A chance to exchange notes on the little everyday things that cheer you up when you're down, or make an ordinary day into a better one. Winning move unaltered.
Each of the first few sort-of-words uttered by one's grandchild. He said "ready" yesterday, when we were playing the "ready, steady, sit down" game I invented.Hidden textAnd yes, I have surreptitiously trained my grandson to sit on command :)
Diff'rent strokes, as they say. I hate hot floors. My fave is walking across a cold stone floor on a hot day... ahhhhh. My feet are definitely heat sinks.
Dressing up like my character in the Deadlands:Reloaded weird west game I'm involved in. The GM turned up in cowboy drag too yesterday. I am an inspiration to the younger generation.
I should hasten to add I only do this on those days we actually play the game, and I confine my wild west RPG cosplay to those regions that can be seen when I sit at the table. The lower Steviebod is clad in my usual pink tutu, black vinyl hotpants and rubber waders.
The prosect of once more having muddy boots when I work on enhancing my expertise of fruit tree pruning and Dutch fruit tree vocabulary, next Saturday morning, and the next four Saturday mornings after that.
[pen] Were it not that you liked it, one might assume that you would claim "Penelope's exemption," whereby expat Penelopes may claim they work and enjoy the rewards, but actually do nowt. Mme Fillon being the current example.
[Bismarck] If you knew me, you'd know how untrue that was. I have a full-time university job, plus volunteering for the Netherlands' natural and historical heritage. We penelopes despise Mme Fillon and her pretence of working that brings the penelopes of this world into disrepute. (And I can actually write articles that get printed, unlike her)
A snowy landscape outside the living room windows, and a whole Sunday of baking and cooking - the in-laws and nieces are coming this afternoon. Carrot cake, cherry tarts, a big shepherd's pie, and baked stuffed apples.
Listening to my recently acquired "best of The Mutton Birds" CD. Jeepers, I wish I'd found these buggers years ago. Poppy tunes that cradle some of the best song-stories I've ever heard. I have no idea what "White Valiant" is about but it scares the living snot out of me every time I hear it.
And following [Bismarck], despite having to take the counter-intuitive long way onto the Rotterdam ring road (driving first in the wrong direction) in order to get home tonight because of jams, the route goes past a storks' nest with brooding storks on it.
Driving to and from work while the schools are on holiday. The town I have to drive through is like a ghost town at the moment whereas it is normally a 10mph crawl.
Hotel wi-fi that works like it should. No password, no stupid web proxy in the way, no signing up. My laptop sees the wi-fi and connects, the same as at home. And a sensible amount of bandwidth too.
The end of roadworks on the motorway bridge at the beginning of my drive to work every morning, and at the end of my drive home A chunk of metal from the bit of the bridge that lifts to let tall ships through came off two weeks ago, and they've been trying to fix it ever since. In the meantime, the 70km/h speed limit causes tailbacks at peak hours. My detour to avoid standing traffic is very pleasant - through the lanes and villages to join the motorway again 4 junctions up - especially at this time of year, but it doesn't put me in the mood for coming to work. I have three weeks off from 24 July... The end of roadworks hasn't happened yet but it will be sooo good when it does.
Sausages? Why didn't you say so before?! What kind of sausages though? I have just imported 3kg of best Lincolnshire sausages into the Netherlands after our stay there last week. I feel as rich as Croesus with a freezer full of sausages. In fact, I'm loathe to eat them. Hmmph.
The re-opening of Streatley Hill after 6 weeks of mending a chimney (damaged by a lorry), eliminating 16 miles from my daily drive, and meaning I can get to the Tesco Express that opened the other side of it about 4 weeks ago in about 8 minutes instead of 18.
The pleasure gained from caring for and learning from my youngest granddaughter and then sending her home after a very exhausting day. To explain: My own children's childhood, apart from weekends (not many), I more or less missed. That was due to work hours, sometimes days at a time, plus my involvement in a number of local volunteer organisations as Treasurer/Secretary/President/Dogsbody.
Pouring the sugar out of a Sainsbury's sugar bag This was unexpected. You know how a conventional 1kg bag of sugar is folded at the bottom and glued closed? So that there's always a last few annoying grains that hide under the paper flaps and won't come out? Well the Sainsbury's bag had a crimped closure, like the bottom of a crisp packet. Nowhere for those last few grains to lurk in hiding, so they all came out. Yay. +1 for a tiny refinement in modern packaging.
The rare occasions when I can remember a chuckleworthy joke for long enough to pass it on. It's nowt to do with age as I've always had that 'disability'.
Despite the winter solstice being two weeks ago, it seems to get darker in the mornings at this time of year, so I look for visual treats on my way to work to try and persuade myself that it's not all a dark slog in shitty traffic. First off this morning, driving to work under a full-ish and bright moon, and the rising sun only hitting the skyscrapers of Rotterdam (seen from my office window) after I got here. And I have a new thermal cup and my tea from home was still hot.
Watching Rowan Atkinson play George Simenon's Maigret, dubbed into French. If you made him slightly thinner and slightly greyer and have him wear a slightly more worn mack, he would be exactly as I imagine Maigret. The acting, though, is spot on.
Discovering a blurry picture on the internet that showed that in fact there are no missing parts to the loom of the Pelham "Mother Dragon" marionette Mrs Stevie gave me for Xmas, and by simply re-arranging the screw-eyes someone de-arranged for gosh-knows what reason and replacing the long-gone elastic links for the wings and jaw strings I now had a good-as-new puppet to play with even though this one was bought sometime before decimalization. Someone also tied knots in the leg strings so they wouldn't "run" through the screw-eyes, but I got those knots out with two needles (used as marlin spikes) and some patience while Doctor Who ran on Xmas night. S'triffic puppet. Raaaaaaaar!
Driving on the motorway past the same spot every morning this week just in time to see a huge flock of geese, numbering thousands, take off from their overnight roost.
Finding the waxed thread online and using it to repair the Dragon marionette. Thread snapped after I twisted the control strings too aggressively for storage (you do this to stop the lines tangling in the box). Head detached from body, tail detached and fell into component beads. All fixed now, though, including discovering a new and great way to "snug up" knots with only one pair of hands.
Made myself a full English breakfast this morning. Haven't done it in over 2 years, you just can't get the bacon over here, and Ham is not an acceptable substitute. So fried bread. Black Pudding. Bacon and scrambled eggs. Sausages. Tea and toast with marmalade. 'Cos that's the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) I like it.
Seeing that the second-hand 50-year old pear tree we installed outside the house a month ago (to make our new-ish house look less new on this street) is starting to blossom. Good. If it hadn't have done anything, then that would have been quite a lot of money wasted.
A Bank Holiday with perfect weather! Full sun, light breeze, able to take luncheon on the terrace (oh all right then, a chicken and cheese sandwich in the backyard). But, there was cider involved....
[pen] I'm impressed that it tried at all in its first year, after the shock of being moved. Have you given it the love and horse poop that a budding tree needs?
