For the last month, Ma Pawpads has graced us with her presence.

She flew into Bristol airport last month, arriving at 8am and was then going to her sisters place in the city where I was going to drive down to collect her from once I’d finished at the Beauty Salon where I had a long standing, regular appointment. Believe me, I really couldn’t risk changing my appointment.  Well, I could have, but I have a feeling that I would have been shunned by polite society, small children would have screamed upon setting their sights on me . . etc.

So, off I set, down to Bristol, enjoying the late summer sunshine, music blasting, motorway traffic behaving.

I’m really impressed by the fact that it doesn’t take me as long as I had expected and I pull up at my Aunties house, patting myself on the back for remembering where she lived, despite not having been there for about 10 years.

I ring the doorbell and as soon as the door is opened I am swept up into an enourmous hug from my Uncle Tim. Propelled into the house while Uncle Tim talks ninety to the dozen in the superfast, really thick Bristolian accent that he has, and that I struggle to keep up with.

To discover, after about 15 minutes, that my Ma is not there.

Not only is she not there, he doesn’t know where she is and wasn’t even aware that she was coming over from America. His wife, my Auntie, is at work. He phones her, I speak to her and discover that she thinks that Ma is flying over on Saturday. Umm, no, I spoke to her the night before while she was at Newark Airport waiting to board her flight.

So, this confusion goes on for a while, until I remember that Ma was flying back with a cousin of mine and that  her father was collecting her from the Airport. Perhaps Ma Pawpads is with him. Uncle Tim is on the case and phones Uncle Brian.

Hurrah, he has Ma. Thank God.

But, he lives in another part of Bristol. A part that I’m not familiar with. Uncle Tim offers to drive to Uncle Brian’s and I can follow him in my car. But first, Uncle Tim needs a coffee.

Yes, of course he does.   I can’t really complain though, I haven’t seen this bloke for years and he’s loving hearing what me and my siblings have been up to and telling me about his kids. I daren’t interupt him to explain about Facebook and how we’re all in touch.

All this time, I’m keeping an eye on the clock, trying to figure out how long it’s going to take Uncle Tim to drink his coffee, for us to drive over to Uncle Brians, to get my Ma (who could easily win Gold for talking bollocks in the Olympics) out of the house and into my car so that I can zoom bac up the motorway to collect B as this was also the first day back at school following the summer holidays.

I find myself staring at Uncle Tim every time he takes a sip of his coffee, wondering if he could possibly drink it a bit quicker.

Finally, we leave the house, and zoom off to find Uncle Brian. . . and hopefully my Ma.

And of course, once I get to Uncle Brian’s, I can’t just whizz in there, grab Ma and leave.   So we go in, have drinks, the Uncle Brian remembers that I was tracing my family tree, and takes me off to his office to show me everything that he’s discovered. To be fair, it was fascinating, (he’s managed to trace his and my Ma’s family back to the 17th Centrury) but I could have done without it today.

Then my Auntie calls us down because lunch is ready.

Lunch?

I don’t have time to fucking eat ~ although my Auntie is from the Philipines and seriously, I’ve never known anyone to cook like her.

A ~ maze ~ ing.

Anyway, we eat a most delicious meal and then we have to go, I’m getting very nervous as I’m checking the time trying to figure out how long it’s going to take us to get home, what the traffic is going to be like and if the radar thingy on my car is working incase there are any coppers out and about on the M5.

But once again my luck holds out. My Auntie announces that she needs to leave soon to get to Frenchay Hospital where she works, and Uncle Brian offers to let us follow him part of the way, using short cuts which will cut about 10 minutes from our journey time.

What a star.

So, I get Ma out of the house and into the car. Uncle Brian insists on putting her suitcases into my car ~ no mean feat, let me tell you. When Ma packs a suitcase, she packs everything.

We make really good time, and I even have time to go home, drop Ma off, stay with her for 10 minutes which also allows Gem to get used to her, before I have to zoom off up to the school.

Two weeks before this, I had managed to quit smoking.

Not anymore.

I’ve always loved to read. I don’t care what, I don’t care where. Reading for pleasure is something that I do everyday.  Sometimes, it even takes priority over more important things like, cooking, cleaning and more often than not, sleeping.

But for pretty much all of last year I lost my reading mojo.  It just upped and buggared off without a word of warning and left me, not knowing what to do.

I joined the Book Club on the forum, ordered the books from the Library, even started to read the books, but it was no good. I just couldn’t get into anything.

I have hundreds of books. Some are permanent fixtures in my life. Books that I read loved and have kept to re~read, over and over again. Others are on my Mount TBR (to be read) but none of them could keep my attention for more than a chapter or two.

But, I’m pleased to say, that it’s back.  I don’t know where it went, and I’m afraid to ask, in case it decides to buggar off there again, but my reading mojo is well and truly alive and I’m loving it.

In the past 8 months I’ve read over 20 books.  Not a great amount, I know, but considering the fact that I do have a family who keep me very busy, I’m more than happy with this number.

I’ve got the Book club up and running on the forum again, although time will tell if this is as successful as it has been in the past, and I have devoured six books in the past 2 months.

Now though, I’m just waiting for the library to email me back to let me know that the three books that I ordered almost two weeks ago are in stock.

I also found a gift card that I got for either my birthday or Christmas last year for Waterstones and spent a lovely two hours on their website trying to choose and decide what books to buy. I finally decided after checking that both books were in stock. I chose two of Phillippa Gregory’s books from her thrilling Tudor series.  I ordered and within twenty minutes, had the email confirmation come through telling me that, of course, one of the books was out of stock. And of course, the one book that has been delivered is out of sync with the ones that I’ve read so far, so that’s just no good to me at all.

The book is in the kitchen at the moment, and I keep walking past it, picking it up and stroking it and reading the blurb on the back cover. I’m so desperate to read it and I don’t think I’ll be able to hold out for much longer.

Excuse me while I go and click “send and receive” on my email account again.

I know, I know. I’ve been a very bad blogger.

But in my defence, it IS the school holidays and I do have an 8 year old B to keep entertained and an M who works the worlds shitiest hours.

So far though, this summer we have been all over the place.  Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures, Alton Towers, Warwick Caste (x2) and Legoland.

I’m sure I’m missing something out, but you get the general idea.

It was also B’s 8th birthday on Monday. 8! I have a son who is 8!

And yes, I am far too young and attractive to have an 8 year old ~ I was indeed a child bride and he was born way before he was conceived*.

*Some of this may not, actually be true.

Facebook. A handy little way of keeping tabs on people that you don’t actually have the time (and in some cases, the inclination) to speak to in your day to day life.

Lots of old schoolpals and work colleagues have a nasty habbit of popping up from all over the place and sending friend requests.

And then there are the status updates. Some people post every detail of their life on there. No matter how small, how big and how private.

Don’t get me wrong. I love hearing about the safe arrival of my cousins baby, but I don’t need to know about MAP that my neice has had to rush out to buy nor that she has posted that her mum (my sister) still thinks that she’s a virgin.

And now the groups that people have joined have started to pop up on my screen. How lovely to know that people that I went to school with are fans of rough sex.

Now, I know that I’m a fairly private person. Even though I have a blog, I don’t tell everyone everything. I have three people that have requested my friendship on FB that I haven’t accepted yet, as I don’t want them to know what I’m up to, how much my friends and I swear or anything really.

I’ve deactivated my FB account about 3 times in the past few years, but in the end, I’m just too nosy and end up logging on again to see what everyone’s up to.
So, really, I suppose I should stop moaning about it.

I was diagnosed via the internet at the beginning of this week.  Internet though! How crappy. I’m not even allowed to go to see my Doctor if I’m feeling crappy and have at least two of the symptoms. Which I did.

You’re basically sent to an NHS website to answer a load of questions, if you say yes to enough of them, you’re given a code number and told to send someone to go and collect your Tamiflu for you.

What a kerfuffle.

So, now I have my Tamiflu and am thankfully beginning to feel better. Poor B has been left to entertain himself over the past few days, so because of this the house is an utter disgrace, but I’m not being too cross with him, as he must have been bored rigid, due to me not being allowed to go anywhere or do anything.

I’m hoping to be better by Monday as we’ve made plans to take B and one of his cousins to Legoland.

Well, I’m back.

Actually I’ve been back for a while, but it’s summer holidays here and trying to find the time to blog is not easy when you’re also trying to entertain an (almost) 8 year old boy and a crazy dog.

But here I am, and here is the story of mine and Emma’s mini adventure to Edinburgh.

I woke up on the Wednesday and it was raining. I wasn’t impressed at all, but took B to school, giving him loads of hugs, I rushed home, took Gemma out for the fastest walk in the world ~ well, it was raining ~ double checked that I had packed everything, chucked it all in the car, went to Tesco to fill up the car and drove to collect Emma. The drive up to Scotland wasn’t bad at all and I really enjoyed it.

The weather stayed good and didn’t feel that it took very long at all, even though I ended up with a numb bum a few times.  We had a mention on both Radio 1 (Emma’s choice of radio station) and Absolute Radio, during our drive up. Emma had sent a text into Radio 1 as it was Harry Potter day, and they phoned her back!  They checked to see that we were over 18 ~ “ummm, yeah, just a bit” was her reply, and they asked if we had a question that we wanted to ask the 3 main characters.  We couldn’t think of anything and they said that they might phone back later.  They didn’t.

And Absolute played “Save a prayer” so I got Emma to send a text into them saying that we were driving up to Edinburgh to see DD play the following night, from Gloucestershire.  They didn’t phone back, but they did read the text out which gave us a bit of a boost during the drive.

We got to Edinburgh just after 4pm (I think), couldn’t find the hotel car park but found an NCP almost next door to the hotel and went and booked into the hotel.  The car park wasn’t very big at all, and wasn’t much cheaper than the NCP so we decided to leave the car where it was. We got a 20% discount from the hotel so that was that.

We dumped our stuff in our room (which I forgot to take a photo of ) and went off to have a wander.

We found this chap on the Royal Mile. He was making a hell of a racket ~ but I think that’s how Bagpipes are supposed to sound.

We ended up going to TGI Friday’s for something to eat and then going back to the hotel for an earlyish night, but not before I discovered this alley. It’s the best alley in the world! Ever.

It’s actually next to the bar where we ended up having breakfast for the next two days. The first day was sunny and we managed to sit outside and enjoy the atmosphere, but I noticed that loads of people kept stopping and taking photos of this alley. And when I see loads, I mean at least 20!  In the end, Emma walked over to have a look and see what was going on in the alley. But there was nothing happening and it turned out that it was the alley that I had fallen in love with the evening before.

The next day, we explored more of the city and did a sightseeing bus tour.  And, we went and saw Greyfriars Bobby which was very important to me. I didn’t get to see him the last time I was in Edinburgh, and I was determined to see him this time ~ which we did.

The castle was still open to the public even though they were getting it ready for the concert that evening, so we managed to have a bit of a walk about and listen to the soundcheck.  We got to walk around the back of the stage and everything where I took this photo of a DD storage thingy.

I bought a postcard to send home to B, and we went back to the hotel for a little rest before the concert.

Then we discovered this wonderful bar, tucked away down one of the millions of alleys in Edinburgh.  We kept looking for a lovely little bar, which had a nice vibe about it, that wasn’t too packed full and was friendly. We found it ~ and it’s called The Jolly Judge.

We got to the castle, found our seats and were happily listening to Florence and the machine and watching the nasty dark clouds move closer and closer to the castle. Then at one point I was looking up at the flag that was flying above the castle at the exact moment that lightening cracked across the sky. Not good.

This photo was taken just before the heavens opened.

Within about 7 minutes the heavens had opened and it pissed down.

Everyone legged it. Especially Emma and I, because although we’d been checking the weather forecast all week, and had remembered to bring our waterproof jackets, we had made the executive decision to leave them in the hotel.  So, everyone ran to shelter under the seats. This wasn’t too bad, except we chose to stand next to a load of those portable urinals. After a few minutes the smell was unbearable.  But this wasn’t too bad because the people up there were so friendly. Not like us southerners.

We only waited for about 30 minutes for the rain to stop ~ but it felt much longer. My teeth were bloody chattering ‘cos I was so cold and wet.  There was an announcement made and we all made our way back to our seats.

The rain stayed away and Duran Duran had everyone up off their bums and dancing themselves dry for a couple of hours.  It wasn’t the best DD gig that I’d ever seen, but they were full of energy and clearly having loads of fun up there and I’m glad that I made the trip up to see see them in such a wonderful setting.

They only had one other gig planned in the UK for this year (so far) which was at a festival in London on the following Saturday, and much as I love Duran Duran, I’m not willing to spend a fortune just to hear them play a handful of songs.

The drive home was boring and uneventful. The weather was shocking, going from drizzle to finer drizzle until we got to Birmingham where it got sunny and then proper torrential rain when we got through to the other side.   The drive took ages.  Due to the weather and the fact that it was the last day of term for the majority of schools in England.  I think it took about 7 and a half hours to get home.

Remember this post?

M just had a phone call from the Police. Burgular Bill has been in custody since this happened and he went to court on Friday.
He asked for 26 other incidents to be taken into consideration and has been put away for 3 and a half years.

One more scumbag off the streets.

Went to the Tewkesbury Medieval Festival yesterday to celebrate the Battle of Tewkesbury.  Even though it’s not far from where I live, I hardly ever go to Tewkesbury and had never been to the festival before, but was looking on the interweb a few weeks ago, for things to do with Deigo and up this popped.

We dragged my buddy, Emma along with us and had a lovely day. Emma was picked from the audience at one point to play in the band for the Fire~eater. This basically comprised of Emma and a couple of others playing on recorders and tin whistles.  The noise was shocking but the comedy value was priceless. The Fire Eater was great too, very funny and I managed to get this wonderful shot, which I have pimped all over the place.

There were so many wonderful and interesting stalls selling everything and anything. As well as a circus tricks guy there who let everyone have a go on the apparatus. B was fantastic on the Diablo, which I had fun with too, but I preferred something which was basically, 3 sticks. I had to balance the one stick between the other two, then flip it about.  I’m not really good with the describing~ness, so shall leave it there.

The day ended with a recreation of the Battle, but I didn’t get to see any of it as by this point my pelvis had decided to give up, so I went and sat at the back of the field while Emma and B elbowed their way through to the front of the crowd and managed to watch the soldiers.

It was a brilliant day, the weather held out and even got rather warm at some points, and the rain began as we were walking back to the car.

I really love living in England and being surrounded by so much history.

I’ve never done this before, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

This is a photo of me and my siblings, taken last month at one of my brothers’ surprise 40th birthday party. I think it’s rather obvious which brothers’ birthday it was. He’s the one that is obviously a few worse for wear.

I love this photo and I was so determined to get a photo of the six of us together. It wasn’t easy though. Everytime I thought that I had all of us, one of them had wandered off somewhere else.

Dad…so many images come to mind
whenever I speak your name;
It seems without you in my life
things have never been the same.

What happened to those lazy days
when I was just a child;
When my life was consumed in you
in your love, and in your smile.

What happened to all those times
when I always looked to you;
No matter what happened in my life
you could make my gray skies blue.

Dad, some days I hear your voice
and turn to see your face;
Yet in my turning…it seems
the sound has been erased.

Dad, who will I turn to for answers
when life does not make sense;
Who will be there to hold me close
when the pieces just don’t fit.

Oh, Dad, if I could turn back time
and once more hear your voice;
I’d tell you that out of all the dads
you would still be my choice.

Please always know I love you
and no one can take your place;
Years may come and go
but your memory will never be erased.

Today, Jesus, as You are listening
in your home above;
Would you go and find my dad
and give him all my love.

By Leah Wells