Personal Blogs

It is the time of Lent and for many Christian followers, this means fasting, starting  on Ash Wednesday,  then every day or every Friday until Easter.
This is to commemorate the time, when Our Lord Jesus was fasting in the desert, where he was tempted by the devil three times. He was able to resist the devil and pray,  he stayed close to God. It is also a time to prepare for, and to celebrate the mystery of Easter, the time when Jesus paid the sacrifice, to blot out the sins of the world, to those who believe.

It is a time of self denial, to repent of sins. when we give up eating for the day, no meat must be eaten during the day,  so it is a good opportunity to practice being vegetarian.
If you are over a certain age or on medications you do not have to fast.

Instead you can choose to deny yourself something like choclate, alcohol, a holiday, a cake, watching TV or using the social media, something that you usually really enjoy doing. The main thing is to deny yourself, so it should feel slightly uncomfortable like a discipline, then you can pray and repent of sins.
It is also a time for acts of charity or kindness, a time for alms giving.

I myself am fasting every Friday before Easter now, some people do more or some people do less(all depending on health, age or lifes circumstances) For some they will just give up meat for the Friday, others do a full fast. If you do a full fast you can eat after sunset and before sunrise. You can drink water but not have any solid food during the day on which you fast.

It is a time to draw nearer to God to depend on him, to pray and read Holy books such as the Bible or other Christian books including poetry that inspires devotion to God. You can pray for certain things like healing or forgiveness or for a good cause.

The main purpose is to come  closer to God as we depend on his help to get us through the day of fasting. To show gratitude, being grateful for what you do have,  like the basics of life like a shelter, a home,  enough food, money, clothes to wear and so on. Being thankful to God.

🌷🌻🌺🦋🌾⚘🌼

Still reading the same chapter. I have identified some or all of the topics and some of the ideas noted below.
•  Role of the literary agent   Cultural value and commercial value.
• Ideas of Bakhtin discussed in Unit 17, Chapter 2 and Unit 18, Chapter 3, and those of Heaney in Unit 17, Chapter 2
• Ideas relating to translation (Unit 5)
Collaboration- The contribution of collaboration to creativity in language use has been considered in relation to spoken language. 

•(Unit 3), workplace humour (Unit 2) and grass-roots politics (Unit 17)
•Impact of new technologies. A theme running throughout the module, especially in relation to translation, creation of multimodal texts, grass-roots politics, and commerce and advertising.

Still lots to do reading and taking notes.

(Unit 19 Milton Keynes Open University)

The weather was cold but sunny, when I went out for a walk this afternoon.
I decided to walk through the village rather than across the muddy fields(it had rained earlier on)

What struck me the most, as I walked along the street today, was the silence along the main road. Even though it was Saturday,  there has been hardly any traffic about (especially since the pandemic.)  It reminded me of when we had first moved here from a large industrial town in the late ' 70s

Of course as time went on things changed,  as everyone could afford their own cars. The husband, the wife, the teenage children all owned cars, these stood in their large drives.  Then it was not so quiet anymore, there were so many cars, driving about madly everywhere!

However, today it was like being transported back in time, to those peaceful days again, when we first arrived in this quiet village. A time when there were very few cars about. It was as if time had suddenly gone backwards.

It was not always like this, but today I heard a blackbird singing so sweetly, so clearly, in a nearby tree, birds flew down onto a bird table in one of the gardens, now this was most unusual because it is on the main road leading into the village, so usually lots of cars charging past. But not today!

I stopped to sit on a bench on the quiet market place,  and I closed my eyes. I heard birdsong,  I saw some magpies and several gold coloured finches, who landed close by to where I was seated. 

All that was missing now was the sound of a little flowing fountain, as. you see  in the market places, while on holiday somewhere in Provence in the south of France!

 "Why can't it  always be like this?" I said out loud. Maybe it could? Imagine this scene in the city or town centre. Wouldn't that be wonderful? 

Well one can have a  dream as they say, but wouldn't it be good if it came true?

💭💭🕊🦆🦉🐦🛋⛲🌳🌲🌻

It was such a bitterly cold day today,  that I shivered when I woke up, the weather had turned much colder. I had a runny nose.

Never mind I soon warmed up as I did  quickly my daily house work routine. This included Sweeping up, Washing the floors, dusting and polishing.
All this made me feel a bit warmer. However I still wore 2 leggings, 2 jumpers and 2 pair of socks!

I Stopped to have a coffee mid way through and a snack of Croque monsieur(with quorn sausage in) and
a fried egg. I am not Vegan but I try to be Vegetarian whenever I can. By the afternoon I was a lot warmer.

I then got down to studying. The politics of language and Creativity in a Globalised World.
Chapter 4. Language, Creativity and the politics of Value.
Last week I had enjoyed chapter3 Creativity on sale.
It was a very interesting.chapter.

I read a portion of the chapter today and I wrote down notes in my digital notebook.

I am so amazed that I have even come this far in my degree.  After everything I have been through, bereavement (my sister), family illness, looking after my son and the latest rising costs of living, which is very hard and crippling for me.
Well, I suppose that is the life of a student !

Unfortunately, I don't seem to be having all these great fun parties that everyone is supposed to be having!
             
🥂🍾🍷🍹🍺 😒

Does anyone know what these are?

In Political discourse
Why is the creative-aesthetic dimension so common?
There are three possible reasons

1. First, creativity is a fundamental aspect of human life; therefore, it is not surprising that it is also evident in political discourse.

2. Creativity, as understood in Bakhitinian terms as a carnivalesque activity, often involves transgression of conventional social, cultural and political norms which can be mobilised for more planned political purposes, such as challenges to established authorities and the status quo.

3. In the twenty first century for a range of reasons, not least to the material means of cultural production through the use of the internet, there seems to be what Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999, p95) call a 'heightened reflexitivity'
this refers to the fact that people are paying increasingly explicit attention to discourse, both in the production of discourse for particular purposes(buying, selling, persuading, etc.) and in the production of self(how we talk, dress move, etc.)

        *********************

The importance and potential impact of creating and sharing a banner or meme which laughs at dictators cannot be underestimated !

(Open University)

Today we received our energy bill for this winter quarter and it has doubled!
Despite our best efforts to cut back, like having the heating on for just 1 hour only per day, in the morning (only on the coldest days)
Then to top this insult off, it said on the letter to pay by the 17th March that was yesterday!
My son is in the most vulnerable group. We are on low income.
This is really  evil to treat people like this!
I never voted for this  and the other parties do not seem to offer a better alternative. Can the government not do something to help those consumers who are struggling to pay their energy bill?

What sort of country are we living in?

I thought things were supposed to get better for Britain?  ££££££?

Thank God the weather is getting warmer so we can turn off the heating!

FAT CAT MONEY MEN

Money is the root of all evil.

http://www.heartlight.org.