boom boom shake shake the room

so its all happening this week - can't get five minutes to myself!

and in between it all i catch myself off guard and get a lump in my throat about my gran...
i'm trying to get on with things - i'm practical that way, but i guess Sunday/ Monday at the funeral is the time i'll have to catch up with myself and let the news sink in properly...

we all have to go sometime of this i am well aware, but it doesn't make it any less of a shock to the system.. a reminder of how short our time is and that we should use it wisely!

i'm looking 33 in the face come June 08 and what have i got to show for all those years apart from a handful of blogs?! haha don't worry, i'm not being too hard on myself, i had my twenties to do that in, but you still should make an effort to make the most of yourself and your life and i think for me 2008 is going to be taking it up a notch...

time to change gear, make it happen, upgrade! haha and any other business like term you want to use as an analogy to making your life taste bettter!

less TV and more books i think is an easy one, i'm going back to basics (and i do have all those unread ones to get thru, so again i'm being practical...)

think happy thoughts

this week's Top 5 is dedicated to my recently-departed gran Mary...

it's always very sad when you lose a close family member as I have this week, and you can't help but take stock of your life and think how much you'll miss that person...

but i want to celebrate my gran's life by writing about my favourite memories of her

5 her lovely home made cakes and jam
4 sitting in her car on the beachfront drinking tea from a flask and nibbling on aforementioned cakes!
3 going on long walks through beautiful Dorset countryside and discovering where Enid Blyton lived, ginger beer? yes please!
2 playing scrabble together and doing crosswords with a dictionary on hand
1 Christmas '83 at gran's house receiving a wonder woman outfit and wearing it all day

i feel a bit guilty that i didn't visit her more often, yes she lived 6 hours away but should i have made more of an effort? i did write often though, sending cheerful cards and updates on my life, jobs, boyfriends..

now she's gone it's a shame... but she had a long life and hopefully knew we loved her

if you've read this and haven't seen someone you love in a while why not give them a call, write them a letter, heck get on a train and go see them... life's too short to miss out on the little things like scrabble and tea with someone you love : )

a startling discovery

i saw a Led Zeppelin tribute band play live Friday night in Birmingham!

Led by Zeppelin rocked my world! haha whole lotta love was a dream, dazed and confused was fab, and generally they did a very good job of playing the hits!

i reckon it must be loads of fun being in a tribute band.. the people you play to want to hear the songs they love, and presumably you're in the band cos you love the songs people want to hear! its a win win situation!

i spose the only downside to impersonating someone else in any job means that you are piggybacking on someone else's talent, but even tho you don't play your own songs in a tribute band, if you don't work the crowd no-one will have a good time!

its good to see that Led by Zeppelin have taken their role as substitue rock gods quite seriously - including wigs haha - cos they really went for it...

creature comforts

TOP5 Creature Comforts!

I've been poorly this week, bad head, bad tummy, bad you don't wanna know! haha So i have been indulging in my favourite creature comforts hence the topic for this week...

5 hot water bottle - on the sofa, in bed, very good hug replacement...

4 tea and toast - can't be beat for comfort eating

3 daytime tv - love that mindless drivel!

2 macaroni in celery soup - my favourite recipe from my mum and a great feel-better meal, don't turn your nose up til you tried it! haha

1 hugs! (ideally from mum, but geography didn't permit this week... ruined!)

a side effect of being poorly at work is a general grumpiness, i know i'm not well if i'm grumpy and i don't care who knows it! haha i'm a pretty upbeat chick most of the time! but since they can't get anyone to cover my work i had to go in while feeling crappy and hey, does everybody know about it! haha

i don't envy my boss today with this sourface on... but thems the heady heights of being the boss right?! at least it's Friday and we all get a coupla days off anytime soon...

and hey! any recommends for the Top5 Creature Comforts welcome!

clearing some head space

it's odd how clearing out boxes of old paperwork, magazines and general crap can make your head seem clearer!

i mean how many years of bank statements exactly should you keep?! haha i made a paper mountain this week as i cleared out some old bills and wotnot... the local doctor's surgery will be getting a sackload of old girlie magazines for poorly people to read in the waiting room very soon!

i've also vowed not to buy another book until i've read all the ones i've got! haha, i've promised myself this before but i've never been abe to resist the latest tomes on offer...

i also discovered i need not buy another notebook for about 10 years! haha being of a writerly disposition i've always been partial to a nice bit of stationary and often have a notebook with me to jot down ideas.. but i also put them in a draw and forget about them only to find them again once i've replaced them 5 times over! haha my favourite author Paul auster wrote a book called The Brooklyn Follies about a dude who found the best notebooks ever in a mysterious bookshop - so i ain't the only one with a paper fetish! haha and a lecturer i had at university called Jon James also had a soft spot for a nice pen and pad for his thoughts... my mum, having noticed by collection no doubt, once bought me a lovely notebook with a velvette cover. but so intimidated was i by the gorgeousness of the book i couldn't write in it! now that's not normal, but that's what happened! i wasn't worthy of my notebook!

so no more books and no more notebooks til the surplus is done with! that could take some time haha, and what about photographs? you know, that old fashioned concept of actual hard copies of snaps... i have a tonne of them - not all worth keeping but who has the time to sift through?!

oh life's baggage, it can weigh you down, quite literally!

keep off the grass

this week's Top 5 is parks. how do you rate them? childhood memories have to rate highly cos your favourite park as a child got a lot of action! but then as a grown up parks can be romantic, great for a birthday picnic, or simply a ming clearing stroll! big up for parks! i may be a city girl but i happen to have great affection for trees, in fact i really like forests but they don't count right, a park is a park and a forest is a place where robin hood might hang out with his merry men!

here's my Top 5 Parks
5 Endcliffe Park, Sheffield
4 Branksome Park, Poole
3 Central Park, New York
2 Regent's Park, London
1 Sefton Park, Liverpool

you can't just beat childhood park memories like the summer music fest, bonfire night, looking for conkers, a million sunday walks with mum over to grandad's house... Sefton Park will always make me smile...

manchester is sadly lacking when it comes to parks in my humble opinion... its bad enough being inland with only a murky canal to keep my waterloving inclinations at bay, but the lack of trees is just plain misguided! the one thing you can say about liverpool is it does good trees... i guess manchester prided itself on being the great industrial city of the north and didn't think trees matched that image! and we do have the gorgeous peak district on the outskirts... but i reckon you can't beat an inner city park (see 1,2,3 in my Top 5!)

this is a belter

saw The Stereophonics live this week in Manchester and they rocked it!

i've always thought the 'phonics okay but live they really gave it some! you could really tell why they have lasted the distance...

they were supported by the Enemy, a new band from Coventry my friend is friends with so we went for drinks after the show at Mojo and i chatted to them about how i really need to join a band next year!

obviously i need to be a better guitar player if this is going to happen - but how can i get better without a band to practice in! my mate B should get on the drums she'd be wild, then we'd only need another guitarist and fanny's your aunt! rock n roll - let's go on tour! haha

but i felt really inspired seeing some seasoned players working the big stage... watch this space! i'll rock your world one day me! hehe

new friday feature

fridays.

some people would say they're the best day of the week. they are certainly often the best day of the traditional working week, being the end of it... i'm a big fan of sundays personally. tho they're slightly ruined by the sunday evening, back to work eve etc, but mosty they're pretty chilled. unless you work on sundays, in which case man that's worse than working mondays! haha

anyways, i've decided to do a Friday Top 5 feature. every Friday, a different Top 5 topic and you dear blog reader can take part! send in your Top 5 for the topic of the week! blogging is interactive baby!

let's start with a bang! my first Top 5 is Beatles Songs... an impossible task i hear you cry! haha

and it indeed it will be difficult, cos no sooner than i have chosen the fab five (see what i did there, hehe) i'll have thought of another top tune from the lads wot rocked the world...

but here goes:

5 Girl (1965)

4 Rain (1966)

3 Paperback Writer (1966)

2 Daytripper (1965)

1 If I fell (1964)

now this ain't fixed in stone. such a topic couldn't be - let's do it again next November?! haha and FYI: solo songs don't count! that's anohter four Top 5's right there! haha

i met Paul McCartney once, backstage at a Madness gig in Brighton (thanks L)... i nearly died from excitment - how very boring of me! But he's a Beatle! i couldn't help it, their tunes frickn rule!!!

if you have any topics you'd like to see featured in the Friday Top 5 drop me a line! And don't keep it simple with music and books, how about your Top 5 taxi journeys (how about that GS!) or your Top 5 parks! Let's get creative here!

too many books

not enough time to read them, money to buy them, shelves to put them on...

i have always loved books me... can't remember not being a book worm... it's a bit of a storage nightmare tho especially in grown up times, lugging them from rented place to rented place, leaving them in storage to get mouldy, it's not good!

today i went to my local char shop for a browse to cheer myself up in the face of a rubbish cold creeping up on me and bought a book called Lost In Music by Giles Smith.. Now i have many many many books in my collection that i am yet to read, so why i thought spending £2 on this one would help me next time i move house i don't know... but i couldn't resist!

when i was younger i loved the library, went every week, and this is where i obviously went wrong - i stopped lending books and started buying them! how ridiculous! i need to get back into libraries - but i guess the deadline on reading them becomes an issue - but maybe thats what i need! a deadline to get stuff read or it just sits there gathering dust merely looking like a good read, never actually becoming one!

I'm denying these books of their very reason for existence! what a horror i am! hehe

my mum has oft said i have enough books for my own library - i protest, surely there's only enough for a Jodester Wing.. or perhaps one of those Mobile Library Buses! haha, I could have a Caravan Library...oh my god! that would be amazing! forget the garden shed - when i get my own place i'm getting a mobile library in the garden! hehe

i have an exhaustive love of the book! my dad likes to tell the story of how i returned home one day with piles of books from a second hand shop in Liverpool that had a sale on - as many as you can carry for a £1! you read that rght! as many as you can carry for just one pound! now that's what i call a challenge! i can't say i've read one of them! haha tho i was very happy with the Kojak paperbacks..

but it's obviously a compulsion! which is why i prefer char shops for books cos the local Waterstones store is a nightmare for my bank account! new books smell nicer! do you think they've put a chemical in the printing presses to make people feel compelled to buy more books? there they are - all piled up saying 'hey, fancy spending a few happy hours with me?!'

so if you ever wonder what to get me for a gift dear blog reader, a book will always be welcome! haha i may not read it straight away, but i'll always enjoy receiving it and putting it in the jodester library...