Up the Mountain and down the Glen.

Well he did it, Mr Uhdd beat his time, from last years Ben Nevis Fell race and I have to say he was in much better shape at the end of it; his busy year of racing has improved his level of fitness, so success all round, although fell runners always think they could have just squeezed another few seconds off their time, why else would they keep doing it!

It was cooler and damper than last year easier for the runners, but less spectators at the start and finish.

Neat feet for running, new laces?

This is the way to go.

Always chance at theses events to spend a little money, on the search for the fell runners holy grail, the ‘go faster fell shoe’

Pipers and runners gather for the start,

Under starters orders and they are off

While we spectators wait, and watch the clock, overhead and against a back drop of broody clouds, the rescue helicopter touts for business.

As the first runners come home,(the winner in came in in 1:32) the muddier bloodier,faster and more breathless you are the more the camera loves you; no need for hours in makeup, this is reality TV (filmed for the ‘Adventure Show’ BBC Scotland)

Some very hardy guys ran the race wearing the kilt, what I want to know is did it chafe their knees?

A little girl with a kilt just like daddies,

It is very thirsty work

Did I mention the mud?

Dew,Scotch mist, perspiration,or just wet?

It was a great event, one of the highlights for me, was chatting with a lady who ran the race in 1955, she told me of the battle she had to be allowed to compete, fascinating stuff. In the evening there was the prize giving, a packed hall saw a total of seven runners picking up commemorative plaques, the race had been their 21st Ben Nevis Fell Race, sounds like Mr Uhdd will be going back next year, it’s obviously a race that gets under your skin.

Technorati Tags: Ben Nevis Fell Race, Scotland, Family, Fun, Travel, Away-days, Fell Running

Take Three Boys

A recipe for hours of summer fun, this recipe makes a VERY fast and long slide, take the following ingredients (after conducting risk assessment.)

• Three muddy boys, who have spent the morning den building and ‘making bricks from clay’

• A sloping garden of a reasonable gradient (it came with the house, a byproduct of living at the top of a hill.)
• A large fiberglass tube (salvaged from a builders skip, I am such a skip rat; but I did ask permission and I did make a donation to the charity that owned it, would you believe it was a fire escape from a residential home for the disabled! I am pleased to say they have come up with an evacuation plan that now retains a little more dignity for the residents.
• Some plastic sheets
• A hose pipe, a bottle of shower gel (unwanted raffle prize from a village coffee morning)
• Some sunshine

• Remove all surplus clothing from the boys, insert boys in tube, repeat all afternoon and most of the following day.

This recipe make for easily entertained boys, a top tip is to supply sugary drinks and snacks; running up the hill is thirsty work and spending the evening with a house full of grumpy, exhausted and dehydrated boys is not recommended.

This recipe also allows parent to, clean mud off kitchen floor, get at a PC and spend secret time mooching around the Internet, whilst drinking a mug of tea, (when what they should really be doing is sewing Joe’s pocket back on his blazer and labels into mounds of school uniform.)

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: Family Fun

A Word About Blogging

I found my cage well and truly rattled the other day; reading how Totally Un PC had had a a lecture on his use of grammar and clichés.

My reaction may have been a bit OTT, but on this subject I have a history.

My brother in law (BiL) ‘outed’ me as a blogger the other day, at a dinner table full of friends; the question most wanted to know is why? Why do I want to do it? (It’s OK BiL, all is forgiven and it was a nice compliment you paid me thank you!) Caught on the hop I wasn’t quite ready for the moment, I don’t think I explained very well, but the bottom line is that I like reading blogs and having found I have far to much to say on other people blogs and a growing confidence in my own abilities I decided to dive in and join the fun.

One of the friends was concerned that I took all I read as gospel, ‘You know it might all be fictitious.’ (Although I truly believe that there are prostitutes in Scotland and that someone lives next door to them.) No I don’t take every thing I read on a blog as the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, for one thing it is a subjective personal account not investigative journalism, a statement for cross examination in court or an academic paper; nor do I take as gospel what I read in the press or watch on TV. To inform my thoughts and decisions; I look at what’s on offer, chuck in my own experience and knowledge and make up my own mind.

Blogs that I like make me think some of the following, ‘Oh I’d never thought about it like that’ ‘well I never knew that’ they also make me laugh, cry, and scream in sympathy with the frustration of the blogger. In a nutshell they are interesting, entertaining an informative and TUPC’s blog does all of that and more.

I think to criticise a blogger for their poor spelling, writing style or ‘standard of English’ (shudder, flash back to school) is out of order, for many people, myself included a blog is the first place they have ever ‘exposed’ anything they have written, it’s a place for the first ‘baby steps’ towards better writing. There is, it seems to me, a slow steady and insidious erosion of peoples self esteem when it comes to writing, from the moment a child picks up a pencil it seems to be told what it is doing wrong rather than right, (the fact that there is so much that is ‘wrong’ would suggest to me the teaching methods are less than ideal) the message is clear if you have poor written skills an inability to spell you should be ashamed, you are obviously stupid and ignorant.

An article in Sundays Observer newspaper reported how a tutor, a member of the Queens English Society at Imperial College London was so unimpressed by the standard of of English used by his students that he has ‘named and shamed them’. I can appreciate poor English is detrimental to clarity of academic writing and that better standards across the board are something to aspire to (and Lamb is quoted as saying ‘The rot thus extends from top to bottom in education’) but to me, the thrust of the article was a placing the blame upon the students, not the educational system that had led these presumably intelligent people to his academic institution.

To meet me you would probably say I was a confident person, I am happy stand up and speak in public, in front of an audience of a couple of hundred people if needs be, (although having looked at the Queens English Society web site, I don’t think they would like my accent) but ask me to write on a white board in front of anyone and I will flee. For me, my fear of ridicule and embarrassment about my writing (especially by teachers and academics) is so powerful that even to this day I will not write a comment in my children’s home work diary without first writing it in a word document and spell checking it. If this sort of tactic is not available to me (whenever I have to write) to allow me hide my ’shameful secret’ it is most likely I will say nothing; it’s a shame, because you never know I might have had an opinion worth listening to.

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words, The 21st World Scout Jamboree

Following on from my earlier post, here is the link to the photographs of the jamboree, they are files of photograph that have been made available to press and public; at one stage they were being downloaded at a rate of 500 per hour.

They are glorious, but be warned they might make your eyes fill (well they did mine.)

Go to www.tsa.thirdlight.co.uk ignore the login box and click on the link at the bottom of the page “Latest pictures from the 21st World Scout Jamboree”

Home Home on the Range.

The holiday is over and we have the washing to prove it.

Well that’s Devon done and dusted, I’ve add some post’s that never quite made it out into cyberspace; having to post from the library made me realise how much time I can fritter away ‘blogging about,’ there was never enough time to do all the things I wanted and check the emails.

I shall be adding some holiday snaps as well, if you can make it as far back as ‘I Spy’ ( July 16th) you may even get a rare glimpse of me in swim attire!!

A happy post script, the empty cottage I was fretting about now has a curl of smoke coming from the chimney and two beautiful cats asleep window, it looks like it has been re-let to locals rather than on the market as a second home. Nice one.

Shout

A life boat call out still rattles the windows, but other things in the village are quieter.

The life boat maroons went up the other afternoon, two window rattling booms,  sending the seagulls for a three mile radius apoplectic with agitation, from our cottage I can see the lifeboat station and in minutes the yellow booted  lifeboat crew are jogging down the pontoon out to the life boat, it had slipped its moorings and was heading off to sea before the gulls had stopped their squawking, everyone stands still and watches the life boat go out, it’s a bit like the trendy visual effect on TV  where some of the people in the shot freeze and others keep moving; the crew keep moving, its not just the tourists like me that watch either; other cottage doors open and the locals, watch too.

Quickly the lifeboat is out of sight, I then listen, waiting for the distinctive roar of the lifeboat engines as they open up the throttle, when they are clear of the flotsam of little boats around Salcombe harbour. I like this sound, I like it a lot, don’t tell my family and I am loath to admit it to myself, I am really a repressed speed/power freak, I’ll start watching ‘Top Gear’ next!

Latter in the evening I walk the dog, we go up through the village, there is a cottage that is always awash with colour and warmth, the door always ajar, the same every summer, people coming and going,  the sound of laughter and chatter in rich local accents flowing out. The colour comes from the sliver of a garden, full of gaudy dahlias amongst the geraniums and fuchsias with trellises of scented sweet peas on the whitewashed walls. The colour outside is mirrored on the inside with jugs of fresh cut flowers in the windows. But its not like that this year, the house is empty and locked up, the windows without flowers are as dull as slate, dark and soulless; in the flower beds just the fuchsias  hang heavy with blooms, no sweet peas no dahlias, the lady who lived here has died.

I wonder what will become of the cottage it is chocolate box pretty with views across the harbour. On the open market  it is likely to be out of the reach of the next generation of local people (this area is the hunting ground of the obese city bonus looking for a holiday home, where it is common to pay half a million for a house with a sea view just to flatten it and rebuild.) The houses are locked up for most of the year,  so with scant customers for so many weeks the village shop and post office can’t survive and have closed, its sad to see, each year a little of the character and life of the village ebbs away. I suppose it is hypocritical of me to think like this as a holiday visitor.

We walk on up past the church, its gravestones bare the same distinct local names, back through the centuries, the same names that you can still see above shops and boat yards across in Salcombe to this day. On the church notice board is announcement of the very substantial amount collected for the RNLI, in memory of the lady from the village who has died, I always suspected she was a very popular person. In the distance I can hear the distinct sound of the life boat coming back into harbour and I remember how last year the lady and I had stood together and watched the life boat.

Cloudy Day

Reflecting on SD’s post ‘The will to live has left the building’

 

The sun went in this morning, (well metaphorically because it hasn’t really been out for weeks) It peeped from behind a cloud this morning when I saw Social Dispatch had a new post, bound to be interesting I thought; and then the sun went in because it was the ‘end of the line’, the end, no more, the last post.

Now I haven’t been blogging around for long enough to fully understand the blogdom reasons or maybe they are purely personal reasons, but I do know I will miss reading his posts and seeing his very ‘surprised cat’ around the place.

 

But in a change to my planned post; I just wanted to say how important I think blogs are for telling it, how it is, in and amongst the ‘entertainment’ you also get a glimpse of how it really is, the highs and the lows the pleasure and the frustrations of other peoples worlds, I am I suppose, what my New Zealand friend calls a ‘sticky beak’ (i.e. very curious/nosy) about other peoples worlds, but I think my world is richer and more educated for it

 

Journal writing has been around since people started using bits of charcoal to write on cave walls, its just the writing materials that have changed; I have beside me a copy of a diary written in 1737, it is written by a doctor and minister who used to ride around theses part tending to the physical and spiritual needs of the people in his community, it can tell me far more about the emotions, hopes, aspirations and fears felt by his society than any ‘history book’ ever can. (I hope someone making a cyber archive of blogs because I think they are a fascinating social document.)

 

So whilst I can appreciate why, SD wants to leave the building and go and get some fresh air; I just hope he didn’t lock the door when he left.

Girl Talk

Go wash your mouth out, with soap and water

 

Teenage girls flow through the double doors a constant babble of words; but such ugly words, such foul words. If I have to use your language to get you to listen, then so be it ‘why the fuck can’t you find nicer words’ I know this language is the fashion, and each generation makes its fashion mistakes (I only narrowly side stepped the era of leggings and stiletto heels, favouring instead big hair big earrings and even bigger shoulder pads, so who am I to talk.)

Your generation already has more fashion victims than most; (only the chosen few should wear low cut jeans. ‘muffin tops’ are not pretty) and that’s what your torrent of expletives is its no more than a fashion, you do it to be like the rest; part of the pack, the words are not delivered with venom or violence of the nasty or the abusive.

But girls look at you; you are beautiful, goddesses but the words that spew from your mouths are those of gargoyles not goddesses. So girls, pleeeease, stop looking in the mirror, if only for moment and listen, listen to the echo, it’s just not a good sound, its so last season.

**********************

Well ‘schools out’ for me no more work till September, (pinch myself, remembering all the school holidays where I juggled my business and children, doing neither job well and just getting grumpy with everything, I am indeed a lucky girl (although I need to give more thought to the fact there are no more pay slips till September either!) the children’s end of term activities (sports day, choir concerts and the rest) are looming and I shall endeavour to be in the front row at each and every event, instead of sneaking in the back of the hall half way through, (as it always was in my previous life.) But this will also mean more demands on my time, as the holiday cry echo’s round the house ‘I’m bored what are we doing today?’ watch for decreased posting levels

Lost in Traslation

I am breaking out in a deep scarlet blush, just writing about this little episode, but Tom Reynolds and his themed multicultural week has got me thinking, that if I apologise for what I so nearly did; it will some how make me feel a little less embarrassed about it, so I am sorry.

At first given the gravity of the incident Tom was writing about, I thought this incident might seem a little trite, but bare with me till the end and I hope you will see why I think it has a some value in the debate about language rather than it just being about me, so nearly making a complete fool of myself.

In my defence I have to say I was a little bit distracted at the time, Moss our dog, had just stuck her paw in a bowl of eggs, breaking three of them, raw egg was running off the kitchen worktop and down into the cutlery draw; I was trying to mop it up with kitchen roll, when the phone rang; now I am not very good at ignoring a ringing phone, I could have let the answer phone take it but I didn’t.

It’s a man’s voice on the phone and I can’t tell what he is saying, his accent is very strong.

I make an assumption that the call is from a call centre somewhere on the Indian sub continent and that the person is trying to sell me something that I don’t want. The words are forming in my mouth to launch in to a curt and not very polite rendition my script that ‘We subscribe to the Telephone Preference Agency and that we don’t accept unsolicited phone calls.’ When I manage to decipher three of the man’s word’s Cricket, Practice , Wednesday.

OMG it is not a call centre, but the father of one of my sons friends, arranging pick up’s for cricket practice…oooh noooo, in double quick time I have to change my tone of voice, to something more socially acceptable. I have just come within a hairs breadth of a major social gaff.

Thinking about it afterwards, I have always been able to tell what is being said to me from an overseas call centre, even if some of the nuance is lost; but this man is a medical man and I suspect a high flying one at that; which is a little more worrying. It brought back to me the time when my son was ill in hospital, when he was a toddler; after the Dr had examined him and delivered his diagnosis and left the room, I had to ask the nurse exactly what the Dr had said, because I couldn’t understand him (as much because of his very strong accent rather than his inability to speak English, or is that one and the same thing?) Give me that time again and he would have stayed put, in that room till I understood exactly what he was talking about; but I felt anxious and dis-empowered and sleep deprived at the time.

So the bottom line is I don’t care where the hospital staff come from, so long as they are skilled, qualified and I can tell what they are saying.

Hello world!

I suppose I should have a little gem of pithy comment ready for this, but I don’t.

This feels not unlike my first driving lesson (and that was a loooong time ago.) At the time I didn’t think I would ever get the hang of changing gear, braking, mirror, signal manoeuvre all at the same time, but I did.

Writing a blog (or more importantly, posting a blog) cant be as tricky can it? Well at least there is nothing to crash in too. Oh no, do I have to do three point turns?And a written test as well?