tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5706550528490487802024-03-12T04:51:07.902+00:00A Woman Of No ImportanceA Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.comBlogger606125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-4112552835738560942013-05-21T18:46:00.000+01:002013-05-21T18:46:01.248+01:00It ain't over until the fat lady sings!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This blog is far from over, and yet I am still getting to grips with being back to my humble, ever so humble origins, here on Blogger.<br />
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She's off again, I hear you say!<br />
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Someone stole my bloglet.<br />
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They did! I was sent information to re-new my blog domain. Blog? I didn't even have my own lap-top. You probably noticed. That was in the whole 'soaking a lap-top in gin can never be a good thing', Christmas spectastacle. Truly. I could not afford to renew my licence, but I had no idea what was to happen.next...<br />
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And, do you know, my beloved meaningful blogname was sold to a mad flibbertigibbet. What do you mean, you never noticed?! She is a bism. Of the first degree. I tell yer.<br />
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Abandon her in droves but lover, come back to me?<br />
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Anyhoo, what have I been up to, you ask?<br />
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Nay. More to the point, what have you been up to, mes bloggy chums? <br />
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I have missed your damp noses and warm whiskers. There, I'm chuckling you behind the ears, in that soft-warm spot you have there. There, there...<br />
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I have a special chuckle under the chin for the dahlink, darling John - Scriptor Senex, for it is he, who has restored me to some semblance of normality. Scriptor, whose bold advice brought me back the techie bits of the blog I feared I had lost. And I am sorely grateful to his magnificence, I really am. <img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTHHJHJRbStJKS2_QjxVo9Cj_FVm72mIh4pznhXea3LOoGr-S-L" /><!--3--></div>
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Merci mille, mon ami - And for those of you who don't know John, here he is with his very own barrel of laughs!<br />
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Lots of my memories are here, you see. Strings of silken threads bound up with boiled eggs, toast, love, tea, whiskers and honey. A smidgen of the scent of the love I have for my son, Grizz, who's now 21 and taller than a bean-stalk, but beautiful and half-wild is writ here.<br />
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En effet, I have more heart and memories locked in this bunch of feral words written across the years than I've ever committed anywhere. Perhaps I will be committed. I thought I might be when I lost my blog into the sparky ether. <br />
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Meanwhile, I've been ueber-busy with my psychotherapy course. Much work is now in hand to 'graduate' this summer - I may even post a picture, if I pass... Eek! If they've got a graduation gown that fits my ampule form, that is!<br />
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I've been busy with the new job(s). I have 3. Do you think that's enough? I think so. It's been doing me heid in, I swear... I think I need to ditch one. I am Arthur Mullarding on that just now.<br />
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And, honestly, I've been busy with life which, on occasions, has threatened to strangle all life out of me. Aren't we all, I hear you whisper...<br />
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And we all are.<br />
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Take time out to smell the coffee, the flowers, the fine feathers on a bird's under-wing.<br />
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Take time out for you. Je vous embrasse. Don't be shy!<br />
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Tell me your news. I've missed you so much. Mwah!<!--3--><br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-67163369234264002922013-05-14T17:50:00.000+01:002013-05-14T17:50:01.010+01:00Abnormal Service will be resumed as soon as possible...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Mwah!</div>
<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-84464896959667531162013-03-23T22:44:00.001+00:002013-03-23T22:44:27.959+00:00Testing...A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-79974952595360239332013-01-06T11:34:00.001+00:002013-01-06T11:34:48.730+00:00Frying Tonight!<a href="http://www.foodrepublic.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/enlarge/Tip_Jar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="230" src="http://www.foodrepublic.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/enlarge/Tip_Jar.jpg" width="320" /></a>Well, howdy-doody and a Happy New Year to one and all!<br />
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I am looking forward to a year of better fortune and a calmer time. Do you think that that's too much to ask, mes bloggy chooms?! Other than that, I have made no New Year's resolutions. No.<br />
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However, I pledge not to start the first post of the year with doom and gloom. Cross my heart and hope to die!<br />
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Why ever did we use to say that as children? It sounds very odd now. <br />
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I hope your Christmases were full of nice memories and New Year celebrations brought a peaceful time spent with less dysfunctional families and/or friends...<br />
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This Christmas in the Crawfy household we have been mainly administering to the sick. Cups of sweet black tea, crispy crumpets, that kind of thing. 'Nuff said, soonest mended, methinks...<br />
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Meanwhile in other news: In an alcohol induced haze at New Year I tipped part of a glass of gin and lemon onto my laptop ensuring its hard drive could no longer co-exist on the same planet as Fhina.<br />
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Snap, crackle, pop went the sound, dear readers. My New Year's fizz was nothing in comparison to the sound my dearly departed laptop made when I attempted to switch it on next day. Oops!<br />
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Harken to my recommendations, my dahlinks. Here's a good tip - Do not use your laptop for or as any of the following:<br />
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A tea-tray from whence to eat your boiled egg and toast soldiers of a morning;<br />
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A rat-warming device;<br />
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A coaster for a brimming seasonal glass of gin;<br />
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An erstwhile pillow for a power-nap;<br />
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Ballast;<br />
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Storing really important and sensitive information that you need for your Counselling course, such as a Clinical Log!<br />
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Tip #2: Back up all your data to a reliable source.<br />
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So, what I really mean to say is that if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because Grizz has scarpered back to Uni taking his laptop, which I am currently using and which has a default setting for a font-size that only faerie folk could read!<br />
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I don't presently have the funds for a new lap-top. *Sniffs*<br />
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Think of me while I am missing you terribly, awfully, frightfully.<br />
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...Bloody loads, in fact!<br />
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Meanwhile, for me, some eye-candy!<br />
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And breathe... And listen to my fantasy paramour, Mr John Smith with This Killer Wave - Just like the one that swallowed my laptop!</div>
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-71650006560333865832012-12-21T18:00:00.003+00:002012-12-21T18:02:08.087+00:00Ding dong merrily on high!<a href="http://www.everett-white.com/images/20081222152056_winter%20solstice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://www.everett-white.com/images/20081222152056_winter%20solstice.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Festive Solstice and Happy Hanukah!<br />
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I haven't been here to blog as I've been <strike>planning world peace,</strike> <strike>building an ark,</strike> <strike>fighting crime,</strike> learning all about my new job as a Housing Support Worker to women with mental health issues...<br />
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I've been a bit busy to be honest. I'm not sure where the time has gone, but I am cream crackered. My husband has been practically house-bound for three weeks with a gammy leg and foot; I've had my birthday and celebrated with dinner with some lovely ladies what I know; I've been last-minute Christmas pressie sorting (I got most of my bits and pieces earlier this year for folk, but always save my husband and son to last to buy for, so I can still feel some of the rush and magic of Christmas shopping) - This year I just wanted to cry, though! And I didn't have dashing Earl Grey (this is his monument in the centre of Newcastle) to wipe my tears...<br />
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I felt a bit weepy owing to the fact that it wasn't very pleasant, traipsing through the shops that evening, barging my way away from rude folk who ought to know better and that made me sad, and I was due to go to college for counselling supervision at 8 p.m. and I was dog-tired, and I was also panicking about what I needed to do for my final assessment for my Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling, and fast running out of time...<br />
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I've subsequently sort of decided to postpone my last piece of work, which would have been due to be handed in on 7 January, as it'd only be likely to turn me into an English female version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas! What with the new job starting and everything, I need to be a bit kinder to me, I think.<br />
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Said new job is going fine - The service users I'm working with are lovely and interesting women and I feel comfortable working with them, although it's obviously not counselling I'll be doing in this job - That will be my next job, hopefully - Or maybe I'll somehow manage to combine the two - Who knows?! I don't, for sure.<br />
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And so. Last week at work I decorated a Christmas tree, bundled a wheel-chair user into my car, sniffed a damp hall carpet, patted a dog, chuckled with some grand-babies, and got lost in a massive housing estate - This photo shows just a smidgen of it. I also found time to get my hair cut as I was starting to look as if I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. Voila!<br />
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Oops, I forgot you can't see me!<br />
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So, my son is home from Uni, I've got a tree to find and decorate, some pressies to sort and wrap, some course-work to complete, some films to watch and the house to clean. And I'm working Christmas and New Year's eves - Yikes!<br />
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Meanwhile in two days off I've done a wash-load for my son, and found that I'd only gone and washed some clean clothes he'd brought home - D'oh! There are days like these. And others live in worse states. As I now know.<br />
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Anyhoo, fond blessings to you all. I'm bound to blog over the Chrimbo, with the onset of rapid cabin fever and so on!<br />
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Thank you for entering my giveaway - The two winners are number 1 - The fabulous <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/05732924562630675589">Mac n' Janet</a>, and number 19 - gorgeous <a href="http://scriptorsenex.blogspot.co.uk/">Scriptor Senex</a> , randomly selected by Mr Peg-Leg from the comfort of his sick-bed.<br />
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Let me have your postal addresses, peeps, and I'll be sending your sweet little parcels of tat out once the Christmas post starts to behave itself again, I pwomise.<br />
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Big hugs to you. Thanks for visiting and making me love you.<br />
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Don't dodge that mistletoe - "It's behind you" - Come 'ere! <br />
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Mwah!<br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-15855566795129005162012-11-04T12:54:00.000+00:002012-11-04T17:59:15.324+00:00Trees 'r' good... And a giveaway!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I am sitting, nay recumbent, on the sofa on a Sunday morning. I've been up since half seven, in spite of longing for a lie-in, and I'm trawling my interwebs, filling the dishwasher, feeding the fire its logs, and so on...<br />
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Suddenly, (I've never been able to say or write 'all of a sudden', since a belovedly Bohemian English teacher of mine, a throwback to the fabulously hippy Sixties, hell she even had a cigarette holder!), said 'Whenever one hears 'all of a sudden', one always thinks 'a big black puddin' came flying through the air!')... Suddenly I am startled from my zombie-like reveries by the whirring and whining of a chainsaw. Peering through the frosty morning, I am not wholly surprised to find two neighbours steadily dismantling a tree in my garden.<br />
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Am I alone in wondering, I wonder, whether a partner is supposed to communicate such things to his <strike>much beloved</strike> other half of thirty <strike>(long, long, bloody long)</strike> years, when he's taken out a contract on the tree with two of our neighbours who he met at the pub?!<br />
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Yes, he's been whining and whinging like the chainsaw for a while about the tree. About a year, in fact. Not that I've noticed. Much. Yes, it interferes with our otherwise uninterrupted view of the hills. Yes, it blocks our way up the garden path. A bit. And, admittedly, it was growing terribly close to the telephone wires that lead to all 17 houses that form our neighbours in the top half of the terrace (we're in the middle. -Ish).<br />
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But the last straw for the tree came yesterday, when our neighbours' new kitty, Pepper, decided it was an ideal vantage point from which to spy and snare young birds. We used to have cats as pets. I grew to love them and now I miss them dearly. But going all snacky-snacky on young birds was 'Verboten'. As much as you can ever verbote cats not to trap birds...<br />
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Sample bird commonly seen in Fhina's garden. (NB: No birds were harmed during the writing of this blog).<br />
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So, as much as I liked to see the green leaves blowing gently in light breezes, and as much as I hate to cut down any living thing, the tree's days were numbered. Its time was up. It was soon to be an ex-tree. And as much as I thought I could replicate Owly, a wooden sculpture which I blogged about earlier, within the tree, it was far too skinny to do so, when I looked at it realistically.<br />
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And now the chainsaw has ceased its whirr, I have had my lazy bath and have managed not to flash the neighbours cutting down the tree, when I shimmied out of the bath-towel in my bedroom which overlooks the garden.<br />
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And here I am once again gazing out of the window. This time at a patch of blue sky with a frosty, but fluffy, white cloud skimming across it on this golden autumnal morning. The tree is no more. It has ceased to be. But wonders never cease. The sun is shining, and I am amazed at the symmetry once again restored to the garden's outlook, where once there was only untidy tree in sight. Now the green-golden-copper beech hedge, split in twain by the garden gate, can yawn without interruption. The gateway is more clear. I can see the road and the hills beyond.<br />
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<strike>I shall eat my words.</strike><br />
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I live and breathe. Sadly, the tree does no longer. I think the tree was a bit of a metaphor for how stuck I've been. How hard I find it to let things go.<br />
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How good is/are your partner(s) at communicating, I wonder, mes bloggy chums? Do you take the rough with the smooth. Is your communication with one another a bit like the tree of life, with lumps and bumps along the way, or does it flow like a river-stream under shady willows?<br />
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Do you still experience surprises, sometimes on a daily basis like I do? What are your expectations of them? <strike>Do they drive you mad?</strike> How do you cope?<br />
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Answers in the box below - Oh, and please do follow me, if you don't already. I have lost a few followers recently and the numbers go up and down like a navvy's breeches, and I have an oh, so fragile ego... <br />
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Ramble over - One random answer, or rather answer selected at random, will receive a <strike>hastily</strike> carefully chosen bijou <strike>bit of tat</strike> trinket from somewhere about my home, as I strive to de-clutter and free my mindspace for more <strike>sane</strike> sensible things...<br />
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I hope you will like it. I have a no returns policy.<br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-44329661134534952462012-10-26T00:30:00.000+01:002012-10-26T00:30:01.455+01:00Loving Molly Anne...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I want to pay a little tribute to a wonderful lady that I never ever had the pleasure of meeting, but I know her darling daughter well, for which fact and whose friendship I am humongously grateful...<br />
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Molly Anne Fabre, late of <a href="http://theviewfromthisend.blogspot.co.uk/">The View from this End </a>was a writer and an artist, a lover of dogs, her French husband, JP, her family, her home and her history. She told stories about her early childhood that made me cry. She and her siblings were serially abandoned by her mother into the non-care of horrific nuns, and yet (in spite of her name, which I understood as Moany, rather than Mo-Annie(!), until corrected by her loving and dutiful daughter, Sara,), Moannie never seemed to actually moan about her lot in life. She spoke about things factually, but from the heart, and with real emotion. And my heart, my rescuer's heart, bled for her.</div>
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Moannie wrote in a way that seemed as if it flowed from her like a running river; It was as if it were vital for her to get everything, every fact of her existence, out there into the world - To be counted, to count as a woman. ...She adored comments on her stories, often replying to every one, and she was a faithful and loyal supporter of other bloggers. </div>
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Sometimes when I would write about how I missed my own mother, who passed on a week later than Moannie did this year in October of 1996, in fact, Moannie would appear in my comments box with soothing, caring words, making me feel warm, held, appreciated and supported. <br />
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I don't think she ever knew what exactly she meant to me in those many moments... </div>
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Sara took this photo of her Mum in the summer. It became her favourite. <br />
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Moannie had an indomitable spirit, or so it seemed to us in Blogland. She oozed vitality, fun, feisty wit, and a maybe not so quiet strength.</div>
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Hers had been a life of journeys, onwards and upwards. Of adventure. Of reaching out to people. And being reached. And met.</div>
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Finally, the view from this end stories moved indelibly into the present, with Moannie telling us about her battle with cancer (which she called the Fecker). She dictated her words bravely from her hospice bed when she could no longer use Paco her pc and, when she was too unwell, Sara took up her 'pen' to tell us all how Moannie was faring. </div>
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This was dignified and touchingly beautiful. And bloody hard. And fucking brave. I never find endings easy. We talk about having a 'good death'. What can that mean? Is it even possible?<br />
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I have ferreted back in time, and found these words to me from Moannie, which seem to sum up the very essence of how she was to us here in Blogland, those of us fortunate enough to have known her: <br />
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The context here is that I was whingeing and worrying about a forthcoming operation,<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">"Dear Fhina, you know the fact that you have made me cry shows how much this Blogging phenomena magically bonds us all together; how we all rush to hug away hurt, and strive to find the right words to soothe aching hearts. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">And the truth is that it is not psuedo, pretend, fake caring - Why would we spend time in false words? The pain we feel for you is as real as the sun, moon and stars. We are real friends even though we shall never meet". </span><br />
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What more can be said?<br />
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Well, if we can see ourselves reflected back in the words and eyes and souls of others; when we know we have made an impact, then we can know we have lived life to the full. Molly Anne will be terribly missed.<br />
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I know she was very partial to a handsome Frenchman!<br />
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...And, I like these words from the subject, Marcel Proust. I once spent a week in a big house right on the golden beach-front in Trouville, Normandy, that had been turned into flats. In the nineteenth century it had been a hotel that Proust himself stayed in and was also painted by Monet.<br />
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These words are principally for Sara, and at the same time, I hope they may stand for all of us who continue to miss the faces we loved:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">“Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">At the present time, this is not yet possible. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power ... that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.” </span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">― </span><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/233619.Marcel_Proust" style="background-color: white; color: #666600; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;">Marcel Proust</a><br />
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A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-48120496392541574002012-10-21T14:09:00.000+01:002012-10-21T14:09:35.224+01:00Moments in life...<a href="http://www.andrewsgray.com/sold/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/best-seat-middle-earth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://www.andrewsgray.com/sold/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/best-seat-middle-earth.jpg" width="320" /></a>This week I have been nursing a humdinger of a cold. It has made me spend almost a day in bed and many more hours sitting around feeling not so much miserable, but a bit frustrated that it doesn't appear to be shifting very quickly...<div>
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Before that, I was on a bit of a high, given that I heard I'd been made reserve candidate in the second job I'd gone for - It did wonders for my self-esteem that I had come second in a job that I felt I'd love. There's a six month probation period for the successful candidate, so if it doesn't work out for her then the job may still be mine. I took some comfort in that, after so many months of applying for jobs and not hearing nottin'.</div>
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Latterly, we held a little informal ceremony for the infirm ratty I mentioned in my last post who sadly passed last weekend. He joined his brother in the front garden, carried in a linen shift, and I picked a few blackberries and a small apple from the tree to help him on his way, this next stage of his journey, little sweet, cheeky thing that he was.</div>
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The weather meantime has been intermittently sodden in Northumberland, with rivers flowing full to bursting, and autumnal bright. On two evenings the mist has rolled into the valley, swathing fields and trees in white gauze, bringing a fresh dampness with it and a gleaming crescent moon.</div>
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I'm trying to notice things more. To be mindful. I advocate that my anxious clients connect to their mindfulness, seeing beauty where they might otherwise have rushed through, overwhelmed with thoughts and deeds. A red leaf, tinged with gold. The tricolours showing on a green bush. The white hindquarters of a flitting deer, vanishing into the hedgerow in front of my car. </div>
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I strive for my clients to connect more closely with themselves, to be more real. And so I felt it was time enough for me to begin to practice what I so dearly preach.</div>
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Of course, with the shoe on the other foot, I noticed two toddlers travelling in a double decker buggy passing by me in the crowded city streets just the other day, as I sat down in the sunshine to eat a hummus and falafel wrap on a bench that's also a work of urban art, with words by Julia Darling, late of Newcastle, whose grave I mentioned recently... I didn't know that until I just googled the bench - I shall try to be more watchful in future...</div>
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<a href="http://www.juliadarling.co.uk/public/glass.html">LINKIE</a></div>
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I was thinking how lovely they looked, the babies - How interested in the life that they were passing through, and then I noticed the set and grim criminal features of the mum and dad pushing the buggy. The image that came to me was that these boys would be likely to grow up to be the next Kray Twins. Nature versus nurture in action. I felt the chill of the day through the sunshine and thought about how judgemental I can be. </div>
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...And mental too!</div>
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I have been listening to this, this sunny but cold Sunday, while my neighbour hammers wood into the ground somewhere on his property, like a demon - Oh, I can feel it in my bones... And Alfie's voice is like balm to my troubled soul. I adore this song.</div>
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Be mindful, peeps!</div>
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Beautiful photography of Northumberland by Andrew S. Gray.com - <a href="http://photos.andrewsgray.com/">PLEASE CLICK ON LINK TO GO TO HIS SITE</a></div>
A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-59474858878254026572012-10-04T17:57:00.000+01:002012-10-04T17:57:11.773+01:00This-ish week in headlines!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Eek! Hello, you caught me there en deshabillee - Hardly a moment to get me curlers in!<br />
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This week I have done the following mad, bad and dangerous-to-know things:<br />
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1. Done the zombie hand dance thing to Michael Jackson's Thriller while driving the car home on my own. NB: The road before and behind me was totally empty, and no animals were harmed during this *ahem* episode...<br />
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Come on, you know you've all done it!<br />
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2. Shouted "Owly!" out of the same car window to greet a wooden carved owl that I pass on my way to my voluntary unpaid work...<br />
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3. Shouted "Owly!" when I passed him again on my way home - I love seeing him, he brightens my day...<br />
Am I that easily pleased?!<br />
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4. Considered that, if I love Owly so much, I should see if I could commission one for my own garden. Bugger saving for a Louis Vuitton handbag that I couldn't take out in the rain!<br />
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5. Read up all over the internet about the elderly pet rat who has lost the use of his hind legs. No, not the rat from last time, the other - really fit and healthy-cheeky rat. Still, he is managing some quality of life, in spite of his debility. And that's what t'Internets told me, whispering through a chink in the door.<br />
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6. Managed to sleep almost one full night through without waking with insomnia or a full bladder. Blissdom.<br />
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7. Had an interview for a job that I thought I really, really, really wanted. It was for a charity working with the Armed Forces on an air-base near to home. I had to be photographed for my pass and everything. They didn't ring me back. The girl following me in for interview looked about 12. Still, I left on a high as it had felt like I hadn't done too badly, and an interview in this rat-shitty day- and economically-depressed-age IS an interview after all.<br />
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8. Accepted a part-time job working for a national housing charity. Hopefully, I'll be working with folk who are recovering from mental health issues, as they settle in to their tenancies. That was the 'woohoo' moment I mentioned in my last post. I also think this success has contributed to my missing last night's regular bout of insomnia. Woohoo times two!<br />
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9. Bought my charity Christmas cards from Mind, a mental health charity, what else? I found a beautiful (and dirt-cheap (£17.49)) black lace dress at the same time, on the off chance I'd need it for a Christmas 'do' when and if I found work, and look what happened at 8. The dress is exactly like this one, but in black, bien sur - Many Stevie-like swishy skirt moments ahead, methinks!<br />
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10. Stopped desperately applying for any and all jobs. I'll still keep my eye out, of course. My job is to cover someone's sick leave, so you never know, they might come back and snatch it right from under my snotty nose after the 6 months is up! <br />
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Meantime, that other thing that I was desperately worried about for several months on end, you know that thing that I mentioned last time that was tearing out my heart and bleeding my soul. The thing that concerned me but didn't entirely concern me, so I couldn't really blog about it? Well, it hasn't wholly been resolved, but I can sort-of stop worrying myself to bits about it for a wee while. <br />
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Woohoo!<br />
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Plus ca change, say the Froglingtons. Plus ca reste la meme chose, indeed.<br />
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Anyhoo, I've a pub quiz to get prepared for, so watch out, mes bloggy loves! <br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-25664999344309051912012-09-26T19:06:00.000+01:002012-09-27T09:17:25.227+01:00Just me and my shadow...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have had a woohoo-shit-crap-feck of a weekend after a fair to middling week. Pardon my French. All of the above was bleated by me out into the ether at some point(s). <br />
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Least said, soonest mended methinks. <br />
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I might tell you more about the bad bits when I have stopped grinding my teeth down in panic and sleep-walking the floors at stupid o'clock before dawn. Then again I might not, as it doesn't just concern me and I don't wish to air laundry that is not strictly mine own.<br />
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But there again life is friendly here in Blogland, and so I am sitting, awaiting the second episode of Downton Abbey, while biting my lip and nursing a sickly, probably dying, pet rat. I live it large, mes peuples!<br />
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In another world. A period world, in fact. Here at Crawford Towers, I am morphing into Dame Maggie Smith, who plays Dowager Countess of Grantham. I've always loved Maggie Smith. And now Shirley Maclaine has joined the cast. I've always loved Shirley Maclaine. I've read all of her books. Well, nearly all of her books... Some of them are proper bonkers. (They're the ones I've read!)<br />
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I wish I had an iota of either of their aplomb. Their rabid tongues. Their wonderful put-downs... I do. To be able to give THAT kind of tongue-lashing. It might make me a less anxious person...<br />
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In this world, I was so distracted a week or so ago, as I stood in a car-park in a queue of chattering people in front of a badly behaving ticket machine that I missed someone important, another famous actor. <br />
<br />
...I was being a skinflint without a job in sight, desperate not to feed the machine anything more than the requisite several pence and I only had pound and two-pound coins in my purse. I also didn't want to give the car-park nazis (don't judge, you know they are) more than I absolutely needed to. The council would probably spend it on new uniforms and shiny badges for them and not some of the shabby potholes in my country roads. Well, not my roads, as I don't own them, as such. Crawford Towers may be grand, if small in scale, (two-up, two-down with extensions adding valuable space to live in, which I've filled with boxes of crap, of course), but I don't have an estate...<br />
<br />
Yet.<br />
<br />
But they are scarily holey after last winter. And it looks as if this winter is going to be a doozy after a horrifyingly wet summer. At one point, I started to put together bits and pieces to build an ark. I had the two rats already, natch, as a starter for ten. (Edited to add, we've had further flooding since the weekend and since I wrote this, (see picture from yesterday below), and I haven't even been able to get out of the house for two days for the fords at the bottom of the hill Crawford Towers is perched on are flooded, and I have no landline to speak of and internet access that is equivalent to the local woodpecker chipping out words with his beak on stone tablets...)<br />
<br />
Anyhoo, the rambling button on the blog was on there, and I've also been texting an old, old friend while writing this, so there's really no excuse. Clicks 'send'.<br />
<br />
So, back in the car-park. I managed to exchange one of my pound coins for several bits of silver shrapnel by chatting up the lady behind me in the queue, while the gaggle of mainly men in front of us continued to try to coax the machine to behave. She seemed a little distracted herself, but I thought maybe it was just me and my heightened state putting her off. <br />
<br />
I approached the machine finally, grabbed my puny, almost illegible ticket and was setting off for my twenty minute trolley-dash around the supermarket, when she tapped me on the arm and said, 'No wonder you were so overcome there, with all that fuss about the money, you just missed Robson Green.' <br />
<br />
'Wha'????!!!'<br />
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'No, you're joking!' I cried. 'Yes!' she squeaked, her eyes moist with excitement. 'Where was he? How did I miss him?!' I asked.<br />
<br />
'He was right there, in front of you', she went on - 'You could have touched him!' At this, she licked her lips and looked rather salacious. She glowed with glee. 'Well, where is he now?' I blurted...<br />
<br />
All the people around me (including the more-than-usually-excited male pensioners), pointed in the same direction and with my bat's-eye focus, I saw him (at least I think it was him) crossing the road over to Marks and Spencer.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I think I might be losing my marbles.<br />
<br />
Who said, 'Again?!' Was it you, <a href="http://scriptorsenex.blogspot.co.uk/">Scriptor Senex?</a><br />
<br />
Pah!<br />
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<br />
'Jewellery'/Stitch Marker symbols pic courtesy of this seller on Etsy <a href="http://www.etsy.com/listing/59190534/british-expletives-stitchmarkers">CLICKIE</a>A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-41054891787452267102012-09-16T20:54:00.001+01:002012-09-17T10:13:45.143+01:00The World At His Feet...<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m currently catching up via Sky Plus with the latest episodes of the
new Dallas (heck, it’s like it’s never been away!</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I adore S’wellin’.), waiting for Downton Abbey to return to my telly-box, and running a Spyware
check on my laptop.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">My schlepptop seems to lurch from one virus to another
these days. And for someone who doesn’t
download great balls of *&)T from the vast bowels of t’Internet, I don’t
know what else to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Currently I’m also delivering cupfuls of hot lemon,
ginger and Manuka honey to the bedroom, as hubby languishes there, coughing,
spluttering, and just generally making the house a more unhealthy place to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The lemon and honey sore throat recipe comes courtesy of darling
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/rosaria.williams.5">Rosaria Williams.</a> I made it up, she says it can be left
in the fridge for up to two months, and it’s amazing. I’m already making up a second batch. I wonder if it’ll work on the laptop?!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s been a long summer.
Not hot. It’s been frightfully
wet. A bit grey. Some very wearing heat. The midges have thrived. I've been nibbled and scarred over my arms. Wonderful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I came back from Paris some weeks ago and I’ve got on top
of the laundry again. When I say ‘on
top’, what I mean is that there’s nothing left to wash and, since I no longer
iron, smoothed but still wrinkled clothes lie strewn decorously (or not!) in baskets about the house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I used to watch Dallas back then. When I ironed like a good ‘un in the
Eighties. When shoulder pads reigned (come on, we all wore them - Even the men!), and it seemed like the world was at my feet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now, I feel like I’m at the feet of the world, as I
strain to find a job in this difficult economic climate. And, to top it all, I’ve had some anxieties
about stuff going on elsewhere in the family.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We just never stop worrying about our children, do we?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I was talking to a fabulous octogenarian lady, Ella, the
night of our pub’s Annual Leek Club. I
came 18<sup>th</sup>, and very proud of it, I was too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">(NB: There are 25 members in the Leek Club. 1 lady has got so old she couldn’t remember
to submit any leeks this year for the show.
‘No-one told me to grow leeks’, she cried... That'll be me one day.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I know, I’m rambling. That's what I do - Unhitch yer wagon if you don't like the odd (and I mean odd!) ramble or two!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ella and her husband, Don, are very dignified people. Always beautifully turned out. Caring and loving. She was telling me about her children, who
are older than me, and her grand-children, who are almost twenty years younger
than me. We sat and whiled away the
evening. The Leek Club Champion, who’d
just got married that same week, passed around the silver cup, filled to the
brim with the whiskey that he’d won in that evening’s raffle. (He won three raffle prizes, his luck seems
to be in! He told me he'd also had a very modest win with the Lottery, yikes!) Like the true Pagans we are descended from, we each took a sip from the burnished cup, drinking to his health and his good
luck. And hoping a little bit of his luck will rub off on each of us for next year's show.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ella told me how she’s never stopped caring about how her
children are doing. Not for one
minute. She was describing how she
moved from their childhood home just a few years’ back. She is pleased she was able to give her
children and the grandbairns the memories of growing up in a safe, rural
location, where there were lots of freedoms and, above all, fun...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’ve tried to do that for my young ‘un. And this year, I’ve noticed him getting more
and more anxious about his studies.
I’ve seen his fingernails bitten down to the quick. Wherever did he pick up that habit? Not from me... Perhaps the angst is passed down in the
genetic makeup? That’s not so good a
feeling to have as a parent. I hope
I’ve given him lots of fun too. I know I have always known, and shown to him, just what love I hold for him. Just how much he means to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So now I’m giving him the free rein he needs. To make the decisions he wants to make about this part of his future. I’ve never pushed him into anything, as
such. Pushy parent, not moi? Helicopter parenting? I try not to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But I’m worried about this next year, or so, in his life
(and mine), and what it will bring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There. Enough
said. If I keep on phasing in and out
at the blog, that’s generally why. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m
an anxious person. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m strong, but I’m
also vulnerable sometimes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That’s
me. Pleased to meet you!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But, can anyone tell me, how come the dead woman from Desperate Housewives has managed to get to Dallas and marry Bobby?!</span></div>
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A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-59398627610437156672012-08-21T13:16:00.000+01:002012-08-21T13:26:46.716+01:00Paris Part Deux...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Paris, in all her gay abandon, sizzled.<br />
<br />
It was warm. I did get rather hot under the collar. But I breathed her beauty in. It was heavily rose-scented, like petals can smell on a dusky evening, with a caramel top-note... Paris has generally stopped smelling of wee, after many years of trying to get it right. Her aroma is once more enchanting.<br />
<br />
And, once I'd learned the words for walking cane/stick and crutch at the pharmacist's, we were away!<br />
<br />
My OH's foot became sore with walking. (Sh)It happens from time to time. Particularly more so this year in the life of the Travelling Fhina. I left him en lit, while I went to scour the local traders to see if I could find a cane to help him get up and about.<br />
<br />
Having googled the word for stick on an American tourist's travelblog, I felt able to cope with the local pharmacy in Montmartre, which was exceptionally busy. Wandering quickly past the tempting displays of products designed to keep Frenchwomen toned and souple, I spied some walking sticks. Pretty enough for me to carry about, they were festooned with more flowers than you'd see at a Church Festival. And they were scarily expensive - 'Trop cher pour moi', I intoned, to no-one in particular.<br />
<br />
I sauntered down a back-street. It was day-time after all. Back-streets are where it is actually happening in Paris. Where all life is at. Glimpsed from a bus off the Rue de Richelieu, people go about their daily lives there, hidden from the average tourist. Here, see the children play. There the baker is open (in central Paris, in August!). Corner cafes are brimful of locals, stopping for some gossip and small beer. <br />
<br />
All beer is small in Paris. To be savoured and sampled by the thimbleful. Vase-styled glasses of frothing ale are for tourists. Like Fhina. I wandered on, stopping only to buy two cheese salad filled baguettes to take back to sustain The English Patient.<br />
<br />
As is the case in Paris, you don't have to go far before you find another pharmacy. There are little neighbourhoods everywhere... I lost count of the number of opticians I espied. (More about that spectacle later!)<br />
<br />
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Anyhoo, this pharmacy was quiet, just down from the Moulin Rouge. I explained to the young assistant that my husband had, among other words, '...un pied arthritique'. I'm not sure if that was the right saying, but I was going with it, in full flow, arms waving like said windmill. <br />
<br />
I asked for, 'Une canne, svp?'<br />
<br />
She tootled in to the back of the shop and emerged to place two packets on the counter. One was to be smoothed liberally across the foot, the other was to be sprinkled into the shoes...<br />
<br />
I struggled on - 'He has an arthritic foot, he has difficulty walking, I need to get him a cane, not a cream...'<br />
<br />
She looked at me like I was talking another language... To her I probably was.<br />
<br />
'And what's the powder for?' - I couldn't help myself. Perhaps the French had discovered a cure for arthritic conditions that no other nation yet shared?<br />
<br />
'For the athlete's foot - 'athletique', she said...<br />
<br />
I became at that humid moment in time the Facepalm emoticon.<br />
<br />
I mouthed 'a walking stick', and mimed it, drawing a peppermint candy cane in the air. A reassuringly young pharmacist, bespectacled (always a good sign), came to my rescue.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://www.anvari.org/db/fun/Cute_Kids/Candy%20Cane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.anvari.org/db/fun/Cute_Kids/Candy%20Cane.jpg" /></a>'Une can-ne', he said to his assistant. 'Mais, but I heard, 'un-e crem-e'' she cried...</div>
<br />
I know I'm from the north, but really. My accent isn't all that thick.<br />
<br />
He emerged once more with a suitably medical looking implement, a sort of stick/crutch,showing me how to lengthen and shorten it and how my hubby should walk with it, his arm at a jaunty 45 degree angle - 'Never straight!', he chastised.<br />
<br />
Filled with delight, but also with fear at what this was going to cost my holiday budget, I trepidatiously asked the price. He smiled and said that this particular model would cost around nineteen euros. Phew, for the cost of three large vases of blanche, I had procured a reason to return to the hotel room. At last.<br />
<br />
With my purchases in hand, I practically whistled my way through the streets of Pigalle. <br />
<br />
I found that anyone dodgy-looking swiftly moved out of my way on account of that cane I was brandishing.<br />
<br />
Next episode: Finish this sentence: 'As blind as a...'<br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-88271518536254772922012-08-10T14:06:00.002+01:002012-08-10T14:06:27.466+01:00La Vie d'Une Fee Electrique. (The life of an electric fairy!)There is nothing like sitting in a cafe in the City of Lights to offer balm to a troubled soul...<br />
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Well, unless you're absolutely skint, that is!<br />
<br />
Paris, pronounced for the uninitiatied as 'Paree', (say the 'ee' sound very quickly, like a whisper to a lover), is not for the faint of heart.<br />
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Coming back to this Elysian paradise every couple of years or so, restaurants we have adored moved further and further out of our affordability sphere. It ain't cheap, so don't be, but if you are a lover of art, or an artist, or someone who loves anything or anyone, then come to Paris.<br />
<br />
At least once.<br />
<br />
But not in a group, holding hands and following someone carrying an umbrella. Or a fan, I kid you not.<br />
<br />
And don't try to do it all in a week. Or even a month. Paris deserves ever more of your time. She will wait for you, after all... That's her over there, sipping an absinthe and powdering her nose. Later she's going to be gilding those eyelashes of hers and putting on Le Rouge Coco. She's going out for the night. She might not come home.<br />
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Paris never ceases to surprise me.<br />
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Here, I breathe in works of art (Dufy and Matisse) and architecture (all of it). I wander through shady back-streets looking for signs of La Belle Epoque, that were not hoovered away by Baron Haussmann. <br />
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I drink slightly too much in shabby-oh-not-so-chic cafes with transvestites and somewhat dodgy clientele. I can't afford to stay longer at the bar, where a glass of red sets me back about nine euros. I wish I could stay and hear more of their stories... <br />
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I revel in la vie quotidienne here - As quirky as it comes...<br />
<br />
From watching le Patron of our tiny neighbourhood bar-resto shooing away a scarily un-dressed lady, d'un certain age, hovering in front of his gentilhommes regulars, and bending suggestively to pick up her Louis Vuitton bag-sized dog so that the world could see her ample 'balcon', to watching the happy bin-collection blokies on their afternoon rounds, waving to le Patron, to sitting at Le Danton with my beau for two leisurely hours, counting how few cars at the crossroads of the Boulevard St-Germain and the Boul' St.-Mich' pass through Paris without any dints, bashes, scrapes or other injuries!<br />
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All the chic women in Paris seem to walk across crossings on red with only a cigarette for protection. <br />
<br />
I fear for their lives. Either the smoking will get them, or the traffic will.<br />
<br />
I eschew other tourists. Or at least I try to. It's not so easy in Paris.<br />
<br />
In August. Are there any Japanese left in Japan?!<br />
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The ones that aren't frequenting Starbucks, that is.<br />
<br />
Why go to Starbucks when you are in the European capital of Cafe Culture?<br />
<br />
Je ne comprends pas.<br />
<br />
But I do understand the lure that Paris exerts on me. For she is always waiting to be discovered.<br />
<br />
And today the sun is shining. I feel rested and I want to go explore La Cimitiere de Montmartre. Monsieur Degas is over there. We have a date for cafe au lait. I think I'm paying.<br />
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A toute a l'heure, mes bloggy chums! <br />
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Oh, and owing to a dodgy internet connection, I can't post any piccies - Sorry about that!A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-85422810073087472172012-08-02T14:50:00.000+01:002012-08-02T14:53:10.449+01:00A propos of nothing much...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've never waited so long between blog posts. What has become of me?<br />
<br />
Moreover, what have I become?!<br />
<br />
I've been to London to see the Queen, as you know. I even got a specially produced tag - You know, like the one Paddington Bear wears? It was given to me by my dear friend, Donty, who also accompanied me at the end of May to our Buckingham Palace Garden Party. One of only two to be held this year, in the back gardens of Buck Palace. In her Majesty's (no, not Madonna! FGS...) Jubilee Year 'n' all. <br />
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It was fab. More later, I pwomise. Here's a mere tastette, it's about as much as we saw of the Queen, to be fair - The lure of cucumber and mint sandwiches and delicious cakies was too much, I'm afraid! We never even saw the rest of the royal party - When the second line formed after Queenie had passed by us, we sauntered off to the tea tent for second helpings, and to find somewhere nice to rest our feet. I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled!<br />
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What have I been up to else you cry? Well, perhaps you don't - Perhaps there's fewer of you there than before to care. Pity me, came the even louder cry.<br />
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Whelk, I've been busy.<br />
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Busy doing nothing.<br />
<br />
No, busy being busy - Working at my voluntary job, applying for jobs (I even applied for security work for the Olympics, getting caught up in the whole G4S fiasco - Do you believe it? Moi??!); I've been rounding up bits of my course (ongoing), signing up for next year's Psychotherapy programme. In addition, I've been wrestling lions of anxiety fighting with the cheetahs of fear and self-doubt, as well as trying to sort out the dregs and pieces of my family's own anxieties. Perhaps theirs are wolves. Or tigers. They're certainly not as fun and bouncy as tiggers, to be sure.<br />
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A truly troubling time has been had by all. <br />
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I've been in avoidance of having much fun here, to be fair, as life was just getting a bit raw around the edges.<br />
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And now? I'm still waiting for the clouds to clear and the day to become brighter.<br />
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Sometimes life is just a little bit hard, is it not?!<br />
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I think so.<br />
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See you soon, my darlings. <br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-71097883949975912242012-05-30T00:33:00.001+01:002012-05-30T00:33:00.922+01:00Question...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-f6Q32PaIZ83UyZEbROGqUSF3pkYeeTW0RO4LJacQ4ZeXB9At8yYQ0bDyaz3JDICvjUKGhIAA0mutUBMoQpWBiKFDuWMyofPYII8VupeacOXvAxZz2anPi3rnYYNRhTGDJwJ1FciL48/s1600/tumbleweed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-f6Q32PaIZ83UyZEbROGqUSF3pkYeeTW0RO4LJacQ4ZeXB9At8yYQ0bDyaz3JDICvjUKGhIAA0mutUBMoQpWBiKFDuWMyofPYII8VupeacOXvAxZz2anPi3rnYYNRhTGDJwJ1FciL48/s320/tumbleweed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Is it just me, or has it gone incredibly quiet in Blogworld recently?A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-65456512649521959752012-05-27T18:11:00.000+01:002012-05-27T18:11:13.120+01:00A la recherche du temps perdu...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Good grief, this is my longest ever absence from my blog...<br />
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Merci bien to those of you who have wondered what has become of me.<br />
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I wonder that too.<br />
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The blog and I are indivisible, interchangeable, entwined and forever linked by our shared memory.<br />
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But stuff sometimes gets in the way, as I think we've all found. De temps en temps, as they say in the land of frogs' legs and mussels in wine.<br />
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I know we were all suffering from the winter blues a bit chez Crawford Towers. Winter seemed as if it was having a revenge for not having been harsh enough and signs of spring were tardy in their emergence.<br />
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Even the little lambkins were struggling, it was so cold, damp and miserable, as only the Green, Green Grass of Home can be here in the UK...<br />
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Meantime, we walked through treacle at the Towers. Grizzler came home from Uni for Easter and we were treading on egg-shells around his lithe form, recumbent upon the sofa, in all His Majesty. It's his second year. He's a lot like his Mum, and I struggled like a b@rsteward through my second year, I mustard mitt...<br />
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Finally, the stress is over. Even temporarily. (Breathes sigh of gin mixed with relief!)<br />
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And then, for the past couple of weeks, it's been unseasonably warm and I've had pet baby leeks to pot on, pet rats to wrangle and my trip to London to see the Queen to plan.<br />
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As of tomorrow, it's upon me. Yayyyyy! <br />
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My GBF Donty may be even more excited than me by the prospect. We're going to see What The Butler Saw by Joe Orton, as well as just generally being degenerate across the city. <br />
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Well, we're almost 50, who could blame us?!<br />
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Soon I'm going to share a recent textexchange we had. It certainly made me laugh out loud.<br />
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I needed to laugh muchly, as my tears and anxiety have been too oft my companions these past few weeks, while I've been a la recherche de something. I don't think it was temps perdu.<br />
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Perhaps it was, after all.<br />
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A toute a l'heure mes bloggy may-blossoms. Je vous aime.<br />
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Beaucoup!<br />
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I shall give your best to the Queen. Probably while I'm tripping over a corgi or two! LOL...<br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-42988916709949591462012-04-28T23:18:00.001+01:002012-04-28T23:18:34.635+01:00Meanderings Of An Unforgotten Life.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I haven't forgotten about blogging...<br />
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Or you!A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-60228421121275631632012-04-06T16:35:00.000+01:002012-04-06T16:47:46.569+01:00The Red Shoes...<br />
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Last time I was here I mentioned my latest pair of shiny red shoes. I wear red shoes a lot. They're my 'go to' shoe! And, unlike many women, I'm not a big shoe person. I try to hold onto comfortable shoes for years, and hate buying new ones, as I fear they will tear my tender toots to shreds.</div>
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As they often do!</div>
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I like handbags, though. I've got a red clutch bag that I adore and wish I could use more. It's very like this one, made by <a href="http://karinasbags.co.uk/?r=731">Karina Hesketh</a>, via <a href="http://office.logodesign.co.uk/preview/pinuppolly.com/index.php/about-pinuppolly">Pin Up Polly</a>.</div>
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So, red shoes. I'd never really thought about it until a therapist, not mine, noticed my shoes recently - She drew an analogy to the film, Red Shoes, by Powell and Pressburger. A film that I'm not terribly familiar with - About why I choose red shoes... What draws me to them. </div>
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I like the colour red, for a start. I'm currently sitting by the heart(h) of my home and it's painted a warm dark, almost-blood-red. So are two other walls in the room. The rug under my feet is deep red wool with a small Rennie Mackintosh-style rose stripe. </div>
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This has got me thinking now. My kettle is a red Duralit model. We've only just thrown out the matching toaster, because it no longer functioned as it ought. The new one is silver and looks like a commercial toaster - I like tough things! I'm prone to being a little bit cack-handed when it comes to handling implements...</div>
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I started to ponder on the subject of red shoes. And then I realised that I don't think I've ever been without a red pair - of boots or shoes - in my wardrobe.</div>
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I have a short 'Pixie'-like pair of boots for winter. Once they're on my feet, I hardly ever take them off. Lourdes knows what I'll do when they finally wear out! I'm hoping they won't. Ever.<br />
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I've also got a calf length pair which I haven't seen since before last winter, and when the kitchen renovations began a lot of schtuff went off with the house-faeries! </div>
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Thinking back to the Eighties, I wore a matching pair of teetering court shoes in rotation for my work in a factory shop-floor's office - Very <a href="http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/rag_trade/">'The Rag Trade' </a>- One was blue, one red. </div>
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At University I remember going with my then boyfriend, now my husband, and his friend to a shop in the city where I fell for a long red pair of lovelies that kept my tootsies warm for years...</div>
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I wore flat shoes a lot then. Turquoise pumps with a yellow star across the front. I remember another pair that were orange with green soles. I like colour in my life and I'm not afraid of it. For years I did steer clear of black as it made me look very pale. Now I've made my peace with black. I've also always had a black pair of shoes too, while I'm on about it.</div>
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Black and red - I used to wear black and red combined back in the Eighties. A colleague said he believed they were my 'war-like colours'. I might have been angry during some of those years, when I couldn't achieve promotion at work, owing to recruitment freezes, in spite of my bosses telling me I should have ambitions towards promotion. I became a little twisted then. All those years seem so far away from my life as a fledgeling counsellor and soon to be trainee psychotherapist now, I must admit...</div>
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My favourite ever car was my red Alfa Romeo. We had an earlier mustard model, but the red stole my heart until it rusted to scrap on the drive-way. I thought it looked like a crouched tiger when it wasn't moving. Red obviously features muchly in my life.</div>
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Why?</div>
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I found this short article - Well, why do the work, when someone else has? I'm <strike>lazy</strike> good like that!</div>
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"Scientists have finally made a breakthrough, tackling an important issue close to the hearts of many people: “<em>Why do women wear red shoes?</em>”</div>
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Dr Elaine Webster, a Sociologist from Otago University, New Zealand has spent the past six months asking why women wear red shoes. And, she has concluded that young women wear them for excitement, and out of a desire to be noticed; whilst most men associate red shoes with sex and sin.</div>
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Dr Webster, whose long term interest is “dress and identity” conducted the research after being impressed with the way that women spoke about their red shoes. She said:</div>
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Women always say ‘my red shoes make me feel great, I love my red shoes’. They never say ‘I love my brown shoes’.</div>
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Many of the women interviewed made a connection between their red shoes and <em>Red Shoes</em>, the film of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale, or Dorothy from <em>The Wizard of Oz</em>.</div>
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Dr Webster believes footwear, more than any other items of clothing, has a special quality in our lives. And red shoes are a way to lift you out of a drab and ordinary existence. She stated:</div>
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Women and some men wear red shoes because they’re really wanting a richer and more exciting life than the one they are living."</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">So, I have no life but live in and through my dreams. 'Nuff said, non?!</span>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">You knew that anyway, right? </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">I think I need to put a clause in my will to ensure that when I dance off this mortal coil I'm buried with a pair!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">Oh, and Happy Ostara by the way! Mwah! Gotcha with a big fat slobbery, but nice, kissy-poo!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">Serves you right for lingering over my red shoes!</span>A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-6032044167313521122012-03-29T15:07:00.000+01:002012-03-29T15:12:36.943+01:00Somewhere over the rainbow...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been over <a href="http://madmanicmamas.blogspot.co.uk/">HERE</a> at Mad, Manic Mamas twice this week.<br />
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Blink, and you missed me! I deleted my first post there, after getting some enormously helpful advice.<br />
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My bad.<br />
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Also, I'm going to share with you the delights and delectations of my life this past week and a bit, since my sojourn, walking with the dead:<br />
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I bought some beautifully decadent (albeit practical) red shoes from Fly London to replace my last pair of red shoes from Clarks, a style incidentally which I've been wearing for several years but which they no longer make... (Weeps).<br />
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I nursed my son, who came back from Uni with a stomach bug and 'flu, back to health and back into his flat (apartment) again! The <strike>bugger</strike> boy takes up far too much space on the sofa!<br />
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I've had a two-day stomach bug and 'flu in return, which was nice.<br />
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I've been overly anxious about Some Stuff, including losing a friend who seems to have slipped from my life.<br />
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I've created a Facebook account for this blog. See button in sidebar.<br />
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I've forgotten the password for that account. And the Googlemail account associated with it!<br />
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I've put my first ever item up for sale on E-bay. (Other auction sites are available)... <strike>I need the money.</strike> I'm <strike>successfully</strike> down-sizing.<br />
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I've tried to stop some compulsive skin itching and skin picking things that I've had for <strike>years</strike> a while, without understanding they might be linked with a disorder associated with anxiety, and also with self-harm. Eek!<br />
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I'm talking about it, because many people feel such shame attached to it, and because some others may not even be aware that they do it.<br />
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I'm nice like that, see?<br />
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I'm about to embark upon another intensive weekend of psychotherapy training. Help me, Jesus and Mary Chain!<br />
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I bought and did not yet watch.<br />
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This DVD.<br />
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And this one!<br />
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(My guilty pleasure).<br />
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I got very into this piece of TV.<br />
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The high temperature and stomach bug that rooted me to the house probably helped me have the concentration to enjoy it, but I did!<br />
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I do like Kiefer Sutherland. And he's less raspy than in 24, which means I don't have to turn the volume up too loud to annoy the neighbours, who appear to have been using this unexpectedly fine March weather to bang, drill and hammer <strike>nine bells of shite</strike> away to their heart's content. Whatever can they be up to?<br />
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<strike>They're probably getting their own back on me for the racket I made putting in my new kitchen.</strike><br />
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<strike>No, I haven't forgotten that I still need to put down new flooring and decorate.</strike><br />
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<strike>And, no, I hadn't forgotten that I promised you a bloggy Oscar Giveaway on this very page...</strike><br />
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I've been too <strike>lazy,</strike> <strike>half-arsed,</strike> <strike>ill,</strike> busy.<br />
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Love you anyway! Oh, and here's a pic of me in my sexy new red shoes!<br />
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You want me, don't you!<br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-17545543144400796182012-03-19T00:00:00.000+00:002012-03-19T00:00:02.226+00:00...She electrified the ordinary.<br />
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Original picture courtesy of <a href="http://losingit.me.uk/2010/02/17/weight-and-stuff-report-17-february-2010">Les Bessant.</a></h3>
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Good grief, I find that this is my 600th post. "I have wasted my life!" ;) <br />
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I have tried to resurrect a fallen blog-post, and I have failed - This is long, read it and weep. I did! (Not really).<br />
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Indelible, Miraculous</h3>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">friend, think of your breath</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">on a cold pane of glass</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">you can write your name there</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">with an outstretched finger</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">or frosted, untouched grass</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">in the early morning, a place</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">where you can dance alone</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">leave your footprints there</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">a deep pool of silver water</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">waits for you to make waves</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">the beach is clean after the storm</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">the tide has washed away yesterday</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">we all matter, we are all</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">indelible, miraculous, here</span></div>
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This is Julia Darling's poem, which inspired the title of my 'lost' blog post I was lamenting earlier this weekend.</div>
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Since then, there has been much whining into over-filled cups and glasses, but I have got a grip of myself and will be undaunted by the Beast of Blogger.</div>
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Nil carborundum illegitemii, as they say in Genoa. Ooh, that's made me think of cake now!<br />
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<span style="line-height: 1.6em;">So, last week I was inspired to take a pleasant walk, having bought a local guide book from the City Library. On Mondays and Wednesdays I spend some time in the Library </span><strike style="line-height: 1.6em;">lazing</strike><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">, </span><strike style="line-height: 1.6em;">slouching</strike><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">, studying for my course and I occasionally peruse the little book bargains there - At the same time I managed to procure a book for my hubby that concerns 'Disaster Glasses' - Terribly peculiar to the North East, these are the locally made glasses, rather amateurly engraved, which commemorate memorable events, such as pit disasters (hence the name 'Disaster Glasses' silly, do keep up!), drownings, and occasionally something far more pleasant, such as the opening of a bridge! It wasn't all doom and gloom, whippets and flat-caps oop North, I'll 'ave you know! The book was £1. Bargin, innit?!!</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.nationalglasscentre.com/geisha/inc/img.php/geisha/assets/images/IMG_8504.1.JPG/710/600/contain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://www.nationalglasscentre.com/geisha/inc/img.php/geisha/assets/images/IMG_8504.1.JPG/710/600/contain.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Anyhoo, I treated myself to a little giftette for Mother's Day - Doesn't every Mum get herself something?! No? Just me then! </div>
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The book I parted with a few scheckels for concerns the history and inhabitants of Jesmond Old Cemetery, near to Newcastle.</div>
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The cemetery was set up in the 1830's, as was the famous Highgate in London, to attract the more wealthy paying 'guests', who would reserve plots in the grounds or even in the catacombs, to spend their wee small hours in peace and tranquillity, amid butterflies and birds...</div>
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I love old cemeteries, me! Especially those in Paris.</div>
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Armed with the guidebook, I passed through the architect John Dobson's white stone gates and started to walk amid the monuments and graves. The cemetery has been rather neglected for years, smothered in sharp bracken and greedy ivy and here, an angel with arms outstretched heavenwards had lost her hands. There a smaller angel stood to attention before the broken gravestone of the man whose tomb she had once stood atop. I myself was standing at the foot of the largest monument - To Archibald Read, when I was very rudely assailed by The Hound of the Baskervilles!<br />
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<span style="line-height: 1.6em;">I stood, rooted to the spot, as a mighty black dog of some description, probably wolfhound crossed with yer actual wolf, via Florida crocodile and Shetland Pony, and here he was lolloping in my general direction, with intent, long tongue dangling from a mouthful of razorbill teeth, ears flailing, eyes raving! He looped around me, as I grabbed a pillar of the monument to steady myself. In the distance The Hoond's owners wandered into view, as he bounded up at me again, then halted sharply as they called his name, rather hoarsely. I didn't catch his name, the blood was rushing so in my ears!</span></div>
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They saw me rigid there and apologised, chastising The Hoond roundly, heading in a different direction with the Beast, a brown dachshund, for some inexplicable reason on a lead, and another hairy misfit, also leashed... I called after them, "I thought it was the Hound of the Baskervilles!" They laughed nervously. I think I've been watching too much of Jeremy Brett's The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes of a morning, for sure!<br />
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Whither The Hoond, I wondered? </div>
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I wandered on, past architect (Dobson) and Victorian philanthropist (Laing), by famous merchants (Fenwicks and Bainbridge's) and someone who at one time was the fattest man in Britain, landlord of the Duke of Wellington in the city. There was even a famous artist, whose resting spot I never found.<br />
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I found the day mild and the company fascinating. The earth was moist underfoot, anticipating the warmth of spring to come. The air stood still, and the silence was only broken as bracken crackled in my path and snagged at my legs. M<span style="line-height: 1.6em;">idges </span><span style="line-height: 1.6em;">buzzed around me, full of life and as annoying as hell. A raven cawed.</span><br />
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More recently brought to earth, here was a former SAS soldier whose stone was marked "Connie", for his name had been Peter William Francis. I chuckled at a memory that was not mine, but I felt privileged to share - In the midst of life, etc...<br />
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What caught my eye as I moved through the newly emerging stones, as much work is ongoing to resurrect the cemetery to something of its former glory, a table-like mild grey stone caught my eye. Here, the writer and poet Julia Darling was buried in 2005. She was 48. My own age. Cancer carried her from the world, leaving two daughters from her marriage, and her partner of 15 years, Bev. Julia's grave carries that eternal symbol of the sisterhood of women...<br />
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I traced it with my fingers. Julia's words, <span style="line-height: 1.6em;">winding their way around the stone, chosen by her, intrigued me - "We all matter, we are all / indelible, miraculous, here..."</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.6em;">As we are. And on that note, I shall draw matters to a close here with her poem End, which foreshadowed her sad but accepting exit, so it happens...</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 1.6em;">For more information on the bold Julia, click <a href="http://www.juliadarling.co.uk/">HERE</a>. I hope I haven't made you sad with my long blog...</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 1.6em;">Anyway, Easter - or Ostara - is just around the corner and I've seen some springy new lambs already, so all's right with the world, non?!</span></div>
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End</h3>
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Eventually, I was placed on a bed like a boat<br />
in an empty room with sky filled windows,<br />
with azure blue pillows, the leopard-like quilt.</div>
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It was English tea time, with the kind of light<br />
that electrifies the ordinary. It had just stopped raining.<br />
Beads of water on glass glittered like secrets.</div>
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In another room they were baking, mulling wine.<br />
I was warm with cloves, melting butter, demerara,<br />
and wearing your pyjamas. My felt slippers</div>
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waited on the floor. Then the door opened<br />
soundlessly, and I climbed out of bed.<br />
It was like slipping onto the back of a horse,</div>
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and the room folded in, like a pop up story<br />
then the house, and the Vale. Even the songs<br />
and prayers tidied themselves into grooves</div>
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and the impossible hospital lay down its chimneys<br />
its sluices, tired doctors, and waiting room chairs.<br />
And I came here. It was easy to leave.</div>
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<br /></div>A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-69913056580065320962012-03-17T17:27:00.000+00:002012-03-17T17:30:24.978+00:00...we all matter, we are all / indelible, miraculous, here...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I just lost all of this earlier post, and I think I'm about to cry - Short of trying to resurrect it, I feel embittered and worn out by the bar-steward that is Blogger. Excuse my French cousin!<br />
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It was a really nice post, inspired by a recent walk in a cemetery, embellished by having encountered the grave of an author and poet, Julia Darling, who died in 2005 at my very own age...<br />
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I was enchanted by the words she chose for her flat, table-like gravestone, some of which form all I have left of the post now - Its title, as above.<br />
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I then wrote the post, for over an hour this morning - Went back into it to finish it off, having selected some lovely photos, and then Blogger deleted all my words and pictures when I pressed something, which wasn't the Delete button, and then auto-saved, like the bar-steward that it usually never is!!!<br />
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I might re-write it, but I do remember I used to only type in Wordpad, or something similar, and then I got to trusting Blogger again.<br />
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More fule moi...<br />
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I know I won't remember all of it, and I'm sad about that.<br />
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Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!<br />
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Julia's friends used her words, and spelled out "She electrified the ordinary", around the stone as well...<br />
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I wish, one day, somebody could find themselves wanting to say something similar about me, I guess.<br />
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Meanwhile, Blogger needs to be taken in hand by an electric chair!A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-75348224468462763612012-03-11T11:28:00.001+00:002012-03-11T16:53:40.816+00:00The Versatile Blogger Award...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My dear bloggy friend, <a href="http://scriptorsenex.blogspot.com/">Scriptor Senex</a>, was very kind enough to offer me his Versatile Blogger Award - Blushing, moi?!<br />
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It came on a day when I was feeling a little whimpery, thinking I was a boring old sod, so it meant a lot to me - it did! Thank you, Sir!<br />
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As a sideline, I have to gift you the following - Seven Factlets About Moi...<br />
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1. I hate housework, so I do very little of it - Can you see my shameful face, children...?<br />
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2. I have had only one therapy session in which I haven't cried since I was referred to a personal therapist last year! Why?! I'm one of those people, yes those, who wanted to be a therapist to support others, but didn't for the life of me imagine that I needed therapy - Go figure!<br />
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3. I think everyone in the world would benefit from some therapy in their life - Hell, if I didn't think I needed it, and I'm seeing the benefits, who knows what it could do for you?! My business card is in the post - I'm very reasonable!<br />
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4. In spite of my hunger for culture and the arts, I love nothing more than lying in in bed of an occasional weekday morning, watching The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes on TV, or Judge Judy, or even little bits of The Real Housewives of Name Your State. I am THAT shameful!<br />
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5. For two years, like the delightfully versatile Scriptor Senex, I've been studying my Family Tree, from time to time - I've discovered a long-distant grandfather who was buried on Holy Island in the 1700's, after serving the island for many years, when he fled from Scotland and having all his furniture burnt in front of the Manse, for saying he wouldn't pray for William and Mary - I long to see his will which is in Durham's archives... <br />
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In addition, I found a distant-distant aunt who was a maid to a well-known Justice of the Peace - they both lived in <a href="http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/wordsworth-house/">Wordsworth's birthplace in Cockermouth</a> - I am astounded! I can't find records of her marriage or death, so the trail went cold, sadly, but still fascinating...<br />
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I also discovered that lots and lots of my relatives lived within five miles of where I've come to be living now - I pass some of the farms on which they worked every day, and one of the water-driven woollen mills that they worked in during the mid-1800's is now a holiday complex - <a href="http://www.the-oldmill.co.uk/">HERE</a> - Bizarre, hein...<br />
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6. Haven't I told you everything already?! Sixth factlet... I think I'm running out! I gave up chocolate in January - For six months. The story that I'm managing this addiction well is nothing to do with the fact that I've substituted cake in its place... Can you see how red Fhina's cheeks are, children? No?! Then, you're obviously not looking close enough, lol! <br />
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Seriously, I don't know how I'm going to manage Easter without a chocolate egg!<br />
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7. Oh no, not more... I really struggle with people who are control freaks in their lives - I can feel the blood boiling under my skin when, for example, someone wants to micro-manage me to within an inch of my life. I am a grown-up, people, I don't need hand-rearing!<br />
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There you have it.<br />
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I think I have to pick 7 bloggers to carry the baton, so here goes - Remember, you don't have to if you don't want to... :<br />
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1. Sara @ <a href="http://fabfeistyandfifty.blogspot.com/">Fab, feisty and fifty</a> - My best bloggy amie - She's terrific! Her newest baby is <a href="http://www.bagdiva.co.uk/">HERE</a> - She's a Bag Diva Extraordinaire!<br />
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2. SueAnn, @ <a href="http://wwwsueann.blogspot.com/">SueAnn's Journey </a>- who's a fabulously versatile artist and blogger - Her art is immense!<br />
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3. Desiree, the glamourously splendiferous model, who blogs at <a href="http://pullyoursoxup.blogspot.com/">Pull Your Socks Up</a>. Elle est incroyable!<br />
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4. The lovely Elisabeth @ <a href="http://sixthinline.blogspot.com/">Sixth In Line</a> who writes like she was born to it, and never ceases to amaze... <br />
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5. Bad Penny @ <a href="http://pennyshenhouse.blogspot.com/">The Hen House</a> who's incredibly versatile and wonderful - She has such a full and fabulous life, I get quite dizzy when I read her blog!<br />
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6. A new reader, follower and writer <a href="http://loveandenterprise.blogspot.com/">Love and Enterprise</a> - Sharing some of the things that make us human - Thank you! I don't know where some of my followers have gone to these days - You win some, you lose some - All are welcome here!<br />
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7. And finally, last but never least: <a href="http://mrsjoneshomethoughts.blogspot.com/">Mrs Jones Home Thoughts from Home</a> - Between knitting, crochet, gardening, art, making jewellery and playing the saxophone in a super band, Mrs Jones continues to make me open my eyes wide with glee! <br />
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So, there you have it - Have fun, bon courage, mes bloggy chums!<br />
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Mwah!<br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-86727422323778055522012-03-05T00:17:00.024+00:002012-03-05T00:17:00.058+00:00Me, myself, I... And the other angels...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I pinched this from a lovely lady - Given that I have not been a good blogger lately - I am currently fighting a pitched battle with my last-but-one assignment for year 3 of my counselling course and am nursing a snozzly beak at the moment as I have another cold! I thought I could just cheat a little and run a sort of meme...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Everybody say "Ahhhhhh!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There's another instalment of this bilge, by the way, when I realised this posting was pretty long in the tooth!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyhoo, here are 11 random facts about me - Courtesy of the delightfully wonderful and wild Vix, Queen of West Midlands Vintage, she's 'on tour' with Gilbert the Camper at the moment, but she usually blogs magnificently chez <a href="http://vintagevixon.blogspot.com/">Vintage Vixon:</a></span></div>
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<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I played the violin from the age of 9 to 19;</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I never knew it, but my great grandfather had been the Second Violinist in an important working men's orchestra in my town in the Thirties...</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I love stained glass art and studied it for 6 years - I am just waiting for the right time to get back there... This art is by Sylvia Laks - Gorge!</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I speak three languages well, and two more badly! </span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I am addicted to cheese and biscuits!</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I grow competition leeks - I think you knew that, already?!</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Gerry Rafferty is such a musical hero of mine - It's a year now since he died...</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I've never read anything by the Mitfords - The idea is anathema to me because of the characters!</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I've written seven chapters of a novel, but then my laptop broke, so I don't know if I'll ever be able to get it, or that time, back!</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I worry too much that I'm not a very interesting person and have sneaking paranoia when I'm stressed...</span></span></li>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/Sy7ELeDoMOI/AAAAAAAAB6g/zFYMVCQuK38/s800/13-Interesting-Facts-about-Dreams-flowers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/Sy7ELeDoMOI/AAAAAAAAB6g/zFYMVCQuK38/s320/13-Interesting-Facts-about-Dreams-flowers.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here's <a href="http://vainglorysinner.blogspot.com/" style="color: #191919; text-decoration: none;">Sandy's</a> questions:</span></span></div>
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<ul style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 2.5em; padding-right: 2.5em; padding-top: 0px;">
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">What is your favourite dessert? I am a stickler for anything chocolatey these days, so Tiramisu! (NB: Currently I am trying to do without chocolate for 6 months - I may not survive!)</span></span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">If you could live in any decade which would it be and why? I think as I've already lived through some of my dream era - The Sixties - although I was a bit young to appreciate it, I'll plump for the Edwardian era - I'm currently fascinated by it...</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">What is your favourite Disney film? Was Bedknobs and Broomsticks Disney?</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">Who is your favourite historical person and why? I'm very fond of Marie Stopes, for without whom we would still be living in the dark ages for women's health...</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">What is your favourite book? Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It's true! Reader, I married him!</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">If you were given £1000 to spend in any one place, where would you choose? I'd be off to Paris in a squeak! Here, in fact, the Old Navy on the Rive Gauche...</span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="http://tellmewhere.us/media/f/09F81322-2E7F-4DC6-A817-13F4618976E4.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://tellmewhere.us/media/f/09F81322-2E7F-4DC6-A817-13F4618976E4.jpeg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<ul style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 2.5em; padding-right: 2.5em; padding-top: 0px;">
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">What is your favourite childhood memory? Of my Dad pulling me along on a sledge through the shallow snow as we traversed the pavements of my childhood town on our way home in the twilight. He had made my sledge for me. I have such happy memories of it. And him.</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">If you could hold a dinner with only 2 other guests (dead or alive, celebrity or historical) who would they be? Oscar Wilde - for his wit and the gossip, and Stevie Nicks, because I'm an obsessive fan, lol!</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">What would you choose to be your last supper? Cheese on toast as made by my late Dad. No-one has ever made it nicer, before or since...</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">Name one beauty product you couldn't live without. Toothpaste! If we're talking proper make-up then it'd be lip salve!</span></li>
<li style="margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Paris, most definitely - For the culture and scenery, for the food and quirkiness of the people - I'd also have a pied-a-terre in Nice, for the sunshine and faded grandeur! </span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here are Sue's</span></div>
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<ul style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 2.5em; padding-right: 2.5em; padding-top: 0px;">
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">What was the name of your first love? He was called Brian - I know if I met him again today we'd hug as if we were best friends - We were both five when we met and then were parted for years when my family moved house, until we met again in our twenties par hasard - The big bear hug I got in front of my husband, who was with me, needed some explaining later!</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">What was the first car you owned? Goodness me! It was a Lada Riva, which I could never drive very well, but the first car that was mine own was a 'C' reg Nissan Micra. Nowadays I drive a Nissan X-Trail and it's just as easy to handle as the Micra, believe it or not! </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">Who is your favourite TV character? I think it's Wile E. Coyote - I love the fact that he's perpetually thwarted, and never gives up...</span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="http://www.alexross.com/opticular.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.alexross.com/opticular.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>
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<ul style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 2.5em; padding-right: 2.5em; padding-top: 0px;">
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">How did you meet your partner? I met him at a University ceilidh - He'd gone with his sister, my then-friend. Our eyes met and that was it! (In reality, I asked him to dance with me and he drove me home - He said later I wasn't his type, but I think I terrified him into asking me out!) </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">What pisses you off the most? Like Vix, bigotry and I'd add racism.</span></li>
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">If you weren't living where you are now, where would you live and why? See above for Paris.</span></li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9pUICHiNwcaOCdh1Pfa69jIiojilowwATQL19zUTpOHwqQZ2jaSGRV7FuflZOVW8Xg-Xsqff9eZFM5IxGxT0TJiBmjGGYN1-PUYGrE6zk93G_v3MbRmzHwi02yKb4sgg-DhoE9Mp1EtY/s1600/BOMBAY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9pUICHiNwcaOCdh1Pfa69jIiojilowwATQL19zUTpOHwqQZ2jaSGRV7FuflZOVW8Xg-Xsqff9eZFM5IxGxT0TJiBmjGGYN1-PUYGrE6zk93G_v3MbRmzHwi02yKb4sgg-DhoE9Mp1EtY/s320/BOMBAY.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">What's your favourite drink? Mine's a Guinness or a Bombay Sapphire and Slimline Tonic. I also like the odd pint of Lime and Soda to wet my whistle! </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">Confess something naughty! I once 'lifted' a particularly pretty glass from my table when I was at a conference - It slipped into my conference goodie bag nicely when no-one was looking - It's a particularly vivid turquoise glass and I still have it... That and a perky cream Novotel mug which caught my eye about fifteen years ago at another conference! I promise you, I don't make a habit of it - I is a good girl really! </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">If you could be reincarnated, who would you be and why? I wouldn't mind a spell as a famous female author or poet, someone like Joanne Harris or Elizabeth Barrett, who was married to Robert Browning and whose poetry inspired Poe and Emily Dickinson - I'd like a life devoted to writing and lounging, I think. </span></li>
</ul>
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<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">What skill would you like to learn? I'd love to be able to sing properly - I love it, but I am awful at it! </span></li>
<li style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; line-height: 1.4; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">If this was your last day on the planet, how would you spend it? With my family and friends, telling them how much they mean to me - We'd be on a sunny beach somewhere, eating nibbles and sipping all kinds of exotic cocktails and we'd be at peace with one another and the world...</span></li>
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</div>A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-38384885462435342812012-03-01T11:53:00.001+00:002012-03-01T17:03:37.496+00:00A few words from our sponsor...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://apageofmyown.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/words-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://apageofmyown.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/words-1.jpg" width="247" /></a></div>
Hello Campers,<br />
<br />
About to post a mega-length blog, so just a short one todays!<br />
<br />
Please, those of you who have the word verification torture on your blogs, please (for the sake of my sanity) remove them!<br />
<br />
I cannot be arsed with any more faffing about with your comment boxes and the practically unreadable script it wants me to retype, and then my computer throws a hissy fit and chucks me out, while it apparently attempts to download all 97 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica!<br />
<br />
I live in the wiles of the country - Oop North, where the dragons and bears be...<br />
<br />
My BT webmaster thingie goes about as fast as a knackered antique spinning wheel would. <br />
<br />
Yes, that fast! It's not the Infinity warp factor speed gizmo. No. Some days it'd be quicker if I could comment on blogs longhand. Seriously.<br />
<br />
Just letting you know. If you have that nonsense, that's it from me comments-wise. For. Ever. <br />
<br />
(And that includes my beloved <a href="http://theviewfromthisend.blogspot.com/">Moannie</a>, from whose blog I have just returned with much gnashing of teeth and a complete re-boot of my system. Or two!)<br />
<br />
So there!<br />
<br />
I don't get the trolls on my blog really, and I've been here over two years now. <br />
<br />
I don't allow anonymouse comments, that is all I need - The Chinese spammers will spam whatever we do - They're Chinese. They're allowed to be inscrutable.<br />
<br />
Don't make me release the flying monkeys.<br />
<br />
They always make such a mess!A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-570655052849048780.post-40022930404046635092012-02-23T12:41:00.001+00:002012-02-23T12:45:53.917+00:00Film 2012...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/content/images/2006/11/21/tyneside_frontage_300x400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/content/images/2006/11/21/tyneside_frontage_300x400.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
Alright, I know I've been absent a bit. Pretty vacant, really!<br />
<br />
I've been working like a dog, sleeping like a (an insomniac log), and eating like a hog for days...<br />
<br />
This week has been a pretty tough one, and I have an Intensive Weekend of creative skills practice and psychotherapy coming up.<br />
<br />
Yesterday I treated myself, as I'd been working so hard, and I went to see The Descendants.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/CWHNXJ1K4yA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
The fact that George Clooney was in it had nothing to do with me going to the cinema for only the second time this year! I have a lot of catching up to do with movies when all this study is over...<br />
<br />
Review: I liked it. I think it's too easy to knock popular, so-called middle-of-the-road movies that deal with the 'worried well' (because they don't have problems too?!). I mean, what's two hours in the cinema unless you've had to labour over tragic socio-demographic mores and plundered your social conscience that we should all 'do more' to help others...? Or you've managed to shoot up a couple of aliens, terrorists, or more?<br />
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This is a gentle film. Relational, true to life, banal, if you like.... I read it described as tragi-comic - I laughed in parts, but managed not to sniffle my way through it - So the therapy must be working, right?<br />
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I loved the soundtrack, featuring real, beautiful and poignant Hawaiian music and musicians. If it doesn't get best soundtrack for the Oscars (I don't even know if it's been short-listed), I'll eat my Buckingham Palace hat! <a href="http://youtu.be/tjC_sxk9LOs">CLICKIE</a> for a taster, and even more lovely <a href="http://youtu.be/Ba92EDMF7_o">CLICKIE HERE.</a><br />
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I enjoyed the little quirky touches - A goat tethered to a house-lawn, Clooney inelegantly schlepping half a mile to a friend's house in ill-fitting boat shoes, looking every inch the harried rich Dad that he portrays. He seems to have slipped under the skin of his character. He's not playing Clooney the Charmer here. <br />
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I loved the supporting cast, all brilliant, including a beach-bum cameo by Beau Bridges, one of my favourite actors. Clooney's teenaged daughter, played by Shailene Woodley, will surely be tipped for even bigger things.<br />
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In other words, the first film I went to see this year was The Artist.<br />
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Would you be surprised if I said I loved it? Perhaps you think me easily pleased. Maybe I am. There are some things about me I might not want to change.<br />
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The love of simple films is one of them.<br />
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Go see The Artist, if you haven't already. Don't watch the trailer on YouTube - It gives the game away. I hate it when a trailer does that - I prefer to keep my expectations suspended, as if in aspic. I like to make my own mind up about a movie.<br />
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The Artist is a wonderful and beautiful film too, very French, very entertaining. It pays lots of homage to earlier silents and even surrealist movies...<br />
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It's brilliant. A classic. Clever. So redolent of the Thirties. The stars are terribly talented, especially DuJardin who epitomises the stars of the era, like a cross between John Gilbert and Douglas Fairbanks Junior. <br />
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The 'coat scene' with Berenice is truly moving. I felt she came somewhere between Mary Pickford and Louise Brooks. The dog, Uggie, is a true star, obviously. I found it a very touching and unique movie.<br />
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It may sweep the red carpet at the Oscars. J'adore Les Oscars. <a href="http://www.awomanofnoimportance.com/2010/03/blog-oscars.html">CLICKIE. </a> <br />
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Remember, Fhina's Bloggy Oscar Give-away will be coming around soon!<br />
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Meantime, here is a little, behind the scenes vignette. It's en Francais. Gird yer loins!<br />
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<br />A Woman Of No Importancehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02194976046531063422noreply@blogger.com10