menopausaloldbag (MOB)

I'm a Celebrity get me Out of Here

2009-11-20T14:52:00.010Z

Dear God, have you been watching 'I'm a nobody, keep me in here this week'? Now I am not a fan of reality shows in general. I used to watch the X Factor but when I realised the level of manipulation involved on the part of the production team - you know what I mean - the 'my father died before he could see me on here as it was his dearest wish but I know he's watching from above' type of tugging at the heartstring statement as he/she wipes away a tear, I stopped watching. In the thick of severe depression and the menopause, I'd sit with tears streaming down my face until I realised I was being played for a mug.

I'd laugh like a drain when someone came on and sang like a bag of spanners in a tumble drier and Simon Cowell would put them straight - but my laughter was reserved for those little angels who had been told by mummy and daddy that they were special and then let rip a foul mouth string of abuse at Cowell for telling them the truth. It didn't sit comfortably with me that the other poor hopefuls chasing their dreams got sharp shrift and summarily dismissed. Perhaps it's best they know and find another dream but we seem to have spawned a plethora of Cruelality TV programmes where the criticism is delivered with unqualified glee.

The only show that I'd beat a path back from the pub at speed to see was 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'. I reckoned that as these celeb's were trying to kick start their careers and get paid and humiliated for the privilege and were adults capable of rational decision, then what the hell, I'd have a laugh at their expense. And that was fine whilst the public voted for characters and not simply out of spite. I can't bear Celebrity for Celebrity sake - the Paris Hilton's, the Katie Price's of this world. If someone can act, sing, dance, and work hard, then great they deserve to achieve success in the bear pit of the arts. If they need to keep their name at the top of the next casting director's list then why not get themselves more air time because there are too many talented actors out of work, too many chasing the same parts. It's a tough ole world out there so good on them I say, although many would say that the rag bag of celeb's that go into the show are pretty devoid of talent but I find it refreshing when you see someone you previously disliked coming up trumps and changing your opinion of them.

But for the love of God, this year's offering has become the 'let's beat the crap out of Katie Price' show. If you read the comments on the articles about the show on the Daily Mail web site then you would think this girl was a paedophile. She has a great many haters who spit venom and vile and keep voting her in to do the bush tucker trials. Anyone who tries to point out the simple truth that to keep voting for her is to continue to supply her with the oxygen of publicity and if they stopped we might get to see some of the other celeb's have a go, gets shot down in flames and red arrowed - nope that wasn't me - I don't bother my arse to comment. As much as I despise the cult of celebrity - and I don't mean the reverence afforded to the great iconic actors, singers, comics and so on that have talent - I am sickened by a demographic of society who behave in the manner of spectators holding their thumbs down as a Christian was thrown to the lions. I know she has courted publicity when it suited her and I know she divides opinion into those who love her and those who hate her. It has been argued enough about how she is iconic to a section of young impressionable people who think they don't have to work hard and just want to be famous. But for all I hate to see column inches about this young woman as frankly she just annoys me, no one could say she got there by not working hard at it. That's the message that doesn't get across to those seeking fame for fame sake.

IACGMOOH has become a ritualistic virtual stoning of a young woman whose life has been spiralling out of control since the breakup of her marriage. We are seeing the public destruction of a celebrity without really realising that she is a person who doesn't always make the right decisions in her life. I know I've made some horrendous decisions in my life but I've been able to lick my wounds in private. I know my life fell apart when relationships have fallen apart but I raged, cried and grieved in private. We all know just how duplicitous and wicked the press can be but we still fall for their tricks and read the papers believing somewhere along the line that there is no smoke without fire and so she becomes a figure of hate. She should have taken herself away and recovered in private but she is a product of her own, her fans'and the press's making with 'Brand Katie' to protect. She clearly went full-on to attempt to win the ratings war against the husband who left her. In her hurt and humiliation and most likely reeling from a broken heart she reverted to her alter ego 'Jordan' and seemed out of control as she blundered from one photo opportunity to another, each one showing her in a worse light than the one before. I mean who of us hasn't lost weight, acquired a new hairdo, and changed our wardrobe in a futile attempt to show the git that dumped us that we've moved on, ready for action and say hey, just look what you lost? In her desperation to wash that man right out of her hair, it seems that Katie went back to her alter ego of the glamour model Jordan, to a time when she was successful before Andre entered her life. She should have moved forward, not back. Doesn't that seem like a poorly advised woman who reverted to type and tried too hard to pretend her heart wasn't broken; the Sod you Mr, I'll show you how little you mean to me when all she really meant was come back and stop the hurt?

Her apparent panic attacks each time she is chosen for a trial didn't ring true to me as she's been in there before and coped admirably with the tasks. But I swing between believing it's an act of public manipulation and then wondering, given the knocks she is taking and the realisation that she is so disliked, if it is hurting her psychologically. Who can really say but although she is an ace manipulator I'd rather err on the side of caution and get her out of there pronto. But the mighty buck rules all and I doubt the producers of this show are too keen to lose their cash cow before the public oust her at the first chance. I find no comfort or laughter any more in seeing her do the trials.

We are known for being a nation that puts people on pedestals and then doing our utmost to knock them down for becoming too grand and full of themselves. Perhaps she deserves a lot of time in the shade but this public show of tearing her limb from limb leaves me distinctly uncomfortable and is bullying at its worst. Her mother and brother were both interviewed on a day time TV programme, saying quite rightly that she was being thrown to the lions. But really, I think their efforts might have been better served nurturing her and advising her not to throw herself into the den in the first place.

I never watched her reality show on TV, I'd rather have my eyes gouged out with a red hot poker but in reading more about her this week than at any other time I found that the general view is she bullied Andre incessantly and that her ego is rampant. She seems to be narcissistic and single minded in achieving her goals but I wonder how much we would find that distasteful were she male? After all, the majority of successful type A personalities run huge corporations and will step on anyone to get to the top - I know, I worked with and was married to one! I knew he would reach the top and he's achieved his dream of holding top positions and lately becoming the Chief Information Officer for a Fortune 500 international travel company that we all know and love. He's quoted regularly in the business press and I always smile when I see a reference to him and avidly read his words of wisdom for he is talented and wily and manipulative and a great orator. He talks up a good storm and is very charismatic. He was also hard to live with, vain, unfaithful and controlling. But that wasn't the whole man. He could be loving and kind and loved to party too, it was just that in time, I only saw the negative and needed my freedom and as I slowly emerged into the nutter I am today, he found his lack of ability to control me as constricting as I found him and so he left me. My point? Yes he had some distasteful traits but that wasn't all of him, and none of us are perfect. Inside Katie Price is someone just like him. She might have set herself up for retaliation but the beatings are severe, quite out of proportion to the crime.

And if anyone wants a real bush tucker trial, just nip over to my old mate Garry's house. The stuff he knocks up would have the lining of your stomach on the floor.

Paper Anniversary

2009-11-03T14:50:00.009Z

It was our fifth wedding anniversary on the 16th of October. It’s a paper gift kinda anniversary. I hadn’t seen any receipts from Aspreys or the like, no small packages secreted away in Himself’s usual hidey holes so I resigned myself to receiving a toilet roll as a keepsake. Useful I thought, you can never have enough bog roll. Even if you die, someone’s bound to nick it; it will never go to waste. I mean, how many times at work have you done a sprint to the loo in record times that only an Olympic medallist could dream of because you left the call of nature to the last minute and just as you are about to get down to the admin work you realise some light-fingered little toerag has made it away on their toes with the five rolls you saw in there earlier? There is nothing worse than the walk of shame as you shuffle off to another cubicle to remedy your acute distress followed by the need to torture the thieving little git with a shitty stick the next the time you catch them stuffing loo rolls in their oversized designer handbags that should have SWAG printed on the side. So all in all, you can never have too much bog roll I say.

As anniversaries go, it wasn’t all it should have been. Personally, I felt so ill that I should have been on a life support machine but Himself was determined we should go out and celebrate our wondrous union. I argued that being riddled with aches and pains, coughing up a storm and breaking a rib each time was probably going to take the edge off our romantic evening. Shivering like a washing machine on a fast cycle just added to my joy along with a runny nose that was barely contained by a truckload of tissues. I’d have been better off hooking a nosebag over my ears and just letting it run into that. Still, I’ll have the bog roll I thought and so, we reached a compromise and went to the pub up the road. I managed three small glasses of wine, purely medicinal of course, and enjoyed the look on the regulars’ faces as I told them it was swine flu. Hah, you’ve never seen so many backs rapidly disappear since the Great Plague of London. We almost got caught up in the slipstream of hasty exists.

And so it went with a whimper. “Never mind there’s always next year”, I consoled him as I headed off for a hot bath and back to my death bed, too ill to read Frankie Boyle’s autobiography that he’d thoughtfully chosen as my gift, as he knows I love his humour. So what, no bog roll then?

As a husband, Himself is wonderfully attentive and as these last two weeks have trawled by, he has enquired after my health to almost unheard of proportions, so much so, that I mooched off to check that my life assurance policy was still in the filing cabinet and not top-of-the-pile in his briefcase. I needn’t have worried, he still loves me and isn’t ready to dispose of my dismembered body parts quite yet. He was simply making sure I was in the rudest of health for a surprise two day trip to London; a city that I adore and lived in for ten years yet never did the tourist thing. He’s booked a fabulous 4* hotel behind Buckingham Palace, a theatre trip and worked out a wonderfully paced programme of top places to visit. What a catch eh? What a guy. What a totally adorable man.

And so we are off tomorrow morning to just be tourists. I am so excited I could dance, well almost. I can’t be arsed dancing really, never truly felt comfortable doing it. My blood runs cold when I see women dancing barefoot at wedding receptions. The sheer thought of some hefty eejit in stilettos piercing my foot makes me faint. So, as a nod to our wedding day where we didn’t have a ‘first dance’ here’s what himself and me would have looked like if we had. I’m the rotund one. Click here.

Parliamo Glasgow

2009-10-14T20:58:00.005+01:00

A company in Glasgow is recruiting ‘Glaswegian translators’ to help out visiting business men and women to understand the local lingo and the wee nuances of being Scottish. Top of the tasks they are expected to do is to attend business meetings. I can just hear the dialogue now.

Visiting business person: “So, what kind of revenue are we talking here?”

Scottish person: “Aw aboot a hunnerrrrr million, gie or take a tenner here an’ rer. Bit of courrrse, it’s aw subject tae auld Jimmy, oor high-heed-yin, geein us ra go aheeed”.

Translator: “We’ll be talking your proposal over with our CEO Sir James Farquahar before we give you the final figures, but we expect it to be in the region of one million pounds”.

Visiting Business person: “Great so we’ll wait for you to get in touch then. Now, how about joining us for a few drinks and dinner, we can talk over the fine details over a snort or two and perhaps get a feel for the local culture?”.

Scottish person: “Oh aye, nae borra there son, we like a wee bevvy noo an’ again. There’s a rare wee place doon the Barra’s; the place gits full o’ baw-bags frae time tae time, but therrrrr harrrmless rrreaally, as long as you don’t make eye coantact an’ hang oan tae yer wallet. The pub dae a great line in pints o’ heavy and Bucky cocktails, bit mind ye take care drinking them, ye can get fair stocious an’ fine yersel’ face doon in the gutter afore chuckin’ oot time. But ye’ll no git a finer intrrroduction tae Glesca culture, no surr.

Translator: “Thank you, that would be lovely, we enjoy an aperitif or two now and then. Perhaps you’d enjoy visiting a quaint and typically Scottish venue situated in our famous market area, the Barra’s. It’s patronised by some colourful local characters that you might find entertaining; apparently they collect money after their performances so you might like to donate a pound or two. Seems they also specialise in local beer and cocktails made from Buckfast, a glorious concoction made by Benedictine monks and now responsible for 80% of all alcohol sales within the Strathclyde area. But a word to the wise, two or three of these little numbers can leave you rather squishy by the end of the evening".

Scottish person; “Aye an’ you’ll no be wantin’ tae gie yersel’ a bagie-heed fur yer flight hame the morra mornin’. See, ma wee pal Hamish, pished as a fart efter ten aw those wee beauties, stoated oot only tae huv a hughie right oan a polis man’s boots. He wis fair near blind, whit wae him fallin’ doon three flights of stairs and the polis geein’ him a kick in the heed fur his troubles but fair play to him, wae the help of the polis, it didnae take Hamish mair than a few minutes tae find his wallies afore he could head aff hame fur his deep fried haggis and chip supper. Man, ah wis fair black-affrontit wae that wee effort and ma face wis beamin’ fur a week. And mind whit a say aboot the baggie-heed; Hamish wis fair crabbit fur at least a week and said he was getting home fine until someone stepped oan his fingers so we’ll no be wantin’ that tae happen to youse yin’s, seen as yer oor guests an’ all that. So, seen as ye’ve been brought up tae speed aboot whit a great night oot it can be, and ye don’t mind a wee heed injury here and there, we’ll meet ye aw there aboot 7 okay?

Translator: “Well ladies and gents, it seems an acquaintance of Mr Scottish Person had a tipple or two too many and found himself, temporarily myopic, rather disoriented and had some difficulty negotiating his way home. Luckily for him, the local constabulary were most helpful and after a short stumble on leaving the hostelry, pulled him upright and brushed him down. Wishing to maintain their well deserved reputation as a sharing caring police service, they went to great pains to check he had no head injuries and helped him to locate and refit his false teeth which had inadvertently been displaced rather conveniently onto the policeman’s boots when he was somewhat sick at the shock of tripping and being unable to right himself in time. Thankfully, there was no lasting damage and the man was on his way home in no time for a light supper of haggis and French-fries. And while Mr Scottish person was somewhat embarrassed for his friend, he empathised totally with the following day’s crushing hangover and why his friend seemed to have experienced a personality bypass and sense of humour failure for several days following their jolly jape. So, there you have it, a salutatory tale of overindulgence for you to consider but forewarned being forearmed and if you’re sure you’re up for it, we’ll rendezvous there around 7, shall we?

Visiting business person: Well, that’s certainly fine by us, and perhaps we can try a spot of haggis too?

Scottish Person: Oh aye, nae danger ranger. It’s shootin’ season, so there’ll be plenty of haggis tae be had and the beauty of it is, that if ye find yersel’ huving a wee chunder, it looks nae different on the pavement to when it was oan yer plate.

So, for a £140 a day, I think I’m more than qualified for the job. Only problem is, I’d have to relocate back home and a’m unrny gonnae dae that jist yet!

But as a wee taster and an introduction to Scottish culture, have a wee read of some jokes below. You’d have to go a long way to find a nation more self deprecating than the Scots and we’re all the better for being like that.

The Scots have the [unjustified] reputation of being stingy.
But what they do have is the ability to laugh at themselves.
Here are few examples
________________________________________
Double glazing is doing great business in Scotland in hope that the children cannot hear the icecream van when it comes round.
________________________________________
Angus called in to see his friend Donald to find he was stripping the wallpaper from the walls. Rather obviously, he remarked "You're decorating, I see." to which Donald replied "Naw. I'm moving house."
________________________________________
Old Tam, who had lost all his teeth, had a visit from the minister who noted that Tam had a bowl of almonds. "My brother gave me those, but I don't want them, you can have them" said Old Tam. The minister tucked into them and the said "That was a funny present to give a man with no teeth." To which Old Tam replied "Not really, they had chocolate on them..."
________________________________________
Callum decided to call his father-in-law the "Exorcist" because every time he came to visit he made the spirits disappear
________________________________________
A farmer's wife, who was rather stingy with her whisky, was giving her shepherd a drink. As she handed him his glass, she said it was extra good whisky, being fourteen years old. "Weel, mistress," said the shepherd regarding his glass sorrowfully, "It's very small for its age."
________________________________________
At an auction in Glasgow a wealthy American announced that he had lost his wallet containing £10,000 and would give a reward of £100 to the person who found it.
From the back of the hall a Scottish voice shouted, "I'll give £150!"
________________________________________
Jock was out working the field when a barnstormer landed.
"I'll give you an airplane ride for £5," said the pilot.
"Sorry, cannae afford it," replied Jock.
"Tell you what," said the pilot, "I'll give you and your wife a free ride if you promise not to yell. Otherwise it'll be £10."
So up they went and the pilot rolled, looped, stalled and did all he could to scare Jock. Nothing worked and the defeated pilot finally landed the plane. Turning around to the rear seat he said, "Gotta hand it to you. For country folk you sure are brave!"
"Aye," said Jock "But ye nearly had me there when the wife fell oot!"
________________________________________
Jock's nephew came to him with a problem. "I have my choice of two women," he said, "a beautiful, penniless young girl whom I love dearly, and a rich old widow whom I can't stand."
"Follow your heart; marry the girl you love," Jock counseled.
"Very well, Uncle Jock," said the nephew, "that's sound advice."
"By the way," asked Jock "where does the widow live?"
________________________________________
"I hear Maggie and yourself settled your difficulties and decided to get married after all," Jock said to Sandy.
"That's right," said Sandy, "Maggie's put on so much weight that we couldn't get the engagement ring off her finger."
________________________________________
Have you heard about the lecherous Jock who lured a girl up to his attic to see his etchings?
He sold her four of them.
________________________________________
A Scotsman took a girl for a ride in a taxi. She was so beautiful he could hardly keep his eye on the meter
________________________________________
A Scottish newspaper ad "Lost - a £5 note. Sentimental value.
________________________________________
Scottish telephone directories make ideal personal address books. Simply cross out the names and address of people you don't know.
________________________________________
SAVE petrol by pushing your car to your destination. Invariably passers-by will think you've broken down and help.
________________________________________
HOUSEWIVES: I find the best way to get two bottles of washing-up liquid for the price of one is by putting one in your shopping trolley and the other in your coat pocket.
________________________________________
INCREASE the life of your carpets by rolling them up and keeping them in the garage.
________________________________________
One day Jock bought a bottle of fine whiskey and while walking home he fell.
Getting up he felt something wet on his pants.
He looked up at the sky and said,"Oh lord please I beg you let it be blood!"
________________________________________
A Scotsmen and a Jewish man were having a magnificent meal at one of the finest restaurants in New York .At the end of the evening the waiter came over to present the check and a Scottish voice said "that's all right laddie just gae the check to me". The headlines in the local newspaper next day proclaimed "Jewish ventriloquist found beaten to death".
________________________________________

Chasing the Sun

2009-09-24T15:41:00.012+01:00

Imbued with the spirit of adventure after our walking holiday in North Wales, we were itching to get away again, but not for a week this time, just a short break of a few days to fit in with our weekend commitments. We checked the weather reports to see where the sun was destined to shine over our beautiful island and decided to chase after it instead of being at the mercy of clouds and rain over our little patch in Northamptonshire. We Ebay’d our way through cottages, B&B’s, static caravans and log cabins that offered so much or indeed too little for stonking great wedges of greenbacks for what amounted to a short let of two nights, where even worse, our furry friends were mostly persona non grata.

“When did things get so damn complicated and expensive?”, I asked Himself as I sloped off to make us a coffee and to rethink our options. I thought back to the ease of my teenage years where camping was a de rigueur requirement of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme of which I was working my way through the achievement levels. The excitement of leaving one’s parents to partake of an adventure of sailing, canoeing and rock climbing sent us giddy with anticipation. Each day was an adventure of hanging precariously backwards over the side of a yacht, holding steadfastly to the jib rope, as the sail swung dangerously low overhead, changing our direction as we sailed round at a superbly fast rate of noughts that would have the fainthearted heaving up lunch overboard. If it wasn’t sailing it was canoeing in the icy cold waters of the lake where learning to roll your canoe, wait three seconds and tap the now upturned underside to say you were still alive took your breath away as you almost expired from hypothermia before any thought of drowning entered your head. No matter that we returned to base camp soaked and cold through to the bones, for a hot shower, beans and sausages for dinner with a mug of hot chocolate. We could sleep for Scotland under damp canvas on a mountain of building site rubble and with our supple, mouldable young bodies experiencing few bouts of agony before embarking on another days exciting activity

Many years later, foot firmly placed on the bottom rung of the career ladder and somewhat financially challenged, I experienced camping as an activity once again. Only this time, there was no joie de vivre comparable to the experiences of my earlier youth. The cheap inflatable beds deflated overnight and were about as comfortable as an MFI flat-pack; the ground sheet wasn’t attached to the tent and all manner of creepy crawlies found the inside of our tent much more favourable than the howling soaking conditions just outside. The piece de résistance was to discover that as we had pitched the tent in darkness, we were perilously close to the edge of a cliff with a sheer drop of heart stopping proportions. Obviously we relocated and re-erected the tent somewhere less life threatening but I spent the rest of a two week vacation in that bloody hell hole. Why we stayed is another story, but I vowed that as long as hotels and B&B’s were in existence I would never spend another night under some flimsy piece of canvas masquerading as a holiday home; where the toilet and shower block looked like something out of Tenko with turds floating in toilet pans whose previous incumbents hadn’t enough brain cells to work a flush handle; where the only thing missing was a tower manned with a search light, machine gun and a barbed wire fence to complete the ambiance of the camp site from hell. And so it was, that in the intervening years of international travel staying in top class hotels, apartments and villa’s, I kept my word never to holiday like a refugee and having been spoiled to within an inch of my life, had become somewhat even more precious.

“Where’s the coffee then?”, Himself asked, as he slumped down at the kitchen table and interrupted my trip down memory lane.

“I don’t think it’s worth shelling out a week’s money for a two to three night stay”, I said, as I passed him his coffee and sat down, resigned to shelving our mini break for the time being.

“Well, what about we take that tent I bought a few weeks back?”, he proffered carefully, knowing I’d rather poke my eyes out with a hot poker than go camping again in this life time.

“Camping! Bloody camping in that 3 man tent you bought for your road-trip with D?” The shrill tone of my voice wasn’t entirely unexpected but it made him sit back in his chair nonetheless. “You mean the tiny effort you bought at Asda for forty quid that hasn’t seen the light of day because ‘it rained a bit’ and you wallowed in comfort in a B&B with gastro food on the go and Guinness at three quid a pint keeping the smile on your face? You must think my head buttons up the back”, I threw as a final shot at such a ludicrous suggestion.

“Nah, didn’t think you’d go for that, I’ll keep looking ”, he said with a cheeky grin as he picked up his coffee and headed towards the study, leaving me mumbling to myself about what it was to be living the dream.

As I prepared lunch my thoughts turned to the girl and woman I had been who’d embraced life and was up for a challenge. Somewhere along the line I’d lost sight of the tomboy that loved the outdoors; that often rose to any dare my five brothers would throw at me. I winced at the time I lost my footing and fell out of a tree; gasped at my foolhardy actions when I swam the Margin in the river Clyde knowing that the dangerously strong currents could whisk me away in a moment and smiled at numerous other calamities that befell me. But eventually I mourned the woman who had travelled the world on business and holiday, never worrying about my destination or the people I would meet. All those years of childhood devouring my mother’s National Geographic magazines instilled in me a need to travel far and wide and I’d achieved more than my wildest dreams but it had lain dormant for too long. Too many business trips over a 25 year period, initially exciting and fun had eventually become a chore and long left me jaded, dulled my inquisitive nature and quashed my spirit of adventure. In short, I was a bore.

“Okay, you’re on”, I said, with eyes shining as Himself raised his fork to his mouth.

“On for what?”, he asked, eyeing me suspiciously .

“Camping, what else? It was your suggestion, okay? So let’s do it”.

“Yeah right,” he said, almost choking on his lunch at my sudden change of attitude.

“The weather’s great here today”, I continued, “but fantastic down south tomorrow so if we get packed early morning we can be in the New Forest by lunchtime, that way we can maximise the amount of sunshine we get over the next few days. And, if the worst comes to the worst and we get flooded out, we’re no more than two hours journey back home”, I offered, convincing myself that nothing was irredeemable.

“Yeah, right”.

And so it came to pass and we found ourselves pitching our all-in-one tent with attached ground sheet – no scary hairy monsters sharing our sleeping bags then - in the New Forest, a national park and an area of exceptional beauty. History records that the New Forest was created as a royal hunting ground in 1079 by William the Conqueror, the Norman king who trounced King Harold at the battle of Hastings in 1066. In time William handed the New Forest over to the commoners for the pasturing of ponies, cattle, pigs and donkeys and those royal concessions remain today. We walked our dogs alongside ponies and donkeys of all shapes, sizes and colours; an equine mishmash synonymous to the area and with the freedom to roam wherever their hooves take them. In a surreal moment we shared a pavement with a donkey in the picturesque town of Brockenhurst as it ambled its way from one end of the town to the other, perhaps looking for this season’s horse shoes by Manolo Blahnik.

The camp site, populated by enormous oak, elm, monkey puzzle, silver birch, willow trees and many more, too numerous to mention here, provided the camouflage needed to protect us from the elements. Bordering the campsite was a vast field, home to some of the equine population and provided the ideal place to walk the dogs sans leads. As we strolled onwards we entered a continuation of forest providing long walks of great stillness and serenity where the only sound was the crackling underfoot of twig and leaf as we traversed the designated paths in warm sunlight recharging our sun starved souls.

On our second day we took a trip to Milford on sea and discovered to our delight the Hurst shingle bank, a mammoth shingle barrier and natural feature that runs from Milford alongside the Isle of Wight. Cascading downwards in a seamless flow of shingle, bank became beach, to meet the Solent, a sparkling azure sea with the stillness of a millpond. Waves broke gently on the shore as Beach-casters cast their lines wide hoping to catch Mackerel, Scad and Black Bream. We watched as they gazed out to sea, lost in thought and turning only infrequently with a companionable nod to their fellow fisherman in acknowledgement of their shared solitude. As we scanned East of the shoreline we could see Hurst castle, where Charles the 1st was kept captive during the English Civil war; situated in the narrowest stretch of water between the mainland and the northern shores of the Isle of Wight, the castle was the first line of defence from ships entering the Solent from the west. Scanning westwards from the castle, we couldn’t fail to see the Needles, a famous trio of distinctive formations of chalk that rise out of the sea to the west of the Isle of Wight.

Further west and a short drive along the coast we alighted at Barton on sea. Hovering precariously close to the edge of the cliff top, the Solent below us had taken on a hue of brilliant aquamarine and melded perfectly on the horizon with a clear blue sky in a panorama reminiscent of Italy's Amalfi coast. Our high vantage point afforded us a spectacular view to Milford on sea in the west and to Christchurch and Hengitsbury Head in the east. With a sky so immense and a vista so extensive I willed myself to absorb every single detail my eyes could see as I inhaled the smell of fresh seaweed and listened to the seagulls cawing mournfully as they flew gracefully over the sea.

Each night we’d return to our temporary home on a beautiful campsite so far removed from Dante’s campsite for the criminally insane that I’d stayed in all those years ago. The shower and toilet blocks were clean and modern. We met people from all walks of life who were fun and interesting; the most surprising a group of senior citizens in their 60’s 70’ and 80’s for whom they claimed camping was a way of life and who were strong advocates for how the outdoor life kept them fit, healthy and vibrant. Our dogs behaved impeccably as they sat snuggled in the open tailgate of our people carrier, backed onto our area where we sat in surprisingly comfortable camping chairs. As the hot sun soaked day gave way to a balmy dusk, we sat drinking red wine out of plastic beakers and talked about so much that was important to us and what the future could hold for us too. A quiet hush descended upon the campsite around 10pm as weary campers retired for the night. With one last look at the star encrusted sky, so very clear without the light pollution we are used to, we too retired exhausted, dogs in tow into our small tent with the most comfortable blow up bed ever.

“So, what do you think of it all now, Mrs Mob?”, Himself asked, as we snuggled down for the night.

“Brilliant”, I replied. “And surprisingly romantic too. What about you eh, what do you think about it dearheart?”

“Ditto”, he said, seconds before a gentle snore told me this was the best thing we had done in years.

How green is my valley?

2009-09-03T19:06:00.004+01:00

Well just about as green as it gets. We took a holiday in Wales, on the edge of the Snowdonia National park. I’d been to Wales over thirty years ago and remember its beauty then. We’d planned to go away but couldn’t decide from the many great areas around Britain and Ireland. In the end we plumped for a beautiful cottage in a lovely village called Llanrug, ideally placed at the edge of the Snowdonia national Park. Now folks Llanrug is one of the easier Welsh names to pronounce but forgive me any Welsh Gaelic speaker who may be reading this but let’s face it, when it comes to naming places, someone just chucks a pile of letters in the air, lets them land and that’s it, named. A pile of consonants spewed out one after the other that only another Gaelic speaking nation could understand. To make matters worse, there’s rarely a vowel in sight and before you know it you are hoarse trying to pronounce a bunch of names that require the skill and dexterity of a voice coach on the X-factor teaching the tone deaf to throttle out a note or two. It is the closest I came to getting a grip on what it must be like to be severely dyslexic but it just ads to the quaintness and uniqueness of this wonderful country.

That aside, what an amazing place to spend a week of your life; Snowdon as the highest mountain in the UK outside of Scotland, is fairly impressive and it can be walked up in four hours and down in three. But knowing my lack of ability to walk back down without tripping over some weedy twig, losing my footing and rolling down at a thunderous speed threatening to wipe out flora and fauna, wildlife and eventually a human or two as I bowl on into them, I’d do it in a fraction of that time. Alas none of us were fit enough for the descent let alone the whole climb but we shook on oath that next year we would return and take on the challenge. So, as a compromise we took the Snowdon Ranger trail, a gentle rise named after a ranger John Morton who was an early mountain guide, and walked as far as our unfit bodies would take us, just to say we’d done it. I stopped before the others and sat on a rock surrounded by mountains nestling a valley with a lake of tremendous proportions. The colours of the flora and fauna and in particular the purple heather were outstandingly beautiful. The silence and exquisiteness of that moment will stay with me forever. And the sheep, dear God, the sheep! I think there must be more sheep in Wales than there are people. That reminds me of an old joke...

Q - What’s the Welsh for foreplay?
A - Here sheepie, sheepie, sheepie!

And just in the spirit of fairness here’s a couple more.
Q - What’s the Scots for foreplay?
A - Urrr ye sleepin’?

Q - What’s the Irish for foreplay?
A – Brace yerself Maureen

And just to end the theme of sheep...

Q – What’s the Scottish version of Silence of the Lambs?
A – Shut up yous! (Ewes, geddit?)

Jokes aside, I discovered that North Wales is truly one of the most beautiful parts of our country. Time and again I found that I could have been home in Scotland as so many places reminded me of its breathtaking scenery and in particular my beloved Loch Lomond which is only a short drive from the city of Glasgow. Each day was a discovery of wild rugged beaches with huge arching waves the hue of slate grey edged with blindingly white foam surging towards the beach carrying surfers brave enough to embrace the icy cold water of the Irish Sea. We walked for miles in warm sunlight and sometimes bracing winds, foraged in the sand dunes with the dogs, poked around the rock pools for signs of life and I imagined a heroine nestling a broken heart taking the same route as she came to terms with her loss and need for solitude. And so it was for my lovely sister in law who had come with us and is indeed searching for answers with the sudden, unexpected and unexplained abandonment of her by her paramour.

And castles! We drove into pretty town upon town, unspoilt and basking in the glory of a majestic stronghold. We regularly stopped for lunch in cafe’s that welcomed our canine friends and the quality of the meals were surprisingly good in these tourist areas. We all agreed that a must see was the village of Portmeirion which is located on the coast of Snowdonia on the estuary of the river Dwyryd, (see what I mean about those names? Not a vowel in site and God knows how you pronounce it). For those of us in our fifties and over it was the location for the filming of the cult 70’s TV series The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan. It was a pleasant surprise to discover the architect of this wonderful coastal village of Arts and Crafts style constructions which were later contrasted by classical and Palladian constructions was devised and designed by a Mr Clough Williams-Ellis, a great environmentalist who was born and grew up Northampton, a town where ‘Himself’ was born and not far from us today.

At the end of each day, dogs exhausted and able to be left in our homely cottage to snooze, we strolled somewhat stiffly and slowly to the local pub, a mere one hundred yards away, to imbibe is some amazing repast and a couple of glasses of wine where to Himself’s delight the extra cold Guinness was only £3 a pint! We talked easily; read books, looked only at the TV for the weather reports to adjust our plans for the next day should storms of driving rain be expected. But we were very fortunate indeed as mostly the sun shone warmly just sealing the deal on one of the best holidays we have ever had.

And so we are home, rested and in awe of a country of hardy unique people who cling to and celebrate their language and individuality, a country of sheer beauty where progress meets tradition and is seamless in its execution. My sister in law found no real answers for only the absconder can give her closure but she came back with more understanding of perhaps why he ran away; returned with a sense of family and friendship to retreat to whilst her heart heals. And us? Well, it’s back to the diet and into the gym on Monday because we shook on a deal to climb Snowdon next year and it’s going to take that long to get in shape.

AWOL , missing in action but the wanderer has returned!

2009-08-07T15:47:00.006+01:00

It wasn’t intentional, truly, my absence from blogging I mean. There I was happily blogging away and the next day the real world took over. It’s hard to know where to start really but here goes. In my penultimate post I had mentioned that one of my furbabies was suffering somewhat. My wee Jack Russel Taz, who is the female doggie love of my life, started to have regular seizures. Somewhat prone to one every six months and previously not too much to worry about she began to seize several times over a period of weeks – a worrying development that made me deeply concerned. I was sure she was not going to make old bones. I researched the net, read the abstracts of a truckload of scientific papers and delved deeply into the publications that proved the most informative. I found out some horrifying facts, discarded the positively obscure and ran with the most relevant. A change of diet to naturally produced food that doesn’t include euthanized pets and zoo animals plus diseased organs as a major ingredient in many pet foods, has put my mind at rest that I am feeding her the best she can have. Many scientists believe that the Pentobarbital used to euthanize pets is not eradicated at high heat and therefore causes seizures when ingested through commercially produced pet food. In addition, she is now on a course of Phenobarbital to calm the electrical activity in her brain. It was a last resort but one nevertheless I am grateful for. Her progress seems good with no more fits and remains an active wee doggie that bounds around wagging her tail and barking at all and sundry who dares to invade her territory.

Shortly after this little drama, my 19 year old cat, Hattie the fatty catty took a downturn in her health. She was suffering from Kidney failure but with treatment she was coasting along eating us out of house and home – she was the Desperate Dan of the feline world. Had she been human she would have been evicted from every all-you-can-eat establishment for being a greedy mare. She loved nothing better than to be fed smoked salmon with a side serving of freshwater prawns hand shelled and served by yours truly. Hattie arrived on our doorstep nine years ago, some months after I had the last of my three cats euthanized. Given the utter heartbreak of losing the last of my pride I was in no mind to take on yet another. We tried everything we knew to chase her away, even going on holiday to Crete for ten days hoping she had returned to whence she came before our return. We hadn’t bargained for her determination to make our home hers and in time, after she had disposed of a multitude of field mice in the garden, himself relented and recognised that a win win situation of mutual gain was to be had and in she moved taking up where the other cats left off. She was a chubby soft white and black moggy with mesmerizing eyes and a wonderful temperament. On the last visit to the vet, we knew her time was short but I wanted her to have one last summer, lounging around in the garden, basking in some warm sunlight whilst flicking her ears at the flies and butterflies that dared disturb her slumber as they fluttered too closely past her.

Three weeks ago, she slowly stopped eating and no amount of tidbits could encourage her otherwise – she tried but with a heavy heart and a look of acceptance on her beautiful face, we knew the time had arrived. She slept peacefully in the wonderfully warm and sunlit garden in between cuddles and quiet tears from me whilst we waited for the vet to arrive. Needless to say, she went quickly and peacefully and is buried in the garden in the spot she so loved. I cried off and on for two days but consoled myself with the fact that she was loved and loved us and had a great life.

And so, moving on from a bit of a sad and relatively testing time we concentrated on continuing with the renovations of our home where great progress is being made and we can see light at the end of the tunnel. The work proved to be a great cathartic activity that occupied my mind and stopped me dwelling on what had passed. I spent a good deal of time doing research for and writing my novel whilst himself went off on a road trip with his eldest son. Four days of father son bonding was a great success and one that we have decided they and his other son should do on a yearly basis. I also revelled in the complete freedom to see to myself and set my own schedules.

During this quiet period, I toodled off as I was forced to do, to the village surgery for an HRT review – my doctor insisted I do so as I had used every excuse in the book to avoid it – and so I sat down for a wee chat on how useless the stuff actually is. I was in for a bit of a surprise though. During a general check-up he informed me that my BP was 170/96. Now, being a fat bird, I expect my BP to be borderline but given that I have lost two stone in weight over the last three months, I was somewhat surprised. The doc whipped out his stethoscope and did a wee check of my heart. He looked concerned and then came clean. He suspected I had Arterial Fibrillation which is a bit of a heart condition. I won’t bore you with too many details but it can be there from birth – no chance for me as I had been in hospital before and it had never been detected so there must have been some other cause. It can be caused by drinking yourself to a standstill on a regular basis – clearly the more likely cause given our lifestyle although strangely enough I got fed up with that and cut back drastically over the last six months as I pursued a new lifestyle, or it can be the result of heart failure. Given that my mammy had a major heart attack at 60 and died at 64 and my daddy lived with angina until he was 78 I was pretty sure it must be heart failure. Even worse, I thought, cirrhosis of the liver – a death sentence if ever there was one.

I had to wait a week for my blood test and ECG to be done and another week for the results. In the mean time I had trawled the net, scared the bejeebies out of myself and convinced myself that I was not long for this world. I told himself but no one else and endured sleepless nights of worry and angst. Fear gripped me and just about every psychosomatic symptom reared its ugly head. When the results came through I resolved to ignore them until I had my birthday. Oh the sheer drama of it all as himself pleaded with me to find out what the score was and me playing the dying diva saying I just wanted one more birthday without a death sentence hanging over me. There was time enough afterwards to determine my fate I argued, feeling all of five years old and trying to be an adult at the same time. But I grasped the nettle on my birthday and phoned to make an appointment for the next day, the stress of not knowing was becoming a health hazard in itself.

The upshot? My liver and heart are healthy as are the other organs that float around in my torso! But I do have an extra heartbeat! What does that mean? Not much really, I just get one more beat every ten beats or so and there should be no adverse effects. But dear God, it was two weeks of hell not knowing my fate and no matter how hard I tried to relax and think positively, my overactive imagination wouldn’t let up. To be fair, I made the doc tell me the worst and then went off and thought it. There’s a lesson here, just can’t think of what it is at the moment......

A wee bit of Scottish dialogue.....

2009-06-21T15:35:00.002+01:00

You know you are a true Scot if...........

Ye can properly pronounce McConnochie, Ecclefechan, Milngavie, Sauchiehall Street , St. Enoch, Auchtermuchty and Aufurfuksake.
Yer used tae four seasons in wan day.
Ye kin faw aboot pished withoot spilling yer drink.
Ye measure distance in minutes.
Ye kin understaun Rab C Nesbitt and know characters just like him in yer ain family.

Ye kin make hael sentences jist wae sweer wurds.
Ye know whit haggis is made ae and stull like eating it.
Somedy ye know his used a fitba schedule tae plan thur wedding day date.
You've been at a wedding and fitba scores are announced in the Church/Chapel.

Ye urny surprised tae find curries, pizzas, kebabs, fish n chips, iron-bru, fags and nappies all in the wan shop.

Yer holiday home at the seaside has calor gas under it.
Ye know irn-bru is a hangover cure.
Ye actually understand this and yurr gonnae send it tae yer pals.

Finally, you are 100% Scot if you have ever said/heard these words;

how's it hingin
clarty
boggin
cludgie
pished
get it up ye
wee beasties
erse bandit
amurny
away an bile yer heid
peely-wally
humphey backit
Baw-heid
Baw Bag
dubble nugget
And finally......

A wee Glesga wumman goes intae a butcher shop, where the butcher has just came oot the freezer, and is standing haunds ahint his back, with his erse aimed at an electric fire. The wee wumman checks oot the display case then
asks,

"Is that yer Ayrshire bacon?"

"Naw," replies the butcher. "It's jist ma haun's ah'm heatin"

My adorable cousin Robert sent me this. He keeps me well up on Scottish sayings and I thought I'd share it with you. I laughed my head off at it - but then I am a Scot through and through.

The Emotional Rollercoaster

2009-05-31T07:40:00.009+01:00

It’s been a month of highs and lows and one where I kept meaning to blog but never quite got around to it. April 30th through to today, May 31st are difficult weeks for me to navigate. Anyone who has read this blog will know that I lost my father and an uncle on one night, followed by another uncle six days later, my mother three weeks later and then my step-father a few weeks after that. I don’t dread the time anymore having come to terms with my loss some years ago but there is always the subconscious at work taking the odd pop at me when I least expect it. Today is the anniversary of my mother’s passing.

Grief is a strange old taskmaster that never entirely leaves me no matter how long the journey has been from the loss of a loved one. I have come to recognise it over time and even welcome a good old sob now and again as it means I haven’t forgotten what the person(s) meant to me. But I am not going to dwell in the past or let my loss define me; rather I thank God for what is in my life now and how fortunate I have been. So, I am not at all sad today, just reflective on what my wee mammy meant to me and how with time, we could have created so many more memories together as I matured into the many ages she had traversed before me. I think I may just have missed her wisdom more than anything in my life. R.I.P mammy, I love you. So, that is a few lows and nothing I can’t manage but it is enough, along with some renovations we are doing, to render me blogless for too many weeks.

One particular high was unexpected and still leaves me with a glow of joy. Some years ago I was quite a big earner of the old greenbacks, spondoolicks, dosh, whatever you may want to call it. I also had a superb expense account but nothing that quite matches that of the thieving fraudulent and ethically challenged gaggle of MP’s that have been ‘creative’ with their accounting of late. To cut a long story short – hah about time I hear you say! – four years ago, after a marathon effort at sorting out my tax returns, Her Maj’s taxman sent me a wee note saying they owed me several thousand pounds. Buoyed with delight at this piece of good fortune I did a jig of thanks to whatever God had blessed me that day, grabbed a cup of tea and sat down to call and claim my booty.

“Hello”, I chirruped in a light and jolly happy tone to the woman that answered; a first if ever there was one, I am usually subdued and fearful when dealing with the hand that wields a baseball bat over my finances.

“Name, NI number”, she barked back at me without any kind of pleasantry or even the most basic of telephone etiquette. Miserable old bag, I thought, as her blunt and rude tone bit into my good mood.

“I’m calling about the letter you sent. You know, ref number 1234567 etc, the one that says you owe me millions!”, I joked obviously delighted in my good fortune that it wasn’t the other way around. “Okay not millions”, I said as her silence at my wee joke deafened the airwaves, “but I have in my hot little hand a letter from you that says a number consisting of five figures and 49 pence, so may I have a cheque to that value please”, I carried on determined not to let this misery-guts ruin my moment.

Tap, tap, tap was the only response I heard as she thumped the keyboard rather too hard. Must be menopausal, I thought. as the silence stretched and I drank my now tepid tea just for something to do.

“Mrs MOB”, she barked over the phone like a sergeant major, "there is nothing here to say that we owe you that money".

“But you sent me a letter saying so”, I protested, feeling my good mood drain from me quicker than blood from a severed artery or indeed pounds being sucked out of my imagined fat bank account.

“Nope, not a thing, it’s a computer or record error”, she spat back at me with what sounded like unbridled glee in her voice.

“No, surely not, if you sent me a letter then it must be true, isn’t it”, I asked in desperation and by now sounding and feeling like a child who had been told that Disneyworld had gone bust. “Oh c’mon, you're joking aren’t you? Is there perhaps someone else that could check your findings, or verify......”

“.....NO”, she interrupted far too quickly in her hurry to dismiss me. “Now is that all I can help you with?” Call that help?, Call that Help? you miserable hairy chinned old boot, I wanted to spit back at her but self preservation kicked in and I accepted a shocked defeat before thanking her – God knows why – and reluctantly placing the handset on the receiver. Himself said I looked like I needed to be put on suicide watch and I felt how I looked.

We didn’t have an accountant at that time so I knew not what else to do but to file the letter away as one of life’s little snatched moments of happiness that turned ugly.

We have a fantastic accountant now, when she came on board she took up my case but got nowhere and I finally gave up the ghost and duly forgot about it until....

.......In April of this year, along comes a letter from the Inland revenue. ‘Dear Mrs Mob, H.M. I.R. owes you a five figure sum and 49 pence’ Oh for Christ sake, here we go again I thought. Bugger it, I can't be arsed chasing my tail over this one again, I decided, and went to file it. But himself had other ideas and took it to our lovely accountant. She drew the same conclusions as I had but with a sigh, offered one last time to chase it up. Rather her than me I thought, simply because I didn’t fancy another ten rounds with that hairy faced old bat who’d taken such delight in ruining my day all those years before. But in all reality, she’s probably been head hunted by a fundamentalist terrorist organisation to train their new recruits in torture and telephone techniques, so who cares eh?

The upshot is that I got a cheque about a month ago, with a guarantee that they will not come after me to return the money at any time in the future. Y’see the records for more than six years have been destroyed and as my claim was for that period, no one can prove whether that money was mine or not to claim. I almost peed myself with utter joy, well that and the ageing effects of the menopause, the joy just compounded things. I danced even more jigs this time as I kissed the cheque and himself in that order. We’d already started a renovation project on our house to sort our drive out, update the outside of the house and modernise our three toilet and bathroom facilities so this is a welcome bonus. The drive and outside of the house looks great. We now have those lovely square toilets with soft close seats, eco friendly with 3 and 6 litre flush options, and much more comfortable to lounge about on, if you get my drift. There’s something quite satisfying about being the first person ever to use a new loo. But, the soft closing seat is a revelation. You just have to touch the lid and it closes gently, but here’s the best part: On first use, after his return from the pub and needing to relieve himself of a few gallons of Guinness, himself toddled off to the downstairs cloakroom. Strange strangulated noises coupled with a few choice Anglo-Saxon words came hurtling through the door. On his exit from said room with the most cheesed off look I have ever registered on his moosh, himself enlightened me to his problem; each time he lifted the loo seat, it started closing down again before he could aim Percy at the porcelain. Crikey it must have been designed by a woman I thought as I laughed up my internal organs at such an unexpected bonus. The loo seat is now known as the Todger Trap and himself now has to adjust his position to accommodate our new purchase, well it’s either that or a mad rush to finish before all hell breaks out! Hah, result!

Around the same time as this we were in the process of selling a hideous purple suite that sat in our conservatory – got a hundred knicker for that just by telling the step-son that we wanted to get rid of it and his friend gladly grabbed it for it was in good condition – and this additional money meant we could treat ourselves to some beige leather chairs and foot-stools from Ikea. We had an expensive garden table and chairs languishing in our summer house so we moved that inside our conservatory. What with new lights and shelving, the room looks superb and has already lent itself to a few dinner parties using our raclette machines that we dragged out from storage and dusted down. We have had the most fabulous social times of late and this has made my April/May much more bearable.

To cap our good financial windfall, Himself’s pension went up unexpectedly by 25%. We hadn’t factored that in for this year and as our company has a contract with the Justice Office that pays superbly well, we are comfortable - for the first time in yonks - we've had some hefty financial demands in the past and God what a relief it is to be free of that. Himself is basking in the glorious feedback he has been receiving of late from his employers for a job well done – he does some very intricate investigations for them that requires a high level of professionalism so I am rightly proud of him. We’ve been having a mega clearout and selling our unwanted stuff on E-bay, thus generating some additional pin money. Lately with my investment income taking a bit of a battering from the latest financial crisis we thought we would have to tighten our belts a bit and put some of our plans on hold so this has all come as a relief and a welcome surprise and all in the space of six weeks or so.

But, every silver lining has a cloud and if I sound too delighted for my own good, I am reminded that life is precious and that at times there is a rug waiting to be pulled from under my feet. Something has happened of late that has made me sob in desperation and sadness but that is for my next post. I cried, off and on, for two days, picked myself up and resolved to find a solution. I’m in the thick of my research now and will post when I have a path to follow.

Life can be a rollercoaster of emotions, and it’s not what life throws at you but how you handle it that defines you. I’ve not always been strong in my past but I’m not going to fall apart now, not when my wee pal and fur-baby needs me.

Fact is stranger than fiction...

2009-04-05T12:08:00.015+01:00

.......It is you know. Many years ago when my mother was a young girl, she lived in the south of Glasgow in a housing complex called tenements. These Victorian red stone buildings were a series of dwellings that house four floors of apartments. The entrance to each dwelling is called a close that has stairs leading to the upper floors. In essence they are vertical villages for they housed many families, often several members of one family, to just two rooms called a room and kitchen. Built in a large rectangle, there was a huge central area out the back where the middens were kept for disposing of household rubbish; where the lavvies, (toilets), were placed, where lines and lines of washing hung in addition to the area serving as a great big play pen for the weans to play in. Games of kick the can, hide and seek, postman's knock and spin the bottle could be heard echoing around the area as the weans laughed and screamed in their play. Everyone knew everyone’s business which was sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing too. But in the 1930’s and the great depression, poverty, hardship and struggle were commonplace. Inside toilets were a thing to be dreamed of and tin baths in front of the fire were the norm for a family of ten or so. The luxury of separate bedrooms for the parents let alone the children was something only the wealthy could aspire to. God knows how people with large families survived but certainly with no National Health Service and a visit to the doctor for a prescription costing more than a wage packet denting shilling, infant mortality was high and family health in general was poor. Even so, with little or no contraception to talk of, families continued to grow, stretching the already thin wage packet that if you were lucky, the man of the house brought home on a Friday evening. Jobs were hard to come by during the depression and the sight of men queuing for work on a Monday morning at the steel works would fair break your heart at the desperation of it all as many were turned away, returning home with an acute sense of worry and hopelessness etched firmly on their weary faces. But as my wee mammy used to say, desperate as those times were, families stuck together, looked out for each other, lent each other money when shoes were needed or a loaf of bread meant the difference between going to bed hungry or not. Often when the man of the house had one too many and spent the wages at the pub before coming home as one local Da was prone to do, a kind hearted neighbour would take pity and lend a frantic mother a shilling tae get the weans their dinner.

It was in this vein that my mammy and her sister Aunt T had the regular task of walking the wee wean for the wee wumman upstairs. Her man was away working and so a bit of respite from being a lone parent was my granny’s way of helping her out. Every day, after finishing their chores, mammy and her sister would gleefully run upstairs and bang heavily on the door for the wee wumman played her radio so loud that she often didn’t hear her door go, as we say up north. Grabbing the weans’ buggy, one at the back and one at the front, they’d negotiate the stairs until finally they emerged into the sunlight and wheeled the wean away down the road at speed, making him giggle at the fun of it all. He was a bright wee boy and fell easily to laughter and for this reason my wee mammy and her sister loved taking him out. A few years went by and my mammy and her family moved to better accommodation in the shape of a new council house in a new development in the south of Glasgow.

In time, they thought no more of that little boy until quite a few years later. At first they weren’t quite sure that it was him, for he had changed his surname and now lived in northern England but as details of his life unfolded in the press, there before their eyes was the confirmation that it was THAT little boy; the little boy with the rosy cheeks who would laugh hysterically as they ran so carefree with him all those years before. There he was as bold as brass - Ian Sloane – now known as Ian Brady, the Moors murderer; a serial killer of young children. My mammy said she was so shocked at such a coincidence that she almost didn’t believe it was him.

In a further twist of fate, some years later my younger sister married the son of a Doctor of Psychology who was the director of the southern region for the Open University. I would see her father-in-law regularly for the Open University hired classrooms at the large education and training centre in Milton Keynes where I worked. Had I done my psychology degree course with them at that time, he would likely have been my tutor. We’d often have a chat as our two sets of students frequented the bar before and after dinner and it was expected that lecturers would join their students on the first night for a welcoming drink.

On my way to my desk one morning I stopped at reception to pick up my daily newspaper. In an instant I was drawn to the headlines and photograph on the front page of the Sun newspaper; a red top tabloid noted for its sensationalism in news reporting. There in full Technicolor was my sister's father-in-law presenting Myra Hindley with her psychology degree. To say you could have knocked me down with a feather is an understatement. It struck me as quite strange that first Ian Brady’s connection with my mother and aunt and then his female partner in crime being associated with my sister’s in-laws. It was bizarre and sometime later when I saw my sister’s FIL I asked him about the experience. I can’t tell you what he said as it was a confidence he shared with me and not mine to tell. I can say that he thought it was to be done in private but that Lord Longford, a long time sympathiser and supporter of Hindley had arranged for the press to be present. I can also tell you that it was an experience he was none too fond of. The fact that Hindley was born on the 23rd of July doesn’t thrill me either as we share the same birthday....AAAARRRGGGHHH! Hopefully, that’s where the coincidences end......And, as himself has just read this, he says, hopefully that's where the coincidences end too.

And finally, just as an aside, my sister’s F-I-L is the direct descendant of the man who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the 28th of June 1914, thus technically starting World War 1. The 28th of June is the day I got engaged to the man who was to become my first husband and one of his given names is Wilhelm, same as the archduke.

Strange old world isn’t it?!

'I'm the cooking woman's crumpet'.........

2009-03-30T22:27:00.014+01:00

....Says Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace. Err what? Come again? For the love of God, how delusional do you have to be to look like Mr Potato Head and still come out with a statement like that eh? I mean, has he had a good look in the mirror at all lately? Crikey, it seems old King Edward head has no difficulty getting all manner of women to take their kit off for him. The phrase ‘pass me a bucket’ slips easily from my lips.

I like Masterchef, I like it a lot and the format is exponentially better than when whiney old Lloyd Grossman, or Gross Lloydman as I used to call him, with his mid Atlantic accent used to prance about on it, but let’s face it, the real talent on that show now is John Torode, followed by quite a few handsome and talented male contestants, followed by some of the uglier contestants who hail from small villages where the gene pool choice is seriously restricted, followed by some gnarled looking turnips that need a wash, followed by a Monkfish and somewhere down the line, holding up the rear, would be Mr Wallace sporting his face that looks remarkable like a slapped arse or a kilo of tripe in a string bag.

Now there is no doubt that some eejit with a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle and suffering from severe myopia with an IQ of 80 might just find Mr Wallace the hot bit of stuff he claims to be. Celebrity has its way of attracting a certain type of person who craves fame, fortune and attention and it doesn’t really matter what the target celeb looks like, or whether they have talent or integrity, just as long as they are ‘off the telly’. Given the criteria just detailed, Mr Wallace’s conquests may be, as he claims, as young as 21 but that’s bugger all to brag about really; Perhaps I am being unfair here, for I could have mistaken him talking about their average IQ rather than their age. Moreover, I’d be inclined to wonder if these nubile young conquests of his still had a pulse or not. Or perhaps he’s indiscriminate and even has dalliances with the older lady because their ability to be grateful makes him feel philanthropic. I just hope he took along a mirror for those octogenarians to make sure they were still breathing too. Whatever their age though, it’s no guarantee that they are fit looking women or whether they are intelligent enough to know what they are doing or indeed if they can walk and chew gum at the same time without falling over. I mean are they capable of using reason to deduce that one day they might just live to regret sleeping with reality televisions’ equivalent of a ‘two bagger’?; That’s where you put a paper bag over his head and one over yours just in case his falls off during sex. Now that’s what I call using protection during intercourse, well that and donning a suit that would require having to use a tin opener to get to me if it meant I had to sleep with Mr Wallace. It's a shame he felt the need to boast about cheating so much on his wife within weeks of marriage and heaven's knows what his kids will think of his comments too. There doesn't seem to be any remorse that he hurt his family deeply and now he's boasting about his many sexual conquests and how one in particular, the 21 year old he picked up, bored him.

But, to be fair, ugly people need love too and as nature abhors a vacuum, it is understandable that alcohol was invented to aid them in their quest to bag a bonk every now and then. Let’s face it, how many of us have donned our beer-goggles after a night of overindulging? Perspectives change to the point that even the most discerning of us will find the allure of a greasy late night kebab from a white van in a lay-by a veritable banquet that slips down the throat with immense ease – not to mention finding it slipping back up the throat with even greater ease later on. Of course, our impaired judgement doesn’t end with dodgy food. Alcohol has the immense ability to mind-alter the repulsive into the deeply desirable. There you are laughing your head off, feeling witty, more attractive than you ever thought possible and quite simply the most entertaining person that ever lived. If only. If only you could see you as others do right there, ten sheets to the wind and on the make to snare that gorgeous catch in the corner. And then, somewhere down the line, you wake up.......

.......Cue eyes opening that are crusty and half welded shut with mangled mascara and as your vision makes a return from blind drunk, and sobriety and bright unforgiving daylight does its work, you realise that you have entered the realms of Coyote Ugly. Your hear a scream of horrifying proportions but nothing comes out of your mouth and then you realise it was a silent scream, an involuntary cry for help as you focus on the horror that lies snoring and dribbling beside you. Oh dear God, NOT COYOTE UGLY, not again. For the love of God, what the hell is up with me you ask yourself as you fight to quell the rising bilge in your stomach, unsure as to whether it’s a hangover of severe proportions or the mere sight of the monster muntah lying next to you in bed. The shame is just too much and slowly you attempt to make a move, to extricate yourself from this fate worse than death. Praying for a break, you slowly try to pull your arm free but realise it's well and truly lodged under his shoulders. To make any more effort would be to wake your ‘bedmate from hell’ and you have no option but to take drastic action, to chew your arm off and make a getaway before said muntah makes a recovery and asks for your number. But hey, you can kid yourself on but the reality is you might just be his Coyote Ugly muntah date from hell so getting away first is probably more damage limitation of your emotions than anything else that might be going on in your thumping dehydrated head.

But alcohol isn’t the only aphrodisiac at the disposal of the aesthetically challenged. Let’s face it, television has enchanted many a poor sap into thinking that because someone stands in front of a camera then he/she is loaded, must be God-like in some way and clearly has magic powers so that they attract the permanently bewildered or the ‘Gold-diggers R Us’ brigade. How else would people like Mr Wallace be able to have sex with something other than a blow up rubber doll and a foot-pump? He cheated consistently within weeks of his second marriage and as long as he was home before the kids went to school, he seems to think that was acceptable. God, what a catch eh? To think I missed out on snaring him. I think his wife had a lucky escape when the marriage crumbled. He clearly knows his celebrity is the pull and not his dashing good looks and devastating personality. You’d think the follicle challenged bespectacled eejit would keep schtum about that little fact.

But you know, it isn’t how he looks that truly makes him ugly for on the whole, he isn’t an ugly man. It’s his lack of discretion, his vanity, his self belief that he deserves to sleep with all and sundry and that his cheating is a right of passage that makes hum deeply unattractive. I like quirky looking guys, I’m not attracted to the classic male model groomed to the hilt look and I can see beauty in any face that shows kindness, laughter lines, love, joy and wisdom. Beauty is truly skin deep and no one is really ugly unless is seeps out from a bad heart. And beauty is subjective, let’s face it, maybe each and every one of us has been or might be a Coyote ugly moment for someone else. You hope to God not, but hey, that’s life.

‘So Gregg Wallace, are you really the cooking woman’s crumpet? Somehow I don’t think so; to me you’re more like a deflated soufflé. There’s nothing more unattractive than a kiss and tell merchant, someone who brags about their conquests. But like attracts like and I suppose that you get what you deserve in life and perhaps the females that he is so boastful about bedding don’t care about his huge ego and fragile self esteem. Perhaps, they find skirting around the edges of celebrity with a z-lister is enough of a springboard to capitulate them towards their real goal of being hangers on in a world that offers glitter and dubious fame and for that, the price of a bonk with a rather sadly delusional old fart of a man is a price worth paying... Shame, I quite liked him until I read his interview.

P.S. I never had a Coyote Ugly experience in my life, too much of a Catholic goody two shoes and I was never interested in a hit and run bonk, too busy drinking and having a lugh for that, but a couple of my colleagues did on those far away foreign trips we went on. This is my tribute to their ability to survive it and move on in life!

Legs Akimbo LIL - the PAP test Queen....

2009-02-27T17:07:00.019Z

Look away now guys - the following content may gross you out as it contains medical information, a visit to the doctor - which we all know that anyone of the male gender does his utmost to avoid and would rather have his eyes poked out with a red hot poker - and graphic descriptions of a Menopausaloldbag in a compromising position; a vision guaranteed to make the population rip out their eyeballs in shock.

There was nothing untoward in my compromising position. It was a medical necessity, lying there ankles together, knees apart and trying not to meet the gaze of the nurse as she inserted the speculum - several inches of stainless steel that felt like it has just been extracted from the freezer - and shoved well up into places only my husband has seen of late; actually that's not entirely true, I think the nurse went where no man has gone before because I am sure I felt the swab tickle my tonsils.

Now, as any woman will tell you, a smear test is at best a mildly embarrassing event in her life, and for others it is excruciatingly so - it shouldn't be an excuse to forego it - remember the old campaign message a few years ago? 'Don't die of embarrassment ladies'. Even so, I certainly don't open the reminder letter from my local PCT and go "whoopee, time to show off the innards of the old wedding tackle to someone I've never met before". I mean there you are having intimate relations with a stranger, a someone who doesn't even have the decency to give you a kiss on the lips first before rooting around in places he/she really ought not to be. It's all very surreal you know. And with that in mind, for about 30 seconds I think about making an appointment, shudder, then surreptitiously file the reminder on a pile on my imaginary to-do-list. I've done that for the last four years. Stupid really, as I am scheduled for a test every 12 months as I had precancerous cells on the last result.

On that occasion, I won a little visit to my nearest hospital to have a loop diathermy done on the old cervix. Now what a wonderful event that is for a woman to enjoy. Two nurses chatting away to you about anything you care to jabber on about so as to distract you from the rather odd burning smell permeating the room as the doc zaps those precancerous little sucker cells with his mighty laser beam. To add another dimension to the procedure, there is a screen next to you, showing your cervix in the starring role for all in the room to see. Interesting, I've never been on telly before but one of the most intimate parts of me now has. But I don't suppose anyone would recognise me walking down the street though unless I was sans knickers and Legs Akimbo Lil-like in the gutter somewhere and before you ask it, nope, not managed to do that one yet. To be fair, the film of the procedure wasn't broadcast on any terrestrial T.V. stations so I guess my anonymity remains intact. My viewing public was restricted to a couple of nurses and a male doc wearing a hard hat just in case at my age any more of my body collapsed towards him, braining him in the process as he played a medical version of space invaders. My footage is probably doing the rounds as a horror movie somewhere out there in the ether, if you come across it, you can't see me smiling.

Do you know the silly thing about all of this? Up until they found pre-cancerous cells, I was a regular good girl and attended the clinic every three years for my test. The wait for the results was always a semi anxious time but I never lost sleep worrying about it. Now, when I should know better, and get straight down there, I'm much too reticent to make that appointment. Finding the pre-cancerous cells has had the opposite effect to how it should have turned out, i.e. making me ultra efficient in booking those appointments straight away. In my defence though, I've had such a bad time with the menopause and without going into grossly horrid details, until recently, was rarely in a position to have the test done, if one gets my drift.

Scary and embarrassing as it may be though, no experience can match the one that happened to a colleague of my cousin. Rushing home from a nightshift in a busy emergency housing association, she bathed, dried herself off but decided at the last minute, that for extra freshness, she'd spray some antiperspirant over the area in question. Realising she'd run out, a quick raid was performed on her teenage daughter's room to grab her aerosol can. Running terribly late, she pressed the trigger, squished the contents rapidly around her target area, pulled on her knickers and got dressed. Feeling mightily pleased with herself for arriving at the surgery with minutes to spare, she happily followed the nurse into her private office, undressed as instructed and within minutes had assumed the position. Minutes later, the doctor entered the room.

"Hello Mrs A, I'm Dr B", he said smiling at her as he snapped on his latex gloves. "Now just relax for me dear", he instructed as he picked up the speculum, ready to insert. "Oh for the love of God", he stuttered in astonishment, stepping backwards. He shot her a quizzical look before clearing his throat, raising his eyebrow and carrying on with the procedure.

Wondering what had caused such a reaction, Mrs A was a tad uneasy as to what the doctor might have seen. She decided not to ask and thought perhaps he was just a smidgen eccentric and possibly she'd ask the nurse after the doctor had gone. She didn't have to ask however, because when she rose to get dressed, pulling on her knickers, Mrs A was shocked to see the gusset full of glitter particles. Blushing profusely, she realised that in her rush to deodorize she had unwittingly decorated her pubic hairdo with a layer of glitter spray that her daughter used when she dressed up to go nightclubbing. Mortified with shame, Mrs A finished dressing and left the surgery at the speed of light, leaving all and sundry behind her in her wake. Clearly, she reasoned, the doctor thought she was either demented, or on the make for dolling up her nether regions especially for the examination.

Jokes aside though, a young celebrity mother, Jade Goody, is now terminally ill from widespread secondary cancers that eminated from a cervical cancer that went untreated. News reports say this is because she ignored repeated letters requesting her to return to the surgery for further tests and treatment. There but for the grace of God go many others for it is so easy to say manyana, manyana. She now has weeks to live. She has been the subject of much press coverage and whether it is morally right to cover every detail of her deterioration. Whatever the rights or wrongs of that situation, and you may have an opinion on it, she is dying and will be leaving behind two young sons. Her rationale for living out her death in the public eye is to secure as much money for her sons' future. Her childhood with an addict mother had been tragic by all accounts but she seems determined to be a loving mother and give her children the choices and education she was never granted; as a Big Brother contestant she was vilified by the press for a lack of education but now that she is dying she is a hero to them - oh hail the fickle press and public. I am not a fan of reality television shows or celebrity where people are famous for being famous, and Jade falls into this category. Tragically though, she has transcended that moniker and through her celebrity, done something truly magnificent. It seems God had much bigger plans for this young woman. The general consensus by those in the know, is that many more women are clamouring to their surgeries to have a smear test done. Opinion on the constant coverage of her death has polarised the population into two camps, those who support her, those who condemn her and leave some astonishingly cruel comments on the newspaper online message boards. I am pragmatic about both viewpoints. I believe in live and let live but perhaps now I believe in die and let die. What harm does it do to let her die and the story to be told in a manner of her chosing? I wouldn't want it for me, but I defend the right of a dying woman to have the choice. Perhaps it's a small price to pay for the good she is doing.

I am deeply moved by her plight and I admit, that it is instrumental in goading me into finally making that long overdue appointment. I, like many others, may just be very glad that we did and for that, Jade Goody's legacy is something much bigger, much more important and much more enduring than fifteen minutes of fame on a reality show. The nature of her death, how it came about and the message it conveys to women of all ages, backgrounds, creeds and cultures may just be a gift of life from an unfortunate young woman who's life ended prematurely and so publicly.

I don't want to watch her die anymore than I would want to watch anyone else die. I want privacy and dignity for her in her painful and heartbreaking journey. But it is her life and her death, and her decision. I have an off button if I don't care to rubberneck at her last moments on earth.

May the road rise up to meet you Jade Goody......and whilst I'm at it, my heartfelt thanks.

Connections of the heart

2009-01-29T23:58:00.046Z

Have you ever felt a connection so deeply strong to someone that you feel secure just knowing that it's there? You know, a real connection where you feel you are impregnable because the love this other person has for you and you have for them survives a distance of miles and a difference in time zones? I have been fortunate in my life to know people that I love dearly and who in return love me deeply too. I first became aware of long distance relationships and the kryptonite strength of the invisible umbilical cord that exists between people who are intrinsically linked, when I relocated to London from my home city of Glasgow to take up my career in Information Technology.

In my excitement at arriving in the capital I gave so little thought to what was left behind. My parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and great friends; One of those great friendships was made way back on that first terrifying day in junior school. A day when my bottom lip trembled as my mother turned around for the very last time that morning, tears in her eyes as she smiled forlornly then waved at my tear stained face and snotty nose before turning her back again and disappearing through the classroom door. I thought my heart would break and no matter how many times she tried to reassure me that I'd be coming home at the end of the school day, I wouldn't nor couldn't believe it. I will never forget the deep feeling of sadness on that first day, but neither will I forget Jenny Burns.......

……….. I sat on the tiny grey metal S framed chair at the tiny wooden desk and being so completely ego centric as all children are I hung my head and assumed I would never ever recover from being abandoned. As my own sobs began to subside, so did the sniffling and sobbing of the other abandonee next to me that until now I had only been vaguely aware of. Slowly I raised my head and turned to see a wee lassie, much the same size as myself but with a shock of curly ginger hair and red eyes with a red nose to match sitting on an identical chair, swinging her wee legs for like me she was too short to reach the floor.

"Hello.......errr, wiz that your mammy then?", she asked in a small nasally Glaswegian accent as she stared at me with her huge tear laden brown eyes framed by the longest lashes I'd ever seen.

"Aye it wiz,", I answered, before choking back another sob at being reminded she'd abandoned me only minutes before. I took a minute to blow my red nose on my by now very soggy hankie, "So……so where's your mammy then?", I asked with all the curiosity and naivety of a tiny wee five year old wondering how all these mammy's could abandon their weans and then leg it out of the place.

She's no here, she didnae come wae me", she said in a voice even smaller than before.

"No here? Whit dae ye mean she didnae come wae ye?" I asked, wide eyed with legs swinging away wildly on the chair as I stuck my thumb in my mouth for a suck whilst she answered this conundrum.

With her huge brown eyes fixed tightly upon mine, tears welled again and began to trickle down her rosy cheeks. "Ma mammy's deed", she spluttered out before letting out the loudest wail of utter heartbreak I had ever heard.

"Oh no, yer mammy's no really deed, is she?" I asked, getting all weepy because even though my mammy had dumped me there, at least I had one. The shock almost did for me for I knew nothing of death except that sometimes I would get scared that my wee mammy might die one day. So there it was, wee Jenny Burns didnae huv a mammy and I wiz heartbroken fur her. We sobbed our wee broken hearts out in unison until Mrs Murray, our lovely sweet teacher came over, put her arms around us both, calmed us with soothing words and dried our tears. Shortly after, down at the bottom of the school yard for playtime break we sat on the ground on our coats drinking our free milk through a straw and scoffing a digestive biscuit.

"Jenny?", I asked her in between slurps and chomps.

"Aye whit Annie?", she asked after swallowing the ice cold milk.

"Will ye be ma new best pal?"

"Aye, aye a wull", she said turning to look at me with the biggest smile I'd ever seen. Bless her, all of five years old and she had teeth like a bar chart thanks to her brother who 'encouraged' her to pull her wobbly milk teeth out so they could share the sixpence she'd get under her pillow from the tooth fairy.

"Great", I said delighted that at least one good thing had come out of the day, "and seein' as yer gonnae be ma best pal and seein' that you've no goat a mammy, ye can share ma mammy tae, that's IF she comes back fur me ye understand"........ The jury was still out on that one and I'd need a lot more convincing that the woman I knew as mammy and had dumped me here this morning would actually come back for me. Still, I reasoned, it was the least I could do for ma best pal who unquestionably had been bonded to me for life in our shared grief and loss that very same day.

Six years later after much tears and laughter; after sleepovers at each other's homes; after shared hours of playing 'kick the can' in summer until it got dark and we were dragged inside exhausted but still delirious with joy; after climbing trees and returning home with bumps the size of golf balls on our foreheads because we lost our footing and much to the merriment of our brothers, swan dived out of a tree hurtling head first towards earth; after having our hair doused in nit killer because yet again we let wee Gladys who lived next to the dump come and have a sleepover in our homemade tent in the back garden where we were infested within an inch of our lives; after rolling doon the hill outside ma hoose in summer on a homemade geggie, (go cart) - three pieces of wood knocked together like a big letter H with big auld wheels off a pram at the back with two smaller one's at the front, no brakes and a long piece of string attached to the front bit of wood for steering. There we were getting splinters in our arses as we ricocheted downhill at speed right into the path of the parish priest's new car; After sliding doon the hill outside ma hoose in winter wearing our plastic beach sandals that polished the compacted snow into an Olympic standard ski slope so dangerously slippy that we could get a fair bit of speed on before crash landing through auld Alfie's garden fence and into his allotment at the bottom of the road; after making faces with me at the grumpy old folk who moaned as they slid down the road on their arse and then swore at us and threatened to go straight to oor parents to tell them we should get a hiding for being so bloody cheeky; after laughing even harder at the ill-tempered old biddy's when they tried to chase us as their moaning reached epic proportions and not one of us getting anywhere because we were all running on the spot; after nearly melting the ice with hot yellow pee as we laughed ourselves stupid at the whole scenario; after promising to be best pals for ever and ever and ever and after her da, a skilled carpenter, a tired, skint single parent announced that they were off, off to the land of opportunity.........

...........A land of opportunity where he could earn enough to buy them new shoes and clothes instead of second hand clobber from the jumble sales; where a working man was paid a decent wage without having to scrimp and scrape his way cap in hand through life just to feed the weans; where the sun shone so much that life would no longer be grey with arctic like winters for them to struggle through with nae money fur their heating. He'd found a beacon of hope and a step up from the near poverty that threatened to overwhelm him and his young family. Australia and the Ten Pound Pom emigration scheme was the answer to his prayers and he'd been planning it for a while but said nothing for fear it wouldn't work out and expectations were dashed or even thwarted by those who would make a fuss and not want to go. By the time Jenny had been told, it was a done deal and she came to tell me, stayed for a sleepover and reminiscent of that first day together at school, we both cried the night away in total grief. In two months she was gone but we never lost that connection, well not for a long time but as with all distance relationships, pre email and affordable telephone calls, contact by written hand that was fervent in the beginning became sporadic as the years went by and our adult lives moved on from those relatively carefree childhood days.

I will never forget her but life moves on and I have made other friendships that have had the same deep connection - some of these made after just one meeting which has been a delightful surprise over the years. Ella was a work colleague and a real Jolly Hockey sticks kinda gal. She had all the eccentricity of the very rich, which she was after her parents shuffled off their mortal coils leaving her a multi millionaire. You'd never know it though for what I loved about her was the way she lived modestly almost impoverished with a sofa that her four cats shredded on a daily basis. With huge lumps of sponge filling missing and other pieces hanging down onto the carpet, it was a work of art that Damien Hurst and the Tate gallery would have been proud of. We worked on different projects much of the time but we knew each other through the vast social scene that was inherent to our work life. She lived about five miles from me and when I heard that she had cancer I made a point of going to see her. Our friendship developed over the year during which she went into remission and returned to work with her no nonsense approach to take on the huge projects she was famed for managing. But her good fortune wasn't to last. Excruciating pain in her spine and a sudden inability to walk back from the coffee machine to her desk told her something was drastically wrong. In the midst of her colleagues carrying her to her chair, Ella's heart sunk lower than she had ever imagined it could.

The oncologists report identified secondary tumors in her spine and other major organs. I was naïve and positive and hopeful that she'd beat these monsters down yet again. "You'll do it again Els", I reassured her brightly. "You did it before, you can do it again and this time you know what you're up against, so half the battle's won okay", I flannelled on, hoping to inspire her. I didn't know then that her only hope was chemo and radio therapy to shrink the tumors, to slow their growth. I didn't know that when these didn't work anymore that her end was nigh and that palliative care was all that could be offered. I didn't know until I was finally taken aside and told by a wonderful MacMillan nurse that secondary tumors are terminal and that I should prepare myself for the loss of my friend.

I took my turn, along with closer friends that had known her much longer, in doing practical things she found difficult to undertake as time went on. Her husband, grateful of our help, support and friendship thanked us profusely but we didn't need thanks for you don't do you?; not when it's a pal. But, it wasn't at all miserable and certainly not all one sided. No matter how ill Ella became she kept her sharp dark wit and we would often roll around trying not to dampen the chairs in our great shared mirth.

I'd boss her around and remind her to take her medication. She'd grumble and tell me she was rattling away thanks to the overabundance of pills she had sunk so far that day; "What did forgetting to take a few more matter?", she'd ask crossly, annoyed that her life had been overtaken by schedules, pills, appointments, taking urine samples along with the indignity of being prodded and poked at by doctors and nurses and anyone else called a specialist. She'd tell me to get lost when I was of no more use to her and she needed a nap. She'd become argumentative as exhaustion and pain took over. I'd tell her to watch her manners or she could decompose without me. On one memorable outing, I took her to pick up her NHS freebie wigs that she much preferred over spending good money on privately made wigs that she said she certainly wasn't going to take into the next world with her. I nagged at her and called her mean because I said that a good wig made all the difference and anyway, I wanted them after she was gone because they'd come in handy for Halloween parties and such like. As usual she ignored my advice, tried on a plethora of cheapo wigs and solicited my opinion on which was best. She was none too pleased when I said she had all the allure of a blow up rubber doll.

One Sunday soon after, when she was roasting a chicken for lunch that by now she had no appetite for but wanted to prepare for her husband, she opened the oven rather too quickly. Whilst bending down to check on the contents an excruciatingly hot blast of air hit her full on the face and welded the nylon NHS wig to her forehead. "Cheap is as cheap does", I said when I saw her still wearing it a few hours later. "Christ Ella", I continued as I stared at her. "You could take the fecking thing off, it looks like a rancid bit of old road kill on yer bonce". She registered my comment just as she was taking a drink and I heard her snort heavily before two streams of water and other gooey stuff trickled down her nose as we laughed our heads off at this vision of loveliness she had become.

No matter that when I returned the next day, I scolded her for still wearing this year's 'fascinator' as a hairdo. "I'm not", she said looking straight at me, waiting for reality to set in. "Now don't be so bloody cheeky", she said, as she watched my horrified reaction turn to deep sadness as I looked at the wisps of fine hair left after several bouts of chemo. She'd done well to keep the effects of the chemo under wraps with her wig until her disaster made her go commando as it were. She teased me relentlessly at her little joke for she knew perfectly well that her hair and wig were on a par and that I'd mistake her hair for the burnt wig. I played along and smiled but in my heart I was haemorrhaging emotion because her life was ebbing away in front of me.

Some months later I had to attend a software conference in Minneapolis, USA and it was a three line whip as far as my job was concerned. She understood and scolded me for considering not going and insisted she was much more interested in hearing all the fun tales and gossip from our shenanigans abroad. I knew she missed the vibrancy of work and promised a warts and all report upon my return. To my shame, I felt relieved and quite a bit selfish because her deterioration was rapidly causing her more and more distress and I wondered if I would be strong enough to hold out for her at the end. I was grateful for my friends permission to go and I relished the conference and the chance to socialize with colleagues and friends as we worked hard but also partook of a great deal of alcohol. I had so much to tell her when I returned that would have her heaving with laughter and looked forward to hearing her fantastically wicked laugh. We were in the thick of it all and jolly merry when I was suddenly stopped in my tracks, as though a Tom and Jerry frying-pan-in-the-face kind of moment had happened. I stood still and felt a wave of emotion so strong that I was overwhelmed with the need to cry. I took a moment to register my astonishment at such a depth of feeling.

"Oh God, it's Ella", I blurted out to my drinking buddies as tears welled in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. "She's gone, I'm sure of it. Oh Christ", I wailed, "and here I am enjoying myself when God knows how she must have been". The guilt of laughter was hanging heavily upon me.

"No she hasn't, she can't have, how on earth would you know?", they asked whilst looking at me as though it was time to cart me off to bed after ten drinks too many.

"She has, I know she has, I just know okay?", I said tetchily for I was filled with a deep sadness and confused at my inability to explain what I was certain of.

When I returned to the UK some three days later, I returned her husband's voice mail message. "What time did she pass away ?", I asked him as he gave me details of her last hours with him."Oh, at six am", he said. "I know because we were in bed together, and for some strange reason the alarm on the clock, which hasn't been set since Ella came home from the hospice, came on to wake me. Shortly after that she let out her last breath. It's incredibly strange but I'm just so grateful that it woke me in time", he said, as he went quiet, reflecting upon those last few painful moments together.

My blood ran cold for a moment for the time that I had felt and known that Ella had gone was 1200am in the USA. - six hours behind 6am in the UK. Sometime after the funeral and when we were able to talk with an amount of acceptance and peace within us I told him what had happened. He felt comforted by my story and I was glad that I had shared it with him.

Although I believe in God, or at least a higher being, I am not inclined to believe in spirits and such like and with a science background tend to be pragmatic about what happens after death but this 'visit' from Ella I cannot explain. I felt the strong disconnection from her after that visit in Minneapolis. I believe in my heart that she came to say goodbye but my head disputes this. I knew she had died and I couldn't be moved on that conclusion even though I couldn't explain it. And now I feel the same overwhelming disconnection from Jenny. Just recently I felt a wave of loss so deep that it threw me. It made me think of Ella but it was Jenny that flooded my mind and stayed with me for days after. Perhaps, it was a goodbye. I don't want to know. I'm too sad to think of her passing, but if it was that I hope she's content and happy and that she's caught up with that mammy of hers after all this time. You see, I am a dichotomy, a person of conflicting views and beliefs as my certainty on things crumble as life teaches me otherwise. As I get older, the more I learn the less I know and the more inclined I am to open up my mind to new orders and possibilities.

I hope she relished her wonderful new life as a Ten Pound Pom; she and her family certainly deserved a better future and God, there are worse places to grow up than paradise. But I hope too she never suffered the hopelessness of the tyranny of distance, of the dislocation of family and of homesickness and knew that somewhere back in the UK, her wee pal held her as dear to her heart as she had always done for even though the memories faded, the friendship and love never did. And finally, I just hope she didn't call any of her kids Kylie or Jason.....

To kip or not to kip, that is the question....

2009-01-08T18:51:00.005Z

Happy New Year tae ye all! I had a great festive season. I restricted my visits to the pub to a couple of hours only on Christmas day - big effing result! Those of you that might read this blog occasionally know that himself likes to spend some time in our 17th century village inn. Personally I can't be arsed much of the time and like to stay at home instead although a Friday night up there for the odd sherry here and there has become a bit of a ritual in this household. Having said that, I truly cannot be arsed drinking through the day and suffering a hideous hangover as I start to sober up around tea time - much better in those situations to drink your way through and wake up in hospital the next day after having your stomach pumped and feeling smugly superb as though you've been on a detox weekend. You also don't give a monkey's as to whether the food turned out okay or not and as such enjoy a completely stress free day where the only memories you have are the ones you care to manufacture out of that jumbled pile of vague flashbacks that haunt you every two minutes or so over the following week.

And so, determined that I would resist the constant moaning of himself that, "the pub had been opened about an hour or so already and that if we didn't get up there soon some cheeky no-mates kind of sad looser type who only visited the pub on Christmas day would have nicked our table by the inglenook open fireplace and we'd have to stand all day", I encouraged him to swan off up there with our good pal Mr P who with his lady wifie and other good pal Mrs P was due to come to dinner with us later in the day anyway. Having waved himself off before slamming the door on his arse to make sure he had cleared off, I continued with my planned ritual to remain at home thus peacefully bathing in ass's milk and contemplating prepping a few bits of nosh here and there so as to cut down on the domestic stuff whilst our guests were here later on. It was a civilised and joyful start to Christmas day as ever I have had. After a leisurely couple of hours, I made my way along the three minute journey between home and inn and entered a pub full of good cheer, high spirits and red nosed drinkers with contented almost sleepy smiles and glassy eyes making their slightly unsteady preparations of winter coat donning and the wrapping of chunkily knitted winter scarves around necks before warily braving the cold in the crisp but sunny day towards home for the Christmas lunches awaiting them.

Working my way through the by now thinning throng of drinkers, I soon located himself and Mr P sitting happily by the inglenook fireplace with contented little Guinness laden bellies, both sporting red Santa like shiny faces engendered from the heat of the fire and the consumption of mucho pinto's of beero. 'Twas a sight to behold - two wee happy bezzie mates filled to the brim with festive cheer and the anticipation that a belting big dinner was awaiting their consumption to round off the day. Soon Mrs P joined us and we each snaffled two small glasses of wine before heading off home to get the dinner on the go.

It was a terribly good natured day with lots of laughter and good will from friends and strangers alike as we made the short journey home. Unfastening zips and poppers and removing coats and hats, a knock on the door meant that more good friends and neighbours joined us for an impromptu drink around our kitchen table. As Robbie Burns is oft' quoted, from his To a Mouse poem "the best laid plans o' mice and men, often go awry". But not in this case for it was the first festive season that Mr and Mrs P were not slaving away managing our local inn as they had done for the previous four years before it was sold onwards to our current new owners; it was the first festive season as happy punters on the right side of the bar and as such, free to enjoy the day as the rest of us had done so for many a year before; it was a delight for us to share the day with them and the inclusion of our other neighbours into the mix was a delightful addition to the merriment and hilarity of the day; it is a happiness that our door is open enough for people to feel comfortable in paying a visit without a formal invitation to do so.

Dinner was grand and we ate too much but not so much that we were unbearably uncomfortable. A top up of the wine glasses and a mutual agreement to have the pudding later on, we left the table and settled down in our hugely comfortable recliner chairs to do nothing more taxing than idle contented chit chat and to watch a bit of telly. The twinkly glow of the white fairy lights of the silver, green and red baubled decorated Christmas tree, the soft shadowy light cast by the various burning candles coupled with relaxing scent of the real pine tree and the essential oils of the candles alongside the open coal fire created an atmosphere so tranquil that you'd be hard pushed to find any better an environment for which to de-stress and unwind. Such was the soporific effect of the food, wine, heat, scents and exhaustion from laughter it wasn't long before Mrs P, who works the hardest and longest of all of us, was gently slumbering with her head slumped back, feet up and a huge enigmatic smile on her face. This is not an unusual occurrence as Mrs P never stops until she stops and then she stops good - a wham bam thud like she has hit a brick wall at full pelt. For this she is forgiven; for this she is loved because it is simply her and the way she is; that she feels so comfortable in our midst is entirely right and proper to us for our home is her home for the short time she is conscious in it.

It wasn't long before I became aware that Mr P too had headed the same way as Mrs P. Given he had been drinking rather earlier in the day than myself and Mrs P he could be forgiven for needing a restorative nap. His chosen position was head slumped forward with his chin resting on his chest, arms resting by his side with his feet tucked in towards his body - he looked rather like he had been shot in a hit and run drive past. Himself and I smiled gently to each other for we like nothing better than our guests to pass out so that there is no squabbling over the remote control and we can get on with the business of watching what we want instead of being polite to them. Err, actually what I mean is that we are delighted that our two great pals, Mr and Mrs P are like family in that if they want a nap, then as with all of us, they just go ahead and no need to worry what others think as there is simply no need.

I sank back further in my super duper recliner and felt enormous contentment as I sipped my red wine and enjoyed the companionable silence broken by the low telly dialogue and the odd snore or two from the unconscious guests. It wasn't long though before a snort to my left indicated to me that himself had also taken a stroll off into the land of nod, no doubt frequenting with Mr and Mrs P in that hinterland of alcohol induced coma. Well, bugger me, Himself's chosen position to nod off in was with his body in full recline, head slumped to one side with his arms flailed outwards, two dogs slumped over him and acting as a further heat generator - and God only knows how he didn't start convulsing with a probable body temperature that would melt steel. It crossed my mind that he reminded me of a fallen murder victim and I was fair tempted to get a piece of chalk and make one of those chalk outlines on the black leather recliner for him to have a look at when he came round later on.

I sat up in my chair a bit and reviewed the scene before me. Feeling jolly merry from the wine I started to laugh and then the more I tried to stop it lest I wake them all, I started to laugh even harder to the point I almost wet myself trying to hold the laughter in. I kept stopping and starting and each time it became harder to keep any kind of control. "Fuck me", I said to myself through the laughter as I bit on my balled fist in an attempt to stem the rising hilarity. "It's like a fucking care home in here". The only thing missing was the smell of boiled cabbage and wee but I imagined that if I sat there any longer I would no doubt be supplying one of those odour's pretty soon if I couldn't control the laughter.

I needn't have worried about waking any of them. They were much too comfortable and content as was I. Y'see Mrs P and I have had a hard time of it over the past few years what with our simultaneous and joint suffering of the menopause. We have narked at each other, avoided each other when we wanted to rip each other's heads off. We've commiserated with each other about our severe symptoms, shared tips on what works and what to do when it suddenly doesn't and so on. We started off as great friends, our husbands are good friends and it works terrifically well. That's the thing about great friendship - it survives changes, trials, challenges and comes back together if it was ever worth a toss in the first place - we've successfully stayed the course and it is a better friendship for it. Now that we have things more under control, we laugh again, tease each other, help each other out and just enjoy the friendship. There is no one more like family or has earned the right to kip in my home after a good meal and a few drinks. God knows, if himself and me worked as hard as she does, we'd have no trouble falling asleep in her company and feeling no ill about it either.

Order was restored an hour or so later and we all retired to bed. They respectfully left around 8am the next morning and let us sleep in. We'd arranged to meet up at their place later that day where she returned the favour and made dinner, plied us with drink and was a terrific host. So there it was then, their first festive season as Joe Public instead of landlords and hopefully, they will remember it as fondly and with affection as we do. We've talked endlessly in the past about the four of us buying a retirement home in a hot country and retiring together. I saw a glimpse of that on Christmas day night, and do you know what? There's worse that can happen than to hole up, decrepit and disabled but with mates you can drop off in front of and have a laugh with when you come round again.

Happy Christmas everyone..........

2008-12-16T15:32:00.011Z

............except the deranged Politically Correct movement who would rather burn a couple of thousand Christians at the stake instead.......

I'm still seething, even after reading it over two weeks ago; can't quite believe it really, can't quite get my head around it all; I'd happily borrow my neighbours rifle and go out and hunt down a few politically correct eejits and bag a few heads for my collection - not that I have one but I am seriously thinking of starting one - you know, a rogues gallery of heads of the seriously dim-witted, the seriously misguided, the perennially arrogant, ignorant pompous idiots that promote bigotry and censorship under the name of 'political correctness'.

I live in a beautiful Northamptonshire village in a picturesque part of what is quintessentially English - surrounded by sprawling green farmland that is sometimes laid to waves of intensely beautiful yellow rape flowers as far as the eye can see; long scenic walks shared by people, horses, dogs and wildlife alike and tranquil woodland with a carpet of crisp fallen leaves and twigs underfoot that crackle as you tread carefully through it. The village is populated with the usual mixture of thatched and Victorian cottages, a large manse now privately owned, a general hotchpotch of individually designed 70's 80's and 90's housing and a smattering of social housing - mostly all very tastefully, sympathetically and architecturally accurate for the soul of the village. We are blessed with our beautiful parish church, of which the chancel is built in the decorated style, and parts of it dating back to the 12th century. The church sits resplendent atop a hill at the west end of my village whilst overlooking our sister village; both flanking its beautiful grounds and well tended grave yard. It is a building of immense history, meaning and tranquilly. Just inside the south door stands the Norman font of which the base and cover is Victorian. The tower houses 6 bells and a Sanctus bell, which can be heard pealing when the dedicated campanologists gather for their weekly practice in readiness to call those worshippers to come forth for those early Sunday services before repairing to our 17th century inn for a well deserved snort or two after practice completes. In addition to the five 17th century peal bells, a treble was added in 1946 as a memorial to those brave men and women who died in our name in the second world war; it was also dedicated as a thanksgiving for those who returned home safely.

The central tenets of the church and Christianity have informed the way of life around here for centuries. It has presided over the union of lovers making a commitment in God's eyes. welcomed the newborns to be christened into a way of life that will inform their every moral decision, allows the faithful to give thanks for life and its blessings and to pray for the sick and disadvantaged, it gives the grieving a place to hand over their loved ones to God for safekeeping until they see them again; the church service being a deeply meaningful and healing requirement for helping a family, a community come to terms with a loss whilst finding the strength to support each other, move on with their lives and bring up the next generation. The grave yard houses ancient and imposing family vaults through to simple plaques attached to a discrete wall in memory of a loved one lost. Generations of the same family names can be seen etched on faded and newer gravestones clustered together around family plots. People walk their dogs through here and often there is a lone figure tending to a grave of a loved one as they are lost in their reflections, oblivious to our intrusion in their grief. The rustic pathway through the church grounds and onto the warren links the two villages that are intrinsically related through poverty, hardship, economic growth, a sense of history and a church and society that preached a sharing of beliefs, goals, values and culture; simpler times where the statement 'it takes a village to raise a child' was at the very core of its commitment to the family. To all intents and purposes that maxim still has some value here today.

The church is much too big now, for the village attendance numbers, once substantial, have dwindled greatly over the years. As a result, services are shared alternately between a few other village parishes served by one vicar where before each village luxuriated in the services of a dedicated one. Although this is the case, also at the centre of our village is the beautiful C of E junior school which still teaches and operates to the tenets of Christianity. People may not attend church as they used to but they fight tooth and nail to have their children taught at one of the best schools in England; a school so quintessentially English that you would believe that time had stood still and that it was preserved in the aspic of the genteel beliefs and practices of the 1950's generation; by this I mean it is bang up to date in its teaching of the national curriculum but class sizes are small, results are very good, the children are well mannered, parents who live in the village walk their children to school and collect them at the end of the school day; the children participate in the village fete, dance around the maypole, raise funds for the school with cake baking days, open evenings and it is a safe environment for them to play out after school until being hailed indoors exhausted and starving to gobble down tea at a rate of knots. The children learn a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a true sense of Christian values and what it means to be a good member of society. The people who buy into our village and indeed the surrounding villages, our churches and schools are buying into a lifestyle that has worked for thousands of years. We live by a belief system that isn't perfect because human beings are imperfect and some will interpret laws to benefit themselves, but it is a system and culture that is largely kind, caring, inclusive and a jolly wonderful thing quite a lot of the time.

The demographics of this village and surrounding villages are predominantly white with Christian values. There is not a huge influx of diverse ethnic minorities, (I hate that term - it is exclusive by its very name and creates cultural divisions so much loved by the politically correct - it gives them a demographic of people to patronise where they were never asked to interfere on their behalf in the first place). There are two market towns that flank our villages where locals shop to support our local economies where possible - a variety of people own and manage the shops. The minority of people who chose to move here, or are born here to second and third generation immigrants embrace the lifestyle, values and culture and believe themselves to be British. They do not wish to be singled out for preferential treatment or to be patronised because they are 'different'.

But here's the rub, our village newsletter contained the following message:

'Those of you who wish to buy postage stamps from the town post office, please note; If you wish to buy stamps with a Christian theme, you must ask for these as they are not allowed to advertise them' .

Dear God almighty. I find this politically correct abuse quite awful. These people are tyrants who are bigoted against their own kind, see inequality where it just doesn't exist and create inequality by making Christians feel dirty somehow for following a belief system that this country's culture was founded upon and is still practiced today. I am deeply offended by the PC's reckless belief that by allowing us to celebrate Christmas is somehow offensive to others who practice a different religion and as such we are driven underground to ask for some effing stamps under the counter. Before you know it we'll be holding secret meetings and practicing Christianity in hovels while the PC brigade torch our homes and meeting places as they attempt to destroy the very fabric of our society.

I am more than happy to not just recognise but to join in the celebrations of Dewali - the festival of lights where Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism, adherents of these faiths, celebrate freely and in joy. I am certainly not offended by other faiths or the people having the freedom to worship in whatever way they wish. I truly embrace the differences that cultural and religious beliefs bring but underpinning that tapestry of differences is human nature; a need to be loved, wanted, embraced, included and accepted no matter what you believe or practice. All religious beliefs should be tolerated and incorporated into British life. But I am deeply bloody offended however that I am being censored by idiots who have deemed Christianity offensive. These are scary fucking people who are oppressive and dictatorial in their approach. To subvert the Christian religion on my behalf when I wasn't even consulted is not their right. Neither do they have the right to insist their bigoted small minded viewpoint is superior to mine and as such impose it upon those of us with a more tolerant, educated and open minded approach to life. Christianity is about tolerance of all creeds and colours and cultures, not the subversion of any. I believe the subversion of a culture and belief system of a large demographic of several million people was responsible for major atrocities that started the second world war - recognise the signs anyone?

Our freedoms of speech are being eroded daily. The PC create divisive communities and intolerance where alternatively, good sense, human nature, tolerance of others absorbs all into one community - one that can have diverse beliefs but one that allows all and sundry to practice their beliefs without destabilising the community as one religion is promoted at the expense of another.

I am sickened that to voice my disgust against such subversion is called racist. These PC eejits are being racist against me by subverting my belief system, by taking away my freedom of speech to rail against that and as such my my right to accuse them of being the real racists by their verbal acts of vandalism. They are intellectually incapable of a proper debate on how we create an inclusive culture - they somehow believe that to subvert Christianity and the celebration of our holy days is to create equality. How the hell do you work that one out eh, when every other religion can celebrate theirs but we Christians cannot? By all means take religion out of politics and create a secular society if you must but don't tell me that I cannot openly buy a religious themed stamp from my local post office unless I wear a disguise, whisper my intentions, go around the side entrance and recant my religious beliefs as I hand over the dosh in exchange for such illegal booty. Should I now worry that perhaps some guy working at the sorting office is of a different religion and as such he will be deeply offended by handling my letter with the stamp of the baby Jesus on it? Should I feel deeply apologetic that the same stamp might make the non-Christian postman or indeed the agnostic postman fly into a rage and claim compensation at having to deal with the scarring after effects of having to see a religious symbol on an envelope and been totally traumatised at having to handle it?

Perhaps I should lead a campaign to have the war memorial outside our church bulldozed because our war dead hero's were remembered and celebrated under the auspices of Christianity? Perhaps we should sell the church and convert it into exclusive flats for the PC to live in so they can remind themselves how they destroyed a civilisation of loving tolerant people by their own hateful, intolerant doctrines. Thank God for the sensible, calming, educated voice of Trevor Phillips at the Commission for Racial Equality. He is almost a lone voice and champion of the sensible amongst a sea of nutters.

Two fingers to the lot of you PC numpty's and shame on you.

Happy Christmas and good cheer to all denominations and a very unchristian plague of boils on the arses of the politically correct movement and may your next shit be a hedgehog. May your Trotskyite tendencies be eradicated as quickly as your hot air nonsense dissipates.

Anyone care to join me in a bush tucker trial?

2008-11-24T23:05:00.035Z

A few weeks ago we had some friends, neighbours and family here for an 'internal' pig roast. By that I mean that we had a huge shoulder of pork cooked in my range cooker and on a low low heat overnight. It was a prime piece of free range pork, prepared by our local butcher who assures me that the little darling had a life of foraging and snorting and rolling around in dust and hay before heading off to the great pigsty heaven in the sky. I try not to dwell on meat and how we get it to the table for I would easily return to my old vegan ways of twenty four years ago so I banish it from my mind and hope that by purchasing free range products that at least my dinner has had the best life possible before ending up on my plate.

Pork shoulder on the bone isn't a cut of meat that we usually eat but the Jamie Oliver recipe looked incredible, (you can find it in his book, 'Simple cooking techniques for thick chav twats with a reading age of five' - or was it his other book - 'How to cook for twenty dole cheats with a budget of £2.50 a head because it's cheaper than a kebab with a bottle of cider thrown in?'. Anyway, as it was our turn to host a do for the usual suspects I wanted something that was easy, that practically cooked itself and would feed an army or two if need be. Himself and my two very tall and adorable step-sons would happily each eat a serving the size of a dustbin lid and still have room for seconds followed by pudding so it's good to know that there was more than enough to go around - I've never truly recovered from a dinner party I did in my early twenties where I was horrified that I ran out of main course because I was hopelessly useless at cooking for grown-ups at the time - up to that point my usual repertoire of meals were anything cheap and cheerful that was quick and easy on a student budget.

Given that the pork had to be cooked for 13 hours, I set my alarm for 3am so that I could whack it in the oven ready for our guests arriving around 4pm the next day. I'd prepared the joint the night before by rubbing on rock salt, oil and fennel seeds all over the scored fat, (oh and all soaking in a bottle of good dry white wine or if you are particularly chavvy and strapped for cash, because you spent all your bunts on fags, then a bottle of buckfast may be substituted), and left it covered and nestling on a bed of fennel bulbs, carrots, onions and pumpkin and good to go at the ungodly hour I had chosen to cook it from, (our friends have kids so having a late lunch/early evening dinner means they can be in bed at a reasonable hour). So, there I was at 3am when the alarm dragged me from my slumber and looking like an effing old coffin dodger zombie on the loose from a Hammer House of Horror movie, I sloped off to the kitchen and cranked up the range to full-on-turbo-nutter high heat for 30 minutes then whacked in the joint - just in case you are interested it has to be fired first off to crisp up the crackling - and then after 30 minutes you drop the heat to 120 and crawl off back to bed leaving the science to do its work.

Some 13 hours later, our guests were tucking into the most succulent moist pork with the best crackling ever - I've never ever cooked crackling before so this was a bit of a triumph by all accounts from those in the know, all served with an amazing gravy, mini baked potatoes, dressed salad, mashed roasted veg, pan fried savoy cabbage and a big big knackered smile from me. I was amazed by it and it was so easy to do, that I have persuaded himself that it should become his signature dish in the future - remember this is the man that fecks on the oven at record high temperatures, sticks his pie in to burn the house down of a Friday night whilst he surfs the net until I smell burning, rush to open the oven door to rescue his burnt offerings and walk away with a face like someone on a night out from a serious burns unit. So, cranking up the oven for that first hour should go some way towards satiating his need to cremate, cremate, cremate - I think he might have been an undertaker in a previous life - and there's method in my madness at 'gifting' him this signature dish - next time he can get his arse out of bed at 3am whilst I gently slumber on. It's definitely going to be a dinner party and festive season offering at our place as not only is it easy, but highly impressive with a wow factor that has all and sundry praising it for days afterwards.

Anyway, I got to thinking about cooking and my absolute passion for it and where I'd inherited it from. Growing up with 8 other siblings in a noisy boisterous household, mealtimes were structured and orderly and almost military like in their timing. Not a sound was heard at the table as we tucked into mince and tatties, mince and dough balls, ham and pea soup, steak and sausage pie and in the summer lighter foods that met with our differing needs for that season. My mother grew her own seasonal vegetables and was a fabulous cook and to return home to the smells of home cooking was a welcome like no other. She inherited her cooking skills from her mother whose home always had a pot of delicious celery soup wafting throughout it as she opened the door to welcome visitors in. Clearly I inherited my passion for cooking from these two ladies who were creative and provided nourishing and rib sticking food throughout two world wars. Both believed that a fire in the hearth and food on the stove was the way you brought your family together and kept them coming home for sustenance and succour when life delivered a hard knock or two.

Now that winter is firmly upon us and with the festive season beckoning, I am heavily into the preparation of Scottish casseroles, Scottish Steak and Sausage pies, Mince and carrot pies, spaghetti meatball Bolognese, rump steak in red wine and dry sherry sauce, chicken and ham pie, Chinese ring-stinger chicken, (so called because it is so loaded with chilli that it would rate a fairly high position on the Scoville scale which is more than evident the next morning as the chilli does its worst as you rush at speed to the loo for an agonising wall clawing poop. You're a better man than me, (and no I still don't have a penis, it is merely a turn of phrase), if you can come out of that loo without a swollen ring stinging away as it throbs big style whilst your sphincter swells to the size of a baby's arm. There's many a guest who has dared me to do my worst with the chilli and regreted having an arse like a baboon the following day. And you know what? Never ever after the age of fifty, trust a fart, especially after eating my ring stinger chicken. You will be deeply ashamed that you have aced your pants when all you hoped to achieve was a silent but violent parp of the ole botty upon your hosts whilst you endeavoured to pretend it was the dogs. Hah! Eat it at your peril for it is not for the faint hearted nor those without an asbestos coated bum or a spare pair of underpants. And so, having painted such a picturesque view of my dish and the after effects, all of this fare is carefully placed into our freezers and is ready to hand for step-sons and visitors who relish a good hearty home cooked meal and himself has a veritable store cupboard of goodies to destroy in the oven if he so wishes.

In talking about himself's culinary shortcomings I am reminded of another so very dear to me and who passed on two years after my mother; her sister, my aunt T, and all round spiffing person altogether. A woman who was deeply affected by being a war baby and who's mission in life was to hoard tinned goods way past any kind of safe 'best before' date lest she ever suffer the indignity and horrors of those hungry war like times ever again. Where my mother was a terrific home cook, aunt T would cook the shite out of anything she happened upon in the kitchen - so much so you often wondered whether it had started out as food in the first place - or whether she'd picked up a shoe and just got on with it thinking it was a cheaper cut of beef. Where myself and my siblings ate hearty home cooked meals my cousins were served a hotchpotch of tinned third-world produced corned beef, burnt to black tatties, (potatoes), a dubious bit of lorne sausage from the bowels of the fridge and tinned nuclear marrowfat peas so luminously green than you could spot the buggers from outer space. No two meals were ever the same and whilst my cousins might have been perilously close to vitamin deficiencies from time to time, she always kept a larder full of fresh fruit and they were never short in being served up the most bizarre concoctions of food that anyone else not suffering from delusional tendencies would ever think to serve up on the same plate.

As testimony to my aunt's disastrous cooking skills, my cousin relates a tale where, as young boys he and his brother were invited to tea at a school friend's house. Upon sitting down to a full plate of food at the table, they were mesmerized by five or so white objects nestling on their plate next to some mince and veg.

"Hey Mrs A, whit's that oan mah plate?", he asked as he pointed his knife towards the unknown objects.

"Eh, dae ye mean the boiled tatties son?", she asks incredulously as she inspects what he's pointing to with his knife.

"That cannae be tatties Mrs A", says my cousin as he picks up the plate to sniff them and to make sure she's not fobbing him off with something that might just taste hideously like brussel sprouts. Given their mammy's lack of culinary skills, he and the younger cousin developed a routine of sniffing food first in the hope they could work out what it might once have been just so they could get an idea of what they were eating.

"Aye sure enough son, that's tatties, now get on and eat it will ye 'afore it gets cold, there a good lad", she says thinking no more about it and perhaps wondering if he was just a bit slow on the uptake or something.

"Nah, that's no tatties Mrs A, never in a million years", pipes up my second younger cousin who has also been inspecting these white beauties on his plate.

"Have you two no ever had tatties afore then?", asks Mrs A, beginning to believe that the rumours about their mammy's cooking abilities must be true.

"Aye of course we have silly", they say in unison, both a little embarrassed at their culinary ignorance of such a basic foodstuff. "But are tatties usually no meant to be black and skite aff yer plate when ye stick a fork in them?, asks the older one in all gloriously naive honesty.

"Nah son, they're meant to be just as they are here", she replied, rolling her eyes for the truth was worse than she'd expected. My cousins tore into the meal with gusto and as they accepted this new properly cooked food group into their diet both agreed that they'd never seen the likes of it in a long time, nor were likely to again anytime soon.

Some years later, the elder of my two cousins was staggering home up the driveway to his house after a wee session down the local when his rather irritating and nosey neighbour popped her head over the fence to tell him with pride that she'd given his mother her old pressure cooker because she had just purchased a new one. Sporting a huge smile she waited for his grateful thanks at such a generous act. Stopping in his tracks and making an effort to focus at least one of his drunken bleary eyes on the woman he would most like to see six feet under, he uttered the following:

"Oh ye did did ye? Ye gave mah mother an effing pressure cooker?", he asked incredulous that someone of supposed sound mind and body would do such a thing. "Whit in the name of God was the world comin' tae?", he pondered, as the horror of her news sunk in.

"Aye, aye ah did, whit's yer problem wae that then?", she asked as the smile slid from her face at the hostile response.

"Oh, no much of a problem at all hen", he slurred sarcastically back at her, "That's just fucking great and dandy", he continued, as he shook his head in disbelief. "Now she can burn the shite oot of ma tatties in half the bloody time it used to take her", he threw at her, as he lurched off indoors to see what culinary delights his mother had left for him to chuck in the bin just before he phoned for a Chinese takeaway.

The pressure cooker just made things worse really, for aunt T loved pottering around in her garden and losing herself in weeding and digging and planting and nurturing it to within an inch of its life - her grass was so perfectly neat that it looked like she cut it daily with nail clippers. When she'd finally remember that she'd started dinner some one hour or so before, she'd sprint like a gold medallist into the kitchen on a rescue mission and could be heard to shout, "I just caught them in time", as black acrid smoke billowed from the pressure cooker and the tatties that were welded to the inside of it. "Just caught them in time for what?", you'd ask yourself open jawed. "Just in time to feck them into the bin or did she have some other unexplained role for them that we were not privy to for she sure as hell hadn't caught them in time to be eaten", we'd tell ourselves. Some years later she discovered the micro wave oven. If you thought that someone's already hideously poor culinary skills couldn't sink to a new low then you have never had sausages, bacon, tattie scones, a fish finger, a beef burger, nuclear peas and a raw egg all cooked together and served up with dry toast for breakfast - butter was unhealthy apparently. If you had thrown the food at a wall, so rubbery was its consistency, that it would still be bouncing around the room today.

Oh but for all aunt T couldn't cook she achieved other great things much more important in life. She was successful and a role model in her career, as a wife, mother, sister, aunt, friend and mentor. She lived a life of Christian values and did endless charity works- thankfully she wasn't let loose in a soup kitchen - that would have been a cruel twist of fate for the hungry homeless people looking for a square meal. She provided me with a safe haven to run to as a child growing up in and who needed to escape from a troubled environment. When her husband was unexpectedly elected to the position of Lord Provost of Glasgow and Lord Lieutenant to the Queen, she rose to the role admirably,only momentarily being slightly caught unawares of her duty and what was expected of her initially but never putting a foot wrong as she embraced each task and grew with the experience. She knew sign language and taught the hearing to communicate with the hearing impaired. She was actively pursuing a programme as lady Provost to introduce sign language to some schools so that communication barriers could be torn down. She could strip down her troublesome spin dryer, service it, fix it and have it back on its feet working a treat until the next time it needed her expertise. In another life she may just have been a fine aeronautical engineer or designer for she was well able to grasp technical detail and idiosyncrasies with no trouble at all. She enjoyed science, but just not the domestic science branch of it. But no matter she couldn't cook for the welcome into her home was genuine and warm and she maintained the best treat store this side of Nirvana. No matter what age you were, if you were good, she'd let you rummage in her treat store that housed mars bars, waggon wheels, club fruit biscuits, tunnox caramels and a whole host of other goodies to make your young eyes light up with joy. Every serious partner I had accompanied me home to my family over the years and to this day, each one of them reverted to being a five year old boy who couldn't wait to be allowed permission to raid the treat store. It was a right of passage and one where you knew you had been accepted into the family.

I get plenty of time to reminisce about times gone past as I chop, scrape, cut, brown, boil whatever it is that I'm preparing. I miss the chatter of my mother around the table as we would companionably go through our pre festive season tasks whilst we shared the skills, knowledge , love and gossip that formed our relationship. Her passing means that she has handed the mantle onto me and I instinctively start preparation some six weeks before Christmas because I too need to feed the people close to me, need to provide a haven of warmth, love, sustenance and succour. My daughter would have been 24 this year but she was not meant to be. I cannot hand onto her the traditions, skills, excitement and heightened expectation that Christmas Eve, the best day ever, will soon be upon us. But as I work studiously, alone in my preparations, I am thankful that I have a husband, two step sons, family and friends that I love and love me back.

To come home and upon opening the door on a wintry night to just soak up the fantastic aroma of my mother's slow cooked Scottish steak and sausage casserole is to almost have my mother there waiting patiently for her marauding children to return to the nest. It couldn't be more evocative and heart-warming. She and aunt T may not be here in person but there is strong evidence that they both inhabited my world and each left me a legacy unique to them. Both inspirational in their own ways even if one cooked like an angel and the other like she was devising the menu for a bush tucker trial on I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out Of Here!

On Christmas day I'll take a moment to think of all who are missing from my life, raise a glass in memory of them, and raise another or two in thanks to those still in my life. I'm certainly thankful I didn't luck out in the great lottery of life and get my aunt's cooking skills and himself says he's eternally grateful too!

A Blast From the Past.....

2008-11-01T14:57:00.023Z

I opened my desktop email as I do every morning and on seeing the ‘Receiving Mail’ message kick in on the task bar at the bottom of my screen, I waited for the usual mix of round-robin jokey mails that mostly I can live without because they are about as funny as lacerating your piles on a broken glass; couple those with the odd spam about enlarging my penis, (nope I don't have one in case you are wondering), to the length and girth of a Jedi Knight’s lightsaber, (imagine that girls – massively erect, lit up in the dark and being waved at you from five feet away; you could probably have the orgasm of your life followed by a quick hysterectomy and superb cauterisation to minimize the bleeding, come to think of it you could probably have a fairly successful tonsillectomy into the bargain and not even be in the same room as your well endowed lover); add to that a selection of pointless marketing shite about everything you will never need in this life like a fake Rolex watch with an X Factor winner’s face on it and of course besides some wee thieving arsehole trying to con you out of your Abbey savings account balance there is always the ultimate in emails – the fecking death threat chain emails promising you great suffering from the relatively simple boils on your arse infliction to a total wipe-out of your family, business and life as you know it threat if you don’t forward it to 3.2 million people in the next 5 nanoseconds. Like I give a rats ass about them but it does cheese me off that people perpetuate the fear factor and forward them to people they profess to love and care for – oh yeah? So how come you’ve just sent me an email promising torture of unimaginable proportions if I don’t send it on and then you finish off with a salutation of:

‘Hope all is well with you,
Talk soon,
Love,
The mental case that just sent this’.

So erm, how does that work then eh?
But hey, all that crap aside, you might just get lucky and eventually get a golden nugget of an email from family, good friends and old acquaintances that are a joy to read. Lets face it, for all its misuse, email when used for its intended purpose can be magical. It is quite simply the naughties version of the love letter and has encouraged millions driven apart by circumstances to put pen to paper or at least key to document and articulate things they might not have thought of saying in our time poor society.

Well anyway enough pontificating, bugger me, there I was last week firing up the desktop to welcome this array of communication excellence into my home whilst I sauntered off to brush the old gnashers in readiness of having a smile here and there or at the very least a grimace at some old crap that I had to delete - actually if I could get my hands on the wee sods that think I am stupid enough to send them all my bank and family details ranging back to the early 19th century so they can perform an online mugging of my bank accounts I would gladly pull their teeth out one by one in the style of the dentist in the Marathon Man movie where poor old Dustin Hoffman doesn’t look much like he’s enjoying it. For feck sake, that movie set back dentistry about thirty years, as if it needed it. Personally I like to cling to my dentist’s nuts with a tightened bulldog clip whilst he insists on drilling into some deeply soft tissue and jaw bone with a piece of hardened steel that was last used on a construction site. We usually come to an understanding that if he hurts me then he doesn’t get off too lightly himself. Actually this is a piece of artistic license here because my dentist reads my blog and I want him to see it in black and white that I'll come after him and there is no hiding place in this world if he hurts me bad - ever again. It took him ages to find the blog - he kept looking for Genocaushaloldgag - well Christ he'd ask me what it was called when he had a whole fecking denitistry tool kit lodged in my open and by now three foot wide stretched gob - what the hell did he expect? Perfect enunciation whilst I was choking on my own spit?

Anyway, as usual I digress. Incoming email trickled in one by one and settled into a list of twenty or so. One caught my eye simply because it was so unique. ‘ Calling all LDCers’ was the title. My heart skipped a beat and I re-read the title before double clicking on it. “This is going to be interesting”, I thought and I was right. LDC was Sperry Univac’s London Development Centre from the early seventies through to the mid 80’s before it was then dismantled and moved to Milton Keynes. During that time, over 200 of us worked as computer software programmers, hardware engineers, analysts, designers, operators and a big support staff for one of the most exciting and innovative American I.T. manufacturers of its time. It was a place that housed such immense talent and skills and incredible personalities that it would be hard to replicate it today.

HEALTH WARNING - NON TECHNICAL READERS SHOULD SKIP FORWARD OVER THE NEXT PARAGRAPH HERE PARTICULARLY IF YOU OWN A GUN - DON'T READ ON BECAUSE YOU MAY WANT TO SHOOT YOURSELF SHORTLY AFTERWARDS.

It was unique in its time in that the centre was at the forefront of technology, science and physics in inventing and developing the early I.T. systems that are the great great grandparents of the totally sophisticated desktops and laptops of today. Crikey, when we started programming we used Assembler, ASM, then Meta Assembler MASM, Plus, PL1 and eventually FORTRAN and COBOL, 1st, 2nd and third generation languages but then to talk about this technical stuff really is to bore for Britain and America about programming languages. But those with an interest will fondly recall having a punch room full of girls who translated coding sheets onto 80 and 132 column punch cards which were the programmes of the day. These soon gave way to the terminal – a green Cathode Ray Tube with a keyboard which allowed us to type our code into files and run them as a batch run. We were known as the ‘Green Tuber’ generation of I.T. and those green tubes, thanks to the likes of Bill Gates, evolved into the PC’s that we use today.

GOT THIS FAR WITHOUT TOPPING YOURSELF? AWARD YOURSELF 10 GOLD STARS AND DO THE SENSIBLE THING, DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND FECK OFF AND READ SOMETHING ELSE OF CONSEQUENCE THAT WON'T STRIP YOU OF THE WILL TO LIVE.

Sperry Univac being the multinational corporation that it was employed a plethora of cultures, nationalities and people from the very wealthy to the very poor but all had a lust for computers and a talent to match - I couldn't believe my luck being employed alongside these great people. London Development Centre, (LDC), had a reputation for excellence, working hard and playing hard and copious amounts of alcohol were consumed over at Charlie’s Prince of Wales, (POW), pub just a skip away over the road from the office. Just for a change now and again, we’d all head off to the Queens Railway Tavern, (QRT), to snort a few gallons of booze there. We firmly believed in keeping the local economy on an even keel and spread our embarrassingly large earnings between the pubs that let us partake of lengthy lock-ins to the extent you practically just rolled back to work the next day rather than go home first. Such was our reputation, people clamoured to get assignments to this place which was a grand melting pot and only language we needed in common was the programming languages we used and a common bond to create the best products in the world - or so we thought anyway!

Humour played a huge part in keeping us going on the long days we worked. Friendships were forged that last to this day. Relationships were made and broken and made again in the biggest dating agency going at that time. I married my first husband, divorced him, met and lived with my second long term partner then broke up and fell in love with another who was never going to be mine because neither of us was free at the same time - and all of them from the same work environment. This was typical of the environment as we all worked long hours and travelled a lot and we saw more of anyone from work than we ever did of friends and family. It was simply an extended university environment and we had some of the best years of our personal and career lives whilst working there.

I saw the world from that office in London Paddington. Both in terms of the differing cultures working there and on the assignments we were sent on overseas. No matter where you went on assignment there was usually someone based there that you knew and nights on the town were the order of the day. There are a thousand adventures I could write about but I won’t bore you with these right now.

And so, yes this email is a golden nugget, a real gem and one that makes having all the other old tat come in worth it in the long run. This email has generated a thousand memories, smiles, reflections on a time gone by and it’s raked up some deeply buried moments that are a joy to rediscover. The point of the email?.........There is to be a reunion next year. As I read through the list of email names it has been sent to, I felt the most immense joy at the thought of seeing so many of these people again. In particular, one name stands out - the second person that I fell in love with. He’s on the list, flew in from overseas for the last reunion which I couldn’t attend so will more than likely be at the next given the amount of notice we have been given this time round.

Will I attend? You bet I will but I think Himself will probably attend with me! He trusts me and is comfortable with me going along on my own but you know, I'd like him to meet some of the finest people that I have known that influenced me greatly in my most formative years; people that I have so much in common with, a shared history and a chance to renew those friendships that got shelved as our profession and industry took a battering and we moved onto pastures new.

And what of those death threat chain emails that I get sent? I usually email the sender and ask them not to send me these emails but if they ignore my requests, then I just send it back to the person that sent it to me.....Keeps them paranoid wondering what the hell to do with it now and I get a laugh out of it!

Love is............

2008-10-14T21:08:00.008+01:00

Love is....

How you blend in some misapplied make-up on the side of my nose and then just keep caressing it because you love my nose, then you bend to kiss it no matter who is around to see.

The way you take care of me and protect me when I’m vulnerable and need your arms as a shield.

When I mention a song that I like and you come home with the CD for me a day or two later.

That you laugh at my humour then make me laugh more at yours until my sides ache and tears run down my face.

The way your love acts like a balm that washes over my bruised and battered heart and strengthens it.

Staying around for the long haul through the menopausal struggle and supporting me because you knew and loved the real me first and knew I’d come back.

How when I was in the midst of the menopause and in the bad old days before the HRT started to work we went to Costco and I realised I was out in my slippers like a bewildered old fart who had escaped from a care home you just smiled, told me I looked great and said at least I'd be comfortable strolling about the big store then hugged me.

The way you wrap me in gossamer and make me feel secure when things feel wobbly from time to time.

The way you anchor me to life; the way I’m grounded by just being with you; the way your strength is contagious.

Your forgiving heart that loves me almost unconditionally no matter how horrible I was in the last three years.

The way you teased me because I said I was going to cry when we made our vows and on the day you were the one who choked and couldn't talk because you got all emotional. You almost ripped my heart out because I was so touched that you could show such emotion in front of so many people.

Watching you sleep and hearing you breathe next to me and making me grateful for the extra heartbeat that you bring.

Snuggling up to you in bed because you radiate heat like a furnace and let me warm up my frostbitten tootsies on you.

Trying not to moan that I have to wear breathing apparatus and get like a firefighter because you are forever cremating food when I let you loose in the kitchen.

Getting excited that I can hear your key in the front door when you come home safely because I know when I'm not in the car with you, you drive like you are in the Monte Carlo rally.

Trying not to wrap my hands around your throat because for the umpteenth time you took your used cup to the kitchen, left it on the newly cleaned worktop over the dishwasher. Love is trying to understand how you got all the way in there and fell at the last hurdle by not actually getting your cup into the dishwasher. What's that all about then eh?

Always lowering the toilet seat and realising you must get just as frustrated that the seat is always down and having to raise it.

Having separate bathrooms, separate toothpaste tubes and no moaning about who squeezes the tube from the middle.

Love is knowing that if you are taken before me that every habit I find annoying will become a reminder of the person who is no longer here, a reminder of the loss I have to bear, a sign that each habit was a bit of you that populated my world and that instead of grumbling about it, I should have embraced it and celebrated it. So my dear husband, for one day and one day only you get to do every annoying thing you ever wanted to do and have complete amnesty thereafter but for 24 hours only......... Oh sod it, do your worst for as long as you want. One day the clear worktop with the missing cup, the lack of black acrid smoke and the burnt food odours, the toilet seat always being down and the ensuing interminable silence will taunt me that I wasted time moaning at you needlessly when all I should have done was love you.

Love is.........Living with my best friend, lover, husband..........

So my darling for the 16th of October happy 4th wedding anniversary my hunkymanthing. Love is? Simply loving you warts and all as you do me.

Here’s our song.....Click on here and play it and if you don’t get all dewy eyed and sentimental within minutes, yer in for it okay?!

The seven stages of grief....

2008-09-29T16:59:00.014+01:00

Shock and Denial

Oh yes, the first stage; Shock at so many deaths together and one more at least to come as my adored step-father was dying of cancer. Shock that was so great I was completely overwhelmed; Shock and devastation and disbelief and emotional overload; One shock after another with no time to absorb the details of the one before. And denial? Oh just about as much denial as I could muster if it meant not having to absorb the awfulness of my situation and not having to feel the immense pain that was threatening to kill me from the sheer weight of it. But denial only lasts for as long as it takes you to finally turn and face it all. Life doesn’t let you deny things for too long, it prefers that you deal with the harsh realities head on otherwise how else would we grow, cope, move on?

Pain and Guilt

It’s simply too much to stay in denial. Nature abhors a vacuum. Now that my shock absorbers start to wear out and no longer deflect the reality of this desolate hinterland of death, my battered and bruised brain acknowledges each death, each loss, each severe kick in the guts raining ever more emotional blow upon blow on my heart, and I begin the process of experiencing pain of quite exquisite depth. How I will stand this is anyone’s guess. I cannot see how I have the emotional maturity or tools to cope with what God has given me now. There is an old maxim that God gives you only what you can handle. Oh really?; If that’s so then he’s screwed up big time here; he’s chosen the wrong person to test that theory out on for I am scared, so terrified that I will not cope, that pain and grief will engulf me and I’ll capitulate and throw in the towel just as my uncle did when he hanged himself.

Each second is an hour, each hour a day, each day a month, each month an eternity. I am bent double from the pain and I need to protect myself from any more agony. I am tormented beyond belief and almost forget to breath. I have reverted to being a helpless frightened child and I am lost in a hell that I can’t see a way out of or an end to. I need to run away from this excruciating unbelievable pain, just run as far away as I can, but it’s useless for what ails me will come with me no matter where I am and this realisation leaves me desperate, boxed in, a prisoner to grief.

And what of guilt?; Oh yes, plenty of that of course; remorse for being much too absorbed in my own life; remorse for being far too enamoured of my career and how it always took priority; remorse for throwing away the most precious gift I had been given – time with my family and it was much too late to claw even a second of it back; remorse at never having said I love you quite enough times. I know that I should fully embrace the pain, take it on and deal with it, not run from it but I think God will forgive me this time if I say to hell with it, curl up in a ball and wait for death. I don’t want to die but neither do I want to be alive. I wish I could die in my sleep, a nice peaceful passing and I can be with them all again. I can’t be the architect of my own demise because for now I lack what it takes to take my own life but I consistently ask God to take me. Dear God, if only I could fast forward past this appalling part of my life to somewhere painless and carefree; somewhere that promised peace of mind and where my heart had repaired.

Anger and Bargaining

Can you really be angry at someone’s death? I didn’t think so until I railed at my uncle for taking his life. I felt anger at how he could be so flippant about the precious gift he had been given and just thrown it away when my other uncle and mentor pleaded with God to save his. I felt anger that my mother should die so young; that I’d been robbed of so much time with her. I raged that God should take my parents together, that for someone so great and good and benevolent that he should do this to me. “What kind of God does that?”, I remonstrated over and over. My anger gave way to bargaining, frightened that I had been disloyal to a higher power, scared that I would have more emotional trauma visited upon me. Catholics, we graduate with a double first in guilt and fear. But I did bargain. I cried deep heaving sobs, pleading with God to let me see them again and if he did so, I’d be a better Catholic, a better person, a better whatever he wanted me to be if he’d just bring them back, just let me hug my mother one more time, let me hug her and never let her go. It was all in vain, he wasn’t listening. He was off buggering up someone else’s life and had left me to it, left me in despair.

Depression, Reflection, Loneliness

Christ, I have never experienced depression before; A black, black depression of such enormity that it weighs about 80 tons on my head and chest. I am buckling under the sheer burden of it all. I still cannot believe the course of events that my life has taken of late. The frequency and suddenness of death in my life leaves me a shadow of the person I was. I am diminished as a person, daughter, sister and niece. I am having difficulty grieving because I am confused. If I cry for my mother I feel guilt that I am not grieving for my father or my two uncles and I am also grieving for the loss that is yet to come. I stop in my tracks. I have no guide book, no instruction manual on how to grieve for so many at the same time. Nature demands a cycle of birth, life, death and a grieving process for the person who has gone; I can’t find anything designed to help me grieve in multiples of four. I don’t know how to do this, don’t know who to ask, don’t think anyone else could possibly have gone through such heartache and as such cannot be of any use; don’t have the energy to look for help as I spend my days curled up in the foetal position on the couch that I rarely move away from. I am at a standstill, can't move forward, backward, up or down, can't move an inch. Inertia keeps me stuck, unable to move. My world has shrunk to this couch, this room and someone has sucked the oxygen out of it. I keep trying to drag myself out of this state but I am simply too exhausted and heavy grief physically drags me back down. I’m not ready, not done reflecting on each person and their part in my life, the memories good and bad that they leave me with. Not done asking them to come back, not ready to let them go and to acknowledge they are gone from me forever. If I can keep them here, I’ll never experience the appalling loneliness that sweeps over me. But I can see people looking, read their minds as they think I should be getting over all of this and I want to scream at them to go to hell, that they will never understand my unique pain and that if they just walked ten steps in my shoes, they’d never think let alone utter such a thoughtless, stupid, puerile statement again.

The Upward Turn

Somehow bit by bit there is a chink of light at the end of the tunnel – it’s been so dark here for so long that I can hardly believe I can see it. My life has started to calm. My body is incapable of any more deep grief. It simply won’t survive any more heaving racking sobs. I can’t replay it all anymore. My heart and my head are toughened, stronger, covered in steel where they were once tender and vulnerable before. I find I can breathe with less effort as my depression eases and my chest begins to relax a little. My head is still weighed down but I find that I am able to bear it better than of late. Perhaps my self-inflicted isolation and purdah is coming to a close

Reconstruction and Working Through

Life must go on. I know this and given that I didn’t deny myself that even in the worst of my grief – I managed to stay the course, not down a thousand tablets in a quest to end it all - then it must be true, life must surely go on. I must reconstruct a way forward without these wonderful people in my life. I have to chart a course for the rest of my life that remembers what they gave to me and to use the best of what I inherited or was gifted through knowing them. My life is now different to what is was or was planned to be. I have to deal in facts, what is and not the fantasy of what it should have been. I can feel them willing me out of my purdah, telling me gently that it’s time to let go, that they’ve done what they can for me and they and I need to move on. I hear them giving me permission to start living again. Baby steps, one at a time, but faltering steps forward nevertheless; Progress of a kind. Immense sadness still pervades my every waking moment but despair is releasing its tentacles on me.

Acceptance and Hope

Reality stares me in the face. I must accept what has happened or stay trapped in a world of grief. To expect to be happy at this stage is a high expectation but it is enough to know that I will again laugh without guilt, be me again but with a few knocks and bruises that will heal. I am still me but a slightly tougher me because I survived the worst and came out the other end. But I’m a more vulnerable me too. I am wise to the fact that life can be cruel and deliver the most extraordinary blows and part of me will always fear an all too intense pain and a grief that I might not recover from. For the time being though it is enough to know that I had the strength to come through a terrible situation and the signs are good that I would survive it again. But mostly I have learned that life is to be lived and that I can’t live in fear of the worst. Life is risky and that’s what makes it so interesting and fun. Acceptance means moving forward and planning for the future again; it means experiencing happiness and joy and love. My life is wonderfully full and happy and I can talk about, laugh about the people that I loved so deeply and lost. The best parts of them are their legacy to me.

My heart was dealt a final blow when five weeks after my mother’s death, my step-father passed away. I managed a journey home to finalise a few details that he needed completion on and just four hours after saying my last tearful goodbye to him, he let go. As his family said at the time, he somehow found the strength to wait for me that one last time, to make sure his affairs in this life were complete before moving on to take care of my mother in the next. Only then could he let go. I cried at his bravery and dedication to the last. A gentleman to the end, making sure he was there for my mother once more.

I remember talking with a good friend and telling her my disbelief that so many blows could be delivered one after another. "It's called the catastrophic effect", she said looking at me. "Just when you think life can't give you any more to handle, off it goes, again and again and again, until you can't stand up from the weight of it all".

In conclusion, the model above is a general guideline to the grief process. Each step will be visited at different stages, revisited again and again as stages cross pollinate each other, and each individual grieves at their own pace and in their own timeframe. I moved between them several times during my journey and I wish I had known at the time what I was experiencing and why.

Stop the world, I want to get off......

2008-09-22T17:42:00.022+01:00

There is a dreadful loneliness in grieving. Even though my whole family were grieving for the loss of a brother, sister, mother, father, uncle, aunt, brother-in-law, sister-in-law it became a strange solitary process where we were united in our tragedy but it all seemed so abstract, so detached and we were unable to console each other, such was the magnitude of our loss. My head kept replaying the awful truth - two deaths in one night, three deaths in a week and four deaths in a month. It was as though my brain needed to constantly replay the whole catastrophe in order for it to make some kind of sense before I could start to come to terms with my loss. I clearly was still suffering immense shock and I reeled from the intensity of it.

On the day that my mother died, the journey home to Scotland was arduous and protracted. I wept over and over as my partner patiently drove the four hundred miles or so in one long journey so that we could get there as soon as possible. I felt bad that my step-brother and his wife had to deal with undertakers and such like on my behalf and I needed to get there to relieve them of such a dreadful burden. It was particularly hard for them as my step-father lay dying whilst his wife had passed away in the next room. I couldn’t imagine the torture this must have created for them all.

It was with a very heavy heart that I knocked on the door of my mother’s home. Knowing that it wouldn’t be her opening the door to me as she had done a hundred times before made me weep at the finality of it all and I leaned heavily against the door frame to steady myself. My partner seeing my distress came swiftly and engulfed me as he held me tightly because he knew I was dreading so much and this was a first of many things to dread. The door opened and the ashen faces of my step-brother and his wife said it all – they’d no doubt had better days in their lives and what we were now experiencing was staring them in the face too. They ushered us in and I quickly went to see my step-father for I was concerned as to how he was coping.

Oh this gentle man who had loved my mother so late in her life was but a shadow of himself and in little more than a week since I had last seen him. The events of the day had taken their toll and the sparkling light in his eyes that was his love for my mother had faded with her passing. I saw my own deep grief in his eyes and it was the most painful reflection that I have ever seen. It was like shards of glass lacerating my heart, death by a thousand cuts, all over again. I hugged his frail, cancer ridden and emaciated body, careful not to break him, and we were silent in our grief but tears rolled down my face as the damn burst yet again.

Where my father had been a violent controlling man, H was as gentle and fun loving a creature you could ever meet. My mother blossomed in his love and care and he in hers. He was a true gentleman to whom people turned for advice and help and he never failed in his duty to be a good husband, brother, parent, friend and neighbour. He was a dapper old soul with exceptional manners and I was so grateful that he was in my mother’s life. He gave my mother a future full of love, hope and laughter where all she had known with my father was fear, pain, physical and mental torture. Her premature death at the age of 64 meant a cruel twist of fate that robbed her of perhaps the best years of her life. But in time I came to be grateful that if she was to die at that time then it was better she went first rather than her witnessing the painful and deeply sad passing of her husband.

It was a long night fielding calls from brothers, sisters, relatives and friends. My head felt like it would burst having to repeat the details of her death, plans for funeral arrangements over and over again. It was like planning a military operation simply because my mother had 9 surviving children, two sisters and one brother and a smattering of other relatives and they all needed to be at her funeral. Finally the phone went silent for the night and myself, my partner, H’s son and daughter in law got down to the business of drinking ourselves to a standstill as all good Glaswegians do in times of sadness, happiness or indeed just because the sun rose again that day. We don’t need much excuse to get ‘tired and emotional’ as it is called back home - the opening of a crisp packet would probably make it onto the list of things to pop a can or two about. I badly needed a drink as all day emotions were running high and simply because I was the one there, answering the phone to my grieving family, I became by default the counsellor, mentor, parental figure for my siblings who were so deeply lost in their grief too and looking for any kind of reassurance that the world wasn’t imploding in on itself. When I replay this day in my mind, I am incredulous that I survived it, as to take on the grief of your siblings as well as your own seems almost too bizarre to comprehend. I clearly remember almost standing outside of myself as autopilot kicked in and I took call after call after call. I can only think that my years of being a senior manager in a professional environment and with all the training that went with that privilege had kicked in and I treated the whole scenario as a project, problem solving exercise that needed to be addressed. It was clearly a coping mechanism that got me through those few distressing hours.

The funeral took place some seven days later; an inordinately long time for my mother’s body to remain unburied but as she had died on a bank Holiday weekend, as coincidentally had my father the previous month, then everything ground to a halt as arrangements could not begin to be made until the following Tuesday. I felt such immense frustration and there were times I got cabin fever from being holed up whilst giving my step family some respite by helping to take care of my step-father as he fought his battle. The funeral arrangements were not without problems and as with all families there were misunderstandings, petty grievances from years before aired once more, alliances rebuilt only to be broken down the next day because grief is a hard task master that demands maturity at a time when all that surfaces is a lost, bewildered and angry child needing the safe haven of a parent to run to. It is almost ridiculous to feel like an orphan when you are in your mid 30’s but simply put that is how every one of us felt at the loss of both parents in such close proximity.

Shortly before the funeral my step-father’s family took him back to his old family home where they provided round the clock care and to allow us to grieve with some privacy. It is with great respect and with some discomfort that you dispose of your parent’s worldly goods. Rooting through drawers and cupboards throws up a mixture of old bric-a-brac, old photographs of happier times you forgot or sad fearful times you can’t forget. It took a few days of constant graft, giving possessions to charities, throwing out things that you hope they would approve of as rubbish and not something that harboured a dear memory for them, allowing family to choose a treasured piece of jewellery to remember her by. But none of it really matters in the scheme of things for possessions are meaningless clutter and it is your memories that keeps them alive; their names uttered on your lips as you talk about them with others who share your loss and share your history and share your deep personal grief.

Finally I left her house and turned to close the door behind me. The home that was once full of love and warmth now echoed a barren and empty sound as the door closed heavily. She was gone from this place and the realisation filled me with dread for the future because I knew that she was no longer going to be part of it. I had closed that door knowing it would be the last time I would hear the peculiar noise it made as the dodgy latch kicked into place; I had closed it knowing that I would never see that door again; knowing that I couldn’t ever come home again for a wee cup of tea with my wee Glasgow mammy; knowing that I would have to find my own sense of ‘well done’ because she was no longer there to tell me that; this was going to be a mammoth task because no one told me ‘well done’ quite as good as my wee mammy ever did - I wasn't up to the task.

Several hours later, several drinks later and sobbing uncontrollably in my home in England, I picked up my phone and dialled her home phone over and over but no one answered. I knew her home was dark, empty and completely abandoned but grief made me hope against hope and with complete irrationality I wished to God that she would pick up the phone and tell me that she lived to fight another day. I understood just how helpless my brothers and sisters had felt when I’d fielded their calls but this time there was no one to answer the phone to me. Oblivion called.

Life's a bitch and then you die

2008-09-13T16:18:00.006+01:00

Back in April I started to write a story called the Catastrophic Effect. I got as far as detailing my father’s death from lung cancer. I also wrote about how forty five minutes after hearing of his death my cousin called to tell me our uncle had committed suicide. Not only was it unusual to hear of such news so closely together, the second death was completely unrelated to the first for the uncle that took his life, was my mother’s brother and was incarcerated in a mental hospital in Glasgow so knew nothing of my father’s death. It was shocking news on top of my father’s death but only because it came so close on the heals of it.

My uncle had been desperate to kill himself for some months as he had great difficulty in coping with the loss of his brother and wife within weeks of each other. As a well healed and seemingly strong individual who held down a professional career for many years it was an immense shock for us to see his degradation into a babbling and angry wreck with suicidal intent at every turn. Nothing we did for him helped ease his anguish and he was like a wounded animal cornered in life with nowhere to go. He could not be reasoned with and was finally sectioned against his will in an attempt to save his life and see him through the worst of his fear and grief to a point where reason could once more be used to encourage him to want to live again. No one bargained for his utter determination to succeed and so on that evening he obtained a wire coat hanger, attached it to a light fitting and hanged himself. He didn’t actually die that night but was effectively brain dead from there on in until he finally got his wish and took his last breath two days later; Suicide – the long term solution to a short term problem.

In a complete contrast to this deeply distressing situation, another uncle was fighting the final stages of secondary bone cancer and desperately clinging to life for he wanted to live so very much, to carry on being here for him and us. The immense effort and pain he endured was deeply etched on his wonderfully kind and intelligent face making it enormously difficult to look at him and not want to sob your heart out just watching him lose the battle bit by painful and heartbreaking bit. But there were to be no tears, no remorse, no outward displays of emotion or recognition that he was dying for this would have distressed him and had us banished from the room until we could pull ourselves together. No matter how much pain he endured he fought the battle of his life with grace, bravery, courage and strength, with fortitude and a determination that had gotten him through life.

Here was a man who was born into poverty and hardship in the east end of Glasgow in the depression of the 30’s to a father who had been embittered and disabled fighting in the bloody battle fields of the first world war. He was a man of immense intellect and the first in his family to obtain a university degree. His heart was the biggest I have ever known and his compassion was endless for the poor and disadvantaged that he represented as a councillor for the poorest ward in Glasgow. He never forgot that education and a magnificent work ethic was his passport out of poverty and he worked tirelessly as a teacher and a councillor to help as many willing participants as possible achieve that same goal through the same opportunities that he had been given. He was my mentor, friend, inspiration, uncle and father substitute and shining light in a young life that had endured much violence and hardship at times. His and my aunt’s home was my refuge in times of fear. I studied science as my major because he was a scientist and I so wanted to be like him. He instilled in me a love of all things scientific and physics fascinated me. But mostly he infused in me an understanding that real strength in a man is the gentleness of spirit, the kindness and the ability to forgive that love brings and that bigotry, violence and hatred are enemies to be thwarted at all times. It was his utter belief that life was for living and living well that gave him his strength and deep need to survive.

So, here was a juxtaposition of incredible extremes; two men fighting their own personal battles; one to die and another to live.

I have no anger for the uncle who killed himself. I don’t know whether it is a brave or a cowardly decision to take your own life. I cannot enter his state of mind and find out what drove him; I can only try to understand that it was his wish, his right to do what he did with his life. Even with my psychological knowledge and understanding I cannot offer a plausible insight but I do hope fervently that he is at peace.

The week following my father’s death and uncle’s suicide was a flurry of detail, arrangements and communication with all who needed to know and be there to say goodbye. On the Wednesday we waved off my father, on the Thursday it was time to see off my uncle but on that morning, my other uncle died.

It was a bizarre netherworld kind of existence and everything seemed to enter a slow motion kind of reality. For a time I was angry that my other uncle lost his battle. Grief brought out the child in me and every fear I once buried, every injustice I felt bubbled to the surface. I raged at the world for taking my protector, mentor and friend but in time I came to realise life and death are bedfellows that must be lived and endured and that the natural cycle was indeed working as designed.

His funeral was a grand affair for my uncle was halfway through a four year tenure as Glasgow’s Lord Provost and Lord lieutenant to the queen. In the years before Scottish devolution, he was Glasgow’s leading politician and the Queen’s representative for all things royal in Glasgow. His death in office meant a funeral of almost state proportions was to be held. Police lined the streets, people turned out in their thousands to say goodbye to one of the most popular Lord Provosts ever to hold office and the press were there in their droves. It is my only experience of being photographed and filmed at every turn as we travelled with my aunt in the official car that lead the procession – a deeply intrusive moment in my life. My uncle was a practicing Catholic who was devout in his faith and the head of the Catholic church in Scotland, Cardinal Winning insisted on leading the service with a multitude of bishops in attendance. The Queen was represented by a minor royal and the service was magnificent in its dedication to my uncle and really quite beautiful. He would have been fair chuffed but equally humbled at the turnout and the depth of feeling that was emitted that day. It was a surreal experience seeing so many well known faces all in the same place.

I remained in Glasgow for a few more days for my mother was not entirely robust in her health and when you lose one parent, the surviving one becomes even more precious. The truly depressing news that her husband, my stepfather was in the terminal stages of cancer had been told to me by his son. My mother was unaware that he was dying and no one knew how to tell her for she had a weak heart - a legacy from a massive heart atack that she had suffered four years before. A few days later I returned home to England and immersed myself in work. I was full of confused emotions at the death of my father, the callous suicide of my uncle and the shocking loss of my dearly loved mentor. I had no idea how to work through such an extreme set of emotions and as usual, work was my salve. I carried on almost zombie like just going through the motions for it was all that I could do to get myself out of bed and showered in the morning. I carried on for a week and almost collapsed from exhaustion and grief on the Friday night, but glad that I had made it through the week with no major catastrophes happen in front of colleagues.

At 7.45am the next morning the phone rang, dragging me from an exhausted slumber. It was my step-father’s son. I felt my blood run cold as I waited for him to tell me he had died. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, I kept asking him to repeat what he had just said for what he did say just did not compute. My brain refused to take it in such was the god awful shock at what I was hearing. I could hear him speak and it sounded like he was a million miles away in a parallel universe with his voice just seeping through.

I collapsed onto the floor, dropping the phone as I did so. My life felt like it was ending before me and I didn’t care, welcomed it, prayed for it, was ready to make sure it happened. I ran to the toilet and threw up over and over again as I sobbed and wailed and cursed God for taking her. My mother had died exactly one month after my father.

Mr and Mrs Chancer

2008-08-30T08:43:00.010+01:00

I’ve been reading the hilarious and equally frustrating account by Debs Lehner about the trials and tribulations of selling her house in France. It’s no wonder that selling a home is up there as one of the highest stress generators along with bereavement, divorce and changing jobs. Heaven knows how we survive it and go on to do it again and again. The brain is surely the most amazing organ ever – just look at how it wipes out the real pain of events so that we go and repeat the process all over again – how else would women go through the rip-you-apart-don’t-you-fecking-come-near-me-again pain that they do to have more than one child? Now I’m not comparing childbirth and house moving, really I’m not, but dear God there are times when having a 40 hour labour would seem so much better an option. Well that or having electrodes attached to your nuts.

As my mother used to say, ‘the people you meet when you don’t have a gun’. Just stick your house on the market and you’ll get an idea of what she meant but I suspect you probably do already. Where do these people really live? I mean I know they live in society somewhere and that they move about us freely and that some unfortunate bugger has them as a neighbour but how do they actually get by in life without someone ramming a fistful of knuckles down their throat? Let me be clear here, I have never ever in my life been violent or hit anyone, (well except for when I was 11 and the 13 year old boy from around the corner took to bullying me and terrorising my life for a while. I soon sorted that with a swiftly placed and unexpected kick in the nuts whereby he dropped to the ground with his hands cupped around his throbbing tackle and finding it difficult to breathe from shock, finally rolled into the foetal position with his mouth wide open, eyes bulging and groaned out what sounded like a death rattle. I was pretty impressed with how one rapid kick could have such a marvellous outcome and of course he never bullied me again. Thanks for the tip dad).

However, I digress so let me get back to the point. Given that I am not prone to launching physical attacks on people or plotting their death it is with some amazement at the range and depth of emotions that house viewers can elicit from me. Take for example the creature that is more commonly known as the ‘House Tourist’. You know the scenario; the agent calls at 8am on a Sunday morning to ask if it’s okay for :
Mr and Mrs Noseyfeckingtimewasterandnointentionofbuying to come along now to have a look. Of course you don’t know they are called that because they fool you by using a nom de plume like Mr and Mrs Smith to throw you off the scent and let you think they are serious punters. Anyway, they just happen to be in the area so could they just sneak a little peak?; won’t take long, the agent assures you with his chirpy happy godimightfinallygetasaleoutofthiskip tone which is exacerbating your terminal hangover from drinking formaldehyde or something equally organ rotting the night before. You stand there in your grubby dressing gown that you knew you should have tossed on a bonfire let alone washed, take a look around at last night’s dinner party chaos that you were too tired/comatosed to clean up at the time and you know that if you possessed a pistol you would just take the easy way out. You want to tell the agent to go take a bungee jump without the bungee but instead you put on your smiley nice voice, negotiate 30 minutes ‘to let the children finish breakfast’ and dash around like a loony kicking things under beds and couches, ramming stuff into already overstuffed cupboards, break several prized bits of crockery as you attempt to empty and reload the dishwasher at record speed just to get a semblance of a clear worktop here and there. Then if you’re lucky you get to scrape your hair back tightly into some sort of tight sink-estate-face-lift type look which coupled with red-eye and a face gray from blood loss because your body needs it for the major organs to fight off the alcohol onslaught, you look the sight you feel. It is a truism that you get the face you deserve in life.

With only seconds to spare you pull on trackie bottoms and a top and they arrive sans estate agent who incidentally is being paid shed-loads to show these bloody people around, but no, he’s busy destroying someone else’s Sunday arranging for more tourists to tramp about someone else’s house like it was ‘open to the public stately home season’. They ooh and aah all the way around, get disappointed that there isn’t a little old lady sitting by a roped off area in each room to chat to and wonder where the bloody cafe is. In time they take their leave but only after delivering the parting shot that they ‘loved your house, it was just as they always thought it might look and that even though they aren’t in the market to move, (probably because a fecking care home is more in their line), they thought that as the house was up for sale, you wouldn’t mind them having a look because as you’re showing people around anyway, another pair wouldn’t be any more trouble. It’s at that point if you did have a pistol, you would be committing homicide instead of suicide.

Then there is the:
I’lljustknockonthedoorandseeificanwhizroundwithoutanappointmentatsomeungoldlyeffinghourinthemorning waller who’s true agenda is to hopefully negotiate a huge discount because ‘let’s face it, if the agent doesn’t know and we don’t tell him we can pretend that this is a private sale and I’ll get to keep the agents fee and you get a sale – deal?’ Err, no, you cheating git, no sale because you woke me up at 8am on a Saturday morning by kicking on my front door like a police bust was in operation, and because you are too arrogant to make an appointment like most well mannered people, and because my house looks like if a grenade went off it would tidy it up and because you are happy to suggest we cheat the agent out of the fee, you will probably cheat me too.

Well dear people, both these types of people, (and more), came into my life when I was selling a home many years ago. It was a lovely little mews cottage in a row of lovely little mews cottages and a joy to live in. The chancer/opportunist viewer happened upon my place on a Saturday morning at 8am or so. Only the day before my then partner and myself had experienced a protracted journey home from Hong Kong. At this time on the Saturday morning, myself and he were exhausted and in a deep slumber when all hell broke loose. Dear God, we thought a herd of wildebeest were trampling their way through our front door. We ignored it and rolled over but the noise was relentless. Clearly it was an emergency we thought and pulling on dressing gowns, dashed downstairs wondering what the hell was wrong, Cue door opening partially and my partner and me squinting in the bright sunlight at three strangers.

“We hope you don’t mind, but we saw your for sale sign”, the lead chancer barked out rather army like in tone.

“Yes, and.....?”, my ex asked in return with a thunderous look. He was still foggy headed with sleep and jet lag and so being woken up so bloody rudely to be told they had seen our for sale sign wasn’t going down a storm here.

“Well....., we rather thought that as we are in the area you wouldn’t mind showing us around?”.

“What ? Now?”, we both asked incredulously standing there with mangled hair, sleep encrusted eyes and wearing nightwear a tramp would have thrown out. We weren’t exactly prepared for it.

“Well yes, isn’t inconvenient is it?”, chancer number 2 asked quite pompously as she popped her head around from behind chancer number 1. Chancer number 3 just looked on gormlessly.

“Sorry, no, as you can see we aren’t really prepared for an impromptu visit”, my partner said politely as I mentally ransacked our house and saw wanting in every room. No, definitely too messy to let anyone in just yet. Crikey, they were quick, the house had only gone on the market the day before and we’d calculated we’d have a day or so to tidy up before anyone came.

“You see”, I offered in support, “we’ve only just returned from a trip to Hong Kong and not only are we exhausted, but the house could do with a bit of a tidy before anyone has a look. We’d really be much happier and in a much better position to let you have a look round later”.

“Perhaps you can give the agent a call, get a time convenient to both parties and we’ll see you then. Okay?”, my partner insisted, expecting they would see our predicament and like most normal people get their arses out of our faces and let us get some sleep.

“So, can we come in or not?”, a booming voice from chancer number 2 shot back as though the last few sentences from us had never been uttered.

My partner’s mouth dropped open as he realised he must be talking to the human equivalent of a radio – all output, no input and tuned to the one station. “I beg your pardon dear?”, he asked adopting the rather pompous tone that she had just used with him. “Did I not make myself clear that now is simply not convenient so will you please.....”

.......“Oh come on, just a quick once around the block, we’ll not be long, promise, and if we take our time down here, you two can go and get dressed up there before you let us have a scan around that”, said chancer number 1 in a stroppy overbearing tone whilst pointing to the upstairs of the cottage. “C’mon, what’s your problem?”, he continued. “Surely you can manage that? Then we’d be out of your hair in no time and you can pop that little filly of yours right back in the sack”, he snorted a leery little laugh and winked at him as he said it.

Oh mother of God, the cheeky bastards. There was no way I was putting up with this or going to get changed in my home whilst leaving a bunch of strangers to rummage their way through my house unsupervised. I moved my ex rather snappishly out of the way and pulled the door open further so I could get my face into the trio of chancers that were in danger of getting a knuckle sandwich from the exhausted and by now furious man of the house. If anyone was going to hit them, then it was going to be me I decided – less damage that way.

“Look, what part of ‘it’s not convenient’ don’t you understand? You weren’t owed an explanation as you have barged you way in here ,but we were polite and gave you one so now if you would please go and by all means take the agents number, we can arrange something for later. But not until late afternoon please? Okay?” I said firmly, hoping I had made myself clear. Good God almighty, what the hell was I doing discussing this stuff with these people on our doorstep. Clearly they were used to coercing their way around life but I was buggered if they were going to get away with it now.

The thunderous look on the faces of chancers 1 and 2 as we closed the door on them was a sight to behold. Clearly they weren’t used to being refused much in life but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere, good things come to those who wait and all that. Chancer 3 had continued to look gormless and reminded me of a still life on a day out. He certainly had a future as a mannequin should whatever he did now not work out.

And so they came, later that day; chancer 1 and 2 with 3 following gormlessly along behind. Chancer 2 was particularly vocal and derogatory about what she found wanting in and out of the house. It was all I could do to stop myself rugby tackling her out the door and fecking her onto the street with her handbag to follow when I saw her kick at the French doors frame to test it for some imagined rot. Meanwhile, Chancer 1 drew filthy looks and shook his head as he tut tutted in ham acting mock disgust at decor and paintwork not being up to his lofty standards. Chancer 3 never said a word, just persisted with the gormless look and a shake of the head here and there. Eventually after much whispering, head locking and furtive looks, they took their leave oblivious to the fact that we were more than aware that clearly their tactics were to undermine the vendors, (us), then negotiate a knock down price for the purchasers, (them, or so they thought). Christ, eejit amateurs!

“Well that‘s the last of them”, we chimed quietly together, as the door closed behind them. But it wasn’t......

“Hello”, I answered, as I picked up the phone some 30 minutes later.

“Hello, Mrs Mob. John from Rip-off & Do’nowt estate agents here.

“Yes John, how are you?”, I asked.

“Good news, we’ve had an offer. Mr and Mrs Chancer would like to offer you xxxxxxx. How do you feel about that then?”

Oh how lovely, 15 k less than the asking price. Bearing in mind this was over 25 years ago, that was quite a drop. They were a pair made in heaven these two.

“No that’s not a problem John”, I responded lightly.

“Really, are you sure?”, he asked, obviously astonished and delighted that he didn’t have a battle on his hands and could avoid the usual rigmarole of rejection, back to the buyer to arrange a new offer and so on until a deal was clinched.

“Really, yes I’m sure”, I responded. “No it’s not a problem at all, because we won’t be selling to Mr and Mrs Chancer; not now, in fact not ever, no matter what the price”.

You could hear a pin drop as John absorbed the news. I almost felt sorry for him as I pictured him, for now, watch his commission disappear

“What?, YOU’ll NEVER SELL TO THEM? NEVER?” Are you absolutely certain about that? Why?”. I could hear the frustration rise in his voice. ”Are you taking the house off the market then?”

“No, it’s still up for sale and I’m happy for you to continue to market the property for us. It just isn’t available to the Chancers”. This wasn’t something he had come across before and I could hear him huffing and puffing away as he wrestled with a situation that he wasn’t sure how to manage.

“Well, what on earth am I supposed to tell them?”, he demanded as an explanation.

“Oh that’s easy”, I replied. “I’m more than happy for you to be very candid on our behalf. Just tell them that we love this house, we love the neighbourhood and more importantly we respect and like our neighbours to the point we wouldn’t inflict what may very well be tantamount to the neighbours from hell moving in”.

I quickly gave him an account about the coercive and very poor behaviour of our would-be purchasers and how under no circumstances would we be responsible for the erosion of such a nice neighbourhood. I tried to make him understand that sometimes in life there were consequences for poor behaviour and this was clearly the time for the Chancers to perhaps reflect on theirs. Being an estate agent and where the sale is king, he thought me mad and that I would change my mind. He was clearly under pressure from the Chancers and called several more times with increased offers. Each time, much to his consternation, he was sent on his way. He even called my partner to offer over the asking price but we were united and John was given short shrift by him for disregarding my instructions and trying to manipulate the situation. The Chancers never got that house and it was sold shortly afterwards to a lovely young couple just starting out in life who needed the carpets and curtains and a hotchpotch of furniture we threw in as part of the deal – it was a second home for us so we could afford to be generous with what we could leave and in truth they were doing us a favour taking it off our hands. Some two children and over two decades later they are still there and have no plans to move.

God knows where the Chancers ended up – six foot under at some point would be my guess. Wonder what happened to the gormless one and if the poor soul ever got a word in.

Thanks buddy!

2008-08-26T09:49:00.019+01:00

I’ve never been the ‘other party’ – the one who ‘stole’ a partner from their wife. I’d rather eat my own foot than break up a marriage. My mother had a great saying - ‘never take something that doesn’t belong to you as it will never bring you happiness’. I always apply that to other people’s men and let’s face it, as a rule if a guy or girl strays to be with you, you can be fairly sure that they will probably eventually stray to be with someone else. There are of course exceptions to the rule and if you are in a loveless marriage, you made a mistake, married too young, just fell out of love then why stay? Crikey, on the wedding day of my first marriage I knew I’d made a huge mistake. I sat in the back of the wedding car wondering what the hell I had just done. It was like a bolt through my heart but I stayed with that relationship until he found someone else and we broke up. It was an amicable break up, we remain friends of a sort but the woman that he left me for is one of my best friends almost 30 years later.

You might wonder why I became friends with her when she ‘stole’ my husband. The truth of the matter is that she only took what I didn’t want and what I was prepared to give away. It may have been a very different story had I been in love with him and felt that my life was over had he left me. As I constantly remind her, I got the better end of the deal. I got a tremendously loyal, kind and caring friend out of it and she got my wayward disloyal husband who was quite a pill from time to time. She also got my love, devotion and loyalty for the rest of our lives.

They met when he was on a business trip to the USA. He wasn’t wearing his wedding ring and then when the truth could not be hidden any longer he eventually told her he was married but that his wife didn’t understand him blah blah blah. The trouble was that I understood him only too well and knew that he often played away from home. You see, we worked for the same large blue chip corporation and the world is a small place at times. There were people very loyal to me that let it be known what he was up to but he was a consummate liar and often thought he had convinced me otherwise. I am sure he knew deep down that wasn’t the case for I refused to have intimate relations with him without protection as I was never sure what he might bring home with him. It was certainly a coming home gift I was prepared to forego.

I knew when he returned from this one particular business trip that something was wrong, that he was different. He was subdued, evasive and really rather cruel. He couldn’t meet my gaze and was altogether shifty – not that this was new behaviour – but I just knew some kind of seismic shift had taken place but couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It was a difficult period for although I didn’t love him nor really want him, I was rocked that my world as I knew it was crumbling. I had known deep down that it would have been he who left me for I had been brought up to get on with it and make the best of it. His ego and needs were such that he couldn’t remain in a marriage where intimate relations were a distant memory. No matter that he had brought that part of it on himself, he wouldn’t and couldn’t see that his infidelity had contributed to that. To be fair, he probably knew that I didn’t love him and he went off looking for love elsewhere.

We went through the usual cat and mouse games whilst he refused to admit he had strayed again. I caught him having furtive phone calls to the States late at night where he’d look guilty and say that it was a client. I found myself checking his receipts, the phone bill, our bank account for traces of betrayal to home in on. It wasn’t the fact that he had strayed that was a problem – I found I cared less and less about that as time went on – it was his duplicity that drove me nuts and his belief that I was stupid enough to believe his lies. He found it so easy to convince me that the silent phone calls when I answered the phone were all in my imagination. He had a plausible excuse for every receipt he carelessly left around for me to devour in my quest to be proved right that he was having an affair. I knew this was different, it wasn’t a meaningless indiscretion on a business trip, this was a threat to my world as I knew it. I felt rather sordid sneaking a look through his brief case and wallet and jacket pockets when he was asleep, or mindlessly hitting the redial key on the phone to see if I could catch him out. God, the amount of useless conversations I had with plumbers, takeaway places and such like was becoming embarrassing after a while. When I look back at that young woman of 23 I see an inexperienced and quite quite scared little girl who was terrified of losing him. He was the only family I had in London when I moved south from Glasgow and as a quite domineering character, my only real friend, or so I thought. He had quite cleverly isolated me from my friends and family to the point I was alone. I understand the behaviour well enough now and recognise it for what it is and would never get myself involved with someone so controlling again but at the time, I was confused and alone.

In time, his feelings for his new paramour spilled over into our lives. We sat and had a bottle of wine together and he felt brave enough to show me photo’s of her. She was a stunning red head with flowing long hair which I immediately envied. She was a truly sexy girl and I envied him his new relationship and happiness for it was something we had never had together. But more importantly, I felt relief. Relief that I finally knew the truth and that I wasn’t going mad and that I could stop the furtive amateur detective work that had so engaged my every waking moment. It took us much too long to break up – about eighteen months as far as I remember – but eventually he moved out into rented accommodation and finally she came.

My God, my curiosity was high. My soon to be ex in-laws lived over the road from me and on her first visit to them I got a perfectly good front seat to watch and evaluate this nemesis from. I did a quick overall look, a quick mental check of her bits in comparison to mine and then when I could not find her wanting, sat back deflated. I had so hoped that she would have had warts, an arse the size of Red Rum and a stoop for good measure. There she was, just a perfectly normal and very pretty girl who had made the biggest move of her life to come to live in London to be with her paramour.

It was new territory for me. I wasn’t sure how I’d behave when or if we met. I didn’t know if I’d suddenly want to scratch her eyes out if I came across her unprepared. But I knew we would eventually meet. My ex and I remained on good terms, so good in fact that people at work often remarked about our having lunch together and often in high spirits. It was true that we made better friends than we did husband and wife. I felt happy for him and his eyes would light up whenever we talked about her and I knew that I would like her.

And so it came to pass, the day arrived that we had talked about on the phone and promised to arrange. I dressed to kill for I didn’t want her to think I was a frump and that she had somehow taken my man – I wanted her to know in no uncertain terms that she’d picked up my castoff. No matter how it had ended, for some strange reason I needed to boost my self esteem, to be important and not a diminished washout of an ex for her to pity. And of course, I’d recently been through the divorce diet and lost whatever excess weight that had languished before so now I could wear clothes in a size that I had previously only dreamt about. We met on neutral territory and I was as nervous as hell. I almost didn’t go in and stopped in my tracks just outside to gather myself and wondered if I stayed there too long would I just bolt. I forced the door open with more push than was necessary and walked on in, shoulders back, head held high. I saw her immediately. She was even more beautiful close up. We greeted each other somewhat curiously – her more than me for she hadn’t seen me or indeed a photo – and within minutes we were gassing away like old pals.

I’d spend my days off with her, she’d cut my hair for she was a terrifically talented hairdresser but I insisted that she cut it before we devoured two bottles of wine. By this time I too had met and fallen madly in love with another colleague and as we all got on well, we socialised often together. It was a particularly happy time in my life and I often wished that if I had known how it would all work out then I would have spent so much less time trying to cling to a dead marriage that was no more stable than a ship wreck. I had an illusion of stability that never existed. In time, he relocated to the States and I cried my eyes out for the friend he took away from me. I had grown to love her better than a sister and it damn near broke my heart when she went. As I rose up the corporate ladder I spent more and more time in the States on business so we managed to get time together. I would often drop in to stay with them at the end of a business trip and everything was just so bloody great. Until he went and ruined it again.

My friend confided in me that she thought he was having an affair; that she knew who it was as she’d seen her around the office. I felt so useless as she was heavily pregnant and needed her man but he was busy making plans to move on. There were no ‘I told you so’s’ when he left her for another. I had always told her that she’d freed me from a life of commitment to a man that I didn’t love but didn’t know how to leave. I was grateful to her and thought her a much better match for him so I had high hopes that this would last for them. Towards the end I spent some time staying with them and he was cruel and indifferent to her just as he had been with me at the end of our marriage. On some level he felt guilt and this was his way of dealing with it.

My friend’s predicament broke my heart for she was vulnerable and lost. He went, she carried on with life as a single parent and brought up a son to be proud of. She is a fantastic mother and has devoted her life to her son, never marrying again – yet. She remains my closest friend to this day as I can tell her everything and anything and she treats my confidences with respect and keeps them close to her as I do for her. I love this woman with all my heart and know that she loves me too. The love of a close friend is an incredibly pure one that shifts mountains and stays with you for life if you are incredibly lucky. It sees you through the bad times and is your safety harness when all else seems lost. We pick up conversations where we left off months before and our dialogue is seamless and we never have to say sorry. My only regret is that she lives in the USA and I am here. I continue to hope that she’ll meet another Englishman and come here to live. We don’t get together like we used to and have become lazy at arranging that but one day, it may just be too late. She constantly asks us to come for a break and I constantly say of course then worry about leaving the dogs behind. I constantly suggest she comes here for a break, she says yes then worries about leaving her son and the dog too. But thank God for phones and email. We have the closeness of a dear friendship even if we don’t have the physicality of it. I am enriched by her presence in my life.

And so dear Crisco Kid – happy birthday my darling pal and darned good bezzie mate. Long may you live a happy and prosperous life full of the love you deserve and thank you for being such a great role model for a daft wee lassie from Glasgow.

I love you babes and if you need me just call.

Sorry guys if you want to leave a comment you will need to go through the crud of entering a code. I've had to turn on the moderating feature for I had a particularly vicious and very abusive comment left on my last post which I have deleted altogether for it was horribly sullied by the troll. I did however keep a copy of the post and her comments in Word so no problem producing the evidence when needed for the cops. Oh and the sheer beauty of it all is that I tracked a copy of the unique IP address and I know exactly where it is - so local you wouldn't believe it!

Oh and as a final note dear D - you are very much on track for being the same kind of friend as the Crisco Kid. You are talented, adorable, kind, intelligent and so very nice to know. Great old chat today and thanks you are a great support after the horrid after effects of the troll. She knows that I know who she is and I hope she is deeply ashamed for the very personal vitriolic diatribe that she left on my post. It was truly shocking and deeply disturbing and she needs help. Alcohol eh?

There is a God after all...

2008-07-11T09:44:00.026+01:00

In my previous life as an IT person and eventually a Functional Director for a very large ‘Blue Chip’ global American I.T. manufacturer, part of my role required I undertake international travel. There were many reasons for this type of activity over a twenty something years career such as technical support, client meetings, attending and giving training courses for new software product releases, project management meetings, meetings about meetings, meetings to discuss what we knew and more meetings to discuss what we didn’t know and anything else that fell in-between; consequently my arse was often wedged into an aeroplane seat built to accommodate a size zero model who would find getting her arse and thighs in there pretty much tough going.

I can’t begin to tell you how I delighted in the vagaries of air travel; for example negotiating that plastic table with drinks and food precariously perched on it just as the numpty in the window seat needed to go for a waz whilst the aisle was completely blocked by a trolley and two flight attendants. Or even better, given that the table was a feature of the back of the chair in front of me and as such not under my control, it has not been unknown for the incumbent of that seat to recline at speed and with such force that the contents of my flimsy table would be jettisoned fairly and squarely over me. Over time I got smart and stopped dressing up for air travel and just wore anything that a quick hose down wouldn’t sort. It got so I would take at least one change of clothes in my hand luggage as there were a few occasions when I was in one country whilst my luggage was a tourist in another; on one occasion I arrived home before my wayward luggage turned up two days later. Had I known that the last I was to have seen of it was at the check-in desk on the outward bound leg of my journey, I would have simply saved myself endless time and trouble by not bothering my arse to pack it and lug it there in the first place.

I could have merely headed off on my travels with one clean pair of knickers, a tooth brush and one non crease business suit and blouse with suitable shoes in my hand luggage. The downside of this of course is that I'd end up performing a juggling act eking out a meagre ‘capsule’ wardrobe over a three day period whilst trying not to resemble a disheveled old bag lady with hygiene problems. But at least you weren’t office bound first thing Monday morning at your excruciatingly early breakfast meeting still in the stained and crumpled outfit of the unfortunate slightly insane looking international traveller. Of course an occasional solution was that the company would reimburse me for the purchase of a blouse here, some underwear there, to tide me over when I could prove my case had gone awol but it got to be so regular they assumed I was a lazy bint and just fibbed about the loss of my case so that I could expand my wardrobe at their expense from each country that I visited. If they’d seen the shite that I’d bought out of desperation and haste because my tight schedules didn’t allow for shopping trips then they may have revised that assumption. Looking like Bozo the clown was not a great ambassadorial look for the global corporation I was supposed to represent. Anyway, had that bloody suitcase of mine accrued air miles I’d have been laughing.

However, good background info as this might be, if you are still awake this far in, I have a tale to tell. As I progressed up the company ladder, greasy pole, whatever you may call it - I promise that I did that without any arselicking whatsoever, without the learning of funny handshakes, by being devoid of the backstabbing activities of some of my colleagues and by simply relying upon and being grateful for the bad judgement of those clearly bewildered people who for some reason thought I had talent and promoted me – as such with each step my perks improved. More often than not, I was booked to travel ‘club’ class; an oasis of comfort and joy away from screaming babies, queues for the loo’s, drunks sleeping with their head on your shoulder whilst they snored and dribbled over you and the low class punter that polluted the air for fifty seats around him because he didn’t have the good grace to stop dropping his guts whilst in such close company and in a pressurised area. Those were also the days when you could smoke aboard an airliner and kill your fellow passengers with extra concentrated and recycled passive smoke throughout the cabins. Bad as it was, at least that went some way to masking the fug from Mr Fartyarse’s backside.

And so in time, with club class being the order of the day, I became much more enamoured of the idea, the practicality and ease of international travel at spoilt brat level. No more slumming it in cattle class or being on a plane that sported an outside toilet. “No, I’d arrived”, I told myself smugly as I peered back at cattle class. My how I loved travelling and my smugness grew with each trip I took; that is until one day, recessions being what they are, the IT marketplace being what it was – a rapidly dwindling one with diminishing returns, subsequent layoffs and company closures - a dreaded circular on head office notepaper was placed onto my and every other managers desk. “Oh dear god”, we all shrieked as though we’d witnessed a disaster. “Oh for fuck sake”, cried another, as he grasped his desk to steady himself whilst his secretary rushed for the smelling salts lest he fall to the floor in a faint. And so the memo went:

“Given the recent downturn in company profits, poor performance in the marketplace as a whole coupled with poor financial projections for the 3rd and 4th quarter results, it has been decided that from now, all international travel will revert to economy class. Club class will be for exceptional circumstances only”.

Well you could have heard a pin drop and shipped in a team of Paramedics on standby such was the shock as it settled in. We moaned, complained, threatened to refuse business trips and manipulated anyone and everyone into reinstating our spoilt brat status but it fell on deaf ears but we knew the score. The top of the tree would be the ‘exceptions’ that got to travel club class; the exalted few that wouldn’t know a day’s work if it bit them on the arse; the people least likely to benefit from a stress free journey with some truly hard graft at the end of it.

And so it came to be. In time we learned to accept it, to realise that controlling costs saved more jobs and in return the company had a fighting chance of survival.

So, there I was one day, arranging with our newly appointed in house travel company, a trip to our manufacturing plant in Minnesota, USA. I wasn’t looking forward to the cramped conditions for an eight hour flight but this was a trip I couldn’t get out of. There was a three line whip on it.

“Okay Ms Mob”, said the travel agent as she went on to confirm the details of my flights, hotel and car details back to me. As I thanked her and went to replace the receiver, she said “you do know that as an introductory offer we are upgrading you to club class, don’t you”. I could have kissed her such was my joy at this news. I perked up immediately, checked she wasn’t on day release from the local loony bin, and promised to bring her back a gift for such generosity.

It was a laborious trip to the airport, hampered by bad weather and the usual traffic chaos on the M25 motorway which has earned the moniker of being the largest car park in Britain. I rushed to check-in and prepared to wave goodbye to my luggage and wish it a nice holiday wherever in ended up. But imagine my joy at being told I had been upgraded yet again to First Class? I was almost delirious at the prospect of travelling in true noboff style. Dear God, in the space of no time at all I had gone from being a rear gunner at the back of the plane to hobnobbing with the captain, the rich and famous and of course the elite members of the cabin crew. I could have danced a jig right there in the airport.

Due to the lateness of my arrival, I was fast tracked through. I felt like royalty what with someone carrying my hand luggage, whizzing me through security checks, and seeing to my every need. My head was spinning at the speed of it all but at the same time, I was aware of a woman, desperately trying to not only keep up with me but to surpass me if she so could. I knew the ‘type’; clearly a spoiled little madam with a huge sense of entitlement and little manners with it. She seemed clearly miffed that I was receiving such elite assistance but that didn’t dissuade her from barging into me at every turn in an attempt to somehow achieve one better than me by getting on that plane before me. I couldn’t believe the dirty looks she kept throwing my way and it became a battle of wits to keep one step ahead of her for it became my goal to thwart this new nemesis who was such a dreadful little bully. Finally, when we reached the departure lounge we parted ways. Me, unnoticed by her into the first class lounge, her, for a quick dash through duty free for her cheapo cigarettes and booze.

What a different world the other half live in compared to us mere mortals. This was better than anything I’d experienced before or was likely to again. But it was all too short lived for I was being gently led by the elbow, towards the plane because first class passengers board first, in a gentle an orderly manner and without someone behind me dead legging me with their swinging hand luggage as they push forward like eejits trying to get inside the shops for the January sales.

“Hello madam, may I take your coat?”, asked the rather posh flight attendant smiling widely like I was ‘someone’ as she took my jacket and hung it on a hanger in the wardrobe.

“Champagne madam?”, she enquired as I settled into the extra wide beige leather seat that could easily accommodate four size 12 models and leave room to spare.

I settled back into a chair that was sheer bliss and picked up the film guide that listed the twelve or so films that I could choose from to watch on my individual DVD screen. This was in the day when this technology was prohibitively expensive for your average punter so I was mightily impressed.

“Bellini’s madam?, how many would you like?”, she asked, before returning with a beautifully laid out platter of Bellini’s, wild smoked salmon, Beluga caviar and soured cream. It was a Kodak moment if ever there was one. God I could have cried at the sheer luxury of it all.

I was in seventh heaven and thought life couldn’t get any better when what do you know, hiking her own hand luggage and dripping with sweat and hair stuck to her forehead, along comes little miss spoilt madam who on seeing me tooled up to the hilt with superior alcohol and food, stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh my God”, I thought, hiding my absolute delight, as I registered the look of shock and horror on her face that perhaps in her eyes I was a ‘someone’ to be reckoned with after all and that she’d blown her chance by being insufferably rude to me. It was a moment that I shall never forget to my dying day. She quickly gathered herself and moved on and I turned my head and watched her struggle through first class, right through club class and into ‘economy’ class and then lost sight of her in the throng of people vying for the best overhead locker to store their duty free.

I tried, really tried, not to let those feelings if smugness overwhelm me for it isn’t a nice thing to do but I asked God for forgiveness this one time and completely indulged myself in a little smug delight at what happened. Half an hour into the flight I rose to stretch my legs and strode to the back of the first class area.

Whilst I was stretching, someone in club class caught my eye. I couldn’t be sure, so I looked again, and looked some more. Just as I was scanning his face in my quest to see if it really was him, he looked straight at me and our eyes locked. “Dear God”, I muttered when I realised it was the head of my division, a man so very full of himself, a deeply unpopular man because of his lack of fair play with several acts of cronyism under his belt, travelling to the same conference that I was. His face was a picture when he recognised who I was and that whilst he was in club class, here was one of his management team larging it up big time in first class.

“Oh hi John", I said, as I smiled, hugging this golden moment to myself.

“Oh erm, hello Mob”, he stuttered, as his face reddened with obvious anger at my one-upmanship and clearly racking his brain as to how I’d flouted the company travel policy to get myself out of cattle class and into first class.

“Catch you later John”, I said as the flight attendant asked me if I wanted to have my in flight meal now or wait until later.

On that I turned my back, headed back to my seat and wondered at how life can sometimes come up trumps when you least expected it.

I’m no longer smug about such things, I’ve matured and realise that material things are worthless in the scheme of things. But that day, for once in my life, I realised that there was a God after all.....

And the award goes to............

2008-07-09T11:35:00.033+01:00

........A truly loyal and witty bunch of readers who leave superb comments and are a great bunch to know. I said I’d do it and although it’s a long time coming, here it finally is! I want to say thanks to you guys that voted for me on the Best Of Blog Awards, (The BOB’s) – you are the true stars wading your way through the tripe that I write here, for that you deserve a big old pat on the back... I know there are quite a few awards listed here but you are all in good company because every one of you has made me laugh, cry, angry on your behalf or just plain frustrated so you deserve this. These awards are in no particular order!

Debs Lehner – you were the best campaign manager ever. I know I’ve already given you an award but you deserve as much as you can get because you are so good. Now that you’ve been nominated for the Blogger’s Choice Awards most humorous blog I shall bask in your glory when you run away with the title.

AIMS – Best Inspirational Blog 2007 at the BOB’s; a truly inspirational writer. A heartbreaking story that is uplifting because over and over she rises above adversity when most of us would have given up.

Softinthehead – for having a nice word to say about everyone – a very creative and kind lady indeed who writes a lovely blog.

Lane at Lane’s Write – Lane gave me the very best advice when I was struggling to get my novel written. She said something along the lines of ‘if you don’t write you have nothing to edit’. I stopped prevaricating and just started writing and it has been the best piece of writing advice ever. Oh and she also writes a brilliant blog.

Valley’s Mam – writes a fabulous political blog. She has been nominated for the Best Political Blog 2008 on the Blogger’s Choice Awards 2008. She is keeps me going when I want to give up blogging.

Stinking Billy – he was the very first commenter on my very first post. I was amazed anyone found the blog and thought it worthy of comment. Thank you Billy – you made a menopausaloldbag very happy indeed.

Crystal Jigsaw – this woman has a wonderful view on life, her writing is thoughtful and lovely and her energy and kindness shines through her posts.

Carolyn over at Laughingalone in the dark – who was nominated for best Mommy blog in the BOB’s but so generously threw in the towel and put her support behind Punk Rock Mummy who was
competing in the same category. Carolyn asked everyone to send her votes to Punk Rock Mommy who was writing a blog about living and dying with breast cancer. Such a kind and thoughtful thing for Carolyn to do and it sums up this talented young writer so well. Punk Rock Mommy lost her fight for life on the 5th of July. RIP dear brave lady.

Little Brown Blog – a superb writer with great wit. She tells it as it really is and paints the picture of highs and lows in her life with great honesty and humour.

Merry Daze – here’s a sweet and lovely woman who is chronicling the time of her life when she has made a big career change after returning to work from a career break. Gardening is the new rock and roll and Merry is coping with sore knees, sore everything as she learns the inns and outs of landscape gardening and just how backbreaking but rewarding her new career is to her. If you need a push to change your career then visit MD as she will inspire you.

Eileen A Life of Triggers – here is a woman who is bravely writing about mental illness in her family. It is a searing and honest account of her daughter’s struggles to get back to good mental health and how this has been overwhelming to her family; always an educational and moving read.

Casdoc at Motherofshrek – here is another truly inspirational woman who is a champion for Autism and a better understanding of how her son and others live with the syndrome/condition. She never indulges is self pity and with a heart the size of a planet she loves, cares and worries for her son as he takes on his next stage of his life away from home.

Retired and Crazy – one witty broad with heaps of attitude to life, a real disdain for the silly Political Correctness gone crazy mob and any other subject that happens gets her goat. It is this strength of character and unique look at life that has seen her through her husband’s recent health battles with stoicism, great empathy and wit.

Auntiegwen – a fellow Glaswegian who writes with cheeky humour and is never boring. I hope she starts to blog about her dating escapades as well as her beautiful weans.

Ciara – who lives with thyroid disease and whilst this does not define her, she manages to research it and write about it on her blog for others to follow. Always empathetic.

Mopsa at Mopsa Ramblings – so creative and yet immensely practical. The tales of her barn renovation, lambing and the challenges of daily life on a farm is very entertaining and she paints a picture that just makes you want to be there.

Karen - who writes a terrific blog that is also for me educational as she has so much knowkledge.

Belle Diary of a Housewife – a wonderful witty writer who has immense reserves of patience and love for her individual but challenging children. Her sense of humour never fails no matter what happens in her life.

Kitt – and Sophie her dog at The Kittalog. Kitt has a fairly eclectic style in blogging and her photographs are wonderful. Sophie is a character full of fun and the prettiest dog I’ve seen in a while. I suspect she just loves posing for the camera.

Breezy from Breezybreakblogs – a fantastic account of an English couple living in France. Her stories of her Dinner ladies – a collection of belligerent chickens that keep re-enacting the Great Escape into her French neighbour’s garden and how she rounds them up is hysterical. A must read.

Debra from Us In France – more stories from France and how she and her husband are making it abroad. Debra has cats and chickens and even ducks now and is the biggest softest animal lover I know online.

Dumdad at The Other Side of Paris – this is definitely worth a visit. A Journalist with a heart and a conscience as well as real talent and he’s perfectly witty with it. Read about all sorts as well as his and the family’s life in Paris.

Tina at Too young for a mid-life, Too old for a tantrum – a great continuing story about her up and down love life. She’s been a bit quiet lately so I want to encourage her back with an award so she can carry on with the tale.

Mean Moodie Middleaged Mom – writes with brilliant humour and great depth. Writes so candidly about empty nest syndrome and just the ups and downs of home life in general as a mother to sons.

A Mothers Place is in the Wrong - entertaining, delightful and funny. Go enjoy yourselves.

Wakeupandsmellthecoffee – a terrific blog of family life. Great writing and honest. She draws you in.

The Mother of This Lot at Mother’s Pride - Superbly well written and funny too. Recounts the tales of her family, (five daughters and a husband!) in a way that keeps you laughing and reading.

She’s Like the Wind – great family life and business blog. She’s had it tough at times but she tells the story so very well.

Suzy Identity Crisis – Suzy writes the most heartbreaking account of her life as a child. It is a quite astonishing story of abuse, survival, forgiveness and the journey of her life. Quite quite amazing.

Milla at Country Lite – another brilliantly funny take on family life – she’s great and a very good writer.

Manic Mother Of Five - another great blog where the writing is good and you feel at home in her posts.

Maggie May at Nuts in May – just love her blog of family life and things in general and how kind and funny this woman can be. Take a look.

Blogthatmama – a great blog with a woman who writes about family life with great wit and tells all about the Husband she call Lurch!

Willowtree at A Dingo Stole my Barbie – writes great stuff about everything and anything. He’s a straight no nonsense writer with a laconic wit but with a heart of gold if you follow his tales of Belle the dog and her car accident injuries.

Tattie Weasel – a mother, half welsh with a menagerie of animals. Terrific dry humour and well worth a visit.

Insane Mama – what a name eh?! At Help I have a Teenager – this girl is writing a terrific story right now. She’s good and worth a visit.

Jules at Just Because – great sense of humour and does great photo’s too.
The Brit at Spinning the Wheel – what a poet and a romantic. This blog is thoughtful, thought provoking and gentle.

Swearing Mother – a woman after my own heart when it comes to the use of profanity. She’s always topical, witty and passionate about what she writes . Come back soon from your break.

Gonebacksouth – she left home then went back home to her childhood village. This is a terrific account of a woman revisiting her old life but at the age of forty with kids and a husband in tow. Great read and very down to earth.

Dusty Spider – dear Flick who keeps me entertained talking about buying road-kill hats for her daughter’s wedding and travels on her boat.

Donetta Lee who writes the most incredible Friday Flash 55 stories. You have to read them to see what I mean. Such a clever writer.

Very Lost in France – tales of an English family in France. The husband’s away a lot with work and this girl copes magnificently with the nuances of part time single motherhood in France. She also tells it warts and all and if you hanker after a halcyon life over there read this blog first.

Mikiye Creations – a superbly gifted and creative jewellery designer. Her stuff is well worth a look at.

Sy – last but not least the winner of the BOB’s who has a very witty blog and was kind and generous in getting six of his voters to give me their votes one night so that I was bumped back into second place.

Now I know I am bound to have left someone off this roll-call. I am truly sorry for that as it is not intentional. I know that a lot of new readers have been leaving comments and for that I am eternally grateful that you take the time to read and comment. It means a lot to see and keeps me writing when I am tired and want to jack it all in.

I want to also say a great big thanks to the following people who are not bloggers but read my blog and give me loads of encouragement either through voting or just feedback or indeed recommending me to others.

My family – you know who you are and I won’t mention your names to protect you anonymity.
My friends, Betty, Maria, Pat, Susan H, Annie P, Kate, Laura, Sandy and her girls.
My other ‘couple’ friends Tom and Vicky, Robin and Hilary, Pat and Paul, Andy and Claire.
My wee friend Sean L who is always so positive and laughed his head off at the Simondo and Hortense stories. He was a late comer to the blog but I’m glad he and his dad enjoy the stories and have been very kind in their feedback – mostly up the pub after a few Sherry's as it were.

Don B – what a funny man this guy is. He was busy telling all and sundry at the Home Office about how good my blog was – what a star – you can’t buy marketing like that! Good luck in that new assignment in Trinidad and Tobago.

A big thanks to my wonderful two step-sons and their terrific support – when they remembered!

And finally, a great big thank you to the man called ‘himself’ in my stories and in my life. There is no finer husband.

I have included several awards for you each to chose one or as many as you like. This is because I know that a lot of you may have these awards already so I hope you will take another that you may not already have.

This is longer than Gwynneth Paltrow’s effort at the Oscars!
I don’t usually hand out awards so take as many as you want!

Pollyanna and God preserve us from her.

2008-06-24T10:30:00.023+01:00

It’s been a bit longer than I expected in-between posts but I’ve been a bit busy but mostly my HRT stopped functioning properly and I’ve been exhausted, low and generally my-get-up-and go-got-up-and-went. I know I’ve mentioned a few times before that going through the menopause with severe symptoms is a drag but seriously just when you think you have all the checks and balances right along comes nature and whips the rug from under your feet. God knows what caused my latest fugue and fatigue ridden few weeks but I could have well done without them. I did make a change of diet to include a lot more vegetables and surely that’s a good thing? I’ve been a slave to the Atkins diet for a few years now and I know that it is the least healthy diet that I can follow but I got set in a kind of negative mind-set that anything else would just pile on the weight. Anyway, explanations aside, it’s been fantastic rediscovering aubergines, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, mange tout, butternut squash, turnip, pak choi, savoy cabbage, spinach and just about every other veg I can drag off the shelves at Waitrose. It’s been an absolute joy delving through my cookery books and looking at low GI versions of recipe’s that include such an array of wonderful comestibles that have sent my old taste buds into overdrive.

So, I’m going to continue and persevere and wait and see if my mood swings abate and my temper returns to normal but at least for the first time today I feel lighter of spirit and much more amenable to enjoying life. My poor husband has gone through the wringer yet again and God knows how he doesn’t just stick a knife in my neck and be done with it. The trouble is that I don’t recognise the signs that I am going into a bit of a mood meltdown until I am in the thick of it. It’s only when I am rigidly tense, tight, agitated, unreasonable, angry, combatitive with a chest as tight as a drum and a feeling that I am going to have a heart attack do I realise that something has gone very wrong with my diet and medication. It’s a strange combination of being wired to the moon and agitated beyond belief yet at the same time being too exhausted to care enough about functioning at any level above the most basic of requirements. I truly hate this physical condition and long for my body to return to a physical status quo where I am of constant sunny disposition, enjoy a rollicking good laugh, can be relied upon to be in a stable mood and most of all, just cracking on with life like all other ‘normal’ people.

I once had a ‘life coach’ stop by my blog – she had the cheek to spout some obnoxious shite that “all myself and others going through the menopause needed was to embrace and celebrate being a woman, to have a positive attitude, to lie back and wonder at the beauty of being a woman and let nature take its course whilst the sisterhood of positive women sang life enducing songs and quoted storming mantras” or some sugary coated old shite like that. Clearly Madame Life Coach had her head stuck up her arse because no matter how fecking positive myself and my other menopausal friends try to feel, the fact that we have a raging hormonal imbalance of fecking hefty proportions, no amount of fluffy, warm and fuzzy feely type crud makes a blind bit of difference when you feel like ripping a life coach’s head off. If I could have played keepy-uppy with her bonce for an hour or two, I would have done – that might have engendered a bit of warm and fuzzy feeling in my heart and thus as she advocated, allow me to coast effortlessly through life with butterfly wings flapping at my head whilst small birds tweeted “whistle while you work” away in my ears. Oh if only her wisdom had been available to me before. I could have imagined and day dreamed my way through the menopause and sported a benign and love inducing smile for all that happened upon me. Fecking eejit.

Given that I am a student of Psychology, fairly knowledgeable and practiced in the use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, I found the life coach’s diatribe on my blog somewhat annoying beyond belief. The last thing I need is some wee numpty who had stumbled onto Neuro Linguistic Programming, (NLP), feeling it is her duty to offer unsolicited “advice” to someone who may just be more qualified in the subject than she possibly is. NLP is a great psychological tool when used by a qualified practitioner but left in the hands of those with limited psychological knowledge and training it is quite simply a loaded gun.

You can always tell a new advocate of NLP – they attain a glazed eye look, behave as though they are on speed and get religion about all things NLP and can’t wait to bore for Britain about their new found belief system. It’s usually these new recruits that believe they have the answer to all of society’s ails and after gaining a certificate from the ‘Walter Mitty and Pollyanna internet school of life coaching skills’ sets up a business to start saving the world. The danger is some of the worst of these ‘Practioners’ offer their misguided services to some truly ill people that need professional help way beyond the limited skills of the Life Coach. Those Life Coach’s that stick to the realms of their remit and help people organise their days, change a negative thought to a positive one and generally bolster a client along can be more like a good friend to someone who just needs a friend to point out the obvious. But like all industries – I won’t call it a profession as you do not need a degree to be a life coach – it is badly regulated and those who overstep the mark and delude themselves that they are ‘psychologists’ are operating in dangerous territory. These are the people that offer unsolicited advice, make assumptions without understanding the whole picture and offer their own brand of advice that relate not a jot to the person they found it necessary to ‘help’. They can do a lot of damage if the client they are dealing with is particularly vulnerable and perhaps not in a robust mental state at that time.

I have come across some really superb positive people in my life and they are the truly inspiring ones. Terrific people that no matter what happens in life they wallow in private and smile in public. After all, it’s not what life throws at you that matters, it’s how you deal with it that counts. No amount of flipping twaddle from some hare-brained half trained monkey who bought a correspondence course off the net can touch the coat tails of the people that truly inspire others because they were born to it and didn’t pick up a few skills and a bit of terminology on the net.

And finally and thankfully, I found a fantastic web site called Menopause Matters run by Doctor Heather Curry who is an absolute genius on the subject. Being a member of that community has been a lifeline when you realise that there are many other women suffering the same if not even worse symptoms than you are. And it is acknowledged that it is a physical depletion of hormones that causes so much grief – not as Pollyanna would have you believe that you are just missing a fecking wee visit to someone who sees the glass as half full and not half empty and has you quoting life affirming tosh 'till your teeth fall out. This marvellous site and the women that provide support on it are commendable and the site gives a virtual punch in the mouth to the daft wee naysayers that think pretending to be a tree or something equally enlightening is the only way to get through life. The menopause is one of the biggest physical changes that can happen to your body - a positive state of mind is a symptom of good physical fitness and medication that works. An holistic approach is certainly the way to go about addressing all areas but get the physical bit sorted then the rest just follows.

Rant over – job done!

P.S. this post started out as the awards that I am going to hand out to those that supported and voted for me in the best of blogs awards as they are long overdue – next post I promise – this rant clearly needed an airing!