have you heard the one about ... ?

There are so many people who are clever it’s sickening. Sickening, obviously, because they’re cleverer than me. And there’re just so many of them.  Most people I know in fact. 

Just yesterday, three quarters of the way through an average bottle of fizzy with the Sensational Susie and her visiting friend from London (and without any pre-warning whatsoever) she announced that her friend (the Remarkable Rhona) had annoyed her by talking in the past pluperfect third person subjunctive, or some such bollocks. I had no idea what she was talking about. It’s not that I didn’t have an education once, indeed I even did a term of Latin before being thrown out.

It’s just that if I did ever know what she meant, I don’t now.

In fact the more I think I know, the more I know how much I don’t know, and furthermore anything I might once theoretically have known, and been able to expound on with some authority (in the past pluperfect subjunctive if necessary), has seeped through the gaps between my synapses and is no more. I wonder what it was?

Suddenly I realise that for quite some time I have not been holding up my end of the conversation with any great alacrity. Furthermore, it has come to light, just moments before the punchline, that the jokes I once relied upon to disguise the fact that I had no real intellect or knowledge deeper than Mr Google can provide, have deserted me en masse. 

I sit bewildered, bemused and quite clueless. 

In part I blame my children who have turned out to by far more intelligent than me (this is all their father’s fault) and with whom I can no longer hold a conversation unless it revolves around what the dogs have chewed up today or what’s on special offer in the shop.

In a moment of introspection and angst I mentioned this to them this weekend after reporting the SS/RR conversation which I didn’t understand. I said I thought it might be caused by the ‘year’ I’ve had, but I am relieved and absolutely delighted to report that they say, and with some authority for they have known me all their lives, that I have never known what I’m talking about, and have seldom been able to deliver the correct punchline to the jokes I tell.  In fact I’m no different, intellectually-wise to how I have ever been! 
I just have different hair.

But just so you know ...

A pleasant fellow driving down a quiet Wiltshire lane was just passing a farm yard when without warning a cockerel ran into the road in front of him. Whack, the cockerel disappeared under the wheels of the car in a flurry of feathers. The man being a careful driver and a kind man to boot, was much shaken by this experience and devastated to discover the cockerel was quite dead. So being an honourable sort of chap, he pulled into the farm yard and rang the doorbell of the farm house. When the farmer appeared he said, somewhat nervously, “I think I have killed your cockerel, please allow me to replace him”.  The farmer looked him up and down, but this being Wiltshire wasn’t going to argue with a generous stranger, so replied, “Suit yourself chum, you’ll find the hens round the back.”

mwah ha ha ha ha ha 

back where I belong

if you have been here before, you will know that I had a perfect life ...

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

(excuse me)

... that in 2009 I had a broken back. You will also know that I went to have it repaired and I was allergic to the general anaesthetic, and I crashed upon the table causing all sorts of mayhem and malpractice. When I eventually awoke in ITU, I was not the happiest of little bunnies.

Since then things have headed steadily downwards,
or is it the angle I've been looking at it?

I've managed to have untreatable cancer and 6 months or less to live, but have been treated and am here a year later.  (with hair) (after a fashion) (not a recent one)

My marriage has crashed around my ears, but I've been too ill to save it. So I have lost a violent and controlling husband but gained independence that is breathtaking in it's glory, and also two dogs that I would never have been allowed,

but I lost Freddie my gorgeous pony.

I also seem to have broken another bone in my back.  sigh
L1

Is this circlical* d'you think? Or just another bend in the road?

*apparently this word doesn't exist, but you know what I meant didn't you?

bad hair day

I hate my hair with a passion. Not with quite the same volume of passion as I hated no hair, but close enough that any bright spark telling me to cheer up it’s an improvement, is likely to be just that bit less bright at the tone of my riposte that no it fucking isn’t... well much.

It has grown in spirals, not Pre-Raphaelite curls, but a tight perm of the sort an 85 year old great-grandmother might think was a bargain if the new trainee did it for nowt, as a practise run, just before dying it blue. 

I pray* that when it’s grown longer than its current two inches, an estimate obviously I can’t straighten it out properly to measure, it will start to be affected by the same gravitational force to which the rest of my body seems prey. At the moment it seems to be growing up, which is more than can be said for the rest of me.

*not to a god, which brings me nicely on to the WI, who are rife in this village and insist on doing good works and serving tea and cakes at every turn. This is all fine and dandy, and may even be tasty, but two teas in and they want you to be on some committee and baking cakes.  I may have the hair of an aga-saga old bat, but I draw the line at baking.  Such was the verbal content of my moaning, droning and groaning to my neighbour, the Sensational Susie. Her real name because she would never have time to read crap such as this. 

Never have I had the misfortune to meet such an upbeat and amazing woman who thinks nothing of trekking across the Himalayas in her lunch break. No, seriously, at the age of 60 something she leads trekking holidays in the most forsaken places on the planet and can drink a bottle of vodka in one sitting. When she’s home from these expeditions she’s riding her bike up vertical hills and also (if the WI are to be believed) the local male population.  Although she did apprise me of the fact that in her experience, which I can only imagine is manifold, Russian men are the best kissers. 

She has decided the best medicine for my current state of glass-half-emptyism is drinking what’s left in there, refilling and exercise.  As her idea of a short walk is 10 miles and her idea of a short drink is several of them one after another at at least 50% proof, we’re not off to a great beginning. I’m blaming it on the rain as it makes my curly hair into coiled and compressed springs that would take an eye out if only anyone got that close.  But she is not to be thwarted and has decided if I can’t walk far enough, one drink and I fall over then asleep, and refuse to bake, then it's the ‘rights of way’ committee for me; the only village group, according to Susie, made up entirely of men.  While she wields a large and to the rest of us, unwieldy heavy duty strimmer I can co-ordinate the working parties so she is on the ones with the few remaining men who haven’t had the benefit of her attentions. Then when I’m stronger, I can apparently ‘join-in’. 

She’s the sort of bad influence I needed 30 years ago. 

lights off ...

do you think much about climate change? 

I do, now and then. I am today. At times I get worked up and worried about it.  It’s no good thinking that it doesn’t matter because it won’t happen in our lifetime because it already is.

But it’s not so bad is it? We’re coping, sort of. There may be a few starving polar bears because the ice floes are melting and it might be a very hot summer in Downtown US of A. Australia’s burning and there’s a gaping great hole in the ozone over the Kiwis. There are droughts where it should be raining, and there are floods and tsunamis that make us gape in horror.  But you and me, we’re alright Jack, aren’t we? 

I can't remember all the maths, but you can find it here ( http://m.rollingstone.com/entry/view/id/29695/pn/all/p/0/?KSID=fc477700061462cb2a3c4fbd0e1a18d4 ) if you have the heart, the concern and the interest to read it all.

It’s about oil mainly,  and fossil fuels, and the burning of such that causes the greenhouse gasses that are causing the planet to hot up. And up. And the hotting up is disastrous to us little warm blooded creatures, we just can’t stand the heat, even out of the kitchen. 

What’s more clever scientist and geologists and even the oil companies themselves have worked out how much more we can burn before we all melt. Frighteningly, very, very frighteningly, we have oh so much more available to us than is good for us.  Some five times more than is good for us.  It might be still underground but it’s for sale in the share prices of all the big Oil companies.  So do they want us to say leave it where it is, don’t drill, mine, frac, leave it, leave it, we’re all going to die? Nope cos then their stock price will plummet and they won’t be as rich as they were. They might even be as poor as you and me but their grandchildren may live to thank them, but perhaps not while toting a Gucci handbag. 

That’s lucky we can blame it all on the oil companies then isn’t it? Especially we here in blameless little UK (who lead the industrial revolution), because big bad USA and big bad China are currently the worst culprits.  But everyone of us who thinks nothing about jumping into our cars, turning the heating on because we’re a tad chilly, having a nice cold fridge, a nice widescreen TV, even turning on the lights, using our laptops (cough) are all using fossil fuels. Even if we have a nice safe nuclear electricity generator up the road, or a field of wind turbines, it’s simply not enough.  Apparently only one little country in the whole world has managed to reduce their  carbon output (oh yes, if you like, footprint), Germany. They are streets ahead of the rest of the world but the good they do is gnats’ piss compared to poison the rest of us are pumping out.

But if the German’s can do it and make Porsches economical (snort) there must be hope, surely we can put the welfare of the world and all its occupants (except cockroaches who will survive anything and everything) before making money. Are we really all going to hell in a handcart because some rich bastard somewhere is protecting his mighty $?

Say it can’t be so, and while you’re at it get on your bike, the peddling kind.

so, moving swiftly on . . .

Did you see Eric Idle in the closing ceremony of the 'lympics?

I waited, wondering whether he'd say shit and he did!

It was the best bit.

"So always look on the bright side of deathJust before you draw your terminal breath
Life's a piece of shit when you look at itLife's a laugh and death's a joke it's trueYou'll see it's all a show keep 'em laughing as you goJust remember that the last laugh is on you ..."
Eric Idle