Car Crash Dating.

As of this moment I'm officially single and not even bothering anymore to try and change that. Friday night has broken me. This might be the worse one yet. I am a wreck, a broken woman, a date hater and I am never, ever, ever going to one of those parties again. You want to hear all the details? Of course you do. Brace Yourselves. If I had to go through it, then so do you.

So. First I'll confess. I failed to acquire a push up bra. I did do all the hair washing, the primping, the make up, the scent. I was a goddess, prepared to do battle. I was even on time, well I was, until my mother insisted that I needed to come by and change a spotlight bulb for her, at that point I was fashionably late.

The deal was you turned up at the pub at 7.30. All of you would gather in the bar and introduce yourselves before being sat down to dinner at eight. I turned up at 7.45 having failed to bring directions and the pub being in the middle of nowhere in a sprawling village with no lights or sense of anyone actually living there. It took a while to find the place. Heart beating slightly fast at the prospect of real single people being inside I pushed open the door.

Stepping into the warmth of the bar I was greeted by the 'hostess'. Clipboard in hand she ticked me off (the list, not verbally) and reminded me that I needed to buy my own drinks apart from the wine at dinner. Darn. Forgot to bring cash.

I headed to the bar and decided to really go fo it and order water (I know - dashing isn't it?). There are two men at the bar talking to each other. They pay me no attention so I assume they are locals, not willing victims for the slaughter to follow. I head for the 'lounge bar' where I can hear some subdued conversation. I wondered if I had the wrong room. Where were the thirtysomethings? The room had a mixed bag of terrified and or / bored looking men, over made up women and some more relaxed looking 'retirement age' bachelors. Giving myself a stern warning not to judge, I went in.

Nobody spoke to me. I introduced myself (bold hussy behaviour). They stood around in small groups, not really talking to each other at all and clutching their drinks. Some of the men were busy bonding but in classic British male behaviour they were pretending the girls weren't there at all. This was not good. Despite the average age being around the late forties none of them seeemed to have acquired the art of conversation. This might be why they were all single? I chickened out and headed back for the bar. I was going to need more water to get through this.

The two men were still there chatting. They turned out to be friends who had come together to the date night hell but they didn't seem that bothered by actually getting involved in it. We spent a quarter of an hour or so chatting. Well. I asked them questions and they regaled me with stories, tales of derring do and made each other laugh a lot. They were neighbouring farmers. One of them has fifteen dogs, the other looked as if he had had too much botox (very strange over stretched skin on his face) which is an odd look for a hill farmer. They never even asked me my name during all this. Perhaps I should have worn that push up bra?

Noticing silence from the lounge next door we suddenly realised that possibly everyone had gone through to dinner without us and leapt to our feet, galvanised by a British anxiety of being late / rude. Sure enough, like cattle herded into the abbatoir, they were all in the dining room. There were several tables, all with seating arrangements. The boys were to move with each course so that everyone would get to meet everyone else. What a hideous prospect.

Seeing my place name near the door, I sat down at a table laid for eight, at which there were only six place names. Apparently, there were people who looked through the window at the company and ran away rather than coming in. Why didn't I do that?

To my left was a round faced, ruddy cheeked boy / man who was bringing the average age down by about twenty years. To my right an older man. Opposite were two more girls and another man. I sat down and introduced myself to Boy/Man. I soon found out that he was only there because his girl friend (not girlfriend) wanted to come and didn't want to come on her own. He was a farm manager and when I asked what he liked about the job, he answered (with a little too much enthusiasm) 'I like tractors'. Right. My tractor conversation is limited. I persevered. It turned out he also liked combine harvesters, and ploughs, and basically all machinery. He was a boy with a dream job where he played all day with large machinery. He didn't need or want a girlfriend. He wanted the new Massey Ferguson.

Throughout our conversation I was constantly aware of the opposite side of the table. The girl opposite boy/man wasn't saying a thing and the man opposite me, and next to her, was making her look overly chatty. They sat and avoided looking at each other and the silence between them really was deafening. I should defend the girl. She had really lucked out with her 'starter man'. I think he deserves his own paragraph actually. Here goes:

I'll sketch him out for you. Probably the shortest man in the room, he was permanently stoop shouldered. This was good as it showed off his pattered, knitted cardigan which was buttoned up to the top. All the way to the neck sort of top. He didn't seem to like to look up that much, which was also good as it gave me a perfect view of his combed forward hair with its coating of brylcream (or maybe engine grease). Most disconcerting of all though was the fact that he was to spend his entire time unconsciously trying to touch his nose with his tongue. Honestly. I'm not making this up. You couldn't make it up. Have you ever tried to carry on a conversation with someone whilst opposite you there is a man trying to touch his nose with his tongue. You can't. It's disgustingly mesmerising. You want to ask him to stop but it feels rude. Taking pity on the poor girl next to him, who he had failed to talk to and who hadn't (sensibly) tried to talk to him, I asked her what she did.

She turned out to be an ex occupational therapist who was currently writing three books. The 'most literary one' (and I quote directly) was set in the 1970's and was about a farmers wife who becomes a porn star. Really? Truly? This girl is who you would see if you looked up the word 'meek' in the dictionary and there was a picture illustration. She wasn't going to say boo to a puppy, let alone a wolf and she was writing the great literary novel of our times about Farmer Giles's porn star wife? Tongue to Nose man speeded up his tongue to nose action. Eeerugh.

Feeling faintly queasy, and having got the author to talk to the boy/man tractor driver, I turned to my right as the starters arrived. Chicken Liver Pate with one lone piece of bread. Why do they do that in pubs? Give you a great block of pate and a tiny piece of bread so that you can't actually eat any of it? Actually it turned out to be a good thing as the first bite revealed that it was possibly pureed pedigree chum, not chicken liver pate. Toying with the artfully arranged raw onion and red pepper garnish I studied my companion.

Salt and peppered dark hair, tallish, normalish - very 'ishy' in all. Sadly more wishy than dishy though. On the plus side: no cardigan. Phew. Having introduced ourselves, I asked him what he did. 'I'm a leading expert in agronomy' he replied. I know roughly what that is - something do do with crop production and outputs. He dropped in that he had just been in canada and New Zealand. I expressed awed amazement at his cosmopolitan life. He pulled out his phone to show me photos of New Zealand, and of his ex girlfriend in New Zealand. I looked gripped and wondered what the hell I was doing there.

Further lecturing from my new best friend revealed that he had the solutions for the agricultural slump at his fingertips, if only the world would listen to him. It also revealed that he was essentially a travelling fertiliser salesman who spent his time persecuting farmers into buying stuff they didn't want. I avoided thinking to myself 'hmm, he sells crap for a living'. He carried on telling me all about his exciting life. Other than my name, he still knew nothing about me, nor seemed interested in finding out anything. I heard all about the ex girlfriend, the special needs of maize crops, and how tenant farmers are the future and farm owners are spawn of the devil. I started wondering whether I could force down more of the Pedigree Chum pate in order to induce a vomiting attack and a perfect excuse to leave.

I was saved from the pate and the agronomist by clipboard girl, who announced in a falsely cheery voice that 'it was time to move please gentlemen'. Thank god.

My new companions sat down. To my right was a sprightly, grey haired man with an interesting taste in Mrs Merton style glasses (you know the ones - really pointy corners). To my left was a duplicate of salt and pepper man from course one. I blinked. Had he just swapped sides? No - this one had on a different coloured pair of corduroys and it turned out, had a really exciting job. We began with the 'so how far have you had to come tonight' opening bid. Not too far which boded well, in theory. A single man who lived within twenty miles. I didn't know there were any. He then told me that he commuted four hours a day to get to his job. I put on my awed and amazed face and asked if his job was worth it. Fool. I am a fool.

'Ohhhh yesss.' he replied. 'I'm really lucky. I mean, I have my ideal job. How many people can say that?' I agreed. He was lucky. Intrigued by such enthusiasm I asked for more details.

'I work for East Cheshire council. I'm in charge of'... Wait for it.... 'ROAD WIDTHS'. OH MY GOD.

I didn't have to put on a stunned expression. It was there already. Pleased with the effect his announcement had had on me, he carried on. It turned out that he did all the research back through 'historical council documentation' into what widths roads should be. It also emerged that he had a 'real passion' which was for (sound the drum roll) bridlepaths. Bridlepaths it seemed, were more of a hobby for him. An amusing past time. Of course they were. So many of us aspire to amusing hobbies and he had snagged the best one. Damn him.

Gripped as I was by his conversation, I hadn't noticed the main course arriving. It was steak and there was good reason for the steak knives. You needed a chainsaw to get into them. The side dish was 'mixed vegetables'. I don't actually know what they were as they were topped off with red cabbage which had dyed them all to the same shade of purple as the cabbage.

I'll confess that by now I was panicking. Was this what I had paid forty hard earned english pounds for? I couldn't drown my sorrows in my one free glass of red wine because A) it had burnt the inside of my mouth with the first sip and B) I was driving. I started to feel like a hunted animal and looked longingly out of the window at my car.

I realised I couldn't do this. Bridlepath man was telling me with great enthusiasm about a knotty right of way problem that he had solved to the detriment of all parties. Over the table, the porn writer was trailing her scarf through the vegetables as she leaned in to give a glimpse of her push up bra. Opposite me, botox farmer had joined us and was roaring with laughter at his own joke. In desperation, I turned to Mr Merton on my right. He turned out to be a very nice widower who disliked 'all the brassicas' and had seen porn writer in her dressing gown earlier on (they were staying at the same place) which might explain why he spent most of our conversation gazing longingly over my congealed steak at her.

I'd love to tell you more about my pudding companions but I will admit right now that I panicked, and ran for it. The prospect of two more dinner companions and black forest cheesecake was too much to bear. I used Chutney Mary's imminent arrival at my house as an excuse and I fled the scene.

No more internet arranged dating for me, ever again. I officially give up.

Now, does anyone have a failing maize crop or a bridlepath dispute? I know just the men to help you out.

Oh God. It's dating season again.

It's that time of year again, when I launch myself on the stormy waters of the dating world. This year I have chosen a new dating site. This one organises singles 'parties' and outings. It's a good idea. I'm going to skip the whole online chat bit and go straight to the source and actually meet people. Hopefully this will get around the whole issue of thinking that I have met someone nice and normal and sane online only to discover that they are not what they pretended to be when we finally meet.

You see, I have decided that the whole internet dating thing does not work. The problem is that people lie so much. They seem perfectly nice online and then when you meet them they are, in my experience, loons. Men who live with their mothers (there have been two of them), men who ask me my marriage plans the first time they meet me, men who can't speak to a woman when they actually meet her. You get the gist of it. It has not been a good experience.

Honestly, I was thinking I wouldn't bother but the other day someone asked when I last kissed anyone and I was ashamed to realise that it was a figure that ended with the word 'years'. This seems like some horrible kind of failure on my part. I mean who, other than career nuns, goes years without kissing anyone (or any of the things that follow kissing for that matter)? I don't miss it particularly but I feel I should try to do something about it. So, here I am, trying.

The big party is on Friday night of this week. It is in a pub some twenty miles away and the idea is that there will be about forty people - even boys and girls - and we have supper and get to meet each other in relaxed circumstances.

I don't feel particularly relaxed about it. I feel like bottling the whole thing and not going. I've paid for my ticket though and I don't have enough money to just throw it away on dinners that I don't go to.

A friend has told me to wear a push up bra, a low cut top, and just go for it. Easier said than done. I want to go and hide in a corner. I can't imagine who else will be there but I won't be surprised if it isn't a lot of men whose favourite reading material is Farmers Weekly and a lot of girls whose make up and hair products will weigh more than the clothes they are wearing. I can't compete with that. I'm not going to miraculously lose a stone by Friday, and I'm not sure I will have time to buy a push up bra by then either.

My life at the moment seems to consist of being in the car for hours on end and packing and unpacking suitcases. I have not had two consecutive days at home for a while now and until next week there is little prospect of that changing. This weekend is the latest nephew's christening. This means that I have Chutney Mary and her children coming to stay with me. As an unofficial OCD sufferer she has already rung me three times to discuss arrangements for this state visit. Naturally, I have done nothing about it at all and will be rushing around in a panic on Friday trying to get ready for their arrival. This leaves even less time for the installation of the push up bra and locating my hairbrush and makeup.

Wish me luck. It's going to be a rough weekend. If I survive the date night, I still have to make it through the Christening weekend and the state visit.

Mad woman on a mountain

I know, it's been a long time since I was here. I didn't die or anything. Life just escaped me for a while. Builders, Christmas, a crushed finger, snow. The usual excuses. Now I am marooned and there are no excuses not to return. There is a possibility that overnight the hovel, loyal hound and I were whisked off to Switzerland. The only reason I know this isn't the case is that there is no chair lift or gluwhein in sight. Instead there is snow. nothing but snow. So much snow that I have had to shovel a path to my woodshed. You want to see a picture? ok - here's one for you...



I should point out that I took this photo before it started snowing yesterday, when another 7" fell.....

I know that many are excited about the snow but I am on my third week of being snowed in and am thoroughly bored now. I had to evacuate the week before Christmas and ended up spending a fortnight over Christmas with my parents and family. It was about 12 days too long in my book. Carless, and with a house only 7 miles away that I couldn't get to, I was rapidly entering a state of madness. Chutney Mary and the nephews were not too bad but the Box of Frogs had brought her new man home for Christmas and they were lucky to escape with their lives as I was ready to commit foul and dastardly Midsummer Moider style acts after day 2. By day 9 I could barely look either of them in the eye without snarling. Friendly aren't I?

On Sunday I made it home in a combination of four wheel drive vehicles, toboggans and foot slogging and the relief at being back in my own house delicious.

So what happened whilst I was away from cyberspace? The crushed finger was an exciting interlude. I'll set the scene. The builders had finished and after spending three weeks stripping woodchip off the walls and then two weeks painting I was nearly finished. All that was needed was a bit more painting and the carpets to be delivered and laid.

The carpet arrived in a 25 metre x 4 metre roll. Unfortunately the carpet layers didn't arrive. The delivery man was determined to lift nothing more than a piece of paper so my batty neighbour, his ex girlfriend and the postman were roped in. We hauled the carpet onto a ladder and struggled to pull it out of the van into the barn. As the ladder came off the van, the weight kicked in. Everybody apart from me dropped the ladder and my finger was left, trapped between it and the floor. Much cursing and swearing ensued. Then pain. a lot of pain. This being me, I didn't go to the doctor on the basis of 'what would he do anyway?'. By Thursday I gave up and went to see him. He promptly said 'Aaaah yes. You have crushed the bones in your fingertip and the nail needs to come out. Come back tomorrow'. Clutching my arm to my chest I went off and licked my wounds for 24 hours. When I returned he injected my finger with local anaesthetic and then, WITHOUT WAITING FOR IT TO WORK he pulled my finger nail out with a pair of pliers. The Spanish Inquisition had nothing on this man.

Cue shrieks of pain from me and gasps of horror from the nurse who had me pinned to the table. The doctor gave me a scathing look and said 'pull yourself together'. I resisted punching him with my good hand and then shrieked some more as he re crushed all the bones in the finger. ('just checking to see if they are broken - they are!') I'm never going to a doctor again.

Two weeks later the finger felt better but I had torn all the muscles in my shoulder from holding the finger up to my chest (as instructed by the doctor). Why not give me a sling? Apparently this was not worth doing. It would be much better to make me spend over a hundred much needed pounds at the physiotherapist thank you.

This incident put another delay on my life. No painting, no typing and no sleep as the finger / shoulder worked hard to keep me awake. This was a little bit gutting. Having lived on a building site for six weeks all I had been looking forward to was the nice bit at the end when I put the furniture back, cleaned like a lunatic and painted. Instead everything had to be done one handed and at a snail's pace. I could have wept (actually, at one point, I did). This really was a time when I was Single and only just surviving. I longed to have someone else here who could help.

I am now entering a state of cabin fever and rely on all of you to keep me in touch with the world. There are people out there aren't there???? I am living on porridge and cigarettes and am running low on both so tomorrow I will fight through 3/4 mile of snow and see if I can find someone with a four wheel drive to give me a lift to the shops and back. The road over the mountain is not for the faint of heart. The drifts are 8' high the road has been reduced from a wide two lane tarmac ribbon to a single lane of icy slush between the drifts.

I have already brought in two wheelbarrows of logs and dug the loyal hound out of a drift that he misjudged. The reservoir is frozen over and snowed on and looks beautiful. In some ways it is a good thing there is nobody up here at the moment. I must look like a madwoman. When it is snowing hard my stylish outdoor wear consists of a pair of boots with rubber trousers over them to stop the snow filling my wellingtons (actually I have to wear that delightful part of the ensemble all the time now as the snow is too deep to walk in without the trousers). Top half? Coat, gloves, russian style hat with ear flaps and yesterday I was reduced to wearing my strimmer glasses as I couldn't look up into the snow without them. I am the mad woman on the mountain.....

Chutney Mary squashes the Pickle.

My earth mother sister, ensconsed in Devon, and nicknamed Chutney Mary, had a bad day yesterday.

Going into the sitting room to sort out some childish squabble, she tripped over her own shoes and fell, squashing her eldest son, the Pickle, under her as she went and knocking his head into the hearth. Blood, tears and casualty later and the Pickle is a proud owner of some skin glue, a new toy motorbike and a Peppa Pig DVD. Chutney Mary may be scarred for life though.

She is quailing under the guilt. I mean, she is prone to being more sensitive than you or I anyway. The slightest hurt or criticism will be hoarded for years, brought out every now and then, polished lovingly and then carefully stored again in acid free tissue paper. This one may beat all our past insults thugh. I think it will never, ever go away.

I imagine that accidents like this are totally normal if you are trying to bring up children. You are tired, bored and trying to do a million things at once and they are small, wriggly and inevitably in the wrong place at the wrong time. This defines incipient disaster. Chutney Mary can't see this quite yet. She is tormented by the fact that she was cross with the Pickle anyway - as though she caused some Karmic disaster by not being permanently loving and sweet natured. I could explain to her that that sort of parenting is only achieved with Valium but she seems convinced that there is natural state of perfect parenting that she could achieve if only she cooked her children more organic food, knitted them ugly clothes out of leftover newspaper and made up a new and imaginative story every night at bedtime.

Her life would be so much less agonising if she was not aspiring to win the mother of the year award all the time. She might even get to enjoy the chaos and madness that parenting seems to engender.

Obviously I am speaking from a child free position. In her book this means I can have no opinion as 'I won't understand'. Maybe she is right, but I can see how she is tortured by the very act of being a parent and as my sister, deranged or not, I'd like her to have an easier life. I could give her a million pounds and a nanny and she wouldn't rest any easier though. She hasn't had a full night's sleep in FOUR YEARS and has martyred herself to the cause for good. Days like yesterday, whilst horrible, will never become a funny story to tell at future parties. Not just because she won't go to any parties (she couldn't leave the children!) but mainly because she will never let go of the guilt for long enough to see it as just an accident.

I wish that a bit of skin glue and a Peppa Pig DVD could fix things for her.

Life, or something like it.

Life and some sense of normalcy has finally resumed. I don't know that I can remember how to do a normal life? I have remembered where the office is and spent time in it doing little work but lots of faffing. I have been all the way to the local town to do essential shopping only to discover that I left my bag of joy with it's accompanying cash and cards in my kitchen in the hovel. It's a good start. Really.

I managed to irritate everybody over Christmas. You know how there is always somebody who everyone gets cross with when you are all together at Christmas? This year it was me. I think the excessive tiredness of not a day off in three weeks combined with a ridiculous diary during Christmas meant that I was so tired I couldn't remember how to be tactful, charming or much else for that matter. Plus the fact that the rest of my family are mean and nasty and were picking on me.... WAAAAAAH.

Chutney Mary insisted that we all get up at seven o'clock to view her precious ones open their stockings. The boys couldn't have cared less whether we were there or not and I was overwhelmed with bitterness that Chutney Mary had not even tried to seduce us out of bed with coffee and freshly baked pastries. Having got to bed at around 1.30 am the night before and been awake every hour through the night (no, not listening for Father Christmas you muppets), I was most grumpy.

Box of Frogs was possibly on drugs - I've never known her to pick so few fights but she did tell me THREE TIMES IN A ROW that she had infinitely better dress sense than me. All this whilst she was wearing a jumper with pigs knitted on it. I'm sorry. I have bad dress sense and you wear a jumper with farm animals on it? Actually, I think you'll find I have totally indifferent dress sense. I wear clothes so that I'm not naked. I like fabrics that feel nice and if my budget allowed I'd only have cashmere jumpers. I don't do dresses and I struggle to do skirts but I NEVER, EVER wear anything with animals embroidered on it. I studiously ignored her for at least an hour after this, and then told Chutney Mary all about it who kept making loud pointed remarks in front of the Box of Frogs about the fact that I was about to put a coat on to walk the loyal hound and perhaps she should help me to choose it.... Aaaah, the joys of a family at Christmas.

I've made only one New Year's resolution which is to find a house to buy rather than continuing renting. I like this kind of resolution. There is very little I can do about it but the prospect of achieving it is nice.

I braved the shops on Tuesday to try and get one of those little notebook computers to have in the house. This is mainly so that I can blog at all hours of the day and night without having to go over to the office but I think that work can pay for it as it sounds like a work kind of thing! I nearly stabbed my pen through the assistant's eye in PC World due to the extreme irritation that she engendered just by talking. Bear in mind that I had had to sign up in a queue just to get her to consider helping me, whereupon she completely ignored everything I said, tried to sell me things that I didn't want and wouldnt' tell me how much things cost other than an airy 'oh around a £100, around £1,00000.00 etc etc. I should have learnt my lesson when the last PC World assistant I spoke to thought I was a hobbit. Needless to say I left without the netbook thingummy and with a blood pressure that could kill lesser mortals.

Anyway, I am in a white world now. The temperature this week has averaged a delightful -3 in the day and -7 at night. My water took two days of lugging buckets of water up from the stream and boiling them up to defrost but what the hell, that's what life on the hillside can be like. I stayed with friends on New Year's Eve and woke in the morning to find the most amazing Jack Frost ice patterns on the inside of the window - they were so thick I couldn't see out! Each day the frost layers itself over the previous layer so that I woke this morning and though it had snowed the world was so white. So, here i am in my silent and frozen world and loving every minute of it.

Happy New Year.

What Day is it? Happy Christmas, one and all.

I know, I know. I have been remiss. I've failed in my blogging duties and have not been here for weeks and weeks and weeks. This is because I have been everywhere else. You name it, I probably went there. The amount of time I have managed to spend at my hovel on the hill this month can be totalled in hours, not days.

I have composed some excellent blog entries in my head during that time. A very Freudian Christmas was one of the better ones, inspired my dream that I was so busy that I actually missed Christmas day entirely. At one stage there was the risk this might happen.

I am now not particularly excited about Christmas because all festive excitement is overshadowed by the prospect of January and a skeletal diary. I amy actually be able to live in the place where I live. I can move out of the car and stop eating quite so regularly at service stations. It's almost too much to think about. It may be my best Christmas present ever.

In between the jauntering around for work I have found time to deck the halls with holly, cut a tree down and throw on every decoration and make wreaths for the doors. None of this for my house but all for my parents house where I am spending Christmas. Chutney Mary and the Box of Frogs will both be here, as will Special Boy (the youngest much adored brother) and his wife, who he lovingly calls 'his nest of vipers'. Aaaa, Young Love.

So, I wish you all a happy Christmas laced with the usual family rifts, bitter looks, excess of chocolate and boxing day hangover and a tree laden with expensive presents that you actually want.

Happy Christmas.