NEWS FLASH for March

...
With credit to Jeff for inventing NEWS FLASH. Jeff, I changed SPORT to SMILES. I just cannot think of anything related to Sport to talk about.

NEWS FLASH is basically news or thoughts that may be changing over time - an update or an evolution of thought that covers a multiple of topics. It is what makes a blogger tick and it is the reason why we read. So, with that in mind, I came up with NEWS FLASH as an acronym that stands for what is going on in life:

News (or current events)
Entertainment (movies, TV, celebrity, etc.)
Work (thoughts on the job or employer)
Spirit (thoughts on God and/or the supernatural)
Family (or friends)
Love
Anxiety (a rant or a trouble)
Smiles (something that made you smile or will make your reader's smile), and
Home (house, yard, or even another family type of thought).

NEWS - we're moving at last!
The biggest news for us is that we have found a new house to rent. Hooray! :-) We move on the 3rd of April so I might be off the blogs a while before and after. Last time it took them two weeks to set up our internet connection. Let's hope this time we can get back faster.

ENTERTAINMENT - Holy Sheep!
There's been very little of this lately. Between packing and searching for a house and health woes we haven't had one weekend drive or even visited family since the Christmas holidays. The most entertaining thing that has happened this month is... sheep. :-)

Last week I'm in the kitchen making tea when my mom yells "come look!" ...our garden is full of sheep! I phoned a neighbour who tells me to phone the local laird, who owns and rents out several farms in this area. I got him on the phone first try and he was very nice about it. He apologised and said he'd come get them out personally. I was out in the garden when he arrived and I helped him herd them out the yard. He was just as I'd been told by the locals - a complete eccentric. He looks like a tramp, talks like an "uppercrust" and drives a 4 x 4 that looks like it's been used in several wars. I didn't get a photo of the Laird, but my mom did get pictures of the sheep...



WORK - a Dull Month.
The biggest slog the last few months has been looking for a house to rent. Beyond that there hasn't been much I can think of to write about except to add that Hubby is working over Easter to make some extra money, because moving means added expenses.

SPIRIT - Learning to Trust.
The hardest part of having any kind of psychic abilities is learning to trust that you're not crazy or imagining things. If you are a sane sensible person your first instinct will always be to query and double-check, but cynicism or lack of trust is always bad for a relationship, especially in connecting to God or your spiritual self.

Recently I had a small victory in trusting myself. Sometimes passed (deceased) people come to me. Before last year the only people I ever had contact with were my own passed family. I don't normally get messages from people I don't know, but that has been changing the last year or two. Last month I received a message from a recently deceased person. I never knew this person and I only vaguely know one of his family. I was reading about the death online and started feeling so sad and... there the person was.

It took me a while to trust and listen. I didn't want the burden of responsibility for passing on messages. I tried to pretend the person wasn't there, but I couldn't keep it up. The person was so nice and just wanted the chance to tell their family a last goodbye. How could I refuse to help? So I trusted and wrote down their message. Some things in the message were basic, but one part of the message startled me. The message included a sentence about "being with a parent". As far as I knew this parent was still alive! It contradicted what (I thought) I knew about the family. Had I imagined it? Was I wrong? Should I leave that out? I figured all I could do was TRUST... I sent the message exactly as I'd had it given to me.

I got an email the next morning from the relative. In it they explained that the parent was indeed deceased as well. Something I didn't know because I don't really know the family. If I hadn't trusted I'd have messed up badly by leaving out that info, or by putting my own interpretation on it.

It feels fantastic to be able to connect people who love each other. Oh, I may mess up and get it wrong in the future, I'm only human, but for now I feel amazingly good. I've started to realise that love and emotions are the connection, the "telephone wire" you could say. The moment I connect emotionally to another person - they can then connect to me. I'm learning that love knows no boundaries... and that feels amazingly good to know as well. :-)

FAMILY - connections.
What is "family"? Is it the connection of blood and genetics or love and sharing?

The more I think about this topic the more blurry the definition seems. I have four adopted friends who rate blood connections very low in the family definition list. I have friends who feel more like family than relatives and relatives who are such good friends that calling them just "family" seems to lessen how important they are to me. I have no birth sisters, but online I have several sisters I'd be lost without having in my life. I have cousins, in-laws, and parents, who should be classified as good friends as well as family. :-) ...and I have a few "family" I would probably list under enemies if it wasn't for the fact they were related to me! ;-)

I think the connection of love is all that matters. The people I am connected to by my heart are my family. Who are your "family"?

LOVE - weddings and anniversaries
In May some internet friends of ours are returning to Scotland for their anniversary. They were married here about four years ago and Hubby and I were their witnesses. :-) Later this year a blogger friend is getting married in Scotland as well...

BEST wishes to Bassman and Matchgirl!

ANXIETY - health.
The biggest anxiety was the fear we wouldn't find a place to rent and could face eviction. Beyond that my health has been a bother. Here I think Hubby and my parents are more anxious than I am. I'm just tired of waiting. I had surgery this time last year for an ovarian cyst. I had hoped I was on the mend, but last September I started having bad pain again and my stomache blew up. The doctors couldn't figure it out at first, but this January they finally realised - I have a hernia. Seems my stomach muscles have had enough after two surgeries and three laparoscopies. I've been swollen up (like ate a beach ball) since September and it's really depressing. I can't fit into any clothes except s-t-r-e-t-c-h pants and even they hurt after a few hours. So at home I wander around in my gown or caftan feeling like a frumpy slob. Plus I'm not allowed to strain or lift things so life is very boring with me not wanting to be seen in public and not able to do much to keep busy.

I'm due to see the surgeon in April and hopefully they can figure out how to fix this. Normally they'd just fix the hernia right away, but I have internal damage and problems related to my ovary that may need extensive serious surgery and they can't fix the hernia and then do the big surgery so they will need to do the ops in the right order or together. I'm actually so sick of being sick that I'm impatient to get this done now.

SMILES - the joy of being a failure.

This news clip may look long, but it is well worth reading! :-)

And the Band Played Badly...By ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH (Published: March 9, 2008)

WHY should real musicians - the ones who can actually play their instruments - have all the fun?

Some years ago, a group of frustrated people in Scotland decided that the pleasure of playing in an orchestra should not be limited to those who are good enough to do so, but should be available to the rankest of amateurs. So we founded the Really Terrible Orchestra, an inclusive orchestra for those who really want to play, but who cannot do so very well. Or cannot do so at all, in some cases.

My own playing set the standard. I play the bassoon, even if not quite the whole bassoon. I have never quite mastered C-sharp, and I am weak on the notes above the high D. In general, I leave these out if they crop up, and I find that the effect is not unpleasant. I am not entirely untutored, of course, having had a course of lessons in the instrument from a music student who looked quietly appalled while I played. Most of the players in the orchestra are rather like this; they have learned their instruments at some point in their lives, but have not learned them very well. Now such people have their second chance with the Really Terrible Orchestra.

The announcement of the orchestra's founding led to a great wave of applications to join. Our suspicion that there were many people yearning to play in an orchestra but who were too frightened or too ashamed to do anything about it, proved correct. There was no audition, of course, although we had toyed with the idea of a negative audition in which those who were too good would be excluded. This proved to be unnecessary. Nobody like that applied to join.

Some of the members were very marginal musicians, indeed. One of the clarinet players, now retired from the orchestra for a period of re-evaluation, stopped at the middle B-flat, before the instrument's natural break. He could go no higher, which was awkward, as that left him very few notes down below. Another, a cellist, was unfortunately very hard of hearing and was also hazy on the tuning of the strings. As an aide-mémoire, he had very sensibly written the names of the notes in pencil on the bridge. This did not appear to help.

At the outset, we employed a professional conductor, which is a must for anybody who is reading this and who is already planning to start a similar orchestra.

Find somebody who is tolerant and has a sense of humor. The conductor also has to be sufficiently confident to be associated with something called the Really Terrible Orchestra; after all, it does go on the résumé.

Our initial efforts were dire, but we were not discouraged. Once we had mastered a few pieces - if mastered is the word - we staged a public concert. We debated whether to charge for admission, but wisely decided against this. That would be going too far.
So should we go to the other extreme and pay people to come? There was some support for this, but we decided against it. Instead, we would give the audience several free glasses of wine before the concert. That, it transpired, helped a great deal.

We need not have worried. Our first concert was packed, and not just with friends and relations. People were intrigued by the sheer honesty of the orchestra's name and came to see who we were. They were delighted. Emboldened by the rapturous applause, we held more concerts, and our loyal audience grew. Nowadays, when we give our annual concert at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the hall is full to capacity with hundreds of music-lovers. Standing ovations are two-a-penny.

"How these people presume to play in public is quite beyond me," wrote one critic in The Scotsman newspaper. And another one simply said "dire." Well, that may be so, but we never claimed to be anything other than what we are. And we know that we are dire; there's no need to state the obvious. How jejune these critics can be!

Even greater heights were scaled. We made a CD and to our astonishment people bought it. An established composer was commissioned to write a piece for us. We performed this and recorded it at a world premiere, conducted by the astonished composer himself. He closed his eyes. Perhaps he heard the music in his head, as it should have been. This would have made it easier for him.

There is now no stopping us. We have become no better, but we plow on regardless. This is music as therapy, and many of us feel the better for trying. We remain really terrible, but what fun it is. It does not matter, in our view, that we sound irretrievably out of tune. It does not matter that on more than one occasion members of the orchestra have actually been discovered to be playing different pieces of music, by different composers, at the same time. I, for one, am not ashamed of those difficulties with C-sharp. We persist. After all, we are the Really Terrible Orchestra, and we shall go on and on. Amateurs arise - make a noise.

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the forthcoming novel "The Miracle at Speedy Motors."

Hear them play:http://thereallyterribleorchestra.com/index.html

HOME - Forgetting.

I realised yesterday that I have started to forget places and faces from Africa. When I first arrived here I'd see people on the streets who looked like people I knew "back home" in South Africa... and I'd feel instantly homesick. :-( Now, yesterday, I recognised (and greeted) four people I actually knew from here. I'm finally seeing here as HOME, rather than the other way around. Nothing can take away who I am or where I have come from, but it feels good to belong and be happy to be a part of my new HOME. :-)

...