This one was the best yet – a ‘chest infection’ that proved to be a large blood clot in my lung. A potentially deadly condition known in the trade as a pulmonary embolism.

As you can see, I am still here. A little shaken, a little frightened, extremely frustrated and – on the plus side – half a stone lighter thanks to five days of hospital food.

I should have known this was coming, really. Back in April, I was diagnosed – eventually, after years of prodding and poking and blood tests and scans and genetic testing shenanigans – with Polycythaemia Vera; a myleoproliferative neoplasm. In layman’s terms, my bone marrow has gone crazy and is producing too many red blood cells. This is not good. In short, it’s blood cancer. Pretty it up as much as you like, it’s cancer. Of the incurable persuasion. There is more information about it here:

http://leukaemialymphomaresearch.org.uk/patient-information/myeloproliferative-neoplasms-mpn

Just to make life a little more interesting, I also have a genetic disorder called Factor V Leiden:

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/diseases/facts/factorv.htm

In a nutshell, I have blood like jam. I’m not going to die of this form of cancer, not specifically; but the chances are another pulmonary embolism, or a stroke, or a heart attack caused by the combination of the Polycythaemia Vera and the Factor V Leiden will carry me off. Alternatively, life might chuck me another spanner and I may be one of the 15% of PV patients that will develop myleofibrosis or acute myleoid leukemia; but we shall deal with that IF it happens. I’m not wasting time worrying about something that has not yet happened.

I am now on warfarin for life, and will need regular blood tests called INRs to ensure that I am taking the correct dose of rat poison to stop my blood clotting without actually poisoning my body. I am, to be honest, thankful I am still here to tell the tale. It would be have been all too easy, busy mum that I am, to ignore that ‘chest infection’ until it was too late.

The next big step, I guess, is seeing my haemotologist at the end of the month. My appointment is on November 30th – Strike Day – so I’m not entirely sure whether it will go ahead. The question is now, in the light of recent events, whether my consultant wants to start actively treating the PV by reducing the amount of red blood cells in my body. This is usually done by venesection (where they literally drain off pints of blood), however I have read that in the case of young patients (believe it or not, I am still considered young!)  who have already suffered clots, they tend to prefer to start straight onto chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is something I am absolutely dreading.

For now, there is nothing I can do but sit tight; and keep reminding myself that I mustn’t ‘overdo things’. I feel like an old lady. I want to play-fight with my kids. I want to help out with volunteering at the community garden. I want to ride my bike, and push wheelbarrows, and drag tree-trunks around and carry heavy bags of shopping. For now, these things are denied. I am ill, and I hate it.

I’m sorry. A more downbeat post than usual; but normal service shall resume shortly, I promise. With pictures, and everything.

What she lacked in skill, she tried to make up for in enthusiasm. Unfortunately for her, her maker had decided to wire her brain slightly differently to most other people’s brains; leading her to enthuse enormously over something for about five minutes until something more shiny came along. Her maker also endowed her with a less than perfect memory, an asset that was further eroded by her (rather long-lasting) enthusiasm for red wine.

In short, I started this blog. Shortly afterwards, I forgot my password. Of course, I had also forgotten the password of the email address that the reminder email would be sent to. One does not do things by half.

Then I forgot about the blog. I figured my life was boring, and mundane, and not worth blogging about.

Rule Number 1

NEVER think your life is boring, mundane and not worth blogging about. You never know what is around the next corner. I learned this. I’m still learning it. Every day.

That is why I’m picking this blog up again.

At some point. Soon. I promise.

First clumsy attempts at jewellery making..

So, first we have my first, somewhat cack-handed attempts at jewellery making. The pink earrings, the bracelet and brown heart earrings are made from glass lampwork beads. The blue-green pendant and earrings are made from an old bracelet I’d had kicking around in my Drawer-of-Hell and rescued during my January decluttering frenzy.

'Scrapbooking' picture

More ‘crapbooking’, really. I made this for a friend in an online crafting/upcycling group I belong to (this photo shows the placing before I put it in the frame). I didn’t know much about Emma, apart from the fact she loved purple. The original idea was a piece of calligraphy based on a quote from Alice Walker’s ‘The Color Purple’, until I realised that the only available frame I had was tiny. Emma charmingly referred to this piece as ‘scrapbooking’, rather than ‘some junk rammed into an old Ikea frame’, bless her heart…..

Upcycled Baby Card

This is a card I made for Caroline, who is celebrating the birth of her fourth son (and first home birth after 3 sections, yay Caroline!). Caroline is mad about reusable nappies, so this idea popped into my head. It is made from upcycled materials including a broken necklace, old greetings cards and lollipop sticks as well as a few odds and ends donated to me by crafty friends and Freecyclers. It’s not meant to be perfect, but I do hope it will give her a little giggle.

Move over, Heston....

Ellis and I made gingerbread men for Valentine’s Day (we don’t do chocolates and roses in this house, we’re far too tight for that). There would have been a lot more gingerbread men had we not kept eating the uncooked mixture…..but there was still enough for us, and for Ellis’ best friend to enjoy.

And, finally, I would like to leave you with a picture to just remind us that Spring is, indeed, on her way…..seeing the first snowdrops bobbing in the late Winter breeze never fails to make me happy. Small things, indeed.

Snowdrops by the Clyde

 Similarly, later on this month is the festival of Imbolc, otherwise known as Candlemass or  Bride’s Day. Many pagans celebrate Imbolc on February 2^nd, but I prefer to celebrate as our forefathers (and mothers) did – at the closest full moon, which is on February 18^th, or when the first new growth of Spring bursts forth.

 Imbolc (or Imbolg, if you prefer) is – to put it in simple terms – a time to start thinking about the future, the new year of growth and renewal which is just around the corner. As we gradually emerge from the quiet, inward-thinking and reflective Winter period; we can start setting our house in order, shaking out the dust, banishing the cobwebs – opening all those windows (literally and metaphorically) and allowing the first signs of Spring to awaken our senses. Now is the time to get rid of all the clutter in our lives, wipe the slate clean, and start to make plans – for ourselves; our families, friends and neighbours and, of course, the Earth.

The house, I’m pleased to report, is still fairly tidy after last month’s frenzied activity. It’s no show-home, nor would I want it to be. I rather like my curios, my haphazard piles of books, my dog-eared collection of Gardeners’ World magazines in the hearth, my kitchen walls festooned with the boys’ latest works of art and Star of The Week certificates. Our little house is no palace, but it has soul. Despite the grubby wallpaper and the stained carpets and the scuffed furniture, this wee house makes me smile. We’re comfortable here, and I don’t want that to change.

Cleanliness and renewal, therefore, had to start somewhere else. But where? With me, that’s where. I’ve never been one to make New Year’s Resolutions, but Imbolc is a perfect time to start new projects, I find. This year’s project is proving to be a big one. I’m almost 2 stone overweight. Eeeek. How did THAT happen? (I’m not going to answer that purely rhetorical question, I know exactly how that happened).

So, here I am just heading into week three of my ‘Sort Myself Out’ plan. I’m not going to bore you to death with the details, but I’m basically eating less (around 1400 cals a day) and moving more. A LOT more. I’m eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, drinking more water and drinking a LOT less wine. I’m also doing a lot more activity – usually a daily walk of some speed pushing Fin in the buggy for around 60-90 minutes and an hour of Hatha yoga positions each evening when the boys are in bed.

One day, when I am bendy, I will be able to do this.

I have, to date, lost 5lbs (4 in the first week, a disappointing 1lb last week but I wasn’t eating my full 1400 calories, in fact, I was frighteningly under on some days, and I think it’s slowed my metabolism). I feel fantastic – I’m sleeping brilliantly, and I can already see the difference that good food and fresh air are making to my complexion; not to mention my mood. 

I have other plans for this year – the community garden, of course, will play a big part in this; and I already have my seeds and have planned the crop rotation and planting schedules to ensure that our raised bed and our back garden are producing as much organic produce as possible for as long as possible. It’s rather frustrating at this time of year as you can never be sure of the weather, so I have taken to gazing lovingly at my seed packets and dreaming of freshly harvested carrots.

In the meantime, I am saving the money I hitherto spent on rubbish (like too many bottles of wine) and investing it in crafting materials. I have a few projects in mind that I’m really keen to make a start on – silk painting, which I can also incorporate into my card making; glass/acetate painting; and jewellery making.

Beads. Pretty, pretty, pretty.....

I’ve been lucky enough to pick up a few bits and pieces cheaply on eBay, so there are plenty of things to keep my fingers and brain busy when the children are in bed of an evening, as an alternative to sitting on my square backside watching mindless television. Fingers crossed, in a few weeks you may be seeing photographs of my attempts at craftiness. Alternatively, you might be reading headlines along the lines of ‘Talentless crafter goes mad and cuts up entire house with deckle-edged scissors’.

Most importantly, however, is spending as much time as possible having fun with my lovely boys. I’m very aware that they are growing up so, so quickly and I’ll blink and they’ll be grumpy teenagers who won’t be able to stand the embarrassment of being seen with their aged mother. So, plenty of messy play and much adventuring is called for – with as much glitter, paint, sand, mud and tree-climbing as possible……watch this space!

(Oh….the title mentions the Six Nations – the only yearly sporting event I actually get excited about. The less I say about it so far, the better, after Wales’ clumsy performance against England on Friday.

James Hook - Needs a punch in the nose?

All I will say is this – Mr Gatland, Please relegate James Hook to the bench for the next match, before I punch him in the nose. We do NOT need Glory Boys. We need a cohesive team who work as one. Hook, if you want to hog the limelight, do a Henson and go on Strictly.)

Crikey….I’ve finished this post, and it’s still February. Go me!

Post Christmas Clear-Outs

Now, call me obsessive, but I’m the sort of person who clears out their entire wardrobe every time they buy a new top. I might not necessarily throw anything way, but I do at least pick the other items up off the floor and attempt to hang them up. Hell, sometimes I even try to co-ordinate them.

That's me. Honest.

New top needs nice tidy wardrobe. New notebook deserves to be placed in nice, tidy drawer devoid of empty chocolate wrappers and wine corks. Ergo, lovely new teapot from Santa deserved the efforts I made blitzing the kitchen to within an inch of its grease-coated life; beaded bracelet and necklace warranted the complete annihilation of the dressing-table drawers. A truly fine way to spend the beginning of January, cleaning the house and getting rid of all that detritus that accumulates from, seemingly, nowhere. The joys of a tidy kitchen windowsill devoid of megabloks, manky hairbands, broken lighters and loose change! The delicious thrill of looking in your bedroom drawers for something, and finding it immediately! The delight of being able to get the vacuum out of the cubby without being killed by an avalanche of coats, tents, toys, old potties and things you thought you’d Freecycled years ago!

Birds

I have an alarm clock in the form of a robin. Silas (so named after Silas Marner) sits in the honeysuckle in the back garden, just below our bedroom, and sings his little heart out from around 6.30am each morning. Even though it is dark and cold, hearing him sing drives me from my bed with a smile and a positive attitude to the day ahead. How can I whinge about the cold when I have a warm house, and warm clothes and a steaming hot coffee, whilst Silas has feathers and very little else but a beautiful song?

I sat in the window one morning, just for a few minutes, to observe the birds. I had not known how busy our little scrap of muddy garden is until I had taken a few moments to stop and look. We have Silas, of course, who is a curmudgeonly wee bugger when he’s not singing. We have five blue-tits, three great-tits, four coal-tits, a cheeky and very noisy little wren that loves the fact I didn’t do any weeding last year, what seems like 40,000 starlings who love to fight for the same scrap of food, three blackbirds (two male, one female – watching the males trying to impress the haughty female is something to savour, reminding me of college discos); two collared doves; six woodpigeons; five or six pied wagtails who like to run along the wall but don’t venture into the garden; and a posse of bossy magpies. A handful of sparrows (sadly not as many as I’d like) and dunnocks prefer the front garden (presumably where they enjoy games of ‘Catch Me If You Can’ with the neighbourhood moggies.

 I was delighted to witness, in addition, a male great spotted woodpecker hanging precariously from the forsythia and, just last week, a gang of long-tailed tits holding their own against their bigger cousins at the feeding station. If you’ve never seen a long-tailed tit, you are possibly missing out on the cutest creature on the planet – little, pretty balls of flying fluff with incredibly long tails. They are often known as ‘flying teaspoons’, and when you see them in action it’s easy to see why.

Watching the birds; noting their movements, behaviour and routines as well as hearing their beguiling songs and calls fill the Winter sky with a foresight of what is to come – it makes you calm. It reminds you of your place in this universe, of how closely linked we all are, and must be. It’s a wonderful way to spend a few minutes, thinking of nothing else. You can forget your worries and routines for just a while, and watch these incredible creatures getting on with their day. Trouble is, it’s hard to stop once you start…….

Heavy snow last week meant that local people started preparing for the apocalypse by hording bread, milk and eggs (those that weren’t stuck on the roads in horrendous traffic jams, that is) as though the roads would be blocked until 2015. During this time, I became child-minder, neighbourhood baker (Make friends! Have a bread machine!), milk dealer (Make Friends! Have a secret stash of UHT milk!), deliverer of groceries for elderly neighbours and pusher of stuck cars. Routine, and any chance to do nice, Christmassy things with the boys went completely out of the window as we huddled together in the not-terribly-warm-living room blowing on our frozen hands and waiting for the bread machine to beep. How the week flew by!

Some snow on the M8. Pretty, eh?

So, trying desperately to get into a mood resembling ‘festive’ yesterday afternoon; I plonked myself down on the living-room floor with some paper chains and started to watch ‘Kirstie’s Homemade Christmas’; a re-run from last year. It didn’t take me long to realise why I didn’t watch it last year…..

You’ve got to love Kirstie Allsopp (or should I say The Honourable Kirstie – thanks Wikipedia!). So twee she makes Maria von Trapp look like an anarchist pole dancer with a penchant for Satanism. She also seems to have unlimited amounts of time on her perfectly manicured hands to create her perfectly ‘unique’ home-crafted Christmas. Looking at her Wiki profile, she certainly has the money, so quite why she insists every two minutes that her crazed crafting has anything at all to do with saving money is beyond me. Unless, of course, she listened to her own advice a few years ago and bought a house well beyond her means and is now saddled with an enormous mortgage and negative equity, but one rather thinks that is probably not the case.

Allsopp, we salute you!

I therefore present to you…..Jac’s Beta Christmas, or…’How to fail spectacularly at being the arty, crafty, uber-talented Mummy you so want to be; and just manage to get through the Christmas preparations with sanity intact and enough money left in the bank for cheap wine’. And, please take note, my tongue is firmly in cheek.

Handmade Gifts

Not everyone appreciates handmade gifts. In fact, most people only like handmade gifts when they are accompanied by something the recipient actually wanted. Something, usually, bought in a real shop and, if the recipient is under ten, made in China from very flimsy plastic and requiring at least 6 AAA batteries. You can only really get away with giving handmade gifts alone if you are

a)      recovering from a stroke and improving your manual dexterity (you get the benefit of sympathy, and patronising ‘aww, aren’t they doing well?’)

b)      producing excellent quality baskets whist sectioned under the Mental Health Act (nobody will dare tell you they are crap).

c)      Under 5 years of age. Any older than 5 will open up Christmas Day debates on the quality of the curriculum with regards arts and crafts provision.

If are ARE going to make gifts, do think about your recipient. Take note, Kirstie – a pre-pubescent boy is NOT going to be wowed with a rusty, battered old spinning top you’ve picked up on the market and made it ‘home made’ with the addition of a quick polish and a squirt of WD40. Particularly if you are his step-mother. He wants a Wii. Or an iTunes voucher. And if he doesn’t get one, he’s going to make the rest of Christmas Day very awkward indeed.

Dads like chutney. It’s the law. They don’t particularly like anything else you can make, unless you can make socks.

Women, on the whole, are generally more receptive to homemade gifts. Well, when I say ‘women’, I mean your mum who is genetically programmed to adore and coo over every wonky embroidery, glue-covered plaque or revolting smelling candle purely because she spent hours in agony giving birth to you. Everyone else wants jewellery, perfume or handbags. Fact. Give a homemade gift to another woman (who is not your mum) and it’ll be squirreled into her secret drawer to re-emerge next Christmas (when it will be given to her mum, under the illusion it was homemade by darling, talented daughter).

Festive Home Decoration

Does my tree look like this? Err.....

 

When you have small children, do not entertain any fantasies of stylish, sophisticated home decoration. Within ten minutes, the tree will be devoid of needles, as these will have been transferred into ears and noses; but will be covered in half-chewed biscuit, megabloks and baby-wipes. The children will be covered in tinsel and – very possibly – the actual tree.

This is why, this year, I did not spend three hours trying to get the lights looking just perfect. I threw them on, squinted a bit and mumbled ‘Yeah, that’ll do’ and cracked on with hurling tinsel and baubles at the tree. The result looks as though it was decorated by a crazed gang of Ritalin-deprived five year olds. I don’t care. When friends visit, I simply lie and tell them the children decorated it.

Shiny foil ceiling decorations. These make any home, regardless of age, size and location, look like a Glaswegian council house circa 1973 (or 1977 if you are lucky enough to have an artexed ceiling). Of course if, like us, you actually have to live in a Glaswegian council house then feel free to throw the decorations up with gay abandon whilst drinking cheap wine and singing loudly to Slade. You can always claim it to be a post-ironic statement should any friends with a modicum of taste visit.

The organisation’s founder and resident loudspeaker, Franny Armstrong (who used to make excellent, thought-provoking films such as McLibel and The Age of Stupid, but now prefers to crow about her own carbon footprint soaring as she campaigns for everyone else to cut theirs) decided it would be a great idea to team up with annoyingly twee film director Richard Curtis and relative nobody Dougal Wilson to produce the ‘hilarious’ short film ‘No Pressure’.

Franny Armstrong - next film a remake of 'Dumb and Dumber'?

Here are extracts from the extremely bouyant email I received from Ms Armstrong shortly before the release of the film:

Hello 10:10ers,

Even by my not-entirely-downbeat standards, I really am extremely over-excited to tell you that our Richard Curtis-written mini-movie, “No Pressure”, is premiering right now on the front page of the Guardian website…..

….It’s a fairly simple and to-the-point premise, I’m sure you’ll agree: we celebrate everybody who is actively tackling climate change… by blowing up those are aren’t.

So if you’ve ever wondered what the inside of David Ginola looks like, here’s your chance to find out.

I am completely blown away, pun intended, by the sterling efforts from our 40-person professional film crew, who all donated their time and equipment for free. Please, please, please, please forward the info below to as many friends and pretend facebook friends as you possibly can manage without getting sacked from your job, as that’s by far our best chance of going viral and waking a whole load more people up to the climate crisis.

Here it is (I hope) – please note that this is not suitable viewing for children, or anyone of a sensitive disposition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSTLDel-G9k

So…in a great flurry of over-paid, privileged, jolly-hockey-sticks excitement, the film premiered. And the complaints started flooding in. Within hours, the film had been pulled from The Guardian and 10:10’s websites and the right-wing bloggers (notably James Delingpole in The Telegraph) started having a field day about ‘Eco Terrorists’. Climate change deniers, predictably, followed suit; with the American Far Right, ‘libertarians’ and the general ‘Ahhhhhh, they want to blow up our kids’ brigade hot on their heels.

All the while, the environmentalists were wandering around with looks of horrified confusion wondering when on Earth it became trendy and happening to be portrayed as a totalitarian bunch of nutters blowing up those who don’t agree with our views.

So what did 10:10 do? They posted a flippant mock-apology from Franny Armstrong along the lines of ‘Oops, sorry some people didn’t think it was funny but we did so nar-nar-nar-nar-nar, onwards and upwards, we live and learn etc’. Then they went into hiding. For three days. During which time I chose to be very verbal on their Facebook page (alongside a few hundred other people, with the environmentalists now shouting loudest, and most eloquently of all), and disassociate myself from the organisation (including cancelling an event I was arranging for their Global Day of Doing).

Am I buggery....

Eventually, a decent apology came from 10:10’s Director, Eugenie Harvey, who had been dragged back into the fray despite being at home nursing a newborn but, for many, it was too little, too late. Her apology can be found slipping ever further down the ‘jolly wall’ on 10:10′s webpage.  Call me cynical, but it also coincided with the news that Sony and Kyocera Mita, two of 10:10’s three major corporate supporters, were considering disassociating themselves from the organisation. It soon came to light that, outside Armstrong’s tie-dyed coven of ever-so-clever ingénues, nobody else had been consulted on the film. They were therefore completely clueless as to how to handle the chimera they’d released.

Franny Armstrong has upset a LOT of people. Decent, hardworking environmentalists who offer their time freely to campaign – peacefully – through education, for starters. Thanks to her arrogance, she has dragged 10:10 through the mud and brought the name of environmentalists into disrepute. She has handed a stockpile of ammo to the climate change deniers who, through YouTube and other media, can show us as totalitarian fascists intent on the destruction of anyone not sharing our views.

There, Franny, you said you wanted it to ‘go viral’. Happy now?

 Her continued silence, and refusal to make a personal statement of apology despite many calls for her to do so only highlight her contempt for those of us who really are trying to change the World. I feel particular sympathy for the thousands of 10:10 supporters who are, essentially, little more than peddlers of the 10:10 brand. They no longer even get their say (unless approved by the Ministry of Truth at 10:10) as the comment facility on their website has been disabled, and the Facebook page is now being heavily moderated and fluffed up.

Is 10:10 finished? It will limp, rather unspectacularly, towards the big day on Sunday with little of the fanfare it was so expecting. After that, who knows? Sony and Kyocera Mita both appear to have withdrawn support (though nothing official has been heard from the latter as this blog goes out); public funding is provided via ActionAid (not happy bunnies, fluffy or otherwise) and the under-threat quangos of The Carbon Trust and the Energy Saving Trust; so it is unclear where the next lot of money to fund Ms Armstrong’s self-indulgent fantasies and shameless self promotion will be coming from.

Franny Armstrong has been silent for too long now. She is risking the integrity of her own organisation and those who work there. She is also seriously jeopardising her own reputation as a film maker.

Franny, it is time to resign. Show some backbone for the sake of your colleagues, your upset and confused supporters and your fellow environmentalists. Please clear your desk. No pressure.

BOO!

Weren’t expecting me, were you?

As promised, here are the first of my reasons to be cheerful:

Charity Shop Bargains

Bothwell is, sadly, completely devoid of charity shops. It would appear, from parlance with the locals, that the great and good of this fine village consider themselves rather too well orf for charity shops. Heavens, who on Earth would want to wear something second hand? I wonder whether they know that even that Mecca of quietly understated glamour that is Edinburgh’s Morningside have charity shops. As do West Hampstead. Mind you, Hampstead also has aged pop stars crashing into well known photography shops….

Fortunately, Uddingston has no such delusions of grandeur, and is home to a rather excellent shop in aid of St Andrew’s Hospice. It has recently undergone a revamp, which allows more than two people in the shop at any one time without fights breaking out over the glassware and ceramics (one day, just one day, I will find that priceless Lalique paperweight lurking behind a John Major toby jug….). This is excellent news, as it also means I can manoeuvre myself, the four year old whirling dervish, and his buggy-bound grabber of a brother around the shop without bringing down most of the displays.

Over the last week, alongside a couple of Ladybird traditional fairy tale books for the children, I have procured a brand-new looking pair of Doc Marten boots for the long-suffering Richard for the princely sum of £4.00; and a man’s claret red cardigan for myself. It was £3.00, looks brand new, and when I got it home I discovered it is 100% lambswool.  Result.

Rediscovering the local shops

Getting out for a walk every day (as part of my new routine) has meant I had an excuse to shop. I’m not talking about clothes, shoes and handbags here, I’m talking about buying milk, fruit and veg without just nipping into the local hellhole that is the latest in a long line of Tescos opening in the surrounding areas. Walking down to Uddingston took me past the local greengrocers, a place I had only visited a handful of times before and found them expensive, and much of their produce imported. I’m very glad I did pop in – their vegetables are predominantly local and are much cheaper than the average supermarket and, although their fruit is more expensive, I’m not having to dispose of it within a day of buying it because it has gone mouldy (how long do supermarkets store their fruit before it even hits the shelves?). Add to this the fact they sell local free range eggs for a frankly jaw-dropping £1.20 for six extra large eggs, and I have just become their greatest fan. Richard has also discovered that the butchers are now stocking free range chicken, and that one has a rabbit in the freezer (a rabbit that, on Monday, may well have our name on it).

Free food

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m not very good at foraging. I am far too frightened I will poison someone. But I like to have a bash at it, with things that are pretty hard to confuse with something deadly. Fortunately I have two great books – Richard Mabey’s essential ‘Food For Free’ (the Collins Gem edition is great for just shoving in your coat pocket) and Pamela Michael’s ‘Edible Wild Plants and Herbs’ which is rather more cumbersome to carry around.

I’m not a huge fan of Autumn (though beautiful, I find it rather melancholic), but it is a great time of year for jam and chutney making, so with that in mind I have set off around Bothwell’s green and pleasant lands (well, the nature trail and a few scraggy bushes around the community garden’s perimeter fence) in search of brambles, elderberries and even haws (the fruit of the hawthorn, not the ladies of ill-repute). As I’m wandering around, I’m noticing – and being able to identify – more and more. Don’t think I’ll ever be brave enough to pick wild mushrooms, though.

My evenings have been spent (when not trying to pick haws in the dark that falls like a theatre curtain at around 7.30pm and is made all the more pitch by the fact that the local intelligentsia’s latest hobby is smashing the streetlamps) holed up in the tiny, cluttered kitchen making jam and chutney; the windows steamed up against the chill of the night air, and the simmering preserve pan drowning out the sounds of the neighbours’ drunken arguments. And so it came to pass that I now have jars of bramble and elderberry jam, haw chutney and a spiced apple and sultana chutney (though I admit that the latter chutney was a cheat, having bought both apples and sultanas, but one hates to see good distilled vinegar sitting forlornly on a shelf awaiting purpose) neatly jarred, sealed and labelled; hair that smells of vinegar; and a longing for an enormous farmhouse kitchen complete with rayburn, rocking chair and stable door.

It all came to a head last week, I think, when I remembered (with horror) that I am not far off 38 (which, in itself, is not far off 40). Admittedly, I don’t often feel my age (except when surrounded by the young glamour-pusses who wear designer clobber and a full face of make up for the nursery run – in the massive 4 x 4, naturally – whilst I turn up looking as though I’ve slept in a hedge. For a fortnight); but recently I have been gripped by this overwhelming sensation that my life is passing me by.

It occurred to me that; whilst health visitors, counsellors et al positively promote the idea of routines when your life revolves around those small, noisy, messy creatures we call children; too much routine is NOT necessarily a good thing. I am, I admit, a creature of habit – I, like your average 6 month old, settle easily into a routine, adore repetition – and thus each day has become a Groundhog Day of schedules and clock-watching which started off as comfortable in its familiarity but has since become a crashing bore.

When you don’t get the children’s coats and shoes ready (at the hearth, right in the centre) until EXACTLY two minutes after Timmy Time has started, you know you are on the verge of leaving cosy familiarity and bombing, headlong, into OCD. Having realised how much each day mirrors the one before it, from the blue mug of coffee whilst the children throw their breakfast around to the several glasses of cheap red wine before bed (me, not them); it dawned on me that if I’m not very careful, I will be re-enacting this very routine until I pack them off to work. (I’d like to say University, but at this rate financially we will never afford to send them). I dare say they will still be throwing their cereal over the floor and kicking each other under the cheap farmhouse ‘style’ table, too.

I left a random message on Facebook on Sunday about ‘the rest of my life starting tomorrow’. This was meant to be a positive affirmation, a way of putting it down where umpteen people could see it, and therefore validate my efforts. I think it excited many of my friends, who are now under the (entirely misguided) impression that I am pregnant.

So…I would like you to meet the New Me. Well, it’s really the Old Me. The one who cared more about her appearance, that ate well, that looked after herself sensibly (OK, not TOO sensibly), who enjoyed arts and crafts and long walks in the countryside, who would lay on her bed and read and listen to the radio instead of sitting with a bottle of wine gawping at some mindless TV, or chatting to cyber friends about nothing in particular. Life is happening all around me. Real life. And I’d rather like a slice of it, please. I’m fed up of staring into middle distance.

Here’s the plan:

I’m going to keep this blog updated. Pwomise.

Each week, even if it’s only a few lines long, I’m going to tell you my ‘Reasons to be cheerful’, things that I have loved doing – things that have made me really happy. (I must thank the lovely guys at The Touchwood Project for this idea – thank you for a very well-timed email!). I hope to tell you more about what we are doing to save the World (albeit on a very, very small scale), and tell you a bit more about my personal faith and what it means to me. Thank you for bearing with me. xxxxx

Paddling at Croyde Bay

Yes, it has been a while. My apologies to those of you missing the Most Boring Blog on WordPress.

July has been a most peculiar month, and it has taken me a while to get my thoughts into something approximating a cohesive order. Of course, whilst my thoughts whirled around my head like the drum of a 1600 speed washing machine, more and more things have happened – all of which deserve due mention so, once more, procrastination won out (though melting the laptop on top of the stove didn’t help, but more about that later….).

At the end of June, the McNeil family descended on Croyde, North Devon, for our week of summer camping. We met up with my sister and her family, who were in the plusher surroundings of a caravan, and my parents who went the whole hog and enjoyed a week in the salubrious surroundings of a static.

It was our first experience of a ‘Holiday Park’ type set-up and, I will admit, I was somewhat nervous of the whole thing. We are used to small, cheap camp-sites near mountains with very basic facilities and lots of bearded people wearing hiking boots and listening to folk music. This year, we were getting the promise of sun, sand, an indoor pool, family friendly bar within staggering distance of the tent, ‘entertainment’ and a ‘lively family experience’. I, being the most cynical person on the planet, read this as ‘sunburn, crowded beach full of lobster-pink Brummies (why DO they burn so quickly? And why do they not notice? And why are back out in the sun showing their back-blisters to the World at 10am the following day?), a pool full of screeching children and amorous teenagers heavy-petting in the rapids, hordes of drunken parents yelling at their obnoxious children across the beer garden, fifth-rate ‘blue’ comedians and failures from ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, and being shoe-horned in amongst the kind of people I’d come on holiday to get away from who would spend all week kicking footballs at our tent and falling over our (sensibly luminous) guy-ropes.

I was pleasantly surprised. Ruda’s camping pitches are enormous and well set-out, giving the beastlings plenty of room to ‘explore’ without disappearing from view behind a hotch-potch of tents; the facilities, though basic, were really well cared for, and our fellow campers (a combination of families and young surf-dude and dudette types) were (with the exception of one group of moronic bimbos who couldn’t handle their cider) all very conscious of noise-levels, careful driving from the pitch when children were playing, etc. The bar was – well – your typical child-friendly bar complete with soft-play and outdoor play area and reasonably priced jugs of lager (Wetherspoons in the sun, really), though their food was overpriced and not great (but hell, who needs pub-grub when you’ve got 17 packets of Super Noodles in your tent?). The pool, though busy, was great fun. Even when Ellis threw himself down the slide when his father’s back was turned and almost drowned himself……(someone’s name has gone down for swimming lessons). Importantly, the entertainment and facilities are there if you need them, but are not thrust in your face at every given opportunity as I was expecting.

The beach at Croyde is amazing – clean sand, excellent surf, plenty of rock pools for exploring, and all under the watchful eye of the World’s Most Sarcastic Lifeguards, who had us in stitches each time they called another errant surfer in ‘We do not put up flags for the good our health, you know’ / ‘You, yes, YOU, the obviously blind and deaf surfer heading for those sharp rocks. Please don’t be asking us to save you’.

Plenty of places to visit (Croyde is a bit of a one-horse village, to be fair) – Ilfracombe, the beautiful village of Clovelly, Barnstaple is a sweet little town. Same, unfortunately can’t be said of Westward Ho! which we renamed ‘Westward No’ as it compares unfavourably with Airdrie. And that’s saying something.

Here is a picture of Clovelly, as for some reason I don’t appear to be able to either name it, nor centre it.

 One of the best days out we had (and the most expensive) was a trip to The Big Sheep http://www.thebigsheep.co.uk which was, yes, a family attraction based on sheep. Again, deep cynicism got the better of me as I begrudgingly forked out the entrance fee (whilst rolling my eyes in an ‘I’m not bloody made of money’ fashion) yes, once again, I was pleasantly surprised. I now know my Welsh Mountain from my Soay, I have learnt all about shearing and dog trials; Ellis got to ride a Dartmoor pony called Mischief – but the enormous ‘bouncy pillows’ (like huge trampolines, but adults were allowed on – yay!) were worth the entrance fee alone. I should also mention the daily Sheep Racing – hilarious!

(Photos – the amazing bouncy pillow, and Ellis riding Mischief the Dartmoor).

OK, I’m going to wind this up now. Obviously we had a lovely holiday, it was wonderful to get away from the four walls for a while; but there is only so much I can say about it without this becoming an epic. It’s taken me a fortnight to write this much!