Author: Rare Bit Blogging

Twenty years is a fuck of a long time. I usually get the date wrong but the fact it’s dydd Santes Dwynwen (some say the Welsh equivalent of St Valentine) makes it more remarkable. Love. Things I remember about Dad:

How cheerful and happy he was
His creativity and artistic side, always making stuff when he wasn’t working
His cooking and his love of food
His beautiful intricate handwriting
His love of wildlife and nature, and wartime and western films
His occasional short-lived outbursts of anger
His limp from a stroke at 35
His passion and emotion
His love of music and singing
The one time he came to see me swimming
Him making up bedtime stories about the little blue bird
The time we both went shopping to Kwiks and I lost him, and the relief when I found him again
How I felt safe and held when he was there
His absence

I feel grateful to be working today

Memories of happier more carefree times:

Sitting here this morning hugging my comforting mug of coffee before I head out into the crispy crunchy Winter chill, I’m feeling a little sad. I have such a momentous wave of creativity rising up in me but no time to express it fully until, well, I’m not sure really. I’m having to prioritise wearing any hats that involve bringing in some bread and butter, so this morning I’m in trading assistant mode before slipping smoothly into musician mode for practice this evening. I’m trying not to think too much of the money with that one. It’s an important concert next Friday and a beautiful programme inspired by nature to which I want to do as much justice as I can. I’ve had the music for 2 weeks, which in itself isn’t enough time, and I’ve had to take on extra shifts this week as the shop is seriously understaffed. 

I see my brisk cold walk as homework that contributes to my shop work. My hands go numb when I’m working the fridges, especially the milk, and my shoulders ache after reaching up and into the shelves, but after about half an hour welly walking yesterday, warmth and sensation flooded back to my extremities and I glowed.

Outside, the sky is a numbing shade of blue but it is definitely blue. We’re on the right side now.

“Work to move away from processed foods and towards more natural foods. It’s more about learning to enjoy the foods that are good for you than trying to force yourself to eat something that you don’t like.
And, to be honest, “diets” as we often call them, don’t really work. Improving what you eat is more about improving your mental relationship with the food you eat.
For example, a few years ago I was getting sick of always taking sweets into the movie theater, so when going to see Interstellar I brought a bag of carrots. Trying to chew as quietly as I could, I felt much more satisfied than I had with the sweets.
Today, I have a near addiction to carrots and I love the way it makes my mind and body feel when I eat them. I’ve also done better to add apples and other fruits and vegetables to my diet.”

Sometimes it’s hard to see the wood for the trees. It was good to read this short simple blog post at a time where I feel an urgent urge to write but have no energy or time to do so. I’m not depressed but I certainly need more sleep, more play and less work. And more pay! 

Raw parsnips? Maybe not, and I can’t say I’ll be taking a bag of roasted parsnips to munch my way through while watching Stan and Ollie, though I like the sound of that. 

At work last night, the shop ran out of sugar. The shelves are packed with products overloaded with the stuff. At work today, one of the most popular stands was the sweet stall. People filled their paper bags with generous scoopfuls of “goodies” and handed them to their kids. Three people out of four were significantly obese. It’s an epidemic.

I was disappointed with myself earlier this week. I did a big shop and succumbed to the lure of the crap egg shaped chocolate that was so popular in the shop where I work. I felt like a hypocrite, that small toxically innocent bag nestled amongst my cavolo nero and my traffic light bell peppers. It smelt like shit and tasted so good, and that sugar hit was so powerful. It felt like the biggest hug you could imagine, delivered in a cleverly marketed irresistible bag that promised a fun escapist treat. Having portioned myself a handful, I greedily scarfed the whole bag. I couldn’t stop. Afterwards, I wanted more. 

How does one fill one’s soul?

Today my body is screaming for movement but I’m too tired, so I slow down and listen and breathe and stretch and yawn, and tonight we chill. Tomorrow we plunge into the deep end again. God bless Monday mornings. 

https://medium.com/…/4-powerful-ways-to-treat-depression-wi…

“Work to move away from processed foods and towards more natural foods. It’s more about learning to enjoy the foods that are good for you than trying to force yourself to eat something that you don’t like.
And, to be honest, “diets” as we often call them, don’t really work. Improving what you eat is more about improving your mental relationship with the food you eat.
For example, a few years ago I was getting sick of always taking sweets into the movie theater, so when going to see Interstellar I brought a bag of carrots. Trying to chew as quietly as I could, I felt much more satisfied than I had with the sweets.
Today, I have a near addiction to carrots and I love the way it makes my mind and body feel when I eat them. I’ve also done better to add apples and other fruits and vegetables to my diet.”

Sometimes it’s hard to see the wood for the trees. It was good to read this short simple blog post at a time where I feel an urgent urge to write but have no energy or time to do so. I’m not depressed but I certainly need more sleep, more play and less work. And more pay! 

Raw parsnips? Maybe not, and I can’t say I’ll be taking a bag of roasted parsnips to munch my way through while watching Stan and Ollie, though I like the sound of that. 

At work last night, the shop ran out of sugar. The shelves are packed with products overloaded with the stuff. At work today, one of the most popular stands was the sweet stall. People filled their paper bags with generous scoopfuls of “goodies” and handed them to their kids. Three people out of four were significantly obese. It’s an epidemic.

I was disappointed with myself earlier this week. I did a big shop and succumbed to the lure of the crap egg shaped chocolate that was so popular in the shop where I work. I felt like a hypocrite, that small toxically innocent bag nestled amongst my cavolo nero and my traffic light bell peppers. It smelt like shit and tasted so good, and that sugar hit was so powerful. It felt like the biggest hug you could imagine, delivered in a cleverly marketed irresistible bag that promised a fun treat. Having portioned myself a handful, I greedily guzzled the whole bag. I couldn’t stop. Afterwards, I wanted more. 

How does one fill one’s soul?

Today my body is screaming for movement but I’m too tired, so I slow down and listen and breathe and stretch and yawn, and tonight we chill. Tomorrow we plunge into the deep end again. God bless Monday mornings. 

https://medium.com/…/4-powerful-ways-to-treat-depression-wi…

A month in which to be extra care-full

Welcome dear friends. If you’re reading this, it’s more than likely you’ve been following my Facebook page for which I am most appreciative. I want to keep this blog, which started as a snapshot of my life as a freelance musician, separate from my musical persona. My hope is that this new space will give me ever more freedom to express my true self without fearing any possible repercussions or negative perceptions on my professional life. I hope you enjoy discovering this new chapter in my journey as much as I enjoy writing and living it.

It’s been an intense old weekend with one meltdown followed by another and then another, and one more just to be on the safe side as I tried to take on a bit too much. I must think I’m some kind of wonder woman with super human powers, giving myself epic task lists for one day which I can scarcely achieve in a week. Any remaining stuff from the last week gets added on to the new week’s busyness. No wonder I feel like I’m on some fast spinning hamster wheel. Feeling a bit burnt out tonight, I’ve decided that other than Aquafit and Pilates and trying to bolster my social diary (if anybody will have me – I’m so poor at keeping in touch with friends), tomorrow is a do-nothing-much day.

I started decluttering today, butterflying around my house collecting disused nectar and trying to find places to stash it or good purposes for it. It’s nigh on impossible to discipline myself to focus on one room. My priority was making a dent in my shell shocked chaotic kitchen but I haven’t touched it. I’d share a photo but I’m too embarrassed.

I look like a hoarder, some sad single person they do cringeworthy TV documentaries about, up to my neck in my own mess. You should see the understair cupboard. I try to blame my lack of storage space but I’m sure I’ve got a problem with stuff.

My music room looks better but there are 5 piles to sort as well as the humungous orchestral stack. The office shouldn’t take long and the bedrooms are in pretty good shape.

The one big thing I really wanted to do eventually got done. Last. I got my stepladder down from the attic where it had been all summer and carefully clambered up it to peel a couple of crusty hunks of wood chip off the ceiling.

That was interesting. Taking photos with the intention of sharing them here helped me commit to completing the task I’d set myself, even if it meant I was up very late. I’m like a dog with a bone, a rebel with a cause. This tenacity has its upsides and its downs of course. I don’t have an off button. I have comas rather than full stops.

I’m trying to keep house business to weekends but seeing as my schedule is still so erratic, establishing a routine is a challenge to say the least. A little bit of nine to five would be ok wouldn’t it? Words that strike fear into the heart of most of us lucky self employed folk. I reckon the precipitous nature of our work is one of the reasons we stick to doing what we love whenever possible.

When I got home yesterday I bumped into my next door neighbour. He and his partner have been living here just over a year. They’re great neighbours to have apart from the noise from their DIY, sometimes late into the evening. I can tolerate it as they are grafters and genuinely nice people. Nobody would choose to live in a house while it’s being renovated. They must have some sort of deadline, I’m sure of it. Their house already looks incredible. They’ve renovated much of it, and yesterday B proudly but humbly showed me their kitchen which is finished except for a couple of minor details such as a cooker hood. It looks fabulous but I wouldn’t want that look for my kitchen. It’s, well, too perfect and almost sterile in its pristineness. The freshly plastered walls are totally devoid of cracks and blemishes and the room looks significantly smaller than my kitchen, even with all my crap strewn around it. The look they’ve chosen is quite industrial and trendy and that isn’t the look or feel I want for my house, although I did admire many of the features they’ve cleverly sourced online and elsewhere, and I might be asking for some tips when I get round to doing up my kitchen.

I have a very clear idea of how I want it to look but I’m not quite there with the layout. There is wiggle room and some scope to play around and I would need several long detailed Q&A sessions with builders, plumbers and tilers. I’m there with the colour scheme.

I’ve just accepted a couple of days work at the end of the month that fit in with my intention to build a schedule that keeps me closer to home. I don’t know one of the pieces so I did a little research on it before accepting as it’s by a composer with whose work I’m completely unfamiliar as well. Check this out:

How could I possibly say no?

I have another piece on my music stand which I get hyperactively excited about, so much so that it becomes difficult to practice, it’s so far from how I want it to sound. It’s almost autobiographical. Much of my life and what I’m about encapsulated in one short piece of music.

I recently listened to an old tape recording of me singing, one of my first forays into competitive music making aged about 8. I’d listened to it with fascination a few years ago and forgot about it until my latest decluttering episode. It’s a keeper and I’m trying to find a way of sharing it with a select few. Maybe here? What came up for me was the struggle between my obsessive love of music and the competitive aspect that came soon after it was deemed my talent had some value. I hated the competitive side of music making and I still do. It kills something. It removes any natural flow and freedom. I swear if my most private practice moments could be captured in a recording and sold, I’d make a fortune, but as soon as you point a microphone or camera in my face, any spontaneity vanishes into thin air. A bit unfortunate for someone who makes a living out of performance wouldn’t you say?

So far, the much feared and loathed January has been one of the most bearable Januaries yet. My inclination to hibernate seems to have done one and I’m motivated most of the time and early up. I do 3 business like walks a week and the weather has been uncommonly clement. On a weekend when it’s not chucking it down, I get a longer inquisitive, intuitive frolicsome walk in. I put my more buoyant mood down to implementing quite a disciplined routine as such as possible, with meandering flow time built in on a weekend if I’m not working. The other factor contributing to my Bouncuary is necessity. If I don’t get my business looking healthier in the very near future, I’m going to be in deep shit. I’m pulling out all the stops this year and releasing my inner ruthless musician bitch. She is in there and ready to come out if and when necessary. I don’t feel a sense of entitlement but when I consider ELEVEN YEARS INTENSIVE STUDY and the only thing blocking me from making my living doing what I love is money and the bastard internet, it makes my blood boil. Not just a little bit. A lot.

In the meantime, I’m on annual leave next week and I’M NOT TAKING THIS BLOODY FUCKING LAPTOP. I’m off to the beautiful coast and I can’t wait to feel the sand beneath my wellies.

0 LIKES

I creaked into action this morning as I had an 8.30 appointment in town after an intense four hour heavy sleep. My mind blurred by a heady alcohol free hangover feeling, I made a bee line for the nearest independent coffee place after I dropped my car off and ordered the above. It’s a vegan chocolate fudge cake which looked enticing enough but left a strange sensation in my mouth. After the week I’ve had, I felt I’d deserved a slightly naughty treat. I’ve tried a vegan chocolate brownie before which was ok but orangey and dense. My curiosity undeterred, in I went for another go. I don’t think vegan is for me, despite the global benefits. When the barista asked how everything was, I was honest in my feedback and thought afterwards I should have kept my mouth shut. There was nothing wrong with it. It just wasn’t right. I’m not vegan and I’m afraid I like cow. The coffee on the other hand was great.

Yesterday was my induction into my new part time job. It wasn’t without its complications due to technology and in all honesty it was quite painful and arduous. That’s why it’s called work I guess but for someone so accustomed to deriving pleasure from the workplace, it was full on. My shifts are four hours long so I wasn’t expecting a shift after my 3.5 hours spent in front of a tablet watching the induction videos which were a bit useless as there’s no way I can focus for that length of time without a break, and by now, I can’t remember much of the information, some of it life saving. Ideally I’d like to maintain this work for the foreseeable and not start off by killing someone in my first month. There are better ways to become memorable.

If the information could be delivered in bite size chunks rather than seven hefty modules all in one go, it would be beneficial to all parties. I failed quite a few of the tests just because I couldn’t focus above the electrical whirr emanating from some machinery in a tiny office in which you could just barely squeeze four upstanding citizens. Today my hands, arms and shoulders are sore having been hunched over a screen in the small windowless office. My just reward was a few enjoyable shop floor activities. I got quite excited when a customer asked if I could clarify whether or not the prunes in the tin she wanted to purchase had been pitted. Better still was being able to advise her they weren’t stoned and steer her in the direction of pitted cherries as an alternative. The customer is queen.

I think this job will suit me down to the ground with my OCD tendencies. I’m optimistic the positive aspects of this endearing and sometimes frustrating trait will garner our little shop some sort of award. Goals and targets are important and I’m convinced I’ll make a positive contribution with time. I don’t think one of my male colleagues took it too personally that I went round arranging the shelves he’d just tidied up. I hadn’t realised. Men! His revenge was all the sweeter when it came to barcode scanning during the bakery stocktake.

I had a couple of tearful moments, one with just the tablet as my audience. The other was also in private, when I was shown how to take a delivery from the warehouse, which I will never ever manage single handed. I was given a king size high vis jacket to negotiate the perilous venture outdoors to the truck, making me look like I was wearing one of those comedic deflated sumo wrestler suits. There was a mirror in the lift, and I saw myself with my own eyes. Correlating the barcodes to the boxes and crates was mumbo jumbo, even with my specs. Doing it efficiently at speed will take quite some guidance and practice. Up and down I went in the tiny lift while my lovely manager waited patiently upstairs. I cursed as I remembered I wasn’t supposed to block the fire exit with the trolleys and cages. Turns out there’s no other option due to the layout of the store. I wish she’d told me! It’s all learning I guess but how steep is steep! I thought I was going to pull my back as I huffed and I puffed trying to budge a particularly badly loaded cage full of valuable produce. The videos made it look so easy!

Of course, thinking I’d be done and dusted by 7pm, I hadn’t taken any proper food. A trusted sausage roll filled a gap until I got back to the home made soup I’d defrosted. At 11pm I tried not to beat myself up for parking a 10 minute walk away to get 2 brisk stomps in and avoid parking charges. It was closer to a 20 minute walk back uphill, and I started to regret the 5 heavily discounted parsnip packs which would have gone to waste had I not bagged them just before closing time. Raw tubers aren’t much use to the homeless at this time of year I guess.

I stumbled in at 11.20 feeling dead from the crown down, my mind, body and spirit fractured and fragmented into tiny smithereens. Struggling to unwind after my long day, I hit the hay at 1.30am and have been out of order until I addressed my insomnia later this afternoon. I’d booked my 2pm pool class and I’ll feel the benefit tomorrow and for my next short shift on Saturday, but I admitted defeat with 5 minutes to go, my body screaming for it to stop. This is unheard of and I’m astounded I was able to listen to it. I just can’t get enough. Once an addict…

Look what I got in town:

I’ve called it my Wowee phone in the hope that will help. Can you please muster up some enthusiasm on my behalf? 48 hours later and I’m still using my old iPhone. I’m busy! It keeps making incongruous noises at me, possibly because I’m so unenamoured with it. In all fairness it’s for work purposes at this stage until I get the hang of it. It will allow me to record audio and video clips for my music business as well as take photos. I can’t promise this will improve the quality of my photos but I’ll try. I had a thought. Would any of you lovely faithful readers like to listen to my blogs as audio blogs? With my foray into blogging and writing, one of my final proofreading methods is done by reading my writings out loud as if I was telling you them. That’s how that idea came about.

Please bear with me during these first few weeks while I play about with this new blogging platform. I’ll conclude tonight’s blog with another question – what do you think of my new blogging name?

A few more images I’d like to share from my week