Six Degrees of Separation

Yesterday I noticed a speck of glitter on my purse - yes, this is the glitter from the sparkly top I wore back at Christmas which has retired to the wardrobe having broadcast its stardust into the vast unknown. I amused myself with the 'six degrees of separation' idea, as a spark of inspiration for a short story where the specks of glitter are having a spirited debate about how far they can go, and they engage in a wager - who can reach the US President's nose first! Well, it was quite amusing in my head, anyway. Helped to pass the time as we drove home from Bristol. Not that it will ever get written ... by me. I vaguely remember a TV programme years ago where someone had a tiny spark of an idea for a play, and somehow he got caught up in the world of broadcasting - as the writer, he was adulated, any tiny sound or aspect of body language escaping him taken to be significant, and the whole creative team got to work on it, bouncing off each other until something amazingly creative emerged (which had absolutely no resemblance to the starting point the writer had contributed). To someone less and less inclined to invest the necessary concentrated effort to produce a finished piece of writing (finished as in coherent, fluid, inspirational .... add such other adjectives as you might consider appropriate), this idea of a creative 'team' taking one's merest hint and turning it into a spectacular sounded very appealing. That was a long sentence. I think I made it all the way to the end without getting lost! How about you?

Sunday roast with Vicky was wonderful. She introduced us to a dish she picked up in Africa: roast butternut squash. You cut the squash up and remove the seeds, sprinkle with castor sugar and cinnamon and (I think - I'll check up on this and report back) drizzle with olive oil then wrap in aluminium foil and roast in a hot oven or on the barbecue. Amazingly the skin softens to the extent that it becomes edible.

In other news:

I thought I'd finished filling in the application form to become a tea lady, until an inner prompting had me turn the form over to discover more questions on the other side. I have to provide two references, one of which to be a former employer or a professional person, neither referee to be related to me. This is a strange thing and I'm trying not to see any deep significance in it, but as I look back, most of my former employers are no longer trading. After I've left, companies have closed down or been sold off behind me. A question mark hangs over the place of my most recent employment and it looks set to be sold off eventually. Looking further back, the same has happened to most of the places where I was educated. I tell myself "Change happens - it's the nature of life" and yet ...

My affirmation/exercise for the day from "A Course in Miracles" today is
God's voice speaks to me all through the day
the idea being that as I remember that, I'm listening. Thus it was that, unusually, I took three phone handsets into the bathroom with me this morning (a mobile and one each of the two landlines). Sure enough, I had two phone calls - one from Jacky and one from a lady interested in joining the 'Wholeness through Spirituality' training course. To tell you what I was doing when I answered each of these calls would, I suspect, be 'too much information'. Oh, the wonder of modern-day technology.