Funding for Research Required

2 weeks ago, Cambridge University Researchers announced that sheep are able to recognise human faces.

To prove this point, eight female Welsh Mountain sheep were trained to distinguish 4 celebrity faces from pictures of non-celebrity people, using food pellets as a reward.

The researchers say it “might be interesting in the future to investigate whether sheep can identify different expressions on human faces” and that this work “might even have implications for learning about neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s”. I have to confess that I was so bored at this point that I didn’t even bother to research as to why this study would have any bearing on Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease.

How on earth did Cambridge University get funding for this research?

I could have told them that sheep can tell one human from another with a bit of practice. In fact, if you were to send someone into their field with a feed bag, they would come running without even checking to see if they recognised the face or not.

A few years ago in Horse and hound magazine there was an article about an equine research project in America. A group of persons obviously had access to some kind of funding and had 12 pure bred Arab horses in their yard. They exercised all 12 in exactly the same way, for the same length of time each day. And every day after the horses had been exercised, 6 of them went through a set of stretching exercises.

You will never believe what they discovered after 4 weeks of this regime.

They discovered that the 6 horses that had been doing the stretching after their work had only gone and built up more muscle that their non-stretching counterparts.

If I asked Britney (Not her real name) what she thought the outcome would be after this 4 week long bonkers study, I’m 105% certain that even she would have guessed the end result.

When I go outside to my stable at stupid o’ clock in the morning and am wearing my high visibility jacket that I ride in, my horse stands still and looks at me. If I venture outside into the gloom wearing my other scruffy coat that is dark in colour and smells faintly horsey, my horse begins to chew and moves across the stable to his feed manger. And why is this? Is Wet Dishcloth Horse super intelligent? No. Wet Dishcloth horse knows that if I don’t have my riding jacket on, he is going to get his breakfast as we are not going to cavort around the countryside in the dark.

This made me wonder what kind of research I could get funding for. What about some form of remuneration to discover if clothing fades and goes bobbly the more times you wash it? Or I could research how fat I will get if I lie on the sofa every day for a month, eating chocolates and watching daytime television.

The possibilities are endless. I could see how full of rubbish my car becomes if I don’t ever clean it out, how full of ash the log burner gets if I burn 2 baskets of logs every day and how many strange looks I get from my Mummy friends if I do the school run in my pyjamas.

I could check how effective Northumbria Police are by seeing how many times I get arrested for shoplifting and if I drive my car without a valid MOT I would find out if the DVLA are keeping their databases up to date.

I could park on double yellow lines to see if the bastard Traffic Warden is still the Son of Satan and I could check if Britney’s school is dealing with truanting children correctly by keeping her off school for 2 days every week.

How do I apply for funding for my research? Who do I write to?

The article about the celebrity-recognising-Sheep was on the BBC website and handily there was a link to the Royal Society for Open Science.

I actually started to read about how chickens can hear better if they open their beaks. I was a bit horrified to hear that they had been frozen prior to this experiment and then I realised that they were already dead. But as they had been supplied for the trial by a chicken farm down the road, they hadn’t been killed just for the sake of the experiment, but their plump bodies had already been turned into chicken nuggets ensuring that there was no waste. I also read about the long term effects of outdoor aesthetic lights had on bats in churches. Yes, you’ll never believe it, but enormous spotlights illuminating the outside of a church have a detrimental effect on bats. Who would have thought it? A creature that comes out at dusk being put off by bright lights. Truly unbelievable.

I also read about whether dogs are red-green colour blind. The scientists in this research showed them pictures of cats in different colours to reach a conclusion. What if several of the dog guinea pigs in question liked cats? They might have a completely false reading and the whole thing should be null and void.

One study that was total and utter bollocks was Why do horseflies need polarization vision for host detection? Polarization helps tabanid flies to select sunlit dark host animals from the dark patches of the visual environment

Despite the fact that I didn’t even understand the title, I know this to be rubbish because horseflies are evil and will bite absolutely anything. I once got bitten on the back of my hand when I was sitting on a dark brown horse and the next day my hand looked as though it had been inflated with a bicycle pump.

Another study that caught my eye was Living with own or husband's mother in the household is associated with lower number of children: a cross-cultural analysis.

I could have told them that. Surely living with your Mother of Mother in Law could be classed as the best contraceptive known to man. (Or woman.)

So after trawling the website of the Royal Society for Open Science I lost all hope that I would secure funding for any of my studies.

Clearly, every single mad and crazy type of research has already been undertaken.

Darn it.

The "C" Word

On the way home from school the other day, Britney (Not her real name) informed me that her teacher was now allowing her to use the “C” word in class.

I nearly crashed the car.

Once I had regained control and my seatbelt had released itself, I cleared my throat and asked Britney if she could clarify exactly what she meant.

“We’re allowed to say Christmas now it’s past bonfire night.” she replied.

Once we arrived home and I had poured a gin and tonic and blown into a paper bag for several minutes, I looked online to see if there was any clue as to when John Lewis would be releasing their Christmas Advert. This is because in my eyes, this marks the beginning of the official festive build up. I knew it had to be in the near future because it was November and that very morning the cat had been doing his best to emulate last year’s offering by doing his wall of death routine on Britney’s trampoline.

I found that John Lewis had released a teaser for their advert but no-one was keen to actually accept it was real after being fooled in 2016 by an A Level Student and a piece of his CGI coursework. But as luck would have it the release of the advert was imminent and I watched it via a link on Twitter the very next morning.

And I cannot believe what the Marketing Mischief Makers at John Lewis have done. If you have been in hibernation or not in receipt of a television, you can watch the advert here. And if you can’t be bothered to click on the link, basically the advert features a 7 year old boy called Joe and a monster under his bed called Moz.

Since the beginning of time parents, grandparents and baby sitters have reassured children that there are no such thing as monsters under the bed and yet John Lewis and his mad, money grabbing marketing team have rubbished this story in their 2 minute 10 second Christmas advert. So there you go children, there is in fact an enormous monster hidden under your bed in amongst all of the dirty laundry and random toys that you have hidden there. But don’t be alarmed because he will fart, make you laugh hysterically and stay up all night with you playing all the games that your big sister wont; and thus make getting a haircut that is straight at the back a bit more tricky the next day.

And where on earth are Joe’s parents while their son is playing on the Scalextric at 1am with a monster from under his bed? As a Mum, my ears are so finely tuned to any extra curricular bedtime activities that after 8pm I can hear the tap of a finger on an iPad when I am 20 metres away. If I listen carefully, I can hear a Monster High Doll having her shoes changed and I have an app on my phone that alerts me if a torch has been switched on under a duvet. The only reason that Joe’s Mum wouldn’t be able to hear an enormous monster giving her son a piggy back ride across his bedroom is if she’d taken a handful of Tramadol and washed it down with a Magnum of Merlot.

I suppose at least the John Lewis Mum can thank Moz the Monster for finding the lost sock under the bed that must have been pissing her off for weeks. Where do the odd socks go?  Well now you know, they’re all stuck on the monster that’s hiding under your child’s bed. I must ask the one under Britney’s bed to roll around a bit when he’s going to sleep as it would save having to hoover under it. I could even rent him out to my friends once I’d used 4 entire rolls of parcel tape getting the fluff off him.

And while Joe’s Mum is clearly unconscious after 7.30pm, I don’t believe for one second that Joe’s Dad would stand on the touchline and watch the opposition thundering towards his sleeping goalie of a son without screaming a torrent of advice/abuse/encouragement. Perhaps that’s why he’s on the touchline – perhaps all of the other parents have been banned from attending the games.

On the up side, Joe’s spelling is tremendous for a 7 year old who was probably taught to spell phonetically. If you’d asked a 7 year old Britney to write a sign for her bedroom door asking monsters to keep out she would have written “monsturs nott alowed.” My personal favourite from her 7 year old CV was the word “tuna” which was spelt “choona”. But anyway, I digress.

Moz the monster is extremely dextrous with his enormous hands and even manages to play Battleships (£12 from John Lewis by the way) with Joe. But for some reason this dexterity does not extend to the wrapping of a Christmas present for Joe and the package looks as though someone with 1 arm has attempted to wrap a live hedgehog with wrapping paper from the 1940s. And what parent in their right mind would allow some random present that just appeared from no-where, looking as though it had been wrapped by a hyper-active 2 year old, underneath their tree on Christmas morning? When you discovered that it was a night light that was going to keep your child awake all night counting the stars on their bedroom ceiling and when they switch if off a 7 foot tall farting monster appears, you might be a bit concerned as to its origin.

The Advert cost £1million and took a year to make. Why did it cost £1million? If they had paid the twins who played Joe in Haribo and Argos vouchers it would have reduced the cost dramatically. You surely can’t have to pay a monster very much as he wouldn’t even have an equity card. If you’d bought him a caravan to live in after the advert was finished I’m sure he would have been delighted. If you had also given him an account at John Lewis so he could buy some toys he would be set for life. Let’s face it, work must be thin on the ground for a monster who hides under beds and keeps children awake.

The set can’t have cost very much and you would think that the barber would have undertaken the role in exchange for the free publicity. If John Lewis had supplied the half time oranges, bought the football club a new set of strips and a couple of goal posts you’d think they would have been okay with letting their team run towards a sleeping goalkeeper for free.

The other costs relating to the marketing, TV slots in ad breaks and in store advertising came to £6million. So for the bargain price of £7million, John Lewis have again launched a cash cow that will generate something in the region of £70million in revenue.

Academy award-winning screenwriter Michel Gondry was called in to make this 2 minute masterpiece and despite his ex-girlfriend telling him that he had big shoes to fill, I think he’s done it wonderfully well. It’s better than a lonely old man sitting on the moon with a telescope or a fox mite-riddled trampoline and it shows the younger fraternity that the monster under the bed is not a bad thing. 10% of the sales of every Moz mug and soft toy will go to Barnardos to support the young carers who have to grow up so quickly to cope with demands of their homelife. I wish each and every one of them, their very own monster under the bed to play with, talk to and cuddle when times are tough.

Battleships, Scalelextric and piggy back rides only before 7pm, obviously.

The Best Place to Live in the Country

Back in 2002 Country Life magazine informed their readers that the Northumberland market town of Alnwick was the best place to live in the UK.

If I’m completely honest, I’m not sure the readers of Country Life would have been greatly interested in this piece of information, because all of the property advertised for sale in Country Life is usually in possession of the term POA; and Alnwick doesn’t have many available properties like that.

Nevertheless, Alnwick with its famous castle was apparently the most fulfilling place to live in our Country and one of the main reasons for that is because the evening rush hour lasts 18 minutes. This could not be further from the truth, but let us not allow this piece of invention to get in the way of a good story.

Alnwick Castle was the home of Hogwarts for the first and second Hazza Potter films and if you visit the Castle now, you can still have a flying lesson. I will point out just for your information, that Alnwick Castle should be reported to Trading Standards for using this terminology. Britney (Not her real name) was left bitterly disappointed when she discovered that her flying lesson consisted of jumping as high as she could in front of a green screen whilst straddling a broomstick.

To put it mildly this was something of an anticlimax for Britney who had obviously been envisaging sailing over the castle ramparts playing Quidditch.

To be fair, Quidditch looks like a fairly dangerous activity and if you were to combine that with the lack of experience shown by a first time flyer, you’re looking at one hell of a dubious risk assessment, so perhaps Alnwick Castle are just erring on the side of caution.

Anyway, shit flying lessons aside, Alnwick Castle has been used as the setting for many a film and TV programme. A great deal of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves was filmed at Alnwick, some scenes for Downtown Abbey were also made there and Rowan Atkinson rode a horse around the Castle in the snow for the first series of Blackadder.

But an article which I found in the Daily Mail (so it must be true) says that Alnwick is “no chocolate-box fantasy of rural living” because “it has all the facilities required for life in the real world”.

I’m no expert, but I would say this is because it is in fact a real place where people actually live and do normal things, such as take their children to school and go to work. I suppose the residents should count themselves extremely fortunate that they only have an 18 minute rush hour to contend with when they are heading home at the end of the working day.

The judging panel for this Best Place to Live in Britain took into consideration the transport links to cities (the bus), traffic congestion (none, aside from that dreadful 18 minute rush hour) and how the contender was expected to develop over the coming years (rapidly I would say, like everywhere else). And do you know what happened after the glossy Country Life published this information? House prices shot through the roof and every property that was small enough to be affordable to local people became a holiday home. This quickly put an end to the “cheap homes” that had been advertised for free throughout the competition.

Country Life editor Clive Aslet said he was not surprised Alnwick had won, although it was not as wealthy as the other towns shortlisted. He added: “Money doesn't necessarily make you happy”. No it certainly doesn’t Mr Aslet, but if you are attempting to get onto the property ladder in your home town, money does assist an awful lot.

The reason that I am dredging up this information, (although it is still fresh in the mind of any Alnwick occupant 15 years on) is because last Saturday I read an article in the Daily Mail (so it must be true) that was entitled: Market towns with England’s cheapest property revealed: North East is the place to go for historic markets and low house prices.

So if you are a home owner in the North East you can rest assured that the value of your property has just doubled and so has the cost of your shopping.

I think we are very lucky with our quality of life here in the North East. We might have to drive a little further to get to a B&Q but we have the added bonus that we can use our broadest Geordie accent should a situation become rather heated. Honestly, nothing cools the flames of an argument like a thunderous roar of “WHEY AYE, PACK IT IN MAN”.

Although this article was published in the daily Mail (so it must be true) the findings regarding these house prices that were quoted were made by Lloyds Bank. Frankly I have no idea why Lloyds Banking Group plc would be making reference to cheap house prices. Oh, and I must mention that there were three adverts for mortgages half way down the page that were most interesting.

So, Ferryhill has the cheapest average house prices in the country at £78,184 and the Daily Wail has most helpfully compared this to the Buckinghamshire market town of Beaconsfield’s average of £1,049,659. They also described Ferryhill as being near Durham, which it is; but it’s even nearer to Spennymoor but this doesn’t sound nearly so glamorous. After all Ferryhill is a former mining town that “suffered some of the socio-economic problems associated with the industry’s decline but in recent years has seen infrastructural improvements and still has its weekly Friday markets”.

Well, that’s good. If you need 10 plastic cigarette lighters for £1, a pint of fluorescent slush puppy, some nettle flavoured cheese and a coaster with a flower on it, get yourself off to Ferryhill on Friday.

I do think that it’s particularly useful to hold a market in a market town, when everyone is at work and I also fail to understand why the status of a town is raised by the fact that it has a market. Back in the day when I was a child and all of this was still fields, the Saturday market was a bustling place where you could buy meat, fruit, vegetables, a hammer and some wheel trims for your car.

Now, because everyone buys from the internet those markets are a thing of the past. In fact some market towns advertise Farmers’ Markets just to let everyone know that they really can purchase meat, cheese, fruit, vegetables and a strange coloured alcoholic beverage made from distilled blackberries. These days I only go to the market to buy Britney a pint of slush puppy that is so iridescent it is sold with a tool for removing small children from the ceiling; and to purchase juice for my vaping implement. The bloke who sells me this liquid crack cocaine for my fake cigarette resembles one of Eddie Stobbart’s lorries. The writing is a bit smudged on his bottles of vaping juice but it is reasonably priced and he adds enough nicotine into it to stop me becoming suicidal by 7.45 each morning.

I did breathe a colossal sigh of relief that nothing north of Durham featured in this “cheap housing in market towns” critique. Aside from Ferryhill the other 9 places on the list were Crook, Stanhope and Saltburn in County Durham, Guisborough and Marsden in Yorkshire, Cartmel in Cumbria, Boston and Immingham in Lincolnshire and Tickhill in Derbyshire.

They had kept this list to the very end of the article for a very important reason. And this is because Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Cumbria are definitely not in the North East.

If you live in Ferryhill, enjoy your Friday market and the peace while it lasts.

The masses are coming to join you.

39 Traits That Make a Gentleman

I’ve just been on the Country Life website because it works out much cheaper than buying the glossy magazine which retails at £18.79 a week. To my surprise, nestling in between the 7 Golden Rules For Selling a Country House and Royal Babies Through The Years there was an invitation to “Take The Gentleman Test”.

So here you have it, the 39 traits that distinguish a true Gentleman from a really shit Gentleman. Underneath each one I have added what I feel makes a True Woman. Just for reasons of equality; obviously.

 1 Negotiates airports with ease

Checks how far the gate is from the bar and hammers home as many G&Ts as humanly possible in the time allowed.

2 Never lets a door slam in someone’s face

Jams used train and parking tickets under the door to wedge it open.

3 Can train a dog and a rose

Kills plants and allows dogs to sleep on the sofa and bed.

4 Is aware that facial hair is temporary, but a tattoo is permanent

Waxes facial hair and wears long sleeves to cover the tattoo that she had done at University whilst under the influence of cider, that reads “I love Noel”.

5 Knows when not to say anything

And when to keep saying it, until they really bloody get it.

6 Wears his learning lightly

Memorises the answers on The Chase and shouts them out while watching the repeat when guests are present.

7 Possesses at least one well-made dark suit, one tweed suit and a dinner jacket

Has lots of clothes. Lots.

8 Avoids lilac socks and polishes his shoes

Sometimes rubs her scarf over the toes of her favourite stilettos if they are looking scruffy.

9 Turns his mobile to silent at dinner

Either can’t find her mobile under the heap of junk in her handbag so everyone has to listen to the persistent cheep of Twitter alerts or is taking photographs of every course for her Instaphoto account.

10 Carries house guests’ luggage to their rooms

Pours house guests a G&T and says she hopes they have travelled light.

11 Tips staff in a private house and a gamekeeper in the shooting field

Does neither.

12 Says his name when being introduced

Can’t remember her name after the school run, a 10 hour shift and a horrendous bedtime experience with her 2 year old before heading out to dinner.

13 Breaks a relationship face to face

Tags him on Facebook with the slogan: “Back on the Market!”

14 Is unafraid to speak the truth

Always speaks the truth. Especially after a large glass of Shiraz.

15 Knows when to clap

Knows when to cringe.

16 Arrives at a meeting five minutes before the agreed time

Arrives at a meeting 5 minutes late, brandishing her hair straighteners.

17 Is good with waiters

Is good with waiters because her first job at the age of 14 was waiting on tables in the local pub. She therefore knows what it is like to be a shot messenger.

18 Has two tricks to entertain children

CBBC and Minecraft

19 Can undo a bra with one hand

Yes and can remove it from underneath a shirt aswell.

20 Sings lustily in church

Sings quietly in church, for she is tone deaf.

21 Is not vegetarian

Does not frankly give a rat’s chuff whatever anyone eats, as long as they eat it.

22 Can sail a boat and ride a horse

Has time for neither.

23 Knows the difference between Glenfiddich and Glenda Jackson

Adds water to Glenfiddich and would like to meet Glenda Jackson for a cheeky fag and a sherry.

24 Never kisses and tells

Immediately Snapchats her friends.

25 Cooks an omelette to die for

Always has more than just eggs in the house.

26 Can prepare a one match bonfire

Uses diesel and a smidge of petrol to ignite it.

27 Seeks out his hostess at a party

Waits for her hostess at the drinks table.

28 Knows when to use an emoji

 😀😀😀😁😂💪💩💖🍏🍕🍩🍳🐈🐇🐶🐴🍺🍹🍷🍸🔑🎤🎺🏆🚘🚄🚑🛀🌂

29 Would never own a Chihuahua

Has several; and a miniature Poodle called Trixiebell.

30 Has read Pride and Prejudice

Got as far as page 9 and the story only started on page 7.

31 Can tie his own bow tie

Buys her husband a ready tied bow tie from Amazon.

32 Would not go to Puerto Rico

Would go bloody anywhere if someone offered her a holiday. Even Catalunya isn’t out of the question.

33 Knows the difference between a rook and a crow

And a Cormorant and a Shag.

34 Sandals? No. Never

Usually accompanied by a sinking feeling as she cannot recall when she last cut her toenails.

35 Wears a rose, not a carnation

Does not remotely care what kind of flowers they are; as long as they weren’t purchased from the local garage.

36 Swats flies and rescues spiders

Uses the Dyson to deal with both.

37 Demonstrates that making love is neither a race nor a competition

Really?

38 Never blow dries his hair

Never blow dries her hair because she never has time to wash it.

39 Knows that there is always an exception to a rule

And that there are rules with no exceptions.

Rural Broadband

If my internet connection was a person, I would have gone beyond the “having a stern word” moment and would be dragging them down the stairs into the garden and kicking the shit out of them.

Most of us have something in life that makes us want to unfold a set of collapsible steps, climb on them and scream to anyone who pauses to listen. My subject of choice would be the internet at my house, with BT being a close second and Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs racing home into third place.

Aside from my Ban Ploughing Campaign which would enable me and wet-dishcloth-horse to roam the countryside all year round, I’m going to start a “Stop Exploiting People in Rural Areas by charging them for a Broadband Service which is Frankly Not Fit for Purpose” Campaign. I know it would be a fairly long hashtag but I’m certain I would get one hell of a following.

Paying £20 a month for the privilege of clicking on the Google Chrome icon on my laptop and the Amazon Firestick starting to buffer has always grated on me. How is that fair? How can they expect me to pay the same as someone who has a 17 Mb/s download speed? My landlady has a beautiful holiday house and the only complaint that she ever receives from her guests is that the mobile phone signal is patchy and the broadband is slow. To be fair, if you come on holiday to rural Northumberland, you would think there may be one or two things to do to distract you from the vague mobile phone reception and sloth-like internet speed. And I would like to remind these people that the speed they are experiencing in the posh holiday house is as fast as lightning in comparison to what I experience every day.

The issue at my home is that we are at the very end of the line at the furthest away point from the telephone exchange. Tractor-Driving-Brother has the same problem. He lives a mile south of me and is at the very end of the line from a different exchange. This drives (no pun intended) Tractor-Driving-Brother luminous with rage because the high speed Optic Fibre cable is under the ground less than 6 feet from his house and yet he has no access to it.

In previous years and on numerous occasions, I have argued my case with BT as to why I should pay £20 a month for an internet connection that runs so slowly. But unfortunately all of the call handlers at BT must be brainwashed with the same stupid terminology. I have lost count of the times I have been promised “speeds up to 17Mb/s” which is about as probable as Ryanair winning World’s Best Airline at the 2017 World Airline Awards. I also used to laugh down the telephone when BT rang me to ask if I would like to buy BT vision or super fast broadband and took great delight in telling them my internet speed was 2 Mb/s. They usually backtracked fairly sharply after that, when it dawned on them that the commission cupboard at the Jodhpurs household was well and truly bare.

The last time I tried to get BT to agree to a discount, the idiot gentleman that I was speaking to informed me that the charge for the internet was not based on the amount of internet that I was using, the charge was actually for the speed that my property was receiving. I stabbed several razor sharp pins into my BT Advisor Voo Doo Doll and through gritted my teeth asked him how he felt it was ethically correct to charge me for a service that I could not use to the full, because the speed that I was paying for could not be met? He then reassured me that BT provided the most excellent service for their customers because they get internet priority over other internet providers’ customers. As I knew this was a lie so enormous that it had it’s own HR department, crèche and underground parking; I hung up and rang Sky to see if they would mind providing me with an equally shit internet connection, but at a fraction of the price. Sky was delighted to accept my custom and I asked if they could add a note to my account that simply said “This woman hates BT”.

When we are trying to browse the web, pages with lots of photographs take over a decade to load. You might as well click on what you want to look at and then clean the bathroom while you wait for them to appear in their entirety. In a nutshell, my internet has always been inadequate but lately it has reached absolutely calamitous proportions and I have had to contact my provider a couple of times to see what could be done about it.

Initially Sky told me there was nothing they could do and despite running speed check after speed check they were adamant that my interweb was running to the best of its scrawny ability and sent an Openreach engineer. This gentleman telephoned at 8 o’clock the next day and despite Britney (Not her real name) telling him that she was alone in the house and that her Mum and Dad wouldn’t be back until after 10 o’clock, we had his coffee made and he was set to work by 8.20am. He managed to contain his exasperation at the line being Fibre and he explained that Fibre only works if you are within 1800 metres of the cabinet and we are actually 2300 metres from the cabinet.

He managed to get a reading of 2 Mb/s, shook his head, sucked his teeth and probably silently thanked God that he lived in Newcastle. By the time the second engineer from Openreach came a week later, the internet was crawling so slowly along the line that he couldn’t get a speed reading at all. I sipped my coffee and raised my eyebrows to this piece of information, I would have laughed but was worried that he would think I was deranged.

In truth of course, I’m so prepared for the Openreach engineer telling me that my broadband is rubbish; that his words are literally like water running from a duck’s back. And the Openreach lads are brilliant. They have even written on my account for any internet supplier to see that Fibre Broadband is unsuitable for this property. This means that I can cancel my contract with Sky as they are not providing me with the minimum 2 Mb/s that they promised me.

I rang them and when they said that they couldn’t downgrade me to an ADSL line, they offered me a deal. £10 a month for the broadband, a discount on my line rental and call charges and no termination fees should I find a free internet service with anyone else and wish to move.

And I accepted it; because I hate BT more than I hate my weak, wounded and pathetic internet connection and the people at Sky are nice.

And I hate BT.

Fainting Fit

Way back in the depths of winter and after omitting to eat any breakfast, I quite literally keeled over in the middle of the Supermarket in a local town.

I had been on the mission of purchasing myself some lunch, but as this Smallmarket is less momentous than a snake’s shoe cupboard, I was having difficulty finding something that I actually wanted to eat. Usually when I venture into this Tinymarket, the choice for lunch is a pot of cold pasta smothered in some dubious sauce, an egg and cress sandwich or a tin of Weight Watcher’s tomato soup. The problem I have is that I don’t like cold pasta, I refuse to pay more than £2.50 for a teaspoon of egg mayonnaise, some green bits and some soggy brown bread; and I hate tomato soup. I especially hate Waist Watcher’s soup because the tins are smaller than any other brand and you are starving precisely 17 minutes after you have consumed it.

So I gathered some items for dinner that evening and as I studied the tins of Waist Shrinker’s soups again; I fainted.

The next thing I remember is sitting opposite a Paramedic in a store room in the back of the Minisculemarket wired up to a heart machine and when I asked what had happened he told me that I had suffered a seizure.

The drama continued as I needed to ring my colleague The Event Organiser, to tell her that I was on my way to hospital and could she please bring me my handbag; but I had left my mobile phone on my desk. Also on my desk, was the Post-It note with the office telephone number written on it, because even though I have worked for this company for 5 years I can never remember their phone number. Oddly, especially when you consider than my very small brain was still trying to reboot itself, I remembered the phone number of the office and was able to dial it without hesitation on the phone that was handed to me. It is especially strange because when I glanced at the Paramedic’s notes, I asked him who had given him my parents’ address. I then realised that it had been me that had given him the address, just as though the last 17 years of my life had vanished over a tin of Weight Observer’s soup.

By the time we made it to the hospital it was 5pm and to make things worse the damn place was absolutely crammed with sick people, which made me want to go home immediately. In fact this brand spanky new hospital was so completely inundated with people of the sick variety that I lay on a trolley in the corridor for the remainder of my visit.

I had already rung Other Half to let him know that I was not capable of feeding myself properly, but it was around 6.30pm when he rang me back as Britney (not her real name) was worried and asking how I was. The conversation was brief and went like this:

“Mummy? Are you alright?” she asked.

“I’m fine sweetheart,” I replied “I just hadn’t had any breakfast and I fainted.”

“Where were you when it happened?”

“I was in the middle of the Supermarket, trying to get some lunch. How embarrassing, eh?”

“What aisle were you in?”

“Er, the soup aisle.”

“Okay, bye.”

At 9.30pm I decided that I was not going to wait any longer to be seen and rang Biker Brother to ask for a lift home. After all, I had been given 2 ECG’s, my blood pressure had been taken twice, 12 pints of blood had been siphoned out of me, it was now 8 hours since I had fainted and I STILL had not had anything to eat. I can assure you that at that point I could have eaten a vat of Waist Monitor’s tomato soup, several egg and cress sandwiches and a large bucket of cold pasta smothered with a dubious sauce, without the need for any cutlery.

As I was trying to sneak off my trolley to go and wait for my lift, I was called by the nice receptionist and seen by the Doctor at 10.20pm. He apologised for my wait and advised me that I must not drive until I had been seen by the Consultant at the Epilepsy Clinic at the RVI in Newcastle and that there was a 6 week waiting list for appointments.

Obviously to say that this was bad news is like saying that the Daily Mail is occasionally a bit liberal with the truth.

The nearest bus stop to my house is 3 miles away and of all the buses that stop there, none of them go to any of the places where I work.

I had never (and I mean this in all honesty) realised exactly how rural this area is.

So I did what every modern, mature woman with a partner and child does in times like this; I rang my Dad.

And so for 6 weeks, the Vintage Tractor Enthusiast gave me a lift to work and Biker Brother collected me and brought me home (in his car, not on his motorbike). Other Half took Britney to school and started work later than normal and Granny Weatherwax and the Vintage Tractor Enthusiast collected her from school and brought her home. The Resident Vet and Kamikaze Girl (thank God she doesn’t drive like she rides) collected and delivered me for equine duties and my usual work at home continued to arrive via email and a small red van every morning.

Despite the horrendous inconvenience derived from failing to make time to eat, there were however a few benefits from not being allowed to drive. The first is that it saves you an absolute fortune in diesel, honestly it’s truly astonishing how much you can save. The second is that you are always on time, as when you ask someone for a lift they tend to appear on time or even arrive early. This means you aren’t running out of the house carrying your coat, handbag and travel mug and you arrive at work completely cool, calm and collected. Thirdly and most importantly, if you are invited to any social occasions you can get absolutely shitfaced.

After meeting my Consultant he agreed that I had fainted, said there was no need to contact the DVLA and sent me on my way after I had promised that I would return to Newcastle for an EEG to test the electrical activity of my brain (good luck with that one) and an MRI scan on my head.

So 2 days ago and a full 6 months after throwing myself to the floor of the Punymarket, I went back to the RVI to get my test results.

The excellent news is that my MRI showed nothing apart from a brain which I took to be an excellent start. I even asked to see my scan so I could report back to the people at Miserable Finance Limited who had occasionally suggested that I didn’t have one. And it was actually worth lying in a drain pipe for half an hour just to have the opportunity to see my own brain in such glorious clarity. (I did notice that there is a kink in the cartilage in my nose, but given the circumstances, I didn’t think it was worthy of a mention.)

The EEG showed that at times my brain emits voltage fluctuations resulting from the ionic current, which basically means I sometimes have brainwaves that are larger than normal. Unfortunately this affliction does not mean that I am gifted but is something that occurs in 25% of the population; and the Brain Experts have no idea why.

So here is what I have learnt over the past 6 months:

If you see someone faint, do not attempt to lift them up as this can cause them to fit. Check they are breathing, raise their feet and if need be, roll them into the recovery position. Do not try to sit them up or lift them.

I now know that telling a Paramedic that someone has had a seizure without knowing anything about the patient’s medical history or simply by using the words “fit” or “seizure” can cause a person to lose their driving licence for 6 months.

A faint can look very, very similar to a seizure, patients can twitch and shake and it can look very frightening. The Consultant showed me this video and I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s not how you think a faint should look.

If you have to go for an MRI scan on your head, wear the blindfold that they offer you. Otherwise you’ll have 30 minutes of lying in a claustrophobic tube, listening to Radio 2 whilst screwing your eyes tight shut willing yourself not to open them.

If you do have to visit the RVI, go to Za Za Bazaar’s in The Gate for lunch. At least then if you are screwing your eyes tight shut in the MRI scanner at the old General Hospital, your tummy will be full. Hell, there’s even a chance you could fall asleep with your blindfold on after eating that much especially if Steve Wright plays some really boring tunes.

If you know anyone who is going through something similar to all of this, do not under any circumstances inform them that you know someone who wasn’t allowed to drive for X number of years after having a seizure, because frankly it’s not what they want to hear. You may also find that saying “Oh I have a friend who has epilepsy too” might trigger a fit of a different nature and leave you with a black eye and a dazed expression.

And ultimately, laugh, offer love selflessly and live as though you have awfully little time left.

When I panicked my way out of the MRI scanner, I noticed the cartoon pictures on the outside of the machine. The Nurse told me they were there to try and encourage the little children to stay calm and lie still while they were having their scan.

Enough said.

Sunny Dorset

Britney (not her real name) has knickers with the days of the week emblazoned on the front of them.

Why on earth don’t they don’t make these pants in adult sizes? Can you imagine how useful they would be for those of us who rush from pillar to post never knowing for certain what day it is? They would also be so very useful when it came to leaving a telephone message:

 “Hi there, I was meant to get a kerosene delivery, erm (a quick check down the front of your jeans) yesterday and I’m just worried that I’m going to run out.”

Or:

“Hi, it’s, erm (a quick check down the front of your jeans) Thursday, can I get someone to come and service my boiler please?”

Or:

“Hi there, it’s erm (a quick check down the front of your jeans) Friday, could you call me when you get this message? Thanks.”

I appreciate that it could be a little embarrassing if you were in the middle of a meeting and had to pretend to study the wall for a second to check what was written on the front of your knickers, but it would be so much more professional than writing TUESDAY on the back of your hand in biro pen.

It’s particularly difficult to know what day of the week it is when you are self employed.

I usually hinder The Assassinator and The Resident Vet (Kamikaze Girl having gained employment and thus moved to London – the bitch) with their horses on a Thursday but occasionally Office work will get in the way of this arrangement and I have to ride their horses on a different day of the week. This causes immense confusion, not just to myself and The Resident Vet who co-ordinates the entire operation, but also to my household and all of my Childcare operatives as well.

It’s hard to be organised when you are never sure where you are meant to be and this is perhaps the reason why I went on holiday to Dorset with Other Half and Britney and failed to pack any shorts or suncream.

Clearly my Mummy brain had not considered that a County 400 miles south of Northumberland might be a tad warmer than the windswept Cheviot Hills or the bitterly cold sandy beaches of Northumberland’s area of outstanding natural beauty. And as a result of my lack of planning, I still have a dark brown area on my left leg where I failed to apply Britney’s factor 50 suncream while sitting on the beach at Sandbanks.

Aside from this third degree burn on my lower leg and the enormous inflammation that cosseted my ankle, we had a fabulous week in sunny Dorset. By some coincidence our holiday managed to correspond with the remarkable heat wave that had engulfed Britain and therefore Dorset was enjoying temperatures which where similar to that of the southern coast of Spain.

We stayed in a proper chocolate box kind of house with a thatched roof and 3 foot thick walls, which kept the downstairs of the property extremely cool and the upstairs; as warm as your oven after roasting a chicken.

The cottage was on a small holding near to a place called Three Legged Cross and very much in the countryside. We had our own private patio and also (much to Britney’s delight) an outside bath. I’ll just point out that this was a factor of novelty, as there was also an enormous bath inside the property in the bathroom at the top of the stairs.

Britney revelled in using all of the available hot water in her twice daily outside bathing ritual. I had shown her photographs of the house before we set off on holiday and when I asked if there was anything particular that she wanted to take in her suitcase for our week away, she replied “Bath bombs” before adding as an afterthought: “2 for every day we are there”.

The owner of the holiday cottage had a small herd of Alpacas and every morning, usually only clad in her pyjama bottoms, Britney sleepily tottered across to the field to greet them as they congregated to have their breakfast. It took 3 days for her to remember that they were Alpacas and not Lamas, but they didn’t seem to mind.

I had been to Dorset a few times before we undertook this excursion down south and I have informed people on many occasions that Poole Harbour is only 70 miles from Cherbourg and that the sun is so much hotter down there and the winds are always very warm.

Clearly, having a child has made me either entirely lose my memory, or perhaps my brain simply couldn’t be bothered to travel further South than Northampton because I ignorantly sunburnt my arms on the first morning of our holiday sitting on the patio reading my book while everyone else was still in bed.

There was a pair of Bullfinches that came to the patio everyday to forage in the Forget Me knots and I adored seeing them. I have obviously reached middle age as I now love seeing the less common wild birds, especially when these are something of a rarity in my garden in Northumberland.

Staying in self catering accommodation made me realise that the people of Dorset use a lot of butter and I put this down to why our picnic sandwiches always tasted so good. Butter in Dorset spreads like margarine. Butter in Northumberland spreads like Tungsten. At home, after I’ve torn a great big hole in my slice of bread with a lump of solid butter, I give up and resort to the spreadable variety. The Aigle Welly Wearer says that you can tell what season it is in Northumberland by how near the butter dish is to the open fire. In the dizzy summer months the butter dish might actually be in the kitchen, but in January it will be in pride of place on the mantelpiece. This keeps the butter pliable enough so that you can actually scratch some butter from the block with a knife and not have to resort to using a cheese grater to make yourself a sandwich.

The People of Dorset also wear shorts all of the time. And they look normal. It’s not like that up here, people either wear shorts all of the time, even in November or they wear them once a year. The male once-a-year short wearers have legs that are as white as a hospital sheet and the female once-a-year short wearers have legs that are as orange as a 1970’s Spacehopper.

The coast in Dorset was a bit of a shock for Britney as she assumes that if you are going to where the sea meets the land, the joining strip between the 2 will be made of golden sand.

For fossil hunting, there are crumbling cliffs and a variety of stones that are very painful when aligned with bare feet. By contrast the sandy beaches of Bournemouth and Sandbanks have beautiful golden sand which is so hot you can’t walk on it with bare feet. We spent an afternoon happily roasting on the raked sand at Sandbanks and it was beautiful. The sea is shallow there and Britney and Other Half swam in the water that was many degrees warmer than the North Sea.

It took us 9 and a half hours to drive home and initially after getting out of the car and especially after the 31 degree heat of the roadworks on the M1, I was pleased to be home. Then as we drank Shiraz with our House Sitter, the Scottish Moose, we complained how damn cold it was up north.

The night after we returned from Dorset, I was sitting in our conservatory and 3 Bullfinches flew down from the hedge in the paddock and began rummaging through the gravel on the drive. I couldn’t believe it and I took it as a sign that Dorset was missing me too.

Sadly, I haven’t seen them since.