Holiday 😃 😃 😃

Zhongshuge bookshop, Guiyang, China. Be still my beating heart. I’ll just put a little camp bed in one aisle and I’m all set. What a beautiful space; Li Xiang, architectural genius, I salute you.

Le Mistral gift shop, Tokyo. If I could have my own store……….

Hello, pop pickers. Now, there’s a retro greeting for y’all. Sorry I haven’t posted in a while – it has been an absolutely mental couple of weeks but things have finally settled down. I’m a woman of leisure at the moment, apart from finishing the blasted photo images for this site. Tablets, perfect. Smartphones, perfect. Laptops, not so much. I had to stop because I lost the will to live. If any of you are expert at getting Woocommerce product images to stop being blurry, for the love of God, please get in touch. I have the week off and I was considering going away but 1) I’m too cheap to pay the £400 for a couple of days and 2) I can’t face the airport hullaballo. I don’t know why the eco-warriors bother with demos; just get the government (whoever they may be this week…) to make travelling even more unpleasant and we’ll all stay at home. I’ll mostly be staycationing in London. I may even get on one of those tourist buses and pretend I’m a tourist. Read more

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What Is Truth?

Ta-dah! The re-jig of this lovely website continues. We finally had the photos done properly but the ongoing saga with that is such that the wretched pictures which are crystal-clear in other contexts are coimg out blurred on the products pages. Aaarrrghhh! Anyway, that can be fixed (surely?) but they are really nice pics. More about them when they are in properly.

So, what a fortnight. The limpet PM finally got dislodged although she’s still in residence , refusing to take the hint as usual. What a shower! I’m not a fan but I think I’ll go easy on the invective as this is after all a company blog, not that you’d notice from all the other rants I’ve gone on. Theresa May is an irrelevance, it’s just a shame she was allowed enough latitude to do such harm to the country. She didn’t do it alone though, equal shame goes to all the MPs and civil servants who sought to subvert a democratic vote and help turn the UK into a laughing stock. For the first time I actually heard people speculating about the government fixing votes and ballot boxes going missing, such is the mistrust of the populace. How did things get so bad without us noticing? Bread and circuses of course – we were all busy watching Love Island or BGT or following some pathetic Royal non-drama, we assumed our democracy was rock-solid and took our eyes off the ball. Read more

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Home Thoughts

Oh to be in Somerset now Spring is here, to paraphrase R. Browning

Tell me why I don’t like mondays…… Had a most excellent weekend and now back to reality, boo, hiss. I spent Saturday messing around in the countryside; I had to go to Crewkerne in Somerset and it was a perfect day for driving. God help me when we all have our cars confiscated to save the planet – I’m working on a scheme to run an engine on potato spirit, I’ll keep you posted. I realised how much I love driving when I was making a journey from Manchester to the Southern coast. The bossy lady on Google Maps said ‘Take the first exit at the roundabout and drive for 186 miles’, and I started smiling. That’s when I knew I had a problem. So, there I was ambling down winding country roads, birds were twittering, the sun was out, and the place names were brilliant: Staple Fitzpaine, Thornfalcon, Hatch Beauchamp, and my personal favourite, Wreath. Rural England is ridiculously beautiful in Spring; you ought to see the wildflowers in the hedgerows. I also saw fields full of wretched crows helping themselves to the winter wheat. Read more

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High Jinks

Meredith Frampton: Trial and Error

William Goscombe John: A Boy at Play

Arthur G Walker: Christ at the Whipping Post

Dora Gordine: Javanese Head

The best week of 2019 so far. I received news this week that was so good, it made me nauseous. Do you ever get that? I inherited it from my Mum, it’s a classic response to ‘stress’. I got the news on Thursday evening and immediately felt like throwing up. I couldn’t even contemplate dinner until 10.30pm. God help me if I’m ever nominated for an Oscar (yes, it could so easily happen! What do you mean I’m not an actress? Have you seen some of the winners…..Just kidding) It’s really odd actually; on a scientific level, I find it quite interesting. The body diverts the blood supply from non-essentials like the gut and sends it to the heart and brain instead and adrenaline floods my system. When it’s good news, I feel sick but when it’s bad news or a threat, I get total focus as I try to figure out how to battle my way out of it. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t get headaches when I’m stressed. I can probably count the total number of headaches I’ve had in my life and they’re usually linked to a physical cause- cerebral malaria anyone? I highly don’t recommend it. My mother was the same, in fact I don’t ever recall her getting a single headache. But the stomach-clutching stress response? Oh yeah. It’s as good as a genetic marker, I’ve seen any number of maternal relatives manifest the same symptoms. Don’t you just love Biology! So Mum, thanks a lot for the intense nausea and crystal-clear brain 🙂 (This experiment can be skewed by the addition of tequila by the way) More about the good news anon.

Nearly as good was the local elections. As usual I was up at 2am reading newspapers online. When I couldn’t find any exit polls I knew the jig was up and went to bed with a beatific smile. At 9am some poor sap was wheeled out by the Tories to inform us that even though they’d lost 400 seats with only a third of the council returns counted, they were still hoping for a total loss of 800 at the most and 500 would practically be a win, I mentally made some popcorn and settled in for an entertaining day. Read more

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Be Still My Soul

Well, last week was pretty ghastly. Not that anything in particular happened but it was just filled with conflict and stress and fatigue. My tolerance level seemed to have diminshed significantly; you know when you have that feeling that you’re surrounded by buzzing bees and can’t get away? The only time I didn’t feel like that was when I felt like a bird dashing itself against the door of a cage. And yet, nothing really happened to precipitate this; just battle-fatigue. So, by last night my prayers had become something along the lines of…. “This is crazy, I’m so exhausted, why is everything so difficult, you said, you said, do as you promised, do as you promised…. (ad nauseaum for 45 minutes)” Quite frankly, if I were God, I’d have a mute button. It would be: “Dearest Father, it’s me again. Let me tell you about my awful day. First of all…..” CLICK! 🙂 Fortunately for me, God is not like me. Crashed out on the sofa, went to bed at 5am (don’t ask). Had one of those wonderful anxiety dreams when you’re sitting your finals but don’t have time to get to the hall…. Awesome. I haven’t had one of those for yonks. So, I did not wake up refreshed. Woke up an hour before the alarm time thinking what the helling hell. Thought, OK, read Isaiah 40 again, it’s what I read last night and it’s a firm favourite. Opened the Bible, Psalm 121 “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord”. Me to God, “well, you can forget that for a start” Scowl. 🙁

So, I ran my bath, put in half a litre of Jasmine & Citron bath oil, lolling in the bath, reading magazines, and came across the excerpt above, illustrated with a picture of our products. The very first article in my entire born life that name-checked Alara Apothecary. I didn’t even know that they’d visited our stockist. How thrilled was I? You’ve no idea. And yes, I know it’s Somerset Living, not Vogue, but it is so thrilling and I’ve learnt to count my blessings. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a small cloud the size of a man’s hand. And God said, “You were saying?”, and I said, “I’m  natural born idiot, I repent in dust and ashes”. And yes, I did go to the evening service, and yes, the final song was from Isaiah 40, as was the random text a friend sent me this afternoon. Surely God is good to Israel, and to me also. Have a week full of blessings and divine grace.

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