The Woman in Grey.

So I couldn’t resist it, I got my two taster chapters and dove straight in!

What did I expect? Honestly I don’t know, what I feel I got was a 21^st century Barbara Cartland!!!

Uber handsome, well-toned young millionaire, incredibly confident and sophisticated with the world at his feet, to say nothing of several leggy blondes who work in his office and do his bidding.

Along comes Little Miss Awkward, who is sent on a 150 mile trip to interview said Prince Conglomerate by her flatmate who is conveniently too ill to do the interview she set up, Miss Trips Over Her Words and Her Feet, was of course not at all interested in The Prince.

However, when she sees him Cinders interest is aroused and naturally when inadvertently they touch, she feels sensations she has never felt before in places that she didn’t know she had!!!!

He is at first distant and disdainful of the questions she is asking until she confesses they are not her questions and she was railroaded into covering the interview. In a surprising twist he does the unheard of and cancels his next appointment, offering to show her around the company.

Flustered, flummoxed and metaphorically a shoe short of a pair she flees the ball, I mean building.

Once home she thinks of him but tries to move past the encounter, concentrating on her studies and her job at the hardware store.

When out of the blue he turns up at the shop, because of course he was in the neighbourhood and desperately needed some ties and masking tape…..

So that was the end of the taster, what do I do,

·         do I buy it and see if it gets better

·         do I read it to prove it is Mills and Boon so that I can deride it further

·         have I got time to spare when I could be reading my own kind of drivel

I really don’t know, however what seriously worries me is how much of the detail I have remembered as I write this!!!!

Shades of Grey

At a wet, but highly enjoyable BBQ recently, there was talk about a book that everyone, well at least 4 people in the room had read, was reading or wanted to read.

Fifty Shades of Grey is apparently a bit on the saucy side, so it may offend my delicate sensibilities. Actually it is very rude to laugh like that, okay, maybe I’m more feisty than fragile but I’m not keen on the gratuitous stuff.

Anyway I’ve sent for the taster for my kindle and I’ll let you know if I decide to read it.

In the meantime the only Grey I’m interested in is the newly painted walls in my bedroom!

Quirky Qwerty

So in the Bank this morning, no the Bank Manager hadn’t called me in to speak sternly to me, just doing a little bit of money laundering, no don’t phone the authorities that was a joke!

Anyway, the personal banker, who was a nice young man, was typing away on the computer keyboard and I was both amazed and fascinated to see that he was typing with just a couple of fingers on one hand and only one finger on the other. No I am not being disablist, he did actually have the full compliment, just wasn't using them! 

Now I did have some touch typing lessons, about 40 years ago, but I am very bad and, although I do use more than two fingers to type, I move my hands far too much and use the wrong fingers for the keys, unless I really concentrate, but it is slow and harder work, so I don’t stick at it.

However I am genuinely surprised, given the fact that the kids these days are put on computers at school from about three, that they are not taught to touch type, the old quicker qwerty way.

Given the angle this young man was holding his hands as he typed I’ll give him another few years and he will be well on the way to repetitive strain injury, to say nothing of carpal tunnel and arthritis.

We definitely need a campaign to teach children to type correctly and safely

Paint it White.

So the decorating is progressing at an incredible rate, incredibly slow that is.

Well a decision was made about the probable new room layout and where, how the furniture may best be located. Nothing massive you understand just enough to necessitate re-running socket extension leads, moving the phone socket, oh yes and clambering up in the loft to drop the TV aerial back into the room on the other side.

We also needed a bit of plastering, now I don’t do that, the only plastered I know about comes out of a bottle, current favourite a bit of Belgium Beer, but I know a man who does and does it extremely well…so that is sorted.

So on the home straight now, just the painting and wallpapering to do, yep will definitely be done by Christmas this year.

Oh, did I mention we haven’t actually got any furniture yet!

The Glass Imaginary

As a small child, before I was of the age to go out and about by myself or with friends, I used to pester my parents to take me on the pier. It was not an easy ask as entrance had to be paid for and of course there was the expectation of an ice-cream, I mean how can you stroll along the pier without an ice-cream, it would be like going to Ascot without a hat!

I loved walking the length of it, the salt tang of the spray as it hit the supports, the wind blowing your hair about and your skirt up.

Not overly keen on the very bit at the end where the anglers would cast their lines, as I knew a girl who knew a boy who had been caught in the face by a hook as an angler was casting his line. So I thought it sensible not to go too close!!

Whilst the penny arcades were always popular, and so many upgraded versions can still be found in classic seaside towns, they were not really what drew me to the pier.

I had two favourite activities, climbing up to the top and looking at the town on the Camera Obscura. The image of the town was displayed in full living colour and real time onto this absolutely huge concave  white plaster bowl and I thought it was miraculous and never tired of walking around the outside of the huge dish watching the  people,  going about their day, down below us along the seafront. If you have never seen one you have missed an incredible bit of science.

My other stopping place was the booth where the glass man made the all the animals, fish, flowers, and all sorts of glass models. He would do it all by hand using straw like lengths of glass that he would heat on a kind of Bunsen burner until it softened, sometimes melting two together and pulling into strands, sometimes blowing to balloon the glass. He used very simple tools like scissors and tweezers or tongs. I would watch fascinated for hours as these strands were bent and shaped into wonderful, colourful, exotic and fragile works of art. I never ceased to be amazed how someone could create such beauty so quickly and how someone could have that vision and imagination.

It is in these precious childhood moments that we first begin to learn the joy of the world around us and the appreciation of the beauty that mankind can create.

The Mirror Hacked

Due to the whole decorating debacle things are a little disorganised at the moment and blow drying the hair now has to be done in one mirror whilst balancing on one foot, well not really but it does feel a bit like that.

Prior to the disorganisation caused by the decorating and the whole moving everything around and piling things up like a junk shop, there were two mirrors set so that hair could be blow dried whilst back and front could be viewed.

Now I was never that good with mental transposition and always struggled with the reflection where I had to move in the opposite direction to what it looks like in the mirror and it always took a lot of concentration.

Never was any good at that patting your head and rubbing your tummy thing and throughout years of piano lessons always really struggled with doing completely different things with each hand.

That said I am really missing the mental struggle of trying to straighten the back of my hair in the double reflection….

Lord alone, well and everyone who sees me, knows what the back of my hair looks like these days!!!!

The Blogger Returns.

Been incredibly busy lately, yes obviously, as much time as possible with the baby who is now 4months, but also been decorating.

Now I quite enjoy decorating, except for painting the ceilings, as it always makes my neck ache. Usually ceilings only need one quick coat of white to freshen them up, and here comes another except, except when someone, yes it was me, thought it was a cool idea to paint ceilings with a colour, like what we did in the 70’s; then of course it needs 2 coats to get it back to white, even using ‘one coat’ paint!

Moving on to the walls, another good tip is NOT to layer wallpaper, yes me again, even if you think you will not go back to painted walls, the day does come when you do want to and then you have 4 layers of paper to strip off, ahh the joys of scraping.

Anyway we are on schedule, the promise I made was that the first room would be done by Christmas and I am pretty certain that I am going to pull that in on time.

I’ll keep you posted.