Words from a Bird

It's that time of year again.  When your entire house is overtaken by the all pervading whiff of mixed spice and cinnamon. Yes, this week has been all about Christmas cakes and puddings ladies.  I was three days late for Stir Up Sunday, but I reckon the amount of alcohol 'splashed' in will soothe the ruffled feathers of any Pudding Fairy who might have been watching. The main reason I had waited to do them was so that the mother could help.  What's lovely about this, is that I use her great-grandmother's Christmas pudding recipe (neatly typed up on yellowing lined paper with lots of wine glass stains scattered across it.  Measurements of dried fruits have been crossed out and modified and, most unsurprisingly, the amount of alcohol in each pudding was increased two fold.   The recipe contains items that we don't seem to be able to source easily anymore such as Barley Wine, so I have made my own mental alterations to Nanny's recipe, adding Guinness instead. I

Three more days till I can legitimately have chocolate for breakfast.  Whoever invented the chocolate Advent calendar, my waistband salutes you.  It always heralds the start of the festive nonsense for me, although this year I officially went early with a trip to Waddesdon Manor's Christmas Fair.  We were a happy band of travellers who tipped up there on Saturday morning.  The mother, my sister, Miss R and her future mum-in-law, Mrs L.  We had between us one wicker basket, one Sainsburys carrier bag and a  Nerdy bag (see Friday's offering) and were determined that we would consider very carefully what we bought.  As we all know, there is a terrific amount of tat to buy at these fairs, so some level of restraint was needed. Of course, this all went out the stained glass window at the first stall which was selling hot chocolate bedecked with double cream, Baileys and marshmallows.  'It'll warm us all up', said Miss R, looking for any excuse to chuck around 750 calorie

Do you have one of those hessian shopping bags?  You know the ones.  They are often printed with something that you'd never admit (even to your best friend) such as 'Gin stops me killing people', or 'Crazy Penguin Lady' or 'This bag is full of more crap than a politician'.  You get where I'm coming from? Well today, while waiting in a café (my second of the morning, and it wasn't even 9.00) I noticed a rather elegant elderly gentleman (I was sitting in the window seat as I like to have a good nosey while I'm necking my body weight in caffeine).  He was carrying a hessian shopper with the words....wait for it...'Keep Calm and Hug a Pug'.  He was swinging it with no shame, and I have to report that there was no pug keeping him company.   Now there are many things that I like to do to reduce my blood pressure.  These can involve reading, writing, dead-heading my flowers (or someone else's if the mood comes upon me while I'm away from

Yesterday was the mother's day - she with the Fairy Dust Syndrome if you remember. We decided to have a quick lunch in the garden centre before we sallied forth to the nearest supermarket to do her weekly shop.  Now lunch for you or me would be a sandwich or some soup, perhaps a jacket potato and all of these would have been a winner for the mother before she got picked for FDS.  Her sweet tooth seems to have destroyed all other teeth capable of enjoying ham or cheese, but as well as that, the sweet tooth has multiplied, giving my mum twenty eight teeth who scream for sugar like a classroom of six year old kids. 'What do you fancy then? I asked her, looking at the lovely soup, toasties, jacket potatoes.  When there was no reply, I looked round and she had stalled around the table which was straining under the weight of cakes.   'I want one of them', she said said, haphazardly waving her hand so it covered every one of the fourteen cakes on offer.  It's tricky, becau

What a weekend.  Most of it was spent with my sister Miss R and the mother and highlights included an antiques emporium, new trousers, too much wine, a cold steak, a hot coffee, the First Mince Pie (always the best one) and the wrong knickers.  I'll let you work out for yourself which of these can be attributed to the three of us, but all I am going to say is that my roast duck was bloody perfect. Today, I have been at a funeral of a beautiful family friend.  We all have these aunts and uncles who are not 'real' aunts and uncles, but who feature in our lives as we grow up.  It was lovely to see all the other fake aunts and uncles, but it always makes me sad that the only time they all seem to get together is when one of them shuffles off this mortal coil. 'I'll see you at the next one', piped up Mr H (he gave me my first job in his pub kitchen when I was thirteen).  Well, much as I hope that this won't be the case, it probably will.  Let's just hope it&#

Evening to all my beautiful readers... I have a favour to ask. If you are currently reading and hopefully enjoying my blog (fingers, legs and eyes crossed as I write) could you please follow my Facebook page.   This will guarantee that you'll never miss another word I write (however hard you try), and that would make me very happy. The blog's website is at www.facebook.com/readlaughshare.co.uk. Or follow me at www.tracyrich31.blogspot.com After almost eight years of writing and half a million words, it's time to start spreading the giggles further afield. Much love on this Sunday evening... The Bird x

As you all know, Friday is Market Day for me and Mrs H (she's Italian, and likes to look at all the fruit in a most sniffy manner as most of it looks like what the Italian stallholders would chuck away). Speaking to the lady who runs the fruit and veg stall (I'm not sure whether she is actually in charge, but as the only female out of eight fruit and veggie people, we have to assume that she is probably the only sensible one there, and is therefore The Boss}. I was telling her about my blog this morning, and she asked me what the name was as she was going to take a look later.  I leant across her satsumas, and told her, and followed that up with, 'Actually, you have featured a couple of times already'.  No sooner were the words out of my mouth, that the hairs stood up on the back of my neck faster than the husband at a recent wedding when he hadn't noticed that my fascinator was on his chair - those feathers can be very probing, you know. Anyway, back to the fruit a

I've been back at Pilates now for a few weeks.  There was about a year long break which involved two weddings, a knackered knee and a month in Scotland, but you'll be pleased to hear that I have fully thrown myself into my two sessions a week with the lovely Alex.  The first on on Monday morning at 9.30, so there is little time to talk myself out of it.  Fast forward an hour, and I am trotting out of the village hall with a spring in my step, happy and proud that I have managed to firstly turn up and then do most of the things asked of me.  There are a couple of moves that I still believe are utterly impossible without breaking a leg or swapping your head for a screwtop lid, but for the most part, I do ok. Tuesday night is another story however. From then, every move is accompanied with an 'ooh' or an 'aah' and the husband finds this hilarious.  His favourite trick is to make me do a semi-sit up when he kisses me before he leaves for work.  My wincing face is hi

I'm writing from HMP Holloway this evening... Well, of course, I'm not, but after the day I've had out with the mother, my day might have ended very differently As you know, our lovely mum has been sprinkled with fairy dust.  This is my preferred description of her rather than using the dreaded 'A' word which always sounds so final.  As some of her time is spent in her own magical world, I feel that the fairy dust explanation is far kinder, and quite cute actually. Today we made the best use of her National Trust card, and hit Hughenden Manor, the erstwhile home of Benjamin Disraeli.  We normally go at this time each year as the lovely volunteers there dress the house up in all its Christmas splendour about now.  (Actually, we were a half a day early, but it didn't take any sparkle off our baubles).  The thing with being sprinkled in fairy dust is that you don't remember the last time you visited, so for my mum, every table, chair, picture and antiquity is s

Today, my size sevens haven't touched the ground.   The day started in the best possible way with a cup of tea with my dear friend Mrs P.  I had managed to throw on my usual weekday attire of jeans and sweater before heading out to the car to drive up to the cafe.  Just behind my car was a portable bbq which the husband had left on the drive - this despite several warnings from yours truly as to the need to move it before I drove over it.  It has been gathering rainwater and loose leaves since we returned from Scotland, and as I was a tad early for Mrs P, I decided to quickly shift it into the garage so I didn't have to look at it a moment longer.   Hoisting it up into my arms, several litres of dirty water and rotting vegetation spewed out over my previously clean jeans.  Muttering under my breath, I dumped it in the middle of the very narrow garage walkway to achieve maximum annoyance from the husband.  I did think about removing the lightbulb in there so there was a chance t

I'm sure that you will all be relieved to read that the husband's sausage remained intact yesterday after the impromptu Remembrance service yesterday.  The drive home was a frantic one, with the husband muttering many words which might have earned him at least three Hail Marys if they'd fallen on the wrong set of ears.   As a final birthday hurrah, we had planned a late lunch at the local hostelry with my sister Miss R and her fiancé Mr L.  The mother and her chap had managed to coerce an invite from Miss R on Saturday to join us (this was done with a threat of leaving us all her sensible shoes and support tights when she goes) so it was six of us who sat down to Sunday lunch. It was a carvery. Let me repeat that a little louder. IT WAS A CARVERY! Now these were a very popular event when Miss R and I were teenagers, queuing with our grandparents in the hope that there might still be a Yorkshire Pudding left, or that the roast potato tin had just been replenished.  I have a

Strolling though the 'My life is better than yours' phone app (you might know it as facebook) I said to the husband, 'It looks like the RAF are doing a flypast to commemorate Remembrance Day around 11.00.  Let's try and catch that somewhere?'  At that point, it was 7.30 and I had my first cup of tea and was lying in bed with a dog at each ankle.  In my head, I envisaged finishing aforementioned cup of tea and then taking the dogs for their walk, dropping them home, and driving down to the town to join in the commemorations and watch the flypast.  Sounds good, doesn't it?  Unfortunately, the husband was totally unaware of my plans having ignored the 'How to Read your Wife's Mind' section in one of my terrible magazines, so chose instead to completely ignore me and go back to sleep till 9.30. Instead of the well timed morning I had mentally planned, we left breakfast cooking in the oven, and it was a whistlestop walk around the golf course at the top o

This week has seen life return pretty much to normal again. On Thursday afternoon, Mrs H (my Italian friend who makes a mean pizza) asked me to come into Oxford with her as she had presents to buy for various family members. The lucky recipients of these gifts were a seven year old girl, a twenty one year old man, and her mother in law. How hard could that be? First stop was T K Maxx where we managed to nail the 7 years old's gift in a record breaking twelve and a half minutes (that time includes queuing, asking the cashier to repeat a question three times and rummaging round in our handbags for a carrier to avoid paying an additional 10p for a bag the size of a large family suitcase). With this record breaking achievement, we set off to Uniqlo to buy something for the 21 year old man.  And here is where the wheels came off the wagon.  We emerged from Uniqlo one hour later with several carrier bags containing jumpers, a coat, some thermals, a shirt and two stripy tops.  None of whi

So, the party on Saturday night... The husband and I both turned sixty this year, and while he was more than happy to take his motorbike up hill, down glen and through mud in various countries, I wanted something a bit more sophisticated (that's with two Fs as my dad would say), what with being a lady and all that.   'I'd like a party to celebrate my birthday, I said, way back in February, and here are the criteria'... All my wonderful family and fabulous friends have to be there to take the p*ss out of me being sixty I need a coach to take my family and neighbours to the venue, so we can start partying straightaway I am hoping that the coach company I pick has a terrible 1* review on Trustpilot, causing me many sleepless nights as to whether the coach will even turn up I am planning on picking a great venue, which will go into liquidation one month before the big day (causing many more sleepless nights) I want said venue to call me twenty four hours before the party an

And so onto my actual birthday. We had breakfast with California Kate and Biggles who hadn't slept a wink overnight.  They blamed it on the jetlag, but I am sure that the husband's snoring (he made the Guinness Book of World Records in 2019 having closely beaten a misfiring Boeing 747) was more to blame.  They left soon afterwards, desperate for a night flight and a bit of sleep, and it was then off to see Miss R and the parents for tea and stickies.   While this sounds like a move that Morris Dancers might do, it's a family reference to cake, and I left the café slightly wider and carrying a beautiful bouquet of flowers from the wonderful Miss R, together with a large helium balloon which proclaimed how ancient I was that day. She likes to rub it in that I'm older than her, I reckon.  Now it was very windy last Tuesday, and as the husband and I trolleyed up the High Street back to the car, it was touch and go whether the balloon would get there.  But I hung onto it, an

'And where do you think you've been the last ten days then?'  I can almost hear you all asking this question. Well....last week I celebrated a rather big birthday with an 0 at the end.  I say celebrated, but this isn't entirely accurate as I actually celebrated on three days, and recovered for the other seven.  On one of the recovery days, I did wonder whether there were two 0's at the end of the birthday number such was the headache caused by over indulgence on the alcoholic beverage front). But the week started well.  The husband had scribbled into my diary, 'keep tonight free'. Now this was the Monday night before my birthday, so I was anticipating a meal for two as a pre-cursor to The Big Day. I was almost right.  The husband had surpassed himself in taking me to the restaurant where we had our first date, so that was one gold star for him.  He made me shut my eyes as we walked into the restaurant, and after saying in time honoured fashion, 'You can