Friday 28 November 2008

A Slow Learner

Robbie left at 6am as usual and I will not see him again until Sunday evening. He had to choose between me and a train and it was no contest – the train won! He promised me that after this weekend I will have his undivided attention until February, I doubt that somehow but we will have to wait and see. He was funny yesterday evening, he knew he was pushing it a bit by going away for another weekend , so he was trying to be helpful by doing a few jobs without being asked. It was much appreciated but he spoiled it by getting the words wrong. He said, “I have done a few jobs for you so that you don't have to do them at the weekend” he didn't spot the warning look on my face and he went on “I have done a couple of loads of washing for you, I did my shirts and a few other things”. How is that for me???? I don't have a contract making the housework my exclusive responsibility, and if he decides to wash his shirts he is doing it for him not for me! I think he was expecting me to be grateful, but if he thinks I am going to spend my weekend doing housework while he goes out to play he is deluding himself - poor Robbie! Now if he would finish mending the fence I would be more than grateful, I would be overjoyed!

Thursday 27 November 2008

Going Going Gone!

I was very sad to hear that Woolworths has gone into administration and it looks as if their stores will disappear from the high street. I know they haven't been doing very well for some time, but it is very sad, it is like losing an old friend. I have so many fond memories associated with Woolworths, I remember buying records from there in my teens and more recently cd's and dvd's, when we were on holiday it was a bit of a tradition to go to Woolworths to buy a few dvd's for the children. They owned the Ladybird children's clothing brand and and their designs were popular with parents and children, over the years we have bought party dresses, coats and casual clothes as well as all sorts of accessories. You could always depend on Woolworths for wellies, plimsolls, trainers and the like, I can remember when the girls were little we bought them some trainers that lit up as they walked, they loved them. My favourite area was the stationary section – I love buying stationary and you could always find something slightly different and we would often buy pens and all the bits and bobs the children needed for school. They didn't have a huge toy section, but the children liked to buy things from there, and they had no difficulty finding things they wanted, they own the Chad Valley brand of toys and it will be a shame to see that go. Like most people perhaps my strongest memory of Woolworths is the pick and mix sweets, when the children were younger they loved to be allowed to buy pick and mix when we went to town on a Saturday. I think we will all miss Woolworths.

The furniture company MFI has also gone into administration , but I can't summon up much regret, it was good in it's time but in recent years it had lost it's way. The last time I purchased something from them I received very bad service and and to compound my frustration the product proved to be expensive rubbish. I think the demise of MFI is long overdue.

Wednesday 26 November 2008

Road Rage

Every day of my life I seem to be rushing around taking people to or from various places. I am used to being the kids taxi service, and because Robbie doesn't drive I have to drive whenever we go shopping, to town, to the doctors or whatever, but now I am the only driver for my mum and step dad as well. I hate being late and I often find myself racing against the clock to pick someone up on time. It seems as if everything conspires against me, I have written before about my 'love' of milk floats but I really think the local milkman has some sort of vendetta against road users. If he is not creating chaos by dawdling along at 5 miles an hour, he abandons his vehicle in the middle of the road while he delivers the milk and he brings the traffic to a standstill. Northampton must hold the world record for road humps, but once you get used to them they don't need to cause too much of a problem, So why do I always get behind people who have to slow to a crawl for every road hump? The idiots who lower their suspension and put 'go faster stripes' on their cars are the worse, they shouldn't be on the road if they can't cope with ordinary road hazards. Then there are the Volvo drivers who seem to panic and almost come to a halt before tackling the road hump, there is no need for such a reaction, maybe we should just ban Volvos!

It is my step dad's birthday today so I am taking him and my mum out for lunch, he was so ill in September so I am very grateful that he is well enough to enjoy his birthday.

Tuesday 25 November 2008

The Shopping Trolley.

It was an exhausting day for me yesterday. I took my mum Christmas shopping in town, it was quite an experience because my mum loves to shop - and I don't! We spent so long in some shops that I thought I would die of old age before she had chosen what she wanted! It is quite hard to walk slowly enough for her (she has bad feet) and I had to swallow my pride in order to pull her trolley for her, it was OK because I didn't see anyone I knew! I was thankful that I wasn't carrying her shopping, she bought so much she was a one woman antidote to the poor trading figures! I was tired when I got back from the shopping trip, but I before long I had to go to work, so rest seemed like a distant prospect. I was exhausted when I got home and I looked forward to sitting down with a nice cup of tea and something relaxing on tv, but Robbie had other ideas, he was watching a documentary about the evolution of supermarkets so when I sat down I was treated to an excruciatingly detailed account of the history and design of the shopping trolley. It cured my tiredness, I no longer felt tired, I felt murderous!

Monday 24 November 2008

Abandoned Again!

Robbie went 'out to play' again this weekend, this time it was a model railway exhibition that demanded his attention. I wasn't overjoyed about being abandoned again but he promised me his undivided attention on Sunday to make up for it. When I woke up on Sunday morning Robbie complained that he was wide awake and then promptly fell asleep and refused to be woken for ages. I just lay there thinking about Kenny Everett, I know that is an odd thing to think about but it was Robbie's fault, his legs seem to have a life of their own and he waves them around to such an extent that he lets all the warmth escape from under the duvet – it makes me furious! Eventually he woke up and finally I got his attention, but he spoiled it by choosing exactly that moment to tell me that he met Pete Waterman yesterday. I have nothing against Pete Waterman, but having to think about him and Kenny Everett before I get up on a Sunday morning is a bit scary!

Friday 21 November 2008

Dave's Anniversary


It is a year since Dave the cat joined our family. Last November when we first found him living in our paper recycling box he was in a terrible state, he had badly infected open sores on his feet, a huge matted scar on his face another on his tail and he absolutely stank. When I took him to the vet I was almost certain that they would say he had to be put to sleep, and it was certainly discussed, but the vet said we could perhaps try to treat him and give him a chance to recover. It took months of treatment, a couple of operations, and quite a lot of money, but a year on he is a different cat. He is healthy with a lovely shiny coat and he has a very happy life with his friend Oreo. His manners have improved, he still eats whatever he can get his paws on, but he doesn't swear anymore (I wish I could say the same about Robbie!) and he is very gentle - except when he has to see the vet! Dave was an unexpected addition to the family, but he has become really special he is a very affectionate cat and I couldn't imagine life without him.

Wednesday 19 November 2008

Buying Boots.

I think I have mentioned before that I have been giving my mum some extra help since David my step dad was ill, he can't drive for the next few months and mum can no longer drive because her sight has deteriorated too much. It is nice to spend more time with my mum but shopping with her is exhausting, it is as bad as shopping with Laura – we have to go everywhere and look at everything. In fact my mum is like a very old teenager sometimes. A couple of weeks ago she wanted to but some ankle boots because the ones that she wears when she takes the dogs for a walk are worn out. When we got to the shoe shop she was clear that she needed a nit of a heel on them because 'she is not ready for flat shoes just yet' we spotted a couple of suitable pairs and I left her to try them on while I had a look around. She seemed to be taking a long time so I went back to see what she was up to. She was fine, she couldn't resist trying on some stiletto boots as well because they looked so nice. I hope I will be like her when I am 78!

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Conspiricy Theory

I am old enough to remember a time when our lives were not ruled by mobile phones and occasionally I feel nostalgic for those days when you could go out and not be troubled by messages or phone calls. During my childhood the house phone was connected to the wall and nobody thought of phones in every room, often it was positioned on a table in the hall and it certainly didn't dominate the house. Now I am driven to distraction by the phone, we have two cordless phones but when the it rings the handset is never on the base and I have to sprint from one room to the next looking for it. It is usually in Emily or Laura's bedroom, but by the time I have found it the ringing has stopped and I am left to wonder who was calling.

I think our bathroom is bugged, as soon as I get in there you can guarantee that the phone will ring. I would understand it if I shut myself in there with a magazine, but I don't stay in there any longer than necessary. I know the caller can't see you but I am never going to be comfortable about chatting on the phone while using the smallest room. I have to rush out in a dishevelled state to find and answer the phone and it is almost always Robbie just ringing to say hello. I don't know how he manages to time it so badly so often. Even more annoying is when I have just got into a relaxing hot bath, the phone rings and my moment of luxury is ruined. It is bad enough to drag myself out of the bath and stand there dripping and freezing to death just to answer the phone, but when it is Robbie ringing to tell me something 'exciting' about a train that he saw on his way to work I find it very hard to be civil to him. We probably couldn't manage without our mobiles for long, but just occasionally I long for the way it used to be! Of course I could ignore the phone, but it could be important. My parents may need help or Sam's school may need to get hold of me, I can't ignore it.

Monday 17 November 2008

Lost!

Those people who know Robbie will perhaps understand that I don't always listen to Robbie when he is talking. He talks almost constantly and it is like a roller-coaster ride, dragging up hill via a long and contorted explanation, careering down hill as information tumbles out faster than you can take it in, twisting and turning from one apparently unrelated subject to the next and looping back to cover the same subject all over again. It is exhausting and if I am working I find it easier to just make the odd non committal grunt without actively listening to him. OK, I know that is a bit mean but it is a form of self preservation, my head would explode if I tried to listen to everything he said!

Robbie went off to play trains at the weekend, he left with his weekend bag at 6am on Friday and I didn't expect to see him again until Sunday afternoon. He phoned several times on Friday and in the evening he let me know that he had arrived at the Travelodge, but that was the last time I heard from him. I know I can't compete with his precious trains, but when I didn't hear from him on Sunday morning I started to become anxious. I realised that I didn't know where he was, who he was with with or how he was getting back because I hadn't listened. He had two phones with him, both were switched off, I kept ringing, but I didn't know what else to do. As the day went on I became convinced that he'd had an accident or something bad had happened. It was about 6pm when I finally tracked him down, apparently he had forgotten to take his phone charger, he was surrounded by people with phones but he didn't think it was important to send me just one text to let me know he was OK. He isn't in the dog house, he is somewhere much more remote than the dog house!

Friday 14 November 2008

Keeping Busy!

I took my step dad and my mum to hospital on Wednesday for his follow up appointment with the consultant after his surgery in September. The consultant was very pleased with his progress, they have decided that he will not be able to go back on Warfarin any more because they think it was responsible for his bleed around the brain he will have to take asprin every day instead. He is not allowed to drive again until March next year, so as well as being the only driver in our house my role as driver for mum and David will continue for the next few months. It is a small price to pay when you consider that in the first few hours after he became ill there was little hope for David's recovery.

Yesterday I drove to my mum's house to pick her up and take her to the hairdressers, she lives about 7 miles away. I had just arrived home after dropping her at the hairdressers when I had a panic stricken phone call from David demanding that I should take mum straight home because his heating wasn't working. He was clearly getting uptight about it and he said the house was cold so I drove back to their house to see if I could sort it out. When I walked in the house was so hot it was like a sauna, so there was no chance of David freezing to death. The heating was not working because David had forgotten to override the timer, so it was easy to put that right. I set the heating to constant for him with the intention to put it back on timed when I took mum home. I was almost home again when David called on the car phone, panic again, this time he thought the radiators were too hot and he couldn't turn the system off, he was afraid that there would be an explosion so he had turned the boiler off! There was a danger of explosion, but it was my temper rather than the radiators that were at boiling point. I couldn't go back until I had picked mum up and taken her to get her food shopping.

When I took mum home I restarted the boiler and stayed a while to check that the radiators were OK, everything was fine, but poor old David was in mum's bad books for giving me the run around!

Tuesday 11 November 2008

A New Book

After a weekend of Robbie huffing and puffing and falling out with his shadow because he left his magazines on the train, he was considerably brighter yesterday. He's had a book delivered through the post and when he opened it he was overcome with excitement, he kept holding the book up to show me full page pictures of biscuits. I must be missing something because a full page glossy picture of a custard cream doesn't do very much for me! Robbie was still chattering excitedly about biscuits at 1am!! It is nice to see him looking happy, but as far as I am concerned happy and quiet would be even better.

Monday 10 November 2008

A Little Ray of Sunshine!

I always look forward to weekends but they seldom live up to expectation, this weekend was a bit fraught because I had loads of work and a tight deadline, but I managed to get it all done. Robbie was an absolute pain for most of the weekend, he was ready to fall out with his own shadow, it felt as if he was wandering around under his own personal rain cloud. The cause of all this doom and despondency – he had left a bag with 4 new and unread railway magazines on the train!

Friday 7 November 2008

Pictures in My Mind

When Emily came home last weekend she asked where one of her old toys was. 2XL is an interactive robot that works with cassette tapes and he also plays ordinary cassette tapes and that was why she wanted him after so many years. Someone had lent her a set of Chaucer tapes and she had nothing to play them on because we have cd's now. Surprisingly I knew exactly where 2XL was because I had almost thrown him away last year, but Emily had loved him so much that I couldn't bring myself to part with him. After such a long time he needed a new set of batteries and he was a bit sluggish when he first started but he was soon chatting away in his robot voice, making corny jokes and asking endless questions. She took him back to university to play her Chaucer tapes and a couple of weeks ago I joked with her about listening to Chaucer spoken in a Robot voice with an American accent. It plays tapes normally except for the special robot ones but she said that the miller sounded very much like one of her uncles who has a strong Plymouth accent, he also has amazingly curly eyebrows so rather than Chaucer in a robot voice she is listening Chaucer with a strong Devon accent and amazing eyebrows!

Wednesday 5 November 2008

Communication Skills

The wall to wall US election coverage was impossible to avoid yesterday. I couldn't believe that people had to stand in line for hours just to be able to vote, I thought that sort of thing only happened in third world countries. I am feeling tired this morning because I kept the radio on all night to listen to the Radio 4 coverage of the election results - Robbie was not amused, he buried himself in the duvet and snored loud enough to drown out the radio. I stayed awake long enough to hear about Obama's early victories, I woke several times to hear that the Democrats were heading for victory and when my alarm went off just before 5am (usual time) I was in time to hear Barack Obama's amazing victory speech, and then to John McCain's gracious acknowledgement of defeat. I think even his critics would admit that Obama is a great orator, of course he now has to turn the dreams and promises into action, but it really felt as if we were witnessing something significant. After Bush who is barely literate and seems incapable of stringing a sentence together coherently, it was a joy to listen to Obama. It made me feel a bit envious because we have no hope of inspirational leadership any time soon.

Talking of great communicators brings me on to Robbie. He can manage more words per minute than anyone else I know, but as far as communication is concerned sometimes less is more; I have to keep telling him to talk slowly because I haven't got a clue what he is talking about. He often accuses me of reading his mind (because he doesn't get away with very much!) but this morning he failed to communicate at all, apparently he thought telepathy was sufficient. My alarm went of at the usual time, I woke him at the usual time, he got up as reluctantly as ever and caused the usual clatter when he went downstairs. He brought my cup of tea earlier than usual, I didn't take much notice but I observed that he was well ahead of schedule when he went into the shower. I embarked on my normal routine at my usual time, but I felt that Robbie was rushing me along. Eventually I told him that he was way ahead of schedule, and it was only then that he told me he was aiming to catch an earlier train. Since I play an important part in getting him organised and out of the house on time clearer communication would have been very helpful!

Tuesday 4 November 2008

It's Almost Over

The US election is almost over and hopefully we will finally have some respite from mindless news reports. I am so exhausted by the whole thing, it seems to have been going on for years. I have to admit it has made me grateful to be British because our election campaigns are mercifully short in comparison. We don't have any politicians to be proud of, in fact I can only think of two or three senior politicians in my lifetime that have inspired trust or respect, but I sincerely hope that we don't have anyone as unsuitable as Sarah Palin. I couldn't help laughing at the clips of her being taken in by a broadcaster who phoned her claiming to be the French president, it was such an obvious spoof, how could she possibly have taken it seriously? The thing is that it isn't really funny, that woman could potentially be the next vice president and McCain is an old man, so there is a possibility that if the unthinkable happened and he became president he could die or become unfit before the end of his term in office. Would anyone seriously want that woman to be president? She only has the vaguest idea where Russia is, and that seems to be the sum total of her knowledge of anything beyond Alaska, I think she would set the whole world fighting and that scares me. My greatest objection to her is that she does the cause of women no good at all. For at least a century women have struggled to prove themselves equal to men and to gain the same rights and responsibilities in society. Finally women we have reached a situation where they are recognised for their ability and achievement rather than for what they wear or who they are married to. Then this woman comes along, every time she opens her mouth she demonstrates her woeful ignorance, she spends far more than is decent on clothes (that don't make her look any better anyway) and she has some seriously disturbing beliefs. She is an example of pseudo equality, she is nothing more than a puppet, look hard and you will see that a man is pulling the strings. She is an embarrassment, but worse of all, she lacks compassion, if you look at what she believes in you are left wondering where is the humanity?

Monday 3 November 2008

Scary!


This is Sam, he went to a Halloween party dressed as a Zombie, he looked good but afterwards he couldn't get the fake blood off his face. By the next morning he was panic stricken because his face was still red from the fake blood, in the end he had to raid Laura's make up removers and cleansing creams.

Saturday 1 November 2008

A State of Shock

I am still in shock following an incident after work on Thursday evening. It was about 10.30pm and I was tired and glad to be heading home, was listening to yet more drivel the radio about the Jonathan Ross saga as I pulled up at the traffic lights of a large roundabout in the town centre. Suddenly the rear door opened and it felt as id time stood still in that moment of sheer panic a person leapt onto the back seat and another person piled in. When they spoke I realised that it was Laura and her friend Iqra. My heart was thumping, I really thought something terrible was about to happen and it took me ages to calm down. The girls had been to a party in town but they decided to leave early and get a lift home with me, but they were later than planned and they almost missed me. They saw me driving past them and they ran after me and jumped into the car when I stopped at the lights. It was such a dangerous thing to do, they could easily have been hurt if I had pulled away suddenly, but thankfully they were OK and I was terrified but unharmed – except for a few more grey hairs!