Archives
Grassed off
Four weeks ago my two year old lawnmower, a self-propelled Mountfield with a Briggs & Stratton engine, went to the little man down the road to be serviced. 10 days he quoted me. 28 days later, and following three phone calls, he returns it and tells me that its 'beyond economical repair'. By now my grass is of meadow proportions, if a small person walked down the garden they would be lost. I now survey my garden and feel that I should don safari gear and ensure that I have provisions before I attempt a forray into the unknown that was my planned, natural wilderness. It was never neglected, now it looks it and as for hubby's putting green and bunker, well, they are distant memories. To invest in a new lawnmower or to take a chance with the old? I'm not a good gambler, but that is what I feel like. Hubby is going to take lawnmower somewhere else, they are estimating 7 days, by then grass will be even higher, and if they play the same game as cowboy down the road it will be mid-June before I can either cut my grass or buy a new mower. But, if I buy a new mower now, and then new people sort out old one, I've just wasted £150+. I wish I was a toddler again, and I could just shut my eyes and the dilemma would just disappear, or some big person would come along and make everything better. I want my Mummy. No, I don't really. She would never make it all better she would undoubtedly make it all much worse. I can just imagine, before I had a chance to turn round the whole garden would be paved over, with nice pink and grey, chequer-board effect slabs. My plants would all be neatly arranged in regimented lines and there would be a neat line of canes to support the prize dahlias, which would doubtless win first prize at the local horticultural society's summer flower show. All this would be completed by 7 o'clock in the morning, apparently the best part of the day, and would be followed by a jam making, cake-baking fest. I would, as usual, be left feeling totally incompetant, especially since she would also have contacted Mountfield, berated them about the shoddy nature of their goods and their misrepresentation of a two-year guarantee. Following which, they would have immediately sent her a new replacement lawnmower and included a gift voucher for the local garden centre as a goodwill gesture. Mmm, perhaps I do want her, where's her phone number?
Sunshine
The sun has got his hat on
Hip Hip Hip Hurray
The sun has got his hat on
and he's coming out to play!
So am I.
Short - like my grass!
Lovely weekend.
Saturday - Market with eldest daughter and son's partner. Bought lanyard sort of thing for mobile phone so you can hang it around your neck, a bit in your face but at least it will stop me leaving it in people's houses. Lunch at good pub in local village with same daughter, plus she who was pregnant and Grandson. We have decided to make it a regular thing. In the evening the saviours of the hour came round, complete with a lawnmower that has the muscle to bring my grass under control. Went out with them for a curry, great evening.
Sunday - Attacked garden. Grass subdued. Weeds destroyed. Strimmer, well I'm not even going to go any further about that worthless, piece of junk, I will not let it ruin a good weekend.
One little cloud - JoJo. Hope she and baby are alright. Keep checking the PVM, but nothing so far.
Working Mothers
Loads in the press recently about working Mothers, the rights and the wrongs, good for them, bad for the children, bad for them good for the children. Who really knows? Most parents have an opinion, generally formed by whatever they did, or are doing. I'm not entering into this arguement from that viewpoint, I'm considering it from their co-workers perspective. As you may be aware I work for that worthy organisation, the NHS. I am a community midwife who has a caseload of 180 women per year with my average daily mileage associated with work being 45 miles, I have a rural patch. Back to the working Mothers bit. In my team I have a midwife who has a term-time, weekday only contract. Brilliant, for her. This means that, since she doesn't work weekends, I have to work more weekends to cover. As she isn't on-duty on a Saturday or Sunday she doesn't do on-calls then either, so guess who picks those up? Now, all this is annoying enough, but then we get to school holidays. 6 weeks in the summer. 6 weeks when I have to pick up all her work as well as my own. 6 weeks when my on-call commitments double. 6 weeks when no one else in our team is allowed to take holidays because it would leave us short. Bank holidays, who works those, she doesn't. Christmas, Easter, where is she? Not working, but I am. Just because my children are not school age does not mean to say that I don't want to spend Christmas with them. I am getting to the point where I feel that I am discriminated against for NOT having children. Is there a tribunal I can go to? 18 months ago this started out as a mild irritation but over the subsequent months it has grown into a festering sore. I am now dreading the summer holiday season. On the one hand I feel that its great, for her and her family, to have this arrangement, but on the other hand I feel that the extra workload and increased weekend, bank holiday, and on-call commitment is unfair to me and my family. Why should I be penalised because she has children, whilst mine are grown-up? So, my stance is - if you have children work if you want/have to but it should be at your own expense, not your colleagues. How can you call yourself a team player when you really don't pull your own weight and are constantly leaving your team members to carry your workload?
Tubby
It's official - my Grandson is a greedy guts! Three and a half weeks ago when he was born he weighed 6lbs 5ozs, today he weighed in at 8lbs 6ozs! Daughter must be producing good stuff, no Atkins for him!
Troubles come in threes
Well, it started with the lawnmower, it's taking an extended holiday at a health farm, luckily wonderful Sister and BIL have lent me theirs. Then the strimmer decided that its days of tackling the parts of the garden the lawnmower can't reach, were over. Hubby spent the best part of a day trying to cajole it into performing it's duties again, it refused, and so has gone to that heaven for defunct objects, otherwise known as the dump. Worse was to follow though, the telly broke. Now we do have two other tellies, okay, so they have small screens, but they are eminently watchable, unless you are hooked on Sky Sports, in which case you are completely out of luck, no cable programmes, only good, old, analogue terrestrial. I could cope with this, but hubby, no way. The jitters started about 3 hours after the telly advised us of it's intention to bow out of our lives. By early evening today I was fearful for hubby's sanity. It was strangely pathetic the way he kept picking up the remote and pointing into the corner of the room, where a large, black box sat, its single red eye glowing enticingly. Eventually I felt I should put them both out of their misery and I pulled the plug. The red eye dimmed, and simultaneously hubby shrunk into his chair, his eyes dimming in sympathy, his shoulders slumped. He took two shuddering breaths and then sprang into action. This was a man on a mission. "Currys and Comet are open" he said decisively, "Quick, lets go". Off we went, 10 miles to our nearest retail park. We entered Currys first, scurrying past the useful appliances they had, headed for the wall of fast, blinking T.V's. Analogue, digital, flat screen, plasma, 20", 24", Nicam, what an array of tempting packages, prices, well some had, most hadn't. We found a youth wandering around holding price banners and asked him for his help " Tell you what mate, find someone wearing a smart, blue shirt and ask them" the articulate specimen slurred. A quick look around identified a couple of equally poor examples of homo sapiens, both wearing blue shirts, but hardly smart, and they seemed far more interested in talking to each other than communicating with prospective customers, so we left. By now my bladder was reminding me that I had drunk a cup of coffee before being whisked away so I was in need of a powder room. Homebase. Always the place for a pit-stop, so, stupidly, I told hubby that I would meet him in Comet once my need had been fulfilled. It was 5 minutes, thats all I was. By the time I found him in Comet, we were the proud owners of a large, silver, digital thing, twice as large, and twice as heavy, as our recently departed black beasty. I did attempt to negotiate with the helpful assistant, brazenly asking him if he would throw in a DVD player, only a cheap one, because I had my heart set on a cheaper telly thus enabling me to buy one. He was steadfast in his refusal, he knew hubby was hooked. He saw the hunger in his eyes, the desire to have this fine box of electronic wizardry, with, according to hubby, "The best bloody picture of the lot".
Well, its home now. Hubby isn't. He has gone out for a quick bevvy with his chums, whilst I set up this object of his desire. I have read the instruction book, it is picking up cable. However, its not yet made friends with either our VCR or the terrestrial input, and as for digital/freeview, I'm not even going to attempt that until I've had a couple more Bacardi's. Son is coming round on Saturday, I think I might allow him to have a play with it.
I took Elmo, senior cat, to the vets today. One of the pads on his paw is swollen and feels very hot. He hates going in his travel pen. Normally he is the most placid of animals, attempt to put him in his carrier and he becomes a minature Jaguar. Growling, snarling, scratching and biting are some of the ways he lets me know he is unhappy with my idea. Once I had him shut in it, I phoned the vet and made the appointment. It has to be this way round as sometimes it has proved impossible to get him in his carrier. When we got to the vets I walked round to his side of the car and managed to impale my foot on one of their metal posts. He is now on steroids and antibiotics, I am forgetting how much my foot hurts by imbibing white rum and DIET coke. I think he has forgotten his trauma, so will I shortly!