Flash! A- Haaaaaaaa!

Spent most of this morning filling out my tax return online. Every year I haver, and dither, and put it off, and put it off, and put it off, only to find, when I finally do get round to it, that the process of filling the form out is nothing like as horrendeous as I remember. Then I remember it not being as horrendeous as I remembered last year and wonder why I hadn't remembered that earlier.

Now I've filled that in, we can go on and fill in the Insanely Complicated Tax Credits Renewal Pack and hope we still qualify. If we don't we shall have to sell one of the children - in which case we might qualify and have enough money to buy her back. (Maybe we could just pawn them...)

Tonight I flopped on the sofa and fell asleep watching Flash Gordon, a film I remember seeing at the movies when it first came out. What an enjoyable piece of junk! I'm sorry I fell asleep. It had everything I admire and look for in a movie: wooden acting, corny dialogue, cliched set pieces, dodgy SFX, scantily clad people being tied to things and whipped in an unenthusiastic manner... oh I'm easily pleased.

how can you not like a movie with lines like:

"No! Not the bore worms!"

or dialogue like this:

Hedonia:
(Offering the captive Dale a drink)
It has no name. Many brave men died to bring it
here from the Galaxy of Pleasure... It will make
your nights with Ming more... agreeable.

Dale Arden:
Will it make me forget?

Hedonia:
No, but it will make you not mind remembering.

Got up, went shopping, came home, watched a bad movie, went to bed.

That about sums the day up.

It rained.

I went back to the doctors today to discuss the saga of the miniturised submarines poking about in my brain; the discussion boiled down to the simple facts:

If I have the scan and they find something worth operating on they will want to operate (why else do the scan?). There will then be a 20% risk of something happening. 'Something happening' being anything from me having a mild, recoverable stroke, to being 100% irrecoverably dead.

If I have the scan and they find something and I don't have anything done about it there is a 10% risk of the same 'something happening' in my lifetime. ie anytime between now and when I die, from whatever cause, which could be anything up to 40+ years from now. (Optomist)

If I have nothing done there is nothing I can change about my lifestyle that will make a blind bit of difference. If it is going to happen it will happen. All that will change if I know about it is I will be concious of the fact that I have an aneurism and all the attendant worries that will bring.

I think I am going pass on having the scan. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. The maths has convinced me that this is one of those sometimes.

I Had a Sausage Sandwhich for Lunch; I'm Not a Vegetarian After All

I'm being paid to play with kids again. Great fun. As part of some Highland Council money spending scheme I get to spend 4 days this week playing silly buggers with a whole load of 5 - 11 year olds. Nominaly they are called 'Drama Workshops' - but it's playing. I'm only assisting this year, which is a great relief, avoidence of responsibility being a really big part of my entire adult life, but it does mean I'm not getting £20 an hour which I did last year - less that a third of that in fact. One of the best bits about it though, is getting a break from Holly and Daisy for a few days. It seems perverse, playing with other people's children being a welcome break from playing with my own, but it is, and I am grateful for it.

This blog will be a year old next week, the longest time I have kept any form of diary in my life. I'll bake it a cake

I've Been Glued to The railway Track by a Dragon! - Quick, Get Your Dragon Glue Disolver!

I spent most of today laying concrete paving slabs around Mike and Morag's oil tank - something to with it being a condition of sale of their house, I'm not sure exactly why I was doing it but I promised I would, so I did - and I enjoyed myself. Today was the first time I have been away from the kids for a whole day, for ages, I can't remember how long it is since we had a rest from each other. I love my daughters, I really do, but lately things have been getting a bit tetchy between Holly and I. No one can spend 12 hours a day 7 days a week, for weeks on end in somebody else's company and not get a bit fed up with them from time to time - even if they are four and easily distracted.

Holly and are getting like that. It's hard. 'Living with a four year old', as someone smarter, funnier, and almost certainly better looking than I am once said, 'is like living with a psychotic dwarf.'

I'm working all next week and then again a couple of weeks later. I hope the break will do us both good. I love Holly very much but sometimes lately I have found it hard to like her very much. It hurts.

I Don't Like the Tomato - Go Away Tomato!

It is hot and sticky here at the moment as oposed to just plain hot like the rest of the UK. Down in England roads are melting and whole areas of the country are using water faster than the water companies can pump it to them. Here it is humid and I think that makes it worse. We're all wandering around like Tenesse Williams characters, fanning ourselves with whatever comes to hand and watching each other sweat.


It's too darn Hot.

Back from holiday!

Only took 10 hours to drive back and, as Merriol is going down with the snottynesses and not feeling to good, I drove the whole way myself. Furthest I have ever driven in my life. It is now several hours since we arrived and I still can't stop moving. I'm totally jittery. Everytime I shut my eyes everything comes rushing at me. It's a bit freaky. So, the kids are in bed, Merriol is in bed and I'm wandering around reclaiming my territory. Metaphoricaly peeing in the corners and pacing the bounderies growling at the other beta males. That sort of thing.

Grrrr.

Eleven hours to get to Sheffield - eleven sodding hours. Three quarters of one of them was spent stuck in a 'move five meters then switch off the engine for a bit, then move another five meters, nose to tail, type traffic jam on the M74. We could see the line of traffic appearing and disappearing over the hills away into the distance. We're in the center lane. It's hot and sticky real thunderstorm weather. Right on cue Holly says "I want a wee wee".

The thunderstorm broke as we arrived at the rented cottage high in the hills on the edge of the Peaks.

Huge flashes of lightning light up the sky. Thunder cracks. Wherever the lightning is hitting it is pretty close. Rain suddenly pours out of the sky in unbelievable quantities as Merriol and Len scurry backwards and forwards getting stuff out of the car and into the house as fast as they can. I have copped out of the getting wet game and stay in the house try and organise the incoming luggage out of their way, as soon as they lob a bag through the door, I whisk it away into the kitchen, living room or the bottom of the stairs.

At last everything is in. Merriol changes her trousers which are sodden and clinging to her in a very attractive, but uncomfortable manner and we flop on the sofas. We open a couple of beers. We are on holiday! After all the travelling, and driving, and keeping two hot bored kids amused in the back of a car we are finally on holiday.

We raise our beers in a toast, and as we do so there is a final Godallmighty crack of lightning outside and the electricity dies.

0 - 0

The power of thought. Engerland are out of the Whirled Cup and with British 'hopefuls' getting themselves thrashed out of Wimbledon as fast as they can it is now safe to go down south.  Unless of course the Tabloids come up with some 7 year old sporting wonder kid in the International Tiddlywinks friendly with the Faroe Islands.