I’m grumpy today and celebs/people who would like no more than to be in love themselves appeared to spend a lot of time on Twitter, Facebook and forums posting sarcasm and bile and bitterness about Valentine’s Day this week. Apart from making themselves look full of bile and bitterness it also depresses those who are only too happy to have YET another reason; no, not A reason, YET another reason to spread a bit of love…

One of the funniest things I spotted was a girl who had dressed her dinner table and daubed the room in pink hearts and balloons and soppiness waiting for her partner to get home to amuse him BECAUSE they think Valentines day is all about marketing and shallowness…anyone spot the irony there? I bet they had a whale of a time! I hope so…and I bet they do it next year too! It looked fabulous!

As a child, and not an oil painting at that, I desperately wanted Valentine’s cards and don’t think I ever got one…I don’t remember being cynical and stompy saying Valentines Day was a load of rubbish…I just wanted a Valentine’s Card!..I also thought my time would come and I’ve not been without one for 28 years now! *smug* So where does  this misery come from? Is it cool to be miserable? I’m afraid I’m of the opinion that if you go around smiling…no matter how you feel on the inside; unloved, ugly, depressed, scared or lonely, that generally people smile back and in turn that makes you feel better.

Can you imagine having pets and not loving them? They don’t understand that you’re just being cool. You give a pet that has come from a rescue home love and you get untold rewards back from them. Try it on a human!

Love attracts Love…and it’s the best thing in the world.

I am not a huge fan of the colour yellow and would totally avoid it in clothes…apart from one great exception…my Fishbone T-shirt signed by Norwood the bassist and Angelo the vocalist

I would say I dislike the colour until I actually think about it, especially at this time of year as I await the clarion call of (if I remember correctly) about 750 bulbs; the fanfare into spring that makes my heart fairly burst when the first daffodils appear! Long awaited after the winter dormancy and the cold, brown, hard earth…the piles of brown leaves littering the garden from the stark bareness of the beech, sycamore and oak that border it.

When I open my eyes even more, yellow is already apparent in my garden in the Winter Jasmine rambling over the fence at the back and my Hamamelis by the bird table, that when you take the time to actually breathe on the frozen flowers whilst out feeding the birds, emit a beautiful fragrance as you breathe back in (thanks for that tip Emma at the Gift Shed!)

As we see the spring flowers arrive it usually brings with it the other great yellow thing, so welcome, that we also take for granted! Roll on 05:14 March 20th!

Obviously for me, as a huge Narnia fan, my brain went first to Eustace Scrubb’s enchantment in Voyage of The Dawn Treader, one of my favourite books in the Chronicles, and then flitted to Smaug in The Hobbit, but as this is the Tuesday after Wales won their first match with Ireland in the Six Nations Rugby Tournament that began this weekend, I would like to show you the best flag in the world, one which I have on my coffee table to wave madly as soon as the anthem kicks in…

….and I burst into tears before Alun-Wyn Jones, guaranteed!

I was born in Wales, my family are all welsh speaking (apart from my generation as our parents moved out of Wales when we were babies) but I can’t explain it…my Taid, a well-known Tenor on the Eisteddfod circuit in the 50′s/60′s and 70′s instilled such pride in us and my father, who idolised my Taid, has carried it on with my nephew and nieces, not even born in the country but borne of welsh parents.

The sheer volume of the singing in The Millenium Stadium intimidates the other teams so much so that their coaches have the choice to open the roof or not, weather permitting, to allow the dilution of the volume!

Apart from that, you’ve got to admire the blokes’ physiques even if you’re not a rugby fan!

…it also gives my husband a legitimate excuse to call my mother a Welsh Dragon!

CYMRU AM BYTH!!!!

What a stupid language English is! Here is the thesaurus definition!…

wether  is a neutered ram; weather  is climactic and atmospheric conditions; while whether  simply means ’if’ or ’either’

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.  ~John Ruskin

Rainbows apologize for angry skies.  ~Sylvia Voirol

Weather is a great metaphor for life – sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and there’s nothing much you can do about it but carry an umbrella.  ~Terri Guillemets

This week I shall talk about being ‘under the weather’.
I’m a jolly chap in general, positively beany some would say…except I’m a bit fed up because I’ve had a broken ankle since  25.11.11 after an un-glamorous step off an 8″ step walking out of my hairdresser. I knew I’d snapped it straight away as I did the same thing off a half-inch kerb outside Nottingham Rock City before a Marillion gig in 2000 (though we got backstage to meet the band!) however it took 3 casts to heal so when I heard the snap this time I crawled back into the hairdresser, gave her heart failure and she took me to the hospital.

The reason I’m ‘under the weather’ is because four weeks after the consultant had a prod and sent me on my way…I had to ask about physio as an afterthought…my foot is worse than it was three days after the cast came off. The consultant had said no more than it will swell, it will hurt but do what you can on it and rest it if you do too much…which I did. I took my decorations down, I did housework, I washed dishes and ironed, I gigged on it twice and went to see Rich twice in his other bands, so I’ve not just sat about pondering my navel! However, when I turned up for my physio appointment after four weeks yesterday, I wasn’t surprised that she thought I was in rather a bad way as I had gone from the ecstatic feelings, revelling in standing in the bath unsupervised having a shower and washing my own hair again, using both legs, to being utterly paranoid that I was going to slip and fall as I hopped about gingerly on the slippy surface, avoiding putting any weight on the leg at all.

It has stiffened up unexercised, and she now tells me that it is likely to take months rather than weeks to walk properly again, due mainly to the lack of knowing what I was doing for the last four weeks. That, and the fact that she told me I had broken the fibula rather than the malleolus as I had been told; granted by the plaster lady, as I said the nurse who admitted me only told me it was fractured at all, popping her head around the cubicle curtain when she overheard me and Rich saying that the initial Triage nurse had said she thought it may just be ligamental saying “Oh no, it’s definitely a fracture” before disappearing again.

I have now to do physio exercises 3 times a day and ice it 4 times a day, back on elbow crutches to try to regain correct posture to relearn how to weight-bear again properly with weekly appointments at the physio clinic, plus I can’t drive until she tells me I can which renders me virtually housebound again for the foreseeable! I am however infinitely relieved that she didn’t immediately send me back up to X-ray for another cast!…

I could do with that quote about clouds and silver linings about now….?

This week’s weekword is brought to you by this lady http://diario.bunny-land.com/2012/01/weekword.html so by all means go to her blog to read what she has written and for all those others taking part this week!

The best example I can give you of this is to tell a story about a teeny frustration of being in a band, where we are quite aware we are there to entertain our punters but do not generally require audience participation whilst just starting to sing a song for instance…for some half-cut punter walking up to Richard’s Kings of Leon/Killers style covers band on New Year’s Eve shouting lairily, WKD in-hand, that they should perform Mustang Sally; a generally detested standard on the rock/blues circuit, guaranteed to bring most singers out in a sweat at it’s very mention, as ‘all good bands do Mustang Sally’ doesn’t particularly warrant much more than to be soundly beaten by the headstock of a guitar or to accidentally discus the largest cymbal at her retreating tinselled, lolling head, hog-tying her with the mic lead as she goes to tell her maaaaaaaaaaaaaaates what a crap band they are when  she sings it at karaoke every week and it goes down a storm…well, missy, given that and some bleary-eyed flat-as-a-kippers-dick crooner doing Mac The bloody Knife I can understand why!

See you next week!

Hmmm. Witty. Me and my husband don’t watch much telly but what we do watch on it is a lot of the comedy shows, guaranteed to make us smile no matter what sort of day we’ve had and sport. We find that sports people are funnier than a lot of comedians especially cricketers, rugby players but more than anything else, some of the Motorcycle racers in BSB, World Superbikes and MOTO GP are really funny. I think excellence at a physical and/or dangerous thing needs humour for release and I’d listen to Colin Edwards, Shakey Byrne, even Casey Stoner (who can be a bit mizz) do a stand-up routine telling me about chatter on their bikes rather than some of Tim Vine’s pants one-liners that leave me scratching my head in disbelief!

Here’s Ben Spies, so serious on the track. They don’t try to talk to him before the race any more but enjoy this!

Then the current advert for the England Rugby World Cup squad has us in stitches too, though I wouldn’t argue at Ben Foden smoothing my top down or Jonny making me a brew either!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W9W4FrH5mw

Having a driver study to become an osteopath he pointed me to his training hospital where I could get cut price treatment to become a case study for the students, which also meant stripping to my underwear with only a lurid green hospital gown to preserve my modesty in front of up to three students. It wasn’t as bad as I thought and I bravely jutted my chin (I was going to say stick my chest out but that would be just wrong under the circumstances!) and went along with it.

I was doing OK until the first student, asked to comment on my posture, proceeded to tell me I had hypermobile knees and a dropped right arch!..Quite indignantly I pointed out I was there for my back and what did my knees and feet have to do with that?..they explained, I listened. I also learnt quite a lot! For instance, that had I gone to see them 3 months earlier the prognosis would have been better for my back! By this time I couldn’t put socks on or tie a shoe lace!

I had decided to start training for a half marathon with my BNI group under the Osteos’ guidance after a couple of months when just weeks before it I was thrown from a friend’s horse I was going to help exercise. Stupid me got back on after the first fall but after the second one Rich drove me to the North Staffs with a suspected broken back/neck! I also broke the metatarsal in my left foot which stopped me training for anything and overall I set my back treatment straight back to the beginning whilst still performing in the band in my sexy Wayne Rooney boot which didn’t altogether help!

Told that Pilates would help me from the start, as one of the osteo students was a Pilates instructor from Solihull, she had a good old feel of my belly as I chortled I didn’t think I had any muscle under it and to be fair I didn’t do anything about classes, also failing to keep up with the exercises that they did give me – which also to be fair is difficult with a Jack Russell that bounces on your chest as you’re flat on your back putting it into spasm, or a slightly vacant collie that sits staring at you, occasionally dribbling…I also have an aversion to organised classes of most kinds and did do ballet, tap and piano up until I was 17 from age 5. Enough is enough, yes?

From September 2010 to February this year I ran out of money so couldn’t go for osteo but when I went did go back I got a different set of students and one day the overseeing tutor had a good old pummel telling me that in my shoulders I’d got – now let me get this right – soggy, mossy skin! He went on to explain that with everything that had gone on in 2010, Ruds dying, Rich being made redundant, the horse accident etc, etc that my endocrine system was depressed leaving this ‘mossy’ description of my skin where he said my endocrine system was not draining it properly…

Pause for effect…

Me and the delightful Irish student waited for him to leave, looked at each other and said “Did you understand a word of that?”

To cut a long story short, I needed exercises to expand my diaphragm, which is attached to the part of my spine that is immobile that would then help my endocrine system, also attached there, to drain this mossiness away and strengthen my muscle. Got that?

Unfortunately the next appointment saw the usual students and tutor and although I had walked out on air after the previous treatment and was full of this new approach, they didn’t do much of the diaphragm stuff and basically told me to come back in 6 weeks which hardly investigated that side so I didn’t go again.

Move forward to July and my back was in two again so with a Groupon voucher I got 3 chiropractor treatments for a good price and thought I’d try that route instead. I was cracked, pummeled and battered which was more instantaneously beneficial. She also mentioned Pilates. I wasn’t going to get away from this was I!

I researched and found, at last, a trained instructor in the area and I’ve been for my second lesson today. I hate going! I still hate organised classes! Last week I cried in the class as I was so unhappy in the situation (thankfully no one noticed as I stood at the back!) I’m not much older than everyone and considerably younger than some, but I HATE being useless at something, so my tears were more borne out of frustration and inadequacy than anything else and hey! I went back today didn’t I!…

The instructor is lovely, kind, knowledgeable and funny. She is also about my age but has THE most beautiful body I’ve ever seen and SWEARS by Pilates. It is her passion and I will be benefitting from it, once I can stop sulking of course! My back is rigid and I have difficulty with some of the exercises but she assures me that this will do the trick and that is why I’m there…

Are you going to encourage me to go next week?

I wanted to do quite a considered post as to what the word ‘Wonder’ inspired in me but as I was suddenly whisked off to drive an elderly neighbour to hospital with a broken ankle this dinnertime all I can come up with, as I’m quite hungry, is the phenomenon that was Golden Wonder crisps! Many years since usurped by Gary Lineker and his damn Walkers crisps and now only known for the dubious nutrition captured in a Pot Noodle (only chicken and mushroom will do now the Pot Rice is also consigned to the bin *wrings hands*) ANYWAY, back to the crisps of my youth! Cheese and onion were in GREEN wrappers and Salt and Vinegar were in BLUE, DAMN YOU GARY LINEKER! I hate Cheese and Onion and LOVE Salt and Vinegar so how dare they confuse me as I fumbled for change after swimming lessons at school wincing the chlorine out of my eyes!

I’m now in doubt however, as to whether two adverts from my teenage years that made me laugh were Golden Wonder or Walkers… a little Scottish gentleman checking his ancient purse possessively saying “So you’ll no be having a saaale then will ye?” as he paid for his crisps and another one where he lilted “Is it trrrrrrue ye get morrrrrrre crrrrrrrrrrrisps in ev-rrrrrrrry packet?” COME ON! Tell me you remember them too!

Anyway, Golden Wonder were great big crisps that would block out the sun if you held them up to the light and I remember see-through FULL bags, not the secretive foil ones of today that you open to find a third full of crisp fragments! Let’s hear it for Golden Wonder!

I am blessed with a mother and father who are not particularly complimentary but would die for me (as long as it was convenient and their milkman had been told though) and I know love me dearly. They just don’t particularly like saying so in case it gives me ‘a big head’ probably…

I was pretty offended when my mum thought it appropriate to send me a text a couple of years ago asking me what colour my eyes are as my Auntie (her sister) was with her and thought she was the only one in the family with green eyes. Isn’t it a default status that a mother should know the colour of their offspring’s eyes no matter how long ago they left home?

Also, in the last couple of months mum has found it necessary to comment on my wrinkles saying I have lines in the same places as my dad.  I appreciate she isn’t comparing looks per se but merely commenting on my genes and that I am indeed my dad in female form, which I’m perfectly happy with, honest, but just don’t need to be told I have a 74 year old’s wrinkles! There’s a song by Bonnie Raitt called ‘Nick of Time’ that says:

I see my folks are getting on and I watch their bodies change
I know they see the same in me and it makes us both feel strange
No matter how you tell yourself, it’s what we all go through
Those lines are pretty hard to take when they’re starin’ back at you

so I guess that’s what Mum is thinking but bloody hell! I’m still only 45 Mum!

I’ve been on an intensive course, the equivalent of an A’Level in a week, and it shook me up to be honest after my last A’Level being 27 years ago but more so the treatment of the younger kids there that left to go to the pub each dinner leaving anyone over 35 eating butties in the canteen discussing O Licensing, ADR regulations and maximum gross weight on axles of wagons! I’d have been happy in the pub with them, really!

I already found on a mate’s hen do on a beach in Wales a couple of years ago that it was inappropriate to comment on a 15 year old’s physique as he threw a rugby ball (I like rugby!) no matter how impressive for his age, as I was thrown shocked looks and informed they (as teachers) would all be struck off for even thinking what I’d said, so when laughing at a rural haulier taking the exam, probably no more than 22 or so, commenting on ladies in the workplace and their rights when pregnant and after birth commenting “Bloody hell! They just need to keep calving and they dunner ‘ave to work again!” that to exclaim to my 26 and 32-year-old male companions that I’d marry him if he wasn’t young enough to be my son appeared to be nausea inducing!

I look at my husband who I got together with when he was just 21 and I was 30 and wonder, where I was ‘a catch’ at that age, that now he’s still only in his thirties he must now regret being stuck with a (clearly wrinkly) 45-year-old!

I still maintain I’m happy at whatever age but it’s just every bugger else! I’M ONLY 45 OK?!  

Spiders.

I know it’s learned behaviour but yesterday I was just clearing dishes out of the sink, ready to wash them and there were TWO massive house spiders in there and I freaked. I screamed so loudly I hurt my throat and getting away into the front room in a time that Usain Bolt would have struggled to match, I banged one of my bony knees in the process. It took three-quarters of an hour for my heart rate to get back to normal and I now have a bruise on my knee, plus needed every light on coming upstairs to bed in case any more were lurking.

When did this start? I know they are more scared than I am, I know they don’t carry knives and a photo of me but I am truly scared! Any time a bloke has left me (just twice!) a spider has sat in the bath the very first day, requiring yards of toilet roll long enough to climb on but not so it can run up it and get into my ears and eat my brains and then eat me from inside and dessicate me till I drop into a pile of dust when lots of baby spiders will emerge to start their evil plans to take over the world again as I hurl it and the half a toilet roll into the garden screaming like.a.girl. in the process.

Sneezing.

Now I have a theory about why I sneeze so much compared to Rich. He has a cutesy button nose (he’ll thank me for that!) and I have nostrils Kenneth Williams would have been proud of, therefore it stands to reason that more airflow up mine will aggravate it don’t you think?

The violence of these sneezes is apocalyptic. With a dodgy back anyway I have been brought to my knees more than once in an agonised spasm, having laminated most of the surrounding environment whilst doing so. I always carry tissues but once I am struck (and it’s always in threes) I have no time to grab it. Rich lives in fear of me being overcome in the car as there is no escape for him as he is enveloped in mist and the dashboard is…a bit smeary shall we say.

Then there’s the stress incontinence as I look pityingly at him and say “I’ve weed a bit”

A cold nose by the way, is a big problem of mine after the adrenaline rush of a performance…everyone else would probably hit the booze or have ‘a wrap of whizz and a couple of lines of Charlie’ in true rock-star fashion…I retire to bed with a cup of tea and my warmest jim-jams but know if I’m not asleep by a certain time the cold.nose.of.doom will take over and I won’t sleep…cuddling up to Rich is useless as he’s always toasty and shakes me off as despite my near hypothermia I still feel too hot for him. Pfft!

Gulping as we looked out at the continuous rain we have had here all day, the dogs, seriously neglected as we had to go and set up at the venue yesterday at midday and had a guest drummer to entertain all afternoon after our drummer turned his ankle the day before leaving us wondering whether we could perform or not at all, had not been walked so started their team work whingeing pretty much as soon as we were compos mentis this morning which meant we knew we weren’t going to get away with it…

Let me tell you about XT and Ruddles! This is XT and Nic…

We have never met but we have ‘known’ each other on a forum for nigh on 8 years and we have shared a love of our critters in all that time; XT being Nic’s constant companion as she and I both work from home, and Ruddles was my darling dog, my companion for the 8 years I’d run my business. XT left us suddenly on July 13th 2009 and I broke my heart for Nic and when Ruddles left us in January 2010, she broke her heart for me.

Nic wanted us all to celebrate our dogs via a mile run, walk or amble, which she does as part of her training – she swims channels you know and when she’s not doing that she does Physique Figure Competition - we had planned to take Bo and ’Dini up the canal from Cheddleton, Staffs to The Hollybush, Denford (where we’re gigging on 18.08.11) for a pint (bicep training *cough*) until we saw the weather and decided we were going to just take on the half mile to Moorville Hall and back. This is where we have taken the boys as often as possible daily to lose Bo’s near two stones and try to wear The Russell out since we rescued them 3 weeks after Ruddles died 17 months ago. As part of the walk we run across a neighbour’s drive which has a nice incline down to it and a little one up the other side where we always shout “Ruddles!” as I had to walk him for the last 3 months of his little life to give him some exercise and so it has become The Ruddles Run.

I was far too comfy in my jim-jams and thoroughly on strike so when Rich presented me with his motorcycle waterproof trousers and his belt to keep them up, my ‘Luxury Parka’ (free from a catalogue years ago) and my lavender Hunter wellies I reluctantly climbed into them. Rich went the route of Bear Grylls and donned camouflage cargo pants, his camouflage ‘Big Coat’ only brought out in winter, and his wellies. I bring you…

The XT Memorial Mile…

We got drenched….

We’re just raising a glass to XT and The Rudster (for more bicep training!)