Tuck shops in schools
Hop scotch on the playground and in the streets
Eating space dust
Eating out of polystyrene boxes
Indoors for Saturday night TV
Games in the street with the neighbourhood kids
Helping the elderly across the street
Top of the pops is the bee’s knees!
Infatuations with care bears, my little pony and Teddy Ruxpin
Entertainment in the best decade ever!
Sweets sold by the penny in every high street – that was the eighties!
Written 1:31pm 16th March 2023
Filed under poetry
I am so excited that I have lost another dress size!
In the UK I am a size 20 going into 18, I should be fully in the size 18 in about six weeks’ time – to the US I am a size 16 going into a 14 – which makes me about the same size as Oprah Winfrey, well Paul thinks I have similar shape to her only my waist is more defined – which really flattered me! Especially as I see myself more like June Shannon, Honey Boo Boos mum from ten years back every time I look in the mirror, but I have been suffering from body dysmorphia my whole life, so I can’t trust what I see!
I struggle at looking at pictures of myself because it makes me just cry, whether those pics were of me when I was thin or not, because to me, I am just hideous, even now when I look in the mirror I see no visible difference to how I am now vs two or three years ago!
But the scales and the clothing tells me something different, I am significantly different now – I wish my brain wouldn’t lie to me!
On a positive note, my nails are growing!
I had to unfortunately chop both index finger nails down though, because they were peeling and it looked ugly, don’t know why them and the right pinkie are doing that, so they have been cut down and I am trying to grow them, but it looks odd as all the other nails are half an inch long now!
I did a huge mistake in putting clear nail varnish on the other day, it is uncomfortable and irritating and I don’t have any nail varnish remover in the house until weekend!
I really must put up my stats again soon, been meaning to but keep forgetting and I am writing this at like 3am so it’s not convenient to wake Paul up so he can help me measure my stats, lol.
You can hardly tell I had alopecia now, though there is about a four or five inch thick strand of hair that stands up all on its own when I don’t wax it down, because that’s where the alopecia used to be, but my hair is nearly 2 inches longer than shoulder length nowadays, so it’s easy to hide now.
I am one shoe size bigger in the US – I am a 7 to 7.5 so in the US I am an 8 to 8.5!
If your grandma ever tells you that the bigger the woman’s foot is the less trouble she has in labour and the baby is likely to cannon ball out, please believe them! Worked for me!
Even if I did nearly break Paul’s finger with my death grip on his hand during labour, at least I didn’t scream like all the other wussy pussy mothers in the ward that night! I may have growled a little whilst chanting I love you and I want this baby almost seemingly demonically, maybe once roared when the midwife used the scratch and scrape to induce me, but I didn’t scream!
Paul’s finger was bruised for two months.
I often joked that next time he gets me pregnant I’ll get him a baseball mitt for protection! But that’s never happening now, so, lol!
Oh just imagine… now I have nails…
Thanks for reading!
Filed under About Me, Defining myself
I guess I am boring, but summer is my least favourite season of the year, I don’t like it when it’s too hot and too hot for me is anything over 25c/77f I think it’s because warm air is really bad for my asthma and I don’t like sweating outside of my control!
The big positive about summer though is it’s really nice to my arthritis; I have less pain in summer and I am more likely to be active in temperatures of 17c to 24c which is around 62 to 75f. Paul thinks I was born for Hawaiian or Californian climates, but meh – I don’t think so, too dry? I love my woodlands and would miss seeing moss and oaks and things like that – but it’s tempting knowing I’d be in less pain!
Paul nearly got us to move to Seattle a few years back as he was nearly offered a job there, but he refused on grounds that Henry wanted to stay at his current school; if Henry had taken the idea of trusting what we wanted, we’d be migrating back to the UK around now, because Paul is of retirement age and Henry would probably of had a slight American accent – he’d have been there from 7yrs old to now 12yrs old.
Summer is nice for park walks and beaches if it’s not too hot, but the best thing for me about the summer is the fact that watermelon and berries are abundant – I can live on watermelon alone during the summer if I could!
Another good thing about summer is ice-play in the bedroom, but I have had boring and wimpy exes that run from those ideas – well all but one ex and funnily enough it was another woman – no men seem to like the idea of ice!
I like the summer rain, warm with scatterings of rainbows and going for walks in it if it’s light.
Gardening has to be done in the very early morning or late at night around half an hour before twilight or it will kill you if it’s over 24c/75f.
People are happier in the summer, which is a bonus, but I hate how crowded places in nature can get during this time of year – I go out in nature to be at one and in solitude with it, but in the summer it’s hard to find a place without other people!
Midsummer used to mean parties for me, as Midsummers night is special here as a solstice, but also a couple of days later is a joint birthday between my dad and my brother and there was always a big family celebration about it! A huge BBQ and what have you.
I love BBQs.
Another one of my favourite things is going to pick your own farms, especially the strawberry fields! I don’t think summer has happened unless I’ve gone to one of those and I love garden centres and nursery shopping!
I have always wanted to partake in country fairs, but never had the opportunity really to.
But summer is not my favourite season; this is probably why this entry is short!
I like swimming in warm waters and tend to be even more of a water baby on really hot summer’s days because I think I am half Piscean or something – lol – well I know I am a Pisces ascendant in any case!
I am not the kind of person who sun bathes, I’m a bit of a vampire really, a true mythological mermaid!
Thanks for reading!
Filed under Defining myself
What does autumn mean to me?
Beautiful colourful crispy leaves flying through the air, if you catch one a wish will be granted according to legend, or you win a day’s luck per leaf you catch!
It means harvest time where all your hard work in the garden really pays off, rewarding you with sunflowers and pretty gourds, squashes and pumpkins to decorate your home with for Halloween.
Halloween, I love Halloween – I love dressing up, roleplaying, planning things for trick-or-treaters or planning parties when we were fortunate enough to be able to afford to do so. I love decorating the house for Halloween and planning themes, doing weird party foods with weird twists, but the thing is, sometimes I can go too far that the guests decline to eat things.
I suppose raspberry jelly filled gloves to look like a bloodied hand and frankfurters cut to look like fingers covered in ketchup is a bit too much for the human psyche?
Let alone the stuffed Jack-O-Lantern orange bell peppers with spaghetti Bolognese inside of them looking like some kind of zombie freak meal.
I love horror, can you tell?
I love grossing people out too, love, love, love playing to people’s fears when they are spooked out at this season… am I evil for admitting that kind of joy?
I am the kind of person who knows that someone who is sensitive to horror movies, just watched a movie and I creep around ready to pounce when they least expect it – yes, I have a mischievous side, a very impish side!
I am not like that with children though, I don’t like traumatising kids, usually I end up making plans to do things like this with the kids on sensitive adults – but that depends entirely on the integrity and the bravery of each child! I am a bad influence sometimes!
Halloween is more fun with kids, because kids make things more light-hearted and sometimes they can influence me in becoming grosser for next year!
Kids are sickos at heart!
What’s so funny is, I always regret what I do – why? Because I am probably the jumpiest person anyone knows, I am easily spooked!
The start of autumn is my birthday and I don’t have very many happy memories about birthdays because I hate to sound tragic, but I am easily forgotten or pushed aside for a couple of weeks because my birthday is apparently too inconvenient usually. 3rd of October is apparently a difficult date, I suppose I know why – growing up in a family where four of the major family matriarchs have their birthdays between 15th September to 24th September, everyone is spent up!
I like watching the children playing with the leaves on the spinney (a little copse island that sits in the middle of our street, separating my side of the road from the other side of the road by two rows of trees with a path in the middle of it). The children here aren’t like the ones in London who won’t touch the leaves through fear of bird poop or bugs – here the children will gather all the leaves they can in a pile and sit inside of them making huge and very competitive nests for themselves! At the end of the day, some of the children take all the leaves home to deliver to their gardening parents for next year’s leaf mould fertiliser.
Autumn can sometimes be scary, very scary; for me anyway – I have a huge fear of windstorms in particular, because of a few incidences that happened to me as a child where I got injured or nearly killed. Thunderstorms are ok, I like thunderstorms, but windstorms scare the Hell out of me!
It is really hard to make me function properly if there is a bad windstorm, I don’t like going out in them at all.
Thunderstorms though, I am a bit of a storm chaser with those, love taking videos of them and watching them and I have to hold myself back from going out in them!
Though I am scared of windstorms or hurricane backlashes, I don’t have the same fear for tornadoes, I’ve seen and experienced them – yes even here in the UK, they are more common here than you think – in fact it is estimated the UK get about three hundred per year, though they generally are small, some have been known to rip streets apart.
I remember my mother sitting on a hammock with a neighbour I didn’t like and a small one around the size of a big football man ripped right through the garden behind them, knocking them off the hammock and lifting the hammock up into the air and landing half on the fence behind them!
I was glad I was twenty feet away watering my mum’s flowers at the time, no one was injured – but I had never seen my neighbour move so fast before!
Autumn is generally my favourite season of them all – I am very much an autumn person.
Thanks for reading!
Filed under Defining myself
I found one of my old Bucket List Note Books today, some things I have put in there I have completely forgotten about – which is one of the reasons why I put them in there in the first place, because I was afraid I’d forget about them. In particular places I’ve seen on TV or in magazines that look interesting to go to.
I haven’t dreamt big for a long time, these are things I thought were attainable within 5 to 10yrs, but after our money cutbacks and the UK’s heat or eat crisis, even half of these look like a never thing now.
Over the past 13yrs I’ve seen our weekly budget cut like this £200 a week, £120, £80, £50, £40 we can’t survive another cut, which is predicted by the government in the UK in February 2023.
Such as going to Efteling theme park in Amsterdam in a place called Kaalsheuval – would never have remembered that in a million years! I haven’t seen it advertised since the program I watched in 2018 showing it!
I may or may not ever do this – get a tattoo of a specific design I have in mind of a raven on my upper left shoulder or shoulder blade.
Grow the meconopsis (Himalayan blue poppy) from seed successfully, they are notoriously hard to grow and I have failed twice so far – but I may not grow it after all.
Go Christmas shopping in New York, that’s been on my bucket list since I was 8yrs old, only when I was 8yrs old I didn’t know what a bucket list was!
Go to New York’s Serendipity 3 and order their famous Opulent Sundae.
Go to Ireland, particular the areas Cork, Leinster and Roscommon, where some of the Irish ancestors came from – for example, one set of my ancestors was a Duke of Leinster (via a 6x great grandmother’s maiden name FitzGerald) and my great grandpa came from Roscommon.
Go to a huge water park, I love water parks – I haven’t been to one since I was 10yrs old, one of my cousins used to take me annually from 4yrs old till I was 10yrs old but then it stopped when she moved too far. I only like the kind of water parks that let adults on the slides too! I am a big kid!
Take Henry to the London Dungeons with me, I love that place!
Grow a Japanese acer, they’re so pretty!
Grow a cherry tree from seed to harvest!
Publish a novel.
Get a huge house with 4+ acres of land! Actually I think the acreage is too small now, I have bigger plans for the garden and making a sustainable food forest type home with some animals like goats etc. So now my minimal acreage is around 10 acres now.
Make my art project Kabbalah – it’s a woodwork project I have in mind based on the Kabbalah!
Make mosaic planters.
Home make my own garden paving slabs!
Create a large swimming pond, not pool, pond, I want it to be natural… I also want a proper pool too, but there you go. Hey, I was a kid who loved catching frogs and caring for frog spawn, what do you expect?
Build a rockery/alpine garden.
Go to the Chelsea flower show.
Go to Crufts as a competitor with my dogs… I want to do best of breed but also agility and fly ball at some stage.
Breed a pair of dogs and keep their bloodline for generations, 1 pup from each generation.
Take a cruise on the river Danube.
Have a minimum of 5 children – still wanting that! I have 1 so far, I need 4 more or I will get grumpy.
Go to the Jurassic coast and look for fossils and amber and generally do some rock pooling or something.
Go to Whipsnade zoo with Henry.
Own some chickens – buff Orpington’s.
Own some goats.
Make an insect hotel.
Go camping with my family.
Go to the Natural History museum with Henry.
Go to the science museum with Henry.
Go to a musical theatre with Henry.
Go to the London aquarium with Henry.
Go on the London Eye.
Go into the tower of London.
Touch a real live, raven.
Have a 6ft aquarium again and decorate it myself.
Build a large hamster city.
Grow Hollyhocks from seed.
Grow and harvest several gourd varieties at once for an excellent autumn photo shoot!
Get a GCSE in math.
Go to a fetish club, never actually been to one, Paul has promised over the years but never got around to it.
Go to a jazz club.
Go to a cocktail bar.
Go to an Italian restaurant that isn’t run by my family!
Go to France and buy macarons.
Go to Hungary and eat proper goulash in a restaurant – I know how to make it, but I want the real stuff!
Make ratatouille for my family.
Home make vegetable soup for Henry – he’s never had it as we could never afford to make it since he was 3yrs old.
Home make onion soup for someone again
Get my ears pierced again as my mother did a bodge job when I was 5!
Go to the day of the dead celebrations.
Go to the Notting Hill carnival.
Go to Mardi Gras.
Grow oyster mushrooms
Make Barbie clothes for a little girl’s doll – preferably a daughter.
Get Cubase back
Compose and sell my own music and lyrics
Make a close circle of Bohemian friends.
Go to Rutland garden centre
Have a jewellery vault like Scrooge McDuck and sit in there like a guarding dragon! Yes, I know materialism is a bad fantasy, but I’ve always wanted this since I was a kid and I saw Scrooge McDuck and then I saw dragons guarding hoards of treasure and I like magpies and I like shinies… But knowing me it will all be what my gran calls “a lot of your cheap costume jewellery crap”! But it makes you feel like you have a big hoard! They are still shiny, even if they are mostly fake, no? Another thing about this is, I care for jewellery – so I am hardly going to throw it on the floor of the vault and swim on it. In any case, they’d be in glass boxes and easily visible in good lighting like a mini jewellery museum, if I had my way! Weird thing is, other than bangles and finger rings, I don’t like wearing jewellery outside of special occasions.
Become fluent in 5 languages before I am 80yrs old!
Become fluent in Italian
Become fluent in French
Become fluent in Hebrew
Become fluent in German
Become fluent in Japanese
Learn the tango and the paso doble with a sexy virile man who’d be my husband, because in my best reality I’d have a husband who loves that sort of thing!
Have a hot stone massage
Go for a reiki session
Go to a sauna
Be a regular donator of the shoebox appeal, if I was ever a rich woman I can see me doing hundreds of these boxes at Christmas, I just love kids! Up until our money got cut badly, I used to do 3 a year.
Have a Indian head massage
Go to the arctic to see wild arctic life, in particular foxes.
Adopt a couple of rescue donkeys
Go to Christmas pantomimes with Henry
Go zorbing
Go on the world’s longest zip wire
Go paintballing
Go to a Centre Parcs holiday
Go on a huge shopping spree offline – I haven’t had one in ages… the last best offline shopping spree I did was £200 for Christmas 2016 and before that it was a £300 clothing only shopping spree in 2010 after I lost 40llbs when Henry was born. Big contrast to my life before Henry, where £900 a month was a regular treat! I am way over due for retail therapy.
Buy the latest console with a good set of games!
Go to India with Henry.
Go to Dollyworld with Henry.
Go and swim with the sea turtles with Henry!
Join the women’s institute – used to think I’d like it.
Meeting a huge bunch of celebrities was on my list, too long to mention everyone!
Take up amateur dramatics again.
Become more active in my party… I’m a member of the labour party and since becoming sick I’ve been inactive – meaning I don’t attend meetings etc. in the village hall anymore and I miss it.
Make sock puppets again
Make puppets for charity
I love Debenham store’s and really wanted to go to one at Christmas with Henry to the biggest one in the UK, but they’ve gone bust as a brand since this list was made!
Go to Hamleys.
Go on the flying Scotsman
Go to a New Year’s Eve party, haven’t been to one since I was 6yrs old!
Go to a Christmas Party, never been to one.
Go to a German Christmas market.
Have an annual un-birthday party – huge fan of Alice in Wonderland, can you tell yet?
Go to the Eden project.
Go to a beach and find fairy glass.
Walk Offas Dike
Walk the entire length of the river Severn as a holiday.
Go to an encounter group
Become proficient in playing the recorder and then moving onto clarinet and saxophone.
Start a YouTube channel
Do a TedTalk, but not sure on what yet lol
Go to the last night of the proms! BBC proms.
Go shopping in Ross on Wye
Go shopping at Hammersmith again
Go to the Carpathian foothills
Go to Venice for a masquerade and buy lots of Venetian glass and masks!
Go shopping at Covent Garden
Learn to roller-skate!
Learn how to ride a bike!
Go skiing
Go fishing
Holiday on a barge
Party for 3 days on a yacht with a pool!
Go to Styal Woods Wilmslow Cheshire
Go to the Chonqing caves
Go to the Northern Italy black sands caves
Go to Aveline’s Hole – another cave
Go to the Naha suicide tunnels
Go and see the Cheddar Man
Go to Salina Turda Romainia
Go to the Terezia mines in Romainia
Follow the source of the river of Timavo
Go to the Ardia event in Sardinia
Go to a gay pride event
Visit the Karst of canin river and mist forest
Go to the Benin underground city of the Agoji
Go and hear the glaciers sing in Knud Ramussen
Go to Dolly’s desserts in Barnsley
Go to M&M world
Go to China town London
Have cream tea at Fortnum and Mason
Cream tea at the Ritz
Go to American Candyland London
Buy Gucci stuff
Buy Moschino stuff
Buy a Penthouse in London and another in New York or maybe a house in the Hamptons
Go to Duke’s donut shop in Headingley Leeds
Buy Florentine Marble paper
Be on the front cover of Vogue magazine – but I have to get over the fact I am scared of fame first huh?
Start several types of businesses, I have a lot of ideas, but I know it can only be done in baby steps if I want them all to succeed!
Sell merchandise based on my art and stories!
Buy back an ancestral home that’s been turned into a hotel, there’s a handful actually!
Paint with gold leaf
Go to a Holi event – Indian paint throwing
Lose weight and tone up!
Learn to trust and be happy and relaxed!
Thanks for reading!
Filed under cosmic ordering
It’s likely that in the next two weeks that my YouTube could be set up, still struggling to understand the technology behind it all, but I am hoping that I will have it up before December now.
I am totally not confident about showing my face on there right now, because I still have that missing tooth and the dentist hasn’t given me an appointment for the braces we’ve discussed yet as she has a backlog of appointments to get through.
I did try to remind her, but I seem to be lost in the paperwork somewhere.
So until the braces come I am not confident about showing my mouth in particular. The tooth was pulled July 28th and though some of the gap seems to have closed itself with an exercise I found online to move teeth without braces, it isn’t happening as fast as I would like!
Stupid tooth would go and break on a chicken bone though wouldn’t it? Gosh that makes me sound like a Neanderthal with chicken wings doesn’t it? I guess I am though, lol, pretty crazy about wings.
I forgot to have my medication last night so today is pretty painful to eat for me and I may not keep things down. Especially as the planned meal is a rare treat of a steak pepper pie with salad, can’t change my mind as the alternative is worse – Chicken Arribiata, I have problems with that at the best of times without having it when I’ve missed medication!
I love Arribiata but it’s too acidic for days like these!
I took the medication by now, but it won’t work in time for dinner.
On a positive note my size is slimming down faster than I expected, even my smallest clothes are getting big on me now.
Although I love it I am scared of it, because I can’t afford to replace clothing and at the rate I am losing the weight I will need a full wardrobe of clothes once every six to eight weeks!
To be honest with you, it’s why I am bringing forward the YouTube set up, I am hoping to try and get some money in order to replace my clothing so I don’t have to stall my exercises for a while, like I have been doing, just because I can’t afford the transition! I don’t have much choice over the diet, we can’t eat much lately as it is.
I am not confident I’d earn enough with YouTube alone, so I am going to be posting things in Instagram and putting my blog up for monetisation soon as well, because I need to try and get some kind of income coming in now that Paul is officially retired and our money looks cut again.
We really can’t stretch our money if there is another cut; we have lost £60 a week from this past Monday, so things are getting awful right now. But Paul assures me it is temporary, The Royal Navy will give him a pension by the end of the month that will boost us again, but we have a whole four weeks of having £60 a week less than normal, we may not be able to pay our utilities this month. Probably going to be the hardest month of my life!
I am just so glad I am not like my cousins who ignored my grandparent’s stories about how they coped with rationing during the war and actually partook in their lessons to learn how to stretch things out.
How that just because you opened a can of beans yesterday doesn’t make them inedible today – you just pour them into a pot with leftover veg and hey presto a vegetable soup, ok not ideal, but least you won’t starve!
But I’ve learned a lot from them, you see, I learned that those can of beans you open yesterday can be mixed up with fried sausages, onion and dried herbs with mashed potato as a lovely sausage & baked bean casserole – which is a family favourite!
I think every poor family in the UK was raised on sausages and baked beans; it seems to be the go to meal for the poor here.
To be honest with you I hate sausages, had them so often I actually don’t like them anymore, same with baked beans – I like them sometimes, but I am getting to the point I will be happy never to see sausages again!
Unless of course its garlic sausage, chorizo, salami or saveloy – gosh I miss having those! But economy brand 60% breaded sausages are, well they are just ew ok?
You can more or less tell who is poor in the UK by their weight, if you are fat; you are probably on the tight budget – as healthy food comes at a premium here.
It’s a strange world when the fat is the poor and the rich are the slim.
You know we can go days without vegetables and that’s not a choice! Meat and potatoes keep the poor fed!
You have no idea the trouble poor people have with their kids, because we’re taught that meat is unsustainable and your kids are like, but we heard eating meat is killing the planet mum; you don’t care about the planet. Oh my gosh have you tried to explain to a child that it costs £20 a week to feed us in our 5 a day plan but it is only £12 a week for the meat and £5 for the potatoes? When you are on a £30 – 45 a week budget, you can see why we’re not healthy, the poor!
I’d love to have fruit and veg every day, I don’t believe in the 5 a day plan, I am more of anything over 7 is great kind of woman, before all this started to happen in my life!
Before our money got cut in 2017 for the first time, Henry was waking up to vegetable frittatas and carrot muffins, lunching on tuna and avocado pasta and dining on Roast lamb salads and we always had soup before dinner and a dessert after it! Not anymore, often times we go without breakfast and lunch to help Henry at school and our dinners are rarely over 900 calories!
I have to skip the protein shakes this month to survive! Or dip into my £30 savings?
I already told Paul, leave that Christmas savings alone, we barely have £50 for that so far and its so hard telling Henry we just can’t do the Nintendo 64 you want love, we aren’t like your friends who can have that! Anyway, that’s a old console, weren’t that out when I was a teenager? Anyway Henry definitely said that’s what he wanted! He does like vintage stuff, so I am hardly surprised really!
Anyway, rant over, thanks for reading!
Filed under About Me
I just need to warn my readers that tomorrow is a dark day full of scheduled posts that have upsetting content.
The content will be including suicidal thoughts and memories of domestic violence with body horror aspects. I needed to get all of these things off my chest, I am sorry if I upset any of you and please believe me when I say – I do not intend for these posts to become a “a thing” here.
Understand too, that today and for the past few weeks I have had a hard time with my mental health, a very hard time and that tomorrow is a special and very mournful day for me – which will be explained at the first post which will go up midnight UK time tonight.
Things have been brewing a long, long time, the first two posts tomorrow will be a memorial to a child I lost and the third is about how I am not coping right now mentally.
I felt it was necessary to warn you.
I am not all peacocks, rainbows and butterflies you know… that’s a façade these days, trying to trick myself into believing I am actually happy with my life.
As for some of the dreams I had in my earlier post today, well, maybe there is hope for some of them in the future – depends what happens before April…
Anyway, thanks for reading.
Filed under About my work
The UK hasn’t accepted Halloween or Trick or Treat as part of their culture for very long; In fact I remember as a child, the idea of Trick or Treat was largely an American idea, that most UK kids aspired to do, but their parents – afraid of demonic possession, mostly wouldn’t let their kids go out on Halloween night.
My mother was one of those parents who told Gina an honorary aunt that “if my girl comes home with a demon spirit inside her, you’ll be to blame”! I was ten years old when I first went Trick or Treating and I only went twice in my life, because by and large most British folks are aggressive about people knocking on their doors.
I remember lots of people hurling abuse at me and the other kids, swearing at us, chasing us off with brooms or dogs!
Things have changed slightly since my Henry was born, he has managed to go Trick or Treating, but as soon as he was 10yrs old, people started getting mean – because here in the UK you can only go Trick or Treating if you so happen to be under the age of 11 or look it – or are accompanied by younger looking children with you. If you don’t look young enough you are shooed away like some stray animal.
At least one in every four or five doors they either won’t open to you, or they will shout abuse at the kids.
It is becoming quite common in this area lately that at Halloween the local JWs start their rounds in the hope to turn people against their evil ways of encouraging their children to do “Trick or Treat activities”.
It’s so sad.
I remember when Henry was in his primary/junior school that they used to do a Halloween party for the kids every year, as soon as Henry goes to High school from the age of 11, it’s like everybody expects them not to be kids anymore – none of those fun things anymore. No summer fetes, no Christmas fairs, no summer bouncy castles, no Halloween, Christmas or Easter parties, no Christmas card post box for your friends… I don’t get it. Why 11?
I complained to other parents about the unfairness of the huge culture change from junior to high school, they all seem to think along the same lines as the authorities, it’s time to grow up now!
But they’re only 11!
Henry has a lot of depression because of this, it seems to him that the whole world expects the fun to stop now and he is made to think about his career already. When I was in school, they didn’t make me think about what career I wanted until I was 14 – now Henry is expected at 12 to have a firm grasp at what he wants from his life.
He is still dithering from cook, doctor, accountant, marathon runner or actor.
Despite the school pressurising him to grow up, he feels he has less freedom in high school than he did in junior school – in junior school he was a play leader for younger children, this school doesn’t have anything like that – instead they have prefects which are usually the most popular kids in the school as it is done by a voting system.
Henry was certainly the most popular child in primary and junior school, but since moving into high school, he has a small group of friends who are all considered over-achievers and are mostly bullied for it.
It’s so sad they make them grow up so fast here, a couple of my American friends on twitter can’t believe that the UK is so culturally backward as to be mean to children of a certain age at Halloween over a piece of candy.
One of my dreams since childhood was to leave the UK for America or Canada, but things didn’t turn out that way for me. I always though, that although schools are not as secure as ours in regards to violence etc., they definitely do more for children and giving personal choices to children than UK schools do. Because here in the UK, most children are educated like they are clothed in school, uniformly, no deviation from curriculum and certainly very limited choices if any and hardly any after school clubs ran at the school.
Most high schools in the UK are expected to run from 8:30am to 4pm for five days a week, a 15 minute morning break and a 30 minute lunch break and that is all they get, well at my Henry’s school in any case.
I’ve never liked it, Paul and I did plan to move to Canada’s Prince Edward Island, when Henry was 3, but that fell through big time!
Anyway, happy reading!
Filed under Home and Family
Women I’ve idolised my whole life and some more recently for whatever reason;
Kathleen Turner – absolutely stunning, always liked her shape and she’s so pretty.
Diana Dors is literally a pin up I had as a teenager but mum either by accident or design ripped the poster that was on my wall and now I only have postcards of her.
But I always wanted to be like her when I grow up – white hair, that kind of figure at her prime was always my goal!
Even to this day, I’ve mostly wanted white platinum wavy hair, but I don’t think it suits my face. So a brunette then I suppose? Or purple hair? Or go to a wig shop and see what does suit me and see if platinum does suit my face? Lol.
If it does suit me, then I will feel happy, but I am stockier than I want to be and I don’t think I can do much about that, I build muscle too fast, always have! As Al Pacino’s devil said in my favourite movie Devil’s advocate “Vanity is my favourite sin”, but I’d like to think I am not terribly narcissistic in a bad way, but I do enjoy some attention, depends what though!
It was always my intention to be like this someday, whenever the opportunity occurs, I won’t be becoming anything new just because… it’s really who I am in my heart. What I am now is a false creature, living and dressing in the reality I do not want.
I am a chameleon peacock by heart.
Kirstie Alley back in the 80s was also on my pin up idol list.
Glen Close, she’s always been gorgeous!
Meryl Streep, again she’s always been pretty and I have always liked her style too – I was flabbergasted when my niece did my face on an app to see how I would look in 50yrs time if I were rich and glamorous – I looked like I could be her sister! I have the pic on Facebook somewhere I got to find it for Instagram.
Rosie Perez was also on my list growing up, of who I idolised in looks and fashion as well as a classic English actress called Penelope Keith, I envy Penelope’s voice.
As was Kate Moss and Linda Evangelista.
In my early twenties I developed an obsession to be like Lucille Ball and have red hair, one of my exes said that in his opinion my personality is mirror quality to her, but I won’t ever look like her!
Shame really.
Also more recently I really like the fashion sense of Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Dita Von Teese, Bjork and Melanie Martinez, but my body doesn’t suit their style yet… working on it!
I know I am probably going to look like mutton dressed as lamb but I don’t really care, it’s what’s in my heart that counts and I want to look however I like!
On my more androgynous days I like to look like Tilda Swinton, Glen Close, Annie Lennox, Cara Delevingne and several of the lifestyle female dandies on YouTube.
But I am mostly cute and wacky and most likely to wear Joe Browns, gypsy style, or cute styles similar to Kawaii– around the home I like wrap dresses, baggy tops, cardigans and dungarees if I can help it and have the budget for it.
I really wished I had more options going for me, but until I lose around another twenty to forty pounds I am pretty limited in the UK.
My weight loss goal is to be 180llb again.
I will get there, because I need to, my style is boring these days because I am just making do!
Though I’ve never been in the position to afford making myself up facially with cosmetics on a regular basis. As I said, I’ll get there, eventually. I am hoping my YouTube will be successful so I can afford to be this, imagine… a plain Jane to a glamorous peacock!
I also enjoy fashion designs from Jeremy Scott, Donatella Versace, Zandra Rhodes and Alexander McQueen.
Happy reading!
Filed under About Me
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Ellen Grace Olinger
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