Dream job

Oh my ears and whiskers, I had the BEST job in my dream this morning...I was a view inspector!!! I had to go round checking views were beautiful enough...all to do with the Department of Outdoor Enjoyment apparently. Find the country that has one and go there...it has the most fabulous scenery! You can send me a postcard in appreciation of my contribution to its beauty and I'm sending my subconscious a bouquet of brain cells for coming up with such an excellent idea...

It seemed especially special to wake up to as I was rather unwell in the night and couldn't sleep, unlike my neighbour upstairs who passed out with her radio still blaring til past four am. I'm grateful for the opportunities to practice what I preach and stay calm in the face of adversity. I amused myself with word puzzles and articles in a stack of old Radio Times kept for that very purpose and trying to decide whether if I died in the night and wasn't found for several days I'd be too decomposed for a wicker coffin and woodland burial. And, if she died in the night, how many days would I have to endure the radio before someone would break in and turn it off! Methinks I've been watching too much CSI perhaps, or perhaps not enough as I'm sure those scenarios must have been dealt with in an episode some time or another!

I'm grateful to wake up too feeling relatively OK...well enough to get and eat a cuppa and a crumpet anyway. All of us here in the Valley of the Shadow get these episodes when we spot the very thin man with a very toothy smile lugging a scythe and a door around in anticipation. Fret not nor fear, it's what we're really here for...to get through this bit to the one where death has no dominion.

I give thanks to Julie for saying hello (hope Summer is helping with your seasonal blues) and to Angie for not sending in the women in white coats. I give thanks to Ivor and Heidi for getting me some lining paper and send warm thoughts to Pat getting her home ready for coming home from her hospital stay next week. I send to the cosmos the thought that either a bout of unexpected vigorous health on my part or an amiably available chauffeur would enable me to collect the purchase from the former and pop in to say hello to the latter as they're not going to be very far apart. You have to be careful how you word your wishes though...I longed for my alopecia to end and look what I got!

To be fair though...I did say I wanted my hair back and this clearly belongs to someone else. Maybe if they'd like to claim it my follicles could produce something a bit less Starsky and Hutch. In the meantime, in the spirit of spreading good cheer I thought I ought to give you all the opportunity to have a chuckle. I'm thinking maybe I could forget about a tree this year and just decorate my hair. It's quite strong enough to support tinsel and maybe some small baubles too!

Big C, little pleasures

Ugh! So sleepy! Hoped concentrating on this might help...

Grateful for a car to take me to the hospital...hope it's someone who doesn't want too much chitter chatter.

Grateful I don't yet have to rely on strangers for everything...if you can't be with those you love sometimes alone is best.

Grateful I'm awake before the alarm...time for a cuppa while the water for ablutions heats up.

Grateful for the 'big C'. Meant to write about this yesterday but forgot. There was quite a breeze and the best shelter from this in sight of the sea was under the curve of the C shaped sea wall. It's built like that to help defend the town from the power of the waves but the effect if you're sitting right under it is amplification of their sound. Tiny little tricklets can be landing on the shore but you hear mighty breakers!

...and for identifying the strange faint musical whistling sound I could hear whilst walking across the promenade to the steps down onto the sand. It was the wind blowing through the sipping hole in the lid of my takeaway cup!

I'm grateful I'm off to the separate specialist neurological centre which is part of the NHS hospital but next door to the private one and slightly more influenced by the latter in decorative style. I must admit to a fondness for the already old fashioned hospital buildings of my youth with fancy brickwork outside and bulbous pipes and radiators within. They were deemed difficult to clean...but no one cleans hospitals properly nowadays anyway, ha ha!

I'm grateful the heatwave has broken so the trip won't waste a sunny day and that my upstairs partying neighbour and friends stayed all night on the other side of the building so I could get some sleep. Look...awake enough for real sentences already!

Unsuitable behaviour

Well, I made it to the beach, just before the tide came in and hid it!

I had no idea how feeble I was until I got outdoors. Sometimes you have more energy doing something nice instead of boring chores and I was sure I'd be skipping along when I got near the sea but I felt absolutely exhausted and only moved from place to place if I needed a cuppa or the loo or not to drown etc. Every time I sat down I felt not so much settled as stuck and I thought like Aschenbach in Death in Venice I might just stay there for ever gazing into the haze. Not that there were any beautiful androgynous young men in stripey cozzies, well not that I saw anyway! Neither were there any dolphins to be seen though I looked and looked and looked.

The guy at the cafe was having a look too. I said it would have been a nice day for them...no jet skis etc and he said the other day they came across the bay and there were people on jet skis in the middle and the dolphins went to have a play with them. He said the customers kept saying 'They shouldn't be doing that!' and he kept having to explain it was the dolphins idea! So for 3)let's hear it for rebel dolphins eh? For risk taking, thrill seeking dolphins who do what they shouldn't now and then.

There was a packet from me from the hospital on the hall table when I got downstairs on the way out, well a large envelope with a little lump in it. I didn't think it was appropriate to take it with me but didn't have the energy to take it back up all the flights of stairs so left it where it was and when I got back my evil neighbour had opened it (to see if it was worth stealing) and rendered it unsterile. I know this is not the place to moan and but I've tried telling the police, her landlord, the council and my MP all to no avail so I thought I'd ask you all to combine your cosmic powers and make this behaviour STOP! Thank you!!!

You can see I have a very subjective take on what's unsuitable beahviour. Don't we all?

Weather to go out tomorrow?

Just checking the weather reports to see if I can work up enthusiasm for the effort of going out tomorrow. How can I make sure it's an acuweather day if I do instead of a metcheck one as the former will be three degrees warmer?

Oh well, I've made my bed at last woohoo, time to go and lie on it...what a shame a lot of rowdy drunk people arrived upstairs as I wrote that!

Monday, Monday...so good to me...

How good to me? Well about so good...visualise for yourself how far apart my fingers are.

Felt rough and fell asleep on the sofa. Would have liked someone to make me a cup of tea. Empirical evidence suggets Catholics are more likely to make me tea which demonstrates how inaccurate conclusions can be made when working with very little data.

This picture seem familiar? It's my profile pic on here. I call it 'every puddle has a rainbow lining'.


How about this one? It's what happens when hubcaps roll down the road very carefully...

It's quite big and it's quite clever...

And I feel quite clever having learnt how to put pictures on my blog like this ha ha!








Neighbours next door are trying out the volume control on their stereo. My head hurts! Need to get off here before I forget the positive things... which are...

1) see above (or below) to be more accurate...just checking you’ve been paying attention
2) clean flat
3) the Button/Murray thing
4) That the new noisy neighbours aren’t on the same side as my bedroom so presumably I can escape later
5) The book I’ve just been reading about Dewey Readmore Books (a very special cat)

What a difference a day makes...

This time yesterday I was such a miserable cow...this evening I’m almost chirpy. What’s all that about...wish I knew then I could bottle it and sell it ha ha!

Wonder what will happen with the neighbours tonight. Last night he came home alone while she stayed out. Her not coming home was part of the reason for the major row the other night, tho to be fair a lot of the time he’s too far gone when he’s here to know if she is or not and the previous boyfriend was left home alone while she went out and found the current one. A woman of looks and charm you’re thinking? Hmm...not for me to say... I think he was having some sort of hallucinations last night. ...singing for hours, quiet quietly, then silent for half an hour or so and then started having an argument by himself shouting for something to eff off and throwing things. I suppose it could have been a spider or something. I mean a real one not one in his head!

Of course it makes me count the blessing of not being in a ‘bad’ relationship but the term is subjective. I’ve been in ones I thought were good until the other person told me otherwise, and vice versa (And I don't just mean lurve type things...apparent friendships too) Some people seem to really like to argue and fightI guess, some seem to moan about their partner for years and you have to wonder if it’s really so bad or if they just like to moan...or even both in which case they should be happy!

There’s an apple, apricot and almond crumble in the oven...mustn’t linger. A lot of this blog’s about food isn’t it? Can't give you the recipe cos I made it up but I'll give you a tip: the main ingredients are...