Moving On

Today has been my last day in Wales, and, my last day in my own home ***sigh***.

Tomorrow morning I will be returning to Madrid, and my house will soon have a tenant moving in.

As it is my last day, I thought I should reflect back upon the last few months, and how I feel right now (just for my own record, if nothing else)!

I will firstly state that it feels surreal to be going back to Madrid. It actually feels as though I am moving to a strange city, rather than a place I have lived in for two years! I know why though. These last few months in Wales have been busy for me, extremely productive and of course lots of fun! Being in Wales this time has been somewhat different, because I feel I have achieved so much, and, so much has changed. 

I have been working for a political party, and have thoroughly enjoyed the work too! Being a political researcher and a trainee journalist allowed me to put my skills and brain to good use, and because I haven’t felt that way in a long while, it felt good. I also met some interesting, intelligent, supportive, kind and humorous individuals whilst working, and I learnt so much from them. 

I also managed to finally organise renting out my house to a tenant!! Yipppeeeeee!! This was another skill tester, and I am pleased to say, I passed! My home of eight years will soon be someone else’s to enjoy as much as I have.

I have finally finished up all the odd jobs in my home too, of course I did have help from others too! In fact as I write this, I have only just completed all the required jobs! Thank God, the angst and frustrations of trying to finalise everything are now over!!

I have cleared out everything from my house, it is as bare as, well, God knows! I have got rid of clothes, glassware, food, appliances – practically even the kitchen sink! It’s weird to see my home so, well, damn empty! 

I have had much needed time to spend with family and friends, and I can tell you, I have had fun. I’ve been out to some lovely places, spent some money, ate and drank far too much and basically thoroughly enjoyed myself. 

I have also made some new friends too, which I think is pretty good going, considering I have only been back in Wales a few months! 

Oh, also celebrated my Birthday – albeit on the actual day I was completing some of those dreaded house chores. 

Not to mention actually getting the opportunity to see flourish a most glorious Springtime. You can’t really beat the countryside in Wales. 

***sigh***

Anyway………………………………,

I still have to finalise my suitcase packing – 20kgs isn’t much for anyone to contend with. 

So I shall say goodnight to you all, as I now also need a drink (an alcoholic beverage) if you couldn’t already guess 🙂 

 

When In New York………

………….Why not join the bare breasts and book reading club????

Apparently, a spokes person, not spokes woman by the way, was quoted telling The Huffington Post that  “once in a while a woman (and it’s always a woman) will give us a dirty look as she passes or mutter “really?” under her breath” ………”Really”, is that all the female passer by says, wow! I say, if you strip off then expect some comment from someone, otherwise, don’t strip off!

I wonder why other women walking through a city centre park, in the middle of the day, might dare to say something (even if the word is as inoffensive as ‘really’) to the topless brigade?

Are these well read topless women really (there’s that word again!) so clueless? Perhaps all that book reading hasn’t yet stretched to feminist literature!

One step forward and two steps back! Let’s once again refocus on image, youth, beauty, breasts, bums and vaginas and everything else feminism tried to overthrow because of objectification! Who cares what book they are reading when they have their breasts out! No one is evaluating their intelligence, just their breasts! Let us be blunt on that point!

Apparently, the males of New York are encouraging towards the bare breast book reading women……….who would have thought it!

Of course men won’t mind! It’s great watching women’s breast sway in the breeze! They are men, who find breasts sexually attractive! They are relieved to see breasts free of tops, jumpers and shirts! No longer do the men of New York have to walk around Central Park and try to sneak a peak at breasts, they are in full view! Happy days!

Yet, if a woman exposes her breast to feed a child, there is uproar (in the UK this is the case anyway). I just don’t get it, such hypocrisy! Breasts aren’t for feeding babies, did you know? No, breasts are merely just to be exposed for sexual gratification in any random situation! Of course they are!

This craze of stripping off is the same in Madrid. The sun comes out, which is does frequently in Spain, and so too do the half naked women, not men, but women.

Being a heterosexual woman, I don’t wish to be relaxing in any park and have to face the view of other women’s half naked bodies, regardless of how gorgeous they may be! I don’t visit parks to ogle other women’s bodies. Perhaps this female nakedness wouldn’t be so bad if the disparity between female nakedness, and male nakedness wasn’t so glaring obvious.

If naked is OK, or semi naked or whatever, why don’t men strip off too?

Why do only women have to walk, sit, lie and whatever else in a state of nakedness in public places? Why?

I personally rather keep my private bits and bobs under wraps. My reason? Do I need one? Should I have to strip off in public? Should anyone strip in public? Why is it so OK to strip off in public? Why is it deemed so liberating? What’s liberating about objectification?

Call me old fashioned, I don’t care! Call me a prude, I don’t care! I just wish people would think before they strip off, so sue me!

If more women than men strip off in public, then surely there remains an inequality. Women’s bodies are to viewed and objectified and men’s aren’t. Women are sexual objects who should parade their wares and men are not and do not need to.

So, regardless of my fragile sensibilities I suppose yet again I will be the only woman in the park thinking, my body is my body and not for the viewing pleasure of any Tom, Dick or Harry, nor is it up for discussion either! My body is mine and I show it only to myself and my partner. But, then I am old fashioned, and a prude! So, sue me!

Birthday Blues? Not me!

It’s that time of year when I begin looking forward to my Birthday.

In a little over two weeks I will be officially another year older. For some this might be an occasion to dread, but for me, I am ambivalent. 

Another year, so what! Who cares! Life is measured in more than merely age. For me, it’s what I’m doing with the years that means more than the age I am, have been or will be. 

I am not one of those people who wish to be eighteen again; never liked being eighteen when I was eighteen, so why would I want to go back and re-live it! Although, I do have friends who would give their right arm to be eighteen again, and I wonder why. What is so lack lustre about their current time and space that makes being eighteen again look so appealing? 

I might not be eighteen, but I’m not exactly Methuselah either. Just yesterday I got asked for ID to purchase alcohol, I was highly bemused. I wasn’t afraid to produce the said ID and declare my age, I was more mortified of the fact my drivers licence has such a ghastly picture on it; I cringe every time I have to show it to a stranger! 

So why does age, an increase in a number, bother us so much?

What makes eighteen OK and thirty (plus) such a shameful thing? 

Why do people feel their life is over once they leave their teens or even their twenties? I just don’t get it! 

I think this is where Spanish makes me smile. ¿Cuántos años tienes? Which is asking, how many years do you have. It’s not asking, how OLD are you, it’s asking about the years of life you have under your belt. It’s far nicer than discussing oldness! 

Who is old anyway?

No one feels old. What does old feel like? 

We’re all just subjects of our time and space, we don’t wake up one day and say; ‘you know what, I feel old’. 

This is where western society seems to hold the answer. It is obsessed with age, oldness, wrinkles, grey hair, plastic surgery, recapturing a lost youth. Well, growing older is going to happen to all of us at some time or another. That’s what we share, a commonality, we will age. No amount of plastic surgery will change a biological age, it won’t stop time from ticking by. 

We are not Dorian Grey, we are not immortal, we are human and we all age! 

So, I may be looking at another year under my belt, but, my life won’t come to an end. Time marches on regardless of my age, time ticks on and so it should. I am not going to dread being older, I am not going to cry, I am older and wiser and more experienced.

 

Your life is an occasion, so rise to it!

I do not fear a number! I am made if sterner stuff than that! So, bring on my Birthday, I can’t wait for the cake! 

 

The Never Neverland

People and their possessions puzzle me.

As long as they have the flash car, phone, television, kitchen and so on and so on, all is well in their world.

It’s a competition; who can spend the most, who can fill their lives with endless empty vessels.

Yet, look a little closer and everything isn’t quite as rosy as it appears to be. All they have, isn’t even theirs. It’s all paid for by the never never. The credit card, loan and finance option, the Neverland for all goods bought and sold. 

People demand the ‘necessities’, which used to be called luxuries. Consumerism is now the prerequisite to the picture perfect life. They believe the latest products make life worth living. People eagerly buy into the product and the myth ‘you need this, and this will make your life great’.  

For me it is all show and no substance. Can happiness be found in buying the latest gadget or redecorating for the eight time in a year? I doubt it.

How can any object be worth more than what is going on in life, in relationships in the world? 

Why spend money you don’t have on things you really don’t need? How many washing machines can a person really use in one house?! 

Now I appreciate the finer things in life, but not if it means I am lumbered with debts I struggle to pay every month, just so my neighbours are green with envy. 

Maybe then, if we all stopped buying, and considered for a moment why we are buying, perhaps we might decide we don’t need to take another trip to the checkout. We might discover we can actually be happy, and, happy with what we already have! 

One pause for thought might convince us that saving our money doesn’t mean our lives will come to an end.

If we thought before we bought maybe we’d see how buying a 3D TV won’t make us better people or somehow more interesting. We might also consider the conundrum of a society that throws away so much just because it’s deemed unfashionable or technologically redundant, and therefore consuming just for the sake of it makes no logical sense. We might realise that the never never is economically foolish, and a sure way to make us more depressed than not having a new car or latest iPhone. 

Ummmmm, money in the bank or credit on a small plastic card. I know which I’d prefer, and it’s not the latter. Give me cold hard cash any day; it’s not out of sight out of mind like a charge on a credit card. With cash you can see your money, understand the real value of it and know that once you’ve spent it, it won’t grow back on trees!