Be Careful Out There

First of all - an apology. I have not been here so I haven't. I have been lurking and reading everything - even if I've been a bit late to the party. Just a lot going on - nothing too troubling. Back to work and it's busy and life and things. Am working hard to get back on an even keel.

I just wanted to say a little bit about Channel 5 and its "Too Fat To Work" programme. These thoughts are in no particular order and I will not be troubling the Pulitzer Prize with the writing here but stick with it. 
Listen, I don't like a shirker and and everyone who can should be working. I really have little insight into these people - they could be serial killers for all I know. I am also the wife of someone who works on a hospital ward and has had struggles with people with obesity - both with the physical weight and the attitude they sometimes have to their own lives - I'll leave that there.

I have to be a bit careful here because I know the people in the film slightly as they are service users where I work and I also had some dealings with the film crew they worked with. Having said that, all I would like to point out is

1. I know a set up when I see it and some things in this programme were not quite as they seemed.
2. Not everyone in the film was able to understand that there may be an agenda here if you know what I mean. 
3. The whole thing was sad and upsetting and doesn't reflect well on anyone - including Channel 5.

That's all I can say really. I would like to rant for twenty minutes but I just wanted to warn you not to accept everything on face value. 

Just also wanted to mention a friend who, in the middle of a long line of trolling of the couple on Facebook, typed in "God Bless Them. I hope they have a long and happy marriage" I love it when Grace intervenes.

It seems extra sad to me that on a day when people in Paris have paid for their journalistic integrity with their lives - other people who also call themselves journalists - can produce this. I am almost calm now. Thank you.

All Present and Correct

Sooo, we did it, we survived Christmas. It was fine. Some really nice days. I dragged all at Martha Towers to the traditional Christmas film at the Plymouth Arts Centre. This year it was ET which none of the offspring had seen (Call yourself a mother?) There was some discord as FOW1 declared that his favourite Christmas film was Die Hard and I felt that this misconception had to be dealt with. However, all was merry and bright and if I was slightly unhappy at having to pay £55 for four ponced up burgers in Ed's Diner afterwards, I kept it to myself for the most part. Other than that, I seem to have spent a lot of time providing lifts for offspring and then waiting for offspring to get back from things. You know how it is.

We had to split Christmas Day as HOH was working on Christmas morning, so presents were done on Christmas Eve which means the arrival of Aged Parent with four bin bags full of Christmas detritus and therefore me working like a Trojan to placate HOH who likes his life quite tidy. Christmas Day was spent in the kitchen more or less. I was quite taken this year with Frugal Queen's assertion that it was just a big roast and that we just just back off and give ourselves less pressure. However, I spent hours in the kitchen and am feeling more and more that Aunt Bessies pre cooked stuff is the way forward in future years. Or a lasagne.

The Carol Service was excellent this year. Lots of carols with a traditional choir. Seems like that's what people want at a Carol Service - to come along and sing lots of carols - who knew? It was good for me though because up to then, I had been a bit like Barry Manilow about Christmas - you know - up, down, trying to get the feeling again. I did wonder briefly if this was the year that we had all finally managed to kill Real Christmas off. What with penguins on buses and Black Friday and adverts pretending to be about the war when really all they want you to do is buy their chocolate. Linking up on the Advent Pause was helpful. I read everyone's blogs and found new people and generally just felt more proper Christmassy with it. 
I'm a bit woo-woo about Facebook, this time of year. It's full of photos of people in their living rooms having a great time at Christmas. It's good for me because I live a long way away from people that I like so I can see them and also I'm quite nosy. However, it crossed my mind that if you were alone or worried or just not having a particularly good time, it might make things a bit worse for you. I say don't be too affected by this kind of thing. Most people are muttering under their breath a lot during the festive period - despite all the #lovemyfamilyatChristmas stuff that is posted. Of course you love your family! Why are you telling me? I have come to the age when I will be quite glad to "see things go back to normal" and I am eyeing Christmas tree with a sort of  - "how well will that burn?" gleam in my eye. Speaking of burning, the photo above is a fantastic present from a friend. It goes by the fire and is full of the odds and ends of old scented candles. So when you light your fire it is easier to get going and you get a nice scent as well. Bob - il est votre oncle as they say. Some people are so creative.

Christmas story. This is there too.

Independent

A sound was heard in Ramah,
    weeping and much lament.
Rachel weeping for her children,
    Rachel refusing all solace,
Her children gone,
    dead and buried.

Isis in Iraq

Advent 3

This week I am

Cancelling tea with the Mayor. Yep that's the kind of high living person I am. I just throw the Mayor to one side because I get a better offer. (Actually, we have a couple of people off work which means that there are literally no phone answerers if I go swanning off. Am hoping Mayor is ok with this. Am thinking that he is as he as already cancelled on me once)

Reporting back on the Paddington movie. It's really good. The spirit of the books is there in all its glory. He's funny and sweet. The Brown family are exactly as they should be and the house they live in is just beautiful in its eccentricity. It is also an unashamed plea for racial tolerance and welcoming strangers into our lives. I don't expect UKIP will be giving out copies of the DVD for Christmas. (Didn't get to see the one about the nun. We weren't sure if we fancied it. The day after we didn't go, it promptly won a big award at a film festival. Of course it did.)

Trying to find a sensible place and then noting down where I am keeping presents. This will hopefully avoid the usual scene of me having to remove all the clothes from my wardrobe on Christmas Eve in a mad panic because 50% of the presents I have been buying are missing. It's never a good time.

Thinking - blow the whole thing and sitting down on Saturday afternoon with some chocolate and watching Hello Dolly. How lovely it is. Am almost not bothered about being found later in kitchen high kicking and singing Put On Your Sunday Clothes.

Attending FOW2s A Level Certificate presentation. Am hoping against hope that it will be as funny as the year they invited a contestant from The Voice to make the presentations. The faces of the Board of Governors as he sang "Your Sex is On Fire" has kept me happy on many a cold night.

Wondering why a elderly man who was drunk as a monkey was trying to shoplift a bottle of suntan lotion. (Bit of a commotion while I was waiting in the Chemist for medication for Aged Parent) I wouldn't have thought there was much call for it at this time of year - even on what I presume is a thriving Black Market in Plymouth. Maybe it was just for the thrill of it. Anyway, I was more unhappy about seeing it replaced straight back on the shelf when the bottle was recovered. It could quite clearly have done with a rinse having been down some rather unsavoury trousers.

Finding out about Advent Candles. I didn't know that each one was supposed to represent anything. (I come from a Christian background where any candle in church is the beginning of a slippery slope) So when we lit ours on Sunday,  I heard that it represented John The Baptist and this was news to me. I like John The Baptist though. A voice in the wilderness. A light in the darkness. In the busy times, in the mess that is in my head, in the darkness that lurks in my thought life, in the sadness of buying a coat for a child in a refugee camp because they have fled their homes with only the clothes on their backs, in the startling realisation that the people we trust to govern us think that we will be ok with torture. During these times it's helpful to remember that God is there - a small light in the darkness sometimes or a still small voice of calm and wisdom. 

Linking up to A Pause in Advent 

This Week

This week I am

• Receiving FOW 1 back into the fold for Christmas -  We are stocked up on Pizzas and toilet paper - we are braced.
• Going to the flicks a couple of times. Off to see Paddington tonight (with my stern "I love Paddington - this had better be good" face on). Then something about a nun on Thursday I think. Will report back.
• Having aged parent round for tea. Remember no onions. Unfortunate consequences for her belly (and for all concerned)
• Spending time struggling to get into cupboards. We have replaced a mattress on a bed but are keeping the old one for a Christmas visitor as the only thing that is wrong with it is that it is a bit saggy in the middle (bit like my good self) Thing is, we have nowhere to keep it so it keeps being left against wardrobes and my big cupboard at the top of the stairs and I keep having to wrestle it to get in anywhere.
• Praying for an early fitting of our blinds. People are getting chairs out and sitting in the road outside our house now to watch us. (Well it feels like it)
• Putting in very chunky amounts of toil at work. All shopping buses and scooters and wheelchairs are choc a block with people trying to get their Christmas stuff done. There is nothing like a determined pensioner on a shopping mission - trust me.
• Being very pleased that HOH was able to mend Joseph in our oldest Nativity set after an unfortunate incident with Morecambe last year. (Or was it Liam? Can't remember) Anyway - at one point we thought we would have to marry Mary off to a shepherd and that would not do at all.
• Looking ruefully at my planning book and wishing I had the time to sit and plan in it - never mind actually DOING the stuff on my to-do list.

It's all going very well - as usual. Carry on.

Pausing For Advent (2)

If only. I am still struggling to pause. I am up to my eyes in various bits and pieces and life etc. Nothing to bother too much about. I am reading all the other blogs and it seems that, for lots of reasons, other people are the same. I will not go gently into that Bah Humbug though. I LOVE Christmas and I will not sink under all the detritus so I don't enjoy it anymore. I am well aware that this one is up to me. We had a guest speaker at church today and he told us that the secret to contentment is a decent dialogue with God - which makes a lot of sense to me. I have to find the time to do it - especially at this time of year. It is up to me to cut back on things where I can. So, here are my Christmas Resolutions. Unconventional I know but that's the way I roll.

1. If I see you every day. Sort of "Hello - nice weekend?" as we sit down at desks opposite each other. Or, if I usually send you a card after you have posted one through my door saying "To all at 22 from all at number 48." because neither of us know each other from Adam - then don't hold your breath for a card from me. Cards this year will be to people who live a long way away, people I need to re-connect with and to my Mother, who takes the size of the card we send her as an indication of the amount of affection she is held in. (Can be tricky when the lady who does her hair once a week has sent a bigger one than me because I went for quality rather then size)

2. I will be making several meals for visitors and on Christmas Day and all that. This is fine. I am looking forward to it. However, know now that the mash will be Marks and Spencer. The pudding will be ready made and Mice Pies will be Mr Kipling. Come to terms with it. I have. It is happening and it is happening in this house.I will probably make my own roast potatoes because I like them best but, have to be honest, there will be a bag of frozen ones in the freezer in case of emergencies.

3. My house will not be a picture of domestic perfection. It has just been through a traumatic time with the windows being replaced and half the front rendering being ripped off. We don't have the new blinds in place yet so getting dressed in the morning is like permanently dressing under a beach towel. If you are coming here to see a beautifully tidy and serene home you are a) barking up the wrong tree completely and don't know me at all and b) Seriously? Why would you do that?

4. I will not be losing that last half stone before Christmas. All my clothes are fitting (more or less) and I reserve the right to seek solace in an emergency bag of cheese and onion crisps if the need arises. 

Good Grief - that feels better.

On a more positive note - everyone else went out this afternoon and I took the opportunity to put some Christmas music and give Hark The Herald Angels some welly in the privacy of my own kitchen. Wow I love that carol. Top Notch.

Linking Up at A Pause in Advent

Advent First Sunday

This is our hallway - last year. Because I haven't put any decorations up. Not yet. We couldn't if we wanted to but we don't want to. Not yet. We have just had the windows replaced, as well as the rendering on the front of the house. I am all of a kerfuffle. I have lost three weeks of my life to dust, unplugged phone lines and wi-fi, scaffolding and big spiders. I am barely back in the habit of having regular showers - let alone Christmas Decorations. And it's TOO EARLY! I am downcast by Black Friday - watching people who fought last year in Tesco's car park for a 28 inch telly, now coming back and fighting again for a 40 inch telly because the Internet tells them that they have to. Bah!
I am bad tempered, tired with little positive to say about Christmas and I love Christmas. According to the You Tube people - this week is Jingle Week enabling me to buy my Christmas clothes and make-up. Hah! Well you know what you can do with that.
Yet, in the middle of all this, there is just a tiny hint. Something is stirring. Think of the Wise Men. They had maybe spent years and years studying astrological charts, watching the skies and reading the stars. Looking to make sure that they had got it right - that a king - a promised Messiah was on the way. Maybe they just noticed a few subtle changes in the skies, before they ever saw THE star.
Just thinking about Mary, alone and quiet - rubbing her belly and thinking and wondering what was to come. In the middle of the madness that has so successfully claimed Christmas, I'm trying to stop and look at the skies. I'm wondering how it felt, if it felt any different at all, in those moments, just before the miracle, when God's great rescue plan began to move into action. And I want to claim it back. I want Christmas to be about the baby who would be Saviour and before it all starts, I want to quietly take my time and think about what is to come.

Linking up with Tracing Rainbows - A Pause in Advent 

The Heretic

Can I just bung in a review for this book? I was given this, not to review but just by someone who thought I would like it and I really did. Set in 1536 when burning or horrific executions were waiting for anyone who held convictions contrary to the state view, it is just a rattling good read. There is a lot going on here. There's a big picture which will appeal to people who like Wolf Hall and the Sansom books and then there is a smaller, more intimate picture of family and friends during the time.The author also manages to weave in the changes and challenges to the Christian faith without it being, well a bit obvious. I think the idea was to tell a good story, really well and job done. Highly recommended

Dreams of Another Life

We found this photo of my mum. It was lurking under the bed and she came across it trying to find a photo of me as a child for some dreadful fund-raising thing we were doing at work. She looks really great I think - a bit of Munroe in there? So we rescued it from under the bed and it's on our wall now (that's why it's a bit wobbly sorry because all our family photos are on the wall going upstairs and I had to risk life and limb leaning over a banister to get it) Mum has total recall of the day this was taken, at work (notice the typewriter she is leaning on) and it's probably over 50 years ago. It makes her a bit wobbly looking at this because she was full of hopes and dreams in those days and she is not sure that too many of them came to pass. Although she produced me - how good can it get, I ask you? Still, she has seen a nasty divorce and the death of a child as well as her other child being seriously ill. It has not been a barrel of laughs. She is finding more contentment these days though. Settled in a flat near us, she like the area and is forging new friendships and although she is loath to admit it, is perhaps more settled than she has been for years. She still likes a moan and is robust in her criticism of nearly everyone (mainly me though) but in the main I think she is doing ok.
What she has never lost and what an inveterate conflict avoider like me has never had, is the ability to tell it how she sees it.


Mum (sitting on her settee with her chum)
I think Eileen and George (residents in her building) may have something going on
Chum
Yes indeed, I have seen them linking arms and the like. (Do not get involved in what "the like" could be - I find it best not to)
Mum
She's a lot older than him - it's a bit strange if you ask me
Chum
I knew her first husband you know, if he'd have had both his legs, he would have never have looked at her.
Me (interjecting to try desperately to inject some positivity into the conversation)
She's a very handsome woman though

There then follows five seconds silence while Mum with furrowed eyebrows considers this.
Mum
Are we talking about the same woman?

Mr Turner

Well, this was unexpected. I really liked this. I mean really, really. Possibly one of the best films I have seen this year. We went on a day off which seenmed to be a pensioners' day out. They were giving out lists of future performances for the seniors club but HOH said I wasn't allowed to get one. I thought that was a missed opportunity for HOH. He would get a cheap ticket and a cup of tea and biscuit.
 Despite the stellar reviews I wasn't expecting that much from this film really. I sometimes really like Mike Leigh and sometimes I really don't. His thing about Gilbert and Sullivan was one of the few films I have ever walked out on (I have probably only ever left about five films early in my whole life - unless you include "Love Actually" which I left mentally by falling asleep about two thirds of the way through -  a mercy for all concerned) The Gilbert and Sullivan film antipathy could have been because I don't really get G and S although I realise that they are the very air that some people breathe. I remember in my twenties going with a friend to her new fiance's house for celebratory drinks and someone - apparently unbidden stepped up to the piano and gave us all a rendition of a G and S number. It was all deeply unnerving. I was partly worried because I thought the same might be expected of all of us and I remember wondering if my version of Wham's Last Christmas was going to cut it. Digressing.
However, would recommend this. Firstly, it is beautiful. Just lovely to look at. Secondly, it seems to capture it's time and place perfectly. Thirdly Timothy Spall is just amazing. Turner seemed to me to be complex, sometimes heartless, sometimes kind, always immersed in his work and Spall makes him a human.You don't need to know about painting or anything. Just go. It's very good.

Giving Up

So, I have given up a bit and brought this home. Just to look at, you understand. Not to actually do anything with. It's just helpful, to be thinking about it - a bit.