Turn it up!

Okay, ignore the picture, just click PLAY, turn it up and you will discover moves that you didn't even KNOW your body knew! This is THE definitive cheer-up tune -  it's called 'Moonlight Bliss' and he used to be in the Mavericks - remember them?   I love it. Love it. love it.

Um... did I mention I love it?!

It *was*n't me!

One of the mildly annoying things about having a Blog and maintaining the damn thing and trying to come up with interesting things to say two or three times a week (and they're a few mildly annoying things too, come to think of it) is the fact that you're never quite sure Who's Reading In on it.
There's the very handy visitor counter/site meter thingy at the bottom which tells me what part of the world/country each visitor hails from (mostly via Facebook and a particularly Elite Writing Group I belong to, which is nice to know) and occasionally I'll get a hint at what words were searched for resulting in the visitor... um, visiting... but unless I get a proper 'follower' person joining my happy band of readers, or somebody making a comment (in English please) then I'm really none the wiser.
The oddest search words I've had were lick my boots. And before you go trying that one at home, I've deleted that post anyway because when I changed my background colour it made the whole post go a funny shade of puce.  As Paddy McGuinness (don't you just love him-but-don't-know-why?) would say... "no likey"  not at all.
Because generally  the things that make me laugh and make me seethe and make me squirm and make me want to blog about the most are people -   people I work with, people I live with, people I meet in the street - okay then, Sainsburys.  And people I'm family with.
I know I can safely get away with having a sly dig at the Hubby because he wouldn't do anything so remotely out of character as wanting to read, voluntarily and with mounting excitement in his bones, anything that I've written.  Oh dear me, no.  He's a proper Husband and proper husbands don't read stuff their wives laughingly call 'books.'
Not until they're signing the six figure advance, I'm guessing.
And if I DID mention an incident or a conversation or something that made me white with rage/hilarity/disgust, then it might be pursued by the inevitable query (and let's face it, nobody wants to be persued by a query - inevitable or otherwise) "Was that me?  Was it?  Go on - you can tell me...was that me you were blogging about?"

I've just realised that maybe I should just blog and be done with it because once I'm published *and I will be* I will still be persued by the inevitable queries then, won't I?

Anyway, my point was that I don't want to upset anybody (apart from the Hubby and he should have read the small print on the Marriage certificate if he's got a problem with that, shouldn't he?).   So I do as my Nan used to tell me and if I "can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all".
Mind you I've done that in the past, and it's still risen up and bitten me squarely on the arse.
Sometimes you just can't win.
I'm saying nowt.

*This is a visualisation technique brought to you via several self-help manuals, some lovely writer friends and a lot of Notes from the Universe*

An excerpt ... (indulge me, it's my Birthday!)

This is a little piece from the book I'm working on at the moment.  My teenage character has somehow been transported back to 1979 and her mother's house - who is the same age as her.  Here, they're chatting to her mum's Nan....

‘She’s got these hot irons, Nan.’

            ‘Straighteners,’ I tell her. Then worry that this might be too much information and might change the course of history.  Would it?  ‘They’re very big in America,’ I add just to make it seem more believable that Julie has never seen any before.

            ‘Like my curling tongs only flat.’ Julie explains.  ‘And my hair feels really nice – but it’s not very fashionable.  Nothing like Jill Monroe in Charlie’s Angels.’ She swishes her lovely golden mane around her shoulders and I wonder how come she’s so difficult to please?

            ‘Oh yes the girl who’s married to that nice Six Million Dollar Man…,’ her Nan nods.  ‘Now she’s very attractive, Julie, but you really mustn’t go around wanting to be somebody you’re not.  It’s not good for you.  You are who you are and you have to make the most of it – not try to turn yourself into somebody else…’

            ‘I’m not, Nan!’ Julie scowls crossly.  ‘I just like the way she looks – everybody wants to be Farrah Fawcett Majors.  Everybody!’

            ‘I don’t,’ her Nan winks over at me.

            ‘Neither do I,’ I wink back.

            Ah - there’s nothing like bonding with your great grandmother (deceased).

Where did I put those Rose-Coloured Specs please?

It hasn't been a great Half-Term 'break' thus far.  Imagine if you will how Ebenezer Scrooge looked in his dank shell of an office, huddled over his accounts books, quill in fingerless-gloved hand, an icicle hanging of the end of his chilly nose and you won't be far off the picture of me right now.  At least the screen's giving off a nice glow and making me feel slightly warmer (in the face anyway).

In what must be the coldest week since the 'snow days' of last month, our boiler has stopped working.  If you'd driven past our house this week you could be forgiven for thinking we're either away on holiday and pretending there's someone home - with remote-car-in-drive-timer-delay - or else we've forgotten to pay our electricity bill.  It's dark and the reason it's dark is because all the curtains are drawn in the hope that what little heat we manage to create inside, stays inside and doesn't escape out the windows (NOBODY tell me this is a scientific miscalculation.  Not now.  Not unless they want their virtual heads ripped off and thrown on the fire anyway).
Yes, we have a fire.  But of course we've run out of fuel.  Of course we have - that was going to happen, wasn't it?  In a world controlled by Sod's Law of course it was.
Just as my handbag was going to fall into a (quite deepish) puddle this morning as I tried to get back into the car forgetting to deflate the umbrella and causing a bit of a personal commotion.
And just as my clean-on jeans are now soaked wet up to the knees due to having to run the whole length of the (not short) garden to the shed at the bottom of it where lives the tumble dryer - in three inch grass and flares to shame Shaggy. Multiply this soggy olympic event by four and you have a week's worth of washing (nearly) done.
And just as when I finally get to the plumbing shop to pick up a replacement boiler part (after having spent three days in discussions with plumber/supplier/technical support/plumber/supplier... you get the picture) to have the young man on the desk tell me he's just given it to someone else who put an online order in for it earlier...all perfectly understandable.  Living in the house where Sod rules.
So we are still 'living' upstairs, the Girl and I.  Where we have an electric fan rotating gently on the landing, ensuring all doorways are nice and lukewarm for entry but no further into the rooms. We are wearing enough layers to become the human equivalent of a filo-pastried tart.  And its' very difficult to type with cold cramps.
At least that's the excuse I've given myself for lack of wordage and lack of inspiration.  How can I be expected to create a world of fiction when all I want to do is sit with my hands cupped round a mug of tea constantly like an advert for Ovaltine?
And the scary thing is that to make a cup of anything hot, you have to go downstairs.  The kitchen's *downstairs* - in that incredibly scary place where there's NO heat whatsoever, aside from the slight breath from the cats as they're balled up, their tails over their noses, waiting for normality to resume.  And if anybody seriously wants to be warmed up from the breath of one of our cats, then a one-way ticket to Insanity is waiting for them.
Although I bet it would turn out to be invalid.
That's just the way this week is panning out.

Hope Over Heels

My gorgeous-ly tolerant and eternally optimistic-in-the-face-of-adversity Hubby bought me a couple of CD's for Valentine's Day yesterday.
On Friday, the girls at work had asked me what I was getting  him and I was still undecided.  But I said that if I didn't get the damned Michael Buble CD I'd put VERY STRONGLY on my Christmas Wish List ("Ahhh but there's always your New Year's present"  oh yeah?) then he would be getting a divorce. Of course I didn't mean it.
Much.
So as the Girl had been working on his memory ever since the non-appearance of the New Years present (or ANY New Years present, come to think of it) I wasn't surprised to watch Michael Buble drop onto my bed after I'd torn off his outer coverings *cold shower*.

Although I wasn't expecting Susan Boyle to land on top of him.
I put her off for about two hours of Buble delight but she begged to be heard.  And what I did hear made my insides curl up with happiness and absolute joy.
Jeez, but this woman can sing with more emotion than I've heard in any other singer's voice for a long time (Buble excluded of course).  I haven't stopped playing it.  It's on in the car, the kitchen, even whilst I'm writing. And that's unheard of - I can't usually concentrate with any music in the background.  Different with Su-Bo.  She's a feisty, gutsy, determined, emotional, ordinary woman who's not scared to just be herself.
I can't lie that we didn't watch Her Story which was on over Christmas and I sobbed like a proud mother at it.  I have also just read the notes she's made alongside each of the songs she sings on the album and it made me cry again.
And I know it's all down to good lighting and Spandex and great make-up and frocks, but she looks so lovely in the picutres too.
She's making her dreams come true. She's making her late mum's dream come true.  The fact that she's started her Dream at the age she is, in the 'condition' that she was in, gives me hope.
And anything that gives me hope is a good thing.

Who remembers Prize bars?

Whilst researching 1979 for my latest teenage book, I found a whole host of TV ads for that era on YouTube... particularly heart-tugging in this selection is the one for WH.Smith showing all the Hi-Tech games we used to play with and the C&A tune - ah, we were so easily pleased back then, weren't we?

Snippets from The Resources Room

I should explain that the Resources Room is where I spend 4 hours of my day.  I get paid for creating backgrounds onto which children's work is displayed throughout the school.  There're loads of them. Sometimes it feels like the're taking over the world. And some of the discussions overheard within our hallowed walls you probably wouldn't find in any other occupation...

1. "Do you think we should put the Lunar Module actually ON the surface or leave it hanging about in space?"

(Unlikely to have been said by anyone in NASA at the time of the moon landing although I haven't  bothered to confirm this. Anne Other and I decided that our contribution to the historial event would probably have been "Houston we have a problem - we're clean out of Hob-Nobs")
 
2. "Oh my god I left Queen Victoria in the Printing Room!"
She was wondering where I'd got to.

3. "The world needs blowing up before it goes in the Library"
(I can never remember to say "enlarging")

4. "Pauline's making the muscle man bigger - she's better at it than me"
She is.  What can I say?

5. "Should Albert go beside Victoria or does he look better on top?"
We positioned him in a manner less open to controversy in the end.

6. "We need to do something with Uranus, it looks more like a Christmas pudding from here".
It still does.

I'm so glad I don't have a *normal*  job - this is way more fun!

I MUST learn to focus on the task in hand... I must learn to focus on the ... oooh looky...

Whilst washing up at the kitchen sink, I notice the pot of Basil/Parsley/Poison Ivy on the sill in front of me, is wilty.  So, lest I forget, I pull off the Marigolds, fill the kettle and top the poor droopy thing up - remembering that the fern-y thing in the living room also needed a drink last time I looked.  So while I'm at it I do that as well.  And the plants in the fireplace.  Which is covered in dust and ash and when was the last time the grate was emptied and the slate polished?  Might as well give them a quick once over whilst I'm in here.  So, fishing about in the undersink cupboard, back in the kitchen, I notice that the bin needs emptying and the cleaning spray isn't under here, so I must have left it in the hallway.  Better have a quick look before I forget.  It's by the phone.  And there's a message on there which means I can't have listened to it because it's still flashing.  And it's a bloody woman with a Terminator voice asking me if I'd like to consolidate all my debts into one easy loan blah blah blah and I'm so incensed with her not being a really nice message from somebody more lovely that when I try to delete the message I actually delete the outgoing message and I have no idea how to re-record a new message and I really need to because of husband's work etc. and if prospective customers call and all they hear is a ranting, sighing, bleating mad baggage then they will NOT be encouraged to leave a message asking him to ring back.  I need to find the instruction manual for the phone.  Which is in a drawer in the sideboard.  No idea which one.  But there's a whole drawer-ful of photographs from our Wedding which are flicked through idly, then pored over thoroughly whilst trying to work out where the waist went and the shining dewy bridal glow and then the clock strikes an hour of some description and I also wonder where the hell the past three hours went - I know - a nice cup of tea would be ... well, nice.  But when I get into the kitchen there're no cups washed up and for some even stranger reason,  the kettle's disappeared.
And I ask myself how come I can't seem to just SIT DOWN AND FINISH WRITING THE BOOK?
... Per-lease.

Just give me a home, where the buffalos roam.

I've just realised (although there's been a dawning of this coming on for a while, let me tell you) why God invented Retirement.  Why Nature invented a General Slowing Down.  Why Time needs so much of it to Work.  Etcetera.  An Epiphany?  A great flash of inspiration?  A sudden burst of hitherto untapped creativity?
Nah.
I just got back from dropping The Girl off on her 'Sixth Form Shadow Day' and accidentally bumped into my reflection in the rear view mirror as I was unclipping my seatbelt.
See Jackie Stallone there?
So did I.
This is clearly what happens to a person who has spent the best part of  their life trying to hold down a job of any description in the name of trying to keep a roof over their heads and something edible on the plate. 
Of course, getting up, dressed and made up in the dark this morning could also have something to do with it but I'm sticking to blaming it on the ravages of Time and Tide. My overworked body is just getting to tired to cope with commonplace funtions best left to youth.  It needs a rest.
And even whilst I adjusted my badly (embarrassingly badly)  applied lipstick from 6 a.m. I almost convinced myself that NOBODY else saw how insanely it had been flung on earlier, especially not The Girl, her boyfriend, his brother, his sister and his parents.  They wouldn't have seen anything at that hour, would they? In the bright lights of their kitchen.  Surely not.  After all, they live in the neighbouring village from Denial where I reside - it's probably in the water. And I'm hurtling towards the age where I just won't give a sh*t anyway. So,  I'm in training.
Embarrassment - moi?
I'd say.

Do the Math? I'd rather do the Funky Chicken (naked) in any well-known UK shopping centre (but don't hold me to it)

I loved my twelve times table square.  When I had it right there -  in front of me and the teacher pointed and said "six sevens!".  I could walk a path (two paths, actually) to praise.  And I arrived at the correct square... hang on a minute (seriously, where's that damn calculator when you need it?) ahem - 42.  Of course! 42!  I knew that - had I been hypnotised and regressed to that exact day at school when I had my twelve-square out - I mean.
You see I'm not a black and white person.  For me,  1+1=2 has been done to death.  We all know it.  Can we not just move on now and find something else out? A cure for cancer perhaps or maybe just read a new book which has words that are put in a different order to make someone happy.   Whoever invented Mathematics as a lesson that should be learned, was a sadist.  And it's something that apparently we ALL need to know and pass down to our children and their children ad nauseum.  There's probably even a mathematical term for this which I'd share with you if I was bothered enough to look it up.
Anyone else remember Logarithms?  What were THEY all about? And hands up who's had cause to panic  in the face of an everyday-life-conundrum and thought "shit - if only I had my Slide-Rule/Logarithms book with me right now...the world could be saved/the puppy wouldn't die/global warming would be a thing of the past" No.  me neither.
Maths homework for me meant sitting huddled over a very damp exercise book (tears), rubber in hand, holes in the pages through so much erasing, a little pile of pencil shavings as a distraction technique (from sharpening my wrists mostly) and my Mother breathing over my shoulder, huffing and sighing like she'd given birth to Forrest Gump's dumber sister.
My mum worked in Accounts.  She could add up a string of thirteen numbers in her head and still carry on knitting and not break out in a sweat.  Me?  I only had to glance at a sum and I'd want to pee my pants and hide in the girls toilets til it was all over (embarrassing at the age of thirty-four).
I just didn't get it.   It didn't have shape, or colour, or sound or smell or rhyme.  And for the life of me I didn't get why you could sometimes 'borrow' some from one number and then 'carry' some more somewhere else to arrive at the 'right answer'.  That's what bothered me.  There was only the RIGHT answer.  No debating, no 'possibles', no uncertainty or discussion allowed - right or wrong.  No in between with Maths.  BUT this is what I like.  I like the in-between stuff, the grey areas, the debateable, the uncertainties, the variations and connotations - I don't like worlds that are black and white with no shades in between.
Which doesn't cut much mustard with any Maths Teacher I know.
So it comes as a bit of a shock to find that The Girl is in the Higher set for her GCSE Maths.  Er- pardon me? When did this happen?  Currently she's skipping gaily through a field of Simultaneous Equations.  The last time we sat down and did sums together we were both nearly in tears and at each other's throats - I ended up writing a letter to her teacher in the end telling him that although 'we have both tried, we are sorry to say that we do not understand the question'. Which was the truth.  And teachers admire the truth, don't they?
And I like to think that my outright honesty with the whole 'not understanding' thing has helped forged her path toward mathematical genius - no, I do.  For, since that day she has always raised her hand when she hasn't understood the question, or else waited until lesson-end and asked if she could be helped and this - contrary to personal belief that it will result in being labelled 'slow-to-grasp' - actually works.  She's proof of this.
Although I do have a confession to make.  And this makes me very proud indeed.  I once sat up til the wee smalls on the BBC Bitesize site, teaching myself Algebra for when the Girl and I had a tough old time of it way back when.  And the thrill and pulse of sheer victory I felt when she returned with a monumental 12/15 for that night's homework, is something I will always remember.
It's never too late.
If you want to do something bad enough - especially if it's for someone you'll do anything for.
Delight equals Determination over Despair.

If the Genes fit...

So the Girl has a pre-arranged, pre-paid for, pre-tty much completely organised 'Kerrang' thing happening this coming Friday... by the way... what happened to going to KidsWorld and turning your tongue blue with Slush Puppies and falling off foam-covered rolling logs and laughing til you're sick? - it's true - it DOES go quickly, this childhood thing.  Trust me. Back to the story.
So,  whilst she was chatting on line with one of the lads who's going with the party, he inadvertently (or not -  jury's still out) misspelled the word "you're" - without the apostrophe or the 'e'.  (The sentence was something like "your an idiot" - feel free to replace stronger, more insulting teenagery-type words at will).
Gulp.
This is MY daughter we're talking about, so you kinda get the gist of where this is going, right?
She corrected him.  Only decent thing you can do.  He stuck to his guns, telling her he was using it as slang and as he's currently mid-way through A-Level English Language, he should know.
Double gulp.
The Girl pointed out that if he'd wanted to use the word as slang or even 'text-speak' then it should have read something like"ur"  and not just missed out the apostrophe.
Heated debate (again, use your own imagination) ensued.
Fine.
Lots of 'fine's during supper this evening.  a few tears.  a few more.

[I have to interject that MY advice: "A Mother's Advice" - which was actually sought, may I add - was that the whole thing should be "slept on" and re-visited tomorrow after the heat of this evening had been allowed to chill a little.  No rash decisions should be made until then. Very sensible I thought.]

Consequently, lad is told that until he apologises and admits his inaccuracy, he is no longer welcome on this pre-arranged outing of musicality.
Nothing like a sound piece of advice being put to good use.  Nothing like.
He stands his ground.  He knows what he's talking about.  The A-level course again cited as proof if proof were needed.
So another girl is invited in his stead.
An hour later he apologises.

[Of course very, very tempted at this stage to go with an "I told you so", but a Mother knows her place]

And after he's informed of being usurped in the Kerrang seats, tells the Girl that of course he's not upset, and he wouldn't dream of demanding he still goes after she's already replaced him.
There's a moral in here somewhere but for the life of me, the only one I can come up with right now is "Mother knows Best".