Grannymar

Grandad has a really soft streak. I had to get the tissues out.

I am sending a little something to celebrate

For Herself:

and for Grandad:

I have counted my light bulbs. There are 27 of varying types in the house, but don’t forget about the one in the garage, so that makes a total of 28. We are told “Energy saver bulbs typically use around 80% less electricity than normal incandescent bulbs”. They cost a bit more than ordinary light bulbs (about £3.50 each) but they last 12 times longer and could save up to £9 on my annual electricity bill or £100 over the bulb’s lifetime! So making this effort will really make a difference! I can feel justifiably proud of myself.

About six years ago I changed the light fittings in my living room. The central light had three bulbs. One of these bulbs had lasted since the house was built. I know this because it had become completely soldered into the fitting. That means that particular bulb worked for 30 years. So if the new bulbs last 12 times longer I should not have to replace them again for 360 years! I hope I live long enough to find out.

A high powered flashy car has raced passed my window … Now that makes me think….

Today, the average new car has some 14,000 to 15,000 parts and accessories. These parts must fit and work together. They are made by many different companies, in different countries. The workshops are all hi-tech nowadays with robots doing the work of several men. While in the past men used blood, sweat and tears to build the parts and the cars, the robots use electricity. Much more than my measly 28 bulbs worth!

Cars come in all the colours of the rainbow. When finished they have a high gloss shine. How many coats of paint does it take to achieve this effect? The paint is not applied by paint brush, oh no, it is machines yet again doing the work. The fumes given off while one car is sprayed, would I am sure, cause more pollution than my bulbs. Is such a high shine necessary? Travel around Dublin or any city and you will observe many cars that have never been washed since they left the showroom.

New cars are designed to travel faster than all legal speed limits. The higher the speed the more fuel used. I would imagine the faster they travel the more wear and tear on the roads. How do they make the tarmac type surface for the roads? I am sure it causes yet more pollution.

I am not anti motorcar I have taken it as an example. I do drive and own a car. At times it means the difference in my being able to get out and about or being trapped indoor for days on end. I live on a hill and walking down to the town is fine, but walking back up again with shopping is a no-no. For me a car is a necessity and not a luxury.

I suppose if I gave up eating, drinking water and washing my clothes I might save the world!

This is still very hush-hush! You must not tell anybody because it is MY secret.

Grandad really, reeeeeeally loves me! How do I know? He has made a proposal. Now you are to say nothing, because ‘herself’ doesn’t know about it yet. He is waiting for the right moment to tell her!

Well the proposal is that I can become a partner in his Web Design Company. Grandad wants me to give him €5,000 deposit as a sign of good faith. The problem is that he wants the money by this time tomorrow.

I suppose I could borrow from Elly’s inheritance. Sure she won’t need it for awhile. By the time she does it will surely have doubled if not trebled or quadrupled. I better check to see how much I have in the mattress.

This is all a bit complicated because he wants me to send it by Brown email. I have looked at my computer on the front, the back and all sides but there is no slot to put the money in. Can anyone help me?

Grandad says it must be a Brown email because he wants to lodge it in his off-shore account…

Now where did he say the account was? Oh yes! Now I remember it is on The Blasket Islands.

Now not a word about this until we find a way to tell ‘herself’ and Elly!

Anne was a widow who lived in Co Clare she reared hens & geese and when she came to Dublin it was usually for the day and involved a trip to Clerys Department Store. There she bought a complete new outfit - from the skin out. The parcels were taken to the “Ladies” and she changed into the finery before she caught a bus to our house.

She always carried a leather shopping bag on these visits. It contained at least two or three-dozen eggs complete with half the hen run on them! These had been collected at dawn on the day of her journey. In the bag, or should I say half in the bag were two chickens. The head and necks hung out one side while the legs complete with claws hung out the other. Their necks had been wrung that morning while the due was still on the ground. They were complete with feathers and innards and there would be a trail of blood dripping from them all the way from Ennis to our front door! Her arrival on the avenue was announced by her laughter, which was loud and infectious.

One year when we were very young mammy was ill and in hospital. Anne was looking after us. She cooked, fed us and generally kept the house ticking over. My youngest brother who was aged three and the baby of the family pined for mammy and refused to eat. He refused to come to the table at meal times so Anne sat on the stairs and fed him chocolate biscuits. They were the only food he would eat for her. Her idea was that he was at least eating something.

Dorothy my niece shared this memory with me: “I remember Anne in a huge high bed with about 200 mattresses and blankets in the box-room”. Houses do not have box- rooms any more, all bedrooms are smaller nowadays. “I think about it when reading the princess and the pea to my own children! It was so high I remember not being able to climb onto it; I still remember the feeling of falling off yet again! And then when you got up it was so bouncy! People’s backs must have really ached after a night’s sleep in it” she said.

We were forever having visitors to stay at our house. Mattresses came up and down the stairs like yo-yos. The easiest place to store them was on the bed. A little less dusty than under it! One year we had a gathering for my father’s entire family. We planned to have the August bank holiday weekend Saturday as ‘The Day’. They were like ‘The Tinkers’ coming for a week and going for a week!

We realised it would be a late night. So plans were made for everyone to stay over. We children were to sleep on mattresses on the floor while all the adults had the beds. The only problem was that the adults stayed up all night talking, singing and drinking.
In the end nobody slept in the beds.

We learned plenty of old ballads as we sang through all the Counties of Ireland. Each song seemed to have about 32 verses. Even today when I hear one of them on the radio, I can clearly see an aunt or uncle sitting by the fire singing their heart out!

I sometimes think about the children of today and wonder if in forty or fifty years time they will remember what happened in Big Brother or I’m a Celebrity get me out of here, or for that matter what their parents looked like?

TV has a lot to answer for!

While listening to Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 this morning I discovered this mind blowing titbit. ‘The average person spends 31 years dieting’. That is more than half the time I have spent on this earth. I would hate to be restricted to say – cabbage for one week and pineapple the next. I am far too fond of my food for all that rubbish. My mother believed that we should clear our plates and with the food she cooked we had no bother complying.

I remember one school day as lunchtime approached and our thoughts turned to hot food and going home (mind you in those far off days we called it dinnertime) my chum asked me what day it was. She knew by the day of the week what was on the menu at home. I thought that this was crazy because we never knew until we reached the front door and a ‘Bisto Kid’ style aroma met us and made us drool! Friday was the only exception when we had fish. This varied with the season and it was still a surprise for us. The only things we knew for certain were that Terry Wogan graced the airways of RTE on a Wednesday with Hospitals Requests or that the Kennedys of Castle Ross had a twice weekly spot.

During my early working life I discovered a colleague who lived with her parents and her mother dished up steak one day and chops the next. They were all she knew how to cook. My friend was the youngest of four and at least in her middle thirties. So her mother had only ever cooked two dishes for over forty years!

Back on the topic of diets then… Recently I read where a lady was Slimmer of the Year’, not sure whether it was Weight Watchers or Uni-Slim. This woman had lost NINE STONE (126lbs). That is as much as I weigh! Imagine losing a whole person!! I am only 130lbs now even after gravity, child birth, and the ravages of time have taken their toll. Dairy products do not agree with me but apart from that I eat everything put in front of me, especially when at The Cellar Restaurant, in Ballycastle. Just ask my Sin-in-Law if you don’t believe me.

So I am not average. Mind you I never was. I was a size ‘0’ long before it was thought of. Unlike today I was rather ridiculed for being so thin, sorry skinny was the word used. I was called drip-dry, drink of water and much worse as I grew up. Later after I married my husband told me many times that my muscles were like sparrows kneecaps! This he did with a twinkle in his eye and never meant any harm. We were able to laugh both with and at each other on many an occasion.

I feel sorry for young girls today where TV, cinema and magazines all portray the skeletal figure as beautiful. There is nothing beautiful about it at all. A few curves are so much better, more cuddle-able, make clothes hang well and I can tell you keep you warmer in this very cold weather.

Right middle age spread I am ready and waiting…

Way back last year, well not really that long ago I was asked a favour…

You know the kind of thing, three minutes before leaving for school you hear “Oh by the way mum I need £50 for the school trip”, or “a new Badminton racquet” or “my shoes are letting in rain”. How come you are never told the evening before when there is a chance of doing something about the situation? No, it has to be on the doorstep on the way out to school. Nobody ever tells you that motherhood involves being a magician. It is one of those things that are never mentioned.

Well that is how I felt last September when my Elly phoned to say “Mum I need a favour!” She was no longer at school, she had stopped the Badminton and she could afford to buy her own shoes. What on earth could it be? Those of you who have followed my Blog from the beginning will remember that I was to be her ‘case study’ or as I called it ‘guinea pig’ in teaching Granny Pod-casting. A topic she had agreed to speak on at the ‘Barcamp’ in Cork

We began with a lesson on how to set up a Blog site. Well to be exact she sent me several links for subjects to read and places to experiment with, so that I could get started. I chose my template, fonts; colours etc. and Elly later ‘tweaked’ things a little to make it more inviting for anyone who might come across it by accident.

Since her topic was Pod-casting I had to learn how to do that as well. I liked to idea of a Pod-cast as it hid my awful grammar and bad spelling. I found it easier to prepare and type out a piece on my chosen subject and then read it to an imagined audience.

I seem to have flapped about like a non swimmer in a choppy sea between the Blog and the Pod-casts. My subject matter has also seemed ‘Mixed Middling like Hafner’s Pudding’ as my Grandmother used to say. I suppose I have not found a theme for my Blog and have no idea if this is off putting for any readers/listeners out there.

My biggest surprise is that Elly who got me started and my future Son-in-law both experienced Bloggers have not yet as far as I know made a Pod-cast. Why I ask, what are they frightened of? If I can do it why can’t they? I am a great believer in not asking someone to do something that you are not prepared to do yourself.

Come on you two there is nothing to it!

P.S. This was supposed to be a Podcast but Odeo had other ideas!

Where is my spray? Oh gosh I can’t breathe! Get me my spray quick this is far too much for me!

While reading an article in the Guardian online by James Walkman, I came across a piece about Mascara for men! Yes Mascara for men is now in the shops. It’s in the men’s department. For men.

Now I can about imagine Grandad with his mouth twisted and his tongue hanging, with one eye shut as he tries to focus on the other, while at the same time trying not to poke his eye out with the wand (yes that is what you call it)! His aim being to add ‘an attractive shimmer and enhance, or create a sensuousness that will captivate and make his eyes come alive!

Life in the village will never be the same again!

Do you think he will wear it to the Irish Blog Awards?

Thank goodness I won’t be there!

What have all the following got in common?

Their common factor might be surprising and horrifying!

Thankfully I was finished my lunch when I caught up with an article from Wired Blog Network

“London, UK (PRWeb) January 18, 2007 — Mobile mad Brits are in for a shock thanks to new research published today which reveals that there’s actually more filth on our phones than the average loo.

Mobile phone retailer Dial-a-Phone conducted the study taking swabs from everyday objects and analyzing the bacteria found on them. The shocking results found that there’s more muck on our mobiles than the average door handle, keyboard, and bottom of a shoe or even a toilet seat.

The study found that without cleaning and disinfecting your mobile phone and keyboard on a regular basis, more bacteria could spread potentially causing illness.

The research confirmed the presence of skin bacteria including staphylococcus aureus on the phone, keyboard, toilet seat and door handle. The shoe in contrast had bacteria from the soil and air.

Joanne Verran, Professor of Microbiology at Manchester Metropolitan University comments: “Mobile phones, like many everyday objects such a telephones and computer keyboards, harbor bacteria. However, being ‘mobile’, they are stored in bags or pockets, are handled frequently, and held close to the face. In other words, they come into contact with more parts of our body and a wider range of bacteria than toilet seats!”

“The phones contained more skin bacteria than the any other object; this could be due to the fact that this type of bacteria increases in high temperatures and our phones are perfect for breeding these germs as they’re kept warm and cozy in our pockets, handbags and brief cases. These bacteria are toxic to humans, and can cause infections if they have the opportunity to enter the body.”