Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society - Mark Twain

My mum is an amazing woman. She loves clothes and at 80 she likes nothing better than a shopping trip with her granddaughters. When it comes to clothes shopping she loves fashion and she shops enthusiastically, she has plenty of stamina and she will happily shop all day. She likes bright cheerful colours, high shoes and matching accessories. She gave up on my fashion sense years ago; she respects my right to wear more sober styles and very little make up but just occasionally she will tell me "you can wear that when you are dead!" 

My mum finds Robbie's approach to fashion rather surprising, but she supports his right to express his individuality and to wear bright colours - but perhaps not all at once! They often chat about clothes and shoes and Robbie likes nothing better than flicking through her collection of catalogues to 'window shop'. Earlier this week he was flicking through her cotton traders catalogue and showing me the many things that he would like when suddenly he emitted a groan of delight. He said "oh yes, they would look great with some bright contrasting boots, I really want them" He thrust the catalogue in front of me to reveal that 'they' were a pair of bright red trousers. I gave him a steady stare trying to work out if he was serious - he was! He looked to my mum for support but she tactfully said there may not be many opportunities to wear red trousers. I told him that it would be a mistake, he would look like Santa on his day off - or a Smurf!! I just hope that he will see sense.

Flushed with Pride

I understand Robbie fairly well (he doesn't get away with much!) but just occasionally he does something so random that he manages to leave me lost for words. Yesterday he came downstairs proudly carrying my birthday present, it was beautifully wrapped in colourful paper. He was very keen for me to open it and he seemed convinced that he had chosen exactly the right present for me. I opened it to find a boxed toilet roll! What exactly are you supposed to say when presented with a boxed toilet roll? I opened the box hoping that the roll itself would bring me inspiration. The individual sheets had a message printed on them 'Hygiene and cleanliness are essential to robust good health and longevity'. Could it be a subtle way of pointing out that I am getting old? I thought not because Robbie doesn't 'do' subtle, but I spent the rest of the day wondering exactly what it said about our relationship!!   

Age is a high price to pay for maturity.

I have been asked that question a number of times in the last few weeks. My birthday was coming up and for some obscure reason people seem to think that it is cause to celebrate. It is a really difficult question to answer, because I really don't want anything. We have far too many 'things' already and there is nothing that I really need and I can't have the things I would really like.


More than anything I would like to be able to turn back time. Not to get rid of the wrinkles or because I am worried about my grey hairs, I don't care that much about either of those things. After all living with Robbie is bound to cause a few grey hairs - OK, I admit to more than a few grey hairs! I would like to turn back time because there are people who aren't here that should be and you can't help wishing that things could be different. Anyway things change, and I have to hang on to the fact that there are important people in my life now, such as my lovely nephews and niece who would be there if I turned back time. I guess the moral is that you have to live in the present and enjoy the people and things in your life now, then at least you carry special memories into the future with you.

I think my best ever birthday present was probably my first pony Geme. He had such a character and there was a very special bond between us for the rest of his life. The bond that develops between a young rider and her pony is very special. It is not the relationship with a dog or other pet because it involves a different level of trust and understanding. It is difficult to explain the closeness between horse and rider, it is not just an emotional bond, it is a physical communication.The rider understands and responds to every movement of the horse and the horse recognises and reacts to the movements and signals of the rider. The partnership depends on a large degree of trust and respect.


The joy of riding and the feeling of being at one with the pony brings a lot of pleasure, the thrill of cantering across a field and the gentler enjoyment of ambling along a lane in tune with the world around you. Horse riding gives you a lot of thinking time, it enables people to process thoughts and mull over problems, riding is good for your soul as well as for your mind and body.


I think my best birthday present as an adult was a video that I was given on my 41st birthday. My husband had borrowed some old cine film from my mum and had it transferred to video. I'd never seen the footage before and when I watched it I was confronted with my younger self laughing, playing and enjoying life. I was a spectator at my own first birthday party and I saw my grandmothers and my dad alive and well doing all the ordinary things that I only half remembered. Watching the video was a very emotional experience, but it was so precious, it was like being given back a little bit of my past. 

A room without books is like a body without a soul - Cicero

I had such a good time on Saturday. For me it was a Robbie free day because he was out playing trains - nothing new there! A couple of months ago my friend took me to visit the most amazing place, it is called Astley Book Farm and it is the largest second hand book shop in the Midlands. I loved it and I promised myself that I would go back when I had plenty of time to brose. I told my daughter Emily about it and she wanted to go as well, so we planned our trip for Saturday. To say that Emily shares my love of books would be an understatement, I have never seen anyone so excited about visiting a bookshop! 


It was a nice morning and we had a nice drive to the book farm, we got there fairly early so that we had plenty of time to explore every section of the shop. It is an amazing place, just when you think you have got to the end of the shop you find a doorway or turning opening on to another section. Emily soon found the English language section and she was in her element, crouched on the floor looking at every book that took her fancy. I wandered off and soon I had found two or three books that would make perfect Christmas presents. I was having a great time and I felt virtuous too, it is only September and I have started my Christmas shopping! 

Emily was still sitting on the floor reading text books when I wandered past ten minutes later. She excitedly offered me a book, it was a dictionary of vulgarity in 
old English, that girl is passionate about language. I left her surrounded by a pile of books and headed up to the children's section in the hayloft. Who needs anti wrinkle cream when you can visit a place like this. Soon I was sitting on the floor rediscovering treasures from my childhood including Sam Pig, My Naughty Little Sister and many more. Emily came up to join me and we rekindled memories from her childhood too. 


Considerably later I made my way down from the hayloft and headed for the transport section clutching the pile of books that I intended to buy. There was a whole section on railway books so I happily whiled away another half an hour looking at some amazing books. I selected a book about the railway companies pre nationalisation, it is a lovely book and it was very reasonably priced.


By then my friend had arrived so we paid for our books and put them in the car before going to the coffee shop for a cup of tea and a natter. Afterwards we had a last look around and we bought a couple more things before going back to my friend's house for a while. I really enjoyed the whole day, it is nice to spend some quality time with my daughter, and I always enjoy spending time with my friend. The added enjoyment of the bookshop turned it into a perfect day. I must take time to do more things like this.

If At First You Don't Succeed - Keep Nagging!

Robbie has a really annoying habit of asking my advice, nodding furiously when I offer my opinion and then doing as he likes. I don't (usually) expect him to do what I tell him, he would get a very direct answer if he tried to tell me what to do; but why ask me if he is going to do as he likes anyway? 


Sometimes I rely on ancient wisdom and I keep on offering the same advice. According to Ovid "Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence." In the end it is his life and he has to live with his choices, so I don't push too hard, I just hope that he will 'wise up' eventually. I could't push him anyway, he is a stubborn little devil, he would refuse to budge and the effort would kill me.

This week has been a bit of a high point for me because Robbie has finally decided to act on a piece of advice that I have been giving him for quite a few years. I am not sure why now is the right time, perhaps he is just a slow learner or more likely it was a difficult thing to do, but I am pleased that he has finally decided to deal with that particular issue.

According to my mum, if you want a man to do something you need to sow the seed and nurture it so that it becomes his decision. It has taken five or six years for this particular seed to germinate but I hope Robbie will think that 'he' has made a very good decision.

We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.

I rarely mention my work when I write the blog, but today I am going to break my own rules because this trivial incident made someone feel so good and all it took was a little effort. A lady came up to me to ask a question, I could see that she had difficulty in walking and when she asked her question her speech was hard to understand. I guessed that she may have cerebral palsy. I latched on to the couple of words that I understood and repeated them asking if that is what she was looking for. I was rewarded with a huge smile as she realised that I'd understood her without making her repeat the question. I told her that I would show her what she was looking for and I walked with her at her pace to the correct place. Her friend came up to us and the lady almost danced with excitement as she told her that I had understood the first time she spoke.   It was such a small thing and it cost me nothing, but it made a big difference to her - and it made me feel pretty good too.


In my family there are several people with disabilities. I don't think it really gives me any special insight, but the one thing that they all have in common is that they want to be able to do the things that other people do and they want to focus on their ability rather than being defined by their disability. I don't really understand why other people seem to find that so difficult to understand that. My son has a disability (autistic spectrum disorder) which would not be obvious to someone who only met him briefly. Ordinary things like shopping have brought extra challenges for him - and me! There have been a few occasions when people who should have known better have treated him very badly and made things more difficult for him. Usually this could have been avoided completely if people were a little more accepting of difference and less critical of behaviour that they do not understand. My son is amazing and I am really proud of the way he copes with life, but it has taken him a long time to admit to his disability and to accept help when he needs it.


Robbie also has a largely hidden disability, he has spina bifida and it causes more or less constant pain and difficulty in walking. He wants to be seen as just a normal person like everyone else, but he has had to admit that sometimes he needs extra help with certain things. OK, I know that Robbie is a little more unique than most, and the word normal really doesn't suit him, but you know what I mean. Little adjustments like having additional leg room makes travelling much less painful for him. I don't need to list everything, but a lot of small adjustments add up to a big difference to someone's ability to cope with a disability. So when you see a young and apparently able bodied person sitting in a seat offering extra leg room, or using other facilities provided for people with disabilities don't be too quick to judge, their disability may not be obvious. 



We awaken in others the same attitude of mind that we hold towards them.

A Boy Called Sarah?

Robbie has been promising (or threatening) for weeks that he would take me on a charter trip so that I could experience the ‘wonder’ of Sarah Siddons, the oldest electric locomotive still in traffic. Today was ‘the day’ but when I woke up at some ungodly hour, I told Robbie that I would rather stay in bed. He was not a happy chap, he stomped off and came back bearing a cup of tea to find me still half asleep. When bribery didn’t work, he stamped his foot like Rumpelstiltskin. I am not sure if it was a war dance or a rain dance but it got my attention. Somewhat reluctantly I left my lovely warm duvet and prepared to face rush hour on the railway.

We had no problem finding a parking space at Northampton and after a quick visit to what turned out to be by far the best station toilets all day, we were on our way, heading towards Milton Keynes. We changed there for a Southern service to Harrow and Whealdstone, it was an OK sort of journey except for the catastrophe when I visited the toilet. It was compact in the extreme, I put my hands under the hand wash thingy and it dispensed a large dollop of soap onto my hands, then nothing at all, I tried everything but there was no water! I tried to wipe the soap off my hands with toilet paper, but the paper just stuck to my hands. I returned to my seat leaving a trail of soapy finger marks and attempted to clean my hand with hand sanitizer and wet wipes, but the soap made the wet wipes lather and it got worse rather than better. By the time I was able to wash my hands in the shopping centre at Harrow, there were stinging and sore.

When we reached Harrow and Whealdstone we had to get a bus to Harrow on the Hill. We found a bus with a driver who did not speak English, judging by the price he charged us he must have thought we wanted to buy the bus rather than travel the short distance to Harrow on the Hill! I expected Harrow to be rather posh but the places we saw looked a bit grim and ‘unloved’.

We got to Harrow on the Hill Station to find that the ‘the socks and sandals brigade’ were out in force and wearing their ‘winter uniform’ – I have never seen such a display of dodgy footwear in my life! In fact when I saw such a large gathering of the the gathering of the ‘weird and wonderful’ I had an almost irresistible urge to run . They ranged from the quietly confused through various categories of weirdness to the downright odd. Robbie had to hold on to me to stop me making a dash for freedom. Sarah Siddons was late, but eventually it arrived – I refuse to call a loco that turns up late and breaks down a lot ‘she’ when it is so obviously male!

We found some seats in a compartment and soon we were joined by a chap with a big simile and thankfully few words who liked class 37s. I could have cope with him but my ‘weird magnet’ was working overtime and two seriously strange bods from the South West came to sit next to me. They talked incessantly about quail maps and sections of track that they’d ‘had’. They made it sound like notches on their bedposts! It did not surprise me that they both turned out to be single! I did what any sane person does in such circumstances; I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep.

At Amersham I was entrusted with everyone’s bags, it was like lemming year! There was a mass exodus of men and cameras all hoping to get the perfect shot of Sarah Siddons. As I gazed out of the window at crowds of men milling around carrying cameras with formidable lenses, I couldn’t help wondering if train spotters like trombone players are over compensating for their deficiencies in other areas. After two trips from Harrow on the Hill to Amersham and back I was allowed to escape to the relative sanity of a normal service to Aylesbury. I hadn’t really enjoyed the experience, I was bored and trapped and I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Robbie said that perhaps I just don’t like electric locos, perhaps not, to me it just felt unreal and uninteresting, like a theme park ride with added weirdness. I think I prefer proper rail tours with interesting people and (preferably) diesels.

Aylesbury offered the worst station toilets of the day, they seemed fairly new but they were so badly designed that you had to straddle the toilet in order to shut the cubicle door. The tap that claimed to be the cold tap produced such a powerful burst of uncomfortably hot water that it soaked my top! Why is it so had to provide clean adequate toilet facilities? It may not sound important but passengers remember when companies/stations can’t even get the basics right.

We came back via Marylebone on a Chiltern service. That proved to be the greatest disappointment of the day. It was rubbish, the toilets were in a disgraceful state, no toilet paper, filthy seat, overflowing bin, floor flooded and a broken dryer. Also there was no air con and it was so uncomfortable when we were delayed by about an hour that my asthma played up. There was no wifi, some of the sockets were not working, there was a distinct lack of useful announcements, people had to get refunds for their tea and coffee because the milk was off and the train manager failed to apologise for the delay. The seats were very badly designed, impossible to get in and out of and very uncomfortable. I will steer clear of Chiltern from now on.

The best bit of my whole day was the Virgin Pendolino that we caught on the way home, it was absolutely perfect. We had to get the London Midland service from Rugby, but for once London Midland excelled themselves, it was one of the more comfortable ‘blue’ trains, the toilets were working and it was a pleasant trip back to Northampton.

On The Buses

George Row, Northampton

It's Heritage Weekend, many buildings and places of interest in Northampton were open to the public, but the highlight for Robbie was the old buses. They were taking people on tours around the town via an assortment of interesting places. Robbie didn't seem to mind that some of the buses had never been used in Northampton or even Northamptonshire, but it mattered to me. It was nice to see a couple of our old red buses, but it would have been lovely to have seen one or two of our old green (county) buses. 

This is the bus that Robbie travelled on today

This bus is rather like the one that I used to catch to get home from school it brings back a few memories. I often travelled by bus in those days but I have probably only been on a bus about twice in the last twenty years. I don't really have good or bad memories of buses, they just took you to where you wanted to be and if you were very lucky they were on time. 


As a very young child, I often travelled on the bus to my aunt's house and back. I liked that because our journey took us past Castle Station and my aunt usually let us sit on the top deck so I could look out of the window and see everything going on at the station. There was much more going on in those days, and the bus paused at the traffic lights I could look across towards the goods yard. So I guess for me buses were just a means of seeing the things that I wanted to see!

This is the bus that took me home from school

A Northampton bus conductor

The conductor used to have a little machine with different coloured (and different priced) tickets on rolls, so when you paid your fare he or she just pushed a lever and produced the correct ticket. Most conductors were reasonably cheerful, but when someone decided to modernise the world and change to one man buses the drivers seemed to be as miserable as sin. I disliked one man (or should I say person) operated buses and for me that was when bus travel took a turn for the worse and became something to avoid if at all possible.

Northampton bus tickets

I lived and worked in Sheffield for a while in 1983 and I liked their buses very much because the drivers were not miserable and payment was simple. They had a hopper thing to drop your coins in and the ticket that was produced had an imprint of the coins that you had put in. As far as I recall it was called a videmat ticket machine. I haven't seen that system anywhere else but there again I don't go out of my way to travel by bus. 

So for those like Robbie who are interested in anything with wheels, here are some pictures of the other buses that were out and about in Northampton on Saturday. Robbie is so obsessed that he will be back 'on the buses' on Sunday

Life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor - Homer

Sometimes we are reminded in the most painful way that we are just observers in the drama of other people's lives. On Wednesday evening Robbie was travelling home (by train of course), he left his first train and walked along the platform to wait for his connecting train as he usually does. He noticed what he thought was a train spotter standing on the ramp at the end of the platform rather too close to the track. He alerted station staff and walked towards the man, but while he was still some distance away he saw the man walk onto the track, position himself and then within a matter of seconds be hit by a train. Needless to say Robbie was very upset about it and upset for all those people who had to deal with what had happened.


Seeing something like that is not easily forgotten and not easily processed because it gives rise to a muddle of conflicting emotions. First there is shock and sorrow for a life lost and sadness for those left behind. Then there is anger that someone would make such a selfish choice by killing themselves in such a messy and public way, causing trauma and inconvenience to everyone involved. Anger too that someone would choose to end their life while others fight so hard to stay alive yet lose their battle. 


There are so many thoughts and so many questions, but perhaps the most pressing question is why would anyone feel that such a terrible death was their only option? Was it some terrible shock that had driven him to such desperate action, or perhaps he felt alone and afraid, unable to endure the troubles that life brings. Could it even have been desperation caused by the incorrect assessments and impossible demands of CSA. I know that Robbie felt very close to giving up when he recently received a totally incorrect demand for £17,000.  


Whatever the reason, I hope that this poor man has found peace and I hope that the train driver, station staff and all those who were touched by this tragedy will not suffer lasting effects because of what they witnessed. I also hope that anyone contemplating such a drastic option will reach out to someone close to them and find the help that they so badly need.

Warning - Short, Angry Woman at Large

We have had a problem for some time with things being moved, usually out of reach! That little problem has been more or less resolved because as they say, 'where there's a will there is a way'. I have plenty of determination and I have found a way to reach even the highest shelves  Now it seems that things have started vanishing too and I am not amused. I don't think we are being plagued by a poltergeist, I suspect our 'phantom' is all too human!  


This morning I went to have a bath and the bath plug had 'vanished'. I could have had a shower but I am not so keen on showers and Robbie doesn't like the shower head to be adjusted, so by the time the water gets to my head it feels too heavy - yes really! I decided to have a wash and postpone my bath until I had the plug. That was when things took a turn for the worse, I reached into the little basket by the window where I keep my toothpaste and several other essential bits and bobs. I pulled out the tube that was in the position of my tooth paste and it had mysteriously become a tube of Ralgex! That was a very lucky escape!


Later in the morning I went out to have a bit of 'me time' and to buy a bath plug, it was nice I should do it more often - not the bath plug, the 'me time'. When I got to the shop that sells bath plugs the conspiracy against short people continued, the bath plug was on the highest hook on the rack. There was no one around to help so I selected a metal shelf bracket from a lower hook and used it to reach the item I wanted. Then once I had paid the huge sum of 99p I went home with my personal bath plug and enjoyed a long hot soak. 


Just one word of warning, the culprit should sleep with one eye open in future because I have the Ralgex and I may be tempted to use it ...................!!!