It ain't over until the fat lady sings!

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.

She's off again, I hear you say!

Someone stole my bloglet.

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...

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.

Abandon her in droves but lover, come back to me?

Anyhoo, what have I been up to, you ask?

Nay.   More to the point, what have you been up to, mes bloggy chums?

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...

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.  

Merci mille, mon ami - And for those of you who don't know John, here he is with his very own barrel of laughs!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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...

And we all are.

Take time out to smell the coffee, the flowers, the fine feathers on a bird's under-wing.

Take time out for you.   Je vous embrasse.   Don't be shy!

Tell me your news.   I've missed you so much.    Mwah!

Abnormal Service will be resumed as soon as possible...

Mwah!

Testing...

Frying Tonight!

Well, howdy-doody and a Happy New Year to one and all!

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.

However, I pledge not to start the first post of the year with doom and gloom.   Cross my heart and hope to die!

Why ever did we use to say that as children?   It sounds very odd now.  

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...

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...

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.

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!

Harken to my recommendations, my dahlinks.   Here's a good tip - Do not use your laptop for or as any of the following:

A tea-tray from whence to eat your boiled egg and toast soldiers of a morning;

A rat-warming device;

A coaster for a brimming seasonal glass of gin;

An erstwhile pillow for a power-nap;

Ballast;

Storing really important and sensitive information that you need for your Counselling course, such as a Clinical Log!

Tip #2:   Back up all your data to a reliable source.

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!

I don't presently have the funds for a new lap-top.   *Sniffs*

Think of me while I am missing you terribly, awfully, frightfully.

...Bloody loads, in fact!

Meanwhile, for me, some eye-candy!

And breathe...   And listen to my fantasy paramour, Mr John Smith with This Killer Wave - Just like the one that swallowed my laptop!

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!

Trees 'r' good... And a giveaway!

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...

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.

Am I alone in wondering, I wonder, whether a partner is supposed to communicate such things to his much beloved other half of thirty (long, long, bloody long) years, when he's taken out a contract on the tree with two of our neighbours who he met at the pub?!

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).

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...

Sample bird commonly seen in Fhina's garden.   (NB:   No birds were harmed during the writing of this blog).

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.

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.

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.

I shall eat my words.

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.

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?

Do you still experience surprises, sometimes on a daily basis like I do?   What are your expectations of them?   Do they drive you mad?   How do you cope?

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...

Ramble over - One random answer, or rather answer selected at random, will receive a hastily carefully chosen bijou bit of tat trinket from somewhere about my home, as I strive to de-clutter and free my mindspace for more sane sensible things...

I hope you will like it.   I have a no returns policy.

Loving Molly Anne...

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...

Molly Anne Fabre, late of The View from this End 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.

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.   

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.

I don't think she ever knew what exactly she meant to me in those many moments...   

Sara took this photo of her Mum in the summer.   It became her favourite.  

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.

Hers had been a life of journeys, onwards and upwards.  Of adventure.   Of reaching out to people.   And being reached.   And met.

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.   

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?

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:  

The context here is that I was whingeing and worrying about a forthcoming operation,

"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. 

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". 

What more can be said?

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.

I know she was very partial to a handsome Frenchman!

...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.

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:

“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. 

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. 

At the present time, this is not yet possible. 

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.” 

― Marcel Proust

Moments in life...

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...

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'.

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.

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.

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.   

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.

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...

LINKIE

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.   

...And mental too!

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.

Be mindful, peeps!

Beautiful photography of Northumberland by Andrew S. Gray.com - PLEASE CLICK ON LINK TO GO TO HIS SITE

This-ish week in headlines!

Eek!   Hello, you caught me there en deshabillee - Hardly a moment to get me curlers in!

This week I have done the following mad, bad and dangerous-to-know things:

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...

Come on, you know you've all done it!

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...

3.   Shouted "Owly!" when I passed him again on my way home - I love seeing him, he brightens my day...
Am I that easily pleased?!

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!

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.

6.   Managed to sleep almost one full night through without waking with insomnia or a full bladder.   Blissdom.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

Woohoo!

Plus ca change, say the Froglingtons.   Plus ca reste la meme chose, indeed.

Anyhoo, I've a pub quiz to get prepared for, so watch out, mes bloggy loves!  

Just me and my shadow...

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).

Least said, soonest mended methinks.

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.

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!

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!)

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...

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.

...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...

Yet.

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...)

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'.

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.

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.'

'Wha'????!!!'

'No, you're joking!' I cried.   'Yes!' she squeaked, her eyes moist with excitement.   'Where was he?   How did I miss him?!'  I asked.

'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...

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.

Sometimes I think I might be losing my marbles.

Who said, 'Again?!'   Was it you, Scriptor Senex?

Pah!

'Jewellery'/Stitch Marker symbols pic courtesy of this seller on Etsy CLICKIE

The World At His Feet...

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!   I adore S’wellin’.), waiting for Downton Abbey to return to my telly-box, and running a Spyware check on my laptop.

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.

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.

The lemon and honey sore throat recipe comes courtesy of darling Rosaria Williams.   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?!

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.

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.

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.

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.   

We just never stop worrying about our children, do we?

I was talking to a fabulous octogenarian lady, Ella, the night of our pub’s Annual Leek Club.   I came 18^th, and very proud of it, I was too.

(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.)

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!

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.

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...

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.

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.

But I’m worried about this next year, or so, in his life (and mine), and what it will bring.

There.   Enough said.   If I keep on phasing in and out at the blog, that’s generally why.   

I’m an anxious person.   

I’m strong, but I’m also vulnerable sometimes.   

That’s me.   Pleased to meet you!

But, can anyone tell me, how come the dead woman from Desperate Housewives has managed to get to Dallas and marry Bobby?!

  

Paris Part Deux...

Paris, in all her gay abandon, sizzled.

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.

And, once I'd learned the words for walking cane/stick and crutch at the pharmacist's, we were away!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.  

I asked for, 'Une canne, svp?'

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...

I struggled on - 'He has an arthritic foot, he has difficulty walking, I need to get him a cane, not a cream...'

She looked at me like I was talking another language...   To her I probably was.

'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?

'For the athlete's foot - 'athletique', she said...

I became at that humid moment in time the Facepalm emoticon.

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.

'Une can-ne', he said to his assistant.   'Mais, but I heard, 'un-e crem-e'' she cried...

I know I'm from the north, but really.   My accent isn't all that thick.

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.

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.

With my purchases in hand, I practically whistled my way through the streets of Pigalle.

I found that anyone dodgy-looking swiftly moved out of my way on account of that cane I was brandishing.

Next episode:   Finish this sentence:   'As blind as a...'

La 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...

Well, unless you're absolutely skint, that is!

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.

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.

At least once.

But not in a group, holding hands and following someone carrying an umbrella.   Or a fan, I kid you not.

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.

Paris never ceases to surprise me.

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.  

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...  

I revel in la vie quotidienne here - As quirky as it comes...

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!

All the chic women in Paris seem to walk across crossings on red with only a cigarette for protection.  

I fear for their lives.   Either the smoking will get them, or the traffic will.

I eschew other tourists.   Or at least I try to.   It's not so easy in Paris.

In August.    Are there any Japanese left in Japan?!

The ones that aren't frequenting Starbucks, that is.

Why go to Starbucks when you are in the European capital of Cafe Culture?

Je ne comprends pas.

But I do understand the lure that Paris exerts on me.   For she is always waiting to be discovered.

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.

A toute a l'heure, mes bloggy chums!  

Oh, and owing to a dodgy internet connection, I can't post any piccies - Sorry about that!

A propos of nothing much...

I've never waited so long between blog posts.   What has become of me?

Moreover, what have I become?!

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.

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!

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.

Whelk, I've been busy.

Busy doing nothing.

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.

A truly troubling time has been had by all.

I've been in avoidance of having much fun here, to be fair, as life was just getting a bit raw around the edges.

And now?   I'm still waiting for the clouds to clear and the day to become brighter.

Sometimes life is just a little bit hard, is it not?!

I think so.

See you soon, my darlings.