My biggest chuckle of the day came from these 2 signs I saw in 2 shops in a very classy Georgian shopping  arcade in Dublin..The idea of  posh children,  high  on caffeine, running back to nanny clutching real live fluffy bunnies was too funny  for me not to let out a large guffaw! The grammatical error in the woolly warning does not distract from the image of unruly children  being turned into jumpers. I like it here.

SONG OF THE DAY -Rabbit in your Rucksack

who knows…you might not have seen this yet….if you have, it might have been a while. x

…..really not sure. Quite a friendly face, seems to be the strong silent type though, possibly a bit cold, and I have to admit I don’t even know his name which is a bit rude as we have spent a whole night together. I am not sure yet if he is my type, he is a bit unnerving.  Where ever I am in the bedroom he is sitting there opposite my bed…staring at me. he has not mover yet. I have told him to desist but I think he might be a trifle hard of hearing as well as unable to speak. I can see my time with him is going to be a bundle of laughs. Well it is early days…I did notice when I turned the light on  in the middle of the night that he was still staring at me with that wry little smile and upturned eyebrow.   As I shall be sharing my room with him for the next few days, I will try a to attempt a  little light conversation this evening, maybe get some nibbles in, I am assuming he may be quite literate, you never know we might just find each other tolerable. At the moment I am yelling ‘bring back Mr P.’ he is much better company! Though there is a certain likeness. Am I just replacing like for like? A serial monogamist who has a thing for finely sculptured features? Top of the morning to you…..Later!

SONG OF THE DAY – Could it be I’m Falling in Love -The Detroit Spinners 

I consider myself to be a World Mother, there are lots of us about, some World Mothers are menI don’t live with any children, I have not given birth to any children, but  my life includes lots of  joyous mothering, to both kids and adults. Join me in my quest to make Mothering Sunday a day to celebrate all types of ‘mothering’.

I am interested in the  way this particular commercial hyped up  festival has developed over the years, and how far the tradition of Mothering_Sunday (click to read) has changed since it was introduced as a religious festival.

In  times gone by, it was the Sunday  half way through Lent when people were allowed to return to their ‘mother church’. Servants were given the day off, to go back to the church of their childhood, which usually meant visiting their families. With children as young as 10 years old being in service, this was often one of the only days in the year that families might have had the chance to all be together. So the ‘mother’ in this particular event started off as the church, the faith, the spirit, the parish where someone was brought up, not the biological  mother.

Only later did it become a more literal day for  mostly biological mothers, and yes, it is good to have a time to say thanks to your mum for bringing you into the world and looking after you, if she did. The thing I find sad is that the spiritual universal concept of  ‘mothering ‘ is somehow being overlooked for something that is just  a trifle manufactured, over sentimental and  rather exclusive. You don’t have to have given birth to ‘mother’, you don’t have to be female to ‘mother’. Once again we have been pressurised by the commercial world to feel sort of duty bound to romanticise the way we feel about our mothers, or there will be tears before bedtime!

Here is a festival that is now mostly for women who have given birth and all other types of world mothers and nurturers get marginalised. And if one more person tells me that I cannot understand the connection with another living being unless I give birth to them, I shall have to do something really British like ‘tut’ quite quietly under my breath.

In our Western commercial world ‘Mother’s Day’ is a very hard day for people both young and older who have lost mothers, for people who have lost kids, or cannot for some reason be parents. It is in our face from the day after Valentines, and every year it seems to get more and more commercialised.  If we saw the day as a festival to thank  or reflect on anyone in our lives who ‘mothered’ us, whether it be our church, our temple, our spiritual teachers, our school teachers, our parents, our friends, our partners – if this was a day when we concentrated some energy on all the children in the world who have no parents ( ‎43 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa are orphans), I think the day would sit much more lovingly in the world. Well what a bundle of joy I am today! have a good weekend everyone…Happy Mothering Sunday to all of us! x x x

SONG OF THE DAY

CELINE DION -BECAUSE YOU LOVED ME

Its cheesy, but it so good…….’my world is such a better place because of you’. Thanks to all the mothers and the lovers and the people who believe in us.

The doors are open, the third load of washing is littered clean around the flat and garden, riibbitI am sewing, and nursing what is possibly a  strained rectus abdomenis(!) or high stomach muscle from  standing, over singing and over leaping about ( it is possibly my first day off in the last month when I have not been nursing a cold…what a ninny, sadly freelance work is like buses, all comes at once and then nothing for weeks…ha ha). The bird song and the ribbit of a frog are most welcome diversions. Took a couple of pictures of afore mentioned frog…what a handsome chap he is too!

Lets hope he finds a mate and we get lots of baby frogs in the water butt that seems to double as a pond .

SONG OF THE DAY