Tag: Happy

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I’ve been out of the apartment

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I’ve gone from an almost hermit like existence to being less of a hermit.  I can’t really say social butterfly because that would really give the wrong impression.  On the other hand compared to normal it could be used…

Anyway – this year I decided to go to things and do things.  The last few weeks have been busy – busy for me that is (I don’t know why i always feel the need to put in qualifier🤷‍♀️). One event a week is busy for me.  It started when I went to see Jenny Eclair on a Friday night – I did agree with her sentiment that an 8pm start really was late but that’s ’cause we ain’t the spring chickens we like to think we are.  On the whole she really was funny – now on occasion one or two of her references didn’t exactly hit the mark (possibly just for me) – referencing a shop in the UK, yes I recognise the name and have a vague notion of the point you’re making but as we’re not in the uk it didn’t have quite the impact it should have – that kind of thing.  To be honest, that didn’t really matter because it was a great night.  This was slightly overshadowed by looking at the phone afterwards to read of a shouting match in the White House between Trump&Co and President Zelenskyy – like WTAF?!?!

The following week on a Thursday, I went to see James Blunt in concert – this time it was indoors and my word there is such a big sound difference and on this occasion I wasn’t dancing in the rain – so that alone was a big thumbs up.   While we were waiting for the concert to start there was a video on the screens to advertise merchandise – completely brilliant – There was King Charles – unnoticed, Trump – booed, Musk – less booed, Putin – tittering, Starmer – unnoticed, a random woman in the house of commons – confusion for me (I now think it might have been Kemi Badenoch but I’m not 100% confident…) then Zelenskyy – massive cheering.  So whoever came up with this really hit the nail on the head – especially after last weeks fiasco/”art of the deal”

Jump another week and it’s a Friday – myself and my Mam went to see Michael Harding.  It was brilliant!  Mams generation in the audience thought it was hilarious as well – I just thought it was funny in places.  On the other hand I could listen to that man read a shopping list and I’d think it was brilliant.  I have to admit that I haven’t read his books but I do read his pieces in the newspapaer  The lesson of the talk was that you don’t have to understand people – you don’t have to work them out, know what makes the tick – you just have to love them.  Accept them as they are and love them.

This week, I flew solo.  I went to a matinee in the theatre – it always astounds me how they remember the words.  It’s an absolute pure feat!  It’s magic!  Anyway – yesterday’s excursion was to see Shakespeare!  King Lear to be precise.  Now it seems that most people I know of varying generations have all done it for their Leaving Cert. – myself included, when I repeated mine.  When you think of the play you did in school, the general feeling (or possibly personal feeling) is that it’s dry – it was lines and quotes remembered for an exam, the story line was only a thin surface.  The novel you study is all about the story – dialogue, descriptions, narration – it’s all wrapped up to convey the story.  The play however is pure dialogue and to read it on a page for an exam – this can be very barren.  Yesterday however, to see it played out – to see facial expressions, to hear intonation and delivery – this made it – this changed it – this was outstanding.  I think that whatever the play that’s being studied for exams – go and see it being performed – whether it’s via the big screen, the little screen, on youtube or live on stage  – see it performed – see what becomes of a script – because essentially that’s what it is – it’s a script for a visual production.   And yesterday’s production delivered on the visuals too!  Gloucesters ordeal took place on stage with the makeup (?) for each infliction being put into place – I don’t go to the theatre much – so this is possibly something many of you were acquainted with, for me it was better than any CGI in the cinema – it was real – it was credible.  The cast was a cast full of luminaries – 4 of whom I recognised immediately and the rest I’ll be watching out for.

I have 2 weeks of nothing ahead of me – I’m looking forward to them!  However after that it gets busy again with another concert and a trip or two.  I’m going to need a long lie down after all of this is done!

 

Coffee in a mug with a spoon, on a counter top with a light shining on the surface Slow Sunday Morning
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Slow Sunday Morning

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It’s been a relaxing morning I woke up had a look at the weather forecast and decided that comfort was going to be the order of the day. I eventually got out of the bed and went to the kitchen and blended stuff to make a smoothie type thing.  I’d previously bought a smoothie thing from Lidl and had a fight with it every time I tried it – so I went back and bought the nutribullet thing.  This morning was my first time giving it a go and it worked without any fuss or persuasion. While I was drinking my yogurt, blueberry & banana, I put a coffee on to brew and a pain au chocolat into the airfryer.  I love the treat of it all. I took the coffee and pastry back to bed, put on some jazz to plink away in the background and decided to read the Good Housekeeping on the iPad – it’s pure decadence! Outside I can hear a bit of wind (it’s actually the trees rustling) and the rain is hitting the window, so I have a feeling that the rest of the day is going to continue in this vein
Bloggage · Food · Home · Life

I now consist mainly of bread

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I ran out of bread yesterday and rather than going to the shops yesterday evening, I thought I’d go this morning before work.  You can take it that there was in fact very little thought given to this until about 06:30, when I realised I’d need to have a shower and wash my hair before I could emerge outside.  Anyway – Amn’t I wonderful?  that’s exactly what I did!

I decided to treat myself and rather than getting a sliced pan, I bought a loaf from the lidl bakery instead.  Apparently it’s called a “Country Loaf”, according to my receipt.  According to me, it’s just delicious.  Whether it’s a doorstep with just butter, butter and jam, or toasted with butter – it’s all good and almost all gone.  Although I will say this for one of the slices of toast, you’d swear I’d never buttered toast before – it was carnage!  It still tasted great though

Note to self: thinner slices will make it last (no they won’t)

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Slow Sunday

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This is going to be short’n’sweet as I’m just out if bed as I type this!
This morning I have done something I haven’t done in a while – I got up, made myself a cup of coffee (mug of coffee) brought it back to bed, switched on the speaker and listened to some background music and read a magazine on the iPad.  I can’t remember the last time I flicked through a magazine.  It was so worth it – I have a new recipe for tea brack and I have discovered there is a new book I want to buy, although it’s still only being written.  It seems that Joanne Harris is currently writing a prequel to Chocolat.  Mind you it seems that the kindle edition of Blackberry Wine is 99c/p on Amazon ’til the end of March – I’ll have that, Thank You Very Much!!

On that note, I’m off to sit on the sofa and watch Pride & Prejudice – the entire 1995 mini series – well what else would you be doing on a Sunday?

BTW the recipe was in the March issue of the Country  Living magazine

 

Bloggage · Books · general · Life

I’ve Been To The Library

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I always thought that I was bad at blogging because I had a boring life.  Well recently I’ve been doing THINGS so it seems I’m just really rubbish at writing about it!  I’m not going to list off all of the things I’ve been doing –  in fairness it’s not really a long list, but it’s more than two things so that definitely constitutes as being a list right?

Today I took the day off work to go and get my eyes tested.  It seems my vari-focals will see me through for another year or two and after that I’m reverting back to single vision lens because I tend to use my reading glasses for all things bar seeing.   My eyes are complicated – long sighted/shortsighted/astigmatism <- I should point out that I do only have two eyes but one of them has two defects, just in case you were getting carried away with notions.  When I was finished with the opticians I decided to drop into the library.  Now this is no longer my local library – but it was when I was growing up and I remember the joy of being able to go from taking books out upstairs in the children’s section to taking out books from the grown-ups library downstairs.  Of course all of that has changed now but the memories were wonderful.  I went in and although it’s smaller, it definitely felt like they had more books than my local disappointment.  I decided to take out a book anyway – I mean, how daring!  and yes it does mean I have to go back and return it in a few weeks but that’s no great hardship really – ok maybe the parking is – but…

The book-du-jour is “A Nice Cup of Tea” by Celia Imrie

A Nice Cup of Tea

I’ve listened to the Audio books of the other two in the series and they were lovely!  “Not Quite Nice” & “Nice Work (If You Can Get It)” were both read by the author herself and believe me when I say she really has the voice for audio books – absolutely delicious!  This trilogy (so far a trilogy) is about a group of British Ex-Pats, plus Carol the American, all living in Bellevue-sur-Mer, along the coast from Cannes.  I don’t want to spoil it but it’s basically about their friendships and adventures.  I’m almost tempted to compare it to the Famous Five, if they had all retired to the south of France.  The south of France is also why there’s so many plays on the Nice and the British nice.

Anyway – I’m off to put the kettle on, this has put me in the mood for a nice cup of tea, and I’ve a book to be reading!

 

 

general · Life

My Mediocre Year

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I know you might think that is a tad negative but believe me that’s me bigging it up.  There’s a lot of round-ups of the year that was etc so I thought that I’d hop on the bandwagon.

For me 2023 was a year that went by and I’m not sure what it was that I did for 365 days.  Work wise, we had somebody go out sick, which meant that a my work became that little bit more stressful fairly early on, and it just didn’t seem to recede back to what was previously normal.  Technically I’ve stepped up to the challenge etc but I’d now like it if I could gift wrap it all up and hand it back.

Another draw back to work challenges was the inability to take time off, however, this was also a result of being the carer of a deaf and demented cat.  Should I want to go away, I would have needed somebody to come and babysit ’cause despite being 17 she was my baby.  Sadly she (Oscar) passed away in October leaving me alone in the apartment for the first time ever.  Prior to her passing, I had two family funerals to attend, one was a cousin – She was my first cousin once removed – otherwise known as my dads first cousin – she was a lovely woman, and whilst nobody deserves it, she most certainly didn’t.  After that, there was my Uncle, he was my Godfather and I was fond of him, but I really was a terrible niece.  I hadn’t been to visit in years- but covid played a part in that.  His death was unexpected and I think that was better, it was sudden and he hadn’t been ill – by which I mean terminally ill.  It did lead to a bit of a tiff with my sister – I won’t say it’s resolved but we have moved on.

So what about me?  Well I essentially spent my time either working or after work just looking after the cat and waiting for the time to pass so that the next day would arrive.  Once I was left in the apartment, it’s taken time to readjust.  Sometimes things have just occurred to me and I have to wonder why didn’t I think of it before – which is rather comical.  I was at a craft morning and I was wondering how do all of the ladies get the time to start and finish so many projects???  Of course then it hit me that – they are either retired or they do it in the evening – and I realised, I no longer had a cat to dominate my time – so now I’ve been doing a lot more crochet.  I’m really rather pleased about that.

And what do I intend to do?  I’m not entirely sure – there’s so many things that I want to do, however I can safely say that consistency is not my middle name!  I’d like to get back to walking, I’d like to attempt to learn to knit, I want to improve my photography – or at least my ability to see a photographic opportunity.  I’ve started to follow an instagram account – it’s a lady that who is advocating that you wear the sparkle, and while I’m not a sparkle wearer, I am going to embrace the wear the nice clothes and not just keep them for Sunday best as it were.  When I’m working from home, there are times when the bar is very low and I’m just happy to be dressed – so yes – 2024 embrace the sparkle.  I also want to start to cook – previously I think you could describe my culinary attempts at simply heating something in order to eat.  Lets face it that can be demoralising – especially if you’re also dressed like swamp monster.  It’s sending subliminal messages that you don’t matter.

So 2024 will involve, good food, good mood – indulging in hobbies – I might even remember to post here

What are you planning to do in the New Year?

Bloggage · Celebration · general · Life · Mental health · Notions

Let Me Inspire You

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The other day I was reading a substack.  The author was saying how in general she doesn’t compare herself with others – and yes I can identify with that notion – I’m happily playing away at being me, because although we are all the same, we are different.  The author also decided that this steadfast reluctance to compare herself to others was impacting her negatively – she found that although she enjoyed doing the things that she does, she was reluctant to write or publicise it because there are others out there doing exactly the same, but doing it better.  This I can truly identify with.  I know my limits, I know what I can and can’t do – I know where my finesse ends!.

There’s a world of blogs out there that you can dive into and love, well I’ve decided to blog so that you can look at this and say, you know what? I can do better than this.  You see I’m happy with my limits, and pushing to expand them a little every so often, but there are people out there that do want a push, that do feel the need to try and produce things they are proud of.  If I was to think that way, I’d be stuck in a paralysis because my talent falls well short of my minds eye.

So in future, if you like what you see, but thing that you can do better – then do it!  Seriously, just do it!  If I can produce this then I know that you can do it so much better.  Break out your flat lays, construct your photos, write your reviews (mine mainly consist of yes or no and let’s face it – that doesn’t really count – it barely has a word count!), show us what you’ve been working on – I’ve been working on a blanket for the last year and I’ve only done about 25 rows!.

It’s just about finding your voice.  I love the word JUST as if it’s the simplest thing in the world!  In a year and a half I’ll be 50, I’ve been married, and now separated. I never had children, but did have 4 cats.  I’ve loved and experienced the heartbreak that lurks in the shadows.  However I’m only now starting to have the courage to be me, it’s taken a lot and I still haven’t really gotten there – so in fairness there’s no JUST about it – but it’s still something that needs to be done.

So there you have it.  I’m going to be ordinary, so you can shine.  I’m happy to trundle along slowly improving (or not) but I’ve decided not to be ashamed of being ordinary because there’s billions of us out there and it’s not really a bad thing.

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Sitting in the Shade

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It’s just after 8am and I’m out in the garden with the laptop and a coffee.  I think this is the hour that everybody seems to emerge – I can hear windows opening and voices – chattering about what needs to happen in order for the day to start.  The dogs have been left outside, they too, are chatting over the garden fences.  It’s the same every morning, an unconscious way of marking what time it is.  The various different birds flying about and singing in their dawn chorus are joined by aeroplanes.  I see their con trails in the sky – why has that reminded me of slugs and snails? – when I can’t see them like the birds, I can hear them somewhere high above and off in the distance.

Because of the angle of the building, I have a choice, I can sit in a warm sunny carpark or sit in a slightly colder shaded garden.  I’ve picked the garden, nobody goes near me.  The closest I have to that are the bees who are investigating the raspberries.  They’re not in the lavender yet, although I can smell it sometimes if the breeze goes in the right direction. I’m waiting for the honeysuckle, now that is a beautiful smell.
Occasionally I will be joined by the cat but this morning she has chosen to go back to bed.  I will probably make the same choice when I’m her age.  But for now, for this season, for this day, I chose to get up earlier and and enjoy the sounds.   It’s a gentle way to start the day and for that I’m lucky.  There’s no hurry hurry hurry.  It’s strange that 30mins less time in bed gives my day much more than 30mins extra.
Books · Cats · Christmas · general · Home · Life · Links · Music · Reading

Do I really have to work?

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It’s currently 07:45 and I’m still in bed.  However, I’ve already had my breakfast – I made porridge and a cup of coffee and brought it back to bed – so breakfast is finished.  I’m now reading “The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories”, the cat is curled up beside me and ClassicFM is on in the background.  Surely this is a Saturday and I can comfortably stay here for a while longer??  Sadly it’s Wednesday and I have to commute into the spare room, which isn’t exactly torturous, but leaving my little idle is!  Oh well!

Bloggage · Books · Cats · general · Home · Life · Links · Reading · Uncategorized

Relaxing After Easter

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Background: I’ve been left with one cat and she is decided clingy and needy.  If I sit down then it is an open invitation for her to sit on my lap – the exception to this is if I’m at a table/desk.

Today is a bank holiday and this morning I started to read a new book (A Venetian Reckoning by Donna Leon– see below 👇)  I knew that if I sat down then the day would be spent with a cat on my lap and not in a cute way you see on the telly.  So, and I admit it!, I hid in my bedroom so that I could read.  Naturally her hunting instincts meant I was found the minute she realised I wasn’t in the same room as her and there’s only three other rooms in the apartment.  However sitting on the bed with my knees up meant no cat on the lap, despite a few attempted incursions.  This has lead to what I can only describe as a really pleasant day.  She’s been asleep beside me while I read (and on occasion closed my own eyes) and it is contentment all around.

Now I do realise that because she wasn’t actually sitting on me, it means I’ve neglected her shamefully throughout the day and I will have to show undying love and affection to her when I do go to sit on the sofa later.  However, for now, I’ve had an absolutely wonderful day, stress free with no cat howls, read my book, dunked biscuits in my tea and dipped into the internet here and there.

I think I might just have found the format that works for calm days of nothingness – I will return to it for more days like this.

Book in question should you choose to indulge: