where did she go?

When I was in London last week, I used a tube station I haven't been to for years. Took me back to how I was then, and who I was waiting for - the person I thought was the Love of My Life. Actually, he probably was and a little corner of my heart will always belong to him, but he was never interested in me, when I got up all my courage and asked him out I got the 'like you as a friend' routine.

But the main thing I remember is how scared I was. Back then I think I was scared of everything, scared all the time. I know I still get scared of things now, but I'm not scared of my whole life, like I was back then.

So it got me thinking about my life, and the way everything's turned out. And so did going back to studying chemistry. I feel a little silly and a little regretful that I didn't learn this stuff properly when I had the chance, the first time round at university. But then I think, if I'd've stayed and got my degree and got a job and a mortgage and a husband, I'd be going quietly insane in some suburban hell.

Instead I got thrown out of university, had a twisty turny life path, met some fantastic people, learnt a whole load of stuff, go policitics, and most importantly I got R & O. So now I go noisily insane in cyberspace bwahaaahahahahahah.

poor little boy

Aww, my poor O. He's had a temperature and been vomitting, and spent the day in bed. He got up for a bit this evening to watch the wildlife programmes, one about elephants and one about Ants.

Then I put him back to bed, but he woke up an hour later, feverish and raving about the ants in his bedroom. Awww.

my week

Finished my maths course, started my chemistry course, had a cold, looked after O with a cold, lost 2 lb, fell in love with green tea

lycra & sadness

First real bike ride in ages today, and it wasn't very long. 10 mile round trip to visit CB, whose bad knee is still stopping her cycling. Wore a black armband in memory of the four North Wales cyclists killed while out on a club ride last week.

Have started back at FatClub - going to a different meeting as my last leader was pretty bobbins really. I hate having to go to FatClub (and pay for it!) but I think it's the only way I can keep focussed on weight loss. My stats might make a reappearance in the side bar soon, also I need to spring clean my blog roll.

back(ish)

Happy New Year. Back home from Ireland, back to work, back to fat club. I reckon, last year I did the excercise thing, the year before I did the eating thing, maybe this year is the year I can get them both going. Oh and work on the bingeing thing too. But don't know how much blogging there will be for a while, am busy with trying to fit it all in, plus work, study and obssess about Celebrity Big Brother. Some kind of service will be restored sometime.

happy solstice

Sorry for lack of recent blogging. We're off on our Xmas travels tomorrow, to the wifi-less wilds of Ireland. Normal service will be resumed next year (maybe even with weight loss efforts included woo).



Big festive greetings and respect to U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III and the Dover parents.

[O]ur conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach I[ntelligent] D[esign] as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom ...

We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion

They're partying over at Creation Watch (you can even download the whole trial transcript as a pdf - could come in useful as gift wrap for any ID-ers you know).

owl cat

I may have mentioned how much I hate my menstrual cycle. Now my PMS has come back with a vengeance, and I have spent much of the past week as an utter loon. How can it be fair that I have to have this on top of already being a nutcase? Not feckin fare. Nor is it fare that my already vast body feels like it is swollen to twice normal size at the same time. Life's a bitch and then you die, eh girls?

Add to that crap eating and no excercise and you have a recipe for me feeling at my worst. I am not eating anything approaching normally. I am working on eating 3 meals a day, with the content of those meals a secondary consideration, but even that is eluding me most days. Tomorrow morning I will eat a normal breakfast. Not much of an aim but a start.

Oh and I'm always tired, and have light headed spells, despite going to bed early most nights. Bah.

Other stuff:

We had fab time when Trin visited, her and her girls are stars. O is in love with Danz all over again.

O is arty as an arty thing right now, drawing all the time. An owl cat is but one of his latest creations.

Went to belly dance party and bought myself the most gorgeous coin belt. It was money I shouldn't've spent this close to Christmas, but I couldn't resist. It's my favourite colours (purple) with masses of silver coins, and is heavy, and makes a lovely sound.

Am still doing maths for loonies, currently on Fun With Triangles wooo.

Will blog more soon.

that's Christmas sorted then

Got O's Big Present today. I'd got him something else, ages ago, but he wrote his Santa List at the weekend and it seems he has his heart set on Texter the Robotic Puppy. I'd never heard of it, I thought perhaps it was some kind of txting dog thing but a google for 'robotic puppy' reveals the thing's called 'Teksta' and available in Woolies for 30 of our English pounds. So now it's safely stashed in the back of the filing cabinet, along with his other pressies. Most of which are from ebay or TK Maxx. The Chocolate Orange is probably the only one that's new and not last season's. Meanwhile my poor parents have spent all day looking for the "Shark Boy and Lava Girl" DVD for him. They wanted to get him a DVD and asked me what he'd like, I said that one cos he loved it at the cinema and his friend has the DVD, so I knew it was available. So mum and dad have ShopYouths in every dvd shop in their town looking for it, before finding out it's not been released in the UK yet. Oops.

Now I just have to think of something for R's birthday. It's not fair, our anniversary, his birthday and Christmas all happen within a month of each other. Anniversary pressie I have already. Christmas is easy because we've already decided we don't want presents. Well we do, obv (I personally would love an ipod and a nice shiney new bike) but the peeps in Kashmir probably needs tents more, so we've agreed on donations instead of presents this year. Everyone else is getting books or Lush things or something from the Oxfam catalogue (unless we guilt trip them into the Kashmir thing too bwahahahahaha).

Other news: Trin and girls are coming this weekend hurrah! I hope they get here thro the wind and snow eep. Mr Branson's trains not like snow. Better pack wooly hats, a shovel and a hip flask, just in case.

acceptable face of capitalism

I am supposed to have 0 money. I do have some money but the Inland Revenue quite unreasonably expect me to give it to them soon. Bah. So I'm not supposed to be spending anything (much). Plus I'm up to here with rampant consumerism and there's still 6 weeks to go till Xmas. But today I had an anti-consumerist shopping spree. Went to The Basement for vegan-but-nice lunch and while I was there, got myself some fair trade footwear. Then on to Oxfam books and another few quid spent on lovely lovely books mmmmm books hurrah.

Haven't told Trin yet that it's Buy Nothing Day next Saturday!

Here is an extract Jack and the Bean Stalk by O:


The beans grew and grew. Jack was shocked.

I :heart: sums

I am finding this maths short course worryingly interesting. There is something nice and soothing about manipulating the numbers and watching the answer come out. I'm currently loving algebra.

Be prewarned, I am almost certainly in my maths comfort zone and this time next week I will be tearing my hair out and throwing books around the house and ranting about how stoopid it all is.

come the glorious day

Manchester is over run with, infested with, plagued with, luxury flat developments. You'd think there'd be a limited on the number of feckwits with too much money who could afford urbane urban sophisticate open plan beech and chrome palaces in the sky but no. The skyline is still as full of cranes and scaffolding as ever, ever corner you turn you see old buildings being converted or new buildings going up, to provide more flats for yuppy wankers and more trendy bars for them to drink in. The BBC's northward relocation is going to make things worse. But of all of them, if I get to chose one to be the first to be blown up come the revolution, it will be this one:



This is 'The Hacienda', built on the site of the old Hacienda and marketed with the phrase that triggered a screaming rage everytime I cycled past it "The party's over. Now you can come home". Walking past it yesterday morning, as we walked along the canal into town, I read on the back of it a timeline of the Hac, and then the famous quote "That's all over. You'll never see the hacienda. It doesn't exist. The hacienda must be built".

Now, I wasn't much of a raver even when I were a lass and I only went to the Hac a few times. And I firmly believe Anthony H Wilson is an agent of Satan. But that's not really the point. What I hate is the way the city is being airbrushed and glossed over, everything sleek and clean and airbrushed and corporate. Stop homogenising my world!

Oh and I bet few of the wankers who live there know that where quote comes from, or have ever heard of situationism.

Rant over, back to work.

P.S. Freedom for Tooting!

you know you live in the big city when ...

... you're watching Britain's Toughest Towns and it shows Donal driving past your house.

And you know you live in a real community when you take your kids* swimming and meet neighbours and kids from school and staff from school at the pool, and the lifeguards are kind and friendly to the kids, and the people in the papershop when you stop to get a paper on the way home know you won't be buying sweets cos Friday is the kids' sweets day and you have lunch in the local cafe and the kids interupt your neighbour's late lunch with his new girlf by telling them bad jokes. And you think, for all its problems, living round here is way better than alot of other places.



* I still only have one, but we took B along with us

quick update

sorry peeps, been busy busy. O was 6 on Friday, we had his party on Friday after school. 15 very loud and very lively kids, it was fun but knackering. First thing Saturday me and O drove up to Durham to visit my best friend C for her birthday (R had to stay home and work awww). Our friend M (lovely man) was there too. Saturday as Bommie Night, Sunday we all went to Marsden Bay. I admired the lovely rocks, O insisted on stripping off and jumping about in the sea. The North Sea. In November. I know we are having an unseaonally warm autumn but it was still mad. He warmed up with hot chocolate in the grotto where we had lunch. Then the long drive home. Only the amount I love and miss C could get me to drive up and down the A1 in a weekend. I hate that road. Back home Sunday night and now started on my maths course hurrah (sort of).

I am vastly proud of O right now. Last week he got two gold star awards for good work at school. On Saturday he managed to see most of a fireworks display - for the past 3 years he has been terrified of fireworks. And as soon as he heard we were going to the beach he was determined to go in the water - this time last year he was terrified of the sea, too, and became hysterical when taken anywhere near it. Now he's a complete water baby. I love my little (not so little now he's 6!) boy.

Eid Mubarak

Thinking of everyone marking Eid ul Fitr in Kashmir this year.

note to self:

I am an old married lady. I must not attempt to flirt with the Nice Young Man who works in the cafe. Even if he did wink at me over the falafel.

Festival of Lights

Subh Diwali!

return of the curse

The doctor said I had to have my lovely IUS taken out cos its 5 years was up. After 5 blissful period free years, the reality of the return my real menstrual cycle is coming as a bit of a shock. Where did I put those white trousers, I need to go roller skating.

trickle treat

3 things you need for a happy halloween:


Our pumpkin








my O in his skelington suit








Pumpkin soup a la Nigel Slater

rainy day women

It was hard to get out of bed this morning, even with the extra hour From under my lovely warm duvet I could hear it was wet and windy outside. Cyling 35+ miles in it was not an attractive idea. I nearly rang CB to say I wasn't going, but I did go. We modified our ride down to 25 (less exposed) miles and even fitted in a bit of shopping - I got a BananaGuard^TM at last. No more squashed nanas, hurrah! And even tho the morning was wet and nasty, the afternoon was lovely and sunny.

Came home earlier than expected, to find R had forgotten all about the local Apple & Pumpkin Party, so I took O to the end of it and he got to carve his own pumpkin for tomorrow night. It's party party party all week next week - B is having a halloween/late birthday party tomorrow, then it's O's turn on Friday, then we're off to spend the weekend with C for her birthday.

today's 2 things:

• went out cycling in spite of the weather
• have eaten reasonably all day (no bingeing)

something new(ish)

A few years ago I saw a psychologist for a course of cognitive behavioural therapy. A big part of CBT is working challenge and re-setting your automatic thoughts, the ones that tell you you're bad, rubbish, don't deserve nice things, everybody hates you, etc etc. At my last appointment, the psychologist recommended some things I should do to carry on working on my automatic thoughts. One thing was, at the end of every day, write down at least two things I had done that day that I could be pleased with, that I could praise myself for doing. I haven't done it for a while but I've been feeling a bit cr@p lately so I'm going to try and start the habit again.

today's 2 things:

• took O out to the park for a couple of hours, rather than staying in lazying about all day
• I did not smoke today