Do days come better than this?

Well do they?

Me and mine went for a spin in the car after we'd had our evening meal. The sun was sinking behind a bank of cloud, which if we're to believe the weather forecast, is the herald of another icy blast. I often feel it's better to put the camera down to absorb the sounds, sights and smells, yes smells - farmyard ones in this case. What a sublime moment it was just standing at the gate here and listening/watching to lambs bleating/gambolling in the fields whilst behind me I heard a stonechat chit-chatting, not forgetting the little jenny wren intent on dominating the scene with her own vocal churring and scolding. ................

Once upon a time ........

...... the land formerly known as Cambria, was inhabited by fierce creatures known as dragons. These vile monsters lived a lazy life in dark, dark caves. They only ventured out when hungry, when they would eat whole armies of Saxons by killing and roasting them with their dragon's breath i.e. tongues of flame. As centuries progressed and the land became known as Wales, the fierce dragon-creature became its national emblem. The Welsh Dragon (metaphorically speaking) still roars at events such as the game known as rugby, but this little baby dragon has run out of puff from being waved around on banners in the stiff breeze of late due to a weather phenomenon known as The Beast from the East.

A brave new world

...or possibly, exploring new frontiers. Welcome to another dimension to the world known as Planet Paradise. The view from my upstairs back bedroom window. How surreal is that ?

As I keep saying, ok then, repeating due to this vile condition, I  can still overcome things or as stated in previous entries, get around the stumbling blocks.

The latest is that I discovered that I can use a different browser for this . Will it work?. Who knows . Will I have achieved another 1-0 against The Master of Surprises ? Who cares? Well I DO!  I also discovered recently that I can fulfill and extend my passion for photography with these kind of shots . Simples!

The only disability in life is a bad attitude. ~ Scott Hamilton

Here I stand.....

We're never too old to learn eh ?

Today I learned that filling in a PIP form was the most demoralising thing I've done in my life.

It's like this......you spend 25 plus years of your life bumbling, stumbling and bumping into physical hurdles. During those years you develop a way of getting around those hurdles, physically and emotionally. Somehow in the process, you  magic all the negatives  into positives. Hey presto, the next thing you know is that you've surrounded yourself in so many rainbow layers of positivity that you feel pretty good about life in general. Right ? Agreed ? Oh yeah! You're floating.  Bobbing up and down rhythmically on a wave of emotional stability just like this buoy in the water. Sunshiny.

 

Cunning as ever though, that old, very old, age old Master of Surprises  still has you in his grips and when the time comes to fill in that form, or should I say booklet ? (seeing as there's a whole 40 pages of it) you find yourself peeling off each comforting rainbow coloured layer, in the same way as your mam used to unpick and unravel the yarn in the rainbow coloured sweater she knitted for you  - there you stand stripped down naked  to the core of  whichever tangible 'working bits' are still intact.  

Here I stand naked in the truth of my being........

Boy or buoy indeed!

Eureka!

It's a new dawn, it's a new day.....

with a lightbulb moment. Ping!  ...fizzle, fizzle .....doh! 😳

It's like this then.....I've been yearning to get back to rambling in more lyrical vein, for a good few months now. However due to cyberspace technicalities way beyond this fizzle-frazzled brain's comprehension, I was on the verge of giving up. Apparently it's to do with my laptop browser and OS system  ( still with me ? ) being incompatible with Blogger. Neither have I had the mental energy to figure out how to blog from my iPad. 

Not until this morning, that is, when you'd think that after attending  The Orange and Black Ball for Ms with its inevitable consequences of fatigue, brain fog and a few more neurons looking for their missing axons, that I suddenly discovered that I could.

Or could I ? Well kind of yes, and kind of no, but mostly a huge dollop of  WE SHALL  SEE ABOUT  THAT ! 🤓

I hit a stumbling block, but as a stumbler myself, I tend to gently, albeit in ungainly fashion, stagger around the block and Ping! 👌Eure......e....can not. Doh! How to format the text ?

                                                        " Vee shall pee back " 🤓

It's a quacker

This is just a holding post whilst we at Planet Paradise figure how to Blog using an iPad.

After The Ball Was Over

Here at Planet Paradise we’re kind of re-grouping after the past year saw another uninvited guest into our lives. No, not the Master of Surprises, but the Big C  had been insidiously attacking Huw without any suspicion of it. Glory be to the wonders of modern surgery combined with medicine,  that that uninvited guest has been given the boot within less than a year. Life continues.

    

Inevitably, once the ball was over and was safely kicked into touch, that old chestnut happened – a visitation by the Master. A fleeting one, no doubt, but one which caused me to revisit old diary entries about accepting these visitations, the title of which was  initially ‘Reactive Acceptance’.  A heavily  edited version of what I once wrote….

‘I allow MS into my life on my terms, accept that it is there but put it in the ‘naughty corner’ paying it occasional lip service; keeping up the platitudes (metaphorically speaking of course). Then when MS throws a childish tantrum, I react calmly instead of fighting, because if we fight then we’re already doomed to have a label of ‘failure’ just because of the nature of the condition  – and what does that label do to us emotionally?'

So how do I react ?

I treat it as a hurdle, not one to climb over, but to be got around gently- on my own terms and my terms alone because I very much like to be in control of my life. I know me better than anyone else so  I make my own guarded but informed choices about what suits me best.

What suits me best in the aftermath of our mutual battle with a guest so vile that it doesn’t even deserve to be named, is nothing more than sleep.

At the time of writing I’ve slept a whole three nights of quality and uninterrupted sleep, eight hours at a time, and unashamedly, three whole days apart from eating, cooking and naturally my Photo a Day Project. 

I’ve already had enough now though of that malarkey and very much looking forward to next week, one where we’ll be celebrating the entry and exit out of my body, of a very real mortal-being nicknamed Worm, the wriggliest of babies but thirty years down the line, a giant of a man in very many ways.  Bring it on. ........ oh and I'll sneak a pic of him at three years old simply because I adore this one - ignore the antimacassar (another story) .....and a quote in relation  to it..

          The most beautiful moments always seemed to accelerate and slip

               beyond one’s grasp just when you want to hold onto them for

as long as possible.”― E.A. Bucchianeri

It's not for the love of the money

It’s not for the love of the money

Or those things that tear us apart,

It’s for times we can share and the times we can care

To follow an act of the heart.

And it’s not for the praise or the glory

Or those things that just fade away

It’s for   living some how in the here and the now

And facing it all day by day.

These are words by the late John Wright from the John Wright Band’s album/CD ‘Language of the Heart' which is unavailable as a web link unfortunately.

The lyrics  accompany the above pic because I had the privilege on January 15^th this year of travelling to Cardiff and taking this, one of official photographs for MS Society Cymru at The Principality Building Society’s ‘handover’ as their nominated Charity of the Year. In this photo, to the front  left you’ll see the CEO of The MS Society, Michelle Mitchell with her counterpart at the Principality to her left, and to the left again a staff member who had her hair shaved to raise funds for the charity.

What happens quite often after an official photo shoot is that I rarely get to see the end product. It was with great joy however that I saw this poster in my local branch when I popped in for tickets for a local charity function – a fashion show for MS Cymru at Morriston Golf Club on Thurs.  Oct 9^th.

John Wright's lyrics came alive  in my head when I saw it because the reason I do so much photography is definitely not for the praise or the glory, neither the money. The reason I do it can be read here ( scroll down to Page 5 ) of THE UK MS Register’s Newsletter where I explain it more clearly.

I received far more that day in intangible terms compared with anything I gave myself. 

“For it is in giving that we receive.” ~ St. Francis of Assissi

Myfanwy the Earworm

Two weeks ago I went to bed with an earworm, and by that I don’t mean that I’ve invented a new nickname for Huw, but it’s one of those tunes you just can’t shake out of our head. It happened again last night, same earworm, same song. Thankfully it wasn’t unpleasant such as Joe Pasquale’s “I know a song that’ll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves etc. etc” Familiar with it? If so, then you’ll be sorry you’ve read this because I bet that’s ringing in your own ears already.

The earworm is unquestionably the greatest love song of all for those of us fortunate be born in Wales, for those of us with  music and poetry running through our veins.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of hearing and seeing Bryn Terfel singing this great love song ‘live’ in Swansea’s Proms in the Park and just couldn't shake it off for days.  Then  last night I attended Dunvant Male Voice Choir’s Annual Patron’s concert  at The Brangwyn Hall, Swansea where they sang  an a cappella rendition of it. You could have heard a pin drop during the performance- well no, you couldn’t  have because you’d have been as mesmerised as I was.  

Have a listen yourself to The Morriston Orpheus Choir sing  Myfanwy  whilst you view photos of Planet Paradise, and I dare you not to have non-MS tingles down your spine.

Of course as is invariably the case, a lot of the feeling is lost in translation but you can read it in English here and all about its composer Joseph Parry.

The Brangwyn Hall itself has recently undergone a major refurbishment and I must say it’s looking good, even though they’ve swapped the ladies and gents toilets around which needless to say caused a bit of confusion and some embarrassment to many last night.

Just being at The Brangwyn took me back to the days when I performed there myself, but even further back to school Speech Days where we’d gawp with embarrassment, stifling  giggles, as you do at that age, at the semi naked figures in the famous Brangwyn Panels.

Talking of ‘Welshness’, there’s a saying ‘three times for a Welshman’ so will I once again in the coming few weeks take Myfanwy the Earworm to bed with me, I wonder ?

“Music has charms to soothe a savage breast" ~ William Congreve

Tales of the Riverbank

Life on Planet Paradise gets richer and richer despite its physical limitations although if I’m truthful, then the cognitive malfunctions now outweigh the physical ones.  The joy of being at such an age is that friends from the past start retiring from their careers giving us a chance to meet up and rekindle our mutual interests. Such is Life with the Master of Surprises when you find yourself pushing 60 however,  is that that forgetting to take a mobile phone, aka lifeline,  means that the friend who drives six miles to your home then six miles back into town is begged to return to pick up the lifeline before we embarked on today’s adventure.

Finally we had  lunch  at  Café Twocann, Swansea Marina, then we boarded The Copper Jack, Swansea's Community Boat for a trip up river following the Heritage Trail of the past copper industry which Swansea was famous for. I haven't kept copies of shots  which I've captured in the past of the actual barge,  neither could I take shots from where I was sitting because of rain on the windows. However the guide spotted this Grey Heron ahead so I moved quickly to the front of the boat and shot this through the drier window.  A fascinating trip learning even more than I knew already about our Industrial Heritage but also interesting to see the cormorants, moorhens, and other birds in the water and on the riverbank.  Also a lesson learned: keep husband’s mobile phone number in notebook in case you forget your phone.

                              “ Time moves in one direction, memory in another” ~   William Gibson

Missing you

                                                   Cushion

                             

                                                   I glimpsed at the sofa.

                                                   The cushion you lean on

                                                   Still has your indentation

                                                   On it.

                                           

                                                   I miss you

                                                   And so I’m leaving it like that.

                                                        "There's no fool like an old fool."

                                                                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An Oeuf is Enough - excerpt from Stumbling Along (c) Eiona Roberts 2005

This is an excerpt from my book Stumbling Along  - a Journey with the Master of Surprses (c) Eiona Roberts 2005. The setting is Lille  in France. Please do not reproduce in any form without prior permission from myself, the Author.
......there was a moment that week when I thought that an oeuf is enough!  I’d lost a lot of weight in the preceding year and none of my rings fitted me.  I hadn’t worn my wedding ring for nine months.  Huw was none  too happy about this and wanted to buy me a new ring; not to replace the old one, but simply as a gesture or symbol that we are actually married (Ref 1st Chapter about the Marriage Certificate) 

Because I need many power naps during the day, he’d left me asleep in Room 101 (ref: previous chapter) for a few hours and when he got back, he declared he’d found a department store  which had a fab jewellery counter.  Lille has many jewellers and shoe shops, far too many in fact for a shopa-a-phobic, but he decided on this one and dragged me there kicking and screaming - not!

I saw one I liked immediately, but the assistant had to try to find someone with enough command of the English language to serve us.  I was wearing trainers on my feet because I’d been exercising my legs a bit too much for my liking earlier in the day so due to the heat in the store my ankles had swollen  up quite spectacularly and looked like two small cauliflowers.  I had no intention in being there a long time.

Huw tried to pay with one of his pieces of plastic and that’s when the bother started.  It wouldn’t swipe.  The chic French lady started getting bothered and kept on swiping the card back and fore on the side of her bum, I assume in an attempt to clean the magnetic strip.  Then another chic lady appeared and did the same.  Then a supervisor was called for; she also swiped it on her bum too, but also very sexily put a bit of spit and polish on the hologram, all to no avail.

I offered to pay with my Flexible Friend but no, there was a matter of principle at stake here.  We waited and waited, not very patiently in my case, because I had been half way through eating a salad baguette and the lettuce in it was wilting - and so was I.

I had asked if I could wear the ring and was told at first that I could but then I found myself being asked to take it off and place it on the counter, whereupon two red nail-varnished French fingers delicately and daintily picked it up and replaced it in its box and put it behind the counter out of reach and out of sight.

The next thing we noticed, much to our astonishment, was a security man appearing but I was so hot and tired that I was literally propping myself up with my chin on the counter and couldn’t have given a flying  FGS if he’d strip-searched me; at least I would have cooled down, though I doubt if I would have been able to get my cauliflower-ed feet back into my trainers.  I felt like telling them to stick their ring where the sun don’t shine but I was so tired I couldn’t have said it clearly in English, let alone in French.

An hour and two phone calls later, the card was accepted.  Then the original lady needed Huw to write his full name and address down on paper so she could type out a proper receipt and Certificate of Value.  I hope you’re not losing the plot yet, because I was losing the will to live very rapidly by then.

After every ‘i’ had been crossed and every ‘t’ dotted, or something like that anyway, she asked which country we came from (Huw had already written UK on the paper).  He said, “Aux Payes de Galles,” and was given a very smug look and gallic shrug which hinted, “That explains a lot.”  It’s a very beautiful ring; I wear it to death.......................

36 years ago....

........I put that ring on that hand and have followed the tenet below it ever since

'But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Child of the Universe

We went for a stroll on the Llanelli Coast today. When I stood  and look at the sheer vastness of this , it brought  home just how much of a microcosm we are in this vast world. Microdot or not, each and everyone is of importance - it reminded me of part the of The Desiderata, 'You are a child of the universe; no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here'............

Penfolds and Page not Found

(Written by me circa 2006)

The thing with Penfolds and MS is that you wake up the following morning, not with a hangover, but with a numb hand which takes half an hour to come back to life, whereupon it feels electric-shocky. This alerts the senses to and sets the tone for today's flavour of MS; the rest of the peripheral nervous system twitches and tingles away  in dischord, intent on intruding, gate-crashing on any kind of serenity within; so much so that you just have to get up at the ungodly hour of 5am for distraction.  

And such is the fickle nature of MS that I’d walked two miles the previous evening over sand dunes and stony, woodland paths engulfed, no seduced, by the fragrance of wild garlic which grows so profusely there at this time of year; I even had the audacity to forget that I suffer from a debilitating, progressive condition.

"You know you'll never get better," are the words ringing in my head; words uttered a while ago by a nurse who is about as tactful as a fatal brain haemorrhage, unlike the cunningly insidious nature of my own neurological condition.

After tossing and turning there during the pre-dawn hour, my loved one kicks me out of bed for having the damned cheek to feel very well, very bright and breezy physically,  but feeling foul mentally because I have a long  day ahead of me alone - but not only for that reason because he too knows I need the distraction

I get out of bed, make a cuppa with my left hand instead of my pre-dominant right, and no that's not a moan but simply a statement of fact - such is life with MS after a brief encounter with Penfolds. I boot up my laptop but don’t open my email client because  I feel like writing, which to many like myself is a long, laborious, loose tapping with one finger of my left hand.

The affair with Penfolds is by now but a memory, and the details of the previous evening dissipate whilst I have my third cuppa Tetleys. The men are yet to stir upstairs despite the humidity in the house after a night of torrential rain.

An idea had been mulling around my head because of the forthcoming solitude of my day. That idea was based on the words we often find on the Internet - 'Error 404 - Page Not Found'. However for some reason, I couldn't formulate what was in my head enough to commit thoughts to keyboard because I was afraid in case it had the same kind of angry tone as 'Come Undone' by Robbie Williams - familiar with it?

I didn't want to write anything along such a negative theme because that's not the way I was feeling in, so I finally gave up.

Next I click on my Outlook Icon- and  how lovely, I don't get Page Not Found, but I get the first email of the day and it is from none other than the dearest friend an MSer could wish for and then a link to a website forum  where that very person had sneaked in overnight on a conversation between myself and a very lovely person who seeks solace in that forum. 

A paragraph springs to mind from a travelogue I once wrote:-

"So there I was quietly stumbling along in the casual way I do, when out of the skies which are cyberspace fell another fellow stumbler – whoosh! right into my life, but more like a snowflake floating-falling from a brilliant  blue sky rather than the typically heavy thud of an MSer."

I cannot ever write ‘Page Not Found’

In remembrance - 9/11

Day 254/365: in remembrance - 9/11, a photo by Eiona.R. on Flickr. [COPYRIGHT PROTECTED IMAGE]

9/11 – The Orphans.
A peck on her cheek as he left for the station,
Not knowing the fate that awaited a nation,
A kiss gently blown to a babe not yet born;
A familiar scenario each USA dawn.


A stab through her heart when she heard of the horror
On CBS News, as she felt the world cower;
For death came so swiftly right out of that sky,
To husbands and fathers, in the blink of an eye.

Today a child watches the world weep once again
As Westerners mourn for the day named 9/11.
Are pecks on the cheek and a kiss gently blown,
Sole legacies left by fathers unknown?

Can each orphan resolve the grief of a nation?
Will they be the ones to lead Man to salvation?
For the powers - that - be took their freedom away
By denying all access to what happened that day.

Will the orphans of truth seek their own retribution
For atrocities cast against their own nation?
For Truth must be there, but knowledge is spurious;
Man, mourn the fact - the Fat Cat killed the curious.

© Eiona Roberts - Published by Jasmine Books 2006

The Station



We recently spent some time away, including a week in Hampshire with our good friends, Jan & Alan Coupe of Wisteria House, Stubbington . One of our days out that week was a trip on the Watercress Line from Alresford to Alton. When we got home and I started looking at my photos, it reminded me of this below the picture.....

'The Station' by Robert Hastings

Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves on a long trip that spans the continent. We are traveling by train. Out the windows we drink in the passing scene of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at a crossing, of cattle grazing on a distant hillside, of smoke pouring from a power plant, of row upon row of corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of mountains and rolling hillsides, of city skylines and village halls.

But uppermost in our minds is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving. Once we get there, so many wonderful dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. How restlessly we pace the aisles, damning the minutes for loitering - waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.

"When we reach the station, that will be it!" we cry. "When I'm 18." "When I buy a new 450SL Mercedes Benz!" "When I put the last kid through college." "When I have paid off the mortgage!" "When I get a promotion." "When I reach the age of retirement, I shall live happily ever after!"

Sooner or later we must realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The true joy of life is the trip. The station is only a dream. It constantly outdistances us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~







A Return to Bruges

Night falls over Bruges [EXPLORED # 102 on 4/06/11], a photo by Eiona.R. on Flickr [THIS IMAGE IS COPYRIGHT PROTECTED]

Not an easy blog entry to make . I'll try to explain........I was stood in Clinton's Cards, Oxford Street, Swansea looking at the 60th birthday cards, thinking to myself, "But I don't feel old enough to be buying a 60th birthday card for my husband." Not the usual upbeat quirky thoughts you'd expect from me. Anyway I bought the card,bought the pressie and a week later departed for Bruges to celebrate Huw's 60th birthday.

There's so much to write about the wonderful time we had but for now a cameo in pictures or the alternative quirky account here

Have a break; have a Kit-Kat

Day 148/365: have a break; have a Kit-Kat, a photo by Eiona55 [having a Kit-Kat] on Flickr.

Back in a bit :0))

If it looks good enough to eat, use it ~ Abe Ajay

Day 147/365: if it looks good enough to eat, use it ~ Abe Ajay, a photo by Eiona55 on Flickr.