Receiving, in a Domestic Bubble of Niceness.

This week's blog is a gentle domestic ramble.  It is late, it is sauntering into your lives midweek, and it is very laid back.  I will hint at what I am doing this week, but uppermost in my mind is a need to be in a nice clean house with food in the larder and everyone saying a cheery Morning! in the morning, and Lovely Day! in the afternoon, and More cake? in between.  I have come a long way over the last few years, and am in a position to glance backwards to see what was happening then, and gazing forwards to where I am going next.  I am filled with thoughts of the future, and no real way to articulate them.  So I am placing myself in a position to receive.  I am open to all possibilities, I am going with the flow (providing I agree with the flow), I am watching to see who comes along and what can be done.  Uppermost in my mind is the idea of community.  Something in the community, something useful, something life enhancing, something so simple it is as if we all knew it any way.  I have some ideas.  I have made some contacts.  It is possibly as simple as meeting in a small public place once a month to discuss things.

But now, back to my home and the pleasure of keeping it all ticking along.

Hallway is clean.  Cow is hoovered. All is in order.

I live in a very nice house.  At the moment, we, my four lodgers and I, plus Giant Boy, live in a jolly Bognor bubble of niceness.  The household right now is wonderful, and I am grateful to the house for selecting my current lodgers for me, they make life easy and interesting, and I am very much at one with the choices the house has made.  I always say that this house attracts to it the people it wants, and so we have had some very interesting indications of what the house thinks it needs.  We have had a Polish grandmother who looked like Barbara Windsor, and could not speak a word of English.  We have had a Russian man who left very quickly to live in another country, just in time it seemed, as the debt collectors arrived within a few months. He did leave me his nice new fridge though, which I did not give to the debt collectors.  I felt that they did not need it as much as I did. I have had a Martial Arts expert, an Anxious Pole, a Grumpy Pole, and a quiet Hungarian teacher.  I have had a  nice Pole and a frightened Pole (put here by his sister who was very determined.  He was very young and ran off back to Poland as soon as he could lose his job) and I have learned much about people passing through my life, moving into my house, staying a while, and then moving on.  A new lodger moves in next week, a Sensitive Pole; I have given instructions to everyone here to move slowly and to be aware that he is delicate and may cry.

Giant Boy has been told that to pop out of a doorway and to rugby tackle him may lead to him dying of fright, so he is not to do it on any account.

Giant Boy has found a spiritual home.  He has found a gym where he can be taught MMA, or mixed martial arts, which looks to me like sanctioned attempted murder.  Giant Boy has always had a deep affinity with cage fighting, and has often whiled away an afternoon practising arm locks and hip throws on me, ignoring all my squeals, and only responding when I tap three times.  Last night we watched a huge MMA event on telly, a kind of Mother Son bonding thing, and I saw grown men shake hands, then knock seven bells out of each other and tie each other's limbs into knots, sit on each other's heads and try and stop each other from breathing, before the ref signalled the end of their five minute bouts.  Then they gave each other a hug and that was that.  I'll be doing that one day soon, said Giant Boy excitedly, visibly moved and full of admiration.  I see, I said, trying to imagine him with cauliflower ears and a broken nose like a cartoon gangster.  As long, I say, as they don't pull his fingers out of their sockets, he needs them for his piano playing.  He hadn't thought of that.  Perhaps he will have to wear special gloves, and learn to use his elbows more.

Today I am seeing an new friend in Bognor.  A lady who works in the community on some very imaginative art projects. I want to stick to her like an adoring limpet to see how she works, to get some idea of how to move forward with community based end of life awareness stuff.  She has gamely agreed to allow this, and since she has a fine sense of humour, much of the time we are laughing.  At the end of the week, I am going away to Lancashire, to spend four days in a little cottage near to my friend and colleague Gail, of Elizabeth Way Funerals (http://ant0568.wix.com/elizabethway).  I have often wanted to see how Gail works, so next week I will do so.  Gail has bought a painting too, so this is by way of a fantastic delivery service that includes a holiday, her cooking lunch for me a lot, and a tour of her Funeral Business.

Talking of Funeral Parlours, the very nice man indeed (hello Joe!) at Dying Matters put me in touch with Philip Evans and Sallie Clark at Sussex Funeral Services in Brighton.  http://www.sussexfunerals.com/. Very nice couple, and very inspiring.  Sallie is an artist too, and it was the first time I have seen paintings in an undertakers with swirls of colour and glitter.  The paintings were lovely, and our meeting was full of promise.  I thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon.

There is much more happening, but I am drawn, as I said in the beginning, to mindless domestic ramblings.  So yes, I am completing my last Jesus on the Tube for the Valentine Half the Price Double the Love offer.  Exciting, yes, I have another painting to do for someone for April and gosh.  Yes.  The two AGD events in May are swinging ahead with bells on.  I have been filmed for a taster for a documentary on Soul Midwives and End of Life Care, I have another AGD event in Swansea at the end of the year planned, and I am possibly taking part in a panel of experts (I am the expert on being a member of the community) at a one stop end of life drop in clinic in Brighton, as part of Dying Matters Awareness Week.

But you need to know the washing machine is mended, and that the dishwasher no longer floods the kitchen.  You have to know that I put potatoes in Giant Boy's lasagne in an effort to get him to eat more veg, and that I have hoovered everywhere.  Even the doors.

And so.  Farewell for the time being from a Bognor bubble of niceness.  Time to put the washing out and plan my next meal.  Time for a spot of receiving.

Kitchen is clean and tidy. Flood from washing machine and dishwasher yesterday has cleaned the floor. God is good.