Impressions
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Saturday, August 19, 2000

13:44    archived    
We spend so much of our lives in prevarication, waiting for a cue when the other person does not know that a cue is required. For three days now I have had to squash hope that wriggles upwards at the sound of every car that stops, mashing it into the ground of desperation as I might deal with a torn but dancing butterfly that offends me with the fragility of its beauty, for daring still to be capable of flight despite the gaping holes in its wings.

The little things are so important.

Did I cut myself? Only a little. I played "how far will the knife go into the connection point before the skin breaks". I played many such games. In the end I couldn't do it, despite the pain. An evening of agonised prevarication, with the cold coming on thick and strong to blank out the anger, the fear, the sense of betrayal, left me with only an hour before Frood got home. At that point it would have been beneath me to give up just then. A reprieve, but for how long?

And the doctors would say I am depressed, a danger to myself. I say that the world is the danger, a world where your pain is not acknowledged as real, where it is "all in your head", see a psychologist. But they don't understand. They don't understand how it is to be in constant pain for a year, to have finally reached the stage where you realise, you finally understand that no matter how bad it has been, it can always be worse. That is where the fear comes, that is why, in the depths of pain, you consider giving up. Not because you don't think it is going to get better, but because you know that it can get worse.

Maayan, Maayan, if you had sent me a web page address I'd have put a link to it here. The compassion of strangers, another one of the little things that too few people appreciate.

The pain is still bad, and the cold has not faded from last night, not much. I think something in me died yesterday.

I am not your sister.

On the one hand my need is "pretty clear to me, sis" but you will not come because I cannot say "help"? This is because... ah yes. Because you don't want to get dragged in to visiting every time you think it is a good idea. So just how clear was that need exactly?

Evidently not that clear.

Want? What I want has always been irrelevant, no matter how often you have argued that point with me, no matter how often he argued that point with me. I have never seen much point in that argument, because when it came down to it, what I wanted was always secondary, was often dismissed.

Do I want help? Of course I fucking wanted help. What sort of idiot do you take me for? You might be ok with allowing me to make that decision to end it, but I'm not sure I am. The issue was not whether or not I really wanted to do it - I really did want to do it, for the relief. For the end. It made no difference to me whether I lived or died, as long as the pain stopped. I spent several long hours suffocating, unable to breathe, almost grateful despite the severe distress, because I thought the decision had been made for me. The issue was whether or not I could fight that want by myself, whether or not I needed help to do that or could do it by myself. Of course I wanted it.

Could I ask for it? No.

Asking for something like that means invoking an obligation. Invoking an obligation means that the other person has to set aside whatever else is going on at the time in order to meet it. Now I have a similar set of obligations. When I say that love, friendship means driving halfway across the country at 3am to make tea, I will do that. When I say you can ask me to be there for you and I will be, I mean just that. I don't mean "should Frood be ok with it and I have nothing better to do, because you know, I might be busy."

Other people do not think the same way as me. I do not think the same way as them, therefore, by definition, and I do not have the requisite understanding to bridge that gap. I do not understand what is acceptable and what is not, but the welfare of those I love is of paramount importance to me. I therefore refuse to take risks. Tell me that you cannot talk because you have a deadline to meet and I will not talk to you, I will not interrupt, I do not know how important that deadline is, I don't know if missing it will cause you huge problems, I don't know if it might put your job at risk. If you tell me you have an engagement, I don't know what that is. It could be anything from a doctor's appointment to an important dinner with your partner, or your boss.

And I can't countenance making you feel guilty by expressing a want for help when it could be that you have something pressing to attend to that means you have to refuse, and I can't bear the thought of being refused. Not again. Not after Key.

Did I need help?

"..seems pretty clear to me..."

But not clear enough, apparently.

Do I still want help? I think ahead to Monday, to the proposed lek on Tuesday, which will be as useful in regards to this as the camping weekend in Herefordshire with the Friday night of absinthe was useful for training the Weapon. I think ahead to Monday, when I must either go back to work or remain alone at home, dependent on how bad the pain is, and I try not to worry about it so much that the bad things I can imagine happening become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I imagine Tuesday, where there will be no time or space for intimacy, and the coldness will be in full force to get me through.

But I am still alive, this morning. I am not sure I need help.

In some ways I wish I were not still alive. I haven't learned how to cope with this in the intervening hours. More of me will be consumed. But presumably I will remain, and that seems to be what everyone else wants. And if I were not still alive I wouldn't be cold and bewildered and angry and shocked and despairing and grieving.

I am all these things, and the pain continues.


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Friday, August 18, 2000

12:06    archived    
"The deadlines just went serious, and I've gone postal. SMS me if you want to get in touch."

No, I can't call, can't ask. Ever. I was so close, and now it seems it is a good thing I didn't, and that is how it would always be.


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11:45    archived    

And suddenly it occurs to me that I am being sacrificed. When we went to the Birds of Prey centre we took some photos. There is a photo of me looking at the ravens, but they are paying not one jot of attention to me, and there is a photo of Andy apparently talking to one of them, and this, for me said it all. I had to fight back the tears when I saw them last night. I think my useful life is over. Was only ever a prototype anyway. I don't know what I'm complaining about, should be grateful to have got 2 extra years, no matter how painful they have been.

My GNC/LiveWell Gold Card arrived today. I almost want to cut it up into pieces for rubbing my nose in it.

Yes, cousin, they part for those who walk with the dead, unless you have gone so far that you are practically one of the dead, and then they treat you like they treat any other ghost - they don't see you at all. They smash into you with arms laden with plastic argos bags, then turn and stare blankly, in astonishment, wondering what it was that caused them to drop their catalogue chosen prizes.

Ganesha pays no heed to me. None of them does. Not any more. Refuse, expendable, scrap. Use it until it breaks and then get a new one. There is no comfort in this house, no one rests his painted hands on my shoulders and enables me to face what is happening with calm fortitude. My Father doesn't even speak to me any more.

"Oh Gabriel. When was it that you lost your Grace?"

"Sometimes we just have to do what we're told."

And last night he said "Let me connect" and I didn't think he could. But something did. Something connected. I thought he'd perhaps managed it, because it was not something I had tricked myself into doing. It wasn't brought on by expectation because I tried to deny it. I was completely distracted and it overwhelmed me. But then the message came "Let me try..." and I knew it wasn't him. Who was it? I don't know. I'm not sure it really matters, any more than it matters if kids get behind the wheel of a scrapped car. They're not going to be going anywhere in it.

And the rain falls, heavy, and I wonder if I lay down outside and opened my mouth to the heavens, could I drown myself slowly in liquid sky?


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11:25    archived    

I don't even know what to say today. Everything seems hopeless. I can't think of anything worth saying, worth writing. I feel an empty echo of myself, the hollow filled with pain that does not go away except to move deeper. I seem to have lost my connection to this world, as if it's time for me to move on, and that is very tempting. Only what would I be moving on to?

I don't know what I am any more. I seem to be defined by pain. I have spent so much time unconscious in the last few days, unable to cope with doing anything.

I am so sick.


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Thursday, August 17, 2000

18:01    archived    
I don't think I want that much. Right now the best thing that anyone could give me is a safe space, somewhere comforting to sleep so that if and when I wake up to the pain I don't have to face it alone, there is someone there to remind me that the world is not defined by solitude and pain.

I do not respond well to isolation. Although I don't like large numbers of people, the life of a hermit has never been one for me. There are cats, goldfish, who spend less time alone than I do.

The pain has destroyed my ability to trust people, to trust that they are there for me when I am at the end of my tether. This world of instant communication has given people an easy option of email, ICQ. Lines of text on a screen are just that - they don't convey the same message, the same comfort, that even a simple touch can give. They say "I'm there for you" and arrange to be online.

I'm told that I''m a creature of absolutes. This level of stress pushes one to be a creature of absolutes. You come to appreciate the little things, you realise just how much certain things mean to you. Little things become so important and you forget that other people don't see it quite like that. There is no room for greyness on the cliff edge. Is that safe to stand on or will it crumble? Desperation reduces the world to black and white. Are you there for me or do you just intend to be? It has destroyed my trust.

"I'm not leaving it three weeks again." But two have gone past now, and more will. Another statement of intent I read as something more.

I have to remember that I am the one on the edge of the cliff. No one else. And the pain is mine.


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17:17    archived    

My body is making noises like a machine. I can hear it behind my heartbeat. The steady thrum of an engine idling, heard from behind a wall. I can hear wind noise also. If I let myself be caught at all by what is happening to me I can feel my flesh melting, hot and liquid, the muscles turning to useless fluid.

And I fall unsconscious and dream, dream of being on the verge of calling Andy only to discover he and Tam have gone to Ireland for the weekend without telling me and I am not so sure that this hasn't happened because it feels real. Gone to Antrim. Leave a message.

My flesh feels distorted, as if I am already decomposing, and the pain... Dear gods the pain.


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12:07    archived    

There is no sign of her Shadow, or the glass box it creates, but, cowed by pain, the empath does not try to escape. She creeps trembling into the cage with Hugin and Munin and they huddle together while her tears roll off glistening feathers, tiny moonstones of desperation.


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11:21    archived    

In the second dream, we were at another gathering, this one on the coast in some remote hilly area that reminded me of home. It was a little like the white house some way from Craighouse. We were staying on the boat, moored in the not particularly sheltered bay some distance off the rocks. The land belonged to Pauline, who had a small dairy herd there. We stayed on longer than the gathering lasted, because Pauline had some bad news and had to go away for a day or so, but couldn't find anyone to look after her cows. We said we'd look after them for her, and she showed us how to milk ne of them and explained what to do - but she had the milking thing on a long hose and showed us in the field, then dashed off in a khaki coloured austin allegro saying she'd be back the next day. She didn't really want to leave, but it seemed terribly important.

But when it came time to do the milking we discovered that we didn't really know how to work the milking machines properly and we were all looking at each other having these visions of cows exploding becuse they hadn't been milked. They were already fairly unhappy sounding. I hunted around looking for an instruction manual, but all we could find was a marketing manual of a few scant pages listing all othe products (cheese, butter, biscuits, etc) produced on the farm shop label. Luckily one of the neighbouring farmers stopped by and we were able to get the cows milked.

Pauline came back the next day looking much relieved, and her cows were all munching grass, so that was alright then.


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10:57    archived    

Vivid, vivid dreams.

I am part of a team looking after delegates at some sort of conference. For some reason we are all very mellow, relaxed, scruffy types, not the sort that you would normally expect to find providing security. The conference is in this building that has a massive basement conference hall that could be used as a dance hall. There is a stage at one end, the wooden floor on a single level. Bags and jumpers have been left lying around the edges as people go to get lunch or take a break.

The place is invaded by terrorists, only they are not really terrorists, but lunatics, mad and violent and aggressive. No one is in any danger initially, because these people confine themselves to the main hall in the basement, so my team and I hang back, observe, waiting to see what they do. Mostly the seem to be drinking beer, but the odd person who approaches them is met with extreme violence. We have to call off the conference evens in that section.

But then another team turns up, led by a chap who looks exactly like Pierce Brosnan and they set about dealing with it "by the book", which only serves to escalate matters. He and I have a massive argument in which I call him every insulting name I can think of and tell him just how much of a fuckwit he is being, and he threatens me with all the things with which anally retentive FBI types usually threaten their more creative counterparts.

I dismiss him in disgust, then sneak into the hall to retrieve my walking boots. As I suspected, they are all too caught up in whatever mad thoughts they have to pay much attention to me. But I do spot that they have two delegates bound and gagged, underneath a pile of filthy-looking jackets, in the corner. We just hadn't been able to see them from the outside, and the couple of people we had sent in had come out in no condition to give a detailed report.

Most of the place was in fact underground, built into a grassy mound, with only a small building poking out of the top. I went outside to look to see if there was any way we could gain entrance by digging down and through to behind where the two delegates were.

In the end the "terrorists" got bored sitting around in there and stormed their way out. There was much carnage, but they were simply outnumbered. The two delegates were largely ignored - it was almost as if it was a practical joke that had escalated way out of control.

Pierce Brosnan was largely useless.


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Wednesday, August 16, 2000

22:24    archived    
Scared now. Ninety minutes since I responded to his greeting, nothing. Perhaps this is it after all. Despite everything that has been said before.

No, I haven't tried to say anything else. The mail I sent... Enough. So very tired.


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14:04    archived    

For a lot of the time you can convince yourself that the doctors are right, it's probably all in your head and you'e making a big fuss out of nothing. You stick the snake's head behind you and ignore it, call it one of those things that people have to deal with, the way everyone has something to deal with. You get on with your life, carry on with the tasks each day brings, snatch brief moments of pleasure where you can, just like everyone else.

And then you get days like today, when the pain comes so hard and hot that your breath catches in your throat and the tears spring unbidden from the wells inside, and you are faced with giving up all thoughts of plans for the day. But it's impossible to accept. After all that time ignoring it, all that time pretending that you can carry on, all that time treating it as if it's all in the head and a stiff upper lip and a smidgeon of intestinal fortitude are all that are required to deal with it, your life falls apart. You feel lazy, inadequate, lacking in character. You agonise mentally over whether or not you are doing the wrong thing by allowing the pain to confine you to rest rather than pushing, pushing like you think you cannot push, to do the things you feel you should despite the pain. Of course the issue then is whether or not you will make things worse.

Things can always get worse, and when standing blind on the cliff edge the issue is which way to step to get a little more degree of safety.

If I go and do the things I want to do, will I feel better for the forcing, or will I end up collapsed, unable to move? I can barely breathe at times the pain is so bad. Have I put myself in this position by missing gym sessions? By not pushing myself hard enough? Or have I simply arrived here because it is time to be here, and the question is simply how to get away again? If I go, if that makes things worse, I don't know that I could bear it. I am so close to the edge already. If I stay, and things get steadily worse, I'm not really that much better off and I will have the emotional rigour of feeling lazy and worthless to contend with on top of the physical pain.

I don't know what to do. I am losing chunks of my mind in flashes - forgetting who I am, where I live, what I'm supposed to be doing. Every movement, from breathing to walking, is painful enough to reduce me to tears. How to cope? How do I get through this? Can I get through this?


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11:10    archived    

What do you do when you tell someone that you can't cope any more, and that inability to cope is so great you feel your voice cracking as you try to control the tears, and they simply tell you that there is no other choice? They say they will help, that they want to help, but they are thinking in terms of weeks. I can't see how to get through the next 5 minutes today. I have no context. The world is a sweet wrapper. I look at the sun through golden plastic and see reflections of pink and purple foil.

It seems such an attractive prospect to become lost in the meaningless imagery of those reflections. I don't feel resentment, only pain.

Slowly, the brain fails, the strength goes. Inside the spirit crumbles and others lose patience and say things that are practically accusations of hypochondria, of exaggeration, and don't understand that everything you have done you have done to remain. Just simply remain. And they don't understand that the fight simply to remain is a mortal one. Wrapped in coils of pain you grin and smile and push the snake's head to one side and pretend it's just a winter scarf because your neck is cold. Because they can't hear about it all the time. And then on the occasions when you just can't do that any more, when the snake's fangs drip acid into the face to hurt the eyes and the tears fall and the limbs shake and the strength is near failing, you slip, start falling, and they turn round and tell you "You say that often."

And I do, but it doesn't get easier with practise. Sometimes I can't do the banal niceties of conversation because the fangs are too close. If you were clinging to the underneath of a rusty bridge with a crashing fall onto concrete waiting, and you had a family to get back to, a life, would you appreciate being told about the weather in Spain? Distraction? Distractions don't work all the time. You have hung there for hours, days, and no one has been able to get you up, and your fingers are tired and you can't hang on any more, and it seems that the quick death is better than the agony of trying to stay hanging. After days. Talking about the weather just wouldn't do the trick.

You can look into someone's eyes and tell if he has been through this. You can tell. If you have done it yourself.

I feel very alone today.


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Monday, August 14, 2000

22:15    archived    
Notes from the Stones

Odd day today. I almost feel I am wearing my body. It's stiff, very stiff across the shoulders and I feel a distant frustration that it does not hang the way this distant person expects. The joints don't move freely enough and it is not tall enough. The neck doesn't sit correctly, the pelvis seems to be out of alignment. It's too rigid, too fixed. It occupies the wrong amount of space in the wrong way. The head is the wrong shape, the field of vision too narrow. Every so often I find myself rolling my shoulders back or cricking my head round or twisting in a certain way as if I can break whatever is constricting my movement. Perhaps spiders feel this way when it is time to shed a skin.

Why does the coachload of German tourists turn up when I've got Karin on the phone and I'm trying to make my lunch? What possessed me to let on that I speak German when my German is so appallingly rusty I have to scrape the meanings from out of their heads? Too much static.

Buried quartz and black candlewax today in the circle centre. Should have been able to tell immediately, but had to make the effort to feel after Karin said Jane had commented that the circle had been funny. Should have known it was there. Still, found and removed now.

Dizzy and tired. Muscles in hand and arm so weak can barely hold the pen. Woke up with a split tongue this morning. Really should go to the gym today. What I actually want to do is go home and go to sleep again, but I don't know how much the tiredness and pain and weakness is a direct result of not going to the gym for two weeks.

No sign of the robins today either. Hope they're okay.

How on Earth did I get to the point where I can stand and witter on endlessly about the differences between Stonehenge and Rollright without even putting my brain into gear?

Circle doesn't seem right just now. The grass seems to have sunk down and darkened, the topography more pronounced, more irregular, the stones appear to be peering down into the circle they form. Keep seeing people, ghostly, appear by the fence and wander past, vanishing when they reach halfway along the path to the entrance. Odd. Always dark, never actually mistaken for real people.


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09:34    archived    

Aaargh! This shortcut icon thing is driving me nuts.

It can't be that hard. I'm sure I shouldn't have to add header tags to each file in the subdirectories, surely. Maybe I have to add it to ravenfamily root.


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09:17    archived    

Having to sit down for a bit with a cup of tea before I can face the drive to work. Today is supposed to be a gym day after nearly two weeks' absence, but I'm so stiff and sore and tired. My muscles feel like elastic bands that have been left out in the sun and rain for too long.

Dreamt last night that Telsa and I had to go undercover in a biker gang for some reason. I remember being dressed in tight black trousers and black ripped leather jacket, sauntering down the street as if I owned it, accepting a half-drunk bottle of something noxious with a "Ta darlin'," from a massive brute of a bloke with sweaty greasy skin and few brain cells who would have killed me instantly if he had known who I was One swig and I was nearly sick because the stuff was so vile, and the label read "Extra Strength Alcopop", which was pretty typical. Might as well have been White Lightning. And Telsa looking across at me and grinning with her mouth but her eyes hinting, somewhere deep down, at just how much danger we were both in.

And then Telsa has to go and I'm left with them on my own, my position more precarious than ever, trying to stay in control of the situation, not let the mask slip, not let the construct slip, so they think I'm just another tough biker chick who likes having a good time the same way they do. Watching, waiting, being ready to stop them should they show any signs of planning the thing I was sent to prevent them doing.

Then, finally, Maura coming along, signalling the end, and me sneaking off saying I was just going for a piss and actually jumping in the car and getting the fuck out of there before they noticed. We had to stop and pick up my things, my real things, not my biker things, from the place I had left them before getting into the gang, and Maura kept hurrying me up as if they were going to track us down and we couldn't hang about while I sorted out my stuff. It wasn't as if I had a lot of stuff to sort out.

The leader of the biker gang reminded me of a wolf driven mad by hunger.

The weather is really grotty today. I can't imagine there being many folk wanting to visit the stones on a day like this. I could do with another day in bed.


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Sunday, August 13, 2000

22:16    archived    
Could it lie? No, I don't think it could. But it possesses some of Raven's tricks. It could neglect to tell a whole truth. It could allow a telling of a truth to be misinterpreted so that the interpretation is misleading. It could refuse to confirm a truth, unless it was bound to do so by some abstract skein of Protocol. But I don't think it can lie. Exaggerate, perhaps, to a degree. Miss things out, yes. But not lie. Not outright.

It doesn't like being under close scrutiny any more than I do.


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21:46    archived    

I would like to talk, but the walls are too thick.


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21:45    archived    

It's huge, you know, that soup. Massive. And I still have to make the salad.

Feels like the only person I can talk to is myself right now. I can almost feel walls around my head, mufflers, or something, that get tighter to the point of being painful when I try to talk to anyone else. Am I being forced to confront something? El has been terribly quiet recently, I can get no sense of her except in a sort of stand-off, watching and waiting but not talking. Everything gets slippery and tight when I try to talk to other people. Like trying to see something in your peripheral vision that won't stay still. A floater so far to one side that it hurts to try to see that far, and it's pointless to try to look at it anyway because it moves with your eyes.

Someone far away told me in words without words that I can't shift because there are too many signals around. Lock down to protect the baseline, fragile in its little cage. Brittle bones in plaster. And someone else said, also in words without words, that there is still danger of contamination, but I don't think she was talking to me. I don't even know who she was. Or what she was talking about.

And Hugin suggests, calling from between the bars while Munin distracts the gaoler, that I should find somewhere that doesn't contain so many signals, and rediscover my ability to shift so I can deal with this problem.

Because the Weapon can shift, you see, it still has all my strength and skill. It has all the advantages and wants to keep them. But if I can get them back, get out of this box, out of this splint that has become a prison, then I can fight it. Or perhaps come to terms with it, take the lead. The Balance of dominance is out of kilter, and perhaps it will take something extreme for me to win. Perhaps I need to find some advantage of my own.

Maybe I don't really know it as well as I think I do. But am I being forced to confront it or is trying to stop me finding out what I need to know?


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17:22    archived    

No, don't go elsewhere because I'm ranting about food. This is important.

Today I bought a stock pot. I've been after one of these for a while. This one is a cheap one cos I'm broke, but it's still 8 litres. You see we like to use all of the animal carcass. We get a chicken, we eat the chicken, we make a chicken noodle soup out of the bones and gristley bits left over. Until recently I was having to use two of our largest pots because there just isn't space in one. We can make a chicken last almost a week this way. I was going to make a chowder out of the fish heads and skins I have sitting in a bag in the freezer, but decided that this week's budget couldn't stretch to the extra bits of fish and clams I'd need.

We thought that bunnies would be good, cos they're only a couple of quid each, but the very nice man at the organic butchers explained that they only sell wild bunnies (quite right too) and if no one has shot any recently, they don't get any in. So I asked for a couple of ham knuckles instead. He cut me off a couple of bits of a pig that very few people ever use. They have a lot of bone and fat on them, but they were each three times the size of one of my fists and only cost a quid fifty each. I got a couple of organic leeks and some organic carrots and onions from the market stall next door. Total cost around 6 quid. The knuckles, a whole onion (unpeeled), the leek trimmings, a couple of whole garlic cloves (unpeeled), a wobbly carrot that's not much good for anything else and some herbs have gone into my stock pot with 6 litres of water and some dead lamb bones that I gnawed through last night. That will boil for a while then I'll take out the veg, add some lentils and pinto beans and potato, a fresh carrot, some chopped onion and the leeks, and boil all that up and I'll have several days worth for two people for less than 10 quid.

No supermarkets were involved in the making of this meal. And I feel good about that, especially as if I'd gone to the supermarket I wouldn't have got local veg and it would have cost more. No extraneous packaging, no extraneous transport requirements. I even cycled in to the market.

It's not even as if it's a lot of bother. I'm stuck at home today because of the pain anyway, despite having a major desire to go walking in the rain, and the stock gets on with its thing while I sit here writing blog entries and fiddling about with the set up for the PTRA website I'm constructing, as well as getting some work done on my book. I might even look at some text books. While all that is going on I'm boiling some beetroot for the lamb and couscous salad I'm making. Another couple of days' worth of food for not very much money.

Why do people buy prepacked? Is it just convenience? I keep hearing that people are thinking more and more about what they eat and yet every time I stand in the check-out I see people overladen with three-cheese pizza and frozen lasagne. Often they are organic three-cheese pizza and vegetarian frozen lasagne, and I wonder if this is what is meant by thinking more about what one eats.

Sorry, but in my view eating organic is not a way to prevent one becoming polluted, it's a way of trying to encourage better farming practises that don't turn the countryside into blankets of monoculture. I will eat locally produced non-organic if I can't find local organic, because I think the transport requirements of shipping carrots thousands of miles in cooled freighters outweighss the benefits of them being organic.

I want to encourage good farming practises here, not just abroad. I also think it's terribly important to support British agriculture. Some people are growing up not realising that there are men and women tearing their hair out in despair attempting to make a living out of doing something that is fundamentally necessary - producing the food we eat.

I sometimes write letters.

Dear Sainsbury's,

I would just like to let you know that today I bought a French chicken despite my preference for local produce, because it looked like a chicken and not some caricature of a bird drawn by someone with a breast and thigh fetish, which is an accurate description of the birds on offer in your fresh meat section that are produced in this country. I would also like to inform you that today I bought some non-organic tomatoes, despite the range you have in the organic section and my normal preference for organic produce, because the organic tomatoes were grown in Argentina and we grow perfectly good tomatoes in this country.

Why oh why can we not have local organic produce on offer, when I know it is available? I am changing my purchasing habits to buy more of this type of produce from the local market, as I object to having my organic produce shipped across the world when there is plenty available from struggling local farmers. My main reason for buying organic is the environmental benefits, and the personal health benefits and improved flavour are merely an added bonus. I think you would find, if you did some research amongst those who think about these things as opposed to merely following the current fashion, that I am by no means alone in this.

However I would like to thank you for including British organic milk and eggs in your range.

Yours sincerely, etc


I once even started a letter writing campaign playing off Tesco's and Sainsbury's, explaining to each that I had to shop at the other in order to get all the things I want. I don't know how much good it did, but I can now get most things in both when I couldn't before.

Of course, these days I'm trying not to shop for fresh stuff at supermarkets, for all the reasons I explained above.

I do think it's important, and not just because of the strange dietary restrictions that I live with, most of which are to do with respect for the things I eat. Frood thinks it's important too, and he can eat what he damn well pleases. We might not say prayers to thank the spirit of the beasts that we eat, but the entire process of obtaining them has a great deal of thought and consideration and careful pondering. There is respect for life in every point in that process, and that applies to the vegetable matter as well as the flesh. This is also why I prefer to joint my own meat, to clean my own fish, to get involved with the meat at a point where it is still recognisable as an animal. I just don't understand the attitude of people who say that they couldn't eat steak or lamb if they thought about where it came from, if it came as anything other than a pre-packed, sanitised lump of flesh with no clue to its origin. This is prime steak, not a hunk of dead cow. This isn't something that once meandered lazily about in a field with friends and munched grass.

Oh, but you see, oh squeamish pathetic one, it is. And it felt fear on its way to slaughter, and it bled when they butchered it, and the flesh was once warm.

I was in a pub in Herefordshire the other day and it had a sign on the wall proclaiming that they could produce the abbatoir records for the meat in your meal. I nearly cheered out loud. I expect the butcher I like so much (M. Feller, Son & Daughter, in Oxford's Covered Market) could tell me the name of the beasts he has hanging in his window. That's the way I like it.

One of the other Raven Brats sings to his food as he cooks it, to soothe it and acknowledge what he is doing. I don't do that, but that's not the point. The point is we care about our food - not in the sense of how good it is for us, but in the sense that it was once alive and had life, and it no longer has life because we wish to eat it.

That is terribly important to me. Respect for life doesn't have to mean never killing anything, it means taking responsiblity and acknowledging what one is doing and the gravity of it.


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15:11    archived    

Today's soundtrack:
"The King and I"
"Album of the Year" - Faith No More
"Axis - Bold as Love" - Jimi Hendrix

I'm going bonkers. Stood in the supermarket, bemoaning to myself the need to get water filter cartridges because we don't own the house and can't put an in-line filter into the mains, and I did my usual thing of looking at what the other people in the queue were buying. The chap next to me had a loaf of organic bread, but he also had a pre-packed side-salad in a plastic container designed to look like a serving plate, you know, the kidney shaped ones you get in tacky restaurants. I nearly went for him. I had to work hard to sit on the rage I felt at these people, these stupid people buying stuff with unnecessary packaging. Why buy the prepacked tomatoes which have been shipped all the way from Spain when you can get exactly the same type loose, grown in the UK? I had to make a huge effort not to grab him by the throat and say "Why do you buy organic? Eh? Is it some selfish, misplaced idea that organic foods will prevent your body becoming polluted when the problem is a global one? Do you think that you will avoid being contaminated by eating organic when your consumer practices fill the atmosphere with fumes created by transporting these fruit and vegetables halfway round the world, when we grow them in this country?

I stood there and realised I have becom a misanthropic bitch recently. And it's getting worse.

I also realised recently that I don't like pagans. I really don't. I can't stand them. I hate the pretentious way they go on about god and goddess and religious tolerance, and how we should treat the Earth as a temple, but half of them still leave roaches and cigarette butts lying around at prehistoric monuments ("it's biodegradable, innit?") and look at you like you're mad if you suggest going to look at some carvings in a church, and claim all Christians are oppressive wankers responsible for all the bad things in history.

My best friends are pagan, but my best friends are also scientists, computer technicians, writers, good people. They aren't part of the "Pagan Community". They just happen to be pagan.

Pagans who are pagan before they are anything else, who do what they do because they think it's the sort of thing that a pagan should do, they get right up my nose, they really do.

Pagan feminists are even worse. Dear Ghods.

I so want to be someplace else. I dreamt last night about me and a bunch of friends, including Andy, taking amanita, and everyone else reacting really badly to it while for me it was just another day at the office of Weird Shit, and so I was running round with cartons of Libby's organic orange juice trying to get everyone to drink some to make them feel better (works for LSD) and wondering why I didn't have any atropine handy.

It's too hot here, I'm swollen up with the heat. Bright pink, irritable and aggressive. Felt like the system was trying to shift when the rain started earlier, I was standing in a car park at the time, could feel it responding to the change in weather, craving for the break in oppression that a good storm would bring, as if it could shift and bring it closer, but all that happened was that it shimmied around a bit at the edges. It couldn't follow through. The shift would start in a patch and then would die off before speading, but there were quite a few of these patches all trying to go at once. I'm trying to think of something to compare it to. I know I've seen a similar effect elsewhere, but I can't think where or what.

And my back hurts so badly.


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