I have made some bunting. Two 10m lengths in fact, using bright patterned fabric so they look very jolly. They are to string across somewhere or other on Saturday when I do my Open Garden thingy. I am gradually ticking off the little jobs on my to-do list but the list seems to get longer every day, so it’s like the bottomless well. I’m still waiting for the camouflage parachute fabric to arrive so I can make the cover for the frame that used to be a greenhouse but that is something I can do in a jiffy anyway. Plus I have to make about a 100 scones.

However, I have at last managed to get to the beach to collect another bag of shells to finish the fairy pool area. As it is the half term holiday I took the wee girlie to the beach. That is what you do with the wee ones in the school hols isn’t it? So I did. (I still can’t take it in that my youngest child has left college.) It was for her the perfect weather for the beach being overcast and verging on raining. She doesn’t like sun because being a redhead (ish) she gets burnt way too quickly and has had some really bad experiences in the past so taking her to the beach on a hot day would be a form of torture. So although it might have been a washout day for beach babies on holiday along the south coast it wasn’t for us.

I have to wrap this up now though because we have to go watch a film. We were watching Along Came Polly the other day and it led to reminiscing about FX – Murder by Illusion which I liked so we have it on Amazon rental atm. Ok so it isn’t a great film as films go but I like it – but then I like all sorts of goofy crap!

Seven things……………..

I haven’t worn a watch for years – because the time is all around us (till receipts are good) – it was a very liberating experience to stop being chained to a watch.

I have a vomit phobia

I am way too superstitious – I say ‘Good Morning Mr Magpie’ even though I know it’s silly.

I say thank you to cash point machines – and that’s pretty silly too.

I don’t really like plain chocolate, I prefer milk or white.

I have a very short concentration span.

I worry about how I shall be able to cope when I’m older and can’t curl my legs up under me on the settee.

Rules: Each person tagged gives 7 random facts about themselves. Those tagged need to write in their blogs the 7 facts, as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven others and list their names on your blog. You have to leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and to read your blog?

I shall tag: Lee954, Ian Dulley, SketchWeasel, Bizopps, hf148, Steven Paul Allen, freeasthewind

This evening I collected all my baskets together and got everything out so I could get all the bits and pieces out and tidy it all up. Sewing stuff and knitting stuff and crafty stuff and arty stuff plus a collection of other things that shouldn’t have been there at all. With everything strewn about all over the floor Katie decided it was a good time to drop a live mouse in it all. Not completely helpful.

I am at that stage where there are so many things to do I don’t know what to do first so I just end up frittering away precious time wandering around trying to decide what to do first. I even tried to make a list but I couldn’t think what to write first. And then I decide to do something totally random and turn out my baskets – and that wouldn’t have made it onto the list anyway.

This Saturday my sister and I did the Hanover Trail of Artists’ Open Houses in Brighton. Well we did a large proportion of it anyway. The fact that this area is basically a hill and we were yawning when we first set off is an indicator of how tiring it would have been to do them all. As it was I felt asleep on the train coming home. It’s so disorientating.

This was my favourite of the group….
http://www.wiredandfired.co.uk/index.aspx?wsid=45038&sectionid=740228

Another one had an amazing array of lovely cakes and we had to stop for refreshment of course – as you do. We chose Pear & Cardamom and Orange & Rosemary – delicious.

If I had been travelling to a station without barriers I could have travelled cheap today on a 10p permit to travel but as it was I was going to Brighton and couldn’t get away with not buying a legitimate ticket. But it is so galling when I have to chase the guard up the train to force him to sell me a ticket. That one sticks in my craw.

Last night at rehearsal I finally arrived at the conclusion that I really must play my character in the play as a man and it was suggested to me that with a really good cod-piece I would quickly feel like a bloke and then it would be easy. I don’t think so, I really don’t think that wearing a cod-piece is going to make me feel anymore like a man than painting a beard on my face would. However I will do my best to be as masculine as possible. The second role this year that requires a flat chest! Life holds so many distinctions.

I’m still feeling in the grip of the end-of-work-start-of-hols tiredness syndrome. Beginning of holiday time is the danger time for colds and infections, the body just stops to take a huge breath of fresh relaxing air and all the bugs whop in there straight away.

On the subject of grip though I couldn’t grip anything yesterday. I strained one wrist on the door at work the other day and then yesterday a thoughtless fling of the other hand connecting with the lock in the doorframe jarred the hand completely and I couldn’t do much at all. If I had wanted to get out of doing the housework it was the perfect excuse but as it was it was just an aggravation.

However, I managed to make the boy his carrot cake. And then I had to do it again because I realised that the first was made with plain flour instead of self-raising. I don’t quite know what to do with the carrot brick cake but it looks robust enough to make a paving slab for the garden.

Our guest duly arrived in the evening, was fed, watered and shown to his freshly tidied room. Only to find a soppy cat sprawled over the newly made bed in a cattitude of ownership. This morning I vaguely heard him (the guest not the cat) and hubby leaving to go off to France for their booze cruise at some unholy hour so that is the pair of them out of the way for the rest of the day. As guests go he is very easy - and even with his gluten intolerance, because he brings a lot of his own food with him.

Well that’s that. Work is over until 4th June. Thank goodness. You reach a point don’t you when you simply need a break from the whole work thing. I like my job but I like my time off too. And I need mental, spiritual and emotional refreshment.

I was really feeling crabby today. The I-don’t-want-to-be-at-work-any-more syndrome that niggles all the way through the last pre-holiday day. My roomie said I made her feel depressed! So she can have a break from me as well.

I had my weekly trip to the garden centre at lunchtime to look for something to fill my spare tyre. No, not the one on my trousers. I’m not entirely sure where it came from to be honest – but it has been hanging around in the garden for a few years and I thought it was time to put it to good use. Mind you it has to be sympathetically positioned because it is quite hard to make a tyre, regardless of its make, blend attractively into its surroundings. I managed to successfully hide but still make use of the old pink corner bath earlier in the year – it now contains a small fernery. So the only piece still left to locate suitably is the old lav. I don’t quite know what to put in it. Logs seems an appropriate choice but it wouldn’t hold too many! Something to ponder in the next few days perhaps.

I am starting my time off with a mammoth tidying up session tomorrow because my brother-in-law is coming to stay for a couple of days. Start as I mean to go on. Keeping busy!

You have days sometimes don’t you where you wish you could rewind what you’ve just said and erase it. The only-opening-ones-mouth-to-change-feet syndrome. Me and my thoughtless tongue, tsk - I shall be spanking myself severely later on, be assured.

I notice it’s raining again, which is rather convenient as I didn’t really have time today to water the new lawn. Yes, that’s new lawn, you saw right. The brown blanket on the Lower Lawn has turned into a lovely green sward. I used quick grow lawn seed and it has done exactly what it said on the tin – or in actual fact plastic packet – and grown quick. It’s always quite moving to see fresh new shoots bursting from the ground like tiny rapiers, slashing and thrusting their way into the world.

It was our first rehearsal for The Merchant of Venice tonight. Rehearsal might be bit misleading though as it was just a preliminary read-through. It’s quite a lively cast so I anticipate this will be a jolly production, I hope so, I need the distraction. There are going to be three rehearsals a week until the first week of August when the play is performed. So three rehearsal nights and two Morris nights each week – that should keep me out of mischief…..and keep me away from the TV for a while.

I was shat on from a great height yesterday – literally.

It had been a splendid day really; it just had some less than splendid moments in it.

I trundled off with my sister to look at some art. We decided to try the Newhaven scene, and the small collection of Open Houses there. Newhaven is not quite finished we decided. It’s a town that feels as though it’s still in the process of being worked out and in the mean-time, houses, roads, shops and ships have just been randomly thrown together. A little park like area with nesting swans and winding paths looked as though it linked up to somewhere but instead the path just ended in the river – that kind of thing. It seemed like someone just said we’ll have one of those and some of that and a few of those but we’ll sort out how to position them later.

We started with a cup of tea – to refresh and revive after the train journey – in a café that cannot have started out that way. I don’t think I have been in a café that felt less like one. It was cavernous and partly decorated in trendy night-club colours – and partly not – and it had the weirdest feeling that the ‘café’ was really just squatting. A very strange place. One of the waitresses, perhaps sensitive to the vibrations and therefore a little nervous, dropped a load of cups and saucers behind us and I felt the splash of warm tea dregs hit the back of my legs. Start as you mean to go on.

After that came the whole shitting from on high thing. A bird that had presumably had a curry the night before judging by the amount and velocity of its outpourings used the back of my jacket as target practice. My sister said it was a sign of good luck. I said it was certainly lucky. Lucky I had been wearing something I could take off and roll up in my bag for the rest of the day otherwise I would have had to parade around in just my bra – and it was way too chilly for that.

However we did have a lovely time pottering around. There were a couple of places that had gardens which is always an added bonus. They made me feel a little less anxious about the state of my own which I will inflict on people next month because they were quite lovely even with the wild and untamed patches – of which I have quite a few. The cream tea - which we had for lunch - was particularly nice as we ate it sitting in a garden on a hill overlooking the Ouse valley (at least I think so!).

One place we went to had some funky automata and the creator of it was very keen to explain it all – which was nice – such a clever thing to make I think.

A few years ago when we were looking round arty places in a Brighton we wandered into a flat that was quite darkened and quiet, no-one else about and after a couple of longish dark corridors we emerged in a room that was filled to the brim with stuff including a rather intense and almost scary looking artist. It was more than a little creepy at the time and ever since then we take an instinctive step back from the intense, the starey-eyed, the over-effusive, and the downright weird. And there is always one…somewhere. They are probably very nice people really!

But all in all it was a good day.

I had a bit of a senior moment today. During my working day I had to ‘visit the cabin’ for a ‘refreshment break’ or ‘pop to the porcelain palace’ if you prefer. I closed the door, locked it and then stood for a largish number of seconds trying to work out what wasn’t quite right. Eventually I realised I hadn’t turned the light on; I was standing in pitch dark.

I had quite a few blank moments during dancing practice last night – my concentration was all over the shop – and I had to be physically propelled into the correct place at one point much to the amusement of all the others. But I have days like that when there is so much clogging up the brain it just won’t operate. Like the watering can when it gets leaves in its rose, the water is in there but there’s too much in the way of the outlet and you just get it coming out in spurts.

My nice new slim-line water butt up the garden should have collected some water by now I thought. I popped up to take a look. Barely anything. It would work so much better with the tap turned off. Tsk. What a dilly.

I need a rest!

Two o’clock and all’s well. Two o’clock and all’s swell. Well not too bad anyway.

The razor blade juggling sensation has now gone from my mouth so I can natter freely again – and more importantly enjoy my chocolate. And without any numbness and tingling – that will be in two weeks time when I have to go back to the dentist and have the whole of the filling re-done and the tooth re-constructed.

And…..my early morning trip to the dentist meant I bumped into an old friend – she isn’t old, I’ve just known her ages – and we arranged to go swimming and have lunch next week when I am off. So I think it was fated for me to break my tooth so that I could meet up with her. Which is really nice.

And….then I went to work for a wee bit, only for a short fragment. I came away feeling all perked up and tickety because there’s something wonderfully compelling about someone who has complete faith in your abilities, sings your praises, and boosts your ego – AND pays your wages. I can cope with a bit of that in my day, even on my day off – in fact I wonder if maybe I ought to pay him for the pleasure of working. NO – don’t tell him that!

And….I also got round to buying a new toothbrush (oh the excitement of it all!). Every day this week I have set off to work only to have to stop and fish out a toothbrush bristle before I get any further. What are you doing? Just fishing out my daily bristle, thanks.

And…..my sister just rang and asked if I want to go out with her at the weekend to look at the Artists Open Houses in Brighton – which I love doing, and love doing especially with her.

And…the sun is trying to peek out

__________________________________________________________________________________

Additional

Just one of those groovy moments. The girlie standing on a low cupboard so I could draw lines up the backs of her legs – made considerably more difficult because she was convulsed with enticklement giggles. By the time I got half way up one leg so was I – I don’t think her lines are incredibly straight. Hubby is never one to be left out and wanted lines up his legs too. I just hope he doesn’t drop his trousers this evening but at least I won’t be around to see as I am off dancing shortly.

A few more inches and I should have scraped all the skin off my legs. Ah what price vanity. I think it’s the holiday skin lotion I’ve been using that’s brought me out in this most horrendous itchy rash, I can’t think what else it could be. And just to add insult to injury I have acquired a half dozen insect bites as well so as well as the spattering of tiny scabs’n’rash I also have large red angry lumps. All I wanted was for my legs to co-ordinate better with my arms. I suppose I could now rub my arms with a little sandpaper to even things up. Back into trousers I guess.

Someone recently told me I was a bit of a Tomboy – although surely at my age that should be Tom-man – and to a certain extent I am obliged to give the whole feminine thing a wide berth. Make-up upsets my skin, too much dieting upsets my joints, my hair is totally mad, my finger nails are too small and crumbly, perfume brings on hay-fever, jewellery aggravates my eczema - need I continue? Every time I make a tentative effort to improve the visuals something goes disastrously wrong and in my head I can still hear my mother wafting words like vanity and conceit about my teenage angsts.

I shall be shrouding the mirrors again for a while.

Do you think I shall keep away from toffees from now on? Doubtful, very doubtful. I broke a tooth yesterday on a golden penny toffee – and I don’t even like Quality Street because it’s made by Nestlé (one of my banned brands). I’ve only got them because they were given to us and I hate to waste stuff – especially sweet stuff – and no one else will eat the toffees (for obvious reasons). I have had to force myself to tip the rest of the toffee ones in the bin. I could give them to someone who likes toffees I suppose but I would never forgive myself if they then broke a tooth or lost a filling. The real irritation is the time and expense this will cost me – it would have been far less wasteful really to just have put them in the bin straight away. I hope this time I have learnt my lesson but judging by the other mistakes I keep on making in life then no, I won’t have learnt a dratted thing.

Added to which I feel like I am juggling a razor blade in my mouth every time I speak or eat – and they are two things I very much like to do. Hey ho.

I have just spent a very pleasant time in the attic with the new rowing machine. The girlie said she would be more likely to use a rowing machine if it was an air rower rather than the sculling thing we have – and which I can break very easily – so I got this new fancy thing (only very cheap in fact) and I fixed it up and put it together upstairs in front of the little TV we have up there. I have used it. The girlie has not used it. The hubby has not used it either. I’m sure they will get around to it eventually – when I have finally managed to break it. It’s quite nice though because it makes a lovely breeze which is a big plus as the attic gets quite warm and sticky in the summer, even with the windows open. Mind you we can’t have to windows open much because Sylvester is determined to get out onto the roof so he can interfere with the seagulls. The fact that they are much bigger than him is not a deterrent. He’s a typical bloke’s bloke, the bigger the better, especially when it comes to birds.

You know, Shrek thinks Lord Farquaad's compensating for something, which I think means he has a really...

Yesterday we attended to the lawn problems. At the front of the house we have a fine, lush, healthy lawn, and although it may have the odd weed here and there it is essentially a lawn, an area of grass that you can walk on barefoot in the summer (and in the winter if you’re hardy enough) and enjoy.

What we have out the back is a different kettle of fish. We have two ‘lawns’. They are not comprised of edge to edge uninterrupted grass they are simply areas of the garden that are designated as ‘lawns’. The Upper Lawn, a plot of roughly 20’ by 16’ has about a square foot of grass. In fact yesterday it had more oak trees than blades of grass in it. I re-located two or three dozen of the oak trees into pots – if they want to grow they can do it on my terms – and then scraped away the celandine to reveal….mostly bare earth. It is a difficult site to manage because of the persistent badger problem, shade from the huge oak above it, and the fact that is at the end of a long garden. I seeded it again anyway – I don’t give up that easy - I want my patch of grass and I want it on the only bit of flat ground I’ve got.

As for the Lower Lawn…..well it’s a small nightmare, an ongoing battle with badgers and foxes means the lunar surface it has become is a broken ankle waiting to happen. Per square foot of ‘lawn’ there are at least two or three pits about the size of a paw. And in an area at least 20’ by 30’ that’s a lot of holes. We filled them all in as many as we could find with a mix of topsoil, sand and grass seed but I suspect there are still craters. It should look like an area of green grass with tiny islands of brown but it is more like a blanket of brown with occasional tufts of green wavy stuff.

At least I don’t have to worry about watering it today though, thanks to the rain I can just sit inside and watch the grass grow. Ha ha – I’ll believe it when I see it.

I should be out dancing today but there weren’t enough of us able to go. Quite frankly it is something of a relief as I do have a whole bunch of other stuff to do plus dancing in the rain is enervating without being overly pleasurable.

Oh wow, this is luxury. Sitting with my feet up, a nice brew, house to myself, laptop on lap, no place to go. Bliss.

Well anyway it’s time to report back on the exciting stories I went out to find yesterday. I didn’t. I went into work to test the fire alarms and ended up staying a couple of hours – no really, it’s a good thing, more hours = less boredom + more pay. Then later I had to go out and get some sew&sew Velcro. Excitement is lurking somewhere round the corner I’m sure, it’s just a very big corner.

It’s rained some today. It’s rained alotski. My water butt had got to the lowest point possible last week and now it’s nearly full again. Actually although this doesn’t sound like a terribly exciting fact in itself, it is to me because it is so much easier to fill the watering can from the butt than the outside tap. This is because the outside tap has become loose and swivels round – usually as I’m trying to stop the water and I get a face-full – which just annoys me at a time I want to be calm and mellow. It has been loose for several years now and you may well wonder why we don’t get it fixed. Answer – because that would be too easy, because it would make life simpler, because I wouldn’t have to keep watering the garden in a wet t-shirt ……Oh …….Maybe that’s why!

I just saw a Bird of Paradise bloom on the television just now and I am still waiting for my own one to burst forth. Now this really is quite exciting – for me anyway. Fours years ago I carried a rooty bit of Strelitzia back from Madeira in my suitcase. I bought in the market btw I didn’t dig it up. I planted it in a pot and carefully nurtured it through the first summer, brought it into the cool utility room over the winter, and then repeated the process each year - and each year it has produced a few more leaves. Then this winter I noticed it was sporting a new shoot, a different shape and yes, this is a flower spike, and thanks to the hot weather is not far off unveiling its glory. Fours years of waiting – surely this is slightly exciting. It took me less time to have a baby!

This evening I have been enjoying a little reminiscing. Ivor the Engine. On youtube. My little boy - when he WAS that – used to have a tape of Ivor the Engine stories and I loved listening to it with him (and without him actually) because the voices of Oliver Postgate et al were so lovely and lyrical, and the stories so gently and genteelly amusing. How I came to be wandering down memory lane is ……..well ……..a long story! It started with Mary, Mungo and Midge, and a slow Friday afternoon………

I have to go out today and drum up some excitement in my life as I have officially become boring. I was boring the girlie to death yesterday with an anecdote about menstruation and diarrhoea and she turned to me and said it was a bit like the safety pin story. The safety pin story was tedious apparently. It was more of a borey than a story. I said to her that nothing very exciting happens to me so how can I tell her exciting little anecdotes when I don’t have any to tell – let’s face it I am a middle-aged woman who goes Morris dancing for pleasure. I could just make stuff up I suppose.

So today I am going to go out into the world and find something interesting to bring home to the table. Mind you it won’t have to be a food story either. The scorn I get for discussing any kind of pleasurable experience with food is worth avoiding if I can.

Katie (the cat) woke us both up in the middle of the night yesterday because she had a mouse. I had felt her launch herself off the bed like a small firework a little earlier and as I lay there in the dark I just kept having this picture of her in my mind dressed in a rag coat (like this http://bassett-street-hounds.org/kit/ ) and it is an image that just won’t shift…….

Another prime example of my borey-telling!

I need help clearly.

The other day I spoke of being VERY COLD. That was absolute carp, it was before I truly discovered what it is to be cold. I have been so utterly chilled today my head hurts from the strain of just staying alive. Three days of dancing has passed in a blur of colour and sound and for the most part was completely enjoyable but today it was starting to verge on the distinctly miserable. In a tumble-down castle on a hill by the sea is not a place that is going to be the cosiest of locations but the weather seemed to have gone out of its way to be ridiculously un-summery.

This weekend the freaks of the world could have been walking round in Hastings (not difficult anyway) dressed in only a red hat and bloomers and nobody would have given a second glance because there were so many outrageous outfits on parade. I’m quite sure some of the bizarrely attired folks out there were just taking advantage of the opportunity presented to them to pass unnoticed for a change. In fact the oddest people in town were the ones in sensible, conservative habiliments.

As for the dancing, I managed to squeeze myself into quite a few dances over the weekend, and made surprisingly few mistakes so I was quite happy. Both my little ones came to watch their mother make a spectacle of herself today and I was deeply touched. That they even left the house on such a foul day was pretty amazing let alone stand around in the freezing cold wind to endure a whole lot of Morris dancing. Hubby on the other hand has gone to Spain for a week to avoid it. Well each to his own, and to be honest I think I would rather have been in Spain today than Hastings.

On the up-side I can rest easy about not feeling like watering the garden. Swings and roundabouts.

There’s no two ways about it – today I have been mostly VERY COLD. The cold arctic wind found its way into every nook and cranny as I walked to work. I was sitting at my desk looking like a great big pimply goose. And I have spent this evening sitting in a chilly barn watching my toes turn ridiculous shades of pink and purple – which btw did not co-ordinate with my orange sandals. I know I should have worn sensible socks and shoes but its Friday evening and a night out is a night out. Even if it is just sitting around in a draughty barn reading and listening to poetry.

And now I have to pop off to Tesco to do my weekly shopping because there is no other window in my weekend. It’s end to end dancing all weekend with the huge event on Monday which looms over me like a great big looming thing. I have to lead a small group of dancers in a procession – me! Lead!?! I ask you. That and the heaaavy pressure of doing several stage dances. My nerves are all in a jangly tangle with sharp bits sticking out all over the shop. Its seriously affecting my mellow at the moment and there will soon be cracks appearing in the façade of my calm.

On the other hand of course I can’t wait to make a huge spectacle of myself. I love it. I never stop wanting to draw attention to myself in some ridiculous way. This weekend should do it….

What a delicious moment that was. I was on my way home just now and a guy overtook me (walking – we were both walking) on the pavement and as he just passed he looked back to smile and pass the time of day. However, having seen the front view he moved on quite swiftly so I guess I look best from behind! That has made my day. I’m a babe but only on the rear view.

On Tuesday I danced at sun-up and I also danced at sundown which was a nice bit of symmetry for the glorious 1st May. I didn’t do a great deal in between though. I pottered a lot. And yesterday I paid the price for my long day by feeling very, very weary but I’m all perky again now.

I am pottering today as well really. I spent an exciting time this morning sorting all my plastic food tubs – I know how to have a good time you see. I have just had a rather yummy lunch of crispy rolls, hard goat’s cheese, home-grown salad and lavender jelly. And I shall get on with a spot of gardening this afternoon. But the nice thing about this weather is that I can potter about quite happily in and out of the garden and it satisfies me. I don’t need expensive luxuries, just a warm day and a patch of ground and that’s me sorted.

May 1st. Summer is here.

I set my clock this morning for 3.30 but I was awake by ten to anyway and just as well really as my 4am pickup turned up at 3.45. I really regret not putting my camera with my other stuff last night because I just couldn’t put a hand on it this morning when I was groping around in the dark and I had to leave without it, and missed capturing an amazing sunrise over Hastings.

We sat in the café on the West Hill a short while before dawn drinking coffee to ward off the stiff cold wind for as long as possible but the dancing had to start before the sun made its presence too much felt. There were a staggering number of people – in my opinion – and a number of staggering people. It amazes me that so many people are prepared to get up at the crack of dawn – or in reality quite a bit before – to go and stand in the half-light……..on a hill overlooking the sea……….in a stiff breeze and very cool temperatures. And then to strip off their coats and dance! But this is Hastings we are talking about and Hastings is a place where strange and bizarre are the norm and anything goes. (Not that Morris dancing at dawn is unusual on May Day but in more conservative areas it must be viewed as the province of the deranged whereas in Hastings it is pretty much par for the course). Which is why I was there too I guess. I hanker for the strange and bizarre. There were four groups dancing and of those four groups two managed to get two sets dancing (one set is six, so two would be twelve) which is a spectacular sight at sunrise. The final dance, with everyone joining in, had about 80 dancers which was quite a sight to behold against the back drop of the sun exploding like a bonfire over the East Hill.

Yes bonfires do explode - with the right combustible material!

I have a badge that proclaims ‘I danced at dawn – May 2007’ - and the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and I still have the day to play with.

So a very happy May Day to all.