Who'd have feelings?

Rehearsals started for the next Inspiration concert on Monday and my mind has been full of song words ever since. It made me realise how hard it is to think your own thoughts when you're trying to memorise someone elses words.
This comes from the '70s though I didn't put it into writing till 1990:

It has recently been brought,

Quite forcibly, to my attention,

And I must confess, I was surprised to learn,

That not everybody makes up poetry as they walk

Do you think, and am I late to catch on to this, that making kids learn stuff in school is a plot to stop them thinking?

For some reason the possible difference between empathy and compassion has been going through my mind. So, as you do, I looked them up on Wiki:
Empathy didn't exist in the UK until 1909 (they had it in Germany in 1873 and we caught it).
I've skipped bits:
'Empathy has many different definitions from caring for other people and having a desire to help them, to experiencing emotions that match another person's emotions, to knowing what the other person is thinking or feeling, to blurring the line between self and other. 
Empathy is distinct from compassion.

Compassion is the wish to see people better off or happier.' And has been around a lot longer.
It's got something to do with being in someone else's shoes - they pinch, even if they fit the other person perfectly they won't fit me.
Mmmm. 
So is either empathy or compassion doing anybody any good?
Has either got anything to do with understanding?
Think of something else.
Learn the words to the Little Shop of Horrors medley.
This one is auditioning for Audrey 2 - supposed to be an Easter cactus.
Ha.

















I love this building.


 

 

 

Sulking - what's that?

I was going to do this last week, but then I got distracted and now it's this Sunday already.
Woman's hour, apparently, had a thing on sulking.  I caught a bit of the Saturday show when they do extracts and it left me puzzled.
When are you sulking and not being miserable?
When are you sulking and not fed up of trying to put over your point of view?
When are you sulking and not so antagonised that you've decided not to talk to someone any more?
So am I sulking when I don't go to printmaking cos I didn't enjoy the first two of this term?
So when I thought that people had stopped talking to me and so had nothing more to do with them, were they sulking?
How can you tell?
How can I tell?
It's not that I haven't been accused of sulking -I have - but like a lot of what is said to me about personal behaviour, I didn't really understand what was meant.  Is it the being quiet?  Is it the being unhappy?
If somebody hurts you - isn't being unhappy and having nothing to say an acceptable response?

You know 'what goes around comes around'?  I don't know if I'm on the receiving end.  When I was in Sarawak, I was useless at letter writing - partly cos I talk to people in my head and so feel no need to put it into writing most of the time, partly cos when you're just living a normal life there's nothing to put in a letter.  I've got a new method now - I just decide to write and then put onto paper whatever comes into my head.
A bit like this blog really.
Anyhow back to getting my comeuppance.  Jim isn't replying to my e-mails.  Is it any of the above?

This is a detail from the entrance to Leeds Central Library - the rules are a lot stricter now than they were in those days.











Angel was playing peekaboo round the rose bush, until I lifted the camera.
I don't know if she's camera shy or nosy.











I took these with the camera nowhere near my face, mind you she was distracted by the marrow in the ham bone at the time.