Mrs Jones' Home Thoughts From Home

In which I become bicraftual.

2012-01-17T15:11:00.000Z

We did, indeed, have a most fabulous time in London at the weekend, and I can most highly recommend The Ladykillers. The run has been extended until mid-April but it's likely to sell out pretty quick so if you were considering it, then hurry up and decide!

We don't think we've been to the Gielgud Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue before but for one of the Victorian/Edwardian theatres, it was pretty comfortable. TLH is a chap that takes up a lot of space and being about 6'2", he values his legroom. Most of the older theatres in London are very uncomfortable for him. Plus the seats can be quite narrow too - how the ladies ever got their voluminous frocks in them I'll never know - but the Gielgud had enough legroom and there was just about enough elbow space so you didn't feel you were encroaching too much on your neighbour. It's quite an intimate theatre too, so even though we were three rows from the back of the stalls, we still felt we were plenty close enough to see the actors' faces properly.

Enough of that, though. This was intended as a new Ta-Daa post. And in a new craft at that. I've had another go at knitting, with better results than last time. This time around I fished out some knitting needles, grabbed some wool and knitted and purled for several inches, then ripped it out and started again. Then ripped it out and started again. Then decided I'd got the hang of that and actually wanted to try making something. My goal is - don't laugh - to be able to knit socks. I'm a sock wearer - 99% of the time I wear trousers or leggings or jogging bottoms so socks it is. And I like knee socks too, but they're very hard to come by, especially if you have matronly calves, like I do. So one way to resolve this is to make them myself. I do realise, of course, that this is a bit like me being able to walk up hilly Guildford High Street and then announce that I'm going to tackle Mount Everest but, hey, doesn't hurt to have goals.

Some of you may have heard of the messageboard Ravelry. Ostensibly set up for people who knit and/or crochet as a place to keep track of your projects and interact with like-minded addicts, I've been on there for a couple of years now so thought I'd ask those wiser than myself to point me in the direction of a very VERY easy knitting pattern that is absolutely NOT a bloody scarf or a hat (which is what you traditionally start with when learning to knit). People give me scarfs and I've crocheted at least 3 for myself in the last couple of years so I really don't need anymore of them.

A lovely lady pointed me in the direction of a free pattern called Dew Drop Cowl. And, no, a cowl isn't exactly like a scarf even though you wear it round your neck - OK? Unfortunately I can't link to it from here because you need to be a registered member of Ravelry to access it. This is what the finished item should look like though:

It calls for knitting, purling, decreasing by knitting two stitches together (k2tog) and increasing by yarn over (yo) and that's all. It's a very loose knit item so you don't need to worry about tension or gauges. I had to look up Youtube videos for k2tog and yo but they're simplicity itself. You also need a set of 6mm circular needles and a stitchmarker. I found those quite tricky to handle but it makes sense to use circulars because you're creating a tube (the stitchmarker is to indicate where the end of a row would be normally).

A week ago I popped into my nearest wool shop and got my circulars:

And found myself some really nice yarn which, even better, was on sale at only £3.99 a ball:

It's made of recycled silk, cotton and viscose, and the colour is lovely - a turquoisey blue with flecks of loads of other colours. Nice.

So I started it on Monday last week, and finished it yesterday. There were 41 rows of 200 stitches each, so that's 8,200 stitches in all (no wonder my hands ached afterwards). And it didn't come out too badly at all:

Of course I've hid the errors well and there were some. It took me a few rows to work out how to join them on the circulars without leaving a huge gap (I sewed it up after) but the biggest error is that I somehow managed to twist the stitches on the circulars so that instead of it being a proper tube shape, it ended up being a Moebius twist. I'm calling it a design feature. It's not, it's a mistake but no-one will know!

Last night, after I finished and realised where I'd gone wrong, I was really quite pissed off with myself for getting such a simple design wrong but after having slept on it and looked again this morning I think I was being a bit harsh on myself and it's not too bad after all. Especially for a first attempt.

So what shall I make now? I still want/need to do very simple stuff - any ideas?

(Oh, and I spent 2 hours this morning filling in an application for a job. I know - blimey! It will probably come to naught so I'll let you know more about it when I've more to tell).

Two brill things what I've seen.....

2012-01-14T11:36:00.001Z

First off - how are you all? Well, I hope. I've been living in the House (and, indeed, the Head) of Snot for the last couple of weeks. Both TLH and I went down with The Massive Cold From Hell that's been doing the rounds. He fared better than I did - at one point I would have most definitely failed the Flu Test. You know the one, it's the one that determines whether you're suffering from a cold or the flu - if you're feeling grotty and look out of your window to see a £10 note lying in the gutter outside, if you've got a cold you'll go and get it, if you've got the flu you won't be capable of, or even interested in, going outside to get it. On the first day that the germs hit me I felt so unutterably dreadful that it could have been a £50 note and I still wouldn't have gone outside for it. I had an atrocious sinus headache, aches in every single joint known to womankind, was wearing at least 3 layers of clothes but was still shivering enough to need a further layer of blankets and was sneezing loud enough to crack the windowpanes. Awful. I'm much better now but it's still just hanging around the edges. I don't recommend catching this one at all.

Secondly - while I'm here whinging about my physical ailments (and thereby fulfilling every menopausal stereotype going) - I've also done something to my right foot. I haven't been able to go out running since the last time (well, duh....) just before Christmas when I clocked up 50 miles. So that's getting on for about a month now, isn't it? Hmm, this isn't good. I may have to take it to my tame chiropractor as I'm sure it's a mechanical thing. I'm not aware that I twisted my ankle or foot last time I was out but it's possible. I can't tell whether it's Achilles Tendonitis or Plantar Fasciitis but it's unbelievably painful whatever it is. But only when I start walking on it after resting it for any length of time. So first thing in the morning, or if I've been sitting down during the day, when I stand up and start walking, the heel pain on my right foot is horrible and it takes a few minutes of me hobbling about like a cripple before it wears off and I'm fine again. It gives me no more trouble and then I sit down for a bit. And then I stand up and the pain starts all over again. And some days are better than others. It's a pain in the hole (or rather, my foot) is what it is.... The sad thing is this current sudden spell of extremely sunny and frosty morning is, to me, perfect running weather and I actually would rather like to go for a run in it, but I daren't. If it carries on for another week without improvement, then I'll get it looked at.

But, hey, this isn't what I logged on this morning to post about.

I saw two brilliant things yesterday - one online and the other in real life - which I thought I'd share. The first thing was this extraordinary golden cape:

and golden scarf:

Close up of the scarf design:

"So what?" I hear you say. "Sure, it's pretty enough but what's so special?" If I show you a close up of the design on the cape, you might get a hint of why these textiles are so amazing:

These textiles are remarkable because the image above is of female Golden Orb spiders and it is their silk that has been spun and used to weave the cape and scarf.

I'll just run that past you again.

Made from spider silk.

From over 1 million spiders.

Isn't that extraordinary? And aren't they just beautiful things? That fabulous colour is entirely natural too. These are modern items, made in Madagascar, and are currently on tour. They've just been to Chicago and New York, and will be at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from 25 January to 5 June. I think I have to go.

The second splendid thing I saw yesterday was at Mercedes Benz World in Weybridge, Surrey. We bought our little Smart Car from there in May last year and it was due a service. Mercedes Benz World is a brilliant place if you have any kind of petrolhead on you at all. They have a showroom with all the latest models for ordinary mortals as well as ones that are only fit for Saudi princes. There's also a museum and various displays in there which they'd changed since we were there last, so we had a bit of a wander when we went to collect the car.

Right up on the top floor, amongst other exhibits, I found this extraordinary car. It was created by Geraldine Lloyd, an artist who has been dealing with cancer in various forms for about 40 years. She found this old Merc in a scrapyard and adds bits to it every time she has to undergo treatment. I think it's a fantastic thing:

The pictures were taken on my iPhone so apologies for crappy quality but I hope they're good enough for you to see just what an awesome piece of art this is. I realise it may not be to everyone's taste but it's a tangible object showing one woman's way of psychologically dealing with the trauma of having yet another cancer diagnosis - go and stick more stuff on the Merc.

So that was yesterday, and today TLH and I are driving up to London to go see the Grayson Perry exhibition at the British Museum, drink Margaritas at Wahaca in Covent Garden and go see The Ladykillers at the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. So more brill things to see. And it's another beautiful sunny, icy, sparkly day. Sometimes life doesn't get much better than this....

Let's hope the Mayans were wrong....

2012-01-01T15:01:00.003Z

Of course the world won't end in December 2012. I don't expect. The Rapture didn't happen for the Christian god-botherers and there's no reason to think that the Mayans were any better at judging this sort of thing. I hope.

Anyway, how was your Christmas and New Year? Mine was most acceptable. We 'did' Christmas at our house for the first time ever - my mum and stepdad, and TLH's sister came over and food was consumed and drink imbibed and gifts opened. Most convivial.

This year I got many books from my Amazon wish list, a 3.5 litre slowcooker, a very nice cheque (most of which has, rather sadly, gone towards a new washing machine) and, as ever, The Lovely Husband got my favourite gifts, a rather splendid turquoise Mexican wrestler's mask:

I have a plan to mount it like a trophy head. Because why not.

He also got me this stunning silk scarf designed by Grayson Perry showing his map of the British Museum:

I am most enamoured of Grayson Perry's work and the British Museum is one of my most favouritest places ever in the history of ever so to get the two combined is gold-plated fabulosity incarnate. Was that too gushy?

The scarf is really big - 90cm x 90cm - and I'm going to get it framed as it's likely to be the only piece of his artwork that I'll ever be able to afford.

New Year's Eve was very quiet at Jones Towers, as it often is. We ended up watching six hours of The Killing II which we taped earlier and had saved for this purpose. We drank lager, gin & tonic and had champagne at midnight while the local fireworks made it sound like The Somme out there.

So, what am I looking forward to in 2012? The world not ending for a start. But apart from that, in general terms, there's the London Olympics in the summer that we didn't manage to get tickets for so will have to be satisfied with being glued to the telly for. We loves the Olympics, we do.

Of more historical interest, this year marks the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen. 60 years on the throne is a long time, and I suspect she'll do her best to beat Queen Victoria's record as longest-reigning monarch at 63 years. She'll be nearly 90 by then so it might be a close run thing. I'm not a monarchist by any stretch of the imagination but being of an archaeological and historical bent, this sort of thing always interests me.

As a couple, TLH and I are off to more classical concerts at the Guildford Civic and in a couple of weeks we're off to see The Ladykillers at the Gielgud Theatre. Written by Graham Linehan - who wrote Black Books, Father Ted and The I.T. Crowd - it has had rave reviews. Then in February I managed to get tickets for one of the last performances with James Corden in One Man Two Guv'nors at the Adelphi, before the cast changes and it moves to a different theatre. I have had the great fortune to meet up with the really rather wonderful Katyboo during 2011 for a couple of theatrical jaunts and it reminded me of how much I did actually enjoy going to the theatre so I'm hoping to try and go a bit more frequently.

As for other things, it would be nice to get to go away on holiday, for the first time in several years, but that's dependent on whether or not I can persuade TLH to actually take some time off and not just work all the hours he can get, even allowing for the dire economic climate.

I'm hoping Bev and I can sort out our saxophone duo thing we have planned and, of course, some more gigs with The Fugitives would be enormous fun.

I'm also going to have another serious stab ('stab' being the operative word) at teaching myself how to knit. I partially managed it last year but found it really difficult so I'm not sure I was doing it right so put it away again and returned to my crochet hook. As soon as I publish this post I'll be heading off to Youtube to find a decent tutorial - wish me luck!

Continued good health for all my friends and family would, of course, be most welcome.

What are the rest of you hopeful for?

Feeling very pleased with myself.....

2011-12-22T13:36:00.000Z

See that? That picture above? If anyone had told me last Christmas that by this Christmas I will have run a total of 50 miles, I'd have made myself sick with laughter and probably wee'd a bit as well.

I started running back in March and it's taken me 8 months to run the equivalent of two marathons. As TLH so sagely observed 'the slowest marathon in history'. He is still living, dear reader. Quite how, I don't know....

As you can see by the figure above, I'm not exactly the world's quickest runner - more a shuffler, really - as it would appear that the fastest mile I've run in the past 8 months has taken me over 15 minutes. And you will note by the dates of my runs that I don't go exactly regularly, but I'm hoping to do better next year.

And anyway, as one of my friends posted on Facebook the other day:

Here's to many more - and faster - miles under my feet next year.

Happy Solstice to all!!

2011-12-22T13:20:00.000Z

Apparently the winter solstice happened this morning, Thursday 22 December 2011, at either 5.03am or 5.30am. I can't remember which, but one of those. I was asleep when it happened so missed it anyway but it doesn't matter because WE'RE ON OUR WAY BACK TO THE SUMMER!!!

And 2012's summer had better be hotter than 2011's and 2010's was or else...well, I'm going to be cold and miserable again because there isn't really that much I can do about it.

It's been a fairly eventful few days here at Jones Towers. On Monday my washing machine decided that RIGHT NOW would be a really good time to start dying. Fecker. I put on a wash, disappeared up two flights of stairs to do something in my jewellery workshop/office, when suddenly I could hear the most godawful screeching and squealing and banging. First of all I thought it was the neighbours who can't seem to let a week go by without getting their tools out (and not in a fun way) but as I descended the stairs to the sitting room, the noise got louder and Sylvester was cowering in his box, with his eyes like black holes and his ears flat against his head and I realised the noise was coming from inside my house.

I hurtled downstairs (the washing machine and tumble dryer live in a big cupboard in our downstairs study) and discovered that the washing machine had gone into its final multi-thousand rpm spin cycle and simultaneously had become possessed by a banshee. Here, listen to this:

I taped it to show TLH what was going on. *Sigh* Just before Christmas too, when it's going to be impossible to get anyone to deliver a new one. I've decided I can actually continue to use it until just before it goes into the final spin whereupon I shall be forced to leap like a gazelle and shut it off whereupon the tumble dryer will have to just work a bit harder to dry the clothes out.

I understand from two separate sources that Guildford is actually very quiet at the moment (which is odd, considering there's only 2 shopping days left till Giftmas) so I think I'll tempt fate and head there this afternoon to check out some white goods. Oh, the glamour.

And what was also doubly weird was my brain twin, the erudite Katyboo, also underwent a catastrophe her washing machine on Monday. We are so similar that I sometimes think we are the same person living in two separate bodies, like unidentical twins that were separated at birth. I think we should sit our respective mothers down and have a chat about this...

Last weekend, though, we put the tree up. Despite 'enhancing' my pictures with various Christmassy themes, I'm not feeling especially one with the season this year (like most years, actually), but I do quite like having the tree with its tinsel and coloured lights up and can't really imagine not having one (although I did suggest it to TLH one year. He did not approve).

As ever, and as he has done for at least the last decade, Sylvester 'helped' by getting into the box the tree lives in (we have an artificial one because I'll be buggered if I'm going to be hoovering up pine needles for the next three months). It will be a sad, sad Christmas indeed when he's no longer around to help out like this.

Sylvester discovers the xmas tree box

Prepares to insert himself

Cat insertion successful

Giving me the stink eye as he now wishes to be left alone.

He gets to stay in there until the tree decorating has been done, then he has to be cajoled out as it needs to be returned to the loft. It's his annual ritual and he does it very well. Same time next year, buddy.

Our tree is really quite boring and normal in terms of its decorations but we have a few that I'm particularly fond of:

This is a fused glass snowman that we particularly liked because we couldn't decide whether it looked like Oliver Hardy or Adolf Hitler.

This is a tiny little Baby Jebus in half a walnut shell that I got from the Christmas market in Budapest a couple of years ago. I think it cost me all of about 50p - it was just too cute not to buy!

This year they seem to have left us alone, but in previous years we've had a bit of a rat problem at the end of the garden. They managed to gnaw holes into the shed and were living in there, and eating the bird food that I was putting out. I used to see them shimmying up the poles to sit in the feeders. And the cats were rubbish at catching them, except for the late Damian who was brilliant, but he's no longer with us and, weirdly, neither are the rats. I'm still feeding the birds though so I've no idea what's going on. Anyway, I got quite fond of them and their successful survivalist ways so when I saw this mouse/rat hanging ornament, I had to have it to hang on the tree.

Finally, there's an Amsterdam brothel. There used to be (and still may be, for all I know) a little shop very close to the flower market that sold nothing but christmas decorations all year round. We got a shooting star, a pair of clogs and a windmill in blue and white delft, and I absolutely couldn't resist this - well, would you?!?

So, we have three days to go. The tree's up. All the presents are wrapped. I'm starting to clean the house (woe, fie and a pox on it). All I have to do now is collect the turkey tomorrow and start making some of the side dishes and we're good to go. This year will be the first ever time that we're hosting Christmas at our house. We normally go to TLH's parents in his native homeland but that's not happening until later, so I have my mum and stepdad and TLH's sister coming over to ours. Not too many, which is a blessing, because I can't really fit many more than that in our house as it is.

If I don't speak to you again before Sunday, I hope your Christmas day is not too stressful and you all get a chance to sit down with a glass of something and put your feet up at some point. Oh, and best wishes for New Year!

I'm Number One - again!!!!

2011-12-16T13:19:00.000Z

Well, feck my old boots.

Yesterday I posted on Facebook about my blackberry vodka blog posting being the top result out of over 3 million other pages on Google ('cos if I don't blow my own trumpet, who will?). One of my friends offered congratulations and suggested that I'd found a niche market that I ought to exploit. I was writing a reply to him along the lines that I'd posted on my blog several other 'how to' guides - with photos - but they were mainly to do with cooking and these obviously weren't as popular as they didn't include alcohol. Before I could write it though, I remembered that I'd done another one on How to Fuse Dichroic Glass, that was fully accompanied with photos, like the others.

So I went to Google, entered 'how to fuse dichroic glass' and, guess what? Yep, first result again! Perhaps not quite so impressive this time as it was only number one out of nearly 100,000 other pages, but even so.

I'm a bit gobsmacked really. When I was talking to TLH last night about the vodka one, he said that it would be a self-promoting thing now since as it was the first result at the top of the results page, it would most likely be the one that people click on first so it's likely to stay top for quite a while. And now there's the dichroic glass one to add to it too.

And to think last year I applied for an online job writing 'How To' guides that would have paid me per number of clicks each guide received, but they never got back to me.....

I'm Number One!!!!

2011-12-15T18:57:00.000Z

Well, here's a thing. I've just been having a quick look at my Google Analytics results which tells me all sorts of information about how many times my various blogs have been visited and what pages people are reading and always, every month, my most-read posting is the one I did in July 2010 on how to make blackberry vodka.

So, just for a laugh, I popped along to Google and searched for 'how to make blackberry vodka' and - guess what? - my page is the first result! From the whole of the internets! Out of about 3 million results! *Fans self and feels a little overcome*

Blimey.....

Anyone got any paintings they want Christmassed?

2011-12-15T18:13:00.001Z

So, remember yesterday? When I decided to 'enhance' my Mexican Sugar skull cross stitch thingies? And how I suddenly realised I was surrounded by MORE pictures that I could also 'enhance'?

Well, after publishing that last post, I went to town. And then I came back and started searching for images. I didn't really go to town but as I was typing it I thought it was a really odd phrase for just getting on with something.

Anyway, I had a look at some of the pictures we have and decided which ones I wanted to embellish. I chose these (the photos are taken at a slight angle to reduce light reflection):

This is a very big print that hangs above our sofa.

This is a gorgeous medium sized original watercolour of nearby Peaslake Woods in autumn that I got from a local Art Society exhibition.

This is a large signed print of a beach in Scotland.

This is an original pen and ink drawing of Albi in France that hangs above my piano.

Finally this is a framed poster we got when we visited Interlaken, Murren and Grindelwald in Switzerland a few summers back. It hangs just outside our kitchen door.

I managed to find Christmassy themes for all of them and printed out suitable images, cut them out and stuck them on the glass with bluetack (all the pictures have glass in the frames and I stick the images to the glass).

The first one, I felt, was perfect for a snowman in the field and Santa's sleigh passing overhead:

The woodland scene needed a decorated Christmas tree in there:

The seascape called for Three Ships coming sailing by:

The pen and ink drawing already looked vaguely Middle Eastern to me so what could be more appropriate than a star and a camel:

And finally the Alpine cows just needed the requisite headgear and the odd false Santa beard - oh, and some kids tobogganing down the glacier:

I think I shall actually be quite sad to peel all these off after Christmas, but I've more pictures upstairs that I can adulterate so my childish glee isn't quite over yet!!

Time for a more cheering post, I think....

2011-12-14T10:28:00.002Z

Thank you for your kind words, people, both those left on the blog and sent by email. I am, of course, absolutely fine now although I am aware that there is still some underlying emotional fragility hanging about; if I start to think about the things that were upsetting me so much on Friday night/Saturday morning, I can still feel myself choking and my eyes welling up with tears so I'm just being sensible and not dwelling on any of that and letting it overpower me. Last Friday night/Saturday morning I was completely incapable of controlling it but now I am so that's progress, I suppose. I'm not looking forward to any more future episodes, though.

Who'd be a woman, eh?

Anyway, time for a more cheering post, I think.

If you recall, at the end of November I finished off and framed a set of four Mexican Sugar Skulls that I had cross stitched over the previous month:

A couple of days ago I decided that they needed to join in with the Christmas festivities. Rather than just wrap some tinsel around the frames, I felt they would look more jolly wearing hats and such like.

An hour or so searching Google images resulted in this:

And finally all together:

I'm thinking I may give them a summer wardrobe as well, although it'll mostly be sunglasses and straw hats.

As I was posting these pictures, it's just dawned on me that we have a lot of pictures on our walls, mostly of landscapes, and I'm thinking some of them could be enhanced with images of Santa and his sleigh in the sky and a snowman in the field....

And I also have a couple of seascapes which could do with three ships going sailing by....

And a woodland scene that's just begging to have a christmas tree with baubles added....

Guess I worked out what I'm going to be up to today!!

Don't panic - I'm still here

2011-12-11T19:19:00.000Z

I wasn't sure that I was going to post about this, and I still may not press 'post' at the end but I'm just going to write about it anyway.

Last Friday night was interesting. In a way I could have done without. I would have much preferred that it had involved lots of wine, good food, friends and laughing so much I nearly pee. What I ended up with was my brain trying to kill me.

It's the fucking menopause again.

I thought I'd managed to avoid the pathetic crying at stupid sentimental schlock this month but, once again, it crept up on me throughout Thursday and Friday, albeit not as bad as in previous months. It was fine, honestly. Didn't stop me doing what needed to get done in preparation for our visit back to TLH's native homeland on Saturday to visit his mum. She'd phoned us on the Thursday with a list of things she wanted us to do/bring with us and I decided I might as well get them during the day on Friday so we didn't have to stop anywhere on the journey to see her. Good thinking, huh? I was feeling quite proud of myself for deciding to do this off my own bat, and thought TLH would be pleased that I'd saved him a job or two. Plus I'd also started doing some of the Christmas food shopping (especially Christmas morning breakfast stuff) which I was feeling very pleased about.

Unfortunately, TLH wasn't exactly in a receptive frame of mind when he got home at 7.15pm. Then we had a stupid misunderstanding involving the mishearing of bellini/blini and eventually he decided he might as well go to bed. On his own. At 8.30pm. *sigh*.

I sat stewing on the sofa, laptop on, er, lap, cat snuggled up next to me and rubbish on the telly until about 11pm, when I decided I might as well call it a day. I went to the spare bedroom so that I could read a bit without disturbing TLH. A few pages were read, the light was put out and I went to sleep.

I woke with a start some time later and thought it might have been about 5am, which is, more or less, the time we stir in this house during the week. I was horrified then to see that it was 2am. I'd been asleep for all of three hours. I rolled over, closed my eyes, and tried to find my way back to the Land of Nod.

And that's when the little voice in my head started up. The nasty, insidious, hateful little voice that tells lies wrapped in a veneer of truth. Except that at that time in the morning, and in my menopausal-hormone filled mind, it's all truth. It was telling me what an idiot I was for thinking anyone would appreciate me. It was telling me how nobody cared and no-one truly loved me except for Sylvester the cat and he's 15 years old and will probably die soon so then there'll be no-one. It was reminding me that I don't have many friends and those that I do don't really give that much of a toss because they never call me, never suggest I go round and hang out. My brother has his own life and family so there's no reason why he should be even the slightest bit interested in my life.

Lies, all of it, but wrapped in the thinnest veneer of truth, and it wouldn't. shut. the. fuck. up. And I was getting more and more upset. Rolling over and trying to think of other things didn't help, as my brain just roiled around and returned to the same thought over and over. No-one would notice if you were gone, so why don't you just disappear.

I knew this was complete bollocks but turning the voice off was not happening. It was a proper long, dark night of the soul. I figured there was nothing for it but to just get up again, and beat the voice into submission with a cup of tea and a wander around the backwaters of the interweb, in the hope that I could distract myself enough to feel sleepy and away from the razor blades and/or paracetamol (don't worry, that was never going to happen). But I just managed to give myself a headache on top of it all because I'd been crying into my pillow so much and didn't manage to feel sleepy.

TLH came downstairs at about 6am and was astonished to see that I'd, pretty much, been up all night. And I felt like shit, understandably. But at least I hadn't killed myself, right?

I survived the following day in Wales pretty well, considering. I had a couple of weird turns that were rectified with coffee and cake, and I managed to grab a few Zs in the car on the way there and back (yes, we went for the day, so there was at least 5 hours of driving in total).

And today, Sunday, I've been fine, and I'm typing this while chortling along to 'Elf' on the telly. But I can't help thinking that the approaching menopause is to blame for self-loathing and suicidal thoughts of Friday night/Saturday morning and if that's the case, it's a most unwelcome development. I did plan to try and get through this oncoming change of life without medical intervention as best as I can, but if this is going to become a common occurrence then I might seriously have to consider talking to the doctor about investigating HRT.

You know what? To hell with it, I'm going to publish this post. It's part of my life and others reading it may understand what the fuck was going on and can understand.

But, don't worry, folks, I have no plans on going anywhere just yet so no need to panic!

Update on The Archers

2011-12-09T10:04:00.001Z

If you recall, one of my recent posts was relating some shenanigans going on at my allotment site.

There was a meeting last Monday of the allotment holders which, unfortunately, I was unable to attend but the site steward has just sent out a mass email to report on what was discussed. From what I can make out, H (the seeming cause of all the problems) is no longer a steward as, in the email, he was given formal thanks for the work that he'd done (and he had done some good things) and two new deputy stewards were introduced. Hmm, I wonder if he jumped or was pushed? Doesn't really matter though, as long as he's no longer in a position of being able to wield any sort of power over the rest of us and just gets on with growing his veggies, and leaving the rest of us alone, then I'm happy. I'm assuming he still has his plot though. Again, I don't really care as long as he stops interfering.

Discussion also covered the stubborn bugger who has a red ex-Royal Mail van that he parks on the street AS CLOSE AS HE POSSIBLY CAN to the entrance to the site, making it as absolutely as difficult as possible for vehicles to get to the site. It's astonishing that his wing hasn't been taken off yet. It also successfully blocks off vision for those emerging from the site into the road. Luckily it's a relatively quiet council estate road and not a main road but even so.

I live in walking distance of the site so very rarely need to drive there (when I'm carting bags of compost, or delivering/collecting large/heavy loads) so, in all honesty, it doesn't really affect me directly but there are plotholders who need to drive there all the time and they have to deal with it all the time. At the meeting it was decided that the council was going to be contacted and also the police. I think this is a good idea but I don't think it will come to anything as I suspect he's completely within his rights and as long as he doesn't actually obstruct the entrance itself (he parks millimetre close to the bit on the kerb where it drops down, if know what I mean) then there's nothing anyone can do.

And as it's SUCH beautiful day today - the high winds of yesterday having blown themselves out - I think I may pop down there to see if my shed's still standing and do more covering up of the plot which will make weeding next spring much easier.

Have a lovely weekend, y'all, and stay warm!

White Chocolate and Raspberry Trifle

2011-11-27T16:41:00.000Z

TLH and I don't tend to give dinner parties, or even have friends over to eat very often. In fact, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times we've done it living in this house - and we've been here very nearly 16 years! I'm not too sure why this is but it doesn't help that our kitchen is so teeny tiny that it will only comfortably fit one human and one furry overlord at a time, and the dining area bit of our living space can barely fit a table that will seat four people, and one of them has to sit uncomfortably close to a wall. There's just not enough space for properly comfortable entertaining.
But even though good friends of ours moved into a house literally opposite us in the close last November, we've seen nothing of them since about June this year so we figured it was time to get them over and food is always a good reason to socialise!

I decided that I would make Butternut Squash and Coconut milk soup to start with, using one of my last remaining homegrown Butternet Squashes; main course would be Pan Fried Chicken in a Cream and Oyster Mushroom sauce with mashed potates, broccoli, green beans and carrots; dessert to be White Chocolate and Raspberry Trifle.

The trifle is awesome and is so rich and substantial that I only make it when there are more than 2 people to eat it. This means it's a brilliant thing to make for Christmas, so if you fancy something other than traditional Christmas pudding or a bog-standard Sherry Trifle, then I can absolutely recommend this. There's no cooking, it's all just assembly and it's best to make it a day before you need to eat it so the flavours can sink into the sponge. It's up to you how much you want to spend on ingredients but I've made this with the cheapest swiss roll and white chocolate and ready made custard I could fine, and it still tastes fabulous.

So, here we go then, with pictures and everything:

WHITE CHOCOLATE AND RASPBERRY TRIFLE
(Serves at least 6, depending on portion size)

Ingredients:

300g Raspberries (frozen is fine)
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tablespoon of kirsch or vodka
2 tablespoons of icing sugar
1 vanilla swiss roll (not chocolate). Get a big one, or 2 smaller ones.
120g white chocolate
150g double cream or whipping cream (this is actually optional but you need at least a tablespoon)
2 x 500ml ready made custard

The necessary ingredients. As I'd got a bottle or two of Raspberry infused vodka that I made back in 2010 kicking around, I thought I'd use that. And I also misread my own ingredients list and bought both double and whipping cream (you only need one kind!).

1. Place 1/3 (i.e., 100g) of the raspberries in a sieve over a bowl. Push through with a spoon until only the pips remain. I'll be honest, this is a bit of a pain in the bum to do as it takes quite a long time. Apparently you can now buy readymade raspberry coulis and if I'd known about it, I would definitely have used that instead.

The puree you end up with. You need to keep scraping the puree off the underside of the sieve.

2. To the puree, add the icing sugar:

And the juice of 1/2 a lime and the tablespoon of kirsch or vodka:

The bottle of Raspberry Vodka I used. Why, yes, of course I sampled it. And massively yum it was too.

3. Slice the swiss roll(s) into 1cm slices and use most of them to cover the sides and base of a bowl in a single layer:

4. Moisten the slices with most of the raspberry puree, and scatter in another 1/3 (100g) of the raspberries:

5. Set aside a few squares of the chocolate for grating later, and break up the rest of the choc into small pieces.

6. Place the chocolate in a bowl and melt over a pan of boiling water, ensuring the water doesn't touch the bottom of the bowl. Do not overheat or the chocolate will start to go gritty. Stir until melted:

7. When melted, take off heat and stir into it one tablespoon of the double/whipping cream, then stir in both cartons of custard:

8. Pour/ladle half the custard over the swiss roll in the bowl and lay over it the remaining swiss roll slices, like some fabulous lasagne:

9. Dribble the remaining raspberry sauce over the slices and scatter over most of the remaining raspberries:

10. Completely cover with the rest of the custard:

View from the side.

There are now a few options. You can whip the cream until stiff and spread over the top of the custard, or you can pipe it on decoratively. I hadn't decided what I was going to do and feared that if I did this now, the raspberries on top might leak colour into the cream. So I left mine unadorned and popped it into the fridge overnight.

The next morning I decided that, actually, there was enough risk of cardiac failure from eating this without adding more cream so just grated the set aside squares of chocolate over the top and added the rest of the raspberries.

Inexpensive, easy and your family will think it's one of the best things EVER. I guarantee it.

Cross Stitch Ta-Daa!

2011-11-22T14:42:00.001Z

This Autumn I rediscovered cross stitch. I used to do a bit of it in my late teens, just simple stuff - I wonder what happened to the things I made? Oh well, lost in one of my many house moves, no doubt.

I can't remember what sent me off looking for patterns, but I recall reading an article somewhere about Dame Judy Dench who starts a piece of some kind of needlework - embroidery? needlepoint? can't remember - every time she begins a new play or film, that she presents to the director at the end, and it always has the word 'fuck' worked into it in an elaborate font somewhere. I remember thinking what a brilliant idea that was. Then I came across 'Subversive Cross Stitch' (which does exactly what it says on the tin) and discovered their website where you can buy kits.

Going there just now to find and post the link, I see they have a whole lot of new Christmas kits, and this one made me hoot with laughter, as it's how I generally view the season:

There are ones you can get that are just rude phrases stitched in a modern typography which is fine, but I also really like ones that look like old fashioned cross stitch designs but say something unexpected (and not necessarily rude) like this one which has a sentiment I think we can all agree with:

And I've just discovered this one which I rather like and shall add to my future projects file:

Then there's ones like this which are more Scandinavian in style and use a single colour (like the one above):

And how about quotes from Charlie Sheen. This one is magnificent and so totally sums up my life:

Hmm - seems I'm going to have to add ALL these to my queue.

However, I wanted to show you the ones that I HAVE actually finished. While searching for patterns on Etsy, I came across quite a few that tickled my fancy. So I bought a few and got started. You get a .pdf file sent electronically that you print out that give you the graph and also lists the colours of DMC embroidery thread that you'll need. You'll also need to get a size 24 needle (or at least a big one with a large eye), some Aida fabric (14 holes to the inch is the standard size) and although I didn't use one for this design, an embroidery hoop is a good idea (I used one for the others I did).

This was a very simple one to start with, only using about a dozen colours. I got the pattern from Steotch's store on Etsy - check some of their other patterns out, they're brilliant. I've not got round to framing this one yet.

Then while I was wandering around on Etsy looking for other patterns, I found Bombastitch's shop, and instantly fell in love with the Mexican Sugar Skull designs there. I selected four of them. The designs are more complex and I love them all. And I've just seen from going to her page that there are a couple more designs there that weren't there before! But I think I'll leave them there, I've enough crafty things (including some crochet owls, birds and christmas stars) in my project queue as it is, without adding any more.

I also decided I wanted to frame them in a suitably black, gothic and ornate frame - sleek and contemporary wasn't quite right for these, I felt. Searching on the intertubes brought me to Ayers and Graces who do fantastic mirrors and picture frames, and who had exactly what I was looking for and at a ludicrously affordable price as well.

Each one took a week to do and kept me busy while sitting in front of the gogglebox. I framed them myself. I got that really thick card stuff that are used to make 'mats', i.e., the inner flat frame that you put over pictures before putting them in a proper frame (does that make sense?) and cut it to size. Then I used double sided sellotape to secure the finished cross stitch to the front of the mat, and then on the other side to stick the overlaps down and keep them in place - the traditional way to do this is to lace the overlaps together on the back to keep it in place; I tried this with the first one but it took ages and was unbelievably fiddly. Double sided tape works just as well and is infinitely quicker.

So let's have a look, shall we. This is what one of the charts looks like:

And this is the finished product:

And in its 8x10 inch frame:

The frames are all identical. Sorry I couldn't get the picture of the frame any clearer but the flash just reflected back off the glass so these were taken without flash, but hopefully you can click on the picture and see more detail.

These are the others:

Then we had the dilemma of where to hang them. I wanted originally to put them together in a square but the logistics of trying to get them to hang accurately, butting up against each other, was more than we could cope with. So then I thought about hanging them in a long vertical line but couldn't think of a suitable place in the house.

Then The Lovely Husband suggested the perfect spot - the little bit of space between our bathroom door and the wall, and that's where I've put them. The bottom one seems a bit low down but you see them as you're coming up the stairs, so you start to view them from the bottom up as you ascend anyway, so it's all gravy!

I hope you like them as much as I do!

Who needs 'The Archers'?

2011-11-15T10:18:00.002Z

There are some peculiar people in this world. I realise this may come as a bit of a shock to you, for which I apologise. I advise a cup of tea and a bit of cake to steady the nerves. It is a panacea that cures pretty much all ills. I have drunk a LOT of tea and eaten my bodyweight in cake over the last few days and now feel (and look) as stately as a galleon.

Loyal readers of my increasingly sporadic scribblings will be aware that I have an allotment. I used to have one in the 1990s but gave it up after a couple of years because it was quite a way from my flat at the time, and I was working full time and had a social life. Cue 20 years later, a different husband, a different town, no job and no social life, and I decided I wanted to revisit growing my own veggies and found there was a large 4-acre allotment site no more than 5 mins walk from my house. So I put my name down for a plot and, within a few months, was allocated one. I started a blog about it - From Weeds to Seeds - where I posted about starting the plot from scratch, what I planted, a bit of local history, interacting with the foxes and discovering a buried cache of weird religious photographs.

If you can be arsed to head on over there, you'll see that the last posting on that blog is in February this year, at the beginning of the season. This was because I was beginning to fall out of love with the allotment. I'd been there since the beginning of 2008 so this year would be my fourth season. I do it all myself which is both a blessing and a curse. It's nice to have a space outside that is my own, where I can sit on my green plastic garden chair outside my little shed and watch the birds wheeling in the enormous sky while I think my inconsequential little thoughts. But also because I'm female and naturally lack a great deal of physical strength, as well as having a bit of a rubbish back that will dislocate parts of itself if I, for instance, have the audacity to pull a shopping trolley behind me, I find the necessary heavy digging to be difficult. I'm not whinging about it, it's just the way it is.

So, to be honest, I found myself last year doing less and less down there, and began to feel that the allotment was becoming more of a burden than a pleasure. I started to give serious thought to giving it up, even though we have both hugely enjoyed eating the veggies and fruit that I've managed to produce over the years. And when I remembered that, I started thinking that maybe I should hang on to the plot after all. But then I thought of the back problems I'd suffered and how disheartening it is to spend hours working there only for it to look as if you've not even touched it and I wanted to give it up again. And then I started thinking about the economic climate and how Western civilisation looks like it's about to crumble and that, perhaps, it might just be sensible to hold onto the plot after all so that, if necessary, we would have food to eat (we like to be prepared in our house! And we do possess a fine sense of impending catastrophe....). I was, as you can see, oscillating wildly from one perspective to another. Wanting to give it up but not give it up. A conundrum, if you will.

So, as of last week, I'd grudgingly decided that I might as well give the plot one more year and see how I felt after that. I went down there - I'd not been for about a month or so - in order to tidy the plot a bit, dismantle the bamboo pole wigwams, pull up the sweetcorn plants and bolted lettuces, that sort of thing, and start planning where to lay the black weed-suppressant fabric that I bung down over the winter and which makes spring weeding that much easier. I felt quite good about it, especially as I noticed that quite a few other plots on the site were just as overgrown and tatty as mine had got (they always get grotty at this time of year anyway).

Then, last Friday, I received a letter in the post, from the Allotment Committee, basically telling me to 'vacate or cultivate', as following a recent inspection mine wasn't up to standard and that I had a month to sort it out or they would take it away from me and give it to someone on the waiting list.

Blimey.

And then I thought about it and decided it was very odd. The annual inspection of all the plots takes place in June or July and if anyone's plot is not up to standard, then a letter is sent out shortly afterwards. I received no letter in the summer and had been quite confident at the time that the plot would be okay, as I had put a lot of hours into tarting it up for the inspection. I don't like the fact that there's an inspection as I don't particularly like being judged, but do understand the need for it - if you're not actively cultivating your plot then it'll grow weeds that will set seed all over the rest of the site, onto others' plots, and if there's a waiting list it's unfair to those on it if you can't be bothered to do something with yours so you might as well free it up. There's also the not inconsiderable point that the local council is always on the lookout for building development sites and we know for a fact that they'd love to get their hands on our site - they were fended off successfully a few years ago. A 4 acre site in greenbelt Surrey would be worth an absolute fortune. By not actively using your plot, you're playing into their hands and once the site has gone, it will never come back again.

But this letter read as if there had been a second, later, inspection, one that no-one had known about. And I had been judged and found wanting. I was pretty pissed off about this but grudgingly accepted that I had let the plot slip post-inspection, as I was thinking of giving it up anyway, so, obviously, I must have failed. I decided, then, that I would give it up after all, especially now after receiving this damning letter. Yes, I was feeling a bit flouncy about it.

The letter said that I could clear the plot of whatever plants I wanted to, and remove any structures, so I contacted my brother (who has a veg plot in his garden) and told him I was giving up the plot and did he want my fruit bushes and also my shed? He most certainly did.

My next port of call was to drop an email to the steward of my half of the site and let her know that I'd received the letter and was confirming that I would be giving up the plot, and that the site would be cleared as soon as possible, but bearing in mind that my subs were paid up until February 2012, could it be confirmed that I would have until then to do the work, rather than the 28 days as stated in the letter?

This is where this long rambling blog post starts to get interesting.

The steward I contacted replied by email a few days later to all the plot-holders saying that several people had received the same letter, including - bizarrely - herself. She said that even though the letter had come out on official notepaper, it had not been officially sanctioned by the committee who had, in fact, known nothing about it at all! There had been no second inspection (the reason it's done in the summer is because that's when the plots will naturally look their best and most productive - everyone knows they look rubbish at this time of year) and there currently isn't a waiting list for a plot. And my plot had passed the summer inspection, as I thought it had. It transpires that someone else - we'll call him H - on the site had taken it upon himself to perform his own, personal, inspection of everyone's plot and then managed to get the letters sent out.

The poor steward that I had emailed had been contacted by a load of extremely pissed-off people who had, rightly, got the hump about the letters and now she'd been burdened with having to do a lot of fire-fighting that was not of her - or the committee's - making! I've been informed that I can ignore the letter completely.

How bizarre. And just how power-crazed do you have to be to do that sort of thing? And to what purpose? If everyone that he wrote to decided to leave their plot, and there's no waiting list, then the site's just going to get more and more overgrown. Is there some kind of vendetta going on here? I have no idea. I've only spoken to him a couple of times - a brief chat, nothing more, and he seemed perfectly affable at the time. But obviously something about me has annoyed him - could it be my pink hair? Who knows?

But I've now swung my decision completely the other way. I'm most definitely NOT giving up my plot now, I refuse to give some would-be tin-pot dictator the satisfaction! I've had to apologise to my brother, though, as I'm keeping my shed and plants now, but I'll get some fruit bushes for them next spring instead, some new ones, as part of their christmas present.

Who needs The Archers for agricultural-based soap opera? Just get yourself an allotment in a middle-class, affluent Surrey town!

Oh, get a grip, willya?

2011-10-26T10:46:00.001+01:00

Warning - this is a female post, about female problems.

The average age for menopause in the UK is apparently either 51 or 52 depending on who you read. I am 48 1/2. I've had an 'interesting' relationship with all things reproductive since the age of 12 when it all kicked off. My cycles have varied in length wildly over the years. I only managed to get pregnant 'normally' (although accidentally) once but it didn't stick. And then, when I actually did want to get pregnant, I couldn't do it without medical intervention and they also didn't want to stick. Hey ho.

A few years ago, my rather wonderful chiropractor/Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor that I've seen for 20 years suggested that I start using progesterone cream. I think I'd probably told him that I was starting to get some mild hot flushes and my periods were getting painful, as painful as they'd been when I was in my 20s. The cream has given me cycles as regular as clockwork, which is astonishing. I can mark 26 days on my calendar now and know that Aunt Flo will arrive exactly within a 24 hour period. I still get the odd hot flush but they've always been pretty mild, I'm certainly not getting dreadful night sweats or anything like that, for which I'm grateful as they sound awful. So the cream has helped, but Aunt Flo is still visiting regularly, every month. Some months a bit heavier than others, but she always arrives. I wonder how long it will be before she stops because, frankly, I can't wait.

All this I have, of course, expected but the one symptom that has caught me out is the emotional one. I'm not a cryer. Never have been. I can vividly remember waaaay back when I was 11 or 12, maybe 13, deciding that only weak people cried, it was girly and pathetic and I was not going to do it. Ever. No-one would ever see me cry. And I've stuck to that astonishingly well over the decades since. I rarely feel the need to cry, I hardly ever get that emotionally upset and, if I do, then I'll do my crying in the shower or the bath where I can be left in peace and no-one can witness it.

I'm not really sure what this says about me. I'm sure some psychiatrist will see me as being too in control of my emotions, and that it's a sign of me building a big protective wall around me. I'm sure there's more than an element of truth in that. You let people in emotionally, you usually get hurt, and that's painful. This might explain why I have very few friends in real life - people I would call 'proper' friends, not just acquaintances - and only a handful of boyfriends over the years. The less people you get really close to, the less likely they are to fuck you over.

The side effect of this is, of course, loneliness. Which is a whole other post in itself and not what I wanted to talk about.

What I wanted to talk about was the unexpected emotional upheaval of the menopause. Boy, has that ever caught me out. I remember when I was going through my IVF cycles in the late 90s that, in each cycle, there was always at least one day when I would find myself utterly bereft and prostrate with sadness and grief. I would dehydrate myself with crying. The emotional pain was overwhelming and, needless to say, deeply unwelcome. I can even remember being unable to go into work on one of these days because I literally could not control myself and stop sobbing. It was dreadful. The next day, though, I'd wake up, feel fine and think to myself 'what the fuck was that all about, then?' When we stopped doing the IVFs, those weird emotional days stopped.

And now they're bloody back. Over about the last year, in each month, I've had at least one day when I've felt unbearably sad, and have ended up going through half a box of tissues with crying so much. I hate it. And then it dawned on me that it was a symptom of the menopause. I remembered those days during the IVFs and realised they came during the part of the cycle when the doctors put you into an artificial menopause. So that was obviously what was going to happen to me when I hit menopause for real. And it has come to pass. And I wish it would carrying on passing and go by me completely.

This time round, though, it's not actually as bad as the IVF crying days but it's equally as unwelcome. And my trigger is anything to do with animals. I can watch any number of starving kids in Africa adverts and they do nothing, but the cruelty to animals ones? Woah. Also those videos where humans are reunited with lost pets, or animals they used to care for years ago (like the lion one - you know the one I mean - or the one I saw this morning which started this off, where a grown gorilla meets up again with the guy who looked after him when he was little and he remembers him and hugs him so hard he won't let him go and oh god, where are the tissues....?)

Jesus. See what I mean. I can't see the screen through the haze of tears. Bloody hell. And don't get me started on what it's going to be like when we have to say goodbye to Sylvester, our cat and my constant companion for the last 13 years or so. See, I start to think about all this, my fingers and hands do this bizarre tingling thing, and the tears start pouring down my face in some sort of pre-emptive grief. It's utterly, utterly ridiculous and I feel so foolish. Plus I know I'll wake up tomorrow and will feel perfectly stable again and wonder what the hell that was all about.

Yes, as you might have guessed, today is one of 'those' days. I need to find something distracting to do, rather than just sit here and wallow in my misery, and I will in a minute or so. There's washing needs to be done but, more likely, a piano that also needs playing. But I was wondering, does anyone know how long this will go on for? Have any of my lovely readers (if I still have any) been through this and, if so, how did they cope?

Quick catch up

2011-10-23T16:07:00.000+01:00

Wotcha all. How's tricks? We're all well at Jones Towers, October has been rolling on apace and the weather has been gorgeous, hasn't it? It's been a fantastic autumn so far, lots of blue, blue skies, warm sunshine and crunchy yellow leaves on the ground.

I harvested the half dozen or so Butternut Squashes that I managed to grow this year at the allotment. I grew 13 last year and lost the lot to an early frost so this year I was determined not to make the same mistake. A ground frost was predicted last Wednesday so I decided to pick them. And now, of course, it's sunny and warm again but, you know what? if I'd left them, we would most likely be sitting in snow drifts 30 feet deep! Oh well, never mind. They were mostly ripe - although varying in size from acceptable to pretty bloody small - and are finishing off sitting in the sunshine on my kitchen windowsill.

I'm giving serious consideration to jacking in the allotment. There's a few reasons really. One is that it's bloody hard work but I knew that going in. Another is that every year we all get judged by the committee. I hate this. It's probably not as drastic as I make out, in that all the committee members need to see is that you're actually working the plot and that it hasn't gone entirely to seed and become weed-bound, but I can't help getting quite stressed out about it in the weeks leading up to the end of June. And I'm quite a lazy person - actually, that's not strictly true. I'm not good at being consistent in how much I do - I'll put in vast amounts of effort and then not do anything for ages, then I'll do vast amounts again. It's also the way I do my housework. I can literally not see the piles of clutter and dustbunnies for weeks, then suddenly I'll have a day when I go mental and CLEAN ALL THE THINGS, then don't touch them again for weeks and am genuinely surprised that they haven't stayed clean on their own in the interim. I really like the idea of just doing 15 minutes a day but that would mean I'd have to be consistent. I'd be very good at doing it for a few days on the trot then, one morning, I'd wake up and think 'fuck that, I'll do it later' and that would be it. I know my natural inability to do housework and keep surfaces clear drives TLH potty but, you know, I've always been like that. There's some stuff in this life that I'm pretty good at but housework is not one of them. Sorry.

But I've digressed, haven't I? Back to the allotment. I don't get any help doing the work at the allotment. That's okay. I don't like doing housework, my significant other doesn't like doing gardening. But the allotment is big and I could really do with a hand every few weeks. Frankly it's too big for me but I really don't want to give up half of it - I want it all to myself. So, a conundrum. Suggesting asking friends to help would be greeted with hollow laughter - I don't have that many real-life friends and those that I do all work full-time and have large families to look after. And they hate gardening too.

Finally, the allotment isn't in my back garden. It's 5 minutes walk down the road. And even that's too far sometimes. If it was in my garden then I'd potter around in it on and off during the day - 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. If I wanted to I could go out to water in my dressing gown. And no-one would get all judgy about it.

But I do like the actual act of growing things, planting the seeds and (hopefully) eating the produce. *sigh*. I've got until February to decide what to do.

So, while I've been ignoring the allotment, what else has occupied my time? Playing the piano!!! I'm having a ball and have, frankly, astonished myself with what I actually remember, having not played the damn thing for 35-odd years.

One of the really lovely things about it is that I seem to have managed to impress TLH and, believe me, when you've been together for 17 years, there's not much that impresses anymore. I know he'd like to learn as well but, as is the way with human nature, doesn't really fancy doing it the hard way and having lessons to learn from scratch - he'd much rather just sit at the keyboard and be able to play (wouldn't we all?) but, unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. Still, I'm starting to teach him how to play Erik Satie's Gnossienne No. 1, little by little, and he's picked up the first few bars of the right hand melody quickly enough so it shouldn't be long before I teach him the left hand bass line and he has a go at putting them together.

For those that don't know, this is Gnossienne No. 1 - it's a fairly easy piece to learn, there's a lot of repetition of the same chords and the right hand only plays the melody line with no chords at all - it's a very pleasing piece to both listen to and play and only took me a couple of weeks to get to grips with:

I'm now learning Gymnopedie no. 1, which is the famous one that everyone knows, and also another Gnossienne, no. 3 this time, which I think sounds even more mysterious, ethereal and somehow melancholy but also uplifting. I think I like it even more than Gnossienne No. 1:

Also, I'm relearning a piece I was starting to learn back when I was 14 when I decided I didn't want to play anymore. It's a fairly standard Grade 5 piece called 'To a Wild Rose' by Edward MacDowell and it's really quite cheesily sentimental and nostalgic but rather satisfying:

The piano is set up in the dining room bit of our living room so it's easy for me to walk past it and 'just sit down for 10 minutes' which turns into 2 hours and means the washing's still not done and the dishwasher's still not loaded but, hey, I can now play that bit that was foxing me yesterday! Win! So, yeah, a massive time-sponge at the moment but I'm loving it so much that I don't care.

We also went to the Guildford Civic again last night to catch another orchestra on tour. This time it was the Czech National Symphony Orchestra playing some Dvorak and Brahms. Soloists were Nicola Benedetti on violin and Leonard Elschenbroich on cello.

I'll be honest, both TLH and I were a little disappointed. I think we were spoiled by the superb Moscow Philharmonic earlier this month with their spectacular violin soloist. This orchestra was smaller and seemed a little - how to describe it? - lacklustre? Just short of sparkling? Dunno. The Dvorak they played was fine and lovely, a couple of Slavonic dances to start with, and they finished with the New World Symphony which you would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by, but it was the middle thing that let it down a bit, which is a shame, because it was a Concerto for Violin and Cello by Brahms.

I don't think I care all that much for Brahms, and I didn't particularly care for this piece after nearly falling asleep in it. Admittedly the hall was very hot and I'd been awake quite early, but there didn't seem to be much going on to hold my attention. It was like a wave of warm, lush strings were washing over me which was all very nice, I suppose, but not terribly exciting. Some of the entrances by the woodwind section were a bit ragged as well. And I've no doubt that Ms Benedetti on her violin and Mr Elschenbroich on his cello were virtuosi, but they were both kind of lost in the piece. It didn't really do either of them any favours and didn't make either of them stand out. A crying shame really. I think a better piece could have been chosen if they absolutely had to play together. Even better would have been to have them play a showy-offy piece each, something that could have showcased their individual talents. Oh well, never mind. It was very interesting to be able to compare orchestras though. And there were more people in the audience this time, which was good to see although I did notice that they didn't give a standing ovation this time (unlike the ovation and 3 encores for the Moscow lot), so perhaps we weren't the only ones who thought 'hmm, 8 out of 10. Must do better'.

The next orchestra we'll be seeing in this season is the Russian State Philharmonic on 8 February who'll be playing the wonderful 'Masquerade Suite' by Khachaturian, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2. Let's hope they bring their A game.

Last night's gig

2011-10-03T13:02:00.000+01:00

Guildford, the nearest big town to where I live, has a new civic hall. The old civic hall was closed ages ago now and eventually knocked down and rebuilt. I spent a lot of time in my youth in the old civic hall. It was on the gig circuit so in the 70s and 80s everyone came to play there. I saw (in no particular order) Dr Feelgood, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, Lene Lovich, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cramps, The Police, Bauhaus, Toyah, The Jam, The Stranglers, The Vapors - I'm sure there are others but I can't remember. The Civic was a 40 minute bus ride from where I lived then, and it meant I got to see all these great bands without having the bother and expense of getting on a train up to London and then trying to get home again when the last bus had already left.

The old Civic Hall

But the building was getting on a bit and so needed to be replaced. This was never going to be a quick and easy thing, not when the Good Burghers of Guildford are involved. There would be wranglings over funding and size and parking, and so it came to pass. I think it's been at least 10 years since it was last open.

The new Guildford Civic main entrance, seen from London Road

Side exits, York Road side

Foyer

The new Civic Hall finally opened last week. I have to say, it is much nicer than the old one, but then that wouldn't be difficult. They have, though, given it the god-awful name of 'GLive', which sounds like a boyband to me. What's wrong with 'Guildford Civic Hall'? It's succinct and accurate, and anyone who's from around these parts knows exactly what you're talking about. But 'GLive'? Oh well.

So now they have to fill it with events that people actually want to go to. The initial programme was released and I have to say that my heart sank a little when it appeared to be full of the same sort of things that every suburban hall has on these days - some 'psychic', 60s bands touring to up their pensions, military bands, yet another touring production of Blood Brothers, an evening with a couple of football pundits, bloody Jim bloody Davidson - stuff that you can see in Woking or Aldershot, should you so wish. I'm sure this kind of stuff floats some folks' boats, but not mine. They are, however, putting on some decent stand up comedians (and I'm not including bloody Jim bloody Davidson in that, obv.) - Stephen Merchant, Jimmy Carr, Mickey Flanagan, Ed Byrne - so that's good, but where were the rock/pop/alternative bands? It seems I wasn't the only person with these questions and there was a bit of a correspondence about it in the letters pages of the local rag. To be fair, the manager did reply and say that as the Civic had been off the circuit for so many years now, it was going to be a while before the rest of the world realised it was open for business again and it started being included as a tour venue. Which I suppose is fair enough really. At least they've now got the Kaiser Chiefs coming next year, which should be loud and energetic (God, I'm starting to sound like an "old person").

But what I have been thrilled about is the classical music offerings. I've been wanting to go and see some big professional orchestras play for quite a while now, but for us we'd have to go up to That London. And sometimes that just seems like a lot of faff, not to mention cost. The South Bank is the nearest, most direct, decent classical venue for us but we'd still have to add at least 2 hours travelling time (hour there, hour back) plus the cost of the train tickets (best part of about £30) to the cost of the performance tickets, plus drinks and food when you get there and you're looking at little change back from a hundred quid. I may not be on my uppers but even that's pricey to me. The new Civic (I refuse to call it GLive - sorry) is 15 mins drive and tickets start at £19.50. That's about as full of win as it can get, in my book.

So I've been booking tickets to go to their International Orchestral Concert Season, starting with last night's performance by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. Inside the hall is as impressive as the outside:

We were sat right at the very back - where the cheapest seats are. I figured that, as it was an orchestra rather than a play or a comedian, it wouldn't be essential to see the faces of the performers close up - it's the sound that's important, so we were in the second to back row.

As you can see, the MPO is a big orchestra. I tried counting the players and there are at least 80, which is a hell of a lot of kit to organise and ship and insure. The logistics must be incredible. They played 3...um...things? I don't know what you call them. 'Pieces by 3 different composers' I suppose is better.

The first thing they played was Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet Suite, which you'll know. Here, listen to this youtube video, carry on past the two big opening discordant bits, and you'll get to something you recognise:

There, see, you know it, didn't you? I personally prefer the next bit after that, with the light, shimmering strings, it always makes me well up. Interestingly, it wasn't until I was looking for a suitable YouTube vid to show you that I discovered that Prokofiev used to be the conductor for the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, so it's fitting they should play his stuff.

Then they played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major with Nikita Boriso-Glebsky as soloist. He'd just started playing and after a few minutes I thought to myself "Wow, this sounds a bit like the theme to 'The Right Stuff'". And it was! 'The Right Stuff' is one of my all time favourite films of all time, and the bit that always made me cry was when the Mercury Seven emerge from a hanger in their silver space suits, in a row, walking in slow motion, and the impossibly heroic music swells [it's the bit that starts at 6:49 in the video below, if you're interested] and I just crumble. Every. Time. And here was this huge orchestra playing it for me. Right now. And I hadn't known. Blimey.

Plus the soloist was incredible. Obviously, as it was a big solo piece, it's unbelievable showy-offy, but that's what being a soloist is all about. And - feck me - he was good. See for yourselves, I found a YouTube clip of him playing the exact same piece in a competition in 2007 (but with a smaller orchestra):

How bloody fab was that? And how on earth do these people remember it all without the music? Amazing.

They finished off with Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Again, you'll know it. I managed to find another YouTube video but this time it's of the actual orchestra we saw last night, with the actual conductor, playing the actual piece they played (the conductor is Yuri Botnari, hence the name of the website). This is just the intro, but you'll know it:

The final 'picture' - The Great Gates of Kiev - ends with the boys on percussion banging hell out of tubular bells, a gong, timpani, cymbals and lord knows what else. Check it out from about 4:30 on this vid:

The most astonishingly heart-soaring and uplifting piece of music. TLH and I enjoyed it tremendously, which is, sadly, more than can be said for the rest of the population of Guildford, who seemingly preferred to spend the night in front of the telly watching X Factor or some other such bollocks instead of hearing properly talented performers. Mindless fuckwits.

This fantastic orchestra and performers were playing their hearts out to about 250 people. The hall will seat 1700. It was mostly empty. A crying shame, literally. But we 250 people gave them countless standing ovations and clapped until our hands were swollen. We got 3 encores for our troubles. It was brilliant.

I hope this lack of attendance can be put down to the fact that it was only the second classical gig in the new Hall and it just hasn't dawned on people yet that they now have this fantastic opportunity to hear some of the most extraordinary music and performers, right on their doorstep. TLH and I enjoyed it so much that we decided to book tickets for the rest of the season, so in a couple of weeks we're seeing the fabulous Nicola Benedetti and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra playing, amongst others, Dvorak's New World Symphony (which has particular resonance with me, being the first classical LP that my parents bought me); in February next year there's the Russian State Philharmonic Orchestra doing Khachaturian's Masquerade Suite and other stuff; March has Julian Lloyd Webber doing Elgar, Haydn, Barber and Mozart; April has the English Chamber Orchestra doing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and some Bach and Elgar and, finally, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra doing Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis & The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, and a couple of Beethovens. I can't wait.

Plus, to top off a fantastic evening, TLH and I stopped off for a bag of chips on the way home! Result!

"Rawl aht ver Barrel........"

2011-09-23T12:44:00.001+01:00

I've been hanging on to do this post and it's taken a lot longer than I thought, hence the radio silence. Actually there are a couple of things to tell you about but I think I'll split them into 2 posts. Sorry, boring administrative detail there. However, my blog = my internal monologue made manifest.

Remember my lovely new saxophone that I bought a little while ago, back in June? When I was in the shop - Chamberlain Music in Haslemere, Surrey - my eye fell on all the digital pianos and I noticed how small and neat they were and, more importantly, that you could play them with headphones and they'd be silent! I live in a small cul-de-sac that is packed with houses, we're all very close to each other, and the walls are not amazingly thick. And, naturally, in the summer everyone has their windows open and you can hear what's going on.

Generally, though, we're a very civilised bunch and are considerate about noise - I mean, I've only had to call the police out a couple of times over the 16 years we've lived here and that was due to more than noise, there was violence involved but I won't go into that here.

About six or so years ago, our immediate neighbours (we shared an adjoining wall) installed a piano in their study on the ground floor. It was a traditional, upright piano, and they started having lessons and then practising on it. Neither of them were absolute beginners, but I still got hear every single note. This didn't bother me, but it did underline to me how much noise travels through these houses. Because of this, I try to restrict my sax playing to when the neighbours are out. (The piano-playing ones moved out about 4 or 5 years ago, and the new ones don't seem to play any musical instruments at all). I am nothing if not considerate.

But seeing the digital pianos in Chamberlains got me thinking. I used to play piano in my very early teens - I can't remember exactly when, something like between ages 11 and about 14, I think. I had proper lessons and was studying for Grade V piano/Grade I theory when I got all teenage-flouncy about it and decided I'd rather spend my spare time hanging out down the park with boys than practising endless bloody scales. So I stopped.

Now, of course, 35 years later, I rather regret it. I didn't find it easy to play, it was not one of the instruments that came naturally to me (I'm better on wind instruments - recorder, clarinet, sax) but it taught me everything I know about the technicalities of music - how to read it, notation, theory, etc. So I started thinking. We don't have a lot of space in our house but these new digital pianos don't take up much room. The keyboard itself is a standard 88-key size but there are no strings, so there's no upright bit. The only space you need to find is for the width and depth of the keyboard. And I managed to find about 3 places in our house where one could fit!

I broached the subject with TLH and he seemed quite positive about it, so I said, as with my sax, I'd start saving up my earnings from jewellery sales and proof-reading, and I'd do some online research to find one that would suit my purposes. I decided I could live quite happily with a Roland F-110 digital piano.

I started saving but it was going a bit too slow for my liking so I negotiated with TLH and we decided that he'd chip in the rest of the money and I could have the piano as my Christmas present for this year. A bit early, yes, but what the hell? I never know what I want for Christmas so am, consequently, a bit tricky to buy for (unless it's books and CDs but they're a bit unimaginative), so this solves that problem! Hooray!

We popped back into Chamberlains on the Saturday before August Bank Holiday. TLH had not been there before and, like me the first time I went there, was entranced by all the different instruments in the showroom - everything from harmonicas to full size grand pianos. He picked up a ukulele and immediately got ribbed by the staff for playing the opening chords to 'Stairway to Heaven'!

(pic from "Wayne's World" for those bemused by the reference)

He'd not seen any of the digital pianos before so I showed him the one I was interested in so he could get an idea of the size, and a very helpful saleschappy ran through its features and showed us comparable keyboards. But my mind was made up, and so the order was placed.

Of course, things never really go smoothly, do they? It transpired that Chamberlains didn't have any in stock but they would contact Roland to deliver one to me directly. After a few days, Chamberlains emailed to say that, unfortunately, Roland didn't have any in stock either and were waiting for a shipment which should arrive within a couple of weeks!! I was peeved but, obviously, there's not a lot I could do and, in any case, I'd waited 35 years for a piano so what's a couple more weeks, huh?

2 weeks came and went, still no piano. Chamberlains chased Roland down for me and, finally, FINALLY, it was delivered yesterday. It arrived in a box the size of a coffin which took up most of our entrance hallway and weighed a bloody ton. Why, yes, that is my Bet Lynch leopardskin raincoat on the bannister...

There was no way I was going to be able to get that upstairs on my own, so I had to wait all day until TLH came home to nearly rupture himself getting it up the stairs.

We started to put it together:

And it fits exactly into the space I found for it in the dining room end of our sitting room:

My word it's a lovely thing. Chamberlains gave me a free bench (which is very well made and obviously would cost a few quid) and a pair of free headphones. Delivery was free too.

And this is the lid up:

Because it's a digital piano, it has all these 'voices' and settings so you can make it sound like a harpsichord or a honkytonk piano or even, should you so desire, a machine gun and a passing ambulance. Not sure what Mozart would say to that but TLH had a fine old time last night plonking around on it and playing with all its features:

Me, I'm just happy for it to sound like a piano, be silent when I want it, and to not take up too much room.

So this morning I've spent about an hour familiarising myself with the "joys" of scales. I bought myself a book of easy Grade 1 & 2 pieces and horrified myself finding out how difficult they are! Still, got to start somewhere, I 'spose, and Minuet in F is as good a place as any, although perhaps I have to be a small child to be able to play it properly as I'm nowhere near this good:

Ten Years Ago

2011-09-11T09:00:00.001+01:00

Like the lovely sas it hurts my heart to keep seeing pictures of planes hitting buildings but I can't stop watching. There will be many millions of words written about the tenth anniversary of 11 September 2011 (forever to be known as 9/11), all of them far more eloquent than anything I can come up with so I won't try.

I will say, though, that this week, ten years ago, TLH and I were on holiday in New York. He'd been a couple of times before on business, but I'd never been before. The weather was stunning, we stayed in a fabulous boutique hotel (The Hudson Hotel, right next to Columbus Circle), we'd met up with some old friends from University who had moved out to the States some years before and we had a rare old time doing all the sights.

One day, towards the end of our week's stay, we decided to jump on a bus and go down to the Battery to do the obligatory Staten Island Ferry trip and stop off at Ellis Island Museum. On returning to the southern tip of Manhattan,we wandered around a bit, and TLH stopped walking in a square with a metal statue of a man holding a large golden globe on his shoulders. He asked me if I wanted to go up 'there'. 'Where?' I said, 'up there', he replied, pointing directly upwards. I stared upwards and realised we were at the bottom of the World Trade Centre Towers. I hadn't spotted them. This may sound weird but there are so many tall buildings in NY that once they go above your eye-line, you don't tend to notice individual ones, unless you're specifically looking up. They were SO tall I could barely lean back far enough to take them in. They were intimidating and freaked me out a little. I remember discussing with TLH about the car bomb placed in the underground car parks at the WTC in 1993 and how lucky it had been that the buildings hadn't collapsed then as, seeing how tall they are in real life, the amount of wreckage and damage that would have been caused would be unimaginable. I also remember wondering if they'd ever caught the guy who had tried to blow them up.

It was very hot, I was tired, we'd been on the go all day and it was about 4pm, so I declined a trip to the observation deck. We'd also been up the Empire State Building the day before and I wasn't entirely sure that the vista afforded from the top of the WTC would have been all that different. I also clearly remember thinking 'I'll go up there next time we're here - after all, they're not going anywhere'.......

We left New York on, I think, 9 September 2011.

This was the photo I took from the Staten Island Ferry. Within about 3 days of this picture being taken, the Towers were gone.

My Desk

2011-09-10T14:05:00.005+01:00

Hello! Been a while, hasn't it?

I'm not very good at keeping up a steady flow of writing. I'll post something long-winded on the blog and then be quiet for weeks, then post a few shorter ramblings, then be quiet again. It doesn't mean I'm not doing stuff that I could turn into a blog post, it's just I can't be arsed. And I'm finding as I get older, I can't be arsed even more.

There are some 'ta-dah' posts in the offing, as I've recently started doing cross-stitch and am enjoying it very much. But I'll post more about that later as, today, I want to introduce you to my desk.

I was reading Belgian Waffle's post about her newly-excavated desk and, at the end, she asked "What do you have on your desk?" and I thought "You don't wanna know" and then changed my mind because, well, someone might be interested plus it's a record of what I was doing at this time on this day, so this is a post about my desk(s). With pictures. Lots and lots of pictures.

In our house there is a tiny third bedroom upstairs. It will take a single bed and a chest of drawers and that's about it. I use this as my 'study' although it's known as 'the Jewellery Room'. Because this is where I make my jewellery. My husband is Welsh and very literal and very logical, which, I'm sure you'll agree, are admirable traits to have, and which I am trying to emulate. I do other things in the Jewellery Room apart from making jewellery - I keep my lovely saxophone in there so it doubles up as a music practice room. We keep most of our DVDs in here too, as well as my wool stash, so it trebles up as a storage room. We have yet another computer and printer in here so this is where I do my 'serious' typing, i.e., "proper" correspondence, blog posting, etc., and where I fiddle about with my photographs online as well, so it quadruples as, um, a room where that sort of thing happens.

Anyway, some pictures, I think:

This is the view from the doorway. As you can see, I have two desks at my disposal. The one to your left is my main desk, where I construct jewellery. The one on your right is used for cutting and gluing glass. It also has drawers that have collapsed as it is an old crappy desk that is falling apart (a bit like me, really). The eagle-eyed amongst you will also notice my lovely sax sitting in its stand. It's a lovely, lovely thing *wistful sigh*.

Behind the door is hanging pouchy thing that contains various stuff, such as old jars, a rolled up poster of a Dale Chihuly glass exhibition that I really must get round to framing sometime, my old Pentax ME Super SLR camera that I got from my mum for my 21st birthday and hanging on the wall is a framed poster of an album cover from one of my favourite bands of all time, Magazine:

Signed by the band, no less (this says 'Howard Devoto'):

Moving round, we have an Ikea spice rack that makes ideal shelving for small jars for beads, pearls, etc. It's not terribly clear but tucked into the top is a postcard of Mnajdra Temple in Malta, built in 2800BC, which I visited a few years ago, and hanging from the shelf is a papier mache, black and white painted mask from Singapore, given to me by an old boyfriend. Oh look! There's the computer screen with Belgian Waffling's actual post about her desk!

Then we come to the actual work surface of my main desk. Oh lordy. Yes, I know it's cluttered, clutter is what I do and I do it very well. There are two lamps, a bead design board, tools in pots and glasses, jars and pots full of pearls and semi-precious stones, and tucked in the far right is my mini hi-fi/DAB radio with my iPod perched atop.

On the wall above my main desk is a monthly calendar and various images that I like comprised of birthday cards, postcards (from the Royal Academy and Sedona) and photos that I've taken.

Above the photos are a couple of shelves that house my ring binders, magazines, speakers and other stuff.

The top shelf has a couple of my very favourite things, an Elvis Cow and my 50p stuffed Piranha:

This brings us round to the windowsill which, you'll be pleased to hear, I recently spent several hours tidying. There's a money box in the shape of a lady's head that I've had since I was about 9 years old and is one of only two things I've still got from my early childhood (everything else someone either threw out or gave away), there's a Mexican votive candle in a tall jar with a Union Jack flag, a large flat curved bean thing from Hungary and another candle stuck into it, a small picture of an Andy Goldsworthy installation, four empty jars, a plastic dinosaur, some old business cards and a tape measure. All most useful, I think you'll agree.

In the middle of the windowsill is my badger skull:

And now we swing round to the other desk. This is where I cut little pieces of glass that will then go into my glass kiln down in the garage to be fused, so there's a cutting mat, metal ruler, glastac glue, various other glues, cutting implements, small sheets of glass in plastic containers. When I took this picture I had also just been sorting out some necklaces in preparation for my next craft fair - these don't usually live on this table. There's also a sort of black metal tree display unit thing which currently has some of my fused glass window jewellery hanging from it, and leaning against the wall is a photo I took at Avebury in the winter of 2009 of a standing stone viewed through wintry trees:

In the picture above you can just make out my earring stand, here's a better picture, including some pieces that I'm gluing together, ready to go into my stock - earrings, rings and brooches:

Next to this desk there is a tall set of shelves that houses boxes of necklace/bracelet boxes on the top shelf, more pots and stacks of containers full of beads:

And then lower down are our DVDs and CDs, and on the floor in front is the bag that I cart all my jewellery around in, with a toolbox perched on the top. And, no, I'm not going to explain the NSFW card of Gay Biker Jesus on the wall (I would just say, though, that you can double click on all the pictures in order to get a really good, close-up view...)

And finally, looking back through the door, on the left there is a large square wicker basket which I use to store my old hard copy photographic prints, on which is a framed photograph of my late father, a birthday calendar above that, and above the light switch is a painting I did. On the door of the cupboard are photos (of TLH) and postcards (of engravings by Norman Atkinson).

Finally, and as if I haven't crammed enough stuff into this room as it is, there is often to be found a large, elderly, grumpy, arthritic cat, usually in the most awkward places possible, either behind the chair where he's in danger of being rolled over:

Or right under the desk where's he in danger of being trodden on:

So, then, that's a tour of my desk(s), I'll bet you're feeling a lot happier about your so-called 'clutter' now, aren't you?!?

A day out!

2011-08-14T11:20:00.001+01:00

I'm shattered.

Sylvester, our ancient and noisy cat, was very good and let me lie in until 7 this morning (he's normally grumbling at us by around 5.30) but, even so, it feels like I spent last night on the piss. Which is odd, really, because yesterday was spent with the inestimable Katyboo (plus friends and family) doing very genteel things like going to the theatre and eating cake. I'm such a lightweight.

I spent the morning at home alone as TLH had returned to his native homeland in order to construct flatpack furniture for his mam and stay over, and he left at about 7.30. I got the 10.28 up to Waterloo, then the tube to Leicester Square and pootled about until our scheduled meeting time of 12 noon outside the theatre. I was a little concerned that we'd not recognise each other but bearing in mind that my deciding to slap on some unaccustomed makeup plus my pink hair resulted in me ending up with a more than passing resemblance to Ronald McDonald, there was little difficulty in them spotting me in the heaving throng of bloody tourists.

It was a very nice surprise to discover that the Boo clan does actually exist and aren't just a figure of my deranged imagination. And it shouldn't really have been a surprise to me to find that, literally within 5 minutes of meeting for the very first time, Katy and I were chatting about how much more perky properly fitted Rigby and Peller bras make your boobs.

Indeed, conversation between the 5 of was free ranging and organic, and included (but was not limited to) the following:

Whether or not the old Queen Mary had been given syphilis by her husband
The wisdom of importing Nazi memorabilia from Germany in order to make a killing (sorry) on eBay
Why crowns aren't more acceptable as everyday wear
That antique bakelite and diamante jewellery should be worn for doing the housework in
My inability to tap dance properly - I can do the feet but not the arms, and perhaps I'd be better suited to Irish riverdance stuff
Whether we could set up Katy and her dad in a shop to read tarot cards and do spiritual readings
Why 'esoteric' bookshops always smell of soap (it's the incense)
Pondering whether anyone was going to order 'Sauteed Dragon Whiskers with Two Kinds of Preserved Egg' on the menu
Or, indeed, the 'Braised Duck's Web with Fish Lips'. For realz.
That you can change the sex of Gecko offspring depending on whether the egg is kept hot or cold.
That someone has seriously misunderstood the meaning of the word 'diet' if they think that includes the consumption of a large pork pie
The makes and colour of various combine harvesters
Back in 1981 seeing Donald Sinden in blackface playing the lead in Othello, depicting the mad scene by just waving his hands around a lot and moaning
The wisdom of trying to save money by constructing a much-needed neckbrace from (unused) old-style sanitary towels with loops and then being sent to school in it by your mother
Whether it would be possible to convince one's husband to wear a bandalero made from (unused) Tampax

....and so on.

Should you get the opportunity to meet Ms Boo in the flesh, I would highly recommend it for, not only is she most entertaining, she knows where the good cake shops are, a skill to be much admired and one in which I am sadly lacking.

The play? You want to know about the play? Okay. We saw Dr Who and Donna in 'Much Ado About Nothing' at Wyndhams Theatre. Now it's well known in Jones Towers that my critical faculties are sadly lacking - I enjoy pretty much everything; I'm very easily entertained. And I thoroughly enjoyed this - yes, there was some scenery-chewing and a fair amount of slapstick but it all worked really well, and the cast looked like they were enjoying themselves too. The audience gave them a standing ovation which, for a Saturday matinee two-thirds through the run, is good going. Needless to say, reviews have been terrific and tickets are like gold dust but if you can get one, do go, it's terrific fun.

And my day ended with being able to get home in time to watch on the Proms the National Youth Orchestra playing Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet suite which had me snivelling like a baby.

All round, a bloody fab day!

Finally did it.....sort of....

2011-08-12T16:34:00.001+01:00

I wrote this post over a year ago. It was a post about dying my hair properly pink. I was umm'ing and ahh'ing about it but decided I would probably do it, when I finally plucked up the courage.

I finally plucked up the courage. And it's sort of worked. But, hey, look, I took pictures to show you the progress. However, a bit of backstory first:

I decided last week that I'd had enough of shoulder length hair. It clogs up the bath plug. It makes the back of my neck hot which means, every summer, I have to sleep with it pinned up high on top of my head. It takes an age to dry and I hate, hate, hate it hanging all wet and limp around my neck but I also don't like using a hairdryer. The plus points to having long hair is that it doesn't cost you anything at the hairdresser because, um, I didn't go to a hairdresser. When the ends got splitty or the fringe too long, I just took a pair of scissors to it myself, and job's a good 'un. Or, at least, a respectable 'un.

Having a complete restyle in a fancy schmancy salon would cost an arm and a leg but I found a friend of a friend who works in a salon during the day and does private customers (clients? patients?) after work for a very reasonable price. So I contacted her and she came round on Wednesday this week and she hacked it all off.

In the back of my mind I'd been preparing for this, and the subsequent bleaching and dyeing, so had been growing the old colour out and letting my natural, fag-ash grey colour dominate, so that I could start from a clean slate, as it were.

Anyway, this is what it looked like before I let Hannah get her magic scissors on it:

Sort of fairly nondescript, shoulder length bob that's pink at the ends but greying on the top.

Hannah then did this to it:

And suddenly I was turned into my mother. This is no reflection at all on Hannah's skills as I think she did a really good job, it's just, all of a sudden I seem to have developed the neck of an almost-50 year old woman which had been successfully hidden by lots of hair before, and even though I am an almost-50 year old woman, I don't really want any of her bodyparts knocking around - know what I mean? The haircut itself was fine but I was just not sure about it. I felt a bit 'mumsy'.

TLH arrived home, though, and decided he loved it and made me put my new sunglasses on so he could take a picture and, I must admit, it doesn't look too bad here, but then I always look better slightly out of focus:

Thursday (yesterday), I decided I might as well slap the bleach on that I'd bought and see what happened. If I didn't like it, I knew I'd got some brown hair dye and also some Eastern European hooker purple colour hair dye in the cupboard left over from when I used to dye it that colour, so, if the worst came to the worst, I could always use either of those.

When I used to bleach my hair totally peroxide white, back in the 80s, I used to use a brand that didn't have added colour - the idea was that you bleached the feck out of your hair, then added the colour that you wanted. And, stupidly, I thought that was what I had bought this time. Turned out it was a brand that had a colour already in it. In this case it was 'gold'. Oh well, I thought, let's give it a go and see what happens.

So onto my head it got plastered while I sat and watched a minor black and white Alfred Hitchcock flick on the box ('Shadow of a Doubt' with Joseph Cotton - pretty good, actually):

(By the way, these are all pictures that I took of the process to send to TLH during the day, so he could see what I was up to!).

The end result was quite interesting, a sort of pale goldeny biscuit colour. And because I had so many different colours in my hair to begin with - naturally dark, grey, silver white, pink - it looked like I'd had highlights:

I actually quite liked the colour, and was half tempted to keep it. But then I knew that was not going to fulfil my dream of having pink hair so decided that I'd carry on with my plan.

This morning, Friday, I had to nip out to run a few errands before I got down to it, so it eventually took me until lunchtime to get up to the bathroom, brush in hand.

This is the colour I'm using - Special Effects Atomic Pink:

Which looks blood red in the bottle and is, actually, that colour when you put it on, but comes out pink.

I'd squirted out about a third of the bottle into the bowl, loaded up the dye applicator brush, raised it to my head and then stopped. I almost, ALMOST bottled it, right there. I started wondering what the hell I was doing? What was I trying to achieve? For Christ's sake, I'm forty-bloody-eight years old with the figure of a grandmother, not some willowy eighteen year old art student. What if I hated it? What if it looked really, REALLY stupid?

Then I remembered that it's just hair, it grows out. And I have two packs of back-up 'normal' hair colour that I can use if I freak out. And - okay, I admit it - while I do want people to notice me, I really, honestly don't give a toss what they think about me; I just don't want to be invisible. Zandra Rhodes is my role model.

So I took a deep breath and started plastering it on:

No going back now! Oh God - what have I done?????

You're supposed to leave it on for 15 minutes, and the colour will be brighter depending on how porous and/or bleached your hair is. I left it on for 45 minutes, as I wanted to be sure the colour was as strong as it would go.

You know what? It's fantastic:

I think it would have been even brighter if I'd managed to get my hair peroxide white to start off with, rather than biscuity golden, but I still think the colour's pretty good. Plus it's actually brighter pink in real life, and, yes, I know there's gratuitous cleavage in that shot - don't say I'm not generous to you all...

So here I'm looking like my mum still but at least I'm ROCKING PINK HAIR, DUDES!!!

And here's a final, glamorous, sunglasses shot which I think is pretty cool and badass, melonfarmers!

I'm now feeling MUCH happier about the haircut and am pleased I plucked up the courage to go ahead with it. Admittedly, I haven't left the house yet to show it off in public but I'm off to London tomorrow to finally meet up with the fragrant Ms Katyboo for the first time so she'll be one of the first of my friends to see it and have her retinas burnt out!

Who, me? Overshare? D'you think?

2011-08-05T14:11:00.003+01:00

I had a bit of a first today.

Today was the very first time I've done housework in the nude. Yes, you read that right, completely starkers. Before you think I've gone all German and naturist on you, I shall explain.

I've started running again. I had a bit of a hiatus - throughout the whole of May, June and half of July I only ran 8 times which averages out at about 1.25 runs per week, which is a bit rubbish really. But the weather was often against me and then I sort of 'forgot' that I was supposed to be running. The weather from mid-July, though, has been much improved. Plus I also remembered that I'd got a portable blood pressure monitoring machine so thought I'd better check it one morning a coupla weeks ago and it was a bit higher than I would like. Admittedly I'd woken that morning with a tickly throat and had, in fact, just had a massive and prolonged coughing fit before strapping on the armband, which can't have helped, but even so, I thought, time to step up the running again.

So I'm trying to get back into the habit of going out if not every other day (it's best not to run every day, a day's break in between is optimal for muscle recovery, etc., and, yes, that does include shamblers like me) then the day after that - what's that, every 2 days? every 3? It's maths and counting, I can't do maths and counting, but you know what I mean - run on Monday, rest Tuesday, possibly go out Wednesday and, if not, then definitely Thursday (but Wednesday if I feel up to it), you get the picture.

At the moment I'm averaging around 1.8 miles per run but I'm also suffering from bloody shin splints again and the only 'cure' that I can find online is 'don't do too much, or go too fast, too quickly' so I'm trying to keep the pace slow but steady so it doesn't get too painful. Therefore I'm resigned to not seeing the far side of a 2 mile run for a very, very long time, but that's okay. Slow and steady will get there, I hope.

Anyhoo, I went out this morning at about 9.30am and went my usual route - down the road, into the meadow, along the path down the edge of the poppy field (which, this year, had no poppies in it but was spectacular last year) and into the corn (maize) field which has grown as high as an elephant's eye. I wonder what variety it is since it's MASSIVE. The corn I grow at the allotment is lucky to make it to 5 feet tall but this stuff has to be 7 or 8 feet tall. I usually get through one of the cornfields before the voice on my C25K iPhone app chimes in with 'you are halfway through your workout', which is the cue for me to turn round and head on home. It was a lovely morning, blue sky, sunny with scuds of cloud and just this side of bearably hot. I shambled home, sweat literally pouring off me, shut the front door and plonked myself into the chair in our hallway while I checked the stats on my iPhone (I'm SUCH a geek) and took my shoes off.

It dawned on me then that we'd left our sitting room curtains closed this morning (we often do this as the sun comes up on that side of the house) so rather than go all the way up two flights of stairs to strip off my sodden running gear and then eventually traipse back down two flights of stairs with it to put in the washing machine, I could take it all off in the hallway and just load it into the washing machine in our ground floor utility cupboard right there and then. Head on upstairs, pass through the sitting room (on the first floor) and carry on upstairs to the bathroom for a shower; curtains are closed, no horses (or neighbours) would be startled by the amazingly pink and wrinkled suit I was apparently wearing, job's a good 'un. So mote it be.

I was on the final, skyclad, approach to the bathroom when I suddenly realised that I had told myself that I was going to do the hoovering today. I'm not very good at doing housework - I have a bloke's natural inability to see clutter and dust and stuff and so it doesn't bother me. Until it does. Like now, when the cat gets stuck to the floor because it's so sticky and we're fending off giant tumbleweeds of his discarded cat hair spiralling around in various corners when there's a draught. I know I have to get the hoover out but I hate doing it - a three-storey house has a lot of floor space and two flights of carpeted stairs are a right pain in the hole to do. Plus - and this is the whole point of my rambling - hoovering always, always gets me very hot and extremely sweaty - I've been known to need a shower after doing it.

You're ahead of me, aren't you?

I had a lightbulb moment. I halted my progress to the bathroom, turned back and headed off into the garage to get the Henry. Stark bollock naked.

Took me about 40 minutes to hoover everything and, yes, I did get very hot and sweaty again, and I felt perfectly justified for doing it au naturelle when I felt the big trickles of sweat running down from under my giant lolloping boobs (can I offer you some bleach for your mind's eye? It's just over there, help yourself...), knowing that it wasn't soaking into the clean clothes I'd have put on following my post-run shower because I wasn't wearing any and I hadn't had one! Hooray!

So that's how I spent my morning - how was yours?

PS. Yes, of course I had a shower afterwards - I'm not completely without standards, you know!

PPS. I'm getting all my hair cut off next week. Finally. After threatening months ago to do it, the time has finally arrived.

Which wolf to feed?

2011-07-28T09:21:00.001+01:00

I'm not given to airy-fairy, arty-farty New Age bollockspeak but occasionally - just occasionally - I read something that makes me stop and think for a second (and then continue on my normal, ramshackle way).

I read this today and I'll just leave it here because I actually quite like it:

”My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is  Evil. It is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies, &  ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility,  kindness, empathy, & truth.” The boy thought about it, and asked,  “Grandfather, which wolf wins?” The old man quietly replied, “The one  you feed.”

Still here!

2011-07-25T11:52:00.001+01:00

Blimey. Where has the last month gone? 'I have no bloody idea' is the answer.

My blogging mojo left me yet again. I'm not sure it's returned yet either, but I thought I'd better check in. I shouldn't think anyone's noticed I'd gone quiet again, after all I'm not the most prolific blogger on the planet.

So what's been happening with you all, mes amis? It's got to that time of year where those of you with mini-me's are all caught up with end of school/beginning of the summer holidays madness, aren't you? Meanwhile, life rumbles on at its inexorable pace here at Jones Towers. The Lovely Husband is still working and earning some pennies - which is good - at a job he's not enjoying very much - which is bad - to which he is driving the Little Car every day - which is good - but occasionally the traffic coming home is so bad it takes him nearly 3 hours to get home - which is awful, frankly. The contract he's on is due to end fairly soon, and he's looking forward to not having to work there anymore, but he thinks there's a distinct likelihood that it'll be renewed again for another few months. And in this economic climate, you'd be an idiot not to accept the renewal. Poor lovey, I do feel sorry for him.

And what am I up to just now? Well, following all the excitement of joining The Fugitives and playing a couple of gigs in the last few months, no more gigs have come along (although I've been looking and sending out emails) so it's all gone a bit quiet on that front. I've no doubt there'll be more at some future point, it's just getting them that's the problem.

However, if you can be arsed to go back a couple of posts, you'll see that I referred to my good friend Bev having a suggestion about a new musical venture she thinks we should explore. She finally got round to telling me about it and, I believe, it has legs. She's suggesting that we set ourselves up as a sax duo (her on tenor and baritone, me on alto), playing along to backing tracks. We would play soul, easy listening, familiar tunes and having the backing tracks means you don't have a full band behind you, meaning that we'd be cheaper to hire than a full band (being only a 2-piece). We could play in smaller venues and at places that just wanted incidental music, such as wine bars, art galleries, that sort of thing. See what I mean? It might work. My only real concern is my actual ability to play that well - doubts that I expressed to Bev and which she, very kindly, dismissed out of hand.

I'm willing to give it a go but I will need a LOT of practice. To that end I've downloaded about a dozen tracks so far to play over - stuff like Fly Me To The Moon, Cry Me a River, Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps, Dock of the Bay, Rescue Me - soul tunes that we play in The Fugitives but also other well known songs. I may even sing some of them but I'll need to see how Bev feels about that. She's heading back to Cape Verde in a few days and will back mid-August so we'll put our heads together when she returns. I'll keep you posted.

My new saxophone is still very lovely but also appreciably heavier than my old one and, consequently, is putting a much greater strain on the back of my neck when I use the standard sort of neckstrap. It's been giving me backache and neck strain, leading to some very unwelcome headaches. I've decided to get a harness instead so the weight is distributed across the shoulders rather than the back of the neck - like this:

In fact, this is the very one I've just ordered. It's specially designed for women so hopefully it'll cope with my matronly boobshelf. Bev uses one for her Baritone, but it's standard to use a harness for those because they're huge instruments and very heavy indeed, it's not so common for an alto but if it means less trips to the chiropractor for me, then that's all to the good.

Hmm, what else? Oh yes, I had a MUCH better day at the last craft fair in Alresford that I did - the one before that I only sold one pair of earrings for £8.50 - I whinged about it, if you recall - but this time sold just over a hundred quid's worth! There's no predicting how the British public want to spend their money and it's a waste of time trying to second guess them.... But obviously I'm pleased they're spending again (well, they were in July at least) because I'm now saving my money to buy yet another musical instrument!

Yes, I have my eye on a digital piano now. I used to play piano and had lessons back in the late 1970s in my early teen years, and I got up to Grade V before jacking it in. I can remember reading not very long ago some article, though, that said many people who gave up playing the piano in their teen years come back to it at a later date, and I think that's true, at least in my case. I may have come back to it earlier but, as far as I was aware, pianos only came in Grand, baby grand or upright versions, were big and heavy and were LOUD. I didn't have the room anywhere in my house to put one and, almost more importantly, I was painfully aware of how annoying the sound of constant scales and wrong notes would be to my neighbours.

Then I saw the digital pianos in Chamberlains when I was scouting for a new saxophone. And I was stopped in my tracks. Digital pianos have no need for strings and hammers so the only space they take up is the size of the keyboard itself. These were neat and tiny by comparison but still had a full-size keyboard. One of the sales chappies spotted me lovingly stroking one of them and wandered over for a chat. He explained that there were several sound settings one could choose from, but the main piano sound had been recorded from a Steinway Grand. Then he said the magic words, "and of course you can practise silently on it". Seems there's a couple of jacks underneath where you can plug in headphones, and bash away at the keyboard as loud as you like and no-one else can hear you! Brilliant!

There are actually quite a lot of digital pianos on the market, some of which are very expensive, but I just want an ordinary bog-standard piano, that sounds authentic, takes up little room and plays silently. I have my eye on this little one, a Roland F-110. It's only 1.3m long and just over 300cms tall:

With the lid closed it has a flattish top and looks a bit like a console table:

And because it's their entry-level piano, it's not too badly priced at £799 if you go to Chamberlains showroom in Haslemere (online practically everywhere else - and shops too - it's priced at £849). Now I'm not denying that this is a lot of money, because it is, but it's cheaper than a brand new traditional upright piano and don't forget it takes up much less room than a traditional upright and it's silent! Plus, being digital, you can also record from it onto a computer via some sort of lead out the back or something, but that's TLH's domain and I'll leave him to figure that out.

We've identified 3 or 4 places where one would fit in the house so now it's just a question of saving up my pennies (I'm just over a quarter of the way there), asking for contributions instead of christmas presents and adding birthday money and it shouldn't take too long before I'm boring myself stupid playing scales but without annoying the neighbours!

Finally, I've been very slowly working on a crocheted shawl for the winter. So far I've made cushion covers, three blankets, a couple of scarves, some flowers, a beanie hat and some hanging decorations, but my eye was captured several months ago by a Japanese flower design:

Beautiful, isn't it? So I decided I needed one of these in my life, and then I saw a version made in mohair which just blew me away:

And so I got myself some balls of Rowan Kidsilk Aura which is made from 70% kid mohair and 30% silk and, consequently, frightfully expensive. I'm using three shades - a plummy purple, a watermelon pink and a powder pink. I need to make around 40 of the flowers and I'm up to 10 now, I think. Anyway, this is what my flowers look like:

And this one gives you a better idea of the fuzziness of the mohair:

I haven't found the mohair to be that tricky to work with although undoing stitches if you've gone wrong and have to redo them is a pain as the little hairs all wrap around each other, so you need scissors to give them a trim but I'm liking the way this is going so I'll post pics when it's done.

Oh, now look, I have nothing to say for weeks and then I just ramble on. Imma shut up now as I need to put the kettle on and deal with an ancient cat who firmly believes there's not enough cream in his life and never fails to tell me at every opportunity....

Ooh - shiny!

2011-06-27T13:21:00.001+01:00

Remember in my last post I mentioned spotting a secondhand Yamaha YAS62 sax in Chamberlains music store in Haslemere?

It's now resting gently in its stand in my living room. Yes, gentle reader, I went back to the shop two days later, gave it a good blow in their practice room (which was more like an unsoundproofed storage cupboard, frankly) and decided that it was infinitely better than the student horn I've been using since the 1980s.

Here she is, in the case she came in, which was pretty beaten up. Fortunately they gave me a free lightweight Reunion Blues gig case which has a strap so you can carry it on your shoulder or across your back.

Taken outside in the sunshine, on the bridge. She's in very nearly almost perfect condition, there's just the smallest dent above the thumb rest on the back, but she was secondhand so small imperfections are to be expected.

Just look at that beautiful, almost Art Deco-style, swirly, curvy one-piece key guard that just swoops around the bottom and up the front of the bell - gorgeous.

The sax is an instrument that's crammed with pads and buttons and levers, but it is actually easier to play than it looks - if you can play a recorder or, perhaps, a clarinet, then you can play a sax.

It's maybe not terribly clear in this photo (you can click on the pics to make them bigger) but the bell of the YAS62 is engraved with swirls and stars.

It's a professional standard saxophone as opposed to the student version that I've been using. This means that it's been built to a great level of accuracy, there are more keys and levers than my old one and - what surprised me - it's appreciably heavier. This indicates to me that the metal is thicker which will affect the tone of the instrument - a richer, heavier sound. It sounds like an alto sax should.

Some more photos, I think - indoors, this time:

The buttons here are Mother of Pearl, and these are the ones that are played with the left hand - index finger on the top button, middle finger on the third one down and the ring finger on the bottom one that is at an angle. Your little finger operates the collection of four keys (that are in a sort of circle arrangement - called spatulas, I believe) below and to the right (in the picture) of the bottom Mother of Pearl key. The three levers on the right, a bit higher than the spatulas, that look a bit like snakeheads, are called palm keys and, as the name suggests, you operate them with your left palm. There are similar sorts of key arrangements that you operate with your right hand, below all this lot.

I suppose it is a bit complicated, really.

One more look at her on the sofa.

The sound is noticeably (to me, anyway) different from my old sax, although I'm not too sure about the mouthpiece. There are any number of combinations of style and size of mouthpiece that can be used with at least 5 different thicknesses of reed, all of which will affect the sound you make, so that's a whole other area I suppose I ought to wade my way through.

Anyway, I just thought I'd show you my new acquisition - the single most expensive thing I think I've ever bought (possibly more than my first ever car!) I'm definitely getting it insured, probably by joining the Musicians' Union.

So all I need now is some gigs to play it at!!

A week of ups and downs....

2011-06-20T17:25:00.001+01:00

I felt very miserable on Saturday. The Lovely Husband and I were at the craft fair in Alresford, Hampshire. We go here about 7 or 8 times a year. When we first started there, about 4 years ago now I should think, our takings were really good, easily just into three figures almost every time. Then the economy died on its arse and my takings there have become erratic.

But guess how many things I sold on Saturday.

One.

One single, solitary pair of earrings.

For £8.50.

We sat there from 8.15am until 4.30pm and I took just £8.50.

Sigh.

Plus the table space cost me £16 so, effectively, I made a loss of £7.50, not to mention the cost of the petrol to get there. Worst craft fair I've ever done, anywhere.

Double sigh with added tutting.

I almost wish I'd sold nothing at all, but I still have that joy to come.

I know I can't force people to buy my stuff, especially when it's so unnecessary to one's everyday life - as my mum says (she's also in the craft game, she does fabulous decoupage on stuff) "We're not making sausages", in other words, people are more likely these days to spend their hard-earned on food and fuel than on decorations for their house or person.

Sigh.

It just all seems like a massive waste of time. However, I shall plod on, not least because it will get better towards christmas - and as tomorrow is Midsummer Day, it's all downhill to christmas from then on - but I have a large stash of beads, pearls, crystals and semi-precious stones that I need to use up! Plus I'm registered with the tax people in order to pay National Insurance Contributions so that my full state pension is guaranteed, and so I need to produce annual accounts for them, which means I need to sell stuff in order to have something to put in said accounts. I don't make enough profit in order to pay any tax, mind you, but at least I'll get enough of a pension when I'm old and grizzled to be able to buy my tins of cat food. So that's okay.

Secondly, today I had to go to the dentist to have a big job done. One of those ones that they insist you book an hour's appointment for. I have to have an 'on-lay' which is not, apparently, the same as an 'in-lay' (of which I have one) or a crown (of which I also have one). It's sort of half-and-half. It's a big bottom left molar which has a decades-old filling in it that's starting to leak, and there are hairline cracks appearing on all four side, so an on-lay sort of holds the tooth altogether. I'm typing this with half my face feeling all fat and numb, hoping the anaesthesia will wear off soon so I can have a cup of tea without fear of dribbling it all down my matronly shelf-boob, or biting into my tongue.

Actually, my dentist is terrific - although he ought to be, at the prices he charges. It being a private dental clinic it is, of course, more like a fancy spa than those terrifying NHS clinics of your childhood that were all painted institutional green and smelled of antiseptic. At my clinic they have a hypnotherapist available to help you get over your dental fears, and an in-house reflexologist (for some reason). All the hygienists wear colour co-ordinated scrubs, and they pipe Brian Eno's Ambient music into the treatment rooms.

I currently have a temporary crown thing on the tooth in question and have to go back in 2 weeks to have the new porcelain on-lay fitted, and that tooth should last me for at least another 20 years.

Just down the road from the clinic is Chamberlains, a large music shop. I've never been in there before so I thought I'd wander down there for a poke around. It's a big shop, filled with all sorts of instruments, including brass and woodwind. And I espied, in a display case, a secondhand saxophone of the exact make and model that I think I'm after! For a reasonable price! Sadly, having a numb face meant I would not be able to take it for a test blow, but I think I may well come back in a few days and ask if I can try it out and see what I think. Excited!!!

I texted Bev (my lovely sax playing friend) about my find in Chamberlains and she rang me when I got home to tell me that she's had a brilliant idea about another musical venture that she and I can do, but she wouldn't tell me what it was!! Such a tease!! She said she wanted to think about it for a few days yet, and then we'd meet up for a coffee and she'd tell me what she thought. She did ask, though, what kind of music I most enjoyed playing - I told her that I actually enjoy most things but it's more a case of whether I'd be capable of playing it.

Intriguing. I shall keep you informed.

So, a week of ups and downs - Alresford = bad; dentist = bad but necessary and not too horrendous in the end; potential new sax located = exciting; Bev's plans = intriguing. Plus it's Glastonbury on the telly this coming weekend which TLH and I always enjoy watching.

How's your week been so far (and it's only Monday!)?

Emerging from the darkened room...

2011-06-14T10:27:00.002+01:00

So the gig last Friday night was brilliant. Wedding receptions are always fun events because everyone is (generally) happy and up for a good time, so you could probably just stand there and play on a comb and paper and people would still dance. If they've had enough to drink.

This had been quite a posh wedding, by the looks of the outfits. The bride looked lovely and had on a very nice frock, and the main blokes were in tails. None of the guests looked like they'd stepped out of a Big Fat Gypsy Wedding - not that there's anything wrong with that - but those receptions or parties are the ones that are, generally speaking, more likely to get a bit lairy and fighty which, while probably a bit entertaining to watch from the sidelines, can tend to ruin the atmos somewhat. And then you can't get out of the carpark due to the ambulances and police cars.

The reception was being held in the undercroft restaurant bit at Clandon House. I didn't take any photos (not really the done thing if it's not your wedding or you're not a guest) but I found some on the intertubes:

Front of Clandon House

Inside the Undercroft (note the fine mustachioed pillar!)

Dancing in the Undercroft

As you can see, the ceilings in the Undercroft - which is basically a tarted up vault or cellar - are low and all the surfaces are hard.

There was no platform - let alone a stage - for the band to stand on but this isn't actually a problem. However, a proper PA system had been hired with monitors for everyone and, this time, I got my own microphone rather than having to share one with Bev, and there was proper lighting! This all meant that the sound, from the point of view of the band, was fabulous, because we could all hear each other and I was able to ensure I was in tune and sounding less like a honking goose than last time!

Mind you, it got bloody hot, mostly caused by the lights, I think. At one point the sweat was running down the arms of my glasses and as I bent forward, dripping like a faulty tap all over my boobs! Which sounds quite porny really but wasn't. I'd sorted out a better outfit to wear for my second gig so I looked less like a middle-aged Surrey housewife who had wandered by accident onto the stage, and more like I ought to be there. I got myself a 50s style top - in fact, this one:

Which I wore with a leopardskin pencil skirt:

Black fishnets with black kitten heel sandals with very pointy toes (a fab charity shop find):

I did my hair a bit like Mary Tyler Moore, a flippy 60s style, a little like this:

My hair's actually a darker shade of pink than this but the style is almost exactly what I did.

A fantastic look, I think you'll agree, but - in reality - only if you're half the weight I currently am. Admittedly, due to reasons (more or less) beyond my control, the exercising has had to take a back seat for the last few weeks so I'm going to have to ease myself back into it again, plus I'm going back on a semi-Atkins diet.

I did the full, proper Atkins a few years back and it worked really well, I lost over a stone (14lbs) but I couldn't keep up the strict removal of all carbs, so they started creeping back in and now my weight's back where it was. And it's too much, really. I ought to lose a couple of stone but I know how hard that is, so I'll be happy for just one for now. Trouble is I'm fighting the menopause (which is notorious for weight gain) and I come from a line of very big women - I have one aunt who has had a gastric band and another who ought to have one - plus the polycystic ovarian syndrome means I have trouble with insulin resistance which converts all sugar to fat - resulting in it being really difficult for me to lose weight. And, yes, I do know the whole eat less + move more = weight loss but for some people that doesn't seem to work - when I started running a couple of months back, I was running at least 2 miles three times a week, going swimming as well, and cutting down on my food intake and in about 6 weeks of doing this guess how much weight I lost? Not. One. Pound. Seriously. And how demoralising is that?

Ooh, I've gone off on a tangent about weight loss, haven't I? How very dull for you all. My apologies.

Anyway, the gig was fab, the audience took a little bit to get warmed up but once the alcohol started flowing and the buffet got underway, they packed out the floor and there was plenty of dad dancing going on. I mostly remember the lovely little dark-haired girl - who couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 years old - who was absolutely fascinated by me and Bev playing our saxophones. She stood right in front of us, with a very serious little face, scrutinising us thoroughly, for almost half the gig. I kept smiling at her but getting no smile back, so she was obviously in deep thought mode. The feminist in me rather hoped that she was taking on board the fact that it is perfectly acceptable these days for females to play in bands, doing something else other than singing - I can imagine the other little boys at her school (who are all naturally misogynistic at that age) telling her that 'girls can't be rock stars - only boys!' and I hope she remembers us and puts them right.

Licensing restrictions meant the music had to be finished by 11.30, and it took me another 45 minutes to get myself packed up and sorted before I left. Fortunately the venue is only about 15-20 minutes from home so I was sitting on my sofa with a cup of tea by 12.30.

Churt Village Fete was the following day and I woke up feeling really rather crap. I hadn't really had enough sleep and, despite not a drop of alcohol passing my lips the previous night, I felt rather hungover. Playing on stage, in a hot sweaty room, and getting one's funk on, is a strenuous business but because you're enjoying it so much, you don't feel it at the time. Certainly hits you the next day, mind. And I'm old enough to be a grandmother these days so my recovery time is not what it would be for a 24 year old. But, luckily, Churt Fete is only for the afternoon and we didn't need to get there until 12 noon.

We were extraordinarily lucky with the weather - it had been peeing down all the week before, and, indeed, there had been some spots of rain on Saturday morning, but it held off entirely for the afternoon, before starting to rain again in the evening. The good weather certainly helped to bring out the punters - this was the third year I'd done a jewellery stall at Churt and there were definitely more people there than in previous years. And they were in the mood to spend money - hooray! My new sax fund has been swelled appreciably. The only bad thing about doing these village fetes is that we always, ALWAYS consume too much. Both TLH and I came away from this one feeling most definitely poisoned, and it was all our own fault.

We just can't help ourselves - we started at about 1.30pm with a fantastic carrot cupcake with cream cheese frosting and a less successful cranberry muffin each from the cream tea stall. Then at about 2.30 the scouts' barbecue started serving, so I had a hot dog with onions, mustard and tomato sauce and TLH had a cheeseburger with all the trimmings. At about 3.00 we each had an ice cream - toffee flavour (with lumps of real toffee) made by local producers Meadow Cottage Farm who use cream from their Jersey cows. It's spectacularly good stuff. At about 3.30, TLH disappeared and returned with Pimm's for us. Then, at about 4.30, as everyone is starting to pack up, someone from the WI came round with a fantastic home-made Black Forest Gateau cut into slices saying that it was left over and did we want a slice for 25p each? How could we not? It was unbelievably good but, by then, I couldn't finish my slice (not surprising really).

And on top of all that, TLH had already made a visit to the WI cake stall early in the afternoon to choose a cake for us to take home. I'm looking at it now, sitting on the table, still covered in clingfilm and untouched. It's now 4 days old and I'm not sure that we're going to eat any of it.

So, yeah, Atkins diet for me for a bit.

So Churt was on Saturday and Sunday was meant to be Chiddingfold Festival. We've done Chid for the last 6 or 7 years and it's never been rained off, but I think this year was the first. The weather report for Sunday looked like torrential downpour from sun-up to sun-down. But, as you know, British weather can turn on a sixpence so we decided to leave everything packed into the car and reassess in the morning. However we only got as far as Saturday evening before deciding that, frankly, I was too exhausted to do Chiddingfold and that we'd give it a miss this year. The organisers don't lose out on any money, though, because I'd had to pay for my pitch in advance, but I reckon it was worth the loss to me of £15 so that I could have the day off. I was a bit conflicted, though, because last year I'd made a lot of sales and if the good people of Chid were in as much of a spendy mood as the good people of Churt had been, then I was waving goodbye to a darn sight more than £15. But TLH had said he didn't want to do Chid and I knew how tired I was, so that was that.

And then it absolutely chucked it down all Sunday afternoon so we ended up feeling quite smug while watching old films on the telly in the dry and the warm, knowing we'd made the right decision.

A busy weekend then. And I have another craft fair next Saturday so this week I'm going to have to make more stuff for that, plus there's always work to be done down the allotment and it seems I've been sweet-talked into trying to find new gigs for the band!

Ooh, that reminds me, if any of my lovely readers know of any small/medium sized live music venues near them that might be suitable for us, then please leave a message in the comments. Just to remind you of what we sound like, this is the Fugitives website (which hasn't yet been updated to include me!) - really, anything you can think of.

Busy, busy, busy!

Bloody Hormones.....

2011-06-07T20:41:00.000+01:00

I am busy this week. Very busy.

My next gig with The Fugitives is this coming Friday. It's a wedding reception at Clandon Park, near Guildford, and that's all I know about it just now. But that's okay, I'll be told in the fullness of time exactly where I have to go and at what time. In the meantime, the Fabulous Beverley popped over yesterday afternoon for us to have a run through of the sax parts. She plays tenor and baritone, and I play a lowly alto. This will be my second gig with The Fugitives and we only had an hour or so to practice together before the first gig, so we're determined to sort out our harmonies, and solos, and so forth. We only managed about 90 minutes before her phone rang with another request for a taxi - she drives a taxi for a living at the moment while trying to find a job more closely aligned to the music industry. But what we managed to sort out sounded good. I mean - really good.

My confidence is getting better each day. We're trying to get at least one more session in before Friday and, this time, I'm going over to her place, which I can't wait to do as she's just moved into a houseboat on the Basingstoke Canal as a housesitter for a year while the owners go travelling! I'm so jealous!

So there's that. And then my brother asked me to make him some cufflinks to go with the suit he's wearing to a family wedding (on his wife's side) this coming weekend. This has taken a stupid number of days to accomplish - he wants purple ones. Purple dichroic glass is a fickle beast. I made two pairs of cabochons - one more blue-purple, the other more pinky-purple. I couldn't capture the colour differences enough in a photograph (this is common with dichroic glass) so I decided to just post the two pairs to him so he could compare them to the purple dress his wife is wearing as head bridesmaid (or whatever they're called - Maid of Honour? I dunno). I posted them Friday, just before he told me he needed them by Wednesday evening at the very latest, so fingernails were bitten to the quick while waiting (and hoping) that Royal Mail could get them back to me in time.

They arrived this morning so I was able to glue them to the cufflink backs and, hopefully, they'll be properly set by Wednesday.

And not only do I have a gig this coming Friday, but I have Churt Village Fete on the Saturday and Chiddingfold Festival on the Sunday to do. This will be the third year at Churt but something like the sixth at Chiddingfold. Admittedly I've not sold very much jewellery this year but I still feel like I've got to make some new stuff just in case the villagers go beserk and buy everything I have. Not likely I know, but you never know. So I've been making some new stuff - if you're interested, it's on my VenerableBead website.

As well as this, the annual inspection date for the allotments has been announced as 28 June and I've been trying to get down there as often as possible, practically every day, each time for at least a couple of hours. It's exhausting, but I need to weed and cut the grass and get all my seedlings in and, at least, make it look like it's being cultivated so they don't throw me off. It's bloody hard work but the benefit is being able to eat your own vegetables, which we did last night - harvested and cooked my own broad beans and they were damn yummy.

So I was down at the allotment this afternoon and I remembered to take my iPod with me in order to listen to some music I downloaded a few days ago. The first album was 'Just Another Diamond Day' by Vashti Bunyan, a folk singer from the sixties who has recently had a resurgence in popularity. And it almost instantly reduced me to tears. Her voice is so unbelievably pure, and the songs are full of innocent yearning to return to the land, she sings about travelling on the road in a gypsy caravan and rescuing animals on the way. And I sobbed and sobbed. It was completely unexpected and took me utterly by surprise.

I'm not a crier. Never have been. I can vividly remember having a word with myself when I was about 12 years old and deciding, there and then, that no-one would ever see me cry. It's a sign of weakness that I won't allow myself. And mostly I've stuck to that over the years, except when confronted with severe emotional pain (death, divorce, infertility) or when blindsided by hormones.

I remember when undergoing my various rounds of IVF, in each cycle there was at least one day when I found myself uncontrollably sobbing my heart out for no good reason at all. It transpired that this was always during the phase when the injections were putting me into artificial menopause.

And, of course, these days there's nothing artificial about my menopausal symptoms, so all I can assume is that this caused my sudden fit of inexplicable sadness and the clear sweetness of Vashti Bunyan's songs just pushed me over the edge. Such as this one, 'Jog Along Bess' - have your hankies ready:

Guildford Castle

2011-06-05T17:59:00.002+01:00

Today it's raining. Hooray! This has been an incredibly dry year so far, with more than a hint of 1976 about it. The soil at the allotment is little more than dry dust these days, which is just blowing away in the strong winds we've also been having. So all told, I'm quite happy that it's more than a bit damp.

I digress. Sort of. It may be raining today but yesterday was lovely. Warm, blue skies, fairly breezy and just lovely, really. TLH suggested that we popped into Guildford for the morning, mostly to get out of the house but also because he had a new phone that does contactless payments that he wanted to play with and I quite fancied visiting the wool shop and getting some balls of Rowan Kidsilk Aura (I hear the sighs of 'oohs' and 'aahs' from fellow knitters/crocheters) to start making a shawl in a particular Japanese flower pattern. This won't mean a damn thing to those of you not of the yarny persuasion but let me just tell you that Kidsilk Aura is made from 70% kid goat mohair and 30% silk, and is as soft as the belly fur of a long-haired cat. And because it's mohair, there's a kind of haze around it which makes it even more fluffy. The particular Japanese flower design to be crocheted took the intertubes by storm a few months ago but it's taken me until now to get myself sorted.

I'm going to make something that looks a bit like this, but in different colours (the ones I've chosen are plum, a pale sugary pink and a more vibrant pink):

And the shawl will eventually be this size:

I digress again. Well, it's Sunday, it's raining and there's nothing but 'Carry On Cabby' on the telly so my brain's wandering a bit. Anyway, it's a nice shawl, innit?

So, to get back to yesterday, we puttered off in the Little Car to Guildford and I went to the wool shop, then we wandered down to the Apple Store and stroked the lovely, shiny Macbooks and iPads. TLH used his phone to successfully pay for something small from Pret a Manger (hooray! It works!) and then we decided to go for a coffee in Tunsgate Square. For once we decided to sit outside the square and while I was waiting for TLH to return with my latte and one of the cafe's yummy chocolate croissants, I took this photo on my phone:

It's perhaps not terribly clear but in the centre right of the picture there's a tree with yellow leaves, yeah? You see that? Right. Well, behind that and slightly to the right of it you can see part of a tall building with what looks like a cage on top? Got that? That's Guildford Castle, that is.

When TLH returned and we'd drunk our coffee and nommed our croissants, I said to him, 'Do you know, I've lived in this area for 44 years now and I've never been in Guildford Castle'. 'Neither have I', he replied. I told him the Castle was set in some nice parkland with old-style municipal flower beds and we should just nip over there and have a look.

So we did. Sadly, the beds hadn't been fully planted up yet so I didn't bother taking any photos but as we were wandering around, we decided that, as we happened to be there, and it was a nice day, and as we hadn't anything pressing to do, we might as well actually go inside the Castle itself.

If you're not fussed about history/archaeology, then you can skip this part.

The Castle was originally built by William the Conqueror (or possibly his brother, Odo) not long after 1066. It's a traditional square keep, built on top of a motte (a mound) and surrounded by a bailey (grounds around the motte enclosed by a wall). The keep had a ground and first floor with the entrance located in the first floor to aid in defence. It was most likely used as a private apartment for the King. On the first floor there was a main chamber, a chapel, and wardrobe with latrine. A second floor was added shortly afterwards containing a two-seater latrine (so you chat to a mate while both having a poo! Classy....). The roof of the building was made of lead and the inner walls were covered in plaster and then whitewashed. It was built on the lower slope of what is now Pewley Hill and is quite close to the River, which it would have overlooked at the time.

Various Kings of England were involved with the castle, both in living in it and fortifying it from time to time, but it was never attacked. If you want to read more about it, you can check out its Wikipedia entry.

The ground floor has a small information area with display boards telling the history and models showing what it used to look like. There's an outdoor staircase that goes up to the first floor and the main entrance to the little Castle. It's basically just a large single room with high ceilings with three teeny, tiny rooms leading off. One is thought to have been the King's bedroom but, honestly, it was so small there was barely enough room for a full grown man to lie down. Then there was a large inglenook-style fireplace that had another small room leading off which may have been a wardrobe with the loo (i.e., a shute to the outside) inside. The third very small room was the chapel which may have been used as a jail cell at some point. The prisoners carved graffiti into the walls (click on any picture to make it bigger):

From this chamber on the first floor there's an incredibly narrow metal spiral staircase that takes you up to the roof. This is the metal cage that you could see from my first photo. The views over the town are pretty good but, for some reason, I didn't take any pictures of it. To be honest, I wasn't thinking of doing a blog post about the castle at this point so didn't consider that other people might like to see. Sorry. But I found one on the intertubes:

(That's Guildford Cathedral on the hill in the distance. Yes, the same one that caused Damien the young Anti-Christ to freak out in the original film of 'The Omen'. It'll do that.)

These, however, are my pictures of the view looking the other way, towards the Surrey Hills in the distance:

From up on the roof we could see down into the Castle grounds and spotted what looked like an interesting sculpture tucked away in a corner of the gardens, so we went back down the spiral staircase, through the main chamber and back outside.

To get to the sculpture, it looked like we needed to pass along an open tunnel that connected the Castle grounds to the bowling green:

(Not my photo but shows entrance to the passageway)

(This one is mine, though - further along the passageway)

The passageway goes up slightly and when you emerge at the other end, you find yourself in the gardens where we had seen the sculpture from the top of the Keep. Turns out it is a representation of Alice Through The Looking Glass:

Guildford has a strong connection with Lewis Carroll/Rev. Charles Dodgson because he rented a large house which butted up to the Castle grounds for his sisters. Although he never actually lived in Guildford himself, he visited his sisters frequently, and this is, apparently, enough of a connection for the worthies of Guildford to lay some sort of claim to him. To be honest, they haven't made much of a song-and-dance about this - as far as I can see there's just this sculpture in the Castle grounds and another down by the river that looks like this:

It was a really nice, impromptu little trip out, just being a tourist in my own town!

No Buyer's Day for me then......

2011-06-03T11:44:00.003+01:00

I haz a sad.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 2011 opens in a few days time and I'm still waiting for my Buyer's Day invitation. Like I've had for the last two years. It's still not arrived. I can only imagine they've somehow forgotten to put it in the post to me. It surely can't be anything to do with the fact that I've not bought anything directly from the Exhibition for the last two years but have, instead, gone directly to the artists - can it?

Last year when TLH and I went we said we wouldn't go again next year (i.e., this year) because Buyer's Day is always packed and there's no air conditioning, so you're fighting your way through the crowds to try and get into the Small Weston Room to look at paintings/prints that might actually fall within your price bracket, while trying to look at the little catalogue and simultaneously try and hold a pen (to mark which pictures you like in the catalogue) and a handbag all the time trying to ignore the relentless trickle of sweat running down your back and into your bum cleft. Classy, eh?

But now it's here again, and I don't have a free invitation, and I'm looking at stuff about it all online and feeling terribly wistful. I also can't afford anything this year as I'm saving up for a new saxophone. But - dammit - I like looking at art. And I know that the second most popular blog posting I've done has been to do with the Summer Exhibition, so I know my readers like me going too. (My most popular blog posting is the one on how to make blackberry vodka, so at last my readers have the priorities straight).

I do think I want to go, but it will be on an ordinary day. I'm going to try and persuade TLH that we should drive the Little Car up to the London, rather than go on the train. This is because it costs so much now to get there by train - easily approaching £40 return for the two of us, yes, that's off peak at the weekend too - and the Little Car is so economical that it would probably cost a quarter of that in petrol. Even taking into account parking costs, it's got to be cheaper. However, the downside is that he wouldn't be able to drink so a boozy lunch/dinner would be out of the question. Still, I'll put it to him and see what he thinks.

We used to drive up to London a lot, in our 'courting' days (what a fabulously quaint expression that is...). We'd just become a couple and used to decide to go up to London to catch the midnight showing of some film or other on a Saturday night, stopping off at Dunkin' Donuts just off Piccadilly Square at about 2.30am and getting home an hour later. We've not done that in years, and it was such fun, driving around London at midnight in the summer, with the windows open, listening to the sounds and smelling the smells of a capital city at play. Anyway, I'll see what he says. And if we do go, I promise I'll take sneaky photos again for you all.

Fame at last for The Artist?

2011-05-26T20:20:00.000+01:00

My ex-husband, The Artist, has recently signed to Ugly Models - a modelling agency for people with interesting (i.e., normal) faces and bodyshapes - and was successful in auditioning for a Heineken advert. I'm really pleased for him and I hope he gets more work from it.

And here it is - he's 'The Magician' that appears about 40 seconds in. And, yes, he is rocking the William Hartnell look:

Quick hello....

2011-05-26T09:46:00.001+01:00

I've got the painters in. Literally. For both meanings of the word. I won't bore you with the miniutiae of my pre-menopausal innards other than to say that, at my age - thirty-eighteen, since you were wondering - changes are seemingly occurring. I can't wait for it all to stop altogether. The ability to reproduce seemed to bypass me entirely and babies failed to appear despite bucket loads of money being thrown at my uterus so now I'd just rather it stopped entirely.

I have a weird relationship with children - no, not like that. When I was little and growing up and, indeed, all through my first marriage, I never, never, ever wanted children. Ever. I was more than happy to be, what the Americans term, 'childfree', a term that implies there's a choice involved. My first husband ('the Artist') was of a similar mind. We were busy creating art and making music, and there was no room for anyone else and it was good.

Then I met The Lovely Husband. And all my friends started spawning, and I contracted 'baby-rabies'. I wanted to join the club (literally). I wanted to know what our children would look like. Unlike the Artist, I knew that TLH would make a fantastic father. I wanted his babies desperately. And they failed to arrive, month after month after month after month. From 1996 to 2001, doctors were consulted, surgery was undertaken, money spent - a great deal of money. I did manage to get pregnant twice but the first was ectopic which had to be removed in an emergency operation, and the second was miscarried at 6 weeks. All I ended up with were scars on my belly, a smaller bank balance and a massive sense of loss.

We decided to stop treatment as the emotional toll was getting too great, and I'm sensible enough to realise there's no point throwing good money after bad. I had, I think it was, 3 embryos still in the freezer after my last round of IVF and I just couldn't face trying one last time with them so I decided to donate them to research, then I knew it would be over. I could have left them where they were for a few more years until I'd decided to have another go but I'd had enough by then. The weird thing is that it was never entirely discovered why I couldn't keep a pregnancy, there was nothing particularly obvious. We found out I do have fairly mild polycystic ovarian syndrome but that was the only thing.

I had friends who didn't understand. One of my closest friends who, ironically, had much greater gynae problems than me but still had children easily, told me that she thought I'd given up too quickly. Funny - I don't remember how much money it had cost her to get pregnant or how many painful injections she'd had to give herself or vaginal ultrasounds she'd had to undergo, or how many of her parents were dropping hints about how lovely it was to have a 'big' family (actually I do, it was NONE AT ALL). And adoption was never going to be an option for us - we'd considered it and decided against it.

Yes, it still bothers me. But the loss of your future family is not exactly something you just 'get over'. Most of the time I'm absolutely fine and, frankly - seeing the problems my friends are now having with their teenage children - thanking my lucky stars that we didn't manage to have kids. But I can't help wondering what it would have been like, to have a house bustling with activity, with your kids' friends coming and going, the potential for making new friends for myself at the school gates, all that sort of thing. I've never had that. So I've filled in my time with doing lots of other stuff, things I wouldn't have been able to do if there had been ankle-biters around. I went to university and got a BSc and an MA. I started teaching. I took up horse-riding (for a while). I taught myself to make jewellery and started a business. I took on an allotment. I spent time with my camera. I paint (occasionally). I taught myself to crochet. And now I'm playing in a band again, at nearly 50 years old.

I have another friend who, I suspected, was envious of all the things I did until I explained to her a couple of weeks ago that I did these things to fill the void that my children should have filled. She was surprised that I still felt like that, but, then, she's had her kids in her life for the last 16 years and can't imagine life without them.

So I think I probably now class myself (if I have to class myself as anything at all) as 'childless' rather than 'childfree'. Because I've had no choice.

And now I'm approaching the 'crone' phase of my life and, if I'm not going to be a mother, then it can't come too soon, to be honest.

Blimey, that was unexpected. I was going to mention the house being painted but I shot off at a tangent there, huh? Still, this is my blog and I'll say what I want - it's still cheaper than therapy.

So, the house is being painted! Yay! We've been here for 16 years now and, apart from having new double glazing put in several years ago, and TLH redoing the bridge recently, we've not done a damn thing to the outside. Yes, we're slackers. But our neighbours had theirs done last summer so I got them to give me a quote to do ours, just like a proper grownup. And they've been here all week and doing a fab job, and they're lovely boys too. They're the politest painters/decorators I've ever met - and The Artist's 'proper' job was a painter/decorator so I've met (and worked with) a great deal of them - effusively grateful for a cup of tea, they don't swear (which is extraordinary), they don't have a radio on and because there's no radio, there's also no out-of-key singing at the top of their voice! I know! Amazing!

So I'll give them a plug - if you're anywhere near Godalming in Surrey and you need the outside of your house decorating or maintaining, then you will definitely do a lot worse than get a quote from Adam at www.a-w-cleaning.co.uk.

This has been a Public Service Announcement.

Friday the 13th - a good day for some...

2011-05-13T16:31:00.001+01:00

*Blogger has a bit of a spasm at the end of last week so this post should have been put up on Friday 13 May. Just pretend you've gone back in time to read it....*

Well, I’m having a good day today, even if it is Friday the 13^th. Not that other days recently haven’t been good (and some haven’t, with a vengeance, I’ll explain in a bit) but just right now, here, this morning, I’m having a good day.

The weather has been just lovely and that always, always helps. It’s been pretty bloody magnificent since the beginning of April and there doesn’t seem to be much sign that it’s going to stop either. At least until we get to late July and August when I expect it’ll start raining and not stop until October. Ah well, ‘twas ever thus with British weather – enjoy it while it’s here.

I know the blog’s been pretty quiet since the last post (well, duh…) but you know what I mean. A few things have happened – we bought a lovely new (to us) car, a little black Smart car. It’s teeny, tiny on the outside but is genuinely like a Tardis, inside it easily fits The Lovely Husband, who stands 6’2” when he kicks his slingbacks off, AND there’s just enough boot space to take our weekly shopping, so it’s win-win! It’s hugely fun to drive as well – because it’s so small and light it goes like poo off a shovel when you put your foot down.

We’ve managed with just having one car for the last 14 years because, up until now, TLH was commuting to work in London on the trains so didn’t need the car. But lately he’s been working in a location that is very difficult to get to by train so has had to take our one car with him every day. This has been fine as long as the contract was only going to be a few months – I can walk into the nearest town if I need anything and get the train if I want to get anywhere else – but the contract has been extended and I was beginning to feel the loss of the car. Plus what would happen in an emergency? If I needed to get somewhere really quickly? I’d be scuppered.

Also the only car we had is a shamefully gas-guzzling Range Rover. I make no excuse about owning one since it’s AWESOME but it does appalling mileage to the gallon. This was just about okay when TLH was in London as the car was only used, at most, a couple of times a week, so we could put our first world, privileged blinkers on and just about justify it to ourselves. But doing proper commuting in it, 60-70 miles a day, was costing us an arm and a leg in petrol. So we pondered about what kind of small car to get and ended up investigating the Smart cars.

We needed to see if TLH would fit into one (no-one we know has one so couldn’t ask for a quick sit to try for size), so we found the nearest dealership to us, which just happens to be the Mercedes Benz World over at Brooklands in Weybridge.

Blimey.

This is a somewhat different place to your usual garage forecourt with a row of secondhand cars parked outside. It’s an extraordinary place – it’s built in the middle of what used to be the Brooklands race track and there’s some sort of airfield there as well. But there’s a race track there as well as an off-road track and a skid pan. It’s the sort of place where you can do ‘experiences’ – usually bought as Christmas/birthday presents for blokes – and get to drive massively expensive cars at stupid speeds. Fun if you like that kind of thing.

Anyway, we found that we both fit nicely into the Smart Cars so decided to take the plunge and buy a secondhand one. We’ve had it for a couple of weeks now and we LURVE it. It’s a bit like driving a go-kart for grownups, costs tuppence ha’penny to fill with petrol and uses very little of it to go long distances.

It’s on the driveway right now, looking like the Range Rover’s baby – look, see here:

We’ve rather unimaginately christened it ‘Little Car’ and the Range Rover is now the ‘Big Car’. TLH wanted me to take a picture of them both with a cardboard box next to them, for a really rather tortuous joke relating to the Rave era**

Mind you, it’s not all been new cars and bad jokes at Jones Towers, I have just got over some kind of very nasty stomach bug. It was very, very painful and felt like it could either be Norovirus or, more alarmingly, another bout of mild Pancreatitis but, weirdly, without the additional symptoms of either, i.e., vomiting and the squits. It just hurt. A lot. Lasted about 5 days and has now gone. No idea what it was but just be warned, it could well be something going around, and I don’t recommend it.

It caused me to basically just sit on the sofa and watch old movies for the last 5 days, which is not a bad thing in itself and, frankly, an ideal way for me to spend my day anyway, but it did mean that I couldn’t spend any time at the allotment and we’re getting perilously close to the annual Inspection Date. This is where bigwigs with clipboards come along and inspect your plot to make sure (a) you’re cultivating it and (b) it’s not too overgrown. I’d pass (a) but fail on (b) rather spectacularly at the moment, so I need to spend more time there just doing the bastard weeding. Oh well. I managed to spend 3 hours there yesterday afternoon and got some more beans and some courgettes in. I just have to gird my loins and resign myself to spending more time there next week. But I’m glad I managed to get some work done there this week, stomach bugs notwithstanding.

And this morning/afternoon finds me in my jewellery workshop, with an elderly, overweight, arthritic cat at my feet, making some new things to put on my stall for this coming Saturday. I’m hoping to be able to sell at least one or two things but the credit crunch has hit craftspeople VERY hard – as my mum says ‘what we make isn’t sausages’, which (a) you can’t argue with, as my stuff most definitely isn’t a pork product and (b) means that people would rather use their hard earned cash to buy essentials, such as food, rather than splash out on frivolous jewellery. I’m just very grateful (and lucky) that I don’t need to sell my jewellery to make ends meet, and all the money I make from it is going into my new saxophone fund.

And while I’m making new stuff, I’m listening to BBC Radio 6, which I love. It’s like listening to my iPod on shuffle, and plays enough new music to keep me interested so that I’ll go off and download it.

As I said, it’s a good day today. And it’s Eurovision at the weekend! Yay!! What more could I ask for?!?!?

_______________
** 'Big Fish, Little Fish, Cardboard Box' was a sort of dance move at the time. Hard to describe but you can read more about it here if you are that desperate to know. Saddo.

London Archaeologist

2011-04-24T17:49:00.001+01:00

Apart from me doing my first gig in 23 years last weekend, it being my birthday this week, us buying a new car, and the weather being unbelievably fabulous, something else happened that was also quite exciting. Well, to me at least.

As I've banged on about in the past, I used to be an archaeologist. Between 1996 and 2006 I got myself a BSc (Hons) and an MA, I went on digs and I taught adult education courses and lectured to undergraduates. Then the University where I was teaching decided, in its wisdom, to close down all the archaeology courses, at the same time as the County Council also cut funding for adult education and, bang, that was it. The end of my burgeoning career as an academic. And because I was only at the beginning and hadn't had very much experience, I couldn't just walk into another job at another University because (a) all the other Universities were also cutting their archaeology courses so there were myriads of far more experienced lecturers than me all going for the same jobs and (b) the ones that might still be teaching were much too far away, i.e., Exeter or Durham. So I drifted away from it, saddened, because I had really enjoyed teaching, but wiser for having got myself a real proper edumacation and ending up with both a science degree and an arts degree. I am so smart. S-M-R-T.

Anyway, one of the digs I went on was at Tolworth in South London in 2000 and 2002. One of the main lecturers on my BSc course lives in Tolworth and had been aware all her life of all the lumps and bumps in a field just off the A3. She'd done shed-loads of historical research on it and felt fairly sure that it could have been the site of the medieval moated manor of Taleorde with a possible associated medieval village. The site was investigated by Kingston upon Thames Archaeological Society (which has the fabulous acronym of KuTAS - yes, really, 'cute ass'), and the (now disbanded) University of Surrey Extra Mural Archaeological Society (UniSEArch) which I was on the committee of at the time.

The dig in 2000 went on for six weeks and because my knee joints, back and neck aren't very happy when I kneel on all fours on the ground and trowel away for hours at a time, I specialised in working in the Finds Hut, which is the location for everything that the diggers pull out of the ground, and where it's all washed, identified, dated, tagged, bagged and recorded. It's less physically demanding than digging but it's still busy and you need to be incredibly organised and good at identifying and dating stuff.

What I also decided to do was produce an online Dig Diary. This was in the relatively early-ish days of the internet but, at that time, I was fairly experienced in building web pages. One of the other diggers also owned one of the first commercially available digital cameras which he very kindly offered to lend me so I could take loads of photos to upload to the website. The Dig Diary is still available online but some of the picture links are now broken (just the earlier ones, almost all of the later ones are still there, from Friday 28 July 2000 onwards) and I do actually cringe when I look at the design but, like I said, this was 11 years ago so be gentle when judging my web page skills!

Anyway, at the end of last year I got a phone call from the curator of Kingston Museum saying that they were putting together a display of all the Tolworth Court Farm artefacts and asking for permission to use the online photographs, and if I still had electronic copies of any others. Naturally I gave permission but sadly I couldn't find the disks that had the electronic copies. She also asked me if I would like to come along and help them set up the display as I would have first hand knowledge of the artefacts. Unfortunately I wasn't free on the set up days so couldn't help but was flattered to have been asked.

And then about 2 months ago I received an email from her saying that the 2011 spring edition of the magazine 'London Archaeologist' was going to have an article all about the Tolworth Court Farm dig and they'd like to use one of my photographs, if I was happy to give copyright permission! Ooh, one of my photos in a publication! Of course I said 'yes' and filled in the forms they sent me and returned them.

I subscribe to London Archaeologist anyway so was thrilled when it landed on my doormat about 2 weeks ago! And, indeed, there on page 335 was my photo, reproduced in colour and in pretty good detail. And I'm damn glad I got all my angles and verticals properly aligned in it too!

I've been meaning to scan the article so I can blog about it since it arrived but I kept forgetting, so this afternoon I took some iPhone photos (which might be a bit dark) so I can finally get round to sharing with you this small triumph of mine:

The front cover of Spring 2011 London Archaeologist. The picture is of a 2nd Century Roman bronze mount found at Syon Park.

The article

Map showing the site location. The roundabout in the top left hand corner is where Tolworth Tower is. The site itself is in the bottom right hand corner, cross hatched in red.

My photo! With a credit and everything. The picture shows part of a line of postholes that were filled with late Iron Age and early Romano-British artefacts including the ubiquitous pottery, cattle bones and, more rare, a melon bead fragment.

I'm a published photographer! Sort of. No, I am, really. Not that I get any money for it or anything, and it's just a single photograph in a minor and specialist publication, I realise that but, hell, if I can't blow my own trumpet, no-one else is going to.

It's been an exciting few weeks here at Jones Towers.....

Happy Birthday to me!

2011-04-23T23:51:00.001+01:00

Today is my birthday. It has been a very nice birthday, complemented by the unbelievable weather we've been having. Today it was 28 degrees centigrade (that's 82 degrees Fahrenheit). I'll just remind you folks that it's April, not August. We've also had not a drop of rain since I can't remember and the ground is dry enough to just blow away. TLH said he'd heard something on the news the other day about the reservoirs only having 80% of the water they should have at this time of year, so unless we get some persistent downpours soon, it looks like we're heading for another hosepipe ban within the next few months.

Anyway, this year I didn't buy myself any fancy presents, unlike last year when I took my saved up pennies to London and became the proud owner of a Mulberry Bayswater handbag. I'm currently saving up for a new saxophone but as that's likely to be a four-figure sum, it's going to take me a little while to get there. But TLH did give me a long sleeved specialist running top and a couple of books off my Amazon wish list - 'Just Kids' by Patti Smith and 'One' by David Karp. And my lovely friend Sam brought me a bunch of yellow lilies. I know some cards have got caught up in the post, what with us all being unable to move for bank holidays round here, but the ones I have received have been funny and lovely.

However the most exciting thing we did today was to buy a new car!! Unfortunately not as a present for me, more's the pity, but as a main commuting car for TLH. The cost of the petrol consumption on our old Range Rover has been killing us for the past few months and we've been debating replacing it with something newer and far more economical. But then the contract he's been working on has been extended, possibly until the end of the year, and while the contract was only a few months, it was possible for me to exist without the use of a car, but this has started to get old now, and there's places I'd like to go that I just can't get to using public transport. So we started thinking about getting a second car, one that TLH could use that would be small, efficient and economical, and I'd get the Range Rover back.

We umm'd and ahh'd, and thought about and discarded almost as many cars as you could think of and then, for some reason, at the beginning of the week we started talking about a Smart car. You know the ones - little upright 2-seater jobbies that have been around for a few years now but are still iconic and cool. We did some research online and discovered they're made by Mercedes Benz and although you don't see many of them for sale secondhand, there were quite a few available at Mercedes Benz World at Brooklands, Weybridge, which is only about 20 minutes drive from us. So yesterday we decided to drive over there, primarily just to see if TLH could fit in one - he's over 6 feet tall, so being able to fit is a priority.

Mercedes Benz World is the swankiest car showroom I've ever been to - it's definitely a place for petrolhead boys.

They have a museum onsite, as well as a skid pan, a test track and an off-road circuit, and the place was heaving. I presumed it was full of man-boys using the driving experience gift vouchers given to them for Christmas, still they looked like they were having fun, spinning their cars around at high speed on tarmac slickened by spraying water.

Anyway, we found that, much to our surprise, TLH fitted comfortably behind the wheel. In fact, the little car was positively Tardis-like inside. A tiny boot but big enough to take a week's shopping. Little hidden away storage compartments. We came back home and thought about it some more and decided next stage was a test drive.

So back we went to Brooklands again this afternoon, where TLH had arrange to test drive a neat little black turbo-charged number. And, yes, we bought it! We get it next Saturday and then we'll be bombing about all over the place in it.

This is it - TLH insisted on taking a picture of me in it. You'll see why there's not many photos of me in this blog, I just don't take a good picture. But just concentrate on the car instead:

Cute car, huh?

After this excitement, we took ourselves off to my favourite Thai restaurant of all time - the Rum Wong in Guildford. The food here is utterly delectable and it's a very popular restaurant. They have a room at the back where you can sit on the floor and recline on triangular cushions, eating off low tables, but we sat in the main area.

It's always so hard to choose what to have when everything on the menu is just so yummy. But we started off with chicken satay and pork wontons which I forgot to photograph, but I remembered with the rest of the food we ordered (although we'd eaten half of everything before I did remember). We had:

Moo Yang Nam-Pung. Barbeque pork marinated in honey, soya sauce and sesame seeds.

Pad Thai. This is the traditional dish of Thailand and is fried noodles with bean sprouts, ground peanuts, chopped salted turnips, eggs and chicken.

Talay Pud Namprig Pao. Prawns, scallops and squid sauteed in sweet chilli sauce, garnished with crispy Basil leaves.

Ped Yang. Special roast duck served off-the-bone with soya sauce, pickled ginger and fresh cucumber slices. I didn't bother photographing the small bowl of jasmine rice. It was a bowl of white rice.

Yum yum.

We are now home, royally stuffed. I don't think I can get off the sofa to stagger up to bed. And I don't want to think of all the calories I've just consumed, but I suppose I can always run them off tomorrow. And if you believe that....

Summer can start - the Swifts have arrived!

2011-04-21T19:26:00.003+01:00

As has become customary at Jones Towers at this time of year, the last few days has seen me, when out in the garden, staring intently up into the currently blue, blue sky, awaiting the arrival of our summer visitors from Africa.

Last year I saw my first one on 22 April, and today, 21 April, at 5.45pm, I saw the first one of 2011. I was, as last year, sitting by the plastic-houses at the end of my tiny garden, sowing vegetable seeds for the allotment, when TLH came out for a chat. I said to him that I'd been checking the sky constantly for swifts and, as I said that, I looked up and saw one! How's that for timing?!? And I'm extra pleased because TLH saw it as well. Just the one, solitary crescent wheeling high, high up in the sky.

I understand it takes a good couple of days for them to complete the journey so I'm expecting more and more to arrive over the next week until the air is filled with my favourite sound of the summer (apart from the pop of a wine bottle, or the cracking of ice in a glass as a Pimms is poured over it), that of gangs of swifts chasing each other at high speed just above the rooftops, squealing for all their worth.

Summer 2011 has officially arrived!

How Mrs Jones got her groove back..............

2011-04-19T17:35:00.002+01:00

So then, the gig was last Saturday. As I said I've spent the last 3 months or so learning the 30-song set list which is all standards from the 50s and 60s - Dock of the Bay, My Girl, Mustang Sally, Mr Pitiful, Soul Man, Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, I Feel Good, Rescue Me, Respect, you know the sort of thing, music you absolutely cannot sit still to.

Bev told me that she'd got all the sax music and notes written down from when she first learned all these songs 20 years ago but they were still with her things back in Cape Verde and she wouldn't be getting them until early May, so I had no choice but to work them out myself. The Fugitives have got a live CD of them performing a little while ago, and their website has some performance videos so at least, for those few songs, I had their versions but there were quite a few that I had to download the original versions and try and work them out from that. And, as I mentioned earlier, it turns out that The Fugitives play them in a different key. But three months of really quite hard work had given me the confidence that I'd got at least 25 or so of the songs down. Plus I had to get to know my sax again, and remember all its little foibles, and which notes it plays more in tune than others. That actually turned out to be a bit like riding a bike, I hadn't forgotten any of the fingering, but I had forgotten what hard work breath control was. As I was working out the songs, by the time I'd got through the first two lines of Little Richard's "slippin' and slidin'" the first time, I was practically on my knees with breathlessness. How I was going to be able to play through the entire song was, in mid-February, absolutely beyond me.

And my embouchure was rubbish. That's the technical term for the use of facial muscles and shaping of the lips and mouth to the mouthpiece of woodwind and brass instruments. You have to use the muscles to keep the reed tight and manipulate it to change notes, and you have to fold your bottom lip over the top of your bottom teeth to protect the reed. This all adds up to chapped, swollen lips and cramping in your facial muscles. Practice builds up the muscles - or at least gets them used to being used in this manner - and helps to keep your embouchure tight and the notes sweet.

So, anyway, as I said Bev managed to come over for a couple of hours rehearsal with me on Saturday afternoon - this was going to be the only 'proper' rehearsal I had, I didn't have one at all with the full band (after 20 years' playing, they don't need to rehearse!) - and we ran through the songs that I'd got and checked that I was in the right key, and that the harmonies I'd worked out actually sounded okay, and that was it.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to stay calm and failing utterly. To say I was nervous would be a massive understatement. I could feel my heart rate was up and I was starting to get a low level headache. It was all I could do to shove a cheese sarnie down my throat at 3pm for lunch, even though I knew I ought to be eating more, and a bit later, because there wouldn't be time for a proper evening meal. But I could barely eat that as it was. I'll tell you what it felt like, the hours before going for an interview for a job you really REALLY want. Or an audition, where you're going to be judged by loads of people you don't know. Scary.

And as if having to learn the songs wasn't enough, I didn't have anything really suitable to wear! Yes, I've still got all my old stagewear in bags up in the loft, but they are 25 years old and about 3 sizes smaller than I am now. Plus The Fugitives wear all black on stage - I've not worn all black since about 1992. My wardrobe is as technicolour as a sweet shop these days. I did manage to find a pair of wide legged black silk trousers and a black t-shirt but even with my currently pink hair, I still managed to look decidedly 'mumsy'. Oh well, not much I could do about that now.

The venue was a hotel about 30 mins drive away, and we had to be there for 7pm. TLH very kindly agreed to come with me as both driver and to provide moral support, and we arrived to find some of the guests already there - it was a surprise 60th birthday party - and 2 of the band members propping up the bar. The band has its own PA system so they'd set it up in the ballroom, where the DJ was already spinning the decks. This, of course, meant there would be no soundcheck for the band but I trusted that they knew what they were doing - they ought to, after 20 years! Bev eventually arrived about 30 minutes later, after trusting her satnav and getting lost, then the guitarist arrived from Tunbridge Wells and the drummer from wherever drummers come from. I was reintroduced and we all sat down chatting while more and more guests turned up.

One of the hotel rooms had been set aside as a changing room for the band, so we trouped up there for a few minutes so that clothes could be changed and Bev and I could have a very quick run through of a couple of the songs that we were still unsure about. By now my nerves had calmed down somewhat but I was still feeling a bit hyper, you know?

9.15 rolled around and we were on. Stuart (the lead singer and manager) had decided that tonight we would do 90 minutes divided into three sets of 30 minutes each. I don't think I've ever played for more than about 40 minutes total in any band I've been in, and even then I wasn't playing or singing in every song. Tonight I would be playing for the entire set! Baptism of fire or what?!

We started with Mr Pitiful and off we went. Sadly I'm afraid there's no photos - I'd asked TLH to come along and tape the whole show on my iPhone so that I finally had a complete audio recording of the setlist as performed by the band, and also take pictures but he felt a bit uncomfortable taking photos at what was someone else's private party. And I'm not putting any of the audio files up on the blog because, frankly, the sound quality was appalling - good enough for me to work from, but definitely not good enough for anyone else to hear, sorry 'bout that!

People danced, people danced a lot. There was proper dad dancing going on, there were very leggy teenage lovelies who looked like they'd just walked out of a Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, there were very drunk boys reeling about the place. It was a very happy occasion, which is always a bonus. Bev gave me some valuable advice earlier in the evening, she said "if a fight breaks out, remember to hold your sax behind you because you don't want someone slamming into you while you're playing, in case the sax gets rammed down your throat and knocks all your teeth out". Wise words indeed. But apart from a few people dancing a bit too close to the sticky out bits of the microphone stands and knocking them around, it was fine. We were on the same level as the audience (i.e., not on any kind of stage at all) and Bev said that if people did start dancing a bit too close, then Stuart just comes out in front and sort of dances everyone back a bit.

Stuart also dictates what songs are going to be played based on how the audience is. This is why I had to learn 30-odd songs when not all of them would be played. He would decide if the next song should be a fast one or a slow one depending on their reaction and how much dancing was going on. As I hadn't memorised the songs yet, I'd got my parts all written out in a musical manuscript book which meant that also had to have a music stand to put it on so I could read it while playing. I'd already asked Bev if the band would be okay with this, and she told me that when she first started playing with them, she used a music stand for at least 2 years so there wouldn't be a problem. Of course this does mean that I had to go searching through my book for the next song which sometimes they'd already started playing before I'd been able to find it! Which I found a bit embarrassing but I don't think anyone else noticed.

And then, by midnight, we were finished. We retired to the hotel/changing room where I very gratefully changed my heels for Birkenstocks, and nobody said I was rubbish so I think I might have joined the band! It was about 12.30 when TLH and I made moves to go and, as I left, Stuart said the next gig would be at the end of May and that he'd call me with more details later.

We got home at about 1am and I was absolutely shattered, starving hungry and running on adrenaline (I didn't manage to fall asleep until after 3am). I can't believe that I'd managed to get through it and IT WAS OKAY. Not great, but absolutely okay. I'm not entirely happy with my saxophone's tuning and, to be honest, I could probably do with a new one but that's a bit spendy just now. I also need to learn the songs better, and I also just need to become a better player myself. Bev is a fabulous tenor sax player and does plenty of wonderful solos that I couldn't possibly hope to emulate. I'm more than happy to play harmonies and parp and toot away in support of her, but I want to be able to show her and her playing in a good light, and not let her down by being the out-of-tune mumsy one honking away beside her. I've definitely got some work to do.

But at least it's started. I can't believe I might actually have got my groove back again!

Thanks for your supportive comments

2011-04-17T12:35:00.001+01:00

Gig went okay, considering. Am shattered though - I woke this morning feeling like I'd been hit by a bus - so I hope you'll forgive me if I give you a proper update later!

Parp!

I'm ready to communicate with you now

2011-04-16T15:54:00.002+01:00

Okay. So, if you've been reading my spoutings for the last few months you might have noticed that I've been alluding to something that I wasn't quite ready to share with you yet.

No, I'm not pregnant, and never gonna be, so you can put that thought of your head right away.

Yes, TLH and I are still together and co-existing relatively happily.

It's not something that's, on the face of it, as monumental as that. However, to me, it's pretty fucking epic.

Tonight I am playing in my first gig for 23 years.

AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH! (That's the sound of terror, by the way). And I'm on the Immodium. And have a bottle of Resue Remedy to hand as back up.

I'll explain....

Way back, over two years ago in fact, I mentioned that I had played in bands in my teens and twenties but I hadn't gone into the full boring detail of my previous musical life. In about 1986 I formed an all-girl 3-piece sax outfit called 'Casual Sax' with the idea that we would busk but also hire ourselves out as a horn section for any available local bands that wanted us.

(I'm not sure if I've posted this picture before but I don't care if I have because it's one of my favourites)

This was Casual Sax back in about 1987, playing with a student band called Holy Durex where the rest of the band dressed as religious figures - pope, vicar, monk, that sort of thing - so we decided we'd dress up as devils, hence the horns and tails:

In both these pictures, I'm on the right, Bev is in the middle and Chrissie is on the left. We stayed together for about 18 months but then Chrissie left to work in a hospital after finished her PhD, and also played with Hang Wangford, so she was going more of a country route. Bev and I carried on for a bit:

But then she joined a 1960s style soul band who got a residency in Portugal and I was left on my own. The band I was playing mainly with then disbanded in 1988, I packed my saxophone away and never really played it again.

Bev carried on and became very good. She got work as a proper session musician and played at the 2006 MOBO awards in London behind Sam Moore. Her life took her to live and work in Cape Verde, just off the coast of Senegal, West Africa for several years, but last November she announced she was coming back to the UK for good and in January 2011, to celebrate her birthday, the soul band she'd played in was reforming and doing a gig at a pub near to me. I'd not actually seen Bev for about 7 or even 8 years so I dragged TLH along:

She was just as fabulous as always. I love Bev.

Anyway, the band played, and it was huge fun and then afterwards, Bev and I were chatting and she said that now she was back in England, the band were reforming and asked me if would be interesting in joining her on sax.

O.M.G.

I said 'YES'. In capital letters.

I'd recently been going through a very nostalgic phase of listening to live recordings of my old bands, watching the videos and looking at all the old photos and wishing I hadn't given up playing but, being the age I am now, the fact that I've not played properly in 23 years and - most importantly - I didn't actually know anyone in any local bands meant my visions of returning to the stage were left lying in the gutter. Until my lovely Bev turned up.

I knew both of us were taking a bit of a risk, as I was bound to be crap after not playing for so long, but she spoke to the rest of the band and said they were keen, and it would be good to have a 2-horn sax back line as it would suit the sort of music, so let's go for it.

She said the next gig would be in April so there was plenty of time for me to learn the songs and stuff. And that's what I've been doing for the last 3 months. I dug out my sax from the loft and got it repaired (which is what I was doing last Saturday in London) and started listening to the songs and transcribing the notes, preferably live versions as played by the band (who are 'The Fugitives', by the way) but if I hadn't got a live version, then the originals. The music is 60s soul and R'n'B and is stuff that absolutely everyone knows. Think 'The Commitments' and 'The Blues Brothers', that sort of thing. Very popular with weddings, parties and business conferences. More likely to get hired for paid gigs than younger rock bands because at least everyone knows the songs.

And the gig is TONIGHT. Yes, I'm bricking it. Bev came round this afternoon for a run through and we've discovered, sadly, that there are at least 3 songs in the usual setlist that I've had to learn from the originals which are, in fact, in a different key to the one the band plays in. Arse. There's not enough time to relearn them in the new key and I'm not that good at transposing while playing, so I'll either have to not play them, or just pretend or hopefully find one or two notes that are in the right key and just parp and toot those at relevant places until I can learn them properly.

God, there's nothing like being thrown in the deep end.

I've been keeping this under my hat until now in case it all went tits up - and there's still a pretty good chance of that happening - but I'm hopeful that it won't be a massive disaster so am risking telling you all now.

I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes. Wish me luck.....

Ooh - shiny!

2011-04-13T12:25:00.001+01:00

You all saw the horrors of my old Reebok trainers, yes? The ones I've worn every day for the last 8 years? That I'd just started running in? No? Well here they are then:

The sole has nearly worn off under the ball of the foot and the heel? Well, just look at it.

These are obviously no good for running in and were a major contributing factor to the very painful shin splints I suffered last week. There was no other choice - new running shoes would have to be purchased. This meant finding a 'proper' running store where there were knowledgeable assistants who would watch how I run in order to ensure I got the right kind of shoes for me.

The only store I actively knew of - without going online to research - was the London Marathon Store down Long Acre, because when I used to work down Fleet Street, I used to regularly walk past it at lunchtimes on my way to a bead shop in Tower Street. But there was no way on earth I was going to travel up to London in all my running gear - including industrial strength bra - just so I could run on their machine for 5 minutes!

Luckily, I found a much nearer alternative - Sweatshop. Apparently, according to their website, they're the UK's largest specialist running shop and there's a branch in Woking which is about 30 mins drive from me!

So after doing the trip to London on Saturday, TLH and I decided we would go to Woking on Sunday to get me properly fitted. I contacted the shop to ask what was the best time to come along for a go on their machine, and was advised either 11-12 or 4-5 would probably be the quietest times. We walked into the shop at about 11.10am. I was in all my running gear and was very pleased that the shop assistants didn't fall about laughing as I plonked my lardy arse down on the bench and told them about my woes.

In fact, they were most enthusiastic about the fact that I was venturing into the world of running (or, in my case, 'jogging very slowly, in fact more a shamble really') but agreed that better shoes were a priority. So, they got me to put on a pair of 'neutral' shoes - they had no specially supportive areas - for a baseline reading and led to me to the treadmill. I was instructed to start it at a walking pace, then increase the speed until it was at a comfortable running/jogging pace, and they would video the back of my calves and my feet as I ran. This took about 3 minutes and they showed me the video from which I could see that my feet both rolled inwards as I ran through my stride. He drew a line on the screen from the mid point at the back of my knee down to the ground and instead of it going through the mid point of the back of my heel, it was way off to one side. I was running at an angle that would put massive strain on my knees and ankles. This meant that I need shoes with extra support on the inside edge of the heel to stop this happening and keep everything in a straighter line.

Now it was just a question of working through different brands of shoes to find ones that weren't too tight across the toes, and which had enough support. I tried on three pairs of shoes and each time had to try them on the treadmill being filmed and then run up and down the shop, to discover which had enough support. One pair was too tight at the toes, another pair just felt really 'flat' under my feet, like wearing skateboard daps, and then I found them.

Silver and bright, acidic yellow they may be, but they felt brilliant on my feet. It's hard to describe, but the sole felt almost curved under my feet, like it was tilting me forward slightly and making me feel like I wanted to take off running, right there, in the shop. Lovely.

And here they are, say hello to my brand new Mizuno Wave Inspire 7's:

Yes, they were a little pricey but I don't think £90 is too bad for proper running shoes, especially when you can get ordinary trainers that cost more than that these days.

And I couldn't wait so I went for a run in them that afternoon and, blimey, what a difference! There was some residual shin splint pain but nothing like as bad as before. I could definitely feel a difference because when I'd finished, different muscles were hurting - the front of my thighs were aching, which hadn't happened before and can only result from different muscles being used, hopefully the right ones now!

London in the spring...

2011-04-12T22:20:00.000+01:00

We've had the most glorious, glorious weather here for the last couple of weeks. The average temperature at this time of year is around 14 degrees centigrade/57 degrees Fahrenheit but since the beginning of April, the temperature has been between 21 and 24 degrees (69-75 degrees)! Blue skies as far as the eye can see. Factor 50 suncream for me, lobster pink flesh for the rest of the English populace.

Last Saturday I needed to take a thing up to London to be repaired (I'll tell you about this at a later date), to a specialist shop just off Baker Street, so TLH and I decided we would make a bit of a day of it, partly because the weather was so fab but also because it had been our 15th wedding anniversary on Monday 4th and because TLH has to get up at stupid o'clock in the morning to go to work these days, going out on that particular night was not really an option. Plus we'd have had to have stayed sober and that's no fun.

We got a late morning train and headed off to Baker Street on the underground. I deposited the thing that needed repairing with the repairman who said it would take about 45 minutes to sort out, so we decided to go for a spot of lunch. I'd already done a brief bit of Googling before we came up ('restaurants near Baker Street' was my exacting search criteria) and had decided we would check out a place called Canteen. This is a small chain of 4 restaurants that specialises in traditional British food - soups, pies, roasts, fish 'n' chips, proper puddings. It has won many plaudits and seemed reasonably priced. They don't take bookings for Saturdays and, in fact, for the rest of the week, apparently 70% of the tables are kept free for walk-ins so you don't need to get worried about booking a table. We got there at about 1pm and found it only about a third full.

Canteen specialises, it says, in 'honest, seasonal food, nationally sourced, skillfully prepared and reasonably priced. Our meat is additive free. Our fish delivered fresh from day boats on the south coast'. The menu is yummy - there's a breakfast and all day section that offers toast and marmite; porridge; Bacon, eggs and bubble & squeak; kippers with poached eggs; eggs on toast; sausage & onion sandwich; bacon sandwich; rhubarb compote with yoghurt & granola; and welsh rarebit with poached eggs.

Yes, I'm going to tell you everything on the menu.

Starters/small dishes will give you soup, bread & butter; Spinach & Lancashire cheese tart; 1/2 pint of prawns with mayo; chicken liver pate, piccalilli & toast; devilled kidneys on toast; kippers with poached eggs; and welsh rarebit.

Salads - walnut, tarragon & roast chicken; chicory, watercress, apple & walnut; smoked haddock, leek, croutons & poached egg; and beetroot, broad bean, mint, peas & Berkswell cheese.

Mains - Roast squash, fennel with barley & marjoram; mushroom, chard & pearl barley stew; smoked haddock, spinach & mash; shepherds pie; macaroni cheese; sausages & mash with onion gravy; fish and chips with tartare sauce; chicken & chips with salad; pie of the day with mash, greens and gravy; daily roast with roast potatoes, greens & gravy; steak & chips.

Puddings - Bread & butter pudding with caramel ice cream; cheesecake with caramel & roasted nuts; steamed syrup sponge with custard; rice pudding with jam; rhubarb & almond trifle; chocolate brownie caramel sundae; homemade ice cream & shortbread.

Cakes - scones, jam & clotted cream; carrot cake; Victoria sponge; chocolate & beetroot cake.

Bar snacks - fish finger sandwich; sausage rolls; scotch eggs; pork scratchings; Twiglets (gotta love a restaurant that has Twiglets on the menu!)

See - proper British grub. You hungry yet?

TLH and I both plumped for the fish and chips with a side of mushy peas. It was, without doubt, the best goddamn plate of fish and chips I have ever, ever eaten. The fish was haddock (which is my favourite), thoroughly skinned and boned, and fried in breadcrumbs instead of batter. It was surprisingly non-greasy.

The chips were crispy on the outside, fluffy inside and, again, not greasy. The tartare sauce was definitely homemade and had lemon zest and chopped chives in it. The side order of mushy peas was huge (check out the bowl in the picture). The colour of them was, perhaps, not the most appetising but who cares when they tasted so good, and they were peppery. TLH drank ginger beer and I had homemade lemonade which was both sharp and sweet.

Inside Canteen

We were surprisingly stuffed but we still managed to find room for pudding. I had the homemade ice cream (which was caramel and delicious) which came with a piece of shortbread and some thin biscotti that contained pistachios and fennel seeds, and were utterly fabulous. TLH had the rhubarb and almond trifle which was the only slightly disappointing thing we had as there was far too much whipped cream on the top, little - if any - sponge and no cold custard in the trifle. I mean, yeah, it was nice 'n' that, but not quite what I would call a trifle. Service was very quick and competent, and I would very definitely recommend it. The branches are at 55 Baker Street, the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, 2 Crispin Place in Spitalfields, and Park Pavilion, 40 Canada Square, Canary Wharf.

We were finished and done, and the repaired thing collected, by about 2.30pm and we wondering what else to do. Sadly we were in the wrong part of London to be able to cheer on Antonia and the Family Cornwell who had donned hairy fabric and two-wheeled transportation for this year's Tweed Run, but we were very close to Regent's Park and I wasn't sure if I'd ever been there before, so off we went, past Sherlock Holmes' place (the photos in this post were all taken on my iPhone, so apologies for quality) :

And within a few minutes we were strolling beside the boating lake, admiring the stunning flower beds and enjoying the sunshine along with, seemingly, the entire population of Central London!

You could easily forget that you were in London completely until you catch sight of the Post Office Tower, looming at the edge:

There are cherry blossom walkways:

And beautiful municipal flowerbeds with fountains and large urns:

And ornate black and gilt park gates:

After about an hour or so, we decided we'd had enough of bounteous Mother Nature and so started heading vaguely back in the direction of Waterloo. Our route took us along Portland Place which is the location of the famous 1930s Art Deco building which houses the BBC's radio studios. The statues on the outside were sculpted by Eric Gill:

And - somehow, I don't know how, it was a miracle - we ended up again at Wahaca in Covent Garden, heeding the siren call of their magnificent Margaritas (with a side order of beer):

I love London in the springtime.

In which my legs fall off

2011-04-07T13:42:00.002+01:00

Just got back from the run that should be Week 2 day 2 of C25k. Except it wasn't really. Only gone and got bloody shin splints now, haven't I?

Arse.

The burn was starting towards the end of my previous run but I just ignored it and carried on. I didn't even manage to get to halfway through this morning's workout before the burning became too strong to ignore so I had to walk through the last one-and-a-half of the running sections. Which cocks up my stats righteously. I was only able to cover a distance of 1.7 miles and both my walk and run paces were slower.

This has chucked a fairly serious spanner in the works because, much to my surprise, I was actually sort of starting to enjoy the running a bit. Especially after I stopped. You know, the way that you feel pretty good after a good swim, or decent session at the gym, when everything's jangling and the blood's flowing, that bit I especially enjoyed. But I'm not entirely sure what to do now. I think I probably need some decent footwear - I have to admit that I'm running in some pretty battered 8 year old Reeboks that I've pretty much worn every day since I got them, and maybe I should have eased into the whole running malarkey a bit more slowly than I have rather than suddenly putting a whole load of strain on my lower legs and taking them by surprise.

My knackered trainers

At the moment I'm thinking I should perhaps visit a specialist running shop (I've found there's one in Woking, which isn't too far from me) where they'll have a machine I can run on and they can see what sort of shoe I need, and then when I've forked out an eyewatering amount of money for something hideous looking to shove on my feet I may have to start the C25k all over again, from the beginning, and take it more slowly this time to give my body time to adjust.

But whatever I do, the main piece of advice I've gathered from Dr Google is that I have to stop running until the pain goes away. Well, my next run probably wasn't going to be until Sunday but I don't think I'll be able to get to Woking before then as I don't have the car, and TLH and I are off up to London Village on Saturday for the day. Yes, I know there are specialist running shops in London but to be tested properly on the machines apparently you have to wear your usual running gear and then run on them for 30 minutes, and I'm not wearing all that - including industrial strength sports bra - up to London on a day out! Hopefully TLH can arrange to work from home one day next week and I'll go then.

I'm genuinely disappointed about this setback - why is nothing ever easy?

Ta-daa! Unveiling the Pansy Beanie!

2011-04-07T11:26:00.004+01:00

Well, this makes a change from my latest exercise blogging, doesn't it? I've not been neglecting my crochet but, sadly, am unable to do it while running, so I'm only doing it in the evening in front of the telly.

Last weekend, while attending a craft fair, I sat and made seven African Flower Hexagons. Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but I really liked the pattern and fancied having a go. Look, aren't they nice?

The ends haven't been woven in yet and, obviously, they've not been sewn together yet, but you get the idea. I might make a circular cushion cover, something like this perhaps:

I've also made another crochet flower from 'Crochet Bouquet' by Suzann Thompson, that I mentioned previously. This time it's a Narcissus, which is a white daffodil-style flower with a pale pink centre (in this case):

It is very cute but came out larger than I was expecting, it's about 4 inches across. There's a rosebud I want to try but I need to investigate a particular stitch it requires because I'm not sure how to do it.

It dawned on me that the flowers would look lovely on a fern green crocheted beanie hat so last night downloaded an easy, free pattern and made the hat in just over an hour. My first piece of wearable crochet!!

This morning I tried the flowers but decided that the Narcissus is actually too large, so I think I'll add a few beads to it and turn it into a large corsage-style brooch. But the pansy I made a couple of weeks ago was perfect. I toyed with the idea of making a couple more in different colourways and adding them as well, but, you know, I think just the one will do. So, with no more ado, here it is then:

It's all in UK treble stitch with a shallow shell edging.

See my collection of Birdies has increased? I've got loads of kids' birthdays coming up so guess where they're going?

Ooh, using the flash makes the wall look really dark. Anyway, this ceramic head (which is actually a plant pot) is somewhat smaller than a proper head (especially mine), so shall I show you what it looks like on?

Note the subtle positioning of the camera to hide my double chin. But look, look how cute this little beanie is! And it doesn't need any more flowers, does it?

OMG!! David Bowie fans prepare to be horrified.....

2011-04-05T23:22:00.001+01:00

One of my posts over the past weekend went into very lengthy detail about the massacring (is that spelt right? Doesn't look right....) of some David Bowie classics that my long-suffering ears were subjected to.

I've managed to find the album just now, by Googling 'jazz version space oddity'. It appears to be an album called 'Ground Control to Frank Sinatra' by Duffo feat. Jeff Duff. The concept appears to be what it would sound like if Frank Sinatra sang some of Bowie's songs. Which, frankly, isn't the worst thing I've ever heard of but why gild the lily?

Anyway, I've just hopped onto Youtube and I can't find any videos to show you, but I've found an Amazon link to the album which has 30-second clips of each track. Here you'll find the songs I heard at the weekend - 'Sorrow', 'Changes', 'Rebel Rebel' (this clip of this one doesn't make it sound too bad but, believe me...), 'Space Oddity' and 'Suffragette City'.

I don't think I'll be buying the album anytime soon...

Quick Tuesday update

2011-04-05T22:55:00.001+01:00

As this blog has turned into my diary, I might as well keep it up to date for a bit.

Today I went to the hospital for my baseline ECG reading. I had to strip to the waist and lie on a bed in a curtained off cubicle while the nurse attached half a dozen electrodes to me, mostly around my heart but also a couple on my left ankle. You can't feel anything at all while the reading is being taken but you have to lie totally still. I've had this done before at least once, when I got electrocuted back in 1994, and they wired me up to the cardiac monitor to check if my heart had been damaged.

It only took about 10 mins from arriving in the department to leaving again, amazingly hassle free. I'd parked in the car park of a big Tesco which was literally opposite the hospital so did a spot of shopping. Because the Tesco is very, very close to the University where I used to work, and the University has a high proportion of foreign students, this Tesco has a fascinating 'foreign food' section, which is rather more exotic than your usual jars of Thai curry paste and Mexican fajita kits. I didn't really have much time to thoroughly examine everything they had but there was Eastern European chocolate (which I can recommend, by the way) and bags of 'oily' chana dahl and everything you need to make proper sushi, amongst loads of other stuff.

And as the Tesco is about 1 minute's drive from the swimming pool I'm now using, I thought I might as well take the opportunity to go for a swim as well. Damn, I'm so organised. As I've decided to increase the number of laps each time I go by 2 (I don't want to overdo it), today's target was 14 laps, which I did quite easily in just over 20 minutes. It's definitely getting easier.

Today's swimming was made more interesting by the fact that, while half the pool was laned off, the other half was being used by an instructor taking someone through a synchronised swimming routine. I wouldn't have noticed except for the fact they had a speaker at the side of the pool that was blasting out Labi Siffre's godawful song 'Something inside so strong', over and over, while the girl in the pool waved her pointy feet in the air and made angular movements with her arms. Not something you see in the average, everyday swimming pool. I'd have liked to have watched further, but I was on a mission to do my 14 laps and head home.

All in all, a pretty successful day.

Tomorrow is my wk2d2 run of the Couch to 5k workouts. Let's see how far I get.

C25k update - 4 April 2011 - wk2d1

2011-04-04T17:21:00.000+01:00

Final post for today - it's very rare you get three in one day out of me, but I decided, mid-afternoon, to just get off my arse and go for the damn run, already.

This is the first run of the second week of the C25k interval training. Weather was sunny and cloudy, warmish in the sun but a little chilly in the shade, but with a strong, cold wind. The run pattern for the three sessions of the second week are 5 minute warmup brisk walk, 90 seconds run, 2 mins walk, repeat for 20 mins, 5 minute cooldown walk.

I wasn't looking forward to it but just went and did it anyway. It was hard work again and the 2 minute walks were much appreciated. I couldn't finish one of the 90 second runs and had to walk for a bit. I had to stop for a few seconds to point my toes to stretch my shins a bit (the start of shin splints?) but I did the full work out.

And the results are astonishing. I was amazed. The improvement from last week is nothing less than remarkable - I'm wondering if the GPS has got a bit enthusiastic. Here are the results, with last run's figures in brackets:

Distance covered: 3.4 miles (1.7 miles)
Walk pace: 16:29/mi (18:08/mi)
Run pace: 13:32/mi (15:07/mi)
Calories burned: 200 (195)
Weight: I didn't weigh myself this morning as I had a bad weekend on both the booze and the curry so there's unlikely to be an difference there.

But - bloody hell! 3.4 miles! It really, really didn't feel that far. It's exactly twice the distance I was covering last week. Bloody hell!! Maybe there's some benefit to be had in doing this after all.....

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, I did go commando and, surprisingly, it wasn't too bad at all, so at least I know now that's an option.)

Blood Pressure Update

2011-04-04T12:58:00.003+01:00

Just after finished my earlier blog today, the post arrived, and in it was a letter from my doctor's surgery about my blood pressure. If you recall, last week I did a 5-day blood pressure monitoring session and the results were a bit higher than they should be. Not massively high but enough for it to be registered.

Anyway, the letter says that she wants me to do some fasting blood tests and book an ECG (electrocardiogram - heart rate trace) as I might have to start treatment. Enclosed with the letter was a form for the blood tests, for which I just have to ring the surgery and book a time, and another form for the ECG for which I have to go to the local hospital.

I immediately phoned TLH at work and told him. I would normally wait until he got home but the easiest way for me to get to the hospital is by car, and I wanted to warn him that I would need it and he'd have to book a day working at home once I knew when it was which could be, for all I knew, 3 months away. He said he was going oop north again tomorrow for a meeting so I would have the car then anyway but how likely would it be they could get me an appointment tomorrow?!? Of course I could use public transport to get there but that would involve a train and a bus and would take hours longer overall than just jumping in the car and driving 15 minutes down the road. He was quite happy to have a day at home so I rang the number.

God love the NHS. No, really. I rang the number which was for the Cardiology Dept. The receptionist very chirpily told me there was no appointment system, you just turned up and the test would take about 5 minutes! Blimey, I thought. 'In that case', I told her, 'I'll come along tomorrow'.

Take note, America. This is what socialised medicine is all about. And it's free.

The fasting blood test has been booked at the doctors' surgery for 13 April, which was the soonest they could do it and will, according to the sheet, be used to screen several things - renal, fasting glucose, liver, thyroid and fasting lipid. It's at 11.05am and I can't have anything to eat after midnight the night before but that's okay, there are many mornings when I don't have breakfast until 10.30am or even later so 11.05 shouldn't prove to be a hardship.

All this is a bit of a pain in the arse, frankly, but at least I'll have a pretty good idea of how my body is shaping up as I'm getting closer to the age my dad was when he died suddenly, and if there's anything I need to do in order to prevent the same fate. I'll keep you posted.

PS. My blog seems to have turned into more of a diary of late. When I started doing it, coupla years ago now, the general plan was that I would only post when something interesting happened rather than my dull, everyday 'doings', but it does seem that, at least in the last few months, stuff has been happening. And I know for a fact that there's more stuff to come so this blog could get more frequent!

Never mind having a sit down - I need a lie down...

2011-04-04T11:26:00.001+01:00

...to recover from a really rather busy weekend - for us, that is. The Lovely Husband and I are shocking homebodies and don't tend to go out as much as we ought to. But this weekend we were hardly in. And it was all fun, apart from some unfortunate underwear chafing.

So, Saturday, as you know (if you read my last obsessional post) I went for my last run of the week. I typed the post almost literally as soon as I got in, all red of face and slick with sweat but before I'd jumped in the shower. While scrubbing away, I discovered something most disagreeable. The elastic around the right leg hole of my undercrackers had rubbed the skin raw and, what's more, it had started bleeding. Ouch. This is not good. My first running injury! I got online and discovered that I shouldn't have been wearing cotton underwear, something about it not wicking moisture properly, and manmade/specialist fabrics are best. Or you can try using an anti-chafing product which (according to a messageboard I frequent) is actually nothing really more than a glorified antiperspirant. Or you can go commando. Eww.

I investigated specialist running pants for ladies and found some online at Gear for Girls which is an online sports shop in the UK that only sells womens' sports clothes. I've ordered a pair (blimey, they're a bit pricey for a pair of kecks) but I'm resigned to having to going commando until they arrive. I'm a bit bothered by the thought of the seams in the undercarriage of my cropped running leggings and how 'interesting' that might get, but I'll give it a go. For science.

Then, eventually, 5 o'clock rolled inexorably around and I shuffled off to the kitchen to start making dinner when TLH suddenly suggested we get a curry delivered. Hooray! I knew I'd married him for something! And while we were waiting for that to arrive (bless 'em, our local curry takeaway not only delivers but frequently only takes about 10-15 mins from taking our order to knocking on our door), I got a text from our friends Joe and Samantha, who now live opposite us in the close, suggesting we all go for a pint in a bit. Double Hooray! Seeing as how the utterly fabulous Danish murder mystery 'The Killing' has now finished on the telly, there was nothing to stay in for, so after stuffing Lamb Bhuna, Chicken Tikka Dupiaza, boiled rice, Sag Aloo, Brinjal Bhaji, Tarka Dahl and 2 plain poppadums down our necks (I'm not going to weigh myself until the middle of this week 'cos I'll just get depressed otherwise), they called for us and we walked to our nearest pub, which is about 5 mins away.

The inside was pretty full but as it was still fairly warm outside, we decided to sit in the garden until we got too cold. I really like Joe and Sam, they're interesting people who both have colourful backgrounds that I wish I could tell you about as some of their escapades would make your hair curl. But they've come through everything more or less unscathed and are successfully bringing up three teenage boys, and no-one's died in the process (so far). We did eventually move inside where we were extremely lucky to be able to get the table that has two upholstered rocking chairs at it. This is a fine idea for a pub and I recommend it to the house unreservedly. Sam and I grabbed the rockers while the two boys had to make do with the ordinary wooden dining chairs although, in the interest of fairness, we swapped over halfway through our pints. As it does when you're with people you've known for a very long time (I've known Joe for 24 years and Sam for 18), the conversation was wide-ranging and freeform, and finally ended on how likely you would be to do karaoke (I admitted you'd never get me off the stage) and the exact level to which we thought David Bowie was influential on today's bands. A lot, but probably without today's bands realising it, we decided, and this was a good thing.

That is until, on Sunday, TLH and I heard what can only be described as the carbuncle of noise that results when someone covers David Bowie classics in a 'swing jazz lite' style. Aaarrrgggh! Kill it with fire! We were doing a new craft fair in a small village hall about 15 miles away from home and the organiser had brought along her iPod to provide background music. Her taste was really rather eclectic and quite interesting. It started off with some salsa, which you tend to find yourself grooving along to while not really listening to it, and then you twig and think 'hmm, this is catchy and it's got a good beat!' but then, as the morning wore on, the music got definitely weirder.

We'd set the stall up and were sat behind - TLH with his laptop, and me crocheting African Flower Hexagons (which will look something like this when finished:)

And her playlist went from catchy Latin tunes to unrecognisable big band swing that started to go...well, I can only describe it as the sort of music that would be playing in the dream sequence of a particularly unfathomable David Lynch film. Maybe 'Lost Highway'. Chord sequences that are okay on the surface but just weird enough to make you feel a little uncomfortable. In the style of late night, mellow dinner jazz that's playing in the background and you're not paying attention, and then, slowly, you start hearing the weirdness creeping in and wondering if you really heard it. Then it repeats and you think, 'WTF?' Very, very peculiar. It may have been a soundtrack to something for all I know, I should've asked her really. Her taste was obviously for jazz as it then moved onto standards covered by a female singer, someone like Diana Krall or Jane Monheit, and then to 'proper' jazz, a sax four-piece doing those kinds of numbers you can't sing along to because they're improvising all over the bloody place. John Coltrane or Charlie Parker, that sort of thing. I can admire their skill and ability, but I wouldn't choose to listen to it.

And then, as we were packing up to leave, on came the excrescence that was the jazz lite covers of the David Bowie songs. A whole albums-worth. TLH and I stared slack-jawed at each other when we realised what we could hear. Honestly, I can't describe just how truly appalling it was - I've googled for ages to try and find who it might have been playing so I could see if there was anything on Youtube to put up here but to absolutely no avail. Which, believe me, is a blessing. It was wrong on so, so many levels. But hugely entertaining nonetheless and, I have to say, overall more welcome than the godawful music we have to sit through at the other main craft fair we do, where they play nothing but horrendous Hooked on Classics and bloody, bloody panpipe music. After hearing the same CDs there over and over again for the last 5 years or so, a bit of David Lynchian melodrama would go down just fine!

To continue with our weekend, then - we got home from the craft fair (which was moderately successful but I'm not sure if we'll bother doing it again) and had just about enough time to eat before heading off out yet again. This time it was to go with our mates Joe and Sam to see the stand-up comedian Micky Flanagan play at a nearby town. I really should remember to take some tissues with me when we see comedians - I ended up wiping the tears on my sleeves which, I think you'll agree, is dead classy. I thought the woman sitting next to me was going to pass out from lack of oxygen she was laughing so much. If you get a chance to see him live, go for it.

We got back home by about 11pm and I had the first unbroken night's sleep in, ooh, about three weeks. Hooray for busy weekends!

And if that's not enough, today's our 15th wedding anniversary.

C25k update - 2 April 2011 - wk1d3

2011-04-02T14:11:00.001+01:00

Just back from my 3rd run of week 1 of C25k.

Blimey.

Today was HARD. Really bloody hard. I didn't have a particularly brilliant night's sleep last night but, compared to many, many others recently, it was fine although I didn't wake up until about 9am. I felt sluggish, though. Massively less than sprightly, all morning, in fact. No idea why. I had a largeish sized dinner last night, the size I always have, so I don't think it was that. I had a banana with homemade plain unsweetened yoghurt for breakfast at about 9.30am. Lunch of tomato soup and a slice of wholemeal bread at about 12.30. Went for the run at about 1.15pm.

It was as hard work as the first run I did, which I wasn't expecting. Still I made myself carry on, didn't try to push myself too hard (because that's when injuries occur, when you're tired and push yourself too hard) and finished the workout.

And was pleased as punch with the final results, as there was improvement in three of the five categories (the previous figures are in brackets):

Distance covered: 1.8 miles (1.7 miles)
Walk pace: 18:08/mi (19:23/mi)
Run pace: 15:46/mi (15:07/mi)
Calories burned: 195 (195)
Weight: same.

So there's some improvement, thank goodness.

Next week's training is 3 runs starting with the brisk 5 minute warm up walk, then alternate 90 seconds of jogging with 2 minutes of walking for a total of 20 minutes, ending with the usual 5 minute cooldown walk home. My ideal - weather and energy levels permitting - is to go on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with at least one swim thrown in there somewhere, possibly next Saturday, or earlier if I have the car. Then I'll be wanting to visit the allotment and there's always the Wii Fit for if it's raining.

I wonder how long I can keep all this up for......

Having a bit of a sit down, instead.

2011-04-01T15:59:00.000+01:00

I've decided to actually have a day off from the exercise today. I'm fine with this as I've done loads this week anyway. Tomorrow (Saturday), I shall go for my final run of Week 1 of the C25k training, and then on Sunday I won't be doing any exercise at all as I have a new craft fair to do from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, after which The Lovely Husband and I will probably pop over to my mum's to sort out some computer problem of hers, then in the evening we're off with friends to see the very funny Mickey Flanagan perform at a nearby town, so there just won't be the time to do anything.

And if the weather's fine on Monday, then I'll start Week 2 of C25k! I was looking online just now to see if there's a website for the particular C25k that I use but there doesn't seem to be. It appears there are several versions each by different software houses that, I would assume, basically do the same thing - get you from the couch to running 5k without stopping in 9 weeks via interval training - but the version I use is by Bluefin Software, and I found a graphic that shows what the frontpage looks like:

If you've already set up a playlist, when you press the big green GO button, the music will start and the voice will announce 'warm up', and off you go. As I have my iphone strapped to my arm, I can't see the screen as I'm running but this is what the screen looks like during the warm up:

When you've finished, there's a journal page where you can record basic details like how you felt, what the weather was like, the terrain where you walked and ran. You can also see how far you went, your various paces and how many calories were burnt off (the picture below I grabbed from Google images - it's not my info - for a start I don't weigh 195lbs!). You need to have the GPS add-on for this info though. If you do, you can press the 'Map' button which will bring up a map and show you exactly where you went! I think it's pretty cool. If I wanted to I could also 'Share' this information on Twitter but I don't twat as I can't see the point of it. I'll just share the info here instead.

It also has a series of graphs that will show your progress. This is the distance one, for example:

All of which is fab if you're a bit of an information nerd, like me. I'm very impressed with this bit of software, especially as it only cost me £1.79 plus £0.59 for the GPS add-on. £2.38 very well spent.

...puff, pant......just let me catch my breath....be with you in a sec.....

2011-03-31T17:08:00.003+01:00

First of all, thank you all so much for your supportive comments about me doing battle with my need to begin exercise and my enormous distate for doing so.

To that end, I've pulled up my big girl panties and decided that I've really got no other choice. Actually, that's not true. I do have a choice. I can choose to do nothing at all and end up in a wooden coffin (or maybe a wicker one, not decided yet...) ending my days prematurely in the fires of the local crematorium (or maybe buried in a field with a sapling at my head, not decided yet...).

It's quite odd, though, throughout my life I've had spasms of being really quite fit and exercise-y - when I was in my early teens I used to both swim for my local town and also played hockey for my school. But then I went to sixth form college and discovered performing in bands on stage and boys and eating disorders and alcohol and smokable drugs, so exercise went right out the window. It wasn't until I was in my very late twenties that I and my first husband ('The Artist') decided we wanted to take up Wu Shu Kwan, a form of full-contact Chinese kick boxing. We did it for 2 or 3 years, from about 1989 to 1992, and it was pretty bloody full on. Classes lasted 2 hours twice a week that involved god knows how many sit-ups, push ups, practising of forms (kata in karate) and then, finally, one-on-one sessions of sparring with each other (we wore pads but it could still hurt). We both got about halfway up the belts but then I had to stop because I kept damaging myself too much, and kept dislocating my ribs. Apart from the injuries, it's probably the fittest I've ever been. Fun too, 'cos I got to hit boys who were bigger than me.

In about 1993 I signed up for tap dancing classes at the University where I was working and did that for about 10 months and in the following year I started hanging out with the future TLH (he worked at the end of my corridor - you can read a potted version of our getting together here) and one of the things we did was play squash against each other. But then I split up with The Artist, got together with TLH for real and we discovered other, more...um, 'interesting' sorts of exercise and we thought 'sod the squash, let's just do this loads and then go out to restaurants and eat our bodyweight in steak and ice cream' which, I think you'll agree, was absolutely the right thing to do. Trouble is, we've not stopped doing it since. The eating, I mean. We've been together 17 years now so the other more 'interesting' exercise has calmed down somewhat.

And I really think that was the last time I did proper exercise, 17 years ago. Blimey. That's quite a long time ago, innit.

Goodness, this has been a longwinded way of getting round to actually documenting what I've been doing. So why don't I just stop blathering and get on with it, hm?

So then, my new exercise regime started last Saturday when I went swimming with my good friend Sam. She's far fitter than I am (she does a lot of power walking and swimming) so when we got into the pool itself, she went off to the medium fast lane and I plodded along in the slow lane. The pool, incidentally, is lovely. It's low chlorine because it uses fancy-schmancy modern technotrickery involving ultraviolet light to keep the water clean. It also has a unisex changing area which, surprisingly, didn't bother me in the slightest as everyone gets their own cubicle, i.e., no communal changing areas, so it's no big deal. The pool is 50m long but it has something called a 'transversable boom' which goes across the width of the pool and can be moved up and down its length to divide the pool into two different sizes. It's mostly used to divide it into two separate pools of 25m each which means one side can be laned off for the 'serious' swimmers and the other can be a free for all splash pool for everyone else. It's a really good idea. Like I said in my previous post, I only managed 10 laps but it was a start. So that was Saturday.

Sunday - I didn't do anything. Bad Mrs Jones. In my defence, though, I don't want to go hammer and tongs into things and end up doing myself a mischief. Softly softly catchee monkey. Or some such bollocks.

Monday - I was really good and did my first ever run. I put on my proper running gear, strapped my iphone to my arm, plugged in the headphones and stepped out the door to do my first Couch to 5k session. About 5 mins walk from my house there's a big area of open fields where everyone walks their dogs so I decided I'd go there.   The Couch to 5k (C25k) app claims to be able to get you to run 5 kms within 9 weeks if you follow their training. The app suggests 3 sessions a week and, for the first week, each session is exactly the same: a brisk 5-minute warmup walk (this gets me to the dog fields), then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 mins, finishing with a 5 min cooldown walk. In the second week it's 90 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking. So, you see, it seems really quite sensible, nothing too difficult and within reach of even the lardiest couch potato. Except that it was bloody hard work. You really appreciate those 90 seconds of walking. I would tell you more details but I hadn't got hold of the GPS add-on for this app (I have now!). You have a playlist of your choice playing and a voice interrupts to tell you when to run, when to walk, when you're halfway through, when you're about to do your last run, and then when you've finished - it's really easy, you don't have to think what to do, the voice will tell you.

Tuesday - I managed about 45 mins of digging and hoeing at the allotment, and then followed it up with 30 mins on the Wii Fit doing hula hooping, step aerobics, running on the spot and boxing.

Wednesday - I was going to go for my second run of the week but it started raining so I decided to go for a swim instead. I can only get to this particular pool if I've got the car and, fortunately, TLH had to attend a business meeting oop north by train, so I had the car yesterday. This time the swimming was easier. I've decided to try and increase the number of lengths I do each time by 2, so yesterday I swam 12 lengths in about 20 mins and I found I wasn't quite so out of breath at the end of each lap. Progress? or just not swimming as fast as possible as I was doing on Saturday?

Thursday (today) - sunny/cloudy but not raining. Huzzah. Today was my second C25k session. And this time I'd got the GPS add-on working so I can give you a lot more detail:
      Distance: 1.7 miles
     Walk pace: 19:23/mi (i.e., it would take me 19.23 mins to walk a mile)
     Run pace: 15:46/mi - oh yeah, I'm not jogging fast!
     Calories burned: 195

All a bit slow at the moment. According to the app, the goals I should be working towards are, obviously 5k in distance, a run pace of about 9:41 mins per mile (I've just realised they're mixing kilometres and miles!), and a walk pace of about 12 mins per mile.

I've set my own goals for weight loss (I want to lose about 2 stone/28lbs, if possible) and I've been making a concerted effort this week to look at what I'm eating and, especially, portion size. I'm eating way more fruit that I normally do and cutting down on carbs, and I have a reward for myself in mind for when I'm down a dress size. I'm going to buy myself this gorgeous frock:

It's a Fifties gypsy style figure hugging dress made from pale pink fabric covered with tattoo designs.

Or possibly this one:

Same designer but this fabric is pale blue covered in Mexican Day of the Dead sugar skulls. Sorry about the quality of the pictures but eBay is very awkward about copying pictures so I had to photograph them on my phone from my laptop and then email myself the photos! But you get the idea. Picture them with fishnet tights and pointy, pointy kittenheel sandals. I have to admit there is an ulterior motive to getting one of these frocks, but one I'm not quite ready to share with you yet in case it doesn't work out.....

As for tomorrow, Friday, well, currently not sure what I'll do but I may take the slightly easier option of half an hour on the Wii Fit (don't have to pay any money for that, unlike the pool, and I don't have to go outside, unlike the running!).

The purpose of this post has been to log what I've been doing as a permanent record but I have to say, if you've managed to read this far without being bored out of your tiny mind, then you have a level of stamina I can only aspire to...

And so it begins.....

2011-03-27T00:01:00.001Z

I've been taking my blood pressure for the last 4 days now and once I've averaged it out over 10 readings and then added 10 to the Systolic and 5 to the Diastolic readings, it certainly looks as if I'm going to be in the low end of the high blood pressure range. Bummer.

Still, at least I know. And steps are starting to be taken so that when I return the machine on Monday and see the doctor (probably at a later date) I can at least tell her that I'm trying to lose weight and I'm increasing my exercise from zero to some. Well, it's better than nothing and now I have an incentive.

So to that end I've downloaded the Couch to 5k app for the iPhone which claims it can take you from - as the name suggests - the couch to running 5kms (3 miles) in 9 weeks. We'll see. I had to get some proper clothes to run in, and an armband to attach my iPhone to my arm so I can listen to the little voice (not the ones in my head, for once!) telling me when to jog and when to walk. So I've got all the kit now, I've just got to make the exercise happen. But today I didn't feel like getting started on the running, and I felt like a failure before I'd even started.

And then, at about midday today, I received a text from my good friend Sam who now lives opposite me in the Close, suggesting that we go for a swim together later this afternoon. I pondered saying 'no' but stopped myself - after all, what's the point of starting an exercise regime if you don't actually start it, know what I mean? And I used to really enjoy swimming - I mean, in my early teens I used to swim for the town where I grew up so I used to be good, you know? Plus the University near me has recently built an extremely spiffy sports centre with a 50m pool which is where she swims, and I'd fancied checking it out anyway, so what was stopping me?

I dug out my swimming costume, and rummaged around to find my goggles and condom hat which were located somewhere in the depths of my knicker drawer. I tried them on and decided I was too sexy to live:

It's a good look, non?

The pool was fabulous and although the sports centre was heaving with all sorts of things going on, the pool itself was relatively empty for 4.30 on a Saturday afternoon. I utilised the 'slow' lane while Sam headed off to the 'Medium' lane. We decided we would swim for about 30 mins and I managed 10 laps, but had to stop after each lap to bring my heart rate down. I still managed to go faster than one woman who was doing that very slow breast stroke where you don't get your hair wet, which just seems pointless to me.

Anyway, I was very pleased I went as I did enjoy it loads, so when I get the car back in a couple of weeks time I'm going to try and make it a regular thing.

It's official - I'm getting old....

2011-03-24T11:09:00.002Z

Last week I went to the docs to have a suspicious rash (that I’ve had for over 2 years!) on my hip investigated in case it turned out to be basal cell carcinoma (like a close relative's just been diagnosed with) - turns out to be ringworm! Yay for 19th century ragamuffin diseases!

While I was there (and ‘cos I don’t go to the doctors very often), they nabbed me for a blood pressure check. As I'd just had a brisk 10 min walk to get to the surgery, I wasn't surprised that the reading was a bit high. The doctor was a little concerned and insisted that I do a 5-day home blood pressure check so on Tuesday I went to collect the machine to start checking my blood pressure twice a day. Like a motherfucking adult. Or even Old Person.

When I told friends last weekend about having to collect the monitor I was pretty gung-ho and dismissive about it since I felt absolutely fine, and had no doubt that the readings would be normal. Obviously, as I had had a brisk walk to get to the surgery, it had been raised but, it'll be fine, you'll see.

Then, over the weekend, as you do, I hit Google as I wondered what the symptoms of high blood pressure would be (apart from the obviously terminal ones like sudden stroke or heart attack). Turns out, rather alarmingly, there are no symptoms of high blood pressure. You bimble along, happy as a sandboy until WHAM! you literally hit the deck and either survive or don't. Huh. This must be one of those 'silent killer diseases' you hear of. Bugger.

I tested yesterday morning (141/87) and yesterday evening (140/80) and this morning's reading was 138/88 with a resting heartrate of between 72 and 75 bpm. The instructions that come with the monitor says that anything over 135/85 is iffy so mine seems to be at the top end of borderline high blood pressure. Just for comparison, we tested The Lovely Husband's blood pressure this morning. His was something ridiculous like 122/77 with a resting heartrate of 62 bpm (I think it was). The difference between mine and his was a lot more than I was expecting.

Sigh.

I have to take 10 readings and do an average, and then add 10 to the first (systolic) figure and 5 to the second (distolic) figure since "on average, home blood pressure readings are 10/5 lower than readings in the surgery, and targets for blood pressure are based on surgery readings" according to the form the doctor gave me. And it looks like when I do that it's going to put my readings into the high blood pressure range properly.

Double sigh with additional 'tut'.

From what I've read on the internet (yes, yes, I know one shouldn't consult Dr Google but I like to be informed, you know?), my blood pressure is not so high that I should immediately be put on medication but that the doctor might consider it. I'll see what she says.

Putting my sensible grown-up hat on for once, this is actually a good thing for me to discover. My genetic inheritance is Not Good regarding heart problems as I have it on both sides of my family - my maternal grandmother (who was an ill woman all her life) died of her 5th or 6th heart attack aged 64 - so that's heart problems on my mother's side of the family - and my dad dropped dead of a massive heart attack (his first and only one) aged 55. I'm almost 48. And, as far as I'm aware, he'd never complained of chest pains and wasn't on any kind of medication. He was also a non-smoker, didn't drink much, played golf, squash and swam, and it still got him. However, he did run his own business and was under quite a lot of stress most of the time. But, still, 55 is no age to go and I really, really don't want to follow in his footsteps.

Guess I’m going to have to watch the salt and start doing exercise. Can’t I just sit on the sofa and eat cake instead?

Ta-daa! Unveiling the Pansy and a new Bauble and more Birdies....

2011-03-22T15:55:00.001Z

My name is Mrs Jones and I am a hooker.

Yes, once again, I've put down the knitting needles and reverted to my beloved crochet hook. Knitting's weird, people. Having to manipulate two long thin metal spikes and a ball of wool in order to veeerrrryyy slooooowwwly create something that looks like my 5-year old nephew made (actually, he could probably do better) is just not my idea of fun.

I know millions and millions of people can do it and it bothers me a bit that I just can't seem to manage it when, on the face of it, it doesn't really seem that difficult but it's got me flummoxed. So, for the sake of my sanity, I've gone back to crocheting.

This past week I've made another couple of Birdie decorations, and I now have a little flock of them hanging in my front room:

I've had to stop for the moment though, because I've run out of buttons for the eyes, plus I want to get some different colours for them. I'm making them in a 100% cotton yarn (I normally use acrylic for everything) which makes them feel, sort of, I dunno, more classy somehow and a bit posher. I'm heading into my nearest big town on Thursday this week so I'll swing by the wool shops then to check out what colours they've got and check out different coloured buttons for eyes.

My intention, at the moment, is to carry on making a few more of these and then see if there's a market for them, either on my craft stall or in my (currently defunct) Etsy site. I'm also planning to do something similar with the Bauble decorations. If you recall in my previous post I'd made a blue one, while earlier this week I made a purple one, and decorated it with more beads:

This one has faceted crystal beads (the clear Aurora Borealis - like a clear rainbow glaze - ones on the outside, and the blue ones in the middle), small silver metal beads and a pearl in the middle. Sadly, it's a plastic pearl - I'd much rather use a real pearl but the holes in the middle of real pearls are not large enough to pass even a very fine needle and thread through. I do have a pearl clamp and a Dremel drill but enlarging a hole through the middle of a real pearl is an unbelievable faff. Takes ages and the pearl gets really bloody hot.

I'm not sure it's worth the bother when a plastic pearl will do the job and look just as nice. Still, I'd like to use real semi-precious stones and pearls on these eventually.

I want to make more of these in different colours and, like the Birdies, see if there's any market for them. They'd look great on a Christmas tree as well as just hanging them up in the house all year round.

My final ta-daa for you today is a flower that I crocheted. I bought myself a book called 'Crochet Bouquet' by Suzann Thompson which tells you how to create all kinds of different flowers.

It arrived a couple of days ago, so I've had a quick look through it and have started to decide which flowers I want to have a go at. I'm not sure it's as easy as she makes out, though, mainly because it's written using American crochet terms and I use English ones. For example, what they call a double crochet (dc) in the States, is a treble (tr) over here and their single crochet (sc) is our double (dc). It means you have to really concentrate while reading the pattern until you get the hang of it.

Still, I had a go at her Pansy design yesterday and I think it came out pretty well - at least, it had a passing resemblance to a pansy so I'm pretty pleased:

Sorry the picture's a bit dark but you can click on it to make it bigger. You might just be able to spot the small gold glass bead I attached to the middle.

One of these things is not like the other....

Not sure what I'm going to do with it. I absolutely adore the tea cosies covered in flowers made by Alice over at Crochet with Raymond but, sadly, I don't use a teapot (nor know anyone who does) and - as whinged about above - I can't knit yet. But the cluster of flowers is to die for - I suppose I could try and crochet my first beanie-style hat and attach a load to the side....

Anyway, apart from fannying around with fibre, I've been enjoying the arrival of Spring and today mowed the lawn for the first time this year. What a hateful job that is. Took over an hour to mow our tiny little patch of lawn and the sweat was literally pouring down my face by the end.

And I've been a very good girl and have been going to the allotment more frequently - in fact, I ought to pop down there now for a bit but I've promised myself a session on the Wii Fit and there's other things I should do this afternoon, so I'll probably leave it until tomorrow, but a few days ago I sowed over 300 carrot seeds (you can't really start carrots off in the greenhouse, they don't like being transplanted, so you have to sow them where they're going to grow), and weeded the flower bed beside the shed where I grow plants specifically to attract the bees - lavender, potentilla, foxgloves, sedum - and put in a couple of delphiniums and a small clump of Golden Rod.

But I am feeling a bit guilty about not going because it's just such a glorious day. I mean, this is my view from where I'm sitting writing this - our back door is open onto the bridge, Sylvester's sitting on the doormat and the sun is just streaming in through my filthy dirty windows:

I hope the spring's arrived wherever you are...

Ta-daa! Unveiling the Bauble Decoration....

2011-03-11T14:36:00.001Z

Yeah, I know, I'm still on a roll. This is my latest project, now finished, a crochet bauble decoration (don't forget you can click on all the pictures to make them bigger):

As before, I got the pattern from Lucy's blog at Attic24, in fact this particular tutorial.

I used acrylic yarn from my stash in shades of blue and used a 4mm hook to make it.

This should give you an idea of scale. They're simple to make and you can use them just to hang up anywhere for a bit of colour in your life, or you can make a load to hang on the Christmas Tree. Lucy's ones are very bright and she uses buttons and plastic beads. I don't have buttons but I do have more beads than any sane person would have (in case you've forgotten, I make jewellery so have a craft room filled to bursting with pearls and crystals and semi-precious beads of all shapes and sizes), plus I was inspired by the serious embellishment that Elizabeth Cat used on her version of Lucy's bauble decoration. Please click on the link to have a look - they're like jewels!

So mine hasn't been encrusted with quite so much loveliness as it was the first one I made and I need to work out how to attach all the pearls and beads and things, bearing in mind I don't have any embroidery thread (I think I need something thicker than sewing cotton but thinner than yarn to attach the beads - wool won't go through the hole and cotton is too thin) but I do have very flexible beading thread/wire.

Instead of a button for the centre, I used a clear Swarovski octagonal chandelier crystal with two holes, and just sewed one in place on both sides.

And then used the beading thread/wire and crimps to attach the dangly bit at the bottom, utilising three differently shaped and coloured crackle beads.

At the top are a couple of silver-lined glass beads in pale and darker blue. These have really big holes in them so the hanging thingy can pass through the middle of them.

I'm really pleased with how it came out although it did take quite a long time to make. Mind you, that might well have been because I was following the pattern for the first time, but I think I will make some more and try experiments with adding crystals and pearls to make them really lavish!

Ta-daa! Unveiling the Birdie Decoration....

2011-03-07T12:25:00.000Z

I seem to be on a bit of a crocheting roll at the moment, and this little birdie is my latest finished project.

After I'd finished the Twirly Scarf I turned my attention to learning how to knit. This is coming along slowly and not without swearing. I'm struggling my way through a scarf made in moss stitch (knit one, purl one) which is a pretty stitch, sort of bumpy, but I'm really having to concentrate and remember exactly what stitch I'm supposed to be doing. Of course I don't manage this so I end up with too many stitches and holes and, well, look, see for yourself:

See? Rubbish, isn't it? I'm not too bothered though as the whole idea was to get the hang of manipulating two long thin needles as opposed to a single short hook. God, that photo makes it look really, really bad, much worse than in real life!

Here's a closeup of a really crappy part:

I just have to keep remembering that my very first attempt at crochet in November 2009 was meant to be a square but it came out triangular. It was dreadful, but now I can make blankets. And small birds.

So, yes, back to the little birds. Knitting the scarf is hard work, like I said I have to concentrate, and it's disheartening to keep making such a dog's breakfast of the whole thing but I shall persevere because I've got to get better eventually, haven't I? Please God, say I will... Anyway, to give me a break from the swearing, I thought I'd rattle off one or two crocheted birdie decorations which I've been meaning to have a go at for some while.

I got the pattern from the incomparable Attic24 blog (which if you are interested at all in crochet, you should check out) and if you follow her wonderful tutorials, the birdies really do come out as they're supposed to. I followed her instructions to the letter which meant I had to get a new crochet hook, some buttons and some new yarn - cotton, this time. I got half a dozen or so colours - two shades of pink, two of blue, creamy white, a browny-purple and an orange - and over the weekend made this little guy:

It's a bit dim on that side of the kitchen, so let's hang him up in the sunshine on the other side, shall we?

I'm glad I've finally found a use for some large gold-plated heavy metal beads with big holes that I bought by mistake about 5 years ago - they're perfect for birdie 'feet'!

This was so satisfying to make, that I've made another one, finishing it this morning:

The body of this one is alternating cream and pale pink stripes with darker pink wings and an outside edge in browny-purple. Cute, aren't they?

I'm keeping the first one but the new pink one is off to a new home as a surprise present for a lovely person. But I like it so much that I think I'll make another in the same colour way to keep for myself.

Where should we go?

2011-03-03T17:03:00.001Z

I'm feeling in need of a break. A short getaway. The Lovely Husband and I haven't been away on holiday for what seems like an age now. Not even a short city break. This has mostly been down to constraints on time and, most especially, money.

But we have a wedding anniversary coming up in the first week of April, a reasonably substantial one at that (15 years, if you really want to know) and call me an old romantic, or a traditionalist if you will, I actually think that's something to celebrate. It would be easy enough to just go out for a curry and enjoy a bottle of wine but, to me, that's an average Friday or Saturday night. Being able to stand 15 years in the company of the same person without wanting to stab them to death too often is an achievement, and one that demands something a bit more celebratory than a Lamb Bhuna and a bottle of Shiraz for once. So that's 15 years wed come Monday 4 April. Trouble is, we're already going out with friends on 3 April, to see a very funny comedian called Micky Flanagan, which I'm looking forward to tremendously, but it does mean we've kinda scuppered our plans for getting away that weekend.

No matter, I have a birthday 19 days after that, so - I hear you mumble - why not get away for that? Because it's only bastard Easter, isn't it? Yep, my birthday this year falls on Easter Saturday so if everywhere I fancy staying isn't already booked, then it'll be extortionately priced because it's bastard Easter.

*Sigh*

So let's say we just discard those particular dates. Okay, no worries. The next choice is where to go and what to stay in. And this is where my head asplodes, because, frankly, I have no real idea. Well, that's not strictly true, I have so many ideas and desires that I can't make a final choice. Right now I really, really like the idea of a small cottage, as close to the beach as it can be, with a woodburning stove and a pub that does really good food in walking distance. Preferably on the south coast so it doesn't take hours to get there. We both love Cornwall but I'm thinking it may be a bit far. I'm tempted by the eastern side of the country - East Sussex and Kent where it sticks out into the sea - but probably not Suffolk or Norfolk, for distance reasons, again.

The Isle of Wight is quite appealing - not just for its reputed unhurriedness in a 1950s Britain stylee but also for the dinosaur factor. I mean, of course, real dinosaurs not just stuff that's unfashionable, ancient and lumpen.

But then I start thinking of cities that I want to stay in - Brighton, Bath, York (too far, but on the list), Canterbury - or smaller places such as Rye - or even just areas I want to go to where I've never been before - the Lake District, Cumbria, the Yorkshire Moors, the whole of Scotland - and I end up closing the browser window in despair and thinking about what to make for tea instead. I just can't decide.

So can you help me? Have you any suggestions of places you've stayed at that might be what I'm looking for?