Blob Thing Meets Giant Refugees And Enjoys Art And Free Tea At Greenbelt

Blob isn't going to write much today.  He's finding it hard to focus being down in Sussex and at this point would much rather be with his friends.  Winefride is finding it hard too.  She's getting quite bored and it's left to Blob to do the looking after.  Blob hopes that she can come out on an adventure soon but his person keeps being busy and doesn't know if any of the busy people would want to go out on adventures with soft toys.  Blob also hopes that they can all escape soon and go out and see the animals.  Maybe today after all the other silly human jobs are done.  Blob says that humans spend a lot of time worrying about meaningless things and collecting meaningless things.  He doesn't understand humans sometimes.  Then again, his person doesn't understand them either and she is a human.  Blob and Winefride are very glad that Portal is here too because Portal brings a little bit of soft toy sanity in the place.  Even Portal is looking forward to being somewhere else.

Greenbelt was going very well but it was Sunday morning.  Everyone knew that would be a harder time due to the lack of things going on.  Grief.  Blob is finding it very hard to write while here.  It's not a comfy writing place for him.  Not comfy at all.  He's not going to go into the reasons why but you can probably guess some of them.

Blob said in his last post that he didn't want to go to the big communion service at Greenbelt.  Lots of people did go and they seemed to enjoy it.  But Blob didn't want to go.  However, on his way to breakfast that morning he and his companions met some very friendly people who were on their way to the service.  They were incredibly tall for humans and were from another country.  Blob and Winefride didn't quite take in what country they were from but they had their pictures taken anyway.

He thinks that the two people were refugees who had come to the United Kingdom not so much to find a better life but to escape a terrible one.  He knows that refugees have often escaped from horrendous situations.  None of them wanted to leave their countries.  They just felt they had to because their lives were so bad.  Not just through poverty.  Oh no.  If they were just poor people coming to Britain to get richer then that would be an entirely different situation and Blob would have preferred them to stay in their countries and some help given to build better financial and economic lives there.  That seems sensible.  It's not that simple though.  Refugees aren't refugees from poverty even though many of them were very poor indeed.  They are refugees from war, hatred, oppression, injustice and a whole range of awful things.  They had to leave their homes, their lives, and head off on a long and difficult journey.  Blob Thing is very glad that he has never had to be a refugee.  He might moan about how hard it is to write a blog post today but that's nothing compared to the lives these people have lived and the lives many still live due to not having been granted refugee status.

Blob had met refugees before and he was very glad to meet some more at Greenbelt.  They were ever so friendly and smiled almost as much as he and Winefride does.  Blob doesn't know how much Winefride understands the refugee situation.  She was pleased to meet the people and swung wildly on her reins as she was held and she giggled so much it's a wonder that the entire Greenbelt festival site didn't hear her.

After breakfast, Blob, Winefride, Blob's person, and his creator had a plan.  It wasn't mentioned in the main programme but Blob's person had seen that one of the tents would still be open and that they would be able to sit there and do some art things.  It was ever so good.  The people in the tent gave them all free cups of tea.  And then someone from another tent passed by and gave them all more free cups of tea.  Out of fairness to those people Blob has decided not to say which were the better cups of tea.  He was pleased to have received both drinks.

The tent contained lots of information about something called Iona.  Iona is an island off the west coast of Scotland.  Blob is now asking when he and Winefride can be taken to Scotland because it looks really close on the map from Newcastle and they have never been.  Blob's person says that it's quite expensive by train and takes a long time to get to on the bus but one day they will get up early at the weekend and go all the way.  Blob's person says it's more than a hundred miles to Edinburgh and even going by train would take quite a long time.  She hopes that one day early next year they can all go there on the train for free because she hopes to have a medical appointment there.  She has been hoping to have that appointment for a very long time but the powers that be keep not allowing her to have it even though she has been legally entitled to it for well over two years.  Blob's person has to be very patient.  Sometimes she doesn't care about it all.  Sometimes she's pretty unhappy about the whole thing.  Sometimes she doesn't even want the treatment that the appointment would eventually lead to and wonders what the point of it is.  Blob wants her to stop talking about it now.

Iona contains a Christian community.  They always seem to be quite nice people and they sing lots of nice songs.  Blob wouldn't want to be part of the community though.  They all have to read the Bible a lot and they have to keep praying and praying and praying and using liturgy addressed to the sky God he doesn't believe in.  Maybe some of the community members don't believe either.  They just use the liturgy.  Blob keeps reading about such people and he met some more at Greenbelt.  People who don't believe in a sky God but use long prayers addressed to the sky God.  Blob doesn't quite understand how people can do that.  He knows that there are ministers who don't believe in the sky God and lead prayers in every service addressed to the sky God.  Blob doesn't think he would be able to cope with doing that if he was a minister.  He would have to use prayer forms that removed the language of such forms of theism.

Iona people are nice though and later in the weekend Blob and his person would attend two Iona services.  Blob's sister and his creator would be at the second one too.  There was ever such a lot of singing in that and it was enjoyable.  Blob's person likes singing and it makes Blob happy to watch her enjoying herself.

The piece of paper Blob's person had read was true.  There was art to be done in the tent.  It was called the Northern Lights tent.  Iona is a long way north.  It was a bit confusing for Blob though because he got taken a couple of times to a church in Newcastle called Northern Lights and the tent didn't have anything to do with that church.  Blob's person had to explain that more than one thing can have that name.  Blob met a few people from that church at Greenbelt.  There are people from that church there every single year and they're all pretty nice too and some of them don't really believe in a very orthodox Christian God.  One woman in the congregation does believe in a sky God but not in the normal Christian story and she rewrites all the prayers and liturgy as she goes along and says different words to everyone else.  Blob's person has been known to do that too.  Not that she goes to church much now.  She attended more church things at Greenbelt than she had in the previous six months and she didn't join in with a single spoken prayer in a service.  It's lucky there isn't a sky God who created an eternal hell or she would be doomed and Blob would be doomed too and his fur would keep getting singed for eternity.

The Iona people had a plan.  They had a lot of spare boxes.  And a lot of pens.  The boxes and pens would be combined.  People could decorate the boxes with things to do with justice and inclusion.  That sounded like fun.  More fun than listening to sermons and sitting around while a thousand people shared bread and wine (or blackcurrant).

Blob's person and his creator got to work and they managed to create some nice things.  Blob's creator managed to decorate an entire box which she left behind for the display in the tent.  Blob's person only managed to decorate half a box and she took it away to complete at home.  She hasn't completed it yet.  But in part that's because she isn't at home.  Blob hopes that she will finish her box when she gets back there.

 After their time in the tent the four companions moved on.  Blob's creator and Winefride went off to do some things and Blob and his person went off to do other things.  Blob's person still needed to change into clean clothes and that seemed the most urgent thing to do.  As they passed the Big Top and the communion service, which still hadn't finished, Blob heard Justin Portal Welby talking.  He must have said something very funny because everyone laughed.

So that was the start of Sunday.  It was going to prove to be a difficult day.  Blob's person wasn't coping well for quite a lot of it and he had to look after her a lot.  By the end of the day things were wonderful again and that was a big surprise.  Blob's person would be totally surprised by her own actions and by how things turned out.  But that's a tale for another blog post.

 

 

[1720 words]

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 Enjoys A Banquet And Heads To The Refugee Rally

It's late in the day and I still haven't even started writing my blog today.  There's a good reason for it.  A very good reason.  Winefride was listening while I was dictating the posts for the last couple of days as I met the Herma Merma Dragora and then was lucky enough to find a ferryman across the Tyne.  She was looking at the pictures too and she did really well because she starting pointing at them.  I asked her if she would like to go on a ship like that too one day and she got excited by that thought.  It was almost more excited than I've ever seen her before.

So last night I talked to my person about it and told her how much it would mean to both Winefride and myself if we could one day we taken on the ferry together.  Then this morning she completely surprised me by saying that today would be the day.  She had been planning on going for a very long walk and taking us with her but the weather didn't look right for that.  She still wanted to go out somewhere though and said that we could all get the Metro to South Shields, have a little explore there, and then find the ferry person and cross the river and have another little explore.

It's been a stunning day, full of adventures.  Winefride has had a brilliant time and it's been wonderful and joyous to see how happy she's been.  She enjoyed the ferry the most of course and we have some great pictures that I'll show you sometime.  But that wasn't the only adventure.  Winefride met a friendly lion, rode on the shoulders of Muffin the Mule and we met a creature living in a tree.  It got a little bit dangerous at one point and it was only with the help of a giant octopus that Winefride was able to rescue me from being eaten alive by a shark.  I was quite scared.  It actually had me in its mouth and if it wasn't for my sister and the octopus she had made friends with I don't know what would have happened.  My person tells me that the shark would probably have realised that I'm not a fish and wouldn't have eaten me.  But it was still a frightening experience.  I had a few adventures of my own while Winefride was having a rest and even my person had some fun.  She played on a roundabout and a zip wire in the rain.  Watching her have fun was brilliant.  The only things that would have made it better were if it hadn't been raining so much and if my creator was there to share the fun of the play area.

Anyway.  I'll tell you about all that another day and show off the pictures.  They're all stuck on my person's phone at the moment and she needs to get round to moving them onto her computer.  But she kindly agreed to email one picture to herself so I could put it in my blog today.  Here are Winefride and myself and behind us the ferry is just arriving to carry us across the water.  Isn't it swish?

But back to my other adventure.  We climbed the hill from the ferry into the centre of North Shields.  I don't understand it.  I thought we would get more of a welcome after our heroic trek.  I thought there would be banners raised in our honour, that the streets would be lined with cheering crowds and that they would possibly even be throwing rose petals in our path.  But there was none of that.  Nothing.  It was almost as if the city of North Shields did not know that we were coming and that we had completed such an arduous ordeal in order to be there.

We walked on, through the very centre of that city.  We still didn't see any shields for sale but I did spot at least one shop selling socks.  Even in North Shields in this century, socks had replaced shields.  Perhaps the cities should both have changed their names by now and the area be known as the Land of Socks.  But maybe they are overly proud of their historical heritage and keep the name in order to remember a time of valour and shields that would otherwise be forgotten.  Maybe more barbarian hordes would invade if the city were called North Socks.  It's not such a powerful name.  Maybe the barbarians don't know about the socks.  I hope they don't ever read my blog otherwise it'll only be the Herma Merma Dragora - and the powerful, friendly lion we met today - who stand between Shields and it's total annihilation.

Further we walked.  Further still.  Away from the noise.  Away from the crowds who hadn't known to cheer.  Eventually we saw a church ahead of us.  A place of God.  My person said that this was our final destination and there we would receive the welcome we deserved and be able to share in the fabulous banquet we had been promised.  The building rose up ahead of us, imposing, as if the people there had fought and won many battles against barbarian hordes.  My person is trying to tell me that in the 300 years the church has been there, no barbarian hordes have tried to invade the Land of Shields.  But I think my story is much better than hers.  Her story might be believed by scholars of history but it's not very exciting.  Her story is this:  A church got built.  People worshipped in it.  And then one day the people welcomed the people from the walk for refugees and gave them a banquet.  The end.  My story is far better.  I didn't see any socks for sale in the church either.  The church website says it has a long and fascinating past.  So my story must logically be closer to the truth than that of my person.  I'm sticking with it anyway.

We entered the building.  Journey's end.  We had made it.

And we were welcomed as we deserved.  The people of Christ Church, North Shields had done an amazing job preparing for our coming.  We all took our seats in the banqueting hall.

There were some speeches to commemorate the occasion.  The minister who led the walk said a prayer.  He talked with my person and by the end of the chat they were friends on that which is called Facebook.  They discovered that they had a mutual friend in Scotland, someone who had stood beside my person when she got married.

And then.  And then.  We ate.  And we drank.  And we ate and drank some more.  And we celebrated everything that we had done that day and celebrated the fact that the refugees are welcome.  I know my person is proud that she lives in a City of Sanctuary.  Sunderland is also such a city and that is a brilliant thing.

Yes.  We ate and drank.  But not all of us did.  Some of those walking with us, some of those brave refugees, ate and drank nothing.  Those people were Muslims and they follow Islam.  One of the important things in Islam - it's one of the five pillars of that religion - is fasting.  It's not just the giving up of food and drink, there's a lot more meaning to it than that.  During the year, my person told me, they have a month of fasting in the calendar month when they believe the Qu'ran was revealed to their prophet.  For the whole of that month they fast from all food and drink from sunrise to sunset.  Our epic walk had taken place in that month.  While we snacked and had lunch they ate nothing.  While we feasted at the banquet they ate nothing.  And the month was in the middle of summer.  It would be a long fast.  It's true that each of them was given a banquet to take away with them.  But they would still have many hours to wait before they could eat.  Isn't that amazing?

I ate a lot of course.  Here are the remains of just a fraction of my eating.  Lots and lots of fruit because my person and I are just extremely healthy people.  Honest.  We are.  And I don't see her butting into my blog and correcting me at this point so she obviously wants to give the impression of health too.

Here's a photo taken by the minister.  These are many of the intrepid walkers.  And a few of those who welcomed us into the sanctuary of Christ Church.

Walking with these people had been one of the best days of my life and I hadn't even nearly been eaten by a shark.  It's always a bonus for the day to not be eaten by a shark.

It was time to go.  My person had somewhere else she needed to be and I was going to go there too.  We planned to go and sing at a rally for refugees.  I posted something about that when it happened.  We arrived back into Newcastle and there was just time for us to walk from there to the place of the rally.  More walking.  After an epic trek my person made me walk some more.  To get to the rally we had to cross back over the River Tyne.  But this time there was a bridge.

The view from The Tyne Bridge is brilliant.  From here you can clearly see the Tyne swing bridge, and beyond it there are more bridges.

We arrived at the rally.  We sang our hearts out and I do think perhaps my person should go and sing with those people again.  The media took lots of pictures of us and filmed us but then, because the media is a very biased creature, we were hardly mentioned anyway apart from by one media outlet who said that some children had gathered to protest, and they included a picture of some of the stupendous children who were with us.  That's the way the media often are.  They skew reality so much that anyone who experienced it can hardly recognise that the event they lived through is the same one that's been reported.

I shared this photograph in my post about the rally.  I still say it.  I stand with refugees.  And I stand for each of those four words on the placard.  Sometimes it is hard to hope.  But we must hold onto hope and, if we are able, work for a future where compassion, decency and humanity are at the centre of all we do, and where "loving one another" is at the centre of the way we live.  That's what I think anyway.  I may only be a small pink soft toy with an active imagination, but it's what I think and believe and it's how I try to live my life as a friend.

Tomorrow I'll be talking about a different subject.  I've got a lot of adventures to choose from.  I keep having more of them too.  My life is amazing.  And now I have a sister to share it with.  I love my sister.




[1883 words]

Blob Thing Talks Socks And Is Thankful For The Tyne Ferry

My person says that I said far too much yesterday.  She says that I rambled and went completely off the topic.  She says that all I was meant to be talking about yesterday was my encounter with the Herma Merma Dragora and that by the end of all my discussions about undersea cities, the lack of legal protections for soft toys, and God her fingers were aching a lot.  My person says that I shouldn't just dictate to her today and that she wants to be able to discuss things with me and then just type a few important words.  But I want to dictate.  It's fun to talk.  And it's fun to watch her fingers.

I suppose I should take pity on my person today.  She's very tired and more than a bit dizzy and would probably prefer to go to bed for the afternoon rather than type something about my adventures.  It's her own fault though.  If she had got up this morning and typed with me then she would have had lots of energy for my blog.  But did she do that?  Oh no.  Today she wrote down a short poem and then finished a verse simple work of art and then wrote a blog about it.  She did that.  Instead of writing my blog.  No wonder she's tired.

I'm going to get on with discussing my adventure now.  I'm not going to talk about eating pufferfish today.  My exciting day joining the walk for refugees was approaching its end.  We walked through the streets of South Shields, tired and hungry and with every cafe and curry house we passed we became more tempted to stop and eat.  If we hadn't known there was a promise of a banquet at the end of our trek we would have succumbed and never made it to the far land of North Shields.

We were tired but we felt good and we knew that the day had been worthwhile.  From this point on it would be an easy walk.  Easy.  Or so we thought.  But we were wrong.  As we passed through the final streets of South Shields we came to a market.  Several people were attempting to sell pairs of socks.  The desperate vendors, obviously struggling to make enough money to feed their fifteen children, kept calling to us.  "Five pairs for three pounds.  Come and get your socks.  Quality socks for quality people."  It made me sad to see how hard the market people were working and the struggle a purveyor of cheap socks has to survive in the land of Shields.

None of the brave walkers bought any socks.  We all had socks on our feet.  Nearly all of us.  I admit that I do not own a single pair of socks.  I have no tights or stockings.  None.  That's not a big worry for me though because I don't have any feet.  Trying to sell me five pairs of socks for three pounds is a fool's game.  I don't need your socks.  I don't have any money either.  I am a soft toy friend of few material needs and I am fortunate enough to have a person who looks after me well.  Now she has my sister to look after too and she's doing a very good job.

My sister is sitting with me right now and she's very happy today.  It's been very windy and she has enjoyed watching the way the leaves move on the trees, how the light turns and changes as the leaves shake.  She has loved the way the wind in the trees sounds like the sea washing against the rocks and she has closed her eyes and imagined herself lying on the sand gazing up at the sky as the cumulus clouds rush past, the gulls talk and the fish and crabs sing their songs in the water.  I think my sister would have enjoyed the next part of my adventure with the refugees and their friends.  I think she would have enjoyed the entire walk.  Maybe my person will take her on that walk one day.  I know she wants to see all the places near Sunderland.  I think she would especially love the roof of the glass centre and it's fun to think of her bouncing and spinning on the transparent roof and jumping up and down with all her might to see if it would crack.  Yes.  We must take her.  I'd like to play on that roof too.  Please person, can we go soon?

I was a bit confused in the market.  We were in one of the major settlements in the Land of Shields.  But there wasn't even one person in the market with any shields for sale.  No swords.  No armour.  Not even a helmet.  What was going on?  This was the Land of Shields and there were no shields.  Hey person.  Can we go to the big Roman fort in South Shields too?  It was confusing and disappointing.  A pair of socks is not a shield.  Of what use is a pair of socks when someone is attacking you with a battle axe?  I admit that socks are quite nice things to wear on feet, if you have such things as feet.  But how would you use them to protect yourself when a barbarian horde is rushing at you with their swords and axes and clubs raised high, shouting out with the fiercest of battle cries? - like the Viking my person saw this morning could have done.

I'm serious.  In such a scenario, what would you do if you only had five pairs of socks for three pounds with which to defend yourself?  I'm not at all sure that if you held up the socks and said, "If you don't kill me and promise to leave my land then I will give you a sock," that the barbarians would listen.  I'm not sure there would be a peace treaty made on the basis of a simple sock donation.  I think with a sock but no shield you would surely be cut into four thousand pieces and the barbarians would celebrate in your castle and drink far more mead than was good for them.

No.  There were no shields for sale in the Land of Shields.  Not that I saw.  Maybe they were hidden in some secret shop.  Maybe the shield and weapon sellers felt too vulnerable in that market square.  Maybe the city had defenders I didn't see and any invader would be lulled into a false sense of security.  They would advance from the sea, laugh at the sock sellers and then be destroyed by an unknown force.  Or perhaps a known force.  The known force I had met on the other side of the city.  Maybe the Herma Merma Dragora could fly up and bear down on the barbarians and destroy their whole army, leaving just three of the smallest of them to take a message back to the barbarian king that the Land of Shields would never be defeated.  I think perhaps it could.  It did seem to be a mightily powerful creature.

I'd better get on before my person tells me off for talking too much. This adventure isn't about socks in the market.  It's about something far more thrilling than socks.  We passed the market and saw something daunting.  We had imagined that the rest of the trip would be an easy walk.  We were mistaken.  It would be an impossible walk.  There was no way to walk from South Shields to North Shields.   Our way was barred by an immense body of water.  This was the River Tyne.  Victory in our quest was snatched from us and we wanted to sit and weep in our defeat.  If we couldn't cross the water we would never reach our banquet.  And going back and buying five pairs of socks wouldn't benefit us at all.  Socks don't make excellent floatation devices.

Our journey was over.  Within sight of North Shields, almost within sight of the banquet.  It was over.  Because we couldn't walk on water.  Even Jesus would have had a hard time getting all of us to walk across the River Tyne.  There was no hope.

But in that time of sorrow came a joyful sound.  The minister who was leading the walk has a way of communicating with his god.  He must have called out because suddenly, there before us in the road, was a ferryman and a ferry big enough to carry all of us across the water.  We were saved.  We would be able to eat the banquet.  And my person would be reunited with her rucksack.  All hail the ferryman for saving the day.

I was so happy to see the ferry and I got my person to hold me so that I could be in a picture with it.  A sturdy ferry indeed.  I had no doubt that it would get us across the River Tyne.  The chances of the ferry sinking were minimal.

And so we all boarded the ferry.  Some of us had to pay a fee to cross the water.  None of us had to part with any of our socks.  I didn't have to pay because it turns out that soft toy friends don't have to pay to cross the Tyne.  We may have no legal protections and we may be treated just as property but there are some advantages to being a friend rather than a human.  My person didn't have to pay either.  She has a magic card that she can use most of the time to travel on a bus.  And her magic card worked for the ferry too.  She showed it to the ferryman.  He bowed and said she was welcome on his fine vessel.

As we crossed the water, my person took lots of pictures to commemorate our trip.  Winefride would have loved this.  Maybe one day we can go again and maybe the ferryman will be just as kind to my person.

Here are a couple of pictures of me.  My person had to hold me very tightly because it was windy and I would never have balanced on the narrow ledge on the ship on my own.  Here you see her wearing two bracelets both of which were given to her by my creator.  My creator even made one of them.  It's got rainbow beads and on it are the words "AUTISTIC PRIDE".  My "Autistic" badge was made by my creator too.  She's very clever.  Anyone who can make me must be very clever indeed.  And now I've got a sister and she's got a beautiful dress and a bow and she's very very lovely.  I love my sister.  I'll post something about an adventure we shared soon.  I am quite desperate to tell you about the policemen!

You can see how windy it was.  Just look at what it did to my dress!

Don't look too hard though.  Please.








One final picture for today.  Here are some of the people we walked with.  An excellent group of people.  I was proud to have been part of the adventure with them and would happily walk with them again.  My person is in the middle of that group.  Most of the other people are refugees, some of whom have lived in the United Kingdom for a while and have built a new life.  Some of them are newcomers.  They didn't want to have to come and live here.  All of them would have preferred to have been able to stay in their countries of origin.  Refugees are not refugees by choice but by necessity.  All of them are glad to be here though.  This is a place of relative safety, of welcome, of freedom.  This is a place where they won't have their lives destroyed by war or persecution or hatred.  Here they can start again.  Here there is hope.  Some of these people have passed through many kinds of Hell.  It's been shockingly difficult.  They must have felt like giving up at times.  But they didn't give up and now they are all thankful for their good fortune in making it here.  Many do not make it.  Some even die in the attempt to be free.

I am proud of each one of these people.  And it was a total honour to be among them.  I want to thank them all for such a beautiful, brilliant day.

So we were able to cross the waters and the ferry carried us all the way to the edge of North Shields.  We had made it.  Just a short walk through that city and we would be at our final destination and would share in a fabulous banquet.  Well, some of us would share.  Some of us wouldn't be able to eat with us.  But I can explain that in my next post.





[2158 words.  Blob is bouncing around now and telling his person that it was okay and that he didn't talk as much today.  Blob's person still isn't happy and says it's too much talking and asks why he had to talk so much about socks when they had nothing to do with the adventure.  She wants a short post tomorrow.   Perhaps everybody would prefer a short post.]

Blob Thing Fights And Vanquishes The Human Dragon Chimera

Blob Thing's epic walk with the refugees and their friends would soon be over.  There ahead in the distance he could see the land of Shields.  Somewhere within that place he would reach journeys end and in the hall of the Saint would be rewarded with a feast.  Would songs be sung?  Would epic poems be written about this day?  Probably not.  But maybe he would be able to write a blog post about it.

Blob says:

Oh yes.  It had been a good day.  I was so happy to have been able to walk up the coast along paths I hadn't seen when my person forgot to take me with her once.  Walking with the refugee people was amazing too.  The refugees could all tell stories and there were some brilliant people on the walk who devote a lot of there lives to helping.  I'd been expecting to go to a rally and sing out for refugees that evening.  A man called Mister Farage was speaking in Gateshead and I was going to go along and sing because I thought he was wrong about refugees.  A group called the North East Socialist Singers would be leading that rally.  I've written about it already with my person in a blog post.  Yes, I enjoyed that evening a lot and keep telling my person that she should go and sing with those people again.  They were ever so friendly and the singing was a lot of fun.  And there I was that day walking for the whole day with refugees.  They were ever so friendly too.  It was a great honour to be able to walk among them.

I'd seen so many things and I want to go back and explore them some more.  There are a lot of places I've seen that I want to go back to.  And a lot of places I haven't seen that I want to go to even though I don't even know what I'll find there.  I wonder where I'll be able to go this week.  I'm a bit dependent on my person.  I am not able to go out myself and get the bus and the Metro to places to explore them.  So I find I'm sitting there having to bully my person sometimes and I have to keep telling her that we need to go out and have an adventure.  She's getting to be quite good at it.  But there are days on which going out at all is an impossibility for her and other days on which it's very difficult indeed and she can't be out for long or have a big adventure.  Sometimes she gets into difficulties when out and although I do my best to help her there are days on which I wonder if we're going to be able to get home safely.  My person looks after me very well.  But there are times when I have to be the one who looks after her.

Some days are so hard.  But the refugee day wasn't one of them.  That day was a day on which my person could fight through any difficulties in her head and appear normal enough that someone didn't even believe she could be autistic.  She did incredibly well that day.  The next day she had to recover and couldn't do much but on that day my person - as someone put it - did amazing.

Now here I was and the walk would be over quite soon.  I sat on a dune and thought about how wonderful my life is.  I'm just a small pink soft toy.  But I have a wonderful life and I have grown up into a person in ways that nobody could have imagined when I was created.  Behind me you can just see a place close to where we were walking to.  It's Tynemouth.  At the mouth of the river Tyne.  We had walked all the way from the river Wear to get there.  Not far to go now.  And then the walk would be over and I would say goodbye to these people.  I was a bit sad because they were all going to get together for a celebration at the end of the week and I wasn't going to be able to attend.  I was going to see my creator and I always like to do that.  But it would have been nice to celebrate with the walkers.

I'd like to apologise.  Sometimes my person is a rubbish photographer.  Terrible.  She's not good at knowing when something is flat.  The sea doesn't actually sit at this angle.  It's meant to be flat.  On her behalf I say we are sorry.  Sometimes she takes a good picture.  But then there are rubbish ones like this.  At least I am straight even in the sea has gone wrong.  If the sea was really like that and you lived in the land at the bottom then all the sea would flow across your land and you would get flooded.  You would either have to move, drown, build an undersea city, or develop the ability to breathe underwater.  I think of those options the breathing one would be best.  I think it would be incredibly exciting to be able to have adventures underwater.  I could walk out and talk with the fish and visit the dark depths and I'd be very careful not to be stung by a jellyfish or to scare a pufferfish. 

I don't know exactly what pufferfish poison would do to me but it's probably best to be careful if I saw such a creature.  The internet says it's a thousand times more toxic to humans than cyanide.  I don't know what cyanide would do to me either but I don't ever want to find out.  Some humans are incredibly strange.  I knew that already.  But the internet tells me that they think pufferfish is a great delicacy.  It also tells me that although it's prepared by highly trained chefs quite a lot of people die from eating it every year.  Tell me, what possible tasty dinner is would risking death for?  It's not just people being strange.  It's stupidity.  Pure, simple stupidity.  I don't want to eat pufferfish.  I'm not so stupid as a human.

Sorry.  I was meant to be showing you a photo.  I wasn't meant to be making my person type all kinds of things about pufferfish.  And if you lived in the land at the top of the photo all the sea would have poured down to the other land and the smell of dead fish on the exposed seabed would be horrible.  People would have gone to a lot of trouble to make the harbour walls at Tynemouth and South Shields and then there wouldn't be any sea because it would all be in Sunderland and Roker Pier would be useless at holding back that much water and Sunderland would be an underwater city full of humans with special gills and I would go and visit even if the glass centre had turned into a giant boat and sailed off to Norway.  Sorry again for this photo.  Next time I'll try to get my person to take a photo that shows the horizon properly.  My silly person.  She did a bad photo in yesterday's post too.  Maybe she needs to take lessons.  [Blob's person at this point is not happy with Blob.  Not happy at all.  She admits it's not the best photo ever but she's also taken good ones.  The ones yesterday of Marsden Beach were decent.  More than making up for the bad pictures.  Blob needs to get on with talking about his adventure.  Not about his silly person or about pufferfish.  Get on with it Blob.  Now!]

Okay.  If you insist.  Eventually the dunes came to an end and still the walk wasn't over.  I was feeling tired by this point and I hadn't been able to have a proper rest.  I was told that we wouldn't be able to have a proper rest until the banquet at the end and I wondered whether I could cope.  I was determined.  I may only be small but I would finish this trek.

We left the beach behind and walked into a place very different.  There was a lake and a railway and quite a lot of people.  Many of them had ice cream but I wasn't allowed to get an ice cream.  I do like ice cream but I have to be careful with it otherwise it makes me very dirty.  It would be a bit easier now.  My dress got fixed recently so now it doesn't keep riding upwards and covering my mouth, my wonderfully gorgeous smile.  I like smiling.  There is always something to smile about, even on the hard days.  This year my person has set herself a challenge to post online every single day with things she is grateful for.  Some days have been extremely hard but she tries to do it anyway.  Because there is always something.  Right now we're in a nice house, on a comfy chair.  There is superb music playing - it's by Simon Thacker who you almost certainly won't have heard of.  There is light and the option of going to make tea.  We have my person's phone with us.  We have books.  We have pretty things.  A stone and candle display we bought nine days ago and a lovely painting of standing stones we bought on a difficult day this week.

My person wasn't coping well that day.  She had gone into town to do one specific job.  But when she got to the place for the job she was already struggling and then being there was far too overwhelming and she had to leave.  One job.  And she couldn't do it.  She ended up wandering in the streets feeling rubbish and not knowing what to do.  Eventually she took refuge in a quiet shop.  A charity shop she had never seen before.  It was nice in there.  Quiet.  So quiet.  And they weren't playing music.  My person still had her headphones on though.  And in that shop was this very nice framed print for three pounds.  And a brand new friend, a giraffe called Gerry.  He was beautiful and he's a lot of fun to have around.  He only cost a pound.

I worry sometimes about the ethics of such things.  Is it really right to buy and sell friends?  We are people too.  Should we be counted as property in this way?  I know we're usually bought by good people who offer us some love but that's not the point.  Friends are people.  And I have issues with the buying and selling of people.  We're friends.  We're not property.  Humans shouldn't be able to own friends.  They should be friends of friends and care for us as we care for them with our cuddles and the way we happily participate in imagination games.  But legally, under British law, we have no rights whatsoever.  People are allowed to treat us badly.  They can throw us away.  They can neglect us.  Sometimes we're even burned or ripped apart to make beds for humans.  We have no rights.  And that makes me, as a living, thoughtful soft toy sad and more than a bit cross.  I don't expect I can do anything about it though no matter how unjust the law is and how much it allows friends to be oppressed by powerful humans.

[The adventure, Blob.  The adventure.]

Oh yes.  I was on a walk and then away from the people I saw something very frightening indeed.  I saw some kind of dragon.  Or some kind of human.  Or some kind of something.  It was as if some evil scientist had combined several creatures into some kind of hybrid, a strange chimera, and the result was a monster.  A fierce monster ready to destroy the land.  A Herma Merma Dragora.  Yes, that's what it was.  A Herma Merma Dragora.  Frightening to behold and I was scared because I thought it was going to rise up and destroy everything between Sunderland and North Shields and all the beautiful things I had seen would be gone by the end of the day.

But I am a brave friend.  I decided I would fight the Herma Merma Dragora.  I would fight it and I would in.  I had to.  There was no other choice.  I would vanquish this creature and would be hailed as a hero and all my friends could come and live with me in a magical castle full of light shows and sensory rooms and quiet places and a big cinema to watch our favourite things and we would live happily there forever and only come out so that we could have even more exciting adventures than I already have.  There was no other choice.  I, Blob Thing, hero of the Shields.

I approached the Herma Merma Dragora carefully.  I didn't actually know how I was going to vanquish the creature.  I didn't even have a sword.  But I would find a way.   My person wasn't quite so brave.  She just stood back and took photos, a record of my heroism.  Something to include in the Blob Thing museum that people would undoubtedly want to establish.

My person got a bit scared at this point I think and she ran off and took a picture from further away.  She didn't want to get eaten or burned.  I think that's why she went to take this picture anyway.  She probably has a different story.

I was about to strike a fatal blow into the heart of the Herma Merma Dragora when it spoke.  I was ever so surprised.  It said, "Please don't kill me.  I'm not dangerous.  I'm the friendliest Herma Merma Dragora in the world and I've chosen to be here to protect the Land of the Shields.  I won't hurt you.  If giant dragons invade or aliens or if the ants ever rise up into an army and try to overrun the land I am the one who will fight back and keep the people safe."

It was a great relief.  It meant I didn't have to vanquish the Herma Merma Dragora at all.  It meant that instead of a triumphant pose over the body of a monster, I had found a friend.  It was true that it also meant that there would be no castle to share with my friends with lots of sensory rooms but that didn't matter.  Finding a new friend is far more important than gaining a castle.

Here I am with my new friend.  I still think it looked like a fierce, dangerous monster.  But that just goes to show doesn't it?  You can't judge a person from how they look.  The Bible says that God doesn't look at the outward form but at the heart of a person.  I think in this way we should emulate the God of the Bible.  Don't judge from outward form.  Find out who someone is instead.  Some Christians treat my person according to her outer form rather than according to her heart.  They say she isn't a woman because she was born with a penis.  They say she has to repent of being a woman.  Foolish Christians.  Lots of other Christians don't make that stupid mistake.  My person knows quite a lot of those other Christians.  They're much nicer than the foolish ones who say she has to be a man.

Yes.  Treat people according to their heart.  They may be a Herma Merma Dragora.  They may look incredibly scary.  They may look like they would prefer to eat you than smile at you.  The Herma Merma Dragora can't smile at all.  But it has a beautiful heart.  It's heart is full of smiles.  I could have hurt it.  I made a mistake in making the judgements I made about it.  And now it is my friend and I am very proud of it for everything it does to keep the Land of the Shields safe.

Friends with a Herma Merma Dragora.  I couldn't have imagined that at the start of the day.

Sadly I had to leave my new friend behind.  It might have followed me to the banquet but it wanted to stay and keep being sentry against whatever threats would arise, be they ants, giants or aliens.  Farewell kind friend.  I'm sure we will meet again.

I think I've talked more than enough.  I should stop for today.  Thanks for reading.  I know I say a lot of odd things and have some quite strange opinions that I voice without any shame and with knowing that people may strongly disagree.  For today it's time to stop, safe in the knowledge that the horizon is still flat and a Herma Merma Dragora still protects the land.




[2821 words.  Yep.  2821.]

Blob Thing Is Awestruck By The Sea Stacks Of Marsden Beach

The coast of the North East of England can be a beautiful place.  Blob Thing was enjoying seeing a little of it on a sunny day.  He was glad it wasn't raining.  Blob has been out in the rain a few times but he doesn't like it much.  He doesn't own a waterproof coat and his skin isn't as water resistant as that of his person.  He would just absorb all that water and it wouldn't feel comfortable at all.  But it wasn't raining.  It was quite sunny.  Blob likes sunny weather because it means that the sun is smiling at him.  He doesn't mind how sunny it is or how hot it gets because Blob's peculiar body is one that doesn't ever get sunburn and he doesn't feel uncomfortable in the heat.  He doesn't get sweaty and smelly and he doesn't get exhausted on the hot days.

He feels very fortunate.  He doesn't even need to wear sun cream and protect himself from the dangerous UV rays of the sun because he feels it is extremely unlikely that he would get any form of cancer.  Blob's skin is cancer free and it'll stay that way.  He may get more worn.  He may lose some of his beautiful pink furriness.  He may even need to be stitched back up one day or have a patch if he gets hurt.  But he knows that his species isn't prone to cancer or to dangerous things like bubonic plague or even to little inconveniences like the common cold.  Lucky Blob.

The route ahead on that day looked amazing.  The path, the cliffs, the sea.  And then rising up there were stacks in the sea.  Blob thought they were stupendous.  How could such things exist?  Perhaps a giant or an alien had carved them in a distant mountain range and placed them there.  Perhaps the alien had taken pictures and exhibited them as part of an alien creativity competition.  Which alien could make the best stacks.  These ones were pretty impressive but Blob wondered whether they would be enough to win a competition.  He now knows that the alien who made these wouldn't have won.  They wouldn't have even won a medal.  Blob saw a better stack later that would have had a much better chance of a medal.  He doesn't know about stacks like The Old Man of Hoy, stacks that dwarf the ones he passed that day.

[Edit:  He does know now because he wanted to find out about The Old Man and now he wonders who the old man was and what his crime might have been.  It must have been something very serious if the punishment was to be transformed into a sea stack for a thousand years.  Blob Thing says he doesn't want to be a sea stack.  The view would be very nice indeed but he thinks that after about three hundred years he would be quite bored with it.  There are only so many different types of wave in the sea and he would have seen them all by then.  Many times.  And the birds would keep going to the toilet on him and wouldn't care about his feelings.  Probably after five hundred years the only interesting thing would be when someone tried to climb him.  But even Chris Bonnington wouldn't worry about his feelings and would keep hammering nails into his skin to help him get to the top.  No.  Blob doesn't want to be a sea stack at all.  Maybe one of the birds on top of the sea stack.  Especially if he got very good at flying.  He would like that.  He thinks he's mentioned that before.  Yes.  Jonathan Livingston Blob Thing.]

Blob was enjoying walking along the top of the cliffs.  It was quite an easy path with not too much up and down.  But then he was horrified.  Because the minister leading the walk said that they were about to climb all the way to the bottom of the cliffs.  And then they would have to climb all the way back up.  Blob didn't like that idea.  He didn't know why all the refugee walkers couldn't just keep walking along the cliff top.  Wasn't the journey to North Shields hard enough already without making it even harder.  Blob actually got a bit grumpy about it.  Not for long, but he was grumpy.  Blob's person told him that the next part of the walk would include a sea stack.  And that Blob wouldn't just look at it from a long way away.  He would be able to touch it.  Touch the alien sculpture.

Maybe the alien would come back with some of their friends and show off their exhibit.  Maybe the alien would come back with a big pot of paint and turn the stack pink in honour of Blob's visit.  Maybe there would be time to have a pot of tea and a slice of cake with the alien and they could use a rock as a table, drink out of the sea shells and use flat pebbles for plates.  Maybe.  Although even Blob had to admit that was a very unlikely possibility.  Perhaps it would be utterly impossible.  Blob can see that.  It's all very possible.  Except how would a giant alien drink out of a small sea shell?  Unless the giant alien had some kind of technology to shrink themself.  Or maybe they could use it to make Blob bigger.  A bigger Blob Thing.  That would make his walk to North Shields a lot easier.  Walking so many miles is very difficult when you're only a few inches tall.

All these thoughts cheered Blob and he stopped being grumpy.  The intrepid walkers reached a giant staircase at the top of the cliff.  It was a long way down.  And a long way up.  At the top of the steps was a plaque that quoted from the Bible.  Blob apologises for the photo quality.  It's hard for his person to take pictures when she has to hold Blob in the picture and hold the camera in a funny position where she can't really see what the picture will be.

It's lucky Blob doesn't take the Bible literally.  He would have been very worried to know that the hour of God's judgment had come.  He would hardly have time to go and see the stack before God swooped down or swooped him up and judged him and then he wouldn't be able to finish the walk.  Blob didn't want to be judged.  He's got so many other things he wants to do.  He's not worried about being condemned though.  Blob knows he wouldn't be thrown into a burning hell for eternity.  Blob knows that nobody will suffer that fate.  Because there is no eternal burning hell.  And there is no God existing who would be so incredibly mean and evil to put anyone in a burning place for eternity.  It's a disgusting idea.  A God like that would be worse than the most evil person who ever lived and Blob wishes that nobody would ever believe in such a story ever again.  Blob doesn't like that story.

If Blob wanted to think about that Bible verse he would drop the judgment words.  And he would swap the word God for something less theistic - or try to understand the word in a way not tainted by supreme being myths.  And he would swap the word fear because it's ambiguous.  The word is about being awestruck not about cowering from something that is going to judge you or might strike you down.  Blob likes awe.  Being awestruck is good.  There was a lot to be awestruck by that day.  Blob doesn't ever want to take things for granted.  There is always awe.  Always adoration.  Always glory.  Blob doesn't believe in the God that John believed in when he wrote those words.  But he believes in awe and in the spiritual experience when being washed by beauty.

Once Blob reached the beach he realised that the journey down the cliff hadn't been that bad and that he would be able to manage to get up again.  He looked back down the beach and there were those stacks again.  This was Marsden beach and Blob decided it was a good place.  Here he is, posing in front of some stacks.  One of them used to have an arch leading to another stack but the other stack was destroyed in a storm a few years ago.  Many years ago that stack had stairs leading to the top and Victorian tourists could climb it at low tide.  Blob would have enjoyed that.

As Blob and his person and all the refugee walkers continued along the beach, Blob's person looked back and took some photos.  Blob wants to include two of them here.  The first is of a cafe on the beach.  It's got a lift from the top of the cliff to the bottom.  Blob thinks that he would like to drink tea at the cafe one day and he's quite jealous now because he just learned that his person had a drink there on the walk a few weeks before when she had forgotten to bring Blob out with her.  That's not fair at all is it?

This photo is of a stack on the beach.  There is a person there so you know how tall it is.  Blob Thing had been able to touch this sea stack.  The walkers had made a human ring around the stack, a ring of peace.  And they had played a little game there.

Blob had been grumpy about having to climb down and up again.  Now he was very happy indeed.  He was glad to have made the effort.  Marsden beach is worth the effort.  And when touching the stack Blob was completely awestruck by his non-theistic god and he gave glory.  How can there not be some form of worship in the face of such things.  Maybe for a non-theist like Blob there is should be a more appropriate word than worship.  For now, it is the vocabulary he has.

Onwards!  There was no more time to spend on the beach being awestruck by the amazingness of the universe and glowing with thankfulness.  It was time to walk back up to the top of the cliff and continue to the journey to North Shields.  Blob was determined that he would make it to the end and wouldn't have to give up.  Onwards!  And upwards!




[1756 words]

Blob Thing Visits A Big Stripy Lighthouse For Lunch

Blob Thing is pleased.

He's really happy about something.  It's not a big thing but he's happy about it.

Because this is the 100th post on his blog.  100 posts.  He is enjoying that immensely.  We might not even get a post written because he's so happy about it.

Now you might be confused at this point.  Wasn't it just a fortnight ago that Blob was writing his fiftieth post and celebrating his little jubilee?  You might be wondering that.  You would be correct.  Fourteen days ago Blob was celebrating that milestone.

And today, fourteen days on, he is celebrating his 100th post.  He's written fourteen more posts and now the total is 100 and he's currently bouncing up and down on the sofa so much that if he was a heavy human rather than a lightweight soft toy the sofa would be totally wrecked.

100 posts.  Wow.

At least, it's 100 posts in base 8.  Blob Thing doesn't always want to count in decimal.  In base 4 this is his 1000th post.  And in binary it's his 100,000th post.

Most people will of course not care in the slightest about that.  But Blob Thing cares.  Perhaps he cares too much.  Most people count in decimal because - at least that's the story - they have ten fingers to count on.  The Babylonians used base 60 because they had sixty fingers each.  No Blob.  That's not right.  And The Simpsons and other animated people count in base 8, octal, because they have eight fingers each.  No Blob.  That's not right either.  They still use decimal unless there's a counting joke written into the script.  Blob says that The Simpsons should use base 8.  He says that if his person were Marge Simpson she would be wildly celebrating his 100th blog post too.

[But I'm not Marge Simpson am I?  I'm not an animated character written by one person, drawn by another and with the voice of yet another.  At least, I don't think I am?  I don't feel like a cartoon.  This might all be a bizarre dream.  But it's definitely not a cartoon.  And within the dream I have ten fingers to type with so I can't be Marge Simpson.  Anyway, my hair is not blue and it isn't several feet tall.  It'll never be that tall.  But it might look good if it was blue.  It would match my clothes today.  Point is, I'm not Marge.  I'm still happy for Blob but I'm not wildly celebrating.  He does look funny though bouncing around like that.]

Blob says his person should shut up now.  He wants to get on with telling you about his next adventure.  Especially as most readers may have been more than a bit confused by everything she just said.  Perhaps even slightly confused by his insistence that his 64th post is his 100th.  Right.  Focus now Blob Thing.  Talk about your adventure.

He was having a very good surprise day with the people from Sunderland who were walking for refugees.  Blob had been expecting to go to a rally for refugees that evening.  Spending a day with refugees and their friends was a completely unexpected bonus.  And now here he was walking all the way to North Shields.

The walkers had enjoyed their little break and Blob's person had enjoyed the thought of walking without a rucksack.  Now they had to continue walking.  The path soon left the road and stayed very close to the sea.  There were some beaches on the way and at the flat area at the top of one of them there was an amazing stone labyrinth.  Blob wished that he could have had more time to go and explore.

The church minister leading the walk told him about some amazing sea caves under the cliffs and Blob wants to go there too - being very careful not to get cut off by the tide.  The minister said that nobody should go there alone in case anything happened.  Blob thinks that's okay because he would be going with his person so he wouldn't be alone and he would probably have his sister with him too.  All good.  Blob's person says that's not quite what the minister meant and that ideally two or more humans should go there.  Blob's person would be able to help Blob if he fell and got into trouble.  But what would Blob do if his person got into trouble under the cliffs?  How would he call for help?  Blob admits that his person has a point.

Parts of the walk felt quite rugged to Blob and he was glad that he had all his best clothes for walking.  It must be admitted that Blob only has one dress.  But it is his best one for walking in and if he had feet then he's sure that they would be totally comfortable in that dress no matter how far he had to walk.  His pink bottom doesn't get sore - except perhaps when prickled by plants - so his imaginary feet would be fine too.

The path opened out and the green grass got greener and the weather was wonderful.  The day was perfect.  And there in the distance Blob could see a building of some kind, rising out from the ground.  It was a tower with red and white stripes.  Whoever would build a tower of stripes?  Unless they were building it out of play bricks like a small child.  Or like an adult who has always thought they were too adult to play with bricks and then finds they monopolise the bricks belonging to the child so the child has to go off and play with a toy duck.

Blob got closer and closer to the red and white tower.  He didn't know what it was.  It seemed a funny thing.  When Blob got very close to it Blob's person told him that this was a lighthouse.  Souter Lighthouse.  He learned that it had been built to warn ships where the coast was so that they wouldn't crash into it and that this stretch of coast was historically among the most dangerous in Britain.  Later the internet told him that there were an average of forty-four shipwrecks for every mile of coast.  Blob Thing is amazed.  That's one shipwreck every 36 1/2 metres.  A lot of wrecked ships.

Here's Blob outside the lighthouse.

And here's a picture that makes Blob Thing laugh and laugh.  This is his person.  Outside the lighthouse.  It was a little bit windy and his person is totally terrible at remembering to carry anything that could tie her hair into place.  That day she had actually remembered to do it.  But then had left the hair tie in her rucksack.  Blob finds it so funny.  Her hair got so messy and she complained so much afterwards when brushing it.  [Blob needs to stop laughing so much now so he can finish his post.  I'm putting a lot of work into typing his blog for him.  He should stop laughing at me so much.  Unless he wants to type his own blog.  Okay, so it was quite funny, I admit it.  But it wasn't that funny.]

Blob wants to go back to Souter.  He didn't have time to explore inside the lighthouse because the walk was long and North Shields was still far away.  He wants to see inside.  He also knows that Blob's person has been to another lighthouse this year, St. Mary's, and he wants to climb to the very top of that one.  Now that he knows what lighthouses are he thinks they're amazing.  He also wants to visit holy wells.  He read his person's blog yesterday and it talked about a well.  And his sister is named after a saint from a well.  Saint Winefride.  A good name.  Winefride.

Blob Thing has decided that he needs to have a new name.  He just doesn't know what it should be.  His person says that there's no rush and it took The Doctor in Star Trek Voyager several seasons to choose a name and he still didn't manage to find one that suited him.  Blob Thing wants a name though.  He is a very dignified soft toy except when he's bouncing around enough to break sofas and a dignified toy needs a dignified name.  Blob Thing is not dignified.  Not at all.  Blob's person says that he can choose himself a name and can even change it later if he wants.  After all, she changed her name.

After eating a lunch provided by the organisers of the walk, Blob and his person continued on the route back to the north.  They looked back once at the lighthouse.  Adventuring inside could wait for another day.  Blob believes that he has many days of adventuring to look forward to.

The walk ahead looked good.  Blob hoped that he would be able to manage the rest of the journey.  Without help.  He was glad to be with his person because he knows that if he gets too tired she is happy to carry him some of the way.  In fact she now has a bag she bought especially to carry him in on a walk.  She has a problem now though.  What if Winefride wants to come on an adventure too?  The bag is only big enough for one soft toy.  She does have another bag that fits two toys but it's not ideal for a long hike.  Blob says that his person needs to remedy this problem very soon.  He doesn't want to go back to riding in her rucksack all the time and doesn't want Winefride to have to ride there all the time either.  It's too easy for his person to forget him if he's there.  Too easy for it to be a day when she is out adventuring and Blob doesn't get to see a thing.  Blob doesn't want that for himself.  And the thought of it happening to Winefride is almost heartbreaking.

Blob was happy.  The day was brilliant.  The people were brilliant.  The lunch had been great.  And he knew that there would be more adventures for the afternoon.  He just didn't know what they were yet.  North Shields was just a name.  He thought they were all walking in the right direction.  The minister said they were and Blob believed him.  But he didn't know quite what North Shields was and he couldn't have imagined that later in the day he would not only have his first ever ride on a boat but he would get to fight with a dragon.  Blob's day was about to get even better.

[1782 words]