Kicking cancer where it hurts!

Firstly, apologies for the length of this post but it can't be helped and I do have an excuse.... for me it's probably the most important 'missive' I have posted to date.

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You might remember way back early last summer I posted a few slightly vague offerings here (you can find them by clicking the 'cancer' tag if you have a mind too) regarding someone who I only referred to as 'The Patient' (TP for short). T.P. is a private kind of guy and as a consequence I felt it inappropriate to rattle on about it all too much here, but I think today can make an exception.

After almost a years illness T.P was finally diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer back in May last year, the survival rates of which were given as something in the region of 2%, unless he underwent some pretty massive surgery. For those interested in the specifics, the procedure involved is pretty rare, the 'Whipple procedure' but if you are squeamish I might suggest you don't click the link.

Luckily and quite unusually T.P was fit enough in all other aspects to be subjected to the surgery which was scheduled to last 6-10 hours, and a week or two after the initial diagnosis he was wheeled into theatre. Amazingly the 'very clever surgeon men' did the job in just over 6 hours and T.P. was then dispatched to ITU where he was expected to remain for maybe 4-5 days...but he beat the odds and was back on a ward in hours and then again beat the odds by being discharged within a week instead of the expected 2-3 weeks!

What followed has been months and months of recovery and chemotherapy, of up's and down's, of hospital visits, of doctors visits, of two steps forward and one step backwards and a plethora of medical and emotional issues to deal with along the way.... all I might add with barely any complaint! T.P is an absolute star, my hero, and I am extremely proud of him. If I ever face anything such as this I hope I can be half the (wo)man he has been through it all!

So, what has prompted this post? Well, yesterday T.P. was summoned to the 'very clever Mr consultant man's' office for the results of the final scans, performed three weeks ago, to ascertain just how much of a success all this amazing medical malarkey had been. I don't know quite how he felt but he went off in the morning sounding astoundingly relaxed... but back here at home I did some floor pacing I can tell you!

And the result?

He's clear!!! No detectable cancer cells remaining!!! It was a resounding success, it was all worth it!!! Huraahhhhhhh!!!

One is never of course referred to as 'cured' and there are one or two minor issues still to be mended and lots of strength rebuilding and getting back to some semblance of normality to be done but the outcome is as good as can possibly be hoped for and probably better than I dared to hope for!

It's been a tough year for all involved but we got there in the end and by no little effort of the N.H.S. who have been marvellous and about whom I will hear nothing bad said (unless it's about parking!) It's been a year none of us would want to live through again and it's been a year of emotions and difficulties no one would relish but it's come to the very best conclusion and with a little luck and a prevailing wind it's all it's all gonna be good from here!

For me it's had an added 'odd-ness' that I couldn't blog it, I blog most things that trouble me but my thoughts and feeling were not paramount, respect for T.P's wishes and privacy were. He will probably still clip my ear for this post if he gets the chance and if he ever sees it but given the happy outcome he might just forgive me!

Did I ever mention T.P. is my dad? No, I thought I didn't! I could bang on now with lots of soppy emotional stuff but he hates that and I hope he knows how I feel anyway, so I will resist and just say today is a happy, happy, happy day and 'well done dad' I'm very proud of you and....no I said I wouldn't do the soppy bit.......

;o)

Unclean, unclean!

So, the powers that be in the unemployment office having finally decided I qualify for their paltry handout, yesterday was my first official 'signing on day' and I didn't relish the prospect I can promise you but I duly turned up at the allotted time clutching all the required paperwork.

I hate it! Almost from the moment I first spoke to a member of staff I could feel my hackles rising, they just seem to have an inherent 'attitude' issue....service and manners not being a top priority apparently.

I wasn't sure exactly where I had to go so upon arrival I approached the reception desk, where almost ten minutes later a frousty faced woman asked if she could help me, completely without smile or interest. 'Help' was not her forte I suspect! I told her why I was there, she pointed aimlessly at a queue and grunted at me to wait there. Now my appointment was for between 3 and 3.15, I was happy to wait but she then grumbled at me that I was too early, big sin and that I should wait where she had indicated until exactly 3.03 and then join a different queue....which was literally 2 paces in a different direction. Quite why queue number 2 was so important or why she was quite so pedantic about the timing is beyond me....because I stood there from 3.03 (check your watches guys) until 3.25! Apparently their timekeeping is not quite as precise as they expect mine to be!

Add to that the place is horrible, grubby, smelly, cramped and without as much as a single seat to sit on anywhere for anyone but the staff! Lord help anyone who has a disability!

So, as I waited I eavesdropped on the conversation going on at the desk in front of me, where a maybe mid twenty something, well dressed woman was getting a 'dressing down' from her interviewer for being 5 minutes late. Really, she was speaking to this lady like a five year old, no, I would hope a five year old who had been 'naughty' would be spoken too with more respect actually, and issuing her with a 'late letter', which she had to sign to say she understood that if she did it again she would lose a days benefit!!! Rules and regs. we may have to have but the delivery of them in this instance was utterly appalling!

By the time my name was called I was about ready to implode but I held my tongue, answered all the questions fired at me, signed on the dotted line and then dared ask a question. Why had I not yet received any monies given that I had been advised I would have last week? 'Madam miserable' looked at her screen and told me haughtily that I had....£8.17 last Friday!

Sorry, but you might understand how I had managed to miss that princely sum hitting even my meagre bank account!

By now I had had enough of being condescended too so I played my trump card and told her I wasn't feeling too well as I have shingles....she couldn't push me out the door fast enough! Ooopsss....did I forget to mention I am no longer infectious?! Result!

What concerns me most is this. As more and more people are forced to join the dole queue by no choice or making of their own, are the staff going to learn that not all of us are life-time work dodgers intent on playing the system and acquire a few manners and a little of the principles of customer service? Or are they going to continue to make this a much worse experience for everyone than it already has to be?!

If you felt crap and a little 'low of self esteem' about being out of work in the first place I can promise you the attitude and approach of these people makes you feel a whole lot worse! For me it really is a case of having to grit my teeth on the principle that I am entitled to this benefit, accept I am going to feel miserable and degraded, dig my heels in and get on with it....it's much tougher than it ought to be or than I had expected and it's utterly and horribly humiliating.

Ice music

I had never heard of 'Ice Music' until yesterday but now I have, as a lover of all things snow and winter-wonderlandish THIS seems like the perfect, if very chilly, orchestra! :o)

How annoying!

You know, the aspect of this job hunting malarkey that most annoys the hell out of me is the propensity that many prospective employers appear to have for not even acknowledging the fact that you took the trouble to apply for their damn job!

It drives me nuts!

I am well aware that in the current climate many vacancies probably attract a larger than usual number of applications and that time is at a premium but I don't expect an individual, hand penned letter in copperplate for goodness sake, just a run of the mill template two liner would be nice! All I want to know, at least in the first instance, is that my application has reached it's destination. What I don't want is to be left dangling on a piece of endless string wondering and just not knowing!

Is that really asking too much?

We, the unemployed masses, are expected to adhere to umpteen protocols and rules of engagement when we submit an application, we spend hours filling in forms, writing and re-writing C.V's, checking content, checking grammar, checking spelling, using the desired colour ink, dotting every 'I' and crossing every 'T' until we are boss-eyed and then we rush to the post box clutching our hopes in our hand......and then what? Damn bloody all is what, not a dickie bird!

It is reminiscent to me of some among our politicians who too often expect us to 'do as they say not as they do' and who while expecting us to behave with a certain degree of moral fibre and respect for others, then go their own merry way, showing little or no adherence to their own rules!

Is it not just a common courtesy to offer at least an acknowledgement of receipt or am I being naive? I am well aware we are currently in an 'employers market' situation at the moment but come on guys, if I am expected to make the effort and operate within accepted levels of manners and disciplines could you not do the same??

Did I mention it drives me nuts?!

Allow me....

....a few moments reflection on a dull and dismal February morning and the memory of one of the most amazing times in my life!

These few pictures probably mean very little alone but for me they embody a time of hope, promise, excitement and a second chance at life, of a feeling of finally getting to a place in life I had striven for, of courage, of trust and of one of those all too rare times in life when everything in the world feels right and good!

I couldn't at the time blog the details and I can't now but the location was Andalucia, I had the time of my life and like I say, on a dull and dismal February morning just the pictures alone do my heart good! :o)

The 'Dogloo'!

Meet Molly!

Molly is a friend's dog, who in the recent snowfall and after much hard work, became the proud owner of her very own 'Dogloo'.......


.......however, the principles were a little lost on her from time to time!

Who says romance is dead!

So, this is a little snippet of a conversation Fletch and I had yesterday, bear in mind here that I do all the girly romantic stuff, remembering dates, times, yada, yada, yada...Fletch is, shall we say, not naturally given to such things!

Me: "Do you realise we have known one another over three years now and we have lived together a year tomorrow"

Fletch (and I might add without missing a beat) replied: "How long did Peter Sutcliffe get"?

Add to that, I managed inadvertently in my oft times dim-witted fashion, to add to his amusement by allowing his response to go whooshing at high velocity, straight over my head..... and trying to remember how long Peter Sutcliffe actually did get so I could be helpful and answer his question!

Who said romance was dead?

Don't laugh, he doesn't need encouragement! Men! ;o)

Hammy got mail!

It really is the small things in life, as they say, that bring some of the biggest smiles!

I woke this morning (unusually late for me) to find a parcel on the doormat which had winged it's merry way from 'up north' courtesy of Daffy, she of mad texts, emails and blog posts, who has recently become a really good friend to me and who knowing I had been through something of a rough week one way and another, had packed up a parcel of treats for Hammy and a lovely, lovely card for me and sent it on it's way here to cheer me up! All that despite her own self feeling something less than 'chipper' of late!

How kind and nice is that??? It made my day, no, correction, my week, it was just such a lovely thing to do and my day was begun unusually smiley and cheerful as a result and Hammy for her part, is about to indulge in a feast of hamster gourmet happiness!


*Thankyou flower, you really made my week :o)

Caught like a rabbit in headlights

Remember when you were at school, that very annoying'clever' trick teachers had that enabled them to recall everything you had ever done just when you had convinced yourself you were in the clear? Suddenly, days or weeks later when your guard was down your reprimand for a previous misdemeanour came apparently out of the blue and you were completely unprepared with any form of defence or excuse... well it happened to me again this week at the ripe old age of forty something! Ugh.

Ok, so a very different scenario and this time a doctor not a teacher but they too seem be 'blessed' with the 'I'll remember and get you in the end' memory function that my teachers used to have....and just the same I found myself without valid excuse or reason at the point I most needed it, all vestige of assertiveness gone!

So what happened? Well, having been forced by my shingly leg to go to the doctors, something I don't relish despite my quack being a particularly nice guy, and having made it through the consultation, or so I thought, I was just struggling back into my jacket, with my hand almost on door handle to make good my escape when he uttered the dreaded words, 'I think we have something else we need to discuss while you're here don't you'. I knew what was coming, I had been avoiding it since...well since forever but this time I knew I couldn't escape, he had me and my mind raced around for all the well worn excuses....and came up with none as I sat back down.

"I think at your age (ok, don't rub it in mister, I know how old I am I don't need you to rub it in) we (is that the royal 'we' because I don't recall joining in this little gang)need (well actually no, I don't need but I suspect I am going to have too tolerate) to take you off the pill!

One of the sentences no woman never wants to hear!

Noooo, nooooo, please don't do this to me was what I wanted to say but instead, caught like a rabbit in headlights (the man got me when I was down and out with the shingly thing and he knew it) I just sat there and meekly agreed to his heinous suggestion! All my previous avoidance techniques deserted me in an instant.

And so I sat while he regaled me with the list of reasons he was finally forcing the issue (yes, I know and I know he's right but that doesn't mean I have to like it) and the list of 'alternatives' he couldn't offer me for one medical reason or another and then listened further while he had the audacity to ask me if I would 'manage'! Um..he had my medical notes there, he remembered everything else, how did it pass him by that at forty something, to date I have never been pregnant and therefor would perhaps 'manage'!

Does this look like a happy face to you? -----> :o(

Don't anyone dare say 'famous last words'! Ack.

Kingsford goes to the beach

And still on the subject of 'oink'.....

So here I am...

....staring blankly at the 'new post' page on blogger and I can think of absolutely nothing to blog! I hate that, I find it frustrating! Well in actual fact it's not so much that I can't think of a subject, more that I can't somehow manage to formulate the sentences to string it together into any semblance of coherence....no one told me shingles affected the brain too!

I've got the hump with it all already, every bit of me seems to hurt, I can't sit comfortably, I can't walk like a normal human being, I'm as tired as hell but I can't sleep, I have a headache that no amount of paracetamol seems to be able to dispense with and Fletch is away on business so I don't even have the pleasure of being 'ministered' too! Ppffttt.

I know, I know, shingles is no biggie really, and in fact it's still not even confirmed as shingles for sure anyway.... but whatever it is I will be glad when it sods off out of my system and I can get back to normal.

In the mean time this managed to put a smile on my miserable chops this morning.....oink!

Hobble, shuffle, grumble!

To my dismay it appears I have shingles...or at least the quack thinks it's likely to be shingles, though I have no nasty, painful rash....yet. I have that to look forward too maybe.

In my ignorance I thought that the shingly thing always presented with a rash of painful blisters and always on the torso or head, but apparently not. I have it down the entire length of my left thigh and I can only hope, that as the doctor suggested might be the case, I only have it mildly, because if this is mild I don't look forward to the full blown version. It hurts and I'm already shuffling and hobbling around like an old bint.

I have another few days to wait and see if the rash appears, if not then it may be something else, the name of which I have already forgotten but either way, no rash means no meds, I just have to let nature take it's merry course!

Joy.

Cooper - The cat photographer

That is a cat that takes photographs not an individual taking photographs of cats!

Cooper, a ginger American shorthair cat not only has his own blog to display his photography but now he also has his very own exhibition in Seattle!

If you ever wondered where your cat goes too in all those hours he or she is out, or what exactly he or she is up too, this is the way to do it. Coopers 'parents', Michael and Deirdre Cross, attached a lightweight digital camera to his collar, programmed it to take a picture every two minutes and sent him out wearing it once a week.

The result, Cooper the cat photographer, a cat with his very own exhibition!

Monster - ous.com!

Most of you will be at least familiar with Monster.com, the job search site, they that promise the earth and deliver, or at least in my case, barely much more than advertising!

That of course maybe for various reasons but in the year I have had my details with them I have been wholly underwhelmed and information given to me this week only proved to seriously underwhelmed me further.

Whilst at an interview at the job center on Thursday I happened to mention that I had (had being the operative word here) an account with Monster, C.V's, profile, the lot. The guy looked at me in horror and told me to go home and delete it straight away, this seemed like something of an odd instruction from a government department who's sole aim is to get me into work, so I questioned further.

Apparently Monster have been hacked, twice in the last few months and with rumours of a very recent third breach, this has rendered literally millions of individuals personal details at risk and in the hands of heaven knows who!!

If that wasn't bad enough, and I accept these things happen, Monster took an active decision not to inform it's members and instead merely chose to prompt them to change their password on the next occasion they logged in. For me, who had long since decided Monster was pretty much useless in my case, that means my details, including my full C.V have been 'out there' for months!!

Had they advertised the fact that they had a problem immediately and taken steps to rectify it and been upfront, I would have been far more convinced of their integrity than I am in knowing that they instead chose to attempt to hide the issue, presumably purely for corporate gain, and thereby knowingly risked their clients security more than was necessary!

Maybe I should have been aware of all of this, let's face it, I spend enough time in the interweb, but I wasn't and the very fact that Monster themselves chose not to inform those affected is what really angers me.

My account is now firmly deleted I can promise you. If a government department, who's sole purpose is to encourage me to find a position any way I can urge me so strongly to kill it immediately, then it speaks volumes about Monster and it's codes of practice!

If you have an account with Monster I can only suggest you don't have from this point on!

Devolve me!

This is me...hot stuff eh?.....I think my new nose is particularly attractive, don't you? ;o)


To be more specific and very thankfully it's not me now, though I am sure some of you will say there is more than an adequate likeness, it's me 3.7 million years ago, courtesy of the OU website!

As part of the site's celebration of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday this week they have a 'Devolve me' service, you just upload a current image of yourself and they morph you back over 3.7 million years of evolution.

Not for the faint hearted or vain maybe but quite amusing!

Devolve yourself HERE. :o)

Call me nuts....

....but I couldn't resist going for a walk on my own in the snowy darkness last night!

The snow began falling again in the mid afternoon and by evening everything was transformed back to the beautiful pristine whiteness of earlier in the week. As I ate dinner I pondered that the forecast suggested it would begin to thaw again almost immediately, and by morning there would remain again only a slushy mess. Something had to be done!

So do something I did, I scrambled into my boots and jacket and headed out of the warmth of the flat and into the dark and still heavily falling snow and went for a walk! It was fabulous, while the few people around were scuttling about grumbling and trying to get indoors as fast as possible I was wandering around finding virgin snow to make footprints in and loving every moment!

I walked into town and watched the snowfall under the street lamps, I walked along the quay with a swan slipping and sliding just ahead of me, I sat watching the flakes disappear into the river and I turned my face to the sky and felt the snow landing gently and silently on my skin. It was amazing, peaceful and beautiful and the perfect antidote to a horrible week.

Eventually the cold began seeping through and reluctantly I began pottering slowly back through the silence, headed for home again all the while trying to commit to memory the feeling of pure white tranquility against the darkness and choosing an untrodden path to hear the 'scrunching' sound of new fallen snow under my feet.

I arrived home, pink cheeked, covered in snow and wet. I made a cup of hot chocolate and sat by the window watching the snow continue to fall. Perfect.

Flooded!

Remember the snow pictures of a few days back? Well these images are all taken in the same places as those were. What a difference a few days make!

In actual fact it's not quite as serious as it might appear, we have a pretty funky flood control system going on in this little part of the world and when the water levels get too high all the fields are purposely flooded to save the nearby towns suffering. It is controlled to within an inch or two by a complex system of sluice gates and other paraphernalia that I have absolutely no understanding of! It works though, the water gets to within inches of us a few times a year and is then backed off. Pretty amazing stuff.

....and though I don't like to blow my own trumpet too much, I can't help but show off just a little that some of these pictures made it onto the local BBC website yesterday! Hey, it might not be Getty Images but beggars can't be choosers and all that! :o)






(Clickable)

Biting the bullet...again!

Yesterday was not a good day and today isn't showing much promise in shaping up considerably better thus far either but I'll get over it no doubt in a day or two, I usually do.

Yesterday was another in what sometimes feels like a long line of days of facing situations I either didn't want to or find particularly difficult. You would think after all the divorce, bankruptcy and housing issues over recent years I would be used to it, and I suppose I am in some respects, but somehow, at the point of impact it just doesn't get any easier!

This time it was the employment issue, or rather the distinct lack of it issue, that had to be faced and face it I did. After all the months of soul searching and moral dilemma I faced it in an hour and a half grilling at the local benefit office yesterday afternoon. I hate it! It's not the actuality of the interview that 'gets me' it's the whole issue of being stigmatised as 'benefit scum', the standing in line in a grubby office, the prying into every aspect of my life by a complete stranger and the being spoken too like a bloody idiot that really get to me. I promise you, if you haven't been through this it does damn all for your self esteem or confidence! I am not ashamed to say I drove home in a state of numbness, walked through the door and just sat down and cried and had my first 'oh so lovely' panic attack in years. Somehow, and I can't pull apart the psychology, but for me this is almost harder than standing in front of the judge being declared bankrupt ever was.

So, the outcome? I wait now for a few weeks to discover if I am to qualify for my paltry handout and for a time I'll have to get used to the standing in line and the rest of the whole demeaning, miserable carry-on. It doesn't matter how much I tell myself this isn't my fault and I should hold my head high, it still makes me feel like crap and I still know that there are people out there who judge me negatively by my employment status alone.

If there is anything positive to be taken from this it is perhaps only that at least I am now counted in Mr Brown's manipulated figures and I did come away clutching the details for a possibly suitable vacancy. And that perhaps is the only slight amusement in the whole sorry story....the position is to be 'one of them'.....a benefits agency front line interviewer!!! At least there's one growth industry!

It's not only me who likes snow....

...though I'm never as effusive in my appreciation or as energetic about it as THIS little guy/guy-ess!

A stoat loving the snow and caught on video last week in a back garden somewhere in Wiltshire.

Love it!

To Twitter or not to Twitter!

Today I thought I would post my own few words in defence of the latest in a long line of that which is the latest of the virtual-social-networking-phenomenon, 'Twitter'.

If you don't Twitter this will probably sound like double dutch to you, but if you do, chances are you do it for little more than a bit of fun and to make a few virtual friends....and that is my point, what is the issue with that?

There will always be high brow intellectuals standing on the sidelines ready to denigrate anything but that alone is not a reason to assume something is completely worthless!

Twitter, if you have never got to it yet is simple, you choose to 'follow' other individuals and are 'followed' yourself, by whoever chooses to do so, from there on in you get 140 characters to say what you are doing at that moment.

All sound a bit inane? Well you would be right, it is, it is just truncated conversation but as Charlie Brooker of The Guardian says in his column today it is "strangely compelling".

We Twitterers are a diverse bunch and include everyone from the Jane Doe's such as myself to the rich and famous such as Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and The Dalai Lama....and for me that is where the interest is, 'meeting' people, I otherwise wouldn't ever get to meet. I don't necessarily mean the celebs among the twittering fraternity, though some are very interesting, but the normal people, going about their normal lives, who quite quickly become friends.

This may all sound suspiciously like a 'chat room' and once you have a group of friends set up, it does have a tendency to veer from purely tweeting 'what I am doing' to more 'conversation' but thus far it differs greatly from the old chat rooms (and believe me I am a self confessed ex-veteran of IRC, I know what they could be like)in that those that Twitter seem mostly to be professional articulate individuals (ok, that's me out), as opposed to odd-bods up to no good! Sadly I suspect as time goes by the odd-bods will find a way in, as the spammers are already beginning too, but that unfortunately is a part of life that we have to deal with in all areas. Twitter does differ greastly though in that you can choose for only those you wish to, to see your 'Tweets', it's not necessarily open to all-comers.

The old argument which has always been levelled against all forms of virtual social networking (and I'm not a fan of all, Facebook for instance I really quite dislike but that's another story) is of course that these aren't 'real' people but I beg to differ. I may not be able to look them in the face or hear their voice but at the end of a line of text there is of course another human being sat at a keyboard, just as I am and I believe, certainly as adults, it's not terribly difficult to tell quite quickly if someone is being less than genuine. Add to that, given that both my partner and my best friend are people I first met virtually through blogging, it would be hard for me to have faith in the 'these are not real people' train of thought.

No, social networking is not going out and meeting people face to face it's true, in the main I will never actually get to meet most of these people but as long as we keep a perspective and balance why should that be a bad thing as opposed to just a 'different' way of interacting and why is it that the intellectuals appear to assume that anything that is 'just fun' is to be criticised? Almost everything has a negative side if we look for it, football for instance, something which in this country is almost a 'religion' for many, but is in fact ostensibly just a game, costs the NHS a fortune in cruciate ligament surgery and has a tendency to attract violence here and there but there is no doubting it also makes many people lives much more pleasurable!

Yes, like many things I'm sure Twitter can be distracting and perhaps a little addictive but that's not a new phenomenon, it's the case with many things, good and bad, but one thing it certainly is for those of us that enjoy it is fun, entertaining, quite often informative and sociable and in my humble opinion that isn't a bad thing.

Like the inimitable Stephen Fry, he who has over 100,000 followers and 'tweets' hilariously is quoted as saying, "some people just don't get it"...and that's fine, we are all interested/entertained by different things but what aggravates me is why those that don't 'get it' feel they have to criticise it almost on principle! I could go into all kinds of psychological theories and principles on that aspect but I won't bore you any longer! If you don't 'get it', that's cool but don't critisise us who do, purely because we do!


....and incidentally, if you are interested my Twitter I.D is 'gemmak500'. All comers welcome :o)

The lights are out....

.....today!

Very late night, suffering, nothing to see here, move on please! ;o)

Women drivers and mad bikers!

Nothing has made me laugh so much as this first video for along time, albeit it does nothing for the defence of women drivers. Watch to the end for the previously mentioned (here and here) Cambridge rising bollards!


And this one is for anyone who has ever ridden a bike. Again, watch to the end or you'll miss the gtruly demented best bit....and hold on to your hat, or should that be helmet!

Bring on March!

I know, I know, I'm not supposed to be wishing my life away but March this year brings with it a pretty exciting event, one of the best in fact!

When the same thing happened last October I thought it likely would be a 'one off' or at the very least a rare occurrence, time, money and logistics considered but I was wrong....on March the 19th Lisa will arrive from the U.S at Heathrow again in the wee small hours, for another weeks visit!

Last time we had an absolute ball, it was just so fab to be able to actually spend time with she who has been my closest friend for over five years, the person who has been there through all the up's and down's of those years and who probably knows me better than almost anyone else. We have had a constant, many times daily email conversation going on for all that time and to actually be able to talk face to face was just amazing!

So, in March, more of the same, Leffe, pancakes for breakfast, hilarity, chatter and the pleasure of being able to hang out for 'real'!

I can't wait! Yayyyyyyy! :o)

SNOW....I got SNOW!!!!

Happy, happy, happy!

So my Tesco delivery has been cancelled, do I care? Nope! I have chocolate, coffee and snow, what more could I want! :o)

(Images clickable)

Swinging the lantern

Occasionally we read or hear something that pulls us up short and makes us examine our priorities, bringing life, and how horribly fragile it can be, into crystal clear focus!

Why one piece of information or story really 'gets' us as opposed to another I don't know, lets face it, we aren't short of stories of personal tragedy or world crisis, we see death, destruction and disaster in such copious quantities in the media it may even begin to have the opposite effect on us as our minds become desensitised in their effort to cope with such a dismal overload.

So perhaps one item connects in our minds because of simpler things, the way we hear of it, the way it is written or spoken or perhaps because as in the piece of writing I am about to direct you to, because it's written by someone real, someone we know, a normal individual who lives a normal life just like the rest of us but who contrary to most of us has faced situations in the course of that life that the most of us just can't imagine.

Balderdash and piffle, a blog I only recently began reading, carried one such piece of writing yesterday, the post is long but it is one of those you will find yourself glued to. Alex, it's author serves in the RAF and was directly underneath the very first launch of a Patriot missile when it shot down an Iraqi Scud in 1990, during the Gulf war. THIS post is his account of that experience and I promise you, it will make your blood run cold and you will thank your lucky stars, that no matter the politics of a conflict, that whilst the pundits and politicians sit in the comfort of their offices 'considering and criticising', we have service personnel with the fortitude to manage situations most of us wouldn't even care to imagine!

Snowless and sulking!

Really, I am beginning to suffer a serious case of snow paranoia!

Whilst most of southern England ground to a halt under up to a foot of snow yesterday, here, nowt, well almost nowt! Ten miles away in any direction they were up to their knees in the stuff but my little patch of the UK? Well, see for yourself, This was as good as it got, most unimpressive!


We have more forecast for Friday, theoretically even more than should have been yesterday but from now I am ignoring all things snow.... and sulking! ;o)

Sod it!

As ever it seems, sods law has prevailed and the promised heavy snowfall is yet to be seen here! We have a light dusting, pathetically light and that's it, nothing worthy of boots or a sledge. Pah.

It's a funny thing me and snow, when I lived in London, it snowed in Scotland, when I lived in Scotland it snowed in London, when I lived back near London, the significant snowfall was back in Scotland and now, having moved to Cambridge, the snow is in London! I'm beginning to think sod's law is gunning for me!

That said, the snow has given me much entertanment over the last twenty four hours, if you are a snow-a-holic like me and you Twitter (surely you Twitter?!)check out the thread #uksnow, moment by moment snow reports, news and images from likeminded mad people snowlovers around the UK. :o)

So, it's back to hoping, the forecast still promises more today, though less than it did and again a very significant fall for Friday......maybe sod's law will sod off just this once in my area!

Just maybe....

.....this time the forecasters have got it right and the predicted significant snowfall may actually materialise! I am waiting with breath suitably bated, the temperature is good, the pressure is good, the wind is picking up and the clouds are forming suitably.

Midday is the approximated time for the commencement of the first 'delivery', I've been chart watching for days (yes, I know that's a little suspect) and unusually, those who purport to know about this stuff appear to be pretty close to the mark for once. Everything is set, it's all looking good to go!

So, whilst I get back to charts and gazing out of the window for the first flake I'll leave you with a probability chart and a few words on the snow subject courtesy of one of my favourite shows, Northern Exposure.

"Oh the snow the beautiful snow filling the sky and earth below. Over the house tops and over the streets, over the heads of people you meet. Dancing flirting skimming along. Oh the snow the beautiful snow how the flakes gather and laugh as they go. Whirling about in their maddening fun it plays in its glee with everyone. Chasing laughing hurrying by it lights on the face and sparkles the eye. And even the dogs with a bark and a bound snap at the crystals that eddy around. The town is alive and its heart in a glow to welcome the coming of beautiful snow. Bon Hiver."

*UPDATE - Bang on midday and the first few flakes have started to fall! :o)