Jane Alexander's Blog, page 23

What kills us...

You know that phrase - you are what you eat?  Well, actually, yeah - your body takes what you put into it and uses it to make you - from the inside out. During the summer holidays, a friend had a heart attack.  He’s okay but he’s got to have a bypass.  Could he have prevented it?  Well, I’m no doctor but I can’t help but wonder if eating like it were an Olympian sport, drinking like the proverbial fish and not exercising allied with a big dollop of stress probably had...

The Pretender...

Last night I dreamed I was at an old funfair.  Adrian said, 'This way' and I realised we were climbing up the wooden tracks of the runaway train ride. 'Is this a good idea?' I thought, but didn't say. 'The bends are blind and what if a train comes down?'  But the tracks were old and worn.  And no train came and we came to a break in the track, an opening out, and people looked at us as if we were mad and someone said, 'And why on earth would you do that?' And I shook my head an...

Rain...

Woke this morning to the sound of rain, relentless rain...again.  And this poem, which I always loved, since having to learn it by rote at school, inevitably rode through my mind.  Funny thing, memory - when I looked it up (to save typing it all out), it was different from how I remembered.   Rain by Edward ThomasRain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For w...

I've had enough...of journalism

Ah, sod it.  Three rants in three hours?  Why not?
I had an email from a magazine yesterday.  I’d pitched an idea to them. The editor loved it. They wanted the piece. Could they have X words by X date?  Yes, yes, yip, yip.  Except…right at the end…as a breezy afterthought… ‘Of course, we can’t pay you for it.’  As if it were the funniest thing in the world.  As if I didn't need their money; as if writing were just a hobby, a bit of fun.
It’s happening more and...

Tesco saves my school bacon...

Can I quietly scream? Will you mind? Nothing major; just a small strangled ‘aaaghhhhhh’.  Three small words, six meagre syllables that drive me demented. School freaking uniform.   Get that hair on the left...
The return to school is looming into view and I keep gazing gloomily at the list.  Okay, so I get why schools feel the need to do the uniform thingy. I get that it’s all about ‘TEAM US’ (that’s ‘us’ as in ‘we’, not US as in the USA). I get the argument that i...

I just don't get it... (GMO reprised)

‘I just don’t get it,’ I said to Becky as we slung kettlebells around down by the river.‘Huh?’ she said.  I think the grunt was in reference to my utterance (but you can never be sure when you're doing kettlebells). ‘Well,’ I said. How come the Co-op say on their website that they have banned GM foods yet their goat’s cheese says it was made using genetically modified pseudo-rennet?’‘Huh?’ That was definitely in reference to me as she turned and frowned (though, then again, that’s a commo...

Right now

Sometimes life seems hard.  Damn hard. You know the beauty is out there/in here but you just can’t see/hear/smell/touch/taste it. You can still feel but it hurts.  Everything turns to ash.  And, no matter how much you sleep, you are simply tired, bone tired – physically, emotionally, spiritually.  And you know it’s only you that can change how you feel, even if you cannot change the physical essence of it.
In the past I would probably have drunk or eaten myself to oblivion...

Words...

I assume so...don't you think?

Assumptions.  We all make them and I’m as guilty as any – if not more so.  But really, how can you ever know what someone is thinking, what someone is experiencing?  Even if it seems oh so certain?  
Adrian came in the other day from the pub (nothing unusual there, you might assume, and you'd be right). But then he said – ‘I was talking to X and, y’know, he’s really struggling.’  And he looked incredibly puzzled. ‘I’d got it all totally wrong,’ he said.  'I h...

Wu wei (reprised), cosmic ordering and winning the lottery (possibly)

So, I’ve been pondering.   About how you make things happen; about whether you should make things happen, come to that.  Recently a lot of people have been talking (or not talking) about determination; about force of will; about how you have to have total utter single-minded determination if you want to achieve something. 
‘You can achieve anything,’ one of the somebodys said. ‘You just have to be totally determined.’   Which is fine – to a point.  I mean, I...