Revolutionary Rants

Off to France shortly, so will be back when I am back… Ta-ra!

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It is amazing what a walk with your dog on a nice day and a little bit of good reading can do when you arrive home after a four and a half hour/200 mile round trip to Plymouth and all done after only five hours sleep, isn’t it?

It is also amazing how nice it is to take off ones shoes and work clothes after such a drive, put on shorts and open all the windows of the house.

Little things, as they say, little things…

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I know, no blogging for ages. Sorry! Life has been busy, busy, busy of late and we are winding up to “holiday” next week, too.

Last weekend we saw Jools Holland live at Killerton Hall in South Devon. It was absolutely smashing, a little bit cold once the sun went down but nothing some dancing couldn’t help! We (my sis-in-law and I) particularly loved seeing Marc Almond sing with the big band, especially as he did both Tainted Love and, most magic of all, Say Hello and Wave Goodbye.

Last week was madly busy for both Mr C and I. I left Addaction, for one thing, volunteered on Wednesday and attended training to say goodbye on Thursday. I think I may apply to be a magistrate now… I started my NVQ level 3, it was Bernie’s birthday so I went with him, sis-in-law and lots fo small boys to The Mill a climbing wall place where they learned basic climbing, we took the little peeps (niece and nephew only) to see Wall-E, and other hectic things! Plus packing, of course, and general life things like the walking of small pooches.

Said small dog is malting like mad in the sunnier weather we’ve been having - strangely only white hairs not the black and tan ones… Oh well.

Anyhoo, the sun is blazing so I want to try and get down to the allotment and finish the packing so, for now and probably for a while, ta-ra!

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Muggy doesn’t even come close to describing the weather the last couple of days. After torrential rain all last week (thanks BBC for pointing out a monsoon is not rain but a wind - or a very expensive capitalist shop, alternatively), a sliver of sun on Saturday between grey clouds and a lovely day on Sunday we now have grey skies and mug, mug, mug.

On the bight side, we (Mum, Sarah, niece and nephew) got to Crealy Adventure Park on Saturday and had an absolutely fab day. We loved the petting area where we met pygmy goats, ponies, a cow called Queenie and other animals; we adored the log flume (on which we had three goes in all), pirate ship (seven goes), roller-coaster (only one go, as it was a bit boring) and really hated waiting for nearly an hour to get on a double go-kart for a couple of minutes round the track (niece had the same wait for a pony ride). Apart from that waste of valuable time we had a blast.

We rest of our long weekend - Chicken was off on Friday - was spent pottling. I even got down on to the allotment on Sunday. In the wet weather the weeds have burst back with a vengeance, dammit. Still, the sweetcorn is looking surprisingly high, my beetroot is growing well, some carrots have come through, the runners are climbing high and most of the rest is fine. Apart from some of my lettuces, which have been slugged… But I did eat a large portion of what was left for my lunch yesterday at work! My first crop: bliss.

My poor brother now has sciatica and a very bad back, throwing our trip to see Jools Holland on Saturday in to doubt and also even our holiday. I hope he gets well soon, poor old thing…

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As I had promised previous to try and by jollier I haven’t posted for a few days. I have yet another cold, yesterday saw the whole of England and (I gather) Wales under a monsoon, I am not sleeping well and yesterday I went to listen about setting up my first pension, a slightly frightening prospect even for someone as miserablist as myself…

Oh deary me, woe, woe, woe. On the bright side, Chicken has tomorrow off work so we have a long weekend to enjoy, I am off to Crealy Adventure Park with the kids on Saturday (Mr C as yet undecided on his coming or otherwise), we have a BBQ at Si’s tomorrow and, yes, we have a long weekend! Hooray. I had tried to book us a last minute weekend away, to Lyme Regis, actually, but people kept quoting me much higher prices than were on their websites and additionally charging large fees for a certain pooch. Oh well, we have Brittany to look forward to in a week or two!

The stream/river in the village has swelled up hugely, luckily the Environment Agency came last week to unblock it a bit and as such it has remained within the banks. It is, however, causing Ferris much consternation as he currently lives under the misapprehension that water is an alive thing. He keep standing on the bank trying to summon up the courage to bite the water below…

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Well, I had a look at the new American owned capitalist supermarket in Bideford yesterday before volunteering at TPAG, and it was not up to much. Much hype and excitement surrounded North Devon’s first shop in this particular chain, and Wall-Mart rubbed it’s hands together with glee, no doubt. People were camped outside at 4:00am on Monday, according to staff I spoke to, trying to get a ‘cheap’ laptop… Scary stuff. So much for the flipping credit crunch, then, shopping is still king…

We are in between sun and rain here and expecting a wet weekend. I have to work on Saturday so I am not too stressed, but I would like to get out to my garden. Ho-hum.

Murray crashed out big style last night, Chicken and I even watched it as we ate our tea. Like anyone associated with these isles he was scuppered by not being very good and immense pressure. He probably only said the thing about England and the football to keep the Henmanites off his blooming back. I think he is quite amusing, really, permanently pissed off and, most importantly, he’s not Tim Henman…

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Erykah has tagged me again, this time with a book related meme. So, as I am sat up in bed, under my marriage saving brand new evil capitalist feudal leader with a crown sized devet I have plucked the first book from the shelf up behind the bed and…

“To participate, you grab any book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and blog it. Then tag five people.” say said meme.

Hence:

‘That meant the workers were definitely beaten; I realised - though, owing to my political ignorance, not so clearly as I ought to have done - that when the Government felt more sure of itself there would be reprisals.’

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell.

I shall tag Thursday, Viv, Kiki, Rhodri, and Stephen, once again. Oh, and Chaz can do his comments box thing, if he will!

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Sorry, I have been sparse in postage lately and when here quite grumpy. My teenage insomnia has been about these last couple of weeks, plus a cold, plus general life mulling-over occurring, all of which adds up to grumping. I shall try to be sunnier is disposition as of … now.

The sun is out full force today, it was nice yesterday, but it has that sunburn feeling to it today. I slapped on the factor 30 High SPF before taking Ferris out at 9:00am and we had a lovely walk, featuring a tennis ball, in the unbroken blue of the day. Plus it is breezy, my favourite kid of day, blowy and beautiful. The weather-forecaster says it will rain tonight but never mind, we’ve still had more sun this summer than the whole of last summer  - and it is ‘only’ July. Seven months of ‘08 already gone… Crumbs. Everyone seems to feel like this year is storming passed, not just me, so I shall take comfort it is not just the fact that I have now lived a quarter of a century and time passes quicker from now on… Mind, it would be no bad thing, I used to hate it when I was a little person and it seemed like forever between Christmases/Birthdays!

Another interesting feminism piece here today. Particularly interested in the celebrity pregnancy angle, this forming of ‘career’ women in to ‘mother’ or even ‘earth mother’… No more is she Angelina Jolie ’sex pot’ or ‘weirdo’ or ‘home-wrecker’ she’s a ‘orphan collector’ or a home-maker. This whole Juno empowered female giving birth by choice thing is worrying, too. Seventeen teenagers are up-the-duff in Canada after making a ‘baby pact’ to bring up their children together. Christ when I was seventeen I thought I’d be living in Cardiff, a famous journalist who appeared regularly on list programmes and married to James Dean Bradfield - just goes to show how life changes in eight years. Women are still, essentially, supposed to be child making machines, we are meant to want to give birth and protect our off-spring above all else in life. Now, that seems like a very important and fulfilling thing to do, but it is not the only thing we can do and it is also the easiest way to hide Alan Sguar-esque sexism in the workplace; “she’s in her twenties, crack out the maternity policy before she sneezes and produces a baby!!!” And here is the major problem feminism faces now, we both need to fight for women’s right to reproduce, have that valued by society and get the provision of acceptable child-care in the workplace and fight for our right not to be mothers as well.

And as for Mr Sugar, I am sure his choice of hiring a liar with added dinosaur impressions is a much, much better one than hiring a woman who just might want to have children one day…

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