Not laws – the social obligations we have to create an orderly and civilised society – which I can live by quite happily. Laws not only protect us from others but they protect others from us and that is just.

I am referring to rules, conventions, if you prefer.

Irksome Rule No.1 – You will shower your partner with gifts on 14th February to show them you love them.

We recently had Valentine’s Day – a particular horror of mine. And it seems so ungrateful to grumble about the whole Valentine’s event when one is ‘blessed’ with a husband who always remembers to buy chocolates or flowers or both and encloses soppy greetings in a carefully chosen card. But it is just a convention. You can’t buy romance pre-packaged on the shelf, romance is spontaneous and to my mind there is more romance in the little everyday things you do for each other than you can find in chocolate that widens the hips. We are tied to this convention because the shops say we should so they can sell mega loads of extra trash a few short weeks after the biggest do of the year. I am considerably more grateful to my husband for coming to pick me up from work, day in, day out, even when it is a struggle to get there and he has better things to do – now that is far more meaningful to me. In any case I find it irksome to be tied to this one day of the year for expressing a romantic thought; I might feel more romantic on, say the 16th or the 25th of February, or even the 14th of June. Mind you I’m not much of a romantic and I feel so inadequate when I wake up on Valentine’s Day and remember the date and realise that not only have I not bought a gift of similar value, I haven’t bought one at all, or even a card! I hate spending the day feeling guilty.

I want my ‘romance’ to be a surprise, a gesture out of the blue, and something that comes from the heart – not the pages of a magazine in an article on ‘How to romance your partner’.

I really don’t like my life being organised for me – certainly not by retailers anxious to increase their profit margin. I like life to be serendipitous.

Irksome Rule No.2 – Housework.

Don’t get me started on that one. It’s another area of my life that I apply the Serendipity Principle to (great film, Serendipity, by the way but then John Cusack is lovely!). I enjoy my housework because I don’t make it a chore and I do it when the mood takes me to do it, or when I have completely run out of clean socks and clean cups. So why do I feel so inadequate when I hear people talking about how they HAVE to get up at 6am to get the hovering done. They don’t want to; it’s a chore and a bore. I enjoy a good tidy up and then I can see when something has been done. I cleaned for an elderly lady one time who wanted me to dust the walls every week. – I never went back, I was afraid of losing my mind…and my will to live!

My only house rule is that the bed is made every day. If you make the bed you really don’t need to do anything else!

A local sussex trug-maker is struggling to keep afloat, trugs are not the height of fashion at the moment it seems - they are a pricey item though which might explain a lot. I have a small one that I keep in the utility room which I throw my gloves into at the end of a stint outdoors.

Contents of gardening trug the other day:
2 pairs crunchy, soil-ingrained gardening gloves
A pink pouch of pink garden twine (supporting breast cancer charity)
A selection of seed packets, some open and spilling seed
Length of wire
1 fish finger

“Ah, I was looking for that” - I swear he is going doolally since he retired. I guess though that it is easy enough to lose track of your fish fingers, you think you have them all in the box but they are itching to get out and in amongst the gardening paraphernalia.

It was in this same weekend that I observed a swan attempting to break into a car’s petrol tank. Some fool had parked it right by this delinquent, over-sized duck’s pond - but it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to wrench off a petrol cap with just a beak so the car-owner was in luck. Not so lucky were the passing motorists subjected a large amount of crevice on show from the road planer, almost visible puckering (not to mention extremely unattractive under-garment).

Another snatch of the mildly odd. Seated on a settee in a small bungalow I am conducting a conversation with a guy in the adjoining porch-ette while also carrying on a desultory conversation with his wife in the room off the other side of the hall-ette. He is sculpting a head for a Medusa, life size and very fine, though he isn’t doing the snakes, another chap will do that. She is collecting together bits of pattern and fabric and pins to arrange for constructing my to-be-ready-for-Easter waistcoat (for Morrising in). It is a tranquil moment of surrealism after the mundane and commonplace arena of work.

Although work does have its moments. We have a new manager. After many years of being led by a formidable lady we now have……….a bloke. And he is a man not a poor excuse for one. Athletic build, gregarious, and doesn’t know how shopping works – he is a breath of fresh masculine air. I have to laugh - every day - when a constant succession of women seem to find themselves drawn to his office, to say hello, pass the time of day, or simply ask….whatever. These women who went out of their way to avoid going near the office in the days of his predecessor are suddenly drawn in there like moths to a flame. My roomie and I listen to the tinkling bells of feminine flirtation and snigger; we are biding our time – besides I prefer to have the opposite sex flocking to MY door rather than the reverse. I suppose that could be why my office is ….quiet.

In the week that sees the wee island of Eigg with it’s small but not insignificant population at last able to experience the joy of a reliable electricity supply – something that on the mainland we take very much for granted – there is also the story of the Cannabis Ships.

Not a million miles from the small island of Eigg, is another even more remote and far less well-known island, which cannot be named for security purposes and it is here that the Cannabis Ships skulk. A brand new wind farm on the island generates an incredible amount of power which is then supplied to the National Grid but not maybe not all of it….

A small family have been diverting some of the electricity to power three hulking, skulking ships, moored close to the secluded inlet on the north side of the island. Seen from the outside the ships appear desolate and enshrouded, a pungent smell emanating from them. These are the Cannabis Ships. Deck upon deck of marijuana plants….

Not really of course, this was just a conversation I was having with a guy who has way too much imagination! But is quite an idea and I was thinking of maybe a film of the tale on the lines of Whiskey Galore. A vast ship load of Cannabis lands on a remote island, etc. etc. There’s definitely a part in it for Robbie Coltrane I think and I think Ewan MacGregor would make a very convincing hero….

You just need a little imagination!

21.00pm Sunday Evening

48 Hours Ago: Drinking coffee after the meal at our Christmas Do and wondering why I sat at that table
36 Hours Ago: Drinking coffee and trying to plan my day of cooking for hubby’s Retirement Do
24 Hours Ago: Desperately wondering how to stay awake for another hour until I could legitimately go to bed
18 Hours Ago: Dreaming
12 Hours Ago: Stuffing tomatoes
6 Hours Ago: Taking photos at hubby’s Retirement Do
3 Hours Ago: Downloading photos onto computer of hubby’s Retirement Do
2 Hours Ago: Eating Chinese Meal back at home with family
1 Hour Ago: Chatting with the family about our various weeks
Now: Chilling and listening to tunes
1 Hour from now: Reading before bedtime
2 Hours from now: Spark out - hopefully
3 Hours from now: Dreaming – about something nice preferably
6 Hours from now: Still asleep – though it might be time for a little indigestion and insomnia by then
12 Hours from now: Sitting at my desk at work wondering where the weekend went
18 Hours from now: Making a nice cup of tea to keep me going until home time
24 Hours from now: At rehearsal – thinking if I get any colder then bits will start falling off
36 Hours from now: Going through my in-tray
48 Hours from now: Dancing

Why is it that people always seem to think if you are off to Paris you must be going to have some kind of romantic breakaway? ‘How romantic’ and ‘Is it a second honeymoon?’ have both been wafted my way by people who knew I was off to Paris for a few days.

Well……..NO! Not all trips to Paris are romantic ones.

When I was nine years old my mother took me to Paris for five days – my father not being too keen on crossing water and my mother desperate for some kind of foreign travel experience. We were very much UK-holiday goers and it represented a wonderful and scary dip into the unknown, and largely unknowable. We went by hovercraft and train (my mother had - and still has - a horror of aeroplanes!) which made it seem a lot further away I suppose. It wasn’t a romantic trip although it was quite an adventure.

I have been to Paris several times since. I cannot honestly say that any of the other visits were of a romantic nature either – Paris doesn’t particularly speak to me of romance, well certainly not the soppy, sloppy, kissing-on-bridges type of romantic claptrap but I’m not that kind really. I have a far too short concentration span to sit gazing into someone’s eyes for more than a few seconds.

This trip was not a romantic getaway for hubby and me; it was a Paris taster for the girlie and a chance to catch up on some research for her Uni course which she starts in the autumn, History of Art. We left on Thursday morning on the Eurostar and returned last night on same. In the two days in between we covered a lot of ground – literally.

The girlie has a fear of undergrounds – any subterranean spaces really – so we had to walk – a lot! We did the Pompidou Centre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, a river boat trip, the Louvre, and Notre Dame. We beheld a lot of places in between as well. It was an incredible amount of culture to cram into a couple of days but so well worth it. The snow on the Eiffel Tower was a bit bizarre, as was the general reluctance to dispense with Christmas - Notre Dame still had a massive tree outside - but the art part was always impressive.

The Japanese tourists were an absolute hoot. They were all clustered round the Mona Lisa trying to snap each other posing by her with their cameras and phones. One guy couldn’t get near enough the real thing so he was taking a photo on his phone of the black and white photocopy of her picture near the door. They thronged round the statue of Venus, taking it in turns to stand proudly in front to have yet another picture taken. I told the girlie that they had to provide proof they had actually been in Paris.

One lady was just walking through the gallery screening the entire stroll onto her video camera and not actually looking at anything as she went. That seemed so very odd. But they had us in stitches more than a few times.

The last few hours of the trip however were a little less fast-paced. The girlie managed to fall down a few steps in the Louvre and sprain her ankle. She hobbled on valiantly but increasingly more painfully, until she simply could not carry on and we made a very slow and uncomfortable journey back to the hotel and thence to the station. Fortunately I did have a book to read as without it the last four and a half hours of enforced sitting around would have been a bit tedious – although I didn’t mind having a break from all the walking!

Oops – looks like I just left the building for a while but here I am again.

I feel like a bottle of lemonade that has been opened, half-drunk and left in the fridge a couple of days - a bit flat, rather cold and not at all appealing. I am lacking my usual bubbles and sparkles – don’t know why but perhaps a combination of Christmas, PMT and low light levels. In fact a lot of people I have spoken to recently have said they have felt a bit flat this year – and they can’t all have PMT. Well the men might of course. I know it has not been a brilliant year for many but I can’t use that as an excuse because although it hasn’t been amazing or astounding or anything it also hasn’t been bad either.

The relentless moving of the finger that writes on the pages of life’s book, yes that’s the rub. Having no small children in the family now means we can no longer appreciate it through the eyes of the little people with all the magic and fairy dust. That said my girlie even at 18 manages to get as excited as a much smaller version of her used to do so all is not lost – she is the bright sparkly thing that sweeps us all through the festive gloom!

Oh dear I sound so maudlin but I don’t feel sad particularly – just not bouncily happy either I guess. Just a wee bit nothing at the moment.

I have tried to keep writing list s of all the fun things in prospect for the coming year, holidays and driving lessons……..and a new kitchen. It sounds exciting doesn’t it but it isn’t, it’s keeping me awake at nights trying to create the ideal kitchen and I can’t get it right. I lie there turning over and over, not tossing much but lot’s of turning, and I keep moving the cooker and the fridge and the sink around in my head until they are all whirling in ever increasing circles.

It’s all too much!

I was having a chat with someone the other day – oh I know, that’s like, shock, wow! I have at least one conversation every day of my life; even if it’s just with the cat – and you’d be amazed how much she can say when she is hungry.

No, this was a real conversation. And it made me think about stuff.

She – for it was a female person – was saying that she knew just enough about the people she had just started working with and wasn’t really wanting to get to know them more intimately. It was one of those moments when you see yourself as you were a few years ago and hanker for a simpler time.

Many years ago, in another life – or so it seems! – I went to a meal with a large group of people. It was a sparkly evening in my recollection and I had the good fortune to sit opposite a guy who was very enjoyable company. I remember laughing a good deal, feeling a real buzz from the rapport of my table companion, and I myself felt vibrant and not unattractive. Some years later however when I learned of the true nature of the relationship between the guy opposite and my immediate female neighbour at the table it stripped the evening of some of it’s gloss. I realised that not only had I not contributed in any way to his good humour and that my presence was an irrelevance but in having arrived slightly ahead of her I had taken the place opposite him which she would have had and therefore I must have been something of a disappointment! A pleasant memory turned into a hollow nothing. It was like being given a shiny penny and then discovering it to have absolutely no value.

While I was talking the other day I saw how much my appreciation of bright penny moments has lessened because of knowing the world a little better.

Having felt a bit of a misfit all my life, and having to shave off a few of my corners to fit into the round holes, I have seen acquiring deeper knowledge of people as a form of gaining acceptance in a world that still, frankly, puzzles me. But all it is really doing is tarnishing my own brightness and dulling my own pleasure in life.

I have a jar full of bright pennies. I really don’t want to get them all out and inspect them to see which are flawed and worthless so I shall leave them where they are and believe, deep down, that at least some of those bright pennies are actually worth ten time their face value. I shall henceforth make more of an effort to preserve my innocence and although it is not possible to un-know people it is sometimes politic to forget!

I went to bed in all good faith feeling sleepy, started nodding off and then the telephone rang. After a short period of tossing and turning I decided that sleep was a long way off still so I got up and stumped downstairs with a my duvet and my book only to be joined by the girlie who had the same problem. We had a midnight feast – though not in the dorm – and watched a spot of Dads Army and she decided to give the sandman another try but I am even more wide awake now than I was then! So, here I am, 1am.

I have been mostly a bit distracted and a bit depressed recently. Oh not in any really heavy way but I just feel unsettled by things that are currently in transit. My girlie is having a gap year but although she is keeping busy she hasn’t found a job that is doing enough to stimulate her and it is worrying me. Added to which hubby announced yesterday that in fact his last day at work will be….this Friday. He ‘retires’ from the police technically at the end of January but with all the accrued time owing he finishes this week. I was expecting it to be December so this has pulled the rug out a bit. He is unsurprisingly quite up-and-down as anyone would be facing the end of a career so it doesn’t make for a relaxed atmosphere at home. And I am so busy at work atm that I don’t feel I am giving either of them enough attention. It doesn’t seem that long ago that the children were at school and hubby was at work and me working only part time I had time to do my housework (and etc.) without interruptions. In a few years everything is turned completely on its head and next week I shall be the only one going out to work. I need time to adjust.

And then there is Christmas just around the corner, which has a habit of creeping up on you while you’re still folding up your sandals. Actually I don’t have fold-up sandals so that is silly.

It has been a busy week at work as I have been doing some update sessions on Confidentiality. As it is directed at all the staff from highest to lowest I have had to break them down into three groups to make it manageable and I’ve done two of three so far. I prepared a presentation, booklets for the discussion group bit, and even made lunch but the best part was to see how much it got people talking and thinking. The first one I was very nervous about doing because there were at least two people in the group whose opinion I have heard on the subject of bad presentations and bad presenters. Today’s, however, was less daunting and therefore almost enjoyable. The performer in me, or rather the attention-seeking show-off in me, does like to have an audience - but I still prefer an audience that is sitting somewhere beyond the apron in the darkened stalls, it’s quite off-putting to see the whites of their eyes. But I even got a little round of applause for today’s session which made me feel quite shiny and nice for a while.

I think I really should try the whole sleep thing again now.

OMG how sad is that- I have had two glasses of champagne and I am pissed. I have had to re-write that sentence a few times.

No it’s not a party. The lady that does our window display for the upcoming play needed an empty champagne bottle and we only had full ones at home. Sooooooooooooo…. I said….well…its easy enough to empty one.

Hubby thought it very wasteful but I said that I can celebrate the fact that I got through my first presentation – of a series of three on confidentiality in the NHS – oh and btw, shhhh, I didn’t tell you that, it’s confidential.

I was so nervous. Partly because I had people attending whose opinion I have heard on the subject of bad presentations and bad presenters. I wonder why it is that when you want to if not impress than certainly not un-impress someone that you just fall apart at the seams doing something that really isn’t a tricky thing to do. But it was fine. Ok so I may not have been the best in the world but it got people talking over the topics and discussing it as a group – I couldn’t ask for more!

I am hoping that the effects of all this champagne on an empty stomach will soon wear off because I have to go out and take photos this evening and they don’t want to be blurry.

The southern rail network went completely to pieces today or least the part I was intending to use did. No less than three broken down trains caused such major delays that I got on a train that was nominally called the 7.31am to London but it’s departure time was in fact 10am. In point of fact I wasn’t really technically entitled to be on that train as I only had a cheap day return but in one of those quirks of fate today was a day for travelling free anyway with no one checking tickets and all the barriers open. That irked me I can tell you. I was only going into Eastbourne to visit my dentist which I was unable to do because the train was about twenty minutes too late for me to get there and I would have turned round and gone home but I had already bought me a ticket so I was determined to use it. To then face a journey I could have done ticketless was definitely irksome. Added to which there was a curmudgeonly old gent on the platform who wished to engage me in a tirade against the railway but my only real problem with the whole thing was having paid for a ticket no one looked at and that wasn’t his beef at all. I wasn’t agitated about the inefficiency of the rail network. I let all that sort of thing go right over my head, people are always complaining too much. I went into a chemist recently and asked for an item which the assistant was unable to furnish me with because the pharmacist wasn’t back from her lunch break, she was very apologetic but I said that it was fine, we all need to have lunch and she was grateful for my uncomplaining attitude. What’s the point in hassling people; it doesn’t make a nicer world. I think I may possibly have contradicted myself in that paragraph somewhat!

While I was in Eastbourne I pottered round the shops for a bit and I tried on a whole load of stuff – only really for the pleasure of seeing me slipping into a size 10 as I didn’t really want to buy anything – then I ambled despondently home, slightly wretched at the lack of usefulness in my day.

I did however get my Santa finished. See below.