A quote for today... by Isaac Newton..

We build too many walls and not enough bridges

I know I normally put a quote at the end but this deserves top placement me thinks!

Weather is perfect here now... Sounds like déjá vu so maybe already said this... but I just don't care, it really actually is perfect... It feels like a breathe of fresh air, it feels like new beginnings and adventure and getting started.. it feels like onwards upwards and don't stop to think... just feel the moment, and breathe it in.

Which is very contradictory to how I feel coming up from the coast, especially in the evenings, feel detached from here, feel apart some how.

Anyways, mince pies and large Christmas selection of chocolates available here now in Spain, so Christmas has come early, still September after all! Just until tomorrow!

I'm enjoying working on a book for someone, and having small light-bulb moments, or epiphanies as I remember stuff I thought I'd forgotten..

Friends and neighbours all about me seem to be having lives of the unexpected just like me, so maybe that's just life and I thought it should all run smoothly and happily forever and ever... Amen!

M.

 

I know this is a strange photograph, just that I wondered where it had come from.. expected the word China.. 

So yes I Googled... There are 195 or 197? Different countries in the world and I for one cannot name them all.. by far.. 

So this was the answer for *Chian

Chian

/ˈkʌɪən/

adjective

1. relating to or characteristic of the Greek island of Chios or its inhabitants.

   "a Chian merchant"

noun

1. 1.

   a native or inhabitant of the Greek island of Chios.

   "the Chians arrived in Sparta"
2. 2.

   a variety of red wine from the Greek island of Chios that was considered valuable in antiquity.

   "Anacreon drank Chian with Helas's sages"

I still think it's just a spelling error though..

My last full day here in Blighty and home tomorrow... Been beautiful week here and a little rain at home.. 

I have a list to complete, and important things to do, times ticking and every day is so important.. a poster Tony and Addie have says.. "Live Slow"

I think I should have that on my chalk wall at home.. we're all so busy moving fast, the days turn into weeks into months and years.

How often we say things like that movie is thirty years old.. or I read that book forty years ago.. how often we sound like our parents and in time grandparents.. We are just blips on this planet, making a life, changing the life of others if we can for the good... Others tearing us apart.. 

We want to feel we are all doing this life for some reason, maybe at the end of days we'll know why, maybe we won't, whatever our beliefs if we're right we'll know.. or not.

So tomorrow back home, and I must do better and getting things done that need doing!

M.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

W. Somerset Maugham - 1874-1965 - Novelist-Short-Story Writer-English Playwright

 

Beautiful sundial in a local Garden centre.. we went last weekend..

Pancakes at Bill's.. in Welwyn Garden City.. Meant to try a drink there that sounded so good, the Golden Latte.. wondering if they deliver! 

Another beautiful day, been one day a little cloudy, and a few minutes of drizzle... But walk to walk sunshine the rest of the time.. 

Soon be time to go back home, onwards and upwards.. 

M.

I have to trust what I do and then do it.

Ednita Nazario - Musician-Singer-Composer

Just looking through photographs to send something, a reminder of drinks up the Duff; and came across this face.. just loaded to Facebook actually.. as seeing her here on my phone gripped my heart so tightly..  my breathe caught..

Wish I could go back to then, to the Duff, the coffee and long deep conversations.. then get in our cars and drive home.. to what was, although I know things that have happened since along our paths we can't change, and however we got here, some good has come, happy things, beautiful moments.. things we also wouldn't want to change ... There has been, and continues to be pain.

But just some time, just a little.. of what was... Would be both amazing and the worse heartbreak again..

I know we can't, shouldn't look back, should only focus on the here and now and make every moment count.. 

But I've always looked the wrong way.. one day I'll be doing that and get hit by an elephant! 

Or life...

M.

So as per the norm.. wake up about 4am these days, same as home, even though I'm in British time.

Thought I'd read one of the many, far too many items I click on, save in a tab, and never get around to reading, it was about memory, about bettering ones memory..

One idea is to ask yourself 'will I remember to do such 'n such.' apparently this uses the hippocampus and can aid memory up to 50%.

And to get memories into our cerebral cortex is to say it out loud! And they say here clever people do this, talk, say things out loud, and this makes the mind hear things differently and therefore, remember them.

The third idea is .. copying this bit..

'Memory consolidation is the process of transforming temporary memories into more stable, long-lasting memories. Even though the process of memory consolidation can be sped up, still: Storing a memory in a lasting way takes time.'

They say to rehearse something for 40 seconds to help with this consolidation.

Well, at now 6am, I hope I remember the above memory ideas..

Spot on 6am the birds have now woken up, the rest of the household sleeps.. 

I'll get back to my book, as the first flight probably out of Stansted passes overhead and my need for coffee kicks in!

The quote below also from above article.

M.

...Because ideas without action aren't really ideas...

They're regrets

Jeff Hayden

 

Flying again.. To stay with Tony for ten days and then home.. Feels like a long time I have flown to England for family.. In fact actually I think apart from the states, flying to the UK for family may have been my birthday 2017?

Flight full enough, maybe 80%... Was sharing this line with two men, then they both moved before take off.. Something I said???

Gate number changed three times, and finally boarded at terminal 1! Not been there for many years, the original and only terminal!

The airport was fully open also... This is the first time I've seen it open since I flew March 2020. Armed odd, strange...looked so normal.

This has copied and pasted badly..but no matter.. 

It's Friday now and weather is still nice.. not as warm as home but pleasent enough, nice out walking.. 

I feel I should have more to say.. I always do, I say too much about some things and not enough about others! 

Last few weeks at home have been up and down, spent a lot of time down at Calahonda, nice being where I first lived, permanently, after Fuengirola.. passing old familiar places most days.. Seeing people I know too is really nice. 

I love driving down to the coast and back up through the beautiful mountains, they always look a diff color, green and purple and browns.. amazing at different and every time.. 

I managed at last back in early June to get private healthcare sorted, it's a lot more than I thought and nearly a hundred a month, so time to use it now, get myself checked out and make the most of it! 

It's not staying with it.. I have to finish the year, but I'm back in the Spanish heath system now which is the best news!

And paid off my funeral plan now too! Now that's a bonus!

M.

I'd prepaid my coffee for the flight, my bank card is stuck in my bag, so although I'm hungry no way am i going to try to open.. Or rather close that again!!
Just paused then in thought, looking out of the window and saw a plane flying okay the other way! Hey "Hi! How you doing!" Looked like it was moving at rocket speed, but I guess if we're travelling at 500mph so are they?
Reading a murder mystery book, small quote, a poem.. Quill search it when I'm back with data..
The sorrow of remembering, in present pain, past happiness.
But it is so true, in fact it's what brings me down the most often.

‘There is no better way to fight weakness than with strength.’

Today my vecina and I went for a drive, a magical mystery tour for her and a planned route for me..

My coffee and the sugar with wonderful words.. translated.. 

I drove us to Setenil De Las Bodegas.. one of my favourite places.. 

The words above.. Kiss me in this corner..

I parked almost too far up the road towards Olvera.. where I parked last time I visited.. but we took a different route down to the village.. and I am so glad we did! All the years of visiting and saw a whole new part of Setenil!

Absolutely amazing place..

There were quite a few tourists.. I guess that included us, but we were a bit put out by the fact that no food was served where we had coffee.. nothing, nada, nowt!

On the way there we stopped off in the Sierra de las Nieves.. no snow of course! 

Beautiful.. warm breeze, and stunning as always..

One beautiful September.. 

M.

Just adding a song here.. Jack Savoretti.. such a beautiful song...

Above taken from the flea market down at Calipso so near to where we lived.. 

Strange thoughts this week, one from a conversation talking to someone who is only in their twenties, and how when I was at work up to 19.. even in my mid twenties.. those conversations we have with all those people at work, you know funny things, life things, stories and conversations, 40 years ago.

And although I remember days, odd days, odd moments from work, before I had the children and in my twenties and early thirties.. I don't remember everything,  it's impossible. Those outstanding memories maybe, or even are they just the memory of the memory.. 

I am glad I enjoyed where I worked, Eurocolour,  Clinton's, Mercedes.. good friends, so many strong bonds..

But nowadays, conversations, places I go, things that I do, the memories I'm making now, I'm going to remember really well because I guess.. so little time left really.. even if there is still 30 years... if I'm lucky and well I can't remember from over 40 years ago those things.. and the person I was talking to, I said this conversation now for me I'm going to remember but for you in forty years time you wont and I'll be long gone.

Was a strange thought... But then I do have these strange thoughts don't I!

Today no different, I bought 40 bathroom bin bags because I have run out, yet putting them away I found an unopened packet just the same.. and another 40! A bag lasts me a month! Or more if I decant into the kitchen one.. that's a minimum of 80 months..

We're talking over 6 years!! 

I need to use either more of them a month or get a grip! 

The weird and wonderful thoughts that pass through my mind! Thankfully as I write them down, I can let them go! You on the other hand are left with thinking what the hell is this woman going on about now! Call security!!

Should I even mention a dream I had about my mom? She was sat with me and covered in what looked like down.. (feather down), making her look very pale and ethereal.. with a teeny tiny mouse over one eye! And then three glis glis were chasing eachother.. looked like a family of them.. until they stopped and the big daddy glis glis bit me!

All this with not even a paracetamol or nighttime meal of cheese or whatever else caused weird dreams!

M.

 

September skies are so beautiful in Spain.. Also from October to August of course, but especially September.. Don't know if it's the imminent change of season, of temperature.. the Sahara desert in the atmosphere.. But the cigar clouds begin to form and the sunsets are molten golden..

Although I have to say this morning walking down into town the sunrise at 8am wasn't too shabby either... 

I had a wonderful duo call with my grand-babies this morning, both families in one view... Absolutely wonderful!

M.