Hippy Chic

Linking up with Maxabella for The Weekend Rewind.

Sometimes I'm like an (almost) adult version of that toddler who, when confronted with the open jar of Nutella shakes their chocolate smeared face in total denial.

I had thought it would be hard to top dyeing my daughter blue but it seems that I am endlessly inventive when it comes to new ways of making a complete arse of myself

YOU KNOW WHAT I DID DON'T YOU?

Yep, Miss Mac decided she wanted to dye her hair again and this time we thought we'd give natural henna a go.

Off  we to the local hippy shop which is the only place in town you can still buy it and came home and mixed it up.

That stuff is DISGUSTING!!  It's looks and smells like cow shit after the cow has spent several days gorging on new grass.

Obviously I only realised it didn't come with gloves after mixing it up but, I am nothing if not ingenious and pulling out a couple of doggy poo bags from the drawer I popped them over my hands and started work.

That paste not only looks and smells like shit it's actually really hard to get to stick onto hair and every time I tried to smooth it through my emergency 'gloves' slid off so I ditched them.

After all, if I washed my hands straight away after I'd finished it would be FINE .....  Wouldn't it ....


I left Miss Mac in the bathroom proving (or whatever it is henna does) and went into the kitchen to washed the sludge off my hands.  My scream of horror alerted her to the fact that not all was well.

She rushed into the room looking somewhat reminiscent of a conehead due to the fact that I'd also forgotten to buy a showercap to put over her hair while it developed and so instead I'd wound half a roll of clingfilm around her head (I told you I was ingenious didn't I?) to find me waving around hands like an Oompa Loompa.

Look!!

This photo doesn't even do it justice!  36 hours later and my hands are still a pale tangerine and my nails are (according to a kind 'friend') the colour of old wee!

Miss Mac realised that drastic measures were needed to stop me hyperventilating and, reaching for the cupboard she pulled out a packet and offered me:

FECKING JAFFA CAKES!!!

While I sat mindlessly shovelling chocolate into my mouth she disappeared back into the bathroom.  After a while I decided that it was (toddler like - she IS my daughter) far too quiet in there so I went to investigate.

Having seen how effectively I'd managed to dye myself she decided to use the left over paste to give herself henna tattoos ALL OVER HER HANDS.  Fortunately there are only a couple of days left of term so she's unlikely to be excluded from school and if anyone questions her hand art well, Diwali started yesterday didn't it ...

I think a few more days scrubbing might get my hands almost back to normal but my nails are a lost cause but, because I like to think of every cloud as having some kind of lining I remembered that they also sell this great mirrored nail varnish in the hippy shop we bought the henna in so I'm just going to have to go and buy some aren't I?

nb  Miss Mac HATES her new hair colour which is just bloody typical isn't it?

The Lounge

The Lounge this week is coming from Musings of the Misguided and the theme is food.  Initially when I saw what the link was going to be it said something about sharing your recipes and, given the events of yesterday I did briefly consider sharing my recipe for disaster (and there will be a blog post to follow on THAT I promise!).

Anyhow, as regular readers will already know I AM A FOOD BLOGGER so HOW bloody fortuitous that The Lounge is all about food this week?

It's practically intuitive of them don't you think?  I mean, last week I became a food blogger and this week they want me to talk about food, it's like we are linked in some inexplicable way.

I'm really hoping that they are linked to those nice Thermomix people too because I haven't received mine in the post yet and I really, really want to make those levitating cakes but after this post I'm fairly confident that one will be winging it way towards me tout sweet!

Ok, down to the business part of things ...

I make a lot of cakes (which is why I NEED a Thermomix).  In my opinion there cannot be enough cake in the world and there should be a cake for every occasion.

For example, here are some I have made previously:

Perfect for those times when someone really pisses you  off and the only solution is to eat cake!


And THIS:

This I fondly call the 'cock cake' - I'm not quite sure HOW this happened, they seem to have gone through some sort of morphing process in the oven.  I made these cakes for Big D's birthday and I have to admit, it did leave me with a bit of a dilemma!

Should I ice them and pretend that I'd planned all along to serve my eldest son tiny penis cakes (and what would that do to his self esteem??).

Should I become the Lorena Bobbitt of the cake world and chop them off??  (I did consider serving the off cuts with a little dipping sauce ...)

The original plan had been to make them into lemon drizzle cakes and the irony of the recipe that told me to 'prick' them all over before soaking in lemon syrup was not lost on me ...

In the end I decided to eat them myself and bake another batch after all, it's one thing to offer your son a cock cake but it's quite another to expect him to take them home and share them with his fiance.

Mary Mary Quite Contrary

How does YOUR blog post grow??

Mine's a kind of regurgitation of all the stuff in my head which is why it's often an incoherent stream of conscious (and occasionally unconscious) thoughts that don't necessarily link together.  There's loads of stuff that never makes it on to the blog simply because the thread gets overwritten by yet more stuff.

I often think that I must write about something only to 'loose' it in the maelstrom and so great blog fodder is gone forever.

In an attempt to cling on to these gems I sometimes send myself texts.  Most of which, when I come to re-read them, are complete gibberish and I've got no idea what I was banging on about.

Saturday night was Carnival night in Taunton.  If you've never seen a west country carnival then you really need to get down here some time in October and experience the madness.

I've probably become a little complacent having lived here for so many years and so, despite the fact that the carnival practically passes by my door I completely missed it this year!

I couldn't miss hearing it, the whole house was vibrating with the music and cheers as the floats went passed but I was busy getting ready for a night out.

I probably would have caught some of it if SD hadn't had me painting wheels until 7 o'clock at the farm.  Seriously, before SD I didn't know anyone painted wheels and yet, in the last few years I seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time doing just that!

Anyway, if you want to see a little of what you have been missing then take a look here (unfortunately you cant skip the ad).  Given that the video was shot by the local paper I was a bit disappointed by the quality but check out Mr and Mrs potato head at 2 mins 45 seconds - they are GREAT!  The Transformers float right at the end was also well worth seeing I've been told but the video doesn't really show it that well.

I am not going to comment on the quality or inadvisability of the numerous majorettes, you can judge for yourselves ...

Anyway, as usual, I'm digressing ...

So, Saturday night saw SD and I along with a crowd of friends at our local listening to a band.  The others had all spent the previous couple of hours stuffing their faces with an Indian so SD and I got the full benefit of second hand Bhoona with the odd Tikka belch thrown in.  D sat there perspiring gently as he attempted to digest vast quantities of naan bread and pilau rice, N repeatedly tried to untie SD shoe laces for some unknown reason, S sat demurely in a corner giggling to herself at some untold joke and Cornish M stared cross eyed into the middle distance.

Either they had peaked too early or we needed to catch up pretty quick!

Luckily, given the wheel painting and mad rush to get ready I hadn't had time to eat anything other than a sandwich so catching up was no problem on an empty stomach!

You know what?

My friends are HILARIOUS - seriously, I've NO idea why I don't realise this when I'm sober.  The more I drank the funnier they became and I had tears of laughter pouring down my face.  I suspect they probably found me really funny too although they all claimed the next day that I wasn't even there!

Well I WAS and I know I was because I sent myself a few texts ...

Like this ...

'Hot tub, wine glass' and 'Flaming Sambuca, funeral, fire'

Things I couldn't POSSIBLY have know if I wasn't actually there!

Now all I need to do is remember what the hell I was talking about ...

Actually, I can!

D and A have a hot tub in their garden and every now and then they invite friends around for a party and the hot tub is fired up.  Its best to avoid these parties like the plague.  Yes I love my friends, yes I love to party, yes, I even like the odd dip in a hot tub BUT, I really, REALLY don't want to combine all three.

Seriously ,friends half cut is bad enough, I don't need to see them half naked at the same time!

It does mean that I miss out on seeing A completely rat arsed in a hot tub slowly sinking under the water, wine glass in hand and then reappearing gasping for air and looking in wonder at her glass that has magically been refilled.  I also miss that classic moment where she joyfully empties that glass totally unaware that she is drinking a mixture of chlorinated water dubiously carbonated with curry filled noxious gasses and, to be honest, god know WHAT else!

A is a notorious part animal and really shouldn't be allowed out in public and definitely shouldn't be allowed to buy drinks and was entirely responsible for the Baileys and Tia Maria shots that sent me right over the edge on Saturday night.

SD thank god vetoed the Flaming Sambuca, mostly because he still has flash backs to the night he set fire to his face the night before a first date with a girl he was really keen to impress (not me!).  And D managed to dissuade A by reminding her of the last time she knocked over a Flaming Sambuca and the resulting domino reaction that set fire to the table at a WAKE!

Cornish M makes me laugh, he's one of those people who get more distant the more they drink.  By the time we met up on Saturday he was practically in Dorset!  He sat quietly on the edge of the circle occasionally laughing at a joke someone had made 10 minutes before which was GREAT because then we all got to laugh at it (and him) for a second time!

N was completely out of control but then he is when he's sober so it's really hard to tell the difference.  In between trying to untie SD laces he spent some time stroking his leg hair (SD' that is - SD wears shorts for at least 8 months of the year) and then moved on to the hair on his head (SD's again).  Really SD SHOULD know better than to sit opposite N!

'It's really soft' he said, 'how DO you get it so glossy?'

'I'll bet you use Timotei ...'

'No he doesn't' piped up D.

'He only uses the really expensive stuff, PANTENE - geddit?  PANTENE - PAUND TEN'.

D creases up at his own joke ...  Everyone else follows suit ....

Five minutes later Cornish M chuckles softly, 'paund ten' that's a good one ...

Niche Me

I've been thinking.

If I were a niche blogger people might send me stuff!

I was reading a post this morning where a blogger got sent a really cool American style fridge.

FOR FREE!!

Just so they'd do a review on it!

Now I don't have room in my kitchen for an American style fridge.  I was lying on the kitchen floor this morning looking under the cupboard for stuff and I reckon my kitchen is approximately 14ft x 10ft so I'd probably have to get rid of the cooker or the sink or something to fit one in.

But I COULD find room for a Thermomix ...

Got to be honest here, I'm not entirely sure what a Thermomix is but I'm guessing it mixes stuff and then thermo's it ...??

I think what you do is just chuck a load of flour and eggs into it and, after mixing for a while, a perfectly formed Victoria Sandwich rises up and levitates above the bowl - It's something like that anyhow ...

So anyway, I'm guessing that to be a niche blogger you need to know loads of stuff about something and then just blog about it a lot.

This might be my downfall.  I know loads of stuff about lots of different things like sheep wrangling (but I don't want anyone sending me another sheep thankyouverymuch) and fence building and ...

Well, OTHER stuff ok!

I'm not sure I know a lot about anything in particular but I don't see why that should stop me and to be fair, it doesn't usually ...

Today I'm going to give food blogging a go.

I'm basing this on the fact that in the last couple of weeks I've made a shed load of plum jam, frozen half a hundred weight of blackberry and apple, made a dozen butterfly cakes for Miss Mac and friends for a movie evening and yesterday I made some blackberry ice cream and today a batch of sour cherry in port ice cream.

I think that qualifies me don't you?

SO (nice Thermomix people), please send me one of your thingies and lets crack on!

nb. This is NOT a sponsored post, I have been sent diddly squat so far and have very little expectation that I ever will be.  Oh, and if you were interested, I found quite a lot of fluff and half a carrot under my kitchen cupboard ...

Turd On The Tiles

Scrolling through FB this morning I saw this link to a post Mrs Woog wrote a while ago entitled 'The Seven Habits of Highly Irritating Husbands'.

I remembered nodding along as I read it the first time around and thinking how much I could identify with many of those things so I thought I'd use her post as template and write my own list of men's irritating habits, I might even include one or two of my own irritating habits ...*

Mrs Woog:
DISHWASHER – Not a day goes by that I do not get up and find a plate on the bench above the dishwasher. Mere centimeters away from the door of the dishwasher.

Me:
Ok, so I can't identify with this one any more since I was nearly SHOT by by own dishwasher - TRUE STORY!  You can read about it here!!  

So now I just have an empty dishwasher shaped space in my kitchen which houses the cat litter tray and this morning RIGHT NEXT TO IT was a tiny cat shaped poo so I guess Squishy (the cat who has no name because I am not keeping her and I am (according to SD) finding her a new home so there is NO POINT in giving her a name ...) was trying to identify with Mr Woog  by leaving her own version of the plate on the bench.

I call  it, 'The Turd on the Tiles'.

Mrs Woog:

DISASTER – Last night I told him that there was a bra under wire caught in the washing machine. I watched him walk into the laundry and peer in.“HOLY CRAP!” he screeched at the top of his voice. He is one for extreme over-reactions and saying “I have had a disaster……”

Me:

Ooh, I'VE had that happen too!!

Mrs Woog and I must be like TWINS or something (didn't I TELL you how freaky it was that I have so many twins ...  DIDN'T I???).  I think men in general might be prone to over-reaction. Ex Lax, my ex husband (so called because he gives me the shits) used to do it ALL the time and SD TOTALLY over-reacts as you know when I wander off to take photos of stuff forgetting that I'm supposed to be holding the ladder when he's 20ft up an apple tree or something.  I mean seriously, the way he bangs on you'd think he was going to plunge to his death and he's not at all mollified when I point out that he far more likely to just break a limb and even that would be slightly less likely if he just stopped hopping about shouting at me and let me take the damned photo in peace!

Mrs Woog
ADVICE – unwanted of course.  My favourite is when he gives me parenting advice. The problem is that he will often contradict himself within a few short sentences. Or when he says things like “The kids need to eat dinner at 5 or they will go feral…..” when really it is HE who wants to eat at 5 because he is living on pensioner time.

I don't recall Ex Lax ever giving me parenting advice, possibly he would have seen that as a little too much commitment but SD is FULL of 'really helpful advice that I should follow in order to enable Miss Mac to become a well rounded, useful member of society' - He doesn't actually SAY that I hasten to add but that's definitely the subtext.

I have perfected a grave, interested, serious face that looks like it's taking on board all of this useful advice (and, on occasion I have to concede that he may have a point ...) whilst mentally I'm throwing darts at his head until he resembles Vivian from The Young Ones because 'Ain't NOBODY telling me how to parent MY kids Yo!!  Incidentally, that NOT because I think I'm the perfect parent with all the answers, I'm very far from that.  

It's just ...  Well, you know ...  

Mrs Woog:Mrs Wood

OBSESSIVE – mainly showering, which can be up to 3 times a day. I am not sure if he is just purely filthy, a chronic masturbator or just likes having a shower.

Me:

Hmmm, I haven't come across this one.  SD  (and Ex Lax) pretty much stick to one shower a day or, depending on what we have been up to, maybe two (I'm talking about dirty jobs here ...  of the outside variety ... like grovelling around under cars and stuff ...  Oh god, I GIVE UP! If you want your imagination to remain in the gutter then there's nothing more I can say ...).  As far as I'm concerned, 'what happens in the shower stays in the shower' and, as long as you come out of it clean and sweet smelling then fill your boots!

Mrs Woog:
BUDGET MEETINGS – He calls for a budget meeting about once a week,  where he will go through upcoming expenses and brainstorm ways to save cash. “We have nothing to insure, so why do we need insurance?” “What is wrong with doing your own nails?” “I really, really like grey hair on you….” It is the same each week. I nod, make agreeable noises and proceed to ignore everything.

Me:
Now I'm wondering if SD is in fact Mr Woogs twin!!   He apparently also has NO IDEA how expensive it is looking this fabulous!

EXCESSIVE WHIPPER SNIPPING AND MOWING AT 8AM ON A SATURDAY MORNING – no need for commenting on this one. You could set your watch by this.

Again, I have no real point of reference.  I'm not sure SD even KNOWS that Saturday and Sunday have two 8 o'clocks in them, he certainly hasn't ever seen them to my knowledge which may or may not be in part due to the fact that I don't have a lawn ...

Mrs Woog:

ABSENTMINDEDLY TAKING ME FROM THE REAR – Sorry. You did read that right. I could be bent over unpacking the dishwasher, and he will dash over and dry hump me. Like some sort of horny dog on Viagra. Or I could be bending over picking clothes off the floor or tying my shoelaces. And there he is. Humping.

Me:

I'm very pleased to say that SD is NOT guilty of this particular habit but Ex Lax ...  Well, he was another matter entirely!!

Washing the dishes - cleaning the bath - loading the washing machine ...  I swear to god he had some kind of inbuilt sensor for when I was at a 90 degree angle!

HOW is it sexy to dry hump someone wearing a washing machine drum like a bloody sombrero?  I don't WANT to be jammed shoulder deep into a cave full of your dirty kecks having a layer taken off my chin as it grates back and forth on the metal interior of my Bosch Maxx 5  thankyouverymuch!

*KIDDING - I don't have any!!!

Thank you Mrs Wood for inadvertently and unknowingly providing me with the inspiration for this post - you are a legend on a laptop!

Monday Musings

Over the weekend I spent at least 20 minutes with my nose pressed against my laptop screen and then slowly pulling away in a desperate attempt to see one of those magic eye pictures.

You remember them?  They were all the rage in the early 90's.  Pictures of dots or patterns which profess to contain a hidden picture?

It's a TRICK I tell you!!  It's like the Emperors new clothes or something, no one wants to be the first to admit that there's nothing there!

Well, I'M calling it!

THERE IS NOTHING BLOODY THERE OK!!

I don't know what made me think of them, maybe it was SD's total disdain of my viewing pleasure and YES, I'll admit to avidly watching The Great British Bake Off even if SD does sneer at it and not see the point.

'She can't even TALK properly' he complains, 'Lays ...  she says lays, I can't see the lays clearly in this cake!!'

'THE WORD IS LAYEEEEERS, LAYERS, LAYERS, LAAAYYYEEERRRSSS'

I don't complain when he wants to watch F1 do I? Hours and HOURS of cars driving around the same track, cameras jumping about all over the place and you can't even tell which car is which most of the time (and did I mention that it goes on for hours and HOURS!!).

I don't complain when he wants to watch the MotoGP, hours and HOURS of bikes going around the same track, cameras jumping around all over the place ....  You get my drift ...

Actually, I don't mind the MotoGP too much (but don't tell SD) although it scares the shit out of me - how do they go around corner at 200 miles an hour with their knee and sometimes their elbows scraping the ground and not fall off??

Oh, and did I ever tell you about my introduction to drag racing?

After watching about an hour  and feeling very confused I innocently asked SD why you only got the first few seconds and why they didn't show the whole race ...

So I stared at this image for 20 minutes or so and followed the instruction to 'look through' the picture and allow it to go blurry giving myself a migraine and then the cat walked over the keyboard and it was gone thank god.

SD has been bleeding quite a lot lately.

Honestly, for someone so safety conscious he's incredibly accident prone!

His latest injury was whilst jumping out of the van.  Somehow he managed to catch his knee on the speaker in the door and it shaved off a piece of skin the size of a 10p piece.

SO MUCH BLOOD!!!

I'm more concerned about what happened to the piece of skin and flesh - where did it go???

I reckon it's actually INSIDE THE SPEAKER!!

Fortunately SD bought a new van last week although it's not on the road yet as it's waiting for an LPG conversion so the sooner he sells this one the better - we don't have to tell anyone about the potential bit of rotting flesh in the door do we?

I mean, if they actually ASK or anything then of course we should but otherwise ...

I've also started another craft project - well, when I say start ...

I won this box of chocolates in a raffle a couple of weeks ago and once I'd emptied out all the useless stuff like actually chocolates (kidding - I stuffed them 2 at a time into my face until they were all gone and then blamed Miss Mac when SD asked if he could have one) I thought - what a great box!!!

And so far that's my crafting project but I will transform it soon so keep watching!

SD has very unkindly started referring to Miss Mac as 'Monkey Girl' because she has developed a small patch of impetigo (which is being treated with a course of antibiotics) and he says she is like that monkey in the film Outbreak and despite being given her own towels etc to use until it's cleared up she keeps forgetting and using other ones so he is totally paranoid about catching it.

I also worryingly discovered this weekend that SD seems to know all the words to the Wombles song, Minuetto Allergretto.

Is it me or is that just a little ODD??  I mean, I know the chorus to Underground Overground (doesn't EVERYONE?) and a bit of Remember Your A Womble and I can la la along to Wombling Merry Christmas but Minuetto Allergretto?

Seriously, who remembers that one??

Other than that it's been a quiet weekend.  I helped SD install a new log burner at the farm, cooked up the last of the blackberry and apple for the freezer and watched this great film, Salt, which stars Angelina Jolie as a Russian double agent posing as a CIA agent, it's a totally kick ass film and I'd definitely recommend it!

I remember SD once said that he wouldn't swap me for Angelina Jolie but to be honest, after watching that film I think he might just have changed his mind.

Hell, after watching that film, I'd swap HIM for Angelina without pausing for breath!

Finally, I went to the doctors this morning to get a mole checked out - the mole is fine, nothing to worry about but my day (which hasn't been great so far due to it pouring down with rain) was considerably brightened by the doctor coming into the waiting room to call his next patient - Miss HAPP!!

Fluff And Crumbs From My Brain

Linking up with Tegan at Musings of the Misguided for the Lounge and Maxabella for the Weekend Rewind, OOh AND Emily at Have A Laugh On Me for the Laugh Link.

I was writing a post the other day and it just DISAPPEARED!!

Has that ever happened to you?

I was DISTRAUGHT!

I bashed a few keys, hit the back button and eventually saved, closed and reopened it because SURELY blogger would have saved a draft of it wouldn't it?

No!

It was a really GOOD post too telling you all about SD's dating past.

About the time he set fire to his face the night before a first date.

About how he followed a girl around Newquay because she was dressed like Beetlejuice and he thought it was SUCH a cool look (I KNOW, slightly questionable!) but how the next morning he was very disappointed to discover that in the cold light of day she looked more like Michael Keaton ...

About the time he and a friend (chasing some girl no doubt) ended up in a marquee in a field in the middle of the Somerset Levels dressed in their usual weekend gear of skin tight leather trousers with zips and chains hanging down to their knees, eyeliner and 2ft high mohawks surrounded by a load of Young Farmers dressed in tweeds and wellies who were not at all pleased to see these two freaks dancing with their girls and how they spent the entire evening dancing to Soft Cell (image here of a terrified SD and friend, hands clasped in supplication, hip shimmying and singing 'I'm sorry I don't praaaay that way') in the middle of a circle of girls while the young farmers formed an arms crossed barricade between them and the exit and how they narrowly avoided the chairs thrown at them as they bolted, chains dangling across a cow shit strew meadow.

Or the time that (with another very tall friend) they ended up in the roughest pub in town with a load of Marines who were out on a a 3 legged pub crawl and they had to play along and tie the laces of their 16 hole Docs together and stand back to back for the whole night (The Marine loved and hated SD in equal measures with his long flowing blond locks and pretty boy looks, Taunton wasn't a particularly safe place for him to be out in dressed in his Post Punk phase in the 80's!).

But anyway, that post is GONE!

FB a wonderfully diverse place isn't it?

As you know, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it.  Yesterday morning I deplored the trolling I saw on a buy and sell page but then last night my lovely friend M posted a photo of her central heating timer.

I KNOW RIGHT - how very bloody ....  Ummm ...  Obscure???

Even more obscure was when other people also started commenting on the post and adding THEIR photos of central heating timers ...

WTF ...?

I couldn't let it pass.

I posted my OWN photo of MY central heating:

and here it is!

One of her friends replied, 'Ditto'!  And I confessed that they weren't even MY socks, I'd STOLEN them (but of course, that won't surprise YOU).  So she posted a photo of HER socks and they didn't even match.

Then I spotted that she had a pink plate with cupcakes on next to her feet on the coffee table and I said that I had some plates with cupcakes on too and she wanted to see them.

M at this point tried to get in on her own post (bloody cheek) by saying 'I have such classy friends' - I'm fairly sure she was referring to the other Sarah - I KNOW, she was called SARAH TOO - we are like TWINS or something!!

I have SO MANY twins it's unreal - just yesterday Dave did one of those FB quiz things so I did it too (thought of you BP!), it was, 'what word best describes you?' and he got Compassionate and I got it TOO!

Anyway, I digress ...

I went off to get the plates to photograph but I couldn't find them, I did wonder if I'd lost them, or broken them, or if in fact i was SO desperate to be Sarah's twin that I'd actually made them up and never had them in the first place!

But then I found them in the sink so that was ok ...

I gave one a quick lick and posted the photo, Sarah was VERY impressed but then she started listing all the other things she has with cupcakes on.  Mugs, necklace, earrings, bicycle basket, PJ's, table cloth ...  And I started to wonder if we were actually twins after all - I'm not sure I've ever shown that level of commitment to ANYTHING!  But then she confirmed she turned 18 a zillion years ago and 'ditto' SO DID I so I guess we ARE twins after all!

To placate M I did offer to take a photo of my heating timer at this point if she didn't mind waiting while I cleaned it and if she could ask her friends to ignore the bit where I melted the bottom with the toaster but I think she'd started ignoring me at that point ...

I offered to take a photo of my hairbrush (although on closer inspection THAT needed a clean too and then I REMEMBERED!!

I CLEANED MY TOASTER THE OTHER DAY!!

So I posted a photo of the stuff that fell out of it ...

They were VERY impressed, I think it even surpassed M's best guess of what I might have found, no kittens or small children in THERE M!

Sarah wondered what we could photograph for M next - I wasn't sure that my hairbrush would be ready in time although I'd spent a while manically picking bits of fluff out of it.  I was slightly hyped up due to the fact that I'd run out of milk so I'd unearthed some disgusting instant cappuccino from the back of the cupboard and drunk four of them but then Sarah remembered that she was supposed to be marking some essays and really should do some work so I resumed my fluff picking while wondering if I too should have been a teacher and if I were being selfish in keeping all this wisdom to myself ...

Unkind!!!

You know what I HATE??

I really hate people being UNKIND!!

I was perusing FB this morning when I saw this post on a local buy and sell site:


'Dues engine on here no a man with a van has to be cheep just to pick up a three peace and table from wellington and to bring to taunton'

OK, so the spelling and grammar leave a little to be desired but the message is clear and I could understand what this lady was saying.

A few comments down (where people were offering to help) I came across THIS comment:

' How can anyone understand this? 
Terrible English.'

It was followed by the lady who wrote the post saying:

'What?'

To which the commenter replied:

'Think you mean pardon! 
Your English is awful, at least try to post stuff on here that people can understand.'

Maybe it's something to do with the fact that it's peeing down with rain here and that always leaves me out of sorts but I was INCENSED - totally outraged on this poor woman's behalf - how DARE someone take a pot shot at her just because she struggles with literacy!!!

So I responded and said:

'I think you should remove your extremely unkind comments and show this lady some respect!'

I struggle to walk on the other side when I see something like this and it does occasionally get me into situations that I'd rather not be in but this was such an unwarranted, gratuitous attack on an innocent person just looking for help that I couldn't help myself.

Seriously, WHAT A BITCH!!!

She then came back with:

 'It's not hard to write with correct English grammer! 
Most annoying.
I shall not remove, its a public post and I have freedom of speech.'

Yes you do, you also have the right to remain a bitch, you have the right to feel superior if that's what floats your boat but personally I don't think you have the right to abuse others on a public forum when you know nothing about them or their circumstances.

I chose to bow out at this point, I chose NOT to point out the grammatical inconsistencies or spelling error in HER comment, I chose to let her wallow in her own superior bile and I also choose to continue to think that she is a BITCH!

While You Wait

And I attempt to rewrite a blog post that blogger ATE!!  I thought I'd give this post from way back another outing.

If it's peeing down with rain where you are like it is here then hopefully it will brighten up your day a little:

I Am (STILL) Not A Plumber!!

The other morning as I plunged the breakfast dishes into a bowl of hot soapy water I watched, almost in a detached fashion, as a swam of little brown puffs of rice raced their way to the surface and bobbed around amongst the bubbles like a layer of frog spawn or chocolate ducks on a pond.

Having spent the next 10 minutes carefully sieving the washing up water and peeling soggy cereal from every bowl, spoon and mug I then, without any conscious thought, dumped the whole lot in the sink and washed it down the drain.

The next morning saw me performing heart massage on my shower drain.

I shit you NOT!

I was quite happily washing the shampoo out of my hair when I realised the water appeared to be coming UP the drain rather than going down it.

The previous night when I'd emptied the bath and the water backed up into the shower cubicle before flooding the bathroom I had, in the absents of a plunger or any drain unblocker, tossed half a pack of caustic soda down the plug hole and hoped for the best.

When the back of the house wasn't blasted into the next street (result!) I'd assumed all was well.

Now, as I turned the shower off, half blinded by shampoo, naked and freezing cold I realised that I was standing in 2" of lukewarm water and bloody breakfast cereal!

So there I was, on my knees, one hand cupped over the drain plunger fashion, other hand on top of it:

One, two, three, and pause ....

One, two, three, aaaand pause ...

one, two, three .....

And joy of joys the water started to recede, DEEP sigh of relief.

I sat there, blue with cold bedecked with cocopops reflecting on the possibility that my life may have actually reached an all time unglamourous low.

But then, a long low gurgle came from some where deep in the bowles of the earth underneath the bathroom.

It stopped and then there was a gulping sound.

I leaned a little closer and ....

Got the hell out of there!!!

(and, doing what any sensible person would have done in the first place)

I peeled the cocopops off my feet, rinsed my hair in the sink and went out and bought some bloody drain unblocker!