We Are All a Part of the Neverending Story

 Today was another adventure. A quest, if you will. I went to Swansea to see the film The Neverending Story on the 40^th anniversary of its release.

This was an adventure for me because it involved travel and planning. It would not have been possible a year ago. But it is possible now because I am growing and changing and learning independence. Two years ago, the Vue Cinema in Swansea was showing Matthew Bourne’s spectacular version of The Nutcracker in December, and I was DESPERATE to go but I could not conceive of any way to get there. Swansea might as well have been the moon. It felt like the most impossible task. Thankfully my friend Jo stepped up and offered me a lift and I got to go, but I remember being so lost and confused as we walked from the restaurant to the cinema. But then there at the cinema I made my first connection that became the spark of independence for me—I recognized where we were. I had been there before. I could see the Crunchie Bridge and the arena where I had gone to Comic Con in April. I recognized the multi-story carpark that my friend Helen parked in when she picked me up to go to Comic Con. I had just found my first landmark. And so today I used that same landmark as a homing beacon—I confidently walked toward the arena and found the cinema. I even had to time to scout out the location of the hotel I booked to stay in in February when I go see Bowling for Soup and Wheatus. Yup, another adventure to look forward to.

 Now onto the film.

First off, I would like to say that I expected it to be heaving with people as it is summer hols and kids are out of school. I also expected a large population of aging geeks like myself there for the nostalgia factor. Well, there was one of each—a dad about my age and his son. And that’s it.  Also, they shared a popcorn and left half of it (who leaves half of a popcorn that costs an outrageous £6.50??? I had mine nearly eaten by the time the adverts and trailers were done. I wasn’t wasting £6.50 worth of popcorn, My mama didn’t raise no fool.) Sorry, I digress.

 Onto the film.

It was just as good as I remember as the effects—a terrific mix of puppets and animatronics and forced perspective—really held up. Give me practical effects instead of CGI any day. Also did you know that Falkor the Luck Dragon, the Rockbiter, G’mork the evil beast of darkness and the narrator were all voiced by Alan Oppenheimer? He was also the voice of Skeletor from He-Man!! And in the scene in the bookshop where Bastian steals the magic book the grumpy shopkeeper mentions both The Wizard of Oz and the giant squid attacking the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea both which have featured heavily in my life recently.

But the main thing I want to talk about is how I viewed this film through the lens of grief.

The obvious bit to talk about (and the bit that traumatized us all as kids) is Artax in the Swamps of Sadness. The line that really struck me was the line Bastian reads from the book:

Everyone knew that whoever let the sadness overtake him would sink into the swamp.

I think about this a lot. Those early days after Spiderman shuffled off this mortal coil were like drowning in treacle. There were months that I was barely keeping my head above water. It hurt to breathe, and I sincerely just wanted to stop taking in oxygen if it meant that the pain would disappear. But like Atreyu said to Artax: I understand, it’s too difficult for you. People acknowledged my pain (though a few unhelpful arseholes suggested I should be “over it” by now) and when I could no longer bear the weight of grief, I was so lucky that friends and customers and the lovely Welsh community lifted me up like Falkor and cleaned me up and tended my wounds.

It made me really think today because I have lived in the depths of despair, it is very easy to give up like Artax. It takes far more effort to stay and fight and live. And like Atreyu, having lost my faithful companion I know I must still go on my quest. I must still do what I have been called to do—save my corner of the world through Love and Light and not let Darkness prevail. Fantasia still needs me.

When the Rockbiter has that heart-breaking speech, I really felt that.

They look like big, good, strong hands. Don't they? I always thought that's what they were. My little friends. The little man with his racing snail, the Nighthob, even the stupid bat. I couldn't hold on to them. The nothing pulled them right out of my hands. I failed.

I still carry a lot of guilt that I didn’t see that Spiderman was so ill. Maybe we could have saved him if he just spoken up and told me how bad he felt. The Nothing really did pull him right out of my hands.

I was also struck by the line by Urgl (Engywook’s wife) when she had brewed the healing potion full of nasty bits for Atreyu. She asks him if he is still in pain. He replies that it still hurts a little, but it’s alright. Then she said something that really spoke to me:

It has to hurt if it’s to heal.

Grief hurts. It rips at your heart like G’mork’s fangs. But pain is how we know we are still here. Pain is how we know we have lost something precious. The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. Pain lets us know we are still alive. When you cease to feel then you cease to live. My pain was so great because my love was so great. And as awful as it is, you have to go through it. You endure the suffering and the despair, and you keep moving forward through the Swamps of Sadness. That is how you survive. I will always have a dark hole in the centre of my heart, but I am building layers of Light around it to cushion the sharp scratch of grief.  Those people who are the most successful after their spouse dies are the ones that keep moving, keep questing. If you stand still and only dwell on the great injustice of your loss then you risk forgetting what that person stood for, their hopes and dreams. If you can only look backwards then you cannot see how to bring their Light forward, how to continue their hopes and dreams. How to make the world better in their name and carry on their goodness. If you stay in the past, then you will die. I mean, we all will physically die. But your heart will die if you lose hope.

When Spiderman died the world was full of THE NOTHING. Everything looked grey and hazy and had no meaning. All joy was gone.

Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?

G'mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.

Atreyu: What is the Nothing?

G'mork: It's the emptiness that's left. It's like a despair, destroying this world.

And so, I have made the decision to not let the emptiness destroy me. That I will not lose hope. I will not forget our dreams. I will not let the Nothing engulf me. I will choose to rebuild Fantasia. I will choose to build a good life. I will bring the memory of the past forward and continue questing. I will keep his memory alive and like Bastian I will make many other wishes and have many other amazing adventures before I leave this world . . . But that's another story.

Happiness is Out There

 Hello lovelies! This is the year I am learning to do so many things. After my amazing Doctor Wholiday in Weston-super-Mare where I took my first independent trip since Spiderman died (read about it HERE) I was ready to be brave again and do another thing that we loved, namely to go see our favourite comedy band Jonny & the Baptists in Bristol. This involved expanding my repertoire of new skills that I have had to acquire after the untimely death of the Amazing Spiderman, but I was ready.

Spiderman and I have been fans of Jonny & the Baptists since their earliest days. We were buying merch from them before they set up a dedicated PayPal account and were a bit shambolic posting us something with slightly less postage than it needed and then apologising profusely because they were not very organised. Their hearts were always in the right place and their music funny but with a message.

Every tour they did of the UK, we went.  Every time they did a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for another album, we were backers. When they started a Patreon account we were one of the first sponsors. 

When people ask me about them I like to say that their music is like if satirical political Private Eye magazine was set to music. Their music has looked at serious issues within the conservative government poking fun but also raising awareness. They had a whole album and subsequent tour called Stop UKIP. They are unashamedly left wing socialists but also decent human beings. 

 In later years their albums begin to touch on mental health, dealing with quite serious issues in a light-hearted way but with an underpinning on how serious depression has been for both Jonny and Paddy. Particularly Paddy who had a full-on breakdown in  2020 and is still recovering and the fact that they were both marked emotionally by losing a parent before the age of ten. 

 On his death bed Spiderman made me promise I would always support them on Patreon. I am so glad that i have been able to keep that promise. Their music, their podcasts with frank talks about depression and anxiety have really helped with my grief. They are worth supporting.

 When I saw that they were touring again I knew I had to go. My life is sharply divided into Before and After the death of my Best Beloved. But I am trying so hard to carry on the things that we loved so that a bit of Spiderman comes with me wherever I go since we are separated on two planes of existence until I die and we can be reunited. 

 I checked the tour itinerary and found that they were playing in Bristol which is about 3.5 hours away by train. I used my new found Google Maps skills to locate really nice Hotel with a kitchenette right around the corner from the oddly named arts centre the Tobacco Factory Theatre where they would be playing. I used my new found confidence to navigate the train, a taxi, and then unfamiliar set of keys (for someone who loves Locke and Key so much I can be rubbish at opening doors). I learned the new skill of phoning and booking a taxi. This sounds like the sort of things that normal people do all the time but for me with sometimes crippling anxiety, they were a huge milestone. More on this in my next post. 

I brought a framed photo of my Best Beloved  like I did when I went on Wholiday which I think I will do at every new experience that he would have loved so that I can bring him with me because I don't want him to miss out on things. Also I need his loving spirit with me to help me be brave as I navigate doing things on my own.

 Now on to the show. The first half was made even funnier by these ridiculously ill-fitting boiler suits.

 

I could not have asked for a better show at this particular time in my life. The first half of the show was less music and more talk, with some planned but also some clearly improvised skits about tracing Paddy's decline in mental health as it paralleled the state of the nation with each different prime minister. They are so good at capturing the reality of how ridiculous it is that we are so hard on ourselves. Songs like Never Too Late really illustrate all the ways we sabotage ourselves with the opening lines:

Happiness is out there, but out there is very big. 

You've never been good at finding things, you once got lost in a Boots. 

(for my American peeps, that is like getting lost in a Walgreens)

 Which really resonates with me if you remember THIS POST about my extreme lack of a sense of direction. The song also contains phrases like It's never too late to give up (I have this on a fridge magnet) and so many other negative self talk phrases that run through my head. They manage to deal with this sense of self loathing and sabotage so well, in a humorous way. Spiderman was always very good at gently poking fun when i was in an anxiety spiral which made me laugh and showed me how ridiculously flawed my perception of reality was. Their songs and hilarious banter had me laughing until I cried.

 At the end of the first half Jonny was wearing a dress and standing on a chair pretending to be Paddy's dead Scottish mother to help give him some closure from the trauma of being six years old and losing your mother to ovarian cancer. There was lots of of bad "Och, aye Paddy!" which were hilarious and then it made a sharp turn in Jonny telling Paddy in the guise of his mother this message:

 I am so proud of you. I have watched you grow up and you are so kind and so gentle in a world that does not give that back to you. I am so proud of who you have become and i love you very much.

 And suddenly it wasn't Jonny pretending to be Paddy's mother but the Amazing Spiderman talking to me and I cried for real. Because I really needed to hear that. 

 The second half of the show was more like a regular gig, with Paddy on guitar. They sang so many of my favourite songs that I was squealing with joy. To be honest, they are all my favourites from the silly Cocaine Gran which includes my favourite line You used to love your church choir til you punched Ethel in the tits and Isaac from the perspective of a nine year old boy talking about what he did on his summer holidays in which the chorus is I was sitting on the top of a mountain all tied up and waiting for my father to kill me as a sacrifice. There are a lot of songs about the nature of God and Biblical themes with Jonny & the Baptists. 

 All too soon the gig was over. One of my favourite songs Capitalism which is a scathing look at the audience as capitalists which begins You're either against capitalism or you're for the end of the world and the tickets tonight were £14. So we know what side you're on and ends with At the end of the show we have merch.

 They did indeed have merch for sale but i literally own every single thing they sell: the t-shirt, the set of badges, a fridge magnet, the terrible calendar (by their own omission), the Jonny & the Baptists Detective Agency tote bag and every album on both CD and Bandcamp so i just gave them a donation. 

 I had a chance to speak briefly with Jonny afterwards and give them a card i had made telling them how much they meant to us and how they continue to help me deal with my grief. I showed him my photo of Spiderman and he remembered when i wrote to them via Patreon after he died. He was very touched that I brought his photo so he could still be a part of something we loved and he hugged me. This meant so much that he remembered me writing to them. This is why I support them. They make me laugh, they make me cry (in a good way) and they feel like friends because I have followed their journey since they began. 

The one thing that also makes their shows different is the obvious affection between Jonny and Paddy. it is so clear by their interactions and the way that they make each other laugh that they love each other. This has been an ongoing thing in the podcast Making Paddy Happy (now called Happiness is Out There) that was set up to talk about things men don't talk about like mental health particularly "Man up" and all that ridiculous, harmful nonsense or how much you can love a friend of the same gender and it is not "gay" to tell them. 

It was an amazing mini break and I moved throughout the world negotiating things like delayed trains and change of platform like a champ. Spiderman would indeed be proud. 

 And if you would like to support them on Patreon you can do it here: 

 https://www.patreon.com/jonnyandthebaptists

Direction(less)

 Hello Lovelies! 

Everyone has been asking about my holiday or WHOLIDAY as I am calling it.  It was an amazing and overwhelming (but in the best possible way) experience. But with everyone who has asked about it I have started with the travel and navigation part instead of the holiday and I will tell you for why--I am DIRECTIONLESS. So, navigating on my own was a much much much bigger deal than for a normal person (whatever that means.) Everyone who enquired about my hols has remarked on this saying, "Yes, but how was the Doctor Who part of it?" Because no one seems to understand just how important of an achievement this was for me. So, dear reader, I am starting with the most important part. 

First you must understand this:

I have no sense of direction. Other people say that and what they mean is if they get a bit muddled it may take them a few minutes while they relook at the map to orient themselves and then they're back on the right course. This is not what we mean when we talk about me.

I have no spatial sense in the world. I struggle with left and right. I seem to have no memory of my surroundings even if it is a familiar place. It is like a blindness when it comes to moving through the world. A blindness that often leaves me in a state of sheer terror because I am lost. Not just lost, but LOST.

 I first remember this being an issue when in the 5th grade a friend who was coming over for a sleepover phoned and asked for directions to my house and I stood there stunned because I did not know directions to my house. I could only weakly suggest my house address, but I had no memory of how you got there. I recall in a panic quickly handing the phone over to my annoyed mother who rattled off a list of directions. How did she do that? I couldn't do that. My father kindly wrote me a list of things to say which I memorised so that I could be able to tell someone if they asked, but it had no meaning to me. 

 In case you are interested:

 Go down Jackson Street Extension and turn right onto Twin Bridges Road, turn right on Joe Hesni Boulevard and right again at the end and take the first left onto Stephen Circle. 

 This was a coping mechanism I developed, a mantra to chant to help me in familiar places that felt unfamiliar. I still do this every day, reciting the memorised directions from my work to my home. 

 And then once when we lived in England because the street I normally took was blocked off because of a gas leak I had to learn a second way to get home because all I could do was stand in the road and cry because I could not see a way to go around it because straight was the only way I knew.

 Things got worse for me from 6th grade through Louisiana College. Now I had to change classes and had to get places quickly. These were classes I went to every day and I still could not remember how to get there because the halls looked basically the same so there were no landmarks to grasp. I recall vividly the rising terror of standing at the top of the stairs at ASH not knowing which hallway should I take to get to Science. To the left or the right? One way led to English and one to Science, and even doing it every day I could not remember and just watched in panic until I saw a person in my class and followed them down the correct hall. And then there was finding my locker. How could I find it when they all looked alike? And which order did my combination go in? I could recall the numbers but by the time it took me to find my locker I was flustered, and the numbers swam in front of my eyes. 

 Most people never knew this about me. I was very good at "masking." I had seen the look of disbelief and annoyance on my mother's face who thought I was just playing up and had no sense as opposed to no sense of direction. 

 It got much much worse when I learned to drive.  I HATED driving. There was so much to remember, so many body parts to coordinate, the screaming pain like being tased in the tailbone after driving for more than 30 minutes (thank you broken coccyx). How could I also add navigation to the mix?

 I worked the same job for 4 summers. I worked for the Rapides Parish Library Summer Reading Programme.  I was required each week to drive to 2 different library branches a day. It was so stressful because none of it ever looked familiar. I don't mean that each summer I had to re-learn the way because I hadn't driven it in a year. No, I mean each week I had to re-learn because I hadn't driven it in a week.  I was always accompanied by a teenage student worker who had good directional sense.  I just remember speeding down a highway in tears because nothing looked familiar, and I didn't know where I was. Each summer the student worker acted like a SAT NAV and just told me where to turn. Smart ones pointed instead of saying "left" or "right" because I was very likely to go the wrong way. 

 I met the Amazing Spiderman in 1989. He was amazing in more ways than one.  He took that burden from me because he was good at navigation. Perhaps he was just normal and merely competent at it, but in my eyes he was a GENIUS. He was endlessly patient as my father had been.  Whenever we went to a restaurant where you had to go up the stairs and down corridors to get to the toilets not being able to find my way back was a regular occurrence. After 5 minutes he would just come to find me as I stood crying in a corridor, my heart squeezing with panic and shame.  When I desperately wanted to go to London to hear a lecture at Friend's House at the age of 40, he turned it into a board game with photographs of all the landmarks  I had to pass on my 10 minute walk. We played that game every night for weeks before I went so that I could have a mantra of landmarks to recite as I made the simple journey. He never shamed me for this lack of spatial ability. He only ever looked at me with love in his eyes. 

 We were together for 32 years before he died, and he was my North Star in more ways than one. While I have taken trips since he died, there was always someone to meet me on the other side and chauffer me around. And last year when my mother and granddaughter were killed in the car accident, a friend texted me at every airport to tell me my next departure gate. So then all I had to do was find the gate, which was difficult enough, but made less difficult by not having to locate and interpret giant electronic signs that keep changing while you are trying to read them before finding the correct departure gate.  That trip was not fun AT ALL and I had big ole snotty sobbing breakdowns in 3 airports from the stress of it. 

 When Spiderman died, I felt DIRECTIONLESS in more ways than one. Not only had I lost my trusty navigator, but my soulmate as well. I wondered would my directional issues ever allow me to continue on our adventures.  Then a few months ago I had a very clear dream where Spiderman told me I was ready. That I was to go to Weston-Super-Mare to see the Doctor Who exhibit at the museum. That he would guide me, and I was to bring a framed photo of him with me. And so, I booked it--another skill I have had to learn. Transportation and accommodation were also part of the things he did for me.

 I am surrounded by ANGELS. As soon as I started telling customers I was going on a trip, my first holiday since he died, I was surrounded by help.

 An older customer gave me his A-Z book of street maps of Weston-Super-Mare and helped me practice tracing the route from my hotel to the museum every time he came to the shop.

A younger customer showed me how to use GOOGLE MAPS on my phone and set it up for the walking directions.  He taught me that my body would be a large dot on the map and there would be a dotted line I was supposed to follow and so if I was not going the right direction I could see in real time that I was off track. Another customer (who is becoming a friend, hoorah!) showed me that if you do GOOGLE MAPS on a computer you can see street views and so I spent hours before I left practicing walking through the town and making a list of landmarks I would pass to know I was on the right track and landmarks that would help me know where to turn (turn right by Superdrug is much easier than turn right on Orchard Street. Also, why do so many streets not have a fecking street sign????) 

 And so, by the time I got there I knew where I was. I had a list of landmarks and so was much calmer and was able to enjoy myself. It was like a switch had flipped in my head. Suddenly I could see connections. I could see how this street connected to that street and remember it. Something I have NEVER been able to do before.

 

I was like a cartoon getting an idea and a light bulb appears over their head. It was like my whole brain was illuminated for the first time in my life. I even was able to look at GOOGLE MAPS and make the connection that the cinema (where I had practiced finding before the trip) was near the train station and so I was able to use my prior knowledge to get me to the cinema and then do a practice walk the day before I left to the station. I just went slowly, used the dots on GOOGLE MAPS to help me know I was going in the right direction and then emailed myself a list of landmarks to follow the next day. And it worked. it really worked.

 

I came home so excited because I now had coping mechanisms and some directional skills but mainly, I had CONFIDENCE. This has opened up a whole world of travel for me. Which is why I must talk about it first, before I tell you all about my grand adventure. 

 

Stay tuned tomorrow for the tale of SIX go on a WHOLIDAY. 

 

 

Live Love Be Believe

 

Hello lovelies! The title of this blog is Live Love Be Believe which is the motto for the band the Crüxshadows. This is what I am trying to do:

LIVE in a world that has been turned upside down, live in a way I can be proud of and continue to live and grow and not shut down because the unthinkable has happened. I will never move on but I want to move onward.

LOVE and continue to love my Best Beloved, practice more self-love as learning to do all these new things on my own is hard without him, spread love and kindness with every step.

BE just learn to be whole without the person who I thought made me whole, just be in the moment not worrying about so many things, and be the person who is my best self.

BELIEVE that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, that I will see my darling again and what a sweet reunion that will be and to believe in all the good magical things that there are in the world and to be a part of spreading that joy.

My new tattoos

This has been my tattoo year, it seems. I have met the Fabulous Ffion who makes my ink dreams come true. And because she can double up (or in today’s case triple up) designs during a one-hour appointment I have my final three of the year.

Like every one of my tattoos these designs have a deep personal meaning for me, and like most the ones I got this year they are related to my Best Beloved the Amazing Spiderman.

There is so much I wanted to say about them that it felt like it needed to be a blog post.

The first design is the logo for the band the Crüxshadows. We have loved this goth darkwave band for years and even were lucky enough to see them live in London several years ago which you can read about HERE. This band, led by the charismatic lead singer and songwriter with a moral compass Rogue has been a hero of ours for years. Their lyrics are influenced by literature, religion (one of their songs quotes directly from the 23^rd Psalm) and Greek mythology. One of our favourite songs is Sophia, meaning wisdom. This song had a profound effect on both of us. Read some of the lyrics below and see why.

So you must carry this light into the darkness
You shall be a star unto the night
You will find hope alive among the hopeless
That is your purpose to this life

Do not injustice to another
Defend the weak and innocent
Let truth and honour always guide you
Let courage find the light within

Stand up when no one else is willing
Act not in hatred or in spite
Be to this world as a perfect knight
Even if it means your life

And through these doubts and through your confusion
Know that you are chosen to this fight
Look to find a soul filled with compassion
Look to see a living source of light

I wanted something to remind me always to be that Living Source of Light.

The second one is an hourglass. This timey-wimey symbol of Life, Death and Time Lords is also a reminder to me that we never know how long we have on this earth, and we must make it a good one, spreading love and kindness wherever we go so that we do not regret our lives. The Crüxshadows also have a song about this called Birthday.

Roll out of bed, look in the mirror
And wonder who you are
Another year has come and gone
Today is your birthday
But it might be the last day of your life
What will you do if tomorrow it's all gone?

Look at your life, who do you want to be before you die?
Look at your life, you haven't got forever

And tell me what really matters
Is it the money and the fame?
Or how many people might eventually know your name?
But maybe you touch one life
And the world becomes a better place to be
Maybe you give their dreams another day
Another chance to be free

You won't be young forever
There's only a fraction to the sum
You won't be young forever
Nor will anyone

I remember Spiderman playing it repeat every February 13^th as he looked at what he done the past year to make the world better and what he hoped to do in the coming year to Be the Light. He brought a lot of good into the world, it just was extinguished far too soon. I have his ashes in an urn that is an hourglass to remind me of this song and who I want to be before I die.

The last one will make no sense to anyone but us except maybe Matazone Haggis who created the animated film. Spiderman and I had several ways to say I Love You without using words. The most popular one was this. The sound TK TK TK. A bit like the sound a tap-dancing pigeon might make. This all comes from a hilarious video by Matazone Haggis (creator of Mr Snaffleburger if you know that character) of Skippy the Goth Kangaroo. Which contains the hilarious dialogue:

Skippy the Goth Kangaroo: TK TK TK

Boy: What’s that Skip?

Skippy the Goth Kangaroo: TK TK TK

Boy: Aw, no! Lord Oberon Darkness-of-the Night has fallen down the well?

Skippy the Goth Kangaroo: TK TK TK

Boy: AND he's run out of eyeliner!

You can watch the video HERE.

So, I wanted to create the image of a stone well as viewed from above with TK TK TK inside so I could have a permanent I Love You from my Amazing Spiderman.

That makes a total of 11 tattoos for me this year (and brings the grand total all the way up to 28) but I love reading my body like a map that tells the history of my life but also that is a love note to the life I shared with the most amazing man I ever met.

Merry Christmas everyone and a happy new year!

Spidergrrl x

RIP Pippi Longstocking

Hello Lovelies,

I woke up this morning and the Pipster had shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to the big web in the sky. Then, as if this day couldn’t get any worse, I got to work which looked like a crime scene so I spent the morning mopping up blood from in front of the shop. 

Pippi was a complicated Spiderbabe. She was feisty. She HATED to have her tank moved. Even if you were just moving it so you could open the lid to add food for her, she would glare at you (well, maybe not glare—despite having eight eyes, tarantulas are quite blind) but she would definitely show her displeasure. She was FLICKER. And by that, I mean anything she didn’t like she would use a back leg to flick off a cloud of hairs in protest. She did this so often her abdomen had a big ole bald spot. Yep, our baby had a bald bum.

Flicking hairs is a defence mechanism in the wild as the hairs are barbed and extremely irritating. Tarantulas will flick hairs at a predator to blind them and be able to escape. It is also worth knowing that itching power you used to be able to order for cheap from the back of comic books was probably ground tarantula hair. Because of this I always like to wear protective goggles and gloves when I dealt with her.

She was also lightning fast. There were many times that everyone else got fed but she had to wait because she was also a wall climber. She would climb up the sides of her tank and then sliiiiide down which really could have used a squeegee sound effect because it was hilarious. But because she was a potential escape artist if she was attempting to climb up, we daren’t take the lid off for fear she would do a runner. So, she often had to wait for her supper until she settled back on the ground like a sensible spider.

I thought she was gearing up for a moult. She did it last year about this time and she was showing many of the signs. She was sitting with her bum in the water dish (more than usual) and she was doing what Spiderman used to call “spider yoga” where they press their bodies into the corner of the tank and arch backwards to get their carapace ready to pop off when it was time. She was also eating less (normally she was a greedy gobbler) but that is also a sign of getting ready for a moult. I wasn’t too worried.

A few days ago, she went to her favourite place in the back of the tank. When she wasn’t climbing and sliding, she liked to scrunch herself up into the small gap between the wall of her tank and her hidey cup. She took after her mummy on this as I too like to see if I can fit in small places (and get stuck.)

On Friday I gave the tank a jostle and she flicked hard at me. Saturday I was loathe to disturb her but did a little tappity-tap on the wall beside her and she moved her leg as if to flick but very little hairs came off. I attributed this to the fact that she was a baldy-bum and there wasn’t much left to flick. Sunday night I did the tappity tap and she raised a leg in warning—like swatting you away or giving you the finger. Though with eight legs how do you know which is the middle finger one?

I looked in on her this morning at around seven and she didn’t move at all, with a tappity-tap or a quite severe jostle of the tank. Oh dear. Then I did the water test because she HATED to get water splashed on her (something that was difficult if you were trying to fill up her water dish while she was sitting in it. Still water=OK, but falling water was a big ole NOPE.) Nothing. So, sadly I knew she had passed on.

At that point it was raining, so I took her out and examined for signs of disease but there were none that I could find. Her abdomen was a little shrunken, but I took that as she hadn’t been eating as much in preparation for the moult. I wonder if what happened was this. Did she ask herself:

“Do I have enough energy to do a full moult at my age?”

“No, I don’t.”

The End.

She was between fourteen and fifteen years old (hard to place her age but we have looked after her for fourteen years and she was at least six months old when we brought her home) so that is a good old age to be, and it does become much harder to moult the older they get—they just don’t have the enormous energy it takes to complete this exhausting process.

It stopped raining about 8:30, so as the ground was soft, I decided to take her out and bury her in the front garden before work. She is out there with several of her spider sisters (and 2 brothers.)

So, this just leaves Christina Rossetti. She is the last Spiderbabe of the original eight. She is between nineteen and twenty years old (she was definitely an adult when we adopted her in 2008) and I thought she would go before Pippi or Frida (who died in January). Rossetti hasn’t moulted since 2017 and is so chilled out she is basically horizontal, so it is difficult to tell how much time she has left. It is hard because the death of every Spiderbabe severs a connection between me and my beloved Amazing Spiderman because our love of arachnids was one of the things that brought us together. But I will admit it has been very stressful trying to care for everyone on my own. You definitely needed a Captain to feed/water etc and a lookout to be sure they didn’t escape while you did it especially with Pippi.

 So, goodbye to our feisty redhead. Our beloved Pip.

 

It Takes a Village...

...to raise a Spidergrrl.

Hello lovelies! What an adventure I have had. Anyone who has read my book The Wanting Comes in Waves will know that the last good thing the Amazing Spiderman did for me before he got sick and died was take me to get a mammogram in Pensarn. Well, it is that time again because it has been a little over two years.

This has thrown up lots of issues for me:

• Grief over the fact that I have to do it alone this time (and the memory of what came after the last time)
• Anxiety of all the related things that go with it like how to get there by bus (which bus do I have to get, where does it pick up? How much does it cost? How will i know where to get off?)
• Once I am there the worry that they will find something because many women in my family have had breast cancer
• Then the journey home: where does the bus pick you up to take you home because it is never the same place it dropped you off

The last time all I had to worry about was the actual worry that I might get a diagnosis of breast cancer because Spiderman found the bus times, got us on the bus, got me to the mobile unit in the Morrisons car park and got us on the right bus to come home. 

I just kept thinking, How can I do this alone? 

Several people said  Oh, you can walk to Morrisons! it takes about 15 minutes. it's easy! you just have to do things like:

go OVER a bridge

go UNDER an underpass

go THROUGH a tunnel

and then it just became a list of prepositions and that was even worse than trying to figure out the bus. I think these people have seriously underestimated just how lost I can get. The bus is stressful, but walking it blindly through Preposition Land is terrifying. maybe if i had  time to do a practice walk with a friend like Spiderman used to do with me, but not without having a go a few times before the actual day. I will take my chances with the bus. 

I know it seems silly. I am a grown-ass woman. I should be able to do this. But i really struggle with reading a bus timetable. How can I figure out what bus i need if the timetable looks like this? 

Seriously. It might as well be written in Chinese because I cannot make heads of tails of it. 

I have just been talking and talking to Spiderman asking for his help from beyond the grave to help me figure out how in the hell I can do this without him. 

And he came through. He sent me ALL THE ANGELS.  I mean, seriously. There were angels every step of the way. 

First, I had no idea what bus to catch. How do you find that out if you can't read the bus timetable? 

FIRST TWO ANGELS: My colleague Paul at work remembered that one of our regular customers Chas takes the bus that passes Morrisons. He emailed Chas for me and asked what bus he took. Chas confirmed that i need the X11. He told me where he catches the bus and it was outside my favourite YMCA charity shop. Chas came by the shop the next day and talked me through it in person as he knew i was anxious about transport issues. 

ANGEL NUMBER THREE: I now knew my bus number and where to catch the bus, but how would I know the bus times? My dear friend and neighbour Sian and I went out for a cuppa before work and I mentioned my predicament. She told me all about the TRAVELINE CYMRU app which lets you plug in where you are, where you want to go, and the time and date you are going and POW! it tells very clearly all the information you need and more! Isn't this so much easier to read???

So, today I had to completely rearrange my schedule. My Angel colleague Paul swapped shifts with me so i could get to my 3:20pm appointment. We also swapped book clubs. I did his book club today from 1-2pm and he will do mine next week on Tuesday night. 

After book club i changed into leggings and a t-shirt to make getting my boobs out a bit easier then I went down to the YMCA. I decided  I was in plenty of time to catch the 14:13 bus (2:13 to my American peeps) and I could just mooch around Morrisons supermarket for an hour as the bus ride was about ten minutes.   

There was still that worry about how will I know where to get off the bus. Several people said it would be OBVIOUS but they have not counted on how crap I am at spotting (or rather missing) landmarks.

Enter ANGEL NUMBER FOUR: The lovely Christine from book club which had disbanded a mere 10 minutes ago came over and said, "Oh are you taking this bus as well?" I confirmed I was. I explained that I was nervous about where to get off and she offered to DING the button for me at my stop. What a relief. And it really was a relief. I was staring with my X-Ray vision out the window looking for the obvious sign that said MORRISONS in big ole letters when i heard the bell go DING and Christine shout, "This is your stop!" I am eternally grateful as all I could see was this hugh-jass hedge so i would have never known it because i was looking in the wrong direction. 

ANGEL NUMBER FIVE: the bus driver. He was incredibly patient with me and told me where to pick up the bus on the way back. It involved crossing the very busy road and he told he me to use the crosswalk to get across. I hadn't even seen the crosswalk as i was too busy imagining myself as a real life FROGGER tried to hop across the road to the alligators on logs (well, the return bus shelter.)

I had an hour to potter around Morrisons so i found a few treats on special offer like this crazy delicious palm oil free chocolate spread. I bought two but after tasting it, wish i had bought the lot. YUM.

Then it was time for the ole mammogram which Spiderman described as a boob sandwich between two panes of glass. They let me in at 3:15pm for my 3:20 appointment. It took literally five minutes which included going over my details twice, taking off my bra, getting squished two different ways and getting dressed again. 

Before I went in I wished I had gone for a wee but when I came out i didn't need to go anymore so it must have been just nerves. 

I looked at the Traveline app and it looked like i would need to wait until 15:54 (3:54 for my American peeps) to return to Carmarthen so i went over to the crossing, pushed the button, stopped the cars and crossed over. I was resigned to wait for 30 minutes when lo-and-behold an X11 bus was trundling our way. The mammogram had happened so quickly I had managed to catch the 15:24 (3:24) back to town. And just like that I was back on familiar ground by 3:38. 

I am so insanely proud of myself for figuring it out without crying that I feel like I have climbed Mt Everest. It feels stupid because taking the bus should be a life skill, but it is not one I acquired because Spiderman was the great navigator. But now i know I can do it though I could not have done it without all the ANGELS. 

Thanks Best Beloved. 

Goodbye Frida Kahlo

 

Sadness has come to our house once again. Frida Kahlo our beautiful Mexican Flame Knee  tarantula has shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to the big web in the sky. She was approximately twelve years old, which is a good life. Not as long as some, but longer than others.

Normally adult tarantulas moult (shed their skin) about once a year. This act has made me anxious without the Amazing Spiderman. If someone is late, should I worry? I have no one to discuss these fears with. I don’t worry about Christina Rossetti because she hasn’t moulted since 2017 and seems to be OK with that. But Frida and Pippi used to be like clockwork, perhaps because they are so similar. Spiderman used to say they were cousins because Pippi is a Mexican Fireleg ( Brachypelma Boehmei) and Frida was a Mexican Flame Knee (Brachypelma Auratam). They used to both moult within a month of each other (usually in the summer.) After Spiderman died, they both missed their summer moult which left me in a state of panic. Had I done something wrong? But eventually they both moulted in the autumn of 2021. Pippi moulted again in October of last year, but Frida never did. I had been trying to watch her for signs, but she was not showing any.

One of the characteristics of Frida was she seemed to love to play hide and seek and scare her Mummy to pieces. Her favourite spot was crouching small in the back right corner of the tank by the heat mat, half buried in substrate behind her hidey cup. A quick glance into the tank would make you think she had some how escaped. But moving her tank out into the light caused her to leap out and flick her itchy hairs at you as if to say “Stop shaking the tank, I was fine until you bumbled in and started moving everything!” She was like Pippi in that regard. Pip has always been an irritated hair flicker.

Friday, I noticed that she had moved away from her favourite spot in the back corner and was out in the open. I was able to get a good look at her with the torch. Her skin was dull and her joints scabby. This is a very clear sign that a moult is imminent. I noticed she hadn’t eaten the crickets I had put in on Wednesday and so I carefully removed them (a necessary act because a moulting spider is incredible vulnerable—they are helpless and their new skin is soft. A cricket can easily nibble on them in their weakened state and they will bleed to death.) This job always makes me cry with frustration as I need Spiderman to help with this. Looking after the Spiderbabes is a two-person job. It really helps to have one person doing the job and the other as a lookout, so the spider doesn’t escape. But she was surprisingly chilled out. This might have been a clue that she was unwell, but I was so relieved she didn’t try to run up the side to the open lid like she did one other time, I just breathed a sigh of relief. Spiders who are about to moult are often very quiet and still and “not their usual lively selves” before a moult as they are conserving energy for the big day, so I wasn’t too worried. In hindsight, maybe I should have been.

I checked on her again Saturday and she was still out front and centre. There was no sign of laying down a soft blanket of a web to moult on, but if she was going to do it, she was in the correct place to do so as it had plenty of room. I still wasn’t worried, but I increased the moisture in the tank as higher humidity helps with a moult.

On Sunday, I looked in and realised that she was in the same position as she had been both Friday and Saturday. Not just “near the same place” but in EXACTLY the same place. Uh oh. I did the test of jostling her tank. Nothing. I poured water near her. Nothing. I poured water on her (an act previously which would have made her furious). No reaction. Normally you can tell a spider is dead because they go into the “death curl” with their legs tucked under their body. She really wasn’t curled up, no more than her favourite scrunched up position she used to do in the back of the tank.

By this time it was very late and there was nothing else I could do. I woke up early this morning and removed her from the tank and looked at her body for signs of disease, but I could see nothing. I went out to the garden before work and dug a little hole and buried her. She’s out there with Lily Rose, Blanche DuBois, Polychrome and Pirouette.

I am both saddened and relieved. Saddened because our mutual love of arachnids was one of the things that brought Spidergrrl and Spiderman together. Of the original eight of the Spiderbabes (Lily Rose, Blanche Dubois, Christina Rossetti, Pirouette, Polychrome, Tibia, Pippi Longstocking, and Frida Kahlo) only two remain. Pippi Longstocking who is approximately fourteen years old and Christina Rossetti who we have had for fifteen years and we believe was an adult when we rescued her so she might actually be eighteen or nineteen years old.  Relieved because I have struggled since I became a widow to care for them on my own. Spiderman was always the Captain and I was the lookout, now I have to be both Captain and lookout.

I have loved each and every Spiderbabe with all my heart, but I know when the last one leaves this earth, I will not seek replacements. As with everything in my life it is made more difficult having to do it all by myself, but like the rest of my life I will just continue to muddle on.

Rest in Peace my little eight-legger.

 

What I Ate Wednesday--Tapenade Pasta with Kale and White Beans

 Hello lovelies. It has been two years since I blogged about food, mostly because when Spiderman died my eating habits changed. It is harder to cook for one person when what you want to be doing is cooking for two people. It has taken me two years to be able to write What I Ate Wednesday instead of What WE Ate Wednesday.  

After he died I was exhausted mentally and physically. I struggled with meal planning. Do I make something BIG and eat it all week? No, I have discovered that two nights in a row is about my limit. Unless it's nachos, then that can go three nights in a row because nachos. More on them in a few weeks.  But the act of cooking something fresh from scratch for one exhausted and sad person night after night was often too much. But these days I have things figured out.

These days I do a lot of small preps so that cooking from scratch goes easier. I plan to talk about these tips in the future. Today was one of those small prep days. 

I haven't eaten Black Olive and Walnut Tapenade since Spiderman died. It was always one that I made in HUGE amounts and filled our freezer with jars for an easy Saturday night dinner. A friend mentioned it to me that she loved my recipe and made it all the time and I suddenly thought, "Why I am I not making it all the time either?" 

And so I did. But instead of making insane amounts because my freezer is full up and being one person it will take me twice as long to get through the jars, I made a regular sort of amount. I saved up smaller jars that would have enough for one person servings, but of course if you are feeding more people you can freeze in larger portions like I used to. Also I changed up the way I used to do it. We always served it with roasted cherry tomatoes, but these are a bit pricy and I just can't be arsed to heat up my oven for 15 minutes just for one person so I just bunged in some oil packed sun dried tomatoes. I always keep these on hand in the fridge as they add a pop of flavour with little effort. Plus a jar costs about the same as a punnet of cherry tomatoes and I can get several meals out of one jar. 

We used to always serve it with kale and I still do. This time I added half a tin of cannellini beans just to make it more filling. I will use the other half of the tin of beans in another, slightly different pasta recipe tomorrow.

Tapenade Pasta with Kale and White Beans

First make your tapenade. You need:

1.5 cups black olives (this was a 330g /163g drained weight jar)

1/2 cup walnuts

4-5 cloves chopped garlic

2TB olive oil

Throw everything but the oil in a food processor and pulse until crumbly, then add the oil and pulse again a few times and divide into jars.

You need half a cup of the tapenade per serving. This made enough for me to have three pastas and one pizza (it made 1.5 cups plus 1/3 cup so I plan to use the jar with less on a pizza.) I labelled three of the jars and popped them in the freezer.

To make the rest of it:

This is obviously just for one person so feel free to double it. 

50g or thereabouts  of curly kale (3-4 massive handfuls)

half a tin white beans, drained

juice of half a lemon

more garlic

3 TB nutritional yeast flakes for a cheesy flavour

3-4 oil packed sun dried tomatoes, snipped into bits

half a cup tapenade

No need for salt because of the olives, but lots of black pepper

3/4-1 cup (GF) pasta of choice

Boil a pot of water for the pasta. I like to use water from a boiled kettle to speed things along. You can add a bit of salt or a stock cube to the pasta water if you like. When it is boiling, add the pasta and boil for however long the package says. 

Meanwhile, throw all the other ingredients into a Hugh Jass pot and cook with about 1/4 cup of the pasta water until the kale turns bright green and softens. 

Add the cooked and drained pasta to the veg mix. Eat.

If you have the tapenade already done this comes together in 20 minutes or less. 

Plus you have extras for future meals. Which is a life saver for when you are tired and need something healthy, cheap and fast.