Podward

Now.

Let’s just pluck a random topic out of the air.

Dog poo etiquette.

I am curious about the rights and wrongs, and indeed if there are any, of a little scene I witnessed this morning. It was a lovely bright winter’s morning this morning and my mood was lifted and more mellow so I was able to take in the entire world around me instead of being wrapped in a blanket of despair. It was around 8 o’clock and I was half-way to work (I walk) when I overtook a gentleman (I use the word ‘gentleman’ guardedly) who was taking the early morning air with his dog. The dog had been about its business and its owner had diligently scooped up the deposit. Now this is the part that perplexes me. He had his little bag of doggy poo and obviously didn’t relish packing it in his pocket so he walked over to the amassed bin bags (awaiting refuse collection) outside the nearest house (not his I hasten to add) and undid one of the tied up bags so that he could add his pooey contribution to the rubbish therein. What I would like to know is - is garbage covered by any kind of etiquette, and where does this kind of violation of a person’s household trash feature. Do one’s bin bags, brimming with the detritus of everyday life, suddenly become public property when they sag a little plastic wrinkle onto the public footpath? Are they then in the public domain and available for any Tom, Dick or Harry to add his little sack of crap? I know it is only a very small point but worth a few moments consideration I feel.

And now for something completely different.

I discovered a new power this morning. The colleague with whom I share office space arrived, as she generally does, after me. This is nothing to do with her being a slacker, she just starts later. She walked into the room and I, immediately following the usual ‘good morning’ pleasantries, asked her for £8. Did she hesitate? Did she ask what it was for? No, she plucked her purse out forthwith and produced in seconds a fiver and £3 in coin. I was rather belatedly trying to pay her back for a sub she lent me last week and once the £8 was in my purse I gave her a tenner. She had forgotten anyway but how many people just hand over money without even asking why - I was pleasantly gobsmacked. So I feel I may have acquired the power to make people hand over their cash without question. A modern day Dick Turpin – but without a horse………….and a gun…………..and a threatening catch phrase……….and a rather saucy, sexy face mask……….so not at all like Dick Turpin really. But I might try it out on the boss next time, ‘erm, can you give me a £100’………………

Self-pity mode on.

Having a bit of a down day today but I think it is mostly weather related. Or at least weather originated. But I have been dwelling on stuff. Big stuff. The future and all that. Hubby is in his final year, counting down until retirement and he can’t count down in years anymore, only months and weeks. It is scary. The 26th January was the marker and now what seemed like forever away is looming frighteningly close. Apart from the practical day-to-day aspects, like how the merry feck we will manage on half his income when we struggle now, there is also the psychological factor. Suddenly I feel like an old lady, my children all grown up and my husband retiring. And I am only 43 for fex sake; I shouldn’t be facing these life stages now when I’m still 20 years away from my own chance of retirement.

In addition to that looming large on the early part of 2008, it is also next year that my manager is coming up for retirement and where will it leave me. It is easy talk and speculate about this possibly bringing me goodies but to honest I’m not so sure. It is she that got me where I am and keeps me on the top of the pile and I don’t know whether a new order will be so keen on me. It might be chance for someone, or ones, to clear out and make new. At a time when I will need if anything to increase my working hours will I suddenly find myself without any? On the scrapheap of life also? Old, wrinkled and no use to a living soul!

The girlie has kindly said I can doss down on the floor of her university digs if I do find myself jobless and homeless in a couple of years. I can just picture her dragging a lad back to her room and saying ‘don’t mind her, that’s just my mother, poor thing has nowhere to go, not since my dad went daft and ran off to a commune with his retirement package…’

I think this really wasn’t helped by finding out the car needs a big expensive fix – which we can’t afford right now – just lurching from one expense to another. Still might as get on with it now as we might have to sell up and live in a wooden shack soon.

*heaves big dramatic sigh*

Self-pity mode switched off now!

I am making tickets. It’s an uninspiring little job but it has to be done. As we are performing in a Church Hall instead of a theatre we have to print our own tickets. As I do the printing I have to print them. There is a lot of printing involved in this play and this time of year there are a lot of extra printing requirements with the AGM coming up as well as and also. So I am spending a lot of time with the printer. And to be honest we aren’t that compatible. It wants to sit around churning out pages and pages and I don’t. It is a struggling relationship.

Seeing the word tickets reminded me. My boy when he was a wee lad had a friend who used to call his willy his ticket. I never quite understood that one. Ticket for what? Well I suppose ultimately it is a ticket to ride. It was really rather a strange thing for his mother to encourage him to call it. After all how many times in life is one required to show one’s ticket? You could get kicked off a lot of trains, and box offices up and down the country would be dreadful places with staff handing out tickets all day. And let’s not start on traffic wardens. So here I am printing a whole load of willies.

We had Basic Life Support training at work. Just to while away a lunch hour. Fortunately there was none of the messy blowing of Annie necessary - as it was just a refresher course we weren’t obliged to be hands on. The first time we went on the course we all had our own dummy, I don’t know if they were all called Annie though. I didn’t at the time get intimate enough with the dummy to be on first name terms. Anyway today’s dummy looked like it had taken enough of a beating for one lifetime; I would be surprised if she had any ribcage left. The whole procedure has changed again in the two years since we last did BLS so it would appear that it is getting increasingly easy to resuscitate people and I am desperately hoping that we soon arrive at an age when all you need to spark someone back into life is a small plastic strip. Like Bones used in Star Trek. Now that is my kind of doctoring. No mess, no fuss and absolutely no bodily fluids.

Every Sunday evening my family gets together for an evening meal, alternating between my mother’s house and mine. I have always felt it was good for us to have an evening of non-telly, and conversation etc, and family unity and that. Also it is company for the women when the men doze off and snore on the sofa. The topics of conversation over the dinner table have proved, over recent years, very useful for the girlie to entertain her friends with on Monday morning at college. Tonight gives her plenty of material.

Mother: soft French porn
Sister: plastic crotch-less knickers
Father: cutting toe nails with wire clippers

It is frightfully intellectual as you can see! Not for us the hot political potato of the day.

Over the last few years we have had crackers at Christmas and there are always a couple left over so I decided as we had enough collected leftovers for eight people we should use them up. We all thought of something small but significant in our week to celebrate. Then we collected bits and pieces to wrap up and give to the family. My mother brought some bits too. It was a tiny little extra Christmas.

I tried to think of something to do for the girlie and came up with this idea that turned out quite yummy. I had some melted chocolate and dropped some of my Kellogg’s Special K flakes in. They were surprisingly good. I will have to remember that for another occasion and they would make a good dessert topping. So there you have another recipe from the woman that brought you chocolate covered rocket leaves.

http://jojo52.blog.co.uk/2006/01/06/i_wasn_t_kidding~446667

Enough madness for one evening?

Yeeeeessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

Where is time?

“There is time for everything.” - Thomas Edison

And he should know, he even found time to make light bulbs. Bless him.
He wouldn’t have had time to invent stuff if he had been a woman of course. It’s already a lot of the way through Saturday and I haven’t really achieved much. I didn’t have much on my daily goal list though so that’s something to be grateful for.

Tolerance is a word much bandied about in the news. And intolerance of course. Religious intolerance, racial intolerance. A positive minefield really. The Big Brother racism debate which still rumbles discontentedly on has forced the issue into the open and prompted so many to think about how they feel. It is comforting and reassuring to discover that the majority of British people disapprove of the behaviour of these so-called celebrities. I was reading a column in the Independent the other day which was a little cynical and patronising in its flavour. It is all very well to say that the programme is trash and not worthy of notice in the first place but it does illustrate some basic human behaviours. As an anthropological study it is quite illuminating. Put together a group of human beings and add some stress and see how they behave. In a generation that has grown up on watching wildlife programmes to study the behaviour and lifestyle patterns of our animal cousins it is hardly surprising that we choose to watch our own species as well. It is inevitable that in a stressed and contained situation the natural reaction of a group of pig-ignorant human beings will be to attack the alien in their midst. It is what most of the beasts in the field would do. Albino animals are often ostracised. But we are supposed to be a civilised species – don’t you believe it!

The other topic in the news that has caused much debate about tolerance is the Roman Catholic Church’s reluctance to sanction gay couple’s adoption. If we are preaching tolerance, both racial and religious, where is our tolerance of the strongly held views of those who embrace Catholicism. If we respect the Muslim’s strongly held beliefs, as we are urged to do, why are we then so intolerant of the views of the Roman Catholic Church. Tolerance is a two way thing surely. If we are respecting the religious views of one group of people then we must surely respect any group, especially one as old and established as the Church. We may not hold the same beliefs but we should respect each others views – if we are as civilised as we claim to be!

In my own experience more tolerance is forthcoming from those who do not hold strong religious beliefs in the first place. As I said it is a minefield!!

What is going on?

Second power cut of the week!

The other evening we had a power cut at home. The lights went out and we were in the dark for an hour. Hubby was a great help, he sat on the sofa and dropped off to sleep. Lights out = go to sleep. I am so glad he doesn’t work down a mine. They would be forever having to step over the sleeping miner. Hey ho, hey ho, it’s over the snoozer we go etc.

Tonight however was slightly different. I was at work. Working late after almost everyone else had gone, only me and the boss left. So there I was, alone in the building with a gorgeous guy, and all the lights go out………….

Hey ho, we can but dream!

I am enjoying an evening with my feet up under the laptop and debating whether or not to dip into my little bottle of Baileys that waits on the dresser for no special occasion. Work is finished for the week and I have danced and walked and swum and rehearsed and house-worked and printed and done the thousand and one little tasks that every woman juggles in the spare time she has, so why not have little tipple.

That settles it; I just discovered it is Australia Day today so I am going down under……………………………….the table that is.

Glug

Pedantics

I get highly irritated by some of the crimes against the English language – as it is spoken and as it is written……..

Like Natasha Kaplinsky earlier on when reading the news said secretaries but pronounced it sekkertrees. It is one of the niggly things that jar with me that people commonly do. As with saying ‘should of’ when it should be ‘should have’ – should’ve is short for should HAVE not should OF. Please try to get this right people!

Definite has no ‘a’ in it and separate has two ‘a’s.

It also really bugs me when people refer to their children as kids – they are not baby goats so why call them that. I know I have said this kind of thing before but it really irritated me that a reader of the news should speak sloppily. They were always so nicely spoken in the days of my youth. I don’t have a problem with dialectic variations and I just love accents but I can’t abide lazy language.

When I text I make a point of using whole words – unless of course I don’t have space – because I love the beautiful language we have and it seems so wrong to trash it about.

I know, I know, there is an argument here for progress and I don’t mind progress but can’t we progress intelligently, not ignorantly.

Now I have that off my chest…..

This believe or not is the view from my office window - pretty fine don't you think

After the complete failure last year of my amaryllis to produce any kind of a bloom I am happy to say that this year I have two amaryllis at the same stage, i.e. about to blossom. Although to be fair one of them has already had one delicious head of trumpets and is on its second showing. When I bought the first one the colour was reported to be a deep and luxurious red, a blood red tending more to the arterial than the venous but in flower it is considerably lighter than expected. However, it is bloody gorgeous.

And on the subject of red.

The long awaited sofas have arrived at last. They are a glorious red and fit the spaces exactly right. They look as though they were just made to go there, which is such a relief, I always dread buying a large piece of furniture and finding it looks completely wrong when it arrives. However, they are bloody gorgeous.

Aaaaah – Time Bandits. And the freedom to watch it! It isn’t popular amongst my kinfolk so I am taking advantage of the fact that the rest of the household are amusing themselves in different parts of the house.

It is so gloriously surreal, it reminds me of reality.

And so back to reality for a moment. Today I went to work. I do so on most Mondays, except of course for my holidays, and also Bank Holidays. I had done the four items on my daily goal list by 10am which is pretty neat don’t you think. Then I cleared my in tray. Then I sorted out the projector for the meeting, arranged the room for the meeting, made the lunch for the meeting and then chaired the meeting. After that I cleared up and dealt with all the action points arising from the meeting. I even had time to give a little extra sausage to the special guy. I was really in the zone today. I wish all work days were so satisfying.

Trips to the vet are like buses. You don’t see one for ages then two come along at once. Ok so that might have to be relative time scale since the last trip to the vet was in the autumn but before that the pussies had been free of medical intervention for some years. Today was an allergic skin condition apparently. The injection will possibly make her hungrier and thirstier than normal, so that’s going to be interesting as she eats enough for a small cat army as it is. I don’t know where it goes to though because she is such a lightweight ball of fluff you wouldn’t think she lived on anything more than candyfloss. And believe me she would probably give that a try.

But back to Time Bandits. Hm, Sean Connery in a short tunic. Good legs. And no that isn’t the only reason I like watching the film! Although it is a damn fine one.

Oh to be.........

I made an executive decision today. I decided to finish my Drop a Jean Size diet a bowl early. Instead of the last bowl of Crunchy Nut I had a bacon sandwich instead. Man that was good. After all the sweet sugary cereal lunches I was absolutely craving a savoury lunch and I enjoyed every moment. And have I been naughty with the snacks today, no I have not.

Not everything is tip top though. I was looking forward to having a nice afternoon cup of tea but the milk is all gone so that’s a bit pooey.

I haven’t seen my foxy friends for a while, a long while even, but today I looked out the window and saw a very fine russet coat slinking through the undergrowth. The best looking and un-mangiest fox I have seen in our garden made its way down to the little bit of decking we have and curled up in the cats favourite spot, in the sun, and dozed. I would to think it is my little girl from last year that I fed and pampered but I don’t know if that is likely. But it was a pleasure to see such a fine animal.

The M & S ad was on again. I never even heard of edamame beans so here is a bit from the wonder of the web.

“Edamame is a green vegetable more commonly known as a soybean, harvested at the peak of ripening right before it reaches the "hardening" time. The word Edamame means "Beans on Branches," and it grows in clusters on bushy branches. To retain the freshness and its natural flavor, it is parboiled and quick-frozen. In East Asia, the soybean has been used for over two thousand years as a major source of protein. Edamame is consumed as a snack, a vegetable dish, used in soups or processed into sweets. As a snack, the pods are lightly boiled in salted water, and then the seeds are squeezed directly from the pods into the mouth with the fingers.”

That last bit reminds me of pea pods in the early summer. Yummmmmmeeeeeeeeee.

The penultimate day of my Crunchy Nut Cornflake ordeal. To be honest it hasn’t been nearly as bad as I expected it to be and I have got so used to having some cereal in the morning (instead of a Chelsea bun or a hot cross bun or a fruit scone or something else like that) that I bought another box of cereal. A different make though as Crunchy Nut Cornflakes are really a little too sweet – even for me. The question is has it worked.

In that it has made me a little more disciplined about my eating habits, yes it has done the job it was supposed to do. I don’t know whether there has been any weight difference because I didn’t weigh myself at the start and I have no intention of weighing myself now either but today I bought a skirt a size smaller than I would have a month ago. It is just a question now of maintaining a sensible diet. Me and sensible – er….yes…..riiiight.

We spent an hour this morning clearing off the shed roof. The Russian vine, bramble and dog rose had to be hacked back and several years’ worth of leaf mould to sweep off. It will be interesting to see if the cats from next door find it so attractive in the summer – if they are put off using it as a look-out place it will be an added bonus.

It is always hardest to picture the garden at its blooming best when it is dull and sodden January but each new shoot I see gives me a little hope.

We also had to go out shopping today to re-jean the girlie – although I still can’t quite understand why teenagers need to have more than two pairs of jeans, if I can manage with two. As a general rule though ‘one on, one off and one in the wash’ is good. Mind you if we all tried to do that with pants television wouldn’t get a look in, we’d be forever washing pants.

It is Friday – again.

They seem to come round quick. Or is that a sign of getting old.

I woke up this morning with about a dozen bites - gnat or mozzie but don’t know which - all over one hip. Now what is all that about. I expect this kind of thing in the summer but in mid-January it really is a bit much. I know what it means, it means that some beastly insect has crawled into bed with me and taken advantage of my body. I suppose I should be grateful that there is a creature out there that finds me so completely irresistibly attractive that it is prepared to gorge itself to death on my flesh. But I am not. It’s all hot and itchy and uncomfortable. Even my lunchtime swim did little to alleviate it.

Honestly. I love busy. I love being busy. And I love having lots of busy to be busy with. But work is terribly busy just now and I have to keep leaving things to one side because I’m too busy. I don’t like leaving stuff. The trouble is that now I have increased my hours to three whole days instead of four halves I seem to have acquired more than an extra days work to do in the time. I guess life’s like that. At least I enjoy my work though; it would be really pants if I had too much to do and hated it. I even bring a little bit home with me just so I can keep a bit of work close by – in case of emergency………or boredom! (The last sentence is making use of the concept of irony.)

Now that the wind has subsided somewhat I think I should take a look at the devastation of the greenhouse but I just can’t bring myself to. Although if I am going to view the damage it might seem less depressing if I look at the mess now while it is covered by the hours of darkness. Daylight may not be so good. There isn’t much we can do about the weather, I just have to heave a sad sigh and accept it.

Fricking Thursday

I am frickin well fricked off today.

The weather has been frickin awful and torn apart all the mended plastic on the greenhouse and left the poor thing worse than it was before. And I was forced to watch the increasing destruction all day and completely helpless to do anything.

But not a bad day to be forced to stay in to wait for two sofas to arrive. They didn’t frickin well come because the lorry had a frickin power cut. They let me know as soon as they could but that was mid-afternoon and the weather was too crap anyway to go out.

Ok so if you’re stuck indoors waiting for something to arrive there is always the internet. Frickin internet has been off all frickin day so I have been going frickin stir-crazy. I had my fill of housework by lunchtime. I had nearly finished reading my book by 2 o’clock and I was ready to strangle anyone who offered me more frickin bad news by 4 o’clock. Thank heavens the girlie came back before I started sticking needles in things.

I was so looking forward to having a nice day off all to myself, looking forward to it for weeks and it has been a frickin pain, in not only my behind but also everywhere else. I am so frickin well fricked off. Have I said that already?

And I couldn’t even seek solace in chocolate.

Well I hope Friday is going to be frickin improvement on today. If it isn’t I shall be…… quite disappointed.

The factory is seething with discontentment today – again. I think everyone may have PMT. At the same time. Including the blokes. It started badly, as one person was snappy which led to three others feeling upset and verging on tearful. Fortunately they were able to dissipate these negative feelings by combining some scissors and some data tapes. Very therapeutic no doubt ripping and cutting up yards - or should that be metres – of tape. But disgruntlement rumbled on throughout the day to a greater or lesser degree.

I was not afflicted myself but that is partly because I was feeling too weary to be upset or to upset anyone else. I dare say if I’d had the energy I could have gone one way or t’other although I am not an upsetter by nature. But my capacity for being upset by the cruel and harsh words of others is enormous. We all need a jolly old night out in one - or thirty - of the fine drinking establishments of the town but it is always so difficult to get people to go. One will have a bit of paint that they need to watch dry, and another will have a crack in the ceiling that they simply must spend the evening falling asleep studying and so it goes on. It’s just feeble excuse after feeble excuse until the numbers dwindle to a couple or three die-hard night-outers (like me) who would jump at the chance of an evening out even if it is only to study a different crack in a different ceiling. Not that that I am short on nights out as it happens; I’ve only just walked in.

Hey ho. There’s no pleasing some people.

I am glad to see that the blatantly racist behaviour that has been displayed in BB is being not only noted and complained about but also taken seriously. I sat and watched (albeit briefly) in appalled horror at those extremely ignorant, white British trashy women as they bullied, yes bullied, even verbal bullying is bullying, a fellow woman. As a study of human behaviour it shows the depressing consistency of our most basic nature. But what I find most sad is that these women are held up as ‘celebrity’ figures in our society – how low have we sunk! I think BB just lost a viewer.

That’s as much ranting as I can manage tonight – I feel too disgusted to waste vocabulary on it.

Return to Tuesday Morris after the holidays and it was good to get back into a bit stick-bashing and hanky-waving. Back to the real world again. The world of beer, beards and bells. Where real men use hankies and the women have something else to talk about other than nail polish.

I treated myself to a rose arch today. The cheapest possible of course as I don’t have enough dosh, post-Christmas, to be lavish but it still cost more than its predecessor which I had constructed from branches cut down in the garden. It had lasted nearly eight years so it did well but I don’t have so many lengths of wood lying around these days so it is time to make a change. I realise of course that is a little early to start thinking about roses but try telling that to the beautiful pink bloom that is blowing around like a bright beacon in my drear, damp and distinctly dismal garden. Aloha. The name of the rose. Has the most amazing scent.

That’s a film I haven’t watched in ages, The Name of the Rose. I’ll have to dig it out.

Jaded.

I am.

The problem is I had to do a lot of thinking at work. Exercising my brain cells and now they all hurt.

I did Sociology at college and it was a subject that made absolutely no sense to me. Well the subject made sense but it made no sense to me to spend three paragraphs saying what can be said in a sentence. It was so waffly and airy-fairy and I like a spade to be called a spade, and not ‘a practical tool designed for digging and turning over earth’. I might waffle a bit myself for decoration but I like things to be straight forward. So it is hard work spending time working on making policies and protocols that simply tell us what we already do but do it in complex and unnecessary jargon that just creates confusion for the people who are busy getting on with the job. It just keeps a lot of administrators in paperwork when really we should being spending more on treating, curing and supporting patients. And if I go on like this I will talk myself out of my own job!

Eight days down, six to go on the Crunchy Nut and I am at last feeling decidedly peckish, I knew it would happen and I am glad that normality has finally returned.

I do wonder why nobody living on Coronation Street seems to think that so many sudden deaths over the last few years is not the tiniest bit suspicious. After all I don’t know anyone that would dream of moving anywhere near the Midsomer area where deaths occur in unbelievable multiples. So why are there still so many people living in Coronation Street – jeez, do none of them watch the telly!

It has been a calm and unruffled sort of a day really.

It was good to see a bit of blue sky and as it coincided with a weekend I could don my old gardening trousers and go outdoors to play. I tackled the greenhouse disaster zone. It’s nothing fancy made of glass or anything, it’s just a wee plastic job but after two years the plastic is crumbling and it let water in so I walked away from the problem back in the autumn because the too-difficult light came on. I threw a plastic dustsheet over the top and let it wait until the New Year.

Well.

I started by repairing, with the aid of some plastic sheeting, rope and a stapler, the holy greenhouse cover. There was a lot of collected water in anything that didn’t have a hole, which meant a lot of stagnant water was just hanging around, festering. Got rid. I filled three sacks with all the tatty broken seed trays, bits of plastic, bits of cardboard and just stuff that had drifted there. Then in a moment of unexpected determination I washed all the intact seed trays and watering trays in hot soapy water in a large tub on the patio. I felt very satisfied, as one does at the end of a long-overdue-job done.

The girlie wanted to make a rag rug for her room so I helped her with that. It’s only a little one but she doesn’t have a lot free floor space anyway. But as she finished so quickly she wants to do some more – well it keeps her occupied.

I made carrot fritters today. They were jolly fun. My sister said it was her New Years Resolution to try a new recipe every week and it prompted me to make an effort to try some different things out. I lost interest in cooking over the years so it’s nice to get reacquainted with my culinary curiosity.

So all in all it has been a homey day, and rather nice.

We have been discussing holidays - as one inevitably does in January. The other day hubby tossed the subject casually into conversation but the girlie and I were unprepared and it has taken the pair of us a couple of days to assimilate the idea. Florence is our destination of choice and September our choice of time so now there is only the small matter of readies to deal with. It came to me that for the first time since 1987 I don’t need to book my holidays around school holidays and it is really quite a liberating thought. I’ve always taken the major part of my annual leave during school holidays because I have always loved spending time with my children. Just an old-fashioned girl at heart you see! But it will be nice to have holiday at different times. My favourite months for holidays would be June and September rather than July and August. This year I can take two weeks in September instead of August which is a month I never really found incredibly appealing for holiday purposes but it had the advantage of having a bank holiday in it so I could use slightly less annual leave.

There is always something slightly depressing about late August. The nights are getting noticeably shorter and the weather is beginning to fall apart, the garden looks dry and exhausted, and Christmas starts appearing in one or two shops. But September is quite different for some reason.

And now we have Christmas out of the way of course there is whole lot of Easter appearing. Rows of chocolate bunnies and crème eggs. Mind you I got in nice and early with the crème eggs by buying one on Christmas Eve to pop in the girlies stocking. I don’t why I encourage them!

I wonder where else I shall go this year.

Five days down on the old Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and a) I’m not any more hungry than usual, and b) I still like the cornflakes. So something must be wrong, that can’t be right can it. And the day included swimming, walking and a full day at work as well so I feel jolly virtuous at this end of the day.

Aren’t people lovely? Well some people are. Two colleagues went out of their way to give me a lift today – obviously not at the same time! – both are real sweeties and I must get some sweeties for them but this is a public acknowledgement of their kindness. It is one of the joys of being car-less that I can appreciate these little nicenesses in other people. And it’s so social. Just think how much nicer it was for them to have my company for a while than just have a solitary car ride. Ok so they could have had a more interesting companion like………… (insert name of your most desirable car companion). Think about it for a minute, your dream car-companion. That might of course depend on the length of the journey. Somebody who may seem an ideal companion on a short journey could turn out to be a real drag on a long haul.

I have spent a portion of this evening ‘invigilating’ at an audition. In a building that gives a new meaning to the word cold. It was Michelin man time again with the layers. I have never in all my acting shenanigans been on that side of the table at an audition before and I have to say it is probably the first audition I have actually enjoyed. Although part of me can’t help feeling that knot of anxiety when someone stumbles on a word – too much empathy is really bad for the digestion!

At home I had allowed all the paperwork to pile up over last year. Partly because we have been moving rooms around and re-decorating but mostly because I don’t like doing it at all.

Paperwork is my daytime job and no-one likes to take their work home with them so I let things pile up. Then once you have six months paperwork piled up the job has become too unwieldy anyway and you wait another six months for the paperwork fairy to come along and magic it away. However January is usually a good time for sorting out stuff like this and today I have tackled the beast. And I won. My back aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense an’ that but the beast is slain. The folders are now all stacked and neat and everything in its place. And if it didn’t have a place it certainly does now. A ritual cleansing at the beginning of the year.

I am still aware that my resolution making is slightly behindhand so I will conjure a few out of the air.

In 2007….

1. I will try hard not to procrastinate! Leaving things until the last minute is one of many things that disappoint me about myself.

Well that’s a start!

It’s been a long day. Well to be honest it has been as long or as short as any other day but it felt long. I was at a training day for the largest part of the day and with the best will in the world it is hard to keep me awake during the graveyard shift after lunch. The most riveting speaker would have a struggle to fascinate me at that hour and very few power-point presenters are even close. In the morning it was suggested that we would prefer to push on through the afternoon without a break so we could leave early. I hear that so often at these kinds of things and it is a huge mistake. It would be so much more productive to have a long coffee in the middle of the afternoon. They just keep rolling out the same format though – what can you do!

And then I popped into work to finish the day off with a quick testing of the fire alarms. A charming wee addition to my jobs list. It’s ideal for an attention seeker to have the opportunity to make a big noise. Makes up for not being a big noise myself I guess.

This evening I have just been in a committee meeting. I really should minute the bits that don’t get minuted, there are some gleeful moments. Like the discussion around the broken toilet seat. The Hon Sec said it was a bit loose when he sat on it. I said ‘you do mean the toilet seat?’ ‘It just needs a little tool’ he continued. Oh please stop. And there is also a small damp patch under the sink which we all had to look at. Mad stuff. It’s a bit of light relief though after such a concentratey day.

Boots are exhorting folks to ‘Change one thing’. People try to take on too many lifestyle changes after Christmas apparently, so Boots have made little pocket packs to help you change just one thing. My sister put four in my bag the other day. She likes a challenge.

I liked the start of my six week diary on the ‘Lose Weight’ one as it just said to ‘conjure up an image of how you wish to be’ so I closed my eyes and thought about that while I dunked another chocolate biscuit. But that was the easy part. Oh well it will all be worth it in the end.

I need to keep myself occupied. But it’s January. The garden is too squelchy, the light is really a bit rubbish for artistic purposes and anything too practical will just bore the pants off me right now. I should be learning my monologue really because there are ten pages, of which I have only five under my belt so far. Surely a bit of procrastination doesn’t hurt………..

Hm, decisions, decisions, shall we watch Soapstar Superstar or Sleb Big Bro. Oh what a choice, crapop or crapreality. I’m afraid the crapop wins hands down – well you know me and crapop. The addition of the Goodies (where the giant kitten is I dread to think) to the Big Brother house really didn’t do a thing for me. I don’t mind a mowffy cow, or even two, but not when they are unwatchably so. And after learning that Ken walked I’ve no desire to revisit. At least with SS there are some jolly tunes to listen to.

First day of the Drop a Jean Size diet today and I am surprised that I haven’t felt really, really hungry. Cereal usually just gives me a tremendous appetite for some real food but I have managed to just about stay to target and don’t feel the need to rush off to the kitchen for a last minute food-fill. The reason for choosing this two week challenge is partly the control aspect because half the battle with weight loss is getting back into control - me controlling it not it controlling me - and the first two weeks of any diet are the worst. In two weeks I can wrest back control and get into a healthier eating pattern. Also as I don’t eat cereal as a rule when I am fed up with the sight of a crunchy nut cornflake by the end of the two weeks it won’t be a foodstuff I shall miss.

I have for a few weeks had a real craving for cornflakes so this should sort it out!

It did mean though that I couldn’t partake of the delicacies I prepared for our lunchtime meeting. The sandwiches with cream cheese, raisins and grated carrot looked really interesting, and actually rather refreshing.

I took a chap by surprise tonight. Oh not in a naughty, cheeky, caught-in-a-dark-corner type way. I acted with him in a play twenty-two years ago and haven’t seen him since but I surprised him by remembering him when he didn’t have clue who I was (I was less memorable in those days – people don’t dare forget me now!). Memory is a strange creature though as I’m often reminded of doing things I have no recollection of – and I really don’t have any recollection of walking across Tower Bridge naked apart from a red bobble hat and a little feminine grace.

I am joking of course – I don’t have a red bobble hat.

Well. The wheels have come off. Off of the floor tool for the Dyson that is. It’s a bit of a bummer as a new floor tool will cost about £40. Such is life. Just when things are going well the wheels come off your floor tool.

However, on the upside, the alien that has been festering in my body for eight days has finally been removed. I had a splinter stuck down my little finger nail and I was starting to think it would be with me for life. If it had been there much longer I would have been obliged to give it a name. Sammy the Splinter perhaps or Bert the Bastard Bit of Basket that held Bread. The latter has a lovely poetic feel to it but alas is now no longer required.

At a party I was at yesterday we had to wrap a member of our team in toilet roll to look like an Egyptian Mummy. As you do. It took me back to my childhood – my mother wrapped me in toilet roll while she was on a training course for social workers. I have photos of me top-to-toe in toilet tissue at a tender age. I sometimes wonder how I turned out as ‘normal’ as I did. At the party last night I managed to get myself into a team where half the people were called John, or a John variant. The long night of the Johns.

January seems to go on forever. You get Twelfth Night out of the way - and the decs all back in their boxes - and it just stretches out in front of you with no chance of sighting pay day for yonks. I could really do with two pay days in January.

I am not referring to the book of the same title by John Steinbeck although the idea of ‘workers trapped in a cycle forever’ does ring a bell. And on a completely unrelated note that reminds me of The Bicycle Men – if you haven’t seen it you won’t know what I’m talking about but this link might help http://www.thebicyclemen.com/

Anyhow back to the mice and men.

The mice. We have had four mouse sightings in the last 24 hours and I am beginning to suspect they are all separate mice and not the same one as there was another mouse running around quite happily even after I had put one mangled corpse in the bin. It has knocked the cats out; they are totally zonked after yesterday’s mousefest but there is still a little fellow sitting on the pipes in the downstairs john washing his whiskers. Jerry is in the John. Clearly he has worked out the cats don’t get access to there so it’s a good place to hang out. On the one hand I can’t stand to see the little things being hunted down but on a practical level the cats are there to keep vermin at bay so one has to, ultimately, accept the law of the jungle. Mice are terribly cute but they breed very, very quickly as we discovered years ago when my boy’s two pet mice turned into twelve.

At least I don’t stand on a chair and scream like a girl.

The men. Why. Apart from the tadpole things what is their function. I jest. Earlier on I was mulling over the line from When Harry Met Sally the ‘men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way’ one. I suppose ultimately at some primal level that has a certain amount of truth in it as one of most basic human instincts is to reproduce. Ergo many of our friends of the opposite sex are at a subconscious level identifiable as potential mates. The human species being what it is - a kind of virus that covers half the planet (echoes from Red Dwarf!) - the urge is ever present in our loins. I don’t know why I thought about it at all except that I was dwelling on the basic instincts of the wee creatures in my house. We humans have buried our instincts beneath many, many layers – thank God! – but I guess it must still be there, reassuringly constant. Circle of life, cycle of life stuff all this. I am relieved to say though that when I have been out with male friends in various eating places I have never faked an orgasm.

They were all real.

Four down, only three hundred and sixty one days left of 2007. And so much to do in the time. Two more days of clunking into the Christmas decorations. After that it’s Spring. Time moves inexorably onwards.

We are currently being overwhelmed with a bowl of hyacinths. The scent is so heavy it’s almost suffocating us. They don’t understand the concept of gently fragrancing a room. Every inhalation of air into the lungs is coated with hyacinth.

I have just spent a little time brushing some wigs and it has brought on the sneezes not to mention covering me with hair in a variety of shades. They aren’t for me of course they are for hubby. Panto time is upon us and he needed a wig, handbag and some jewels. I am glad I don’t work with wigs. Or WAGS either come to that.

Sleb BB – or ‘A Pile of Shite’ – is on at the moment so I feel I can multi-task. I couldn’t bring myself to watch it properly without having something else on the go. A suitably bizarre mix of characters and it is odd that amongst the reasons given for being involved in this years ‘Testament of Uncouth’ there aren’t many ‘I’m here to boost my flagging, sagging career’. It’s like watching the test card and I used to be mesmerised by that. No hope for me really!

I knew it was asking for trouble watching an emotive programme like that (Not Forgotten: Shot at Dawn) – now I’m all sniffly. I have never had much time for the Second World War as a historical topic but the First World War always catches at me with its little sadnesses and its idiotic bravery. I put it down to watching Testament of Youth at a deeply impressionable age.

But oh how quickly we slip back into the inanity of a later century and the telecrap ads.

And moving from vomitous ads to the equally vomitous ‘round-robin’. We always get one around this time from some friends in NZ.

I will share some of it with you, removing names of course lest you wish to hunt them down and destroy them.

***’s year went from sickness and despair to amazing recovery. Despite losing a full term of work she topped her year in the July Cambridge History exam and caught up with everything else. She lead her school house in the annual house music competition – with far more dancing than singing and came 4th out of 11 houses, completed her DOE Gold award, came 2nd in the NZ secondary schools and 2nd in the National team aerobics champs. Somewhere in between she played for her school no2 netball team. How she flew through her contemporary dance exam having had 3 lessons we’ll never know………

And so it continues. Clearly she would have been 1st in all these things if she had not had her bout of glandular fever but as it is she is lumbered with being always the bridesmaid, never the bride. I shouted up to the girlie earlier on ‘for f**k’s sake, have you not come top in anything in the last year that we can brag about?’ but answer came there none. Actually this yearly epistle does one thing for me (apart from jiggling my upchuck reflex) and that is that it makes me for a moment appreciate how good a ‘mom’ I am. I don’t need awards to prove it and when I handed the letter to the girlie just now she just tossed it aside with a dismissive laugh and said ‘who cares!’

That’s my girl.

Get the priorities sorted on New Year’s Day and the rest of the year should fall into place.

So I bought four new tea towels today. And a diary.

See what I have planned for the year!

It’s amazing what a difference it makes when New Year’s Day dawns bright and sunny – at least I assume it did as it was still quite sunny and bright at 11am when I finally surfaced. That must be the latest lie-in I’ve had in donkey’s ages and certainly the latest I’ve had this year. Not that I was drinking in the New Year in an alcoholic whirlwind social doodah or anything. In fact I didn’t get through more than a third of a miniature bottle of Amarula and the only thing that kept me awake this side of midnight was a text from my sister at 1am saying her boyfriend wanted a picture of my boobs to show his friends.

I haven’t thought about resolutions today. As always, I need a few days to think about it. Christmas needs to be packed away in all seventeen of its boxes (and the fourteen trees re-forested in the attic) before I can comfortably settle down to my resolution preparation.

The 2007 notebook is as yet blank and waiting for the writing of our lives upon the pages. Let’s to it…..

I shall keep it short and sweet...

Happy New Year

2007

to everyone