recycling

I’ve never thought of myself as much of a conformist, infact i guess in truth a lot of the time i’m more of a rebel but when the bureaucrats at the local council started rolling a colourful assortment of plastic bins and boxes down my garden i decided i’d do my bit for the environment and recycle what i could.After many a day spent brushing soggy weetabix from some item of recycleable proportions thrown carelessly into the ‘naughty’ bin by errant teens or gagging in disgust whilst trying to rinse kitty yum supreme from an aluminium can without shredding my fingers into ribbons it eventually became somewhat of a second nature to dispense items to their requisite location. Alas i am not perfect and i’m sure on the odd occasion an errant tin can would be sobbing dolefully at the bottom of the plastic bottle bin but for the most part i was quite smug in my efforts to save the planet. BUT my efforts are being thwarted by a very dear miscreant friend of mine who to my total horror quite cheerfully and unashamedly admitted that he does not recyle. Swamped by visions of cans and bottles with their little lives cut short begging and pleading on their knees, cries of please dont kill me echoing from the depths of the local landfill site and no chance of being reincarnated into something wonderful and shiny, i quite happily admonished him for his lack of effort in my best ‘you’ve been a naughty boy voice’. One good thing about being a mommy is you get to develop a special voice that you save especially for reprimanding the erring child no matter the age of them at the time. Now good friend that i am i feel it is my solemn duty to lead this straying lamb back to  the fold and instil a sense of mercy for all the shiny little lives yet to be created so here i create a permanent reminder..my dear friend, recycling saves lives 

“to sleep, perchance to dream”

Many people may not know but i actually love Shakespeare, yes you need to be fully absorbed to be entirely aware of what he is trying to say given the long  since replaced style of speech but its so emotive and dramatically expressive you cant help but be drawn into its flamboyancy and swept away by the passion and drama of it all. Perhaps Shakespeare had me in mind when he penned the quote by Hamlet…”to sleep perchance to dream”  for I do dream, and I dont mean the odd night here and there I mean i dream a lot. Gloriously bizarre full technicolor blockbusters that even Steven Spielberg would be proud to lay claim to! They say dreaming is the brains way of making sense of things it cannot comprehend or process whilst we are awake and there are hundreds of books that will give you a definition on almost every dream you ever had, from appearing naked in class, to having all your teeth fall out when you open your mouth. But given this rather scientifically rational explanation i can only conclude that my brain and i are on different planes of existence!! One night Im trapped in an underground bunker with a robot sidekick being chased by space age druids and the next I’m a medic riding along in the back of a jeep in some war torn country. Now i like to think i’m unfailingly interesting, spontaneous and adventurous but in truth my life really isnt that exciting, and yes i could lay claim to the most fantastical imagination but dream me has turned into Lara Croft and is intent on saving the universe. I wonder what Shakespeare would have made of me, perhaps he might have decided perchance to dream was not such a good idea after all. And so dear bloggers i must bid you goodnight and go face my latest battle…once more into the breach dear friends, once more!!

The simple fact of waking up

Well another early morning and I was up long before anyone else, except for some small bird not some distance from my window who is quite gleefully and merrily singing his heart out oblivious to anything except his desire to sing. Perhaps the joy of having such a simple unfettered life was too much for him to contain and so he had to share it with the world, whatever his efforts have not gone unnoticed and I cannot help but smile and feel a lightness of heart. Sometimes i’m so tempted to do much the same and throw open my windows and shout ‘hello world I’m alive’ although i doubt my neighbours would thank me very much for it, more likely they would imagine i had gone quite mad and I would be the subject of discussion for the rest of the day.  I’ve come to find that something so simple as waking up in a morning was something i took for granted, indeed I confess to never having given it a passing thought until these recent months. Working in elderly care has perhaps altered my perception of life and mortality and made me aware of the fact that I may not, as I so naively used to announce, manage to live untainted by age and die in my own bed at the ripe old age of 103. I have no idea why I decided I was going to live to 103, as usual I expect it was some whimsical fancy of mine plucked from obscurity without any real thought behind it but now I find I’m daily faced with the stark reality of becoming older and can’t help but feel a certain trepidation that makes me certainly appreciate the golden years I’m living right now. So yes although i refrain from shouting this out loud, i cant help but want to say ‘hello world I’m alive’ 

my ipod and i

Well today as usual I’m out with my ipod walking along with Ron Pope singing merrily in my ears, quite happily jauntily going down the road. Suddenly I had one of those penny drops moments and it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t actually walking it was more of a half dance half walk with a bit of a wiggle in the middle. Well that did it, I gave a quick panicked look around checking that I didn’t actually know anyone and that Jeremy Beadle wasn’t over the road chortling GOTCHA before guiltily scuttling off. So I carry on walking and i’m quite happily mentally warbling along to Jason Mraz  when I realise the little wiggly dance walk is back. Now I have to sing mentally because in my head I sing like Adele and everyone is awestruck by my wonderful voice but in reality I sing like a strangled cat. I guess i’m fortunate that my ears work perfectly and I can actually hear the horrendous squawk that crawls reluctantly out of my mouth but i dread getting older because once I get just a little bit deaf I might forget to remember that i actually cant sing and I will suddenly believe i’m the reincarnation of Edith Piaf. So I’m happily doing my wiggle dance walk down the road and caught sight of myself in a shop window, okay so you know on a friday afternoon when you see mr ‘ive hit the pub early’  wandering all over the pavement , yes well add in a little wiggle and you have me.  They always say you should look in a mirror before you go out i think they should change that to amandas should look in a mirror while theyre still out!!