Words, webs and weavings

"Oh, here we are, the waiting unknown..."*

Wow, what a long and busy few weeks. So much has happened, it's hard to know where to start.

I have been writing like a possessed thing - just not here, much to my disgust. 

What's been on my mind...so much that my head is overflowing and my thoughts keep getting tangled up and lost. A few strands stand out amongst the muddle...

A wonderful woman I know, a poet and one of those rare people who surrounds you with warmth and inspiration when you're near her, has been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. It seems so vastly unfair that such a thing should happen to someone with a head so full of wonderful words and a heart so full of generosity. If wishes were words, this page would be full, just for her. 

The local spiders have been busy. I wonder if they look at their webs of a morning and congratulate themselves on a great work of art completed, or if they just think, 'right then, that's dinner sorted.'

Sadly, my uncle passed away a few weeks ago, and distance reared its ugly head once more - the impossibility of wrapping grieving loved ones in your arms and telling them how sorry you are is a sharp reminder of your position in the world; in more ways than one. 

Our hamster also died, and while it might seem like bathos to mention it here, it was a deep and sorrowful tragedy to my children, for whom it was the first ever taste of death, and who grieved it ferociously for 24 hours. 

It also brought up some interesting quandaries for us, non-religious parents that we are. I was unwilling to suggest to them that their hamster was in heaven; on the other hand, they are taught religious worship at school, and if the older one chose to find comfort there, I wouldn't have dreamed of squashing his beliefs. After the short, tearful funeral, a chimney cap that closely resembles a mushroom was placed above the grave to deter foxes digging up the hamster-laden chocolate box. There has been no mention of heaven, but it is now a fully established belief amongst the children that the hamster lives on in the mushroom. It's my duty to look out the window every night and check that mushroom and inhabitant are still 'okay'. Comfort is a funny old thing, and perhaps our minds will offer it up in any shape that makes sense to us at that moment.

Next on our giant and neverending list of to-dos we have a birthday party, two new family members in the shape of pet rats - sorry, Cysgu the hamster, a child's love can be fickle - and, well, many more random acts of being, I guess...

*Green Day