Beki's blog

What is your favorite scent or smell and why? 
Submitted by Nebraska Plates.

My favourite scent is Cartier's 'Declaration'. I know it was originally designed to be a man's fragrance, but it makes my nose happy. I could sit and sniff it all day long. A friend of mine gave me a load of perfume samples as a Christmas present one year and that was in amongst them. I put it on and felt my mood lift, such a sensational scent.

My favourite smell is breakfast cooking; fresh made coffee, fresh bread, eggs bacon and sausages in a pan. That and the smell of my man's skin, but then I'd rather smell that than anything else.

What are some things that are worth (and not worth) spending money on? 
Submitted by pinejar.

I object to spending money on anything that's designed to be thrown away, flushed away, sprayed into the air and dissipated or left to be smelly. Planned obsolescence gone wild trying to convince us we need to spend more money on the best softest toilet paper, the strongest refuse sacks, things to make our homes smell artificially sweet or things to make the dirty job of cleaning more convenient. If a room smells bad, then I open a window. If something needs to be cleaned I get the hot soapy water and apply elbow grease; here's a strange fact for you. Heat kills germs. Heat in fact will kill as many germs as disinfectant will, making the disinfectant which kills all but the nastiest bugs both redundant and dangerous. We live in a throw away society, surrounded by the urge to waste resources in order to line the pockets of fat cat companies.

I also object to spending money on our over taxed road system. I am taxed every which way but Christmas every time I turn the key in the ignition of my (old and battered) car. I pay to tax the car direct, I am taxed through the nose every time I refuel with diesel prices hitting the magic £1 a litre here, I am taxed again on every spare part I must buy to maintain my vehicle and I am taxed again on the labour to fit those spare parts. Living where I do a car is not a luxury, it is a necessity. I could not survive here without my own private transport, and yet I am subsidising those two car families who run little Chelsea-Jade the mile to school in gas guzzling 4X4 luxury and then run to the bottle bank to recycle the weekend's Pino Grigio bottles and believe themselves to be green.

Things which I believe are worth spending money on? Underwear and perfume. Both should be the best quality one can afford, but should be just enough to do the job required and no more when in use. Does that make me a hypocrite? No; buying the best quality means that less goes further. I don't need to drown in Cartier Declaration for the subtle scent to become a trademark, and my underwear lasts longer and looks better than cheap tat.

What was the best football highlight of the past week?

Football? Not I; I'm a rugby fan. The rugby highlight of my last week was being given an "All Blacks" shirt which had originally been stripped from an All Blacks prop forward, but that's not why I love the shirt. I love the shirt because of who gave me it.

What small act of kindness have you done in the last thirty days? 
Submitted by One Kind Act.  

The last 30 days have been no different from always with me. One thing I always do that I will talk about publicly is this: I smile. I treat people as if every one I meet is special and important, because they are. From the stranger in the lift who takes the time to smile and chat, to the till operator in the supermarket, to the waitress who brings me my meal; they are all people and deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. Even in a text based medium where others can't see me I'll still be polite and friendly because so often we forget that behind typed words on a screen is a real person.

One of my close friends was in an horrific car accident recently, she and her husband are pretty badly injured and practically housebound. I wish I were closer to do more, but I can send a little love and comfort by post, so today I'm going to do just that. When I was in the head on car smash that wrote my old volvo off and turned my world upside down for three months I was polite and friendly to the driver of the other car. I wanted to jump up and down and swear at him for the trouble his thoughtlessness had caused me, but it would have served no purpose. Looking back now I got off so incredibly lightly; seeing the injuries my friend suffered put that in sharp perspective.

Another friend's husband passed away yesterday, so very sad that he's gone. This brings home another lesson that seems to have been floating around my unconscious this last few weeks:

Life's too short.

Life's too short to be miserable.
Life's too short to regret past actions or hold a grudge.
Life's too short not to be the best *you* possible, every day.
Life's too short not to wear your favourite perfume every day.
Life's too short so grab every chance to smile and make other people smile that you can.
Life's too short not to finish what you started.
Life's to short to waste precious moments wishing it were different.
Life's to short to worry about what other people think.
Life's too short to turn down a hug.
Life's too short so don't wait until tomorrow to start making a difference.

If this were my last day on earth I'd want to spend it happily doing ordinary things and be remembered for the fact that I was the stranger who made someone smile.

When I've enough happening in my life to make my posts interesting I don't have enough time to update. Ironic isn't it?

About a month back I packed the daughter and headed up to Oban for West Highland Week, meeting friends up there who were part of the committee and running out in their little boat to help with race management. We had a fabulous time, the motion of a small boat in the sound of Mull, gorgeous scenery that brings back happy memories, good company, fun things to do, new friends and old, gentle flirtation and taking photographs of pretty boats.

I promised friends that I'd let them have pictures of the week - I have loads as you can probably imagine, put someone with an eye for a picture in the middle of a pretty scene and even though I only had my mobile phone some of these came out pretty well.

Digging back though old comments to my livejournal while deleting 500 odd notifications I stumbled across this link provided by one of my "geek team". I remember now the frantic coding, the dropping of pages to allow the site to go live with reasonable (if temporary) content. The scramble when the .php code had to be rewritten as the site went live, and then the sigh of relief when it was all over. Followed by two straight days of tech support when people couldn't get the hang of logging in on the new format. I remember eating snatched meals at my desk for three months straight, letting the ME symptoms rule my world for everything other than just sitting in this seat coding content,  working full time on a volunteer project for which I get nothing more than a warm feeling. There are I think only three people in this world, perhaps four, who know the wo/man hours that went into that project.

Now I look at the site and I know that technically I have got it as good as I can get it (without my geek team it would never have happened) and yet it still isn't good enough and never will be. Why? Because I can't do the last bit; for that I have to rely on everyone else. It's lacking content. Index still looks as it did when the site went live and it was never meant to look that way for longer than a fortnight, but without input from other volunteer specialists it'll stay looking that way.

As the article says it's not really that important anyway, one more screen in the millions. Accessed by about 1000 people a month. It's the author's last page which rings true for me: "the reward is: I did a thing, and I doubt I'll ever do anything like it again. One, two, three: I will never get enough praise; of course I failed; and what I did was not particularly important. The best thing to hope for is that in time and with much more effort the work will become transparent to its users, that it will be taken for granted. That's life with websites." I really couldn't have put it better myself.

What decision changed the course of your life? 
Submitted by Ally.

The one decision which has really changed my life was the decision to become a Lion. I'll make no apology for yet another mention of the fact. Working as part of that team has given me purpose and pride in myself and my abilities that I'd have lost through this long fight with disability otherwise.

My first "sliding doors" moment was in 1985. I was walking up a set of stairs (running late) one morning to find the man who I had such a crush on standing watching me all alone and in a situation where a quick kiss wouldn't have been out of the question, although it would have been an incredibly bad idea. I wanted to kiss him but I didn't have the guts and walked on. I've often wondered how much would have changed had I kissed him, not that he'll be anywhere near my life ever again.

It does seem to be decisions about relationships which have shaped my personal life, sending me off in different directions for the last 20 years. Right now I'm living "apart and at peace with myself" making my decisions for myself and my daughter rather than letting relationships shape them. The latest decision that will change the direction of my life is that we need to move to somewhere smaller and easier to run and the long wait for the wheels of red tape to start disentangling itself and get us shifted. That's more than two years old now though, and until bureaucracy catches up with reality I don't see us getting out of that bit of limbo.

The decision to go to my GP and get the possibility of Meniere's looked into seems to have been pretty life changing too. I woke up at about 4AM and realised that it was roaring yawning dizziness which had woken me, and that in fact this had both woken me and kept me awake in the past. I went and took one of my anti-dizzy tablets, put my head back on the pillow and within half an hour was deep in restful peaceful sleep, dreaming happily, and woke at a reasonable time refreshed and clear headed.

Would you sign a prenuptial agreement? Why or why not?
Submitted by Lantastic.

Yes. Without a doubt. Absolutely 100% definitely yes. Assuming that you could produce a prenup that was totally watertight under UK law. I've been married twice, both times I thought it would be forever and it wasn't, so having been both bitten and burned I'm that bit more careful. I'd never dispute a prenup either. Once I've given my word I will keep it to the very best of my ability. My bottom line is that if a relationship fails I'd like to walk away with exactly what I walked in with, no more, no less. To be able to part as lovers and stay friends means that I have to be fair; I don't care if the other person is being fair or not. In my experience as long as I'm fair the other person will come round in the end. 

Having just got back from a hospital appointment and collapsed into my seat in front of the computer with the world doing its standard lazy waltz around me I got to thinking. The diagnosis from the consultant is that part of my symptoms could well be caused by Meniere's disease and this means that the symptoms are controllable although it's going to take a full year of tests for the consultant to be sure of the diagnosis. I've been living with and controlling these symptoms for years now, taking it steady, making sure that I really am fit to drive before driving but when I actually get a diagnosis I'll have to inform DVLA and stop driving until a medical proves me fit to drive. At that point the symptoms are likely to be more under control than they have ever been.

What does this mean for me? Well in reality nothing changes, I may get more help such as a higher rate of disability/mobility allowance, a disabled badge for the car and so on. The thing is that the symptoms are the same as they've always been. The one thing that does change is the fact that with a diagnosis of a physical cause for these symptoms I can at last point and say "LOOK! Physical cause. I TOLD you it wasn't all in my head. There's the proof that I'm not a hypochondriac lazy bum with a bad attitude to work." I do have 'significant' hearing loss in my left ear and the likelihood is that it will deteriorate, does that bother me? No. Deafness is the one disability that won't really affect my quality of life. I have always had the ability to hear music in my head, perfect playback from memory, deafness won't affect me that much.

I walked back to my car over soft damp grass being warmed by sunshine and the smell of warm mossy grass and humid air took me back to Mull-days as a child, the midge laden summer mornings after heavy rain when we would run to the walled garden and go looking for raspberries and early blackberries and then onto the first beach or the stickleback pools and fish for shrimp to boil in a metal bucket over an open fire. Bar-b-ques on the beach with a jumper over a swim suit and swimming from the castle corner to the pier. Nights in June where it didn't get dark there and the warm storms that whipped the phosphorescence up so that the water glowed green as it splashed high onto the rocks. At peace with the world with enough money in the bank to pay the bills at last and the knowledge that I can now sit quietly and do a little bit more good in my corner.

Last time I googled this I came up empty but this time I hit a winner, three sites all answering my question. I have a set of cushions with mangled almost-Latin on them. I knew it wasn't ipsum I was looking at because I know ipsum well enough to recognise it. But I still couldn't trace the source of what had to be a quotation from somewhere even with the bad grammar. Turns out the designer took phrases from Horace's The Art of Poetry and chopped them, they should read;

“Ut ridentibus adrident, ita flentibus adflent
humani vultus.Si vis me flere, dolendum est
primum ipsi tibi: tum tua me infortunia laedent,
Telephe vel Peleu; male si mandata loqueris,
aut dormitabo aut ridebo.”

“With those that smile, our face in smiles appears;
With those that weep, we burst into tears.
If you wish me to weep, you yourself must first feel grief.
So I shall feel your sorrows as if they were my own,
O Peleus or Telephus!
But if your language isn't fit, I'll sleep, or smile”.

In other news I have another car.