Everyone has a Story.

If I sit and really think about it, I find it overwhelming, the amount of people I see in any one day but don't speak to.  Or even the people at my place of work who I see everyday and exchange polite chit chat with but don't bother scratching the surface. 

We buy books and go to the cinema, watch the telly and read the newspapers but we ignore each other.

People are interesting and it’s amazing what stories there are around you that you just don’t know about. 

I was chatting to Liz who works on our switchboard today. She’s lovely and  reminds me a bit of my Dads mum, Ada.  Liz was exchanging chit chat with me about holidays and she was talking about the holidays that her and her late husband used to go on with another couple.  They went back to the same farmhouse in the Italy every year.  She was talking about the scenery there and the delicious food that would be cooked for them and we nearly changed the subject when I decided to ask, "So why did you go back to the same place for years then? Why not somewhere different"?

The reason for their repeated trips to this little, remote farm in the Italian mountains was because the friends they went there with, the man used to be in The British Army and during World War two, whilst in Italy in 1941, he and some of his comrades were captured by Nazi's and put on a train, like the one's I have seen in war films, to be taken to a Nazi concentration camp.

He jumped off the train and ran for his life.  He managed to escape and hid. 

In the middle of the mountains, past Ancona, near the Adriatic Sea, an Italian family, (peasants) found him and took him in. They fed him and looked after him,  digging a large hole to hide him in.

He stayed there, being kept hidden, with this family for four years, until the war had ended.  

His wife had received a letter back in 1941 from the Army stating that her husband had gone missing in action, presumed dead. 

He returned home to his wife in 1945! !

And so that was why every year, they’d return to the Italian family and stay with them for a week.

How fantastic is that? True acts of human kindness and bravery.

Psychoville - Tina Turner

These boys are my comedy idols.  Some of you might know them, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton from League of Gentleman (BBC2).  This is from the second series of Psychville, currently on BBC2 but the last episode is next week. They are dark but so original and just brilliant.  Enjoy!

Re Decorating

Last year I decided to paint the front room.  Three walls white with the chimney breast wall bright pink and royal blue.  It's not our house, (we missed the boat there and will probably be renting for many years to come), so it was a bit of a cheap makeover. 

I bought cushions to go on our second hand sofa, (a free, ginger suede number) and I felt I had to keep the price down due to S not understanding why we needed cushions in the first place.  

Surprisingly, the colours worked well together and it was warm and cosy and child friendly too.

We bought three cheap canvas prints as well.

But oh how things change. 

What a fickle lodger I am.

Now I really don't like the cost cutting look. I think the prints, even the Banksy rip off, look a bit Argos and the cushions irritate me. Two of them were bought from Primark and when you wash them, they come out lumpy and tired looking.  There's a pink one too but that's torn and luckily not pictured here.

I have decided that as S has finally bought a decent HD television and we bought a right bargain on Sunday at the boot sale. A large rug from Next, - new looking and really thick & soft under foot. It's made up of grown up shades of stone and cream.  We got it for £20 and it's still in Next for over £200 - that I must redecorate.  This time I have started with the cushions. All off eBay...

 

Right, so there's a definite chicken theme.  As I was scrolling through hundreds of designs I could hear myself saying, "well that's nice but it just doesn't go with anything else so that's a no no" and I'd then hear Kirsty Alsop as my imaginary designer conscience chirruping, "Tally Ho I say! If you like it....get it"!  So, whilst sensing that there was a lot of clashing going on, I pressed BID BID BID, or Buy Now! And am now the happy owner of five completely different cushions. 

I am now stuck for the colour of the walls.  We cannot afford a new sofa, so our ginger friend is staying.  See now these cushions atop that strawberry blond suite is a challenge it itself, without me going Rolf Harris on the walls as well! I am fearing the worst. I fear that due to my sudden cushion obsession, I will have to paint the walls cream.

Oh yeah, the rug is this one... but in real life it is slightly stony in colour.

So come on readers....what colours for the walls? I don't need opinions on the cushions as my colleagues all assured me today that they were nice INDIVIDUALLY but not as a job lot.

Ramalamadingdong

When was the last time you completely lost it?

When was the last time someone annoyed you so much that you could stand no more and just went Oriental? 

Not just a few cross words but a proper ding dong?

Maybe your storm is brewing now, after suffering a myriad of constant but minor irritants that have been circling you for a few days/weeks/months?

Maybe you are teetering on the very edge of reason and rationale, about to take that leap into FURIOUS ANGER & BUBBLING HOT WRATH!

I bicker a lot with S.  Just the boring mundane bickering about me not cooking enough, or leaving the washing up til the morning, or not being vocally appreciative enough when being handed S's culinary delights. 

And I'll bicker with him about being a RETARD and putting a dark wash on, with a couple of white items thrown in, coz, "i didn't see them", or putting a clean damp towel on the floor after a shower, or putting the kids dirty, food covered clothes neatly back in the drawers so that when we're in a hurry to go out somewhere, they have NO CLEAN CLOTHES LEFT!

People at work irritate me sometimes but I love them really. I know I irritate them too. An example was just a couple of days ago.  L was visibly put out at the fact that I had worn a black, jersey, harem pant suit & Birkenstocks, with a 'grandad cardigan' to work.  She felt it wasn't appropriate work wear. I, on the other hand, felt I could easily answer the phones in what I had on, particularly because the majority of the people I'd be conversing with probably still had their Primark PJ's on at 2pm.  Nevertheless, my casual, unprofessional-looking presence had irritated her.  She gets me back though by saying 'physically' all the time, when it's not needed in a sentence.

Sometimes certain people just have to walk a certain way to irritate the masses, (and I'm the first to admit my walk is ridiculous, due to one leg being longer than the other and having a pot belly,big boobs and an arched spine) - or cough repeatedly, for effect I believe!! Or put on a sick voice.  OR and this could drive me mental....put an S on the end of words that don't have a feckin S....like, 'Hello Switchboardssssss'?  Or insist on using the word specifically, when they can't pronounce it.... PACIFIC IS AN OCEAN, YOU DIV!

When you've just come in from being outside and it's cold and your hands are freezing, you don't need to stick that frozen hand on my warm face to shock me into understanding the difference in temperature, MUM!

If I am buying something from your shop and I am standing in front of you at the till and waiting to pay, don't scan my item, whilst having a conversation on the mobile which is propped on your shoulder, then stick your hand out without looking at me, or informing me how much I owe you.  Actually, now here's a fun idea, it's what my 2 year old does when she's playing 'shops'; You could have your conversation when you have no customers in the shop and maybe even say words like, "Good morning", or "How can I help you"?....or even, "Thank you"! Funny eh?

Aside from day to day bickering, or piddly little non-arguments, when was the last time you seriously lost it.

You start realising that the human being in front of you is effecting your inner thermostat and your cheeks get hot....maybe your eyes feel cold and bulging?!  Before you can stop yourself, you have shouted something.  Maybe a whole shouty sentence has left your mouth before your brain has had time to catch up and it does, just in time to hear it's owner scream, "YOU FCUKING PR*CKFCUK"! Or some other swear word/s. 

I find the angrier I am, the odder the profanity.  "YOU FLAILING COCK-END" being one that I don't use in daily banter but that often warrants an airing when I'm driving somewhere and the car in front feels they just can't be bothered going anymore than 20mph on a straight, clear road. 

My Dad's friend Pete found that traffic wardens made him explode with rage.  They are a normal irritant to most people, even though I suppose they sometimes do have a job to do, BUT, the traffic wardens would be putting tickets on other peoples cars, not Pete's.  Even still, he felt he had to make a stand for Joe Public and I actually heard him bellow the words, "YOU SYPHILIS EPILEPTICS"!

We refuse to watch Eastenders but caught 10 minutes or so on Comic Relief, of a recent story line about Whitney's scumbag boyfriend trying to lead her into a life of prostitution. This enraged S so much that I thought he was going to cry.  He swore and shouted and finally sat at the computer and typed angrily until all his 'rage was on the page' (hahah).

When you have lost the plot, mid rant, maybe you had an out of body experience where you felt you were looking down on yourself screaming, and possibly felt embarrassed but still could not stop.  Maybe a little bit of spit even left your angry, contorted mouth.  Maybe the rational side of your brain was running neck & neck with the emotional side, like a cerebral steeple chase and you'd be quietly going, "oh calm down, you loon, you sound like a proper scumbag - GROW UP"! But the 'loon' could not be talked down. The loon was off!

I wonder if as I get older, I will calm down.  I really have calmed a lot already as at 38 yrs old, I can keep a lid on it for the majority of the time and I have a lot more stupidity around me now, so I should really have more to shout about.

S and I are a passionate pair. We are loud whether we are laughing and singing, or telling each other why we are right and the other is wrong.  So, as a result, our spawn are loud.  CLEVER AND GOOD LOOKING naturally but loud ;)

I'd love to hear what ruffles your feathers.

You're the One for Me Fatty!

I'm still fat and I've done bugger all about it.  Nothing proper anyway.  A half arsed toddle on the treadmill twice a week is not gonna shift 3 stone! 

I looked at the Weightwatchers website and followed one of their slimming tips by purchasing a large tub of low fat yogurt and popping it in the freezer to eat, instead of ice cream, with some berries.

Then it was bank holiday wasn't it?  Three whole days off work. Three whole days of not being told to take another call, or log your call on three different, equally time wasting programmes.  Three whole days of not having to communicate to people who cannot form full, coherent, articulate sentences. And three whole days to fcuk the diet off and disguise not being disciplined enough to go to the gym as, being a good parent who lavishes their kids with time and attention.  A good parent is a wobbly one!

Anyhoo, I am having to start again.  I shall start tomorrow as we had a bbq today and I ate and drank a substantial amount.  An amount large enough to not want to write it down and see how many guilty 'points' I had scoffed.

I will not join Weightwatchers. I have seen three friends lose a good amount of fat using this method and obviously there's that Jennifer Hudson being heralded in every Women's mag as having 'done it'. 

Those magazines are such wankers, they really are. 


MMN YOU TASTE LIKE CHEDDAR

 Poor old Natalie Cassidy's weight goes up and down like a whore's knickers and as it does, these magazines comment,

"Oh poor Natalie must be sooooo embarrassed after gaining 2 stone after she brought out those exercise DVDs...look, here she is eating a fat laden cheese sandwich...see how we've used a photo where she's just about to bite it and blink at the same time....aren't fat people vile when they eat cheese"? 

Then the next week, the same mag will show Fat Nat with a bit of lippy on and a posh frock and go, "Look at Our Nat...she's proud of her curves and we think she looks GREAT...she says she gets all the exercise she needs being a 'busy-working-mum' and says 'I just have a healthy attitude to cheese sandwiches', You go girl"!

Then, Fat Nat will miraculously lose 2 stone and look a bit pale and the mags will leap on her,

" Poor Natalie is obviously finding the stress of being a busy-working-mum too much to cope with.  A source told our reporter that "Nat often goes for weeks without eating more than a few cheese sandwiches", Our psychologist said, "Natalie needs to eat more cheese sandwiches if she wants to be a good role model for her new baby!

Then thin,pale Nat will pop on a bit of lippy and turn up at the Soap Awards and the same mag will report, "Wow look at the difference in Our Nat! Check out our photo of her just a few weeks ago, (see Fat Nat in lippy & posh frock) where she squeezed her wobbling, unhappy frame into a dress that our fashion expert says was, 'definitely too small for her'.  We think she looks GREAT and you can follow Nat's Cheese Diet on the following page!

FCUK OFF HEAT and NOW and REVEAL and CLOSER etc etc...

Anyhoo again, where was I??! Yeah I won't join Weightwatchers as although I have seen great results in some of my pals, I don't think they necessarily promote healthy eating. I think they kind of say, "eat just two mars bars and some of our low fat crisps a day but nothing else ...just aslong as you stick within your daily points".

I need something though.  Another friend had a stomach bypass operation and she's shrunk from a size 16 to a size 8...she does look fantastic, even though she shits herself if she eats too much sugar, (hmmmn, maybe that's the kind of deterrent I need)!

So, that's what I am gonna do.

Get back on the 'no shit' diet.  It's bloomin' hard for me to eat no rubbish though as I honestly didn't think I had the 'fat gene' and could always eat what I liked...as long as I teamed it with copious amounts of cocaine. I am most definitely NOT advocating that as a diet plan... just saying, age and being responsible has made my fat gene come out from hiding for 34 years. Now old 'Fat Jean' is like an unwanted friend who has outstayed her welcome! She truly needs to piss off now. 
So tomorrow, I will drink more water and eat more fruit and salad and go to the gym and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Alright?

The Tree of Forgiveness

All a bit nothingy today.

The weather outside (as opposed to the weather inside) has turned grey and murky.  There's been a bit of thunder and it rained heavily on my drive home from work, as though the sky had just realised it could take no more premature sun and warmth and had just burst in a fit of frustration.

I bought two bags of Transformer crisps for the kids, on the way to collect them from nursery and my back got drenched by cold heavy raindrops as I farted about with the kids car seats.

I turned my radio off so I could have a conversation with them on the 15 minute drive from nursery to home. J spoke non stop and A sat silently eating crisp after crisp.  She piped up occasionally to shout "ERE YAR...CRISP, MUMMY", over the windscreen wipers and the car heater.

We passed a man on a bicycle, with no helmet on and wearing shorts.  He was soaked to the skin and peddling hard into the down pour.  It made me feel very cosy and safe.  J was staring at the cyclist and looked concerned and shouted at me, "MUMMY? THESE CRISPS DON'T TASTE LIKE RACING CARS"!
"NO"? I shouted back, "WHAT DO THEY TASTE LIKE"?
"I SAAAAID, THESE CRISPS DON'T TASTE LIKE RACING CAAARS"!!! He bellowed.
"THAT'S GOOD THEN"?! I yelled.

We got home, ran through the rain, through the front door and into the silence.

Dry, quiet, warm and familiar.  The light does funny things to your eyes when you come in from outside and haven't turned the lights on yet.  There was a faint waft of hamster pee as I chucked the bags on the floor and started pulling small shoes of little perfect feet, (the kids, not the hamsters...he doesn't wear shoes but he does have tiny perfect feet).

"No telly tonight... I'll read a nice long story"... I said to J & A. 

The kids got washed and brushed and ready in their mis-matched pyjamas and I sat on the floor in their room whilst they sipped their little mugs of milk.

I read Town Mouse & Country Mouse.  The story was quite 'nothingy' too. A nothingy story to end a nothingy day.  I kissed the kids and closed the door.

I've been on ebay a bit. I also looked at before and after photo's of vaginoplasty operations and felt quite sick...someone had been talking about them yesterday and so I curiously checked what all the fuss is about.  I showed S when he came in from football and he looked a bit uncomfortable as well.

S is now cooking sweet & sour chicken stir fry & noodles. 

I cooked fish & chips yesterday, according to a Weightwatchers recipe.  I used polenta for the first time, (not placenta...there's no link to the vaginoplasty topic)... and I made wedges from scratch and baked them. The '20 min' cooking time was actually 55 bloomin minutes and I'd made the batter too thick but it was a 'good effort', according S.  OOH AND, I bought Coley fillets, instead of Cod.  The cod would have cost over a fiver each where as the coley came to £2.30 for both huge fillets...and it's sustainable, unlike the diminishing cod.  The only reason it's not as popular is coz the Cod is bright white, where as the coley is a little bit greyish. Tasted exactly the same. Please buy coley instead of cod or tuna next time...give it a go. Oh and polenta filled me with WIND!

Oh and the picture at the start of the post is called The Tree of Forgiveness.... I did a google search for 'coley' and that image appeared amongst all the fish. 
It has no connection to this post, apart from that clotheswise the couple in the picture are a bit 'nothingy'...but I just thought "OH WOW"! asI haven't seen that painting since I was about 5, in my aunties house...I was always a bit embarrassed coz of the nudity.  It's funny thinking about all the zillions of memories, words & images that your brain stores, unearthed for decades eh?

Anyway... I'm off to eat my dinner now.  Sorry for the boring, nothingy post tonight. ;)

Stoned Celebrities.

Remember I was gonna read my new boot sale purchases and do a sort of book review for you? No? Well I was.  It was our second to last precious day off today and so, after dropping the kids at the grandparents, we made our way to the beach with our books.

It's just a stony beach but it was lovely laying there, on a blanket, eating fish n chips for lunch and watching a middle aged man canoeing about in the sea.  It got us fantasising about having the luxury not to have to work and being able to answer people with, "oh me, dunno what I'll do today. Maybe I'll dust off the uni cycle and have a practice, or I might learn French, or bee keeping"!

Anyway, we were going to be grown up and read books. You know, look all booky and intellectual to passers by but after a couple of pages, I noticed how a pebble in front of me looked remarkably like Michael Winner.  I lost that one but he, (it) was white with a pompous, pursed mouth and teeny tiny slit eyes.

I then started digging around for other 'celebs'...

Ridiculously scraping the barrel with Chewbacca out of fishing line, fluff and sea grass;

"UGGGGGGH GAAAAAGHH"

"I am not an animal.......I am a human.....being"

The Elephant Man - John Merrick - see the sadness and fear in his eyes

"Dreams can come true"

Sunshine through my window...Yes, it's that famous one eyed songstress - Gabrielle!

Look closely....it's Free Willy!

AGGH!!! IT'S THE MASKED KILLER FROM SCREAM!!!

And lastly, her Blake was incarcerated...

It's everybody's favourite drug addict... after Keith Richards, Kurt Cobain and Pete Doherty...

They tried to make her go to rehab but she said NO! Three times!

Yes. it's Amy Winehouse!

Next week, I'll be finding vegetables that look like members of parliament....should prove easy!