27 May 2009

Perfect Day

This morning I tried to sleep in, honestly I did, I mean I gritted my teeth in spite of my silly smile, and forced myself to luxuriate a little longer, but in the end I was just too excited.

I think I first woke at 4am.
Again at 5.30 , fifteen minutes before the alarm habitually goes off.
I was in that sunny, half giggly 'going to get up any minute' frame of mind by the time the music started and that allowed me to float through a whole hour of Radio 2, before the alarm switched to the 'last warning beeps' in the middle of a really quite interesting bit.
Even that couldn't dampen my mood.

At 9.30 this morning, after checking emails, catching up on Facebook and answering a few requests for advice on the Homeworking Forum (je suis Millysoo, un forum specialist, for my sins); I set off for town and spent nearly an hour with Paddy Range, the presenter of the Breakfast Show at Seahaven FM.

I was allowed to touch the buttons - to call up items using the music software, to drag and drop the jingles etc etc. I was allowed to sit in the big chair.

I realised just how much I'd absorbed from watching Tony Vanburger (thank you, Tony).

I realised its not actually that scary, or hard.

Afterward, I floated out of this pretty seaside town, through the one main road of shops, past the little war memorial with its perfectly coiffed lawn and immaculate flower beds and up the steepest hill, to my 'proper' work. I even got there early.

Sigh. Soooo happy.

On the way up that hill, past the pond and on into Millionaires Row where the smallest, most modest and unadapted properties have five bedrooms and a mere acre for a back yard, I saw a woodpecker.

I saw a woodpecker; my first ever, clear as day, as-near-as-a-streetlight woodpecker, half way up a tall, ancient, dead looking trunk, nestled safely in the middle of an otherwise sturdy, large and healthy tree.

It took me a moment to notice the perfectly circular holes, and another to realise that from one of those emanated the raucous, hungry complaints of a very boisterous, demanding and obviously thriving offspring.

I couldnt work out where, precisely, and mother made an ostentatious, langourous but flourishing exit around the foliage in, I presume, a bid to draw me away. I did the decent thing and walked on. The young squawked impatiently, regardless.

By this point in time it might assist the narrative for you to be absolutely certain that the childish delight I had worn thus far like a slightly goofy halo, was from that point on a solid, fixed grin on high beam, plastered right across my face.

I don't care who saw. I was tempted to engage a solitary gardener under false pretences, even when he was so deep in thought and rosemary alike, then a few doors down, to tap on the window of a van where a lone builder was enjoying deep thought and a sandwich.

I restrained myself; I know not how. Possibly by skipping slightly more than might be considered sane, if you were to see such an action performed by an overweight, middle-aged English woman in the tipping English rain.

It was, after all, all very, ... English.

25 May 2009

Funny Peculiar

You know that strange feeling when you put down heavy shopping bags and your arms want to float? The one you get as a new mum when 'he' pushed the pram off down the road and you end up trying to shove your hands into your jeans pockets just to stop feeling like something's missing?

That's me, today, because I failed to get hold of Tony and have ended up not going to the radio station for practice, for the first time in weeks and weeks.

I am in withdrawal, with a side-order of green-eyed jealousy and another of hollow-gutted regret.

I think I must be addicted.

On the plus side, however, I've cobbled together a button for my sidebar so I don't have to open another tab to the Seahaven website when I want to listen in - I can just click the button instead.

If you look one post down, I got carried away and tried to envisage my own Presenter's page, and how the home page banner will look when I'm on the air. I think maybe the headscarf could go.

Listening to Tony and learning from a distance, today. Yay for me.

You ain't seen this, right?


Got plans for this.


Muahahahaha

21 May 2009

It's All Gone A Bit Pete Tong

I don't even know if that 'it's' is supposed to have the apostrophe.

I see several glaring errors in yesterday's post, but to quote my own monstrous, pre-teen incarnation, 'Tough titties'.

I've just made myself SO LATE to walk daughter (12) to choir practice that I had to buy her a taxi ride and send her all on her own.

She's just phoned from someone else's mobile, or possibly the church phone - I forgot, its not 7.30 practice, its 8.00 special service.

Someone will bring her home.

When you find yourself walking through Hell, the important thing to remember is just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep going. Head for the exit.

The same is true of any five minute muddle, any 24 hour bad hair day, any month long astrological hiccup.

The clever thing is remembering where 'in front' is and not going round in circles instead.

To that end, sans visitors (which may be a blessing given current IQ of a house brick etc), today is another day, and I am posting to this blog today, because that is what I set out to do.

Even though it means I'll have to post here in Firefox and then re-open to edit in IE because I can't see pop-ups like the picture editor in this flaming browser and even though its been like that for MONTHS, I still went and forgot.

I don't care.

And yes, if that counts as two fingers up to the Universe, then my arm is out straight, my other hand is on my hip, and my head is cocked at a defiant angle. I wish I could spell a raspberry.

Bthhhhhhhhhhhh?

20 May 2009

Brain rattle

Too many thoughts.

I am realising that sometimes I failed to blog because I couldnt keep my mind still enough to pin down a single, suitable line of thought.

For example, potential blog posts since late yesterday have been:

Mercury retrograde and several funny/painful stories about how I guessed as much before going to the web to confirm it.

Trouble transferring bloglines et al to IE so that I can finally comment again on other blogs.

Two long mental rants on how transgender people and astrologers are positively promoted in the New Testament if you know where to look, and why can't pharisee-types stop telling us we haven't spiritually washed our souls if we haven't washed our hands, and we haven't done that either if we didn't go up past the elbow...

OK so that was THREE rants and now I feel like the Spanish Inquisition, and can I just come in again?

AND how, if it bugs me, it probably relates to me so I should go play specks and beams and maybe this is all my own lesson and not for anyone else and I should just shut up. Right.

Moving on...

The trip my mind went on, all by itself, wondering who I could possibly give this to for Christmas, without being accused of sarcasm.

The growing urge to completely remove and reinstall Firefox, whatever that does to my bookmarks (and no, some of those beauties are NOT going to get stored online in Delicious etc, tyvm, not even temporarily). My Firefox is so useless that I can't even see the pop-up that allows me to install a picture or two to break this up.

Two wonderful, fantastically people to add to my RSS feeds: Gretchen Little and Neil Fairbrother. I could have waffled a post's worth on either one.

The brilliant, brilliant community project called The Engine Room in Somerset (Bridgewater, specifically, I think). They have a protoblog but THIS brilliant Medialit video says it all.

Did foxes dig up my beloved (17 year old, recently dead) cat in the middle of the night and if so, how come there are no shreds of shroud-towel on the front lawn?

Should I even tell the kids, or should I just plant something in the hole, quick, even if I have to pull it up from somewhere else?

When burying beloved family pets in their favourite sunbathing / world-watching / dog-taunting spots, how deep is deep enough?

Did the binmen mistake him for something the local wildlife had ripped from the black plastic bag, and take him on a final journey this morning in the back of a big yellow lorry?

Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry. The big red lorry went over the hill. The big red lorry has pots and pans. Uh-uh, no Janet and John in my infant school world. No reading, much, either, because I was a late, much wished for child and taught to read before I got there. I did all the books in all the colours in year one, after causing an argument amongst staff as to whether I could really read the words or just had a photographic memory, or both.

I used to spend most of my lessons, aged four or five, sitting on the piano for being naughty, but then when you've done the task in the first five minutes and there's nothing left to do but hide the equipment and mess it up for everyone else, or sneak an extra milk carton not realising it mean Johnny slow-poke who was last to finish, wouldn't get one at all....

And that was an on-the-spot tangent, oops. I must practice forethought.

I must remember to remember to write that down somewhere.

Oh, OK, somewhere else.

I've found so, so many funny stories in the last couple of days, as I surfed for them deliberately to feed into Tony Vanburger's show, but I've never been near my own computer at the time. Tony's whole concept is to find a funny story, then find a song to go with it, all live on air. I could have put my own slant on each and every one of them on here in the safety of my blog, not least because in some instances (as is natural) Tony and I are diametric political opposites. I miss venting my own take, but where to start?

Sorry to anyone who has been listening out for me - the studio email account went silent yesterday (not even a word from the 'five emails per show' regulars, and we have a few of those,) so we had to do loads more research for ideas and had fewer conversation starters to spark off from. I just stayed in the background, researching, watching and learning. Thank heavens for David Evans who comes into the show on Tuesdays to advertise Nick's show, which follows. David and Tony have a whole 'guessing game' going on.

Here's one link I found that wasn't suitable radio fodder but is deliciously funny - commenters have got carried away with endorsing the magical and sexual powers of this t-shirt..... well worth a read; don't forget to look at the stuff in the right hand sidebar too.

And that's not half of it, but now I am nearly late for work (and rushing and messing up, can you tell?). Today for my first task I will dress up like an Elephant keeper at the zoo and scrub out the filthy, huge palladin bins with a long handled broom. Its not so bad unless its windy....

Then at 3pm, four hours later, I will leg it down to the studio and sit and watch an expert at work for three hours, 4 to 7, before walking back up the hill to home to sort out kids and homework and school uniform and tales of their day, and dinner, and bed.

Wonderful!

18 May 2009

Blogging from the Seahaven FM Studio

This is just a quicky because I haven't blogged today (or all weekend, for that matter) but I want to get back into the habit.

Good news! Darling Other Half couldn't quite see what I'd done to my Firefox at home to stop me being able to comment on other people's blogs, but he did manage to sort out the problem with IE instead, so as soon as I've transferred Bloglines back to the old swiss cheese, I'll be back in touch with precious friends like Zilla.

I'll pad that last statement into a list with links when I get home.

For now I'm sitting opposite this guy, big fuzzy red mic near my face, huge black cans on my head. Hooray for me!

16 May 2009

I give myself some very good advice

... but I very seldom follow it.

I am SO enthused, so fired up, so happy because of the whole radio learning curve thingummy that I've found a little of my old get up and go.

Walking from one end of town to the other no longer makes me feel like I'm wearing a Victorian diving suit and lead boots, in fact I can manage it three times a day. By necessity I am also a little more organised at home, as time is limited and more needs to be done in advance. The sight of the ironing board no longer makes my soul want to shrivel back into the 'safe corner' and window to another world otherwise known as my computer desk. Steady on, I'm no saint; sight of the pile to be pressed still does that, thank you; one step at a time.

Anyone who knows me under this identity, or any other where I may have briefly hidden, knows I have rarely if ever composed a blog post in advance or given it any real thought prior to letting the words tumble (my apologies to those who understand that only too well through the multiple update alerts, as I go back in to edit glaring spelling errors.)

It's odd to look back and realise that, in theory at least, that irresponsible, unfocused side of myself which meant I could never, ever manage to find a single style or subject for this blog and stick to it, may actually be an asset for radio. The important thing in that medium seems to be the ability to go with the flow, change tack, pick another subject and run with it, come out of left field, yada yada yada. The flightiness that makes bad copy in this realm may at least mean that I never dry up behind a microphone.

I am excited to the point of silly, can you tell?*

I tried to be professional, honestly I did, and I tried once or twice to follow other people's 'successful blog' guidelines, but all that did was make me look even sillier than usual, like trying to dress a rabbit in a business suit or a frilly apron.

The best advice in the world is to be yourself. Time I listened.

*Which reminds me of the time a few months ago when I went for a very important interview with the local Vicar (the local Reverend Canon, to be precise), as one of the last two in the running for a little secretarial job. You have to believe in divine intervention, because for the first time in two or three years I forgot to take my beta blocker that morning. I took the whole interview like a scary middle-aged Powerpuff girl on speed. Roger Rabbit and Taz couldn't have kept pace as I smiled (manically, I imagine) and chattered away, taking the conversation off on crazy tangents, all at breakneck speed - I could feel it - I could even see it in my dreams for days afterward in some stoned, slow-mo way like an out of body nightmare experience, but I couldn't stop the show. There's Aspergers syndrome in the family, but also ADHD. I used to be like that all the time. *Sigh*, I'd never really looked, before.

15 May 2009

So Where Were We?

So where were we?

Oh yeah.

I'd thrown the towel in on this blog twice in the last twelve months for fear of not getting a 'proper job' through being disadvantageously googled, and you've all gone away now and nobody's watching.

So that's alright, then.

I mean, I still can't get pop-ups to work on this computer since the all singin'-and-a-dancin' software briefly used to eliminate a virus also seemed to get rid of every DLL or spare thingummy-dooda that was standing around with its hands in its pockets or whistling. It was running on suss laws, I swear.

At this point in time I assume all my blog friends think I've waltzed off and left them, because I lurk but cannot comment, and fear to spout enthusiastic feedback in other locations such as Facebook in case people are running dual IDs and don't want the connection made in other minds. Somehow doing it by private email seems a bit creepy and stalker-ish.

Anyway, having established that I am currently talking to myself and you are not, in fact, there, I have to say that this also is OK because I am learning the ropes at Seahaven FM, the local radio station, with a view to eventually hosting my own slot.

There is an inordinate amount to learn, but the things I can do here on this blog are:
  • confirm that I am happy talking to myself on a regular basis
  • get (back) in the habit of finding new topics on a daily basis, and making a respectable stab at looking like I know what I'm talking about.
Right.