Future Shock (by sarah)

A cold frosty morning with delineated skies of faded ice cream colours, we look out over Gloucester with it's historical buildings as they puncture and frame the ancient landscape around them. The air is misty cool and I feel sick at the sight of a frost covered sleeping bag hidden in a corner, the occupant is alive and I sigh in relief, the air tastes of ozone and fumes and rotting food until it is all over lain by the sugar-fat smell of the doughnut van cooking their first batch of the day.

The progress of time marches on, we seem to have been stuck for a long time, at least ten years we failed to roll with the waves of advancement, we barely noticed them.

Before that we thought we'd march singing and triumphant into a future of virtual reality and medical advancement and the healing of our societies and nature. We are 80's childs though Alaric was born in the 70's - just.

When the mysterious x-box was sent to us for Christmas a couple of years ago and we found we could do physical games with it, we knew the future had arrived and we had somehow missed it.

We think on these things, we park our car... we plug it in.

We have FUTURE SHOCK.

When we drive we can plug in and charge our books, my friend charges her cigs. My mum is in hospital but she is alive, alive because of amazing medical advancements made in the last twenty years, made in my lifetime. My dad is the same, a hundred years ago he would have died in his early 30's, he turns 70 this year. I am alive, one of my children is a c-section babe, we walk paste the homeless on the way to dance classes and I swollow the bile that rises. The future is being good to us but it is rather too threaded through with cyber-punk dystopian chords than I would like. Our eldest complains that people live in apartments with all they could want and swimming pools on balconies that over look slums.... how could they?

I frown how different from that are we?

But we do stuff she insists. Yes we do, we don't know what others do or do not do. The Future is full of mental and moral pit falls I never saw coming, like Brexit... like finding myself on the side of the haves and seeing what it would do to the have nots and despairing as I knew which way they would vote and why and neither side would listen, dipolling themselves further.

The divide is growing. But uneven.

Sometimes it overwhelms me, all the thinks to think about, all the interconnect facets of our time and world and society. The environment, housing conditions, health, respect for others, not becoming an oppressor when you have been repressed but not slipping in the victim mentality, stopping cruelty, allowing freedom. Sometimes I can't process it all and I have to ignore it to function and do anything and that maybe selfish but if I don't then we can't do anything. When overwhelmed we can not organise fundraises or gather supplies for food banks or try and remember to shop ethically when we can afford to do so.

Adaption is key and not being judged for buying primarny when there is no time or money but looking nice is an imperative and the way our society works yes you do need to sometimes look nice... like job interviews etc... I am not saying that is right, but it is a reality.

We are lucky, having had times of not being lucky we are acutely aware of the contrast and how fragile that can be. Yes we've safe guarded ourselves this time - as much as we can - because we can. But we are more determined than ever to make a good future - the future maybe here but that doesn't mean we can't improve it and more importantly it is not here for everybody.

So we change what we can where we can, sometimes the difference is so minute we can not even appreciate it and sometimes it is for many and sometimes it is just a packet of sani pads sent to the food bank or a conversations with someone.

Sometimes it is saving up money to try and pay for surgery privately for a parent and not getting there before the nhs sorts them out and then having a deposit and luck to get a new car on lease, a car that will help the environment and our long term spending as it is cheaper to run. Sometimes it is then giving the other car, the old polluting the air car, to your parents because they no longer have a mobility car because... austerity and the damage it causes especially to older folk who drastically go down hill if they can't get out and about, ending up in hospital costing the tax payers more money than their mobility allowance ever cost.

To miss-quote Terry Pratchett - we can't make everything better but we will make the little bit we can see and touch as bettererererrrrr as we can. Granny Weatherwax says it better in The Shepherd's Crown.

It took us ages to work out how to unplug the damn car so you know the future is never going to be plain sailing.

Coming up Trumps. (by sarah)

An inauguration of an argument nation
Security guards are stationed
Protecting Towers of Guilt
How long before first blood is spilt?
Highlighting Golden hair
A lapdog caught in it's very own snare
Showered and showered and gleam
But never clean
Because underage sluts are keen
To be queen with key to the plantation
Or so they say
They girls say...
No one cares what they say
No one cares
Everyone ware the new wares
The fashion accessories, dress and bow You can never bow too low
Sow the seeds of trepidation skies
Bombs flying high
Impact zones
Tweeting inanities from unsecured phones
Furry moth with micro dick
Is sick at it's new name
Humans? Are they all insane?
This ones... an orange ball bouncing
Flouncing to some anthem
But which Super Power is singing?
Who's conducting?
Who's leading?
Blonde fluff, golden stuff...
The tribble aint the trouble
No no that is piggy eyes
'Cos money buys
Apocalypse rise
And divides with fear and hate
Such bait awaits
Social media waits
Workers in the grave
Again, again
Broken dreams, smashed, who bleeds?
The people of no consequence
Shuffled off their coils
For not being faux Royals
Sitting up high
In thrones of...
An inauguration to split a nation
Remember the klu klux klan Think - His the MAN

Celestia and Watching the Night (by sarah)

Thankyou so much to everyone who gave Alaric and Jean money towards the telescope at Christmas. It has arrived!!!! We put it together last night. The actual telescope arrived a few days ago but we couldn't really do much other than play with the finder scope looking out at Robins Wood Hill through my attic window - which was of course all upside down!

This was because the tripod had not yet arrived but it arrived yesterday 🙂

It's the kind that bounces light around inside of itself and is kind of the biggest a beginner should get.

Jean and Al have been very excited about it and I was being reserved though I have dug out lots of my old astronomy mags and what have you but I kept reminding myself it was theirs and not mine. Turns out it is also for me and Mary 😀 With our January birthdays!!!!!

Mary loves the thing!

Infact both kids pretty much rushed straight over to this morning when they saw it sadly I don't think we are going to get to play on it tonight as it is currently thick fog here.

We are going to make a case for it with good made to fit holes in padding because we are going to be bundling it into the van and going up into various bits of the cotswolds!

Al and Jean made sure there was a camera mount so I can take my "arty" photos as Jean has started to call them (whilst looking down her nose at me!). Sadly my camera doesn't fit - also said camera is rubbish at low light levels as in REALLY bad. It is an amazing camera and takes magnificent photos of animals in broad daylight - which is what it was bought for, but low light... just kind of no. I'm sure it's me and I should read the manual or something.

And.... I want to look at the moon, Jean is interested in stars, Mary wants to look at the smoke (nebulea) and Alaric... I think is looking forward to motorising it and linking it to computers and stuff but that is a guess.

Local peeps are already interested in a starparty but we need to work out how to use the thing first!!!

Getting a camera that fits is high priority for me, Alaric reckons we can 3D print and adapter, which might be a waste of time with the low light stuff. However my friend reminded me that some amazing photos have been taken by smart phones including iphones that are the model before mine so that is an option as well though again is going to need an adaptor of some kind.

Thinking of my friends who have and are working with the large observatories and how they will no doubt laugh at our enthusiasm for our little Celestia. But I'll remind them of this when they have to go out to break the icilces off their huge one 😉

Lastly I am getting myself some new make-up, I was tempted by it anyway as it is all on sale reduced from £6 to like £1.50. The nail vanish is called eclipse and the perfume midnight and then there's galatic glitter and so on... And well they match the telescopes glittery finish so I can match the telescope!!!

Yes yes I know shhhhhh.

Meet Sheila (by sarah)

We've finally managed it!!!

This is Sheila she is our new car and she is actually NEW! As those of you have known us for a long time will knew we have not had the best luck with cars... vans fine but cars no.

We have been lucky in that friends and family have stepped in with cars and the little Skoda was lovely and reliable but... was a bit small for multiple sets of hips and a car seat in the back and sadly we wore the poor thing out. It did us good service though!

There have been many adventures of getting stuck on motoways with no phone charge and having to walk and walk... well you can read that fiasco here. Also I am sick of trying to fix engines on the go with what ever we have laying around (remember the time I attempted to make a missing pipe out of empty drinks cans?).

Or the time the car set on fire? (OK which time the car set on fire!).

So we've tried saving up and we've tried buying second hand vechiles from not friends/second hand car dealers ships and well yes you guessed it that ended up with the company we taking to court filing for bankruptcy as they do every single time too many people try and take them to court >:(

You can read that one here.

Obviously a lot of this was not having money, having to go for what we could get, we borrowed my mums little car, it red, white and blue and it failed catastrophically. Bear in mind it's not like we don't do maintinance - in general a large chunk of our weekends was often spent faffing around with the cars and vans but this is what happens when you can't afford new cars. It costs more to have little money than it does to have alot!

Anyway long story short - we have a shiny new car with funky lights - I will try and get a better pic!

Did I mention it's electric? It's ELECTRIC!!! Not hybrid but full on electric - it is not a Tesla (boo), it is not a funky colour... it isn't even the blue or silver we would have preferred and of course... it is ours but it is not ours. We've leased it.

a) This was basically the only way we were going to get any new vechile ever and b) it is electric and as much as we've always wanted electric it is still an emergent technology and so we really don't want to be investing tens of thousands (even if we could!) into something that is pretty much still prototyping.

I am very excited about it being electric!!! I used to enter all the New Scientists comps to win a hybrid back in the day!

One little note on the old car thing - I was coming from a back ground where my relatives were autocar mechanics and there was always access to tools and maybe even an apprentices to fix the cars. In that environment it's doesn't matter that the car is old and also it means you don't get ripped off because cars that need a little work kind of accumulate and you're sorted. Outside of this environment and there are dangerous crooks who don't care if what they are selling you for all the money you've scraped together is dangerous.

And breath.

We are incredibly lucky to get our car - it is glacial white, it smells of new car. We picked it up this afternoon - it is now getting muddy because... Cranham and Scouting. It comes with polish and high viz. I love the lights... asthetically I really LOVE those lights. I was in fact mooning over those lights on a Zoe (make of car we have) at the services not long ago... it's still not a Tesla. No more road side fixing!!! Remember I can't actually drive and am kind of fed up with stupidly put together engines that are actually designed so that it's hard to fix outside the approved dealership because.... money.

The vans a Ford Transit - we know what we're doing with those 🙂

So yeah its a Zoe 🙂

Which is why we've called it Sheila 🙂 (Sheila's are often called Zoe incase you didn't know!).

So yeah... we has new car - we kind of thought this would never happen, we are very nervous about it but it is here now and we have charging cards and a big fat cable!

A Flambe Lunch (by sarah)

So yeah - looks like I still can't really cook on my own. I'm fine with popping something in the oven to heat and nuking stuff in the microwave and even things that cook quickly in the frying pan though I still tend to burn them. But yeah I was grilling some bacon, I knew it was an off day, I couldn't find half my craft supplies that turned out to be exactly where I left them and so on.

Issue - weekend was busy with poetry performances, kids parties and tax returns. I think it might have been the tax return I had to think about which years stuff happened in and that is often different to the year it was paid for in which might be a different calendar year to the tax year and might not. Al did the reciet checking but I still had to work out dates and where I'd filed (or hadn't filed) various invoices etc..

Basically I am on my own during the day, Al normally makes food for me to just nuke for lunch or I have dips and veg etc... but there wasn't time to organise that because the weekend was busy and I didn't even do everything we were supposed to do! ie I was supposed to have a self defence class - something kind of needed after the van being smeared in shit and yobs throwing sexual insaults at me and my daughter.

Getting back to it - I decided what I wanted was bacon because it was being a slow day and I couldn't get my head around anything so working was a no go. Everytime I tried to do my naps someone was at the door delivering stuff (yes Christmas stuff is still arriving at our house!!! And we still have presents to hand out - go us!). I put the bacon on, I don't like cooking it when Al is around because it stinks and he's a vegi and its not nice for him.

Not really sure what happened, I was in the kitchen, the bacon was under the grill, it smelt like bacon cooking and then suddenly it smelt like bacon burning and when I looked there were flames coming out of the grill and I was like "AARRRGGGGGGGG" I oiked the grill tray out singing my oven gloves (booo hissssss) and popped it in the garden where the flames where leaping and spitting as the rain hit the hot fat.

I looked for our fire putting out thing... cylinder. It wasn't there - this is because it is actually in the workshop where it is more likely to be needed but Al says we can get a fire blanket for the kitchen which will make me happier.

When I looked the flames had signif. calmed down in the rain and I thought it would be ok so I got my camera and took a pic - because you know that is just what I do! Here's a picture of my lunch or rather the lunch that would have been.

Of course I was then too worried about burning things to attempt making the kids dinner and was just setting them up with cheese and biscuits (remembering Mary can't eat cow milk and is refusing peanut butter I wasn't very sure what I was actually going to be feeding her - we were going to be having fish fingers but the grill tray was/is still in the garden and I am not sure it will be much good). To the girls delight and my relief Alaric came in brandishing shopping and started cooking pasta.

This meant Mary went to bed an hour past her bed time as he comes in just before her bedtime. So kind of failure - kind of funny - kind of scary - very frustrating but also I am starting to see the correlations with things. I did heavy brain load stuff (tax) whilst not having my naps - I will get there with this one but it is why Al worries about leaving me on my own.