Boxes and Blind Spots

Did you see the news the last few days?
About this 12 year old girl called 'Molly' who went to Pakistan with her father and sister without telling her mother?

Apart from the discussion about how stupid it is to just take off and go to a far away country and not even leave a 'TTFN' note to your mum, I was fascinated by something else.

Did you see the mum? Hardly able to speak, move or do anything else that seemed remotely 'normal', trembling all over, taking small steps out of the press room. Her appearance a mess with a haircut that has probably been applied by either herself or a neighbour with kitchenscissors. How did she come across to you?

Now.. I totally understand that in the midst of despair one does not think of how one might come across on telly. (Although I promise you no amount of distress would keep me away from applying a bit of make up before going on camera knowing that every news room desperate for ANY news in this time of the year will repeat my shiny red face and puffy eyes about, oh, 100 times a day for a week, ok, you can call me vain!)

Anyway.. then today.. the father... dressed in one of those, famous for Pakistan, male dresses which probably have a name which I don't know. He looked magnificent with his big black beard, a bit like this guy who sings 'if I was a rich man'. Saying that Molly can do whatever she wants.

And of course there was Molly, beaming, radiating love for her daddy.

So... did she get shipped out to get married in Pakistan? Do I really care?

No...

I cared about my own reaction which was 'If I had a say I knew which parent I wanted her to be with'

It would definitely be mr Rich Man.

So.. .I wondered, why...

Why on earth do I think I can judge someone by looking at them for 20 seconds and reach conclusions like 'very emotionally instable, not quite there, missing a few bits here and there, not capable to look after a child'

AWFUL!!!!

But.. it is reality.. I liked this guy with the beard saying that the girl can do what she likes and if I was her I would like to stay with him as well even if I wouldn't approve of his clothes choice.

But... after having stopped beating myself up over it I realised that people do that with me too, all the time.

They look at me and decide who I am, what I am capable of, or not and they put me in one of the boxes they have in their heads for that purpose.

And I can't help being so curious - where do I fit, how am I perceived?

Talked to John about this and he just says he doesn't care. And I suppose I should go there, I am what I am and what everybody else believes is not important.

And he is right, it isn't, it wouldn't change me but I would try and set the record straight if I felt they had me all wrong. (thinks.. why is *that* so important to me.....)

I would for instance love to know how my manager perceives me, does he see me as some sort of clever secretary? Or as a full blown member of the department capable of proper project management? Does he look at my face and thinks 'gosh she has a lot of confidence' when I constantly think that the reason they pay me pittance and don't give me a proper contract MUST be because they think I am stupid but just didn't tell me yet and am a bundle of insecurity about loads of things a lot of the time.

Is the picture I have showing on our internal HAL website saying 'nice competent woman', 'uptight bitch', 'nice try', 'looks like a librarian' or 'clueless'?

When I was doing my college education we were told that everybody had a blind spot, that you know certain things about yourself ,that there are things you DON'T know about yourself but are able to learn through the course of your life but also that everybody has their blind spots.

That unsettled me a lot, I thought I quickly had to find out all there was to know about myself because the idea that someone could confront me with my blind spot and me not recognising it was too scary to contemplate (no idea why, I suppose I still cared a lot back then :-))

Anyway, off I went trying to find out as much as I could about myself so I would be prepared for that day that someone would say 'you are such and such' and I would gently smile and say 'yeah I know' and have one up on them.

And now.. because of this experience today, I know that it is all out of my hands, that no amont of me getting to know myself will prevent people reaching their conclusions in 2 minutes flat and of course, not telling me! So I can't check if they are right and adjust any misconceptions they might have.

So... the morale of this story?

It is *all* in the eye of the beholder and I just *have* to let it go.

I thought I would share this insight with you.

:-)

BIRD

I had a bit of an unsettling day!! I am terrified of birds, stemming from an early childhood experience when my parents took me to Amsterdam to feed the pigeons and all those birds were all over me picking my hands and clawing in my head, when you are 5 pigeons are really big and somehow I have always been unable to get over this fobia!!

There is not a lot of need for me to get over it I suppose, as long as birds stay where they belong I am fine but this morning they didn't!!

Well, it didn't...

From my bed working away on my laptop (thank god for wireless) I heard a squeek from the kitchen and feared the worst, peeked from my bed through to the kitchen and yep... A FLYING THING. I totally panicked and ran to the bedroom door and closed it so I was safe.

After initial panic subsided I decided this was silly, I couldn't even go to the toilet so I was really brave and opened the door and peeked if I could see it just when I thought I couldnt' and thought of going into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee I heard another sound and a squeek so I threw the kitchen door shut giving me access at least to the bedroom, bathroom and back garden!

Still slowly de-panicking I decided to have a shower and review the situation after that. I know we have steps in the garage which I thought I could use to peek into the house from the outside. So.. that is what I did, started to look through the kitchen window and hooray, no bird, I really hoped it would have found its way out through the same window it got in!

But no.... when I looked into the lounge window I heard a bang and again a bang and it was clear that birdie was trying desperately to get out. Unfortunately time ran out... I had to attend a conference call for BAC and concentrate on that, so back into the bedroom and get laughed at by my Indian colleagues who just wanted to know what breed of bird it was!!! No sympathy there then!

After the call and getting really hungry and desperate for coffee I had another look from the steps into all the windows but couldn't see any bird, a lot of tiny bird poo droppings though.

Contemplating going in and it being stunned or dead or flying around frantically (can't decide which option would be worst!!) made me shiver so bad that I went to my last resort in the form of Johns mum who lives in our street. She laughed (of course pffff :-)) and came with me to slay the dragon.

So I let her go in all alone, while keeping the protecting kitchen door firmly closed and of course.. no bird.... nowhere... she was clapping her hands fiercely (as if her presence alone wasn't enough) but no moves at all.... all we could assume is that it flew out again.

And I know I should feel all better now, crisis averted, bird safe, me safe, all safe.

But of course with every 'strange' sound I think it came back to haunt me and it will take days before I don't get a reflex shock if a bird flies past our window a bit too close!

New shoes

Well, yeah, I know.. haven't been writing for ages.. don't really know what about but since Marije asked me if she could link to my blog I was reminded about it again :)

So.. yeah.. I've been busy, first been to our department 'do' which meant that I had to fly to Southampton, 'work' for 1 day, had the do all Tuesday and 'worked' again on Wednesday when I flew back again.

Well.. that was exciting!!
There was some sort of communication disruption (BT they said) on Southampton and they cancelled all !!! flights!

In itself minor crisis, I mean .. BAC pays for my flights and hotels so that was covered, BUT ,it turned into major crisis because the next morning I was supposed to fly to Amsterdam to be part of Kevins birthday! (My OLD kid is now 21 and officially a grown up!)

Anyway.. .it is was definitely a case of adopting the great BAC adagio of 'how am I going to project manage my way out of this one!!'

So... put down the strategic model of :

Current situation vs Wanted situation hampered by what helped by what.

(Did you know hot shots earn thousands by milking this model?)

It was easy to determine what hampered me getting to my wanted situation of getting my butt into Glasgow ASAP - Bloody Southampton Airport.

Luckily I had my mobile and the phone number of my favorite colleague and he directed me to the train where I found out how to get to Heathrow while he booked a ticket with BA to Glasgow for the pricely sum of 191.10 pounds! Dear me! So glad I didn't have to pick that bill up myself!

So, after 3o minutes train, an hour in a hot bus, a 2 hour wait on Heathrow and an hour flight to Glasgow I arrived home at 23:30.

Only to leave again on the Prestwick bus the next day at 13:09

How is that for having a pitstop!

Then.. Holland.....

Kevin was over the MOON with his present (notice the birthday hat that I specially brought for him) and all the attention and I am so glad I went after all, we had a brilliant evening.. I must say.. loads of wine went through my system lately!
So now.. I am trying to get used to living a stable less exciting life which is a bit weird after all this excitement!

The weather is threatening to get bad here for days now but it has been nothing than holiday weather and my system has enormous trouble accepting that I need to work!

How one suffers!

Big city

Well... I am here... in the middle of London..
I can't believe how not used I am anymore to a city.
Walking to where my course is is plain dangerous, cars everywhere!
And noise...

It is unbelievable what an assault a city is to your senses, screeching tubes, roaring motors, masses of taxis and buses, bad singing in the metro stations, so much to see, all that dust everywhere, I forgot how DIRTY cities are.

The area I am in is very close to 'Liverpool Street', which apparently is the heart of the financial part of the city, which means there are masses of 'suits' running around, and I mean running, nobody seems to just pootle along, it is all QUICK QUICK QUICK, frantic!!

For someone interested in food it is absolutely magnificent the amount of choice one has here. A lot of 'latte' factor.. I think half of all these running around people have either a big cup of expensive coffee in their hands or a mega big baguette.

My hotel is simple but SO exactly right. It has all I would ever want.. well... maybe a bath would have been nice but the powershower is lovely too! I even have a nice little couch in my room and a desk and a hair dryer and coffee and tea things and I get a showercap every day (which I then steal of course) - no cool shampoo and stuff to take home though, they have these dispensers with shampoo and showergel and other soap. Oh well... can't have it all I suppose!

Found the greatest little restaurant across of the hotel.. it is a pizzeria but the posh trendy version where they sell the pizza per yard. Quite nice.. they consider 'a glass of wine' to consist of 250ml.. thinks... how many units is that!!! It is a good thing I only have to roll 'home'. :-)

Oh and what is this thing about 'water'? Everybody is walking around with bottles of water, all the shops are overflowing with bottles of posh stuff and in my favorite restaurant they keep on asking if I would like some water and look really surprised and worried if I said, tapwater will be fine. I first thought it was because they can't really charge me for that but I think it is more that for them it it so rare to meet someone who dares drink tapwater. Interesting! Oh well. since they do know how to make good food I will let them off!

And the course is fun too would you believe! Almost forgot to mention that.. normally I am really really bored on courses, they are too slow in general.. this one is different, yesterday the teacher almost went too fast for me which is something that never happened to me. Today was a bit better because it is getting more difficult now and the rest of class is struggling so she needs more time to save them :). It is a bit unfair on them though, I have been working with all of this for about a year now and just lack the basic structure when they probably see all of it for the first time, it is fantastic to get all my blanks filled in!

Only 2 nights before I fly back again, then a month pause and then flying to Southampton again, pff.. .rains it pours and all that! Wish I had something like this in boring end of November or something... maybe I should try and steer in that direction :-) Having said that.. part of the enormous fun I am having at the moment is the lovely weather I suppose, can't really expect that in November ;)

It is also lovely to watch all my rubbish on TV WITHOUT feeling guilty :) Poor John has to suffer so much, from Strictly Dance Fever to Big Brother to xFactor Battle of the Stars etc... when he is more interested in the digestive system of the egyptian tigershark or something like that! Only downside is I miss him like hell.. it is just not the same without him snoring next to me on the couch and me trying to find the perfect balance between the volume just so I can hear it over the snoring but not so loud it wakes him up. :-)

The little joys in life eh... for now I will have to cope with a big double bed just for me :-)

How I suffer....

Wine and Dine

Oh joy... temperature is rising - Sunday morning I am flying off to LONDON
Big city girl - same girl, different city

I wonder how it feels, I thought Glasgow was overwhelming, wondering if I am de-city-ing without realising it.. maybe I am more a suburb girl than a city girl after all :-)

Anyway, it will all be good fun, leaving early on Sunday, going to the hotel and trying to get online (everything feels more organised if you have access to the internet don't you think? Me? Addicted? Neh!! :))

Then going to THE SHOPS I think... or just browse and see where I have to be on Monday to attend this cool Domino Designer course. Had to ask my boss person what it is I am actually doing. Bit embarrassing really. I knew I was working with databases and manipulating data and that I work with developers and have to tell them what to code (using the agreed processes).

Learned now that it is a database application that I work on, very educational indeed. And now I am going to be taught the fundamentals of designing one of those databases because I keep on feeling I have fallen right in the middle of all this code and miss the basics. So hope I will not be bored out of my skull. But eh.. I like the hotel experience in itself and the fact that I can choose which restaurant to use as long as I keep under 25 quid. Not sure if that is enough in London, I guess I will be OK as long as I stay away from the Ivy or Fifteen.

I saw this advert though, that you could go to the musical 'Les Miserables' including dinner at Planet Hollywood for 25 quid!! Now.. that sounds interesting.. decided to not book but see how it all feels when I am there though. :)

Apparently I am in the middle of the financial part of the 'City' - Liverpool Street is on walking distance.. so nice of BAC to organise a course in the middle of where things happen. Much better than in the middle of nowhere where I have to go when I visit my yearly do in July, lovely hotel but NOTHING around but country roads, this is a lot better!! :)

So tomorrow, packing, bbq-ing, wining, sleeping and go...

Exciting!

Release your inner bag lady....

This has always been my biggest fear:

http://wanderingscribe.blogspot.com

And I am not talking about how she got a book deal and all came good after all...

:-)

David Blaine and Magic

So, am I the only one?

Who does not just hate David Blaine and all his stupid undertakings but hates anything magical apart from Eurodisney?

It is supposed to be great, to be entertainment, we are all supposed to be in awe when they do their magnificent tricks but it just makes me very very very VERY uneasy.

Like... in the program about David Blaine tonight (Drowning Alive) they showed clips of him asking a person to think of a card and a minute later that person gets a call on their cell phone showing that particular card as the caller.

Very clever indeed.

So why does it leave me angry?

I suppose I feel fooled, embarrassed, left out, stupid, unable to work it out and I can't get ANY pleasure of something I do not 'get'.

It is probably very clever that he and all the other magicians are able to do these tricks but if I never ever see another magic trick again it will be too soon!

Sometimes... it *is* gorgeous here!

The picture doesn't do it justice really.... the dark rocks in the front, the houses on the other side but I think you get a good idea how nice it is when it doesn't rain for a little while :)

The joys of technology

Dear me...

What drama's! Remember I said my harddrive crashed?
Well... it sort of got back to working again after it moved its bootsector and I have been trying to get information of my old drive since the first sound of marbles jumping up and down in my harddrive...

Used Norton Ghost, created an entire backup image of my C: drive because I was told after that I could browse the backup and only put back the files I really wanted. Well.. when I finally received my lappie back with the new harddrive and the BACs standard image I first tried to browse the image I had put on an external drive (13gb image...) to pick out a few of the most important files and directories.... 'browsing this file is not supported'. Oh blow...

After trying a few more times I thought that it was probably because I did an image of my entire hard drive and had the brilliant idea to just put the entire harddrive back on my new one... Well... that resulted in a 'disk read error' and nothing else. Nothing I could do.

So.. lappie back to the BAC kitchen again for another refresh with the BAC image.

So yesterday finally I got it back and manually installed again all the programs I need to use to do my job.

And today.. normality returns... I am of course still searching all over the place for passwords and login names and I find it remarkable how many things you don't realise you use!

I have now installed the BAC's own backup tool and today after using most of my favorite programs and sites and therefore installing all cookies and passwords and things I will try and backup it in total. I must say.. it is nice to have such a fresh start, it is like having a spring clean but I am sure that over time I will realise all the things I didn't know were important until they died in the HD crash...

But.. all that is totally unimportant!

My mum had to go to a skin doctor because she had an awkward bit of skin on her cheek which her GP didn't trust, yesterday she got the result! It is 'just' sun damage and will be 'frozen' away on the 16th of June, not very nice but we are all over the moon that it is not skin cancer of the bad kind, hooray!

Who cares about lost data anyway!

The Da Vinci Code

Yes.. that is also something I did when I was in Holland.
Finally read the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, Karin had it lying around her house and I wanted to know what the buzz was all about. Generally these bestsellers are not bestsellers for nothing!

I didn't think I would like it, I am not very interested nor engaged where it comes to 'the Holy Grail' and such. It doesn't mean anything to me at all so couldn't imagine I would be attracted.

I have this sort of free religion inside of me (thinks maybe I should start one myself, Tori Amos always sang that 'I have got enough guilt to start my own religion' and I know what she means :)) I feel that God (or however you want to call him) is good and not such a bad guy as some religions let us believe and I am sure that Jesus was a very nice and talented man but I always have a hard time to believe all these miracles and holyness surrounding him.

When I hear people talk about their religion I always get this tight feeling around my chest because they want to stuff it all in a little box where I feel the more godding something is, the more space it needs. (Lost you yet? :-))

I felt this much needed space in his ideas in this book (that Jesus might have been married and have a child and not the saint he has been made into). I love the fact that the book describes it as a theory but also leaves space for your own conclusions and then leaves it all alone and turns into a riveting thriller that keeps you hovering between reading quickly wanting to know how it ends and slowing down because you don't want it to end.

And now.. the movie.. I want to see it now.. to see if it is true what the reviews say, that the film is even better than the book, I think this film might break all records ever made in film land, can't wait!

Oh and if you want to know what the buzz is all about, cheap 2nd hand ones at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/detail/offer-listing/-/0552149519/all/202-7002370-6273447

Update

Well... it has been a hell of a week and a bit!

• I have flown to Holland
  
• I went to the zoo with my mother (aren't we cute?!)
  

• Visited my brother and his kids and his girlfriend
• Went shopping daily (and therefore meet my son :-)) in my favourite supermarket
  
• Underwent a 90 minute massage donated by my friend (those are GOOD friends to have!)
• Watched masses of girlie movies
• Had nice long walks since the weather was fantastic - it felt like summer!
  
• Ate nice Dutch food like proper chips with fritessauce, kroketten and vlaflip
  
• Bought 1 kilo of drop
• HAD A HARD DISK CRASH (capitals because that was VERY scary!!!! My lappie kept on saying 'disk read error')
  
• Had the insight to press the 'access IBM' button while starting up and from all the icons I saw I thought 'diagnostics' sounded like a good start which thank God brought it back to life.
  
• Went to dinner with my dad, his wife and her daughter and partner (my stepsister who I hadn't met before, at least, not that I can remember)
• Did the 'anti stress arrangement' in the most fantastic spa I have ever seen and got a tan (well a red face really)
• Had a few drinks with my son, mum and my friend and closed the visit with a nice fulfilling shoarma with french fries (quite an event since I had been looking forward to that for quite some time.
• Flew back again
• Sent my dad a thank you note for taking me to the airport at sparrowfart and included the picture above.
• Got told off by return for doing so because 'that marriage is a closed story' and 'please do not send that kind of pictures again'.

Which was a very pissy end of an otherwise fantastic long week in my life. (Thinks... goodness you are 70, get over it, it is 23 years ago, it IS still my mother, you DID create me with HER, and I am on this picture too, but eh, he is 70 so I said 'ok, message received' )

Took it out on the garden. Have decided to suffocate the weeds since I can't win otherwise.

Luckily it is a lovely period, masses of sun and gardening is proving to be a very cleansing experience.

So why are these called bluebells?

Exactly!

Oh dear...

John and I were talking about how people always say the same thing over and over when they speak...

Like... Shayne always says 'to be honest' when what he says has nothing to do with being honest or not it is just something that is pushed in whenever he feels like it. Can't blame the boy really it must be a bit unnerving all these endless interviews.

Anyway.. of course we talked about what we say too often and we have discovered that John says 'Fantastic!' all the time and I am guilty of 'Exactly'. We have also now found out we BOTH use these words a lot :-)

Taking a bit of a distance and looking at those words I can see that we are very positive people who agree with eachother an awful lot!

So .. what happens now is that we have become very aware of these words which has made me very self concious, it is so irritating that only after it has escaped my mouth I think 'shit, said it again!'

I know with learning (or unlearning I suppose) there are 4 stages:

unconciously unable
conciously unable
conciously able
unconciously able

Which basically means that first you didn't know you did something, then you realise you do but you still can't do anything about it, then you are able to change it but it costs a lot of effort and then you become so good at it that it becomes so normal you don't have to think about it anymore.

Since I discovered my over enthusiastic use of Exactly! I hear myself say it all the time, but can I change it?? NO! I am definitely stuck in phase 2 and have no idea on how to go to stage 3.

I have tried to think about alternatives for the word in the hope that it would then be easier to alternate it a bit with other words but apart from precisely I can't really think of any other words which means exactly (!) the same :-)

There are of course alternatives like 'Bang on' or 'Spot on' but I think these are even worse than my 'Exactly!'

So when I muttered and mumbled about this to John, that I think the word is used exactly(!) right and that I struggle to find good alternatives for it (Fantastic b.t.w. is also a very difficult word to replace!) to which he said 'Darling, you can use exactly as much as you like'

But that doesn't feel right either, see... these stages as described above, you can never go back, I will now forever be stuck in the consciously unable stage and forever hear myself say 'Exactly!' and think 'BUM'!!

:-)

Make Up and Over

Today a nice self obsessed blog, might as well be clear about it :-)

When John was visiting his beloved children I had a bit more time on my hand than usual and I don't know why but I suddenly had this idea to photograph myself through my routine of make up. Not that I use that much mind you but I am always amazed how different it can make me feel. I know that a big part of that is all in my mind.

I mean.. I know that make up most certainly helps to make me look better, I am not one of these women that can get out of bed and look nice and fresh and wonderful. I am more of the type of hair all over the place, shiny fatty face and bland, very bland.

I must say that working from home doesn't help, nobody knows what I look like when I am on the phone on conference calls and putting make up on often feels like a waste of good make up so a bit of moisturiser just has to do, if I scare myself with my blandness too much I might go as far as adding a bit of lipstick or kohl to my face but that is it.

So, 'gettng out of the house to see other people apart from the people walking their dogs in Wemyss Bay' is a bit of an event which requires loads of attention and make up. You can imagine that a visit to Glasgow was a perfect reason to do it properly.

And I don't know why but I suddenly had to think about all the 'make over' things they do in the magazines, you can't open a woman magazine without one of those in it so I thought I would try it myself and prove a point while doing so.


On the left is me, freshly showered (so not so shiny anymore :-)) and me on the right WITH make up - I think myself it is a pity that I didn't take a photograph of my wet fringe down on the left picture because now you can't really properly compare how much difference it makes. What I notice from these pictures is that I have a droopy mouth!! Wonder if that is old age? But why only on one side of my face! My right mouth corner has dropped dramatically I think. I do think I look better with the make up but the difference is not as spectacular as I feel it to be if you know what I mean. I feel I look a lot better than this picture shows me to look. Erhm.. hope you are still with me.. my point being... if you take a before and after photo with a sort of the same look on your face the effect is not dramatic at all. Interesting is that you can see that I almost smile on the after one.. I suppose that is the make up effect, feeling better for it :)

But now.. to part 2 of my experiment... the following picture shows another after picture which is more like the ones you see in those magazines:

And I don't know about you but this looks much more like a dramatic difference, not only by the smile (which takes care of the droopy mouth nicely) but also because of the colorful cardigan I am wearing.

So.. lesson here... don't believe those make over pictures in those magazines, if they would get these people to smile and let them wear the same clothes the effect would not be that dramatic!

Note to self: Smile more but keep mouth closed because of crown

:-)

House & Son

Ha!

House is brilliant television I must admit... can't choose today which remark was more brilliant 'babies are useless, they have hearts the size of ping pong balls' or 'Does it occur to you if you need that kind of friend you may have made some deeper errors'? :-) Can't even say WHY it is so funny, they just tickle me :)

And totally not interlinked, my son suddenly, out of nowhere sent me a link to a 1 hour 29 minute video of 'The Umbilical Brothers' - Now... I am way too busy and not patient enough to watch anything for that long but I am sure some of the 3 readers of this blog would actually enjoy this.

Isn't he cute? :)

Poor neighbours 2

Yay!!!

Remember that I said I enjoyed the music (and screaming at the top of my lungs) so much and that our speakers were not that good anymore (very bad actually)

When I was talking to John about how we deserve good music, good speakers and a good life in general (always a good way to pave the path to buying something new) he said he had thought the same thing!

Well... whaddayaknow!

So I went for a hunt on ebuyer, generally THE place to buy any new stuff with a plug and we really liked the Logitech Z-2300 - all the reviews I have seen were very good, maybe not high end stuff but then again we are not like my brother who is one of those high end hifi people and makes his own speakers with special wood and in special shapes to get a certain resonance and all that.
He once owned a car that gave you a back massage as well as ruined your hearing, all at the same time, boom cars they call those. I will NEVER forget hearing the Fugees in that, 'Ready or Not' was... organic!

Anyway, I digress...

The Z-2300... I already added it to my basket and was on the way out when I thought 'hang on, lets check if there is anything bad on google' and no, all good reviews so that was ok.. but I did notice they were a lot cheaper in the US on Amazon and of course from there thought, hmm... lets check Amazon, you never know!

And wahey! They are cheaper in total because Amazon doesn't charge any shipping if you are a patient old thing (which we are) so I just saved us a tenner.. and that feels good!

Can't wait to get the clarity of a tweeter with the richness and fullness of a separate midrange - always wanted one of those. (side note, do you know that site? http://www.iwantoneofthose.com)

So somewhere end of this or beginning next week the neighbours will really get it.

Note to self: 'Do not dry any laundry while testing speaker system'

:-)

Spring? Autumn? Oh no, spring! Huh, winter?

That is how it went today, gorgeous sunshine followed by masses of rain, cold, drab, murky. Then.. glorious sunshine again! This is when I nipped out and took this picture, I thought I'd better hurry and take one before the winter spell arrived!

And of course would you believe, only an hour or so later the hail started coming down... this is definitely one of those '4 seasons in a day' day in Scotland!

Glad to say John is all back in one piece and all is good with the world...

I don't think I aggrevated any neighbours this morning during my Miserables outburst, glad I got that out of my system.

So...tomorrow.. back to HAL again... Oh Joy!

Poor Neighbours

One thing I do when John is not here is listen to music he absolutely hates!

Doing this made me notice that I have a bit of an eclectic taste :-)

I went from Mathilde Santing (Dutch singer with a gorgeous voice) to Lori Carson (ok, not such a big jump) to the Fugees (bigger jump, sexy music, had to dance silly of course thinking of yesterdays movie pretending I was one of those sexy black girls) via Verdi's requiem (which brought me to tears once more - Libera me - does it every time) to the somewhat lighter Shayne Ward and Rowetta (yeah sorry, I have this xFactor thing going on and I needed something lighter after Verdi) to KT Tunstall with her cherry tree - live - very 'lekker'.

Made me ponder of course why I never do this when I am at home with John, I could always put the headphones on... and I know now why, I am unable to just listen to music. I need to sing and shout and dance and bop and apart from that it is a bit restrictive to do all that with headphones I wouldn't want to do it to John!

And.. oh dear.. I just went into our utility kitchen where we keep the fridge and washing machine and dryer... and of course I forgot that I was drying some clothes for which of course the window needs to be open. Oh dear... that means during my Verdi outburst (which was extremely loud - through bad (died and therefore making horrible noises from what should be serene sound) loudspeakers and me screaming at the top of my lungs that the window has been open. Only 5 meters or so away.

Poor poor neighbours.. I will now as a good girl go to my couch, under the duvet and watch 'a dragon of a movie' (as we call it in Holland) on ITV -

But.. tomorrow... I will check all windows are closed and I will belt out 'Les Miserables' in full.

In Dutch!

I mean... what are double glazed windows for anyway!

Fantastic!

I had such a good day!

Woke up in time to catch the train I planned to take (which was quite an achievement since I didn't set the alarm and John wasn't there to kick me out of bed!)

Browsed around a couple of shops but noticed I enjoyed it a lot more to take in all the goings on of the city - things I forgot about happen in a city, absolutely LOVED it... Saw at least 4 bagpipers (I am such a tourist, I love that), a man covered in gold pretending to be a statue, a fantastic jazz band, a few not so brilliant but still ok singers and a loud juggler.

I stepped into House of Fraser and went to the nice smells and creams department but I must admit that was too intimidating, all these people trying to sell you something, or when I wanted whatever they wanted to give away I seemed to be invisible. Always wonder what that is? Do I not look posh enough? Young enough? Old enough? Do they really not see me? I know the grumpy old women always say that, that over 40 you become invisble, maybe it has happened to me already. Not sure what I think about that but it did make me just want to run out of the place!

Anyway, after that shock I moved onto the main event and bought a cinema ticket. Luckily that process was exactly the same as in Rotterdam so it wasn't too daunting. :-)

Then.. went to TGI Friday... we have one in Holland but I never actually visited it, it took me about 3 years to realise that 'TGI' means 'Thank God its'. Hm... shows you how out of touch I am! Anyway... thought this was the perfect opportunity to have lunch.

I must say.. it was a bit of a culture shock and brought home to me how enormously I have changed since I am living here.. I looked at the menu and it hit me that you could only get masses of food on a plate.. I started to feel full just looking at the menu!

Every dish seemed to have things like 2 chicken breasts AND fries AND onion rings (the thought crossed my mind that they probably thought that those rings would make it a balanced meal (being vegetables and all that ;-)). Anyway.. I dithered about just going but there was this very cute waiter so I thought I'd sit it out and have something I would normally NEVER make myself.. spareribs.. the last time I ate those must have been 6 years ago when I had these sort of outings at least once a week....

That definitely changed! And after enjoying half of my ribs, fries and onion rings I decided it was a good change! I like my own cooking I'm afraid, even though the ribs were very nicely made (ring and fries were awful unfortunately) I now know I will not have the need to visit them again :-)

Oh.. and then he tried to charge me 6 pound more than was on the menu.. being a bit scared of any language difficulties I so hoped this would not happen. But it so infuriated me that I went up to the guy and put him right, saw he got scared, real scared and it was solved in minutes, phew! I really felt something stubborn happening, like they can drag me to the police if they like but I am NOT going to pay for this! It was all very exciting!

I must say... Glasgow has enough shops to keep a woman happy for days and I don't know if it is the protected life in a village with 1 Spar but I felt a bit overwhelmed with all the choice and happy that it was movie time.

I know.. 'Take the lead' is not one of those filmhouse films and will not get an Oscar I am sure, however I loved it, absolutely every minute of it. It was quick filmed, I absolutely love to watch Antonio Banderas and sexy dancing, it was all there.. and of course it was a great feel good movie. I had forgotten how nice it is to see a movie properly, on such a big screen, there is something so intimate about it even when around you are a bunch of strangers.

Note to self.. need to do this more often, it was great!!

Oh.. and when I bought myself a lovely proper Easter Egg because I felt I deserved it (and because it has been tradition in my family since I was small to get one) I bowled over the cashier of Sainsbury who commented on its beauty by telling him I bought it for myself. "Really? But it has a bow and everything" he said, hovering my change in mid air "You're pulling my leg!". "Nope! I said, it is for me!" and he said "people who feel they are worth enough to buy themselves nice things are confident people" and I saw him thinking "need to give myself some of that".

:-)

Enjoy Easter!

Big City

And.. my prayers have been heard!
Ok.. it hissed down in places today but Eric (ehm.. our version of 'God' or 'The Universe') was being nice, it just happened to only piss down when I was actually in the car!

Good stuff...

Actually felt some sun today and ripped some weeds out of the garden. Nice feeling.

Now all I need to do is pray for it to be like that tomorrow when I plan my yearly trip to Glasgow.

Bad isn't it... I have been living here now for over 5 years but I can still count the times I went to Glasgow on one hand, and I haven't even been once to Edinburgh.

Also, there is this ferry going back and forth in front of our window all day, all the way to Rothesay... and we keep on saying 'we should take that ferry one day'

Yeah right.. chances are we will die without having seen Edinburgh nor Rothesay.

And then I think.. does is it matter?

Why does everybody say 'Oh REALLLLLYYYYYY?' When I say I hardly ever visit Glasgow. Am I missing something and if so, what? Can someone tell me? Because apart from a few shops they don't have in the Oakmall (like Debenhams, Primark and Next) I can't think of anything that I need to visit Glasgow for. Sometimes I wish that someone would invite me on a 'let me show you Glasgow' sort of trip, maybe they can convince me ;-)

For now.. I will visit my favorite shops tomorrow and squeeze in a visit to a big cinema, I miss that part of city life.

Along with a proper sauna :-)

I need spring!

OK... I am fed up with this winter!

It has either been ice cold and dry or mild and very wet and even though there are nice juicy green buds on some bushes here, today for a change it was very cold, wet AND windy!

I am dreaming of having a nice cup of coffee in the sun on the back terrace - I don't mind if I have to keep my coat on or anything, just feeling the sun.. I look like a ghost in the mirror unless I use my very very expensive Clinique foundation.

We have had springs here that John had to take his top off because it was too hot in the garden in March! And now it is half April and it is not even pretending to get nice any time soon!

Looking at the forecast it will be another 4 days of mild but wet - mutter mumble.

Ordered a compost bin today - only 6 pound in Inverclyde, not bad eh? If you fancy one, have a look here

I looked at the animation on how to deal with the bin and I did notice that it is for patient people. It takes 1 year!!! for nice earth to compost out of the bottom.

It *is* probably better than the 'just chuck it on the cliff' attitude we have adopted so far :-)

We will miss the 'banana tree creations' though!