THE OVERDUE POST:

 Shwmae from the banks of the river Lleidi!

I didn't intend to leave it so long before blogging again, I’ve tried writing a new blog post about a dozen times throughout last year and the first weeks of this one but just could not think of what to say. I am so very tired.

At the time of writing this line I am sat wrapped in a blanket, it's -2 degrees outside and storm Darcy is coming to town. Friends have already started to post pictures of snow and I'll be honest I have snow envy. Llanelli is a tropical biome with warm air coming off the Gower estuary and basically being a kill joy! I keep checking my weather app like a gambler begging his bookie. "22%! I've got two nieces, they want to sled! you gotta give me better odds on snow!" Usually February feels like a liminal time when you really sense the shift in seasons but it does not feel like that this year. But then time is an illusion and has been since March 2020. 

Cerys and Nerys By mythsntits

So yeah 2020 was a thing, a whole year that both simultaneously lasted centuries and five minutes. Like that week between Xmas and New Year’s but stretched to infinity.  I pretty much spent up until September just cooking or playing in the garden that is my Veg Fort.

There was also an epic thunderstorm that I sat outside for the majority of in August. That was nice.

None of that was really worth blogging about and I really didn’t want this to become a weekly commentary on the horrors of the pandemic, there’s already plenty of that. So I plodded along like everyone else and I was thinking it was going to be a breeze, I’ve done long stretches of unemployment, I am trained for this. But then October rolled around and it was really hitting me. Not seeing friends, the knock on effects of trying to look for a job during a pandemic, gods help me I even miss going to the gym. I was climbing off the walls feeling anxious with a constant feeling of dread accompanied by a month long stretch of Insomnia. It was not nice.

Then two things happened. One – I got a stinking cold that made me sleep whether my stupid brain wanted to or not, which pretty much sent the insomnia packing (for now). And two – I went for a walk along the Mabinogion trial here in the People's Republic of Llanelli. It’s not much of a trail to be honest; it’s a path that winds through a hundred maybe hundred and fifty meters of trees.

In the summer it’s a really nice walk and when you get towards the centre of it you can almost pretend you are in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, there I am walking along feeling miserable. Beating myself up about nothing particular or within my power to change and I remembered this thing I had read about the ancient Greeks thinking their internal monologues were actually the voices of the gods. So there on the trail I start talking to myself. Or more specifically I start talking to my depression. And I take the piss out of it. I point out that Van Gogh’s depression made him cut an ear off. Mine? Gave me some sleepless nights that while uncomfortable did allow me to get through several books. I just kept pointing out all the ways the demon on my shoulder was crap at their job and should really feel ashamed. Then a woman out walking her dog came in to view while I was looking skyward and calling it a cunt and she looked terrified as she hurried passed me. And I burst out laughing because that demon wasn't even good enough to make me feel embarrassed by my little mental health snap. This didn’t magically make it all better but it definitely evaporated a chunk of the self-blame that depression loves to convince you is yours to own. I imagine I probably would have got the same result just shouting ‘FUCK’ very loudly.

So thanks to my demon roast I started to get organised a bit better. I go for an hour walk everyday which has really shown how much I need to get back to the gym. Giving a bit of attention to what I’m eating, I mostly did okay last year keeping off the weight that I’d lost but I wanted to add a few healthier bits, cut a few unhealthy bits out, nothing too grand.

Then focusing on job stuff I started a few CPD courses. I’m hoping that with all the contracting and shifting going on with non-profit comms jobs right now these courses will help keep my CV in the pile. I’m currently working through two CPD courses in HR Administration (very sexy) and Project Management. The HR stuff is purely because so many comms jobs in the third sector seem to be getting merged with really odd admin roles to save money. 

The Project Management course is just to help give context to a load of transferable skills I’ve picked up over the years, same as the Google Digital Marketing course I did last year.  I’m also working through a certificate in Digital Well-Being that’s been really interesting.

Medusa By mythsntits

Doing these courses has given me some serious flashbacks to University. it's also made me realise how shot to shit my concentration is. So I've been utilising all and any tips to improve focus. I was looking at the Forest app as a possible tool. Basically the longer you go without looking at your phone a digital tree grows. Look at your phone and it dies! The aim is that eventually you grow a forest that represents how not distracted you were.

This month will also mean starting to do more in the Veg Fort so I’m checking my gardening excel sheets (shut up!) and planning what needs doing so that will keep me occupied. This year I'm thinking about turning the corner section of the Fort that is currently a storage area into a flower bed for plants and herbs that I can use to make my own tea. I've mentioned before that I want the Veg Fort to be as practical as possible, I'm not fussed on ornamental gardens, they're for rich people and scabs. Plus I really like the idea of growing my own tea.

I also would like to get back to blogging but I don't think it'll be on a weekly schedule. So for now - if it interests any of you - expect a monthly post. I may play around a bit, try to make these posts more of a curation of things that interest me. As the summer rolls in I'll probably post my Veg Fort updates here instead of Tumblr just because Tumblr has a limit on how many images that can be used in a post and that sucks. I'm stealing a trick from the author Robin Sloan and putting some art throughout this post so if my words bore you, you can just treat it like a mini digital gallery.

Smoking Welsh Ladies By mythsntits

I may - and it's a big may given a certain global situation we're all dealing with - put up some posts from some walks I'm planning on doing. I’ve got this book called The Geology of Llanelli, it was published by my towns council in the 70’s and has no reason to exist but it does which is brilliant. And at the back the writer lists a series of walks covering what he considers to be the most interesting terrain of the town. I keep meaning to follow a few just to see how much has changed from when he wrote it but also to visit the outer edges of Llanelli which are far more rural and far enough from the centre that it’s often not thought of as Llanelli. Which sort of makes it seem more adventurous…In a when you’re a kid and you go camping in the back garden kind of way.

Okay. I'm going to call it quits there and go make a cuppa.

Brave heart, dear friends. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

 

THE QUITE SHORT POST

Shwmae from the banks of the river Lleidi!

This will be a short post this week as I’ve had family visiting so haven’t really got up to much worth blogging about.

I’m currently blogging to you from a world in which toilet paper can only be obtained on the black market and we all greet each other with the Vulcan salute. These are interesting times.

Speaking of interesting times, I have spent the last week engaged in a war on Duolingo. After finding myself promoted to the Obsidian League I also found myself immediately in first place. For seven days and seven nights I did battle with all those who would steal my throne!

Luckily I prevailed and progressed to the Diamond League… Where I was immediately dropped to 45^th place because the Diamond League is not a place for chancers like me. In the process of trying to keep my place at the top of the Obsidian League I had to add more languages to my Duolingo just to keep up with my rivals, so in addition to Welsh I’m learning Irish and Scots Gaelic. I love seeing the similarities between all three and despite my general ineptitude with languages I’m looking forward to learning more.

Staying with learning, I have taught myself to make peshwari naan bread. I used a yeast free recipe so they were really quick to make. I need to improve the coconut and almond mix that goes inside but they went really well with my prawn yellow curry.

The curry has just the right amount heat and has an oceans worth of prawns in it. I’m getting hungry now.

Continuing on with food, I recently went to a seed swap and got some Marande tomato seeds. Which was great timing as this week marks Solarpunk action week! It’s basically a week to do anything that makes your life a little more self-sufficient or environmentally friendly.

I’ve already planted my potatoes in the round tub, sowed some summer spinach and carrots as well as putting some leeks and the tomatoes in seed trays.

My other plans for Action Week include:

• Finish building the insect hotel.
• Finish painting the veg beds.
• Put the first flowers into the troughs.
• Get a sourdough starter going.
• Give a bit of TLC to the plants that have been bunkered down in the cold frame.
• Repot my Purple Beauty Pepper plants.
• Research growing mushrooms.

Obviously some of this requires the weather to calm its tits. Which even for wales has been taking the piss lately. So here’s hoping.

Speaking of Wales I urge you to check out the app AM it brings together loads of Welsh cultural and creative content and I’ve really enjoyed looking through it. Here’s a link for the Google play store.

In other content related I’m sad to hear that The Magicians is ending after five seasons. I’ve never read the books but I really loved this show. Season one asked what would happen if teenagers went to magic school (Answer: they get high and have sex) then found a Narnia type land through a magic clock? The characters are really interesting and well represented with some excellent story arcs. And the musical episodes are always a solid A+. I’m going to miss it.

Okay I’m going to call it quits there. I’m hoping next week will be the second scriptwriting post with the next instalment of the Kingdom Cwm pilot.

Brave heart, dear friends and don’t let the bastards get you down.

THE PARTLY INFORMATIVE POST:

Shwmae from the banks of the river Lleidi!

Did you know the Blues Brothers have a cameo in Sister Act!?

It blew my mind when I found out. Imagine that potential shared universe. We have been cheated as a society by not having a Blues Brothers-Sister Act crossover movie!

Another fascinating thing I recently learned, not everyone has an internal monologue. I just cannot process how that works. As I’m typing this I can hear it in my head. How can these ‘others’ function? But the real surprise is that they don’t realise that some people have an actual inner voice. We’re all just farting around not realising that some people have actual voices in their heads and some just have visual concepts. It stunned me almost as much as the Cameo fact.

Sticking with learning new and vital information, you should absolutely mute these words on Twitter. You know all those annoying tweets that tell you who’s liking what tweet or who follows who? Muting the words on that list gets rid of all that. Now we just need to get rid of the Nazis on there. You can also use this app to disable retweets en masse. I’m half and half about doing it, I tend to use twitter for news gathering and connecting to subjects that are interesting to me. So some of the accounts I follow are mostly just retweeting. It would make an interesting experiment. Hmmm.

And just for shits and giggles here are some awesome facts about ravens.

While I’m just throwing links at you, check out the web comic Vattu by Evan Dham. I can’t remember how it came across my path but I’d planned to read a few pages every so often and work my way through it. I ended up burning through about 900 odd pages in a few hours of absolutely well spent reading.  I love the world building, it feels so much bigger and lived in than the narrative you’re following which makes you want to see more and designs for all the different races are brilliant and fascinating.

This is another week that seems to have flown by. I battened down the hatches for storm Dennis and basically hid in the kitchen all weekend, I made a massive batch of Jambalaya as well as two streak and mushroom pies. The gravy in the pies is a secret recipe that I’ve perfected over the last few years. The diced steak and chestnut mushrooms marinate in it for at least two hours. Then it’s all about the quality of the hot water crust, you have to work ninja quick before the dough can cool.

Pro tip: if you want the best hot water crust pastry add a vegetable stock cube and a splash of Worcester sauce to the hot water.  The perfect gravy you have to figure out on your own.

After Storm Dennis had done it’s think I was able to get out into the garden.

My poor bloody shallots. Between all the rain and the cat that I suspect is waging a war against me, they have had a hammering. I pray to the great shallot in the sky that they will recover.

I also seeded up some wild garlic and savoury. They’ll go in the troughs that run along the front of the veg beds, also seeded the first of the radish crop as well as some spring onions.

I just hope they survive the next wave of storms. And apparently there’s the possibility of snow in mis Mawrth a mis Ebrill. 

I’ve got some potatoes chitting on a window sill at the moment and I would like the correct weather to plant them in next month please. I'm going to try a bit of Keyhole gardening with them and see how that goes.

I’m currently hoping March has enough dry days so I can do something for Solarpunk Action Week. And just in case you’re wondering what Solarpunk is. There’s a solid Solarpunk community on Tumblr, it’s brilliantly positive and with tons of ideas and advice on sustainability and just being environmentally conscious. I like that it is grounded in the benefits of actions big and small, whether that’s just having an insect hotel in your garden or going full on urban farming.

Once the garden is fully operational I’m thinking about starting some kind of Solarpunk Cymru group, a little network for seed swapping, advice, etc. It just has to stop raining first.

Changing track to growth of a personal nature, the gym sessions are going really well. Still at thirty minutes cardio, thirty minutes strength training. I’ve upped the Kg I’m lifting and have managed to shed 3Kg which I think is about half a stone in old money. Which I’m happy with, that being said my weighing scales have a 3Kg margin so I could have lost anything 0.01Kg to 3Kg. Still, it’s progress.

Sticking with progress, I am now in the Pearl League on Duolingo. It was another stunning last minute fight, knocking some other poor sod back for another week.

As I’ve mentioned previously I have a backlog of newsletters that I’m working my way through, most of the links in this post were curated from some that I’ve read this week. I’ve managed to get the number down from 277 to 243.

Okay, I think I’m done for this week. Before I sign off, if you could check out Michael Sheen’s Go Fund Me raising money for those parts of Wales most effected by Storm Dennis and maybe consider making a donation that would be awesome.

Brave heart, dear friends and don’t let the bastards grind you down.