Bloggernacle Barmy


Have you discovered the 'Bloggernacle?'

I have just discovered that my fascination with it is shared: http://www.salon.com/2011/01/15/feminist_obsessed_with_mormon_blogs/

Who'd have thunk it?!

It started inncoently enough with a link to the blog of the subject of an article in one of the Sunday supplements.

Once I had worked my way through that particular blog, in which the writer drooled over her 'cute' husband and posted daily pictures of her many shiny children and I had been instructed how to knit my own car, admired the daily posted pics of 'yummy' home made soup/cake/zucchini with saffron infused home made cheese pie, and effectively managed to dodge the adoring references to the (mostly, I am sorry to report, terrifyingly trite), 'lessons' taught by legions of white middle-aged men who seem to rule the roost in Mormon-Land, I wondered how those who don't 'fit' fitted into this picture.

Amongst the literally thousands of pictures (honestly, I couldn't figure out how she found so much time to bake and breed, when she was at all times weilding a rose tinted camera), there were no scruffy uncles, no single elderly cousins with frizzy hair, no childless friends, disabled seniors, bored looking teenagers and absolutely NO ONE who was anything other than shiny white, so I went searching, and what I found amonst the dozens of other shiny blogs were a few where the writer was trying so hard to 'fit' that it was heart-breaking. Please believe me here when I say with all sincerity that I am not knocking the LDS beliefs and I bow my knee to any society in which kindness, goodness and decency is the expected norm - but why encourage blogging as a method of prothleytising (sp?!) when the vast, vast majority of the readers could only be further alienated by their own obvious lack of 'fit?'

So.... why do I continue to be fascinated by the Bloggernacle? (you may well ask if you've followed me this far!) because - it reminds me every day to be grateful to live in a liberal country, amongst liberal people, where diversity and difference is the norm - and because I really ought to learn to knit my own car and where better to find out?

Happy birthday Angel!




Beautiful wasn't she? It's her birthday on Saturday, she would have been 49, although she'd have still looked 35 and her joyful spirit never did get much further than 17, even though her body made it to 47. We should be sitting on bar stools laughing our heads off whilst drinking Bloody Marys after stuffing ourselves with Calamari - but this year, she'll be hangin' out with Ali and John, Pete, Margaret, Richard and the rest of our mates in Heaven. If there's any justice, St. Peter will be mixing cocktails and they will be smiling down on the tear stained faces of those of us who mourn them.

Grief's a bugger. It's been 18 months since we lost her and 15 months since our dear friend Ali went (at 44 for crying out loud!) to join her. We're making a fist of re-grouping, of making new memories, of moving forward. There have been new babies & grand-babies, new jobs, travels, parties (a couple of truly memorable ones that she would have LOVED) but still, on my birthday a couple of months ago, the special poignancy which comes from us all being together and having a great time, serves to magnify the enormous losses and those of us closest to them both were overwhelmed by the memories and sobbed - not pretty sobbing either - snot ridden red eyed sobbing - and in public!

As the memories of those last terrible months as her body disintegrated and the dreadful pain made her withdraw from us all, are replaced by the myriad of happy memories, there are days, weeks sometimes, when I smile when I think about her. When I can see a red car without looking to see if she's driving it, or hear certain songs without breaking, when I see a pigeon and can hear her saying 'flying rats Hel!' but I am never, ever, going to stop missing her. In a way I embrace that as testament to the fact that I truly loved her. What I wouldn't give to be re-creating the picture above. I'm hugging her so hard I look like I'm strangling her! - but as it is, all I can do is this - and wish her as happy a birthday wherever she is, as those we shared when she was still here on Earth.

Thanks for listening. x
Want to know why I haven't posted in so long? because I am SO technologically disabled that I couldn't find my blog. DOH!

Anyway...how ARE you?

Life has changed beyond recognition for me. Steve stepped out of the Army after 33 years and is now extraordinarily happy as the CEO of a charity which lifts landmines and campaigns for the rights of those affected by armed violence. Proud of him? Oh yeah!

And... we FINALLY own our own house. Palatial it aint - but it's comfortable, modern, it over-looks woodland (you know me by now, trees are necessary to my happiness!) - and it has the wonderful advantage of being in civilian territory which brings with it the anonimity I so craved when living on Army patches.

Now I've found you again I'll be back to post some more!