Trouble with internet stop can not access www stop must send back crappy modem stop sent out by dsl source stop co stop uk with ancient firmware stop makes it drop bb connection several hundred times a day stop crappy thing stop alternative bulldog slow service extortionate stop see you at start of easter holidays stop must stop stop stop stop x e

He lived his life by the rhythm of the land, the ebbing and flowing of seasons, the greening and yellowing of the hedgerows, the lambings, the deaths, the milkings and turning out of cows. An age-old lifestyle, despite the arrival of modern innovations to make his life easier.

He died in the depths of winter, but was born some fifty years earlier at the start of spring.

Someone he left behind makes a yearly pilgrimage to the slab marking the burial of his ashes. They clean it tenderly, almost polishing the black stone, pushing back the tangle of wild grasses attempting to reclaim the rock as its own.

They come not on the anniversary of his death, but of his birth, and leave behind a bunch of gloriously irreverent spring daffodils, bright against the grey grass.

Leaning over on the beach to pick up a sea-polished rock, the late afternoon sunshine glinting coldly across the pebbly beach, a sudden thought strikes: I will remember this moment for ever. Followed almost immediately by another: No you won't. You'd better write it down.

It was the end of a perfect day, unplanned in its entirety, but which had started with a trip to drop Sim off at his friend's house. We don't know the othe boy's parents very well, but like like most of the other parents at our children's school, they are utterly delightful.

We ended up chatting from 11am until 5:30pm, having consumed a large lunch, walked, helped out with the horses. It was a glorious optimistic day.

As dusk beckoned, we drove down to the seaside at Sidmouth for fish and chips on the beach and the building of a stone castle. The resort is beautiful out of season, months away from the rattan beach mats, garish wind breaks and lobster-pink flesh. The light was Mediterranean, the sea-front English and understated.

We ate our fish and chips in the shelter of a groin(thank you Ruth) groyne watching the sun disappear and the lights of a tanker turn on out to sea, and drove home after sundown.

Purple Sister #3, henceforth to be known as Persephone, left this morning. She seem extremely level-headed and calm in the circumstances. Although she still loves the bloke -henceforth to be known for a variety of reasons as Uranus- she is quite determined that there is no chance of a reconciliation before he gets some serious help.

The man is, in short, a walking mess. His father died when Uranus was 15, and his dying words were for his son, in classic Dickens style: "Look after the kids, Uranus". Which responsibility, his mother being incapacitated through illness and a very weak specimen of womanhood despite bringing forth more children than she could shake a stick at, has completely and utterly fucked up his life.

You would have thought that at 50 (he is almost a generation older than my beautiful, intelligent, caustically sarcastic, 33 year-old sister -number available on request) he would have the sense to spot the recurring pattern of cock-ups, some metaphorical, some apparently, for real, that his life has become over the last thirty years.

Persephone feels stupid and foolish. The writing was on the wall from the start, and she says that she had suspicions from the start, seven years ago, which only goes to reinforce her feelings of foolishness. I pointed out that trust is a good thing, not a bad one, and that she is hardly the only woman in the world to have done it.

So she left at lunchtime, to go back to the Sussex coast town where she owns a house. She is determined that everything will change. They will not get back together until he shows real progress. She has left the children's birth certificates and passports in a safe place. She will go back to work, being at the moment on parental leave, and get herself into a situation in which she can be financially independent. He will help with their two troublesome toddlers, coming in to take them to the childminder in the morning, and picking them up in the evening, while she commutes in to London. He will do what she says- she has him over a barrel.

We shall see. I wish her well. She is strong, but I just hope that she manages to stay so.

"Who is that, knocking at the door?"
"It is I."(knocking at the door)

"Who is that?"
"It is me." -->classic subject verb object?

So this is it. My sister arrived last night after a five-hour drive with her two toddlers, and it is not looking likely that she'll be going back for quite some time. Purple Sister #3 -for whom it's looking likely I'll need to find a separate moniker, as she may figure for quite some time- has discovered that her bloke is, as the rest of us have believed for the last 7 years, rather less than reliable. Except that he is even worse than even we thought. It appears that the man has a number of relationships dotted all over south eastern England, including at least two other "long-term" girlfriends. Her first port of call is the STD clinic as far as she's concerned

It never rains but it pours here. Purple Sister #3 has at last cottoned on to the fact that her bloke is, to put it mildly, unreliable, and is heading down here with her two toddlers. Don't know what sort of a situation this is going to turn out to be...

I emerge one warm spring day, the outside harsh against my soft pink body. I know little, but soon realise that I am to live in darkness- light is not of my world. Light means danger; I shrink from it wherever it strikes me. Eating is done in the everlasting night. And so many meals! All of the same type, although occasionally I feast on a rich seam of something different. My life is to eat. I meet no others of my family. I will occasionally feel them nearby, even inches away, but there is no letup from the blinding darkness. One day, a cold winter day, I am aware of a tremendous commotion near me. Before I can escape from the light pouring in, I understand that something terrible has happened. I am in pain. I am pain. My life is eking out through a gash in my abdomen. I am left out in the awful lightness, where all may see me bleed. I lie waiting for death, which does not come. I can move but feebly.
Some time later, the woman returns, sees my agony and takes pity on me. Tenderly, she picks me up, carries me up the garden, and feeds me to the nearest chicken. My last sensation is of slipping down a warm gullet into welcoming darkness. No more.

Service round here ain't up to scratch. I'd like to be able to say that that's because I'm too busy being a successful parent, student and teacher, but I'd be lying. I'm actually struggling along like a solid wheel with a flat side- ie bowling along happily for a while but coming to thumping halts all the time. I don't enjoy inadequacy, but I'm uncovering rather too much at the moment. The final, camel-back breaking one is this inability to say anything remotely interesting on here.
All this to say that I'll begin blogging again only when I can do it justice- ie when I'm inspired.