Why? 'Cos I have been swimming here today - and yesterday too - making the most of the fabulous weather we've had this weekend!
'Wild' swimming is one of my top pleasures in life.
There's not much more I can say about this, really, 'cos the joy is all in sensations not words. But I will say this: if you haven't swim in a lake or paddled your toes in a stream recently DO IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
Flow x
P.S. If anyone is thinking that it looks a little bit autumnal in this pic, you're right. It's an old one... When I go down here on a summer's day, I'm much too busy swimming to be taking photos!
I need to start by saying: I am a woman. If you don’t already know this, it is important that you should, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.
I know, infuriating, aren’t I? Sorry.
I’m waffling a bit, because I’m afraid this could be the most redundant blog post ever written. You’re here on Blogger, aren’t you, so the chances are you’re on Facebook too, and quite possibly other online places like Twitter and MySpace and YouTube and Flickr and Wordpress. There’s probably not much I can tell you about the online world that you don’t already know.
We like to hang out online these days, don't we, keeping in touch with old friends and making new ones. Social networking, it's called... Though you probably already knew that!
I wonder, though ... Have you ever thought about social networking and gender? About the different ways that men and women use sites like Facebook and Twitter?
I’m sure there’s a Ph.D. in the subject, but don’t worry, I’m not going to pretend to be erudite here. I just want to share a few idle and unscientific thoughts…
I joined Twitter a few weeks ago. (If you’re interested, and you haven’t already found me, you can follow me @gogowiththeflow). And being a thoughtful and reflective sort, I noticed fairly soon that most of my followers are men. It’s not that I don’t have women friends – I do – it’s just that hardly any of them are on Twitter. They’re all hanging out on Facebook.
I was interested in this apparent gender difference, so I started looking for some figures. And it’s
Officially True that Facebook has more women users than men. It’s much harder to be sure about Twitter, because you’re not asked to identify your gender there, so anyone who tries to work it out has to guess from the usernames.
(Would you have guessed I was female from the name @gogowiththeflow? What about @scribblemoose? Or @syzygy or @steeluloid or @irevdrdab?)
Anyway, that’s a diversion… My point is this: It seems to me that Facebook is as full of female chat as my corner coffee shop, while Twitter is a sort of electronic men's locker-room!
There's another difference too: the people who are my Facebook friends are (mostly) my real-life friends and neighbours. But on Twitter, my followers are much more likely to be people I know through work or even total strangers. So while idle chat is going on in both places, it has a different audience: the Tweets I see tend to be updates, information and fairly neutral comments about what's going on, all self-policed to make them 'safe' for any audience; while the Facebook status updates seem much more intimate.
Then a colleague of mine made an interesting observation. He's off to a conference soon, where he'll meet lots of people he's previously 'met' through Twitter, and he'll be able to start conversations with them easily because he knows something about their lives. And it reminded me that men have always been comfortable linking their work lives and their social lives in this way - building relationships in smoke-filled clubs and in five-a-side football teams.
While the women I know usually keep their work lives and their home lives very carefully separate.
Now I've crossed this line, and people who are my collegues and acquaintances but not my friends know something about my personal interests and my weekend pursuits. It's not entirely comfortable to be hanging out in the electronic locker room ... But at least I can't smell any sweat!
Flow x
P.S. I dunno whether this is just a strange peculiarity, true only for my friends and followers, or whether it’s true for you lot too. Let me know what you think!
Just a little thought here: BBC Radio 4 told me yesterday that the Tories received £1.46 million in donations in the first week of this election campaign, and the Lib Dems received £20K... If we assume the donations are all being spent on campaigning (oh, and we do the maths), we can see that each percentage point of support is costing the LibDems (on 30 percent) about £665 and the Tories (on 33 percent) more than 66 times as much!
No, I'm afraid it wasn't as profound as Martin Luther King's dream; it was a real, mundane dream, about an hour ago. And it woke me up.
Other people's dreams are pretty boring, so I'll paraphrase... I was writing an outline for a new TV series. But I there were other people around and I was due to go out somewhere, so I there were too many distractions to write. Plus I needed to get my younger son to hurry up, and I couldn't, so I was going to miss whatever it was I was supposed to be going out to do. It all led to pretty familiar feelings of frustration. Life getting in the way of art, again!
When I woke, feeling rather disgruntled, I spent quite a few minutes trying to remember the details of the TV outline so I could write it down - now that all the distractions had stopped. It didn't really dawn on me that it had all been a dream until I was awake enough to realise that there was nothing, really, to remember.
I was in a bad mood because mundane things had stopped me from doing something I wanted to do, but which I hadn't really been doing anyway!
Hang on to that thought for a moment...
Anyway, Ladles and Jellyspoons, you will have noticed that I have been away for Quite Some Time. I could give you an-elephant-ate-my-homework type of explanation, but other people's excuses are just as boring as other people's dreams, so I won't. I'll just say that I have been in a Bad Mood.
This Bad Mood has lasted a long time (and it hasn't quite gone away yet, but never mind that for now). At the root of it, I realise, is frustration that mundane things have stopped me doing things I want to do. Ha - deja vu!
The things I want to do (the important ones that I'm not managing anyhow) are writing, swimming outdoors and enjoying some sunshine. But somehow other things have got in the way - things like earning money, housework, newly-diagnosed arthritis and rain.
The trouble is that after a while of not doing things for very good reasons, you get out of the habit of doing them. Then you feel frustrated about not doing things you want to do, although you are making no effort at all to do them anyway!
So... I haven't been go-going with the flow, I've been sort of limping along with the flow. Time to kick myself up the arse!
Anyway, I've done a bit of writing, and now the sun is up, so I'm off.
This sign recently appeared at a Warrington station. Civic leaders say kissing there "causes car park congestion".
Spoil sports! We need more love and affection in this world, not less, and I say smooching is worth a bit of a wait.
So wherever you are, strike a blow for the freedom of Warrington lovers. Go on: pucker up today!
Flow x
Monday, 9 February 2009
Imbolc is my favourite festival - a real celebration of optimism!
For those of you who don't know, Imbolc is a traditional Celtic festival, marking the beginning of spring. In our village, people celebrate with a fantastic fire show, with fire-swingers and other performers, including singers, drummers and dark Foxes who dance with fire. And at the climax of the spectacle, the Green Man battles Jack Frost - and always wins! - so that spring can arrive.
But since Imbolc is traditionally held at the beginning of February, spring is usually still a long way off. This year, snow began to fall here on the first of February, and by the night of the fire festival, it lay thick on the ground. I love the way everyone carries on and celebrates the arrival of spring, whatever the weather! The fireworks and performance are symbolic: there's light shining bright despite the dark, there's celebration and fun at a time of year that's generally pretty miserable, and there's promise of much better times to come.
It's almost the end of January, and I haven't posted on this blog for nearly three weeks. I hope you haven't missed me too much!
The weeks have whizzed by. Whatever your age, you will probably have noticed that time seems to pass faster and faster each year. I have always believed that's because we experience the passing days as a proportion of our lives so far: when you are four, a year is a quarter of your life; but when you are forty, it is only a fortieth.
Oops!
I was just about to wax all philosophical - or maybe even scientifical - about perceptions of time, but I caught myself before I began to waffle too much! The bottom line is, time is unpredictable: it depends on us, our moods and the people we spend it with ... in weird ways. Certain places seem to have their own time zones, too: time generally seems to move faster in bed, for instance; and classrooms and hospital waiting rooms are often Go Slow Zones.
We have all experienced an hour that has felt like a lifetime, and a year that has passed in about 40 seconds - like this video.
