Night class

It has been a long time since I have blogged. It has been a very long time since I had anything blog-worthy. But today the virtual drought came to an end, thanks to the Belfast Metropolitan College part-time courses supplement I picked up ... somewhere.

I have an itch to learn something. The problem is, I'm not sure what. So I picked up the prospectus with an open mind and the view to broadening my horizons.

The first thing I realised was that the courses are all for qualifications, like HNC or NOCN or C&G which is not at all what I want. Just something that will get me out of the house occasionally, maybe get me a bit excited, stimulate the old grey matter ... nothing too serious or with an assessment.

Which left ... Pilates, but I'm afraid of heights so I could never fly an aeroplane, Using Facebook, like really??, Creative Writing for beginners, but why start now, Bricklaying DIY, I'd rather do the Pilates and ...

Singing in the shower.

Honestly course Code CL030, classes held at Milfield tech. Now here's the thing, I have some questions I need answered like: do you have to bring your own shower or are those provided? Is there opportunity for duets, or choral singing? and does the life drawing class take place in the same venue at the same time?

My children think I should join, watch this space ...

Note to self

When son is having friends back after school, make sure there are no
knickers hanging out to dry on the whirly-gig. You'd think after 11
years I'd have the embarassing parenting thing sussed

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Bobs and bits

Long time no blog. Since I last blogged some points of note have occurred, but not necessarily in this chronological order:

Mother and I survived a week in the smallest holiday resort in Majorca. It had four hotels and only six shops. And a Doctor and a pharmacist. Speaks volumes ... read previous post.

Son was accepted by his school of choice and is a third generation Collegian. There are no better people in the world, ask Alan Green, Chris Barrie, James Ellis, Niall Malone, Barry Douglas, Caron Keating, Robin Eames, John Hewitt, Jeremy Davison the man who split the atom whose name temporarily escapes me, and...um... me :-)

Daughter has found love in the form of a classmate with a mobile phone. The mobile phone is important because she calls him on it to arrange dates. His mum told me he wanted to take her to the local tesco on a date. I told his mum that my daughter is better than that!

SingLive Gospel concert is on Sunday night. It has sort of crept up. I have still words to learn. Alright, lets be honest, I still have parts to learn too.

Two days to go

I have got my books for the pool. I got three from the library ... well four actually but when I got home I discovered I had lifted two different versions of the same book. Doh! So, that afraid am I that I might have to converse with an octagenarian, when I was in Tescos today I bought myself another two books. I am allowed 20kg of luggage. My 20kg consists of 10kg of books and 10kg of suntan lotions and potions!

The lists are on the wall. The first one is all the various finishing times for each child from school and leisure activities. The second is a not quite alphabetical list of the ready meals Tesco delivered this morning which are now tucked away in the freezer, ready for reheating. School dinners will also be eaten each day.

A project on the Victorians which is to be submitted on Friday is also near completion. It will be ready for the printing stage by the time I shut my case. And the news we had been working towards and waiting for for months finally came through today, son is following in his parents and Gran's footsteps by following them through the doors of THE best school in Belfast ....

So all that remains to do now is pack, relax and go brown!

Majorca's Grumpotel

This morning mum and I have booked a holiday to Majorca. It is a last minute deal and we go next Tuesday. The resort is a sleepy area of the island and the hotel looks very nice, right down on a golden sandy beach.

Then we came home and consulted tripadvisor. And the first review said : " this hotel has gone from being a fun place to be to an old folks home by the sea walking sticks and wheelchairs by the dozen we will not return"

And the next review said: "I'd recommend it to couples over 60+ looking for a chilled out break."

Followed by: "Our party of 4 consisted of 2 over 50's and 2 over 70's and for us it was perfect"

This little gem was tucked away on another website: "Absolutely nothing wrong with the Hotel however I think that in the brochures or websites of Portland and Thomson they should warn people that it is geared towards people 75 and older .I am 53 (!!) and went as a single traveller and found the atmosphere in the Hotel very depressing , It really is like a an old peoples home besides the sea .Don't get me wrong as I will be old eventually (!!!) . If you want to relax surrounded by octegenarians discussing there ailments this is the place for you

The Hotel has the unfortunate luck of having the word Grupotel in it's name - mother has already renamed it the Grumpotel and we've not even got there yet!!

Belated Happy Birthday

With the first posting on this blog being on Sunday, May 07, 2006 this blog has recently celebrated it's 4th birthday. Who'd have thought it!

Blogging Milestone

I have just noticed I am less than 100 visitors away from my 20,000th hit. Wow!

An arse the size of a small country

I have been in Portrush. Nice place, terrible shops.

I arrived two days ago and as usual when I got here I discovered I had
arrived without some essentials. On this occasion it was mascara,
socks and knickers. First things on Sunday morning I had to trawl the
town looking for these items. The socks I got in the third petrol
station I visited. And that was the total extent of my success.

In an attempt to acquire knickers I was sent (by my mother, I should
have known better!) to the White House. Locals will understand; if you
are American, this is NOTHING like what you are imagining.

The first pair were what can only be described as bloomers. Dolly took
one look and with eyes wide asked 'mummy, what ARE those??'

It was even funnier when she held them against herself and they came
below her knees. The second pair were nothing short of steel
reinforced. When I was very young I remember ads on the TV for 18 hour
girdles. I think these might have been an original from that era.

The best pair, well they looked like they'd been made from a
dishcloth, or four! Pictorial evidence on the 365 photoblog. Faced
with the prospect of wearing those I felt it would be more appropriate
and a lot more comfortable to go commando.

Did I mention the smallest size in stock of any knickers was a medium
(36")?

Then dolly found the pair I eventually bought. Made by Sloggi, called
shorts, with scalloped edges and a big lily on the right cheek. At £7
a pair they're obviously what passes for sexy lingerie in this part of
the country.

Close your eyes and imagine the sight. I defy you to laugh.

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What would you do with a satsuma?

I have just returned home from the annual BB display. 3 hours ten minutes of top drawer entertainment, with many many highlights, of which I will mention only two.

(1) When the boy who won the scripture cup was announced, his mum, who was sitting beside us shouted out 'Oh my God!'

(2) The answer to the above quiz question, which of course is eat it. The further explanation being that a satsuma of course is a type of plum and a variety of snail.

Top drawer.

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.