Smudging the issue

I have had an esoteric hour. As the house settles into its new shape & we have increasing daily enjoyment of our "gracious & spacious new home” - it now all flows far more fluently & makes so much more sense as a space - it occurred to both of us that we have brought to bear some pretty serious GBH on the bricks & mortar that surround us & keep us safe, warm & dry & that it might be an idea to make amends for the GBH & to do a bit of Smudging. Smudging basically involves burning certain herbs to dissipate negative energies – I paraphrase here Adrienne Borden and Steve Coyote, 2 Native American Indians who regularly perform smudging ceremonies.

 “Native people throughout the world use herbs to accomplish the cleansing of spaces of any bad feelings, negative thoughts, bad spirits or negative energy. One common ceremony is to burn certain herbs and let the smoke cleanse every bit of space .Today this is commonly called "smudging." In Western North America the three plants most frequently used in smudging are sage, cedar, and sweetgrass”

As someone who has had the Feng Shui lady in, burning a few herbs for purification & removal of any bad stuff made complete sense! So I lit my Sage & Copal stick & began to waft the ensuing smoke around the house. And as I wafted, the KC who had not been seen for hours suddenly appeared out of the bushes, hared down the garden & followed me about as I filled the new space with smoke. After visiting each room in turn, I opened every single door, window & roof vent & watched as all the smoke & “bad stuff” dissipated into the ether. The KC was suitably enthralled by my little ceremony – so much so she  stayed indoors, despite it being a lovely afternoon & is now sleeping soundly in a cleansed bedroom! Bless!

Oh what a beautiful day!

It’s a bit of a Disney day out there in FauxSurrey land. Whilst it was only 9 degrees when I took hubby to the station at 6.30 AM (brrrr!) the sky was clear blue & now we have 17 degrees and a gentle breeze & utter silence apart from the sound of birdsong. The KC is slumbering in the gentle sunshine, the last of the summer flowers are blooming beautifully & I feel as if the squirrels will scamper & the bluebirds will fly in to help to me clean up the kitchen at any moment.

However the best is yet to come - this afternoon my task at hand is to go out to take pictures of kittens. Yes I’m completely serious. Kittens. Better go change into something pink ...

Strictly Disappointing

One of the many things I love about the arrival of autumn is the launch of Strictly Come Dancing. Yes I am an old fogey for loving it but the line up has finally been announced (in a very peculiar way) and I confess to feeling let down & disappointed.  I think they may have lost me this year. I guess there there are a few 'proper' celebs - Lulu, Jason Donovan & Rory Bremner & at a push Anita Dobson & Holly Valance - but we have the token controversial politician in Edwina Currie (am I the only one who post her John Major revelations always feels slighty nauseous when I see her?), Audley Harrison & someone called Robbie Savage (???) as the sportspeople, an ITV presenter called Dan something (OK he's v good looking but ... sorry WHO is he?) the Welsh woman with no skills or sense of humour off the One Show (whose publicity shot is just bizarre, all squished boobs) and a couple of odd ones for comedy value no doubt - Russell Grant & Nancy Dell'Olio.

However there are 2 who have completely lost me - a spotty 16 year old (well he looks 16) called Harry Judd (no idea - he looks like a pizza delivery boy) and last & worst is some 'pram faced' girl with pneumatic boobs & hair that is pulled back so tight she looks permanently surprised called (and I have checked the spelling I am not slipping on the keyboard) "Chelsee Healey" Seriously. Her publicity shot is her in a huge wig with a big nylon bow  & what looks like an embroidered support bra. If the lovely Brendan got her he'd walk off before the first dance! Nuff said.

Am sure the last 2 "who the hell are they?" types are in some dreadful teen soap like Hollyoaks so will go far. Will watch the pairing up show this Saturday to see who gets who but it'd better perk up or I will be re-running last years ....

Things to love about the rain

I know most people will have their heads in their hands on waking up today - Surrey is awash. The rain is hosing down & the mercury has dropped right down, but hang on. There's plenty to love about this weather:

1. Having 2 cups of coffee & homemade scones with strawberry jam for breakfast suddenly seems so right!

2. I can light a log fire & hunker down with the KC (who of course is indoors -- good lord, get her paws wet? Are you mad?) & a good black & white movie          

3. Can't do laundry!

4. Can't do back breaking weeding

5. Don't need to get out & water the garden, especially my newly planted bits

6. I can wear my pink Hunter wellies  to the shops & not look like a fool (honest!)

7. Summer hols are officially over - you may as well be back at work / school in this

8. Loads of building dust (!) is being washed, naturally, off my conservatory roof

9. Colder weather = autumn is here which = Christmas is on its way! Hurrah!

10. For some reason, watching daytime TV / a DVD in the rain feels OK ... (see point 2) 

There we are! Happy days.

Free Food!

As we come right from what has to be the worst cold ever (definitely not flu we didn't have temperatures just a truly brutal cold that laid both of us so low it wasn't funny) we were fiinally able to take stock of what our beautiful garden has offered us. As I said, no gardening for 3 weeks also = 3 weeks of ignoring weeds = not good (cue offer of money to hard up teenagers, a huge chunk has been done already!) but it would seem the courgettes (zucchini) loved being ignored as I found myself faced wiith a huge pile. If I hadn't picked them when I did, I would've had marrows!

But whilst beans & spuds etc are easy to use up (no massive amount of imagination required..) what to do with over a kilo of courgettes? A quick search on recipes on line & we got a free lunch. Truly delicious Courgette & Tomato soup. Well free in that I had all other ingredients in the cupboard plus a couple of our own home grown spuds! And I can't tell you the staisfaction knowing almost no airmiles (not sure where the Waitrose tinned toms hailed from) and all good as we used nothing nasty on our veg.

There, you see, another thing to add to the Pigs' list of things to be so happy about!

The Pig Of Happiness

An email from a long lost friend made me realise that if I pointed him to this blog to catch up with my life he would think that the last 6 months have been simply awful. Which is not true - I have simply put the awful bits in as they make for more interesting reading! Poetic license or something ... However I will now act on advice from Edward Monktons’ Pig of Happiness - "May his joyful smile remind us how much there is to be happy about" so here are my top of mind things to be happy about!

1 Whilst we have not been in rude health it has been truly lovely to spend completely uninterrupted days (well apart from coughing fits) with the Practically Perfect Hubby. We have looked after each other & laughed & talked & just hung out. He really is the best company. He really was worth the wait.

2 The house is looking truly stunning and being sick here has been no trial to be honest. It's a joy to sit in the evening watching the sunset from the new sitting area.

3 My back problem is mechanical & won't kill me. It just annoys me!

4 The garden has delivered a bumper harvest of Desiree spuds, huge courgettes, onions, carrots & French beans - yum!

5 The flowers are also doing their best to put on a show; the ostoespermum, gladioli, jasmine & lavatera and even my roses are all still flowering beautifully!

6 No gardening for 3 weeks = a family of shrews has taken up residence in the long grass! The KC is of course thrilled but (nerd alert) “Mammalian predators rarely take them as shrews have scent glands on their flanks, which mammals find distasteful (most birds have no sense of smell). Domestic cats will kill shrews, but not eat them for this reason” As a result she is chasing & alerting me to their presence so I can grab “The KC victim rescue system™” and hi them off to safety. They are SO cute too!

7 I’ve just had an invoice paid!

More to follow no doubt!

A microdiscectomy isn't just for Valentines Day ...

... it's for life. Removing the best part of my L5 disc some 7 years ago on a very romantic Saturday has left me with a shockingly bad back that frequently "goes" a little but occassionally goes completely in that I "slip a disc." I love that phrase, slip a disc it sounds almost quite nice - like slipping a fiver into the doormans hand; but no, it would seem slipping a disc (which actually means that a whole spinal disc 'slips' out of its correct place between your vertebrae to stick out & sit on nerves causing abject agony) is also the perfect end to a  rubbish holiday.

For not only did I not come back jolly & relaxed, I came back with a cold - a very nasty hard core full on cold which caused me to cough so violently my broken  back couldn't hold my discs in & one (maybe 2?) popped out. So since arriving home from useless hols I have been pretty much bed bound, and every time I coughed or sneezed I experienced mind numbing excrutiaiting pain. Practically perfect Hubby has been brilliant until he caught the cold - which was inevitable - and as he has asthma he is suffering 10x more than I did - and lord know I suffered. We bascially sound like a TB house. Not nice. We are ringing bells (unclean! unclean!) and have a plague sign on the door. Keep away. Well till the germs shrival up & die that is. The KC bless her doesn't know who to cuddle up to next. She has been amazing, staying in bed for hours with us & not waking me to go out till past 8AM - normal out time is 6AM. They do know you know.

Take a break ...??

OK OK I did it again; after vowing I would never ever do it again, I stupidly did it again. I went on a family holiday in the UK. I got lulled into it – the promise of 2 weekend parties, multiple locations – I thought oh come on, at least one of them had to be good – no??? Well…. If you don’t count the emergency hugely expensive “get me out of here now or I am going home immediately” sheer bloody luxury, god we were lucky farmhouse (booked over the initial godawful house I had found. So yes we paid twice …) then NO! I have an uncanny knack of choosing absolutely awful places. Leaving behind my perfect mattress, my newly refurbished, redecorated & and stunningly beautiful house we prayed hard as we headed north. But clearly to the wrong god. .

The first house of horrors – where to begin?? The website gave it 4 stars. Would HATE to see 3 star or fewer properties ... Tiny; dark; pokey; uncomfortable; rabbit hutch; 12” portable TV (seriously) no DVD but VHS player (yup – seriously); treacherous ladder -like stairs, limited head room (ouch); said sleeps 6 but only had one loo (which was in the bathroom & we were travelling with 15 year old girl - just work that out!); no dishwasher; off the main road but high up enough to get perfect acoustics of articulated lorries; no allocated parking on cobbled double yellow line street; (we have a 4x4), if you opened the bedroom door you hit the bed; rooms so small you couldn’t get you & your suitcase in at the same time; to sit at the table you had to move the sofa & 2 chairs (I use the word sofa loosely - had thin woooden arms & tapestry upholstery); the ironing board was the shirt attachment for a real one & went on the table (which you had to move….). I’ll stop there before you die laughing!!

So after 2 vile nights in the horror house hubby & I headed to library to get WiFi and embarked on a search of the interweb; 3 begging phone calls later we handed over a vast amount of money – seriously vast we could’ve gone to the south of France – we finally secured heaven. A huge 6 bed, 4 bath beautifully designed & kitted out farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Granite worktops & handmade lightshades. Underfloor heating beneath stunning tiles. 3 huge living rooms with views of the stream passing by & the cows & the bats. Interesting local residents too; 3 ‘wild’ chickens a cockerel & 2 ducks. The 2 ducks were hatched – accidentally - by a chicken & the funniest sight in the world was a tiny white chicken being followed by 2 huge honking ducks!

But we only had 5 nights in blissville. Then onto more dodgy lodgings. But much worse than poor real estate were 2 permanently sulky teenagers who didn’t want to get out of bed till 2pm, didn’t lift a finger, didn’t want to eat when we wanted to eat, were surgically attached to a BlackBerry or PS3 and who complained, bitterly, constantly that they weren’t abroad, or they were bored. Seriously – next year if I even put the words family & holiday in the same sentenced have me sectioned. Immediately.

Riotous?

I have to say something about what’s been happening on the streets of our cities – certainly about what’s been happening in London. I am aghast. I am angry of Tunbridge Wells, I am a Daily Mail reader, I am leaning to the right of Attila the Hun. All of my PC sensibilities (the few that I had!) have been stripped back by my complete disbelief & disgust at the actions of a few “feral rats” (great phrase coined by livid shopkeeper in Ealing) who have taken it upon themselves, as they are bored, stupid, arrogant & genetically greedy, to use the death of a man to go smashing windows, causing terror & looting. It’s as simple as that.


As I said in an earlier post – how did this country breed such amoral, ignorant, selfish f*ckw*ts? Who are their parents? How do you get parenting so completely & utterly wrong? If you look at the images of the people already posted up on the internet as “persons of great interest” you see a despressing raft of images of the the great disaffected, the hooded “who gives a sh*t?” the “you can’t touch me,” the “that contravenes my human rights,” the “you don’t respect me,” the “ I breathe therefore I deserve (demand)” generation. Respect? I doubt any of them can even spell it. As for human rights – well you have to behave like a human to get those.

Cameron said that there would be serious consequences, that people would be arrested & feel the full force of the law. Oh really. A night in the cells? 6 weeks in jail? Ooh I can feel from here they are quaking in their boots. A criminal record? Pah, who cares? It’s not like it will affect their future employment. An ASBO – great! A badge of honour!

We need – as a society & certainly those in “authority” - to grow a pair. These are creatures (I will not dignify them by describing them as humans or people as they are neither) need to be shown we will NOT stand for this sort of behaviour. Ever. From anyone, no matter what the reason / excuse / whinge may be. Being PC and “talking” and trying to “understand them” and trying to “see where we can help” will get us nowhere. They will take the p*ss as they are curently taking mobile phones.

The punishment should fit the crime. There is currently an online petition calling for anyone convicted of rioting to lose all benefits, should they be claiming them. Well that’s a start. I am all for getting out the water cannon & the rubber bullets. Isn’t that harsh? I hear the liberals out there cry. NO – if you are not out rioting you will not be hit by either a water cannon or a bullet. Simple. Someone on the radio has just suggested soaking the f*ckers with vivid blue indelible dye - brilliant! When 1000 hooded w*nkers are rampaging wiith bricks & iron bars what are your options – seriously?

As for punishment for those actually arrested – would a prison term work? (3 meals a day, Sky TV & PlayStation 24/7?)  I doubt it. Would visible community service work? Again, I doubt it. The humiliation element may work on some but for the rest who clearly have NO sense of community anyway, it would mean nothing. No, I’m advocating something far more medieval. The stocks. Right where the scene of their crimes was, where the local shopkeepers & residents whose lives have been torn apart by these mindless acts of violence can let these little a*seholes know exactly how they feel, exactly how their vile actions have impacted their – yes THEIR - community.

 

Why should they get to hide – enjoying anonymity - in the shadows? Policed naturally so soft, rotten fruit only is thrown, or indeed nothing more than feelings & words. They would have to listen, there would be no walking away, no “talk to the hand” no “I don’t have to listen to you”. Oh yes you do. I am not suggesting an eye for an eye, I don’t - ever - want to stoop to their utterly degraded level, but maybe a few nights of hearing what's what, they will begin to understand the real life impact of their mindless actions. And that there are consequences. Long reaching consequences.

And by the way, I am not some sort of middle class privileged privately educated type, I was born on a council estate in a deprived part of the North of England but I made certain choices and grabbed opportunities. I had only one parent from the age of 8, had free school lunches as we couldn't affford to pay, and I went to a comprehensive school - where by the way I chose to work hard & got to university. We didn't have a car, I didn't have the "must have" things of the day - designer jeans, a flash stereo or a video recorder - but did I go out smashing windows to get them? No. And neither did my neighbours, we were all brought up properly.

Noise annoys...?

Have calmed down after my previous rant & am editing. Whilst I am still not overjoyed by the sounds of the suburbs piercing my clearly far too delicate ears, I think I am being over sensitive and a tad intolerant (Oh OK, that's an understatement). Vile is far too strong a word for the neighbours offpsring, I was simply having an off day. And no no words have been spoken just got a grip. Had a big stressful work meeting & was surrounded by loud & dusty workies who have actually drunk all of my tea today. And used most of my sugar ... But given what's going on in our cities right now, (God knows what's going on. How did we breed such vile, amoral, ignorant, self centered arrogant, violent little sh*ts?) give me over excited 6 year olds any day.

We have finally finished our renovations (welcome to my gracious & spacious abode!) and tomorrow I can hoover up all the dust (dust? surely not!), although I am still praying pray for rain, mainly so I can breathe without coughing ... and I am getting excited about cleaning windows!

I am still doing the lottery as I do still fancy the idea of a totally silent garden. A place where the hubby & the KC & I can hear ourselves think, no matter what time of day, no matter what season, no matter what the weather. And a view of the sea would be nice too ...

Phew - what a scorcher!

As Surrey bakes in its ‘don’t blink you’ll miss it’ 3 day heat wave Chez FauxSurrey is doing its best to resemble a full on sauna. On the hottest day of the year so far, in the room with a glass roof (yes the totally useless conservatory - when I can afford it, it is going!!) the decorators were using a steamer to peel years of wallpaper off the walls … you can only imagine the blistering heat. Even with the solar blinds pulled down and all doors & windows open & a fan on permanently, the temperature got up to about 95 degrees Fahrenheit & the boys were dripping with sweat & having to stop every 20 minutes or so before they passed out!

Luckily for me as the mercury boiled over, I got a call from my lovely friend & neighbour with the deep cool swimming pool. Asking very kindly if I fancied a swim…. Can a thought last less than a nano second?!

However, post my splashabout, as the evening draws in & the heat of the sun cools a little, the heat has not left the glass room. The poor plasterer is still here, wandering about stripped to the waist (yes a bajillion tattoos) on these amazing bionic looking stilts (never seen anything like it, they are like something from the future!) trying to plaster the ceiling –and as it’s so hot in there it’s drying almost as soon as he puts it on. Which is presenting quite a challenge & if I’m honest quite a bit amusement for me & the KC – we’ve never seen speed plastering before!