This morning woke up to the news that there has been a terrorist attack in Saudi .. probably Al Quaida. I am amazed that there appears to be such outrage - what do people think would happen after the response in Afghanistan and Iraq? I have been reading the Koran ( I am one of those people who doesn't like to have an opinion unless I have done some homework) and I have to say that it is almost identical to the Christian Bible. I may have missed it but there is nothing in there which urges muslims to kill christians - rather it preaches tolerance and forgiveness. I always suspected that "fundamentalism" is like the Christian version - its a power kick based on politics with little reference to God or Allah.

I think the hippies had the right idea - love and peace

I just realised how long it is since I blogged.

My mum died about 6 months ago and I finally got round to going through her papers.... and guess what? I found a load of photos and certificates which have enabled me to construct a family tree with a lot of detail going back about 200 years. I always thought it was sad doing this but I really got hooked. It got me thinking though about those people in Iraq who just "disappeared" - their families will always have question marks - even if they find their bodies then how and when they died will not be complete. So the horror will live on down the generations - perhaps we owe it to our children to construct our family trees and to give them as much info as possible for them to carry on.

I was listening to a prog on Radio 4 about brothers and sisters who share one parent and don't know and end up unwittingly in a sexual relationship. If each of us was given our family tree then at least we would be able to spot these things - the attraction may remain but at least the information would not be hidden. So what if your "father" is not your real father but he doesn't know - according to something I read this is true for about 20% of people .. mother keeps mum about being naughty.

I am fascinated by what I found out about my family - way, way back we were connected to a wealthy family. That must be where I got my taste for the high life ( but obviously no money to go with it!!!)

Am still on a high from the holiday - so much so that I started doing some spring cleaning today.Just as the bin men disappeared down the road I appeared with a bag full of junk. Can anyone explain to me why I collect carrier bags?

As the weather has been so good I have been tackling my front garden. As it is a mix of full sun and full shade the previous owner wrote it off with bark chippings. Unfortunately I have two cats to whom bark chippings = catty loo heaven! You can only imagine how pleasant a job it was to clear it all off and dig what can only be described as concrete earth. Anyway after a whole winter the good old worms have done their stuff and have made the soil useable again - helped by husband and a pickaxe. Went to the garden centre this weekend and blew the next 12 months earnings on plants. The plot looks stunning now with lots of little plants that will be mega this time next year.

I used to laugh at my mum's obsession with her garden - but now she has died it has transferred to me .. spooky or what?

I have just come back from 2 weeks holiday in Kenya - it was absolute magic. We spent the first week on safari - and what an experience. We saw the most amazing animals who were completely unfazed by these strange people with cameras pointed at them almost touching them we were so close. At one point we got in the middle of a herd of elephants and got a very hard stare from the senior matriach at the rear whose baby we were rather close to... hasty retreat was beat.

What touched me is that there seem to be 3 societies in Kenya - the luxury one reserved for tourists and "the elite", the small middle class who work in industries and then the rest who are so poor that it is a wonder they survive. The new government there is doing all it can to try and redress some of the corruption which has kept the poor poor so if you can do anything to support them please take the opportunity.

Oh yeah - and I discovered I am allergic to goat!

I have a strong family history of breast cancer and have been invited to join the patient advisory group for the policy on how people like me are treated by the system. I went to the first meeting on wed and met a small group of women in the same position. I felt honoured to be in their presence and glad to not be alone. I learned more about breast cancer in those few hours than I have learned through all my readings and questioning the medical profession.

My heart went out to the young woman who sat next to me. Her mother had died in January aged 36, 3 months after being diagnosed. She was a single parent and this woman at aged 20 had been left alone with no job and two young children to bring up. She was not complaining but quietly over lunch told me how hard she was finding it learning how to run a house and be mum. She had had her first night out on Saturday since her mum got ill and had been to a club - and some vile scroat had stolen her bag while she was there. I am usually a bleeding heart liberal and try and do the well they must have been in need - this time I would like to get hold of them in a locked room for half an hour and make them face her and her life.

I have been watching much of the news on the 24 hour news channels in my local gymn while exercising - the benefit of this is that you can watch with the sound off and therefore interpret what you see without being directed by the commentator who may or may not be biased. What I have seen has humbled me.

I have watched young soldiers doing a dangerous and difficult job with grace and dignity. I watched two soldiers go into an Iraqi town and be greeted by the people there who were in danger of giving them RSI they were shaking their hands so hard. These were the same men who earlier had been firing at their town. They behaved with grace and dignity - no rejoicing or raising salutes .. just handing over their rations and water where they could see it badly needed. I watched a British Soldier outside Basra being cautiously approached by young children. As they got closer he lowered his gun and put his hands in his pocket and handed out packages of sweets. A small girl in a red dress watched without approaching and he noticed her and coaxed her to no avail. As he turned away to pick up some bottles of water to throw to the children she approached him shyly and stroked his leg. She got her sweets and water. People dealing with people .. no politics involved. The soldier had, the children wanted, the soldier gave. That soldier must have known that any one of those children could be a decoy for a sniper or carrying a bomb but humanity prevailed.

I am not convinced that Sadaam was a threat to the rest of the world - this is about changing the face of the middle east but I think I am humble enough to say that it looks like whatever the reason the outcome will be good for the majority of the Iraqi's. How can a rich country have people who are hungry, uneducated, unable to say what they think and don't even have shoes on their feet? The allies must complete their task now - we cannot let the Iraqi's down as we did last time.

The other thing this has done is in my view revealed that the UN is no more effective than the league of nations. I would have respected france and russia for their views were I not able to check out that they have billions of dollars worth of business with Sadaam as his two main suppliers of arms. They have a vested interest in his regime being allowed to continue. National interests again overruling the world view. I suspect however that the UN is now well and truly f****ed. Without the Americans it has no teeth to impose it's will and I suspect the American's will now dismiss it and choose to exert their power as the world's policeman without them. Perhaps Blair can keep them honest as they do this. Britain has the skill and experience if not the firepower!

Peace is a noble end - but sometimes we have to be prepared to go to war to win peace. Peace has to be for everyone .. not just those of us who live in democracies with nice warm houses, enough food to eat and water to drink, schools for our kids and medical treatment for our sick ( try the NHS out on the Iraqis or the Kenyans and see how much they complain!) AND the right to say whatever we think and believe out loud with no fear of reprisals. No-one has dragged anyone here out of bed and locked them up without trial for protesting about the war. EVERYONE has the right to this - so for those of us who have self righteously said not in our name perhaps we ought to reconsider. I don't like war and wish it wasn't happening but sometimes you have to be the Good Samaritan and lend a hand rather than the Pharisee and pass by on the other side.

Here endeth me hopefully being big enough to admit I was wrong and selfish

At War
Have been listening to the progress of the war on the radio all day. It seems strange that some families are sitting worrying about their young men and women who are in the thick of this conflict and for the rest of us life goes on as it ever does. This must have been what the second world war was like for most of America - a sort of news item that was happening somewhere else and to someone else.

I don't believe that the west has made the case for war with Iraq - but I have to believe that they know something that they can't tell us .. Now that it has started I pray that it will be brought to a conclusion as swiftly and with as little loss of life as possible. Perhaps the removal of Saddam and the introduction of a prosperous democracy ( using their own inherent wealth from oil) which will see their children fed and educated, people allowed to read and think and speak as their conscious dictates and to live without fear will be some recompense for the Iraqis for the terror we are now inflicting on them. Who knows? I just hope that Bush does not use this as an excuse to gain control of the country's oil and leave the Iraqi's dependent on the USA to give them a power base in the middle east. I am not yet convinced about his motives.

I wonder if we would be here if it had been London that was hit on 11/9????

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I and you are you - whatever we were to each other , that we are still.

Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way you always used. Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed, at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Pray, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means more than it ever did - it is the same as it ever was - there is an unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near: just around the corner.

All is well.

Henry Scott Holland 1847 - 1918

couldn;t have put it better myself!

I haven't written for a while - not sure if it was because I didn't know what to say or that I didn't want to face up to what I needed to say.

My mum lost her last and bloodiest battle with cancer just before Christmas. It was very cruel - she was unable to drink which made her tongue like leather and must have felt horrible, and she couldn't talk.. and my mum loved to talk. She has lived alone since my dad died 6 years ago and has gone for days with no-one to talk to apart from a quick 5 minute phone call from me. I knew she was lonely but I was going to get round to fixing it eventually - when?

Despite her pain we managed to communicate and I got to spend about 3 1/2 weeks with her as she became more and more frail. She never lost her sense of humour - or her faith in God. She told me she could see my dad in her hospital room - funny that I couldn't see him but I could sense him. That's when I knew the end was near. Like Halley I had to sign the DNR ( Do Not Ressucitate) order and agree to go for palliative care rather than trying uselessly to make her better. Like Halley I wonder if it was for my benefit or hers - but I think that I made the decision for the right reasons.

The weather has been good this week and I have been planning my front garden - a task she was going to help me with. She had green fingers and mine are definitely orange! The fuschia cuttings she gave me have both bust into flowers on my kitchen window in the sun .... and I miss my mum!!

I am 41 years old next week - supposed to be a grown-up and I WANT MY MUM! Things happen in my life and I pick the phone up to speak to her - the phone just rings and rings. Why can't she just answer once so I can tell her how angry I am with her that she has abandonded me. I only realised today that I couldn't cry about her because I was so damned angry with her for dying when I haven't finished needing her. As I am writing this the tears are pouring down my cheeks - are they for me or for her? I don't know. Probably for me - she is happy now, free of pain and back with my dad.

We don't cry for the dead - we cry for the living. For the person they were we will now have to live without. My parents loved me very much and I am left with the overwhelming sensation of having been loved and still being loved. My husband will be relieved that at last there have been tears - I think he has been waiting for me to implode!

Now - the paperwork!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spent yesterday in the garden getting it ready for winter. My Acer Palmatum which I bought for the "deep red foliage which brightens up an autumnal garden" has shed all its leaves and is bare twigs. Have spent most of the day off and on hunting for advice on the web - and it let me down so if anyone is reading this and knows about them HELP!

Actually it was really satisfying in the garden - when you spend your day working intellectually you forget just how satisfying it is to break your back in something physical.

Also bumped my car last week - I reversed into a bollard!! Hopefully the trembly bottom lip will persuade hubby to get it fixed!!!

I am sitting here with fireworks going off all around me. My poor little cats are terrified... despite my assurances. I have music, radio or tv on full blast in every room to try and create a bang free environment.

Makes me think - how do you explain fireworks to animals? and what about those who are wild or out in fields. I am not a party pooper but they have been going off for about a month now which is sustained torture for the poor things