Not in my wildest imagination…

February 27, 2018 by Colette B 3 Comments

Not in my wildest imagination would I ever have guessed that drinking less coffee for a few days trying to make the last jar last longer, then being deprived of coffee for three days until I could obtain groceries, would immediately result in my first insomniac phase of this last few weeks (while thoroughly physically exhausted and fairly incapable). Being ‘atypical’ / typically ME again…

drawing (mine) circa. 1995 – a page in my half-filled A6 sketchbook from art school days.

Not in my wildest imagination, back in 1995, would I ever have pictured my life as it is here and now, all these 23 years later! However, that is not the point of my making this post…

NB: potential trigger warning – if you are sensitive or in distress, you might not want to read some of my reflections and rants about the traumas of the world and persons. Nothing worse than you might see or hear in the news, perhaps – no image triggers but the text might remain highly-strung /over-wraught while i’m not well-practised editing my own writing yet and lacking somewhat in the field of objectivity, versus subjectivity that is. I have objects enough.

assemblage of personal notes, notebook, money, a 1st class large letter stamp – the subject deliberately obscured by my shadow and finished with my first ever attempt to use the digital calligraphy pen available in MSPhoto editing tools via the trackpad on my laptop, …

Not in my wildest imagination, even as recently as 1995 – or even around 2001 when I bought my first internet-ready desktop computer (good old Windows ’98 – now why on earth did that ever need improving upon – apart from, of course, increasing photo resolution capability?!) … never would I have had any way back then to perceive the ways I might utilise my internet time nowadays. I managed to make a Homestead page or two back then, but, but being English and female, so far behind more priveleged societies such as the US etc. was clueless enough to fail to understand ‘how to make (ie. structure) a website’ … I just couldn’t visualise the root-tree structure, in spite of handling document file storage. doh!

Not in my wildest imagination would I have expected after all THIS time, to still have so very much basic stuff to learn regarding application of web technologies before i am proficient enough to do anything seriously with this wondrous butterfly net technology – i know a lot of people are very successful with it and can make almost anything look so neat and professional. I’m still hazy and sketchy, but nonetheless, will try and try again (here and there, health and attention-span allowing) to practise those essential skills that I currently lack.

on my lap (top left) my unfilled A7 notebook in use during c.2012 art-based work-related training activity; (to the right) my 1995 art school A6 sketchbook open to show the left side page of notes and the right side page of the drawing used to introduce this post; (beneath those) my A5 Day Notes 2018 notebook partially showing my overnight notes…

Not in my wildest imagination would I ever have believed I would have quite a few more than this selection (pictured) of tatty part-filled notebooks and sketchbooks with what little is in them  – such scrappy notes and unfinished visual art project ideas! Unresolved now for almost two and a half decades awaiting to get well enough to paint and draw enough to do anything with them toward completion. i still have my meagre rations of art materials from mid-1990s’ college days too – paper, oil pastels, charcoal and the like! I do however have several a4 feint-ruled pads of the most mundane and excruciatingly painful to both have written and to re-read ‘Day Notes’ – that I mistakenly referred to as ‘my journals’ whilst not knowing the difference. I kept ‘day notes’ religiously between late October 2013 and January 2015. Why? Because some stupid twot sat beside a doctor at some stupid twotting bench(!) had the audacity and ignorance to say – whilst laughing in my face – “whatever do you do all day?” I’m still on the road to recovery and, ‘we all get there eventually’, as we all say – and do. Unfortunately, we, here in Britain, during the last few years or more, have lost many more than tens of thousands of vulnerable people – individuals who might otherwise have survived and sustained some level of potential viability to live fulfilling, worthy lives; tens of thousands of welfare claimants denied the means to live by the heartless, scandalous grip on our country – the ‘War on welfare’.

Not in my wildest imagination could I ever have prepared for the shocking realisation that people with no relevant understanding or experience of debilitating and disabling degenerative/otherly diseases get to make life-changing decisions (ultimately resulting if not in imminent death, then in disastrously reduced circumstances from which recovery might seem a more never-ending uphill struggle than ever before) whilst NOT understanding that people with very little money simply cannot do things like afford (vegetarian/special-needs) ready meals and taxis and trips backwards and backwards again to doctors to try and fight for healthcare and appropriate medicines in order to both stand any chance of improved health and (as is crucial for some twot on some twotting bench!) to ‘evidence’ their disability welfare claims! And the maladministration that occurs to achieve results whatever the cost to human life and the contempt and lack of regard for the principles of things like the Work Programme – as if sabotaged from within the very halls and corridors by those receiving more than a living wage to deploy the envisaged support.. Aagh! If the UK is to be as awful as all those nation states with NO or very little welfare provision, can the British government and community of public servants PLEASE be a lot more HONEST in delivery of their administrative duties and public communications and actually EARN their bloomin’ salaries for doing the job properly and all the etceteras…!

Not in my wildest imagination would I ever believe i’d have any sympathy for a true-blue-tory’s  eventual resignation from their ministerial post and I wouldn’t be popular for voicing disappointment that I.D.S. stood down, but they just couldn’t get the staff and as always, someone has to ‘take responsibility’ and be scapegoated – and, as there’s been no woo-hoo news, i guess they couldn’t crack the organised crime racket that some local authority personnel and JobCentrePlus staff have been running for however long it took for the facts of such issue to make their way into the 2014 Social Security Handbook (maybe around chapter 14 or so, whereabouts anyone might have given up skim-reading for some answers as to WHY  are ‘his’ policies turning out like this)?

Not in my wildest imagination could I ever have guessed the British public could be so easily hood-winked that ‘claimant-fraud’ was rife among genuine benefit claimants easily-believed to be ‘swinging the lead’ or keen for an easy life with extra money for their weaknesses. As usual, it’s the more priveleged citizen who is more likely to rob the state blind, not those at the bottom of the heap – yet the Inland Revenue appear unwilling or unable to prevent tax evasion (more bribes and dubious goings-ons?)  and yet again, the poor will suffer the most from any of the recent tax changes around self-employment and so on – assuming that those changes to tax rules proposed some time ago are implemented already and  i’m unwilling at this stage to go research it. In the multi-tier systems our current government seems to favour, perhaps those already self-employed in previous years retain their advantages and only the more recently and newly self-employed will suffer the changes that will leave them deprived of any assistance during times of need. And unrealistic staff insistences and misguidances have and will be likely to leave very many people very very vulnerable and, from the types of whimsical notions that employment advisers might still be proffering via self-employment routes vulnerable individuals compelled to work-readiness will be at risk of serious harm to health and perhaps even lose their life to deprivation.

Not in my wildest imagination did I ever have ambition or dream of spending all these hours on a soapbox ranting back in protest at politics and piffle so back to something lighter fora wee while…!

Not in my wildest imagination would I have believed that i would so peeter out of steam to keep up with  writing aforesaid Day Notes and only have scatty intermittent partial records for the every day evidence-base that could be demanded at any time of any day of any week during the last three years or the next however many minuets before some Kazzammin’ “customer service manager” of a down-n-doity-rotten-donut ‘public service employee’ whips the rug from under me/another once again despite them (CSMs/DMs) having no legitimate ground but preferring to leave people in need with neither leg to stand on and just a gaping hole where means to live just about survived previously. I have however blogged a little. Today, I ‘ve spent way too long making this post travel and close. That alone is probably enough to sift back to the top of the soft-target hit’em-harder list. I haven’t been deliberately avoiding blogging to reduce that potential risk – I’ve been trying to excercise my brain back to some semblance of cognitive health by playing SimCityBuildIt for my hobby of choice in the meantime while barely capable enough and even that being so very exhausting – and usually provoking healthy enough sleep and not usually keeping me awake all night and day like trying to read does – even if reading from books*. Boomed and busted. Phaseology… is that what I’m attempting to forever learn myself here? (yes, grammar, i am aware…  and it is how we may speak…)

Not in my wildest imagination would I ever have believed that the British government could spin and hype public opinion to the extent that even a relative might say words to the effect of ” It’s alright for you on welfare, getting it all for nothing and not having to work…” as if being so-called disabled and / or unemployed is living the life of Riley. But of course it is, Riley having been starved for simply being… deprived of spud enough? [I’ll have to look into that ‘idiom’…]

Not in my wildest imagination might i have believed I’d still be here, at this post insisting on adding a footnote for a previous paragraph’s asterix’d (ie. asterisked!) annotation, except by now, i can’t remember what i intended adding for the *annotation mark re:books and reading. Will I please stop drifting back and adding more words every time I believe I’m about finished.

 Not in my wildest imagination did I envisage those topics above might creep in to this post. This so often happens – I had other ideas in mind, then digress. I hope my rant above hasn’t upset my reader(s). Unfortunately, the political stuff about Britain, it’s as true as the United Nations’ displeasure with our ‘regime’ for exactly those kinds of human rights abuses.** Ok, we’re all thankful in England that we’re not in the position of so many Syrian peoples’ and other war-torn and/or starving populations … and not in my wildest imagination would I have expected these wars to persist all these long seven years  with the atrocities impacting civillian areas in and around Syria (and all other people’s sufferings in our world  the decades longer besides). Are the ruling classes among the human race not intelligent and compassionate enough yet to enable and achieve at least ONE century of global peace during humankind’s time on Earth with more equal distribution of the plentiful availability of food and resources to those developing nations either largely without or exporting almost all they can produce  – without annihilating the world to achieve it?! Or is artificial intelligence running the New World Order based on human tendencies and decision-making strategies determined by App technologies and online gaming data?

There went another topic that was not in my wildest imagination pre-conceived even in the short time of ending one paragraph and starting another! I must be sleeping while I wake and writing semi-consciously… i guess it shows…

another abstract-ish image of mine from 1995 sketchbook, suggesting a figure, perhaps in turmoil, or maybe wrapped in clouds; drawn very quickly with red, black and blue ballpoint pens.

Not in my wildest imagination… can I think of a way now to reconcile this post with the topics i was intending moving toward. Hence I’ve decided to consider this almost too many over 1450 words, enough for “Part One”.

I’ve been attempting this post in response to the ‘imagination’ prompt from the Daily Post and so closing, for now, with the challenge page linked here: Not in my wildest imagination would i have expected anyone to read so far down the page as to reach this interval, so very much thank you for reading. I hope you’ll perhaps return for “Part two”, here soon in my very next post, hopefully sometime later today… whenever, next. Time…! …and hopefully not as bleak with it…

P.S. None of the illustrative attempts shown in this post are fully-realised work – including the poor quality of my photography – I’m just leaving plenty of room for improvement and, as the saying goes, work-in-progress by the end of the day is better than nowt.

#I-should-have-been-sleeping #IShouldBeSleeping #dinnering-for-breakfast-next-lest-i-forget-again-innit

P.P.S. Challenge for another day: can I cut all this ‘not in my wildest imagination’ waffle down to between 500 and 750 words, or maybe 1k max. whilst retaining at least most of those points, or perhaps replacing one or two to improve the post and make a slicker article? Good idea!?

What ‘not in my (your) wildest imagination’ bug-bare might you be longing to let go of? Please feel free to let rip in the comments… Thanks again for reading! And of course, i’ll be glad to try and help if you struggle to understand my native English language use, abbreviations, failures to adhere to American grammar and spelling rules whilst blogging from the relative comfort of my home provisions here in little England, Britain aka (UK). All writing and images in this post are original creative content and the intellectual property of myself, All rights reserved – however normal Fair Use applies 🙂 Any necessary reference citation should please be made to either here, being my main blog address, or ‘Colette B’ as a minimum (by my full name if you prefer) with a link to any of my other blogs displayed from my gravatar profile. © 2018