Santipolo

I know it’s very council estate but the other day I just left home and looked over my shoulder and suddenly realised just how happy I am living here with who I am living with. Sure, I’d love a mansion big enough for all the family or, better yet, a large house with houses in the grounds for family so they all get their own space. Home is just such a special space though, wherever it may be. It’s tatty and run down on the outside, the garden is overgrown and if anyone wants a meter reading I’m in trouble but, it’s where I live and love, it’s home. Anywhere can be home though, it’s not so much a location as the place where we share love. There are many places I feel at home, places I can happily lay my head and feel safe. Since having a house with my name on it I have totally up 4, two in Basildon, two in Northampton, probably lived here longer than any of them! We moved in this place in March of 2003, on Matt’s birthday as it happens and, n...

I suspect my blog was actually getting on a bit, that I’d started it some time ago so I went and took a look and was quite shocked to discover the first entry was actually from June 2004! Somehow I have managed to keep it all in one piece despite numerous moves about from one remote location to another. I’ve probably lost some images along the way which went with entries but, back then, the internet was really slow so, quite likely those pictures were poor quality and barely worth bothering with. 2004 was a really very busy and decisive year. It was when I decided to end the relationship I was in at the time and rediscover myself, so much has happened since. I am tempted to read it all through just in case I missed something fun! You take care now

I feel that each year Christmas has come that little bit earlier. It might be nice to play this whilst your reading There was a time when Christmas didn’t even think about getting going until two weeks before the day. Occasionally, for those of us old enough to remember, Blue Peter would encourage us to build our very own (burn the house down) advent crown with old coat hangers, tinsel and some tacked on candles! Anyway, they’d get us to make this and maybe some other little decorations would appear. The very first of the decorations in my mind were always those we picked up from Hainault Forest in Essex. It was always bitterly cold but we’d go and explore to see if we could find some decorative items, ideally mistletoe and holly (with berries) so mum could make her yearly arrangement with the never were alive fake Robin’s on. There was something magical about that. Magical and not a little cold, muddy and damn right miserable being told not to bring the mud into...

I personally think we are all the better as a nation for our Monarchy. They do represent us as a country worldwide and that they’re unelected makes it all the better, they never have to follow party lines, stick to a popular trend or offer bribes to get elected, they just uphold our dignity. When someone attacks our monarchy they attack us, when they ignore etiquette they are insulting us. Something we often forget is that the Queen (or King) represents the Commonwealth and not just ‘England’. She is head of state to all of these countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Canada,  Jamaica , New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia, Solomon Islands, St Kitts and Nevis, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Jamaica is considering removing her but it’s by no means certain, Barbados will let her go in November of 2021 (their loss). Is the Monarch perfect? No, far from it and this is why they represent us so well. There was a time when sug...

I’ve been using Blogger for some time now but, the trouble with Blogger is that, I actually do not own it. Google could at any time delete it, change it or sell it or, plaster it with adverts and there isn’t anything I can do about that.