notthrowingstones.today

Sometimes, when it rains, you find rainbows in unexpected places

But sometimes weather forecasts lie and it hardly rains at all, despite dismal threats of torrential downpours..

“heavy rain” – day 1 of 3.

“heavy rain” – day 2 of 3

“heavy rain” – day 3 of 3

Sometimes it wouldn’t matter how much it rained because your hotel is actually a boat

Sometimes ferocious beasts live on the top floor of multi-storey buildings

Sometimes dangerous bridges need crossing (and sometimes they’re not as scary in real life as they are in your head)

Sometimes all you really need is a borrowed bike and a bench by the sea

***

Sometimes you go somewhere thinking it will be good, and it is; you go, you enjoy it and you come home content.

Sometimes you think something will be good and you’re disappointed when it isn’t.

Sometimes, and I think this is maybe the best kind, you don’t really know what you’re expecting so you hope it will be ok (or good), and prepare for rain (literal or figurative) just in case, and then are amazed by how wrong you were, because it turns out so much better than you could have expected.

This was one of those weekends.

🙂

One which is (going to be) memorable for more than just being good, because although not all of it was sunshine, the tears were somehow necessary and healing.

One where knocking over the Jenga blocks means you can start redesigning the tower.

One that wasn’t exactly “perfect”, but feels better than perfect because it was real. All of it.

One I’m glad to have had the pleasure of experiencing.

Thank you, world.

Xx

***

This is probably a good motto:

I consider lying on a huge wooden platform soaking up the sun and watching the world go by a good use of heartbeats

So is stopping to smell the roses during the only rainy patch of the weekend

Dear WWF campaigners,

I’m no time management expert, but I have a suggestion for you..

If you smile as you accost me on my way between the train and the bus and ask me for ONE minute of my time, I might actually choose to honour your request.

Here’s where I think there’s room for improvement. One minute is not a long time, so it’s important to know how you want to use it before it starts.

It’s not so much that I mind talking about where I’m going and what I’m planning to do when I get there and what I do for a living, it’s just the chance is pretty good that the minute will be up before you say a single word about pandas or rainforests or petitions or monthly donations.

Jus’ sayin’..

Also. If you’ve gone to the effect of preparing a presentation, maybe you could set up a big screen and let it play on repeat. People, myself included, would almost definitely rather watch it as they walk through the station than on a miniature tablet under close scrutiny.

You never know. They might even stop to talk to you about it. Possibly for longer than a minute ;p

Regards,

Jesska

It seems Google still doesn’t think I’m trustworthy.. 🙁

I will consult the experts again…

I don’t really understand what goes on behind the screen, so when I got the second message from a reader who couldn’t open my website without immense risk, I asked the experts.

They did something, and now it works again.

I think.

If it doesn’t, please let me know..

I went out to dinner tonight, wearing my new dress*.

It’s made of flowing material that swirls around my knees when I walk.

It’s neither tight nor sack-like and it hangs well,

I felt good, good enough to think I might look good too.

When I got back, I still felt good so I asked H to take some photos. He obliged, but afterwards, when he handed the camera back and I clicked through the pictures, all the magic was broken.

Moral of the story?

I don’t know. Maybe you should just enjoy the fantasy world inside your head without trying to capture it.

***

* Yup. I bought a dress at the weekend! No panic involved.

I bought a dress at the weekend!

People who know me or have been reading for a while know that doesn’t happen very regularly, and that it is usually a fraught experience when it happens.

Not so this time.

I bought it from my favourite sales lady at the market in the next town. She’s enthusiastic about everything she sells and she exudes happy, bouncy thoughts while she looks after her customers. She remembers things people tell her and asks about them the next time she sees them which could be months later. She has that rare ability to talk to several people at once,without ever being rude. She never stops moving, bustling about, rehanging clothes on their hangers, giving advice and opinions, handing over different sizes and colours and waving at acquaintances across the marketplace. She’s tremendously good at her job, and she would rather let you go home empty handed than sell something that doesn’t work for you. I think she’s brilliant.

I tried on a couple of dresses and she shook her head. “Nope. That’s not your colour. That one’s not at all flattering. That one, hmm, I don’t know, no, it’s not right. Try this one. No.. What about this one? Yes! That one’s good! You can buy that one!” 🙂

I came away with a dress, a skirt and a pocket on a kind of belt (for wearing over pocketless skirts or trousers).

Yay!

“No movement is thought of as sexual or embarrassing when you’re little.. It’s just movement. Just an experiment. Little kids are still discovering themselves. Dancing is also self discovery. No brain required, just you and your body and the music……and the other people”

Today’s dance teacher wisdom:

“Without primary schools, there would be no universities. Unis don’t teach you anything really new, they just build on what you already know. Primary school is where you really learn new things.”

And also:

“When you say, ‘I can’t do that’ you take a step back. When you ask, ‘how can I do this?’ you take a step forward. Not just physically, but psychologically.”

And also:

“No one looks at the foundations when they go to see Gaudi’s house. The foundations are absolutely necessary, but no one looks at them. They all look at the building.”

This morning I found a notification of a new WordPress comment on my phone.

That’s generally a very cool thing. I love it when people write comments in response to things I’ve written.

This comment, however, was about a post I wrote in December, and which I, for some currently unknown reason, decided not to post.

When I woke up for real and looked properly, I found that 3 draft posts had been published, all at the same time (6am – when I was sleeping, but possibly when my phone finished charging… Or possibly when my landlady’s WiFi connection turns on?)

I might have been hacked I suppose, but I think posting random draft posts is a very strange thing to do with a newly hacked site.

I also had a whole pile of messages about pages that hadn’t been/couldn’t be updated, also from around the same time.

Very odd.

Then I checked the playstore for updates and found this:

WordPress is one of the apps I set to update automatically. It seems tonight was update night ;).

Is it possible that somewhere along the way, “upload it to the server” became “change draft to publish”??

Has anyone else had any random draft posts go online recently?

If that’s going to be normal, I don’t think it’s an improvement…

This was written in December.. This morning (June 22nd), several posts were published from my draft folder.. I didn’t press publish… Skybright commented on this one so I’m leaving it up. I’ve reconsigned the others to my draft folder where they belong. I will have to investigate what happened..

***

I am usually very much a hot water bottle person. VERY much. I think my thermostat’s broken – my normal temperature is several degrees lower than most of the people round me. When it’s cold I need extra heat to compensate.

Yesterday / this morning I took an ice pack to bed instead.

Sometimes the world is strange.

(..In this case, it’s mostly because..)

I fell off my bike and bashed various bits of myself – hands, knees, a hip/thigh, face, shoulder,…

May 21st.

I took the photos off my phone in the middle of writing this.. I was planning to go back and add pictures of the peacocks before posting, but I haven’t taken the time to turn my computer on for a while and I’m unlikely to get the chance before my holiday. Just imagine the peacocks for now. 🙂 I’ll add them later.

***

The leech and I decided to meet up with M&M* for a walk round Peacock Island before one M (Mi) comes back to my flat for the night and the other M (Ma) goes back to his hotel.

***

The island is beautiful.

Apart from the trees and other plants, pretty much everywhere you look there’s a bridge or a fountain or a castle to admire.

And… Possibly more spectacularly, there were ‘flocks’ of peacocks to admire. Assuming the multiple pairs count as flocks..

Halfway round we found a mini waterfall and a boggy patch of grass. We weren’t sure what the leech thought but we were pretty sure he’d have a better life there than in my bath, so I persuaded him out of the damp tissue paper and shook him more or less gently out of the yoghurt tub onto the grass. He still wasn’t convinced that it was a good idea when I left him..

* Friend and colleague of friend

It’s Thursday.

I leave on Saturday*.

Between now and then, I have 2 days of work and a session of afterschool maths to fit in, each with travel time.

Then there’s a balconyful of plants to water (it’s 30+ degrees here), an aquarium to replant, a flat to tidy up and lots of washing to do.

As a bonus there’s a friend’s locked phone to rescue.

Probably I should eat and sleep and shower too.

And as yet nothing is packed.

All the surfaces in my house are covered in things I might need.. But nothing is actually in my paniers.

Not packing until the last minute is the only way I know how to pack.

:/

* 2 ½ week cycling holiday across Sweden 🙂

9th May

“There aren’t any perfect partners. If you spend the evening looking and waiting for one you will go home without having danced at all. Also, don’t try to force your dance partner to dance exactly the way you want to dance. They won’t enjoy themselves and you’ll be frustrated when it doesn’t work. Instead, when you dance, focus on offering yourself and your style and asking the other person for theirs, both of you will change your dance to fit both of you and it will be a fantastic experience. If you do that, it won’t be long before you can dance with everyone, and everyone will want to dance with you. Just like life. Dancing is like living. Life is like dancing. It’s all the same thing really.”

After a week or so of people deciding to remove themselves from my life, this is a good thing to hear.