A little while ago I blogged to say that I had been feeling ill for some time and finally, after over eight years, decided to visit the doctor. He told me it was all down to my weight and my blood pressure, but I should have some blood tests. So I did.

THe first set of blood tests came back and I was told I was (a) probably diabetic (b) had high cholestrol and that these were undoubtedly the cause of all my problems. I went to the appropriate clinic, my weight was mentioned again.
'I've started losing some weight' I told them.
'We'll have to weigh you anyway.'
So they weighed me, and lo! I had indeed lost about 13 pounds. THey decided the scales were faulty and went and fetched some others. After much fiddling about, it was found that I had indeed lost just under a stone in weight.

My GP had told me he was willing to give me medication to help me lose weight 'as long as you don't mind the side effects' - but I'd determined to avoid that particular medication which was just as well because nobody mentioned it again.

Now at this point you might think they would at least congratulate me on making a good start in the weight loss department without costing the NHS a penny in drugs. But no.
'Are you cutting the fat off your bacon?'
'Are you eating plenty of wholemeal bread?' Actually the essence of my diet is essentially leaving off the carbs altogether. But this, apparently is the wrong way to lose weight.
'You have to eat carbohydrates.'
I pointed out there are plenty of 'hidden' carbohydrates, and that I knew exactly what I was doing with my food. Besides, I was losing weight, so surely that was a good thing.
'You can't eat eggs either, they're bad for your cholestrol' I was warned. (Actually, they're not.)

Anyway, they said I would have to have more blood tests, just to be certain. So I did. And now I learn I am not diabetic, nor do I have high cholestrol.

My blood pressure is still high, so I returned to the GP. 'We'll wait and see for a while.... come back at the end of the year.'

I still have all the orginal symptoms. The weight is still reducing nicely. Makes you wonder why I bothered seeing the doctor, really, doesn't it?

Next time I think I'll ask my dogs.

Florence continues to make excellent progress. Yes, she is still a bit fragile, but she's starting to stand up again by herself and goes off into the garden with the others.

It's wonderful to see and a sobering reminder that we came so very close to ending her life.

It's also a very apt reminder that we humans don't know it all, and old dogs like Florence can still surprise us!

The past few days have been rather upsetting. Our much loved dog, Florence has been very poorly indeed. Ten years old may not sound like much for many breeds, but for modern St Bernards, it's a very venerable age indeed. She's been getting frailer these past few months, but still feisty. Her once ferocious bark has begun to sound rather croaky. She doesn't spend hours out of doors any more, but prefers to lie in the kitchen.

And then, the past few days, she hasn't been able to get up. This has been heartbreaking to watch. Now Florence isn't the best of patients, in fact she's up there with the Tsaverich Alexei trying to toboggan downstairs. So helping her get up is a tad risky which is why we've taken to threading a bath towel under her tummy and hauling her in a general upwards direction.

Yesterday she seemed so listless and unwell that we decided.... the Time had come. This is never an easy decision, but her quality of life was clearly non existent, and not likely to improve. The vet was consulted and agreed to come out after morning surgery.

Our other dogs, Homer, Ben and Barney (the latter two are pretty terrified of Florence at the best of times) just sat around her in a circle. They didn't want to go out into the garden and play, they just sat there and looked at each other.

And then.... she woke up and started nibbling at her foot. And nibbling. And chewing. And when she let us get close enough we could see that buried deep in one of the toes was what appeared to be a large thorn.

We cancelled the vet's visit pretty damned quick, I can tell you. Bread poultices were concocted (I'm nothing if not old fashioned), healing salves mixed, the wound was gently probed, the thorn removed, everything cleaned up and bandages. About five minutes later the bandage was off and torn to shreds.

The remainder of the day Florence was still very washed out and tired, but became a model patient, taking all the remedies we gave her. We still had to lift her using a towel and a lot of brute strength, but once she was up she could totter into the yard a few times even though she kept sinking down with sheer exhaustion.

Yesterday was an endless round of cleaning her up, dressing her wound etc. This morning she was much improved, and has been able to get up on her own a few times and amble into the garden.

I've always said I believe that animals tell us when they're ready to go. Florence may be elderly, and frail compared to when she was in her prime, but she certainly isn't ready yet.

Long may she reign!

Insomnia is a terrible thing. Most people suffer from the odd night when they cannot seem to get off to sleep, some people suffer from it on a regular basis. I read of a survey a few months ago which reckoned that men and woman think of different things when they are trying to get some shut-eye.

Apparently men think of - ahem - sex, celebrities, words of songs, football etc while women think of things to do, count calories, think of holiday, shoes and handbags.

I think this is a load of bunk. I think of coloured fabric and mentally start making a quilt when I need to sleep.

Mr Penry, on the other hand, thinks about large pieces of furniture.... and duck eggs

What do you think of?

Well, it's taken me a few days, but I have finally managed to get this post back together.

Regular readers of this blog will know that back on the 19th July I reckoned I had seen a UFO - I'm not saying it was a flying saucer, just that it was flying and I didn't know what it was - hence the UFO tag.

The following day I posted up some suggestions about how to track weather satellites if you think you've seen something, since apparently a number of 'sightings' are really of weather satellites and not the flying craft of the planet Zog.

Then I came upon this article - which claims to show footage of moving spacecraft taken on someone's mobile phone.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/08/17/are-aliens-targeting-wales-91466-21546597/

The article itself is a bit garbled, but it seems this incident took place on July 12th (despite the late date of the article) - a week before my experience.

By the way, the commentary on the short video clip is a joy in itself!

Yesterday I wrote a nice little post about UFO's complete with an interesting (well, I thought it was) link. Alas, my internet connection collapsed when I tried to post it and I lost everything (my net was down for some time.)

I'll try it again later!

While those of you who know me will already know that I harbour a few cynical suspicions about global warming, I'm as passionate as anyone else about treating the planet with respect. I just don't like the way some parties have hijacked this for what I suspect are their own nefarious purposes, nor do I appreciate the 'holier than thou' brigade who should really look a bit more closely at what they're doing before taking it upon themselves to tell me what to do.

In this latter group is one of our local supermarkets, which has taken it upon themselves to ration the supply of plastic carrier bags. Now don't get me wrong - I have no problem with paying for a bag if I need one. I have to do this whenever I shop in Lidl's, after all. But there's a subtle difference - Lidl's is cheaper. Other supermarkets build the cost of free bags into their prices first and then tell us we can't have them.

Bearing in mind that if I go shopping with my own carrier bags, that same supermarket's security guard follows me round like glue, I get pretty annoyed sometimes. Especially when you get to the checkout and you've got some dingbat trying to ram everything into a single bag. Fragile products like bread are promptly flattened, and I'm getting sick of complaining only to be told 'We've all got to do our bit for global warming.'

So I thought I'd look a bit closer to home. And what do I find? Basil from Israel, Mushrooms from Poland (like we can't grow mushrooms in the UK? ); a dessert that combines English cream with Polish raspberries? And best of all, the olives with feta cheese which originated from Greece, Spain, Denmark ... and was then all shipped off to Holland to be packaged!!!

The supermarket is quite right. We must all do our bit. I think it's high time they made some effort.....

I have long suspected that Mr Penry belongs in myth... the Prose Edda perhaps, or Beowulf. I don't mean he has a certain je ne sais quoi more that there is something a touch otherworldly about him...

Dogs certainly recognise something in him... Mr Penry has spent many a happy hour having long meanginful conversations with other people's dogs (and occasionally getting racing tips from them for the 3.10 at Doncaster, but that's another story.)

Now it seems, young children also recognise him as being, well different. There he was today, striding through Brecon, carrying some very large bull horns (don't ask) when a group of small children out with their Mam pointed and said 'Are you Santa Claus?'
He didn't so much as break his stride as he answered. 'Yes,' he said, 'of course I am.'

Now that's what I call style.

Many centuries ago, Irish Monks wrote and decorated one of the most visually beautiful books in the world, the Book of Kells. Looking at a facsimile of it today, the detail and intricacy is still breathtaking, a memory of a world long since gone.

Handwriting experts have suggested a number of different scribes worked on the book, their personalities ranging from the careful and pedantic to one scribe who loved quirky flourishes and brilliant colours.

The Book of Kells is not the only illuminated manuscript from the period, although it's certainly one of the most famous.

Most touching of all however, is a marginal note in one of these manuscripts by an anonymous scribe, back in ninth century Ireland, who wrote: 'Pleasant to me is the glittering of the sun today upon these margins, because it flickers so.'

Beautiful!

It's been too wet to photograph Owlie these past few days. The lens gets misted up or worse, raindrops on it, so I've given up until we have some sunshine and then Owlie can be revealed in all his glory.

As we're having visitors this weekend, I went out to buy a bottle of red wine to saturate the planned Lasagne... on the back I read 'Please drink responsibly and remember that abstinence one day is no excuse for overindulgence on the next day.'

Oh, puhleese!!! This is a bottle of wine. Soon I suspect I shall have to be fingerprinted in order to buy it, or worse, have to produce a little card that will be stamped and swiped to make sure I'm not buying too much wine (too much according to whom, I wonder?)

I know all too well how horrible it can be to live with alcoholics. That said, I don't believe that today's social drinkers are tomorrow's alcoholics... some people are happy social drinkers, some are horrible the moment a teaspoonful of Mateus Rose gets past their tonsils.

Some people love a drink. Some people don't. Some people, alas, live only to drink.

But I really don't appreciate some patronising claptrap telling me how to live my life.

The saddest thing is that the people who should be reading and listening to the message may no longer be able to see straight anyway....

Mr Penry can occasionally be devious. Yesterday is a case in point. He told me he was off to get some wood for a project in the garden; he's always enjoyed woodwork and has his own little den out in the garage. (When I say 'little den' I use the term advisedly. We can't get the car in the garage any more....)

Anyway, I didn't think anything of it. He said he'd be gone for an hour or two, maybe a little longer and not to worry. So I didn't.

I was merrily playing the piano about two hours later when I spotted our car bearing what looked like a bloody great totem pole whizzing up the road. I couldn't quite believe my eyes.... what the hell whatever had he been up to?

Well, it turned out he had gone up to see a woodworker he knows in the Brecon Beacons, having spotted a great carved owl in his workshop the other day. When I say 'great' I'm not kidding - this thing has a six foot wingspan and is taller than I am! He'd tied it onto the roof rack with rope, having first made it comfy on a bed of moth-eaten blankets (not mine) and old cushions. Apparently a couple of Hell's Angels had given him a hand....

Of course, that left us with one small problem.... how to get it down again.
'Don't worry,' says my beloved, 'We can do it.'
We? We? I looked around, half expecting to see the bikers come roaring up our street.

But no. He meant himself and myself. Hmmmmm.....
Well, in fairness, himself did most of the lifting, and now it stands, wings outstretched, guarding the house.

For the moment we've nicknamed it 'Owlie'.

Apparently people were waving to Owlie all the way up our valley as Mr Penry was driving it home.....

As a pagan, I've been amazed down the years at the number of festivals that were taken over by the early Church. The Summer Solstice was replaced by St John's Day, just a day or so later; the Winter Solstice by St THomas' Day and Christmas Day... but what happened in August?

Many modern pagans, myself included, tend to celebrate Lammas or Lughnasadh as our biggest August festival, marking yet another turn of the annual wheel as the year changes gear for the autumn. Usually most pagans celebrate these on or around the 1st August... but that does beg the question, what did the early Church do about them?

It's important to remember that the early Church initially concerned itself mostly with Christianising festivals celebrated across the Roman Empire. So Lammas and Lughnasadh, which seem to have been essentially north European festivals, seem to have missed out.

The reason for this was the the Church had targeted a much bigger threat, the birthdays of the twin deities of Artemis and APollo, celebrated right across the classical world on August 13th. To deal with this, they instituted the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on August 15th, two days later. (You will find this two day gap regularly seems to crop up when looking at Christianised festivals!)

Many traditions state that Mary was in Ephesus when the Assumption occurred.... and Ephesus had a particularly powerful cult dedicated to Artemis, shown here:

I really don't like using a walking stick, but when I get really bad flare-ups I have no choice. It's not just vanity (well, some of it is), it's the fact that it's difficult to hold a walking stick, the huge sack that I call a handbag and also get around and do things that I want to do.

Plus, I am incredibly clumsy. Years ago, before I needed that bloody things walking aid, I was known to accidentally demolish gates, letter boxes and public conveniences.... with a stick I am even worse.

The other day I'd wandered into a rather lovely shop that sold crystals and pagan type jewellery. Well, obviously I wanted to see everything, and to leave my hands free I'd tucked my stick up under my arm. I then wandered around, bending down to see some of the objects on lower shelves.

I was awakened from my happy daze by a man's voice (rather falsetto, actually) saying 'Ooh! Ooh!'

When I turned around I discovered that as I bent, so my walking stick stuck out behind me and rose up in the air.... right between the poor man's legs in a certain rather tender place (or so I'm told...)

'Honestly Mam,' said my daughter as she hustled me out of the shop in a hurry, 'I can't take you anywhere!'

Firstly a big thank you to my blogfriends for your birthday wishes and posts. It was really kind of you and very much appreciated.

I had a great birthday - the weather stayed fine, which meant I got to sit in the garden in my arbour almost all day..... I had a beautiful set of books from Mr Penry which should keep me reading from now until January...and the family were able to visit and we could enjoy a birthday meal (not to mention some wine ) together.

There's definitely something to be said for summer days, but only when you're not stuck indoors doing a job you hate! The first sign of summer we all need a little time in our spiritual garden to sit, smell the lavender and roses, and dream...how do you like to spend summer days?

There's only one word for today's weather - Glorious!

So I'm off into the garden, then!

Homer our Bassett Hound, hasn't been the same since the Dark Knight Batman film came out. You see he has a mark on his back that looks exactly like the Batman logo, and being a Bassett has decided that Christian Bale probably modelled his performance on him!

Now of course he is looking for the Joker. Will it be Ben? Well, Homer would like it to be Ben, because he's always good for a laugh, but Ben isn't so keen....

Ben considers himself to be the Love God, so there's no way he's going to be the Joker too.

And Barney 'I'm Welsh you know' is going through a very serious phase

and simply isn't interested. The only thing that might tempt him is a bag of cookies, but Homer keeps pinching them off him.

So that leaves only the Dowager Duchess Florence....

and believe me, it would be a brave dog indeed who trusted her to play the Joker!

So at the moment there's a lot of plotting and scheming going on, and Homer whizzing around on his short little legs going 'Dara dara dara dara Batman!'

I think we're in for a very interesting weekend!

I'm not sure what set me off thinking on this, but maybe it's the fact that sometimes the news is so horrible that I vow never to read another newspaper again.

Now I know there are certain groups out there that just love the word evil. The media loves it because it makes a great headline...Evil yobs do this... evil hoodies do that... and some of the things they describe are so horrific that yes, the word evil is probably right. But there are other times when I think the word has been overused, to the point that it loses much of its meaning.

So what is evil? Is there really more of it about now than there used to be? Does it matter?

Start talking about evil and it makes many pagans, particularly Wiccans, a bit uncomfortable. THis is because when some people (notably the religious types) start talking about evil, what they mean is witchcraft and the devil. Now I'm a witch but like most of my kind I don't believe in a devil. Not the figure with horns and hooves and a nasty little trident for prodding people as they roast in the eternal flames.

Why? Because when Christianity ousted the earlier pagan faiths (of which there were many strands, not just one) it appropriated sacred sites and even some deities (Brigid the goddess became St Brigid for example) and Christianised them. That was the easy bit.

But some deities weren’t so easy to assimilate, so these had to be demonised. And the pagan Horned God (who goes by many names, but the most popular nowadays are Herne and Cernunnos) became the Devil (Satan, Lucifer. Beelzebub etc.)

That's not to say I don't believe in evil. I do. There is great good in the world, great evil, and an awful lot of middling stuff too. But for me the biggest problem with believing in a devil is that it's an easy cop out. When someone has committed a horrible crime and says ‘The Devil made me do it,’ it’s just a way of denying their own guilt. A way of saying 'look, I'm a good person who just had a bad day.'

Now for me this is where we run into a few problems. Do good people do evil things? Or are evil actions confined to only evil people? And what exactly constitutes evil anyway?

For me, doing something evil means doing something outside the normal realms of ‘bad.’ It's something so alien to our natures that it shouldn’t come easily to us. An evil act is so far outside the norm it is impossible to justify (although that doesn't stop people trying). That’s why oppressive regimes first begin by demonising and dehumanising the enemy, because then the normal rules of society no longer apply.

And this, in my paranoid moments makes me panic when people still demonise people like me - pagans, witches etc. Just what are they planning, I wonder?

If you think you've seen an Unidentified Flying Object and are trying to eliminate the more mundane explanations a good site to visit is called Heavens Above. This lists all known satellites and gives maps of their orbits and when they are passing overhead etc.

Having had another look at these today, whatever I saw last night, I don't think it was the ISS satellite, as it was moving in the wrong direction.

Interesting stuff!

Rather strange, actually. There I was, out in our street, at 10.45pm waving goodbye to one of my daughters and her husband who had come to spend the day with us and were just leaving for home. It was a beautiful night sky, no sign of the moon where we were, but a lovely clear sky with a few streaks of light pearly cloud. I'd already pointed out a few stars and planets and then.... I saw it.

Now I'm not saying it was filled with little green men or greys, but it was definitely a UFO in the sense I haven't got a clue what it was; it could therefore reliably be classed as unidentified and it was definitely flying.

It was flying quite low, approaching from the south and then heading south east towards Pontypridd. It made no noise. It left no vapour trail that I could see (and I think in that sky I might have seen something.) It had no flickering lights as you usually see on airoplanes (and indeed I could see on other planes in the sky at the same time.) This was nothing like them.

It was just a large, white ball of light. Like a planet on the move. It flew slowly, but smoothly. No aerobatics or anything fancy.

My other daughter saw it too, so I know it wasn't the gin

I don't know what it is lately, but there are never enough hours in the day. Maybe Global warming is speeding up the clocks or something.

And talking of clocks, we are still having some spooky problems with one of ours. It will only work when it is showing the wrong time - otherwise it stops at the same time every day. Weird or what?

Apart from that we have had a ghostly appearance of smoke out in the kitchen. No, I didn't burn the toast. This was weird, it appeared to be coming in short puffs (almost like someone smoking) near one of the kitchen windows. It would last about 15 - 20 seconds and appear every 30 secs - 2mins. This went on for over an hour and several people saw it.

We investigated all sorts of ideas as to where it could come from. It only happened (as far as we know) on one day. But all the same, very peculiar!

As a welcome break from being up to my eyes in Mandrakes (well, on paper at least!) two of my daughters decided to take me to the cinema to see Mamma Mia. It was great fun, and was the only film I've ever been to see where everyone was still in their seats when the lights came on again. Apparently some viewings have had the audience singing along too, but I went early in the morning (probably so I didn't embarrass my daughters with my terrible laugh. It's been known to make strong men shudder...)

Anyway, the final draft is almost done, just a little bit of cleaning up now, sorting out the glossary and the index and I'm done. It's a great feeling! Now for the next book.... Mamma Mia, here I go again....

Nearly finished the book.... am just doing the final draft of the final chapter. After that I've got to go through it and clean it up a bit (looking for typos etc) and then send it off.

I still can't quite believe it's all coming to an end... I wonder what I'll write next?

Yet more apologies for not being around much lately - it's just that I'm trying to get my new book finished.... it's dragging on now yet I'm nearly there.

I do keep dropping in and trying to catch up with your blogs and comments, only I'm not doing very well at the moment... sorry about this.

I am so preoccupied it's getting ridiculous. Yesterday I went out and only when I came home did I discover I was wearing odd shoes!