Just pleasantly floundering around.....

The way I always remember the past is to clump periods of time together and attach an overriding feeling or gist. Consequently my personal history is chunked and categorised with the feeling each chunk evokes. Is that what everyone does? The chunks' labels can be arbitrary and chunks can overlap. For example I can have a feeling for the time I lived in a particular house but also a feeling for a friendship that also spanned two different homes etc. I suspect this isn't unique to me but feel I might need to look for a little reassurance so I can deny anti-mainstreaming....again. Other chunks can be decades. I suspect I am not alone here. What does the seventies evoke for you (feelings or thoughts?) or the eighties? Those two were so distinct. (The nineties and the noughties don't feel quite so discrete for me but can muster up a few 'gists'). A book I am reading at the moment also pointed out something else about the past to me: I(/we?) tend to arrogantly have a patr...

There is a place in Norfolk called Fustyweed http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl Officially, it's just a hamlet........but I have insider information. A terrace of five small houses sit some distance back from the only road. Smoke from the five little chimneys zigz zags into the sky. The doors and window frames are haphazardly painted orange, purple, red and green. The front gardens are brimming with stunningly beautiful flowers: mostly noddydil, fraf and craggleweed. Silver and gold fluttifol buzz around them collecting gliff to make their glittery crunnyplop (which is sold in jars from a table at the roadside). All of the houses are kept perfectly maintained with the exception of number four. Minky Flupp who lives there says she spends far too much time granting wishes to bother with keeping her house shipshape. Her neighbours don't mind, as long as she grants them a wish now and then. Jiggy Paloozeville at number three keeps yickins. The yickins lay the most delic...

Interesting times, interesting times. It is already feeling quite different from a year ago. My wonderings are: 1) With so many socially-minded, middle income people being made redundant, what will fill that work void? By their nature, public sector workers tend to be idealists and not overly 'business minded'. A sweeping generalisation, but I don't think these 'types' are overly suited to business in boom time...let alone a time when people are being financially cautious. We are in the early days of this change. The first wave of redundancies are about to kick in. There are many more to come. So we haven't seen their full impact yet. 2) Recession can mean less consumption. This is good for the planet! We nearly all consume much more than we need. I wonder if a fundamental shift in values might occur or is this just my wish list? I guess difficult times can make people go both ways: snatchy, selfish and dark (1930s Germany) or connecting and mutually supportive ...

A few years ago I was asked to give some answers to some standard questions the local newspaper issues to various Norfolk people each week. Recently I was cleaning out my 'pooter files and found them. These are they! They make me laugh because they are so 'twee' and I don't think I am. I could be deluded...again. What is your idea of perfect happiness in Norfolk? Is that not a strange question? Wouldn't it be better to ask - what do you love about Norfolk or in which Norfolk places do you find happiness? I’m a small pleasures person – so it doesn’t take very much to make me happy – or even over-excited! However I do love Norfolk and Norwich’s many outdoor festivals or street events, wandering around and lapping up the atmosphere. How do you relax in the County? Again - slightly odd question. Probably relax in Norfolk in a similar way as I would in Crewe, Inverness or Tunbridge Wells Leaving the hustle and bustle of Norwich behind and getting into the countryside o...

You don't have to look far to see there's a lot of cut, cut cutting going on in the public sector. My team was part of the first wave of cuts. We are the county's Teenage Pregnancy Strategy Unit. We have known we were to be axed since July. July! That's a long time to know that you are going to be made redundant and an awful lot of sympathetic 'well what are you going to do?' conversations to endure! The team is well past needing sympathy and a little bored by those conversations - although we do acknowledge they come from kind intentions. We have worked with lots of different agencies across the county and I have worked with many schools in particular. I have supported schools with their sex and relationships education, personal, social and health education and many things linked to well being. It has been a fantastic and fascinating job. We were told a couple of weeks ago that we couldn't just say goodbye to everyone on the phone and that we needed to have...