The've Gone

They've gone. They've gone; they were only here a short time but now they've gone and life can continue as normal. Goodbye toast rack. Cheerio cut crystal Au revoir glass domed individual butter dishes with twee butter knives. Until the next lot arrive I can be a slob again and enjoy my ninety second breakfasts with a book. I can once again drink water from the bottle and put sugar in my cup before pouring the coffee. No longer do I have to shut the bedroom door before walking naked into the bathroom because, did I tell you - they've gone. They were amusing, they were fun, they were nice but the nicest thing about them is that they have gone. They are, now, as John Cleese might have said ex-visitors, they are no more.  Now don't get me wrong. They were lovely people but in this last case I now have to buy more butter. I find it quite astounding that there are people who, at breakfast when faced with a pristine container of butter insist on digging a huge chunk from the centre. Do they not understand that, in order to butter warm toast without the slice finishing up looking like a Glastonbury field after the festival it is necessary to hold the knife horizontally and slice of a sliver at a time and lay it on aforesaid toast - obviously not. Philistines, they even wanted sardines - in February??
Ok, ok, I'll hold up my hands and admit I have become Victor Meldrew; in fact I'm more Victor Meldrew than Victor Meldrew ever was. Never mind art imitating life - this is life imitating art. Yes, I'm settled in my ways; I no longer like change in my habits, particularly in my own home and why is it that others are more than happy to stay in someone else's house when I prefer not to? Why can't they be more like me and when invited say "Yes love to but find me a little hotel nearby and we'll sleep there". I say this and add 'then we are not putting you out and we can meet up after breakfast and spend the days together". What I actually mean is, my habits are different to yours, my needs are different to yours, the structure of my day is different to yours and the bottom line is my quirks and your quirks don't mix. You cannot bring two families together 24/7 - well you can but not without tension - hence first paragraph.
But now I have three glorious weeks until my sister-in-law arrives and when she does the first thing I am going to do is teach her how to put butter on toast.

 

Ants

I know I’ve myself this question before but until now I never had an answer. However I now know why I am sitting here writing this, this blog which started a while ago after coming across other life-style diaries. The only reason I am continuing is because now I have a follower, yes a follower, just one but I’m sure she’s lovely. I know she is interesting because of her personal blog of which she is prolific and I also now have someone who actually reads my nonsense and follows my inanities. And this is, as I understand, the be all and end all of blogging. Not having a following is akin to spending your entire life talking to yourself. There is a downside of course and that is I now have to continue and even worse, should my follower un-follow me the rejection could be quite painful. So dear follower, I beg you, when you stop reading my drivel, don’t tell me.

I have to write this down, for if I don’t I may forget how I spent a totally bizarre two hour chunk of my life. It was one afternoon last week and had you walked into my kitchen at that time you would have found a somewhat bemused man standing next to a carefully placed blob of marmalade on his white floor tiles while his eyes swept  the room’s perimeter as if they were surveillance cameras in south London. Why, I hear you ask, why would reasonably sane man place marmalade on the floor?  A fair question and the answer is that I was trying to trace where the ants were coming from. Ants black, floor white, they should stick out like the proverbial thumb even if they are minute. You know the ones; they are approximately 2 millimetres long and meander across surfaces in a conga-like fashion. Actually, if you think about it they don’t meander, they are pretty quick on those tiny legs, in fact, size for size I reckon they are all little Usain Bolts’ and Mo Farahs’.

After approximately ten minutes of standing over my marmalade blob without Usain or Mo appearing the mind starts to wander. Should I have used fine cut rather than coarse cut, after all you can’t expect a 2mm ant to carry off a heavy piece of peel. At this stage I realised that I was verging on the ridiculous or probably already passed into it. I binned the blob thinking perhaps they prefer Marmite or peanut butter I could set out a row of delicacies for them to choose – oh hell, madness is setting in I should be looking out for men in white coats not ants.

As I raised my binoculars (ok, it’s a big kitchen) and surveyed the granite worktop the blinding flash of realisation hit me like a thunderbolt. Slapping the side of my head and shouting Eureka (as one does) I looked at the worktop. The granite is of mixed colours, grey, beige and black, yes black. Do you remember as a child playing musical chairs? When the music stopped you had to find a chair to sit on, well that’s the answer – when someone walks into the room the ants rush to the nearest black bit and play statues – they hide on the black bits.

 

Blogs & Facebook

As this is now my fourth post I have now officially joined that illustrious band of people that call themselves’ bloggers.  Now I can understand blogs that promote a business or services, I can understand blogs that are written by persons with a particular passion for something they wish to share with like-minded people but I find personal blogs – such as this – somewhat mystifying. Why do we do it? We are not receiving monetary gain – are our egos that frail?

In February this year someone took it upon themselves to count the number of blogs out there and reached an amazing 156 million with rate of 1 million posts per day. Previously I thought it was vanity driven (and many, I know are) but, with the exception of those who crave publicity such as politicians, sportspersons, actors, media folk and C list celebrities etc. I believe most blogs are written anonymously with a nome de blogue. So what’s in it for them? 

The above quandary has been brought about by my lying awake at 4am pondering as to my reasons for adding to the amount of useless words floating around in the ether. But a thought has just arrived and is nagging away in the corner of my head.  Could the reason be a form of Munchausen’s - praise by proxy. If you agree/ like what I say, I feel good but if you disagree/dislike what I say, well it’s not my name at the bottom and I can still walk around with my head held high.

Hmmm, I’m not sure whether I like the new me.

Whilst on the subject of web writing, last week I received an email from Facebook telling me that Jasmine Higginsbotham (not her real name) wants me to be her Facebook friend. Now Jasmine, with whom Sophie and I had dinner with 30 years ago and have not seen or heard of since, suddenly contacts me and gives me, on my screen, a choice of two buttons to click on. YES, I confirm our friendship or SEE all requests. This is akin to her bumping in to me in the street and saying “hallo, do you like me?” In the unlikely event of this happening I could always say something such as “Well I don’t know you that well but I’m sure if I did we could be good friends”. Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t give you that option therefor rather than be rude I always click the ‘confirm’ button.  So, Mark Zuckerberg if you’re reading this, could we please have a third button marked ‘WHY’. Clicking on this could open up a dialogue box in which I could write “Listen you sad person your insecurity is showing. We haven’t been in touch for 30 years and then we didn’t have much to say to each other. Why do you need me to be your 984^th friend?”

Ho-hum. I’m off to plant a palm.