Ooo, look at the big green pond over there...

Recently hubby and I decided to clean out our pond which has got quite overgrown by plants in the last year or so. We’ve actually got a lot of fish in the pond as well – originally we had 6 goldfish and 2 ghost koi and over the years most of the goldfish have died, but not before procreating in large numbers, so now we have too many of them to count. Actually, we probably could count them, but they very inconveniently keep swimming around instead of lining up and keeping still to make the job easy – if only I could get them to behave like the miis in the Wii plaza…but still, there you go, I can’t so I’ve given up trying to count them! The koi are still there and have both grown as lot although one has grown more than the other and has (by virtue of being a bully and extremely greedy) become big enough to have earned the name ‘Monstro’!

So, we were cleaning the pond and Monstro (possibly because he could actually see out of the pond without all the plants in the way) was splashing around taking an interest in all that was going on. It was at that point that he suddenly decided to make a break for it and leapt out of the pond, landing on the grass about 4ft away. Now I know we’ve had enough algae in the pond in the past for him to maybe think that the grass might be another big lake-y type thingie, but this really was a jump too far! It was at this point (around the time that he lay there flapping and squeaking about how breathing really wasn’t as easy any more!), that hubby grabbed at him to try and get him back into the pond. Well, large fish can squirm a lot it seems and hubby had a real problem hanging on to him. Monstro was flapping and hubby was struggling and trying to turn towards the pond and Monstro made another leap for it – this time hitting the side of the pond with a thump, falling in the water with a splash and sinking without a trace.

“OMG!” I rushed to the side of the pond – only to see Monstro slowly heading back up to the surface looking a little dazed (and slightly scraped down one side). I decided to act goalie for a bit, just in case he got any other funny ideas, but he was more sensible than I gave him credit for and decided that he’d had enough adventuring for one day!

So, here we are, a couple of weeks on and his scrape has healed nicely (leaving the kind of impressive scar that he can tell the other fish how brave he was^*1) and he is back to his usual bullying greedy self. Long may he stay swimming in water...!

^*1 Reminds me of the ‘call that a scar?’ incident…

The inevitability of change

After a recent conversation with hubby I began to wonder about the way that our lives change over the years.

Nothing ever stays the same, does it? Pets and people grow old (hopefully) and die (sometimes too young). Your health waxes and wanes – even if you just feel run down or pick up a cold in the winter. New technology means that we buy the new TV or camera that has made our old one obsolete and our cars get rusty and prone to breaking down. Actually, that last point isn’t strictly true with my car, it’s old but not too rusty and doesn’t break down – it does however make weird gurgling noises when it rains and the rain gets in thorough the sun roof and gets trapped in the ceiling....but I digress....

Hubby and I were talking about how your relationships change as your time together evolves. When you are young and in love you spend all your time together. For much of the time you are joined (quite literally) at the hip and even outside of that you spend every waking moment together or calling each other. Then life just seems to take over and for many people children happen. Their lives are suddenly transformed into providing a nappy changing, feeding and onwards to taxi service. The couple don’t spend so much time together, they spend it with the children...(we by-passed this and moved onto the next stage (having no kids!)). Then, the kids leave home and the couple want to do all those things that they didn’t have time for when the kids were occupying their time. Much of their time is spent with work and the social life attached to that, some of them join clubs and societies and have ‘a life of their own’ and as a couple they end up spending no more of their time together than they did when the kids were around. Maybe they even spend less as at least they did things as a family when the kids were small...

Time marches on (as it has a habit of doing), something else becomes obsolete and needs replacing and then the mortgage is paid off and it’s time to retire from work. Guess what happens....the couple end up spending every waking moment together again, just like they did in the first flush of love. Isn’t that amazing?

I suppose what I wondered the most about all of this, is that although those changes are bound to happen, sometimes we don’t like the way that time keeps moving on, forcing us to get ever older and making us continually adjust to stuff. But, it’s how we cope with that change that makes us who we are. Should we move forward kicking and screaming, should we be depressed at the passage of time or should we go forward always looking back with regret at what has passed? I don’t think we should do any of those – I think we should look to the future as an undiscovered country – yes it will always change and yes, I will get older, but life is just like that. Since purple is my favourite colour, I guess I won’t have any issues about wearing it when I get old either!

New poll day....

Yes, you got it, it's a new poll day....

Please vote - I promise it will have more effect on the politics of this country than our current system!

Chatanooga ripple....

We went out recently to a Glenn Miller concert. No, don’t be silly, we’re not time travellers, it was a tribute type thingie! Anyway, we took my mother out to this concert because it was her birthday and it was a significant one – one of those ones that starts with eight and ends with zero – not that I’m mentioning her age you understand...

Anyway, we were up in the balcony and (as I like to do) I looked out over the audience and decided that I was plainly the youngest person there (by about 40 years) – ignoring of course PMB, SIL and hubby. The average age in the audience was, um, well, ancient and I reckon the collective age may well have headed into the millions! These were people who probably did see Glenn Miller when he was alive and when they were young and trendy!

So, the lights dimmed and the music started and the whole audience started rippling, grey heads were nodding up and down and rocking from side to side like some mild version of the St Vitus dance – at one point one couple even got up and started jiving in the aisle (although to be fair they didn’t do too much before the gentleman stopped - visibly heaving for breath) – all the same, everybody had a really fab time. Even I had a fab time, and I’m not poking fun here, it really was great to see so many people out there enjoying themselves.

It was halfway through the concert that I looked to my right and there, about 6 seats away in my row was a young boy of about 10 years of age and he was bopping up and down in his seat, playing imaginary drums, trumpets and saxophones. He was grinning from ear to ear and thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. Now apart from the fact that he alone probably lowered the average age of the audience from ancient to merely old, it was just so refreshing to see and just proves that that Glenn Miller chappy knew good music!

In-truder alert!*

MBP phoned me a few days ago and was complaining that he hadn’t had much sleep the night before and so I asked him what the problem was. He started to tell me that it was the SIL, but not quite in the way that you might think....

The SIL was woken at about 2.30 in the morning by a strange noise and she told me she thought it was a large moth. In the way that you do, she lay awake for a bit in the dark, straining to hear what was happening and then heard more noise and began to wonder if it was a mouse. It did seem odd that a mouse might have got in and climbed the stairs just to leap up and down on the spare bedroom bed in order to wake her up, but it's true that odd things do go through your mind at that time in the morning. Added to the mouse theory, was the possibility of revenge, as after mice getting into the garage and munching their way through a spare duvet that had been stored there, traps had been set...I will say no more...!

After a bit more clattering and what sounded distinctly like a meow, the SIL bravely got up to investigate and on opening the door of the spare room spotted a cat who immediately ran under the bed! Now, MBP and the SIL don’t own a cat and it wasn’t one of ours that had smuggled its way home in one of my brother’s shoes so she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. She got down on her knees and peered under the bed and yes, it really was a cat! It was back to the bedroom to wake MBP who so far was oblivious to all this excitement.

“Wake up”, she said, “we have an intruder – there’s a cat under the bed...”
“Grummph, blurgle” he mumbled “do you want a hand?” – he said in a tone of voice that really meant ‘please say no and let me get back to sleep....’

The SIL is made of stronger stuff than that and so he got up to give her a hand! They both peered under the bed and she was right – there really was a cat under there. Thus ensued a certain amount of time playing ‘catch the cat’, which as any cat owner who has ever wanted to take their pet to the vet will tell you is lots of fun^*2....and eventually, the cat was outside the front door.

First a frog , next a cat ...let’s just hope they’re not working their way up to bigger animals....

^* Danger Will Robinson!
^*2 ...and is something akin to how to give your cat a pill...

Ah! The annual get-together...

This year we had a party..actually, most summers we have a party and they vary in size and scale depending on whether either of us has a significant birthday! TBH I can’t actually remember how it all started, but I think it was when hubby turned 40. I may have previously mentioned that all our friends are scattered to the four corners of Britain (well, maybe not quite that far afield, but almost) and so we just don’t get to see them as often as we would like. The summer party gives us (and them) that chance - the chance for us all to meet up and just spend a bit of time together. After the first one, the next one was organised for us when the POG ^*invited a few friends to our place for the weekend and suddenly we were throwing another party!


I love it – I love to see everyone and I just wish it wasn’t for such a short period of time. The cost to us is the food (this year barbequed chicken with salad and a cooked breakfast for 15) and in return we gain a significant quantity of alcohol. The equation goes something like this:

3 chickens + salad + coleslaw (made by the VNSO – yum yum!) + sides + crisps and snacks + Pimms and punch + 12 bottles of Carslberg + cooked breakfast = at least 8 bottles of wine + 5 bottles of cider + 11 cans of beer + 5 cans of lager + 2 bottles of cava!

Seems fair to me!

Apart from the food and drink, the only other cost is the work. The preparation is tough on me for a few days before (mostly because I feel a need to clear enough floor space for all the airbeds...) but once the BUF arrives I find myself with almost nothing to do. I’d like to call her a treasure, but she might blush, so all I will do is publicly thank her via this blog! I am really lucky generally – as soon as folks arrive, I no longer have to be the hostess with the mostess – they all run around, fetching and carrying and even making me coffee while I sit down and (on this occasion) put my feet up in the sun. Can partying really get any better than this?

Now, where’s the diary, I want to set a date for next year....

^* Probation officer guy