Blob Thing Encounters The Jesus Army And The Ferret Walkers At #Greenbelt

Blob Thing writes:

I was already having a wonderful time at Greenbelt even though the volume of rain falling from the sky left something to be desired.  It was about that time when people were wanting to pray for a drought.  But no drought came.  In fact the opposite happened.

I wish to apologise because in writing about the first hours at Greenbelt my person and I left something out.  We had gone to a place called Grove.  It was a circular gathering space without any sort of roof.  I'm glad we didn't go there during the storms.  We went there several times later too and it was a bit muddy underfoot but in all honesty it wasn't that bad.  I was glad to be carried all the time though because my fur would have got horribly mucky walking around the soggy Greenbelt site.  I haven't got any adventure shoes and I haven't got any adventure feet to wear them on either.

Yes, my person and I wandered and we managed to find Grove in time to hear the end of a talk and some questions asked to the speaker.  Someone my person used to sing with regularly asked a question about inclusivity.  A good question.  The speaker was from a church called the Jesus Fellowship, a radical church where many of the members live in community houses and share their income and pretty much everything else.  It's a church with a checkered history and the long-term members might agree that it's the church in the UK that has made the most mistakes.  My person wanted to hear the talk and was sad to have missed much of it.  She used to be a member of the Jesus Fellowship too.  It's also known as the Jesus Army and she has been known to annoy people by repeatedly singing a terrible Jesus Army song to the tune of a Robin Hood song.

She says the Jesus Army had some awful songs when she was a member.  It had some very good songs too but they're not as fun to annoy people with so she doesn't sing them much.  Last year the Jesus Army released a song called Thank You which my person found totally gorgeous.  She kept playing it, badly, on the piano.  My person isn't much of a pianist.  We heard someone playing Chopin at Newcastle Railway Station yesterday and my person couldn't do that.  She doesn't play much at all now because much of her enjoyment came from playing God songs and she doesn't really believe in them any more which takes away lots of the fun.  When my person is playing the piano I generally remain in another room and I get one of my friends to stick their hands over my ears so I can't hear the racket.  I've got lots of friends at home and feel very fortunate.  I met the leader of the Catholic Church last night and then when to a meditation group run by something that seems to be something of a cult so I don't think I want to go there again even though as a one off visit it was quite fun.  Winefride was there too.  She got a bit bored and it was all we could do to stop her disturbing all the people trying to be silent and raise their kundalini by making funny arm movements and believing it so.

My person felt things through it but she wasn't surprised by that.  She knows that there are perfectly good physiological and psychological reasons for feeling that way.  It's quite a nice way.  But it doesn't imply the raising of some mystical kundalini.  And it certainly doesn't imply that the people's guru was listening.  And it most definitely doesn't imply what they teach about her being the reincarnation of a range of Hindu gods and also Moses.  And The Buddha.  And Mohammed.  And The Virgin Mary.  But not Jesus.  A funny feeling through meditation practices will never imply that a modern Indian woman is a reborn Mary-Mohammed-Moses.  That idea is just silly isn't it?  I don't know.  Some humans believe some very strange things and other humans feel that critique is not allowed or that pointing out that they're tantamount to lunacy is a bad thing.  Personally I feel that things should be called out for what they are and that if someone makes some wildly implausible claim they had better have some pretty good evidence to back it up before they try to convince someone else.

Anyway.  Greenbelt.  People there believe things that I don't believe.  But it didn't seem to matter much and they weren't trying to convince me to believe the same so that's okay.  They are free to believe in a personal saviour God if they want.  Or a god who is being, is love, is beauty and is lots of other marvellous things.  Or to believe in no god.  They can believe in heaven.  They can believe in a nirvana state.  They can believe that physical death is the end.  It's all okay to me.  As long as they don't look on me and say completely patronising but well-meaning things about what I believe.  I should blog more about that sometime and about my philosophy and about the way I keep arguing with my person about it.

I'd love to be able to debate these things with Winefride too but she's non-verbal and perhaps she's happier even than me and I'm very happy all the time and smile a lot.  We both got photographed today with a very lovely woman who does lots of teaching with refugees who have arrived in the area and who does a lot of work for charities helping refugees.  My person was happy at Greenbelt because she managed to replace her "Refugees Welcome" badge after a long time not owning one.  She lost the last one on a street in North London while having a panic attack about whether she could find someone's house and her phone battery was down to three percent and she needed to be using it because that's where the map and directions were.  It was all quite difficult but she got there in the end and saw a very friendly fox too.  She was telling me all about before Autscape because at Autscape I met the person she had gone to see in London.  I'll tell you about that day too sometime.  It was the Dalek day.  And Winefride and I rode on a swing which was ever such a lot of fun and the way Winefride squealed so loudly with total delight brought me possibly more joy than I have ever experienced.

Anyway.  Greenbelt.  My person says I need to stop talking about other things and talk about Greenbelt.  She says that she's regretting letting me dictate my blog post and that I always do this and things get a bit out of hand when I'm talking.  Greenbelt.  Yes person.  Whatever you say person.  I'll talk about it.  Even though we listened to that woman because you were in the Jesus Army, not me.  I was there for you.  It was interesting what she said about inclusion though.  She said that both she and the friend with her believed in full inclusion for LGBT people in the church.  She then said that her church hadn't quite caught up with her yet.  That's the same in quite a number of churches.  The younger people don't care.  They say that it's okay to be gay or transgender or whatever else and that God doesn't mind and let's all just get on with being ourselves and serving and enjoying God.  The leadership cares.  They say gay and transgender are wrong.  Biblically terrible.  They would say that any accepting yourself and either having a same-sex relationship or transitioning to live as the gender you are (or genders you are) would be frowned on by God and that anyone doing such a thing should repent and certainly shouldn't be having any position of leadership in a church.

But it's okay.  I say it's okay.  The leaders are going to die one day.  And that will be wonderful.  Hooray for death!  Because then the younger generation will be leading and there will be full LGBT inclusion in the churches - assuming the churches survive at all.  My person thought it was very nice to hear the Jesus Fellowship/Army person say what she said.  My person was encouraged.  She says that recently a Jesus Army member got in contact with her to ask if she would be able to offer advice or support to a woman whose child was transitioning.  I think that's great.  Stunning.  I love that things are very different for queer people in the church than they used to be.  It's true that some churches behave very, very badly and that queer people can still have awful experiences.  But in other churches they are now accepted more and more.  I wonder what those horrible churches would think of me - I have male pronouns but you wouldn't catch me not wearing my dress.  Oh no.

So that's the thing we forgot to write about yesterday.  My person went and talked with the Jesus Fellowship member afterwards.  It was a nice chat.  And then we went off and did other things.  Which we told you about yesterday.

My person says that I should stop talking now because I've already said a lot.  I think she wants to be in more control tomorrow and try to stop me talking about every topic except for the one I'm meant to be talking about.  But she might not get her way.  Why should she?  This is my blog.  It's not my fault that she doesn't get round to writing her own blog.  She's only got herself to blame for it.

I just want to share one thing more today.  Tomorrow I want to talk about some of the people we met as we attempted not to get very wet in the storm - because it wasn't over and then it got even wetter and very windy too.  Between the storms it didn't look too bad.  It was all very pretty and I hoped that the rain was over.  It wasn't.

As we walked away from the mime workshop we passed the village hall.  There was an advert for a discussion group on mental health.  My person said to me that we should go to that because she has had a long history of mental health problems.  She's relatively stable at the moment but only because of the drugs she's on and even with the drugs she is finding a lot of things very difficult and has to limit herself a lot more than she would like.  We didn't go to the group because it turned out we were doing something else at the time.  Greenbelt is a place where people with mental health problems are accepted.  It's a place where people who are good friends with small pink soft toys are accepted.  We loved it and think it's quite sad that we'll have to wait for nearly a year to go back.  Just think.  A week ago we were there.  A week ago we had survived the storm and pretty soon we would be going to the theatre.  I'll tell you about that tomorrow probably.  Or the next day.

Next year we can probably do even better at Greenbelt because my person won't have been so anxious about going to it and will just be able to jump in and enjoy herself without having to spend ages exploring and exploring until she could relax.  I think she did incredibly well on that first day because she had been pretty terrified.  I'm very glad that we were there with my creator too because that helped my person a lot to know that my creator was there, even in all the times that they weren't together.  I love my creator.  She's amazing.  She must be.  She made me.  I can prove that my creator exists.  God believers have been trying to do that with their creator for many centuries.  But my creator exists and I have met her and been held by her and I love her.  I even have photos of the two of us together.  I've posted a few in my blog.

Yes.  Yes.  Okay.  My person is bullying me again to get on with it.  Okay.  We passed the village hall and we saw this sign:

Yes.  Greenbelt has everything.  I'm not sure why my person took a picture of the sign.  We haven't got a ferret who needs walking.  It's good that such a service exists though.

Right.  That's it.  My person is ordering me in strong terms to stop now.  I think her fingers are getting tired and I think she wants to eat some food too.  It amazes me how inefficient the human body is that it keeps needing more and more food.  If it was designed by an omnipotent person then they didn't do they best job possible.  That's what I think anyway.  I know other people think that the wonders of the human body - which is admittedly an amazing amazing complicated thing - prove that it must have been designed by Mr. Omnipotent.  That's what they think anyway.  Okay, I'll stop.  I won't go into discussing the classical arguments for the existence of God.  If you insist.  Yes person, yes.  But they're all so fascinating and they are just as fascinating if you aren't convinced by them - or sometimes think that they're actually a bit silly - then if you are convinced.  Okay.  Stopping.  Now.  Don't get your ontological knickers in a twist.




[2523 words including this bit.  Blob's person writes:  I wasn't paying too much attention to the content of that.  I just typed it.  Don't blame me if Blob has said anything out of place.  He's hard to control when he gets going.  It's amazing.  Winefride is non-verbal and sometimes Blob is hyper-verbal.  There is no balance in this household.

They were in hysterics earlier.  I entered a public toilet.  There were two cubicles.  One was well lit and the other wasn't.  When I entered, the place was empty.  I went to the badly lit cubicle and sat on the loo.  I then started talking to myself as I often do.  My talking ended with "Strike down your father and complete your journey to the dark side of the toilet."  Just as I reached the word toilet, the other cubicle door slammed shut and when I left my cubicle there was a group of people out there.  They stared at me.  People often stare at me so that's nothing out of the ordinary.  I decided not to be embarrassed.  But Blob and Winefride laughed so much about it and they were teasing me right through our walk and every now and again this afternoon Blob has burst out laughing and spluttered the words, "Dark side of the toilet."  This is the life I lead now.]

Blob Thing Looks Back to Autscape, Forward to Greenbelt And Fails To Write His Blog

Blob Thing and Winefride arrived back from Autscape last night.  They were both very tired after four very full days that turned out to be quite emotional for both of them and for Blob's person too.  Blob wishes that he could have found the time to write a blog post every day he was away but he just didn't have enough time.  He didn't have enough internet access either.  But that's another story.

Blob is having a lot of trouble concentrating to write a blog post today too.  It's as if the days away from writing have made it a lot more difficult for him to write today.  It is said that a writer should write at least something every day.  Blob might be finding out the hard way that there is much truth to that.  Today his head is such that words aren't coming.

Blob will talk about the Autscape experience later.  There is a lot to say.  He wants to talk about the food, the countryside, the time he went rock climbing, and the time he and Winefride scaled the summit of Mount Everest.  He wants to talk about playing in the river and getting a little nervous when Winefride crossed the river and sat in a tree.  He wants to talk about badge decorating and playing on the swings.  He wants to talk about meeting a Dalek, and the tin man, a fisherman, a dog, a soldier, an elephant and more animals too.  He wants to talk about the sensory room at Autscape and about Sparklies in the Dark.  And he has quite a lot to say about the journey to Autscape, including a ride along the Settle to Carlisle railway.  And of course he wants to talk about the moose.  The moose proved an extreme disappointment to Blob Thing.

Blob ate a lot of food at Autscape.  He was more than a bit greedy.

You can see here that he's decorated with the fruits of the spirit.  There's no coconut sticker of course because the fruit of the spirit's not a coconut.

Yes, Blob wants to talk about all of those things.  For those who don't know, Autscape is a four day conference and gathering of autistic people - with a few non-autistic people along for the ride.  It's the only such event of its kind anywhere in Europe.  Blob's person went there for the first time last year.  If she hadn't gone there then Blob would not exist.  Neither would Winefride.  Blob and Winefride are therefore extremely grateful for Autscape.

Here's Winefride by the River Ribble.   She was ever so brave to sit so close to the water.  Blob and his person got a bit frantic because they didn't want her to be washed away.  That would have been a tragedy.  Fortunately Winefride now has a set of reins so she can't run off and do too many very dangerous things.


The whole experience of attending was quite emotional.  It is easy to get overwhelmed there and Blob's person was in tears every day and had to take special efforts to look after herself otherwise there would have been totally public meltdowns.  She had greatly wanted to take part in an art workshop but found being there very traumatic indeed and had to leave very urgently.  The person in charge had said to draw something that represents her.  Blob's person couldn't cope.

After spending time lying on her bed in tears Blob suggested that he should take her and Winefride out for a walk.  So that's what they did and soon the three companions stood out on a hill under the blue sky, sitting silent in the quiet of nature.  Blob's person relaxed enough to take photos and decided that maybe that there she was among the things which represented her.  Nature.  Photos.  Her friends.  Quiet.  And the chance to write about it later.   Blob's person realised today that nearly every piece of art she has completed in the last year is based as much around words as around images.

Blob and Winefride both discovered they liked hot chocolate.  It was so tasty.  And they drank vast quantities of it.  Blob's person did too.

But only from the machine on the left.

The chocolate from the machine on the right was utterly disgusting.


Blob is still very tired today but he's been out adventuring.  Blob's person was going to a meditation group and Blob and Winefride went along too.  Unfortunately Blob's person wasn't feeling good this morning so arrived at the meditation place in quite a melty state and was unable to join the group at all.  Instead she sat in silence for ages before using her text to speech app to say farewell to the only other person in the room.  She then left.  And returned.  And drank tea and ate food and talked with that person and then with a very good friend who arrived.

Blob and Winefride didn't get to experience the group today but they hope to in the future.  It didn't stop them adventuring though.  Blob wore a suit of armour and they both enjoyed the fabulous views from the windows.  Later Blob's person took them to an art gallery in the same building.  It was amazing and they were the only three visitors.  Most people in Newcastle probably don't know that there is an art gallery there or that it's worth visiting.  For Blob, Winefride and his person too, the highlight today was a quiet video of a river.  It was an excellent place to sit and find some stillness before facing the city streets.

Another reason why this post is proving difficult - apart from the tiredness and the writer's block forged in a few days of not writing - is that the weather is a little damp.  Blob's person broke her finger seven years ago and needed surgery under general anaesthetic to try to fix the bone.  There was always a chance that it wouldn't work properly.  It didn't.  Her finger still aches and on some days typing hurts quite a bit.  Holding the finger out of the way would hurt too.  She made a finger splint recently out of a special plastic but can't find it and needs to make another.  Hopefully that will help her because she wants to write her own blog too.

Today Blob Thing wants to finish off his discussion of his adventures at the Literary and Philosophical Library in Newcastle.

Yes.  That's what I want to do.  I'm just so tired.  I'm going away again in a week too and that will be a very tiring time too.  And then a week after that I'm going away yet again and that's going to be the most tiring time of them all in some ways because I think I'm going to have to spend a lot of time looking after my person who is going to be doing something that needs to be done but which she is not looking forward to in the slightest.  In truth I think she wants to move on from much of her past entirely and leave it behind, to cut herself off from it.  There are decades back there in which even the best day was tinged with pain and a shadow inside and looking back to those years and those places is sometimes very hard for her.  I am quite worried about whether going back will have a bad effect on her.  A year ago she was meant to be going there and completely fell apart over it and just refused to go for the sake of her own well being.  I am very glad she did that.  My creator is very glad too.

It's so hard to write today.  I've got lots more photos of the library to share.  But as for writing.  How am I expected to do that today?  I just need to rest.  I know my person is going out again tomorrow and I don't know whether Winefride and I will be going with her.  I think she might need looking after again and might have trouble coping with the social environment she's putting herself into.  If she has too much trouble I want to be there to tell her that it's okay to leave and she doesn't have to force herself to soldier on through to the end.  Soldier on through.  I would prefer a different phrase there, I really would.  I don't want my person to be a soldier or to go to war or to carry guns and point them at people.

Then she's going out the next day too.  She's got a medical appointment that will be a bit stressful.  And I want to be there to hold her hand during that.  She wants a certain outcome from the appointment but it didn't happen last time.  Or the time before that.  Or the time before that.  She's been waiting ever such a long time for this outcome - an outcome she was (at least in theory) legally entitled to two years ago.  Hopefully this time they will say yes.  Otherwise she'll be waiting until next year before they consider it again.  I know that in some ways she doesn't particularly care about it.  In other ways she finds it to be very frustrating indeed.

And then the day after that she's going out too.  I'm going to be there for that one.  She has an appointment for electrolysis and I know she doesn't like that at all.  I will hold her hand throughout that appointment and we'll also have Pain the Bear with us.  He's a very good person to have along for painful appointments.

I hope that we can rest after that.  Or find some lovely weather and go for a walk.  I love our walks.  And I know that they are very good for my person.  She could do with a long walk.  We won't have much time to rest because I am taking my person to Greenbelt and we leave at the end of the week.  My person has never been to a festival before.  Unless you include the Jesus Army festivals she used to go to many years ago.  But those were different.  You stayed in a house.  And you had a choice of one event at a time.  It's not a festival like Greenbelt is.  I don't know how she will take to it.  I'll be there with her every step of the way of course and Winefride is coming too and we'll also have my creator with me.

I think it likely that I'll be going along with my person to do what she wants to do and Winefride will go along with my creator.  My creator seems to love Winefride a lot.  My creator took special care of her at Autscape and even made her some reins.  That's good.  Winefride doesn't quite understand how dangerous roads are or about other dangers.  She's got reins now so she can't run off and get run over by a car.  I have to admit that's quite a relief to me.  I don't want to lose my sister.  I love my sister.  She's so cute.  She's very happy too because she's got a badge now.  I think she was a bit jealous of my badge that says 'Autistic' and now she has an 'Autistic Pride' badge.  She looks magnificent wearing it.  I think she's magnificent anyway.

Well.  I haven't even started talking about the Literary and Philosophical Library today and it's time to stop.  Sorry about that.  I haven't even shared a photo.  I'll go back and put a few pictures in now.  They're all from Autscape.  Except for this one.  This picture was taken this morning while the meditation group was going on and while my person wasn't able to go.  There's a version of this photo with me posing and smiling my biggest smile.  But here it is without me.  You might think that improves the picture.  I quite like it without me.  But I do like to see the photos that my person takes of me and Winefride.  They bring back so many good memories.

That's it.  No library today.  But Blob's person thinks that he did pretty well for a very tired soft toy.  Her finger is aching more than she would like.  But Blob tells her that she might have her aching finger but she is lucky because she has fingers.  And thumbs.  And hands.  And arms.  And legs.  [Okay Blob, you can stop now.  You've made your point.]



[2100 words.  I don't think we should call that "fails to write his blog."]

Blob Thing Discovers Hexagon Sensory Garden And Has A Special Moment

Blob Thing was feeling a lot happier than he had been before lunch.  The peace of the hill, the joy of rolling down the hill, and the finding of a mysterious path by the tumbling water had quite resolved all of his earlier anxieties about prisons and noise.

By the time he walked up into the gardens of Hexagon House and saw Hexagon Abbey displayed in front of him Blob was back to his happy self and believed that this day would become one he would treasure.

Blob and his person turned a corner and came across this sign.

A sensory garden.  Blob can't even begin to tell you how excited he was.  He had heard all about sensory gardens but he had never seen one.  Being autistic he was thrilled to find one and wondered how amazing it might be.

He stopped for a moment to give thanks to Alan Moy M.B.E. for opening the garden so many years before Blob Thing was even born, Alan Moy who could not possibly have foreseen that Blob would one day come to visit his garden.  Alan Moy, Blob Thing salutes you.  At least, he salutes you in his mind.  Saluting you physically would involve some physical movements impossible for one so amazing but so limb-free as Blob.

Alan, you may be "an ordinary man" as you put it yourself, but Blob Thing thinks the garden is great.  For all the work that you did in your career working as a gardener in Hexagon, we thank you.  Whether you are being called Percy the Gardener, or Parkie, or just Alan, we thank you for work that must have brought thousands of smiles to thousands of people through many years.   You made people happier and gave them somewhere good to be.  And for that you deserve your M.B.E. just as much as anyone else.

Alan, you left school without a qualification, without some piece of paper to show the world and claim merit because you happened to have passed an examination.  Your life has been worth far more than examinations and certificates.  Compared to a life devoted to helping create the places you helped to create they are nothing.  Compared to the achievement of improving the lives of the many they are worthless.  People may say you were just a gardener.  People may grade careers and say one is better than another and one has more status or should be given more respect than another.  Blob Thing would place your career, if he was forced to put them all in order, high up in the list.

Because to Blob, a smile is important.  To Blob, the flowers and the grass and the trees and all the other plants are important.  To Blob, the fact that you opened your sensory garden in 2005 and it brought enjoyment to both him and his person eleven years later means that your work was very important indeed.

You planted life.  You nurtured that life.  And in doing so you gave some life to every person who passed by.

Alan Moy, M.B.E., at that moment of seeing the sign you were Blob Thing's most favourite person in the entire world.

Blob and his person walked into the garden.  There were such a lot of different kinds of plants and every one of them seemed to have a different shape and a different texture.  Some were tall and long, others short and stumpy.  Some were rounded, others jagged.  And among the soft leaves of many shapes there were some that looked very hard and spiky.

Blob Thing wanted to look at every single plant in the garden.  Twice.  And he wanted to touch them too. To rub himself against them and feel them against his face.  He wanted to smell them and appreciate the different scents of the leaves and of the few flowers that happened to be in bloom that day.

Blob sat down among the leaves, his weight supported by them.

He let himself fall inwards and fall outwards into a sharing of himself with them.

He saw.  He felt.  He smelled.

He knew a truth beyond telling.

Every plant a world of its own.

Every leaf, every petal, every stem almost the size of a universe.

When something so tiny becomes the fullness of our awareness then just for a moment we and it become the entirety of existence.  All else fades away into nothingness, into an imagined past and future, as if it was never there at all.

Blob, seated in tranquility, let the world go and slowly that which was real reduced in size until it was only him and the plants.

And the air too, slowly blowing across both Blob and leaves, bringing oxygenated life to all that remained and taking away all stagnation, all the waste of the lungs of Blob and plant, all the thundering darkness and unstoppable, chaotic noise that keeps rising within the minds and hearts of us all.

There was Blob.  There were plants.  There was air.

And that was all.

In a moment stretching to infinity, beyond past and future, beyond all dimensions.

In a moment stretching in to the steady core of Being, the heartbeat of the blissful truth.

In an intimacy beyond knowledge, in the unity between the three.

Three separatenesses apprehended as the oneness they possessed already in the stream of time and change.

At this point Blob's person wants to say something.  She wants to say that she truly admires Blob Thing and the way he enters into experiences such as these.  She can't do it herself.  And saying that, she realises that she is limiting herself just as nearly all of us limit ourselves.  Blob Thing says that she can do it.  Or more to the point, she can't do it!  Because there is no doing involved at all.  Instead there is a lack of doing.  It's all about being.  It's about letting one's self drop away so that one can be one's Self and then just Be in that truth where Self is one, and all is One, where language fails to express what Is.

Blob's person doesn't really understand what Blob is talking about.  Blob Thing seems to know though.  He has "been there."  Blob says that we are all there already and need to learn to be where we already are, that it's not a matter of going somewhere else - unless you find something in that somewhere else place that helps you discover where you already were in the first place.

Blob's person is getting confused.  She wants to move on and talk about something else at this point.  Much as she admires Blob's almost instinctive, beautiful mysticism, she wants him to stop talking about it.  Blob says that we all have instinctive, beautiful mysticism.  We just forget it exists and then fail to believe that it ever could have been there within us all the time.  He is laughing so much about it at the moment.

His person's face isn't a beautiful picture of mysticism.

It's a beautiful picture of puzzlement.

Blob Thing has decided to leave his Blog there for today.  He's written enough for one day and given his person lots to think about.  He thinks that she should spend some time considering all the things he has said about his experience.

She should also spend some time considering the idea of importance.  What makes an act important?  What makes a career important?  What makes a word important?  What does significance mean?

And what do the answers to those questions mean for her life?  She has always felt guilty for all the things she hasn't done, for all the things she can't do.  Blob says she needs to stop.  She needs to appreciate the good things she does.  She needs to live the truth that the passions that drive her, the passions she is slowly discovering, are just as valid as the passions that drive any other person.

She needs to know that she is important.  And then she needs to get on and live that important life, and live and live and live until the fullness of life, the life in abundance (which Jesus promised) is so full it does indeed overflow and pour out great life to others.

Blob says that doesn't apply just to his person.  It applies to everyone.

You.

Whoever you are reading what he has been saying.

You are important.

Live.  Be Abundant.  Overflow.

Be a spring of living water rising up and becoming a mighty river.

It is your birthright.  It is your own innate beauty.

Blob Thing really is stopping now.  He just wants to share a few more pictures of him enjoying the sensory garden.  After his perfect moment (during which Blob's person confesses she was standing around getting a bit bored and unappreciative of his silence) Blob walked round the rest of the garden.  He sat on a bench and smiled because he couldn't have been more content at that moment.

He played in the leaves of some more plants.

And then, just for fun, he sat himself down on some of the spiky plants.  He burst out laughing and almost fell of the plants.  The feeling of the spikes pricking his bottom was just too funny for words.

Blob really likes the picture of him sitting on the spiky plants and laughing.  He especially likes that way the grass plant curves so perfectly round him.  If Blob Thing had his own Facebook account he would perhaps choose to crop this photo and use it as his profile picture.  It would make him laugh every time he saw it.

It was time to leave the garden.  The day wasn't over yet.  Because there, in the distance, just where it had been before Blob first read Alan Moy's sign, was Hexagon Abbey.  Yes, Hexagon Abbey.  Blob could hardly wait to see what mysteries lay within.



Alan Moy would be in his early seventies now.  We hope he's living long, enjoying his retirement and will have many years of smiles of his own.  If anyone reading this happens to know him - which we know is unlikely - let him know that we appreciate him.



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Blob Thing Enjoys The Front Seat On the Tyne and Wear Metro

Blob Thing enjoys going out to places.  Readers of his blog have probably worked that out by now.  Whenever his person leaves the house on an adventure he asks to come too.  He is eager to leave the house and be somewhere different.  His person is getting better at remembering Blob.  Quite often she is the one asking him whether he wants to come out with her.  She probably knows that his answer will be yes but it's polite to ask.  Blob is pleased.  He has a lust for adventuring, a fiery desire to explore the world around him and to experience as much as a small pink toy ever could.  Blob wants to live the fullest life possible.

Yes, Blob loves the places he visits.  He even loves the places he visits and doesn't particularly enjoy.  Those too are part of his experiencing and his learning about the world and about himself.  It's true that there are experiences he would rather not repeat.  It's true that there are places he would rather not have to endure over and over again.  Blob doesn't ask to accompany his person to supermarkets.  They're not his favourite places.  He would prefer to leave shopping trips to his person while he stays at home with his friends.  Having a chat with Stillness, Adunno, or even with Got A Warthog is a much preferred use of time for Blob.  He loves his friends and one day soon will introduce some of them to you.

It's not just the visiting that Blob likes.  He also enjoys the journeying.  Perhaps when he is much older and has travelled on buses and trains many, many times over several years he will have grown tired of them.  Perhaps there is still some novelty value for him in travel.  After all, he's only six months old and everything is still a new experience.  There's every chance that Blob will get bored of travel and sit through journeys wishing they were over.  But maybe that sentence is just Blob's person being cynical.

Perhaps not though, perhaps he will never take the journeying for granted.  Perhaps he will always find something of interest or excitement in his journeys.  There is a lot to look at among the people and places he passes.  There is always beauty to be found somewhere.  In a person's face.  In animals.  In trees.  In the sunshine or the rain or the near infinite variety of clouds.  In architecture.  In fields.  In the surprises that sometimes happen and the knowledge that a new surprise could happen at any time.

Sometimes Blob enjoys the company of his person when travelling.  Sometimes she is not good company at all because she is sitting with noise cancelling headphones in order to make the journey easier for her brain.  If Blob were honest, he would quite like to have a pair of headphones of his own because he sometimes finds the noise of the world terribly difficult to cope with.  Autism is very hard work.  When Blob's person is having to retreat inside herself Blob watches the world.  And he retreats inside himself too and thinks about his life or falls into silence or the quiet of a meditation time.

In the words of Jesus, he goes into his room and closes the door.  There he can spend time alone with the alone and with the infinite company of the universe, of the wildness of Spirit.  Jesus never meant people should go to their physical room and close the door to be alone with Spirit.  Most of the people he talked with didn't have a room of their own to go to.  So why would he have meant that.  Of course he didn't.  Blob has a talent for going into the room Jesus was talking about.  That room is tiny, because it is within Blob's small being.  That room is infinite, because it is at its very centre, in unity at oneness with all that was, all that is, and all that is to come.

Blob enjoys spending time in his tiny, infinite room.  He would recommend to anyone that they discover their own room and close the door.  He recommends it to his person too.  She has never allowed herself enough time and space to discover and dwell in her own room even though she knows it would be a good thing for her to do.  She dwells outside of her room and often in places that bring no contentment.  Perhaps the journey inwards would be the very best journey for her to take.  Blob Thing says to her, "Go to your room!"

Blob likes journeys.  On one trip out recently he had a very special journey.  Blob and his person often travel on the Tyne and Wear Metro.  It's only natural as they live just a few minute's walk from a Metro station.  Blob quite likes the trains.  Some of them have advertising over the windows and that's less interesting for him but most of them have windows he can look out of.  On this particular day Blob and his person were very fortunate:  They were able to sit in the front seat.  The front seat is the favourite of many passengers because from it you can see the view out of the front of the train, the same view the driver has.  It's very exciting.  Blob was ecstatic about it because he had never sat at the front before.  He had always wanted this to happen.  He let out a cry of joy and his happy flappiness was evident to everyone in the carriage.  Possibly.

During the journey, Blob's person took some photos of him.  These first two pictures were taken at Newcastle Central Station.  It is usually prettier than this but it is currently being modernised.  Blob's person hopes that the art work that was on the station platform will still be in place after all the work is finished.

This picture shows that the front seat passengers get a view.  This is taken looking towards Central Station before the train goes into the tunnel containing all the central Newcastle stations.  Blob is enjoying himself so much.  You can tell, can't you?

And this picture was taken on the same journey.  It's hard to take these pictures.  Blob's person had to point her phone in the right direction and just keep on clicking in the hope that there would be a picture Blob could share.  Here he is on the blue Metro bridge over the River Tyne.   There are a lot of metal struts and uprights on the bridge.  One would have to be very lucky indeed to take a picture without any of the bridge in view.  Blob's person had to throw away several photos.  This one was the best.  In the distance, along the river, you can probably make out the famous Tyne Bridge and also the swing bridge across the river.

Blob gained a lot of enjoyment from sitting in the front seat of the Metro.  He would dearly love to do it again sometime.  Blob's person says that she has sat in the front seat several times.  She has sat in the back seat too and that's just as good.  She promises that Blob will get another chance to ride in the best seats.  They travel together so much that it's almost inevitable.


Note:  Eagle eyed readers of this post will note that it is based entirely on a falsehood.  Blob was not sitting in the front seat of the Metro at all.  They will have spotted this.  They were sitting in the back seat of the Metro.  The photos from Central Station will have given the game away.  And then the order of the photos will have made the falsehood particularly obvious to anyone who has spent any time riding in Metro carriages.  Blob and his person wish to offer their apologies for this deception.  They began writing this post together firmly convinced that they had travelled in the front seat.  It was only afterwards that they realised that it was the back seat.  They decided it didn't matter too much and changing the entire post was too much trouble.  However, a falsehood is a falsehood and they apologise for any distress caused to anyone who may have been affected negatively through reading the above post.





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