Help!! I'm Trapped In A Middle-Aged Body!

Climate Conference

2009-12-16T14:02:14Z

Now that the year is drawing to a close and temperatures are running high in Copenhagen at the climate conference, it’s time to think about the New Year celebrations.

Here in The Netherlands it is the custom to light fireworks all over the country. Everybody buys their own and all through the night those fireworks are lit, with the worst part of the night the hour or so following midnight.

Every year about forty million pounds of fireworks explode in the air above Holland and Belgium, leaving about 90% solid waste like paper, wood and synthetic materials. According to the Nederlandse Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieuhygiëne (RIVM) (the Dutch Institute for Health and Environment) the air on that night is polluted by soot, sulfurdioxide, nitrogenoxides and dust particles. Water and soil are contaminated by toxic metals like copper, antimony, strontium and barium. And I haven’t even mentioned what happens in the rest of the world.

Of course there is also the terrible noise, the accidents that happen, causing people to lose their eyesight or limbs, and the distress it causes people and pets.

Why is nothing ever done about this? I understand people wanting to celebrate, but why not have a few really good big fireworks, done by professionals, and stop this senseless waste?

It’s now 16 December while I’m writing this and it’s the middle of the day. Over the past half hour I have heard two big bangs, totally illegal of course, but nobody seems to be wanting to do anything about it. The police are probably much more busy fining cyclists without lights I suppose.

blue_jay12345 @ 2009-12-12T23:28:00

2009-12-12T22:28:43Z

I don't think I would be cut out to be a mum. Don't get me wrong, I love children. I really do. As long as they have their mums there to look after them.

Tonight I have been babysitting my 2-year-old and 7-year-old cousins. It's now 11pm and I'm totally wasted. I'm sitting here with a large glass of wine pondering the fact that I am really in dire need of a week's holiday. I know I'm over the hill and that's probably the reason, but stil, I see grandmums running around with grandchildren like they are still 20-something and I wonder how they do it.

There are women my age who absolutely live for their grandchildren. I don't have any, but I do have my little cousins, whom I love dearly, but I wouldn't want to spend every single minute with them. Maybe it's because I work with children all day long so I'm glad when I get home and get my feet up and make conversation with adults, but then, even if I didn't work with children, I would probably never be that engrossed in them.

After having had dinner with them (food everywhere, even in my lap), having bathed them (I have never been so wet in my life, still shivering), and played endless games, I am now absolutely dead. Tomorrow is Sunday. I'm going to read all day.

The Right To Be Happy

2009-12-01T22:13:00Z

Everybody seems to be talking about it. The Right To Be Happy! When you are born, you have a right to it. No responsibilities are important. It's all about ME. If I'm not happy, the world stops. And woe me if I should be unhappy. Then it's time to find a GP and get myself some Prozac or whatever other antidepressant is the current fad.

What about my right to feel UNhappy? Sometimes I really like being unhappy. I like to wallow in unhappiness now and again. I don't WANT Prozac. My feelings of happiness are all the better when I know what UNhappiness is.

Why do people look at me strangely when I tell them I don't want antidepressants when I'm not feeling happy? I had to take them for a while once when I went through a very bad patch, but never again. It felt like everything was totally bland. No ups or downs. No highs, no lows. That was not happy. That was nothing. From that time I learned that everything, even being extremely unhappy, is better than not feeling at all.

I enjoy the occasional small things that make me happy, which can be anything from the smell of freshly mown grass in the spring to a smile from my little seven-year-old cousin. Is that a right, or is it a privilege? I really think it's the latter. And I'm glad I got that back, even if the rain sometimes falls for weeks.

Flu

2009-11-19T15:11:15Z

So I got this swine flu that's going round. I had a fever for about three days, tummy trouble and a nasty cough (which is still bothering me). I started working again after a week, and I'm still not feeling too good, but I've been told it takes about three weeks after the symptoms have left before you're back to normal. They say it's a comparatively mild flu and I think they are right about that, but I still felt bad.

The thing that's bothering me about this is, that the things you hear on radio and television are so contradictory. Yes, it's a mild flu, yes, it's a bad one. Yes, you should get vaccinated, no, the vaccine is more dangerous than the flu. Yes, less people are dying than when there is a seasonal flu outbreak, and yes, people are dying! What's bothering me even more is, that you can't switch on a radio or a television, without there being some 'expert' on, telling us exactly how it is and what we should do. The other thing that's really bothering me is, that those so-called experts all seem to be paid by the big pharmaceutical industries (or have shares in them), exactly the industries that tell us it's imperative to have yourself vaccinated.

I don't know what to believe anymore. It would be great if life was so easy that there were people you can trust. After 53 years on this little planet you'd think I would know a bit about what made people tick, but the older I get, the harder it seems to be. I do however know, that a lot of this hype seems to be driven by big money. If you are a manufacturer of face masks, you are making the big money at the moment. And do they help? That's highly doubtful. It's the same with the vaccin. Even at the best of times it gives you only about 70% protection as far as I understand it. But then again, this information comes from yet another bunch of 'experts'.

I'm glad I had it really. I can't contaminate anyone anymore and I don't have to worry about getting vaccinated anymore. However, I think it's very hard to decide what to do when you're a parent with young children, or even worse, a woman who's pregnant at the moment. It's high time the media started rethinking the way they make the news. High time we were told what's really going on. I hope this thing will go away soon.

Writing

2009-09-26T21:29:20Z

I was reading about writing today. Several writers were talking about when they’d started and most of them said they’d been writing for as long as they could remember. One of them said he started when he was 5 or 6 years old, another one was doing novels by the time he was 15 and all that made me think.

I never wrote anything before I was 12 and then I hardly ever wrote fiction. I started writing my first diary the year I left primary school. I can’t remember why exactly but I can only suppose in retrospect that it must have had something to do with peer pressure. It was a time when all the girls got those pastel coloured diaries with little locks and keys to write all your secrets in.

Although I had the good fortune to grow up in a household where there were plenty of books at hand (my mother was an avid reader), I don’t think writing was considered the right thing to do yourself. The sentence often heard in our family was: “Behave normally, that’s good enough for you”, by which was meant more or less that you had to work hard, refrain from frivolous things and then die or something equally depressing.

Fancy stuff like going out to dinner or to the theatre were not for our kind of people. Not even when there was a bit of money to spend. The only thing my parents considered all right was going on holiday.

Of course nobody thought of giving me one of those diaries as a present for a birthday or “Sinterklaas”, the two occasions when you were given presents, because that just didn’t occur to anyone.

“That´s not something we do”, was typically something my mother would have said, or even worse: “You won’t do anything with it anyway”. She meant well and it was a time when money was scarce, life was hard and waste of any kind was abhorred.

Going out to dinner in a restaurant would have been a waste of both time and money. “You can have a perfectly good meal at home and it won’t take up so much valuable time.” The problem was of course the bleak Calvinistic background my mum came from and which she never got rid of completely. In later years we sometimes did go out to dinner and I could sometimes persuade her to come with me to the cinema if there was a really special movie on, but some things were very hard to do when I was still living at home.

My sister wanted to study music and she later became a music teacher, but it took a lot of arguing before she got her way, because music wasn’t something that got you a steady job or made you money. My father tried to persuade her to learn a proper job first and then do the music thing as a kind of hobby, but my sister was always the headstrong one and when someone told her NOT to do something, it was all the more incentive for her to go on.

I was the one who usually did as I was told. I found out at a young age that that was what made life easier. I had no idea that my parents were doing my thinking for me (“we don’t do that”) either from choice or because they themselves had grown up in an environment where children were supposed to do as they were told and shut up. And even when nothing was said, I knew the expressions of disapproval, so when I grew older it was a lot easier to keep things that could be in any way controversial, to myself.

Of course it got a lot easier when I left home and got my own place, but as I wasn’t married there was often some reason or other to tell me what I should do. As I said, I usually complied, especially when things were not all that important in my opinion, but the time my parents found someone they thought would be prospective husband material for me, I drew the line.

I had no feelings at all for the guy in question other than that I didn’t like him. We had absolutely nothing in common. We didn’t share the same sense of humour, we didn’t like the same movies, he didn’t like reading and he was a whiner. When there once was an electricity failure he complained about his Coke not being cold. Thinking back about it now, I think I was mostly disappointed by the fact that my parents apparently didn’t know me well enough to understand what was my type of guy. Of course they knew my friends, both male and female, and this guy didn’t fit in at all. He was just not my type, neither physically nor emotionally.

Where I come from, anything to do with emotion was hidden or people totally denied there existed something like emotions. You don’t cry and you don’t tell anyone you love them. “Don’t be silly” was one of the things you heard a lot. And of course, never waste time or money. Now and again I like just sitting and doing nothing. Watching the birds, thinking about things. One of my mum’s sayings used to be: “Go and do something useful”. Fortunately she loved reading and so do I, so to avoid any arguments I could always put a book on my lap and pretend to be reading or doing my homework.

From the time I was 12 I kept a diary. Not one of those fancy ones, but one of those grey notebooks you use for schoolwork. When I was writing in it I could pretend I was doing homework and that way I was giving the impression of doing something useful.

Now, what did I write in my diary? Just ordinary things, of course. Nothing about emotions or anything like that, because I was always afraid that someone would find it, so I kept everything I wrote to ordinary daily things. I once wrote about my first real boyfriend, pages full of stuff which I put in an envelope which I stuck in my diary. However, even stuck shut like that, it still worried me so much, that later I tore it out again and threw it away. I would never have survived my mum’s look of disapproval if she had ever found out about it.

Now, of course, I know that at age 15 I should have been allowed some privacy and it would have been wrong of anyone to read my journals. I don’t suppose my mum would have read them even if she had found them.

I never thought that my thoughts and feelings were good or at least as good as anyone else’s, and I thought that everything I wrote down was very silly, just something to be ashamed of really. I had no idea that it was perfectly fine to write things down in a diary and that it helped me to make sense of the world around me, or even that if a diary is sitting on a desk for anyone to see, that it would be absolutely wrong for someone else to open and read it.

After I left home I started writing more. Not about terrible things, just things that were important to me, things about situations and people. I still have all those diaries and now that I’m getting older I sometimes worry that something will happen to me and that the people who are going to clean up my house after I’m gone will find them and maybe read them and I’m sure there are things in there some people wouldn’t really like. Still, I can’t find it in myself to throw them away just yet. It’s not as if I read them, it’s just that I know they’re there. I know that there’s a lot of things in there that I have forgotten about and I don’t WANT to get rid of them. I know of someone who destroyed everything before she died. I don’t know if that’s something I would want to do. As for now, I’ve told my cousin to destroy all my papers after I’m gone. If she doesn’t and reads something she doesn’t like, so be it.

I started this blog by thinking about writing. I did write a bit of fiction when I was in my teens, but I usually destroyed it again after I wrote it. I was so afraid that people would read what I’d written and would look at me disapprovingly or worse, just tell me it was nice and forget about it the moment they put it down. Now, I don’t care about that so much anymore. It took a long time before I ever asked someone to read anything I wrote and it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. These blogs are helping too. I know there are some of you out there who read them and I even get some comments now and again, which I like. I sometimes submit something to writing contests too, and I know I will never stop writing. I also know it’s not really important what people think about it and that what I’m writing is not any more stupid than what some other people are doing.

I do know, however, I have a problem making things interesting. There are people out there who have plenty of ideas but never write, with me it’s the other way round.

I love reading, I love a good story, but I’m afraid I’ve now grown up too much to ever write something really interesting or worthwhile. Some people want to be 18 again, but I want to be 4 again, when a thunderstorm was the end of the world and there was a huge fish in the pond at the back of our house which could take your leg off in one giant bite; when there were still monsters under the bed and woods were filled with green men. When did I lose all that? I can’t remember, but one day I will read those diaries again and maybe the answers will be in there.

Sunny Afternoon

2009-09-21T19:01:53Z

I am watching the cat catching a fly, one of those shiny green bluebottles. You can see his whole body quivering in anticipation. His pupils dilate to focus on the insect and I know that from now on he won’t notice anything else. His front paws are slowly clawing into the rug to get a better grip and his backside jiggles from left to right in anticipation of the jump.

The fly has no idea what’s going on. It’s doing what flies do all the time: flying around and being a nuisance and leaving dirty fingerprints on everything, especially on the food. Its buzzing sounds loud in the silent sunny room.

The cat jumps.

In one fluid movement his body changes into a flash of red fur and his front paws vainly grab empty air. The fly lazily buzzes on its way. Did it ever really notice how close to death it has been?

The cat sits perfectly still now. Only the tip of his tail moves slowly, as if it has a life of its own. He still watches the fly.

Then he suddenly flops down on the rug, excitement over. He knows when he’s defeated and when it’s time to cut his losses. He looks at me and blinks. It’s time for a wash and a little nap.

I sometimes envy him the simplicity of his life.

OAP?

2009-08-29T16:42:15Z

For everything there is a first time.

I can still remember my first kiss. A very disappointing experience, because it was given by a slobbering 12-year-old I didn't even know. I was perfectly disgusted by it. Should something like that happen to me now the person in question would probably leave with a broken nose or worse.

My first real kiss, now that was something else. I was 15 and my boyfriend was 17 and I was very much in love. It's been nearly 40 years since that happened but I can still remember it as if it were yesterday.

This summer I experienced another first. I was in England with an American friend and she happens to like markets. Any kind of market, and she wanted to visit a car boot sale. Now I had never been to one either so on a sunny Sunday morning we went to a sale that was held on a field just outside Eastbourne. It was nearly noon when we arrived so there were already people leaving, but there were enough left to make it interesting so I drove the car up a track to where a teenage girls was sitting on a rickety kitchen chair which had probably lived in the dusty attic of aunt Begonia before she went off to spend her old age in a place like Blackpool or Torquay. Next to the girl there was a blackboard on which were written the entrance fees in big fat white letters. Children under 12 20p, adults 40p and OAPs 20p, it said.

I remarked to my friend that that was pretty cheap, but she wasn't paying attention because she was rummaging through her handbag to try and find some loose change.

"Good morning!" the teenage girl said cheerfully. "That'll be 40 pence!"

My friend paid and I drove the car to the corner of the field where there was a make-shift car park.

"She thought we were OAPs," I told my friend and I explained what I had read on the blackboard. "I don't think she mistook us for children under 12."

We had come a long way since we had been asked to show our IDs in an American bar last year.

"Maybe they charge less because the market is nearly over," my friend suggested optimistically. I instantly felt a lot better, that is until a few hours later a parking attendant at a priory we were visiting advised us to walk in the road instead of on the gravel footpath because that was so much easier on the feet.

So it's now official. I'm a member of the blue rinse brigade.

Just a Little Rant

2009-07-20T19:48:13Z

I swore I was never going to do this. Never ever was I going to say ‘when I was young ....’, followed by something that showed some youngster how much better it was in the olden days.

I lied. I’m doing it now. My only defence is, that I have a very good reason to do it, I think, although, come to think of it, I’m also pretty sure that every old-timer in the history of mankind has thought the same thing.

I absolutely hate it when people break into a conversation. One moment you’re in the middle of a conversation, the other there’s someone standing between you and the person you were talking with and this person just interrupts you. When that happens to me, I always say something like ‘I’m sorry, but I’m in the middle of something, I’ll be with you in a sec’ which shuts most of them up quick smart usually, but hardly anybody seems to do that nowadays. They just seem to think it’s normal for someone to break in on a conversation and leave the person you were talking to standing there in mid-sentence.

Not only the younger people do that (I can see a lot of it at the school where I work), but also people my age. I see colleagues having a talk and when a pupil breaks in, they go on talking to the pupil.

I do not and never will understand why people are doing that or letting it happen do them. It’s impolite, to say the least, and it certainly doesn’t set a very good example to our pupils. Yes, it was better when I was young. You waited until it was your turn and you didn’t have to hurry through a conversation when you saw someone coming for fear he would break in. And yes, that’s something I really liked about then as opposed to now.

Okay, I’m saying it now: When I was young, people were more polite, and I liked it!

Eulogy

2009-07-17T22:59:22Z

Today they cut down a tree. One of the three trees there are close to my kitchen window. I don’t know what kind of tree it was. Just an ordinary tree. When there was wind you could hear it whispering in the leaves. When it was hot, it gave plenty of cool shade. It’s colours where spectacular in the autumn. It gave me a lot of pleasure ever since I came to live here.

Was it diseased? Was it too big? I have no idea. It looked fine to me. The wood seemed healthy enough and there didn’t seem to be any dead branches.

It could be they chopped it down because it took away someone’s light, but as it was on the shady side of the house, the side where there are no gardens, that is hardly likely.

I once heard someone say that here in the city they sometimes chop down trees because someone high in the city council needs some firewood and I can well imagine it. I don’t have a very high opinion of most people that are in charge of things. Either they get their positions by kicking someone else arse or they were just plain lucky. I never had the illusion they are there for us, ordinary mortals.

Cynical, moi? Maybe, but then I really don’t have much faith in people anymore. Although there are of course always exceptions to the rule.

The tree is gone. I don’t see any sign of the council planting another one, because that is what they are supposed to do. Chop one down, plant a new one. The only thing I can do is keep my fingers crossed and hope they won’t chop down the other trees as well. Those trees were a major reason I found this place agreeable to live in and I would really hate it if they turned the whole area into a parking lot.

I know it’s easy for me to say that, because I have rented my own personal parking space, but then again, as far as I know, there has never been anyone who has complained that there aren’t enough parking spaces around and even at the best (or worst) of times, there is always some space one or two streets further away.

I’m going to miss that tree, I really am.

Hairdresser

2009-07-14T13:46:10Z

This morning I looked in the mirror and I realised my hair looked a mess. No problem, I thought, just phone the hairdresser and make an appointment. I do have a few nice things to do this weekend, so if I manage to have it done before that, I'll be fine.

Alas, not so. The hairdresser, where I have been a customer for over 40 years, told me there was a waiting list of TWO whole weeks. I asked them very politely if there was no possible way they could fit me in (just a haircut and dry usually takes about half an hour and I could even dispense with the dry if it was really a problem) but there was no possible way they could fit me in.

Now I can understand that it's the holiday season and they are very busy, but as a long standing customer I would have expected a little bit more service. For instance, something like: I'm really terribly sorry, but we do have people cancelling appointments sometimes, would it be possible to call you if there is a cancellation? Or: I'm really sorry, but I can recommend a very good colleague who will be able to make an appointment for you. I would have done something like that with a longstanding customer, that's for sure.

Apparently, I'm not even important enough to say 'sorry' to. Just: there's nothing I can do about it, you must realise it's the holiday season.

I know I'm over the hill, and I know the hairdressers at my salon are now all of an age they could be my daughters, but I have always been a very good customer, and it's not as if they come cheap. This thing really made me very grumpy and I decided it had probably been the last time I was going there.

Then I remembered my cousin. She has a hairdresser that comes to her home and takes care of her and her daughters and I remembered she had told me that she was coming there tonight, so I decided to call her.

My cousin called the hairdresser, and, no, it was no problem at all to give me a quick haircut too. My cousin told me it would cost about €15. €15!! At my own hairdresser's it would have cost me at least €40!

I have no idea what my hair is going to look like tonight and frankly, I don't think it can be worse than what it looks like now. If I'm unlucky, I will look like an idiot for the next few weeks, but it's always worth a try. If this person is good, I will definitely NOT go back again.

I may be a grumpy old woman, but I don't think this is the way to do business. This is the way to lose customers. How stupid can you get?

Worry

2009-07-11T20:31:30Z

Why do people think about themselves all the time? It's not something I'm complaining about, mind you. I'm just stating a fact here. I'm doing it myself too.

I really try to think about others. I try to remember birthdays. I try not to forget answering emails and notes people send me, little things they do for me and the favours I want to return and sometimes I can do all this really well but at other times I can only think about myself, or rather, I don't notice anything beyond myself.

Usually it's the increasing physical discomfort that's to blame. Little aches and pains and worries. Of course it doesn't help being a hypochondriac. My motto is: Even hypochondriacs fall ill and die at some time.

I am one of those hypochondriacs who never see a doctor for fear of turning into a patient. I rather suffer in silence. And how I suffer! Much more probably than if I were to see a doctor now and again.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, just worrying about my health takes up a lot of my time. Moreover, I also worry about everything else. I'm a born worrier. I worry about family, friends, work, the cat, not necessarily in that order. Small wonder there isn't much time left to think about other people.

It's a viscious circle I can't seem to get out of and which is the cause of even more worrying. O, and did I tell you I'm a worrier? Have you got a moment?

Bored

2009-07-05T14:13:39Z

What can I say, it was hot, I was bored ......... And then I got wondering about what guys could be talking about. Sorry if I guessed wrong, guys. O yes, disclaimer. The characters are NOT mine, they're Bernard Cornwell's, I'm just misusing them a bit and I still am NOT making money from my writings (I still live in hope though).

Sharpe's Women

“I’m bored,” Major Richard Sharpe said.

Sergeant Harper looked up from the fire in amazement. In all the years he’d known him he’d never heard Sharpe say anything like that before. He put some more wood on the fire.

“Go shoot some Frogs,” he suggested.

Sharpe lifted an eyebrow. “We saw them off our territory remember? There aren’t any left. At least not ‘ere.”

“Maybe you should find yourself a new woman then,” Harper told him.

Sharpe lifted his other eyebrow.

“No more women fer me, Pat! Ah’ve ‘ad it with women! They always wont yer te do summat else than what yer doin’ and when ye do what they wanted yer te do in the first place, yer always doin’ it wrong.”

It took a few seconds for Harper to get his head around that one.

“Surely you just haven’t met the right woman yet,” he said. “I’ve always told you, you shouldn’t go gallivanting about with those hoity-toity, so-called well-bred ‘ladies’. Find a good soldier’s woman. That’ll get you sorted!”

“It’s not a matter of jest pickin’ one, Pat.” Sharpe told him. “There ‘as te be a kind ‘o feelin’ te go with it.”

Harper shrugged.

“Them high-bred women have put too many fancy ideas into your head. Look at me. Do I ever tell Ramona I love her? Of course not, she just knows I do. Love is something for drawing rooms and not for the likes of us. You’re better off without silly ideas like that.”

Sharpe stared into the fire for so long that there were little white dots dancing in front of his eyes when he looked at Harper again.

“I sometimes wonder ‘ow Ramona puts up with yer,” he finally said.

“I’m a grand lover,” Harper grinned.

Sharpe look at him unsmilingly for a few seconds and then burst out laughing too. He got up and stretched his back.

“Anyroad, ahm off ter check out that tavern in the village,” he said. “That’s at least one advantage of ‘avin’ chased those Frenchies off. No need te worry about them anymore. Comin’?”

“If you’re paying.”

Harper grabbed his gun and followed Sharpe. When in doubt, especially about women, what better way to set things right again then a few mugs of ale? And tomorrow everything would be back to normal.

Easy Last Week

2009-07-01T10:40:44Z

Someone thought up the idea of lightening the burden of the last schoolweek by thinking up some special projects for the children. That was the moment me and my colleagues realised it was going to be a really hard haul up to the holidays. At the moment I'm sitting in on a guest lesson, held by some people from an organisation that wants to make the children aware of racial discrimination.

I am sitting here listening to two people teaching a group of ten and not managing very well. I'm cringing at what I see happening. One of the ladies is sporting a worker's cleavage when she bends over and I can't blame the children for giggling and not being able to stop. They want out and so do I. It's hot again and the sun is shining.

The object of the day is making the children realise how they treat one another and people of other colours or cultures. I have never heard so many offensive remarks in my life. I swear if it goes on like this, I will start screaming. Loud!!! Very loud!!!

The Chinese say beware of what you wish for, and I never wish for much, but right now at this moment I wish I were at home sitting behind my computer and doing exactly what I am doing now, but without the distraction of two people in my classroom, teaching in a way I would never do it.

Is it criticism? Can't I just admire someone else's handiwork? I don't think so. Those children are getting away with things I would never let them get away with. I'm really getting too old for this s**t!

Heat Wave Rant

2009-06-29T19:32:05Z

We are in the middle of an official heat wave, the weather bureau told us. It's official when for five days in a row the temperature gets above 25C and three of those days are above 30C.

Now for me, that is terrible. I hate the heat. I actually can't stand it. For me it's a heat wave when the temperature rises above 20C. I feel sweaty and ill all day when it gets as hot as it does now.

What I hate most is those annoyingly cheerful weather people on telly who tell us that this is what we have ALL been waiting for.

No, I haven't, thank you very much. I'm waiting for rain, and wind and lovely LOW temperatures. People always call me mad, but I actually LIKE rain and wind. Always have. That is weather you can experience and don't have to undergo like this incessant heat, which gets everywhere and which you can't get any release from, not even at night when you can't open the window because the mosquitoes will get in. And when they do the cat will start chasing them, which is a moderately good thing I suppose, as they won''t get a chance to bite me that way, but when he starts stamping on my stomach to catch them, it doesn't do for a nice quiet night's sleep either.

Of course, because of the heat, the cat is also shedding like mad. I swear he loses about a complete cat's worth of hair every day. And no amount of hoovering will get rid of it. Ever had a shedding cat problem when you're sweating like mad? The hairs stick to anything and I so hate that!

They say it's going to last at least another five days. FIVE! And I have to work four of those. I'm going to have a shower. A long one. And be a grumpy old woman the rest of the week.

Disappointment

2009-06-05T21:42:49Z

This week my faith in humankind was severely damaged. Two people whom I thought I knew turned out to be total strangers. One of them walked out on his family. Well, his former partner kicked him out, but there were good reasons for it as it turned out, and I had never had any notion of what he was really like. The other one was someone I've known for over ten years and without going into too much detail, he did something I would never have expected of him either. The exact nature of the things that happened are actually not really all that important, but what was important to me was, that I had never expected it of either of them.

What is wrong with my understanding of people? I've always prided myself on being a pretty good judge of character, but having this sort of thing happen to me twice in the course of one week, made me seriously doubt myself.

Is it now time to start doubting every single person I know, I wonder? Is nobody really what they seem? Does everybody have some hidden agenda? The world feels a bit stranger today, and more of a lonely place. I really lost two friends, but the worst thing is that they were probably never real friends after all.

Thanks to the person who created this picture. I have no idea who made it, but it was very appropriate so I decided to use it anyway. Should you be that person, let me know if I can keep it on my blog. I hope you will.

Spring

2009-04-24T22:35:50Z

Today the weather was great. In England they're saying it's officially been the hottest April since they started recording things, but here in The Netherlands it hasn't seemed all that hot really. It's just been nice out. A moderate 18 to 20 degrees C and cool winds.

I couldn't keep the children indoors and when they told me they wanted to go out to study there, I couldn't really refuse them. I managed to take a few pictures of them in which they really don't look like the little devils they can sometimes be. The big can in the front is meant to be a trash can and from this angle it looks as if it's not very hard to use it, but usually there is lots of trash around it which was dumped next to the thing instead of in it.

When the sun comes out, it's also a sign for most of the women to start showing lots of bare flesh. Now I have never understood that urge, just as I have never understood why people have to go to a tanning studio when it's winter. It doesn't make you any healthier (quite the opposite in fact) and if you're not careful you will get that special tanning salon yellowish skin that makes men look like overripe gigolos and women like dried out prunes. It's a fact that at least 80% of the girls at my school think tanning in a studio is a normal part of their routine and no amount of warning them against it will make them change that. They can't go out into the sun before they have a tan and to get that they simply HAVE to go to the tanning salon.

Have you ever noticed how silly most women look when they show too much bare flesh? The lilting chicken wings under the armpits, the spare tyre peeping out between the skimpy skirt that has been cut too low and the shirt that's 3 sizes too small, and the milky white legs sticking out of the skirt. O, and don't forget the tattoo that can be seen on the back just above the bum.

Men are just as bad, but they seem to show their flesh a bit later in the year than women do. But when they finally do show what they've got, it's truly disgusting. Beer bellies, army type trousers that reach to just below the knees so you can see the hairy calves, and the most horrible sandals. Even worse are the men that do all that and insist on wearing socks to go with the ensemble.

I have never liked sunbathing, but now that I'm pretty much over the hill, it has never appealed to me less. I'll stick to the jeans and jackets, thank you very much and if it were up to me, the tanning studios would disappear from the face of the earth.

Lazy

2009-04-23T22:34:55Z

Last weekend I didn't go anywhere. No birthdays, no parties, nothing that I had to leave the house for. I just went over to my cousin's place to have dinner on Saturday. It's spring and I feel I should be doing more than I am. I know I'm home too much, but I can't make myself get up and do anything really. Sometimes it's even hard to get out of bed.

When that happens, it's always good to have some kind of appointment, because that makes you get up and go. Do something nice with your hair, try and find some clothes that make you look moderately nice, that sort of thing. I'm not complaining, because there once was a time I wished I had more time to myself, but now that I have all the time in de world, I don't do anything with it. In the time I spent doing nothing last year I could have written at least three novels, taken a degree at anything, made myself the fittest person on the face of the earth, or could have become the nicest volunteer on two legs.

So why don't I do anything like that? What is it, that makes me sit in my chair and watch the world go by? Sometimes I feel as if I'm paralysed, not able to lift a finger.

Of course, the feeling goes as soon as I have to work again. Like yesterday morning. I had to start teaching at 8:30am, which means I have to leave the house by 7:30, but I had no problem getting up at all. Well, not any more than usual. I'm not really a morning person, so that always makes it hard to get up, but why is it always so bloody hard in the weekends?

It used to be so nice having a day off, but now that I have a three day long weekend and only have to teach for four days, which means I can do a lot of work at home, I hardly do a thing, except hang around reading. Now I do like reading a lot, but there comes a time when it's just a bit too much. I really do need to get myself off my butt.

The only thing I really still do is my work. I know I have to do that, because I don't want to get behind on it and I sometimes spend literally hours at the computer to finish things, even things that aren't really all that important.

For years I wanted to have the time to do really nice things. I really wished I could write, or make wonderful wall hangings, or do things in my house, but the housework keeps piling up too and the wall hangings are all in a big basket with all sorts of ongoing projects. I never go to any lectures any more, nor do I attend any classes I always wanted to take because I just can't find the will to do it.

So what's the problem? Is it that a holiday is just nice because it is what it is, a holiday, as opposed to a day on which you have to work? You appreciate things more when you have less of it probably and when you are very busy, really like I am now, you manage to make more of the stolen half hours you have now and again. I haven't updated my blogs for a few weeks and I had lots of free time, but today, when I'm really very busy with lessons until 4 and parents coming to talk to me about their little darlings tonight, I manage to write a fairly long piece.

Why can't I pull myself up by the hair and get myself out of that deep pit and start living again? I feel like I'm already in a home for the elderly, albeit without the communal meals and outings. Someone said 50 is the new 40 and that life begins after 50 now, well, it's high time it started then, because lately I haven't been feeling alive at all.

Or it may be that I'm just lazy ......

Middle of the Week Blues

2009-03-25T19:28:45Z

The week started off rather badly. I had to go to a special training on how to learn to cope with agression and violence. I don't want to know. I don't want to step into a classroom and have to think about violence. The day I will be scared to go into a classroom will be the day I quit teaching. You can't teach when you're afraid of the people you're teaching. I have never thought about it. I really like my job. The teaching part, I mean. I don't want anyone telling me I should watch my back all the time. The trainer actually told us you have to be careful where you are in the classroom to be safe. The world has become a strange place.

However, this little vid cheered me up. I'd never seen it before. Love Sean and the helicopter.

Click on the icon to start the vid.

Paint

2009-03-20T22:10:56Z

Today, when I looked out of my window, there was a man looking in at me. Nothing very special, you'd say, but I live in an apartment which is situated on the third and fourth floors of a building, and I certainly never see men hanging in front of the windows.

My house is being painted. Preparations started months ago. In December I got a letter from the owners informing me that maintenance work was going to be done and that the painters would soon be coming to paint the outside of the house. It also told me I couldn't claim any damages should my clothes get spoiled by paint.

Now why would I get paint on my clothes? Were those painters planning on throwing buckets of paint at each other (and at me)? Or were they going to have paintball fights in their lunch breaks? I didn't sleep very well that night.

However, weeks went by and nothing exciting happened. Christmas came and went and I had a nasty stomach bug over the holidays, so the painters were not a very important issue in my life anymore. Until that grey January afternoon when I returned home from work and they had put up scaffolding all round my house.

From that moment my privacy went down the drain. And it didn't help at all that just at the time they started on my place, I got a week's holiday.

Usually, when I have a holiday, I like to sleep in and potter around the house in my nightshirt pretending to do important housework and annoying the cat who is used to being on his own during the daytime. This time it was all different. I went through the house as if I were a spy on enemy territory. Peeping around corners and crossing open spaces as quickly as possible, I moved stealthily through the house and I can tell you that isn't something that comes natural to a woman of my age and posture.

When even that got too hard, I started wearing a dressing gown. One of those big velvety things that I dumped in the trash immediately after I had nearly set fire to myself and the house when I tried frying an egg while wearing it.

My cat didn't mind all the activity. He sometimes peered round the curtains or lifted an eyebrow now and again, after which strenuous physical exertion he went back to his cushion or my bed to sleep the day away in spite of all the noise and commotion outside.

This morning I forgot all about the painters so I came eye to eye with one dangling in front of the window. I wouldn't have minded so much if it had been one of those nice-looking bare-chested young men with some great abs, but it was March and still near freezing and the guy was greyish, dusty and he was wearing a coverall and a safety helmet.

To be fair, he probably wasn't impressed by my appearance either. I was wearing my over-sized nightshirt with a dancing Snoopy print on the front, my readers were precariously balanced on the tip of my nose and my hair was standing on end. Not a vision of loveliness, I can tell you that.

It should have been summer, I should have looked like a princess and the painter should have been a poor student working his way through law school or something in order to become very rich and very famous and it should have been love at first sight. Harlequin and Mills and Boon at their very best.

Alas, it's cold and bleak and more like December than March. I'm way over the hill and so is the painter. Life's not fair.

Saturday afternoon

2009-03-07T17:31:37Z

After a bad week and an even worse one coming up, I decided to go and drive a bit to get my brain round a few things. Turned out I drove around for a few hours without coming any nearer to a solution. I'm seriously considering getting another job.

Anyway, the afternoon was not totally wasted. They were burning off the rushes near the Kinderdijk windmills and it looked as if there was a war going on. Very bleak, very windy, but I braved the weather anyway to get a few pics.

Bryson's Small Notes a Must for Britain Lovers

2009-02-26T14:36:44Z

If you love Great Britain as much as I do you are certainly going to like reading Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson.

Last year I bought A Short History of Nearly Everything but I’d never got around to reading it, frankly because it’s such a heavy tome and I do most of my reading en route and in bed and lugging it around between shopping and snoring is a bit much, so that book disappeared to the bottom of my TBR-list for the time being. However, after having read the Notes, I’m really looking forward to it now.

Notes From a Small Island is the story of an American who absolutely loves everything about Great Britain as much as I do, and who makes a tour of the island just prior to returning to America again after a stay of seven years. When I say he loves everything, I do literally mean everything, from well-know things like cricket (which he doesn’t understand at all) and having scones for tea and a full English breakfast to the lesser known things such as pastimes that include having a picnic on a bleak mountainside in October after a hefty ramble up its difficult slope, only to discover that the view is non-existent due to the fog, or the ‘enthusiasm’ of the Yorkshire man who finally acknowledges him as his neighbour.

I haven’t had the good fortune to live in Great Britain for any length of time, but I did spend nearly every holiday there for over 35 years, so reading this book is one long experience of recognition. Add to that the fact that Mr Bryson’s writing is highly entertaining, although not quite in the great-big-belly-laugh-till-you-cry way the jacket promised. To me it was more the smile-of-understanding kind of funny, which suited me just fine. I enjoyed it tremendously and look forward to reading more by this writer.

Schooltrip Survival Story

2009-02-20T22:14:19Z

Going on a schooltrip with 39 teenagers is not something I would recommend to the faint-hearted. It takes its toll, I can tell you. Of course, it probably has to do something with my age as well. Now that I'm over the hill, it gets harder and harder to keep up with the little darlings, but I must say, in between the hole that was kicked into the wall of one of the dorms in the hostel, the chewing-gum I had to cut out of my hair, the coach driver who thought he was in Scandinavia instead of the UK, I can only say I enjoyed myself very much.

We never lost a teenager, which could easily have happened. They could have been run over at a motorway services, fallen overboard on the Calais to Dover ferry or fallen from the white cliffs at Dover. Nothing like this happened, although there were one or two darlings I would have gladly thrown from the the battlements of Dover Castle if I had been permitted to do so.

But seriously, they were all really rather good. Or at least, they tried. I mean, it's not their fault energy drinks are filled with so much caffeine, suger and preservatives that only one can of the stuff would give me palpitations for three days or would put me on life support. And it's not their fault I can't keep up with their pace when walking to the top of the hill on which stands the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. And it's not their fault the driver took us halfway to Sheffield instead of south to Harrods to do a spot of late afternoon shopping.

No they were really good. And they managed to get back alive and still in one piece. Not bad for a week's work. I'm already looking forward to next year .....

Picture Challenge

2009-01-20T17:37:56Z

I wrote the next short piece of fiction after someone made a picture challenge on www.SeanBeanOnline.org/forums . Disclaimer: I don't know the people in the picture and I didn't earn any money by writing this (I wish!!). It was just a bit of fun (sorry, boys!!)

“What did you lose?” Richard, the military advisor, exclaimed.

“Me sash,” Sean answered. “Ahm sorry, it just seems to ‘ave disappeared. I know I still ‘ad it last night, though.”

Richard was looking more angry by the minute.

“You know we can’t shoot that scene if you’re not wearing your sash,” he said, “and not shooting that scene means a day’s work lost. So, what happened last night?”

Sean shrugged. “It were cold,” he said. “Blood-eh cold. An’ me an’ the lads decided te go fer a drink.”

“In your uniforms?” Richard was looking really annoyed now. “You know you’re not allowed to take any props or costumes from the set. What on earth possessed you to do that anyway?”

“Ah told ye,” Sean said, “it were cold. And that caravan they gave us were blood-eh cold as well. So we decided to ‘ave a drink first to get warm. Besides, that pub is only just cross ‘t road. We were goin’ te be back in no time anyway.”

“So what happened?” Richard was getting more irritated by the minute. How could anyone be so stupid? Bloody actors. They always thought they owned the world. Besides, he knew why they had been wearing their costumes. Those uniforms were a great hit with the ladies of the town and he knew there were several hanging around there every night hoping to score a green jacket.

“Nought at first,” said Sean. “We had a beer. Or two. Can’t remember proper. The only think ah know fer sure is that I was still wearin’ me sash at that time.”

Richard sighed in desperation. Two beers? Richard and Daragh and some assorted actors and supporting crew members? And pigs can fly!

“And then I ‘ad this little accident.” Sean was starting to look a bit uncomfortable.

Richard sighed again. This was going to be a long, hard day. “A little accident?”

Sean looked suitably embarrassed but Richard wasn’t fooled. Sean was a pretty good actor after all.

“Ah dropped me tassel in a beer glass,” Sean said. “And then it were wet.”

“Dropped ....” Richard started.

“Well,” Sean continued, “it were reall-eh Daragh’s fault. He held the glass under the tassel.”

Richard started to develop a pounding headache just behind his right eye. That sometimes happened when he was dealing with wayward actors. He swallowed hard and bit back a nasty remark. Upsetting actors, however irritating they might be sometimes, was never very productive. Before you knew it they could throw a tantrum and that would definitely cost them shooting time.

“So what did you do?” he asked instead. He marvelled at himself how in control of the situation he remained.

“Took it off,” Sean said, “but you know, the blood-eh think is about 15 feet long, so it took a while, and then someone threw up over it.”

Richard suspected either Sean himself or Daragh had been the one to do that, but he still managed to keep his calm.

“Go on,” he just managed to utter through clenched teeth.

“Ah were just on me way to get it cleaned when that stripper came in and started doin’ ‘er ... ehm, thing .... It weren’t very polite te walk away just at the time when she started, so ah jest left the sash on the bar for a second.”

“You shouldn’t have left it there,” Richard said. What he really wanted to say was, ‘you bloody fool, you shouldn’t have left it there’ but he managed to keep that in. Just.

“Ah know,” Sean said, “but ah thought it were safe there. Anyroad, ah jest forgot abaht it fer a while and when ah came back, it were gone. Don’t ya ‘ave a spare one?”

Richard tried not to think about the beer-sodden, vomit-soiled sash lying on a bar somewhere, or, which was worse, some silly fan girl taking it home with her as a reminder of the evening she spent in a pub with a drunken actor who was infatuated by a stripper.

“No, I haven’t,” Richard said, “and it will cost us at least a day to find another one.”

“Sorry,” Sean said lamely. He was still hung-over from the night before and his head was pounding as well, although you wouldn’t have noticed because he’d just been to make-up.

At that moment they were interrupted by the arrival of a bleach blond woman in a very short skirt and extremely high stilettos. The shoes were definitely not suited for the terrain, because it had been raining in the night and the ground was sodden and very muddy, but the woman wasn’t deterred by that.

“Seanie!” she called. “Seanie baby!”

Richard thought it would be time for someone to employ some more security people. If those fan girls were managing to get on to the set, they would never get any work done. He started gesturing to one of the crew members to take her off the premises, but just at that moment the woman fumbled in the big red lacquer shoulder bag she was carrying, pulling out a red sash. She started waving with it.

“Oh my god,” Richard mumbled under his breath. The man’s taste in women was atrocious.

Sean, however, produced a dazzling smile. “Not such a problem after all,” he grinned.

The woman hobbled up to them, grabbing Sean’s arm when she arrived.

“You didn’t tell me a film set was such a muddy place, darling,” she pouted. “Anyway, you forgot something last night. Barkeep found it just after closing time and as you had already left I popped it in the washing machine for you. It’s nice and clean now, but you were a very naughty boy to get it so dirty!”

Sean grinned sheepishly. “You shouldn’t ‘ave gone to all that trouble, luv’,” he said. “But ah thank ya for it. You saved Richard ‘ere quite a bit of work.”

The woman looked at Richard and smiled a big coral smile.

“Hi, Richard,” she cooed, “hope you don’t mind it shrunk a bit. I tried to iron it, because that sometimes helps, but it wouldn’t work. I had no idea it was silk. But I’m sure you won’t see the difference once he ties it round his lovely waist.”

She handed Richard, who by that time was quite speechless, the sash and patted Sean’s stomach, before turning back to the gate.

“See you tonight, Seanie baby!” she called, giving him a fat, not very lady-like wink. “Oh, and bring your friend there. Love his sideburns!”

Impressions of a winter evening

2009-01-06T21:19:16Z

Underwear

2008-10-21T10:58:42Z

Underwear

The newest fashion for young people here in Holland is Björn Borg underwear. I used to think Björn was a pretty cool guy, great tennis player winning Wimbledon a few times and I also thought it was quite clever when he started a line of underwear and later all kinds of accessories, but nowadays I break out in a rash when I see his name, because it's usually plastered all over someone's (usually tight) bum.

In my days you didn't have underwear you wanted to show. We used to wear granny panties when we were still grandchildren and the most outrages knickers I ever saw up close were the ones my sister once bought. They had colourful pictures of fruit on the front and for those who didn't know what it all meant, lettering explaining what kind of fruit it was. There was for instance an APPLE, and I also remember the PEAR. I'm sure there must have been other fruits, because they came in a set of seven (one for every day of the week), but that's about as wild as it got. In those days underwear was meant to be worn under your clothes, hence the name underwear. Today it seems things are somewhat different.

A while ago it was all the rage to show the waistband of your knickers or underpants above the top of your jeans or whatever article of clothing you were wearing, making the name Björn Borg scream out at you. But a few weeks ago when I entered my classroom, there were two boys there explaining to one another how to wear their jeans in such a way that everybody could fully enjoy the design of their BB underpants whether we wanted to or not. It seemed that it was not just the elastic waistband you now had to show, it would have to be most of the thing, requiring you to wear your jeans so low that your bum is actually visible.

When they saw me entering they at least had the decency to quickly pull up their jeans and disappear giggling behind their desks. Oh yes, boys of a certain age giggle too! Sometimes they are even worse than girls, but more about that another time.

Now today I had an even worse experience. I noticed I was on the verge of starving kitty because I'd run out of cat food, so off to the supermarket I went. It was a nice day, sunny with blue skies, and mild for this time of the year. Is this important to know, you may ask yourself? No, it isn't. But I'm using it to underline my mood. Sometimes you have to use devices like this when just saying you're happy is not enough. So you see, I was feeling pretty good about things.

The supermarket was terribly crowded, as it always is on a Monday and to make matters worse there were all those shelf stackers running around the place. Then it happened. Somewhere near the vegetable department I nearly ran over him with my supermarket trolley. He was sitting on his knees on the floor shelving tins of olives. His bum was sticking out, his jeans barely covering his arse and of course he was wearing BB, this time in pink. I know he was still young, sixteen-ish I estimated, but PINK! And there was so much of it! The pink I mean...

Why do we have to put up with this? Isn't the knowledge that our bums don't look like that anymore enough? Do we really have to be confronted with a bum like that in the middle of the vegetable department?

I think not. Believe me, I like to see a nice bum once in a while, but I don't want to be confronted by one when I'm out grocery shopping, and especially not by a pink one.

I try to go with the times, I really do, but there are some things I just can't live with.

Thank you very much, Mr Borg!