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.

Blame it on The Weatherman

The temperature fluctuations over the last few weeks must have been particularly tiresome for all of those Field Decorators out there.

When the weatherman announced that it was going to be cold, there was a sudden flurry of activity and all the Field Ornaments were suddenly stripped of their waterproof rugs and left nude. Then when the weatherbloke said that it was going to get warmer, the Field Decorators hurried outside again to replace their horse’s coats. In short, the Field Ornaments’ rugs have been off and on more times than Microsoft Windows 98.

In fairness I had myself thought that it was meant to be springtime, but the sleety showers and freezing winds a few weeks ago caused me to think it was winter once again. I even thought about putting the heating on, but the little watchman on our kerosene tank was showing only one bar remaining and I wanted to put off the agony of buying fuel for as long as possible.

Luckily, as soon as Theresa May announced that a general election was possibly on the horizon, the arse quite literally fell out of the crude oil market causing kerosene prices to fall through the floor. This has worked well for us country dwelling folk and we were able to fill up our domestic fuel tanks for a cheaper price than usual, just as the cold snap was about to hit.

At least we had warning that the bitterly cold weather was approaching, but that in itself was a bit odd. Generally I watch the weather forecast and then go outside to see if Lord Lucan is riding Shergar around my garden. The only forecast that seems to be faintly truthful is the week-long instalment on Tooniefile on a Sunday evening and this forecast irritates me as the bloke that presents it seems hell-bent on being casually dressed. This is clearly not right. He should be smartly dressed at all times to encourage the general public to believe him. Let’s face it, who are you more likely to trust, a woman with several pieces of hay in her hair, a high visibility jacket and a pair of holey jodhpurs or a bloke in a suit?

Quite.

I have come to the conclusion that to be a Weather Forecaster, you have to be a habitual hoaxer and a fantasist.

Think about it for a moment. When we have a rubbish summer (every year), they announce that in September we will bask in an Indian Summer. And every autumn once the Indian Summer has failed to materialise, they predict that there will be a hard winter with heavy frosts and lots of snow. We are encouraged to stock up on salt and grit and are then enormously disappointed when all winter brings is masses of rain and in turn, mud; and a colossal flood risk.

I’m sure that weather forecasters’ methods of guesstimating what the weather is going to do are extremely complex. At least I hope they are extremely complex. I will be seriously annoyed if I discover that they are using a piece of Bladderwrack, a barometer that they have to tap on occasionally and a wet finger held up towards the sky to decide what they are going to dramatically announce on the next bulletin.

Monty Don announced on Twitter last week that you shouldn’t “cast a clout until May is out”. By the state of Monty’s hands he doesn’t have an army of pensioners from the local village weeding the Jewel Garden once the cameras have stopped rolling and this should make me believe that he is correct with his clout casting quotation. But unfortunately I don’t want to see Monty removing his coat, because judging by the state of his trousers all his clouts would benefit from a 90 degree wash with a litre of bleach and 9 capfuls of Roundup. The hair and make up lady on Gardener’s World must want to swop his Radox for Borax.

I heard many years ago that if the holly bushes have an abundance of berries on them, it will be a hard winter. I also know that in the spring when the trees are beginning to come into leaf, that if the “Oak is out before the Ash, we will merely get a splash but if the Ash is out before the Oak we will surely get a soak”. In my book this makes me a far more accomplished and proficient forecaster than the BBC weather people. In fact, maybe I should apply for a job with the BBC. I could save them a fortune as I could present the weather from my desk in my guest room via a webcam. As everyone is so busy these days, I could produce shorter and much more to the point weather announcements simply by using my wardrobe. If I was wearing a duvet, hot water bottle and balaclava, people would know it was going to be cold. I could wear a sou’wester and brandish my wellies if it was going to rain and if I was wearing a sun hat, sunglasses and was slapping on some factor 50, this would suggest that it was going to be sunny.

I should maybe apply for a job with ITV as well because as their weather girl is always pregnant I could cover her maternity leave to get into the swing of things. I appreciate that this would mean that I would have to actually turn up at the television studio, but as they rarely show what the weather presenter is wearing from the knee down I could wear my jodhpurs under whatever dress I had grabbed from my wardrobe that morning.
I would just have to make sure that I had removed all the hay from my hair prior to transmission, otherwise the viewers would think I was an amateur.

Cost Cutting

My Yoga Instructor says that I have fantastic posture and a great centre of gravity.

Honestly, it’s true, the lady on the Wii Fit told me just a few days ago. I was fairly pleased at the time until I remembered that she isn’t a real person but a computer generated friend.

She’s a bit like my groom Alison, who tells me that I am a great rider who has empathy with any horse I sit on and she often wistfully says that she wishes she could ride as well as me.

Sorry, did I say that Alison is my groom? Yes, thought I did, what I actually meant is that Alison is my imaginary friend.

I appreciate that I may be sounding as though I am a hair’s breadth away from being carted off in a square wheeled ambulance, but I have discovered a wonderful way to save money and stay fit when you want to live frugally; and 10 miles from the nearest gym.

For example, I’ve just cleaned my kitchen. I detest cleaning the kitchen, so once I’ve done it, I pat myself on the back and mentally add up what it would have cost if I had just paid someone else to clean it. And hey presto, I smile and acknowledge the fact that I have actually just saved my household some cash by doing it myself.

In the winter, racing around with the Dyson saves me from having to put the heating on and in the summer if you wear a bin bag underneath your clothes, it can aid weight loss too. I can assure you that there are multiple benefits to be gained from wielding the Dyson and if you are still struggling for motivation I urge you to play Queen’s “I Want To Break Free” very loudly to mask the groan of the hoover. There are 2 rules should you choose this method of encouragement. Firstly, it is law that you perform Freddie Mercury’s 2 time quick steps as you move from one room to the next and secondly, you must have a moustache. If you have no real or false facial hair to hand, you must paint on a moustache with a biro pen or eyebrow pencil. Make certain that you remove it before you do the afternoon school run however, because I know from past experience that people tend to give you a particularly wide berth if you are standing in line waiting to collect your child whilst sporting what resembles a Hitler moustache.

It’s the same mucking out my horse every morning, only without the upper lip embellishment. Not only does mucking out and emptying the wheelbarrow give me a bit of a workout, but I am actually saving money by doing it myself. I also clean my own saddle and bridle (when there is a letter Z in the month) and congratulate myself on having just saved a tenner, as this is what I would charge someone else if I had to clean their filthy dirty saddlery.

I also save money by not going to the gym and many people might say that the bloke who built our house did me a massive favour by placing the lounge upstairs. In fairness, I don’t much feel like going to the gym after I’ve carried 25 kilograms of logs up the stairs to fill the log basket. And I suppose it gives Dick Van Dyke (my Chimney Sweep) a bi-annual work out when he has to lug all his paraphernalia up the steep, original and downright dangerous stairs.

I save money by doing my own ironing. Actually, that’s a complete and utter lie, I save money by buying shirts that have a label inside them that says “non iron”. This means that I don’t have to use the iron or tumble dryer and therefore saves electricity.

Sometimes if I’ve forgotten to wash my favourite jeans and I want to wear them that evening, I have to take a quick swig from the Gordon’s bottle to come to terms with the sound of the tumble dryer. The gin also helps me to ignore the noise of my debit card wimpering as it realises how large the next electricity bill is going to be. Furthermore, this activity keeps me fit due to the number of times that I run back and forth to my tumble dryer to see if my jeans are dry.

Washing and polishing my own car saves money and in turn, keeps me flexible because I am so undersized I have to jump on and off a small stepladder to enable me to reach all the way across the car’s roof with my soapy sponge. I have learnt to wait until rain is forecast before I begin to wash my car. There is nothing like the approach of an enormous, threatening black cloud to make you buff the polish off your car at lightening speed.

I save money by buying wine by the box, as it works out cheaper than buying wine by the bottle. This also saves the environment as I am able to recycle the empty wine boxes in my log burner and don’t have to drive my toxic diesel car to the bottle bank.

I buy Lidl’s washing power and decant it into Fairy Washing Powder box. This means that both Other Half and Britney (Not her real name) have no idea why they itch when they put on freshly laundered clothes, but it leaves us more money to buy wine.

Saving money is a talent and as you may be able to tell, I am gifted beyond all reality in the saving money department.

I know what you are thinking; you’re thinking that I must have some amazing money saving tendencies with all of my horse’s wardrobe and my own, equine type clothing.

Well no. Unfortunately my economy proficiency doesn’t apply to anything remotely equine.

I may use a familiar brand of washing up liquid rather than a proper equine shampoo to wash my horse’s legs, but Wet Dishcloth Horse’s wardrobe is worth more than the contents of my house. I might spray furniture polish into my horse’s tail to keep it free from tangles, but that’s to ensure that I can afford to buy my favourite everyday breeches which cost the thick end of £90. And should I accidentally reverse my car over my saddle, riding hat and new high visibility jacket, several underwriters at the National Farmers Union would be suddenly homeless.

You can’t cut corners with everything; that would just be ridiculous.

Potholes and Dangerous Driving

My local MP has just sent me my quarterly fire lighting equipment.

It’s a marvellous service, although I would much prefer a weekly newsletter as it would save me lighting the fire with tonic bottles and the foil innards removed from empty wine boxes in between editions.

I usually have a look through this bragging newspaper before I scrunch it up inside the log burner, just in case I know anyone in the photographs. I was at first disappointed that I didn’t recognise anyone in the articles featured, but I did notice that my Local MP is welcoming a “new pothole fund for Northumberland”.

Potholes do a huge amount of damage to vehicles and cause literally thousands of pounds worth of damage. As far as I am aware the 2 most dangerous situations arise when either: a) the pothole is full of water and a Visitor to the area drives into it at 60 miles per hour or b) when a local knows the pothole is there and drives on the wrong side of the road to avoid it.

Apparently the North East is to receive £3.9 million specifically for pothole repairs and Northumberland has been awarded £1,111,000 which is enough to repair 20,962 potholes across the county.

How on earth do they know that?

Who has gone around the county and counted the 20,962 potholes? Is this all of the potholes or just the worst ones? What if they’ve missed one? And what if a pothole has developed since this pothole audit was undertaken?

Surely there is no such thing as an “average” pothole? Some of them are enormous and some of them are tiny. Some of them are 5 inches deep, some of them; an inch deep. And does this £53 allocated to each pothole include the time of the person who is going to fill in the hole? It can’t cost £53 in tarmac per hole, can it? I can buy a bag of tarmac for about £3 so surely this is overkill.

What a ridiculous statement. I think I will need to request a written report from the Department of Transport detailing the repair of all 20,962 potholes. And what if they put too much stuff in the ones they fill first and run out by the end? Actually, instead of a written report from the Department of Transport I will just suggest to my Local MP that the Pothole Renovation Operatives begin their assignment very near to my house.

Apparently these proposed pothole repairs are going to be “real repairs” and not the usual unreal repairs where the Pothole Renovation Operatives just fill these evil car-killing pits with sawdust and saliva. So I suppose that’s a start.

I’m interested to know what sort of timescale this pothole renovation scheme is going to take and sadly there was no mention of this in the article.

In my local area, there always seems to be road repairs of some description being carried out and as the TK Maxx Ambassador’s husband is a Highway Surface Specialist, I asked him why this is. According to the Highway Surface Specialist (and a discussion on Jeremy Vine’s Radio 2 programme that I heard last week) the quality of the road surface (or rather lack of it) is the problem. And basically, the stuff that the Pothole Renovation Operatives put in the potholes resembles what Britney (not her real name) leaves on her toast plate after breakfast.

Currently, a section of my school run route is closed for 4 weeks and I had hoped it was

going to be completely resurfaced. This piece of road is home to the most horrible potholes in the world. Not only do they rattle your fillings loose if you drive over them faster than 5 miles per hour, but if you are on foot, it takes you over an hour to transverse them as you have to excavate your way past the underground streams, waterfalls and chambers before you emerge back into daylight.

I (illegally) drove down this section of road 3 nights ago, once the Thoroughfare Preservation Squad had gone home. The road had been shut for a 2 and a half weeks and therefore I was eagerly anticipating a new and smooth stretch of road. I drove The Licence Taker slowly over the railway line and then began to squeeze down the accelerator, gearing up to cover this new piece of road at a speed that would have been unthinkable a few weeks earlier. To my dismay I then had to apply the brakes as though I had just dropped a lit cigarette on my lap, because all the Thoroughfare Preservation lads had done was put in 2 drains.

That was it. 2 drains. No new and smooth road surface, no pothole repairs, just 2 new drains. I suppose the Thoroughfare Preservation Team have another week of road closure to complete whatever job they are doing. Perhaps another drain, or paint a white line or something.

The item above the “MP welcomes new pothole fund for Northumberland” informed me that my Local MP is also backing the “Government crackdown on dangerous driving”, because “Dangerous driving can be a real problem here in Northumberland”. I wasn’t aware that it was such a real problem, most of the time it is impossible to drive dangerously because you are stuck behind Old Bob in his Suzuki Swift on his way to collect the papers.

The only dangerous driving I’m aware of in Northumberland, is hitting a 5 inch deep pothole at 60 miles per hour.

That’s exceptionally dangerous.

Good For The Soul

Other Half has found out about my Glossy Magazine addiction.

I have ferociously protested that the heap of magazines hidden underneath the spare room bed were all donated to me, but he has still banned me from spending any money on publications that are full of adverts for bathrooms and kitchens.

I have been going cold turkey for a few weeks now; in a sense. Because I have managed to satisfy my addiction to the lovely photographs in these magazines by visiting their websites instead. This (aside from the horrendous cost of my painfully slow and frankly futile broadband) is free. It also means that you can read articles that were written months ago without a towering heap of magazines on your sofa or under the spare bed.

I’ve just looked at good old Country Living’s website and was thrilled to read that living in the countryside is “good for your soul” and to emphasise this they gave me 8 reasons as to why. I’m not quite sure why they supplied me with only 8. Perhaps they couldn’t think of 10.

So, living in the countryside is meant to be better for you, both physically and mentally. After I’d read the first paragraph of the article I knew for certain that this piece had been written by someone who lives somewhere which is served by both public transport and a super fast internet connection, because the term “closer to nature” had been used.

Apparently living in the countryside makes you more mindful and therefore you notice the weather, the birdsong and the sounds and smells of the countryside as everything is enhanced.

True.

I am aware of the weather because for 6 months of the year I am wading through sludge. In the winter, I wash so much mud off my wellies that I half expect my landlord to turn up with an invoice. And I’m certainly aware of birdsong during the summer months, although when a pheasant is screeching away on the grass margin outside your bedroom window at 5.30am you could be forgiven for shooting it even though it’s 5 months out of season.

If you are lucky enough to live in an area where humans outnumber pheasants or where there are none of the stupid birds at all, you will be unaware that they are really rather good at throwing themselves at moving cars. They have an exceptional technique to achieve this and I can only assume that the skill has been passed down through the generations.

To begin with they usually loiter at the side of the road and as you approach them, they run to the middle of the road. As soon as your foot moves towards the brake pedal, the idiotic bird will then return to the side of the road. This is all part of their cunning plan to lull you into a false sense of security because when you are within kicking distance of the dim fowl, it will suddenly make a frantic effort to reach the other side of the road. When you are about to run the brainless thing over, the bird will then make an attempt at flight. This means that instead of making contact with the underside of your car, it collides with the bodywork of your car and this in turn costs a lot of money. The pheasant is a plump, weighty bird and is capable of breaking bumpers, aerials, headlights, windscreens, number plates, fog lights and giving motorcyclists a terrible headache.

Aside from the annoying, screechy, Asian-imported, poor excuse for a bird with a death wish, you will develop an appreciation for your planet if you live in the country. Apparently seeing “Flash floods stream down country lanes” and “snow blanketing untouched fields” will make you appreciate the power of the world that we live in. Unless you live in a house that has previously flooded which means that a flash flood of any kind notifies you that you need to instantaneously lift all of your furniture to waist height and set your flood alarms. Blankets of snow might delight Britney (not her real name) but to anyone over the age of 12, snow is just something that makes country life even more difficult. Snow means that there is a higher than normal risk of crashing your car on the narrow ungritted roads and the white stuff also makes the journey to work take longer than normal. Because, and this may well come as a gigantic surprise to residents of urban areas, people in the countryside do in fact have jobs to go to as well.

Country Living also reports that there is a slower pace of life in the country and that “although people who live in the countryside can still lead busy and hectic lives, the peace of their surroundings helps to bring them to a gentle halt and remind them not to rush life away”.

When I am driving over close to the legal limit to get Britney to school on time or when my car is in the garage and I have to ask people for lifts because the nearest Bus Stop is 3 miles away, I am rarely in a position where I can consider being brought to a gentle halt. I’m surprised that people who live in the countryside aren’t given Valium on a repeat prescription.

Another thing about living where a bus is a rarity is that there is the “Possibility of adventure”. Because “without having a plethora of transport and social activities on your doorstep, both children and adults can be left with just their imagination and senses to take them on an adventure”. The author then suggests that a “walk, a bike ride or building a den in a forest will all give you a different perspective”.

Firstly, if you try to walk anywhere in the countryside without a canine, you will be offered a lift by every passing car. No one walks anywhere in the countryside. If I announced on Facetube that I was about to walk to the local shop to collect the Sunday papers, 15 people would then offer to drive me and ask if my car is broken.

Yes okay, there isn’t the plethora of social activities on the doorstep, but we do still have them. It might mean you have to drive 7 miles to get to the gym but to those of us who reside in the country; this is quite normal. Come to think of it, it almost certainly keeps us healthier as we can’t have 5 pints of lager after visiting the gym as we have to drive home afterwards.

I have to agree that the bike riding facilities in the country are fabulous as there are a lot of rural roads with little traffic. This mode of transport is also convenient because it allows us to have 5 pints of lager and ride home legally.

The whole building a den in the forest thing is never going to happen because whichever “forest” you choose is owned by someone. Generally, landowners don’t take kindly to den building and should you decide to have a quaint campfire beside your bushcraft creation, an alarm automatically sounds in the local Game Keeper’s house. I can assure you that your campfire won’t even have reached the smouldering stage before he appears with a shotgun, 9 dogs and a very cross expression on his face.

Point 5 in the article suggests that you will make “friends for life” in the country.

I suppose this is partially true, there are many occasions when you have to ask a neighbour for help in these less densely populated areas. Whether it’s the neighbour with the 4x4 when the snow is 2 foot deep, or the neighbour who has a chainsaw and there’s a fallen tree blocking the road, people in the country definitely rally around to help you.

As long as you were born here.

Even if you have lived in the country for 30 something years and are a Parish Councillor; you are still not a local. On occasions even people who have lived in the country for 58 years, will still be referred to as “the new people”. It’s just the way it is.

The article also tells me that it is a much “healthier way of living” in the country because of all the organic produce. No one I know can afford to buy organic produce so the only organic objects we eat are grown in our gardens. That’s if the carrots don’t get Carrot Fly and the tomatoes and the potatoes don’t get Blight. Then we just go to Aldi like every one else.

But living in the country does give you a “happier mind” because we mustn’t “underestimate the happiness we get from the small things in life.” This is a good point, life is too short to walk around with blinkers on and ignore the good stuff.

The final point suggests that you will have a “more active body” through rural living because it appears that there are “huge physical benefits from just one hour in the garden”. Now this is truly marvellous news. I didn’t realise that I was actually benefiting physically from sitting on the patio with a gin & tonic.

I will make absolutely certain that I do it much more often.

What Winter is Really Like

Up until a few weeks ago, I was convinced that winter was over. I was so willing to believe that spring was almost upon us, I even posted a photograph of some Snowdrops on my Instaphoto account.

But no.

The air has been so cold that it has consistently turned my fingers white and then numb even when they were encased in my thickest gloves. Last Thursday Kamikaze Girl and I enjoyed a bit of fast work on Giant Horse and Anxious Horse along the beach and ended up with hypothermia.

There was not a breath of wind that day and we were able to canter side by side and actually have a conversation instead of just shouting “What?” at each other for 10 solid minutes. This was nice, but the air temperature wasn’t and it took another 20 minutes for my features to return to normal. I should really apologise to all the people we passed as we cantered back along the beach, as they must have assumed that I had taken advantage of a half price Botox offer.

The rain that we have had of late has turned my postage stamp of a paddock into a water feature and even Wet Dishcloth Horse who is usually eager to go out and play in the mud, has been quite reluctant to leave his stable.

On Saturday afternoon I put him out in the field as he had been in the stable all Friday night and all Saturday morning. It’s unnatural for a horse to be stabled and although it was chucking it down with rain, Wet Dishcloth Horse needed to go out and stretch his legs. He quite literally glowered at me as I turned him loose in the mud pit and promptly marched across the field, into his shed and refused to leave it until I went to get him in 3 hours later.

Although this winter has been a good lot easier than last year, as usual I had my rose tinted binoculars strapped to my face until November. I was dreaming of cosy afternoons tucked up in front of the log burner, conveniently forgetting that I am unable to put my pyjamas on before 6pm because I have a horse standing out in a muddy paddock waiting to be brought inside. I have tried putting my wellies and waterproof trousers on over my pyjamas but I just felt as though I was about to take part in an episode of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. I’m not the sort of person who would venture into Tesco’s at 11pm in my dressing gown, so I don’t go outside in my pyjamas.

Unless it’s Sunday morning. Then I think that it is perfectly acceptable to run from my back door to the stable, give the Wet Dishcloth some chaff and a haynet before running back into the house for a leisurely coffee.

Up until January, there had been a lot less rain than last year and this made me fairly cheerful. Although mud is an excellent exfoliant scrub for your hands, it makes your horse look very messy and brushing off dried mud creates gritty dust all over your face which in turn, makes the black semi-circles under your eyes look even darker.

Thankfully we are past the worst part of winter, when it is dark by 4pm and still dark at 8 in the morning. because there is nothing worse than going to work in the dark and returning home again in the dark.

I like to have all my outside jobs for the week completed by a Sunday evening. I fill 10 haynets to save me having to do them each working morning, a whole bale of wood shavings is put in the stable to last the week and I like to see my washing basket is empty before the working week begins.

In fact I have been known to have a builder’s dumpy bag containing 1 and a half tonnes of split logs in the corner of my lounge on a Sunday night, to save having to bring logs in during the week in the dark. Okay, okay, you got me, that was a total exaggeration. There was only about 3 quarters of a ton of logs in the dumpy bag in the lounge that time.

Although the glossy magazines that I have become addicted to, depict winter as a wonderful time, I can assure you that it's not all cashmere socks, cosy fires, soup and hot chocolate.

But sometimes in the dark of winter we are blessed with days like this.

And that's when you forget the biting winds, the numb fingers and the rain. You even forget about the way that the skin on your hands splits open with exposure to the cold and the waterproof trousers that are still damp when you put them on the next day.

For a while, at least.

It's a Mug's Game

I hold my Granny entirely responsible for my addiction to horse racing.

Granny was a wonderfully kind lady with a very quick mind which stayed active to the very end. Sadly, as what often comes to pass with these pre-war durable old sorts who are still mobile at a ripe old age; a broken hip took her from us when she was 98.

My friend The Aigle Welly Wearer, was most shocked by the news as she had always said that Granny was hanging on for a telegram from The Queen. 

In my mind, Granny resembles Grandma from the Ronald “Carl” Giles cartoons that appeared in the Daily Express, which is a bit unkind because Granny didn’t really look like that at all. But she was tough, unshakable when faced with a crisis; and I suppose that is why I think of her as the Giles Grandma.

When I was young, we used to visit Granny on a Saturday afternoon and there was always horse racing on the television.

You had to pay attention though, because Granny only watched the races and not the interviews in between. This was back in the days when there were only 4 television channels and amazingly, with the power of a remote control Granny was able to watch all 4 programmes at the same time.

Granny also liked the occasional flutter and I remember her backing Mr Frisk to win the 1990 Grand National. And not only did she back him but she backed him weeks before the big race, at odds of 40 to 1. The weather in the spring of 1990 was unusually dry with very little rain and Granny had backed Mr Frisk after the racing broadsheet The Sporting Life, had said he “liked to hear his hooves rattle”.

With Granny’s years advancing, she moved into a beautiful Retirement Home in the Gosforth area of Newcastle and regularly scared the shit out of all the people who worked there, by disappearing off down the High Street to go to Ladbrokes.

Unlike my Granny, I have always been a cautious gambler because I am the worst tipster the world has ever seen. There is literally more chance of Kim Kardashian buying her footwear from Sports Direct (and the items actually fitting AND being comfortable), than me backing a winner at Warwick this afternoon.

I once (and only once) backed the winner of the Grand National and that was because in 2004, I allowed sentiment to rule my head and bet on the horse that was trained by Mr Ginger McCain who back in the 1970’s had also trained Red Rum. Amberleigh House duly obliged and as luck would have it I had the same horse in the Office sweepstake.

When I watch the racing with Other Half it is always a complete disaster. There is no point in logging into my Ladbrokes account as it would have the same effect as feeding £20 notes into my shredder. Other Half knows one thing about racing and that is the term “Sheepskin Noseband”. So if there is a horse running with any kind of fluffy embellishment on its bridle, Other Half chooses it.

And it wins. Always.

Every. Time.

I on the other hand, look at each runner’s conformation, research which horse is going to appreciate the going, study the form and then proceed to be beaten by someone who chooses a horse which is wearing half an inside out Ugg boot on its head.

Last weekend there was a meeting at my local Point to Point track. As a group of us had arranged to meet up, I got Other Half to drop me off and arranged a lift home with Pilates Friend, just in case I fancied a gin & tonic or 7.

Music Teacher Friend asked me for my tip of the day and I did (for once) actually tip a winner. Unfortunately, as the horse in question was called Always Tipsy, they obviously thought I wasn’t being serious and no-one backed him.

Towards the end of the day, we were all congregated outside the bar as the tannoy system announced which horses would be taking part in the next race. Music Teacher Friend immediately chose a horse for her bet and was about to march off to the Bookies when PR Friend asked if she wanted to go to the paddock and wait to see the horse that was about to carry her wager.

Music Teacher Friend looked blankly at PR Friend and then remarked: “Well, no not really, I’ve chosen it haven’t I?”

We all laughed uproariously at Music Teacher’s method of horse selection and watched her weave her way through the throng of people in front of the Book Makers. We were still bent double with laughter when we went down to the rails at the final fence to watch Music Teacher’s horse carry her £2 stake to what surely had to be impending doom.

By the end of the first circuit, we were no longer laughing and by the time the runners approached the second last fence, Music Teacher’s 2 whole English Pounds was in the lead. Landing safely over the final fence however, her £2 was suddenly in second place having been overtaken in the air.

At this point all hell broke loose and everyone was shouting and yelling encouragement to Music Teacher’s horse to make one final, valiant effort to get to the winning post first.

And would you believe it, but he did. And won by a neck.

As we congratulated Music Teacher on her amazing win, she confessed that she’d backed the second placed horse as well.

I clearly should have paid more attention to Granny and I think I will just remove what small amount there is in my Ladbrokes account and close it.

It’s just a mug’s game.