As well as the Tour de France, of which everyone has heard, the French have an annual cycling festival called Semaine Federale, held in a different city each year. A good plan, as it shares out the profits as well as the inconvenience and disruption to people's lives. I wouldn't have known about it if it weren't for the skulls . . . . crystal ones that is.
    By 2004 I'd acquired four of them - buying one is a mistake, since it lets them get started in your home. That first one paves the way for the second - the two of them put their heads together and soon there are four. Once they had a power base, things started seriously hotting up. 

They demanded things - they wanted a table to sit on, and I gave them my tarot table, covered in an embroidered cloth. It seemed flowers made them happy, so I picked roses from my garden. Candles, incense and feathers came next. I should have known, the day they asked to go under a cloth, that things were getting serious. Now I could not see them, but when I passed their table they would give out messages. They were working to bring another skull, they said, it would be citrine and its name was Frankenstein. I told them that was not a name I liked.

I told Joshua Shapiro, my crystal skull mentor, what they were up to, and he said he did not know of any citrine skulls. Nevertheless, they were certain - Frankenstein was coming! Joshua was launching the world's first crystal skull conference in Switzerland. He invited me, but I declined. That kind of thing is outside my income bracket.
    One day, passing their table, I heard the skulls say "We're going to Switzerland".
    "I don't know how you'll get there," I said, "because I'm not." But they didn't drop it. And the citrine skull turned up on ebay - he was in Brazil, and very expensive. I put him on my watch list, and wrote to the maker saying we would do our best to meet his price, but if he could come down a little, it would make things easier.
    Summer arrived and I started thinking about a holiday - on my bike of course. I remembered the chap we went to Normandy with in 2000, in an old banger of a bus. He was cheap. He might be going somewhere. I went to his website and noticed a flashing icon - 'late availability' - I clicked on it.
    He was taking the bus to Semaine Federale at a place called Cernay. I typed Cernay into a search and found there were six places all with the same name. One was within two days' ride of the conference in Courtemaiche, Switzerland. "All right," I said to the skulls, "I'll find out which Cernay it is, and if it's that one, we will go."
    It was. We did. When I told Joshua the story of how we got there, he iinvited me to speak to the conference. In a meditation, the skulls revealed how they could be used in  healing, and I conducted individual and group sessions using them, something I had never thought to see myself doing.
    After the expense of the holiday, I thought I could wave goodbye to the citrine skull, but when I got home I found an email offering him at a price I could easily afford. The maker had been told in a dream that he was meant for me.
    He arrived. His name is Frankenstein because, after all, he is a creation of the Gang of Four, and they had already named him. Who was I to argue?

All my life I never bothered with doctors, but I did assume their services would be available to me if/when I needed them. Now that I do, all I find is total inefficiency.

Consider the following 8month saga:
1. You injure your thigh muscle through using a ball-throwing device, after going at it like an Olympic discus thrower.
2. It gets worse, so when you cannot even lift your foot from the floor, you visit Doc. You also mention you have noticed a strange swelling on the outer edge of right foot.
3. He sends you for an xray on your foot.
4. Results take ten days to travel four miles. Says nothing wrong with foot.
5. You do not get any better. You visit again. You lie on a couch, he picks up your leg, waves it one way, then the other and declares you have a hip problem, nothing can be done, come back when it is bad enough and you can have a new hip.
6. You suffer some more, your holiday in Ireland is spoiled because you cannot walk far, if at all. You go back and insist on xray of hip (to rule it out, in your opinion).
7. Results return after 14 days. You are not shown any xrays, nor is there any discussion. Verdict: Moderate damage to right hip; mild to other. You ask what does that mean? Eejit starts to tell you what arthritis is. You cut him short by asking: “Do I need a hip operation?” Answer, “No.”
8. You say now that that is ruled out, can you see a physiotherapist about your muscle problem. He agrees. Again, has to come from you, has to be forced. He says waiting list is 2 months, You say you  can wait.
9. After almost three months, you ring surgery to ask what has happened to your physiotherapy appointment? Answer, it does not appear to have been made. They will do it now and mark it ‘urgent’. You wait.
10. A week later you get a letter asking you to phone a clinic. You imagine this means you will now get an appointment, Wrong. After asking some questions, you are told you have now ‘registered’ and will be placed on a waiting list.
11. Another letter comes. ‘Your doctor recommends physiotherapy concerning your back problem”. Fury. Rage. One thing you do not have, thankfully, is back pain. You telephone the number and are slightly cross. You also note the letter says that when  you have 'attended the back pain clinic’ you will be ‘placed on a waiting list’. And God knows how long you will again wait for the wrong referral to the wrong department.
12. Just put me down for the crematorium. It will be quicker.

It is coming out more and more that self-publishing (Lulu) is the best way to go nowadays. It was always the Holy Grail to find a 'publisher' by which we meant someone that would do all the work and sell your book for you. Now apparently that is no more. Even if you achieve this HG they still expect you to do all the marketing yourself and do not put any money into this (except in a few cases). I also frequently read that a writer should spend 95% of her time marketing and 5% writing. Not many of us can do this. What we want, what we really really want, is for some devoted fan to dedicate their life to promoting our talent, while we get on with what we were put on this earth to do - live, observe and write. So there is fat chance I will ever become famous. I wanted to leave my mark on the world - time is getting short, but my Spirit Guides whispered in my ear - "Your life is your memorial - who you were, what you did. No one is going to forget that." And they are right.

I just watched Daytime TV for the first time ever. Hitherto this has been tabu; I never put it on before 6pm, considering it the height of decadence to watch before this watershed.

Is this one of the ‘signs of old age’ we are always looking for? Like wearing your first cardigan, getting your first shopping trolley, or acquiring a walking stick - two of which milestones I have passed, though I draw the line at cardigans. Being forced to wear one daily at school caused me to eschew the practice ever after. No, I believe it to be a consequence of the deterioration of radio in modern times. From the four alternatives available for after-breakfast listening, none of them are worth the effort of bending my earlugs.

My first ‘hit’, BBC1, produced a most entertaining narrative - excellent for a writer, as it dealt with the unravelling of unknown people’s life stories. This was ‘Heir Hunter’. Fascinating, yes, riveting, certainly, but how sad that no one traced the now sorrowing relatives of these people while they were still alive, bringing them to their door while there was still time to share and reminisce. The crocodile tears of one participant, visiting the home where her cousin had died ‘to be sure that she was happy there’, did not impress. “That is the main thing,” she said, but no, the main thing would have been for her to give some human warmth in the final years, not turn up to collect the legacy.

Yes, and you might ask, what am I doing to cheer and comfort forgotten relatives of mine? You are quite right, nothing. I am as guilty as the rest.

picture: My Dad, who died in 1996, with his Murfin-Shaw cousins in their native Derbyshire