"You're gonna be ok"

When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

 

Jenny Joseph

I Hope You Get What You Need

Mummy

I am and always will be a dancer

http://shawnlent.com/?p=1478

6 Things You Thought Wrong About Introverts

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3569058/

High School Training Ground

http://youtu.be/_Il70mlj38o

To This Day by Shane Koyczan

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

One of the most amazing people I have ever known was recently diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder. To know she was struggling with it herself for so long while I knew her to be so caring of others is astounding. A mutual friend of ours posted this for her.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
(Wild Geese - Mary Oliver.)

One Second Every Day

*Started my own One Second Every Day video on 7 February 2013

Iconic Photographs: Vulture Stalking a Child

In March 1993, photographer Kevin Carter made a trip to southern Sudan, where he took now iconic photo of a vulture preying upon an emaciated Sudanese toddler near the village of Ayod. Carter said he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn’t. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. (The parents of the girl were busy taking food from the same UN plane Carter took to Ayod).

The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993 as ‘metaphor for Africa’s despair’. Practically overnight hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had survived, leading the newspaper to run an unusual special editor’s note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown. Journalists in the Sudan were told not to touch the famine victims, because of the risk of transmitting disease, but Carter came under criticism for not helping the girl. ”The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene,” read one editorial.

Carter eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for this photo, but he couldn’t enjoy it. “I’m really, really sorry I didn’t pick the child up,” he confided in a friend. Consumed with the violence he’d witnessed, and haunted by the questions as to the little girl’s fate, he committed suicide three months later.

Vote Britain?

Unlonely

Day in the Life

Browse. Come Home. Cough. Dance. Dream. Drink. Eat. Email. Fall Asleep. Give. Go Out. Phone. Play. Receive. Run. Shop. Sit. Sneeze. Stand. Stroll. Talk. Wake Up. Walk. Work.

Do Wordsearches.

"I want to be a nuurse or a teacha."

"Oh I can just see you with the red pen - do you remember Jo - its almost Freudian that Emily is now the teacher and Jo is the perpetual pupil"

Mum, reminding me of our childhood games - me, the teacher with the essential red pen, checking my homemade school books and inputing the scores in my homemade registers (I was very serious about playing 'schools') and Joanna and her friends always the students. Now I am in Thailand doing exactly that (except the student lists are real) and Joanna is starting her 18th (and possibly not final) year in education.

***

In a video of me when I was around four years old sitting in a chair in my Grandmother's living room, I declare in my strange but cute Scottish influenced English accent that "I want to be a nuurse or a teacha".

Maybe there is something in the innocence of a child's wishes that makes them smarter than the 20-something year old trying to decide what to do with their life...and maybe thinking a little too hard about it.

Desert Island Discs: "When David Heard" - Eric Whitacre

"When David heard that Absalom was slain,
he went up into his chamber over the gate and wept,
and thus he said;

My son, my son,
O Absalom my son,
would God I had died for thee!"

I first heard about this piece because my sister was involved in a concert in which it was performed. During the performance of this song members of the choir began to cry.

*Between 7:30-9 minutes into the song, one of the most emotive pieces of music I have ever heard.

Sensation Thailand

Experienced the 'sensation' that was 'Sensation' on Saturday and I must admit it wasn't as sensational as I had imagined, granted seeing thousands of people all wearing white was always going to be amazing and the dancers and costumes were certainly dramatic but I guess it just wasn't as spectacular as I had envisioned. But definitely still worth it, I had a great night. Highlight: 'O fortuna' in the middle of some hardcore dance beats.

I don't know why I am crying

http://hellogiggles.com/i-dont-know-why-i-am-crying

Ed Sheeran - Small Bump

Brilliant video.

Thailand thus far

Assembly at Joseph Upatham Girls School

Some things I've experienced so far:

1000 girls playing Simon says at morning assembly.

Walking passed 30 elephants on the way to school.

Lovely girls in my class kneeling in front of me and giving me flowers.

Roti.

Hundreds of people stopping for the National Anthem on an extremely busy overpass.

Four people motorcycle ride - David, Me, motorcycle taxi driver, motorcycle taxi drivers' grandson.


A pink VW camper as a cocktail bar.


A lady on a very busy bus offering to hold my (very heavy) bag on her knee so I didn't have to put it on the floor while standing in the narrow aisle.