Celebrations and a Daffodil

Last Wednesday, Mona, my mother, was 89 years old. The changes she has seen in her lifetime are immense! We took her and a dear friend of hers, Suzanne, to her favourite restaurant, The Ledbury. as soon as the staff realised it was her special occasion, a birthday (sugar tart & icecream) cake appeared with Happy 89th Birthday written around the rim of the plate. She felt very cherished.

We had a little drama last night. I realised that Magic must have been fighting again and suddenly had an enormously swollen cheek, so straight after dinner we whizzed him round to the emergency vet.

So we now have a very disgruntled little Magic, who is impersonating a daffodil. He must have said something rude to a big cat with mucky paws (Maybe: “Hey there, Mucky Paws! Puss off and clean up your act?”) and received a mucky smack in the face for his troubles. Anyway, it very quickly turned into an abscess, meaning he had to spend the night at the vet’s having a minor operation to sort it out and resulting in his having to wear a plastic collar for protection that makes him look like the proverbial little spring flower. We are not his favourite people at the moment. He holds us personally responsible for catnapping him and leaving him to the not-so-tender mercies of the Medivet Slasher.

Just back from a blissful holiday. We drove down to the South of France to Cassis just in time to cheer on the runners in their local Marathon (Marseilles to Cassis, 25 Km). There were some runners carrying wheelchair-bound folk and a wonderfully jaunty brass band on the quayside after the last runner had staggered into town. All the local folk turned out and cheered all the participants on, shouting "Bravo!" or "Allez, allez!" to everyone in the race. It was a very grueling race because it is all uphill from Marseiles for most of the way, then sharply downhill into Cassis.

We had stopped off in Reims (for the champagne) and Pérouges (for their special gallettes) on the way down, and returned via Macon & Épernay (for the champagne again) - so the car boot was full of bottles of Macon Villages, Pouilly Fuissé, Pommery........ I'll drink to that.

Back to work and thankful that I love my work. I have just written some feedback for the first year students' main written assignments and I feel so proud of them, they have done so well. Tonight I ran the Healing Clinic and all the students were really busy because there were so many people who came for healing. The energy that built up in the room was dazzling, and some lovely healing was taking place. Three of next year's students came and two of them received healing for the first time - and loved it! Still on the lookout for really good candidates for next year's Soul Therapy Course. Looking for people who want to develop their healing to national registration level and work in the most privileged and rewarding way that anyone could hope to do, in the service of Spirit. Someone once said that working for Spirit is fine, and the Retirement Plan is out of this world!

On Friday I met a lovely man called James Knight, who is the publisher of Hot Gossip Magazine. He likes my book, Eternal Sparrow: Poetry for love, laughter and life, and is going to publicise it in the magazine. I am extremely happy about that. Lynne, the owner of Rosie Brown Boutique, is also selling the book, as is Muswell Hill Bookshop. Charli has it on order too. People are contacting me and telling me which of the poems is their favourite, and that gives me quite a buzz. I have my favourites too, I suppose, for all sorts of different reasons.

The Sonnet, Italian Style, "The Orchid" seemed to write itself - it just flowed and the usual blood, sweat and thingummies were not needed - very unlike the haikus, so tight a discipline that at times I could hardly breathe with the effort of containing as rich a description as possible into three tiny and carefully limited lines.

The Grown Up Nursery Rhyme was fun to write because somebody challenged me to write a nursery rhyme and it just turned out to be a tad saucy. I started on the premise that nursery rhymes had to be clear, with simple language and if possible also with a nonsensical refrain (cf: Lavenders blue, dilly dilly); they have to have something magical, so I incorporated the number three by having three lines to each verse; also they have simple topics and themes so that children can easily relate to them, hence I chose two: primary colours and clothes. You can find the ever so slightly naughty result on page 54.

In later blogs, maybe I will talk about some of the other pieces....

Meanwhile, Rosh Hashana has taken up a big proportion of my time, and we have had a houseful of guests as usual. Tonight is Kol Nidrei, the eve of Yom Kippur, one of the most sacred festivals of the year. At the end of the week, I am off to Paris for Fashion Week. Vivienne Westwood's Show is on Friday afternoon, so I have to go straight there as soon as I get into town. Hussein Chalyan shows on Saturday and I am really hoping that my friend Melih will be able to get me a ticket to that one. I want to see Kinder's collection as I was unable to attend his London Show although he sent me a lovely invitation, and as always I love spending time with my friends Vicki Sarge Beamon (Erickson Beamon Jewellery), Maria Grachvogel and Aydin & Angie Kurdash (Gina Shoes). We always have a ball!

Slowly and surely, the people who are to make up the next year's group of students are gathering around us, ready for a January start to the Diploma Course in Soul Therapy. I am always so grateful to Spirit that the process of recruitment seems to occur around this time of year. Wonderful people are drawn to us at The Soul Therapy Centre and every year there is a unique group of shining individuals with a common purpose: to learn, progress and develop spiritually and to be of service to their fellows. Tonight, quite a few prospective students are proposing to attend the Healing Practice Clinic, and I am confident that when they meet our present students, they will be encouraged to apply for the course, as our students are our best ambassadors. Some of our practitioners are aiming to attend as well, and a few of them are running very successful Soul Therapy practices of their own now. I am very proud of them all, and of our AHA and UK Healers accreditations.

At the 60th Birthday Party of a dear friend, Zak, I was talking with my friend Nina, who is a Social Worker. She was bemoaning the fate of the modern profession which she tells me is now around 80% paperwork. She spends the larger proportion of her time not doing social work but writing reports and filling in forms. She also added that it is the young, inexperienced colleagues, just fresh out of training, who are assigned to the worst child protection cases, because nobody else wants to do them. They are chronically understaffed with very little admin back-up, and so it is no wonder that problems arise. We worked together in the good old days in the Inner London Education Authority, a world-class organisation that was abolished by Margaret Thatcher's administration in 1990. What a monumental act of vandalism. However, if it had remained, so would I, and I would now be retired and on permanent holiday - a thought to conjure with. Instead, I am still in harness, under the hardest of slave-driver bosses (ie, myself.)

Life has been good to me in the intervening years and I could never return to being employed in a corporate setting. Being one's own boss can be hard, and has its own pressures, but ultimately so rewarding.

Arriving back in London , on Sunday, we went to Regent's Park and hired a rowing boat. Very romantic, as I remembered that Nick had taken me rowing on Roundhay Park Lake in Leeds on one of our earliest dates, soon after we met in September 1972. He also took me rowing on the river in York on a lovely, lazy autumn day soon after that. Ah, youth!

In Regents Park on Sunday, there were hundreds of people, but the Park just seemed to absorb everyone. All nationalities in our cosmopolitan city seemed to be represented, all shades of colour, all varieties of national or religious dress codes, all enjoying the late summer sunshine and relaxing with their loved ones. Dear God, if only the whole world could take heed. We humans really can all get along when not posturing and not warmongering.

We could follow the example of these wonderful animals in these images here, loving and caring for each other and understanding that we don't need to harm each other. Thanks to Mia, who sent me these divine photos.

Once again on the anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, there have been the predictable television and general media documentaries. How inconsiderate of those in the media, who still see Diana as a means of selling papers or attracting viewers, with no thought for how it feels for the grieving families involved. Not just the Princes, but the Fayed family and the other loved ones of the chauffeur and bodyguard. How must it be to be regularly reminded of the tragedy of that night as if it were some kind of public entertainment.

Today I created a beautiful perfume with Tamara for her to wear on her wedding day on Saturday. I hope the weather keeps fine for her and Jeremy because they are getting married in a field somewhere out in the country and wellies would just sooooo spoil the pink bridal look. Sorry we can't be there, but I will be thinking of them of course, and sending love. I love weddings, I get very emotional and have to fight back the tears. The last wedding I attended, I conducted the ceremony with the Registrar and thoroughly enjoyed it. My darling friends Maria Grachvogel and Mike Simcocks were marrying, they both looked amazingly gorgeous and we had a ball. After the ceremony, the Registrar offered me a job! I thought that was cool. When people decide to get married, it raises their relationship into a magical space and the wedding guests surround them with so much love it is almost tangible. Everyone should be as happy as a bride and groom in love and on their wedding day. If I were Queen, I would make that kind of happiness compulsory. If I were Donald Trump, Richard Branson or Sir Alan Sugar, and feeling in a generous mood, I would find a way to buy it and send large free amounts to everyone.