When I sit back and look at VintagePretty.org, I’m inordinately proud.  Like a child that’s growing up, I see every little detail and I love every bit of it.  Not only is it a place where I’ve been able to confide my innermosts with the world, it’s the place where I’ve been able to talk about my passions for responsible farming, ethical living and a greener world.  In short, it has been so much more than I ever thought possible.  I’ve achieved all of this, with something so simple.

However as I am at a personal cross-roads, it seems that VintagePretty is at a similar point in her life (I can’t believe I referred to the blog as “her”, but there you go!).  A new paint-job isn’t what’s called-for, but something else, something more meaningful.  I look through the visitor stats and so many people come to the site because they’re looking for information, everything from “vintage milk-bottle holders” (yeah, I have no idea either) to “ecological washing powders” and “hugh’s chicken out campaign”.  The last two meaning that people are getting to my site for the right reasons, and that I’m playing a role in informing and helping others to make greener choices.  And for the last two years, this has been my blogging raison d’être.

When I started the blog (over 3 years ago) it was mostly about all things vintage and the garden (two things I still love dearly, of course).  It seems that as much as I didn’t intend to ever post personal things on here, the dynamic of the blog and its content has changed as I have done.  We’ve both done a fair bit of adapting and evolving.  I definitely don’t want to turn this blog into a baby blog, or a purely vintage blog, or even one where I vent personal things constantly (this is what my paper diary is for).  I am a very private person, and so it does go a bit against the grain.

My blogging has been sporadic of late - I’m sure you can understand why, and as much as it saddens me to say it, many things I previously loved have gone on the back burner in favour of more pressing real-world concerns.  Not entirely on purpose, I hasten to add, but rather because my life is totally upside-down at the moment.  It’s forcing me out of my “comfort zone” and into different, unchartered waters.  And sadly, VP is paying the price.

It hasn’t escaped my notice either, that the numbers of visitors has dwindled too.  This is to be expected - I seldom comment or even visit other blogs any more (something I really, really don’t like), but as I have even less time online, reading blogs and commenting has gone too.

I’m hoping that VP is going to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, and be great once again, but for that to happen I need a bit more time to concentrate on the site, and before any of that, I need a bit of time to get myself sorted out.

So VintagePretty.org is going on a Summer Holiday for a little while, and will return in a while with a new look and a new feel, with loads of new posts and hopefully a happily refreshed writer at the helm.  Heck, I might even try to write a very short post en francais!

Looking back at the last 6 months, I am amazed at the changes that have gone on in my life.  Yep, sorry it’s going to be another post about my life - bear with me! The first inkling of change happened in October last year.  It wasn’t a particularly grand feeling, but like the leaves that were falling from the trees with such elegance, the same wind causing that to happen was also causing little ripples in my own branches.  But I didn’t come face-to-face with any changes until 2008.

On the 4th January, my birthday, I was walking around Waterstone’s bookshop in Newcastle when I really strange feeling washed over me.  It was a feeling of change, that the quiet, steady life of the last 3 years was about to come to a halt and change.  It wasn’t a feeling of slow, insidious change, but more of change that would turn my world upside down.  Absolutely making sure that my life was about as different as it could be.  It felt good, though.  Positive and full of hope.  But change, like anything else new is a scary prospect, however refreshing.

Little did I know that 6 days later the first step would be made, changing the course of my life forever.  That was the programme on Radio4 which in turn triggered the visit to the doctor’s surgery and a hospital appointment soon after.  At the time I didn’t equate this to the change I’d felt happening before.  It was just something I was doing.  No different.  With hindsight I can tell it was a huge event, a momentous day that’ll forever be remembered as the very beginning of the change.

The problem with change is that although the end results are usually good, the bit in-between where everything is thrown up in the air, and you’re desperately trying to adapt and carry on, is difficult.  It’s confusing and hard, it’s new and bizarre, and you can be left feeling like you’re in the middle of a whirlwind.  This is just about where I am now.

What I hadn’t bargained on was the change affecting other parts of my life, from the very things closest to my heart; my marriage, my homelife and my friendships.  I suppose, looking at it logically, when one thing changes everything else is a bit out of kilter as well, and it takes time to adjust to the newness of the world that one faces.

It’s worth saying that, for me, change happens every 7 years.  You can set your watch by it.  I didn’t realise this until much later, though.  But eventually it made sense, that it’s exactly 7 years ago (to the month) that the last enormous change happened in my life, and just like then (when I felt desolate and found life very difficult) this was the transition phase in-between the old and the new.  2001 was both the most wonderful and the most daunting year of my life, up until now, when 2008 has definitely topped that!

So many things have happened of late (things that I don’t necessarily find appropriate to share in blogland, due to their sensitive nature - sorry!) and at times I’m struggling to find the silver linings to the clouds that have been dotting my days.  I try to be blindly optimistic, I tell myself things will eventually be ok, that this is a time of change and much better things will come from the ashes.  But I’m finding that harder and harder to believe.

Not to sound too desolate, there have been some really amazing things happening, too.  For instance, since meeting Frenchy, we’ve become really good friends.  For the first time in a long while, actually in many years, I’ve got the kind of friendship I’d always wanted.  Who else would I race in the swimming pool?  Or take to Loch Lomond for a day-trip?

We had Frenchy around last night, having all three of us been swimming, I made dinner and we watched a film (which has my favourite French actor Alain Chabat in it too, bliss!).  I dropped Frenchy off at 3am (dirty stop-out, I know), having first talked for many hours, as I drove home I noticed the sky brightening.  So instead of being reasonable and going home for some much needed sleep, I drove to the beach.  I got there at 3.40am, it was still almost totally dark, with masses of grey clouds.  But as it got lighter the sky changed, and with the iPod on for company, I just sat.  I had my notebook and a trusty pen there with me, so I wrote thoughts, freeform, onto blank pages.

The sun didn’t rush to rise, it took its time, and I’m glad it did.  As I sat there, utterly alone, the only person around for miles, I felt strangely calm.  I watched the seagulls overhead, wake up and start to fish, climing to great heights and then diving into the steely-grey water below.  The clouds melted away and left streaks of blue, yellow, pink orange and green in the sky.  It was a sight to behold.

After an hour of waiting, the sun started to emerge, and my iPod played the only song I can imagine could’ve done the moment justice.  My only regret was that I didn’t have a camera there to take photos of the moment the sun rose over the horizon.  It was so big and bright, so amazingly perfect.  As soon as it’d risen clear of the horizon I drove off home, arriving at 5am exactly.

I don’t know how Margaret Thatcher ran a country on 4 hours sleep, because it’s killing me!  But for the experience alone I wouldn’t have changed a thing.  Not a single thing.  It’s these moments that let me see the silver linings to those clouds.

(photos from the same beach last November, as the sun rose on a perfect Winter’s morning)

I have been meaning to do this post for a long time.  We all have to believe in something, and I believe in a lot of things.  Like the propensity for humans to be wonderful creatures, and that we could do so much more if we strove to do it.  So in a nutshell, these are some of my beliefs.  Some weird, nonsensical or daft, some very real and rooted in who I am as a person.

• I believe that human beings are capable of the most wonderful things.
• I believe that there is so much more to this world than what can be studied in a lab or seen with our own eyes.
• I believe in ghosts and souls, that everyone and everything has a soul, and that everything is sacred.
• I believe in second chances if the person deserves it, and I believe in letting go if they’re not.
• I believe you can love more than one person with a burning passion so great you feel you’re going to burst - mothers do this every day.
• I believe in trying your best for something, but knowing when to stop.
• I believe we should always know when to stop, and when to continue.
• I believe that life of those alive is sacred, but I believe in a woman’s right to choose.
• I believe we should all have the right to choose, and not to judge others based on their decisions.
• I believe we judge too much, but I believe one day we’ll know the follies of our ways.
• I believe in greater being(s).
• I believe that music was given to us as a way of surviving the downsides to life.
• I believe in soulmates.
• I believe that you have to try to find your soulmate, but that fate will help you to do so.
• I believe in aliens.
• I believe, more than anything else, in fate.
• I believe in Love, as an almighty force for good and change.
• I believe our world is the best place in the universe.
• I also believe that greed is behind the motives of every big business, at the cost of other people’s safety and well-being.
• I believe that there are a few well-placed men, in seats of power, who control on a daily basis almost everything we do.
• I believe eventually we’ll be free.
• I believe in clean breaks, and the ability to let go.
• I believe you can run away, but the past will catch up with you.
• I believe that the things your mother tells you are true as a child, are actually true.
• I believe it took me 22 years to realise this.
• I believe that the world is overpopulated, and that like the very famous experiment with rats, the more of us humans are packed into a town, the more unpleasant we become.
• I believe, like the dinosaurs and millions of ancestors, there will be a devastating event to put our numbers right.
• I believe we should all do more to help other people, and that charity starts next door. Help a neighbour.
• I believe that we get pointers, little things, from another place, to give us faith when we’re at our lowest.
• I believe in rainbows, and their accompanying pots of gold.
• I believe in our ability to adapt to difficult situations.
• I believe we trust too much in science, and it will be our eventual downfall, because scientists simply don’t know enough about what they’re playing with.
• I believe Calogero has one of the loveliest voices, and is very good to listen-to at any time of the day.
• But I believe that Ed Harcourt is my favourite singer ever, and his EP Maplewood, came just at the right time.
• I believe that colours in nature never clash. Red poppies next to orange wallflowers. Divine.
• I believe in gay marriage, and that love is love, whoever it comes from.
• I believe in evil people, they exist, and if we don’t have faith enough to defeat them, the world could be a bad place.
• I believe in silver linings.
• I believe in dragons.
• I believe that the closest you’ll get to the stars without leaving Earth, is to lay out in the middle of a desert at night.
• I believe that we are children of the stars.
• I believe in magic.
• I believe that the mass-media is tainted and controlled, to make sure we feel desperation.
• I believe we each have gifts unique and individual to ourselves.
• I believe in red lipstick and 1940’s heels.
• I believe in a little bit of powder, a whiff of perfume and freshly laundered blouses.
• I believe housework can soothe you when you’re stressed. Try ironing.
• I believe in clean but untidy houses.
• I believe that to bake a cake is to soothe a soul, both in the baking and in the eating.
• I believe that many people don’t see past the end of their own noses.
• I believe in better prisons for serious criminals, and that life should mean life.
• I believe you should be married to have/ adopt a child, but if you’re not when you get pregnant, you shouldn’t necessarily marry for the child.
• I believe in single mums, and how hard they work.
• I believe we all need a shoulder to cry on, even if it’s your pet hamster’s (or in my case, dog’s).
• I believe in someone’s right to choose death over life, because life is only sacred if it’s lived well.
• I believe in apple orchards and old lichen-covered apple trees.
• I believe I’ve found heaven on Earth.
• I believe in Saturdays when it rains.
• I believe in piano keys and guitar strings.
• I believe we are too scared to live, and we hold ourselves back. Take a step, breathe, and jump.
• I believe we hurt ourselves to try and make sense of an extremely difficult situation.
• I believe that if you’re in a difficult situation, the only person who’ll get you through it is yourself. With a little help from a friend.
• I believe it’s bad to rely completely on anyone to get you through something. Have faith in your own ability to cope and adapt.
• I believe we should all ask for help, but not rely upon it.
• I believe we should make the most of every day we have, because you’re a long time dead.
• I believe you learn more from the world around you, than you can ever learn in a classroom.
• I believe we should all have the ability to read and the interest to do the same.
• I believe being close to the land, and working with it, is as close to a perfect work-life balance as anyone will ever get.
• I believe in being tactile.
• I believe in hugs given with love.
• I believe kissing is the most intimate thing you can do with a person, second only to trusting them.
• I believe in love ever after and once upon a time.
• I believe in smoky jazz clubs and Ella Fitzgerald singing a sassy number on stage.
• I believe everything sounds better on a crackly old record than it does in perfect high-definition quality.
• I believe you should give freely. Give all of yourself, because it’s the only way to be happy.
• I believe we should live like it’s our last day. Because it might well be.
• I believe what goes up, must eventually come down.
• I don’t believe in madness, just a temporary change of circumstances.
• I believe beliefs should never be written in stone. Pencil is much better.
• I believe I’m old beyond my years, yet there is so much more still to know.
• I believe in you, and him and her, them and those.

Je crois.