Always an adventure.
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: December 21, 2011
- In: Travel
- 5 Comments
The journey to and through Paris was like a dream. We were positively sauntering along with out brand new shiny 4 wheeled luggage, barely needing to nudge them along whilst trying not to exude too much smugness as we waltzed past bent backed be-rucksacked voyagers. I know we were garnering envious glances as that used to be me. Oh yes the 4 wheeled case green eyes monster has been long a part of my psyche. But not any more. A combination of the ‘pickle incident’ on our last trip and worrisome back has made the purchase of 4 wheelers not just a luxury, but a necessity. So here we were using fingertip control to manoeuver our cases and running ahead of schedule. I even had time to run the gauntlet of beggars at Gare du Nord and get a coffee.We had to wait for our train. Yes wait, I know.
The Eurostar pulled away on schedule and the journey passed without incident. We were in a small sectioned off part of the carriage with 11 chaps on the way back from a pre-Christmas work jolly, sorry i mean a very important conference of course- and they were all very …. pleasant. No really it was all going so well. As we emerged from the tunnel onto the shores of Blighty, I contemplated a leisurely stroll around the shops at St Pancras , restocking my purse with sterling, picking up our tickets at kings cross then a smooth ride up to the North East of England enjoying the many delights offered by the Grand Central buffet car.
Ha ha ha haha ha ha. Yeah ok.
The train glided to a smooth halt at Ashford in Kent for it’s first stop. Hang on this one doesn’t stop at Ashford. No really it doesn’t. Except for today when EVERYTHING was stopping at Ashford. Stopping and staying.
Bugger.
The conference delegates snapped into business mode and demanded an explanation from the steward. They came back and explained that there was a gas leak on the fast line and no trains were going to pass that way until it was fixed at some point later in the day. We were duly asked to leave the train where we would be instructed on how to continue our journey.
But it was fine, we had at least 2 hours to do this. No problem.
There was not so much instruction as herding taking place as the 400 or so extra travelers flooded the station as they all tried to find the first train to St Pancras. Except there weren’t any. The only options available now the fast track was impassable were Victoria, Waterloo or Charing Cross. Stations. None of which were ideal. We were all directed to take the lift, (which was of order,) and then walk upstairs. Except upstairs was the Eurostar departures area, and none of course were. We were then re directed back down stairs and round the corner, then down the non working escalator to the domestic trains. 4 wheels count for naught against the might of concrete steps.
Then we stopped. The sheer volume of people had rendered the domestic platforms too dangerous and the rest of us where to be kept in a ‘holding area’ until space was available.
It was around 30 minutes since we had left the Eurostar train and by the grumbles of the ever more restless crowd, it seemed it would be an awful lot longer before we were going anywhere. Having resigned myself to missing my connection and ascertained that there would be no issue taking any other train North without extra cost I abandoned any rancor and simply waited. Several people were getting very cross. I understand how it goes, I really do, but I make it a point to try not to get cross about anything that is outwith my control. It’s just a lot of hot air and misdirected fury in the end. There were alliances being formed within the mob and the words ‘ taxi sharing’ and ‘hire car’ lured the like minded and significantly more well off to abandon the rest of us to our fate.
A large group were filtered through the gates and marshaled by the harassed station staff to appropriate platforms to take the hour and a half all stops service to where they didn’t want to be. As we had ended up near the back of the group we didn’t make it through that time and were corralled once more. I don’t know if you have ever been corralled with a group made up of angry English and indignant French people. It’s not something I would recommend as a fun afternoon activity. The ‘other’ nationalities seemed to be taking it rather more in stride and behaving in a much more pleasant manner. I decided that as a native Scot I was definitely allied with ‘the others’.
When the news filtered through that the gas leak had been contained and the fast track was now operational once more instead of happiness and thankful noises there was outrage and vitriol being poured onto the poor steward at the decision to take us off the Eurostar train in the first place, and demands to be put back on it. Of course this could not be done, and I am astounded that it was not only suggested, but demanded. Once again i felt somewhat disappointed by people in general.
As we were finally waved through the barriers I wished the steward a cheery Merry Christmas and he almost fell over with shock. He did a double take and asked where we needed to get to. I told him kings cross and he pointed me to platform 5 and the now almost obligatory non functioning lift. I looked glumly at the stairs only to be pulled a side with a furtive grin as he fished in his pocket and withdrew the magic key for the staff lift. On the very short journey up I was told exactly where to stand should I wish to be at the head of the train and therefore nearest the exit on arrival in London. Like I always say, it’s the little things.
By my rough calculations we would have about 15 minutes to get our pre-ordered tickets and find our platform. Easy.
Easy-ish. The ticket collection machines had an attack of amnesia and failed to recognise my card so off the the ticket office, a mercifully short queue, and a friendly machine which greeted my plastic like a long lost friend. Off we set for platform 3 and boarded the train with 3 minutes to spare. Ages by our standards.
We settled in for the last leg and began to relax once more and my thoughts drifted to the buffet car and the miracle that is caffeine. My thoughts then drifted to the fact that my plans for my leisurely 2 and a half hours at Kings Cross had involved a visit to the cash machine to obtain some local currency.
Bugger.
I made my way with some trepidation along the train the aroma of coffee filling my nostrils and clouding my brain. “do you take plastic?” ” yes we do, but there is a minimum spend of £6?” replied the voice of an angel.
Now had we been still on the Eurostar a coffee and a bun would have more than adequately fulfilled that stipulation, but with little to tempt my appetite and a bag of crisps for small person I still fell short. Then my eyes lit up as they fell upon the perfect solution.
I returned to my seat, drained my coffee and spent the last half hour toasting the conclusion of another successful international crossing with an ice cold G&T. Perfect.
A Bientôt.
The rules of parenting (particularly in relation to carrots)
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: November 23, 2011
- In: parenting
- 2 Comments
The rules of parenting are ever changing. What was a constant just yesterday can be erased from all existence in the blink of an eye without so much as a by your leave. And then re-instated just as quickly.
Take carrots for example.
Moo used to love carrots when she was smaller and less argumentative. Just about every meal would involve some kind of carroty overtones, be it mashed, diced, raw, boiled or lovingly sculpted to form the beard of a Scottish giant on her plate ( a particularly fine, if not altogether traditional, burns supper one year).
And then one day without warning or reason the presence of anything orange was banished entirely from her diet. It took me a little by surprise, but there weren’t that many foodstuffs that fell into the category so I did what any battle scarred parent should do in these circumstances and gave in entirely to her whim.
Gradually over the course of the next few months a few delicacies were subtly re-introduced. The humble pre peeled satsuma, red Leicester cheese grated cunningly into mash and the lure of the lurid cheesy wotsit crisp proved too tempting for her temporary titian tinted tantrums.
I was feeling particularly pleased with my tactics and decided that the time was ripe for the re-introduction of our long lost carroty companion. And I felt sure that the carrot stick hedgehog ensemble I had crafted for snack time would be a triumphant success.
I was spectacularly incorrect and it took me almost a week to discover the locations of the full complement of carrot stick prickles.
Occasionally I tried offering carrots as a accompaniment at meal times only to be met with scorn, derision, accusations of mental incompetence and occasionally an almost polite ‘no’. And so once again I gave up. I just didn’t cook carrots in the end it was easier that way. Then one day I had some carrots on my dinner – as a treat- and she looked at them and asked me rather indignantly why she didn’t get any.
‘You don’t like carrots’
‘Yes I do’
‘No- you don’t’
‘You never give me any carrots, I love carrots, I always eat them’
‘You always used to, then you stopped’
‘No I didn’t. I love carrots’
‘Since when’
‘Since always, you just never give me any’
You haven’t eaten a carrot for six months. Every time I have even mentioned the word carrot you have treated me to such delights as fake vomit at 100 db, outbursts worthy of the possessed and recriminations to the point where I haven’t even dared to utter the word in case you thought I was trying to force feed you a damned carrot, and now you are sitting here in front of me looking at me with your best ‘duh’ face on because I hadn’t read into the deepest chasms of your twisted psyche and located the exact whim that decided that you might fancy a bit of mashed bloody carrot with your tea tonight.
That is what I wanted to say but what I actually said was
‘Do you want some carrot then?’
‘Yes please, I love carrots’
‘Good,
The only hard and fast rule of being a parent is that the rules can be changed. And the only thing you can do to keep a small portion of your sanity intact is try not to act too bewildered when they do.
A Bientôt.
London Bound
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: November 2, 2011
- In: Travel
- 3 Comments
“Ladies and gentlemen we are now ready to depart, if you could make sure you have all your belongings with you as the doors are about to close.”
I am indebted to the wonderful, crazy ( some may say suicidal ), Parisian taxi driver who made it possible for me to hear those words. As I leapt, and yes I really did leap, onto the Eurostar train at Paris dragging a panting small person in my wake.
It had all begun so well. I was ready and packed the night before, with just a handful of electrical goods and their associated chargers to be neatly stowed in their designated nooks. Small person had agonized and finally decided that rather than carry a larger bag to would be wiser to leave Behind the bedding and pillows allocated for Messers George and little George who would be accompanying us on our trip to the UK for half term.
A smooth run up to the city and a gift of a parking space, not to be sniffed at on a Saturday morning, and over the road to an awaiting tram ready to whisk us onward to the train station. with a little under an hour to wait for our train to Paris we enjoyed a leisurely lunch in the sunny plaza, boarded early and we were off. Rather smugly I thought ‘ this is going well’.
As we all know however smug comes before a fall, or something like that.
We glided seamlessly through the French countryside watching the picture postcard villages emerge and then fade through the glorious autumn sunlight.
We made good progress as we approached what is my favorite part of this particular journey, around 15 minutes from the destination. Once you learn to look left at exactly the right moment through the small gap in the woods across the elongated lake, towers the majestic palace of Versailles, home of the Sun-King himself. On a day like today with the sun transforming the flat still surface of the water into the perfect mirror the glory of the building is doubled as you feel yourself transported momentarily to a time of kings.
The home of the Sun King. I think he was out.
As luck would have it the train had slowed, for some unknown reason, to allow me to gaze for a few moments more than the usual fleeting glimpse. as we passed the perimeter we slowed even more and came to a halt adjacent to the palace gardens, where stood a truly magnificent sculpture of a horse and rider in full battle charge. I have never seen this statue before, it is stunning. The dynamism and movement that was captured in this unyielding stone, looking for all the world like at any given moment the rider and horse would burst free from their stone tomb as if touched by the breath of Aslan himself ( I am assuming here that you have read/seen/or are at least aware of the chronicles of Narnia ). But, as if bound by their earthly shackles, still they continued to stand.
As did the train.
Now while I was rather attracted to the decorative masonry, I was becoming a little perturbed as to how long I had been allowed to study it. But after 15 minutes we were slowly on the move again. Just one more scheduled stop we would be enjoying the luxury of a spectacular taxi ride through central Paris, and perhaps a coffee at Gare du Nord before passport control, then we would be London bound.
Just one short stop.
Short stop I said, why are we still at the platform? Tick tock tick tock. Why are there so many confused looking commuters standing on the platform and why are no trains moving whatsoever in one of the busiest satellite stations for central Paris? These questions remained hanging in the air unanswered as I began the futile game of looking from the numbers on my clock to the meaningless train information boards and the worst case scenario calculations began running through my brain.
So we might cut it a little fine on the 30 minute check in, but all would be well.
Soooo, if we leave this station in less than 10 more minutes there is no cause for alarm, nothing to worry about. it’s only about 3 minutes to Montparnasse from here then we can jump straight in a cab which will take around 15 minutes to cross the city and we will still make check in.
Never had the imaginary clock in my head ticked louder.
At last after 15 minutes and zero explanations we were on the move, and I heaved a sigh of relief, that at the very least we were on the move once more, and all being well for the rest of the journey, although we may have to sacrifice a coffee, we would soon be London bound.
The train hauled it’s mighty bulk through the final stage of the journey not quite as fast as I would have liked, but just about quick enough to allow the rising wave of panic to recede.
( As with a tsunami, when the wave recedes it is the time you should know you are really in trouble.)
By the time we reached the cavernous halls of Montparnasse we had the sum total of 55 minutes till our train left from the other side of Paris. Tight but do-able. We hot-footed it to the usual taxi rank only to find it had been replaced by building works of a monumental scale. Undeterred by this development we turned tail and headed back through the station to the slightly less well known subterranean stand.
50 minutes.
The queue was not overly large and I determined we were 6th in line. As long as the taxis appeared with their normal regularity we could still do this.
45 minutes.
Waiting, ears pricking up at the slightest rumble that would signal the entrance of a vehicle to the underground halls watching for the slightest glimmer of headlamp to arrive. Nothing.
40 minutes.
Then came the welcome, welcome roar of engines as 3 cabs in convoy pulled gloriously into sight. 3rd in the queue.
In the next 3 minutes only 1 taxi appeared and my head was filling with the exact translations needed to try and blag my way on to the following Eurostar service.
37 minutes.
One more taxi crawled up the ramp towards us and, having clearly sensed my palpable agitation and worry, the beautiful kind wonderfully generous angel ahead of us allowed us to cut in. Madame, you are one of the worlds finest.
35 minutes.
On a good day you cut through the heart of the city in a quarter of an hour. It turns out that just before 5 pm on a sunny Saturday afternoon is not a good day.
We crawled through the mess traffic with every one of the numerous traffic lights hindering our progress. Usually the chance to stop and wonder at the architecture and sculptures is a welcome one, but today I was cursing the tiny crowded streets and the careless parking/abandonment of vehicles in the forbidden taxi lanes.
20 minutes.
It had taken a quarter of an hour to reach the landmark towers of Notre Dame and with a heavy heart, and I’ll admit the formation of a tiny tear, that i resigned myself to the fact that there was no possible way we would make it now so I told small one that we would have to try and get onto a later train.
The driver turned and witnessed the scene, shrugged in a way that only the Frenchman can, pulled off and proceeded to jump the red light and began to weave and honk his way furiously north. I knew that Paris cabbies were good, what I didn’t realize was they could actually manipulate the laws of physics. There is no other possible explanation of how we pulled up in front of Gare du Nord just 8 minutes later. With a healthy tip already in the bank we were offered some unnecessary but kindly meant advice, ‘Now – you must run’
12 minutes
So run we did, like the wind. Thankfully I know the route to the Eurostar terminal. Inside the main doors, turn left and keep going, up the escalator, straight ahead and you reach the first ticket barrier. Of course I had the tickets ready in my slightly sweaty hands.
9 minutes
The look of surprise on the guards face when she saw which train we were aiming for was clear. She handed them back and as we ran once more to passport control the words that rang in my ears were ‘ we cannot guarantee you will be allowed to embark….’ but by then we had handed over our passports for scrutiny
7 minutes
‘ in a rush are you love? ‘
That would be a yes. Thankfully there was no hold up other than a rather obvious Q&A session, and it was round the corner to security
5 minutes
As we were rounding the corner I saw a sight that sank my heart to the very sole of my boots, a queue next to the scanners. Those eager and keen travellers who had turned up not just on time, but early for the departure in 2 hours time. Swots.
Now many jibes have been aimed at the security staff and the rigorousness of training and their observational skills, but clearly this chap was able to spot a person in a state of mild panic and distress and correctly ascertain the reason for this state. As we skidded to a halt at the back of the line they were almost magically manouvered out of out way and we were placed at the head of the queue. I threw our bags and coats onto the belt and having removed all potentially suspect items from my pockets whilst in the taxi, stepped through the scanner.
2 minutes
With an all clear and a thumbs up from my (now) favourite security guard our belongings were gathered in haphazard fashion and were were off once more at a gallop. The platform came into view
So close.....
1 minute
Pick a door, ANY door. As luck (which was clearly hitching a ride with us that day) would have it we landed in a somewhat sweaty heap in the corridor between our designated carriage on the buffet car and recieved a round of applause from the train manager.
“Ladies and gentlemen we are now ready to depart, if you could make sure you have all your belongings with you as the doors are about to close.”
Around 30 seconds later we were indeed London bound.
Is it ever ‘the right time’?
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: February 15, 2011
The tale of a funny yet simultaneously horrifying evening.
Its a subject that has been lurking in the background for a while, like the slowly creeping damp patch in the corner of the bathroom that catches your eye every once in a while and you think ‘hmm really must get round to doing something about that at some point’ and then swiftly forget till the next time you happen to be sitting on the edge of the bath in the exact same position, (clipping my toenails in case you were curious), and it enters your field of vision once more.
It’s not a subject that I have avoided completely. When questioned directly I have given as much information as was required at the time, but volunteered no more than was strictly necessary. On the other hand it’s not an issue I have sought to bring to the fore always relying on the old adage of ‘when the time is right’, and always hoping that ‘the right time’ would be in a far distant future and with some Hubby shaped back-up in case I folded under the interrogation that I would be forced to endure. I don’t do well under pressure.
But ‘the right time’ was suddenly thrust upon me one otherwise uneventful Friday evening.
I hadn’t really taken too much notice of the library book that Moo had in her bag when she came home from school, but I did notice that during the evening while I was pottering about getting tea ready , that she seemed unusually engrossed and unnervingly quiet.
It wasn’t till we were sitting after tea watching a film that I noticed the title: ‘Le graine d’amour’ – and the alarm bells began to softly chime . I picked it up and discovered that it is a book all about where babies come from, and it pulled very few punches. By now the alarm bells must have been clearly audible to every parent within a 5 km radius.
She looked up at me browsing her book and rather hesitantly asked if I could explain some things to her that she didn’t quite understand. My mouth was suddenly filled with the bitter metallic tang of the bullet I was about to bite.
“Of course you can darling”.
5 little words. The beginning of the end of childhood innocence.
And so we began, as indeed many things begin, with Sperm.
There is something a little unsettling, for me anyway, about using the word sperm when talking to a 6 year old. It’s not a rude word per-say, its a bodily fluid after all. Like mucous or phlegm or sweat and yet, not like them at all.
After I’d hopped over my little sperm hurdle, so to speak, the pages of the book progressed as swiftly as the ‘grains du papa’ themselves and we were soon in a womb with a view. We had a little chat about how the sperm and the egg join together and that’s what makes the baby, then it grows inside mummy’s tummy.
I was mentally prepared to expand further on the miracle of conception and birth, but at that precise moment Moo decided that she had heard enough and the subject was mercifully closed.
It proved to be a temporary respite. It became clear at bed time that while she had been watching the end of Tinkerbell she had been using the time to mull things over and prepare a few questions. And it has to be said they were pretty good, and raised the parental discomfort level once more to ‘high’.
“Do different colour sperm make different coloured babies?”
This one caught me a little off guard it has to be said, until I refreshed my memory of the picture book.
I explained that because it was a cartoon they had drawn them in different colours so you could see what they looked like, but really they were all the same colour.
“When does a lady get the eggs put inside of her?”
I carefully explained that when a girl is born they are already inside her and when her body is old enough the eggs are then ready to make babies.
She was fascinated when I told her they were about the size of a dot on a page, and that sperm were even smaller.
“When a baby gets really big inside…..where does it come out of?”
The look of wide-eyed horror on her face when I told her had to be seen to be believed, but I softened the blow by telling her that when a baby comes out, your lady bits are brilliant and stretchy and they go back to the right size after. I’m not sure she entirely believed me.
We had discussions about the umbilical cord and how a baby gets fed, and how a baby grows in ‘water’ inside and only breathes properly when it comes out.
“So its a bit like a scuba diver then” she commented. I hadn’t thought of it like that.
And just when I thought it was safe to say goodnight, just when I thought I had avoided the million dollar question, just when I thought I had made it through relatively unscathed the parental discomfort level hit the roof and the only stage of the process that wasn’t covered, (thankfully), by interestingly coloured cartoons was called into question.
“So, how does the man’s sperm get inside a lady anyway?”
with the utmost gratitude to the lighting state in the bedroom at that particular moment in time, (dim), I explained as well as I was able that a man puts his ‘man bits’ inside a lady’s ‘lady bits’ and the sperm comes out and goes inside the lady.
I was gratified to be on the receiving end of a resounding “EEEEEWWW”.
I felt this would be a good time to make sure that she understood that this is only something that you can do when you are an adult and she informed that you should “really only be doing that sort of thing when you get married” – (small pause for an parental imaginary high-five) – we live in hope!
She also understands that it’s a very grown up subject but it is really interesting, and in her own words “a bit gross”, to find out properly how babies are made. And if she has any more questions she can ask us anything she likes without feeling embarrassed ( at least one of us won’t be). Its desperately hard not to be embarrassed for some reason, but I think its important that she isn’t afraid to ask questions and that we are honest with her, well up to a point anyway – she is only 6! I also tried really hard to use the terminology that was in the book to avoid any unnecessary confusion, but I still can’t quite bring myself to call ‘man bits’ a penis in front of her yet. There will definitely be a ‘right time’ for that I’m sure.
Hopefully when Hubby is home and I’m out.
A Bientot.
information overload
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: February 4, 2011
I had something all ready for the blog (well in my head anyway). Something light and jolly, possibly even amusing. I thought it would be good.
But after spending far too much time in the company of the news for the last couple of days I just couldn’t bring myself to write it. It did not seem to be a fitting time for my whimsical notions.
I’m not known for my political activism or my social commentary but watching recent events unfold across the globe made my original ideas for today’s blog seem superficial and inconsequential.
Sitting in the countryside, undisturbed by anything other than the occasional tractor rumbling past, I watched with compulsive dread both Nature and Man bring chaos and destruction spanning the globe.
The terrifying sight on the weather maps of Tropical Cyclone YASI being upgraded to a category 5 storm and heading straight for the, already weather beaten, shores of the North Queensland coast in Australia, along side the real-time twitter feeds of frightened people who had been told to expect nothing short of carnage was humbling, to say the least.
Then to the other side of the world and blizzards wreaking havoc in a vast number of US states and Canadian provinces. Hearing the words of warning ‘is your journey worth your life?’ repeated over and over again. Seeing the pictures of deserted cities, lifeless, frozen and scared.
In Egypt the largely peaceful anti government protests in Cairo’s Tahrir square took a violent turn as bus loads of ‘pro-government protesters’ arrived and started throwing Molotov cocktails and broken paving slabs at the assembled demonstrators from the surrounding streets and rooftops. The anti government demonstrators on the square were un-armed civilians. This we know as various news agencies around the world have their journalists ‘on-the spot’ and have they have witnessed and reported that all protesters crossing the barricades into the square were searched for weapons. Yesterday afternoon hundreds of seemingly well organised and well trained ‘pro-government protesters’ arrived en-masse and armed and were allowed by the army to engage in direct and bloody confrontation. The pro-government protesters are alleged, (by an overwhelming number of citizens, news agencys and world wide government officials), to have been unleashed on the peaceful protest by the very man they were protesting against. You cannot fail to see why a growing number of ordinary Egyptians want to see an end to this regime. The list of casualties grows ever longer by the hour.
And I sit here in splendid isolation and feel extremely insignificant.
Australia woke to unprecedented devastation of property and crops that will take years to recover from but, thank God , their worst fears of mass casualties and loss of life do not seem to have been realised. Although there are still a few people unaccounted for, in the words of Queensland Premier Anna Bligh “‘I’m very relieved this morning, but I do stress these are very early reports It’s a long way to go before I say we’ve dodged any bullets.”
In the US and Canada at least 12 people are known to have lost their lives so far in the latest winter storms, buildings have collapsed under the sheer weight of snow, and with meteorologists warning that temperature are set to fall to around -34 degrees in some areas, the fear is that the death toll may rise significantly.
In Egypt the protesters continue their vigil in Tahrir Square, at the time of writing the square is peaceful, but its inhabitants fear what the morning will bring.
And I sit here in splendid isolation and feel extremely insignificant.
The growing senseof powerlessness and impotence I have felt over the last few days is at risk of becoming rather overwhelming. In this age of instant information exchange and real time reportage should I not feel more ‘at one’ with the world, should the intimate knowledge of world events now empower us to act and be a part of ‘something’?
Or is it a case of ‘information overload’? Too many images of desperate situations being beamed directly to our lives on a minute by minute basis enfeebling us rather than empowering us.
Tonight I don’t have any answers to that question. I don’t know if I ever will.
I do know that the advances in technology have, and will continue to, enhance and enrich my life, and I would be a much poorer and less rounded person without being able to access the these things. But for now I need to switch off from the wider world for a while, and concentrate on ‘my world’.
The people around me that make me smile, the people whose lives I can make a difference in, and situations where I feel I can have at least some degree of significance.
A bientot.
On its way…..
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: February 2, 2011
Several things are on their way…
Now that the dreaded month has departed I am starting to wake up again and get back to work, so you can expect a bit more from me very soon. I can feel the ideas bubbling away and now I have wordpress on my I-touch hopefully this will mean more randomness and frequency.
Another thing on the way, although she probably won’t thank me for calling her a thing, is my dear friend JJ. She is due to arrive on Friday morning and the excitement is growing.
But much more immediate is another birthday party for Moo this afternoon, so i must away and wrap gifts and try and wrench her from the TV!
A Bientot
January fails
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: January 23, 2011
So the thing is, its like this really, well it kind of happened sort of like that, in a way it did anyway. But it was a bit different than that, and then it just sort of….stopped. Really.
In a round about way, what I’m getting at , I mean to say, the crux of the matter is, the real issue I’m trying to deal with is … difficult to phrase.
You see it all started so well, the intention that is, I really meant to do better, there’s still so much to say, its just I’m having a few problems ….. saying it.
Yes that’s right I have hit the wall. Metaphorically of course. Literally it has been horrible.
Put simply, I just cant write.
I’ve been trying, Lord knows I’ve been trying, but whatever I attempt just seems to dribble to a unsatisfactory slush about half way down the page and just stop without ever seeming to finish. If you see what I mean.
Its very frustrating. Especially as writing is usually something which gives me such pleasure and satisfaction, now it has become an uphill struggle plagued with self doubt and massive doses self criticism. Not a very helpful attitude when trying to create anything.
I blame January.
I really don’t get on with January very well. In fact I would go as far to say that it is my ‘bogey month’. Nothing ever seems to work well for me in January.
As regular readers will know I have a few emotional issues with winter anyway, but January in particular just makes me want to hibernate. This January has been nothing short of dismal, with a few brief wonderful exceptions bright enough to pull my head up from the general air of gloom.
The fun and laughter of Christmas is already a fleeting memory, the decorations already hang limp and listless, the faded sparkle seems to mock you as you turn the calender and face a whole month of gloom and dismal weather to boot.
Then when the tired decorations come down they leave your walls bare and a gaping hole where the tree stood but a few moments ago. The glittering baubles packed away for another year leaving stark bare emptiness staring back at you from every surface. Its little wonder that home improvements come so high on the agenda for so many people at this particular time of year. Suddenly the rooms that looked so warm and pleasing all year round look forlorn and neglected.
And its just been so cold. Yes, I am fully aware that I live in northern Europe and it is winter and as such it is supposed to be cold, but I really don’t think I have ever felt it is as much as I have this year. It seems to have permeated my very bones, I don’t think my feet have been anything approaching warm since early November. Even in the midst of the flu with the rest of my body burning up with fever, my fingers and toes felt like icicles. And with two bouts of illness under our belts it has seemed a very long month indeed.
But, believe it or not it hasn’t all been doom and gloom. A perfectly timed and wonderfully spirit lifting few days with my parents, setting the world to rights and planning our various schemes for the future, were enough to raise my head from the gloom for a while. In between bouts of vomiting Moo has shown her passion and talent on the ice rink, so much so that we have decided to but her some skates of her own and save her feet from the leaden ill-fitting hire skates. We are eagerly awaiting their arrival with my February visitor who is due to arrive at some point early next month. (Skate asylum provide relatively cheap goods, but do not deliver to France and as we have an impending visitation by car I thought it best to combine the two events).
Another upside to my almost total lack of literary is that my culinary experimentations have reached (and breached) new boundaries. There seems no end to the variations of biscuits that have been coming out of the oven, but I’m bored with them now and as I have totally run out of usable jars for jams and preserves I have turned my attention to cake. Banana and kiwi, lemon and ginger, chocolate and lime and an unexpected favourite of mine avocado and buttermilk loaf. (I even managed to write some of the recipies down!).
But whilst I could happily bake for days on end there is a limit to how many the two of us can, or should, actually eat. My waistline has become another victim of my writers block and all the dietary work of gastric flu has been more than undone.
But as the month drags it’s lethargic heels to the finish line I can at last feel the rejuvenating effects of the watery winter sun as it struggles to penetrate the mantle of grey that January has worn, and it hopefully this effort, combined with the ever nearing calender page turning deadline, will go some way to restoring the flow of my literal lubrication.
Hopefully it will not be long before I am back at full strength and fulfilling my promise to write.
Here’s to February.
A Bientot.
Under the influenze…
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: January 4, 2011
Well first thing first, Happy New Year, Bon année.
And what a start to the year it has been. Mostly I have seen it from under a duvet, yes the far reaching influence of influenza has visited upon us and laid us waste. Moo started the sofa snuggle on the 26th of December and I joined her on the 29th after we had dropped Hubs off for his all to swift return to Macau, and barring a couple of trips out to the doctors and the pharmacy there we have stayed. There isn’t much to tell as I’m sure that most of you have your own tales of splutters and sneezes not too dissimilar to ours.
Before Hubs departure and before the bugs had us completely housebound, we did manage a dinner with friends when, despite a small confusion over the venue, a good time was had by all and my reputation as a ‘super chef’ was done no harm on production of the gastronomic marvel that is the humble Yorkshire pudding. It still amazes me that despite the closeness of our two nations the distance in the cuisine is vast. But if it keeps up my, slightly undeserved, reputation as a master chef then who am I to argue? I was still a little bemused at the astonishment that the humble puds produced, I mean I know that they are nice, lovely even when just right, but surely a nation so famed for its cookery has its own equivalent. Apparently not.
My education in French cookery is far from complete and really is something I should do more to appreciate and learn but, at the risk of being extradited, I do find the food a little on the boring side. The sauces are a delight and have incredible depth of flavour and interest, but the dishes themselves can be somewhat bland underneath the spectacular sauce. And despite my adventurous nature in the kitchen there are some things from the meat shelves that will remain there rather than being brought home. When they say that ‘the only part of the pig the French don’t eat is the oink’ they are really not joking.
The ‘spice’ of life is certainly not something that is embraced in the vast majority of local dishes I have tried. Whilst herbs are used extensively spices are eschewed and the thought of using MORE than 1 at a time is the stuff of a mad-woman’s dreams and certainly not something suitable for the purist’s palate. Fortunately most of the consumers of my sometimes experimental cookery are not purists and are more than happy to discover the novelty of my strange and often peculiar creations.
My ‘Christmas concoctions’ have become a bit of a hit with friends and neighbours and I have to keep thinking up new ideas to keep people guessing what on earth I will come up with next. And to be honest right up until the moment I start baking I’m never really very sure myself. But this year I surprised even myself with the addition of a small amount of chilli flakes to the mince pie mincemeat and I opened up a whole new world of possibility with just a hint of tarragon kneaded into the cookie dough.
The problem I have now is that people keep asking me for recipes. Its not that they are closely guarded family secrets handed down through the generations it’s just that I don’t actually write things down when I’m cooking, so not only is it darned near impossible for exactly the same thing to be recreated should it turn out to be a winner, but its also pretty hard to tell someone else how to do it.
For years I maligned my poor mother when she responded to my questions of ‘How much of this do you put in?’ with a vague ‘A bit’ or the equally frustrating ‘just enough’ rather than the precise measurement I was seeking. But here I am some years later responding in exactly the same way, (and incidentally being maligned in exactly the same way). So to my mother, and all of those who have asked me those same questions, I apologise unreservedly.
But as it is the new year I have made a resolution which is not something I usually do, and the resolution is this:
I hereby resolve that when I am cooking something new I will write down the ingredients, and quantities thereof.
Well I’ll try.
And try I must because along with my resolution to write down my recipes I have decided to collate then into what I hope will become a quite handy little cook book which might end up languishing on my shelf gathering flour dust , or it might just end up being my very first attempt at a proper kind of book.
Of course once the effects of flu have worn off completely I may decide that this is a silly idea borne from a high temperature and even higher levels of medication, but then again, maybe not.
Now what would be the exact measure for ‘the amount of champagne left in the bottle after couple of Christmas drinkies’?
A Bientot.
2010 in review
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: January 2, 2011
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 69 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 93 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 42mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was August 5th with 52 views. The most popular post that day was in the words of Columbo….
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, hillywillyworld.com, android-vs-ipad.co.cc, upstandinghommevert.com, and obama-scandal-exposed.co.cc.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for www.mumbaimadness.multiply.com, phiphi, house of dancing waters in macau, the world’s most beautiful pier, and bang pae safari.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
in the words of Columbo… August 2010
1 comment
Helloooo……. hello…. November 2010
14 comments and 2 Likes on WordPress.com
Remembering a legend. December 2010
10 comments
Reflections May 2010
Tears and sadness March 2010
Ho Ho No…
Posted by: hillywillyworld on: December 23, 2010
- In: Christmas
- 2 Comments
What do you get if you cross Father Christmas with a duck?
A Christmas quacker.
I’ve got a great idea! I’m going to send a Christmas themed joke to Hubs every night when I go to bed, so that when he wakes up in the morning he can have a little chuckle and think of his Christmas homecoming. Brilliant, should be easy enough, there are LOADS of funny Christmas jokes aren’t there……
It started well, as you can see by my first effort above, but it has to be said by the end of the second week I was struggling. It also seemed that the quality of joke and my levels of bed time fatigue seemed inexplicably linked, but once you have begun something like this it is almost impossible to stop. And with the power of the internet at my fingertips it couldn’t be that hard……
Whats brown and hides in the kitchen?
Mince spies.
But no matter how many searches I made and how many websites claimed to be packed full of ‘hilarious holiday howlers’ it seemed that they all contained the same dozen or so fairly mediocre Christmas cracker standards that failed to raise a smile, let alone a chuckle. Once or twice I hit gold. But more often than not I found myself wishing, (for more than one reason), that Hubs was due home much much sooner.
But just why is it that ‘Christmas cracker jokes’ are very rarely about Christmas, and even more rarely funny?
Well having searched long and hard I can assure you that there aren’t a huge amount of funny seasonal joke out there, so this would answer one of the questions, but why are they just so…bad?
What did the bald man say when he got a comb for Christmas?
I’ll never part with it.
According to Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman, (really I couldn’t make it up a professor called Wiseman in a blog about Christmas….), who lectures on ‘The public understanding of psychology’ at Hertfordshire university (just in case you think I did make him up), thinks that the reason the ‘jokes’ are so bad is thus:
‘If the joke is good and you tell it and it doesn’t get a laugh, it’s your problem. If the joke’s bad and it doesn’t get a laugh, then it’s the joke’s problem. My theory is that it’s a way of not embarrassing people at Christmas.’
But according to Rachel Davis, the head of design at Britain’s largest cracker producing factory, over the course of the last 50 years all the jokes have been vetted for political correctness and therefore ‘all the really funny ones had to go’.
What do you get when you cross a vampire and a snowman?
Frostbite.
And so as I write this Hubs should be sitting in departures at Hong Kong international airport waiting to board his flight to Paris reading his final Christmas joke before coming home. And, weather worries aside (because if he doesn’t make it home because of the snow that really wouldn’t be funny), I cant wait to greet him later today because it will mean that my quest is finally over and I don’t have to sift through all the humourless drivel I have been subjecting myself to for the last 23 days!
Whatever you do this Christmas I hope it is filled with joy, peace and laughter.
Although I wouldn’t count on your cracker jokes for the last of those things. Happy Christmas to you all. But before I go, I want to share with you MY favourite joke so far.
Which Playwright is terrified of Christmas?
Noël Coward.
A Bientôt.
