#windswept rambles

It's not just because you're done with the summer sun and heat. It's because it's August, not September, that marks the beginning of the turn towards the next season. 

My partner and I call August the time of Summer Gothic. For though the days are hot, bright and beautiful, there's a haunting melancholy to them, for this isn't the peak of summer, that has passed, this is its dying flame. 

The sun has scorched the vibrancy out of land, leaving dry and brittle remnants in its wake. The verdant greens of nature take on darker hues. Fruit hangs heavy on the branch, ready to be picked. There's a promise of decay in the air. Now is the time of the first harvest, the time to reap. 

Day by day, second by second, the nights creep in, subtly stealing away the lights dominion. There's a cool touch to the evening air and with it, comes a macabre fascination for the darker days ahead.

While I completely agree with those who say the moral the show was ‘trying’ to go for is: Sometimes you give it your all, and shit still happens. So the point is to enjoy the journey and value the life lived, no matter what. And keep trying, the effort made is/was never pointless, the purpose was in the living. 

I think it's a poignant life lesson. But I think the show had the perfect advocate for that already, and it's Hob. And it's delivered the right way, a kinder way. Hob tries to change and does, but so often he doesn't see a reward for those efforts, life still repetitively kicks him, often for no reason. But Hob never sees any of his efforts as pointless and no matter how brutal, treasures every moment he has. His suffering is never treated as some divine punishment to get him from A to B. It happened and its fucking awful, but Hob gets its just a factor of life sometimes.

(Because the point of that message is, your suffering IS NOT punishment or atonement for a sin. Suffering shouldn't be glorified or made to look like some noble sacrifice you had to make for personal development. Shit actually just happens. Always remember that.) 

But most importantly Hob understands death is never a fix, it's a mugs game. The sacrifices and suffering he's endured aren't defined by some grand finale. Redos and second chances take nothing away from his actions. His life isn't defined by an ending. It's in the telling, in the living. That's the important bit, not the full stop. 

Which is why I think the end result comes off feeling so unbalanced. As we see both Morpheus and Hob travel the same path in the show, change equally from 1389 onwards, but the outcome is so different. 

By the finale, Hob has transformed from the sword for hire we met in the 14th century. He still suffers despite it. But we leave him on such a hopeful note. Morpheus too is unrecognisable from the brat prince dragged kicking and screaming to the Waking by his sister. But for him, it doesn't matter, there is no hope, cosmic law decrees it. And the two narratives ending in such opposition feels so out of alignment. And I get that's life, it's unfair and what one gets another is denied. But if you are aiming to deliver a core message to your audience, it feels messy. And I think that's the ultimate issue with the story they tried to tell, it's messy. 

They can be phone or switch. Simualtion, action/adventure, rpgs I'm not fussy. They just need to be easy to pick up and put down when needed. 

The word masterpiece is thrown around a lot these days, but in this case the term is truly warranted. It is television at its pinnacle. I wouldn't recommend you watch it, I'd insist that at some point in your life, you sit down and experience this show. Trust me, you won't be the same when the final credits roll. 

(Looks at ever increasing list)

In June 2020, our wedding was cancelled due to covid. And we shrugged good naturedly and said, why not increase our little family instead? And thus our near five year journey with secondary infertility began. 

Because we already had a child, (my daughter from a previous relationship), the NHS refused to help us save a few preliminary tests. Which we utterly respected, there are those who need fertility treatment far more than us. Private IVF was not an option financially, so we were left with a shrug, a diagnosis of unexplained fertility and given over to the hands of fate.  

I could write an essay on what it's like to struggle with infertility, the sheer powerlessness of it. But instead, I'll just say it's a journey I truly wouldn't wish on anyone.  It's a perpetual, inescapable monthly cycle of hope and despair that slowly chips away at you. It can take an immense, destructive toll on your mental health, your relationship and your sense of worth. And is something, I've found, that's phenomenally hard to emphasise with unless you've experienced it first hand. Thus it can be very lonely and isolating to experience. It made me truly hate hope for a time, I don't think I can sum up the pain of it any more poignantly than that.

It wasn't a straight line from hard to easy. We had good times and bad times, and sometimes ALL our energy went into our daughter, making sure she was happy and thriving. Because no matter what we were going through, she was always the most important thing in our lives. 

When I started writing this post back in March, it was for closure. We'd reached a place of acceptance. After four years and ten months we'd agreed with heavy hearts it was time to stop trying. Hope was becoming a painful burden and clinging to it a hindrance rather than a help. It was time to stop stalling life, bring this chapter to an end and start anew. When my next monthlies arrived, that was it. Full stop. Time to move on to new adventures. 

Spending the run up to the local elections finding increasingly more entertaining ways to dispose of Reform leaflets....

Dartboard… Entertaining and therapeutic. Highly recommended!

Reenacting the infamous Titanic scene with Trump and Farage was a personal favorite. Sadly Trump's raft proved to be unsurprisingly unreliable and both sank to the murky depths of our tiny garden pond. So sad.