For all my declaring I was in a trash reading mode at the moment, I’ve actually got something “proper” on my bedside table at the moment: Minette Walters “Fox Evil”.

It’s fantastic, and I’m really struggling to put it down to get to sleep at a reasonable hour. I love Minette Walters style of writing – not just prose, but newspaper cuttings, text messages, emails, and maps all get thrown into the mix, making the mystery all the more atmospheric. Her characterisation is vibrant and believable – these are real people with real flaws, but I’d still be happy to meet them down the pub (well, apart from the murderers of course).

I’m reading a major exposition part at the moment where she’s completely breaking the rules of “show don’t tell” by having several different conversations revealling masses of information about the people involved, which you would expect would make it really dull, but amazingly it works well.

I wish I had half that woman’s writing skill.

You know, there used to be a time where I would enter a library, carefully browse for about half an hour, pick up 8 books and have finished them by the next week. These days, I go in with Akra Jr in tow, spend half an hour choosing and reading books with him, then as we exit past the “Girl Talk” display he grabs the closest book and chucks it into the pushchair for me to check out. I have never read so much chick lit as I have in the last few months.

On the plus side, it’s actually quite relaxing having that element of choice completely taken out of your hands. There hasn’t been a single one I’ve really hated yet, and most I’ve rather enjoyed, so the random grab seems just as effective as the “read back cover for hours” selection technique. I’m also reading regularly again.

I suppose I really ought to think about reading something more “worthy” from time to time, but I’m in summer book mode – I need something light and humorous that all turns out alright in the end. Hot lazy weather is meant for lazy reading, don’t you think?

Well the washing machine still hasn’t arrived yet – they’re running late apparently so I’m sat here twiddling my thumbs.

On the plus side, it does mean that I’ve finished The Two Towers. Wow. I really want to find out how it all ends now but that puts me in rather a dilemma: do I carry on and read Return of the King before I’ve seen the film?

Now, I do understand that many Tolkien fans will think it’s heresy that I’m even considering seeing the film before I read the book, but every film I’ve ever seen *after* the book has been disappointing. I’ve really enjoyed reading the first two Lord of the Rings books after I’ve seen the films as I’ve been able to picture the actors in the place of each character and have actively enjoyed the differences between film and book. I’m worried that if I do it the other way around, the differences will just annoy me and I’ll end up not enjoying either to their full potential.

Biggest problem is, I’m not the patient type. I need to find out what happens! Am trying to stave off temptation by reading a random library book I picked up last time I was there.

The more observant among you will notice that I now have a “Currently Reading” section down the left hand side. No, this is not attempt at blatant commercialisation – wads of cash don’t get sent if you all click through and buy what I’m reading (at least not to me, anyway). I just thought it would be a handy kick up the backside to get me reading more.

Since Akra Jr has been born, my reading time has naturally been substantially reduced, and I’ve found myself regretting my lack of commitment to carving out some quality book time in my life. I found the All Consuming site (well, they found me – their spider hit the site yesterday due to my links to A Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables) and thought what a cool idea it was. Many hours of faffing with Movable Type plugins later, and here I am. It’s going to be really embarrassing if the same books are still there for months at a time, so I’m actually going to have to read something. You never know, I might actually get around to talking about what I’ve read too – hence the new category to match.

A small warning though, I have been known to read complete trash from time to time. So if you’re still under any illusions that you’re in for some deep booky type discussions ahead, you might be slightly disappointed.

I’m making the most of the good weather this morning and getting down and dirty with my flower beds … yes the joys of weeding.

Actually, although I spend ages putting off the task, I find weeding rather enjoyable. I usually leave it until the weeds have reached jungle proportions so it’s quite a physical job. So there I am, out in the quiet of the morning, ripping up weeds, listening to birds singing their hearts out, drinking in the smell of freshly turned earth. A time of contemplation, I feel far closer to the divine out here than I ever did having a “quiet time” of bible study and prayer.

Two books come to mind as I clear the way for my plants to breathe again. The first is Anne of Green Gables. I can’t remember the exact quote but there’s a part where the young Anne explains that she can’t understand why people go inside into a dark gloomy church to pray. If she wanted to pray to God she would go into a field and throw up her arms to the sky in praise. That’s a little how I felt this morning.

The second book is The Secret Garden. I am not a good gardener. I don’t really know what I’m doing. However, there’s something almost primal, a longing for a “patch of earth of my own” just like little Mary Lennox, and watching things grow that at first looked lifeless is a special kind of magic. There’s memories of my childhood mixed up in all that (hence the book choices, I guess) – the scent of earth reminding me of mum and dad digging up potatoes and sieving the earth. The delight I felt in finding an old glass marble inside the sieve – previously lost for a couple of generations. Fighting the birds for the first fresh raspberries (and losing!)

As I said, I’m not a great gardener, but I am proud of what I’ve achieved with the overgrown wilderness that was here when we moved in. I’ve tidied it up considerably. My biggest thrill was planting a raised bed full of cotton lavendar – I couldn’t afford much so picture 23 tiny little one-inch diameter plants looking completely lost in a huge flowerbed. I was terrified that I was going to kill them off and even at that size they’d cost so much. Today, one year later, with a mix of nuture and neglect they’ve flourished and there’s not a single gap between them.

I’ll miss this garden when we move.

I hesitate to write about this topic, as it’s about religion/spirituality and like politics it’s one of those topics that’s almost guaranteed to piss someone off somewhere. I’ve spent about half an hour arguing with myself that it’s not an appropriate blog topic, that by writing down something I’m still exploring I won’t make much sense, that I’ll somehow invite ridicule/advice/debate that is unwanted at this stage, that I really should write about something fun and avoid heavy topics. I then realised I was protesting too much and should just sit down and get on with it.

A bit of background about my brand of spirituality is probably in order about now, to put things into context. I consider myself a pagan. I made a conscious decision to follow a pagan path about 3 years ago – but the road has been a bit meandery since then. I’m still finding my feet if you like. Before that I had been a pretty fundamentalist christian who became disillusioned with organised religion when I became aware that intellectual questions about the faith weren’t particularly welcomed – I was expected to switch off my God given brain and accept what God had supposedly ordained on blind faith. The issues were slightly more complex than that, but that was the final breaking point really. Before that as a young child, I was just interested in ancient history, myth, spirituality, occult, the bible… I think I’m probably one of those people who are just wired to be a constant seeker.

Appropriate to the time of year, I have just finished reading The Jesus Mysteries. It was a spur of the moment purchase while I was actually searching for something else. I read all the customer reviews and thought, that’s a book I want to read for myself and form my own opinion on. I won’t get into a complex review myself – I’m sure to make a hash of the authors’ main points, but I will say that it was a good choice, I’ve hardly been able to put it down, and now I’ve finished it I feel… well I’ll get into that a bit more later.

I learnt a lot more about gnostic christianity, and probably have a better understanding of how initiatory stages in mystery religions work now, which is interesting to me on a philosophical/intellectual standpoint not just a spiritual one. So much information and learning was casually dismissed by a throwaway label of “heresy” without true understanding of what it was all about.

I also understand more about the early history of the christian church – I still feel great anger, loss and sadness whenever I read about the burning of books and the devastation at Alexandria so that wasn’t news, but there were a lot of gaps filled in for me about how christianity relates to judaism, why most jews never accepted Jesus as Messiah, and how christianity came to dominate the world so much.

I knew that there were a lot of parallels between christianity and paganism particularly in their choice of festivals (the church’s way of “selling” their religion) but I didn’t realise quite how incestuous it all was. Really, this should lessen my respect for christianity but it hasn’t (at least not for the christianity of the bible rather than the organised church). Seeing how it all interconnects has given me a sense of awe of the philosophy and deeper truths behind the teachings rather than the sense of frustration at inconsistent “historical” documents being used for the agenda of the day. It’s helped me reconcile my personal spiritual history too – I don’t feel that any of it was “wasted” or a “wrong” path anymore – I needed the journey to get here, and hopefully move on to something deeper. I feel relief and a sense of freedom to move on too – something that I find hard to put into words, but makes sense to me.

I realise that this blog entry isn’t particularly coherent, but it’s just something that’s had a profound impact on me and I wanted to share.

I’m still reeling.

This morning we had a mere 10 days to go until moving day. A bit stressful in terms of organisation but also a wonderful feeling of endings and beginnings. I spent my lunchtime ringing around trying to get removal company quotes and trying to make lists of what needed to be done.

Late afternoon we get a phone call to say that the person at the bottom of the chain has pulled out – just sent an email to his solicitor saying he wasn’t interested anymore. I don’t think I’m even angry or upset yet. I’m numb, don’t quite yet believe we’re back to square one.

In the interests of my sanity for tomorrow when the reality kicks in, I’ve made a list of ten things which shows that things aren’t as dire as they seem. Here they are:

1) I’ll actually be able to finish the library book I started (Tad Williams’ Otherland I).
2) We might get organised enough to have cleared out the crap in the garage before the morning of the move.
3) Ditto the paperwork disaster zone we like to call the filing cabinet.
4) We will get to celebrate Akra Jr’s 2nd birthday (on May 6th) with our friends.
5) Okay, I’m struggling now and I lied about 10 things…

Of course on the otherhand, we could lose out on the house we want to purchase, lose our buyer and get into real financial difficulty when our mortgage payment holiday ends next month. Isn’t the property market fun.

On a happier note, Akra Jr seems a lot better today. Was a rough morning and I was rather worried about him as he had no energy at all and just wanted to lie flaked out in my arms. With the help of a lot of bland food including half a packet of Carr’s Table Water Biscuits he actually got his giggle and his bounce back. Let’s hope he’s even better and bouncier tomorrow.