Katie and her mental meanderings

Or perhaps we already were?

Anyway we went for a walk on the coast at the weekend (yes, I am still trying to do this – but slowly. But I only have another couple of short segments and I’ll have walked from my house to Blackpool… ok it’s fairly close but still!) and called in at Knott End which turns out to be Home Of Traditional Food Shops. Some Very Tasty Lancashire (boy it’s strong), a baker’s with nice tea cakes (but no bread -apparently one of the bakers called in sick in the night…), and a butcher’s where, even if you can’t actually find out the name of the animal who provided your meat, you can at least find out “this week’s farms”. They had lovely meatballs in tomato and olive sauce, and hopefully also lovely lamb and flaky pastry pinwheels.

Today we took the Brownies to our community orchard – I was a bit worried they’d find all the different trees a bit tedious but they loved trying all the kinds of apples (the trees are all a bit young, though, so some haven’t produced anything yet) and guessing what some of them were. Children seem to have a much higher tolerance for really sour fruit than adults… And the other leaders said how nice it was to have a new body with new ideas. So much a contrast to my old group.

Got my results back from the clinic – nothing they can find wrong with me that could have been causing the miscarriages, except one test was slightly elevated but it could be due to stress – I am probably going back for some other tests so they’ll do it again just in case.

The horrid people with the horrid protest signs at the hospital that I have to cycle past on the way to work, that is. I do try not to cry while trying to control a bike.

Anyway as some people have heard The Spouse™’s dad died on Tuesday. We are coping, we think – I have been busy, but not overwhelmed, at work, and people have been very sympathetic about changing things. Oddly, more sympathetic in changing my conference talk than when I had the first miscarriage last year and had to cancel a conference talk, but didn’t want to specify why – I just said I’d been ill and was having a hard time coping with work because of being tired, and they were Very Rude.

I think being busy is helping, so I’m sure that once all the arrangements are made it will hit especially him and his mum quite hard. We are arranging things for his mum to try and stop her going into her shell – which I think she has a tendency to do – but not to overwhelm her. I expect Christmas will be particularly hard so hopefully she’ll be able to come to our flat then.

We did have a good time at Greenbelt – I was once again inspired to do something next year though normally I don’t bother following it up – but so was The Spouse™. He has gone around telling people I’m going to try and do a talk next year so I have emailed the guy who organises them (unless his email’s changed of course, in which case I’ve emailed someone else entirely) and made a proposal. I’ll have to tell everyone he’s going to volunteer, so he’ll have to do something about it. I’ve also just been writing a piece for an online parents’ newsletter so I’m honing up my “explaining things to the public” skills.

Just finished reading: Gone with the Windsors, by Laurie Graham. A hilarious diary of the best friend of Mrs Simpson. Sounds bizarre, but it works. I bought three books at Greenbelt and am reading Prayer by Philip Yancey.

I also bought a book on multicultural youth work – I thought it would be all about Inner City Yoof but on the first page saw the writer was working in Devon, so hopefully it will be helpful for my church/mosque Brownies project, which the Guiding district, and the church and mosque joint women’s group all think is a good idea. What am I letting myself in for, I wonder.