You hold your breath

You hold your breath
As you wait for the line to appear on the stick in your hand

You hold your breath
As the grainy image on the screen reveals the life inside you

You hold your breath
As the midwife searches for that heartbeat that beats within you

You hold your breath
As every muscle in your body works to bring your child to you

You hold your breath
As you feel their body in your arms, their warmth against your skin

You hold your breath
As they smile, stumbling clumsily with their first steps, giggling joyfully

You hold your breath
As they grow their wings, the noise, chaos, screeching and flapping

You hold your breath
As they take off and soar, reaching new heights every day

You hold your breath
As they make their way home, no matter what time of day, girl or boy

You hold your breath
As you check their WhatsApp to see when they were last active

You hold your breath
As the doorbell rings

You hold your breath

And Back In The Room……….

The Witch is back!! New adventure has begun, and I am riding the crest of that wave!! Scary, but of the sort that makes you want to shout at the top of your lungs from sheer exhilaration!! Returning on a permanent basis  to my home country is quite odd, it is a place in which I am an intimate stranger. Everything is familiar, and yet very new. I am like a small child in a toy shop, running from one display to another, unable to believe the choices laid out in front of me!! 

Shopping, which I normally hate with a vengeance, is suddenly hugely enjoyable. The array of products available, the speed at which they are obtainable, the special offers that  abound, to entice you in, all of these are quite magical to someone whose shopping experience has been limited to a single street. Even the much maligned postal system here is meteorically fast in comparison to that which I have been accustomed. No more five week waits for an item ordered online! No more trawling through pages of order forms, only to be told that the company doesn’t deliver to your country! Broadband that works. Constantly! And doesn’t require that you go make dinner whilst you wait for a page to load! Amazing!

I know the novelty will all wear off at some point, probabbly in the depths of winter, when my feet are blocks of ice, and the public transport has ground to a halt. But for now, I am relishing every moment!! Even the weather has conspired to make my transition easier, with glorious sunshine, and endless opportunities for drinks in the garden, surrounded by the most glorious array of flowers and fruit. And grass!! I hadn’t realised how much I have missed grass. The feel of it under my bare feet!! Wonderful!!

Best part of all? Free phone calls as part of the deal with my mobile supplier!! For someone who talks even in her sleep, that is the most wonderful gift ever!!! Torn-apart and I are like a pair of teenagers, spending hours talking utter nonsense to each other, just because we can!! The sort of conversations where, if asked, you couldn’t actually say what you had been talking about.

So in all the excitement I have sadly neglected my writing!! That little scribe voice hasbeen becoming steadily more persistent, and it has finally won, I am back at the keyboard again. More irreverance, madness, random photos, and occasional attempts at grown-up writing, with an odd poem thrown in!! I missed you all, and can’t wait to catch up on everything, and everyone!!

Oh, just one more thing!! A new photo!! Having lived for so long in a country where the sunrise and sunset times remain pretty constant all year round, my body doesn’t quite understand that daylight does not necessarily mean morning as we know it!! So I find myself wide awake at silly o’clock, while the rest of the household sleeps! This morning, I decided to mess around with my webcam, and of the 16,537 photos that I took, I found one that didn’t make me look like a convict, or a cabbage patch doll!! I duly posted it on facebook, and it has been met with universal approval!! Which is wonderful since I wasn’t wearing make-up, and hadn’t brushed my hair!! I think I shall adopt this approach for all further photographs!! And just for the record, it was a strappless top!!

Good to be back!!!

 

My Hero!! R.I.P. Rick Mayall

 

 

 

Kevin Turvey

Rik Mayall

Rik Mayall

Drop Dead fred

Lord Flasheart

Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson

Lord Flasheart, Cliff Richard – Living Doll, The New Statesman – Alan B’stard

There will be a lot of you who will probably have no idea who I am writing about. But today Rik Mayall died, and I am devastated. He was my hero, the man who made me laugh louder than anyone, with the sole exception of my Torn-Apart and my boys. He was completely mad, a huge breath of fresh air after the British sit-com culture of the seventies. Along with his best friend Ade Edmondson, he exploded on our television screens in the early eighties, and won the heart of every teenager. The Young Ones was anarchic, rude, chaotic and hand over face horrifyingly dreadful at times. But any of us from that period can quote the script by heart.

The charity single he and the rest of the cast performed with Cliff Richard was wickedly awful, but I can’t hear the original of Living Doll any more without expecting the shouty chorus!! His series The New Statesman, in which he played a highly ambitious and ruthless Tory M.P. was all the funnier due to its almost perfectly accurate depiction of many a real life member of parliament. And his role as Lord Flasheart in the brilliant Blackadder series was sublime!!

As with a lot of successful comedy actors, the frantic gurning he employed belied a really handsome man. He always reminded me in some strange way of my Torn-Apart, which may be why I actually cried at the news of his death. In 1998 he had a near fatal quad bike accident, and as a result of the head injuries sustained, he suffered from fits, and it is suspected that this may have been the cause of his death today. He was only 56. British comedy will never be the same. Without him, it would have spluttered to an end a long, long time ago.

R.I.P. Rik Mayall

 

25 Songs – 25 Days #13 A Song That Reminds You Of A Former Friend

 

Ca Plane Pour Moi by Plastic Bertrand

This track reminds me of my school friend Diane. We didn’t know the lyrics properly (did anyone?) but used to sing along loudly and tonelessly on the school bus, much to the annoyance of the bus escort. It was the start of my foray into much louder and spikier music. Diane and I were forces brats who met in Gibraltar in our mid teens. For a glorious year we were joined at the hip, singing, dancing and spending endless days in the sun. We bought our first pair of platform shoes together, shoes that my father hated. He said they looked like surgical boots! They did, in truth, but we thought we looked fabulous, even though we couldn’t walk in them, and they made my feet bleed!! It was a wonderful time, of crushes, and make-up, all sweetly innocent. We lost contact after she left Gibraltar, but thanks to the power of Facebook, are back in contact again, and spend glorious hours laughing about our memories of this time!

Here Comes The Sun!!

Good morning from Gibraltar, it is going to be a beautiful day!!

Poppies

I have just been to England on a flying visit, and rejoiced in the lushness of my mother’s garden. In particular these beautiful poppies, huge blooms over a handspan across, with their single alien eye staring out from the centre of their vibrant petals! Poppies are my new favourite flower. I want to be surrounded by them!!

25 Days – 25 Songs #8 – A Song That Reminds You Of Your First Love

 

How Deep Is Your Love – The Bee Gees

No hesitation with this one!! I only need to hear the first few notes of this song to be transported back to my teens! Forme, it was definitely a case of love at first sight. I can still remember with absolute clarity the very first moment I saw him, and felt as if the world stood still. My stomach flipped over, he literally took my breath away!! I was only thirteen, but knew in that instant that I would never feel the same way about anyone else. Even the way he walked, a slightly arrogant bantam strut, made me smile. Although not a huge Bee Gees fan, this track just fitted.

Life intervened, and we parted after seven years together. But I never lost hope that I would see him again. I spoke to him in my head every day, and tried to imagine where he was, what he was doing, how he looked as he aged. And then, last year, he found me. The radio was on as I got ready for work, and my phone pinged, announcing an incoming email. As I opened it, this record started to play. The briefest of sentences, but as I read it, my world stood still again.

“Hi, how are you, it’s been a while?”

Thirty years of while!! A few weeks later I went to meet him. I worried that I wouldn’t recognise him, but in the middle of rush hour, surrounded by hundreds of people, from over fifty yards away, I saw him. And my stomach flipped over.

25 Songs – 25 Days #7 A Song That Reminds You Of The Past Summer

Avicii – Wake Me Up

Last summer, last August in fact, my wonderful friend Anna treated me and another friend to four days in the Gran Hotel in Benahavis, here in the south of Spain. It is a fabulous spa hotel, nestled in a tiny village in amongst the mountains, surrounded by some incredibly lush greenery, unusual for Spain at that time of the year.

We had the most wonderful few days, sunshine, laughter, and fabulous food. And pure relaxation! By the time we came back, it felt as though we had been away for weeks!! We are going back this year. If you are ever in this part of the world, try and pay a visit. The village itself consists of a few very steep streets, packed with some of the best restaurants in europe!! Amazing place!!

Wake Me Up was in the charts at the time, and we played it very loudly in the car on the drive up!! Three middle aged women behaving like teenagers!! Every time I hear it I am transported straight back there.

Gran Hotel,Benahavis

25 Days – 25 Songs #3 – Song That Reminds You of Your Mother/Father

 

South Pacific

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Herman’s Hermits

I’ve cheated a bit today, because I have three songs. Hope you will forgive me, but it wasn’t easy finding a song to define either one of  my parents. These choices though are from very strong memories I have of them from my childhood.

For my Fragrant Mother, I have chosen Happy Talk from the film South Pacific. She took me with her to watch this at The Gaiety Theatre cinema in Bristol, when I was about five years old. I remember it so clearly because she armed me with tissues, and then promptly stole them all back off me as she sobbed her way through the film, much to my embarrassment!! But we used Happy Talk as our survival song for years afterwards, whenever things weren’t too pleasant. I can still do all the actions!! I have never cried on my daughter in a cinema!!

For my Father, Bobbing Along from Bedknobs and Broomsticks. We weren’t close, and he very rarely spent any time alone with me as a child, but on two occasions I remember him taking my sister and I to the cinema. The first time we watched The Poseidon Adventure, which traumatised both of us, (we were very young!), and the second time was to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I managed to walk into a traffic meter just as we arrived, and so he made me sit with a coin pressed on the bump for the entire film. I also remember we went to a pancake house afterwards.

My parents used tp throw the most amazing parties in the early years of their marriage. My mother has always been a fabulous hostess, and her dinner parties were legendary. My father was a lecturer at Bristol University, and so the house was always full of students. The party I remember most clearly was a Hallowe’en fancy dress. The living room was decorated with all things witchy. and had a net pinned up into the ceiling, filled with pumpkins and spiders. i remember my sister and I hiding at the top of the stairs, watching people arrive, until we were spotted, and sent back to bed. I could only have been four at the time, because my middle sister hadn’t arrived yet!! I also remember one very drunken guest stumbling into our room during the evening, and peeing in the corner, much to my horror!!

I chose Something Tells Me.. by Herman’s Hermits, because it always transports me back to that time!!

 

 

 

 

25 Days – 25 Songs #2 – A song that reminds me of my most recent ex

Lou Reed – Perfect Day

My ex-husband and I may not have had the most perfect of marriages, but there were a few things that we did agree on, and this track was one of them. I fell in love with the Transformer album in the very early eighties, my ex, who was twelve years older than me,  had loved it from the moment it was released. We didn’t have a big wedding, quite the opposite. But we did have this played as our song. And despite everything, we both still love it!!

 

Think I Will Try This!!!

Going to spend today doing just this!!

Some Days…

There are days, not many, when this is exactly how I feel!!!!!

It’s Been One of Those Days…..

Mother!!!

Apparently, it is not acceptable for a mother to ask her son if he has a hicky on his neck whilst standing in the queue at the bank! I live and learn!

Thought of the Day

 If an anteater becomes vegetarian, is it then a verdanteater?

Thought of the Day

 

If a fly loses its wings, does it then become a walk?