Podward

"Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates." -- The Kybalion

I spent a little while today packing five years of my working life into a few boxes. My eyes leaked a bit - it was the dust, the dust I tell you! I'm not a cry-baby - honest.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune...".

I did Julius Caesar at O'level (it's wot we had in the olden days before GCSE's). I have had a few floods but so far not one has led to a fortune. One of my favourite lines was the one that starts "Let me have about men who are fat....." and what he should have ended with was " because it makes me look good". But of course there you have the difference between me and Shakespeare, his stuff is still being read hundreds of years later!

I went to an audition yesterday - for a Passion Play - which tours local churches. I am to play Mary the mother of Jesus and I am to sing. And playing Jesus will be.........hubby! Yes, my own, seven-years-my-senior-husband's mother. I really must be doing some renovation work on the old face.

I am glad January is almost behind us. February brings all sorts of exciting things with it. At least I jolly well hope so.

Quote for the day...........

"Hey, this is mine. That's mine. All this is mine. I'm claiming all this as mine. Except that bit. I don't want that bit. But all the rest of this is mine. Hey, this has been a good day. I've eaten five times, I've slept six times, and I've made a lot of things mine. Tomorrow, I'm gonna see if I can't have sex with something."

Ok so I haven't exactly had this kind of day but I probably ate five times. Five times too many that is. Diets would be so much easier if I liked salad more than chocolate. And I get cranky. Grrrrr, don't ruffle me or I'll bite you!

Brambles in the winter have some of the most incredible colours in their leaves. A deep rich purple through to a glorious almost blood red. They are weeds and grim ones at that but so beautiful at times. I did not, however, find the ones in my garden quite so beautiful and they knew this and tried to bind me up. Me and the secateurs won though.

I have braved the wilderness of my garden two days running. It creates such mixed emotions going out there at this time of year. I get sad for the things that didn't make it and for the bleakness and the drabbery in the shrubbery. But then there's joy in all the little shoots on the plants, all the bulbs shooting up here and there. There's new shoots on Daniel Deronda I noticed today...

http://www.duchyofcornwallnursery.co.uk/plantshop_ext.asp?plid=3496&ptid=2&_page=2&sL=

....such a glorious blue.

I can wax rhapsodic for hours over such things but I do have things to do so I'd better not get carried away................

For anyone who has played with my bunnie, or wishes to, please remember to put her back. Just as well I didn't choose a pussy or that sentence would be censored!

And why did I dream about a hamster, and a man with clenched fists holding a baby. (The bit of the dream where I was walking around with a blanket looking for my daddy is just too embarrasing so I won't mention that bit!)

I looked at my hands just now and one was purple where it had been on the mouse and the other was white with pink patches. The mouse hand gets soooo cold. Or should that be mouse paw. Paw as a church mouse.

It really hit home yesterday that I will no longer see the colleague I have shared an office with for several years. She is not moving to the new site with me and I must say farewell. She is a quiet, mousey lady who seldom talks to anyone but we have always got on ok and with me she can be quite chatty. And I can ramble on, and she laughs at my little stories and I know I shall miss her.

I wonder if I should get her a mini-me - it would be quite useful to split myself in two occasionally. It would be quite useful to have another me at home sometimes. One who does the housework, smiles sweetly and beneficently on all and doesn’t have a mind or aspirations of its own. A friend told me ‘surrendered’ wives are usually happier! But I was that quiet, mousey creature for a long time. Or it could be rabbity creature since I was born in the year of the rabbit. But perhaps there’s a were-rabbit inside all rabbits. There’s definitely a wild and psychotic look in my eyes at times!
I always put that down to the Baileys or the cocaine heavy blue M&M’s or Red Bull.

I have to go now and eat a pancake…………….

Just don’t know what to say.

I mean it quite literally. I am without words. I am a flowering plant without a single bud, I am blind.

Like a dry river bed. No merry, chattering water tinkling across the dry stones of my imagination.

A gash that does not bleed.

I'll go away and come back later............

Having tried Helly's link to googlism I was impressed with how many are actually relevant!

jojo is out there
jojo is around all the islands almost daily
jojo is confused and cannot understand such barbarity
jojo is not completely tamed
jojo is always polite to the other characters met in numberland providing a positive role model without being patronising
jojo is an enjoyable gaming experience only marred and bogged down by horrible character imbalance
jojo is going to be online anytime from now
jojo is seen in japan and everywhere else is massive
jojo is largely uneven and haphazard to control
jojo is not only rare
jojo is a beauty
jojo is totally lacking in the hard rock bombast and prog
jojo is a heart
jojo is a rabbit
jojo is excellent and deserves to be recognized as a superior fighting game
jojo is a tomboy who's not afraid to mix it up with the guys or party down with the girls
jojo is the archenemy of the powerpuff girls
jojo is rock
jojo is a mad inventor of the lex luthor school
jojo is an elliptical design and was one of the smaller kites in the test
jojo is right
jojo is our future
jojo is considered the prime suspect
jojo is it's not your basic beat 'em up
jojo is quite capable of finding other men attractive
jojo is about to get away
jojo is not lonely
jojo is a unique atlantic bottlenose dolphin who has been living and playing in the shallow waters of the turks and caicos islands in the west indies since 1980

Oh how I ache to stretch out my toes in long warm summer grass……

Stretch them in any sort of grass today and they’d soon fall off and I’d lose them and then they’d get caught up in the lawnmower, come the first spring cut…… – I am so hacked off with the cold.

It’s so beastly. I turned up at dancing yesterday looking like a deranged psycho, (ok more like a deranged psycho), because the cold stung my eyes so much.

Re-read some earlier stuff and realise how much darker things have become. Once the insouciance of summer drains away it leaves me sombre and dark. Can really see it sometimes.

So let’s try and cheer up a bit shall we? Hm?

I am lunching out today. I lunched out yesterday. I haven’t lunched for weeks and weeks and two come along together. Which is nice.

But before I go out I must paint a little more of my tree. Familiar with The Faraway Tree? I am painting it in my toilet. Not in the pan you understand, on the wall. The other wall has the Yellow Brick Road on. It’s a work in progress and has been for about a year. The tree bit goes up the wall and in the canopy above is the attic hatch where I go to row. That’s row not row. As we have skylights now I could take my painting stuff up there as well really but I don’t think I would be able to persuade even the most adventurous soul to pose nude in my attic. I quite like the idea of climbing a tree and entering another world above my head. A form of escapism I suppose!

I liked the whole idea of the four thing (Helly et al) but couldn't do all them justice so I changed them a little..........

Four jobs I would be dead good at…
1.
2.
3.
4.

Four parts I would love to have played
1. Queen Elizabeth in Blackadder Second
2. Mrs Doyle in Father Ted
3. Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing
4. Anyone who gets to kiss Harrison Ford

Four places I would like to live:
1. Near the Helford
2. Near St Ives
3. Near St Clement
4. Another Cornish place

Four movies I never want to see again:
1. Don’t Look Now
2. Alien
3. Cheaper by the Dozen
4. Mrs Doubtfire (only cos the girlie has watched it like a million times)

Four words I have not yet used in any post but would like to:
1. Defenestration
2. Tumescent
3. Ululating
4. Frenetically

Four foods you won’t find me eating:
1. Cherries – make me swell up
2. Parsnips – make me gag
3. Beef – makes me sad
4. Red Bull – makes my eyes spin round in circles

Four songs I can sing all the words to without thinking about it:
1. Bat Out Of Hell
2. Wonderful Tonight
3. My Johnny Was a Shoemaker
4. Three Blind Mice

Four things I wanted as a child but didn’t have:
1. Mousetrap
2. Etch-a-sketch
3. A Bay City Rollers outfit
4. A social worker – it would take too long to explain!

How mean is that!

The girlie just forced me to have a huge dollop of Baileys and two chocolates. She knows I’m on a diet. Sabotage, that’s what it is, sabotage. I know what it is, she wants my wardrobe!

What a little beastie – don’t you think.

A great change has come upon me and it is rocking me on my feet. It is I tell you. A huge shift in the space-time continuum. A rift, a rent, in the fabric of the universe.

Ok, well, not really but we have moved the computer upstairs after having had it downstairs since… well since always. It is a whole big thing to get my head round. My life has suffered a sea change. The Tempest that’s corrupted from. I played Miranda, many years ago, when I was young and beautiful, well when I was young anyway!!

Anyway now I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing or if my name’s Sarah.

My mother told me a story of her trip out today. She got chatting to a kilt-wearing gentleman (from Aberdeen originally), in a ladies toilet, about my mothers Scottish ancestry while he was banging on the door of the cubicle his wife was in.
My mother is very special.

Piggy in the Middle

Hated it as a game – always the ended up being the piggy. Partly because of my complete lack of ball skills. There’s only one game I can play (well) that involves ball control and it’s a while since I played that.

Caught in the crossfire.

Why do people have to be so crappy to each other? There’s always a bystander or two that gets injured. Like in a Carry On film where someone’s throwing a custard pie at someone else and it’s the poor sod in the middle that gets covered in doodah.

That’s me standing there. Covered in doodah.

Hey ho

Let’s move onto flowers.

Nasturtiums. Or masturshalums if you like. I haven’t grown them for a few years. I might have another go at those this year. They can rampage. They can take over a largish area if they are content and in the right place. And the flowers do look pretty in a salad. I thought of them this morning when I was looking at my white birth mark It is shaped like a nasturtium flower. I never really thought about that before. It’s shape. A little white tattoo in the shape of a flower. . You can use nasturtium seeds like capers as well. So more or less all the plant can be ingested. If you’re eating outside you could just drape a section of the plant across a salad bowl and it saves the bother of picking it.

I wonder if those leaves would taste good covered in chocolate.

Ok

I don't claim to be a poet. I simply write stuff and I write simply.

I don't like being bound by rules. I am a woman, which is half the problem there. I am a sensitive, and to be honest, overly-romantic person and tend to be a bit sloppy and soppy. Some of what I write appeals to some people and that is way more than I have ever expected.

You can accuse me of being hypersensitive here if you like in responding to criticism with defensive excuses. There are no excuses for laziness and I admit straight off I am lazy and I write what I feel like writing. I leave most untrimmed because they are of the moment and born of feelings, invariably love, of some one or some thing or some place. I am not ashamed of that.

As for the rule-bound book of poetry writing - this is a poem of a type called Kyrielle and it conforms to the 'rules'

Here where we looked across the bay
As sunlight droplets skip and play
On dancing sequin covered sea,
There’s still a trace of you and me

Visiting places we have been
Seeing the glories we have seen
Keeping you fresh in memory
There’s still a trace of you and me

Dreaming

I dreamed
For a moment
And fell into your eyes
In surprise

Bewildered
For a moment
And I realised you
Never knew

I woke at 2.00am which made it about two and a half hours sleep.

Decided against tossing and turning as hubby has to go to work very early and it’s not fair to disturb someone else’s sleep. So I made myself a cup of tea and frittered away some time with a jigsaw. Jigsaws are very Virgo things really. The neatly putting together of pieces, controlling the elements and making tidy patterns. A lot easier than the jigsaw puzzle that is life where the pieces keep changing shape. In life all the elements get out of control and wiggledy.

I am filled with self-loathing right now. At times I behave in a way that appals me and I feel revulsion for the un-selfless-ness I am so capable of. I have not been a good friend today (or yesterday as it is now) and I don’t like myself much. And even this is self-indulgent self-pity!

The trouble is that someone who can make me laugh becomes very compelling and then I end up neglecting the people I should be giving time to. It has been a week of highs and lows. A rollercoaster. I suppose those that are important will overlook my shortcomings and I hope I can properly appreciate that generosity. We are what we are I guess, it’s just that I don’t always like what I are.

It’s 4 in the morning and this is all going to sound really dumb by 9.00am. It’s the wine. It always induces melancholy. But I had to stop doing the jigsaw because Katie kept sitting on it and scooping up the pieces in her paws. She isn’t any good at jigsaws.

Hello everybody. Said a la Nick Riviera! Of course you can’t tell how good my accent was just then. Which is probably just as well.

I am off out soon to do more Morrising. Joining another group tonight to see how it goes in an established set-up. I shall probably make a complete teet of myself but, hey, I’m getting used to that now!

Morris is the perfect antidote to a hard day at the office. It completely empties what passes for my brain and by the end of the evening I am all tickity. It wasn’t a very hard day at the office really, there were some pleasant moments. Leaving the building for example was a splendid moment. And worthy of repetition. Fortunately it is one of the things that I get to do every day at work. Leave at the end of the day!

Now how do you feel about hairy chests? Better hairy or smooth? I know which I prefer but what is the general consensus of opinion?

A symposium = a convivial meeting for drinking, music, and intellectual discussion among the ancient Greeks.

So could that be a convivial meeting for ancient geeks. I wonder if for geeks it should be sim-posium. Well enough of the ramblings………

I just had a pointless walk to work. I only went in to do a bit of tidying up but I couldn’t get into the room I needed to so I walked home again. And it rained – again. I am damp – AGAIN. Darnit. Dang nabbit. Well the journey wasn’t entirely wasted as I managed to get another pair of boots. My feet are size 6, the girlie is 7/8, she wears most of my clothes but I did think my footwear was safe – not so! I’ve found it’s probably just easier to buy two of the things I really like.

So now I’m killing time and putting off the stuff I really should be doing. I should be printing 630 flyers for a play and stapling 150 brochures and……….well you get the idea!

I can procrastinate. I can do it so well I could win awards for it. I could procrastinate for England. That’s if I could actually be bothered. I always wonder if I would have got round to having children if fate hadn’t popped them into my life schedule. They were happy accidents. I often hear about people planning to start a family. Deciding when they are going to develop an infant. I can’t get my head round that one at all. I kind of got the idea they were these little things that crash-landed in your life when you least expect it. But that is just my personal experience of course. Little explosions of colour on the canvas of life.

I really must get on with stuff, groan, groan, groan.

There's got to be a bright side, after all, if you have your head cut off you won't have the bother of cleaning your teeth anymore....

Now let's all have a little sing song

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Repeat to fade...

It rained on me today – a lot, and I feel slightly damp around the edges. Dark clouds rolled menacingly around the sky and there was unrest today at the factory. Ho hum.

When my babies were little, and having a sad moment, I scooped them into my arms and gave a hug. There are days I want to do that for people who are having a sad moment but of course it’s not always appropriate and there’s a feeling of impotence then.

I picked something up the other day. I saw it lying there and I thought, yes, that’s interesting. It was a piece of advertising for Seat but all I could see staring up at me was the slogan ‘I am not a sheep’. A message. No I don’t mean the car bit! So I picked it up and put it in my back pocket. I’ve torn off the rest of the advertising crap of course. Just kept the slogan. On the other side it says ‘I will not conform to stereotypes’. I need a reminder now and then. I’ll put it in my diary.

Some days I look at working women and think ‘Jeez I’m scruffy’, I should maybe buy something tailored and smart. Fortunately I remember who I am before I make a purchasing error. I don’t do smart. I don’t do suits.

I had a fright today. I don’t wear make-up. Well I do on occasions. Those occasions being when I’m on stage and when I go out for a meal, the first because it’s necessary and the second because when the wine goes to my nose it turns pink. A kind of RED-pink! Like some sort of deranged clown. Anyway back to the fright. The rain attack caused me to take refuge in Tesco and my glasses were so steamed up I made straight for the ladies before I could blunder into some unsuspecting shopper and cause an accident. The face that peered back at me from the mirror looked like something from the Munsters! Euuugh.

It prompted me to indulge in the purchase of a lippie. Called ‘Nude’ – I liked the name really. The only function of lipstick as far as I can see is to identify which cup you had coffee in. Ah, one of those foolish, vain moments. I have to laugh at my own vanity sometimes!

Today’s pointless and irrelevant question - if there’s a bare-faced lie is there a bearded one and what is the difference?

Little bargain = two miniature bottles of Baileys and three chocs in a jolly tin for £2. Shame I just started a ten week diet. Ah well, I can just sniff the tin from time to time. But the expiry date is July 06 so…………

Went shopping yesterday with the girlie. She bought loads of pairs of shoes – well two pairs. And on my itinerary, the Nemesis. Bras. I hate them. Well I hate shopping for them. They look so pretty and attractive dangling innocently from their hangers but they are like sirens luring you in with their beauty and then imprisoning you with tortuous spider webs of elastic and wire. Plucking a size at random, say 36C, one would suppose that all bras that claim to be 36C are the same size. Incorrect. It is possible to select 12 36Cs and they will be 12 different sizes to fit 12 different busts.

Have you ever been to wondir.com? It is a bizarre but intriguing place. Weird and wondirful!

Top TV moment this week had to be Jeremy Paxman wiping a tear from his eye. Mind you, Richard Fleeshman singing Moondance was a close second!

I feel kind of restless and fidgety at the moment. It isn’t helped by the fact that I am in limbo at work. I have to move to a different site at the end of the month and I am going back and forth between the two. I like the flexibility but it is hard to settle to anything with feeling restless and unsettled anyway.

How long is this supposed to last? This ‘mid-life crisis’ stuff. Hubby faces retirement in 2 years. A time for human waste products hitting wind generating device. I feel somewhat like I’ve been made redundant from my ‘job’ of ‘full-time mother’ as my baby is 16 (and way more mature and sensible than me anyway) and I’m still quite ‘young’. Being a mother has been a fab career really. Flexible hours and being my own boss suited me down to the ground and there was ultimately a real feeling of job satisfaction, a sense of achievement. The pay was crap of course. But then money means nothing if love what you do and do what you love. Ooo I really am waffling now………… That’s not to say I don’t enjoy my ‘work’ work. The only problem is when people tell me what to do.

My mother and I were discussing smacking the other day. She and I both hold similar views on the subject. She said that I needed a smack occasionally because I was the sort of child who if told not to do something would immediately do precisely that. I wonder if I should try and grow out of that now.

What a difference a day makes. The other day I was pleased to be going on one jolly, now I have three to look forward to. Including Barcelona. They are in February and March which are rather uninspiring months really. They’re still cold, sometimes overly damp and the garden is heavy weather. So it’s nice to have a couple or three distractions. And after that it will be chocolate time, sorry, Easter. And in April and May my garden starts to put its new Spring clothes on.

Just got to get through January!

I realise I have not updated on the amaryllis for a few days. So I shall put that right straight away. There is now a hands length of growth. That is to say one of my hands, which are about……….this long! Reading about them on the web it says they are a bit poisonous but safe to handle – so, like other ‘beautiful ladies’ then?

Back on the rowing machine after a long break….feels sooo good. I don’t know if the added exercise is making me sleep heavier but I keep dreaming too. Not unpleasant at all, but because they are sweet dreams it makes it soo much harder to get up and go to work. Work bears no resemblance to a sweet dream. Although there are moments……..*closes eyes and remembers hand sliding into deep tin of chocolates*……aaah, orgasmic……the long, smooth, creamy shaft of a toffee baton….…er, sorry, where was I?

Ahem, *clears throat, straightens glasses, tidies hair*.

Chess. I realised, doofus that I am, that there is a whole bunch of stuff on the web so why not chess. I found some! A craving satisfied. I’m too rusty to play against a real person so it’s good to have a computer telling you when you are making a dumb move where a real person would be sniggering behind their hand waiting to checkmate.

Vegetarian haggis, hm, interesting………….

Broken Mirror

The broken mirror leans against rough, bare bricks,
Sunlight hits the broken edges of the glass
And fractures the light into dancing rainbows.

Time, the great healer of all our doleful sorrows
Will not mend this break but where she bleeds,
She bleeds in a myriad of sparkling colours.

Answers to some of life’s puzzling little questions…………..

What is love? Love is (or was) a thin silk used for ribbons, with narrow satin stripes.

What is happiness? Happiness is an album by Fridge released September 24, 2001.

What is friendship? The friendship was a First Fleet transport ship, built in Scarborough in 1784.

Any more.............?

Having re-read yesterday’s post I now realise how disjointed it was. Some days are like that aren’t they? Disjointed. Fragmented. Like a jigsaw with the bits out of the box but not assembled. Which reminds me, there are at least two jigsaw puzzles lying around uncompleted in various parts of the house.

I just heard today that I can go on a jolly to Oxford in March. A meeting with overnights basically. Ok it’s not wildly exciting but it’s a break from routine, something different. My companion says I don’t drink enough but when I see what he looks like over breakfast in the morning I’m not sorry to limit the intake. Sadly the jolly to Rio de Janeiro isn’t happening, it’s now going to be Barcelona and we may not even be going on that - but never mind, there’ll be something else..…somewhere.....sometime!

Morris resumes this evening, my bells are rusty and the less said about my sticks the better. Actually my bells aren’t rusty but my bell legs sure are. So I am hoping not to trip over my own ineptitude this evening as a squashy bleeding nose is not a good look. For those with a knowledge of Cotswold Morris we are learning a new dance in the Eynsham tradition. Well it involves flapping hankies and a lot of stamping. So there you are.

And now I must away to the kitchen to make culinary magic………

I couldn't wake up this morning. This is partly because I stayed up last night to finish The Wasp Factory. I've now started on something lighter for a wee while, it is January after all and that's depressing enough.

Worked, yes worked, until after 8.30pm and now my head feels fuzzy and tired. I wanted to go swimming today but when I got to the pool they had decided to close at 4 o/c and I turned up at....4 o/c. So I went back to work instead. Then we had a meeting.........so I'm tired!

What is blushing for, for goodness sake, and why the hell do I still have such a problem with it, I'm 42 not 14. And don't get me started on spots!

Peter Capaldi is very shouty in The Thick of It and he was such a soft sweetie in Local Hero. Best Local Hero quote is of course 'And are there 2 g's in Bugger Off' and the music is so lilting and lovely, much watch it sometime.

Balderdash and Piffle redeamed itself this week, last week I was slightly irritated by the insistence of the word 'gay' meaning homosexual in the early part of the century - no, the last one, not this one, century that is - people used the word differently then and the evidence for its newer meaning was rubbish quite frankly.

I'm just fussing really, I think I should stop here and put my tired old eyes to bed. Well my eyes aren't 'old' particularly, they are my age, which in some eyes would be old I guess.

As I'm rambling I should really ramble off to night-nights.

Night!

The chocorocko went down very well at the party and the plate was cleared. I had visions of taking them all back home again. Admittedly quite a few went into a 9 year old boy who felt the leaves inside the chocolate were unnecessary! But quite a few other people were intrigued and were prepared to give them a try. The general consensus of opinion was that the chocolate could have been thinner as it overwhelmed the rocket so that’s something to bear in mind for next time!

I’m hoping to spot it soon…….you know…..the decoration that gets missed and usually evades capture until one fine day in February when the sun shines on it and you think ‘oh fiddling doodah’. Hauled all the boxes back into the attic this morning, including the length of tinsel Katie had to kill several times. You can’t trust that tinsel – it’s so tricksy. A little dysoning required now! The church I used to attend had a lovely big tree every year which we decorated and it looked jolly fab. Then one year the taking down part got forgotten and it was still sparkling and twinkling in March. So superstition? Unlucky? Well shortly after that the congregation abandoned the church and last year it caught fire. Oooh, get those decs down!!

A fact you may or may not believe about me. I used to run Sunday School. Even I don’t believe and I know it’s true!

Well what was that post all about………..January plays with the mind…….

Chocorocko

As I was saying…..bridges. I love the Royal Albert Bridge {IKB} across the Tamar. One of my favourite views is from the train as it crosses the Tamar into Plymouth. On a sunny day it is spectacular. The train journey between London and Penzance has some truly sensational vistas once you’ve gone a good piece west and the area round Dawlish Warren is….well…..I shall run out of superlatives.

And moving swiftly on….

Now for a slightly mad tale. Fat Fighters - "Dust is low in fat so you can eat as much dust as you like." Etc. A group of us at work are preparing to tackle our xmas flabby bits with a name and shame programme of weight loss amidst the jeers and tongue-lashing of colleagues, ach, all good fun. And it came up in discussion that lettuce would be more palatable with a chocolate coating (you’ll never guess who said that!). Added to which of course the chocolate would then become calorie free – she says hopefully! Anyhow I thought about it for a bit. What would salad leaves coated in chocolate really be like? Can you guess where this is heading…..Yep you guessed, I melted some of my delicious, and in this instance organic, fair-trade, chocolate in a bowl.

Obviously you don’t really want to dunk a chunk of Iceberg in chocolate and even your traditional round lettuce is a bit on the hefty side but a few rocket leaves and a few young spinach leaves………………….hey I like that, ‘dunk a chunk’.

They are sooo much fun and surprisingly yum. The rocket especially. And the best mix for the chocolate is just over half dark, just under half milk. As I have to provide a plate of party food for a….party…….tomorrow I am definitely going to take some ‘chocorocko’ leaves – you heard it here first! – I’ll let you know the response!!

Oh and good TV……..

Three Men in a Boat was soooooo funny. A very watchable couple of hour’s television. Has to be if it’s to peel me away from something else and I actually sit down without a second pastime on the go. I’ve always loved the book and it still reads as funny after many, many perambulations through its pages. Time to browse the bookshelf....

Boy, am I bushed. Plum tuckered out and all that. Thought I was finishing at 2 but didn’t leave until 6. So I am cream-crackered. On the subject of crackers - I just had a couple of crackers with black bits in. They weren’t poppy seeds they were bits of pepper so my mouth is a little surprised and strangely warm.

“So had Drippy and Strangely Brown” – BA again!

You know how you get days that have stuff in that you didn’t expect. Hence a sense of befuddlement reigns in my brains.

I have not worked well on the dieting front today and as for behind, the less said the better. Must try harder – a phrase that featured more than once in school reports. But it really is most unfair to have a Christmas Do in January when one is wobbly and lardy. Probably have to wear a large sack……..with a few sequins on maybe!

Sequins reminded me of this verse...

Here where we looked across the bay
As sunlight droplets skip and play
On dancing sequin covered sea,
There’s still a trace of you and me

This is a disjointed train of thoughts. Anyone like trains…. The Titfield Thunderbolt, now there’s a good film! The boy child used to watch it over and over when he was younger – and still liked trains!

Not far from us is a lovely walk along the track of an old railway, long since passed on thanks to Dr Beeching. It is a fabulous walk in the summer, masses of honeysuckle in the hedgerows etc. and peace. It peters out at the point marking the beginning of a viaduct. The viaduct is also long gone and I would so much have liked to have seen it. I’m not that excited by bricks and mortar in general but bridges are always fascinating and somehow glorious in their feats of engineering. If you follow the track as far as you can go, fighting your way through the overgrowth, there are still piles of bricks, half buried in the earth. Kind of sad really…

And on the subject of bridges………..no I will come back to that on another occasion.

Well what can I say
About today
A pile of shite
Well no not quite

Ok so it wasn’t that bad! Like the curate’s egg, good in parts. Although in fact the there were no parts of the egg that were ok in the phrase’s origin…I believe. But the day was not wholly bad and not wholly good either. So let’s scrap the crap and dwell on the swell.

Good point number 1 – tried on 2 two size 14 skirts and they didn’t fit, too loose!
Good point number 2 – didn’t spend much money
Good point number 3 – did a lot of walking and some swimming
Good point number 4 – a nice evening in with the girlie

I haven’t been swimming for ages. I didn’t do a huge lot of swimming but I did get wet all over. Being quite myopic, swimming is a funny old game. It can be quite a puzzle sometimes if the thing bobbing about in front is coming towards or going away. Can’t tell really unless they are under my nose. And you really don’t want someone’s swimming-trunked bottom under your nose do you! I like the clean smell of swimming though. I know its bleach and bleach is bad news but it smells clean. I like to inhale my forearms after swimming.

Why do cats think they can be helpful in the sewing department? The girlie is trying, trying, to make a bag for college. Both cats have tried to help by sitting on the fabric and Katie has just ‘killed’ a length of silk. Dead, yep, it’s dead. Dead as a can of spam. I’m sure that’s a Dwarfer quote too!

I was reading somewhere……….maybe I should be putting this in another blog but hey I’m here now…….anyway I was reading…yeah yeah I know, dangerous stuff. Well I was reading (as I said) - in The New Scientist I think - that our health is adversely affected by the overly uniform nature of the surfaces we walk upon. Apparently the increased incidence of raised blood pressure, DVT’s and varicose veins can possibly be linked to our too smooth foot terrain. A couple of reflexologists from the US suggest making a walkway from stuff like broom handles, bamboo poles, hosepipes, gravel, pebbles, dried peas, driftwood, fallen logs, sand, doormats and strips of turf to exercise on. That sounds like a typical walk round my garden to me. Although I don’t usually allow peas to get near the ground and dry, that would be such a waste!
And people have always thought I was mad to walk around my garden barefoot. Ha! Mind you the holly leaves take some work. When I was a little girl, even when I was a big girl actually, I could run down our pebbly beach barefoot. I could I tell you. I just didn’t realise how good it was for me…

And also on the subject of reading I made a valiant effort to get on with reading The Wasp Factory only to plunge straight into a chapter with a grisly bit of murder in it. I think I put it down the last time because it had a vomitty bit in and as that is my long term phobia……. And Iain Banks looked so normal on University Challenge!

I had control of the TV last night woo woo and wallowed in a little UC, some balderdash and piffle and topped it off with a smattering of political satire. The girlie put her head round the door and pulled at face at my televisual feast and took a DVD away – something trivial. Aw come on can’t I every once in while watch what I want! I like trivial too!

Just realised I may have started to sound a bit stuffy and not fluffy so here’s one of those puzzling questions. Why when you open a delicious Amicelli does the top inch fall off and land on the floor? Ah well I brushed the dust off…

How lovely – I have just been handed a very large G & T! Ooh and the lemon is all tart on my tongue and lips. Lemon makes your lips go all funny…

And moving swiftly on.

I just have spent a couple of hours trying to re-plan my website – www.jojoturnbull.co.uk – so a drink is most welcome although I’m not sure whether the content might need to be checked carefully later. Of the website that is. 2006 doesn’t seem to have made me less rambly. It will probably take the rest of the month to get the site done but hopefully it will be a bit tidier and the links will work better etc. Instead of having my own rather whacky blog on there I will have a link to this one (and my others http://sillytoe.blog.co.uk/ & http://titaniasdream.blog.co.uk/) so I may have to read back and monitor the content of my blogs. But I don’t know really maybe I should just brazen it out, someone recently told me that I am who I am and ok - jeez I hope he meant it! Otherwise I’m out of personas… or should that be personae. Dang…

My amaryllis has a lot of pokey bits now – I thought you would all like to know that!

Oh wow, just found this quote that the girlie and I were talking about earlier – anyone know what series, what episode and who said it (well of course I know!)
"Erm, I think we're losing sight of the real issue here, which is 'What are we gonna call ourselves?' Erm, and I think it comes down to a choice between 'The League Against Salivating Monsters' or my own personal preference, which is 'The Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society'. Erm, one drawback with that - the abbreviation is 'CLITORIS'."

I may have to stop here as the gin has made all the letters b ounc e ab out a l love….r thepa ge

Back later agillators

'Toad fondler' - oh no, someone knows!!!!!

Dancing Through the Night

We danced away the midnight moon,
Talked the stars from the velvet sky
And with the blanket of dawn mist
Tucked beneath our weary chins,
Closed our eyes on the waking world
And slept in yesterdays’ shoes.

Once more we throw ourselves into a brand new year. To see how quick we can mess it up! 2005 was certainly a bit of an anus for so so many people. But there are usually a few ups in there as well as downs. Even if the ups are just little ones and the downs are whopping great biggies. Actually the Downs, the Sussex Downs, are quite lovely and well worth a ramble over. And talking of rambling over I am doing it again, rambling.

Anyhow 2006 started off with auspicious vibrations. Well no not really. It started with a thumping great headache, a gentleman feeling vastly sorry for himself and a text message from a friend at 1 am in serious emotional disorder! Added to which neither of my wee darlings replied to my New Year messages so I shall be spanking them later. It is grey and damp also. Jeez I am trying to be positive but the odds are stacked up the other way right now!

So as I have myself a little space this morning I have tried to get into a more positive vibration on a personal level. I have exercised, I have showered, I have meditated, I have consulted the cards and now, the ultimate!, I am onto caffeine and maltesers. Works every time.

My boy child spoke to me severely yesterday. He said I am really making a meal of my mid-life crisis and that most people just go in and come out the other side. It does make me laugh......especially as I know he'll get to my age one day and whereas I am a woman he will only be a man!

The world is my oyster........if only I liked oysters.....