30 Day blog challenge: Days 07 & 08 - cheating a little.

i'm going to stand up and proclam right now that i'm going to cheat.  day 07 was supposed to be a photo that makes you happy, and day 08 was supposed to be a photo that makes you angry or sad.  there's a couple of problems here. 

firstly, last night was mostly a cuddling-wih-hubby-and-kitty-in-front-of-the-telly night.  Friday of the first week back after christmas, an we were both fairly buggered and feeling snuggly, so i decided to give blogging a miss for the night.  i'm allowed to do that, right?  i just committed myself to doing two posts today. 

and then i realised that no matter how much i racked my brains, i couldn't come up with a photo that makes me angry or sad.  this is probably down to deeply ingrained habits of Black Dog avoidance.  i tend to blank out stuff like this.  so, y'know, just insert pics of abused animals and people, facist pride marches, tabloid front pages, &c, &c, and you'll get the idea.  i refuse to go searching for this shit, and if you want to, that's your bag.

so on to the happy pic.  there are many photos in my library that make me happy, but i guess i only get to pick one.  the winner is one that follows on (sort of) from the reason my last post was as it was, and has never actually been in my electronic archive, since i wasn't a member of the body electric when t was taken. the only reason i can post it here is that i used it to test my scanner one day (which is currently packed away, and i'm not of a mind to go rumaging)

as you may remember, two days ago was our wedding anniversary.  but that was just the day when we signed the bit of paper which the law recgnises as making us married, and it was just us and two friends as witnesses.  the really important day in a spiritual sense came six months later, on june 19th, 2005.   that was the day we were handfasted in our local woods, by a lake, surrounded by friends and family.  handfasting, by the way, is a Pagan wedding ceremony.  now, hubby and i are both athiests, but we both revere nature, and find all the wonder in the cosmos that we could possibly wish for, without the intervention of imaginary friends.  so i guess you might call us athiests wth Pagan leanings, if you wished to label us.

this was taken at the point in the ceremony when we were literally handfasted.  Martin the priest has just wrapped a plaited ribbon around our hands to symbolise our being bound together in love.  behind hubby's shoulder you can see The Most Wonderful Woman In The World, representing the element of water.

the thing that makes me happiest about this photo, apart from all the beautiful memories of the best day of my life, is the look on hubby's face.

30 day blog challenge - day 06 - whatever tickles your fancy

well, that's a very useful coincidence.

you see, today is my wedding anniversary.  also, my first-day-of-being-together anniversary.  the former is 6 years, the latter 15, and tonight, we go out to eat lovely foods.  so i won't really have time to do any blogging tonight - therefore i blog at work.  but what to blog?

it just so happens that i was inspired (and challenged, by the by, by @catinabaglady - hi, princess! :) *waves*), to write a little something inspired by the ubiquitous ladder in my tights.  so i shall post it for today's 30 day challenge offering.


Ladder.

It’s dark, and cold, and I’m bleary. Slumping into my usual seat, I scrub my face with a gloved hand and yawn. The rumbling of the bus’s engine is soporific, and I resist the urge to close my sore eyes. Damn winter mornings.

Yawning again, I glance around at the other passengers, and my eyes widen a little in surprise. The bus fairy is here.

Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Indeed, I feel stupid thinking it. But that’s the name she’s earned for herself in my head. In her early twenties, her hair a permanent and artful birds nest, her make up subtly fantastical, and her clothes the ultimate in hippy chic.

I mostly see her in the summer, haven’t seen her for months now. I was beginning to get the weird notion that she was a creature of the warm weather, and that she was hibernating in a den of soft furs somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, the lights of the aurora singing pleasant dreams to her as she slept.

But no – here she is. I steal surreptitious glances at her as the bus begins to move, and she crosses one leg over the other, left over right, settling deeper into her seat. Looks tired, no make up, and her torso is bundled up in many scarves and an old army jacket against the biting chill. My eyes travel down her body to where her legs poke out of the bottom of the swaddled mass of her clothing. Feet and calves tucked up warm and snug in the most enormously shaggy furry boots I’ve ever seen. She wears them in summer, too, but they’re far more suited to this bitter cold, and I envy her undoubtedly warm feet.

Incongruous to the rest of her attire, though, her legs are encased only in mustard coloured tights. Sort of a soft, yellowy brown colour which, on anyone else, would look awful. Somehow, though, her fey charm carries them off with aplomb and certainty. I’ve seen them before, of course, and they must be favourites, because they are a little the worse for wear. I notice a snag, here and there, and a ladder. On the inside of her right knee, it starts just below the top of her calf and travels up, only a quarter of an inch wide, and disappears underneath her crossed leg and the hem of her skirt. I find myself staring, and quickly flick my eyes away as she moves, settling her body a little, burrowing a little further down into her protective cocoon.
I know it’s rude to stare, but gradually, my eyes make their way back to that tiny, exposed strip of soft, creamy flesh at her knee, and I marvel. I wonder what it would feel like to run the tip of my index finger slowly along that gap. To feel the yield and warmth of that beautiful, pale skin. My eyes half-close as the reverie overtakes me. Half-dreaming, I watch her shift uncomfortably, and re-cross her legs; right over left this time. Those tights must be near the end of their useful life, as the movement causes the ladder to grow. As her right leg settles in place, the ladder widens slightly, and a pinstripe run bursts from the top. I can almost hear the faint zipping noise, as it races along her soft inner thigh, and into the darkness under the hem of her skirt, ridden up now to mid-thigh. Now I have a perfect view of the ladder. It’s a cliché’, I know – or a bad chat-up line – but just at that point, my ethereal finger is replaced my the tip of my tongue as I gently trace the path of the ladder along that soft, sensitive flesh. Would she be ticklish, I wonder? Would she giggle as my tongue’s tip traced its way around the bend of her knee, along her inner thigh? Would she sigh and open her legs a little, to allow my tongue to continue its journey? All the way to the end of that ladder? How far up does it run, I wonder? All the way…?

The bus jerks and hisses as we reach a stop, shaking me out of my head and back into the real world. Even as I feel a blush heating my face, my traitor eyes follow her body as she stands and prepares to leave the bus. Just before I force my eyes to the floor, though, I swear I catch a glint in her eyes.

A half-smile quirking the corner of her mouth…

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30 day blog challenge: Day 05 — Your favourite quote

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross quotes (Swiss-American psychiatrist and author )

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30 day blog challenge - day 04 - your favourite book

...i'm sorry, what?

...'scuse me whilst i go ask someone which their favourite child is....

i mean... what sort of a question is that to ask a bibliophile?!  come on - be realistic!

ok, ok - enough with that.  i have, as i'm sure you can imagine, manymany favourite books, for manymany reasons.  but if it counts, above all of these for sheer depth and scope and variety and storytelling and achievement is The Sandman, by...  oh, come on - surely you know me well enough by now...?

i could witter on about my myriad second favourites, but i'm not feeling too funky today, so i think i'll just leave it there, and head on over to Neil Gaiman's blog, to see if he's officially announced the happy news, yet...

(added edit: he did!  soooo happy for them both! :)

30 day blog challenge: Day 03 — Your favourite television programme

*sigh* again a hard choice.  there are, actually, two.  one that i'm sure everyone in the English-speaking world with a telly (and most without), will have heard of, and one that is more of a cult thing and is, sadly, no longer being made.

the first is, of course, Doctor Who.  how could it not be?  prime-time british scifi with this depth and scope - the acting, the storylines, the effects - everything is totally primo, and has been since dear ol' Russell Davies revived it and made it as it was always meant to be made.  i will plan my weekend around it's showing, and even cut a family christmas day visit short in order to race home and watch it. i think my family understand...

the second?  well - i am unable to adequately describe the surreal genius that was Green Wing.  in short, it's a sitcom set in a hospital.  but it's more - oh, so much more - than that.  characters say and do bizarre things, time speeds up and slows down at will, the dialogue is sharp and often hysterically funny, and every time i watch it (yes, we have the DVDs of both series and the special), i notice some new weirdness or nuance that just keeps on giving.  there's never been anything like it before or since, and i treasure it as something that will keep me laughing for many, many years. 
oh, yes - and we named one of our chickens after one of our favourite characters in the show.

Day 02 — Your favorite movie

i remembered seeing this heading over at .Square Mug., (where my sister-in-bloggery and co-drabbler Liz is doing the challenge with me),  and i've been thinking about it since i read her long, long list.  have to amit, films aren't a huge part of my life.  i enjoy them very much though, and have often been known to sob like a broken-hearted maiden, or laugh like a drain at the most throwaway stuff. it took me a while, therefore, to actually remember that there are several that fill me with a quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) joy, and chief among these is MirrorMask.  written by my hero, Saint Neil of the Gaiman (well of course it was! c'mon - did you expect anything else...? if so, you haven't been paying attention.  it's kinda his fault that i'm here, after all.  if you want to know why, go have a look here), and designed by his artist pal of the stunningly beautiful weirdness, Dave McKean. it's a beautiful, sadly overlooked tale of magic and monkeybirds (all called Bob), and a dark queen, and the desire to run away from the circus and be normal, and sphinxes, and a Really Useful Book with sticky pages, and cowardice, and bravery, and a flying house, and orbiting giants and... and... well - it's a joy of invention and a feast for the eyes and heart.

yup - hands down, it's my favourite.

and i HAVE to watch it again, really, really soon.  it's been far too long.

can't at the moment, though, as hubby has a new computer game, and i won't have control of the telly for...  well...  probably a few days, actually...

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30 day blog challenge: day 01 — Your favorite song

so here we are.  2011 at last.  happy new year everybody! *fireworks &c*

no really - i hope your 2011 is everything you dream it could be (though not the nightmares, obviously - that would just be mean).  i'm not really a celebrater of new year - haven't been for years, but it is kinda nice to see the calendar flick over and feel like you've got a chance to start afresh (however arbitrary the timing of that chance may be.  remember, kids - time and date are an invention of man... ;)  we had a lovely evening with a couple of friends, last night (The Most Wonderful Woman In The World and her lovely man).  they came over for dinner, and then left to get home before midnight, as the fireworks frighten their dogs.  so it was just me an' hubby watching Jools Holland's Hootenanny (a tradition a decade long), and it was quiet and lovely.

and now, as i said, here we are.  new year, new decade, new challenge.  a thirty-day blog challenge, to be precise.  and today's is a really, really easy one for me.  in fact, i've even mentioned my favourite song somewhere on here.  hell - i named the blog after it!  but for those of you who may have missed the post, here's a link to it on  YouTube.  the first time i heard it, it made me cry.  well over fifteen years later, i still sit here, cheeks wet with tears, marvelling at how every single word in the lyric both calls to and describes me.  though i am neither a musician nor a music geek, music is viscerally important to me, and this song touches my soul every. single. time.

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