Mab of Dream

I am feeling so much more positive about things today.  FT Kate was coming over last night to get me, after worrying that it's got to 'Dominoes'.  It's got to the entire album now -  I've had 'Barrett' on repeat all day and me and Syd are duetting on every song.  Where he can't make the note, I'm helping out by singing it for him.  We're a great double act.  ;-)  But it's Syd because I want it to be, rather than 'Dominoes' for sanity.  There's a world of difference, though it might not be entirely obvious what that difference is from the outside looking in.
 
Yesterday, in between FT Kate, Anna, Pixie and finally BS Kate, I really did sort my shit out.   This morning, I awoke to a gray world and decided not to be depressed and upset anymore.  Syd helped, the fact that I'd run out of fags didn't.   Because I don't want to risk damaging Rebecca more, I went for a walk up the shops. 
 
I didn't fancy walking up Shant's Bridge, so I cut over the old quarry, which was hours of fun.  Really!  It was fun.  It was like an old fashioned (ie when I was a kid) adventure.   I could have gone the direct route, which only involved two barbed wire fences, but I spotted the trees.  I haven't been in those trees since I was about 10.  In those days, they were the far distant lands sort of trees.  We had our own line of trees this side of the quarry, but those trees could be full of Chesos and you know what the Cheslyn Hay kids are like.  *insert contemptive noise*  (It's only as an adult that you suss that their estate was only slightly posher than ours and really that quarry and the railway track weren't quite the massive barriers they appeared to be at the time.   Yes, as an adult, I've met the real middle class!  The Chesos aren't the same thing.)
 
Anyway, the trees!   I walked over the old quarry and went into those forbidden trees with much the same sense of adventure that I'd ventured over with as a child.   You can't see inside them unless you are inside them.  I remember them as being proper woods, unlike the trees on the Wyrley side of the quarry, which are mainly a single row.  Once there, I discovered that two or three rows of trees don't actually constitute proper woods, but it was still cool.  :-D  
 
I did have to scut a bit to find a way out onto the road which wouldn't damage me too much.  There was a gauntlet of barbed wire fences, nettles, hawthorne, brambles AND thistles, which I thought rather excessive myself.  Why is it, when I decide to go a walk over the old quarry and try to get into Cheslyn Hay that way, I always seem to do it in sandals or, as today, flip-flops, and some kind of extra material on my back?    Today I had to unhook the hood of my cardigan from barbed wire three times!   'kin Hell.    But otherwise, I managed my adventure with only a couple of nettle stings and a big scratch up my thigh (which didn't tear my trousers to scratch me).  It could have been a lot worse, but this was the terrain in which I trained to be a Jedi Knight, aged about 8-11, so I know how to stamp brambles down and use whatever is to hand to lift myself over nettle patches. 
 
I also stopped to make the reacquaintance of a few old tree friends.   We've all grown a little bigger, but we're all still in fundamentally the same place.  One of the oaks now has a fir which has nearly matched him in height and whose branches interweave.   As I canted with the oak, there was a fluttering up in the fir and a green cone hurdled down missing me by inches.  Ta very much.   I moved on.
 
Of course, my adventuring brought me out mid-way between Cheslyn Hay and Wyrley, in that kind of No Man's Land where the factories are.   Big decision then, do I walk up to the Co-Op or down to the Spar?   Fair Trade won, as it should, and I walked up to the Co-Op, reading 'Stupid White Men' along the way.
 
Not much to tell about Co-Op.  I didn't cause chaos like I did last time I was in there.  *grin*  That was the day when I realized that a) the shop was full,  b) while there leaflets galore on the front shelf, none of them were Fair Trade ones and c) I didn't recognize either of the members of staff from the million other times I'm in there.   As I was buying Fair Trade wine, I asked if they had a leaflet 'to help me explain Fair Trade to my friends'.    Instant chaos ensued.  I wouldn't have asked if I'd realized that the wench on the till was new and flustered enough as it was.  Neither would I have asked if I'd realized that the manager was a little on the slow side.   Neither knew about Fair Trade (I got a good plug in for all the people in the shop) and panicked.   It took a grand total of 20 minutes for me to buy one bottle of wine and two packets of fags (the wrong brand, but the wench was really flustered by then and I told her it was ok, I'd have them!), and to calm down two panicking members of Co-Op staff.  
 
Today, however, the usual people were in there and I successfully did my shopping without incident; walked home, reading 'Stupid White Men', until the point where I had to traverse the barbed wire- nettle- bramble- hawthorne- thistle obstacle course (anyone would think the general public weren't supposed to be over there! *grin*) .   After a few minutes, it occurred to me to stop saving my place with my finger and put the book in my bag so I could have that hand too for holding onto branches in order to lever myself up and over.   At one stage, I had a bit of barbed wire attached to my flip-flop, whilst still attached to the fence.   I had to balance myself mid-air to yank myself free.  LMFAO!  
 
After all that, I actually did some MA work.   *pauses for anyone reading this (are you mad?) to get up off the floor again*    I'm looking at the Margaret Murray issue and I've come to the conclusion that she never actually read 'Witchcraft Today' before writing its foreward, seeing as she contradicts everything in it.  
 
I came across something about the Leannan Sidhe, in 'Witchcraft Today', which is something that one of the Witchgrove people has been asking on.  Of course, after venturing into Witchgrove there is no escaping.   I haven't looked at the MA stuff since! 
 
And here I am.
 
'kin Hell, I can waffle, can't I?
 
yours
Mab
xxxxx