You can't get the bosses these days

I get lonely in work. So I amuse myself when I can.

Today Chris phoned and asked if I could quickly tell him the number of the house John lives in. I said, 'deny den.'

He said, 'What?'

'Denty den.'

'What are you talking about?!'

'You said you wanted me to quickly tell you; was that quickly enough?'

And then Chris, well-respected (in some circles) church leader, told me, 'Shut up!'

Is that any way to address your employee and church administrator? To say nothing of an older woman. (I said say nothing of the older woman!)

Still it made my day.

The finished cake

At a party tomorrow, Ann is celebrating her retirement as well as the progress she has made in the year following a stroke.

How to spend a sunny afternoon

I tried to do something I've never done before today: make royal icing for piping. I'll confess straight off that I was using the cheat's method i.e. a packet of royal icing mix that just needed water to be added to it.

But it still didn't start off well.

The first instruction was 'Accurately measure 75 ml cold water.'

I was making half the quantity so needed 37 and a half ml and the smallest mark I had on a measuring jug was 50 ml. And how often does a recipe say 'accurately'? I ended up with too runny a mix and had to keep throwing in more sugar by the dollop until it was stiff enough. So much for accurately.

And now I have blobs of icing all over my clothes, the wall and the clean dishes. Hey ho. I'll show the result later when it's set (I hope) and I've added the finishing touches.

Monday's Odd Shots

'Oh, yeah, and are you going to stop me?!' We'd already seen this pussycat see off two dogs.

For Katney's Odd Shots

Words written today

739.

My son, the wild-haired academic

I'm delighted to say that Younger Son's application to present a paper at the Royal Geographic Society's annual conference has been accepted.

It's based on his dissertation that looks at public awareness of marine environmental issues and, uniquely, the use of social media, such as Facebook, as a resource tool. Lots of you very kindly completed his on-line questionnaire that provided the information for his paper. So thank you very much.

When he is a famous wild-haired academic you can say, 'I taught him all he knows.'

The resilience of nature

As in many parts of the country, areas of Clyne wood have been burned recently. The air is still tinged with the familiar acrid smell.Here and there, amidst the scorched bushes, odd clumps of bluebells survived unscathed.

And nature is resilient. New life soon springs out of the devastation.

This wild rose was well away from the fires growing on the remains of the old corporation rubbish tip. I wish you could smell it - the rose not the tip that is.

A fully fledged nag

The cleaner at Linden has resigned because 'Liz nags me too much.'

I feel quite pleased with myself: I have acquired a new skill. Nagging has never been my forte - not counting nagging the children, 'When are you going to have babies? Isn't it about time you had a baby? You don't want to leave having babies too late, you know.'

In my defence let me say that when Younger Son went into the toilet in Linden he exclaimed, 'This is filthy; it looks as if it hasn't been cleaned for ages.' And Younger Son:

a) has lived in student accommodation;

b) is used to my standards, which wouldn't pass most people's scrutiny.

I shall have to practise my new-found talent. 'Husband, when are you going to ...'

Words written today

427.

I am approaching the end of my novel and I realise I haven't worked out what is going to happen. I mean I know what is going to happen next but what will the outcome be. No, I suppose I do know that but how to do it without it being cheesy and too neat is what I mean really.

It can't be very happy given the circumstances but there has to be hope.

I expect it will come. I've found that, as I've worked more regularly on my novel, it's flowed much more fluidly and taken turns in unexpected directions. I wonder if there will be an obvious difference between the later chapters and the earlier ones, which were written over a longer period of time and in phases.

I'm reading A Prayer for Owen Meany at the moment. Now that's a well-written book. It puts my effort to shame. But is also encouraging me to be more - I can't think of the phrase - hop-aboutish, and nonconformist. Trouble is, I'm not sure if that's really my voice.

I've just had this good idea: I'll stop analysing on my blog and concentrate on writing the novel!

Taking on Paypal

It is over.

My 8 month battle with Paypal is finally over. It's an incredibly long and complicated story but to sum it up:

a) When setting up accounts I made several mistakes that came to light when we were given a donation of more than £1,000;

b) I explained to Paypal, apologised and asked them to put it right so I could access the money intended for a children's orphanage in Zambia;

c) Paypal repeatedly quoted EU money-laundering rules at me and told me I had to comply with certain requirements;

d) I did as requested but hit problems because of my original mistakes;

e) They said 'you've got to do this and this' and I said, 'But I can't,' and they said, 'You've got to do this and this,' and I said, 'I've just told you that I can't';

f) I brought in the Financial Ombudsman;

g) Paypal realised I was serious and gave me a real person to talk to;

h) Sadly real person was no higher up the chain of responsibility and couldn't make executive decisions;

i) And so on and so on and so on;

j) Last month Paypal finally agreed that they would manually transfer the remaining money (£222) to our bank account (which is what I asked them to do back in October);

k) Today I received notification that the absolute final bit of money - £1.54 that Paypal had put into their own charity account without asking us - had been transferred back to our account too.

Somewhere along the way they did say that they'd make a goodwill payment to our charity but, in spite of my requests that they pay up, it doesn't seem to be forthcoming. Do I have the energy to continue the fight?

I was going to say that I took on Paypal and won but the amount of time, energy and emotion I've put into this fight make it less of a victory. The only good thing is that it will have cost them a lot of money to deal with me too.

This week in Devon

My new best friend after I fed him (her?) grapes. I had to crush them a little before piggy realised grapes were nice to eat but then she couldn't get enough. When I stuck my hand in between the fencing to point to a fallen grape (oh, the shame!) she tried to chew my arm but soon realised that fluffy jumpers weren't edible.You're lucky: there could have been a photo of dog poo on here but I resisted the temptation. But honestly you'd have been tempted too if you'd seen the colour of HollyDog's poo. If I didn't suspect her of eating green playdoh I would have been seriously worried.

And on the way out on our walk, as we passed cars parked outside the church, I said to Holly and GrandDaughter, who might have been asleep by then, 'Bother, Granny's knickers are falling down already.' That was just before I noticed the man sitting in the car with the window open.

The new shorts I bought on Tuesday have turned out to be the same size as the ones I already had that are too big.

We got home tonight just in time to vote. I was thrown slightly when I got there and I was handed three ballot papers so it was a good job I'd taken my glasses with me. And that's a strange place to end a post but my brain has stopped working.

The man and his cake

Plus cigarette!

Words written today

692.

Four fingers? Seriously?

I had a very successful shopping trip this morning! (Not something I say very often.)

Now I've lost weight all my clothes are too big for me which is great except ... all my clothes are too big for me. So today I bought denim shorts and 2 t-shirts - stripey ones that I've always had to avoid before but can get away with now. The only disappointment was that all the lovely swimwear I saw in M&S a few weeks ago but could never be bothered to try on has gone and all that's left is boring.

And I was resolute in keeping my eyes averted from the baby section: each time I've tried before to buy new clothes I've ended up with nothing but baby stuff.

AND Cadburys Fingers were Buy One Get One Free. I put down the first packets I picked up and continued shopping but, well, they must have snook back into my basket somehow. But it's all right because on the packet it says a serving is only 120 calories. Whether their idea of a serving is the same as mine i.e. a whole box in one go, is doubtful, but they should be more specific.

Postscript

Husband has pointed out the small print. A serving is 4 Fingers. 4? Seriously? Who stops at 4?

Did Lent work?

So my novel-writing Lenten discipline worked very well. In all there were only two days when I didn't write anything at all although I did think about what I would write on those days. Anyway, apparently, according to Girlfriend who is a practising Roman Catholic - off the point for a moment, why is it so easy to identify Jehovah's Witnesses coming up your path? - Lent is supposed to be 40 days but it's actually more than that so RCs don't include Sundays. Or something like that. So by that logic I would have completed my Lent 'fast' easily.

However since Easter Day I've struggled to write on more than a couple of days. Which is very odd. I'd hoped and planned to maintain the discipline but somehow without that compulsion, rule, I don't know what you'd call it, I've failed miserably.

I was telling Husband this and told him he had to set me a deadline to finish the novel. 'Okay,' he said. 'Thursday.'

So ignoring Husband I'm going to try again to make sure I write a bit of novel every day. I shall report on here how many words I've completed daily - and it doesn't matter how many that is: the important thing is the doing.

Today I've written 469 words.

Monday's Odd Shots

A couple of odd parking signs this week. The first is unusual but self-explanatory:The second is just plain confusing.
For Katney's Odd Shots.

Girls just wanna have fun

Had a 'Me' morning beginning with exercise with Wii Dance. You should have seen me strutting my stuff to Fame (I'm gonna live forever), I like to move it move it, Girls just wanna have fun, A little less conversation (a little more action) but best of all, Eye of the Tiger, with my hooks and upper cuts warranting the 'Great!' acclamation.

Having had my fun it was down to the serious business of hair removal, bleach, washing and sun-tanning. By the time I'd done all that I was ready for bed but stayed awake long enough to enjoy a lovely walk by the river with Husband and George. (My word, the hugest fly in the world has just landed on my pinboard.)

Did I do that aloud?

I was in the delicatessen yesterday. Now the shop is about big enough for three customers if one of them stands outside so it's quite intimate.

I was being served when the woman behind said to me, 'Are you dancing? You're dancing, aren't you?'

'Oh, dear, yes, I might be.'

'That's a relief; I thought I was getting dizzy.'

The man serving said, 'It's good to dance,' but he probably wanted to keep his customers happy ... and ease their embarrassment.

Great little trains of Wales

Just behind our garden and along a bit is the home of the Swansea Steam and Model Engine Society. On Bank Holidays they open to the public for train rides. I haven't been for a few years as my children refuse to come with me but, this year, Younger Son promised to take Girlfriend on them so I went too!

It costs 20p to get in and then rides cost 50p so we could have a few. First of all we went on the Canadian Pacific but that's a modern electric one so, though faster, wasn't as good as the proper steam engine that we went on next.
This one smells like old trains and makes the right whistling noise when going through the tunnel.
You don't really need to duck to go through the tunnel but it's hard not to.

Baby talk

When Daughter was pregnant, Katney made and sent a lovely cot quilt from America; now Daughter-in-law is pregnant, Katney has made another quilt for us! Isn't it fab? With a froggie marching band.

Its arrival on Saturday was very well-timed as Elder Son and Daughter-in-law were down to stay this weekend and they were delighted to take this quilt home with them.