Met some amazing ladies, old women but rather than being grumpy old women they were fairly joyous! But that's more towards the end of the weekend sooooo

Saturday went and rummaged around TK Max, it's a bit like a jumble sale so you have to look.... I have a bit of an advantage in that I can check out all sections really, the women's, obviously, the men's... as I like bloke's trousers!... and then there's the boys section... where I found a delicious Ralph Lauren jumper reduced dramatically from £160 to a much more affordable £14! It's age 12 but fits perfectly!!! Even started the christmas present purchasing and got J a Man bag!! It even tells him where the webpage is so he can marry his bag??? The other J disapproves completely and thinks it was far too much money for a bag !!!!

Sooooooo caught the train into King's X... zipped down thnorthernrn line and headed for the Tate Modern to check out the boxes




ok yes they were white there were a lot of them... it felt cool, particularly as everyone was already well wrapped up from the cold.... but that was it... it didn't grab with delight like the weather project, it didn't annoy like the sound thingy.... it was just there....

headed into Brockley and to the party and on arrival all my ageist prejudices came to the fore... it was Kate's Mum's party and I have met her before and she seemed pleasant enough, others were going from Greenpeace so I hadn't really thought about who would be there.... well it was full of 'old people' and my prejudice immediatelyly kicked in and I thought 'oh my god' and spent my time talking to people I knew previously and didn't really bother with getting to know anyone else... it was fun anyway even if Kate got me a drink which turned out to be red wine and coke!!! and I actually enjoyed it!!!! Anyway was up until 4 putting the world to rights but woke in the morning at my usual hour, which is so annoying... Some of Ginny's friends had stayed over and we all joined in sorting the place out, making breakfast sort of stuff and I realised I was in the company of some really rather dynamic women.... they talked of following the hippy trail in the sixties to San Francisco, of sailing down the Amazon, of the diversity of animals seen in Madagascar!! It was quite inspiring... talked of the business I want to set up in Cornwall and I have my first booking! Now I have to get cracking! It is a real proposition and people are interested! I can do this!!!

oh yes think I also agreed to instruct tree climbing in Mexico next year for scientists/volunteers working in the rain forest canopies!!!

an excellent weekend and I will feel very fortunate if I meet up with these people again!!!

Back in the world of the bicycle again and I had thought I was reasonably fit. Arrived at work yesterday the colour of the ripest strawberry and so very very hot! Looking back on the summer's activities though I don't think my legs were ever put to any strain, arms yes in climbing, belaying,archery, windsurfing, kayaking, yes the arms are good, but that doesn't help much on a bicycle! and I must get a comfortable saddle!!!

woman sharing my office space reminds me of the Kathy Bates character in Misery... scary!!!!

well after a brief and intense exchange of emails they stopped....and haven't heard from him in days. He has now reached the heady heights of No. 10 in the Mr Popularity ratings!

He just doesn't know what he has missed out on!!!!

found this intelligent quiz today with intelligent questions....
this is 'what type of humanist I am...

Handholder

You go out of your way to build bridges with people of different views and beliefs and have quite a few religious friends. You believe in the essential goodness of people , which means you’re always looking for common ground even if that entails compromises. You would defend Salman Rushdie’s right to criticise Islam but you’re sorry he attacked it so viciously, just as you feel uncomfortable with some of the more outspoken and unkind views of religion in the pages of this magazine.


You prefer the inclusive approach of writers like Zadie Smith or the radical Christian values of Edward Said. Don’t fall into the same trap as super–naïve Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge who declared it was okay for clerics like Yusuf al–Qaradawi to justify their monstrous prejudices as a legitimate interpretation of the Koran: a perfect example of how the will to understand can mean the sacrifice of fundamental principles. Sometimes, you just have to hold out for what you know is right even if it hurts someone’s feelings.

What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

Hadn't realised frosted leaves actually clatter as they fall to the ground, but that's what they are doing this morning and it presages all that winter represents... gloom, biting cold, a search for the other glove, scraping ice off various things ahhhhhh it is no good I just don't like this time of year at all. Yes we have had a gloriously warm October and yes the skies have been a crisp cerulean blue for the last few days but it is getting darker earlier and noticeably so and there are those glittery things appearing in shop windows, things that have baubles and other glittery things dangling from them ahhhhh it's bah humbug time indeed!

Time for a change! Using one of Rowena's pictures for the header and I hope you like it...seems totally appropriate as it is soooooo cambridgeshire! that landscape is the background of my life.... one wonders how I became a climber!! The remarkable thing about Rowena's work is that it is appliqued work.... in a gallery it looks like an oil painting and then you are drawn in to look closer until you realise that each block of colour is an individual piece of fabric and each piece of fabric is sewn together to make the composite whole.... really lovely work indeed!

ok .... does this bloke seem real?!? I have exchanged a number of fairly esoteric, succinct emails with him... and see that he is now in the 'popular' list, oh yes even dating sites reflect the hierarchical nature of our society!!! even 'Guardian soulmates!! a site supposedly for politically correct, intelligent lefties !! oh yes it is deeply embedded within whatever we strive to do and don't get me started on the ageism that is prevalent here too!!!!.... anyway.... just read this and then give me advice... is this man for real? should I even attempt any sort of correspondence or is it some make-believe fantasy profile and the guy in reality lives with his mum on an estate in Luton and works in a wellington boot factory???

read on:
I'm deeply curious/frequently filled with awe, laughing lots, frequently silly. Enjoying fine/visual/performance arts; playing guitar/singing. good listener/learning to be a better communicator.

HUMBLING MOMENTS:
PHYSICALLY: Trekking Himal with 50 pound backpack, watching 4' sherpas carrying 140lbs of pepsi cruising by...or... INTERSPECIES: being attacked by a alpha male howler monkey after cataloguing harem, collapsing from impact of guanacaste fruit it threw at my head, camera smashing, paralized, calling to my students for help, the alpha male screaming from the tree limbs 5 feet above... EMOTIONALLY: Being present at births/deaths of people I love...and even those I don't know so well.

for fun:
tundra alpine zones, rainforests temperate/tropical, coral reefs/turtle grass beds, roped friends dancing high ridges, somersaults descending reef walls weightless, gazelling tropical savannahs by sand rivers; backpack, scuba, telemark, sea kayak...alpine mountaineering, climbing...long-distance hiking...

my job:
Natural/Biocultural History, Environmental Sciences/Studies. Community-based participatory action research. Traditional Ecological Knowledge/Processes of Inquiry. Protected areas studies. Internationalist. NGO Director, GOV, university. Fine art fotographer/printer, writer, foto journalist, national geographic society expert lecturer, nomad professor...
nature, nature, nature... My sense of self/life's meanings are deeply interwoven with my lover, nature, my friends/family and communities in which I live/work. I'm atheist fascinated by others beliefs, myths and faith. Nature/nurture, power/wealth, resonance/dissonance. Evolution is like gravity, there it is! Exploring beyond post-modernism. nature/metropolis inspiring me.

favorite things:
sultry jazz w/female vocalist, chet's sax, ball mozarella w/plump organic tomato smothered in virgin olive oil, dark French chocolate w/ 92% Ecuadorian cacoa, making love in the tropical intertidal, splashing, the million star hotel...

wow!

I am utterly crap at working in an office... do the bare minimum and then spend the rest of the time exchanging emails or surfing the net for imponderables... last night though returned to Mepal and it was lovely... miss them/it all! realise that the job was so good for me in that there were no short cuts, no time off, no fudging stuff... you had to do the job properly because it changed people's lives and that was such a different criteria!!

Anyway went climbing last night and woke up some atrophying muscles but it has made me feel alive and bouncy today!!! So much so that I walked into reception to collect stuff for the seminar room, someone commented on how alive and bouncy I seemed I said I'd been climbing and the receptionist told me about a new climbing wall at her gym! It is on the way home!! So tonight I will have to check it out!... Think what this little waffle was all about was that once you get into a positive frame of mind, things start happening, things that increase the positivity and it's all for the good! Wish I could get this across to my eldest...his negativity is boundless, his anger intense and he brings a lot of what happens to him because of it! I really don't know how to get him to see the world in a different way, it all seems so embedded in his psyche??? Will he grow out of it, I can only hope so....

have been flirting with Guardian soulmates again and am 'corresponding' with a few hopefuls... and they seem very nice and very positive....hmmmm but all are based in the west country?? Is this a coincidence I wonder????

just browsing stuff and planning the next few weekends activities, one of which includes a march and I found this picture....



see the blurry smiley face in the background... wearing a pink scarf!! yours truely!! and the chap in the foreground... well that's another story!!!! sadly you cant see the Mongolian flag I was carrying....

have occasionally checked out my blog on the bloggernity site and usually it has had one or two ratings a few hits nothing terribly spectacular at all.... until today!!! suddenly readers have started rating it and my god what awful ratings!! has my haphazard writing style and execrable spellings suddenly taken a downturn, please tell me... let me know.... or is it anything to do with shooting at lifesize plastic deer and really enjoying the experience??? it was plastic!!!

So looking forward to the weekend! Have been working in my new office since monday but worked the full weekend at Mepal so it seems like ages since I didn't have to get up to go into work!

The last weekend at Mepal was really pleasant although the whole fortnight prior to that I had felt 'out of sorts' you know that indefinable not too happy feeling. But heard from the university temp agency on thursday that there was a job for me starting on monday and that took the whole uncertainty thing away and I could enjoy my last few days there unhindered by niggling worries... and I certainly did enjoy it, particularly saturday!!!

We had a couple of chaps from Ely archery booked in to check out how suitable the site was for field archery and I had been given the task of showing them around... I wasn't too sure about the whole thing, didn't really know what it entailed but they duly arrived and I was absolutely horrified to see them take from their car a life sized 3D plastic model of a deer!! They had a couple of other 3D shapes too and some splendid looking bows and kit!! Soooooo started wandering around the site, their enthusiasm was quite infectious and very soon they had picked an appropriate first spot and they used a 3D ball shape, chucked into an open spot on the grass and shot at it.... I sort of got the itch to have a go myself so I went in search of my favourite bow, rushed back and had a go! Hit it first shot and felt very pleased with myself... we then went into a little woodland area we use as a trust trail, ie a group of paired people, one blindfolded the other acting as their guide go around a course of obstacles, it is quite hilly and very wooded and so the deer was placed half hidden by foliage.. I just couldn't resist and took aim.... it was rather like reverting to childhood and playing 'bows and arrows' and yes I hit the deer. It has a little 'kill zone' marked in the chest area and if you hit it you score maximum points!!.... we all got rather carried away with it and ended up shooting from the fork in a tree, the top of a climbing frame, through a number of tree branches and my god it was fun!! Quite buzzy indeed!!!

and so now I sit in an office at as a 'postgraduate secretary' dealing with the day to day admin of one of the departments in the university... so far so good, quite like my little role!!