https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g187053-d212240-Reviews-Jumbles_Country_Park-Bolton_Greater_Manchester_England.html#/media-atf/212240/350363204:p/?albumid=-160&type=0&category=-160

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/02/nyregion/learning-how-to-relax-without-guilt.html

improve these archived versions.

WHY do I always feel guilty when I’m not doing anything? I mean, what’s the big deal? The cat sits around all day and never lifts a paw, yet I feel like a degenerate when I’m idle. Maybe the cat has a better analyst. Who knows. But me, I’m like a kid caught robbing the cookie jar.

My friend Sheila sits for hours devouring the soaps, while curtains are still packed away from her move six months ago. I get nervous if the 4:30 movie sounds inviting. And what about Ginger who, behind closed doors, daily from 2 to 3, hums her mantra, totally relaxes her body and soul, and emerges as if she’s had a 10-hour nap. I tried that once, but found it difficult writing my grocery list in the lotus position. Then there’s Pam, who takes one day off every other month, her ”sick and tired time,” she calls it, just to laze, read Redbook and sip tea. She unplugs the phone, puts on her robe and really gets into relaxing.

How I’d love to get into relaxing! What’s wrong with me? I don’t think I was born this way. Looking back, there were no great traumas in my childhood warranting this aversion to loafing. Just where along the way did I pick up the guilties? Was it the occasional prod by Mom that ”idle hands are the devil’s tools”? Or could it be because I always finished my chores faster and seemed to be sitting around all the time, and Mom would say, ”How can you just sit there while your sister does all the work?”

Maybe it’s because over the years, two bosses have trained me to keep busy. Even when I have a minute’s breather, there are always those folders with little notes attached like, ”for your spare time,” or ”when you have nothing to do,” or ”leisure

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/well/live/solitude-benefit-mental-health-advice.html

It’s a relief to be out on the island,” Ms. Snowman, 70, said. When she’s by herself, “the wheels stop spinning.” Her time alone is restorative.

But not everyone feels the same way about solitude, and for the last two years, the pandemic has forced some version of it upon us all. We’ve seen fewer friends and spent more time at home. Some people have found themselves feeling lonelier, particularly if they were already single or living alone.

As we enter a new phase of the pandemic that’s less “wipe down your groceries” and more “welp, I guess this is our new normal,” occasional periods of isolation may be something we just fold into our lives, like digital vaccination cards or having a dedicated drawer for masks.

Whether you’re hoping for more time alone or less these days, solitude is something you can learn to appreciate.

Solitude is more 

https://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/threat-to-health/

https://www.happiness.com/magazine/relationships/happy-friendship-day-the-power-of-friendship/#

ZZ g

riendships are a powerful aid in maintaining both mental and physical health, as well as our happiness. Dee Marques explores why nurturing friends throughout our life is essential to our well-being – understand the science-backed power of friendship. 

A few weeks ago I met a 97-year-old lady and asked h

https://thegrowtheq.com/the-incredible-power-of-friendship/

GSo many of the digital devices that supposedly connect us are leaving many of us, myself included, feeling a bit lonely. Yes, it’s true that email, text messaging, and social media can be enjoyable and beneficial, and that they can spawn wonderful relationships. (I met the coauthor of my book on Twitter — really.) But although they may offer the illusion of doing so, online relationships simply cannot replace real, live, in-person connection. There’s just something special and irreplaceable about being physically present with another human being. And no, there’s not — and I can’t imagine there ever will be — an app for that.

The scientific literature offers plenty of insight on what close friends do for us.They give us confidence and bolster our sense of self, especially during tough times. They increase our sense of purpose and belonging. And they significantly influence some of our most important behaviors. Studies have found that if you have a friend who becomes obese you are 57 percent more likely to become obese; if you have a friend who quits smoking you become 36 percent less likely to start lighting

How can it be that he is never here?
How can it be I do not hear that voice
His presence haunts from his old ,battered chair

Though I have money and no need unbare
I feel the grief , the affect of his choice.
How can it be that he is never here?

What is the world when loss turns to despair.
When every sheet by weeping is made moist?
His presence haunts from his beloved chair

Now we learn the symbol of the hare
Unpeaceful, hunted, jugged or potted roast
How can it be that he was ever here?

Into the real we stand and long time stare
We’re begging, blaming,badgered and then gassed
His presence feints with ours in death’s own lairs

Now the world of man has long surpassed
The time we could blame God for what we‘ve missed
How can it be that He is never here?
His absence haunts , symbolic , suffered, real

https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/15597629.poem-day-human-family-maya-angelou/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/opinion/john-donne-death.html

The power of John Donne’s words nearly killed a man.

It was the spring of 1623, on the morning of Ascension Day, and Donne, long a struggling poet, had finally secured for himself celebrity, fortune and a captive audience. He had been appointed dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral two years before. He was 51, slim and amply bearded, and his preaching was famous across the whole of London. His congregation — merchants, aristocrats, actors in elaborate ruffs, the whole of the city’s elite — came to his sermons. Some carried paper and ink to write down his finest passages and take them home to relish and dissect them. Donne often wept in the pulpit, in joy and in sorrow, and his audience would weep with him.

That morning he was not preaching in his own church but 

Attack is the best form of defence

Such adages have common sense

You will hear this from others

From friends not your lovers

A boil only heals when it’s lanced

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/technology/personaltech/20basics.html

Kindness covered me on that dark night.

Then I knew the meanings of this pain

I must get up yes I must walk again

Without a compass map or any guide

The darkness my companion as I strive

The golden light was love but also fear

We are never lost if we are dear ear

Share this:

Wrapped in your smile,I saw the golden light
As if a hidden world our love revealed .
Our spirits touched, our sorrows pushed to flight

In that space, our worries did not bite
The trees were shelter, losses were each healed
Wrapped in your holy smile,I saw the light

Do you learn there is a second sight
From heart and soul , the golden bells shall peal
Where spirits touch ,where sorrows quickly fly

And who but you would see my inner plight
Would know the false from what is right and real
Wrapped in your smile,I felt warm golden light

No army with its metal and its might
Can win the final war , love conquers steel
As spirits touch ,as sorrows say goodbye

I know it’s hard to learn what others feel
And not draw back from grief, from loss revealed
Wrapped in your holy smile ,O golden light
Our spirits touch, our eyes weep their delight

 Like children’s   gleaming tears in a  bright sun
That can be dried respectful of the source
The points of light on holly leaves  each shone

The  pink horse chesnuts’ flowering  has begun
May flows on to June  as rivers  course
As children’s   gleaming tears drop in  the sun

Nothing human should be broken,shunned
Yet evil screams till its sharp voice is hoarse
The points of light on holly leaves  still shine

When we learn of genocide , it stuns
I was  unborn, did not know of  such force
As children’s   greying tears dropped  under sun

Each  child is God,  yet such vile acts are done
Anne Frank ‘s  haunting memories now cursed
The points of light on holly leaves  will wane

Where did   our evil start,what makes it worse?
Unheld and hungry   baby needing breast?
Like children’s   golden tears in a   black sun
The points of shame, the prickling leaves may win

Enraptured by your smile,I lost my soul
It  joined with yours to make a   presence whole
A wall of light  curved round , enchanting me
Gave me  comfort, gave me history

For after such illusions ,we are changed
Our soul and heart and body rearranged
In the memory,  we image bliss
To comfort , showing nothing is amiss

Afterwards we wonder  was it real
That golden light such comfort  made us feel
Vivid is the symbol of delight
Dreams may  use this symbol in the  night

To lose ourself will fill our vacant mind
Like holy water cures the one  who’s blind

Could it be despair  that held me tight

in the wintry evening and the night

I could not see a way to  carry on

Everything  was wrong and I was done

I saw great blackness all around myself

I could not be restored, I had no health

I   had reached the end of seeking aid

God alone  knew all the coins were paid

  Inexplicable, the  golden light

That made a sweet shawl round me on that night

Impressing me with kindness and goodwill

Holding me until I had had my fill

Most sensuous, most tangled with love’s  grace

Surrounding me,  protecting my lost face

As if the arms of love were something real

That anyone  who knew this  must reveal

Only when we reach the very end

May the force of love on  us descend

i

 

May the force of love on  us descend

Shocked by life events I fell down low

Unsure of what to do or where to go.

I lay unmoving on the muddy ground.

I did not speak nor did I make a sound

I grew colder as the sun sank low

Till all that could be seen was a faint glow

At last I stood then sat down on a log

Fearing I might sink into a bog

Getting to my feet I tried to walk

I must move before the midnight dark

I felt no hope no comfort, had no faith

Yes all my face was sad,in tears I bathed

I thought that I would die of bitter grief

My life eclipsed by trauma unreleased.

And then I was enveloped by warm light.

Kindness covered me on that dark night.

Then I knew the meanings of this pain

I must get up yes I must walk again

Without a compass map or any guide

The darkness my companion as I strive

The golden light was love but also fear

We are never lost if we are dear

The government have decided doctors can give love on prescription to older people who often live alone.

The problem is no one seems to know what love would look like

You can’t describe it in words but you would know it if you felt it said Mary Darkwood

She said that if you act lovingly to a person eventually you will begin to love them and they will begin to love you

But she recommends you not to waste your love on men who never get washed. In this time of pandemic we must remember clean hands and possibly clean lips and face and nose are the best way to protect ourselves against catching viruses.

Maybe it is better not to kiss anyone unless you’ve known them for 3-months and you have had time to inspect their bathroom.

And if you are dirty yourself it might be a good idea for jet wash before you go out looking for love.

The time of the hippies has passed. The question of the kind of clothing that you life on men is something that you should think about

I don’t like shorts on most men nor sandals with hairy feet.

Also be aware of very strong deodorants could this be a murderer who is trying to cover his tracks or is he trying to hide the fact that he never gets washed by sprayin ghimself with antiperspirants

Remember that you can make yourself ill using too much antiperspirant because they stop sweat from coming out of the body and if it can’t you will die.

T.his is getting confusing it seems that nature prefers dirt and sweat

I don’t think Jesus would have won a deodorant or antiperspirant even though an angel would have been glad to buy some for him What about Mary Magdalene? I doubt if she wore anything more than red lipstick. And a dress

Well that’s very interesting do you think the doctors in Jerusalem would have prescribed love for their patients? Jesus was a doctor possibly. And look what happened to him.

Where are the real doctors now?

https://lithub.com/read-13-of-the-best-literary-interviews-from-interview/

E

June of 1982, Joan Didion travelled to El Salvador with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, to report on the country for The New York Review of Books. The results of that trip appeared as three articles, and were published in book form last month by Simon and Schuster. To readers familiar with the work of this highly acclaimed essayist, critic, reporter, novelist, and scenarist, the trip made a great deal of sense;­ the region had obviously been on her mind for some time. A Book of Common Prayer, her novel published in 1978, prophetically depicted the downfall of a Somoza-like regime in the imaginary Central American nation of Boa Grande, which bore a startling resemblance to Nicaragua. Moreover, it seemed reasonable to assume that if any writer could get a handle on El Salvador—caught, as it is, in the throes of a savage civil war, as the newly-unleashed anti-Sandinist insurgency in Nicaragua causes tensions in the region to mount, at a time when the political atmosphere of the United States is charged by issues of human rights violations by the Salvadorian Right and the question of increased U.S. military aid ­— it would be Joan Didion.

After reading the book, one thing became searing clear: What has always informed Didion’s non-fiction in the past and distinguished Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album as classics — a sensitivity that is viscerally sensitive, vulnerable yet always tough-minded, an unerringly keen eye for detail and irony, and a prose style of singular brilliance—only makes Salvador that much more devastating. Perhaps the most telling phrases she uses in the book to describe her impressions are those like “a prolonged amnesiac fugue” and “a true noche obscura”— in other words, there is no “handle” in El Salvador; there is mainly the ambition for power — (“Don’t say this, but, there are no issues here,” she is told by a high placed Salvadoran. “There are only ambitions.”) — obfuscated by the rhetoric of “el problema,” “la situacion,” “la verdad,” “la solucion.” Mostly there is “the exact mechanism of terror” she comes to understand so well; there are El Playon and Puerta del Diablo, where the mutilated bodies of the “desaparecidos” are dumped by the death squads, and the kind of “practical information” she imparts at the outset of the book:

In El Salvador, one learns that the vultures go first for the soft tissue, for the eyes, the exposed genitalia, the open mouth. One learns that an open mouth can be used to make a specific point, can be stuffed with something emblematic; stuffed, say, with a penis, or, if the point has to do with land title, stuffed with some of the dirt in question.

“Terror is the given of the place,” she tells us, terror and death are the true tangibles in El Salvador — the rest is rhetoric, illusion. Seated across from her in a suite at The Carlyle, what comes immediately to

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/25/dining/cooking-relief-grief.html

It’s exhausting and seemingly endless, as my colleague David Leonhardt wrote a few hours ago for The Times: “The list from just the past decade includes supermarkets in Buffalo and in Boulder, Colo.; a rail yard in San Jose, Calif.; a birthday party in Colorado Springs; a convenience store in Springfield, Mo.; a synagogue in Pittsburgh; churches in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and in Charleston, S.C.; a Walmart in El Paso; a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis; a music festival in Las Vegas; massage parlors in the Atlanta area; a Waffle House in Nashville; a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.; and a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.”

And I’m here to tell you

Funeral marches horses silent crowds

The one day that our mourning is allowed

The lonely long bereaved find comfort here.

Releasing withheld tears they are sincere.

The gods of war the monarch show their teeth

While we struggling mourners mind our grief

Dukes and earls and princes eye the crowd

Thinking of the sinking of the pound

Houses with extensions will feel cold

What will this do in the polls?

Voter’s won’t like losing their hot air,

The emperor has no clothes on he is bare

God save the King he’s waited long enough

The demons in the Belfry almost laugh

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/18/scramble-for-new-royal-figureheads-begins-among-britains-arts-organisations?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2016/09/joyce-carol-oates-soul-white-heat/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/18/finally-we-have-evidence-that-hell-is-other-people-on-social-media?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I always enjoyed looking at Maps since I was first shown an atlas when I was 8 years old

My brother who was 1 year older than me was also interested maps and we were interested in the the many roads crossing the industrial area of South Lancashire. And with the aid of the map we could see which times each road went to.

Some of the roads were then regarded as very big like the A6 which I believe went to London although I never went on that road as far as I know no as we have no car and there’s no buses going over there

Interesting difference between my brother and myself which is this :his main interest was exploring the towns that our roads led to

He was able to explore some of the towns on foot or by bicyclen i

My main interest was not the towns but the roads the connections you might say the geometry of the roadsM

But I’d like to see a road with the same name and number going through several different times like the main road at the bottom of our street which eventually went to Warrington although I have never been to warranton in my life

My brother’s main interest apart from that was in geomorphology. He went to a very good university history geography and geomorphology which I also liked.

Unfortunately computer were just coming into use and he ended up finding most of his life studying distance information systems.

I was never quiet sure what it was and what it was used for

But I do know it wasn’t one of his loves when he went into his studies.

So even people with similar genetic inheritance and growing up in the same place always find the interest in very different aspects of the world around them. Well I went to university I studied mathematics of which geometry was obviously apart

I would like going to into largest towns because I wanted to find the book shops and that’s what I saw was in Manchester when I was about 17 years old before that all I seen was a rack of penguin books in a stationary shop

Naturally there was in those days a very large public library well stocked in the town centre and quite good small libraries in the various suburbs.

One of these was near our house and when our dad was very ill he sent us to this library nearly every day in the summer holidays and while we were there we enjoyed for example large bound volume with the readers digest which included

Laughter is the best medicine

At 8 years old I was very interested in this but it did nothing for my father. He died on the Sunday before the schools reopen in September and I never went to that library ever again. Though I knew a lot of routes to get to the library should I ever need to. Should anyone asked me for directions

Here we have Ms Lizzie Truss

We don’t need no ancient albatross

The Tories ruined althe British state

Helped along by Madame Fate

In the doldrums, can’t get out

Does this introduce some doubt?

Where’s the lifeboat shall we go?

Some said yes and some said no

The Titan of the British State

Has no captain has no mate.

Now the lifeboat’s sprung a leak

The British future looks quite bleak

At the very edge of human sight
Places we don’t go till in despair
Love is waiting like a golden light

The world in panic, will the virus bite
Noone ever said this world is fair
At the very edge of human sight

Is there really danger of such might,
Where our hidden fears emerged dark ,bare
Love is fading where’s the sun, the light?

 Panic like a virus can  ignite
Responses that are worse than germs out there
At the very rim of human sight

Our defences that are usually adroit
Now lie like dead young soldiers unrepaired
Love is fading  to a  weaker light

The still,small voice is quieter than a bird
The storm is passing by, will it be heard?
At the very edge of human sight
Love is  dying,looks like candlelight

 

 

 

Jonah you’re no Prince of Wales

You’re no fish for you have got no scales

Oh prophet so wise

God has a surprise

He says he won’t mind if you fail