if indeed any of you are left out there after the latest sustained silencio... eight weeks and counting? Something like that?
How are we all? Enjoying the more seasonal temperatures, I hope!
Me, I have my windows thrown open so I can enjoy the nonsensical music coming out of the phones of the delightful youffs passing my building:
and the tremulous growls of the motorcycles, while the potent odour of weed rises up from, well, pretty much everywhere these days.
Gotta love suburban life.
*EDIT* It's been rainin'.
Happy Bank Holiday Weekend, y'all.
But, it being a long weekend, I thought it were only fair to grace you with my online presence and throw down some wyrds for your perusal.
Here be said wyrds.
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This ... however long it's been, I have mostly been ...
Reading đ
This, still.
I'm enjoying it, when I get to it – well, not so much enjoying the countless tales of women being shut up and shot down for, yep, being women... It's enlightening in a sobering sort of way, let's just say that.
Watching đē
... well, switching between:
Grey's Anatomy
I'm onto season 6. Izzie has survived her tumours (no more Denny hallucinations, sad face):
 |
| Sad face, I said. Not ridiculously alluring, dimpled smiley face. Stoppit. |
Little George O'Malley is deaded, there's an influx of newbies in the wake of the merger with Mercy West, and the male characters left behind are increasingly vile. Especially Hunt. I just don't get it. Yang, wake up and smell the coffee; that man is no good for you, QUEEN.
The Goldbergs
Just as one has to form a little pyramid with one's fingers during the theme tune of The Big Bang Theory (thanks for that one, Jo!):
one is also now compelled to shout back "JTP" in response to Barry's greeting to his friends. Never gets old.
OK, maybe it does after two and a half solid minutes.
Pretty Little Liars
Precis: Painfully skinny girls with All the Issues put themselves in dangerous situations in every single episode, only use a torch when it's conducive to the plotline, and can't pull themselves away from their phones in case they get cyber-stalked by the mysterious, manipulative 'A'. This has gone on for two seasons so far with another four or so still to watch. They're all idiots.
It's oddly compelling even so.
Seeing đ
9 to 5
with family friend Cassie.
(With thanks to Jos for the recommendation!)
Oh my hecking goodness.
All About Eve may have featured Queen Gillian Anderson which obviously made it a viewing necessity this year, but if I were to choose an all-round favourite Thing to Have Seen for Quite a While, 9 to 5 is it.
Based on the 1980-something film featuring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Queen Dolly of Parton, the musical, the book and lyrics for which were also penned by Parton, is just magnificent, with themes of male-female workplace disparity that are just as relevant almost forty years later (sad to say), from women being overlooked for promotion, being paid significantly less than their male counterparts to the casual everyday sexism that is at least now being called out more frequently thanks to the courage of those spearheading the #MeToo movement.
All that aside...
It's always surprisingly pleasant to be pleasantly surprised – nay, bowled right over – by a production, and there were a handful of performances in 9 to 5 that achieved that.
Wit the first:
Brian Conley.
You read that right.
Brian "Dangerous Brian/It's a puppet" Conley.
Superbly seedy, uninhibited and my goodness, he can actually sing. And really well. Even if some of his lower notes did mean we lost the diction a little bit down there.
Wit the second:
Denizen of stage and screen, Goddess Bonnie Langford.
She is super-bendy.
Super-funny.
Super-bendy.
Just brilliant.
Actually, her brilliance was less of a surprise (she is, after all, the walking embodiment of the successful stage school graduate) but still. I saw her as Peter Pan in the 80s; her role as the PA secretly in love with the seedy boss was a rather wonderful counteraction to that.
Wit the third.
Louise Redknapp nÊe Nurding
One of these lasses from that there pop combo, Eternal:
I'll admit, her popstar days are a long time ago and I suspect she has done a lot of solid work since the Nineties that I've been blatantly unaware of since she's, well, Louise out of Eternal.
However.
She delivered a strong, epic performance (her vocals were actually fantastic; colour me stunned), and I forgot she was, well, this lass:
Fair play to her.
The sets are quirky and true to the 80s setting; props are brought on between scenes by members of the cast, the dance and singing numbers are strong and authentic and it carries a strong, feminist message.
... Ohmyword, just go and see it.
Having a minor revelation đĄ
Yeah, I'm-a just going to drop that in there, as if the Yang-inspired revelation of my last post
wasn't quite dramatic enough.
A few weeks ago, Natalie and I took ourselves to a local college of a weekend, for a Wellness Fair. She was in the market for crystals, I was in the market for a decent free massage or reflexology sesh.
Ha, no such thing.
However, I managed to come away with a little lavender pulse-point roll-on and a sea-salt rock that I really need to start hugging again.
In a secluded corner of the hall, we came across a stand reserved by an organisation called the Kind Mind Academy; they were offering a couple of half-hour meditations during the day, plus the chance to take a survey and find out how kind you are to yourself.
Turns out both Natalie and I scored very low on that, which seemed incentive enough to sign up for the second of their meditation sessions.
Now, if I say to you the words 'self-care', what springs to mind?
Some factions of social media may have appropriated the expression 'self-care' to push expensive skin or body care products, or to promote a particular lifestyle that guilts people into believing that unless they subscribe to 'clean eating' they are 'dirty' or polluted in some way; at its core, self-care shouldn't be about that. It's about obliterating that sort of thinking.
The crux of the meditation session was, on some level, that self-care is about stepping outside yourself on a daily basis, and assessing and addressing your fundamental needs.
It's about being the friend to yourself that your closest friends are to you. Changing the dialogue in your head from criticism to kindness and encouragement.
It's not about pure selfishness, hashtag self-care hashtag it's all about me; it's about ensuring that your needs are met as much as those around you are having their needs met by you.
"You can't pour from an empty cup", as they say.
At the end of the meditation we were given a) a hug if it was needed and b) a bracelet on which is written the words "What's the kindest thing I can do for myself right now?"; a reminder if ever we need it that sometimes we need to take pause, step outside the chaos, the ridiculous workload, the demands, and just find something, one thing, that we can do that will make us feel a bit better about things, more in control, just for a moment.
One revelation I had in the wake of the meditation is that in different ways both Natalie and I are continually apologising for ourselves; if I'm in a shop or even browsing at the stand at a fair like this particular one, and I am in any way jostled or if people crowd me, if I'm in a queue and the person behind comes too close and won't wait their turn while I'm paying and packing up my shopping, that to me is a message that I'm not important enough to be given space or time, and I either step away from where I'm browsing, even if I haven't finished looking, or I get angry and harrassed and passively-aggressively start moving more slowly!
My point is that we should be the ones to determine our worth in this world; nobody else should be allowed to do that for us. And on some level, self-care is about stepping back and seeing where we fit in, what we can do to carve out our place, to push ourselves forward for something we believe we deserve, in the same way in which we'd push a friend forward for something we believe they deserve in their lives.
Equally, self-care is about removing ourselves from a situation or a mindset that is damaging, draining or toxic. It's about holding off putting unnecessary pressure on yourself because you mistakenly believe something is expected of you.
Or it's about coming to the end of a week in which you've had something booked in for every night of that working week, and you just want to be on your own, even if it means turning down well-meaning invitations.
Embracing self-care isn't easy; sometimes you have to realise you're martyring yourself, or you're competing too closely with someone else, comparing yourself and finding yourself lacking, or you're mired in a rut of frustration for one reason or another, and this can come out in all sorts of angry, toxic ways. The kind thing to do therefore won't just benefit you, it'll benefit everyone around you.
Time to take a quick check at the bracelet and think, "What's the kindest thing I can do for myself right now?"
...Pink gin, Pretty Little Liars: in other words, a lazy rest of the evening – that's the thing I'm embracing.
Link Love đđ
Serious
Why introverts won't survive without self-care (apt?) | Introvert, Dear
Councillor's colour-coded knitting shows the imbalance of male:female verbal contributions | on BBC | via Inger
Invisible Women: are modern workplaces and buildings still geared primarily towards women? | Caroline Criado-Perez in The Guardian
Sweet
Tiny McDonalds opens in Sweden ... for bees! | on Pretty52 | via cousin Julie
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Well, that's all for now. Enjoy the rest of the long weekend, and, see you when I see you!
qb xx
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