Lucy

Just as one child has entered the family another one left ... childhood at least.  On 14 November 2012 my niece Lucy turned 18 and legally became an adult.  Last night we went to The Lamb at Winkton and had a big family meal complete with new great-grandparents and their 5 day old great-granddaughter Sophie.  However the star of the show was a grand daughter Lucy.

I had gone into town yesterday to get some helium balloons, but one of them made an escape for the stars when I moved it to the boot of my car and the ribbon hadn't been fastened securely.  So she just had the two, which as I got them had to have teddy bears on them!  I also got some table confetti with shiny 18's, stars, hearts and flowers, but I only remembered them this morning, which isn't a great deal of help!

On my side of the family Lucy doesn't have many relatives.  Her grandfather, my father, died about three weeks after my 18th birthday.  Her grandmother died 5 years before she was born so most of those present were from her mother's side of the family and they are a close family.  I suppose I have always felt a lack of family especially as I have never married or had children - no one ever really wanted me.  I feel separate from them, and rather like an intruder.  For a couple of years of Lucy's childhood I didn't see her at all, despite the fact that we lived in the same town, but this is getting melancholy. 

Will I make it to Lucy's 21st, her wedding, celebrating her children?  Who knows, after all first she has to find out which way she wants to go with her life.  In which case I had better get round to learning how to use Skype so I can keep up with it all!

Sophie

This little lady came into this world at 00.56am on Monday 12 November 2012.  You can tell that her mum is a hair stylist - look at all that hair!  No wondering if her hair will grow, it already has.

She is presented to the world by Vicky and Trevor Sheppard, and the photo was taken by her Auntie Lucy Ford who will be 18 in two days time.  Her name is Sophie, a sister for Holly.

I do like Mondays!

My niece Vicky Sheppard and husband Trevor Sheppard are the proud parents of Sophie, born 12.56 am 12 November 2012 weighing 9lb 1oz by C-section. CONGRATULATIONS and so pleased that she is here at last and congrats to Holly who now has a little sister to boss around! So grandparents Marcus Ford and Lyrain Ford can go and get some sleep as well - your going to need it, and so will Auntie Lucy!

♥ S ♥ O ♥ P ♥ H ♥ I ♥ E♥

I posted this on my facebook page this morning.  At last a Monday morning with good news and something to look forward to, like meeting my great-niece Sophie for the first time.  I do like this Monday!  Sophie was having some breathing difficulties because they think she got stuck so she went off to Neonatal, but should be with mum later today.  Everyone can get a bit of sleep in the mean time, and they are going to need it!

Trevor dropped a knife on his foot on the 7th, which was the due date, and has severed a tendon in his foot which will need an operation to reattach it, so dad is hobbling and mum has stitches!  Welcome to the world Sophie ... things will get better, honest!

Windows 8 is a mystery!

I have not been posting for some time because my PC power pack blew, and it turned out that I was also having problems with the hard drive.  So on Friday I collected a new PC and yesterday I got a new router for the internet connection because I have changed provider.  I have been having a lot of internet connection problems for the last few months which has meant the loss of some posts on various sites and forums, and a huge amount of frustration because it has been difficult to keep up with what has been posted and what hasn't.  There have also just been days when I have given up on the internet before I smashed the monitor!

I now feel rather disconnected from what is going on.  These days I rarely watch TV; preferring instead to used the BBC iPlayer for most of the programmes I want to see on a regular basis, or to catch up with things I have missed.

The only problem with the new PC is that it runs Windows 8 and it is causing me all sorts of problems.  Maybe if I already had an iPhone or iPad it might not be as confusing, but at the moment all I can say is where is the start button for the my computer thingy!?  Why can't I have two or more non internet explorer pages sitting at the bottom of the page waiting for me to click them into life?  It is not that I am a technophobe but I do like things to be where I can find them, and not where I have to search for everything.  When I ordered the PC last Wednesday it didn't really occur to me that Windows 8 would be that different.  So, be warned those who are not computer geeks, it will take you some time to get used to it.

The other problem is that all my favourites have disappeared and it has been an effort to start finding things again.  For a while I thought I had lost this blog as I struggled to get to grips with this new system, but I am slowly getting the hang of it, but if you hear the sound of breaking glass, it is the monitor following its previous partner...

It is almost time to say goodbye Pinktober

A part of me wonders just how much breast cancer awareness month actually achieves.  After all a whole month!  We don't have Remembrance Month, just the 11th day of the 11th month and Remembrance Sunday.  We Christmas Day and Easter Day.  I don't know about you but a month seems to drag on ... and on ... and on ...

Why not a week?  Something that can be focused on, comes and then is gone for another year, rather than something that doesn't have a definate start and finish.  Maybe an Opening and Closing ceremony like the Olympics, with a pink ribbon torch burning in between?  I know that this may all sound a bit flippant, but it isn't ... totally.  Not only that but there are so many different breast cancer organisations which all have their own events going on, and their own ribbon design, it all gets a little confusing. Maybe these organisations could just set out exactly what it is that they do, what they support, or maybe just become one organisation.  These days I have an attention span which can be so short it would embarrass a flea, so what is tonight's breast cancer event and what is their message?  Why not have one big event?

Isn't the problem partly that too many people believe that it won't happen to them because if so many of the foods we eat, things we buy and what is happening to the environment was so bad wouldn't the politicians be doing something about it, like banning some of this stuff?  That sounds so naive and obvious, but sometimes those are the very things that politicians forget.

Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells

Ok, I just couldn't resist the temptation.  For those of you who don't know the story behind the title of this blog I will enlighten you.  There may actually have been, or there reputedly was, a correspondent who wrote to a national newspaper and signed himself as 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' on a letter complaining about something.  After that it got a bit of a life of its own.  As I actually am in Tunbridge Wells, which was one of the first Spa towns there the genteel would go to take the medicial waters at the moment it just had to be done.  I was actually down on the Pantiles today, the original centre to fashionable TW and they are doing some work to a building there.  It has boarding up to protect the public from the work going on and there is some 'graffitti' from Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, and other such humourous sayings written to entertain those who are passing. 

The public is now deemed to be in need of protection from a building site rather than being expected to have any common sense when coming into the vacinity of something like a building site.  Common sense - whatever happened to that?  It used to be something that we were expected to acquire over the years, it is sometimes also called the blindingly obvious, but now we seem to need to be told what common sense is, and when we should apply it.  It has become something that politicians singularly lack.

I was amused a week or two ago when the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize  !  !  Yugoslavia and its former constituent parts spring to mind immediately when 'Peace in Europe' is mentioned, but I think that someone has conveniently forgotten that.  Just what the Nobel Peace Prize committee (if there is such a thing) is thinking heaven only knows, but this ranks with Obama getting it now long ago for ... not sure about that one.

I suppose the Nobel Prize organisation hasn't completely lost its common sense ... after all it didn't award the European Union with the Nobel Prize for Economics!

Finding my way

Each of us has to find a way of dealing with a diagnosis of metastastic breast cancer, or metastatic any cancer for that matter.  I think we have all been there with the OMG I'm going to die, and I for one went through a long period of being angry and not really knowing where to turn.  I live alone.  I don't really have close friends around me and my brother and his family are always too busy, especially now that my niece is about to have their first grandbaby.  I am sure that they would be there for me in the event of an emergency, well my sister-in-law would, but sometimes you just need people around you to remind you that ordinary life still goes on and also to just readjust your train of thought and get you to concentrate on something different, something mundane.  When your mind gets hold of something it can be really difficult to alter the way you are thinking without some sort of external distraction and stimulation and sometimes the trivial is just what you need to snap you out of it..

That may be one reason that I have come to rely so much on having a computer and internet access.  This has really been brought home to me because on Sunday morning I went down stairs to put some washing on and came back to find that my computer was ... dead.  Just the flicking of the light to show that the monitor was still working but the main part of the PC was just gone, silent, vacant! 

I have been working on a project to try and find the name and obituary of as many of my on-line friends and those who use one of the same forums as I do.  These are the people who just know where I am coming from.  These are the people you don't have to try and explain things to.  These are the people who know what it is like in the wee small hours of the morning when your mind is racing in any direction except in the direction of peace, contentment and sleep.  I really miss being able to go into my 'office' and log on at any time of day and see what is going on somewhere else in the world.  I have a netbook which I am using at the moment, but I don't like the lap-top style keyboard, and earlier this week I finally fired the finger mouse and got out an old mouse mouse to use.  Oh the joys of clicking and scrolling!

The problem is also partially my internet connection and I am in the middle of changing providers in the hope that things will improve and I won't get the incessant Internet Explorer Has Stopped Working notification which makes me just give up some times.  I was trying to create a group on facebook yesterday and managed at the fourth or fifth attempt, which was going to be my last try before giving up on the whole idea.  Essentially I suppose, I have become one of those sad individuals who is addicted to the internet and their forums.  They are my friends and companions and my blogs are my way of being able to express my thoughts, on my opinions for right or wrong.  I hope someone can breathe new life into my PC soon ...