Monday 16 July 2012

Keepers

There are people in life that you just keep.
You may meet hundreds of new people as time goes by but only a few of these are keepers.
           My two dear friends were keepers and i knew this from the moment i met them. We have been through many tough times together and have managed to come out smiling, our children have grown up together and we have grown up together too in many ways.
           The first time Steve was ill their little boy was a toddler and his daughter a bit older it was a major shock to everyone and something of a life and death emergency. Max had never been away from home before but came to stay with us whilst his daddy was rushed to hospital, I looked at him that night on the sofa cuddled up to my little girl who was about the same age, they sat together drinking their bottles of milk and snuggling their blankets at bed time. We had tears in our eyes looking at that little boy and wondering if his daddy and our dear friend would ever see him go to school, go to cubs, would he ever take him fishing? and do all of those things a daddy should do.
 Miraculously he amazingly came through we could barely breathe all day waiting for the news but the transplant had been successful. A few years later bad luck was to befall him again and he became very ill needing another transplant, I spent most of the operation duration on the end of the telephone whilst his wife was there at the hospital in pieces, he very nearly did not come through but if anyone knows Steve he was a fighter and he beat all odds. 
Sadly on Friday night this brave man who never once moaned about his health lost his fight for life, a simple life where all he wanted to do was work and care for his family, i suppose we should be grateful that he did survive those extra precious  years so that he could take his boy fishing and do all of those things that they did together, A quote i read today on his Facebook page was 'This was the most gentle, funny and nicest man ever' with a picture. Well I cannot think of a more perfect description, all I have to say is that it was a pleasure to know you Steve and you will never be forgotten.

 I wrote this story for a children's book compilation all those years ago its about the night that the most precious thing in my friends life was entrusted to me. I never told them we were up quite late in to the night making up stories and looking out of the window because he wanted mummy and daddy, we were fine though we ended up having lots of fun and this is basically what happened. Rest assure Steve we will now always be entrusted with your precious things and will always promise to look out for them. Rest in peace beautiful man.

Ode to Steve one of life's keepers


Max and me 



There once was a boy, who came to stay with me
His name was Max and he was three
Odd things started happening really quite soon
When Max said ‘Hey look there’s an elephant in my room’
Oh yes’ I said,  pretending I could see
I’ll call the zoo keeper so that he
Can catch that elephant, what is in your room
So I called him quick, he came quite soon.
Can you hear the stomping?’ Max said to me.
LOOK up there! a monkey in that tree’
I looked outside and pretended he was right
And then I called the zoo keeper for the second time that night.

Cant get to sleep!’ shouted max again
Look at the ceiling, a hippo flying a plane!’
Oh yes I replied ‘So there is’
Ill call the keeper back, he’ll be here in a whizz!’

A witch on a broom with a fish on a stick’
Oh goodness me ill call someone quick!’
But who should I call?
The fish was not small.
The big nosed witch was dressed in black
She’s even got a giant cat’

We sat and we thought Max and me
We’ll call a wizard, would you agree??
So the wizard came wearing a big tall hat
He came with a wand and a cricket bat.
I was puzzled now
And so was the cow
Who suddenly appeared?
Next to the elephant, who now had a beard?

The room was so full; it had always been empty,
I started with Max
But now I had plenty
An elephant some monkeys a zoo keeper too,
Who looked at me strangely quite unsure what to do
The witch and the fish, the stick and the wizard
And out of the window it was striking a blizzard

What a strange night…….So max and me
Lay down in his bed and counted to three.
Tired little Max closed his eyes,
I opened mine and what a surprise
The elephants and all they had been here so long,
Now Max was asleep and they were all gone.

RIP xxx



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Friday 6 July 2012

Im sorry about the Jubilee weather Horribulus Your Majesty , I had no idea that our summer plans would clash :0/

            It soon became clear that the confessions blog had not worked :0/ I could tell this by the 7 hour traffic jam to Cornwall ! Oh yes the day that the M5 was turned in to a car park :0( I was reminded of it again when the weather was so bad in Cornwall that it was raining sideways :0/ To be truthful i didn't realise we had a sea view until 3 days in because to me it just looked like bad sky :0/
           On the Sunday (The big Jubilee Sunday of the water pageant) the rain pelted down so hard that the caravan shook in an alarming manner, it was on this day that we decided to stay in as it looked far to dangerous outside :0/  Im sure that the queen and prince Philip wished they were staying in also :0( I felt awful for them shivering away on that boat like that :0/ knowing that probably it was all my fault.
I am so sorry your majesty when I booked my annual holiday I had no idea that it would clash with your jubilee celebrations, had I have realised I would have indeed chosen another week :0/
            If you refer back to the cornish showers blog from last year the photos will give you a good idea of what it was like ......... I don't know why I bother!!!
           So I was apparently allergic to the sun. Well I can tell you the condition has not been a problem at all :0/  Although sods law before the holiday we had a few hot weeks.
 It was in the week before that I decided to clean up the camping chairs, it was a boiling hot blazing sun day and I thought yeah!! dining alfresco in the sunshine in Cornwall nice!!! I found 6 adult ones all together and they were to be fair in a bit of a state, I thought id take them all as we were going with some friends. So I swept the patio planted some hanging baskets and sprayed all 6 chairs, I sprayed them until they were soaked this I thought would get rid of the green stuff :0/ It was then that bubba 4 woke up, pleased that I had finished something I picked her up and then looked at the chairs in the blazing sunshine. It was then that I glanced down  at the spray ..... fec In big fat gypsy letters it said FLAMMABLE!!! DO NOT LEAVE IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT!!!! Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! :0(
            The sunlight couldn't have been more direct than that :0/ now what the hell do I do? they desperado needed hosing but Bubba 4 was not having any of it, in the end I just had to leave them there ..... on display, in the boiling hot sunshine :0/
            I ran to school that day hoping that my patio would not blow up :0/ How many people have had to worry about that ? not bloody many  I bet :0/
            Upon my return I am glad to say that the patio had not blown up and all was well ....... until the next day that was, when we tried to fit them in the car........ They wouldn't fit, neither did 1 suitcase the pushchair the travel cot and a child :0/
           So well done to me I had done it again!! I had packed up a years worth of stuff to last us seven days! normally my friend comes round and goes through my packing taking out the fur coats and stuff but she had selfishly gone on holiday so i had to do it by myself!  :0/ ...... im sure i have a hoarding problem :0/
          Boy 40 managed to shove a lot of stuff ( mainly winter get up ) in to the £500 roof box. I then cleverly shrunk the duvet covers sheets and towels in to shrink bags!! (how many people pack so much stuff that they have to hoover shrink duvets?? ) :0/
          So then we were off 2 hours late already because the roof box would not lock, this could be because it got crushed underneath that barrier that time :0/ At this rate our friends who hadn't even left yet would be there before us :0/
I had never been so glad to get to Cornwall. First of all we visited (apparently) the oldest pub in Cornwall for some tea, they probably started building it when we got on that flippin motorway :0/ I love Cornwall but by the Thursday I would have been quite happy to go home, I extracted bubba 4 from her cot that night at 3 am through fear that we would wake up in Kansas in a broken caravan, I have never never experienced wind like that before , oh apart from the time at 3 cliffs bay in Wales when our tent blew down :0( 4 am 999 rescue. Boy 40 was outside in his pants franticly  bashing down the tent pegs, we pulled the kids out by their feet and all rocked from side to side in the car until 6 am when I decided to tell all of our friends we were leaving and could they chuck our tent away in the 'proper' morning :0/
            Im not sure what I looked like when I turned up at McDonald's at 7 am wearing a pair of moo cow pyjamas and some wellies :0/ I was glad though to have left that camp site as the very next day a land rover careered backwards down the field through the campers and in to the road :0/
             So back to Cornwall. Following the weather from monsoon land gushing down my head all week boy 40 decided to drive up the coast on the way home, he figured that the motorway would be the same as the previous Saturday because the holiday makers would all be going back up ....wet :0(
             10 HOURS!!!!!! 10 HOURS I TELL YOU!!! 10 hours 4 counties and 2 country's!! Yes 2 country's the motor way was closed when Jeremy Clarkson decided to eventually get on it so we were diverted to Wales!! WALES!!!! FFS
             Child 3 was not impressed she still gets flash backs to the welsh camping disaster although to be fair she should get flash backs every time she sees a field our camping holidays have been that bad :0/ it happens every where  :0/ She shouted I don't want to go to Wales to all of the other people in the traffic jam and I could tell by their faces that they didn't want to go there either :0/ I didn't much fancy it myself we had already been on the road for 5 hours :0/
Glad though this time I was that boy 40 used the diversions, and not the sat nav in his brain which he unfortunately used when we ran out of petrol in Cornwall, even sat navs cannot find petrol stations in Cornwall never mind the one in his brain :0/ That was the day that child 3 dropped ice cream on the floor of a shop in Tintagel . The miserable git of a shop owner gave her a right good telling off, poor thing she would have eaten it outside if it wasn't raining so much :0/ For this child 3 broke friends with the whole of Cornwall and does not want to be going back there again any time soon ( A bit like Wales)
          Erm Mum she pipes up from the back of the almost stationary car 'How is the queens husband? I heard he is in hospital !!' Yes I think he's ok I replied 'Oh right she said 'did he fall off of a cliff??' 'No I replyed 'he got a wee wee infection when he was out in the rain 'AH right' she replied, I thought nothing of this until I heard her tell someone if you go out in the rain and get stingy wee it means your a prince :0/ I can feel a whole new children's story coming on instead of the princess and the pea it would be the prince and the pee :0/ .............. just an idea.
            Im not really sure where to start with her antics over the past month, I suppose I could start with the ' look mum no hands, no feet, no nuffink' accident, or the spectacular skid across the bridge and over the top of the scooter accident (I mean stunt) or indeed when she crashed in to that lamp post, stood up immediately giving her fingers a gangsta rap flick whilst saying 'Check it!! stunt' :0/ To be honest with you there have been too many to mention. I would say the most dangerous one in my mind would be the one last Tuesday when she raced against the flow of pedestrians on the path at school. Picking up tremendous speed she made the mistake of breaking as she hit the wet grass thus skidding sideways to a miraculous landing outside the school hall :0/ It was only the week before that I had to let about 40 parents and kids go by me repeating ' erm sorry would you like to go by me she appears to be stuck in the fence ':0/ ....... that was a long night.
           Her fascination with the 240 volt electrical box at the traffic lights also came to a head in this week. ' can I touch that mum? ' no I said you cant touch it ' can I touch it with a pen? ' no you cannot touch it with a pen .......'can you touch it with a pen?' no I cannot ' if I get a pen from school can I touch it on the way home? 'No' I answered for the thousandth time that morning. It was also upon this day that she managed to convince the shop keeper to sell her a bag of skittles for 8 pence less!!! 8 pence I tell you!!! that was some achievement it costs about £2.40 in that shop for a can of beans!
           The next day we unfortunately had to take child 2 to the Othodontist or Awful dentist as she has re named her. Upon leaving child 3 shouts out 'HEY MUM LOOK AT THAT CAR'!!!! 'COR'!!!!! 'That man must be soooo rich he's had the Olympic rings put on the front of his car in silver!!!!!!' ...... I didn't have the heart to tell her it was an Audi :0/
          Another faux paus she has made this week was telling her teacher she could play the harmonica. She had no idea why she did it because she had no idea how to play the harmonica.  It was arranged that she would get up on the stage the very next day and play the said harmonica in front of the whole school :0/ She laughed as she told me this conundrum she was facing and thought the situation hilarious :0/
We then had 5 solid hours of 3 blind mice, she was blowing sucking and even made up her own tune to it at one point.
        If you know anything about 3 she is as stubborn as a mule and will succeed in anything she wants to do so by the next morning she could indeed play 3 blind mice on the harmonica perfectly and even got put in to a concert :0/ I was at the least very impressed by this because up until that point she had only made joke fart noises on the small instrument.
You will be glad to know that she has named her feet Bob And Maureen, I have no idea why and she styled a ponies hair in to a Justin Bieber style at dinosaur land, she has managed to get child 2 stuck in the wheelie bin and 4 of her friends stuck up the woods :O/ She also emulsioned her own face last friday :0/ ........before you feel you should get involved social services im already putting together my defence case and its bloody good!!!
       I was glad last week that child 2 and 3 were invited to a jewellery party next door, not glad to get rid of them for a while although that was a bonus but glad because child 3 was at last doing something a bit girly!!! ...Until that was that 2 came home and said that she had pulled the party lady to one side and had asked where she got her drill from :0/
           I think that's probably enough of her now.
2 has been to hideous amounts of hospital appointments in the past 2 weeks, I try to fit them all in the holidays normally but she had a treat this year and went to Cornwall in the pissing down rain instead :0/
 I was surprised that her lung capacity was so rubbish at 68 % I mean I don't know anyone who can shout louder than her :0/ Her and the boy child were having a conversation in the kitchen, she obviously did not have her hearing aids in because they were both shouting (and the door was open ) :0/
'HEY LOOK' says 1 this Shepherds pie defy's gravity!!!!' ....... I bet Nigella's kids have never said that!" nor I bet they have never had to pick up roasted salmon with their fingers because the cutlery was not strong enough to cut it :0/
          Just while im still thinking of 3 look what she did to 2's face on Sunday night!!!!















How was I to get that off by Monday morning? 2 went to school looking like Alice cooper :0/ 
She then offered to paint my nails :0/










My fingers look like mikados!!!!! :0(

Well lastly me ive been hoovering up frubes and stuff :0/ stupid hoover wont suck up crumbs but it sucks up plastic wrapped yoghurt's :0/ it all smells quite pleasantly fruity at the moment but give it a few weeks and it'll smell like Gorgonzola :0/ id let myself off if I didnt have history in that department :0/
I realised the other day that the taller my shoes are the skinnier my legs look, I now require some 50 ft platforms if anyone has any? I mean it was nice to receive so much home made birthday cakage on my birthday but now my Kylie arse is paying for it :0/
The birthday BBQ was cancelled by the way due to adverse weather conditions :0/
         So apart from the boy child going to a madness concert (although he could have saved some money & stayed home and seen it ) Nothing much else has happened, he had a psychology exam which he probably aced living here and certain university's are willing to pay him to study there next year! :o) I would actually be eternally grateful for that fact though because otherwise he will be 60 odd grand in debt :0/
          So that's it then hope you haven't been too bored.
Until next time 5,881 ;0)