I miss public transport! (by alaric)

When I lived in London, I used to commute on the London Underground and the busses. And in my bag, I always had my current reading book. And I'd sit and read for my journey, half an hour to an hour a day.

When I started working from home, I lost that; but I had to travel into London a few times a week to rotate offsite backups and things like that, so I still got a good hour and a half of reading time a week.

When I moved to Gloucestershire, I still had to go into London once a week, which provided a solid hour and a half of reading time each way plus some time on the Tube, which was excellent!

But that came to an end. When I leave the house, it's rare that I don't drive; and I detest having to manually steer a vehicle around, consuming all that energy and taking up space on the road! Whenever I can I take my bike or use public transport - but times when I'm not transporting passengers or cargo or am in a hurry are so rare. It was a rare treat when I went into town to visit the optician and I worked out it would be just as fast to go on my bike (slower moving than the car - but able to go through the centre of town rather than around, and can be chained up right by the optician rather than having to be parked further out and walking in!

As a society, we're in a vicious cycle: because most people have cars, businesses face little penalty for setting up a few large premises on cheap land outside of city centres, rather than lots of smaller ones nearer to where people live. And because businesses do that, people are pressured to have cars in order to be able to access services.

Even aside from the environmental costs of all those individual cars driving all over the place - and the direct financial costs of a significant fraction of the average person's income being spent on a vehicle, and maintaining it, and fuelling it - we have the all-too-common problem with a lot of things the ignorant call "progress": it leaves behind the people who can't take part. The young, the poor, and the sufficiently elderly can't drive cars, and so are locked out of accessing important services. And because they're the main customers for what local public transport (eg, busses) there is, that public transport is underfunded and poor.

This vicious cycle is somewhat avoided in large city centres, where road layouts laid down before the invention of the car are too hard to change now, and so public transport is the only practical option for most journeys. And it can be undone everywhere else, too, with the right incentives - the fifteen minute city concept, for instance. I'm sad people are opposing it, spreading misinformation to turn others against them - I'm not sure if that just comes from ignorant misunderstanding couple with a knee-jerk fear of change, or deliberate manipulation in order to prop up the fossil fuel industry.

I want a world where I can get to most places I need on my bike, and places further away by bus, tram, and train. Sure, there will be delivery vans, and emergency vehicles, and work vans for tradespeople who need to turn up on-site with a load of equipment; but the roads should be dominated by bikes and mobility scooters and busses (that the mobility scooters can drive onto!). I don't understand why governments want to spend so much on roads (have you ever looked at a motorway junction and thought about what it cost to build?) for people to spend so much to buy and maintain cars to drive on them, and spend so much time driving, and finding and paying for parking in parking lots that take up so much space. Public transport is cheaper and more accessible!

I want this solarpunk transport utopia not just because it's more efficient - less waste is better for the environment, and frees up resources we can use for fun things - but because it's also safer, and frees up our time to read and think and talk while on busses, trams and trains.

(Since writing the above, I had a particularly bad day visiting our eldest at University - delayed by missing a turn because I had ingrained muscle-memory telling me to drive to somewhere else, then delayed by a road closure, then delayed even more by being rear-ended when the car in front stopped suddenly to try and not miss a turning; I stopped in time by the car behind didn't... I'm now even more sick of driving than I was!)

Gloucester Story Telling Cafe 5 – The Summer Time Special (by sarah)

It's that time again already! July was hectic with end of term and beginning of summer holidays events including The Gloucester Festival of Archaeology!

Now its Augusts turn and we shall be starting off with The Gloucester Story Telling Cafe tomorrow evening at The Folk of Gloucester - this is our monthly story telling night and is open to many and varied different types of story telling from flash fiction, to biopic, to traditional tails, to Crankies and probably a whole lot more!

What you need to know to come and see the show!

When:

Thursday 2nd of August 2023

(It is the 1sr Thursday of every month except January)

Doors open 7 pm for a 7:30 start

It is a pay what you want system - we have no funding currently so could do with some shackles to keep the night running but equally if you have nothing or little to give just come along and enjoy the night for free

End time is around 10 pm (we are aware that one site says 9 pm it is an external site to us so we can't change it!)

We have an interval where you can buy drinks and cakes at the Cafe and Bar, it is also open before the show

Where:

The Folk of Gloucester, 99-103 Westgate Street, Gloucester (just down from the Cathedral)

It is the old Tudor style wooden framed building!

Who:

This months guest story teller is Nick Brunger - check them out even if it is just to see the awesome photos on their website!

And music from Ed B

You:

We also have open mic slots capped at one story, three poems or 10 minutes maximum. Please come and share your stories with us or just kick back with a beverage of choice and enjoy the night.

Luna and Their Wondering Stars (by sarah)

There is a lot of wonderful astronomy type stuff going on at the moment and sometimes I find myself able to capture just a glimpse of the worlds and burning suns in our sky. At the moment there is a visible comet - my eyesight is pretty bad these days but I am still hunting for it as I did with Neowise a few years ago - this time I do not have my mum to drag out in the car with the kids with thermoses of hot chocolate and lots of moaning and excitement when a shooting star is seen or a planet spotted. But I do have a Mary and Mary likes to point out "weird" extra glowey stars and wonder on what they might be and they have been many things - more things than I thought they would be. And so we have this picture taken on the dance run of a new moon growing from a slither so so thin and delicate with planet in tow - Venus and Saturn - at least I think that's Saturn much smaller and fainter there.

The moon always has held a fascination for me and of course it is for many cultures that this new moon - this moment is the New Year and with everything that has been going on and the illness over Christmas that feels right. Besides I like the idea of a rabbit in the moon - I know I've mentioned it before but I had a little outfit when I was a kid with embroidered bunnies on it and this idea kind of stuck in my head. Plus our bunny Angel is named after Mum and I am scrabbling for so much that was or should have been and I am becoming I think a re-Me or a new-Me or at least an adapted me at the moment.

This seem so cyclic as stuff from years past rears its head and says you need to use this skill or investigate this thing you knew or just look at the world in the wonder you once had. I found the MoonMania embroidery and have a wood to look at nature and rocks in and I found needle ice on my own drive way - a thing I've known about but never seen. I've been photographing mushrooms and taking part in Wassails and playing music. I have been finding the sky and the forest floor to be filled with things I know of but have been missing, I see landscapes and world and stories that want to flow but I am so very tired and broken - as Jean used to say "need glue" or maybe some gold to stick these fragments together again. I don't know. I don't even particularly care but I took some photos of the moon and of stars over the River Severn and found siderite and drew things for my kids.

Sometimes I dream of adventures in those skies and I wonder were exactly the wonderers are wondering off to but then I know I could just look it up or plot it out myself but is that any different to my walks were I find so many things to see and investigate.

Last year we failed to get the telescope out at all - this is an amazing fact to me but something I hope to counter this year.

Why do we hate? (by alaric)

About a decade ago, I wrote a blog post about how people forget the humanity of others when they hate them. I find hate really interesting - it's not an emotion I'm particular prone to, but the world seems full of it, so it interests me. And it's usually very harmful, so I'm interested in ways to mitigate and eliminate it.

Since writing that post, I have pondered how we start to hate somebody in the first place, and I've noticed a pattern that seems to underlie a lot of hate. I've not seen it called out explicitly before, which is really interesting.

Read more »

Headless, Heedless, Reckless and Restless (by sarah)

I feel a burning restless desire to just do something but have no energy and the thought of choosing anything is hard at the moment. I feel like I am wondering aimlessly - like my head has been cut off. I am just me but who is me and what do I do now? The last few years have just been absorbed with caring and doing and before that just surviving - it has been a rough run through grief and miscarriages and hitting my own mortality more than once and then both parents gone as brackets around a global pandemic. And I am still here looking at my beautiful family knowing it is only a fragment and that they each of them is hurting and fighting their own battles and a chunk of that - what ever they say is my fault weather through my fault be it genetics or circumstance.

My heart isn't just broken, it is pulversized - it is raw meat - it is a bloody pulp that I am not sure can be revived - I want my babies and I want my parents - but I have Al and the kids except I feel I am loosing them - this is only right for the kids they are growing up and I can not cling to them because the ones in-between are missing. I feel that I sacrificed my last bastion of motherhood to look after my Mum and yes I resent that and I know people think I am selfish for even considering more babies. I am just a tattered remnant now - I look at all the things I am supposed to enjoy and I just think "but do I really?" I am doing better with this but still not sure it is not obligation.

Alaric says they just want me to be happy but - what is happiness - all I ever wanted was to feel safe and secure - to not be in pain. Apparently that is not happiness and I have struggled with pain my whole life and I'm no longer sure that I will feel alive without it. What would that be like? No pain? I am sure there must have been times of no pain but my memories are riddled with it. Sitting on the wall waiting for a bus at 17 my back burning, standing doing my shifts at the Union at 21 my pelvis and hip aching, 11 year old me in a Guide game crying because to sit like that made my knees feel like they were being crushed. And I didn't know others did not also feel this. And just to ease it often robs me of thinking capacity as the pain killers space you out but then so does lack of proper sleep.

And I think of my mum and the pain she endured and I get so angry - incandescent and this rage... it scares Al - it scares them and they need me and I can't be there for them and I know this has broken them. There has been so much lose for both of us - during all this Al also lost friends and family members and had to make decisions they never expected to have to make. They said they are sick of me almost dying and they are sick of death - it is eating our lives this bereavement merry go round we have been living. 5 years now - 5 yrs of lose and medical dramas and it sticks in our throats and it is scouring our bones and we are tired. The year before the pandemic Al ran out of leave days to take for funerals - last year they had to have months of compassionate leave to help me look after my mother and it was harrowing - the thing we all found the worst was when she was calling for her mother and reaching her arms up to us like a toddler but it came and went and the week before they discharged her I was hopeful even when they took her back in after the disaster of a discharge - I still thought... it doesn't really matter... things either don't matter or the smallest of things seems so frantically important.

The sunsets have been amazing lately - because of storms and dust and climate change - things that were once rare - specific light and cloud formations are now a regular thing and they are beautiful and breath taking but they are born of turbulence. I vibrate now - it is weird and part of the Graves Disease from my understanding - my whole self just kind of hums and the dreams are bright and real and in those dream I am retrieving my parents from weird distorted gardens or trying to get out of zombie filled shopping centres whilst trying to retrieve children I have left behind and sometimes Mum is already dead and sometimes they sit up after embalming and they have trouble thinking and I see the photos of her from when she was young and I think of the person she never got to be - the person she actually was beneath the damage and that hurts most of all - because she poured those regrets on us in the last year - she told us about her loves and wants and wishes.

I wonder if the vibrations are the after shocks of turbulence - like there has been an Earthquake and the sea floor is still cascading as minute shifts in currents prod the now unstable surface and everything slips - crashing down into the abyssal plain smothering fledgling life that dared to try and exist on the edge. This is my life now - it is a new stage - a phase as yet unseen but I have no idea where I am going and I am not sure I am even steering. Our electric car broke down on Friday and I had to steer as it was pushed round the corner but really I was just making things easier for those pushing I was following directions and I don't even think it really mattered if I'd done it completely wrong. I am on that hummocky bit of the river after the full force of the rapids - but I don't know where the river leads so there could well be more to come or a water fall or slow meandering rivers or back waters that snag and down you.

All I know is the more you love the more pain there is to feel - there is no way around that - no way at all. So all there is is loss really. It grinds you away. Sometimes I think I am just echos of all those I have loved that I still love and that fill my heart and mind - they are there but where am I? What am I? How can I ever be? I have always felt I only really come into being around others - that doesn't mean I don't want to go off and have time alone but there are still those people there for when I return - I am still tethered - but now... I feel like a none person. I had to spend the weekend on my own and I realised I am 41 and no one can remember me being on my own in a building at night - not once - room yes building no... there has nearly always been room mates for a start from siblings to cousins to my nans to my mother to other students to Alaric to the kids to sleep overs with friends - so I went to invite people round for a sleep over and realised it sounded completely in appropriate and so I didn't send the invites and then I had to face being alone. My friend visited for the afternoon after I cracked and asked what are you supposed to do on your own? No really I don't get it and I didn't like it if I hadn't had the animals I am not sure what I would have actually done.

All of this I know is part of the grief but I am also really not sure who the hell I am and I long LONG to run and climb and jump and I know that is realistically unlikely at best - I watch my friends caving videos and I can't even manage weeding my own garden at the mo - for the first year since university I am not growing veg or herbs - I have planted nothing just scattered some flower seeds and bought already growing plants to pot up to try and make things look ok - but they don't because actual work needs to be done and sometimes I can't even get myself into a vehicle without help.

I am so tired but thrumming with energy at the same time - oh I want to go to the skate park and fail at doing stunts - I want to join the armoured combat group - I want to canoe in the canal.

Instead I plod along with crutch or sometimes crutches and slowly amass the kilometres to add to challenged I've paid to get medals from - I am walking 100 Km for a medal I've personalised for mum but it isn't even a proper charity walk or anything - its just a shiny medal I thought would fit. People like telling me what to do - I am struggling to even want to listen to them - I would say I am running of regardless except I am not but maybe this is the way to go - maybe the river knows - I was after all born of the Muddy Waters, I have the Estuary in my bones - I have found a part of the Severn to sit and be by whilst Mary is in dance and a robin has befriended me and tries to steel my chips - hovering in front of my face and I love the birds there - I see herons and swallows and house martins (well by the houses I do), and I get to see the mud banks and think about how I used to go down on the Thames foreshore with my dad and find bits of broken doll and weird green crabs that didn't belong and needed the warm water from one of the factories to live. I remember the big chunks of chalcopyrite they put in when the docks had gone and I'd planted trees there with politicians helping with the digging and how important I felt planting those trees were even though I had a huge chest infection and shouldn't have been doing anything - I remember my mums students doing an art project on the rivers and waters ways and how it was tied into those trees and then whilst sorting things for the funeral me and and my brother went to parts of it and my friend who works on it told me about the new larger project that takes into account the fens and marshlands and I just remembered my dad taking me to see the wolves in there large enclosure and how the one I liked to watch with their piercing eyes would trot over and look at me though the fencing and follow me as best it could and the walks learning about all the uses for nettles and that I don't think I've taught my kids to identify the trees well enough and that I loved the marsh with its hidden Iron Age footings and the little owl with apparent ears. And I miss all of this.

After Dad died I felt he was some how Old Father Thames - that was how I saw him in my dreams - but I live far from my rivers except it turns out there is a tunnel connecting the Thames and Severn so I felt/feel that that makes them one thing - but kind of not as well - I liked that connection and I longed for the sea and estuary during lock down and I love walking by the rivers and seeing and photographing their multitudes of life - I feel I am part of them - I am the will o whisp that is the marsh light and I am the girl who played in the river and went to the river ever day and who went to get their dad to rescue the kids who did not know or understand the river or when you should not go in. I first found rocks on our river bend and I dream of my river realm regularly - I showed Mary water plants so that they could know where not to tread and at my place along the Severn we were told the tide was coming in - that the bore was coming and so we waited and Alaric got bored and wondered off but me and Mary watched and Mary got excited as the mud banks were swallowed and I realised watching the calm shallows become chopping muddy hills of water - that this brackish world trapped and interlinking two worlds - the sea and the river - this is my world - with salt marsh to boggy patches of unknown depth and the wide wetlands with hill struck island and I feel the boats calling me and the reeds waving and recall why I love Wind in the Willows so so much though I probably am Mole.

The rivers gave me pebbles and pets that were wild from foxes to badgers to ducks to my new robin friend - and I am those cross currents and calm water turned to power churn - I can go against the flow or with - I can choose - but there is life and danger in this.

Recently as I walked down to the river to earn this gold heart with my mums name on it that is probably spelt wrong because I made it but thats ok because I always spelt it wrong I thought about Sabrina or Hefren as my dad called her and of how she is the river Severn and I can help but here the eulogy Alaric created from my mothers own words about the boats and the adventures here and dad had had and hoped to have again - the rivers connected but separate are them and I miss donning a wetsuit and swimming in brackish waters that tend to salt and going in little boats up the river. My brother is into canoeing at the moment and has my granddads boats - I wonder if he too feels this connection with the rivers and I know that sounds stupid but I have always been called to water as to rock and fire.

Maybe spinning around trusting the currents is the way to go and maybe backwaters and rapids all have their place though I would like very much to have my family whole and be picnicking on a sand bank as we used to do.