Give Thanks; It’s Good For You

Whether you believe in God or not, it is a good habit to count your blessings. In fact, it has been scientifically proven that being thankful for what you have is good for your health and mental wellbeing. I know this because I saw it in a Twitter meme, so it must be true. For it to work, it is recommended that you find at least five things to be thankful for. 

I record daily thanks in a notebook and I’ve been doing it for about six years. I only have bad moods on non-recording days but this might be because I don’t record my thanks because I’m in a bad mood. Science has to get back to me on that one.

Thanks should be personal to you because it’s unrealistic to be thankful for the neighbour a few doors down with the flawless skin and gleaming hair when you’re going through age-mandated repuberty and you look like Dorian Gray’s older, less attractive sister. They don’t need to be big things, though we ought to be thankful for them also. On days when I’m almost in a bad mood and can’t be bothered to be grateful that my fingernails look fabulous, I use my big things as default thanks: husband, kids, grandson, dogs, health, wealth, outstanding personality. More often than not, though, I’m thankful for small things like cheese & onion crisps, panty liners, invites to dinner at friends’ homes=no cooking, etc., and I have been thankful for as many as 23 separate things on Malteser days.

Today, to put my money where my mouth is, I’m going to share my thanks with you.

I am thankful for:

• My lack of money, because it teaches me the true value of things (a little fake sincerity is surprisingly positive at times)
• How often my fake sincerity teaches me the true value of things
• That I’m not in a bad mood
• For my eldest child; I love him so much
• For the man he has become
• Cheese & onion crisps, obviously
• That he’s a fantastic father
• That he’s known me for 28 years and yet he still talks to me
• That blogging is cheaper than a birthday card

Surprise!

Happy birthday, darling! 

Thank goodness that’s over with.

Oops! Did I say that out loud? Thank goodness he didn’t read me. And that he has a great sense of humour…

Excluding what we have established is the boring (family/pets/health/etc.), what are YOU thankful for?

Rules Are Made To Be Broken

Taking an inadvertent blogging break due to all of the studying I’m doing, I came across a post I wrote (hey, poets need downtime, too, you know), about a deliberate blogging break I took in 2013:

When I have time on my hands like this, I start thinking about myself. Always a mistake.  Last time I had nothing to do, I set a few rules and general guidelines to make Tilly Bud Tilly Blooming Lovely, Inside And Out.  Tilly Blooming Lovely IAO is, I am sure, well-groomed, relaxed, affable, clean, and at peace with herself.  Everyone will love her. Tilly Bud: The Menopause Years, not so much.

Forgive the use of an old photo; I wanted to look my best for you.

The Rules:

Presentation:

• Tilly Bud shall forthwith cease and desist speaking of herself in the third person.
• I’ll stop the pompous balderdash as well.
• I will address the next lot of rules to ‘you’ because the use of first person negates the funny.  Take it as read that ‘you’ is ‘me’.

Diet:

• When you eat the last Malteser, don’t open another box for at least an hour.
• Stop eating: you cannot starve to death in a morning.
• Exercise is not the enemy.  Dance, be a flibbertigibbet, chase the Hub around the house.
• Galaxy Bubbles are not an acceptable substitute for Maltesers.  Nor are Galaxy Bars, Galaxy Ripples or Galaxy Minstrels.
• They can, however, be enjoyed as a side dish.

Home:

• Never miss an opportunity to clean.
• The synchronicity of a dust bunny behind the couch and a vacuum cleaner in your hand should never be overlooked.

Computer:

• Nothing bad will happen if you stay offline for ten minutes.
• If your hand resembles a claw, put down the mouse and step away from the laptop.

Family:

• It’s okay to be nice to the Hub.
• Really.
• Just because your child didn’t call doesn’t mean A) you are a bad mother or B) he doesn’t love you.  It means he’s a bad son who doesn’t appreciate your stretch marks.
• Dogs are not substitute children.

Blog:

• It’s okay to be nice about the Hub.
• Really.
• Serendipity gave him to you; keep him sweet by throwing out the occasional compliment.

General:

• Stupid is as stupid does: pick a side.
• Life is like a box of chocolates: you can be a soft centre and a nut.
• Really.
• Forrest Gump is not the Oracle.  And that’s all I have to say about that.
• Never miss an opportunity to laugh (the first point under ‘Home’ refers)

This post first appeared five years ago.  Tilly Bud has since learned that the rules only work if you adhere to them.

Narrow Escapes

When we were kids, my brother owned a copy of The Book of Narrow Escapes. Aimed at children, it was full of stories about people who survived experiences like falling out of planes (as you do), or getting lost in the Amazon: always follow a river downstream to civilization was the advice, though how a child – or this adult – knows the difference between upstream and downstream escapes me, and not narrowly, either.  Come to think of it, I’m not sure that book, full of horror stories along the lines of Alive! was suitable reading for kids.  Unless I’m thinking like a be-fair-everyone-has-to-come-first-and-be-safe millennial.  Or a mum.

This morning, I was humming the tune to the seventies’ show Black Beauty because of a Facebook meme I’d seen, and that got me thinking that I read Black Beauty as a child and found it tedious, but loved The Book of Narrow Escapes – me, who never took a risk in her life unless it involved eating my weight in chocolate and thus the possibility of an obese, diabetic future.

As I was on the loo while all of this thinking was happening, that naturally reminded me of my own narrow escape, about twenty years ago: I went to the loo one day, finished, stood, turned around, and there were two wasps, flying around the neck of the bowl!  Talk about a squeaky bum moment.  To this day, I can’t sit on the loo without first inspecting it.  Thoroughly.  So if I visit your house and you catch me at it 1) I’m looking for stinging insects, not dirt and 2) why are you in the bathroom with me?

Do you have your own squeaky bum moment to share?

Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Who Cares?

Picture the scene: a new box of cereal, too tall for the cereal shelf.

Solution: reduce the size of the box.

Here is the Hub’s handiwork:

           Crunchy Neat

Here is mine:

            Rice Tearmies

Where do you stand on the Seriously?  It’s just cereal! debate?

Cough, Cough

 

It’s my choir’s concert tonight.  We’re doing stuff from musicals, including a fantastic arrangement – by Ollie Mills, our choir director – of Cats.  His alto line for Memory is the most fun I’ve had singing anything, ever, not least because that’s the only bit in the whole show I can sing without mistake.

Don’t tell that to the audience.  I’m pretty sure Ollie and everyone around me already knows, but we still have some tickets available.

We had a rehearsal last night and I coughed all the way through it.  I have had a persistent cough for months, for which I’m now being treated because I finally dragged myself to the doctor after hearing a horror story from a friend about a friend of her friend’s who ignored a persistent cough, and things ended badly.  

Mine is nothing so dramatic; it’s probably a post-nasal drip.

I misspoke when I told my singing chauffeur (the lovely woman who gives me a lift to choir) about it, accidentally calling it a post-natal drip, and we giggled for an hour about me developing a twenty-one-year baby-related condition that wasn’t excess weight.

The cough is always worse after exercise: for example, from the walk to church on Sundays.  I hack through the first half of the service but I’ve noticed that it improves after communion, just from one sip of wine.  That thought brought on a brain wave – I’ll take alcohol with me tonight!  

Alex tells me alcohol is bad for the vocal chords, but we’re not talking great singing on my part; and I’m thinking, better no voice than Coughy McCoughy in the chorus, ruining the best bits.  You might suggest that I could, of course, nobly stand down and not be in the concert tonight; but I’ll thump you if you do.  I didn’t spend six months learning these songs (some of them, anyway; my first paragraph refers) only to sit sulking in the audience on my big night: yodelayee-yodelayee-yodelayeeNO!

I tested my theory when I got in from choir by supping a tot of rum and, yup, no cough after it.  I’m taking a small bottle with me, to sip throughout the concert. I’ll just have to be careful not to get drunk: no one wants to see a sozzled alto tottering around the stage, defending McCavity against the slurs on his character.

Although…if you do, tickets are a fiver.

 

Good News, Bad News

Bad News

The Manchester date of The Iconoclasts tour is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.  

Good News

I can stop nagging my friends and family to buy tickets to support them.

Good News

Which is bad news for you if you live in London, Nottingham or Bristol – the other dates are still on:

18th and 19th June @ Camden People’s Theatre LONDON, 20.00 – 21.15
Tickets: https://www.cptheatre.co.uk/production/the-iconoclasts/

21st June @ STUFF NOTTINGHAM
http://newtheatre.org.uk/stuff/

26th June @ Alma Tavern & Theatre BRISTOL, 19:30 – 20:45
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-iconoclasts-the-alma-tav…

Good News

My choir is staging a concert on Friday, with songs from the musicals.

Bad News

I can nag my friends and family to support us.

Bad News

You visit this blog, expect to be hounded.

Good News

Buy a ticket and watch my colour change from red to less red as my hot flushes [desperately searches for a singing pun] [gives up] [if you can think of a good singing pun, you know where the comment box is] come and go at random.

Or, as Home’s Cool, one of my American readers so memorably put it, watch me as I flash in church.

 

Flushed Away

To My Children: I’d tell you to stop reading now but one day you’ll have menopausal wives and I want you to be understanding husbands, like your father, so have at it.

I have gone from being peri-menopausal to very menopausal, and last Sunday I had to leave church halfway through the service because I had one hot flush after another; so many that I was sweating bobbers, as we say here oop north.

Aside:

What is a bobber?

According to Google:

bobber
ˈbɒbə/Submit
noun
1.
a person who rides on a bobsleigh.
2.
a float used in angling.

So, the menopause is causing elite sportsmen in weird clothing to cascade down my person?  Sounds fishy to me; and not at all the sort of thing I want to be bothered with in the middle of a woman-made heatwave.

Back to my story: there I was, sweating for Africa, even though our usual British summer plays more like an African winter – or a British winter, come to that: central heating on in June?  Go for it.

I was feeling ill and extremely ill tempered; so I left church.  I’m afraid the menopause is going to make me an atheist.

I know they call it ‘the change’ but that isn’t the kind of change I expected.

I have to tell you – hot flushes…I’m not a fan.  Though I’m thinking of investing in a fan.  Maybe even a fan company.  Or an air conditioning company; or an ice company.  I’m surprised these companies aren’t all run by women of a certain age.  My age.

Trust me, we don’t need to worry about a New Ice Age: just put a bunch of menopausal women at the front of the line, give ’em a cup of tea, and let ’em have at nature.

And then bring on the HRT.  Please!

 

In The Last Week I Have

• Photo by Pam Robinson
• Given three short poetry readings
• Hosted my firstborn child, Rarity Boy
• Made the best fairy cakes I’ve ever baked
• Made the worst fairy cakes I’ve ever baked
• Baked!  Who’d have thunk it?
• Chatted to the Mayor
• Put a hole in my knee (and my favourite black leggings)
• Proofread and/or critiqued at least five documents of one sort or another
• Missed the Supermoon, as expected – Stockport doesn’t do celestial events, being under one continuous cloud blanket since I moved here in 1996
• Made a roast dinner in a state of mild hysteria
• Attended two meetings
• Been unable to buy train tickets on a website because it’s just too hard!
• Allowed my last born child to patronise me because he knows how to buy train tickets off the internet
• Felt immense guilt that I haven’t replied to your comments or returned your visits
• Not been paid for anything on this list
• Wished I had a penny for every moment of guilt felt because then I could pay someone to reply to your comments and return your visits
• Found the first photo of me I’ve actually liked since 2003 (banner photo notwithstanding, because that’s of the Hub and I, who I love soooooo much)
• Considered replacing the Hub, who broke my Tree of War mug, even though he offered to give me his as a replacement; maybe I’ll replace him with his mug…or just bean him with it
• Put off going in the shower by writing this when I should be getting ready to go out to another meeting

I apologise for the smell

Ooooo…

I’m meeting several bloggers in London today.

Sigh.

Three more people who are going to discover I’m funnier in ether than in person (Viv, no need to reassure me in the comments, but thank you in advance for thinking of me).

In the ether, you see, I can rewrite the dull; in person, I’m borderline offensive when I mean to be amusing.

Not having a crisis of confidence at all. No, sir; not me.

                                                                                                                 Wish them luck.

 

 

Don’t Eat The Spam!

Sometimes, spam comments looks genuine; at first glances, I thought this was:

My brother suggested I would possibly like this web site.
He used to be entirely right. This put up actually made
my day. You cann’t believe just how a lot time I had spent for this info!

Then I thought about it: her brother used to be entirely right?  I has brothers.  I don’t thinks so….

It’s definitely spam; or the author is an only child and wishing it ain’t so.

*

On a seriously note, I heard that the illiterate emails we is getting in our inboxers are deliberate: nasty spammers want to weed out the intelligent and/or persons what can spell, becAuse they are less likely to be gullible and therefore taken in buy iritating emails.

*

Does you like how I am writings in the style of spam?  It’s very pleasance.

I was going to asks you all to do similar or the sames in your comments, but yours proberly ennd up in my spam filter.

By the way, the title refers to a family story going back about six years.  My nephew and niece were staying with us for a couple of weeks and I made lunch.  Much hilarity ensued because I squirted a bottle of tomato sauce from directly over the top of a sandwich and still managed to miss.  Such are my cooking skills.

Nephew & Nice sat down with their sandwiches and Spud and Wary Boy were given theirs.  One of the boys smelled it and said, ‘I think this ham is off.’

You know how in The Night Before Christmas visions of sugar plums danced in their heads?  Well, visions of vomiting children for whom I was temporarily responsible danced in mine and I ran into the other room screaming, ‘Don’t eat the ham!  Don’t eat the ham!’

Nowadays, if I ever say the word ‘ham’, everyone in the room yells at me, ‘Don’t eat the ham!  Don’t eat the ham!’

My mistake, of course, was not to give food poisoning to my own children.   They wouldn’t have laughed at me then.  Ah well, we mothers can’t get everything right.

 

Me And EU

The EU referendum is coming up; I’m feeling a little down because I’m truly undecided: I see pros and cons for in and out.  I’ve been going back and forth on this.  The top and bottom of it is, however, that I feel British, not European.

That got me thinking about what makes me British:

• The Queen (obviously)
• Rain
• Queues
• Peculiar Spellings (previous answer refers)
• Earl Grey Tea
• Big Ben
• Cadbury’s Chocolate
• The NHS
• Polite Silences
• Football (NOT ‘soccer’) (What kind of word is ‘soccer’ anyway?  It’s just weird)
• Carry On Films
• Stamps
• Snow Panic (Three flakes?  Shut down the country!)
• Shakespeare
• Fair Play
• Humour
• Austen
• Pragmatism
• Coronation Street (even if you don’t watch it, there’s nothing more British than busybody small business owners clustered together down the pub, gossiping)
• Stiff Upper Lips

None of these things help my decision, sadly – unless Europe wants to make this a republic, in which case I’m throwing the towel in and voting out.  I’m a royalist through and through and I have the stamp collection to prove it.

Tell me, what do you immediately think of when you think of Britain and the British?  Stereotypes welcome here.

 

Untidy Lounge, Untidy Mind.

My house is cluttered; you know this.  

You also know that from time to time the mess gets me down even though, for the most part, I can live with it.

Last Wednesday was such a day.

This was my train of thought: I‘m never going to get rid of this stuff.  Well, not until there’s just me, anyway, and I can decide without argument what stays and what goes.

Here’s what I said to the Hub: I can’t wait until you die and I can get rid of this stuff.

Worst wife ever.

Wonder if I’ll get a Christmas present this year?

A Little Ocular Jocularity

Image from PictureSpider

I’ve had a busy few weeks, giving poetry readings and attending poetry events of one sort or another.  A lot of saliva flies around at poetry readings; have you noticed?  Sibilance by its very nature demands a level of spit not seen anywhere outside of a snake hissing contest.

The result of all that liberated discharge, however, is that at some point I contracted a cold.  I felt rough – really rough; rougher than a cold should make one feel; but I am of a delicate nature, of course, as I might have mentioned once or several hundred times.  I was useless for the first three days and then the mucus began its exodus and then it eased and then I started with a sore throat and then the sneezies came.

It was at that point, lying in bed feeling very sorry for myself, that I remembered that I had once read that you can’t sneeze with your eyes open, or your eyeballs will fall out.

Now this is one of those things that I believed I didn’t believe, so when I felt a sneeze coming on, I decided to try to keep my eyes open.  The things we invalids have to do to keep ourselves amused.

When it came to it, however, I chickened out. Apparently, I do believe that if I sneeze with my eyes open, my eyeballs will fall out. I was assailed with a terrible image of a huge sneeze and…plop…plop…stinging eyeballs caused by carpet fibres (apparently you can feel carpet fibres even though your retinas are literally detached.  In my world, anyway).   I could hear myself screaming at the Hub, My eyes!  My eyes!  Don’t stand on my eyes!  

There was I at three a.m., 52 years old and afraid to sneeze in case my baby blues fell out. (My baby blues are actually hazel, but ‘baby hazels’ doesn’t have the same ring to it).  I think may have overdosed on the cough medicine.

Tell me you’ve got a similarly ludicrous fear; please.  Eye don’t want to be alone.

A Grand Day Out

Everything you need for village living

The conversation went like this:

Friend Pam: Look at these fabulous desserts at the restaurant where we took Mum and Dad for their anniversary.

Tilly Bud: Drool…

Friend Pam: I’ll take you there one day; you have to eat these puddings; they’re fabulous.

Will she, bud?: Droo…l

Friend Pam: Hang on a minute…your birthday’s coming up…I’ll take you for a meal on your birthday!

There is a God: Thank yo…r….oo…l…

And so it came to pass last Wednesday that I found myself heading out of Manchester and into Burnley.  To misquote Field of Dreams (and, in fact, tell an outright lie for comic effect), the only thing we have in common is that Pam came from Burnley; and I had once heard of it.

Pam suffers from a chronic condition: she cannot plan an event without it being a huge success and, as we were heading in that direction, she reasoned, why not go up the famous Pendle Hill (never heard of it) and be tourists in the famous Witch Trial/Trail area (never heard of it).  We could see the famous Eye of God (never heard of it) in the famous centuries-old church (never heard of it) where her husband had proposed to her (I’ve heard of him); call in at the Elizabethan Towneley Hall (never heard of it); eat lunch there (definitely heard of that!); call in to see her parents for some northern hospitality (we’re all famous for that up here); and finish off at the famous pudding restaurant (which sells other food but, seriously, who cares?).

The woman is a genius.

We had a fabulous day.  Pendle Hill was gorgeous; the witch business was fascinating and a little sad (hanging innocent women gets me like that; I dunno why).  The church was…open.  It was hard to believe we were in 21st Century Britain when we could walk into an open, unmanned church and be trusted not to damage/steal anything.  Amazing.  Of course, it probably helped that it was situated halfway up a mountain in the middle of witch country.

I forgot to take my camera but Pam obliged by taking photos with hers, including my request for a pic of the inside of the public toilet – it had a high cistern with a chain!  I was back in my childhood (complete with cold seat) particularly as, technically, it was an outside loo.  Pam and I have a friendly rivalry going to see which of us is most common and I think I win because I was born in a Liverpool slum and come from Irish peasant stock (hence the Liverpool slum): an outside toilet with a lock was a step up for me.

My favourite spot: The Long Gallery. Can you see me way back there?

Towneley Hall was wonderful.  Walking through rooms which have been inhabited by who knows how many people over the past 500 years is one of my favourite things to do and I’m afraid my mouth got stuck in the Wow! position until it hurt Pam’s ears.  But that’s to be expected of a slumdog, of course.  I was, like, well impressed.

There was a slight change of plan when we saw the queue outside the restaurant door and, as we’d only had huge slices of cake for elevenses we decided – which is to say, Pam decided and I went happily along with any plan intended to feed me – to head straight for pudding paradise and eat there, calling in for a brew at Pam’s folks’ afterwards.  Which is just as well as Pam’s Mum was having her feet done and didn’t really want her guest to see that.  I don’t know why; I’ve got feet; I know how the whole thing works.

I am praying for the strength to dig in and climb out the other side

I forget the name of the place where we ate because I was too busy stuffing my gullet with a delicious carvery (which could have been called a spoonery because the meat just fell off the bone and the chef told me that sometimes he has to use a spoon to serve it) to write it down.  Pam tells me it’s called Sycamore Farm.  Check the desserts:

Now tell me it wasn’t worth turning 52 just for that.

We rolled out of there for the short journey to Pam’s parents’ house and I’m not sure that it wasn’t the best part of my day.  Her parents are lovely and her mother is adorable.  She hugged me despite never having met me before and then gave me an entertaining rundown of some of her neighbours, past and present.  They included friendly drug addicts who ran in to help during a crisis to the creepy bloke who introduced himself with the words, I’m not a paedophile and I’ve got a letter to prove it.  Pam’s Mum – or I should say, Pamela’s Mum, because that’s what she called her the whole time; no one ever calls Pam Pamela, she’s too friendly to be full-named;  but you know what mothers are like.  As I was saying, Pamela’s Mum wasn’t convinced by the not-a-molester, though she was glad to see him go when he was arrested for his cannabis farm and stealing his neighbour’s electricity to supply it.  I can’t decide which of her neighbours was my absolute favourite, but it’s a toss-up between the biker who stripped and rebuilt his motorbike many times over fifteen years, in the middle of his living room and partner and children; or the dominatrix who kept a dungeon in the basement but lived elsewhere.

Don’t think that any of this is my usual hyperbole; I swear I had it straight from the horse’s mouth – which was wearing its false teeth at the time, as she happily informed me.  Only the best for Pam’s friends.

I think I love her.

Thank you, Pam, for giving me a brilliant day, showing me a fantastic time, and for having a wonderful mother.

All photographs courtesy of Pam Robinson.

My Eyes! My Eyes!

I think I’ve kept you waiting long enough, but be warned: my new room is not for the faint of heart.  You see, I have this problem of never letting anything go to waste on account of having little disposable income.

The Hub bought a job lot of matt paint – something like 30 litres for £15, two colours: fuchsia and honeysuckle.  I decided the fuchsia was too dark and opted for the honeysuckle.

I needed gloss for the woodwork and I needed a fair bit because I had five pieces of furniture, none of which matched.  Aldi had paint on sale, but not much choice.  I thought I could mix white and bright yellow and make pastel yellow.  There’s a reason I’m not paid to think.

I put on my painting pyjamas, prepped the room, and mixed those suckers.  Did you know that white gloss and bright yellow gloss mixed together make bright yellow gloss?  Me neither; but they do.

The Hub was ill in bed; I was pyjama-ed up, spent up and raring to go, so I went.  I figured that if I didn’t like it, it could act as an undercoat for the time when I could afford to buy pastel yellow gloss. But you know what?  I like it.   Actually, I love it.  It’s, um, bright, but so cheerful.

If you come to stay, you’ll be using this room so you’d better learn to love it, too. But bring a sleeping mask.

I did have one little problem.  After emptying a tray of four tubs of honeysuckle, I noticed a few white patches where I’d missed spots.  I pulled a tub from the next tray in the shed and daubed over the patches.  It was only once it dried that I realised that the contents of tub no. 5 were a slightly different colour – noticeable, but only if the sunlight comes in at a certain angle.

I was bored with painting by this time so, instead of re-doing the whole room, I placed pictures and furniture in strategic positions and voilà!  One room painted one colour.  Honest.

You’ll see a South African table cloth in this next photo, used as a picture.  That’s where the biggest number five daub is.  I think the blue breaks up the blinding luminosity rather well (and I already had it in).

The room cost no more than £20 to re-do, if I include the curtains (charity shop: £1.75), lamp shade (charity shop: £1.99) and cushions (car boot sale: 40p).  

What do you expect of a woman who once papered a bedroom with stickyback plastic?  Class?  You haven’t been here long, have you?

The carpet is fourteen years old and has been through two teenage boys so I need a rug until I can replace it.  Anyone got an old rug covering their compost heap?  You know I’ll give it a good home.  But it needs to be a tasteful colour, like orange.  I have my standards.