wagwaan?

May they rest in peace

I would like to just record for posterity the terrible tragedy of 14th December in Connecticut. Such horrific events are beyond our comprehension. I have since discovered that the granddaughter of one of my coaching friends goes to that school but on the day, decided she 'didn't want to go' to kindergarten. There but for the grace of God! 

My heartfelt prayers go out to all the families of the victims as well as the whole community that has been devastated and will never be the same again. 

 

Riots are nothing new

I've been thinking about this cartoon since the rioting began, and just had to find it for you. It's the cartoon in the Sunday paper that my dad used as an excuse to talk to the beautiful young girl sitting opposite him in the Paris Metro carriage. Yes, that's how my parents met. 

 

source

So you see, there is nothing new under the sun, is there? In fact, when I went to see if there were indeed riots in Paris in 1952, I found this list on Wikipedia, dating back to the year 44 BC!   (strangely, no mention of those Paris riots I was looking for....)

Proud to be a Brit

Well, despite everything negative that's going on in this ol' country of ours, it's nice to know there are good people out there. My friend Kirsty blogged it first, but I feel the same as her so here is a link to her thoughts. Spread the love!

Big news day

Well, this was the story that unfolded in my local town today. The place came to a standstill as roads were cordoned off and Claire had to change her plans because she was due at 1pm at the shop right opposite the bank that was under siege. It's not every day you get someone in a small Hertfordshire town who says he has a bomb and is going to detonate it.... Luckily all is well that ends well and no one was hurt. One young man is in custody. I hope he gets the help he so obviously needs, because it's a pretty desperate act isn't it?

Apart from that, my sister found some more treasures at my mother's house last time she was there, and she has scanned some to show us.  I just adore these two that I'd never seen before - first my beloved Grandpa, aged around 4 in 1906 (!):

And then my dad, aged around 6 months:

Even Claire can see the family ressemblance there - we have strong genes!!  

Talking of photos, my friend Nikki came over with a friend and their two baby girls so Claire and I could take some pictures of them. I only took a few and let Claire take over, but they are so adorable...

And here are the girlies, BFFs already haha:

The difference in size makes me smile... because when Claire was born her father very diplomatically (not!) told my SIL how HUGE her daughter was. Of course, she was 5 months older than Claire at the time, and when babies are little, 5 months makes a massive difference. I don't think J has ever forgiven my ex for that!

Well, that's about it for now. I'm off to catch some zzzzz's.  Nite!

 

This is democracy

Well I voted today, did you?   I always vote, however hopeless it may sometimes seem, because it's a privilege to have a voice and I feel that you can't complain if you don't register your vote.  That's just my humble opinion.

I have been feeling a bit down for the past couple of days, due to something that happened - but I'll get over it. I'm just sorry for the lack of interesting posts!

In other news, my Cath Kidston catalogue dropped on the mat this morning. As usual, lots of eye candy, making me feel all nostalgic for my childhood and my grandparents (especially this stuff).As I turned the pages I came across an article about vintage caravans. I was excited for Happy because I saw that she got a mention and two photos in the spread. What fun!  I'd post a picture here, but I forgot to take photos and the light in here is dire at night. Maybe tomorrow?

I really should get to bed - I've promised my niece that I'll go up to town to see a room for rent tomorrow, as she is moving to London for a year and we sadly don't have room to put her up for that long.  *yawn*   Nite nite.

Monday already?

I thought I'd blogged about this but obviously not. Maybe I posted it on my Facebook? Anyway, the Continental Market was in town this weekend and we had absolutely amazing weather for it.  Claire was going to take pictures, but ended up just lugging the camera round for nothing... 

We always love it when they come to town. It's great going round the stalls jabbering away in French to the stallholders, who always seem to come from near my mum in Normandy. On Friday we bought a baguette and some cheeses, not forgetting a pain au raisin for the OH. Claire also got some croissants to take to her colleagues, although it was her day off. She wanted them to taste REAL croissants, not faux croissants!   

The next day I got a text from Beth who was out with the family, asking if I'd join them. Sadly it was newsletter delivery day and I was volunteering all morning at the Community Centre. After lunch I got another text from Stéphie asking the same thing, so despite a headache I met her in town. Funnily enough, on the way we bumped into Beth's lot coming home, so I got my baby Alex fix after all (he was wiggling his bare toes in the sun, and looked very happy).  At the same time we bumped into the OH coming back from town, as he'd been out earlier.  Quite the little reunion we had, in the middle of Market Street.

So Claire and I met up with Stéphie and Eloïse, and we went round the market all over again. This time I got some rillettes and what I call "proper" ham (jambon de Paris). Oh, and as I needed some instant coffee I treated myself to some chocolate-flavoured coffee.

I was more tired than the day before, not surprisingly. Two outings in two days is still a bit on the ambitious side for me.  Luckily for me, S was tired too, so we sat and chatted over an iced coffee in Costa while the girls went clothes shopping.  

Yesterday the weather was also gorgeous, so after I'd done a bit of laundry I took myself out in the sun to read. I have finally got round to picking up my copy of Eat, Pray, Love and am really enjoying it so far. 

 

Well, looks like it's really April this time: it's gone all cloudy and I'm sure we're in for some showers soon. I do hope the rain stays away for the Royal Wedding, though. Wouldn't it be glorious to have a hot sunny day on 29th April?  Talking of the Royal Wedding, I'm loving all the bunting and Union Jacks that are everywhere in the shops.  Why are we Brits so afraid of being patriotic?!  I managed to sneak a pic of the John Lewis display (by pretending to be on my phone - the security guards are ferocious if you get a camera out).

Well, that's it for the moment. Byeeee.

 

Sunday night

What a nice, restful weekend I've had.  I did pop out in the sunshine a couple of times, but decided against going into town today. Instead, I made good inroads into my book, and I cooked, and had copious cups of tea. 

Oh talking of sunshine reminds me that I didn't tell you the Vitamin D duly arrived and I've been taking it religiously every morning. I have to take 50,000 units/week for two months then have another blood test. One bottle is enough for the two months.

(thank you Google Images)

My GP couldn't believe the price when I told him it cost just over 2 Euros. Apparently, the dose of tablets I'd need to take in this country costs over £20!  Someone's making money at the expense of the taxpayer, methinks.

Right, I'm trying not to go to bed too late at the moment, so I'll sign off now. Before I do turn in, I shall be saying prayers for the poor people of Japan who have been devastated by the quake and tsunami. The final death toll will surely be in the tens of thousands, as entire towns and villages have been wiped out. It doesn't bear thinking about.

There but for the grace of God go we....

 

Happy News

I've been rather busy today, hence my late post, but I thought I'd pop in and show my face. First of all, how can I do a post without mentioning the latest happy news about Prince William and Kate Middleton's engagement finally being official. I thought it was lovely that William proposed with his mother's engagement ring because he wanted her to be included. Awwww. What a lovely young man. I confess I've been something of a monarchist ever since I was little, but I can't give anyone a rational explanation why, so don't ask me!

Changing the subject totally, I thought I'd share this clip from a forthcoming Glee episode. You might have heard about it - it's Gwyneth Paltrow singing Cee-Lo's "Forget You".  I love it. And my favourite line is at the beginning of the clip "what would you know about Cee-Lo? Cos you're like 40".  (I don't know when this is out in the UK):

I'm actually trying to cut down on my TV watching, but I haven't been able to resist the wonderful "Turn Back Time - The High Street".  The latest era was the 30s, which is one of my favourites, and it made riveting watching.  I particularly like catching glimpses of the pretty blue shop "Nostalgia at No. 1" which is run by Nicky of Nostalgia at the Stone House. I've been reading her blog for ages, and it's thanks to her that I had my eye out for this programme. Rather than linking to iPlayer, I'll embed the first part of the first episode that someone has kindly put on Youtube so that my family abroad can catch up with it: unfortunately, BBC iPlayer doesn't let you watch programmes abroad which is really annoying!  Here goes - enjoy:

It's way past my bedtime, so I'd better leave it there. I would, however, like to finish by saying I really feel like I've turned a corner recently, with the fatigue. As I said earlier, I had a busy afternoon and I came through it without feeling exhausted, just nicely tired as if I'd done a full day's work. Let's hope this is the home straight!

Right, if the girl next door could just stop her whooping and hollering I might get a good night's sleep... Well, at least the arguments seem to have stopped. Mustn't grumble.    Nite all :)

Into the unknown

So there we have it: the UK now has a hung parliament. It's quite funny that after the Tories whingeing repeatedly in their campaign about "13 years of Labour" and how the country was fed up with it, they still didn't manage to win this election outright. In fact I had to smile when Jeremy Paxman said as much to Boris Johnson this morning :)  We're not sure what's going to happen now, and the markets are probably suffering, but we'll just have to wait and see.  

Meanwhile, it's the same old same old here. Nothing exciting happening. I do wish I could go out and do some sightseeing in London and take pictures or something, but I haven't yet got the energy to do stuff like that, sadly. I am, however, hoping to take the opportunity to meet up with some girlfriends in London when I go to see my rheumatologist soon - the hospital is round the corner from where I used to work. Fingers crossed eh?

One exciting thing on the horizon is that they boyf might be doing a parachute jump to raise money for the charity Different Strokes. If he decides to go ahead, I do hope you'll all chip in!  The charity is run by and for younger victims of stroke (i.e. under 65) and their website is a mine of information. I've been in contact with someone from the charity by email, and she has been very supportive. The closest support group to me is too far to get to, but she says they would be able to help me set up a local group, once I'm feeling up to it. That's great news!  Anyway, the OH has to sign up before the beginning of June so I'll keep you posted.

As for Claire, her eye is gradually getting better although it's still very bloodshot and there's a kind of "blood blister" in one corner which is annoying her.  She has to have drops in the eye 4 times a day, and she's learning to do that herself. I forget that some people don't like eye drops - I have such dry eyes I'm quite the dab hand at popping them in myself without a second thought. 

Anyway, that's it from me. Keep smiling :) 

Have you voted yet?

I can't let such a momentous occasion as this year's General Election go by without a comment, can I? Claire and I went out earlier to vote at the polling station which is just over the road, Claire holding on to my arm for balance as her eye is still very bloodshot and won't focus properly.  There were 3 voting forms and it was quite confusing because on two of them you only put one mark, but on the third you had to choose first and second choice. I was getting in a tizz hoping I wasn't getting it wrong - and it's at times like these that I realise I do indeed have some little cognitive problems. Something like that wouldn't have phased me pre-"brain thang". Oh well.  Everyone's predicting a hung parliament, and if that has to happen I'm hoping it's Lab-Lib Dem...  

After we had voted, we continued along to the hospital where I popped in to see a couple of colleagues. They told me that I looked much, much better, which is nice!   

When we got home, the post had arrived, and I now have an appointment to see the Clinical Psychologist at the Neuro-rehab place. That means my diary is getting even fuller and in the next two weeks I shall be seeing the Neuro Specialist nurse, having an interview with the "pathways to work" people at the Job Centre, seeing an occupational therapist, meeting with a lady from Age Concern (don't even go there!), seeing the Rheumatologist and finally the Dermatologist. Oh and then in June I get seen by the Neurosurgeon to check on progress too!  It's a good job I have a calendar in the iPhone because I can put an alarm on every appointment. If I just put them in the paper diary I'd miss appointments because I always forget to look in there lol. 

Well that's it for now. Byeeeee!