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.

Quark Quark

OK, so I've not been around for a bit but I'll be back properly soon.
In the meantime for those tempted to eat cream when they shouldn't.

Take a Tub of Quark and add a little good quality Vanilla essence, makes a great topping subsitute and won't blow your arteries!!

Sherbet Dreams

So doing a special birthday cake at the week-end with a spring theme and using some rice paper daisies for decoration, it was obviously important to taste the aforesaid daisies, quality control is paramount!

As the rice paper melted on my tongue I was instantly transported to the little sweet shop that I used to go to when I was at infant and junior school.

The rice paper had evoked the initial salivation and anticipation of sherbet, the memory of the amazing flying saucers that were one of my favourite treats.

The shop was a sweet shop, it sold nothing but sweets, jars of pineapple chunks, cola cubes, aniseed balls, humbugs, fruit salad, black jacks, fireman’s hose, chocolate honeycomb and so much more, a veritable paradise and for me a place to anguish over what to choose!

In the sherbet department not only were there flying saucers and sherbet lemons but dabs, a packet of sherbet with a lolly to lick and dip, the sherbet tubes with a liquorice straw that you bit the end of and then sucked up the white powder (obviously an early precursor for those who now inhale up another white powder through a straw). Then there was the farthing or even a ha’penny worth of sherbet crystals in a white paper bag, orange, lemon or strawberry. There was only two ways of eating it, to tip the bag up and try to gently shake the crystals into your mouth, not always a safe option as you could get too much and choke or miss your mouth and lose some, or to use your finger as a tool, lick it and dip it so the sherbet stuck and then lick it off, by the time the bag was empty it was falling apart and your finger was either bright yellow, orange or pink.

You could of course take the crystal home and put it in a glass and mix with water to make a sherbet drink, but quite frankly even as a small child I thought that was disgusting!!!