In this gusty Norwich evening, when Liverpool have succumbed yet again, (I swear Liverpool should start playing all games on the continent), I want to give a shout and BIG thanks to my dear and precious blog buddies.
Having this blog, this outlet, this shelter, this corner seat, this place, has allowed me a lot of thought and hope during the fear and gradual realisation of what I'm entering into, with regards hospital waiting lists and crippling injuries. The year from start to finish will seem like viewling a string from one end to the other...but the string is not straight...one side is ability but halfway, the string twists round a great tree at a right angle and heads into shade, the end of which I can't yet find nor see.

Anyway, my wonderful blog buddies, stay close, you are very much appreciated in many, many ways, and again a warm thank you.
You are stars.

Colour: Oceanblue
Music: Faithless: Why Go?
Reading: Nature Through the Seasons by Shinzo Maeda

I am becoming increasingly sure that my dear hospital have lost my paperwork, because nobody seems able to get a respone from them...they ignore my GP, MP and of course little me.
My GP declared my spine so serious that I must refrain from work, a deep shock to my craniums' inners, but, upon receiving incapacity benefit for the first time in my life, I have received a mighty swift doctor examination appointment, via the Dept. of Work, not the NHS, as if by miracle, the waiting list is only 5 days...so, so, so...I get it all now, this country which I love so much acts with haste in the department that governs money, and shuts the door on the ones that need basic treatment to save an even more basic gift, that of being able to walk.

In summary;
I have waited since January for ANY treatment to a cracked spine which now threatens my ability to move.
Within a few weeks of being forcibly told to stop work, against my wishes, and placed on incapacity benefit...I get a miraculous doctor's appointment, a doctor willing to see me, not to help me, but for diagnosis/confirmation to satisfy our government, to make me feel even more helpless. I'm not annoyed with them, and welcome the appointment, they are doing their job...but by doing so, they highlight how BADLY the hospital are doing theirs.
But far from feeling depressed, this is stirring the fire in me more and more and more.
It is, at least here, obvious that priorities lie in money, pure and raw money...health can go to hell, and if you are patient and polite, even worse.

There is only one way to go forward here, and that is to fight, and fight hard.

~~~~

Many times, I have something in my mind, a phrase, a memory, a person, place, song, or something, and low and behold, as I listen to the radio at the same time, view a website, read a newspaper... that same thing appears within a second of my thought...it happens time and time again.

Do you have this happen often?

Music: Faithless: She's My Baby
Take the Long Way Home

Faithless, aspire to the places where I want to be, and to places where I've been, I salute you, and all you touch, it touches all I know, and is with me where Im headed.
You come 1 with all those you touch. Faithless always.

The earthquake in Pakistan was really hard for me to wrap my head around. I mean, I've lived with earthquakes my entire life, and I've lived through some really huge and terrifying ones, but nothing that even begins to approach the magnitude (pardon the pun) of the Pakistan quake earlier this month. Coming on the heels of Katrina and Rita, I have to admit that I was suffering from a major case of tragedy overload, and I didn't really know what to say or do about it.

Just now, I read a story at Yahoo! News about natural disasters that brought the catastrophic enormity of the disaster into sharp, horrifying focus.

Of the estimated 61,000 people who have died this year due to natural disasters, about 50,000 (according to today's estimate) were victims of the 7.6 earthquake that struck Pakistan Oct. 7. In 2004, by contrast, more than 60 percent of the total natural disaster deaths were caused by the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

The whole story talks about how it's not Mother Nature who is changing, as much as we who scurry about the planet are. "Earth might seem like a more active and dangerous place than ever, given the constant media reports of multiple natural disasters recently. But a broader view reveals that it's not Mother Nature who's changed, but we humans." It goes on to say "Drawn by undeveloped land and fertile soil, people are flocking to disaster-prone regions.

This creates a situation in which ordinary events like earthquakes and hurricanes become increasingly elevated to the level of natural disasters that reap heavy losses in human life and property."

Environmentalists have been succesfully demonized by the Right Wing Noise Machine, and some of the loonies out there don't exactly help the cause, but we've only got one planet to live on right now, and it's clear that we who scurry about on her surface are having an impact on how well she handles us. It's something to think about, at least.

[the above is from WWdN, October 17th, 2005]

I agree, it is a media fashion to blame global warming, and mother nature, without ever seeing the broad view, (which ironically, is more readily available than ever before). Global warming is a convenient reason, which in itself needs to be looked out over centuries, not just this decade!! The media are good at creating hysteria, we only have to look at Sven last month, bird flu now, and global warming these past years. Good people of the world are not stupid, and we can see raw data which tells us a whole lot more than the media ever can, in their present form.
For example;
England 2, Poland 1 = the 'Sven out' calls subside, at least for now.
We get a cold winter in the UK, with all of us seeing a snow plough at some point. = Ordinary people say they have never known a winter like it...but it is a return to normal weather, just like this poor summer over England...it was actually a normal summer of decades past...we have forgotten that!

It only takes one change of course, (or return to the 'norm'), and a whole hypothesis can be thrown out of the window...if anything is fickle, it is US humans!!!
lauren6

What do you, my blog buddies, think?

We could not walk, it was so very rainy.
Dorothy Wordsworth, October 25th, 1800

Colour: Darkorange and darkolivegreen
Music: Stranglers: European Female
Howard Jones: What is Love? ...remember that???

News story of the day, a lorry has shed it's load...of lard somewhere in the UK today...didn't catch the location though...anyone know where??