Never trust Nottingham Weather

When I moved here to the midlands as a young impressionable twenty year old student I bought an umbrella and a pair of gloves as my first purchases with my student loan.

As a lass from North Wales you'd think I'd be used to the wet but Nottingham rain is different from anything else as you don't need a brolly but know you'll be drenched by the time you get there.

Having now lived here for over five years in total you think I'd remember the wet and not leave the house wearing inappropriate footwear, but no....

I woke up this morning, the sun was shining and I put on summer clothes (mistake number one) and sandals (mistake number two).

When I got to work the skies opened and I had to go out to pick up photos at lunch time without an umbrella.

Friendships

I met up with one of my Uni friends last night and then drove back home thinking about how things have changed since the invention of email and MSN and just how rubbish a friend I really am.

I don't phone people anymore I leave the mobile to ring if I can't be bothered to call people and I send one liner emails in response to other people's messages.

So as part of my be a better friend drive I'm going to email everyone with long boring letters about how dull my life is........ if only I could get into hotmail to get to my email addresses.

Sofa so Good

(it was just too easy!)

Our new sofa's arrived this week and so far we have been spending the past two days commenting on how we managed on the cottage suite that has done us so proud for the past four years and running at the cat when ever she gets her claws out to scratch the back of the new sofas.

Life is a video

If your life was a TV show what would it be?

I think I'd have to be an audition for Big Brother.

It'd be a whole life of freaks with the odd exception of people that you'd like to meet and you wonder what they're doing in the audition in the first place.

Also means that I can watch the bits of my life I'm not to proud about from behind a cushion cringing from the truth.

Chocolate

I took my guides to Cadbury's World this weekend. Hotest day of the year and I went sampling chocolate! Not really ideal.

The strange thing is that after a quick trip to Birmingham I'm not worried about them all and their well being.

When I was 13-14 I didn't worry about what I looked like or what I stuffed in my face... but these girls worry about eating two chocolate bars in one day to the extent that one of them was crying all the way home about havign to do exercise.

What has the world come to when children as so pressurised by modern society that they are image conscious to the extreme and are making themselves sick worrying about their figures.

LET THEM BE KIDS! you're a long time grown up!

Money

As a student I lived on £30 a week plus student loan (about £1k a year) I drank like a fish, I ate out most lunch times and I partied hard most weekends. I never remember not having any money and not being able to survive.

So why do I find myself four years after graduating struggling to make ends meet when I never seem to go out, I don't go to the pub, I make my own lunch and the last time I had a BIG night out was sometime in 2004!

I also feel like the wicked witch of the west as I spend most weekends drumming into my husband about how we have no money and can't spend anything thus making his life as miserable as my own.

Not fair! Not fair!

R & R

Althought I enjoy being married there is nothing better at times that having a whole weekend to yourself and not having to worry about who else is in the house or what they want to do.

Paul was away in London village this weekend so I prepared myself for a girly pampering session - new moisturiser, rasor blades, hair mask, wine and chocolate cake.

I ran a bath and lay there in the warmth with my wine and my book for two hours only moving to turn the page or to top up the hot water when it started to get tepid.

Why don't men understand the power of the bath and the enjoyment you can get from just lying there and not doing anything for hours at a time? or have to ask you how long you're going to be in there for after only ten minutes?


What kind of animal do I feel like today - any sort of new born animal as I'm struggling to keep my eyes open

What kind of animal do you feel like today?

Travelling for work purposes this week I was listening to Colin and Edith on Radio One talking about their daily feature "what kind of animal do you feel like today?" so I thought I'd carry this on with my blog.....

Today I feel like a hedgehog - slightly prickley, in constant need of sleep and with an uncanny ability to get your ass into situations where you put yourself in dangers for no reason at all.

Spiritual Alignment

For the first time in my life I went to a church small group meeting yesterday.

It's a method used by our church to allow people to get to know each other and make friends while doing spiritual things.

Having ummed and arred about what we want from this meeting on a personal level and came up with a wish life - young, outgoing, married couples who are not freaks.

So having picked a short list we set off to try the first group. I felt like a child on the first day of school I hung onto Paul's hand and was dragged apprehensively into this new environment complaining of tiredness and generally not wanting to be there.

We were met by an eclectic (spell checked for you pedants out there!) group of people, which we later found were in the majority the members of latest Alpha group who made us welcome.

I'm not a big fan of group therapy, I like my life to be like it is and I like to have some privacy now and then. So when it comes to being prayed for I don't like to discuss the bits of my life where things are shitty.

But I persevered and was really suprised with some of the things that were said and the incites into my life (none of which I had previously mentioned) and then when praying for someone else I saw all sorts of images in my mind which I was later told related to her life.

Overall there were instances and areas where I wasn't comfortable but I'm sure that finding yourself spiritually isn't supposed to be comfortable.

I felt so refreshed when we'd finished that for someone who was so tired to managed to kept the better half awake for hours after getting in with constant talking, theres got to be something in it.

Holidays & Chickens

You know you need a holiday when

1. You can't talk to each other without snarling
2. You fantasize about not having to get up at 6:45
3. You can't wait to spend three days in the company of all your grandparents, parents and siblings in one small house

So off we set to Bath for three days of R&R.

My Grandmother is the woman that they based Hyacinth Bucket on and she just gets more obstinate with age. So when the wife and I were preparing chicken curry she bustled into the kitchen and questioned why we hadn't washed the chicken breasts before we cooked them, as according to a magazine article they could contain any number of bacteria, trying to removing the bits that the wife was frying in the pan and wash them under cold water.

Following said incident (which the wife won in the end) she was heard to mutter that she didn't read or follow all the rubbish she read in magazines as they were all just fads and there was never any truth in them.

Now the wife's a bit worried that I could become just like her in time.............roll on old age