Count your blessings - for Karen W

This weekend draws to a close with a sad farewell to a lovely lady. I went to the funeral of Karen on Thursday. It was a beautiful personal service and evocative of who Karen was. Her three children stood for the eulogy and it was as you would expect very moving. To all intents and purposes she was a bubbly funny lady full of life and mischief. I got to know her on a personal development course at work and we had lots in common. One of our first little adventures as she called them came about when we had our colours done. It turned out we were both wearing the wrong colour for our hair and skin tone, in fact each was wearing what the other should so in the break we went and swapped outfits, in the toilets giggling like a couple of kids and then trying to keep a straight face whilst waiting for the others to notice.
Prior to the course our only contact had been by email and so we just exchanged pleasantries. After the course that changed and one of our constant sources of amusement were the medical appointments she had to send to my station. We started trying to think of all the possible alternatives to say the same thing. It was so funny at times that we would end up phoning each other and she would always answer as she knew it was me with a Leslie Phillips type hellooo. Our friendship continued when I covered for 12 months at the station next door to her office. We shared jokes, confidences, talked about our failed relationships, our kids, our lost babies.
When things got tough for her at work I tried to give guidance and advice and visited her at home when she was off work. Regrets? Yes definately that we seemed to lose touch after this, only the occasional text or Facebook message. That she didn't feel able to share the way that she was feeling or ask for more support. That I didn't recognise her withdrawal as a sign she was struggling. Under the surface of that devil-may-care attitude she was obviously suffering and in pain and for that I will always feel truly sorry and sad. That the world has lost a one in a million diamond and those children have lost their mom is such a terrible shame and such a waste.
So another reminder that we should be grateful for what we have, those who love us. Kiss your babies and treasure the good times. Never judge another until you have walked a mile in their shoes and never be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Sleep tight Curly Kaz, until we meet again for that great big party in heaven.

Sometimes only a strop will do

Work for me just lately is a constant niggle. It's not something I am accustomed to and I don't like it. For over 7 years I have been very lucky to have been in a position where I have loved my job and not minded going to work at all. Towards the beginning of this year this all changed. Austerity cuts to the fire service have meant a rocky ride for myself and my colleagues and I found myself having to justify my role, being interviewed for my own job and being compulsory transferred from the fire station where I worked to the corporate headquarters. It has not been easy. I know I should be grateful I still have a job when others don't but still I am finding it increasingly difficult.
The work should be fundamentally the same but in reality it's poles apart and the very bones of my old role, the stuff I really loved and that really challenged me has gone. These days the challenges are of a different kind and I begin to question whether its time for another change. I don't have a problem with change generally but it needs to have a good rationale behind it and all this just doesn't.
Last week on my first day back at work after holidays I found myself feeling very out of sorts. Office politics plus the organisations tendency to bend rules to suit them driving my stress levels high up the Gail force scale.
All I wanted was my own desk, not much to ask in a building which is littered with empty desks and sections you would think. My own little space to call my own after being uprooted from my little station world where I was more or less queen, somewhere I could adapt to my lefthandedness, an oasis of calm to come to after the hellish commute with its increased diesel bills, road rage and tripling of my journey time. A little niche within my team which incidentally now includes someone who has no admin experience but has been given the job anyway when other colleagues have been displaced or left. I digress.
So it came to be that I got a strop on. Now in the general scheme of things my strops aren't huge but their rarity makes them somehow more potent. I hate feeling this way and I also hate that it sounds to others that I am always moaning and being negative which goes against my very grain. It's all very wearing and counterproductive. Anyway up a strop it was and I think more by luck than judgement on this occasion I got my own way and I do currently have my own desk. A small battle in what has increasingly felt like a war. The only problem is now I have it, it doesn't seem as important now as it it did and I am left looking again at the reality of my new circumstances and having to decide what steps to take next. Hmmm

French diaries part deux

This morning I feel a little weary. This is due to a very traditional Burgundian evening spent in the village (montberthault) at the house of Claude and Annie. Several aperitifs proceeded a lovely local meal. A salad of crayfish tails, asparagus and egg followed by escargot in garlic butter. I challenge you to taste better snails anywhere, Claude collects them locally and then prepares them. For main we had local deer shot by their son with accompaniments including lambs ear mushrooms also collected by Claude. Then the obligatory cheese and on to homemade tarts of custard, plums and cherries. All was washed down by copious amounts of burgundy wine. Of course we couldn't leave without a digestif and l'eau de vie of pear and also plum warmed the cockles. It was a great evening, these people speak little English and have little money but open their home to us willingly and shared the delicious local produce served simply but there is nothing better.  Claude has lived in the same house all his life, his mom the village school mistress. By the end of the evening we were all chatting amiably in a mixture of French and English.
A super evening leading to a quiet morning as we all recuperate. Tres jolie!

And breathe......

Bienvenue from France. It's been so long since I have blogged I don't know where to start. The big build is virtually finished, I had become intimate with my work men Tony, Matt, Dan, Loxley, big Jim, often more intimate than I would have liked to the point I feel like they should be on my Christmas card list and invited to family parties but they have now departed and I have my house and garden back to myself. Just in time to come away on my holidays.
So here I am in France feeling very relaxed but mindful of the decorating I have to do back home.

In other news (another reason the blog has been neglected) the fact that my mom had a fall here in France and ended up having to have a hip replacement before being repatriated home to the UK. A stark reminder of the march of time and the fact that we are all getting older. My mom and dad have always seemed so hardy but they aren't invincible and I don't really want to think about what that will mean in the future. Having to make regular visits to them both brings this home.

I'm sure lots of things have happened some interesting some mundane but these seem to have escaped my memory which leaves this particular entry a little lame. Apologies readers I hope to be back on form soon. Watch this space!

Would you like dust with that?

Well here we are well into my build. It's going well, of course there have been the unexpected costs putting a strain on the budget but on the whole it's going well. I still feel like I'm camping but under the dust cloud of some long over due volcano in Iceland. I've got dust on my dust. At first I tried to keep on top of it. Closing all doors, hoovering daily, dusting too but it was all to no avail and the dust has triumphed. Now sitting on the sofa leaves an imprint of my bottom but even if I dust it when I return after a few hours it has settled again. I will be glad when everything is restored to normal and I can have a proper spring clean I hear my self saying like I have been brainwashed by a 50s style house wife. I feel this will be when my book 1001 ways with vinegar will really come in to its own. Now if only there was a book called 1001 ways with dust I'd be laughing.

Indoor camping

Forgive me readers, it has been many days since my last submission...
This is because the big plans are finally happening. The big build has begun. The excitement is still at the moment outweighing the inconvenience. I currently feel like I am camping in my house. The contents of my kitchen cupboards are spread between my lounge and the spare bedroom. the microwave has pride of place on the sideboard. This does mean apart from cleaning up dust and mess caused by the work, housework is pretty futile and so I can refrain without any guilt. I wonder where the housework guilt thing comes from and guess it must be my mom. She is very tidy and even at 77 insists on her daily chores and housework with military precision. My sister is pretty good at it too. I must have the rogue gene. Also my ex mother in law was very old school and housework was done every day along with ironing and the tea on the table when the man got in from work. I'm not sure how that works when the man gets in from work before you but hey. She also had the knack of making me feel spectacularly inadequate in the good housewife stakes. It's not that I don't do it, that would mean we lived in a slum but I don't relish it and will prevaricate as much as I can. I think I have to be in the right mood. When the mood strikes I can beaver away like the best of them, cleaning windows, dusting cupboard tops, spraying, polishing and mopping. I draw the line at bleaching the teapot though! Luckily for me but unluckily for my OCD prone hubby that mood doesn't strike with alarming regularity. Following one of these manic sessions I promise myself I will keep on top of things because then it's not such a big job but inevitably life gets in the way.
Any way today the wall between my old kitchen and my new kitchen is coming down in a very Berlin-esque type way. I feel liberated. The dust for once is not my responsibility. Although I'm guessing clearing it up for the next few weeks will be.

Big plans afoot

The proposed building work on my house has been in the planning stages for what seems like forever. How complicated is it these days to get work done to the outside of your house, I had no idea. My house is an unattractive 1970's semi. It has square edges and little character. The problems with planning that we have had you would think it was a listed Jacobean cottage. The garage juts out at the front of the house and we thought we would bring the rest of the house to meet it with a symmetrical line, matching window and sympathetic new tiled roof, just as several people in the road have already done. Not allowed. Why? Not in keeping with the road. Ok so the road is not in keeping with itself. There are 4/5 different types of house in the small cul-de-sac and we face some low level flats and terraced 3 storey houses. Over the years lots of building work has gone on, some sympathetically some just plain ugly but the result is a higgeldy piggedly array in a patchwork quilt type display. The planning officer though he say no! New rules since 2007 apparently (shutting gate after horse has bolted) so we can't change our house to look like the nice looking ones in our road. We appealled, we lost. This all cost money. The jutty out bit has to stay as does the garage door. More money for new plans. Finally we are due to start work on the revised plan.
I am excited but also scared of the magnitude and mess. I have virtual shopped and planned so many times, changed my mind, changed it back again, it's difficult to accept its about to happen and I have to commit myself and make decisions. So it's farewell to my retro mustard 70's kitchen which has been in so long it's come back in fashion and hello to dust and eventual modern appliances. Let the work begin....

On a serious note

For those of you looking for something light and frothy, today this isn't it. I've had a few difficult days. Friday would have been my son Daniel's 21st birthday. Tragically Daniel died 16 years ago on his fifth birthday. He hadn't been poorly but unbeknownst to us he had a coronary aneurism which was udiagnosed and undetected and in fact a ticking bomb. Dan had Kawasaki disease as a toddler but this had been missed.
May is a month full of birthdays for my family and this makes it especially hard that Daniels is such a sad day rather than a celebration. It's difficult that when I am buying cards and presents for everyone else but for Dan, I am writing a piece for the in memoriam section of the paper and ordering flowers for his grave. It's something that I will never get used to and doesn't get easier even with the years that pass.
How people react is interesting too. Obviously close friends and family are fine, they are used to Daniels being spoken of often. Some people are curious asking directly what happened but worried that they may cause me offence by doing so. I am always keen to point out that no offence will be taken and I'm glad to be able to raise the profile of the silent killer that is KD. Others are shocked but sympathetic and you can see them mentally counting their own blessings and wondering how they would cope in that situation. They often say that they wouldn't be able to but the reality is you have two options to carry on or not. Most people choose the first but they are unlikely to wear their grief like a badge of honour, more likely they quietly deal with the ups and downs of grieving. So many bereaved parents walk among us, you would be surprised. From a personal point of view, I had a traumatised 7 year old that I had no choice but to carry on for, it must be so much harder if you lose your only child. Even so the survival instinct is a strong one. Don't get me wrong some days you just want to stay in bed, draw the covers over your head and never face the world again but thankfully those times get less as the years pass.
The other group of people you come across are probably the hardest to come to terms with. They are the ones who for what ever reason can't deal with acknowledging your loss. In the days, weeks and months after Dan died, I had people who literally crossed the road to avoid speaking to me. Or when I did speak to them for the first time didn't acknowledge what had happened to the point where I have thought that they didn't know, in some cases I have told them as I really believed they didn't know but they did and that made them even more uncomfortable. At first this made me angry, that they couldn't   Acknowledge it was like an insult to Daniel. Now it's makes me a bit sad that they are so scared of emotions and also a little envious because its likely that they have never lost anyone really close or they would be able to be more empathetic.
Nowt so strange as folk eh.
I think one of the best pieces of advice I can give anyone for dealing with sensitive issues such as these is take your lead from the person in question, chances are they will want to talk about it and just because you don't know what to say, don't just say nothing. It's perfectly acceptable to say just that ' I don't know what to say' yes you may feel bad but believe me you are never going to feel as bad as the person who is bereaved and they don't feel bad because of what people have said to them, they feel bad because of their loss and sometimes just someone acknowledging that is enough.

Bad weather and general malaise

The brief sunny interlude at Spring bank holiday was just a blip it seems. It's cold and it's rainy and it makes everyone miserable. The heating is still on mid May when the doors should be open to the garden. What's it all about.
In winter you expect it to be cold, you dress accordingly, yeah you still moan about it but that's par for the course but its spring and well it's just not spring like at all. When the sun shines I feel all sociable and motivated. I throw open the windows and make like Snow White with the help of the woodland animals and clean with gusto. I plan jobs for the outside, the lawn, the oiling of the decking, the painting of the garage doors* I have to add at this point these jobs don't always get done but I feel like I want to do them, that's the point. The garage door is my nemesis. When I moved in 7 years ago I bought the paint, a sedate Oxford blue. I still haven't painted them yet. I thought they were going last year so put the job on hold due to proposed building work. Then they were staying so got psyched up about doing them but only last week Mr UDG mooted we might have a new one so now their future is up in the air and the paint may not get used. That's if it hasn't gone off by now.

I digress....back to the weather, so today I should be at the local leisure centre before work to do an exercise class. Last week I walked up with my mat in my exercise clothes and felt very pleased with myself. Today I wallow in bed thinking its too wet and miserable to do anything. Hence it seems my mood and my motivation are inexplicably linked to the weather, which living in this country doesn't bode well for the state of my house. Maybe I was a sun goddess in a previous life or maybe I'm just a lazy bint. Hmmm jury's out on that one.

Sleep stories

Sleep... I love it. I have always loved my bed and need plenty of sleep. As a small child I didn't have a set bedtime as I would go to bed myself if I was tired and didn't stay up late. As adolescence kicked in my parents maintained a relaxed approach to my sleeping. If I was out late on a saturday they had no issues with me sleeping in on a Sunday until 3 getting up in time for my dinner. Mr Undomestic Goddess though is a different matter, after being a milkman for 20 years he can manage on as little as 3 hours sleep a time. A concept I find disturbing. Anyway maybe it's an age thing, my mom used to lie in on a sunday but now can be known to be up as early as 6 on holiday or the weekend, I fear this may be my fate. 
Firstly I started with the 4 o'clocks. My eyes suddenly ping awake in the early hours and then it's as if I'm a fruit machine as all the thoughts and images start spinning behind my eyeballs rendering sleep impossible. When I finally do drop off its not long before the alarm and then I feel awful.
Secondly is what I call the wide awake club. It's when you're really tired but can't get off to sleep. You toss and turn and then start to fret that if you don't sleep soon you will exhausted tomorrow which of course is not conducive to slumber.
Both these sleep patterns are accompanied by me not being able to stay awake on the sofa to watch tv in the evening. Oh yes I used to mock my parents for always being asleep in front of the tv and could never imagine that one day it would be me. Well it is. The worst thing is when I go into a really deep sleep and actually think I'm tucked up in bed. Mr UDG is culpable in this as he often covers me with a blanket so I don't go cold. Ah how sweet I hear you say and yes it is but it also means he can watch boring bloke things on tv undisturbed. He has to suffer my wrath though when I awaken and find I am in fact not in bed and still have to go upstairs, undress, wash, brush my teeth etc. I am never amused and not a happy bunny at this effort. Then of course I am back to square one with the wide awake club and so it continues...

The side effect of new shoes

A lovely bank holiday weekend was had by all. So Saturday with friends we all head off to a charity old Skool disco. Please note: the new shoes are looking mighty fine and admired by all. It all started off a bit dubious, big room painted black, very dark and lots of people. Nowhere to sit or perch a drink either. They were playing jazz funk not a favourite of mine. To add insult to injury they didn't have any Bacardi so I had to drink vodka. Anyway after a few of the aforementioned vodkas things were on the up, music improved, table acquired. Had a great night, lots of tunes some I'd forgotten some I wish time had forgotten. The 12" version of pig bag was especially hard on the knees. Unfortunately the feet didn't fair as well. The new shoes causing a huge blister! No pain no gain I guess. Thank god for blister plasters is all I can say as BH Monday was spent in malverns which of course involved walking. So will I learn my lesson and wear sensible shoes in the future? Nah, aesthetic over comfort any day.

New shoes...chemical free anti-depressants

The sun is shining, I have new shoes...all is well in my world.
I'm not sure where my love of shoes began, I have an early memory of my first Mary Janes. I would have been about 3 and they were red and I would show them to anyone, friends, family, the milkman, the postman, random passers by. The following years weren't so happy and I suffered endless traumas  in shoe shops as my very narrow feet meant I could only ever have the same style shoes. They were basically a pair of Mary Janes but with a double strap and I had them in black, patent black, red, brown and navy, over and over again. Each visit to the shoe shop would be accompanied by tears and tantrums and that was just my mom. As I got older things got worse and I would only be offered masculine lace ups. My first pair of fashion shoes were red plastic platforms with a big gold buckle and I loved them. They weren't great for running in though and I still have the scars to prove it.
Maybe the frustrations of  previous years led to my passion for shoes, who knows but as soon as I got my own spondoolies I spent them on shoes...lots of shoes. If I liked them I would get them in several colours (this is was definitely an early years throw back)
The new shoe experience is enhanced by a nice shoe box, I keep them to keep the shoes in and also a matching bag.
Today's newest addition to the shoe family are a nude hidden platform court. I plan to wear them tonight and I will in the finest tradition be showing them to anyone and everyone, including I'm sure later in the evening, the taxi driver.