Cold and Tired in Scotland

I think it’s going to be a more relaxed Christmas than usual for us, because of the bad weather. I just think “hey ho, if I don’t have all the gifts, they’ll arrive later.” We all have our excuses ready; we keep being told by various sites and couriers that we might not get our presents in Scotland before Christmas Day, but I’m inclined to think a lot of it is bluster…. just like us when on Christmas Day we are telling our loved ones “sorry, you would have had three extra parcels but they’re still stuck on the motorway. Snow and ice, you know. Not my fault.”

But it was dreadful today… I mean the weather wasn’t snowy but it’s very cold.The local temperature stands at -4 degrees C, and might drop to -6. I’m so glad we got that heating fixed (it broke down, and we were three freeeeeezing days and nights without it! Though the heat is on again, I can feel the ice still tiptoeing up my spine and trying to give me a sly hug… the opposite of that warm furry Cup-a-Soup hug that would leap on you from nowhere when you had a mug of Cup-a-Soup (according to the commercials)). Anyway, we got the bus out to town in the morning, and met my sister for coffee, then drifted round the shops, and I felt awful. It seemed to me we were just going to the same shops and fingering the same goods we did for the past couple of days, and I was very bored and ‘down’. All I wanted to do was go home again. I was looking forward to going home before we even left!

It wasn’t till we DID get back home that I remembered I got up early this morning, and had already been up about 5 hours before we took the morning bus to town! I’m still very sleepy. But I felt fed up anyway, as we were spending ages in shops I didn’t want to be in (lots of waiting near the door looking at the same nasty cardigans and overpriced Christmas baubles for the umpteenth time, trying not to fall asleep on my feet), and then I was being rushed impatiently round those shops that I DID want to be in… At least I managed to get a couple of things which went off (“bleep bleep bleep”) when we were leaving the shop, and we had to have their alarms deactivated as they hadn’t been removed at the till. I don’t know why that always happens to me at least once every Christmas…

Then we went home and sat watching the same old programs we’ve seen millions of times before (Antique Roadshow, Eggheads, Pointless etc) and it was made worse by the Antique Roadshow doing “the ten best…” (pot boiler). If I had control of that remote control, the TV would either be off or I’d be watching something with more meat in it, like a film or a drama… or a DVD if I was desperate. I was looking at a family in the Antique Roadshow having a doll or a bear or something valued, and I was wondering how they could stand there looking so bright-eyed and interested. Surely the ennui of everyday life had got to them too? If they felt it, they didn’t show it, though the mother looked a little further along that road than the child.

My tiredness has turned to headache… I think that means I should have slept but didn’t really. Was dozing off on the sofa then getting up for coffee.

Sorry, I sound very grumbly! I suppose I should try and finish this Christmassy picture… will be back when I have more energy. (Probably 4 a.m. tomorrow morning…)

Tired Heart

Looked up ‘tired’ in deviantArt, and found these desktop wallpapers. Some have little or nothing to do with being tired, but I liked them anyway.

Tired Heart (1152 x 864)
I Am Tired (1024 x 768)
Tired Moon — No 67 (1280 x 960)
I’m Falling into Memories (1600 x 1200… over 1,500 favourites)
Another Dream (1280 x 960)
Rebirth of a Black Moth (1280 x 960… over 2,000 favourites)
The Gate (1024 x 768)
Prince of Persia (1024 x 768… nearly 1,000 favourites)

WIDESCREEN
Purple Aurora (1680 x 1050)
Morning Rise (1440 x 900)
Voyage (1920 x 1200)

Can’t Make Up My Mind

I hate feeling indecisive, thinking I’m going to choose A or do X, then changing my mind and deciding to choose B or do Y… then deciding that I won’t go for either. Well, I say I ‘decide’ to do nothing, but in reality I’ll change my mind again in half an hour or possibly next week. There were two pictures I meant to upload today as wallpapers; one on Arty Site A, and the other on Arty Site B. I made sure they were clean and wearing their prettiest frocks (along with my name and address round their necks), then I wrote up my blurbs (“this is how I made this”), opened up the ‘going to load this’ window… and cancelled.

I decided one picture needed to be worked on more and I wasn’t out of options yet. As for the other… I was going to upload it because it ‘wasn’t important’. It wasn’t my usual style and the colours were too girly to please everybody… it was just a bit of fluff. Wasn’t it? Still, I cancelled.

(Hits ‘send’ and goes to bed). (No, wait; goes downstairs first for a drink). (Hang on, just remembered I left the tap running for Samson to drink from; can’t leave it running all night). (Now…. I’ve gone and forgotten what I was about).

TV Sighs and Groans

Today just disappeared – do you know that feeling? I got up so full of energy and things I meant to do, and only did one or two of them. After supper I was very sleepy and didn’t even want to go out in the gusty cold twilight to bring my washing in. So it will have to stay out for another night.

I thought I hadn’t seen Spiderman 2, but it turned out I had, so I surfed the channels (whimpering disappointedly) looking for something else. There was MASH, which Mum likes, but no subtitles. I ended up on Frasier, which we both like, and that did have subtitles… I would have whimpered even more if it hadn’t.

After a couple of shows went by, we had the following conversation (or how it seemed to me):

Mum (in a matter of fact voice): “Good, you’ve stopped groaning.”
Me (surprised she was talking about that when Frasier and Niles had been keeping me quiet for the past while): “Oh. Why?”

My brain has just got stuck in a sleepy tangle… will wake again in a minute.
…
…
…
…
…

OK, the rest of it went something like…

Mum: “No, I said…”
Me (struck by sudden doubt): “oh wait… what did you say? Did you say I had, or I am?”
Mum: “I said you were.”
Me: “But I wasn’t….? I haven’t said a thing.”
Almost immediately, as we kept an eye on the TV, yet another commercial began, and I let out a gusty sigh.
Mum pounced. “What do you call that?”
“That’s not a groan. That’s a sigh. It’s because of all those commercials.”
“Hmm. We shouldn’t be paying for Sky when they put so many on.”

Then we saw part of QI… sometimes it’s not very good, but tonight it was funny. Alan Davies said he saw something run across the snowy winter backdrop behind them, and Bill Bailey said it was a Velociraptor. (How do you pronounce that? Do other people let that trip off their tongues as a matter of course? I’m impressed). I thought Alan was just joking, then something streaked across the snow again, quite far away. The people on the show missed it and were determined to see it next time, so they all sat staring behind them, waiting for something to happen. One of them (probably Alan but I’m too sleepy to remember) said “the little things matter.”

I was laughing so hard that my throat hurt – it was a strange feeling. I would start choking if I kept it up, so I stopped. That’s what happened last time I laughed that hard, which was…. erm…. months ago! I can’t remember what was so funny then. Might even have been QI.

How often do you laugh really hard, and why? The other day the TV happened to be on and I was watching something that looked like You Have Been Framed (but wasn’t). You Have Been Framed annoys me enough, but this thing was awful. Nothing was funny. Some things were upsetting and others were very normal… there was a clip of somebody falling over on the skating rink. He didn’t cause a pile-up – he just slipped and fell.

I got up and went to find Mum (who had left this dross playing on the TV) and said to her, “they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel… they must be desperate.”
“Oh, if it’s that thing,” said Mum, “it’s dreadful. They send in films of things happening to people which are meant to be funny, and they’re not.”

I’m surprised I’ve managed all this … I’m too sleepy to finish it properly. Night, all. No falling out of bed or videotaping it. I fell out of a bunk bed once…. had to avoid squashing one of the cats, who caught me by surprise, so I fell out instead.

Sleep tight.

Lost Dreams

Last night I found some notes jotted down with the intention of turning them into a blog post or six. Trouble is, I wrote them down some time ago and now they make no sense to me. I should lump them together and rename them ‘The cry of the disillusioned 40-something.’ See what you think:

No time or room for all souls to live forever
No time or room for all things
Cat understands what I say
That’s all

Too many thoughts in my head to track
Nothing will survive in its present form
World is too big – we need to go small
I wonder what’s the point?

“There are no perfect men; only perfect intentions”
From Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves
Lara Croft Tomb Raider tired me…
What’s the point?

Whole world choosing its gym teams all the time
The cuckoo always gets the worm
Jobs, friends, marriage or trade
We compete from cradle to grave

Can’t do everything I want to do
No longer want what I did
My opinions change
Truths differ
Nothing’s the way I believed