Make it Happen Someone?

Back at work, to discover that in my absence they have subsumed my job and thus cut my hours in half. I now no longer qualify for tax credits, and am really stuck as to what to do. It can't be legal to do this I suspect, but I feel that I have no fight whatsoever to take them on with. Oh, and I only received SSP for the time I was off. Cheers guys, really appreciate the support.

In good news, amazingly, I got onto the maths course. This means, that when I pass the exam at the end of August (I can't even contemplate failing it) I will at last be qualified enough to take my PGCE.

Then I can get the hell out of here and they can all kiss my fat arse goodbye.

Truth be Tulled

I am busy sewing a gazillion fuschia sequins onto miles of black tulle. This is part of the trial of being a goth mother. Elle doesn't know that while I have been away from work I have decorated her bedroom. The colour is called Turkish Delight but would be far better named Sexy Pink or Hot Lips. It's a deep, deep blue pink, very startling... at least it is when you stare at it for hours at a time, as I have been. On top of this lurid shade I have painted yards of black ivy trailing across and down the walls. A new set of drawers, a new wardrobe and a lampshade dripping mirrors and sequins completes the look. Or rather, the fifty thousand metres of tulle studded with sequins will complete the look, once it is attached at the window.

Elle lives at my mums during the summer, as she cannot get back to TinyVillageByTheSea from her summer job. I miss her. I am hoping to tempt her back during next week so that I can see her stunned face as she saunters into her new den. Of course I may be way off beam - it is entirely likely that she will gasp in horror and weep tears of pain before telling me that this year, its all about pale lemon and fluffy ducks. I somehow doubt it though.

Fractionally off...

Went for my maths test this afternoon. Must admit I was a tad grumpy, as it was boiling hot in tinyvillagebythesea and my new book was laid on the hammock, flipping its pages suggestively in the faint breeze. And I was sat, hunched over a level 3 maths book all morning. Looking confused.
After striding confidently (it's all bluff) into the wrong campus building I doubled back and arrived blotchy and panicky at the agreed meeting place where I hung around for ten minutes feeling sicker and sicker. Literacy test or numeracy test? asked the admin guy (note - cute, Christopher Eccleston lookeelikee, corphroaretc. Let's hope he likes ditzy women who count on their fingers.). Numeracy, I whispered, and followed him into an IT suite.

I need this maths thing to get into teacher training. I don't want to teach maths, I don't even want to teach a broad subject range, as I am intending to teach just English, and at a push psychology - why is it then, that I need to work out the volume of a cylinder? Convert decimals to fractions? What is the point?

I got 46.9% anyway, which is too low to qualify to take the intensive one week course which would get me the GCSE. I failed because I cannot work out volumes (except the one on my stereo) and I do not know what mean, median and something else means. If I knew what they meant, I wouldn't be sat there with three knuckle draggers . I can though still attend, and then go for an extra two evenings a week (like my life isn't shit enough already) until I reach the standard that the exam requires. That won't be too long, said Christopher Eccleston cheerily. Bless him.

At this rate, I shall be pensionable age before I qualify.

Leaving the car park, I leaned on my horn and made wanker symbols at a bloke that cut me up inadvertently. I need to find a better way to channel this energy.

Feeling better when I watch this.

Exit the Dragon...

This is what was flying and shooting near my house yesterday, Flighty tells me. Flighty knows everything about planes as you might suppose from his name. Thank you!

(I must say though, I rather preferred the idea of Puff the Magic Dragon. A warthog is much less acceptable. Though more likely to be associated with me, I grant you).

One for Flighty

I live by a tiny airbase. Well, I say by, it's a mile or so from my house. I've never been there as a grownup, but as a child I went samphire picking in a marsh with a friend and her mother one evening, and we were ushered away by a man who said we'd be blown up by the bombs if we weren't careful. I remember being quite thrilled. A favourite book of mine was Carrie's War, and as a wee one, I imagined myself in all kinds of dramas, so this was probably lovely. I'm not much better as an adult, chucking myself into dodgy situations. Anyway. I never really think about the place much -the father of a schoolfriend of Bonny's works there. He's a bit of a drip, and though Bonny's friend says he is a pilot, she also insists that she has a flat in Big Ben, so I suppose he is someone who manages graphs or something. I drive past the sign that says R.A.F VeryTinyVillagebytheSea twice a day too, but I don't really give it much thought apart from when I'm outside in the garden and very noisy jets fly over, or there is some bombing out to sea and then I get a bit annoyed as the village is very quiet otherwise.
Today whilst sunbathing off the effects of a miserable visit to the dentist (more later) both myself and Hats the Mutt were alarmed off our lazy bellies by an HORRENDOUS noise. It sounded like a huge, giant sized zip being drawn across the sky, and went on for a good while. The dog leapt up, ears all spanish policeman hat shaped and I was aghast. Wondering what the hell it was, I called dad - he used to be an aircraft engineer in the RAF years ago. I tried to explain the sound - like the big sky zip, but also like something horribly wrong with a speaker or an amp at full blast, when it happened again - Oh, dad said, I hear it now (he lives 10 miles away to give some idea of how loud it was in my garden). It's puff the magic dragon, he said.
It's amazing how quickly thoughts of alzheimers, dementia, how mum would cope can whip through your mind. Puff the magic dragon? I mean I know he lived by the sea, but wasn't that in a land called HonnerLee or something, rather than VeryTinyVillagebytheSea?
Turns out it was this. It fires 6,000 rounds a minute. That's a hundred a SECOND. All firing off into the north sea, inches from my hammock.

Ok, well not inches but it bloody sounded like it.

It went on all afternoon.

Today hasn't been a great day. Nine o' clock had seen me at the dentists, where Petr the Over Friendly Polish Dentist, did something like the Lindy Hop as he tried to remove a molar from my mouth. For twenty minutes. "Are you okaaaay?" he asked, sweaty droplets landing on my brow.
"Of course I'm fucking well not you great OAF" my eyes replied. With a hint of "oh, I'm just a fragile little thing please stop hurting me."

"Vell, I aim doink it now, so sorry, please vait"

Please wait. Honestly. Six hours later my mouth (and tongue and nose) were at optimum numb, too late. Which made me sound very, very stupid as I tried to negotiate a place on a course at the local college in August. I have to go tomorrow to take an hour long test to see if I am capable of passing the course.
In Maths.

*weeps softly*

Puff, come back for me.

Marathon Man


My dad ran the 30th seabank marathon on Sunday. It's a particularly tough one, as the terrain is extremely rough, comprising as it does of long grass, stiles every so often, mud, sand and lumpy bumpy stuff (I don't know the technical term for those). Originally a sea defence built by the romans, it is slightly longer than usual marathons. This year it started in Skegness and ended in Boston (they switch the start/end every year), and I went with Wibs and Bonny along to watch - we caught him in Wrangle (Isn't that a great name for a village?) which is approximately half way, where he changed his trainers, had a banana and a swig of water. We then drove on to Boston (after a spot of lunch at the garden centre and a wee bit of retail therapy at TKMaxx) and waited at the finish line for him. Bonny couldn't wait to get to him, nipped under the barrier and ran the last few yards with him to a big cheer and an aw from the crowd. Look at my dad smile - I think it's a huge achievement not least because he has never run a marathon before - oh, and he's seventy.

Hats off to you dad.

Breast Beating


My grocer said breasts to me the other day. As in "I don't like women without hips and bums and breasts" (we have a fairly close relationship do me and Charles). I was telling the fish about it, and she said that breasts is a difficult word to pull off. Too many consonants together - that sts part of the word is so hard to pronounce, she says. "Hrm" I said. "Breasts breasts breasts". Nope - I find it easy, but I am used to speaking silly Czech words like zmrzlina and krc. An S a T and an S together poses no problem for me.
Bring on the consonants I say.

Sorry Spider

that I painted you midnight blue. You have a broad, round back. I was painting the shed you see (like a tardis, but never mind) and your body is almost a perfect sphere. I thought you were one of those wood screws. You only have yourself to blame, holding so still like that. I realise that you were probably scared of either me or the whiskery dog who was watching the paintbrush brush zipping back and forth, because you upped and legged it (and how, you have so many) very fast and I thought as you ran away, you look like a sapphire gleaming in the sun. I wonder what your wife will say.

God is Good.

Nah, haven't been converted. Though sometimes, something happens which could almost make me a believer.
Last night, I dreamed that I went camping. With Johnny Depp. And one sleeping bag. One.

Oh, and I lost weight. Not in the dream, (though I must've burned at least half a stone on that overnight trip, and there weren't any long hikes either fnaar), but at Fat Club.