Enrats rant

Watch pipes don't thaw!

2009-01-08T06:53:00.000-08:00

On the basis that a watched kettle takes twice as long to boil i thought perhaps my definate need for a bath would probably have a detrimental effect on the pipes thawing....as in they wouldn't.
So, the sun shining and the ground crispy and crunchy, wrapped up warm I persuaded Mr.H to accompany me on a walk.
Some negotiation took place as to exactly where we would walk and the merits and disadvantages.
I was suprised to hear Mr.H advocating a rather steep hill climb over a flat walk along the valley floor in the sunshine until i realised the true motivation....beer.
Good beer in a freezing cold pub served by a landlady, best described as ancient won over a third rate pint of insipid something in a warm pub served by a slightly less aged landlady.
Huffing and puffing and many a rest...I mean stop to admire the view and we finally reached the top.

A bit of a chill

2009-01-08T03:31:00.000-08:00

There's been a bit of a nip in the air of late. Subzero temperatures for about a fortnight here on top of our mountain.
We haven't experienced this sort of weather for about 12 years and were we prepared? Not as well as we thought!
Yesterday the water supply froze but in all fairness we had made sure we had 5 gallons of water in the house.
It has been quite interesting to see childrens reaction to this cold snap. Yes a little dissapointment that it hasn't snowed but the water pools on the common have frozen and have been a constant draw for sliding and slipping....so far no broken bones and being small pools the risk of drowning is minimal.
Some of the kids have been busy trying to thaw out frozen lumps of ice on top of the heat outlet for the boiler and one daft child actually tried to make his own skating rink by leaving the outside hose on over night.
Leaving doors open as a past time has gone out of favour and swanning around the house in shorts and a t shirt has been looked on without sympathy as has the phrase "I'm cold".
Get a jumper on, socks and shoes have been the buzz words of the week.
I'm loath to say this but the aga has behaved beautifully and we have had warming soups and a sumptuous twelth night duck. It's also helped dry out wood and is a wonderful source of comfort when waiting for the kettle to boil.
This morning there was still no water and some blank faces when told to wash their face and hands. How?
Taking a jug of water to the washbasin didn't seem a logical answer to the kids.
It's amused me no end to see modern children struggle with concepts of cold and no water.
Personally i'm old enough to remember Jack Frost painting the inside of the windows with wonderful patterns nevermind the outside.

We are survivors!

2008-12-30T14:35:00.000-08:00

I went to my mother's today. She's in her late 90's and is a lot less mobile than she used to be, and has decided that she'd like to start recording what her life was like when she was younger. When we were looking through some of her papers, we came across something she'd already written and was quite pleased with, and I'd like to share that with you:

"We are survivors!
This is an article for those born before 1940.
We we're born before television, before penicillin, polio shots, frozen-foods, xerox, contact lenses, videos, fridges and the pill. We lived before radar, credit cards, split atoms, laser beams, and ballpoint pens, before dishwashers, tumble dryers, electric blankets, air conditioners, drip dry clothes, and before man walked on the moon. We got married first then lived together {How quaint can you be?} We thought 'fast food' was eaten in lent, 'A Big Mac' wan an over sized raincoat and crumpet we had for tea. We existed before house husbands, computer dating, dual careers. When a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your cousins, and sheltered accommodation was where you waited for a bus.
We were before day centres, group homes, and disposable nappies. We'd never heard of FM radio, tape decks, electric type writers, artificial hearts, word processors, yogurt, or young men wearing earrings. For us, "time sharing" meant togetherness. A chip was a piece of wood or fried potato, "Hardware" meant nuts and bolts. and "software" wasn't a word.
Before 1948, 'Made in Japan' meant junk, the term "Making out" referred to how you did in your exams, a "stud" was something that fastened a collar to a shirt, and "going all the way" meant staying on a double decker bus all the way to the depot.
Pizza's, McDonald's, and instant coffee were unheard of. In our day, cigarette smoking was fashionable, grass was mown, coke was kept in the coal house, a joint was a piece of meat you ate on Sunday's, and a pot was something you cooked in. Rock music was grandmother's lullaby, Elderado was an ice cream, a gay person was the life and soul of the party and nothing more, and aids just meant beauty treatment or help for someone in trouble.

We, who were born before 1940, must be a hardy bunch, when you think of the ways in which the world has changed and the adjustments we have had to make. No wonder we're so confused and there is a generation gap!
But by the grace of god, we have survived - Hallelujah!"

Credit crunch

2008-11-28T14:17:00.000-08:00

The credit crunch....sounds like a cereal.
Snap,Crackle and pop...and your money , job, pension, saving, house, local shop has gone.
So here i post a little credit wonder.
Yesterday, Kingsmill bread was £1.39 per loaf in Tesc....but i had been to Bookers and bought it on a short life for .49p per loaf less £3.61 for ten. Which in the end meant i bought ten loaves of bread for less than it cost me for one in Tesc.
FANDABIDOSY!
Mr Wilkes wanted to sell me a very small bath for just over £250 and said if i waited till after Xmas i could get it for 20% off. If i wanted it now i would have to go to a bathroom specialist and it would cost me a considerable ammount more.
So... i went to B and Q and got one and the panels and delivery for £158
Power of the net....catch the deals and reel them in!
However i did go to Ikea on Monday...and wanting to offer a good example i made a note of what i wanted to buy and tunnel vision bought it and only it. Mr H was most amused and tried to tempt me with many a likely buy.

Auction today and i'm sad to say i was a little distracted.
However i bought a new sofa for the kids to fight over to watch the telly for the princely sum of a £1.
6 games and a deluxe corkscrew for £3.
We have had tremendous fun with the board games all evening (no child has even wanted to press the start button on a computer or game boy never mind fight over them)and Mr H has practised using his new corkscrew..DELUXE!.....Xmas presi sorted
then!
It's about time i got him back for the tile cutter!
The bathroom floor looks great...just needs the bathroom door putting back.

Life,Love and Loss

2008-11-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

I havn't written on here for some time. In fact i've been very busy being depressed, a little 'issed off ansd tearfull.
Living with mr H can do that.......only kidding!
Seriously, it's been a sad month.
We can all relate to being young, headstrong and invincible....personally, in secret that's me.
In reality, we are often vulnerable, inexperienced or at the mercy of others.
A young 19 year old, step brother to my eldest children, has died in a car crash.
Young, headstrong, invincible, vulnerable and much loved, a beautiful young boy.
There were many, too many, to see him off to his afterlife...they made a long procession behind the herse to the grave side and after packed the small evangelical church. A short life celebrated and a future moarned, lost. The weeping strong and pungeant, wracked with thoughts of what iff's.
Baby P, so frought with terror. A short life.
There was also an inquest for a young person scolded in a bath.
Loss, such terrible inexplicable loss.
Blame.
This is something which often consummes us but which more often offers no solace.
To blame , extricates, places accountability in the hope that in future things will change. We are human and to ere is human....and loss is often hard to bear.

My mother is quite old, well, compared with me fairly old.....and she wants to die in her own house.
She also wants to make sure we all know, as in all my brothers and sisters .....and she also wants to be the very centre of our universes.
Wants and needs.....so hard to reconcile.
She lives 120 miles away and when i make an arrangement to visit she is always going somewhere else.
She is 98 and busy busy busy and i am glad.

No actually I'm ~issed off because my brothers and sisters say I'm a crap daughter and my mother has better things to do than see me.

Actaually she was a great mum and was there when she was needed by me and i know i have been there when she has needed me....and i will be.

The lengths Mr. H will go to .......

2008-10-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

The lengths mr H will go to to get me to write on this blog are quite incredible.
The bread rolls i made today were admittedly very hard, as in rock like, even I had to saw through one with the circular saw.
Mr H on the other hand would prefer to ham it up with the green godess hearth kit...Hammer and chisel!
He failed to mention i had prepared and cooked a fantastic indian supper or that the same bread dough had made super duper pizzas which he had guzzled down without the aid of hammer, tongs, chisels or even a jack hammer....infact he had not even had to find a sharp knife.
Three casseroles in the freezer, all because we want to go to France and be alone together....Be afraid, very afraid Mr H!

i've had enough

2008-10-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

I've had it all. Today has been a pretty horrible day.
Definitely not moving, my mother is giving everyone the run around and there's loads of questions about where the money has gone. I can see a mega family bust up on the horizon.
I've forgotten the grandchildrens birthdays.
I want to run away!
Now I've been forced into baby sitting out of pure guilt.
I wonder if i would have all this shit if i had tithed.
I really really want to run away.......and the worst of it is i know there are lots of people out there having an even worse day.
The optimist in me says it will be a better day tomorrow.....like hell!

OOOO! I love an auction!

2008-10-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

It's Friday. I've baited Social services and they've bitten. chewed and spat out. Having won i can do something a bit more challenging, something that's going to jazz the old brain cells...like an auction.
Off i go, having perused the wares the previous night, made my notes, consulted the oricle...Gooogle and the like and priced up.
A quick second look incase i've missed something.
I survey the auction rooms to see which dealers are present.
The white haired guy with the Aussie hat nods to me...we've parcelled things up before. He likes clocks, oil lamps and needlework.
The big dealers are out in force, many from the big cities, who all deal in the quality furniture market, one guy i know from the capital who also has a retail outlet locally.
Some of them clock me, nod, smile, or glance a recognition....we are all sussing the oposition.
The biggest danger are those we don't know, the newcomers, those ordinary people, who quite often will bid stupid ammounts and drive up prices. They are the ones the auctioneers are looking for.
I saw a nice pine set of bedroom chest of drawers, normally they would go for £20. They went for just under what you would pay for them new....2 people were in the room who wanted them. They also wanted the beds i wanted.
Another day another auction!
A fridge freezer went for £35.00...I was hoping to get it for £5.00
There was a murmer of incredulity...someone behind me said they're mad, another, thats daft.
Thing is the economy is upside down, it's hard to tell what something is worth.
I was there to get the sofa, it was a bit flowery for my taste, but comfortable.
Just the thing for lounging in front of the telly!
There were some nice water coloures and a few pots, the maker of which i've been collecting. An Alfred Meakin dinner set i liked loads but not enough to put in a further bid.
The piece de resistance for me was perhaps an oak dresser, dating to around the date of the house we are buying.
I thought I'd better consult Mr H, after all this was quality and i thought would go for about £900.
A considerable sum for us to spend.
A little old lady saw me looking at the piece and declared she had been told it would reach 6-9 hundred but that a lot of dealers were there and it might reach £1300
She was very exited and a little detective work indicated that she had the same initials as indicated the seller.
Don't be dupped!
The bidding started and Mr H was close by...£600, 650, 700, 750, 800, 850, 900, 950 and i bid a £thousand. £1050, 1100, £1100 i bid, i looked to see if that was ok and Mr H was missing....1150, 12000, £1250 and my hand went up 1300...etc.
I was out and so was Mr H.....I found him in the foyer, head in hands muttering.
It's ok it's at £1500 i said. He looked up in horror.....
No, not us.
US! You mean you his eyes said and then they registered we didn't need to find £1500 we havn't got.
It is not often i can get him in the seat of his pants....well not unless i'm driving.

Actually i'm sad. Nice house, nice dresser, just not meant to be......just yet.

Rain Rain and more Rain

2008-09-05T00:15:00.000-07:00

Now I'm beginning to feel rather greedy regarding rain and really i feel we should be sharing it with Australia or the Gobi desert.....
We've been lucky this year as we went to Brittany for 3 weeks and saw the sun. I've only seen the sun three times since and with more rain on the horizon and it expected to be torrential today there is only one thing that might make a difference.
I have declared it is the grand lighting of the Aga day....if it will lite, a sauna like kitchen is bound to bring out a late autumn swelter in the sunshine department.
Anyway I'm fed up of salads, time for some rich creamy soups and curry.
In all fairness it's very nice of me to declare the lighting of the Aga but it will be a long day of toil, soot, oil, swearing, heavy lifting, singed eyebrows and more swearing for Mr H.
Consequently Mr H is all together less happy about my declaration.

11 years old and big school

2008-09-04T23:46:00.000-07:00

Friday today and the first week in big school is taking it's toll.
Little ninja bouncing Tigger is wandering around in a daze, complete with PJ's and sleepy eyes.
The breakfast spoon seems heavier than usual and his normal superspeed reflexes and quick repartee is missing.
Simple questions such as wholemeal or white rolls in your packed lunch? tax his almost dormant thinking.
I can see he is going to need a lot of help or he will have a detention for not having his tie, a detention for not having his PE kit and a detention for leaving his books at home....something will have to give.
Big D finds his rucksack and packs his lunch for him, Beth helps him with his tie, berrating him continuously as she does so, threatening much earlier bed times next week if he's going to make them all late for school.....I'm beginning to think i'm redundant as a mother!
I find his kit for games and little D finds his trainers.
Branny finds an envelope to hold money and a permission slip for a rugby trip and Mr H starts the van and beeps the horn urgently.
As they pour out the door, little ninja Tigger declares he doesn't want to be a big ninja Tigger!
Growing up, responsibilities....i feel for him.

Looks like it's red gooey stuff in a very hot place without any darlings with wings or trumpets!

2008-09-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

At last we have gone to see the house for real.
Now I know all about travellers, hippies and eco warriors and being a positive person I thought I'd prepared myself for mayhem.
I often joke that i live with a bloke that hasn't decided whether his hero is Steptoe or Dell boy from Only Fools and Horses.
Bearing in mind we often as human beings model ourselves on who we admire....be very very sorry for me!
No one and I repeat no one could have prepared themselves for the property or the vendor we saw today.
He described himself as a wizard, but surely even wizards have to touch down occasionally with reality.
Flying away on his magic carpet he showed us where we could put a geodeasic dome, where he had put his sauna, complete with nudes on the wall and a massage bed....knocking shop or what?
We could put a tarp over an outbuilding and rent it out to the local council...the fact it had no water, sewarage, electricity seemed to have passed him by.
Wave his magic wand!
The outbuilding had full planning permission for conversion to residential....residential what?
The roof was a combination of wood tin and perspexe and the homemade staircase was a deathtrap!
Mr H was very keen i go and look....silly man he's the one with a will!
The main house, a typical Pembrokeshire house probably dating back to the early 1800's was delightful from the outside....inside I'm not sure what is holding up the kitchen/dining room which is on the first floor.
I love the steps and balcony leading from the outside,through beautiful french doors into the kitchen....i can see Mr H and I having morning coffee there in the early spring sunshine....after all it will probably be too wet the rest of the year!
Two large sycamore trees are to the rear of the property, complete with tree house platforms and rickety steps....Perhaps i should get the kids to write wills?....and to the south a large pond with an island and a man Friday hamock.
All i need now is a man Friday!....Calling Mr H!
The mad vendor maybe a wizard after all becaue i am enchanted. I leave Mr H to haggle while i sit in a dubiously constructed deckchair in the rain thinking...Heaven!

To sell ..To buy....Both but which?

2008-09-03T04:12:00.000-07:00

Ah the joys of selling a house are as nothing compared with the joys of buying a house!
Harangued and under siege by estate agents from all directions, buyers, sellers and the kids all wanting to know where we will be living at Christmas.
I'm a pretty untidy person, but i am organized....everything I've tidied up for a viewing is in a cupboard, chest of drawers, under the bed or in the van.
Have you seen....? is a common question asked of me.
Where is....? is another.
Under the stairs? In a cupboard? Under a bed? In the van? is a more common answer.
It was funny when the viewers opened the door to the under stairs cupboard and were bombarded by an avalanche of sleeping bags unpaired socks and t shirts.

It is with great delight that i can now return the favour and know that someone has frantically been tidying up, dressing rooms and hoovering the carpets.
Houses with windows opened when it's windy and wet are damp and those smelling of perfume and patchouli oil have pets or kids who wee the bed.
There is something voyeuristic about looking around someones house and it's very difficult not to make some sweeping judgements.
We went to view a house and partly renovated cottage this morning...It looked sad, abandoned and overgrown.
The cottage looked as if a chaotic magician had started some spells and had got distracted halfway through.
Later, after much digging around on the Internet we discovered the chap had indeed thought himself a bit of a wizard.
I just know that is where we will end up living....Mr H was enchanted.
I am far less susceptible to magical influences and thought..."deep red gooey liquid in a very hot place!".....work it out!
On the way home, we received a call from an estate agent we are not even looking at houses with or is selling ours to ask us had we put an offer on another house that she had on her books.
Indeed we had.....and she informed us that there was likely to be an acceptance of the offer. So now we are in hiding, awaiting to see if an offer will be accepted on the magicians property before we make a decision.
Meanwhile the buyer ai champing at the bit.
Life is never dull living with Mr H.

Water..Slugs..Indian Floods and a Hurricane

2008-08-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

Brittish summer...well, it's rained. Rained and rained some more!
Even the slugs seem a bit waterlogged and are creeping their slime filled way into the house.
Trails of glistening slug gloop accross the floor, over discarded jumpers, trainers and socks.
Cabbage gorged they seek shelter from the persistant rain.
They could have had it worse, were they an Indian slug....washed away in monsoon rains....or New Orlean slugs exhorted to leave their homes for higher dryer lands.
Strange that slugs, so universally slimey can be treated so differently.

Back to school soon as in imminently

2008-08-31T13:40:00.000-07:00

Hooray!
The school holls are so very nearly over.
Shirts, blouses, trousers, socks, jumpers, skirt, trainers, shoes....for 6 children.
Mega pounds.
Rucksacks, pencils, pens, calculators......don't need one of them to know there's no money left for lunch.
Listen kids it's going to cost £75.00 per week for you lot to have lunch in school....so guess what you are going to have packed lunch.
Much cheaper but one hell of a lot of work. I've worked out that if i get up half an hour earlier i can provide the kids with a balanced meal for half the price.
The kids are crestfallen....salad,fruite,rice, bread, yoghurt and the occasional chocci biscuit or even a packet of crisps.
YUKK!! YucK!
The 6th formers, and Beth, oh how nice they had planned to be to Beth, who would always go to the shop accross the road and get them crisps, fizzy pop and SWEETS.
Will we have money for drinks said little D?
What's wrong with corporation pop? I said.
Water from the tap?.....eh nothing! They said a little feebly.
We might not pay tuition fees but the state system of education in Britain seems to cost more and more each year.
Computers, printers and the more expensive ink, memory sticks, musical instruments and hockey sticks, bats, balls, trainers, shorts and special socks and shirts to tell which school you belong to.
You want to do geography GCSE?
Can you afford to send yor child on a course, that's a necessary part of the examination?
£93.00
It was a struggle for us and we are quite well off. How can a working class or especially a child from a non working family do geography?
Cover your books with film to keep them safe from being kicked around and getting wet, pens, pencils, rubbers, rulers, calculators.

We say education is for all..equal opportunity so long as you can afford to cover your books.

A Different Perspective

2008-08-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

I love Brittany and our little house, the Intermarche, Le Scorff where you can get a 4 course lunch with wine for €10.50, sneaking off to a cabin that the kids don't know about with mr. H on the ferry for a bit of us time.
I love lots of things, even home in Wales, very wet Wales.
Several kids down and we think we are in for a quiet,ease yourself into the usual life time.....Funny how fate thinks differently.
Mam has had a really big stroke, she is out of hospital and back home. My eldest sister has moved in with her, which has involved getting a skip and junking a lot of mams stuff.
No 2 sis phones and says I should visit soon, as in now, mam is very funny and is a lot of fun at the moment.
I hear the anguish that she thinks is buried...mam has needed oxygen several times in the night, her 97 yr old heart is struggling to pump.
I steel myself and phone home.
"Ello luv...'s Glooooria. Yur muthers under the dryer...D'y'uh wan me te give er a message?"
Now, do I want to be all Barry or shall I be posh?
I decide that my parents have shelled out on elocution lessons and it would be disrespectful not to put them to good use.
"Yes please Gloria. Could you inform mam that i will visit on Thursday afternoon"
"Rightyo, luv. Yer mams gonna luv tha"

Typical I thought, she can't possibly die with a bad hair do!

Mams fine, well she ate a whole plate of sausage and chips followed by Auntie Bettys' fruit cake. Of course she had said she couldn't eat a thing....but that's part of the game isn't it?

It's my nephew's wedding next Friday...I've bet Mr. H a tenner that's when she'll snuff it. She can't abide anyone else being the centre of attention....and why should she?
97 is a good old age and she is old labour so she won't be waiting for a telegram from the queen.....?
Had yet another visit from big D's social worker....my, is she keen.
Big D seeing mam and dad at last. The previous visit had been cancelled because they didn't have the bus fair.
His mam was very upset as her dog had died, the windows had been smashed in and the television arial cut.
The social worker ooohed..... and i thought, dad has pissed off the neighbours again then. Wonder where they will move to next?
The phone has tintinabulated quite alot since we've been home...and i have let it sing.
Sadly others have been more curious and answered it's pervasive call.
The estate agent called....thought they were a thing of the past.
Viewing on Sunday morning...people from Hampshire (lots of dosh) their house has sold and they are looking for our sort of propeerty (semi derelict)
Actually less of the semi as we are definately detached!

Bugger! Bugger, Bugger!
Last viewing back in April....which means the house has not had a proper, thorough tidy through since then....and it's rained a lot and we've been away for a month so the grass outside is up to my neck!
Why oh why didn't I learn from my mother and follow everyone else in their desire for housework?
Why have we not employed a gardener?
...Oooops I know the answer to that one...because we'd rather spend the money indulging ourselves in France!

Ok. Plan 1....Do the job properly.
Plan 2....Panic.
Plan 3....Strim the hay...put junk in the trailer and bag up everything else in the house and shove it in the van, hoover and dust (if I can remember how)

We opt for plan 4....go to the Indian for a meal, get bladdered and go to bed!

weddings

2008-07-30T07:33:00.000-07:00

Strange things weddings…….

Even stranger in Brittany.

The sun glinted through the clouds and sparkled fairy dust on glistening woodland. Evael and Francois are to be joined together, forever? In front of a load of people in gowns of white cream green and blue. My girls carry the flagfs for Wales and Cornwall and stand behind and to the kleft and right of the druid mawr, who is presiding over the ceremony.

It is mystical, it is magical, it is something wonderful to behold.

People desperately trying to connect with their past, to bring their past into the present and vice versa.

A spring in a woodland, magic in itself, air, earth, water and with man,…. Fire 4 elements, three common one rare. One element which has been regarded by some as that which holds man apart from animals.

Fire holds withing itself those attributes of saviour and destroyer., Choices….. Does the fire chose? No, man choses.

To warm to cook food to light or to destroy.

We can chanel water, use it, but often it reminds us of it’s power. The same is true of wind and also earth….

If we look after it it returns the favour, feeds us, builds security and in death surrounds us but fire …. Is something we think we can control

It’s a Pagan ceremony I would like to say steeped in history but having witnessed it and having witnseed it I would like to say it is relelvent today, in machination to draw ones need for clelbration and ceremony together.

I have always felt that Youenn the father of the birde had some Jewish background, There is a pride, a part of history that defines a Jewish person a sort of dignity. I am in awe. They sing Shallom and it feels right within the ceremony and ritual there is a sense of times slipping by….

I have a sense of now in the past and the past in now.

I think of the current whodunit literature and fantasy and think of the Jesuits of the crusaders and the Masonic lodges.

Dressing up, drinking from horns, pillars, wells, woodlands, could be from a new novel.

To artex or not????

2008-07-23T15:40:00.001-07:00

Lying in the bath, glass of Sancerre to hand and a book.....very strange book. A book that Zills has purloined from the library.
Be very suspicious of books where the writer uses different fonts, colours and bold text to emphasise things.
I put the book down on the lav seat and look up contemplating, a sip of wine and i notice several new blobs of pre-masticated toilet tissue stuck to the art ex ceiling.
Several weeks ago i decided to plot the path of blobs on the bog roof by purchasing different coloured toilet tissue........and what a beautiful, colourful ceiling i have.....perfectly offset by my chandelier!
I suspect it is easier to get paper blobs off a flat ceiling than it is to remove them from art ex.
I am in the bath, yet again, having had to scrub white paint from the kitchen floor...Little D, bless, well someone will need to after I've finished crying, has decided to roll his football off the chest freezer into an opened (by him) bucket of exterior white emulsion.
What a lovely pattern the ball has painted across the kitchen floor!
What a lovely addition it has made to his new T shirt and shorts!
Psychosociodoggiedoo......my glass is full of brilliant innovative art work.......believe that and you are really........STUPID!!!!!

EGGs

2008-07-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

Haven't written anything for ages...been too busy, washing clothes, organizing and packing for a weekend of efficacious and various musical entertainment.
The phone tintinabulates....could we keep an eye on Josh. His friend isn't allowed to go and mummy and daddy are worried he'll get up to no good at a music fest.....alcohol, drugs sex....I wish!
Now the thought of bigmacs boyfriend coming with us for a weekend of camping fills me with all the dread of swimming in seaweed!
Two adults, one of whom will be sleeping 6 hours and working 20 in each day and the other who just wants to bop and chill with the said same worker for 28 hours in every day.....7 kids and another who is enchanted with eldest daughter....sad git!
Spells disaster before it's even started.
The phone ring rings again.
Is J going to the fest? says a nervous mum.
No he's house and animal sitting i reply.
A sigh of relief..."in that case can you keep an eye on Mattie?"
Well, she's really cool, for a teen, witty intelligent and fun to be with...no probs!
Forward and on...wellies or flipflops? Shorts or thermals?
Bought a great double sleeping bag and self inflating mattress......intimacy and warmth guaranteed.....well as long as I can find a victim to share it with!
Zills comes home from school with a by the way LLyr (her very distant 75th cousin 24 times removed God botherer) wants to come to the fest as well and further more his mammy will phone that very evening.
AAAAGGGGHHHH... no one told me it would be worse when they were teens!
Mammy was worried about drugs and drink and Mr H being a relative she knew he would be safe!!!!!!!????????
Obviously not the most loving and in touch parent. Visions of lambs and wolves uppermost in my mind I continued to prepare.
Prepare for what?

The weather was great, the self inflating mattress and double sleeping bag lived up to all expectations. The music outstanding and the kids were an asset, a credit to their parents and stupendous ambassadors for youth......great Junior stewards!

What' s that got to do with eggs?

The first morning blurrr after the late night before was welcomed in by the quacking and gaggling of many ducks, slug slurping around the tents.
The said ducks stayed and layed whilst I cooked breakkie on a two ringed stove for 12 and Dave...whoever he was.
Two eggs later, one of which was poached and served up with great ceremony. The other freshly layed was declared the new would be son or daughter of Sir Bruce and was promptly stashed under her arm pit to be kept warm and incubated until hatched.
No one told her it would take 20 days, but help in the form of saddo the clown and his marvellous egg saver balloon ......at least if she rolled over in the night the balloon would contain the gunk.....that was the idea.
Not content to just nurture this would be little brucette, the egg was transported warmly everywhere, experiencing the delights of the waffle bar, ice cream parlour and the various musical extravaganzas...tucked safely in her bra? it bopped and danced, jived rocked and swayed....until it bounced right out and ended spread across the dance floor.
Wailing above the sound of garage, beating her breast in anguish with the BOOM BOOM of the drums she looked in horror at her yellow and white smelly offspring.
...........Daddy, god bless has got her a duckie for when we come back from France.

Last post and dentists

2008-07-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

Just read my last post. What has the dentist got to do with anything?
Well, I meant to tell you that he who should never has actually purchased a toothbrush.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

....................................sorry I'm in a bit of a faint...stunned and shocked! Stunned and shocked!
I have known he who should not for several years...nearly 2 decades and i have never known him to brush his teeth.....
Yuk and double yuk and some.
He says he does brush his teeth......but with what?
Better not be my toothbrush!
Or mine, or mine, or mine, or mine, or mine etc.

Yes Ali, by the time you get him, he'll be a new man!... perhaps he'll even have clean teeth.
Whose a lucky girl then?

What a week, dentists included

2008-07-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

What a week!
This is the first time I've had.... to think, all week.
Small Nations music fest next weekend so it's all hands to the pump. The green goddess pump that is. Who cares where we will all sleep, let alone in and on what? Will we eat?....probably not if the food tickets go to Zills as they did last year.
The most important thing is getting a new head on GLORIA!
I nod wisely, and look sympathetic.......Should it be torqued to 100Th, 70Th or as it is now 64Th. Modern metals, new bolts, something about copper gaskets and by the way if i wasn't doing anything important could i sit in GLORIA and apply the brake when he tooted the horn. He was trying to free off the clutch, but apparently the brakes had gummed up and were firmly stuck.....no need to apply the brakes then!
All of this sit in my wonderful vehicle came as a bit of a surprise to me especially as i had taken out most of the fence and half the side of the car coming down the drive on Wednesday and the wing mirror still dangling and clanging as a reminder.
Glutton for punishment or what?
The girls are at my mothers...she has had yet another stroke but at 98 years old she has no intention of lying down and ....
They are supposed to be looking after her but in all honesty she is looking more sprightly than she has done all year.
She has thoroughly enjoyed being passed from pillar to post by "the family" and has decided it's my turn.
GROooooooaaaaaaan!!!!!!!
I don't do my mother,much to the amusement of he who must be disobeyed.
The thought of looking after/putting up with/listening to my mother ( YES I'M SURE THERE ARE LOADS OF PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO WANT TO SPEND THERE TIME WITH THEIR MOTHERS BUT I'VE SPENT 18 YEARS TOO MANY WITH MINE.) is more than i can cope with let alone actually do it.
I feel sort of vindicated because my sister feels that she would rather go to hell 100 times over than spend any length of time with mum.
He who must not has never felt this about his mother and hence the amusement and i feel a little unease.....then again i would have travelled to Pluto for my dad and he probably would have for his father but would have resented every step.
Family!!!!
Big D threw up in the bathroom yesterday.
Projectile vomiting is his forte it would seem. There was more fluid on the floor than the bath could hold.......ok it felt like that at 11.30 pm.
He who should not found the plastic gloves and domestos and passed them to me with a hint of sympathy.....BARSTEWARD!!!
At last a day alone with he who must not.....a cuddle in bed? lunch? a walk along the coast path hand in hand?.... a kiss?
Forget it.....oh yeah i forgot I'm nearly 50.....you are not supposed to think of such things.
We are old, ancient, beyond time and not supposed to want / need/ desire intimacy.
Get real....shopping and the answer machine...who invented them?....Shoot them!
Tali had hurt his shoulder in school and needed to go to casualty.
Family.....bloody inconvenient!

The Positives About Fostering

2008-06-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

Fostering other peoples children can be a real horrible deal.
Sometimes you need more help than is recognised or available, sometimes it goes horrendously wrong....yeah and sometimes it's special.

Those special times make up for all the down times.
Chris phoned today...I can say his christian name, because he is no longer in care, he is just another person we all think about and sometimes write about in our diaries and blogs.
He left our house in a storm of unthinking, unthinking on our side and that of social services, but despite the past, despite the bad time we shared we still keep in contact.
He will be 22 years old in October.
Funny to think of him as a young adult, the last time we met he was 15 years old.
He was desperate to see us and we him. We both thought that we would have time to speak, swap photos, have lunch....quality time catching up.
Social services had different ideas. They were concerned that meeting up would cause problems for his new placement and so they allowed and facilitated him to meet his mum for the first time in three years.
His birth mum quite rightly was more important to him than meeting up with us.
We gave him a hug, told him how much we missed him, passed on the photos and made a sad but Hasty exit.
The kids were sad and didn't really understand....they were hoping, wanting to spend time with him. They missed him terribly.
Funny when i think of Chris, I see him with a plastic police helmet on his head siting out the front of the house on a large boulder, walkie talkie in hand, reporting me for driving to fast.
He has moved yet again, and worried that we would not be able to get in contact with him, he phoned to tell us his new address.
Can i speak to Tess, and Branny and Beth he asked....and they were more than delighted to chat to him.
Gwion was sad,....what about me? He had been a babe in arms, a toddler just when Chris had left.
What's new with Vic and Mat? he wanted to know and we were able to keep him informed, part of the family....our extensive and wonderful family.

Competition and driving

2008-06-21T01:39:00.000-07:00

He who should never....in this case.....be believed really is a devious so and so.
Not content to win the unofficial house blog competition, he seems to have created in this house, he has attempted to lure me into once again having a new rant by elaboration, exaggeration and pure lies.
I am a Paragon of good driving and as to the UFO sightings in South Wales.....I haven't been air borne for at least a week.
Admittedly, I was a little cross with he who thinks he's faultless in all things, but i had given him the option of driving.
He had replied that I should drive as he hadn't been terrified enough that day!
Before i had even turned the key he was clinging on to the door rest, head pushed back into his seat, grimacing like a gremlin. Picture starship Enterprise going into warp speed unbelievable and the hull is about to fail and they are all going to spill into the dark void of space and that is him.
Who am I to disappoint him?
I was perfectly aware of the S bend, the speed at which i was proceeding at, the adverse camber of the road as well as the runny cachi spread across it.
I had judged the reactions of drivers of oncoming vehicles with an astuteness akin to mind reading......apart from that I was in mid rant and it would be a shame for my driving style to be out of sync with it.
He is still alive, which is probably more than he deserves, the car is intact and those driving in the opposite direction were now well awake.
God would once again smile on me, as yet another few converts to his cause prayed quietly in thanks.
I could pull over and he could drive, i suggested.
There was a pregnant pause as he looked down at his white shorts.......not sure that that would be a good idea he said.

About to loose a limb

2008-06-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

We are about to loose a limb, yes , ok sounds strange, but that's exactly how it feels.
You know the limb is a little disfunctional, a little bit strange, but it has been a part of us, a part of our family for over 5 years.
The limb has an extention of itself, an older parent, a little way off and this parent hasn't always functioned well but now is on top form and ready and wanting, needing to take on the job of rearing.....and in my heart of hearts I know that this is right.
In my heart of heart I feel bereft, lost and loosing a limb.
Not just any limb, but one we have as a family put everything we had into, nurtured, cared for, grown.

I went to collect him from his birth mother today, from the train station.
He greeted me with a smile and held out his bag. "It was raining back home" he said...and my heart flinched.
Home....This was the first time he had talked of home other than Penlan...and i could feel a great upwelling of sadness and gladness and a crack in my heart.
I know he is not mine, I know i have borrowed him, to care for him for a time, to treat him as if he were my own, but not my own. I knew there would come a time when I would hand him back....but I did not know that i would feel so bereft. I did not know that i would feel as if my world had broken....I did not know.
"It's been sunny but windy here" i heard myself say....and I could see he wanted to know that while he had been away that life had somehow stopped and we, suspended had done nothing of interest.
His real mum said "I've been thinking" and my heart missed a beat" He should go home with you after your trip to France for a few days so that he can say goodbye to his friends."

I knew she was talking about a real and apparent GOODBYE, not a see you later.
I mustered an Ok.....but it wasn't and fighting back the tears we moved forward to the van.

He sat in the front, buckled up and waved his mum farewell.

We drove in silence.... the tears falling.

In The Pink

2008-06-10T01:13:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling qite well today....in the pink!
Now i'm a person who is often tempted to view the world through rose tinted specs. Unfortunately life has a habit of jumping up, bopping you on the nose and knocking them off.
Reality.......the word is not half has hard as the concept.
As i was driving along yesterday, Zills singing along to her i pod, admiring the purply pink spikes of the foxgloves and the delicate pink of ragged robin in the passing hedgerows, i gave a thought to "PINK" and it's close cousin "RED"
I'm seeing red as i pass yet another fuel station....132.9 pence a litre for diesel.
I glance down and see the fuel gauge is perilously close to the red and i'll never get to the dentists and back before it sinks to empty.
Never fear, he who should never has lent me his credit card, as mine, along with the tesco clubcard and my debit card have been swallowed by the washing machine.
Do you remember when hole in the wall machines were introduced? I do and i was always petrified that it would swallow my card. Let me tell you at least with a hole in the wall machine, you stand a chance of getting your card back in one piece. My washing machine has been spitting them out via the filter in little pieces!
Go to Morrisons, he advises. They have a pay at the pump.
So with his card in my pocket and the number written on the palm of my hand i look for the said supermarket.
He says i'm notoriously bad at navigating.....i think this is part of a spurious propaganda operation by men against women.
I found the dentist, i navigated though Swansea without getting tooted at or having a bump, but i could not find the needed garage.
In desperation i drove into the nearest garage, which happened to have diesel at 127.9 pence per litre....but no pay at the pump.
Feeling hopeful i filled up, pondering overgales in the bank account and being very much in the red.
I walked into the kiosk payed with his card easy peasy!
Not very secure these cards are they, especially since no one looks at them to check a signature?

Zills pink faced watched as i walked towards the car, almost disapointed that the police were not ready and waiting to ambush me.

Things for nearly .....FREE

2008-06-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

The sun is shining in a bright blue sky, well ok it has been today where i live, and the elderflowers are just coming into bloom.

Not last year but the year before 24robbers came knocking at my door.....oops sorry. I meant Tesco, the electricity board, local fuel station and my central heating supplier!.....oops I meant yesterday!

Love that book!

Elderflowers are blooming and blooming great they are if you like elderflower cordial or champagne!

So for anyone who lives near a supply of plastic screw top bottles, elder bushes, and Tesco (just to buy the sugar and lemons)...oh yeah and you will need some citric acid you could be making your own elderflower cordial/squash.

Citric acid is becoming a little difficult to get, apparently it's because it's used in the making of crack cocaine.

We are onto a winner then with the youngies already!

My grandfathers recipe for elderflower cordial:

Pick 20 heads of elderflower.....Please ask the tree for permission before you take.....or it will turn out like cats pee.

N.B. Only take the flower heads that are fully open and pick in FULL sun.

Yes, I know they smell like cats pee!

2 lemons, unwaxed.

2 tsp citric acid

3.5 llbs sugar

2.5 pints of boiling water

Something to strain it, such as a muslin cloth or a tea towell. ( babies puwk clothes are perfect)

If you want it to give you that little extra, use 4 lemons....useful for sore throats, colds and arthritus i'm told.

Personally i just like it.

Pare the rind of two lemons ( cut it off in long strips) and juice the other 2. No reason why you couldn't use the same 2 lemons. Or make it extra lemony do both, paring and juicing of 4.

Sorry if i'm confusing you!

Heat the sugar and water until it boils, then add the juice and rind of the lemons, also the flower heads and the citric acid.

Leave to cool, covered for 24 hours .

Sterilise bottles with boiling water, strain liquid and fill bottles, leaving a gap for expansion, especially if you want to freeze the cordial.

Serve, diluted, yes , Mr. H, with cold water and ice, add a sprig of mint.

Yes Mr. H I'm sure it's better with cold white wine!

I think it's yummy, so do the kids and even "he who should never" is persuaded to leave the corkscrew alone!

This is a tree i'm told that can ward off witches and if you wear a sprig of elder in yor hat at Beltaine then it said that you may be able to commune with fairies!

Not that I'm an unbeliever, but i wonder is this anything to do with crack cocaine use?

Honestly elderflower cordial is delicious and safe!

If you have a chance and you are pleased with your cordial take a drop back to the elder tree to say thankyou.

Fang Menders

2008-06-09T14:02:00.000-07:00

Spent nearly all day travelling to and from the fang surgery, accompanied by Zills, who also has suddenly developed fang rot.

My teeth are brill, apparently...especially with all the shiny silver amalgum and gold. Seriously the fang doc. thought, after X-ray and freeze the tooth/teeth experiments that breaking my nose had set up some sort of neuralgia....so if i get liver and kidney damage from excessive use of painkillers and whiskey it's my fault for trying to clean out a soaking wet boat on a slope in flip flops!

Thankyou mr H for the anti-biotics!

Zills on the other hand has been sent home with a script for amoxycillin and corsydyl and is about to have her first filling.

She told the fang monster "That's it i'm never brushing my teeth again!"

Grunt has started a week of work experience in a local garage.
"What do you mean you work school hours?....Oh no you don't. Work starts at 8.30am and finishes at 5.00pm. Bring a packed lunch, overalls and toe 'tectors. I'll supply the tea and coffee."

The poor lad dozed all the way home, ate a bowl of cornflakes, followed by bolo, ran a bath and crept into bed without even a grunt, all by 7 pm.

Will he make it to Wednesday?.....

I'm beginning to think i like the whole idea of work....It certainly makes for a quieter time.

What a competative person?

2008-06-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

Competition is not dead in our house.
Not content at getting his blog on line before i got mine.......i may add by minutes! He can type faster than me. Mr H avidly clicks into his stat counter, he even sends me e-mail reports of how well his blog is going.........Look at my face am i bothered?
This morning he brought his lap top back to bed, so he could cooch up and show me his stats!

It used to be little babies and kiddies coming between us, and in the depth of winter "dozy daisy" the cat.....the lap top is getting close to the last straw!

I've brought you coffee said no.1 daughter, sorted the towels and bathers out.....then i remembered we'd promised to go swimming.

Off to the local pool and some serious swimming. Not for us the larking around in the pool.
A steady breast stroke and i was off. 4 lengths to his 2.

It's not fair he grumbled Zills is putting me off, she's making me laugh.
Excuses, excuses.
Zills was helping him, encouraging him even, in a special voice reserved for encouraging little ones. "Come on daddy, nearly there, you can do it, aim for the light.....no, not that one the furthest one away.....come on daddy, you're doing really well"
As soon as it looked as if he was getting into his stride she'd put on the power and leave him for dead!

The power of sir Bruce.

It's bad enough i can swim further than him......at the moment. I'm sure that will change.
For goodness sake build his self esteem and DON'T READ MY BLOG

A beautiful place to live.

2008-06-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

A perfect end to a beautiful day.

Windberries, juicy and pink. Soon they'll turn deliciously dark just right to add a bit of fruity sharpness to a sponge pud or tart........and FREE!!

A spring mix of bluebells and wild ransomes.

If you like the smell of garlic, take a walk past the wild ransomes just after it's rained.

Pick the young shoots and leaves...furthest from the path!

They add a brilliant dash of colour and a mild garlic flavour to soups and early spring salads, and guess what they're....FREE!

Questions for dentists

2008-06-07T03:14:00.000-07:00

Now I've got lots of half written rants in my drafts box, mostly about my work or on how to...... survive living with mr.H (The latter in the vain hope that the extra lean, younger vegie in Totnes might read my blog and decide she's got better things to do....like eat celery!)

Of late I've been forced to think rather a lot about TEETH.

Now I've got a whole legion of kids here, and every morning and every night i say don't forget to brush your teeth.

I spend a goodly fortune on toothbrushes and toothpaste. The thing of the moment is one that sort of foams up in your mouth and is alleged to get rid of the nasties in the small gaps between your teeth other pastes cannot reach.........but does it have the Ronseal?....Does it do what it says on the pack?
Mr H calls it "Rabies toothpaste"

Are they like shampoos and conditioners......mostly a lot of psychosociodoggiedoo to persuade people to pay more?

A lot of my work is based on best practice, which has been resonably well researched.
What sort of research goes into teeth and where is it published?

For years we have been exorted to brush and floss and pick, swoosh and swill, to flourinate or not......and yet it is now clear that it is not a good idea to do this if you've drunk a fizzy drink.

What evidence is there to support all this oral hygeine?......don't get me wrong i clean my teeth daily.

It's just that i have lots of kids and i have observed...... the one who is now nearly 16 and has probably only brushed her teeth a hundred times in her whole life is the only one who has no fillings and has had no treatment. She is the only one who gets told, lovely teeth and gums, well done every 6 months.

Her elder sister, who is fanatical about oral hygeine has treatment regularly.

Their younger brothers, who don't see the necessity of washing , nevermind cleaning teeth, have only the problems of chipped front teeth.....freefalling from bicycles.

Beth with a mouth full of amalgum is hardly a good advert for toothpaste, brushes, flosses and washes.
Very puzzled mum!

Dentists

2008-06-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

Dentists.....They are among those wonderful group of people we love to hate.......unless you've got toothache and then they are mysteriously transported into that group of people we hate to love, but love to see.

Ahh love is so fickle.

Having now digested a whole course of anti-biotics, which i may add i have not divulged in since the new millenium, a large bottle of whiskey, several packets of aspirin and paracetemol. Not all at once or i'd probably be writing from the great beyond!
I am feeling considerably less in pain and have chickened out of a visit to the fang monster.

Excuses are us abound!

Monday on the other hand looks as if it will be my personal "D" day.

I suspect i am in for open hand bag surgery, or in my case whatever is in my jeans pocket that hasn't been eaten by the washing machine monster.

Toothache

2008-05-31T15:09:00.000-07:00

Gnawing, throbbing at the best of times, persistently there.
I'm passed trying to work out which particular tooth is the culprit, half a dozen at least have joined in.
I've brushed and flossed and used those little coloured brushes to get between the teeth.
I've gargled with warm salt water and he who should never has peeled me down from the ceiling.
I've gargled with Glenfiddich....but i swallowed that!

Ok i've done a naughty thing....i've used mr H's antibiotics, the ones the quack gave him to keep just in case his elbow swelled up again.
and I'm on 4 hourly aspirin alternated with paracetemol. The chemist said that would be ok for a couple of days.....dentist i hope on Tuesday.

I never take tablets, but i'm in so much pain, rattling might take my mind off it.

Lambs Heart

2008-05-29T12:45:00.000-07:00

Yes this is another vegetarians turn away post.
Bought 6 lambs hearts for £1.10
Zills said she'd tasted oxe tongue and it was good, liked liver and bacon, but what was ofal and why was it offal? .....awful?
If we were going to kill animals for meat to cook and put on our table, surely we should be eating most if not all of the animal?

When i was a littlie, we used to have lambs hearts, stuffed and braised for a goodly long time, served with a pile of mash and veg and mint sauce....it was one of my favourite meals.

It's the heart thing i think....love and all that sort of squishy stuff.....emotions.

How come it's ok to eat shoulder or leg of lamb, but mention a heart and everyone is running away?

Ok, so I've bought the hearts...what the hell do you do with them?

The daddie is snoring and probably farting the bed chambre out, the boys are a'kip and the girls are watching "educating rita" on the box....it's late and i have to deal the hearts!

Taking a good gulp of red, i place the hearts on the block....yes i know, these were the organs hard at work pumping blood around those darling creatures that jump and spring on new years grass.

I make an incision with a sharp knife, cutting away the main artery, and then push the hearts inside out, stuffing them with bedcrumbs, onions, lemon zest and rosemary, salt and pepper...I have an audiance.....uugh says bigmacs....wow says zills.

I place them in a deep dish with lots of onions and a dash of red from my glass...ok i'm not that generous... but it adds to the colour, a goodly amount of water and covered with ali foil they are stashed for the night in the bottom oven of the aga.

"Hey big D we are having lambs hearts for dinner" says Zills with glee as he tucks into his breakfast.....looking green he turns to me, hoping zills is having a joke.

They are served up, sliced in a rich sauce, with creamy mash and colourful veg and of course mint sauce.

Wonderful, a blast from the past and a delight for all except big macs, who secretly feeeds it to de man , the cat of cats.

Trading in for a younger model

2008-05-29T01:37:00.001-07:00

My father used to say to me "Shall i trade your mum in for a younger model?" It took me years to see the joke...she was 10 years younger than him and as for being a model, well she was quite a looker for her years.

It wasn't a marriage made in heaven, although i suspect there were some heavenly moments. Like me, she often found a motorbike in the kitchen, or something boiling in molli on the stove, something totally inedible!

There were demands for her to make something, not just babies, but a set of sails, including a spinnaker, or a bee hat. He had this sort of faith that she would innately know how to do something without ever having any basic training in the skills needed.

When i look back, it seems impossible that she make a set of sails. How could anyone expect such a thing?.....HE DID.

.....and she went to the library and got a few books out on the relevant subject, hired a hall to lay the canvas out, acquired the ingredients so to speak, and set to work.

I can see she must have loved him and his belief in her was so complete it swept her along on a tide of "can do".

He never said she ever let him down and i cannot see how she could have.

It was a tempestuous relationship, lots of laughing and joking and singing.....and then there would be anger and temper and he'd lift her up by her hair.

She would go and stay with friends or family.....i suspect until he'd said sorry and it wouldn't happen again......but of course it did.

Reading this, you would think that he was powerful and perhaps abused that power, but she ruled the house and especially the finances with a rod of iron. He rarely had money in his pocket, and certainly not to buy cigarettes or a beer. She kept a set of black books, in which she recorded every significant purchase.

They have been an endless source of amusement with the family and have settled many an argument about dresses or shoes and whether it had been fair or not.

Now he who should never and i, have had our ups and downs but it has always been a secret delight of mine to think he woud trade me in for a younger model.
I often think of him, up at the crack of dawn, walking the dog along the windswept coast, whilst a thin athletic younger woman joggs alongside him, chiding him to run, get fit, drink less. He longs for a bacon butty dripping with chilli sauce but she's a vegetarian and won' t have meat cooked in her kitchen. I visualize how long it would be before she hosed him down, or slept with the windows open in the freezing depths of winter. I could go on and on and be more specific but it's starting to get horrifying. Where i wonder would all the gg's go? not to mention their spare parts. Where would 150 axes and 50 skeins of hemp rope live..... in a little cottage by the sea?

Thinking about it....he rarely trades his vehicles in for younger models, usually older to ancient...perhaps he'll trade me in for an older model!

Bessie in the pub?........errr grim!

Think mr.H had better stick with me....I'm used to doing public service, sacrificing self for the greater good and all that.

Perhaps i could be a new super hero????

If i publish this, i think i'd better go out for the rest of the day, week, month, year!

LOVE YOU MR. H.

Promises

2008-05-26T01:23:00.000-07:00

I try not to promise anything these days. The harder you try not to do something....well,it's yet another unwritten law of human nature, someone somewhere is going to force the issue. A house full of kids and i'm a loser before i've started.

Grunt needs petrol for his motorbike, the little annoying one needs a lift to grans.....100miles away on a bank holiday,with a grand concert happening in town to celebrate WALES WINNING THE GRAND SLAM(sorry should have asked the Saes to turn away) and worse of all i have to be back in time to take the other littlies to the cinema.
Oh and he who should never has just told me we've got friends coming round this afternoon.
Splitting the atom was easypeasy.......anyone know how i can split me and be in three places at once!

To top it all i've got toothache, gnawing, persistent toothache, of the kind you'd happily cut your headoff with a blunt,rusty nail file if it would only make it STOP!

Yesterday i got through, admitedly a bit curtly, on a wave of paracetemol and Glenfiddich but i'm driving today.

Teenagers!!!!!!

2008-05-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Every child matters?.....What was i thinking yesterday?

Teenagers.....aaagh!

Grunt has left one motorbike in the living room and is currently fixing another in the kitchen. "It's raining "....well i think that's what he might have been saying.
They don't exactly talk at this age. Lost the art of human speech, overnight. All that effort in getting them to annunciate the beginning and the end of words, to be confident to speak, all gone.
He went to bed one night and awoke the next morning only able to say "uugh" followed by the occassional "umm"
I've become quite adept at grunt interpretation......perhaps i could run a grunt course for would be parents of teenage boys.

Girls on the other hand, seem to develope instantly overnight into know it all opinionated, articulate, if somewhat loud banshees, who can punctuate what they think with a good door slam.
My advice is get some ear defenders and adopt a vacant expression......they think you're pretty vacant anyway ...best not try and disabuse them.

Every Child Matters

2008-05-24T00:54:00.000-07:00

This is a very serious subject for me and yet as i write, that annoying little ditty from" The Life of Brian".....every sperm is sacred is playing endlessly in my mind.

Every child matters, perhaps should be an anthem, that everyone who works, lives and comes into contact with children should know by heart and is at the heart of their practice.

I work in the child care services and i have children of my own.

We all use the health service and access opticians, dentists, Gp's.The education service is an almost daily part of our lives and as children grow and become increasingly independent, they come into contact with youth and voluntary services.

The judicial system, law enforcement and population surveillance is a constant in our lives and that of our children.

Up until quite recently these agencies worked largely independently of each other and interacted in an undefined ad hoc sort of way which was mostly driven and governed by child protection needs and individual agency agendas.

Identification of need has been in the past the main tool in addressing problematic child and adolescence.

This" identification of need" seems to start almost pre-birth and follow the child through to adult hood.

"Meeting of need " however, has proved to be more problematic and often dependent on factors around available resources. It is still often the case that those who shout loudest or are more articulate, win over those who sometimes have a greater need.

Every child matters as a philosophy, attempts to equalise irrespective of financial resources, the post code lottery of meeting needs.

Every child matters systems as opposed to a select number or type, ability or disability, wealthy or poor targeted systems is in my view, starting to produce some good outcomes for children, which can be built upon in future generations.

In the past few years, foe example, i have seen a growing engagement from the secondary education service in Britain with parents. It has always been there, but now they strive to reach parents and children who have before, been left on the edge, to struggle or not on their own. Welfare and pastoral needs have been identified and specialist trained workers have been alloted to address them. They work closely with youth workers and health, and through the school nurse directly to the GP, paediatric and special needs providers.

Education has become more active rather than passive. Services which have historically, been there for those who looked are now actively looking for those who need their services.

Looked after children are still micromanaged and services imposed that cause them to be treated in a different way to those children looked after by their parents. Personally, i believe this to be to the detrement of those children who often want to be treated the same as other children and offered the same opportunities.

However, in one area, looked after children have benefited greatly and that is by having an alloted CAMHS (child and mental health) nurse. This is often someone they see infrequently, but who, nevertheless, gets to know their personal health needs and individual issues.
They can offer children and carers access to programmes and services that they may not normally be aware of and point them in the direction of targeted help.
I would like to see all children offered an annual health check up on the same lines that the CAMHS service offer to looked after children.

If systems of working and living with children had at their centre, a strong philosophy and actioned that EVERY child mattered then perhaps we could have integrated services equal and open, less open to abuse and more able to spot, and act on neglectful and damaging behaviours...

Bugger the Boat I've Broken my Nose!

2008-05-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

Whose stupid idea was it to get in the boat just after they'd hosed it down......ok, thanks for the bag of peas, but do you really need to be laughing?
It hurts!
Serves me right. I should've known the boat couldn't compete with the GG's!

A Green Goddess Widow Am I

2008-05-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

It's a lovely Sunday afternoon. The sun is shining, and the wind is blowing warmer than it usually does on top of this mountain.

The rugby season has coming suddenly to a halt and i think maybe we'll spend some time as a family kayaking, or a walk through the woods to the pub and a cool refreshing drink.

Want on says no.1 son and he who should never (be obeyed) almost in unison....Phil the biker is coming up in a mo and we thought we'd fill Fishguard Bell up with water....

I can feel the cold icy dread, premonition....ney, conviction of an afternoon pumping water from the river and the inevitable drama of the inevitable breakdown.

Points, coil, run out of fuel, bad earth......the list is endless!

No.1 son says, I can't go kayaking, I'm in the middle of taking the paint off....I'm nearly down to the bare metal and I'll need to get some primer this week before it rains.

Calling all green goddess widows....HELP!

Junk Mail

2008-05-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

OOps, must be the chicken i've consummed.......or that bad bag of crisps!
Someone in work has given my new e-mail address to some computer nerd in advertising for our local authority (the people we work for) and i have been assaulted by invitations to go to reading in the library for tots i don't have, theatre tickets for what can only be described as "z" plays as opposed to "b" movies.....not that i'm fussy! I think it's the aqua robics and the ante-natal swimathon that's got me worried.
Do they know something i don't?
The thing is when i say i work for a local authority, and i do, well.......it's not exactly local, being over 100 miles away!
A whopping 5% discount for something that's going to cost me £50 to get to is sort of defeating the object!
Nevertheless, you've got to admire their tenacity.

So....anyway i phoned the nice lady and said i wasn't impressed....I did it very nicely, you know with the smile in your voice, that says I'll eat you later but for now I'm a smiley person.
Anyway she said "oooo I know, junk mail is an awful problem.....but i just press the button see and i wouldn't know how not to include you....coz i just send it all by pressing the button"

"Could she not just delete my name from her list just before she pressed the button?"......"no" she couldn't because then i wouldn't get the mail.

How sad i thought, hang on wasn't that what i wanted?

I said I'd be really impressed if she could do that but sadly she said she wasn't allowed.

"Where did she get my e_mail address?"

From your manager she told me, because she'd been concerned that she'd sent me the stuff and it was coming back as unreceived and that wasn't allowed.
How sad, i sympathised, whilst thinking that's because i've changed my address so you in paticular cannot send me all this drivel.

Now silly me, i thought your e-mail address was something personal and people needed to ask you if they could pass it on.....ooo and I must be daft because i thought well i can put a stop to the postie delivering junk and i can put a stop to the unsolicited phonecalls enticing me to change phone provider or wishing me to purchase double glazing......but apparently i can't stop the people i work for sending me unwanted, unasked for adverts in e-mails.

Sometimes they send me something i need to know, such as a change in law, or an invitation to a meeting, something pertenent to my job.
How i asked could i work out what was needed and what was junk?

"I dunno" she said "I just press the button!"

Junk e-mail

2008-05-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

I never get any e-mail.......probably because i'm such a bitch.....good friend.
It's so bad my lovely zilla has had to resort to getting her father to e-mail me.....interestingly all his mails go straight to junk e-mail.
Honest i don't know why.
Any techies out there that know please tell me so he doesn't feel junked.

"Pheasant for tea" then says he who should never.

2008-05-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

" P
Pheasant for tea then" says he who should never be obeyed, shutting the door after waving a smiling goodbye.

Ok, my last posting was a tad bitchy.....she brings out all my best qualities.

He who should never, is of course a paragon of virtue and would never stoop so low!

Subtle, he is!

"Hey Nikki, look at these cameras, just bought this one for Zills...she's got a really great eye and this SLR is the next step up for her".

Oooo, she cooed, eyes turning a lovely shade of green. "I've been looking at them in tir a mor"
I like to shop local, you know, keep the little person in buisness.

(It's not shopping local i object to but the "little person" is spoken of in a particularly patronising tone)

"They are coming down in price all the time" says he who must never "We've been looking at a Canon"

The gentle hue of green has spread incredibly fast and she is now looking a little green around the gils. I wonder how long it will be before she has bought a top of the range camera with every conceivable add on and accessory.......Probably first thing Monday morning!

Her credit card company should really think about giving us a cut!

Economy Drive

2008-05-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

My mate Nikki has been here this afternoon, drinking my dwindling stock of good white french wine, the crappy plonk, already having been consumed.
I'm not mean, honest.
It's just that when i go to her house, she drinks the expensive Gurverstremeiner and she opens a special bottle of Bretonniere for me. If i hadn't fetched it for her fom France, then i wouldn't know it only cost £2.10 a bottle. It's the "I'll open this for you, you don't like this do you" brandishing the Gervertz "too flowery for you"
I wouldn't know, i think, i havn't tasted it yet!
I'm far too polite to say this....I know my place having been brought up on a council house estate.
She stays far longer than she normally does and downs a few more glasses than is probably good for her.
"I'd love to stay longer" she says looking wistfully at the empty bottles
Bet you would i think! ungenerously.
"but I've been at the golf club far longer than i should have".
Bet you weren't playing golf either i think.
"He's on one of his economy drives" she whispers conspiritorally. "I'm going home to cook liver...it's so cheap at the moment!"
"I like liver". ......She gives me a look that says....i expect you're used to it.
"How are you going to cook it? With smoked bacon and onions?"
I think she's going to say how sweet but she manages a " How Paysienne. No, darling with a good red!"

Very economical!

Child Protection???????

2008-05-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

Now I don't often write about work but I'm going to make an exception today because quite frankly I'm a bit cross.
Probably "a bit cross" is an understatement.

"He who never does as he is told" has been threatening to hose me off the ceiling with the jets on his green goddess......don't think he'll dare because I'm so cross the water will instantly turn into steam and there's already enough of that coming out of my ears to service several saunas !

Now we have been parenting a young lad for the past 6 years, and a smashing lad he is too. He isn't ours by birth or adoption but a firm and valued member of our family he has become.

Yeah, ok, I'm not his mum and he isn't my child... but he's in my family!

Now I have a lot of kids, not all of them my own, but a goodly proportion are.

The said young lad has two statutuary reviews of his life a year. For the past 3 years one of these per year has been held in our family home....It's where he feels safe and confident enough to say what HE wants and thinks and thats a hard thing to do when faced with a barrage of adults, all keen to stamp there mark and prove that they are truly the ones who have his "best" interests at heart.

The other is held at a family centre so that his true parents can gain knowledge of what he's up to, how school is going and whether he is healthy....all the sort of things parents need and want to know. They also have an opportunity to contribute, say what they would like, voice their opinions and encouragement.

There's a fantastic opportunity for keeping in touch and sharing.

I think there's not enough sharing in this world and every little bit of sharing is so valuable...don't waste the opportunity!

Now, dad has not been a model of good human nature in the past. In fact he's the sort of man most people would not want living next door, especially if they were a woman or a child. Add to this a sprinkling of wanton violence...get the picture?

Yeah, well there's such a thing as unconditional love and young lad has seen it all and loves his mam and dad, just as most love there kids and his mam and dad love him.
They are SPECIAL and so is he!

Ok, Well what am i cross about?

I'm cross because the reviewing officers have for, well , I know for certain for the last review, and suspect for several previous reviews, if not all, have been inviting DAD to my family home.

Now, dad at the moment hasn't transport, and luckily we live over a hundred miles away and he has never attended meetings at my house.

Nothing bad has happened but the potential for evil against little ones, who have done nothing but share their mummy and daddy and home and toys and school and friends and holidays and life and most of all, kinship and friendship, is very real.

The department remain oblivious, content in knowing they are ticking the boxes of parental inclusion.
They are oblivious to the potential harm, and disregard the safety of all the members of our family.......
NOT FOR LONG!!!!!

Mummies Piggies

2008-05-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

Thinking along the lines of vegetarianism and bacon sandwiches, I find myself thinking about our dear little piggies...alas they are no more....eaten they are by ourselves and our friends....Yummy Scrummy they were too!

"Do you want some piglets?" said a friend. What sort of friend she is I'm beginning to wonder!
They were so deliciously beautiful, two little Glouster Old Spot/ Tamworth Cross piglets, Boars, apparentlty, she assured me without the relevant bits.
I am so stupid, I never looked. How I missed the bits that shouldn't have been there....say no more, I'm gullable, daft and naive.

Well prepared, got a book from the library, pig fencing and number one son and crazy friend, called ....Grendal (should have had second, third and tenth thoughts with such a name) made a pig house.

Pigs root around, turn over land and eat anything........Anyone seen that horror film, where the pigs are fed humans?......Ok...lets not go there!

Little, darling, sweet piggies arrive and we are all delighted........

.....................Not for long!
It's very hot and lovely Chris, who is a little hard of thinking, in the kindest way, is concerned that Christmas and Easter are a bit too hot and need cooling down.
Caught in the act of cooling little piglets down with copious ammounts of very cold water from a very large bucket. "Chris, stop " I foolishly shout. "They are only little, they'll get cold and could die"
He is sad. He was only trying to help. He will remember " PIGS MUST NOT GET WET"

Little piglets they do not remain. Their size seems to increase exponetionally daily.

The pig nuts are stored in an old car, and Christmas and Easter, our two growing piggies are very clever and increasingly immune to the electric shocks of our pig fencing. ......
Piece of cake, breaking into a car, for pigs!

Even bigger and fatter piggies, but no sign that their intelligence is waning......they smell female piggies, a mile up the road and have gone "A wall" It's ok, they haven't got their bits....oops!

I run up the road after Christmas and Easter, 10 litre bucket filled with rattling pignuts, in the vain hope that food will win out over F***(interest in the female form)

Serves her right for telling porkie pies! Her sows, were now very likely preggers by their brothers!....Brings a whole new dimention to the family way!

OOps no longer friends I suspect!

Having had their wicked way they were content to follow me down the road. " Come on mummies piggies " I cried whilst jiggling the rattling pignuts, hoping against all hope that no-one would recognise me.

Now, it's pretty typical of Pembrokeshire, that it rains , and pigs being pigs they were running amuck in the farmyard and rain being rain it was pretty wet.
Chris remembered "PIGS MUST NOT GET WET"

He opened the front door and invited.....300 llb of pig x2 into the house out of the rain.

Have you any idea what two fully grown greedy piggies can do in a house?

I didn't know who to scream at first, so scream i did....but pigs can upturn a large freezer and fridge and riffle its contents, immune to screams, turn tables and push arm chairs into splinters before you can say" pork chops"

Yummy, scrummy the best place for piggies is on my plate!

Vegetarians........sorry!

Vegetarianism and me

2008-05-04T07:21:00.000-07:00

Now, i have often flirted with vegetarians....oops or did i mean vegetarianism?
Probably both!

Infact i'm a bit of a fruit and veg aholic, especially if we've grown it ourselves. There is something magical about the whole process of growing something, even if it's just a few spuds.

You know, digging and preparing the ground, and watching with excitement how the first hard frosts break up the large clods into wonderfully crumbly soil ready for planting. Children, eagerly pushing in the chitted potatoes and watching daily for the first signs of fresh green leaves. Earthing them up and best of all, forking them out of the ground.
It always amazes me how many potatoes grow from just one small potato.

The smell of freshly dug up spuds is truly wonderous and one that cannot be captured by the supermarkets no matter how soon they think they can get them from the field.

Cooking them and eating them.....well thats my favourite!

It's just not about the humble spud, i know, and there is such a fantastic array of fruits and vegetables available to us now.

I often wonder about the human cost in producing such delights, not to mention the costs in resources (most of which, once used are gone forever, turned into nasties for our lungs)

The sheer number of grains and pulses available to buy and cook for our edification is astonishing.

I have a whole series of books, probably written in the 70's...101 ways to cook pasta, chicken, soups etc.
I wonder when someone is gong to bring out a 101 ways to cook quinoa....me, i don't know what it is, where it's grown, it's food value or indeed what to do with it!
So come on, there must be someone out there who can take advantage of our ignorance and enlighten us for a small fee.

I've always grown up with vegetables......no Rhys, my father might have had little education but he was no vegetable, although he often grew some spectacular ones!

I think a meal would be particularly dull without the colourful addition of fruit and vegetables, however, for me a slice of succulant lamb.....yes i know it's the same thing as those delightful bouncy, fluffy creatures bleating in the next field...only dead, is something well worth looking forward to.
I quite enjoy chicken, turkey, pheasant and bunny. Bunny pie, in our house is rabbit and vegetable stew with a thick wholemeal pastry crust....thinking on it, it's probably the beer that makes it so delicious.

Now i would be quite happy to live on cereals, pulses and fruit and veg and no meat for a generous ammount of time, but to live without a bacon butty......that would be pure torture.

Vegetarians turn away now!

2008-05-03T04:24:00.000-07:00

A visitor, a welcome visitor is staying once again with us.
She has been a part of my life for many years now, since a babe in arms. I've wiped her snotty nose and let her play at mum. I've watched her forward steps and many of her backward ones too, but i have always known she'd turn into a competent butterfly.
She often visits when she is at her most fragile and we have found that at those times good food can ease the soul.
Hearty breakfasts of bacon, eggs and mushrooms, thick slices of bread smeared generously with salty butter washed down with copious mugs of milky tea.......a grand necessity after the alcohol consummed the night before.

Lunch is in the aga...leg of lamb, well seasoned with garlic, salt and pepper laid on a bed of apricots......makes a fantastic sauce! This will be served with runner beans and carrots and lots of buttery mash.
For desert we're having pancakes with a lemon cream.

Heart attack tomorrow!

For supper i thought some rich brandy and herb pate with melba toast, watercress and best kalamata olives.....and undoubtedly more bottles of good French red wine.

Double heart attack and kydney failure to boot!

Lots of laughter, a smattering of sunshine and a whiff of country air should send her back to the big smoke rearmed and equiped once more to battle on.

Ah to be loved by two women

2008-04-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

Not me of course, but a really special friend of mine is loved very much by two women.
Two very different women, i might add.
One has invested much of her life with him. They have children, a lovely home and a beautiful lifestyle. After many years i know she still feels the magic of a deep love and is incredibly physically attracted to him. They have a comfortable relationship, where silences can go unfilled, and then they often start the same conversation, simultaneously and laugh at daft puns. A warm, loving friendship, born out of many shared joys and pain too.
The other, has had a great friendship with this man, many, many years ago and i know in his college days was very attracted to her, but was perhaps afraid.....
She has had several relationships, as indeed has he, but they have stayed sporadically in touch.
Recently her husband, worried about her, helped her get in touch with this man. The friendship, rekindled and soon became a flickering flame, a flame full of passion, desire and new love.
They became soul mates, perhaps they always had been and hadn't realised.

It would seem that neither woman would be really content to share, although the new love, perhaps recognises that she would need to put up with it until she could persuade him to leave.

He has been asked to choose, and chosen he has......but there is always a cost.
I am really worried about the cost to him.
He is such a kind person, and to love two women and only be with one, especially when the other so obviously needs him so much must be very difficult.

It is all to easy to loose all in these situations. All for the sake of having all even for a few moments.

A small Success

2008-03-26T14:59:00.001-07:00

A small success it may be but tomorrow i gain my OCN in woodland Management.
I have learned about sharpening and keeping tools in good order, about the physiology of trees, coppicing, pollarding, processing a fallen tree, hedging, and green wood working skills.

I have many qualifications, even a degree but somehow this very humble course is more important to me than all the others put together.

I am very sad that my family don't recognise this as a great milestone and achievement in my life....it will go unrecognised....a bit like me.

Places People Perfection

2008-03-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

I used to love Devon. Many a holiday I've spent in my childhood on a boat in any number of harbours in Devon. The swoosh and lap of the sea gently lulling me into a gentle night or morn , seagulls calling and the strong smell of salt and fish permeating the local air.
When a teenager i went with a friend to a small Devon fishing port....one of the worst holidays of my life!
I hate Totnes with considerable passion, followed closely behind by Cullompton.
I've not been to either place and have no intention of doing so. They probably deserve my hatred not one little bit...nevertheless they are forever in my being as evil, vile places.
We often travel to Plymouth to catch the ferry to Roscoff and my heart sinks as we pass the sign for Cullompton first, shortly followed by the Totnes sign.
I saw this weekend past and i had an almost irresistable urge to deface them, wipe them out, delete them from the map of Britain.
I, stoically remiained quiet , biting my tongue, trying desperately hard not to come out with some nasty quip.
In reality however convenient it is to sail from Plymouth, i wish with all my heart to sail from Portsmouth.

Avoiding something you fear is natural, self preservation and all that stuff. Face your fear, do battle and conquer.....if only i could win!

I'm told i've won but somehow i don't think so......I've just delayed the inevitable.

I'm not too keen on Bristol either but perhaps thats just a fancy?

Les Trois Marchandes

2008-03-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

I love food, especially well presented, excellently cooked delicious food....stirs the senses, comforts the soul and feeds the feel good factor.

We eat out more than we can really afford and hence eat in the every day sort of pubs and restaurants, not the upmarket eateries with known chefs and backers.

We have found a restaurant in a small town of Guemene in Brittany that is well worth a visit.
It is open for lunches, and in the simplest and best of french practices offers a plat du jour for €10.50 including wine.

On Saturday we were delighted with an assiette of smoked herring and cabbage with a tamboule of vegetables and crevatte.

The next course, excellently cooked slices of cold roast beef, beautifully pink in the middle served with mayonnaise, french bread and butter. Simple but oh so delicious!

Duck legs with a potage of flageolet beans, potatoes and carrots to follow.

Finished beautifully with a cinnamon spiced apple crumble and rich cream ice.

I look forward to my next visit...may it be very soon.

People Watching

2008-03-10T02:53:00.000-07:00

I really try hard not to observe people and fail miserably. Living on a mountain, a mile from any neighbours, and at least 3 miles before the nearest village sort of limits people watching. Trouble starts when we go out for a meal, shopping can be interesting and the last time i caught the bus.....two stops further than i wanted to go just because i became engrossed in some strangers behaviour.
Thank goodness i'm not in the psychology/psychiatric/police sector of work. I know i could get lost in it and become obsessed.

I love the ferry because it is used by such a large spectrum of the population.

My partner will be talking to me, I hear his words but my eyes are drawn to 'uncle Fester' sat in the next seats. It's not just the old scars and bumps and spots on his rippling bald head...he looks around, vacant, expressionless, lips moving. I realise he's talking to us...asking do we know of a taxi for his friend....we're on a ferry, in the middle of the English channel. He asks others and they look as bewildered as us. The cogs whirr slowly and i realise he's concerned for his wee friend, a thin old chap in a big coat and a flat cap who is completely out cold. Uncle Fester is not that concerned, just sort of drawing attention to his friend and his predicament...i get the impression he's a little hard of thinking at the moment due to a huge quantity of alcohol having been drunk.

People behind me, cluck disapprovingly as they sip at their coffees. Then uncle Fester attracts the attention of an older couple. The lady, and for definate thats what she was, sat next to uncle Fester, leaned close and undeterred by vapourous breath, comforted him....hubby looked on with horror as she patted uncles bald head.
I could feel my eyes begin to sparkle and the corners of my mouth twitching in expectation of a smile, a giggle or a full blown laugh.

Couples who have been long together sit slightly apart, barely talking, some are comfortable with that and eachother whilst others cast around, longing whistfully to be with that person they've spyed accross the room.

A lady, with a particularly dour look, grey hair, grey face,eyes slanted down , matching mouth and wrinkles in their unhappy downward droop catches my attention next. I don't think i've ever seen such a miserable grey visage before. Her whole body seemed to droop at the edges in dull penitious misery.
She cast around her, without expectation or even interest.....then suddenly she was joined by a skinny jolly elf whose whole face and demeanour was totally opposite to hers. His face was mobile in it's mischief and i half expected him to jump on the table and dance a jig!

Just as i thought i was hooked, a young mans voice drifted from another table, behind and to my right.....'...been in the nick twice now for drink drinin' Several others at his table started talking about their various spells in prison. I listened, captured in horror and amusement at their conversation.

My partner gave up, he could not compete with this fantastic display of humanity.
.....A lady well past her youth and better days clutched lovingly at an equally seen better days bloke. She stroked his face in expectation, lust or something....and suddenly he no longer able to control himself flung her backwards on the bench and kissed her passionately. They were lost in sight to me but not to the couple opposite who looked on with amusement. She caught my eye and we shared a moment of communal humour...i was not the only people watcher!

My partner moved his seat to get a better view at what i'd found so funny and smiled as the lady dragged the bloke off to have their wicked way.

The next morning as the ferry docked, sipping my coffee, trying to wake up, the voice of a pretty teenager, long blonde silky hair and full of sulky petulance drew my attention. She was haranging her parents, bored, tired not really wanting to have to spend time with the dreaded, dead naff oldies.
They on the other hand had been looking forward to what was probably their last break together as a family.

People watching, fascinating, dangerous and a lot addictive.

Parents, Disability and Choices

2008-03-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

I am a member of a British online group for foster carers, discussing issues, seeking advice and disseminating information.
It's a fantastic group who support each other through bad times with empathy, sympathy and practical advice and share their good times with humour and delight.

An exceptionally good carer, who looks after, on a daily basis a child with profound difficulties has had parts of their blog taken out of context and used by others, including the media to make points against the birth mother of the child and in particular her decision to give up her child for someone else to look after.

In fact they are two women who passionately care about the child and work together in friendship to do the best for the child.
I sincerely hope that others views will not poison this situation.

I also am close in friendship with the mother of a young person we have in our family. Together, despite the miles that are between our homes, we plan and work to enable the child to have the best of all worlds and to ensure he achieves the potential that is so clearly his to take.

This is not an exceptional situation but it is not necessarily the norm either.
The authority responsible for the child finds this state of affaires uncomfortable.
Perhaps they are uncomfortable because they are used to taking children into care and out of neglect and abuse and defacto see parents in a negative way, somehow lacking and semi-bad.
They see themselves as good and using their power to help.
Parents can sometimes fight hard and dirty for the care of their children, often feeling that their only option is to threaten. This all acts in a way which emphasises the good /bad discourse which often spill into actions.

The mother of the young child in our care has always worked quietly with the services for herself and her child. She is intelligent and articulate and with help has managed to find advocates when her voice was frail and weak. She has managed, with smiles and a quiet voice to hold firmly to the remnants of her bond with her child and stoically travel, weekly, the many miles put in her way with the purpose of deterring her.

It is easy to villify others in pursuit of personal ideals and beliefs than to way up the difficult descisions that others have been forced to make and understand compassionately the emotional complexity and roller coaster associated with making those descisions.

In a previous existence i have worked with adults who have learning difficulties providing community care and respite.
I have seen parents battle on well into old age with their offspring needing constant care, love and attention. Often they have done this with very little support and advice. They have put their lives and work into the twilight zone of limbo and poverty. Family relationships often flounder when the odds are so drastically stacked against them. Anger, desperation and tiredness take their toll.

New advances in medicine, a better understanding of the difficulties posed for these young people and a greater tolerance within society should have made it better for these parents and their offspring..... I guess it is a little too late for this particular group and they are often left feeling critisized and undervalued. They are often misunderstood by the very people who have born children with difficulties today.

Sometimes, doing the best for your child involves giving their care to another.
That someone, however much they come to love the child will always be one very tiny step distant and that, often is all it takes to enable effective help to be given.

Should we villify one mother and worship another.......?

The Youth of Today

2008-02-18T01:14:00.000-08:00

I listen to the news and once again there are items about young people. I turn the pages of the national press and also those of my local community and there are many pages dedicted to bashing the youth of today.

I wonder if it's a British phenonemon.

I'm not that travelled, but spend a goodly ammount of time in Brittany, a land and people close in many ways to that in which i live.
Their news and papers are full of articles about young people too, but they are positive, focusing on achievements and community participation.
They don't seem to harbour bad feelings about or towards young people and are not frightened of them.

I wonder if we promoted such an attitude in our media the problems associated with the youth of today would dissipate.

We live on the outskirts of a small coastal town. There are over 600 children in the secondary school alone.
Every evening and at weekends there are a small number of young people who hang around with eachother on the town square. They lark about, play fight, spit, are loud and sometimes abusive. They ride their bikes on the pavement and are generally unaware of others. They smoke, do drugs, buying, selling and using and they drink.

When asked about this they say theres nothing else to do.....nowhere for them to go.

They are, possibly 6-10 young people out of over 600 young people. They do not represent the youth of today, being less than 1% and yet they are paraded and promoted as typical youth of today. Infact they are the exception to the youth of today.

What are the other 590 young people doing?

I suspect that they are achieving and busy being a part of their local community.

Assignements, deadlines, exams and a sobbing wreck at the bottom of my bed

2008-02-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

It's 2.30 am....the house is snoring and the old man is farting quietly but deadly in his sleep. The noxious fumes steal against me like carbon monoxide in a defective boiler.

The silent killer, creeping closer in the small hours, changing what is, to a nightmare scenario of what could be.....
a fair haired beauty sobs quietly at the bottom of the bed.
.......I am awake!

'Mum, the printer wont load the paper properly' comes a whispered voice through the ether of my fuddled mind.
'Mum....Mum....
The printer.... The hysterics of the previous morn come flooding back. The mad and hectic dash to comets to purchase yet another printer ......
Would it talk to the computer or would it sulk, like a teenager, drooping languidly on the desk, daring you to question or even look at its working agenda.......pouting, brooding, defying!

'Why have we never got any printer ink?..
'Why havn't we got the right paper?...'
'Why do i never buy the right sized file, colour, shape, pocket, box etc?....'
'Why does everyone else need to use the computer now?'

Because.....yes, i know you are not allowed to start a sentence with...because....
The geography project work is due in at 9.30 am that very day .....and if it's not handed in it's a grade C automatically......and.......and she is a grade A pupil and that's not fair!

We swallow, and unvoiced, the words play in my mind....'and how long have you had to do this assignment?......6 months and you wake me up now to help you 6 hours before the deadline?'
Now, it's not as if we are hands off parents.....we care. We go dutifully to the parents evening, we ask contientiously have you done your homework? Do you need any help?
We listen with awe and wonder at the days activity and thank god we are no longer teenagers.....well ok , maybe we wish we were but not with all the anxe!

Have we been greeted with....'Oh for gods sake!' and other indignant phrases, ones generally not approporiate for the tender ears of internet users?
Most certainly!

I bounce out of bed or not and load the paper in the printer, minor adjustments to the page size and she's ready to roll......I fuel up the log burner, pour a drink of juice for the beauty and a bowl of sunflower seeds, kiss her and leave for bed once more.

The pages spew from the printer with a characteristic kerchunck, kerchunck and i can hear the quick light tap of the keys on the keyboard.....ever desperate in their urge to perform.......i drift into sleep and know tomorrow will be a rotten day!

Rewarding work????

2008-01-28T14:05:00.000-08:00

Funny, I've just looked at my last post and have been pleasently unsuprised that I find working in the woodland so rewarding.

People who know me, in real life.....blood and guts and screaming loudly...know that i look after, very often children with many and varied difficulties.

Others have very definate views on this habit. Some view me as a saint, to be reverred..'Oh you are so wonderful to do this. I've always wanted to but I dont think I could spare the time'
Some view me, quite frankly as mildly insane others take a wide berth, avoiding me and mine as toxic, something to be feared.

I've been looking after other peoples kids for quite a number of years now and rarely have I found it rewarding!

Why?

I'm not sure.

My own children are more grown up, rounder in thinking human beings thanks to fostering other children. They have seen and heard retold harrowing tales from childrens early memories, things most adults never come across in a whole lifetime.

The children we have welcomed into our home and family have had labels which have stuck to them faster than any superglue and have followed them relentlessly wherever they have gone.
ADHD, attachment disorder, ODD and compulsive disorders, not to mention neglect, torture and abuse.
Is it any wonder that most have fallen short of achievements and expectations of their peers?

Resilience, continuity, thought, understanding, mentoring , consistency and love are more often way down on the important list of surviving tactics and solutions if they are there at all.

Disorders and negative happenings are labels and badness. They say what has happened and what is but are unhelpful and destructive.

The other stuff helps us and others move on , make sense and move forward.

Most of the children we have looked after have come to us entrenched in a system designed to help them but often makes them and continues to make them reliant on that system.
Forever needy, forever lacking.

I live in hope that one child will hold onto the positives and reject the system that needs them more than they need it and embraces the wonderful possibilities this earth holds.

Working in the Woodland

2008-01-28T12:27:00.000-08:00

Working in the woodland is probably one of the most rewarding things i've ever done.

Not for me the noisy chainsaw and tractor spewing out fumes, but hand tools, often handed down through generations.

There used to be a thriving coppicing industry in Wales, servicing woodlands big and small.

Walk into any old woodland and you can see the remnants of past working.

Hurdle makers, charcoal burners, hedge layers, old skills rekindled in this modern carbon fuelled world.

Working with the hand tools, learning their uses, becoming profficient is a joy initself but I've learned so much more about quality of craftsmanship and the quality of steel used in the making of the tools.

I have a lovely Elwell billhook, beautifully balanced and now expertly sharpened by young son.

It slices through small branches with a conviction I am sure its own. The handle had been varnished in order to present it for sale. Varnish scraped away and now oiled with linseed it will last confidently for a few more years.

The 4lb Brades felling axe I have could well have been used by fire fighters in the blitz or land Jills in the Scottish highlands. It was made in 1939 and now sharpened can fell an oak, birch, ash and willow without splitting and spoiling the wood.

I don't have a two handled singing saw....yet

When you work together well sawing through a large trunk, the saw sings and the rhythm of using your whole body to power the saw, hypnotic. It's amazing how effortlessly and quickly it can cut through the largest of trees.

What i find wonderous about coppicing is that you cut a tree fairly close to the ground and in the spring it shoots forth new growth in abundance.

You can have a tree to process and from that you can have firewood, wood for charcoal, beensticks and peasticks, wood to make furniture, wood to cleave to make posts and hurdles and gates.

..........and 8 to 10 years later you can do that all over again.

Renewable.

xmas 2007

2007-12-27T13:06:00.000-08:00

Uneventful.
I know i should be greatful. Pleased that it has gone without a hitch.....but life has taught me too well....and I am waiting for the sting!

To be honest i think this Xmas has probably gone down as the most boring so far...no kids having to be sprung or pleaded for at the local police station, no serenity with her inventful stories designed for pity and the bank of mum. Even Jamie, the most perfect one has got himself a girlfriend and is hence busy.
The aga played havoc with dinner, but a bit of inventiveness and a smidge of ingenuity payed that one out.

Mr H and I are being nice to each other...the poor bastard is scared to open his phone infront of me and even the computer is bored of playing solitaire and that ubiquitous strategy game. We've chopped the wood and theres bugger all on the telly.

I have no appetite for alcohol, chocolate or money for shopping and i don't even want to buy anything!

I've just logged on to my yahoo groups....One rather dubious dyke wants to know me better, my sister isn't talking to me and the fostering lot.....enough said!

I know by writing this i'm jinxing things but even a bad thing might liven my life up....I AM BORED OUT OF MY SKULL!!!!!
I have never in my life been this bored and i'm scared to death I'll do something to liven the world up.
I'M BORED. BORED, BORED!

Legerdemain the art of deception

2007-12-12T08:32:00.000-08:00

Children are probably the best at this art, creeping up the stairs with a packet of biscuites stuffed up the sleeve of their pyjamas...you of course are supposed to ignore the crinkle crinkle of the wrappers.
One of my children hid in a cardboard box....I can't see you so you can't see me. The logic went slightly awry when the box started moving, apparently all by itself along the corridor and through the living room. Now you and I know boxes don't move by themselves......sadly this bit of knowledge had passed young son by.
We let him get away with it....well he was having so much fun!

Teenagers can be quite good in the art of deception league, although it usually involves lots of other people ........and that is probably its achiles heal. The more people who are in on the deceiving, the more likely it is someone will dob you in. Teenagers-keep it simple!

Men on the other hand are generally totally useless at deception-it is often only by the apparent collusion of women that men believe they have got away with their trickery.
One of my favourites is "well i would have told you but you didn't ask the right question"....ergo its your stupidity as a woman. You should be intelligent enough to ask correctly.
Let me tell you busters we usually know the answer but are trying to deceive ourselves.
Where men go wrong is they deviate from the norm e.g.....shut the computer lid right down....instant give away.

SAME MISTAKES?

2007-12-11T06:33:00.000-08:00

My darling eldest daughter, better known in some literery circles as serenity the calm one has found herself a boyfriend....one, it looks as if, she is moving into her home.
Personally i can't understand all this "have to have a man" lark. If Mr Hughes were to disappear off the radar I might consider a man for Fridays....probably less fattening than a crunchie!

The last great intellectual thinker was sent packing back to the seaside town he came from, sadly he emptied the bank account,leaving the children hungry.

This new bloke, however, seems on the face of it an alright bloke....so why does my sixth sense bullshit radar keep bleeping and waking me up in the night?

He's a self employed builder so why does he need to sign on the dole?
Surely he just relocates his work up here.
The last job he did was a roofing job and he's owed £2500 from that....didn't mention any other jobs.
Strange he didn't say why he hadn't been paid.....and he didn't seem all that keen on retrieving it via the courts.
Didn't mention cashflow, accounts or even the old inland revenue.
He did however say he'd been a labourer.
He's lost his lisence for speeding......lets hope thats for the fast form not the pharmacuetical type!
He's a computer programmer....well, ok he's a little nerdy.

Everyone else seemed to like him.
Am i being misanthropic ?
I don't think so.

My bullshit radar says he's a doggiedoo!

A herd of SHEEP

2007-12-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

I'm a foster carer. I work for a local authority not a private agency.....Not that, thats a problem for me...Children need to be looked after in a variety of places and situations.
There is no boot that fits all needs!

I work 110 miles away from the authority who kindly support me in my work. I know in America and in Africa this is less of a probl;em, where people travel many miles a day.
For me and the children i look after, however, it can seem a million miles or just down the road.

Our government, in Britain, have quite rightly identified that children should be looked after closer to their roots. This helps with continuity of friendships, schooling and contact with family. It helps build resilience, an ability to cope with lifes struggles and strife and to have better outcomes in life.

Like sheep, the authority follow their leaders, baahing and bleating to their callers dance.
Children, settled for many years, schooled well, with many friends and contacts locally are being pulled back, drawn by the buzz of the city, if they are older, and if younger by diverse and devious means.

A tick in the box for the inspectors, for each child brought back in. A tick in the box for the government and the local authority.

It wasn't right, perhaps to move some of these children so far away from their home grown environments. I wonder after so much time if it is right to move them back.

Do two wrongs make a right?

But....they almost certainly make a tick in the box!

Baaa Baaa Bleat Bleat

Perhaps we are so locked into evidencing our practice that we've lost sight of the values that underpin it.

Xmas Presents

2007-12-01T02:47:00.001-08:00

That season is upon us once again.....of good will to all men.
Not in my house!

For several years now i have received tokens of love at Christmas. Well thats what he calls them.
Effort of thought has gone lovingly into each choice gift....Rotovator, electric Jigsaw, workbench, felling axe, ride on lawnmower and a fossil fish in a bit of stone.

Is he hard of thinking you may wonder.

Now you may think that perhaps these are presies he would have liked for himself. Not at all is the garden for him, nor carpentery or D.I.Y and where the fish comes in is totally beyond me.
Perhaps he desired to bring an element of suprise to our relationship.

He has, however, benefitted from each gift....well apart from the fish. He has enjoyed the spuds and home grown, peas and onions, not to mention the goosegogs. He delighted in the boxes made for his green goddess engine heads and has had endless laughs at the thought of me chopping down trees.

Not for him this year, his annual supply of pants and socks (mainly because he tries to make them last a whole year without washing them) One pair a month....told you he was romantic.
Not for him the annual documentary of his life...an only fools and horses dvd or a thought provoking book by Mr Mortimer. Not for him the smellies....lets face it nothing can cover up the smell of infused pants and rigid socks.
No, not for him, a brass bell for his G.G. or a sign writing token.
A shaver, a toothbrush, a grooming set would be wasted on this virtuous vagabond and clothes would soon benefit from an oily dip....Man at C&A....more like man from greasy garage.

This year, i plan to seek my revenge.
A notable gadget has come to my attention, a robotic mop! The blurb says it will clean your floors and wait for it...difficult to reach places! It can do this with 98% accuracy!!!
Lego have a mindstorm programmable robot.....I thought i could get older son to programme it as a surrogate mother type and make it follow him, reminding him to wash his hands, brush his teeth and change his pants and socks, pick up his clothes and pack him off to work.

Dream on i suspect!

Education in Britain ....a parents perspective.

2007-11-24T13:29:00.000-08:00

Private versus public has been the usual debate.
Right to choose a school versus available spaces at popular schools.
Academy schools, grammar schools, religeous educational establishments. Opting in and opting out, not to mention home schooling. O'levels, CSE's, GCSE's, A levels and AS.
A veritable quarry, a mine of material to argue over at home, in the school, in government and in the work place.

Whats best for my children may not be best for yours, indeed whats productive for one of my children is likely to be disastrous for their sibling.

I guess we try to establish an educational system that performs and produces the best results for the majority of children.

What do we do for the minority?
Those children who do not fit in, do not behave, cannot perform the tasks given, or attain targets set.
What do we do for them?

I've listened to both Gordan Brown and David Cameron recently talking about education. Both have said that disruptive behaviour in school cannot be tolerated and indeed the 'new tories' have already given greater powers to head teachers to remove children from school, to exclude them.

Lets look at that word 'exclude' It's synonyms include bar, eject, chuck out, expel, leave out, shut out, throw out, omit.
Isn't it rubbish, unwanted things we throw out, eject, expel, chuck out?
Isn't it things or people who don't come up to our values that we bar, leave out, omit?

What sort of message are we sending to these children? Is it I wonder, the one we mean to send?

DONT MOAN GET EVEN

2007-11-19T01:45:00.000-08:00

I have enjoyed immensely the grumpy old men series on the telly, identifying with the frustration, exasperation and illogic. I have laughed and moaned with the presenters of the programme. I have identified and admitted my own intolerance.
Attitudes have been fed endless morsels of stupidity and like a gigantic monster it has threatened to consume me.
Emulate the Chilean immigration service. Every time a Chilean returns to their homeland with tales of having been singled out for special consideration at Heathrow they crack open the box of latex gloves and invite a hapless British tourist to bend over.
Don’t moan…. get even!

In order to contain this hungry giant I have devised some rules.
Do not groan on about anything you have no power, control or influence over. … Like the weather. No amount of moaning, complaining or action on your part will stop it raining.

Do not delude yourself when he says he loves you and chats endlessly on msn to his soul mate.
You are over with. Pick yourself up and get on with life.

Laugh at incongruous signs such as “Please use all windows when purchasing tickets” Seen at a railway station ticket booth.
How about “Beware heavy plant crossing”

Prison

2007-11-13T14:57:00.001-08:00

Prison.
I guess it's not supposed to be a pleasant place, not one you want to return to, like a holiday place...or is it?

Had a phone call from a socialwork proffessional, big V was missing, had we seen her?
We hadn't seen her since the last time she'd been in the doggiedoo and had needed to run away.
She had of course phoned to tell us she was being evicted, but that had been two months previously. and we had had her back home thirteen months earlier.
She had stayed for only as long as the heat was on...as soon as things had calmed down, and other people had moved on to hit on other silly, vulnerable, not so bright kids, she had calmly said thanks, she loved seeing us, indeed she loved all of us but she had to face her demons. She was gone.

Gone, probably not far enough, but certainly not forgotten.

Two weeks went by and then another phonecall, she was still missing, but big L, the druggie dope dealer, who was particularly good with his fists, was lookin after little LJ well.

Another two weeks went by and lo she had been found by the law.
Well, aprehended, drunk as a skunk, wielding a meat cleaver and threatening to kill big L, who luckily for him was at least fifty miles away.
This seemed to me to be a perfectly logical decision, one i probably would have entertained the last time he beat her up.
Sober, i think she might have stood a better chance of finding him.
Verbosity and the law are not always a good idea either.....she had obviously not heard of staying quiet until her mouth piece appeared!

She was bailed.......

One week later and the law are once again called to see to big V. This time passers by had been worried for her.
The law found her in a shop doorway with a rather large carving knife. She threw it away , learning at last, curled herself up in a foetal ball and was quiet.....well until they got her in the nick and then motormouth poured forth her venom.

Another phonecall from a professional.
Would we be willing for her to be bailed to us?

We were soon on our way to visit her in prison. She had been denied bail, and her case was to be heard in crown court at the end of the month.

Prison. I guess it's not supposed to be a pleasant place......

A modern building, large and airy. No bars for these windows. A tall, sturdy fence, coils of barbed wire on top.
A smart, no nonsense warder behind a reinforced, locked gate, looked at her watch, and we waited in anxious anticipation.
Smack on two o'clock we were let in only after we had shown our I.D. and visiting order. I thought of border controls and the germans in the second world war.
We walked past the flower beds and deposited our worlds into a cream locker, retaining only loose change to purchase coffee or chocolates.
We went and stood at the next gate, making small talk with the warder, who told us he wasn't allowed to talk about prisons. Looking up at the fence and the coils of razor wire, we waited and were then let through, across a courtyard to a building.
Another warder and forms to fill in, before a waiting room, cameras and young briefs with files, pen tapping.
People, ordinary people. People who could have been transported from the highstreet, queing for veg, or waiting for a stamp at the post office, now waited, to put their coins in a paperbag.
Arms and legs outstretched frisked for contraband and forbiddens they waited quietly.

We were let in, wardens on a raised dias and others watching captured images on screens behind screens.
Coffee tables and chairs, and at each one an orange tabarded woman sat.
She looked happily around for us, waved over we hugged her and sat.
We talked and listened to what had happened to her, and listened to what had not been said....and were sad.
It struck me as we were leaving, she was secure. She knew what would happen next, life ordered and predictable. Few responsibilities, structure and safety.....bit like a holiday from a chaotic lifestyle.

Prison

2007-11-13T14:57:00.000-08:00

fear and trust

2007-11-11T03:43:00.000-08:00

Funny i thought the opposite of trust was distrust, and to some degree thats true.
Fear is the opposite of trust.....it's what drives distrust.
Face your fears is often advised....and that is actually what i'm going to do.
Firstly i think i need to catalogue what it is i fear. It maybe one thing or many.

Aloneness. ...I can never be truly alone so I think for me its being without that special person i
love.
Lost. .............Lost in the sense of not knowing what to do.
I. ...................Insecurity, emotionally and physically. Not being able to support oneself.
S. ...................Social integration. people are bewildering and scary to me.
I'd rather be on the periphery, observing than really interacting or would I?
O. ..................Opportunities not taken. Of being marked by failure. Unrealized potential.
N. ..................Not having anything worth remembering from now on. Nothingness.

So I'm going to do something about this/these fears.

Psychosocio doggiedoo

2007-10-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

I feel a proper rant coming on.
This glass thing... You know the half empty/half full thing.
What a load of doggiedoo.
Only from the person who has a full glass can you expect "Never mind, look on the bright side, your glass is half full.
Well lookie here "I'd rather have his glass, the one thats full.....and so would you!"

I remember my father saying " yOU'VE MADE YOUR BED NOW LIE IN IT"
That was doggiedoo too!

I promptly decided that I'd made a mistake so I'd remake the bed differently or I'd make another one. Either way I was not going to lie in the first.

Well if my glass is half empty thats because some other bugger has drunk it.....or because I have......Top it up or drink the rest!
......and if your lucky get another one in, or luckier still get the so and so who half drank yours to get another one in.

Totally daft this half full/half empty lark.....any realist will tell you it's just half way....neither full nor empty.....and the chances are you've already reaped the benefits of the one half.

This house lark

2007-09-26T05:14:00.000-07:00

This house lark is really getting to me, especially as I'm not the greatest homeworker.
I love cooking and my ancient aga rarely lets me down. It slow cooks meat that just falls apart when you show it the cutlery and never overcooks the fish. Keeps everything moist, warms the plates; is rescue remedy for kittens, dries out trainers and is hugely comforting in the middle of a stormy night. Best of all, being a short arse, it warms my bum !

I quite like ironing too. It gives me a chance to hog the telly. Don't get me wrong. I'm really ,truly abysmally awful at ironing, putting more creases in than there were originally but i like the mindless turning and folding and smoothing and the hiss of the steam and the smell.

The rest of it.......especially bathrooms and we've got three is just utterly boring, endlessly tedious and quite frankly a waste of time. Well ok, perhaps not the bathrooms. I just hate doing them!
Tidying up, clearing away.......can't find a dam thing and to be honest with 7 kids in the house it,s pointless. Have you seen that advert...I think it's for a loan ...The woman has this perfectly clean tidy living room, a fixed smile of happiness and contentment. She is on the phone arranging a loan or insurance and her children ask her for something, try in the garage darling she interjects with her happy sing song voice and then her beloved falls over it....."I think he's found it"
It's so unreal!

People coming to view the house again today. Hoovering, dusting, polishing.......I'm not cleaning the bloody windows!
I wiped down the lamp shade...please note i only said one lampshade. That's because it's the only one we've got. Thank god.
I wiped down the lampshade and rediscovered it's colour so that should tell you something about my attitude to housework.
I have hoovered the whole house twice this week.....the carpets will be worn out, nevermind me. Hoovering, what sort of idiot invented that?
My friend Debbie is a compulsive hooverer, she has to do it twice a day, the whole house, and sometimes inbetween times.....her husband has put in laminate flooring but she still has to do it.
We were on a course together run by a psychologist who at lunch firmly told her she should seek help.....OOw no she couldn't possibly get someone else to do it. They might not do it well enough!
Don't think that was quite what he meant.

It was a great relief to me to read in New Scientist some 20 years ago a possible connection with the overuse of cleaning chemicals and leukemia and i have exploited this possibility ever since.
Have you ever looked at the ingredients of some polishes, air freshners, surface cleaners?
Bet you havn't and if you have you're probably a greenie.
As i Mr Sheened the surfaces I thought to look.....
aliphatic hydrocarbons.....can this be good?
non ionic surfactant......is it better than ionic ?
methylchloroisothiazolinone....... not going to name your son that are you?
Benzisothiazolinone.......say no more
What the hell is glutaral?
The most important question of all is..Why are we spreading all this gunk in our homes when we don't know what it is?
We know not to inhale cigarette smoke or if we do we are taking on the risks associated with it.
We tell our kids not to inject, smoke, snort drugs. They are chemicals too, probably half of them are in the products we use daily.....well not me!

Going to live in a yurt is starting to look very attractive.
Do people who live in yurts hoover?
I wonder if they use glutural to clean their surfaces.

Rooms that mean something

2007-09-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

When choosing a new house my wonderful father gave me some advice.
If you walk into a house and you look around and it feels happy then it's a good house....avoid all other houses.
I've always done that and it's served me well.
Lately I've been thinking about rooms, well actually.....spaces.
There are some very special places to me.
One of my first places was under a round tea table which sat on the landing presiding over the stairs. It was a very small space, draped with a crocheted table cloth. Katy and I squashed into it and hid when the coalmen came.....I don't know why but I was petrefied of the coalmen. Luckily they only came twice a year, unless it was an unusually cold winter or that my mother had less money than she would have liked and could only purchase small ammounts of coal. We only had best Welsh anthracite.
My dad made me a treehouse in the old cooking apple tree. It didn't have any walls or a roof. It was more of a look out platform, reached by the steps from our old boat, Sundowner. I played there for many summers...mummys and daddies, pirates and secret 7's. It was the enchanted tree, a way into many other worlds. Looking back, it was probably my area of safety where I could avoid everything else.
I had a den on a building site across the road, where I stashed all my secret possessions , and also my home made rose petal perfume (which stank horribly) and my lemon cordial....which left for a fortnight turned into fizzy lemonade. Jimmy Brown and Paul Allen were my buddies (mostly I suspect because of the lemonade) and Lynda Webley, a sworn enemy. My father found us one day hidden in a nest at the top of a shed and was very cross. The nest turned out to be asbestos. He made us promise we wouldn't go there again.......sucker!
The local cinema was my next favoured space. It had not been renovated for years and told a story of bygone times. I loved the colors and the rich swags, the smell of oranges and toffee popcorn, the thirtees staircase. Very art deco!
When I was a little older, the summers were glorious and I was often in love with one dirt bag or another.....as you are when your a teenager!
Theres a special field.....probably got houses on now, above the 100 fairy steps at Porthkerry where we sunbathed naked and the earth first moved for me......still can smell the grass and hear the bees buzzing from one wild flower to another, the scanty white clouds crossing an endlessly blue backdrop and the seagulls calling to each other.

I'm older now , much older and oh so responsible, so boringly responsible.

The next very special place was my flat. It represented my freedom, independance,
standing alone, just me......trouble was I'm human and although I'm not that keen on people...well I'm not that good at being on my own either. Most of all I loved my fouton but he didn't.

I'm a little out of time and probably more than a little out of order but I went on holiday to Brittany. Actually I was supposed to be working there. I was astounded by it's beauty, it's friendliness. The smells, coffee, cheese and tarte aux fraise, good cider , crepes and simple food.
So much had been happening in my life, mostly very unfavourable things. I'd been stupid and confused and made my situation at home so much more complicated, as you do.
Brittany represented a haven, a safe place, a quietude where I could recenter and the people around me I think understood that need and aided and encouraged that, consciously or not.

I fell deeply in love and still am with one of them .

The house we live in now had a bedroom that had once been used as an art studio. It had lots of light from the many draughty windows and an en suite bathroom, pine clad. In the winter it was so very cold there. We had 3 duvets with a combined tog of abot 33 and still clung to each other all night to keep warm.......well Couldn't tell him I loved him , too much! The bathroom was wonderful if not a bit disconserting. In the wind and believe me we get wind up here on the mountain the pitched pine ceiling would move up and down and rattle ominously. It was wild and scary and comforting and I loved it.

Strange posting I know but something today triggered it.
The upstairs bathroom door is frequently closed and the tap tap of phone keys can be heared and the toilet unused.........think I'm going to need the quietude of Brittany once more after all.

telesales

2007-09-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

My friends son has just got himself a job in telesales.
He's been out of work for a few months so it was cause for celebration and she invited me out to lunch and a bottle of champagne.
"What we partying for, anything specific or just because we can?"
She whispered something unintelligable behind her hand whilst fervently looking around.
Good grief, surely she couldn't be pregnant! New lover, perhaps a toyboy? A mega win on the lottery?.....no. It couldn't be that or we'd be in a much more salubrious establishment and the bubbly would be kosha!
I looked quizically at her and waited.
Rabbit in the headlights moment. She looked around once more, leaned forward so we were almost nose to nose, fixed me with one of those don't you dare comment stares. You probably recognise the one.... that one, usually reserved by the darling teenage daughter when she asks "Do you think this is ok to wear to the party"
You think ****** wheres my little girl gone. Her father needs a shotgun , and some poor guy is going to end up in the nick.......but you swallow and say lovely!
"Jez has got a job in .......( looks around again) T.e.l.e.s.a.l.e.s
Now my mind is full of possibilities, and by this time I'm on the second glass...so spelling things out is not high on my ability levels.
By this time she's making movements with her left hand, like a quacking duck whilst holding a pretend telephone to her ear with her right.
Looks like lunch is going to be a really long one, possibly moving through afternoon tea and into dinner.......I'm crap at charades!
"TELESALES" she desperately blurts out rather too loudly for my liking.
I order another bottle of the fizzy stuff.....she's definately going to need it.
That has got to be the most loathed and detested of all jobs. No one likes telesales people.
Well what I mean is the people are probably very nice...it's the bothering that's the problem.
Usually the tax man only bothers you once a year, but telesales, lets face it are a dam nuisance!
Accountants are dull but you can always send the old man.
I did know a surveyor once who designed carparks and insisted on telling you about every aspect of his job........bored everyone to bed.
I digress, back to the subject ...telesales.
I don't know what a look of horror and sympathy looks like .......she does!
Since I work from home I am regularly interupted and hounded by persistant telesales staff and consequently they have become a target of my anger, jocularity and drama.

Aliens

2007-09-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

I was born in Wales.....I'm Welsh. I moved to Pembrokeshire in my mid 30's.
It's great living here on top of the mountain , fantastic views over the mountains, sea and valley.
In the spring we can be in brilliant sunshine and watch the sea mist creep into the harbour and wind it's way sinuously up the valley until everything is shrouded except the mountain tops.
It's like being in another world, mystical. Alien but supremely beautiful.
Sometimes it's very lonely and wild and it's easy to imagine your the only person in the world......thats usually when i start shouting at the sheep!

I did say in my profile I was a little on the edge!

We only moved 100miles and even though my partners parents come from this area and he and all the children are bi-lingual we are still regarded as aliens, incomers.
The bloke 2 farms away moved less than 20miles into this area and even he isn't thought of as a local.

Having said that we've been made very welcome and when our house caught fire a few years ago, the local people rallied round and offered great support.

The locals are a little odd. Well I guess we must be the odd ones really been as we're in the minority.
It's joked that all the brains moved out and everyone else interbred. It's certainly the case that practically everyone is related.
Theres evidence for this in the local pub which hasn't changed much since the first world war.
Well it's been redecorated, paint and wallpaper but all the furnitures the same and also the pictures, which have been occasionally added to.
On one wall is the picture of the Queen, a very young queen; on another is a picture of the Duke of Windsor (the one who abdicated) and a lovely picture of a soldier with his beloved that must date from the great war.
Through the hatch in the wall, an older lady of indeterminate age (somewhere between 65 and 80) will serve you beer from a jug, with hands in fingerless gloves. Her blue and white check nylon apron covering a dull skirt and jumper and her wrinkly brown woollen stockings end in a pair of sturdy shoes.
Her eyes twinkle with amusement as she barks at you " YES" This should be translated as what would you like to drink? or how can I help you?
She's a woman of few words you might think and you'd be wrong. For as soon as you have settled with your pint, she's in through the door and seated in her comfey armchair rattling off questions like a bren gun firing bullets.
Astute and knowledgable she will dish out advice on every conceivable subject whether you require it or not.
It's like someplace out of the film deliverance!

Selling a house

2007-09-21T03:38:00.001-07:00

Here are the viewees.
They'll probably survive the viewing as long as they don't open any cupboards, wardrobes or look behind doors.
I wonder if I should get public liability insurance?
I can just see it now, the headlines in the local press

Man painted, assaulted by a jigsaw and feathered by odd socks.

Funny thing about socks, there are probably around three hundred pairs of socks in this household and none of them are real pairs.
When I buy new ones i depair them , mix the colours up and the sizes, roll them up in twos and distribute them to the kids.
This is a sort of reverse psychology....oops sorry reverse sockology......
Sadly socks, unlike humans are not that susceptable nor suggestable.
Having said that i wonder what would happen if i did a cohort study. What percentage of socks would suddenly find themselves correctly paired in the washing machine?
If it is taken that socks mysteriously disappear down a washing machine portal and that the under the bed monster is partial to a supper dish of sock ragu . Then surely the laws of physics and biology might suggest that socks could appear in the washing machine and that the bed monster might receive presents of socks on his birthday been as he's so fond of them.
This is getting silly.

Looks like rainy day syndrome, oh what can we do in the coutryside that will satisfy our curiosity?
Oh I know lets pretend we're house hunting. It's jolly good fun, and think of all the effort time and work they've put in to tidy up.!

Personally it might be fun if they opened the cupboard under the stairs.

small roads and cachi

2007-09-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

Living in the coutryside can be pretty wonderful. You certainly know what the weather is.
Driving on the otherhand can be a bit unpredictable. It rained last night, just a bit...and it was a tad breazy with the wind, so there was a fair ammount of fallen leaves.
Drive a bit slower you'd think.....not at all.
The locals especially the one with the green golf gti, fearlessly carreer around the narrow bendy roads as if they are competitors in a rally.
At the other end of the spectum theres Mr Jones....10miles per hour up to 15 if he's speeding.
Driven an old Fergi all his life (no not an ex royal) thinks he's dangerous at 20 mph.
I'm sure you can imagine the potential for car carnage at every trip. Then to top it all theres the tourists. Usually lived in cities or large towns. Oh yes they've mastered lane dicipline and the middle finger salute, brilliant at traffic lights, speed calming measures and duel carriageways but the last time they used reverse was on the driving test. I think they must believe the R on the gear shift is for Rest.
Rest and stare....rest and stare....wildly gesticulate.......rest and stare...... shout....rest and stare and panic.
All of this can be endlessly entertaining, the school run an instant adrenaline hit. The shopping trip a veritable rollercoaster screamer.......but this pales into insignificance compared to a small stretch of road alongside a dairy farm I came across today.
A small square sign said MUD ....I slowed, not a lot, not nearly enough because I'm a local....
Feet off everything... well it wasn't going to matter what i did.
MUD , liquid mud and cachi (cow shit for the unwelsh of you).
I wasn't actually aquaplaning...more like skidding in the skiddies.....brown trouser moment as i manouvered round the bend. I got round it but the shit was in control. It slew me first one way then another, precariously close to the bridge, over the bridge and into the next bend.
Closing your eyes does nothing to alleviate the fear. The shit did nothing except delude me into thinking I had traction, and then it coallesed and hurtled me towards the bank.
I live to tell the tale and so did the other bloke coming the other way.