Easy living

This morning's rainbow, seen from kitchen steps overlooking back yard

Yesterday a friend was telling me that when he was small his grandmother only ever went to the grocery with a list of three things: sugar, flour, oil. Everything else was grown in the garden, along with chickens for meat and eggs. In those days the neighbours also had their kitchen gardens and the community would trade with each other.  e.g. One gives potatoes and cabbage and one gives excess eggs and tomatoes, etc.

He said his grandmother raised 8 children single-handedly (her husband had died)—they dressed well and got a good education. They had no electricity. She would press their clothes every morning with one of those oldtime irons heated by coals. In those days there was no stress about money and material possessions. What you had was what was necessary. And, I'm sure, the things people wanted were simple.

Why do we live in such excess today? 

Was that me?

One of my Criminology essays

Someone who is interested in Criminology just wrote and asked me if I have any notes I can lend her. It was quite a while ago that I was at Cambridge (doing a Masters in Criminology), so who knows where the notes are! 

But digging in an old box about half an hour ago revealed some essays . . . all neatly written by hand! How did I do that? Thousands of words, without a scratch or blotch, in neat lines, with handwriting that is quite unlike what it is now.

It's as though I was a whole different person back then. The style of writing, the content, the use of terms, the way I wrote pages upon pages on police, child delinquency, etc. It all seems worlds away. I wouldn't know how to begin approaching these essay topics now (listed below).

1. The Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure suggested these criteria for the law relating to police powers—fairness, openness and practicability. How far are these satisfied by the provisions of Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 relating to the search of persons?


2. How and why do parental child-rearing techniques influence the development of delinquency in children?


3. Does feminist research have to be "on, by and for" women?

That was then. This is now. 

Happy 800th Birthday

King's College, Cambridge, England
Photo from article (link below)

Cambridge University, where I did my Masters degree and spent some of the best and dearest times of my life is celebrating its 800th anniversary. Wow. Daddy sent me a link to the article and when I started to read it my eyes filled with tears. I felt sentimental, realising that I am a link in an 800 year old chain of students who have passed through this special place.

The celebrations are global, so I'll celebrate tonight with my own simple light show and bell ringing.

The college featured in the image with the article (above) is King's College. My college was one of the women's colleges - the lovely New Hall, now known (as of last year) as Murray Edwards College.

Today: two of my special anniversaries

Double rainbow seen from back yard the other day.
In celebration of my double anniversary.

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Today is a life-changing day. It marks two important anniversaries in my life:

1. The 4th anniversary of my first ever blog post.

2. The 8th year anniversary of that miraculous and unexpected moment when I woke up and knew deep within myself that I would never smoke again.

This post goes into more detail about how the two above-listed items came about.

I'm glad I started blogging. It has brought many joys - in the form of inspiration, moments and new people to my life (those I may not have met otherwise). And I am ultimately glad that I no longer smoke. It is to the top (if not at the top) of the list of "best things done in my life". When I look back at myself smoking, I feel like I'm looking at a whole other person. So many things have fallen away since then ... and new, healthier aspects continue to be added daily.

To those who have made the resolution to quit smoking (or quit anything that they want to give up) for the new year, I support you fully. May you also receive 'a miracle' ... whether it is the miracle of strength, miracle of determination, miracle of realisation, miracle of the desire to be healthy and clean, miracle of it 'just happening' (as it did in my case) ...

Whatever miracle is required to enable you to 'kick the habit', may you experience it in the perfect way and timing for YOU. And may you thereafter find interesting, enjoyable and healthy ways of loving yourself and filling the 'space' left by that which you no longer want in your life.

The answers stretch back to childhood ...

It's been ages since I've done Sunday Scribblings. I happened to look at it last night and ironically the topic is something I had been thinking about a lot yesterday: TRADITION (in light of Christmas in particular).

The Christmas traditions I know were created by my parents and, as their children, we accepted them as ours and grew into/grew up with them. After all, that's essentially what the word tradition means: an inherited pattern of thought or action. Traditions are passed down from one generation to the next.

Sometimes they are outgrown. Sometimes they fizzle out, change/evolve or are lost in time. Sometimes they are consciously broken and new ones created ... or not.

Christmas Eve is still the part of Christmas I like best (I'm not keen on Christmas Day itself). When I think about why, the answers stretch back to childhood. The excitement of what Christmas Eve meant to me then lingers in my blood, even though those traditions are no longer with us.

On Christmas Eve my parents, my two sisters and I would drive around all afternoon into early night delivering gifts to friends (ours and theirs). This was an exciting highlight for me and my sisters. Not only did we love going for drives, but at every stop we would visit a while, enjoy Christmassy eats and drinks, receive a gift (or gifts) ... before moving on again merrily to the next stop. Often we would all be singing Christmas carols in the car.

Christmas Eve was also the day we used to put up our Christmas tree. In those days it was a fresh tree (Latin name: podocarpus) which Daddy would cut. It had a sweet, piney smell and lasted until the 6th of January when we would take it down.

On Christmas Eve night we would go over to Auntie Pat's house for her traditional Christmas Eve dinner. While grown ups chatted and consumed the fare, we children would be out in the garden with sparklers, playing various games and munching on Christmas snacks before going in for a plate of 'real' food.

Christmas Eve also held the anticipation of Santa's arrival ... something my sisters and I pretended we still believed in (just to get the extra gifts) even after we found out that 'Santa' was our parents.

I was never too fond of Christmas Day however, because it involved waking up very early to go to church. Waking up early wasn't the problem because as children we were up early anyway to see what Santa had brought. It was the going to church part that we didn't like ... sitting through a long drawn out Christmas service when there were gifts at home waiting to be ripped open. We would then come home and have breakfast (pastelles, etc.) ... before opening gifts! This too was difficult ... the prolonged suspense of waiting. Then finally we would gather around the tree and take turns opening the presents. When that was done, we would play with whatever toys we got, read whatever books, etc ... until lunch time, which was usually a big family lunch. Either the cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. would come over to our house or we would all gather at one of theirs. Then after all the eating and playing, back home ...

Every year that was the way it unfolded ...
Yesterday as I thought about 'traditions' it struck me for the first time (believe it or not) that I don't have any Christmas traditions of my own. What is something that I really enjoy doing, sharing, getting excited about and looking forward to about Christmas now ... in the way that I looked forward to Santa, gifts, sparklers, freshly cut trees and going for gift-giving drives as a child? This year in particular I'm feeling that it's time to create/experience/celebrate/share something different and special of my own ... a new tradition.

Maybe raw.

Closer

Remember this song and opening sequence? Big Blue Marble gave so many of us our first pen pals. The lovely lyrics of the theme song were applicable then and still are now in more ways than one.

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The Earth's a Big Blue Marble when you see it from out there...

Closer, getting closer, perspectives start to change things look a little strange, as we get closer.

Closer, growing closer, no need to be afraid our troubles start to fade, as we get closer.

Together is a word we must learn to understand, if we ever want to get to know each other better.

Together is a word that holds tomorrow in its hand, tomorrow's just another day to get together, and...

Get closer, closer, closer, closer...