My thoughts in Words
My Drinking Days are Done.
November 09
In April 2006 just before launching my C.D. I gave up the Drink, this
was meant to be a short term thing, I was fully intending to have
a drink or two after performing at the launch, well that was the idea.
The day came and it was great fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it
including me which was a surprise, it was at this point that I realized
I really did not want to drink alcohol again. I found that I had not
felt so good in years.
I suppose to be honest I had been a regular drinker from a very early
age with a glass of cider or wine not just at Christmas or on special
occasions. There was much to cope with, my mother always being ill,
having a succession of nervous breakdowns from my seventh year, although
it was before this that life became very unhappy.
It is fair to say that I have struggled through life with mood swings
and bad memories, depression etc.
There are thousands of my generation, post war babies, whose fathers
had experienced the terror of war and whose mothers did their best.
Some of these got post natal depression on top of everything else
which if not treated promptly can effect one's entire life.
There comes a time when you have to face your "demons" and
accept and acknowledge what has gone before and forgive if you can.
Look at yourself in the mirror and be happy with yourself because
if you cannot, no one else can. As for Alcohol, does it help? Well
not for me, it just muddies it all.
The hardest thing about this decision is that some friends cannot
accept it
And constantly press me to have "just one".... if only!
Yoga for Life.
Yoga has been a part of my life since 1975, this was
nearly a year after having my left patella [knee cap] removed and
finding it very difficult to regain any sort of physical fitness that
I started going to evening classes.
Our Yoga teacher was a lady of mature years and she
had “found” Yoga in her mid fifties when as she put it
she was “ceasing up” now in her mid seventies with the
physical condition and flexibility that both amazed and inspired me.
The emphasis she installed into us all was that Yoga was not a competitive
recreation, that the most important thing to remember is that only
do what feels comfortable [no extreme straining to achieve positions]
the benefits of complete breathing, meditation and eventually contemplation
are quite exhilarating.
From the age of eleven years, thanks’ to a very bossy x-wren
P.T. teacher when I was bullied into attempting to volt a four foot
horse and me just four foot ten inches tall, all ten stone of me crashing
to the ground when apparently it was discovered when the surgeon jovially
commented after removing my knee cap in bits “I didn’t
know that you had played rugby” was crushed at that early age.
This single event has had a profound effect on my ability to keep
myself fit and has been a constant recurring source of weakness and
pain ever since that fateful day[Ms Hurst] who if still alive must
be well in her nineties by now. As for being ten stone at eleven years
well that’s another story and not one to tell now or in the
foreseeable future.
With two operations since, the last one in 1995 and thanks’
to the skill of my surgeon when he repaired the post-cruciate tendon,
which I had managed to sever whilst haymaking ten plus years earlier
I can now walk normally and with only a few exceptions I have kept
my promise to him, not to run or dance anything other than a smooch
[the chance would be a fine thing] I consider myself to be very lucky
to been able to live a relatively “normal” life no more
ceili’s for me giving up dancing a small price to pay, having
had to have a fireman’s “chair” carry out of a third
floor dance hall as a result of doing the twist, prior to 1995.
Being able to walk is far more important than you realize when every
single step is unpredictable as to if you will be flung to the ground
as the knee dislocates not an experience I would wish on anyone.
Although I have strayed away from making the effort to practise my
Yoga routine from time to time over the years the longest break six
years came to an end on fourth of August last year, when I knew I
just had to get a grip and get back to what keeps me motivated into
getting myself as fit as I possibly can at my time of life!
So back to my good old faithful book of Richard Hittleman’s
Yoga 28 day exercise plan,
a leaving present from my work colleagues when I joined my husband
on the buildings as a chippies mate great fun and getting out of the
office environment was very rewarding learning new skills and much
less stressful.
I have never managed to complete all the postures in the book not
even in my twenties, I do what I can and that is all that matters.
The general improvement both physical and mental is worth every minute
of the 40 minutes a day, well almost every day!
My dear friend Joany who lives in Boscastle Cornwall,
twenty years my senior still practises Yoga and often receives compliments
on how well she looks for her age [you are so lucky] as she retorts
back, luck has nothing to do with it “ its dammed hard work
Darling .”
Well in twenty years time if I am still in the land of the living
perhaps I will be saying the same.