Talking heads meditating

Wednesday, 1st July

I didn't tell you the one problem I have with the new meditation routine. If I fall asleep whilst meditating, have I meditated?

The writer says quite categorically it's absolutely normal to nod off during a session, that it's not a problem. But the issue that he doesn't address is this: what if I start meditating for twenty minutes -  the duration he recommends - and wake up to find that half an hour has passed? Or forty-five minutes? That's not simply "nodding off", is it? What do I do then? Start again and hope that sleep won't overtake me this time because I'm so well refreshed? Or is that it? Meditation over.

I am much exercised about it, though I won't lose sleep over it.

On a non-sleep note, We are thoroughly enjoying the new production of Alan Bennet's Talking Heads on BBC1 and iPlayer. I've never before seen all of them, and this series includes two monologues written specifically for this series. I always feel awkward expressing my thoughts about actors - what made me an expert? But I must say that I've been bowled over/blown away/overwhelmed - pick your own idiom - by these performances. We'll watch two more of them this evening in the slot now deserted by The Great British Sewing Bee (very good TV, great fun, but not mind-blowing).

(photos from The Guardian)

Further easing of Covid regulations now allows us to cruise for as long as we want - with various local restrictions - and return unannounced to the marina. So we may well venture out soon, probably towards the Welford Arm, to do a bit of paint restoration on the boat - long overdue now, though not seriously so.

 Here, maybe...

...or here.

But we're still not trusting the current reality enough to go further for longer. There'll be a second wave soon, I'm sad to say.

Today, we're off to Canons Ashby. By car.

*******

Books and bodily contortions.

Tuesday, 30th June

Friday promised storms, thunder and lightning, torrential rain, floods. A yellow storm alert. This is the best it managed, alongside a slight drop in temperature behind a decent breeze. Forecasts this week suggest it's going to be much the same.

Over the past two or three years, I've tried several approaches to meditation. I have to admit that I've always been very sceptical of it. Much of what I've seen and read has seemed rather phoney. Some months ago I downloaded a couple of apps for my phone; one was a number of guided meditations, the other was several pieces of music and sounds of nature which were intended to aid one's meditations.

The sounds and music were fine, but the guides I found unhelpful. Just like the other tutorials and suchlike that I'd seen, this one was full of Indianisms that meant nothing to me - yes, I Googled them, but that didn't enlighten me. It seemed that I had to adopt a set of beliefs about my body, mind and spirit that I simply can't accept. They all required a degree of yoga, too.

I remember with great clarity my first attempt to achieve the Lotus Position. I was at University, and living in digs. My room had a very low bed, and I chose to sit on the edge of it, then lower my weight slowly onto my legs as I crossed them into the appropriate contortion. It's probably difficult for you to picture mentally, but suffice it to say that it was a rather  painful process, the result of which I honestly feared I wouldn't be able to get myself out of, such was the locking of my legs.

With that experience behind me, I have always since failed to understand why I needed to contort my body way beyond comfort in order to achieve... well, that was another thing.

It was never made clear to me what I should expect to achieve apart from aching limbs from having to maintain strange positions. I wasn't aiming for transcendence, I can and do experience mindfulness without the discipline that meditation demands. So why meditate?

Then Naomi lent me her book, and if Naomi lends you a book, you can be sure it's worth reading. It had helped her a lot, so I could be confident that it would benefit me, too.

It's my kind of book. No nonsense, no words derived from Sanskrit, no yoga or other deforming of the human frame. And the author (okay, he's got an odd, hippy name, but don't let that put you off) even gives a clear and sensible answer to the question "Why?" I won't give you any spoilers. Naomi recommends this book, and I add my own endorsement to that (though I do have issues with the use of "Bliss" as a verb.) Don't forget that Amazon lets you look into a book before buying it.

The lockdown has given me lots of concentrated time to work on my own, new book. It has the working title "Those who can't", from George Bernard Shaw's outrageous claim, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Believe me, that may have been true in his day, but today's teachers are heroes. If GBS were alive today, he would suffer GBH from those who can, and who do teach. 

When I'm not writing, I may well be playing with ideas for the cover. It's rather premature, I know, but it's a lot of fun.  I've got a long way to go with it, but the story's coming on really well. I'm just starting chapter 11.

Does anyone have a favourite?

We're off to Canons Ashby tomorrow. We may get wet, but we'll love it nonetheless!

*******

Lockdown day 27 - Just social distancing/lockdown stuff...

It's a strange thing, isn't it, that a visit to a local shop has become a big deal? We went to Co-op again yesterday. It was Grace's turn to queue for twenty minutes and go looking for a week's provisions, and she came out another twenty minutes later with four bagfuls (bagsful?); a shopping list's worth plus things she saw that we'd not thought of before. (It's strange, too, that I even feel the need to write about it. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands.)

It would have been nice to use some of this shut-down time to get a few jobs done on the boat, but there have been problems of course. The leaky rinse pipe in the loo can't be fixed without the fixer coming down into the boat, and we wouldn't want that any more than he/she would. AJ Canopies have told me that, because of the social distancing issue, they won't send anyone out to replace the broken fasteners on our cratch cover. It's sort of understandable, but this is a job that's done entirely outside of the boat, and we could remain inside and be five or more metres away from their worker. Never mind, it'll keep. Kantara's not about to go anywhere.

Simon, on the other hand was happy to come out to take a look at our apparent 12 volt electrical fault - a "low voltage" warning light and buzzer which kept on lighting and buzzing when there was clearly no low voltage problem. The job was almost entirely carried out in the open air, and we kept our distance down in the dinette, so we all felt comfortable. Simon had already looked at this problem some months ago while we were back in St Albans, and he'd found a loose connection which he fixed. On this occasion, he could find nothing wrong. He checked everything, and voltages were spot on everywhere. The starter battery could have been better charged, he said. That was it. But it was reassuring to know that there was nothing wrong apart from the annoying warning alarm, and this is solved easily simply by turning the power monitoring system off. Over the next couple of days I ran the engine for an hour to charge the starter battery, and we've heard nothing from the warning system since then. Hats off to Simon!

I've dropped meditation off my list of things to do each day. I simply wasn't doing it, and I think the reason may have something to do with my coffee rituals, which achieve much the same thing in a more pleasing way: relaxation in a very pleasant, peaceful environment; fresh air and the sounds of the birds; music to please me; time to ponder undisturbed; coffee. Add to those the daily time of on-line prayer with our St Albans church, and I think I get all that meditation is supposed to deliver - and more besides.

I have a new way of getting back to sleep if I'm having broken slumbers at night. Apart from running through the alphabet and thinking of names of famous people (musicians, actors, artists) that begin with each letter in turn, I tried last night to recall the names of the boats that sit in berths opposite me when I sit at the end of the pontoon. Bob Doubles, Andante, ? , Auntie Rincal, The Pozzy, Charlton, Firecrest, Six Belles, Crusoe, ? , Heidi, Achernar, ? , Tuesday Evening. The question marks are for boats whose names I can't see. It worked last night, but I can't swear I got them all right.

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Lockdown day 12 - The list

(No, this is not a post about Kantara having started to lean over to one side. She hasn't. This boat has, however.)

A lot of my friends and acquaintances on social media have said how bored they're getting on these social-distancing days. I can thank my bullet planner for helping me to make sure that everything that has to be done - or those things that I simply want to get done - get done. Another piece of advice I've picked up from others is my list.

One entry that appears every day in my bullet planner is a line with the numbers 1 to 9. These don't get officially referred from the previous day; they're a permanent feature. They refer to nine things that I've decided I want to do every day, each of them to benefit me either physically, or mentally or spiritually. So there's

1 Exercise (largely weights and cardio)
4 Brain games (apps on my tablet and phone to challenge and develop my 68 year-old grey matter)
6 Duolingo (I was told when I retired that it's good practice to learn a new language, so I'm swatting up on my school German and school/university French, and learning Italian)
9 Walking (a decent distance at a speed that get speeds up my heart- and breath-rates)

and there's

3 TED (a daily TED Talk or similar to teach me something new, or to give me a new perspective on something.)
7 Reading (a novel, alongside one or two non-fictions that serve much the same purpose as TED)
5 Writing (not just this blog, nor the book-writing I attempt, but also fun writing exercises from a fabulous little book I was given by a friend)

which leaves

2 Meditation (something I'm new to and not yet made a habit. I use a really good app to lead me through each one)
and 8 Music (not as a background to the washing-up or whatever, but sitting down and listening with headphones and really paying attention to it. I'm amazed by the huge number of songs I'd never really heard properly!)

Obviously, it's rare for me to tick off every one of those on any one day, because there are other things to do with my life. And I've not yet tried it out whilst on the cut when I don't spend as much time below deck as I am at the moment (and who knows when we'll be able to cruise again!) but I find it a helpful list, the nine activities give me a lot of pleasure, and I always have something enjoyable to do.