Growing up

Do you remember being a kid and wondering what it was like to be a grown up? I don't mean when you were a teenager and thought "I can't wait until I'm old enough to drink, smoke or have sex" I mean when you thought that life had a number of milestones where things happened automatically. Am I the only person that thought thet way? A few examples: at an unspecified age you got given a job and a driving license and a car, then you worked for a few years and got given somewhere to live, next you got married and had children. Simple.

I never gave any thought to how everyone got these things because it was obvious, they were given to you at a certain age. If you wanted to be a doctor you went to school, college then university (although in those days I didn't know the exact order) and when you were finished, you were given the job that you'd wanted in the first place. I admire the naïvety that children have, I wish I still had it and I, even more so, wish that it was the case.

Well, I've been to college and university and I haven't got the job I wanted. I've past the age where I'm supposed to get a driving licence and a car and no-ones given them to me. Don't even talk to me about where I live and I've had a few close calls with marriage, but I've not been caught out yet. Children? well I've never even had a scare. I'm a sensible girl.
Well, now I realise that you have to make these things happen yourself. So I'm going to work on them one at a time. After the fantasic time Mark and I had in Wales we've decided to move ourselves a little closer to the countryside. Swansea seems the logical place as it's a big city that's close and easily accessable to the sort of place we like. So I've been looking at places tolive, started with renting a room in a shared house and oh my god, look at the price of them! Not in a bad way either, it's cheap, I mean some of them are the same price for a month as we currently pay a week for the shit hole we live in. And looking at the places they're nice, they have space and gardens and real neighbours that aren't drug dealers or whores (I've looked up the area both on thenet and asking friends that know the area. I've looked on google streetview and as far as I can see there's no down side). Now I think, just for fun-to daydream for a bit, I'll look at the house prices to buy. Again, pleasently surprised, I'm a bit excited now so I look up mortgages that we may be able to get and not only does it look possible, it looks like we'd be fools not to go for it.

People live in London for the excitement and the city life. I don't find it exciting and I've never liked the city life. Apart from it being easy to find work there's no advantage to being here at all.
So there it is, theres a rudimentary plan taking shape and it looks do-able. Maybe what I thought when I was a child wasn't so far fetched, I've just been waiting for it in the wrong place.

The pictures tell the story better than I ever could.

But I've had to cut them down so much that you'll never get the full story...
...so make of this lot what you will-hey, tell me a story for a change!











It's not surprising, but I feel another move coming on...

Holiday was wonderful

And I'll write about that later-sorry it's taken so long, but I went back to working day and night shifts for the last two days and tonight, Friday night, I'm looking forward to a nice early night so that I can be fresh faced for my best friend's wedding tomorrow.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to say here. My boyfriend bought me an apple danish and put it in my work bag. I had it with my coffee for breakfast. I'll be smiling all day now. Don't you think that was a sweet thing to do?

Memories

I love the smell of rain. In the city it's mixed with diesel, especially when you're waiting for a bus on city road.


When I was a kid we had a caravan that was shared between my entire family, not like normal people would with a time share arrangement, it was more like 'it's the school holiday's lets all pile in!' I'm not joking we were known to get 14 people into 9 berth caravan along with 3 dogs. Among the grandchildren the boys out number the girls meaning the girls were always guarenteed as much privicy as you can get in this kind of overcrowding, we had our own room, when I was very young I shared with Ann she is 6 years my senior which is a huge difference when you're 9 & 15 and when I became the hooligan staying out till all hours I shared with Ann's sister Laura who is 7 years my junior. Having so many peple in a small space meant we had to spend most of our time out doors, this was in the South coast of England in the 80's & early 90's it wasn't always pleasent. But we (the kids) loved it, with so many of us there was always someone to play/fight/plot with.



The drive there was always full of anticipation and I rarely fell asleep unlike my brother who managed it on most trips. As we were the smallest family (Dad, myself and my brother-Mum never came) we had the duty of taking my grandparents, which meant there would always have to be a certain amount of Irish music played on the way. Usually mostly Irish music, my Mum called it diddly-diddly music, if she'd only come with us we wouldn't have had both grandparents in the car and probably would have got a bit more capital FM than we ever did.