whatever

Fed up with the weekend
Fed up with the week as well
Nothing happens unless I have the energy to make it happen
I don't have the energy

Repeat patterns in the house
How many times do I have to say the same thing
How many times does it feel like I'm the only person capable of thinking of more than one thing

I want to relax
I don't have the energy

Harmoniums, hens, fish and rodents..

Summer is upon us. The hens arrived in February and are making the garden their own special playground. Lots of plants are just stalks, other areas are well turned over, no weeds, just well raked soil as the girls seek out interesting nibbles during the day.

We have two cream legbar hens and two light sussex hens, they all have names and very different personalities, and are laying well.

The local rodents seem to like hens so there have been some more close encounters of the rodent kind. I now have so many traps around I could start a pest removal business, if only I was better at catching them.

The fish are down to two koi, the koi have almost as much kit as the kids now, with lotions and potions for water quality and tonics for better health. The pond has a new filter and new plants for the summer season. We also got some goldfish to keep the koi company, we bought ten but there are only 6 left :-( But I am trying to keep the rest alive with yet more tonics specially for goldfish.

And the harmonium collection gained a new entry. A rather lovely Estey harmonium that we picked up from Edinburgh. It has the vox humana and lots of fancy stops. Apparently it is the other type of harmonium, I think that the difference is that one blows and one sucks the air over the reeds. Apart from which it is a beautiful piece of furniture. I've located a care and repair manual and I'm hoping to find a quiet moment to take it to bits and have a look inside. Tis a lovely thing. I can't look at ebay for harmonia because I might find another one and get tempted again. My mum has already asked how on earth I can play all the instruments that are collecting about the place, but I have to say that playing them is not always the point.

Fed up with all the bullsh*t

Well I've had my weekly dose of politics, thanks to Question Time and The Politics Show.
I can't believe an intelligent guy like Gerry Robinson just said Gordon Brown was an excellent chancellor. I'm afraid Gordon Brown has been presiding over one of the biggest accounting swindles of all time, with public money.

For GB is the man who has mortgaged the future of the UK Public Sector infrastructure to PFI deals, to meet election pledges now. My poor kids will be paying for these third rate buildings into their old age. Honestly the old Victorian hospitals were better, and cheaper and considerably nicer to look at than all the crappy new boxyhousing estates that have popped up everywhere and the silly modern hospitals which are too small and too uninspiring, places you dread to go to even if you are not ill.

And just how bit is the hole in the public sector pension provision that is being buried in on the UK balance sheet? The deficit must be vast. Again my kids have to work to pay for the pensions of today's politicians, civil servants, council workers, police officers, doctors, nurses etc. I don't think all the quangos have separate pension funds, but the figures aren't included in the national debt. There has to be something wrong here.

Targets in education are meaningless but millions are being spent enforcing these targets. The output of the education system needs to be employable people who have ambition to succeed. I don't care how many exams the kids have passed...can they do a decent days work? If they are creative and polite and personable they'll do just fine. My kids are already neurotic about tests and feel like failures, they are 7 and 9 years old!! As an employer I can't understand the CV of a 17 year old as the courses that they have taken are incomprehensible. I have to check that they can actually read and write an hold a decent conversation.

This is especially true when they are 21+ and have degrees (good degrees from very good universities...but can't write a sentence...great education system). These graduates can believe that the world owes them a living, because they have a good degree, which their parents have now paid a lot for (government policy again, denying access to university with one hand whilst setting a target for more people to go). So how much pressure are the universities under to increase their pass rates...hmm govt targets + parental top up fees = serious pressure. Don't tell me it doesn't happen.

When I went to Uni nobody on my course had got a 1st Class Honours in 20 years. Now 40% get them, this is a good university with a 5* research rating...well the kids today are clearly that much cleverer than we were. The difference is the targets, plus the competition to attract students and all those nasty divisive league tables.

And as for the day to day dirge that a lot of schoolchildren have to put up with, it truly makes me despair. The excellent teachers that have been driven out of the profession by the politically correct rubbish they have been forced to teach must squirm. I couldn't really tell you who did what when I was at school, but from an inner London primary school I ended up at a decent state funded grammar school and then got a grant to go to university...this was 1985...I'm not that ancient.

As a penalty for my success I am not quite rich enough to pay for an independent school to teach my kids the same things as I did at that primary school in the 1970s and 80's!!!!!!! I've been round plenty of private schools for a look, so I do know what I am talking about.

I was brought up with a work ethic, to value education and to make the best of my opportunities. A lot of my ethics were grounded in that primary school education. On the statistics the school was rubbish, but they gave the kids the opportunity to think for themselves...if they chose to take it. The government would do well to back off a bit and let people think for themselves.

Common sense is out of the window...unless it meets a new government target of course, in which case we'll all have to pass a test and get a certificate.

All change ...maybe

Well Jason is contracting for a well known oil company. So life is a bit different as I'm doing all the school related trips during the week as he can't get back to do them.

It has been a significant change. Quite unsettling in some ways, but reassuring to know that we are both supporting the family unit financially.

As usual I'm spending lots of time worrying about schools, either schools now or in the future. Because I live in the Consett area I guess I have a general phobia of the more trendy labour council approach to schooling that happens in the north east. I tried to overcome my fear by getting more involved in the process, but it still scares me.

I guess the reason is that I'm never really sure that the children come first. Too much is driven by centralised policies to improve standards. Why on earth teachers can't just teach without all the meddling and paperwork is beyond me.

I have one vaguely bored child who is underchallenged, and one struggling child who could do with more individual attention. The underchallenged one doesn't rate as a genius so won't get extra help, the struggling one isn't classified as having special needs so equally can't get any help. Thankfully both of them are well behaved.

I'd like to send them to private school but I don't have a spare £20K a year to fund that, and due to the above reasons neither of them is likely to get a scholarship. I can't reduce my earnings enough to qualify for a bursary. So every now and again my fingernails take a battering as I have a serious fret on the subject.

Finally did the ironing

As I have finally caught up on about two months worth of ironing I thought I would celebrate in print and update the blog a bit.

The summer holidays are almost over. I'm hoping the new uniform I ordered from M&S will turn up before the start of term. I've got the permanent laundry marker pen at the ready to write names on everything having lost a brand new pair of shoes last year in the first couple of weeks. I don't know who got them, but they got a good deal! The ones that came home instead were certainly in the well worn category.

After school logistics are about to become a nightmare if Jason takes on a contract job. I'll have to ponder how everyone is going to get from A to B to C if we are both working most of the time. I could do with a tardis or some similar porting device, or someone will have to give something up! Arrgh I can hear the complaints already.

If its not the fish its the garden or the boiler or something

Well the fish pond project was finished very quickly and we purchased 10 baby koi...little did I realise how much there was to this fishkeeping lark. For some reason Jason seems to have a view that pond + fish = success. In reality the pond went very murky after about 2 weeks so we now have a fountain, pump, filter, uv light gizmo to kill algae plus about 4 different types of koi food and various koi related pond treatments for water quality, biofilter activation and first aid.

Once we got the pump and filter and the water cleared we realised that two fish were gone! The mussels (of which there are two) seem to be quite plump so I'm wondering if they somehow liquified and digested the two fish. Another fish was spotted in distress...did anyone tell me...not until it was too late..so we were down to 7 baby koi. Now I can see the contents of the pond it is obvious that 5 koi are getting bigger and two aren't so now the two smaller ones are in quarantine in the old goldfish tank in the kitchen....requiring more special treatment and food that is broken up into little bits.

So much for the pop them in the pond and let them get on with it approach. Oh and there have been visits to the local garden centres in search of pond plants, so we also have water hyacinths, water soldiers and other green stuff floating around in there...oh and the water quality test kits - this is not a cheap venture by any means.

And then there was the boiler. 3 weeks without one so far, but hopefully only 4 more days to the new boiler and I'm planning a seriously long bath. Thankfully I found an old milk churn on Ebay so we've been using that to cart boiling water from the kitchen to the bathroom to have a 3 inch deep bath. After one episode of carrying boiling water using saucepans I decided there had to be a better way. Have you tried avoiding two children ('why are you carrying that saucepan mum?') the dog ('am I going out now')and three cats ('is it dinner time') whilst opening and closing three doors and navigating steps out of the kitchen and into the bathroom, all with that lovely sloshy boiling water? I don't recommend it.

Personally I'd be happier if the whole house got put back into Victorian mode and then I wouldn't need a boiler and I could be complaining about the range and the back boiler instead. I know this house must have had both of these things as we found some of the pipework. It is rather ridiculous that we get so stuck because one gadget breaks (ie the boiler) in the past houses were far more self reliant. I went to Beamish Museum last weekend and that just proved the point. Ideally I'd have a hybrid house with just enough of the old technology to keep going if all the new stuff failed.

And then there is the garden. I got two bags of seed potato this year and they are taking over. I ran out of space in the vegetable patch so popped them into the flower beds as well. The whole garden is now a giant potato patch. Should be fun when it comes to harvest time.

Think I'll get them flippers

The kids just did their latest swimming badges. They achieved 1 mile and 3KM respectively, probably considerably further than I could swim. They are both, quite rightly, proud of themselves.

Croc charms have been selling well, but I need to list a load more on Ebay really.

Can't wait for the Northumberland County Show on Monday. www.northcountyshow.co.uk
The poultry section has been cancelled as there is bird flu in North Wales (!!!) not the really dangerous sort (unless you are a chicken). So alas no Buff Orpington review is likely to appear on this blog anytime soon.

The new Koi pond in our garden has been the focus of a lot of attention recently. Having clearly ignored all the advice on how and where to build a pond (it is under a tree, in the shade, no shallow shelf and no pump or filter) I am now trying to sort it out so that the fish survive the first few months. So far we have a solar pump/fountain, various floating plants, some weed stuff and these barley pellets that soak up nasty stuff.

We've also got water testing strips that detect 5 types of nasty from ammonia to nitrates and some special potion that contains bacteria to sort out any excess nasties. All of which adds up to some serious purchasing. I haven't seen the fish all week as the water has gone a bit cloudy, well I did see one gold one. I guess Kois are shy (or depressed, or quietly dying down there).

To add a new challenge to our lives the combi boiler has been condemned by our friends at British Gas. It seems the heat exchanger has given up and because the boiler is 20 years old the part is hard to get, and would cost £600. So we'll probably go for a more efficient boiler and spend close on £2,000. We've had a look at the ground source heat pumps but they would require planning permission and 80 metres of trench to lay the pipes. It would easily cost £15K for that option, and the rest.... The air source heat pump would cost about the same so they are all out of the question until the kit gets a lot cheaper (it should be cheaper now seeings as how the government keep on and on about carbon footprints and the environment). Still you have got to be rich to be green.

Ebay overdose

The last fortnight has seen me having a real splurge on Ebay. It started with Crocs (www.crocs.com) then jibbitz (also on the crocs website) then something called Shoe Doodles (same as jibbitz really). Which has led me into my first wholesale for resale purchase. I am currently holding 137 Shoe Doodles of assorted designs 'in stock' ready for purchase (Free Postage) from fellow Ebayers.

So far I've sold 11 within 24 hours of starting to list them. If they don't go on Ebay I feel the swimming club may have the opportunity to take them off my hand. I haven't listed the sparkly ones yet, as we rather like them here (Elinor and I that is).

Basically Crocs are a bit like jelly sandals, they are very comfortable and have lots of holes in them for airflow. The holes can also be decorated with little charms. 3 out of 4 occupants of my house now have Crocs shoes!

New lodgers ...trouble with rodents

Well we went on holiday for a week, the cats and dog went to the kennels and when we came back the mice had moved in.

After 24 hours it was obvious that every four legged furry animal had developed an obsession with staring intently at the floorboards. Now if it was just one cat doing it I would have thought that it was the naturally odd sort of staring that cats can do from time to time (some sort of meditation ritual they go into), but this was serious stand near the skirting board staring.

Then the dog was spotted standing on three legs for long periods staring at the floorboards. Not normal.

It doesn't seem to count that most rooms have ultrasonic rodent repelling gizmos plugged in. The mouse/mice have invaded through the small kangaroo sized holes in the bathroom and kitchen walls. Holes which are apparently necessary (and semi-permanent it seems) until the bathroom project is finished (8 months so far). They are in the kitchen wall as well because the pipes go in under there somewhere.

How the dog hasn't chewed up the pipes already is anybody's guess. But now he is also in search of a rodent they are likely to be both chewed and dug up, which could also result in a flood. Does that count as pestilence and flood? Bring on the plague of locusts (no don't).

I'm quite happy that this is giving the cats something to do in the house. It stops them wanting to go out and kill birds, or worse still play with the traffic, but I am very concerned that there is so much floorspace the little brown furry thing will be very hard to get rid of now it is in. I do have 5 humane traps set around the place, but what self respecting rodent is going to walk out of his/her hole and investigate a mouse trap if there are 3 cats and a Jack Russell waiting?

I've been checking on the internet and apparently peppermint essential oil is good for repelling rodents so 100ml bottle is on order and I'll see how it goes. The trouble with living in an old victorian house is every room has mouse sized gaps, you couldn't possibly seal them all up.

We did once have a visiting rat. I caught it eating my packed lunch and freaked out, it also ate the rucksack that the lunch was in, so I called in the council pest controller. He did the business with little boxes full of poison and a few months later we found the poor thing curled up dead in its nest in one of our sheds. On reflection I decided not to do that again, hence all the live catch traps and repellent.

I had to put a bet on it I would give the cats and dogs odds on that they will be eating something furry before it can get into the mouse traps or be suitably repelled. I just hope we can do that before they start attacking the wiring or the new plastic plumbing pipes.

Mice are supposed to be clever, you think they'd have smelled the other animal residents and gone and tried out next door (no pets, bigger house), or better still the woods over the road. The house will no doubt be very minty by the end of the week, as I'll be spraying all the floorboards.

Gone gardening

Spring is bringing out the gardener in me. I'm still not brave enough to battle the way into the front garden, our front garden is inconveniently on the other side of a busy road, but I am on track for getting things in the ground on time in the back garden.

The picture on the left is of a Mantis Rotovator, this saves so much time digging, theoretically you can use it between rows of plants for weeding! But from personal experience that usually results in my plants looking like a hurricane has hit them and all their tops get chopped off.

I do extreme gardening. This means:
1. Rotovate almost everything
2. Plant things
1&2 can happen in one weekend
3. Ignore everything for weeks
4. Admire how the weeds are nearly as big as the plants I planted.

Somehow it seems to turn out ok. I really annoyed my dad last year when I ignored the potatoes he'd given me for months, and then got about four times the quantity of spuds as a result.

The classic example of extreme gardening is our 12 rhubarb plants. I've been ignoring them for years and they always come up like huge triffids. If I can see them over the weeds I might even take a picture.

Harmoniums, Hens and Sewing Machines

My collection of reed instruments is growing apace. We are the proud owners of an old Alexandre harmonium..aka pump organ...courtesy of a bit of an Ebay moment, ok so two notes don't work but hey what do you want for £1.

Of course I've now got my eye on bigger and better harmonia and I've browsed the web merrily wondering how hard it is to fix the notes that don't want to work.

Found a good few websites so there are people looking after these things, despite the terrible prices they seem to fetch on Ebay. http://www.reedorgans.co.uk/

The harmonium works like a sort of horizontal accordion. You have to pump a foot pedal which inflates a bellows arrangement which in turn allows the notes to sound. Rather a good noise comes out of ours. The bellows are in tact, but it could do with a little TLC as the previous owner has knocked it about a bit.

And for my next Ebay trick I purchased an old Singer sewing machine, one of the pedal type (see the link between harmoniums and sewing machines, type in pedal and then check the distance and voila a completely insane purchase) and I have hauled it back to my house full of underappreciated things that really shold be worth more money but aren't.

The sewing machine is great, complete with its oak table, original instructions, all the various attachments for quilting, variable hems and other things I don't think I've ever tried. There is even a spare drive belt (old leather strap thing). It looks to be from the 1920's/30's and seems to have been much better looked after than the one my grandma had.

I am currently resisting the temptation to acquire big fluffy chickens called Buff Orpingtons. I've been looking at the possiblity of installing chickens for a while. We do have the room, but we don't yet have a fully fenced off area in the garden.

Having spent today lunching with a large crowd of Buff Orpingtons (and blue ones and jubilee ones) at Harperley Hall POW Camp I am quite struck on them. They are huge, and very amusing. I'm not sure they could fly if they wanted to. Knowing us they'd end up in the house, but not for lunch.

I've finally discovered the point of ironing

For as long as I can remember ironing has been a way of reinforcing creases. Thanks to my new 'steam generator' iron I think I just removed all the creases from a garment!!! My linen clothing will now be crease free, until I get in the car, sit down or bend, at which point all the creases will reappear.

Seriously I don't like ironing. I have tried not to wear anything that needs ironing for the past 8 years (the advent of children). But our old steam iron stopped working and Jason spent £5 on a new one from Tesco's. As a result the minority of my clothes that do need ironing became completely unwearable as even I won't go out in massively crumpled clothing. Alas I am not the shape for lycra, so something had to be done.

The new iron has an extra kettle like attachment so I can just steam away all those stubborn creases in about a third of the time it used to take me to iron a basket of clothes. Never thought I'd be happy doing the ironing. I don't think this 'happy to iron' feeling will last long, but it is worth noting just for the shock factor.

Current grumbles

In no particular order - and just to get it out of my system.....

Kids who hang around the area and vandalise the local church, and harass my elderly neighbours.

The fact that the local council, the county council and the police have replied to my email about said youths within 24 hours of me sending my email...but they have all told me that there are not likely to be any resources (police) or funds (the money bit) to do much about it!!!

A government who thinks keeping kids at school to do pointless subjects until they are 18 will make any difference...the local kids causing the problem are about 14, they are at school.

The fact that these kids are really quite clever. They know the police are unlikely to come, they have specially selected easy targets. They know to go home by 9pm (seems to be when they disappear).

These kids know they are being given useless qualifications now that everyone passes pretty much everything (they are not stupid), they know they are not likely to get a job even if they do pass their exams, and they know they shouldn't be getting away with this.

By trying to be fair the government is effectively disabling everyone who uses the education system.

I spend quite a few spare minutes wondering where would be the best place to move to...globally. Unfortunately the Orkneys were well featured in the Telegraph the other week, so that means half of London will be buying it up shortly.

Half term - itis

Half term started with a virus, my back had been hurting all week, and by Friday I couldn't move. So missed a day of work and spent most of the weekend feeling out of sorts. My Saturday snooze was disturbed at 11am by the kids announcing that they had 'found a dog in the road'. Thankfully the dog hadn't been hit by anything, but it had attached itself quite firmly to the children, more particularly to the tennis ball Elinor was holding.

The dog was a smooth haired border collie, and it spent most of the day behaving extremely well; being nice to cats, children and Fudge (who being a JRT was not so good in return). She happily fetched endless tennis balls and sat properly on the dog mat, which is much better than the normal dog of the house. I phoned the police who said I had to take her to them sometime before 5pm. Poor dog, I thought. Not believing that anyone could have lost her on purpose, but rather surprised that nobody had been around looking for her.

Anyway in the meantime the children of the area had invaded the garden and started making things with the sundry piles of building materials, which had spread from the garden to the surrounding road. This, as usual, put me into a very bad mood as I can feel the damages claims coming in from the less tolerant neighbours, and anyone unlucky enough to have their car parked in the area. I still haven't got over last year's smashed car window incident which cost me £60 for the Autoglass people and much aplogising for my hooligan 5 year old son's behaviour (he did shout Scooby Doo as he threw the stone that broke the windscreen - apparently).

So, having tried to get the dog to take me to her home (complete failure, she dragged me to the end of the road, grabbed a stick and dragged me back to my house), I gave up and took her to the police station. Sadly she wasn't microchipped but apparently it is against the law (isn't it always) to keep a stray dog without the written permission of the council! So we left her there, well I shoved her into the kennel and she whined a lot. The policeman on duty wasn't optimistic but I made him promise to ring me if anything happened. So that was my quiet Saturday.

Sunday we went off to my mum's for lunch. Came back to packing for the annual Crieff expedition, and a telephone message to say that the dog had been collected by her owners, who are hopefully microchipping her for next time. Packed up all our animals for their holiday at the kennels, and tried to keep the kids indoors.

Thinking about it the rest of the holiday was a breeze compared to Saturday...the kids have been to kids club and done Ceilidhs, Discos and Fashion Shows. I've polished off a few glassess of red wine and Jason has complained about his golfing ineptitudes.

Trouble is that it is Saturday again tomorrow. I think if I can get the kids to the 8am swimming club session my day will be a lot more peaceful.

Old pics

I found this postcard and thought I'd put it onto the blog, if you know me you will know where this is :-)

Private healthcare - the animal perspective

Cinders (cat) got run over yesterday, thankfully a lady stopped and took her straight to the vet. The lad that hit her was apparently going too fast, he knew he hit her but didn't stop. Even though she was lying in the road, stunned, and clearly not dead. She was extremely lucky as she only has a snapped tooth and cuts on her chin - she also bit her tongue. So I am now feeling considerably poorer and Jason has been threatened with some radical personal surgery if he keeps letting the cats out! I have some strict rules about which cats are let out and when, ie they go out if they are hungry, and not for too long, and are called back in for food. She is currently lying on a towel in our bedroom (she really likes towels), trying to lick all the sticky plaster stuff off her leg from where the vet put a drip in to stop her getting shock.

The vet that had her didn't want me to take her home, they had her in a little cage on a drip and she looked really fed up - not eating or drinking. They said the vet was busy and wouldn't be able to see if she needed an operation until either tomorrow or Monday! Anyway this morning I asked for a price .....feeling the £ signs ticking away, plus I also think most animals like to be in familiar surroundings not shut in a tiny cage in silent room. Cost for admission, 1 night's stay, some antibiotics and painkillers and a saline drip £107! Costs to stay overnight for Sunday and Monday another £120, cost for operation ??? Anyway I didn't get that far as I phone my normal vet and told them what was going on (bear in mind I used to have a lot of animals and have spent a fair bit of time at the vets in the past 14 years since moving here).

My vet said that it was fine to bring her in first thing Monday, remember the other vet said they wouldn't be doing anything until Monday anyway. So I phoned the first lot back and said I was coming to get her (didn't give them a choice)...10 mins later my vet phoned me to say that the other lot had been on the phone checking that I had made an appointment, the first vet had said they were really worried, thought she needed to be hospitalised etc (1 vet giving the other a guilt trip, and giving me a guilt trip too).

Collected Cinders, parted with £107, went to other vet - who had stayed specially as the first vet said it was urgent. My vet had a look, said she looked quite perky. He took out the needle for the drip that the other lot had kindly left in, saying that she looked like she didn't need anymore fluid to him. He clipped off some fur from her chin (cat purring at this point), said it was a bit nasty but would probably heal up ok if we keep it clean (as if I'd keep it dirty), said the tooth operation looked a bit pointless as the tooth will probably drop out on its own, and the op would be fiddly and expensive. So I've got an appointment to take her in on Tues evening. Total cost at my vet £24 for Saturday out of hours appointment, 1 painkiller injection and 10 antibiotic tablets. Hmm I wonder why I go to my vet!!!

However the warning sign at Vet No1 was that the first thing they said to me was 'is she insured' and the second thing was ' can you sign this consent form' which gave them authority to do anything without asking me first.

Cat is now asleep on my bed, she has stuffed her face with food and spent an hour trying to lick the nasty sticky plaster mark off her leg.

Jason has been threatened with radical surgery if he keeps letting the cats out, he has also promised to revamp the dog flap to make it less cat friendly.
Cats are banned from going out until this is done.

I am thankful that a good samaritan called Leanne stopped to rescue Cinders from the middle of the road before the next car squashed her flat, and found time to put a note through the door saying what she had done. I am also happy that she went to the vet and that because she received prompt treatment the cat didn't go into shock, but I am even happier that my regular vet is such a calm and sensible practitioner who doesn't just go for the insurance....and the guilt trips.

Just switched to new blogger software, another new password :-(
Spent four hours tidying up the house today. Didn't actually clean anything, but moved a lot of stuff around. Tis the season to be tidy.

Last day of term tomorrow. We're celebrating by going out for lunch and letting the kids go to kids club for the last time this term. I'm sure that the school carol service will be lovely but the church is just too small and unless you are prepared to get there half an hour early there is no chance of getting a seat. If you do sit down it is highly unlikely that your child will then be visible, such is the extent of overcrowding that occurs.

Sunday will be the church nativity and Christingle, now those I am looking forward to. I've even stuck cloves into some satsumas today just to give the living room that festive smell.

George has just appeared as he thinks he has a rat in his bedroom. So I now have to go and investigate. Having tried to tidy said bedroom today I can confirm that anything is possible.

Time for decisions

Christmas is nearly upon us again. I tend to get a bit fed up at Christmas. The TV vision of either joy and festivities, or misery and depression seems to go to extremes, with no middle ground.

I tend to feel it is the season to be depressed, if you are ever going to be depressed now is the time to do it.

For the past 4 years I've been working within my own company. All holidays and breaks from work have caused me to reflect on what I do and why I choose to do it. If you run your own company and don't 'go to work' there is no money. The thoughts 'surely it would be better/easier/less stressful to get a (proper) job' float through my head at these times when really I should be making the most of the quiet time. This year I feel more relaxed (at the moment) and I guess that each year the feeling will get better. Year 1 was terrifying, and now I know it is just how things are and something else will come along. Every week I am thankful that I don't have a proper job. I like the feeling of control it gives me, even if the cashflow can cause moments of stress...

I've got mental plans in place for the things I am going to start doing to promote the business and grow it beyond being mostly just me. They feel real and do'able now, probably for the first time I'm confident enough to admit publicly that I'm good at what I do and worth a premium sum of money. That looks a bit silly in print, but it took me a long time to remove myself from traditional employment and it has taken me a bit longer to start properly getting my head round the issues of what is good value and how I can provide it in a consultancy framework.

Similarly the pressure to buy everything to make things better is still there but I am getting a bit better. I still think I probably shop beyond my means but at least this year I have gone a whole year without a credit card - in itself that deserves a celebration.

What I want for Christmas
~ A bathroom that works (ours hasn't for the past fortnight)
~ A new concrete floor on the back yard (currently rubble and holes)
~ A few thoughtful presents for everyone, not lots just for the sake of it

All of which seems promising at the moment as long as Jason doesn't find anything else to demolish in or around the bathroom and the kids don't start to seriously lobby for excessive presents - but I think I have trained them not to do that by now.

My Ebay account has been busy, buying not selling, in advance of the festive season. I've converted to using the various shops that sell via ebay so my bidding days are over, as I now prefer the Buy it Now prices offered by people who seem to be legitimate businesses.

The festive organic meat selection is on order, if I have to eat meat I want to avoid some guilt by avoiding mass farming methods. Sadly I only stayed a vegetarian for 5 years and that was before children appeared. I lapsed due to an irresistable craving for a bacon sandwich and that was it.

Let the chemo begin...well not quite

If you received a letter from a hospital telling you to start attending chemotherapy appointments what would you think that meant???

After extensive tests and biopsies etc this is the only info that has landed on the doormat at my parents house. So off we all trotted last Thursday to the hospital (in Sunderland) where my parents were told all future treatments would take place.

Needless to say my mum has cried a bit about the implications of all of this...but somehow I feel it is all very bizarre. There are a few reasons for this.

There has never been a conversation with anyone about the results of all the tests...I'm talking a couple of days of tests here. There was no reason give as to why the chemotherapy was being recommended. Does this mean that if nobody says the big 'C' word that it doesn't exist. Or is this all precautionary as nobody seems to want to touch my mum with a scalpel or an anaesthetic if they can help it...which leads me back to the chemo appointment last week.

Having trekked 30 miles to the hospital, we got to reception in plenty of time and realised that we'd never noticed a sign to the department listed on the appointment letter. My dad was still somewhere in the car park with the map, and me and my mum were talking to the receptionist. Thankfully the receptionist really knew that there was no such department, and despite the letter head on the consultant's letter the REAL appointment was in a different hospital 12 miles away in Durham.

The Sunderland receptionist phoned the Durham clinic and explained where we were. My dad was gently prised away from the reception area where he briefly looked like he was contemplating whether to explode or cry with irritation, and we zoomed as fast as my car would go (within reasonable speed limits...and with due care and attention...particularly as there are speed cameras in Tyne and Wear), to Durham.

Then commenced the parking fiasco that is Durham hospital. Whilst the building is quite cosy, the car park is on the compact side and there is no way in the world that everyone visiting can park their cars. I have no idea where the staff park, I think they teleport in somehow. BEFORE the PFI hospital this place had a VAST car park...it is now a (very expensive) housing estate.

So I dropped my parents off at the door and went off to stalk people who looked like they were about to move their car. I have a mystic approach to parking, I imagine my ideal space, and usually it appears. The visualisation worked and I got a space within 5 mins and headed back to the hospital.

But my mum had the appointment letter and I couldn't remember the name of the unit...thankfully a helpful cleaner showed me where to go...where I found my mum, but my dad had gone looking for me. I'm still not sure how I missed him as there is only one corridor. So off I went back to the car park where I found him talking to another lady who had lost her relatives somewhere. I noticed there was quite a lot of this sort of thing going on in the car park...so if you screen people for confusion at the hospital I expect you'd find that the whole population is disorientated and confused..as it is very hard to be anything else.

Meanwhile back in the chemo unit they were reading out the drug sheet to my mum. When we got back it looked like everything was all systems go , so my dad and I headed off to the restaurant for a coffee...mainly to avoid my dad having to being to close to the chemo unit.

Soooo one hour later we went back to find my mum reading the Daily Mail and looking very perky. The reason being that as soon as the nurse doing the chemo read her notes she decided that the whole thing looked like a very bad idea. Something about warfarin, excessive bleeding and artificial heart valves seems to do this to the medical profession (it had a similar effect on the anaesthetist in Sunderland).

Turns out my mum had waited an hour for someone to find a registrar to find out about prescribing an antibiotic that my mum isn't allergic to and then to administer it intravenously before even thinking about the cancer treatment.

My mum appeared to be ok with the whole thing - a tribute to her new heart drugs which seem to have done the trick at last - but the nurses were apparently making a bit of a stand as they clearly don't want to risk the bleeding thing happening in their unit.

This Thursday they are going to try again. The whole process will start two hours earlier to allow for antibiotics to be given (prevents infection in heart valves so essential). My dad has printed out a list of all the things my mum is allergic to and my mum has promised to pay attention. My dad can find Durham and is quite happy to sit in the chemo lounge with his mp3 player on this week, which means I don't have to go.

Which only brings me back to the 'why is this happening?' question. I did ask my mum if she wanted to know the biopsy results, but her view is that whatever they are the medical profession have clearly got it into their heads that they need to give her chemotherapy so why bother asking.

I hope it all stays surreal like this, as it is much less scary this way. But very odd.