Media Catch Up..

Well life has been crazy the past few days. It's amazing how disorientated you can be when something as elementary as your desk is changed.. Our server in the office is being upgraded and consequently our own desk computers. My pal Sam, our book keeper, had my desk and I got busy doing other stuff..we were both quite lost, even the view from the desk is different using someone else's PC... oh well, change as good as a rest and all that.. it will be a good precursor for the big upgrade to a decent (not converted shed / farm outbuilding) office later this year I hope!

The wind was promised to return yesterday so we put off a trip out and Lisa and the girls came by, it was very chilled and nice to have them all here. The big girls are sleeping over next week so I am sure Colin will get busy on all the outdoor jobs that day! ;-)

On catch up I have been thinking about Adverts.. I love them and hate them.. I like to avoid them on TV, but I do appreciate a good ad.. Lidl's with the lady who advertises tea but then says she hates tea and loves gin!  Ads are always good if they can be related to someone you know!

My pet hate is the ad in food stores where 3 or 4 different formats of a product make you do so much mental maths it's like a GCSE refresher course.. take these 3 ads for beans from Tesco just after Christmas... I picked up 4 single tins at 50p each, then 6 for 60p each .. but wait a mo.. 7 for £3!!  I was cross enough to photograph the options..

 ....as for my Blog story, it began about 6 years ago as a supplement to my Scrapbooking, telling the stories behind the pictures I had used in layouts.. kind of online journalling..then I joined some challenges and the rest is history. t
Today I write as a diary and to keep in touch with our Zac who is often away as he trains to be a navigation officer in the Merchant Navy... and whooop! he is home in 10 days!! 

Final thought for the day.. Digital or Print..?

The jury is still out for me, I have a magazine each month in print but have failed to read it much the last few months..maybe online issues would be more portable?
I love to take a book on holiday but do like to have the book on my shelf afterwards.. but instead of 4 books maybe a e-reader would be good.. no sun oil on it, sand in the pages and leaving it in the pocket on the plane which was the fate of my last book.
I don't read newspapers really but when I do see online articles it is because I looked it up and not because I am browsing a whole edition..

So as I said, jury is out.. I am going back to Tenerife in March with the 3 youngest and Col, maybe I will be converted then (reading does make me quite anti-social though and as Col is not a great reader (he is a fab researcher though... when on a mission to find a new car / tool / application for manufacturing..) and I hate having my head in a book while he just sits pondering..

December Daily : Day 24

Christmas Eve .. actually currently a little less festive than previous days ..maybe as Kate has just observed it will be done and dusted in 24 hours!

I braved the showers (yesterday's stormy rain seems to have passed and baring the debris left on the roads it has been uneventful here) and went to Tesco.  I must have stopped for every set of traffic lights but it got better as the day progressed..I even got some reduced salads and trifle so tonight is a medley of buffet type grub!

Then Col and I ventured to Penzance, mainly as Truro was a jaunt too far. He keeps telling me he hasn't got me a present but I am not sure if it is a ploy to make me think that.. anyways I am feeling like a very lucky girl this year..lots of trips away and lots spent on our new rooms ..so frivolous spending for one day feels a bit unnecessary .. and I have a bottle of perfume on Boots awards and several bits I bought whilst Xmas shopping .. All he had to do is wrap!

Penzance is now a sad little town full of phone shops, beauty salons and charity shops..In need of a good steam clean and an injection of all round enthusiasm. I am sure it offers corners of hope but not on a one off visit through the town it doesn't. .

So Jaded and Jaded bought the few last minute extras which made us feel a little more prepared.. and came home to make some Mulled Cider with one of Jordan's popular little kits...hic!

Never the Novotel. .

Just had to share this with everyone. I book Colin's hotels for when he is out on customer visits and I try to get somewhere nice but also close to his next call and with easy parking for a big van.

He has stayed in many Premier Inns and they are all just the same inside so lately I have found some alternatives.  For tonight I booked a Novotel very close to tomorrow morning's call. They had a Shopping Special with breakfast and a welcome pack ..plus .. a glass of bubbly on arrival. Well all he wanted was B&B so grabbed the extras for the same money.

Turns out he has to complete a form to get the bubbly .. and this is the contents of the Welcome Pack:
Plasters
Antiseptic hand gel
Bottle of water
Some jelly beans

Yup..just what you need if you stay in a 70s style hotel which lacks .. well just about everything you are used to ..

Needless to say I am not booking that again..X Sorry hun x

Where's the week going?

I can hardly remember yesterday and now Tuesday is almost done!

The weekend was nice and long feeling as I took quite a bit of Friday off to mind the girls while M&D went to the hospital. all's going well and this time next week we should have some news.. it is very odd to know the day the baby will arrive, unless of course it is a gymnast and going to surprise us all with a double somersault and a revert to natural birth!

Lyla has been over today, getting used to being away from Mum a bit, and everyone here loves her.  She is almost talking but quite shy at times and intruiged with the 'Cat'  If I am holding her and he walks by when we are outside her legs and hands tighten around me.. her protector I guess.

Jordan came home and took some pics of her, she laid on the floor and Lyla sat beside her, copying her leg movements and just hanging out with her... I only took these on my phone but like the movement in JB's wave and Lyla's legs!

Oh, and by the way, in case anyone was wondering Jordan has stopped blogging. She has had a lot on and didn't want to make it so intermittent, hopefully she will pick it up again once she has done these A's and she is on her life's journey! ;-)

I am quietly waiting for my 'Serendipity' moment as mentioned in Anne's challenge this week here .. it will catch me unawares I hope and I will grin!  Col is away with his Dad for a few days, work and some medical stuff., but last night he laughed out loud at me... I was just going to bed and said I had a sore throat..'that old fashioned kind of sore throat... the kind you used to have when you were at school', I said..

Frowning at me, he asked what on earth I meant.. 'well you know, swollen glands, a sore place in your neck, not your throat, like you were fighting something off ' I told him,

Omigod he said... only you could be so retro that you have an old-school sore throat..

Well, I knew what I meant...!

365/362-3 Special - something I'd change..

Mmm, well it's been like a holiday..well a holiday where you get lots of R&R. We are not known for getting ourselves out of bed early, and with late nights too we have been living a midday to midnight life the past few days.  Not lots to report, just enjoyable lazy days with or without a houseful of various family.   Lovely evening Friday night with a niece and her family, really great, want to do more of that!

I had the children for a bit on Thursday and the docs checked on no3 who is still breech but they are going to try and turn 'it' on New Year's Eve...mm, not an area of my expertise but worth a try to avoid a caesarian they think...if it works she is just back to normal plans for delivery and after two fairly easy ones that would be nice..we will see..

Col's brother arrives for a few hours later Saturday so that will be just right, not amongst the hubbub of young children and some time to just catch up...oh and make a big curry!

Special..this picture a cousin sent me over the holiday, she thought I might like it.. sure do..

it is of my Mum at St Levan sports Day back in 2003. She is third from the left, in the grey lurex type trouser suit (ahhh don't you ove Daxon). I can see her hand movements and imagine her talking about something and listening to Penny next to her (who grew up with my brother) and her Mum Val (on the left)   Gill's Mum Auntie Jean is quietly watching and listening to my Mum, obviously on local catch-up mode!  Funny really as Val, Mum & Jean are the mothers of my core bunch of pals as a kid..we were cousins but may as well have been first close cousins as we spent so much time together..

.....ummmmmm. something I'd change...

Funny really as in life we seem to spend quite a bit of time wishing things were different.. the days sunnier, the weeks longer or the pounds easier to lose!  But then you are asked the question...ummmm...probably for me the amount of time it will take to make my extension, the mud and upheaval..the digger, the skip, the blocks, the days rained off, the choosing of windows and doors and the just watching wishing it would be all done and I could be sitting in there in the summer evening sun...

.. I just asked Zac and our biggest moan in our lives is .. 'the weather'!!!

 swap some of this...





for more of this....xxx

365/289-90 Door-cement..

(Monday) Just pre-empting by writing this in the office..then grabbing the quick moment indoors when I can upload this. I am not sure which door will feature, the one which springs to mind is St Levan church door, I remember wishing I was old enough to manage the handle when I was a kid and now I am always quietly pleased when I can open it easily.. big kid that I am..

..it's a case of lift, pull towards you and turn whilst keeping it lifted.. ahh that loud noise when someone fights the handle to get the latch to lift and then the creak of the door and the turn of heads to see who is late..

We (that's him and me) are off out tonight to see Mark Watson at Hall for Cornwall in Truro. It's a bit of a spur of the moment thing, as opposed to the long awaited job when we have seen Rhod Gilbert or Micky Flanagan..

.. we are trying hard to diet so I am starving hungry.. a bowl of porridge and then maybe a salady pizza thing from Pizza express at 10.30 if I am lucky.. but the rain has started and that could put a damper on my evening....see you!

(Tuesday)  well in case you didn't know it, let me tell you that Truro closes at 9.50pm precisely on a Monday!  The show was good ( a very energetic guy and consistently funny, not side splittingly so, but reliably and sometimes unexpectedly!) 
I was looking forward to my Pizza..but alas it was not to be.. we were turned away at Pizza Express and Mannings and then Ask was 'Open til 11pm' but the girl said she would have to 'check with the kitchen' as it was empty and we guessed they were hoping for an early finish. We told them not to bother, not feeling like eating something made by a pissed off chef!

Luckily Kate finished work early and zac called as we were driving home so it all fell into place, though eating beans on toast at 11pm in my sitting troom was a little less than I had planned..good though, almost double cooked and with curry paste! mmmmm

More hmmms.. this time pondering.. cement!?  Well it's a library pic for me today.. but you know when you go to an air day and from a girlie point of view all you can see is cement.. as far as the eye can see?  Well Zac and Col (and JB for that fact this year, making a mockery of my last comment) can't see the cement for the wonderful planes and air displays.

.. 2010 in Farnborough >>

365/284-9 Barren-distance

(Weds) Well the office has been busy and the day long mist made the atmosphere quite wearying, so Col and I set out for Penzance after work. We were about an hour behind the game, the grey foggy stuff was almost rain by the time we parked on the promenade.  There is nothing quite like a seaside promenade in the offseason, grey-brown sea, a cloud settled over half the village ahead and in the distance the Mount nowhere to be seen, quite eerie!

We walked for a bit and I took these pictures, we laughed in a sad way, imagining if people thought we were tourists taking bad pictures of the town...

(on reflection the flash has made it look much bruighter than it was!)

 Barren, unfruitful, unprofitable, desolate, arid buildings on the seafront where they have built Lidls and Co-ops facing 70s concrete bus parks full of recycling banks.  We walked a bit more, I suggested people might think we were a couple having an affair, as why else would a couple our age be out walking in the twilight area of a declining town one October evening..surely we had a home to go to.. ;-)

You know writing this blog the past week or so has made me realise just how sad our town has become, the beaches strewn with sea weed, hotels and restaurants boarded up and those that remain sporting tacky signs to entice the recession driven bargain hunters..

(Thurs) .. we spoke about the town this morning at work, a couple of us regard the town as 'home' and are saddened by the misery which exudes from the dirty pavements, the ubiquitous poundshops and charity shops which abound when all the tatseful boutiques and chain stores have gone.. perhaps it's the time of year when the hanging baskets and festival flags are tattered or gone, perhaps it in the 'end-of-the-line' mentality which seems to bring the sad and bad to our locality..and how can the local council be so short sited to discourage change and development which is not of a concrete nature?

It's such a shame as our weekly paper, the Cornishman is asking who we would vote for to have the Freedom of our Town and lists a number of famous offspring : Tandi Newton (yes, and I babysat her one afternoon, my top tenuous link and five minutes of fame!) and Helen Glover (who incidentally is working tirelessly to promote the town and all things good, she went to the Cheshire Home last week to thank residents for their support) amongst others.

If only the look of the place could match the enthusiasm some people put into the place.. it needs MONEY!!

Sorry.. shuting up now.. here's my offering for today.. the cloud obliterated so much of the skyline, quite odd.



Newlyn.. are you there.. somewhere..in the distance?



I am hoping Suzie will give us a more uplifing prompt at the weekend! 

Ahh and Thursday is the new Friday in our house I hope.. open the Gallo someone!

365/279 A local landmark.

  

Well being lucky enough to live in Cornwall I guess lots of people are familiar with some of our most well known local landmarks: St. Michael's Mount, Land's End and my best place view of Porthcurno Bay across to Treryn Castle headland.  Without boring everyone more than usual about this but to be there on the sea-side is just heaven for me, or as close as it gets, even Col understands the replenishment those granite cliffs give me..am I turning into a granite hugging pagan in my old age I wonder!?

Blogger is still not enjoying tablet world so I am writing here and will adjourn to the kitchen to find a nice picture.

Col travelled home from Hampshire today, he spent the evening with Zac and his flatmate last evening, good food and lots of seafaring chat, just what he likes!  Today he had to go to Portland and through Weymouth, he is so envious of the southcoast marinas.

Sadly Penzance has not utilised its natural features to the best advantage and only has one meagre slipway that is now usable and no decent moorings really, a real bug bear, especially as the harbour has been occupied with a huge carpark instead of a decent development, it took 30 years to do and 30 years on it is a carbuncle on our coastline. Add to that the bureaucratic debacle which has allowed us to lose the helicopter link and not fully develop the sea link to Scilly and our local town has fallen into disrepair and is so much in the shadow of our beautiful sisters at St Ives and Falmouth.

..ahh well, it is said.. on reflection the best bit about the town is probably now the bypass which takes you directly towards my little piece of heaven on the A30. 

Despite that unexpected rant I do not feel passionately enough to get involved in making anything else happen, I think my community spiritedness was sucked up in my youth when I was involved with all kinds of things organising Raft Races, Harbour Xmas Lights, charity fundraising and my first and last love the Pz Phab Club which was such a big part of my life in my early 20's....

awhh, I kind of miss it now sometimes, probably the good people you get to meet and the feeling of achievement, but at his own admission my Col is not a community spirited type (yes, he would do anything for you, but is pretty much fully utilised in his efforts to make work happen and look after and provide for his family.. )and having done my bit in our current village when our Mums were about; all those coffee mornings, table sales and socials at the chapel, and of course the school based stuff which seemed to go on forever,(well it does when you have 5 kids across eleven years I guess!) I must have enjoyed at the time..

So, now I just don't 'feel it'. maybe it's something you do when your kids are young and then again when you retire, but I did a couple of years on the Village Hall committee and tried hard to buck the trend where only 25 of the same stalwart villagers turned out and spent their pounds to keep alive a Hall only used by the 25 who supported it (there's a moral there somewhere) Some events nights would find me making soups and cakes and attending with maybe one or two of the kids an almost funny (yes, just 'almost funny') comedy nights, whilst the rest of my family were laid out at home in front the fire watching X-factor! 

Eventually I stuck to my guns and now enjoy the fire too, along with Blog world and all it offers.. sad but true.. x  And as for you all, thanks for making Jb feel so welcome on her cake blog.. tonight's project she has is making bunting.. gosh, I can visualise her in years to come in a New England shaker kitchen wearing a gingham dress and putting up chequered bunting for the summer cream teas.... are you all coming then?

We could even take in a song and dance show at the Minack...(now that is another story!)

365/265 Fruit

Busy blog today.. a few things to cover.. questions to answer...

1. What do we do?

Lynne asked me what our business is.. well we design & make handling equipment. It is probably dreary unless it is your 'thing' but we have been doing it twelve years and it is treating up pretty well (now). We started when Col was looking for a 'not-influenced-by-the-weather' alternative to civil engineering dive works. We met a super guy who held a patent on a trolley mechanism, and to cut a long story very short, we created a company with him and developed the patent application to apply to lifting heavy drums. 

At first Colin was chief sales / development / promo, everything and I was the paperwork behind the scenes girl!  Our first outing was at the Tomorrow's World Live show and we won a prize for innovation to avoid back injury.  The following year we had taken the product further and Colin won their Inventor of the Year show award.. awwwhh. Henry, the original patent holder was at this point 85 and was delighted to see the growth of his idea and evolution of the ideas. He died just last year and we still have letters from him saying how much he enjoyed being part of it with us, though to be fair it was quite an arduos expensive journey at times!

12 years later we now have a designer partner who is also one of our oldest friends, employ 14 people and manufacture a whole range of handling solutions for rolls, drums, doors, all kind of things.. and because we supply kit which meets all the awful H&S regs we sell to big food, drug, chemical companies, hardly anyone close to home really.  Hence Colin's draining trips up country, it is not easy being based in Cornwall, not really the centre of the world for manufacturing but hey, we get boat and dolphin days and all our family is here. 

You can see more stuff at www.sts-trolleys.co.uk It is a bit of a 'we-job', our daughters do the video editing, the website and stuff and our sons get involved with some of the workshoop stuff when time allows. Oh and I make lots of tea!  It really suits us as you can be home and at work at the same time, I even have a washing machine in the office kitchen (for overalls of course) and so can be found folding shirts thgouh the day just after I have answered the phone to someone in the MOD!

Hopefully that gives you a little taste of our lives and Lynne you can see how amazing it must have been for Zac to find one of our trolleys in the engine room of a cruise ship in Oz xx

2.  22.45 update.. (yes, teen taxi again tonight, but everyone is chatting with Zac, his last night so he will be up late playing X box later with our SiL too!..)

 ..well my Samsung tablet updated yesterday and now I can't do a thing with it! (remember the washed my hair and can't do a thing with it phrase!)  I feel like Anne now.. I have had to change the keyboard properties and now I am trying to upload some pics to this blog and it is on standstill!  It won't even upload a picture I know it uploaded before..bah!
I had some nice pics of the new layout I have done for the latest Happy Scrapper challenge, but no luck.. tomorrow I will transfer to this pc and do it the old way.. I still prefer a keyboard to tablet etc but it is great technology!

3. And so to fruit.. I should have photographed the girls today. I had Lyla come food shopping and then we got Lilly from school.   Lyla loves food and fruit especially.. in the few hours I had her she ate grapes, strawberries, raspberries and banana!  Lilly is doing great at school but it's long days. She does the mornings for academic stuff and it seems a shame to bring her home to miss cooking or playing activities..

Well my picture may have been here before it was taken in France, I love their pastries..

365/255 Hair

Well like Anne I have featured 'hair' several times before, especially Kate's which has many guises and is very photogenic, so I will need to be inventive for this prompt.

First I will tell (at Janice's request) a bit more about the laser hair removal treatment I mentioned last week. I may delete this later as it is quite personal but as I have only about 20 views per blog entry maybe I won't, you either know me or you don't..and you can't see me cringing can you??

So....having been a long time spender (and by long time I mean over twenty years) of money on the disguise and removal of tedious facial hair I have put off looking into laser treatment for ages. Bleaching, waxing and also years of electrolysis, on and off.. which I became expert at tolerating, so much so that the repitition of the needle has been known to relax me almost to sleep!...I gave up electrolysis when my fortnightly treatment lady decided to go away for six weeks without supplying cover..enter the hairy women of the village !!!

.. so back in April I was at the point of having waxing treatments costing about £20 a time every fortnight, enough was enough.. this was nowhere near a permanent fix, sometimes it seemed to reduce the effect but being very dark haired I have always found it hard to face(!) the waiting days between treatments and the awful varied cycles of growth which can be quite unpredictable.

So I booked in for some laser treatment at the (private) Duchy Hospital, I thought it would be the best option, thinking they would have the most up-to-date equipment and be a more proven solution than at a beauty salon. It's called Soprano.. the first day they did a trial patch and as it was okay the next we went for broke, the whole lip and chin.  The put gel on you like for an ultrasound , to keep your skin cool, it is kiind of tingley but not painful, I do feel a bit tense but I think that is more about the idea of it being 'a laser'

The most worrying bit of the consultation was when they said to shave, not wax or pluck during the treatment period, but to be fair the growth is much slower and I can live with this.. they reckon 4-8 treatments will pretty much sort it...well, they mention hormones and no promises are made about the success but it has helped me and I reckon I am quite a 'bad' case!   

The cost was always an issue to me too, but I thought it would be a big one-off payment, but not so, I pay per visit , now less than once a month. So far it has worked out twice the cost of the waxing in the same period but I feel so much better and over time it will definitely pay off. The cost was about the same as six waxings but I have had treatments every 4 then 6 weeks and I can eek it to 8, the cycle of growth varies but I reckon I am 500% happier and do not have the grim waiting time in between.

Best of all now I can get my nails done and enjoy the trip to the beauty place!

So.. ask if you want to know more!! I know I have blabbed on, but I kind of do that when there is something I feel passionate about.

.. and here's my hair pic for the day..South of France? nah, St Michael's Mount..

365/243 Thriving.

 Yesterday evening I had a couple of hours productive scrapping. 

Zac is home next week and I am hoping to get up to date on his midi sized album for when he gets back.. I also wanted to enter a 'sports' challenge on Happy Scrappers' but sadly had trouble transferring images and ended up missing the chance to enter.. ah well, it was only just 'sporty' anyways.. a few nice shots of him during his time off in May, paddle boarding and sailing.

Must try harder with the Happy Scrappers challenge, it is no pressure, one layout a month and an easy prompt.. maybe it's the pressure which is lacking.. you know the cameraderie we seem to feel on the 365 challenge which makes us all want to do it for the team!

I was laughing at myself for not having all the letters I wanted.. I used the surround instead of the letters as there were more of these to suit!

Mmm, busy day today, more customers here but it all went well and I thought Col and I should get out for an hour after work.... we headed to a local pub but it was real busy so we ordered Indian take-away .... and waited the same hour we expected to wait at the pub.. oh well..home to eat it and then get some blogging updated..

and here we are.. have just been upstairs trying to view the back of my back tooth which feels like a piece has fallen off it.. urghh, hate anything to do with teeth. or to the point dentists!  So imagine me, a small, say 2inch circular mirror in mouth trying to view very back back tooth in larger mirror.. and get the light to shine.. and watch it all with glasses perched on nose.. a sure sign I am not too far from ... well being old!!

Yeah, everyone keeps telling me that I keep stopping mid-flow on a story or sentence .. and then never finish it.. but I say it's not my age it's just.........

....... oh, I forget now!  ;-)

365/228-9 Unity / Teamwork

I suffer from martyr syndrome to some extent... I moan like hell about not getting help to do things but then I am often happier doing the job myself and absolutely hate watching someone else do chores while I don't.  

But a day or two ago I came in at lunchtime, the girls were both out, having had their shower and associated titivating, gone off for their day doing something they were looking forward to.. (mind you I guess that's what holidays are for aren't they..?!) Ross and his g/f had ironed clothes and headed off for a day out on their work day off..

(hope you are picturing the scene..)

..the iron was on the side, the sink had dishes in ... and sacriledge, the dishwasher from the night before was Full of Clean Dishes... it's not the first time.. and it IS a pet hate of mine.. so I wrote this...well my tongue was in cheek and I did smile at it, but all I was hoping for was some Unity & Teamwork about the place... ahah tenuous links or what!!

Needless to say I am not sure any of them have done dishes yet, but my chest feels lighter .. ;-)  Soft touch or what!... x

365/209-211 Fire /Rings/Heavy..

Well here I am playing catch up, no real excuse, just lack of specific inspiration for the words during each day.  It cannot go unmentioned that Friday saw the opening of the 2012 London Olympic Games.  I agree that it is a major event and that in parts it will inspire the country and encourage the lovely community feel we had last year for the Royal Wedding and in June for the Queen's Jubilee, and for that I think we will all agree that there is value.. anything that makes us Brits peek out from under the polite table cloth and shout from the roof tops about our solidarity is good, there is way too much negativity in our media that it sometimes makes you feel we are just not good enough..

.. but, and anyone who knows me will know that I have never been 'Sporty Spice' , sadly this is just not really my bag.. and with a fear of retribution.. it is only sport isn't it? All that money, all that hype, if only we could have the same enthusiasm and money fed into our everyday lives surely we'd be dragged kicking and screaming from recession overnight.. well not overnight, but for sure the money would help a lot of ordinary people who are not in the primes of their lives.. (I could go on but...)

..stepping down off soapbox I cannot disagree though with Jennie and my fellow 365ers, the opening ceremony was amazing, and it must have been a real spectacle to be there.. quintessentially 'English'and we wondered what the world at large would think of the tableaux, the NHS beds and olde English gentle folk etc.. not to mention the inclusion of the Dambusters and Enola Gay, but hopefully no-one delved too deep on that! Loved the music too, shows our age doesn't it when we remember it all!

So, the kids have all been busy and Col and I have played catch up over the weekend.. I did the food shop Friday so that was a box ticked and yesterday I helped Kate get a new phone (accident prone bunny dropped the last one.. it now looks like a piece of artwork! ..maybe a picture for a prompt one day! )

This morning our Zac called and we both had a great chat with him, I think he may even be missing home a little.. maybe?   Only about five weeks and he'll be home for a few weeks before his two terms back at college.. but plenty to do in the time off.. sort accommodation, get a car and oh yeah, get his uniform washed and ironed.. mmm, mum's love to feel wanted don't they!!

I had a serious hoover today, the whole house, it may make me sound really lazy but generally 'someone' does the worst looking bits as and when but it is a full day job to work through throwing stuff out and getting into the corners... bloody hell, how dull is that!! But I think I am scrapbooking next Saturday so it was a now or.. whenever and I got with it.. hence the dull pictures...

Fire... I like this painted bottle I bought from the farmshop which used to be next door, just when we moved here.. it has a tree on it but I always think it looks like it is on fire.

Rings..whilst cleaning this came to mind, a long boat like candle holder. (damn.. lost the pic!)

Today's actual prompt was heavy.. our two sofas are beasts to move and this was how they were half way through the tidy.. I try to swap them round, not sure why but I do!

Ahhh I feel better now, a little ranting, some housework which 'shows' and will not be undone for at least a day, and up to date on old prompt-ville.. xx

365/184 Shadow

Monday didn't really offer many opportunities for photographing a shadow.. Col had a customer call in the morning so I hung out at the hotel.. a little dose of Jamie's 30 minute meals, some house makeovers and Loose Women... ahh how the other half live, it's been a while since I saw daytime TV!


We headed southwest and met drizzle and miserable weather, so much so we didn't stop to eat til almost five, the sun came out, but to be honest it would take a major heatwave to make the Little Chef we visited worth trying again.  Who said they had changed? Not this one.. so we left without sitting down and it was a  cheese roll from OnTheRun, which wasn't much better in the facility / tidiness stakes... we were so fed up, the UK we encountered was casting its own shadow over the lovely few days we had experienced in France!


I know that the French people we met said the English are always smiling and the French were miserable, so I think it's not so much about the place or the nationality, it's about being away, being 'en vacance' and generally appreciating a change and noticing the good or bad as it strikes you... ( a loo with loo roll all over the floor and out of order signs you wonder will ever change didn't help the UK cause mind you.. so there's the shadow...


 .. but to cheer me up, here's a nice picture.. sun and shadows on a parrotfish!

365/183 Grumpy

mmm, writing this a couple of days late but did have the word in mind on Sunday and should have a few pictures to illustrate..we had a nice day that day really, 1st July ..we left our lovely Holiday Inn in Lille and headed for Arras where I had read of a monument to the lost men of the Battle of the Somme. Colin is an avid watcher of most things wartime and I also wanted to see one of the cemeteries for myself.

 When we arrived the road was cordoned off as there was a music festival close by, so as we walked up the road, the oldest swingers in Arras, it was about the same time that Kate was queueing for T4 on the Beach at wet (grumpy?) Weston-super-Mare!




..one of twelve or more lstings of names

 

Well the Memorial was huge, listing the names of almost 36,000 men who lost their lives in 1916/7 at Arras.  It looked as if it had been recently cleaned and I wondered how many more cleanings the names would survive as some were fading almost into the stone..Panel after panel of names, so poignant, so similar a feeling to the Vietnam memorial we visited in Washington years ago, every name a son.

 




Detail..

 

..the upkeep of the memorial and the cemetery behind is fantastic and this was a fairly small one I understand.. I have included this written panel as it details the events at Arras and the unbelievable numbers of men lost... the life expectancy of a pilot in 'bloody' April 1917 fell from three weeks to 17 and a half hours..

So... no reason to be grumpy in our 21st century comfort , given a nudge as to the lives lived almost a hundred years ago..

..so we headed north to Calais and our ferry home.  Sadly we had a two hour wait and then a cold ferry with minimal services available (we had to be loaded as freight being a large van and there were no tourist facilities open.. )..

.. the view to Dover wasn't very happy and then the drive to Sevenoaks for a lacklustre hotel doesn't take long to feel a grump coming on.. and when internet costs at £16 a day (vs free in the same brand hotel across the Channel) and I can't get blogging..bah humbug..

... xxx

365/151 Groceries.

..sorry Jen .. rant ensuing .. went to get salad, milk and bread but added few extras so I could use those blessed tokens if I spend enough ... Ta da .. then discover tokens not valid til Saturday.... ?!!

365/129 Prickly.

Mmmmm, I don't think we have any cacti in our house, and prickly is more a feeling or state of mind for me. There's generally between five and nine people living in our house at any one time and mostly things go along pretty well, the odd bristle (another prickly word), plenty of banter but no major league rows.

I feel a bit of a fraud when it comes to blogging some days as I generally try to keep it upbeat and newsy, but rarely moan or groan.. yes, a small smattering of sadness and nostalgia at times, but rarely full on rants and angry stuff..mainly because after the event it's nice to review good times but kind of cringe worthy to revisit bad mood days.. and anyway, the person I may be cross with may unwittingly not even know I was peeved...

...that reminds me of when I was first with Col and raising a young family I would sometimes get what we in Cornwall call 'teasy' about something, but he was (and is) so non-argumentative that I would have the debate with him in my head, and play his role as well..then by the time he got home I had rationalised it, heard both sides of the imaginary argument and it had blown over....and an embarassed face at being cross about nothing was averted..!!

If you are still with me here.. (any you are true blogger pals if you are) please tell me at this point that I was not alone, it was part and parcel of having a houseful of children under eight and feeling hard done to at times! 

..so it came to pass that I discovered I have a default face, one which has been caught on camera and I plead the case that I am just being pensive, thinking about something away from the moment... but to the innocent bystander apparently it looks pretty 'prickly'..



how I scrapped it!



mmm, definitley prickly!





 

I'll see if I can find a pic and you guys can judge for me!!












.. and to update.. Stewart Lee was brilliant  in Plymouth last night.... the non-funny comedy star is quite an acquired taste but I laughed til my face hurt.. he was also at the next table when we went to eat before the show, but we were very well behaved and treated him just like any other stranger eating out!!