Something warm and fluffy

After yesterday's ranting blog, I was determined that today I would write about something warm and fluffy.
I will not get sidetracked by the fact that Grace Dent tricked me into reading some smug woman in a badly fitting jacket's article about how she chooses her darling Poopy (honestly I really read the child's name as Poopy - might be time to visit the optician again!) and India's friends. She did this by putting the link on Twitter with the words, "I have so much to say!"  The link was just a series of letters and numbers, with absolutely no mention of The Daily Mail.

So, back to warm and fluffy.  What do I really know about warm and fluffy?  I'm much more inclined to see the sombre, wicked and macabre. The grump is still in full flow and I WILL tame her.  Warm and fluffy.....right....um......OK....I've got it.

I say, I say, I say!  My dog has no nose.  How does he smell?  Terrible.

Really, he does smell very bad.  When we were children we liked it if the dog farted. We liked it even more if the dog hadn't farted and one of us had because the dog could always be blamed but today it was definitely the dog.  No human could possibly make that kid of smell.  Not only does my warm fluffy thing have very bad wind he also just smells.  He smells of.....well he smells of dog.  A dog that has got wet and dry too many times.  A dog that has sometimes pee-d on his own leg.  A dog who doesn't own a toothbrush.

The warm, fluffy smelly thing has spent most of the evening  snuggled up against my leg, twitching his ears, giving me dirty looks and finally issuing a small growl before going to sit next to the Long Suffering Husband. Knitting is the best way to ensure that you don't let sleeping dogs lie.

LSH has just asked, "Is that smell the dog?"

As the writers of Porridge used to say, "It's the small wins that make life bearable."

Can Reading Make You Happy?

It's been a while since I wrote anything and my head is about to explode.  There's so much in it and the more full it gets the less I feel as though I can write anything. Where do you start? Nobody wants to read the random rubbish that's floating around in there at the moment.  As I'm surprised anyone wants to read the normal rubbish that appears on this page, I think the best thing to do is write.  If you are reading this then I apologise and remind you that I am not writing for you but for the sake of my own mental health (such as it is).

Telling someone, yesterday, that my daughter is studying journalism I was accused of rolling my eyes as I said it.  "I suppose you're thinking that someone has to," they commented.  I am very proud of her and I'm sure that when she starts to write I will enjoy every single word but this has been a week when I find myself holding my head in my hands and wondering why journalists actually exist.  I'm probably reading too much and for that I blame Twitter.  The constant drip-feed of news, gossip and speculation about what might or might not be news, the links to both good and bad articles and the reporting in newspapers of what has been said on Twitter has left me jittery, checking my phone every 2 seconds in case I miss the next rude thing to be tweeted.

Last week I was fascinated as the Reeva Steenkamp murder unravelled on twitter.  I use her name on purpose because it is not the Oscar Pistorius' murder, he is not the victim and he might not even be the perpetrator (although as more details unfold in court it seems it was his gun and he did pull the trigger) but reading my twitter feed on that day, you would be forgiven for thinking that he was the victim.  Then, as the day went on he became a 'wife beating monster.' and I worried about laws I don't understand like sub judice.  The next day the 'proper papers' got involved.

The last time I can remember being shocked by the front page of a newspaper was in November 1981 when the Daily Mail called Michael Foot a 'Worzel Gummage' and an 'Out of work Navvy in a Donkey Jacket'

At the time I thought this was terrible. Here was an old man, with a chest complaint, wearing a nice warm coat and they were picking on him, not because he hadn't done his coat up (which I would have thought was perfectly reasonable) but because they didn't think his coat looked like it cost enough money.  The more enraged I got about the picture the more stories I read about it and then it became clear that it was his wife's fault and everyone hated his wife because she was a feminist.  This only confirmed my desire to be a feminist, who didn't have to make sure their husband wore expensive coats. At the time, I decided I would never read the Daily Mail again and until the invention of twitter I have never not even been tempted to pick it up in the Dentist's waiting room. Twitter seduced me, when a girl who had shown us round on one of the University open days had a horrible article about lazy teachers published and then I was then again seduced by the the Samantha Brick controversy. 

As I grew up I took what was written in papers with a pinch of salt and have mostly found headlines to be funny in their crassness and wondered who they were fooling and then last week the Sun stooped to an all time low of tastelessness.  I was genuinely shocked after being confronted with row upon row of the headline, " 3 Shots. Screams. Silence", illustrated with a picture of what I thought was their page 3 girl, pouting and pointing her various assets in my direction.  Only when I got home and consulted twitter did I discover that the picture was of Ms Steenkamp and there were opinions ranging from total outrage to an appreciation of her beautiful form in her 'work clothes'.  

In the last few days, I have been obsessed with Hilary Mantel's comments about Kate Middleton.  One of my pet hates is women turning on each other and having read some of Hilary Mantel's writing before I was surprised, as I didn't think this was really her style.  The Prime Minister got very worried about it, he made a statement from India, where he had previously said that he was worried about the lack of women in his cabinet but really wasn't sure what to do about it.  The poor man is so confused!  The Mantel piece is worth reading in full, not least because the woman really knows how to write.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

She wasn't really attacking Kate but the press and the establishment that still forgets that women who marry royals are real people, with real hopes and dreams. I quite like this royal couple and I like to think that they married for love and are strong enough to ignore everything  the stupid press and anyone else says about them and it should end there but the backlash is unforgivable.

Mantel Piece - love a play on words

The criticism seems to have been along the lines of, "how dare that ugly woman who is too clever for her own good say anything about the beautiful princess, who is having a baby." 

The Sun reduced it all to Bump...1 Grump....0, with several pictures of Kate looking beautiful and radiant and Hilary looking, frumpy.  The comments by women on these articles was really shocking.

http://storify.com/robertsharp59/the-unwitting-irony-of-mantel-s-critics

Mostly, this has been about lazy journalism and women being cruel about each other but just occasionally it has sparked a brilliant piece of writing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2013/feb/19/hilary-mantel-duchess-of-cambridge-controversy

That should please Hilary Mantel, to inspire brilliant writing as twice winner of the Booker Prize has to be worth taking all this rubbish for. 

Waterstones book shop tweeted in the week, "Whoever said that money can't buy happiness has never bought a book."  They may have a point so I'm off to find my happy place in a book and leave Twitter and the Newspapers alone for a while. 

Synchronicity

In a world packed full of information, I've often wondered how we choose what to pay attention to.  Why is it that  you meet people you know when you've traveled half way across the world but take absolutely no notice of the strangers that are around you all the time? It is a fact that when you are thinking about something those things appear in your life.  Once I was having lunch with my mum and she said, "You never see men on bikes with their gardening tools strapped to the crossbar on their way to the allotment anymore" and a man on a bike with his allotment tools strapped to the crossbar cycled past.

Footpad. "I HEAR A CYCLIST COMING. I'LL UPSET HIS BIKE, AND THEN—"BUT IT WAS MR. TUBER-CAINE, THE ALLOTMENT ENTHUSIAST, RETURNING FROM HIS LABOURS. (Punch Oct10, 1917) I was reliably informed by QI that if you have lost your keys you are much more likely to find them if you walk around the house, repeating the word,"keys" over and over again.  This unusual human habit of seeing connections has always amazed me and some co-incidences are jaw-droppingly amazing.  It's almost enough to make you believe in Kismet, divine intervention or some paranormal activity.  One of my favourites is the story of the baby that fell from a window in Detroit onto a man passing underneath.  Neither was hurt.  This was an amazing stroke of luck but exactly one year later the man was walking under the same window and the same baby fell out and landed on him. This morning I was browsing through Twitter and noticed some tweets about the channel 4 programme, 'How to Build a Bionic Man.'  This is not a programme that would normally grab my attention but then I saw a tweet from the Vice Chancellor of the University that my daughter studies at, which said, "A real hair on the back of the neck moment - 'it does work!' - when DMU's Joan Taylor's artificial pancreas releases insulin in #bionicman" This did interest me so I read a bit more about Joan Taylor and her research. Fascinating stuff.  Joan Taylor has spent the last 20 years trying to develop an artificial pancreas.  This is potentially great news for anyone with Type 1 Diabetes. More information about this work Reading this was making me think about a brilliant young lady I know, and her family who have been raising money for JDRF (The Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation) and as I was reading an e-mail came through from them.  Her mum is running the London Marathon in April and has been training hard for a while.  Her e-mail was to let me know that it is only 10 weeks to go and to let me know that details of her 'just giving' page so that I could sponsor her, which I am going to do as soon as I have finished this blog. If you have stumbled upon this and managed to read this far you might like to consider sponsoring her too. https://www.justgiving.com/NatalieLCook

Footpad. "I HEAR A CYCLIST COMING. I'LL UPSET HIS BIKE, AND THEN—"BUT IT WAS MR. TUBER-CAINE, THE ALLOTMENT ENTHUSIAST, RETURNING FROM HIS LABOURS. (Punch Oct10, 1917)

I was reliably informed by QI that if you have lost your keys you are much more likely to find them if you walk around the house, repeating the word,"keys" over and over again. 

This unusual human habit of seeing connections has always amazed me and some co-incidences are jaw-droppingly amazing.  It's almost enough to make you believe in Kismet, divine intervention or some paranormal activity.  One of my favourites is the story of the baby that fell from a window in Detroit onto a man passing underneath.  Neither was hurt.  This was an amazing stroke of luck but exactly one year later the man was walking under the same window and the same baby fell out and landed on him.

This morning I was browsing through Twitter and noticed some tweets about the channel 4 programme, 'How to Build a Bionic Man.'  This is not a programme that would normally grab my attention but then I saw a tweet from the Vice Chancellor of the University that my daughter studies at, which said, "A real hair on the back of the neck moment - 'it does work!' - when DMU's Joan Taylor's artificial pancreas releases insulin in #bionicman"

This did interest me so I read a bit more about Joan Taylor and her research. Fascinating stuff.  Joan Taylor has spent the last 20 years trying to develop an artificial pancreas.  This is potentially great news for anyone with Type 1 Diabetes.

More information about this work

Reading this was making me think about a brilliant young lady I know, and her family who have been raising money for JDRF (The Juvenille Diabetes Research Foundation) and as I was reading an e-mail came through from them.  Her mum is running the London Marathon in April and has been training hard for a while.  Her e-mail was to let me know that it is only 10 weeks to go and to let me know that details of her 'just giving' page so that I could sponsor her, which I am going to do as soon as I have finished this blog.

If you have stumbled upon this and managed to read this far you might like to consider sponsoring her too.

https://www.justgiving.com/NatalieLCook

Not so Naive

You would imagine that someone who doesn't drink, has never smoked or taken drugs and married their first boyfriend would be a bit boring, wouldn't you?  This doesn't sound like someone who would be telling the dirtiest jokes in the staffroom, watching Sun Sex and Suspicious Parents without being shocked, thinking that her daughter's chunder chart in her University flat is fine, and knowing what the readers wives page of a top shelf magazine is.  The thing is, I have never been fazed by what people do. Just because I don't want to do it myself doesn't mean I care if other people do.  And most things that people do that I wouldn't really are quite funny.  I don't get the urge to cross my arms, roll my eyes, purse my lips and say in my best teacher voice, "I'm so disappointed in you!"  I just want to laugh and I love to laugh, so the more people that misbehave the better.

I am constantly surprised by how little well behaved people seem to know of the the seedy side of life. Do other people only know about the things they do or have done?  When I quipped that someone ought to be careful that their boyfriend didn't take pictures and send them in to the readers wives page I was met with blank looks. Obviously, I have never featured in the reader's wives section (or any other) of a porn magazine but I do know they exist. I wonder if I'm just showing my age.  Maybe people don't buy magazines anymore now that they have the internet.  And when I sing this song, people are shocked.  They thought I was such a nice girl.

The Internet is for Porn - Avenue Q

I am always the first person to spot an innuendo, which I suspect is also ageing me, as I'm sure it's because of the Carry On films that I grew up with.  Today, a colleague said that she loves a good sausage.  This reminded me of one of the funniest Sun Sex and Suspicious Parents episodes where a lad was on a mission to sleep with as many girls as possible and he called it, "sausage-ing".  This was funny enough but when his mum was talking about his behaviour on the holiday and she said, "I don't really mind all the sausage-ing.  It's the drinking I have a problem with." we were almost wetting ourselves with laughter.  Last week's episode was also funny.  I don't understand why parents would take part in this programme because if you can handle it you don't want to know but last week there was a Dad who must have done much worse in his day.  He had been a Bluecoat and had a wicked sense of humour.  He was only disappointed with his son when he got a tattoo.  The boy had a camel tattooed on his toe.  He thought it would be a good chat up line, "I'll show you my camel toe if you show me yours!"  His dad said, "You might as well have had 'RIGHT TIT' tattooed on your chest!"

The Long Suffering Husband has had a difficult week at work.  We all have them, where everything gets on top of us and we end up taking it out on your colleagues and snapping, crying or generally flouncing around like a Diva.  Last night he said that he might go and get some cakes or something to apologise.  Buying cakes is against my religion and so I offered to make him some smiley-face-happy-biscuits.  He said that he didn't think that would work for his colleagues (engineers aren't as easily pleased as teachers) but if I really wanted to I could make some cakes.  I took my inspiration from Sun Sex and Suspicious Parents and made him some, "Sorry, I've been a tit cakes."

Apparently, they went down very well and they were particularly impressed with the 'stripper spangles'.

Happiness is a homemade biscuit

Today I am happy.  There is no damage to my vocal chords, no nodules, lumps bumps or anything that requires surgery.  I watched my vocal chords open and close as I sang, "eee" and although I need some vocal therapy to strengthen them I can carry on doing my job without doing any damage.  This news makes me happy and when I'm happy I bake.

Our family are being Hairy Dieters at the moment and so these happy biscuits will go to work with me tomorrow, where I estimate they will last about 2 seconds (if they're lucky).  I am so happy that I will also take them in my favourite tin.  

These biscuits are perfect because of a meeting of two happy things.  Firstly, the hospital was near Sainsbury's and so I was able to treat myself to Joanne Wheatley's book.  She was the winner of last year's Great British Bake Off, I follow her on Twitter and love that her grandchildren call her Nanny Cakes and she is always re-tweeting the pictures people send her of her recipes.  The most re-tweeted recipe is custard creams, so my bargain priced treat had to be first used for custard creams.

The second happy thing is my Christmas present from my Mum and Dad.  Loads of Lakeland vouchers and I finally spent them at the weekend. I had been into the store so many times but hadn't been able to decide what to get and then I remembered the internet, where you can put things in and out of your basket and shuffle things round until you have excatly the right amount.  It was so exciting having a big box of goodies arrive.

In this big pile of stuff were two brilliant baking sheets for making big batches of cookies and biscuits and smiley face cutters. 

I know that the next few weeks could be just as difficult as the last 8 but I will remain happy and keep baking.

Where's your tea?

When studying homeopathy a lecturer said to me, "If you can find out about their tea, you have the case cracked."

I used to love tea as a child.  It was the first thing I learnt to do in the kitchen.  At 3 years old I would pull up a chair put the kettle on, warm the pot, put the tea leaves in and make my Dad a cup of tea (health and safety people would be having palpitations at the thought).  The children's book, The Dribblesome Teapot by Norman Hunter was one of my all time favourites. My next door neighbour was a tea-obsessive.  He had a green painted chest in his kitchen with jars of every variety of tea known to man and sometimes we were invited in to try different teas.  Sunday tea was my favourite, with cake and crumpet and a warm pot of tea.  It was all very exciting and sometimes I wonder why I only drink hot water now.

We are having Hairy Dieters Burgers for our tea tonight but that isn't what my lecturer meant at all.  Tea, for her stood for Time Energy and Attention and while I am looking forward to my burgers all I am thinking about is my throat and the sounds that may or may not come out of it.  I have tried to blog about other things.  I have tried to be interested in the world and everything else but I find my mind wandering and there it is, settled right in the pit of my throat.

After 8 weeks of waking up and hoping that I would be speaking normally, this morning I stupidly felt scared that I would be symptom free.  You see, tomorrow is my long awaited appointment with the consultant.  Tomorrow, someone might be able to say if there is anything wrong and tell me what can be done to fix it and as I write that I'm thinking that I don't want anything to be wrong - still.  I am the ultimate scaredy cat but I am also aware just how stupid I would look if tomorrow morning I felt absolutely fine, with not one single symptom.  It would feel like such a waste of everyone's time.

I would like to tell you about my brilliant Christmas present, or some homemade biscuits, or the memory quilt I made for my daughter, or the weeds on my allotment, or the lengths I swam, or the baby cardigan I'm going to knit, or the songs I want to sing but because I can't sing any songs, that is all I can think about.  Even the fact that I'm now going to grate a courgette (don't tell my son) to put into the burger isn't inspiring me to make some notes for my forthcoming book, "1001 Things to do with a Courgette!"