Exercise

Most women of a certain age, when they decide they need to do a bit of exercise, enrol in a pilates class, or do yoga.

The more energetic might take to aerobics, either on land or in water.

Some might swim or even spin.

Lots more pay a subscription to their local gym and then never turn up.

Not me.

I've just enrolled in an Irish Dance class for mummies!

Feis

Today was the day!

Dolly danced at her first Feile . She was in a group of 50 girls her age from 5 local Irish Dance Schools.

I am proud, delighted and to be honest a big bit astounded to say that she won three medals of note:

1. third overall in the confined reel
2. highly commended in the reel
3. third in the team dance

I have a wee bit of poor quality video of the event which I am hoping to upload to this post ... watch this space!

Are Youse Gettin?

Went out for coffee last week whilst shopping. To be fair, there wasn't much to choose from by way of eats at the place, but I ordered a tea and a coffee and eyed up a cake on a stand at the till.

'Is that carrot cake?' I asked

Pause ...

'Um, yes' replies girl No.1

I'm not convinced, so as girl No.2 appears from the 'kitchen' (and I use that term loosely) I say

'I was just asking if that was carrot cake?'

She looks at girl No.1 and says

'Yeah, it is ... isn't it?'

Just at this, a third (this time male) member of staff arrives at the scene. The two girls promptly turn to him and say

'Is that there carrot cake?'

His reaction, although not at all conventional, is the most persuading yet - he lifted the cling film off the cake, and sniffed it!!!

Well, I think, in for a penny ... so I also bend down to sniff the cake, now declared 'definitely carrot cake' by the male staff member, to discover it is in fact toffee cake. I don't like toffee cake, so I thanked them for their combined efforts and glanced at the fayre in the cool cabinet beside me.

And there it is, the answer to my now rumbly tummy - chocolate torte.

'Could I have two slices of chocolate torte please'

'Which one's that?'

Pause to think how best to describe the only chocolate cake in the building:

'The brown one'

(Ever wished you had just had a shortbread biscuit??)

So girl No. 1 is cutting two slices of chocolate torte and putting them on plates when

'What are you doing?' asks girl No.2 who has reappeared from the 'kitchen'. 'Cutting her that cake' replies girl No.1.

'No, you can't do that. They're not allowed it.' Then she turns to me. 'You can't have that, you have to have it with tea or coffee.'

OK. So now I'm looking for the 'Just for Laughs' camera.

'But i have a tea and a coffee right here on my tray' I say.

'Yes, but you can't have the cake. Look,' she says pointing at a picture on the counter, 'you have to have it with tea or coffee. It's a deal.'

'Yes, I see that, but ... '

It's no use. I can tell there is no way round it. I push my tray across the counter to her.

'Ok then, I'll have two of those deals instead.'

At which point she cuts two slices of cake and puts them on my tray beside my original tea and coffee.

'Is it OK with these drinks?' she asks.

Dare I say anything but yes, even for a laugh. And there was no chance me asking where they kept the sugar.

The Trevor Brennan Incident

also known as 'Sh1t hits Fan'

Read more here

I drove into a wall today

but it's OK, I was in my husband's car at the time.

Chasing the Friday Afternoon Blues

Sometimes when I pick the kids up on a Friday we make executive and spontaneous decisions about what we will do. Afternoons when we pick up a take-away and a DVD and come home and get changed into our jammies are always popular.

However, the last two times we did this we were caught out, most recently by sister-in-law who thought maybe we were all sick, but more embarassingly first time by a lady from a government department who arrived at 4 o'clock in the afternoon to carry out the latest stage of a survey we have been involved in because the Dolly Molly is a millenium baby.

Now, that was embarrassing. AND more importantly my chips were frozen by the time she'd finished.

Recently we have come up with an alternative Friday afternoon activity. It involves closing the blackout blinds in the playroom, plugging in SingStar on the Playstation, turning on the disco light-ball and standing on the sofa singing our wee (and not so wee!) hearts out.

Today was such a day, rainy, windy, cold, windy, wet and windy. So we had a SingStar session to cheer us all up.

It's a terrible thing to be able to admit, but I've discovered I do a pretty mean version of Bucks Fizz 'Making your Mind Up!' The very knowledge of that useless fact should be enough to keep any prospective visitors away from our door on a Friday - just in case!

The Dog with Two Tails

AKA mummy's little pride and joy mark II

Infamous

I have a birthday this month. A 'big' one.

As a result, and for a surprise, I was taken to Glasgow for the weekend; a little bit of retail therapy, a few geocaches, some very good food and a Celtic League rugby match :-)

So I'm at the match and as usual the craic is mighty and everyone's having a ball. Two very creative ringleaders at the front are calling out the chants and everyone else is giving it the wellie joining in. Some new, spur of the moment chants like 'You're just a suburb of Edinburgh' (to the tune of 'In the lane, snow is glistening') and 'Are you Borders in disguise?' (to the tune of 'we'll support you evermore') (You might have to be into Celtic rugby, or Scottish, to get the significance of those particular chants!)

Anyway, you get the picture: everyone in fine singing voice.

And so it continues, until a lull in play just into the second half of the game when ringleader No.1 turns round and says 'OK everyone, we're going to sing Happy Birthday to Alison!'

'Who's Alison?' a few people shout back? I'm wondering the same thing myself, and then the reply comes 'I don't know, but Rooster (see post below 'Acknowledgement') texted 3 of us and told us we had to sing it'.

Ohhh ... I think I know who Alison is ...

'Give us an A!'

'Give us an L!'

'Give us an I!'

You get where this is going, and when they reached the 'N' the combined choir of Ulster travelling support all sang Happy Birthday to me, as heard back home on BBC Radio Ulster and Setanta TV!!

And later that night I'm walking down the street in Glasgow and someone shouts from across the road 'Hey Alison, Happy Birthday!' and people in the hotel are saying 'There's Alison, it's her birthday!'

I even have my own thread on the UAFC messageboard here

Rooster mate, I owe you!

Those lovely People at EasyJet

Just home from a weekend in Glasgow (more on the specifics of that in a later post) but I have to share my EasyJet experience.

We were booked on the latest flight home tonight, but arrived to book in very early, just to discover the late flight was delayed and instead of leaving at 7.45pm wouldn't be leaving until later at 9.00pm. So off we trundle to the EasyJet counter to ask the nice lady there what would be the earliest we could check in our bags for the late later flight.

Hope you're following all this!

We explained that we were on the late flight which was now running later. She thought for a minute and then made a phonecall. Apparently the earlier flight was also running late, so she checked to see if we could change our flight from the late later flight to the late earlier flight.

And do you know, those lovely people at EasyJet said 'YES!' How's that for a Del Monte moment ;-)

Acknowledgement

Thanks to my friend Rooster, from the Chicken Coop, who allows me to post his fantabulous photos of the Ulstermen on my blog, like this one and this one too.

See more of his handiwork here

My Computer is Constipated

It's been trying to download an e-mail all morning with no success, and now there are three stuck up there in the ether somewhere.

I've tried everything I can to ease the situation, which has involved repeatedly hitting the send and receive button and shouting at the screen.

Next move: