carry on camping!!

Ok I know I've not posted for a long time but I've been really busy.

i'm not sure I'll have time for all this blogging now because I've just gone back to university to start an Msc. I have been trawling through the internet today looking for interesting stuff to write dissertations and projects about and now I feel the need to stop for a bit and do something fun.

So we could all do with a laugh so why don't I tell you about my wonderful camping holiday!

I have to admit that I was warned by lots of people that life under canvas in Great Britain wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. That was putting it mildly! I think that the gorgeous Husband and I must have chosen possibly the wettest week of the holidays to go camping. It was the week that everybody in Gloucestershire got waterlogged. We had narrowly missed being stranded on the M5 and managed to reach our destination (Newquay) on a beautiful sunny day in July. We pitched our lovely 8 man tent and then helped our campsite mates pitch theirs. We woke up to drizzle, downpours and gales. We also found out that our lovely 8 man tent (brand new) was leaking. The weekend passed with alternate days of rain and sunshine and I thought Oh well it could be worse. It got worse.

We travelled to our next camp site, just us and the daughter now as everyone else had dry homes to go to! We pitched up on a lovely but breezy day. The next morning it was chucking down and the tent was still leaking. We went to a local Cornish theme park and got absolutely soaked, just for a change. I had Harry Potter to keep me from complaining too much and so my lovely Husband had some peace! I finished Harry Potter and looked to the skies for some improvement. There wasn't any. We had a good day on the beach, followed by an atrocious one at the Eden project (not for bored kids) the tent blew in, knocked over the cooker unit, snagged on it and ripped. The next day we awoke to a collapsed porch and both zips undone with the gale blowing right through the tent.

At this point I'd had enough and so whilst packing up made sure that a pole broke so we couldn't carry on!!

Actually it nearly took my head off.

We ended up drying out at the Brother in law's house and the weather improved. We bought another tent? (we got a refund for the first)

He wants to try again next year? I think we must be mad.

Sad and Frustrated

The News of little Madeline MCann, missing since 03/05/2007, has left me feeling shocked and saddened. My daughter is only a few months younger than this beautiful little angel and I feel desperately sorry for her family to be going through such hell. Please can anyone who reads this, go to sky news pages and download the internet poster and send it to everyone they know. Or add pictures to their own blogs. We must all keep Maddy in our thoughts and prayers and try to persuade the media not to let go of this story but to keep her image in the press until she is found.
I cannot imagine what the MCann family must be going through but I have been checking on my daughter asleep in her room so often I'm surprised she hasn't woken up.
Please everybody just don't forget her.

fat fighters

I know I've been gone a while but it took some time to get through all that lovely chocolate!!!
So much has happened since I last posted and so I probably will ramble on a bit about everything until I run out of steam again.
I have rejoined Weight watchers today (other slimming groups are available) and I am pleasantly surprised that I haven't gained all the weight I lost before, in fact I am two pounds lighter! I went to a meeting with my lovely neighbour Jane and we sat and giggled at the leader!

It was when she announced that we were going to play a game called 'who wants to be a slimillionaire' that I couldn't help myself and whispered to Jane, "introducing the Fat Fighters half the calories diet, take the foods you like, cut them in half, they've got half the calories. Because they've got half the calories you can eat twice as much!!"

Jane came back to mine for tea and then told me all about her hilarious initiation into the local WI hand bell ringing group! Cue more Little Britain quotes!

Happy Chocolate Holiday

Happy Easter Everybody! Its that lovely time of year when everybody celebrates the Crucifixion and resurrection of Christ by stuffing themselves with chocolate. Everyone who has been doing this whole Lent thing can now relax and allow themselves whatever it was they have been denying themselves for the last month or so. As a lapsed Christian I take a fairly dim view of the whole Lent thing, it has never been properly explained to me as to why not eating chocolate for a month is a good thing. In fact my earliest recollection of Lent was being handed a creme egg on the last day of term and being told "now you mustn't eat it dear until Sunday" I'm sorry but how barbaric is that? How can a primary school child who rarely has chocolate be expected to carry a wonderful and actually sticky and starting to melt creme egg home from school unsupervised and not eat it? Well of course I was caught with a mouthful of chocolate by my Mum's friend, in fact I was merrily chomping away on the lovely sticky gooey egg when I spied my Mother's friend in her car coming towards me and so tried to hide the evidence in the only place available to me. Yes I stuffed the entire egg into my already full mouth, (I'm sure creme eggs used to be bigger!) It didn't occur to me that my Mum's friend would actually stop her car to talk to me and then discover that I couldn't reply due to the fact that my mouth was otherwise engaged!
Last year after much nagging by a work colleague I attempted to give up chocolate for Lent,(I wanted to give up work but was told that it had to be something you liked) I lasted until the first weekend and then it snowed and we were bored and so we ate chocolate. This year I lasted nearly two weeks. But I have already broken into the Easter egg stash once and have had to replace them. There is a word for my condition. I am an addict. I am addicted to chocolate and its all because of that earlier childhood incident. If I eat chocolate I feel bad and so I try to stop but then I just crave it more.
So I'm not going to do Lent again, I don't believe in the reasons and as it is supposed to commemorate the time Jesus spent in the desert then all I have to say is, He spent 40 days and nights in the desert and Lent lasts 47 days so its all a big con! So from now on in my house Easter will be called the chocolate holiday and we will celebrate at the altar of the god of chocolate Mr Cadbury

the eagle has landed

Well baby Robert Alexander Hislop has finally decided to grace the world with his presence and the world is a better place! After speaking to the proud father I can only say that I have the utmost respect for Mummy Hislop as she did the whole thing with no pain relief.
My own birth experience was probably a far less gruelling one as mine came out of the sun roof! The after effects were a bit tiresome, not being able to drive for 6 weeks after, having to stay in hospital for a week, extremely embarrassing wind due to the rather unpleasant fact that they (the evil doctors) pump you full of air when stitching you up so they can see where everything is supposed to go. The pain relief for the belly wound was blinking awful too (voltarol suppositries) I think you can guess what the side effects of those were!!!!!
The actual birth was however lovely, like being draped in a hot heavy duvet and then being handed my daughter.If I have any more I think I will opt for the sunroof option again. The alternative looks far too painful and as my lovely sister said to me, "they don't call it labour for nothing"

The hills are alive

One of my many passions in life is music,I listen to just about anything and absolutely love singing.However most of the people who surround me in this journey are not too fond of my singing and so I have joined a course to discover my singing voice. If I discover that I have one I will be smugness personified in work and will sing at any given opportunity, If I discover that I don't have one I will lie to my colleagues and assault their eardrums out of spite!
I have been attending this course for some time now and made some lovely friends who are all very polite about my singing, in fact last week while I was attempting to visit the ballet with my mother, they said they missed me! Are they just being polite or do I actually contribute to the group hmmm?
Tonight we sang a rabble rousing chorus of Bohemian Rhapsody, a reasonable attempt at Rhythm of Life and then launched into Sunrise Sunset from Fiddler on the Roof. This immediately took me back to one of the most embarrassing episodes of my teenage years.
After I was mercilessly bullied in the worst high school in North Wales, my wonderful parents scrimped and saved to send me to the local private convent school to get me away from the evil children and hopefully rescue my flagging academic career. The convent was a lovely school with Nuns and a Christmas Pantomime that everyone was required to take part in no matter how limited their acting,singing or dancing ability. The head teacher was a Nun with shattered dreams of being an actress
and was trying to relive them through us.It was obvious who her favourites were and they always got the plum parts. I was always in the chorus at the back where no one could see me make a hash of the steps.
One year our Dance teacher decided we should do a routine to Sunrise Sunset. They we were all holding hands in a circle and on the rise we stretched up and moved inwards and on the set we settled back down away from each other. This was all going well until she couldn't decide how to finish the sequence, she asked us for ideas and before my brain could engage my mouth blurted out "we could always go down" Oh the shame, the rest of the class, who obviously were more worldly than me, collapsed in a fit of the giggles, and I red faced with humilation had no idea what they were laughing about. It didn't help that the Teacher found it incredibly funny also. What I meant as I'm sure you have guessed is that we all drop to the ground in a settling kind of way. She used my idea though and I bet she pretended it was her idea, the cow.

lost property

Went to visit my sister this evening for my nephew's birthday, I know he had a party on Saturday but this is his actual birthday. Had cake which was a really cool spiderman one and helped him open his present (power rangers stuff) I was telling her all about my blog and she was a bit worried I might write some stuff about her, oops already done that!!!
So I then thought about all the other things I have yet to tell the blog world about my family {as the name suggests we really are madcap) So here's some stuff about my lovely hubby!
My man has a habit of losing things,keys,wallet,his mind (but he is married to me so we'll forgive him that last one!)This habit of his is so infuriating and the one thing about him that drives me absolutely demented. I know that things can be replaced and that insurance is there for a reason but its his complete lack of concern for the location of the missing item that is so annoying.
A little while ago, before we moved house he came home from the pub to announce he couldn't find his mobile phone.His problem I hear you say, well no not really as it was a contract phone and a smart one at that which was also not insured. I phoned the company the next day to cease airtime provision and enquired as to replacement Sim cards. That evening I was looking for a coat in the hall cupboard only to find said phone in the pocket of one of his many coats. He hadn't even had it in the pub and yet swore blind that was the last time he saw the damn thing!
Not really that eventful, as we were able to switch it back on the next day and a sigh of relief was gasped. Imagine my dismay when a couple of weeks later he came in to announce that he'd just dropped the very same phone down the drain right outside our house.The conversation with the mobile phone company went like this, "are you sure nobody can use the phone for their own purposes?" my reply: "if anyone can get the damn thing out of the drain and working again then they're welcome to it"

Shortly after we moved in to our first house together I came home from work to find a smashed window pane near the door and blood. Now I had just got out of a very bad relationship with a complete psycho and my initial thought was that he'd tracked me down. I got into the house to find my future husband watching telly with a bloodstained tea towel wrapped around his hand.He had gone out to take the dog for a walk (not ours, his parents)and had pulled the door to (Yale type lock) and locked himself out with no money and no mobile phone just a very tired old dog) Rather than phone my mother, reverse charge, from a call box he decided the best course of action was to break in!
I have wound him up about this story for such a long time but today I will have to put it to bed. At the weekend we changed the locks in the new house because the old Yale lock was so secure you couldn't even get in with the right key and the Mortice lock had eaten most of my key and no longer worked.This morning I went to put the wheelie bin out and calmly closed the door secure in the knowledge that as I hadn't locked it I was OK. I forgot we now had an operational Yale lock which obviously locked as I shut the door. I had just locked the back door prior to leaving through the front door. Luckily for me my daughter is incredibly sweet and bright and when I was able to distract her from her Backyardigans programme by banging loudly on the window she came over and passed me my keys through the letterbox. Oh the shame, I had to tell him because if I don't she will!

in work right now

can't access my blog from work but can add to it, how mad is that? just reading wife's blog to catch up, somebody really doesn't like her but obviously is too cowardly to own up as to who it is! had a busy day yesterday and today so I'm tired but its Easter soon and I'm off to meet my new nephew yay!
Its my other nephew's birthday today so I'm off to visit straight from work with the daughter! Oh I could sleep for Britain

my link for wife in the north didn't work so i'll try it again. Hope this works!

Oh I just figured out some stuff out

Hey this is cool I've just changed colour! this one is so much more me!
And look a gorgeous bloke has appeared on my blog how on earth did that happen? Tee hee I'm learning lots of new things!

childrens parties

What is it about children's parties that brings out all the most annoying habits in your child within the space of ten minutes? They can be sweetness and light one minute and then as soon as the word party is bandied about the devil inside of each of them puts in an appearance.Its a similar phenomenon to that experienced at the supermarket checkout when sweets are spied by their ever present sweet radar thingy.
It was my nephew's fourth birthday party today at one of those play barn places, you know the places, with all the slides that secretly you really want to go on yourself but they make the route to the top so tortuously difficult for anyone who is either not four, or not a size zero (what does that mean anyway? if your a zero surely that means you are nothing?)
This place was totally geared up for super cool slim yummy mummies and uberdaddies to enjoy a latte while Quentin and Candida run away and play. I must have looked a right state with my just got out of bed hair(not in the fashionable way) and slightly snot soiled jeans. At least I was in good company with my sister and her friends! Sorry Sis only joking!
It wasn't particularly safe however, my lovely hubby kept pointing out exits where any child may escape unnoticed.Not to mention a flight of stairs with a gate at the bottom but easy access from the play apparatus (very sensible, because children always fall up those blighters don't they?)
Its saving grace was a wonderful wavy slide,like the ones you get at fairgrounds with the itchy mats to sit on, except there were no mats here. My daughter just loves those slides and so I asked my nephew if he could show her how to get to it, because steps on the side would be too obvious wouldn't they? "Nope" was the reply accompanied by a steadfast 'I'm a boy and don't speak to girls in front of my crew' look. Then his best mate pipes up "I will" and dashes off with 'The Girl' much to her cousin's annoyance!
The rest of the party was much the same, moments of the two of them being inseparable followed by a sulky daughter because her cousin wouldn't play with her! Then there was the wardrobe malfunction (juice down her front, absolute tragedy darling) which resulted in a cross child telling her mother to take off her fairy dress NOW
Then of course it was time to leave and we had the tears, tantrum, sulk, full on teenage strop (they start young these days don't they) and only managed to leave by promising her we would go to her cousin's house for tea on Monday (his actual birthday)
Oh the joys of children's parties, and we have to go through it all again in four months time!!!!

wife in the north

Had a quick look at wife in the north, very interesting, all about bullying a subject very close to my heart. I was bullied in school and its something you never really get over. I'm not going to bore anyone too much with this subject I just feel it has to be said. The bullies were probably jealous of my incredible wit and intelligence.
HAH who has the last laugh, most of them are unhappy or unemployed or in dead end jobs Hah

whoo hoo I did something cool

That is so cool I didn't think it would work coz i'm Cr4p with computers but it did I'm so chuffed!
I think I'll try a link! so this is for Donna's blog if it works, oh i think it did!!!

What card are you?

You are The Moon

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Moon is a card of magic and mystery - when prominent you know that nothing is as it seems, particularly when it concerns relationships. All logic is thrown out the window.

The Moon is all about visions and illusions, madness, genius and poetry. This is a card that has to do with sleep, and so with both dreams and nightmares. It is a scary card in that it warns that there might be hidden enemies, tricks and falsehoods. But it should also be remembered that this is a card of great creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition. You may be going through a time of emotional and mental trial; if you have any past mental problems, you must be vigilant in taking your medication but avoid drugs or alcohol, as abuse of either will cause them irreparable damage. This time however, can also result in great creativity, psychic powers, visions and insight. You can and should trust your intuition.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Today was pay day, yippee!
Although in my place its anybody's guess as to what they'll pay me from month to month. Pay roll just can't seem to get the hang of actually working out sums and things which is a bit worrying considering they are in charge of paying an awful lot of health care staff. This month however they managed to pay me correctly so I'm happy. Well I will be happier when my little madam is safely established at new (free) school and I no longer have to fork out a mortgage worth of dosh to cover childcare costs.

So its the weekend so that means a lie in, Oh hang on I think I may have confused my life with someone elses just then. Why is it that children need waking up during the week when you have to get up anyway, but at weekends they seem to have an inner alarm that wakes them at five am? The clocks also go forwards an hour this Sunday morning so I have to get up an hour earlier to go to work. Yes I have drawn the short straw and have to work this Sunday boo hiss.

There is no movement on the Hislop arrival and talk of inducement has been bandied about. That should do the trick. Its a well known method of making a woman go into labour, threaten to induce the birth!! I'm so glad I had none of those worries, mine came out the sunroof and although many do gooder natural childbirth groups will disagree with me, It was by far the best way of giving birth. No pain, no mess(for me) no fuss, and a lovely numb warm feeling for a couple of hours!

After the shock of Daddy H not turning into work the other day, which actually is the reason I didn't notice my little blighter messing with the hazards, We have been a bit guarded about getting all excited for nothing, however this morning I woke up having dreamt that my Grandparents had passed on, and thought, well death dreams are supposed to herald new life. I then got a text from one of the many Iains that plague our Lab saying that he had a dream that Daddy H had had a baby girl. I texted back with news of my dream and got a very shirty one back telling me not to steal his thunder! Honestly some people are so touchy, ever since he nearly had his photo in the local paper, and had his thunder stolen by the resident lab maneater he has become a bit of a drama queen!!

Well I still haven't managed to put pics on this blog although I will try to at some point. I'm still getting to grips with the whole internet thingy and its a terribly steep learning curve. I texted my friend Donna and asked her a load of questions about how to post comments on other peoples site etc, so anyone reading this who knows a bit about blogging some useful comments would be very much appreciated.

Oh it asked for a question when I filled in my user profile and so todays question is are all men smelly or just mine?
Mine really does have rotten guts and the sad thing is that he seems to find it all so hilarious. I have lost my sense of smell at the mo due to a cold so its not too bad, but does he have to be so proud?
i'm off to surf a while and get inspiration, toodleoo!

my first post

Ok so this is the first post on a completely new blog which is all about my incredibly mad life. I hope there are some people out there with a life as surreal and hectic as mine.
First let me introduce myself to the blogger community. My name is Bex and I torture microbes for a living. I was introduced to blogging by another completely mad friend called Donna who has a blog about knitting andThe Mighty Boosh and Bono and Richard Hammond who is absolutely GORGEOUS!!!!! Anyway I was reading her blog just now and took some sort of Tarot card test and found out that Iwas the Moon like her, so I wanted to post a comment on her blog to tell her only I am a bit computer illiterate and so the next thing I know I'm creating my own blog.

If anyone reads this you probably think I'm barking by now and you'd be right. So I'm not really sure what my blog will be about but it will find its way in the end.


So mad familys this is todays subject or thought for the day

Do we inevitably end up like our Mothers and will our daughters end up the same way?

My Mother is bonkers, not just ordinary scatty mother stuff but really quite doolally, and its bothering me that with all my paranoid ramblings I may become her one day (sorry Mum!)

For example,and this is not just an isolated incident,on Tuesday we were off to watch Swan Lake at a local theatre. Now my Mother is well known amongst my family and friends as being a little late for most things. Ok actually she is a lottle late for everything. The saying " Late for your own funeral " was actually invented with my Mother in mind. So I told her that I would be at her house for six fifteen and wanted her my Dad and her friend to be ready to leave at that time.
I arrived at ten past six, she was ready to go and after I picked myself off the floor we set off to the Theatre. We made good time arriving at the venue at seven pm, the show started at seven thirty. My mother was magnificent in her smugness for being not just on time but early. I asked her if she had the tickets and she replied that of course she had the tickets and to stop going on. We sat down with a drink and Mum announced she was off to buy a programme. Two seconds later she returns in a bit of a flap. My initial thought was that she didn't have the tickets at all, but no she did have them, we were just in the WRONG Theatre!
We then had a crazy journey to the proper theatre with much laughter at my poor Mothers expense to arrive ten minutes late for the ballet.

This was the icing on the cake for a day that had started reasonably well but then gone downhill in a big way. I had taken a half day to visit my Daughters new school, So I had lunch with my work buddies and then headed to my car to pick up said Daughter from Nursery to take her for a visit and then the plan was to do a food shop and feed the Daughter before Hubby arrived home to take over while I Swanned off to the ballet excuse the pun!
I got to my car and pressed the remote central locking device and went to get in, except that the car had only unlocked on one side and when I opened the door the alarm started to go off. Now anyone who knows me will know that I have a lousy track record with cars. They always go wrong so my first thought was automatically one of extreme drama."The electrics have gone, the immobilizer is stuck on, its going to cost, I'm going to be without a car, why did I not take out full AA membership with automatic courtesy car"(other roadside assitance providers are available). All this went through my mind and then after kicking the car a few times I popped the bonnet. I then put it back down again as I know nothing about cars and so probably wouldn't know what to do anyway, besides it was messy.
Then I called the AA, then I called the Nursery but couldn't get through, then I called my Mum and ranted at her because she is good like that.
Forty minutes later a nice man, a very nice man, a very very nice man, (sorry couldn't resist)
came to my rescue and told me that the reason the alarm had gone off was because the battery had died. I hadn't left my lights on so I wondered what could have caused it. After fiddling for a bit with diagnostics and stuff I noticed that although the alarm wasn't going off anymore, the indicators were still flashing and asked if they were supposed to do that. He fiddled a bit more and then grinned and reached into the car to switch off my hazard warning lights.
My lovely three year old Daughter must have switched them on when I was walking round to her side to get her out earlier and because I was distracted I hadn't noticed and then of course when you lock the car with the remote device the indicators flash which is quite normal so I didn't notice then!