It’s hard to believe it’s January since I last wrote much on here but I know it’s been too long as I’ve had quite a few people contact me to ask me where I’ve gone. Very flattering, I didn’t know anyone on the Internet even cared!
Of course it probably sounds silly to say that time’s just flown by, but for these last few months life has simply got in the way of life. Or rather, there’s been so much upheaval and mayhem that even sleeping has been something of a luxury recently. Of course everyone gets tired, but you know you’re beyond knackered when you try to take your eye makeup off with nail varnish remover and brush your teeth with Canestone. The first painful mistake was mine, the second disgusting one was that of my rather unfortunate husband.
So what on earth can cause such an extreme form of exhaustion that you’ll strip the skin from your eyelids for several minutes before you even realise what you’re doing? To break it down: buying, building and burying. With a little near canine death in between.
Back in January we bought a house. We gutted it of pretty much everything that could be removed and then re-built it from the roof down and the floor up. With so much to do and something of a self-inflicted time restraint placed upon us (moving 2 kids, a dog and a house full of stuff into said house a mere 6 weeks after demolition begin) there wasn’t really a day, hour or minute where life didn’t revolve around lists of things to buy and jobs that all involved some type of hardcore machinery and cement.
Over the last few months we’ve pulled down walls and ripped out bathrooms, plastered up stinking rats nests and ripped out old ceilings, rebuilt kitchens, added rooms, changed windows and discovered fireplaces we didn’t even know we had. All, I might add, in sub-zero temperatures with snow falling outside and icicles forming on my nose. So cold was it that I do believe the only time I didn’t need to wear 3 layers, 2 pairs of gloves and a scarf to work on the house was the afternoon I spent stripping wallpaper in a room filled with steam. It was a welcome facial indeed.
The moment the Norfolk ice caps melted and the sun showed the slightest hint of appearing, we moved outside to tackle what was meant to be the garden. We cemented in what seemed like 100′s of fence posts, lugged 9 foot sleepers, dug out vast quantities of earth, shifted 4 tonnes of gravel and 2 tonnes of sand by hand, put down turf and laid some sort of patio.
Yes, all in all it’s been a rather manual time to say the least.
And then, right in the middle of all of this physical exertion, my emotions took an almighty battering. With one short phone call and those dreaded words of ‘you’d better sit down’ I found out my grandmother was in hospital. A frantic dash across the country to Weymouth followed by possibly the worst night of my life and the worst case scenario happened.
Thankfully death isn’t something we come across much on a day-to-day basis, but the downside of this does mean we’re not really equipped (or prepared) to deal with the fall out. Because, much like love, grief is an extremely complex emotion that unfortunately has to be experienced to be understood. It’s a surreal time when nothing makes sense, the world seems unfair and life is basically nothing but a bitch.
Two weeks later and one rather emotional funeral behind us, I finally returned home to the world of small children, half-finished houses and living. The following morning, before I’d even had a chance to unpack or regroup, Charlie (the rather dim-witted Spoodle of the house) decided to make a bid for freedom. He flattened himself to the thickness of an envelope and somehow squeezed under the wire attached to the bottom of the gate.
Who knows why he felt it necessary to play chicken with the traffic. Perhaps he felt he needed a little more adrenaline in his life that morning, or he’d been watching The Shawshank Redemption and had been digging out the drive with a stick for the previous few months. Either way, bloody stupid dog.
An hour later and I’m speeding down the road in the car with a near-dead dog in my arms, frantically looking for my husband who’s out looking for us. I eventually find him, somewhere between the pavement and the warpath, all ready to kill the escapee dog.
And so we headed off to find a vet in a town that we didn’t even know, with Charlie sneezing blood all over the place and looking like he’d been kicked in the head by a horse. Mainly because he had been, the dim-witted dog. Needless to say he’s still alive, one ambulance, 2 nights in hospital and a rather large bill later. All I can say is thank god for pet insurance, anyone who says it’s not worth having obviously has better trained animals than us.
So there you go, a whole list of reasons why I haven’t had much time to write this blog lately. I’m hoping the second half of the year is slightly easier than the first. I really fail to see how it can’t be, although saying that 6 months ago I had no inkling that any buying, building or buying was on the cards for 2011.
I can’t say I was exactly surprised about the near-dead dog bit though, it’s not the first time he’s thought with his paws instead of his brain and I can guarantee it won’t be the last.
Filed under: all under one roof, my family & other animals, the funny side of life | Tagged: accidents, building, buying houses, death, dogs, family, funeral, norfolk, renovating, Spoodle | Leave a Comment »





































Long live the King, the King is dead
Michael Jackson’s death will no doubt go down in history as one of those moments when everyone remembers where they were when they heard – just
as when the first man walked on the moon, the Berlin Wall came down, Princess Diana died and 2 planes flew into the Twin Towers.
I was in the gym, peddling furiously away on a bike when I clocked the 3 TV screens above me and realised that something was amiss in La La Land. It took a moment to figure out exactly what was going on as the volume was turned down and my lip reading skills aren’t what they should be.
I immediately sent an SMS to my husband (which is not an easy thing to do whilst going uphill on Level 7) to ask him if he’d heard. He simultaneously called me to tell me the news. Apparently by this stage we were the last 2 people in this media led world to have heard the news.
Unsurprisingly enough, what has followed his death has been nothing less than the full blown media circus that you might expect. Every single TV channel has so far leapt with both feet onto the bandwagon, and bled the story dry for every last sensationalist drop. Tasteless jokes flooded the Internet before his time of death was even called, and desperate ‘comedians’ and talentless talk show hosts thought that the news was the perfect fodder for a few quick and cheap laughs.
Oh what a charmed and hypercritical world we live in.
A place where no matter how famous, successful or talented you are, the media would rather look for a way to break you down and pull you apart. That is of course, when you are alive. Should you die, preferably in an untimely, or even better, dramatic fashion, then every red carpet commentator and entertainment presenter will sure enough have something to say.
They will stand there, all primped, preened and ready for their moment in the spotlight, as they sing the praises of the dearly departed and talk about the travesty of a life lost. Oh please, what a load of cra*p. These headline loving vultures are about as sincere in their grief as Hannibal Lector would be giving a rousing speech at a Pro-Vegetarian Convention.
If Michael Jackson had been in the news the day before, it would have been to make some snide reference to his weird appearance or spiraling debt. A chance to snicker over his eccentric behaviour, dredge up his checkered legal history or make even more assumptions as to why he did what he did.
If he had been on the news the day before, it certainly wouldn’t have been to commend his genius lyrics, his skill on the dance floor or the 5 decades worth of contribution he has made to the music industry. These sort of accolades, sadly, only come with death.
It would be nice to think that a man who has provided so many people with the musical backdrop for a lifetime of memories, be remembered for what he has achieved and not what he so royally buggered up.
OK, so maybe he did look rather odd, and for some strange reason chose to sleep in an oxygen chamber with a chimp called Bubbles. But for heavens sake, the inhabitants of Hollywood are powered by silicon and Botox, and half the stars are already onto their 2nd face. Joan Rivers certainly looks like an extra from Thriller, and no one seems to give her such a hard time.
And perhaps Michael Jackson did somehow manage to get himself into millions of dollars worth of debt, and then have to sell off his ranch and glittery glove to bring in some cash. But so what. Who are we all to judge? After all, those who live in houses built with credit cards, wear clothes bought with store cards and drive cars paid for by legal loan sharks, really shouldn’t throw stones.
Really, if you take comparative salaries into account, Michael Jackson buying a Ferris wheel and a couple of tigers, or a pair of 6 foot solid gold flamingos for his front lawn is really no different to the average person slapping a $1000 handbag or the latest Plasma on their plastic. Especially when they know all to well that there isn’t a hope in hell of ever being able to pay it off before the interest charges double the actual cost.
Michael Jackson lived his life on the stage, lost his childhood as a result and probably never really had a chance to grow up and experience the real world. Many would say that that was his choice, that he chose the life he lived. But those same people were also probably happy to sing along to the music he made and try their hand at a spot of moon-walking.
So lets hope, that instead of dragging his death through another media rumour mill, with endless ‘explosive’ new allegations and ‘shocking’ breaking headlines, he will finally be given a little respect and laid to rest in peace, and we can get back to our regular TV viewing.
dd
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Filed under: all under one roof | Tagged: 5, 5 decades, 50, 9/11, accolades, allegations, america, appearance, bad, Berlin wall, Billy Jean, black, Blood on the Dancefloor, botox, breaking, breaking news, Bubbles, California, channels, charges, cheap laughs, child abuse, childhood, children, chimp, circus, clothes, comedians, commentotor, conspiracy, court case, credit cards, dancefloor, dancer, death, debt, died, discolouration, documentarys, E TV, eccentric behaviour, enquiry, entertainment tonight, exercise, explosive, factm truth, fame, famous, first dance video, first man on the moon, fodder, genius, glove, gym, handbag, Hannibal Lector, headlines, Heal the World, heart attack, history, hit records, hits, hollywood, hosts, how old, hypercritical, images, industry, insincere, interest, interest charges, Internet, It's Black or White, Joan Rivers, jokes, King of Pop, La La Land, legal history, loan sharks, Long Live the King, lyrics, media, medications, Michael, Michael Jackson, MJ, molestation, moon walking, music, music legend, news, Number ones, Off the Wall, oxygen chamber, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, photos, pictures, pigmentation, Plasma TV, plastic surgery, police record, prescriptions, Princess Diana, red carpet, respect, rest in peace, rumour mill, salaries, Scream, silicon, sincere, sing praises, singer, skin, Smooth Criminal, sms, song writer, spotlight, stage, store card, story, successful, suspicious, talents, talk shows, tasteless, terrorist attack, The Jackon Five, The Jackson Five, the king is dead, theories, Thriller, thursday, travisty, TV, Twin Towers, US, usa, vegetarian, vulture, whar happened, what happened, white, Zombie | 1 Comment »