The Naughty Little Flea and the Haka

Here is a musical introduction to this week's blog, setting the agenda. When I told my Darling Dublin Friend that my house was being attacked by fleas, she sent me this.  I realised then that it was all up to me, there were only muffled giggles from Dublin and no offers to come over and help pelt the little buggers.

Today I will talk about my flea infestation, and the manner in which you get what you ask for, but not in the straight forward manner that would make sense in a busy world.  I will also give you a brief idea of what I am doing at the moment.

15 year old son woke recently and said, Look. Look at my itchy bites.  I thought, Ah. I will ignore this and it will go away.  So I sent him on his way with a cheery wave, until, I awoke with itchy bites a few days later.  I have itchy bites, I yelled, it's all about me!  Poor son showed me his new bites and we began to fear we had bed bugs.  Son and I stripped our beds to the bone and saw no bed bugs at all, no signs of them and no evidence whatsoever.  They are hiding, I said to son, let us do this later in the dark and show them who is boss.  We waited till dark, and pounced, still in the dark, with a torch, to catch the bed bugs that I imagined lolling around on our beds, complaining that there was nothing to eat, and who had made such a mess of the mattress and bed frame?  But nothing.  Not even the tail end of a bed bug scurrying for cover into the springs. Well, our relief was short lived as we both awoke the next morning and compared our new bites.

I called our local council, and asked for help.  Send me your best exterminators, I said, I have bed bugs but they are a new breed of clever and invisible bed bug, and we need the Arnold Schwarzenegger approach.  Madam, said the kind lady on the phone, you may find that you have fleas.  Mother, said my excellent daughter on the phone later that night, you have fleas.

Two pest control men came.  Ah! they said as I showed them the beds, there are no bed bugs, you are clean of bed bugs.  The reason you cannot catch them, even with a torch, even late at night in the dark, is because you, praise the Lord, have none.  I had looked online at the methods of getting rid of bed bugs, and it seems that I would have to pay a lot, burn the house, all its contents, and move abroad to get rid of them.  What a relief.

Have you a cat?  Asked my new best friends from Arun Pest Control.  I don't, but my polite and elegant lodger does.  Reggie, the sleek black man cat, lives with my very wonderful lodger in the annex which I rent out.

Reggie, sure enough, was sitting proudly amongst his fleas.  There is your answer, said my pals from pest control.  The cat needs to be deflea-ed and so does your house.  Come tomorrow, I cried, and save us.  Righto, they said, 11am.  But, they said, you must now hoover every inch of your floors, especially the edges of the rooms, you must get rid of dust and mess, clean under all the beds, the furniture, throw out clutter.  When you have done that, remove every item that you can from off the floor so that we can come in tomorrow and give those fleas a chemical Armageddon. 

Here is where the manner in which you get what you ask for becomes an interesting discussion point.  At this point, the nature of the universe collides with the most basic of things, the removal of fleas.

My older son moved out last week, to a nice little place in Brighton. Moving of a young person always throws up the following

• rubbish
• clutter
• foulness
• old bits of food
• plastic bags
• disorder
• chaos
• horror
• madness
• breakdown

As I wearily returned to the house after moving him, I remember thinking that the house is in need of such a clean and a declutter that I may just have to die.  I have no time, no energy, to do it and what is more, I hate the idea with a passion.  It isn't, I thought as I checked my empty fridge for my latest weight watcher dinner of air and vegetables, fair.  I am the only person in the world to have such a terrible life.  I saw myself as wading through eddies of  dust and debris in my house, the sound of wind coming through the broken windows making the plastic bags caught on the doors and old bits of furniture, rustle and flap forlornly.  I saw myself too thin (weight watchers) to take the apron from behind the door and start to tackle this mess.

And so God gave me fleas.  Jump to it, he said both to them and to me.  If I give you fleas, you will have to scurry around clearing up your house between the hours of 3pm when you get the diagnosis from Arun Pest Control, till 11am the next morning when they will arrive like Ghost Busters, with all their paraphernalia with which to bash seven bells out the fleas.  Chop chop, he said.  Spit spot, as Mary Poppins has said.  Spit spot.

I have a five bedroom house with an annex.  It is a big job.  I rolled up my sleeves, furrowed my brow, did a war dance like the Haka, and with a yell, I began.  I hoovered the floors, walls, ceilings, and furniture. I threw away, I banished, I flung from the house;  the flea larvae loves the dust, the flea expert had said, eliminate all dust.  Dust, I said as I battled through, Dust, you are toast.  At 11am the next morning, a single man arrived with  a small pump and some chemicals (not 10 men with a lorry with a radar on the roof as I had expected) and within a couple of hours, my house was a battle field in which the fleas had been routed.  I cannot hoover or clean the floors for 3 weeks, as there is a layer of flea napalm on it. But the house, the furniture, everything as far as the eye can see, is clean!  It is over!  I live in a show house (ish), I have fresh flowers in every room and Doris Day can come and live here now, I have gone from the ridiculous to the sublime.  I have what I wanted, and all because of Reggie.  Thanks Reggie.  But don't do it again.

What am I doing these days?  Here is a list.

1. I sold my Teapot Fairy to my dear friend and Soul Midwife Mandy, and am putting some wings and a halo on it so that it is a Teapot Angel.
2. I distance reiki'd Felicity Warner (www.soulmidwives.co.uk) and she said she felt better.  She is a kind lady.
3. I am planning my route up to the Chimp House in Edinburgh Zoo where I am taking A Graceful Death to take part in the Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief annual event.  This is becoming a wonderful outing as I am staying at different friends along the way and way back.
4. There are wonderful conference facilities in the Chimp House in the Zoo.  Got you there.
5. I am all over the shop getting ideas and meeting people.  Now that I don't have fleas, I have an extra dimension to me, and believe that the world is all mine.
6. I have to do a power point presentation on Spirituality and Well Being In End Of Life Care, for the Spirituality Conference next month for LOROS (Leicestershire and Rutland Organisation for the Relief of Suffering).  I am full of strange ideas that need some careful sorting.  More on that as it evolves.

So now, to end, I will show you how the fleas felt when I was doing my Haka type war dance.  Watch this and tremble.  

Faffing. Perceptions and Reality.

This blog is a day late, I hope you have not suffered.  However, we are here now, writing and reading, so perhaps we can let this slide into what some may call the Great Cosmic Circle of Life.  And now, from this same Great Cosmic Circle of Life comes today's blog.  Read on, it is topical, and universal.  I deal, today, with faffing.  There are two strands of thought in my head at the moment, 1.  Perception   2.  Reality. 

Fiddling and Faffing. (Perception)

I am all of a dither.  My to do list would read thus

• Fiddle a bit in office
• Fiddle a bit in studio
• Faff in both rooms
• Hoover everything
• Expect the bailiffs
• Deny everything

A day contains only 24 hours. There is a day time and a night time with sleeps for up to 8 hours included, and mealtimes thrown in to cheer us up.  After having done the chatting to the family bit, after having done the daily bits and pieces of getting dressed and up and running, there is not an endless stretch of time to work, do your thing, make a difference, change the world.  This part of the 24 hours, the bit where I don't have to do any more household stuff, is the bit where either I faff, or I get things done.  Each day the amount of time is about the same for me to either gird my loins and smite the smiteable, or to clasp my hands together and wring them.

As a Faffer, the day is not long enough.  There is too much to do, and yet when asked to make a list, the list would read as above.  Here is an example of a more considered Faffer's list

1. Um.
2. Write a list
3. I really ought to wash the bathroom tiles
4. Er.
5. Got to write a speech and paint 4 more paintings by 5pm today
6. Plan the whole of next year
7. Call Weight Watchers help line

So as a Faffer, the perception of time is that it isn't enough, however long one has.  When I am Faffing I cannot remember what it is that I have to do, I couldn't make a list to save my life.  It seems as if there is an enormous world outside, beyond my studio, full of people who have noticed the things that I have not done and full of furious people in companies, organisations, groups, who are slamming down onto their very organised and perfectly planned desks, the latest memo that has come to their attention of all the things that could have been just perfect if only Antonia Rolls had stopped filing her nails and putting the washing on, and done all those nebulous things that she had promised to do.  Here we are, one glowering successful person is saying across a sunlit open planned office in a gloriously up beat part of town, to another.  Here we are, saving the world, making a difference, doing what comes naturally to people like us, being efficient - but now!  There is faffing going on in Bognor Regis, and it is holding us up.  We cannot have this!  Off with her head!

At times like these, when I can't quite get my thinking straight, it is as if the things that I long to do and that I have promised to do, drift away past me, like the old Bisto gravy advert, where the two children sniff longingly and delightedly as the smell of Bisto tantilisingly passes under their noses and out through the open window into the middle distance.  I am sure that I have signed up for more than I can deliver, I am sure that I don't have the power to deliver all those dreams that once seemed so important. It is not helpful, though inevitable, to be over critical when watching ones life and ambition drift like the Bisto advert, out of the open window and off into the neighbour's garden.  Ah me! I say as not only my dreams and ambitions disappear slowly into my neighbour's garden, ah me!  Time itself has been upended and what was once simply just a day for filling with pithy and delightful things to make the world a better place, has become a barren and ever decreasing speck of nothing on the space time continuum. Time, that thing which was once mine to command, is but a gravy advert, wafting away from under my nose out and into Bognor Regis, along with all of my common sense . At this point, 15 year old son comes home from school and I am relieved because one thing I can do at all times, is cook sausages. 

Girding of the Loins. (Reality)

Very astute folk say that we can't know what we do want unless we have experienced what we don't want.  Well, I don't want to faff.  I know I don't want to faff because I have done so, and it gets me nowhere.  Here is the reality and the part where I metaphorically gird my loins and get on out there.  So to speak.

Time! I say, with passion.  I bite my thumb at you!  What is this nonsense that there is not enough of you?  There is always the same amount of you, and sometimes you get full up.  Sometimes you don't.  It is my perception of you, when in a droopy state of mind, that is making me feel so low. So now, when I am aware that time is not my enemy, faffing is a thing of the mind, and that I am not, somehow, homeless and without a future, I can get on with stuff.  Once I am clear of mind again, once I have come out from the Tunnel of Faff, I wonder what on earth it was all about.  Those people slapping down memos saying, Good Lord, she was but a whisp of promise in the air, that is all, sever all connections!  are now saying, What vim!  What verve!  Let us work with her because she is all that she said she was and whatever that is, we need it to save the planet.  Send her an email saying Yes!

My lists when I am feeling on top of things, make sense.  They create order for me, so that I do not feel that my projects are ridiculously unrealistic.  I have a calender in my kitchen, I have a diary in my bag and I have a To Do list in my studio.  I also have a large whiteboard in the studio on which I write all of the projects and commitments that I have for the year and behind that, I have three whiteboards on which I have written A Graceful Death, Commissions, and Other.  Overkill?  Perhaps.  And my friend Jane just gave me a lovely notebook to use for all my thoughts and ideas.  I need all this organising, I like to write it all down, and I like to see evidence everywhere of what is happening in Antonia Land.  It can all be terribly exciting.  It acts as a brake too, so that the truly potty ideas can be rubbed smartly out and a small now now Antonia, feet on the ground please.  Concentrate.  Sensible only please, administered.  When I am with my Soul Midwife friends who are trained medics I tend to decide to go and study medicine.  Tomorrow.  When I am with my Soul Midwife friends who are members of the Clergy, I tend to want to go an get ordained.  Tomorrow.  I have to keep a strict eye on myself in order that I do what I do best, which is to paint, to write, to be with people when they need it and to cook sausages.  And to do A Graceful Death and do talks and do workshops and meet new people and say yes to everything....

So this is my reality.  I get stuck, and then I get unstuck.  When I am stuck, when I am miserable, I can't paint.  I can't think, and I can't do anything.  When that passes, which it always does, I am very relieved and set about writing my lists with gay abandon.  I can do it all!  You want A Graceful Death in Smolensk?  Yes!  You want a workshop on Soul Midwives in the Offshore Oil Industry? Yes!  You want a spot of Reiki even though you live in Timbuktu? Of course!  You want a portrait of your entire extended family in fancy dress plus all retainers?  Yes!  Actually, none of these things happen, I have not been offered anything like this but if I was, I would say Yes! 

And So -

And so, life goes on.  Back to the Great Cosmic Circle of Life which we mentioned at the beginning of this blog.    Written in fire at the top of the Great Cosmic Circle of Life are the immortal words Faff Not, Thou Of Little Faith and below, still in words of fire, Gird Thee Thy Loins, Time To Write A List.  And in between, descriptions of many stages along the way.  And in the middle, written in a hand older than time itself, the words, Remember Thou, Bisto.

All Singing, All Dancing Soul Midwives. And Gerald.

Morning.  Here is your menu for this week's news. 

• The Soul Midwife meeting here in Bognor
• Weight Blinking Watchers
• Age UK Friendly Neighbours Scheme 
• Doula for the Dying Course in Lewes

Soul Midwife Meeting Here In Bognor Regis
 
The Soul Midwife meeting, the second of its kind and we hope the start of many more to come, happened here this week.  We Soul Midwives are passionate about our work, and are longing to work with those facing the end of life.  We know we can do it, we all feel the need to change the perception of death by making it part of life (which it is), talking about it, acknowledging it and helping to prepare for it.  We have found though, that all of us work in different ways for the same end.  For a while I was confused, feeling that I couldn't possibly do the work that the other Soul Midwives did, and I felt that what I had to offer was not good enough.  I didn't know enough, I wasn't trained enough, I hadn't enough experience.  And the subject is so big.  How can we do anything to help anyone?  How can I, a teeny tiny speck of dust, make any difference ever in a world a) full of people who know what they are doing b)  full of people who don't know what they are doing c) full of people who long to know what they are doing and d) full of people who think I am barking.

To do any kind of Soul Midwife work, you have to sit alongside people who face the end of their lives.  We work alongside members of other professions - doctors, counsellors, therapists for example.  You have to be able to stay with them, to listen, to help if they ask it, and to do whatever it takes to make their last times here, alive, good, meaningful, bearable, acknowledged.  This is a time to stop faffing, and to say what needs to be said.  Do what needs to be done, listen to things that need to be listened to and at all times go with whoever is dying, as far as they want you to go, in order that their death is as best as it is possible for it to be.  That is all you need to start.  And a Soul Midwife is not just someone who sits with another as they are dying, a Soul Midwife can help at any time, for as brief or as long as it takes, along the journey from diagnosis to death.  As long as we are there when called, we do what is necessary and what we can for that person who needs us, we are Soul Midwives.  I remember once having only a text conversation with a dying lady, and that one text conversation was all that she needed.  So that was the extent of my Soul Midwifing for her, it was all that she wanted.

There are Soul Midwives who are deeply experienced and are in the medical profession.  There are Soul Midwives who run funeral businesses, who manage care homes, who offer complimentary therapies for end of life conditions, who do more spiritual and alternative treatments like Shamanism, and Angel Reiki. There are Soul Midwives who are looking for a path to follow, and have not found it yet, but are drawn to the work.  There are Soul Midwives who volunteer at hospices, at care homes, Soul Midwives who are looking after family members, friends, friends of friends as they die, and there are Soul Midwives who teach and who help other people start their journey helping the dying to die.  There are Soul Midwives who comfort someone sitting next to them at a bus stop, and move on because that encounter was all that was asked of them.  I had a Soul Midwife encounter once with a man with months to live as we sat at Specsavers, waiting to be called for eye tests.  It was all that was required, and he moved on.

And Me!  And there is me who paints people at the end of their lives and takes the A Graceful Death exhibition around the country, and talks about whatever I am asked to talk about.  To whoever will listen.  As a Soul Midwife, I work with the dying by being gentle, loving, present, and by trying to listen.  I do whatever I can that works, I do arty things, and fun things, and mostly I just watch and let them take the lead -  but I have no training, no qualifications, no idea.   I can't tell a kidney from an eyeball, I can't do alternative medicine, I can't chant and do singing bowls and I don't know how to get someone off the bed and into a coffin. So, returning to feeling that I wasn't as capable as other Soul Midwives, I felt myself overwhelmed by what I couldn't do, instead of concentrating on what I could do.

The Soul Midwife Meetings that we have begun to hold, which was at my house this week, is where I look into the eyes of other Soul Midwives to see that they too thought the whole area was full of things that they are not, and we all realised that we are absolutely fine.  Good Lord, we all said, we are doing just fine and it is wonderful to put everything into context and carry on.  It does not matter if I can't channel angels, or put in a drip successfully, or tuck someone neatly into a coffin so that they don't sit bolt upright after quarter of an hour.  It matters that we do what we do well, and that we take inspiration from the other Soul Midwives that came to the meetings.  And so, readers, that is what we did. And just to finish this Soul Midwife thing, I am working with a friend and Soul Midwife colleague from Brighton,  to put together a plan of what we offer and what we can do, prices, packages, contact numbers and so on, in a leaflet which we will distribute to all and sundry.  We want to pool our resources, and to support each other as we work in our own way, to the same end, of helping the dying to live well till they die, and to die as well as they can.  The End.  Or is it?....

The next Soul Midwife Meeting is here, in Bognor Regis, on Tuesday 27 November.  All Soul Midwives welcome, let me know if you can make it. antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com

Weight Blinking Watchers

I struggled.  It was not that I was hungry, I wasn't, it was just that I had to weigh my food and not snack on egg mayonnaise while I cooked cheesy oven chips.  I struggled, and I persevered.  Today, at weigh in, I had lost a pound and a half.  This is truly wonderful, but I wondered if it took a week to put on a pound and a half. I doubt it.  It would take an afternoon to put on a pound and a half, and this struck me as unfair.  However, that is the way it is, and if I am at present, a barrel of lard, then it is going to be sulks all the way back to being my normal size.  I was terribly busy today, and promised myself a binge on something or other as a reward for being so thin now but it never happened.  All I could do is eat 3 weetabix with a half a tin of fruit in fruit juice, and I still have one point to go.  Good Lord, am I brainwashed, or saved?  I did not want a lump of cheese.  I did not care about toast.  I had three weetabix when two are the norm, and pigged out on an extra godforsaken weetabix.  It is a scarey world.

Age UK Friendly Neighbour Scheme

I have signed up as a volunteer for Age UK.  They offer a scheme called Friendly Neighbours, which is what I am now doing.  We visit the elderly who are socially isolated, and just chat with a cup of tea (no biscuits goddamn it, no weetabix either).  The scheme lasts for 12 visits, and then the person being visited is reassessed to receive a more intense package of visits and help around the home etc.  Today, I went to visit my first lady, and I had a ball.  She talked about her life, and we drank tea, and she gave me invaluable advice on how to keep my partner, Alan, sweet.  Give him a hug! she said, and when he comes in, make sure you look your best.  And when he is not expecting it, give him a kiss!  Men love to be kissed, she said.  I bet they do, I thought.  Alan would be pleased I think, to be kissed, but if he was watching American Football, he probably would not notice if I came in with a tea trolly on my head.  So, I will go back to my lady next week.  As we parted, she said Darling.  Those earrings, they are not you.  I don't like them.  So I took them off and she said Ahh!  Now, you are an executive, that looks so much better.  Well, I like this lady and I never liked the earrings anyway.  And I like looking executive.  At least she didn't say Darling.  You look fat.  Ever thought of weetabix as an an alternative to all known foods?

Doula for the Dying course in Lewes

I have begun this Doula course in Lewes today, run by Hermoine Elliot of the Living Well Dying Well Foundation www.livingwelldyingwell.net.  I was delighted to see that my friend the Soul Midwife Felicity Warner's book was there on sale, and I settled in to see what Hermoine's course offered me.  It offered me a lot.  I like Hermoine, I have met her before when I first tried to interest the world in the A Graceful Death exhibition and I have always wanted to go on one of her training courses.  And here I am!  On the first one and very excited about it too.  Because I am back at home late at night now, having driven at 7.30 this morning to Lewes and arrived back here in Bognor at 8pm, and I am on Weight Blinking Watchers, and pooped beyond reason, I can't tell you the first thing about it except that I agree with everything and I think I am going to be a Soul Doula.  Hermoine is thorough, and practical, and made me think a lot about my own reasons for doing this work.  As I say, being exhausted tonight, I am blowed if I can remember what my reasons are, but it is OK,  I think they are sane.  It may be a good idea to write about this excellent course next week when I will be another pound and a half lighter and better able to communicate.  No, it isn't linked.  Yes, I will go to bed in a minute.

And finally -

I arrived home and despite being so weary, made a large vegetable stew, gallons of it for tonight with enough for my packed lunch in Lewes tomorrow, and have eaten it all while doing this blog.  

I went to the National Portrait Gallery last week with my Mother, 82, to see the photos of the Queen throughout the last 6 decades.  Mother is a little hard of hearing and called out to me, over the heads of many tourists and visitors, from one end of the gallery, where she stood in front of a very fetching larger than life sized formal portrait of the Queen, to me looking at a selection of photos on a wall on the other side, Oh I do like the Queen because when she sits down she doesn't fiddle with herself.  Frozen silence for a second, then muffled coughing fits as people tried to pretend they didn't hear Mother and tried to stifle their giggles in their hankies.  Mother has no idea why so many red faced giggling people were in that room looking at the Queen in the nineteen ninetys.  She just thought they were odd.

Son, 15, has been traumatised by the breakdown of his laptop.  It is in the menders, and so to help him cope, I have bought him what he wanted, a hamster called Gerald.  Son, 15, loves Gerald, who is a wee dwarf hamster with red eyes.  Gerald lives in an extraordinary creation that Son has made for him, with branches from shrubs in the garden, with chaotic climbing frames made from old video boxes, with buried piles of food in the sawdust, all inside a huge old hamster cage that used to house at least 2 large, not dwarf, hamsters.  Gerald and Son have a bond.  Gerald tries to run away from Son and Son tries to build him ever more complicated play areas.  The cage looked a bit like a jungle last week, but I think that Son came to realise that dwarf hamsters are not like lions, and don't need undergrowth and trees to sleep under.  Gerald is terribly happy, and so far loves his new life as a Facebook substitute. Son adores sweet little Gerald who being a dwarf hamster, will never grow to be tall, though he may grow fat.  He has treasure troves of nuts and delux hamster food hidden by Son all around his cage.  As we speak, Son is teaching Gerald how to play video games and I will leave them to it.

Good bye now.  I must leave at 7.30am tomorrow and on Saturday and I need a bubble bath to make it all worthwhile.

Fat Reiki Mama.

Today we are going to discuss my new role of Reiki Mama.  The Fat part will become clear, the clue is in the heading Weight Watchers.  I am happy to say that it has all been very straightforward, I am now attuned to do Reiki 2.   I can happily Reiki anything now, including concrete.  As you settle in to attune to this week's blog, at all times be aware, I could be Reiki-ing your chair even as you sit in it.  I can't actually Reiki anyone unless I have their permission but I can Reiki anything, including rooms, buildings and gardens, plants, outer space.  It is all fun and games from now on.   So, the plan for this week's blog is as follows -

 1.  Reiki  2.  Weight Watchers  3.  Edinburgh. 4.  New AGD musician Lizzie Hornby. 5. Any Other Business

Settle yourselves, pour the tea, put the kids (lovingly) outside, tell the boss you will do it later, and let us discover what this week has all been about.

Reiki.

I was attuned last weekend, and am now Reiki 2.  This means that I can do it all over the place; people, rooms and buildings either by being there or by distance; I can heal plants, animals, people, things.  This is the idea, and I expect all of you who have been doing Reiki 2 for years are sighing gently and thinking, I was like that once.  Here I am though, on a high, power mad and healing all the rooms in my house and then, the garden and then - other people's gardens.   I sent healing to Felicity Warner's orchard in my enthusiasm imagining all her apple trees filling up with Pink Lady apples (my favourites, and not in Felicity's orchard.  Yet.) and imagining Tesco sending lorries to pick them up and sell them in their stores.  I have sent distance healing to kind and willing friends, none of whom have been cured, but I tell myself, they may have felt a bit better at some point.  In order to be able to practice as a business, I still have to do my Anatomy and Physiology for the required insurance so that when you shoot into orbit after a healing session and lose your contact lenses, we can replace them on the insurance.

Reiki is a lovely form of healing through energy.  When I am doing it, I am only a channel for God's love and energy, and it isn't me at all.  Despite being addicted to praise I have to concede that it is God, and that the recipient receives the healing they want and choose to receive, through me channeling God's love. Probably a good thing, without the correct distance and understanding I could say Look! Look what I, mighty Reiki Mama have done!  No one helped me, I just healed you fair and square and any divine stuff is because I can!  Bow low, and send me your friends to be healed too.

So I have now only my lavender bushes in the front garden left to Reiki.  The entire house and contents have been done, all the flowers in the porch, and the entire garden too.  The lavender however, is resisting and is turning into dried out old gorse bushes and so needs a gentle, extra concentrated but fairly stern session. 

Weight Watchers

Oh this is what we do, we who tend to love cake and fried eggs on toast.  We become porky, and find ourselves needing some help to shed it again.  I have been eating so much lovely stuff recently and was shocked to find that my clothes no longer fit me.  Of course I went into denial - they were shrunk in the wash, it was the their fault, and not mine.  Going out to eat is such a joy, but I was beginning to select my pudding before my other courses (courses, mind, not course).  Bit by bit I expanded until the day, recently, when I put on a lovely (elasticated) sun dress to go for a walk with my 82 year old mother, who is known as OGL, Our Great Leader.  My, said my mother, what do you consider is your downfall with food dear?  How is your diet going?  Goodness me!  I replied, I am not on a diet! and then, I don't want to talk about it.  That I don't want to talk about it, made me realise that I was avoiding the issue.  I had put on weight and there was no two ways about it.  So I toddled off to Weight Watchers, Bognor Regis, to find that I have 2 stone to lose.  Day two today, and I am doing well.  I have bought a scales and am measuring proper portions and am feeling, funnily enough, fine.  I aim to be back to normal by Christmas in order to join again in January.  When I get back to wearing all my clothes that I once took for granted would fit me forever, I shall celebrate by going out for dinner with my dear other half Alan, and have two puddings for starters, and two more after the main course.

Edinburgh
 

I am going to take AGD (the A Graceful Death exhibition - see  www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.co.uk) to Edinburgh on the 14 November.  I am showing it, with a small amount of talking, in the annual event of the Scottish equivalent of Dying Matters, Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief  http://www.goodlifedeathgrief.org.uk/.  I am very excited about this, it is being held in Edinburgh Zoo.  The last single day showing of the exhibition was at Notts County Football Ground, and that went very well.  I won't be showing it next to the Orang Utangs, it will be in a nice big lecture hall in the main building.  It will take four days to drive there, set up, do the exhibition and presentations, and drive back again.  Bognor Regis to Edinburgh and back with 48 paintings, books, telly to show the film is going to be so exciting for a thin, healing artist. I shall post more on this later, as it is still in its organising stage. 

Lizzie Hornby, the new and glorious AGD Musician

I met Lizzie when I was on Felicity Warner's Soul Midwife course in Devon.  I knew Lizzie was a teacher, and worked with children, and could turn her hand to many things but I didn't know that she was a musician.  Recently, I heard a recording of Lizzie's own compositions on the piano and had one of those Eureka moments. This was the music I wanted to accompany the AGD exhibition.  It was a wonderful, a sad, and a very exciting and happy moment all at once.  Oh my.  Please click on the link below and listen -

www.cdbaby.com/cd/elizabeth hornby

I find myself becoming transported by Lizzie's music.  I think it is beautiful.  She composed, played, recorded all of this herself and I am in such a state of happiness that Lizzie has agreed to let me use it.  And, when we have opening nights of the exhibition, Lizzie will play a concert of her music live.  I can't think of anything more lovely.  Somehow, even though AGD is not just about Steve any more, I can feel Steve loving this music.  It brings him back to me, and if I could be ridiculous for a moment, I feel him with me in it.  I stopped off on the way home from St Ives to have lunch with Lizzie, and took a quick photo of her garden.  Even this photo matches her music.  And of course, we had a lovely lunch and talk too.

I want to play this music for AGD because it is beautiful, and it doesn't lead me anywhere.  I am not suddenly sad on hearing it, nor am I suddenly happy.  I am affected by it just because it is lovely but it doesn't interfere with the exhibition, the paintings and the poems.  It stands both alone, and it complements the exhibition.  Look at the rays of light in the photo below.  Wouldn't you think someone for whom this is a part of their house, would write music as lovely as she does?

Lizzie Hornby's garden, just perfect for both Lizzie herself and her music.

Any Other Business

I am trying to love Green Tea.  It is, I am told, good for weight loss.  This is hard work but I know people who have not only persevered with, but like the stuff.  And none of them are fat.  It is my fate to drink green tea to be beautiful again.

Tomorrow, I meet my 82 year old mother on a train going to London.  I get on at Bognor and she catches it as it flies through Pulborough. We are, she tells me, going to hit the hotspots.  I believe her.  I shall wear corsets.

I have started my volunteering with Age Concern UK.  As a volunteer, I am on the Good Neighbour scheme where I visit an elderly person who is lonely once a week for 12 weeks, in order to have tea and chats.  I love this, and the person who I am visiting has had a truly amazing life.  I found myself terrified for any nice Age Concern UK volunteer who was given my mother to befriend, should the need arise.  They would not last five minutes.

I have decided to write a book.  When, is anyone's guess, but the decision has been made.

And finally, a friend has just texted to say that the Reiki worked, she is feeling happy again.  Darling friend, I didn't do any.  So I will just take the credit and move on quickly.  

Running Away to St Ives to Be Alone via At Least Five People.

www.antoniarolls.co.uk

Two weeks ago I contacted an old school friend who lives in St Ives.  I have not see this friend since we were at school, which was in 1976, so you can imagine she may have longed to keep it that way.  But no, this friend has offered me a restorative holiday many times before and this time I was determined that only my own violent death would prevent me from going.  It was all meant to be;  15 year old son went effortlessly and happily to his cousins in London, 19 year old son did what 19 year old sons do (I don't know what they do) and the lodgers were given a peashooter each, told to repel all intruders and to put the bins out on Friday morning.  I put on my best spotty dress and pink lipstick, and left.  I ran away.

The idea was to be alone.  To anyone who would listen, I said, I must be alone, I must go to where no one knows me, and I can just stay silent for days, thinking things through.  As it turns out, I planned my total alone time thus:

1. Lunch en route with Felicity Warner, this means lots of what my brothers and I used to describe as Windmilling, going round and round and round, like a windmill, chatting.
2. Three days with Jane in her St Ives cottage.  I know for a fact that Jane talks a lot and so do I.
3. Lunch in Penzance with Soul Midwife and lovely lady, Joy, and we both have much to say
4. On my way back from St Ives, lunch with Lizzie Hornby, who has written and performed the most beautiful music on this link- http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/elizabethhornby, and who is a teacher on this link - www.busymisslizzie.com.  Someone with two websites does not sit in a corner silently watching the world go by.
5. A night with my dear friend Fern, the witch, Soul Midwife and Reiki Master.  Along with two others, the next day, I am going to do my Reiki 2, making a total of four of us, not including Fern's family.  That is not about me seeking solitude. It is more like me seeking  a party.

First stop, then, lunch with Felicity www.soulmidwives.co.uk.  A lovely sunny day, a cottage in Dorset and chats with a wonderful friend. Felicity has a huge job to do, she has trained hundreds of Soul Midwives and has started something large and powerful.  It is hard to keep all that together, and so she is writing the definitive book on Soul Midwifery, a kind of bible/hand book answering and explaining all aspects of working with the dying.  Felicity is including the spiritual side of Soul Midwifery in this book, which I think is terribly important.  She has much experience working with this side of end of life care, and I am very interested to see how it is received.

Feeling happy and restored by Felicity's company, I set off again for St Ives only stopping along the way for chocolate and crisps from petrol stations, arriving at last in St Ives at 8pm. 

St Ives, on my arrival, looking perfect

  Oh! The narrow streets.  Oh! The masses of people on those narrow streets!  My car could barely fit through the tiny passageways.  Even driving at 5 miles an hour, with all the people milling around, I feared that I would arrive at Jane's front door with holiday makers plastered all over my windscreen, on my roof and wrapped around the bumper.  Jane's cottage, here on the St Ives sea front, is so tasteful, so perfect, so clean and tidy that I knew I would be healed of all ills and discombobulations within minutes - and so I was.  The cottage is painted white top to bottom, white wooden floors, white walls, white ceilings.  Into this whiteness Jane has brought clean bright colours, beautiful objects, but more astonishingly, she has tastefully removed all clutter... there is no clutter, none, nothing, it is not possible you say, but I say, it is so.  Maybe Jane has deep clutter warehouses beneath the floorboards, but I doubt it.  My bed not only has a headboard painted as a bright blue summer sky with white clouds, it has a memory foam mattress too, and everything is here for my comfort.  Oh I can get used to this, I may just call home and get them to send all my stuff and not go home at all.   And Jane says things like, Shall I run you a bubble bath with candles and bring you some tea?  My soul, it healeth but it stayeth quiet, in case she stops.

Wonderful and tasteful kitchen - and, note the paper on the floor.  Jane has been ploughing through her paper work at the computer, and has been chucking it over her shoulder onto the floor.  I think this is clutter.  

 Lunch in Penzance today with Joy, was a joy.  I ordered sweet pea fritters by mistake but got the correct sweet corn ones.  Joy is a healer and a Soul Midwife who wants to bring A Graceful Death to Truro Cathedral.  She has already spoken to the Cathedral about showing it there, with the attendant workshops, talks, discussions and presentations.  I like this idea, though if  we did go ahead, it would probably have to be in 2014.  Joy is a trained bereavement counsellor and aromatherapist, she also uses Singing Bowls to treat people in need of healing.  Being healed with Singing Bowls is a seriously brilliant experience to undergo.  You sit comfortably, and the bowls are struck to produce a single gentle tone that can be prolonged by the practitioner.  There may be one bowl, there may be many, each with a different sound and all of differing sizes but all very powerful and pure.  The bowls, singing their single pure note, are passed about 8" away from and around your body, and where there is a block in your energy, the tone of the bowl will change.  The experience of the sound of these bowls and the silence that surrounds them when they stop ringing, is magic.  I had a session once, and was transported by their grace and power. I did feel very strong and clear in the head afterwards.  So if Joy, or any other trained practitioner offers you a go, take it and write to me to tell me how fab it was.  I will believe and agree with you.  However, on the Truro Cathedral plan, I will update you on any progress, and look forward to Joy doing some workshops for A Graceful Death if it comes to Cornwall.

 And ...

I have to leave St Ives tomorrow morning.  I will go home via Lizzie in Dorset, and on to stay with Fern somewhere else (I haven't actually checked where she lives yet), and then will land back in Bognor Regis on Saturday night.  I came here to be alone, but what that really meant was I came here to gather my thoughts and to talk to as many excellent people as I could.  Without housework, without family stuff, without responsibility.  I am rested, inspired, hoarse, fat (Jane feeds me a lot of treats)  (I eat them all), and I feel normal.  I must remember to do this again, it is one of those things we all need to, do but most of us don't.  I must have Go to St Ives tattooed onto my forehead, so that I am reminded not to let it pass by when I need it again.  Jane has given me so much kindness, support and peace, that I feel renewed, happy and full of admiration for her.  So, thank you Jane, I hope Bognor will one day revive you.  

 I will have to buckle down too next week.  My next exhibition of A Graceful Death is at an event for LOROS Education in Northampton, at the end of October, called Spirit of Caring - Spirituality and Well-being in End of Life Care.  I will be speaking at that event, and showing the exhibition.  And it will showcase the two new paintings that I am doing now for AGD, of Caroline Soar and Winne from Woodleigh Care Home in Notts.  I will also have a rather snappy and wonderful essay on death by my dear friend, the author Olivia Fane.  Olivia is not sure whether AGD is ready for her, but I can assure her, even if they are not ready for her, they will be entertained.  Crack on, Olivia, I said, crack on.  We can handle it.

  Am I healed?

Temporarily.  I will be back.  I may start to cultivate meltdowns so that I have to come back here and get fed chocolates on a memory foam bed, and take buses to Penzance to talk to Joy, go to Dorset to see Felicity in her orchard and Lizzie in her cottage, and Fern in her home, somewhere, in the South, all will be clear when I find her address.  

St Ives Harbour.

This is what Cornwall is to me, rocks and pebbles on the beach and no one for miles around.  I am but a pebble on the beach of life and so on.

How Are You Feeling? Aha.

I have just spoken to Photographer Extraordinaire, Eileen Rafferty http://www.eileen-rafferty.com, and we have both agreed that we are going mad.  We are not sure if it is the menopause, but we are quite relieved to find that we are not alone.  On the one hand, it is a relief that someone else is suffering in the same way, and on the other hand, it is alarming because it may be catching.  How are you feeling? Aha.

However.  The Summer holidays are nearly over, and soon there will be a dearth of people in my house.  I am delighted to share my home with all who live here, but there comes a time in any busy home when the boss, me, needs everyone to take a long holiday.  Here is my household.

1. No 1 Son.  Waiting to go back to college and spending time watching instructive, educational documentaries on telly on the sofa. He has plans to take over the world.  After last night's documentary on Ancient Rome, he thinks Nero was misunderstood. 
2. No 2 Son.  Waiting to go back to school and spending most days asleep and most nights awake.  Has joined a gym and is training himself for future cage fights.  After your GCSEs, I tell him.
3. Lodger 1.  A hard working Polish fellow who works nights.  He is so well brought up and so well behaved I am grateful he stays.
4. Lodger 2.  A polite and interesting young man who is interested in astronomy and skate boarding.  He always checks if I need anything before popping to the shops and I think that is very good manners.  I never tell him to bring me back a bucket load of chocolate and Victoria sponge because I think he may move out.  One day I will.  He will be strong by then.
5. Reg.  The man cat belonging to Lodger 2.  Reg really is a mystery.  He is small, sleek and black.  We all think he is an Egyptian God.

And Lo!  Tell us what you have done despite your madness

I have decluttered my studio!  It is bigger now, without the boxes and papers and pieces of ribbon.  I did this knowing that it was an outward expression of a very full mind, and I was hoping that by chucking away all sorts of rubbish, I would, in my head, undergo a similar experience as if by magic.  I am very pleased I did this, and while I was about it, I decluttered a fraction of my house.  Under the stairs, in my wardrobe, and in the telly room, there is peace and harmony.

  Forgive how it just cuts off, I think you get the picture.

Soul Midwives are a very wide ranging group of people, living and working all over the UK and beyond.  We had a useful and encouraging meeting a few months ago, where we made contact with each other and talked through things that we find difficult.  It was such a positive meeting that we decided to meet every few months to talk over our Soul Midwifery, and to learn from and support each other.  So, on the 11 September I am hosting the next Soul Midwife meeting here, in my house in Bognor Regis, from midday to 3pm.  If you are a Soul Midwife, please come along.  Email me on antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com.

Two days later, I am going to do some further training with Hermoine Elliot's foundation, Living Well Dying Well -  http://www.livingwelldyingwell.net/   in Lewes, Sussex.  I met Hermoine a few years ago, and liked her very much.  Hermoine trains Soul Midwives as Doulas for the Dying, and has very much the same ethos as the lovely Felicity Warner who trains Soul Midwives http://www.soulmidwives.co.uk/. 

Living Well Dying Well is one of the sponsors for the Kicking the Bucket festival in Oxford, in which I am taking part.  Liz Rothschild organiser and brains behind it, has put together a month long festival of discussions, arts, performance, information and much more, on end of life issues from 15 October to 2 November - http://www.kickingthebucket.co.uk.  I will be on a discussion panel on 27 October, after a performance of Nell Dunn's play Home Death.

Any more work despite growing instability up top?

Why yes!  There is!  I am waiting to hear back from the Scottish organisation http://www.goodlifedeathgrief.org.uk/.  I may, funds permitting, take the A Graceful Death exhibition plus workshops up to their Annual Event in Edinburgh.  I do hope they say yes, I would love to meet them and to hear of all the good work that they do.  It is an awful long way to take an exhibition, Bognor to Edinbugh and back, for one day, so I will have to see if they can cope with the millions of pounds it takes.  Fingers crossed.

Tell us about the Life Board Workshops, do do do 

Well if you insist.  The Life Board Workshops are now up and running.  You may remember that to create a Life Board, you sit down with me and a huge table full of different papers, images, glitter, words, stick on jewels and butterflies and fancy things, paint, hearts and so on.  I give you a board, and you start to create, on the board, despite feeling that you have no idea where to start and what to do, a visual representation of who you are and what you are feeling right now.  Mostly, by the end of it, you are amazed by how lovely your board is and that actually, you are a very nice person with much to celebrate.  You get lost in the creating of this Life Board, and feel clearer after having done it.  It explains something of your self to you.  So far, I have not had anyone do a Life Board and then leave in tears, shocked at how horrible they are and what a dreadful mess their Life Board has shown them to be.  I did have a lady who started her life board by painting it all black.  She is recently bereaved, and I thought Gosh.  Where do we go from here?  She ended up with a glorious silver and black, playful and clever Life Board.  Here it is, to show you.  the silver star on the bottom left was attached on a sort of paper spring so it leapt out at you and waved about. 

Amanda's Life Board

And here is the one that Eileen did -

Eileen's life board with poetry

Life Board Workshops are very good for those who are bereaved.  They are good for you if you feel the need to express yourself and don't know how, they are good for you if you simply want to come and indulge in cutting, sticking, making, thinking.  They are all about you, they are all yours.  You can't go wrong, you will find that you are really quite wonderful.  If you want to come and create, then please do.  Details below -

Workshops last 3 hours.  They run in the mornings 9am to midday, or afternoons from 2pm to 5pm.  They are run from my house in Bognor Regis.

Cost - £30.00 per person.

I have everything here, but if you want to bring photos you want to cut up and use, or poetry, bring them. Otherwise I can find poetry on the internet while you are here and print it out for you to use.

If you need me to come to you with the Life Board materials, I will do that with pleasure.  I will ask you to pay the travel costs on top of the £30 per person. 

email me on antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com 

A solution to my madness has arisen -

I am going to St Ives for a few days to stay with an old school friend and fellow fairy, Jane.  I know Jane will cure me, she had all the facilities to do so.  I am leaving early next week in a cloud of furious fairy dust, and won't come home till I am normal.  

New Website Is Out

 Here, to start us all off, is an Angel in her bath. 

 I aim to write this blog every Friday.  Today, Friday, I am putting my money where my mouth it, I am both talk and trousers, and here is this week's account.  Today I will cover the following  -

1.  Introducing the Website
2. Worth and Worthiness 
3. Sheffield University and AGD
4. Reiki

 The Website

As of now, it is live and it is very very simple.  Here it is -

 www.antoniarolls.co.uk.  

When I asked Neill to do it for me, I wanted the minimum of fuss and so, this is what he has done.  I would appreciate feedback, which you can do on antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com.  I think that is the website covered.  I am carefully not leading you and in a court of law, I would be said to be Impartial. 

Worth and Worthiness

Watching Russell Brand's TV programme last night on drug addiction, I wondered not only at his worthiness, but the worthiness of all the people in the programme.  I was struck with how some people are publicly worthy, and some are not.  Are they all still worthy?  I expect so.  And then, I thought, am I worthy?  Are the people I know worthy and if they are, what are they worthy for?  

Russell Brand was definitely worthy last night.  He produced a programme supporting his views on total abstinence for the treatment of drug users.  He was passionate and visual and famous and as a reformed (but not cured, one day at a time, he said) drug addict, he knew exactly what he was talking about.  We were briefly introduced to Chip Somers, the Chief Executive of Focus21, a charity that puts drug users through the total abstinence programme, we briefly met Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett Divisional Commander of Brighton and Hove, and also briefly, we met Mike Pattinson of CRI, a charity aimed at rehabilitating drug users in Brighton. None of these fellows were visual and famous, but they were passionate.  Their focus was amongst the dirt, danger and thanklessness of addiction.

I was struck by the worthiness of Chip, Graham and Mike.  Goodness me, they began and run charities dealing with drug addicts!  Chip was a drug addict and now he spends his time getting on with running his charity to help hundreds of other drug addicts, having created and organised it from the bottom up.  And then running it so that it works.  How blinking difficult must that have been?  How on earth did he do it?  He was a drug addict for, did he say, 27 years?  He has now a clinic, a system, a philosophy and lots and lots of dreadful druggy clients who he will, if they let him, help.  He doesn't seem to be motivated by fame or fortune.  He is motivated by something that isn't about what he looks like, nor what is said about him, he just gets on with the job.  Same with Graham who as a police officer, locks up druggies.  He didn't think that helped, and is involved with Mike who runs another very community based and humanitarian charity aiming to rehabilitate drug users. And succeeding.  They both want to help, and so they do help. They do Big Worthiness. So do other people who run charities to help, people who go out of their way to make a difference.  There is big worthiness in the hospice and Age UK where I volunteer.  Lots of it.  All that worthiness chugging along, and no one is famous for it.  Russell Brand is famous, Chip, Graham and Mike are not. Nor are lots of other people doing worthy things.  I love how they do the hard stuff though.  I was terribly impressed by the dedication to making a difference.  Russell?  He is also addicted, I think, to himself, but if he does make a difference for the good, then Fab.  Have a Worthiness Badge and wear it with pride.

And then I thought about little worthiness. Do little acts of worthiness have to be planned?  Can you do them on a kind of running tab?  For your act to be worthy, it has to be of worth.  Otherwise it is not worthy, and if it is the opposite and harmful, then it is unworthy.  Am I worthy?  Does my work, my life, do my actions offer worth?  I thought, I hope so.  Those I work with and for, and all of my friends, we try to be worthy.  But we have to work at it and keep paying attention.  We all want to make a difference, and we have to remember that in order to make a difference, the focus is not upon us, it is upon the people we are working with.  That is quite hard because I would love for a few of the Sussex Beacons to be lit on the Sussex Downs every time I am really worthy, and for people to say to each other, there go the Sussex Beacons.  That Antonia Rolls has been awfully worthy again.  Time for another statue in another Sussex town square, bless her heart.

AGD and Sheffield University

A year ago, thanks to my dear other half, Alan, whose first degree came from Sheffield University, the University and I agreed to do an A Graceful Death exhibition with attendant seminars, workshops, talks and stuff from Sheffield University on the end of life.  We thought November 2012 was a good time to do it, but as the time approaches, we have all begun to mumble into our cups of tea and shuffle about  saying ooh well, I can ask so and so what they think, and, run it by me again?  So, armed with passion and worthiness, stoked and inspired by discussions with dear friends trained in the art of kicking me gently and lovingly up the bum, I suggested to the University that we combine forces for the Dying Matters Awareness week in May 2013 instead of this November 2012.  It would mean working with Sheffield University and all of the faculties and academics interested in end of life matters.  So far, the University has said they like the idea, and will talk more together, and get back to me. In the meantime, I will continue with the two paintings I am doing for the exhibition, and the new essay I have on death from the remarkable, brilliant and eccentric author Olivia Fane.  So when Sheffield University call me to say, we have hired the London Philharmonic Orchestra to play at your opening night, I will say I too have been busy! You now have not 45 items to display, but 48!  A Graceful Death, like Topsy, has grown!  Bring it on, Sheffield University, bring it on.

Reiki

My friend Fern, who is a witch, taught me Reiki I.  I love Fern.  She is a witch, yes, a spiritual, loving, worthy, peaceful, nature loving witch, who doesn't do spells.  Fern is a Soul Midwife and would hearten any dying person's heart with her kindness and love. This Reiki business is a turn around for me. I always steered clear of it thinking it was for people who thought Disney films were documentaries until I met Fern. Nonsense, she said, let me explain.  Oh all right I said thinking, the Little Mermaid is not real, Dumbo doesn't exist Fern, help, someone... 

I did my first introduction in April.  Fern said I should only practice on myself and other family and friends, don't do strangers and those you don't know well.  Reiki is a form of healing developed in Japan in 1922;  the healing energy comes through the palms of the hands which are placed directly on the body or held just above.  Fern was right!  I felt brilliant after my first introduction, and thought Wow!  I'm a healer! I chased 15 year old son around the house that first day, aiming to do a full body healing session on him and eventually caught him.  Lie down!  I said, I am going to heal you.  He gave in clutching a crisp five pound note and I healed him. He slept for 2 days after that and I thought, this is brilliant.  I can Reiki my household into oblivion, but then I had to go to bed too with the effort.  Fern told me that I had overdone it, and to only do a bit now and again, and that in 5 months time I would be ready to do my Reiki II.  The thing is, there is something to it.  I Reiki'd my partner Alan's knees on the dance floor at his son's wedding so that he could dance, and it worked.  In September I will do Reiki II with Fern, and then I will come up behind you and Reiki you just when you think you are safe.  

And Furthermore ...

To end now, here is a painting of Lord and Lady Cadogan, standing in front of the huge stained glass window that they paid for to renovate, in Holy Trinity Church in Sloane Square.  Here they stand with Jesus, two of their dogs and a favourite bar of chocolate by the altar.  In order to fit it all in, I have re designed the altar area a bit, so don't be too confused when you go into the church and find out that it is not the same as the painting.  If you are too affected by it, you can always call me and I will Reiki you into oblivion and then none of it will matter.

Until next Friday then.  Be good.  And Worthy.