A bit broken … but all mended now.

I never managed to post about Cardiff, but I was there:

Since my last post on here, over two months ago now, I’ve been battling a virus and its after-effects. Hideous – especially because one of the after effects was an inner ear disturbance – I had no idea, none at all, how bad that was.  Think back to your worst episode of teenage drunkenness, and imagine it going on for three weeks … thats it, yep.

This photo totally represents the “broken” bit – this was my trolley suitcase on my return from Stonehenge, I’ve literally scraped a wheel away while dragging it along the ground!  I’m glad to say I have a shiny new one.

Cardiff was shiny too, mind you – the castle rivals Brighton Pavilion, but its hugely older, and was used more recently too – it was an air raid shelter for thousands of people in WWII.  And it still has adornments like this everywhere:

As well as the walls, which are spectacular for reasons that you probably don’t suspect, unless you’ve already admired them:

Plus there were these guys I walked into the shop off the train to check out Torchwood locations, and I was immediately a regular.  Same with the button shop outside Cardiff Castle.  Serious levels of friendship and happiness in Cardiff.  Its a great place.

Walking the inner circle of Stonehenge

Bigger than I remembered from my childhood visit, which is surprising enough on its own.  Its a strong, beautiful place, I feel very privileged to have been there, and with such special people.  We had a half hour meditation, with jackdaws and starlings joining in, in Fibonacci sequence.  All the photos are taken from inside the innermost circle. 

After a cuppa tea, some of us went on to Wood Henge, which is tiny, and only represented by concrete stubs in the empty postholes where magnificent beams would once have stood. Much more intimate, but powerful in its own right.   Dowsing, healing, archeo-acoustics and meditation all played their part, as did Doris Lessing’s Shikasta, which is a science fictional version of exactly what we were doing, writ large onto the universe. 

Anybody seen Stargate SG1? Daniel Jackson evolving into a higher life form that looks like a glowy squid? And he kept on going there and back again, dead and then alive, then dead, then alive … Daniel was once asked, “Don’t you ever give up?” And he replied, “Not until I’m dead. And sometimes, not even then.”

I could say the same thing of all of us there last Sunday.