Remember to put the glass down......

Saved by Slash

Kelly Hadfield-Hyde was fined £80 last month for causing a disturbance at Manchester airport. She was on her way to Malaga and going through security. The fifty year old woman had already removed her coat but when the security guard said “Off, off. All off” she took it literally. She removed most of her clothes leaving her topless. Having just returned from a trip to the UK, I understand her frustration.

Whilst away, I went on a guided tour of a Sussex cemetery, went to the flicks (Philomena – what a film) and caught up with family. I travelled light and took just with a small suitcase with me. Returning home to Ireland, inside there was a Yankee candle (a gift from my sister), a framed picture of the fictional serial killer Dexter Morgan (a gift from my nephew) and the usual mix of clothing in need of a wash.

“NO LIQUIDS, GELS, CREAMS” the security guard called down to us from the security conveyor belt. I took out my liquids and put them into the tray.  Ahead of me, a few people took off their shoes and outer clothes. I was wearing boots, a coat, a scarf, a belt, a chunky metal bangle, earrings and a watch. Not to mention the fact that I had three tops on me. It would take me ten minutes at least to get down to the bottom layer, I would need at least three plastic trays to put it all in AND I was wearing an under wired bra (that never fails to set the machine off).

An elderly woman in front of me lent over, about to take off her boots. The official on security called over to her kindly, “It’s all right love, you can leave them on”. She shuffled past him and the scanner wearing her ankle boots, a watch, glasses and a heavy jumper. The only thing on her tray was her handbag.

The security official looked at me sternly. “Take off your boots”. The left one came off easily and went into the tray. The right boot wasn’t so easy. The zip had got stuck in my winter socks. I looked at the security guard with pleading eyes but he was having none of it. “The boot has to come off”.

The pressure was mounting. The queue was a mile long and I was hopping around in circles on one leg, tugging at my heel. Then a voice from behind, “Need a hand?” A young rocker dude in leather, with a tall black hat and long black curly hair stood in front of me and with one tug, had the darn thing off. I thanked him for his help with a “Nice hat”. “I’m wearing it through security. It’s too big for my bag”. He was going to a fancy dress party in Dublin as Slash from Gun’s ‘n’ Roses.

I threw my boot in the tray and prepared to go through the scanning machine. “Earrings?” the guard reminded me. I took them off. “Scarf?” I took it off. “Coat?” I removed it calmly and put it in the tray. “Belt?” I removed the belt that was holding up my jeans.  Any minute now he’d say “Off, off. All off” and I’d be in the same boat as Kelly Hadfield-Hyde. 

I went through the machine and the alarm sounded. “Come here please,” a woman rubbed me all over with her hands, then a paddle that went off every few seconds. “Have you any coins in your pockets?” “No”. “Why did you keep this on?” She pointed at the bangle on my arm. It was the only thing that her colleague had not told me to take off.  “BEEP BEEP” the alarm went off around my middle. She looked at me with suspicion. “Mirena Coil?” I offered, convinced that the device was to blame. She gave up on me. “Ok. You can go”. I went over to collect my clothes and bags.

“Is this your suitcase?”  Another official. The X-ray machine had found something suspicious in my hand luggage. “Come with me”. I stood and watched as he stood over my bag. “Did you pack this?” I’m still not sure if it was a security question or disgust at the state of my packing. “Yes”.

He pulled out the framed picture of Dexter Morgan and eyed me with suspicion. “I am not a serial killer” I joked. He didn’t laugh. He pulled out the booklet that the Worthing Historical society cemetery tour guide had given me titled ‘Unusual Deaths’. “I am not a serial killer” I joked again. Then he pulled out the candle. He turned it in his hands and looked at me. “It’s a candle,” I said. “I swear on my life it’s a candle.” I even sounded guilty. My voice sounded different and for no reason, I had put on an American accent.

He looked at me sternly. I was beginning to doubt my own mind. Was it a candle or had my sister accidentally given me a jar of Semtex? Without taking his eyes of me, he put the candle back in the bag, laid my Dexter picture and leaflet on top and gave me back the bag. I walked away and looked over my shoulder. Behind me, Slash was getting a thorough examination too.

I looked ahead of me for the elderly woman. She was nowhere to be seen. She was probably sitting in the departure lounge sipping on a glass of sherry with half a pound of cannabis in her boot heels and a thousand cigarettes sewn into her jumper.

Something about my current state causes security guards concern. Next time I fly, I am going to get myself a grey wig, some knitting needles and a walking stick. I’ll hand out aniseed balls to the security guards and sail through departures with plenty of time to spare for a gin and tonic on the other side. Maybe as Granny Annie I’ll look less suspicious.

Sky Dive Galway

“Oh MY GOD ANNIE! CAN YOU BELIEVE WE’RE ABOUT TO THROW OURSELVES OUT OF A PLANE?” my excited friend, local florist Dave Clancy, shouted into my ear. I could not believe it, not one bit. Not even when we were climbing into a plane so small that it looked like a toy.  Last week, after three attempts, I finally found myself at Galway Airport, wearing an all in one jump suit, about to climb into a tiny plane.

Six of us were squashed into the plane as we made our out ascent. When we were almost level with the clouds, “Are we there yet?” I asked my expert Dean. I was straddling him and tightly strapped to his torso. We had only just met too. Three of us were doing the tandem Skydive that day and each of us had an expert strapped to our back. 

“No. This is 2,000 ft. We’re jumping at 10,000ft”. “How are you feeling Annie?” “TERRIFIED” I replied. “Good. That’s what we like.” This wasn’t the place for sarcasm and it didn’t end there. “It’s not the jump that you have to worry about. It’s the hard landing you’re going to get when the parachute doesn’t open”.  I gulped and looked out of the window certain that even prisoners on death row don’t get this kind of torture.

“OH ANNIE! LOOK DOWN! LOOK HOW HIGH WE ARE!” Dave  shouted from the back. “OH ANNIE! I’M GETTING NERVOUS NOW!”  Beside him, the third skydiver in our group, Dave’s handsome young Polish boyfriend Slawek was starting to look anxious too. “MY HANDS ARE GETTING SWEATY! LOOK!” It was all getting too tense.

I sat, looking out of the window, dreading the fall. Dave tapped me on the shoulder for the hundredth time in half an hour. “OH GOD ANNIE. ARE YOU SCARED NOW?” Scared? That was an understatement. I was doing it cold turkey too. No hip flask, no sedation, no Rescue Remedy. Nothing. Just me and the skydive from 10,000 ft. We were so far above the clouds that it may as well have been outer space.

Dave was whipping us into a frenzy, “OH ANNIEEE!” he screamed from the back of the plane, waving his hands in the air. Dean’s patience was wearing thin. “Oi! This is serious. You are about to jump out of a plane. Calm down”, "Oh you're a barrel of laughs" Dave responded. The alpha male parachutists were not exactly the most jovial bunch. But our lives were literally in their hands. Let’s face it; if Graham Norton was a skydive expert nobody would every want to leave the plane. It would be too much fun. Dave was now hysterical, Slawek was even sweatier and Dean was in a sulk. He shoved ear-plugs into each ear.

At that moment I made up my mind that I would not jump. There was no way. We were too high and it was too dangerous. To add to it all, my daughter was on the ground filming it all. If it all went wrong, she’d have the whole thing recorded and I’d be the main story on Sky News. With my mind made up, I looked out of the window and decided that when we reached 10,000 ft., I’d politely let the others jump out first and then ask Dean to instruct the pilot to take me back to the airport.

Slawek, Dave and I sat silenced by terror. There was no thrill seeking adrenaline rushing through my veins, just the sense that we were all about to die. We climbed another 8,000 feet in the toy plane, its engine sounding just a little louder than a hairdryer. I waited patiently for an announcement from the pilot telling us that we were at 10,000 ft. But of course that only happens on Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Planes where you actually take off - and land.

Without any warning, a freezing cold blast of air and the whole side of our plane disappeared. “AGGHH! I’M SCARED!” was the last thing that Slawek said before he was sucked out the plane.  I turned to tell Dean that I wasn’t going to jump. I didn’t get the chance. “Annie, put your head on my shoulder and look up?” ”Whaaaaaaaaaaat?” Just as I was about to tell him that I had no intention of jumping, with one almighty pelvic thrust, he had me out of the plane.

I don’t remember much about the fall. We were so high and travelling at 200 mph. All I remember was concentrating on breathing. I opened one eye briefly and looked around. It was like a Google Earth image. I clamped my eyes shut again. After thirty seconds Dean released the parachute. “Well? What did you think?” for him the thrilling bit was over. I looked down from 8000ft over Galway. “I’ll tell you in a weeks time” I replied.

The float down should have been easy but we were off course.

To get us back to the airport, Dean had to send the parachute into a series of turns. “We’ve got to pick up enough speed to get us back to base” he said, sending us whirling and spinning 5000ft up over Galway. It was like being on a ride at the funfair. “Keep your eye on the horizon and you won’t be sick” Dean told me.

“OH MY GOD! THAT WAS AMAZING” Dave landed after me, feet firmly on the ground but as high as a kite. “THAT WAS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE” Slawek, was buzzing. “DID YOU LOOK UP AND SEE THE PARACHUTE ON YOUR WAY DOWN? WASN’T IT BEAUTIFUL?” I didn’t because for the entire decent I was focusing on not puking over Galway.

A big thank you goes to everyone who supported our jump. We raised €3,000 for Animal Heaven Animal Rescue in Kerry. Dave and Slawek have caught the bug and are considering a career as Sky Dive instructors. As for me, I have crossed it off the Bucket List. If I’m asked to support a charity again, I’ll do a sponsored silence. Now that will be an impossible challenge.

Stuck in a queue? Here's what you do....

Having spent the morning in a long and boring queue I was inspired by this picture. This is how people queue in Thailand. No need for ticket machines, I am going to try this next time I am in the motor tax office in Naas. 

The Ultimate Chocolate Pudding

A Warm and Oozy Chocolate Pudding for Cold Winter Months

Baby, it's cold outside. I lit the fire last weekend and went through a load of old magazines. There I found this old favourite. Now it the perfect time to bake this seriously pleasing chocolate pudding. This oozy pudding is clever. Not only will it take just ten minutes to make, is it made from store cupboard ingredients and you don't need to make a chocolate sauce to go with it. Follow this recipe and you will have a truly divine pudding that is glossy sponge on top and silky sauce underneath. The genius here is in the boiling water that you pour on top.....weird but magic! Serve with crème fraîche or cream. Serves six. 

Ingredients:

85g melted butter 

125g plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

8 tbsp cocoa powder

120g caster sugar

250 mls whole milk

2 beaten eggs

1tsp vanilla essence

185g light brown sugar

250 mls boiling water

Preheat oven to 180 oc and grease a 2 pint (1.25 litre) pudding basin.

Method:

1. Sift flour, baking powder, CASTER sugar and 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder into a bowl. 

2. In a separate bowl, mix the cooled melted butter, milk, eggs and vanilla extract. 

3. Add the wet mixture to the dry and whisk thoroughly, (it will be runny).

4. Pour the batter into the greased pudding basin and place on a baking tray. 

5. Mix the BROWN sugar and remaining 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder together. Sprinkle this over the batter evenly. Very gently, pour 250mls boiling water over the pudding. 

6. Bake for 55 mins until risen and firm to touch. 

101 Things To Do Before You Are Too Old And Boring To Do Them

“Mum. Get up. I’ve got to run up an escalator the wrong way,” Little Miss Sunshine announced. It was Saturday lunchtime when our youngest daughter came charging into the bedroom. “When I’ve done that, I’ve got to get on a TV show”. I had bought myself a book with the title ‘101 Things To Do Before You Are Too Old And Boring To Do Them’. It was only when I got home that I realised that it was written for ten year olds, which can only mean one thing: at forty-four I am too old and boring to do any of them.

Since I passed it on to her, Little Miss Sunshine has been addicted to it. Thanks to this clever book, she has started collecting stamps, begun to learn a few useful sentences in Japanese and, for the whole of next week, is going vegetarian. But at that moment last Saturday, her request to find an escalator and run up it the wrong way was all too much for this old crock. I was immobile, in a back brace with a swollen foot.

The sky dive that I should have been doing last weekend had been postponed due to bad weather. So instead of jumping out of a plane at ten thousand feet with the folk singers, I spent my Saturday morning moving furniture around the bedroom. This sudden surge of effort was inspired by a new RTE show, the ‘Design Doctors’ where two experts (with perfect teeth) go into a viewer’s house, redesign it and make the place beautiful.

I decided that by moving the bed, the chest of drawers and giving the love nest a darn good clean it would feel like new but just as I began to move a chest of drawers from one corner of the bedroom to the other, a muscle popped. As I stumbled towards the mattress, I stood on a wasp in my bare feet. It was a pain double whammy. It was my own stupid fault; the ‘Design Doctors’ always wear shoes and get someone else to move the furniture.

“Why can’t you take me to the shopping centre?” Little Miss Sunshine pleaded as I lay on the bed, high on prescription painkillers and dabbing my toe with Calamine lotion. “Please? All you have to do is drop me outside, I’ll go inside, run up the escalator the wrong way and you can collect me?” My back was killing me and my foot was so numb that couldn’t feel my toes let alone the brake pedal on the car.  “While I am going up the escalator, you can go and buy loads of vegetables for my next challenge if you like”.  I am not sure how well I am going to adjust to having a vegetarian in the house for a whole week. If this back doesn’t get any better it will be seven days of take away pizza.  

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to work out a solution to the escalator request, when an urgent scream came from the kitchen, “YEOWWWW-AGGH”. Little Miss Sunshine ran off to help and I slowly followed her holding my back, hopping on the good foot. There we found my husband clutching his throat with both hands like he was trying to strangle himself. “I’ve been STUNG BY A WASP”. His neck was red and beginning to swell. He staggered off to the ancient medicine cabinet hoping to find something in date to put on it.

As he made his way towards the bathroom even louder yells, “Ahhhh! F*** F*** F***!” Little Miss Sunshine ran after him with me hobbling behind. “I’ve stood on a F****** DRAWING PIN!” He now lay on the floor clutching his neck with one hand and foot with the other. Balancing on one leg, like a flamingo, I could see the pin in the ball of his foot. “I’ll get ice” Little Miss Sunshine ran back to the kitchen. “WHY IS THERE A F****** MAP OF THE WORLD ON THE FLOOR?”

The truth was that before I had started re-arranging my own bedroom, I had been shifting the furniture around upstairs too. I had turned out young lad’s room from a nursery blue haven to a funky pre-teen den. A huge map of the world had come off the wall to make way for some new Graffiti wallpaper. The map (and drawing pins) lay on the floor whilst I worked out where to put it.

An hour later, the pain killers had set in and the solution to the ‘101 Things To Do’ challenge had been found. “There’s a great escalator at Leopardstown. I’ll bring her racing and she can run up that the wrong way”, my injured husband came to the rescue. Little Miss Sunshine left the house in a blue coat with her Dad limping behind. Four hours later, she came bursting in.

“Did you see me?” she was out of breath with excitement. “I did the escalator challenge. It was so much fun. Then GUESS WHAT? I GOT ON THE TELLY!” The next day on RTE Player we watched the coverage from Leopardstown races and there she was, a tiny dot of blue by the parade ring. Hands in the air, she was waving at the camera like a mad thing behind Tracy Piggott. Her recently stung and stabbed father standing beside her, bravely hiding his pain behind a copy of the Racing Post.

Later that night, she came back into the bedroom. The 100 Things To Do Before You Are Too Old And Boring To Do Them book was in her hand, open at the next challenge. “After I’ve been a vegetarian for a week, guess what else I’ve got to do?” she was struggling for breath with excitement. “In here it says that I have to make a ‘Swear Box’ and learn FIRST AID”.

Those next two challenges will be easy.

My Big Fat Breaking Bad Obsession

Breaking Bad is almost over and so ends six months of obsessive TV watching. For those who have not seen the show that won big at the Emmys this year, it is about a chemistry teacher who, when he is diagnosed with cancer, decides to make crystal meth in order to make enough money to support his wife and family after his death.  Spoiler alert! Stop now if you are at the start of the story. I would hate to ruin it for those of you in the early stages of your addiction.

The Breaking Bad obsession is affecting the family, friends, even the neighbours. Walter White, we're missing you already. 

Breaking Bad and the Answering Machine

Last month, a friend decided to record a message in the style of Jessie Pinkman’s.  Try it yourself:

“Yo Yo Yo, 148, 3 to the 3 to the 6 to the 9, representing the ABQ, word up Biatch, Leaveth Tone”.

Needless to say, it had to go. Her Irish accent didn’t do the message justice and ended up confusing callers, especially the dishwasher repair man who was lost on the M7 motorway.

Skyler

She's lost her brother in law and her husband almost kidnapped their baby. It's no wonder Skyler's resting face is one of extreme anxiety. Until the final season is over, this is my face too. I cannot help it. This poor woman is hated by Breaking Bad fans for nothing more than supporting her husband as he runs the biggest crystal meth lab in the world AND a car wash company. 

The RV

Thanks to Breaking Bad, last month we spent every weekend looking at mobile homes and caravans. Only one just like Walt's would do and we didn't find it in Ireland. In my mind, to own an RV like the one below would be a life complete. When the neighbours beat us to it this week and bought a state of the art mobile home, it could only mean one thing. They are manufacturing crystal meth. I am watching their RV every night. It is only a matter of time before the blue smoke appears.  To my neighbours, I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE UP TO. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me.  

My Uncle

The weirdest thing of all is that I have a recently retired scientist in the family. Call me obsessed but at his seventieth birthday earlier in the year, I couldn't help but notice that he bears a striking resemblance to Walter White. Is he modelling himself on WW? Perhaps, the writers modelled WW on my uncle. It is quite uncanny. 

Walter White

My Uncle

Breaking Bad and Teenagers

My teenager is also hooked. She loves Jesse. When she was asked at school to write a report on South America, she chose Columbia. “I’m going to do the whole report about the drug cartels”. 

The Hat

My husband celebrate's his birthday at the end of October. So far I have purchases dark sunglasses, a pork pie hat and a windbreaker. I am going to urge him to grow a goatee to complete the look. It has to be done in honour of Heisenberg. He works in horse racing, one of the only industries in Ireland where  in his new attire, he'll blend in at any race meeting. 

Finally....Should I get a BB tattoo?

The test of any super fan is whether or not they go the whole hog and get a tattoo. Here are possible options: 

I'll sleep on this decision.