Thérésa Hedges's Blog, page 3

Because April May

Oh boy. Sorry about that.

I totally missed April.

The weather was… confusing. Given where we live, my system went into automatic a-wooga waltz shutdown. And by that, I mean it was sunny, and I just wasn’t expecting it. So an early bit of laying low ensued. I will still be disappearing in a couple of months time, so, just saying.

And before I get on to what I wanted to talk about, I just have to tell you this…

Today, I had a case of Town Nous & Country Nous.

On the way back from the beach with the furbaby, a couple of lads headed towards us, trainers and hoodies at full mast. I stepped back the regulation 2 metres/6 feet. Where I used to live, it would have been for safety’s sake. As in personal safety because we lived in a heavily bilingual area. And by that, I mean English and Anglo-Saxon. Mostly Anglo-Saxon, judging by the adult-content blue air that sat like a Victorian smog outside our flat. I recall once getting an R-rated mouthful from one young ‘lady’ simply because I’d had the cheek to shut my own bedroom window.

Imagine the nerve of me!

How rude!

And as if she wanted to make sure that I had actually shut the offending pane & frame, she began throwing things at said window, including pebbles, unwanted chips (fries), and a couple of beer bottles.

Changing the subject (sort of), I was in a shop once when a Probation Officer tore in, asking the assistant for breath mints – the stronger the better, as her client was due in court within the half hour on drinking related charges, and her whole case depended on her client’s not having touched a drop of alcohol in several months.

Which was true.

He’d been drinking it fast, from a bottle. Absolutely no physical contact involved – it wasn’t even touching the sides on the way down. Nerves were to blame. Dutch courage and so on. Breath mints were poo-pooed (though that would definitely have covered the smell of booze, with the added benefit of him then having plenty of space in the holding cell if things went awry). Cheese and onion crisps – the cheaper and nastier, the better – were decided upon. I do wonder how his case went. I genuinely hope things turned out well for him. We all make mistakes. For some people, it’s wearing sandals when rain is forecast, but for other, they can be true life changers.

But anyway, back to these two lads. We stepped out of their way and waited for them to go past, and in the back of my mind, there was at least one brain cell that was in Town Nous mode, expecting a mouthful. Luckily, that one brain cell was outnumbered by a whole continent of others, who then delighted in being proved right. The furbaby wandered over (she’s such a nosy little madam), her tail wagging. They petted her, called her gorgeous and said ‘hi’ to me. So lovely.

Take that, Town Nous!
Victory for the continent of brain cells!

We’ve been living here nearly four years now, so you’d have thought that my brain would have left behind the expectations that I’d learned in my previous home. As a vampire, you learn to be very wary of everything and everyone. But I’m getting there. I do have to keep telling myself you’re not living in that town anymore…

Be the continental brain cell, not the shouty one who blames everything on everything and always expects the worst, so is rarely disappointed.

I love where I live.

But, on to what I really wanted to talk about. Although, now, I guess there isn’t that much to say. I just wanted to talk about the garden. I planted some plants out way too early. The poor cucumbers are shadows of their former selves and will need to be replaced. I was good – honest! I waited for the last frost and everything!

Did you know about the whole ‘last frost‘ thing?

I didn’t. But it’s a thing. After that date, it should be safe to put stuff out. So I did. And I even put fleece over it. Not the type you wear, obviously, but some floaty, gauzy stuff that you’re supposed to put down to keep the seedlings warm and safe from birds.

Huh.

Put fleece down, they said.

It’ll protect your plants from birds, they said.

Nope. I’ll tell you what it does. It distracts the birds from the plants. And what they don’t tell you is that, at the exact same time you’re putting this cobwebby stuff over your plants to protect them, the birds have got their own DIY home renovation project going and they’re gleefully ripping the fleece to shreds to line their nests with. Because it’s that time of year, isn’t it?

And meanwhile, the slugs are sneaking in and having a flipping field day. Literally. I wouldn’t mind, but I’ve yet to see a slug in the garden. They seem to prefer my bathroom. Second only to my bathroom are my dwarf bean plants that are rapidly turning into twigs while my back is turned.

And now I’m wondering…

Are the slugs and birds in it together? Is one lot running interference for the other?

“Tell you what, Fred. Let me get on with demolishing the beans. And while she’s standing there, looking all stupid and sticking more plants in, you fly in and help yourself to that fluffy stuff. We’ll both come out of this winners.”

Let’s just call it a learning curve.

And that title? It’s from one of the worst dad jokes of all time. A proper groaner. And for anyone who needs an explanation, click here. But why, I’m not sure.

“Can February March? Because April May.”

See you next month!

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This is…not Sparta

Happy Solstice, everyone!

For once, I am actually looking forward to the impending Spring. I do enjoy a good impend, don’t you? And a good spring too, come to think of it. It’s my own fault really, I should never have installed that weather app on my phone. It’s become a go-to thing when I don’t already have enough to worry about. I don’t know about anybody else but just looking at that calendar and seeing that there is never going to be any dry weather ever again can be a bit of a downer.

I mean, I know I don’t like sunny weather but at the same time the weather does take the mickey a bit sometimes with the amount of rain it pushes out. Do you know, there was one day when me and the hubster were walking about in a nearby town and we got caught by some drops of rain and there wasn’t even any clouds in the sky!

But all that rain is soon to pay off ha ha ha because we have begun gardening in earnest. After seeing the carefree way in which some people grope unwrapped food in supermarkets recently, we’re only too happy to try being a little more self-sufficient. Especially seeing as we have the garden. It will certainly be a challenge for the fur baby as she navigates the way around, trying to find a good place to sprinkle when she tinkles (that’s a phrase which I say – rather loudly – when we are out for a walk as she can be quite slow and deliberate when she answers the call of nature. I don’t want anybody thinking I’m one of those dog parents who will leave Mr Woofles to unload their last few meals and then walk off, with nary a care nor a fully-loaded poo bag).

Anyway, back on track. Yes, it’s been raining here. A lot. It does that. As I’ve said before, anything over 0% probability predicted rain usually translates to 100% certainty. And yes, we have got some seeds starting off, ready to plant out if ever the seedlings decide to make an appearance. I’ve decided that lettuce are like Labradors – eager to please and flipping well everywhere. Or perhaps that was just me being clumsy with the seeds. Asparagus are possibly the snobbiest and entitled seeds I’ve ever come across.

But the cold. At least that is hopefully on its way out. The conservatory has gone from a chilly 10 degrees to a better-check-that-again 27 degrees. Let’s see if the rest of the little beggars will germinate now. At least the house is warm. I have a very useful tip for you in a minute. Bear with me.

Ever done this?

Our boiler broke back in November. Because that’s what they do, isn’t it? Wait until winter is just about to set in and decide to do a mic drop on you. Talk about ‘Elvis has left the building’. You see, when we first moved in, we’d moved from a teeny flat where the boiler was about your average size, sat on the wall, minding its own business (and even that was a replacement – but more about that in a minute). So when we first viewed this place and saw a teeny-tiny boiler on the wall of the utility room, we did wonder how it managed to produce enough hot water for the TARDIS-like house. but hey, we thought, there’s also a nice big (like, the size of a small car) washing machine included in the price.

Wrong.

And wrong stupid.

The boiler? That was just for the sink underneath.

The ‘washing machine’?

Yup. You guessed. It was the boiler. And now it suddenly seemed way too big for the house, no matter how Gallifreyan. And it was about 30 years old, though at the time it had been top of the range, apparently. The equivalent of parking your flying car outside with the other Ford Model Ts. I don’t know why I seem to be drawn to places where the boiler is on its last legs.

Because this happened at my last place too.

Except it decided to go bang-bang-goodbye right in the middle of one of the coldest winters since records began (or so the papers said). Although I imagine nobody bothered keeping the records too accurately at the time, given that their fingers were probably frozen and they were too busy warming them on mugs of hot tea.

You know it’s cold when you have to warm your hands up under the hot tap. You know its really cold when you have to warm your hands up under the cold tap…

So there I was, snow piling up outside (when it wasn’t being flung around by winds that could lift you off your feet), in a place that was barely 5 degrees centigrade/41 degrees Fahrenheit. At the time, I rarely watched television (mostly because I didn’t have one), preferring to watch streaming things on my laptop which was linked to a projector.

Two important points about projectors:

1) who needs a 90 inch tv when you’ve got one of these beauties?

and

2) they kick out a lot of heat. I mean, a lot.

So, I ended up huddling next to my film projector to stay warm. And luckily, I did find a lovely plumber who came and fitted a new one fairly promptly. Likewise here. We found an amazing guy who basically saved our necks by dropping everything and replacing the small-car-sized not-washing-machine.

And the title?

Well, that’s because I realised with the first boiler just how adept vampires are at adapting to changing circumstances (even if we do hate change with an absolute passion). And certainly, while I wouldn’t have wanted to live like that for ever, a few months didn’t hurt me. The realisation dawned one night while I was cosying up to my projector, watching a film about the Spartans. And then I remembered how much I’d admired them as a child.

And the tip?

Well, it’s funny how both boilers went wrong either at the start of winter, or in the middle of one. So imagine this.

You’re a runner. You love running. But you only run during the winter months. During the rest of the year, the couch is your friend. TV binges are also your friend. Basically, you do absolutely nothing for 9 months of the year. Moss starts growing on you. Then, on the first day of winter, your running buddy knocks on your door and says “Hey, I’m just on my way to do an ultra marathon. Join me?”

Would you be able to do it?

I’m guessing not.

So, just like with your own movement/fitness levels, you have to give these once-a-year rockstars a regular workout. Make a point of giving your boiler something to do every now and again. Perhaps put the heating on for a while during a cooler summer/autumn evening. At least that way, the poor machine won’t be too shocked when you expect it to work full tilt for three months straight.

Which reminds me, I better go and check the pressure. See you later.

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Bungee-Watching

So, we recently discovered the delights of a human thing where you watch a lot of television programmes in rapid succession. Bingeing. I thought that was actually jumping off a high space with an elastic band attached to your ankles.

Although the hubster reliably informed me that the term is actually binge-watching, the other being bungee-jumping. I should really play more attention.

Now, I can understand how the bunge-watching thing came about. I remember the days when your favourite program would be on once a week and if you missed it, that was it. Your life could literally revolve around watching your favourite show. And then video recording equipment came into being. You could record it and watch it at a later date.

Ah, the freedom!

But you still had to wait a week until the next instalment. I suppose you could still bunge-watch but you’d have to wait until the entire series had finished. Oh, and we called it a series too. Back in the day, ‘season‘ didn’t apply to television shows. There were only four seasons of anything – spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Oh, and the classical music piece The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. Okay, eight. Aah, and the 1960s American band The Four Seasons. Right, that’s twelve in all. But even so, still a lot less than you get with modern television shows. Everything’s a season.

And the term ‘season” can be a bit confusing. It implies, as with the weather and music (classical or otherwise), that there’s more than one. I remember a show I particularly liked from a couple of years ago (I’ve just checked. It was five. Five? Really? Still, you know how bad vampires are with keeping track of time). Where was I going with this?

Oh yes, the show I liked.

A modern retelling of one of my favourite gothic horror stories, updated to take place in the 1930s. I watched it all avidly, even buying the disc recording of it in order to bunge-watch it again. Especially as it had ended on a tantalising cliffhanger. I eagerly awaited to hear news of a second series/season. To no avail.

And then there was this thing called streaming. I didn’t realise initially what it meant, but we quickly discovered its delights, with whole series, sorry, seasons of older programmes available to watch relentlessly. So, yes, that show was on there. Yet another re-watch took place. More exciting, however, was one phrase that appeared on its title page…

“Season 1”

Yes!

And then I looked it up. No more ‘seasons’. It had been cancelled. It was just automatically called ‘season 1’. Pah. It’s just the terminology with the new technology. No apology.

Perhaps someone was inspired by the quote from Ecclesiastes.

“To every thing there is a season”

I was disappointed, to say the least. But, between streaming and having the discs, it can be watched over and over. And it will be.

It’s so easy to get caught up by all these different shows… from crime-fighting zombies to troubled detectives with their ‘quirky’ ‘consultants’ to every possible variation on the theme of ‘teenager finds s/he has special powers and a secret destiny’.

Oh well. We’re still letting our lives be ruled by the bogglebox. Or whatever.

Better that than jumping off a bridge with an elastic band attached to your ankles.

What’s your favourite show at the mo? I’d love to hear your recommendations! After all, winter is coming. The weather’s miserable, and none of us are going anywhere anyway at the moment.

I’m now off to make myself some popcorn. There’s bound to be a show on there that involves a teenage vampire-zombie with previously undiscovered magical powers who has discovered a special destiny working with the New York Police Department alongside a grumpy but attractive potential love-interest detective who was orphaned at a young age and now battles with an addiction to custard cream biscuits.

And if not, there should be.

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The Year of Sarchasm

Omigosh! I hear you cry, What’s the matter with her spelling today? She’s usually so particular about the niceties of the English language!

For niceties, read – basic literacy skills. Although, who really needs them, in this age of social media, text-speak, and auto correct?

I promise you, that the spelling is quite deliberate, as you’ll soon see.

Essentially, sarchasm is said to be the gaping void between your own waterfalls of acid wit and your listener’s complete lack of understanding. Or, as someone once told me, ‘a total 747’. At the time of hearing that phrase, my own blank face was met with the speaker waving a hand over his head and making an aeroplane noise (747 being an airliner plane built by Boeing).

Vampires are not good at sarcasm. I’ve said this several times before. I’ve tried to learn, but I mostly sound either rude or incredibly dim-witted. Or simply very, very literal. The hubster is very good. As previously requested, he gives me marks out of ten when I attempt sarcasm and gives me pointers and examples. And yet, I continue to miss the mark consistently.

I do know there are several factors to making sarcasm work. Choice of words, tone of voice, facial expression, body language…

Ah! Facial expression!

Something that is mostly lacking of late. Face masks = loss of facial expression. But it’s a small price to pay. Have you heard of something called the pee analogy?

Oh, here we go…

It’s all going cock-a-donkey…

Well, the pee analogy goes like this… If nobody wore trousers, if someone peed, it’d get on you. If you wore trousers, then only some of the pee would get through. But if everyone wore trousers, the pee would stay with the pee-er. And that’s why we wear face masks.

I’ll explain the cock-a-donkey thing now.

And further down the rabbit hole we go.

It’s a Belgian saying – on va du coq á l’âne – going from the cockerel to the donkey. It means to change the subject suddenly and completely randomly. Great saying. I think it should catch on. Here’s a challenge for you – try to work it into a conversation once today. Let me know how you get on!

And you’d think I’d be ahead of the ‘facial expression’ game because apparently, I have a very expressive face – it’s why I trend to get ‘character’ roles when I’m acting.

Here’s a little tale to illustrate my point. I don’t often get manhandled at work, but there was this one incident where it was absolutely vital. The room where I worked was opposite the boss’s office. The boss was one of those capricious wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing. The human equivalent of cyanide. The only time this person was known to smile was when they saw someone dying a little inside. When I left that job for good, as I made my final farewells on leaving the building for ever, I said goodbye to them through the open office door. They never even looked up from their paperwork, let alone said ‘goodbye’ back.

Anyway, a colleague came haring in to tell me the latest micro-assassination perpetrated by this pycho-logical harpy. I didn’t even get the chance to move away from my doorway before she dropped the tempting little nuggets on me. But before she said a word more, she grabbed me by the shoulders and bundled me away from the door, then spun me around to face the opposite wall.

It felt like the weirdest game of Blind Man’s Bluff ever.

“Sorry,” she said, once she’d told me all the gory details, “I had to do that. Your face just gives everything away.”

And how about thanking people when they stop to let you cross the road? That happens here a lot. People will even stop at roundabouts to let you cross here. So different to where we lived before. A smile normally suffices as a show of appreciation. Well, that’s right out the window, isn’t it? I try to wave, but it’s not always possible when you have your hands full of either shopping or dog leash. You either end up juggling apples and bread rolls as they go flying into the air, or I have the fur baby glaring at me indignantly for disturbing her concentration. She’s very good at crossing the road and objects when she thinks I’m trying to tell her how to do it.

Oh well, I guess I’m just going to have to work harder on my tone of voice…

For anyone wanting to read all my rants in one place – including all-new exclusive stuff, then click below!

Volume 1 of my diary – why not start at the very beginning?

Volume 2 – more rants, musings and fairly useful advice

Volume 3 – things are afoot! The thot plickens…

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Food, laborious food

So… what is this continued obsession with what vampires do or don’t eat? I think it might have kicked off once more because Netflix have recently added a certain series of vampire films to their catalogue. Here we go again. Yes, I do eat food. Probably far too much. And I love cooking.

I do have ways of getting around the blood drinking thing. I know I’ve already shared a recipe before now for one of my little top-ups. I call it my A+ juice, because it’s that good, plus hey, you know… blood groups. But mostly because it amuses me.

Here it is again, folks. Great if you need a little lift.

My A+ Juice

1 beetroot3 or 4 chunks of broccoli5 or 6 curly kale leaves¼ of a pomegranate2 apples½ a lemona couple of sprigs of mint
Just throw everything into a juicer and press go. Well, you know your own juicer. The one thing I would say is to alternate shoving through the kale with softer, juicier bits like the apples and the lemon because kale can be tough. I mean, basically you’re shoving the equivalent of a small tree through your blender.

And I don’t know why, but a certain scene from the film Fargo just flashed through my mind.

Yikes.

Anyway, food becomes a particular focus at this time of year. It’s the most wonderful time of the year when everyone panic-buys 3 months’ worth of food to cover themselves for the (at most) 24 hours that the shops will be shut. And nowadays, even that amount of time is shrinking rapidly.

Every time I go out shopping for the moment, I see people (quite often the same ones) with another piled-high trolley full of turkey, sausages, beef, pork, pork pies, ham. All the dead stuff. I’m always quite happy to let them go in front of me. It’s all the stuff that, as a vampire, I won’t touch. That, plus all the cheese, and cream and goodness knows what else.

But how can a vampire be plant-based (or whatever the phrase is)? I hear absolutely nobody asking (probably because they’ve already asked it). It’s quite simple really. It’s the same reason is that vampires have stuck to blood for centuries. It’s simply because the after-effects of eating normal human food can be so frightening. It’s just not worth the risk.

And given that the first recorded vampire was in the late 17th century (and in literature in the early 1800s) and the first recorded use of the concept of veganism wasn’t until November 1944, you can see immediately that there is a problem with the timing. 

I know somebody (human) who had a bad experience with a loaf of sourdough bread. It wasn’t even a whole loaf. It was just one slice of a loaf of sourdough bread, actually. They were massively ill and never went near it again, because of the problems that one slice had caused them. In truth, the problem was more likely the six vodkas they’d necked beforehand but it appears that it was the one slice of sourdough bread that tipped the balance for them. I might add they still drink the vodka but sourdough bread – no freaking way!

So you can probably see the issue – in a time when I’m guessing not much was known about food allergies and intolerances, it might have been relatively easy to eat something, feel ill, and get the wrong end of the stick. And probably try eating the stick as well, to be honest.

Picture it – all it would take would be an intolerance to one thing, and it could be enough to throw you. Example – you have a problem with digesting wheat. And you have bread with every meal. After every meal, you feel like Mount Vesuvius at both ends and the seventh level of hell in the middle. It wouldn’t take you long to think that all food is a problem. So you lay off the food, stick to drinking blood (which, I’m assuming) is wheat free and – bingo – no eruptions from any orifice.

That’s how myths are born, folks…

So what are we having for Christmas dinner? Well, this is our first Christmas at home since the hubster turned vegan. We did a trial run with a magnificent stuffed homemade ‘turkey’ style roast, the recipe for which I discovered online. It’s big, too. We did try a number of shop-bought ones but, in our price range, they weren’t much bigger than grapefruits. In fact, even the ones outside our price range weren’t much bigger. And you just don’t get that ‘Voilà’ factor when you carry a grapefruit-sized thing to the table.

This has got the ‘voilà’, the ‘ooh’, the ‘ahh’, the ‘ta-dah’ – all the factors.

And it’s really, really easy to make. It’s great cold too. And it freezes like a dream. Plus the hubster gets to do the primeval man thing with the big knife on the day. Everybody wins. Especially the turkeys. (Click this link right now to find out why! I’ll be here when you get back)

And of course, we’ll all be so food-centred that for a few days, we’ll just keep eating because we’ll have no idea what day it actually is…

So there you go. Some vampires stick to blood alone because the bad reactions to some foods just isn’t worth the risk. The rest of us do, because we’ve worked out which ones we can have.

I first mentioned it back in 2014, and it’s only taken me 6 years to get back to what I was saying originally. Doing well, really.

Like I’ve said before, vampires get distracted. Easily. Very easily. And as it’s now the season of sparkly things, I don’t stand a chance…

See you in the new year!

Want to read more of my ramblings? Apparently, these are free if you have something called Kindle Unlimited. Even without, they’re still way cheaper than one of those fancy cups of coffee…

Volume 1 Volume 2*NEW!* Volume 3







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One-faced nonsense

And so we’re starting to settle in with the change in seasons. I had a brainwave moment of realisation this morning – that just because it’s autumn, does not mean it’s going to rain every day.

I’m guessing there’s a kind of allegory in there somewhere…

The furball is starting to scale down her craziness from summer too. We’ve noticed that she has gotten even better at training us. We did like to alter her walks – long one day, short the next, throughout the week. But… she’s cut down on her longer walks, and now instead wanders out into the garden, where she stares at us expectantly. Her cunning plan? To get at least one of us to go outside and blow bubbles for her.

Yes, she’s obsessed with bubbles. Even on her laziest days, she turns into a frenetic bundle of over-excitement at ‘the B word’. We also might have to leave her large paddling pool up as even if she won’t be splashing in it now, she does like using it as a huge drinking bowl.

It’s the simple things in life, isn’t it?

But it’s worth it to see the smile on her face. In fact, until we got her, I never realised dogs could smile.

And talking of faces and simplicity…

I had to get a new phone a couple of months ago. My old phone went for a swim. Somewhere where nothing and nobody should ever be swimming… I can’t really bring myself to come completely clean (rather like where it landed). But in lieu of a straight answer, I’ll bog off and move on.

I must admit, the timing was awful. But when is the timing right to drop your phone down the- anyway. I have got a new phone now. Well, it’s an old phone, but new to me. And even though my old-new phone is the model before my old-old phone, it’s actually more advanced than it. So my old new phone is actually an older-better-old-new phone.

Isn’t technology grand?

But it does give the opportunity for some relatively old-fashioned fun. Both the hubster and I have iPads – his is newer (and larger) than mine. The rigmarole you have to go through to set them up! I do like being able to unlock it with my thumb, though. Very 21st century. I don’t have this face recognition stuff on mine, however, though he has it on his. Which is where the fun comes in…

If ever he asks me to do something on his, then I have to use his password. But only after the initial face recognition prompt. Obviously, facial recognition is never going to work for me so, while I’m waiting…

I pull faces at it.

Yep. My inner 6 year-old emerges and I pull all manner of weird faces at an inanimate object. The weirder, the better. Try it. You won’t regret it.

But the thumb thing…

Oh, the uses you can put it to… opening your phone in public without everyone seeing that your PIN is actually Mickey Mouse’s date of birth (actually, autosuggest came up with ‘date of being’ which, on reflection, is far more appropriate for an animated character).

I recently discovered one of the joys of having a thumb for a password – paying with my phone for things! Or as I like to call it – flap & tap. Great unless you have a plaster on your thumb. I discovered that one when I had a very long queue behind me. I honestly don’t know why I hadn’t already considered that. I did have other fingers registered as my ‘passwords’ but, to be honest, I was too busy contemplating using one or more of them to signal my response to the harrumphing masses behind me.

Didn’t somebody once say something about someone famous’s face being their currency? Or did I just imagine it (if you know the quote, please let me know)? Turns out that now, to some extent, the same could be true of us all, with the face replacing the thumb (now there’s a body-horror film just waiting to be penned).

Rather similar to Andy Warhol’s statement of everybody being famous for fifteen minutes. Like I said… technology.

Now I’m off to buy a tin of soup to paint… Or probably just have it for lunch.

Bye!

Untitled

But isn’t “Untitled” actually a title? Anyway, I’m back. Admittedly, it’s much later but to be honest, isn’t everything in a bit of confusion at the moment?

I was going to type ‘atm’ but 1) it’s not like ‘at the moment’ is going to take hours to type and 2) I remember someone asking me why, whenever they sent me a text asking my whereabouts, I always seemed to be at a cashpoint machine…

(In case you didn’t already know, & to save you the effort, ATM = Automated Teller Machine)

How was your summer? Where was summer? Did it ever actually turn up? Anyway, never fear, autumn is here – the season of falling leaves and grumbling. So, did we get tourists this year? Oh yes. The entitled masses descended on our little seaside town, demanding entertainment and relief from the stresses that apparently only they were under…

To give you some idea of how small our town is, during rush hour, the traffic down the harbour doubles – to about 4 cars. And even at the peak point of rush hour, drivers will still stop at the roundabout to let you cross. Heck, even BMW and Audi drivers use their indicators!

I know, amazing, isn’t it?

In fact, that’s how you can spot the tourists. They’re the ones sling-shotting around the roundabout like it’s a small sun they’re in danger of falling into. All the while, utilising the built-in Telepathy Circuit which will enable all other road users to know their intentions. I think it comes as standard when you choose options like heated seats.

Did I do any people watching this year? You bet. Actually, I was rather grateful for the face masks to hide at least half of my permanently bemused expression. I did want to say ‘ubiquitous’ face masks, but that would have been horribly inaccurate.

But, fun in the sun and all that. I’m actually thinking of writing a book of updated children’s games based on some of the activities I saw over the summer. Because, let’s face it, there’s going to be a lot of books coming out over the next few months. Most of them really badly written, and all of them about some totally fictional dystopian / realistic / alternate universe future where an unknown / genetically-engineered / alien virus has caused havoc / wiped out all life except for a handful of survivors / brought country X to a standstill.

I just thought I’d like to add a fun book to the tidal wave. I can always make it a post-apocalyptic games book. Are vampires allowed to consider apocalypses? And is apocalypses the plural of apocalypse? It doesn’t sound right. And it looks weirder.

Anyway, I’ll share a couple of games that I saw. New versions of old classics. Ooh! That’d be a good tagline, wouldn’t it?

Hide & Seek

Set a counter on your smartphone so you don’t even have to count – adds to the excitement, doesn’t it? Ready or not? You’ll never know, kids! Then you just let your offspring run off while you spend the next half-hour staring at your smartphone.

Toddler table football

I think in some places this is called fuss ball? (that’s not exactly what I typed it, but I’m happy to go with it – I’ve seen how some people play it)

I saw a parent playing football with her offspring in a local playground. She was standing, legs akimbo and holding the child’s arms and swinging the toddler at the ball so that the child’s feet (occasionally) hit the ball.

So why not make this a fun activity for you and your friends? Get your mates to form 4 lines (plus a toddler swinging goalie at the back), 2 facing the other two. Each (obviously) needs to hold a toddler between their legs, taking turns to swing the child at the ball. It could catch on, I think. Fun for all the families.

Please note – this activity probably won’t work with any child old enough to have an opinion, so you might want to consider forming ‘Under 3s’ squad if it does take off.

Well, that’s two games. There are more. I’m wondering if there might be a section for grocklewuffs…

Ah, it’s good to be back. See you in a couple of weeks!

Bags not packed and ready to rock

Retrospective warning – grossness lies ahead!

Because…

I got to the end of typing this and thought – oops, someone out there is bound to get all snowflakey about where this post ends up…

So…

This is it for me for now.

It’s that time of year again when I disappear until the autumn. My bags aren’t packed. To be honest, I don’t even know where the bags are…  They might be in the attic but then again…

This year, I’m only disappearing metaphorically.  But I guess with everything that’s gone on recently, most people will be only travelling metaphorically. How many people have you seen who need to be gently harrumphed into moving ahead in a queue and got the response “Sorry, I was miles away.” or “Oh, I drifted off for a moment.”?

Well, at least you don’t need a passport.

Oh! And no travel sickness. And no running around the house checking you’ve switched everything off, locked the doors, etc. No decanting all your toiletries into those teeny funky bottles. No making sure you’ve packed enough underwear (plus one spare day’s worth). No panicking about whether you should take an entire first aid cabinet with you just in case you get ill…

I was abroad once when I got a heat rash on my foot. So I went to the pharmacy for some cream. I speak the language fluently, so it shouldn’t have been a problem. I explained and got the reply “Mushrooms.”

Okay.

Stop there for a moment.

Mushrooms?

I later worked out that she meant fungus – aka Athlete’s Foot.

I repeated myself. She repeated herself. I repeated myself again. She repeated herself again.

And round and round we went.

A queue started to form behind me. Their patience was almost audible. And soon the patience bubbled over into altruism. And before I knew it, I had my bare foot up on the (very high) counter with half-a-dozen complete strangers weighing in with their opinion.

A lively debate ensued and after 10 minutes, a consensus was reached. I had heat rash.

Gahhhhhhhfffffft!

And I was allowed to take my foot off the counter and was sent away with a tiny tube of extremely expensive emollient cream that smelled of peppermint.

Turns out it was basically peppermint foot lotion. Same ingredients. And about 5 times the price of ordinary foot lotion.

Lesson learned. 

So yes, it’s me.  I am that person who has a remedy for everything packed in their bag.

I got distracted, didn’t I?

See you in the autumn!

 

Is it summer yet?

 

Or did I miss it?

As you know, this is the time of year that I usually disappear to cooler climes. But I already live in cooler climes… although you’ve be forgiven for thinking that we’re somewhere near the equator today!

Plus disappearing off anywhere at the moment is a definite no-no. We were out earlier, giving the car its weekly run-out. Great excitement – we even had to fill up with petrol!

I need to get out more…

…says pretty much everyone at the moment.

Only we can’t.

Not everyone, everywhere, at any rate.

But if we can, we can, and if we can’t, we shouldn’t, so we don’t.

Huh?

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Anyway!

And while we were queueing up to pay in one shop (because what else is anyone doing at the moment?), the cashier had to call “next please” a few times, and with increasing volume before the lady in front of us realised it was her turn to approach the till (with great caution, naturally).

Her response?

“Sorry! I was miles away.”

And I had to fight so hard to stop myself from replying “That’s probably the only traveling you’ll be doing for the next couple of months…”

You see, things are different here.

I know that in England, things are starting to relax a bit and humanity is starting to creep back outdoors and spread across the map again, with human-friendly places starting to re-open and folks starting to be able to congregate in a socially responsible manner but it’s different here. No creeping. No spreading. And definitely, definitely no congregating, no matter the levels of responsibility being shown.

So this year is going to be different.

Well, that’s an understatement, isn’t it?

This year, I’m staying put. But still disappearing, if only in the metaphysical sense. Because this year, I think that the world I’ll be running away from will probably end up on my doorstep.

Hello, over-excitable tourists. Hello, free-range grocklewuffs.

It should be a good summer. Should.

Stay safe. Be kind. Have fun.

I’ll probably speak to you again before I go off-grid. It’ll no doubt take me that long to find the grid.

The Wisdom Of Nostalgia

Or

4 Things My Mother Used To Say Constantly To Me When I Was A Kid That Now Annoyingly Make Sense

Ever catch yourself saying something and think ‘oh boy, I’m turning into my mum/dad’?’ Seriously, even if you don’t have kids. There’s things I find myself saying to the dog (yes, the dog!) and I have to stop myself and think, I can’t believe I just said that. Although, in fairness, that might also be precisely because I am talking to my dog or, more perturbing, the fact that she’s answering me. In disparaging grunts. I guess that’s where the word ‘disgruntled’ come from…

Does anyone else have a dog that’s a cross between a furry toddler and a fuzzy teenager? And are they ever gruntled? Anyway, I’ll leave you to guess which one of these I’ve said to my dog!

“Eat your greens”
Apart from anything, I find now as an adult that I actually love green vegetables. I also know that there’s an actual reason why small children don’t like the taste (or even the sight) of green vegetables. Dang, if only I’d known that when I was five. The Battle Of The Broccoli could have been won before the stuff had even stopped steaming on my plate. But now? Oh, those leafy greens. Those yummy vitamins and minerals. And oh, the annoyance of knowing the mother had a point.

“Look where you’re going!”
For so long I wondered ‘what does that even mean?!’ And then the great light of ‘duhh’ shone on me and I realised it means. exactly. what. it. says. How did it take me so long to reach enlightenment? I think watching pedestrians’ obsession with their mobile phones cleared that one up nicely. As the third/fourth/fifth person slammed into a lamppost while checking their phones, a lightbulb went on over my head. Actually, it was probably the lamppost, come to think of it. Either walk and focus, or stop and look. They are not interchangeable pairings.

“Don’t make that face. If the wind blows, you’ll stay that way.”
Okay, I’ve got nothing. Nothing. I have absolutely no idea why this one was (and continues to be) so popular. But for some reason, I’ll always associate this phrase with broad beans…

“You look with your eyes, not with your hands!”
The biological ramifications of this one blew my mind as a kid. Or bio-illogical… unless… was it just possible that there was a strange kind of mutant out there that could actually see with their hands? What would they look like? Were they magical beings with eyes in their hands?

Was it some kind of telepathic divination?

Nah.

The mother just wanted me to stop throwing baked beans and chocolate into the shopping trolley while she wasn’t looking. Or touching e.v.e.y.t.h.i.n.g. on the shelves after she’d taken me out of the child seat in the trolley because I was single-handedly (I was using both hands, though) doubling their grocery bill.
And this is the one I kept hearing in my head more recently. Social distancing became the new normal. Gloves and masks became mandatory. Hand-washing became obligatory. Going into a shop meant only buying things I had bought previously because I couldn’t pick them up to read the labels. I couldn’t take the chance with my own health, and I certainly wouldn’t take the chance with anyone else’s. And that’s when it hit me. You look with your eyes, not with your hands.
“Oh! That’s what that means!”, quickly followed by “Oh. Dang!”

But I’m still hopeful about the telepathy mutant thing…