I feel a real twit

I'm in a quandary

Many moons ago I signed up to Friends Reunite. What fun I thought, you can look up your old school friends and see what they have been up to over the years. Then dear FR started charging for emails and frankly I was miffed - this wasn't what I signed up for but reluctantly I paid my £7 (?) and mailed a few old school mates. Now of course the service is free and you can mail away to your heart's content and believe me some people are doing just that.

This week I had a message from somebody I don't know, never heard of them, can't remember them for toffee and I don't know what to do about it- should I mail this woman back and explain that the ravages of time and a misspent youth have addled my brain and I can't remember going to school with her? or should I just ignore her message and leave it sitting in my inbox as a permanent reminder that I am a bad person who doesn't deserve friends? I did ask an old friend who has a wonderful memory for all things scholastic (I can't even remember the name of my favourite teacher - how bad is that!) but even she didn't know the name. I feel so guilty, this woman obviously knew me and even mentioned that I used to have long red hair - shit, what ever I do will feel wrong. I don't want to upset her by telling her that she is truly unmemorable but on the hand it seems rude not to reply, but on the third hand I tried searching for her in my old schools and couldn't find her, so maybe she isn't who she says she is - maybe she is a stalker - maybe she isn't a she at all - maybe I'm being groomed!! But probably I'm just being neurotic and should get on with some work.

While I'm rabbiting about this social networking stuff I have a confession to make - I have joined Twitter - and what a strange phenomenon that is. If I'm honest I only signed up because of an interview I saw/heard with Steven Fry who was raving about it, shallow I know but at least I'm honest.

The trouble is I don't know what to do on there. I am 'following' mainly news based and current affairs type stuff ( as well of course as Steven Fry) and it was very strange that half an hour after I started 'following' Barrack Obama (how cool is that) I had message to say that he was following me.....Do you think that means that some poor sod in the Pentagon or the White House is logging onto to Twitter each day to see what Barry's 'followers' are twittering about? I wonder how much they get paid? I wonder if they have ever considered employing a remote worker for the job? Just think they could be paying me for doing something that is a bigger waste of time than being a mystery shopper (don't ever believe that customer service is important in this country - that way lies madness!) after all what do they expect Barry's followers to be twittering about? world domination and the collapse of capitalism?? As far as I can see the only things being talked about are either breaking news from Channel 4 or random twitters telling you what they had for breakfast - as I've said many times before the web is a very strange place!

The hidden dangers in a visit to the Dentist

Last week my dental hygienist sneezed and two days later I came down with a horrible cough and cold.  

I can't be sure that one discreet sneeze, which if I'm honest,  was behind my back and her mouth was covered by a mask, was responsible, but I'm still going to blame her - why? because I'm shallow and pathetic and feeling very sorry for myself - I've had my winter cold already - I don't deserve another one - it's not fair - why didn't she save her sneeze for the next patient who probably hasn't had a cold this winter and is due a snotty bug.

I should be enjoying the winter sunshine walking the dogs across the fields so Murphy can chase imaginary rabbits (bless!) and Bella can catch a ball and hide it for me to find (I think she might be a little confused about who is exercising who here!) - but instead I'm sitting here swaddled in woolly layers sipping hot fruit juice and popping paracetamol!

A little footnote to this rant - last night at 9pm Dave phoned me - we had a chat and were about to hang up when I realised that I couldn't remember what day it was, seriously I couldn't work out when I had seen him last and when he was due home next - can a mixture of a temperature, paracetamol, ibuprofen and a lack of sleep addle the brain or am I just loosing it?  It was about 10 minutes after our chat that I remembered that it was Monday and I had taken him to the airport that morning and he is due home on Friday - I don't know which upset me more, realising that I had forgotten, or it taking me so long to remember.

Daily

When ever I log on I always check out the Blog of Note for the day. These are, in the words of Google 'Interesting and noteworthy logger-powered blogs, compiled by the Blogger Team'

I'm not sure what criteria they use to choose the Blogs in question but sometime they find a real gem. One I am following at the moment is An Explorer's View of Life.  This chap writes gentle tales of his life and family and it's not so much what he says that I find so fascinating but the way that he says it.  He writes so eloquently it is a joy to read.

Twelfth Night

It's Twelfth Night tonight so all our decorations are now down and the house is back to normal.  No more Christmas trees with their twinkling lights, no more holly wreaths and baubles but we do still  have lots of chocolates and fancy biscuits to tempt the weak-willed away from their New Year diets - or maybe that's just me.

We had a lovely Christmas, lots to eat and drink and Santa was particularly generous as Dave was in such a hurry to get home that he left my presents in London and had to rush out on Christmas Eve with Lesley and buy replacements! Well done Lel - I love the bag and the digital photo frame!

For New Years Eve we all went our separate ways, James went back to Aber, Lesley travelled down to Somerset for a party and I travelled down to London to stay with Dave.  We had a fab meal in the most retro Italian restaurant in London.  It was like travelling back to the 70's, posters of Sorento on the walls and empty Chianti bottles hanging from the fake beams on the ceiling but best of all were the temperamental Italian waiters straight out of central casting - it was totally unreal! We then went to see Blood Brothers along with an audience of mainly foreign tourists.  Quite what they made of the references to Liverpool in the 1960's is any body's guess but if the standing ovation they gave the cast at the end of the show is anything to go by they enjoyed the night as much as we did. On New Years Day we braved the cold and went back up into town to watch the New Year Parade through Westminster and then walked through to Hyde Park to warm up with glugwein at the Winter Wonderland Fair

As we were travelling home on Saturday we had a whole extra day to ourselves on the Friday 2 Jan so we made the most of it and had a bracing walk along the Thames Path from Canary Wharf to the Tower of London, stopping along the way at various hostelries for alcoholic refreshment, before meeting up with Janis and Graham in the evening for dinner - smashing way to end the holidays even if it did mean that we were a bit bleary eyed on the 7.20am flight out of London City the next morning!

Merry Christmas

Not long now - only 2 days 'till Christmas.  The decorations are up, the turkey is defrosting  - I love Christmas!!

The birds have their own wreath full of nuts and seeds ( and clementines for colour)

There are snowflakes in the conservatory

And a trendy chilli wreath on the drive

Just the cake to ice and the last of the presents to wrap all we need now is Dave to come home and we'll be complete

Hydrotherapy

As part of Murphy's on-going treatment for his hip dysplasia I take him swimming once a week. His muscle tone has really improved and over the weeks his stamina has improved so much that he now wears me out on our daily walks.

On a cold day like today it is lovely and warm in the water and he gets a good work out, especially now he doesn't have to wear a life jacket. He does get over enthusiastic sometimes and poor John the hydrotherapist has to make sure that he keeps his fingers tucked in when Murphy is chasing the toy. So far he hasn't managed to eat any of John's fingers - though it has been close - the poor man deserves danger money!!

I Blame the Early Start

Couldn't understand why I was getting colder and colder this morning until that is I looked at the central heating control panel and discovered that I had switched it off rather than putting it on - on the coldest day of the year - duhhh

The poor boy

Sometimes I think that Bella just uses me

'I  dare you to break the ice on the pond' she said

Then she ran off and ate it!

and she didn't leave any for me

the poor boy but it's a lesson well learnt - you can't outwit a bitch 

Do you think she'll want seconds?

The Dark Destroyer

I hope that nobody is looking for a Christmas card this year - the dogs ate my address book

Google Chrome

I have been very happily using the new Google Chrome as my default browser for about a week now.  I like the look and feel of it and especially like fact that for me, it is a trillion times faster than Firefox.  The only problem I have had so far is that I haven't been able to reply to my hotmail via Chrome.  I have been able to see my inbox but I can't reply or forward from it. As you can imagine I reported this to Google but they say that until MSN alter their settings there is nothing that Google can do about this.  This has been a pain but there has been a workaround, until today when I can't even open hotmail through Chrome.  What is going on in MSN are they afraid of the competition from Google ?

Now it may seem daft to run mail through two different accounts, but hey what can I tell you, I'm fickle.

In the News

I know that I must be sounding like a stuck record but since I decided to boycott all the daily newspapers the only news I see is on the BBC and I'm now considering giving Auntie the old heave ho - why is that?  I hear you ask - well for one the BBC seems hell bent on destroying the economy of this country.

Does that sound a little harsh when politicians seem to have buggered up the economy since time began? well maybe but let's consider the facts.  This country, along with many other around the world, is suffering a downturn in it's economy due in no small part to the American system of giving mortgages to people who can't afford them.  That might sound a little simplistic but at the end of the day the world would not be in the state it's in now if American bankers had been more responsible with their lending. That of course is not the only reason we are in this state but I'm sure that the hundreds of hours that the BBC have spent 'explaining' the credit crunch have either informed you or bored you to death and you don't need me waffling on about it here. 

But my biggest reason for looking for an alternative source of news is BBC TV's paucity of world news. Did you know for example that the Israelis are still trying to starve the  Palestinians in Gaza  into submission or that 5 Brits have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month or that a company in China that employs 200,000 people has had it's shares suspended because of suspected stock market fraud or that after only a year since it joined the EU Bulgaria has been warned that it's eurofunding will be suspended if they don't get their act together over corruption and fraud.  Do you even know the name of Australia's Prime Minister or the fact that he is proposing the creation of an Asia-Pacific block similar to the European Union?

 No well you're are not alone. I think it's about time we rebelled and told the BBC what we really want in our news bulletins - news - not gossip from reality shows or pathetically staged vox pops or even god forbid that lizards are the new Labradors (I kid you not, Breakfast news had a big article this morning on how people are buying reptiles instead dogs because of the credit crisis - ahhhhhhh!)

(by the way the Aussie PM is Kevin Rudd)

Children in Need

I thought that it would be cute if I dressed the dogs up for Children in Need day in Pudsey neckerchiefs

They didn't!!

Bella took to her bed and sulked

Three Generations

While I was looking through boxes of old photos I came across this picture of Mum, Lesley and I.  I'm not sure who thought that it would be a good idea to take a picture of us in front of a drain pipe or why we all seem to be having a bad hair day but I still think that it's a lovely picture and I'm only sorry that we didn't get round to taking more of the three generations pictures when we had the chance. (sorry about the quality of the scan, that's probably more my fault than the scanner's)

Feeling poorly

I have been feeling very sorry for myself the past week. I have been full of cold, streaming eyes, runny nose and a rotten cough. The writing has gone to pot, the house has looked like a bomb had hit it and all I wanted to do was sip honey and lemon and look pathetic but unfortunately the dogs had other plans and apart from a lie in on Sunday morning it  has been business as usual. 

Even the dentist was unsympathetic - have you ever tried having a crown fitted when you can't breath through your nose? - I thought that I was going to drown in my own spit!

London City Airport

What is it about airports that turns quite normal people into frantic stress bunnies?

Take the pick up area at Manchester Airport's Terminal 3, it doesn't matter what time of the day or night it is, there will always be people driving like maniacs, cutting between lanes, pulling up on the hard shoulder of the feeder roads and stopping in the middle of the road to drop of passengers.

The other week, when I had gone through to pick up Dave, I actually saw a woman driving through the pick up area with the boot of her people carrier wide open and her husband (I guess) running after the car trying to grab his case out of the back - madness.

At London City Airport yesterday there was a queue to get through the security area and I watched as a grown woman was panicking to get her coat off, her laptop out of her bag and untie her shoes at the same time as her husband. Quite why this had to be co-ordinated I don't know but she was determined that the blue tray with his stuff in should follow her tray through the xray machine. She was getting more and more agitated as other people were putting their trays down and looked ready to stab me in the eye when I put my carry-on bag between their trays to go through the machine (OK I did it deliberately to watch her reaction)

She was muttering away in German, probably putting a curse on me and all my offspring, while her husband, for no obvious reason other than acting like a two year old, gave his tray and extra shove through the machine before stomping off through the metal detector. Then their plans for blue tray efficiency were well and truly scuppered when the alarms went off and he was taken to one side by the security staff. I thought his wife was going to explode, how dare they, her look said, this wasn't part of the plan, she had scheduled 1.5 mins to get through security and now they were going to be 5 mins behind. The fact that they still had well over an hour until their flight was to be called was irrelevant - madness - at airports all common sense seems to fly out with the planes!

Researching for the novel

Dave is really busy in work at the moment and has been working silly hours so rather than sit about in the flat moping I made the most of the time in London by doing some research for the novel and that's why at 6.30pm on Friday night I was in the 1802 bar sipping a glass of dry white wine because I kid you not the museum in Docklands doesn't serve coffee after 5pm!

I had great fun sitting there writing up my notes and 'people watching' (it's not that I'm nosy or anything) There were a couple of office parties in the bar and the one thing that struck me was why do all the young woman working in Docklands think that they have to dress in black? - black shoes, black tights, black skirts, black coats - Do they do it because they think that it makes them look slimmer? more professional? older? - well maybe they do, but unfortunately all it really does is make them look as if they have just come back from a funeral.

I overheard one conversation that made me smile (honestly I'm not nosy)

Good looking young bloke ''what do you want to drink''
Pretty ( if a little chunky) young woman ''gin and tonic?'' ( and yes she really did make a request sound like a question)
Bloke again '' any particular brand of gin?'' ( do me a favour, I know you're trying to impress her but really)
Pretty girl '' no but can I have slimline tonic please' (giggle giggle)

Sorry darling but the 20 odd calories you are saving on the slimline tonic will make bugger all difference on those hips - and yes as a woman of a certain size I can make fat jokes - she's young and pretty and has a handsome bloke after her body what does it matter what I think!!!

Lord Mayor's Show and Fireworks

I didn't get to see any firework displays this year- it's not much fun on your own and to be honest I didn't know how Bella and Murphy would cope with Bonfire Night, the cats are bad enough, they hate the load bangs and usually hide away in the one room in the house without a window - the bathroom. So being the responsible pet owner that I am I stayed in - boring but honorable.

Last weekend was the City of London's Lord Mayor's Show and as Dave was already 'darn sarf' I thought I would join him for a few days so that we could spend Saturday in London watching the show in the morning and the grand firework display over the Thames at 5 o'clock.

I have loved the Lord Mayor's Show ever since I was a 19 year old refugee from the North and would stand in Fleet Street or the Strand and watch the procession. One year we had a special treat when the bank had a family day in their Fleet Street branch so that we could watch the show in comfort. Dave invited my Mum and Dad down and they had a wonderful time. The staff had prepared a buffet lunch and had positioned seats by the windows on the first floor to give us a grandstand view.

After Dave left Fleet Street were were reduced to standing with the hoi polloi but this year we thought that we deserved a treat and booked seats in the grandstand by St Paul's Cathedral. The parade was as good as ever, the floats were colourful, the bands musical and the servicemen and woman a credit to the TA and reserve forces. But my god did it rain - it was torrential but we're British and a little thing like a monsoon isn't going to stop our parade or as a young American guy sitting behind me said 'only the Brits would sit in the rain to watch a parade and cheer every time a soldier marches past' - couldn't have put it better myself!

Unfortunately we were soaked to the skin and rather than catch our death walking about all afternoon we decided to go back to the flat to change into warm dry clothes and go out for dinner rather than hang about for the firework display.

No fireworks for me this year then - oh well there's always next year.

Coffeetastic

Overheard the other day in Costa Coffee

'The Gingerbread Latte - does it come in skinny? Yes? OK, I'll have a regular skinny decaf gingerbread latte'

I'm sorry but that's not a beverage, it's a short story!

Non Elected Officials

When it was announced that Peter Mandleson was to join the Government as a Minister, I was amazed and couldn't understand why Gordon felt that he had to bring him back from the EU. Is our Prime Minister telling us that out of all the Labour Members of Parliament there isn't one who is as capable of being the Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

Well I'm sorry but what does that say about us, the electorate? Are we voting for people who are not up to the job of running the country, or is it that the Prime Minister thinks that his own MPs are not good enough?

I then started to wonder how many other non elected officials we have working in government departments as Ministers. I had quick trawl through some (but probably not all) of the Government Department's websites and found 9 Ministers who haven't been elected, is this right, is it even honest? How can a Government be responsible to it's electorate when there are so many non-elected Ministers in that Government.

I suppose that a student of politics would tell me that I am being naive and this situation is far from unique but I can't help wondering why Gordon Brown felt that he needed to look for 3 Ministers for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform from outside of the House of Commons. I'm sure that he would argue that he just wants to have the best people in place to steer the country through it's current economic problems but what does that say about the Department's previous Ministers? Should we infer that the 'B' team led us into situation we know find ourselves?

And don't get me started on the Government's so called Special Advisers. I have always felt uneasy about New Labour's reliance on these 'temporary' civil servants who are political appointees paid by Central Government. Admittedly the Brown administration has far less Special Advisers than Blair had but even so, in the financial year 2006-07, we the British Taxpayers, shelled out £5.9 million on them - yes £5.9 million. Remember that these are people who are appointed by the government of the day to work alongside civil servants in government departments who are not answerable to the electorate (because we didn't have any say in their appointment) but are there to add a 'political' dimension to the advise that civil servants give their Minister.

And what happens to all these Special Advisers, because let's face it, if you get a job like that it will only last as long as 'your' Minister is in post, well in the case of Alistair Campbell you go off and write a book about working in Number 10 or if you fancy entering politics proper like the Miliband brothers you are in the right place to look for a safe seat to get elected from, or then again you could be given a peerage like Shriti Vadeera and then go straight into Government as a Minister without all the bother of standing in an election.

I wonder if any of this is taught in the Government's citizenship lessons in schools - at first I couldn't find out because the dcsf website didn't seem to have a link to a site where I could look this up and when I phoned their helpline a very nice woman read from a prepared script telling me what citizenship in schools covered for the 14-19 age group but said she was very sorry but there wasn't anywhere where I could look at this for myself. However not one to be stopped at the first hurdle, I had a quick trawl through the Teachers' resource packs for Citzenship on the Teachernet website and I found that the curriculum covers parliament and other forms of government so let's just hope that our young people are far more politcally savve than us oldies.

Panorama - Britian in the Red

I suppose watching, or listening, to any programme presented by Jeremy Vine is a bit like admitting to buying The Daily Mail - you don't have to be Angry of Tonbridge Wells to agree with him, but it helps. You know that he will have his own agenda, he will think that he is speaking for the 'ordinary man in the street' but dear god let me shout loud and clear, he doesn't speak for me!!!

Last Thursday's Panorama programme was supposed to answer all the questions we, the ordinary people, had about the credit crunch, banking crisis et all. What is was however was 55 minutes of Jeremy trying to whip us all up into believing that the whole of the banking industry in this country was on the point of collapse, that our savings were better off out of the banks and under the mattress and if our homes weren't already suffering from negative equity we were about to loose our jobs and have them repossessed because we couldn't afford the higher mortgages anyway.

The 'ordinary' people they had filmed earlier were worried that they might have to pay more for their mortgages, that their homes mightn't increase in value by 300% in the next six months and we were supposed to feel sorry for one poor woman was having to work an extra half day a week to help pay the bills because she was worried that her husband's job in teaching could be in trouble because the government has underwritten the banks and they might start laying off teachers. If these vox pops weren't bad enough he then interviewed experts in banking, finance etc but no matter how much they tried to be calm and sensible about the current crisis Jeremy was having non of it and set about them like a little terrier. Wasn't it all the fault of the government? shouldn't we all hate the bankers? Surely we are all heading for financial Armageddon? The message was, if you aren't worried you damn well should be.....

Yet again the BBC have frightened far more 'ordinary' people than they have reassured. I'm all for keeping people informed about the current financial situation, but until the media in this country starts reporting the facts and not their usual hysterical scaremongering the 'ordinary man in the street' will continue to have no faith in either this country's financial institutions or it's Government's handling of what is a global problem and without some kind of faith we will surely be stuck in a recession for far longer than we need to be. Then I suppose the BBC will justify all the rubbish they are spouting by saying 'I told you so' - God help us and save us from irresponsible journalists!!!