A message for the house fairy

As the rain set in yet again this afternoon and with half an eye on those fantastic paralympians, who are, without doubt, inspirational, I decided to get up off my arse and clean up a bit.

I started with the huge pile by the side of my bed. Books were put into 'interest' piles (fiction, factual, poetry,  magazines) and notebooks were labelled. Then it was time to move on to the enormous amount of 'stuff' that continually grows on the top of the chests of drawers that inhabit the bedroom.

I threw a whole load of stuff out, put things that were to go to my study in an appropriate place ready to take downstairs and things no longer needed/wanted were put into bags ready to go to the bin outside. Amongst the carefully arranged pile that was to go to my study was my passport, newly stamped with a visa for Nepal and which just hadn't made it back into the drawer where it belongs.

I then grabbed the armful of things that were to go to my study and headed downstairs. When I got there I was putting it all away, but where was my passport? I retraced my steps, but couldn't find it anywhere. I emptied the bags of stuff to throw out and checked, but no, not there. I went back downstairs and searched and searched, but nothing, so back upstairs and searched and searched, but still nothing.

Now I did know that it had to be somewhere in the house and that all things being equal it had to be either in the bedroom, the study or somewhere in between. I was beginning to panic slightly, wondering if by some chance I had the beginnings of dementia and had forgotten that I'd stopped somewhere else on my journey to the study. I checked the kitchen just in case and also the dining table. Still nothing.

I went back down to the study and blow me, but there it was, sitting where I could swear I'd checked not five minutes earlier. Oh yes, and the other thing that turned up was my Mophie Juice Pack for my iPhone that'd gone missing weeks ago. I could've sworn this was last seen in a bag in my bedroom and yet it turned up right next to my passport.

All I can say is, if magic is going to be going on in this house why on earth couldn't it be dealing with the cleaning rather than the disappearance of vital items. I do hope the house fairy reads this blog and responds accordingly.

More unsportsmanlike behaviour

And, oh dear, this time it was me.

I had arranged to play a bowls tie tonight at 6.30. I started promptly at 6.30 and had finished by 6.50.

It had been pissing down most of the afternoon and then just as I was going to cancel, the sun came out. I went across and the ground was sodden, which I hate and find I can't bowl to save my life when my bowls are wet.

I started the first end ok as my bowls were dry and won by one and then it went downhill from there with my losing 11 shots in 3 ends!

By the end of 4 ends with the sky getting ever darker and the ground like a swimming pool, I'm afraid to say I gave up. I just said to the guy I was playing with, that was it, I gave him the game and left the green.

I'm sure I've contravened every bowls rule in the book by doing that, but quite frankly I don't really care. I think I've only managed to play about 7 times the whole season and I've not enjoyed it much at all.

I scored my name out on the three other ties I was supposed to play before the end of the season too, so that's that... the end of my playing outdoor bowls.

I do kind of wish that I had finished on a better note, but at least I'll have given the village gossips something to talk about. Mostly I feel relieved that I'm not expected to play anymore.

The indoor season starts next week at Tweedbank. All I can hope for is that I enjoy the indoor a whole lot more than I have the outdoor, otherwise I might well have a set of bowls for sale.

It's a small world

There I was at a friend's 60th birthday party in the Borders having a good time when one of the guests told me she was sure she'd met me before. We chatted for a while, but no, she couldn't remember. What was a little weird for me is that I'm usually extremely good at remembering faces... names, no, but faces seem to be a different story. Frankly I couldn't remember her at all.

After a couple of drinks she came back and asked me if I had been on a certain workshop outside of Glasgow about 6 years ago. And blow me, she was right. It was a bit scary that she remembered and even more scary that I didn't.

What was slightly even more scary is that it was an Astrology weekend and she still had my chart, even after all these years. I'm sure I never kept hers. I wonder now why she kept mine? The only answer I can come up with is that I gave her a lift to the station on the way back and she told me lots of information all about herself, which included many tears, so maybe she felt it was necessary to arm herself with inside information about my tortured soul just in case we ever met again. And now of course we have. Oh dear!

My first live football matches

I don't know where this week went, but it ended up with going to my first ever football match, or to be exact two matches all in one day.

Forest Pitch, the brainchild of Edinburgh-based artist Craig Coulthard, where art meets sport meets community, a football pitch in the heart of a forest just outside of Selkirk that yesterday played host to two football matches, one between two women's teams and the other between two men's teams (both amateur). The pitch will now have trees planted along the white lines and will, in time, become a kind of living 'ghost' football pitch tribute.

Mountain Man and I had booked to go to this way back in July when it was cancelled due to the awful weather. Yesterday's weather was better, in the sense that it wasn't bucketing down, but it wasn't the best to go and be in for 6 hours. A grey, dismal, rainy, Border's day that only completely stopped with the waterworks as we queued to get the bus back to the Park and Ride in Newtown St. Boswells at the back of 5 pm.

So, dressed in full wet gear, armed with an umbrella and a packed lunch, we spent our day freezing our arses off all in the name of art. Sadly, we'd not taken our fold-up chairs with us, which was a major error on our part, as the only places to sit were these rather uncomfortable tree stumps.

We met up with our friend, Jules Horne, playwright extraordinaire (and as an aside if you haven't already seen her play, Allotment, which is currently touring the UK, you should. And then hopefully her new play, Thread, which has been on at the Edinburgh Fringe to much acclaim, will be touring at some point and is another I'd recommend), who'd also not brought her fold-up chair either and had to suffer with the tree stumps too.

Mountain Man in his gear and Jules in the background delicately perched on the tree stump seats

To get to the pitch we had to negotiate across a field and then an approximately ten minute walk through the dense woods on a mud-filled path.

Through the woods

We then arrived at this beautifully laid out pitch with lush green grass, and plonked ourselves delicately down on the wood stumps to wait for the first match.

The pitch

The teams were made up of volunteers, many of them had come to Scotland to escape the problems in their own countries. Team names were named after the four locations that made up the Pan Hellenic games and were the inspiration for the modern Olympics : Olympia (men), Delphi (women), Nemea (men) and Corinth (women). Team strips had been designed by Scottish school kids. I think the men got the better deal on this one!

The women got us started. It wasn't the best of matches and I know this sounds a bit mean, but the thing that came to mind for me was that it would've been a good promotion for sports bras. As my first ever live football match it was interesting but a bit one-sided as Delphi beat Corinth conclusively 5-1.

The women in action

There followed a break for lunch and time to move tree stumps to further up the field where we could see both halves of the pitch rather than being up one end, just in case the men's match turned out to be similarly one-sided.

Jules picking a new set of tree stumps to sit on

Then the men started. It was a colourful display, both in team strips and footballing skill and it ended with Nemea beating Olympia 4-3 in a closely fought contest. What struck me most is, how it appears that the team on the momentary up always seem to have more players than the other, and how the ebb and flow changes this strange phenomenon.

The men fight it out

The score board was made up of four pared-down tree trunks stripped of their bark and marked very tastefully with pink paint.

The score board

Then it was time to slog our way back along the muddy woodland path, wait for our bus to take us back to our car and then head home for a hot shower, change our clothes and go next door where they were having their annual summer barbeque party. Strangely we also have another to attend today. No parties for ages then two turn up at once. Typical!

I thought I'd end today's blog entry with my favourite photo, which is of the men warming up. Something about those yellow socks and pinky-mauve shorts that did it for me!

Script resource

When I was on the film scriptwriting course a couple of weeks ago, we were given the web address of this great site where you can read the scripts from many *big* films, such as The Artist. A lot of the scripts are draft copies, which, in my view, makes them even more fascinating.

By early evening yesterday the rain had returned and it seemed the perfect time to watch a Hollywood Blockbuster and luckily Raiders of the Lost Ark was on. I went onto the IMSDb site and found a draft script so I could read along as I watched the film.

It was intriguing to see the changes that had been made in the script to get the film to the screen. From the bits that had been totally left out to the lines of dialogue handed to a different character, it was all there. And what's more, the site and reading the scripts are completely free.

What a fab resource.

I challenge you

On a beautiful Saturday summer afternoon, Mountain Man and I decided to go for a walk along the Earlston Woodland pathway beside the River Leader. Sound good so far?

We took the car to Leaderfoot and then walked about a mile along. At that point we had a choice to make, either go completely round for 6 miles, go back the way we came, or split up and MM would go back and get the car and I would go the 2.2 miles to Earlston and meet him there. We decided on the latter. Our parting words were:

Me: the path is marked, right?
MM: yes, you can't miss it.
Me: I don't have my phone.
MM: me neither.

From that short exchange we should have realised that this was a mistake in the making. Quite how I managed to get lost on a well-marked pathway is beyond me, but get lost I did. I found myself wandering in an extremely muddy circle and, given that I'd taken no water with me, was just beginning to panic slightly when I found the pathway again. Phew!

MM was, by this time, also beginning to panic and having all kinds of visions of calling out his pals in the Borders Search and Rescue. Apparently he had been along the path I should have taken for well past a mile looking for me. Me? I don't have a clue. I tried to explain the way I went, but he looked at me blankly.

Thank goodness for the Co-op in Earlston and also for the fact that I always have a purse with some meter money in the car. After downing a litre of water I felt a bit better and we headed for home and the washing machine to get my completely mud covered jeans washed asap.

So here's the challenge. Can you go on a path that's well marked, well trodden and everyone knows and get yourself completely lost? I thought not!

The problem with alcohol...

... is that I seem to do stupid things. I only had one glass of wine last night with my dinner, well alright I will admit it was a very large glass of wine and very delicious it was too, but the problem was with my contact lenses.

I have a little container which has two compartments marked L and R, so that I know which contact lens goes in which eye. When I came to put them in this morning I couldn't work out what the problem was. I could see, but not in the usual way. It took til I was on the bus going to work before it dawned on me! I then had to go to Boots and buy some saline solution so that I could rinse each one before swapping them over. But once I had, all was restored.

I'm amazed that it took me at least an hour and a half to think what the problem could be, but then again... maybe not!