When Will The Carnage End?

 

THE Manchester Arena suicide
 bomber struck four years to the
 day after the brutal murder of
soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby.

     I write this with the heaviest of hearts and am sickened by the horrors of the wholesale slaughter of innocent people at the Manchester Arena by a Manchester-born suicide attacker - the death count currently runs at 22 - with 64 wounded (some very badly).

     I was born four years after the end of WW2 and I have no doubt that after six long years of war, devastation and losses it was hoped that mankind would learn.   When I was young we dealt with IRA atrocities and back then I was concerned about the repercussions that might be experienced by my delightful Irish step-father who had no ties to terrorism of any kind, fearing that he might be 'tarred with the same brush'.    The Manchester attack is  the most recent, but undoubtedly not the last, in a series of horrendous acts of pointless violence perpetrated by mindless radicals and thugs who want to rule our world by force in much the same way that they rule their own people using intimidation and cruelty the goal being total control of our world for their leaders.

     Now my concerns are for all of the innocent Muslims including some of my friends and neighbours who may have to face retribution from the British population and I beg their religious leaders to come out in force to decry extremism and publicly distance themselves from this monstrous conduct by a few because the many need rational direction from their Imams.   The majority of Muslim people are not bent on killing us but radicalised youngsters, both girls and boys, must be surrendered and apprehended to prevent future horrors.

     Religion has always been problematic for me because it seems to divide societies and cultures when adopted by zealots.   In my opinion God is a human construct and as such has been managed by a few to gain power and wealth.  When used wisely such notions can be used for good but so often they are exploited by power crazed elites so I prefer to add an 'o' to god and focus on good.    Extremists coerce gullible and ill-educated people into acts that are disgusting to most of us by suggesting that they will inherit the earth ....in the next life, although there no proof of progression to such state and that is the essential flaw for me, they sell fantasies that cannot be assured while we should do our best in this life.  Such marketing has proved highly convincing in lands that have little education, natural resources and food, but if the promises are so alluring why do so many Muslims migrate, some aim to infiltrate but I am always surprised at how many of them come here and settle and then choose not to integrate or learn the language of their chosen hosts?

     Being civilised is hampering our responses to campaigns of violence, we seem to simply 'clean up and carry on' while we observe and try to outwit these 'soldiers' of a cause that we cannot begin to fathom.   Like many of you I am nervous of people who clothe their bodies in full niquab or burkas because we fear that identifying them could be highly problematic, while people who choose to wear the hijab present significantly less of a threat because we can, at least, identify the gender of the wearer.   I see many Asian women of all faiths not covered but nowadays I see far more who are completely covered than I used to and the latter group certainly don't assimilate with ease which begs the question of what is desired in those patriarchal cultures though the holy book of Muslims, the Qur'an, does not state that all women should be dressed in that manner, it is merely a matter of interpretation and it isn't rocket science to work out who gains from said interpretation.

 

     The Manchester bombing has devastated the whole of the British population and we are disgusted by the slaughter and targeting of seemingly innocent kids.   I have to confess I had no idea who the star of the show was, why would I, I'm old, but the villain of  this particular piece was the British born son of Libyan extraction whose parents fled the Gaddafi regime.  I feel for them, not only do they mourn their son, they must be ashamed and appalled by his shameless conduct attacking members of a population who took them in....I prefer to think that than consider that they might secretly be proud of him in any way.

 

     We have tried to be peaceable and we have tried to protect people from the tyranny of their leaders yet still these episodes recur with alarming regularity.    I fear that the inequalities between cultures is a thorny issue, after all a lot of these people are availing themselves of a British education then turning on us and I fear that it is because qualifications do not provide a passport to paradise, they merely give the means by which one can work and earn the luxuries that make us the infidels and the object of their loathing for zealots.

 

     Wholesale equality is notionally flawed, differences of intellect kick that into touch and modern life seems to be creating more problems than it solves.   As a youngster we had some chickens for eggs and the occasional meal until a fox got at them and killed the lot.   I fear that extremist foxes are now in our metaphorical henhouses doing what they do so well - wreaking havoc while achieving very little so their victories are merely pyrrhic because eventually they will push us too far, if they haven't already.   The majority of us will never support terrorism, but we do need to stand up and say so with enough conviction and volume,  we cannot keep muttering about how awful it all is and do nothing because it has been awful for such a long time now.

 

     I do not claim to have the answer to what is happening, that is for us all to work out via United Nations negotiations and, perhaps, a united show of strength and commitment.    Tony Blurs The Facts sent people to their deaths on a fool's errand and he paid the price, although it wasn't high enough for many of us.   We need to stand up and say to people seeking to live amongst us that they must learn about, swear an oath of commitment to us and learn to speak our languages.   Failure to integrate is inherently divisive and we need immigrants to assimilate, pay taxes and respect our lifestyle, thus contributing to the economy of their hosts.

 

     I am happy for people to live amongst us if they become part of our society, but I am not happy if they hold on to outmoded values and beliefs that disenfranchise them from our communities.   Our economy is not there to be exploited by medical tourists and spongers of every hue  who remain intentionally unemployable  by failing to speak our tongue.     

 

     Today my faith in humanity falters, because what happened in Manchester was inhumane, I had hoped to end my days in a more peaceful world where balance prevailed and each of us could express our beliefs without leading to the homicide of opponents.   I am glad that I was born in easier times and I feel so very sad for all who have lost loved ones and are fearful for the future of their children.   It could be such a wonderful world if human kind would let it be, surely it is time to simply think of others and live and let live because 'my god is better than yours' and political in-fighting simply don't work...they never have.  

 

 

 

 

 

THE Manchester Arena suicide bomber struck four years to the day after the brutal murder of soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby.

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Fabmabuk

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Are Girls The New Boys?

     For those of you haven't heard of her, the sweet young thing casually posing for the camera is Lavinia Woodward.   She is the young woman who, having met her boyfriend on Tinder, proceeded to enjoy drug and alcohol fuelled binges with said young man, culminating in a tantrum that led to her demonstrating amazingly poor judgment for someone who aspires to 'cure heart disease' by becoming a heart surgeon.

 

     To my eye the young 'lady' in question looks surprisingly smug in pictures of her and apparently she has the supreme arrogance to imagine that because she has published some articles and is top of her class she is entitled to avoid any serious punishment for actions.  She is not unlike a student of mine who arrived at my college from an all girl environment purely to gain access to boys.   She, too, was bright but failed her first year exams miserably and begged me to have her results re-assessed because she had bought into her own publicity.  She imagined that being intelligent was a ticket to success that required a minimum of effort, while embracing a lot of boys.   If she had had her way the outcome was not have been dissimilar if I had shared her high opinion of herself.   In later exams she did knuckle down but was not the 'star of the show' that she imagined herself to be.  I have since lost track of her but I feel sure that she still imagines herself to be 'special' but sadly not in a good way and she was sufficiently arrogant to think that she could convince me of her superiority.   Well tough little girls!   Life is hard and despite the modern day cult of celebrity seeking and self-serving, the best way to become anything and/or anybody is to work hard and most of all to actually care about other people rather than imagine that you are the centre of a universe around which the rest of us mere mortals orbit.

 

   Back to Ms Woodward; apparently she is a somewhat privileged young woman with a wealthy mommy who lives in Milan.    She apparently plans to return to college as if nothing has happened post sentencing which smacks of manipulation of the law, elitism and merit taking priority over punishment and apparently the judge is an apologist for the advantaged and his actions serve to endorse the comment made by Gerald Nabarro after he was acquitted of a driving offense that he was very likely guilty of :

 

                              'If a man can afford to pay for justice, he will secure it.

                               A man who cannot afford to pay will rarely secure it.'   

 

     Apparently the judge is swayed by  accounts her 'troubled life; her battle with addiction and abuse at the hand of another ex boyfriend.   But this girl punched the boy in the face and admitted unlawful wounding - GBH.   A friend of hers is quoted as saying that 'they see her as worth the risk of having around adding that she might win a Nobel Prize, later stating that she is very intelligent.'  

 

     Just how intelligent is this girl?   She uses Tinder, does drugs to the point of addiction, hurls things at people if she doesn't get her own way and when all else failed apparently she resorted to stabbing the fellow with a bread knife - a 'one -off event' in the judge's opinion, and how, pray, can he possibly be sure of that I ask!    The young man obviously rues the day he went on Tinder and has had the good sense to take out a restraining order against her because she is clearly prone to serious lapses of judgement.

 

     Perhaps if this girl was called Jodi or Chardonnay, had gone through the state education system  and had actually had to work to achieve her success she would value her career potential, but I doubt that this girl really gives a damn!    She's an addict and we all know that they are manipulative, highly accomplished liars and self-deceivers who rarely accept responsibility for their addictions and actions.    If she can be bought out of this little spot of bother by her family, who have probably enlisted some top flight lawyers in a Nabarro-esque legal manoeuvre to plead her sad plight, they will doubtless have invoked the notion that if she is denied a career in medicine it will be a great loss to humanity.  

 

     She will doubtless learn nothing and continue to consider herself to be 'entitled' to do whatever she sees fit.  There must not be one set of rules for the rich and another for the poor, she did a very bad thing and needs psychiatric help, counselling and some time to reflect on the error of her ways and what better solution is there than giving her a custodial sentence to wake her up to the reality of life as the rest of us know it.

 

     If I ever develop a serious heart condition I would hate for this young woman to be my surgeon because she is wholly unreliable.    There may come a day when she might decide on some course of surgical action on a whim that might cause someone to die on the operating table because she thinks that she knows better than anyone else and deems them to be collateral damage.

 

     For me, there are more reasons why this young woman should not join the medical profession than there are for her being treated with leniency.    She is, clearly, a loose cannon and I would have far more confidence in someone who valued their future enough not to endanger it on the alter of capricious self-indulgence.   After all she seeks to go into a life or death profession while it seems she has no respect for either.  

 

 

 

 

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Fabmabuk

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What Is Going On?

     It saddens me to see the amount of litter that is abandoned in our towns.

 

  

 

     As I drove home today I passed a terraced house with a bus stop outside and beyond the front garden wall was a three piece suite piled and abandoned and this seems to be becoming a regular sight.   The council men that removed the abandoned fridges from outside my house a couple of weeks ago told me that they spend their week driving around picking up the assorted detritus that is no longer required.   Apparently there is a service that can be used and it costs a few pounds to have up to five items removed but people aren't willing to pay so they abandon their unwanted items outside their gate and then call the council to say that the items have been fly tipped to avoid the charge.   In time I'm sure the council will cotton on and they will probably stop charging the fee but nothing is free, so our rates will go up yet again.   Yesterday I saw a pile of rubbish abandoned in a layby and people are taking money to remove items and then they dump them in laybys and country lanes and pocket the money leaving the disposal of these items to the council.   

 

                                                  WHAT IS GOING ON?  

 

      When I was a youngster it was drummed into us that we brought our litter home so sweet wrappers and crisp packets were pocketed and binned in an orderly fashion.   Admittedly I was raised to believe that eating in the street was not acceptable and ladies smoked sitting down!  I am old but I miss those standards and the civic pride that we shared with our fellow townsfolk.  

 

     It took me four years to get a bus shelter, like the one above, removed from its location close to my driveway.   My neighbours and I had endless problems with groups of young men gathering to smoke dope and sell various drugs at night.   One day I was horrified to find a heroin cooking kit on my wall.   Fast food containers and cans were constantly being dumped over my wall or in the area of the shelter and our lives were being affected by the noisy and unruly behaviour of the boys who spent their evenings there.    Eventually, having reported vehicles to the police and petitioning both  the council and the bus company we were at our wits end when finally removal was agreed.   The men came to take the shelter away and replace it with a flag on a pole as we requested and they told me that they are spending a lot of their time removing shelters because of similar problems and according to them the druggies often throw their used needles onto the shelter roof so they pose a threat to the council workers, who have to take great care to avoid injury.

 

     The day my shelter came down was a jubilant one for us all, the people living opposite it had given up using their front rooms because of the noise and nobody approached the nocturnal inhabitants for fear of intimidation.   You can imagine my delight when I came home that evening and saw a bunch of boys heading to my shelter and apparently the look on their faces was priceless  when they found their 'den' had gone.   I know they will have simply moved on BUT, although I must sound like a nimby, such behaviour is not acceptable and must be stamped out.

 

       The other day I saw a young Asian boy coming out of the pharmacy I had just visited; he was about ten but because he was very big he looked much older as he waddled down the road.    In his hand was a tube of Pringles and as he strolled back from whence he came he jettisoned first the top then the foil seal, both of which he casually dropped as he rammed his paw into the pipe.   I see this sort of behaviour every day and I find it horrifying that people will blithely drop their litter without any concern for who is watching or where it lands.

 

     Nowadays people really do waddle about; they make their way grasping polystyrene boxes from which they fork the contents into their faces after which they abandon the containers at will.   I wonder  why someone hasn't begun marketing 'on the go trays' like the ones usherettes used in cinemas.   Back in the day we bought ices and lollies from the ladies who wore a tray that had a strap that went around the neck leaving them hands-free to sell their wares.     Imagine the modern day scene, people could stuff all manner of fast foodstuffs into their faces with greater ease and less chance of losing their lunch through spillage.  

 

     All this consumption begs the obvious question... If one eats food on foot are the calories cancelled?      I doubt that people adjust their intake to include 'on the go food' they've just absorbed.  Everywhere I look I see folk stuffing all manner of food in and generally their consumption is reflected in their body type.  I know someone who always went to get fish and chips for her colleagues and came back saying "I don't know why they always give me such a large portion!"  and I remember the look she shot at me when I challenged it and said how do you know that the big portion is for you?   Because her name was written on the wrapper - that's why - and I had been 'looked' to death!

 

     Not only are we suffering from high volumes of littering but excessive piggery is also a serious social concern.   I watched a recent episode of one of those 'On the dole and.....' programmes and there was a recurring theme as two of the subjects said the same thing - "I'm on benefits, I can't afford to eat good food"   Can that really be so?   The subjects of such programmes are often morbidly obese and thus they are incapable of working.  In the main they all seem to smoke and have big 'F-off' plasma televisions and surely if you have had stars tattooed all over your face you have made yourself intentionally unemployable.     My heart is not hardened to people in dire straits but I do marvel at the immaculate manicures and HD eyebrows of the young women who cannot provide proper food for their multi fathered broods of children that require council housing.    Why is it that children and dogs  are often the hapless victims of such poor life management? 

 
   I shop in Lidl and when they first opened locally  it was almost necessary to wear a false moustache to go in for fear of being 'spotted' and someone did once say to me "Margo, you shop in Lidl?" to which I replied ..."so do you apparently!"    

 

     Food snobbery is seriously troubling to me, I know I like a regular supply of fresh earrings but I refuse to make an almost ten mile round trip to Waitrose when Morrison's is on the doorstep as is the case for one person that I know because he seems to think somewhere like Lidl is beneath him and it appears that he has never heard of those round brown things called potatoes that one peels and beat into a wonderful fluffy mash, he buys his ready made.   Lidl's baked goods are excellent and I find their produce very good too and although their ranges are limited and sometimes foreign their wares are of good quality. 

 

     When I was at secondary school we had a flat where we would spend a week running our daytime lives.   We budgeted, shopped, made beds, ironed and washed up leaving the flat only to go home at the end of the day.   During that time we managed our lives in a very productive way and had a ball in the process.   These days life skills seem to be very low on the list of priorities and they need so much more knowledge to survive these days that they get homework early and are being pushed into after school activities and are cramming for success.   

 

     The system seems to be letting youngsters down in a vital area, discipline.   When I taught I had no means of discipline except sending students out of the room.   Each year I would tell them this and advise them that under no circumstances would I send anyone out because, unlike in my day, they weren't allowed to stand outside the door, they would just take off.   Discipline is necessary for all of us, it makes us truly human and we become a part of our society and that is a serious problem in modern life. 

 

     In my schooldays, if we had the ruler or the strap our parents would often know about it before we'd reached home and one or both of them would be waiting, arms folded intent on an explanation.   Despite there being few telephones they always seemed to know and we also knew that as soon as they found out, maybe by letter a few days later, we were in trouble.    The automatic assumption would be that we had cheeked our teacher and we'd get a thick ear or be spanked.   Today's parents will bounce up to school and many have threatened and actually hit teachers for chastising their little 'sunbeam'.   Dammit teaching is hard enough but without any discipline it became a nightmare and in the long term the kids are suffering.   They have temper tantrums and think that they are untouchable, as indeed they are.   Then in recent years some schools have had to request that mothers don't take their kids to the school gates in their pyjamas and dressing gowns - What is going on, littering, piggery and bad behaviour are all reaching epidemic proportions in the UK? 

 

 

    

    

    

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Ageing Certainly Isn't for Sissies!

 

Hello all, it is lovely to be back with you today as I begin my sixty ninth year of being here.

 

 

     So, its sixty eight years since I lay there , virtually bald, toothless, pudgy knee'd and fascinated by those starfish things at the end of my arms that I couldn't do anything with.

 

     Since then I'd gone through many ages and stages, gauche with puppy fat and a serious preference to enter rooms having crawled in between the underlay and the carpet, attention being something I loathed.   The early years of settling into my own skin have been very interesting and there are many more stories to tell but for now I want to focus on this thing called ageing because I find it fascinating.

     Truth be told I wasn't really sure I'd get this far, having had breast cancer a few years ago I did think my goose might have been cooked but apparently it was mildly toasted with twenty doses of radiotherapy  and I'm still here and am very happy to be so.

     When I was thirty I loved a fellow who was just a little younger than me, he was a wandering minstrel in a time when there were none and he struggled with thirty.   I remember meeting up with him and he asked me what it was like and I said it was great, I didn't have to lie if I wanted a comic and that is how I saw it.   Sadly he was completely thrown by it and took an overdose two weeks before his thirtieth birthday.   I was heartbroken and was incensed, I wanted to hit him but he had made his choice and we all have the right to stay or leave.    I am not ready to go anywhere soon but when the time comes I hope that the system will be in place to permit me to make my choice and enable me to have a dignified death at a time of my choosing.

     Forty was fine too, marriage and babies are the two best things that I never did so I have been able to focus on me and keep myself  'in the game' so to speak.   I don't need child friendly cars and my home is simply full of me, no wardrobe is empty, I have, like a koi carp, grown to the size of my environment so all four of my bedrooms are full of me and my stuff and I feel neither guilt or shame.   I love my life with a passion and have accepted that with every choice I've made there has been a consequence.

     For the first half an hour or so of fifty I was a bit uncomfortable, my half century had been reached but I settled into it and soon had no problems with it and I was still having adventures which is, for me, the essence of the ageing process.   

     When I was in my early sixties I found my cancer but it was sorted and I survived it and discovered that it gave me a new outlook on life.   I became a 'why not me?' having rejected the notion that my cancer had been some sort of  punishment for some sin or other, I do not subscribe to worshiping deities, I worship life.    Onwards and upwards is my motto, I healed and grew from the experience and I'm still here rocking my do!

      Now I am a lot closer to my seventies than my sixties, only one more year and I will start that milestone seventieth and hopefully it will be as much fun as my sixties have been.    Honestly they really have been good, warts and all.    They haven't all been plain sailing, there have been disappointments, losses, heartaches and endings but I have very few regrets and am optimistic that there is much more to look forward to.

     I have always been able to look for the positive in any situation and apply this to my take on life.   So my arse and tits are not where they were.   One boob is a bit mangled and smaller and perter than the other one which is heading south.   I have a body that is best on radio and there are lots of wrinkly bits, but they're my wrinkly bits and I've earned them.    It isn't about looks and body really, although most of  like to make the best of ourselves, it is what is in our hearts that really counts.   I try to live a decent life, the ten commandments are very logical to me despite my atheism, and life continues to be wonderful.

     I have seen what retirement does to people so I decided to continue working, I'm not keen to put on the 'old lady uniform', you know the one, the turquoise car coat, pleated skirt and zippy boots and fake fur hat that lurk in shops waiting to envelop us olds.    I love my dead folk and having found myself on the back cover of The Lady recently I  am now looking into being a mature model having been told that I may have a niche look and it will be interesting to see if I have any potential.   So hopefully a new adventure may be in the offing and I will embrace it with relish because.....ageing isn't for sissies any more than life is.

     Whatever happens must be embraced and learned from, we don't arrive with a tag on our toe saying three score and ten wonderful years, we get what we get and do our do........so please, go out there and do your do, don't just sit on the platform waiting for the train because you're already on it and dammit although its a bumpy ride sometimes that's what makes it great.

     Positivity is what I wish for you all, be brave and don't take yourself too seriously, who cares what or if there is anything next, work on the now because that is all that we can be sure of, we're here NOW!
 

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Fabmabuk

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Going Out In Style

Funerals are the joy of my life now, but it wasn't always so.

Like most people I used to dread funerals and as I aged I found that I was bidding farewell to so many people that I knew and not in a good way.    I used to go to funerals reluctantly because they were always such miserable affairs, the deceased was given scant attention as a legion of vicars and priests have rapidly shifted their attention to their God leaving the deceased largely ignored .  Then I went to a non-religious one for the father of a friend and I was so impressed that I decided to become a celebrant so that I could give more people a positive experience when saying goodbye to their loved ones.    Now I consider this work to be his legacy to me, and often unexpected gifts come into my life in that families become friends and I count many such relatives as dear friends.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of the death of a very dear friend and I have been thinking about her a great deal.    She had the sweetest nature and was a truly kind and good woman and I miss her, we all do.  I knew her for what seemed like forever, at least forty years, at one point we worked beside each other as colleagues and when her cancer appeared I became her chemo buddy so we shared a lot of times, good and bad, and we cried with both sadness and joy.   She had a son and he misses him mom badly but he is learning to manage life without her and I see him when he needs me.

Sometimes funerals are truly sad, a baby or a child is never easy handle but I do my best but I seldom manage to remain completely dry eyed.   There are serious funerals but nowadays people are seeing the merit of more light hearted celebrations.   I have had motorcycle sidecar funerals several times and bikers are always good fun.   I've had coffins arrive on the back of flatbed lorries and in a wonderful little VW camper hearse and I love every ridiculous minute of how they are brought to me sometimes. 

The floral coffin above was used for a funeral this past week.   The lady loved all animals, especially cats, she also loved her garden and died at the ripe old age of 82 after her parent had been told that she would be gone within two hours of her birth.    She survived and lived a full and very happy life despite a long history of medical complaints that necessitated several hospital stays.  But she was of a different generation, they had experienced a war, they knew death and were easier in its company and they were the gritty buggers.

Funerals can be what you want them to be, but for me celebrations will always be best, then people leave the chapel with lighter steps and the healing begins.    I don't have many real boundaries in terms of colourful stories because I want everyone in attendance to know who I am talking about so I am not prissy about using salty language and say some very rude words because it has to be about the deceased not me, although only when it is appropriate, but in truth the naughtier they are the better I like it.

I want people to laugh as they say goodbye, I want them to remember that the old person my charges were at the time of death is not all they were.   They were young, they did crush and snogged at bus stops like all youngsters do.   They played pranks, went to dances and generally got up to no good in many cases and that is what I want to focus on, the human being not some sanitised version of them that bares little or no resemblance to the person I am helping.

When I began this work I decided that I would not make any judgments, that isn't what I'm there for, so I have worked with paedophiles, murderers and some people that it has been very difficult to talk positively about, but everybody is the sum of many parts and their mommies or someone else loved them so who am I to rush to judgement?  

Doing this work is as huge a responsibility but it continues to be my joy fifteen years after I began caring for other people's loved ones.

Naturally it is harder to work with someone that I know and have been fond of.   My friend's funeral last year was probably one of the hardest I have ever done because she was my friend and I loved her dearly.   It is also the case that some people are forgotten while others never can be and she was one that I will never forget.   I shall think of her tomorrow and may catch up with her boy.....she is in our hearts and there she is safe.

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Fabmabuk

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A Spanner In My Works!

 

Had a little knock a couple of weeks ago and it was particularly galling as it was my fault, but hey ho!   Shit happens!   After all Pobodys Nerfect!'... even me.

I had a loan car for ten days and have happily tootled about although I usually drive a Mazda MX5 so I did feel a bit 'sit up and beg' in the loaner car but any car is better than no car after all.   To me cars really are mobile handbags but I do like a nice little Mazda and they aren't child friendly thank goodness .   When I was teaching I got a lot of 'cred' when the students saw my car, it was always "Is that yours Miss?" as if I should be driving a knackered Lada, bless them, I guess we all like a neat little motor.

When I got my beast back on Wednesday I noticed a knocking noise that started to irritate the whatsits out of me, I know these cars so well after 25 years and 12 of them and couldn't work out quite where the noise was coming from.   I'd had to have a new wing and wondered if there was a grommet missing or something hadn't been tightened properly so yesterday I went back to the garage and they had a look and they were all scratching their heads.

The mechanic agreed that the noise wasn't imaginary so I sat there for a couple of hours while they de-constructed my car.   The door rattled so that got fixed, then they said could they keep it into next week and my little heart sank at the prospect of being without it for another few days but I agreed.

The  cause of noise had to be found so they decided that in a last ditch attempt to locate it they would take off my bumper to check that they'd fitted it properly and then 'lo and behold' they found the problem - the rock.   It was bigger than a pound coin and it was rattling around inside the bumper, the conclusion being that it had flown up into the grille and lodged in there.  

It was so nice to drive home without a rattle but I did feel sorry for the guys in the garage, they had done a lovely repair and had to virtually remove it all to find 'it' which was simply a chunk of stone.  

Embarrassment over and I'm a happy motorist again and the bunting will be going up on my gate again on father's day - the second anniversary of dumping the last numpty....

So all, life is fine, car fixed, nobody got broken and I'm free.    A result all round I think.

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Fabmabuk

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Broken Man Critter Syndrome

 

Hello all, another chunter begins.

 

 

I was reminded by a reply to a comment from one of you about my first blog and made a mental note to have a chunter so here goes.

 

 

I have a guilty secret - well its not much of a secret really, everybody who knows me knows about it - I am addicted to broken men.  Indeed I am a leading exponent of man mending, if there were a medal for it I'd have a chest full and my chest is somewhat capacious.    

 

In spite of all the evidence of the impossibility of my endeavours I will seek to fix a broken man and can spot one at fifty paces.   I could sniff one out in a football crowd, luckily I've never been to a football match otherwise I'd be in even deeper soup than I already am.

 

Like some intrepid naturalist hunting for the rarest of creatures, I have heat seeking radar that zones in and damaged goods and, once I have one in my sights, my autonomic response is to begin foraging in my handbag for the invisible Salvation Army bonnet that so many of my ilk carry. 

 

I don't know what it is about them that appeals so much, they're usually pretty awful human beings but I am an addict.   Broken men are certainly no challenge, they're all over the place waiting to schmooze us into falling for them with their 'treat her mean, keep her keen' attitudes and studied indifference.   But I do have to admit, they are like catnip to menders, we sniff the air in clubs and bars for their scent, then once he's lined up in the cross hairs we shoot a coquettish glance in his direction and that is more or less that.

 

We talk amongst our friends and compare notes, do we like him, well, yes if our friends do.   Then we set about foraging in our bags to make sure we can snatch the bonnet and noise maker out at a moments notice....and we're off!

 

I have had many failed mends to my shame, like some sad campaigner I have a list with a large F for fail scrawled through their initials......dammit - that list is big!     I say shame on purpose, because in each case I should have known better.   I am notorious among my friends for having very poor taste in men people although my taste in earrings and accessories is par excellence!   My forays into romance have been resounding failures, although to my credit I never married any of my mistakes - phew!

 

Broken men are my catnip, in the beginning each has seemed to be ok, but as time passed on they each got arrogant and assumed that I would take all sorts of indignities...and I did up to a point.   I have known about ex girlfriends and wives, but, like all dedicated menders, I imagined that I could mend them when others had failed.   Consequently I have strolled to the edge of the abyss and jumped off head first, perhaps hoping that this one might be 'HIM', the one who it would be safe to trust.     Alas I haven't met 'HIM' yet, though  in the past I have met a couple of nearly men.  

 

Nearly men are much safer but I find their availability uninteresting, I want to win a broken one - well I did - these days I'd rather have a cup of coffee and forgo all that huffing and puffing, after all dear lady readers, there are only so many variations on a theme aren't there?

 

So, over the years there have been loves, nice ones too, but nice doesn't cut it for me, so they've been abandoned asap.    Then off I go in search of another bastard who is guaranteed to break my poor wizened heart.   I hand them my vulnerability as if it is an offering to a god and later they just sharpen it up and stab me with it.   I remember my last ex - with a large grrrh and absolutely no fondness - one day he blithely asked me why none of my relationships had ever worked ..... well they had until they stopped said I but he was too dumb to get it.   For him it seems a successful relationship ends in her telling him she'll always love him (as one pal, his former girlfriend did, and haven't we all said that to let them down gently as we cut them adrift?)   Obviously he was such a success that every woman he ever saw dumped him, including two wives and me after fourteen years, so if I were you I wouldn't be asking him what the secret of his success is!    That numpty (can you tell I don't like him?) is now trawling web dating sites and he's seventy and not looking so good.   I'm free so what do I care and I have a clean bill of health despite his philandering.

 

Oh do, please forgive me, I'm prone to a bit of a digress here and there but I do eventually get back on track - honest!   Broken boys are like broken biscuits, you can't tell what they're really supposed to be, they've lost their shape in some way and we menders think we can restore them when, truth be told, they were ruined by their mommies who loved them unconditionally and to the point that they expected the same from us.  Well, tough, I have put up with so much in the way of violence, insults and all round abuse that I have jumped off that particular merry-go-round and am now thoroughly enjoying my life.

 

Even menders eventually learn, our straight talking friends tell us to give up but we are nothing if not determined, we hold on as if our life depended on it and it takes years to realise that our life actually depends on us letting go.    In my invisible bonnet days I'd reach in put it on drag out the tambourine and run around the him on the day silently chanting my mantra - 'I can mend him, I can mend him!'   But now I know I can't and having faced that fact there is no bonnet or tambourine in my bag now, they have been replaced by a large box containing self respect and dignity and I don't need to do anything with them other than know that they are mine.

 

I don't envy you younger girls who are going through the bonnet stage and it is clear that at sixty eight I should have known better, but let me tell you all, there is hope and I can shine with my dignity and self respect safely gathered in as I have finally learned to love myself and understand that my heart is true, I just handed it to the wrong men.

 

Thank you for reading me my dears, I'll be back.....if you want me to be? 

 

 

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Fabmabuk

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