Sunday 24 April 2016

Hamlet or tempest? Something is rotten in the state of local politics.

I have been thinking about the election happening in Cambridge on the 5th of May.
Something is rotten in the state of local politics.

I have been thinking about  how difficult it is for people who aren't from traditional backgrounds from entering the politics arena to do so without falling fowl of some rule or regulation or just saying something poorly judged. You can have a whole twitter storm etc. Descend on you and depending on intersectionality and your background you may well not be able to stand tall and shout back at someone attacking you.

This relates to the twitter mob and it means I have to look at my own behaviour when I have been in it. The mob mentality I'd strong, it's simple and morally just and a group of righteous people who think like you do. Anyone who has a differing opinion or is ignorant of what is so obvious to those inside the mob are wholly wrong and you feel justified in your picking at them. It's like bullies in the playground, it's the animal that takes joy in bringing down those weaker in the pack. It's the sexist, racist, homophobe mentality, it's the KKK or indeed the black panthers, it's any group that creates an us and them.

We are all people after all and surely the way to change behaviour we don't like is to persuade and inform but not to chastise. In the past few weeks I've seen a fair amount of in-fighting, insults and slurs flying around.
I (will attempt to) kindly say this to others who may have been involved. We are all people, we have intersectional biases and challenges and experiences.
It's difficult enough to get into politics if you're a cis white man, let alone anyone else, but when we attack those who might misjudge their actions or get something wrong we lose what we are fighting for. We leave the concept of a united Cambridge at the door.
Indeed this is meant to be what we are trying to get away from as a society, braying pmqs and insulting fellow candidates.

Having questioned my own actions in twitter storms. I would really like to say that I'm very sorry for jumping to conclusions and judging myself just to challenge you, I'm sorry if I have embarrassed you as a person, while I may have disagreed vehemently with what you were saying I should not have acted in such a knee jerk way. I think as a society we are better than that, let's work towards that as exploratory partners, not attack dogs with a scent.

This is just a brain fart from my head as it comes rather than planned in any way or even properly proof-read. I'm hoping I can get away with it.

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Long time no speak Womble-Watchers, it appears I'm rubbish at blogging. Too much worrying about whether what I say is palatable or meaningful or worth anything.
Too long have I let this place become a mausoleum for my online life... I'm not even tweeting much anymore.

I want to jump back in but I'm not sure how, like a child having fallen from their bike I'm feeling apprehensive about how to get on again.

I think/hope I get it, I think my fear of what others might think about my thoughts is stopping me from exploring what they actually are. I'm not living online anymore, I'm not sure how but I want to start again.

This tempest inside my head brought up the idea of Internet anonymity past and present.

There have been recent stories of the right to be forgotten, I kind of miss the Internet of old where we were, at least somewhat screaming into the void, connected but not physically.

I'm now in a situation where many of my closest friends and I met online, generally on Twitter but yet I've all but retired from Twitter.

I wonder whether it's because my online persona is now around 5/6 years old at least and the people that care know who/where I am in real life. It leaves me feeling more than a little unsafe. A good old flame war is one thing but when someone can bring those flames to your front door it's quite another.

I guess the thing to attempt is to care less, somewhere along the line the whole wide world sprouted teeth and got all shadowy and dangerous.

I want to claim our togetherness back. I want to feel supported by each other rather than concentrating on ways I could get hurt.

My wonderful real life tweep network are some of the most lovely and supportive people I've ever met, I choose to believe that the majority of the world is like this instead of being as fox news would present it.

Anyway, this whole rambling post was meant to be a warning that I may post more regularly or I may not (Depends if I want to really), also a restating of the purpose of this blog...

Some sort of mixture of baking, cooking, crafting, disability, health/social policy, mental health issues and graphics. It may or may not be interesting, that's not the point, the point is if I can work out s focus for my blogging and my thoughts I would be really more prolific than I am.

I think that will do me for now.

W

Tuesday 4 February 2014

Renewed and personalised lamp.

Hello blogging people! Long time no see.



 I have recently renewed an old lamp I got from a hoarder's house clearance. Due to the years and the hoarding it'd got very dirty and needed a lot of cleaning but after cleaning I love the way it still has a lovely shabby look.


Before and After


I used cleaning wipes, dettol and old toothbrush to get the dirt from all the nooks and crannies but it's been stained by the years of buildup. I could have painted it up again but I like the aged feeling to it.

I've started to build up purple and dark
red items in my new place so this fits well
without feeling too "themey"


I bought a cheap lampshade for £3.99 and attached some (24) vinyl stickers (wall decals from ebay) and boom, a simple and quick lamp rejuvenation for next to nothing.


I used Plum and Maroon butterfly stickers
but you could use whatever fits with your style.

Wombleface x

Monday 4 March 2013

Butternut Squash Risotto (5:2)

So today I started the 5:2 eating plan.

Please 'scuse the letter and plug included!


I used Myfitnesspal to work out the kcals etc. of the ingredients but the site doesn't seem to have recipes syncing with the database so I thought I'd write it down for now.

Ingredients:

Parmesan, 12 g
Aborio Risotto Rice, 50 g
1 Vegetable Stock Cube
Butternut Squash 250g approx
1 tsp of Worcester sauce (can be omitted to make fully veggie)
1 tbsp of soy sauce
approx half a pint of boiled water, more if needed.
(337 kcals)


Cut up butternut squash, bake for 30 mins at 220 degrees C/ gas mark 7.
Then put squash in pan and mash lightly.
Add rice, stock cube, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce in a pan with about 3/4 of a pint of water.
Simmer for about 15 mins, stirring occasionally, then add most of the Parmesan and keep stirring, add a little more water if it starts to stick. Trust your instincts, it's ready when you can draw a spoon through the base of the pan and the metal appears and the risotto is porridgey. garnish with remaining Parmesan.

Oh my goodness this was amazing!

I have further nutritional data through myfitnesspal though I'm not 100% on values.
carbs: 67g
fat: 3g
protein: 7g
sodium 626 mg
sugar: 6 g




Wednesday 23 January 2013

Sewing a Nexus 7 cover

While I spent my childhood with an adept sewer for a mum, I never was much cop myself, in fact I'm still not. But at least nowadays I can manage a fairly straight seem on the machine. I have always wanted to be good at sewing, but never practised enough to actually attain that level of competency.

So here's the deal, I recently received my new nexus 7 tablet (free gift with my new phone contract) and so bought a Bluetooth keyboard/cover to go with it, however I had had the idea of sliding the entire thing into a nice 'envelope' style case since I saw @mlbrook put her Mac book in a similar case when we did the social media videos (I still need to finish the post about that process off!).

So anyway, back to the sewing talk, I was having a short out of clothes and was sorting out a few bags for charity when I came across a purple tank top that I adore but just didn't fit right.
Eventually u decided that actually this was a good candidate for felting in the washing machine and though it didn't work properly it did make me think of the case I really liked.

I picked up the teal coloured polyester satin from a remanant bin in the haberdashery dept of John Lewis in town earlier. I just cut out the shapes I needed (further instructions to follow) and with a bit of machine sewing and the occasional but of unpicking when I got the pattern in my head turned around I left a smallish gap of a few inches at the side to turn it right way out and sewed that bit up by hand.

Then I took a bit of a risk and used the button hole setting on my sewing machine for the first time... Cut a slit in the centre of that and then finished with a button, et voilà a very cute little nexus 7 pouch in a few hours!

Monday 7 January 2013

Having a little difficulty

I haven't written in a while, mainly because my life has been so crazy I've not actually written any goals for 2013 because I've not really had any head space to write them.

I think I'm going to try to in fact just write here, once a day if possible, just as a general diary, doesn't matter about what but just getting my thoughts down is a good step forward I think.

Goals I want to get done before the end of January

My Goals for Jan 2013

1:To clear out my flat, to truly get rid of stuff I don't need and to make space for me to be me.
2:To clear out my clothes, trying to just keep the things that are good quality and fit well.
3:To do my physio more often and increase my strength.
4:To refer myself to the exercise program.
5:To spend more time at home to look after me.
6:To sort through my paper work and actually find a more usable system, shred what I don't need to keep.
7:Put Shelves up because it might be a while til I get to move and I need to try to get my stuff sorted.
8:Contact the Richmond Trust and get on their books.
9:Go through debts and try to sort a plan of action.
10:Buy more waste paper baskets to keep my place more manageable and easily tidy-able

Accepting the problem exists without judging

My flat is a mess, it always has been to be honest, my varying mental states and energy levels mean I don't clear mess and trash (such as empty soda bottles and crisp packets, chocolate wrappers etc.) away, often because I want to recycle them but have nowhere to put them. I don't have places for my stuff, everything is higgledy and nothing (or very few things) have a home.

This is partially caused by my own apathy and fear, the "where do I start?" phenomenon. A strong contributing factor is my lack of feeling like I am the owner of my own personal space. I get things for "the flat" and not for me. I have no idea of how to organise things in a consistent, reproducable, and comfortable manner. I am aware this sounds like an excuse but in all honesty I don't think that's entirely the problem.

I think maybe in the way I don't value my own emotional and physical space as separate entities from those around me, I also never want to throw things away because they're useful, or I might need them some day.
It's plain to see that this way of thinking about my life and space is unsustainable and that I will always end up in a hurricanous whirling mess.

It fills me with more fear than you know, dear reader, to think that I am a "Horder" as I don't want to be like this, it will not help me in the long run and it just leads back to depression.
I have depression, but I also have physical health problems that mean that my activity is limited to the most "important" things, which invariably is friends and family however, spreading myself thin in this way leads to no respite and as I try to create a safe mental place for myself I also need to create a haven for my physical body to inhabit.

I was recently seen by an occupational therapist who will try to get me fairly high on the council list for a new, bigger, easier to manage flat. Obviousy I need to think about how to go through my stuff, not only to sort myself out for now but to create a safe place for my siblings to stay too and so I do not have too many boxes come moving time.

I think tomorrow I will start by writing down what I would like to achieve over the next 6-12 months.

I hope to write tomorrow.
(Written 03/01/13)