It was going to...

...thunderstorm and lightning around midday, so I thought I would go out early today for a wee little trip, and a breakfast.

I wanted to get back well before lunch because the roads will be packed with it being Bank Holiday, and because of road surface flooding with the impending storm.

I went to St Winefriede"s Holy Well. I bathed my feet in the holy waters...lovely and cold. Then I sat there in the peace and quiet and took photographs.

I was going to go in the Chapel and light a candle, but hoardes of tourists of every nationality and languages descend, from Germans, to Japanese, Spanish, to a family of Glaswegians. The children (3 boys, 4 boys if you include the father) of the Glaswegians (I only figured out a bit later on they were Glaswegians when I looked in the visitor's book they had just signed) leapt into the holy waters fully clothed, screaming and shouting, splashing and everything...(as if they were playing in their local swimming pool). Their dad encouraged them by leaping in himself. The mother looked harassed.

With peace at the Holy Well, well and truly shattered, I decided it was time to depart, and go for my breakfast. I filled my bottles with some holy water first. One of the boys, about an 11 year old, was shivering besides me, I said the water was a wee bit chilly, and he came out with a long stream of words...I could make out the word 'cold' in the middle of it....

The cold water definitely dampened the spirits of the children, or else St Winefriede was working her magic.

Went for breakfast. Was a wee bit busy so had a bit of a wait. Lolita waved me into the back room, saying 'quieter'...I wasn't quite sure what she was saying, or why she wanted me to go to the back room of the cafe, but when I sat down at one of the back room tables, she nodded in approval. I might tell you about Lolita tomorrow, otherwise I will be here all night and I am ready for sleep.

My brain which has been remarkably quiet as to the interpretation of new noises with this new mapping of the cochlear processor, suddenly speaks up.

'Babbling brook', Brain says knowledgeably to a sound I am hearing but I have no idea of what it is. In a cafe? A babbling brook?

Earlier a friend had sent me a short video clip with the label 'A babbling brook'. I played the video and it had the sound of water...it was a small stream and the water was eddying and curling around the stones. It made me want to visit the bathroom...and in the bathroom brain says to me, 'Babbling brook'. I cannot go now without thinking babbling brook. So, when the Continence Nurse next asks me how are my waterworks, I know I am going to say 'Like a babbling brook...'

Anyway I am in the cafe siting for my breakfast when Brain informs me what I can hear is a babbling brook. I look around and find I am sitting next to a fish tank with some sort of bubbles/aeration system going....

On the way home, the traffic was packed on the other side of the road (the coast road) for miles and miles. Hardly moving. But my side of the road was relatively free of cars. Then I discovered when I reached a roundabout, because the other side was blocked, a police car with all its blue lights flashing came the wrong way round the roundabout. First time I have ever encountered that. I realised then, I cannot hear police sirens with this new mapping. I am assuming the sirens were going.

I was shattered when I got home with all the new sounds I had been listening to, and I went into a deep sleep for a few hours.

Then I realised I still had my painting to do for my challenge to myself of a painting every day in 2017. I picked up a scrap of card, painted it a greeny yellow colour. Made a cuppa, then went out to the swing where I had placed all my stuff. The storm that was supposed to break at midday still hadn't materialised, and the sky is now black as thunder.

Cat Lynx very kindly sneezed into my cuppa before I had time to take even a single sip...Popeye sat on my lap...Lynx decided my shoulders were a comfortable place...and I was trying to paint...

This was the mediatative peace and quiet in my mind at the Holy Well before people arrived...

I saw this meditative peace and quiet again in my mind at the end of my deep sleep this afternoon.

So this is what I painted for today.

The storm still hasn't broken here and my garden is as dry as a bone...


[This is my artist's perception of sounds as they are now after being drastically changed after the remapping of my cochlear processor. I am readjusting to the different sounds, which are actually vastly different, as it is now suggested I was never mapped properly in the first place which is why I have struggled the last few years.]