Schooling vs Unschooling

There's a lot of negative coverage of Facebook and Twitter at the moment, but I must say that I have found the support groups on Facebook to be amongst the liveliest and most supportive on the web.  I am a member of the alternate day fasting group which supports people using intermittent fasting, the 5:2 diet and fast-5 as well as ADF.  They aren't judgemental or picky about who is allowed to join.  It's a great group.

The unschooling group is a bit less supportive and a bit more judgemental.  I think the major problem with that group is that it includes a lot of schooling home educators who mistakenly think that home education is equivalent to unschooling.  It isn't. That leads to some pretty heated debates in the group.

Home educators may be unschoolers, but I know quite a lot who teach their children to a curriculum who could not be described as unschoolers.  If you try to teach your children then you are probably not an unschooler.  The difficulty for parents who try to teach is that you are necessarily limited by your knowledge and facility with the subject, and you may be sure that any gaps in your knowledge or lack of confidence will transmit to the child.

The whole point of unschooling is that once you put the child's curiosity and interest at the heart of the enterprise you are no longer limited by your ability to teach them, but by their ability to ask questions and understand the answers. When you make their interest the driving factor instead of your own knowledge then you put them in charge of the journey - then your job is to facilitate the search for answers, NOT to have all the answers.

If this seems like the same thing to you, you haven't understood the difference.  There is an extreme difference in the dynamics of the relationship, which means that your child's interests are pulling them in the direction they need to go, instead of the parent pushing them there.

The best way I have ever heard it described, is that schooling is the filling of a bucket, while unschooling is the lighting of a fire.

A way with words

I’ve been thinking about my writing history over the past few days, in connection with a job application, and concluded that my mother can be credited with my vocabulary and some of my facility with words – but not for the usual reasons. It isn’t that I have inherited verbal dexterity or was taught a good vocabulary, but rather that a dictionary and good reference work were essential tools in my childhood and teenage years.

She is a Mrs Malaprop, always handy with the wrong word in the wrong place, or often a word that sounds similar but has an entirely different meaning from the one intended. It isn’t something that crept up on her with age either – in her teens she memorably asked for a John Thomas when entertained to dinner, instead of the Jack Daniels she’d meant to request.

Only this morning she told me to “mea culpa” when what she’d intended was carpe diem. It’s that sort of thing which made me very keen to consult a dictionary more or less whenever she said anything unfamiliar, to double check that any phrase she referred to meant what she thought it did. Thus she recently asked my nephews if they had been fraggled (fraped). I do wish I’d had the foresight to record the many examples of this over the past decades.

This facility for getting things a little wrong doesn’t just encompass words but also gestures. One day, driving to work she was cut up by someone who clearly didn’t know where they were going. She intended to make the US sign for “up yours” which involves poking up the middle finger, but instead used her index finger – I’m not sure what the recipient will have thought she was trying to say.

To her horror, the man she had gesticulated to, followed her into the office car park. She quickly scuttled into the office and was concerned when she realised he was following her in. She had a sudden realization that the man she had just encountered might be a visitor to one of the senior managers she worked for and discovered, just in time to dive under her desk, that he was indeed the VIP from head office who was arriving to see her boss. Stuff like that happens to her all the time. The people in the office passed her a paper bag with eye holes cut out. Only my mother would have seriously considered wearing it….

My friends envy my relationship with my mother, and she is indeed a loving and selfless mother who has helped me enormously in so many ways. But should you ever have cause to rely on her for an arrangement, do bear in mind that she will generally get names, places, dates and times wrapped around her neck, and do not take at face value anything she says. This is a woman who suffered from asthma most of her life and was still spelling it athsma at 65. Not because of typos. Deliberately.

Stunned

I found out last Wednesday that my husband hasn't paid the mortgage for a year, all the while assuring me he had.  I know that I am responsible for this too, and should have been checking up on him.

I was numb Wednesday and Thursday, weepy on Friday, tired yesterday.  Today I'm going to see him with my sister to find out if there are any more things I ought to know about, before I talk to the man from the mortgage company on Monday.

I don't know whether I can save us from having the house repossessed, it may be too late.  I will have to take over everything to do with the finances on the house and organize accordingly.

I've been having a bit of an "It's a wonderful life" moment though.  My friend Jane is coming to be with me for the interview on Monday, my son has given me his savings and offered to allow his salary to be taken into account, my friend and SL partner E is helping me financially, the doctors I work with have been very kind, and my mother is buying my food and helping too.  My sister, with whom I haven't always seen eye-to-eye is coming with me to see my husband and has offered to get an estate agent round to value the house and tell me if it is worth spending money (if I can get hold of any!) to do it up.  I'm lucky to have three gorgeous children, a family and friends who care for me.

My mother keeps asking if I am OK, and I suppose really I am, it's just still something I can't quite process in my head.  But after nearly losing my son in 2005, material things going wrong have been less important to me, simply because the most important thing to me is that my children are healthy and happy.  I don't want to lose the investment we have in the house though.

At present it looks likely that any money I have will be going to the mortgage company to pay the arrears, which should have been about £8000 but have inflated to £18,000 on a £100,000 mortgage. I don't know if I can negotiate that back down again.

I know now I should have insisted on taking control of everything, but I was already paying everything else, and I never thought that he'd do this again.  He promised faithfully he wouldn't.  And I believed him, which was a stupid thing to do without evidence.  Anyway... it has distracted and held my attention since Wednesday and I don't think I will be able to do anything else but think about it until the meeting is over.

Wish me luck.

Lucy Pringle Crop Circle Photography

 

I've known the name of Lucy Pringle for years.  Her beautiful pictures of the Crop Circles around southern England have been something I have admired and been fascinated by.  She put out an appeal for funding last year, because the cost of hiring helicopters to be able to take photographs from the air is very expensive, and rising.

This year I suggested she might like to try an Indiegogo project to see if she can raise money to help her with the cost of flying, running the photographic library and doing research.  She is particularly interested in the fact that some Parkinson's disease sufferers report temporary relief from their symptoms in crop circles.

Whether you think the crop circles are a purely man made phenomenon, or maybe that some have mysterious origins, they are beautiful things, and I think it is important that they should be recorded.   They have certainly become something that attracts people to the areas of Wiltshire and Hampshire where they mostly occur.

So the campaign to raise money is on Indiegogo and her beautiful photographs can be found on her website here.

Return Domenic Johansson

Please sign the petition currently on Change.org, to return Domenic Johansson to his parents. He was snatched from them while on a plane hoping to leave the country.

I have followed the case for years and cannot understand why a government has the right to remove a child from a loving family where he was not in danger of anything other than growing an open mind. You can find more details about the case here, and there is a mailing list and opportunity to donate to the family there too. Please reblog, repost, FB and twitter. We can get Domenic back to his parents!

Disambiguating George Barnett

I've been watching George Barnett (born 1993) as he progresses from favourite of the home education community to public property through the medium of the internet.  It was obvious to me that he has amazing talent from the moment I first saw the video for Silent Sound.

He released Sierra Planes in 2010 and then 17 Days in 2012 and I thought they were both amazing, but what was even more amazing was that he was producing these records on his own, playing nearly all the instruments, providing vocals and backing vocals and doing the production and often video recording, himself.

Of course, a few weeks ago, his cover of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" has brought him a lot of attention.  Once it reached a million views on YouTube it was obvious that the world had woken up a bit to his work - although the best of his own work is several times better than the covers, and the covers are amazing.  The total number of views this morning is 3,391,431.  I realize I have used AMAZING four times already in this post.  Watch the videos and then try to avoid calling them amazing many times over.  They are stunning, incredible, fantastic, wonderful...amazing.

I feared that there might well be some confusion, once people started to try to find information for him, because there is another George Barnett, also a drummer and musician, also English, also tall and also handsome, who is a model.  So I set up a wikipedia entry for George here.  It's been vandalized a few times already, which is really annoying.

Nevertheless, blogs and papers online continue to mix up George Barnett born 1993, singer, songwriter and producer and George Barnett born 1988, model and musician.  The Wall Street Journal mixed them up in their round up of Daft Punk covers, and has so far refused to unscramble them, referring to George's cover of "Get Lucky" in an article which references the other George Barnett's modelling career.  People (including me) have mentioned in the comments that they have made a mistake, but that hasn't changed the article, which is propagating around the web.

It's often said that you only realise how inaccurate papers are when you come across a story you know something about.  The mistaken mixing of George Barnetts has spread to Google, which is displaying one of George Barnett born 1993's photographs with the personal details of the other George Barnett.  I've reported it, but as the information seems to be collected by some sort of automated robot, I'm not sure how easy it will be to disambiguate the two George Barnetts for that.

The BBC website seemed to refer to George Barnett born 1993's appearances on the local radio showcase and other appearances, but then linked to the other George Barnett's details.  They've fixed that though!  I'm proud that the BBC at least does respond to information when they mix up their George Barnett's.

I'm not sure how to help disambiguate the two George Barnetts any more than I already have, and I'm surprised by how irritating I find it when a website gets it wrong... goodness knows how the man destined to be the "other" George Barnett feels about it.

I'm going to finish by embedding "Where the Devil Sleeps"...just because I can.

Money talks

The yahoo coverage of the Tornado in Oklahoma includes the following passage:

"Meanwhile, it has emerged that the two schools which were hit had not been reinforced with tornado shelters, though hundreds in  Oklahoma had received extra protection.

"Albert Ashwood, director of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management, said it is up to each jurisdiction to set priorities for which schools get funding for safe rooms.

"But he said a shelter would not necessarily have saved more lives at Plaza Towers, especially against a tornado that was on the most powerful type, an EF5 twister, with winds of at least 200mph.

"When you talk about any kind of safety measures ... it's a mitigating measure, it's not an absolute," he said.  "There's not a guarantee that everyone will be totally safe."

It is clear that no one can guarantee that a safety measure will keep everyone totally safe.  But a school with a safe room is likely to be safer than a school without one.  It seems incredible to me that in the richest country in the world, children's lives are valued so cheaply.  People's lives.  That quotation is the sound of money talking.

There is something wrong in a world where school boards and emergency management weigh up the cost of those sort of protective measures and decides they aren't worth the cost.  There is money for all sorts of stuff in America, why not safe rooms for all schools in Tornado alley - particularly if climate change is going to mean more extreme weathere events for the future?

I was discussing Quaker philosophy with a friend the other day, and expressed surprise that so many people seem to have the impression that Quakers are saints or people who are inhumanly good.  The only thing required to be a Quaker is that 1) you should believe what you believe and 2) try to live by what you believe.  Does that seem so hard?

I think we get into trouble when people expound views and beliefs that are complicated by money and by politics and by their idea of what someone in their position should say or believe.  If instead they managed to make contact with their true inner selves and expound what they actually believe, I do think that the world would be a better place.  A much better place. 

The world could be such a wonderful place... instead of wars and oppression, freedom and health.  Instead of men making decisions about the cost of safety procedures, making decisions that reflect the fact that human life is precious, and worth celebrating, protecting, caring for.  I truly believe that most people agree with that sentiment.  If more public servants and elected representatives around the world reflected that, the world would indeed be a better place.

I know that measures may fail, things happen and no one can stop them.  But at least we should be able to say that we did all we can.  This isn't the case here.  I hope that changes and the schools in this area of the US get their safe rooms for the future.

Grrr...someone is wrong on the internet...again!

George Barnett reached two million plays on youtube yesterday with his cover of Get Lucky.  I'm really glad that he is getting some recognition for his wonderful work, and hoping that people explore further and find his original work too.

I've been keeping an unofficial eye on the things posted about him.  Partly because I considered it likely that people might confuse him with another George Barnett, who is also a drummer and musician but mainly a model.  I set up a wikipedia page for him, to try to disambiguate (I do like that word) the two George Barnetts, although it was difficult to find good original sources for a lot of the facts, and the person at wikipedia who allowed the posting said that my write up read like an advertisement, although I tried very hard not to make it read like that.

I was proved right about potential confusion when Wall Street Journal mixed up George Barnett, model, with George Barnett, amazing singer songwriter and cover artist.  Several people, including me, commented about their mistake, which they don't seem to have fixed.  Well, I suppose I didn't expect them to, really.  Papers hardly ever fix the mistakes in their outpourings unless forced to by a lawyer.

Then George was featured in a blog on My Frisky which said his videos on YouTube were all covers.  Of course they aren't.  As far as I know, only three are covers, and the other 19 are his very original work.  I posted a comment which has been in a moderation queue since yesterday... and no correction has been made to the story - or the title.

So.  You read it here first.  The George Barnett who made the splendiferous cover of Daft Punk's Get Lucky was born in 1993.  He is the George Barnett listed here.  This is his official website.

He isn't a model, he doesn't just do covers, and his Facebook fan page for liking is here.

His original work is on his youtube channel and available on spotify,  Check it out.  I think it's better than any of his covers - and they are exceptionally good.

Technological Wonder

I was born in 1958.  Yeah, I'm that old.  I can remember watching television as a child on a very small black and white television... and that television was only broadcast for a few hours a day.  I can remember the excitement of watching it in colour for the first time.

I remember being given a cassette tape recorder for Christmas and waiting with it beside my radio in order to record the Persuaders theme on it... which I then played endlessly.  I didn't mind that the radio DJ spoke over the first part and the end of it.  Well maybe I did, but I ignored it.

Those were days in which I would hear a glimpse of a new track and then listen avidly to the radio to see if I could catch it again.  Even if I knew a portion of the words I couldn't find any information about it until I caught a DJ - probably on Radio 1 - playing it again, to tell me the band name...and even then the best I could do was to watch out for an article in a magazine, or an appearance on Top of the Pops.

The telephone in those days was in the main living room attached by cords to the wall and itself.  If I wanted to make a phone call, or receive one, I had to go to the telephone and do it in front of my family.  The television in those days was in the main living room and belonged to everyone.  If I wanted to watch a particular television programme, I had to either establish my right to the television or negotiate with everyone else.

I had cameras... but the film was expensive and required more money to develop the film.  At the end of the processing, sometimes weeks or months later, I would find out what was on the film.  Sometimes that was a wondrous thing... more often than not it was a disappointment to find that I had set the aperture or exposure wrong, had camera shake or not enough light and had fuzzy or underexposed pictures.

So... I am grateful for so many things that my children, brought up in a digital age, don't even think about.  When I got up this morning, the sunrise was not big but amazing, slashes of orange across a soft white sky.  Being on the 27th floor at the moment, you're separated from nature and the people moving like toys beneath you, but hyper-aware of the changing sky laid out before you.

I grabbed my camera and took a series of shots, able to see with each one the differences between what I could see before me and what I was capturing, and then could could upload it to my computer.  And marvel, not at the photographs, which disappointingly seem to shrink sky phenomena to an unexciting, even trivial, size... but at the ability to simply move from taking an image, to seeing it, to uploading it, in a few minutes.  It still excites and stuns me.

Similarly, when I hear a snatch of a song, can remember a few words and can look it up on Google... finding not just the lyrics, but the band website, the biographies of the band... on to Spotify to listen to the greatest hits, add them to a playlist, etc, I am entranced...grateful...astonished.  I appreciate it, the wonder of it, the amazing facility with which we can gain access to information.  I am constantly amazed that many of my contemporaries (even some related to me) are unable to see what they have with a computer and a broadband connection - a link to the best library, encyclopedia, network that has ever existed. 

So on the one hand I have children who take it all for granted, who do not remember a time when they couldn't take a phone-camera-mp3 player with them whenever they go out, and on the other, people who seem slightly hostile towards the technology, as though it may raid their bank account or suck up all the spare time that they need for watching television or gardening (or whatever they're into). 

And I... I am just transfixed by the possibilities that we have now that our grandparents could only have dreamed of... the ability to speak to people across the world and see them at the same time.  The ability to watch videos of friends and family or strangers and even strangerers on youtube.  The ability to share what we are thinking and feeling with anyone who cares to pass by.  I love it all.

My pictures are disappointing... the slashed fire in the sky when I turned the corner this morning and saw it on the horizon was far more striking in the real world than I captured in the photographs... but my wonder and amazement at being able to take photographs, upload them to my computer, upload one to this website and write a blog post and publish it... that's not disappointing at all. 

Fat Lady moaning

Definitely not Evans:  Tropical Sale on Ebay, beautiful Caftans at affordable prices

Although I have lost over two stone with the 5:2 diet I am still a big woman and have plenty more to go.  So I am still in the realm

of plus size clothing.  Today I received a link the new Evans catalogue... and my God, it's horrible stuff.  I feel hot just looking at it... and not in the sexy way... in the sweaty and uncomfortable way.

Time was when Evans was synonymous with crimpelene clothing... for those too young to remember crimpelene it was a man made, thick fabric which didn't crease, and which was especially used for fat lady clothes.  Don't ask me why.  It just was.  Perhaps they thought it was more durable or something, no idea.

The Evans went through a resurgence... better clothing, made for a range of ages, with a lot of natural fabrics in place of the man made. 

But now they seem to have reverted and have taken some very stupid decisions about the clothing they make.  Their dresses have no sleeves or are made of polyester...sometimes both.  They have only a few skirts... I don't know what has happened to the skirts, but they look dull as ditchwater.

Add to that the fact that most of their lingerie and nearly all their boots don't fit most of the people who are supposedly catered for by their shop, and I think you will understand why I find it very frustrating that a shop that has a virtually captive audience in a lot of towns (it being the only shop which offers plus sizes) are still not providing plus size women with what they want.

They are managing to make failure out of something that ought to be easy as pie.  If they were offering me long tops with half sleeves, dresses with half sleeves, nice natural fabrics and affordable prices, I'd be biting their hands off. 

If they added suitable lingerie in sizes and styles that suit the people who are the alleged target audience for the clothes, and shoes too... well all my spare money would be going their way.  As it is, ebay gets it, specifically Tropical Sale.  They have wonderful short and long Caftans in natural fabrics, and I love them. They have sleeves.

Daft Punk cover by George Barnett

I've been posting about George Barnett for years... and it astonishes me that he hasn't had his big break yet.  I think maybe it's happening for him.  As few days ago he posted a cover of Get Lucky, originally by Daft Punk, on youtube.  This morning it has nearly half a million plays.



I hoping that all the publicity and likes for the cover will get attention for his music, which is amazing, and well produced.

Edited to add: French comments on the YouTube stream indicate that George's cover appeared on French tv this evening (Monday May 7) and he is featured on a LOT of trending and viral tips websites, as well as Gizmodo and News 24.  I hope all these new fans listen to his own stuff too... the rising numbers on the YouTube vids indicate they are exploring his other stuff too!

Rotterdam market

Went out to the Binnenrotte market this morning to get a few things for our dinner this evening, and because it is the most interesting market I've ever been to.  It's a beautiful day, warm and sunny, and so I went out without a coat or jumper... while E was wearing a t-shirt, polo shirt and fleecy hoodie.  He's a cold soul, needs to warm himself on some rocks before he can lose the layers!

The market is very varied... there are junky stalls which have everything from pots and pans to rugs and washing machines... you don't really get the wide variety of goods anywhere but car boot sales in the UK - some stalls are almost like antique shops, others have a lot of toys, christmas ornaments and plastic in them.  They're mixed in with the usual types of clothes and household stalls, like the ones you would see in English markets too, selling phone covers and batteries etc.

  

There are quite a lot of foodie stalls, selling things ready to eat.  We stopped for chips and mayonnaise, which is the traditional Dutch treat, from a van which was doing brisk trade.

There are serious cheese stalls, with a wide variety of Dutch cheese... I do not know why they give the impression to the rest of the world that they only produce Edam and Gouda - there are fantastic, wonderful cheeses in the Netherlands.

  

We bought courgette for the meal tonight, and mango for pudding.

 

At the end of the market street, there are flower beds which have been planted up in the most bizarre way.  The corners of the bed had been filled with pansies, and then there was a sort of wasteland between that and the other corner which had been planted with small lavender plants.  Now, I know the lavender will grow, but it still seems a bit bizarre.


 

There are exotic fruit stalls with papaya and fruits I don't even know the names of, bread stalls, stall with Turkish bread and pastries, a jumble of clothes - some new, some second hand. 

  

At one end there is a flower market which had breathtaking flowers, and *so cheap*.  They had some flowers which were obviously only going to last the weekend - three dozen roses for 5 euros though, armfuls of lovely flowers that would cost £30 or £40 in the UK for seven Euros.

 I resisted until I came to a stall with peonies and ranunculus, and so I bought five pink hyacinths, a bunch of white ranunculus and a bunch of the peonies for 7.5 euros...they'd have been a lot more in the UK.

  

We popped into Marqt, which is the lovely organic supermarket on the corner of the street where the market was, to buy some yoghut and bread.  I snapped a picture of E pulling our purchases home in his box on wheels.


And here are my flowers.  They are a bit small for the vase, which we bought on one of the junk stalls.  E has a vase of just the right size, but it's worth a bit and he declines to have me juggling flowers in it... can't think why.


On the way home I snapped my favourite tree.  There isn't much green in this part of Rotterdam, and I miss it, so have adopted this tree, and I give it a pat when I pass it. 

Queen's Day

I arrived in Rotterdam yesterday evening.  Today is Queen's day in the Netherlands, and an extra special occasion as the Queen has abdicated and her son, the new King, has been crowned.

This is the second Queen's day I have experienced.  Queen's day has a large number of traditions associated with it.  The population wears orange clothing to show their support of tradition, and it isn't unusual to find men in orange suits, women in orange clothing, and either with orange wigs or accessories.



It is a national holiday, and children traditionally set out their toys and bric a brac to sell.  a lot of the stuff to sell is children's clothes and toys - I would think it is possible to kit out your baby for the first four years at a bargain price on Queen's day.   In Delft there are streets full of children selling things, as well as market stalls with professional traders selling everything from records to boxer shorts - like one big mediaeval market.



There's lots of street food, lots of entertainers, and lots of sideshows...children posing as living Vermeers seemed popular in Delft.  We stopped off in a dark cafe, Het Konings Huys, to have a hot chocolate and a slice of Dudok apple pie.  It was rather nice, just the right amount of sweetness and a very generous portion.  As a result we weren't that interested in the other food on offer around the town, and there seemed to be a great deal of both traditional Dutch fare and a lot of spicy foods from the Far East.

The central square in Delft was filled with people sitting in the street cafes, and listening to a live band that was playing the national anthem among other things.  The ceremonies from Amsterdam were streamed live to a huge screen over the stage in Delft.



We spent four hours touring the stalls, but I bought very little - some tiny bare wooden clogs, and some Delft blue and white pottery.  we visited the Vermeer Centrum and had a personal tour by a very nice guide, who did the whole thing in English for me.  She explained the symbolism of Vermeer's paintings - the positioning of jugs and windows in his painted is extremely significant and would have completely passed me by without the explanation.  By two o'clock Delft was getting very crowded indeed, and as neither of us much like big crowds, we decided to come back to Rotterdam.



The feeling of the day is one of absolute unity, positive about their country and seeing the Queen and now King as the head of state, without the mystical class-ridden quality royalty seems to have in the UK.  I asked if there is any anti-royalty movement, but there doesn't seem to be a strong anti-royal movement... people are reconciled to the idea of a mutual benefit, and quite practical about it.  The Guardian interviewed people whose views seemed to be summed up as "if he does a good job, great, if he doesn't we'll think again."   And it has to be said that the Dutch don't treat their royal family as a race apart.  They are used to them cycling and doing ordinary stuff like real human beings.

It seems to me a shame that the only time I have experienced this sort of feeling in the UK was during the Olympics... an event I didn't really have any interest in, except for the interesting effect it had on my fellow countrypeople.  I'm especially sad that there isn't really anything in celebration of being English that equates with this positivity - the Scots, Welsh and Irish all have a distinct national identity and celebrate it in various ways, but the celebration of anything English seems to have become something shameful - as though to celebrate Englishness is to be racist, or celebrate trampling on the countries and rights of others, somehow.

The Dutch seem to manage to celebrate their country without any of the triumphalism - well, as far as I could see.  And it feels like a whole country comes together to have a party, to celebrate being themselves. 

We travelled back on the upper deck of a double decker train - the first I have ever been on.  It rocked rather alarmingly when it entered the stations, but gave you a great view of the countryside.



We had Patatjes in the station, which are like chips, with mayonnaise, and made our way home with sore feet.

The club underneath E's apartment is holding a party and the bass is booming through the building.  I'd always assumed tall buildings were rather quiet, but the sound is often louder up on the 27th floor than it is on the ground - the sound has nothing to stop it in between.  Not sure how loud it will get....

One of the amazing things about Queen's day is that there is mess and broken glass in the streets on the day... and the following day everything is spotless again - rubbish and broken glass cleaned away.  The Dutch know how to party - but also how to clean up.

5/2 diet

I have now lost just over two stone on the intermittent fasting 5/2 diet.  As you may remember, I started on the alternate day fast diet and lost no weight at all.  When I switched to the 5/2 pattern I started to lose it slowly - around half to one pound a week.

I've been missing breakfast, having a light lunch and then eating a bowl of soupy vegetable noodles for an early dinner on my fasting days, usually Tuesday and Friday.  I use one nest of noodles between the two of us (158 calories), some stock, and ribbons of carrot and courgette, usually, and spinach.  I'm more or less used to this way of eating now, and don't find it anywhere near so hard as I did initially.

In fact, I find that I often fantasise about being able to eat things during fast days which I have no interest in eating when I get to my eat-anything day the following day.  I feel immensely liberated by this style of eating - I appreciate my food more, I don't feel guilty on my eating days, and even when I came off the diet because I was ill, in January, I didn't pile back the weight I had lost - as I often have in the past with low calorie diets.

In fact my weight appeared to be stable, although I was making no attempt to restrict my eating.

I'm determined to carry on.  The only downside that I can see is the possible requirement to replace my wardrobe frequently.  I'm already two dress sizes down from last August.

Verified authentic

Anyone doing family history online is aware of the tendency for wrong things to propagate on the internet.  Someone makes a mistake, transposes a date or gets some detail wrong, and before you can say wha? the information has spread like wildfire. 

There's a very irritating case which irks me from time to time.  A man studying his wife's family ascribed my ancestor's older brother to someone for reasons I can't fathom.  I know absolutely whose son he was, where he was born, where he lived etc.

I pointed out the error to the gentleman concerned and said I was willing to send him all the proofs he might want that the person he had down as his father was not his father.  He sent me an email saying that he knew it was probably wrong, and would change it when he got round to it.  About three years later I am still waiting for that to happen.  Meanwhile, other people studying the same family have taken the information off this person's ancestry account and it is all over the place.  Wrong.

I love Pinterest, the website that allows you to pin things you find interesting or want to remember.  The great thing about it is that it retains the links to the original picture, and so if you click through the pinned picture, you will be taken to the website where the image was originally found.  Except that some people don't seem to have understood the original intention, and have uploaded pictures again, so they lead nowhere.  Or have pinned them from Imagr or Tumblr, where they had already been separated from their original position on the web and from any information about them.

There's a picture of a house crammed between two outcrops of rock on Pinterest.  The link leads to a list of amazing places around the world, most of which are natural, not man made.  And then it links to an image blog, which has no information except for the title... House between two worlds.  On pinterest the title has changed to house between two rocks, and I have found dozens and dozens of pins and lots of lists online which include it.  But I think it is actually a computer generated image, not a photograph of a real place.

It's getting to the point where it is possible to post things on Pinterest, and to find that things come full circle... posted on Pinterest, linked to by other websites, then used in blogs which quote pinterest as the source.

Denying Christianity

When asked I don't say I am a Christian, because I have a certain idea in my head of what it means to be a Christian, and I don't even try to live by that ideal.  I haven't sold my possessions, left my family and gone off to spread the word among the unbelievers.  I haven't offered people who have tried to hurt me other ways of doing that, nor yet did I run after the people who stole my possessions from our car and offer them the things they missed.  I don't spend my days in service to others.

I appreciate that we don't all have the same idea when you mention the word Christian.  Some people see it as dependent on certain rituals, or attendance at particular churches, or a combination of ritual and attendance.  Some would say that you can't be a Christian unless you have been born again and received a baptism.

The discussion about what it means to be Christian came to mind because I read a quote from James Beverley, Professor of Christian Thought and Ethics at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, who says that Eckhart Tolle's worldview "is at odds with central Christian convictions" and that "Tolle denies the core of Christianity by claiming there is no ultimate distinction between humans and God and Jesus".

When I was a child I went to a Church of England Primary School and remember distinctly the irritation I felt when the Vicar or Curate would emphasise that Jesus was the son of God.  I knew, always knew that we were all sons and daughters of God.  I have come to know that we are all part of God, as God is part of us.  And so I also do not see the division between Jesus, God, humans... it's all part of the oneness of All.  And All are one.  That division, is illusory, part of the confusion which arises from our place in the world of matter and of time.

We are facets of the same thing, part of God's attempt to know himself, and the clues are all there in the words which are reported from Jesus.  He told us that when we did things for other people, we were doing them for him, or for God.  He told us that the Kingdom of Heaven was within.  He told us to love each other as we love ourselves.

The people who really deny the core of Christianity defend wars, starving children, placing a higher value on my life than the life of a child in Africa, or India.  Spend money on bombs and armaments instead of food and drugs and safe water for our brothers and sisters in God.  We live and let them die.  The moment our governments and leaders stop denying the Christianity they purport to support, will be the end of War.  The end of hunger.  The end of treating people from other cultures or religions as though they matter less than we do.

We live in an abandant and beautiful world, with enough for everyone if we aren't greedy for more than our fair share, and yet there has never been time when things have worked that way.  And we're the ones keeping it from working.  If more of us were aware of the oneness of all - the essential lack of difference between me, you, that child dying from starvation and this fat capitalist... then maybe the world would begin to change.  When we let go of our ambitions to be rich and famous, to shine beyond our small lives in ordinary towns... when we realise that it is those ambitions that keep others in slavery to produce the things we want... then we may gain the world.

Imagining feminism worked

The Guardian has been soliciting information from people who regard themselves as working class, about feminism. I don't know whether they have middle-classified the answers, but they sure don't sound working class. But then, no more do I. I have an extreme form of mixture in my mother's ancestry, with one line being more or less uniformly Norman ancestry, middle class, and the other with Anglo-Saxon ancestry and working class. Dirt poor working class, dying in the workhouse, dying with nothing to their names.

I read the Guardian all the time, although the pro-school vibe is a bit offputting, but then a large proportion of their readership seem to be teachers. They try to solicit working class views, but really, if you're reading the Guardian on a regular basis, you're halfway to the middle classes, whatever your background or financial status. It requires a certain sort of worldview before you can read it. Daily Mail readers hate the Guardian.

The article made me think though. A couple of days ago I visited the Joseph Rowntree Foundation webpage. I saw that their strapline was "Inspiring social change" and I know of their work through the quakers. But much of what I saw on the website was a meticulous recording of what is happening, a social commentary on the problems and the challenges that people face today, and very little vision or inspiration for changing it. Many of those sorts of charities spend their time fighting the things, the injustices that they see in the world, rather than presenting a vision of what it should be for the future.

It meshes with something else I have been wrestling with for myself. I don't remember how I started watching Bashar videos... I think it was through Educating Humanity, which is a website which reports on UFOs and the like. Bashar is apparently a channelled being from the future, who gives spiritual advice. The main crux of his advice is what my grandmother always told me: "To thine own self, be true". He says that we are in the world to be the best possible version of ourselves, and that every incarnation is unique and therefore has a mission to be the most like themselves that they can be.

I set aside all the questions about whether it is possible to channel other entities, and whether it is possible for people from the future to talk to today. I look only at the message... is it true? Does it work for me? Do I resonate with it? It's not a unique message, but it does have some unique detail. What he suggests we should do is to imagine for ourselves what world we would prefer to live in, and then pretend it exists. To engender in ourselves a vision of the world we would prefer and then to create it in feeling, in experience, in our minds, and know that it exists.

I don't know if the method of manifesting the future you prefer is an effective one, but it made me think about what I want, what world I prefer. And it made me wonder what is the obstacle to achieving it, what stops humankind from making a world without war, without want, without hunger, without illness and disease. What are we waiting for? We have all the resources we need to solve world hunger, to stop wars, to look after the people who need looking after. At present the UK seems to be going backwards as far as that is concerned, and for what? For money. This artificial construct that we developed in order to make barering easier has become something which controls governments, controls people and forces us into positions we don't want to take. Saving it, hoarding it, balancing the books, has become far more important than all the things it represents... the ability to move stuff around to the people who need it.

I see one of the challenges of the world today that it is in the grip of a very male approach to problems. There isn't enough of the female in our systems - and in fact the recent changes to the welfare system are making it less and less nurturing and caring and more and more punitive in approach. That isn't a good thing. A feminist approach, a feminine approach, would be to put the people first and the money second. To find ways of nurturing and caring for people, however little they are able to look after themselves. I am not talking about socialism, I am talking about tht human instinct to care for those who are unable to care for themelves, to make sure they are safe and well and looked after, and not to count the cost, the way you would if a broken or needy person was set in front of you.

I start to think of my vision of a feminist future, and if I were Queen of the world, I would ban the stick thin models from the cat walk and the pages of the magazines. I would put women on them, real women with curves and lumps and bumps in the wrong places, who are more beautiful than the stick thin boygirls they use today.

I'd make every woman buy a pair of flat shoes and confiscate the teetering high heels until they could run for a bus.

I'd close every massage parlour, every brothel, every spearmint rhino, every lap dancing club. I'd set up free community centres, with interesting programmes of talks and demonstrations on science, on flower arranging, on any damn thing that anyone was interested in.

In my feminist world, women would be free to stay at home or go to work. If they stayed at home they would be paid by the state to look after their children. Woman and men who commit violent and sexual offences would be held in prison until they were no longer a danger to others. Prison would be a town, walled in, but containing everything on the inside that is on the outside - shops and cafes and theatres and restaurants... and only those who proved unable to exist in such a place would be sent to anywhere more punitive.

I loved the model of home for old people which was upon those lines - a place which mimicked real life, it exists in the Netherlands. That place doesn't assume that someone with dementia will have forgotten everything they ever knew, and it allows them to continue to do the things they know how to do. I think prisons should be the same - we would be able to maintain prisons far better if we made them better places to be.

My ideas are unformed, and of course, completely impractical at present, but I do think that having a vision for the way you want things to be, the way you prefer them to be, is an important thing to have, otherwise everything becomes very negative. If you only ever know how you *don't* want things to be, it's a long and hard way towards a better future.

Suffering to be beautiful

Source: google.com viaLisa on Pinterest

I don't know whether I have mentioned it before, but I love Pinterest. I've pinned thousands of images, and find it much easier to remember things for which I have a visual reminder, rather than a bookmark. I love it... it feeds the collector in me, the hoarder, the window shopper and the child.

This morning I found that someone had started to follow my board on Bohemian clothing. I don't have a firm policy about what I include on that board - anything that takes my fancy goes into it, and it is an eclectic collection. There are a lot of Boho collectors on Pinterest, and I have an idea that many of them are harking back to their lost youth in the 60s and 70s, when they were young enough to wear the clothing.

I find that women go through a number of clothing ages through their lives. There's the stage in childhood and teens when you want to look a lot older than you are, but some things are too severe or shapeless and middle-aged to work on a young body. It must be admitted that the young can get away with almost anything, but too much bling or sophisticated detail detracts, rather than enhancing the way that they look.

Then there is a period in your twenties to forties when most women can get away with wearing most things. Almost any colour or style is suitable - well at least appropriate, even if not particularly flattering.

Unfortunately there comes a time, and I have reached it, when certain styles no longer seem right on a middle-aged woman, even if she isn't overweight and looking like a sack of potatoes like me. Puff sleeves, frilly hems, string straps, backless dresses, pale pastels tend to make you look as though you haven't realised you've grown older. There are some women who can carry them off, even at 55, but they are few and far between. The rest of us look ridiculous.

Then a strange thing happens. I'm not sure exactly what age it is, but around 70-75, suddenly you can wear the pastel frilly stuff again. There's never going to be a time again when backless or strapless is going to look good on you, but you can go back to the pastels and frilly and on an old lady they can look good. I don't know whether it is something about grey or lighter hair etc... it just starts to look ok. I suppose once you are past 70, unless you are a very unusual woman, or have spent a fortune on facelifts, there is little chance that anyone will think you are trying to look like a young woman again.

I've veered completely away from my point. In the mornings, I tend to flip through the emails I've received from Pinterest telling me that people have repinned the things I have pinned, and I look at their boards in turn. The board I visited this morning was for someone who had a board "Shoes I can actually wear". I reconized a kindred spirit, unable to wear anything but flat shoes, and looking for more interesting choices for those. I moseyed around her boards to see what else she had, which is very like being able to search through some stranger's junk drawer or photo album, and reward enough in itself for the time spent... something very few men will understand... and found she had another board..."Shoes I couldn't possibly wear, but would love to".

The board was covered in the high heels that every actress seems to wear on the red carpet nowadays. And it occurred to me that in years to come, people may regard these as inhumane as the tightly-laced corset or binding the feet of children. Don't get me wrong... I love high heels, and used to wear them. But my idea of a high heel is a three inch heel that I used to wear on high days and holidays, not the five or seven or nine inch monstrosities that are common nowadays.

It made me wonder once again whose standard of beautiful we are adopting, and why. And what message we are sending to the girls who are growing up now, who see actresses and models walking around in these things, mostly designed by men, and want to be like them. The foot is held in an unnatural position, the balance and structure of the skeleton is undermined by these things. Women will say that they dress for themselves and to please themselves, but even if my bad back didn't prevent me from ever wearing these shoes, I don't think I would wear them. I am too used to being able to move freely, being able to run when required, being able to balance my body and walk as far as I want to without feeling that someone has set the balls of my feet on fire. The thin models of the catwalk are not the way most women are, nor yet the ideal of most men. Most of them prefer real women with curves... indeed we are evolved to prefer that to the other. I do not understand why we have given our power away to mostly elderly men, certainly often homosexual men who seem to prefer androgynous models that look like adolescent boys rather than grown women. Why have we allowed the magazine editors and fashion pundits to tell us what is beautiful? I don't really agree with their vision of beauty... Nigella Lawson, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, Sophie Dahl before she got really thin... those are my ideals of beauty. And none of them could be mistaken for a boy.

I see people around me suffering to try to stagger around in impossible shoes, to diet into impossible clothes, and to balance their ideal of stick thinness with the reality of their bodies. I want a different, diverse, standard of beauty and fashion which includes us all - the naturally thin, slim, fat and obese. That recognizes us as people who want to look the best we can. Even the ugliest person wants to be able to look good, to be admired and liked ... why shouldn't every one of us be included in that? why should we be excluded because of our age or size? We want fashion that takes account of our anatomy and doesn't expect that we will learn a whole new way of walking to accommodate the highest of red-soled heels.

I think that's also what is going on with women who pin to Pinterest. They want a world in which they can find clothes and shoes they like, and which like them and their bodies - not the pristine skinny ideal which is presented in magazines the world over. I want a world in which people feel comfortable being themselves, whatever shape that is, and which tries to make the best of that.

And ANOTHER thing. I've already blogged the unavailability of stripey woollen tights for plus size women. It seems to me that there is something awry with supply and demand if there is a proven demand for something that isn't being produced. It undermines my faith in the idea that this mechanism works within our system at all. I've talked to any number of women who feel that the clothing shops cater for young women and don't stock anything that they like or want to wear.

I find this is a particular problem for plus size women of that certain age between 50 and 70 when they have to be careful not to look odd. Look in the shops for summer dresses - nearly all of them are in man-made fabrics, and nearly all of them are sleeveless. Even women who have kept themselves in shape may begin to get a bit self conscious about having their bare arms on display, and it is a pain to have to wear a cardigan or shrug on a hot day in summer. Sleeves would solve this problem, but very few of the summer dresses have them.

I have a dream of finding a cotton lawn summer dress all floaty and beautiful, which reaches down to my feet, and has sleeves. Of finding that the tops and blouses in the shops reach down to cover my bottom, and are in natural fabrics in plain colours, and not in manmade fabrics with complex patterns. Of finding someone making affordable shoes in beautiful leathers, with flat heels, feminine and comfortable.

I don't think I'm alone. I don't think it is too much to ask. I'd like to understand why it isn't happening.

TED compared to Scientology Summer Camp....

You know, I've always quite liked people who treat other people, however exalted their position, as ordinary people. But the inside view on TED which Eddie Huang has just granted us makes them sound demented.

He explains to the JRE show that on top of making his presentation to the conference, he was expected to attend all the meet-and-greet events for 12-16 hours a day - and when he sloped off to make a podcast, they took his TED fellowship away from him.

That's bad enough, but the power-crazed ones in charge of the conference refused to let him pay for his own hotel in order that he shouldn't have to room with a stranger. When he wanted to spend his birthday, which happened to fall inside the TED week, with his girl, they said no.

Frankly, I've enjoyed TED talks and I have recomended them to many people, but this is starting to leave a nasty taste in my mouth. They don't pay their speakers, expect them to attend everything every day for a week, and room them in bad hotels with strangers. What in hell is the $16 million they reap in attendance fees going to, then? Oh sorry - probably it funds their secretive anonymous scientific board?

I'm beginning to thing we need an antiTED - non elitist, non expensive, non censoring free and open and transparent. Maybe THAT's an idea worth sharing.

Suspending disbelief scientifically

I'm a layperson in every sense that word is ever used. I'm not a priest or any sort of religious official, I'm not an academic, I'm not a scientist. I've been thinking quite a lot recently about the widening gulf which there seems to be between people labelling themselves as scientists - who often also choose labels like atheist or sceptic as well and those who label themselves as other things... mystics, believers, people of faith.

I'm curious, interested in thinking about life, the universe and everything, and I'm puzzled by the dogma of both ends of the spectrum. It seems to me that both ends have pretty closed minds, and that both are unhelpful. It was the fact that two people labelling themselves as scientists had the TEDx Talk by Rupert Sheldrake removed from the TEDx London website which started me examining this, although there's been more and more online and in print recently about this debate between faith and science, creationists and atheists.

The official scientist view of the world, for me, requires no fewer leaps of faith than the creationist view of the world. Scientists, especially nowadays, are just as capable of trying to believe six impossible things before breakfast. My ability to grasp the ideas of Quantum Physics are limited to my teenage understanding of mathematics, and the lack of ability to encompass the idea that so much of the quantum world conflicts so badly with the material universe I think I can see and touch.

The idea that anyone is prevented from postulating a theory or trying to explain a phenomenon because it seems unlikely or far-fetched, would surely have prevented anyone from suggesting quantum theory in the first place? There are still large areas of our world and universe which are little understood and there is still quite a big conflict between the Newtonian universe we were used to and the new Quantum universe that scientists are busy imagining for us. In fact, that quantum multiverse has far more in common with the magical universe of the creationists and mystics than it appears to have with the nuts and bolts universe I think I live in.

What's more, scientists seem pretty ok with people postulating theories which are not backed up by experiment or proven mathematical theory, as long as those theories are postulated by people who are acknowledged as scientists. As I was reading only a couple of days ago in an old copy of the New Scientist, cosmologists at MIT and Stamford have suggested that the Universe expanded in the first few seconds of its existence by a factor of 10 ³⁰. This theory has somehow led to the theory of a multiverse, which leads on inevitably (it is claimed) to the idea of parallel universes.

Forgive me my ignorance... but I find it no greater leap of faith on my part to accept this idea, than to think that a Creator is responsible for the Creation of the Universe. To me, those ideas may not be mutually exclusive, either. This Multiverse theory is in itself dependent upon the theory of the big bang start to the universe we know and love, which is itself not proven, just an idea. I am wondering why those ideas are any different from the ideas that Rupert Sheldrake postulated, which were his views on the science-as-a-religion worldview.

To me, science is the business of having a theory about the nature of some part of material reality and then doing whatever you can to work out whether that theory is tenable, but the ides that Science is a thing which can only encompass that which we know to be true and not that which we believe to be true is manifestly untrue, and always has been. There are also many things in our universe, much smaller-scale, ordinary things, which do not fit neatly into the category of things that can be known. How do we see love? Where is it in the body? Where does the mind reside? Many of the the biggest discoveries in science have been made by laypeople - not professional scientists, not academics, not people who worked within the structure of science, but people who were curious about the world and set out to explore it. I am not sure how many of their discoveries were the results of experiments that would be properly accepted as part of scientific method today. Many of them faced prejudice because they were card-carrying scientists.

All investigation starts with an idea and a question, and I don't think it is any more scientific to start from the premise that this or that "cannot" be true, than it is to believe that a higher-dimensional being is channelling information from the 24th century. If you start out from a belief that you know better, without examining the evidence, that's prejudice, not science.

In any case, however sceptical you may be about the likelihood of messages being from the 24th century, I think there is a lot to be learned from listening to the stories that a community tells itself, whether that community is a bunch of new age seekers after spiritual truths, or a bunch of scientists. The major lesson that both groups, all people have to learn, is the art of allowing other people to be wrong, deluded or deliberately deceptive and listening anyway to see if they have anything that speaks to your condition, as Quakers say. They may tell you far more than you anticipate about yourself.

Rupert Sheldrake is none of the above things. I have a lot of respect for his ideas and his work, and I think it is telling that some people are unable to let his views be what they are and instead feel that they have to challenge and what is more, suppress them. Anyone can be wrong, and that's human. But not allowing other people to postulate something that conflicts with your own opinion is the opposite of scientific. I hope that the community conveys to TED how disappointed they are that they gave in on this subject, and I hope that the controversy over Rupert Sheldrake's TEDx talk makes it the most viewed TED video ever.

5/2 diet - moving on from ADF

Following my previous post about beginning the alternative day fasting diet. I did alternate day fasting for two months and I didn't seem to lose a pound. I joined the facebook group for Alternate Day fasting and listened to people witterng on about how many pounds they had lost... but then I started to notice a pattern... a lot of the people who were losing weight were on the other version of intermittent fasting, doing only two days a week of fasting and eating normally the rest of the time. I decided to switch to the 5/2 diet. My reasons were that I would experiment to see if I lost more weight on the 5/2 diet rather than fasting every other day, and if I wasn't losing weight *anyway* on the alternate day fasting system, I could keep the health benefits of intermittent fasting without having to keep to 500 calories half the week. And amazingly, when I switched to two days a week instead of every other day, I started to lose weight. I've lost just over a stone and a half since I started this regime, in October. It seems to make no sense, as I am only fasting two days out of seven instead of three or four, but somehow it works. I've learned that I prefer to have a meal in the early evening rather than having my largest meal at lunch time - I found I was getting hungry in the night when I ate my largest meal at lunch time on fasting days. I find vegetable soup is very filling and make that on the fasting days I share with my mother. I have found that the fasting days make me appreciate food soo much more than I used to, and I don't go crazy on non-fasting days, but I do eat what I want. I have often found with other diets that my body seems to adapt to the calories control and I have to drop my intake to keep losing. That hasn't happened with this diet. I'm certainly getting used to the calorie restriction on fasting days, and it doesn't worry me to go all day with only a couple of apples before my evening bowl of soup. The brilliant thing about this diet is that instead of seeing an endless stream of days of restricted eating before you, you only have to tackle dieting one day at a time... and you can always tell yourself that you can eat what you like the following day. As *anyone* can put up with one day of dieting, this makes it an easy diet to follow. There'a an increasing number of websites, menu sites and support groups for this type of eating. Beware though! I have found quite a lot of recipes online which claim to stick to the calories limits and they so don't! You need to check the calories values for recipes that you find online. Everyone is different... some people find they prefer to have one meal in the middle of the day and know that they mustn't eat at all at any other time, others like me will have an apple for breakfast and an apple for lunch and then eat their main meal in the evening. It's whatever suits you best. It's hard to find good research to back up the things people are doing, because there are so many variables. Some animal tests have not allowed the animals unrestricted eating on non fasting days; some have fed their animals a very poor diet; some have made the animals fast completely on fasting days. There aren't many human tests available, and they have the same variables. However, I think that more and more research is likely to be done in this area, and if you are trying to lose weight gradually, it works very well indeed.

There's a demand... now where's the supply?

Every year about this time, when the nights start to sharpen and there's a chill in the air first thing, I go on a search for woolly tights.  In my mind, I see bright stripey tights, ribbed tights in cream or red, patterned tights with ethnic patterns.  When I browse through the internet I find them in bucketloads - as long as you're a baby or toddler.  They have cotton mix and woolly tights all over the place, in stripes, plain, ribbed and fairisle.  But not if you are a grown up, and most especially no no no if you are a plus size grown up.

Ordinary nylon tights are horrendously uncomfortable if you are overweight, and most especially if you are a tall and overweight woman.  They stick to you in all the wrong places, and droop and sag alarmingly at the crotch.  They are uncomfortable, and I for one hate wearing them, and avoid it at all costs.

As I don't wear staggeringly high heels, and in fact generally wear flat shoes and boots in the winter, what I would like to wear is cotton mix or woolly tights.  And I am not alone.  Do a search for woolly tights or stripey tights or cotton-mix tights, and you will find women clamouring for information about where to buy them.  They're like me... the weather draws in and they want to be able to wear skirts but want thick woolly tights to go with them.  I cannot understand why they should be ubiquitous for children and so hard to find as an adult.

I'd settle for stripey leggings, but I can't even find those in a plus size - all the leggings in the plus-size online shops are plain colours - and a lot are made of acrylic or nylon anyway, not natural fibres. I don't want opaque tights, I don't want sheer tights I don't want any tights made out of man made fibres - I want cotton or wool or cashmere or some sort of natural material.  In a plus size.

When you do find any sort of cotton mix tight it is invariably in a dark chocolate, grey or black.  Ok that's better than nothing... but why not colours/stripes/stars/hearts?

Diet update

Fresh vegetables galore, photo courtesy of  the US Agricultural Research Service

I'm on a "normal" day of the fast/normal cycle. I had expected that I might go mad for a lot of forbidden foods on normal days, but hat isn't what happens. In fact, this diet is changing a lot of things. Having been a dieter for a long time, before I gave it up as a bad job, it is impossible not to think of some foods as "bad" and others as "good". Some can be both: fresh strawberries good, strawberry meringue with fresh cream baaaaaaad.

Doing this on/off diet means that instead of feeling guilty about having butter on my toast this morning I just think... I earned this by sticking to 500 calories yesterday and I will earn it again tomorrow. I don't feel guilty. I enjoy the things I eat on a non-fast day and I taste them. Somehow the 500 calorie days have revitalized my taste buds so I am tasting the food I eat on both days far more than I did before. I am savouring the taste and thinking more about what I eat.

Yesterday, I made the mistake of following my mother's lead and eating half a melon and raspberries instead of an evening meal. It was delicious, but I was really hungry when I went to bed, it didn't sustain me the way a stir fry of vegetables or a soup would have done.

I'm still feeling positive and convinced I could stick to this forever. Turns out my sister has also gone onto the diet, and she also says that it is the easiest diet she has ever done. I'm eating many more vegetable and fruits than I did before - and I thought I had a diet fairly high in vegetables. It makes me appreciate my food, and it makes me want the food I take in, particularly on fast days, to be as nutritious and well produced as possible. Talking of which there is a crop of blackberries in the garden that won't pick itself! I'll keep noting my progress.

Once around the house

High Highs are about to release their first album, and then have released a new track from that album called "Once around the house". I love it.
You can find their facebook here, and a recent article on billboard here.

Update on diet

Today is a 500 calorie day on the alternate day fasting diet. So far, so good. I have been managing to stick to the limit. I miss not being able to have cups of coffee, and having to plan out everything I eat is a bit of a pain because I am not used to it yet. I think it will get easier over time. I had fresh fruit for breakfast - melon, raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. For lunch I had stir fried chicken and vegetables - leek, carrot, courgette, aparagus, spring onion - with a chicken broth. This evening I am planning a big salad and will splash out the remaining calories on a yoghurt and vinegar dressing. I feel a lot more positive about this diet than any of the diets I have been on before, for a number of reasons. First, because I only have to manage a day of dieting before I can eat normally again. So even though I expect to be on this diet for a long time, I don't have to see months and months of sticking to diet plans before me... it's one day at a time. Secondly, the "fast" days have such a low calorie limit that it isn't really possible to agonize over what to have. A little lean meat, some vegetables and fruit is all there is. Despite this, I don't feel deprived, because I know it is doing me good AND I can eat what I want tomorrow. It's genius. Thirdly, I feel it must be not only good for me, but good for the planet. Not only am I doing myself good, but I am also reducing my demand for food on the planet by about a third. at least. And that means I can afford to eat better on those days I am allowed to eat whatever I like. It changes your attitude to the food... you don't want to waste any when you have such a low calorie allowance. I am a bit hungry though.

Alternate day fasting

All through my school life, I was called fat and made fun of. Which is strange, because I don't think I was fat. There were children who were a lot fatter than I was, who weren't bullied for it. Which I found confusing.

By the time I was sixteen, I was a size sixteen, which I thought of then as enormous, even though I think it was probably my natural size. I still don't think I was particularly fat.

It must be said that in the 1970s there weren't a lot of clothes that went above a 14, and so I found it difficult to find the sort of clothes my friends were wearing. Eventually, I went on a diet. I lost a bit of weight. I felt better about myself and stopped dieting. I not only put back on all the weight I had lost, I put on more.

This started a cycle which continued for about ten years... I would lose weight by dieting. As soon as I stopped dieting I would put the weight back on. I decided it was probably worse for me to yo-yo diet all the time, and I stopped dieting. By then I had tried a lot of different diets... low fat, low calorie, low carbohydrate, using milk shakes, using grapefruit etc etc.

I started to get free lunches at work, moved in with my future husband, who was a very good cook, and gave up smoking, and put on more weight. I had three children and put on more weight I began doing a mostly sedentary job from home... and put on more weight.

I've always said that I wouldn't diet until I found a plan that I could see myself maintaining for the rest of my life. And last weekend I think I discovered it. Horizon was about to broadcast a programme in which they talk about the alternate day fast, where you have 500 calories one day and a normal diet the following day.

I read the article on the BBC website, and then started researching for myself. This diet apparently has health benefits. People who follow it properly will not only lose weight, but also reduce their level for many of the markers of the diseases which our culture suffers from - heart disease, cancer etc.

So, I'm doing it. This week is my first week. And I really think I can do this for the rest of my life. The genius part of it is that you only have to diet for one day... and then you can eat normally for a day. And then you do it again.