Small Changes…Big Difference

Hello my little Foxgloves,

I hope this post finds you well and happy? 

As I settle even more into my life here in Scotland, I feel my creativity and passion coming back for things that I’d lost interest and motivation for. And it’s felt nice but also kind of overwhelming in the sense of “where should I start” But before my move, I promised myself that I wouldn’t put pressure on myself about anything anymore, instead I decided to try and be more present and just do whatever I wanted to do in that moment.

And honestly it’s made me feel so much better. So I wanted to share some more things with you that I’ve been doing different since I moved to Scotland.

I go to bed earlier – In my old house I felt like I would be tired all day and then when it came to bed time I found myself laying on my side scrolling through social media till the early hours of the morning. Often sleeping fitfully and waking up numerous times when I did fall asleep. Here though, I find my eyes growing heavy around 10am. I’m usually in bed not long after and sleep right through to the morning.

Why? I don’t know. It could be a few things, which I’ll go into a bit later. But mostly I think it’s because it’s so quiet here at night and the bedroom is at the back of the property so we don’t have the glare of a streetlight shining through the gap at the bottom of the blind!

I wake up early and get out of bed straight away – We have two cats, the smallest one is very affectionate in the morning and she tends to jump on the bed and bunt her head against our hands purring, which wakes us up. It’s honestly a cute way to be woken up. The bigger one (who is the mum of the little one) will usually follow suit by jumping on top of me and meowing in my face.

Kirby and Zelda

When the cats woke us up in our old place, I’d lay in bed and stare at the wall or my phone and instantly check my work emails and feel all the weight of what I needed to do that day, weigh down on me. And it would make me feel so overwhelmed sometimes that I’d close my eyes and sulk (I’m not ashamed to admit it) and get out of bed 10 minutes before I had to log on and start work for the day.

Here when I wake up, I get up straight away. Not only is this nice on the days when my husband is working from the office because it means I get to have a coffee with him, but it also gives me time to do some bits before work. I usually unload the dishwasher and put everything away, spray and wipe down the kitchen surfaces, put on a wash load. Then I usually shower and do my skin care before making a coffee and sitting for half an hour to read through social media.

Having this me time, has really helped me focus and be more productive in my work day and I find myself barely looking at my phone when I’m working.

I try not to drink caffeine after 5pm – In my old place I was guilty of drinking coffee till about half an hour before bed. Since I’ve moved here, I try to cut it out after 5pm. If I want a drink, I’ll have a mug of hot chocolate with oat milk or a glass of diluted juice.

This could be one of the reasons I’m sleeping so well!

I’ve been eating a vegetarian diet – I’d been thinking of turning vegetarian for a while. I love animals and found myself feeling guilty about the cruelty against them in order to feed me. I also wanted to do more to reduce my carbon footprint. So my husband (already vegetarian) and I decided that we would both live on a vegetarian diet when we moved.

Honestly, I haven’t found the transition hard at all. If anything, I find that my love and joy for cooking has come back more. As a side note, I LOVE my new kitchen. But generally I just enjoy planning our evening meals (which I tend to do on a Sunday for the week ahead) and then get the joy of cooking them. 

Vegetarian Jalfrezi

Some of the dishes we’ve enjoyed so far are;

Vegetarian Jalfrezi Curry (chickpeas, sweetcorn, peas, onion and spinach) with rice
Quorn mince spaghetti with home made Bolognese sauce, served with Mediterranean vegetables
Quorn Roast Log served with garlic roasted potatoes, sweet potato mash, sage and onion stuffing, mixed veg, Yorkshire puddings and veg gravy
Tagliatelle with creamy garlic and cheese sauce, fresh spring onions and garlic bread
Quorn chicken in sweet chili and garlic sauce, served with rainbow veg and udon noodles

Today we have a friend visiting for dinner so I’ve got a Vegetarian Sausage Casserole in the slow cooker with root vegetables and I’ll serve it with creamy sweet potato mash *chefs kiss*

Veggie Sausage Casserole with root vegetables

I’m more mindful of my leftovers – Trying to be more conscious about reducing my waste, I now try to utilize any leftovers and use them to make something else. For example, if I only need half an onion for onion gravy, then I will store the other half in a refrigerator bag and use it in a recipe the following day.

One of my favourite things to do (which I feel will turn out less soft and crunchier when I get an air fryer) is taking the sweet potato peelings, rinsing them off, putting them in a bowl and adding olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika and letting them sit in the refrigerator for a few hours. Later on I cook them in the oven until they’re crisp. Homemade crisps people! They’re good!

Seasoned

I try to eat 3 meals a day and have my tea (I’m northern don’t shout at me) earlier – I’ve always been guilty of skipping breakfast. I’ve been a couple of cups of coffee and not eating till lunchtime or, in some cases my evening meal, kind of woman. Obviously this isn’t good or healthy. As what I was doing was ordering takeaway most nights and filling myself on stodgy food that left me feeling bloated and gross.

Now, I try to eat three meals a day. I still have my coffee but I will try to have a bowl of cereal, porridge or some toast. Then around lunchtime, I’ll either have soup or I’ll make a healthy but filling snack. Such as carrot shavings drizzled with a bit of olive oil and honey mixed with soy sauce. It doesn’t sound filling, but it was for me and it tasted fresh and was quick and easy to make.

Fortunately being able to work from home, also means I can eat my last evening meal earlier. My husband finishes work at 5pm and usually gets home about 6pm. I tend to take my laptop into the kitchen around 5pm and start dinner prep (I still work, make calls and reply to work emails) and it’s easy enough. Then around 5.30pm I start cooking everything. This usually means that by the time my husband gets home at (which is the time I log off for the day) we’re sitting down for our tea and catching up about our day by 6.15pm. This means we get more us time in the evening. 

We get more quality time together in the evening – As we’ve had no internet till recently, we’ve either cuddled up with a DVD (we re-watched Firefly and made a start on Boardwalk Empire) or I’d sometimes tether my phone as a hotspot to my laptop and we’d watch a scary film on Shudder.

Sometimes my husband would play offline games on his Playstation and I’d lay the other way on the L shaped sofa with a book. One of the things I love the most about our relationship is that we each respect the other person has their own interests/ways to relax and we don’t always expect the other person to want to do something together. It’s possible to do your own thing and still be together.

Right now, I’m writing this blog post out and listening to music on my headset whilst my husband is taking part in an online battle on Pokémon Sword. Both happy, still together.

I try not to let myself feel guilty for every single thing anymore – I’ve suffered from anxiety since I was 16 and was diagnosed with depression after the death of my dad, which got worse after the death of my mum. I still have a lot of things to work through from the past 5 years or so. A lot happened in a short space of time and I never really allowed myself to acknowledge anything or feel anything fully.

This means that I’ve spent a long time feeling guilty about pretty much everything, even things out of my control. Even things I shouldn’t feel guilty for, like taking an hour to have a hot bath…It’s not easy, but here, I try not to feel guilty about everything and take a moment to think it through. Previously if I tried to show myself any kind of self love or self care, I felt guilty and thought that it was wasteful use of time and that instead it would be better if I did something else.

Re-watching Season One of Buffy

Now…If I want to take a half hour nap on a Saturday afternoon, I will. If I want to sit and spend two hours flicking through all of my old Buffy the Vampire Slayer magazines for some nostalgia, I do. A moment of kindness to yourself can go a long way. Try it!

Is there anything you’ve started doing that’s helped improve your mental health or phsyical wellness? I’d love to hear if there is, so why not leave a comment below?! Until next time…

Stay Spooky!
👻LWG👻

We became HIGHLAND BOIS…(kind of)

Hello my little pine cones,

I hope you all had a wonderful break over the festive period? I also want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all those who have read and liked my blog so far, it’s not a large number, but I don’t mind as I’m reaching lovely people out there. 

It’s been a while since I posted anything, so I thought I’d break my silence with a bit of an update. There’s been quite alot going on. I worked over most of Christmas and the New Year and only had a couple of days off and I ended up becoming a little run down. Mentally I didn’t feel I was in a good place. I was feeling very burntout and very low on motivation and energy.

I didn’t get any time off till the end of January, so my husband and I decided to and visit a friend in Aberdeen, Scotland. And we both fell in love with the place. The way of life was so much more peaceful, the air was clean and crisp and when we walked along the beach to visit the little village of Footdee, I realised that I felt at peace for the first time in a long time.

The Village of Footdee

It was on this trip that we decided we definitely wanted to move somewhere new and so we started putting plans into place. I tried to keep my job (a permanent staff position which is practically unheard of in my line of work) and see if they would allow me to commute back to the office base once a month for a few days, whilst working remotely the rest of the time. But sadly they couldn’t make it work. So I had to make a tough decision. I mean, leaving a permanent secure job, to move to Scotland is a big decision. But in the end the pros outweighed the cons.

Harder still was knowing we were going to be leaving behind family and friends. We’re both close to our family and knowing we weren’t going to be able to see them as often as we do was hard to deal with. But we were both really touched by their support. And already we’re making plans for visits with one another, lots of summer plans!

So, over the course of 3.5 weeks we packed up most of our belongings and donated them to charity, found new jobs and a place to live and said our “See you later” to our family and friends. There were tears, stress, early mornings followed by late nights…But there were moments of happiness too. Like spreading a duvet on the bedroom floor after getting rid of our bed and sitting cross legged eating chinese food. The string fairy lights giving this sense of serenity to a room cluttered with stacked up boxes and bags of clothes. As we sat and talked about our new future.

We took the seven hour drive two weeks ago, arriving at our cosy 1 bed flat just after midnight. By the time we unloaded it was 1am and after tea and coffee and some chatter we settled in bed just before 3am. The pair of us consumed by a deep, peaceful sleep that’s the result of a chaotic month!

Aberdeen Beach

I’m so excited to be living so close to the sea and being able to explore the Aberdeenshire countryside and there’s the added bonus of not being too far away from Edinburgh, a place in Scotland I have wanted to visit for years. 

I feel happy and content…But also excited for this new chapter in my life.

Stay Spooky!
👻LWG👻

Hellish Nell

Hello my pumpkins,

I hope this post finds you in a chunky knit sweater as Autumn (or Fall, for my American readers) settles itself around you. If I were to say the name Hellish Nell to you, would it mean anything? What if I was to tell you, she was the last person to be charged with Witchcraft in the UK? Sound interesting? Then settle back, get cosy and ignore what you think is the sound of creaking floorboards.

Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan was a Scottish medium born in 1897. She earned the nickname Hellish Nell in childhood due to her bolshie behaviour and dire prophecies. She married a man named Henry Duncan and was a mother to six children. Her husband was supportive of her supposed clarivoyancy and from the year of 1928 she progressed from clairvoyant to physical medium by offering seances.

Helen Duncan

Nell claimed that she was able to permit spirits to enter her body and materialise them as ectoplasm. And pretty soon she was holding seances on a regular basis. Arthur Conan Doyle who created Sherlock Holmes, even spoke highly of her abilities. As the years passed, people questioned her ability and in 1931 the London Spiritualist Alliance examined her method. They even conducted tests on the ectoplasm she materialised. 

It was this, that proved to be the start of her undoing. They found that the ectoplasm was actually cheesecloth mixed with egg whites, that Nell would swallow and later regurgitate during the seances. Despite reports of her being a fraud, the world would soon be at war. World War II would carry an unbelievable amount of casualties and due to this, people fled to mediums to hear from their loved ones, one last time. Nell was one of them.

In November of 1941 she held a séance in Portsmouth and claimed to be visited by the spirit of a sailor who told her of the sinking of a battleship named the HMS Barham. The news of this soon made Nell a person of interest to the Navy, because the sinking of the ship wasn’t made public knowledge, only the families of the casualties had been informed. In fact, the sinking wasn’t announced publicly until late January of 1942. 

Hellish Nell producing ectoplasm.

In 1944 as the pressure and casualties of the war mounted, people were desperate for an end in sight and for that to happen, the British had to be smart and keep everything top secret. Two Lieutenants attended a séance of Nell’s undercover and were shocked and disgusted by what they saw, so they reported her to the police. In late January of the same year, Nell was arrested (along with her ectoplasm) and charged under the Vagrancy Act of 1824. However the authorities regarded this a more serious crime and so charged her with Section 4 of the Witchcraft Act 1734.

Whilst not on trial for being a “witch” she was accused, and found guilty of “pretending to exercise or use human conjuration” The case had numerous defence witnesses and the trial was a media sensation at the time. Grotesque cartoons of witches on broomsticks, dotted the newspapers.

Helen Duncan during the trial

She was found guilty and sentenced to nine months in Holloway Prison. Being that the Witchcraft Act wasn’t repealed until 1951, Helen Duncan was the last known woman to be imprisoned under it’s terms.

Cheesecloth ecotplasm aside, there were people who claimed they had attended numerous seances held by Nell, and found her skills both believable and impressive. And don’t forget, she did know about the sinking of the HMS Burham despite it not being public knowledge.

By all accounts she was quite popular in prison and even held seances for her cellmates. And despite her promise on her release from prison in 1945, that she wouldn’t do them anymore, she continued to carry out seances until her death in 1956. Relatives of Helen are still ongoing in their campaign to have her posthumously pardoned of witchcraft charges.

It’s hard to know for sure if Hellish Nell was a fraud who preyed on the poor during a time of immeasurable loss? Or if she was someone who used parlour tricks to accentuate her true talents with Clairvoyancy? 

It’s really interesting and kind of mind blowing to me how it was only 70 years ago that the Witchraft Act was repealed. And that a woman served prison time because of it. Was it fear of men? Or fear of something bigger?

I’d love to hear your comments on this, so please free to leave one below.

Stay spooky!

👻LWG👻

Hard Times

I think it would be an understatement to say that the world has felt incredibly bizarre for the past year or so. I don’t know anyone who is feeling their best, full of energy and thriving. I’m happy for those who may be, but it’s certainly not something I can relate to. 

I find my energy low, my motivation none existent and my get up and go, has well and truly, got up and gone. However, I really need to get motivated as aside from the fact my wedding is fast approaching, I also just want to get my zest for life back. This is hard especially when you have anxiety and depression, as I do, however I want to fight this.

I’ve started getting back into hobbies I’d neglected for what felt like a long time. Most noticeably reading, and writing.  I do have another blog where I focused on mostly book reviews but I wanted to start a separate one, that will hopefully be an amalgamation of a few of my interests, as well as some thoughts on life. So here I am. I’m hoping starting this will keep me motivated and focused and get me feeling better and in turn, I’ll hopefully keep you entertained along the way.

Hauntingly cosy, welcome to Lil Witchy Gee’s slice of the internet.

Stay spooky, stay wild.

Much love

LWG