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.

The weekend of not doing much was a lovely island in between two weeks and it went much too quickly. Although I didn’t do much I did manage to get a few slabs laid. I have reorganised my vegetable garden a bit - made new raised beds (using my nice new tools!) which has meant taking up all the paths to re-lay them slightly to the left, or right. It has irked me for years that all the beds were different sizes and the paths didn’t meet up in quite the right places, it upset my Virgoan need for neat. I now have all the beds exactly the same size - and I measured and re-measured and spirit-levelled the damn things until I nearly went potty – and all the paths should now meet up and match corners. I don’t have a great deal of patience though and when I want to do a job, I want it done and done there and then. I am having to learn patience however as the slabs I am laying are much bigger and heavier than the previous ones – which means they should lay better - and I just can’t manage too many in a day. Four was really quite an achievement…for a weedy girl!

There have been moments of the day that have been magical. Actually, if I’m honest it was just the one moment but it did last a little while. I’ve missed out on my swimming for the last two Fridays because of the non-cold – which is still, incidentally, hanging round masquerading as a cough. Cue shuffling, tuberculotic hacking.

So having missed the exercise and the compelling smell of chlorine on the skin – I am to be found on Friday afternoons sniffing my forearms a lot – I was keen to get back to my Friday lunchtime treat of a few laps of the pool. I arrived to find the pool completely empty, unusually, and it was serenely blissful to do my lengths in the tranquillity of aloneness. Alone, that is, apart from my own personal life guard, a young man who worked his net alongside me. I don’t know if I looked like a feeble middle-aged woman that might get into difficulties easily or have a sudden heart attack in the pool and need fishing out but I prefer the illusion that my luscious mermaid form gliding through the water was drawing him like a moth to a flame.

Anyway it was quite the most perfect part of the day.

Other parts of it were less adequate of course like the moments of paranoia about people not replying to messages and mails. I don’t know why I get like that – I should get counselling for that maybe!

This evening we went to watch a local group performing The Gondoliers. It was like the curate’s egg, best with a pinch of salt – and a teaspoon. A moderned up version of the G&S classic which luckily had enough novelties in it to keep us awake during the duller tunes. There are always a few numbers in any musical which if it were on television could be usefully used as a kettle or loo stop – but in the theatre you are trapped in your seat and all you can comfortably do is rest your eyes for a few moments. During the interval my mother snared another dead animal story – the tale of a hamster decapitated by a fold-up bed – she is a magnet for these things.

I am looking forward now to a weekend of not very much – ah perfect.

We just finished watching Trinny and Susanna fondling the nation’s boobs. I have to say that it would be a damn sight easier for women to wear the right size bra if bras were made to the same dimensions for each size but they aren’t of course. I didn’t see it all so I don’t know if they covered what women do with mismatched boobs. I guess, like me, you have to accommodate the biggie and use any space left the other side for storage… small bottle of perfume, packet of tissues, biro, spare pair of shoes, etc. And I wasn’t entirely convinced that ‘Zadok the Priest’ was the most fitting pieces of music for nearly a thousand women to launch their bras into the sky to either.

In spite of some sunny and unseasonably mild days it is becoming increasingly clear that Christmas is not far away and so tomorrow the girlie is dragging me out to do some Christmas shopping. I’m nervous at the thought of all that fake snow and be-tinselled nonsense although it’s still quite early for full saturation level – nervous but excited! It’ll be nice to enjoy my day off as a day off, as I haven’t done so for a few weeks, and much as I love work I need a change of scene…

Time to catch up with the internet – sometimes life gets in the way of the important stuff!

The unending saga of the non-cold continues – I have lost my voice. We completely missed out the stage when it sounds husky-sexy and it just isn’t working at all. I still feel absolutely fine, tip top and full of beans but I sound dreadful. And I am a talker so this is really cramping my style. I was supposed to be trailing round places chatting to peops today but had to knock that one on the head – such a pain. I am supposed to be playing a part in a murder mystery play tomorrow and it’s starting to look like it might not the best idea in the world.

Stuff happens.

The other day our next door neighbour – a bit of a fruit loop – had water gushing out and overflowing from the pipe at the front of the house; it went on for hours and was coming from her bathroom. Eventually I had to persuade to hubby to go round and check things out. He was somewhat reluctant as he had visions of her being dead in the bath – in his line of work that’s not a novelty. He was gone for ages. When he eventually reappeared he said that all was now well, a simple problem, the pipe at the back of the house was leaking so she had been running the bath to ease the problem and fell asleep and forgot about it. It’s frightening to think how much water that wasted – we could have bathed a small elephant and still have some left over for a water balloon. She’s a bit of a liability really, she fell asleep cooking salmon one day and it took days for the smell to dissipate – from OUR house.

And then we have the small problem of trying to talk the mater out of joining a transvestite special interest group……….

Damp soggy Sunday, nearly November and its dark by five. But let’s not be downhearted – it’ll soon be Christmas

We had an ‘in’ day today, partly because my night was disturbed by the lingering cough that developed from the non-cold, so it was an excellent chance to sort stuff.
It was starting to get a bit depressing with books piling up higgledy piggledy all over the house so I created some more shelf space. There was a shelf of soft toys left over from the girlie’s girlie bedroom days which was somewhat out of reach. A great place to shove all those books that we aren’t likely to be re-reading anytime soon. This includes some of the books I would much rather visitors to the house don’t see. Like ‘The House of Windsor’ – I married a royalist but I am definitely not one myself. I wouldn’t say I’m a round-head either of course – the clothes just don’t do it for me. And even though I don’t put it about a lot I like a drink or two and I’m not averse to having a good time.

Another title that got relegated is ‘Success with House Plants’ – my success with house plants is totally dependent on whether the plants are tough enough to endure my relaxed level of care. Although that said I have managed to keep a couple of African Violets going for several years now and they are at present sending up the most exquisite flower heads following a few parched, near-death months.

And the ‘Buses Annual’ isn’t likely to be perused too often as none of us is inclined to bus anorak.

Some books even made it out of the bookcases altogether, ‘Flower Arranging’ for example – OMG how out of date is that! I never really did it anyway – arrange flowers that is – I am too freestyle for that sort of nonsense. It’s like painting by numbers. ‘Picture it in Needlepoint’ is also in the out pile. I am not entirely sure how I came to purchase that one unless it was a book club buy. I have not managed in twenty years to find a window in my life to start needlepoint and it is not likely to change in the next twenty. In fact the book is needlepointless to me.

It has been very cathartic sorting out messy places today.

BTW I always liked the song Words by F R David and it haunted me for many years. It is nice to see that he is still singing and making music.

A friend of mine was supposed to be coming for a cup of tea this afternoon but even though I baked a lovely chocolate cake and got some home-made scones out of the freezer, scraped the skin off the extra thick cream, etc. etc. it was a no-show. Still, it got the house nice and tidy. And the cake wasn’t wasted either as we had guest for dinner. Guest, not guests. The boy invited himself round for a feed – which was nice. We (the girlie and meself) helped out a bit with his decorating in the morning - it wasn’t a huge contribution in fact but we did what we could. We made a massive cloud of dust from sanding the walls and then splashed some paint around - and then walked away. Well to be fair we can’t stay longer than it takes for a bladder to fill because there is a limited toilet facility

It was inevitably going to be a day of mixed blessings, on our way out this morning we saw a tree with a whole herd of magpies in it. Sorry that should have been tidings of magpies. Thereafter for the rest of the day I kept seeing single, one-for-sorrow magpies. I don’t quite know what the significance of a huge tidings of magpies would be but it’s got to be interesting hasn’t it. And how long does it last anyway! Does the one-for-sorrow sorrow last until the next magpie, for the day, or for an indefinite period? Information is not too clear on this point.

The girlie was watching a snatchling of Sally Jesse Raphael this afternoon. There were ‘angry kids’ on it. One’s heart goes out to the parents of these children because it is clear to all and sundry that these unpleasant progeny should be terminated. They should be put down; they should be put out of our misery. A dog that is so violent that it mauls a child to death would be given a lethal injection so does not the same apply to a child that squeezes the life out of a pet with his bare hands. Ah no that is different - of course. It did seem a little ridiculous when SJR asked the angelic looking rabbit murderer why he would want to do that to a loved pet. Jeez he’s an eight year old boy – der! Let’s face it; the majority of eight year old boys have a fascination for taking things apart. My boy was eight at one time and he liked to take things apart – mostly with a screwdriver – but admittedly that didn’t run to animals.

We did a lot of Wheatley this evening. A whole bunch of Wheatley dances but by the end of the evening they were all starting to merge into one long complicated mass of trunkles and hankles, sorry hankies. It hasn’t helped that my non-event cold has been trying to go for a higher profile. It’s my own fault to making such disparaging remarks; I spent the night tossing and turning with an explosion of congestion and then spent today trying to stem the nose dripping. Several people have now said I have a cold and I still refuse to accept it but it did affect my stamina this evening, making me feel quite feverish and light headed after the first hour of dancing. And Wheatley isn’t a sedate tradition, it’s energetic.

It’s just as well I have a few days off then. I don’t have much planned particularly which is probably the best way to be….

The weekend is my oyster so to speak and it starts here.

I have been spending a bit of time trying to get to grips with facebook. I only know a few random people on it and it takes me a while to pick up how things work so it’s taxing me at the moment. Trouble is I don’t have very long concentration span……….

I have had a wee cold. It started when I got up yesterday and it has now all but gone. I’ve had this kind of hardly-cold before – just that thick feeling at the back of the nose, throat a little bit stiff, a few sneezes and the odd tickly cough. As colds go it’s absolute rubbish. It isn’t bad enough for a sickie, it doesn’t make my voice sexy and it doesn’t make me want to curl up in bed with hot citrusy drinks. It is no use whatsoever and this afternoon I was so irritated by the whole non-event that I decided to get out into the very fresh air and get all my bulb pots sorted.

There is usually just enough mind-your-own-business growing around the cracks in the patio paving to completely cover my bulb pots. It looks quite pretty really for the two days that the mind-your-own-business retains its green hue. After that it looks a little sad but it does keep the bulbs nice and warm and it discourages the animals from taking them all out and trying to grow them elsewhere. They don’t always agree with my planting. It’s probably badgers; they have strong ideas about garden arrangements. It is absolutely no use erecting a fence without seeking permission from resident badgers as they will just take them down again.

I’m not having as bad a day, week or even couple of weeks as the courier who arrived at work today to pick up a parcel that was not there to collect. He was at the end of his tether with life’s little curves. His cousin had been murdered the week before, his father had been rushed into hospital the night before with kidney failure, and now there was no parcel to pick up. I personally felt that the parcel problem wasn’t on the same sort of scale as the other two events but maybe it was straw that broke the doodah. He collapsed in a heap of dejection and rang his colleague who said that ‘X’ had called this morning to make the arrangement. I said, ‘Well he can’t have, he’s in the Ukraine’. The wee fellow then said could he have a flu jab while he was there. As he left I wished him well for the rest of the day, what else can you do, but I think it wasn’t very likely to improve.

There are lots of firsts in life.

There are significant firsts. Like the first time you fly in an aeroplane or the first time you visit a foreign country. There are less significant firsts. Like the first time you wear a new pair of new shoes or the first time you use an extra large padded envelope to send something. And then of course there are the firsts that aren’t really. Like when you sit down to read a new book and realise you’ve already read it.

This year my firsts have included going to Italy and dancing a Morris jig in front of an audience – pretty memorable firsts as it happens.

But last night saw another first – a first for me that is.

I have never been a great watcher of sport. My parents were very avid watchers of all kind of sporting events. Tennis, cricket, darts, golf, etc. Mind you I will confess to having willingly watched a lot of show jumping as a young teenager because I was mad about horses. For quite a time I never walked anywhere unless I was astride my imaginary horse - a huge embarrassment to my parents I should think. Anyway back to the plot I always found watching sport rather tedious - and to be fair I’m not a player either – so it has never been a viewing choice as an adult.

Last night I chose differently. I watched the rugby world cup final. Not only would that be the first time I have watched an entire rugby match, it is certainly the first time I went off to a pub to do so. I have never been to a pub to watch anything in fact.

I have no idea how rugby works so I couldn’t really be sure whether the players were being good or rubbish but I was quite gripped as there seems to be lots going on the whole time. It does make a big difference though to watch something like that with a lot of people who will make noises at the appropriate times – it’s so much easier to work out what’s good and not so good.

It was a good choice, I had a great time.

I have been trying in the last two days to fill a submission form for an FWA (a USA requirement for research studies) - which is unnecessarily complicated and tortuous. Well actually the form itself is straightforward enough it’s the instructions on how to fill it in that require a degree in Advanced Complication. Anyway having eventually mastered the F***ing Waste of Ages I looked up on the www to see what else the acronym represented – as a kind of light relief you know. And one of the things that FWA stands for is Furry Weekend Atlanta. OMG. Only in America.

http://www.furryweekend.com/

I apologise to any of the blogging fraternity here who happen to be fursuiters but quite frankly the idea of spending several days at a convention dressing in a furry suit and doing lots of activities dressed in a furry suit and meeting hundreds of other people dressed in furry suits sounds more than a little bit crazy. There are loads of vids on youtube too but I haven’t embedded any in here because………well……….because.

Bit of a Billy-no-mates tonight. My usual lift people weren’t available via the telecommunication equipment this evening so I didn’t get out dancing – and added to that the rest of the house members are all out (yep that’s both of them).

I wasn’t feeling gloomy about it earlier on but after an hour or two I find my own company a lot less stimulating.

However, I have sorted out some of the things on my to-do list - the kind of little jobs that get left to another day for months. I printed out a whole bunch of compliments slips and headed paper for the society which they have been requesting for a while now. Cleared a stack of paperwork that was threatening to fall over and crush somebody. That sort of thing.

But now I’m drifting a bit! The last resort will be TV.

I was reading an article yesterday – I think it was in Doctor. It was about this whole five fruit and vegetable a day thing - that this is all hype and has no evidence to back up the claims that it is doing us good. Quite frankly it comes as a bit of a relief to hear things like that as I find five-a-day unbelievably hard work. Three to four is manageable – just. There’s always hype about something or other though. I am still waiting for someone to big up the health benefits of pigging out on chocolate and butter sandwiches. White bread of course! When I stayed in France as a teenager my pen-pal Laurence made us up some chocolate sandwiches to take on the dreary school outings to fabulous places that teenagers never remember unless a really drool-worthy pin-up is involved. The recipe for the sandwiches is dead easy.

1 Rip off a chunk of baguette (fresh from the baker that morning – where at least one of the village hotties worked).
2 Cut some slabs of butter and wedge in the middle of the baguette.
3 Break up some lumps of plain cooking chocolate and wedge them in on top of the butter.

After which there was usually a dash for the door in case her mother tried to make us take something more sensible. Laurence would inevitably buy (or shop-lift) some tubes of sweetened condensed milk to accompany the sandwiches but that always made her sick so I couldn’t quite see the point. But the sandwiches were pretty cool.

I am just resting my arms for a minute or two. I feel like I have lifted my own weight in compost this morning but I probably haven’t. One good thing about these new garden waste wheelie bins is that I can dispense with at least one of my compost sites around the garden so I am overhauling them all while the sun shines. Make compost while the sun shines – or something like that. It is a proving to be a mellow and stress-less weekend but then hubby is away. There's no male tension in the house and the girlie and I co-exist in perfect harmony. I dare say it would be a different story if I had more than one daughter but I don’t and these male-free weekends are too pleasant.

Yesterday I spent some time making tidy in my mothers flat and sorting out some of the hot spots before she arrived back from her holiday. I know how much she hates returning from any kind of holiday so I thought a nice tidy room and a wee box of her favourite chocs might help. It won’t of course; she’ll be hankering for the unreality of a different life in a beautiful holiday location until reality eventually regains its heavy grip. Holidays are just that, holidays, you can’t actually live in them because reality gets in the way and the mundanities of everyday life will find you wherever you are.

I finally got round to spending some birthday money this weekend. Having saved it for something I would be able to remember buying – I always feel birthday money should be spent on something specific and not too dull – I managed to blow it on some jeans. Not just any jeans though, these are the first pair of jeans I have bought for myself since I was a teenager which are size 10. For the majority of my adult life I have been mostly a size 14/16 so going down one size was pretty good, going down more than that is pretty splendid. And it all started with the Kellogg’s Two Week Challenge, so don’t knock it!

Recently I had to borrow some trousers from the girlie for dancing practice because my other jeans keep falling down and I was spending half the dance hitching myself. This does detract from the dance and with ones trouser crotch sliding steadily towards the knees it isn’t a good look either - as one of my fellow dancers kindly pointed out one evening.

There was only the two of us yesterday setting off to watch Hastings Bonfire procession. It seemed quite strange because there are usually at least four or five and then meeting up with other hangers on. So with our small numbers we decided to just watch the procession and come home before the bonfire bit because neither of us felt like hanging around in the cold waiting and we left our desserts to come home to. Boy did that procession seem to go on forever – and I kept thinking about my panna cotta waiting for me. The bonfire and fireworks are always the same anyway, utterly fabulous of course but once you’ve seen it you’ve seen it. And the drunks and the jerks are always the same and that is something you don’t need to see a second time let alone an umpteenth.

And the panna cotta was superb.

Who writes these ridiculous scripts and do they not try them out on other people before they hand them over to the ‘actors’ and shoot.

“This woman owns a dog………what do you see or rather what don’t you see?”

“No sign of a dog period”

At which point the girlie and I turned to each other and in unison went “Eeeuuuuugh”. No sticky red pile on the carpet then!

Admittedly one’s expectations are not very high with Doctor’s Diagnosis - or Diagnosis Murder to call it by its official title. The plots are a bit loose and woolly at the best of times but the dialogue sometimes borders on the plain daft. As the above is evidence of. It is strange that Dr Sloane is always so much cleverer than everyone else, I know doctor’s who need pointing in the direction of their own elbows.

I just have a wee bit of time to kill while I’m bidding on a top on ebay. I haven’t bought anything on there for ages and I felt like a moment’s frivolity – you know how it is. It’s only a few coins.

On the subject of coins, I picked up a couple of coins off the pavement last night as I was walking back from dancing. They looked so pretty and shiny next to the tiny puddles and my inner magpie wanted them. Just like the compulsion to pick up conkers and believe me there are quite a few of those collected around the house now. When my boy bought his latest flat there were conkers in all the cupboards because the lady who had lived there considered them lucky. As they have stripped the flat entirely, even down to the brick in places, all the conkers got thrown out. So being concerned for their luck status I soon found them a nice new shiny one to go in the nice new flat – I bet they chucked it as soon as I left but it’s the thought that counts and I thought of them. But back to the coins – I thought they were two five pence pieces but when I picked them up they were a 2 cent (euro) piece and some other foreign coin whose provenance I still haven’t been able to ascertain. An odd little group – if two can be called a group – to find on the late evening pavement.

And while on the subject of pavements - here the connection is a little loose I’m afraid – I was watching a poor woman walking along trying to balance on her stilettos. Why do woman think it makes them look attractive - tottering along with a dislocated-hip-walk. I’m not averse to high heels, I have several pairs – I’m short(ish) and sometimes it’s necessary to elevate – but there is a time and a place and a terrain. Her partner had to push the pushchair so that she could take the steep slopes carefully and her hips were all over the place. I’d say she’ll need new ones by the time she gets to my age and she won’t be so keen on heels then.

I’ve won my top now and paid for it. It’s quite an exotic scoop neck and back top that would look rather well with tight jeans and high heels.

Jeez, they weren’t joking about it raining hard this affie. It is - it’s raining hard. A good day for turning out some cupboards but the dust has got up my nose now so the impetus has gone.

I should really get a plastic rake for the leaves – I think the same thing every year at this time. Can’t keep putting these things off. Oh but I can…..and do. I would like to think I concentrate on the priorities in life but I don’t, I just fret about the frivolous stuff. I’m not saying that leaves are a frivolous concern, no, quite the contrary, this is one of the priorities of life that keeps getting brushed under the carpet in life.

Not that I have been putting leaves under the carpet – that would be silly.

I was having a conversation with my cousin the other day. She has turned the big four O this year and it is a major life-reviewing point in life. She decided she would study Theology in order to ultimately pursue a career in teaching. Teaching RE presumably. One thing she said though was that she wants to go to Narnia. She keeps looking in the back of her wardrobe but can’t find a way through. I know the feeling of course as I just turned out my wardrobe and apart form a huge load of shoes and a stack of books (I told you we have enough for a small library) there was absolutely no doorway into an alternative reality. She said ‘You ‘get’ me, if I say that to anyone else they look at me as if I’m odd’. Oooh, not me, I understand the apparently odd, join with the bizarre and belong to the surreal.

On a different tack altogether now - I could understand someone disliking me if I had done something to warrant it. I have always accepted that you can’t win ‘em all and I have never tried. I’ve certainly never expected everyone to like me, to be honest if anyone does I’m pleased - and surprised. It’s not that I’m nasty or anything, I am just an incredibly bland and ordinary jo…jo – and because of that I don’t expect to inspire deep regard (even love) but I certainly don’t expect to inspire such animosity that I am maligned and bad-mouthed behind my back. Hey ho – I think I prefer the people who look for Narnia in the wardrobe.

Aw – how appropriate – ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ has just come up on iTunes. At least Stevie Wonder cares!

Fabulous weather this weekend – thank goodness. I can’t be doing with a lot of hanging around in the wind and rain, especially at this time of year when wind and rain equals extremely dreary and dismal. In fact I caught the sun a little yesterday and had a pink nose – well it was either the sun or the red wine.

We did Tenterden Folk Festival this weekend. ‘We’ meaning the Morris side. We were keeping ourselves low profile this weekend as our numbers are low and that includes some newer and inexperienced dancers - so for the sake of our future good name we didn’t want to draw too much attention. We were however well received where we did perform. I managed to ‘call’ the dances (i.e. lead and call out the moves!) reasonably ok – at least everyone seemed to be going the right way, in the right way, and at the right time. From that point of view I am glad the weekend is over – I can’t cope with the pressure! My own high point was dancing a jig (on me tod) at the station at Tenterden and although it wasn’t a personal best as far as the dancing was concerned it was pretty good considering the music was in part provided by a melodeon player who had just spent the journey back from Bodiam learning the tune from scratch – and it isn’t that long a journey! All in all it was a good weekend, we danced here and there, we made ourselves known and we didn’t manage to injure anyone in the process.

As we were leaving the town yesterday I pointed out the big, big-bearded guy walking down the road towards us dressed in a pink floral dress – I also pointed out that if there wasn’t a folk festival going on this weekend that would look somewhat unusual but I’d probably passed dozens of similar figures over the last couple of days without even noticing.

Yesterday I was out all day dancing but trying at the same time to run a craft stall back in the home town, and today I was out all day dancing and at the same time trying to prepare a family meal. I could have done with time-turner this weekend really as I find it terribly difficult being in two places at the same time – especially some distance apart – but thank goodness for extended families. My cousin quite happily provided the physical presence at the craft stall but as business didn’t do too well (it never does in that venue) I don’t know whether she will offer again. Time was when I would have minded not taking much money but nowadays it all seems to wash over me. I just shrug and say la vie.

I am a mellow fellow atm – long may it continue!

The gas man cometh – wasn’t that a title of a song. Well anyway that will be the title of today. In fact it wasn’t gas man it was gas men, there were two of them. I had to be at my boy’s new flat for 8am to await the arrival of the men who were coming to lay in gas from the street. A simple enough task for my day off. But let us take into account the fact that this is a flat without the benefit of any furniture, i.e. chairs, where the water has to be turned on at the stop cock downstairs and the electricity has to be turned on up in the attic, the toilet though working has no door and there are no refreshment facilities. To pass the time I spent some of the morning white-washing the newly plastered walls and then a spot of tool-tidying followed by some scraping lumps off the floor. Great stuff! In truth it was infinitely preferable to hanging around in someone else’s home without anything to do and one of the few times in life when I will be welcome in another woman’s house to do as much cleaning and tidying as I like. There was another unexpected bonus of course in that the fitter of the two men was exactly that, fit. I familiarised myself - visually you understand rather than physically - with the contours of his torso, nearly all of which was on display. I didn’t really need to keep standing by the window but I was drawn in that direction quite frequently. My interest was purely artistic of course – he would make a superb artist’s model – my only regret is that I didn’t suggest it.

I had to have a shower when I got home – no not a cold one, I’m not that sad – but because the dust is so…well, so too much.

I should really be getting on with something more useful but I am re-acquainting myself with ‘sitting’.

The weekend is looming, well it’s looming as far as I’m concerned. We are dancing out and I have to do something I really don’t like doing, I have to lead the other dancers and call all the moves. I have always been content to be a follower rather than a leader and this taking charge goes against the grain – especially when I am still not completely confident in my own ability. It took me at least 20 years to feel comfortable being in a lead role on stage and it may seem like a similar kind of ‘performing’ scenario but I am not a natural dancer. Just another thing to make me feel anxious and there are plenty of those at the moment.

So many people around and about my life are having angsty or stressful stuff going on and I don’t quite know who to feel for more. I know you can’t solve the world’s problems but ‘every man’s death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind’ and I take that to also mean that every person’s stress affects me.

However, I bought a goat this morning, and that made me feel a little better.

I spent some of my birthday tokens the other day. They are Waterstones tokens and it’s a bit like coals to Newcastle buying more books as we could open a small library here as it is - there aren’t many subjects we don’t cover either! I decided to go for the obvious housewifely choice and hunted for a good cooky booky and I found a couple of useful ones. The cake and biscuit book has a recipe for Cinnamon Nutella Cake which I tried – partly because it would take me forever and a day to get through the two large jars of Nutella that hubby bought me back from France – and it was fabulous. All light and fluffy and chocolatey and cinnamony. Scrummy.

It was all part of a shopping spree that could have gone on for the whole day. I realised that it had been a good few months since I last went out and just mooched around the shops and I just kept pulling out my purse. I don’t spend big or anything but I really enjoyed my wee spree.

Unusually I was home alone the other evening and being STILL without Sky – the guy came last week and replaced the box but when tweaking the signal strength for us he managed to lose it altogether, at which point he gave up and went away, hopefully to pursue another career – I decided to watch a DVD while I did some sewing. Jeez, I have managed to put cooking and sewing into this post now, next thing you know I’ll be giving out handy household hints about how to get clothes cleaner – shoot me someone! Anyway while I was sewing (the sewing is peripheral to the plot here) I turned to an old favourite, Independence Day. I’m not even quite sure why it is one of my favourites really – apart from the sci-fi thing of course – but there is something very appealing about the way Jeff Goldblum’s shirt just slips open here and there revealing a rather appealing physique. My mother thinks he’s ugly but she just likes the pretty boy Bill Pullman better. But Jeff has the better lines in the film and I like a man with a crisp wit in addition to the, er…..other stuff. I know it’s just another of those films where the Americans, bless ‘em, have to win the day, but let’s face that is simply because America is the original ‘big guy with a tiny dick - white van man’ and will spend the rest of forever trying to prove otherwise. Now how many people have I just insulted there – but at least I managed to bring a bit of male genitalia in when it was starting to sound a little too cosy and mumsy.

As for a handy hint about get clothes cleaner, here it is…..wash them.

Oh joy – back to work.

No, that was heavy sarcasm.

Mind you, it didn’t start off too bad when a colleague said she didn’t recognise me from behind because I have such a skinny bottom now – I can take compliments like that at 8am on a damp Monday morning…

Mind you she also said I looked like a schoolgirl and it made me think of ‘Don’t Look Now’ (one of the few films I could never watch again for fear of nightmares) – viewed from the rear she looks like a schoolgirl but when she turns round you see she is a hideous, middle-aged, psychopathic dwarf…..too close for comfort!

When I collected the huge pile of work form my workbasket there was in amongst it a slightly belated birthday card with a nice surprise contained therein – which was quite unexpected and therefore most pleasant. But from there on the day dragged and my spirit sagged and I flagged.

I feel quite depressed now.

Moving swiftly on.

I made a tree spirit the other day. I went to the Weald Woodfair 2007 the other day. Well Friday to be precise. And it was an excellent day, I went with my sister and we had a really nice day – but I always do with her anyway. There were stalls and tents and stands all devoted to all things wood. Tree fellers etc. There was even a ‘ride’, you could go up in a cherry picker – a massive one, really massive, way above the tree tops – which we had go on because it looked fun and it was quite cool. I bought a polished wooden pomegranate, made from padauk wood which is a lovely warm red colour. And we saw this stall with tree spirits which are made from branches in a vaguely, or even definitely, body shape with a carved wooden face. So I had to make one.

7pm in the evening, light fading, middle-aged woman, home alone, perched on a wooden workbench up the garden, sawing an 8ft long branch more than an arms length above head. I think perhaps I may be more than a little mad.

But it does help me get through the day.

I can’t spend too long on here this evening – eye sore – but the TV is still f***ed and I want a little screen time. That awful feeling of limbo after a holiday is beginning to clear but I really feel like going out shopping this evening and unlike in some more advanced cities and countries that isn’t an option in my neck of the woods. It’s pooey.

So a few more Tuscan Tales…

One day we went to Pisa. I don’t remember which day as they didn’t always have names and numbers – days don’t when you are away. We went on the train which was an adventure in itself and I have to say that they have one big advantage over our train system and that is that they stop at each station for a good few minutes. Whereas here if you don’t get out of your seat pretty smartish you’ll be off down the track again before you get chance to hit the door release in Italy you have time to carefully fold your paper, make some minor (possibly even major) adjustments to your dress, yawn, stretch, locate your luggage stowed neatly overhead, amble to the door, get out, get back on again to pick up your luggage, chat to the good-looking fellow passenger (they are mostly all good-looking), fix a date, reluctantly depart again, etc, etc. We didn’t try this ourselves of course (hubby wouldn’t let me anyway) as we are English and used to jumping off the train quick while making sure one’s skirt is flicked clear of the door as it closes on your tail.

So we arrived in Pisa - and actually in Pisa not somewhere else altogether - quite easily and without mishap. They have carefully placed the leaning tower on the opposite side of town so that you must run the whole gamut of shopping facilities before seeing what you came to see – Pisa has little else going on. The tower looks a bit fake really when you see it. It looks like a novelty tower stuck in the ground for fun. But the most interesting bit about the tower is what I call the Pisa phenomenon. All round the grounds there are stacks of tourists (mostly American) and at any one time there will be several groups of photographer and photographees. The operator of the camera is posing the models with hands in mid-air (or feet if you're adventurous) to make it look like they are holding the tower up. I have several photos of complete strangers standing in the most ridiculous positions because unless you see them through the correct camera they look like complete jerks and it had me in stitches.

Great stuff!

We, as a couple of middle-aged tourists, had a distinct advantage in restaurants over other middle-aged couples; we had an attractive red-headed 18 year old in tow. We had lovely Italian waiters and they couldn’t do enough for us – a good enough reason to take her out to dinner. It isn’t cheap eating out though so we had to restrict ourselves a little but I did treat myself to the chance of a truffle dish for which they dare not print a price as I seldom eat out at all let alone in fancy places. It conjures up such a lovely picture of some animal rooting these things out of the ground for your supper but it is quite unremarkable to eat so it must just be the idea of it that appeals. We were in fact only round the corner from the famous ‘4 Leoni’ and the noise from their cheery clientele kept us awake at nights but we ate there on our last day and it is well worth a visit.

Dustin and Sting seemed to enjoy it….

It’s post-lunch time and the man of the house is asleep on the couch and the girlie is catching on her soaps omnibi – so much corrie and enemadale to take in.

We are in post-holiday-don’t-know-what-to-do-now phase which is a very strange way to spend my birthday but not unpleasant really as I have just spent a week on vacation in an incredibly beautiful city - a surfeit of art and culture, a surfeit of beautiful scenery under wall-to-wall sunshine blue skies, and a surfeit of pasta – so who’s complaining!

Florence is a rich meal of some of Italy’s finest flavours, arts, history, crafts - ………and Pinocchio. Yep that’s right Pinocchio was chiselled from the pen of a Florentine called Carlo Collodi. We didn’t actually find this out until much later in the week when the hundreds of Pinocchio puppets everywhere in the city were starting to make us uneasy, like there was something we should know - there was, obviously!

Anyone can see the sights of Florence on the internet so I won’t go into the delights of the Uffizi, Galleria dell’Accademia, Palazzo Pitti, et al – suffice to say that at the end of a week spent gorging on culture, hubby had reached saturation & exhaustion point and the girlie and I were not far behind.

So instead I shall reminisce on some of the other facets of our Florentine holiday.

The morning one is setting off to fly out of the country is a bad time to develop three whacking great corneal ulcers as this makes travelling a considerably more painful experience than it should be.

It is NOT a simple matter to get bus D at the train station if you have no idea where the f*** you are headed (if you ever are headed anywhere with my hubby) and ALWAYS carry enough chocolate for emergencies.

Florence is not in fact a large city in Italy, it is a small state belonging to the US – I know this now because I have heard more American accents this week than Italian ones (on a ratio of about 10-1) and those Americans were definitely running the show.

I was delighted when in Spain last year to discover that Spongebob Squarepants had been translated to Bob Esponga and had a racy little Spanish theme tune of its own – Italy is well behind with the whole Spongebob thing…..

Drains do not need to be constantly smelt for people to know they are there and it is reassuring that the streets are regularly cleaned but 2am is not perhaps an ideal time.

It’s those little things that really make a holiday though. More Tuscan Tales to follow soon.

And now for some willy nice pics….