Tag Archives: off topic

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

27 Sep 2025 · 9:11 am

What in the name of Pete …?

Well, it’s September, getting towards the end, and I had thought I’d have my book finished by this time FFS! Or at least off to the beta readers.

As if.

In July I reckoned I had about two chapters to go. I still have about two chapters to go. I do not know what the fuck is going on. Seriously where in the name of Pete did that all that time bloody well go? I have run round like a blue-arsed fly this month. I’ve done digs, we’ve been away for weekends, I’ve done events, I’ve been to the theatre, indeed I’m going to two comedy gigs this week because heaven forefend they should come along neatly spaced out. I have Lived with a capital chuffing L. But two years out from Mum’s death I have also achieved a princely zero percent of the tasks I put off while my parents were ill. OK it’s 10 years’ worth of stuff. That is a LOT but you’d have thought I’d have managed some.

Oh no, hang on.

There’s been one success.

Fuck let’s celebrate that then! Yeh! I’ve managed to get my son’s ADHD diagnosed. I had promised him that. It’s only taken me six months of on-and-off effort but I’ve finally got there. I now have to sort some time for him to see the lovely education woman who will help him with techniques to get through the school day, hopefully with slightly less regular amounts of panicked last minute shit!-I-haven’t-done-this! shennanagins than his mother. Woot.

Go me! Winning at life, clearly.

If you’re wondering why I would bother to get a diagnosis for him, it’s obvious you don’t have ADHD. Put simply, a diagnosis explains the madness, the dysfunction and why it takes 900% more capacity for him to fill in a form and deal with government bodies than the normals. And also you can get medication that helps you concentrate. I do not have a diagnosis, but having been through one with my son, let’s just say it’s pretty blindingly obvious where he got it from. I cannot stress how much self-hatred and frustration fell away just being handed an explanation for my complete inability to organise my time, life, diary etc through learning about his.

How much better it made me feel about having a fucking genius intelligence level (well OK one point off) that is of absolutely fuck all use (welcome to the world of C grades with the odd A thrown in for encouragement. No Bs you notice)! If it was that bloody marvellous for me, God knows what a relief it must have been for him, because he’s way, way brighter than I am. How awesome to officially know IT’S NOT HIM, IT’S THEM, I suspect it’s bloody wonderful. I would have killed for that at his age.

Here’s an example of what it’s like. McSon had his driving theory test the other morning. The night before he looked out his driving license, ready (he’d had a lesson that day and has to have it with him for those so it was in his school trousers). He took it upstairs to put back in his wallet along with some bits of his drum kit that he’d used at a gig this weekend. He reassembled his drums, had a quick practise and then after doing some homework and a bit of this and that he had a quick chat with me and went to bed.

This morning I went off to parents’ swim at the school leaving the McOthers to get to the test centre.

‘Do you need your license?’ asked McOther, just as they were leaving.

‘I don’t think so, but I might,’ says McSon.

He goes upstairs, goes to his wallet where it lives and where he knows he put it last night and … it’s not there. He panics, they go anyway, but without his license he’s not allowed to sit the test (even though he had to submit a chuffing picture of it to book a test anyway so it’s not like they haven’t seen it). I come back to discover McSon in the dearth of despair.

‘How could I be so dumb?’ he asks me. Not to my face, obviously, but by text message to me, in the kitchen, from his bedroom upstairs, because … teenager.

How indeed? This is a question I felt keenly, having asked it of myself pretty much on loop growing up, and repeatedly over the years. This is why I always tell my child that charm will get you everywhere because sometimes, when you forget to do something that you should have done, and you have to throw yourself on the mercy of others involved in the task to help you to get it in the bag, they may help you. If you have treated them appropriately, they will go the extra mile and do it because they like you. So not only is being polite and respectful to people the right thing to do, but it gets you further, in the long run, than shouting and jumping up and down … unless you’re doing the shouting and jumping up and down for humorous purposes, and in a funny way.

So I went on to tell him about his rellies, about his grandfather who managed to arrive at the port to go to France, twice, before he hit the age of 30, with a passport that had expired. A man who was universally loved, whose ability to forget stuff was legendary, as a teacher at his school. Indeed, when Dad was head of the common room he had to organise the dinner, there was some doubt which night it was on, Friday 12th December, or Saturday 13th December. Dad soon cleared that up by sending a memo round to confirm the day. Trouble was it said,

‘I gather there is some confusion as to the date of the Commonroom Dinner. It will be on Friday 13th December this year.’

Then there was his great uncle, who managed, with some friends, to organise a trip to drive a jeep to Afghanistan one summer holidays while he was at university, to deliver a letter from the mayor of Brighton to the mayor of Kabhul … except after the ornate letter-handing-over ceremony in Brighton between him and his friends and the mayor, which was conducted in front of the press, they left the letter on the mayor’s desk, realised too late to go back and get it and had to have it sent on to Tehran or somewhere so he and his friends could pick it up along the way. I told him about his Uncle, who left his hired wedding suit on the train on the way down to the venue and then had to get the lovely people at British Rail to take it off the train at Pulborough and hare over there in a borrowed car to pick it up.

Picture of one of those red ropes they drape across bits where you're not meant to go at events but frayed so badly that only a couple of fibres are left holding the rope onto the hook.

Clinging on by a thread, this is how we live, my son and I. Welcome to our world.

I told him about the time I booked tickets to take him to a comedy show about ADHD … and then forgot to go. I confessed how one term, I started my essays at uni a ruthlessley efficient 3 weeks out from the end of term, wondering why it was so easy to borrow all the books I required from the reference library, only to discover I’d got the date wrong and term ended in four days. I explained how I arrived at the start of the next term a week late because … numbers … and I’d got the date wrong and nobody batted an eyelid.

I told him how I managed to fly home from Norway a day early by mistake. Yes, even when the plane came down in Bergen for half an hour while they tried to work out what the fuck was going on, I still didn’t compute that the date on my ticket was wrong (coz … numbers). On the up side, neither did they, so that was lucky. I told him the story of how I went to France on an organised tour for six weeks, managed to miss the hovercraft and spent the first week trying to catch them up. Also had a lovely night in the waiting room at Gare D’Orley during that one (I’ve done that twice now; one star on trip advisor, NOT recommended). I should probably tell him about the time I called Dirk Bogarde by mistake or the time I answered the phone and said, ‘Fuck off Giles! That’s a crap Welsh accent!’ to someone who, I fear, may have been the leader of the opposition at the time.

And so on …

On the upside, ADHD does train certain useful things into a person. For example, I remember as a kid that something usually went wrong on our family holidays. I suspect this was more about the kinds of holidays my family booked than my father’s legendary forgetful nature, although I’m sure his vagueness helped, examples incoming…

There was the time we turned up in Crete for my second ever holiday abroad. There was no water so we had to spend the first two nights in the hotel owner’s flat. I remember wondering what the fuck we were doing there, but then I had a swim in the sea and suddenly everything was alright.

I remember another Greek holiday the following year when we had to spend the first week in a hotel up the road which wasn’t finished because they’d double booked our room by mistake. We got our revenge, my brother broke the bathroom mirror trying to swat a fruit fly with the flat end of a full bog roll. Or the next holiday on Lesbos, there was the fiesta we hired that we had to bump start every day until the embarrassed car hire man gave us his own ride, an elderly peugot 504 with a bench front seat and gearshift on the steering column that only Dad could manage to work.

Then there was the time when the French fishermen were blockading the ports so we sped along the cost, reaching each port as it was closed, until finally we managed to overtake the fishing boats leaving from Calais to block Dunkirk and get away from there. We arrived at 3 am and had to sleep in the car on the port because Mum and Dad had run out of money and had spent their last 10 francs on the petrol we’d used to get there … at one of the last garages that still had some and was open.

The company honoured our Dieppe – Newhaven ticket at Dunkirk and we got the last berth on the 6 am ferry, just in time for me to do the whole sorry thing backwards two days later for a school trip. We were supposed to be going Portsmouth StMalo for that one but had to go from Dover to Calais, which opened briefly, and then get a train to Paris, that was the first night in the waiting room at Gare D’Orley by the way. In those days, you had to buy currency in advance, or use traveller’s cheques. The only reason Mum and Dad had that 10 francs left was becase it was my pocket money for the 2 week school trip. Nobody panicked and after a few years I grew to like the chaos. Looking back on it, it was kind of fun.

Likewise, I’ve noticed my son is very calm and able to think laterally in a crisis, even when he’s panicking inside. As a kid, when there was trouble in the park or he and his friends saw someone being beaten up, it he who quietly called the police or shephered everyone to the nearest parent’s house, and safety. It’s always he who steps in and mediates between angry friends, often successfully. I’m incredibly proud of him for this.

Blowing my own trumpet here but I defy many people to be as calm as I am in a crisis. This, my friends, is because, if you have ADHD, your whole fucking life is a crisis because things drop off the mental grid and do not reappear until you are about to be supposed to be fucking doing them. If your entire existence is spent dropping what you are meant to be doing and sorting out shit that you’ve forgotten to do you soon become very adapatble.

Most of the time, you can learn make it work. Sometimes, yes, you have to apologise and confess that you’ve fucked up. It’s not great. I mean, lurching from one organisational crisis to the next is pretty exhausting but never let it be said that it’s dull. Oh no, people like us, we live an exciting life. And of course, you soon learn that fucking up and having to admit it isn’t so humiliating, because you are way, waaaay more used to it than other people, which means you have no pride and learn to give absolutely no fucks and just do the few things you are capable of organising without waiting for permission. That’s a win.

Frankly, if you have ADHD and you give any fucks about anything (other than not hurting others or being a cockwomble) your personality and general mode of existence means you will die of shame. The fucks are bludgeoned out of you early on in life because it’s the only way to survive. OK so weeing in your pants in the tack room after a riding lesson because you are too embarrassed to ask to use the loo also helps in that respect. Not my finest hour that one but definitely cured me of my fear of asking the dumb question and speaking up because even though nobody said a thing, they must have known and no way was I ever going through the embarrassment of that ever, EVER again.

Woah! LONG tangent there. But now you understand ADHD a little more perhaps? Although that last bit was probably autism. Anyway… onwards.

There’s another thing! Oh yes! And I’ve managed to sort it so that Mc(no longer)Mini is insured to drive a car to practice on outside his lessons … trouble is … it’s this car.

Picture showing a grey, low-slung, fast looking sports car against a flint and brick wall. The numberplate has been blacked out in the picture, so as not to show the real one on t'interweb, and the photographer has put a red line round the outside of the hole where the numberplate should be shown (as if it's a pair of lips) and drawn in teeth.

Obvs in real life it has a numberplate rather than teeth.

Yeh, I know. But the main car is an automatic SUV and the tic-tac with a boot we bought as a run-around, (a fiat 500 Abarth) is considered a hot hatch, so insuring McSon, McOther was given a guide quote of £900 to insure a learner driver on it for 6 months while they investigated whether they could even do it … and when they had researched it further, they came back and said they couldn’t actually insure him. So instead of the 1.4 Fiat 500 Abarth, he’s going to be doing his driving practise on the 1.6 Lotus Elise with the close ratio gearbox … because it’s only going to cost £150 to put him on there as a learner driver for a year. Because it’s not a hot-hatch.

What the fucking fuck, Insurance Land?

Seriously, you couldn’t make this shit up. So there we are. It now has L plates on it. He’s doing commendably well so far and more to the point, driving extremely sensibly. Much more sensibly than I do. So there’s that.

Other news: Events …

Last but not least, I am doing an event this weekend that ever is. Indeed as this goes out, today and tomorrow. If anyone is at Norcon, I am opposite the signing tables. Do feel free to come and say hello. I will be dressed as The Pan of Hamgee, as usual, in a cloak and hat. I have no new books to sell. I’ve written about 400,000 words since the last one, they’re just not on any one project unfortunately. I am just hanging in there for the year when I get all of this shit I’m working on actually finished at the same time. There’s something to be said for jumping from project to project every time you get stuck but it’s not exactly a short cut to a steady and predictable rate of production. Never mind. At some point there will be 12 books, probably coming out within weeks of one another.

Anyway, if you’d like to, do come along and say hi to me at Norcon, because all the other authors will be selling books hand over fist while I will be sitting there making people laugh and conspicuously not selling any books to them before they go on and buy a book from each of the authors next to me. Because this is how I roll. But I have fun so I’m OK with that.

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17 Aug 2025 · 5:04 pm

The best of times

The best of times …

Yeh I know, steady on! Two blogs in a row. It had to happen sometime I guess. I mean, for starters, you have to learn the name of the trolley, right?

Yeh. I’m sure you are all agog.

That wasn’t the reason it was one of the best weeks ever though. More on that story … later.

The Trolley is named!

Oh yes he is. Literally tens of people from my enormous crowd of superfans—sorry that’s a lie, there are about 100 and usually only 45 are ever active at any given time—voted to name the trolley. Indeed this time, it broke all records as a princely 47 people voted. Initially, precisely no respondants to the off piste option picked K’Barthan names, until I changed it from ‘Wait! I have a better idea’ to ‘Hang on the character name I choose isn’t listed’ or some such. Then one did.

The vote came down to Humbert, Psycho Dave or Trev with Gladys a short distance behind these three but the winner was … drum roll please… PSYCHO DAVE.

So Psycho Dave and I went to the Foreward Festival yesterday. It was quiet but good fun and I did make back the price of the pitch and the petrol, so that’s grand.

Fiddler on the roof

As I may have mentioned, Gareth Davies, who is the ludicrously talented geezer who voices all the K’Barthan audiobooks, is in Fiddler on the Roof which is touring all over the UK until mid January 2026. I am not a big musical theatre person on the whole, I dunno why because I do enjoy opera, but I wanted to go support Gareth doing his thing so I grabbed a matinee ticket for Wednesday and my mate Jill and I made a day of it and went to Norwich. Jill and I trained it the entire way which takes an hour and involves the most ridiculously enormous flights of stairs to cross any railway, anywhere, that I think I’ve seen.

Jill and I are a bit crook. She has two shit knees and I have one so we are, kind of, the halt and the lame. The allocated time to change trains is 6 minutes but you have to get out go into the car park and follow a winding route between two big metal fences go over the footbridge and then follow a similarly circuitous winding route round the carpark and back into the station the other side. It was touch and go as I’m not great on stairs but I do have one functioning knee while Jill doesn’t.

The stairs of doom

By managing to position ourselves in the carriage opposite the exit we were able to avoid walking any distance along the platform, which, due to our dot and carry one status, would have rendered the change impossible.

Having contended with this, we wandered round Norwich shopping, grabbed salads from M&S which we ate sitting in a church yard and then off we went.

Now, Fiddler on the roof is about pogroms, so I was worried it would be incredibly depressing. I remembered watching it as a kid on film and pretty much wanting to top myself afterwards. This production is very well reviewed so I hoped it wouldn’t have quite the same effect but, holy shit, I was not prepared for how excellent it was. I was blown away.

One of the cleverest touches was that they made the fiddler a character and put him on stage, which was genius. For all those long and rather lovely rambling instrumental bits. As someone who was, at one point, not too shabby at the violin, I was gobsmacked as he played all sorts of mad up and down stuff in 5th position, while in character, moving about the stage and at one notable point while lying on a table pretending to be drunk. The clarinettest also appeared on stage and kind of duelled with him at some points.

The singing was epic, the dancing and the choreography clever and original.

All I remembered from seeing it on telly as a nipper was the song ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ but I’d not realised how witty the script is or how many gorgeous melodies are involved. In one song, ‘They Grow Up So Fast,’ I found myself getting a bit teary.

It stands or falls on the main character, Tevye, who is on stage throughout pretty much. The second act is where it all starts to go a bit horribly wrong, but at the end, what was in many respects an incredibly sad outcome somehow became uplifting as you imagined everyone going on to make a new life in countries where they were able to do other jobs than peasant labour. I came out feeling uplifted rather than flat and if you feel like giving it a go would hugely recommend it.

Afterwards we met Gareth for a drink and did this selfie, obvs. He’s second understudy for Tevye but the first only joined the cast recently and hasn’t rehearsed it yet. We discovered that the guy who plays Tevye had the day off the next day and Gareth was doing it. I was a bit gutted to miss that but was still chuffed to see he had plenty of bits to say and sing anyway in the part of Avram. So yeh, that was grand.

All in all a bloody good day. It was lovely to meet Gareth who was, surprisingly, exactly the way I expected him to be. And at least the reason I couldn’t make Thursday’s show was a good one.

One of the best days ever.

The next day, we went on a family trip to Duxford. McOther was a star during the whole looking after parents thing. Both the McOther’s were, but especially the husband-shaped one. So I decided he deserved a treat. I’ve always had to borrow the money from him to buy him anything nice for his birthday or Christmas, and since I’ve inherited half the price of the house and I’ve never had money before—and probably won’t again at this rate—I decided to buy him a really ritzy present.

A flight in a WW2 plane.

Having seen on TV that you could buy spitfire flights at Biggin Hill I had a look to see how much they cost. It was quite a lot for 20 minutes but would be worth it, I decided.

However, ever cautious (polite speak for a bit miserly) I decided to google flights and see how much they cost. Also, if Duxford did them, it was only 40 minutes down the A11 so it seemed a much better plan to go there.

When I started investigating prices, I discovered that Duxford was half the price of the others and that, for the same price the others charged, they would actually involve another aeroplane and do a fake dog fight—or formation flight, depending on the stomach strength of the passenger. The opposing aeroplane was the main fighter of Germany, an ME109 or at least the nearest thing there is left, a Spanish one, but it had seen action in the Battle of Britain.

Originally, I decided I wouldn’t tell McOther but then I realised he’s on beta blockers and that I might need to. I dropped a few hints and he told me he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, do a skydive. So then I thought I’d better check if he was on for a Spitfire flight, there being no option to fly in a Mosquito or a ME109.

Further thought about his hectic schedule—he is retired but the board positions he took which he hoped would be straightforward and just keep the cash coming in are actually not, and he’s been doing far to much real work for his liking—I had to ask him what day he could go and ended up having to tell him.

So we went to Duxford and enjoyed a pootle round the museum with free entry. Then we went to Duxford Flying Experiences to check in. McOther went for his briefing and McMini and I were escorted to a garden, with a small air conditioned summerhouse. It was right on the apron and the double bubble spitfire was parked about 3 metres from the fence one side, with the world’s only double hurricane 3 metres or so from the fence the other. Just behind the hurricane was the Bouchon/ME109.

Woah. History nerd 101.

We sat in the warm sun, ate free cake and strawberries and watched the planes. It was busy and to my joy my favourite plane ever, the Catalina PBY5A flying boat, was doing shareholder flights; loads of them. So I got a specialtastic little present from the fates; to see my favourite plane up close too. It’s the only one flying in Europe, I believe, so extra cool points. It’s also the ship in the next non-K’Barthan thing I’m writing.

There was one other family doing a flight that day and they were lovely, which made the experience all the better. They were booked at 2.00 so we got to see what was involved, which was good. Afterwards the pilot came out and had a chat with us. We were also introduced to the guy flying the ME109. They were both very amusing, with very dry pilot senses of humour.

Then it was McOther’s go. They strapped him in. I took loads of video and photos and off they went. They provided us with two videos, one of McOther’s face throughout the flight and one from the tail of the plane. We were also shown a tracking site for planes so we were able to trace the journey in real time. It looked like a tangle of coloured wool.

One of the most amusing things was the reaction of the pilots when they returned. The one flying the spitfire got out and I asked him how it had gone.

‘He was amazing!’ he said. ‘He let me do everything.’

McOther confirmed that yes, there had been realistic rolls, some time spent upside down etc. We took pictures of the planes, pictures of ourselves by the planes, and also the hurricane because … well … you have to.

The chap flying the ME109 also appeared to have enjoyed himself enormously. Although he possibly had a bit of an itch left to scratch because, as we left the musum at six o’clock to go home, someone was throwing the ME109 round the sky in spectacular loops, turns and barrel rolls. He also had very amusing ME109 socks with yellow bits.

All in all it was a fabulous day, not just because McOther enjoyed his present, but also because as massive history nerds, merely sitting in our special garden on the apron watching the planes all afternoon was absolutely brilliant for Mc(not so)Mini and I. So we all had a fantastic time. One of the best days ever.

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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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30 Mar 2025 · 6:44 pm

Thoughts …

It’s Mothering Sunday today, which is British Mother’s day, which is a church holiday, which is why Mother’s day is in May in every other English-speaking country. Mothering Sunday was originally the day when people went back to their ‘mother church’ or in other words, it was the one day a year posh people’s servants were allowed to go home and visit their families.

I went to church, because I’m a fully paid up God botherer and I’m in the choir and I came home with three rather lovely polyanthuses, which I shall plant in the garden.

This Sunday also has another name, ‘Refreshment Sunday’ which was a give-us-a-break-from-the-sackcloth-and-ashes day in the middle of lent. At my church, it also happened to be the 50th wedding anniversary of a lovely couple so the refreshments in question were cake and prosecco (om-nom-nom). All very jolly.

Elderly lady sitting in a coral coloured chair holding a paper. Her glasses are perched on the end of her nose and she’s smiling

Mum.

This is the second Mothering Sunday without my mother and the first without McOther’s. I was thinking about how I felt which was alright, actually. I am still perennially knackered but I have a lot more energy these days, and most of the knackeredness is because I’m eating the wrong things I suspect. I need to take a bit of a pull at myself as I’ve slightly fallen off the healthy eating wagon this week.

Mentally, that’s alright too. I still think about Mum, well, both my parents a lot. It was kind of reassuring after she died to discover how turgid all the admin and paperwork was without Mum at the centre. I’m glad I realised, while she was alive, that her gentle presence in the middle of it all is what made it worthwhile. I’m glad I could see that at the time and I’m especially glad that I clocked it enough to relax in the moment with her on my visits and just enjoy being with her. She was, as she would have said, ‘a darling’.

It also got me thinking, I have a particular memory early on in the whole dementia business, when I was going to see Mum and Dad often but hadn’t settled into the routine of every Wednesday. Or perhaps it was a family thing and we were all down to stay at the house. I’m not sure. It’s not really the point here, I was dispatched to the vegetable garden to pick runner beans. I lost myself, moving backwards and forward along the row—frequently changing position to ensure I searched the climbing tent of bean plants from all angles, the better to spot the tasty treasures hanging within.

As I worked I forgot about everything else. A massive bee droned by and I paused to enjoy its progress as it trundled past, heading haphazardly towards the cabbages. Utterly in the moment, I forgot to be sad. A sense of uncomplicated happiness wrapped itself around me like a well-worn coat before I remembered that actually, things weren’t so great and I wasn’t like that now. I’d caught a glimpse of something through a forest, a tiny snapshot from a forgotten time that I could hardly recall, when happiness like that was my default state. A time when life was uncomplicated and the web of other people’s love which upheld me was solid and true, and unmarked by anything.

It was a sliver of something I hankered to return to, in the middle of a situation when I could never have it. Caught up in a world of sadness and concern that felt as if it was going to go on forever, it shocked me to realise it was lost. It was the most potent feeling. In some respects it made me sadder but I tried to see it as the gift of momentary respite it was and carry it with me.

Over ten years later, this morning, in church, I felt a mix of emotions as I sat and thought about things. And then, along with those thoughts came another weird glimpse of a life in reverse. Sure I miss my parents. When I look around the world as it is today, it still feels as if the light has died. But at the same time, I don’t miss watching them suffer. I don’t miss the heart-breaking sadness, or the life spent on tenterhooks, waiting for the disaster to fall and the call to come, waiting to drop everything and drive 150 miles in the middle of the night to pick up the pieces.

As I thought about it all, I realised that I am a lot closer to the cheerful happy person I was before this all blew up. There are a few things I regret, I had looked out a stack of books I thought I might bring home and never went back for them. I meant to grab some of my mother’s paintings and I forgot to do it on my last trip down there. I found a beautiful vellum document which was my great grandfather’s certificate of ordination. That was Dad’s grandfather. I decided to leave it for now, think on it and maybe collect it later. I never got back there so that’s gone too.

Finally, on the book shelves, I remember finding two leather bound bibles, both in a terrible state of disrepair with pages falling out, the spines hanging off and chunks of pages. One had a maroon leather cover, the New Standard Version, that had been my father’s. The second had a black leather cover and was similarly in pieces. That had belonged to my grandfather (my mother’s father). I think that was the 1600s original translation, which is mind-blowingly well written. Bizarrely, now I’ve had time to think about it, if you asked me what I would have rescued from the house if it was on fire, those two bibles would be one of the first things I’d have picked. And I left them? Why the fuck did I do that?

Two items that were precious to and venerated by people I loved and admired. Knobhead. Then again, I did manage to get almost all of the other inconsequential things that had stories; including the plants and they’ve survived the winter. So there’s that.

Also on the upside, I have the lodestar; my Mum’s engagement ring. I wear it all the time and in it is wrapped up everything about the people my parents were and the person I believe I should try and be. It was picked with love by Dad and worn daily by Mum. It reminds me of the light; their laughter their sense of mischief, the way they took the piss out of one another. It tells of their open-hearted acceptance of others, their kindness, their empathy. It reminds me that they are OK and that I now carry the light and that I will just have to voraciously read (and destroy the binding) on my own bloody bible. It shouldn’t be that hard to read it more often and I have copies of both editions for fuck’s sake.

And these days, instead of feeling as if the light has gone out and there’s a void where my parents should be, it’s as if I stand on solid ground and they, and the light, are there round me.

It’s alright.

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Tagged as death, dementia, dementia aftermath, dementia emotional cost, M T McGuire, 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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Tagged as author blog, author parent, full time mum writing, humour, 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

24 Feb 2025 · 7:48 pm

Bite me …

It’s been a while since I contacted anyone, I didn’t do any Christmas cards and things have been a bit higgledy-piggledy this Christmas and New Year. There are reasons but I can’t really talk about them. Suffice it to say there was a death in the family, so this Christmas was pretty much a rinse and repeat of last year. When stuff like this happens, I tend to write about it on my blog. There are two reasons for this.

ONE:

As an externaliser, sharing my thoughts helps me get them in order. In theory, as someone who sells stuff and writes books, sharing something this personal might be considered over sharing. Indeed last year, when I mentioned my mother’s death in a mailing, someone unsubscribed and left me a very unpleasant message. Hence, I only share stuff about people who I know wouldn’t or won’t mind. This death was someone who would mind, ergo, no externalising. But my WYSIWYG nature being what it is, I was unable to write a post without mentioning it. That meant no blog.

TWO:

The world political climate is grim and I know I should do something to stand against the bile and hatred that seems to be spewed everywhere at the moment in the name of ‘free speech’ which some folk seem to think means, license to bully people, lie and spread misery.

Sadly, I’ve no clue what to write and nothing will do any good. Apart from writing extensively about why this new strain of (We’re Not Allowed To Call It) Fascism is wank. Clearly many people can no longer imagine what a police state would be like since the USA’s descent into (We’re Not Allowed To Call It) Fascism and the apparent unconcern among a huge chunk of right wing voters there is a tad chilling and yes, I should comment. However, it’s also difficult to write about it until I get my thoughts in order; and they aren’t. At the same time, it’s difficult to ignore it when I attempt to write about anything else.

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

Yes you you miserable fuckers. You’re doing my tits.

Bizarrely, this week, I am finally writing a blog at a point when it’s actually physically painful to do so, because at last, I have a genuinely, ‘interesting’—well yeh, it’s all relative—story that I can share which will stop me straying into ground where my thoughts are not yet cohesive enough. Woot. Probably. Right, on we go.

Ouch

Yep. Muggins here managed to get bitten by a dog; a rottweiler, no less. Copious bleeding and stitches given, or at least, steri-strips and glue because apparently they don’t do stitches much these days. Let me tell you the entire sorry story.

PIcture of a hand wrapped in a bloody bandage against the white and grey background of a casualty department floor and wall.

I was booked to go on a dig on Saturday and McOther was off to Twickenham to watch England V Scotland in the Five Nations. McMini is now competent enough to be left at home although I’d booked him a haircut, left the money and promised to ring him in time to get out of bed and be ready. Luckily the hair cutter comes to us!

Anyway, off I went, parked up, got my kit ready for the briefing and hung around waiting. My detector was on so it and the spade were over my shoulder but my right hand was free. There was this big soppy old Rottweiler trundling about on an extended lead, people were patting him and he was trotting over to people and sniffing them. He came my way so I wandered over to have a chat.

He had lovely light brown eyebrows and his brow was wrinkled, friendly-dog style, his expression and demeanour open and friendly. Now, I’m a country girl. Animals, even the best of them, are unpredictable, especially if they don’t know you and a Rottweiler is a formidable dog and absolutely not one to get on the wrong side of. I usually make a point of asking people if I can touch their dogs before just striding in there for a pat.

However, this dog was greeting lots of people and was clearly a much loved part of the group. Indeed, I think I’ve seen him at a couple of digs myself. He’s well-behaved and properly trained.

So I made eye contact and then held my hand out spoke to him. I have since learned that it is not always a good idea to maintain eye contact with dogs as they can see this as aggression. I knew cats do but I didn’t realise dogs were the same in this. Anyway, he had a sniff and seemed alright with it so I stroked the top of his head. He was OK with that, too, but I didn’t think he was 100% comfortable so I decided to move back. I withdrew my hand and broke off eye contact as I made to step away. When I did so, he suddenly went for my hand. The noise alerted me before I saw him move.

Obviously, I did the natural thing, withdrew the hand pronto. This was kind of sensible, I mean as I understand it, and I may be wrong here but as far as I know, Rotweilers can lock their jaws closed and if they are spooked or panicked they’re more likely to do this. It might be arthritic but I do find my thumb useful, although I guess my instincts decided for me anyway.

Luckily I was wearing two pairs of gloves. I realised I’d been bitten because I felt the pressure and also the glove went with the dog. He shook it twice and dropped it on the ground, thumb completely severed.

’Ah!’ I said.

There’s some previous on this. I once cut my other thumb peeling vegetables because I thought there was a slug in the potato I was working on and threw the knife away, slashing my thumb in the process #NotAMelt. This also bled copiously, well, hands and heads do (feet too I should imagine) and I was ripped for some time because when it happened I just said, ‘ooh’ followed by silence.

On that occasion, my husband was beside me in seconds and I avoided casualty by din’t of the fact we had a doctor staying with us who always carried steri-strips in her car.

I still get the piss ripped out of me about the fact I will yell the place down if I stub my toe but that the McOthers know that if I say something calm and quiet like, ‘oh dear’ I’ve probably severed a limb.

In this case, the ‘Ah’ had a similar reaction.

A lot of people gathered round very quickly. Although the noise the dog made must have alerted them too I’m guessing.

My first thought was, ‘Bollocks! It’s bitten me! This had better not be bad!’ because I haven’t been out detecting in fucking ages and there wasn’t a doctor with steri-strips (and even if there was, it needed washed properly etc).

I checked the damage. The bit that hurt was the base of my thumb on the back of my hand. Yes, there were a couple of punctures just between the two knuckle joints. They were bleeding a fair bit and I could see the bruising coming up round them. Not too bad. The longest was only about a centimetre/half an inch. I reckoned I could get away with that if the organisers had a plaster I could stick on it. But the meaty bit at the base of my hand was also a bit stingy, as if I’d grazed it, so I thought I’d better check that too. Turning my hand over revealed a lovely gash about an inch and a half long. It looked like a slashed cushion with the stuffing spilling out. Strings of yellow fat and strawberry jam. Nice. It was also bleeding.

Copiously.

Everywhere.

Wank.

‘Ah,’ I said again. True to form.

If you want to see that that looked like, click on this link: I’ve given you the option in case you’re squeamish.

With a sinking heart, I explained that I’d had similar cut before and knew it needed stitches. Nobody disagreed. The various stewards cleaned it as best they could, applied dressings and bound it up tight to slow the bleeding.

Various kind others helped me pack my detector up, put it in back in the car and lock it. The guy who owned the dog was mortified but it so obviously wasn’t that kind of dog and I told him not to worry, no harm done.

The dig group is run very professionally by a husband and wife team and, usually three or four other stewards. There is always someone there who’s not digging for just this kind of eventuality, but also so there is someone back at the farmyard if anyone needs them and to view the finds.

The wife, Joanne, drove me to Colchester Hospital in their truck. Luckily she is very good company so we just chatted away as she drove. Google took us via Will’s mother’s, as usual, but we got there in reasonably good time, it was about half nine when we arrived.

Casualty was pretty full lots of people who’d injured themselves, left it overnight to see if they felt better and discovered they hadn’t. We joined the queue and I had to fill in a form which Joanne did for me, bless her. Colchester hospital is being refurbished so there were that many building works going on there it felt more like Heathrow but luckily there didn’t seem to be much work going on (it was Saturday) so it was reasonably quiet.

Joanne was sent off to the cafe because there weren’t enough seats for anyone other than the folks nursing injuries. Luckily she had a book with her. I joined another queue, to hand my form to some ladies behind glass and got told off for going to the nearest free lady before I was called forward so I had to scuttle back to the wait here sign. These ladies were both very stern, and slightly terrifying. I suspect they get a lot of shit.

Picture of a sideboard that looks really miserable

Stern …

Form handed in I sat and waited with my fellow victims. By just after ten it occurred to me that although all my fingers and thumb appeared to still be moving as required, I ought to tell the McOthers in case they had to fix something and I was kept in for surgery. I didn’t imagine it would take long but I’d had breakfast, so it’d be a while before I could be anaesthetised and I might not make it home until very late. McMini was at home alone, McOther having gone to London to watch Scotland play England in the five nations, so I’d need to tip him off or transfer him some cash for a takeaway supper. I put a message on our family group chat explaining what had happened.

Bless him, McOther replied at once asking if I could drive. I said I didn’t know as I hadn’t seen the doc but that I thought I’d be fine and if not I Joanne had already said that someone fully comprehensively insured from the dig crew would drive me. Lovely McOther said he would much rather see me home safe, that he was just about to meet the lads and that he’d explain what had happened, head straight round to Liverpool Street and get the next train to Colchester so he could drive me home.

I asked Joanne if we could pick him up from the station when I was done and she said yes, so it was all fixed.

At about half eleven, I was shown in to see a lovely doctor called Camilla. She was an absolute poppet. Apparently Colchester A&E has at least one dog bite every day, which I thought was a bit of an eye-opener. She had a look, washed it carefully, stuck steri-strips and glue over the long cut on the heel of my hand and the shorter one on my thumb. I asked if yanking my hand away had been unwise and the gist of her reply was, ‘not if you like having two thumbs’.

PIcture of a thumb held over a wooden effect laminate desk with a cut that has a steri-strip across it.

Number 1 cut with steri-strip applied.

That done she dressed it, bandaged me up and gave me a precautionary 3 day course of penicillin. This has to be taken as equally distant apart as possible, with food, so the diet’s going a bit badly as I have to have an extra bite to eat at 4pm and 10pm. The first dose is taken with breakfast so that’s a win and I can drink with it. Also a win.

Picture of a hand with dressings over the thumb and palm

The final article, before bandaging.

The last thing the doctor did was hand me another pair of dressings and bandage to change the dressing on day three, which is probably today. Next Joanne drove me to Colchester Station to wait for McOther who would have got there in perfect time but the first train was cancelled so he had to catch the next one. We passed a very pleasant hour in the truck putting the world to rights. Then McOther’s train arrived so we picked him up, drove back to the farm and he drove me home. I’m not sure he enjoyed driving the Lotus, I’m also not sure the gearbox will ever be the same again, bless him. Shhh don’t tell him I said that.

We got back shortly after my hairdressing friend arrived to do McMini’s hair and while she was there, I got her to tidy up my hair as well … which was nice!

Aftermath

So there we are. It’s now day three and it’s stiffened up a lot, which is excruciating. BUT … I have discovered two things that really help, get your hands moving when it’s too painful to do it alone. Start with a heat pack to loosen it initially, or if you have a vibro massager use that in the general area (but not on the stitches, obviously). Both those are wonderful for reducing the pain and allowing freer movement. Then, once everything is more relaxed, touch typing seems to be brilliant for this kind of stiffness as it’s low impact but enough movement to keep things supple. Also after an injury like this you do need to keep things moving.

On the downside, after about half an hour it all stiffens up again. It maybe that I’ve been typing too much and overdone it perhaps, I dunno, but I’ve left The Pan of Hamgee standing on a roof disguised as half of a drag duo, with the other half at his side and a party of hostile members of the Grongolian Security Forces about to join them very soon, so I reckon I’m excused as I need to know what happens next. Flying car chase, obvs but I need to work out how it goes.

If you’re bored …

Or need to escape, why not check out one of my books. I give some away for free, because I’m kind like that, so you won’t even have to pay to be distracted from the absolute fucking car crash that is the world right now.

Lose yourself in some books here.

PIcture of the cover of Close Enough by M T McGuire depicting a man in a hat and cloak standing on a parapet looking out over the city and a hovvering flying car. The colour palette is mostly blue and purple but the parapet is orange.

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Tagged as an author with children, author interviews, dog bites, I fucked this up so you don't have to, I hate fucking tags especially now I have to do them one by one instead of cutting and pasting them from one blog post to another, istuffedthisupsoyoudon’thaveto, M T McGuire, Mary Fails at Modern Life, off topic, trying to be a writer, writers

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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Filed under General Wittering

Tagged as aurora borealis, author blog, detecting finds, detectorist, M T M Makes a complete tit of herself, M T McGuire, M T McGuire new releases, metal detecting, off topic

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: