Typecast

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.....