Tag Archives: M T M Makes a complete tit of herself

17 Nov 2025 · 4:38 pm

Jump, you bugger! Jump!

Into this here blanket what we are holding out and it will be alright …

Well it’s been an interesting week and a busy one, not necessarily in the best way although there have been good bits. On the up side, the editing is creeping forward. I’m a third of the way through now! Woot. Go me. On the downside, Real Life just will not fuck off and leave me alone to finish my sodding book. I give you this week’s examples.

First up, a piece of such gargantuan twattery on my behalf it defies belief. Let me begin at the beginning. McSon has bought a car. Not just any car, because he’s our son so he’s not going to buy a normal vehicle. Nope. He’s bought himself a Renault 5. He’s not passed his test yet, so at the moment McOther or I have to sit with him while he drives it to school. Then I, or his dad, hop into the driving seat and bring it home again.

We picked up this thing just over ago. Seven days, people. It is his absolute pride and joy. There are only two this colour on the road in the UK. It’s a once ubiquitous thing that has become a rareity. It’s boxy and French and a scream to drive.

Last Thursday, five days after picking it up, we did the school run, after which I took it to the gym first and then home. As I backed it onto the drive I managed to completely cock up the angle and as I backed it past next door’s garage wall there was a loud and terrifying bang. I stopped. Then, very slowly, I backed up.

There was no scraping noise! Hoorah.

Ah yes, that was because the bumper was on the ground.

Arse.

I got out and then, becasue I’m fifty something and a bit hormonal at the best of times, I burst into tears. Then I got back into the car. Parked it where it should be, went and picked up the bumper and carried it to just in front of the car.

I looked at it in horrified silence.

I cried.

Then I looked at it again and cried some more.

Probably a little bit like this

Then, accepting the fact I was not going to stop crying any time soon, I went inside and tried to explain to my McOther half what had just happened.

‘I’ve …’ squeak.

‘What’s happened?’

‘I’ve … squeak-ity squeak.’

‘You’ve been robbed?’

‘No… hic,’ deep breath. ‘I’ve broken,’—I stopped to make a string of noises like a sealion, or perhaps, an asthmatic duck before continuing—‘McMini’s car!’ More wailing and gnashing of teeth as husband patiently hugged me and I soaked his shirt in tears and snot. Nice.

We went to have a look. Miraculously, the bodywork was fine, so there was that, although I’d managed to rip off pretty much every single fixy bit on the bumper that we might use to put it back. Also it had a big rip in it although it hadn’t bent out of shape or anything, there’s just a tear. I’d also smashed the indicator bulb but, miraculously, not the indicator glass.

McSon had to be collected at 5.25. We had about 4 hours.

Fuck.

We started with the bulb. McOther brought the bumper in and set about finding washers, bolts screws etc that might allow us to put it back in away that would be strong enough to keep it there. I also suggested that since it looked as if I’d compltely bollocksed it, I might be prudent to get a new bumper. There was one on-line, pick up only, in Liverpool.

‘It’s only 500 miles. I’ll drive up there and get it,’ I said, thinking logically as always.

‘Let’s not be hasty,’ said McOther.

OK so McOther thought he might be able to get it back on, but if we couldn’t, there might be other options. My car is fibreglass, so I reckoned if I rang my mechanics I might at least be able to take the bumper to their fibreglass bloke so I could tell McSon, when I picked him up, that the bumper was already away to be fixed. While McOther checked the part number of the indicator bulb, I rang the mechanic’s to ask.

The one I spoke to didn’t sound convinced, he thought their fibreglass guy was way too expensive.

‘Is the bumper off?’ he asked me, and I explained it was.

‘Do you want to bring it down here and we can see if we can put it back on again?’

These two guys are genius mechanics. Very, very capable and as absolutely honest and straight as they come. Did I? You bet I fucking did.

But first to Halfords to get the bulb. That done, McOther had already loaded the bumper into the car and put the bulb in. It wasn’t working but … sod that. Away I drove down the A14 at a stately 65, which is about its top speed, to see if I could salvage anything from this horrific mess.

Did I mention that these mechanics are genius? Yeh, well they are. They’re called Gerald and Neil! Hello there chaps! I chatted away with them while they calmly and methodically went round the car, reassembling all the bust bits and somehow putting the back on the car. It took them about 40 minutes.

I told them they’d saved my fucking life and asked how much?

Nothing they said.

Blimey but people are lovely sometimes aren’t they?

Now I must remember to secretly ring when the lady who does their billing and accounts is in and ask her what their favourite tipple is. Because if they won’t take money for saving my arse, I have to give them stuff! Mwahahargh. And jam! I have some jam they might enjoy.

Incidentally, I would tell you to take your cars to these guys but as I understand it, they’ve no room for any more punters … unless your car is really interesting, then I suspect they might squeak you in. They only fix Lotuses though … well … except when they’re putting the bumpers back on a Renault 5, obviously.

Head desk. Or at least head dashboard in this case.

What an absolute melt I am. Jeez.

But they did a fantastic job, as they always do, and I drove to pick up McSon with almost imperceptable damage. He drove home and when we got onto the drive, I broke the news to him.

‘It was the nightmare weird steering wasn’t it?’ he said.

It is a bit different to modern cars, about four turns lock-to-lock as opposed to what feels like about one in mine.

‘That and I drove over a brick,’ I said.

He told me it was just stuff, and not to worry and that it looked OK and he was thinking of getting a body kit for it anyway. I could have hugged him but he’s 17 so that kind of stuff is absolutely not allowed from his mother. I wish I could have found out another way but I was extremely proud of my son over this. He had good reason to go into orbit but he didn’t. Although he is being very sarcastic and taking the piss out of me constantly, not that there is ever a time when he’s not sarcastic and taking the piss out of me constantly.

Then there’s McCat. McCat is not well, he has been a bit drooly for a week or two but now his fur feels a bit dry and tufty, and he seems lethargic, sad and generally very sorry for himself. I took him to the vet for a routine check up and blood tests on Monday and mentioned the drooling but they couldn’t find anything out of order and suggested I keep an eye. So I did. The drooling got worse and I decided it was not normal. I booked an appointment yesterday and after a really good look in his mouth, which he didn’t like, the vet spotted a red patch under his tongue.

Picture of a tabby and white cat sitting on a desk in front of an opened computer.

My theory is that he has tried to eat yet another thing he should have avoided and that there’s something stuck there, like a grass seed, or most likely a bit of dried up lemon grass. Cats are not supposed to eat lemon grass. I looked this up because mine does. Try telling him that though.

I’ve Taken Steps and locked the lemongrass away. If I so much as look at the door to the room it’s in, he’s there. It’s a bit dried up this time of year but a couple of weeks ago, sure enough, I had to go in there and the furry scrote was in like flynn. I suspect a horrible dried up spiky bit has got stuck in his tongue. The vet agreed that it was probably something like that.

Having booked him in to have a minor op to explore the problem area next week, I took him home. Sunday morning, he was completely off his wet food as well as the dry. I have no idea if he’s drinking. I hope he is but he’s an utter plank so it’s not beyond the possiblility he isn’t.

Suddenly I was looking at the fact that, if he doesn’t eat or drink until Tuesday, he may be so dehydrated they won’t be able to get a line into him and he’ll die. Because I’m not melodramatic and I don’t catastrophise at all.

Ever.

With that rather horrid thought in mind, I went off to do my weekly bit of God bothering on Sunday morning, convinced I’d be calling the vet’s for emergency surgery when I got home. Instead, I chopped the food a bit smaller, loudly, and with a great deal of cheerful chirrupping and burrping McCat appeared and hoovered it up in short order.

Phew … for now.

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Tagged as an author with children, author blog, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, McMini, off topic

2 Nov 2025 · 6:28 pm

Did I eat that? Yes I did!

Misadventures in food …

This week, I felt the urge to write something light and pithy because it seems to me there’s not quite enough of that in the world at the moment. To that end, I thought I’d describe some of the bold culinary experiments I have undertaken recently. So here we go. One bit of this has been used elsewhere, the rest is virgin territory. First up (do skip to the cake wrecks section if you have read my October newsletter) …

MTM’s adventures in foraging.

One thing I particularly enjoy is getting something for nothing. Enter foraging. Not only does foraging involve getting free food but, in the case of mushrooms, it’s free food that is about one calorie per metric tonne. If you are trying to eat sensibly and healthily and you are doing that with a dash of food group and calorie control, this is a bit of a bonus.

In the picture we have: top left beefsteak fungus and dryad’s saddle from above and then showing the underside. On the bottom, parasol top and underside.

For the last three years I’ve been finding parasol mushrooms, dryad’s saddle and beefsteak mushrooms in the same places and putting photos on a foraging group on Facebook to confirm my efforts at I.D. This year, the fourth, I was finally confident that, having had the experts agree with my identification three years running, I could probably pick and eat them without risk of death. So when we had a muggy week last week and a lot popped up, I threw caution to the wind and picked them.

Then I ate them, so you don’t have to.

In a lot of cases there are reasons the edible foods in our hedgerows have fallen out of use. Usually it’s either because they take from here to the arse end of eternity to prepare, there’s something that looks exactly like them which will kill you or they merely taste vile.

These were surprisingly good.

Beefsteak fungus is offputting. It’s red/maroon, glistens like chopped liver and it oozes red goo. It’s always a joy to find one at the furthest point from the car on your walk when you have nothing to carry it in. Bearing it proudly home in your hand, past other walkers who look at you nervously, clearly wondering why you’ve just walked a five mile circuit with a pile of chopped liver in one mitt (yes, that’s what it looks like) can be a challenge if you are easily embarrassed. I found the Dryad’s saddle closer to so I didn’t have to carry it quite so far. Typical as it doesn’t ooze anything. Although it served to hide the beefsteak mushroom so the are-you-a-serial-killer looks from other walkers stopped, which was nice. The parasol mushroom came the next day. I found it walking round the grounds of McMini’s school waiting for the rush hour traffic to die down before driving home.

In the picture above we have, top left, Beefsteak Fungus, cooked, Top right, Dryad’s saddle chopped and uncooked. Bottom Right, Beefsteak fungus, chopped and uncooked, and Bottom left, Dryad’s saddle, cooked.

Verdict

Parasol mushrooms are lovely. I will eat more. Dryad’s saddle is supposed to smell like watermelon or cucumber. Actually it’s the smell of a flavour. That flavour is when you pick and eat a raspberry from the garden and there’s one of those tiny brown shield bugs in it. Not 100% pleasurable.

Texture: The texture of parasols is like a shop bought mushroom but slightly more watery.

Dryad’s saddle on the right in the pic, cooked (bottom) and uncooked (top) has a fantastic texture (although you need to use commonsense with which bits are edible and which are too tough).

Beefsteak cooked (top left) uncooked (bottom left). I think we can safely say the texture has to be managed correctly. On it’s own, well, you know that bit in The Blob where it comes through the grating in the cinema? If you don’t I expect you can google it. Yeh well, if you could imagine eating something of a similar texture to that you’re probably in the right area. BUT if you cut it very small, fry it with onions, garlic, tomatos, a glug of wine, herbs de province and throw in a little cream and some pasta and it’s bloody delicious.

Scores on the doors: Parasol 10/10 om nom nom. Very good with onions and cream or paired with scrambled eggs and marmite toast. Dryad’s saddle: 5/10 smells like a shield bug and sadly has a tang of that in the palatte too, only good with other mushrooms I suspect but the texture is mucking farevellous. Beefsteak: 7/10 quite an acidic taste and the texture is gopping so you need to cut it small and cook it with the right things but if you do you stop noticing the texture and it tastes fabulous. I can take or leave dryad’s saddle but will definitely eat parasols and beefsteak fungs again.

And of course, extra bonus points, I’m still alive. Which is nice.

I also had a giant puffball that week but I haven’t mentioned it because I’m confident identifying those so there wasn’t that same will-I-die-frisson.

Cake Wrecks

Shortly after these adventures, still basking in my sense of self-sufficiency, we jetted off to Portugal for a week. While there, I enjoyed a special pudding of the Algarve called, Torta De Armêndoa, or Torta De Armêndoa do Algarve to give it its proper name. This looks like a kind of wholemeal swiss roll with something very reminiscent of custard through it instead of icing. I love this pudding. It is one of my favourite things.

However as our favourite Algarvian haunt becomes a bit more curry-and-chips and a bit less pork-and-clams or fried-squid, Torta De Armêndoa do Algarve has become harder and harder to find … to the point where I was only able to have one portion. Meanwhile, my other favourite pudding, Dao Rodrigues (imagine baklava made with egg instead of pastry—it’s a lot more delicious than it sounds peps) was literally nowhere to be seen. There was only one thing for it. I was going to have to find out how to make these things, and then cook them. Myself.

Knowing that Dao Rodrigues requires special equipment and is insanely complicated to make, I realised this was not something I could learn to do straight away. Torta de Armandoa, though. That was a different matter entirely. I looked up ‘traditional food of the Algarve’ and found a picture of this thing. Then—God bless Google Lense—I searched for it with the legend, ‘recipe for this dish’ and after years of crap results for something similar, with a similar name, which is not the pudding I was looking for, Google finally came up trumps. Woot.

Picture of whole meal looking swiss roll filled with yellow icing.

Torta De Armêndoa do Algarve

Thank you to this lovely blog, where I found this picture and the recipe. I have posted the picture so you can see what the pudding looks like in real life, although I think most of the ones I’ve seen in the Algarve tend not to be iced on top. Anyway, onwards.

The basic gist is that the wholemeal-looking bit is a meringue with ground almonds in it and the zest of an orange.

Anyway, the meringue bit done; egg whites and sugar whipped, almonds and orange zest folded in, I then set about making the custardy-icing-bit which is interestingly counter-intuitive to someone versed in making things like Real Custard, with eggs. Basically, you make a sugar syrup, then you stir in the yolks from the eggs you used to make the meringue. Then, in the antithesis of any sane custard-making technique, you heat it, as if you’re trying to make it go like scrambled eggs, stirring all the time. Instead of going lumpy it thickens up to a similar consistency to butter icing. Weird, but also kind of cool. What I suspect I should have done here, just to keep the whole thing from getting too sickly, is to use two table spoons of the juice of the orange I’d zested, rather than the two table spoons of water suggested in the recipe.

Once that’s done and the ‘cake’ bit is cooked, you let everything cool and then you get the flat tray-baked cake, spread the bright yellow custardy-gloop over the cake. That lovely line from The Beatles’ I Am The Walrus

‘yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye’

was going through my head all the while I did this. Because I’m classy like that. The final results did nothing to dispel that particular earworm which continued relentlessly through my head, on loop as I regarded the results of my labours.

Yes. I give you Torta De Armêndoa, do Algarve.

You can see why the earworm persisted can’t you? I mean, it looks more like a surgical truss covered in pus but in my defence here people, it was surprisingly tasty. I present for your perusal a slice on a plate that looks a lot more like the real thing than this somewhat terrifying view from one end.

We had friends round for dinner so I tried it out on our brave diners. Luckily I’d already done them some prawns they’d enjoyed, so they trusted me. Amazingly, they liked it so much that when I offered them a chunk to take home, they rapidly accepted. Although they forgot it—which was a shame—because it meant I had to eat both their slices, with a cuppa, a few minutes ago.

The rest of it is sitting on a different plate with a glass bowl over the top which makes it look like a domed exhibit at some victorian shop of horrors … or possibly an art installation made from surgical waste.

Plate with a blue rim with a circle design at quarters, a red on yellow each side and a yellow on green at the front. On the plate is a swiss roll style cake which has been left overnight with a glass bowl over the top (still in place in the photo). Yellow custard-coloured icing is oozing from between the rolls of the Swiss roll so it doesn’t really look like a cake at all. It’s all sat on a wooden table with other bowls in the background one black with a lid and one translucent plastic with green leaves inside.

I know, terrifying.

Verdict

Well, yes, my Torte de Amêndoa, do Algarve does look like an utter abomination, but it tasted pretty good and more to the point, quite authentic. Despite containing enough sugar to induce a diabetic coma in a large elephant, the presence of almonds and egg seems to have tempered the sweetness considerably. The orange zest also helps on this score.

Looking at mine compared to the original on west coast cooking blog, I think I should probably have given the egg yolks a proper full-on beating, instead of just flapping at them ineffectually with a fork to get the stringy bits out. Think more fizzy-omelette-comme-Mere-Poulard than the somewhat desultory stir that I did.

Additionally, the texture of mine has come out a bit stodgier, I suspect, down to the fact UK ground almonds are ground up much smaller and peeled first. I have bought some straightforward almonds (un salted and unpeeled). Next time I’ll whack a few of these in the blender and see if I get a closer texture to the Algarvian original. I think I’ll also try adding a little of the orange juice to the sugar syrup because it could be a little less sweet, even if it was deliciously eggy.

Eight out of ten, then. I will definitely try this again.

Last but not least …

I have finished my latest book. I’m just doing the final sweep now before I format it and send it off to the beta readers. It’s not my best work, but it’s the middle of three and I have a decent idea where the rest is going to go, so I am extremely happy.

If you want to volunteer to beta read it, you can find more information, and a form to sign up here.

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Tagged as author blog, author parent, full time mum writing, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, women in sci-fi, women writers, writer

1 May 2025 · 3:41 pm

Living the dream … as always

Hello there, yes, still alive. Things are busy though and I have books to write. I’m determined to publish a bloody book this year if it’s the last chuffing thing I do (and at this rate, it probably will be).

As a result I am working on two at once, the dementia memoir the first of the two sequels to Too Good To Be True. Yes, there are going to be two and Lord Vernon is in them as well. The first of those is so close to completion it hurts and is quite easy to write at the moment although I suspect that is merely because the dementia one is really hard and my brain’s Centre of Procrastination has turned to the only thing to hand.

As part of this, I’ve been working with a lovely blogging friend on this one, because I think I need to do it as part of the healing process. I’ve been trying to pin down what I want it to be about and I’m beginning to think that the only way I’m going to do that is to write a lot of it. BUT I’m also thinking that I may have hit on a way to write it that would give me scope to plait the three different strands of memoir stuff together coherently; funny stories, family history and Dad and Mum’s respective journey’s so … woot.

Garden Wildlife

No seriously, in a town, but yes, there is. For a couple of years now, we’ve had a hedgehog in the garden, who I have privately christened spiny Norma. Norma is fucking enormous, seriously, I shit you not. When I realised she had hoglets, I started feeding her. We use dry cat food, not hedgehog food because hedgehog food production is unregulated and they put things like mealworms in which are actually extremely bad for hedgehogs and make them ill. Kitten food is the best thing to use apparently, because the kibbles are nice and small.

This year, when I realised she was back again, I decided to buy a wildlife cam. I researched cameras and prices and found that one type seemed to get recommended somewhere on most of the top 10 lists so I decided that would be a good one.

Grainy black and white night-vision photo of a hedgehog crossing a patio towards a food bowl. The hedgehog is in the centre and the ground before her slightly over exposed while behind is the hint of folding table and darkness.

The retail price was £99 which is quite a massive wad to stump up for a trail cam so I shelved the idea until, doing more research to find a cheaper alternative, I discovered one that most of the top ten camera articles had a link to for less than £50 on Amazon. Much as I dislike buying from Amazon, it was a market place person rather than the company, itself, so I bought it.

It looks the business but needed an SD card. I have two 32gb SD cards which I used to use in a bullet cam I transferred between my car and on my bike. It was brilliant but unfortunately, after about 6 months, it started randomly turning itself off so I’ve stopped using it. I found the spare SD card I had for it only last week but this week when my new camera arrived could I find that spare SD? Could I bollocks? Could I even find the bullet cam to take the one out of there? Not on your fucking nelly.

Wank!

Never mind, I thought, I’ll have others. Indeed, I did have another one but I had to sort though the stuff on it and clear it before I could reformat it for the wildlife cam thingy. It took a chuffing eternity. I’m a dunderhead.

Anyway, net result. I’ve discovered that there are more hedgehogs bimbling around in our garden than I thought. I think it may be five, as my naked eye observations over the past week or so have been seeing three arriving early and then noticing another two had turned up later but I haven’t confirmed that.

However, I can confirm that there are four, by dint’ of the fact they have all appeared in camera shot at the same time. Also the vid has captured some courting behaviour which I’d seen with the naked eye from the kitchen window a couple of times, including a memorable moment when I discovered they were at it when I went to put out the food. I felt very bad for disturbing them. Luckily, since the breeding season lasts from April to September there’s plenty of time.

That said, while I know there’s hanky-panky going on, I’m not 100% certain between whom. I can’t quite work out if it’s one particularly randy male snuffing round and round in circles with two separate females or two separate males and one, or two, female(s). When the four turned up they arrived as two pairs so it could be two couples. I did see some light argy-bargy with the threesome who had been eating together happily for a week or so. One of them turned out to be Mr Randy and shoved another hog away from the food. It went limp and half curled up so he looked as if he was disposing of a body. Then she just lay there, inert, in the middle of the patio, while he huffed and puffed at the other one next to the food bowl.

There are two bowls now, which seems to have alleviated this.

Also, despite seeing a hog which was very definitely the original Spiny Norma doing courtship stuff with Mr Randy a couple of nights before I got the cam (they’re the ones I disturbed while I was putting the food out) I can’t now work out which one, in my films of courting, is the original Spiny Norma, or indeed if she’s there at all. This is mainly because with the best will in the world, night vision cameras are a bit shit. To be honest, I also can’t quite work out if there is only one Mr Randy trying to poink two females or if there are, indeed, two Mr Randys.

It’s a mystery. Hopefully it’s a mystery which will be solved with the aid of the camera. Fingers and toes crossed. Obviously, I have no definitive answers yet because I’ve only had it running for a few nights. I’ll keep you posted.

Other news: Helios at Ickworth

You what Mary?

Art, sweetie, art.

There’s this artist I follow called Luke Jerram. I happened upon him because some of his first pieces were these amazing models of bacteria made in glass. These things are stunning, although sadly, I haven’t photographed one myself, so I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post a photo. The fact I’m discussing it means that I can post one of his images under fair use. However, this is not the way copyright trolls see it, and having been caught out before—a process which involved about a year of negotiation over what was clearly a bullshit claim culminating in my paying for a photograph I’d used to illustrate a point (fair use) despite knowing their assertions were actually a load of old cock and bull, in order to to make them just fuck off already—I’d rather not.

Earlier this month Helios, an art installation by Luke Jerram was visiting Ickworth. I missed his Moon and Gaia earth installations, even though they came to a venue a few hundred yards up the road, because I’m a disorganised melt. As a result, I was determined that I would NOT be missing this one. It took a while to see it because it was installed outside and could only be on display when it wasn’t too windy. Naturally it was too windy for a lot of the week but I finally managed to see it on a gorgeous hot Sunday. Photos attached.

Luke Jerram, Artist’s, Helios at Ickworth. Inflatable orange ball set against a classical portico with gravel and viewers underneath on beanbags spread over beige mottled gravel. The top half of this view is seen through the foliage of an orange tree with a pair of oranges hanging either side, framing the orange ball in the middle.

I’m not sure it was as lovely as the other two but at the same time, it was outside, in daylight and because these things are lit, I suspect it would have worked better indoors or after dark. On the other hand, by standing with it between me and the sun, I got some lovely pictures of it looking glowy and orange against an azure sky.

Luke Jerram, Artist’s, Helios at Ickworth. Inflatable orange ball set against a classical portico with an azure sky above. This view is seen looking between a pair of blue flowering bushes (cyanothus) either side, framing the orange ball in the middle.

Luke Jerram, Artist’s, Helios at Ickworth. Inflatable orange ball set against a classical portico with hints of the gantry holding it aloft and behind it an azure sky.

Naturally because I’m smutty, I noticed at once that it had an anus.

Luke Jerram, Artist’s, Helios at Ickworth. Inflatable orange ball which is printed with a photograph of the sun. Close up to a part where we see a sunspot which looks a bit like an anus. Sorry I’m smutty like that. Phnark. This amused me.

Yet more Other news: I went to a marvellous party*.

*Divine Comedy fans might get that reference, no-one else will.

A friend of mine had a birthday party this week which involved a bookshop lock-in. Yeh, I know. Genius. As a result I have bought three books; one of which, the Grimoire Grammar School series (Parent Teacher Association) I’m already half way through. Although I’m reading Monument Men at the same time which is non-fiction and also excellent.

Anyway, off we went in a taxi to Clare where there is a fantastic bookshop. We arrived early so we went to the pub next door. I was offered a drink and asked for half a pint but got a whole one. It seemed churlish not to drink it so…

Then, slightly unsteadily on to the bookshop (I’m a cheap drunk). It was fab and I bought three books which I thought was fairly reserved of me. I am liking some of the ideas in cosy fantasy it’s not the horrifically clean, Ned Flanders style upstanding awfulness I feared. The one I’m reading is a genius idea; about a normal couple whose daughter has been bitten by a werewolf. The daughter is at magic school and they are feeling their way with the other parents (selkies, mages, vampires etc)..

My book purchases were oiled by the interesting gins I had which were all made by the lady who runs the book shop. It was particularly cool the way she opened a special cupboard behind the till and there were all the bottles lined up. Then she would pour a shot and ask us not to put the glass sticky down anywhere near the books. Mwahahahrgh! I had rhubarb and then damson which were fabulous. Next, I was tempted to try the rhubarb and ginger vodka but I was conscious that I might get a bit pissed and ebullient if I did that, and since I didn’t know everyone who was there, I decided it was best to call it a day at those two. Harris Books in Clare. Definitely worth a look.

We were also very generously provided with a £10 voucher by the Birthday Girl for more books from the store, so I was off to a good start. I bought three books. I could have bought more books. I could have bought a lot more books although I’m glad I didn’t because it meant I was able to buy four more at the Maker’s Market in Bury today! Mwahahargh!

Next, on to a fabulous brewery where they served up a very fine beer and baked or roast potatoes with various toppings to go with to absorb it all. This involved sitting outside, which was perfect, as it was a gorgeous evening.

Knowing I was buying books ahead of time, I’d bought a small rucksack to put them in because sometimes I’m surprisingly sensible (don’t get excited, it doesn’t happen often). I had elected to wear clothes that would be warm enough outside at night in a British early summer but at the same time, cool if it was warmer outside at night than … you know … British early summer.

This meant I’d packed a polo shirt in my bag and a scarf/shawl that was large enough to double up as a warm thing if the wind got up or temperatures plummeted. I appear to be permanently cold unless the temperature is over 24 (which is approaching 80 degrees in old/American money). On the bottom I was wearing voluminous pantaloons. I think they’re called ‘Harem Pants’ these days, but voluminous cotton trousers gathered in at the ankles, anyway. Think Ali-Baba and the 40 thieves.

Picture of messy room containing a middle age woman wearing a floaty dark blue vest top with red pantaloons. She is holding the pantaloons out to show how voluminous they are and grinning inanely.

The author clad in a pair of said pantaloons, although, not the original ones. Naturally. I have many.

Yeh. So I’m sitting there dressed as Aladdin and some other kind soul buys me a beer. I have not paid for a drink yet and I am distinctly half cut (being, as I am, a cheap drunk).

Anyhoo the table we were sat at was those bench table things that are ubiquitous to pubs everywhere; a slatted table with a bench stuck on either side. They were a bit shuggly, as they always are, and of course, you have to kind of climb into them to sit down. I put my beer carefully on the middle plank of the surface to avoid spillages and sat down.

However, then someone got up, or possibly sat down, the other side and … abracadabra! The plank shifted upwards suddenly, the glass tipped over and the entire fucking pint went down my front and on my trousers. Obviously it went between the planks as well as over them to ensure maximum coverage.

Do you know how much liquid a pint of beer is?

No? Well I can tell you.

It’s an absolute fuck-tonne of liquid.

There was only one thing uppermost in my mind when this disaster happened, well OK two things. First, naturally, was:

Shit! That’s a terrible waste of some really good beer.

The second thing—more of an instinct—which happened at the same time, was to leap up before any of the beer soaked through to my actual knickers.

Then as I stood, holding my sopping trousers away from my thighs—(my knickers don’t come down that low, I promise, but we are talking really soaking trousers here so … you know … seepage upwards was perfectly possible)—I had to decide what to do. The trousers needed to be wrung out, for certain, and possibly dried. Did the brewery have a ladies loo with a hand drying machine?

Did it fuck?

Arse.

Obviously, continuing the evening looking, and seeping, like someone who’d just had a bucket of water thrown over them wasn’t really an option. Then I remembered that I had a polo top and a scarf in my bag and, to whit, that if I’d been sitting about in a vest top and pasha pants, it was unlikely anyone would think it strange if that suddenly morphed into a polo shirt and a knee length ‘sarong’ because I looked that fucking weird already.

Except, could I get to the lav to change in private without a) getting slubbery beer-soaked trousers too close to my (currently) dry scarf and top to avoid soaking them too or b) getting slubbery beer-soaked trousers too close to my (currently) dry pants and then having to endure the entire evening with an unpleasantly damp mimsey?**

No.

**(That might just be the longest sentence in the world right there never mind, where was I? Ah yes onwards…)

What to do? The only thing I could do. I told everyone to look the other way, took off my top and put the polo shirt on. Then I took off the trousers, grabbed the scarf and wrapped it around me like some kind of shit sarong. On reflection I realised it was too long to tie like a sarong and also it would end up too short. Unsure as I was as to the tidiness of the topiary situation downstairs in the lady garden short seemed unwise. I didn’t want the world to see ‘spider legs’, giant black knickers, or indeed, the hairy thighs which I hadn’t bothered to shave. Hmm, would I have to hold the stupid sarong closed all night?

Yes.

But no!

Wait!

I had an idea!

Removing my ‘Kindness is as punk as fuck’ mum-badge off my bag I was able to use it, like a safety pin, to keep my modesty together. Then, just to be sure, I took the ‘I’m a little teapot’ badge off my jacket and fastened that the other side to keep both the ends I’d wound round me in situ.

This happened in front of everyone.

There was laughing.

But nobody gave a shit.

And someone bought me another beer.

Which was nice.

Even better my knickers stayed dry and having spread them out, my clothes dried enough to wear the pantaloons home so there was no worrying about losing my ‘skirt’ in the taxi.

Hoorah!

That’s me right there people, living the dream and winning at life.

Er hem … Sort of.

Fancy a change?

Fancy something a little bit weird? Why not read one of my books? A surprising number of people think they’re good and some are free. Woot. You can find those if you wend your way down the following linky-link: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot-3 https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot-3

Black and white photo on dark blue, fading to yellow background showing a street with two old ladies (cartoon silhouettes against the yellow bottom section). They are holding a cage with the silhouette of a parrot in it.

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Tagged as author blog, author blogs, funny, humor, humour, humour … probably, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, writers

9 Mar 2025 · 6:52 pm

In which MTM is a cockwomble, just for a change …

Last Monday was an interesting day. The kind of day that makes me wonder what the fuck is going on. Well, no, I mean, I end up thinking that most days—at the moment, I think that every time I watch the news for starters—but I digress, I am talking about on a personal level. I do wonder if other people’s lives are a bit less chaos-tastic.

This is probably no big surprise to you, bearing in mind the constant adventures I manage to have, laminating bacon or getting bitten by one of the soppiest, tamest dogs on earth, for example and then, when asked if I had an up-to-date tetanus shot having to explain that yes, I have, because I got bitten by a mouse in 2020–I got bitten by a rat in 2022 as well but, as usual, I digress again. Come on MTM get with the programme.

PIcture of a double metal hook with eyes stuck above it so it looks like a face with two outstretched arms.

Yeh… go figure.

Let me share the story of my day last Monday and at least demonstrate why I get absolutely fuck all done. Do feel free to tell me if this is the kind of stuff you’d expect to see regularly in your life.

Monday morning, I was booked in at the gym and headed off on my trusty bicycle. I got there pretty much without incident, except for thinking, as I parked my bike, that it would be a bad place to get a flat tyre, two and a half miles from home and all.

It’s strange how you can be prescient about stuff like that. After training quite hard and walking jelly-legged out of my session I was looking forward to cycling feebly for about half a mile and then, basically, sitting on it as it rolled downhill all the way home.

As you can imagine, I was a bit peeved to discover that this was not to be because my front tyre had gone down. I got out the pump and pumped it up but it simply made the type of loud hissing noise that suggested the air was going out almost as fast as it was going in. Sure enough, when I checked, it was.

Wanketty-wank.

A succession of inner tubes has sprung a leak; same tyre, the same place, where the valve joins the tube. Knowing the symptoms, I was pretty sure this was what had happened.

Again.

For fuck’s sake.

I’d already wheeled it home once (from half way to the gym) so unless I could pump it up enough to stay vaguely inflated, wheeling it anywhere now meant the tyre would be toast. I gave it another go. Nope. Nothing doing.

Arse hats!

Never mind, there was a motor spares shop in the next industrial estate over, it was also on one of the many routes home. At least if I got the tube I might be able to fix it …

Except I wouldn’t. The original front tyre of the bike had levers that allowed you to undo it without needing a spanner. However, I bought an electronic assist for it three years ago and that comes with a new front wheel, with an electric motor in the centre, which you have to use instead. This wheel has nuts you have to tighten. This also meant that without the prerequisite spanner I wouldn’t be able to fix it anyway. I decided that if I could walk it there I might be able to get a new tube for the bloody thing so at least when I finally got home I wouldn’t have to go back out to the local cycle shop.

I flirted with the idea of leaving the bike where it was, walking to the motor spares shop and buying the right spanner as well as a new tube, but to do that, I needed to know what sized spanner to buy and naturally, it’s a sodding number, and as we all know, thicky-Mc-Thicko here couldn’t remember the simplest number even if it was tattoed onto my actual fucking hand.

eyes stuck on a whitewashed window to make it look like two miserable faces

The spares store was about half a mile away so wheeling the bike down there would mean the tyre would be toast anyway, so even if I fixed it to ride home, I’d just have to take it off again when I got there. On the upside, I had a new tyre at home which I bought the previous time this happened.

To my joy, the motor spares store did, indeed, have some spares for bicycles. I paid the princely sum pf £6.50 for a new inner tube. They sold tyres too, so I thought about buying one, plus spanner, and fixing it there but was thwarted by the fact that, though they had knobbly mountain bike tyres, they didn’t have one that would fit my wheel.

Arse. Kind of.

Never mind. Can’t win ’em all. I supposed and it did save me the cost of a new tyre—when I already had one at home—plus the cost of the right spanner to change the wheel on top (also something I had at home). Accepting my fate, I popped the inner tube in my bag and paused to take stock.

Having started bright-but-cold it was turning into a lovely warm day and I was sweating, so I stuffed my coat and sweatshirt into my bag with the tube and set off.

The gym is at the top of a hill, the motor-spares place half way down. There are many routes home but none of them is direct so I usually choose the one with the least number of uphill climbs on the way there—it is not the most direct but I will go a long way out of my way on a bike if it avoids unnecessary hills—and a slightly longer route that’s downhill all the way on the return journey.

Since I was walking, and half way down one hill by this time, anyway, I chose a different route, which was also the shortest in miles; the cycle route. This is by far the hilliest with uphill stretches both there and back so I seldom use it on an actual bike because it’s far too fucking tiring, it takes a sodding eternity to get up all the bloody hills and I have better things to do with my time.

Half way down the first long hill I discovered a shortcut across a field that took off a huge corner AND the longest up hill stretch, suddenly turning this into the quickest option, at least on foot and possibly even on a bike, too. Huzzah! The path also goes straight across the field and I do like riding an off road cycle off road from time-to-time so I will definitely be trying it again for other return journeys.

This is the field in question …

Despite being the shortest route, it took for fucking ever to walk home. On the upside, at least I had water and a lark followed me across the field path, singing its heart out, which was wonderful. But it took me every bit of 45 minutes and what with another half an hour or so faffing about buying the inner tube on top I didn’t get home until half past eleven. I was knackered and all I wanted to do was relax but oh no, no chance. Now I had to fix my effing bike.

PIcture of a tabby and white cat lying on its back, stomach up, back legs akimbo, clutching it’s tail with it’s front paws.

It’d be nice to relax but … no time.

Once I’d removed the wheel I could see the problem, the tape round the inside of the wheel (that stops the inner tube from rubbing on the fastenings holding the spokes in place) had shifted round, digging into the stalky bit of the valve and rubbing a hole in it. I went and got a modelling knife from the house, dumping all my stuff on the kitchen side as I did so.

Back outside at the bike I greatly increased the hole in the tape where the valve pokes through using the knife. Hopefully it’ll now stop the bloody thing from puncturing every fucking inner tube I put in. Unless it’s the metal of the wheel where the valve goes though, in which case I’ll have to file it down, fingers crossed it’s the tape and nothing else.

Next I checked the tyre which was full of little balls of rubber, proving it was, indeed, comprehensively bollocksed. Bin that then.

The tyre came off easily, the new one went on eventually, but there were several moments where I rather wished I was an octopus. A lot of tyres come folded up which is great but means they need a bit of coercion to assume their proper shape.

It also took ages to pump the stupid thing up because I couldn’t get the pump on far enough to release the valve and let any air in. Finally, after about an hour of sweary effort, I had fixed the puncture. I put everything away, locked my car and went back to the house. At which point I discovered that one of the things I’d dumped in the kitchen was my house keys and I’d locked myself out.

Bollocks.

So then I had to break into my own bastard house, which is something I have to do once every couple of months, on average. By this time, I was ready to eat my own arm off so before taking a shower I had a quick bite of lunch. I finally had my shower at about 2.00 pm … instead of the usual time of about half ten. I’d left in a hurry so I had to do the washing up and tidying up from breakfast, at which point, it was time to collect Mc(not so)Mini from school. Then it was tea, family time and that was that.

This is what I do with my time. This is why I never get anything done.

Ho hum. Onwards and upwards.

Never mind if you have more time than me why not read a book.

Graphic book cover with two old ladies silhouetted against a darkened street

Yes, you can read a selection of my books for free to see what they’re like, including this one. To dip your toe in the world of K’Barth, check out www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot3.

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13 Oct 2024 · 10:55 pm

I bore you about the aurora borealis and also bang on about other things …

Woah there, another massively busy week. We hit the ground running (from both ends) with a lovely bout of the Noro on Sunday night. I was fine by the end of Monday but it was still a right pain in the jacksy. Tuesday I kept things very low key because I was still feeling a bit delicate so I did a bit of admin in that I wrote three reviews, which I’ve been meaning to write for ages. There isn’t really room for them this week but I’ll set them up to post, by the wonders of modern technology, while I’m running around like a blue-arsed fly over half term in a couple of weeks.

By Wednesday I was able to go back to the gym for a session, which was great fun. I haven’t done Wednesdays before and I should probably mix up my days a bit more as each day has a different set of exercises. They pretty much all do the same thing, but it’s fun to vary it. Instead of going Thursday, I went again on Friday and was exceptionally stiff afterwards!

Wednesday night we went to a wine tasting. It was advertised as coming with ‘tapas’ so we ate first. Mwahahahargh! Won’t do that again. They produced a fabulous 4 course meal although I hadn’t bothered to tip them off about allergies so one course was chicken in a sauce that was hooching with the only kind of mushroom out of the vast and varied world of edible varieties, to which I am allergic. Yes, of course it’s the ubiquitous one that appears in everything. It was a shame but it just meant I had more room for the other courses and it was a very entertaining evening.

I boreaborealis … yes, I saw the aurora (at fucking last).

Highlight of the week; the Northern Lights. Finally I managed to see them. Seeing the Northern Lights has been on my bucket list from pretty much the moment I knew about them … although on the downside I got a bit engrossed and have been catching up on my sleep debt all week.

Having had a text from a mate telling me to have a look, I popped out into the garden at 11.30. Didn’t get much … see picture … wasn’t sure if it was the northern lights or just light pollution from the railway yards and the site where a new housing estate is being built, both of which sit between us and North.

I was in my pyjamas by this time but one photo had a bit of a blue/purple bit in the sky above our garden looked hopeful so I tried from one of the windows at the top of the house.

Picture of very slight aurora: just green to purple, taken from the top window of a house.

The results were better, but still inconclusive so I decided I’d pop over the road and see if I could get a more definitive sighting in a dark street next to the allotments. It took me a minute or two to dig out a tripod and then I removed my bathrobe, because I didn’t want anyone I met asking me where my towel was, flung on an anorak and headed out into the night.

It was about 11.45 by this time and after having a go I felt was definitely getting a few shades of green but still wasn’t 100% sure if it was the Aurora or just … you know … light.

Picture of the aurora borealis (quite low key though, just purple and green and very faint) with leaves silhouetted in front.

I realised there was a small park near a housing estate which was just another couple of minutes’ walk so I decided I’d go there. I took some more pictures and then, reviewing my photos, I realised there were funny lines in the green bit in some of the first ones and that the top of the frame was beginning to look a bit pink. Maybe I was getting there then.

Picture of the aurora borealis (quite low key though, just purple and green and very faint) with telegraph pole and wires silhouetted in front. But with lines in the green bits now.

I walked back to a different bit of the park and took one with more pink and green and then I just happened to look east. The whole sky was tinged with pink, you know the way orange streetlights used to make it look orange in the days when sodium lighting was a thing. Like that.

Hang on, I thought.

Pointing the camera at the pink bit I took a photo. At this point I could hear the hallelujah chorus full volume in my head as finally, I had cracked it, well … almost but I needed to aim it right. After taking a few more pictures—woot! See below—I thought I’d take some piccies of landmarks round town.

Picture of the aurora borealis with trees in the foreground.

Picture of the aurora borealis with trees and houses in the foreground.

Picture of the aurora borealis with houses in the foreground.

Picture of the aurora borealis with trees in the foreground.

The northern lights over the beet factory at Bury St Edmunds

The beet factory, for good measure, on my way back.

I decided I’d start with the church I go to since it was near my house and then if it worked, I’d walk to the Norman Gate and take a picture of that.

I took a picture of the houses on our street, but not ours (doh!) and then headed up the hill.

Picture of the aurora borealis over a row of victorian houses.

Our house is just on the right beyond the sign. Did I photograph it. Did I bollocks! Doh!

Got some lovely shots of StJohn’s (the only inclusive church in Bury) and having photographed two big parts of the Bury skyline; St John’s and the beet factory, I decided I might head for the Norman Gate which was about 10 minutes’ walk away.

Picture of the aurora borealis over St John’s Church, Bury St Edmunds

St John’s Bury St Edmunds looking North.

St John’s Bury St Edmunds looking South.

Luckily, before heading for the Norman Gate I looked at my watch.

Quarter past one!!! Quarter past fucking one! Had I really spent an hour and a half wandering round town with a mobile phone and a tripod, in my pyjamas, Arthur Dent style, like a nutter?

Yes I had. I decided it was time to go home. Still forgot to take a picture of my house (bell end) but I did get one of God’s. Oh well. You can’t win ’em all.

Other News …

It was all rather busy last week culminating in Mc(not so)Mini doing a gig at a really lovely small venue in Ipswich. It was great fun, I passed a very enjoyable evening talking to the other band members’ parents in the bar, where they served Adnams ales (always a bonus). We were discussing ‘modern youth’ and the whole trans they/them thing and how as dinosaurs we had trouble sometimes. Two members of the band are trans and so it was interesting talking to the parents, especially of one.

To my shame, she said that she had experienced a lot of prejudice from ‘Christians’ towards her son. I really struggle to understand the way some of my brothers and sisters in faith behave towards the LGBTQ+ community. The way I see it, Christianity is pretty fucking simple. It’s all about this bloke called Christ (the clue is in the name there, people, Christians because they’re followers of Christ).

What Christ, the original Christian, said was ‘love they neighbour as thyself,’ and then proceeded to tell the story of the good Samaritan as an example of who a ‘neighbour’ is. Yes, he tells a story in which someone his audience would have despised did a good deed and helped an injured man in distress while the pillars of their community, people they’d see as the epitome of goodness, pretended not to see and left him to die.

Sermon on mount. JC saying love they neighbour, someone asks what? even if they’re gay and JC says, did I fucking stutter?

The basic gist of Christianity, then, is to treat other people the way you’d like them to treat you. That you treat everyone as deserving your respect until they have proved otherwise. This does not mean that because one gay person pissed you off, you decide all others are the same. That’s bigotry.

The clue is in the name there people. Be like this bloke, Christ, who was pilloried by the authorities in his time for talking to all the wrong kinds of people, the kinds of people the authorities despised like Samaritans, tax collectors and women some of whom were even—shock! Horror!—hookers.

Seriously though, it’s not difficult is it? Not if it’s that bleedin’ obvious to someone as thick as pig shit like myself. There are two types of people in this world. People who are wankers and people who are not wankers. Sometimes two different people can tell you the same thing and it will be offensive from one and fine from the other simply because of the spirit in which you know it is meant.

Ergo when it comes to being a Christian, I thought the point was to be as Christ like as possible, which means seeing the humanity of others before everything else and Doing The Right Thing. You know, love your neighbour as yourself and all that. I’m probably being a trifle simplistic but ‘doing the right thing’ means doing what is just, which isn’t always following the rules (no vigilante justice bringers, that’s NOT what I’m talking about). I’m talking about being kind to people others spurn. Kind to people who are doing things that are perceived as ‘bad’ by the rule makers. I’m talking about stopping and offering to help when you see someone in trouble.

Recently, I’ve read extraordinary things stemming from friends who appeared to be perfectly normal (until they started sharing this stuff on t’interweb and moved themselves to the bat-shit crazy area on my venn diagram of living).

There is a conspiracy theory that the pedophiles are after our children and that they are hoping to achieve this by pushing back our tolerances to other forms of ‘deviancy’—their words, not mine—so that eventually pedophilia will be allowed. I really struggle to see how pedophilia—in which an adult forces a child who does not consent or too young to do so into sex, or sexual activities—can be remotely compared to consenting adults choosing who they love or who they’d like to be, or indeed consenting young adults being allowed to fall in love with whoever they fall in love with.

Yes, as mother of a teenager it is a complete minefield but, as I understand it, two people falling in love with one another, and being allowed to admit it and even express it, within the bounds of the law, wasn’t a crime last time I checked.

If someone female happens to fancy females rather than males then, again, the way I see it, it’s fine, because it’s none of my fucking business. They’re not forcing their choices on me, which, incidentally, is what the establishment has been doing to the LGBTQ+ community, and up to a point, women, for the last thousand years or so.

Likewise, when I was at school in the 1980s, my gay friends were not forcing their choices on me then either. Instead, one of them only came out to me when we were both 25 because she knew I was a Christian and thought I’d be like those other cunts.

At least we’re not all gits. Here’s a story about what even just avoiding a topic can lead to (let alone being openly anti and judgemental) …https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/8-june/news/uk/it-took-this-death-to-end-silence-on-inclusion-says-priest-of-teenager-who-took-her-own-life

Here’s another thing that completely bamboozles me. How is the ‘Christian’ right are pushing to erode women’s rights and return us to ‘our place’ in the kitchen and to the days when the male half the population was sexually repressed to the point of obsession, while the female half was vilified and hidden away as if their very existence was shameful.

It hasn’t been like this in our society for years but we know how crap it is. We’ve seen ISIS, and these ‘Christians’ were all anti that. Therefore, I fail to understand how they can despise members of other faiths, Muslims, for example, and then paint an ‘ideal’ world that mirrors the ISIS Caliphate. The point of a moral stand point is that you live up to those morals. This kind of crap isn’t being better than the Daesh. It’s just doing what they fucking do. How does the world not see this? How do their brainwashed followers not see this?

Also, why do these ‘Christians’ care so much who other people choose to love or how other people see themselves. Do they realise how far from Christ’s teachings this actually is. Well no, of course they do, because everything they espouse is from the Old Testament and they completely ignore the New Testament most of the time. Which makes them … I dunno … some kind of extremist Old Testament sect. Not Christians anyway. I really don’t care if someone decides they’re a fucking toaster, so long as they’re not a cnut … unlike those judgemental bastards who weigh in with a ten out of ten score on the cuntomter every day of the week. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Twats. Never mind. Here are three of the band.

Three members of the band, Subliminal, with a diverted traffic sign

Sorry where was I? Oh yes, other stuff.

Detecting

Or Wombling With Pretentions as I sometimes call it. I am a member of a number of Facebook groups now which organise digs. Mostly these are on Sundays and as that’s the only day I get a lie in, I am always on the look out for digs mid week or on Saturdays. One group has run two on the last two Saturdays in the same place (but different fields).

Having attended last week’s and found not much, but at the same time, found many bits of good things which indicated there was old stuff there to be discovered, I decided I’d go this week as well. My first signal was an Edward II half penny so that was something good, job done, can happily go home. There were lots of signals, mostly fragments of old things and then, at the top of the hill in a really junky area—where the machine was making farty iron noises as if we were at a rave—I dug up this tiny milled coin.

Milled coins are made with a machine and is how coins are made today. Before that, coins were hammered which is when you get a die with a design, stick a blob of silver/copper/gold on it and then put another moulded die over the top, smack it with a hammer and bob’s your uncle you get a hammered coin. See pic.

Picture of a silver hammered coin of Edward II

Tiny, tiny hammered coin. I think it’s a ha’penny

The first milled coins were introduced in the reign of Elizabeth I but it didn’t work out. They were not reintroduced until the reign of Charles II. As a result, Elizabethan milled coins are quite rare. The tiny milled coin didn’t look like anything I’d seen, ever. It was really, really thin for starters and small. It had a shield on one side, which I’d seen on hammered coins of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. This sent me to early stuff, Chas II or maybe James 1st? I wasn’t sure, But at the same time, when I flipped it over and cleaned the other side, the monarch was clearly a woman … wearing a crown … and although at the time, I assumed Victoria. But then, when I cleaned it up, I could clearly make out that she had a crown on her head, and a distinctive aquiline nose. there is only one queen that this could be; Elizabeth I.

Composite pic of two sides of a tiny milled coin with faint outline of elisabeth 1st and a shield on the other side.

As. you can see, this coin is in a really shit state.

It’s pretty unmistakeable. Neither of the Charleses looks similar and since it’s base metal, copper? I’m assuming it’s a threefarthing. Yes there was a denomination for three quarter of a penny at that time, lord alone knows why but there you go. So this is a rare thing, and possibly a significant thing. I dunno.

Also, fun fact, the monarch’s heads alternate, so Henry VIII has his nose pointing right. It does help with identifying them sometimes.

On the one hand, yes, this could be a seriously rare and significant find. On the other, it’s bollocksed so even if a decent one is worth anything, this one won’t be worth more than about £40. So once again, subject to checks—because I will make sure I check this out carefully, in case it is worth something, in which case I must either buy out the farmer or sell it and ensure they get half—but subject to checks it looks like the usual. I get to find something really interesting and significant, and by din’t of it being a really shit example, I get to keep it. I’ll take that.

Next stop the finds liaison officer for more advice and to see if I need to add it to the portable antiquities database or think about getting it valued. I’ll keep you posted. At least, I’ll try.

And finally …

At last we reach the end … I’m thinking that if it’s going to be like this I should write a blog twice a week. But finally, I’ve been working on some jolly japes for my website and I’ve come up with a K’Barthan Insults and Swearing Generator. You click and it will produce the cream of K’Barthan swearing for your enjoyment, enlightenment and edification (probably). If you think you’d like to have a go at that, click here.here.

Until next time ..

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21 Sep 2024 · 9:04 pm

Hello again, hello …

Crikey but it’s been a long time hasn’t it? I am well aware that this is not good for my readership and that most of you are long gone. However, life has been very busy. I suppose everyone gets back from holiday in September and has to catch up on the month and also do All The Things that those of them with kids were putting off over the summer. I confess to being no different, although, today I have a cold so I have decided that running around like a blue arsed fly will not be my lot and I am going to spend it sitting down doing things I enjoy. Ergo …

Chaos fairies have been in abundance this week, when are they not? Although I have managed to remember my own name, and even some other people’s. I have kept my eye on the ball enough to get my lad to and from school at the right times, with the right kit washed and ready for a whole week while McOther went to Arnhem on a history walking tour. This process confirmed to me, very strongly, that I am not a morning person. But we managed it anyway. Woot.

Picture of a hollyhock flower with a bee inside it collecting pollen.

At one point I had a hilarious meeting with the school bursar who was so stereotypical that it was like interacting with a character from a comedy comic strip.

The speed limit on Mc(not so) mini’s school site has recently dropped from 15 to 10mph. After 7 years of 15 I do tend to do that speed on autopilot now so I have had to be very mindful that it’s dropped. Basically, if the car is bunny hopping along in second gear, I know I’m doing the right speed. If it’s running smoothly, and I’ve forgotten to stop and put it into first, I’m going 15mph.

So there I was, having just turned onto the site, about 100 yards in, drifting along on auto pilot. It was 5.00pm and I noticed there were lots of cars still parked at the pre-prep and was wondering whether it was late pick up, or a parents’ evening or similar.

As I lurched over another bump and gave it a bit of a squirt to stop it bunny hopping, I was brought back to earth, as the revs dropped again, by a movement at the side of the drive. A tall man in the kind of tweed suit you’d expect to see on Colonel Blimp was striding along with his arm out at about 45 degrees from his side waving it round in a circle.

Is he looking at me? I wondered.

Yes, I decided he probably was. The gesture was not one I’ve seen but I assumed he meant slow down. I eased right off the pedal and checked my speed, which by the time my very dodgy vision was able to present my brain with an image of the speedo that was in focus enough to read it (more on that story, later) was definitely bouncing about a bit at the 10mph mark.

OK not speeding now then, probably was before. Never mind, all’s well now. Phew. Job done. Smile and creep on past. But no, he continued to wave at me. What did he want? I checked the speedo and the errant eyes worked better this time. Yes, it was just below ten.

I’m going about 7mph now mate, I was thinking. I can’t slow down any more, so I stuck with 7mph and continued on by. It wasn’t like he had a speed gun, so it wasn’t his fault if he didn’t know I was going under 10 miles an hour, I decided as I approached the next speed hump. He was still waving his hand, presumably because he wanted me to go slower, no stop yet though.

There is normally one of those things that tells you your speed at the bump there, which I’ve slightly come to rely on to check I’m complying with regulations, that would have helped both of us know my speed for certain and has the added benefit that I can see it, but I was disappointed to note it wasn’t there.

I slowed even more for the speed hump. That was the point at which point he ran over and banged on the window.

Well that was a turn up. I stopped, and wound it down. Somewhat flabberghasted but also wondering why, if he wanted me to stop, he didn’t just … you know … put his hand up, palm towards me, in the universally acknowledged signal for stop. He appeared to be absolutely incandescent. And before I could even take a breath to say,

‘Hello there, can I help you with something?’ he started in.

Here we go. I thought. People do that same slow down gesture as I motor carefully through villages at 30 because they are certain that a car like mine will be speeding, so I was already harbouring misgivings that he was one of those. As such, it was probably best to just keep schtumm and see what he wanted. It depended how reasonable he was and what he had to say I guess. But since he was some random male I had no clue what he was about, but I could always burn away if he tried to open the door.

‘I am Arnold Rimmer*, the bursar of this school and when I signal for you to stop I expect you to do so please.’

*Not his real name, obvs.

Well, it would probably have been a good idea to actually signal that he wanted me to stop then. Never mind. I looked up at him in silence, the only thought in my head apart from, doesn’t he know how to signal stop? was, hmm, somebody’s done assertiveness training.

That, and a certain amount of surprise, of course, because I don’t think anyone’s talked quite as comprehensively down to me as that since I left preschool, and I had to hand it to him, the way he tacked that ‘please’ on the end took the sentence to a new level of rudeness and, yes, aggression, whether he meant it to or not.

Well. On the upside, it was nice to know he was the bursar and not some weird fucking rando, on the downside, it was very clear that he was about to go into orbit. Previous experience of this kind of situation has shown me that it’s best not saying anything to these people. You just nod politely until they’ve finished and then carry on with your day.

Even though it was extremely tempting to suggest, politely, that actually signalling ‘stop’ might have been more effective than just waving his arm about in some vague and random gesture, I reflected that it was unwise, and more pertinently, pointless. He had already decided who and what I was and no evidence or polite suggestion to the contrary was going to change his view, that much was clear … he had me pegged as evil. Forever. Not that he gave me time to so much as breathe before continuing.

‘How fast were you going?’ he demanded as I took a breath in to ask if I could help him.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I really don’t think it was much more than about twelve.’

‘It looked much faster than that to me,’ he said.

I didn’t reply. I think he said some other stuff but I’ve blanked it out. When he was done I drove off. At 10 mph. Except I started off in the wrong gear so my car was having none of it so embarrassingly, it bunny hopped the entire way up the drive. Now he’s going to think I’m speeding at any point when he sees the car driving smoothly.

Fucking weird though. Really, fucking weird.

That story there was going to be more of later …

Other things I have been mostly doing this week? Buying eye-wateringly expensive spectacles. My son and I needed eye tests. I have noticed, for some while, that I can’t always see things close up … or far away to be honest, but then I discovered that there were days when the instruments in the car … well I can see them, I just can’t always read them straight away. And that’s very bad so I booked an eye test immediately.

McMini’s eyes needed adjustment and he chose new frames, the most expensive frames in the shop which are made in Japan using the same technique that is used to make samurai swords or something ridiculous. For the love of the almighty. Raises eyes to heaven. They do suit him though.

Not the glasses in question…

Meanwhile I discovered that I now have astigmatism in my right eye as well as my left. I had no idea that could happen. I thought you were born with it but no, it grows. So there’s a new fact I’ve learned this week. Here’s another one. Varifocal lenses are extremely expensive. I’m going to try contacts as they do lenses that act in a similar way but I’ll still need specs whatever. I’ll have to test the lenses out as apparently some folks find they just make everything feel blurry. We shall see. I have chosen new glasses (the cheapest frames in the shop) although they were the ones that best suited me as well so … swings and roundabouts.

Writing news.

The writing has been coming along. I’ve been managing to do a little bit each day, which has been grand. It’s mostly editing so far, and shuffling scenes around so they fit, although I have a cold at the moment, just for a change, so I probably won’t be able to do much until that’s gone.

Bastard Chaos Fairies

Yep. The little bastards are back. This time it’s my fitbit they’ve got into. Yesterday it suddenly went yellow. I plugged it into its charger and rebooted it which seemed to fix it for a few minutes, then it went yellow again and completely died. I’ve no idea what’s up there but it’s not even a year old. Return it and get a new one I hear you say. Well yes, I could do that, I thought if I could find the chuffing receipt. I know I bought it in October but that’s all, which was kind of annoying.

Worse, I know I threw the box away recently, as in put-in-the-recycling-they-collected-two-days-ago recently. So that’s also sodding annoying. I have no receipt, no delivery note … nothing. That’ll teach me to tidy up.

I did everything I could think of and then clicked the help thing and got a call back. Turned out I had, indeed bought it from Fitbit, and while I couldn’t see it on my dashboard after Fitbit became Google, they could. So I have a shipping label and it will be off to Holland by DHL on Monday to be fixed, or at least switched. It’ll take ten days, and it’ll be a bust one that’s been fixed, but I’m really chuffed not to have to stump up for a new one.

Here’s another thing you never knew.

On the usual Saturday morning trip to the market today, there was sad news from the egg sellers. Apparently one of the major re-homing shelters for urban foxes from London is near them and many are released into their woods. This is usually fine, but occasionally, once a year or so, a fox gets into their hen coops and kills everything. Last night a fox got into their bantam coop and killed all 12 of them.

Interestingly, the girl also told me that the reason foxes kill everything is because they will take the bodies away and bury them to eat for later meals. So it’s not bloodlust after all. Nope. It turns out your basic fox is just a panic buyer.

Onwards and upwards.

Afore ye go …

There’s a fabulous free book giveaway on today so if you want to snaffle a copy of Few Are Chosen, now’s your chance. There are a stack of books in the promo, you can find them all here:

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7 Jul 2024 · 8:54 pm

Life laundry and other adventures

It’s been a busy few weeks, as you’ve probably guessed from the spectacular lack of blog posts, which is irritating because I had loads of stuff to say last week and thought I would carry it over. Needless to say, when I sat down this evening I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember what I was going to write about.

Bum.

Never mind, onwards and upwards.

Two weeks ago, I won ticket sot the Self Publishing Show live. I wasn’t sure how it would go but it was excellent. I really enjoyed it and met a group of authors who seem to be great fun. I also met a fellow blogger which was also grand! Even better had a few really significant ‘learning moments’ that I feel may smooth my self publishing efforts.

picture of a book cover featuring a few of the Thames with the same view of the thames in the background

My hand looks much nicer than it really is in this picture. Mwahahargh!

Highlights this week! I took Mc(Not So)Mini to a WWII reenactment yesterday. That was fun. He met three friends and I had a pootle round, a wee chat to one of the friend’s Mum’s and another wee chat to other friend’s dad. They had gone as 1970s British Army and had some lovely chats with veterans who recognised their old kit. I also took a close look at a Willys Jeep and decided that I would not enjoy driving one from Brighton to Kabul which my Uncle and two friends did one summer holidays when they were students. Not just the dust in the hot bits, but driving that through rainy France. Mmm… no fun.

BTW my Uncle’s mate wrote a book and my uncle has published it. I can’t for the life of me find the link but I know it’s on Amazon, at least. I’ll have to see if I can find it.

McOther was given a voucher for a local restaurant when he retired and so we went there last night with friends. It was an absolute gas and a very jolly evening. I had lobster. Mmm-Mmm.

This week has been Life Laundry. In order to accommodate the stuff from Mum’s we have to move, remove and generally tessellate the stuff we already have. But our social lives have been busy so we’ve had to fit it all round that.

As a result our dining room looks like a furniture warehouse with various bits waiting to be polished, have the drawers hoovered etc.

Compromises were made too, because when we got to Sussex with the removers and thought about it, we realised that the rather lovely oak bookcase we were going to have wouldn’t actually go out of the room unless it was taken apart.

Looking back, I dimly remember Mum and Dad realising that it couldn’t move from the housemasters quarters at the school where Dad worked straight away because it was too big to fit anywhere in the house. So they hired this dear old boy, who was in his 90s I believe (he went on to collect cider apples from the tree in Mum and Dad’s garden for a few years and he would bring us a bottle of really good Normandy style cider).

Sorry where was I? Right, yes, this lovely old man went over there in a van, took the shelves to bits, cut two feet off it and rebuilt it. What I’d forgotten but think I now recall, was that he brought it back to Mum and Dad’s in pieces in his van and rebuilt it there. Which means we can’t remove it without taking it apart.

Luckily one of the removers was a carpenter.

Unluckily, he took one look at it and realised that it was nailed together with tiny nails and he felt it very unlikely he could take it to bits without breaking it.

Luckily, I was allowed to make a substitution so now, as well as the collection of little bits and bobs Mum had (which she, or her Grandmother who started it, I’m not sure which) called ‘funnies’, I have the cabinet they have always lived in, which was going to be sold. It’s too big to fit into my office, but it comes in two parts. The bottom cupboards can go in one place and the top half with the shelves will work fine as a display cabinet. I discovered, to my amusement that the cabinet has legs, which obviously nobody has ever liked, so they have travelled with it from house-to-house and owner-to-owner stuffed in the back corner of its under cupboard, so to speak.

Not as bad as it was, we’ve cleared a way through

Meanwhile I’m also having Mum’s desk, which means I have to empty the one I have. There is a startling amount more stuff in there than I anticipated. I have filled three boxes so far and will easily fill two more, which is a bit horrific, but I suspect most of it will go back in the drawers of the new desk. The old one doesn’t have drawers but it did have shelves. I genuinely think Mum’s will accommodate more stuff than the old one, even though it’s half the size, but it might be different things because some things—the books for example—will need shelves.

Then it’s a case of shuggling everything around so the two armchairs I’m having fit in… and a footstool. It should be OK. It’s just a case of having a massive clear out. Gulp.

Once that’s done, I need to start putting my toy collection in the auction. It’s glorious and I love it but most of it is in 35 boxes in the loft above the garage and has remained there for the last 16 years. It comprises Dr Who toys, Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet toys, the odd left-field thing like Austen Powers action figures and a lot of StarWars stuff. The only things that are worth anything are the 1970s StarWars 3” action figures, which, naturally, are the thing I like best of the StarWars stuff, and are about the only things that are small enough for me to actually keep.

Once that’s gone, or at least, the big bits, I can put all my stock of books on the shelves so I know how many copies of each I have and organise some other things—which are currently dotted about the room—onto the shelves out of the way. Having sold some of Mum’s stuff, I can also put my more interesting detector finds in the glass fronted display cabinet too, so that’s grand.

Obviously, I should embrace the opportunity to have a sort out, and I kind of do, but I also really, really want to finish the WIP and actually, if Real Life would just SOD OFF for one fucking moment I could probably knock that book on the head in a few weeks. But Real Life is showing no signs of pissing off and leaving me alone any time soon. The minute I get one thing sorted another person asks me what the status is with X, Y or Z and I have to ring people and find out. And I need to pay the bequests which will leave me with perilously close to nothing to pay the bills and run the house until it’s sold.

Seriously, don’t bother growing up. Being an adult is absolutely fucking bollocks. I hate it.

It got me thinking, though. I think one of the hardest things about getting rid of all the stuff is that everything has a story. It’s something Mum and Dad bought together shortly after getting married, or it’s a poignant reminder of some member of the family I utterly loved. Or I remember thinking it was lovely. Or ‘dear old x’ gave it to Mum and Dad.

Some of it’s been in the family for years, seriously, there are every lady member of the family’s wristwatch from about 1910 onwards. All lovely. All worth about £100 for the scrap gold or silver value. I feel like the curator of a museum which is closing whose last duty, before signing their own P45, is to put the collection up for sale.

It’s an odd feeling.

As I write this, I know there will be people reading who will be thinking that these are very first world problems and that I should grow a pair and belt up. And yes, they’re probably right.

But this blog isn’t about me being strong and overcoming against all odds, this is me writing about how I feel, however wretched that may be… or a bit sad, in this case because lord knows, I’ve done wretched and this really isn’t it. But I digress. My point is, I didn’t write this to open the batting for a game of ‘I’ve had it much harder than you with anyone’. I am actually aware that I’ve had it a lot easier than many people with regards to ‘stuff’. Emotional toll? Not so sure but maybe sometimes cash and stuff can make the emotional toll easier to bear.

Talking about the last 10 years to a friend whose wife had lost both parents relatively fast but had needed to deal with a similar situation, albeit for a shorter time, he asked who I had been ‘talking to’ about this. Had I had therapy or counselling? I was intrigued because it had never occurred to me to do that long term. I did a six week course of counselling with the NHS when it all kicked off back in 2012. Six weeks was all you got then, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get that now. But it was very good and from then on, I just applied what I’d learned.

So if you’re reading, fingers poised over the keyboard to comment about how you only had one pot to piss in which your parents shared with the neighbours on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the rest of the time had to go without, can I humbly invite you not to, because if anyone does I will, I’m afraid, politely tell them to fuck all the way off.

Picture of a sideboard that looks really miserable

If anyone starts playing ‘I’ve had it harder than. you’ with me, they can fuck off.

None of my regular commenters will … but just in case anyone else happens upon this, here’s a truth. My parents didn’t have an huge amount of money in the grand scheme of things, but they had enough to show me that it’s not the universal panacea those who have none believe it is. Having enough wealth to live comfortably can really, really help. And for Mum and Dad, it did. But it didn’t lessen their suffering, or mine and my brothers over the last ten years. Sometimes people have to face things in life are just really, really harsh and their wealth, or lack of it, makes no difference.

Obviously comments deliberately taking the piss about licking t’road clean wi’tongue or that meme with the mountain about ‘our parents route to school’ are allowed.

In some ways, it would have been easier if my parents had nothing. There would have been no big questions and nothing to lose although there’d have been a LOT more work and a lot more hectoring homes to see that they were cared for properly.

Amazingly, I don’t begrudge spending £1m (more than their life savings, and some of ours) for them on their care. It wasn’t my money (mostly) and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I really don’t mind. What does get to me, a bit, is that they did. They saw their life savings as their nest egg to have fun with and the rest as an inheritance for my brother and I, and their grandchildren. It was taken from them to pay for something they had paid tax all their lives to be given for free as part of the NHS. What they got for being good citizens and saving for a rainy day was a fair distance along the path to institutionalised destitution.

Yes, I am lucky I am to inherit anything and I know that for dementia sufferers it’s very rare to have anything to leave your children, rare to live in your own familiar surroundings until the end and rare to come out of it with any assets at all. I am lucky to have something as piffling to deal with as trying to tessellate furniture. Or feeling sad about letting go. I know that. I don’t need to be told. This is just an honest account of how I feel, because if I’m feeling this, there are probably other people somewhere feeling it too and if just one of this finds this, reads it and feels a bit less daunted and alone knowing they’re not the only one, then my work here is done.

On the upside, the house sale is projected to complete in September, which isn’t too far away, I’m crossing fingers and praying that, maybe, what I might get for Christmas from the ether is my life back. I’m not holding my breath, but I can hope.

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Tagged as death, dementia aftermath, grief, grieving, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life

9 Jun 2024 · 6:02 pm

Stuff

A mixed bag this week so on we go.

On health

Because I have French blood—so if you ask how I am I’m going to smecking well tell you—I’m going to tell you how I am. Before you hesitatingly raise a hand, first finger extended in an ‘excuse me’ gesture and start to explain that you didn’t actually ask how I was at all, rest assured I’m going to tell you, anyway.

Picture of an iced bun with eyes stuck on it so it looks as if it's a miserable face bearing the legend, 'this too shall pass but some other bullshit will come and take its place becausae it never fucking ends.

Once again, I have been riding the vomit comet this week, although I did manage not to actually hurl, merely emptying at extreme speed at 3.00 am in a manner reminiscent of someone upending a bucket. But since I did not find myself vomiting into the small plastic pot I have learned to keep ready and disinfected by the loo for just this purpose, I’ll chalk up this latest round of Mary versus The Virus as a draw.

Another visit to the Doctor and I have new HRT to try—patches—which seems to work better as I am already sleeping more soundly. I have to change the patches twice a week, which is irritating because as we all know there are seven days in a week. Seven is a prime number, which means it’s divisible by one, itself and fuck all else so dividing it into two is tricky. I have elected to go for 3.5 days which so far means 8am on Saturday, followed by 8pm on Tuesday, back to 8 am on Saturday and so on. It would have been much easier if the instructions were something sensible like, change the patch every three days. Never mind. Onwards.

Out and about

Between Saturday’s hurlathon and Thursday’s attack of fire-hose bottom (or FHB as I like to call it) I finally managed to get a gym session in, which is always good, had a swim, did ‘Walk and Whinge’ with my friend Jill or a ‘Grumble in the Jungle’ in this case, since we took the woodland path.

A picture of british countryside, rolling hills and trees, with sunshine and blue sky

Picture from the woodland path …

We also went to see Miles Jupp’s one man show, On I Bang at The Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds on Thursday night, pre my FHB attack. I cannot recommend the Theatre Royal enough, OK, like every theatre, it could do with a couple more loos—even the gents queue out of the door during the interval—but otherwise it’s a lovely venue, the staff are delightful and it’s small which makes is so much more intimate, and therefore, more fun. They also get some amazingly big names in comedy. I saw Frank Skinner there a couple of months ago, I was in the third row back, which was brilliant although I missed Michael McIntyre and Dara O’Brien.

Anyway, if you can go and see On I Bang, I highly recommend it. Miles Jupp’s relationship with his wife appears to be a facsimile of mine with McOther in that he clearly shares the same manic need for tidiness while I got the impression his wife, like myself, might be a bit more louche about that aspect of keeping house.

It was also clear that the dynamic with which the Jupps handle this difference was very similar to ours. Jupp comes out of it as a genuinely lovely chap, which he proved beyond doubt on this particular evening when someone in the audience was taken ill. OK, so the whole show was about a similar thing happening to him, plus the aftermath, but it wasn’t necessarily a given that he’d be empathetic. In the event he was the first person to notice, simply stopping, looking out into the audience and saying, ‘are you alright?’

When it was clear that, no, the chap was not alright, he calmly asked if there were any medically trained people who could help, asked if they could bring the lights up and then enquired whether they needed him to stop the performance at this point or just pause. The end result was a pause while the gentleman was helped out of the theatre.

However, the thoughtful and kindly manner in which Jupp handled the crisis was extremely impressive. Concluding, after the chap had been helped out of the auditorium, that he was thinking about offering him tickets to On I Bang in Ipswich the following Saturday but that, if the show affected the man the same way a second time, he might not want them. After the actual interval, the first thing he mentioned when he came on again was that the taken-ill-man was OK.

So that was grand. I passed up a chance to do a comicon in Ipswich today because we were due to go to my Uncle’s 90th Birthday celebration yesterday and I wasn’t sure I could manage two days running after last Saturday’s outbreak, let alone after Thursdays’s extra helping. That was grand. It being Saturday and there being GCSEs we went down and back in the day.

Screengrab from Google Maps showing the amusingly named town of Titsey and the clogged M25

The M25 is mostly down from 4 lanes to 3 all the way round at the moment which means it’s bollocksed at the best of times. This wasn’t too bad, but it was the M11 which screwed us. A lorry side swiped a car and ruptured its diesel tank in the process. We sat for 45 minutes and then they’d sorted out the bollards and we were allowed through along one lane.

Having taken 3 hours, and the rest, to get down there, we decided it was best to leave by about 4, but after a worrying trip to the loo during pudding, I decided it might be prudent for us to leave at once, just in case. In the event, my fears proved unfounded, but had we stayed, and I’d got more tired, they could well have been borne out by my ever troublesome guts. It’s very difficult to predict it for certain, as I’ve no clue what sets it off.

Going past the morning’s crash site on the M11 on our way back, it was still a lane down although they were just finishing up resurfacing it. We noticed there was hardly any traffic and discovered that was because exactly the same thing had happened about five miles further up. There was a tailback for about 10 miles and it looked like they’d closed the road. We were extremely glad it wasn’t an evening do and we weren’t sitting in it on our way down.

This morning, I had a suspicion I was going to be the only member of the choir at church and because of riding the Vomit Comet last Saturday and Thursday night, I hadn’t passed a cursory glance over the hymns, mass setting etc the way I usually do. There are only three of us, anyway, but the other two are consummate musicians and while I can read music, it is a bit hit and miss. I’m there to make up the numbers really. Today the other two were away and it was a choir of one; me.

Picture of the insides of a church reflected in the brass dome at the bottom of the lectern.

The mass was one I hadn’t sung for rather a long time and I was a bit nervous as I hadn’t prepared myself in advance. I managed to sing one of the responses a third higher than everyone else, which was a bit embarrassing and of course, a lot of the congregation followed me and wondered why it was such a strain on their vocal chords.

Luckily one of the altar party doubles up as choir from time to time so he helped out with some of the descanty bits in the mass setting, albeit an octave lower. I forgot the first of four in the gloria but managed to remember the others even if I forgot to go up a note instead of down at the end. It didn’t really matter as it still went with the rest of the chord. In the Agnes Dei, the organist was kind enough to pick the alternative bits out for me, which was very helpful of him.

To my horror, I managed to forget the first three notes of the second (gradual in Anglican nerd-speak) hymn. Naturally it was the one where we weren’t singing the tune printed next to it in the book. It’s one I know backwards, upside down and inside out … until I think about it. Luckily I managed to calm down, stop thinking about it and switch to autopilot by the end of verse three so at least I got it right twice. After that, apart from the aforementioned Angus Dei, I blundered through to the end of the service largely unscathed. There was another slightly sticky moment when we had a hymn which went to the tune of another, slightly more famous hymn, and I had to concentrate extremely hard to ensure I didn’t switch to autopilot and end up singing the wrong words.

Afterwards there were homemade biscuits and having spent a fair part of the week emitting my entire contents, suddenly, and at speed, I had no qualms about replenishing my lost calories by eating four of them. I also had coffee. Mmm. After the first bout of FHB finished, I kicked caffeinated coffee into touch because I’d not been able to drink it for most of March and April while I had my endless crapathon. Previous to that, I had reached the stage where I had a raging headache if denied access to coffee in the morning, not to mention trouble getting out of bed.

Having got rid of that annoying dependency, it seemed a bit mad to re-establish it so I’ve been drinking decaf, except occasionally. However, I have discovered that drinking the caffeinated stuff now gives me a little bit of a buzz! Mwahahahargh! Which is nice.

On writing

My writing is really pissing me off at the moment. I have a story, with a timeline but I am slightly flummoxed as to how I deal with it.

There are two sub characters, a gang member and a kidnapped sausage maker, whose relationship is a big part of the whole thing. The sausage maker is being forced to make sausage against her will and refuses. Her gaoler is trying to persuade her because his boss wants her to make 8 more sausages after which they promise to release her. The trouble is, they promised to release her after she’d made four, eight and then twelve sausages so the sausage maker has refused to make any more.

Finally, the gang leader has the sausage maker’s husband kidnapped, intending to threaten his murder unless the sausage maker makes more sausages. Enter our hero, The Pan of Hamgee, who blunders upon the kidnapping as it happens, and after finding out some more about it, reports it to Big Merv who decides to send a message to the gang leader who has done the kidnapping.

Originally, delivering that message was where the story starts. Then I rolled it back to at the point the husband was kidnapped. I can start it with the delivery, but … there has to be some time before that for the relationship between the kidnapped sausage maker and her gaoler to develop. That either means a prologue or flashbacks. I suppose it’s possible flashbacks might work… I think prologues are like cliffhangers, some people avoid them on principle, and lord knows I have few enough readers without pissing some of them off before I start. But others hate flashbacks.

It’s all extremely irritating and although I think I’ve almost solved it, it’s stalled progress for a chuffing eternity, which is irritating in the extreme but I think I’m nearly there now… probably.

Right with that, it’s time to go and help cook stuff. I also have to interrogate my son about cake.

Afore ye go …

picture of four book covers in M T McGuire’s humorous science fiction fantasy trilogy The K’Barthan Series If you’d like to read something, there’s always a free book. I have some free at retailers, and more free from me. You can find links and information as to where and how to download them here

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Tagged as author blog, humorous blogs, I fucked this up so you don't have to, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, trying to be a writer, women writers, writers, writing

2 Jun 2024 · 6:04 pm

Meh.

OK here’s a TMI alert for everyone. This is far too much information, very much TMI. If that’s not your thing, please feel free to pass on this one. The rest of you… enjoy.

Last night I was unfortunate enough to have yet another visit from Cardinal Chunder and Mr S’hitattak. Jeez what is going on? Actually no, let’s stop me there, because I think I may know.

After the Stomach Bug That Would Not Die, coupled with the stress of possibly putting Mum in a home which I knew would devastate her, and all the money worries over the last two years, and then her dieing and all the gubbins and aftermath of that, I have been left a bit run down. When I am tired, the first thing affected is my digestive system which makes it much harder to kick a long-term, double-ard bug bastard with this level of persistence into touch. At the moment, I’m on HRT. After having two coils I now have pills for the progesterone bit and the same oestrogen infused alcohol gel to rub on my legs. The pills have to be taken on an empty stomach. I’m not sure what happens if they aren’t but I’ve assumed it means they don’t work as well.

The instructions suggest I take them an hour before food or two hours after eating. Before the Undead Stomach Bug I would take them when I went to bed which was usually anywhere between half ten and midnight which meant my 7 o’clock supper had between two and four hours to vacate my stomach beforehand.

However, when I am knackered, my digestive system slows down. I discovered this by din’t of throwing up A LOT while I was doing my A’levels. Usually that was caused by eating something too rich, or too late. The meal would then stay exactly where it was, until a few hours later when, if it was something really rich like a pork chop, my stomach would decide it couldn’t digest whatever it was, throw up it’s hands and admit defeat, at which point, I’d throw up.

So essentially, stomach bug aside, I think what has caused the last two attacks has been partly that I’m still recovering, and therefore tired, but also I’ve taken the HRT pill two or three hours after dinner on a stomach that is tired and lackadaisical—not to mention still very full of food. Ever since I’ve been taking the pills I’ve been much more menopausal and have had much more trouble getting a good night’s sleep. You need a good 3 hours to get proper REM in and I’ve been getting two hours unbroken rest if I’m lucky, waking up 5 – 7 times a night like I have a newborn or something. It’s been particularly bad all week.

I tried taking the pill later, in my regular 1 am wake up slot. I’m guaranteed to wake up at 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 at the moment, which is a pain when I usually have to get up at 7. This hasn’t made much difference so far. I could start taking the pill in the morning, which might work because it has to be an hour before food, but not if it’s holidays etc and I’m having a lie in and wake up at 9.30 or if we’re going somewhere and have to leave early and I can’t have anything to eat before I go, and spend the day ravening hungry.

Naturally sleeping really badly makes me tired, ergo the digestive system goes slow, and with each successive night of disturbed sleep the digestion is slower and presumably the stomach fuller each time I take the pill on a supposedly empty stomach at midnight. So, presumably the effectiveness of the progesterone pill gets less and less as there is more and more food on board later at night … so I get more and more menopausal symptoms, until I get so knackered that my stomach does a go slow, and, if I eat something rich like curry it throws up it’s hands and … yeh.

Last night, after feeling a bit more nauseous each time I woke up, I was finally sick at 5 am, while poor McOther was getting ready to go to a car boot. So I literally had to wander into the bathroom while he was cleaning his teeth, carrying a small pot, bid him a cheery, ‘good morning’ apologise, and then proceed to do the level up from farting and coughing at the same time; sitting down on the loo and cleverly emitting copiously from both ends of my alimentary canal. Mmm. Poor man. I bet he enjoyed that. Isn’t life a peach? Let me tell you, this is not an ideal way to start the day for me either. And despite being 5 am, it was clear that my stomach had not even given a nod to digesting my supper. I was also pissed off that I didn’t get to church or do anything fun today because I wasn’t ‘empty’ in time.

So I have to decide if I’m going to have another coil or if I’m going to try the patches first. I slept like the dead with the coil and gel combo and have always struggled with the pills so I suspect they may not be for me. I guess I should give the patches a go as they may work better, seeing as the coil did. So another trip to the Doctor’s on Monday, I think.

There are still another few weeks before my results come back but I think everything barring microscopic colitis has been ruled out.

Still feeling a bit nauseous as I write so it’s rice tonight. But I’ll put a tiny bit of ragu in it to make it more interesting.

On the upside …

I’ve been far too ropy to do anything today so I have sat in the garden, in the sun, in a deck chair in my pyjamas and read a book. I also repaired to McOther’s lounger where I had a very pleasant little sleep so all is good. I just need to be really careful what I eat from now on I think, until I get on a more even keel financially and the Mum admin is done.

I have money worries for myself now. Mum used to pay my brother and I expenses to go see her—‘Darling, you must pay yourselves because it’ll probably be the only bit of our money you’ll ever see.’—and I no longer get those regularly. I am feeling their loss, on top of a succession of enormous and thoroughly unexpected bills and in a very long month the housekeeping is supposed to arrive on 1st of the month but it’ll be the 7th or later this time because of the way the days fall. But somehow knowing the end is in sight helps a bit.

Other upsides, or at least reassuring things. I am having grief counselling about Mum which has started and is really helpful. The counsellor said that it is very common for illness to accompany grief so I feel a bit better about that side of it.

Other news this week …

Yesterday I had a very enjoyable day at Watford Comicon. It was a lovely venue and there were lots of lovely folks there, including, among the guests, an actual Dr Who (Colin Baker).

Picture of authors at a table selling their books

Thanks Simone for asking someone to take our picture!

There was also a fantastic bunch of traders with some amazing things to buy and look at. Unfortunately there weren’t that many folks in. Maybe everyone decided the last weekend of half term was too much hassle and they just wanted to stay home. Despite it being quiet the punters who did come along were great and I had some very interesting conversations with some lovely people.

The event was staged at Watford Leisure centre and extra bonus, we saw some wild parrots flying around in the grounds afterwards.

The noisy cricket now has two slow punctures so I’m thinking I should probably get my alloys recoated at some point as this is what usually happens, as they get older and more rusty, they start to leak.

Other comicon news, eyebombed the loos.

Although some things in the loos didn’t need eyebombing.

Writing…

Yes, I have done some writing this week. My main task now is to do the timeline. I couldn’t get it to gel and it was only as I tried to work it out in my head that I began to realise that what I really have is two books. Jolly dee. Both follow quite happily on from each other without cliff hangers so it should be alright once I’ve sat down and planned the timeline.

Probably …

So that’s grand.

Right that’s it from me. Hopefully I’ll have more interesting things to post next week. In the meantime, remember you can always grab any books I have free from this page, here: https://www.hamgee.co.uk/cmot3

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27 May 2024 · 11:51 pm

Let’s try kindness…

This week has been hectic although looking back on it, it’s less that I’ve had a hectic week and more that, after last week’s visitation from Cardinal Chunder and friends I was definitely not firing on all cylinders for most of the time. I finally got back to the gym on Thursday, even though I was still feeling a little ropy.

It did leave me a little time to browse the internet more than I should have done. There was also time to write which was good and finally, after some of the stuff I read on line, time to think. Yeh, I know, if I keep practising it might become an habit etc.

It also gave me more time to spend on social media. The result is … well I did enjoy all those posts about Rishi looking like he’d just got gunked on Tiswas but otherwise it’s all a bit grim. Yes, rant warning ahead. MTM steps onto soap box. Yep. Here we go. You might want to scroll on by but …

Blimey. What a bunch of miserable fucking bastards we are! Seriously. What is going on? I saw a post somewhere about young people and their many genders etc and the poster was commenting on what a load of bollocks it all is.

It wasn’t shrill or tub thumping but it wan’t needed. It was stuff that didn’t need said and yet, it was there and because there seems to be an awful lot of tub thumping shrill stuff about ‘wokeness’ it just felt like another person putting the boot in against kindness, respect and consideration for others, which is what a lot of ‘wokeness’ is supposed to be.

Perhaps I feel it more because my son has so many LGBTQ+ friends. But I get perplexed by this anti woke stuff. I don’t mean the endless pussy footing about in case we cause people offence. That’s just stupid and standing against that is fine. I mean the inability to see the difference between not taking consideration for others to extremes and just not considering others. The anti woke reaction I guess.

The one where the logic goes like this. Bob is LGBTQ+ and has behaved like a twat on telly. That must mean everyone LGBTQ+ is a twat like Bob. Even though there are LGBTQ+ people we’ve known all our lives who are friends and we know aren’t twats! Also, let’s not take the matter up with Bob because even though that would be logical we can’t reach him. Instead, let’s go kick our friend Eric who we’ve known for. years. Eric hasn’t even heard of Bob but he just happens to be LGBTQ+ as well and furnished with our new knowledge of famous Bob, who has been a dick everyone, we now understand that all LGBTQ+ must be dicks and since Eric lives round the corner it makes sense to go smack him. Yes, we’ll smack Eric, even though we have known his family for years and his father is our son’s godfather and we know he’s a lovely man etc etc.

Is this for real?

What fucking prick outside the brainwashed nimby in a police state thinks that one small aspect of a person defines the rest of them?

Also anti woke? Yes of course, because a few morons going over the top about getting offended now means that consideration and thought about other people is a bad thing. As if the fact someone has behaved like an arsehole and got offended over nothing gives the anti-woke brigade cart blanche to go out of their way to deliberately upset different, unrelated people who just happen to have the same gender, sexuality, hair colour (insert your own inane reason here) as famous person who’s behaviour they consider rude, in some warped ‘redressing of the balance’. Or ‘perpetuation of the pointless shit and enmity’ as I prefer to call it.

How old are we all? Three?*

*No. Most three year olds have already grown out of this kind of behaviour.

As the mother of a teenager, I feel beholden to say something.

There is always the disingenuous argument in any conversation about the modern youth’s approach to gender along the lines of x, y or z person has decided that they are a toaster, which stems from a misunderstanding of how they interpret gender, is largely irrelevant to the whole gender/trans debate and merely serves to muddy the waters. A bit like the ‘all lives matter’ mantra, when yes, undeniably all lives do matter, but the whole point of black lives matter was that, to a lot of the ethnic population, it felt like non-white lives didn’t matter. Back to the youth of today.

My son explains that there is a person’s sex, which is what you are born as, male or female and that is irrefutable, but your gender is more like a spectrum which is why some girls are very girly and some are, in many respects, blokes with boobs and a high voice. There is of course, every stage of girlyness or blokishness along the spectrum between.

That makes sense.

Yet still I see so much anti LGBTQ+ or minority of any description crap daily on t’interweb. More than when I was growing up in the 1980s for fuck’s sake. I find my self wondering why? Seriously. Apart from the obvious, are we really going that badly backwards? Question, why does anyone give a shit? Or at least, why do so many people give a shit about trivial rubbish like the way someone else expresses their sexuality? I mean, one; it’s not their business how much man, lady or in between anyone else feels. Two; if choosing to be one gender or another makes a person happier, and therefore more readily able to be kind to others, why would anyone stand in their way? Oh and three; did I mention that someone’s sexuality is none of other people’s fucking business.

I saw a Facebook post just recently; someone in East Anglia getting all hot under the collar because Chichester police dolled up a police car for pride week down in Sussex. That’s where Brighton is, in case anyone needs a nudge. The usual comments asking why they couldn’t spend the money fighting crime followed, from a bunch of people who clearly don’t understand how the allocation of budgets works in government, local authorities and large organisations. Here’s a hint, you can’t take the cost of a £500 vehicle wrap from a marketing budget and add it to a different one. That’s now how it works. I’m not saying it’s good but that’s the way it is in most organisations right now.

These folks who have to complain about everything do my nut.