When Life was Simpler...

That's me on the left.  And that's my best friend holding the bananas. The hunky guy in the furry suit is the Cinema Manager - also my brother - on one of his good hair days. Taken at the opening of the new local Multiplex, I'd like to think that 'King Kong' might have been showing that evening, but I do have a vague recollection that my poor brother was given the only outfit large enough to take his stature - which I'm sure he'd have been delighted with because it maintains the air of mystery (or socio-phobic tendencies) which run in our family. We were all in our  twenties and, really, life couldn't have been simpler.   We shared the same house, shared responsibilities (i.e. I cooked, BF cleaned and sibling paid us both to do his share) and we all got on famously. There was a fourth lodger but we didn't really talk to  him much - he kept himself to himself, worked in something geeky like HR or IT, wore embarrassingly loud shirts and was forever jogging (in said shirts, oddly).  He also lived in the Harry Potter equivalent of a bedroom because we'd all bagged the best rooms by the time he'd got back from a run round the block the night we moved in. He merely served to make up the final quarter of the monthly rental.  Harsh but true.
And the only thing we all (apart from shirt-guy) had to worry about was whether there was stuff  we could make toasties with, if there was wine in the fridge and if, between us we had enough smokes to last until one of could be arsed to go to the corner shop and return with fresh supplies of all the above.
Work was an irritation which got in the way of being back home and having the best laughs I've ever had in my life.  Every weekend we had loud, drunken, hysterical dinner parties and our Sunday lunches became legendary.  Any day with a 'Y' in in it was a good enough reason to throw a party and before long we didn't even want to spend Christmasses away from each other.
And we knew those days were good, even at the time - we squeezed every last bit of fun out of them.
It's seeing a picture like this that makes me realise how easy everything was back then, no real responsibilities, no mortgages, no massive debts, the occasional blip with boyfriends/girlfriends but nothing that ever really got in the way of the life we all shared.  And of course I had no idea that one day, maybe 20 years hence, it would only take a phone call from the 'BF back then' to make me laugh during a time when laughs have been very thin on the ground. And after also not having seen each other for about 7 years, that's a pretty tall order. But then we've always been pretty tall girls.
And she said she'd missed seeing something funny come up on my blog recently, so I think this remedies that.

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*