Being Me

I've been looking at the list of phrases people have typed into a search engine before they end up at my blog. Is there any sense in which the searches people do reflect the general tone, content and quality of one's blog, do you think?  Should I worry?........ Dressing post baby large chest Traditional elongated earlobes, pictures An analogy about me being a boot Black on inside of stretched earlobe Fairy tail adapted Fran flake Hairy cyst with teeth Laryngitis whisper can’t speak Sheep costume ears Goofy looking old guy photo Baby ears pierced ‘ spain ’ Planet zog reading game Yay!  I type in 'baby dressed in foil grieving for buses ruined classic book titles general bunkum' and look what I get!

I am very excited.  I don't think I've ever been anyone's first ever follower before, but have just signed up to follow Martin Lower's new blog  'A View from the Dark Side'.  Martin is a UK milkman (which, for anyone whose nation does not have milkmen, means he delivers milk to people's doorsteps day by day and is part of a tragic breed of workers which is slowly dying because of the greedy-guts supermarkets). Martin hasn't even written anything yet - just posted up an introductory hello - but I am intrigued to see what follows, because my husband was a milkman for 5 years and, while he was working as one, I learned some stuff. Here is some of that stuff. 1. Saying to people, 'My third child was fathered by the milkman' can be used as a conversation starter at parties and soon sorts out the snobs from the interesting people.  Snobs walk off, pretending to go and find a bit of unidentifiable fish paste on a cracker, and good luck to them, I sa...

Someone play some funereal music.  I am about to grieve for a bus. No buses have died, so technically I'm not grieving for a bus - just for the fact that I don't regularly ride on one any more now that my new job is only ten minutes walk.  In fact, if all the buses I used to ride on WERE dead, I would be happier, because that would mean that no one else was riding on buses either, so there would be no one I would be jealous of.   Or, to put it more grammatically accurately, there would be no one of whom I would be jealous . (Using 'of whom' in a sentence describing jealousy of other riders on buses seems stoopid, so I crossed it out.) It's true, though.  I am missing being on buses in a way I'd imagine missing my right leg (although that would be a GREAT excuse to get back on one!)  The last blog post I wrote about being on a bus was in December, because in January I started my new job.  This bus-less state is a matter of great sorrow to me. It's no...

More techno-lit ... Don ShiftKeyote - in which a middle-aged Spaniard embarks on chivalrous deeds but comes to a sticky end when he finds that chivalry isn't quite the same when it's only in upper case. The PrintPreview and the Pauper - in which a poor boy swaps places with a royal-born white screen with very tiny writing on until it is changed to 350%. The Great Esc - in which some prisoners of war tap the Escape key continually in order to hide the sound of tunnel-making by their colleagues. Backspace Beauty - in which a horse tells its story about how it was sent to a cruel owner who made it learn to run only in reverse. The Processor and the Pea - in which the innards of a computer are put to bed on a tall pile of twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds but will still not work until the pea underneath them all is removed. Mobile Phone Dick - in which a man intends to go to sea in search of a whale but finds that, because there is no network access at the...

Here is a news flash: News has just come in.  A 40-something female blogger from Warwickshire, England, is feared to have been abducted by aliens and taken to the Planet Zog.  She has not been seen in the blogosphere for a full week now and friends are becoming concerned. Percy Fellow-Blogger, also from England, told us, 'It's not like Fran to blog less often than once a week.  I'm sure she's been taken away. And she hasn't been anywhere near my blog either. I was beginning to tire of her habit of trying to outdo my own jokes, but now I'm missing it.  [Here, Percy paused to dab his eyes with a tissue before continuing the interview.] If anyone hears where she is, I beg them to get in touch.  You don't know how much you appreciate unsubtle crassness until you don't have it any more.' Another blogger who preferred to remain nameless said, 'To be honest, it's a relief.  I never felt comfortable blogging about cats or nature because Fran wo...

As you know, it's so many years since I was a Young Mother that the 'in' clothing for a new infant was more likely to be a wolf pelt or a blanket knitted out of marsh grasses than anything.  But at least it proves that anyone can manage without Baby Gap or Yves-St-Laurent-for-the-Neonatal.  I'm here to help, because there are many cheaper, quicker and eco-friendly options for keeping Baby warm and comfortable. So, let me ask you a few questions. 1. Why else do cling film and kitchen foil come in such big, long boxes which are almost exactly baby-length?  What do you think that serrated edge on the box is for if not to provide a nice tidy seam all the way up Baby's back that could almost look like a zip fastening if you use your imagination? 2. Why do you think carrier bags from supermarkets have those two handles at the top if not to put Baby's arms through so that he has freedom of movement?  Babies love that rustling sound as they kick their little leg...