I LOVE BUNTING

That's all really.

I Beshrew You

You know who you are. Isn't language brilliant?

Something Pretentious

These words are to be found on the wall of Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road. Quite apart from being generally awesome and having an irresistible collection of Penguin Classics (literally; I did not resist), they also have this on the walls. Turns out empyrean comes from the Greek word empyrus (in or on the fire), and means "the highest heaven". I realise it's incredibly pretentious but I don't really mind - we could all do with some quiet and illimitable space in which to spread our wings and explore...Greek things. Providing said wings are not wax and we don't fall to our deaths, of course.

You are the crumpet of my dreams

The walls are talking to me...

It seems words on walls are making me reassess my life. Again.

Exhibit A:

The answer clearly isn't 'this blog', given the length of this hiatus. This is either because I've led such a whirlwind of a life in the last six months there's no time for blogging, or that I've done/seen/read/heard/smelled nothing blog-worthy. You decide. If it's any excuse, I have been rather distracted by vertical vistas posing potentially existential questions...depending on what existential should actually turn out to mean. See also Exhibit B:

I'll told it I'd get back to it.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

I love it when magnets make you reasses your life. I can't say it happens often. These delightful words were found on a door in a courtyard somewhere near covent garden, possibly. I interpret it as a call to drink more but also to acheive more. I'm concerned these two goals might be incompatible.

Let's go fly a kite

I have been struggling in inner turmoil with this issue for a while now, and I think I need an outlet.

The issue is Merry-Go-Rounds.

Merry-Go-Rounds: The Silent Killer

I find them simultaneously alluring and disturbing. The 'alluring' part is understandable; they evoke a kind of Edwardian charm of fairgrounds and laughter and candyfloss and dodgems. (Yes I know candyfloss probably isn't Edwardian. Don't shatter the dream). Then of course there's Rosie, the Magical Mystical Merry-Go-Round from Playdays; she was neither alluring nor disturbing, but a necessary evil until Why-Bird graced our screens again. I think I can trace my discomfort with them back to my almost-daily viewings of Mary Poppins as a child. Not only did this film form the bedrock of my feminist principles with the classic song 'Sister Suffragette' and inspire the now half-fulfilled ambition to become a tapdancing chimney-sweep, it also had me 60% convinced that if I rode a Merry-Go-Round, the horses would come semi-alive, leave their stifling fairground structure and gallop/bob down a lane into untold danger/excitement. Possibly including some kind of racecourse. I'm not sure what it says about me that the threat of danger we might encounter on our fantastical journey far outweighed any potential excitement and has left me with an almost crippling phobia of Merry-Go-Rounds, and horses, that I am only now beginning to excavate. Perhaps that I have a fear of the unknown and am unwilling to take (equine) risks? One thing's for certain: after five months publishing books on counselling I am no closer to unravelling my own psychoses. Although I did find myself today uttering the phrase "I cannot believe we only have two books on groupwork!"...and genuinely meaning it.