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.....

The Box of Frogs is in Love.

My sister, mad as a box of frogs, hence the name, is in love. She met her beau at a houseparty in the North of Scotland. Tall, ex army and with a head of thick, grey hair, he was promptly nicknamed 'the Silver Fox' and so he shall remain.

They went straight from being strangers to being a couple. Literally. They met on a Saturday. They parted company for their respective homes on the Sunday. They met up the next weekend and officially became 'a couple'. They are at the stage where they can't remember each other's name and call one another 'Darling' a lot. Now they are talking about moving in together.

It just goes to show how quickly these things can happen. After all they only met two and a half months ago. My prediction? If they are still going out by Christmas then this time next year I'll be shopping for a wedding outfit. Apparently he is coming to stay with us for Christmas. Brave of him. Christmas in our household is a deranged affair with an excess of decorations, bickering, food and sulking. If he makes it through that then marriage to the box of frogs will be a doddle.

That's not actually what I wanted to tell you about though. Box of Frogs has been out of a relationship for a while now and she is a few years older than me. She knows what it is like to be single and how vexing the questions you get asked are. You want examples? Ok, how about this one:

"I can't understand why you are single?" This is usually said by well meaning friends but is intensely irritating as it is a pointless statement. I mean, if I knew why I were single, presumably I would do something about it. Are they expecting me to respond by saying in an insouciant fashion "Oh, it's because at midnight I like to eat a kitten and wash it down with the blood of a freshly squeezed bat." What am I supposed to say when people ask that. Do they want an answer? Seriously people, I don't know why I am single, but I am and I am getting on with my life. It doesn't make me less of a person or anything.

Box of Frogs, more than anyone knows how this type of question is not helpful at all. The other night she came to stay and she said to me.

"The silver fox and I feel so bad that we are happy and you are single. I must introduce you to some of his friends". (ok I'm paraphrasing a little)

So, let me get this straight. If I am single I therefore cannot be happy? Pah! Harumph and Bah Humbug to you. How is it that Box of Frogs, having been single for years and years, is suddenly converted to matchmaking me? It's not that I'm averse to meeting the Silver Fox's friends. They may be George Clooney, or Clive Owen. I'm all for that. What I'm not keen on is the instant pity factor that she has developed now that she is in a relationship and I am not. It is a betrayal of those of us who are single and surviving.

I imagine it is a bit of a conversion thing. She is converted to lurve and all it's glories and wants me to be on the side of the couples, god and all shiny happy things in the universe. Instead I am loitering on the dark side, eating crisps, watching House and wearing mismatched underwear because nobody gets to see it and I can! Obviously, I need to be saved.

Well, not today. Box of Frogs is off on holiday with the Silver Fox this week. Next week I expect she'll start matchmaking me with his accountant.

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.

Things I hate about rain

* It's wet.
* Everything it lands on gets wet.
* It makes the sky all dark and mean and grey
* It means that the sun doesn't shine
* It floods under my back door and turns my pitifully small hall into a miniature swamp that hobbits might drown in.
* If it rains from one particular direction, it floods through my sitting room window, creating an interesting water feature, and yet more problems for the lurking hobbits.
* The endless gates that I have to open and close when leaving my mountain side are all situated in the rainiest of rainy spots, so it becomes impossible for me to emerge from my mountain retreat looking like anything other than a half drowned mongrel cat.
* Small rivers appear in strange places, usually places that I need to walk.
* Sometimes they are large rivers. I know this because two white water rafters just shot through my yard on a newly formed torrent.
* Excessive rain usually, and ironically, means that I run out of water as the pipes get blocked with small sheep, lost shrews or frogs with no sat nav. I then have to go and remove said blockages.
* The lack of light makes me confused about what time it is. It's all just grey time. Consequently I missed breakfast and ate lunch twice. I also changed to go to bed thinking it must be night time. Disappointingly it turned out to be just gone two thirty.

There must be things I like about rain, but I can't seem to think of them right now.

You have mail.

E mails are both a joy and a nightmare. This week I had a lunatic e mail from one of my sisters (not the one who makes Chutney and lives in the darkest west country, the other one who is mad as a box of frogs, thinks she is 27 and is nearly 40. She lives in London). Anyway, she sent me an e mail in what I read as a very shirty tone of voice about plans for the other sisters 40th. It's a whole other story but it did make me think about e mail and the joys and dangers of it.

Joyous Things about E mail:

* You can stay in almost instant touch with friends all over the world, often whilst looking as though you are working.
* You can send a brief message to someone without having to track them down on the phone and go through all the chit chat just to say 'yes, I can do Wednesday'
* People sometimes send you funny things that make you spit your tea all over your keyboard 'cos you are laughing so hard.
* It is a million times easier to organise things with a group of people with the whole group e mail / reply to all option. No more "I'll ring so and so and get back to you" hassle.
* I know what my godchildren who live abroad look like 'cos I get photos of them every now and then through the wonders of e mail attachments.
* You can have an ongoing argument with somebody (like my sister) without ever actually speaking to her and then tell her that she misread the tone when she calls you on it.

Nightmarish things about E mail:

* Spam, Spam, Spam, Lobster Thermidor and SPAM
* Now that we are so techno dependant I slide into panic and fear when my e mail doesn't work. I see visions of a dark future for myself where I will not know what is going on and won't be able to tell anyone that I don't know what is going on because my e mail is on the fritz. It's a trauma.
* Companies now think that they don't need to speak to anyone because they can make you e mail them with your complaint, query, request and they can then send you an automated reply and never read your rant.
* It is very easy to misinterpret the tone that an e mail is sent in. Sarcasm doesn't translate well, or irony and it can be tricky to divine whether the e mail you have just sent / received was meant as a joke or a termination of all friendship.
* People send you random pictures of their children wearing their pants as a hat, eating, breathing, looking like Damien from the Omen. I have no idea what to send back as a reply and just ignoring said photos feels rude. It's a modern manners dilemma.


I'm sure there are a load more things that I love / hate about e mail but these are the ones I wanted to share for now.