Typecast

Yes, it's that time of year again... an old year out and a new one in.  A time for resolutions (whether we keep to them or not), a time for reflection, a time for new beginnings - everyone does it.  But I have a more burning question: HOW DO YOU OFFICIALLY PRONOUNCE "2010"? Do you say " Twenty Ten " or Do you say " Two Thousand And Ten " Which is right and which is wrong, what will you be saying and will one annoy you more than the other?

She sat on her faded, aged settee, clutching the crumpled lottery ticket, not daring to let it out of her sight.  She’d chosen the numbers carefully – not the usual birthdays and anniversaries but numbers that she thought would be lucky.  It was 7.30pm on a Saturday and the usual rituals of evening meal, washing up and the pouring of a glass of wine had been conducted.  She was trying to stay calm but she always got jittery at the same time, every week.  Her mind was full of ‘What if’s...’ and she almost couldn’t bear the tension but she knew that was part of her enjoyment of the weekly ritual... or torture, whichever way you looked at it. At 8.05pm the familiar theme tune struck up, the blue logo and the red writing to which she had become so accustomed flew into view on the television screen and she could feel the excitement and tension building. As the host of the quiz show (used to pad out the 30-second draw into a hour-long show) appeared she tutted and shuffl...

... so can someone please tell me where the last year went? I mentioned the fact that my daughter had a baby last year in   this blog ; and how proud I am of how she's managed becoming a parent at such a young age.  Today, that baby is 1 year old!!!  Many battles have been fought during the last year - my daughter has flown the nest (again) to live in her own house, moved to another house, found out she is pregnant again (yes, that bit was TOTALLY unexpected) and is building her own little family in her own little world so it seems the war has been won. I sometimes look at her and think "I did that... I helped there" but then I realise that she's doing it all on her own, really and I'm very, very proud of her.

Nativities are both crap and brilliant in equal measures. I've just returned from watching Jake in the Junior Nativity Play.  This was, as the title suggests, a poignant nativity for me because I realised that it was the last time I'd ever see any of my children in a traditional nativity.  I started crying the minute the curtains opened and showed Year 3 singing (I know not one single child in Year 3, 4 or 5) and continued crying until the curtain closed for the final time half an hour later *rolls eyes*.   Yes, I'm pathetic.  It's official. This Nativity play was called "Round The Back" and was the traditional nativity story interspersed with modern day references.   The grumpy innkeeper just wanted some sleep because he'd been busy rehearsing for Strictly Come Dancing, the light from the star was compared to the light from a Nintendo DS in a darkened room, the Angels danced to "The Eve Of The War" from War of the Worlds and the Three ...

... and it's all available from Argos. I found this "Cristmas List" stuffed in between the pages of my Filofax earlier today. This appears to be the next stage along from giving your child a pen and the Argos catalogue and letting them circle the toys on their wish list. I'm very pleased to note that Jake's spelling and handwriting is coming on a treat (he's just received his "pen licence" at school). It's a shame that Father Christmas will not be able to obtain everything on the list but he may replace it with other presents that are just as good, if not better. Please note the inclusion of the Argos catalogue numbers, for our convenience. On the list we have: [ sic ] 1. science museum 400ft stomp Rocket (he won't be getting this - we live in a terraced house with no garden - yes, apparently the rocket will fly up to 400 feet in the air - no mention of the very upset child when the rocket does not come directly down into the arm...

Today it is 27 years since my Nana died. I only remembered after I'd written the date a few times, however I do have vivid memories of the day she died and the week after. I was 10 years old and in top class at primary school. Nana's house was on the route to school so I used to walk to there with my mum and my sister then cross the park to my friend's house and walk to school with her (oh, the grown up responsibility - walking 3 blocks with no adult supervision!). On 2nd December 1982 Mum asked me if I wanted to go and see Nana on the way because I'd not seen her all week. I said that I didn't and skipped off to Tara's house. Later that night, just as I'd gone to bed, the phone rang. I could hear mum's muffled voice then I heard her make another phone call. About 15 minutes later, my aunt and uncle came round and my mum and dad went out. My aunt came upstairs and said that my Nana had called to say she was unwell, could my mum go round and t...

Steve at Philofaxy posted this blog earlier in the week about an idea that I'd had - a way of road-testing a new Filofax to see if it would suit your needs - a "try before you buy" type of service. I know from personal experience that people have an abundance of Filofaxes ( a recent survey proved that many owners have two or more Filofaxes ) stuffed in drawers or displayed on shelves, mainly unused because they no longer fulfil their purpose. How about releasing that Filofax back into the community where it would be loved and appreciated, either on loan or as a swap? Come and join us at the Google Group that Steve has created and see if you can join in the fun. http://groups.google.co.uk/group/philofaxy?hl=en-GB

Oh.My.Gosh THIS IS BRILLIANT!!! I compiled this "Wordle" earlier using the words from this blog: (click the image for the full-size view) Why don't you have a go? Here is their website: http://www.wordle.net/ Also, you might like to try a Facebook application that is very similar. It uses your status updates from the past week, month or year and creates a "Status Cloud": http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=178353136572&ref=ts Here's mine: I'm liking the frequent use of the words "brew", "wine", "assignment" and "twitter"... that just about sums up my life!!

(click first paragraph for original Daily Mail article) Usually I don’t respond to articles in the Daily Mail because they are so far removed from my idea of normality that the subject matter is just laughable. However, when a self-confessed over-spender attempts to live on Government benefits for just one week, I felt I had to reply . Living on benefits isn’t something that you can pick and choose to do one week at a time, when you feel like it. Circumstances take over and this becomes a way of life. Do you imagine that the majority of claimants, in the current climate, enjoy living on (or below) the breadline? And yet you chose to write a patronising article about how “difficult” it is and how you haven’t got a clue how much things cost complimenting that by bragging about how much you’re already in debt. You may be trying to show that you are eating humble pie but what steps have you taken since this experiment to rectify your situation? Your attitude to debt astounds me. You...

Driving to work this morning and I got stuck in a traffic jam. Nothing unusual there - it's the rush hour after all - but this was an odd sort of place to get stuck. I use this route because it's fairly quiet and there doesn't seem to be any bottlenecks on the way up to the motorway junction. Anyway, this is the UK. There's been a bit of rain. There is a dip in the road. Water has collected at the bottom of the dip (no surprise there). Here is how deep the water was.... *rolls eyes* There was also a random bloke (not council - probably some do-gooder who had no good to do anywhere else) attempting to stop the traffic so that he could poke at a drain with a big stick (it was definitely a stick, not a dyno-rod or anything) assuming that would help. Er, no love, it wasn't helping. IT'S RAIN... NOT A GREAT BIG BARRIER... DRIVE THROUGH IT IN YOUR BIG METAL BOX... IT WON'T HURT YOU!!!!

It's that time of year again... the Children In Need night on Friday 20th November and my friends seem to be split into two camps when it comes to the actual show. We have the "Yay, CIN! Gratuitous crap TV" group and the "OFFS, CIN! Gratuitous crap TV" group. I am in the former group. All week I've been listening to the grand job that Sir Terry Wogan does for Children in Need, auctioning off the "Things That Money Can't Buy" to raise money for the fund. There are some fantastic auctions on offer this year but the minute the bids go over ten quid, it sort of puts me out of the running, giving me a feeling of inadequacy. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way. The winners of these auctions don't actually need these prizes. It seems to be more about how much cash they can flash rather than doing it for the good of the cause and, if they're being honest, the amount of money that they've bid could...

So, the 10 year old is getting regular homework now that he’s in the top class at his primary school. It’s all in preparation for his SAT’s next year and, whilst I’m not a big advocator of homework (I have the knowledge to help, just not the inclination), I can see how much he is improving. He has ADHD which includes a short attention span and a low reading age so homework can take a bit longer than anticipated. Last night was no exception. At 7.30pm he wafted 8 pages of pre-printed sheets under my nose and pronounced that it (his homework) had to be handed in on Friday morning and he wouldn’t have time to do it on Thursday night because he was at his gymnastics training session for three hours. We sat down at the table and, t o encourage him, I got my Uni assignment out and thought that we could study in companionable silence. Oh no... nothing in the O’Hara household is that simple. Every question needed to be read with him or I had to listen. to. the. staccato. sound. of. him....

Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche I love my music and it surrounds me all day - mp3 player, radio, Spotify... Without it, even just playing in the background, I feel lost. The first tune of the day can set my mood for the next few hours or can irritate me by playing on a loop inside my head during moments of silence. There are certain songs or melodies which immediately transport me back in time to a certain event or emotion, there are film scores which will make my eyes prickle with tears and there are genres that I just don't get (my friend Sam tries to get me to like all sorts of weird stuff - she's a strange one, for sure). I used to participate in a "music thread" on a forum on a Friday night. It was mainly a bunch of women (and the odd bloke), sitting in front of their computer, with a bottle of their favourite tipple, posting links from YouTube . Some were favourite songs, some were long forgotten so...

OK, I knew there was a reason for starting this blog - I now need the help of all my readers... YES, THAT'S YOU!!! I bought a book many years ago (well, about 1993/4) and read it over and over and over again. It was falling to bits but lovingly sellotaped back together again until one day, it was lost forever during a house move :-( I can even envisage the cover... it was a drawing (not a photo) of the back view of a woman in a fitted red dress, turning slightly as though she was viewing herself in the mirror. I bought it in a book club 3-for-2 deal and the other two books were "Hungry Women" by Laramie Dunaway and the other was "Wicked Women" by the same author, both published by Warner (I think). It will have been written/published around 1990-1991 possibly. Here is the story line: A lady needs a break from "real life" and goes off wandering in town. She walks down a side street that she's not noticed before and stumbles upon a dre...

Whilst browsing through Twitter earlier today I had noticed that Derren Brown had tweeted the link to his latest blog post . I had 5 minutes to spare so I thought I'd give it the once over. Hhhmmm... The subject matter isn't the issue... it's the choice of wording!! "... few things disturb me more about modern TV than people being humiliated and misled for our entertainment..." Oh dear, Mr Brown! Could you remind us what your Channel 4 commissions have been recently? Mind Control (2000) Trick of the Mind Trick or Treat Mind Control (2007) The Events all of which involve people being humiliated and misled for our entertainment. All of the above links have been taken from Derren Brown's Wikipedia page which, funnily enough, describes him as a "mentalist". That made me snigger for some strange reason.....

Adjective loquacious Talkative or chatty, especially of persons given to excess conversation . I set my Facebook status to one of those silly "describe me in one word" type games and this was one of the descriptions I received. I must say that it suits me down to the ground given my Facebook and Twitter activity but I'm a bit embarassed by the fact that I had to look up its meaning!!

So, you're on Facebook or Twitter or an internet forum and one of your friend posts something that they believe is funny and they're quite obviously expecting a reaction but you're unsure as to whether it's quite as funny as they make out... what do you do? DILEMMA!! *insert quandry type da-da-duuuuhhh music here* Solved... you type a cheery "LOL" underneath their post and carry on with your social networking and the rest of your life. Now you're safe! You've acknowledged their post, you've made them believe that you share a sense of humour and you're not about to be dumped from their friends list for not "speaking" to them for a while. Everyone's a winner. *disclaimer* The above post does NOT count when I type "LOL" on someone's post. I only post if I think it's funny. Or something like that... *whistles nonchalantly*

The novelty has now worn off!! Once it was fun to pretend you were a check-out girl (BEEP!) and scan your own items (BEEP!). The kids enjoyed joining in (BEEP!) and hunting for the bar code, packing the bags whilst you scanned (BEEP!) the next item, then they'd feed the money into the little slot... Now, it's just another chore. There's LOADS of people in the "10 items or less" queue (some stores allow you 15 or even 20 items) trying to save time. And you can guarantee that many of these have sneaked an extra item or two into their basket. I've seen them. I've counted the items in their basket. You know who you are!!!! So I scan my items, as quickly as possible, for that is what this facility is for... speed... in and out... but some items WILL NOT SCAN, for love nor money... so you have to stand around and wait for the one assistant who works on this section to come and swipe his Card Of Power across your machine whilst all the time you are gett...

My life, my love ... where would I be without it? Lost and confused most probably!! I possess the dogs bollocks of all filofax's (in my opinion). It's an A5 Metropol Zip in black and stores everything I need to organise my life. It's big and bulky (it's a bit like me, really) but that suits me down to the ground because I have everything I need in one place - and a big zip to stop it all falling out. It also fits perfectly in my "work bag". the order of my filofax is as follows: IN THE FRONT BIT: Business cards of friends and work 3D digital image postcards for random competitions and writing to people My Parker biro IN THE MIDDLE BIT: A clear plastic pocket for stuffing receipts, stamps and stuff in Filofax post-it notes (I cannot be without these) SECTION 1: diary (week to 2-pages) with my unique colour codes (see below) SECTION 2 : personal information, ideas for blogs and writing, personal finances, library wish list, crafting notes, per...

SMILING IS INFECTIOUS YOU CATCH IT LIKE THE FLU WHEN SOMEONE SMILED AT ME TODAY I STARTED SMILING TOO I PASSED AROUND A CORNER AND SOMEONE SAW MY GRIN WHEN HE SMILED I REALISED I HAD PASSED IT ON TO HIM I THOUGHT ABOUT THE SMILE AND THEN REALISED ITS WORTH A SINGLE SMILE LIKE MINE COULD TRAVEL ROUND THE EARTH IF YOU FEEL A SMILE BEGIN DONT LEAVE IT UNDETECTED LETS START AN EPIDEMIC QUICK AND GET THE WORLD INFECTED