My friend Sally opened her new studio last night.  It is a room they built from their garage.  A work room/studio where she completes her hand made products that she sells at the local markets and some shops.

This was the opening party.  We came home at 11pm and then got called to a birth a few hours later.

We have a new visitor to our garden, a blue tongue lizard.

We also had a disaster at our house this week.   We have a fridge with a cooler that can filter water.  It has to be plumbed into the mains to work.  As ours is not plumbed in it makes a clicking noice.   This has been annoying Jeremy who thought he’d gravity feed water into the fridge .

This however didn’t work.  So to test his theory that it was the water pressure he attached it up to a hose and then decided to leave the room.  About 15 mins later when we went back to the kitchen, the pressure had pushed the hose off and the kitchen was filling with water.

hundreds of litres all over the floor. Here we are clearing it up. Wonder who is taking the picture?

My camera is all fixed but since moving house I haven’t been able to find my memory card.  May just have to get another.  It’s a pain, my phone camera is broken too so I’m photo bare.  It puts me off saying things as life is boring without pictures.

My lovely friend Katie had her baby last week.  She is my ‘cinema friend’.  Ever since arriving in Australia we have attended the cinema every other week, only missing if  attend a birth and other life events.  We had to stop when she had her last baby for 8 months.  This time she is more relaxed and I’m hoping that she will bring Alex along with her.

We attended Womad.  Word of music and dance.  It was an excellent festival and we had a homebirth network stand that I helped with for a number of hours.  The Children came with me on Sunday and we wandered around enjoying the ambiance, eating very large doughnuts and cribbing freebes.

At the same time as all of this was going on my closest school friend (also my 1st cousin) died.  She is just 17 days younger than me and she committed suicide.  It has been an awful week for my family but feeling helpless and so far away is frustrating.  It put me off writing about personal things as I’ve felt a little lost over it all.

I wrote a small piece which I asked to be read out.  However the funeral was seemingly two structured and arranged and they couldn’t fit it in.  I feel extremely upset about this.  If I were there I would just have stood up and said it anyway but my mother wouldn’t do it.

Here is it on the net, sent out to the ether and I know that she would like what I said and she would feel the same.

Chris

We were born 17 days apart we started school on the same day.  We wore our wellies and sat on the door step getting piles, climbed the sewer and got very silly when I kissed Gareth Humphreys.
We were best friends.
We walked to school together every day, when I had 5p pocket money and you had 1pound, you shared it with me.
We played sport to get out of queuing for lunch and we hide down at the radiators.
We were best friends.
You once said you thought we were friends because I felt I had to be as I was your cousin.  What could I say, you were funny intelligent, and all the boys liked you, of course we were best friends.
We wore our wellies to the Nonpol disco, and everyone knew us as THAT Lisa and THAT Christine, we were almost famous!!
The very best of friends.

We laughed and cried made up games, devised tv shows spent hours listening to the Goons and Roger Whittaker.

It  was the happiest time of our lives.  I know you felt it too, you had those terrible pics of us on your face book when we were bridesmaids at Sara’s Wedding.

Life took me travelling around the world and you were always there, the wonders of the Internet to chat and catch up with all, with home and life back in Wales.

I wish I was here now with everyone holding you dear for the last time, but even more I wish I was there when I could have been THAT Lisa. the one who would have known that your funny intelligent and well hidden soul was screaming for help.

I hope you have found your gang.

One last thing and most people wont get this but it is very important to say.
“If I were a rock star, I’d take you somewhere fancy”
Goodbye my friend, safe journey.

This is all in one post because it’s the nature of My life.  In one week it has encountered birth and death, work and family, joy and devastation.  My adrenals are shot and some days I want to get off the roller coaster and onto the boating lake.

My camera has returned.  Well It’s made it as far as the post office so far.  I have to sign for it tomorrow.

I can get back to pictures of everything then.

We have had an unusual week with my closest school friend sadly dying.  She was also my 1st cousin(Well Wales is a small place)and I’m sad that I can’t get home to be with family.

Plus homebirth midwives are going to be illegal next year.  I’m getting on my high horse lots of course. Probably won’t work but I will fight to the death for the right of women to birth at home with a registered practitioner if that’s what they want.