shiny blogging nonsense

With help from friends and a new found enthusiasm.    This weekend, with the boy at work, a couple of good (green-fingered) friends came over and we tackled my garden. After a precarious, sharp, left hand turn into the garden centre I set about loading my flat bed trolley, and banging my shins off it! Four 25L bags of top soil, three 75L bags of compost, two rolls of wooden pole things, slow release plant food, tomato food, baby bio, gloves, plants and more plants. I resisted temptation many times and stuck to the plan.  No sooner were we home when the hunger got the better of me, and I escaped to get us some rolls to fill with various combinations of chicken, cheese, coleslaw and stuffing. Leaving my friends to plot and scheme and dig. After lunch we raided the neighbour's skip for bits of broken concrete, bricks and granite to use for drainage. Oh, it was an exciting afternoon. We, and I use the term lightly, made a raised flower bed. Into which we planted som...

It’s not my birthday, not yet, but there are a lot of birthdays going on at the moment. Three of my best friends’ birthdays are within 4 weeks of each other between April and May. Some celebrate, some don’t, for different reasons. I have to say I love a birthday party, always have, and support the right to party!   In Primary School there were 24 girls in my class so there was a nice, even spread of birthdays throughout the year. I was a bit of a tomboy usually found in a blue tracksuit, with a pink stripe, bombing it 'round on my red bike, but I loved to get dressed up in a frilly party dress and matching hair band. Not much has changed.  Armed with a pink present, wrapped in pink paper, with a pink bow. Ready to eat cocktail sausages, monster munch, chipsticks, rice krispie buns, kimberleys and mikados. I never took to coconut creams. Playing pass the parcel, musical statues, musical chairs (basically a more violent adaptation) and winning amazing prizes like rubbe...

When I was 16 I decided I wanted a yellow VW beetle. I started saving and begging my Dad, but neither worked. Any savings I accumulated ended up being spent on holidays instead and my Dad thought I should pass my test first. I’m still not sure of his logic, but it got him out of buying me a car!  I took some lessons in my late teens and loved it. Myself and my driving instructor would set off, him smoking rollies. It was easy, pedals, gears, mirrors, road markings, easy peasy. Uphill starts, reversing around a corner, three point turns, not a bother! I booked in my test and a load of pre-test lessons.  A week before my test I got a call to say my instructor had been taken ill. My last three lessons were taken with three different, very different, instructors. The first was a young, good looking, charming, funny guy, who I spent more time looking at than at the road. The second was a tiny little feminist who lectured me on going for my truck driving licence aft...