The Last Generation.

                                 

       "Reading the news and it sure looks bad, they won't give peace a chance, that was just a dream some of us had."

Joni Mitchell's lyrics have been playing over and over in my mind this week as the worlds Media tackled the content of the IPPC report on Climate change. I tried to read it (it's very long); Studied bits, skimmed bits then fell back on my pillow as my brain tried to put it in rational order and failed.


This isn't even new news to me either, I wasn't shocked or dismayed, if anything it was gratifying to know that finally the seriousness of the issue was out there for all to see, not just for those amongst us who've been tuning into James Hansen & Paul Beckwith, stalking the NOAA & NASA websites and watching the sea ice retreat in infographics.




To paraphrase most of the major headlines, it turns out we've got roughly twelve years to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions before it's too late to stop the consequences from washing us away in a flood of melted ice, toxic air pollution and a empty million plastic bags. (There will be no food left to put in them.) The media response was varied, some ignored it, some tried giving us facts & solutions and some tried to make out that it was just a plot to stop the oil producing industries from staying in power,yes really. How long it will lurk on the front pages will depend on when the next scandal happens.

That twelve years, to be clear, is not twelve more years to fanny about disagreeing on the terms of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, it is twelve years from right now to get global carbon emissions down.
That 1.5 degree rise is realistically on it's merry way in a matter of decades and could quickly spiral up to 2 degrees without much warning if we don't make radical changes. Either outcome does not bode well for our health, wealth or any future retirement plans to visit Hawaii (it will be under the water by then.)

Clare Perry

So who is captain of the Tory Starship boldly taking us where no man has gone before? Well the good news is that it's a woman with children, MP Claire Perry, Minister of state for Energy and Clean Growth, who, along with a long list of other responsibilties is the UK's Climate change go to.However it seems to me that a lot of these other areas seem contradictory to climate change policy, i.e. oil and gas, including shale fracking.

For a start Theresa May, I suggest we either lighten Claire's load or appoint an MP whose sole job is to steer us through the asteroid belt without having to do the cooking, cleaning and dusting at the same time. (Let it be noted that a commissioners post was created just to deal just with Shale Gas, Natasha Engels is now tasked with defending fracking to the local communities she once supported against fracking...)

Who could do the job (Not Boris) and how we can make this happen I don't know, but I think we'd all be reassured if we knew Climate Change was more of a priority to our current government, no wait, I forgot, next week is Green GB week, the Tories are giving us a whole week devoted to debating the debates & poster competitions, just incase the news that the Tory party has recently supported the environmental disaster that is Shale Gas and is investing in Oil fields in Bahrain, should cast doubt on their Green promises.
And never fear, the Conservative party would like us to also know that Climate Change policy will not be affected by Brexit, you know, that thing which is taking up all our political energy which should perhaps be going into saving us all from certain death from Climate change.

The IPCC report warns of us situations that we are all ready experiencing, take a look at the devastation created by Hurricane Michael if you don't believe in apocalypse now. Species extinction rates are spiralling- at least 1000 times the normal rate- who are we to think we are immune?
 If we don't make the changes required it is possible our children will be the last generation to know a stable climate earth. Archeology shows us that other civilisations have come and gone, at this crucial junction in our future we would do well to remind ourselves that it has only been those humans capable of adaptation that have carried the human race into the 21st Century.

We have let commerce and capitalism sit up front for too long, now it's the turn of compassion and cooperation to drive the way we live our lives. If not, drought, flooding, coastal erosion, stronger storms, crop failure and polluted air are some of the shameful legacies we will be passing onto our children, some of whom, thanks to Geology, are all ready living in that dystopian future.If we are not willing to adapt our ways for the sake of these children then frankly this so called civilisation deserves to be swept away by a mega hurricane, a what not to do footnote in the history of Earth.

We have choices and voices, how we live & who we vote for. In Western culture we have the luxury of being able to change our life styles and we are all part of a powerful social network that we can use to enable us with simple things like vegan recipes, green energy suppliers and eco friendly products to supporting campaigns and becoming a full blown mouthy activist (Please do.)

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/12/17967738/climate-change-consumer-choices-green-renewable-energy

https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/top-10-ways-can-stop-climate-change/

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/13/why-the-ipccs-report-on-global-warming-matters

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/10/11/17963772/climate-change-global-warming-natural-disasters

Good things are happening but complacency is no longer an option.
https://www.aclimatetothrive.org/positivenews/.


Change needs to happen now and all positive change, big or small adds up over 7 billion people. Lead by example, this is your chance to escape the Empire, hop in your (electric obvs) Land Speeder and come join the rebellion.

The Wayward Chronicles- Blinded by the light.

Waking up at 4am is an annoying habit but the early morning silence provides me with time to mainline a lot of books & watch some serious documentaries.The subjects are eclectic but environment, science and history reel me in (conversely the subjects most hated at school) putting the dots in your brain. Connecting them is the secret.

It turns out that so called civilisation is way older than we've been sold. A lot of the things claimed as modern inventions have existed before.Recent leaps in technology are helping archeologists reshape our history and frankly we've been told a whole different fairytale. Our planet is no stranger to the rise and fall of mass populations far greater than this, if not in numbers in mind, but mustn't panic the people, so history is tidied up to keep it's  secrets and we learn the abridged version,thanks to the education system, another thing designed to keep us all chained to the desk.

The climate is pretty much fucked.This has also happened before, didn't end too well for all living things but then again,we made it back to be here today & this time we have power of advanced technology on our side. Is it too late to fix it before a lot more people suffer? Let's hope so.

Natural disasters far greater than anything experienced in recent history have come out of nowhere and wiped out swathes of the planet, back through our entire history and one could very well do the same in the next ten minutes and there is mainly fuck all you can do about it if you happen to live too close to a Volcano say, (Millions do) ditto sea rise, ditto earthquakes,ditto forest fires, ditto rogue asteroids. Why anyone takes a 50 year mortgage...

The 6th extinction is a real thing that's happening now. Species decline is running at a terrifying rate...Two thirds of animals gone by 2020...that's two thirds in two years folks, why isn't this horrifying news on the front page of every news paper so people can realise what we're doing to our ecosystem?

Why is because the media is owned and shaped by powers with knowledge of how to control people, filtered down through progressive civilisations these tricks of the trade are now owned by the few to exploit the many.

First there was the Sun, our initial ruling benefactor, giving us heat, light & ruling seasons.Partnered by the moon, controlling growth & water. These forces were life's rulers, powerful but unruly and unpredictable. By studying the sun,moon and stars human beings worked out how to thrive. When we were wild things,having this knowledge gave you the power to survive. This power was so admirable, it was inevitably taken and shaped by those who sought to utilise it for their gain. By claiming to represent the heavenly entities Sun gods arrived on earth as kings and rulers, controlling their slaves by the might of their wealth. (See Media moguls and presidents.)

By blinding us with light we become but dazzled deer. In ancient rule it was Gold, fire, jewels that twitched and bewitched the populace. Like Moths and many creatures, Human beings are easily captivated by the light (The dark has its own pull.) See how we can't resist the light of our screens, it's just a modern equivalent. Our natural capacity to see the sun as our leader was exploited easily and the knowledge of this passed down to the hierarchy, represented in most power structures in some form,
each generation seemingly more greedy with it than the last.

Like a magician's misdirection, we are only ever being shown the things designed to misle us into believing we have & need so much more than we do.

While those in power mine our lives for luxury yachts they barely use,we let the glare of technology,commerce, wealth and new, distract us from the truth and destroy our connection to the very earth that gave us this life in the first place.

 Many countries are run by those who simply bought their way to the top and whose interests are only profit related not humanitarian,though they put on a good show. We are ruled in every aspect of our lives by those exploiting their power to keep us making them money. Human beings are easily led by suggestion and have a herd mentality (ask Derren Brown) you show us on TV what our lives should be like and we will copy it.

Herd mentality cultivated by feeding us herd animal meat and dairy products? They say you are what you eat.


Keep staring at the screen, let programming take over your mind so you don't notice your puppet strings and even if you can see them dangling all around you and they're twisted up in knots of frustration, can we ever break free?

 I suspect Mother Nature will do it for us and it won't be pretty.Might not be in my lifetime, might be after lunch and as a rumbling starts high in the sky, we'll probably go outside
and stare at the Sun.

Message in a bottle

                                                          What the 80's wants me to know.

I've been listening to Fleetwood Mac recently (Added to my life's discography in 1987 by way of the slightly too synth album 'Tango in the night' which I bought on, a now incredulous, cassette tape and listened to on my brick size Walkman.) So maybe it was the music that unconsciously picked me 3 books to read recently that were all written about that period of time. Gavin Edwards "Last night at the Viper room", Hadley Freeman's "Life moves pretty fast" & Tiffanie Darke's exploration of the aftermath " Now we are 40-whatever happened to Generation X?"  Then I happened upon 'Swayze Sunday' on Channel 5 & gave myself another fat dose of nostalgia.

When I woke up the next morning and picked up my book again I heard a clear," Errr Hi, it's the 1980's & we need to talk..."

Hadley Freeman's book deals with all the 1980's movies deeply entrenched in our '80s kid hearts.She makes some shrewd observations on the politics,gender & culture of the times.These films are now like photo negatives of the decade, revealing retrospectively how attitudes back then shape our lives today.
Having gone back to the 80's literarily, I then watched Dirty Dancing this time with '16-61' eyes giving it an added context only retrospect can provide.

 Saying that however, despite the, now large, age gap between Baby & I, I'd just had a Watermelon moment earlier that day (& I wish I could say they were rare.)My reaction to the "I'm scared of walking out this door" speech remains as heart squeezing as it did when I first saw it, as does the cheese fest that is the 'Time of my life' number.

 I beat myself up regularly for being a hopeless romantic, I push it down by staying resolutely single & staying out of the firing line because it hurts wearing your heart on your foppish sleeve (Think early Spandau Ballet) but it's like actually, not to point the finger at you, 1980's but how could I not be one? The early 80's were underscored & soundtracked by the New Romantics, blame Duran Duran for my awkward heart.
As the decade progressed and the teen hormones kicked in I fed them on a steady diet of John Hughes movies mixed with a musical compendium from punk to pop, hip hop to house with Indie on rotation.It's no wonder I grew up a rebel without a definitive cause, until Band Aid came along that is and shocked us out of our shoulder padded reverie for a while.

30 years has however passed since I slurped up my McMega Milkshake of untenable freedom & movie Love and I'm still not over it, but perhaps, instead of railing against the world for not sending me on a mystical quest (led by David Bowie and backed by The Goonies) or giving me my Geek to Goddess transformation, a la 'Pretty in pink', then pulling me out of a corner to do the last dance of the season (with The Lift obvs) I need to find a better approach.

What I can't figure out yet is wether it means turning a stony eye on the optimism of the 80's, I mean even The Princess Bride cites that "Life is pain, anyone that says differently is selling you something." or can I carry on through the Fire Swamp, doing battle with the rodents of unusual size,still believing that one day Falkor the Luck Dragon will swoop down & carry me off to a world where no-one is cruel to each other or animals, or kills mother nature for profit then throws the rubbish in the sea...

I wonder sometimes if my passion for vintage is really just arrested development for a time less complex but dealing with nostalgia from last century has never seemed more appealing in the light of today's mounting chaos. Remember 1984's 'Never ending story?'  Is it just me that senses 'The Nothing' over the Horizon if people don't wake up fast to the reality of endangering our environment.

 I love the 50's for it's post war new mood, the 60's for the birth of counterculture, the 70's for the explosion of colour & creativity and the 1980's for it's gamut of Youth Culture. The Noughties feel like a real cultural let down comparatively. The worlds gone so Magnolia I feel light headed from the paint fumes.Freedom and individuality have become entangled in a mire of bureaucracy, stopping us from appreciating our differences as a way to stop fighting about them.




People weren't made to be carbon copies but we fear to stand out too much lest someone might see how messy we are underneath the carefully crafted image of perfection we feel we have to front.
" Hi, is that the 1980's? Yeh I'm just calling you from my Trim phone to thank you for making me who I am today and I haven't given up hope, so err, don't you forget about me..."

Surviving Society - The Wayward Chronicles.

 Being Self employed means a lot of things, not all of them sunshine and roses but it does mean my daily commute is down the stairs and the only fidgety colleagues I have can be shown to the cat flap. The majority of my work related, face to face communication takes place at car boot sales, charity shops, auctions and free cycle escapades and I've 100% met some great people, made friends and had some really interesting conversations, finding it strangely easier to be genuine with these strangers.I think that's because I'm in my element, I've heard it called "Junk Drunk" on 'American Pickers' and I think that nails it, in the euphoria of possibility I am my best self.
I maybe cash poor while I establish my vintage/design business but I am grateful every second I spend out of the rat race,pursuing something I love.

The rest of my encounters are on line, behind which from I can be, mainly, super nice thanks to the relative anonymity.Sadly however I cannot hide behind my jaunty logo out side of work, though it would make a useful shield when encountering the horrors of society. You can run however but you can't hide. The lunacy is everywhere, even our inclination to head to the beach for a breather  has turned into a heart breaking trudge through marine litter.


In a car boot conversation someone told me that Winston Churchill said,       "Shop at supermarkets at your peril." I can't substantiate this but it's a valid sentiment. Since changing my eating habits and paying more attention to the environment Supermarkets are unbearable. The amount of processed food, dead animals, plastic, mass production and waste packaging coupled with people clearly making unconscious choices is driving me to 'Falling down' point. Directed by greed and our need for convenience (which is a direct byproduct of our stolen time) Humans have become horribly selfish,wasteful & cruel creatures. The 'I'm alright Jack' mentality acts like a brain washing tool to keep us participating in the slavery of modern society.


Politics are a delusional method of keeping the wealth & power flowing upwards. Rules for our alleged greater good are in place to keep us from our freedom and the net is still tightening as the cost of living spirals,personally and environmentally.Spontaneous combustion beckons.



Moving far, far away to escape from society is tempting,though in some ways it's another version of 'I'm alright Jack'. If we all moved back to the wilderness we'd trash that too. What people need to do is to manage their own lives, not let advertising tell them what they should be doing. Wake up and see that the Earth is dying in front of our eyes and only we have the power to stop it.Say no to being spoon fed bullshit on a factory farm conveyor belt. I don't believe Humans are built that way but society is forcing us to live like that.






 I harbour a Utopian fantasy that involves moving all my family and friends to Fogo Island, Newfoundland, a dying fishing community with breath taking scenery and the most amazing hotel
-The Fogo Island Inn.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08nx7hd
I stumbled across this incredible place via VicelandTV's 'Abandoned ' series, then it popped up on the BBC's Amazing Hotels series, cementing every fantasy I have about running away to work there.To live and work wholly immersed in a culture that respectfully utilises it's environment in such a mindful manner is Nirvana to me as I pick through our rubbish strewn streets.



'

https://youtu.be/6zrn4-FfbXw
https://www.plasticoceans.org/take-action                                     
The 'Plastic Ocean' documentary is a harsh look at the effects of plastic pollution and if I thought UK beaches were increasingly toxic, that is nothing compared with the rest of the world.
The man made invention of this cheap thus highly profitable material is literally choking the life out of our eco system and desperate calls are being made to ban Plastic as material.Please support them.

 So how do we go on without bursting into flames in rush hour traffic/ being banned from Asda? The Japanese pastime of 'Shinrin -yoku' promises peace from bathing in the woods, though thanks to popular culture we are all mainly convinced the woods are populated by serial killers (funny that.)




But as Albert so wisely put it, if we could all spend more time looking at nature we would be able to see it waving it's help flag with an increasingly frantic motion. If we don't act now every day, in every way Nature will kick us back so hard that human life may never recover.
 ( A good thing? To be discussed)

The Wayward Chronicles-Women's world.

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/how-to-watch-viceland-in-the-uk                                                         
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7DbPE4salw








I strive not to live in fear, to trust in a greater good that shows me that living a kind life will be echoed by the world I live in. However if I were to examine the parameters of my beliefs I can clearly see where being a woman & mother, often alone, is a solid barrier to a wider existence. It's second nature to me always consider my personal safety as a woman when travelling about and now my daughter is starting high school, hers too. My son however goes out alone, I caution him, but instinct just does not create the same ball in my stomach as the thought of her out on the streets alone, and that's in the UK, where compared to many places in the world,women are statistically fairly safe.
http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures

Viceland's series 'Women' provides a powerful snap shot of the lives of women around the world and will open your eyes to some the most extreme conditions in which women are forced to live.It's brutally honest, heart breaking & at times, crushingly frustrating but always with an empowering example of how things can and are changing, the charge usually led by women.As I watch I can feel my empathy with woman kind pulsating through my veins. In simplistic terms, no women deserve to live like that and what can we do to stop it?

Viceland junkie that I am, I savour watching episodes of 'Abandoned' like a spiritual practice. Obsessed with architectural salvage and repurposing myself, I sit in worship of those people who are utilising these spaces and my mind is allowed to create numerous scenarios for the still empty ones.
Episode 8 on the Native lands of Canada showed derelict fisheries and canneries lying to rot, in desperate need of dismantling before they cause environmental catastrophe on sacred Native land.
Episode 3 of 'Women' tackles the problems of the first Nations women,who are suffering today for a long, shocking history of abuse to the native population.

I am idealistic but right now,things as they are,what have we got to lose? Joining the dots between the two programmes I thought why not use one problem to solve the other. Start women's refuges across the world in these abandoned spaces? Simultaneously clearing up the environment and creating self sustaining communities for women who are marginalised in their current societies. Women are strong, resourceful and when put together could easily create a new world where they could live and raise their children free from fear.

Running away of course, does not solve the root problem, but these women are running anyway but into worse situations, so for for now, while Men figure the fuck out that it is not OK to treat women in these terrible ways, they deserve some place safe to go and we need to make it so. No woman or child should have to live that way.

Women have the gift of building a home and the resourcefulness to be able to take the challenge and make it work.Granted it would take time to establish a food supply to make it self sustaining but with enough land it could be done, after all we lived that way for thousands of years before "civilisation" came along. Yes living rurally can be environmentally challenging but I bet women would rather take on Mother Nature than the constant threat of Femicide.

So who can make this happen? Viceland I'm asking you, is there any way one project could serve the other? In Canada could these sacred sites be restored whilst simultaneously giving refuge to the marginalised first women?
 Most of the stories featured in both series involved people moving mountains to make things happen.It gives huge hope to see the hard work and ingenuity that people can muster when they're not being spoon fed by society.Contrary to what we know it doesn't have to cost much, if you're prepared to be resourceful. There are empty buildings everywhere and enough scrap that anyone can build a home with very little money.With some basic tools you can cultivate the land and eventually make it as civilised as you desire.Deep down even the most urban of us still have the primal skills to make it happen, especially if you were motivated by building a better,safer life.

Does anyone have Angelina Jolie's phone number ? Surely she could buy some abandoned buildings- there's whole empty communities across the U.S -or land tucked away in South America and Africa and start some women only worlds, on safer land. She's pretty tight with the U.N, she could get the peacekeeping force involved to help them to do it and keep it safe.There should be a better escape route so these women can leave those violent male cultures, let them work it out amongst themselves. Male children would then be raised in a dominantly female community where they could learn a different way from the traditional attitudes of their current culture. Isn't it worth a try for the next generation?

We are clamouring at the perimeters of a gender revolution and we have a long history of fleeing oppression, any woman or child who is suffering deserves somewhere to go and in a world littered with abandoned societies,surely we could make it happen.




As Steinem says, "By confronting the problems once marginalised as Women's issues,we can tackle the greatest dangers of the 21st century."

Joining the Dots- The Wayward chronicles.

                                       
                             The Wayward Chronicles - Joining the Dots.

We roam through the world and the lives we've created like work horses wearing thick blinkers designed,ostensibly,to stop us from being spooked.Scared horses might
 rear and bolt,upsetting the applecart and causing chaos, they might even actually escape and become the wild animals they were born as ,then where would we all be ?

What we can't see is that our current masters are whipping us into a minefield littered with the carcasses of civilisations, far wiser than ours, that too broke down in the face of greed and politics or fell foul of Mother Earth,destroyed by her ultimate power.

Once you begin to question the accepted truths about the world we inhabit, you start to see everything in a different light and suddenly you find that actually,all the evidence is right beneath your nose,you've just been conditioned to only see it through the narrow slit.

If you've travelled you'll have no doubt stared,on one continent or another, at the ruins of a once great civilisation.Amazing as they all are to marvel over, it transpires that, through the relatively new medium of Space archeology - https://www.wired.com/2016/02/sarah-parcak/ - that the ones we can see are just the tip of the iceberg.
According to the pioneer of the medium Sarah Parcak, history as we've been told it, has hugely underestimated the size and scale of past human settlements.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/996220-ancient-egypt-illuminated-by-electricity/

We've been living under the misconception that this modern society is the most highly evolved but contrary to our general understanding Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison are not the fathers of electricity, the ancient Egyptians & other cultures had all ready been making it,indeed overwhelming evidence of batteries and light bulbs aside,there are theories that the Pyramids are not just monuments at all, but power stations,creating energy that we have yet to fully understand.

Did you know that there are pyramids in Bosnia and that China is also littered with them?

 We've all questioned how they could build the pyramids and the other wonders of the world with primitive technology when evidence, in fact, indicates these societies were no more primitive than we are today and some would argue we are the ones lagging behind.




It doesn't take long for the earth to reclaim things no longer being used-
http://askwhy.co.uk/dinosauroids/?p=480 -

I may have mentioned Viceland TV's  series  "Abandoned" a few times- ( Love McCrank- whole channel is a must watch) but if you want to see how quickly the natural world will reclaim a disused spot then this series has completely opened my eyes. As seen in the episode on New Orleans,after hurricane Katrina, it only took the trees ten years to  take back over and for wildlife to reclaim the turf. I find this information oddly reassuring that in the face of human extinction the forests will regrow and Mother Earth might get her balance back.



Once you start looking clearly, there is overwhelming evidence everywhere that the Earth has seen many a civilisation, some much greater than this, totally disappear under the rubble and weeds, is it so unbelievable in our modern arrogance that we could be next?



The conspiracy theory that we are all being played by a New World Order is an old one and like every fairytale it hides a truth within the many stories. The recent political turn of events is just another red flag as to who really has all the power and it isn't us.Why and how can one family be so wealthy and have so much control? Precisely because us work horses keep plodding on,we've got bills to pay remember.We have to pay a mortgage or rent to live on land that no more belongs to anyone but the earth itself.We pay heavily for food that we could grow ourselves,pointless insurance against events that don't happen and for a plethora of utilities at a cost far outweighing their production.Nikola Tesla wanted electricity to be free and was squashed by those seeking to make money from it.


History, as we are taught it, may have been skewed to an agenda, but thankfully evidence remains of our rebellious natures. Humans have staged uprisings at many critical points in history and have toppled the dictators of the past. Inside all of us is a seed that recognises freedom as an intrinsic human right, even if our fear ( False Expectations Appearing Real) prevents us from doing anything about it.

 No doubt we are currently at a critical turning point, NWO and the evidence of our slavery aside, Greenland is melting ,rapidly, along with both ice caps,at an unprecedented rate, all ready way out of control.  http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5056
This is not good news for over a billion people who will be directly affected by rapid sea level rise as their homes go under water. Displaced refugees are all ready desperate, add a billion more to the problem and see how the system copes.

Ironically if all predictions come to pass and the 6th extinction wipes us all out, except the Rothschilds I'm wagering, who must have a hell of a vault to hide in, it will not be the concrete structures of our recent time that survive, modern building methods degenerate
way faster than ancient brick built monuments do, oh wait...

All the single ladies...

I'm coming up 9 years as a single parent and five since I was in close proximity with a male of the species and if you had told me that 10 years ago would I have maybe,made different choices?

But ten years ago I was still waist deep in the lure of love and I had no idea that being single would be the most empowering thing I could be.I was an insecure girl,validating herself by the men I chased around constantly in my head,looking for a soul connection outside myself,with a tinge of fairytale and happily ever after.I couldn't know then that it would take those single years for me to actually achieve dreams that had been half arsedly pursued in the heady 20's and that went missing,presumed dead after having two children in two years.That's not in a bitter way by any means,I was just too busy changing nappies to give them head space.

I had always wanted to be a writer as a kid but insecurity convinced me I wasn't good enough,not realising I could learn, and I chose the safer path,teaching,which I was hopeless at at 18 years old and I dropped out with my hands firmly up. I was always coming up with ideas for books but never finishing any of them, distracted by boys,work & just living.

I was never single for long and I didn't spend much time alone.

In the last 9 years since it's only been me and the kids at home, I finally wrote that novel,then started a second one, decided it would make a better film script,went to a script writing group to learn,won a film competition with the group, wrote a treatment & submitted it (with zero expectations) to a short film making scheme,got accepted,went on to get a contract to develop it as a feature script, got paid to be a writer,went to BAFTA, got a shortlisted for some other schemes,started a novel and a blog, then got a place on a BBC /BFI scheme with a different film,then churned out a 3rd script, got knocked down, several times,got up again,started my own vintage fabric/sewing/design business oh yeh and all be it too briefly, owned a vintage VW camper van. Bucket list tick,tick,tick.

 I know in my heart that had I stayed as I was, for the sake of being in a relationship I thought I so desperately needed, none of those things would have happened,because what I really needed to come into my own was to be alone.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/when-you-start-enjoy-being-alone-these-10-things-will-happen.html 

It's not all been smug quality time with myself, I've buckled many times under the weight of juggling a job and raising two kids coupled with elderly parents, the so called 'sandwich' generation and between all the achievements, I had plenty of insane crushes and broken hearts,some that took years to heal.For years I wouldn't have classed myself single by choice, more unlucky in love.

I've been working alone from home for a year now and apart from my son,Dad and brother in law I've spent no time with any men and frankly, I feel like it's been the making of me. I've never been so focused,so well informed,so content,so thoughtful or self assured,so able to look in a mirror and not criticise,so clear about life and mentally strong.

Am I missing out? Someone said to me yesterday about them being happily single," but I don't want to look back at 70 and regret it." I shrugged,that could happen. (My gut reaction was as if you think the planet will still be here by then...)

I haven't given up on Love by any means but one thing I've come to see is almost how secular our beliefs on male female relationships are.

Kate Nash says it succinctly

https://youtu.be/ryH5cga0yUI

Every man I've lived with (and at one point I lived with 6 of them at once) has been pretty much messy,lazy,smelly and has complained constantly about having the heating on, which, on the flip that makes me a nagging neat freak who can't sit still,is obsessed by cleaning and has the house too stuffy.All true in balance,so maybe this outdated notion that you have to live together needs to go bygones, I've always believed women with young children should not live in isolated pockets,ditto elderly women who mostly out live their men folk. Society would work much better if we went way back to our primitive ways of small female led communities. It does take a village to raise a child to ensure that child is nurtured,in turn to keep society strong in the future. Putting us in pairs, in little boxes (that we have to borrow huge sums of money to live in & never really own) makes us weak and thus easy to control.

Divide and Conquer has so many truths across the world right now but I digress.

Spending a huge amount of time alone has meant I've been able to dig back through the layers of who I became whilst chasing my elusive soul mate through the years,not realising that if I sat quietly and listened carefully,I would find my own soul and become mates with her and maybe that's all I'd been missing.

I guess what I'm trying to write is almost an addendum to my teenage self who would have seen five years without being kissed as a terrible tragedy, and not the best thing that could have ever happened for me to really know me.