16-3-2022: Day 279
Listening to the youth station on the car radio, a heated section of the listeners were dialling in with news of a strange phenomenon sweeping the Island. The phenomenon was dirty rain. And to be fair, my wheels were covered in shit from bumper to bumper. Flecks of some muck, presumably from the Saharan desert.
I was keeping an open mind on the source, as I completed the home leg of the school run and jumped online to touch base with members of the healing voices community.
As I switched up the technology, searching for a missing battery pack, I realised my stress levels were going through the roof. Or, what some might lazily term psychosis, I held to be universal forces manifesting.
And, as I zoomed into the meeting and started bombarding the members with tales of dirty rain, so the connection dropped off and I found myself staring into a blank screen.
18-3-2022: Day 281
Digging furiously in the rich, fertile soil, at the back wall of my postage stamp garden, I was hitting on a concrete slab, carving out a hole big enough for the white rose being planted. It was my forty-eighth birthday, on a Full Moon, and the party fever was brewing.
Hands deep in the earth, shovelling by the fist-full, I was pulling out the gnarly roots of the Tree of Life, taking out the gargantuan stresses and strains of a hard knock life on the mission in hand.
And in the moment, I was wondering where the next pitfall, bear trap or snake bite might strike from.
Job done. I headed inside with the deep sense of anguish of an open heart, wondering whether the white rose flowers would bloom and thrive in these adverse climactic conditions.
I was just going to have to walk the line. Try and shine. As the world collapses around my fragile white rose bush. And, ignoring the gathering storms of negative forces, so I turn to focus on the hard partying weekend ahead.
18-3-2022: Day 281
Full birthday moon fever was kicking off, as I embarked on a freestyle booze crawl round the gnarly delights of Shoreham-by-Sea’s finest watering holes.
I had been for mussels and a liquid lunch on the Worthing seafront, hopped on a sweltering packed bus, and entertained myself touching base with my old student day muckers on the virtual wire.
So, I followed the coast, followed the way of the watercourse, into the dark recesses and forgotten pub corners. The abandoned corners where the doomed male psyches live, where the demons come out to play after a dram or five.
Then it’s back to the ranch for more beers, furiously hitting up the socials hard. And, as the Full Moon fever lights up, beaming its mystical delights, dancing in the shadows, so my phone blows up.
Messages hacked from across the Pond, from the rivers of the Congo, from the old East European Bloc, from the shanty huts of the Philippines, in a furious friendship circle round the Full Moon and back.
The white rose was budding strongly under the blooming pressure.