N is for Names of Pets

A to Z Challenge

Who you looking at?

I HAVE a cat. Look at her picture. How bloody annoyed is she? She has perfected that "you're an idiot" stare during  years of living with the dearly beloved and me.

There is a long list of things which annoy her from flies and spiders to overt displays of affection. She won't do anything you want her to. She won't sit where you put her but insists on trapping the DB by lying across his legs when he's stretched out on the sofa or me by sitting with her bum on the arm of the chair and her torso on my arm. She clings on, digging her claws in if I dare to move a millimetre.

She doesn't lie neatly on the edge of the bed. The DB and I aren't by any stretch of the imagination petite but she still manages to take up three-quarters of the bed whenever she wants to, leaving us crunched up in imminent danger of falling to the floor.

She hates visitors with a passion. Here is a picture of Miss Grumpy on a day we had visitors. We had a houseful of people that day and she spent the whole time sitting on the windowsill glaring and swiping at anyone who came within a foot of her.  Miss Grumpy, though, is not her name. Ironically she is called something very sweet, Toffee - her name when we got her.

Miss Grumpy sits on the windowsill glaring at one of my lovely visitors. 

Her predecessor was a laid-back ginger moggie called Carlsberg. We were struggling to find a suitable name when the DB spotted a can of Carlsberg lager and he was Carlsberg for ever more. He died at the age of 18 - gone but never forgotten.

Naming pets can be as tricky as naming babies. You want to get it right. I have a friend whose cat is called Cindy Clawford.  I also know a couple who named their two cats Brad Kit and Angelina Pawlie.

So if you're a fan of  celebrities how about Cat Winslet or Cat Damon? Then there's Marilyn Meow, Catsy Kline, Daniel Day-Mewis, Jude Paw, Pawdry Hepburn or Meowly Cyrus. Here are a few other names that made me laugh -  Ms Demeanour, Bob Scratchit, Margaret Scratcher and Pablo Picatso.

It's too late now to give Toffee a new name but, you never know, she might grow into it one day.

Do any of your pets have unusual names?

• I have another blog in the A to Z Challenge, That's Purrfect. That's about cats too. Obsessed? Me? 

M is for Medieval Dinner

A to Z Challenge

ONE of the best dinners I have ever had was on a medieval theme. The memory put me in the mood to write this in Chaucerian English but having struggled through The Wife Of Bath for O-level English Literature, I abandoned the idea. All that “when showres soote” stuff is incomprehensible and the last thing this blog needs is to become even more incomprehensible.

I knew I was going to be in for a good night because it was at my sister’s house (the hostess with the mostest) with food by my nephew (the brilliant cook) and his daughters (following in his cookery footsteps and also a dab hand at decorating).

Fancy dress was optional but the dearly beloved and I thought we would make an effort. Inspiration failed us but he eventually dressed up in an old red dressing-gown with a big wooden cross painted gold he had made himself and went as the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expected that....

I toyed with the idea of painting big red spots on my face and going as the Black Death - you can't accuse me of being tasteful.

In the end I searched out some ecclestiastical garb I had worn to a previous fancy dress party and went as The Prioress in Canterbury Tales. The dearly beloved looked at me in disdain, asked who I was and when I told him said drily, “I should have guessed," his sarcasm arising from the fact that he went to a secondary modern school where Chaucer was not high on the agenda whereas learning to smoke and snog girls behind the bike shed was.

His sneering remark was somewhat spoiled by him being dressed in a red “frock” and a hat with a red scarf wrapped around it. "You lack gravitas," I told him and he sneered even more.

I was given the task of finding some medieval background music - not exactly the Golden Age of jolly tunes. Even so, I downloaded some songs of the Summer is Ycumen In variety with instrumentals played on those well-known instruments dulcimer, cabinet organ and sackbut.

To my ears it was all pretty dire stuff. I’m surprised no one asked me to haul my sorry sackbut out of there - and take my music with me. Which they did, in effect. After a couple hours of depressing music plinking-plonking in the background, people asked me if there was anything else on my i-Pod. Cue the medieval Rolling Stones (well, the band is pretty old) and the equally ancient Elton John.

It was a great night - brilliant company and the food was astonishing, each dish surpassing the last. If this was how they ate in the Middle Ages, let me find a time machine.

• I have another blog in the A to Z Challenge, That's Purrfect. Have a look; it won't kill you!

L is for List (Bucket)

A to Z Challenge

I'm a list person, I can't do anything until I  have a made a list, but today I'm not talking about my "to do" list, my Christmas card list, people who have pissed me off list (now running into four pages) or my symptoms that have started to materialise as I get older list (five pages).

My bucket list doesn't include life-enhancing projects like sky-diving, visiting the Taj Mahal, climbing Mount Everest or wangling a snog with George Clooney. No, mine is down-to-earth and altogether more achievable.

My bucket list includes one word: bucket. Yes, my old one has sprung a leak and I need to get to a DIY store and buy a new one "toot sweet".

What do you reckon? Workmanlike black or a racy red? Do I need one of those little mop-squeezer  appendages  or shall I go minimalist? Do I want one with a lid or au naturel? Should it be made of rubber, plastic, aluminium or a fancy-pantzy one of bronze like they used for ceremonies in days gone by? No, of course not, I'm getting carried away.

Should I go for the lazy option and get one with wheels? Ooo, how about one with two handles - one for carrying and one for pushing along?

 I might even get two - one for everyday and one for best.

So, must go. I have a lot of research to do on the internet. Do you think there are bucket forums?

I have another blog called That's Purrfect. I would love you to visit.

K is for Knifeball

A to Z Challenge


IMAGINE if you will a child's rubber ball with a knife taped to it. Imagine a children's party in the park with several children with several rubber balls with several knives. Hours of fun.

This is an idea for a children's game in the book Knifeball: An Alphabet of Terrible Advice by Avery Monsen and Jory John.  Of course, the book isn't really for children. No one is seriously advocating arming up your little 'uns and sending them out to play. In fact, if you are a parent I would advise not letting your children within a 100 yards of this book.

I was once the proud owner of Knifeball, a birthday gift from one of my madder friends. It made me laugh at the time but I don't know where it is now, I probably taped it to a rocket and sent it skyward. Seems fitting.

It's a book of rhymes and I couldn't remember any of them - I'm of an age when I can hardly remember my own name, let alone dredge my memory for some lines I read 20 years ago - so I have searched the internet to bring you a few examples of the book.

This one struck a chord:

A is for Apple

eat one every day

And then wash it down

With your mom's cabernet.

Then there was:

D is for Drifter

Who's out on your lawn

Bring him inside when

Your parents are  gone

And the wise advice:

P is for push when you're waiting in line.

Do you want to move forward?

Just aim for the spine.

I think this is my favourite as it brings back memories of my childhood with my mother's dire warnings about looking at the sun ringing in my ears.

S stands for sun that shines bright every day.

How long can you stare at it?

Don't look away.

Do you have any mad advice for children or adults?

•  have another blog over here and would be delighted to welcome you for a visit.

I is for Instructions

A to Z Blogging Challenge

I AM very good at following instructions. I don't mean I like being told what to do - not those kind of instructions - but written instructions that come with, for example, flat-pack furniture or new household appliances.

Orders like "fit sprocket A into the B side's lateral bucket using the flange widget provided" hold no fears for me. Obviously, come the end of the procedure I still have the odd nut, bolt and plank left over. Who doesn't?

The dearly beloved, however, pooh-poohs instructions. I have never known him do more than give them a cursory glance. Annoyingly, he rarely has a nut, bolt and plank left over. But I need the reassurance of those leaflets with their funny little drawings and illiterate sentences. He relies on 40 years of being a cabinet-maker.

He's annoyingly good with electrical things too. My washing-machine gets stuck mid-cycle occasionally. I'd love a new one but along he comes with his spanner and it's working again in two minutes flat. So while other people have a state-of-the-art appliance that does everything except the ironing, my old Hotpoint is still chugging away in the corner.

Even so, I am better with new technology than he is. After years of working with a whizz IT guy (called Guy, actually) and watching him at work, I can get routers and software up and running. I can occasionally fix IT problems.  I am considered the computer expert in my family although this, to be honest, is not an indication of my expertise but more of how bloody useless the rest of them are (that's me cut out of several wills).

Art work by Kenyon Yeh.

Still, you don't need to be an expert at following orders. Designer Kenyon Yeh threw away instructions for some IKEA flat pack furniture and assembled them into works of art. I use the term "works of art" loosely as you can see from the picture above but I make no pretence of being an art expert. His website says he "seeks to create personal identity from ubiquitous uniformity," which I kind of understand.

However, this quote made no sense to me at all: "The process is liberating and brings a limitless attitude of possibility creating unique furniture instead of doing such a thing that made by forces."

I probably got the wrong end of the stick - which is not advisable when assembling a flat pack wardrobe.

I have another blog over HERE. I'd be delighted if you visited.

Handy Hints for Husbands

Hello, honey, I'm home!

WHERE would women be without their husbands? Probably living it up with a toy boy in the Bahamas, that's where. You can but dream...

In actual fact, there's not much about The Man I would change but I wish I'd had this handy little booklet called Don'ts For Husbands (written by Blance Ebbutt in 1913) before we started living together. There's also one for women called Don'ts For Wives.

It included very handy hints like this one: "Don't stoop, even if your work is desk-work. Your wife wants to see you straight and broad-chested." Wise words if ever I heard them. 

As are these: "Don’t sharpen pencils all over the house. It does not improve either the carpets or the servants’ tempers to find pencil sharpenings all over the floors." 

The times I've told the dearly beloved: "For goodness sake, consider the servants!"  Good servants are so hard to find these days. I really don't want to be faffed with finding a new parlour maid and training her up to my exacting standards, not at my time of life.

Then there was:  "Don’t sneer at your wife’s cookery or bridge-playing or singing." Unless you want the cookery all over your head, sneering is definitely out.

Here are a few more handy hints for the dearly beloved to consider:

• Don't increase the necessary work of the house by leaving all your things lying about in different places. If you are not tidy by nature, at least be thoughtful for others.
• Don't take it out on your poor wife every time you have a headache or a cold. It isn't her fault, and she has enough to do in nursing you, without having to put with ill-humour into the bargain.
• Don’t try to regulate every detail of your wife’s life. Even a wife is an individual, and must be allowed some scope. [Take a minute to think about that line: EVEN a wife is an individual (!). You think...?]
• Don’t try to “drive” your wife. You will find it much easier to “lead” her.
• Don’t increase the work of the house by leaving all your things lying about in different places. If you are not tidy by nature, at least be thoughtful for others.

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Genetic Memory

I'm no geneticist so I know little about the science of genes. I know it's nothing to do with Wranglers, Levis, skinny or flared but more to do with why I am a dark Devonian stumpwort rather than a fair Amazonian maiden.

I have come to terms with the fact that I'm never going to share the catwalk with Georgia May Jagger or Kate Moss, but then, they probably can't type at a 100 words a minute while whistling You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly like I can. Each to his own.

It seems genes are far-reaching and there is a genetic memory you inherit from your ancestors. So if you are always playing the fool and making excruciating jokes you may have inherited the talent from a forebear who was a funeral clown in ancient Rome. It was his job to dress up like the deceased, wear a clay mask and dance around making awful jokes. This explains a lot about certain members of my family…

It's handy to have the excuse "it's in my genes" for all my shortcomings. I eat too much? Don't blame me for having no willpower, great-great-grandmother spent all day shovelling mutton roasted in dripping and sweet lemon posset down her gob. It's her fault.

I'm a bit of a moaner? Not my fault. Great-great-great-great- grandfather spent his days belly-aching that the apothecary had failed to cure his pustules with the application of leeches and complaining that Pitt the Younger had put another farthing tax on his ‘baccy.

Ah, if only. But unfortunately we all have to take responsibility for our own actions. We all know people who blame something or someone else for all the ills of their life. It's their parents' fault, their teachers or the fact that Jupiter was out of alignment with Mars on the day they were born.

Although it is may be true that there is some inherited memory, take a leaf out of George Bernard Shaw’s book. He said: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them."

For those of you who might not have believed there really is a song called You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly, here it is:


 

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Facebook Sharing

I'm on Facebook and occasionally a friend will post something similar to the picture above. I don't mind people sharing little posters like these. It's quite sweet. The random capital letters offend me, but that's another story. At least it's not telling me that if I don't "share it" or "like" it, a plague of locusts will descend on my garden (slim pickings there, locusts) and I will suffer from a virulent outbreak of boils (as if anyone would notice). Believe me, some of those people who post on Facebook are MEAN.

There are those little sayings about motherhood or pictures of a wholesome "mom" which tell me "post this on your wall if you love your mom". Does this mean if I don't post it the rest of my friends will think I don't love my mother? What to do. What to do. I'll tell you what to do, don't give in to emotional blackmail.

Then there are the ones urging me to help promote or support some cause or other and I will happily share those that strike a chord.  But some of them adopt this passive-aggressive and sometimes slightly sinister tone with comments like: "Only some of you will do it, and I know who you are." It has shades of "we know where you live".

And why do  some of THESE PEOPLE always write WITH TOO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS!!!!!! It's like they are SHOUTING AT ME THROUGH MY SCREEN!!!!!! And there is always a proliferation of EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!! I'm always tempted to leave the comment: "Do you know your caps lock is playing up?"

Anyway, I have created my own little poster. If you don't share, a plague of boils and locusts will hit you. Only some of you will do it and I know who you are. SO YOU MUST SHARE IF YOU AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!

Before you leave:

You can follow me on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. As you can see, I have far too much to say for myself.

• Please feel free to leave a comment. I love to hear from you and will reply and visit your blog, if you have one, if I can. 
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Mother's Eye Test

Mother. Aged 95. Deaf as a post. Eyesight iffy. Unintentionally hilarious.

We arranged a home eye test for my mother as her sight has deteriorated recently and she cannot get to an optician's. Mind you, she can see well enough when you are trying to hide something from her. ("Is that your third biscuit?")

Some poor unsuspecting young man from Specsavers turned up carrying a load of equipment. I warned him my mother was fairly deaf - but not completely. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm used to that." Of course he is, travelling all over the south west of England administering eye tests to lots of elderly people.

I go to the kitchen to make him a cup of tea. There set out on the worktop are mother's best tea cups and saucers, some hideous bone china receptacles with a swirly gold pattern. I use mugs from the cupboard and get an annoyed sideways look as I deliver the tea that tells me I have let her down in public. She saw those mugs well enough, at least.

Specsavers man was brilliant. Very patient. He joked with my mother while testing her eyes with various bits of equipment, not that she heard much of it but she laughed politely anyway. He diagnosed a mild glaucoma which no one had ever picked up before. My sister has glaucoma and we always wondered why no one else in the family suffered from it as it's supposed to be hereditary.

We got to the eye test with Mum reading the letters off an i-Pad situated on the other side of the sitting-room.

She did well with the first few letters, then she got to one she couldn't see and turned to me.

"Pat, what is it?" she asked and wonders why we all laugh.

Then she got to picking out frames. She tried on one pair. "That's no good," she said, disgusted. "I can't see any better with them at all!" Specsavers man explains patiently that she's just picking out frames and the lenses aren't in them.

In the end she picked out two pairs of glasses; one pair of bifocals and some reading glasses. Mr Specsavers gave her a letter for the doctor so she could get eye-drops for her glaucoma. All in all a good couple of hours' work.

We're now considering getting her a home hearing test. That should be fine. Shouldn't it? I SAID, THAT SHOULD BE FINE, SHOULDN'T IT?
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D is for Diet Books

In 1983 I bought The F-Plan, a book that advocates a low calorie, high fibre diet. I tried to follow it, really I did, but one of the side effects is excessive flatulence and another one, paradoxically,  is constipation. After a month of chewing for England (that high fibre stuff is very, very chewy), farting for France, and straining for Spain, I abandoned it. It was either that or start living alone, the dearly beloved being less than enamoured by the atmosphere.
Result:Result: by the end of the year I had gained 5lbs.

In 1985 I bought Rosemary Conley's Eat Yourself Slim.
Result: It should have been called: "Eat Yourself To Another 5lb Weight Gain".

In 1990 I bought The Atkins Diet which is a very high protein, very low carbohydrate diet.  This produced bad breath, tiredness, dizziness and nausea but - yay! - I lost 10lbs in two weeks before I could stick it no longer.
Result: By the end of the year I had gained that back and another 5lbs besides.

In 1995 I bought The Cabbage Soup Diet, attracted by the tagline "you can eat as much as you wish as often as you like". Sadly, this only referred to cabbage soup. The F-Plan and The Atkin Diet's noxious side effects had nothing on The Cabbage Soup Diet. The flatulence was severe and the bad breath nauseating. These and the necessity to pee every two minutes turned me into a social pariah.
Result: by the end of the year I had gained 5lbs and lost five friends.

Then in quick succession came Paul McKenna's I Can Make You Thin (no you can't) and Dr Phil's Ultimate Weight Solution (didn't solve anything for me).
Result: another 5lb weight gain

I have bought books about The Beverley Hills Diet, The Blood Type Diet, The 5:2 Diet, The Dukan Diet, The South Beach Diet, The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet and many, many more.
Result: weight gain every time.

Conclusion: Diet books make you fat. Avoid at all costs.

There is a happy ending to this tale of woe. I have at last very slowly, started to lose weight. How have I done it? Since I have started working from home rather than in an office,  I have stopped dieting, started eating more sensibly and moved around a lot more - walking, doing the housework and getting out into the garden. Nothing more and nothing less.

Before you leave:

You can follow me on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. As you can see, I have far too much to say for myself.

• Please feel free to leave a comment. I love to hear from you and will reply and visit your blog, if you have one, if I can. 
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Extreme Cooking

John Torode (left) and Gregg Wallace

IF watching cookery programmes on TV correlated with one's ability in the kitchen I would be churning out Michelin star quality dishes every evening. But, like a lot of busy people, come 7 o'clock I am flinging open cupboard doors hoping some left-over chicken and wrinkled peppers have miraculously transmogrified into poulet basquaise. They never have.

I love the way the celebrity chefs try to inspire me to cook something more exciting than egg and chips. I am enthused and try out their dishes with what I have in the store cupboard. Let me tell you, you can't recreate Heston Blumenthal's Snail Porridge by heating up prawns in Quaker Oats.

My lack of cookery skill, however, does not stop me from having strong opinions on the ability of contestants in Masterchef. I love Masterchef in all its incarnations: Masterchef UK, Masterchef Australia, Masterchef New Zealand, Masterchef the Professionals etc etc.

I always watch the UK's John Torode and Gregg Wallace, although the catchphrase, "Cooking doesn't get tougher than this," annoys the hell out of me. Really? Last week I made two bacon sandwiches at 2am  after an evening drinking gin and tonic without setting the house on fire. So don't talk to me about cooking being tough, Wallace and Torode.

I sit in my culinary ivory tower and criticise the contestants.

"You're going to have to improve your presentation. No point in it tasting good if it looks crap - not at this level," says I, whose idea of presentation is taking a serving spoon and dolloping everything in lumps side by side on the plate.

Or yelling, "What about your seasoning!" My seasoning consists of salt, pepper and maybe a touch of Schwartz five spice if I'm feeling exotic.

"Cheese with fish? What were you thinking!" I shout, when my lunchtime sandwich contained Marmite, corned beef and sliced grapes.

No, cooking may not be my forte but there is one way in which I am exactly like a Masterchef contestant - I  cry when everything goes horribly wrong.


Before you leave:

You can follow me on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. As you can see, I have far too much to say for myself.

• Please feel free to leave a comment. I love to hear from you and will reply and visit your blog, if you have one, if I can. 
• You really don't want to miss my next post. It could be my best one ever (or not... who knows)! Enter your email address below and FeedBurner will tell you every time there's an update.

B is for Breakfast

A to Z Challenge

HERE'S a comedy classic for you - the breakfast scene by Morecambe and Wise.

Take another look at it. Does it remind you of anyone? Ladies, do you have men in your life like this? He's never admitted it but I reckon the original sketch was written by the dearly beloved.

Here is my reasoning:

1. There's far too much food for two people. It is a breakfast of gargantuan proportions. Who would prepare a breakfast like this, eat it and then complain he couldn't move? The Man.

2. What's with all that searching through cupboards? He obviously hasn't a clue where anything is kept. Who else is a stranger to the kitchen? The Man.

3. As for those scrambled eggs, they are full of egg shells and there is no attempt to remove them before whisking. Whose cooking skills are so minimal they wouldn't even notice the shells? The Man.

4. Neither Morecambe or Wise can resist playing with their food before eating it. They just have to make a big performance of everything, singing, dancing and playing the fool.  Who do I know who is always playing with his sausage and flinging it about? The Man.

5. Who would put one tiny teabag into a teapot and then complain it was too weak? The Man.

6. And finally, I know of no one else who would be such a tosser with the pancakes.

I rest my case.

BBC, please send all the royalties directly to me.