Saturday 31 August 2013

How to explain pocket money to a 6 year old





This comes from The Guardian's 'Ask A Grown Up' page. I have loads of questions to ask the grown ups but you have to be aged ten or under. Thank goodness Ennis (aged 6) asked, "Why do I get just £1 pocket money a week?" The grown up in this case has answered the question so clearly that even I understand.  













Tuesday 20 August 2013

Flying with Red Bull, a hip flask and a plane load of irish folk singers.

“Please say yes, please say you will,” my husband begged me last week from his hospital bed. He held my hand so tightly that my fingers were turning blue. He had just returned from the operating theatre having had the first of two operations on his eye. He had been almost blind with cataracts, but now, possibly under the influence of the sedation and a new lens, everything that really mattered to him in life was clear. I didn’t have to think for very long. “YES! I WILL” I replied.


The tears welled up in both our eyes and the nurses stood round us clapping. The planning has now begun in earnest and when the other cataract is done next week, my husband will be able to witness the event with twenty-twenty vision. The children were jumping with a little too much joy when we broke the news to them. They can’t believe I am doing it and they are not the only ones. On the 7th September I shall be jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet.



My husband can’t do it. After cataract surgery the hospital gives you a list of things that you should avoid. You shouldn’t sneeze, bend over, or expose your eye to dust or grime. You shouldn’t drive for a week, put any pressure on it, and lift anything heavy or let water near the eye. We are skydiving over Galway Bay, which rules him out. With a good wind behind him he could end up in the sea. Combine that with his fear of heights and there was no way that he’d jump. So the focus was on me. This is what happens when you write a feature about the love of a pooch as I did last month.


“You are jumping out of a plane for a load of stray dogs? Are you insane?” my sister is always the first to slam dunk a negative. “If I am insane, so is virtually the entire Irish folk scene. And the local florist,” I pointed out with pride. Loads people have signed up to support the cause and it turns out that I’ll be flying over Galway Bay with a planeload of talented people. I shall be jumping out with Sharon Shannon, Eleanor Shanley, Frances Black and Dave Clancy. We are all sky diving from 10,000ft for Kerry charity, Animal Heaven Animal Rescue.


“Have you seen ‘Terror In The Skies?”” was Patsy’s response. I had asked her to jump with me for moral support but she is still recovering from two broken ankles earlier in the year. We gently swam a few lengths in the Gables last week as part of her physiotherapy regime. Our local pool is a mecca for people recovering from surgery and various injuries. You can’t do a length without stopping to hear about a knee replacement, a back sprain or a dislocated shoulder. “Maybe you should do some training?” she suggested. “You should practice on the zip wire at Tayto Park or you might break every bone in your body and end up in here every day like the rest of us”. I threw myself in the icy plunge pool to hide my fear.

But how fit do you need to be to jump from a plane? How much preparation should I do? Patricia Wall did one this year and she’s a seventy five year old nun. Sister Patricia did a sky dive, raised €35,000 for a good cause and lived to tell the tale. My first preparation was the purchase of a hip flask that I have filled with brandy. Next, a four pack of energy drinks because Red Bull gives you wings.

Obviously my biggest anxiety is that the parachute won’t open or that when it opens, it has a huge hole in it. This could happen. But I am fully prepared for this disaster and have a plan in place. My ‘Plan B’ is my bingo wings. In such an emergency, I’ll open my arms out wide and glide my way down onto dry land like a flying squirrel. It is the only logical use for them and why nature must have given us bingo wings in the first place.


But there is at least one thing to look forward to. It’s a tandem skydive jump, which means that I’ll have an expert on my shoulders to push me out of the plane, pull the cord and land me safely. This is, as far as I can see, the only perk. I’ll be in a fight with female folk singers to see who gets the strongest, most experienced instructor. Knowing my luck, in the confusion I’ll strap the local florist to my back. If I do, at least I’ll go down smelling of roses with a smile on my face.


There is less than a month until we do the jump in Galway. Right now in Kildare, the training has begun. This is serious stuff and I need to be prepared like an Olympic athlete. I am preparing myself by jumping off the sofa with my eyes shut. So far it’s working for me and I have not so much as sprained an ankle. Next week I am upping the danger and jumping from a stepladder. The week after that, I’ll be drinking a can of Red Bull and jumping off the roof of the car, blindfolded. It’s the kind of stuff my bored kids do every day now that the summer holidays are almost over.

So if you do bump into me over the next few weeks, please be supportive and kind. I shall be hiding my fear behind a copy of The Little Book of Calm. “You only live once!” is Dave Clancy’s attitude. I’ll remind him of that when we’re ten thousand feet up and screaming.

If you would like to Sponsor me and support all creatures great and small at Animal Heaven Animal Rescue, follow the link here:



Saturday 17 August 2013

What can be done with a Reliant Robin....



Wonders will never cease....


This is what my uncle, Bernard Reeves, gets up to in his spare time. The man is a genius. He has converted a Reliant Robin (in his words, "A thrifty car much loved by the working man") into a fully working military vehicle.There is a rumour going around that the Rugged Robin is soon to become amphibious. 

Just like me, the 'Rugged Robin' is available to hire for birthdays, weddings and military gatherings. 








My Top Ten 'Songs To Clean The House To'



This is very self indulgent I know but I just can't help myself. These ten tracks are still damn hot after all these years. They need to be shared. I know the lyrics to all of them of by heart. The running time of all the songs together is around 40 minutes. I know because this is my housework playlist. I highly recommend it to anyone born in the Summer of 69 as like me, you'll know all the tunes. 


























































Monday 5 August 2013

GAY MEN WILL MARRY YOUR GIRLFRIENDS!


Straight men: support gay marriage or they'll marry your girlfriends and bake them a f*cking QUICHE....I've watched this 4000 times, girls, you will love this.



Saturday 3 August 2013

Keeping Up With The Kardashians....



“Kim Kardashian is always flying somewhere exotic,” I had hinted to my husband a month before my birthday.  It worked and last week we flew across the Irish Sea. He had booked a very traditional sort of hotel (one very popular with the elderly) in Eastbourne, on the south coast of England. It may not quite have been Barbados but it was still a night away from it all. We made our way to reception passing seven mobility scooters on the way. “Happy Birthday!” he said, planting a kiss on my cheek, “at least you’ll feel young staying here”. The receptionist greeted us and invited us to join other residents for an afternoon tea dance at four but my husband had one thing on his mind. “Is there live coverage of the match anywhere in the hotel?” It turned out that there was an important game on the same day as my birthday. He went off to the sports bar and I went upstairs.

Our room was beautiful. Crisp white linen on the very low bed, silk curtains, a view over the sea and bright yellow hand rails everywhere. It also had a small balcony. The bathroom was divine with an enormous Jacuzzi bath that was too good to resist. I filled it, adding half a bottle of lavender bubble bath. Lowering myself in using the safety handles and being sure not to accidently pull the red emergency cord, I savoured every moment of this rare time to myself and bubbled away with glee. Afterwards, wrapped in a cozy bathrobe and feeling peckish, I did something quite decadent. In all my years I have never ordered room service for one and this was my special day after all. Only one thing stood out on the menu so I phoning the order through, I waited, passing the time with a magazine about pensions. Twenty minutes later, a young waiter stood at the door and handed me a pretty white porcelain plate of ‘Sesame Prawn Toasts’.

The day was just too good to eat inside.  I put on my new sunglasses, opened the sliding doors and stepped out onto the sunny balcony with my plate of scrumptious looking treats. The sea was calm and not a cloud was in the sky. Preparing myself for a little sunbathing I lay down on a sun-lounger and rested the porcelain plate upon my lap. This was the life. This was summer. This was the perfect birthday and for that moment, I really did felt like Kim Kardashian. 

Just as I was about to put the first Sesame Prawn Toast into my mouth, twenty of the biggest seagulls in the world flew menacingly in the sky above me. I froze. Then suddenly, like vultures on the attack, they nosed dived towards me.  “Aggghhh!” I threw the canapés into the air with fright; birds were landing all around me. I fell to the floor and squeezed myself under the sun lounger. There I hid, stiff with fear, as the flock squawked and bashed against one another to get to the Prawns Toasts. I was trapped under a sun lounger, surrounded by scavenging seagulls pecking at crumbs. Every time I dared to look out from my refuge, a huge wing, a beak or a beady eye was in my face.  




 The only thing to do was to escape before they started pecking at me. With my eyes shut, I rolled out from under the sun-lounger and crawled through the birds, making it back into the bedroom, closing the sliding door behind me. But just as I was about to let out a sigh of relief, the nightmare continued when I heard a flapping sound from above. Two seagulls had flown over my head and beaten me into the room. They began squawking loudly, trying to get out again. The birds with a wingspan of three feet were now flying about, smashing themselves into the glass door. “Aggghhh!” I may be forty something but I have the lungs of a two year old. I screamed, praying that in the hotel bar many floors below, the football fan might hear me above the match.  But he didn’t. To make matters worse, the terrified birds were losing it. They began to let out white sticky bird splats all over the carpet.

I picked up the hotel phone and dialed for reception; “HELP! SEAGULLS ARE GOING CRAZY IN MY ROOM”. The reassuring voice at the end of the line told me that they would send someone up. The noise in the room was deafening, I covered my ears and tried deep breathing relaxation techniques. It didn’t work. The seagulls were banging so violently against the glass door that they were losing feathers. Trying not to cry, feeling hysterical and sick, I made a dash for the bedroom door, escaping to find myself in the hotel corridor. It was silent but for the sound of the stressed birds going berserk in the room. An elderly Englishman in a suit with a rose in his pocket slowly made his way up the corridor pushing a zimmer frame.

I frantically waved my arms about, “HELP ME….” He didn’t stop. Instead he shuffled past me, smiling apologetically and humming to himself. Moments later, a young waiter came running up the corridor. He went into the room telling me to stay exactly where I was. I put my ear to the door and listened to a full ten minutes of squawking from the birds and cursing from the waiter. Then silence. The waiter came out wiping feathers from his lapel. “All clear” he announced. I can’t remember ever being so grateful to a stranger before. In my bathrobe and sunglasses, covered in bird droppings, I fell into his arms just as my husband came running up the corridor. He didn’t notice the waiter, the feathers, the bathrobe or my state of distress.  He had one thing on his mind. “WE WON! WE WON!” 

This never happens to Kim Kardashian.