Temple Cloud

I had better warn that this post may contain opinions that some people consider misogynistic or homophobic.   I am not good at being tactful (this morning I had an email from a friend who had been avoiding returning my calls for the past month, explaining that the email I sent him last month had hurt him and he would rather I didn’t call him again), so, if this hurts anyone, I apologise in advance. I have been trying to make the world a better place by signing petitions on everything from suspending patent rights on vaccines  to better education for disabled children  to campaigning against compulsory photo ID for voters  and against restricting people with mental illnesses from calling emergency services . But today, I’ve had a couple of petitions that I really didn’t feel like signing.   You may feel the opposite, so I enclose links for you to sign them if you wish. The first was Give MPs Six Months Parental Leave .   The email I received was an update  complaining that Stella

  The Big Issue challenged me to walk a hundred miles in July.   My first thought was, ‘Sure, why not?’   My second was, ‘Wait, they want me to have a Facebook account?   Nah, that’s way too much work!’ In any case, one hundred miles in a month – little more than three miles a day – didn’t really sound like much of a challenge.  So instead, I decided to do a sponsored walk of two hundred miles in July, and raise money for a choice of charities, whichever sponsors feel deserve my money more. The first charity was obviously still going to be the Big Issue Foundation , the support organisation that helps homeless magazine-vendors to deal with the problems that made them homeless in the first place.  This can include helping vendors to find housing, access healthcare, learn to manage their money, improve their education, and apply for jobs.  The past year and a half has been a particularly tough time to be homeless, or to make a living by selling a magazine on the streets, and Big Issue

As PDB11 and I had previously read the Children Of The Star   trilogy together, and enjoyed it, we decided to read Enchantress from the Stars , which is by the same author, and set in the same universe.   This is the story of an attempted planetary invasion, and of three people from three very different backgrounds trying to do what they can to stop it: Georyn, an intelligent, brave and genre-savvy young peasant determined to slay the ‘dragon’ that is laying waste to his world; Jarel, one of the invaders, who is increasingly indignant at what his people are doing to the natives, whom they regard as no better than animals; and Elana, a naïve, impulsive student from an advanced civilisation, who stows away to join a mission to protect the locals from the invaders. I loved this story, though at times I found it emotionally painful, because I could see how important trust was in enabling the characters to learn and develop their abilities: Elana’s trust in her father as he trains her

Last week , as I slowly started to climb out of a week-long depression, I resolved to write a blog post on things that are better ways to develop as a person than making myself miserable.  I thought I might mention some of the following, even though I have written posts on some of them before: Keeping in touch with friends has been possibly the most worthwhile thing I’ve done during lockdown, as I scheduled times for phoning friends – and, more importantly, reminded myself to listen to them and not just talk.   Admittedly, I don’t always do this – but one great advantage of friendship over therapy is that if I’ve been ranting to a friend about something that bothers me, I can phone back later when I’ve calmed down and say, ‘Sorry about that.   Now, how are you?   What have you been doing lately?’ Keeping in touch with friends who are unresponsive is harder.   Since 2003, I have been a volunteer for Human Writes , a charity that finds pen-pals for lonely Death Row prisoners in Amer

  It is two hours after the time I would normally want to be asleep, and I can sense that this is going to be a bad night, like last night.   As last night, I’ve taken a quetiapine tablet to calm my irrational thoughts as they chase wildly around my head.   As last night, it hasn’t made any difference. Last night, I eventually took my quilt, a personal stereo and CD of relaxing music, box of tissues and a few other odds and ends, into the spare room so that I could let PDB11 get to sleep (and so that, if he was too warm, he could open the bedroom window without worrying that the hooting of owls would keep me awake).   I couldn’t bring myself to listen to the CD.   I didn’t think I deserved to listen to pleasant music.   Instead, I just lay there crying.   Tonight, I listened to the CD, but it didn’t relax me much. Yesterday (Saturday) had actually been a cheerful day, until suddenly something in the evening shook me into emotional crisis.   Perhaps I had overtired myself on a long

  Last week I was thrown out of Shepton Community Bookshop . When I say, ‘thrown out’, it would be more accurate to say ‘gently advised that I was getting over-emotional and it might be a good idea to go for a walk in the park to calm down’.   SCB is a gentle, laid-back second-hand bookshop where they’ve always got time to chat with customers who just want somewhere to sit down or somewhere to listen to them. In that bookshop, I met some of the best friends I’ve made since moving to Somerset.   One is the Dungeon Master who gave me the chance both to play Dungeons & Dragons and to join a writers’ group, which were two things I had wanted to do for a long time – in the case of role-playing games, ever since PDB11  introduced me to the webcomic Darths & Droids .   Another is TyrannosaurusHood88 , whom I met when he came into the shop to tell us about the crossover fanfiction he was writing. So, generally, Shepton Community Bookshop is a good place to be, and this visit star