Grain of Rice (by sarah)

Written Monday the 6th but was not put live because there were people we felt we should tell first before they saw it anyway else and because we weren't really sure we wanted people to know at this stage. I'd also been writing poetry since Friday 3rd which I will see about putting in a blog post.

Grain of Rice

So I found out I was pregnant and as also happens... I find out - I start bleeding. Really very lightly, so light I wasn't sure if I was seeing things.

But I was coughing... bark bark bark, coughing right down deep in the core of me so that my c-section scar hurt, so that I'd pee myself. I've had a cough all the way through since September but mostly it's just been an annoying tickle but it was a chest infection in September and it suddenly hit me hard whilst I was in town. Fortunately one of the people I'd been working with at Frightmare spotted me and thought I looked unwell and gave me a lift home.

I'd sneezed a couple of times and the coughing hadn't yet arisen to it's full intensity it was still just a cough - the main issue was that I felt suddenly like all the life had gone out of me and my pelvis had clicked and walking was once again damn painful. My separated pelvis had never fully gone away so a cracking pelvis wasn't that strange.

I got home and the cough got worse and worse and that night I was struggling, it hurt my pelvis and scar with it rattling lot of coughing fits. The chest infection seemed to be back I went to bed early but the blood appeared so so light - we phoned the Drs...

I could barely talk for coughing - I was steeped in misery at the thought of the cough I developed at the beginning of Jean's pregnancy and what that had meant for me. The nightmare of blood clots and oxygen monitors and samples of arterial blood being taken.

The blood quickly snatched my attention as the new fear was that I was losing the baby - but I had spotting with both Jean and Mary - I had full blown periods with Mary's pregnancy but I also had a suspected ectopic and years of delayed periods followed by bad periods where I dared not take a pregnancy test. There was supposed to be a two year gap between Jean and Mary - I think that says it all really.

So I found out I was pregnant and then there was blood - like every other time I've done a pregnancy test - seriously what is it with that?

Currently the Drs can't do anything for the cough - it has subsided a lot. Then it was the waiting game - I had to wait until Sunday morning to get my scan to check. The baby was smaller than expected, with no obvious heart beat. Saturday I lost gunk, slime and old blood.

I'd been feeling cold for days, so cold Jean had lent me her hoody - this was before the blood appeared - I wonder was I already bleeding inside.

I'd been having a bath Saturday evening when the gunk arrived, I had a slight cramp, Mary barged in to go to the toilet - she's six and always needs the loo if I want a nice relaxing bath. She said, "Mummy you've pooed in the bath" I looked and there was gunk and I swallowed the horror and coughed and thought "oh my god I've just miscarried in front of my six year old".

Sunday was the halloween and fireworks party I'd promised the girls; I didn't really want to cancel it - I thought I'd lost the baby I thought I might have to have the DnC thingy again where they wash your womb. My friend came over uber early with her little baby to baby sit the girls and let anyone in who arrived at 10 for the party if we weren't back.

I told people I wouldn't be making cakes and the floor would likely not be hoovered. Alaric's friend hoovered for me and he made us all nice nutritional food to sustain us and Alaric got to talk to them and remain sane.

Sunday morning was more wee testing and the scan - I'd already convinced myself that the baby wouldn't be there. Initially all they could see was the sac and the bleeding which was on another part of the womb. So I had to go and wee for an internal scan - on the loo I lost a solid lump about 2 cm with little white bumps on them.

So I was surprised when they said there was something in the sac... a very small pregnancy - the size of a grain of rice. But there was no heart beat but it is small it maybe a pregnancy that has stopped growing, it maybe just a younger pregnancy and it may or may not be still alive. It may just be too small for the heart beat to show.

I wonder about the bleeding spot and the gunk I've lost, Alaric is convinced it is the same as happened early on with Jean where it appears we lost a twin. He is hopeful - I am not - I have to wait 10 or so days to go back and see if the pregnancy is growing, whether the baby is still alive.

This means I am sitting here not knowing whether the cramps and bleeding are turning into a full miscarriage, or whether there is a little baby developing or whether I have a dead baby sitting there or worse combo a zombie baby that is neither properly dead or alive but has the potential to poison me with its decomposition.

Some of the gunk was stinky, mostly it's been fresh blood I've lost. I am in pain, physical pain. I keep swinging from desolation to little peeks of hopes and dreams about finishing my baby discworld toys I've been sewing. I am getting angry at friends who have babies but didn't give up smoking and stuff - I get like this - I feel a rage and hate and a ITS ALL UNFAIR as I watch others do things "wrong" whilst I do everything the Drs say and struggle so very much.

This is not fair on my friends who I know have their own struggles.

I opted to see this one even though it may well not be viable - as Al said the ones that are nebulous between Jean and Mary we struggle with because we don't know how to remember them or how many actuals there were but this one we can remember - he wrote all the stats down for it so we'd have at least that.

Miscarriage and still births are often not talked about or seen as a thing of shame and this is unhelpful in the healing and to be honest the medical research around it all. I am fortunate that mine have all been early on issues but it still hurts like hell and I just remember all that pain between Jean and Mary when I didn't even know how to talk about it or what I was supposed to feel and I don't think I'd actually processed all of that until now.

As you can imagine I am a bit of an emotional wreck, I keep apologising to Alaric which I think he's starting to find frustrating - he wont let me do any house work or anything which I'm finding frustrating but I understand - plus when I have sneaked in a bit I just end up coughing up my lungs again. And yes I fear blood clots like I had with Jean.

Again the issue that the records from Jean's pregnancy are all missing much to the Drs horror >:(

So yeah unhappy Snell-Pym's and yes the kids know - considering they knew/suspected I was pregnant before I did and they can see when I'm not well it isn't really fair to keep stuff from them. Death is part of life, grieving is something that kids are often denied and I don't think that is healthy - a new baby or the lack of affects them as well as us.

Just sitting here hoping it's not a zombie baby and fearing its a gone baby. Oh and one last thing - yes I am referring to it as a baby but in reality it is a bundle of cells at this stage and things around pregnancies are always hard times for the parents weather they are wanted, not wanted, surprises or forced -so if I catch anyone using this as an anti-abortion thing I will go spare - a woman's body is her own. Plus I'm sure that's the only way to safely deal with zombie babies :'(

Seasons (by sarah)

I realised something whilst watching all the online banta and bitchin about Halloween verses Christmas. For me there is no real distinction as such, Halloween at the beginning of the darker, scarier but also conversely cosy and safe part of the year.

I see the festivities as flows and markers within the seasonal procession but they are the beginnings not the ends. I think most people see the fixed Western calendar dates as the ends of the festivities. Both me and Alaric see them as beginnings or markers and that is all. I think that is also how my Grandparents and that saw them as there was a steady ramp up and down to Christmas/Easter etc....

And from them I have also come to the conclusion that there is kind of only two seasons for me as well - Summer and Winter - Spring and Autumn are the transition periods. Autumn is the ramp up to Winter but though I used Winter as the name for the season in the darker part of the year I do not believe that the bit normally labeled autumn is less important it is more - that for me they blend and merge and are in essence one.

Looking at fiction produced for Children I find myself thinking that others feel the same - the groupings are always Spring-Summer and Autumn-Winter. Maybe this is because I think like a child?

For me "winter cosy" or the making of the safe place or creating the home nest, begins with Harvest - my seasons also do not entirely match our months. Harvest is a nebulous term as food can be pretty much gathered all year round if you know where to look but some times are easier than others and for many things there is a deadline for harvest i.e. before the bad frosts begin. Nature being nature and physics being physics the precise times for these alter ever year. There are variations within years, the Earth's orbit round the sun changes, climate fluctuations, sunspot activities and volcanic eruptions on other bits of our glob all affect it. But roughly speaking it is the end of September or beginning of October.

This is Harvest Festival time it is when I am still foraging but the fruits are getting less abundant and I'm winding down things like the tomato and squash plants. Now begins baking and making time snugged in my home. It is jam, wine - preserves time, I start planning in my head what sort of presents we will give at Christmas. I start to itch for long long walks in the low golden sunshine that bounces off of trees and clouds and seems to be a remembrance of the harsher summer light.

Of course this is also the time when I start to suffer from season light issues - but the thing is with that... it is only an issue with how our society is structured - it actually means I'm kind of more in tune with how things are - I am adapting to the changing light levels and getting ready for the northern reaches semi hibernation.

I start knitting and watching films with the girls, more board games are played, if our fire place was installed properly we'd light fires. We snuggle under blankets as Harvest melts seamlessly into Halloween with vegetables grown and picked (or selected) are strung up or carved into faces to keep the souls and spirits whipping around loose at this quarter turn of our globe away, marking our homes as safe spaces. I light a candle to remember those no longer with us - I think it is a Jewish thing not sure - my Welsh grandmother used to do it.

When I was a kid the nights from Halloween to Bonfire night were filled with listening to ghostly stories around a lit pumpkin until fireworks night sparklers were dumped into the beginning to moulder flesh.

Bone Fire Night contained the mission of checking for hedgehogs in the prepared fires to be - they were normally constructed from someones old wardrobe and a couple of pallets no one wanted anymore. When my dad worked at the timber yard along with a few of our other neighbours lots of wood was found along with scavenge from the local out crop of trees - our "wood". Everyone would bring a few fireworks and we'd go behind the houses, eating burgers and sausages cooked on peoples BBQs not yet packed away from the summer. Sometimes apples and potatoes were cooked in the fire embers for a later meal whilst we toasted marshmallows and drank hot chocolate. In some ways it was the beginning of the dark part of the year but also the transition and halloween/bonfire week would be the last major use of the outdoor spaces for gathering and eating as the cold began to strike.

It was packing away the remnants of summer time.

The first painful to be outside and true winter event was/is less than a week later - Armistice Day or Remembrance Sunday when we would march and sing and lay wreaths and think on war and the horrors within and the making of heros and the breaking of their families hearts. Blood red drops of flowers and later white contrasts mingled and mixed. I used to collect the remnants of poppies with conquers that lay strewn on the ground, one was strung to play multitudes of tournaments, the others were used to repair and create new flowers as the forgotten mutilated remnants of flowers hurt too much - it was as if people forgot what it was all about as soon as the service had finished.

Mists and fogs and frosts, sometimes together, would swallow up our little out crop of London - this still happens here in the Cotswolds too though there are more frosts and the fogs and mists are in patches depending on the ground layout.

Being part of various Choirs and Sunday School meant that most of November was spent in prep for Christmas and now as a workshop leader and crafter this is still very much true and so the seasons slide seamlessly.

Frost makes the air taste of tin and smell of electric sparks, I would make stories up about Jack Frost and how he made all the patterns as I walked to school, I'd tell of the ice dragon who lived under the railway bridge and prove it's existence by the plumes of breath that arose from us in the chill.

Sometimes I got into trouble for scaring my brother and little cousins but that was more with my Mad March Hare at Easter.

Gloves would be sown on strings and hats labeled. We'd feed the goats at the top of our road our playtime crisps so that their breath would warm our fingers.

For a few years which seemed like every year it snowed and settled but that was generally after Christmas Day.

Christmas involved ADVENT and NATIVITY and stories and songs and making things, making so many things and also at my school the Christmas play my favourite being a Chinese story about dragons in the moon and sun.

Glitter covered everything and lights lit up the dark night and candle processions filled the streets and one of my favourites - Santa on a sleigh would come round collecting for children's charities, you'd get a sweet weather you dropped a coin or not, I was often too shy to go up to Father Christmas so a Carole Singer would have to rescue me and give me my sweet.

We'd learn about why we put apples on trees and eat lots of food - the festivities meant visiting family and friends and staying inside with them whilst the world was dark and miserable outside.

There would be Christmas Bazaars and Fetes and Rainham Village would turn into a Christmas Village complete with stag men and a rag-a-tag men dancing and fake snow drifting across the streets. We would have to help at the sausage sizzle. They did a similar thing in May for the Summer but that involved a Maypole and no baskets of fruit.

Later on whilst working on the campsite I discovered the joy of catching the silver dawns often gently tinted of new year mornings, of seeing the trees silhouetted against the weak but trying sun, watching it burn off the mist and reveal subtle rainbows in the dew drops. The barren woods are not that barren and little birds and scurrying animals would say hello. When we lived at The Mill deer would come at dawn to drink, breaking ice in the streams shallow edges.

My uncle would do insane races in water on New Years Day after his epic parties with streamers being set off at mid night and New York and Auld Lang Eye sung badly. Often the parties greeted the dawn with all ages in attendance and left over curry for breakfast.

Christmas for me will always continue to twelve night but it doesn't really end there... there would be little bits of the story still unfolding through January until the beginning of February. Especially as I have a January birthday and we'd have some decorations left for my celebration (yes I'm aware some people consider this bad luck). But then the wise men didn't finish their journey until well after my birthday and they still count as Christmas!

And then for me the change over occurs February 14th with Valentines Day - flowers are peeking, the birds are beginning to change places again. It is transition time to the Lighter Part of the year where I crave the outdoors and make my family live in tents and eat BBQ food and sit in gardens and dig allotments. Feb. is when I start potting seeds up to germinate on the window sills. For me it is the beginning of Spring-Summer I know that for most people it is not.

So that is my seasonal divide - how do others view the changes of seasons?

St Mary’s DeCrypt Archaeology Dig (by sarah)

Thursday finally got to do one of the things on my extensive must do one day lists! An archaeology dig. Or rather I got to take part - I have been "on" digs but was too little to take part really and if I'm honest I don't actually remember the actual dig. So when I saw that a local church was carrying one out I jumped on board. I wasn't really expecting to find anything if I'm honest - I can't wizz at physical stuff like I used to at the camp site and I'd got my dates confused so I had to walk in!

But I did find stuff as did the others and the archaeologists were really nice and helpful and gave little talks one various aspects of archaeology (which I spent most of trying to convert to geology in my head).

This what I found 😉

Parts of a glass jar/bottle/inkwell which I found after moving some bricks - I exclaimed "oooo pretty when I spotted the glass fragment due to the colours especially as they were more vivid sitting on the darker silty soil. Of course the rim is more interesting and was lit. a pale circle that I initially thought was a worm.

Writing slate and stylise - though the stylise was found by someone else on the dig! The slate is divided into little rectangles giving it away as a school slate which makes sense as they room we were excavating was an old school room.

Nails which were lumpy rusty things, shells which were probably from the sand fill used to build the floor up rather than from eating, tiles, bits of clay pipe - these were just the stems with no decoration. And reminded me of all the bits Dad collected along the bank of the Thames.

I also found a round post hole and lots of bone fragments including ones showing evidence of butchery. I liked the bricks but they aren't particularly interesting archaeologically!

Brilliant day with Avon Archaeology Ltd and volunteers including knowledgable peeps on local history form the Gloucester Civic Trust and other various places 🙂

Others found marbles, and a little toy cannon which looked like the one that my dad had as a child which actually fired - it was thought that the cannon would date from the early 20th Century so it could well be the same type. Musket balls and other sundries were found which again makes sense as the church was used as an ammo store during the civil war.

The school room that we were excavating was in fact the first free school in Gloucestershire and is steeped in history 🙂 I meant to take photos of the wood panelling which was covered in old schooly graffiti but forgot.

And I got to play with a theodolite which I haven't done since the day I found a little hill in Richmond Park during my undergraduate days 😀

Working Things Out (by sarah)

Cuddly Science is about the kids engaging and discovering things for themselves - sometimes this leads to "off topic" discovers such as how the magnetism of the earth works when the workshop was about looking at the rocks with the hand lens attached to the compass! These are the best moments though when the child is fully engaged and working things out for themselves and asking questions!

Plus this is a super cute picture of Mary 🙂 But in all seriousness one of the things I came up against time and again is restricted learning - to keep children focused on the "task in hand" for box ticking rather than it being about the learning process. This is one of the reasons I am sticking to informal education rather than formal - my brain doesn't work like that and though will agree that children including those with ADHD need help to learn to focus often I feel it is detrimental.

I love these moments when the child falls down the rabbit whole of enquiry and you can see their brains actually working things out for themselves - it is AMAZING!

Mad but Lovely Times! (by sarah)

Things have been pretty mad here! There have been Science Festivals, poetry festival, scare acting and a whole host of other things! Last week saw SMASHfest at Gloucester Library which was super super amazing and Cuddly Science had a fab time.

The Wiggly Pet Press launched the Gloucester Poetry Societies first book Poetry without Pretension at the The Gloucester Poetry Festival and Salaric Art and Craft have been out and about doing Upcycling projects and drawing like fiends!

And of course all three of those things are me plus the acting! This last week alone saw me filmed for TV, interviewed for radio and though I wasn't in the photo Cuddly Science was photographed for the newspaper. I have so many photos and things to share and November is looking pretty exciting too with more acting, Christmas craft workshops, archaeology digs, singing, Diversity, literature and poetry Festivals, craft fayres, community outreach and museum gigs! I am no longer taking bookings for 2017 sorry about that but I really am full!

And that's without all the domestic stuff like my hospital appointments and halloween/fireworks events for kids etc... not to mention Nanowrimo and stuff.