Weekending

I've just returned from a long weekend away - can you guess where?

Here's another clue

Yes, sunny Devon.  We drove for 5½ hours to get there through Shropshire snow and sleet and found a blue-skyed Shangri La smothered in primroses and bluebells and clotted cream teas.  My sister in law has cannas in her garden 12" high already.  Mine are blighted soggy stumps that I doubt will ever rise again. 

 

Tags: Devon

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And to clay you will return.......

News today in economics circles about food prices in the poorest neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which is perhaps the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

The price of rice, the people's staple food, has doubled in the last year. This increase naturally has forced poverty-stricken residents to look for substitutes for rice.

Apparently in the past they have baked “dirt biscuits” using salt and vegetable shortening along with clay from a nearby area.  The clay has some nutrients in it, so it is not entirely filler. The problem tho is that the supply curve of clay is not horizontal; so with this increased demand for the clay, its price has risen too — by 40% during the same period. 

The dirt is no longer dirt-cheap - and the poor are just too poor to eat dirt. 

Tags: Port Au Prince, rice prices.

Feeling a lot better now :O))

I just saved myself £470 - by using the tips and links on MoneySavingExpert.com I saved £350 on buildings and content insurance and a further £123 on train tickets to and from Chingford.  Tomorrow I'm going to save another £200pa on my hub's mobile phone by switching his sim from O2 annual contract to Orange PAYG and have a look at changing our electricity provider.  Then once I'm feeling a bit less peaky I'm off to Chester for some Retail Therapy as recommended by good doctors everywhere. 

It's amazing how saving some dosh can perk one up, innit?

Tags: MoneySavingExpert.com, Buildings/Contents insurance

Rantin and Ravin

 

Well I think I must be picking up a bit because today I've had enough energy not just for a rant, but also a rave.  I'm living proof that my mother was right when she used to tell me that washing my hair and cutting my fringe out of my eyes would make me feel a lot better.

 

In my hamlet there's a garden which was adorned by a small collection of the most wonderful mature Poplar trees.  Throughout the year the sound of the breeze rustling through the leaves was as if we all lived on the edge of a shingle beach where wavelets constantly fell with a sigh or a roar.  I could open my windows at night and hear their gentle susurrations lulling me to sleep.  In Spring the opening of the big fat pink bud cases was a joy and later the fluffy seedheads lined the lanes for a week or so like duckdown trimmings.  In Summer the Poplars were like green sentinels overlooking the crossroad at the bottom of my paddock but in Autumn, well, in Autumn they were a honey coloured glory visible for miles around like golden obelisks pointing to heaven.

Yesterday the Philistine wanker who lives there had them cut down to stumps.  So go on, guess what this house is called. 

Yup - The Fuck Ugly Stump House Owned by a First Class Fuckwit formerly known as The Poplars.

 

My rave is for a cd which I ordered from the USA after reading a review by a blogger whose good taste I admire.   Have a look at  http://singlemanwriting.blogspot.com/2008/02/two-things-to-like-about-texas.html

I was inclined to think that any son of the great modern American writer Larry McMurtry would know how to write lyrics and Paul Mcs recommendation was good enough to spend a few quid on.  Today I listened to James McMurtry's award winning CD 'Childish Things' and after one hearing I'm an absolute fan.  It's rare in these times to find songwriters who can really make you feel something with their words but James McMurtry can.  Great lyrics, fantastic driving rhythms and what a voice.  Honest, I'd give him one right this minute and as you know, I'm still a bit poorly.  :O))

 

Tags: Waterboy, James McMurtry, Childish Things, Poplar trees

Off colour

I've been feeling a bit poorly lately, the sort of poorliness that can only be described as 'a bit poorly'.  I've nothing to show for it, no headache, no womit, no squits, just a bit of shakiness and a generalised feeling that I'm a bit poorly.  I'm all 'Pathos-R-I'.

The trouble with being a bit poorly is that it resembles nothing so much as an excuse for doing sfa but sit on the sofa palely shaking while someone else does the graft.  So I feel an idle sham, but an idle sham who feels a bit poorly, so now I'm a bit poorly and slightly resentful.  It's not a good look, but it does go with the lank hair and unmadeup fizzog. 

 

I know it sounds masochistic but just once I'd quite like a broken limb.  Something I could thrust into people's faces and elicit instant sympathy 'Look John Look.  Look at Jane.  Jane really is a bit poorly'. 

I'd like the sort of poorliness that makes people in the street ask if I'm feeling okay, would I like a chair, shall they call me a taxi (or tacsi for Welsh speakers).  Mind, given my age that's bound to happen within the next fortnight.  Osteoporosis isn't warded off by Clairol.

 

 

 

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?