At 6.25am, I have for once taken my own advice and got out of bed to do something. Whilst I have lights on my bike, it is still too dark to go off cycling down dark country lanes, so to occupy myself, I have taken to my other hobby of writing.
I have said in several posts that if you have a lot of things running
through your mind, it is not a good idea to lie in bed mulling things over. A case of ‘lying in my bed I hear the clock tick and think of you,’ or depending on your musical choice it could be, ‘I hear the ticking of the clock I’m lying here the room’s pitch dark.’ Two of my favourite songs and a little relevant really, as from our bedroom I can hear the church bells ring every fifteen minutes, even on silent mode.
Occasionally I can hear the chimes four or five times without sleeping; okay, it’s not a clock, but I think you can get the connection, hundreds of years ago, it is how people told the time! Anyway, hearing them that many times without sleeping isn’t good. I rarely take my own advice, and I tend to stay in bed as even after an hour or more, I will usually fall asleep again, but not everyone will be like me, and even an hour or so gives you a lot of time to think about things, that I do know.
I’m not lying thinking about a person. However, my underlying issues often raise their head to say hello, but the ‘you’ part of that line from the Cyndi Lauper song can be anything and the ‘you can be any subject that affects your mental health, not necessarily a person. I have my underlying issues; others may have a job they don’t like or may not have a job, which makes life difficult. It could be a lack of money, a lack of love, a lack of family, a horrible neighbour or neighbourhood, or health issues, both mental and physical; it can be anything that triggers your anxiety or other mental health issues. Lying in the dark, letting those issues spin round in your head ‘time after time,’ is not good for you.
As mentioned, I won’t go out cycling as it is too dark, but often, as early as 5.15am, I hear someone running on our street and so physical exercise. Here I am writing, and as you may know, I get lost in writing, as I am right now as I write this, and I enjoy it. My mind does not go to bad places, I am concentrating on this post, even though I am writing about how our mind can wander off into those dark places if we lie there and let it, it is my writing that has my attention, not the subject – I hope that makes sense.
But it can be more, whatever your distractions are, but you need to
have something suited to you, as writing and cycling are to me. It can be something as simple as having a jigsaw or a good book on the go; a good film helps me too. Tom Daley, the Olympic diver knits, so there are many things for people to do to distract your mind and help you escape from the subject that triggers your anxiety or mental health problem. Please try to find something, and please don’t just lie in bed, letting your mind wander.
The problem I have, and I am sure many people can relate to this, is that bed is a very comfortable, warm place to be, and especially in the colder months, it can be difficult to tear yourself away from that comfort. So there in itself is a battle for people. Lying in bed, tossing and turning, thinking many different thoughts and occasionally not very good ones, or lying in a warm, comfortable place that gives you some support. It’s a bit like me sitting all alone in my back garden, there is nothing there but comfort, and that makes me feel good.
But this morning, I took my advice, and I got up and started this post; before I knew it, an hour had passed, and I had to start
getting ready for work, visiting a site five minutes up the road meant it was a later start for me and there was no rush, and that is what distractions do for people or at least certainly me. I was lucky again because it started to make me feel better today (Thursday) because, on Monday and Tuesday, I had felt uneasy for want of a better description; a tiny bit anxious might be more truthful.
It was definitely there, way down on my numerical scale, probably about a two and maybe even a one, but I felt it gnawing away, and what was the reason – I have no idea? Sitting in the office and speaking with a work colleague, she told me she believed it was the full moon, and I smiled. I don’t believe in that type of thing. I’m not interested in stars or birth signs, and I don’t think the movement of the planets can affect our lives or minds; it’s the way I am.
So we chatted as we always do, and I didn’t give it much thought
until this morning writing this, and I started to give my distractions the credit for everything and for me feeling better. I then realised that there is only one night in a cycle that there is a full moon, and in this cycle, it had passed! So it got me thinking, was my work colleague right? Was it around the night of the full moon that made me feel the way I did? Now that the full moon has passed, I am starting to feel better. Maybe I need to wait until the next full moon and check out my moods. If I don’t feel so good, I might just have a chat with my work colleague and let her know she was right. So, the 20th October it is then?
Whatever we do, whatever the moon cycle, we have to keep going, and I will. I have the arrival of a granddaughter to look forward to. I am off cycling tomorrow morning with my friends, I am out tomorrow night with more friends to celebrate her birthday, and the Ryder Cup has started. It sounds like a relaxing weekend, and sometimes we can ask for no more than to be happy, which I am, and life is good, and how your life can change in a couple of days.
But no, I’m not finished. I often wonder what it would like to be a 
Prime Minister or President, looking after millions of people and trying to get the balance right. We probably all think we could do a better job, when in fact it’s more probable we couldn’t. But certain aspects of being in these positions intrigue me, and I would like to be involved in some of their meetings just to hear and know what’s going on. I suppose I could put my tuppence worth in, not that anyone like Johnson or Biden would listen, but it would be good, I could give them my logical, common-sense views!
So this week, I don’t quite understand why Joe Biden is getting involved with Northern Island and stating that according to https://www.euronews.com – ‘Joe Biden warns UK, no US trade deal if Irish peace accord becomes ‘casualty of Brexit.’ My point here is what has this got to do with a trade deal, and more importantly, what has it got to do with Joe Biden and the USA because I don’t get it?
According to https://education.niassembly.gov.uk/ ‘The Belfast
Agreement is also known as the Good Friday Agreement, because it was reached on Good Friday, 10 April 1998. It was an agreement between the British and Irish governments, and most of the political parties in Northern Ireland, on how Northern Ireland should be governed.’ So again, what has that got to do with Biden and the Americans?
As far as I am aware, the peace treaty is pretty much holding up, I certainly haven’t heard anything to contradict that, and if there were issues, I’m sure it would be highlighted on our daily news bulletins, but there hasn’t been too much that I’ve heard.
I have thoughts about the USA; there’s a lot of taking; I tweeted my opinions on Anne Sacoolas and Prince Andrew; they want Andrew back to face charges but won’t give up a killer, so why does it all seem to be on their terms?
Who remembers the film ‘Love Actually’ and Hugh Grants ‘we’ve got David Beckham’s right foot, we’ve got David Beckham’s left foot’ speech? But whoever wrote it should either be a politician or certainly writing for ours because as Prime Minister Hugh Grant said, we won’t bow down. Yes, only a film, but the speech was spot on.
So the USA can deal with who they want, we know that, but 
research tells us Biden has a soft spot for Northern Ireland, as photos show. There is no evidence he is an IRA sympathiser in any way, so what’s happening in Northern Ireland shouldn’t be part of a trade deal. The last time I checked, Northern Ireland was part of the UK, so back to the Beckham speech. Why not put a deal together and insert a stipulation stating that if any aspect that the USA is concerned about, such as the peace treaty, are broken, then the deal is void, or is that too difficult? But to say ‘no deal’ over something that’s not there doesn’t make sense to me.
What if we were to get involved with the thousands of people queued up on the US borders trying to get in? What would the USA say to us, because I’m pretty sure I know. So I think the USA should concentrate on their borders rather than ours.
As always, it’s not rocket science to me. Are people trying to create difficulties that don’t need to be there? But whichever people need to keep personal feelings out of international trade between countries that have supposedly been friends and allies for hundreds of years – an odd war and tea parties aside, of course!!
Thanks for reading, and stay safe