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chess

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chess… when playing this ancient and intriguing game, best to dress to impress, like some ottoman panjandrum!
with left over birthday money from mum i ordered a chess set and a book of puzzles, arrived today. fun
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my latter years, once my dance career is complete, will be spent playing chess in a park, on a hill over looking the turquoise sea
each morning I shall set out the pieces and recite poetry, sitting there in the shade of an ancient tree, surrounded and succumbed to Roses
opponents will come. opponents will go. the hustle is moderate to lucrative
a beautiful old town nestles somewhere down below, meditteranean… spain? italy? Praha-on-sea? yet the stillness rhythmically punctuated by the ullululation of a mosque… daydreamy artifice need not be overly specific n’ realistic
in the distance a band plays flamenco inspired music, sometimes mournful, often more euphoric. latino… frangipanni … jacaranda … bouganvilea
as i ponder the board, half an eye wanders to the endless variety of beautiful folk meandering by, dog walkers, book readers, jugglers, kids… many stop to tell me about their lives, i nod sagely.
KnxB Check!

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(as i’m clearly prone to waffle)… i loved chess as a kid… sport of kings? that and table tennis… best games ever… do all programmers adore chess?
i was the captain of the school team… top board… which sounds impressive… but when its a drear bog standard british comprehensive… i think i was the only oddball actually interested…
many of the other pupils dressed as mods and spent all day being brusque and gambling with games of ‘penny up the line’… tho yeah in hindsight that sounds fun too!
i even played at cobham chess club… clive craigmile (craig clivemile?) took me along most weeks, there was me and one speccy kid, he was good, and lots of earnest, intelligent middle aged men
chess clocks with the looming impending doom of the flags… a genius invention… notation pads to jot down every move
an air of intense concentration. humbugs, in fact every variety of boiled sweet… oh and pipes! surely them bods were smoking pipes?
clever

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i almost posted a black and white photo… to comply with the underlying chess cliche… but decided the colours were far too lush and sumptuous to waste

‘chess a game for clever and serious people’, a selfie obvs, tho as befits all attention to detail folk, i set the board up so i’d lose to fool’s mate on the next white move… hence the glum… well scholars mate actch, but ya get the drift x

Roast Avocado and Asparagus

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Roast Avocado and Asparagus, on a base of quinoa, with spinach, orange and almonds! washed down with a czech lager…
oh and an equally green view from the downs
first attempt from a birthday recipe book from my sis, tasty! tho somehow warm avo has the unique quirk and kink of something from the 70’s
i was half expecting the suggestion of a vegan prawn cocktail for starter and pink angel delight for pud?!
this despite the fact i doubt i tasted an avo before ooh 85.. back in the seventies of my childhood it was but a colour for bathroom suites
the zeppelin of cuisine (well if your middle class brit like me) has clearly drifted in the direction of the moon
(new instagram moon in cancer)

birthday

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heart felt thanks for all the birthday greetings… 57 today, here i am cream crackered, just having ran for 57 minutes (9.973 km) to Seaford head and back to Tidemills. tidy!
daughters coming over, haven’t seen her since she’s back from greece, so we’ll have a mellow day… eat pie, drink prosecco, go for a walk, swim in the sea… tho deffo not in that order!
‘Love people, both despite, and for, all their flaws… then have the wisdom to both acknowledge and cherish, the myriad impossibly beautiful ways the world loves us back’
i adore composing a sentimental aphorism

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ha, i like this photo, accidentally blinked, which is as well for my red rheumy hay fever frazzled eyes, makes me look like a goofball mystic meg, ‘the closed eyes of the seer representing spiritual vision’.. or in my case, the fact that i haven’t got a clue in which direction i’m going!
enjoying running at the mo, as you get older treat your body well, just so that you can utterly take it for granted when you need too… because when wedged down the front at a festie, the crowd goes mad i want to wild whirling dervish frenzy with da best of them!
today, jogging along beside the oomph of the mighty ocean, grubbing across the willow strewn marshlands, then weaving in between the dog walkers along the promenade
if i was fit would have blundered on over seaford head and to teh seven sisters beyond., no hills for me.. dullard but determined!
narrowly missed out on making the 10k target in the allotted 57 mins. put that down to having guzzled way too much cacao and been to a dance yesterday evening

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last night i dreamt of flying… not the bobbing along banging your head on a chandelier, like a helium balloon, type of flying
but rather that which begins with a balletic leap or two, then, with practice, carving your way through the air, with skill and diligence you begin to soar.
Outside above the tops of the trees, looking down, see those people below?… ‘tally ho land lubbers! ground huggers! you FLOOR BOTHERERS!’
to swoop, plummet, then soar
i alight, it is dawn, sit cross legged on the banks of the river, a sense of summoning, imminence, she is near, robed in the gentle colours of the sun rise, Sri Lakshmi, Venus Aphrodite, the goddess
…
dreams eh! have a beautiful day xx

blooms day

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tis bloooooms day (Joyces Ulysses set on the 16th June 1904)… preposterous book… prague my proxy for dublin… took me years to wade my way to the end of that mighty tome!
everywhere i went the only things I had in my brightly coloured hippy duffle bag, juggling clubs and a much battered copy of Ulysses… both seldom used… yet parks, pubs, raves… whatever time of day or night, however wrecked when i’d meander home, somehow i never lost my bag
must have started the book at least 10 times… beautiful gibberish… ooh its about hmmm death, music, politics, family, lechery… and everything in between… a hologram of much of the universe
if you’ve finished it presume your an intellectual, a pseud, have had far too much time on your hands, are dogged and tenacious… and that you LOVE words… personally, I think its fab!
oops enough of the maudlin’ reminisce… i was going to say, get the audio book of ulysses… it’s read by Bishop Len Brennan from Father Ted (apparently a famous Irish thesp)… deeply nuanced… he switches voices mid sentence… makes it much easier to understand
as the often the book is several voices gabbling over the top of each other within a single coagulated convoluted sentence. hurrah!

wild cherries

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wild cherries… sweet/sticky… purple/black… found these on a cycle today… thoughts tumbled back to ooh June 92, Praha… Sabina and I jumped the wall into an orchard somewhere below the castle
clambered high, high into the swaying branches, there to guzzle cherries from the tree.. laughing, juice drool on our lips… sweet/sticky… purple/black

noo bouffant

noo bouffant… transPlant… follicle profusion… as the sanskrit proverb: ‘ALWAYS trust a man with lettuce on his head’

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Elderflowers and wild Roses, the fragrant pong, the mood of early june
its been an emotionally turbulent time, sorrow, but also huge dollops of fun, dancing, there is usually dancing!
i’m impressed by the beautiful fickleness of the human soul… sometimes tears in the morning, yet laughter later… allow to flow through… wind harp
we are so versatile, intricately tuned
lots of root chakra stuff for me… being outside and in the body, a balm… smelling salts, counterbalance, to powerful thought
only when grounded, tethered can the heart truly flourish. peace x

stitchwort

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stitchwort… louche on the verge, sprawled and bedraggled amidst the hedgerow
spotted these a few days back, near an ancient thatched house, down a narrow lane in east devon… away in the distance the Rust Red sandstone sea stacks of Ladram bay, more the aboriginal desert dust of Uluru than the green, sog-fest of the west country
in days gone by, this plant, i would lazily ascribe as daisy!
but, take a snap, then later look it up in a wild flowers spotters guide… a gift from daughter yonks ago…
slowly, slowly, expanding circles of knowledge, when we yoke creativity, and nature, with wisdom… we become unstoppable!
a thought which, ha, occurs to me walking home from this mornings jog, a long long queue outside the drive-in mcdonalds, smell of fried flesh and petrol fumes in the air… its not really going that well?

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…..
stitchwort, such a beautifully prosaic anglo saxon name, no flummery, all stomping about in hob nail boots, a culture so deeply embedded in nature, so intricately connected, that there would be no point in wonder
yet, with my love for pomp and the absurd curlicues of words, guess i would have been inside, blessing of clericism?
indeed the latinate… ‘Stellaria’… a star flower… 5 petals, deeply bifurcated, so, the double pentacle, a ten pointed star!
ooh a nine pointed star would be the enneagram, but am unaware of the symbology for ten
anyway, two posts, broadly for earth day, glut, clearly of wafflesome disposition!

empress

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planting up a few tomato seedlings… earth day, blessing from the empress, abundance to all
walk on the sacred earth beneath the broad expanse of sky…. our birthright
being outside, in nature, with people we love… connection to body, land and each other
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toms grown from last years seed slobber, love the closing of these circles
nettle tapenade for lunch, yum… i’m calling it tapenade as, happily, i have no idea what the word means!

Esther: I have these Angel cards too! Don’t have much spare time to draw them these days but you’ve reminded me to do a reading for myself 👼 xx

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Aw I’m sure your so hugely busy all the blooming time! Hope you find some peace amongst the bedlam… plus occasional appreciation of how joyful it is… my nippers are 25 and 21 now… proper bonkers xx

I actually really like these cards… I read tarot for years, but kind of came to a pause with it, as tho, obvs, powerful wasn’t always in the right space to integrate some of the darkness
These are proper fluffy, love the illustrations and lots of buoyancy
Most of the cards make me think of someone I know… this lady/empress does too… tho can’t quite work out which of my friends she is?! Ha! Hug xx

cernunnos

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in the realm of cernunnos, the horned god
a drab day, an inconsequential copse, away on the cusp of the downs.
yet even then, is there anywhere you’d rather be than a british woods in the idyllic throes of spring?
a white carpet of wood anemones bob their heads beneath the breeze… birds flit, a warble of rapture
hawthorn and elder flush fresh with leaf
everywhere the froth of life, thin skein. green
i love this place, partly for the fact so few people bother to come here
all the paths are stopped. toppled trees from the great winters storm
upheaval. upended… vertical becomes horizontal
the roots claw scrabble down in the chalk. amongst the flint … not deep enough to withstand the barge and shove of air
i hunker down, these roots, a fungal earthen smell, gone to ground… a selfie, trying to conjure the trunks as cernunnos horns? not quite
next… bum shuffled along the trunk, over the crisp crackle lichen, till perched 10 ft above the path… legs a dangle. that’s plenty high enough for me!
with the breeze, occasionally the trunk thrums, a wave of vibrations move upwards, and then through my body
dragons of earth, dragons of air
i sit, still, thoughts settle then subside
………

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emerging from the trees there’s a view of the abrupt white cliffs of seaford head, the spire of St Michael Newhaven peeks above the ridge
away, far down the valley, the silhouette of the Castle and the spire of St Michael Lewes
the archangel Dragon slayer! doubled.
The worm would have plummeted to earth somewhere along this ridge? I look for a long barrow? but none I know of nearer than on the hill above Alfriston
curious to think that, back in the neolithic, before the coming of sheep, all the downs would have been lightly wooded… a liminal space of dread
the path follows the sight line, directly downhill to the church in piddinghoe
and there in a stained glass window, clasped in a golden chalice, i find the baby dragon!

written quickly, coz thats fun too!

oh and i’ve got in the habit of writing respectful, but mildly eccentric words, in church visitors books… give it a go!

i love this site… you can zoom in anywhere and find all the barrows and ancient listed buildings wherever you care… lewes is an utter glut!

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/map-search?fbclid=IwAR1OvL9JeWulPKLRSSIC2fwY_nV9SFwvdSmN0imn0TZo04WmMOsctVi94h8#?search


majestic

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do things that make you feel infinite! majestic! stuff that makes you laugh!
i went for a jog today, hurrah… heres an artists impression (by Rich, age 56), which captures something of my wild eyed gait!… mixed media, the clothes i ran in, some lidl lemons and left over Kale from the permie plot…
haven’t been out since last year, when i totally destroyed my foot up on the cliffs… gently, gently we shall see how it goes
the body is amazing, a pharmacological genius, it produces all these absurd euphoric happy chemicals, just for us to indulge and gorge on
of course they don’t last long, pretty soon we’re back huddled again in our cloak of despondency… but the memory of such glee! bound to lighten the load
so jump in the freezing cold sea, dance like a loon, recite poetry to a gold fish… whatever floats your boat
i’ve been pondering the obvious… ‘being happy is a radical act’, the oft neglected buddhist quality of mudita… boundless, effortless joy
the caveat that: so long as you have a roof over head and all your woes are just human size… but just being happy, tis a good thing
and even better… theres nothing more to say about it!
…..
oh and may as well jumble in some other pics… can’t beat a dollop of chaos!

eldest is home from his adventure, lovely to see him again

praha april 92… steve and i in his kitchen… day or night? party… never seen this snap before yesterday, made me chortle