Tres bon! at last - quand le Francais? Je ne connais pas. C'est un de ces jours!
This year up to now I have done tons of stuff. Looking at my calendar and updating next years - yes getting booked up already - I was surprised to find that during the year up to now I have been sick/ill/injured for 55 days of it, and it's only the start of October!
Believe me, I know I've been ill and sometimes I have ratted on about at it length in this blog, but 55 days?
Ever since we moved to the Cotswolds we have been ill, even planning to move here and during the move I had a stress heart attack and broke my arm with a fall downstairs.
Perhaps this isn't the place for us.
Square pegs squashed into a round hole. I don't give up. I've given it my best shot, but you know the old saying "when you bang your head against a brick wall, it's nice when you stop."
But this weekend is a rare one we are not delivering books, or at the Sealed Knot, or on a photo shoot at a country house, we are as the Georgians used to say "At Home."
We may even have time to think about what comes next.
I'll keep you posted. Here's a few pretty pictures for you
Ted and Griff on our windowcill - Andy made Griff - he's great at pottery.
Waddesdon Manor my place of work.
Peacock butterfly, ragged and tired poor thing, on our log store.
Have a good weekend everybody.
I don't want sex vendors using my blog, or tindr or tumblr or any other mispelt rubbish. I don't want to see people having sex. I'm not 14. I don't want a new partner male or female. I AM NOT A PORN SITE - so take down your links before I get an authority figure to do it for you.
I steeled myself to watch Debbie Horsfield's adaptation of Poldark's trial. I had tried to watch the series before, but I do not understand why Debbie Horsfield, who had been given such a strong female character has changed the feisty, clever, sexy Demelza from the books into a long string of wet tap water played by Eleanor Tomlinson.
The witty, sparking clever trial, with the manipulation of Jud Payner by Demelza, did not exist in this version. Whereas in the books,although the Judge is not turned by Demelza's discourse on music at the party, he certainly remembered her with kindness at the trial.
With such great material, how does Debbie Horsfield manage to make the scripts so futile?
The costumes are absolutely terrible, having actually studied handled and seen up close and personal clothes of the period, how can they get it so wrong?
Versailles was incredibily costumed and historically incorrect. But history is subjective and guesses are made. So I watch the pretty pictures and research the truth.
Winston Graham wrote a book about a man with a social conscience from the upper classes. His wife was from the gutter, but had street "smarts" and a willingness to learn.
So why the great hype about this "new" programme?
Because the TV reviewers haven't read the books - they don't care. Because the memory of the 1980's Poldark success is still so strong that this is riding on the back of it. Aidan Turner is a big sex symbol and that also pushes the ratings along.
It's a travesty that Mammoth films think they are doing a good job. Money speaks after all and isn't that what it's all about? Winston Graham didn't like the re-writing of the original
series for the BBC and there were huge rows about it.
God knows what he'd think of the half-mangled rubbish churned out in his name.
Read the books in the original form, be transported back to a time where Ross and Demelza joked with each other, celebrated with each other, loved their children, protected their world and lived and loved passionately in Cornwall.
Not I might add Lacock in the Cotswolds! Or in computer generated backdrops!
I would hate anyone to adapt my books as badly as this.
Here is the original Ross and Demelza, Robin Ellis and the late Angarhad Rees
The happy couple Mammoth style
By the way Aidan is staning on a box as Elinor is taller than him!
Oh well, I just hope Dobby has enough tea towels for Demelza to wear in the next series.
Sundays in my childhood were always boringly quiet, nothing was open. Sometimes there weren't even buses. It was only years later while doing research for my book, I found this was a hangover from Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate when it was made law and only repealed in 1994 after the 1986 Bill was defeated.
Our Sundays in Shoredtich started with a fried breakfast with fried bread, then we'd go down the "Lane". Petticoat Lane as it was always known to us started in the 17th century, trading on Sundays from 9am till about 3pm. There was the flower market near the Mildmay Hospital, and Club Row, the dog and animal market, and yes it was a cruel as it sounds. Puppies who were weak were just thrown away under the stall.
Characters were the Pearly Kings and Queens raising money for the poor,
and Prince Monolulu
He was a bookie/fortune teller believe it or not.
Then we'd go home and have a roast dinner. Always on did Sunday, followed by tinned pears and cream or if we were really fancy, neopolitan ice cream (four flavours!) if it was Summer our Dad would drive us and our dog Prince a Labrador Alasation cross, (bought in dog lane) to Hampstead Heath for the afternoon. All East End dogs have noble names, like Prince, Tsar, etc. The lower down the social rank you were, the higher up your dog was!
Prince would have a rare old time head butting walkers and children, we always knew where
he was as they fell like nine pins down the hill. He always head butted in the back of the knees so no-one saw it coming!
Back home, bath Prince, bath us, french bread cheese and salad for tea, turn off Songs of Praise, and wait impatiently for Sunday Night at the London Palladium, later as I was the oldest I was allowed to stay up and watch Maigret which scared me silly.
Sundays now are so different, they are whatever you want them to be. Hubby is planting our garlic for next season, I had cereal for lunch as I didn't fancy anything else, and now I'm blogging down memory lane or is it Petticoat Lane?!!
Have a good weekend!
So many people are into Angels at the moment. Trying to communicate with these beings of light and hope.There are courses on how to do it, Angel cards, Angel music, Angel shops. Nothing about God without whom, his messengers, the Angels wouldn't exist.
You can't talk about God because it's too preachy. I used to get God mixed up with Father Christmas, with a lot of please can I have?..... Now the Universe has taken over that role what role has God got to play in our lives?
A lot of people still say OMG without realising in means Oh my God. If something shocking happens, or during sex, a lot of people still invoke God's name. Oh God, Oh God.
I think He must be sitting with pads of thick cotton wool clouds stuffed in his ears! In the 1970s some physicists tried to prove that a God or Creator did exist, as everything was made up of mathematical patterns. It's a physicists try and prove things we can't see exist.
Still with me or have you turned me off like Songs of Praise on Sunday evening? So you see it's hard to write about about God. Any God.
My mother was a Catholic, my father was an aetheist. So I have been conflicted from an early age.
I quite like Saints. Saint Anthony when called on always makes my car keys,earrings,important letters turn up, he's the patron saint of lost items. He also helps with my cats.
Talking of which, Saint Francis of Assissi helps with animals,who are lost, in pain, or needing help.
I call on my parking Angel to help me find a good parking place, and he/she is amazing and has never let me down. My agnostic husband now calls on the parking Angel when desperate!
I have been bending the ear of Archangel Raphael recently. Asking him to shine his green healing light on me, and throughout all my illnesses, he has been a steadying influence.
We all need to believe in something and that's where I come to the dark side.
Demons.
I saw a 14 year old girl in the supermarket wearing a black tee shirt with Satan Worshipper on it. I'd have preferred Sun worshipper, but that is not good for you either, bad for the skin.
Joking apart, I have in my life met a lovely woman, wife of a minister of the church who
took it upon herself to break up Satanic circles and was good at it. I have met a health visitor who was trying to take a baby away from a young girl, not just because it was her father's child, but because it was to be a sacrifice.
In the USA Satanism is now to be declared a religion and some people want it taught in schools.
You only have to look in the dead eyes of any murderer whose photograph appears in the papers to see a Demon.
Evil can be charming, irresistable, persuasive, I worked in the BBC with such a person, who was also a murderer, but had got away with it.
I have told you all before I believe in all creatures, mermaids, the Loch Ness monster, dragons. Probably we know them now as manetees, brachiosaurs, helia monsters. But they existed.
Why did Hitler spend so much time and money looking into the dark side of the estoteric?
My mother used to say "The Devil looks after his own."
For every good thing there is a bad thing. While we're at it, I think the quote attributed to G.K.Chesterton "If a man doesn't believe in God, he'll believe anything."
In the end the thing that God has given us as humans is choice. We can be good or bad,
kind or nasty. Angels or Demons, and that's a very big expensive gift.
Sermon over, leave your change in the dish as you leave!
Sounds interesting, but is actually scary. This morning I had a flashing semi-circle of light in my right eye. Optical migraine I had been told. Took exactly five minutes to wear off. I had one two weeks ago, took 15 minutes to wear off. No headache with either of them.
I have to go to the eye hospital in case it's PVD. I haven't looked it up, I don't want to know.
I just want it fixed - now.
How about Universe, God, ascended beings, Saints, me having a life without all this?
It's just yet another straw on this poor camel's back. I know there are people worse off than me. I do know that. But I'm not a bad person. Really I'm not.
These are the charities I support financially, and if not able to, beg on behalf of.
The Salvation Army, they go places and do things for people that are amazing. Things I could never do, because I am so OCD, like holding out a hand to hold and a cup of tea to a dirty homeless person. They also provide safe places for children.
The Blue Cross, saving animals in distress and looking after them and finding them really good homes. The sight's they see and the animals they save from starvation deserve all the help they can get. (I have always had rescue cats).
OXFAM, I've supported them since I was a student in London.
Movember, Hubby grows the tashe and I bake cakes raising about £120 in a month for men's prostate cancer charity.
The Lifeboats, I can't swim, I've tried, I don't float, so they get all my help because I love the sea.
Shelterbox, I raised £18k for them by pestering the hell out of the supermarket giants to
give to their Tsunami appeal.
BBC CHILDREN IN NEED As I worked for the Beeb I used to man the phones without pay on shifts throughout the night. Now I just donate.
Cancer UK I supported this because my sister had cancer. She's cured now, and she and her daughters do the Run for Life which I sponsor with £20 here and there. She's taken over from me raising money for them.
Then there are the people who stand outside the supermarkets with collection boxes, they always get my small change.
I'm not rich, I just do what I can when I can.
So at the moment this is what I'm fighting,
Rheumatoid Arthritus (the Consultant told me I'd been in a wheelchair in 5 years - I'm not
- been fighting this for 20 years or more now).
Low Thyroid function (which is why my weight goes up and down like a yo yo!)
Seriously allergic to most foods (I carry two epipens)
Oh that reminds me The Anaphalaxsis Association & Allergy Aware UK are two of
the most recent charities I support as they have helped me so much.
Stress (ummm wonder why?)
High Blood Pressure
Now my eyes.
Too much for me.
Strangely I don't feel sorry for myself, I just want and hope optimistically that I will one day be completely well and pain free, even if it's just for a day, an hour, a moment, a second.
Would be nice.
Me on a breezy Lyme Regis seafront a few weeks ago. No I'm not pretty, but that's the least of my problems! Hubby loves me and all my SK/40s/Steampunk personas so I don't care!!
Have a good day everyone.
Ever had that moment on the computer where you pressed the send button and realised you shouldn't have? Did you feel the gut wrenching pull of making that mistake?
Well this morning the AA posted in reply to my constant barrage of complaints that they haven't answered or replied to my complaint, that I did not have a complaint number. They asked for my postcode to try and trace it. Then they posted my private message containing my Postcode. To everyone. On Twitter. In the World. Probably the Universe. AAAGH.
I can't take it off. They can't take it off. Twitter refused to take it off.
OK I live in the Cotswolds. I'm not the only person who lives here. But WHY???
The AA phoned yesterday trying to sell me a mortgage - I think you know what I replied to them. The Automobile Association that I used to trust no longer exists.
Anyway here is a snippet of my latest book. The Overdown Chronicles. Out in October.
Please remember it's copyrighted.
In the cold dark corridor of the Manor, outside my door, Anthony stood with his hand on the brass handle. Not turning it. Not knowing what to do. He stood for a moment, listening to me sobbing. He put his forehead against the wooden door, wanting to come and comfort me, but knowing it was wrong. He left silently to go to his own room, along the corridors he had haunted as a ghost for over four hundred years. His heart ached, his head spun. He had never felt emotions like this in his old life, or in this new life he'd been given. "I'm here beloved." he whispered into the darkness of the Manor, "I'm here."
Copyright of Margaret Cooper Evans 2016, may not be reproduced, used in any media whether on-line, in print, on DVD or television without the copyright owner's permission.
Well things have quietened down for the moment. We are both back at work, the sun is shining unseasonably warm and autumn is fast approaching.
Here are a few nice photos on a sunny day
I'm making Pot Pourri with my roses, bay and lavendar this year.
Rosebuds and Bay leaves drying on a tea towel
Herbs hanging in the conservatory to dry: sage, curry plant, bay and lavender.
I should be writing, I'm not quite in the zone yet, perhaps another cup of coffee...
I've tweeted, I've blogged, I've e.mailed but apart from that the latest, best and darkest
Hilary is still handwritten in notebooks. Must get on.
After last week you would have thought things would have got better. Well, yes, I suppose they have in some ways. I'm always asking the Universe for more time off with my husband, and this week I got it. Thanks to him jumping like a nanny goat over the towing rig of the caravan while putting it away and missing! He's bruised, may have cracked a rib, a massive red raw hole in his shin, and bruising up his arms and his legs. (As this happened a week ago they are a lovely sunshine yellow and sea blue now.)
At the time I washed and bandaged him up and he refused to go to the doctor and went back to work for two days. By the third day he couldn't put his foot to the floor and the massive cut was seeping yellow goo. This time I insisted he go to the doctors and they put him back together again (just like Humpty dumpty) and gave him antibiotics.
This is it a LOT better - why the drawing pad you might ask - for white balance! Hubby is after all a camerman like myself! The picture below was just after the treatment and should have looked a lot worse.
Now the irony, I had a steriod injection at the beginning of the week and for the first time in a year I can walk without any pain - joke eh? Good one Universe! So I have been running about after dear hubby where he is normally running about for me. Be careful what you wish for. I should specify for future Cosmic Ordering that I'd like us both to be off and well at the same time.
What next you may ask? Well at the weekend we will be hobbling round the Goodwood Revival meeting dressed as 1940s Mr and Mrs for our 14th Anniversary. Ivory apparently,
so we will be giving some money to preserve and save baby elephants that have been orphaned by Ivory hunters. We cannot run out of elephants on this planet! We have just fostered Jotto and Makireti for our presents to each other!
Here's the link https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/
If would be nice if you could pass this on and give, but only if you can. Charity begins at home.
