The End Of Another Year

I had my forecast for 2010 prepared by a celebrity astrologer this time last year and I thought it would be interesting to go back and see what he got right .

He said:
- I would get a pay rise before my birthday in February …..WRONG !
- I may change jobs and even move home ……WRONG !
- Travelling abroad would be a distinct possibility…..WRONG !
- Although I have a good network of friends, I should nurture my friendships more as I could fall out with a few this year…..WRONG, though to be fair I have been pondering the meaning of friendship recently.
- My marriage will continue to be problem-free and we will work well as a couple….. well that was obviously WRONG to start with but things have been good this year
- I need to be careful about my health, as I will be prone to a number of common ailments like flu and stomach problems ….. I laughed that off at the time but it was the one he came closest to as I ended up in hospital in September and quite frankly, I haven’t been right since, so I’ll give him that one !
- My life still has a way to go before things will settle enough for me to start unravelling the knots ……RIGHT ! I have started “unravelling” but it feels as if there’s still such a lot to sort

So I think we conclude that on the whole our astrologer friend was …a bit crap. But that’s OK, he’s a nice guy so let’s just forgive him and move on!

Thinking back over the last year, my therapist has been good and my sessions are now down to once a fortnight on his advice. I do feel much better and that cloud of depression has certainly lifted. I guess the worry is that I’m aware of it still hovering in the distance and I don’t want it to come back. Blogging about what Ewan did helped a lot. I think the problem is that that in the current climate when money is tight, I am constantly anxious that there could be a repeat which of course puts a strain on him as he is constantly trying hard to prove to me that was a one off mistake but I can’t, or won't, forget it. That said, I have felt very warm towards him recently and we’ve been getting on well but somewhere deep down I’m still scared of something and so I know I’m holding back. We started entertaining more again this year and I really believe that has been good for us as it is what we used to do early on in our marriage.

My nephew Daniel got married this year but with a special wedding there is always a funeral. This year there were two – my darling young friend Maria and a newer friend, Anna, who died suddenly. That resulted in me nearly getting back with Matt but fortunately I saw sense and ended it with him once and for all in February. I just feel very embarrassed now about my whole fling with him. What was I thinking?

That feeling of foolishness deepened when I found out later in the year that what I thought was a very special relationship with Chris all those years ago, was really no more than just a notch on his bedpost as I learnt about a string of other women who thought they were “special”. I cringe every time I think about it

Much better not to think about any of that and instead, focus on my lovely children. This year Kyle got 10A*s in his GCSEs - I still can’t get over that - and Sasha has written her own musical which will go on stage early in 2011. I’m so proud of them both.

I found out just this month that I have an uncle, cousin and niece that I knew nothing about. We plan to visit them in the States sometime next year.

And that’s it really. Although I can't let pass that I hit a hundred posts this year. However, the blogging has slowed down considerably and I don’t get the chance to read and comment on my favourites as much as I would like. It’s good in a way as it means I’m now actually living my life again as opposed to just writing about it but doing it less feels like something is constantly missing. Maybe, hopefully, I’ll strike a happier balance in the New Year.

Oh well, just a few hours left. Time to “dance one year in, kiss one goodbye”. Who knows, maybe 2011 will be ….the perfect year ! Here’s hoping.

Happy New Year to you all xx

How Did This Happen So Quickly?

I can’t believe it will be Christmas the day after tomorrow!

I have spent the last week still writing Christmas cards, buying gifts and food and drink, wrapping presents, preparing nibbles or fancy meals, entertaining and being entertained and I’m loving every last minute of the festive panic.

There’s more of the same over the next week so I don’t think I’ll be back here this year.

Therefore ……

Can I take this opportunity to wish you, my lovely blogging friends, a VERY happy Christmas and a brilliant New Year!

Have a good one! xx

Spreading Some Festive Cheer

So, a few weeks ago, my blogging pal Rosie Scribble wrote a post saying how she had got a free TV simply by commenting on a fellow blogger’s post who had written about getting a free washing machine.

All these freebies came courtesy of Appliances Online

She invited her readers to comment and I did, congratulating her but I couldn’t bring myself to ask for anything in particular as a) I was a bit sceptical and b) I could hear my mother’s voice from when I was young telling me never to ask for anything but always wait to be offered !!!

I forgot all about it then, until earlier this week when I received a surprise email from a lovely sounding gentleman thanking me for commenting on Rosie’s blog and OFFERING me the choice of some posh choccies or Amazon vouchers in return for just linking to them. And do you know, I’m happy to do that as deep down, I have a bit of a sneaking admiration for the clever route they have taken in their marketing.

So, here’s the link and feel free to leave a comment here saying what you were hoping Santa might bring as you never know, Appliances Online could be reading.

Meanwhile, do I go for chocolates or books or chocolates or DVDs or chocolates……oh, such decisions !!!

Family Secrets

When my mum was little, her father’s brother was killed in a car accident and because his wife couldn’t cope with life, their son stayed with my mum’s family during the school holidays. My mum and her brother and sister became very close to him and looked on him more as a brother than a cousin.

The last time they were all together was at my parents’ wedding and then almost immediately afterwards, the two boys went to America to make their fortune. Soon after I was born, my mother’s sister who was only 20, developed a brain tumour and only had weeks to live. In that time, she wanted to see both her brothers. The trouble is neither of them had any money and between them they scrimped and saved enough for her real brother to come home but not enough for both of them.

Although my aunt was pleased to see him, she was desperate to see her cousin too and so my grandad took out a loan to buy an air ticket (which was very expensive in those days) to get him back. But, he got home just an hour after my aunt had died and in her last hours she had still been asking for him. He was completely gutted and everyone was grief stricken that such a beautiful young woman had been taken away from them. But my Mum’s grief turned to anger and she gave him a really hard time. She accused him of not caring enough to get a loan of his own, constantly telling him that my Aunt Sadie had been calling his name and that he didn’t have the heart to reciprocate her love, shouted that he wasn’t worthy of her love because he wasn’t even her brother and that from then on he was not dare consider her his sister because she wanted nothing more to do with him.

I only found all this out last week as suddenly, out of the blue, she told me all about him, including how horrible she was to him. Until now, I only knew about my Aunt Sadie, who I never met and my Uncle Charlie who I’ve only seen a few times as he lives in America. And now, I find out I have an Uncle Charles who also lives in the States and who is currently over here on a visit to the UK. He got in touch with my Mum and told her he was coming to see her whether she liked it or not and after all these years of bitterness, she finally relented and agreed to see him.

He came over last night and it was very emotional.

Ewan opened the door to him and welcomed him warmly and I was drawn to him immediately because he looks just like Uncle Charlie. He shouted my name when he saw me and gave me a big huge bear hug and I loved him straight away and then as he let me go, Mum came down the stairs slowly with tears streaming down her face and he ran to her and they hugged and hugged and she was sobbing and saying how sorry she was. This is one strong woman who never apologises but she seemed almost frail in his big arms as she held on to him so that I thought she might never let him go. He hugged Sasha and Kyle and told me he knew all about them as he had seen photos from Uncle Charlie and then we went into the sitting room and caught up with 40 odd years as Mum just sat next to him, holding his hand and looking at him, occasionally stroking his hair.

We had a lovely evening and we talked more over dinner. He told us he had got married the year after my aunt died because he had got a girl pregnant (!) but that they were married for over 25 years until she died suddenly and that he now lives with his daughter who he named Sadie (which made Mum cry even more) who is around the same age as me and married with a daughter. I gave him a lift back to his hotel in Central London and Mum came along too and we met his daughter, my second cousin Sadie and her daughter Naomi.

We’re all going out again tomorrow night. I can’t get over the fact that I have family that I didn’t even know existed and that last night, I met a woman who looks a lot like me with a girl who looks very similar to my Sasha.

I still can't quite believe it all.

A Special Post To A Fellow Blogger

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Dear Amanda

Because I do love your blog and I always value the comments you leave on mine and because I am oh so grateful for the Tuesday Tipples and because I like you and suspect that we could be very good friends, I feel obliged to notify you of something terrible that is about to happen. Not on the scale of recent events there but worthy of advance warning…..

First though I need to go back a few years when I was away from the office for a few weeks and came back to find a new member of staff – Billi.

In a group of really talented, lovely, funny, beautiful people she has always stuck out as, well.......not !

She is a short, squat, scruffy, loud woman. It doesn’t help that she uses her very strong Liverpool accent almost as a form of aggression ! On most days she’ll come into work late, always looking slightly grubby with tatty combat trousers and shapeless tops, no make up and her lank, greasy hair scraped back off her face with an elastic band. Fortunately, she is kept hidden away deep in the main office far away from clients but …… on the odd occasion that she has come to a big event, she undergoes a magical transformation and she looks, well, there’s no other way of describing it but, quite beautiful. And when she got married, a year ago, I couldn’t believe the photos were of her as she looked so elegant.

But the thing is, she is quite vile. She shouts all the time, she always feels hard done by and so is permanently angry, she has the most dreadful phone manner, she swears using words that make me cringe, she can’t ever accept that she may be in the wrong and she has several huge chips on her shoulder.

She was brought in by one of the senior partners and the rumour is that they “knew” each other rather well though I can’t imagine how that could have come about.

Most people in the office have had a run-in with her, including me, just a few months after she arrived, when she got upset with me for not inviting her to a particular meeting. I told her it was because it didn’t involve her and she went off on one saying that she was fed up with the way I treated her, like she was dirt on my shoe and that actually I wasn’t all that and that I should take a long look in the mirror some time as even though I may think I’m young, I’m actually nothing but an old goat !! I told her to watch her tone and she challenged me to do my worst and see if she cares.

I stormed into Ken’s office and demanded that he do something about it and he said I should calm down and learn to cope with a “naturally fiery spirit” !!! That’s when I realised she must have something very big on him to let her get away with the constant episodes. Since then, I have rarely engaged with her and she has never made any attempt to apologise to me or anyone else.

Anyway, yesterday, she walked into the office and shouted “OK yous lot, listen up, ay’ve got summat to say! (I appreciate this is a very poor attempt to mimic her in writing but you need to know I do it brilliantly in real life). Ay’m leavin this doomp. Me husband’s gorra job in New Zealand so ay’m going withim and yous lot can all foock right off. Ay’ve hated every one of ya and you’ve mayde my life hell, so good riddance to the lotta yer an I ‘ope this coompany goes down, takin the lot of ya with it. See ya – wouldn’t wanna be ya”

Seriously, she really did say all that and she turned on her heel and walked back out again. There was a couple of seconds of silent shock and then everyone started cheering and laughing. Even Ken came out of his office smiling. However, I suddenly realised that our great joy means impeding doom for you, dear Amanda.

She’s coming to Christchurch !!

Musical Dreams

When Sasha announced last year, that she wouldn’t be applying to university, I was admittedly upset but she seemed adamant that she wanted to take a year out and I fought hard from telling her what I wanted her to do and allowed her to make her own decision.

I was worried that she would while away her days sleeping in and then going out with her friends but I have to say that although she enjoyed the long summer break she hasn’t wasted her time since September. She has found herself a part time job at a shop three days a week but more impressive is that she has been helping out at a soup kitchen on her days off and for a while now she has been working at a youth centre in her spare time too. And whatsmore, she seems to get a lot of pleasure doing that. So much so that she announced a while back that she was going to write a musical for the youngsters ! I told her I thought it was a lovely idea but assumed it might be something that never saw the light of day.

But then, a few weeks ago, she played me some of the music she has already written. She has done the opening and closing numbers and two other songs and when I heard it all I was completely blown away. It is amazing. The storyline centres around first love and the music definitely has hints of Grease, High School Musical, Glee and a bit of Hairspray thrown in for good measure. The kids will love it but I’m still getting over the fact that my daughter has put this together. My little girl !

She has been musical since she was tiny (she used to hum while lying in her cot) and is always singing and playing the piano and guitar. Her GCSE and A-level music compositions were pretty spectacular so I really shouldn’t be surprised but I just can’t get over how she has put this together in such a short space of time and how she has got it so right.

I was at an event with Lord Lloyd-Webber a few weeks back and although I enjoyed my brief conversation with him (about how he went out with Liza Minelli for a while!!) I had to keep stopping myself from butting in and saying “By the way, my daughter is 18 and has just written her first musical and IT’S BLOODY BRILLIANT - can you give her a job??!!! “ But I didn’t…..

Anyway, last night she asked me to help with some musical workshops for the kids so that she could work out who the strongest singers were and that was a fantastic experience. These kids, aged 11-16, were brilliant. So enthusiastic and they clearly love her. And, they made a great sound.

I think my rather beautiful, talented daughter is going to have a success on her hands and I am unashamedly bursting with pride !

Friendship

I’ve been thinking about my friends a lot recently.

I have always surrounded myself with lots of people and I like that I form friendships quite easily and that people seem to value having me around. But I think that when I was feeling particularly low, I was upset that I didn’t have anyone I could turn to who I could pour out all the angst and bore to death.

I know that’s not true though. I know any one of them would listen to me without judging but because of my issues I couldn’t talk about what was wrong. Hell, I didn’t know myself. If I’m honest, I don’t really know now although with the therapist’s help I have a better idea.

The point is that I enjoy being a friend to others and listening when they need a comforting ear. I can’t expect that back when I refuse to allow any of them into my inner core. It’s my problem not theirs.

I saw this poem recently and thought it summed me up, especially the second verse.

FRIENDS by ELIZABETH JENNINGS
I fear it's very wrong of me,
And yet I must admit,
When someone offers friendship
I want the whole of it.
I don't want everybody else
To share my friends with me.
At least, I want one special one,
Who indisputably,

Likes me much more than all the rest,
Who's always on my side,
Who never cares what others say,
Who lets me come and hide
Within his shadow, in his house -
It doesn't matter where -
Who lets me simply be myself,
Who's always, always there.

A great move forward is that I recognise now that I have never had, nor never will, have this sort of relationship because I don’t think I’m worthy of just being myself - others might not like that real me. It’s a work in progress with the therapist but an area that will probably take the most time and effort.

What I can be, however, is a good friend to those around me. I can offer unconditional friendship and one day, when I have truly sorted myself out, that will be a two-way process