Well that's that done and dusted and over with, Christmas is behind us and I have to admit I am not sorry. I know that's pretty much of a 'bah humbug grumpy bint' attitude but there it is, it wasn't my best festive season by a long way!
We did I have to say, make the best of it and being with my sister and her family made it a whole lot better but for all of us it's our first 'event' without my dad and for me my first for a very long while single, definitely a status I am learning to dislike intensely and particularly at holiday times. It just isn't nice. I know there are many that hail female independence in the 21st century, yada, yada, yada but it just isn't for me, I wasn't built to be a solitary soul in this manner and whilst I may be getting used to it, I have no wish whatsoever to tolerate the single life for long!
Hey ho, onward. We have the new year to get through and then maybe some semblance of normality can begin to resume. What my normality will be now I have no idea but my life is set to change again quite significantly over the next few months.
Did I mention I am fed up with change? A spell of stability might be nice for a while.....I'm not holding my breath!
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Saturday, 26 December 2009
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Friday, 25 December 2009
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
It's official....
...that I have failed dismally this Christmas one way and another and as a result I should apologise here and now!
What for?
Well, I haven't so much as purchased a Christmas card, let alone written or posted any, so if you would normally expect to be seeing one from me popping through your letter box, I am sorry but it won't be happening this year. I'll say again, I'm am sorry but pressure of circumstances and all that, I just didn't seem to get to it. In fact Christmas is pretty low key here this year for obvious reasons. None of us can really get into it so my mum and I will head off to Leicestershire tomorrow to stay with my sister for a few days, we will do Christmas for the children but that will be about the extent to which we go, it will just be nice to be together.
So, again, my apologies but not much festive to see here this year.
What for?
Well, I haven't so much as purchased a Christmas card, let alone written or posted any, so if you would normally expect to be seeing one from me popping through your letter box, I am sorry but it won't be happening this year. I'll say again, I'm am sorry but pressure of circumstances and all that, I just didn't seem to get to it. In fact Christmas is pretty low key here this year for obvious reasons. None of us can really get into it so my mum and I will head off to Leicestershire tomorrow to stay with my sister for a few days, we will do Christmas for the children but that will be about the extent to which we go, it will just be nice to be together.
So, again, my apologies but not much festive to see here this year.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
On pride and falls and getting marooned!
Bugger! So last night full of confidence and against my overly worrying mothers advice I went out in the car, I know how to drive in the snow, I have some experience (that's another tale)and thus far in my life I have never got stuck! Thus far!
Off I went and when all around me were abandoning vehicles and causing minor bodywork damage I made it to my destination, albeit only a mile away and albeit having taken me a half hour.
Things were looking good. I parked in a place suitable for making good my escape later in the evening and enjoyed my evening. At 2am I decided it was time to go back home and set off on my one mile trip. All was well....until 500 meters from home where my pride took a considerable jolt.
Suffice to say, much digging of snow from around my wheels, much clutch burning and swearing, an hour later I had moved approximately five foot, just enough not to have to abandon the car right in the middle of the road, I arrived home at three bloody thirty! One mile, one and a half hours! Ooppsss. *Blush*
The remaining short distance home was on foot and this morning I am off with a shovel to try again....failing that I may have to completely swallow my pride and get my brother and his Land Rover over here.
Tomorrow my mother and I are supposed to be travelling to the Midlands to spend what will already be a pretty strange Christmas with my sister and her family....not making it is not an option!
Off I went and when all around me were abandoning vehicles and causing minor bodywork damage I made it to my destination, albeit only a mile away and albeit having taken me a half hour.
Things were looking good. I parked in a place suitable for making good my escape later in the evening and enjoyed my evening. At 2am I decided it was time to go back home and set off on my one mile trip. All was well....until 500 meters from home where my pride took a considerable jolt.
Suffice to say, much digging of snow from around my wheels, much clutch burning and swearing, an hour later I had moved approximately five foot, just enough not to have to abandon the car right in the middle of the road, I arrived home at three bloody thirty! One mile, one and a half hours! Ooppsss. *Blush*
The remaining short distance home was on foot and this morning I am off with a shovel to try again....failing that I may have to completely swallow my pride and get my brother and his Land Rover over here.
Tomorrow my mother and I are supposed to be travelling to the Midlands to spend what will already be a pretty strange Christmas with my sister and her family....not making it is not an option!
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Monday, 21 December 2009
Short dog in snow!
Remember 'short dog', he who I borrowed from my brother way back in the summer sometime...well he's rather partial to snow too, specifically catching snowballs!
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Sunday, 20 December 2009
How many cats?
This little festive offering amused me...but don't expect me to know the answer to 'how many cats'...each time I count them I come up with a different result!
If you think you have the definitive answer, let me know!
*Update.
As has been pointed out to me in comments it's twelve, as in the twelve days of Christmas! Duh @ me. Hey, I told you my brain is addled recently but I like the picture just the same! :o)
If you think you have the definitive answer, let me know!
*Update.
As has been pointed out to me in comments it's twelve, as in the twelve days of Christmas! Duh @ me. Hey, I told you my brain is addled recently but I like the picture just the same! :o)
Saturday, 19 December 2009
The snowmum!
Intrepid as ever, at eighty, in six inches of snow, 7.30 in the morning, minus 5 degrees, slippers on feet and without even a jacket, the snowmum feeding 'her' birds on time!
There is just no telling some people!;o)
(Apologies, poor image but I was so surprised I didn't have time to organise my camera properly!)
There is just no telling some people!;o)
(Apologies, poor image but I was so surprised I didn't have time to organise my camera properly!)
Friday, 18 December 2009
Snow....
...I have snow! Big snow, beautiful snow, wonderful snow! Unfortunately I also have a failed central heating system...snow pictures once I have sorted the heating issue! Dammit, where's my dad when I need him!
*UPDATE
Have fixed the heating and at last taken some snow pictures. I don't have quite the scenery here close at hand as I did in Scotland or Cambridge but hey ho, it's still snow!
(Click to enlarge...and the rest are HERE.)
*UPDATE
Have fixed the heating and at last taken some snow pictures. I don't have quite the scenery here close at hand as I did in Scotland or Cambridge but hey ho, it's still snow!
(Click to enlarge...and the rest are HERE.)
Thursday, 17 December 2009
About bloody time!
So, I was pontificating recently over the multitudes of surgeries and treatments my dad had to undergo and endure in his fight against cancer, he was amazing, he went through some really major stuff including 8 hour surgeries,chemo and many other less than lovely things, and he barely uttered a word of complaint or showed more than the minimum of fear.
It kind of put into perspective my dental phobia, (which is well documented here if are are bored enough to want to read it) ok, so we are different people and we all react differently to fear but nonetheless, to be so terrified of having one tooth extracted, that has caused me pain for almost two years, began to seem a little pathetic.
It was thus that yesterday I took the bull by it's proverbial horns and made an appointment for said procedure to be carried out today....and I did it, the offending item is gone!! Yayyy!!
I will admit to having to have my sister in tow and to visibly shaking but I did it and I did it without my usual dental assistance, Valium!
If my dad can go through what he had too I can damn well have a tooth out, he kept telling me to get it done every time he saw me 'winding' food around my mouth or taking pain meds trying to avoid the pain, so I did it....and about bloody time!
*Oh....and it's snowing!!! Yipee :o)
It kind of put into perspective my dental phobia, (which is well documented here if are are bored enough to want to read it) ok, so we are different people and we all react differently to fear but nonetheless, to be so terrified of having one tooth extracted, that has caused me pain for almost two years, began to seem a little pathetic.
It was thus that yesterday I took the bull by it's proverbial horns and made an appointment for said procedure to be carried out today....and I did it, the offending item is gone!! Yayyy!!
I will admit to having to have my sister in tow and to visibly shaking but I did it and I did it without my usual dental assistance, Valium!
If my dad can go through what he had too I can damn well have a tooth out, he kept telling me to get it done every time he saw me 'winding' food around my mouth or taking pain meds trying to avoid the pain, so I did it....and about bloody time!
*Oh....and it's snowing!!! Yipee :o)
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Saying goodbye
So yesterday we said our final goodbye's to my dad and if a funeral can be described as amazing, this one was! It's was absolutely what we had hoped for, it was perfect, it was 'him'!
It was as the saying goes 'a good turn out', people we couldn't imagine showed up, people some of whom we hadn't seen for years, or in the case of colleagues from his days in television, we had never met.
My dad was a staunch atheist, we found an amazing non-denominational celebrant to carry out the service and she was spot on, he would have wholly approve. My fifteen year old niece sang a solo, quite how she managed it I will never know but any of us who had managed to hold it together up to that point lost a grip listening to her angelic voice singing unaccompanied through her own threatening tears. My brother, despite his nerves read the eulogy magnificently, a concoction of amusing tales from each of us, his children, one memory each that a few days ago he gave us two minutes to think of and relay to him.
There were tears, there was laughter, there was love and there was much loud and funky jazz, music my obsessively jazz loving, bohemian dad had chosen himself before he died. A family who in grief came together closer than even usually we are, grown men cried openly and myself, my mum and my siblings gave up any vestige of our stiff upper lips as we listened and remembered a very, very special and individual man who was summed up in this short Indian 'prayer' that was included in the service;
When I am dead
Cry for me a little
Think of me sometimes
But not too much.
Think of me now and again
As I was in life
At some moments it's pleasant to recall
But not for long.
Leave me in peace
And I shall leave you in peace
And while you live
Let your thoughts be with the living.
Yup, if a funeral can be described as amazing, this one certainly was..... and I'll bet not too many coffins carry a floral tribute including some rather large cacti!
It was as the saying goes 'a good turn out', people we couldn't imagine showed up, people some of whom we hadn't seen for years, or in the case of colleagues from his days in television, we had never met.
My dad was a staunch atheist, we found an amazing non-denominational celebrant to carry out the service and she was spot on, he would have wholly approve. My fifteen year old niece sang a solo, quite how she managed it I will never know but any of us who had managed to hold it together up to that point lost a grip listening to her angelic voice singing unaccompanied through her own threatening tears. My brother, despite his nerves read the eulogy magnificently, a concoction of amusing tales from each of us, his children, one memory each that a few days ago he gave us two minutes to think of and relay to him.
There were tears, there was laughter, there was love and there was much loud and funky jazz, music my obsessively jazz loving, bohemian dad had chosen himself before he died. A family who in grief came together closer than even usually we are, grown men cried openly and myself, my mum and my siblings gave up any vestige of our stiff upper lips as we listened and remembered a very, very special and individual man who was summed up in this short Indian 'prayer' that was included in the service;
Cry for me a little
Think of me sometimes
But not too much.
Think of me now and again
As I was in life
At some moments it's pleasant to recall
But not for long.
Leave me in peace
And I shall leave you in peace
And while you live
Let your thoughts be with the living.
Yup, if a funeral can be described as amazing, this one certainly was..... and I'll bet not too many coffins carry a floral tribute including some rather large cacti!
Monday, 14 December 2009
Tomorrow is the day
So tomorrow is the day, my fathers funeral, everything that can be organised has been, the hordes are massing, I can hear my niece upstairs practicing her solo ready for her performance and there is a very odd air of anticipation going on here.
Yesterday myself, my mum and my sister visited the chapel of rest to say our private good bye's, it was a very surreal experience. Somehow he just looked so 'normal' I expected him to suddenly say something....and yet at the same time he looked like he just wasn't there anymore, the man that my dad was, had long since gone. I couldn't then, and still don't really know what I felt, a deep sadness that this really was the last time I would see him and yet a happiness and maybe comfort that I was there with him at that moment. I wasn't sure before I went if I should go at all, if as people say, I would regret it, but among all the confused emotions going on inside my head at the moment the only thing I do know is that I am very glad I went to see him that one last time.
Tomorrow, I have no idea, part of me wants to have the opportunity to publicly say good bye and to acknowledge my love for the man who took care of me one way and another all of my life, part of me just wants to try and ''pull down the shutters and get through it as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
In the end I suspect I won't have to make a choice, what will be will be. Hopefully it will all run like oiled silk and before long it will be over and we can move on to whatever the new phase in our lives without him is...and who knows what that will be....
Yesterday myself, my mum and my sister visited the chapel of rest to say our private good bye's, it was a very surreal experience. Somehow he just looked so 'normal' I expected him to suddenly say something....and yet at the same time he looked like he just wasn't there anymore, the man that my dad was, had long since gone. I couldn't then, and still don't really know what I felt, a deep sadness that this really was the last time I would see him and yet a happiness and maybe comfort that I was there with him at that moment. I wasn't sure before I went if I should go at all, if as people say, I would regret it, but among all the confused emotions going on inside my head at the moment the only thing I do know is that I am very glad I went to see him that one last time.
Tomorrow, I have no idea, part of me wants to have the opportunity to publicly say good bye and to acknowledge my love for the man who took care of me one way and another all of my life, part of me just wants to try and ''pull down the shutters and get through it as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
In the end I suspect I won't have to make a choice, what will be will be. Hopefully it will all run like oiled silk and before long it will be over and we can move on to whatever the new phase in our lives without him is...and who knows what that will be....
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