Declined

I got up early this morning and got ready for another appointment with the nurse, for even more B12. Which I think I'm starting to get used to, although it's pretty damn sore afterwards.
I told the nurse I was heading off for more needle action at lunchtime and a new tattoo, she screwed up her face and said "whatever for?" I'm guessing she's not too fond of tattoos.

So, around lunchtime I collected Harriet who was going to accompany me for the inking.

We strolled in and heard the telltale sound of the machine tattooing someone in the back room.

He called my name and strolled out to speak to me.

I was declined.

He said my design was too complicated.

I suppressed a sniffle.

It was in the concentric circles apparently.

He'd tried to trace them and just couldn't get them exactly right, so was worried that once it came to doing it on my actual skin with that permanent needle he wouldn't do a good job.

Which is fine really. I'd rather he were confident about it than have a go and I end up with a horrid mess that I can't exactly wash off.

I asked for a little of his time to discuss some other work I have in mind, so once he'd finished up the tattoo he was working on, he came and chatted to me.

For nearly an hour!

I have some weird plans, but they've been lingering in my mind for a while now and he really understood what I wanted and was keen to get it exactly right.

I have a new appointment for next week and this time I'm guaranteed to come away with some new ink.

Oooh, seeing as you won't be seeing this on my person, want to see the design that caused the troubles? Here it is:

Man in the maze. The way I understand it is that life is not unlike a maze, sometimes you hit a dead end, sometimes you have to find a new way, but the moral is that if you keep on going, you'll reach your destination and where you're supposed to be. I like that. We've all hit a dead end or two. (Or two dozen). Maybe I'll find a new maze design.... I hadn't thought of that before.... now there's a plan....

Growing & Walking

I decided that it was finally time to address the chaos that is my garage yesterday and also the chaos that is my garden. I plainly woke up feeling industrious and it had nothing to do with finishing the book I so deeply love. (Well maybe I was avoiding finishing it just a little, I couldn't bear for it to be over.)
Anyway, as I flailed with a trowel on my hands and knees a neighbour sauntered past and asked if I was getting some early veg in.
No, some late bulbs.
He then asked if I'd heard about the allotments they were creating in my village.
No I bloody hadn't! Ten half plots!
Is it weird that I am unnaturally excited by this?
I'm ringing first thing in the morning to get my name down for one of those wee plots so please, pretty please all keep your fingers crossed!

Also, last week I became aware of this awesome website: landshare.
What a brilliant idea. If you own a good plot of land, let someone grow veg on it and the rental for which will be produce. If you don't have any land, put your name down to please borrow some of someone elses.

If I'm not able to get one of the plots in the village and my landlord is iffy about my digging up some of my lawn then this is the perfect solution!

Anyway, on another note, my friend Rachael and I went out for a walk today. We joined up with the Young Ramblers for what, Rachael assured me, was going to be an amble. After the first few hundred metres I knew I was in trouble. I simply couldn't keep up to their pace.
I'm only a scratch over 5 feet and have particularly stumpy legs.
It was also incredibly wet and muddy. By the end of the walk the mud was literally to my knees. Partly due to the sudden immersion of my left leg in a mud patch that was much deeper than it appeared. That mud patch also had ideas about my boot and tried desperately to wrench it from my foot. But it was foiled, not only had I laced my boots so tight that my toes felt a little numb, it was also impossible to remove - which by the way, was much less funny when I actually wanted to remove them when I got home.
And which meant I also had to drop my jeans in my conservatory.
Which is immediately next to the footpath. And road.
Quite how I managed not to indecently flash anyone is the product of pure luck. Their luck, not mine.
Anyway, I jump ahead.
I'm stumpy and squat as we've mentioned, I am not built for speed, I'm just not. The combination of big boobs and stumpy legs just doesn't equate to an aerodynamic shape.
As evidenced the last time I ran for a bus. Which is still mentioned. Despite the fact that my boyfriend at the time has been happily married to his wife for some years now - which happened after we broke up - just for clarification!
He still mentions my selfless act, as I lay, bleeding (not broken thankfully) and I looked up at him, knowing he would be late for work and said "Go, Leave me here."
Had he actually done that, I'm not entirely sure what I'd have done. He didn't though, he helped me limp my way back to his house as I sniffled.
Anyway, there were a lot of people on that bus that would be happy to testify I am not built for speed. Although I am built for a comfortable landing. Which is lucky really.

Goodness I'm in a world of digression today.
I told Rachael that was my first and last excursion with the young ramblers. I clearly need to be in the OAP group. Which is fine by me. I feel like I'm ageing too fast anyway.

Harriet has started drinking Apple Cider Vinegar as it's said to be good for you, possibly a little anti-ageing, maybe I need to try that too.

Yesterday evening I finally gave in and finished my book: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I don't understand how the building of a cathedral can be so completely absorbing. It must be the way he built the characters, you come to care for them or hate them, at times I found myself willing some of them to be killed. When literature can inspire that kind of feeling I think you have a skilled author. I know this is outside his usual realm of writing and I'm pleased he went for it.
I first heard about the book on Oprah and she raved about it so much, she went on to interview Ken Follett and he talked about how he'd wanted to write the book for years but that his publishers weren't really interested.
I can't even begin to explain how awesome this book is. I wanted to do nothing but read it, whilst also wanting it to never end.
At one point in the book he skips a period of years and I felt like I wanted to hear about every mundane thing that happened to those characters in that time.
I found myself completely absorbed by this tale of the Middle Ages, how they behaved, how they ate and drank. It was absolutely fascinating.
I want everyone to read it, because having read it feels like one of the best gifts I ever had.

Chivalry?

I was in my local small supermarket the other day. I had just a few items in my wee basket and I headed for the inevitable queue. As I neared the end of it, a young lad arrived at the same time with, I assume, his grandfather.
The young lad, who was no more than 10, stepped to one side, allowing me to go in front of him.
I grinned, said thank you and waited.
Then I heard "what did you do that for?" from the grandfather.
"I let the lady go first" said the little boy.
At which the grandfather let out a very loud exasperated sigh and said "For goodness sakes, next time just stay where you are in the queue!"

It's good to see that the children of our future have such exemplary role models.

I would also like you all to be very proud of me for biting my lip. And my tongue. And possibly inserting my fist into my mouth to prevent me from speaking and loudly berating the unchivalrous grandfather.

By the way, I cannot insert my fist wholly into my mouth. I had a friend once, LaLa (which was not her name - her parents were much kinder than that) but she could get her whole fist into her mouth. Apart from the day she dropped a window on her hand, then her fingers resembled sausages and didn't even nearly begin to make a fist, let alone fit in her mouth.
In fact as I recall, she and I were covering reception, she sat there with her sausage hand and I slid about merrily on my wheeled office chair, momentarily forgetting that there was a gap in the carpet tiles. I was sliding at speed when one wheel hit that gap, the chair came to a sudden, abrupt halt and catapulted me onto the floor.
I'm a picture of grace and elegance.

Books, Books, Books

A friend of mine was talking to me about the list of essential reads that's doing the rounds at the moment, I hadn't seen it so he sent it on to me and I thought I'd put it here as I do so love to read and I'm curious about everyone else's opinion of it.

The ones I've read are in bold and the ones in italics are on the shelf waiting to be read!

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (the first part is on the shelf!)
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

So here's my questions; there are a lot of duplications on there to my mind, in fact I counted and if we were to just select a single novel by each author, there'd be 25 spaces in that list. I realise it's almost impossible to choose which one to keep, but my question here is, if there were 25 empty spaces, what would fill them?
I really think that The Reader by Bernhard Schlink should be there. I love that book and will be avoiding the movie as I'm not sure that it can live up to my imagination, no matter how great the actors involved.
I also wish that Iain Banks, Jeanette Winterson and Margaret Atwood were featured somewhere in the list.
Who else is missing? Which books did you look for and were surprised not to see in the list?

Another question; of the books that I haven't changed to bold or italics, which should I absolutely be placing on my nightstand and preparing to read?

And another question, are there any in the list that you've read and hated? Are there any that you feel really don't deserve a place?

I do have to say that I am absolutely loving reading The Pillars of the Earth, it's just brilliant, excellent, wonderful. I'm on the edge of my seat at times and was almost in tears earlier whilst completely engaged in the story.
If you get chance, pick it up and read it, you can thank me later!

UPDATE: 24.01.09 Finished The Pillars Of The Earth. Awesome. That's all I have. I want to read it again and I am deeply envious of everyone that hasn't read it. I even went to the Oprah site to do the quizzes on the book. Shut up. I'm addicted.

UPDATE: 22.05.09 Finished (11) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, (13) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, (37) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute and have started Anna Karenina!

UPDATE: 15.08.09
I got a new list of books after the lovely Sleepydumpling mentioned it on Twitter.
So here goes:

01 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
02 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
03 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
04 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
05 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
06 The Bible
07 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
08 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
09 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I had a count up. In the first list I've read 37 and in the second I've read 38 of the books. I also counted that the two lists share 62 of the same titles.
I have similar niggles to the first list that some authors make repeat showings, well Dickens does but hey ho and also that both The complete works of Shakespeare and Hamlet feature. Surely the first encompasses the second?

I do love that the second list has The Wasp Factory, The Time Traveller's Wife, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Notes From a Small Island as I do so love those books!

Song Of The Week XXXXV

I've seen these guys live a few times and they're just such good fun, it's like a comedy show as well as a gig.
Seek them out... they're great, honest!

The Handsome Family - The Bottomless Hole:

Flipped

By the way, the temperatures here are around freezing at the moment, hovering around that little minus symbol, so why, why, why did I see a woman wearing flip flops today?
I need to know!
We're wearing scarves and gloves, what about those poor toes?
Does she not value them?
Does she think blue is a pretty colour for skin?
Crazy lady.
From the ankle up she looked so normal too.

Song Of The Week XXXXIV

I was being organised today. I got up, I did my chores, I spent a few hours out at my barn having a sort out. I knew it was going to be heavy work so, despite the freezing temperatures, I left my coat at home. After moving box after box after box I headed home again, unlocked the front door into my conservatory and went to open the main door into the house.
The handle failed.
It failed miserably.
I was stuck in my conservatory.
That handle has been iffy for a while but it's only ever failed from the other side, the side where I can repair it.
Now I was stuck the wrong side. Mifford and I looked at each other through the window.
I kept turning the handle but no joy. It was kaput.
I rang my rental agency, they found me a locksmith. It was about 12.30pm and they said he'd be there between 3 & 4. So, the choice was either sit in a conservatory with no heating or head out for a bit.
I headed out, I met Harriet, we ordered a little lunch.
My phone rang, alerting me to the fact the locksmith was at my house.
Of course he was.
So, I dashed home.
I got stuck by not one, but two trains when the level crossing gates dropped.
The level crossing in Lincoln is an abomination. It's on the High Street, it stops the entire centre of town. For every train. It's a work of genius.
I finally make it out of town and am stuck behind someone who reads the 60mph sign as 40mph and dawdles frustratingly in front of me. I mutter (scream) choice swear words - I keep favourites for just such occasions.
I finally make it to my wee village and there sits Mr Locksmith, I run, I apologise. He is apparently unconcerned.
As I pull out my keys to unlock the front door he says "I wouldn't worry about that door". I don't really listen and promptly unlock my front door. Only it's then locked.
Turns out, he got a little bored waiting and let himself in. Figured he didn't really need a key so might as well fix it instead of waiting for me to get home.
Instead of being concerned by this am instead extremely pleased that the house is very tidy and his first impression would have been that I am very clean and tidy person! Ha!
I did however ask how long it took him to break in.
Apparently it took 20 minutes, which surprised me, I had totally imagined Mission Impossible timeframes and it taking just seconds. Am very proud of front door and its ability to hold unwanted visitors at bay for so long (whilst realising and ignoring fact that real burglar more likely to just give it a good kicking).

Anyway, I'm finally getting round to this weeks song.
I'm in a really happy mood at the moment so I'm going with something that just really makes me happy.
Oh and, for good measure, I'm sure it's obvious I'm a fickle creature with many a Celebrity Crush, there's another one of them on here. Oh and I was there for this too! Bloody brilliant!

Shooglenifty - Tammienorrie:

So, my Celebrity Crush? That would be Angus. See the dude with the fiddle and serious beard? Yeah, him.
I stood at this festival with Harriet, she turned to me and said "Is it weird that I fancy him?" No, it's not, not to me anyway. Oh and he's really sweet too, signed my CD and everything at a different gig, even though I'd clearly danced like a lunatic right in front of him. At a seated gig. Well there were like a dozen of us that got up, I was in lunatic company.