On Saturday I went on a course. It was called "How to Feel Good from the Inside Out" and Hippy Chick was running it.
I had done the course before as a half day, but after feedback Hippy Chick decided to extend it to a full day so it wasn't so rushed and people had more time to share and soak in all the information.
I always knew this was powerful stuff and I agreed it takes a whole day, at least, to really grasp the whole concept of increased self confidence and self esteem.
What I hadn't realised, until the day got going, was how far I'd come with it all.
I've had some one to one sessions with Hippy Chick. Some of them really intense. The ones after my redundancy were particularly painful. I sobbed and sobbed and let it all out then collected it all up in a big ball of frustration, resentment and anger and chucked the whole lot into the past. Where it belongs.
So on Saturday, I watched the the brave and incredible ladies who had the courage to come on the course, some of them crying, some so broken and bewildered with life they felt on the verge of a breakdown. When I saw them and recognised myself from this time last year I knew I had come such a long way.
One particular visualisation we did really brought it home to me. Without going into the whole thing it's about facets of your personality that you may have closed down over the years after negative comments. You visualise these as doors to rooms. My doors were open. Not all of them yet, but many more than ever before. I felt free to roam from room to room. I felt open. I felt honest. I didn't cry this time.
I smiled.
I told the others on the course. I was where you are a year ago. You've made the first step. This stuff works. Keep going. It's an on going process.
But then so is life.
We should never stop growing. Learning. Challenging ourselves.
I'm not "fixed"! But then who is? I'm not sure anyone ever is and I've learnt that maybe that's ok.
A little while ago Ken's Mum asked in astonishment why I was having confidence coaching.
"You are one of the most confident people I know" she laughed.
I couldn't answer her. I didn't know. I just knew I wasn't right. I was still on the "happy pills". I had dark days. Days when I just couldn't cope. When I didn't want to get out of bed.
"But you get on stage." she said.
True. I lark about. I make everyone laugh. Except some days myself.
That was the key. It's not confidence I lacked but "Self Confidence".
The ability to be comfortable in my own skin. To open my doors and not hide behind a players mask.
So now I like that's there's still a long way to go because when you feel you are on the right path the journey can only be fun, can't it!
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Sunday, 13 May 2012
The One With The Wedding
We've had the build up.
We've had the hen do! (apologies for having only written part 1 of that - other parts to follow I promise)
So last Friday week we had the wedding.
The wedding being that of Ken and Mr Ken.
Ken is my dear friend who sat next to me for nearly the entire time I worked with her and put up with my old jokes, larking about and general lack of enthusiasm for doing any actual work for the best part of 13 years!
The woman deserves a medal.
On more than one occasion she has remarked that her now husband is like a male version of me!
A medal? She needs her head reading!
So along came the big day and Ken was very calm and collected bless her.
I on the other hand was a nervous wreck.
First of all I had convinced myself that the boy was going to scream all the way through the ceremony, meal, speeches, first dance and any other major moment of a person's wedding day.
Secondly I had also convinced myself the boy would poo just as we reached the registrar and a horrible aroma would pervade the entire proceedings. .
Thirdly I had visions of sticky little hands all over the brides beautiful white dress.
Fourthly I assumed he would do all of the above plus just as the bride and groom were about to exchange vows in a moment of tender devotion to each other, a little voice would pipe up from the back and say
"Spencer and Gordon next. DD please Mama" in his usual Thomas the Tank engine obsessed way. DD being boy speak for a DVD and Spencer and Gordon being his favourite story.
In fact he did none of these things. What he did do was got over excited after I'd left home to go to the wedding venue, launched himself off the sofa and banged his head and nose resulting in bloody red marks on his face.
All week I had been carefully applying calendula cream to his cheeks to calm the redness of his teething rash so he looked lovely for the pictures and he goes and does that!
I heard the news of this calamity via Nanny P when I phoned her to ask Hubby to bring a needle and cotton with him so we could sew the brooch back onto Earthquakes's bridesmaid dress. Nanny P made it sound like his face was that of a boy who'd done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson and then added helpfully
"He's ever so grumpy too"
Great! An arsey two year old page boy with a cut on his nose!
You too can have your wedding ruined by my son. I'm thinking of hiring him out!
I fessed up to the bride. Many a bride would've freaked out that their cherub of a page boy had smacked his face on the morning of the wedding but not Ken.
Ken is a star.
"He's two mate. And a boy. What do you expect? Little boys look like that. He's gorgeous"
After that I felt much calmer.
In reality, when hubby arrived with the boy (and the needle and thread - which we never got round to using) his face wasn't that bad and due to a sleep in the car on the way over his mood had vastly improved. His suit went on swiftly and with only a little wobble before we went down the aisle and one Hubs had to deal with at the end of the ceremony all was good.
I needn't have worried about the official photos as we never got one of the boy. He was too busy bombing about on the grass with the other children and running his poor father ragged to stand still long enough but at least he was happy. And thanks to bubbles and colouring books on the table at dinner he was as good as gold during the meal.
He also waited until the end of the meal to have a poo so he missed a good deal of the speeches by being back in our room with his dad having his bum changed so all in all it went off fine.
So relaxed was I at this point and so happy was the boy running about on the stage area with the other children that he stayed up long after his bedtime. He even started to do the Peter Kay thing where little boys pretend to be aeroplanes at wedding receptions - he came just short of skidding about on his knees.
My parents were invited to the evening and the plan was for them to stay until the boy could take no more then they would bundle him in the car and take him back for a sleep over at their house for the night.
The disco started. All was good. The boy was dancing, running about and generally being a two year old on reserve energy and excitement at being up an a hour and half later than his usual bedtime.
The guy doing the disco set off the smoke machine. Clouds of white mist flooded the dance floor.
"Fire. Fire" the boy screamed.
"No baby, it's just the smoke machine. Not a fire"
In hindsight how a 2 year old who's never seen a disco before is supposed to know what a smoke machine is I have no idea so of course it was a fire! Where there's smoke there's a fire. Usually started by Naughty Norman or that idiot Mike Flood and expertly put out by Fireman Sam.
"Fire. Fire!" he was really screaming now. And not only screaming but due to the many, many episodes of Fireman Sam we have watched in his short life so far, screaming "Fire" in a Welsh accent.
Come in Nanny and Granddad your time is up!
The boy was unceremoniously scooped up and taken to our room for milk and pyjamas all the time screaming "Fire" as if he hailed from the valley's themselves buyo.
Once safely and sleepily handed over to his doting grandparents, we waved him good bye as the car drove away, him still mustering up the energy to shout "Fire" at regular intervals.
"I thought your husband was half Irish not Welsh" someone said to me later.
"He is" I replied. I didn't bother to explain. I was too busy strutting my stuff on the dance floor with a gin and tonic in my hand to go into it.
I was just relived for everyone that the day had gone so well.
Like a house on fire in fact!
We've had the hen do! (apologies for having only written part 1 of that - other parts to follow I promise)
So last Friday week we had the wedding.
The wedding being that of Ken and Mr Ken.
Ken is my dear friend who sat next to me for nearly the entire time I worked with her and put up with my old jokes, larking about and general lack of enthusiasm for doing any actual work for the best part of 13 years!
The woman deserves a medal.
On more than one occasion she has remarked that her now husband is like a male version of me!
A medal? She needs her head reading!
So along came the big day and Ken was very calm and collected bless her.
I on the other hand was a nervous wreck.
First of all I had convinced myself that the boy was going to scream all the way through the ceremony, meal, speeches, first dance and any other major moment of a person's wedding day.
Secondly I had also convinced myself the boy would poo just as we reached the registrar and a horrible aroma would pervade the entire proceedings. .
Thirdly I had visions of sticky little hands all over the brides beautiful white dress.
Fourthly I assumed he would do all of the above plus just as the bride and groom were about to exchange vows in a moment of tender devotion to each other, a little voice would pipe up from the back and say
"Spencer and Gordon next. DD please Mama" in his usual Thomas the Tank engine obsessed way. DD being boy speak for a DVD and Spencer and Gordon being his favourite story.
In fact he did none of these things. What he did do was got over excited after I'd left home to go to the wedding venue, launched himself off the sofa and banged his head and nose resulting in bloody red marks on his face.
All week I had been carefully applying calendula cream to his cheeks to calm the redness of his teething rash so he looked lovely for the pictures and he goes and does that!
I heard the news of this calamity via Nanny P when I phoned her to ask Hubby to bring a needle and cotton with him so we could sew the brooch back onto Earthquakes's bridesmaid dress. Nanny P made it sound like his face was that of a boy who'd done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson and then added helpfully
"He's ever so grumpy too"
Great! An arsey two year old page boy with a cut on his nose!
You too can have your wedding ruined by my son. I'm thinking of hiring him out!
I fessed up to the bride. Many a bride would've freaked out that their cherub of a page boy had smacked his face on the morning of the wedding but not Ken.
Ken is a star.
"He's two mate. And a boy. What do you expect? Little boys look like that. He's gorgeous"
After that I felt much calmer.
In reality, when hubby arrived with the boy (and the needle and thread - which we never got round to using) his face wasn't that bad and due to a sleep in the car on the way over his mood had vastly improved. His suit went on swiftly and with only a little wobble before we went down the aisle and one Hubs had to deal with at the end of the ceremony all was good.
I needn't have worried about the official photos as we never got one of the boy. He was too busy bombing about on the grass with the other children and running his poor father ragged to stand still long enough but at least he was happy. And thanks to bubbles and colouring books on the table at dinner he was as good as gold during the meal.
He also waited until the end of the meal to have a poo so he missed a good deal of the speeches by being back in our room with his dad having his bum changed so all in all it went off fine.
So relaxed was I at this point and so happy was the boy running about on the stage area with the other children that he stayed up long after his bedtime. He even started to do the Peter Kay thing where little boys pretend to be aeroplanes at wedding receptions - he came just short of skidding about on his knees.
My parents were invited to the evening and the plan was for them to stay until the boy could take no more then they would bundle him in the car and take him back for a sleep over at their house for the night.
The disco started. All was good. The boy was dancing, running about and generally being a two year old on reserve energy and excitement at being up an a hour and half later than his usual bedtime.
The guy doing the disco set off the smoke machine. Clouds of white mist flooded the dance floor.
"Fire. Fire" the boy screamed.
"No baby, it's just the smoke machine. Not a fire"
In hindsight how a 2 year old who's never seen a disco before is supposed to know what a smoke machine is I have no idea so of course it was a fire! Where there's smoke there's a fire. Usually started by Naughty Norman or that idiot Mike Flood and expertly put out by Fireman Sam.
"Fire. Fire!" he was really screaming now. And not only screaming but due to the many, many episodes of Fireman Sam we have watched in his short life so far, screaming "Fire" in a Welsh accent.
Come in Nanny and Granddad your time is up!
The boy was unceremoniously scooped up and taken to our room for milk and pyjamas all the time screaming "Fire" as if he hailed from the valley's themselves buyo.
Once safely and sleepily handed over to his doting grandparents, we waved him good bye as the car drove away, him still mustering up the energy to shout "Fire" at regular intervals.
"I thought your husband was half Irish not Welsh" someone said to me later.
"He is" I replied. I didn't bother to explain. I was too busy strutting my stuff on the dance floor with a gin and tonic in my hand to go into it.
I was just relived for everyone that the day had gone so well.
Like a house on fire in fact!
Monday, 16 April 2012
The One With the Brewery Tour and the Wrong Door
So last Tuesday was my 42nd birthday and Hubby and I went on a brewery tour of Adnams in Southwold.
Nanny P had the boy for the afternoon and we ate fish and chips out of the paper, then went along for a look at how they brew our favourite beer.
As far as I am concerned Adnams is one of Suffolk's great treasures and finest success stories, exporting their real ales, stouts and now spirits all over the world and importing unusual wines into the country to sell in their Cellar and Kitchen stores.
Me and Hubby do love a brewery tour! On several trips to Derbyshire we've been to the Bass museum and tour and then again since it has changed hands to Coors.
I do however tend to get the giggles in these places. Once, on the Bass tour, I'd had a lot of coffee at breakfast in the B&B. Never a good move as me and caffeine don't mix well. I'm like a hyper kid after a bucket full of Smarties and a vat of orange squash. I was bouncing off the walls and completely losing it. There was a working model in a glass cabinet showing how, back in the day, the canals and trains brought the ingredients for the beer into Burton on Trent and took the finished beer away again. There were buttons to press to make the miniature vehicles move, blow steam, whistle and generally do stuff. So I, like a demented 4 year old, ran round and round the glass case pressing them all, giggling and laughing as the little trains and barges zoomed up and down their pretend rails and canals.
Little things....
But on this tour, I was very well behaved. I'd had no alcohol or caffeine prior, only fish and chips , which sometimes aggravate my IBS, but other than that we were good to go.
The tour was excellent, with a really knowledgeable guide to talk us through the history and the process of how Adnams came to Southwold and how they brewed the beers before and right up to the present day.
After about an hour we went for a tutored tasting!
God love them, they were not stingy on the measures. We tasted four beers and I must have had a good half pint of each. Then the guide asked if anyone would like a wine tasting session too?
By this time two of the ladies on the tour I'd been chatting to knew it was my birthday
"Yes, we all do. It's her birthday. We've got to celebrate!"
So another very lovely lady who was extremely well versed in wine knowledge, took us through a white, red, limoncello and a dessert wine called Rubis, which tastes like chocolate but has the texture of port. Amazing stuff. We bought a bottle!
I was feeling mellow at this point and, as a friend of mine describes it, "lightly refreshed"!
Hubby and I walked along the front, towards the pier for an ice cream.
"I just need the loo" I said
"It's that door there" said Hubby "You'll need 20p for the barrier"
By the time I'd fudged about for 20p I was a bit desperate. the fish and chips mixed with all that beer and wine had kicked in!
The door was open so you couldn't see the sign on it and the barrier was up which immediately confused me, and in my "refreshed" and desperate state I didn't notice what I should've noticed!
I sat down quickly and did what I needed to do.
I coughed.
Then I heard a voice.
"Is that you?"
It was Hubby!
"What are you doing in the ladies?" I said "Get out!"
"What are you doing in the men's?" came the reply
"Oh Christ you told me the wrong door!" I complained back at hubby
"Well hurry up" he said urgently
"I can't!" I moaned frantically "I'm having a poo!"
Hubby kept guard and luckily no one else came in but it was touch and go in there I can tell you.
In Hubby's defence the men's and the ladies used to be the other way round and there did used to be barriers that charged you to go in so you can see why we got confused.
"Why didn't you notice the urinals?" asked Hubby as we walked back to the car with our ice creams.
"They looked like the sinks" I said "They have those all in one soap dispensers, sink and hand dryer things and they looked the same" I explained.
"No they don't" Hubby exclaimed.
"Well they did to me"
Must have been the beer.
Beware beer goggles! They don't just make unattractive people look attractive, they can make the Gents look like the Ladies!
Nanny P had the boy for the afternoon and we ate fish and chips out of the paper, then went along for a look at how they brew our favourite beer.
As far as I am concerned Adnams is one of Suffolk's great treasures and finest success stories, exporting their real ales, stouts and now spirits all over the world and importing unusual wines into the country to sell in their Cellar and Kitchen stores.
Me and Hubby do love a brewery tour! On several trips to Derbyshire we've been to the Bass museum and tour and then again since it has changed hands to Coors.
I do however tend to get the giggles in these places. Once, on the Bass tour, I'd had a lot of coffee at breakfast in the B&B. Never a good move as me and caffeine don't mix well. I'm like a hyper kid after a bucket full of Smarties and a vat of orange squash. I was bouncing off the walls and completely losing it. There was a working model in a glass cabinet showing how, back in the day, the canals and trains brought the ingredients for the beer into Burton on Trent and took the finished beer away again. There were buttons to press to make the miniature vehicles move, blow steam, whistle and generally do stuff. So I, like a demented 4 year old, ran round and round the glass case pressing them all, giggling and laughing as the little trains and barges zoomed up and down their pretend rails and canals.
Little things....
But on this tour, I was very well behaved. I'd had no alcohol or caffeine prior, only fish and chips , which sometimes aggravate my IBS, but other than that we were good to go.
The tour was excellent, with a really knowledgeable guide to talk us through the history and the process of how Adnams came to Southwold and how they brewed the beers before and right up to the present day.
After about an hour we went for a tutored tasting!
God love them, they were not stingy on the measures. We tasted four beers and I must have had a good half pint of each. Then the guide asked if anyone would like a wine tasting session too?
By this time two of the ladies on the tour I'd been chatting to knew it was my birthday
"Yes, we all do. It's her birthday. We've got to celebrate!"
So another very lovely lady who was extremely well versed in wine knowledge, took us through a white, red, limoncello and a dessert wine called Rubis, which tastes like chocolate but has the texture of port. Amazing stuff. We bought a bottle!
I was feeling mellow at this point and, as a friend of mine describes it, "lightly refreshed"!
Hubby and I walked along the front, towards the pier for an ice cream.
"I just need the loo" I said
"It's that door there" said Hubby "You'll need 20p for the barrier"
By the time I'd fudged about for 20p I was a bit desperate. the fish and chips mixed with all that beer and wine had kicked in!
The door was open so you couldn't see the sign on it and the barrier was up which immediately confused me, and in my "refreshed" and desperate state I didn't notice what I should've noticed!
I sat down quickly and did what I needed to do.
I coughed.
Then I heard a voice.
"Is that you?"
It was Hubby!
"What are you doing in the ladies?" I said "Get out!"
"What are you doing in the men's?" came the reply
"Oh Christ you told me the wrong door!" I complained back at hubby
"Well hurry up" he said urgently
"I can't!" I moaned frantically "I'm having a poo!"
Hubby kept guard and luckily no one else came in but it was touch and go in there I can tell you.
In Hubby's defence the men's and the ladies used to be the other way round and there did used to be barriers that charged you to go in so you can see why we got confused.
"Why didn't you notice the urinals?" asked Hubby as we walked back to the car with our ice creams.
"They looked like the sinks" I said "They have those all in one soap dispensers, sink and hand dryer things and they looked the same" I explained.
"No they don't" Hubby exclaimed.
"Well they did to me"
Must have been the beer.
Beware beer goggles! They don't just make unattractive people look attractive, they can make the Gents look like the Ladies!
Monday, 9 April 2012
The One With Easter
Keep Easter special I say.
And by that I don't just mean, the shops should shut on Easter Sunday.
By special I mean keep it simple.
What I love about Easter time, apart from the beginning of spring and it is often my birthday, is that it doesn't hold any of the pressures and work of Christmas. You get four days off to spend with friends and family but without having to send cards, buy presents or decorate your house up within an inch of it's life.
And so it should remain.
Adverts on TV may be telling you that the Easter bunny is chain-sawing a hole in all his baskets to cram a board game in and shops may be trying desperately to get us to send each other cards and trim up with chicks, lambs and bunnies, but I prefer a much more traditional Easter.
And that means chocolate!
So on a rainy Easter Sunday with Nanny P and on an even rainier Easter Monday with me, the boy has been helping us make a craft challenge from Tesco Online Magazine.
And it's due to the very simplicity of Easter that we have lots of lovely time to do things like this.
So with card, glue, glitter, bunny and chick sprinkles, crayons and coloured paper, not to mention chocolate eggs, buttons and a Thomas the Tank Engine cupcake we set to work.
Here's our efforts to cheer a couple of grey but not so miserable days.
Long may Easter be simple and special.
Happy Easter everyone!
And by that I don't just mean, the shops should shut on Easter Sunday.
By special I mean keep it simple.
What I love about Easter time, apart from the beginning of spring and it is often my birthday, is that it doesn't hold any of the pressures and work of Christmas. You get four days off to spend with friends and family but without having to send cards, buy presents or decorate your house up within an inch of it's life.
And so it should remain.
Adverts on TV may be telling you that the Easter bunny is chain-sawing a hole in all his baskets to cram a board game in and shops may be trying desperately to get us to send each other cards and trim up with chicks, lambs and bunnies, but I prefer a much more traditional Easter.
And that means chocolate!
So on a rainy Easter Sunday with Nanny P and on an even rainier Easter Monday with me, the boy has been helping us make a craft challenge from Tesco Online Magazine.
And it's due to the very simplicity of Easter that we have lots of lovely time to do things like this.
So with card, glue, glitter, bunny and chick sprinkles, crayons and coloured paper, not to mention chocolate eggs, buttons and a Thomas the Tank Engine cupcake we set to work.
Here's our efforts to cheer a couple of grey but not so miserable days.
Long may Easter be simple and special.
Happy Easter everyone!
Sunday, 8 April 2012
The One with the T and A
Last Saturday I went shopping with Lemon Cake Lady in what turned out to be a "tits and arse" day!
We had escaped for a whole day and got to be us again instead of Mum.
Don't get me wrong, we love being Mum's but sometimes you just need a damn good day out.
So off we ventured to Norwich letting the train take the strain. Unfortunately part of the journey meant letting the coach take the strain but that did give us the following gem from the driver, who said, in a thick Suffolk accent;
"Put your seat belts on to comply with the law"
No please, thank you or kiss my replacement bus service. It takes on it's full effect if you say it making "comply" the longest word in the sentence, if not the whole world, then you get the picture.
Once we arrived in Norwich we headed straight for Bravissimo.
It's like a Mecca to us both. I have, to not put too fine a point on it, enormous boobs. I hate them. I hate them with a passion. They get in the way, they make my back hurt, they are the butt of many a joke and they cost me a fortune to "house".
No picking up a £2.99 bra from Primark cos it's pretty and trendy and I can float around the bedroom in it tantalising the window cleaner. Oh no. I'm talking re-mortgaging the house just to buy something plain and functional to go under a t-shirt.
But still Bravissimo have excellent service and loads of choice in my size so I do have pretty stuff as well as the obligatory "over the shoulder boulder holders"!
And more importantly they always make me feel better about myself. The assistant I saw was very flattering about my shape and how I'd dressed. We were both wearing one of their dresses and she complimented mine and I hers. It was that moment of slight frisson when two woman appreciate each others form. After all as Ken always says, "There's a little bit of lezza in all of us!". Mind you the assistant had just felt up my bangers on a professional basis and she may well have been on commission but frankly I'll take my pleasure where I can find it! I got two bras with matching knickers.
My bank balance may have taken a serious hit but I came away feeling uplifted.
In more ways than one!
Which brings me to our second appointment of the morning.
Lemon Cake Lady had booked us into an event called Jean Genie at the Chapelfield shopping centre. This was a Gok Wan style pod where advisors would fit you for jeans and had various pairs from all over the centre for you to try on. Big, small, tall, short, small waisted, long legged, of child bearing hip or as petite as a pin, it didn't matter. They were there to help and make the best fit make the best of what you've got.
If Bravissimo was the booby lady then this I had affectionately nicknamed the "arse doctor"!
The ladies were funny, charming, helpful and positive. Lemon Cake Lady and I are the polar opposite of each other. LCL has a great figure but whereas she is slim on top with a tiny waist she's conscience of her hips and bottom. I quite like my lower half and indeed Hippy Chick has remarked on more than one occasion that I have "cracking pins, but I carry all my weight on my top and middle, especially after having the boy.
LCL was delighted to find jeans that actually fitted her after all these years. She is, according to Levi's, a supreme curve. I could've told them that years ago. And I'm a slim leg, slight curve. Apart from the obvious help and information this was so much more than that.
With the help of Hippy Chick I'm on self confidence kick about my body image. For years, when shopping, I've done this awful squinty face into the changing room mirror which annoys the hell out of LCL.
"Don't do the face" she'd yell at me as I screwed my face up and narrowed my eyes in an attempt to not really look at myself properly. It's like the hall of mirrors at the fairground. If I distorted the image maybe I would look thinner. Or disappear altogether! In fact all it achieved in doing was giving me the look of someone who had smelt something nasty and couldn't work out where it was coming from.
What Hippy Chick is helping me do is accept what I have and learn to love it. If I want to work on slimming it down or toning it up later on then so be it, but for now I want to love myself, wobbly bits and all and say this is me, without screwing my face up like old man Steptoe every time I pass a mirror.
So what Bravissimo and Jean Genie did was to help me love my best bits and control and compensate for the bits I don't like.
One of the ladies who helped us at Jean Genie had , as far as I was concerned, a perfect figure, yet she declared that she didn't like her thighs and they only looked ok because she was wearing the right jeans. How could she not like her thighs I asked? How could I not like my boobs and my curves she asked? I was womanly and "lush" she told me. I had my second little lezza moment of the day. I was starting to like this!
Then I realised that there is no perfection. We all of us don't like something about ourselves, even those who seem to be perfect. When I told LCL that I found this very comforting she said,
"What, that no one is happy?"
"Yes" I declared. "That no one, however perfect we think they are, is so smug and self satisfied that they don't have flaws and things they don't like about themselves too."
Then of course Samantha Brick wrote "that" article but hey you can't be right all the time can you?
That would just make you perfect.....
We had escaped for a whole day and got to be us again instead of Mum.
Don't get me wrong, we love being Mum's but sometimes you just need a damn good day out.
So off we ventured to Norwich letting the train take the strain. Unfortunately part of the journey meant letting the coach take the strain but that did give us the following gem from the driver, who said, in a thick Suffolk accent;
"Put your seat belts on to comply with the law"
No please, thank you or kiss my replacement bus service. It takes on it's full effect if you say it making "comply" the longest word in the sentence, if not the whole world, then you get the picture.
Once we arrived in Norwich we headed straight for Bravissimo.
It's like a Mecca to us both. I have, to not put too fine a point on it, enormous boobs. I hate them. I hate them with a passion. They get in the way, they make my back hurt, they are the butt of many a joke and they cost me a fortune to "house".
No picking up a £2.99 bra from Primark cos it's pretty and trendy and I can float around the bedroom in it tantalising the window cleaner. Oh no. I'm talking re-mortgaging the house just to buy something plain and functional to go under a t-shirt.
But still Bravissimo have excellent service and loads of choice in my size so I do have pretty stuff as well as the obligatory "over the shoulder boulder holders"!
And more importantly they always make me feel better about myself. The assistant I saw was very flattering about my shape and how I'd dressed. We were both wearing one of their dresses and she complimented mine and I hers. It was that moment of slight frisson when two woman appreciate each others form. After all as Ken always says, "There's a little bit of lezza in all of us!". Mind you the assistant had just felt up my bangers on a professional basis and she may well have been on commission but frankly I'll take my pleasure where I can find it! I got two bras with matching knickers.
My bank balance may have taken a serious hit but I came away feeling uplifted.
In more ways than one!
Which brings me to our second appointment of the morning.
Lemon Cake Lady had booked us into an event called Jean Genie at the Chapelfield shopping centre. This was a Gok Wan style pod where advisors would fit you for jeans and had various pairs from all over the centre for you to try on. Big, small, tall, short, small waisted, long legged, of child bearing hip or as petite as a pin, it didn't matter. They were there to help and make the best fit make the best of what you've got.
If Bravissimo was the booby lady then this I had affectionately nicknamed the "arse doctor"!
The ladies were funny, charming, helpful and positive. Lemon Cake Lady and I are the polar opposite of each other. LCL has a great figure but whereas she is slim on top with a tiny waist she's conscience of her hips and bottom. I quite like my lower half and indeed Hippy Chick has remarked on more than one occasion that I have "cracking pins, but I carry all my weight on my top and middle, especially after having the boy.
LCL was delighted to find jeans that actually fitted her after all these years. She is, according to Levi's, a supreme curve. I could've told them that years ago. And I'm a slim leg, slight curve. Apart from the obvious help and information this was so much more than that.
With the help of Hippy Chick I'm on self confidence kick about my body image. For years, when shopping, I've done this awful squinty face into the changing room mirror which annoys the hell out of LCL.
"Don't do the face" she'd yell at me as I screwed my face up and narrowed my eyes in an attempt to not really look at myself properly. It's like the hall of mirrors at the fairground. If I distorted the image maybe I would look thinner. Or disappear altogether! In fact all it achieved in doing was giving me the look of someone who had smelt something nasty and couldn't work out where it was coming from.
What Hippy Chick is helping me do is accept what I have and learn to love it. If I want to work on slimming it down or toning it up later on then so be it, but for now I want to love myself, wobbly bits and all and say this is me, without screwing my face up like old man Steptoe every time I pass a mirror.
So what Bravissimo and Jean Genie did was to help me love my best bits and control and compensate for the bits I don't like.
One of the ladies who helped us at Jean Genie had , as far as I was concerned, a perfect figure, yet she declared that she didn't like her thighs and they only looked ok because she was wearing the right jeans. How could she not like her thighs I asked? How could I not like my boobs and my curves she asked? I was womanly and "lush" she told me. I had my second little lezza moment of the day. I was starting to like this!
Then I realised that there is no perfection. We all of us don't like something about ourselves, even those who seem to be perfect. When I told LCL that I found this very comforting she said,
"What, that no one is happy?"
"Yes" I declared. "That no one, however perfect we think they are, is so smug and self satisfied that they don't have flaws and things they don't like about themselves too."
Then of course Samantha Brick wrote "that" article but hey you can't be right all the time can you?
That would just make you perfect.....
Friday, 30 March 2012
The One Where We All Panic
To quote The Smiths - Panic on the streets of London, Panic on the streets of Birmingham, I wonder to myself....
What I wonder to myself is firstly who are all these people queuing for fuel and panic buying the pumps dry?
If social media networks are to be believed everyone is deriding those who are queuing around the block for fuel, but someone must be doing it because there are long queues everywhere.
Yesterday I had lunch with Ken. As I drove over to my old place of work I stopped at the traffic lights. I looked across to a BP garage and idly commented to the boy,
"Oh look there's no queues at that petrol station. Maybe people aren't being too silly about it anymore?"
On closer inspection I realised that all the pumps were covered and they had no fuel left!
I turned the corner to be greeted by an enormous queue for the Shell garage instead. So huge in fact that I had trouble passing it and when I left Ken after lunch I couldn't get out of the end of the road and had to turn round and go another way!
So if everyone you talk to and everywhere you read about it, people are saying these panic buyers are irresponsible, reactionary, selfish idiots - who are they?
Or are we in fact all closet panic buyers?
After all there's nothing we like better than a good old crisis in the UK. Stock up, hunker down, put that light out and dig for victory. The Dunkirk spirit. We'll show them, we'll buy all the fuel we can carry now and then let them strike. We don't care. We're British! If we can get our upper lip to really stiffen we can hang our jerrycan of petrol off it on our way home from the forecourt!
And it's not just petrol. With the massive hike in stamps prices in April the great British public are stockpiling those too.
And for god's sake don't get the man on the street started on the Pasty Tax!
I put out a little tip on Facebook and Twitter yesterday
Buy a cold pastry. But it on the bonnet of your car. Queue for petrol. By the time you reach the pumps it'll be hot. The money you saved in VAT on the pasty means you can put an extra millilitre of petrol in your car.
I also had a theory that even if we could afford the stamps to send letters to each other, the posties won't be able to get the petrol to drive the vans to deliver them!
If you've got anymore interesting panic buying tips then pop them on a postcard and send them to a friend. Don't forget a stamp. If you can afford one.......
Keep Calm. Carry On. And as Jones always said in Dad's Army......
What I wonder to myself is firstly who are all these people queuing for fuel and panic buying the pumps dry?
If social media networks are to be believed everyone is deriding those who are queuing around the block for fuel, but someone must be doing it because there are long queues everywhere.
Yesterday I had lunch with Ken. As I drove over to my old place of work I stopped at the traffic lights. I looked across to a BP garage and idly commented to the boy,
"Oh look there's no queues at that petrol station. Maybe people aren't being too silly about it anymore?"
On closer inspection I realised that all the pumps were covered and they had no fuel left!
I turned the corner to be greeted by an enormous queue for the Shell garage instead. So huge in fact that I had trouble passing it and when I left Ken after lunch I couldn't get out of the end of the road and had to turn round and go another way!
So if everyone you talk to and everywhere you read about it, people are saying these panic buyers are irresponsible, reactionary, selfish idiots - who are they?
Or are we in fact all closet panic buyers?
After all there's nothing we like better than a good old crisis in the UK. Stock up, hunker down, put that light out and dig for victory. The Dunkirk spirit. We'll show them, we'll buy all the fuel we can carry now and then let them strike. We don't care. We're British! If we can get our upper lip to really stiffen we can hang our jerrycan of petrol off it on our way home from the forecourt!
And it's not just petrol. With the massive hike in stamps prices in April the great British public are stockpiling those too.
And for god's sake don't get the man on the street started on the Pasty Tax!
I put out a little tip on Facebook and Twitter yesterday
Buy a cold pastry. But it on the bonnet of your car. Queue for petrol. By the time you reach the pumps it'll be hot. The money you saved in VAT on the pasty means you can put an extra millilitre of petrol in your car.
I also had a theory that even if we could afford the stamps to send letters to each other, the posties won't be able to get the petrol to drive the vans to deliver them!
If you've got anymore interesting panic buying tips then pop them on a postcard and send them to a friend. Don't forget a stamp. If you can afford one.......
Keep Calm. Carry On. And as Jones always said in Dad's Army......
Sunday, 25 March 2012
The One Where Curiosity Kicked The Cat
Just when you thought it was safe to put Oscar and the boy back in the same room together, there was an "incident at the pass" yesterday evening!
It was bath time and in order to get the boy to do anything now you have to prise him away from the TV. So we switched it off and called him for his bath.
We've been exposing the boy to old skool children's telly programmes so he was watching The Clangers. For those of you who don't remember The Clangers they were small pink, knitted, aliens looking creatures with long snouts and they lived on a planet far far away and whistled to each other. There was a Soup Dragon and an Iron Chicken and they ate blue string pudding.
I know it sounds like a 60's acid trip, up there with The Magic Roundabout, but believe me it was very good. If good means weird. Hubby and I loved it as kids though and the boy seems to be the same.
"Clangers, Clangers" he protested
"After your bath darling" one of us said. I don't remember who because what followed was a barrage of shouting, screaming and crying.
And that was just Hubby!
The boy lost it and in his frustration gave out the most vicious, hateful kick at Oscar our cat, I've ever seen him do.
Oscar might be an old moggy but he's no slouch still and he ducked in time but the sheer vitriol on the boys face was pure bloody evil.
I have never heard Hubby so cross and so clearly disappointed in his son.
Bath time was a solemn affair with no toys, no bubbles and no laughter.
The boy kept trying to engage with us and make us laugh again but, certainly for Hubby, he'd gone too far this time.
There was no TV after his bath and all the stories were either cat based or about being kind to animals. A subtly clearly lost on the boy who just drank his milk and played as normal.
He had obviously forgotten all about it in his gnat like attention span and the incident had past in his mind.
Or so I thought!
Today Nanny P and Granddad Atu arrived at lunchtime to take the boy out for the afternoon. The first thing he said to them was,
"Oscar. Kick. Dada say no, no"
I'm not sure he was remorseful. I think he was probably just relaying it as a piece of news to his grandparents, but it had obviously struck a chord with him and been playing on his mind.
I had been trying to explain to him that he was lucky that Oscar was such a docile cat and didn't bite or scratch back. I didn't use the word docile of course. I'm not daft. He can't count to 10 yet without missing out all the odd numbers (thank you Thomas the bloody Tank Engine and your "they're 2, they're 4, they're 6, they're 8, song) so I was hardly going to hit him with a word like docile.
One of my biggest problems with the boy is getting him to listen to me. When I'm trying to tell him something important he either, changes the subject, sings, laughs or runs away.
I just didn't think we were getting through to him but hey, maybe we are.
Never underestimate a two year old boy and what is sinking in while they are seemingly transfixed on trains, fire engines, space rockets and cars.
They are storing it all away, just ready to embarrass you at the most inopportune moment.
I just hope some of the language I use when I'm driving or when Daddy's watching football isn't sinking in as well....
It was bath time and in order to get the boy to do anything now you have to prise him away from the TV. So we switched it off and called him for his bath.
We've been exposing the boy to old skool children's telly programmes so he was watching The Clangers. For those of you who don't remember The Clangers they were small pink, knitted, aliens looking creatures with long snouts and they lived on a planet far far away and whistled to each other. There was a Soup Dragon and an Iron Chicken and they ate blue string pudding.
I know it sounds like a 60's acid trip, up there with The Magic Roundabout, but believe me it was very good. If good means weird. Hubby and I loved it as kids though and the boy seems to be the same.
"Clangers, Clangers" he protested
"After your bath darling" one of us said. I don't remember who because what followed was a barrage of shouting, screaming and crying.
And that was just Hubby!
The boy lost it and in his frustration gave out the most vicious, hateful kick at Oscar our cat, I've ever seen him do.
Oscar might be an old moggy but he's no slouch still and he ducked in time but the sheer vitriol on the boys face was pure bloody evil.
I have never heard Hubby so cross and so clearly disappointed in his son.
Bath time was a solemn affair with no toys, no bubbles and no laughter.
The boy kept trying to engage with us and make us laugh again but, certainly for Hubby, he'd gone too far this time.
There was no TV after his bath and all the stories were either cat based or about being kind to animals. A subtly clearly lost on the boy who just drank his milk and played as normal.
He had obviously forgotten all about it in his gnat like attention span and the incident had past in his mind.
Or so I thought!
Today Nanny P and Granddad Atu arrived at lunchtime to take the boy out for the afternoon. The first thing he said to them was,
"Oscar. Kick. Dada say no, no"
I'm not sure he was remorseful. I think he was probably just relaying it as a piece of news to his grandparents, but it had obviously struck a chord with him and been playing on his mind.
I had been trying to explain to him that he was lucky that Oscar was such a docile cat and didn't bite or scratch back. I didn't use the word docile of course. I'm not daft. He can't count to 10 yet without missing out all the odd numbers (thank you Thomas the bloody Tank Engine and your "they're 2, they're 4, they're 6, they're 8, song) so I was hardly going to hit him with a word like docile.
One of my biggest problems with the boy is getting him to listen to me. When I'm trying to tell him something important he either, changes the subject, sings, laughs or runs away.
I just didn't think we were getting through to him but hey, maybe we are.
Never underestimate a two year old boy and what is sinking in while they are seemingly transfixed on trains, fire engines, space rockets and cars.
They are storing it all away, just ready to embarrass you at the most inopportune moment.
I just hope some of the language I use when I'm driving or when Daddy's watching football isn't sinking in as well....
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