Another Fine Use Of Vintage...

....too quick for me to grab the camera, Wilbur had just been sitting on these old imperial scales. I popped him back on, out of curiosity: he weighs 2 pounds. Don't ask me what that is in funny kg language... I can't/won't do metric, but its the same as a large bag of sugar;)

The gerbera plant next to the scales is Being Very Good and has 2 bee-yoo-ti-ful candy pink flahs now. Strange that, as when I bought it 6 or so weeks ago the flowers were cream'n'purple, the way passion fruit flowers are.  When I get my act together I'll put it in a bigger pot... who knows how big it could get or how many flahs we might get...?

In the Rest Of My Life, chaos reigns; the 14 year old has sort-of dropped out again, after 3 clashes with authority at school, each one sensationally mismanaged.... With that, and the long days off I have now that I'm not at the World of Work til after the summer holidays, I'm regularly dipping into The Bad Place that is inertia far too frequently. I've acquired more hauls of vintage frockery, which remain in bags until I can be arsed to to take photos.... I think I need a Plan Of Action...

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And now for the bit where I'm Not A Film Blogger But.... some lovely films I've seen recently:

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) - when Liz Taylor died I realised to my shame I'd never seen any of her films, like Butterfield 8, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Giant... This is the one with the iconic still of Liz wearing that white slip, great portrayal of family dynamics, especially if you're a daughter-in law...

A Very Long Engagement (2004, Audrey Tautou) - caught this accidentally late the other night and stayed up til stupid o'clock watching it as it was so lovely...

The Graduate (1967) - one I'd somehow never seen, more screamingly funny than I'd expected, and the frocks! The excellent hair! The chairs! The cigarettes! See it if you haven't... And obviously it has a dark undertow of tight morals, jealousies, and why getting married just because you're pregnant, like they had to do back In Them Times was So Wrong...

Moonrise Kingdom (2012, Wes Anderson) - lurved this, very very sweet and beautifully shot. Reminded me of Tim Burton's Big Fish...

Cosmopolis (2012) - I'll say nothing as this is new so don't want to risk a spoiler..... go see it and make your own minds up about this. Will it become seminal? Who can tell...

Making Myself A Bit Late For Work. For Real.

Ewwwwrrrrggghhh - back to the World of Work today, after 9, or is it, 10 days off. An utterly slack life indeed. No wonder I need to have a job - I obviously lack the willpower to hack it self-employed. Whatever, I was dumbstruck by How Did It Get That Dark Since I Last Got Up That Early? Despite 2 dreams torturing me that I've been Severely Late (9am and 3pm ....) I am still sitting here, stubbornly having a 2nd cup of black tea, with precisely 36 minutes to shower and find something presentable in which to leave the house.

No doubt Work Talk will be of How Dark It Was This Morning, and who the hell is Patrick Crawley from last night's Downton Abbey. I will, of course, be extremely one-up on helpful in the latter conversation, from watching the previous series. Though maybe less knowledgeable about why Mary seems to get romantically entangled with all her male cousins. Heir or not. Isn't that inter-breeding? Is that what the New Era they are talking about, at the end of the First World War, is supposed to eradicate? Matthew's legs are twitching... he may be back in the running. Literally.

Perfume Discoveries, Pop Art And Monochrome Tones

Today I had it all wrapped up. I was to be at the World of Work til 1, then free-wheeling the rest of the afternoon, doing exciting things. Like buying a ball of black wool at the market, to finish a black, grey and white scarf I've been knitting the past 2 evenings. And painting another dining room wall mid-grey... having an obsession with pop art and primary colours at the moment, so planning to put up some colourful prints on a darker background in the next few days.

Almost made myself late this morning as Jarvis Cocker was on 6Music, saying something about songs he used to write when he was a young'un. When I got there, the frenzy began - not enough staff, finding awol tutors, no coffee, stopping students gluing each others' faces, coping with students obsessed already by christmas... and doing overtime until 4 o'clock.

Got back. Lovely warm afternoon. Cup of tea and chocolate brioche. Out in the garden. Have an unofficial deal with the American neighbour to bring in each others' dustbins, whoever is around at the time. This involves navigating 2 huge wheelie bins round several corners and down an alleyway between the houses. How quaint - only up north, eh. Invariably there is cat crap somewhere in the alley. Which is not at all quaint, and the cats had been there again.

I wondered about spraying some old perfume around, to see if that would deter the moggies. Lancome's Magie Noire, which I bought a decade ago, has always been a bit heavy and noticeable on me, maybe ok in winter. I could just waste the rest of it on the alleyway... I squirted my wrists, and sniffed, googled the ingredients, sniffed it some more... Found a charming perfume blog and signed up to it... and decided it was definitely too good to waste on the alleyway. I shall wear it over the next few days and expect people to be asking me what it is. Or else some cats may run the other way. And my spam box will get filled up with garden pest deterrent products.

The Other Side Of The Night Before...

Back on to my "regular" World of Work timetable, and my bodyclock has finally adjusted to the legging-it-like-a-loony pace. I left WoW yesterday, having contributed to the well-being of those I was in charge of by having:
* learnt a new Australian phrase "shag on a rock"
* drunk 3 coffees
* had a lunchtime conversation with the girls about waxing and men with ear hair (euwwwwwggghhh)
* planned some Official Day Off time running about town, dropping stuff off to the charity shop and picking up another old Quality Street tin from the sorting office...got to lurve those mauve patterned beauties.

For once I was ahead of the game with thinking about dinner - something italian, sloppy and autumnal now that we've got the post-heatwave cool-down. And then I remembered... the 12 year old will be bringing home pizza from his school cooking class. So not only do I have the day off today, I don't have to cook tonight! And I just might go and watch the Liver Birds in a minute - boots and beehives - and then I will get myself out, instead of having just a bit more sofatime...

Ballroom Dancing, Blur and Bad School

A while ago I kept banging on about the Pixies, since when I don't think I've mentioned music much. One of the things that gets me to put a cd* on is to drown out the awareness of the low-level noise coming from our neighbours. The random amateur carpentry games their 4 year old plays, the accelerating vocalisms of their baby. Not the shouty lady who rants at her husband, who we recently discovered has taken to peppering his gujarati with "fuck off". 50 years in this country, and the local dialect is rubbing off on him... No, we are blessed not only to live in a terrace, but one in which the party walls** on either side are Very Thin. So I'm listening to Think Tank, the massively vermillion-fabric'd cd Blur did about 9 years back. Damon Albarn and Kristin Hersh's voices are always good to re-tilt the axis in a mad day...

Because it has been one of those. Back in the swing of the World of Work, with a morning where the recent training actually came in useful in a fairly heavy situation, and where I'd got the 14 year old off to school. By bus for the first time. All good so far. And then his school sent an automated text that he'd got a detention to do that lunchtime... no explanation. And possibly the best way to ensure his continued enthusiasm to attend, with a less than 50% attendance so far this month.

No one at the end of the phone knew anymore than it was for "failing to follow instructions". Yes, that's why he's not been at school for the past year, etc, etc, and why he's under their monitoring... By now already late for the afternoon session I was working in, I got hold of someone who was able to tell me he'd walked out of school 2 hours previously. Although fairly confident his homing instinct, and desire for a quiet spot with his computer, would guarantee he'd be at home, I excused myself and went straight home to see what was what. After which I calmed myself down by catching the tail end of a programme about the coachload of ballroom dancers who'd been called in to be in the Magical Mystery Tour film.






* Too old to be trained to use an iPod. That's for when I'm 80. And I usually forget about 6Music.

** To non-Brit readers, that's a technical term for the bricks 'twixt you and the neighbours. Not a wall covered in lurex, Twister mats and balloons.

Time Flies

No, that is (probably) not a new species of nuisance, buzzing, insect. It is that I have just done a Proper Day's Work for the first time in months, not counting the rather rubbish 2 days of training at the World of Work, which were short bursts of relevant and some utterly irrelevant corporate speak, intermingled with hanging around in corridors being told off for being noisy and critiquing the free buffet. Therefore, it is suddenly 17.43, even though it feels like I only just got in, and I've had to quickly put the oven on. The 12 year old is in a pie-mood, so its some packaged vegetarian interpretation of cornish pasties tonight.

Another bizarre but not-unexpected start to today - especially if you include the dream I had about watching the clock tick by past 9am and not being at work on time - with the 14 year old refusing to go to sleep last night, probably til around 1am, then me waking him at 7am so we could set off at 8.15. Wide awake but acting catatonic, blanking me. How do they do that? Decided not to talk about the situation at work unless anyone asked me - I think someone believed me when I said I'd been away, working on my tan. I still have to pin my boss down to explain it all, and give the official piece of paper, from the gp and all.

The Day After Tomorrow...

... is Back To The World Of Work. Although seawater getting into the streets of New York over the past few days does seem a bit familiar too...

What have I done to prepare for re-entering the World Of Hectic? The life that is getting myself into a fit, presentable and coherent state, and managing to prise 2 similarly prepared offspring out the door at an unholy hour of the day? Which I have not had to do since early June? Well, not that much really.

• Last night I dreamt that the 13 year old's friend, who will also be at his new school, was driving a milk float whilst trying to learn Polish by linguaphone. The friend has autism, and the multi-tasking was not going well.
• Tomorrow is the day the 13 year old becomes 14. Having a birthday the day before going back to school is a bit bleurrggghh at the best of times. It being the day before, when he hasn't got a settled sleep pattern, a teetering inclination to go to the new school anyhow after dropping out for a year, etc, is perhaps not the best day to fill him with chocolate, birthday cake 'n' all that. Luckily he hasn't discovered booze or drugs yet...
• So we have a Sort Of Plan. Yesterday we went out and did some lovely spending on things that currently make him happy - hoodies, lego, lunch... so we can spend tomorrow a bit more quietly (but still stuff ourselves with cake). And I will keep my fingers crossed.

As for myself, my sort-of plans to sell, sell, sell lots of vintage loveliness during the summer panned out into procrastination, as I ignored the plastic crates piled high that prevented me from getting to my wardrobe area, and thus forced me to create even more piles of not-put-away clothes. Not a good scene. All that I managed to tick off the list was some speedway badges from the 70's, a wooden chair, and a book. Not much of a dent in the mess that has overtaken my room...

With typical good timing I have, at the eleventh hour, gone into decluttering overdrive, and decided Its All Got To Go. Now. I've spent 2 evenings brutally sorting out what to get rid of. 3 bags for the charity shop, and a 4th ready to fill today of more stuff I don't wear.

Oh, and I did some stupid thrifty fence mending on Saturday too - which involved creating a support for a rotten fence post out of a plastic dustbin filled with bricks from a skip. The neighbour is American, and likes his yard Tidy. Part of his fence leaning into my garden was not doing it for him. And given the hurricane conditions over his homeland, I thought having the fence nice'n'straight would give him a bit of zen. 

So I'm a bit tired, have muscle fatigue, and will probably oversleep on Thursday. Or not be able to sleep a wink in a blitz of over-exhausted insomnia.

Not Much Going On

Oh the folly of last week's blitz on the kitchen. It was meant to lead to grand things, such as skirting boards being finished off in the dining room, anti-winter insulation devices being, well, devised for this cold victorian house... I have just got round to pouring a cement mix into the corner that the dishwasher usually occupies, so am technically still doing the kitchen. And its very boring.... and now The World Of Work has decided to have a staff meeting this week (I know! And I'm officially on holiday and all) and some training has to be done next week. Frankly m'dear, I couldn't give a damn...

The other thing I told myself I would be doing with all this free time is ebay selling. There was another free-to-list weekend - which turned me completely off the idea, as I cannot ever seem to do anything when it is supposed to be done. Ah well, will just have to pay those extra pennies if I ever get round to listing all that stuff languishing in the loft. A buyer has just paid by e-cheque, which has knocked 44p off the amount I got from them, the cheek of it. So I'll have to find out how to not accept those next time. Bah....

I'm off now - to burn the dinner, or embark on some similar catastrophic domestic failure.

Sand(paper), Bucket And Trowel

I'm being super-duper focussed at the moment (can't exactly say this week in case I jinx myself) spending some hard-core time fixing up the house. The house that is perpetually unfinished. Well, the annual long summer holiday has now started and I have 2 AND A HALF MONTHS OFF WORK!! Am I in the right job or what! Obviously the pay for only working 9.5 months a year is a bit of a drawback, but I prefer the time over the cash... Have been working my way round the kitchen since yesterday - tacking an extension lead along one wall (for the dishwasher; having paid an electrician 2 years ago to put in sockets, only to decide to change the layout el cheapo-style), putting up a rail for the tea-towel & oven gloves, and this morning I've sanded the long wall above the sideboard and cooker so I can finally finish painting that wall. Dull stuff, but its high-time it got done. Then all the vintagey bits will come out of storage and go back on the shelves to get greasy and dusty  to look magnificent again ;)

Ah well, tea-break in the garden over - better fix another shelf, wipe the dust off myself and go buy the paint. Far too messy in there to cook tonight - it'll be 2-for-1 pizza delivery!

Friday?

Ok, a lame title for a post, but it sort of sums up a week that's zig-zagged to its Traditional End, as in the Great British BlowYerWagePacketDownT'Pub in a 60s kitchen-sink-drama-film sort of way. Yes, probably that film with Rachel Roberts in.

With a week that didn't really start til Wednesday, is it any surprise that I was a bit gobsmacked to find it was Friday, already?

Its not that I've been hibernating til Wednesday, or been on a far-flung jaunt to a time-zone challenged somewhere. Just that the 12 year old and I have been jammy enough to be still on our Easter holidays til Wednesday, which is when hurtling around at crackingly early times of the morning kicked in again. And any first-day-back-to-school-and-World-of-Work always feels like a Monday. Hence, 3 days in and its Friday. Already. Heck. Brilliant.

The day before that I had a birthday. Which was a delightful more-chocolate-than-usual fuelled 24 hours, and I pretended to be sophisticated by adding brandy to my coffee all night. Though I would go for amaretto next time.

Wednesday  (which I seem to be name-checking a lot, but more in a failing point-in-time reference than for any other reason) was spent trawling the many charity shops in a nearby little town, having capuccinos with big fat cookies, and scoring £14 worth of cardis, tops, picture frames, and a 1973 book on lacemaking and crochet which is going on ebay.

From then on it seemed any time I wasn't at work I was shopping, for two birthdays. There was sensible present buying - jewellery, hand cream - for a work friend, and then there was silly stuff like glittery beach bags, garden gadgets and a fruitless trawl of more charity shops and the vintage market for bits for my mum*. By this time my head was spinning with the sight of reduced-to-£2 Primark cushions emblazoned with Attack of The 60 Foot Killer Diva, and all manner of kitchenalia, old pictures, and more jewellery so I retreated home. To eat nearly a whole packet of flaky pastry cheese twists and move only the fingers I'm using to type this.



*Which is what I always end up doing before working out what main, proper-money, thing to get her. This can be hard work, given that she recently bought me an itchy blanket-fabric cocktail dress and a blouse with whacking great pockets on the front that even Yootha Joyce would have cast to the back of the wardrobe. But she knows to include the receipts...

A Whiter Shade Of Grey

Nanoseconds til I really must be going. To get ready to be vibrant and on-the-ball for The World Of Work. And, no, I am not a football coach. Not even for gun-toting Ashley Cole. I have opinionated teenagers today. It would be mildly more bearable if these opinions were vaguely related to what they were meant to be doing, but no, it'll be as random and disruptive-intent as ever. Maybe I'll take a starting pistol in my handbag today?

And, added pressure, we are being officially checked at the moment, that we are not sitting back filing our nails, reading Heat magazine on our kindles, or worse, writing their coursework for them. So, I must flee to the wardrobe department and try to pull together a Very Good Outfit indeed.

Au revoir for now. And thank frisbees its Friday.