All Is Grace

I really didn't mean to read it all in one sitting, honest, that wasn't my intention, but I just couldn't put it down.

It's definitely one to go on the savoury list though.

I'm a big fan of grace.  But I don't always accept it for myself.  Or practice it on others.  But I know it's important.  I know it has the potential to be big and  life transforming and I really should spend some time thinking about this a bit more.

SERIOUSLY

IN NEED OF

SOME

LIGHT

RELIEF 

or

chocolate 

A Night to Remember - Naomi Smith

Becky and her friends organised a gig night at the O2 in Sheffield.  The event was to raise money for P.A.C.T. (Parent's Association of Children with Tumours and Leukaemia).  They did an absolutely brilliant job of organising the evening and raised over £900 for the charity, on top of paying for the venue (which they got at a reduced price, thank you O2!!).

There were 4 solo acoustic artists and 3 bands, who were all really, really good, and over 150 came through the door on the night. 

Huge success and I'm extremely proud of Becky for pulling this off.

And relax!!!!

Keeper - Andrea Gillies

I've just finished reading this.  It's a true story, taken from Andrea's diaries, of caring for her mother-in-law, Nancy who has the mid-stages of Alzheimer's Disease.  It's heart wrenching and you feel for both Nancy and Andrea as they struggle to manage the illness from their own perspectives.

From Amazon:   Can our personalities be taken away from us? Are we more than just the sum of our memories? What exactly is the soul?

Three years ago, Andrea Gillies, a writer and mother of three, took on the care of her mother-in-law Nancy, who was in the middle stages of Alzheimer's disease. This newly extended family moved to a big Victorian house on a headland in the far, far north of Scotland, where the author failed to write a novel and Nancy, her disease accelerated by change, began to move out of the rational world and into dementia's alternative reality.


This book is a journal of life in this wild location, in which Gillies tracks Nancy's unravelling grasp on everything that we think of as ordinary, and interweaves her own brilliantly cogent investigations into the way Alzheimer's works. For the family at the centre of this drama, the learning curve was steeper and more interesting than anyone could have imagined.

Almost Finished!

Here we go with the first photos of the new bathroom.  I think it was worth waiting for! 

Lush bath with a glass of wine tonight methinks!

 

Gordon our Gekko - he's topical right now.

 

No more radiator to paint!

Facebook

Hello, my name is Pauline and I'm a Facebook addict.

As much as I'd like to think I'm in control of things in my life,  I'm not. I have spent way too much time on the internet and especially  Facebook more recently than is good for me.  

The recent confusing changes to the Facebook system have  caused me to look at how much time I spend on there and how useful it really is.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great thing, used in moderation and most of you who know me well will know that I've been a huge supporter of it in the past.  

But.

The downside is that it's easy just to spend hour after hour reading update after update and posting mintiae about myself whilst not really serving a useful purpose.  I have done this.  I admit it.

I don't think many of my relationships are any better because of it, in fact I'd go so far as to say that most have suffered because of it.  Yes, you can keep in contact with folks more readily, but not on any deep or meaningful level.  Anyone with an iota of sense won't post anything of a sensitive nature on there, which leaves it all a bit happy clappy doesn't it.   Unless you're pissed, when all sorts of things are liable to come tumbling out.  Before I would keep in touch with valued friends by email or telephone, these rarely happen now as we use Facebook to reassure ourselves that everything must be well in our friends world because they're still posting on FB.

I was brought up short whilst driving through the outer suburbs of Sheffield the other week. Adverts on buses and wall hoardings now have the big blue 'F' sign all over them. It seems that everyone and everything has to be connected to  Facebook. It's become like the Matrix.  And I don't like that.  I'm always suspicious of monopolies, and Facebook really is becoming all pervasive.  I'm just waiting for my local GP surgery to start a page. It'll happen before too long.  It's crazy mad and I don't like it.

So time to disconnect from the Matrix and find some more meaningful ways of keeping in touch with folks.  

Mashups

Can't help posting these everywhere.

Enjoy.

Busking

Well, it's that time again when we had to take Jenny off down the road to University.  It was quite an eventful day.  We took her bike down for the first time this year, so Simon and Jenny went off for a ride up to the William Gates building, to time how long it will take her.  I wandered off into the centre of Cambridge looking for an A level Biology book for Becky and passed this little chap doing a bit of busking. In a bin.  Hilarious.

A little later on, whilst on the way to Tescos to get some supplies to make sure Jenny eats something substantial this week at least, we passed Stephen Hawking out in his chair, taking some sun or more likely heading off to work.  He's the Director of Research for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge Uni and we think he lives in the area also. 

I wasn't quite so emotional leaving Jenny this time.  She has a year under her belt and is no longer the newby - although it still tugged at the heartstrings when we left.