You don't have to take this crap. You don't have to sit back and relax. You can actually try changin' it (Walls Come Tumbling Down - The Style Council)

  

My beautiful flowers from Colombia Road Flower Market (see Sunday)

So tired this morning.  I did not sleep well. All kinds of rubbish going through my head and I had to be up for 8.00 ..... well it was 8.30 by the time I crawled out of bed.  Shower, breakfast, make up and out of the door.  Today, ironically, I have a hospital appointment.

Saturday:  So this morning I had a medical appointment.  So on the bus up to the clinic and found it straight away.  I really have found my way around.  As usual, I was far too early so found a wonderful independent coffee shop and sat and watched the world go by whilst drinking a lovely cup of coffee.

The woman in the clinic was so kind.  I had to go for a mammogram, which under the circumstances this week, was rather ironic.  You men reading this have no idea what it is like to be a woman.  Basically, a mammogram just puts your breasts into a vice and squashes them! Joy oh joy. I said to the woman instigating this torture that if it is not one end being squashed it is the other end being probed! We had a good giggle.  Still, I guess it is good that I can have it done. So now the results will be with me in a couple of weeks.  

Back on the bus and I called into the health shop I went into last week to get some bits.  The girls remembered me and asked how my two patients were doing: the non-vegan and the vegan. I thought it was quite sweet they had remembered.  Back to the flat and mission on.  I was cleaning out my closet as Eminem would say.  Summer clothes put away, old clothes bagged up for the charity shop, winter clothes in the wardrobe. Ironically, it is really, really warm today and I have all the windows in the flat open.  

Something as simple as taking clothes to the charity shop is not easy when you live in Central London.  There are not many charity shops around in easy walking distance. I suspect it is because of the price of the rent.  I mean, you do not want to be walking around carrying three sacks of clothes for too long.  I will take a sack at a time, which means then you have to find some storage to store the sacks until you can take them.  I sorted out the one cupboard we have in the flat for storage.  When I moved here I got some of those vacuum bags.  I love them.  You put the vacuum cleaner nozzle on the bag and it sucks the life out of them.  It is like being a Dementor in the Harry Potter films.  Unfortunately, in my case, they do not always work and over the weeks they start to grow and grow and grow in the tiny little cupboard as the air starts to fill the bags back up.  Then boom. The cupboard door flings open and the bags full out!  So today, once again, I sucked the life out of the bags and made room in the cupboard but I do think it is rather a thankless task. 

This evening I went to visit a friend who lives West.  When I say West I mean very West.  She lives very near to Heathrow Airport in Zone 4.  Things you never think you will say - oh no Zone 4!  It took me an hour to get there and it was like suburbia.  Very nice but very town.  It was strange.  My host cooked a lovely meal and she spoilt me rotten and I think I left her feeling a great deal happier as I had spread my sparkle.  Back on the tube home and this time I shared it with ghosts, ghouls, monsters, people with gun shot wounds and zombies.  Just another normal day on the underground.  It was so strange because I had a wonderful time at my friends but boy did I miss the city.  I really do not think I can live anywhere but in Central London now.  I got off the tube - along with the zombies, ghosts et al and made my way back to the flat beaming as I was so happy and so pleased to be back where the road is always busy, the buses are always full, the cranes have their red lights beaming, police sirens are relentless and madness rules.  Bliss, sheer bliss.  I was home.

Sunday:  I was tired this morning when the alarm awoke me.  However,

Hoxton Art

nothing was going to stop me going to my meditation group at Hoxton.  It was so foggy this morning.  As my bus made its way across London Bridge you could not see a thing along the river.  I did feel for the early morning tourists on the bridge as they did not have a thing, apart from fog, to look at. I got off the bus and walked along a dank and foggy canal to the cafe, which, as always, was warm and welcoming. I know I keep saying it, but it such a lovely, warm and welcoming group.  Today, the lady was back who in the summer, gave me a coffee grain reading.  Her name escapes me. I am so bad at names but she remembered me.  This time I had a card reading, but they were not your 'normal' tarot cards.

Hoxton Art

I had two things on my mind.  Well that is not entirely true, but I focussed on two things; both of which I will not discuss on here.  However, she was amazing.  I actually had a card with a snake in the grass on it and this a turn of phase I have used recently to describe someone.  She also went on to describe someone in such a way it really was quite spooky yet reassuring.  Stayed round chatting and drinking peppermint tea and Andre, the guy who runs the group said that he does not recognise me from the

Hoxton Art

person who first walked through the door back at the start of summer.  He is right  I told him that on the rare occasions I look back, I do not recognise myself.  It has, and continues to be, an amazing journey.  I am learning so much about me.  I feel free; totally free.  I am not answerable to anyone and I love it.  I walked around London with my camera, just being me.

Left the cafe and walked along Kingsland Road in Hoxton and come across some wonderful street art and The Geffrye Museum which is a museum of the home!  The museum looks at th home from 1600 to the present day and shows displays of middle class living rooms and gardens throughout the centuries.  It was very good.  Outside, in the gardens, there was a really good piece of art called The Last Hug.  The artist had used leaves to form the shape of a human, hugging a tree.  It was to bring the last hug of the leaves, as they left the tree.  I really, really liked the whole concept of it.

Continued walking and made my way to Colombia Street Flower Market.  It was so busy and they sold every flower, plant, shrub or bulb imaginable here.  I

The Last Hug

treated the flat to two bunches of dried flowers and grasses and decorated the fireplace and even if I say so myself, it looks rather lovely.  Made my way back to Shoreditch and the bus to the flat.  It is colder tonight in London and it is as if November has arrived and so has the cold.  London never stops giving.  Sundays used to be the worse day of the week for me; now they are amazing. I love my meditation group and the people who go there, it sets me up for the day and the week ahead.  Then I normally try to do something on a Sunday but in 

London, there is always something to do and normally it does not cost a penny.  

It was so good to be out and about today with Beatrice and I have included more photographs this week.  The local art was taken in Hoxton and I thought it was really quite good.  I particularly like the Love Will Tear Us Apart work.  I like that song and thought the artwork was brilliant.

Here are a couple of photos from the Geffrye Museum, which like most of the museums in London was free.  They did have a lovely cafe there but I did not use it.

The Geffrye Museum

Edwardian Room

So another weekend has been and gone. Relaxing evening, just watching a DVD and trying to figure something out in my head.  I guess the thing about people lying means, by default, at least once they have to be telling the truth.  It is just by then no one can believe them and then it is too late.

As always, with my love x