Ding dong merrily on high!

I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Festive Solstice and Happy Hanukah!

I haven't been here to blog as I've been planning world peace, building an ark, fighting crime, learning all about my new job as a Housing Support Worker to women with mental health issues...

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...

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...

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.

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.

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!

Oops, I forgot you can't see me!

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!

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.

Anyhoo, fond blessings to you all.   I'm bound to blog over the Chrimbo, with the onset of rapid cabin fever and so on!

Thank you for entering my giveaway - The two winners are number 1 - The fabulous Mac n' Janet, and number 19 - gorgeous Scriptor Senex , randomly selected by Mr Peg-Leg from the comfort of his sick-bed.

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.

Big hugs to you.   Thanks for visiting and making me love you.

Don't dodge that mistletoe - "It's behind you" - Come 'ere!  

Mwah!

Somewhere over the rainbow...

I've been over HERE at Mad, Manic Mamas twice this week.

Blink, and you missed me!   I deleted my first post there, after getting some enormously helpful advice.

My bad.

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:

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).

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 bugger boy takes up far too much space on the sofa!

I've had a two-day stomach bug and 'flu in return, which was nice.

I've been overly anxious about Some Stuff, including losing a friend who seems to have slipped from my life.

I've created a Facebook account for this blog.   See button in sidebar.

I've forgotten the password for that account.   And the Googlemail account associated with it!

I've put my first ever item up for sale on E-bay.   (Other auction sites are available)...   I need the money.   I'm successfully down-sizing.

I've tried to stop some compulsive skin itching and skin picking things that I've had for years a while, without understanding they might be linked with a disorder associated with anxiety, and also with self-harm.   Eek!

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.

I'm nice like that, see?

I'm about to embark upon another intensive weekend of psychotherapy training.   Help me, Jesus and Mary Chain!

I bought and did not yet watch.

This DVD.

And this one!

(My guilty pleasure).

I got very into this piece of TV.

The high temperature and stomach bug that rooted me to the house probably helped me have the concentration to enjoy it, but I did!

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 nine bells of shite away to their heart's content.   Whatever can they be up to?

They're probably getting their own back on me for the racket I made putting in my new kitchen.


No, I haven't forgotten that I still need to put down new flooring and decorate.


And, no, I hadn't forgotten that I promised you a bloggy Oscar Giveaway on this very page...


I've been too lazy, half-arsed, ill, busy.

Love you anyway!   Oh, and here's a pic of me in my sexy new red shoes!

You want me, don't you!

Happy New Year - New me? Know me?!

Well, this Christmas and New Year holiday has been a bold, relatively quiet and muchly daft one...

We've had no snow to speak of - Just a few short flurries which didn't do any damage - Do you remember, we've been snowed in for the past three years until cabin fever set in and I threatened to eat the chair legs!

We've been mainly ferrying a somnambulent and nocturnal teen (he turns 20 in February *gasp*), as he segued from one social appointment to another, returning every other day to refuel and snore the rafters loose (or was that me?!)...   It was like having to take a toddler off to playdates again!   This meant we could go nowhere special...

We spent part of some evenings in the pub, catching up with gossip - Who's put whose windows in, driven their car into a ditch, run off with whose wife, that kind of thing - Toasting our tootsies by the fire - Drinking our spoils from the Annual Leek Club Bottle Draw - (I won back the ghastly bottle of white wine I had in fact donated!) - while trying to avoid the fall-out from the septuagenarian landlord and landlady, who are my sort-of substitute parent figures, but who are also at each other's throats over her plans to semi-retire, finally and long-deservedly...   This situation will be resolved in one way or another, I'd guess.   I hope it's happily.

A lost earring of mine - Silver, with a tiny heart that dangles - resurfaced.   My friend had only recently gifted them to me for my birthday.   Phew!   I am hopeless with earrings, but I do still love them.

Meanwhile, I watched some of the films I had been longing to retreat into, and became a part of my sofa.   I even squeezed in Hitchcock's Rear Window, with my favourite, Jimmy Stewart!

We stoked the stove, burning coal on it for the very first time and occasionally feeding it fragrant logs.

We tickled the rats and, at the same time, learned something about neuroscience from scientists LINK.

Sadly, Grizz broke up with his lovely girlfriend (owner of said rats).   We think that means we've got custody...   We don't know why they broke up and can't find out...   I know it's not our business, but we are sad about it...

In other news, with my 'gin-goggles' on on New Year's Eve, I bought a beautiful handbag in local designer, Karina Hesketh's, sale.   I've lusted after it for months at full price, and then I take it as an omen that if no-one else has bought it in her sale, it and I are meant to be...   Karina's going to be designing some more soon.   Oh dear.   Mind you, I do only buy one-ish of her uniquely designed and beautifully hand-made bags a year, so I can't be described as anything like obsessed.   No...

This is a metallic pink leather brogue bag with a cross-body strap, integrated with a vintage (Fifties'?) scarf depicting the Dolomites in Italy.   This is a bag that called my name, like a Siren ensconced beside the River Coquet!

And, we learned on New Year's Day (but not from Bono) that my eighty-plus year old father-in-law had run himself over with his own car...   Three weeks ago.   And my helpful sister-in-law only saw fit to inform us on New Year's Day...

I rail against my socially apathetic in-laws, out-laws, I do!

I don't know what I can do about them?   Obviously nothing...   'You can't teach old dogs', etc!

Meanwhile, I build bridges, forge friendships, make amends...

Happy New Year, mes amis, bold and beautiful as you are...

I wish you all that you could ever wish for yourselves...

For myself, all I require is some peace and some certainty.

Meanwhile, your love and comments are enough!

Merci mille for you and them.   Mwah!   Well, the mistletoe's still up above the doorway, so I'd suggest a kiss is in order!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder... Or so they say!

Madame Fhina is otherwise indisposed...

See you soon, mes belles, j'espere.

I'm over here on this chaise longue, languishing.

How louche, n'est-ce-pas?!

Soit gentil. Be good, you lot!

~Je vous aime...

Friday Last...

Well, today has been interesting to say the least...

You know I've been penned indoors like a prisoner for days by the snow, well seeing as there had been no fresh snow overnight, and the temperatures were looking more favourable, we thought we would try to dive out while we could in my car, to seek provisions.

Honestly, each worsening winter, it gets more as if we're living like pioneers in the Rockies.

So, we spent two hours clearing and warming the car (well GJ did, I mainly ate porridge, drank tea, watched Homes Under The Hammer, and tippy-tappied here).

And we sallied forth, we did, full steam ahead, man the breakers, watch the ice-bergs, that kind of thing!

We had some dicey icy moments, to be fair. The bit where we had to overtake a JCB on a single carriageway, crossing over the roadside equivalent of the Himalayas was interesting, to say the least. Never corkscrewed in a car before... There's always a first time for everything, they say!

But, the supermarket was attained, provisions were purchased, the boot was filled and Fhina breathed a sigh of contentment at being re-united with a healthy supply of chocolate.

The snowflakes were falling again as we took the supermarket trolley back to its roost, and temperatures were plummeting once again, so we scarpered sharpish.

The return journey was also interesting, for the roads homeward weren't half as clear as they were earlier, and we encountered a tractor this time.

When he'd pulled over to allow the lengthy snake of cars to over-take him, we wended homeward. We crossed the little mediaeval bridge that leads to our country road, and found ourselves in a veritable cavalcade of transport. It seemed that all of my neighbours had carpe'd the diem and had all ventured out at the same time.

On a steep ungritted hill with only hope for brakes, we halted in a line of vehicles, handbrakes were applied and creaked under the strain of slithering back on ice...

People were getting out of their cars with snow-shovels and spades and we were all wondering what was going on?

Up in front there was White Van Man, stuck fast on the packed snow and ice, being rapidly dug out by my neighbours, whom we call The Intrepid Greenacres, for no rain, hail or snow prevents them from donning skis or snow-shoes and venturing out to climb the nearest mountain in Britain and in Europe.

I was talking to another lady, standing beside her flat-top truck, to try to find out what was the hold-up. It turned out that said White Van Man had by this time already been dug and pushed out of his predicament five times by people in the cars behind and was trying to reach the Terrace. Of course, having been snowed in for more than a week, no-one in his right mind would have even attempted the journey if they didn't have four wheel drive. White Van Man hadn't stood a chance.

Right at that moment, a tractor arrived to help, having been called to the rescue by his wife and daughter who were also stuck in the queue... Whether he intended to drive over the four cars (including mine) in order to reach White Van Man and dig him out wasn't quite clear.

Manned up as we were, I felt able to offer to push the White Van. I was, of course, getting desperate for the loo and was fearful of my chocolate melting in the warmth of the car, which GJ hadn't moved from. Bless him.

So, five of us neighbours set to, heels firmly dug into the ice and snow, to give us some chance if the van rolled backwards, and pressed hands, arms and shoulders to the task of pushing the van.

As if in labour, we PUSHED!

Then the driver took off his handbrake.

With that we soon began to motor, and we found ourselves running up the hill, as if glued to the van doors. Success!

Such incidents only happen in the Terrace where I live. Here, there is cameraderie, spirit, bravery and often intense care for others.

Of course, passing the flat bed truck, I espied that a diverse selection of wines in the bottle were set right into the flat-bed, pressed firmly into the packed snow that lay there. Fabulous! Someone was going to enjoy a well-chilled Chablis by this evening after all that hard work...

Phew! Chin-chin, what?!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Today I am hopefully going into the nearest town for a haircut and some highlights. I am beginning to look as if I have a mane, and the Festive Season is galloping towards us like a mad mare!

I say 'hopefully' because I have been sort of snowed in (did I hear you say, 'Again?!') since yesterday.

Ah, the joys of rural living. One week wild salmon wrestling, the next digging your way out of a snow bunker, lying about the house in your nightgown like a scene from the Last Days of the Roman Empire, spending hours warding off the siege mentality that only comes from fear of another outbreak of the Cabin Fever we underwent last year under very similar conditions... HERE

And I was reading a note on Facebook from a friend's sister, who lives in Australia, when she said that a White Christmas was her dream...

It might be. If you live in Brisbane.

Snow does look wondrous for a time, as it coats the earth in virgin white and makes everything look pretty, all Christmas-cardy and chocolate-boxy. But when it prevents you getting about safely, when your employers doubt your motives for having to stay at home (not saying mine are like this, they are very understanding, but others may not be, and you go through torments of guilt...), and when leaving the house between snowfalls leaves you breathless with anxiety when it seemed as if you were going to slip back down the steep hill and plummet into the freezing river below, (which happened to us last year), it's snow joke.

So, spare a thought for Fhina, please, as you go about your business today, perhaps untrammelled by the weather.

And if you spot this person about town:

It might be me if I don't get to the hair salon sharpish!

Wagner, currently wooing the nation's Saturday night TV audience with his Brazilian zing on Simon Cowell's (Syco's) X-Factor.