Come on a Gondola Ride in Venice!

What a change to my last post.  I am pleased to say that I managed to get back on top of my feelings, talk to the right people and make a decision on how I was going to proceed with what had happened.  All that counselling and prayer is working!  It needed to, as last Wednesday May 18th was hubs and mine 20th wedding anniversary and we took ourselves off to Venice to celebrate.  My husbands second mum (step mum sounds so scary) came and looked after our 15 and 16 year olds.  It was the first time we had been away for more than one night since my mum died 3 years ago.

Now just before we went my husband let on that he wasn't intending to take me on a Gondola.  Fortunately for me Granny Liz felt as strongly as I did that it was something we MUST do :) .

After a couple of days watching the madness of the Gondoliers working in the very busy tourist area around St Marks Square, I decided I needed to use Google to find somewhere quiet!  I found some great tips on trip adviser,  they advised going in the evening and suggested going to an area the other side of the Grand Canal from St Marks Square.  This was in the Academia area, where all the students live.  What wonderful advise it was, the only other Gondola's or boats we saw the whole 40 minute trip were the few minutes on the Grand Canal.  The rest of the time we could hear birds singing and the ripple of water made by our skilled Gondolier as we gracefully glided down the 'streets' and under the bridges.

As we turned onto the Grand Canal, we were shown where Casanova was born and another building where Napoleon lived for a couple of years.

You can see that although the Grand Canal is so much bigger than the small street canals, after 7pm even that quietens down.

All too soon, we were came to the end.  It wasn't cheap you pay 20 euros more after 7pm, making it quite expensive at 100 euros for the 40 minute ride.  It is however a once in a lifetime opportunity that I am so pleased we did and I'm very grateful to google for helping us to find somewhere nice and quiet!

Heart wounds.

A phone call ends and blood flows from the gaping wound left in my heart.  Eyes stare at those hopes, those much prayed for hopes as they burn leaving only ashes ahead.  Don't ask me how I feel, I don't know...... Angry? Furious? Tired? Resigned? Mournful? Sadness? oh yes, there is definitely sadness, I can feel it flattening me to the ground.  That is something I suppose, I can identify something correctly, practise makes perfect.

Thirty minutes before the phone call I was walking the dog, laughing out loud at her antics as she first got stuck in a stream and then swirled into madness as the squirrels in front of us suddenly all took off in different directions.

Madness....... I wouldn't have been giving that word any more thought now if the phone call hadn't come.  But it did, Madness, Mental health, Self Harm, Suicide, oh yes, more and more thoughts are tumbling out of their neat little boxes in my mind where I can usually keep them tidy AND under lock and key.

I could of course could just quickly vacuum all those horrid thoughts up, get them back under lock and key, hey! what does it matter if they are not neat and tidy in their little boxes. I'm so tempted, that way would be so quick, so.... I might need to wear a mask again for a while but who cares?

Actually I care.  There is also that gaping wound that needs dealing with.  A wounded heart needs attention.  A quick patch up job will fail, I know this and have some ugly scars to show for it.  What this heart needs right now is a healing touch, I need the hands of my maker to come and hold his hand over this wound.  He will stem the flow of blood.  He won't mind the mess, the redness, the rawness.  His hands will work with such care. His patience will be forever enduring. There will be another scar but it will be different. I'm learning from Him to have patience too. No human can say or do the right thing, right now. I shall just wait and wait some more.

New hopes will come too, in their own time.

Luke 12:7  Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Something New.

Hellooooo, anyone still there?  I'm sorry that I have been quiet so long.  Sometimes the busyness of life causes us to have to re-evaluate what is essential in our list of daily tasks and sadly the blogging has been very near to the bottom of the list.  I have tried to keep my Mrs Craftypants site going as this is turning into quite a busy little business but writing for pleasure, that was no longer a pleasure.

Something or rather somethings have got my writing fingers itching again.  Firstly I was asked to be a administrator on a facebook page that my lovely friend Katharine runs ........ for writers! Secondly the death of the music star Prince, just 10 years older than myself.  The significance of this making my writing fingers itch is the sudden realisation that i have a lot of stories inside me and if I don't tell them they will disappear for ever!

The book that longs to come out is one I promised my late mum that I would write a very long time ago.  She had a very interesting and somewhat harrowing start in life as a war baby, born to a German mother in Hamburg, Germany who had a brief affair with an English soldier at the end of the second world war.  I have managed to find a few stories of American soldiers and French soldiers fathering babies with German mothers, however trying to even find statistics for the English fathers is near impossible.  The UK government unlike the American government did not intervene with policies to help German mothers, for example giving them a right to become alien citizens.

So the story must be told and I think the best way to get myself back in the writing habit is to have a go at doing a blog at least once a week!  That is my goal for now and hopefully I can use my time wisely enough to try and commit to at least 10 minutes every day to research and write.  Just 10 minutes, that is all I have at the moment, it's so easy to flitter way 10 minutes on nothing, so at least now I will have something to show for those particular 10 minutes!

So, same time, same place next week, bye for now xxxx