Quiffs

By the time the year is out I will have posted a mere handful of entries to record this 12 month period. To continue or not to continue? That is the question. The honest answer? ...Don't have a clue. I don't have much enthusiasm for writing lately. Whilst I'm pretty much housebound I feel that recording my days in fine detail would probably be intensely boring, both to read and write about. I have a very real sense that I shall be going out more and more in the coming weeks and months and I suspect that when I do, I will not feel any compunction at all to regularly sit here and record it.

I've always been quite fickle about 'projects' and I'm wondering whether my computer geek phase has just run its course. (I should qualify that last statement by saying that to describe myself as a 'computer geek' is a gross overstatement. I'm still a complete dweeb with technical stuff. Seriously, you'd get more useful information from a poodle than from me). One thing I will say - it was building a website that ignited my interest in photography and I have very much enjoyed sharing the results with my friends here on the internet. Some of you may have noticed that I have removed from this site everything I wrote and put together pre-stroke. Two reasons...To be frank I got fed up with 'hits' to my site from photographic libraries. My pics were meant to bring my pages to life and give my friends pleasure. Without my say-so these libraries have listed me, filched thumbnails of my work and therefore give the wrong impression that my piccies are up for grabs by the world and his wife.

Aside from the pics, I also read back some of what I'd written and realised that person no longer exists, so do I want daily reminders of her? Probably not. My internet years have coincided with some very bad times and as a result what I've written has reflected a very sad girl, poignantly even occasionally when I thought I was sounding up-beat and happy. So, there we are. I've had a massive clear out of this site and it pretty much reflects the way I'm feeling in my life. There are changes afoot.

Now having said all that, those of you who have been visiting here for long enough will recognise this kind of lull and my current lack of enthusiasm. You won't be surprised therefore if one day I fly in the face of everything I've just said and start churning out journal entries like a woman possessed. Also expect that if I continue to write I will continue to post photos - crumbs I have already haven't I? I just don't think I'll be leaving anything up here permanently on the web any more.

Is all that crystal clear then? Good. I like to think of myself as 'consistent' in my approach to life - consistently contrary.

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Enough of this. In other news...I have decided to wind up my father's business. I've been thinking about this for a long time now but the deciding factor occurred about three weeks ago. I had a very aggressive phone call here at home one evening from a woman who owes me money but from her attitude anyone would think that it was the other way around. In the past I could probably have dealt with this harridan relatively easily but since my stroke I am emotionally much more fragile. Her call left me terribly agitated and upset. After some thought I came to the sensible conclusion that extra income is simply not worth risking another stroke over. Yesterday I took the first step to winding it all up. I started helping to run this business maybe 10 or 15 years ago now and the company itself is nudging 60 years old. In a way therefore it is a sad decision but now that I've taken that first step I'm relieved. With any luck (and a following wind) I will be mostly extricated from the weekly routine by about the middle of next year.

In many ways I feel this is just one more indicator of big changes ahead. Both Alain and I are in the frame of mind to simplify life and get rid of some of the pressures that tug at our lives on a daily basis. Life in recent years has been completely subsumed by external factors and the needs of others. Daily discussions are based entirely around things we 'should', 'must' and 'ought to' do, to the extent that we are now unable to think how it was to just relax and fill a weekend doing as we pleased. That's going to change. Last weekend we spent a fair chunk of Saturday sitting chatting with friends over a delicious lunch in a casual restaurant. I can't even remember when we last did that - a very good reason why it needs to happen again soon and with much greater regularity.

My least favourite time of the year looms on the horizon but this year I'm feeling much more relaxed. My current physical state has simply left me with no choice but to do things differently and take it all in my stride (if indeed I could stride - which I can't!). My Christmas cards are all but complete and were, this year, a breeze to do because I had no option but to resort to typed labels and notes for inside. I hope to be writing with my right hand again by next Christmas but do you think it would really be awfully rude to do typed cards from now on? It's so much easier.

I'm not really very much use in the kitchen at the moment and since my brother is planning to be half way across the globe during the festive season, it looks like Christmas will be a very quiet affair and entirely stress free for both Alain and I. I'd go so far as to say I haven't felt genuinely this laid back about the whole event for many a year - I hardly recognise myself.

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Update Saturday, 6th December:

Can't hang around here because I have things to do, places to be and people to meet but I thought I'd just mention the morning's activities. I've been to the hairdressers for the first time in over 8 months so this was almost like going for a radical 'make-over'.

I've been to numerous different hairdressers in numerous different salons over the years and only found one stylist who cut and styled my hair truly to my liking. (He left the salon within weeks to go back to his former job in a top salon in Manchester). The girl who does my hair now is a lovely person and reasonable at cutting but the styles I come out with are the usual story. In the salon I smile sweetly in the mirror at the style that has been carefully welded in place to my scalp. I then stump up the cash before dashing to the car where I have a hairbrush at the ready and waiting to drag through my hair in an attempt to make it look 'normal'. (My very Britishness and my personality will not allow me to offend her creativity by telling her of all this).

All I really wanted today was a trim to remove the split ends and then a simple blow dry. I came away with a weird quiff on the top of my head like Woody Woodpecker. I asked Alain what he thought of it and he did the typical male thing of protecting his own backside when asked such a loaded question by a woman and told me it looked very nice. I didn't have a brush with me anyway so on that basis I didn't touch it and sat in the car, on public view, all the way back across the island thinking I looked OK. It was only when I was home again and the wind had flattened it that he told me it looked a whole lot better without that 'quiff thing' on top!