I had two *firsts* today.

Iain had an appointment in Belfast at 9am this morning so we had to be up and out extremely early. We flew down the motorway and suddenly realised that today was the first day the new underpass opened. It was great! We were on the Westlink within seconds, blinking rapidly at the ease with which we found ourselves there. Then we missed our turn-off for the city centre and spent the next 10 minutes sitting on the Westlink as per normal! Oh well!

The underpass gets a big thumbs up from us. Well done to the workers who finished the project a reported NINE months ahead of schedule. I saw a news report the other night where one of the guys interviewed said something along the lines of “Yea, we all worked very hard.” Awwww bless

The second first was a long awaited visit to the new Victoria Square in Belfast which kinda happened by accident, just because of where we parked up. Jessica was with me as we arrived far too early and had to spend 10 minutes in the Starbucks. Oh dear. Dirty job. We also had a quick wander towards the Albert Clock to let Jessica see it. she said “Wow - that is really big.” It is big - but it isn’t Big Ben - I kinda shrugged a little and explained that there are bigger but she put it in to perspective when she pointed out that “It is a LOT bigger than MY ALARM CLOCK!” She has a point there. I sometimes forget that she hasn’t seen everything yet and can still be surprised and awed by things.

I have to say I really loved Victoria Square. It was bright and airy and new . . . and you know how I love taking photos in shopping centres! By the WAAAAAY no one approached me as I blatently tool my shots. YAY!

Jessica was less than impressed by the fact it seemed packed with clothes shops rather than toy shops and even less impressed when the one toy shop we did go in to was too dear for her to cajole me in to making a purchase for her!

But, DUDE!!!!! URBAN OUTFITTERS!!! They have an Urban Outfitters! YAY! I made a very small purchase in there. Or ten. So going to have to go back there! Very soon.


We wandered around for a wee while and then headed up to the dome. The weather was fantastic and the views even better. But BOY was it like a greenhouse up there. I loved the views though.

Victoria Square is within walking distance from the ferry so any of my Scottish peeps could come for a day trip - do Starbucks, lunch, views and then be back on the ferry before 5pm!

Iain was less than impressed when he went to pay for the car park. £7.50 in one of the off-street parks. God he can moan about the price of parking.

He also had good cause to moan some more later when I went in to automatic pilot on the way to work, totally disregarded our motorway exit and proceeded to head for *home* instead for work adding a good 20 minutes on to our journey. Am still fairly convinced someone must have moved the exit cos I have no recollection of passing it. . . You’d think I would have noticed it huh?

If you know where to look, I have posted a pile of photos from the Square. I really enjoyed taking them just for fun. It isn’t often I take photos for myself and having the blog up and running again helped me get in to the mind-set. Yay.

So, good day all round. Am still trying to narrow down my choice of topics for the Something I Dislike part of my Reader Interactive Task. Have quite a few bubbling away here. More soon

Tags: Driving, Belfast, Victoria Square

Last summer Iain was mighty happy with himself when he found a MASSIVE (and I mean MASSIVE) swimming pool on eBay dead cheap for the kids to have in the garden. It was about 275 feet across and 77 feet deep and when you multiply that up you will realise that it held around a trillion gallons of water. For those of you not good with figures this means it was MASSIVE. We had to move things around in the garden to make room for it and had steps to climb up the side. Oh, and it came with a tarp for the top but as you can guess, this was never taken out of the packaging. It did have a pump system. The pump was supposed to circulate the water and keep it clean. There was even a wee floaty thing filled with chlorine to keep the pee from contaminating the circulated water.

When it arrived the outer ring had to be inflated and the pool had to be filled. With one hose pipe on constantly it took (honestly) around two days to fill. I had real issues with the amount of water that was being used but the kids loved the idea of having their own pool and Iain was, as I said, mighty pleased with himself.

Once it was in place on our patio area I had a couple of thoughts about the durability of the sides and how on earth it was going to be emptied. Iain assured me on both counts. The sides were extra special and "It wont be a problem to empty it."

I can't tell you the amount of sleepless nights I had thinking about the pool bursting and flooding our neighbour's garden - which is prone to flooding at the best of times. I was anxious about it and kept my head down when meeting the neighbours in case they mentioned the sheer volume of water contained in this flimsy pool . . . you get the idea. I didn't consider this to be the best idea my husband had ever had.

The kids were able to use it for two days last summer. Hmm . . ok. . . let's be generous. . . THREE days then.

In the past couple of weeks I have been doing a little bit around the garden. One evening I cleared the greenhouse out and over the next week or so was able to sow some seeds, transplant some plants and do a general tidy up. My enthusiasm jumped to Iain and he started a bit of digging and weeding too.

Yesterday I worked late for the first time in ages meaning that Iain went home on his own and was there for about 30 minutes unsupervised. (Big mistake!) On the way home I thought about doing a quick 15 minutes in the greenhouse before tea and then straight to bed.

There was no one to be seen when I arrived home. The house seemed to be empty. I went in to the back garden and witnessed my watery nightmare. Obviously the pool must have finally split - there was water everywhere, our garden was flooded and torrents of water were heading from three holes in the pool towards the neighbour's garden.

I immediately waded in to survey what could be done - to find Iain happily splashing in the middle of it all. It hadn't split - he had taken the three plugs out. He was emptying it with so little planning that he hadn't even put his wellies on.

I think I went in to a little bit of shock. I ran to the greenhouse, grabbed four buckets and my wellies and started trying to catch bucket loads of the pouring water to empty down the drain. After about 10 trips to the drain Iain shouted at me for being so dramatic and sighing all the time - I wasn't sighing - I was gasping for breath! There was no difference in the level of water in the pool.

Things are a bit of a blur after that. I insisted that he stop the pouring to allow us time to think. Surely there were hoses we could rig up. We couldn't allow the water to flood the neighbours. Iain thought the water would simply drain away in to the water table under the house. . I thought differently. After a while we got a conveyor belt system on the go - I used a hose to fill the buckets and Iain emptied them. After about 50 trips there was still no visible difference to the level in the pool.

Part of our future problem was - the three holes were at different heights - as the water emptied each hole would become unusable and the lowest one was the furthest away from the drain. I reckoned there would be hosing at B&Q that we could fit to the larger gauge stuff the pump used and simply leave it in the drain, allowing it to empty over night. Iain refused to spend money when we could just empty it by hand. Did I mention how broken my back was by this point?

Oh, and the pump. . . Bailey had chewed through the lead for it ages ago. I made Iain fit another plug to it but once that was in place the pump was so ineffective it was quicker to suck it up with a straw and spit it out ourselves. We ditched that idea and went back to the one where the water filled the water table. . .

We picked the hole closest to the drain and allowed the water to spill out. We then brushed the water towards the drain. After 10 minutes of this it struck me that by fixing the hose back on we could direct the water closer to the drain and therefore save our muscles. We rigged that up and then I remembered I had (half) guttering on the side of the greenhouse so we detached that and made a wee waterway from the pool, through the hose and then three bits of guttering to the drain.

THAT was fine for a while but the water level finally fell below the level of the hole and the emptying stopped. Iain worked out that he could stand on the pool side and lower everything and the emptying all started again.

I seriously doubt my husband's sanity at times. He started this with no planning, no working out and no help. He seriously thought he could just let the three trillion gallons of water just empty with no concept of the effects of it all.

Once the guttering was in place it was just a matter of standing there and waiting - that became a one person job. Iain worked out it was a one person job and cheerfully announced he was off to walk the dog.

Blink.

I found I couldn't move because when I took my feet off the pool the hose moved and the guttering, which was all fairly delicately balanced, all fell apart. About 15 minutes after Iain left I realised I needed a hand with putting the guttering back together so took my mobile phone and rang the house to get David out from the XBox Lure to help. It rang and rang and rang. I looked up at the patio doors to see Jessica standing with the house phone in her hand - waving it and mouthing the words "The phone's ringing" to which I waved the mobile back at her and shouted "I FUCKING KNOW" (no I didn't).

Jessica then came out to help and I tried to think of the whole thing as one of those tv games where one person has to direct another, blindfolded, person to carry out simple tasks. My choice of words became very important. "The green thing", "the thingy" and "don't get your feet wet" all became meaningless.

Finally I had her bring over a big empty plant pot for me to sit down on and I chose to think of this as my director's chair.

I also wondered if this would be the start of her engineering career. Will she always think of this night as the time she realised she wanted to build tunnels and aqua-ducts and bridges? Or will she just have a fear of large garden swimming pools from now on?

When Iain returned with tea the draining had eventually stopped - he can empty the rest himself - I reckon THAT may be a one person job and there isn't enough in the pool now to worry about if he just lets it empty now.

All sense of humour was well and truly lost. There is nothing funny about this situation and if Iain ever mentions filling this pool again I will find somewhere to insert the hosing telling him it wont be a problem to empty it.

Tags: House, Jessica, Iain, Pool, Garden, Greenhouse

That's the longest break I have ever had from blogging since I started - it wasn't meant to be - things just kind of got in the way. And I have been a bit stressed about a few things so that tends to keep me away from the internet in general never mind the blog. For days at a time I go no where near the internet and have lost all interest in most of the RSS feeds in my reader which now tells me I have thousands of unread items.

No one emailed to see what was going on so I mustn't have been missed much!

Remember Iain wrote his car off a while back? Sharing a car was starting to lose it's novelty value, especially as the children had to get up on their days off to take Daddy to work.

After many many weeks (about four months!) we finally found a car good enough for Iain to be interested in. We got it on Easter Tuesday and I drove it to a wedding-shoot on the Thursday and by the Sunday it had packed up and needed hospitalised. It basically stopped dead in the middle of the fast lane of the motorway half a mile from our exit.

Iain and I both went in to shock over this. Yea, it is only a car but we had spent so long looking for a good one, we had taken a loan from his parents to be able to afford this one and now it had made a fool out of us by going and breaking down. Within days of us driving the car in to our drive-way we had to be towed home and then have not one but two breakdown trucks flashing their lights in to the neighbours bedrooms in the middle of the night. . . it was just more than we could bear to be honest.

We had a very paranoid week thinking that the seller had passed on a dud but the thing that went wrong wasn't something that could have been predicted so that calmed us down a little. Even so, we had to part with £900 to get it out of the garage (he knocked off a fiver for us - yay!).

We are now back up to two cars again but after travelling together for so long it has proved to us that we don't need two every day and we do tend to leave one at home most days still.

The kids are fine. David is now needing showers every day and we have to drag him kicking and screaming to the tins of deodorant which tend to gather dust in his room. I don't like the idea of him growing up like this - he is almost as tall as us now and can actually wrestle Iain to the ground if Iain isn't prepared for it. He isn't a baby, a toddler or even a small child anymore. He argues with everyone including his own shadow and bullies Jessica terribly.

Jessica wakes up moaning, moans throughout the day, moans about going to bed and if I listen carefully now, I am sure I can hear her moaning in her sleep.

As I said - they are both fine.

Work has changed for me ever so slightly over the past while for a couple of reasons. The first one is; I have had a friend working with me part time for a couple of months. This month she will be with me almost full-time while she looks for a proper full-time job. She is doing loads of creative stuff that I don't have time for but also the kind of thing which is out of my league either skills-wise or because I could do it but would take forever to get round to finishing.

This timing has been quite good for me - I needed a good boot up the backside to really get my business going - crank it up a notch - and having to pay a (albeit a small) wage is making me be a little more proactive when it comes to enticing the customers in through the doors. We have added to the range of products the studio offers and with her Photoshop skills we are starting to produce exciting things like books and nicer albums, the likes of which my customers have never seen before.

I also have jumped in to a new venture. I have devised a kinda "bonny baby" competition for primary school children. We sat and thought it through with the help of another friend in the business and had leaflets and fliers printed. It finally launched it this week in the local newspaper. On the first morning we went in to the cafe next door and I read the OTHER local newspaper with a sinking heart. It looked to me that the other paper was a much better place to advertise and I really thought I had made a mistake right at the very start of the project by placing the ad in the wrong publication.

Much to my delight, that first day we received more calls than we could handle - in the first week I reckon we have taken more than a normal month's worth of
bookings and I am now having to pace myself and not over-book days to maintain energy levels.

It is very nice having someone else in the office - it is great company - someone to bounce ideas off - someone you can rely on to raise the quality of the work being produced and someone you can leave to get on with the important things while you investigate other avenues of income. While I am not having to do the day-to-day things she is doing, I can get on with taking the business to a new level. For example, I am working out of the studio next week taking photos of something for a software company who create console games. It is all very hush-hush at the moment and my name wont be on any of the games - but it is still an interesting thing to put on my cv at a later point.

There ya go - a quick update for you. What's been happening where you are?

Tags: Life, Work, Break, Blog

Every night, in bed, I spend 10 - 15 minutes channel hopping on Sky to find the perfect program to *watch* as I fall asleep. It has to be a good program; one I am interested in but not too noisy as to keep me awake longer than necessary. It is important that it shouldn't have started too long. If there is a *+1* channel it is better that I switch to that as the program will be on longer than the normal channel . . . or if it is a double bill then after the first episode is over, the second episode will air, thereby giving me longer viewing possibilities.

All this has to be taken in to consideration as I hop, hop, hop.

Finally, I will settle on one series. Probably one of just a handful of favourites. I'll set the tv timer to turn it off after 10, 20 or 30 minutes depending on how sleepy I am. I will put the remote controls away. I will lie on my stomach, pushing my feet over the edge of the foot of the bed and promptly fall asleep.

It is always the same. Why is it so necessary to pick the program so carefully? Ultimately, it never matters what is on in the background.

The ritual is more important than the program.

Tags: Ritual, Bed, Sky, TV

Since the Hen Party last weekend, I have had a very busy week. Work has been hectic, I collected my unsold (how surprising!) Art! from the Gallery, went out for a meal with my friend Siobhan to celebrate all the hard work that went in to the exhibition and have a girly evening together. This was proposed quite some time ago but we never set a date for it all until recently.

I then spent a day with the Aussie bridesmaid Suzie at Rathlin Island and then went for a fantastic night of Clay Pigeon Shooting, where once more, I excelled at the whole "pulling the trigger at the right time" malarkey. That would be the Rathlin Island I swore I never needed to go back to after the last time but in the spirit of "showing tourists the country" (read: you never know when I may need a bed in Australia!) I braved the ferry trip and the bus ride and went to see the puffins. Suzie was most pleased to see the Golden Puffin. There is one bird there which is golden instead of black and he was so cute - even I squeed at him!

We decided to pay the extra couple of pounds and take the fast ferry. Why? Because when we went to the sales desk for the normal ferry we interrupted the social life of the people behind the desk. It was as much as they could do to tell us the time of the next crossing. After using their toilet we turned and left the building in disgust. We didn't darken their door again - except for the next time we needed the toilet!

There was a wedding rehearsal to go to on Thursday night, where I met a minister who experienced an inconsiderate photographer 25 years ago and ever since has banned photographers from taking photos during the ceremony. He explained all this to me and I took great pleasure in telling him it didn't upset me at all. I still get paid the same money for less work.

I also spent twelve hours on Saturday taking photos at Rosemary's wedding. It was the longest and largest wedding I ever did do and I have just realised, the only one that I didn't cry at during the church. There was a moment during the dancing at the end of the evening when the DJ had everyone doing "Rock The Boat" where I watched Rosemary totally throw herself in to the actions and I remembered the girl I knew years ago - the one with the real sense of fun who energised everyone around her and I teared up at the thought of not having been part of her life for so long. I might do something about that in the future. As Dorothy said to me later "I'm not letting her out of my life again". (Dorothy and I are great buddies now - only met a week ago mind you!) Dorothy was extremely drunk by this time - judging by the photos I have been looking at - I was the only person still sober in the room.

I am slowly getting through the photos and think some of them are good. Am pleased with the performance of the new camera, like what I got last week and am well chuffed with!

Today I spent around 18 hours wishing I had worn different footwear yesterday. My feet are absolutely killing me - in a "I can't actually walk" way.

What else? . . . O O O O o o o O O O O Cagney AND Lacey were on Norton this evening. OMG How I love Tyne Daly. I have seen Sharon Gless interviewed several times but this is the first time I have seen Tyne live. I always loved her in the program but have been watching Judging Amy for the past couple of years too.

This made my night for me!

Lots of exciting things are happening over the next while. For starters David and Jessica have been invited to Ethan's birthday party on Tuesday and David to Joshua's on Friday. I have to put in two full days are work to offset the days we will have to shut over the holiday period.

Am not sure how I will do my shoot tomorrow if I still can't walk - may have to do it on my knees!

Tags: Rathlin, Suzie, Shooting

Today has been spectacularly crappy. I woke up early and started the day off well, getting on with a couple of phone calls and some work. Then at 12.15pm I rounded the children up and fought with them for a while about whether they were going to be going to the childminder . .. they won and I agreed to take them in to work with me for the afternoon.

Then.

I went to put my bag in the car.

Only to realise the only set of car keys were still in the glove box of the other car. Dammit. I was grounded. With children. Without all the HND stuff that I really needed to have about me in order to get ahead for tomorrow.

There was nothing for it other than to set up the computer on the kitchen table and get on with it there. It was during the setting up stage that I did something that nearly had me just shutting down my life and going and crawling in to the nearest corner, sobbing, for the rest of my life.

I plugged the external hard drive in with the OTHER external's power source and only realised when no lights came on, even after restarting the computer and all that jazz. When I switched to the correct power lead nothing happened - still - I thought I had blown up the whole hard drive. Seriously - at this point I was sucking my thumb and fiddling with my comfort blankie.

When I changed over the "figure 8" lead all came back on again but it was a very scary few minutes I can tell you. I suppose the other one must have fused - Iain has fixed it for me already. Thank goodness for fuses - s'all I can say.

When Iain got home with the printer I tried setting it up again but it is still only printing blank pages out from this Powerbook so I gave up and started some other stuff - knowing I had loads to do for tomorrow - then jumped out of my skin when Jessica started to wail - that child can scream for Ulster - she had slipped in the sock-soles and fallen badly on her elbow and hip - we thought she had chipped a bone in her elbow and contemplated going to hospital with her - but almost an hour of sitting cuddling with me and she started to brighten up.

There was my night of HND work out the window. Sigh.

So here I am now at 11.18pm and wanting to go to bed but still have so many things to do - aw sod it. G'night!

Oh, before I go - have a wee listen at this - it came to me from my (other) mate Gordon and made me giggle at just the stage of the day when I needed a giggle. Thanks Mucker.

I have a small confession to make.

I find it very hard to choose bananas from the box in the supermarket.

Part of my problem is that I am really particular about the precise state of ripeness they have to be before I will consider them. They obviously can't be green but also, they should not be marked in any way. Any blemish will persuade me to keep on walking.

But. The confession is :

I am terrified of sticking my hand down and a bloody great hunking tarantula leaping out at me.

I have heard of that happening you know. People find them in their bananas and keep them as pets. Wont happen to me though cos I shake my bananas. A few times.

If I find any good enough to buy.

From entertainment.ie here is a little fun. This isn't for the UK Lotto - but I can't find one similar to play with for the UK version.

I haven't played the Lottery since I worked out I was getting a better return from the shopping trolley (put a pound in, get a pound back) but had I been using numbers with a little bit of meaning to me here is how much I would have *won*.

If you had played these numbers in one panel every lottery draw since 2003, you would have spent €1,348 and won at least €25.

A potential loss of

€1,323

The good news is, with these numbers, your day of luck has still to come.

To date, the highest earning panel entered here by one of our viewers is [11 13 15 22 40 2] which won €7,420,713. The luckiest panel entered here by one of our viewers is [10 11 13 31 38 40] which won 15 times. However, it lost €993. The average win is €2,855,783. The average loss is €1,233. To date this tool has been used 1173 times.


Seriously, how gutted would you be when you entered your numbers and found that you could have won €7,420,713? I think that would be enough for me to go and sit in a darkened room on my own for a while.

I have converted my losses to pounds - I would have lost £905 - but also that means that by shrewd decision making on my part I DIDN'T lose it - therefore I SAVED it - so it is still mine to spend - I think I could justify a new camera now. Surely Iain will see it my way. I have SAVED £905 by NOT playing the lottery so therefore the money is spendable.

Hands up who agrees with me . . .

As part of the HND course I am to try out, generally experiment with and hopefully master Pinhole Photography. To that end I bought a 1970s Russian Zenit E camera on eBay with a pinhole body cap on board. The first roll of film came back from the lab totally blank - seems that I am a Jamoke when it comes to loading film. This morning I made a last second decision to swerve in to the local park and finish off a roll of film there on The Tree I like to take photos of. You have seen it before - I took photos of it for the Open project last year, remember?

The park was nearly empty. One car arrived while I was there and the driver looked like a girl I used to know years ago and who I keep seeing around the near-by village and then our own village - it seems she is living locally which is really weird because when I knew her we were both living 40 miles down that way. I stared at her - parks really aren't the best place to start staring at people.

I set up the tripod and took light meter readings (get me! light meter. readings. HA! I am a photographer at last!). I started to take photos. An older man approached me and I actually looked forward to a wee chat with him - he was looking at me and inclining his head at me in a "Oh I used to have a camera like that" way and I really fancied a chance of swapping stories with him. Sometimes I can be sociable with strangers in a way that I can't be arsed with real people.

He DID stop. He smiled and did that wee nod of his head again and asked me "How old is it?" HEEEEEEEE! I wanted to tell him EVERYTHING I knew about this beast of mine - how it was so old and you would have to drive over it in a tank to break it and how it had been customised and sold from Poland and how we reckoned, going on scientific squintings at it, that it was f.82 but that it is easier to work out the shutter speeds at f.90 and and and I managed to tell him it was a Pinhole camera, the name of it and the age of it.

He did that wee nod again. Just before I launched in to more he said "I meant the tree."

Sigh. It seems not everyone has the same One Track Mind That I have. How rude.

The Pinhole isn't really going to work out for me though - the photos came back from the lab and were ok but in a disappointing way. On to the next experiment. . .

O.M.G. that has got to be the worst night in the history of living in this house. The wind started up suddenly at about 2am and by 3am both Iain and I were so tired and grouchy we moved from our room to the guest room. The wind lifts the tiles (as I have told you all before) and scares the absolute crap out of me, in particular, as they lift, then ban g back down again with a thump. I worry about the whole roof being torn off and us having to live under a tarpaulin for months.

In the guest room you can hardly hear this going on at all because it isn't in the eaves, so the theory was we would get more sleep in there. We barely made it into the room with our pillows, discussing which side of the sofa bed we would sleep on (as if the side we chose would be different to the bed we had just left 2 seconds previously) before Jessica joined us. I had heard her door open and was worried what she would do when she found we weren't in our own bed. It didn't faze her at all - she just moved from one room to the next. Had that been David I am sure he would have shouted the house down - it wouldn't have occurred to him we were in another room.

She settled in beside me (never beside Iain!) and I scooped her up in my arms for cuddles. Little did she know she was my wee hot water bottle for the night! She had had a bad dream. She had dreamed a bad man with a list was collecting all the children and she was the only child left in the street. Strangely similar to my own nightmares - we must have the same fears. She said she woke up and wanted to cry but she hugged her dog Jess instead. Remember Jess? I had a fit of the giggles when she told me in all seriousness that Jess had had the exact same dream and that Jess was a psychic dreamer. Huh uh. I swear that dog is well worth the money spent on her - she has more of a personality than some people I have met!

We lay with pillows over our heads and tried to get back to sleep. As I was stuck in the middle of the other two I couldn't move without major complications. I lay singing "There were three in the bed" over and over in my head but it didn't help much. Finally after a couple of hours lying there awake I woke Jessica and told her to go back to her own bed. She got up and went without a word and I spread out in all the extra space.

I reckon I got about 4 minutes of sleep. I heard Iain getting up and going into David's room and telling him it was 8.30am - Iain normally wakes at 7.30am so looks like he slept right through!

There is an alarm clock in the guest room - I looked at it when I woke again - it was 10.14. That is a good compromise - no point in me going to work real tired huh? I got and glanced at the clock in the hall - it was exactly noon. Look - I know that Iain has a thing about keeping the clock at the wrong time - but almost two hours SLOW? wtf?

I am back in my own room now typing this and the wind has not died down any - the tiles are lifting just as frequently - somehow in the day time it isn't so bad - but still bad enough to need to get sorted and get into work for a while!

See you there.

This evening we headed out to have a look at a car that the lady owner *sold* very well over the phone to Iain. It was only one of four he was interested in that wasn't already sold despite the Auto Trader only being on sale today. He hates looking at cars in the dark but took the big torch just in case.

We arrived at the house and the kids and I sat in the car while Iain went to speak to the owners. It wasn't long before he came back shaking his head. The car was declared a "dog" and an "absolute dog" at that. He reckoned the lady driver parked by touch, judging by the four corners of the bumpers looking like the Dodgems at Barry's. It also carried the reminders of every single car park she had ever visited down the doors and wings. The alloys were scraped and the interior looked quite posh but was covered by a fine layer of dog hair.

At least he tried.

We headed to the three car sales yards we had been meaning to go to for a while. The first one had quality cars which were all too grand for our pocket. The second one was closed. At the third one we allowed the kids to get out of the car to wander round and be a little more involved. We walked around with coats on and hoods up and hands in pockets - I had no fewer than four hands in my pockets at one point! Work that one out! The wind was bitter cold and there was a sting of rain every now and then. It started off well, we looked at a Scenic. I used to have a Scenic and have to say I loved it. Of course they are a lot older than the one I had and ew - that one has a rip on the driver's seat - that means it has done a lot of miles. Sometimes it is hard work being married to the man who knows every little thing to look at in a car. Like the mat wear matching the clock, the accelerator not being too worn etc. . . .

We wandered around the yard on our own as the owner was too cosy in his portacabin chatting with a potential customer. Then we started to notice the little things. There were quite a few cars there with at least two tyres flat. One Volvo had all four tyres with no air in them at all and it was the one closest to the gate - a great first impression! There was a Peugout with two tyres flat and I swear there was some form of lichen growing round the windows. There was a 406 that had had an accident, had a door replaced and not aligned properly - you could place your fist down the gap between the front and back door (no NOT really!) and the front door was scraped where it was banging against the back door when they were both open. . .

There were cars with obvious accident damage and one with a bumper a whole different colour to the rest of the car.

There were no professional looking price signs in place but some poor child must have sat with every colour of highlighter they had in their pencil case and made out signs for some of the cars. Ages ago. Cos they were all faded.

It wasn't until I walked round the other side of the cars that I got a flashback of looking at a Lancia at that place years ago. I arrived, all eager, wanting to buy my Lancia, willing to put up with anything in order to have a Lancia badge in my drive way. Anything. Except sitting in a puddle on the driver's seat. My jeans were so wet I had to change when I got home. The (same) guy told me it was because he had left the window open but you could actually see the water dripping from the sun roof.

The car yard is in a prime location - you couldn't get better. It must have one of the best sites in the town. Yet the owners do nothing to clean the cars up and make them presentable. How on earth do they pay their rent - some of the cars must have been there for a year.

It wasn't a car sales yard, it was a scrap yard. You don't buy cars to transport your children around in from a scrap yard. We wont ever be back there.

Oh by the way - the sign says they are Specialists in Jaguars. I think Jaguar may have something to say about that.


(I didn't take any photos tonight so here is one from the archives, this is Jessica driving the Renault on the beach last year. She was quite literally MAD!)

Today has just been ridiculous. It started off bad, got worse and is now at the most ridiculous ever.

We had to spend 25 minutes beating the absolute crap out of the car this morning to get the fuel pump to un-stick and get working again. Seemingly there is nothing wrong with the pump - it works fine - it just sticks in an OFF position which means err that err the car doesn't start. That means to me that the car is unusable and needs a new pump? Nah - a new pump would be £2-300 and we just don't have that sort of cash . . . . Huh? No pump = no car = no work = no income. Seems fairly logical to me. That was headache number one.

By the time we got into work I launched myself into processing some photos. I have a pile of work, a pile of orders, a pile of photos to process and none of it was done over the weekend so I HAD to get it done today.

I started on one photo in particular at 10am. I still haven't done it. Photoshop crashed three times and I never actually learned the Apple-S lesson.

I had a friend of a friend coming in today for a shoot with her two children. Actually, the kids were lovely. The two year old was gorgeous and a cute wee man, the eight year old was a wee poser and brought about three dresses with her to change into.

Imagine my absolute horror when I picked up the camera and found my battery was nearly empty! Unbelievable. That just never happens to me - I am so good at keeping the batteries charged. Before the shoot started I asked Iain to run out to the car and bring in a spare battery I keep in the glove box.

It was empty too.

I took as many as I could explaining to the girl that it could run out at any point. She seemed fairly laid back about it all. *I* wasn't!

I took loads of photos and while the wee lad was getting changed into his builder's outfit, complete with Daddy's drill, I took more of the wee girl and the battery died. Dead.

I knew it wasn't possible that there were only two batteries around the place and rooted around in my bag and found a third one. It didn't have a great amount of juice in it but it would get me out of trouble. Happy days! What relief!

We were able to take more photos but I was careful not to over do it. When the Mum mentioned another change of clothes I stopped shooting so I could concentrate on catching the last outfit. . . the battery lasted about another 6 photos.

Today goes down in history as the day three batteries drained in front of my very eyes.

After that family left I had the pleasure of another family. A mother and her 6 month old baby came in to chat with me. Obviously that is what I am there for but when their opening words are "I have been in here lots of times and you are never here" it tends to get my back up.

Iain had already told her about my system. I have a sitting fee of £50 which gives you a dvd mini-movie of all the photos I take in the sitting. I don't give proofs. If you don't have a dvd player I invite you to watch the movie in the studio. If you don't like the fee then I invite you to frequent any other photographers you care to frequent.

This lady thought my fee was too dear. I blinked a little and thought "Today is not the day to be arguing with me. I am beat. I don't want to ever see another customer in my life."

She continued to push the pram back and forward allowing the rain-water to drip off the wheels and into my carpet. And chew her gum.

She only wanted two photos. She didn't need a whole sitting. She only needed two photos taken. Big ones. Like that size (indicating the poster size). How much is that then? Oh. Really? THAT much. Ok. Perhaps a smaller one.

She wasn't listening to the *sitting fee* part so I re-enforced it a little but she just kept pushing and pulling the pram. And chewing her gum.

Finally she decided to let the cat out of the bag. She had tried to get her baby's "photie-tuk at that Pixie-Photo place" but she wouldn't sit still. I decided to be patient and explained that the Pixie *elves* only have a limited amount of time to do each child and only take a few photos, you don't get proofs and have to choose there and then. . . etc etc . . . didn't wash with her though. She just needed two photos, don't forget. We chatted some more about the price of the smaller photos and I knew I was losing her - my prices are actually very competitive compared with any other professional photographer in the area and I have a damn sight more patience with children and babies and mothers too!

I decided to let her go about her business when she told me once more that she only needed two photies-tuk - one of the baby in her Liverpool outfit and one of her in her pink dress. Six months old. Liverpool outfit.

Sigh.

At least we had a lovely pork roast to come home to tonight. It was already cooked. All I had to do was cook the potatoes, carrots and peas. Yum.

I boiled water and started to cook the potatoes and steam the vegetables above them.

Then the gas ran out. I am not kidding. The gas ran out. I blinked at the potatoes et al and blinked some more. They were already started otherwise I would have just run out for a chip. Everything had to be microwaved to within an inch of it's err life. . .

I never actually liked the Threadless t shirt I used as the icon here today. But tonight, I totally understand it and if I had it I would go and put it on right now.

I think I'd like to go to bed now please. What else could go wrong between now and when I fall asleep?

This is terrible! Who would have thought that cones would be used in this way? This puts a different perspective on The Killer Cones group on Flickr now. . . .

We sold the BMW last week.

The couple and their children came to view it on Sunday and put a deposit on it before they left. We had a great afternoon with them talking Mac - it took me about five minutes to sniff them out as MacHeads but they have more Macs than I have and that upset me greatly. I will rebalance that as soon as possible I hope when I get my three iMacs! Muhahahaha.

They also come from my home town and I was able to talk Memory Lane with them and Paula and I realised that we were both in the same year at the same school but we don't remember each other. Small world huh?

I have to say they have the quietest, most well behaved children on this earth! I kept forgetting they were there! Poor things - I am sure they were bored stupid having to sit and listen to me go on about PowerBooks and Flickr and such like.

Iain agreed there would be one small part fitted before they came to pick it up again so that gave us something to do while we waited for their cheque to clear. He booked the car in to have it fitted but when he rang to see if it was done on Friday night the guy didn't answer the phone. We made the way down to his garage to find he hadn't even started the work yet and it would be Saturday 6pm before we could collect it. As Donald and Paula were picking it up at 6.30pm and Iain wanted to wash and hoover it before they came - things were a tad frantic on Saturday!

Finally it was time to hand it all over. At the last minute I had a change of heart. I don't really want to let the car go. I love the car. I want it baaaaack. . .

Thankfully, I got an email postcard from it this morning to say that it had made it home ok last night and was all safely tucked up for bed. HeeeEee - the new owners are as mad as us! Look at the photo - doesn't that look like the recent backlit Macs that have been on Flickr? I think it looks mighty cosy there in it's new home.

It's gone now. And of course that means that we are now a one car family until Iain finally gets another car sorted. We may have to put up with a run-around for a couple of weeks until he gets something better sorted.

We woke up this morning knowing we had nothing to do. No car to polish or clean or hoover or T Cut or . . . any of the other things that Iain is obsessive about when he has a half decent car to do these things to. He decided instead to drive round to get milk from the shop.

But the Renault wouldn't start. I sat listening to him trying to get it to start. Then I heard him thumping the fuel pump but that didn't work. Thirty minutes later he gave up and came in to the house and handed me the RAC card to call them out.

How embarrassing for me when the RAC man actually recognised me and was able to tell me all about our last meeting! Fecking man - hasn't he got a life? How could he remember all that? Well - he got one thing wrong - he said that he had been to our house before to Iain and a Proton. I can assure you we have never had a Proton and if he has been to our house it was before our time! The last thing he told me to do was to have the fuel pump replaced but we had never gotten round to it! Busted!

He got the car going again in much the same manner as he did last time, and in much the same time as last time too - two swift hard kicks to the fuel pump. Iain said he had loosened it up for him. Huh uh.

We are back to being a one car family again and can cope with that ok. It is just really scary when all of a sudden you are down to Shank's Pony. There isn't much we can do here without a car! You can't even go and view cars without a car. . .

"Hello? I am interested in the car you have for sale. Can you call round and pick me up for a test drive?"

I have just been looking at two bad websites - neither of which were done through RapidWeaver!

Nik and I were chatting about annoying sites and I came up with a professional site I go to every now and then. The web site actually put me off joining the association for two years! With my limited levels of concentration, I don't think I have ever managed to read all of that first page - never mind get any deeper in to the site. There is just too much going on!

Nik's offering was Borat. Love him or loathe him, his site is marginally less annoying than the SWPP. Borat's site uses many of the same techniques. Overcrowding, flashing, bright colours in the wrong place. . . but it is used there to highlight the tackiness!

The sad thing is, someone spends lots of time and effort on the SWPP one. It is, no doubt, their pride and joy. They need RapidWeaver!

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Last night on the way home I sat at a junction waiting to pull out after a car had passed just as the driver indicated he was going to turn left. That would be down the road I was on. I never pull out until I see the car committed to the turn so sat for a fraction of a second longer thankfully and watched as the car sailed on past me and into the church car park which was the NEXT left.

Dude. You aren't supposed to give other driver's scares like that.

Today as I sat at the end of Nanna's drive way to turn right across the traffic I saw a car come out of the car wash on the other side of the road. The driver indicated she wanted to turn right so I checked to make sure my indicator was already on so she would see me. It is kinda the way that the person who was there first gets the right of way.

Eventually I pulled out of the drive way and found myself quickly approaching the other woman who was also pulling across the road. She hadn't even seen me. She had time to throw her hands up to her face in total horror but had it not been for me reacting so quickly we would surely have hit each other.

David and Jessica were quite scared by the one at Nanna's and we discussed how scary it had been for a couple of minutes and I must admit I got a fit of the nervous giggles.

I am not leaving the house until I hear of someone else having my third accident though!

So today has been a good day for lots of reasons.

I touched base with Becky this morning for coffee, which turned into lunch, which very nearly turned into an all day thing! That was good. I had a great laugh at one point when I was told that I USED to be funny YEARS ago. Um . . . ? (Am grinning madly still because I know that isn't the way she meant it but it is still funnier the way I tell it!) She even quoted WHOLE conversations from, say, 12 years ago, word perfect, intonation perfect and used the SAME hand gestures as were used at the time. I am creasing with laughter as I type this.

I think my visit to her was just the tonic we BOTH needed! I have just counted that there has been one wedding and five children since then. Sometimes I forget how much of my life Becky has been around and how much she influences me every day even though I don't see her for ages at a time. I must so a whole Becky blog sometime. . .

Oh, and thanks for lunch too!

A past customer popped in to say hello to me and to keep me up to date with her post natal depression which was fun. When she mentioned about bringing the baby in for a shoot I made myself tell her all about my new sitting fee which wasn't in place the last TWICE she was in with me for other family shots. How good am I? I don't know if it worked though - she is less likely to come in now and had I not mentioned it she would have at least purchased a few photos from me. Sometimes it is hard to know where to draw the line.

Paradoxically, in the late afternoon I donated a voucher for a sitting fee to a woman trying to organise an engagement party on a budget for someone in her family. She is local and I am hoping this unbelievably generous gesture will reap benefits when the rest of the family all contact me in their droves for their (not free) sittings. She has already told me that she will arrange for the dvd to be playing in the background during the party and as she has a shop locally will also display advertising material for me there. I am looking upon it as a marketing exercise. And no - I am not giving any more free sittings away!

After work as I walked to the car a guy started to talk to me in a familiar way. Thankfully I recognised him immediately. He is one of the nicest guys I have ever met having been a customer of Iain's in two different shops and then resurfacing years later as the right hand man of a local MP who attended loads of our village residents association meetings. He was always a lovely guy and he earned most peoples' respect by being even handed during some very heated discussions.

He was happy to learn, this evening, that not only was Iain the proprietor of the mobile phone shop but I was a photographer too! I expected him to tell me all about his recent trip to my competition down the road but he told me instead that his family was due a new portrait and he would bring his wife in to talk to me.

He then went on to say that his village residents association wanted to have a fund raising calendar printed and would I be interested in the job? I told him I would have to think about it - NOT! I hope to be meeting with him next week *on site* for coffee and a walk round the village. It isn't a place I have ever been in so am really keen to see it.

The most bizarre thing happened when I turned away from him. Something was stuck under my window wiper. It was a crumpled photograph of some sort of church service with a few priests standing in a row and what looked like choir boys or alter boys standing too. I think that someone has found a discarded photo in the car park and recognised my car as "the photographer's car" and therefore, by default, the photo must have been mine! It made me giggle for a moment anyway.

Another random and bizarre thing happened this evening. I made plans for the weekend that are totally unexpected and quite a pleasant surprise.

I *do* have other stories to tell you but they are going to have to wait - I need my sleep!

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Today was the last day of our second year of a three year course. This year has flown in so quickly I am sitting here in a little bit of shock really. All of a sudden I have no projects to be thinking about, no work I have hanging over me . . . it is weird.

We had very little to do today - just a couple of loose ends to tie up and then we were out of there. We don't go back again until September. Next year is going to be a little different in that we will be concentrating on one big project for the majority of the time - no doubt it will fly in too. Can we not just fast forward to the end of next year - and then another two years after that when I hope to have just finished a degree. . . would that work for you?

This time last year we produced a slide show of all the (good) photos we had taken so far - I kind of like that idea and might do something similar myself to just document Second Year.

After college I went into work, made a list of things I Must Do In Order To Get Ahead And Get Rid Of The Sense Of Dread I Have Over Me Every Time I Think Of Work.

I made a list of about 12 things and made it my mission to do as many of them as quickly as possible this afternoon. Funnily, three of them were simple phone calls I needed to make and had been putting off. Am happy to say that I got a few things done and feel a little more in control of my business and therefore my life.

Here are a couple of the things we got up to in college today. I love You Tube now - if you have an account, link to me and let me see your videos. You can see we were very busy by this stage. . . .

Touched By An Angel is evil.

There ought to be a law against crying into your corn flakes at 9.30am. . .

I went into the shop next door earlier to get a sandwich and a snack. I had a few loose coins in my pocket and a £10 note. The bill came to £3.56 so I looked in my hand to see how close I was with the coins and found I had three pound coins, a fifty pence, a five pence and a one pence.

How spooky is that? This sort of thing happens to me all the time!

But this one made me smile AND nod my head at the same time.

I like this guy's attitude at times. He combines common sense with humour. He hasn't a cat's chance in hell, of course, but wouldn't it be nice?

THIS year? Just once?