Away With The Fairies

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One of me fav poemries

Sometimes I lie here of an evening and moon over poems. I mean not moon as in out of the back window of the school bus (not that I ever did such a thing, no no no..NO) but MOON as in drift off to another, more surreal, planet where people are in love and stare into each others' eyes whilst eating Flakes and there are beautiful babies, puppies, goats and donkeys and nobody nags me to open letters or answer the phone. 


Anyway, this one has my fav'est line ever which is "I like the way your elbows work, on hinges."...


It's by John Fuller.

Valentine

The things about you I appreciate may seem indelicate: 
I’d like to find you in the shower 
And chase the soap for half an hour. 
I’d like to have you in my power and see your eyes dilate. 
I’d like to have your back to scour 
And other parts to lubricate. 
Sometimes I feel it is my fate 
To chase you screaming up a tower or make you cower 
By asking you to differentiate Nietzsche from Schopenhauer. 
I’d like to successfully guess your weight and win you at a fate. 
I’d like to offer you a flower. 

I like the hair upon your shoulders, 
Falling like water over boulders. 
I like the shoulders, too: they are essential. 
Your collar-bones have great potential 
(I’d like all your particulars in folders marked Confidential). 

I like your cheeks, I like your nose, 
I like the way your lips disclose 
The neat arrangement of your teeth 
(Half above and half beneath) in rows. 

I like your eyes, I like their fringes. 
The way they focus on me gives me twinges. 
Your upper arms drive me berserk. 
I like the way your elbows work, on hinges. 

I like your wrists, I like your glands, 
I like the fingers on your hands. 
I’d like to teach them how to count, 
And certain things we might exchange, 
Something familiar for something strange. 
I’d like to give you just the right amount and get some change. 

I like it when you tilt your cheek up. 
I like the way you nod and hold a teacup. I like your legs when you unwind 
them. 
Even in trousers I don’t mind them. 
I like each softly-moulded kneecap. 
I like the little crease behind them. 
I’d always know, without a recap, where to find them. 

I like the sculpture of your ears. 
I like the way your profile disappears 
Whenever you decide to turn and face me. 
I’d like to cross two hemispheres and have you chase me. 
I’d like to smuggle you across frontiers 
Or sail with you at night into Tangiers. 
I’d like you to embrace me. 

I’d like to see you ironing your skirt and cancelling other dates. 
I’d like to button up your shirt. 
I like the way your chest inflates. 
I’d like to soothe you when you’re hurt 
Or frightened senseless by invertebrates. 

I’d like you even if you were malign 
And had a yen for sudden homicide. 
I’d let you put insecticide into my wine. 
I’d even like you if you were the Bride of Frankenstein 
Or something ghoulish out of Mamoulian’s Jekyll and Hyde. 
I’d even like you as my Julian of Norwich or Cathleen ni Houlihan 
How melodramatic 
If you were something muttering in attics 
Like Mrs Rochester or a student of boolean mathematics. 

You are the end of self-abuse. 
You are the eternal feminine. 
I’d like to find a good excuse 
To call on you and find you in. 
I’d like to put my hand beneath your chin. And see you grin. 
I’d like to taste your Charlotte Russe, 
I’d like to feel my lips upon your skin, 
I’d like to make you reproduce. 

I’d like you in my confidence. 
I’d like to be your second look. 
I’d like to let you try the French Defence and mate you with my rook. 
I’d like to be your preference and hence 
I’d like to be around when you unhook. 
I’d like to be your only audience, 
The final name in your appointment book, your future tense.

 

I want to be alone. No please, I really really DO...

Firstly and foremostly, to my friends, I love you, I want (some of) you but there ain't no way I'm ever gonna need you. But please don't be offendalated, it's not you, it's me.

 

Scene 1 7pm

Phone: Ring ring, Ring ring, Ring RINNNGGGGGGGG

Me: Whistling nonchalently, staring into mid air until it stops but thinking "WHY OH WHY DO THESE EFFIN' PEOPLE INSIST ON WANTING TO TALK TO ME, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY ON THE PHONE AND SURELY A TEXT MESSAGE IS SO MUCH EASIER AND TO THE POINT!"

Phone: Hi it's Sally please leave a message or SEND A TEXT Beeeeeeep. "Hi Sally it's ME, I know I saw you barely an hour ago when I called round and we talked through the letterbox but I really need to discuss some plans..blah blah"  [unnecessarily long explanation with many tedious digressions which make me pull violent faces at myself in the hall mirror]

Me: [Thinking] Oh for Christ sake have they got nothing better to do at 7pm of a Tuesday evening than ring poor innocent victims and try and TALK to them. And "PLANS?!" Oh that is my worst word, please please help me. Stomping to the phone I thrash it with a wet teatowel before stabbing the delete button with a very pointy potato peeler (multi tasking, dear reader). It's like it never happened. By the way, if you ever share a house with me you will never get any of your phone messages because my fingers have St Vitas Dance around that delete button.

I was going to write some other scenes but I realised you have probably started to hate me enough already. So I'd better do an explanation.

See, I have yet another dysfunction. I love love love being on my own, I can be on my own for days and weeks, decades even, and still be full of the joys of spring. Nothing fills me with more happiness than someone cancelling a date or saying their party has been called off because the village hall has been smithereened by a hurricane, it's just pure joy. On the other hand nothing fills me with more impending gloom than being invited to a party or a work drinks thing or, horror of horreurs, to someone's house for a silicone bakeware party. Why do you think I go running? Because as soon as I get out of the door nobody can TALK to me, I can just go for hours and hours unfettered by human contact or Virgin Vie parties. 

So I asked my old friend Carl Jung what might be the matter and he said I'm an introvert. Oh it sounds too FREAKY, surely not, I thought.... Surely introverts have mousy hair and stubbly legs and don't wear mascara or come-hither skirts. But one of the symptoms of this is that the person decorates their desk less, doesn't offer sweets to entice people over to chat and tends to arrange their workspace to discourage social interaction. So I was thinking, how about moving your desk 25 feet away from your colleagues, do you think that's a sign, or even to a different town? How about never making any eye contact or saying hello or goodbye, that seems like some sort of symptom? ALARM BELLS. Thankfully all this unpleasantness has been cured via  the modern medium of working from home. I hear people saying "On no no no, working from home is not for me, how would I get to find out what's going on and how would I mix with my colleagues" and I'm thinking "Why are you worried about what's going on? On your deathbed will you be stressing about the fact that they took away the water cooler on the third floor in 1998?" (or perhaps this is the cause of your impending death, in which case I'm truly sorry) And why do you want to mix with your colleagues, what an appalling thought.

Except it's a bit confusing; I'm not a total introvert cos I talk to strangers like there's no tomorrow, sit me on a bus next to someone who looks like an axe murderer and before the next stop I'll know where they come from ,how old their nan was when she got married, whether they like garlic bread, how much they weigh, what their views are on the shooting of badgers and what their biggest weakness is (I will have deduced this from a variety of manipulative questions) Sit me next to a strange person at dinner and I'll have pulled them by the time the main course arrives as I'll have have shown so much interest in their childhood and collection of Phil Collins albums. This even happens if I am covered in spots and haven't brushed my hair, they just get sucked in by my avid attention and deep questioning. But aha, have you spotted the ruse? All the time I am questioning these people they don't get a chance to ask me anything about myself (gosh me, that would be far too much like BONDING) and as soon as they do I'll quickly distract them by asking a direct question about their thusfar undisclosed weakness. They'll start crying, and BINGO. End of.

And I do like going out really and can be quite bubble-icious but this brings me to a secondary dysfunction which is based around being allergic to being told what to do. So if someone says, "Sal, you coming to the pub on Thursday at 8pm?" I feel instant pressure of HAVING to do something, having to PLAN something, having to get somewhere on TIME (insert that Psycho shower scene noise here) What if Thursday comes and I want to go for a run or do some colouring. I cannot possibly commit to this! So I say "I might. Ooh look, you know you're scared of tarantulas well there's a HUGE one behind the door, it must have come in the bananas from your shopping delivery!" While they are screaming I run off.

So in the spirit of a litigious society I'd like to blame this on someone or something. Now when I was growing up I spent a lot of time on my own due to my brothers and sister being 549 years older than me and my mum being out at work, oh my dad was living in heaven by the way. So while the childminder was out at the pub I spent many a long hour (not knowing how to turn the telly on or anything, only being 1ft 6in high at the time) just twoodling around darkened rooms (couldn't reach the light switches), colouring in Holly Hobby pictures,  chatting with my teddy, dancing to the latest grooves, smoking my brother's ciggies, trying on my sister's hand-sewn sequin swimsuit and seeing if it was OK to have a bath in (you can imagine her surprise when she went to put it on for her Christmas pantomime) and these are pretty much my favourite activities to this day, apart from the cancer-sticks. Also, my lovely mum (THE loveliest mum in the whole wide world and heaven) would so often spring geographically-related surprises on me. 

Here's another scene:

6:30am  on a Wednesday morning. Mum enters the bedroom in her kaftan

Mum: Darlingggg, wake up, the car's all packed and you start your new school at nine o clock

Me: Whaa? Start gently sobbing. I had no idea about this as my mum probably thought it best not to worry me.

Mum: Yes, it's in a lovely little village in Dorset (we are currently living in Essex, well we have been for four months since the move from Devon) I've already found you some friends. Now come ON darling, chop chop! You can clean your teeth at the motorway service station.

Me: (Sobbing to my teddy) Well I'm not going to make any real friends because what's the point because I'll start to love them then I'll have to cry every night for three months when we unexpectedly have to move to the Outer Hebrides one Tuesday morning mid- term. He didn't say anything back but a big teardrop plopped out of his eye onto  the bare floorboards  (Mum had snuck in in the night to remove all his cuddly toy friends along with the furniture and carpets)

Later that day I would go to tea at one of the arranged-friendship friend's houses. I would always be unsettled that there was a mum and dad and two children, and they'd be having Findus Crispy Pancakes. It all smelt weird, like Pledge polish, and was all just too horribly alien and oppressive, far too controlled. I couldn't wait to get back to the comfort of dysfunctionality at my own house and start unpacking.

Anyway, repeat this scene several hundred times during the formative years and you start to realisamate why I have loads of friends but stay somewhat slightly 'detached'. Like not answering the door to them, or anything.......

OH HELP, IS THAT THE DOORBELL? I thought I'd taken the batteries out.

I've said too much.

Here's me, with my bags packed.

Sally

Relation ships (in the night)

Okay. Let's stop pretending. Manthings and femalians were NOT MEANT TO BE together under the same roof for more than, let's say, three days. TOPS. Furthermore, as a general rule of thumb women just want babies and men just want 'boom boom', which would work very nicely if left unfettered by modern times.

Let's try and make sense of this:

Girl baby comes out and immediately starts to wonder if her crib would look better over there, with perhaps a little bedside lamp arranged prettily against a guest flacon filled with Evian and a copy of the latest Cosmopolitan. Boy baby comes out and wonders what the nurse would look like with (a) suzzys on (b) cooking him a bacon sandwich or (c) covered in army webbing and cam cream, held hostage in a bush in the front garden. Quite why we are trying to fight these instincts I never understand.

Rather than going with these natural urges and making the most of our elemental traits, it's all got horribly mixed up. As far as I can see, truly, madly, deeply happy cohabitations are now for the seriously deluded, brain dead or hardy traditionalist. So we have men doing washing (YES, you heard right), women building their own patios and somebody (anybody) else 28 miles up the road looking after the children. And nobody is happy, if they're honest.

I mean, girls spend much of their formative years preparing for what nature intended; dressing dolls, feeding water to dolls and making dolls pee so they can practise changing a nappy, taking them out in the pram, arranging doll-based furniture and suchlike. You don't find many girls drawing pictures of themselves standing on a freezing station platform of a morning, briefcase in hand, planning a PowerPoint presentation. Neither do you find boys drawing pictures of THEMselves sorting a load of washing into lights and darks (and if they did they'd be mixing reds in with whites) or making a batch of pureed apple ice cubes for the baby. I realise there will be some of you fainting at the horror of what I'm saying and ringing up the Labour party to complain but a lot more will be nodding secretly inside their heads, though berating themselves for the embarrassing un-PCness of their thoughts.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job(s) but in an ideal world I would not be doing them; I'd be doing what nature intended, making babies and looking after donkeys. Okay so I got to make a baby. I clearly remember having this tiny, helpless ,adorable bambino-thing and when he was still less than a foot long having to scour the county in a maternity nightdress for somewhere/somebody/someTHING to entrust his life to for eight hours a day. Should it be the newbuild institution where there were 58 doors each with its own secret code, leading to a vast room where bored-looking teenage girls slumped on the floor clutching the helpless inmates, not knowing how to feed them and send a text at the same time (that takes a real mummy) Or perhaps better to leave him in a complete stranger's house and hope for the best? I opted for the latter, thinking at least he would get to see a real garden, maybe stroke a cat and eat a bit of dirt. As it turned out I found someone wonderful and very loving but still, it should have been me (insert Gladys Knight lyrics here) Handing him over every morning was like that scene out of Ghost where the roguish Oda Mae Brown has to give four milllion dollars to the Nuns on the street but battles with herself to hand it over and can't quite let go until forced. The poor childmindy woman was coerced at virtual gunpoint in to keeping a detailed log of his every move, and I mean EVERY SINGLE move. I was therefore able to experience the excitement of his first tooth coming through by, err, reading about it in the journal later.

Moving on. Now what with us females going to work all our lives and enduring giving our babies away to axe-wielding strangers we become super strong; stronger than nature intended, probably. Then things get all mixed up because man's position in the home/society becomes weaker but he can't accept being weaker because of course, despite what Cosmopolitan says, it's not natural. So he fights against it but he isn't just fighting naturally strong woman he is fighting extra strong and enabled woman with added bleach, and money. PowerPoint woman.


We are living through a horrible transition period for relationships. Nobody knows what they're meant to be any more, men are forced into being womanly and not being very good at it and women are having to adopt blokey attitudes without having the testosterone back-up. Not only that but the situation makes the blokes deeply unfanciable, like living with another woman. It's CRAZY-MENTAL I tell you. Now I know that some of you readers will be a generation down from me and quite happily going about gender-swapping-related hoovering and car maintenance. I am very happy for you. Really I am....

But let's picture the scene in a gazillion other highly mortgaged houses, dear reader. It's Sunday lunchtime. Woman walks in with 30 bags of groceries, Bloke-Thing is, naturally, slumped in front of the rugby. She's thinking "Lazy basstard, I'll make him do some bloody work" (in natural world she would've had all week to get shopping and stuff but no, now the whole effin' lot has to be squeezed into a 48hr period). He's thinking "But I am MAN, I been to work all week I must sit and read paper and watch telly and drink beer and blow off in my own living room that I paid for" Of course he forgets that the She-Thing works too because it's not yet evolutionised into his brain chemicalations. She-Thing stamps into the kitchen, loudly bangs and crashes stuff about and switches the Hoover on, leaving it just outside the lounge door to drown out the telly. She has not yet evolved into a fully malian creature who takes a direct approach. He thinks "What the eff's up with her, she must be pre-menstrual again I'd better offer to peel the potatoes or we're never going to get any effing food today" So he does. She watches him peeling potatoes (badly) and subconsciously thinks "Why hasn't he been out of the house for three days spearing mammouths instead of farting about with a friggin' peeler in the kitchen" And it slowly spirals from there until they're both 75 and he's shuffling three steps behind her (she is fully bearded by now) to the shops pulling a tartan shopping trolley, head empty of all free thought, eyes glazed over.

And then he dies and she uses his old trousers to polish the car.

Perhaps it's just me.

For Baby (for Rory)

Okay maybe I'm a bit phantasmagorial about songs, poems, trees, the soaring of red kites, mountain goats, clouds, that sort of thing. But one of my best daydreamy subjects is my real life very special and gorgeous sproglet. So this post isn't for you, the lovely reader, it's for YOU, my little man.


Pictur43

Now, you probably won't read this until you're at least 45, by which time it'll be 2047 and you'll have me in a home for retired bears where I'll be chittering on like an old loony, asking you who you are when you come to visit and jabbing you and the grandchildren in the bum with me walking stick. But right now you're seven and I've still just about got my marbles and you're all elbows, knees and to-die-for eyelashes in bed next to me because there might be a witch behind the wardrobe and because I failed to train you to stay in your own bed at night right from night one when you appeared on this planet.

You're a serious, thoughtful, funny and polite little thing. I say little but you're already about six foot seven; that'll be 2.0066 metres in your space-age language. So by now I expect you're at least five metre-whatevers long which is because I made you eat your vegetables. Your current favourite things are GoGos (small seemingly pointless blobs of plastic with evil faces that are worse than plugs for standing on in bare feet); cycling (which is why you won Olympic Gold in 2024);  a television programme called Gavin & Stacey which makes you ask really awkward questions about babies being made and sends out quite the wrong messages about drinking and smoking but it's my own fault for letting you stay up until 11:30 on school nights; Haribo sweets and, oh yes, another REALLY INTERESTING programme called Scrapheap Challenge where blokes and sometimes even a woman make weird machines out of rubbish on a production budget of £5.99 per episode. Your dislikes are based around shopping, cooking, cleaning and watching Market Kitchen, which I don't suppose has changed much, has it?

But listen, I'm not going to go on and on because that's why I started writing a journal when you were born, OKAY I gave up after about three months as I obviously needed to get back out there and get this country back on its feet and the rest of the time was taken up with making you ice cubes out of pureed carrot, and that. I'll get around to finishing it some day soon and bury it in a secret location along with some Haribo, Dairylea Dunkers and the Christmas episode of Gavin & Stacey.

Anyway, as I alluded to at the start of this, and as the name of this blog suggests, there are certain things that make my head go into the clouds even more than normal and at the moment this song is one of them. It was written and sung by someone called John Denver about 80 years ago. He wrote it for one of his children, as far as I know. It makes me think about you.

For Baby (For Bobbie)
John Denver

I’ll walk in the rain by your side
I’ll cling to the warmth of your hand
I’ll do anything to keep you satisfied
I’ll love you more than anybody can

And the wind will whisper your name to me
Little birds will sing along in time
Leaves will bow down when you walk by
And morning bells will chime

I’ll be there when you’re feelin’ down
To kiss away the fears if you cry
I’ll share with you all the happiness I’ve found
A reflection of the love in your eyes

And I’ll sing you the songs of the rainbow
A whisper of the joy that is mine
And leaves will bow down when you walk by
And morning bells will chime

I’ll walk in the rain by your side
I’ll cling to the warmth of your tiny hand
I’ll do anything to help you understand
And I’ll love you more than anybody can

And the wind will whisper your name to me
Little birds will sing along in time
Leaves will bow down when you walk by
And morning bells will chime

Img_0281_1

The one where I'm always late

Let's get this straight, obviously I am probably accompolished in every single way EXCEPT for being LATE for everything. I bet when my lovely mum was giving birth she heard an echoey shout of "Just a minute, I can't find my phone" or "Hang on I'll just quickly do my heated rollers, I won't be a minute" An hour later she was probably sitting in the car revving the engine while I just quickly looked for my sunglasses.

On trying to find an explanation - no, not EXCUSE you suspicious, contrary reader - many scientific causes have come to light. I'm sorry to do another list but lists are the only things that keep me from finally ending my life perchance via grating my wrists with a cheese grater. I have placed these in order of probability:

Being of diploid genetic determination. Id est FEMALE

Over optimism. In my mind, if I'm due to be somewhere at 10:30, I am not late UNTIL it is 10:30, even if the somewhere is three hundred miles away and I've just left. At 10:31 I start getting disappointed that I'm going to be unavoidably late.

Not realising that there are 51.7 million car owners in Great Britain today, a lot of them in Nissan Almeras, who will, inconsiderately, all be going to the same place as me at the same time. Instead believing I'll be the only one on the road and that my car can do eighteen thousand miles per hour.

Thinking I can go to work, do the weekly shop, meet a friend for lunch, pick critter up from school, have three children to a five course tea, take them swimming, bake a lemon drizzle cake, go for a run, scrape cat sick off the sofa that is really stuck on, have a daily argument, write a blog, do Twitter and Facebonk, write forty one people's training programmes, train someone in real life then swim home via the river and get straight to the hoovering.

Actually ENJOYING the adrenaline rush  of doing everything at the last minute. It's cheaper than crack Coca Cola.

Going to bed at 1:45am and getting up at 11pm.

Dyscalculia Yes, I clearly have an ism. Or, in this case, an ia. See how it mentions not being able to conceptualise time? Ha!   THIS. IS. IT.   Also, I can't do 21 + 12 even on a calcumulator. And I get really bad palpitations if I try to write on a cheque stub.

Bad hair. I don't know why I didn't put this at the top of the list.

Being creative. Apparently.

Lastly and absolutely leastly (if you are good at maths you won't be able to read that word string, by the way) having a complete lack of regard for others. People, friends, I do love you, I do want to be with you on time, I am sorry and ashamed of myself. 

I will try harder from 01012010 at 09:01:36am Greenwich mean time Great Britain - see what I mean about all the numbers though?

Finally, the perfect man.

Resusci_annie

This is who I have, mostly, been snogging for the last two days

I know. Irresistible isn't...err... he. Because, dearest readers, in spite of being called a girl's name and having very feint pair of moobs she, I mean he, is in fact a virtually fully functioning member of the male brand. However, they always leave his bottom half in their ambulance because it gets inappropriate 'wood-ons' and causes (a) blood to transfer from the vital organs, confusing the signs of clinical shock and (b) female girls to spend far too long bandaging it, over and above actually providing cardiopulmonary rescumalation.

Unsurprisingly, he and I have fallen deeply in love; this can often happen when one saves another's life. It all started yesterday when whispered in his ear that I was cold and he said I could borrow his shell suit jacket. As I slowly unzipped it his face went todally trancelike (see above, taken yesterday) and I thought it's a good job his, y'know, THING is detached because it could be very embarrassing for him and he'd probably have to go back to his ambulance for a LIE DOWN. While I'm on the subject of verticals in the shell suit bottom region I couldn't help wondering how all the men on the course kept theirs under control, what with all the girl aiders checking their trouser pockets and loosening their cardigans before slipping them into the recovery position. But that's another matter. Although I would appreciate some answers.

SO, as I was saying, he and I formed this beautiful relationship unencumbered by marital terms and conditions; simply based on conversation, albeit pretty much one-sided, and the exchange of life-giving gases and tongues. Actually, just MY tongue as his had been severed in a terrible car accident, yesterday.

So that's it. I have finally found the perfect man whose main positives are:

a. His neck. Take a look at it. Have you seen a thicker one this side of wherever the Incredible Hulk lives? 
b. Removable lower half, prevents uncalled for but pretended to be accidental wake-up prods in back. 
c. Own ambulance, with bed and, if necessary, gas & air. 
d. Unable to talk (shit for hours) or turn the heating off. 
e. No pesky hands, leading to feminine freedom of movement between bathroom and bedroom. 
f. Detachable face. Machine washable and handy for own use on days when your spot cream has run out. 
g. Can be snogged senseless without demanding birds and bees activity within two minutes. 
h. Easy to squeeze past at the cinema. 
i. Can’t fit more than one chip in his mouth at once, letalone fifteen. 


So that’s it then. In sickness and in health.

Songs are poems too

While Im on about the groovy John Denver and also in a deep poetry period here's that song I was getting moony to in a field earlier. If you have Spotify (or the album, but why would you unless you're 85) lie down, close your eyes, imagine you're lying in a cornfield on a hot summer's afternoon and get with the sentiment. Warning: drugs may help.

It's up to you
John Denver
You can do whatever you want to do wherever you want to go it's up to you
And wouldn't it be fine following your heart playing your own part
You and me out on a farm let the sun be our alarm
Kicking off our shoes doing what we choose
And wouldn't it be fine knowing that you're mine anytime you want to be

I don't want to own you I just want to hold you
I don't want to need you
I just like to see you smile and stay for awhile

If the times get rough bein' free might be enough
Keep our feelings warm see us through the storm
Wouldn't it be fine looking back and knowing that we helped each other find
You can do whatever you want to do wherever you want to go it's up to you
And wouldn't it be fine following your heart playing your own part
It's up to you it's up to you



Monday in the life of a spotty cavewoman witch in a shrunken dress

Things I have liked today:

1.Waking to find that Sudocrem had healed a spot the size of Demis Roussos overnight.

2. Watching a man change a tyre....It's a cavewoman instinct I am afflicted with. It goes something like this: "You change tyre I JUMP your bones RIGHT here and now"

3. Evilly slipping five different kinds of vegetable into critter's dinner but making look like penne with Heinz tomato catchup. Hiding behind door all cackling and warty as he ate it.

4. Charlie nibbling my ear. Me nibbling Charlie's ear. Herbie nibbling Charlie's ear. Charlie 'twatting' Herbie for nibbling his ear.

5. Listening to John Denver's love songs whilst walking in the countryside and simultaneously seeing a beautiful red kite soaring gracefully in the sky. (Townies, it's a bird)

6. Seeing that one of my car tyres is going down.

Lastly, things that made me go hmmmmm:

1. A letter from Barclays. Was desperate not to have to use the shredder due to the factoid that I think there's a hamster in it.

2. A member of the man species telling me ALL about his trumping bottom disorders but acting as if it was very attractive and funny Almost like the preamble to asking me out to the proctologist's Christmas ball at Claridges. Or something.

3. Christmas

4. Christmas

5. Noel (not Edmunds)

6. Taking my sweet gorgeous perfectomondo Critter's 15" high bike to school to collect him but being late due to stopping in a field to get all moony about John Denver's Love Songs and Red Kites and ending up having to ride said bike dangerously fast with knees around ears and dress that shrunk in wash, thereby flashing at neighbour innocently driving past in car.

And your Monday was...?

Coming soon, knitted gifts

I was thinking about knitting this year's Christmas presents since every time I visit the cashpoint a pair of handcuffs pop out, capture me and send me down a chute where I am forced to read and check down to the last 2p all the bank statements I haven't opened for the last 25.33333recurring years. Anyway I think people will be really pleased to get an iPhone, won't they?

Photo

Warning. Hand not included.