Raecheybaby

I have discovered that the hardest thing about cold weather is that my bike starts to malfunction.

It’s as though it really is protesting being dragged out and starts to play at being a stationary exercise bike – not the best plan if I’m already late for work, as you can imagine!

It is tough though, the colder it is, the farther I have to walk to get to work, and the greater nasty mood I find myself having to calm down from when I get there or get home again.

Not a long post today, but I needed to share that!

I don’t have much to say, but Happy Christmas to Everyone and a blessed New Year to come.

We are busily dealing with gifts and frightened cats but I wanted to wish everyone the very best today.

Much love
Rachel

It’s nearly time! I’ve finished the Christmas cake off and baked off the mincepies.

I’ve been to Debenhams and bought a dress and shoes and worn them to the very last works Christmas do here (and fallen down the stairs!)

I’ve got a packing list of everything I’ll need to take to Dan’s starting with the cats going through clothes and ending with my share of the food and wine.

I feel a bit flat but i’m tired and I think I might be getting a bug. Only it really doesn’t matter because I’ve only got three and a half days to work and then I’m off for almost two weeks!

Bring it on, and in case I forget to blog again before Christmas arrives, Happy Christmas to you all.

I’ve recovered from my post holiday blues it would seem, my energy level is right up today, so much so that not only is the washing done, but I’ve moved the living room around the way I wanted to months ago.

I am enjoying this, because this mood/energy level thing isn’t that stable. Sometimes it will be good for weeks on end, other times it’ll be up and down more often than the FTSE100!

On a slight change of tack, the Grand Prix in Japan today has left me slightly stunned. Yesterday the practise and qualifying was like a demolition derby, almost a case of “lets see how many times we can hit the wall” Three red flags, lots of yellows, bad weather, you name it. Today someone on Twitter asked was it the same track. I wondered if we had the same drivers. It was like watching a Conga dance; a couple of grazes, only one car in the wall and one safety car. No race steward investigation calls, nothing!

I think it found it dissappointing because I was awake at 4am to watch the race live from Japan and found it if anything a bit boring! Nevertheless, I enjoyed chatting online with a lot of other F1 devotees and making fun of some drivers who shall remain nameless.

Sometimes I just think the world has gone utterly crazy, sometimes I know it has!

What has me shaking my head today is this news link I found on the BBC website this morning. Just what is the RMT union thinking? A two day strike at this kind of notice in the middle of the week?

Do they really not care how many people will not be able to get home from work or not get to work or – even worse – not make their flight for their holiday? I use the London Underground fairly infrequently, but when I do it’s because I have to get somewhere for a certain time. To be faced with a service that’s not operational because of strike action would make me incandescent with rage. I wish I was joking about that.

A group of my friends are meeting in London today for the first time, at least one of them has come from Europe for it, and now their meeting will now be completely marred by having to make sure they get the tube before the strike starts or trying to negotiate a crowded bus service during the evening.

*and breathe*

OK. All that said, I have Classic FM playing on the radio, and they are playing pretty tunes aimed at soothing the savage beast and I think it might just be working! I am not swearing at Oliver who has decided to pester me just as I sat down to eat, or the fact that my lunch didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to.

I do still need to think fast on what to eat later today, but thats not unusual for me. I’ll sort it, because I hate going hungry at work!

Overtired alert.

I think I’ve done too much recently. Things that are issues but are managable ones are becoming major crises that give me stomach cramps and make me cry.

I think this is just a short note that I’m going to be resting for a bit and spending a bit less time here this week.

My lifestyle has changed since I met Dan and while it’s no bad thing, I haven’t compensated for the fact that the days I used to keep for rest are now no longer as restful as they were. I travel a lot more and I’m getting up earlier on a daily basis, but not getting to bed earlier to compensate for that.

I think this weekend is about recalibration of my bodyclock. Housework can wait until I actually have the energy (now that I want to get it done!)

Take care everyone and don’t forget the sunlotion when you go out!

Monday was a nightmare. I know it’s now friday, but it’s taken this long for me to calm down and order things in my head to be able to talk about it; but again, so much happened and there was so much turmoil in my head that I need to write it down to make sense of it and also so I have a benchmark on how rough mondays can get!

Due to the heat all day sunday I didn’t get much sleep on sunday night. As a result I was tired before I even reached the train station. Ted dropped me off in Loncoln as usual, and I went in only to find that the train I would be getting on was stoppping at Newark Castle and I’d have to get the rail replacement coach to Nottingham and I’d probably not manage to get to Loughborough in time to get the train home, thus I would be late for work.

In addition, I got a call from work because there was a case of misplaced paperwork and it was possible I knew where it was. I didn’t, I had given it to someone else on friday and they’d misfiled it!

There was nothing for it but to get on with it, but I was already tense. I was fretting about how to get to work and whether I’d be on time, and in addition worrying about the paperwork that was lost, even though I was sure it wasn’t me that had moved it. There wasn’t a chance to call Dan either, since monday is one of the days when he works at the same company as his mother.

There was a great deal of incompetence going on at the station where we had to get off and go on to the coach, and I could feel the minutes slipping by. I knew which coach we had to get on and the organiser kept umming and ahhing and generally being a bit of an idiot, but we got on the coach eventually and got under way. On arrival in Nottingham things actually started to look up. The train to Loughborough and/or Bedford was one and the same and at the platform. I even managed to get my prebooked seat, not bad at all. So I did get back to Bedford without incident and got a taxi home as I had originally decided.

I got in, sorted food and drink and got ready to leave for work. Then the next disaster struck. I locked the house, went to unlock the bike and found that some impoverished person had made off with the saddle for my bike. Call me naive and trusting, but I always understood that locking your bike to a wall right outside your home meant it would be safe. Not so, it would seem; you have to cement everything down, even in a low crime area! I called the bike shop to try and get a replacement saddle but there was no answer, so I had to cycle in sitting on the luggage rack!

I am not normally a person to swear my head off, but you can imagine the way my feelings were going being tired and dealing with what felt like a war against me having a good day.

Fortunately the rest of the day wasn’t too bad. Mostly it was difficult simply because I was already tired and tense from the previous mishaps but work itself wasn’t actually bad in itself. Micheal, the star of the day, borrowed a saddle and seatpost off an abandoned bike at work and set it on my bike so I’d be able to get around until I could get one that fitted properly.

Overall, It was a real mixed bag of a day, it did get better, but it was thoroughly marred by the early mishaps and the tiredness from trying to sleep in the heat. Here’s hoping I can avoid another day like it for a while!

Last weekend was so busy, so full of highs and lows, I need to blog it just to try and make sense of it!

I’m not kidding about the title, there was more going on in it than an episode of a soap opera. I might just be able to blog it in one post, we’ll see.

Saturday started in grand style. It was the funeral of Noel Stanton. I didn’t miss any busses getting there, which is really something for me, but a poor old gentleman on the way got overbalanced trying to ring for the bus to stop and actually getting off it, so between the bus driver and some of the passengers, we took about 10 or 15 minutes to get him back on his feet and walked home.

I then went into Sainsbury’s for some food and bits for later – and left my overnight case there once I’d paid for and bagged up all my stuff, but didn’t notice until I came to pay for something in The Body Shop and mum rang me in the middle. Needless to say I was a bit tired and rather flustered before I even got to the funeral.

The funeral was very much a history-making event. It was held at the Northampton Jesus Centre and was packed out. I managed to get into the main auditorium, but I’m certain there were people who had to sit out in on of the overflow room and watch a video link. I didn’t get a seat, I had to sit/kneel/stand in a walkway area. Gerald Coates (edit: actually it was Roger Forster!), a long-time friend of Noel and a friend of the Jesus Army too, gave a message and a reading from the Bible.

There was a video containing photos and videos of Noel running from early life, his time in the Navy, ordination, early days at Bugbrooke Chapel and going on right up to the last addresses he made to the Jesus Army just before and at Easter. Kelly, Shaun and Danny gave tributes of their own. They spoke of how Noel had believed in them, pushed them on, been there for them, seen God in the most unlikely people and actions.

We sang 9 songs of Noel’s own choosing, and at his request there was very little evidence of black. He wanted a celebration, and I believe we managed to do him proud. There was a lot of laughter throughout. That may sound odd given that we were at a funeral, but it was good and right. I suppose it might be more fitting to say it was a service of thanksgiving for the life of a man who had served God until God called him home. As you might expect, there were tears at the end when the coffin was carried out by the young men who Noel had regarded as his sons.

I chose not to go to the committal. It was enough for me to say goodbye to him at the Jesus Centre.

The “fun” restarted as I left the Jesus Centre. I walked to the train station in baking heat pulling all my luggage, bought my ticket and made it to the platform just in time to catch the train. Great. Except the train was quite a long one and I got on about halfway along. I was a little surprised that the train didn’t pull out immediately, and was stunned to learn when the train was 10 minutes late that only the front section was going where I needed to go and it had already left. I had to go to Birmingham and then change and get to Nottingham via Derby, and I was an hour late getting to Nottingham. Dan and his dad waited patiently for me to arrive and then find a toilet. By the time I arrived in Nottingham I’d drunk 4 litres of various drinks due to the heat, but the toilet on the train was broken, so I was in great discomfort by the time I arrived!

After all that, Ted and Dee (and Dan, before he panics!) were lovely to me, listening to all that had happened and feeding me wine and tasty food. Watching TV was abandoned in favour of going pretty much straight to bed.

I need to talk about someone special.

His name is Dan. He kind of stumbled into my life via Twitter one day a few weeks ago, and since then my life has changed completely. I think what scared me a little to start with is how many common interests we share, obviously that has long changed!

I’ve got to know a man who makes me feel good about myself even when I’m so tired that I cry when I’ve spilled coffee on my clean jeans, who sends a text message that makes me smile “just because”, who lets me sleep even though he would really prefer that I stay awake so we can talk on the phone, and doesn’t sulk when I fall asleep while he’s on the phone to me. He is a man of many interests.

He is a self-confessed geek with a love for earl grey tea and Formula 1 racing. He likes music in most of it’s forms. He lives in a village for heaven’s sake, and has no desire to live in a town! He enjoys cooking and garden watching and watching intelligent humour. We also both have long term health conditions.

We aren’t identical twins though, he loves films where I love books, and I can understand simple technology that on occasion defeats him (makes me feel great to teach him about something!)

He has changed me. I have been told repeatedly at work and home that I’m happier and that I function better as a person. He makes me feel complete in a way I haven’t felt complete in longer than I can remember.

I told my family about him last weekend, once we’d been getting to know each other for about a month, and now there are plans for us to arrange a meet up. Mum already likes him and she’s not met him face to face yet!

Monday.

It’s always an interesting day when it comes to bank holiday weekends that involve a large marquee and huge numbers of people. 95% of those people are really tired from long days at the tent and dealing with crowds they don’t normally face. Friends getting irritable is pretty much par for the course on mondays, but it’s still worth being there if I can.

Big downside to things, I have 2 mobile phones, and both of them ran out of power just after breakfast this morning. Given that I was camping, I’d decided not to bring chargers as I didn’t want to leave the phones where I might lose them.

No doubt about it I was tired. 3 days later, I’m still tired! I got up at 7am having managed to tune out the dawn chorus – I was surpised I managed that so quickly – and packed up the tent before breakfast. No cooked breakfast today, that only arrives on sunday.

Flasks, cakes, rolls and flowers and back up to the tent – but we’ve forgotten to pick up Mavis, so back into Daventry to collect Mavis and arrive just 10 minutes before the start of the session. Thank heavens for the carload of event team people who went an hour ago and saved some seats really!

As is usual for a monday, this particular session pulled together the various threads of all the other sessions and put them into order for us, as well as having time for people to stand and speak of how the weekend had gone. There is also rather less in the way of singing on a monday, to allow time for this.

This weekend has focussed rather a lot on Noel’s passing, but I think that was right, and only to be expected. He led the church for 40 years, and he was loved by a great many people, and was the catalyst for change in many people’s lives.

We’ve sung a lot of songs that he wrote, or particularly liked or that he had requested in his will for his funeral. According to my Dad, he had set out much of the content of the bank holiday not long before his final crisis and surgery. It all felt very special, and was indeed a celebration.

As the end of the main session, as people picked up their things and headed out to their cars for coffee and cake and home, my family picked up the flowers from the garden and went to visit John and Grandma Win’s graves. The burial ground is a place of peace. Some might think it a little morbid, but I find it a place of rest rather than a scary place full of dead bodies. It’s the resting place for the bodies of people who were dearly loved, and on saturday another dearly loved person will rest there and give me greater reason to visit in August.

After visiting the graves we (mum, dad, David, Paul, me) climbed in the car to go to my house for a dinner and a break, but it was hot, and we didn’t have much to drink, so we stopped off at a Tesco that we don’t normally go to for some cold drinks. Then we missed a turn coming out of Tesco and got disorientated. We ended up going part way to Milton Keynes before finding the turn for Bedford. It was also noted by myself that when 5 big people need to go somewhere by car, its a good thing to have a people carrier rather than an astra size car!

We reached my house and promptly cooked dinner having sent Dad off to my room to chill with a Planet Earth DVD. To explain, Dad got really grumpy on the way back, partly because he was tired and partly because Paul acted up to him. Mum settled with a book, David helped me cook and Paul sat ignoring all of us with his laptop.

Once everyone was rested and fed the conversation returned to the normal banter. This is one of my favourite parts of a bank holiday weekend, the chance to chill with my family and chat about anything and everything. On kicking out time, everything was slightly delayed due to dad hoping he could steal my Planet Earth DVDs (he was already borrowing my British Isles Natural History set) and mum hoping she could nick one of my books! The DVDs did stay with me, but the book is on loan for a week…

Anyway, that’s my bank holiday for you. I know the posts have been really long, but I didn’t know how to make them any shorter and still be able to capture the essence of what went on. I do find these bank holidays special times; and this one was particularly special.