Waiting At the Window By A.A. Milne

Have returned to my Blog for the first time in ages! Have lots to tell to all 4 people who read this but must finish my OU first. However, I just wanted to throw this little poem in quickly to anybody confused enough to accidentally follow my link on Twitter who also, by complete chance enjoyed a summer of JJJ and Big Brother this year.....It's a long-shot but just in case such a person exists, here goes!

Waiting at the Window By A.A.Milne.  

(A poem from the mind of a little boy watching 2 raindrops chasing down the windowpane.)

These are my two drops of rain

Waiting on the window pane

I am waiting here to see

Which the winning one will be.

Both of them have different names.

One is John and one is James

All the best and all the worst

Comes from which of them is first

James has just begun to ooze

He's the one I want to lose

John is waiting to begin

He's the one I want to win

James is going slowly on.

Something sort of sticks to John.

John is moving off at last.

James is going pretty fast.

John is rushing down the pane.

James is going slow again

James has met a sort of smear.

John is getting very near.

Is he going fast enough?

(James has found a piece of fluff.)

John has hurried quickly by.

(James is talking to a fly.)

John is there, and John has won!

Look! I told you! Here's the sun!

Seems that even as early as 1927, the split personality that accompanies the name John James was being observed! 

Bogged Down

Hello! Long time no speak! I have had no opportunity to do any leisurely passtimes on my PC since I began on my latest attempt to become a little more clever! My search for qualification heaven has taken over my life somewhat and I have become a whole different person since. You may be able to detect it if you compare this to my previous entries. But I am, sadly, no more intelligent. I feel a little bit of me is missing, a portion of my brain has been taken over. Strict word counts for my OU essays mean that I now pour over texts/emails/greetings cards for any words which can be removed without making any change to the overall message that I'm trying to get across. A birthday card that would once have read:
             
                 Dear (person)
         
            I hope you have a lovely birthday today.
          Hope you get all the presents you wished for (and maybe a little more)
            Here's to many more birthdays.
        We really ought to get together soon, it seems like ages since I saw you last
        (goodness-it probably is!). I'll see if we can get over to you in the holidays.
                  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
               xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx!

Now reads:

             (Person)

       Happy Birthday, speak soon. x

I now tweet and find I still have 50 characters remaining. My Twitter ID 'Talkloads' is in serious danger of a lawsuit and even my house has taken on an eerie silence as I precis sentences before I utter anything.

I miss my former self. I even look different. Within a week or so of my OU starting, I began getting headaches. It didn't register at first, I thought I had one of these non-descript viruses (doctor's diagnosis) that turn out to be brain tumors (only after it's too late to treat them). I would have eventually dragged myself to the doctor's but one morning, I went to my maths class (I am one of those duffers who at middle age is still trying to get my maths GCSE 'C' or above) feeling fine and happy. We were doing graphs and after two hours of trying to count pale green lines only fractions of a millimetre apart to put a fat 4-line obliterating splodge to represent the formula y=mx+c (or something) my head was killing me and my eyes were weeping independent of my emotions (although to be honest I feel like weeping after most maths lessons) and it ocurred to me that I may need to get my eyes tested. 

A well-known money-spinning supermarket in my local town were able to arrange an appointment for me to see their optician the next day. So off I went. Late. After a very brief 'history' chat, I was sat in a chair in an unlit cupboard and a pair of remarkably unstable bulky goggles were placed on my face. With no word of warning, like a game of Connect 4 (or 4 in-a-row/ make 4 if you have the cheaper version) a black disc was slotted in the left eye and I was (I think) handed a mirror (or something-it was all a bit of a shock as I had expected bright airy rooms, white coats and a little board on the wall with letters that decreased in size, this  felt more like I'd been abducted by aliens) but not asked to read off the letters reflected (I may be wrong) in front of me, but instead to confirm whether I could see the bottom row. I could have lied for all they knew. This was repeated with the other eye, then, as if the goggles I was wearing weren't precariously placed enough, something heavy was hung off them and I was given a heavy plate-sized tray-shaped gadget that closely resembled a baby toy without the bright colours.

I was asked to look at a portion of it that had a tiny circle with two lines, one above and one below, a bit like the sight on a gun. I was asked whether the lines were in line with one another or not. I didn't know. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't. I found myself apologising for being so indecisive but this lady was heartless, gave no reply and began slotting more discs into the goggles and repeating the question over and over again. I was feeling under immense pressure to say the lines were great as I felt she was getting increasingly irritated with my inability to say one answer and stick to it but as the lines were skewing in all directions I really didn't feel I could sound convincing. Finally, the correct combination of discs was found and the lines settled approximately together. The test was over. The lights were put on and we shuffled out of the cupboard, back in view of the queues of people waiting to pay for their groceries, plasma TVs and lawn seed. Humans doing human things-I was back on earth. The lady doing the test had transformed from the evil professor into a nice lady again and was telling me to go into the cupboard opposite for the next test....What?!! More tests? No!

In the next cupboard there were two huge machines, I was directed to one and told to sit on a stool with my chin resting on a....chin rest. A few twiddles of pulleys and knobs and these two 'things' were lined up with my eyes. The evil professor was talking but I couldn't hear her over the sound of my own beating heart. The next thing I remember was a cold blast of air puffing at high pressure into my eyes. Yikes! Three times it happened. I figured I was supposed to keep my eyes open for this but had no physical control over what my eyelids did. However, I apparently passed and was told that I was clear of glaucoma, not that I'd even expected I might have it in the first place? Finally I went to the other machine, complete with chin-rest, not, I suspect to keep one's head steady but to prevent one from collapsing into a heap on the floor through fear of what these aliens were doing. This test required me to look at pin-prick lights and click a button (similar to the one I had on my foetal monitor to track my contractions during labour) every time I saw the light go red-or something. I passed that anyway, and made to leave, thinking my work was done but the Jekyll/Hyde lady called me back. 'Excuse me-I need to write out your prescription' My what? I passed didn't I? Apparently not. It seems that I have a prism in my right eye (have or need one-I'm not sure) and it means that my eyes fail to work in conjunction with one another.

I needed to get glasses!!!

I was offered to look at the range displayed in front of all the tills, but was too traumatised by the whole debacle to be relied upon to safely choose a decent pair of glasses, so with prescription in hand, I scarpered home to lick my wounds and recover from my ordeal. Okay so it wasn't an ordeal but I certainly wasn't in the mood to buy a breadmaker. A few days later, The Grumpster and I visited a famous purveyor of fine spectacles. This was a whole other story but I'm aware I have a word limit so I'll give a brief synopsis.

Woman and man (35-40) enter spectacle store, look at glasses for 10 minutes, wonder why no-one is asking them if they need any help, chance upon a desk called 'Reception' where they ask if someone could assist, only to be told they needed to sign in. Sign in, mill about, see lots of old people wander in to be accosted at the door (despite having not attended the required sign-in point)  by eager staff desperate to wear the 'I'm so good with the old folk' badge. At the point where this has happened at least 3 times, and knowing full well that these staff members know that they have been there for at least 20 minutes, the said couple make moves to leave to spec shop, aware that young children will be taken in by social services if they are not collected from school. Spec store staff practically barricade the door to prevent said couple from leaving and suggest it will only take 5 minutes to find a suitable style. Couple relent, find a style (not a good style, just the least worst) and then agree to go back to complete the transaction another day. The couple return the next day, with a three year-old child who systematically destroys the spectacle shop while the couple order the specs. Justice, they feel, has been done. 

I now have my glasses. I'm getting to grips with the idea of wearing them and in all honesty, with my young daughter not sleeping well at present they feel as if they are the only thing that is stopping my eyes from falling out of my head right now. Many people look really good with glasses. I don't. I was wearing them in a maths lesson last week, waiting for the tutor to come and help me with a 'hard sum', and as he approached and I looked up at him to catch his attention, I felt a look upon my face that you only really see in comic book pictures or sitcoms. Some people look really hot in glasses, that iconic image of a woman removing her one hair clip allowing 10 heads-worth of glowing hair to tumble down their shoulders, then removing her glasses seductively, putting the end of the arm innocently into the corner of her mouth etc ( etc??? See how clumsily I ended that-seductive I am not!) doesn't come without precident. Other people look spectacularly intellectual. In most TV programmes, doctors, scientists, serious journalists etc will have glasses as their no. 1 prop in order to look the part. The seductive look is often combined with the intellectual look -intellectually hot? Incredibly popular on the TV as it allows the viewer to believe there is nothing but science and maths going on in a character's head until their night-time alter-ego appears...

The third look can be called simply gormless. Generally accompanied by a flycatcher mouth and a constant forefinger flick on the bridge of the nose to shove the glasses back into position, this look (which in films would feature bottle-bottom glasses) can combine with neither sexy or intellectual, no matter how hard the wearer tries. Of course, as I appealed for help from my maths tutor in that lesson, the latter was the look which fell upon my  face like a favourite glove, and I realised in that instant that all the study in the world would never improve what was inside, the glasses confirmed what I have maybe always known. Inside of me is a gormless numpty who may forever chase the golden egg that is the maths GCSE! Watch this space come late August...

So my followers (if indeed anyone is truly reading this tripe) I leave you for the time being.

Happy days, Lucy!

The Lottery

 My current kitchen. 

Note the lack of space for simultaneous prep of healthy suppers and baking.

 I'm listening to the radio at the moment. There is a phone-in on at the moment about whether money makes you happy. I cannot believe how many people are ringing in to say they would not want to win the lottery!

We don't really play the lottery. The Grumpster and I chose a set of numbers each when the Lottery started in 1994, based on things like the phone number, door number, birthdays, lucky numbers and the odd dream-like vision. Not understanding the lottery fully at the time, we felt obliged to buy our two tickets every Saturday, because obviously the week we didn't put the numbers in would certainly be the week our numbers would come up. We became slaves to it.

The Grumpster would attack me as I walked through the door, hands full of shopping bags with an urgent 'Have you bought the lottery tickets?'  Inevitably I would feel my heart drop into my stomach, I would struggle to gasp in oxygen, I would feel tears pricking the corners of my eyes. I would barely manage to whisper 'No' in reply before he was grabbing his coat and car keys and running for his life into the darkness (or gorgeous sunshine for May/June/July-we had hot summers back then).

We kept this going for quite some time. If we knew we were going to be busy on the Saturday, we'd plan ahead and buy our tickets on the Friday. We couldn't afford to buy a number of weeks ahead (we had a 30K mortgage to pay-we were positively poor!) and for some unfathomable reason we felt we felt it was perhaps frivolous-or maybe too addictive to buy more than one day ahead, so there were occasional slip-ups. A mistaken Saturday evening would go as follows:-

Grumpster (mixing concrete to scree the floor/slapping paint on a badly-plastered wall) : 'What time does the Lottery close tonight?'
Me (Heating up microwave food on the skanky kitchen floor as the worktops were out for about 8 months) : 'Oh my Goodness!-I'll run up to the Spar and see if we aren't too late.'
Grumpster (grumpily) : 'Well that will be our numbers coming out of the machine tonight then'

(I must note that I'm pretty sure the lottery was played at random times depending on the TV schedule, we can't have been that crap at remembering a fixed time for 'last orders')

Shortly after my empty-handed return, we would sit, scooping our curries out of the black plastic trays that they were heated up in, eyes fixed on the screen with the multi-coloured balls rolling mesmerically before our eyes. Under my breath I'd be muttering 'not my numbers' over and over again like a woman posessed, The Grumpster to my side, his steely-face willing our numbers to stay in the huge bowl. As the first number was drawn up the tube, our nerves would reach the sort of height normally experienced in the face of abject danger. My eyes would be dancing like bees around a daisy as I tried to read the number on the side as it rolled down the little slope. A small bounce at the end of the run, and I could again breathe. Not my number. No missed millions this week. By the time I'd tuned my brain back into the TV I'd be relieved to see four balls sitting at the bottom of the screen, none with our numbers, not even a tennner missed, and a pound richer. The Grumpster, true to form however, would still be bemoaning his luck 'Our bloody numbers never come up'! Oh, how half empty his glass is!

At some stage, possibly a year into the lottery, someone (I suspect Mother-of-The Grumpster) gave us a small gift. It was intended to be useful to us, but proved to be more ruinous to our Lottery journey than anything. It was a pen. Cheap, not very tactile and too clumsy to use, but there was more to it than the pen 'feature'. The pen was the standard length of a biro, maybe a little skinnier which contributed to it's unusability as a pen, which was then compounded by the main feature- a large, globe-like sphere which rattled it's cargo of mini balls around with every movement. Yes, you got it, it was a  Lottery-number-selector-pen! The idea was, you held it with the globe-end pointing down, shook the balls to ensure random-ness, and then flipped it over, pen-end down, and there, in the shaft, would be six balls, randomly chosen from the 49 available, for us to copy onto a lottery-form and morph into a winning ticket!

So exciting. But we already had our numbers, and as I have previously explained, burdened by an enormous 30K mortgage, we could never have afforded to buy three tickets each week, but we had the pen (of fortune?) and we couldn't discount the possibility that this pen would make us winners! We could afford to pay someone else to scree our floor and paint our walls, and maybe pay off the gigantic mortgage under which we were forever shadowed! But neither of us wanted to give up our own numbers, because of course, they would then be guaranteed to come up. Until a solution to the affordability of three tickets-a-week issue was found (lottery win?) the pen was abandoned.

Given to aimless tom-foolery as we all are in the you-don't-know-how-lucky-you-are days of no children, one evening, the pen surfaced, and made it's way into our bored hands. We decided to see how many times we would have to go through the shake/tip sequence until one of our sets of numbers came up. I don't recall at which point we gave up, but suffice to say we never got our numbers. In fact, not even three of our numbers in any one attempt. For me, this became the point where I decided not to ever panic over losing something I didn't have in the first place. The Grumpster, for all his pessimism continued to ensure the tickets were regularly bought for quite some time after this. I think it all fizzled away once the Wednesday draw was started. £4 per week was too much, even for him.

One day, a couple of years after we gave up on the lottery, we bumped into a friend who was going to the local shop. He was off to collect some lottery winnings. 'Six numbers' he told us! Why was he going to the local newsagent to collect the wonga? Because he had two lines of numbers that he always used, and each had come up trumps for a tenner. His numbers had been chosen as randomly as ours, and I was left feeling that he was one of the unluckiest people I knew, how easily he could have put those six numbers on the same line, but I have a feeling if he had......

Anyway, the original premise for this Blog was that on the phone-in, quite a few people said they would hate to have the amounts of money generated by a lottery win! Are they mad? I would love to have a load of money. All I actually want is a house here in my current location, with enough bedrooms for the boys to have one room each and my daughter to have one with a bit more space, a bedroom for guests, a kitchen big enough for me to put aside my baking while I prepare a healthy lunch (yeah right-but if I had that kitchen I would cook properly!), a room entirely devoted to washing and ironing with a sub-room off that, never to be seen by visitors, where the boys' football boots, enormous school-bags, plethera of coats for various weather-conditions and perhaps a little dog could live....

Yes, I really would be very happy to win the lottery, if only we could get into the habit of buying a ticket!


For now, not in any state of riches, take care. Lucy.

Mr Wenger, you may thank me at your leisure!

Just a quickie. The Grumpster is watching the Arsenal v Porto Champions League game. I am listening in the small, healthy-food/baking-prohibitive kitchen. On my DAB radio. Anyone who is interested in sport and has left 5 Live on whilst watching a match on Terrestrial TV will have noticed that the streaming on a DAB radio is about 2 seconds (maybe more) ahead of that on the TV. I use this fact to help in crucial World Cup games etc by leaving the radio on loud whilst watching to enhance my enjoyment of the sporting experience. When something exciting/terrifying is happening, I drown out the TV commentary and focus on what is happening on the radio ahead of what I can see, thus preventing me from getting too excited by something which may ultimately let me down. In a nutshell, it somehow lessens the disappointment (which comes a lot with the teams I support- Arsenal/Portsmouth/England).

The Grumpster (like most) finds the same thing immensely annoying.  He likes to let hope dwell in his heart. I think it feeds his Grumpy side as he can really moan when it goes belly-up. To avoid irritation tonight, the lounge door has been firmly shut to prevent any spoilers, but our daughter keeps going to see him and leaving the door open. I have therefore, out of the kindness of my heart, kept the radio on a low volume to ensure he enjoys the game 'to the Max'.

However, I had been busy (doing nothing) and wasn't listening to the commentary for a few minutes when the lounge door opened and I could hear The Grumpster pleading with aforementioned youngster to shut the door. I couldn't resist yelling 'Yeah-Go Arsenal!' at the top of my voice to annoy him, and not a word of a lie, When I stopped, the commentator could be heard yelling 'And Arsenal have an equaliser...' My plan had backfired in a weird sort of favourable way! The joke hadn't worked at all, but I took solace in my psychic affect on the Gunners.

So Mr Wenger, read my previous post re: money, and make the cheque payable to........

Lucy

ps-anyone who reads this may be starting to understand why The Grumpster is so grumpy...He's grumpy now as while I have been doing this, the children have left a trail of destruction throughout the house. Time I got going!

Web-love

Why oh why did I think it would be a good idea to sign up for an OU course that involved spreadsheets and creating my own Website??? I have made no secret of the fact that I am not to be combined with most post-war technology yet I persist. I believe my new moblie phone may be to blame. To refresh, I bought a phone called an HTC HD2 which was recommended to me by a friend's husband. He then sold his a week after I bought it, citing the complexity of the phone and the many functions which he would never use as reasons for flogging it on (thus using the remaining 18 months of his contract on the old phone he had been so desperate to replace in the first place). I on the other hand, was able to use the phone most successfully for many of it's recommended uses, and even The Grumpster was calling me names like 'nerdy geek-face'. I think a false sense of communication confidence had overtaken me.

So I needed another 60 points to complete my degree, and signed up for a course called The Environmental Web'. The 'web' part is nothing to do with spiders, more to be associated with the world-wide variety, but Hey! No problem for moi-I own an HTC HD2 and I can take photos on it and upload them to my Facebook page almost instantly. Modern technology has caught up with me, I have joined the communication generation. Computers-schmuters, IT will no longer stand in my way, I can now do anything.

Except anything required of me on my course.

In just under two months, I need to send via the computer (rather than post or even hand delivery at midnight as in the former years of my degree) typed answers to questions on a word document, a spreadsheet of something, and 6 graphs done on spreadsheets. Yes 6! Zipped?  How on earth am I going to manage that??? Before that, I need to participate in an online Tutor-group forum and I tried my bloody hardest and I could NOT log in to the said forum so my contribution is going to be pretty poor. I tried to join all the clever people who had gone in on the course forum to say a little bit about themselves and ended up putting my two-penneth in the middle of someone called Lisa's offering. I can only hope to do something similarly stupid on the tutor-monitored, mark-grabbing forum, just as someone's adding something really profound and claim it as my own. But only if I can work out how to log in.

The course website is something to be feared. In the centre, highlighted in blue, dominating the page is a section which I am going to refer to as my Mother. The course planner. Every chapter, paragraph and activity is listed, week-by-week with a little check box next to each to show your progress. Or not. And because I am such an old lady I don't know whether it is something my Tutor can access to see if I am working hard. I can hardly tell him 'Well I am working so bloody hard at the computer stuff I haven't read the environment bits' Instead I am going to check them off, convincingly, bit-by-bit to look genuine, and then nod knowingly at the day school in March as all the brainboxes and whizzkids discuss the issues associated with the course.

I am also doing my Maths GCSE. We use paper for that. The tutor uses an interactive whiteboard to show us how to do hard sums and we copy the method onto paper. Maths used to be my nemesis, it is fast becoming my friend. I should soon be able to calculate what percentage of my OU course I have been unable to do and express it as a fraction or a decimal. But I won't be able to put it on my course forum....

I must go now as The Grumpster and I are going to watch TV. I will leave him in charge of the remote control.
Lucy.

Guitar Hero

The title refers to The Grumpster, who treated us all to a Playstation 3 recently. I have kept away from this new gadget as much as possible, prefering to nerd away with my new, now-functioning mobile phone. However, there is no escaping the noise from this new addition, it's driving me mad!

The first is the noise of ripples of applause, the swipe of stick on ball and a whispering commentator. A golf game in other words. It's rather pleasant to observe but I can only imagine that it is boring to play. There is one facility on it however which caught my fancy, one which allows the player to create their own image for the on-screen player,a  facility which forces the player to think in great depth about their appearance. On the screen is a series of breakdowns of a poor guy's face (don't know why I'm saying poor guy as it's Tiger Woods-read as rich man if you like!) into it's constituent parts, nose, brows, mouth chin etc. By clicking on any one of these, you are able to create on a 'dummy' face your likeness. For the first time, men (the prime audience for the game as only men have time to play for hours on end) are being forced to really think about their appearance, something which their female counterparts are miserably programmed to analyse about themselves on a daily basis. What fun! Throughout the process, The Grumpster was analysed, picked apart, stretched, fuzzed/defuzzzed and subjected to a series of tans and fades until we agreed the best likeness. It even had his hairstyle. It has been commented upon that the picture looks like a fugitive with mad staring eyes but when you eye The Grumpster up closely.... 

The second game on this machine is interesting. The Grumpster has been wandering around some hot jungle armed with various implements designed to end the lives of jungle baddies. These are convieniently dressed in grey from head to toe so that The Grumpster will have no trouble spotting them. They also shout at him when they have seen him, even when their jungle-unfriendly costume hasn't alerted him to their presence, allowing him to pick them off easily before stealing items of theirs which he deems useful and wandering off to find their endlessly appearing comrades. I know it's only a game but I get very cross with him when he walks over their dead bodies. He should have some respect. He has a buddy in this game, who follows him around like a child and talks to him in an urgent voice but seems to serve very little purpose. Neither of them appear to be killable which is nice as The Grumpster gets to play for as long as he fancies but it worries me that it is not ideal preparation for a situation in which The Grumpster gets lost in a similar environment in the real world with a subservient friend and an enemy who despite having been issued a stupid uniform (clearly British forces-why are they the enemy?) are likely to be better trained than him.

And then there's Guitar Hero. The Grumpster and his mini-me's are learning to share by taking turns to stand in full view of the lounge window with a small, Early Learning-sized guitar strapped to their chest, following a set routine to music. Sort of. Gone are chords and strings, replaced by coloured buttons on the fret and a big clicky-flap thing. The idea is you travel along a conveyor-belt of guitar frets on the TV screen pressing the coloured buttons on your 'guitar' as they flash past you whilst strumming this flappy job, in time to guitar classics such as Knights of Cydonia and School's out for Summer. Music it is not, however I have to say it is the game which gives me the greatest pleasure. Not that I play it, I played the guitar when I was a teenager and I can honestly say this game bears no relation to the real thing whatsoever but watching The Grumpster is an absolute delight! He attempts to maintain a nonplussed expression on his face but his determination to 'Rock' is there for all to see. Without even looking at the TV screen I am able to track the peaks and troughs of difficulty by the amount of tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth, I can sense a missed note with each frustrated grimace, but best of all is the 'I know it's sad but I can't help it' expression which is extracted with nothing more than a well-timed snigger from myself. On a romantic note though, last week, after 'unlocking' a new song by playing the 'career' mode (the worst career he has ever had as he gets paid in songs) he turned to the rest of us (I'm sure he winked) and said 'this one's for you Luce'. Swoon.

He's been on Amazon looking at other games as well. He wants to invite me into the lounge (I am now an outcast) to join the PS gang, and knowing my prowess at singing, has had a good look at Singstar for me. I might be tempted, there is no equipment required other than a microphone and it requires no coordination to play, you just have to sing in time and tune, a doddle for me, and it would be the only game I could beat him at every time. Strange he hasn't bought it yet! I must just add that I've never seen a cricket game for the PS-I'd be good at that too -well, the bits where thay break for tea anyway. My lounge pass will undoubtedly expire on a permanent basis the moment he comes through the door with a F1 game-it will happen soon I am sure and I can already hear his reasoning  'well I thought it might keep the boys happy...'

Well, this year I am doing my honours course for my OU degree, and have had a successful afternoon study-dodging, for that my followers three, I thank you!
Lucy. :-)

An Explanation. (I think!)

Yesterday, the Grumpster had a clever idea. I was writing yesterday's entry for my blog when some standard family disruption reared it's head (tea/fight/phone call/injury) and I was called away to rescue/prevent/lecture about the situation. It was hours before I got to the computer to finish, and as I came into the dining room where the complicated laptop lives, The Grumpster was sat reading what I had written. Adept as I am at multi-tasking, I simultaneously moaned about my headache whilst harrying him from the desk so that I could finish up quickly and sit on my backside eating crap and watching the TV. At this point, The Grumpster made a suggestion which would save my head from worsening at the same time as securing an early pass to the lounge. (Plus I realised, the opportunity to get to sleep before midnight). Why not leave the blog at the point where I had stopped earlier? Just leave it! Add no more!

Unable to resist an opportunity to abandon anything that requires me to sit upright and think for myself, I positioned the cursor over the box which says 'Publish Post' and left-clicked. It was done, I thought it was a bit rubbish really but I reassured myself that it would have impact if nothing else. I had a fairly good evening, enjoying pink wafer biscuits, a handful of Revels and a cup of tea. I then remembered that my younger son was being evacuated from school the next morning, and spent my 'early night' making labels and gas mask box etc to make him look like a real WW2 child, but I didn't return to my blog and it spent the night incomplete and exposed.

Well, this evening I was summoned through to the dining room by the Grumpster. Now this regularly happens in our house. I will be elbow-deep in washing up water or trapped behind a mound of ironing when I hear my name being called. I will try to avoid rushing too fast, to avoid creating an impression of being eager, and wait until at least the second summons before muttering a stream of whinges and obscenities to myself (purely for my own enjoyment) then shuffle off through the house to see why I am wanted. Nine times out of the proverbial ten, when I arrive at the required destination, I will be greeted by a child who is pinned to the ground by The Grumpster, yelling 'Don't tickle me', to which I am then requested to tickle said child, to the amusement of the ones-who-got-away, before returning to the drudgery from which I had been torn. Most of the time on the other occasions  the summons is issued from the lounge, where, upon my arrival I will be asked to observe on the television one of the many places that The Grumpster has visited with his work. I will be expected to look impressed, give a verbal acknowlegement to clarify that I wish I could go somewhere as wonderful as that, and agree that one day, when we are in a position to leave our own house without arranging a babysitter/packing five peoples' bags/telling unwilling party-members that they have to come with us because we will go to prison if we leave them at home on their own, he and I will go there together. However, nothing could have prepared me for what I was being summoned for this evening.  The Grumpster was sitting at the computer with my blog page open, and there, at the bottom of the page, was a picture of a tiny pencil telling me that I had 3 comments for yesterday's entry!!!

So people are, somehow, reading this bizarre collection of words and even though the comments pertained to the fact that the entry, typically, made no sense at all, (even less given that it was incomplete) I was delighted to see that they wanted to know what the whole thing meant. The Grumpster was even more delighted that he had been mentioned! Winners all round!

So anyway, it now means that I need to inject a little sense into my unfinished post. From memory ( I am too scared to leave this draft and re-read yesterday's post in case this alphabetti-spaghetti of a post is never found again) I had explained that my January blues had been delayed for two reasons, the first being the snow, the second being The Grumpster. I first need to reassure any worried readers that the Christmas decorations are safely in the attic-room with the damp and the things-we-keep-but-never-need, and I had no need to nag for it to be done! ( I have to add that we can't keep things in our loft but instead have a first-floor attic room over the garage room in which we have to store everything. This means that it would be unreasonable to nag The G. to do it as I could just as easily do it myself  due to there being no requirement to pull oneself from a rickety six-foot ladder, up a further five-feet through nothing to a rotten loft hatch as we did in our last home.)

Anyway, I digress. All you want to know (and all I came on here to explain today-still nursing the headache) is why The Grumpster, my husband, is the second reason for me only noticing that we were in the miserable grips of January yesterday. It actually isn't really interesting or even relevant but I will explain (this blog could hardly be described using those adjectives anyway) for anyone with an enquiring mind.  The Grumpster has a job which means he has to go away from home sometimes, and when he does, it is for huge amounts of time. In the last two years he has been away on and off for 19 months, and this means he has accrued a lot of holiday. And he needs to take it. So of all the lovely months of the year, he was allowed to take January off. You know-the month when you have the least money to spend, the least inclination to spend it and the worst weather to not spend it in. So we have been mooching about together for three weeks now, like some kind of extended Christmas without the expectation, popping out to school and back but otherwise pootling about without purpose. And then yesterday, he had to go into work to sort out some complicated work-like issue, and I was left alone with our three-year-old for the first time since mid-December and I didn't know what to do! And January smacked me in the face with full-force. The snow was almost gone, it was drizzling, everyone was back to their normal selves. And it all happened on the same day. Rubbish. Roll on summer!

So now the 'mystery ' is revealed and I should imagine anyone who has spent an unhappy twenty minutes reading through this will be thinking 'is that it?!' and sadly, that is. And for anyone wondering whether we did get more snow, the answer is no. The miseries won. The snow which was ours by rights, forecast for us to enjoy, hung fire until it got further East before treating other people to a fun day.  Glory be! January really is truly miserable!  

My followers three, and anybody else who finds themselves in the awful position of reading this, Take Care, and I will spout a load more rubbish soon. Keep commenting!
Lucy.

January.

Glory Be! January's dull. It has to be the worst month of the twelve!!! Normally I start feeling this fed up on about the 4th of Jan, when the children go back to school and the boxes of Christmas decorations wait expectantly on the landing for the 'Can you out the bloody Christmas Decorations back in the loft?' row to erupt, but this year the feeling has only just hit. There are two reasons for this delay. The first is of course the snow. It's still here but it's not exciting any more. There's no discernable thaw, it is simply receding. When it was really thick though, it caused an exciting extension to Christmas as normal day-to-day life stopped,  the schools closed (except ours of course) everyone had something to talk about and those who weren't talking about it were out playing in it. The sledges that had sat in garages, redundant for years (unless your children do the same as mine in the summer and spray the garden with a hose until sodden then drag each other round in the ensuing mud) were suddenly liberated from behind the bikes, rakes and paint tins, and dragged up and down anything remotely slope-like. Even we went sledging at the weekend-even me! Then miserable swineherds started ringing radio shows etc suggesting that we do the same as countries like Canada and carry on as normal and before we knew it, the snowy gift was shunned,  the sledges went back in the garages for another 20 years, and all this in favour of office chairs, long commutes and classrooms. BOO, HISS. We have more snow forecast overnight here-up to 15cm but I bet those same misers are on the phone to God asking for it to be rain please, 'As we've had enough fun this year. Thankyou.'

Anyway, my second reason for the late onset of my January blues. The Grumpster.

Still Geeking....

So here I am again, still geeking (as the Grumpster has described my technological activities) and testing a new editor feature on my blog. And there is no discernable difference. -Hang on, change that, there is!  I can now change how the text looks!  How Exciting!  I don't know what most of the icons at the top of this box mean, other than B and I  (can you tell?!) but there is always an option for the Grumpster to experiment on my behalf. He knows so much more about computers than I do. Today, I decided to put some photos that I'd taken on my new phone onto the computer. Under his direct supervision. All went well until I plucked the lead that connected my phone to my computer from  it's umbilical housing. 'NO' yelled the G. 'You have to tell the computer that you are disconnecting it!!!' As if it's a dire emergency, he has already made his way across the house to the poor, shocked PC. I am sitting, frozen with fear, as if the machine might in some way retaliate against my foolishness. Well, there was nothing that could be done. The computer survived (I hope) and so has my phone, but I have been shown what to do, and will never be so foolish again. Phew!  

Everyone has been so excited by the snow this week, it's just incredible. We actually get snow here most winters but it generally never lays and when it does, by the time we have slipped out into the garage to get the sledge the drip-drip signal that it is going to disappear faster than it arrived is already well under way. This year however, we have had super-snow! It's been here for days, schools have closed (although ours was the only one in Somerset that opened on Thursday-we are so hard here!) and the shops look like they have been looted. So I am sad to report that the BBC are forecasting a thaw over the next couple of days. As I type, frantic shouts and drawer-opening sounds are happening in the boys' room above me. That is the noise of boys getting dressed. We are off sledging  before it's all gone. I will let you know how it has gone (hopefully from home and not an X-ray dept.) when I next geek.

Be careful and stay upright followers. Lucy.

No my laptop is not snowed in!

Just a quick one. (Really.) I have neglected you this week but I am still here. However I have had new technology to tend at the moment, snow to contend with and children back at school/not back at school/back at school. My new phone is wonderful! And I have been able to work it which is a bonus. The Grumpster says he doesn't like touch phones but I catch him marvelling at it when he doesn't know I'm looking! And the photos-well, they look superb, unless they contain me although they are the best pics of me ever. And that's saying something!

Anyway, I have to learn to be a little more brief so I shall leave you to the snow and ice, and will be back ASAP.

Speak soon followers three.

Did you hear about the Morgans?

Good evening followers. I went to the cinema last night with my secret follower! Now it has taken me a while to work out what the film was called. Until I checked online just now, I thought it was called 'Have you seen the Fosters?'. My secret follower told me it was called 'Meet the Fosters'. Both, as you can see from the title bar for this blog (which displays the correct name), totally incorrect. Anyway, despite my confusion, my secret follower had cleverly pre-ordered the tickets so fortunately we were able to get into the film without making hideous prats of ourselves in front of the ticket office staff. (For the chance to see a short but revealing description of how readily I can make myself look utterly stupid, read my previous blog.)

Anyway, it is my opinion that the title of the film is going to muddle lots of people. I know that I can get things very wrong, very easily, but my secret follower is normal and does not. She is a big fan of one of the main characters in the film and it was her idea to go and see this film in the first place-and she must have read the title when ordering the tickets online. Yet she still couldn't get the title right, and even after seeing the bloody film we weren't sure what it was called! It's because the title is too wordy-a little like me I think.

Now this blog isn't a dedicated film review site (clearly) so I won't go on too much. Needless to say I know anything about films-I probably only watch 10 films a year so I really don't have much of a clue, but it's a perfectly good film and worth a watch. I certainly would rather watch that than Avatar, which, having seen the trailer looked to be visually similar to the Cbeebies programme, Waybaloo, but (judging from what I've heard) with a less impressive script and an inferior plot.

Now to matters of telecommunication, yes my new mobile phone. 'Wow, you have it?' I hear you all gasp 'What's it like?'
No I don't have it. And it's not looking good for the rest of the week either. Now, I can't remember what I had said about my expectations for it's delivery, but having bought it on a next-day delivery late on a Saturday night, I was fully expecting the order to be processed on Monday, and to take delivery on Tuesday. I smelled a rat at 10.30 this morning, when I had heard nothing (how impatient of me) and phoned the company. My fears were confirmed when the nice young lady was unable to find my order details. There was nothing registered against my order number!!!!! Fighting back the tears, I 'yessed' and 'no-ed' to her while she explained to me that she would e-mail another department to get them to find it. ('Look for something blue!') At some point during the call, something was said which led me to believe that I would hear within a couple of hours, so I said goodbye to the operative, and tried to relax in front of my home phone, my mobile phone and my e-mail on my laptop, so that any attempt at communication would not be missed by myself.

By three o' clock, with a very numb-bum and pins and needles in my left foot, I decided that I ought to ring again in case they had mislaid my phone numbers and e-mail address, as they had done with my order. This operative was a little less friendly than the first and seemed not to sympathise with my predicament. I had a cunning proposal in mind which I felt would save an awful lot of hassle on their part, and time on mine. I recommended that the first order (that didn't seem to exist anyway) was cancelled, and I would then simply place a totally new one, thus guaranteeing the delivery of the phone for tomorrow. But no, apparently, that was not possible. At least not yet. I was told to give it a few days.....yes!- DAYS!!! If I had not heard in a few days, then perhaps I could then cancel the order and re-purchase!

So I don't have my phone yet. I even pointed out that the particular model was becoming a little hard to get hold of and that I was worried that by the time they found my order (where are they planning to look?) the phone would then be sold out. She didn't reassure me at all and I got the impression that all of this was just a chance I would have to take. Next day delivery my arse. I have e-mailed the company to re-suggest my cancellation plot but am scared to ring again in case they put a note on my file saying 'screw up this order in every way possible'. But there is no order....so maybe they already have......

Me and my followers three!

I couldn't let today pass without a quick (or maybe not) comment. It has been eventful and tremendously exciting. First, if you look at the bottom of the right-hand gubbins of this page you will see just one reason for my joy-two new followers! I am just delighted, my drivel is now spreading to four outside parties and I am truly humbled. Yes, the new folks are my Mum and Brother and yes, they are following out of a sense of supportive duty and yes, if they have any sense (which despite being related to me they do) they will never read a single word that I spout but (gasps for breath due to lack of punctuation) they have placed their thumbnails upon this blog and I am genuinely thrilled! Hello to you all!

So why else would I be so excited? Well, I am about to be the proud owner of a new mobile phone (subject to credit checks) and it's a really good one! I have made no secret to date of my multimedia ineptitude, in fact my whole online persona could be considered to have been built upon this fact (if indeed I have an online persona) and mobile phones are no exception to this. I was a late bloomer in the world of texting despite having plenty to say, and my first couple of mobile phones were actually slightly less sophisticated than those found in toy shops, sold to beleagured parents hoping to fool their small children into believing that the shiny lump of plastic is in fact a real mobile phone. (I have, for your information, never yet met a child who has been fooled into going along with this. They may be tiny, but today's cyber-generation can smell technology at 1000 paces)

The chunky 'candy-bar' phones that I have previously owned have been specifically chosen for their duh-duh simplicity. I once even returned to a phone shop at the point of tears begging to change a new phone as I was so scared of it. Maybe it's an attack of over-confidence (after all I have a blog now, I am the Queen of a media kingdom ) but this time I have gone straight in at the top (or so I read), have flown above the i-phone cloud to the summit of the highest mountain, complete with snowy peak and greek hero and have settled (according to reviews) for possibly the best phone on the market!!! The HTC HD2. Today I struggled, during conversations with bored, hungover phone-shop assistants, to utter the name of this masterpiece of technology with the proficience that is probably required to own one. Conversations went roughly as follows:

Bored shop assistant.(Sounding worse for wear):'Hi, d'you need some help there.' ***no question mark as this is not posed as a question***

Dithery customer.(Sounding (yet not) inebriated): Do you sell the hctd2d...'(dies away pathetically)

Bored shop assistant.(With raised eyebrow):'HTC HD2?'

Dithery customer.(Wondering whether to go with the inebriated version of self despite having three children in one's charge as it provides cover for one's stupidity):'Em, yes I think that may be the one...'

Bored shop assistant.(Realising customer is not drunk, just stupid.):'What do you want to know about it'
***as per first entry***

Dithery customer.(In small,pathetic voice):'Em, well I don't really know really, just sort of how much it is and if it goes on the internet and em... does it do Twitter?'

Bored shop assistant.(Preferring the hangover symptoms to this imbecile):'It's a Windows internet phone so... yes.'

Dithery customer.(Realising one is looking like a twot and seeking fast escape):'Wonderful, em, I think you've answered all my questions anyway, thankyou so much for your help...' Slithers pathetically towards the exit, hoping the three children will follow. Does not want to look back if it can be helped.

I ordered the phone online. It seemed easier than buying it face-to-face and the website will never know what a numpty I am. So it will arrive, I would imagine, on Monday and I can't wait. It has occurred to me that I will need a lot of help and support to set the thing up, but the Grumpster (who was away at a football match during all this) will be here and he is (as noted previously) not afraid of pressing buttons. I will keep you updated on my progress with my phone. I can't wait!

I forgot to explain though! The reason I have taken the unlikely step of going from the least sophisticated mobile to the most without drawing breath is that this new phone is a 'touch-screen' phone. There is a situation which occurs with a standard press-button phone which could be best described as third-party intervention. You see what you want on the screen, but in order to enable it to happen,you must remotely operate the highlighting 'mechanism', by use of a button, which, granted, is immediately proximate to the screen but still has margin for error. You press the down/up/left/right button to cursor through the menu then attempt to capture the required icon with a quick press of a central buttton, but unbeknownst to you, a delay has been incurred somewhere during the process. It appears to be hovering over the icon but the phone-brain and your brain are not synchronised. As you press 'select', the phone-brain is still working it's way through the manic series of instructions which you have hurriedly issued and it continues beyond the point at which you were hoping to stop. Before your eyes, a screen appears, generally informing you that a something disastrous is going to happen if you press the wrong button, but giving you no clue as to which button gives you a safe option. Terrifying for those like myself! A touch-phone removes this hideous scenario by allowing you to directly select, with your own well-loved fingers, the icon that you require. Of course there is always the chance that a finger may accidentally stray at the moment of 'touch', but at least we can thus, only blame ourselves.

I realise that I have gone on, but there is just one more exciting thing that happened today! I got something for free! My beloved Audi A4 informed me when returning from the in-laws, that it was in need of more oil. I remembered vaguely, something about a special oil which when used, allowed a two-year interval between services, instead of one. The second non-special oil is poured into the engine, there is no going back! Responsibly I informed the Grumpster that I needed to visit the dealer for oil, and he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like 'Well that's probably £40 down the drain', something which I myself believed possible. Well I can joyously report that I was given the oil for free! How exciting! And they didn't even charge me for putting the car up on the engine inspection ramp to retrieve the lid to the oil bottle which I managed to nudge off the top of the engine and into the hot, moving parts. I am pushing my luck, with the repair booking I have made to find out why water does not ensue when pushing the rear-wash stick to the clean-rear-windscreen position. The guarantee on the car runs out in February and I am going to exploit the free repair bonus which I currently enjoy for all it's worth, particularly as the car is valeted at no cost as part of the service. They will soon have me for every penny they can, of that I am sure.

Goodnight friends, more soon. Bet you can't wait.... x

One Day In!

This is just a quick post today.(During my pre-publication preview, I can assure you that it is not) I have eaten a dinner fit for a king (Henry 8th-yes, that much)and can barely move-even my hands are struggling to lift my roast-beef-full fingers to type this but I have a duty to fulfil. A new follower! 'Where?!' I hear you say. Well this one is a rather secretive follower, she is an 'anonymous' follower, one who wants to remain cloaked in secrecy as she forces herself to read the utter diatrabe which I spoon out in plentiful amounts. I know she's following this though, as I forced her to read it and begged excitedly down the groaning phone wire for her to keep track of my ramblings on here. So a big welcome to my silent friend. Happy New Year to both my followers!

Last night went pretty much as I feared although there were some deviations from my predictions. I am pleased to say that I cooked dinner at five o'clock (under duress from my three-year old, there is only so much you can take before the pulling, climbing and moaning that accompanies a young child's hunger gets too much. Some people snap, my daughter is fortunate, I just whack the oven on.) so plenty was eaten. The knock-on effect was simply that the manic post-dinner lunacy that seems to follow a late meal was thus avoided and fortunately so was any injury. I was in fact able to get my daughter up to bed at her pre-Christmas bedtime, and made it downstairs in time to play a fraught game of 'Go-gos The Board Game' with my boys. When we all began exchanging unpleasantries with the person on our left, the end of the game was signalled and I sent the boys to bed. I then watched this blog site for some considerable length of time willing someone to mistakenly wander in and become brainwashed enough to decide to become a follower, but it soon became clear that I had underestimated the world-wide public, nobody was interested. On entering the lounge I discovered that the boys had got confused en-route to their bedroom and were actually playing with the irritating lego set on the floor again. In a bluster of mild protest, the boys remembered how to get to the bathroom to clean their teeth and with some assistance made it into their bedroom.

Back to the computer again, I returned to the blog site to see how many new followers I had. None. Then by chance, I moved the cursor over some words which read 'Next Blog' and simultaneously left clicked! Amazingly, an American-looking family appeared before me, looking healthy and happy, complete with an Annual summary of their 2009. It instantly looked as if their year had gone better than mine so I clicked the magic words again and found myself on a Gospel blog. Then another, and another. And so it went on. I began to worry that somewhere on the initial set-up of my blog I had clicked something that suggested that the best place for my blog to be listed was under the heading 'Religion'. I have no objection to religion or religious blogs but felt a 'religion' heading would be somewhat inappropriate for my strange utterances and would earn me few followers, I am sure you will agree.

I retired to Twitter to review the situation and like a message from Him above, someone who I don't know but seem to be following had put a link to a blog that their niece was writing. Intrigued, I decided to look, as the child is only 10, the same age as my own son. I was very impressed by this child's book reviews, particularly as one of my intentions with this blog was to share books which I love. She was on this same blog site and I fiendishly clicked on the 'next blog' option on her site, and went straight to a religious blog, or three, before turning pages and pages of photography blogs. Satisfied that this child's blog was also incorrectly placed (but bearing in mind I am 36 and this child is 10) I turned to facebook,and clicked on the link which returned me to my own blog. 'Next blog' this time took me through a random and varied selection of sites (including one which I loved that is apparently written by a dog!)

So I have read some other blogs now. I have realised that I will need to get a bit more sophisticated and add colour and interest to my site. Even Bishops and Gospel leaders have the know-how to import photos and clip-art to their blogs, I am way behind in these stakes, but intend to right this wrong as soon as possible. I will get the Grumpster on the case, he's not afraid to click buttons on the computer.

Anyway, back to last night. When my eyes began rolling down my cheeks in protest to the endless staring at the computer screen which I had inflicted upon them, I walked away from my laptop (after first reading the many generic 'Happy New Years' sent via facebook and twitter), and ventured into the lounge to for a change of screen. Graham Norton preceded Jools, and with the wonderful Joan Rivers as one of his guests, I sat with a cup of tea and began to fall asleep. At 11.45, I decided I was not in the mood to prevent the end of the world, and headed up to bed. At midnight, someone let off a load of fireworks outside which sounded laboured and tired, a little like myself. After 30 seconds of a rhythmic !BANG! ''''FIZZ'''', all fell slient again. We had survived another New Year's Eve!

And where was my Husband, The Grumpster, throughout my whole, eventful cybernight?

Yes, absolutely!

Take care my following duo. Lucy. x