I have Wii'd myself....

On Tuesday, work necessitated an overnight trip to London. Blah blah. All very unthrilling. Routine even. I was not even going to be there for 24 hours. I rang one of my endlessly patient friends to find out if I might stay and headed South.

Tuesday evening began innocuously enough. A glass of red wine, a quick catch up on events since we had last spoken. That is when the trouble flared up. The last time we had spoken had been her birthday and her boyfriend had given her a Wii machine thingummy.

She extolled its virtues to me. She suggested I try it. I viewed it askance. Such a thing was surely not for me? She started plugging things in and it seemed that it would be rude, churlish even, to refuse to play. In my innocence I imagined that five minutes or so would prove to be enough and I would then be able to return to my wine glass and the armchair. Fool. Fool. Fool. How little I knew.

It began innocently enough with a game of bowls. My kind hostess told me with glee that she thrashed her boyfriend at this on a regular basis, consequently I had no hopes for my own prowess. But then the seduction began - STRIKE!!! The sound of cheering crowds, scores in the hundreds. Best of three turned into best of five. I was winning. I was hooked.

It might have been during the last, hotly contested match that I strained a muscle in my bottom. I hadn't worried about this since I didn't think I had any muscles there but it turns out that I do, and it is a muscle required for bowling victory. Ouch. But like a true sportsman (ok, sportswoman) I persevered through the twinge and carried on.

When my friend stopped to answer the phone I started playing Baseball. Now that is hard and it turns out that there are a whole set of muscles in my shoulder blade that are required to play it, muscles I have not used for a long time. Muscles that are protesting.

It didn't end there. Exhausted after the fourth innings I switched to what I presumed would be a leisurely game of golf. Not that I have ever played golf in my life mind you. I hit a Birdie. I don't know what that is but it was very exciting. I also hit a tree and hit the ball straight down the fairway onto the green. I was 1 under par. NO idea whether that is good or bad but I was addicted.

After a brief stop for food we resumed and decided to take up skiing. We had downhill races, we slalomed. We swore at one another and we shouted at the screen in frustration. By the end I was exhausted. It would have been less tiring to do the real thing.

That was just the beginning of the end. This morning I can scarcely walk. Little old ladies with two walking sticks travel with more agility than I do. Entire muscle groups that I thought had retired for good have come out to play and cripple me in the process. I have Wii'd myself, and I'm paying the price.

God it was fun though.

Holding out for a Hero?

So, I spent my Sunday evening lolling about on my sofa with the Loyal Hound snoring gently on my foot. The fire was crackling away and I decided to watch the film Signs with Joaquim Phoenix and Mel Gibson.

Now, the merits of the film (or lack of them) aside, I found myself pondering something deep and meaningful. This is most unlike me and gave me rather a shock. Then I realised it wasn't actually that deep and meaningful rather flippant and irrelevant which made me feel a little more at home. Despite pondering this for a full lap of my concentratcion span (a good thirty seconds then) I came to no decisive conclusion so I have decided to share my hypothetical dilemma with you and gather your thoughts on the matter.

Here goes:

Are men naturally more 'heroic' than women? Is their natural instinct to protect and defend or is that just what they think they should do? This thought came about because Signs is a predominantly male cast. Without any token women to protect it addresses much more the question of how brave men might be on their own without the stimulus of protecting 'the little woman' and rescuing her from the proverbial dragon (or aliens in this case).

All our lives, the literature and stereotypes that we are fed show us girls being rescued in the nick of time by the tall handsome hero. Films and television perpetuate this myth more often than not. I must be honest here. I don't find this to be particularly true in real life but as I am very rarely carried off by Godzilla or King Kong and left stranded in improbable places and in need of a Bruce Willis style rescue it is hard to judge. Perhaps this happens to you all the time though?

I am also handicapped by the fact that I have never been in a situation where I have not had to sort the monster under the bed out on my own. I've not been given the opportunity to see hero man in action. Also, being a tall person, men don't tend to view me as being in need of much protection. I shall be honest and admit that sometimes I wish this was not so because somehow the sense that I can look after myself makes me feel less feminine. Less like a heroine. Consequently I behave less like one. It's a self perpetuating thing.

Opportunities to be a screaming heroine in need of rescue are scarce though and in my case, futile. If a mouse runs across th kitchen I could leap on a chair and scream but what would be the point? I'd still have to deal with it myself so that is what I do. Deal with it. Would I do things differently if there was man to rope in to deal with it though? Would having a man around make me less brave and does it force him into a position of having to be heroic even if he didn't want to be?

Being on my own does not make me heroic though. I mean, if there is a noise downstairs in the night I choose to ignore it on the basis that I don't want to meet a burglar (so far I am happy to report that it is the mice or the wind). My decision to stay in bed is self preservation rather than bravery. Going downstairs to investigate is asking for trouble. Why would I want to do that? What I don't know is if I was lying in bed with somebody, would he insist on going to investigate? What's more I don't know WHY he might want to go and investigate? Is it stupidity, bravery or foolhardiness?


So here are some questions that I have and that you might be able to answer?

Ladeeez- do you feel safer if there is a man in the house? Why?
Big Strong Men- if you are on your own would you hide from the proverbial burglar in the night?
Ladeeez- if you are home alone and there is a noise in the night do you hide or grab your handy hair straighteners and go and investigate? In other words are you braver when you are on your own?
Big Strong Men- Would your answer to the first question have been different if you were with someone? Why? Do you feel obliged to be a reluctant hero or is it some instinctive reaction to defend those that you love that sends you hurtling into the arms of danger?

Enlighten me. Please.

You've changed.....

One of the people I count as my greatest friend is my old boss. I worked for her and with her for 8 years and only left because I no longer wanted to live in London.

I have helped her move house (twice), am an executor on her will, have had her children to stay countless times and seen her through an affair, a divorce and the death of her mother. All that on top of working together in a fairly high pressure environment and still managing to laugh an inordinate amount and stay friends. In eight years we only argued once. That's rare.

The thing is that in the years since I have left London she has changed. I expect I have too but I really notice it in her. She is harder than she used to be, more impatient and more self centred. These are deliberate changes. She was always an incredibly generous person, hugely accomodating and would bend over backwards to help the friend of a friend if she could. I think she got fed up with it and decided that she was going to put herself first from now on and have what she wants. I can understand this but I confess that I feel I have lost a great deal of the person that I was friends with.

She is so much more impatient now and much less accessible as a friend. She was always my first port of call if I had a major dilemma or crisis and now I think twice before ringing her as I'm not sure of the reception I'll get. In the last three years I have asked her to stay countless times and each time she has cancelled me at the last minute with frankly really poor excuses. Essentially she couldn't be bothered to come from London to Wales. What does that say about how she views me as a friend?

I loathe situations like this. People change, I know that, but I don't want to give up on a friendship that has meant so much to me over the years. Equally the friendship simply isn't the same anymore. I know that there isn't an easy answer to this. No quick fix that can resolve it. The obvious answer is to talk to her about it but that is the crux of the problem. She is incredibly hard to talk to now. Aaargh. Life is always so hideously complicated.

I shall stop moaning and get on with painting the office instead.

Surveying my Domain - it seems I'm doomed. Doomed I tell you.

So, after a manic week spent mostly on building sites, in the car or at the airport I have made it home and have been able to speak to the surveyor. He took great pleasure in suggesting that the house of my dreams is a deathtrap that will suck up my lifesavings, my will to live and leave me penniless and in debt for life. He was on the verge of suggesting I watched 'The Moneypit' and took it as a serious documentary.

The difficulty is how much attention should you pay to a survey? They are naturally pessimistic and never tell you good things that make you feel happy about spending the most money you will ever shell out on anything. In fact they are designed to part you from large paper bags of cash in order to persuade you not to part with further bags of cash for the actual house.

The big problem on this one seems to be the roof. Unlike most welsh houses the roof does not have slate but is done in some delightful tile invented by a lunatic in the sixties. I had naively hoped that, despite its ugliness, I could live with this for 20 years or so before worrying about replacing it. Not according to Survey Man. Apparently, the tiles are 'shaling' which is a BAD THING. Not that he has ever seen it before, but that fact in itself seemed to induce a gloomy outlook over the whole roof.

In addition, he added morosely, the roof trusses might not be strong enough to support the weight of slate tiles so replacing the sixties tiles with slate might mean changing the entire structure of the roof. Great.

His advice? Pay for more specialists to come and look at it and then throw myself off the nearest cliff when overwhelmed with depression.

Naturally he also said that the house had, and I quote, mysterious damp which was erratic and unsourced. Well, that's a welsh house for you.

Oh god - am I biting off more than I can chew? Are my eyes too big for my stomach? Am I cursed with an inability to write anything other than cliches?

What do I do now? I'm sort of afraid to haggle in case I lose the house entirely but equally I can't buy it if I can't afford to look after it. I can feel myself getting stressed just thinking about it. I will go and lie down quietly and moan to myself for a while and hope for words of wisdom from all of you as to what course to take.

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.