She who can believe herself well, will be well.

 I'm doing my level best, Ovid.

 
“You don't need treatment. The fever, inflammation, coughing, etc., constitute the healing process. Just get out of their way and permit them to complete their work. Don't try to 'aid' nature. She doesn't need your puny aid—she only asks that you cease interfering,”says Herbert M Shelton.

Irony. For the past three days, I've never eaten so healthily. I expected to get headaches from giving up caffeine, alcohol and dairy products. What I didn't expect was to go down with a flu bug. Or something very close to it.

I actually think the two (detoxing and being ill) are not particularly related because I've got the same bug as loads of people in my circle of friends.



I think it's rather more something called Sod's Law...

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers.

If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

I take your point, Ralph Waldo Emerson

But I DO have a terrible headache...

Also self-inflicted. This time by NOT drinking any alcohol or caffeine or eating any dairy products (the first two since Friday night, the last since yesterday lunchtime) and instead partaking of organic fruit juices, brown rice and herbal teas.

Vitality diet? Yeah right.

The good news: I finished 'The Last Assassin' and sent it off to the producer. Apparently 'everyone loved it' and there's a shoot date planned for March 23rd. Here's the provisional poster:

In the meantime...mind if I just go and lie down?

To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.

Henri Frederic Amiel

No poetry of a morning's roses for me, yesterday. Absolutely self-inflicted. And serves me jolly well right.

Gripped by the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.

It has served its purpose though.

Today, we're off out for Sunday lunch (it being Sunday!) with friends. After that - well, tomorrow because I need to get the right ingredients in - I'm going on a one week Detox and Vitality Diet making use of my trusty juicer. (Why oh WHY has it been designed in a way that makes cleaning it such a PAIN?)

I'm announcing it here so I won't chicken out. Unintentional pun. No chicken allowed.

This will be me in seven days time.

Maybe.

If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

Ayn Rand.

I was going to go on to say that she probably didn't include white wine on an empty stomach in this assertion, but looking at her photograph, maybe she did.

We shall draw a discreet veil over last night's reunion with Self Expression and Leadership programme buddies in London, especially the bit on East Croydon station platform, for which I can only apologise.

Suffice to say, I DID become shamefully self-expressed.

Have you ever felt seasick on a horse? I have. Today. I think Alfie noticed.

I'm sorry I'm not feeling well too but I'm giving myself absolutely no sympathy.

None deserved.

Too lively a sense of humour frequently leads to laxity of principle.

A misquote via Georgette Heyer - good grief, I never in a million years thought I might quote from Georgette Heyer. And how unfairly judgemental that is since I've never once read anything by her. I just Think Things about historical romances.

Get in there! RIP THAT BODICE!!

At the moment, I'm writing a short screenplay - The Last Assassin. It's a comedy. That's to say, I've written it as a comedy. And I think it's achingly funny.

But then, I would, wouldn't I?

The test will come when other people read it, above all, the guy who's commissioned it...

We shall see.

But honestly, I can't begin to tell you how funny it is...such a lively sense of humour in evidence and definitely lax principles...

A single disturbed thought creates ten thousand distractions.

Keep your heart clear and transparent and you will never be bound.

So said Ryokan.



 Sometimes you can think too much, right?

It's what Pete and I do when we're planning a holiday. Every time. The fact of the matter is that there is simply TOO MUCH INFORMATION out there.

So what happens is, we end up going nowhere except down Grumpy Street...

A couple of days ago, Dangerous Dave, skiing friend, asked us if we were going anywhere this year. I bleated on a bit...I think it's called a First World Problem...fretting over which skiing holiday to take. Shameful.

But, with someone else to kick our asses,  it seemed so simple. Decisions have been taken without painful mind-throttling deliberations. We're ready to book. What had taken several weeks, on and off, of discussions backwards and forwards and sixty eight different plans, each one discarded in turn...well, I think if we add it up, it has probably taken less than an hour.

 

Yes!

No pleasure endures unseasoned by variety

It's a long time since I referred to a Latin chappie, so here is Publilius Syrus - actually a Syrian who was a slave but, favoured by his master, was freed and educated.

Variety. Yes. It's what keeps me going. That and my unshakeable optimism.

This week, so far, apart from writing my blog every day, I've transcribed a screenplay into a stage play and submitted it and another piece to Equal Writes...reviewed the first forty-six pages of a feature-length for a friend...thought a lot about the short The Last Assassin - which I'm just about to start writing.

Then there's time spent with the horses and the dog and my family, practising yoga, cooking wholesome dinners, baking a naughty cake, continuing with Little Acts of Kindness, and lovingly restoring our banisters and staircase, which are soaking up beeswax polish like a sponge.

I'm such a lucky girl, to be able to wake up each morning excited about the day ahead, the next challenge.

Lucky, yes, unbelievably lucky...but I know it simply wouldn't happen if I didn't create it.