Tip-Tap, Tip-Tap, Tip-Tap

These days many of us have a new soundtrack to our lives.....tip-tap! At work, at home, on trains and in cafes there's a constant tippy-tappy, clicky-clacky keyboard/pad noise in the background. There seems to be such a need for people to be in perpetual communication ...... except for the most part nobody is actually talking. I must admit I have sometimes resorted to msning one of the kids to tell them it's time to come off the computer or time for dinner or just to say hello, did you have a good time at school simply because they can't resist paying attention and replying. Speak to them and you might get a grunt or an exasperated hurrumph but type.....

U ok? Gd day at skl? :-)

and you're likely to get a pretty civil reply...........sad huh?!

I hate that some people still answer the phone or text whilst they're driving - what could possibly be so important that they can't pull over or wait until they get to their destination? Why hasn't somebody invented a phone with a drive mode - something that automatically alerts the caller that the person they are trying to contact is driving and that their call may potentially harm life... then some sort of option for letting the driver know if it's important enough for them to find somewhere safe to park up and answer or alternatively, not important - I'll call later. And whilst I'm having my little rant - isn't it about time they banned smoking behind the wheel too? Apparently you can't eat a cheese sandwich whilst driving but it's ok to light a cigarette - where's the logic in that?

Ok, so here's the HS:MS:HS word that prompted this thought process and subsequent letting off of steam......

Happy Birthday Moo

The weekend was fairly busy, partly because yesterday was our very own Mouldy Moo's 12th birthday. Contrary to the usual feelings of 'where did the years go' Mollie's birthday seems to have come around a bit slowly - it feels like she should be older than 12 by now. Perhaps this is down to the fact that she's been behaving like a teenager for so long it's hard to believe she's not one yet.......or perhaps it's because she's only a couple of centimetres shorter than Tess who is almost four years her senior!

A post-school-run picture today....

Another Thursday

Yesterday I did my son a disservice. I said that he didn't do any extra-curricular sporting activities but I was forgetting Dodgeball on Thursdays. This means that on Thursdays I get the pleasure of not two but three school runs....oh lucky me! Tonight Fletcher took over the camera for the majority of the journey....10 minutes and 153 photographs later......

SPORT?!

I must admit I shuddered slightly when I looked at the HS:MS:HS prompt today because sport really isn't my thing. We are not a very sporty family and although the children quite enjoy sports at school (except Tessa whose only possible Olympic hope would be if they introduced pouting as an event), they're not really into any extra-curricular clubs or anything. It's very rare that anybody even watches sports in our home either....I'm a bit partial to the odd cricket match or Grand Prix but not much more. But on the plus side I'm never going to be a football or golf widow and am not likely to have to spend my Sunday mornings knee-high in mud on the sidelines with a bunch of over zealous pushy parents! So anyway, I had to borrow one of the dogs' tennis balls for my photo today........

And here we are again - another Groundhog Day......

Roger...Over and Out!

Today's HS:MS:HS prompt is handle....

When I was about 12 or 13 the big craze was CB radios. A few of my friends had them and I bugged my Mum relentlessly until she agreed to let me have one. My 'handle' was Golden Wonder! Unfortunately, much like the Internet, there was little way of controlling who contacted you over the airwaves and it wasn't very long before my Mum overheard some weirdo broadcasting into my room and confiscated the radio forever!

Today's school run....

Technological Perfection

Today's HS:MS:HS word is technology. We have no shortage of that in this house with three children around. The kids never seem to be amazed by new technology the way that I sometimes still am though. I can just about manage to surf the net and watch tv - although when I do I often find myself reaching for the remote to rewind the programme and catch up on something I've missed. No such problem for the kids, they can watch tv, play World of Warcraft, chat to friends (several at a time) on msn, update their emotion on facebook and still carry on an argument with one another at the same time without any trouble at all! I think though that of all the technological gadgets and gizmos my favourite is this one...

at the press of a button it gives me a perfect measure of hot water for my tea (green of course), I can wander away and do something else and come back in a couple of minutes when it's perfectly brewed - bliss! Especially welcome after a school run like this:

no further comment!

Can't Get No (Job) Satisfaction..

One week down.....five to go! It may still only be the beginning of a new half term but that doesn't stop me counting down on a daily basis to the next holiday......wishing my life away..... it's a terrible habit but one I don't seem able to break, even before one holiday is over I've usually worked out how many weeks, how many weekends, how many work days etc until the next break. It's not that I have a bad work ethic, I've never taken a sickie or bunked off work but I would always much rather be at home and have never had a job that I've enjoyed enough to look forward to. I suppose some people would say I'm unfulfilled but I don't see it like that - I'm probably too lazy for fulfillment. I look upon work as a necessary evil........or like sleeping - not very exciting but it has to be done! Tessa, on the other hand, is already stressing about her career path, scared that she'll end up in a job she doesn't like, worrying about her exams and what A levels she'll be able to do (she has her GCSE's this year). Sometimes I wonder whose daughter she is - surely not mine? All I wanted to do at her age was get a job (any old job) and earn enough money to keep me in records and shoes!


If I was feeling ever so slightly sorry for myself when I got up for work on Monday morning my self-pity didn't last long after I got there. Several of my work colleagues suffered much more severely than I did for a much longer duration, some of them spent virtually the whole holiday in bed and still returned to work looking and sounding a lot worse than I did. So, it would seem I got off lightly - perhaps there really is something to be said for drinking gallons of green tea each week.

The office, like everywhere else all week, has been f..f..f..freezing! Luckily my desk is closest to the radiator but when a building has been shut up with no heating for two weeks it takes a long time to thaw out and I've been grateful every day for my thermal underwear. But despite the cold office, the frost on the windscreen, the ice on the roads, the filthy salt on my car etc etc, I'm not looking forward to the warmer, wetter weather we have forecast for the next week. I wonder why we British so overly obsessed with weather? I've just decided my new challenge (ha, ha, that makes it sound like I'm always challenging myself when really the closest I usually get is persuading myself to wait another 10 5 minutes until I have that next chocolate bar!!) is to not blog about weather more than once a week ..... so far this year I've only managed to blog about once a week so if I keep up that record it's not going to be much of a challenge at all.

I'm trying hard to remember to take a camera with me wherever I go - this is okay as it goes except perhaps that my photo husbandry is just about as good as my laundry husbandry (rubbish!) so I may be needing an additional external hard drive before the year is out. Here's some stuff I saw this week.....


en route to the hairdressers......

and bird-watching?!

Green Tea, Snot & Chocolate

My life since the beginning of this year basically amounts to this: Sofa, tea, chocolate and TV! On New Years Eve when I got home from my friend's house I assumed that the reason I was sneezing was that she has two cats....not so. By the next morning it became apparent that an hour in the company of two shy cats could not possibly result in so much snot, not to mention the fuzzy head, itchy throat and aching limbs.

So, I've spent the past four days lounging around, drinking copious amounts of green tea - (a practice which I previously rather smugly declared to be the reason I hadn't succumbed to the various lurgies inflicting everybody else at home and at work) - eating way too much chocolate and watching so much tv I swear I can feel my eyeballs changing shape.

Today at 2pm I decided enough was enough and I really must have a shower and get dressed in something other than fleece and elastic and venture outside the house. Travelling the whole 100yds on foot to my mother's house was pretty arduous but I was rewarded with more green tea and chocolate which helped me face the return trip!

Tomorrow I have to return to work - urgh! I know, in the present economic climate I should be grateful I have a secure job to go back to.....but, really......urgh!! And...how come I only ever feel ill enough not to go to work when I don't actually have to go to work?!

Young Love (just decide which flavour and press the button)

Happy New Year! So, actually, I'm not really a big fan of New Year, it's just another new day really after all and I really don't get what all the fuss is about - what's the New Year equivalent of Bah Humbug I wonder?


Christmas was good, Steven cooked like something possessed - four roast dinners over the course of the week, each one for between 7 & 9 people - and each one as delicious as the last.


I got one of these:

How cute is that?! I don't drink coffee but have wanted one of these for ages just because they look so pretty!! And, it does make hot chocolate so it's not a complete waste of space (so much for my diet then!)



On Boxing Day evening mum and I took Tessa up to Southampton airport to pick up her friend Wytze who was visiting from Holland for a few days. This was pretty daunting for the pair of them really as although they've been friends for a couple of years (since meeting on World of Warcraft!) they had never actually met in person yet. It wasn't the best start, we got a puncture on our way home and ended up sitting on the motorway for an hour in the cold and dark waiting for the miserable recovery man to come and get us back on the road.......I wonder if he feels the need to explain to everybody that a space saver wheel with a big label on it saying '50MPH Limit' cannot be driven on faster than 50MPH - and not just once either, three times he pointed this out to me. Yes, I am blonde (or used to be anyway) but I'm really not that stupid!


They seemed to get on well together, and of course we couldn't let him come to England at Christmas without introducing him to the madness that is the good old traditional English Pantomime - poor boy! He seemed to be smiling all the time, particularly when any one of us attempted to pronounce his name.....Mollie said it is Pizza with a V but somehow none of us could make the combined V & W sound that he could so he still had a good giggle whenever we tried. In fact, in the end it got to the point where I would change a sentence around anyway I could to avoid actually calling him by any name at all!!

Pretty soon it was time to say goodbye. We spent Wytze's last day with us in Bournemouth, it was a beautiful day, but freezing cold. We had a walk along the beach, did a bit of shopping and had lunch and then in the afternoon drove him to the airport. Tessa was pretty sad to be saying goodbye.........

but of course for every dark cloud there's usually a silver lining - in this case it came in the shape of a vending machine at the airport........apparently Wytze is no competition for Ben and Jerry!