A Real Country Bumpkinsville Fair

Posted on September 25, 2012 by thepogblog

On Saturday I was a stall holder with my poggyW goods at a local fair.  Not just any old fair though – no, an eco fair. To be honest, I wasn’t sure it would be worth the 6.30am start – it was six hours of sitting in a field and that’s a long time if you’re not busy.  Still, I dug out my thermal vest and socks (I drew the line at the long johns), and got on with it.

Well, it turns out that an Eco fair involves not only lovely stall holders (I had am amazing artist lady one side and a man who makes fantabulous jams and chutneys the other) but also bell ringing, maypole dancing, folk music (which somehow included ‘Walk like an Egyptian’ at one point) and morris dancers.  Down to the specifics though, this is what made it great for me:

  • There was a stand for teaching people about rehoming battery chickens.  It was run by un-feathered bods and Ros and Doris – two rescuees.  Doris was part chicken and part flamingo; she spends her time on one leg.  Ros it turns out is rather demanding when it comes to cuddles.  Chickens.  Who’d have thunk it?
  • The very friendly Rastafarian sheep who had been bottle raised.  Ok, they weren’t really Rastafarian, but they did have very cool dreadlocks.
  • The small, very fluffy dog being escorted by a rather well-to-do looking gentleman.  They had everyone giggling as the small fur ball had fluffy everything….including a fuchsia pink jumper.
  • And talking to people and finding out their stories.  One customer said she was buying something for her 4th great grandson….but she really didn’t look old enough.  I said as much and she told me she’d been married at 16 and so had her daughter.  In fact, her daughter met her husband to be on a Tuesday, got engaged on the Thursday and married on the Saturday. (He was in the Navy and leaving on the Monday).  And she’s still married to the same man.  How lovely is that?  ;o)

Spot the Pog!

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A few technicalities

Posted on September 18, 2012 by thepogblog

I don’t have a technical bone in my body.  People look stunned if I ever mention my BSc.  And think I’m lying when I tell them I started my career on not one, but two graduate technical schemes (to be fair, I agree – 12 years later I’m still waiting for HR to tell me there was a mistake and I was actually hired as a cleaner).

Because of this aversion to technology I have a DVD player but have never used it on my own (I can’t work out what buttons I need to press to get to the picture on the TV), I have no recording thingy on the tv as even the idea it gives me palpitations and I only changed my iron the other day because it was so old that every time it got to the steaming phase it tripped the switch in my fuse box.

This may explain why I’ve been managing for months with a laptop that blue screened on a daily basis and was so slow I think it was run by snails rather than the usual hamsters (hamsters was how a friend explained the inner workings of a laptop to me – it was the only way I could grasp it).  I finally bit the bullet though, and had another laptop built for me that uses hamsters on speed (well, it’s a lot faster anyway).  As I suspected, this did not go to plan and I had to spend a few evenings transferring documents from my old laptop to the new one and installing new software – a real technical feat for me.  Happily, the only total disaster in all this was that I sat on the floor with both laptops carrying out this technical magic and must have got distracted at some point as…erm…I knelt on the old one and now have a knee shape in the rather cracked back of the screen.  I’m really hoping nobody at work was hoping to use it for anyone else…

Of course, things couldn’t be that simple and the same day that I was working myself up to get that all sorted, I lost my mobile.  Because it’s me, I’d not upgraded my mobile in years (people sniggered when they saw my ‘old school’ phone) and it seems things have moved on.  A lot.  I now have a touch screen phone that is so advanced I’m just waiting for it to cook me dinner.  I spent the weekend trying to fathom out how to use all its bits and bobs and now I only have two problems.  One:  I can’t work out how to make a phone call and two: my fingers are waaay to fat for the touch screen meaning that a text message now takes a good few minutes and a lot of humphing to write.  So the only two things that I needed the phone for, I now can’t do.  Brilliant!

On the upside, I decided that as its main function is to look pretty, I needed to do something to protect it.  So I made a mobile sockdom.  So now I can’t see all the parts of it that I can’t use and, as I discovered this morning, I also can’t hear it ring.  That’s ok though as I’ve not fathomed how to answer a call yet….one step at a time ;o)

My sockdom – protecting the phone form me…and me from the phone.

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Distraction techniques

Posted on September 11, 2012 by thepogblog

Nobody likes a wallow-er (the possible exception being pigs wallowing in mud – that’s an acceptable form of wallowing).  By last Friday I felt the need to wallow, but it seemed completely pointless.  So I gave myself a couple of hours to feel sorry for myself and then decided enough was enough.  From Saturday I would just ‘get on with it’ day.  I did a lot.  And learned a few lessons:

For the first time in months I got on my bike and within ½ mile I’d got to a road closed sign.  As other cyclists will know, this is more of a challenge than a command so I carried on….and came to a rather large fire and number of firemen.  As the fire was under control (It was a file of something in a field rather than someone’s home) I chatted to them, asked if they had enough tea and coffee and they said all they were really missing was bacon sandwiches.  That seemed like a reasonable request to me so after my ride, I went to the local shop, bought the goods and made up 8 butties.  In return, I requested a photo:

Lovely smiley firemen :o)

Lesson:  Get outside.  You never know what you’ll find or how many people you will be able to make smile.

I tackled the garden. 

Lesson:  It’s not the best idea to have loud music in your ears and secateurs in your hand.  On the upside, nobody else will have trees pruned in quite the same way as me…my garden is looking…unique. 

Washed the car.  This is a dangerous activity as I think my car is mostly held together with the dirt it is covered in. 

Lesson: I’m pleased to report that not only does it still work but it is now a rusty/silver colour rather than its usual ‘mud’.

Did the embroidery for 6 Christmas stockings

Lesson: It may be possible to multitask when doing this, but possibly not when the additional activity is pruning the garden.  The constant stretch-run-crouch-run was probably a good bit of exercise.

Went to the sewing shop for thread that was rapidly being used up

Lesson: Perhaps next time a change of clothes having spent a few hours over pruning the garden would be a good idea.  Or a bit of hair brushing.  Anything to remove the garden and reduce the pulled-through-hedge-backwards look.

Made 2 chocolate and banana loaves

Lesson: These can feed 5 people.  They could probably feed 6 if you don’t put them on the top shelf of the oven that is so high they don’t rise.  Still, a flat topped chocolate and banana loaf is a bit different.

That was Saturday.  Sunday morning I realised another lesson: If you rush around doing all the above the end result is a house that looks like it’s been burgled by an interesting trio – a gardener (explaining the trail of mud and tree), a seamstress (thread and material coated part of my lounge) and a chef (raw banana loaf all over the kitchen).  It means a lot of cleaning.

Hey ho.  At least I didn’t wallow and achieve nothing  :o)

The only acceptable form of wallowing

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Sunscreen

Posted on September 6, 2012 by thepogblog

Last week I discovered something terrible: that not everybody in the world has heard the song ‘Sunscreen’ by Baz Luhrman.

It’s been a bit of a tough week…The more entertaining trials included:

  • Managing to lose the hole the washing line goes in and spending 30 minutes redistributing the two tonnes of pebbles that cover my garden to find it
  • Spending a good 20 minutes hunting for my iron that Sister 2 had, for some unknown reason, decided to rehouse in the cat biscuit cupboard
  • Attempting to catch an enormous spider that was on the back door…and discovering it was actually a bit of rogue passion flower that has decided it would rather grow inside than outside
  • Rescuing Norman who was scared by the neighbours kids while sitting in a paper bag and promptly got the handle of the bag wrapped around his tummy as he hurtled up the garden
  • Rescuing Norman from the passion flower that he managed to get tangled in (I’m not sure who is more at fault of daftness at this point – Norman or the plant)
  • Almost piercing my nipple when I forgot that I’d pinned a heap of pins to my top while sewing and then curling up on the sofa with a cup of tea

So anyway, I decided I needed a dose of Baz this morning.  If you’re one of the people who’ve not heard it, listen – it’s great.  If you have heard it, there’s always time for a reminder.  Whack up the volume and smile.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

 And if you don’t fancy listening, you can just read…:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

 I should point out that this was actually written by a lady called Mary Schmich and called “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young”.  It was published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997.  I bet she had no idea that one day her words would be in the charts in nine countries :o)

 

 

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Grumpster Pog

Posted on August 29, 2012 by thepogblog

This morning I let rip on facebook a little (the neighbours had not felt there was any issue with letting a small herd of children run riot, screaming and slamming doors until 1am – 3.5 hours before I had to get up) and one lovely person commented that they didn’t think it was possible for me to grump.  They were lovely….but wrong.  Confession time:

Last Friday I went out with some school friends for dinner.  We’d not met up as a group for about 20 years but for some reason I thought I’d be home early enough to spend some time with TTB.  It turns out that it’s quite tricky to catch up on two decades in a few hours and I didn’t text TTB til almost 11pm.  Not surprisingly, his response to my ‘I guess it’s too late for you to come over’ was a rather terse ‘Yes.  I can’t be bothered.’  (He didn’t say ‘bothered’ though.  Use your imagination….)   On my drive home I grumped silently that he could at least have been nicer about it, grump, grump grump.  Then I pulled up outside the house and panicked that I was being burgled.  Admittedly they would have been stupid burglers – having all the lights on and the curtains open.  But no…TTB had arrived with wine and was supping it on the sofa.  By the time I arrived he’d supped the vast majority of it, but I felt bad for grumping…and chuffed that he’d do something so sweet.

That didn’t stop me grumping the next day though.  Sister 2 and I went for a Bumpkinsville wander and thought we’d treat ourselves to a lunch snackeral in a local tea room.  Sister 2 went for soup, I decided on scrambled egg and salmon on toast.  Half an hour later, having watched four people leave in disgust, most refusing to pay, our food arrived.  Sister 2 promptly scalded her mouth on soup hotter than the sun while mine was stone cold.  I took it back.  Was ignored.  Wasn’t brought anything else out so at the end of Sister 2’s bowl of molten lava I took the money for her food and our drinks to the owner and said I obviously wasn’t paying for what I hadn’t had.  Did she apologise?  No.  She informed me that smoked salmon was supposed to be cold.  I agreed.  But pointed out that as a rule both, scrambled egg and toast should be a few degrees above room temperature and that an apology of some sort would have been appreciated.  I left behind my views in their visitors book and a loud wish of goodluck to everyone still waiting for food.  I felt they needed it.

So you see?  If you don’t already know, I am a great grumper.  And if the neighbours keep me awake most of the night tonight they too may experience a Pog grump :o)

Note:  to be fair to me, I don’t usually grump that often…honest!

Not grump related, I just liked it.

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Wierdness Central

Posted on August 24, 2012 by thepogblog

The last week has been busy, weird and (sorry) full of vast quantities of snot.  I wont bore you with the details but apologies for slacking on the blog front – especially to the person who put in a complaint (you know who you are! ;o)  )

The peak of the weirdness was on Wednesday when my mobile rung and the conversation started with ‘You don’t know me but…’  Now, I could see this going in all manner of directions but I wasn’t expecting the next 20 minutes.  They consisted of what sounded like an elderly lady who had received one of my notes looking for Charlie Cat back in June who, I think, just wanted a conversation.

I now know all the places she has lived from childhood, the cats she has had, the cats she has lost, about all her neighbours, the fact that her son recently split up with his girlfriend and took their cat (who then escaped, was found 3 days later in a building site and had to be rescued by the fire service – ‘by having the hose sprayed up his botty’ – her words, not mine!).  I know all the cats names, all her past neighbours names, their ailments, her ailments.  I think the only thing I don’t know is her shoe size.

Once I’d worked out that there was no real point to the call I settled into making the right noises in the right places, wondering if it would ever end.  Finally she got to the point – I think – which was ‘don’t give up looking’.  It was very sweet of her although I am slightly nervous as she finished the call with ‘Well it was lovely chatting to you, you sound like a lovely lady.  I’ll give you another call to catch up again soon….’!

I don’t really know what to say about that, but I’m wondering if there is a marketing opportunity for a phone line for slightly-mad-cat-lady types.

I’m rather hoping that next week is less busy, less weird and full of a lot less snot.  :o)

A little bit of calm

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Fifty Shades of Confusion

Posted on August 15, 2012 by thepogblog

This isn’t my story to tell, but I have asked permission to tell it here on the grounds that it made me laugh so much.

To set the scene, I mentioned my friend the Lovely Nut the other day.  The Lovely Nut is in her 70’s and when she isn’t in her gorgeous Bumpkinsville house, she lives in a rather well-to-do part of London – one of those places where famous people live and all the shops are rather exclusive.

When I stayed with her at the weekend I was up first and was reading my book in the garden when she came downstairs.  It was one of the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ trilogy but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have heard of them, so wouldn’t bat an eyelid.  (If you’ve somehow missed the hype about these books and don’t know the kind of content, you might want to do a quick Google search now.  Or perhaps you wouldn’t…).  That was the wrong assumption to make as this is the story that unfolded:

The Lovely Nut had heard all about this amazing book everyone was reading, so went to her local bookshop to ask if they had a copy of the book that ‘was something to do with ‘grey’ ‘.  Apparently the young man went a little pink but showed her to the stand which also had another book with a sticker saying ‘if you liked Fifty Shades of Grey, you’ll love this’.  The Lovely Nut decided that they must therefore both be great reads and purchased a copy of each.

She settled down to read Fifty Shades and suddenly discovered the cause of the young mans embarrassment…

The next day, walking past the bookshop she thought she should apologise.  She sought out the man and explained that she’d not realised the content and was probably wasn’t the target audience.  He kindly said he completely understood and would be happy if she wanted to return them.  She told him that she’d bent the spine a little so not to worry.  What she didn’t tell him was that she had actually become so involved in the book that she’d read it from cover to cover in a couple of hours!  And, that as she’d managed to miss most of the story (I can’t think what she was concentrating on!), she will be reading it again at a slower pace to take in the details.

Apparently we will be discussing the content next time I stay.  Talk about never judging a book by its cover! :o)

there isn’t really an appopriate picture for this story so I’ve gone with a complete random one!

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Good Bye Intern ;o)

Posted on August 14, 2012 by thepogblog

 A year ago an Intern started in our team at work (a university student who takes a year out part way through their course to work in a real environment). He drove me loopy.  To start with I wondered if that was how it felt to have a little brother.  Then I realised I was almost (not quite!) old enough to be his mum…and I felt really old.

I’ve got used to him over the last year.  It’s been like having an entertaining Tigger-like presence in the office and I’m going to miss him – today was his last day.  I’ll miss the round of applause he gives each member of the team when they come back to their desk from a meeting, getting a drink, the toilet….  I’ll miss the teasing that he was so good at.  And I’ll miss the insight into the mind of a 21 year old…actually, some of that I won’t!  I will miss seeing his words of motivation and notes though. 

This appeared on his desk early on:

 

And notes like these followed on team desks on a regular basis:

 

He wrote his years achievements out and put them on display.  These included:

  • Carrying four glasses of water at once
  • Fitting three golf balls in his mouth at once
  • Finishing a pint of diet coke in thee seconds

A few weeks back we asked him what was the most important thing he’d learned while being an Intern.  We expected some sort of business related gem but his answer was:

‘To keep women in their 30’s happy, provide food.  Preferably chocolate’.

Ben, our work here is done.  I’m going to miss you and your biceps a lot ;o)

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A weekend with the Lovely Nut

Posted on August 13, 2012 by thepogblog

This weekend I went to one of my favourite places to stay with the Lovely Nut – my friend who just happens to be an ex boyfriends mum. (I bet there aren’t many people who do that a good 7 years or so after a relationship ends).

The Lovely Nut has a very beautiful house that her and her husband rebuilt from a wreck many years ago.  It’s in the middle of nowhere and takes Bumpkinsville to a whole new level.

We focussed on eating and drinking wine in the sun while we sewed and yesterday we went for a walk around the outskirts of a local national trust property.  Us being us, things didn’t go quite to plan:  We chatted so much that we missed a turning and got lost, and when we came across this sign:

I convinced the Lovely Nut we should risk it.  So we walked across the huge field, very quietly…..

And discovered the bull standing right in front of the gate we needed to get through. 

 

I was all for throwing the Lovely Nut over my shoulder and having a quiet word with Mr Bull, hoping I looked braver than he did, but she sensibly suggested we should make our way back and find another route.  We did…but the wildlife fun was not over…we found a rare Bumpkinsville crocodile:

And the a pig who was snorting as happily as, well…a pig in mud.

 

The rest of the walk was just lovely, sunny and full of prettiness.  This is my favourite picture from the day though:

 

 You can’t beat Bumpkinsville :o)

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Olympics based sleep deprivation

Posted on August 8, 2012 by thepogblog

I blame it on the Olympics.

Originally I was most looking forward to the fact that I didn’t have to brave the commute into the office for a full two weeks.  When you hate crowded trains so much that you change your hours to miss the rush hour – resulting in getting up at 4.30 am – having a few weeks of normal start time with a commute from bed to lounge is AMAZING.

I have got into the Olympics a bit thanks to TTB (who is obsessed), which is pretty impressive considering I’ve never sat down to watch any of it in previous years.  I’m starting to go off it again though, because in addition to some sort of lurgey that means I’ve been waking up at silly o’clock to cough / sneeze / sweat profusely, I have had to contend with Olympic fever from others.

Last night Norman cat seemed to have devised a racecourse around my bedroom about the point when I drifted off.  On his third circuit of chair, bed, windowsill and chest of drawers I decided to investigate.  It turned out he was doing some sort of a relay involving a moth…

The night before it was TTB who suffered the fever.  Again, just as I was about to drift off, an arm was enthusiastically flung across my face.  TTB was asleep but still managed to respond to my ‘what the hell are you doing?!’  The response?  ‘I’m saving a penalty!’ (This was followed by a lot of words that may have made sense in a different order but definitely made no sense at that point).  A few hours later TTB seemed to be doing some sort of sleep dancing.  I didn’t attempt a conversation this time but did ask if he remembered in the morning.  Silly me, he’d not been dancing.  No, he’d been driving a Formula One car around Bumpkinsville in his dream… (and yes, I know that Formula One is not an Olympic sport, but you get the idea).

I’m looking forward to seeing if I get to sleep though tonight – I’m starting to feel like all of you mummy friends :o)

The telephone box offering to the olympics

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