Buzzed about blogging

Badger's post on what it feels like to have tourette's disorder has been shortlisted for Post of the Week!

Well done Badger!

Just 8 posts made it to the shortlist this week - so to be amongst those is a huge achievement.

A friend of ours recently said to Badger "Blogging is boring", and I'm still blown away by that comment. It reminded me of when I talked to the team at the BBC's Imagine programme about blogging. There was a wonderful moment in which they suddenly realised that it was not about websites or technology or news or reporting or personal diaries - it was about relationships. I introduced them to the wonderful Natalie of Blaugustine, and watched their confusion and hostility towards bloggers melt into warmth and humour and understanding.

My blog brings me into relationship with many lovely people, but also facilitates communication between different parts of myself. I can no longer work with the concept of 'real life' being outside of my online relationships - surely these are real lives being lived and expressed regardless of the medium? Instead I have settled on a notion of 'whole-life' friends. Those who are part of my blogging community, with whom I also meet up in the flesh.

In just 34 days time, Caroline's book, In Search of Adam, will be published in hardback (yes - hardback! - that's for serious grown-up writers only!) and a whole bunch of us bloggy friends will be gathering together at the book launch event (details to emerge soon says Cas) to support her and celebrate her achievements. We won't be there out of obligation. We won't be there to network. We will be there because we love Cas and believe in her. How gorgeous is that?

Currently, we are running a little treasure hunt over on the In Search of Adam Map - which now has almost 200 pins in position! The treasure hunt clues lead you to the blogs of people on the map, and whilst it's really just for fun, we also hope that people will discover new blogs, new friends and new relationships whilst they are hunting. One of my most valuable bloggy finds recently has been lovely Maht at The Moon Topples, who has been running a very community spirited Short Fiction competition.

I haven't written a fiction story since I was at primary school. The idea of doing it terrified me. But I did do it, and I enjoyed it. As Maht says: if you like your entry, you are a winner. Wise words. I do like my entry (resisting inner voice that says I sound like a conceited wanker saying that). I liked the process and I'm content with the result - I don't think it's brilliant, but it answered my own questions. Simultaneously, I've discovered that someone on the other side of the world has read my whole NaNoWriMo story. I wrote something like 15,000 words of the beginning of a book last November, before illness interrupted me. Prompted by Natalie, I chucked it up online fairly recently in a secret location under a pseudonym, and I have a stat counter on there too. I guess I was interested to know what the response of any unconnected stranger who stumbled upon it might be ... and then somebody did.

I don't know who this person is. I know that they are in thailand, and I know that they found my blog simply by clicking on the 'next random blog' type link. Then, over 4 days, they made 3 visits of about an hour each, and read the whole thing.

Isn't that kind of exciting?

Not in an 'omg I could be an author!' kind of way. More in a 'wow, somebody has digested my thoughts' kind of way.

Of course, it's always possible that they were simply trying to learn English, and sitting with a dictionary in hand trying to work out what my peculiar turn of phrase meant ;)

But still. I'm buzzed. Buzzed by it all - Badger's post of the week shortlisting, Cas's book launch, the Map that keeps joining us to more wonderful people, Maht's short fiction comp, the stranger in Bangkok who has read my book, the fact that a whole bunch of my lovely blogging friends did a group meditation all around the world at 2pm on Wednesday as I was going into surgery, plus, above, the most beautiful flowers I've ever had - sent by the gorgeous Ms Melancholy.

*sigh*

I am a happy little blogger.

To absent friends ...

Jess, on the left, is Ruby's best friend. Which is only fitting, as Jess's dad is my best friend, and his mother is my mother's best friend ...

And so we are continuing the years of holidaying together as a unit, but this generation abandoning spanish villas and hotels in Lanzarote for dog-friendly caravans in bits of the UK with Big Hills. Fab.

When we first got home on Monday night, Ruby was excited to be back. Now she is depressed. She is searching and searching for her friend, going into my housemates' rooms at six this morning and crying pathetically ... and she is sad not to find her.

I wish I could explain. I wish she could understand the concepts of 'again' and 'soon'.

I went to the lakes to attend the wedding of some very dear friends. Lovely lovely people, and I would have married either of them - they are gorgeous inside and out. The sun shone and their little boys looked like a tiny mafia in their supercool suits. And it was perfect in so many ways, but glaringly imperfect in another. Another friend who should have been there, laughing in the sunshine, holding his wife's hand and smiling, because he never stopped smiling, is gone. He died suddenly just over 2 years ago, without warning, of a heart defect. He was skiing one moment, dying the next. She was there with him when he died, and as awful, as horrific and traumatic as that was, she says she knows she would never have believed it if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes.

So, there were happy tears, for those we love who are still with us, and sad tears for those who aren't. Not physically anyway. Very present in many other ways, spoken about (thankfully) and laughed about and remembered, and very much still loved.

I am doing my italian widow look she said with a smile, replacing her shades.

I know he would have enjoyed the joke.

The importance of being Badger

I snapped this shot of Badger at the wheel of her convertible mini cooper whilst she was whizzing us home from Portsmouth yesterday afternoon.

As I took the photo, the lyrics from the first track on the latest Take That album - Reach Out - permeated my consciousness.

'Cause I don't know you
And you don't know me

click here to watch it on youTube

And it got me to thinking about how lucky I am to have, and live with, a friend like Badger.

As well as having tourette's, Badger is on the Autistic spectrum. Sometimes it's easy for me to forget how different Badger and I are, because on the surface we're pretty similar.

We share values - simple things .. like be nice to people and animals, but don't be so nice that you compromise yourself and others. Don't worry about what's in it for you. Things that cost nothing can be more precious than ferraris. If the chickens need cleaning just get on with it, no whinging. If you don't know how to do something, ask and learn. Don't be scared to make mistakes or busk stuff.

Badger and I also share most of our interests - football, walking, tree climbing, playing the guitar ... we have the same taste in music, TV and computer games. In fact, I can't think of any of Badger's interests that make me think "No thanks, I've got some shiny new pins I can stick in my eyes instead".

We shop the same. That's what I want. That's my size. No I'm not trying it on. I'll take 3 please. No messing.

Both being runts of the litter, we had similar school experiences of always being friends with the fat kids, the ginger kids - the assorted rejects. Neither of us is interested in looking cool - which is fortunate, as Badger had a little outburst of tourette's break-dancing in the queue for the wholefoods shop yesterday.

So ... sometimes it's good to remind myself that under the surface we're very different. We gather data about the world and process that data in totally different ways.

Faced with something new and unfamiliar, I disappear into my head to extrapolate from the next-closest known-model ... Badger sniffs and touches and looks close up. Given a message - spoken or written - I am working with the unsaid, the invisible writing, the implied and the conspicuous by omission - in Badger's world everything Does What It Says On The Tin.

Being around Badger reminds me to be in the moment, that I don't have the full picture unless I stop to sniff the world around me, and that sometimes it's ok to believe that someone means exactly what they've said.

This post is brought to you by the number 1 and the letter 'm' ...

... for most of the last nine years or so, I have been half of a Two. Now, I am becoming accustomed to being a One.

Right now, I am sitting on a small wooden pontoon over a lake in the field where I am camping in Wales. It is the first time I have been on holiday as a One. Just a few days here, so far west that you can't go any further. When I say One, I mean one person. Ruby is here with me, loving every moment. So, I did not sleep alone, but snuggled up with a tired, sandy, happy dog.

The weather is astounding. The lane we drive from the field to the beach has set the hedgerows a loose dress code for June/July - anything, so long as it's pink and flowery.



The thing about my dog is that she is so much better at making friends than I am. She struck up a conversation with Meg, a border collie we met by the sand flats, and whilst they romped and chatted, there was not much else I could do but strike up a conversation with Meg's human, a lovely woman in her late sixties, not that long in the area. We talked for maybe twenty minutes, maybe longer. First just the polite soundings out, but after a while she told me that her husband had died in November. She went on to talk about how supportive her welsh farming neighbours had been, much more so than the middle class english folks with whom she has so much more in common - on the surface at least. We talked about whether living in proximity with death as well as life, with death as part of life, equipped those people better for dealing with loss in all forms. How so many people seemed to think death was something that could be avoided.

Eventually we said our goodbyes, and Ruby and I carried on our path, stopping to greet a small but cheerful cocker spaniel - Meg. Whilst meg and ruby chased around her owner and I initially kept some distance, but our defences were broken down by the ridiculous antics of our doggies, and we struck up a conversation and quickly found we had our profession in common. Meg's mum began telling me how she had got into her industry, but ended up telling me pretty much her life story. After a few minutes she invited us to walk with them on the route they were taking, and so we spent a couple of hours together, strolling and talking. She spoke to me about struggling with depression, and anxiety. About failed relationships and finding herself. About loss and fear of loss and how powerful that could be in her life. At one point as we wandered across the golf course, she turned to me and said "I don't know why I'm telling you all this, you're a total stranger ... but I trust you - I don't normally talk about this stuff". And I believed her.

We both shared confidences and spoke about the kinds of feelings not normally thought of as small talk. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Big talk. About stars and the nature of shared experience and reincarnation and self-destruction. About being a One when you have been half of a Two and how difficult it can be, but how freeing and empowering too. And when we had to part she gave me her number, and I did the same. For next time I am here. And she gave me a hug. And it felt right and supportive and not at all odd. Which is odd in itself.

So, back on our own again, Ruby and I retired to the beach and lay in the sand, scorching under the sun but not much caring. And I felt hopeful, but also heavy, scared of losing Ruby, who is my world. And I wondered whether I would ever get over the loss I am feeling now, and the future loss of Ruby, which may be sooner that I would hope because she has a heart problem which may get worse quickly at any time.

And then we met Mabel. 12 weeks worth of loose skin and big paws and pure vulnerable joy. Just like Ruby was when I first brought her home a year and a half ago.


They romped around together for a while, but it was an uneven match and little Mabel scared regularly and retreated to sit on my feet and lean against me and look up for reassurance. And I knew then that if Mabel didn't already have a very lovely family, I would take her home and love her just as much as I love Ruby. Different, but no less. Hope.