.H.O.O.Q.' by Marcel Duchamp  Centre: 'Guernica' by Pablo Picasso

Some of the more artistic ones by Duchamp (the artist, not the poncy men's fashion label), or Picasso remind me of how much the world has changed since their time, but also to appreciate the things that we now take for granted, but that were revolutionary back then, like moving pictures and modern art. One of the things I particularly like a postcards, is that it's a fun and relatively cheap way of saying hi and touching base with someone, of letting them know you're thinking of them, without picking up the phone, or sending an e-mail, or going on Facebook. They're a lot quicker than writing a whole letter, and you certainly don't have the space to update your intended receiver on your entire life, but I think it retains some of the charm of letters in a world where we're so used to instantaneous communication, and an interesting or attractive design adds to the appeal. I absolutely love receiving letters and postcards from friends and family in the post, and I want to be better at sending them too (it's so hard to fight the temptation to keep them for myself!).

I've still got loads of cards to sort through and and work out how best to display them, but I think I'm actually going to run out of spare hooks on our walls before I get through all of them. I may well have to lend them to friends and family so that they don't just sit gathering dust in a box under the bed. Anyway, I didn't want to write too much on this one (a picture's worth a thousand words don't you know?), so hope you enjoy the pictures (please excuse the camera-phone quality) and look forward to posting some more soon.

Bye for now x

A Brand New Day...

On Sunday night, we got hit by the tail end of the Hurricane Katia and although it was comparatively mild where we live in the Shropshire borderlands, it did still cause a hell of a racket.

I've mentioned before how having labyrinthitis makes you feel as if you're on a ship at sea, well on Sunday night it sounded like the whole house was a ship at sea. The gusts would start low and quiet and then whoosh over and crash around the house like waves, joined by high-pitched, shrill whistles as it rushed through gaps in wooden fences and the corrugated sheet roof of the garage next door, the clatter of bins being knocked over, and gates rattling and banging against fences. The irregular patter of rain drops swept against the sky lights by the gusts of wind was like sea spray on a boat as it pitches dangerously from side to side. It genuinely felt like the house was being battered by a really rough storm, and it took quite some time before we were able to drift off to sleep again. I think we all (I had family staying over that night) felt somewhat nervous by so much noise, even though there really wasn't much risk of damage in our area, but it just felt as if something bad might be about to happen.

The fact that Sunday was also the 10th anniversary of 9/11, made me think of poor young Dorothy Gale in 'The Wizard of Oz' (my favourite film as a child) getting caught in that twister. Dorothy's character, as played by Judy Garland, is knocked unconscious inside her house, which is raised and dropped from a great height and eventually crash lands into a whole new world of technicolor vision, and for her nothing will ever look the same again. Similarly our world was changed forever in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and not only in the sense of that specific act of death and destruction, but as with Dorothy's experience in Oz which was often frightening and fraught with danger, the way we view the world (and each other) has changed as well. 

[Anyone interested in this might want to watch the British film Yasmin (2004) which looks at how the 9/11 attacks affect the lives of a Pakistani community living in West Yorkshire, and in particular how prejudice, intolerance, and the anti-terrorism measures may have led to increased tensions between different communities, and even pushed people towards extremism.]

Time is a funny thing. In some ways it's hard to believe that 10 full years have passed already - just where have they gone exactly? When I first found out about the twin towers plane crashes, I was on the school bus back home at the end of one of the first few days of sixth form. At around that time I met and became close friends with the man who would eventually become my boyfriend and with whom I now live. Time seems to have flown by in that sense. On the other hand the resulting war in Iraq seems to have dragged on for an eternity. Yes, in 10 years the world has most definitely changed, almost beyond all recognition. Yet despite the passage of time, for many the pain of grief, the feelings of loss of loved ones will never ease. And I don't of course just mean those who died in the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, but all those who have lost their lives as a result of that event; those fighting in the Middle East, and subsequent terrorist attacks such as those that took place in London on 7th July 2005, and in other attacks around the world.

Getty Images Photo By Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla Sun, Sep 11, 2011

For those that were present at the Memorial events in New York and who were grieving the loss of friends, family, and co-workers, it might seem, like Dorothy when she awakens in her bed in Kansas, that barely a day has passed since that fateful day, when the world was literally turned upside down.

For my mother, the attacks on September 11th 2001, signalled the start of a series of pretty awful events in her professional and personal life. For one thing she turned 50 on the 12th, the day after the attacks took place. While many people choose to celebrate their 50th with big family parties where they can joke about being over the hill with a glass of bubbly in one hand and a piece of cake in the other ("Ooh I shouldn't really, I've not got the figure of a teenager anymore... but it is my birthday after all"). In my Mum's case, my Dad had arranged a lovely and thoughtful day out at the races in a posh car, which was owned and chauffeured by a family friend, but unfortunately with the shock of the previous day's events still sinking in, Mum really didn't feel like celebrating her birthday at all, let alone swanning around like a lady of leisure at the races. After much cajoling she was persuaded to go along with the plan, but when my Dad mentioned that he would like to take shopping as well so that she could pick out something she liked, she had to put her foot down. How could she possibly want to go shopping after what had happened?

Mum quite often talks about 9/11 as a catalyst for all the big changes that took place in her and our lives after the attacks. What happened immediately before the milestone of her 50th birthday made her question a lot of what she had previously taken as given in her life. I won't name names or apportion blame as that would be unprofessional, but sadly this spelled the beginning of the end of my parent's marriage, which in turn led to the liquidation of the family training business (which my mother had built up over the last 18 years), us eventually moving house, periods of unemployment, and so on and so on. Over the past decade, Mum has had more than her fair share of crap to deal with, from Administrators (always with a capital A in my mind since we lost the business), to lawyers, planners, banks, redundancy, debts, DIY, and dating.

But now 10 years have come to pass, and Mum has now turned 60 (although you wouldn't think it if you didn't know). Like her 50th, the idea of a lavish celebration that happened to coincide with the 9/11 10 year anniversary seemed wholly inappropriate, so instead of a big party we just invited Mum and my siblings round to our place for a bottle of bubbly, followed by a yummy curry in town, and everyone stayed with us so Mum didn't have to drive. On the next day, Mum's actual birthday, I accompanied Mum and my younger sister Annie to Cardiff to drop her off at her new house before the start of the third year in Uni. For some reason on the way down Mum kept saying how much she wanted to buy a Sting album (specifically one with the Brand New Day track).

We had a tasty lunch at Gourmet Burger Kitchen (yay!) in the city centre and then Mum and I drove home with Sting playing on repeat on the car stereo.

The track, Brand New Day, was to be her new anthem, and it would be symbolic of the end of a horrible decade, and the start of something new. Far from feeling depressed about turning 60, she was feeling really positive and had loads of ideas of things she wanted to do with herself in this new period of her life. We both decided we wanted to "do more". I opened up about feeling frustrated by being stuck at home with this labyrinthitis, and decided that I wanted to get out and do more interesting things that were for me - not just watching films with friends (you can do that anywhere and anytime), but I want to see more exhibitions and plays, and go to more concerts and gigs, things that might not necessarily be 'couple things', but that I still want to do, whether it's with other friends or family, or just on my own.

I'm really enjoying writing at the moment, so I'm going to keep that up and I also want to keep learning new things. I'm thinking of signing up for a course in web design which would no doubt help me with my current job and take a bit of pressure off our in house designer, but it would also be another string to my bow in general. I'm going to keep on selling things on Amazon and Ebay to help clear out the junk, and clear my overdraft.

But that's not to say that the end of a decade is just about wiping the slate clean - a lot of good things have happened over the past 10 years as well as the bad ones. During my time off work, I've finally started sorting out all the postcards that I've collected over the years and I'm hoping to display them creatively, if not stylishly (but not holding my breath) around the house. I've already got some up in the downstairs loo!

"What's the use of Enlightenment, when you're out of loo roll?"

Looking back through these old postcards helps me remember the places I've been to and the fun times I've had with friends and family, but it also motivates me to see new places and to keep my mind active and curious.

What I have to remember is that it is up to me to make the decisions that are important in my life, and how it will turn out over the next 10 years. There's no use in regretting past decisions, or blaming circumstances for being unhappy about something in your life, if you're not willing to do anything about it. That would be a very good example of Sartre's "bad faith" or mauvaise foi.

Turn the clock to zero, honey / I'll sell the stock, we'll spend all the money / We're starting up a Brand New Day.

Turn the clock to zero, boss / The river's wide, we'll swim across / Started up a Brand New Day

Summer in Algiers (extract), by Albert Camus (1950)

....
But at the other end of the city summer is already offering us by way of contrast its other riches: I mean its silences and boredom. That silence is not always of the same quality, depending on whether it springs from the shade or the sunlight. There is the silence of noon on the Place du Gouvernement. In the shade of the trees surrounding it Arabs sell for five sous glasses of iced lemonade flavoured with orange-flowers. Their cry 'Cool, cool', can be heard across the empty square. After their cry silence again falls under the burning sun: in the vendor's jug the ice moves and I can hear its tinkle. There is the silence of the siesta. In the streets of the Marine, in front of the dirty barber shops it can be measured in the melodious buzzing of flies behind the hollow reed curtains. Elsewhere, in the Moorish cafes of the Kasbah the body is silent, unable to tear itself away, to leave the glass of tea and rediscover time with the pulsing of its own blood. But, above all, there is the silence of summer evenings.

Those brief moments when day topples into night must be peopled with secret signs and summonses for my Algiers to be so closely  linked to them. When I spend some time far from that town, I imagine its twilights as promises of happiness. On the hills above the city there are paths among the mastics and olive-trees. And towards them my heart turns at such moments. I see flights of black birds rise against the green horizon. In the sky suddenly divested of its sun something relaxes. A whole little nation of red clouds stretches out until it is absorbed in the air. Almost immediately afterwards appears the first star that had been seen taking shape and consistency in the depth of the sky. And then suddenly, all consuming, night. What exceptional quality do the fugitive Algerian evenings possess to be able to release so many things in me? I haven't time to tire of that sweetness they leave on my lips before it has disappeared into night.Is this the secret of its persistence? This country's affection is overwhelming and furtive. But during the moment it is present one's heart at least surrenders completely to it.

At Padovani Beach the dance hall is open every day. And in that huge rectangular box with its entire side open to the sea, the poor young people of the neighbourhood dance until evening. Often I used to await there a moment of exceptional beauty. During the day the hall is protected by sloping wooden awnings. When the sun goes down they are raised. The the hall is filled with an odd green light born of the double shell of the sky and the sea. When one is seated far from the windows, one sees only the sky and, silhouetted against it, the faces of the dancers passing in succession. Sometimes a waltz is being played and, against the green background, the black profiles whirl obstinately like those cut-out silhouettes that are attached to a phonograph's turntable. Night comes rapidly after this and with it the lights. But I am unable to relate the thrill and secrecy that subtle instant holds for me. I recall at least a magnificent tall girl who had danced all the afternoon. She was wearing a jasmine garland on her tight blue dress, wet with perspiration from the small of her back to her legs. She was laughing as she danced and throwing back her head. As she passed the tables, she left behind her a mingled scent of flowers and flesh. When evening came, I could no longer see her body pressed tight to her partner, but against the sky whirled alternating spots of white jasmine and black hair and when she would throw back her swelling breast, I would hear her laugh and see her partner's profile suddenly plunge forward. I owe to such evenings the idea I have of innocence. In any case I learn not to separate these creatures bursting with violent energy from the sky where their desires whirl.

A large flock of starlings fly over a park at sunset seaking an area to land for the evening, in Algiers. Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty images

Dreams and dolphins....

Hello again.

It's currently 00:44 and I'm sat downstairs in the living room as I can't sleep. Normally if I can't sleep I just try to stay in bed until, after much tossing and turning, and huffing and puffing, I might eventually fall asleep and catch a few hours rest. But tonight, for some reason I really was just awake and not feeling sleepy at all (might have been something to do with the fact that we did actually go to bed quite early for us (about 11pm) and then I was reading a bit more of IT before turning off the lights.

Forest Bed, in The Architect's Brother (Parke Harrison)

 Now I've read enough Stephen King to do know that it really is a pretty dopey (excuse the word) idea for me to read scary/thrilling books before bedtime, as I know my mind will either get all worked up and won't be able to shut down from the excitement of the plot, or I'll just get scared and won't be able to sleep for fear of having bad dreams.

I am definitely one of those annoying people who remembers dreams, and anyone who's ever met me, even just once, has mostly likely been subjected to the "I had this weird dream last night..." conversation.

Some people think that dreams might have some clairvoyant properties (especially people who regularly get deja vu), and indeed in ancient times, dreams were thought to be important sources of information about the future, and those who were able to decipher their meanings were thought to have been endowed with special powers of 'sight'. For some people like Freud and the early surrealists like André Breton, dreams were a gateway into the otherwise locked-down subconscious, which if tapped into would either reveal repressed desires in the case of the former, or disable the self-censoring activity of the mind and allow it to discover a higher state of reality in the case of the latter. [As an aside, the french term surréalism, actually refers to the belief in "the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations", i.e. it is more than real, as opposed to unreal.]

Although Freud is often considered the big daddy of psychoanalytic "dream theory", he was certainly not the only person thinking or writing about it in late C19th and early C20th European society. Arthur Schnitzler, also living and writing in Vienna at the same time as Freud (although strangely they never seem to have met despite moving in very similar circles) wrote the story on which Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut was based, Traumnovella, in which the characters express socially unacceptable desires in their dreams, and the confession of these dreamed desires instigates a journey into an underworld of drugs, corruption, and sex, which threatens not only their marriage but their lives. Believers of the wish-fulfillment theory would see in these dream desires an expression of actual repressed desire and therefore an admission of guilt - Michael McIntyre actually did a rather funny sketch at his stand up show in Wembley about 'guilty' dreams:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6kvcNw10D4

Others believe very strongly that the content of dreams hold very little scientific value. J. Allan Hobson's Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction, makes the claim that the only meaningful way to study dreams is to analyse their formal features, rather than their content, in other words, to analyse the perceptual, cognitive, and emotional qualities of dreaming as opposed to the individual details of specific dreams.Although my background is more literature, philosophy, and culture, I am certainly not opposed to more scientific approaches (I did do Psychology A-level after all.... and I do love Mythbusters), so I may well try to finish Hobson's book if I have time (I know, I know, it's SHORT, but I have a long reading list already).

Le Horla, Maupassant

The number and range of cultural sources you could tap into to research the topic of dreams in European culture is vast: Breton's Nadja is an interesting read; Freud's Interpretation of Dreams is long, and one for the hardcore among you who can cope with his pseudo-science, although there are some interesting sections on his wish-fulfillment theory (e.g. his own dream about a patient Irma); many of Franz Kafka's tales have a dreamlike quality of them, although the short story Ein Landarzt (country doctor) is an interesting critique of the insufficiency of Freud's analyses of his own dreams. Maupassant's Le Horla, a favourite of mine, explores the themes of sleep walking and the fear of some mysterious creature which can take over your body while you sleep (something akin to the Body Snatchers).
 
One of the more interesting texts I have read about dreams though, is Charles Nodier's Smarra, ou les démons de la nuit (1821) which was apparently the first work of literature in the french language in which dreams are the central subject. The bulk of the story deals with the dream narrative of the main character who has just returned home from his wedding party. Heavy with fatigue and wine he drifts off to the sound of the clip clopping of some cart-donkey's hooves going by his window, and starts to dream that he is riding a horse through a forest...

Smarra, by Charles Nodiers

I won't reveal too much as it would be interesting to see what others think of it (but also because I haven't read it in well over 3 years and memory fails me) but as a dream narrative it really does feel like you are reading or imagining someone else's dream. Sounds from the exterior world intrude (like when you dream of bells, and wake to hear your alarm going off), protagonists change, physical appearances shift so that family and friends become unrecognisable, the notions of space and time are distorted and compressed (e.g. when the dreamer suddenly appears in a new locality without seeming to have spent any time travelling), physical impossibilities e.g. flying or metamorphosis occur, and certain conversations and scenes are repeated word for word on several occasions. If there was ever a text that explored the format of dreams and how their narrative unfolds, without focusing too much on any potential latent meaning behind their content, then this is definitely it.

To bring this not-so-short post to an end, on the theme of weddings (again) and alcohol and dreams, my younger brother wrote on my Facebook wall today that he'd dreamed that my boyfriend and I had gotten married in Germany, but that thankfully he'd been invited and got to drink lots of Steiners, and it was overall a glorious affair! Believers of the wish-fulfillment, or even clairvoyant qualities of dreams might well want to read lots into that one, but I'm not sure how they would treat my dream from last night, in which I dreamed I was a dolphin swimming around what must have been a partly flooded industrial site after the post-wedding hen-party of one of my co-workers.

Freud can eat his heart out with that one!

Dizzy up the Girl...

Remembering Water, in The Architect's Brother

Ok, so it's about time I wrote a little about this bloody dizziness. A lot of friends and family have been really concerned on my behalf, which has been lovely but it's been quite hard to accurately explain to people what it actually feels like, at least from my perspective. I think everyone's been worried that's it's something more malicious than I'm letting on, so the purpose of this post is firstly to put people's minds at rest, and also perhaps to try to articulate some of the features of viral labyrinthitis, which is what I've been diagnosed with.

Viral labyrinthitis, if you've not heard of it before, is an inner ear infection which affects your balance, with the common physical symptoms being vertigo (dizziness) and nausea. Luckily in my case I've actually not had much nausea at all since the first time I started getting dizzy (about 3 or 4 weeks ago now). Back then I didn't actually think I was ill, I just felt spaced out and like I wasn't able to focus at work. The main feeling was a feeling of being on a boat, or sea legs as I sometimes call it. It feels as if the floor beneath you or walls around you are moving, even though in my case it doesn't often feel like things are swimming in front of my eyes, and I don't have blurred vision. Nowadays, I also occasionally feel as if my right ear is blocked slightly, and my head feels "full" if that makes sense? If I've spent too much of the day with visual stimuli e.g. e-mails, reading, typing (!), and TV, then I do feel a headache growing as the day goes on, and I might also feel a bit nauseous in the evening, but for the best part I don't feel as if I am a "sick person".

The video link below was made for the NHS by a long-term sufferer Rebecca, and this explains quite well what it feels like to have labyrinthitis, and how it can affect your life.

The first time I felt this dizzy, floor moving sensation, I just put it down to being in an old-ish building at work and thought that maybe the floorboards were a bit loose. But I also noticed that I was dropping things without reason - I'm quite clumsy normally, but just letting a glass of water drop out of your hands is a bit abnormal even for me. That first evening a few weeks ago I did feel really physically sick, but did not actually throw up, which in hindsight I'm really glad about.

Now that I've been told it's viral labyrinthitis, I'm so, so glad I've been spared the nausea for the most part. I've heard of family members and parents of close friends who've had it in a severe way - for instance, they can't move their head at all without throwing up. Thankfully I have not had that at all, although I did have a few distressing moments before I eventually got to the docs.

The second time I remember feeling strangely dizzy was at my friend's wedding in the Netherlands (see previous post). We were standing on some wooden decking in the courtyard outside the venue, and I just attributed the wobbly feeling to the wooden floor flexing and bending slightly beneath our weight, and for the best part of the day I felt mostly fine (albeit a little bit emotional, which I put down to hormones and the context of the wedding.) Perhaps the alcohol and hormones masked the symptoms, but who knows?

It was only when I went back to work on the Friday for Staff Development that I noticed I was feeling dizzy and wobbly pretty much constantly. During a tour of some new facilities for the Entry and Pre-Entry department (one of the few elements of work that I think are absolutely great), I had to lean up against some lockers to keep my balance, even though I didn't feel like I was likely to fall over, I just felt like I needed support and that perhaps not relying on my own legs would make the spinning sensation ease up. It was almost as if my legs didn't quite belong to me bizarrely. Later during an awards presentation everyone stood up to applaud the chair of the governors, and I had to sit down again immediately. It must have been the sudden movement but I felt myself get very hot almost instantaneously, and felt extremely lightheaded and weak, and bizarrely, I also felt tears well up in my eyes.

On that first day it did feel pretty disconcerting, but I couldn't think why I would suddenly want to cry for no reason, but I suppose subconsciously it must have been panic. In a weird way, I think the tears made me even more concerned, as I didn't feel like I was anxious or stressed about anything in particular, so I couldn't explain where they came from. When I finally decided to go home early, I had to sit still in the car for a good ten minutes to calm down before turning on the engine.

As my new surgery doesn't have a walk in emergency surgery session, I had to wait until Monday before seeing anyone. In the meantime I did a bit of my own research to try and figure out what it might be. The NHS Direct symptom checker was not particularly helpful as at first it seemed to suggest that I might be having a stroke (the questionnaire only asks you to indicate yes or no if you have any of the symptoms, and won't let you clarify which ones, or indicate on a scale how severe those symptoms are). But after a bit more research I was pretty convinced that it was something like Labyrinthitis and came across a really helpful website written by two long-term sufferers Emma and Isla. http://www.labyrinthitis.org.uk/

One of the most important things the website helped explain me to was not just how I was feeling physically  but how I was feeling emotionally. 

For someone like me who does everything at top speed, who walks and talks quickly, having to slow right down and do everything at a snail's pace, and in some cases do nothing at all, was unbelievably frustrating, and I think that's perhaps why I felt tearful at work. Depression is actually a very common feature of viral labyrinthitis, especially since because it is a viral illness there is not much you can do medically to make it go away. I have been medication to help the symptoms of vertigo and help prevent nausea, but I have to admit I've not noticed any let up in on the dizziness front.

One of the main things I find frustrating is not being able to cook. Normally I do the vast majority of the cooking in the house which I love (have I mentioned how much I love food?), but now standing up for long periods of time (we don't have a kitchen table where I can sit to prep food) increases the dizziness, but also there's the moving around the kitchen, reaching and bending to fetch ingredients from different cupboards, or check on something in the oven. As Rebecca mentioned in the video above, one of the worst things is bending your head downwards, so even looking at a pan on the hob can make the dizziness worse.

This obviously applies to other things besides cooking, like getting dressed, moving around the house, picking stuff up from the floor, and having showers. Me and my sister had a laugh about it when she came to help me work from home earlier on this week, as I jokingly asked her if she'd sit on the bed in my room and listen out for me in case I slipped over and 'brained myself' on the shower cubicle. I've had to learn how to pick stuff up from the floor by bending my knees and squatting rather than bending from my waist and back, and by not looking at whatever it is I want, but instead looking straight ahead and groping blindly until I find it. I feel a little bit like Ziyi Zhang playing a blind woman in House of Flying Daggers, or as if I'm a toy doll who's neck and waist won't bend like the rest of the body. It's awkward and I probably wouldn't want to do it in public, but at least it stops me tipping my head forward.

Not like I'm going out in public much. I find walking slowly so annoying (I was one of those people who "Liked" the Facebook group about hating being behind slow-walking people), and I also find that when I walk I want to find things I can loosely hold on to if need be, which makes me feel self-conscious. It's like being on an ice rink and wanting to hold on to the rails I suppose, except in the real world there isn't always something to hold on to. That's one of the main things that upsets me, is this feeling of vulnerability, and feeling a bit useless and dependent on other people and things.

As I said before I don't necessarily feel like I am a 'sick person'. I don't have a fever, and I don't feel shivery. I don't have a sore throat, or hacking cough, and I don't have red eyes or a snotty nose. My sense of smell and appetite pretty normal  - I even joked to my boyfriend that I was a bit sad not to have nausea as I could normally rely on being sick to help shift a few unwanted pounds. But in this instance I've eaten a fair bit of junk food when I'm home alone, and the lack of physical activity is certainly not going to help.

In general I feel fine - just dizzy, so anyone who is worrying please don't *smiley face* I am taking things slowly, so I'm not likely to collapse, or fall down the stairs, and the boyfriend and the rest of my family are really looking after me at home, so I'm not going to starve or anything like that!! I'm hopeful that this will sort itself out sooner or later (3 - 8 weeks is the average apparently, which does still feel like I long time to me). I don't feel ill (according to my narrow definition at least), just... incapable sometimes, with respect to how the dizziness affects your day-to-day life, but then no worrying I or anyone else does is going to help that.

So I hope you feel reassured that I'm not dying, and that it's just a blip. On one end of the spectrum I even at times feel a little like a fraud. Because I don't feel sick, and don't feel that I look or sound sick (despite my mother claiming I looked washed out - that's because I haven't worn make up in days Mum), I worry that some people (people at work in particular) might think I'm just skiving. Because it's something that is so interior, that is so invisible to the untrained eye, I worry that some people will think I'm just malingering or attention seeking, and I feel bad every time someone tells me to go to bed and rest, and offers to do shopping/cleaning for me, or just asks how I'm doing with a tone of serious concern in their voice. In the scale of things, I feel like this 'dizzy' problem is nothing compared to some stuff. I know of at least 3 people who have been diagnosed with some form of cancer in the past 6 months, two of whom are barely 40, one of whom is suffering from terrible chemo side effects, and one of whom has been given a matter of weeks to live. So in the scale of things, I feel bloody lucky.

Weddings...

Ah ha! So I managed to beat the Gremlins...this time...

So following on from my first successful post I was wondering what I should, or rather what I would like, to write about. There are so many things I find interesting, and so many things I could talk about I don't really know where to start. I could talk more about this balance problem I have at the moment, but when I first thought about writing a blog I was conscious that I didn't want it to turn into one of those, "follow me on my journey of discovery and feel sorry for me" things. There are so many people out there who are far, far, far worse off than me (might talk about that another time), that I thought I'd prefer to talk about something more positive first.

So I thought I'd like to talk about what happened immediately BEFORE I got this virus thing, which was a wedding my boyfriend and I went to in the Netherlands. I almost wrote Holland there, but my geography isn't good enough to know if where we were was actually the Holland part of the Netherlands and I don't want to offend anybody who could (just possibly, maybe?) be reading this.

Camping Domaine de Labeiller, St Victor de Malcap

A couple of months ago I got a text message off an old friend of mine that I have known since I was a teenager, called Marlot. Now Marlot and I met on holiday I forget how many years ago as both our families used to go to the same campsite near Saint Ambroix in the South of France at the same time every year, and we have stayed in touch on and off for the last... must be at least a decade now I think of it! Her real name is Martha Charlot, and I knew her as Charlot the first year we met, but she decided she preferred Marlot after that and that's how it's been ever since. Her Dad always used to call me his second daughter, as we actually looked quite similar as teenagers - both tall, slim, with long, straight, light brown hair, although I think she is much prettier than me, but then we do often think that about our friends. She came over to visit me in Wales and Cambridge a couple of times but I had never been over to stay with her in the Netherlands, although we had met up in Amsterdam when I was there with friends on my gap year, and then in London while she was there on an internship.

As teenagers we'd often talked about boys while we were on holiday and I think she must have met quite a few of my old boyfriends over the years, which I think is quite nice for someone you see so rarely. At the time of her text, I knew that she was living with a long term boyfriend called Michel who I'd never met but had seen photos of and seemed quite nice, although I knew nothing about him. Anyway, one day I get a text message out of the blue, announcing that she and Michel were getting married at the end of August and did I want to come!

I don't need to tell you how excited I was. Apart from the obvious appeal of a trip abroad, it was also an opportunity to catch up my "other sister" and finally see where she lived, and experience a wedding in another culture which is something I've always been curious about.

After a fair bit of time spent on www.travelsupermarket.com looking for cheap flights, and www.laterooms.com looking for cheap hotels, and a fair bit of back-wards and forwards with text and Facebook messages we eventually settled on us flying from Liverpool John Lennon to Amsterdam Schiphol on the Tuesday and staying in Amsterdam the night before the wedding, getting a train to Capella a.d. IJssel (where the wedding was taking place) on Wednesday morning and staying at Marlot and Michel's apartment that night, and then flying back from Amsterdam on the Thursday after. In hindsight I should have booked the Friday off work as well, as it was a Bank Holiday week and I could have had the whole week off and spent more time in the Netherlands (especially as my boyfriend had never been there before). But alas, it was Staff Development on both the Thursday and Friday and I didn't want to give work a reason to be mad at me by missing both days.

But eventually, the flights were booked, the accommodation (at the bizarrely named Hotel Flipper) was booked, and the cheap airport car parking was booked so all we needed to do was get a card and a present (in spite of Marlot's protestations) and get there. As we were spending a fair bit of money getting there I wasn't planning on spending much on a present, but I still wanted to get her something small, especially as we were taking hand luggage only so wouldn't have much room in our bags!

The invitation that she posted to us (complete with English translation, bless her) had included the words "Cadeau Tip" at the bottom and a picture of an envelope, so I assumed this was the name of a website where she might perhaps have had a wedding list. After a while confusing myself looking at very general dutch gift websites I decided to read up on Dutch wedding customs on Wikipedia, and discovered something that I quite like.

 The symbols on Dutch wedding or birthday invitations are actually hints at the kind of present the bride and groom (or birthday boy or girl) would like, the envelope signifying money in (surprise surprise) an envelope i.e. they're not going to open it in front of anyone else at the reception, but after the party instead. This made much more sense!

But still, I wanted to get them something a bit different, so I suggested to my boyfriend the traditional welsh "Love Spoon". If you've never heard of one it might sound a bit like a bizarre, pre-wedding snuggle between you and the bride and groom before they gain their status as a legitimate, grown up, married couple, sleeping in the same bed and everything, or some kind of weird version of the French kiss on the cheek. I know, Wales can be weird sometimes, but it's not that weird people.

A Welsh Love Spoon, is actually something handmade by the man and given to his beloved lady friend (presumably homosexuality wasn't invented in Celtic Britain), so technically it should have been Michel giving it to Marlot, but I have heard of people giving them to couples as a wedding gift and as they come in a range of sizes I was pretty sure we could get one to fit in out hand luggage. Winner.

Only problem was that we'd left it quite late, and turns out they're not that easy to come by outside of the gifts shops at welsh tourist attractions or heritage sites. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing (seems to be a re-occurring theme on this post) we eventually bought one on the morning of the day we flew out (the shop was closed on Bank Holiday), along with a welsh wedding card and tea towel from the Welsh Shop in the market where we live. The tea towel I particularly liked as it had a picture of the sun with the words "Bore Da!" ("Good Morning!" in welsh) in big letters across the front. I know it might seem like welsh overkill, but I quite like the idea of being greeted in the morning by a cheery little welsh person saying "Bore Da!" to me. Don't know why, but it just puts a smile on my face. I may well get myself one if they bring their prices down a bit - £8 is a bit much for a tea towel.



So anyway, following a bit of a stressful time at the airport involving getting lost and executing dangerous manoeuvres and 3-point turns right next to roundabouts, and a good half an hour of not talking to each other, we eventually got on our flight and landed safely in Amsterdam. We'd also realised that the hotel was close to another train station in the city and successfully found a connecting train that took us straight there, and despite a good hour wondering around not asking people for directions, we eventually found Hotel Flipper (thanks to the security guys in one of the nearby business buildings who printed us off a map and helped us orientate ourselves).

The next day was a lot easier (despite some hair issues) and we met up with Marlot's brother Frank (who again I'd never met before, but who turned out to be funny and charming, and an all round decent guy) at Capella Schollevaar train station and then went on to meet up with the parents of the bride Ron and Hilde in plenty of time for a nice catch up before heading over to the ceremony venue.

The venue looked like just an ordinary red-brick town hall type building, which looked like it had been converted into a modern art gallery inside - and by modern art I mean lots of paintings of nude women in bright colours - but upstairs they had kept the original dark wood panelling, old portaits and porcelain collections and various other artifacts pertaining to official civic matters.

The bride and groom arrived in a Porsche Sportster (apparently the groom is meant to collect his bride with a bouquet of flowers for her before taking her to the wedding, rather than meeting at the altar/registry office). Marlot looked absolutely beautiful as I'd expected (she worked a brief stint as a model) and Michel looked very smart as well. The registry room itself was actually very small but then it was a small wedding - aside from us, there were only two other people who weren't family, so I felt really flattered to have been invited. One of the other guests explained to me afterwards that the registrar had told the story of the marriage proposal in which Michel had had to do it three times as they were diving at the time and Marlot hadn't understood what he was trying to do, which I thought was a sweet story.

Then we went downstairs to the riverside (the IJssel, I think) for Marlot's homemade wedding cake and a bit of bubbly and lots of photos. Me and my boyfriend ended up by pure coincidence having the two parts of the cake that spelled out Marlot's name which was really funny (and delicious!).

After that we were given some silver balloons with wedding wishes attached to postcards and let them off in the courtyard. Unfortunately the postcards were too heavy for the balloons to float so we had to tie them all together in one big bunch and in the end they did take off, but sadly they didn't get very far before getting stuck in the branches of a tree on the riverbank.I really liked the idea though so I may well suggest it to a friend who I'm going to be bridesmaid for next year.

After the ceremony we were driven by Marlot's parents to the reception which was being held at a "luxurious beach resort" near the Hague, Kijkduin, which according to Marlot's brother means "watch the dunes". Not sure if he was telling the truth but I liked the sound of it anyway. At that point the clouds had disappeared and it ended up being an absolutely beautiful, bright, sunny afternoon on the beach. The reception venue, a cool wooden beach club was stunning.

Lots of natural tones, to match the natural environment I suppose, with an added element of glamour and luxury, with gilded chandeliers and chairs. If I had to pick one element of the club as my favourite (aside from the sea view) it would have to their version of those beaded door curtains you sometimes see in old seventies shows, or slightly old fashioned houses, but they were made out of round discs of shell and they were hung in the windows.

These gave the room a beautiful shady kind of look in the afternoon light, but also reflected the light off the surface of the discs to add a pinky-golden effect to the room, which was emphasised at night when the red of the disco lights came on.

The wedding meal was just amazing too. Initially we couldn't understand much of the menus as they were in dutch, but everyone around us helped translate and eventually we were able to make our choices. For starters my boyfriend had the carpaccio of beef, and I had tuna spring rolls with wasabi mayonnaise and a dipping sauce. Both dishes were beautifully presented, but the tuna spring rolls were to die for. The spring roll was crisp and not at all soggy as they sometimes are, and the tuna and sauce filling was warm and tender (obviously not canned tuna by the way), and went really well with the dipping sauce and wasabi mayonnaise, even though I'm not really a fan of wasabi or horseradish at all. Sometimes I think it might help to not be able to fully understand a menu, as you can be put off by some aspects of it. In this situation we had a choice of two alternatives for each course, and with such a small group (we were all on one large table) the last thing you want to do is appear indecisive, or even worse picky, so the only thing you can do is to pick between beef and fish and see what turns up in front of you! It's actually rather liberating to eat like that - so I may well try this approach again next time we end up eating out.

For the main course we both had the entrecote (steak) on a bed of vegetables with some kind of slightly spicy jus, and a cup of the tastiest chips and mayonnaise I think I've ever had. Apparently they were grandma's secret recipe fries according to one guest's translation. If so I would have loved to have got my hands on that recipe! And for dessert there was a trio of puddings - there was definitely a chocolate mousse, and I think a creme brulee, but I can't remember what the last one was, I think because I might have been full and asked my boyfriend to finish it for me. All in all an absolutely delicious meal (I'm salivating just remembering it now!), and the only thing that was a shame was that Marlot started feeling nauseous half way through and couldn't eat her dessert (apparently unheard of for her!) but thankfully she got better as the day went on and she was soon boogying the night away!

The club also had a large outdoor decked area with smooth white wooden booths, square shaped seats and stools with cushions and sofas in soft cream, stone, beige, and sandy brown tones. Looking back at photos, it kind of reminded me of a Japanese zen garden.

My boyfriend and I spent a fair bit of time after the meal just sat outside with a glass of wine or beer (the bride and groom had paid for a free bar!), chilling in the sunshine and enjoying the view. Not because we were being anti-social you have to understand, but because I think it was a bit of an effort for everybody to try to keep speaking in English in order to include us in the conversations and Marlot and Michel had to greet lots of evening guests, plus it just seemed that kind of chilled out wedding where people could do what they wanted and just enjoy being there.

I have to admit, that was one of the unexpected delights of the trip - taking off my heels and walking bare foot in the warm sand on literally the last day of summer. At one point as the sun was just about touching the sea in front of us (at least from my perspective), when the sky and clouds are turning that chalky grey-blue which fades into the hot, almost blinding white of the setting sun, we noticed a horse and rider making their way from (our) right to left along the waters edge. In one of the photos I took, it looks as if they are literally riding into the setting sun.
 

 At almost exactly the same time though, a large group of joggers turned up on the horizon and made us feel like a pair of proper lazybones, although I think after all the travelling we'd done (according to Google maps, about 550miles including flights and trains) we were entitled to enjoy sitting still and enjoying the view for a bit.
 

The beach club at night

Gremlins...

Hi there!
I've never written a blog before (though I have kept journals on and off over the years) and despite my belief that pretty much everything even vaguely "technical" is allergic to me or vice versa, I thought it was about time I had a go to see what all the fuss was all about!

Now when I say I have issues with technology, I'm not just being falsely modest (thought I have been accused of that in the past) - I sometimes wonder whether I am going completely mad, or whether there really are indeed Gremlins in my house. I am currently stuck at home unable to go to work as I have an inner ear viral infection (sounds pretty gross, but will talk about that later on) which basically makes me feel as if I'm on a boat in varying degrees of bad weather all the time. A couple of days ago I decided that, as reading was giving me motion sickness, I would try to watch something on iPlayer instead - this was set up by my boyfriend to play through our Wii and go through the TV and stereo and has been working absolutely fine since we moved in. However, for some mysterious reason there seemed to be no sound coming out the TV. I checked that everything was plugged in as it should be, sound turned up on the stereo and the TV, and not accidentally set to mute, but still no sound.

One of my first thoughts was - irrational as this may sound and I have my mother's hypochondria to thank for this - am I going deaf? To be fair, I'd been scaring myself with the symptom checker on the NHS Direct website and one of the links took me to an article about how continued exposure to noise levels over a certain decibel level can seriously damage your hearing in the long term.

In the end, I gave up on the TV and reconciled myself to the fact that I probably needed a 'noise diet' (one of the recommendations of the article), so just tried to carry on reading IT. But later when I mentioned it to my boyfriend he checked the TV and there was nothing wrong!!

Similarly today, I was trying to go through the last of my outstanding work e-mails on my boyfriend's laptop (even though I'm supposed to avoid computers as it doesn't help the balance problem) and I couldn't play and of the voicemail winamp files. They were playing, I could see the little blue progress line crawling steadily along and the timer count the seconds left on the voicemail, but there was no sound. Again I checked the volume and the mute button was off, but I just can't figure it out. Bearing in mind that my sister and I listened to probably twenty voicemail files on winamp yesterday when she was helping me out doing work from home, there is absolutely no reason that I can imagine as to why this isn't working now. Cue return of completely irrational fears of having developed very specific selective deafness...

And just now, when I started up this bloomin' blog, I tried to complete the little About Me section, and having formulated what I believed was a sufficiently unpretentious summary of me (age, rough location, and range of interests) and pressed save, I got the all too familiar "Sorry, there's been a problem" message.  Half of me is wondering whether the same thing is going to happen if I click save now.... I will be seriously p***ed off if I have to write this all over again, I'm telling you. I might just copy and paste it to a Word Doc just in case....

If this works I'll be bloomin impressed with myself!
Ta ta for now!

Lettie B
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