BADD 2013

Tomorrow is Blogging Against Disablism 2013. This year I shall be writing not one, not two, but three shiny new posts in honour of Blogging Against Disablism Day 2013. This event allows people from all over the world to unite, writing on the theme of disability in our less than perfect society. The perspectives are as broad as you can possibly get, and I hope that my thoughts will help towards creating an interesting snapshot of the lives of disabled people in 2013.

So come back tomorrow for my three posts in honour of #BADD2013!

Mary Beard and the Sheela na gig

Doing my degree was a huge act of faith.  I knew that I would gain lots from the process, but so often a degree is seen as a means to an end - the end being employment.  I remember talking to one of the more coherent taxi drivers who ferried me back and forth from the hospital school I attended.  When I mentioned the possibility of doing a classics degree eventually, he was a bit astounded - who'd ever pay you to classicise?

And although there's not a lot of money in the field, there are positions of employment - jobs which I'm unlikely to ever be able to contemplate.  I'd love to teach in some way, but for the time being at the very least, this is out of the question.  How, then, do I not feel like I wasted the time, effort and money getting my classics degree?

Mary Beard is a classicist who has done very well for herself of late.  I don't think a month has gone by recently when she's not been on the BBC news site (although not always in full toga).  Her blog, A Don's Life, is very successful.  And she's presented some wonderful documentaries.  Of course, if you go on Question Time and deign to offer an opinion...

Have you ever come across a Sheela na gig?  These sculptures (often found on church buildings, particularly in Ireland) depict women spreading their vulvas for...well...the reason's a bit of a mystery.  Some people think that it represents the dangers of female lust.  Others that they're a simple fertility symbol.  I'm inclined more towards the theory that they are an image to ward off evil spirits.  So, why do I mention them?

Well, the furor over Mary Beard's appearance on Question Time resulted in a flood of vile misogynistic abuse on the net. Several times when I've written blog posts, Deb's warned me that there's the potential some twit might start trolling.  But the sad truth is that she's much more likely to be targeted   Women just attract more of this kind of cowardly bullying.

So Mary Beard was targeted - and how did she react?  Well, in my mind at least (which is a very odd mind and in no way representative) she took a leaf out of the Sheela na gig playbook.  Rather than retreating from the comments and insults about her genitalia, she replied, facing evil spirits with the full force of her feminine power (I know...I could hardly bring myself to write 'feminine power'...but bare with me, it is quite late and I lost some sleep last night).

Deb wrote a very important blog post about misogynistic bullying on the net, and she identified two damaging pieces of advice given to women dealing with this kind rubbish.  It's really worth reading the post, but, to very briefly summarise, the advice was to 'be nice' and to 'grow a thicker skin'.  A woman who has been encouraged to act in this way will never be able to deal with abuse head on.  She must ignore it and try to be as nice as possible in the hope of avoiding further attacks.

But Professor Beard did the most powerful thing she could - she named the abuse as clearly as possible.  It takes a lot of courage to actually repeat the nasty things said to you.  I remember my grandmother losing patience with another elderly lady of her acquaintance because she didn't feel capable of repeating in court the threats shouted at her by some yob because it was 'rude'.  Well, if classics as a subject taught me anything, it's that rudeness is sometimes entirely appropriate.  Also, it helps that Mary Beard, having read Catullus and the like, will be familiar with similar levels of rudeness, albeit tempered by poetic genius.  The Sheela na gig exposes her femininity (for whatever reason) creating an image of total honesty and power.  Mary Beard goes on Woman's Hour and uses the word 'vagina'.  In fact, she uses it in relation to her own body.  In doing so, she regains complete ownership of herself*.  And the evil spirits depart.

She has done this for the benefit of those weaker than she.  Those who are harmed more deeply by these silly people.  And what's more, she's calmly addressed the aggressors and, it would seem, has been successful in reforming them (for some time at least - I'm not ever so optimistic about such people) thereby making the world a better place for everyone.

So why do I feel like I didn't waste my time, effort and money getting a degree in classics?  Because my studies have bought my a little closer to heroic figures like Mary Beard.


*Not that I think Mary Beard ever lost ownership of herself - but I think that the abusers felt that they suddenly had some power and rights over her being.  I believe it is this confidence of ownership which allows bullies to do such awful things.  'It's my toy to destroy as I see fit...'

Office Party (A piece of Flash Fiction for Interzone Advent Calendar)

This has been written for TTA Press's yearly Advent Calendar of Flash Fiction (less than 1500 words...or bang on in my case).  As an avid Interzone subscriber, I've fancied giving this a go for a while.  I hope you enjoy it.

---

Office Party

Stephen Whitehead

Distant tinny music filtered along the metal corridors of the Epsilon Class Explorer Vessel, each note collecting a thin coating of rust as it went.  The vast pressure of vacuum caused dissonant groans as the panels of the ship’s skin shifted to bare the load.

Vast pressure of vacuum, she thought, gloomily.  Vast, silent pressure.  Briefly she toyed with the idea of spacing the entire worthless lot of them as they gyrated and flirted their way towards a paralytic coma.

“Christmas...” she sighed.

She’d grown up an Ep-Ex rat, living her entire life in the confined space of a ship designed exclusively to travel as far and as cheap as possible.  Not for her verdant vistas.  Even when they found an interesting spot in the galaxy, she stayed firmly in the cabin which was home, work and comfort.  She flew.  The crew explored.

The crew.  Every three years a new bunch of candidates.  Slung deep through the void on a gravity well and then cruising the solar currents in search of something new, interesting and, preferably, extraordinarily valuable.  Bunch of warp-drive wannabes.  Not one had any idea what their life would become.  They dreamt of glory and adventure but soon realised they’d have to drink away the next three years of their life or go mad in the dark expanse she so loved.

“The child is a King, the Carollers sing,

The old has passed, there's a new beginning...”

Not that drinking your life away was always a bad idea, she thought to herself, head dropping in defeat.

The damp tinsel tacked with hot glue and hope to the bulkheads wafted in the scant airflow afforded by the recirculation unit.  The goldish fronds clumping like some wet animal.

It was at that point her entirely relative calm was broken.

Judd was a typical adventuring space pirate quarterback.  Why a six foot four pile of muscle and teeth would take a job in the cramped confines of a space craft, she couldn't....well, actually, she could guess.  On his bare bicep was a passable representation of the ship complete with the date of departure and, rather optimistically she felt, return.  This was to be his great story.  No doubt he had already picked out the rocking chair from which he would recite great tales of daring do to the hundred or so grandchildren he could already name.  Juddson.  Judd Jnr Jnr.  Juddette.

“Join us!”  He gestured with a foamy bottle of many-times-recycled beer.

“I’d rather not.”  She turned away to the rows of instruments – lights with every right and reason to flash multicoloured.  This, however, did not deter him.

“Captain, I really feel like we've not hit it off like I wish we had...”

She aimed an eyebrow at him, usually enough to send any one of them scurrying.  But not Judd, probably thanks to numbing cheer.  He merely slumped into the worn foam sling-shaped navigator’s perch, his bulky knee thudding against her dainty zero-g adapted joint.

“ I've got a story for you!” he enthused, his face bursting into a sly grin.

“Ooooohhhh...” his face fell and she marginally corrected the nosedive of her response, “...good.”  Her tone didn't rise with any hint of enthusiasm, but a lack of outright threat seemed enough to convince Judd that his story was perhaps the greatest idea he’d ever had.  To be fair, she thought, this could well be the case.

“There was this other Epsilon class a few years back a mate of mine was on, came across a habited world covered in the greenest grass you've ever seen.  Fruit growing everywhere.  Only two species of sentient life on the whole planet – some sea mammals look like bright orange whales filtering algae in the seas – and these furry little primates who harvest fruit on the land.  No biggie, right?  No real trade potential – the algae wasn't bad, but eat a bowl and you end up as orange as the whales.”

Despite herself, the captain snorted – the irony of a drink-flushed boy criticising those of unusual hue was unintentionally hilarious.

“No language, no buildings, no clothes even.  They spent all year wandering around naked eating fruit and getting fat.  They sound simple, right?  But they had this weird orb thing, some kind of computer.”  He flicked idly at a kumquat-sized glittery bauble precariously attached to the main engine core release.  “ Didn't seem to actually do anything for them, but every few days the primates came over and pressed their hand against it,” he let the shiny ball roll against his hand, “and there’s this flash of light and...well...nothing.  Tech guys figured it to be some kind of scanner.”

She was impressed, thinking that the orb would turn out to be a weapon and the story inevitably descend into epic, culminating in an intergalactic battle for Truth, Honour and probably some kind of apple based pudding.

“So, anyway, as they’re observing, winter comes by,” he gestured around at the tinsel, as if it spoke of something as organic as a season,  “and by come by, I mean WHAM, two days later the grass is all sparkly white and even the seas have iced over.  The whales dived deep and entered some kind of hibernation.  But top side is where it gets interesting.”

He leaned closer, voice dropping.  She could smell the stale booze on his breath and the biological results of scant water reserves.  His eyes, though, still sparkled and she found herself unwilling to halt the story.

“When warm, the little guys were all spread out across the land.  But as soon as it got chilly, they scurried back to the orb, clustering around it like it was some great big heater.  And the techs said that yes, it was giving off a faint heat.  Like, maybe, a couple cups of coffee-worth!  But still, they snuggled up close to it, maybe ten thousand of ‘em.  We threw up an IR filter, and sure enough, right at the centre they were warm as an ostrich in clover,”

She blinked, but he didn't pause.  Or explain.

“...and they kept moving, milling around like a mass of electrons circling the nucleus of an atom.  But those little electrons, they started to fade.”

He flicked the sparkly decoration, sending it spiralling around madly.  Light caught and flickered across the room.  Irritated, she grabbed at it, carefully lifted it from the bank of switches, placed it under the heel of her boot, and with one deliberate squeeze, shattered the delicate ball.

He gulped.

“Get on with it, okay?”

“Okay,” he mumbled, suddenly much less sure of himself.  “Er, the ones on the edge started to die.  Just not warm enough, right?  But their friends didn't stop to mourn or bury or burn or whatever.  They just kept moving with three or four dying every hour.    Soon there was a thick wall of furry frozen bodies surrounding this circle of little guys buzzing about.  And the more died, the less the wind got in.  But the less heat they were all producing.  So it kept pretty stable.  And this carried on for well over a hundred cycles, them getting thinner and thinner and the bodies piling up.”

She almost asked why no one did anything to stop this, but everyone knew that you couldn't interfere.  You could convince them to sign away half the wealth of their entire planet in exchange for a plastic singing Santa (and given the distant rendition of ‘Rocking Around the Christmas Tree’, she could almost support that policy), but stop a race from wiping themselves out and suddenly you weren't respecting their cultural autonomy.

“And all the time they kept touching this orb thing.  It was only by the time the numbers were way down, less than a hundred, we realised that the flash of light changed with the different beings.  What’s more, the shorter the flash, the closer to the edge they then went.  The longer the flash, the closer to the centre they stayed.  Until finally only two were left.  And on that day, the winter lifted.  The grass was green in a few hours.  But,” suddenly the greasy smile returned, “there was one thing the pair were left to do...”

She looked at him, could barely bring herself to say it.  “Repopulate the planet?”

His face split open, emanating an horrific glee like radiation.

“Well I thought we might just start with dinner, but OKAY!”

As he leaned towards her, she thrust an arm forward, her nimble fingers catching his flushed nose like a prize salmon.

“All that was some kind of,” she paused, letting sufficient bile rise to colour her words bright green, “COME ON?”

He was struck dumb, the stinging pain of his predicament causing tears to leap to his suddenly fearful eyes.

She sighed, letting go of him abruptly so that he tumbled from his seat and landed in a crumpled mess on the chequer plate deck.

“Christmas.” she muttered under her breath as she left the room.

Shhhh!

As with most things, I'm rather behind the times.  It's been many months since most of the arguments to combat the closure of libraries in the UK have been made.  People have been impassioned.  Placards have been waved.  And so it's now, after all of that, that I've decided to blog about it.

Having said that I'm behind the times, like most classicists, I can be surprisingly modern.  I bought a digital camera when they were still very rare (one of those Sony machines which stored the data on 3.5" floppy disk!  When they still measured things in imperial...), I have not one, but two Raspberry Pis and, if I had my wish, a flat screen television would rise up from the foot of my bed (I said I was modern, not that I have taste).

Why then would the disappearance of libraries matter to me?  The great meta-data cloud of the internet can provide us with, in some cases, a lot more information than can be gleaned in a wood pulp collection, and, what's more, in a fraction of the time.  Books sold on the internet are relatively cheap and easily found.  As much as I miss the excitement and sensual pleasure of browsing in a tiny book shop, I don't mourn the passing of these institutions in the same way.

But that's because they weren't institutions, they were businesses.  One of the many wonderful things about a library is that profit really should not enter into its ethos.  I think that this is one of the reasons that they have fallen foul of the twenty-first century.  'Profit as worth' is a concept which has trampled on places like these.

What then can we get from a non-profit space?  Everything else!  And do you know how I know this?  Because of my dreams...

I have nightmares every night.  It's to do with my body reacting to pain.  Some nights they're not too bad, others they're awful.  But they are usually very interesting and vivid.  I have many repeated themes that would, no doubt, fascinate any budding psychotherapist.  But let us concentrate on the dream image of the library.

In my sleepy brain, a library can house almost anything - violent struggles (blood on the crinkled spines), intrigues (whispered conversations behind the shelves), quests (the rows and rows of books leading on for miles and miles) and...well...best leave it there in case I give too much away and sentence myself to a prolonged period of incarceration and therapy.

There is a very good reason why my brain can site so many different genres of action in one space.  A library can be a huge number of things.  It is an open, public space.  It does not discriminate on lines of gender, age, ability, literacy or even taste (you should have seen the number of x-files "novels" I borrowed as a kid).  People can gather for events (book readings, IT courses etc) and there are facilities entirely apart from the bound pages (in our library there were computers, a photocopier and spaces at which one could work).

When I was talking to Deb about this, she very sensibly pointed out that spaces of congregation were disappearing - fewer people go to church and the associated meeting groups.  Libraries worked in a similar way.  We as a species are bettered by being around a wide group of individuals.  We learn to tolerate and understand the true meaning of 'diversity' outside of political spiel.  It also gives a place which you don't necessarily need to drive to.  There's a reason why there were always a good number of pensioners wafting around the shelves.  It's a cheap, warm and safe venue.

And although I'm an advocate of actually owning books (if you buy enough of them, they act like a second layer of insulation on the walls of your dwelling), there are many advantages to being able to borrow them for free.  I developed much of my taste for fantasy and science-fiction literature through the dedicated shelf of my local library.  And I did this at a time when I desperately needed an otherworld to disappear into.  Escapism, though, was just one of the gifts given to me.

I remember as a child my entire primary school class going to the library to become members.  As cultish as that sounds, it was a rite of passage of which I heartily approve.  We all got our library card which we had to keep safe (it was made of porous cardboard too, not some kind of indestructible plastic.  If we wanted to keep borrowing books, we had to look after that thing!).  With the card we were able to take out our first book - and we did, the entire class.  I wish I could say that I remember which book I got out.  I only know that it was a reference book and so was probably about dinosaurs.

When studying for my A-levels via distance learning, I went to the library to study.  There was absolutely no practical reason to do this - I had all the information I needed in my course folder and I was comfortable working in my bedroom/study.  But I knew that studying in a library was something that people did.  So I travelled to the library on my mobility scooter, set myself up at a desk, and did my best to work for however long I could stand it (probably an hour).  I think in the handful of times I did this I read about twenty A4 pages and wrote less than five hundred words.  It was not energy efficient.  But I have that experience - sat at the shiny desk, trying my best to concentrate in this environment that was entirely shared.  It is a memory which makes me smile.

And then there's the issue of choice.  You can walk into a library and chose any book you want.  True, you have to make it past the judging eyes of the librarian ("Ground Zero by Kevin J. Anderson AGAIN?") but if you can cope with that, then you have the option to try everything with absolutely no monetary risk.  And so this place which you don't have to travel far to visit gives you access to a vast geography of knowledge and taste.  It really can open up eyes to new ideas.  And that's something we really need - new ideas and greater scope.  And we need that to be based in a space which is free from the tyranny of profit based worth.

So save the libraries!  If there are any left by now...

The Idiocy of Recent Statements About Rape

Just to warn you, this post discusses rape and ignorant attitudes regarding the subject.

Last week Deb wrote a rather amazing post about some of the things we can do to prevent rape.  It was very well received.  Indeed, even her hero, Captain Awkward, retweeted and mentioned it.  And so she should, as it was very important.  It addressed some of the errors people make in campaigns to reduce incidents of rape whilst also pointing out the behaviours we can do our best to stamp out.  You Really Must Read It.

After having written it, however, the proverbial has most definitely hit the air circulation device.  There have been several things in the news which fly in the face of Deb's advice.  Obviously the people involved did not listen to me and read the post.  So, I feel that I should go through and list some of the mistakes people have been making, most of which are covered by point no. 7 on Deb's list;

Use The Word Rape to Describe Rape.

Julian Assange has been accused of a crime.  It is entirely beyond me to know whether he has or hasn't committed this crime.  That is what the legal system is for.  However, rather than relying on the process of that system, there seems to have been another tactic used.

Denial that the act of which he's accused is rape.

Although, as I say, I don't know if he's guilty or not, I find this difficult.  If I had been accused of rape, my first act would be to address my guilt rather than to quibble over what is or is not rape.

But quibble people have.  Most recently George 'Meow' Galloway has waded in.  He has suggested that raping a woman while she is asleep (and so unable to consent - hence rape) is 'bad manners'.  Even now, having been condemned and given the chance to retract his statement, he has not.

"What occurred is not rape as most people understand it. And it's important to note that the two women involved did not initially claim it."

As most people understand it.  Well now, this is part of the problem.  Mr Galloway is not human as I understand it - if he were he would be unable to say such a thing.  However, I understand that my belief of what constitutes humanity is in contradiction to what biology and, sadly, the law states.  If I wanted to, I could brutally murder a spider (if I were brave enough to get close to one in the first place, that is) with no legal comeback.  However, if I were to do the same thing to Mr Galloway, I would be rightly charged and convicted for the act.

If I went about expressing my view of Mr Galloway's lack of humanity enough, I might even be able to convince people to join me.  Soon, with enough voices chanting, he might become sub-human in the eyes of society.  It's happened before.

That is the power of belief.  And so we have to chant;

Rape is rape.

It might also be worth addressing the rest of the above quote - the two women did not report it initially.  Oh well then, that makes it so clear.  Because every victim of rape marches straight up to the nearest police station and reports the crime.  Because that's an easy thing to do when there are silly people out there muddying the waters by suggesting that what most people understand as rape is something other than what they have experienced.  As Deb says, 'So often accounts of rape begin, “I wasn't raped, but this thing happened to me once where I was forced to have sex against my will...”'

People are raped and don't report it.  Proper statistics seem a bit impossible to me, but take this Independent article from March of this year;

'One in 10 women has been raped, and more than a third subjected to sexual assault, according to a major survey, which also highlights just how frightened women are of not being believed. More than 80 per cent of the 1,600 respondents said they did not report their assault to the police, while 29 per cent said they told nobody – not even a friend or family member – of their ordeal.'

So the women weren't raped because they didn't report it, George?  Please.

The problem with the Assange situation is that he is a hero to many people on the left.  But in their desire to protect their hero, they are making the lives of those who have been raped so much harder.  They are also painting a very damaging image of sexual life.

Not that I blame this entirely on Assange and the left.  You just have to read some of the dodgy articles in both men's and women's magazines to see a very dangerous image of a sex-life which is both aggressive and plain weird (read point no. 5 in Deb's post).  And then there are things like the 'romantic' scenes in stories like Twilight.  Stalking behaviour is somehow elevated into something sexy.

Galloway's initial interview paints a picture of a man who, when acting properly, wakes up the love of his life and says,

"'scuse me, do you mind if I put it back in again, please?'

*cringe*

I think this is where plain sense should overcome anything else.  If this is your image of right and proper...then something serious is wrong.

In America, the problems with rape have been somewhat different, and yet entirely the same.  No. 7 has been breached but so has all scientific (rather than just legal) reality.  I would be amazed if you'd not already heard the specifics, but in brief;

Todd Akin has suggested that women suffering 'legitimate rape' are able to magically protect themselves from getting pregnant.  Challenged on this he has claimed to have used either 'a wrong word' or 'wrong words' depending on which interview you read.  He does not, however, specify which of those words were wrong.

Obviously the whole thing is wrong.  It is scientifically, factually, morally and in all ways WRONG.  As I understand it (and I am no expert in American politics) his motives for saying and, presumably, believing such a thing is that if this were the case then it would help to support his anti-abortion stance.  If this were the case he can then say that only women wanting to get pregnant will get pregnant.  So there's no need for abortion.

As leaps of logic go, it makes Sonic the Hedgehog's jumping abilities look like, well, mine.  But as well as the logic and science flaws, we have a concept of different kinds of rape.  Legitimate and illegitimate.  The crime is once again something that can be question.  Was it really rape?  Well, you did fall pregnant, so you must have wanted it.

Well, you didn't report it straight away, so it can't be rape.

Well, you were in bed with him, so you were asking for it.

Well, you did put on the short skirt...

Well, you did go out walking in that neighbourhood...

Well, did you do everything you possibly could have done to stop him...?

It is heartbreaking seeing the look in someones eyes when they come to terms with the fact that they were raped.  It is heartbreaking when someone questions what rape is, questioning what a victim has experienced.  It is heartbreaking seeing what is, effectively, another violation and the change in their body language as the damage hits home.

But because of the fear that we might have to witness someone we love dealing with the aftermath of rape, because we might know someone who could have committed rape, and because, ultimately, we might have acted in such a way that we could be a rapist, we question the definition of rape and the validity of the experience of victims.  That is nothing less than absolute cowardice, if not significantly more.

And by we, I mean men.  Every one of the idiots involved in these things have been men.  They talk with such authority and absolute arrogant certainty and don't stop for a second just to question what it is that they're saying.  And the scary thing is, you get the feeling they wouldn't stop to question what they're doing either.

We need to question ourselves.  Men need to look at the things we do and think and say.  We need to listen to the experiences of women and understand.  And when we find other men saying stupid things, we have to speak out, lest those we love and care for are hurt.

Pi squared

You know, I don't know how I managed to miss the PlyPi from my list of achievements.  Although I listed artistic achievements, and the Raspberry Pi case was included vaguely along with that, I was trying to deal, at the time, with getting a couple of photos ready for an exhibition.  But I think it's fair to say that, other than one or two popular photos on Flickr, the PlyPi is my biggest achievement in terms of public reaction.

And today there's more!  Jon Yoemans has written a piece for ZDNet which features, along with seven other brilliant Pi enclosures, the PlyPi.  And I couldn't be more proud.

So here's a link - read and enjoy.

And if you've not seen it already, here's the Venture Beat article which has been drawing people to my blog for a good few weeks now.

Rest assured, I have more ideas for Pi cases and, fingers crossed, I will soon have the means, time and energy (all of which are in short supply) to put some together.

Thank you to everyone who have said such kind and supportive things about my work.  Being a poorly type means that so many of my achievements are small and unrecognised.  This is all rather...strange.  But nice.

EDIT 2013 - PLANS NOW AVAILABLE

5/5 Going for Gold

Being traditionally British, success is a difficult concept for me.  I've been bought up to believe that taking part is the most important thing and that actually lifting the gold cup is actually a bit excessive, a bit immodest, a bit OTT.  We are programmed to say "Well, it's nothing really" and downplay success.  It's no coincidence that Ali's "I am the greatest!" came from supple American lips, not stiff British ones.

So please accept how tricky this blog post is to write.

I have been tremendously successful recently.  Even when I've not been.

Let's start with the easy stuff.  Already this last week I have written about;

• My birthday and how well it went - no family rows, no trauma, no thrown birthday cake (only one dropped one, and that didn't do it much harm) and no unwanted socks.  Instead I got everything I wanted and more.  We all enjoyed the day in an easy and comfortable way.  And I did not suffer any anxiety about entering my third decade.

• Although I didn't enjoy the film ever so much, I was able to see the theatre production of War Horse.  Although this might not seem like a tremendous achievement, it did mean travelling into London and surviving the theatre production and trip back home.  It was a big day and I suffered for it.  But the memories, as you could probably tell, live on in a very positive way.

• I am engaged.  Enough said.

• I photographed an outdoor theatre production in the dark with a 300mm zoom lens.  Not many people do that kind of thing and I believe that I do it very well indeed.  I can get into the rhythm of Shakespeare and use that to help guide when I press the shutter.  I hope that my photos make some of the cast smile, especially given how much they make me smile.

• I am most of the way through a book which I am not enjoying, but which I can not enjoy in an educated and enlightened way because of the work I've put into my education along with a natural skill with literature and narrative.

And on a similar vein;

• I have completed a degree in Classics and made it into London (again!  And I don't even like the capital!) to graduate.  Because of this I feel I have a set of knowledge I can use to rubbish incredibly successful novels.  And also to enlighten and inform anyone who wishes it.

• I have two photos ready to go into an exhibition in a couple of weeks time.

• I am learning Latin and ukulele and loving both.

• I am producing art in various forms.

• I am helping people in many ways, including practical things (I helped with a Holiday Club for children by sorting out IT issues) and more airy fairy emotional stuff.

Of course, life cannot be all success.  But when things go wrong, increasingly I feel that this just becomes another possibility for success.

I recently found out that my blood pressure and cholesterol were both raised.  Given that, due to my health, I cannot exercise, this means that my chance of heart attack or stroke are quite significantly raised.  Obviously this is a pretty bad thing, but since then I've been working hard on both diet and stress.  I have cut my salt intake (which was hard, because I didn't ever overload on salt) and reduced the amount of saturated fats I'm eating.  I've not had a single rasher of bacon in over three weeks now.

And the interesting thing is that success in this is not measured by the reduction in BP or cholesterol (my BP has reduced somewhat...although whether enough or not, I'll let my GP decide) but in how well I've made the change in diet.  I'm not doing anything with my diet that is hurtful or upsetting.  I'm still really enjoying the food we eat.  That's very important to me - food is a huge element of my sensual enjoyment of life.

Likewise, I've been trying my best to relax.  This one is harder and perhaps less of a success.  But I've found new images to use in an attempt to meditate and reduce BP, heart rate and such.

And even when health gets in the way of something like my planned blog a day for a week, it actually allowed me to include something more.  And my blogging has just extended into the weekend which is no problem at all.  And this morning when I've been awake early with pain, I've been able to concentrate on writing this.

So I really do feel that I am succeeding in life.  I don't believe that I am the greatest, but I'm beginning to feel that I'm getting close to being the best I could possibly be, and what's more, I'm accepting of the things that limit how much I can achieve.

Of course, I'm not always this enlightened.  I still get frustrated and angry.  I still sometimes forget my successes and dwell on the things that I wish I were doing.  But on the whole I feel...comfortable.

And the good thing about seeing all this success is how excited that makes me feel about the future.  Because if I'm succeeding now, then there's no reason why that shouldn't continue into the future.

The future's bright - the future's gold.