Juana Molina

love,

trolly
x

and on feeling music

The last time I was in Aberdeen, I caught a ferry to Torshavn, capital of the Faroe Islands.

Which is a daft thing to do.

In February.

On an overnight crossing.

When you can't afford a cabin ticket.

I can very clearly remember leaving Aberdeen dock, and that feeling I got (an anxious thrill thing going on) on leaving the land behind. It had been raining. I could see a huddle of grey, slate-tiled roofs slanted above grey, granite terraces; the cold, weak February sunshine occasionally and unexpectedly bright, flashing off windows, and glinting as sunshine does when a storm starts to gather in.

Aye. Ill-experienced in north-Atlantic ferry crossings. In February. With no cabin ticket. And a storm on the horizon.

When I arrived in Torshavn the following day I was a half-frozen, shaken up mix of exhaustion and exhileration. And, amazingly, after the seas I had seen, still alive.

For I had also seen the ferry slip past a string of improbably green, beautiful, vertiginous islands scattered like a handful of leaves across the surface of the sea. On one, a solitary farmhouse, and a farm dog doing its mad farm dog thing: barking at us as we went past.

Or barking at me at any rate - everyone else was tucked up asleep in their bunks. It was all I could do not to bark back.

that i've had the day off work today - i was, temporarily, in blog heaven.

here; there

so.

all would be well. but now i feel a bit

i went with my little girl to her primary school today; she starts full-time in April. and we'd both been looking forward to it: hello, meet the teachers, sit on very small chairs and discuss all the essential pre-school stuff. but she was spooked by the noise and the big kids and the lunchtime routine and the NOISE that was everywhere.

she was happier when she got to wear her school sweatshirt, and she was just a little bit impressed by her blue nylon school book bag. but me? i feel like all the overwrought parents i have ever heard about, all rolled up into one.

i do.

that's better.

now all i need is a fair and decent pay offer from my employer, and all will be fine and dandy....[listens]...nope, it would appear they're not listening...

but if they're reading this: ... there's a very handy little Pay Campaign pdf file available....but, hey, you know, they know this stuff already.

they'd just rather not pay us very much, given the choice. if we didn't mind, awfully.

er.

nice to know when one is valued.

isn't it?

public sector workers across the UK will be on strike on the 28th, in what is expected to be the biggest strike action since the 1926 General Strike.

the reason?

action to protect pension rights.

it's barely two weeks since i was standing on a picket line as part of the AUT (Association of University Teachers) action on pay. i'm no firebrand, but it occurs to me that unless folk like you and me make a stand, then all that has been achieved over years and years of real struggle will just be whittled away.

the sad fact is that there's nothing inevitable in the rights we have: the NHS, free school education, public-sector pensions, the rights to organise in trades unions...it can all so easily be crumbled away.

Unison are calling for support: and you can do this in many ways, either via the Unison Web site, or simply by taking a flask of coffee and some biccies down to a picket line near you.

and i have no problem at all with using the word comrade. being a comrade means looking out for others; having a comrade means having someone look out for you.

so, be a comrade, even if only for a little while :-)

you owe it to yourself, and, in no small way, to our collective future.

thanks.

to have mother's day on the day the clocks go forward...?

worringly, i seem to remember that this happened a couple of years ago as well...

and, no, i'm not getting up yet.

I just wondered....

If one person visited your blog fifty-two times in one day...

would they be, like, really interested?

or, just

ever so

slightly

mad?

well.

you know.

i'm never going to win an oscar.

never going to get to stand on a stage and well-up.

never, ever going to be other than what i am.

that's oscar-less, then.

which is fine by me.

at least.

but.

i am a blogger. and

i should like to thank my Gran. a Welsh woman, who worked all her life, and, although she often thought otherwise, was strong.

my Gran has Alzheimer's disease. and she remembers now what she had long forgotten and, in most cases, had wanted to forget; and forgets most that is closest, nearest, dearest.

my Gran is a fine woman, and i love her very much.

My Gran (right)

My dear friend, Andreas, is writing about love. which set me thinking.

and this is what i wrote to my husband:

love
i know that in finding love with you
i have found myself and more
and
in that space between falling and being
i have through many feelings
surfaced
and
breathed.

and i have grown.
and i am happy.
and i am fulfilled
being we
and
not
just
me.

i am, quite obviously, no poet! but, what i love, is the poetry of e.e.cummings which tumbles a storm of feeling in me when i read it. i particularly like, i carry your heart with me(i carry it (scroll down the page to find it).

i do other stuff, other than standing on picket lines.

i find myself needing colour on a drear March day. how's about this?

(© 2006. All rights reserved) if you don't mind.

I was amused to read the UCEA (Universities and Colleges Employers' Association) press briefing, that notes that the average academic salary is circa £40k.

Er.

However, dig a little deeper and it would appear that they are refering to staff in about 5% of UK HE institutions.

Right.

Post-doctoral research staff start on £19,460.

It's woeful.

And it's not exactly a compelling advert for a career in Higher Education, is it?

It’s a funny thing, picketing a University.

It’s all so polite.

So, academic.

And nothing like Wapping.

But.

Nonetheless.

A scab is a scab is a scab is a scab.

Just we’re all too polite to say it.

But we’re certainly thinking it.

As him on the bike goes past at speed.

Not looking any of us in the eye.

As if we cannot see him. And he cannot see us.

As if.