I'm back....

.... and sleepy. The last week has seen me travel from London to Cambridge, to Sussex, to Seville, to London and back to Cambridge...tomorrow the circle is complete when I drive the last leg back to London again!

It's been fun, we had a lovely Christmas and an amazing time in Seville....more when I've had time to get the 'back home' chores in hand and download whatever I captured on my camera.

In the meantime:

A HAPPY NEW YEARand may it bring you at least some of whatever it is you wish for yourself.

Gatwick...

....16.00hrs tomorrow, Seville, tapas, Rioja, sunshine and temperates in the high teens....tough life..... ;o)

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

I have absolutely no idea yet where I will be after today, Amsterdam, Spain somewhere maybe, France etc. etc. all possibilities or perhaps just complete laziness chilling at home, who knows, that's all part of the fun but in case I can't get online (or persuade my phone to post something here which it seems hard to persuade to do) best I wish you all a fab Christmas now.

I'll blog from wherever, whenever if I can! :o)

Have a really good one guys, peace, happiness, lots of beer and all that stuff to you all....

Ben Parkinson

We may or may not agree with the politics and the principles that results in any conflict but this report of Lance Bombadier Ben Parkinson's courage in the face of adversity, the like of which most of us will thankfully never encounter, deserves our respect, gratitude and pride.... and is maybe, when we think our own going gets tough, worth remebering.

Great timing!

Not!

So we are headed to Christmas, there is a strong possibility I will be flying off on a short holiday somewhere and what happens? What happens is that my trusty, much loved camera died a sudden and complete death! FFS! That thing was like my right hand, I knew it inside out, it worked well, did it's job and I loved it.


It was old but it was fab, it was bought in the days when a digi compact set you back a fair few hundred quid and I never wanted it to die.....but it did, very unceremonoiusly!

Thank heavens for small lottery wins and the fall in price of technology is all I can say....at least I managed to get a new one, I would hate to be completely camera-less. All I have to do now is get to grips with it!

Hmmm...

.....this is gonna work well then.

Not!

Getting there

I know, I know, I have been a very bad blogger recently, in fact I haven't been a blogger at all as is appallingly very evident by my recent lack of anything new here, not even so much as a silly cat post!

It's the Christmas rush that is to blame, or rather my complete and utter lack of organisation during the run up, resulting in a manic dash at the very last minute. There was a time in my life that everything was done by the beginning of December....those days are long gone!

I have at last though got it together and managed to get some semblence of Christmas sorted out. The cards are written (ok, all 10 of them, another of my poor points) and the final gift is wrapped, I even managed to decorate the tree that had stood sadly naked in my parents living room for too long. I seem to have spent every moment I haven't been working in one shopping centre or another deserately searching for the ever elusive inspiration but finally it is done....all I have to do now is pack it all up, for my Christmas will be elsewhere.

As yet I have no idea where 'elsewhere' will be but I finish work for ten days on Friday and if I'm a lucky girl my Christmas might begin with a flight.

Friday can't get here soon enough! :o))

Jeez....

.....life has suddenly become manic in the pre-Christmas rush!

I will catch up with everything soon....

Odd aint it....

...this life malarky?

You know those rare moments, when out of the blue from the haze of confusion and questions that usually muddle one's mind comes a sudden, clear realisation that hits squarely between the eyes and momenarily provides insight....well today, as I drove my white van (I do my thinking behind the wheel of that van, maybe not a good time but hey...) I had one of those moments.

I was marvelling at the beauty that two days and nights of frost and sub zero temperatures had bestowed on the countryside, it was almost like snow, white covering every surface and glittering in the winter sunlight, amazingly intricate ice crystals clinging to every surface like tiny diamonds set against the backdrop of blue sky and fallen autumn leaves and I realised in that moment that for the last year or so life seems to have been about survival not living.

It feels as though I have had many personal mountains to climb, almost daily I find myself trying not to worry about one thing or another, not to allow myself to feel for fear of where that might lead me, not to look either side of my usual conciousness in case that raises further concerns. There have been some of my bleakest moments and blackest thoughts and I've had to fight hard sometimes for my sanity. It has been a time of very low low's but also some very high high's and I have survived but I don't want to merley survive, I want to live, I want to notice more of the good and the beauty around me and not get lost in the mire of my mind and my thoughts.

There are millions of people in this world who truly have to fight for their whole lives just merely to stay alive and survive, to put food in their mouths and to escape disease, famine and war and they bear difficulties as a matter of course, year in and year out, that we in the Western world can't even begin to imagine.

In comparison my mountains pale into insignifigance, that doesn't necessarily make them less painful to me but sometimes a sight of particular beauty, a small unexpected kindness, a reminder of just how much there is out there to enjoy, if only we take the time to look for it and to actually see it, allows us to see beyond the bounds of our usual and individual thought processes and be thankful for what we have, however little or much that might be in usually accepted terms.

Wake up!

Whilst I assume it's highly unlikely that anyone with even the remotest of interest in things feline hasn't seen this already, it's so funny and so true that just in case you missed it it's here:

Sound on....enjoy :o)

I won the lottery!!!!!

Ok, so before you start thinking yacht's and Belgravia penthouses... don't!

....but, to walk into work at 06.30 hrs on a Monday morning, after a two hour drive in wind and rain to be handed £200 won in the works lottery syndicate, made for a pretty good start to the day.

Yayyyyy....£200 that I didn't expect, right now that's a kings ransom to me.

Yup, there have definitely been worse starts to a Monday! :o)))))

The nativity....

.......UK circa 2007!

Coming to a town somewhere near you soon!


Kinda worryingly true!

Penis envy??

I doubt it!

One would have thought that by the time a guy makes it to his forties he is somewhat more familiar with the responses of his anatomy than this guy was....who felt it 'necessary' to put a ring of metal pipe around his most precious and delicate of body parts!!!

The result....the fire brigade called to attendance complete with cutting gear in hand....I kid you not!

I shall resist the temptation to use the phrase 'Dick head'!!! ;o)

It's only...

...... eleven working days until I 'break up' from work for the Christmas holidays....not that I'm counting like! ;o)

Yayyyyy.

Wow!!!....

...just WOW!

As one who has a passion for extreme weather and the sea I find this report recently of a Newquay surfer's shennanegins in the biggest surf
Donegal has seen, absolutely amazing :o)

© BBC

A perfect 'upper cut'

Yesterday I was 'treated' to a new experience in my life courtesy of Fletch, something I have long wondered about, about how it would feel (get your mind out of the gutter please), well now I know!

Imagine the scene, a Dickensian Christmas market in the town square, christmas carols and a wintery chill in the air, children laughing happily, lights twinkling, a perfectly relaxed festive atmosphere......and then out of nowhere a powerful and perfect upper cut landed squarely on my jaw!!!!! Owchhhh!!

Ok, so to be fair it was far from intentional, one of those bad timimg things. I bent down as Fletch moved his arm up to do something and the contact between hand

and jaw was complete and instant. For a minute or two I wasn't sure where I was anymore, I bit my tongue hard, I had been eating some small titbit (where it went in the aftermath I have no idea), my teeth seemed to crash together and everything started to go very, very black........

I didn't thankfully keel right over, though a degree of 'propping up' was required from a concerned Fletch for a minute or two, whilst I concentrated on remaining upright. I really didn't know what had hit me, it was so instant I had no idea what had happened, only that it hurt like hell and all I could do was stand there holding my mouth like a fool, I couldn't speak to even say I was ok. Well I wasn't but you know what I mean!

A few minutes later I had gathered my wits, my jaw and my tongue still hurt but nothing too drastic.

I always wondered how boxers did it and now I know they have to be very strange individuals to put themselves repeatedly in the line of fire....I had absolutely no idea just how much a smack in the mouth could hurt!!!!

Ok, ok, so in retrospect it's funny I know.... but stop sniggering at the back please ;o)

Time to panic

It's that time of year again, the one that as a child seems to take an eternity of excitement to arrive and as an adult seems to creep upon me with a ferociousness of speed that leaves me in my current state....panic stricken at my lack of appropriate action!

Christmas, ugh!

I used to love it but I begin to think it should be relegated to perhaps alternate years, or maybe even one in four like leap years. I barely seem to have relaxed from the last one and here it is again and again here I am not in any


semblance of organisation. Not so much as a card purchased in gemmaks-ville, let alone any gifts....and more worryingly I haven't so much as mustered any inspiration as to what those gifts might be when I finally make my way to some manically crowded high street!

It's not that I don't have the time, my early start at work means I finish at 2.30 each afternoon, it's more that any attempt at motivation seems to have deserted me completely which of course means that my level of panic is rising considerably now as the final countdown approaches. Hell, I don't even have kids or a home to deal with and I still can't get my act together!

It should be easy, I know it should, I don't have anything like as much to get organised as most do, I'm unlikely even to be in the U.K. for Christmas but somehow the 'get up and go' to do what needs to be done seems to have 'got up and gone'!


*note to self - pull yer bloody finger out girl!

The short way round!

Today saw Fletch and I heading off early for Birmingham and the N.E.C....to the bike show of course, an annual 'must do', though it's probably 20 or so years since I last actually managed the pilgrimage! On that occasion things didn't go too well, it was April, I was camping overnight and a freak heavy snowfall caused my tent to collapse spectacularly at two in the morning....leaving me no option (I was on a bike remember) but to spend a cold miserable night holed up in public toilets for a little shelter! Ugh.

This visit went more to plan, we made the journey easily, the roads in were remarkably clear and the N.E.C as ever has the whole queuing/parking/paying malarky sussed, no problem, relaxed and easy, none of the usual bunfight gaining access to these events often is.

The show was as these things are, excellent if you're into two wheels, probably boring in the extreme if you're not....so I won't, bore you that is! ;o)

We enjoyed it thoroughly though, all the things we wanted to see/achieve were achieved and the place was only comfortably full (thank God for the Christmas shopping rush and the need for many to hit the high streets).

For me there was one most definite highlight, seeing Claudio von Planta (and his bike of course) of The Long Way Round fame.


He might not have been the one to attract all the publicity at the time but this guy was the un-sung hero who not only had to ride with Messrs Boorman and McGregor but also had the task of filming the whole thing single handedly!

As ever I am with these kind of individuals, I just gazed at him and his machine in wonder....this guy had actually, really done one of the things I would most like to do in my life!



Ok....so he did it with a support team and on a BMW (maybe you have to be a biker to understand why that is mentioned) but he did it and that mere fact is enough to more than make him a hero to me! :o))

Other than that there was the usual 'sitting' on various bikes in the hope that someday, someone might just make an adventure bike low enough for a five foot female, I have to say here that BMW (for all we deride them) make the nearest thing too it but still the only thing I can comfortably get my feet down on is a Hog, ugh, just not made for offroading is it with all that chrome!

For those taller and for we dreamers there is however this:


...assuming of course one can get it to go the distance in one piece!

Did I say I wasn't gonna bore you? Ooopss....sorry! ;o)