Disingenuous

I’m trying to think of an alternative example of ‘disingenuous’ that doesn’t involve mentioning Donald Trump, but his big arrogant bully-boy face with its big ignorant alpha-male mouth just keeps on pushing its weaselly way into my thoughts – ok, ok, I get it, Trump it is – so, which example to use? How do I choose just one of so many?

Hmmm… Not too long ago Trump was all over the merits of Julian Assange, considering him (and Wikileaks) to be the best thing since sliced bread (I’m paraphrasing here, of course). So much so that Trump triumphantly tells an entire rally full of people how great the guy is. Fast forward a year or so (or whatever) and the tables have turned politically, and suddenly Trump magically has no idea who Julian Assange is, or Wikileaks. Amazing!

That, in my world, is Trump being truly disingenuous – he clearly knows full well who Assange is and what Wikileaks is when it suits him, but as he thinks it benefits him right now to pretend NOT to know, he prevaricates obfuscates lies through his teeth about the extent of that prior knowledge… And we all believe him, of course – not! (Liar, liar, pants on fire…!) 🙂

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Internal Juke Box

A couple of days ago my husband woke up with a specific song going round in his head. He was humming it to himself quizzically while preparing his breakfast, and between us we soon recognised it as ‘Give a Little Love’ by the Bay City Rollers, way back from 1975 – a real blast from the past, especially as the Bay City Rollers were not really on the radar of any 14 year old boys at the time – Rollermania was definitely more my teenage domain!

We had such fun looking it up online and finding loads of other similar songs and bands from our teenage years we haven’t thought about in decades – a proper trip down memory lane courtesy of whatever random brain waves came crashing to shore as he slept. The weirdest thing for me is, how can I (decades later) remember most of the lyrics from a teenage tune but sometimes struggle to remember what I had for dinner yesterday?

Then this morning he jumped forward a decade and woke up with Whitney Houston’s ‘Wanna Dance with Somebody’ from our late twenties bopping along in his head – another completely random track with no logical explanation behind its overnight resurgence in his musical memory banks. As he says himself, God knows what’s going on with his internal jukebox right now… 🙂

Here they are for anyone who doesnt know the tracks in question…

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Quizzical

Anomaly

“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.” ― Henri Bergson

Often I feel that I am the anomaly in life, I am the one who is out of step with the rest of the world, unable or unwilling to fit my firmly square-edged peg into the restrictive round hole alloted to me. But then I read words like these, and feel reassured that perhaps I am, after all, philosophically on the right path for me, and feel glad of my different outlook to the accepted norm… 🙂

Fandango’s one Word Challenge: Anomaly

You’re Welcome!

I get really annoyed when people don’t have good manners – particularly living here in the ravenous dog-eat-dog world of busy London. If I hold open a door for someone, or step to the side to let someone walk past, or give up my seat to someone on public transport, I expect at least a smile of recognition or maybe a ‘Thank you’ in return – after all, good manners cost nothing, right? And of course some lovely considerate people do smile and say thank you, like polite people should.

But when I invariably DON’T get a thank you or any other acknowledgement of my action, I have a really bad habit of smiling and saying loudly ‘You’re welcome!’ as if they HAD said thank you. Sometimes I get an embarrassed ‘Oh, er, thank you’ mumbled in return, sometimes I get an insolent stare, to which I smile sweetly and say ‘thank you’ expectantly, and sometimes I just get completely ignored. But whatever the response, for some reason I get great satisfaction in not allowing such basic rudeness to go unchallenged.

I’m not usually a get-involved-in-dispute, rock-the-boat person in public, but I honestly believe that one little consideration – a polite recognition in some form or other that someone has gone out of their way to do something nice for you – is an important line to hold, however busy your day or stressful your journey or otherwise preoccupied you may be in your own insular self-importance to the exclusion of all others.

And I think probably the best response I have ever received was from a little boy holding his mother’s hand, who, when I held open the shop door for them, smiled and said thank you to me even when his mother just barged past and didn’t even acknowledge me. She looked down at him when he spoke, and he responded quite critically to her ‘Mummy you’re supposed to say thank you!’ – It absolutely made this grumpy old woman’s day 🙂

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Welcome

A Mess of Stress

So, apparently this week Fandango is curious to know how I deal with stress? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… oh… well… um… maybe laughing maniacally at my on misfortune isn’t exactly the level of response required here.

Historically I’ve always dealt with stress by comfort eating. Currently though, due to recently diagnosed problems with my digestive health, I’m having to be VERY careful about what I eat – including eating minimal animal fats, salts and sugars, which I must admit pretty much make up the bulk of all my usual comfort foods… sigh 😦

So right now on top of the stress of everyday generic life stresses AND being menopausal I’m also trying to deal with the stress of NOT comfort eating by distracting myself wherever possible from my cravings for comfort food. Colouring in, listening to music, walking, crying and feeling sorry for myself… And when that doesn’t work I’m stressing myself out even more by beating myself up for not coping, creating an even bigger internal mess of stress.

But I’m determined I’m not giving up on it all, my ongoing internal health is important to me so I’ve decided to try to help reduce my external stress factors by giving up instead on all news of Donald Trump messing about playing chicken with China and Iran, Theresa May messing about playing chicken with both the European Union and her own parliament, oh, and America making itself even more not-great-yet-again by banning abortion…

My blood pressure just can’t handle it all any more, I feel like I need to ban all news coverage for a while. So I think I’ll take to sitting here with my fingers in my ears going la la la la la la la… a bit like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but at least hopefully my digestive system will be happier 🙂

Semantics…

Semantics…
Rhetoric the main concern
Doublespeak a favoured term
Weasel words imply and squirm
No clear meaning fixed and firm
Spin and soundbites fill the space
Lies instead of facts in place
Semantics twisted to your face
Politics a pure disgrace…

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Semantics

Anyway…

Today was the first in what feels like forever that neither my husband nor I had the news on. It’s Bank Holiday Monday, neither of us are working and we’re both thoroughly sick fed up with nothing but Brexit, Trump, violent weather storms and violent mass shootings on the news. So we decided to switch off from it all, and spent a relaxing morning and much of the afternoon completely out of the media loop, enjoying the break from all that sickening stressy stuff.

Anyway, not too long ago I picked up my laptop to surf a little bit before making dinner, only to find out – from a blogger in America, would you believe – that Harry and Meghan have had their baby boy today and the news has been full of excitement and happiness instead of endless negativity and heartache. And I completely missed it!

The birth of a new baby is always lovely to hear about, so it’s been so nice to have something good happen in the news at last. Sending huge congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on the birth of their beautiful son, and thank you both so much for giving me something positively perfect to smile about today 🙂

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Anyway

Weekly Smile