Its long.....

...... but hey ho, Lordy lordy lordy, all of a sudden I decide I want to post.  The ability to comment has been reinstated but please don't feel obliged to do so!

I have a post inside my head which needs more consideration with regards to Internet privacy and its implications.  The title of which Veronica has kindly given me permission to pinch. I will give her full and appropriate linkage? when it comes out of my head onto the page.

Bizarrely her post coincided with me having the most interesting conversation with my pharmacist regarding information a large pharmaceutical company holds on their database about me and data protection.  So somehow I can't work out whether this means there will be two posts back to back - Internet privacy and data protection. Or as is usual for me a jumbled up conglomeration of the two.  I crave order in my life as usual so perhaps I will be disciplined enough to separate the topics.

I bet you can't wait to find out what has prompted me to post apart obviously Veronica - thank you Veronica.

I know I said I wouldn't ever but I have.  I have succumbed.  I can now tweet.  Oh how blithely I say it.  I can now tweet.  Except that I have done the signing up thing, thought of a stupid name (actually I did that ages ago hence bramblycat).  Now my poor bloggy friends, well Kim from frogpondsrock and Veronica http://somedaywewillsleep.com/ @ sleeplessnights are being bombarded with my tweets.

As ever I am impatient, I don't read the handbook? I truly don't get retweeting and the rest ...... Its made more complicated because I am relying on daughter's laptop at present to borrow.  Which means I have limited www access.  My guess is to facilitate Twitter's full functionality I have to be able to tweet efficiently, regularly, a hint of wit perhaps.  Had lunch. etc.  Not as  banal hopefully as that but I hope you get the gist.

Also I am struggling to find words short enough to get across that which I want to say without seeing the little -  indicating I have failed on the restricted word count!  Either that or Thesaurus must become my friend and I will have to become efficient at using very complicated long words to describe my passing thought or activity rather than those of the more concise variety.  I understand why those who may be language snobs sneer at Twitter fearing the dunning down of language.  For myself the jury is out, I think over time and in history it will be noted as a medium of communication that is in fact an art.  Historically, in literature, the arts, music (look at punk) I am not a particular fan but I understand the influences it has had and its importance in the evolution of music.  That which is often ridiculed is feared, particularly by those in authority.  Look at the current debate with regard to the Police and social networking in demonstrations.   Please note that I do not condone violence in public demonstration but I can see how easy it is to manipulate a large gathering to change location via social networking.  So instead of becoming the dinosaur my kids are beginning to accuse me of I decided it is time to dip my toe in the waters - and take a sample of that which is known as tweeting?

Hard when I don't have required paraphernalia to make for efficient Twittering. Tweeting? Tweetering.  I have no fancy phone.  I even Twitted tweeted that I need one.  I have broken my self made old fashioned promise to myself. Moi a fancy phone.  Now I have a burning urge for one.  Whilst my mini passion for Twittering overtakes me.

I swear its a conspiracy, thought up by a clever marketing mogul.  Twitter means one needs constant access to expensive phone and new laptop. To be honest I need a new laptop anyhow.  How has it happened that I am the one that pays the bill for broadband, phone line etc. and am the only one in the house without required kit to facilitate all things every person needs to access for fear of being sad as my kids would say.

I know the reason actually, being a mother, if one is not rich means one constantly denies oneself 'stuff'.  To enable ones offspring to have 'stuff'.  Well actually mine pay for their own 'stuff' because I have brought them up well and they have part time jobs.  When I say 'stuff' what I actually mean is the little I do have is spent on good food.   By good food I do not mean, caviar; I mean, fresh, when possible organic decent food.  If you  are of a mind to give me a lecture on how I could feed them well on pulses which are not expensive (which for the record I do already) or grow at home fresh stuff etc.  I will let you know now that despite living in the countryside, my housing association house has a very small back yard.  Not big enough for chickens etc.

I have tried to persuade OH that the front garden is big enough for a chicken run but he says it is breaking the rules of our tenancy.  I personally cannot find anything in our tenancy agreement about chickens.  I can about dogs and cats.  The rules on that are bizarre.  One can have one dog, and two cats if in a house.  But if one has two dogs only one cat is allowed. (No mention of goldfish etc) So actually we are breaking the rules already for we have three cats and one dog.

PTS disorder as a result.  However, mother of son, who died is twenty years old. She was suffering indescribable grief missing her son so we thought we would get her a companion to take her mind off her grief.  So entered new kitten.  Elderly cat stopped pining.  Then out of the blue, elderly cat took to her bed and appeared to all that she was preparing herself for cat heaven.  OH panicked that kitten would be distraught if she were to die so arrived home with another kitten.  A week later elderly cat, got a new lease of life apparently stimulated by two crazy kittens.  So we have three cats - thus breaking the rules.

 If I am called to account on this I have prepared myself well and will launch into the story with appropriate dramatic effect, hankie in hand (although in truth it will be a tissue as I think hankie's are horrible) explaining that elderly cat really does not have long to live.  Which is true as bloggy people she now lives inside.  I simply cannot believe she has resorted to a litter tray, things which I simply abhor.  By way of distraction I will also explain that we are tormented by a feral cat who is bigger than any cat I have ever seen.  And as it explains in the manual the Housing Association are responsible for my safety!  Oh yes.  I will demand that something is done about said feral cat, of whom I am a little scared and so would you be too if you had met him.  He is a beast of a cat, hissing, he can climb brick walls with his claws and more.  I will demand that justice is done and that the beast is caught for we can't catch him, and that he be sent to a farm (there are many nearby) where he can live in a barn.  Just not in my back yard.  If you had ever smelt the spray of a feral cat apart from all other of his habits you would understand.

Can you tell whilst I have not been blogging, I have been watching a great deal of drama via DVD.  Given by my dear daughter for Xmas, a boxed set containing Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre etc. All the others and I wish there were more Elizabeth I, The Tudors, etc.  So perhaps this is why if called to account about the rule breaking on the animal front, I may well feign a faint and call for the smelling salts.

I am ploughing my way through, the boxed set of books by Anita Shreve.  Reading is difficult because of my stupid hands. (Am trying not to mention EDS too often so won't bore with why on that front).  However I have finally just completed amazon/Resistance-Anita-Shreve

Not normally a subject I would dwell on, hereby admitting that whilst my father ensured I had a full and proper working knowledge of the war and the atrocities that befell the innocent.  I admit I have not often chosen to read of them.  Fully admitting here that I am much affected by such things, my private angst changes nothing after all, a futile indulgence of the mind .  For this I have always felt guilty.  A personal guilt.

However Anita Shreve artfully managed to write in such a way that as soon as the content turned ugly, I did not shut the book never to look at it again.  I was driven to read on.  Compelled now to educate myself further, read more on this, so if anyone has any recommendations that would great. Please bear in mind I am not intending to write a thesis or intend to submerge myself fanatically in the topic.  I have read The Diary of Anne Frank.  I imagine that Nechtan from http://foreveranxious.blogspot.com/   may be able to suggest something suitable.   So that I CAN tell my grandchildren in an appropriate way and so that those that lost their lives for future generations are never forgotten.

I am trying hard not to dwell on the reasons why I have felt unable to blog.  I simply cannot worry so much.  I will not in each and every post forthwith explain how long it has taken me because of my disability and how many spoons I have used to complete a post.(The information contained within the link is a couple of pages it is well worth a read so if you can't be bothered right now, perhaps bookmark it for another day.  (Most who read here if they still do are most probably very intimately acquainted with The Spoon Theory!)  link to explain the spoon theory - with thanks to butyoudontlooksick.com

I am determined not to feel guilty for not campaigning constantly here on my blog with regard to DLA.  See last post. I will continue to support all related causes but it has been making me too anxious worrying that this benefit to which I am entitled is probably going to be taken from me.  Thus leaving me relying wholly on my OH for money, of which we have little anyhow.  I may be worrying about something which may not happen although I feel in my bones it will.  However I will not be broken by this.  This means though that apart from talking about it when I feel like it.  I am afraid my blog is not to become a forum for all things benefit related.  I completely admire those that are able to campaign but I am weak of mind and find the more I talk of it the more anxious I become.  So in order to save my sanity and to be able to blog again, this is my way forward.  Teaching myself I hope, not to feel so fucking guilty about just being me.

Well I have talked of this and that.  I have enjoyed on the whole writing this post.  Apart from that last paragraph.  I am determined not to worry that as a disabled individual I shouldn't even be here using my valuable spoons to blog at all.

I read in a blog that a young girl with severe ME has recently been awarded more money in her personal care budget? excuse my lack of politically correct terminology, for socialisation and that the Internet does not count in this regard.  She was asking for suggestions of things that she could do which would stimulate her yet not exhaust her.  There were some interesting suggestions.  She already receives in her PCB 45mins a day for help bathing etc.
A good news story of someone getting help when so many are having their aid reduced etc. 

So I finish this post on a positive note - after the very sad death of our beautiful staffie a few months ago.  We have rescued another young staffie.  Sadly his owner a schizophrenic had been unable to care for him properly.  I am astonished that the RSPCA felt it appropriate that this young dog should be left for 48 hours without food or water before they would intervene despite the fact that they knew that his owner had been sectioned.  They agreed that a relative of his owner could let us adopt him thankfully, so that he did not have to go through that further trauma.  Having already been left for long periods alone in squalid conditions.  I wish his previous owner nothing but goodwill and hope that with appropriate help he comes out of his present psychosis and in the months to come his life improves.

Our new dog after initially being very 'still' is finding his personality again, although at the minute he is in a grump having been castrated last week.  Poor boy. Enough said.   So this new dog in my life has lifted my spirits and his.  His eyes tell stories we will never know the full extent but here he has found a loving home.  He doesn't understand the Internet or twitter but as I try to get my head around twitter he looks at me quizzically as if to say - don't give up.    

pic courtesy of bing thing