No. You shut up!

This week I fell down the stairs. My mind was preoccupied with the roast dinner I was cooking and I was making my way past an avalanche of LEGO which had been thoughtfully abandoned on the stairs and I slipped. Ha ha very funny. Shut up.

For most people their natural reaction would be to soil themselves, mutter a swear word and then crack on that was exactly the way they wanted to come down the stairs, quickly, on their arse and screaming expletives.

Not so much for me. I fear the slip, trip and fall because of my precarious back and the worry that a bump might mean I end up in great pain, and at the mercy of a surgeon.

So I did my dramatic tumble down the stairs and took to social media to grumble about it. I cited injured pride as the worst that had happened (thankfully), but I’m watching a corker of a bruise develop on my left arm, I have a dodgy knee, a twangy groin and my right arm doesn’t like moving, twisting or picking things up. I’m bumped and bashed but I’ll live.

So why the blog post? Well dear reader, I’m pretty fed up with people who have known me for years, or followed me and interacted with me on social media saying stupid things like “haha did you get drunk and fall down the stairs again?”. Well no. Shut up.

Firstly I’ve never fallen down the stairs drunk in my life. I know better than that, when drunk the safest way to traverse the stairs is by crawling up or down them. You can take that advice and use it, feel free to pass it on. I am not and never have been a falling down drunk. I can count on the fingers of half of one hand how many times I’ve had a drunken fall in 25 years of expert drinking. I have a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long (drinking) career. The ability to stay upright and get home in one piece are high on that list.

Secondly if you knew anything about me, you’d know I have nerve damage from the waist down. Some days I don’t have real feet, I wake up with bath sponges on the bottom of my legs (I just can’t feel them, it’s a strange sensation), the feeling in my thighs is long gone and my calves are hit and miss. Stairs are always something I need to concentrate on, but today I was thinking about bread sauce and went arse over elbow. My fault, my fault and that damn LEGO left abandoned and unloved.

I’m moaning because I’ve had a bit of a sense of humour failure. Or maybe people aren’t funny. The “haha did you get drunk again” people are the same people who say stupid things like “cheer up love it might never happen”. They think they’re helping, but their silence would be more helpful. Them backing away and never entering your breathing space again would be pretty magical too.

I guess I’m one of those people with a hidden disability, I look, act and walk (for the most part) in a perfectly normal way, so it’s easy to assume I’m just clumsy or a shambling alcoholic, but I’m not. So kindly keep your *hilarious* suggestions that I’m a bumbling alcoholic to yourself. I’m lucky to have legs that work as well as they do, I try and be good humoured and upbeat about my lot in life, so I hope you’ll forgive me the odd sense of humour bypass and you’ll find a way to shut the hell up. Capisce.

Ten things 2014 has taught me

If 2013 was a year of drastic change and a bit of drama, 2014 was about appreciating what I’ve got and learning to be me again. Here are some of the lessons 2014 has taught me.

1. The reliable things in your life are reliable until you take them for granted, then your whole life can shift. Don’t take people for granted.

2. Small people grow, they continue to be adorable in different ways, but cherish each moment, because each day they’ll be a little bit older and a little bit different.

3. Work and money can be scarce, but when you really need it, the universe somehow provides it, be thankful and don’t say no, you never know what it will lead to.

4. Good friends are awesome and can be relied upon to buy you a brew and cheer you up with a natter, or an impromptu delivery of Milk Tray in TGI Fridays on your birthday.

5. Don’t bore your good friends to tears with the same old story. Recognise that you’re a stuck record and change it. Only you can change the tune you play.

6. People you love go away, but they will always be part of your story.

7. Say yes to things you would have previously have said no to. It can open new doors for you, or teach you new lessons or be a mistake you can learn from. Mistakes are ok.

8. Drink less, stay in, cuddle the people you love, tuck the small ones in and read them a bedtime story. Watch them sleep, hold that memory to your heart.

9. Look after your back. Keep moving, keep exercising, don’t let pain stop you. Take your pills, power through. You’ll never be as good as you are now, so don’t let pain stop you.

10. Stop. Look at what you’ve got. Hold hands, smell the flowers, listen to the birds in the trees, admire the sky, put your head on his shoulder. Tell him you love him and mean it.

Happy New Year to you and yours.

Cameron Must Go

I am a woman of quiet values, I vote at every election and referendum. I read widely across the media, I watch interviews on Newsnight and on Andrew Marr. I take in everything, but rarely open my mouth; why bother when there are those much more politically articulate than me, more passionate about their cause, more able to instigate change. But I can stand no more.

I am a woman of quiet actions. Food banks are my own personal cause. I know what empty cupboards and having a hungry child can be like. I don’t like to think too hard about the empty bellies of the children my donations feed, I quietly collect what I can, non-perishable items which are sent to whichever local foodbank shouts the loudest that week. This is England. This is 2014. We should not have hungry, malnourished children living and dying in extremes of poverty.

I am a woman of quiet pain. My story is no secret. I have a debilitating spinal injury. I am in pain every day and will be in pain every day for the rest of my life. Right now it is a level of pain I can manage and cope with. Without the NHS I would be at best paralysed in a wheelchair, or worse, dead. I used to work for the NHS, I know what it achieves every single day, what miracles it performs, it’s not perfect, but it’s a billion times better than any alternative and it is worth fighting for. We must not lose it.

I am a woman who quietly notices. I see more homeless people on our streets. I hear of friends who have lost their homes and are “sofa surfing” until they can get back on their feet again, but that might not ever happen. I see children staying in hostels and B&Bs, wholly unsuitable places to raise a child, but better than the streets. I notice more soup kitchens, more shelters, more help needed. Government cuts biting hard at the most vulnerable in our society.

I am a woman with a quiet voice. But it doesn’t make my words less valuable. I am prepared to stand up and argue. I won’t be waving any placards anytime soon, but I will do what I can in my own way. The world is full of people like me, introverts with quiet voices and passionate hearts. As Stephen Hawking once said “quiet people have the loudest minds”.

Don’t underestimate the public and the strength of feeling about the current regime. No government pleases all of the people all of the time, but any government which gleefully pushes families into poverty, sanctions the sick, brushes the homeless under the carpet and at the same time gives themselves a whopping pay rise isn’t a benevolent, caring, supportive government serving its people.

I’m not seeing any significant positive economic changes as a result of these apparently cost saving measures, only poorer people getting poorer and hungrier, the vulnerable being victimised and treated unjustly and the systematic breaking up and selling off of the public service infrastructure of this country. The UK is a not for profit organisation. It should be run by the people, for the people, not by the privileged, for the privileged. This is why Cameron must go.

Balance Transfer Your Life with MoneySupermarket

My family is probably fairly typical, we’re always busy-busy, always on the go, juggling work and family responsibilities. Don’t get me wrong, we have a lot of fun, but sometimes some mundane tasks get forgotten about, or put on the back burner until someone can be bothered to sort it. I often fantasise about having my own PA to deal with all the really boring stuff like bills and paperwork, giving us more time to make cakes and go for walks by the river and so forth.

Somewhere a fairy was listening and waved her magic wand, MoneySupermarket got in touch to tell me about their “Balance Transfer Your Life” scheme (or #BTYL if you’re on Twitter). Balance Transfer Your Life is a really, really cute competition, you just tweet them your neglected job, for example, painting the bathroom, new clutch for the car or maybe a trip to see Granny in Wales, whatever you’ve been meaning to do but couldn’t either find the time, motivation or money to do, tweet them and they’ll pick ten of the best and make those dreams come true.

For our part, we chose to treat our son on his birthday. The big day was fast approaching but we’d not managed to arrange anything special, nor did we have many spare pennies to splash out on the kind of treat he deserved. Very kindly, the MoneySupermarket fairy arranged for us to go out for a fabulous meal on his birthday, complete with a brilliant cake, balloons, singing and ice cream.

We had a slap up meal in Zizzi in Didsbury, Manchester. The staff couldn’t have been more welcoming and lovely with us. Our meal was delicious, my Ravioli Di Capra was among the best I’ve had and Hubs had a Calzone which he happily polished off and said he’d definitely have again (praise indeed from my man of few words).

The small boy had a build your own pizza which looked really tasty, we’re fans of a thin base with extra cheese and he got exactly that. Then they brought out the huge chocolate lion birthday cake, the small boy loved the fuss and the cake (who doesn’t like chocolate cake?). We had a thoroughly memorable family meal and a proper birthday treat.

Moneysupermarket started the ‘Balance Transfer Your Life’ competition because they knew that some people end up paying high interest rates on their credit card debts. Although there are offers available which let you transfer your outstanding balance to a zero per cent balance transfer card, leaving you interest free on your debt until the deal expires, it’s something which is easy to put off. Despite being a big money saver, the process of sorting it is one of those little tasks that people put on the back burner.

Things like finding a credit card with a free balance transfer, there are loads of these little niggling tasks that we just keep putting off, which is why MoneySupermarket is getting involved and offering you the chance to ‘balance transfer your life’ – no matter what the little chore is.

You can find out more about this great (and really easy) competition from MoneySupermarket on their website.

Autumn’s Best Bits

I love autumn, I mean what’s not to love? Crunchy leaves to kick through, warm fires to cozy up in front of, the autumnal festivals of Halloween and Bonfire night. I love it. It helps of course that my birthday falls at the start of autumn, and the small boy’s falls towards the end, so autumn is quite literally party season for us. I’ve picked some of my favourite pictures taken of us and our adventures during autumn, what were our best bits?

I love this one, my son and his cousin at Bramhall Hall during half term, wrapped up against the chill and having an awful lot of fun.

I love the skies in autumn, clear and blue, with fluffy clouds and sunsets where the sky is a thousand shades of orange, pink and red.

I love this picture of my son blowing out his birthday cake. His birthday party was a very cold day and him and 16 of his friends enjoyed a trip to the miniature railway, braved the cold and were rewarded with lots of cake. It was a lovely day.

This was our “pumpkin patch” from Halloween, I love the colours of pumpkin and squash, they’re so cheery.

This is another one of the boy and his cousin. They were doing some autumn leaf craft with some leaves we’d collected from the park, it’s a reminder of a lovely day and it was a nice, interesting thing to do with the boys.

Another of my favourite autumn pictures is this memorial bench in our local park, it’s dedicated to a local lacrosse player and is a stunning piece of wood carving. I love the way the small boy is peeking over the bench, it gives it an idea of the scale of the carving too.

Possibly my favourite picture is this one taken during early autumn, it was still warm enough for shorts and a t-shirt but the leaves were beginning to turn and the evenings had a definite autumnal chill about them. The boy looked and was so happy that day.

I love each of these pictures for different reasons. If I were to pick one which I felt represented autumn it would be the boys making the leafy tree. We had such a good time collecting the leaves, then making the tree, it’s a real autumnal memory for us all.

My Autumnal Top Ten

I love autumn, it’s my favourite season, or my least favourite season, I’m still undecided. So in the style of a teenage girl doing a pros/cons list on a potential boyfriend, my favourite things about autumn are…

1. Kicking through crunchy leaves on walks
2. Hot chocolate with optional whipped cream and marshmallows
3. Warm snuggles under a blanket
4. Halloween parties
5. Stew and buttery mash
6. Rainy day crafting with the small boy
7. Watching firework displays from the bedroom window
8. Collecting conkers
9. The evening sky in autumn is often incredible
10. Stodgy, happy puddings with lashings of custard.

But I really hate autumn for these reasons…

1. Rain, endless rain
2. The dark
3. It’s cold
4. Slippery leaves on the pavement
5. Falling conker concussion
6. Arguing over putting the heating on
7. The resulting heating bill
8. Diets are hard, like really hard, I want sticky toffee pudding
9. It’s too cold to go out and exercise, I wanna stay under the blanket
10. Stupid fireworks, it’s not November 5th yet

I could go on, but I won’t, that angry nerve in my eye is twitching again. I’m still undecided. Autumn definitely is a love/hate season for me.

Autumn

Five things that make mornings easier

Now the small boy is at big school, mornings are a bit of a kerfuffle. Husband drops him off at school on his way to work which is a massive help, but mornings often feel like a Generation Game style challenge. There are a few things which make the rush in the morning easier to cope with.

Here are our five morning wins…

1. The small boy wakes up well rested and in a good mood. This makes everything exponentially easier. He’ll do almost everything you ask with hardly any fuss if he’s fully topped up with sleep.
2. Opening the wardrobe and finding that what I want to wear is clean and hanging up, not crumpled up on the “that’ll do another day” chair, or worse, festering in the laundry basket.
3. Someone in the household has had the presence of mind to put a pot of coffee on. The smell alone is enough to gladden the heart.
4. The small boy eats something for breakfast. He’s gone off virtually everything bar scotch pancakes and Belvita biscuits. And he eats them so slowly. Eat your breakfast or we’ll all be late!
5. We get a kiss, cuddle, or a backwards glance as he runs to his friends in the playground. Goodbye son, have a good day…oh.

Belvita biscuits are a bit of a godsend to be honest. When the small boy refuses to sit and eat breakfast, we can’t force him so we often nibble a little packet on the way to school, or they go in my bag for when we get peckish later in the day. I think of them as a healthier biscuit, like a treat but filling us up and giving us that slow release energy that kids (and their parents, let’s face it) need.

What are your morning wins?

This post is an entry for #MorningWin Linky Challenge sponsored by belVita Breakfast. Learn more here.

How I made Twitter less annoying

I’ve been on twitter for over five years now, I’ve previously blogged that it’s been a life saver to me. It’s a social network with the emphasis on SOCIAL. I’ve made more true friends on there than I dare to count, it’s fabulous, but it’s also pretty annoying at times.

It’s the Internet, so you do get complete loonies, perverts and trolls, usually I wear my big girl pants and deal with these pretty well, by rising above it; throwing a snarky tweet at them; having a whinge or just plain blocking them. Blocking is always a last resort for me, so if I’ve blocked you, you really have crossed a line that can never be uncrossed.

A few weeks ago I updated the twitter app on my iPad and it finally gave me the feature I’ve been waiting for, the ability to mute people. Why not just unfollow or block them you ask, I don’t want to, maybe I like the person but not their constant rubbish tweets, maybe I still want to tweet with them but I don’t want them clogging my timeline all the time. The twitter mute button has massively changed my experience for the better.

I have a three strikes and you’re out policy when it comes to twitter, this is a new thing, made up by me, but it works.

Step one: you’re annoying me, I make a mental note that this is your first warning. You might be tweeting annoying stuff, too many selfies, lots of retweets about the same thing, maybe you tweet every single detail of your monotonous day without irony or humour. Any of those (and more) can put you on a warning.

Step two: oh you’ve done it, you’ve irritated me again with your stupid retweets. I immediately turn off your retweets, I no longer have to see every single retweet you do about sausages, street food, football bantz or “inspirational” quotes, this may or may not be your salvation. It’s worth noting at this stage that retweeting praise and #FFs may also put you in this category. It’s also worth noting that I sometimes do those things too, but I usually put myself on the naughty step and consider what I’ve done.

Step three: agh! I’ve snapped, I cannot tolerate you on my timeline anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve waved my finger over that twitter mute button two or three times by now, this wasn’t an easy decision to make, but take solace in the fact you’ve been muted and not unfollowed or blocked, we’re still friends, it’s just that I don’t want to see or hear you and your stupid whiny voice ever again.

It’s like I’ve reclaimed my timeline, I can check twitter safe in the knowledge that I won’t be seeing whole rafts of annoying tweets from the same few accounts, it’s a delight. I never, ever fell out of love with twitter, but I did sometimes avoid it to stop me getting annoyed. So if twitter is getting you down, why not try my handy three step plan, it’s saving my social media sanity on a daily basis.

Birthday Girl (38 today)

It’s almost a blogging tradition on your birthday to look back over the previous 12 months and reflect on what has passed. I can’t be bothered, I’ve looked backwards for far too long now, it’s time to look forwards for a change, time to give what’s coming at me the hairy eyeball.

What’s going to happen…
My baby (now aged 3) will start nursery at school
I will get a bit greyer and a bit more wrinkly
My back will deteriorate a bit more
I will start a new, very part time, but very fun job
With school hours and work my lifestyle will change, along with it friendships
We will get a puppy and I’ll pretend it’s the baby I can’t have

What I’d like to happen…
I’d like to be a better Mum
I’d like to earn enough money to feed my family
I’d like to be in less pain
I’d like to laugh more and be loved more
I’d like not to be a slave to my anxiety
I’d like to watch more sunsets, hear the roar of the sea and feel the wind in my hair

I don’t think it’s an outrageous list of demands, especially coming from a girl who put “conditioner” on her birthday list. I just want to be happy, safe and loved. It’s all anyone wants I think. I try so hard to make sure the small boy feels all that, because it’s so important; as adults, as parents those things are often neglected. Or maybe that’s just me.

So happy birthday me, I’m 38, who knew I’d make it this far? Let’s raise a glass and toast surviving another year! Cheers.

Letting go of a toxic friend

I have a friend, a toxic friend. A friend who messes with me, builds me up then knocks me right down. I build a wall, take a step back, they knock down the wall, offer the hand of friendship, a glimmer of kindness and then they turn on me again.

It’s like a game to them. I’m sure it’s not a conscious decision. If it is then it’s a particularly nasty thing to do. I am nice, too nice. I am too nice, patient, forgiving and too open for my own good.

When I met this new friend, I was equally delighted and appalled that they reminded me of an old chum who I was very fond of, but had done the exact same thing to me. I didn’t know at the time that history would repeat itself. But when you laugh like a drain with someone who seems like they might’ve been handcrafted to be your new best mate, you don’t think that all that is good will soon turn out to be all that upsets you.

I hate this, it all seems so playground. I’m 37 and so and so is picking on me Miss and making me feel pretty crappy about myself,

Why do I care? I have no idea. Why do I keep allowing toxic people in? I don’t know, really I have no idea. This time last year I was a mess. Toxic friend number one was busy messing with my head and now toxic friend number two is doing the same. I’m all confused. My head is buzzing with a combination of anger and frustration as well as a strange, almost desperate need to please and smooth things over.

I don’t know what to do. Wise friends keep saying cut them out of your life, but that’s hard, you hope that things will get on track and you can sit in a beer garden laughing your socks off with them again. But in reality that’s not going to happen.

So what do I do? Carry on with this destructive cycle or find a way to let go? I need to let go and not look back, because looking back gives them the chance to return. Toxic people have no place in my life, but somehow they always find a way in.