As you may have noticed, the UK has had rather a lot of snow recently. It seems the Southerners are not dealing with this quite as well as us hardy Northerners who are quite used to freezing cold temperatures and having to stock up on food. I’m not saying Southerners are rubbish in arctic conditions… but they’re just not doing very well. Here’s a hint: you can’t always be fashionable if you want to be warm.
Maybe you should just try scarves and big coats with wellingtons?
Today, America is celebrating Thanksgiving. Being British, I’m not.
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Of course, I’m joking; that isn’t the end of this post but I’m still not going to celebrate Thanksgiving. However, I did think that it was a great opportunity to mention some of the things and people in my life that I am thankful for.
So, here are just a few things that I am thankful for in my life. I guess they are sometimes things that are taken for granted because they are always there, which means you may only realise how thankful you were when they’re gone. The trouble is that too many people take too many things for granted. And if these things were gone they would be sorry.
The ‘fellow prisoner of hope’ part of the title is both a reference to the song by Allie Moss and how I feel right now. It seems that the only thing I can do right now is hope that things in my household will get better.
As you are aware from previous posts here Master Berserker returned home and is, once again, terrorising the household. Sadly, the rest of the occupants of our house simply pander to his every whim.
I didn’t have a particularly nice day yesterday. In fact, I was downright tired and therefore irritable. I did try very hard to stay calm and be pleasant, but things don’t always work out quite like that. However, you may be able to tell that I am somewhat more chipper today.
Today has been a good day. I’m feeling Christmassy again. I’m sorry about mentioning the C word in November so much, but it’s such a good feeling and so I have to share it in what I hope is a cheery manner.
Yesterday’s tiredness, however, has meant that I haven’t been doing an awful lot of writing lately. This is not for want of trying. The two jobs means that I’m feeling pretty run down, but it’s really only until Christmas.
#Flashfiction - A festive themed flash piece.
He stood outside, pale skin gleaming in the frosty light, peering in through the window. It was warm inside. The fire glowed and lit the children’s faces. They supped at steaming mugs of soup, raising each chalice to their lips like some heated nectar. Damn, snow spattered hair dried off in the face of that insistent orange glow.
Brittle fingers shivered in the biting air as an icy tear tracked his white cheek.
A woman melted into view behind the cold glass. She gathered the children’s coats and scarves, mittens and hats, and hung them over the radiator where wistful eyes watched the snow thaw from their smattered surfaces, dripping into a pool on the carpeted floor. The woman hugged herself tightly over the thick pad of her jumper.
So last night a rather exciting thing occurred. That’s right the advert was on. The special advert. And everybody knows what it means when the advert is on television. There’s even at least one facebook page dedicated to the meaning of the advert. It has the same meaning to thousands of people.
That’s right.
The coca cola Christmas advert was on television.
Everyone knows that once the coca cola Christmas truck advert has been on television it really is the start of the Christmas season.
I have been for a while. This is not to say that I’ve been battling orcs and got mislaid during the bloody onslaught. It does, however, mean that I must once again apologise for slow posting due to an increase of stuff in my life. If you follow my twitter or my facebook page, you may be aware that I now have a second job and that the lady I work with at my first job has been ill for about a fortnight. You may be wondering how the latter would affect my time regaling you with my insane tales and rather weird ideas.
Well, we work as school crossing patrol officers (that’s lollipop ladies to you and me) on an extremely busy T-junction, which is all fine and dandy when there are two of us to patrol it. With one, however, it poses more of a problem. Surely there should be a stand in, right? Someone to step in when we’re sick? A person to plug the gap when we’re holed up in bed with boxes of tissues, forced to watch that ghastly orange man (David Dickinson) flogging peoples precious possessions?
I’ve been quite busy over the past few days, hence the lack of posting. Those of you in England may have guessed why, but those of you who are not may be unaware that we were in the throes of a National Holiday. Every year, on the fifth of November we celebrate the death of some poor bloke who hated his government and was trying to blow up King James.
The day is about the death of Guido Fawkes who banded a group together and plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, which is where our government hangs out (and the king too in those days). He didn’t have a very pleasant death. They dragged him from the Tower of London to the Old Palace Yard at Westminster (opposite the Houses of Parliament) where his co-conspirators were first put through the traditional methods of killing traitors to the crown.
As interestingly as always, I was sitting musing on some of my past actions last night and, being a bit of a Harry Potter geek, I came to a conclusion. Many of you (or at least those of you who are also openly geeky) will have done those silly quizzes that you get on certain sites to determine which Hogwarts house you would be put into if you were a witch or wizard in JK Rowling’s world. This may or may not come as a surprise, but I always get Gryffindor. I know that these quizzes are not totally accurate or even created by JK (if by some miracle you are reading this, Mrs Rowling, you should put one on your site) so I understand if you think I am just waffling again.
Sometimes I wondered if I should have been stashed in Hufflepuff instead because I am not always especially brave, which brings us to what I was pondering last night.
I did say to myself that I would write a post yesterday, but by the time I got around to it I was just far too tired and for that I apologise. Maybe next year I will do a Hallowe’en/Samhain post on the day that it actually occurs. I know a lot of people, however, were out and about celebrating All Hallows Eve either with friends or relatives and some even privately.
I feel I ought to mention my friend Louise (or Ann-Louise if she’s being really annoying) who was a part of the Edinburgh Samhain festival and was dressed up as a wolf with her clan to welcome in the Winter and say goodbye to the Summer. I may ask her if I can show off a picture of them on this blog so that you can all have a good look if you, like me, were unable to get to the celebrations.
Other lovely people told me that they were planning to spend the event trick or treating with either friends or youngsters. I must admit that we bedecked our house in all manner of Halloween paraphernalia (I do like that word).
