Queen Glitch...

Thought I'd have a quick peek at Blogger to see if it had decided to behave in my absence.  It most certainly had not.  But as I'd planned to do lots of writing today, I wondered if a quick flick thro' a couple of old posts might just spur me on.  Either to make me think 'it's ok I CAN do this' (unlikely) or to be so shamed by my drivel that I'd resolve to improve, and set about doing so (a virtuous ambition don't you agree?)  So I just tapped on a couple of random ex-splats.  Noticed some typos.  Ignored them.  Next splat - the urge to correct over-took me so I hit the Edit button.  Fool.  Removed the offending error.  Fool.  Was faced with Save Draft or Publish.  Hit Publish.  That's what I used to do wernnit??  FOOL.  Suddenly I was back on the battleground of Signing In.  My password has lost it's power.  My choices are displayed in a muted 'you can look but you can't touch' tease.  I press everything in the end but nothing works except 'Cancel'.  My corrected old post disappears.  Now it wasn't a great work, but it's a link in a chain that has become more precious with age.  It's the rarity value.  My bloggy offerings are but a paltry tinkle of coppers due to a broken heart - Blogger dumped me and I never got over it - (oh it lets me spew still but not defend myself afterwards - comments still denied) - so I recoiled and took myself out of the market.  But like a soppy black&white heroine I pulled my old love letters out from under the bed to torture myself - and dropped one down the floorboards....

Oh the anguish!  I have no idea why I felt so bereft, especially as I had just read it and knew it was wholly inconsequential, but it's the principle goldarnit!  And gods knows I have so few of those left.  I've just been electronically erased.  Outraged by technology again.  Feel thick now.

Can't even remember what it was called....

I give up fighting against the fight.  Go back to the front line hands raised clutching a tattered white hankie and look!  There the bastard is.  Re-published as if it's a new bloody idea.  

I hate this 'I Know Best' digital nazism.  I can't even retain my own thoughts in the order I thought them. I might just stop thinking altogether.  That'll fix Them.  

Anyway - just ignore.  Did you know that on the Self-Service tills in B&Q there is an Ignore button that the staff can press when the posh voice goes AWOL?  I want an Ignore button installed in my head.  When the shit starts to waft my way - click.  Ignore.

It's the only sensible path.  Self-improvement has shown itself to be a worthless ambition after all.  In trying to polish-up my previous incarnation, I merely highlighted my lacking.  So I'm backing away into the dark bushes once more to watch the pretty lights from my lowly hovel.  Pretend you never saw me.

Click.

.  .  i g n o r e  .  .  .  .  .

The Lonliness of the Long Distance Blogger

Keeping the far-flung Roving Blade company with stories is the brief. Brain Department says 'eeek!' What can I pretend I've been doing with my face-less bra-less hairbrush-less day? Can't confess that... MadameSmokinGun would not leave the house without eyebrows, sculpting or mop restraint. Thing is... Madame did not leave the house. Only as far as the washing line. Madame took the unusual opportunity of a Sunday without football, play rehearsals or Aged P-visiting to stay in what she had worn to bed and just avoid mirrors. Thuglet was too snotty to take out but well enough to ignore. The perfect set-up for anti-social slobbing sans guilt. And with no Roving Blade to pour scorn, the Scene of the Dance Crime was full blast and fluid. Boy things were electronically entertained beyond the radio-ruled Scene's threshhold. Their noise dismissed by a twist of my own cheeky little volume knob. Minxie-Pops appeared sporadically to feed, join in the dance crimes and change my phone's wallpaper to creepy images of sloths. (Funny the teenage interest in her wild counterpart.) The most taxing activity was disagreeing over the pronunciation of sloth. I know I'm right but have the calm maturity to just pull a 'derrr' face instead of argue. And carry on twerking. A 40-something booty-grinder will always but ALWAYS win any argument with a disturbed teenage daughter. Just have to brace oneself when switching one's mobile. A sloth in a box this time.

Back to thinking how to describe my day to my loved one peeking in from foreign shores. Back to the bosom of The Blog. I had convinced myself that my blog site problems were a gift from The Universe to stop me from directing my energy towards fun and frolics and make me concentrate on The Infamous and Still Unwritten Book. Yeah...I haven't been overly successful on the word-count front but I HAVE started. (That means diddly - I started it about 10 years ago... ) What I mean is I have downloaded an app on my new posh phone and have been rabbiting on that - all over the house at odd opportunities - instead of waiting my turn on the big pooter. Then I email them to myself and feel all clever. ....Except on the days when I haven't. Then I feel worthless and shamed. Today was a non-writey-emaily day so receiving a request for a blog tale split me in two. Am I misdirecting or am I boosting my achieveless little soul with a wee bloggy pick-me-up? Just a drop to warm the cockles eh?

So what tales to tell? Ummm.... unfortunately, despite the huge spaces between posts, I am still the same lame dame. I switch on machines that hum or whirr. I squidge-clear plate-sized spaces on counters and coffee tables. I squirt things that stink with chemicals. I sigh with over-work and check Facebook. I am an inspiration to my doting children....

And yet this evening did I not get up-to-date with my Home Ed scrapbooks? Surely a podium position? It's astounding what a moving date can spur. The last time I was up-to-date was the last time we moved house. The thought that Kent County Council might discover our existence and pay us an inspection does also haunt the cobwebbed tomb of my skull. East Sussex have been delightfully uninterested in us. My scrapbooks are so unwieldy and frightening I would hope they'd still the clipboard scratching. Preparation preparation preparation....

I haven't started packing. It's not for the want of boxes, it's the skip I'm looking forward to. Almost everything I lay my eyes on has been mentally filed there already. Apart from the scrapbooks. I peered into my wardrobe thinking I could start clearing out but didn't dare as I realised I'd not stop til it was all bin-bagged. I feel the same about the boys' room. Moving Day may be a month away but is there really any point in changing the sheets? It'll seem so much the nicer in the next place... I've got those vaseline-smeared visions - a new house with floors and walls you can SEE.... A clear table.... Clean made beds.... Sparkling kitchen.... Fragrant bathroom.... Let me dream.... It was only 2 years ago I dreamed this dream. Then we moved in. This time baby I'll beeeee bulleeeeeet-proof. No crap allowed. Apart from me. Aagh I've been shot!

Today was not the day tho'. Today was for throwing shapes, much tea and sellotape over-load. And a little nip of a blog.

Tomorrow will be back to hitting targets - multisports, extra football, the museum, chips in the park and everlasting lurking at the theatre. Interspersed with more football and dazed knitting. I'll turn off the engine tomorrow night and collapse onto the steering wheel. So today was a sweet oasis of flop. Looking at it like that I don't feel so lazy. I really should have had a shower tho'.... target number one for tomorrow then. As for rounding off my fat-arsed evening, I'm off to my crumpled minging bed to sleep, perchance to dribble.....

A Bigger Arse

Have got Roving Blade on a promise to think of away round my Can't Comment on a Post (Even My Own) Problem. Been a problem ever since Blogger 'improved' and fucked up their perfectly fine previous layout. Will hopefully be back to abnormal soon - leaving stoopid comments on things. 'Cos I couldn't I've not even been reading - too much like having me nose pressed up against the windows of cake shops I'm not allowed into. Sigh....

Bloggers beware.......

Arse revisited

Just testing.

Help Wanted

This is an appeal on behalf of MadameSG's cushions:    Cruelly neglected,   these soft victims of abuse have only days to live.    Possibly hours.    They are stained,  ripped,  clogged with dust,  regularly found discarded onto the hard filthy floors and,  when they do get selected for human interaction,  farted on.


Just £3 a month could save these squares of comfort.    If we could raise a significant sum of money  MadameSG's tyrannical regime of arsiness could be tackled and,  in time,  erased completely.

Slowly fade to colour and perkier music...

For if enough ordinary kind people donated just £3 a month MadameSG could be persuaded to shift her lardy backside and pick the bloody things up and even change the covers.   

We know flumping them daily is still a long way off but with small steps we can change the world.

Thank you for your generosity.  

Together we can make the living room a comfier and less gravyfied place.       

Woolly Libertines

Ok so can we take the bunting down now?    And throw it in the gutters along with all the St George flags.    Wot a load of bollox.

And where was the punk barge this year eh?    Radio6Music have been doing their bit,  and BBC4.    Wheeling lots of the old spitters and safety-pinned ones out for a second airing.    Some nice jumpers there tho'.    First time around ones or did we whizz off to Kensington market (if indeed that still exists) to look good on telly?    I don't care  -  still better than the old girl surrounded by stiffs in medals pointing at things.   'Oh look ma'am... common people.'    Funny how Mr Queen suddenly had a bladder problem for that awful concert.    I would have too.    Meanwhile Siouxie Sioux plays lots of disco on the radio.    Nice to knit to.

But no new punks then?    Sadly lacking.

Us scruffy lot (or should I say SEHE  -  South East Home Educators for our full kennel name) were spreading ourselves about in Woodbury Park Cemetery Arts and Crafts Fair in Royal Tunbridge Wells last Saturday.    Supposed to be just the one stall but we managed to commandeer several tables in the end with knitted things,  baked things,   sticky things,   stolen things probably....    All pretty much on the cemetery theme.    I had personally provided a smattering of very small colourful woolly bats,  spiders,  skulls,  snakes and goth girls and dug out a few papier mache grotesques from my stash of previous creations.    We also had knitty ghosties,  crocheted flowers,   gravestone cards and skull-stamped paper pads....    Make your own spiders webs were also available.   Very available....    Not especially popular but certainly available.    Trouble was,  we only found out at fairly short notice that this was in fact a Jubilee Arts and Crafts Fair.    Ooops.    In true British style we soldiered on with our deathly theme,  hoping we wouldn't be tried for treason by the end of the afternoon.    In fact we made £75 which is now on it's way to Great Ormond Street Hospital.    So there.

We were the punk barge!!

Knitting is the new punk!!

Oh it really is.    I've been addicted to my two new knitting bibles  -  Knit the City and Yarn Bombing,   both extolling the delights of knitti graffitti.    Move over Banksy,  you're too.... smooth.    We love to feel up our graffitti these days.    Check out the garter stitch on that lamp-post missus.    We've been checking out likely spots around Tunbridge Wells to tag.    (Oh yeah I even know the lingo..)    If I ever do learn to download pictures I'll definitely post up my first woolly subversive message to society.)    Gotta be dun.

Anyway wot else have we been up to?

The annual End of Seasons ice skating competition  -  managed to get a dress made,  fitted and picked up just in time AND Madame Tin Hat blinged it for us from her mighty stock of Swarovskies.    She's a blinging star that woman.    MinxyBabes was still slightly jellified from the measlies but when her music started she really pulled it out of the bag.    She was elegant,  strong,   beautiful and then plop  -  oh yes  -  bum skating again.    Gosh darn it....    Was a bit wobbly from then on but did well to catch up with the music again... almost.    Realising she didn't quite have time to get up from the knee spin for the finishing pose she flung her arms up dramatically still on one knee.    Fabulous.    The music stopped.    She didn't.    The crashing into the barriers into the end I thought was a show-stopper.    Her friends watching from that end of the rink thought the clambering clawing fingers wiggling into view above the barrier a few seconds later was the clincher.    Mass applause.    Lots of stuff thrown onto the ice (including a floppy carnation saying 'Well done - Love Minx'  -  mah baaad).    My baby's a star.    SOOO wish I'd filmed it now.    She wants to do the artisitic section too now  - where you get to interpret music WITH words.    I asked her coach if she had any good ideas for a routine with lots of sitting down.    Minx didn't think it was very funny.    But hey   -  she still staggered onto the podium for a third place trophy  -  not bad eh?

And then I get a text from Roving Blade  - this year on duty for my favourite event of the year  -  the Fathers Day Football Club Family Fun Prizegiving Day in Forest Fucking Row.    Oh how I love this day.    Oh how I love that phrase Family Fun Day.    Oh how I laughed when I realised that this was the SAME day as End of Seasons.    I'm STILL laughing.    For once he couldn't pull a swift one and wriggle out of it....   mwa ha ha ha haaaa -  oh sorry back to the text:  Chicken Boy has won Player of the Year!!    OH yeah.    And Little Rock Godling was beaming from sticky-out ear to sticky-out ear (new haircut) with his Well Done For Showing Up trophy that they all got.    It's a trophy.    It's HIS trophy.    He has a new haircut and a trophy.    And thanks to the new haircut we can see how happy his little face was.

Wot else....?

Minx and me both survived our birthdays.    For her special day Minx got measles.    I got blue nail varnish,  a Mama Cass CD,  a knitting book and chocolate biscuits.    I won.

And I've taken to wearing scarves on my head to cover up my hair-don't.    I'm sick of short hair cuts but longer hair looks crap on me so the obvious answer is to swathe my stoopid head in skull-patterned scarves.    Mutton dressed as EMO.    I can live with that.

We saw/sang alonga Oliver up big at the Electric Palace Cinema in 'Astings the other day,  begging Nancy not to stay wiv that Bill Sykes we woz,   and then we bombed dahn the beach wiv chips and cricket bats.    Wind,  rain  -  museum....    Kids thought the rain was preferrable.    The musEEEEum??!!    Ok back to the beach.    Despite singing I'd Do Anything all afternoon,    I didn't mean it.    Headin' back down that way at the end of the week.    Better not be museum weather again....    I'd get a cricket bat wrapped round me 'ead instead of a day-glo scarf.

Sadly some recent badness  -   stresses and traumas with troublesome members of our Home Ed group resulting in an expulsion!!    Not nice at all that.    But lines had been crossed.    Nasty business.    Funny how I've managed to squeeze weeks/months (years?) of time-sucking into a couple of sentences there.    Best left.

More eye-liner.    More skulls.    More knitting.


Oh and apparently we're getting chickens.


Definitely more knitting.....    And omelettes obviously.    (Or goblets as they're known in this house.    We also eat alot of sodages I'll have you know...)    There'll be plenty of unusual language if we gets a cockerel.    Maybe not so unusual.    My language is deteriorating further....    But it's the only vice I have left.    Let's have more swearing I say.        

Plenty swearing required today.    Oh bloody buggery bollocky bum.    I did do go and see my mum.     I didn't scream or hit noone.    But it ain't fair and it ain't fun.    Poetry innit?    Fink I've earned myself some more knitty time.    Strange how tying my fingers up in knots soothes my tangled mind....    Random phrase of the day:  'At least you're not like that awful Victoria Beckham.    I can't STAND that woman.'    Uh - huh....    Soon followed by finger-licking page-turning through the Radio Times...  'Wimbledon... or Jamie's 30-Minute Wonders?'    'Oh tennis or cooking.    Please shoot me now.'    My cheerful response was however drowned out by the goggle-box's leap into life.    The kids started mouthing 'It's a bit loud!' at me.    'Would you like to watch a ghost story?'    'Oooh well we've really got to be going now...'    'Oh no have you?    Ohhh Last of the Summer Wine...'    'Yes shoot me now.    Now I said.    In the head....'    'Oh Jeremy Kyle.. I can't STAND him!'    'Bye!!'

Get me my needle therapy!!!!    Needle and the damage done or some such....    It's the only way out!!!    Self yarning?    Give me my fix!!!!    Before I make any more heinous puns.....   Help me........

Think I can predict a bladder infection for my next 'free' day.    Some might call it taking the piss.    If it's good enough for bloody royalty....    Otherwise I've got to grow up and we've discussed this.    Not on the agenda.    I'm not wearing shiny red boots with purple laces and a childish sneer for nothing you know.    Crank up the 70's disco,   slap on the green eye-glitter,    I have a mission.  


O come all ye clicker-clackers  -   rally round and poke yer pointy needle ends into the up-turned noses that surround us.    The streets of Britian need you.    Push me boat out mister I've got something to say!    With my winding threads  -  be it cashmere,  acrylic or plastic bags.....  and my magic wands  -   of bamboo,   slinky metal  or  old pencils.    The bunting is dead.    Long live the railing sock.....




.....Here come the hotstitcher  (Muuurdera!!)    Hexcuse me mister hofficer   (Muuurdera!!)     

WHAT'S THAT????

She's back.

The telly's ear-splitting but she still cannot STAND this woman,  that presenter,  these ridiculous comedians....    Nobody speaks properly.    They say aks instead of ask and momentarily instead of in a moment and yous instead of you.    Civilisation is collapsing.    No standards at all.    Even at full blast.

She's definitely back.

Apparently there's absolutely nothing on.    Very loudly.    Who'd've thought absolutely nothing could be so deafening?

But it's all been at a distance lately  (although I can still hear THE NEWS from her house which is a whole HOUR away from my house.)    We've been in quarantine for a month.    The four children of the apocalypse decided to take turns to have measles.    No we didn't have the MMR thank you so much for aksing.    But we will now.    And anything else going.    Wheel that dessert trolleyful of drugs our way and we'll have the lot.

Meanwhile her next-door-neighbour died  -  but she still doesn't know if it was him or her.    'I didn't see The Living One.'    They who must not be named.    Just spotted the hearse outside.    And turned the telly up a bit more.    I SAID she TURNED the TELLY UP a bit MORE.    No there's NOTHING smelly on the FLOOR.  
'Could you see who it is?'
'Where?'
'You said there was someone at the door.'
'No I said.....   never mind....'
'Oh that silly door.    Don't know what's the matter with it.'

Yes she's back in town.    The Enablement Team never started at 4 visits as first thought necessary.    'What's the point of the putting to bed visit when they just get out again after we've gone?' the nice lady smiled.    Good point.    Then they dropped the getting up visit as she was always dressed and waiting anyway.    Show off.    Then another one went.    And as from Friday,  they ain't a-comin' no more.    But she's got her little bell round her neck.    Well,  that button thing if she starts mis-timing her beam dismounts.    Big bruv sends Tesco's round once a week.    The District Nurse comes and sucks blood in the comfort of the BOOMING pale green living room.    Funny phrase that  -  Living Room.    Probably a better place to enjoy your tea than the Gasping For Breath Room.    The Physio still tips up and does her thang.    Although she's gawn an' dropped her hand-squidgey exercisey putty down the side of the chair.    That silly chair.    And there's always the phone....  

Apparently the volume button on that silly phone doesn't work properly.    Up!   UP!!    Never look down in our world.    Down is out.    Up is all.

'I'll go in the other room....'    pant shuffle bang clonk....   '...that's better.    I can hear you now...'
'Wouldn't it have been easier to have turned the volume on the telly down?'
Pant click whirr....  '....well... oh that silly thing.    Absolutely nothing on...'

Odd how my eyes automatically squint shut when I ring her.    Strange scientific fact:  if I screw up my face I am able to communicate more clearly.    Stabbing something repeatedly also helps.    In the Losing The Will To Survive Room.

Well we might be getting back to normal next week.    (Yes I did have the audacity to say that.)    Our threat to public health is over.    And I shall be returning to the house of misbehaving volume controls very soon.    I might stab them.    Alot.    It might not help them very much but I'd feel fucking great.