Oh, My Days!

 My bum is flat, my eyes are square and I thought I was going to have an attack of sciatica, but managed to avert it by performing some emergency Pilates. And all because I have spent all weekend attending the TABI (Tarot Association of the British Isles) Mid-Winter Conference which was, as is the case with such events these days, conducted over the Zoom. The plus side, of course, is that I could provide tea and refreshments to myself that I actually enjoyed (some rather lovely home baked rock cakes, since you ask). Also, during the less than scintillating lectures, there is the advantage of being able to switch off the video camera AND the ability to pretend you are making intense notes just out of camera view when, in fact, you are reading a jolly good book. You can’t get away with that when you are attending a face to face conference. We had the added excitement of a conference raffle, with ten prizes of different Tarot decks and books. …ME! I actually won a raffle prize! This i...

 On Wednesday, Andy said, ‘I’ll build your new desk for you tomorrow,’ and then off he went to work which left me thinking, ‘Botheration. That means I’ve got to paint a wall today.’ Painting a wall wasn’t on my list of ‘to do’ for Wednesday because the list was mostly full up already with a) sit on sofa and feel sorry for myself and b) watch ‘Mapp and Lucia’ to cheer myself up. Therefore, I literally had to FORCE myself to dig out the pot of paint I bought months ago for the specific purpose of redecorating my office. And then find a brush that wasn’t rigid with age. And then get painting.  Blimey, it was hard work. The wall in question was covered in greasy blu-tak marks, plus shallow pock marks where the blu-tak had lifted off the previous coat of paint. It took me a good three hours to apply the first coat because I was having to be very careful as I wasn’t bothering with all that ‘put down protective sheeting and use masking tape’ nonsense. I was having to factor in a lot ...

Since ordering my new desk from Wayfair three days ago, I have been receiving ‘update with your order’s progress’ emails on a far too frequent basis. Firstly, there was the ‘thank you for your order’ email. Followed by the ‘we are processing your order’ email. Then the ‘your order is scheduled for delivery on Tuesday’ email. And then a ‘your order is scheduled for Tuesday and we’ll send a time slot on Monday’ email. Bizarrely, this was followed by a ‘how are we doing so far’ feedback email. What did they want? A half-time encouragement sticker and a gold star. Good grief…. I don’t respond to feedback emails. I can’t be doing with all this, ‘We value your opinion on our service’ shenanigans. If a company doesn’t hear from me, then they can assume that I am a satisfied customer. If the service is very, very, VERY exceptional, I have been known to make a comment, for example, I occasionally leave a Five Star Service review for our Evri delivery lady, Kat, because she is prompt, polite and...

I made the mistake of reading the papers this morning. Not the best way to start the day, because all it did was make me feel incredibly sad about the state of the world. I thought, this is no good. I need something to distract myself, something to make me laugh and to forget for a while that humans often aren’t very kind to each other.  Therefore, I dug out my DVD of ‘Mapp and Lucia’ which is always good for a bit of gentle wit and tittering. But before I could settle down for a sofa ‘n’ DVD ‘n’ cup of tea couple of hours, Andy said, ‘H has just called.’ (H being the breeder of our puppy). ‘She says she is about to advertise the puppies and do we want to visit today to make sure we have chosen the right puppy for us? She says they have changed a lot in the last two weeks.’  Good old Universe! It must have been listening to my gloom. We set off to Derbyshire for a puppy visit!  Oh my goodness! Talk about a puppy pile on! I deliberately wore an old jumper because I had an ...

There are two places I enjoy writing in the cottage. One is at the dining room table, at the far end from the kitchen facing North. It is a place that has the right ‘vibe’ to it, I don’t know why. However, it’s not really convenient because my writing resources - books, folders, notes etc - are all upstairs… …in my writing room at the front of the house. The dining room position is as far from the writing room position as can be and I really can’t be doing with having to bolt up and down stairs every time I need something. I know it’s good exercise but it does rather break the creative flow, as it were - all that bouncing up and down. I use the dining-room, then, only when I’m starting a fresh idea and am in ‘head down and go, go go!’ mode.  My writing room still needs redecorating. Every time I think I know how I want it to look, I end up talking myself out of it, or I find myself distracted by things like, oh, I don’t know - puppies, for example. I think, ‘How about peacock tail ...

 I know…just when I thought my life couldn’t become anymore exciting, I spent a scintillating afternoon yesterday researching the pros and cons of various brands of dog foods. Did you know, dear Reader(s), that there are several hundreds of dog food brands out there? Seriously, you go into a supermarket to buy a pizza for dinner because you can’t be arsed to cook and you have, what? Half a dozen options? Look online for dog food and you’ve enough choices to eat a different dog dinner every day for the REST OF YOUR LIFE!! The first tip I realised is to avoid being sucked in by all the pretty packaging and marketing hype. For example, did you know that ALL meats in dog food are fit for human consumption? Any marketing blurb that states this as a selling point is a tad ingenuous. Mind you, the meats might be fit for human consumption but whether a human would WANT to eat them remains another kettle of prawns that hang around by sewage outlet pipes altogether.  The second tip was ...

 Look at our little girl! Five weeks old tomorrow and butter wouldn’t melt… The breeder has sent some more photos today, and a little video. She said that weaning is going well… …and activity levels are growing… And then she added, all casual-like, that she’d nicknamed our chosen one ‘The Velociraptor.’ The Velociraptor?? Pourquoi? Because, apparently, she likes chewing feet. And other things… Well! Bit harsh, don’t you think? Don’t all puppies chew things? Isn’t that part of puppy development? I mean, even human babies chew things and I bet they leave more slobber around than a wee cockapoo girly. Anyway, Heather reckons our puppy is called ‘The Velociraptor’ because she is very, VERY clever. And not because she is untrainable and vicious. Or has a gimlet eye. Puppy will very much enjoy living with us, as Andy often foot wrangles with Bambino. I say, ‘You’ll regret starting that game,’ as Bambino enters the excitable territory of ‘Wild Cat Eviscerating A Large Rat’ mode, and Andy ...

 I haven’t really been buying puppy stuff this week. Just a puppy sling, and a carrier to use in the car. The puppy sling is so we can go on socialisation outings before Puppy is fully vaccinated, because she can’t go on the ground in public spaces until then. I know it will be a burden having to cart a cute puppy around in a sling for a couple of months but it’s a burden I am willing to bear. And a bed. I did buy a bed. It’s round and squishy with high sides and was the only one of its kind in the shop so it would have been daft to NOT buy it because if I had left it and gone back in a couple of weeks, The Law of Sod means it will have been sold. Buying it was a mere precaution against this eventuality. And some puppy toys. How many toys? Well, twelve toys, since you ask. That’s all. Promise. I did look at a collars and harnesses, but will save buying those until I can take Puppy to be fitted properly.  And I haven’t really been watching lots of puppy videos with Bambino. Wel...

 Passing the library the other day, I popped in and selected these two novels for what, I hoped, would be an enjoyable reading experience… The blurbs were promising. The covers were pleasant to mine eye. The number of pages weren’t too many or too few. Two books, I hoped, that would contribute to my January ‘read at least 6 books’ target.  ‘Needlemouse’ was very entertaining. One of those engaging novels you can whip through in one sitting, or at least in the space of 24 hours, which I did.  ‘A Girl Made of Air’ however, was a different kettle of miserable dead fish altogether. I don’t know why but I thought it might be in the same vein as ‘The Night Circus’ by Erin Morgenstern which I enjoyed enormously. It wasn’t. The prose was readable enough, if a tad verbose, but it soon became clear that the initial tone of abject misery wasn’t going to be lifted with occasional segues into comedy or general light-heartedness of any sort. Come on, author! Even Shakespeare knew it is...

 Perfect day for writing yesterday. Wet, windy and raining. Who wants to go out in that, eh? No, best to stay in and crack on with the official business of Being a Writer.  Except… …as Andy was leaving for work he mentioned the bath had taken a while to empty and was gurgling a bit, and last time that happened it meant the pipes servicing Vladimir (Poo Tin) were backing up and we probably needed to employ the drain rods. He’d deal with it ‘later.’ Well, I thought, it shouldn’t be up to Andy to deal with these things. I am perfectly capable of wielding a set of drain rods and shifting a blockage. After he’d left for work, then, and despite the inclement weather, I togged myself up with wet weather gear and wellies, and ventured out in my unofficial capacity of Drains Inspector. I’d do this, quick sticks, and then head indoors for my planned writing day. Drain One was, indeed, backed up with unmentionables. Drain Two less so, but still fuller than it should be, because what it s...

 Well! His Lordship Malarkey and I took a sixtyish mile drive yesterday morning, out of Shropshire, through Staffordshire and briefly into Leicestershire before nudging into Derbyshire where we found a litter of four puppies. Three girls and a boy. They are three and a half weeks old and just about getting onto their feet and waggling their little stumpy puppy dog tails. Talk about heart melt!  Mummy dog is a working cocker spaniel. She was very sweet - a bit cautious of us for all of three minutes before deciding we were her newest and very bestest of friends. Father dog is a miniature red poodle. He came from a stud nearby and we were welcome to see him if we wished.  But we were too busy playing with puppies to worry about that. The boy dog had already been reserved, so we had a choice of the three girls. One was noticeably lighter in colour; she was also VERY squeaky vocal and, we felt, a little on the anxious side. The other two were almost identical, except one had ...

 Lord Malarkey and I, in a moment of uncharacteristic spontaneity, went to see this film this afternoon… The little cinema in town was barely half full, and we sat up the back with plenty of space around us. Along our row were a couple who arrived at the last minute, so we had to stand to let them get to their seats.  About fifteen minutes into the film, the woman of the couple said, quite loudly, ‘Well, this is tedious.’ And  about five minutes after that, she and her companion both stood up and shuffled along the row, meaning we had to stand to let them pass again. As she went by, the woman whispered, ‘Sorry, I’m not feeling well.’ I thought, you are feeling perfectly fine, lady. You are just finding the film tedious because you announced it so just five minutes ago and we ALL heard you. Why pretend you are unwell? Why don’t you just admit the film isn’t your cup of tea. In fact, why don’t you just get out of the way as quickly as possible so I can sit down and continue...

Just before Christmas, I heard a little news report that didn’t half make me laugh! Apparently, the Government is considering offering something called a ‘Midlife M.O.T’ for the 600,000+ over fifty-year-olds who have given up work in the last couple of years and have no intention of going back. This has caused a gap in the labour market which needs refilling. And the Government think that their ‘Midlife M.O.T’ idea will ‘help’ us no-longer-in-paid-employment folk back into work, by assessing our skills and any work-related issues we might have, so that we might be placed back in suitable employment, be that full-time, part-time, or voluntary. All for the convenience of the Government, of course. Like everything is these days.  How patronising, I thought. How presumptive, I thought. How bloody rude, I thought.  It’s just another way that Government feels it has the right to interfere in how people live their lives, that’s what it is. Like undergoing health screening, or how muc...