Saturday 17 January 2009

Return Of The Diddimen


How to turn a completely pleasant hack into a farce? Pick the smallest pony you can find, ride it like you're an ironing board, decide to dismount after a leisurely trot, get back on and vault right over the other bloody side & onto the grass! To that dog walker out there, glad I gave you a giggle!

Friday 16 January 2009

Back Away Slowly.....


So, last October me & my BG (bestest girlfriend) are driving out to somewhere jolly in the countryside when she raises an issue with me. For several years she has been having weird dreams about airplane crashes and all her dreams seem to have come true. She pre told one to her husband and it came true.......now she was telling me about a new dream. The night before she's had a dream about an aeroplane which has come down (she always wakes up before the impact): she is really certain that it came down in one piece and that there were no injuries. It is a white plane with a blue marking on its tail. She thinks it comes down on a motorway - it is coming down onto something straight and long. She is seeing the whole thing happen from above - like she's on a bridge. "So I'm telling you this now and we'll have to see if anything happens". We both try and chortle it off .....

Cut to last night. I'd seen the news and not even thought about our conversation back in October. 11pm my phone beeps away & there is my BG's text,

"Sorry it's late but there has been a plane crash in America! It is a white plane with a blue tail fin......everyone got out. It was in a river, though, but it is the Hudson so long and straight and tv footage is from a bridge! Ooer!" Ooer? - too bloody right!

That surreal moment I had earlier in the week? - blown right out of the bloody water.

Wednesday 14 January 2009

I'll have a ham sandwich, please.....


I'll swear my son is going to turn into a ham sandwich. He had them for his tea last night. He'd barely opened his eyes this morning when he was asking for some for breakfast. Then he had some in his packed lunch (he checked with me a zillion times to make sure it was definitely HAM in his sandwiches) and he's just had another load for his tea.


Bless him, he's not the biggest of eaters at the best of times so I'm happy to make 'em til the cows come home at the minute!

The best morning!


Dropped my little boy off at school this morning & walked back through the park to my home. Oh. My. God. How beautiful was the Earth this morning!!? Kylie's Stars on my iPod; a really low, big bright winter sun blinding me kindly; frost thick on the paths; silhouettes of a couple of dog walkers heading my way; an enormous flock of seagulls low over the park gardens; the bowling greens iced with a thick layer of frost. Everywhere crisp, fresh & bright. Your heart feeling like it will burst.

I live for mornings like these.

Tuesday 13 January 2009

Up In Smoke


What is it with people? I have been getting all the usual lectures about smoking - quitting/the benefits of etc etc for, like, forever.

So....I go and quit. I have been quit for 15 days. That might not seem monumental but it's a bloody big deal to me.

And, do you know, only ONE person has told me 'well done'. Bloody one!!

Not even my bloody husband can muster up any Goodwill to cast in my direction, this is despite the fact that he used to squawk & flap & feign asphyxiation if I nipped out to the garden to have a wee ciggy.

Nowt.

So, how does that work?
Are folk not interested? But they were bloody interested enough to hound me when I did smoke...

Jealous? That's just poor form...

*sigh* I really don't know, but I shall march forever onward in my No Smoking Quest. You just watch. And thank god for that one friend....

Hitler who??!?


So, we're standing in the Yard, all tacked up & ready to ride out & I'm chatting to a friend before we head off. She has a gorgeous young black Labrador who she's doing all manner of work & training with. And she's telling me that she has taken him to see an animal behaviourologist.....for her to establish herself as leader of the pack she has to be all calm and unstressed & whatnot. "I'm usually quite a big person" she says, moving her arms in a large circle "and very loud and noisy. So he tells me to model myself on calm and serene and commanding people. And then I got it! I visualise 2 people who just command power....every time he [the dog] is naughty or panics me I just think of Hitler and the Queen Mother". ........ For a second I felt slightly odd. Did she just say Hitler??? In the same breath as the Queen Mother??!? What the??!?!?!?!?!?

It has to be one of the more surreal moments of my recent life!........

Tuesday 6 January 2009


There is something wonderfully gratifying about Facebook. Being stuck a la maison with a heavy dose of flu I have finally got myself on there and have rediscovered some fabulous old friendships as well as able to better keep in touch with regular chums. Aren't friends fabulous??

Monday 5 January 2009

Feck


Feck.

And I'm not even Irish. But it's such a lovely word - all singular and authoritative. You can row a few of them up like ducks on a mantelpiece:
Feck Feck Feck Feck

As a Northerner I really should be a Fook girl: my friend Richard says Fook. A lot. Poor Richard, he's been like a parent at the touch line waiting in vain whilst his offspring pisses about with the ball somewhere down the other end of the pitch. Except it's not his offspring - it's me, and the ball is me actually making some bloody decent contact. Richard, I'm sorry. This year I shall make amends.
Anyhow, I like Feck. Such a jolly looking thing. Me and it shall become friends this year.