Introducing: Little Pea!

Posted on April 5, 2013 by thepogblog

On Wednesday night, my very talented Sister 1 gave birth to my very first nephew – Little Pea.

He is gorgeous.  But then I would say that.  So I thought rather than just bragging, I’d use this post to show you the differences between a large Auntie Pog and a Little Pea.

The hair (yes, he has considerably more than me)

LP 3

The feet (mine are awful…but his?  Just little lumps of gorgeousness)

LP 4

And my favourite: the hands  (Aren’t his just teeny tiny?!)

LP 2

Sorry, I think that may class as bragging after all – oops :o)

Congratulations to Sister 1 and my brother in law for their new arrival, to mum and dad for finally getting to be grandparents and to Sister 2, the other auntie (at least she will be unless she gives into temptation and eats Little Pea up on the grounds that is is that gorgeous!)  :o)

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A week off work Pog style

Posted on April 2, 2013 by thepogblog

I am really rubbish when it comes to taking time off work (unless it involves lying in the sun somewhere warm, when I am very good at it).  I intended to spend the last week lounging around on the sofa reading books and eating Easter eggs, forgetting the world of e-mails and meetings.  Instead, it took three 3 days to work out where the off button was on the BlackBerry of Evil and then the discovery that I can only turn it off for an hour at a time without having to check that my inbox hasn’t overflowed.

The one job I had to do over the break was move my rockery and patio (reasons will become clear in a future post).  The Arctic weather on the first day stopped that though and lounging didn’t seem quite right that early in the break.  Instead, I found a pattern for some trousers and some material I’d put aside for the project.  The only clothes I’ve ever made before were a pair of shorts when I was 15 and at school.  They were inevitably terrible and were never worn (they also had a matching tasteful boob tube, but we’ll gloss over that for obvious reasons).

It turns out I can make clothes.  In fact I got a bit carried away and in the last week I’ve made four pairs of trousers, three long sleeved tops, one short sleeved top, two pairs of shorts and a skirt.  I had a small taste bypass with the material on a few of the items, but I’ll put that down to practice (and the fact that when only curtains are available, there is a possibility that the item will look like a curtain, whatever you do.  We’ll gloss over that too.)

trousers (ok, they have an elasticated waist band, but you have to start somewhere!) and top

trousers (ok, they have an elasticated waist band, but you have to start somewhere!) and top

short sleeved top - I'm hoping it's one of those things that looks better off the hanger!

short sleeved top – I’m hoping it’s one of those things that looks better off the hanger!

It also turns out that you can spend time in the garden in Arctic conditions as long as you have a mum, dad and Sister 2 helping out (Sister 1 is busy being heavily pregnant so was excused from landscaping duties).  Between us we moved the rockery back a foot and removed part of the side,  added some sleepers to hold it in, removed a fence panel and added a new one, took up most of the patio, re-edged all the flower beds and removed two tree stumps.  I have blistered lips, but much to my surprise, all of us still have the usual 10 fingers and lost none of them to frostbite.

before

before

after

after

By yesterday I’d had enough of the sewing machine and the garden, so I sat down to attempt some of that lounging.  It didn’t work though, so instead I spent five hours cleaning the car, my house and the windows (between the sewing, the gardening and numerous trips to the tip both needed a lot of TLC).  Then I rounded off the holiday by super gluing a pipe cleaner to my fingers.  As you do.

So there you go.  A week off work, Pog style.  :o)

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A few Friday giggles

Posted on March 22, 2013 by thepogblog

Here’s two random giggles from this week:

In our office we have (very large) fantastic pictures on the walls taken by the photographers that work for the company.  If you’re an important sort of a person you can choose the pictures in your office.

In the lift the other day there was a very big, very heterosexual looking, very American boss complaining very loudly to a big English boss.

‘My PA thought it would be funny while I was away to have pictures of David Beckham and Brad Pitt put up in my office.  They just stare at me.’

He didn’t seem to see the funny side.  I did and sniggered out loud.

I guess it’s not surprising that feedback a while back was that I need to ‘work on my gravitas’ :o)

And out of work, I was reading posts on a local network and thought I’d misread a post.  I re-read and realised I’d not.  And I laughed lots.  This was it:

Has anyone got a Donkey that XXX church can borrow on Sunday for its Palm Sunday procession? Sorry for late notice but Paddy the Donkey has sadly been put down. It would have to be safe with kiddies….. Can anyone help ?

I wasn’t laughing at Paddy’s fate.  That, of course, was sad.  It was more the fact that social media could potentially help with the acquisition of a child friendly donkey at short notice that amused me.

For the record, to date, three donkeys have been identified but all have prior engagements.  A black Shetland pony has been offered if things get desperate though.  Who knew donkeys had such an active social life?

:o)

This is 'Donk' from Ithaca, where I went on holiday last year. I wonder what his social life is like...

This is ‘Donk’ from Ithaca, where I went on holiday last year. I wonder what his social life is like…

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Another year older, another year wiser?

Posted on March 19, 2013 by thepogblog

Yet another birthday snuck up on me at the weekend.  It was lovely, but I just wanted to show you four of the highlights (there were more but I don’t want to bore you…)

My mum baked me the hugest birthday cake I’ve ever set eyes on:

bd cake

This has to be my all time favourite birthday card, ever!  Bradley wearing my Bradley!  Love it!

bd card

Norman bought me a gift of a fresh prawn:

bd norman

(Once again, apologies if you’re very local and are losing dinner again – he brought me a cooked fish a few nights earlier)

And at work a very lovely colleague made me an amazing cake.  Thank you – I know you’ll see this :o)

bd carla cake

Best of all though, I got to spend the whole day with my sisters – and I treated us all to a massage at a spa.  I’ve never done that before but I’d love to do it again.  Perhaps I should wait until after Sister 1 has gone pop though…apparently massage tables and bumps this large don’t mix that well!

bump

Another year older?  Yes.  Another year wiser?  I doubt it!  :o)

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Proactive Pog

Posted on March 15, 2013 by thepogblog

I don’t know quite what has happened to me recently – I’ve become all proactive. (Usually I’d just accept things and get on with it).

BT made a decision to disconnect my broadband for no good reason so I called to complain…and received a cheque in the post from them.

The payments on the washing machine insurance went up so I called to say it was no longer worth it, and they cut payments to lower than they were in the first year.

My neighbours deposited a dirty nappy in my outside bin (which had no bag in it) so I threw it back towards their five bins (it wasn’t like they have a shortage).  Last night they were still making so much noise at 11.30pm that my ear plugs wouldn’t block them out.  As this happens more nights than it doesn’t, I finally lost it and screamed through the wall for them to shut up.  I instantly regretted that combined with nappy gate as they are not the sort of people you want to upset, but today all of them have said hello to me and told me that one of the children is away for the whole weekend.  We can all get some sleep – hooray!

But there is one bit of proactiveness that’s not worked…yet.  I know you all like my daft date stories, but as I paid for the service (not full price, but that’s not the point) I hoped that there would be something positive to come out from of the Introduction Agency.  And frankly, nothing has so far, and the most recent profile suggests that it wouldn’t be 3rd time lucky.  So I wrote this e-mail:

Thank you for sending through XXX’s profile – you’d actually sent it to me last year too.

I’ve spoken to a few people about the two dates I have had with you so far and they have expressed surprise that I’ve been matched with those I have.  I’d be the first person to agree that you don’t have to have a large number of things in common with a partner, but I do believe you have to have some similarities – in outlook or beliefs – or there is absolutely no common ground to build on.  YYY was someone who I would actively avoid if I had met in any other social setting – and that is irrespective of his views on smoking.  As I said to you after each date, I’d be happy to give you some feedback on both if that helps with future matching.

Based on this, my friends suggested that I ask you why you have matched me with XXX?  It is very hard to tell much about him from his profile (who doesn’t like having dinner with friends or going abroad?) and  I don’t want to waste his time, or mine.  I’d also like to avoid a repeat of the last date.  It was funny once, I think if another date was that bad though, I’d probably not see the funny side (and may consider joining the nearest convent!)

That was last week and there has been no response so far.  I don’t think it is unreasonable (is it?).  I’m hoping the silence is due to a holiday or something and not because on this one, I am beyond help.  I’ll keep you posted :o)

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One epic commute

Posted on March 12, 2013 by thepogblog

OK, so the UK is not known for its ability to deal with any sort of weather that could be classed as ‘out of the ordinary’ (ie, not damp and grey) but let’s ignore that fact and just accept that everything went bonkers in Bumpkinstown last night.

There was a teeny bit of snow in London and it was cold, but  I fell asleep on the train and woke up in some kind of winter wonderland.  I only had to drive 7 miles from the station though and I set out, pulled onto the main road and…stopped.  Nothing was moving – Bumpkinstown and all the surrounding areas were gridlocked.  Having left home at 5.30am, left the office at 4.30pm and got back to the station at 6.15pm, I finally got back to Bumpkinsville at just gone 11pm.  Yup, nearly 5 hours to drive 7 miles.  That’s not the story though.

the joy of gridlock (please note that there was almost no snow on the ground - just ice under that little sprinkling!)

the joy of gridlock (please note that there was almost no snow on the ground – just ice under that little sprinkling!)

It was stressful (hooray for  my new years resolution or I would have been completely bald by the time I got home!) and it was boring (hooray for mobile phones and Face book – and the friends at the other end of both) and it was scary (hooray for an amazing Sister 2 who sat on speaker phone and talked me through how to actually get up a hill that has turned to sheet ice when I was shaking like a leaf and almost crying as I watched the car in front repeatedly loose control).  But actually, there were some really lovely parts too…:

  • It was the first time in many years that I’d spent time with my head out of the window catching snowflakes in my mouth.  It’s quite liberating – especially when Bradley-less :o)
  • On the first hill of terror I realised that some very lovely people weren’t standing at the side of the road watching as people lost control of their cars – they were waiting, ready to push the cars that couldn’t make the hill.
  • Approaching the second hill of terror, as Sister 2 talked me down from near hysteria (I’m not a competent driver, let alone a confident one), I realised there was another group of people, waiting to do the same.  I can not describe the relief I felt when I saw them – at least I was less likely to fall back down the hill and into other cars.
  • I passed a lovely lady standing in the arctic conditions, with a teapot and mugs of lovely warm tea that she offered to all the people that passed.  I would have killed for one – had it not been for the fact that I had been desperate for a wee for about 4 hours at that point!
  • Today I discovered, through the power of social media, that someone had posted that a lady with two young children was stranded as the trains were no longer running…and a complete stranger went and got her and the children, fed them and put them up for the night before driving them to the station this morning.  That was more than lovely.

My own little ‘thing’ though was that, about 3.5 hours into the epic journey I realised that I was missing a trick.  I could continue to panic and grump, or I could enjoy it a bit.  So I unwound my window and grinned like a mad thing at the cars on the other side of the road.  Despite the fact that I must have looked like a loon (and possibly due to complete boredom on their part) a lot of people wound down their windows and had a chat.  I met some really lovely people – we swapped times, distances, where the iciest patches were and where people were standing by to help.  And how far we could have flown in the time we’d been stuck in our cars.  Strangely, despite the fact that I was very cold, tired, hungry and in desperate need of a toilet, I almost enjoyed myself!  See what a smile can do?  ;o)

To all the heroes out there last night, thank you – you were all fantabulous!

And now I’m staying inside until spring is well established.  Just to be on the safe side…

:o)

And this morning it just looked calm and peaceful...

And this morning it just looked calm and peaceful…

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The (almost) secret baker

Posted on March 8, 2013 by thepogblog

OK, this is another post that I was going to ‘save’ but I want to share the fun of it with you now :o)

Most work places can sometimes be boring, stressful places.  Don’t get me wrong – I have great colleagues who I love spending time with, but it’s always possible to make things a little better for everyone.  In January my office seemed to have a real case of the January blues and I started wondering what I could do to perk things up a little on the quiet.

One thing I am truly bad at is cooking, so I decided to improve myself while I did my perking.  I appointed myself the secret baker for my floor with the aim of taking something in each month that I’d made.  I’m usually the first person in, so it wouldn’t be difficult to keep my identity secret as I just had to get a tin of things to the kitchen and disappear.

I missed January but in February I made industrial quantities of sticky bicky cake.  By 10am it was all gone and I heard a few people mention it.

cake 3

This week, I made sticky ginger cake with ginger fudge icing.  There wasn’t so much (mainly because it turned out to be rather difficult to cut without crumbling so unfortunately I had to eat quite a lot myself – tee hee) .

cake 4

I had an early meeting and when I got back, two of the girls I sit with told me I should go and take a look in kitchen (they had both worked out I was the cake provider about 10 minutes after they discovered February’s efforts).  The reaction had been brilliant!

cake 2

:o)

I think there is only one person from my office who reads this blog (and she is one of the two girls mentioned above), but if you’re also based where I am, please don’t let on that it’s me.  It does seem to perk people up a bit – even if it is just because of the sugar rush first thing in the morning –  and I’d like to try to get through the year, taking something in every month, without anyone else guessing that it’s me.  I’ll let you know how it goes of course. :o)

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Naked head cycling and a spot of trend setting

Posted on March 5, 2013 by thepogblog

For about an hour today, I felt really smug.  I worked from home, it was a gorgeous day and I had enough time to take a lunch break for the first time in I don’t remember how long.  So, after months, I finally got on my bike and did a breaking-myself-back-in short 5 mile ride.  It was lov-er-ly :o)   I only felt smug for a short while though as, after congratulating myself for doing exercise and possibly kicking off an unfatness plan, I managed to inhale a bag of gummy bears without even noticing.  Hey ho, baby steps and all that!

There was also the hat trauma yesterday.  When the sun came out while I was in the office, I vowed I’d get on my bike today if it was as nice.  Now, I’ve not cycled with a baldy head before and thought it had the potential to be a bit breezy, so on the way home I rushed to the bike shop to grab a skull cap type thing to go under my helmet.  I realised as I looked at them though, that I had to try them on to make sure they fitted.  It was ok – the shop was quiet and I managed to whip off Bradley, work out which hat I needed and pop Bradley back into place without anyone being any the wiser.  Or so I thought.  I ran to the tube, got to the mainline station and decided just to check all was as I thought in the toilet mirrors (when you wear a wig, you seem to spend rather a lot of time locating mirrors – just in case).  It turns out that I’m still not great at speedy Bradley replacement.  Not only was he at a slightly wonky angle, but somehow I’d managed to fold some of the hair into the wig, giving the impression that I had loops growing directly out of my scalp.  Still, you never know, there may have been some jealous people out there…and almost all of them would be unable to achieve that look themselves.  So really, I have just established a very unique trend (please, just let me believe that to get over the embarrassment!)  :o)

Spring sprung!

Spring sprung! (My favourite smelling flower in my garden)

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Goodbye poggyW (the company…not me!)

Posted on February 26, 2013 by thepogblog

Because the blog seems to cover all of my life, it only seems right that I pop this on here.  I posted it on my company facebook page today:

I’m a little bit sad to tell you that as of today I have stopped trading as poggyW.  Not (as the Barclays business advisor assumed) because I’ve not had enough custom – quite the opposite.  I’ve worked out that between the day job and this I’ve been averaging an 80 hour working week (not including my commute to London, poggyW deliveries, trips to buy stock, research and time on here!) Sadly, I’ve realised that even full time I’d never make enough to cover my mortgage and eat and instead it’s all been getting rather stressful!

Thank you SO much for your custom.  The idea that people will pay for what I make has continued to stun me and make me very happy.  And for you lovely FB people, I’ll happily make up any items that I still have materials for – there is quite a lot.  It just wont be with any profit (so better for you – although as I only charge a few pounds an hour for my time, not THAT much better!)  Instead, I’ll be teaching myself new things and posting pictures.  If there is anything you fancy, as long as you cover the cost of materials I’ll happily make things for you – just at a far more leisurely pace than I have been until now.  If you are interested in anything, just comment as usual, or drop me a mail and we can discuss prices.  If you want something made from existing stock (baby goods, hoodies etc), again, contact me and we can work out the cost of materials.

Obviously any outstanding orders will be completed and I’ll still be at the fairs that I’ve signed up for.  I’ll also still send out random thank you gifts as I mentioned in my last post, just because that’s a nice sort of a thing to do :o)

Thank you all for all your custom – It’s made me so very happy for the last year and a half :o) x

 

poggywI set up poggyW in the hope that one day I’d be able to give up the rat race and sew to support myself, but I can’t actually continue feeling so blimin’ knackered all the time – particularly as I did some sums and realised that in my current situation – single, with a mortgage all of my very own – it would never be something that would support me and ‘Normous Norman.  It’s a bit sad that I failed in some respects but I’m looking forward to sewing for fun again…and getting back a bit of a life.  I was also in danger of developing a serious vitamin D deficiency as I was spending all weekend every weekend in the cellar / workroom!

On the upside, the more time I spend out of the cellar, the more time I will have for daft things to happen to me and the more blog posts there will be.  I think that is a positive :o)

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A departure from dating. Again.

Posted on February 25, 2013 by thepogblog

Well firstly, apologies to those of you I confused by reposting an old blog post this morning…it was from October last year which is why TTB suddenly re-emerged!

Tonight’s blog though is about another date – the one I was leaving for when I wrote on Friday.  And as some of you already know, it was a terrible, terrible evening.  Almost on a par with the one where the bloke I went out with listed all the Eastern European countries in which he’d slept with prostitutes…

It was quite hard work from the start:

Him: I’ve been waiting for you in the pub, reading.

Me: Oh, what are you reading?

Him: I can’t remember the title or author.  It’s on my Kindle.

So that was the end of that conversation.

In no particular order, he then managed a monologue on the ‘awful’ people who live in council houses.  I didn’t tell him I have several good friends doing just that.  Then it was the ‘awfulness’ of those who chose to have tattoos.  I didn’t let on that my newly acquired brother-in-law is a tattoo artist and both sisters are into double figures when it comes to body art.

Music seemed like a safer topic and I mentioned a few concerts I’d been to.  I was informed that he doesn’t ‘do popular culture’ and had never heard of them.

Me: But your profile says you like 80’s music?

Him: God no.  I don’t know where that came from.  I hope it doesn’t make people think I like something terrible like Sapandau Ballet or something like that!’

The irony here is that the night before when I’d been in a bar Gold, by Spandau Ballet had come on and I’d started dancing like a bit of a loon.  Another thing best kept quiet…

He started telling me about Cambridge University.

Me: Why did you choose to go there? (I meant as opposed to any other city)

Him:  Because I am that clever

He went on and on and on (modules covered, internships taken, the differences between Cambridge and ‘the sort of university you went to’) so I reminded him that he left over 15 years ago and asked what class degree he got.

Him: 2:1

Me:  Oh, so did I.  So maybe ‘my sort of university’ wasn’t so bad after all. (That went over his head)

His next conversations starter was ‘I bet you can’t guess where I buy my flour from?’  Seriously?  I was getting bored by this stage and started trying open sarcasm just to entertain myself.

Me: Oh, do tell me.

Him: Amazon

Me: (not even a little impressed) How exciting.  And how much do you buy?

Him: 16 kilos of normal flour, 6 kilos of wholemeal.  That lasts 6 months with the amount of bread I make.

I then found out, step my step how it takes him up to a week to get his sour dough perfect.  By this stage I realised that the night was so bad it was almost funny and started taking mental notes to write this, but then, after 2 hours,  it happened…  (I should point out that one thing that I did keep from the TTB days was that I started smoking again.  I know – it’s disgusting, I’m an idiot etc etc. I asked for the Introduction lady to add it to my profile so I was completely open about it, so he knew I did from the start.)

Him: Would you like another drink?

Me: OK.  I’ll just go outside for a cigarette while you go to the bar.

Him: No

Me: Sorry?

Him: You will not go for a cigarette.

Me:  If we’re having another drink I will.

Him:  No

<pause while he turns a shade of purple and I feel lightly stunned that someone I just met feels it’s ok to try to control me >

Him: So I’ll get the drinks

Me: If you are happy for me to have a cigarette, ok.

Him:  I said ….<insert little rant here> and if I’d known you would smoke at any point while I was with you I would never have come

Me: In that case I think it’s probably best we both go home now.

So we did.  I thought bigoted idiots that far up their own backsides had died out years back.  Sadly it seems not.  Hopefully the story has raised a few smiles from you though (say it was worth the torture, please?!), and at least I never had to worry about Bradley.  If he couldn’t cope with smoking, I’m pretty sure that the idea I was a skin head would have brought on palpitations! Part of me wishes I’d removed Bradley just before we left now.  That would have been funny :o)

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