Community Plays and Toad Avoidance

Morning!
After a brief period of non-blogging, I am back and bursting with enthusiasm about the Builth Wells Community Play, to which I went on Saturday evening.

The drive down on a wet Saturday night was fraught with toad avoidance as our slimy little friends are hacking across the roads as slowly as they possibly can - mainly because they are horrified at the amount of their dead pals that already haven't made it. A road by a lake has been closed in Powys as so many of the squelchy things are crossing it and boy-racers think it's great to go Toad Skidding in their XR3s (I may be a little behind the times with regard to the make of boy-racer cars, but you get the picture?) However, I think I made it without splatting too many of them, but only because I went at five miles per hour. Although I hate toads and frogs with a passion, I still don't like the idea of squashing them, mainly because the thought of them going pop sends me into even more shudders of horror.

I met my friend at her house and we walked to the show only to find that on the way back the little blighters had made it to her road and they were everywhere. My friend's partner is all countryside and he was looking at them and I was trying so hard to not show my fear as I was sure he would have flipped them at me - and he probably would have, had he not just been playing guitar at a Commmunity Play as was feeling all benevolent towards his neighbours.

I made it into the car with only a few squelches beneath my feet and thought I was safe, but then sat on a burger that Huw had left there a few days before... (damn those slimy gherkins)

Oh, and the show was great - I didn't understand all the jokes, unlike the clever bloke in front of me, but it was great.

Lastly, a Well Done to my little sister Abby who has apparently just clinched a first class degree in Engineering. Well done you swot. (I could have got a first class degree if I had wanted one, if I had done a bit more work and had a slightly different genetic make up...)

Do as I say...

Hello!

After doing a little marketing work for a local business, I decided to review what marketing I have been doing for my own - of course, the answer is none of that which I have been advising as essential.

I had a quick peek at Amazon to see how Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons is doing in the ratings and saw that it has rocketed to 351,000th best selling position. This is good news as at one point there were over a million other books stashed in Amazon's damp warehouses that were selling better than mine. So that was good to see. What was not so good to see is that the related items that are on the "People who bought this book also bought..." section included Sleeping Beauty (I bet I know who that was) and Only Men Aloud. Come on people, if you buy the next one, please can you buy it at the same time as you are buying a Dickens?

It does remind me of the time that Huw bought my mum a couple of Lace Making books for Christmas and kept getting emails from Amazon about whether he fancied going for a special offer on Knitting Rabbits for Easter Hats or Making Vests Even Scratchier With Unwashed Yarn books.

My favourite thing of the week was finding our girls bouncing on the bed playing the Grandpa Game - which is basically jumping up and down with their trousers pulled up to their chests. I dread to think what the Mother Game consists of...

Life and Garage Laundry

Nights out - but at what cost?

Last night, I went out for about the second time in six months. The occasion - the local Motorclub's 40th anniversery. Huw used to do rally driving and spent his weekends putting knackered old Fords back together. Personally, I hate anything to do with motor sports, avoiding cars whenever I can and using them simply for A to B journeys and storing apple cores and lollipop wrappers. Therefore, the evening wasn't one I was presuming to enjoy.

The first problem came in the form of a little text from the babysitter that had been booked for four weeks, saying that something (i.e something better) had come up and that she couldn't make it - perhaps she'd come round again when the weather was better. A mate was hurriedly roped in.

We were anticipating leaving at seven p.m, so at fourish, I thought I'd sneak off for a half an hour's snooze to set me up for the night. I woke at half six. The children had not been fed or watered and no copius notes written about what they might want / do.

Our mate arrived amongst a frantic hunt for my shrug, in the same monster truck that was featured in the blog of 5th Oct. I found a pair of trousers that would allow me to sit down and we sprinted for the car.

A friend was also dragged along by her husband who used to shout "litter!" as he drove round corners. The friend and I decided that we couldn't allow it to be a completely wasted evening and so ordered cranberry juice all night so that at least we could flush out our urinery tracts.

Despite all that, it was actually good fun, although the three hours of amusing speeches could perhaps have been squeezed into two, the mash could have had a little less glue in it and it would have been nice if they'd turned the heating on. I won a box of chocolates in the raffle and am sat here now with them being thrown across the room into my open mouth, each with a request for another cup of tea.

By midnight I was getting a little figety, as the nominated driver I was getting tired and a little worn by conversations about the gear box on a series 47. By 1.30, I was yawning as loud as I could whilst lying on the carpet next to the dance floor. Luckily another little text saved the day:

"Some tw*t has driven into the back of my truck" it read.

With relief in my heart, we went home to find the monster truck surrounded by broken glass with a dent in the back big enough to hide a sheep. The friend, who sometimes phones just to tell Huw how much he loves his truck, was sad, but pragmatic, having rolled it himself in the snow earier in the week.

To put the tin hat on his night, we have now leant him our car so he has to drive around in something that has so much litter in, it makes people feel sick.

A good night all round I think.

Snow, snow and yet more snow!

Fantastic! Snow! We had a few little flurries yesterday and in between flurries, I moved the whole of the log pile into the house, mice and all. I then shook a load more mice out of an old blanket that is kept in the barn and wrapped it around our pipes. We borrowed a DVD, then sat on the sofa and waited to be snowed in.

In the attempt to distract the girls from noticing that they were going to bed, I told them that if it snowed, they would go to nursery on a sledge in the morning. They immediately lay down and went to sleep - I will have to use that one again. This morning, it was straight to the window to see and, yep, snow. So I put my back out again, dragging the little ones along, scraping the bottom of the sledge on the frozen dog turds stuck to the pavement. It was great. By the time we got there, the little one clutching her carrot that I'd kindly donated for the nursery snowman, they both had wet coats and trouser legs full of snow.

Huw and I then started the process of stockpiling tins that is so essential for a snowstorm in this country. We now have enough tins of beans to keep our colons fresh until mid summer.

We then had a good five minutes watching the Council Man scraping snow from the pavements, turning it from a pile of snow that is quite easy to walk through to a lethal layer of compacted ice. We didn't feel that we could face staying any longer to see who broke their wrist on it first - if I don't manage to write another blog this week, you will know that karma has stepped in and it is me that is having to wear elasticated skirts and slippers as I can't do up buttons and laces for six weeks...