Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Probably those words will not mean anything to younger people, but they will be very familiar to my generation. When I was a child it was fairly common for technical difficulties to interrupt television programmes (there were only three channels back then) and the when things went wrong they would put up the test card and play music until they could fix the problem. The announcer would tell us that "normal service will be resumed as soon as possible" and we would wait hoping that the break in service wouldn't last very long and even normal broadcasting was about to resume the announcer would say ".... Normal service has been resumed"

From the point of view of the blog 'normal service has been resumed'. I stopped writing the blog several months ago because I was unwell and my stamina levels were extremely low. It was a real struggle just to cope with the essentials of life. I was determined that the blog would not become a miserable tale of woes, but it was such a struggle to keep my writing bright and up beat when I had been feeling unwell for so long that I was losing hope of ever feeling better.

The good news is that after attending a lot of hospital appointments and seeing three different consultants I am finally getting better. I am not coughing anymore - well not much anyway! More importantly I have reason to hope that this is not just a temporary calm between bouts of illness, but a sign that we are dealing with the  causes of the problem rather than the symptoms. There is still a long way to go but I feel so much better.

So what has been happening with us over the last few months? I suppose there are lots of things that I should have written about, but I will catch up with some of those over the next few weeks. Robbie has been working in Darlington for the greater part of each week. Surprisingly it is an arrangement that suits us both fairly well, Robbie enjoys the work and staying in Darlington is better than a long commute every day. I miss him of course but it is nice not having to get up before the birds every day to take him to the station. I'd better make the most of it because his contract ends in mid September and his next contract will involve a daily commute. He is really looking forward to a new challenge and it will be nice to have him at home again. My daughter obtained her post graduate qualification in June and she is now a fully qualified geography teacher. She has a job at a school about half an hour away from our home and she is looking forward to the new challenges that the September term will bring. 

Robbie and I are getting ready to go on holiday to Norfolk, so I will do my best to update the blog every day, but the Internet connection in Norfolk is precarious that I will not make any promises! I probably will not be able to add any photos I get home again.

Timing is Everything

Our Sky Box is making some very ominous noises and  every so often it decides to record oddly so that part of every sentence is silent. Clearly it is on it's last legs and we need to replace it very soon. Yesterday the Sky Box was humming again and Robbie decided that we couldn't go on like this, so he started to research the likely cost of a replacement. He mentioned that this would be a good time to move to Virgin but I wasn't convinced, we have our internet and home phone from Sky and I rather like them. We had such a bad time dealing with aol, and at least since we have been with Sky we can speak to people who speak English and who can respond to the problem without reading from a script. I told Robbie that I had to get on with my work and we would have to talk about it another time.

When I got home from work yesterday evening I spent two or three hours in the lounge with Robbie, then I went to bed because I was tired. At about 1.30am I woke up and went downstairs to get a drink, then on my way back to bed I took a detour via the the bathroom. Within a couple of seconds Robbie knocked on the door and asked what I was doing - what did he think I was doing in the bathroom at 1.30am for heaven sake! Surprisingly my response to him was polite, I explained through the door that I was 'using the facilities'. He replied that he thought now was a good time to discuss what to do about the Sky box. I am afraid that my response was somewhat short and tinged with menace. I reminded him what the time was and I told him in no uncertain terms to go away. He may be a slow learner, but he got the message loud and clear, when I got out of the bathroom he had vanished!

“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” – Socrates.

Being the parent of a teenager certainly keeps you 'real'. There was a time in my 20s and 30s when I thought  that I was reasonably intelligent with a fairly wide general knowledge. There was a time when my children were little that they looked up to me and trusted me to answer all their questions, but now they treat me as if I know nothing. My son is always keen to share his 'vast knowledge of life' accumulated over 17 years! To be fair he does have a wide general knowledge, but like most young people he only sees things in black and white, he will need to notch up a few more years before he starts to see shades of grey and then he will gradually realise how much he doesn't know. Until then he is content to tease me abort my astounding ignorance. I am not very good at sitting still and I have never been terribly interested in films and television and with one or two notable exceptions I have no interest whatsoever in sport so it is hardly surprising that I do not know the names of actors or sports personalities. Not so long ago my son decided to test me to find out exactly how challenged I am when it comes to knowing who does what. The whole family roared with laughter when I though that George Clooney could be a golfer, apparently he is an actor. I don't mind the teasing, after all if we did a similar test on history, poetry, literature or various other things I am fairly sure that I would know more than them!

Recently I encountered a woman who told me that she intended to return the game that she had bought for £32.99 the previous day because it was not fit for purpose. I asked what was wrong with it and she said that the questions were much to hard (the game was age 12 to adult). I must have looked a bit sceptical because she told me what some of the questions were.

- Who was Nebuchadnezzar

- What is an archipelago

- Who was Samuel Pepys

I was able to answer all the questions so she posed a few more which I also answered correctly. It was probably just luck that she chose questions that I was able to answer, but I was deeply offended when she told me that I only knew the answers because I am old! I thought (but didn't say) that old or not, I would not wish to publicise my ignorance by returning a game because it was too difficult! Maybe I am old, but I like to think that I could answer the questions because I have a wide general knowledge and I had a good education.

These little episodes along with the start of an annual recruitment phase at the company I work for has led me to realise that it takes all sorts to make a world - and it takes all sorts to make a good workforce. A group of people with different and complementary skills (and personalities) will make a stronger and more competent workforce. Only a fool appoints in his/her own image.

Living Dangerously

I often go to bed before Robbie, partly because I need my sleep and partly because I prefer to listen to the radio rather than watch some of the scary stuff that he likes to watch on television. This works quite well for both of us but there is just one problem - Robbie! He doesn't understand the meaning of the word quiet and he always manages to wake me up when he comes to bed. He then falls asleep as soon as head hits the pillow leaving me wide awake unable to get back to sleep and fighting to hang on to the duvet.

On Monday night he decided to take things a step further. He wasn't quite ready for bed but he decided to come upstairs for a chat. He wasn't put off when he found that I was asleep, he just kept asking if I was awake until I woke up. So what was so important that he needed to wake me up at 1.30am? It certainly wasn't something that could be classed as an emergency even in 'Robbie world'. He wanted to inform me that the cat was suffering from flatulence! I told him loud and clear to 'go away' but I wasn't going to escape that easily. He went into great detail about the exact nature of the smell, then he started rambling on about possibly changing the cat's diet. By then I was ready to harm him and he made a hasty retreat.

The next day I asked him why he woke me up and he said he didn't think I was deeply asleep because I wasn't snoring - I give up!!

What goes on in his head?

It was 8.30am on Saturday morning and I was tired of waiting for Robbie to wake up, so I decided to wake him up. He seemed oblivious of the first two or three prods, then suddenly he turned over and said "That's a surprise, there were no announcements". I asked what he was talking about and he said that he dreamt that Google had a new operating platform and he was trying to work it out. Not for the first time it left me wondering what goes on in that man's head. I have never knowingly had a dream about Google, in fact I haven't given it a passing thought. What sort of person  dreams about Google for heaven sake!!


We had to go shopping for a gift for Robbie's new nephew. I was tempted by the usual sort of baby designs but Robbie was attracted to the more colourful designs. We couldn't agree, but then Robbie spotted a blue all in one with a Thomas the Tank Engine design and his mind was made up, apparently you are never too young for trains!! I know when I'm defeated, but I made sure that we found a cute cuddly elephant for the baby too.


Robbie spent most of the day planning and re planning the best route to south Staffordshire. I wondered why it was proving so hard to plan a train journey, I know it was a bank holiday weekend, but surely it shouldn't be that difficult. Eventually all became clear; he could take a more direct route and have time to eat with me before he left, but if he took the more contorted route via Walsall he could do a bit of bus spotting as well! If time had been on his side I think the buses would have won, but in the end he chose to spend a little longer with me so that we could go and eat.


I dropped Robbie off at the station in good time for his train and I drove off to do some shopping and to enjoy a few hours of peace and quiet. The peace and quiet didn't last long, when I got home my son had taken control of the television and I had to endure his viewing choices all evening. Well I didn't have to, but it would have been unkind to object when there was nothing that I wanted to watch. I occupied myself with family history research on the internet and before long I had 'zoned out' the junk on television. Meanwhile Robbie was at a family party to celebrate the wedding of his nephew (a different nephew, not the newborn one!!) according to his texts he was having a great time, but he had to admit that he is getting old - the music was too loud!! Maybe it wasn't such a hardship to put up with junk television after all, at least I could control the volume! 

Watching Paint Dry!

It would be fair to say that Robbie and I could (and often do) argue about absolutely anything. The other day we had a fierce row about Fred Dibnah. Robbie has some very dubious interests but without doubt I find his fascination with Fred Dibnah the most difficult to deal with. Usually the mere mention of his name causes me to run for cover, and if Robbie threatens to watch his series on television I take myself off to do something more exciting like watching paint dry. This week it was so cold (and I had run out of paint!) so even the mention of dead Fred wasn't going to make me give up my seat in front of the fire. With gritted teeth I endured half an hour of excruciating boredom, I turned my back on the television and tried to focus on my computer, but it was impossible to ignore and before long by blood pressure was off the scale. 


If they ever gave a lifetime achievement award for the most inarticulate man on television he would have beaten Bill and Ben by a mile. I didn't understand a word he said in the whole programme. The trail for the programme mentioned that in this episode he would be taking his steam engine to Sheffield. I was interested because it is a place that is very dear to my heart. I lived there for a while, I love the South Yorkshire accent and I thought it would be nice to see footage of Sheffield as I remember it. Sadly the whole episode seemed to consist of old men standing around in what looked like a pub communicating in monosyllabic grunts. Worse still I don't think there was a woman in the entire episode! We would not show old programmes that are racist so why would anyone think it was ok to show something that is so blatantly sexist? I think I will have to start a 'ban Fred' campaign, his dvds should be relegated to 'under the counter sales' in shops that are frequented by men in dirty raincoats with 'unnatural appetites'


The whole Fred argument led on to another heated exchange about the gender of vehicles. It really irritates me that men refer to cars, lorries, locomotives, steam rollers etc as 'she' when it is blatantly obvious that they are male! I have explained before that my car is definitely male because it is unreliable and expensive to maintain. I only know of one man who's car has a male name, my daughter's boyfriend has a car called Bruce. I was very impressed that he had chosen such an apt name, Bruce is very loud, hard to ignore, rather unconventional and prone to the occasional bad day (apologies to anyone called Bruce but that is what the name conjures up for me). Bruce is a red Citroen Saxo with lots of adaptations. It turns out that it was my daughter who named the car not her boyfriend, so maybe it is a case of like mother like daughter!

Strange Animal Spotted in Cornwall

Photo by nirutha 

There are many tales of strange animals being spotted around Cornwall, but as this story involves Robbie it is a little stranger than most. For 200 years there have been reports of sightings of a sea monster in Falmouth Bay, known as Morgawr it is said to be over 20 feet long with an 8ft tail, scaly legs and a horned head. There have been sightings of the Beast of Bodmin Moor, a panther like creature since 1971 but it (or more likely 'they') have never been caught. So when Robbie told me that he had spotted a very strange looking animal while watching a television program set in Cornwall I was prepared to believe him until we used the rewind facility, the strange animal proved to be a sheep!! I was incredulous, he may work in Birmingham, but he grew up in a rural area so he must have seen a sheep before. His excuse was that he didn't know that sheep could have different faces!  

A Good Start in Life?

I love all my children very much, they are all different with different strengths and abilities, different ambitions and very different outlooks on life. My younger daughter has loads of ambition, she is clever, hard working and determined. She does things her way and she makes her own mind, in fact she is every bit as stubborn as me! All the children had the same start, going to church and Sunday school and growing up with strong values. However younger daughter has always taken a pride in being 'the token heathen' in our family. I was pleasantly surprised the other day when she mentioned that she was the only one in her seminar group at university who knew that a reference  to the plagues of Egypt related to the Bible and to Moses leading the Hebrew people out of Egypt. I was shocked because I thought most people would know that, but I was pleased that she still remembered. It was only then that she announced "I remembered watching it on the Rugrats". Oh well at least she remembered. It will make me think more kindly about American television in future, at least something good came out of it - but I still haven't forgiven them for Kenan and Kell, I detested it because it was loud and stupid but my children loved it!

Magnetic Attraction

Tuesday mornings are never wonderful, there is still too much of the week left, but this week Tuesday started badly and got worse. Sam reluctantly got up and got ready for school, he had the television watching Everybody Loves Raymond, I don't love Raymond, he gets on my nerves so I didn't look at the television, I was busy getting on with my usual morning routine. When I finally glanced at the television I saw a broad green line running right across the screen. Sam crumbled under interrogation and admitted that he had rolled a large magnetic ball baring across the screen. When asked why he said it just sort of happened when he was wondering if the ball would make a narrow line or a broad one! This is not his first encounter with television screens and magnets and I was seriously annoyed, but my response was nothing in comparison to Robbie's - it was a case of light the blue touch paper and retreat! The television has recovered now but it may take Sam a little longer to forget the incident.

The rest of my day was marred by doing battle with an incompetent insurance company and an even more incompetent phone company, difficulty booking the car in for an MOT, unwelcome political canvassers and worse of all a moron claiming to be from Southern Electric who I found in my garden who addressed me as 'darling'. I assured him in no uncertain terms that I wasn't his darling and there was absolutely no chance in this world that I ever would be! He then tried to insist that I was one of their customer - I am not their customer and if that scruffy, gum chewing yob represents their idea of customer service, I never will be!

After a day like that I hope Wednesday will be better!

Full Marks For Effort

Robbie is still unable to to explain who Brenda is, but I have to admire him for trying (he was calling out Brenda in his sleep at the weekend). First he told me that the only Brenda he knew was an elderly lady, the daughter of his late grandmother's best friend. Next he suggested that he must have been watching Dinner Ladies - I doubt it! By then Alice had also cropped up in the conversation, I am sure I just misheard and he didn't say Alice at all, but he did grudgingly admit that Alice was Brenda's mother! His latest suggestion is that they were both characters from Thomas the Tank Engine, as far as I know there isn't an engine or a carriage called Brenda, but I had great fun trying to imagine what sort of engine would be called Brenda. I decided it would be a Class 33, but I will not dwell on that in case I offend anyone unfortunate enough to be 'blessed' with that name. Anyway you have to admire Robbie for trying, if he ever gives up the railways I am sure he would have a very bright future as a fiction writer!

Look at Me

Last Friday I wrote about the cat thinking we should look at him rather than the TV. Here is the evidence!

Visual Disturbance

Robbie was in a much more pleasant mood last night, in fact he was doing his best to be very helpful. So when I mentioned that I was having difficulty viewing the television because a furry interference preventing me from seeing the bottom third of the screen, he assured me that he could see perfectly. He came over to look from where I was sitting, he could still see, he crouched on the floor and finally admitted that there may be a slight imperfection in the picture. I told him that was not what I was seeing, I was losing the whole bottom third of the screen. He got increasingly cross because he couldn't see the problem, so I drew it for him, then he got cross because he had been wound up, but he agreed that moving the sofa a little would solve the problem.

A Question of Time

This is a delicate subject to mention on the blog, but it is one of those situations that either makes you laugh or scream and when Robbie is more 'Robbish' than usual he can be very funny. We were sitting outside looking at the sunset when Robbie asked if I would mind him watching Skins at 11pm, I wasn't that bothered so I said that it was fine as long as he gave me lots of attention afterwards! He looked at me very seriously and said that he wanted to watch something else at midnight but he could fit me in between 10pm and 11pm. He may be a train planner, but if he thinks he's going to have me working to a timetable he can think again!

Memory Lane

When I was a child colour television was a new and exciting development and daytime television had yet to be invented. It sounds rather quaint now, but we knew what we wanted to watch and we turned the television on five minutes or so before to 'warm up' and when the program was over we turned the television off and got on with other things. When I was small sitting down to see Watch With Mother was an important part of my day and among my favourites was Mary Mungo and Midge, a cartoon series about the adventures of a girl, a dog and a very badly behaved mouse who lived at the top of a tower block. When I was a little older another cartoon series captured my imagination, Captain Pugwash was the cowardly and greedy leader of a band of pirates and their comical exploits always made me smile. John Ryan, the cartoonist who created Mary Mungo and Midge and Captain Pugwash died last Friday, his work brought a lot of pleasure to generations of children. Television may have become much more sophisticated since then, but somewhere along the way it has lost the simple magic of those long gone days of Watch With Mother.

An Inspiration

I didn't post on the blog on Sunday because it was a very busy day for me. It was my brother's birthday so we had to pop over to my mum's house to take his presents, then later on I had to work so the day passed in a blur of activity.

In the morning I was sitting on my bed doing some work on my laptop when Emily came into the bedroom looking very sad. She told me that Tony Hart had died, and she went on to say that he was amazing. I'd heard the news of his death on the news earlier in the morning and my reaction had been much the same as Emily's. As a child I had watched Vision On an amazing combination of art and performance, I loved the art part of the show especially the gallery of viewers art work. Tony Hart was original, inspiring and clearly very talented, he made art fun and he made it accessible to everyone, in so many ways he fired our imaginations.

When Emily was a child Tony Hart was there to inspire her too be creative too. He had moved on with series that were entirely based on art and animation such as Take Hart, Hartbeat and Smart Hart. All of my children love art and Tony Hart played a part in inspiring them to try many different aspects of art. Laura was always very good at three dimension work and Sam loved those very large pictures made of household objects that you have to look down on, he used to create them on the lounge floor. They still love art, all can draw and paint well and all have their own style. I wonder how many children have been influenced to enjoy art because of Tony Hart - what an incredible legacy. I can't write about Tony Hart without mentioning his annoying little sidekick Morph, a plasticine stop motion animation who appeared with Tony. Morph lived in an artists pencil box and he appeared in short clips of little more than a minute, he was fun and it was just one more way of introducing children to different aspects of art and creativity.

Tony Hart made a huge contribution to children's television, and he will be sadly missed by the many people who have enjoyed and been inspired by his work.

Beyond Endurance

Robbie and I are spending new year apart, I am upstairs listening to Radio 4 and Robbie is downstairs as he prefers to see in the new year with Jools Holland. He is a man by the way way, from his name I had assumed he was a woman. Robbie said he was in a band or something but I had never heard of him or his band. I did my best to endure this thing on television, one woman sang and it sounded like a cat being slowly strangled, I don't know who she was, apparently she was just called Adelle - with a voice like that I am not surprised that she wouldn't give her last name. Then there was a group of geriatrics who sang Jimmy Mac, they looked and sounded as if they had just been dug up, so I thought things could only get better. I was wrong Duffy came on next and that was truly more than flesh and blood could stand, so I voted with my feet and came up to listen to the radio. I am much happier up here on my own.

A Legacy of Happy Memories

On Tuesday my radio alarm clock clicked on and I was roused from my slumbers by the Radio 4 Today program. I lay there only half listening while enjoying the last few minutes of comfort before getting up. Suddenly the radio commanded my full attention, because the voice of my childhood is gone Oliver Postgate has died. I have written before about the important part he played in my childhood memories and I was sad to hear that he had died. I first came across him (or rather his voice) when I was a very young child, Pogles Wood was my favourite Watch with Mother program and the voice and imagination of Oliver Postgate brought a unique magic to the series. As time went on I grew to love his other work, the Clangers, Ivor the Engine and my special favourite Noggin the Nog. When my own children came along I was delighted to find that they also enjoyed the work of Oliver Postgate in Bagpuss. His work had a very special quality and for my family as well as so many others, the sound of his voice evokes very happy memories.

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!

Missed

The weather has been lovely over the last few days, I love this time of year when the whole summer stretches ahead of us. I'm not sure my children would agree with me, Sam is suffering badly with hay fever, Laura is just about to start exam leave for her AS Level exams and Emily has exams looming at university. Sam has started on his medication, so hopefully his hay fever will improve soon. The oil seed rape is in flower and the countryside around here is a mass of yellow, I hate the smell and the pollen upsets my asthma so I will be glad when the flowers are gone. It really annoys me that I have asthma, I didn't develop it until I was an adult and I don't understand why, I have never smoked a cigarette in my life.

I had to go to town yesterday to buy birthday presents for Imogen, the youngest (and probably the loudest) of our children, she will be 9 later this month. Imogen looks so much like Robbie, she can be very strong willed but she has a lovely side to he nature, when asked what she wants for her birthday or Christmas she doesn't provide a long list of desires, she just says that she will be happy with anything. So we have spent the last few weeks trying to think of things that she will really like. I can't tell you what we have bought, that's top secret, but it involved me trudging around town until my legs almost dropped off. It was a successful trip and now I have plenty of wrapping up to do.

For those who are wondering if Robbie was forgiven after yesterday's blog entry, yes, I never stay cross with him for long. There was another points failure yesterday so he was late home again, it is so frustrating. He was home just long enough to eat his meal before dashing out to sort out Marion's wayward router again, it was an AOL server problem - again!. When I picked him up from Marion's house he said "I missed ..." and just for a split second I thought he was going to tell me that he had missed me (we have hardly seen each other this week), but it was something far more important - he had missed one of his favourite TV programs! It was late so I went to bed and left him watching the repeat of his program. Oh well at least I had peace and quiet!

Mystery Men

Robbie was at work until late in the evening yesterday because he had to work from home in the morning while waiting for the Sky repair man to come and replace the sky box. We had no TV over Easter because the sky box turned up its toes, I didn't miss it that much but certain other people were having withdrawal symptoms. I am fairly happy as long as I have my radio, I can't survive without Radio 4. The Sky man turned up eventually and everything is back in working order, so when Robbie got home last night he parked himself in front of the TV and watched junk until 1.30am.

Talking of Radio 4 it was responsible for a serious rise in my blood pressure yesterday. The You and Yours program had a 'phone in' about rail travel, George Muir from ATOC, Nigel Harris from Rail magazine, Tom Windsor a previous rail regulator and the dreaded Iain Coucher from Network Rail were all there to answer questions. The first three sounded sensible and plausible, but yet again Iain Coucher sounded totally insincere and complacent. Someone who rang in had been prevented from getting to work that morning because of an engineering overrun at Shenfield. He did his usual splutter and stutter, then explained that the planned engineering work to work on signals had been completed on time but it just so happened that the very next signal to where they were working developed an unrelated fault and this caused the delay. Whatever! When Sam was younger he always blamed the squirrels for whatever he had done wrong, he was very convincing, but that didn't mean I believed him. The calls to the program were overwhelmingly critical, the only company to receive any praise was Virgin; whatever you think about their service you have to admire their PR!

I overheard Robbie making a series of work calls during the morning, he kept talking about Craig and Timmy and I began to wonder who they were, a gay couple perhaps? Did Robbie have a secret life? Eventually I asked about them as I hadn't heard him mention either of them before. It turned out that he was actually referring to a place, Craigentinny nr Edinburgh, apparently it is the place where the trains 'go to bed'.

East Anglian Daily Times