This is a view of Doneyloop church at sunset.  Doneyloop is a small village just over the border in Donegal from Clady.

If someone has time today, can they give Extinction Rebellion a call and ask them when the global warming is arriving because when I got up this morning my car was covered in something that looked suspiciously like frost AND the gritter was on the road when I was coming home last night!

Not to mention the fact that it was cold and wet all through May and June and the allotment didn't get going until July and we were decimated with slugs this year: we planted 40 cabbages and got about 12. My French Marigolds didn't grow at all this year and the nasturtiums only started to appear in September.

And it rained again for most of August and September, and now frost, and it's not even Halloween yet!!! It's going to be a looonnnnnnggg winter! Bbrrrrr!

This is the latest from my art class, I'm quite pleased with this one. The sluice gate was broken and the water was pouring out of it which added to the drama, plus it was a beautiful warm sunny day. 

Just sitting watching Boris in the Commons; listening to him just highlights how negative everything is and how long it has been since I heard someone actually have something positive to say about the UK and be hopeful about the future.

Now Corbyn's up and whining on, all fear-mongering and propaganda. There he goes again on the 'climate emergency', publicly dismissing his own brother, the so-called lefty who was anti-EU his entire political life, now sells out on every principle he ever claimed to believe in. What a turncoat!

If this doesn't go through today, the working classes will never forgive Labour.

I used to be a leftie, I was even a communist, although it was my own version of communism. Now I have turned into an unapologetic, meat-eating, Trump supporting, climate-change denying Brexiteer!  I cannot listen to the self-righteous posturing of the neo-liberal fascist ego's of the left who have no idea how the rest of us have to live, who sit above us posturing on their arrogance and think they have the right to dictate to the rest of us and who think that they have the right to overturn the democratic wishes of the people of the UK.

Scotland's turn now. The voted against independence when they had the chance so tough luck!

Jo Swinson, God, give me strength!!!

I wish they would just get on with it!

So, Boris (allegedly) squeezed the thigh of journalist Charlotte Edwardes 20 years ago. I mean this kind of sexual harassment is just not on and I for one am appalled.  Thank God, we have moved on as a society and the casual sexual harassment that went on in the past is rapidly being exposed for the horror that it was for all victims of thigh-squeezing.

And I must confess to a certain 'mea-culpa' too.  I remember now the almost weekly sexual harassment of Terry Wogan on his BBC talk show, Wogan. Week after week, woman after woman used to come in and squeeze his leg, I actually think the odd man may have done it too!  And to my eternal shame, I remember, I used to laugh along, I thought it was a joke too! My God, how could I have been so naive?? 

Little did I realise how distressing all this must have been for Terry, and although he seemed to take it as a joke and laugh along too, maybe underneath it all he was in torment. Did he go back to his dressing room after each assault and cry at the impossible position he had been put in, the humiliation of having to endure being sexually assaulted right on screen every week for the whole country to see?  Did his bosses make him play along, was there pressure from the top to just sit there and take it??!  I think we need to be told, nay, DEMAND to be told!  

What kind of culture existed in the BBC at the time, when an innocent man could have been subjected to such appalling behaviour for the entertainment of millions and with no regard for his 'personal space'.  The term 'Housewife's Favourite' now takes on a much more insidious tone!  Was Terry Wogan used by the BBC to provide sexual gratification for frustrated housewives and women everywhere? Was there a darker side to the easy banter and playful innuendoes he used to so casually drop into his broadcasts? Maybe they were secretly a cry for help from a man without friends, a 'victim' of his own 'success', whether he wanted it or not?

Terry Wogan is unfortunately, no longer with us, did the years of sexual harassment add to his stress and have a bearing on the cancer that killed him? Who knows?  But at the very least, to honour his memory, I think we need a public enquiry and those women should be publicly named and shamed for the blatant harassment of a kindly gentleman just trying to make a living!  The horror of it all!

Today, I liberated myself from Facebook although, it will be 30 days before my account actually deletes.  I had posted a comment on a site in relation to the Neo-Liberal Fascist love in over Greta Thunberg and I said . 'When the work of real scientists like Dr Peter Ridd, Dr Michael and Ronin Connolly, Dr David Bellamy, Dr Willie Soon and Piers Corbyn Msc is ignored or denied, remember Galileo'.  So, some twat came back about how in years to come we'll see who is right or something to that effect, and I said 'Yes, you can sell anything with a picture of a cute kid in plaits and a shedload of propaganda', and posted this image.  So, Facebook blocked it for a review and then refused to post it.  They completely ignored the context of the debate and also, did not even allow me the opportunity to argue my case. So, farewell Facebook, and beware of cults using teenage girls in plaits to sell their propaganda.

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As it's Friday, it may not be five o clock, and it may not be time for Crackerjack but the sun is shining, the sky is blue and in spite of all the doom merchants striking in the largest show of mass brainwashing/stupidity in my lifetime, I thought I would share a good joke with you. 

I was reading through comments after watching a quite serious video on Youtube last night, in relation to an onging courtcase in Canada around transgender identity which I will discuss in another post but not today because today is a day for fun!!

In the comments section, someone had remarked, and I apologize for not checking who, but I think it was a male ( a real one, that is and not a made up one) and he said ' I want to identify as Michael Jackson, and my chosen pronouns are He/Hee'.  Brilliant!

Enjoy, and have a lovely weekend everyone and if you're still worried about 'climate change' check out the work of  Michael and Ronin Connolly or Dr Willie Soon on Youtube, it'll put your mind at rest and you can go and enjoy your life and not worry about the planet.

Michael and Ronin Connolly -  https://globalwarmingsolved.com/about-us/

For my sins, I ventured out to see Quentin Tarantino's, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  I had intended to go and see It - Chapter 2, but my friends messaged to say they were going to the Tarantino movie so I thought I'd go with them and see It next week.  

I'm not really a fan of Tarantino, I remember going to see Reservoir Dogs, the film that catapulted him to fame and fortune and where he made his name as an innovative director.  I have to say I was blown away by it, it was very different from anything I’d ever seen and I have loved Steve Buschemi ever since. I did however, find some of the violence too much but within the context of the film it was realistic.  The next film of his I watched was Pulp fiction, hailed by the critics; it didn’t really do anything for me. I thought the violence and language gratuitous, designed to shock rather than be realistic and I don’t really find anything deep and meaningful or entertaining in the lives of thugs, druggies and scumbags.

Maybe living through the ‘Troubles’ when thugs and scumbags were 10 a penny around here has somewhat tainted my perspective but Tarantino obviously, never had to deal with people like this because if he had, he certainly wouldn't be making them the anti-heroes of his movies.  

Then, I watched From Dusk to Dawn which was one of the worst films I ever saw and the last Tarantino I ever watched.  From then, I have religiously avoided his work, I don’t have much of a stomach for violence and it seems to be that every film of his follows the same formula, foul-mouthed tirades and high levels of gratuitous violence and the uniqueness and innovation of Reservoir Dogs has been lost amid the tirades, the swearing, the thuggery and the gore.

So, back to ‘Hollywood’ I had heard it was good and the story didn’t seem to lend itself to thuggery and violence.  The little I had heard about it was that it was about stuntmen who were coming to the end of their careers and whose style of work had fallen out of fashion.  From that, I had the expectation of an homage to the TV series and movies of the early sixties with a bit of comedy thrown in, as our heroes battled to find a life/career in a very different and changing world.  (Which actually, would have made, a better movie)

On the detail of the times, I couldn’t find fault, he definitely captured the look and feel of the era. The story is that Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is the stunt double for actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo Di Caprio), whose career as the star of an old TV series Bounty Law, is winding down and his acting future is looking bleak.  Cliff is a thug, he has a thug of a dog, lives in squalor, has the manners of a pig and is altogether, repulsive and I say that as someone who is a fan of a lot of his work, especially 12 Monkey’s.

Di Caprio is good as always, there is a scene where he loses the plot and goes on a foul-mouthed tirade (of course) which was over the top and gratuitous. 

At 2 hours and 40 minutes, it is also very long and the first hour really starts to drag.  I almost left and if I had been on my own, I would have but I thought, well, I’m here now, I may as well see it through to the end.  And so my penance endured. 

There is a scene with ‘Bruce Lee’ which was heavily criticised by his daughter and I can understand why.  It has Cliff the thug almost putting Bruce through the door of a car.  Why this scene is in this movie, I have no idea, other than to scoff and taint the memory of a man loved by many, myself included. 

What happens then, is that it drags on for another hour while building up to an ending which had to be narrated as he pissed about so much with the early part of the movie that if events had continued to unfold at the same pace, I would still be there waiting for something to happen. And considering what did then happen, that might have been the better option.

The premise of the movie finally boils down to some twisted fantasy on the part of Tarantino where Cliff the thug, inadvertently, saves the life of Sharon Tate and her house guests.  The violence in this scene was nothing short of horrific and maybe, it is me, but I don’t find someone being brutally savaged by a dog or a woman having her face repeatedly slammed into a fireplace funny on any level, and in the context of the real life event that did actually happen, the horrific murder of five people, I was sickened and appalled that Quentin Tarantino could take that event and play it for laughs.  Quentin Tarantino really needs a good psychiatrist, he is a sick, sick man and that will most definitely be the last movie of his I will ever watch.

Not recommended viewing for anyone, not even psychopaths, they really don’t need any encouraging.

Greta Thunberg has really upped the ante in the 'paragon of virtue' stakes as she sails across the Atlantic to attend the United Nations climate summit in New York in September in her little boat, hand carved from a tree that she planted in her own garden as a child, somehow knowing that, one day, it might be needed to teach humanity a thing or two, such was her incredible knowledge and foresight...

What do you mean it's a racing yacht???  You mean one of those big boats made from fibreglass, and all sorts of plasticy type of materials not to mention the aluminium and steel??  

Did you know that the building of boats is tightly regulated these days, you just can't decide to make a raft for yourself and go sailing off into the sunset, well, maybe you can still build a raft but you certainly can't build a, just under 4 million pound racing yacht, in the back yard. Oh, no!

Boat builders have to be trained because of all the toxic chemicals involved in the process and  'must wear respirators throughout the construction of fibreglass hulls because of the fumes generated by the catalyzing process. Air emitted from the building must also be controlled in accordance with the regulations of the EPA. Workers wear Tyvex suits to guard against splashing hazards, and chemicals are carefully stored and disposed according to regulatory requirements.'  

Read more: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-6/Sailboat.html#ixzz5wkyqxMaW

Doesn't sound very environmentally friendly to me! 

I was also wondering how she got to Britain to catch the boat, did she walk, has she been on the road since her fine speech to the EU? 

The boat will be powered by solar panels and hydro- generators, which I'm assuming were made in a factory somewhere, powered by oil and or gas, and made out of metals mined from the earth and plastics derived from oil.  And it has a computer on board, most probably made by children somewhere in the far east on a 14 hour factory shift and full of metals, toxic materials and plastics. Hmmm...

Ah, Greda, not quite cutting it in the paragon of virtue stakes after all!  Now if only you were a transgender, mixed race, vegan, refugee who had been brought up in a forest by wolves and dressed only in leaves that had fallen on the forest floor, then you would really tick all the boxes for the virtue-signalling, neo-liberal fascists.  

By the way, does anyone know how she's getting back?

Well, England/London was brilliant as always and heart-breaking to have to leave.  The trip to Bel Canto on the Saturday was definitely worth the trip alone and very reasonable considering, it is in the heart of London and the height of the tourist season.  Me and my sister have decided that we'll do it again next year for our birthdays, as they both fall in July.  But next time, we plan to stay in London and make a weekend of it.

I didn't get to the Van Gogh in Britain exhibition, the last ticket sold out as we were trying to buy them and there was nothing available until the Thursday but unfortunately, I was back home by then.  I was hoping to do a quick weekend trip before it finishes on 11 August but it's just too expensive as the car had to be taxed and is also in getting serviced.  But that was the only disappointment over the weekend.  We had some nice pub lunches and trips to the Sussex Downs and the coast, and at Wilmington, I even met a 'long' man!  

So, all in all, it was a very enjoyable weekend and to be honest, I've been struggling since I came back home. I am just so unsettled and do not want to be here.   I cannot relate to the culture/the politics or most of the people.  I have outgrown Ireland and really feel that I need to leave for a few years, at least.   

I've been looking at jobs in London and there is one in a hospital in the same role I have here, that I'm really tempted to apply for. It closes on Monday so I might send off the application over the weekend.  As Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson said or rather sang, 'There must be more to life than this.'

My sister headed off last week to walk the Camino, she’s started in the south of France and is walking to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. For her, it really is a pilgrimage and not just a chance to post a selfie on social media.  Five years ago, this week, she lost her sixteen year old son Jude, to a brain tumour and is struggling with the loss more this year, than when he died.  The truth is, she hasn't fully grieved her loss and is trying to find some way to work through it and so, she thought that walking the Camino would help, and something she felt she had to do.

Around the time he died, I was going through a very rough patch too which went on for some time.  It was the culmination of all the traumatic events that had happened in my life and they came back to haunt me in one crashing blow.  One day, I was sitting thinking about all that had happened and feeling sorry for myself and asking the usual, 'Why me?' 'Why did I have to go through so much?', wallowing in self-pity and then, another thought struck me. I thought, 'Well, why not me? Yes, why not me? What is so special about me that I should I be exempt from suffering?  And, if not me, then, who?’ Could I point a finger at anyone and say, 'No, give my suffering and pain to them'. And I couldn't because as much as we might feel there are some who do deserve to suffer, (like the Tories) no-one really knows what is going on in anyone else’s life or what burdens they may have to carry so, why not me? And that was a big turning point.

There is a lot written on the subject of trauma and forgiveness and it is often said that, in order to move on from past traumas, we have to forgive. I’ll be honest, I always had difficulty with this and I know others who think the same. I’ve forgiven no one for what they have done to me but what I have come to realise is that it is not those who have injured us that we have to forgive, it is ourselves.  This was another step forward for me, to forgive myself for having allowed myself to be vulnerable or for putting myself into a situation where others could use or take advantage of me.  I did not always have control over the events or situations and often, my biggest fault was naivety, believing people to be friends when they were anything but.  In forgiving myself however, I have been able to make peace with the past and move on and the days or sitting feeling sorry for myself or ruminating on the why’s and wherefores are now over. 

They say, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and I have to admit, it was touch and go with that one for a while but in watching my nephew and my sister struggle and fight for his life, how could I throw my life away so, I soldiered on through the pain, like my sister is doing now, soldiering on across northern Spain.  And that is all you can do with that kind of pain and sorrow.  If it is something that happened in the past, there is absolutely nothing we can do to change it.  All we can do is sit with the pain, grieve our losses and eventually, we move on or at least, find a way to live with it.

I now have a full understanding of how and why things happened the way they did and the part I played in it.  That is another important step on the road to making peace with myself, being able to look back and admit to how I contributed to some of those events. I don’t mean that I consciously sought pain or suffering but because I wasn’t acting with full consciousness, it was almost inevitable that I would attract the wrong type of person into my life.  I had a victim mentality and may as well have been walking around with a large sign above me saying, ‘use and abuse’. 

Growing up in Northern Ireland and being brought up Catholic, didn’t help either as both those things feed into the victim mentality. 

I’m reading a book at the moment by Dr Gabor Maté. It’s called When the Body Says No and it is about pyschoneuroimmuno(endocrino)logy(try saying that after a few beers!) It details how stress is linked to cancer and how there are similar patterns of personality/behaviour in a lot of cancer patients. They are usually people who can’t say no and who insist in taking care of everybody and everything.  Then, they end up ill with cancer and when their past is delved into, there is usually a history of abuse of some kind, usually in childhood, where they were unable to express their emotions in a healthy way, especially anger and remained that way into adulthood and so they are still operating from a place of sub-consciousness. 

I thought this was interesting, especially this week, when it was announced that Willie Frazer had died from cancer which he had been battling for some time. Willie Frazer was the founder of FAIR – Families Acting for Innocent Relatives – and was full of hate and anger. His anger was understandable; he lost not only his father but several other family members at the hands of the IRA.  He could not make peace with the past or let it go, and it may have cost him his health and his life.

Also, on the news this week, was the result of a government consultation on plans to deal with the legacy of the Troubles where it was revealed that a majority opposed an amnesty for veterans.  I have to say, I was very disappointed to hear this.  There has been a lot of suffering in Northern Ireland and anyone who lost a family member or friend in the Troubles has my deepest sympathy. But, you cannot change the past and if you have lost someone, how can you ever really get justice? You can’t bring them back.

But, there are still a lot of people here with the victim mentality who won’t let the past go.  They wear their suffering where everyone can see it, they are victims, they keep dragging it up, like the scab on an old wound, they can’t or won’t leave it alone, picking at it and picking at it, never giving it time to heal. Each side, claiming victimhood, at the hands of the other.

There are very few of us who get a free pass through life and don’t have challenges, pain or loss to deal with at some point. We can piss and moan about it forever and a day but it won’t change anything.  In the end, there is little that can be done other than to sit with the pain, face it and deal with it, cry, go for a long walk, find a way that works for you to get through it because you have to go through it, there is no way around and if you don’t deal with it, it may be waiting for you further down the road or it may be quietly eating at you, in other ways.

Thankfully, I have now come out the other side of my ‘pain’, and while it was a tough road, I can look back now and see that it was both a learning experience and a period of great personal and spiritual growth and I would never have fully grown up without facing that pain and dealing with it.  I still have no forgiveness for those who were instrumental in contributing to my suffering but I can see now how nasty, weak and pathetic they really are. I’m not angry at them because I don’t have the energy to sustain that kind of anger and they’ve taken up enough of my time and energy and they’re not getting any more.  Actually, not only am I not angry, I don’t really feel much of anything for them, they just don’t really matter and maybe that’s the best place to be.  Maybe that is forgiveness?

I was walking the dog up around the river this morning and all the wildflowers/grasses and weeds(??) were blooming so I picked a few added some calendula and white foxgloves from the garden and voila! I'm very pleased with this and it got me wondering why are some plants regarded as weeds and what makes something a weed as opposed to a flower?  I stopped trying to dig the dandelions and buttercups out of my flower beds as I had noticed that dandelions are one of the first plants to flower in spring and an early source of nectar for bees.   I bought 3 grasses for my garden and they don't seem to have taken, looking at the wild grasses I thought, why did I bother to buy something that grows freely anyway so the grasses won't be getting the chop again either.