Monthly Archives: June 2006

Writer’s block

I have to write a piece for a newsletter. I’ve been attempting to for a couple of weeks now. How to say boring stuff not boringly in half a page sums it up. I left the work I’ve done for a few days, returned to it, deleted and started again. Not for the first time.
Deadline is on Tuesday. I’m going to a party today and will probably not feel like work when I get home.
Maybe I’ll write better after a few drinks?
No, I tried that last week. That lot got deleted the next day.
I’ve a feeling I should have stuck with the first draft. I wonder what I said that time?

Later:
Nothing like a whinge for putting the backbone back in the back (huh? makes some sort of sense I suppose) as I got it done and respectfully sent it round to the rest of the committee for them to say “Pah! Write it again.”
And I finished it after the party furthermore, which was an excellent do, thrown by friends, newly retired, who are selling up their gorgeous home and moving to France. They have bought a flat in Colchester too, which they will let, in case they change their minds and want to return home but the property market here has done another hike.
It turned out that I was the designated driver so I behaved myself.
Didn’t want any dinner, but Al and Dilly were toasting marshmallows on the embers of their barbecue, so I wandered across and shared.
Still got my ‘speech’ – annual review, not a big deal really thank goodness, at least I don’t have to be funny – to sort out for Tuesday but as long as I mention the right things and thank everyone by name and leave no one out, it’ll be fine.

Food, inglorious food?

There’s a new sandwich bar in town. It’s called ‘Get Stuffed’ which has already caused some outbreaks of DBM amongst the more politely spoken members of Suffolk society.

The day it opened, Al went in to try its wares. All the food was temptingly laid out. The proprieter appeared, looking harassed. “We’re not open yet, come back in an hour.” It was already around 12.30, but Al left it as long as he could before trying again. This time, the man was nowhere to be seen, so he read the price list while he was waiting. And then slunk out of the door and bought his sandwich elsewhere.
There certainly are people who will pay a higher price for a better, or at any rate fancier, product, but they are more likely to buy at the deli down the road, and those who want freshly made, perfectly acceptable filled rolls will surely go to the cheaper bakery, even if the service is a bit slow there.
I hope he will do well, though not being ready for lunchtime on your first day is not a good start. I mean, it’s making sandwiches, I’d manage somehow and not turn away a customer, even if I hadn’t had time to make up the full range of salad dressings or flake the fresh wild salmon. I’d apologise for an attenuated menu, knock off 10% as an opening offer and be so friendly that customers would forgive any shortcomings and come back again.
Maybe the name does reflect the attitude after all.

There is a new restaurant in Norwich, called ‘Tasteless.’ This has caused some bemusement, wondering if English is not the owner’s first language perhaps and he didn’t realise what he was saying (at least Get Stuffed has some connection with a sandwich bar). A columnist in the local paper published a picture of it last week. She has now had a sniffy communication from the owner, who says that the sign actually says ‘Tasteless…taste the difference.’ He explains “You know when you go to a restaurant and the waiter asks ‘Was everything ok?’ and you say ‘No’ for a joke? Well, we were trying to make it a fun thing like that. We are saying ‘Are we tasteless? Come and taste the difference!'”
No, doesn’t do it for me. But then I don’t wind up waiters either.

Birthday

Today is the Sage’s birthday. As ever, he doesn’t want a fuss made so we haven’t, I’ve bought some particularly fine meat from the farm shop stalls at next village’s Friday night market and we’re having a barbecue this evening.

Everyone else has gone to more trouble than me and my children, it’s embarrassing. Dilly has had a cake made and beautifully decorated and she and Al have commissioned a piece of china which will please him hugely, and about which more later. The china factory has made him a piece specially, which is immensely kind and which will touch him more than anything else.
He will have the metal detector from me, which he went and bought, I’ve since given him the money, I don’t think Ro has got anything yet and will have to scurry out this morning, El is going on holiday today and so is relying on getting something ethnic from a muck’n’tat stall in north Africa and Al shines vicariously through Dilly.

We are just not into making a fuss. None of us likes being on the receiving end, so tend not to hand it out either. The men of the family take ignoring their birthdays to the absolute limit they can get away with, though El and I can take a certain amount of pampering. Christmas is better, as it’s not all about one person and we all love a party and general celebration. We do tend to give each other ideas for presents though, as we all have, in our time, opened too many deeply unsuitable ones. My mother was once given a Max Bygraves LP – Swingalongamax – by a female friend ‘I know you love music’ and she was deeply offended, and would have thought it a studied insult if it were not for the fact that the friend never listened to music of any sort and probably found Max the height of suave charm. As maybe he was, but his music was not to our taste (I’m being tactful).

Of course, the best presents are still the wonderful surprises and we have all given and received some of those too. And the Sage has a few treats in store today. I think, having been unimaginative in the present line myself, the best thing I can do now is to go out with him this afternoon and wonder and exclaim at the thrill of metal detecting. Even if, in this neck of the woods, what one mostly finds are bits of shrapnel from the war and the occasional coin which has fallen out of a fisherman’s pocket. Maybe I should hide something exciting and challenge him to find it.

Techlinks event Duxford

This is what I did today. I was a helper at Techlinks at Duxford airfield. My engineering chum talked me into it a couple of years ago and I enjoyed it sufficently to volunteer to go back each year. This year, I was helping with the Jitterbug.
Hard work though, 40 children in groups of 4 to see through an hour-long task, then a few minutes later, during which time you frantically refill boxes of equipment, another 40.
Some really great children this year, sometimes you have groups who can’t work together, of don’t listen to/read instructions, or wait passively to be told what to do, but this time most of them independently read the worksheet, checked the list of equipment, did the right thing in the right order and were happy to go off with their completed item.

So yes, all being well, I’ll be back again next year.

What are the advantages of using an electric shaver verse a regular razor blade?

Search engines are very useful, and entertaining through those idle half-hours that those who spend chunks of the day sitting at a desk find themselves landed with, either through not enough work to do, or an understandable disinclination to keep up with work without a scarily near deadline to spur them on.
But they can give annoyingly or entertainly random answers to a simple question. ‘What are the advantages of using an electric shaver verse a regular razor blade?’ Well, I don’t know, but Google it and my totally irrelevant blog is third. An irritated (I should think) Italian checked me out and, I suspect, found me wanting.
He (for I think it is more likely to be a he) should have checked further of course, but if he cares to look back here is my small opinion for what it is worth. Based on hearsay, of course, my chin is not hirsute.

Wet shave: +, you feel as if you’ve shaved properly, it enables you to look in the mirror and stroke your face proudly, it has just that touch of Real Manliness about it that can give you the moral high ground. I am told that it gives a closer shave, especially if you are the sort of person who sports an incipient beard by lunchtime.
-, likely to give you spots, you sometimes bleed, it takes ages, you can really only do it in the bathroom.
Dry shave: + much quicker and less messy and, if pushed, you can do it while checking your morning emails before leaving the house (this is a significant advantage, as I always put in my contact lenses while checking emails) or in the car park when you arrive at work. It is kinder on sensitive skins.
-, see pluses for wet shave and take the opposite view.

I sat down intending to write about something entirely different. However, always keen to oblige and be useful.

Only one thing. WHY AFTERSHAVE? It bloody hurts, and can’t be good for your skin. How glad I am that many men nowadays use a soothing balm or lotion.

Update – Yes! Yes! First and second on Google.

Cynical? What, me?

You Are 60% Cynical

Yes, you are cynical, but more than anything, you’re a realist.
You see what’s screwed up in the world, but you also take time to remember what’s right.

Well thank you very much Blue Witch. I hardly expected to be more cynical than you are, though I’m rarely surprised at anything nowadays.

So, am I lucky or what?

I didn’t think to ask Sal yesterday how she knows I’m so lucky. I’d love her, if she revisits, to tell me – in fact, please, anyone who reads this, am I lucky and why? Or do you perceive me as privileged, and is that the same thing?

I was chatting to a friend yesterday. She and her husband were farmers; they had inherited a small family farm. Sadly, the double blow of swine fever and foot and mouth disease in the country, though not on their farm, left them bankrupt and they lost the farm.
He got a job, but died suddenly last year leaving her widowed with three teenage daughters.
I found out in conversation last night that she suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, which first flared up in pregnancy, and left her nearly crippled for a time, with three infants.
“I’m so lucky though,” she said. “My family have always been so supportive, and the girls have been wonderful in this past year.”

I know a family in the village: there are four children, all of whom have learning difficulties, one with severe mental and some physical disabilities. They have a reputation, the children, as being a bit thick with short fuses (I report this reputation, I do not say I subscribe to it). But I admire this family more than almost anyone I know. Both parents have jobs, taken on at a time when they could have received about as much in benefits as they earned; they have worked incredibly hard and after about 20 years of marriage, you can see the affection they still have for each other. As a family, they all pull together and are protective of each other. The oldest girl is at college, and has nearly a 12-hour day, getting there and back on foot and by bus. They buy loads of fresh, cheap vegetables, so evidently eat as well as they can. I think they would call themselves lucky too, but to an outsider they would seem to have laboured under adversity.

What I read

I may be too sensitive to let you know (yet) how many blogs I read, but there are other sites I look at when I need cheering up. Sometimes, several times a day. And, on some of them, you can always be sure of an update. These ones are all American, the first two are hilarious, the third cruelly (sometimes) funny – but some of the victims so deserve it – and the last is interesting and sometimes bemusing. This is not so often updated, in which case I randomly click on an archive date and see what happens.

1. Overheard in New York. So funny, and constantly updated. I have never heard anything half as good in Norwich or London; if some are embellished I don’t care, many of them are so odd they surely can only be real.

2.Overheard in the Office, its sister website. Also very good, sometimes makes me splutter with laughter.

3.Go Fug Yourselfk. These are not usually just random shots of a celeb shopping without makeup and looking a bit rough. These are people who have really tried and got it so wrong. This can be quite endearing, or it can be – well, see what you think. They also do not approve of too much thinness, which has to be a good thing.

4.Tricks of the Trade. Some of these are really useful. The most bemusing one of recent days is “Here’s how you chamber a round silently to avoid drawing attention to yourself,” yes, something I always have needed to know.

Just thought of a fifth, and a British one at that.
Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down. I read about this ages ago when Stuart and Jenny were interviewed by the Sunday Times. And I like it enough to have bought the book. And taken it on holiday. And read out chucklesome bits to my son, but not often as that is really annoying and, since he is too polite, usually, to protest, I have to self-censor.

And if any of you become addicted, just think of me as a computer virus, but an apologetic one. On the other hand, you might go right off me.

Strawberries

Strawberries have been really late this year, because May was so cold and wet. This month, in contrast, there has been such a heatwave that, now they are starting to ripen, we will be inundated with them. We have three local suppliers.

The smallest producer rang last night to say there would be only two and a half pounds today, so his neighbours will buy them. However, they are the most popular as they are especially delicious and extremely local and we will take all he doesn’t need.
One farm uses polytunnels so they are a little less affected by the weather. So we ordered plenty from them last night and picked them up this morning.
Now the other farm has rung to say they are picking now and there will be at least 15 lbs ready by lunch time. Since we have said we will buy their entire crop, we didn’t say that we have already ordered elsewhere, so let’s hope Al has plenty of customers this afternoon.
The outdoor ones are the very best and they are picked and sold within a few hours. Unlike Sainsbury’s, where, as Jamie Oliver boasted in the advertisements last year, the strawberries are picked and on the shelves in 48 hours. Our standards are rather more rigorous, we don’t think strawberries, if picked ripe, are fit to be sold 48 hours later.

Says I self-righteously!

And moving on

– because that’s what you do….. if you don’t know what I mean, read the previous post first.

I went to a meeting to represent the PCC* treasurer, who is working in Cornwall this week so thought she might as well have a few extra days, visit the Eden Project and the like. It’s an awfully long way to Cornwall and one might as well make the most of it. I thought it was a good idea to go there for the weekend last October; enjoyed it very much but it was a hell of a lot of driving, best part of 1,000 miles for 3 nights stay.

Anyway, the meeting. Very financial. I put my hand up to make a comment. The Deanery Assessor listened politely, replied …. “in short,” he finished, “I agree with you.” Well, that was good, he is obviously an intelligent man because I wouldn’t have said anything unless I was right (hm). And, since the revised, compromise, proposals he came up with took this into account, I probably will have to talk the PCC into paying over more money next year.
I sat next to a chap in a dog collar wearing not only white socks, but jesus sandals too. Yup, together. Pristine, the socks were, so he must have changed them specially for the meeting – a particularly stylish touch, I thought.

I haven’t put a list of links to the blogs I read. This is for several reasons.

1. It would be a bit embarrassing to put in everything I ever read as there are rather a lot of them and it would show how much time I spend on this sort of thing.
2. If I just put in a few favourites, I’d be mortified if one of the others I read and enjoy dropped in and found him or herself omitted.
3. Some of the ones I read, so do all of you. I mean, I hardly need to mention Greavsie*** (just as one example), do I.
4. A few are a bit rude.

* the committee that runs the local church, the Parochial Church Council.
** Mind you, I was a Suffolk girl myself until 20 years ago.
*** Sorry Greavsie, can’t emulate your stylish ways, so just copy your asterisks.