Embracing your Weirdness

Already bored on first day of Maternity Leave, saw Mary Berry making Easter biscuits which are one of my favourites on TV and thought how hard can this be? Not too difficult. Recipe easy to follow, biscuits look a lot more interesting, but a lot less eastery than Mary Berry’s creation. Taste ok though.

Inspired by this, here are 10 problems that Mary Berry probably doesn’t face when baking.

1. Spending 10 minutes looking for the attachments for the hand whisk. Finding them in the washing up. Having no recollection of using them recently.

2. Ingredients in cupboard may or may not be what you want…. do I trust a jar labelled Self raising flour to be this?

3. Only one cooling rack. Recipe really requires at least three. Playing musical biscuits trying to get them to cool.

4. Raisins will substitute for currents wont they? Well yes, unless you want your Easter biscuits to take on the look of the constituent parts trying to escape.

5. Christmas, Mickey Mouse and Gingerbread men cookie cutters will substitute for Bunnies, eggs, and chicks for Easter biscuit shapes.

6. Mixing three types of flour because there is no one jar with enough in. May or may not be the correct flour type (see point 2)

7. Oven of variable temperature. Some biscuits barely cooked. Others with burnt raisins. (This is a recurring theme – baking has varying degrees of success in this oven)

8. Timer running out of power halfway through cooking (downside of using mobile phone). No idea what time has elapsed. Second batch slightly crispy.

9. Floor covered in sultanas/raisins, flour sugar, bits of grease-proof paper. Unable to bend down to clear up due to status of 38 weeks pregnant.

10. Every work surface covered in bowls, whisks, ingredients, rubbish. I suspect Mary has enough work space, more organisation and the ability to tidy as she goes.

But, the biscuits taste nice, I may get the toddler to decorate some tomorrow (if he hasn’t eaten them already)

2013 was not full of the same changes of 2012, but nonetheless had some special times, but with less changes and more normal life.

There were Firsts: 2013 saw our little man turn 1. We celebrated the fact that we hadn’t made too much of a mess of his first year, despite us not having a clue what we were doing most of the time. Lucky that small people are surprisingly resilient (and don’t notice when you make a tit of yourself). We watched as he wondered at the delights of the aquarium and managed to toddle most of the way around under his own steam (whilst we pushed an empty buggy which doubled as a shopping trolley). It was also the year of our first family holiday. A rainy week in Scotland beckoned and our bicycles remained unused whilst we basked in the hot-tub whilst the small person napped. Family life was pretty special. Not just for the major moments. But all the moments.

There were endings: Having worked in the NHS since practically the end of University I found myself at the tail end of yet another fixed term contract without possibility of renewal and had to accept the inevitable and leave the NHS (I wrote about that here before). My last day as a proud NHS employee fell in July and I now work for a private company in support of public sector. Some observations for another time on this I think as there is so much difference and so much the same. But suffice it to say, a good career move and I am definitely glad to see the back of inky printers and ancient machines.

There were improvements: I took over a Beaver colony that had dropped to 6 members (and was shortly due to drop to 4) in January. A year of hard work, good programmes, and a few glasses of wine to recover (ok, more than a few) and we are up into double figures. More young people enjoying membership of one of the biggest youth organisations. Its hard work but not impossible. After all, its only 2 hours a week.

Here’s looking forward to the experiences that 2014 has to offer

And having written this a few days ago and then found a Lloyds Bank Moments that mattered competition to win an iPad and thought I’d tidy this up and actually post for once.

One major goal for 2014. Post more of what I write. Less half finished drafts.

I own quite a few gadgets and being a self confessed geek this is not surprising. Of all my gadgets my absolute favourite is my Kindle. My Kindle is the most amazing bit of kit ever.

I bought my Kindle shortly after my Dad passed away. I fit left a little money and I wanted to but something that really reminded me of him. So I bought a Kindle in tribute to the abiding memories of reading books overlooking the beach after school each day.

I am an avid if sporadic reader. I go through phases of devouring many books in a week but the spells of reading very little. But when I do read I read quite quickly so holidays were always a nightmare with the number if books I’d carry to last the whole time.
And this is the joy of the Kindle. Two years ago I was a leader on a Scout trip to Sweden and Denmark. One of the scouts picked up an ear infection so I ended up spending three days in a Danish youth hostel foyer while the Scout recovered. And I read. First one hook. Then another. Then another. I read the entire Rizzoli and Isles series ove those few days. I’d have never got all those books in my backpack. And the youth hostel selection was mostly in languages that I don’t speak so it would have been a very boring few days. This is after spending 4 days on a remote island in Sweden watching Scouts do activities whilst sunbathing and occasionally taking photos of them. I read a lot that trip. And thanks to my Kindle I wasn’t stick reading and re- reading the same book over and over and over again

Although I suppose it could have been an opportunity to learn another language. Thanks to my Kindle though we will never know.

I recently discovered I could copy my old Blogger Blog into this one. I’ve been reading back through my posts back to 2005 and I find if so interesting to see what I thought and felt at the time as well as what I thought about he future.

My writing style hasn’t changed much, maybe because I don’t get to write as much as I’d like to.

So what’s changed since 2005?

I hadn’t even graduated when I wrote my first post. I graduated later that year and had many adventures before settling down – first with a job, then with my partner, got married, bought a house, had a child. I wouldn’t say grown up because I don’t feel any older. I still have fun and now with a child I have an excuse again!

I wrote my first post on my old desktop computer that is still chugging along but now only used for my Nan to play solitaire on. It was great for its time but now just looks aged with its massive tower and CRT monitor. My first memory stick was 256MB. i now own more than one 8GB stick. We are now in the age of tablets and smartphones and computers with more memory and processing power than those that went to the moon.

I still want to write more but lots if ideas just get stuck in my head while I mull them over and then the moment has passed. There is so much more I want to say. If only I wasn’t too busy enjoying my life to say it.

AlI do is fix computers. I’m lucky. I get paid to so something I really enjoy and I get to do it for the National Health Service.

I get to fix computers for people who do important things. They save lives. Deliver babies. Care for the dying. Male a difference. Matter.

Realistically this is the closest I will get to doing something important with my life. I believe in the NHS. I understand and value it’s principles. And after spending most of my last 6 years service on fixed term contracts I am trying to reconcile that I may not get to do this for as long as I’d like.

I feel quite sad at the thought that I may have to leave the organisation I believe in so much.

But really all I do us fix computers. I can do that anywhere. But the NHS. That will stay with me forever.

I have been musing for months over what to put here. All the stuff you read about blogs says it should stick to a topic.

But my brain doesn’t work to one topic. It’s a collection of randomness. So I think that will be what my blog should be. My own collection of randomness.

I really didn’t realise that it was nearly two years since I last updated. So much has happened but I do find I miss this exercise. I miss the opportunity to construct proper writings that is now missing from my daily life. My written word is now limited to taking down phone messages and random facts about computers.

I hope to be able to do some more of this in the future.

So, again, my Blog has been left for a while with no updates… oops. Life has been too busy, too hectic, and there has been too much going on for me to remember to do this in a while.

Don’t worry, I still know this blog is here… and hopefully when life is a little more quiet I will be able to catch up with all the things i’ve been meaning to do.

Including this Blog.

After three years, 7264 photos and a lot of mistreatment, my beloved camera is finally beyond repair.

The LCD screen is completely beyond use. Which means that most of the features that set a digital camera apart from film cameras are gone. Now essentially I have a camera that can take a lot of photos but doesn’t do much else. It really has done me well. It has taken a lot of photos and punishment but I’ve always considered it a sound investment

So here, for posterity’s sake, the final photo my camera will ever take…

One of my settings had disappered from Google – and in trying to reset it I found something really quite cool. Google has language settings for people all over the world as you would expect. And it would appear languages for those who are not quite of this world…