The Psychology of selling your house!

Our house is on the market, and despite asking the estate agent to show people around they seem to forget or have an excuse.  The upshot of which is I’m left to do most of the showing.  Except there’s a problem.  I’m not a sales person and I’m sort of out of love with my house, so saying things like “here’s the shitty kitchen that you can’t swing a cat in and if one door doesn’t smash you in the face, there are two more waiting to catch you by surprise” isn’t really the done thing.  So I thought I’d run you through my routine and you can all enjoy a virtual tour of my house.

So very often the door bell is rang, this could be anything from 30 minutes early to 30 minutes late.  The early ones often escape the horror of me in my pyjamas and rubber gloves by seconds, but are still treated to the red glowing face of a panic stricken woman with five messy children and a slightly crazed expression.  I’m grinning from ear to ear, see I told you crazed, and say “Hi” in my best Hyacinth Bucket voice.  I almost scream “come far?” as I try to desperately calm down and appear, well, normal.  They step over the threshold and I pray that the Febreze is still working it’s magic in the downstairs loo, where 5 boys with crap aim all tend to wee, over everything.  I’ve calmed down a little now, and they are asking about the neighbours and the location.  I say the neighbours are lovely, and it’s a quiet street mostly.  They comment about how light and airy and wide my hallway is.  “I say yes, it’s a bit of a waste of space really” and then suddenly realize I’m trying to sell the damn house not condemn it!

I open the downstairs loo door, praying now to whoever will listen that the Febreze is still working and that no child suddenly decided to leave the viewers a little floating present before they were ushered out of the house.  I breath a sigh of relief as I notice the lid is down, and the Febreze is definitely still working.  I turn around and smile and then announce “this is the downstairs loo, it’s a bit bigger than your average downstairs loo”  with a stewardess type wave of the hand as if I’m doing a safety talk.  And because the wave of my hand was probably more of a jab than a sweep they feel obliged to stick their heads in and say “ooh yes, it is quite big”.  Another satisfied smile spreads across my face, in a dimented fashion!

We now head in through the opposite door to the lounge and once again I announce “this is the lounge!”  Something I’m sure is perfectly obvious by the sofas, the cushions, the television and the carpet.  And then I say nothing, queue an awkward silence.  Out of the corner of my eye I notice a discarded pair of socks down the side of the sofa, and nearly have a full on breakdown internally.  Usually one of the viewers will say “ooh it’s very light in here isn’t it,  the doors to the dining room are lovely” and once again I say “yes it is very light and airy, the doors are terrible to keep clean though with kids.”  By this time I’m nearly biting the end of my tongue off, and hope they didn’t pick up on my negativity and that the crazed smiling and stating the obvious is stunning them …or something.

We move through into the kitchen and once again without any kind of brain engagement I announce “this is the kitchen.”  By this time I am pretty sure the viewers think I’m an idiot.  Comments of ‘nice size’ or ‘compact’ are usually spoken and then we go through to the dining room.  And then comes the most ridiculous part.  I insist on showing them the garage.  I ask “do you want to see the garage?” A few have said no it’s ok, but I have said “no, come on I’ll show you the garage” and dragged them through the garden and into the garage as if I’m about to hold them hostage. The garage is nothing special, it’s a dumping ground with a mostly neglected running machine and a large freezer in it.  It’s a bog standard garage and yet somewhere deep down I have this ridiculous urge to show everyone the garage.  I need help!  I sometimes wonder if the viewers are a little worried as to why I’m so eager to show them the garage, and if the crazed look and the stating of the obvious repeatedly doesn’t leave them a little worried for their lives whilst being march towards the outside building!

We then go upstairs and we go through the same motions, me announcing room after room what is it despite the glaringly obvious function of that room.  They nod and smile as I make even stupider comments about how the bedroom would look bigger if it didn’t have a bunk in it, and that we’ve had a double bed in there.  We go into my older boys room and I apologise for the ‘mess’ which consists of a gaming bean bag of the floor and a stray sock that I’ve missed on my last frantic sweep of the house.

Going into the bathroom I have an incessant need to point out that the shower and the bath are separate, no shit sherlock I’m sure they can see that, and that it’s a good size bathroom.  We then go along the landing and we stop under the hatch and I go into a spiel about how it’s part boarded, it’s a good space and it has a ladder.  If I’m really unlucky the ‘male’ will ask if he can see it.  I bluntly say  ‘no’,  only because the damn cat has a tendency to escape up the ladder and I’m too little to be able to push it back up into the loft hatch.  And I cannot face the tabby face meowing loudly from the hatch at me with his sad little face because he’s trapped.  We’ve been there before, it was stressful!

Then we go into the littlest bedroom, it’s the box room.  I say “you can fit a single bed in here”, only I’m not sure that I’m convincing.  Purely because ever since we lived in this house I’ve had a baby habit and we have never managed to progress past a toddler bed in this room.  They mention it as an office and I jump on that enthusiastically “yes yes, it would be brilliant as an office! I know quite a few houses in the street have this as an office!”  I might as well have said “this bedroom is use nor ornament, you can’t do much else with it except turn it into an office”, I’m face palming in my head.  Which I’m sure is showing on my face because the viewers are now looking at me as though they are concerned for my welfare!

We go into our bedroom and, yep you’ve guessed it, I victoriously announce that this is the master bedroom.  I say it’s a good size and that we have quite a few cupboards and drawers. We don’t, we have a normal amount but I somehow can’t stop what can only be described as drivel coming from my mouth.  I reluctantly point out the micro en-suite,  I feel like I’m somehow shaming it.  I then swiftly remind myself I’m trying to sell my house, so something equally batty spews from my mouth.  “It doesn’t feel small though when you are in it”, let’s just think about that for a moment………yeah.

We come back down the stairs and I ask the viewers do they have any questions, the look between them says it all.  They want to ask me if I’m on medication or whether I’m ok, but they politely shake their heads and say no.  I ask them if they want to look at anything else, again they shake their heads and say no.

So the viewing ends where it started, in my wide, airy and light hallway.  They are scrambling for the door, but I want to find out if they like my house so I start asking questions like “have you seen any other houses?”  It’s always met with the same “yeah” I mean of course they have!  But now the door is open and they are saying thank you, and before I can say goodbye they are down the path and away.  I close the door, and slump.  I’m shit at this.  So it won’t surprise you to hear that we haven’t yet sold our house, and I’m not sure we will with me showing people around.  So next time, I think it’s me who should be ushered out of the house whilst the estate agents actually do the job they are being paid for!

If I wrote a book (A Bleak Blog)

It might start a bit like this.

The black cloud had descended, the cloud that sucked life and took away joy.  The cloud that only allowed sadness and negativity and unending darkness.  How long would it stay this time, how much damage would it do?  And why now?  Why had it come when life was looking good, and there was so much to be happy about.

The cloud took away all of her motivation, she sat on the bed staring blankly out of the window.  She felt nothing, just a bleak emptiness where everything seemed like too much of an effort for very little return.  Hearing the hustle and bustle of a busy family life going on downstairs, she knew that she would have to haul her emotionless body out of the bed and once again be the oscar winning actress she had to be from time to time.  There were times when she couldn’t even summon the energy to do that, and merely went through the motions hoping no one would notice.  But when people rely on you, depend on you, then you have no choice but to acknowledge your darkness but carry on living as if there was light.  Getting out of bed she looked in the mirror and looked deep into her eyes.  Where had the sparkle of youth gone?  Her once pretty alive eyes were now dull and empty.  She pulled the comb through her hair, she wasn’t even looking at her reflection anymore.  She hated what looked back at her and it reminded her of a trail of broken dreams and aspirations.  Dreams that had washed through her head so many  times as a young girl, and had continued to do so even when one by one they had fallen by the wayside.  And now here she was, middle-aged and lost in a tsunami of disappointment and hurt.

Most days things were great, the broken dreams were nicely boxed up and filed in the back of her mind but on days like this they escaped and coursed through her head.  Some days she relived every moment that had caused her pain, crying until she could physically cry no more. It was as if someone had flipped a switch while she was sleeping and she had woken up feeling nothing except immense sadness.  A generic all consuming sadness.  These were the days when she simply sat, the anguish and silence amplifying the voices screaming at her from the inside.  A paralysis almost took over, sometimes the hours just disappearing and her not even noticing a day had passed.

Sometimes the screaming voices were quiet and replaced with other thoughts.  They didn’t come often, but when they did they terrified and exhilarated her in equal measure.  They terrified her because she didn’t want to leave her family or those who loved her.  She wanted to stay and see what life would bring and if ever she would feel the unbridled happiness and contentment she longed for.  The experiences of her children hitting their life milestones, the smell of her grandchildren, the wisdom of old age all these things kept her here for now.  But the thought of silence, of never hearing the screams from inside her head, or the all encompassing wretchedness that she now felt was almost intoxicating.

The clock was ticking on the lounge wall, sometimes it was the only thing that bought her back from the very inside of her head.  Time was passing, and in a way this bought her some comfort.  It was another day she had been stronger than the darkness that enveloped her,  another day that she had endured and maybe tomorrow she would be able to smile again.  The cloud had a mind of it’s own though and it controlled her for as long as it could before she could fight back.  Hours, days and even weeks the cloud of darkness had gripped her, before just suddenly releasing her to let her go on her merry way.  It always came back though, maybe not tomorrow, or the day after.  But next week, next month, next year it would be back.  And it would kill her just a little bit more.

Well isn’t that jolly?  I’m not sure where this came from, I woke up with it in my head this morning.  I felt I really needed to get it out.  I’m not sure even where it would go at this point, although I perhaps have a slight idea.  But anyway I thought it would a fun sort of blog for today so this is where it’s ended up!

The rise and rise of the You Tube star!

Yesterday we took the rather dramatic step of blocking You Tube at source, ie the provider of our internet services.  Why, I hear you ask?

Well mostly it’s because I’m sick to death of hearing the unnecessary language and inappropriate content used by the likes of Jack Septic Eye, PewdiePie and even Stampy Long Nose, who up until recently could be counted on for being fairly child friendly, to lure young children in! You’ll remember if you’ve been with me a while I blogged about this about a year ago.  The trouble with the likes of these people are that they are passing commentary on games that young children are naturally drawn to, the likes of Minecraft and Roblox. And of course being internet savvy, they do a search because they want to know how to build a portal or want to see what other people are building and come across the likes PewdiePie via the google search engine.  I admit I have been fairly naive about these people, until I actually sat and watched one.  And honestly, I don’t want my 8-year-old to be watching these things.  So after discovering a comment that one of our children had left on someone’s video yesterday, we took the monumental decision to block it.  Yes the fallout was of epic proportion, it probably registered on the Richter scale but I will no longer tolerate my children watching this utter tripe, this mindless vapid content.

In the midst of the protests and wailing I got round to thinking about the content that is on You Tube from the well-known and popular contributors. The likes of Zoella, Alfie Deyes, Marcus Butler and the Chapman family pretty much dominate the world of You Tube, and if you’ve not heard of them you must be living under a rock!  And they’ve got rich from it, not just a little bit rich but REALLY rich.  Now a few years ago, not long after the birth of my 5th boy I was feeling middle-aged and frumpy and decided to update my look.  I was still doing my make up as if it was 1984, ok not quite that bad but you get my drift.  I searched the internet for tips on how to update my look and came across Sam and Nic from Pixiwoo on You Tube.  Now I wasn’t massively into You Tube, I knew it existed but hadn’t invested any time in it. However I liked what Pixiwoo did and they create some truly beautiful looks. Maybe not for me at 40+ to wear every day, unless I wanted to attract attention of the little men in white coats to take me off to the overly made up funny farm!  But about the same time as I was watching how to look 18 when I was clearly not,  You Tube suddenly seemed to speed off at atmospheric proportion making stars out of quite ordinary people.

You’ve probably seen Zoella (Zoe Sugg) talking endlessly about her anxiety, not just on her channel but also on mainstream television.  She’s a perfectly pleasant young lady, not at all offensive, I like her.  But, and here’s the but, what solid and concrete advice does she give to help people with anxiety?  What therapies have you seen her talking about?  What interventions?  Has she mentioned talking therapies?  Has she mentioned actual professionals and organisations that will help?  She talks mainly about her own meltdowns and what helps to her, but of course not everyone is like her.  The tactics she uses, won’t be the tactics that helps another person.  She did in one video talk about the don’t panic button, which was a little red button that you could wear on your coat etc notifying people that you suffered with anxiety. During the course of this she became an ambassador for Mind here in the UK, and yet she really doesn’t seem to be being utilised in the way she could be.  Now of course, I don’t know if that’s the fault of Mind or her own decision (of course she did drop off the You Tube radar for a while after the whole ghost writer fiasco) but it seems a shame.  Mental health problems are not tackled early enough and are still such a taboo subject, particularly for the young. She could so easily be reaching out to those who are in desperate need through her videos and giving them wholesome practical advice, about where to get help and who to turn to. However I bet pug sales have gone through the roof….

Jim Chapman and Tanya Burr are also You Tube ‘celebrities’.  Jim has also dabbled in mainstream television and Tanya has her own make up range and her star is rising slowly.  Again I like them both, neither are particularly obnoxious although I do wish Tanya would drop the wishy-washy girly voice that she seems to have adopted recently.  The problem with most of these You Tube celebrities is that they are very bland.  None are sending out strong positive messages to the millions of teenagers that they attract to their channels.  Jim does tackle slightly grittier topics in his videos, but in the main the videos are short, to the point and tend to gloss over the topic he’s trying to address.  Of all the You Tubers, I think if I was in his demographic (i.e not 44 and peri-menopausal) he would be the one that I would be drawn to the most, well to be fair who wouldn’t be.  I wish he would use the platform he’s been gifted to really get down and dirty and tackle problems that are relevant to our youth of today.  But at the moment both he and Tanya seem to be hellbent on slowly winding their subscribers up into a mass frenzy,  talking about their wedding, which is very private and not a You Tube affair.  Ironic much?

Most of these uber bland  You Tubers that we see in our magazines, on the internet and everywhere they can be bought a bit of space are managed by Gleam Futures.  Now if you google them, once you get past the official websites, you will see them mentioned over and over again on sites such as Get of My Internets and Guru Gossiper.  They are quite possibly the most marmite company you will ever come across.  Now credit where credit is due, they’ve made some very ‘nice’ people very famous, and that’s great.  But if you look at the talent, and I use this word loosely where some of the talent is concerned, you’ll see that most of them are 20 something, attractive people.  Recently Caroline Hirons joined the Gleam Team, and I think out of all of them she is probably the most credible.  As a qualified facialist I would take her word for gospel, if her word wasn’t so bloody expensive.  But having said that you should probably make up your own mind about their talent as a whole.

The thing that annoys me immensely about the march of the gleam team is their assumption that all the millions of teens that follow these people are universally without intelligence.  Before christmas, on one of Alfie Deyes vlogs he ranted about people standing outside their houses, and leaving nasty comments and basically all those things that happen when you sell your soul to the devil for fame and fortune.  The rant was nasty and came across as astonishingly entitled and full of self-importance, to me Gleam should have made him take it down.  It really didn’t paint him in a very desirable light, and if I was the mother of a teen girl, I’m afraid he would have been banned right there and then.  And then not long after that Zoe decided to stop vlogging because of the afore-mentioned nasty comments and we had a video of Zoe crying and saying everything was a bit too much. But recently both Zoe and Tanya have started vlogging again.  Now I’m not going to deny I don’t like watching them, it allows me to live vicariously through the eyes of slim, attractive, young ladies which are words that haven’t described me in a long long time.  In fact probably around the time they were born, were the last time those words were used to describe myself, but anyway I digress.  This week Zoe explained she had stopped vlogging because she was worried that both hers and Alfie’s content was exactly the same, and that people wouldn’t want to watch two vlogs almost identical.  No Zoe, have some integrity and honesty.  You stopped vlogging because the devil rose up and bit you monumentally on the bottom, the whole furor of the ghost writer and that people were passing comment on your life and it seemed that the truth really did hurt.  Also the fact that both Tanya and Zoe have started vlogging within a short space of time, and reciting that it’s not going to be every day, and just when they both feel like picking up the camera smacks of a Gleam instruction to begin vlogging again for fear of a wane in popularity.  And I think that it is this perceived intention of Gleam pulling the wool over people’s eyes that makes for such an emotive response from so many people.  I think for the success to continue of the people they manage, they are quite literally going to have to wake up and smell the coffee and start treating their fans/followers/subscribers, call them what you will, with just a modicum of respect.

I wish more than anything that some of the more intelligent of the you tube stars tackled every day problems, after all Charles Trippy fans are going on the very real and raw journey of his brain tumour.  I’ve known teens commit suicide because their acne was so bad, so lets talk about practical and AFFORDABLE solutions to teen acne.  Not buying £100 bottles of Good Genes by Sunday Riley, which is out of the remit of most ordinary teenagers.  Let’s talk about bullying, low self-esteem, relationships…all those things that weigh very very heavily on the minds of our young people.  Please god lets start using this media for something useful, for something substantial instead of churning out uninspiring, shallow and superficial shit content.

You Tube itself needs to come up with a much more robust system where videos are classified.  I cannot tell you how mortifying it is when your 8-year-old shouts “Mum he’s molesting me” when fighting with his older brother in Tesco.  It may seem funny to the outsider, but believe me it’s not nice when people judge you as a parent, and actually it’s a word he’s learnt from PewdiePie.  So yeah, thanks for that Felix!  We have family safety, and net filters but these videos still get through.  And there’s only so much policing of the internet you can do, so for us a total ban is all that’s left.  And it will be staying off for quite some time!

Don’t get me wrong, You Tube is a brilliant resource.  I use it myself all the time to find solutions to cake making problems, or how to make a Sonic the Hedgehog costume for World Book Day etc.  But for goodness sake, whilst its star is shining brightly let’s make some good of it and not focus on the fact that some of them are earning 2.6 million pounds for swearing loudly into a microphone and teaching 8 year olds words I was learning at 18! Let it save lives, inspire and motivate!

So that was the year that was 2014!

So I’m a little bit previous in writing this year-end blog I admit, but the next week or so is going to be pretty hectic.  And finding a time to write a blog in the middle of wrapping paper chaos and over excited children is nigh on impossible.

I couldn’t decide how to write this blog, I didn’t want to give a monthly blow-by-blow account of the year, that would be tedious to write and boring to read.  I didn’t want to kind of gloss over it and say things like well that was ok, and that wasn’t. So I think that I will write it almost in list format, the things I loved, loathed and ignored.  I’m going to kick it off by talking about the things I’ve loved, and I’ve had to think hard about this.

I love watching my boys grow and start to show the men they are going to become.  I know that sounds sort of cheesy and vomit inducing, but the two oldest now are really starting to be consistent in their personalities.  Son no.1 is quiet and introvert, which in the main is due to his Aspergers Syndrome.  But he is maturing, and is developing a stinging sense of humour.  It’s dry and obvious but he does make us laugh.  He is also starting to develop some direction in his life, he’s beginning to talk about growing up and possible careers.  On one hand it’s frightening to think that my gorgeous first-born with his Arthur Scargill hair, is thinking about these things.  It really doesn’t seem two weeks ago he was running around with dirty pyjamas, welly boots and a blanket tied around his neck pretending to be a super hero.  Son no.2 is loud, and in your face.  He’s confident and outgoing, and he fills a room.  I’m hoping he quietens down a little as he matures because he has quite the personality!

I love my husband.  This year, in our 13 year marriage, has probably been the hardest.  We’ve been frustrated by our house situation and our desperation to move.  We’ve disagreed about the location of our would be new house, we disagreed at times over the children.  We’ve disagreed about new jobs and…well to be honest we’ve disagreed about most things this year. He has to endure my obsession with babies and children, and our significantly larger than planned family.  And he also has to cope with my depression and anxiety, which has probably been at its worst this year.  I’ve forced him into situations that I knew he didn’t want to be in, and yet he continues to put up with me and handle each up and down.  And deep down he knows that I will probably put him in that situation again, and I will continue to be difficult to live with at times.  But I hope he knows I appreciate it, and I love him and respect him more and more for coming with me on my sometimes erratic life. God knows there were plenty before him who jumped ship!

I love the fact that I have managed to reconnect with some old friends.  Maybe not in the way I’d hoped, but again some of that is down to me and my (urgh crap word alert but can’t think of another) demons.  I’m hoping to reconnect much better next year, but I want them to know that I love having them back in my life even if I haven’t been in contact much.  I hope that we can be as close as we once were, even if it’s a different kind of close.   I know that some people have tried to communicate with me this year and I haven’t been as open and receptive as I could have been.  I am sorry for this and I will do better!

I loved the fact that my children were so open to trying new things and having new experiences when we flew to Malta early on in the year.  They all fell in love with Malta and have asked continuously if we can move out there.  I have to say that after next years general election it may become a reality.

And I love the stillness of the morning.  One of the things I did as a child was have a paper round, and although I hated it there were many things I did love about it.  First one is getting down to the newsagent far too early in order to have a sneaky snog with a fellow paper boy and secondly cycling around in the quiet and stillness of the early morning.  Recently I’ve started to get up early and take a few minutes to enjoy the early morning before the chaos of children going to school starts.

Facebook friends.  I have varied Facebook friends, all of whom I love having on my timeline.  Some are from my past, some are from my present and some I’ve never met.  I’ve met them through various online forums and online games.  All of these people are important and current in my life.  And yes I hate it when people defriend me, but I’ve discussed that in one too many blogs this year 😉

And a few frivolous things; dogs, cats, guinea pigs, liquorice, turkish delight, roast lamb with mint sauce, sunny days, cold cider, crisp hot chips with lashing of ketchup, special chicken curry with egg fried rice, steak with onion rings, pretty shiny things, the smell of new cars and a new pair of shoes 🙂

Some of the things I loathe.  Fake people.  This year I have encountered more fake people than any other year.  Well that I’ve been aware of anyway. I don’t understand why people can’t be honest, and if they don’t like you or  want to be your friend or in your life in general,  just say.  There is nothing worse than having your hopes raised, excitement built for it then all to disappear into nothing.  That feeling of being monumentally let down is crushing and hurtful.  And I’ve experienced that once too many times this year.  And if you promise someone something, don’t leave it hanging …ever.  If you offer to have a coffee with someone, then do it.  It could be the difference for them between having a shit day and a great day.

Death!  I loathe death.  And in my line of work you’d think that I’d be used to it and be blase about it.  And yet you never get used to it  How can you get blase about seeing devastation on people’s faces? How can you not hurt for someone when you see them crying tears of loss? How can you heal the hole that death leaves?  This is something that I’ve had a stark reminder of this year, and I’ve been reminded how much death hurts.  In June I lost an ex-work colleague and friend.  I’d only known her for 11 months (and as I blogged at the time) she was the kindest, most gentle soul.  These people are far and few between, and I’ve only ever met a handful.  And she was one of them.  Her death was sudden and unexpected, which is worse.  I had some dark times in my last employment and she always seemed to know when I was feeling beaten.  She’d know when I’d had a sneaky cry in the staff toilet and bring me a coffee and a hug.  At times it felt that she was the only one who truly believed in me and shared my vision.  She’d sit in my office, even when she wasn’t due to work and ask me not to leave and tell me that people would see eventually the direction I was taking the home was a good one, even if they couldn’t see it at the time.  But she knew I was losing the battle, she knew I was losing confidence and belief and I did eventually hand in my notice.  She spent hours begging me not to leave and the last text message she ever sent me was to say how much she missed me and to arrange for us to meet for a coffee.  If I close my eyes I can see her walking out to the ‘fag shed’ and saying “come and talk to me” and we’d sit and have a natter.  About work, marriage, life and the future.  She was a person who I would love to have become a good friend.  And I miss her.  A lot.  As I miss the home and staff that worked there, even if they don’t miss me.  The home got under my skin more than any other and not only do I grieve and miss Denise but I grieve and miss that home and staff.

Which brings me to my next point.  I loathe people who think care is about making money.  I loathe private care home owners who ‘care’ more about the pounds in their personal bank account than the PEOPLE  in their beds.  And this year I had a steep learning curve, and when I was put in a position where I was questioning my own professional integrity by allowing myself to be told to mislead people, accept ‘cheap’ care products bought off of online auction sites and expect people to work unreasonable hours, with unreasonable pay and no thanks.  I made the decision to walk away, because I am a professional and I do care.

I loathe time.  It passes so quickly, my babies are growing up way too fast.  I remember counting the years to my first born starting school and being excited for him, and now I’m counting the years until he starts driving and he’ll be thinking of leaving home.  Whilst I love the changes that are happening and seeing their personalities unfold, I hate that time is marching on and in only a short few years they will young adults and their need for me considerably less.  No longer will they want a hug, or a spontaneous kiss.  They won’t want to sit by me on the sofa and let me tickle them until it turns into a massive cuddle, instead it will be “Mum can I borrow some money?”  And of course I’ll probably give it to them, because I love my children more than I ever thought it possible to love anyone.

I have ignored a lot this year, mostly myself.  I spent the first part of the year trying to be something I’m not, and keep up with someone who wasn’t worth keeping up with.  And the rest of the year I have floated along, ignoring that I have lost my ‘mojo’ and direction in life.  I’ve taken time out to be with the children but I need to work, not necessarily for financial reasons but for self-preservation reasons.  And I like to work.  But I need to figure out a direction for the rest of my working life.  I’m halfway through it, I have another 20 years ahead of me at least and I need to make the decision to stay in nursing or try something completely new.

So I have a week of this year left, in a lot of ways it’s been the worst year since 1990.  My heart was monumentally broken that year, as it has been this year.  But that year it was a boy, this year it was about the loss of life, both young and old.  This year has been about the loss of friendship and myself.  Wow that sounds dramatic, but I hope you all know what I mean when I say that.  I am naturally a positive person, and this year was the first year I admitted to people that I suffer with depression and anxiety.  And the responses were basically all the same “I’d have never have known!”  So I’m not a maudlin person, but this year has nearly beaten me.   Next year will not!

When the hell did it become ok to kill kids?

This week I have seen a picture of a young baby with the back of his head blown off by Israel.  And I’ve just seen pictures of dozens of dead children killed by Isis militants.  My heart is broken.

I’m not going to write about the whys and wheres of these two groups of people, because a) I don’t entirely understand it and b) they disgust me.  As I sit here looking at my 2-year-old happily filling his face with chocolate buttons, my 6-year-old cherishing his £1 watch that he got out of a machine this morning, my 8-year-old cuddling our dog, my 10-year-old watching Smosh (don’t ask) and my pre-teen 12-year-old not yet out of his bed, I cannot get out of my head the heart-broken mothers who have lost their precious children.

And that’s what children are.  They are precious, innocent and blameless.  In the most part they have been brought into this world through love, and yet these Iraqi and Palestinian children are leaving this world through violence and hate.  And it’s wrong.

We as a human race are entitled to a belief set, to an opinion but we are not entitled to kill for it.  Especially not children!  Surely this has what as made us different from animals, the fact that we can reason and compromise.  And yet here we still are fighting like barbarians, killing indiscriminately with no care to human life.  No respect for human life.  Maybe we should all go back to living in caves, wearing a loin cloth and ugging at each other.  Because in so many ways we don’t seem to have come very far.

The leader of ISIS is the same age as me, he grew up at the same time as me.   I presume he also has children.  He feels the love and protection for his own children as we all do as parents and yet here he is so hell-bent on creating a land of sharia law that he would rob other parents of that feeling and replace it with emptiness and a grief that never goes away. I know it’s simplistic and certainly not as simple as I make it, but please someone give him a chunk of land that he can be king in.  Let him have his sharia law as long as the people living under him have made a choice, and an informed choice at that.

When did we as a human race get to the stage when everything became so disposable?  When did it become ok for a grown man to stand in front of a rocket launcher knowing he was about to bomb a school full of children?  When did it become ok for a person to stand in front of a child and shoot it?  A child who has had no choice.  Born into a culture that they have not chosen and yet have paid the price for.   I don’t understand the whole Gaza/Israel war, but I do know that no terrorist organisation should be tolerated.  The death of innocent people should also not be tolerated.    40% of the deaths in Palestine are that of children.

We are supposed to be a civilized group of beings, we should work together not against each other.  I hate seeing this pictures of these children, in the same way as I hate seeing pictures of babies and children whose parents have abused/neglected them.  I can’t help but cry every time.

I know there are those of you who will read this and deem me uneducated, simplistic and naive.  And yes I am simplistic and naive, because I cannot understand how wars can break out because a set of people won’t live like another set of people believe they should.  I don’t agree with how some people parent their children, I don’t agree with how some people live their life, but I would never set a course of action that would lead to violence.  I don’t understand how innocent children can be killed over a piece of land that has been occupied by one set of people for hundreds of years and yet it’s still being fought over because another set of people feel they have the right to live there.  Get over it, grow up, compromise and move on!!

I feel like I want to grow to a hundred feet tall and stand up and shout ‘enough!’ at the top of my voice in the same way when my own children are bickering over silly things.  I feel like I want to charge right into the offices of these ‘men’ and ask them why?  I feel like I want to take a psychiatrist with me, because surely they are mentally unwell?  They have to be don’t they to think this is ok?  Because I don’t think any sane rational person could possibly believe the killing of hundreds of children is ok!  This killing of these children absolutely has to stop!  If they adults want to bicker and fight over ridiculous things, go ahead.  But leave the children alone!!

 

Happy Valentines…..or is it?

Happy Valentines Day! I view today about telling everyone that you care for them, not just telling your partner how much you love them! However, it never ceases to amaze me how intent some people are on being cynical, grumpy and generally ready to (and excuse the phrase) piss on other people’s bonfires.

From Monday this week, not only was my Twitter feed but also my Facebook timeline full of “get ready for the smug valentines posts” and on a couple of forums I belong to, there are people slating other people for posting messages of love for their partners.  I personally like this, it gives me hope that there actually people who still like each other out there!  But in amongst messages of love for partners, I’ve also seen messages of love for friends, family and, believe it or not, ex-loves.  I know that Valentines is predominantly about couples, but in the past I have sent Valentines cards to friends, both female and male to show my ‘love’ for them as valued friends.  Also on my Facebook timeline I have seen children buying parents Valentines, parents buying children Valentines…honestly I think it’s lovely!!  My boys are typical boys and it sort of passes them by.

I have had my fair share of Valentines on my own, in fact I once got dumped on Valentines Day!  But it has never bothered me being on my own.  I’m not going to deny that there was a little bit of the green-eyed monster when I saw friends and couples enjoying themselves on the day but I’ve never once thought anything negative towards those people or the day.  Well ok maybe once when a nurse friend of mine got picked up in a chauffeur driven car from the hospital to the airport, whisked to Prague and proposed to.  I did think very very uncharitable things at that….especially when I few years later my proposal was at Alton Towers.  Yep.

I am a hopeless hopeless romantic though.  I am not a jealous person on the whole, I have looked at every single post on my Facebook timeline and smiled today.  I love seeing the flowers, and cooked breakfasts and even the IOU note for one person.  Some people have had very grand gestures, others have had just small tokens and I haven’t felt a twinge of jealousy from one of them.  Because, and maybe I’m the gullible one, I believe people have posted because they are genuinely happy to have received a gift or some acknowledgement of appreciation, and not just showing off. In today’s world we are all so busy rushing around, working, family life etc it’s very easy to neglect the people in your life.  This is a day to stop and just think about them for a day, and who wouldn’t want someone to do that?

I know that there are genuinely people who are having a tough time at the moment, who Valentines Day somehow underlines their personal hardship, but funnily enough these people never say anything.  They endure it, and yet these people should be showered with love by friends, family and partners if they have one of course!  I really hope that a couple of my friends have been showered this year.

This isn’t particular to Valentines Day though, it’s becoming a regular thing on my social media.  It’s almost like there is a hard-core of people who have to bash the day, whether it’s Christmas, Mothers Day, Valentines…you name it.  At first I ignored, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  But now some of these people just come across as determined to spoil it for everyone else.  It reminds me of the only child at a birthday party, jealous the attention isn’t on them so they deliberately spoil it for everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that not everyone likes to publish declarations of love, or post pictures of what they eat for tea everyday, and not everyone enjoys looking at those pictures.  But it’s also everyone’s right to do the things that please them in this very short life.  It’s not your place to judge, comment or bemoan another persons actions…after all the world would be a very dull place if everyone thought the same!

50 Random Facts about Me!

So I am lacking inspiration with my blog, I’m not feeling particularly political at the moment and well life is just a bit ‘stuck in a rut’ if you know what I mean.  So I pinched an idea that’s been doing the rounds on You Tube for a few weeks.  It’s the 50 random facts about me tag, so I’ll try to keep it interesting but there will be some really obvious ones for those who know me 🙂 So we’ll start…

1) I’ll be 43 next birthday.  Thought I’d hate being in my 40’s but actually it’s not too bad.  50 might be another story though 😉

2) I never wanted children….and now I have five!

3) I live in Wales but come from Oxfordshire.

4) I am a qualified nurse.  I trained at Barnet General Hospital/ Middlesex University.  Loved every single second of my training!  But…

5) I was the typical student nurse.  Worked hard, partied harder!

6) I met my husband via the internet.

7) We’ve been married 12 years this year and together 14.

8) I have 4 brothers and 5 sons.  No sisters except my very lovely sister-in-laws.

9) I have two nieces and two nephews.

10) I prefer the company of men.

11) But I do have some very good female friends.

12) I am a jeans and t-shirt girl.

13) But I do love to wear make-up.

14) I have coloured my hair since I was about 16, first blonde, then dark brown, then red, then blonde again and at the moment I’m a reddy brown. And now I’m thinking of going back to blonde.

15) I am a failed goth.  Tried very hard to be one, but never quite made it.

16) I love Haribo sweets, or any jelly sweets.

17) I would kill for giant cola bottles.

18) I would also kill for Turkish delight.

19) I love Roast Lamb and all the trimmings.

20) My first car was a gold Peugeot 205 .

21) I didn’t drive for nearly 5 years after having a car accident in 1995.

22) I hate my house.

23) I don’t like raw tomatoes.

24) My favourite drink is Southern Comfort and Lemonade.

25) It used to be Bacardi and coke, but I got so drunk on it in 1988 and it made me so ill that I have never touched it again.  Ever!

26) I have size 3 feet.

27) I have spent the night with a celebrity (and no I’m not saying who!)

28) I used to work at Wembley.

29) When Howard Donald got his eyebrow pierced and it became infected I was asked to change the dressing.

30) I love anything Cath Kidston.

31) I’m scared of America.

32) I was bullied for most of my secondary education.

33) I am an outrageous flirt.

34) I love having a bath/shower and getting into clean sheets (doesn’t everyone!)

35) My most favourite place is on top of the White Horse Hill in Uffington.

38) I love London and miss it a lot.

39) I hate rude people.

40) I have a wide taste in music, everything from Josh Groban to Guns and Roses and back again.

41) I love a good gossip.

42) I’m quite good at keeping secrets.

43) I have learned what it is to be a good friend by being an awful friend in the past.

44) I like playing games like World of Warcraft …I know, I know!

45) I love to go out.  Either to the pub, to a club or a nice restaurant.

46) I love walking around graveyards.

47) I love talking!

48) Nursing has made me realise what is important in life and what is not.

49) I am messy.

50) And finally, and slightly weird.  I love Russian history, especially the story of Tsar Nicolas II and his killing.

So that’s the end, I had a few more facts in me but it was only 50.  Most of them are a bit boring, so apologies for that.  Anyway hoping for some more inspiration in the near future so I can blog about something more interesting.  Hope you are all well and enjoying the sun!

M x

I love you…..

Yes you, and you but you…hmm not so much 😉

So the other night at work, in the middle of a horrendous shift one of the patients told me I was ‘lovely’ and a ‘good person’.  And of course I was their ‘favourite’.  As a nurse you take these things with a pinch of salt because they are not always said with good intention, they are often used as a form of manipulation.  To get better care or more attention etc.  I’d like to think that this patient meant it though 😉  However, at 94 years of age he told me how much he loved his wife and he told her every single day.  He said that everyone deserves to be told how much they are loved.

Now firstly this surprised me because I very much believed that when this particular gentleman was younger, it was  time of ‘stiff upper lip’ and women knew their place etc and that men didn’t treat women very nice.  He’s told me several times that all women need to be treated like princesses and when they don’t that’s when they let themselves go LOL! Not sure I subscribe to that one but anyway…

So it got me thinking, how many times do people realistically say I love you?  I have known very tactile people who will throw their arms around you at a minutes notice and plant one on you, and yet I’ve known other people who I’ve never as much as put my hand on because they are not tactile people.

I admit it’s not something I say an awful lot.  As I’ve stated before I don’t come from a particularly tactile family and I just assume that people know that I love/care for them.  But recently I’ve become aware that there are some people who haven’t a clue how I feel for them.

So do you say it? How much do you say it? Are you comfortable saying it?  Who do you say it too? Family, friends? Something that I regret is that I don’t say it too my children enough.  Is it because they are all boys? I’m not sure.  It was something from a very young age I’d always resolved to do was tell my children I loved them.  I am quite tactile with them, although the older two are becoming less receptive to it 😦  It never feels the right time to tell them, to shout ‘love you’ as they go out the door to school somehow feels superficial and throw away.  And to be honest after an hour and halfs chaos I feel less inclined to ‘love them’ and more inclined to shout ‘good riddance’ 😉

There are some days I miss them, but I sort of feel to say ‘missed you today’ when they come out of school seems a bit needy.  And not very adult in some way.

And what about other family and friends.  How do you tell them how you feel about them without coming across like you’ve lost your marbles or taking the piss?  I think if I suddenly starting declaring my love left right and centre my family would have me committed very quickly….they are on the edge of it mostly anyway 😉

I envy people who can just express how they feel. I have no problem being up close and personal with people when I have my uniform on, but in my personal life it’s a different ball game.  I have discussed this sort of thing before in a blog after my Grandmother passed away, but it something that always intrigues me.

In the same way that other people can just come straight out with what they are thinking.  Someone recently told me I’d pissed them off by something I’d said.  It really put me on the spot because it was something I’d said in passing and hadn’t even registered with me.  After a few seconds of complete awkwardness and embarrassment I apologised.  Now this person has quite obviously moved on, is speaking to me completely normally and hasn’t mentioned it since.  So why am I still bristling about it?  I know I’ll forget it in time but at the moment I’m the one who know wants to say “oi you pissed me off about you being pissed off!” but I can’t.  And I won’t. Ever.

But equally it annoys me that there are some things people won’t talk about, and I want to.  But again I have no idea how to start the conversation, how to approach the subject, not cause upset or offense. So I’ll leave it, and those things will probably remain unsaid, which again annoys me.  I hate unsaid things, they sit in a room like a big fat elephant.  Unsaid things are always there bubbling away under the surface, waiting to be said.  And then anything that might hint at that big fat elephant results in an awkwardness, and stopping conversation flowing.  I can’t tell you how much this frustrates me.

So anyway this blog has turned into a bit of rant when I wanted it to be full of love, flowers and peace LOL.  So even at the end of this blog I still love you all, but definitely not you! 😉 Oh and I feel I should just add that no one need worry,  I’m not suddenly going to start sending declarations of love…it’s not my style 🙂

Chocolated Out!

Hope you all had a good Easter!  And I’ve started this blog with a bit of a lie, I’m not chocolate out at all.  And apologies in advance for this wandering random blog entry!

To be perfectly honest I enjoy the roast Lamb more than the chocolate eggs.  Even if you buy Cadburys eggs, the chocolate always tastes funny to me.  Is it because they use a lower grade chocolate or purely because it’s in an egg shape?!! But anyway I’m not a big easter egg lover.  Thankfully my children are not either, and although there is an initial rush of excitement very often they never finish all their eggs.  They get put in the fridge and forgotten about.

Another thing about Easter that annoys me is the age old dilemma about when to buy the eggs.  Most eggs are out after Valentines and do you buy them and put them away and hope they don’t bloom, or do you wait until the last minute.  This year I noticed there were lots of panicked posts on my Facebook about supermarkets selling out of eggs a good few days before.  Perhaps because of our economy at the moment they just didn’t stock as many as they usually do.

This Easter we didn’t do our usual hunt either because I was working the night before and secondly we still have a lot of snow on the ground.   And my mood after I have worked a night isn’t compatible with the usual fights of one child finding all the eggs and the others none.

Anyway Easter is over and done with and this year continues to march on at an alarming rate.  So far I’ve not achieved half the things I was hoping to achieve this year, so once the children are back at school I’m going to knuckle down and get on with it.  I’m putting the baby in nursery for one day a week.  I think he’d benefit from the interaction, and a change of scene and it gives me a day to myself to do as I please.  Which will be most welcome.

So what am I planning on these days, well not a lot truth be told.  I’m going to do some more study through the open university, I can feel my brain solidifying.  I’ll have some lazy lunches with friends, go shopping and generally enjoy having a bit of freedom.  After 5 children and 11 years I think I deserve a bit of me time.

I recently considered taking on a bit more of a high responsibility job, which would have meant going 5 days a week and working 9 till 5.  Whist the opportunity was great, it wasn’t worth the cost in childcare and also the chaos that it would have brought to our family.  I think I’ll leave that until my youngest is at school.  I hope that turning down this won’t come back and bite me on the bottom at some time in the future!

 

Not the best start…

Well we are seven days into a new year, and so far it seems pretty much like the old one.  Average.

Not exactly average I suppose as I spent the first few days at my Grandmothers funeral, I’ve never started a New Year like that before.  For me one of the saddest things was how busy the crematorium was.  I arrived early and found myself having to avoid a previous funeral, and then when we came out of our family one there was a large contingent of another family waiting to go in.

I’ve not been to many funerals despite having dealt with many many deaths.  Of the few I have been too, it always strikes me just how ‘social’ these occasions are.  For me it was so nice to be in the same room as all my family for the first time in many years.  We all live busy lives, and live some distance apart so although I have seen some of them in fleeting visits, I haven’t spent any great time with them since my brother got married 9 years ago.   So it seems weird to say that I enjoyed a funeral, but I did.   I found it a little ironic, that one of my grandmothers last acts was to bring the family together.  My grandmother was not particularly family orientated, and rarely had a good word to say about anyone.  I bet she was stood in that church with my Grandad (his own peace now shattered) saying things like “bet they only came to see what they could get!”  The truth is I don’t want anything, although my Mum has given me my Nan’s bangle.  A silver bangle that I have coveted nearly all my life, and yet now I have it I can’t wear it.  It feels odd, difficult and strange.

Some of it is guilt.  I feel guilty that I had not seen my Nan in some years, life has got in the way to some degree.  There’s another part of me that had no desire to see her, the last time I did she was a little rude to me.  As I said in my last blog, she was a woman who I didn’t really understand in my adult years.  I didn’t ‘get’ her.   For a woman who hadn’t worked in her married life, who had one child and a husband who loved her she was extremely bitter and ‘woe is me’.  Sure her childhood hadn’t been easy, but then most elderly who I speak to will tell you that was how it is was in the early 1900’s.  Post war was also difficult, but again it had been for the whole nation.  No one particular person had been singled out and their life was harder than all the rest, the whole country was in it together.   So I don’t mind admitting that I found her ‘woe is me’ attitude a little galling at times, her rudeness …..well rude, and at times I found her to be unbelievably selfish.

But there were some good times for sure.  When they moved from Yorkshire to Oxon when I was 11/12 they started to take me out and about on a Saturday afternoon.  We would stroll down the high street in Bourton-On-The-Water, looking in all the little chintzy shops.  They’d take me to Avebury and we’d walk around the stones with my Grandad dowsing with his pendulum.  It would make me giggle as it swayed at various points.  Then I’d love to go into the shop and rifle through all the crystals etc with them, my Grandad wanting to buy another crystal of some sort and my Nan telling him he already had one like that and he wasn’t having it.  The other great thing I loved was going to Bibury Trout Farm, feeding the trout and then they’d buy one and we’d have it with potatoes and peas.  I still love trout to this day, shame my husband doesn’t!

It’s funny how memories can come from no where and hit you between the eyes.  I recently posted some photos of a teen holiday we had 23 years ago.  For various reasons the holiday was quite ‘memorable’  me.  The photo’s  prompted a discussion between some of the people who went on that holiday, and although I’ve heard it before, I realised that those things that are remembered and important to me are not necessarily important or remembered by other people.   I know it was stupid but actually I felt hurt that something that was a pivotal moment in my teen life seemed so trivial to other people.  And then I felt utterly stupid because 23 years is a long time, life has moved on for us all and actually nothing that was happening at that time is important or relevant anyway!

So today is where my New Year really starts,  the children are back to school tomorrow.  That means  I can have a tidy house for at least a few hours!  You know what they say tidy house tidy mind!  The silence will be deafening but we’ve had a good christmas,  a good break and now it’s time for normal life to resume.  Bring on 2013!