lifestylesupportguru

Category: Culture

Dismayed, Distraught, Disturbed and Distressed!

Dismayed and distraught

Good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru! I have to inform you that I am Dismayed, Distraught, Disturbed and Distressed! Unexpected things have occurred and they have made me realise that, perhaps, my life is sometimes closer to the ‘ordinary’ than I might have believed – indeed, closer than you, my dear followers, might yourselves have believed. Yes, the LSG is ALMOST human! But what has caused this toppling of the idol, I hear you ask. How has she developed clay feet? (I hear your voices all the time, my devotees, asking me to explain the deeper mysteries of life such as ‘Where can I get a good pint?’, ‘How much should I pay for a pint of milk?’, ‘Is a beach body worth the effort, especially if you’re only going to Skegness or Barry Island?’)
Imagine the first scene:
I am in a quirky little gift shop (the gifts are quirky, rather than the shop), perusing quirky items and wondering if a friend would appreciate a quirky frog

Quirky ornament

ornament for her garden (I decided to buy her a birthday meal instead in the end). A shop assistant, who hadn’t seen me come in, was in a corner of the shop arranging a display of tasteful, miniature wrought iron tea light holders and had her back to me as I pondered the merits of various sizes of frogs (I used to do that all the time when I worked in France). Suddenly, she turned round and screamed when she saw me! I screamed in return, thinking she’d spotted a mad axeman behind me (see a previous blog), but it was simply that she didn’t know I was behind her. I was DISTRAUGHT! The LSG has never had such an effect before!
So, what else has DISTRESSED me this week? Well, I have learned that I CANNOT TRUST WHAT I SEE ON THE NEWS and it is all down to a relative (let’s call him my nephew, for the sake of argument) who is determined to educate me and broaden my horizons, not realising that my horizons (and other parts of me) are already broad enough – after all, I am the LSG!

weather forecast

All these years, I had thought that the nice weather map at the end of the BBC News was a neatly drawn wall display at which the weather wallahs pointed to indicate where it would rain (usually Wales, Ireland, Scotland and most of England except for a small spot above wherever Kate and Wills may be staying). But NO! It is a computer-generated image – they are actually pointing at a blank, blue wall! Oh, the DISMAY, dear devotees! The DESPAIR!

But worse was to come! Apparently, much of the background of the main outside news reports could also be projected in the same way! All this time, I have flinched as I thought John Simpson or Jeremy Bowen were about to be blown up as they reported from some war-torn outpost when, in fact, they may actually be standing indoors, flak vests on, cup of tea to the side, in front of a blue wall onto which some computer geek is projecting scenes from ‘Mad Max’ or ‘Saving Private Ryan’! And that nice Nicholas Witchell could easily be standing inside a nice, warm studio rather than in the pouring rain outside Buckingham Palace waiting to tell us what the Queen had for tea!
Oh, how my dreams were shattered! How my heroes could be idols with feet of clay (see

Corkscrew

above)! And I can’t watch the ITV weather girlies instead because their hand movements are so theatrical, daaahlings – one wonders if they are practising for a part in a Bollywood dance film. What is a girl to do? There is only one answer – turn to drink!

And with that thought, I shall go and pour myself a comforting glass of Sauvignon Blanc and watch something soothing like ‘Titanic’ – at least I know THAT is real (although I sometimes wonder how the cameramen survived to bring back all that footage).
Enjoy the rest of your evening!

Domestic Goddess Part 2

Noodles

A very good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru! Now, although it isn’t that long since I posted about being a Domestic Goddess, I felt that I needed to add a Domestic Goddess, Part 2. As you know, my own speciality is Pot Noodles (various flavours available, although my personal favourite is Chicken and Mushroom, with extra soy sauce), but I have passed a couple of agreeable afternoons this weekend watching others cope with this role and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there are some who are almost at the same level of culinary expertise as the LSG.
First was Frances Quinn who, apparently, was the winner of the Great British Bake-off in 2013 – I was ill at the time, so had to withdraw from the competition. I have to say that I enjoyed her demonstration at the Derbyshire Food and Drink Fair of how to make marzipan bees, although I

bee

think I might have beaten her with my Pot Noodle Poodles if I hadn’t been struck down with a sudden and debilitating malady which prevented me from entering the competition.
Second was Sue Williams, who provided a MORE than adequate lunch (probably ‘Satisfactory’ by Ofsted standards, if ‘satisfactory’ was still a ‘standard’ in their book, but was ‘Outstanding with gold knobs on’ in mine!). Today was not ‘marzipan bees’ or

yellow car

‘noodle poodles’ but pork (her husband said it had gone from being ‘pulled pork’ to ‘sliced pork’ and, eventually, just became ‘pork in chunks’) with a whole range of accompanying vegetables, all of which were rather tasty and wouldn’t have gone amiss as a new Pot Noodle range of ‘Sunday Lunch’. Having spent FOUR hours exchanging gossip and reminiscences, I felt it was time to take my leave before I outstayed my welcome (I’d probably done that after half an hour!) and we then exchanged bottles of wine and air kisses – mwah, mwah, daaahlings!!! We also agreed that younger brother would NOT have been impressed with a bright yellow Picanto as my preferred mode of transport – no taste, Leigh!

My only concern about the whole afternoon is that, unbeknownst to Sue and Will (and me, for a while), I had a little, fine hair trapped behind one of my contact lenses which

contact lens in eye

was causing me to think that I was having some sort of hallucination because it kept making ‘shapes’ in my vision and I didn’t think it appropriate to say that I thought I was about to have some sort of massive brain seizure – apologies to both of you if you wondered why I was constantly winking at you, but I was just trying to clear my eye! You’re probably, even now, saying to each other, ‘Bit worried about the winking; do you think she’s a bit of a swinger?’ The answer’s ‘NO’ – not at my age!

So, there you have it, dear followers – some people CAN come close to achieving the elevated state of the LSG! It just takes that little bit of extra effort – and the ability to get a full Sunday lunch into a small plastic pot to which you just add boiling water! Doggie bag, Sue – that’s the secret! Sleep well, beloved believers – on a full stomach!

Domestic Goddess

A very good evening from the Lifestyle Support Guru! You may not have noticed my name mentioned as one of the ‘winners’ in the election, but I can let you know that I shall be working undercover as a secret advisor to the government and all the other parties, but if I tell you what I’ll be doing, I’d have to kill you, I’m afraid, so I shall move on to something else.

Domestic Goddess

Now, as you know, the LSG has skills in many areas, but what some of you may not realise is that I am also a DOMESTIC GODDESS and I am going to help you achieve this status, too. Being a DOMESTIC GODDESS doesn’t have to involve such mundane tasks as cooking, washing up or cleaning the oven. Goodness me, no! All you have to do is get someone else to do it for you (by going out to lunch on as many occasions as possible) or buy a Groupon voucher for an oven cleaner to come and get rid of all the gunge that has somehow gathered inside your oven, even though you use it infrequently (that means ‘almost never’ in LSG-speak). Personally, I blame the cats – I think they may well be secret Michelin-starred chefs.

Now, imagine the scene: you have a professional oven cleaner booked for the afternoon, so what’s the first thing you do? Yes… you clean the oven! You also clean the kitchen itself and, just for good measure, the bathroom – just in case!
The cleaner arrives and you lead him into your sparkling kitchen, show him the oven and he

oven

examines it. ‘Does it have an interior light?’ he asks. You finally manage to stop laughing because this is almost the smallest oven you can buy without it being a Calor gas camping stove, so an interior light would make it look like a floor show every time you open the door!
He opens the oven door and looks inside and you feel a frisson of terror in case he refuses to clean it. ‘Please, tell me you’ve seen worse?’ you plead and he says – slowly – ‘Yes…’ and then there’s silence… until he adds, ‘We also clean carpets,’ as he looks back into the living room where the red carpet has a fine covering of long, white fur as a contrast.

Italian coffee

You offer a coffee and he then asks to use the toilet (relief that you put that little bit of extra effort in) and then you explain to him that you will be doing your Italian homework while he’s working, hoping that this will impress him and make him realise that the LSG is far above domestic chores.
The oven cleaning and the Italian homework finish at the same time – guess which one of us said, ‘Well, I’ve done the best I can.’?
To the undomesticated eyes of the LSG, the oven, once again, looks sparkling – if those bloody cats decide they want to start doing cordon bleu cooking, they can go elsewhere! This oven is not for burning!

And there you have it – being a DOMESTIC GODDESS is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, as long as you let other people do everything for you(except your Italian homework). Pot Noodles for me from now on – or lunch out.
Sleep well, dear followers!

Have you “BEEN”?

A very good evening, one and all, from the Lifestyle Support Guru. This evening I have a SORRY TALE to tell and a HARD LESSON learned – this is after I found that Good Golly Miss Molly, my black cat, has learned to open cat food pouches (but that’s another story)!

Letter E

So, what have I learned? – that WANTING A WEE can be EXPENSIVE.
The story starts at an Italian evening class (although it could just as easily be Serbo-Croat, Painting By Numbers or Knit Your Own Knickers if you prefer) where you find that the Italian for ‘electricity’ is surprisingly difficult to say. (This point is actually irrelevant, but it surprised me, nevertheless.) During the lesson, make sure that you drink a cup of coffee and half a bottle of orange Oasis but decide that you’ll make it home before WANTING A WEE. However, you forget that you need to call in at Sainsbury’s for petrol on your way home

Need toilet

because you won’t have time tomorrow morning before setting off for the wilds of Chesterfield. ‘Aha!’ you think. ‘They’ve got a toilet inside the store, so I’ll call in there before getting petrol.’

Having done the necessary (too much information?) and washed your hands, as instructed on the back of the toilet door – ‘Wash Your Hands’, without even a ‘Please’ – you decide you might as well have a look at the birthday cards while you’re here because it’s a sibling’s birthday in a few days’ time and you spend a pleasant ten minutes giggling at the ‘Humorous’ section before choosing a card which you think is hilarious, although your sister may not when she opens it next week.

That done, you decide it would be a shame to leave the store without having a quick look in the Clothing section, although you have no intention of buying anything, of course! Unfortunately, this rather delicious orange top leaps out at you and you decide to follow the golden rule – ‘if it isn’t yellow, or blue and white stripes, then go for orange’. Besides, you just KNOW that it’s a different shade of orange from the ones you’ve bought in previous years.

ATM

Having made your purchases, you leave the store and realise that you have very little money on you and you may well be in need of refreshment a little later on (because your mouth is dry from practising ‘electricity’ to yourself in Italian), so you go to the wine voucher machine (aka the Cashpoint) before finally going to get some petrol, which costs you an arm and a leg because the tank was rather empty.

So there you have it, dear LSG worshippers – always ask yourself ‘Have you been?’ before setting out on any journey of more than twenty minutes’ duration after you have consumed any beverages because WANTING A WEE can cost you unexpected SQUILLIONS!

Enjoy the rest of your evening – and before you go to bed, ask yourself, ‘Have you been?’

The Martyr and The Transport Manager

Sick bed

So, a very good evening from the recently-risen-from-my-deathbed Lifestyle Support Guru, pleased to have made it through a whole day without having to return to bed at least twice during the day since Friday. Having rather overdone the Random Thoughts post last week – I got a bit carried away! – I hope to help you with a couple of shorter lessons in life in this post, passing on my recent experiences as a MARTYR and as a TRANSPORT MANAGER.
Firstly, being a MARTYR can be difficult and some of us can achieve this with greater ease than others (myself, for example), but it CAN be done with practice. To be a MARTYR, you need to practise self-sacrifice and thinking of others and this is exactly what I did, dear followers – I sacrificed a LUNCH on Saturday!

restaurant for lunch

Those of you most familiar with my habits and preferences will know that this counts as almost the MOST COMPLETE SACRIFICE I could make! But how could I inflict my sorry self on the proposed companion and, more importantly, on the lovely little Italian restaurant and its lovely food? (Actually, thinking about it, the proposed companion has never shown such consideration when suffering with his sinuses or ear problems, so I shall remember that for the future… )
As further evidence of my MARTYRDOM, I even sacrificed a dental appointment!

So, you will now be wondering how I have gained my experience as a TRANSPORT MANAGER, especially if I have been suffering. This actually relates to the earlier MARTYRDOM when I decided that, instead of returning to my sickbed for a third time yesterday, I would meet some friends for a planned meal and a cinema visit. Following the film – during which I learned that Van Gogh can be pronounced ‘Van Go, Van Goff, Van Cough or Van Choch (like the Welsh ‘ch’ sound); why not just stick with Vincent? – I went to catch my bus. The bus stop has one of those

Bus stop

electronic signs telling you when the next bus is due and where it’s going. A youngish (30? 35?) man came and studied this sign for a minute or two then turned and asked me if I knew when the next bus would be going to Mansfield. He then explained that he was dyslexic and thought the sign had said in 40 minutes. ‘Yes’, I said, ‘that’s right.’ and he walked off, muttering. ‘That’s not dyslexia,’ I thought, ‘that’s not being able to tell the time.’
Immediately following this, an elderly (older then me!) woman asked me if I knew which bus she should get to South Normanton. Do I look like a walking bus timetable? ‘Sorry’, I replied, ‘I don’t, but there’s a printed timetable just two yards away.’ At this point, a young hoodie who had been standing in the bus shelter intervened and, having consulted said timetable, told her that the bus would be along in another 30 minutes. And I had been convinced he was a potential MUGGER, dear followers, and so was hanging on to my handbag for dear life!

So, there you have it, believers and non-believers – life as a MARTYR and a TRANSPORT MANAGER is just grist to the mill for the LSG: all in a day’s work.
Sleep well (and see if you can work out when I should and shouldn’t have used ‘So’ at the beginning of a sentence. Tee hee!).
Lunch tomorrow!!!

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