Lost Dreams

 

In the USA apparently it's tradition for University Professors to give a Final Lecture in which they tell their students their last recommendations on life and living it.  Here's a typical one from a Professor with terminal cancer.  It's about achieving childhood dreams and overcoming obstacles in life:

 

Click here: Professor Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

 

 

It made me try to think of dreams and hopes that I had as a child, and because I've always been handicapped by a lack of imagination, I could recall very very few.  The main one I recall most clearly was hoping for 2 or 3 years that my brother would come back from the dead, either as a result of my fervent prayers which I said several times every day and wrote out in every bible, prayer and hymn book I came across or because some mistake had been made and that the little body my parents had identified was another 10 year old boy, someone else's brother.

 

Another dream was to become an adopted child of the Sioux, ranging the prairies on my spotted pony and becoming familiar with the ways of the wild, perhaps as an adult metamorphosing into a wise woman who knew the uses and locations of plants with magical properties and to whom the wildest of animals was a familiar friend.

 

Well my brother never came back which turned me from a firm believer into a trying-to-be believer in prayer.

 

As for the Sioux, I've never met one and living in Shropshire I don't hold out much hope now.  I did learn to ride and altho I loved riding I ended up with a buggered coccyx.  Sioux women I'm guessing didn't jounce about going 'Owww, ooooooh, faakinell my arse hurts' and so that predoomed dream died the death.  I've tried growing herbs reputed to have medicinal qualities and making herbal remedies.  Like the heroine I am I've always tried them out on myself first.  I can therefore claim to have discovered and manufactured a guaranteed herbal slimming potion - you would lose 5lbs a day but when you're literally glued to the lavatory pan 20 hours out of 24 being slim doesn't have the same appeal somehow.

 

That's about it for me - as I said I lack any real imagination. 

 

What about you? Did you have any childhood dreams and did you achieve them?

My old coalman used to call me 'Flower' :O)

I am a Snapdragon What Flower Are You?

I never see colour.............

 

Leicester has had large immigrant communities for the past ½ century and is set to become the first city to have a majority ethnic minority population.  I spent much of my childhood and adult life living in the City of Leicester and a considerable number of years working in that city too.  Consequently many of my neighbours, friends, work colleagues and acquaintances have been of ethnic minority origin and I still see a number of them regularly. 

When my sprogs were all young and single they brought ethnic minority neighbourhood friends and fellow students home, often to stay for weekends, weeks or in one case 3 months.  One of my daughters later married someone of differing race and hence two of my grandchildren are mixed race. At one point one of my kids was courting a Trinidadian Asian, one a Barbadan, and another turned up with a mixed race Chinese/English beau.  It got so that when one turned up with a white lad in tow we all looked on with astonishment. 

On this basis I think I have a fair amount of up-close-and-fairly-personal experience of relating to people from other cultural heritage.

 

My experience has been that altho of course they were all treated as well, with courtesy and friendliness, as we would treat anyone, they were not always treated as if they necessarily shared the same culture and cultural understandings as we.  If one of my kids had brought home someone who came from Newcastle I would have asked them about their home but I would not have thought of cooking anything especially Newcastlian for them for example whereas for people of other cultures I would always try to ensure that their first meal with us would be something they were comfortable eating.  I would not have assumed that they shared many of our cultural awarenesses, that they knew that Methodists were not identical to Quakers, that they actually knew what Quakers are, that an evening spent laughing about old Coronation St characters or playing that 'film, book or play, 7 syllables' guessing game etc would not have left them feeling isolated among UK Trivia cognosenti.   

 

Now, someone whose blog I read has stated that he never sees colour or difference he simply sees 'people'.  In my opinion it would be better to frankly recognise and accept that people from  other cultures are different to we Brits, that there is nothing wrong and a lot very right about acknowledging those differences, and that we should pay those cultural differences the respect they are due.  Equal and equally deserving of respect (with a few exceptions) but in some important ways very different to the cultural norms of indigenous Brits.  It seems to me that treating people who are clearly different to me in many ways as if they were exactly the same as me is not only disrespectful but boneheaded.

 

What do you think?

TV Trivia

Gene Hunt has been ruined.  Yet again TV producers have misjudged the reason why this character was such a hit with women in the Life On Mars series which is very annoying as it was because of his female fan base that Gene was brought back to our screens. 

In LoM the DCI was hard hitting, tough talking and took no prisoners.  He was also devastatingly handsome and often funny.  In this new programme he spends more time mooning around after the new female character than he does being a warrior. 

We (I) don't actually want to see the nauseating spectacle of a good man turned into a sap by lurve - and we especially don't want to see it when his lurve dresses like an adolescent street walker who cries in every damn episode. 

And no, it's not sour grapes 

OMG, this is SCARY

 

I've just seen something on TV which has left me devastated. 

I'm truly gutted. 

I blame myself, I've been closing my eyes to this all my life and now I think it must be too late to rescue the situation. 

Then there are the millions of Englishwomen and men before me who've suffered. 

They must have thought their world had come to an end.  They should have done as I'm inclined to do, and blame their parents for not telling them this basic essential fact.

Even now, there are literally hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, carrying on living their lives all unknowing. 

What a frightening thought!

 

 

Well I think Dove should tell them what their advertisement told me tonight. 

Your underarm skin can get fragile. 

The only cure is to use Dove deodorant every day. 

 

Take heed now before your underarm skin breaks down completely and your arms drop off.

 

 

Guess who went to a wedding?

And yes, it is a bit OTT but when it's a gay ceremony Mums have to pull out all the stops <g>

aoljpictureUpload, aoljpictureUpload_1

No good deed goes unpunished

 

In mid October last year the Governor of North Carolina made a public appeal for people to cut their use of water in half by October 31st in response to a state-wide drought.  He then asked water companies to record the amount of water used daily in their regions and compare them to average use for the same periods in August '07.

 

He later issued a press release:

 

"…water utilities representing 72 percent of the 6.8 million customers served by public water systems responded to his call to provide information on water use. Early indications, based on an analysis of information from the 25 largest systems in the state, show an average drop in daily water use of nearly 30 percent from the month of August compared to the last week of October."

 

 

Now the residents of Charlotte-Mecklenburg County have their reward for fulfilling their civic duty by responding so wholeheartedly to the Governor's plea.  Their water costs have risen - water rates on a $200,000 house have risen by 8.3% to make up their $29 million profits shortfall over this and next year.

 

So go on then, who's putting their hand up for a nice new water meter?

Tags: water meters

Name that baby! :O)

This website is a fascinating piece of social history, albeit Yankee social history.  Look up your own name to see when it was most popular in the US, and where it's placed now.  'Jane' has never been really up there with the top names, but at least it's done better than my grandson Felix whose name is currently 1000th on the popularity list.

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

Tags: Baby names

Abortion. some comments

 

Before 1966 Roumania had one of the most liberal abortion policies in the world and in fact abortion - at the rate of 4 to every 1 live birth - was the principal means of birth control.

 

In 1966 Caeusescu made abortion illegal in Roumania with the intent of strengthening Roumania by increasing the population.  At the same time all contraception and sex education were banned and special police agents regularly rounded up women in their workplaces to administer pregnancy tests.  Any woman who repeatedly failed to conceive was forced to pay a very steep 'celibacy tax'.

 

Within one year of the abortion ban Roumania's birthrate had doubled.

 

Children born after the abortion ban did worse in every measurable way than children born the year before it.  Their health was poorer, they tested lower in school, had less success in the labour market, had less stable marriages, contracted more stds, and proved to be worse parents.  They were also very significantly more likely to commit criminal acts.

 

Abortion was reinstated within one year of Caeusescu's death in 1989 and currently runs at 1 abortion for every 22 live births.  Children born since the reinstatement of abortion have done better  in terms of their health and schooling and have had markedly lower crime rates than their earlier cohorts at the same age.

 

We could all hazard guesses why these outcomes may have occurred.  It's my opinion that unwanted pregnancies lead to unwanted children.  A child raised unwanted will be resented.  A resentful mother is not a good mother.

Enforced motherhood adds to and exacerbates the maternal problems which may, had the abortion law remained liberal, have led to early termination of the pregnancy.  On the data this seems incontrovertible.

 

Women who find themselves unhappily pregnant choose to terminate for a variety of reasons: she may be unmarried or in a bad marriage, in her teens and think herself too young to take on a long term responsibility for an infant dependant, or perhaps want to continue her education so that in future she and any child she may have later enjoy a better standard of living, or she may be unemployed and believe herself too poor to raise a child.  She may be a drug user or heavy drinker and fear the effect that would have on a foetus and later on the child.

 

For any one of dozens of reasons she may feel that she cannot provide a home environment which is conducive to raising a healthy, happy and well socialized child.  The data from Roumania shows that she is correct.

 

Tags: abortion, crime, poverty, unemployment.

Lilpooh goes shopping

Lilpooh, a regular poster to the GPN message board and a sometime reader of this blog, today sent me this email.  Personally if she ends up with 3 suites of leather furniture I think she should donate one to me.  I'll pay carriage <g>

 

DOES ONE HAVE TO BE A GENIUS TO ORDER ON LINE?

 

I need a new Three/4 piece suite for my other home.

 

I looked thru the Land of Leather glossy  brochure, I ordered..I found the desired pieces I TELEPHONED AND TRIED TO ORDER RE PHONE     .  Ahh Please order on line  HUH?? Yep L.o. L wished me to order on line...BUT the suite in the brochure is NOT amidst the rather tacky for my taste, suites ON LINE..

 

Thereby followed phone calls from myself to Christine of L.OL  She guided me to the suite of my need.

 

All OK?  NOOOO.......When the check out figure came up it was for three suites,,,12k is bad enough(for the three) but THREE SUITES?...Where they gonna go?...

 

I am still in mail to mail and phone calls from said Christine

 

Surely The name of the suite is simple enough...GAWD...I aint bleedin ordering nuffink on line again

A NICE judgement call.

A regular poster on the General Politics News board has written several times complaining that his aged mother has had to pay £800 for treatment to prevent an eye going blind.  This prompted me to look at NICE, the agency which evaluates medical treatments and decides whether the NHS should pay for them or not.  Below is the outcome of my reading.

There is a newish treatment for age related macular degeneration (the leading cause of blindness in the UK) which involves a drug called Visudyne or verteporfin which combined with a low intensity laser treatment destroys lesions under the surface of the retina without damaging the retina itself.

 

In 2002 NICE recommended photodynamic therapy only in more extreme cases, when both eyes are affected, and then only in the least seriously damaged eye.  The implication is that even patients who are treated will still go blind in one eye, and many who would benefit from treatment get none at all.

 

It's difficult to understand why NICE could come to this conclusion which leads to patients becoming unnecessarily blind.

The basic challenge they face is that the NHS has finite funds but an infinite supply of demand for an ever increasing range of treatments from patients who will pay nothing for it and who therefore have no limits on the demands they may make.

NICE has to resolve the dilemma and decide who gets what type of healthcare and who will be left to cope with no treatment.

 

NICE does this by calculating the imapct of each treatment in 'Quality Adjusted Life Years'  (QUALYs) -  so QUALYs would conclude that a treatment that saves 10 years of life is better than a treatment which saves 5 years; a treatment which gives someone 10 years of able-bodied life is better than a treatment which gives someone 10 years of coma life.

 

The most cogent argument for the RNIB and other lobbyists for the blind to make a case for ARMD patients is to argue that a year alive but blind is worth less than a year alive fully sighted.  If NICE accepted this then treatments curing blindness would score high on the QUALY measure which places years alive and fully sighted high above years alive but blind.

 

However - the strict view of 'it's bad to be blind' places a low priority on treating people for other life threatening illnesses if they happen to be already blind.  If 2 people are admitted with a heart attack and there is only time and resources to treat one of them then a QUALY analysis would conclude that it's more worthwhile to help the sighted heart attack victim rather than the blind one.

 

That's not something society would want to accept and so would backtrack to saying that there's no difference in the intrinsic value of the two lives.  Unfortunately in conjunction with QUALYs this leads to the conclusion that there is no utility in spending any funds whatsoever on photodynamic therapy, or even in funding eye tests and spectacles as they do not add any appreciable value to the lives of patients receiving them.

If treatments do not improve the value of patient's lives then they are not worth spending money on at all, particularly where there are many treatments for other potentially lethal illnesses which certainly do improve the value of people's lives.

It's no wonder then that the RNIB tries to argue for this treatment without mentioning the QUALY which guides NICE decisions.

 

Given the problem NICE faces - allocating finite resources to an infinite number of patients and and infinite number of treatments - it's easier to understand the NICE position on photodynamic therapy for age related macular degeneration, and in particular  the apparently heartless decision that where treatment is allowed it's only one eye with the other eye left to go blind.

 

The dispassionate view arising from QUALY analysis argues that the difference between having two good eyes and one good eye is less significant that the difference between having one good eye and none at all.  Treatment to one eye adds significant value to the patient's life, treatment to both does not, therefore their decision.

 

Tags: NICE, Age Related Macular Degeneration

Husbands Grrr

Some time ago I mentioned my son in law. (Cold morning )My daughter has just emailed to tell me that he has parked his car on an unexploded WW2 bomb.  He had emailed her to ask her to collect him from work later this evening as he cannot move his car until the Bomb Squad have done their thing, and his email - and this is to his wife remember - ends 'Kind Regards'.

Now I've emailed her and told her to ask him to wait by his car.  Am I too hard on the boy d'you think?? 

It's a dog's life

When my husband is away from home the joy of taking the dog for her early morning lavatorial traipse falls to me.  In line with Sod's Law, I usually get dull dank mornings where I have to trudge through endless tractor mud, or freezing mornings when the only sounds from birds are of them shivering before clunking dead into the icy ditches.

This morning however, voila, spring's sprung in no uncertain manner.

Coming back from the gallop:

This is my parish church of St Andrew.  It's stood here for 800 years and always makes me think of Philip Larkin's lines from Church Going:

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence

Brewed God knows how long.

Several of the gravestones mention my house by name which makes me feel, altho an incomer here, that I'm in some small way a part of this hamlet.

Loyaulte me lie

Lord Goldsmith has recommended that all British schoolchildren should make an oath of loyalty to the crown:

 

I swear that in time to come I will be loyal to Prince Charles and do his will, no matter how totally off the wall and wappy.  I will cease thinking of him as a somewhat thick vertically challenged spoiled prat who chats to spider plants and will acknowledge that once he's been crowned by Rowan Williams then God has anointed him to lead ThisOnceGreatNation in the production of overpriced biscuits. 

I shall henceforth cease trotting to my GP and instead will manage my health by boiling cow parsley root and diluting it 1:1000000. 

I shall pray that his orders that only old buildings should be built across the nation, plumbing and the logical impossibility of building new ancient buildings notwithstanding, are carried out without question. 

 

I heard that once crowned he wants to be called George.  Can you think of a better name for him children?  Myself I'd go for Nigel.  Or maybe Jeremy.

Tags: Lord Goldsmith, Loyalty Oath, Prince Charles.

Don't doubt where you are headed!

The Roman Catholic Church has laid down 7 new carnal sins: genetic modification, carrying out experiments on humans, causing social injustice, causing poverty, polluting the environment, taking drugs, and becoming too rich.  An unconfessed unabsolved carnal sin means that on death you go straight to hell.

Now, I'm not sure that the Vatican, which refuses to consider the role of contraception in raising living standards and improving health care and preventing infant death and HIV/AIDS, should be railing against poverty and social injustice and expect to be taken seriously and their listing of obscene wealth as a carnal sin can surely only raise derisive eyebrows every time a richly robed Catholic priest preaches on the Sermon on the Mount in St Peter's Square.

Mind, it's got me worried that every time I start the car or pop a paracetamol or open another plastic milk container  God is taking notes and making black marks in his Big Bad Book. 

My only comfort is that I've never tithed the starving or burnt anyone to death for disagreeing with me and I've neither sexually abused a little child nor protected anyone who has. If I ever do any of those things tho I'll be sure to pop along to confession.

But what about shouting Jesus ?

 

 

 

Tags: 7 new carnal sins, RC Church

Fwd Lincolnshire Disaster Appeal

LINCOLNSHIRE EARTHQUAKE APPEAL PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY

A major earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale hit Lincolnshire in the early hours of 27th February 2008.  Its epicentre was in the Market Rasen area.

Victims were seen meandering around aimlessly, muttering "Faaackinell".

The earthquake decimated the area causing approximately £30 worth of damage.

Several priceless collections of historic tractors were damaged beyond repair and all three of the County's compoooooters went down.

Three areas of historic scare crows were disturbed. Many locals were woken well before their press gang Transit mini buses arrived.

Lincs FM reported that hundreds of residents were confused and bewildered and were still trying to come to terms with the fact that something interesting had happened in Lincolnshire.

One strange effect of the  earthquake was to startle thousands of toads into action - but most residents returned to their homes within minutes

One resident - Tracy Sharon Smith, a 15-year-old mother of 5 said, "It was such a shock, my little Chardonnay-Mercedes come running into my bedroom crying. My youngest two, Tyler-Morgan and Victoria-Storm slept through it all. I was still shaking when I was skinning up and watching Jeremy Kyle later in the morning."

Another resident said, 'I was in bed with my five daughters and their grandmother, as usual, and on feeling the vibrations I nudged my mum in the back and said 'Has that disturbed the ducks, Duck?'

Apparently looting, muggings and car crime were unaffected and carried on as normal. The British Red Cross has so far managed to ship 4,000 crates of Sunny Delight to the area to help the stricken locals.

Rescue workers are still searching through the rubble and have found large quantities of personal belongings, including benefit books, jewellery from Elizabeth Duke at Argos and Bone China from Poundland.

HOW CAN YOU HELP?

This appeal is to raise money for food and clothing parcels for those unfortunate enough to be caught up in this disaster.

Clothing is most sought after - items most needed include:

Fila or Burberry baseball caps

Kappa tracksuit tops (his and hers)

Shell suits (female)

White sport socks

Wellington Boots & Barbour jackets

Rockport boots and any other items usually sold in Primark.

Food parcels may be harder to come by, but are needed all the same.

 

Required foodstuffs include:

Microwave meals, Tins of baked beans, Ice cream, Cans of Colt 45 or Special Brew.

22p buys a biro for filling in the compensation forms and their giros.

£2 buys chips, crisps and blue fizzy drinks for a family of 9.

£5 buys B&H and a lighter to calm the nerves of those affected.

 

Breaking news***

Rescue workers found a girl in the rubble smothered in raspberry alco-pop.

'Where are you bleeding from?' they asked, "Scunthorpe" said the girl, wossit gotta do wiv you?" 

 

Please don't forward this to anyone living in Spalding/Boston area - oh, sod it... they won't be able to read it anyway

Starter for 10

Connie, aka Constance - the child who when asked by her nursery class teacher which name she would prefer to be called by answered 'banana' - is now 6 and in Year 1 at primary school.  It was Parents' Evening earlier this week and her mother asked Connie if there was anything she would like her Mum to say to her class teacher, or any question she would like her mum to ask.

 

Connie thought it over for a while and then said .....................

 

 Yes Mum, please can you ask her how do mermaids wee?

From the horse's mouth

A follow up to my previous entries on Rowan Williams' idiotic remarks about Sharia coming to Britain from women who know what they're talking about at first hand - women who once were Muslim but who now live in fear of fatwah for having renounced Islam.

The Council of ex-Muslims of Britain condemns the comments made by the Archbishop of Canterbury suggesting that Sharia law is 'inevitable' and may be welcome in civil cases.
The distinction that he makes between civil and criminal cases does not exist within Sharia law. Sharia law encompasses all aspects of the life of those deemed Muslim. Suggesting that the UK would not, of course, allow the more barbaric aspects of Sharia law, such as amputation or stoning, ignores the fact that it is the family/civil areas of law in the Sharia that are some of the most iniquitous. 
In the discriminatory personal family law, particularly in the areas of marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance and so on, a Muslim woman cannot even contract her own marriage; the marriage contract is between her guardian and husband. A man can have 4 wives whilst a woman cannot. A man can divorce his wife without reasons by simply saying 'divorce' thrice, albeit with a gap in time, whereas a woman must give reasons, some of which are extremely difficult to prove. A woman only receives half that of a man under inheritance rules, and so on.
Clearly, Sharia law contravenes fundamental human rights, such as equal rights for women, and relegates those deemed to be ‘Muslim' to culturally relative rights and at the mercy of regressive imams and kangaroo courts.
In order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of all those living in Britain, there must be one secular law for all and no Sharia.

Tags: Rowan Williams, Sharia

Answer me this one then.....

A little conundrum to mull over..........

 

Two chaps spend an evening in their local and drink 2½ pints before leaving, each driving himself home in his own car. 

 

Bill drives home, has a cuppa, takes himself to bed and is snoring within 2 minutes.  In the morning he wakes up and goes to work with maybe a slight headache and has an uneventful day.

 

Ben drives homeward but en route a pedestrian who has taken illegal drugs suddenly trips over a banana skin and falls onto the road directly in the path of Ben's car and is hit by it.  Ben calls an ambulance but by the time it arrives the pedestrian has died. 

After making all due enquiries into the circumstances leading to the event Ben is charged with causing death by driving under the influence of alcohol and is sent to gaol.

 

What is the ethical basis for sending Ben, and only Ben, to gaol? 

 

And some responses.................

 

 Comment from jeadie05

Ben was the unfortiunate one who caused the accident ,????

 

I said:

Jan - did Ben cause the accident or was the pedestrian also partly culpable?  Bill broke exactly the same law a Ben remember, so did Ben simply have bad luck to have a drugged pedestrian fall in front of his car rather than in front of Bills's car, or even that the pedestrian fell at that time and in that exact place??  

 

Comment from sdrogerson

Well Bill didn't get caught did he. Therefore while breaking the law he escaped detection. There is no difference.

 

I said:

Stuart - the question was not about the law but about the ethical dilemma presented by the facts and the actors involved.  All 3 actors in this event were law breakers remember.  Another factor to perhaps consider is the arbitrary nature of drink-driving limits and of being apprehended for it.

 

 Comment from icklemisssexpot

Ethically it's really the pedestrians own fault they are dead...Legally it's a sod because Ben is deemed at fault

 

I said:

Cathy, you say the pedestrian is the author of his own misfortune, but he could have fallen 60 seconds earlier or later, or to his left instead of his right, and the result might have been no more than a banged elbow.  

Didn't bad luck play a part in the misfortune of both the pedestrian AND Ben?  

If you agree then consider -  should bad luck be punished?

Darling, you really shouldn't have!!!!!!!!

 

Can you hear that creaky cracking sound, and that slight but persistent whine?  Don't worry, it's not another earthquake or tornado approaching, it's the sound that results from one of my birthday presents. 

My husband decided that, as a low cost alternative to a retail visit to Chester, I could have a teensy boskey-copse-y extention of the domestic grinds beyond the orchard and into the paddock. 

 

This 'gift' includes somewhere close to 300 hedging hawthorns plus a couple of dozen other shrubby things like laurel, holly, willow and dogwood and about ½dozen proper trees.  I've spent a morning realigning the electric fencing which is keeping the horses off until our fence bloke arrives to shift it outwards from its current position to beyond the 'new' area, and marking out where the fence is to be put, and setting a marking line for the hedge.  That was the good bit even tho I got a little shock from the fencing and my hair now looks like a more frizzled and sticking out version of Lisa Simpson's style. 

 

4 hours later my back is a creaking misery, my arms bloodily scarified by thorns and my nail varnish utterly ruined.    Still, 12 hedgeplants down and only 288 to go. 

 

Do you fancy a day out saving the world and planting trees?  Be my guest!

A promising beginning, not.

I tootled off to get my new car this morning, a bit anxious about a scratch I'd not mentioned when talking trade-in turkey at the dealership, and even more anxious about a weird warning light that hadn't flashed before - or at least that's my story and I intended sticking to it.

When it came to it, even tho when I bought the new car and sorted the trade-in I'd gone in another car, so they bought the old one unseen, the saleman never even looked at it.  Didn't even go outside to make sure it was there.  Still, no skin off my nose, so off I drove in my new little pap pap to Sainsers to fill up.  Paid, got in brand new 12 miles on the clock car and...................... the bugger wouldn't start.

Irate phone call to salesman consisting primarily of me holding my mob near the engine and turning the key and shouting 'did you hear that?, no, you fekin didn't because it won't fekin start'.   10 minutes later I came out of Sainsers and there he stood, looking suitably shamefaced clutching a new battery.  I put on my snottiest tone and told him saying sorry doesn't cut any ice - I expect at least GOOD bouquet in apology and not something from the Sainsers forecourt!

Anyway, all's well that ends, and now it's standing outside looking for all the world like a lump of queasy yellow custard.  :O)

 

Happy Mother's Day

I know it's Mothering Sunday, but this is so over the top!  15 new piles of frogspawn in one day - at this rate by tomorrow I too shall be able to walk on water.  But then, what Mother can't? 

aoljpictureUpload, aoljpictureUpload_1

Gob smackin info!

OMG, at last I can see where I've been going wrong with my dieting.  I've just read an article on aol's welcome page - understanding the technical parts of the article were a bit of a struggle, my name not being on everyone's lips where clinical nutritionists foregather, but I've managed to glean the basic essentials.  It's going to come as a shock to you but brave up now as I share these diet secrets with you.....

Things which might make you fat: 

1. chips

2. booze

3. Processed food with a high sugar content

4. Burgers.

You know, I'm really not sure I believe this.  What the fek do skinny people eat then???