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Around My Kitchen Table
The secret of happiness: be nice and have a laugh - and in the words of Miss Piggy, never eat more than you can lift
North Korea Doesn't Dig Alan Titchmarsh
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Counting Your Blessings
However...sometimes petty annoyances jump up and bite me on the bum.
Things that have annoyed me this week:
1 The man is, as I may have mentioned before, the untidiest person in the world. People don't quite believe me when I try to explain just how untidy he is. But now I have proof. I bought a nice big box of PG Tips which I should have put in the larder immediately but foolishly left on the worktop. When I got home he had opened the box. A normal person would have removed the cellophane and run their thumb along the perforations to make a nice flap which you could close again. But not the man, oh no. This is how the box looked when he'd finished with it.
I rest my case.
2 My annoyances seem to be of my own making because, secondly, I stupidly filled in a Conservative party online questionnaire. I thought I may as well make my views known on a variety of subjects, more in hope than expectation. But since then I have been inundated with emails from Conservative MPs, all seeking my support on a variety of Tory policies. GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE.
3 I had to phone the Inland Revenue this week about my tax code. After all that "press 1 for this, press 2 for that malarkey, I was put on hold on a loop - music, message ("thank you for waiting, one of our advisors will be with you as soon as possible"), music, message, music, message, music, message for what seemed like an eternity. I'm using the word "music" quite loosely. Its plinky plonkiness was so abysmal that I wanted to tear my ears off and transplant them on to a mouse. Must admit, though, when I finally got through,my query dealt with efficiently and quickly.
4 I live in rural Devon so roads are it is winding with few places where it is safe to overtake. I'm fairly patient behind farm vehicles because I know they will soon turn off but this week I got stuck behind an old Ford Escort. My heart sinks whenever I arrive behind a car and all you can see are two fluffy white heads barely peeking above the seats. It's a tricky road and you have to be careful BUT THAT'S NO REASON TO DRIVE AT 20mph AROUND THE BENDS AND BARELY SPEED UP ALONG THE STRAIGHTISH BITS. Then, blow me down, when they finally reached a stretch of road where it was possible to overtake, the driver suddenly found his accelerator and hared along at the rate of knots, before braking violently and taking the next bend at 20mph.
There are several other annoyances I could mention, but I'll leave those for another day.
Goodbye, and don't forget to count your blessings.
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Christmas Decorations
The man is
better prepared than I am. He has been practising for Christmas for weeks now
by wandering around the kitchen with a bottle of beer in one hand, a box of
chocolates in the other and getting in my way.
At least I've got the Christmas decorations down to a fine art. In our first Christmas together in our new house - many, many years ago - I decked our walls with boughs of holly, plus miles of streamers and tinsel. Every surface was covered with some sparkly festive ornament, from bowls of gold pebbles and pine cones to Christmas candles and miniature Santas. The tree was a work of art - a real one, naturally, so covered with gewgaws and baubles that it may as well have been artificial as not a green bough was to be seen.
I, in my innocence, was delighted with the Santa's grotto ambiance - until January 6 when I had to take the whole blooming lot down again.
They wander in, admire the decorations and then cry out, mortally offended: "Where's that candleholder I made you when I was in Year Two?" So it's back into the decorations box to dig out a misshapen lump of glittery purple plaster with a hole in the middle and the broken candle lying limply at its side. Hence, scattered among the elegant ornaments is a Father Christmas wearing sun-glasses, an angel with two broken wings and a crooked halo and a selection of papier mache tree hangings in various shapes and sizes.
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Car Sharing Dilemma
But I’m going to anyway.
So the radio is off and I have to, horror of horrors, make conversation. For some of these people I would feign unconsciousness to get away from at a party, but here I am trapped inside this metal tube with some gormless idiot chuntering on beside me for 20 miles.
I used to give a teenager from my village a lift to college. I'm not sure what she was studying - I'm not sure she knew what she was studying - but her area of expertise was relationships. I'd nod sagely at pearls of wisdom like, "Well Kelly thinks that Tyler fancies her but I could tell her for nothing that actually he thinks she's a total minger and I know for an absolute fact that he fancies Chantelle but I saw her snogging Dazza in the bus shelter and he's supposed to be going out with Mimi but I don't know what he sees in her, she's such a total scuzz-bucket and not fussy with it either, if you know what I mean, just ask Bruno, he chucked her because he was fed up of finding her with her tongue down other lads' throats and when he caught her with Simon - yes, that Simon - who's totally ancient and must be nearly 30, well he had no choice but to give her the elbow. "
I'm not sure who was worse, her or the young lad who in a year of lifts never said one word apart from the occasional grunt which I took was either a yes or no answer to the odd question I'd throw his way. Then there was the trainee hairdresser who had no conversation at all unless it related to hair and all its associated products.
That's the trouble with living in a village with only an intermittent bus service, mums knock on your door and ask if you can ferry their little darlings to town.
I think I might trade my car in for an old taxi cab and make sure the interconnecting window is well and truly shut. Then I can sit back, turn on Gran Radio and spit out the window.
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Don't Fall For The Spammers' Tricks
I get very depressed when I start thinking about all those villains spread across the globe who only want to con me and part me from my cash.
There's the African president who would like to send me billions of pounds because he can't get the money out of his country after his father died of beri-beri and there was a military a coup. I'm puzzled why he picked on the bank account of an old Devon maid like me into which to deposit millions of £s - but soooo honoured. Must remember to send him all my bank details a.s.a.p.
I've lost count of the number of competitions and lotteries I've won, which is a miracle because I haven't entered any competitions or lotteries.
Then there are this blog's spam comments that, thankfully, my blog provider usually intercepts. Some slip through, though. Yesterday I got this one but I'm not sure that it's spam. What do you think?
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I think it's genuine. I must click through....
Here's another:
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What is even more depressing than the snake oil salesmen and the con artists thinking you just might fall for their spiel is that there must be people out there who actually do get conned or the crooks would be out of business.
Who in their right mind thinks they have won $1,000,000 in the Louisiana state lottery when they've never bought a ticket or visited the place? Why would Prince Mtobobo choose an ordinary person who's never been further than Sorrento in Italy as a conduit through which to send billions of Djiboutian francs, or whatever? Or that a website which advertises itself as "the go-get premier agency for lucid collaring" is genuine?
Some people almost deserve everything they get.
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My Life With Kale
I was reading one of my favourite blogs https://misadventuresofwidowhood.blogspot.com/ when the poster mentioned kale! It brought back memories of "my life with kale" which I posted about back in the year dot. So here's the post again, just in case you'd like to read it! I've shortened it slightly from the original - it seemed a bit wordy!
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Michael Caine's New Film
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The Saga of Washing Instructions
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