The Santa Special Steam Train, Alresford

http://www.watercressline.co.uk/Events/Santa

If you are looking for ways to entertain your children, this is quite magical. You go on the Watercressline steam trains which are all traditional and beautifully decorated with christmas decorations , along the train line between Alresford and Medstead. Along the way Father Christmas comes along with his helpers and gives all the children a present appropriate for their age... the kids love it, it's so exciting for them and that makes it magical for all the adults... a worthwhile experience.

Christmas!

It's Chriiistmassss! I can't quite beleive christmas has come around again, the year seems to go so fast. Looking forward to the christmas celebrations though and I love having the christmas tree up. I went with boyf to his christmas work do. It was cool apart from I'm never sure if I work my way through his colleagues like a social time bomb and there are always those akward moments when you get left with a couple who don't speak to you and you end up standing there like a lemon! Apart from that it was a right laugh!! I have high hopes for the new year too, it has got to be better than this year. I will be 33 next year and I think there are a few key things which would be nice to do. Hmmm I need to start writing my list!

Lake District Holiday!

People don't usually holiday in November but I have  to say if you are going to go anywhere, the Lakes is hard to beat. It is soo pituresque there, we stayed in a friends cottage in Coniston right at the foot of The Old Man of Coniston Mountain. It's a perfect location to get to Windermere, Ambleside, Hawkshead and all the other lovely places in the area. Here are some piccies:

 This is the view from the kitchen window in the cottage - little peter rabbit jumping around whilst making morning cup o' tea!

                               Lake Coniston on the walk to Brantwood House (John Ruskin's House)

                                                  A couple of Goons we saw along the way!

                                                                   Aww, snuggly sheepy...

            A misleading picture of Boyf lighting the fire in the cottage - I was mainly in charge of the fires! ha ha!

                                                          The Jumping Jenny Gondola

                          Boyf taking driving the motorboat that went at 1 mile per hour very seriously.
Things you do need to be aware of are that all the national trust places shut beginning of November and it is a lot quieter there as its out of tourist season but, there is still plenty to do. Brantwood House, the aquaruim at lakeside, Ambleside, Kendal and Sizergh castle are good choices.... we had a good laugh and getting back to the cottage in the evening and lighting a cosy fire is lovely too.

Sally Morgan tonight!

Going to see Psychic Sally at the hexagon tonight... totally intrigued to see what happens, she was accused of being a fake just recently in the papers but I have an open mind and having watched her show on TV I thought she was pretty convincing.

Feeling more positive

Starting to feel in a more positive frame of mind, life is shifting back on plan and it feels goooood. Thank goodness! Love Boyf. so much, and the family has been awsome too. We have booked a lovely cottage in Coniston in the lake district for the second week of November so Boyf and I are really looking forward to that. We travel there on Guyfawkes night so I'm sure there will be fireworks going on! It's a beautiful place so I know we will have a nice break and we can chill out for a few days. We can visit Windermere, Ambleside and all those lovely places, and hopefully Brantwood House where John Ruskin used to love will have fireworks on!

Tick, tick, tick. A few things ticked off the list....

Summer house painted. Tick. Garage Roof re-done. Tick. Getting the house tidier. Tick. Snakes cleaned out. Tick. Food shopping done. Tick. Ok so getting back in control a bit more. Still feeling very anxious but, getting there.... I think I know what makes me tired, it's the constant worrying, worrying about who you're letting down all the time. It may be Boyf or it may be a friend or it may be a family member but it's constant. Always I feel like I can't do enough.

Things are going fine...? Right, time to drop a right clanger.

Yes indeed. Life in Lottie land could not have been going better; Boyf has been talking about the marraige thing and even hints about having a family, so naturally I have been getting very excited about that. I know I am totally in love with Boyf and have been since the day I met him so this is very definitely feeling right. Hopefully for him to. So why oh why do I have to let my weird brain interfere and end up dropping a right clanger into our lives?? The long and the short of it is; I got a tattoo. Yes, a very permanent tattoo on my forearm, which says 'Hydrocortisone' and has a butterfly aswell. The problem with it is it is too big, it literally goes halfway up my arm and also I don't think I like the butterfly. It was a mad, crazy thing to do, it was like I was compelled to do it... I had wanted to get the word hydrocortisone but only very small underneath were I have the medical symbol tattooed. Somehow when I got into the tattoo shop it was like I had entered another dimension and the women who had a brain vanished and the loony, anything goes women appeared. When they placed the wording on my arm, I remember everything in my body said 'No, this is too big, it's wrong don't do it' I even said to them actually this isn't really what I was thinking I need to go away and think about this.... but somehow they kept trying to put it in different places and telling me they couldn't make the word any smaller because the font wouldn't work and it wouldn't be readable or look right. So, I started to think 'right so I have to have this, this is what it's going to be', but why? Why couldn't I have thought, 'no, it doesn't have to be this, I can say no, get out of here and maybe get some jewellery with my required words on'. That would have been the sane and sensible thing to do. Instead, I sat there and let the guy tattoo the word on me. This then snowballed into me also having a butterfly done, 'to make it look prettier'. Oh dear, it was like I was looking in on myself and watching this odd thing happening to me. I couldn't stop it and once he had started I thought I must let him finish because it will look odd if I leave and it's half done. I think shock hit my brain just before he was finishing it. It zapped through my brain like a train collision, I was looking out of the windows of my eyes onto the world and I almost couldn't take in what I had just done. When you see tattoos on other people you think about whether you like them or not and what perhaps they mean but you don't question whether they actually intended to get that tattoo done and how very permanent that marking is on them. Not until you have one yourself. This tattoo which, by the way, I am now going to have removed, cost me £75. It will now take over a year to remove by several different lasers and even then it possibly won't completely vanish. At least it will only be ghost marks and for me a healthy reminder to keep my feet firmly on the ground. I am going to a professional place in Goring called the Chilton Clinic, www.chilternmedical.co.uk they are very kind and friendly and will do everything they can to help sort me out. It will be expensive and painful, this is very clear. The lasers basically cook the ink in your arm so it breaks down into smaller particles so over a period of weeks (approx. 8 weeks) the ink breaks down and is re-dispersed into your body. This means several sessions of burning laser every 8 weeks until your undesired tattoo is removed. I cannot tell you the heartache and fear this incident has given me....and Boyf.....and my family. I feel blown out of the water, any confidence I had has flown away and has been replaced with this nervous, kind of wobbly feeling. Like I don't know myself anymore and I don't know my own body. However, I am not giving up. I am fighting back, looking at the positive side, it is getting sorted out, and Boyf is helping me. We are 'solid' - this is what he tells me, 'no matter what'. I have been to my doctor and I'm being referred for some CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), something which should have probably happened a long time ago ie. before the tattoo incident. I am very hopeful this will help. I am also volunteering at my friends charity Ostomy Lifestyle which I hope to do on a regular basis, so I'll be back in an office environment and kept busy and it's helping other people. I kind of feel like I need to do more than what I am doing. Although I still get tired, I think the more you do the better you feel and it gives you less time to dwell on your worries and fears.
What I wish for more than anything else in the world though is to finally marry Boyf. I love him so so much and I can't imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else. We have been together nearly two years which may not seem long to some and ages to others but at 32 and 36, I think its different. You know when you know. I just want to be the best I can for him and prove to him that I am worth it, that I am worth spending the rest of his life with me...... I better stop now, I'm getting emotional and thats not good, I've got to make the dinner in a bit and I need to concentrate otherwise it will be burnt offerings, also I have just remembered the washing finished about 2 hours ago and I still haven't got it out! I will forgive myself though, because with the help of my dutiful father I have managed to get the summer house painted. Granted Dad did most of it, which was amazing but I did manage to paint all the windows. I will post a piccie soon. Life can be sweet but it can be bitter too. It's learning how to make the bitterness into sweet thats important. Weirdly I think I almost feel better for having my mad trip, it has snapped me back into reality and although it was horrible and I mean severly horrible (couldn't eat, sleep or stop crying for two days) - I think I will come out of this better, a better person and I will be more determined to be something and do something. Or at least acheive something... watch this space.
PS. I will post a photo of my tattoo and forthcoming removal pictures so you can see what happens and how it fades.

Turkey time!

So I've been away for two weeks in Turkey and boyf spent a lot of it 'getting his cooook annnn' ie. getting brown. I however being chalk white to start with have come back slightly freckly and a lovely cream colour which is brown for me! It was gawgeous though and I loved swimming everyday, especially when we went out on boat trips. The sea was sooo warm, clear and bright turquoise blue; totally heavenly. There were loads of fish too, those long pipe fish, some black and white striped ones and silver ones - not very technical naming I know but hey ho! It was very salty too, so although it didn't taste too good it meant you were very boyant, handy, if you're a fatty.... We were in Ovacik between Fethiye and Hisoronu which is also near Olu Deniz (the St.Tropez of Turkey). I thoroughly recommend doing all the trips you can as they are sooo cheap, it was a maximum of about £16 each for a whole day out including a delicious BBQ lunch and door to door pick up/ drop off. The Dalayan River trip has to be experienced; you get on a pretty, long boat which takes you down the river until you reach a place where you have a clay mud bath - you get in and get sucked into the mud upto your thighs. It's funny caking each other in the mud and then you get out and bake! Once baked, a jump into the river to wash it off followed by a quick outdoor shower. Your skin feels amazing and then you get into a delicious steam bath and soak for 10mins. Its just a brilliant laugh! They then take you for lunch at a lovely riverside restaurant followed by the second part of the trip. Once on the boat again you sail to where the river meets the sea and off you get for an hour and half at turtle beach. At the right time of year you can see the baby turtles hatching but September is too late. However they did take us to where some fishermen were feeding a couple of Turtles a blue crab (their favourite apparently) and seeing them swim up to get it was just sooo magical and amazing, they are quite big but so graceful in the water! A definite highlight of the holiday.

                                                      We do love each other really! Ha ha ha!

                                                          Pretending to be Zombies!
 

Ahhh, all nice and clean.... Looking good!

A little jooshy makeover for me!

So I decided it was time for a change and needed to have a makeover. Luckily my excellent friend and best hairdresser in the world who not only cuts amazingly but is the best colourist this side of the ocean, did my hair makeover for me! Michelle works at the Rose Street Zappa's and she is lovely to boot. Here are some piccies of me before and after:

 I am really pleased and think it looks gaewwwgeous! Thanks Michelle!

Yet another Neuropsychologist appointment

My blog was down for a while so I have not been able to update about the latest on the medical front. Last month I went to see another neuropsychologist, this time in Oxford for a proper brain screening of sorts. I wanted to find out if there had been any damage done to my brain either by having meningitus after my surgery or from the surgery itself. It was a four hour appointment; first I met the psychologist and we discussed my medical history and then how I felt I was functioning on a daily or even overall basis. To me I feel like sometimes I am losing the plot because I can't concentrate, I get my words tangled up and I forget things. So I was then put through a series of tests; things like I would be told a story and I had to try and remember as much as possible and relay it back, repeating back series of numbers both forwards and backwards and pattern puzzles. It was actually really interesting. The result was that I am in fact still reasonably intelligent and performed well in my tasks and notably neatly! Some were even excellent. (Major surprise to me!) It is apparent however that because I get very tired, my brain can only perform at half speed during those times. Conclusion: I am a genius 50 % of the time and a tard the other 50%! Ha ha ha!

Craft Fair, Weyhill, Andover

So, I took part in a craft fair last Sunday.... in the work up to the date I felt myself getting nervous with the anticipation of putting my work out there into the public view, it was good getting creative and productive again and I enjoyed the feeling. So I make the arrangements with my friend B to get there as she has a stall too, and also to have some company on route so the fear of driving somewhere new doesn't get to me too much! We arrive on the Sunday morning nice and early without any hitches and set up stalls. I felt kind of excited and proud of my work. However the excitment wasn't going to last, unfortunately the day passed and only about 10 people came through the door! Otherwise it was just the stall members and their friends who popped in to say hello to them! I did however make one sale, with thanks to my good friend RB. So all was not lost. I was a bit sad though because the idea had been to also raise money for Ostomy Lifestyle and I don't think too much was made in that respect either. I think perhaps the venue was too out of the way for people and craft fairs need to be held in places convenient to the public otherwise they won't come.... oh well, I enjoyed the day and catching up with friends so I can't complain. Here is a piccie of me by my stall:

 

In need of some joooshing.....

I'm a bit bored at the moment. I need a little joosh.... I am thinking of changing my hair, It's time for some more blonde. Sometimes, you just don't want to be the same as everyone else, and a change of hair can give you a big boost. Also, if you can't afford to update your wardrobe, just changing your hair can make your clothes look different. However, I doubt that will mean I will stop shopping, after all I am a girl! Watch this space...... I will put before and after piccies up.....

A new exciting chapter could be opening up....Summer House Project.

OMG! My fabulous boyf has bought me a summer house..... it is going up in the back garden so I will be able to get in there and get busy with my artwork! I can't wait - a whole space to fill with creativity, finally I can express myself and make a mess without feeling guilty and taking up allll the space in the house. It is gorgeous:


I haven't decorated it yet, this is the brochure picture, but hopefully I will get it all nice. We are going to paint it in sort of Farrow and Ball national trustesque colours.... it will be my little escape hut! I'll be like the man going to his shed with pipe and slippers... heh heh heh...