Tourney, skill at arms and a large period market in the heart of Colchester.

More info here

I can’t believe it’s been a year since I first participated in the Tarot Blog Hop, hasn’t it flown by? The theme for this Hop is Dancing Between Light and Darkness and the notion that there is a point at which things can be neither one thing nor the other, or both. Initially, this seemed a curious suggestion to me, but it makes a certain kind of sense if you consider that something can be both a hope and a fear or an event can be both a source of joy and of sadness.

(more…)

Welcome to the Yule Tarot Blog Hop. The theme du jour is “Christmas Present” – a topic that I have no doubt has yielded diverse and interesting posts from our wonderful collection of bloggers. You can find links at the bottom of the page back to the lovely (and prolific) Chloe’s Lenormand Blog forward to Joanne’s Tarot blog or back to Alison’s master list of all the hoppers.

Life is short and at this time of year the days make it seem even shorter. As we hurtle towards the outbreak of festivities with joy, dread, mild panic or all three, perhaps it is time to take a moment to reflect. Alternatively, if you have no time, no time, no time (oops, mild panic creeping out there), and the world has not, in fact, ended as predicted today, you can always wait until the main event is over and you are quietly thanking providence for surviving the food, family and festivities in a warm, overfed and alcoholic glow.

(more…)

Welcome to the Samhain/Hallowe’en edition of the Tarot Blog Hop. You can find links to the posts preceding and following this one and also the master list at the bottom of the page, as usual. The theme of this Blog Hop is “Exploring Your Shadow Side”. Well, if you’ve tuned in to find out about all my dark secrets, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. You see, as a well-adjusted as a schizophrenic as a Gemini, I don’t have a shadow side as such; all of my facets are on display…in carefully selected doses…to carefully selected people of course, but essentially, what you see is what you get , dark bits and all

(more…)

Welcome to the Lammas Tarot Blog Hop. This time, the theme is “Pentacles: The Fruits of the Harvest” and the idea is to connect with the Pentacles suit and write about which of the cards you can relate to right now.

When I first signed up at the end of June, I thought “Fab! The garden is taking shape nicely, by Lammas there will be very literally a harvest, so the 7 of Pentacles is obviously going to be the card for me!” Sure enough, I have a pumpkin plant bent on world domination, a courgette producing fruit on virtually a daily basis, the green stuff is growing well (peas, beans, lettuce, cauli,cabbage, etc), the tomatoes are just starting to swell and there are cute little knobbly cucumbers forming behind the flowers. Yes, indeed, I can definitely relate to the 7 of Pentacles  - a little light weeding, liberal sprinklings of slug pellets and leaning on my hoe waiting to pick the fruits of my labours is the order of the day. You can see how my garden grows here.

(more…)

So, here we are again, with Mercury causing trouble. The planet going Retrograde is being blamed for all kinds of breakdowns and communications, meanwhile, our thermometers have been rising too with a small heatwave last week. It makes a change from floods, I suppose, at least if you don’t count the personal ones I have been experiencing in my own little sweatshop (or the conservatory and my workroom, as it is known.) Either way, it is exploding head time.

(more…)

There is something very special about being up at dawn and seeing the sunrise. This is, in part, because most of us aren’t (or don’t want to be) up that early or, indeed, late, which in itself makes quite a difference. There is a completely different energy to seeing the sun come up after having been up all night, as opposed to simply being up before dawn. The former is a culminating moment of the previous day (and night) and there is a sense of achievement in having made it through the whole of the previous day and the night as well. The latter is the bright, fresh beginning of a new day, full of potential and everything yet to come. I’ll admit to having been through both sets of circumstances ;D

(more…)

I had so much fun participating in the last Tarot Blog Hop, that I signed up again. This time the theme was given as “The Fire tends to All” and immediately I suffered a ’70s flashback moment with a mental blast of this…

(more…)

Today’s post is brought to you by the Tarot Blog Hop, which, if you haven’t come across it before, is the blogging equivalent of a round-robin. You can click on the links at the bottom to see the previous and next posts.

The topic du jour for this edition of the blog hop was given as Ostara: Paint a journey with new life. Hmm, I thought, what on earth am I going to write about that? I’m not religious at all*; profound discourses on the meaning of life are best saved for late nights with wine and there are far too many people preaching sharing their insights on how to live your life, so I’m not going to go there either. 

(more…)

So what did I get for Christmas?

I got lucky, that’s what   See? It says so here –>

The card is from the rather lovely Vintage Erotica Tarot, just one of my many Christmas presents and the source of many of the previously mentioned giggles In case you can’t see it properly, the card is The Wheel and is subtitled “You Are Lucky”, which pretty much sums up how I feel about life at the moment.

This deck is a collection of, as you might reasonably expect, vintage erotica – lovely original sepia toned pictures of un-airbrushed ladies with naturally shaped bodies and plush, luxuriant lady beards (no Brazilians here, or if there are, it’s due to nationality rather than nether region hairstyling).

(more…)