Not Floating My Boat

I think there may actually be something very wrong with me.
You see, I have just got off the phone with a girl friend, not Nutty for once, who today is suffering from a self inflicted injury....commonly known as a hangover, lol, who of us haven't done that a few times, get better soon babes.

So the phone rings and a rather excited girlfriend is on the phone. Squealing about how she saw the trailer for the new Alice in Wonderland film and isn't it great that Johnny Depp will be in it as the mad hatter. If you say so says I.

"What do you mean if you say so?.......it's johnny Depp Lia"

"And your point is?"

"Do you have no soul, no heart beat....it's Johnny Depp, only the most sexiest man to come out of Hollywood!"

"Not feeling it babes"

"Well! who do you feel it for then?"

"My partner!"

"I mean out of Hollywood, there must be someone, all women feel it for one of them"

"Err! NO"

There then proceeded a whole list of celebrities:

Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Errol Flynn, Clarke Gable, Bruce Willis Kevin long and boring films Costner, Leonardo Di Caprio, Colin Farrell, James Colburn, Richard Harris, Richard Burton, Quentin Tarantino, Daniel Craig, Mat Damon, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Mel Gibson, Marlon Brando, Harrison Ford, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Nicolas Cage, Matthew McConaughey, Russell Crowe, Tobey Maquire, Aston Kutcher, Tom Hanks, Justin Timberlake.

No! No! No! No! and many more No's followed.
"I don't get yo Lia! There must be someone"

"I told you, my partner"

"But we all have fantasies, and what about before your currant partner?"

"Then it was the partner I was with"

"Oh this conversation is stupid, Lia there has to have been some one, a pop star, a sports man...someone, anyone!!!!!!"

The truth is there never really has been any star that has floated my boat, so too speak, you get what I mean...your a grown up.

I like my men real, as in attainable. I'm not saying I lust after the men around me, heavens, I don't have that much drive, but having grown up in a male dominated home and spending my working life again in a male dominated field, the big screen stars, pop stars and sports men, just seem like a waste of time to me, when you could actually be having real friendships with real men.

There are many, many very attractive stars out there, but they never have felt real to me, I just don't get the appeal of them, I can admire their body of work, but not their bodies, it just doesn't do anything for me. Personally it's never bothered me, however it does seem to bother my friend whose parting words on the subject were;

"Well your just weird!" my reply........."Whatever"

Maybe I am weird, or just wired differently to others. I don't see that as a bad thing.
I have been with Francis (with an i) for 8yrs and I still get a huge kick out of him and he most definitely floats my boat. Add to the fact that he is attainable to me and this sailing malarkey is just the most fun I can have, it doesn't get any better than that for me.

Photo source; www.maldon.gov.uk
This boat is a Thames Barge, I'll tell you more about them one day soon. Promise.

Shop Safe

You know how it is sometimes with shopping, you really can't be bothered to go to the shops or you are just way to busy, or you don't fancy trolling round the mall, getting elbowed out of the way by rude people who walk through you as if you are not there. Spending the day in queues and listening to other peoples kids screaming the place down. Or is that just me!!!!!!

So you reach for the inter-net and push buttons instead. You do your shopping believing that all is safe and well, after all you did all the usual checks and the company you buy from has the suffix .co.uk, so it must be safe, it also has the safe purchase certificate at the bottom of the page.
It must therefore be ok.

However when your purchases arrive there is clearly something wrong, this isn't what you ordered, what the devil is going on. Basically you have been scammed and with no come backs, even if you did pay with your credit card, you won't be covered by the normal means of protection. Basically you are screwed.

I am struggling as to, how to simply explain this to you all, but basically there are ways out there to protect yourselves when buying from the inter-net if you are using a .co.uk site and I would like you to know about them.

Go look here to find out more from the BBC

However there is a little hope for us all. If you are using a site that is suffixed with .co.uk and it is called "WHOIS" look here to find out more.

This little gadget really does work. My partner and I have 2inter-net companies and I used it to see if it worked, up popped a load of info about us, all of which was correct. Which bodes well for when my own little new company goes live. While also proving to me that this little gadget really does do what it says it will do.

I am sorry to say that I don't know about other suffixes, but at lest we can all check out the .co.uk inter-net companies. Shop safe people.

Just For Fun

You just know when you watch this that it was invented by a bunch of very bored boys and men.
I'm not knocking it, often their is nothing funnier than very bore males, due to the fact that they will without doubt find something naughty or inventive to get up to.
So when I saw this on off all places the BBC news this morning (it must be a slow news day) I thought I would share it with you all.
ENJOY :)

Giant Art Deco Inkwell.

France.
1920s.
A massive cut crystal Art Deco inkwell, liner and cover, the heavy base of square section with diamond cutting to base, glass well and heavy domed crystal cover with conforming diamond cutting around the rim, French circa 1920.

Measurements
height: 19 cm ( 7.5 in. )
depth: 15 cm ( 5.9 in. )
width/length: 15 cm ( 5.9 in. )

Materials/Techniques: Cut crystal.
Creator: unknown

Photography
provided by Pullman Gallery

Location
Pullman Gallery
14 King Street, St. James's
London, UK SW1Y 6QU
UK

Phone: 44 207 930 9595

E-Mail: gallery@pullmangallery.com

I just love this, I think it is gorgeous, but then I do have a passion for crystal , art deco or vintage glass and I do have a rather large if more modest collection of said beauties. I have given you all the details in the hope that one of you will take pity on the poor inkwell and want to give it a good home and off course as it is on sale in London, I will be only too happy to collect it for you and allow it to keep my modest collection company, until such times as you are ready to collect it in person....really it is far to nice to be shipped anywhere and I would be neglectful if I didn't bring it to you in person.

Sea of Plastic, uck!!!!!

Pretty this isn't!
When I think of the Oceans and seas of our beautiful planet, this is not an image I have in my head.

Floating around in the Pacific Ocean is an island of plastic, made by us.

Now having looked into this a lot and in the interest of fairness, well on my part anyway, I want to state here and now, that this is not just Americas fault.
You see if you go to you tube and type "Pacific Garbage" you will find a huge amount of info there that can get you started in more research, should you be so inclined. A lot of this info will have you believe that America did this.

Well I firmly believe that "WE" did this, this isn't just down to one country, It's down to "US", each and every one of us.
We now know that the World is round and that all the living things on the Planet are linked to each other, your linked to me right now this very moment, just because you are reading my blog.
Seriously though, we are linked to each other in a far deeper way, if I create too much CO2, you will eventually breathe it in.
If I throw my plastic waste into a river it will eventually wash out to sea where it will be picked up by the sea and ocean currants and eventually end up in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

A prime example of this is the story of 29 thousand yellow plastic ducks that fell off a cargo ship in 1992 and into the ocean, they took 15years of drifting around before they began to wash up on the shores of Great Britain. See here for more details on their travels




We have to stop playing the blame game and start to clean up the mess we have "ALL" created.
We are treading a very thin line, when it comes to tiding up behind ourselves.

Remember your 3r's from school, well they have a new meaning now and it's time we all learnt them.

REUSE.....RECYCLE......REDUCE

Oh and in case you don't believe in Global Warming, I say to you,
"What harm does it do, to tidy up our planet and reduce the amount of waste we create"

Mr Henry Allingham

For those of you who don't know this is Mr Henry Allingham, another one of our great World War 1 heroes.
We buried him today and gave him full military honours, the lest we owe these wonderful men.
Mr Allingham was 112years and 295 days.
I wish I had met Mr Allingham, a man who knew what war meant and tried so hard to tell people how talking was so much better than war.

Mr Allingham died on 18th July 2009
Mr Allingham's funeral took place today at St Nicholas' Church, Brighton at 12:00 with full Military Honours, it was followed by a flypast of five replica First World War aircraft; a bell tolled 113 times, once for each year of his life.


To find out more go here

Commuter Cat

How sweet is this.

Commuter cat is star of bus route

Drivers know what bus stop to let Casper off at

A cat has become such a well-known user of a Devon bus service that its drivers know where to let him off.

Casper has been queuing with other passengers to get the number three service from his home in Plymouth for months, bus company First said.

It added that he often sat in the queue and then quietly padded on board and curled up on a seat for the ride.

Casper's owner Susan Finden, 55, who picked him from a rescue home in 2002, said he had always been a free spirit.

Mrs Finden said she named her pet after Casper the Friendly Ghost, as he has a habit of wandering off.

I don't know what the attraction is but he loves big vehicles like lorries and buses Owner Susan Finden

A spokesman for First said that drivers had been bussing Casper around for months, but Mrs Finden said she had only just found out about his use of public transport.

The care worker said: "He'd always go off and have a wander.

"Once I had to walk a mile-and-a-half with a cat basket to bring him back from a car park.

"He does love people, and I don't know what the attraction is but he loves big vehicles like lorries and buses."

A notice has been put up by First in the bus drivers' rest room in Plymouth bus station asking them to look after the rogue passenger if they spot him sneaking on board.



Source BBC NEWS

Blog Buddy Alert

Right, I am still having trouble reported to me by a couple of my blog buddies.
However my blog buddies Dave and Mark, over at DavenMark
have given me a bit of a clue as to what may be wrong and it could well be my playlist at the bottom of my blog, which has been having copyright issues, there seems to be some sort of copyright problem between this country and America, but not between Europe and America. I don't really know all the details, as I got teribly bored reading it all.

So in the interests of peace and harmony, well ok I really don't want to loose blog buddies, your all fast becoming friends, I have taken it down.
Please can you let me know if it is now better as I know it has been driving some of you nuts.

Feather Brains

Proof positive that chickens aren't as stupid as we think they are.
Each and every one of these is a hen house/chicken coop, they are so marvellous that when I pass to the next life I want to come back as a chicken.

These chickens don't even have mortgages and yet they live in palaces.
Oh and I have no idea where I found these photo's they were just stored on my computer.

When Does A Friend Become More

When does a friend cross over the line and become so much more?

This question has been rumbling around in my head for some time now. As some of you know E is not my blood sister, she is adopted into our family and we are very close indeed. Despite the fact that we are in so many ways polar opposites. We have a very strong bond and despite the fact that over the years people have tried to come between us, there is no breaking the bond between us. I love E, totally and completely, even if we do drive each other mad at times and we certainly bicker like we are sisters, people often say that they didn't realise we had adopted each other. Neither of us can remember when we adopted each other, it just evolved that way.

On our recent trip to wet Wales (I'm sure it doesn't always rain, just when I am there lol), we found ourselves coped up in our tents together and having long conversation, where once again we found that we both were much more alike than we had thought we were, often thinking along the same lines and being able to know what the other one was thinking. I am in fact closer to E, than any single member of my family and that's really special.

But recently, I have been thinking about another friend, the wonderful, colourful and soulful Nutty. Nutty is an amazing woman with great insight, who has had my back since the first time we met. We actually met on line at a forum site that I no longer have much to do with, due to the troubles I had with someone else, I stupidly thought was a friend (see my post "I Never Said I Was Perfect parts 1 to 3) to be honest the one thing that kept me going through all that was Nutty and her incredible ability to see things from both sides, while letting me know that I hadn't gone totally mad and misread every thing that was exploding around me and that I wasn't the one in the wrong, even when I retaliated and told her she didn't judge me, but rather told me that she had been surprised by my restraint, while at the same time telling me to let it go and move on and what the hell did it matter if one person with serious issues and mental health problems thought of me, my true friends knew me well enough to know that, that wasn't the real me this woman was rubbishing.

Nutty and I speak most days on the phone, lucky we don't live nearer to each other or I'd be at her house all the time. There is something very magical about Nutty, she has a comics way of looking at life and can always find the crazy funny side in just about everything. I knew before we met that we would become good friends (remember we had met on line) and I have not been disappointed in my thoughts. Nutty and her little family have become very important to me.

Today we were on the phone making arrangements for the middle of August, when myself and E are due to go up to her home and take care of her animals, so she, her partner and their 2 little ones can go on holiday for a few days and the whole time we were talking was just filled with laughter. In fact Callum complained about the amount of noisy laughter. Nutty makes me laugh like a drain. She really does have a very special and rare gift for that. Her frank talking, mickey taking is the best medicine I have come across in any single human being. I always come away from a conversation with her feeling light headed and refreshed.

Lately, I have been thinking that I am very lucky to have this incredible creature in my life and I don't know how I know, but I know we are both in this for the long haul and I don't feel as though I have to watch what I say or be careful what I say, rather that I can really be myself, warts and all.

I think Nutty has become so much more than just a great friend, she feels so much more than that to me and I simply adore her.

Mr Harry Patch.

For those of you who don't know this is the wonderful Harry Patch.
He was the last survivor of World War 1 and died at the grand old age of 111 years and 38 days.
I never met Harry Patch, but I would have loved to, as he was a very interesting man, with a generous heart full of compassion.

He once said;

	Any one of them could have been me. Millions of men came to fight in this war and I find it incredible that I am the only one left.
—Commenting on graves at a Flanders war cemetery, July 2007

Mr Patch died on 25th July 2009. May he rests in peace.

To find out more go here

Looking After Baby

It's important that you take care of your baby, but wow this might be going a little too far.
I have recently been going through some images that were stored on my computer, that I had found interesting. I actually found this photo here
But other than that, I have been unable to find out anything more about it.
Despite me taking the mickey out of it, I do actually think it's a really great idea and a nifty way to keep the snakes away from your little one.
I suspect that there are better ways now of protecting babies from snakes.

It's A Fake

Being the nosey type, I became intrigued with this building and decided to look a bit deeper into it.

If you saw my post on "Strange Houses Around The World" you would have seen this restaurant in Japan. It is called The Naha Diner in Okinawa and although it looks amazingly life like and is the size of a real life Banyan tree, it is in fact made of concrete and yet it is meant to have a green message, mind you when you consider the hurricanes that hit the Japanese Islands, I would want substantial concrete around me as well.

But while I think it is one of the craziest buildings I have ever seen, I did think it worthy of it's own post. The Naha Harbor Diner is a life sized concrete Banyan tree also known as gajumaru, these tree actually make very good bonsai trees, which I have to say surprised me when you consider the size they can grow to.

The diner is a 20 foot tall with a Pan-Asian restaurant sitting proudly amongst it's branches, there is a spiral staircase on the outside leading up to the restaurant and a lift running up through the trunk. It has an ocean view and offers farm fresh vegetables, chicken and pork, local herbs and "native salts" (what ever they are), but at lest it is local foods, so I guess that cuts down on the amount of travelling and air miles, that our food does these days, maybe it's a little bit green, at lest they are trying to cut down on their carbon and plastic foot print.

Here's their menu for you to take a look at.

Talking of carbon footprints here's a little joke from my Callum.
He came hoping into the kitchen the other day and said to me.
"Mum, I've just stood in a plate of pasta sauce and I'm worried"
"What!"says I
"Well I'm wondering if it will effect my carbonara foot print"

Also if you image google Banyan or Gajumaru trees, you get the most amazing photo's to look at.

Also just out of interest here's a question for my American blog buddies
Q- What is the difference between a diner and a resuarant?