I've got the surge

It's snowing outside and inside the lights have been flickering for over an hour, my PC has turned itself off three times in the last ten minutes and the streetlight outside my house has now also started to flicker.

Only a matter of time methinks

I've the urge

to walk through Belfast city in my bra. Yep

Spa-ctacular night

My perception of spas was all wrong. In my (limited) experience, I understood they made you drink water. Lots of water. Lots and lots and lots of water. Not this spa. When I arrived I was asked would I like a cup of tea or coffee ... and an apple pie!! I thought it was maybe a trick, but I said yes just in case I was wrong.

Then I was asked did I want cream. Suspicious and naive in the ways of the spa and the potions and lotions they used I asked 'what kind?'

'Whipped' came the answer. And sure enough, I was treated to a cup of tea and an apple pie with whipped cream before my treatment started.

Some time later, as I lay on the treatment bed, I was told I would first experience the holistic welcome ritual. So long as it was included in the price, I didn't really mind what I experienced. I was instructed to close my eyes and take three deep breathes, all easy enough so far.

As I let out the third deep breath the girl grabbed my head and pulled it so hard in a direction away from the rest of my body that my neck cracked. Then she did the same thing to each of my arms. If that's how they welcome paying customers, I'd hate to see how they treat people whose cheques bounce.

I was to be exfoliated first. Exfoliated sounds such a nice word until you realise that it means rubbing you down with the spa equivalent of a piece of sand paper. This is why they make you lie naked on their beds - to stop you getting up and running away mid treatment.

I had to shower to get rid of all the 'grit' (there was more on me than some council areas in England had available to spread on their roads during the big freeze) and then the mud was applied.

It was green, but it didn't smell as if it had come from the Lagan.

In the middle of this application, I took cramp in my foot. And then a fit of the giggles. Bits of me started to twitch uncontrollably as both took hold until I had to bite the inside of my cheek so hard I swear I nearly drew blood. Then suddenly a sobering thought. Stop laughing in case you fart. Not that I do fart when I laugh, but I realised this would be a terrible time for it to happen for the first time.

After the mud had been removed I had cream applied. Not whipped. As I'm getting my neck and shoulders rubbed the girl said 'you're full of knots'. I nearly fell off the bed, and then I realised she'd said knots, not nits.

Big thank you to those who bought me this fantastically luxurious present. In spite of myself, I had a lovely relaxing time, and tomorrow I will have skin that shines like an angel on a Christmas card.

Or maybe spots, as apparently sometimes happens.

Mud wrap

It's a bit like a chicken wrap, only you're the chicken.

Tonight I am paying someone £60 to slap a lot of muck on me and wrap me up in towels. Of course it's not just any old muck, it's Monticelli mud muck, and that probably makes all the difference! Mind you, if my kids splashed me with the tiniest amount of mud I'd throw a mental so how I'm going to cope with being fully coated in the stuff.....

I had the choice of a few treatments, like an anti-aging firming wrap, but I'm in denial, or the body strategist organic wrap, but I wasn't sure whether you ate it or lay in it. I only plumped for the mud because they told me the Swedish massage would hurt.

And I thought these things were supposed to be relaxing.

Come Dine....

I'm having a 'Come Dine with Me' fundraising event. Basically the idea follows the format of the programme which is that people take it in turns to cook for each other, and their meals are scored out of 10 by the guests.

In the fundraiser, for every mark you give the host out of 10, you also give a pound. So if you think the meal was really good and you score it at 9 (nobodys perfect!!) then you put £9 in the kitty.

I've chosen Action Cancer as the charity, and if we can get four or even five people who are willing to give it a go for a bit of a laugh and a good cause, then they should be quids in!

This is where it all started and so far there are three willing (to greater or lesser extents!) volunteers. If anyone else feels that they might be up for it there's still time to join in. You don't have to be able to cook, in fact it'll be much better craic if you cant!! If you don't fancy the cooking bit but would like to come for one of the meals, provided you are prepared to join in the voting, that would probably be OK too!

Diddle Diddle Dumpling

My 9 year old daughter reworked a classic this morning. This is her version:

'Diddle diddle dumpling,
my daughter Jill,

went to bed
without her pill'

She can't understand why I choked on my toast.

A Blessing for St Patrick's Day

As you slide down the banister of life,
May the splinters never point in the wrong direction

Sláinte

3 days to go

I started covering a maternity leave on 20th April last year and it's just now entering the death throes. Maternity leave? Eternity leave! I mind the days when you got 18 weeks and were delighted you didn't have to cope with just 12!

And so, three days to go and then I will not have a clue what to do with myself. How blissful is that?

When I resigned my job a little over four years ago I asked myself what would I do? Help my son become a genius, make soup, read novels, knit, go geocaching, take walks, read more, volunteer, clean my house, take up Irish dancing, look for a new job, blog...??

Well, I've done as well as I can with the genius, made a hell of a lot of soup, read the odd book or twenty, knit half a hat for a premature baby (who is now 18 years old!!) gone geocaching, not really walked too much, read more, got a cleaner to clean my house, taken up Irish dancing and retired again through injury, not bothered with the job and blogged incessantly.

What could I possibly do next?

International Womens Day

Yesterday was International Womens Day, and women up and down the country and around the globe celebrated by making meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, running kids to and from school and pandering after partners.

Just like every other blessed day of the year!

Roll on International Mens Day when we all get to sit on our backsides in front of the TV and sleep for an evening.

Eighty Eight

That's the number of bags of crisps I had in my Tesco delivery tonight.

Yes, we're on a health drive.

Let there be light

Dad was telling me today of how he had occasion to use a disabled toilet in the hospital. He couldn't find the light pull so concluded that the light would go on automatically when he shut the toilet door. It didn't.

Mum takes up the story. Apparently the door opened and closed, opened and closed, opened and closed as dad tried to make the non-existent automatic light work. Each time this happened she snuck further and further into the corner of the room, in a kink of laughter but hoping no one else was noticing dad's hokey cokey moment.

I had a similar experience in a toilet in a dentists in Bristol. Again, no apparent light pull, and the only thing that glowed when the door was shut was a dark blue emergency light. It took five minutes for my eyes to acclimatise to even be able to see the toilet, never mind use it. People stopped just short of sending in an emergency crew to excavate me.

Turns out these days the light switches are on the outside. A decision obviously made by an ex schoolboy prankster. Should you come across such a facility, I advise you also watch out for cling film over the bowl.