So today is a bit momentous.  I’ve been writing this load of auld fanny for two whole years.  Can you believe it?  From right back in 2006 when we moved to Dublin and lived with hundreds of rabbits called Paddy, right up to lubly ol’ present-day English Towers, it’s been a whole wondrous, awful, fantastic, terrible, happy, sad, and very silly 24 months!

So in honour of this momentousness (is that a word?), here’s a little selection, a little smörgåsbord, if you will, of random posts; all giving you a flavour of my little world.  From initial Language difficulties, adopting (and sadly losing) our first, beautiful greyhound and discovering a bit more of our new home by exploring beautiful Connemara, to our first St Patrick’s Day.  Then there’s discovering who I am, who I’m definitely not, and a bit about Bert, to a bit about my wondrous Hubby and thoroughly mental children: the Mad Professor, and the salad dodger, my wonderful, bonkers bestest friend, Jen, and through moving houses and making new friends, finally to the pain of losing them.

That lot should keep you occupied for a while.  Enjoy, I’ll be back soon.  Mwah x

First up, we have Madonna looking absolutely and completely normal.  I can’t see the problem, personally, I look just like that when I get out of bed in the morning:

Next up, we have the lovely Hulk Hogan, who buys his seventeen year old son a high performance Toyota Supra, sits back as the child (yes, he’s a child) racks up four speeding tickets (115mph in a 70mph zone, 57mph in a 30mph zone, 106 in a 70mph zone and finally 82mph in a 45mph zone):

…and is then said to be ‘devastated’ as the boy goes to prison following a high speed crash that leaves his friend and passenger with severe brain injuries and likely to be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life:

My children will have push bikes until they are approximately 35 years old.  Then I might let them ride them on the road, but only if they’re wearing a helmet and reflective vest.

Well, well, well…. what is this I find in my inbox?  An email?  Pour moi?  From Pixmania?  Surely not!

Dear English Mum [no okay it doesn't really say that]

…I would like to apologise for the trouble you have had with your order & the confusion caused.  As confirmed on the phone message I have left you [hmmm, didn't get one of those...], the camera will be delivered today with Parcel Force tracking number ********.  I have issued a full refund for the delivery charge, this will be on your Visa card in 4 working days.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any other [other what? complaints?  fathers?]

And do you know how I obtained this lovely apology?  I googled ‘Pixmania complaints’, took down EVERY SINGLE email address that anyone had obtained, and emailed yesterday’s blog to all of them.  Should anyone be reading this because they’re also having trouble, feel free to email me for the list.  Anyhoo, we’ll see if the camera finally appears.  I wouldn’t really put this down as a result seeing as my poor Disreputable Dad got bugger all for his birthday, but hey, it just shows you that tenacity, and being incredibly annoying, pay off in the end.

Right, indulge me here.  I’m going to dazzle you with incompetence, the like of which you’re never likely to see again in your lifetime.  You may know part of the story but hey, indulge me.

Monday 14th July - we’ve received your order!

On the Monday, we decide to buy my Dad a camera.  I go to Pixmania.com, find a nice black one that’s in stock and order it.  I pay for it, and receive an email confirming that the delivery will be 3-4 days.  Fab, says I, that means it’ll deffo be here by his birthday.

Tuesday 16th July - oh dear, it’s not really in stock after all

But uh-oh, Pixmania have other ideas.  They send me another email telling me that the camera is out of stock.  This is not good news.

Every time you contact them, you have to find the little FAQ bit on their website, pick the heading and the subheading that best apply to your problem, and then fill in a little box.  A customer service email address?  Pah, that would be too easy.

I fill in the little box explaining that it’s my Dad’s birthday and I don’t want him to be disappointed.  Isn’t there another lovely camera that you could send him please?

Ooh, I get an email - ‘yessiree‘, say ‘Team Pixmania’, ‘we’ve got green, red or orange in stock!!!‘

I go to the FAQ bit, pick the heading and the subheading and fill in the little box again.  Please can you send him a red one?  I’m in a bit of a fucking hurry.

Wednesday 17th July - erm we think we’re sending the red one - are we?

I get another email from Pixmania.  This time it says ‘I would like to inform you that your request has been sent to the After Sales Department.  As soon as we have an answer from them, we will get back to you with further information.’  Have I ordered the red one now, then?  I’m not rightly sure.

Thursday 18th July - don’t know what the hell’s happening with your order, but do you fancy a barbie?

No reply from Team Pixmania, but they send me an email telling me they’ve got 58% of barbecues!  Woop de fucking doo.

Friday 19th July - we’ll just ignore her.  She might go away

I don’t hear anything still, so guess what? 

I go to the FAQ bit, pick the heading and the subheading and fill in the little box again.  I’m getting a bit cross now, I tell them, it’s my Dad’s birthday on Sunday.  Please can you send him a fucking camera?  I don’t care if it’s red, black or sky blue bloody pink.  Oh, and get someone with a brain to contact me.  OKAY?

Guess what?  I’m ignored.  Dad’s birthday comes and goes and he gets… er… fuck all.

Tuesday 22nd July - I know, let’s really piss her off and send the black one

So then I get another email pretending nothing out of the ordinary has happened and informing me that they’ve received my order for a BLACK camera and it’ll be delivered in 3-4 days!  So guess what?

I go to the FAQ bit, pick the heading and the subheading and fill in the little box again.  Hang on, I say, I thought you were sending a black one last week?  What happened to the red one?  Am I going to get a camera at all?  Please?  Pretty please?  I suppose I’m not really in a hurry now because the poor old sod’s birthday has come and gone, but still, I think he’d still like a camera, don’t you?

And guess what?  They reply! 

Further to your last e-mail, I would like to inform you that the Black Camera has come back to stock as the Red one is out of stock at the moment.  A request has been sent to the After Sales Department to resend you the Black Camera.

Friday 25th July - we’ve got our fingers in our ears: la la la la!

Still nothing.  I’m REALLY REALLY CROSS now, so I get my bloody telephone and I bloody ring them.  Eventually I am put through to perhaps the stupidest woman in the whole world, who tells me that yes, my camera is in stock and being prepared for despatch.  Yes, it will be despatched shortly  She thinks it’ll arrive on Tuesday.  And no, she can’t tell me exactly when, and no, she can’t put me through to a supervisor, or a manager, because they’re in Paris, and no, she can’t help me any further.  Good day.  I stare at the phone for a long, long time. 

And then I go back to the website, I go to the FAQ bit, pick the heading and the subheading and fill in the little box again.  This time I’m really rude.  I tell them they’re useless tossers, that all I wanted was a bloody camera for my Dad’s bloody birthday and they couldn’t even handle such a simple fucking request without messing it up.  Adding, for good measure, that they should all go and boil their heads.

I get another email.  The order’s being prepared in our warehouse and is due to be despatched shortly! 

Saturday 26th July - I know!  Let’s REALLY piss her off!

I get another email.  This time, it’s serious.  We take great care when we process orders so that deliveries are made within the deadlines stated…

it says, without barely a hint of a smirk.  But wait…

…however, a technical incident in our logistics platform has delayed the distribution of your order. Your order will therefore be delivered with a delay of 24 to 48 hours. 

Ha.

Monday 28th July - send it?  Ooooh, we might.  Then again, we might not.  It depends how we’re feeling…

So that’s it.  That’s how the land lies so far.  Just for the hell of it, just for FUN, I’ve gone back to the website, gone to the ridiculous FAQ bit, picked the heading and the subheading and filled in the little box again, this time asking exactly what a technical incident in our logistics platform is, and whether maybe, just maybe, my Dad’s likely to ever see a camera before he gets so old he can no longer hold the bloody thing.

Right, if you’re still here well done.  I’m boring myself now.  I’m off out into the garden where I’m going to find a nice solid object and smash my head against it repeatedly.

So we had a lovely weekend.  Another impromptu gathering saw us this time at the (immaculate) home of T the Taxi and his wife L, the School Secretary.  We spent a long evening talking utter rubbish and eating L’s really nice sandwiches.  All the kids gathered at The Lovelies’ next door and had running gun battles in the garden, then later retreated inside to the PlayStation.  The range of conversation went from ’should we buy a boat?’ (The Lovelies are seriously considering this - well, we live on a lough for goodness’ sake), to ’shall we all go on holiday to this really nice hotel in Castlebar that A’s found’.  Answer = boys: no (it’s not a holiday unless you go on a plane) and girls: yes (thinking of leaving the housework behind for a couple of days).  In the end, the whole evening was littered with one or other of the Hubbies going ‘look, we’re not going to bloody Castlebar, ok?’ and it became a bit of a standard joke.  Later in the weekend, Mr Lovely) even managed to intercept an e-mail between Mrs Lovely and I (she sent me a link to the hotel) with ‘look, we’re not going to bloody Castlebar, ok?’ on it.  As usual, the children fell asleep where they dropped.  When we went next door, #1 was asleep in someone’s bed (he was never a stayer) and #2, our own little Duracell bunny, was still awake.  We took him and left the other.  I’m loving this kid-sharing, it’s very liberating.  

In other news, we’re starting to find that #1 understands a whole lot more than we give him credit for.  This is a part of owning a teenager that I wasn’t quite prepared for.  There’s always tons of family ‘fnar fnar’ moments at English Towers, but now, #1 is joining in.  For example, we’re all in the garden in the glorious sunshine yesterday.  #2 is watering plants and enquires innocently: ’Mum, have you watered your bush recently?’  Hubby and I collapse in hysterics.  Shockingly, so does #1.

Later, at lunch (sirloin steak, garlic and herb butter, roasted vegetables, teeny tiny rosemary roasted potatoes, if you must know), I’m still trying to get Hubby to book a few days away.  ‘Look’, says Hubby, ‘we’re not going to bloody Castlebar, okay?’.  We all laugh.  Then #1 alludes to #2’s bush comment.  ‘I don’t get it’, says #2, ‘what’s so funny about asking Mum whether she’s watered her bush’.  We all collapse again.  I express shock that #1 would find this funny.   ’Oh come on, Mum’, says #1 in a very worldly wise manner, ‘I’m 13 now’.  And to #2 he tries tentatively: ’it’s, er, kind of a euphemism for something else’.  #2 is none the wiser.  ‘Well’, says I, trying to be diplomatic, ‘put it this way: Auntie Jen calls hers a ‘lady garden’.  #2 cops on and is mortified.

Later, we take a trip round Eurospar.  Mass has just kicked out and the place is packed with people in their Sunday best.  #2 is trailing behind me.  ‘Muuum’, he pipes up in a voice that needs no loudhailer, ‘what’s a SHOTGUN WEDDING’.  I turn round and fix him with one of my Mum’s best ‘Paddington hard stares’.  But he’s no quitter: ‘#1 says you had a shotgun wedding.  I just want to know what it is’.  By this stage, half the store is waiting anxiously for my reply.  We dart through the checkouts and into the car, where I try to explain that although we’re a pretty liberal household, these conversations should not be brought to the supermarket.

Sheesh.  I wonder where I’m going wrong.

So our local butcher (well, I say ‘local’, he’s a half-hour drive away) does some really nice finely minced pork.  I usually make meatballs in tomato sauce, but since I’ve done both chicken breasts and lamb shanks (simmer for 2 hours until the meat is falling off the bone) in this sauce recently, I thought I’d try something different.

For the meatballs:

500g minced pork

2 slices bread

Parmesan cheese

1 large egg

Dried oregano

Salt & pepper

For the sauce:

1 red pepper, sliced

1 red onion, sliced

1 clove garlic, thinly sliced

1 glass red wine (and one for the cook)

4 or 5 ripe tomatoes, cut into chunks

1 tin borlotti beans, drained and rinsed

Chilli flakes

Handful basil leaves

So bung the minced pork in a bowl, whiz up a couple of slices of bread in the food processor (I’ve got a little attachment on my hand blender which is really handy for this).  Oh, and if you’ve got some - add a chunk of parmesan in the blender with the bread too.  Add the cheesy breadcrumbs to the mince then break in an egg and add a pinch of dried oregano (perfectly acceptable dried herb, honest) and season generously with salt and pepper.  Squish together until well mixed, then roll into meatballs - I go for lots of small ones but if you want cricket balls that’s fine by me.

Fry the meatballs in a heavy-bottomed frying pan (they tend to release their own oil, but if you have very lean mince you might need a splash).  When they start to brown, add the sliced pepper, garlic and onion.  Continue to cook until the onions become translucent and the peppers start to soften, then add a nice big glass of red wine (or stock if you’re virtuous) bubble away a bit and then add the tomatoes, beans and about half of the basil, along with a generous pinch of dried chilli flakes.  Pop a lid on and continue to cook for another ten or fifteen minutes (longer if you’ve got massive meatballs - ahem) while your rice or pasta is cooking.  Season to taste.

Just before serving, sprinkle over some more fresh basil and grate over some parmesan.  Serve with pasta or rice and the rest of the red wine if you haven’t already drunk it all.  Hic.

Firstly, the highs. The greenhouse with tomatoes far left, dwarf french beans to the right of them and aubergines at the back:

My outdoor tomatoes have real babies on them!:

My herb garden with, back row left to right, sweet peas, chamomile, flat leaf parsley, the triffid that is my fennel plant, then front frow: chives, mint, more chives and at the bottom you can just see the basil, rosemary and thyme.  Oh and that’s a little bay tree to the left:

And finally, the pumpkins.  Oh dear:

Now I live in rural Ireland and with that comes a certain amount of strange stuff.  For example, our pub is also an undertakers, so I suppose you really can drink yourself to death there.  But I’ve just got to share this one with you, because this one is bizarro in the extremo.  A ‘friend of a friend’, actually, who am I kidding, you know damned well who it is, but I’ll call her FOAF,  has an elderly relative who was ’suffering terribly with the shingles’. 

‘Ah you poor thing’, says my FOAF, ’sure, I’ll take you to the doctor’

Met by the strangest of looks and muffled sniggers, my FOAF was told not to be silly, one doesn’t go to the doctor when one has shingles, nooooo, silly, one goes to Bridie (names changed to protect the criminally insane), the undertaker’s wife, of course.

‘Oh, silly me’, says my FOAF, ‘and there’s me thinking that you only go to her when you’re dead.’

So anyhoo, suspending her severe scepticism, she jumps into the car, pops her ailing and rather spotty relative in the passenger seat and sets off to the undertakers.  On arriving, they are led into a parlour straight off the set of ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’, complete with flock wallpaper and antimacassars, and met by Bridie’s daughter who assures my FOAF that ’sure, Bridie’s cured so many cases of the shingles recently, she’s almost out of blood’.  Gulping back her terror, my FOAF takes a seat until the old, teeny and rather spooky Bridie, complete with floor length black widow’s weeds and a rather natty floral apron, appears.

Convinced that a grinning camera crew are going to leap from behind the furniture at any minute, FOAF watches, wide-eyed as her elderly relative is asked to disrobe and then nearly has heart failure as Bridie proceeds to prick her finger and daub each little shingly spot with the sign of a cross while saying a little prayer.  No, honestly.  It really happened.

Ireland in the 21st century eh?  Who needs a national health service when you’ve got good citizens like Bridie to spread the love (and about half a dozen other diseases spread by contaminated bodily fluids)?  ‘Anyhoo’, says my obviously traumatised FOAF, ‘I thought you’d enjoy that story.  I’ve gotta go, I’m suffering with a cold so I’m just off out to slaughter a chicken.  Toodles’.

So I have the most evil, crashing hangover; the kind that clangs you over the head with a frying pan every time you try to move.  I know, I know, I don’t expect sympathy.  It’s this bloody place.  You move here and suddenly the most innocuous gatherings turn into an excuse for a piss up.  We ended up staggering out of lovely J&A’s house at 1am, through absolutely no fault of our own.  The Lovelies (self explanatory nickname, here) are Mr and Mrs Sociable - when you go round there, A is always looking after a gazillion kids (she has her own 3, plus Little C and Lou a lot of the time, then there’s all sorts of other kids popping in and out) - and you can’t visit without being plied with tea or alcohol and made to laugh until you cry.  Their house is Hubby’s spiritual home.  I think he’d actually move in if he could.  The kids were already crashed out there and came stumbling back home this morning looking absolutely shattered.  Picture the scene:

#1 is lolling around the kitchen, opening random cupboard doors and then either leaving them open or banging them shut, whilst sighing dramatically a lot.  His hair resembles a bird’s nest, his glasses are so dirty I’m surprised he can see through them, he’s wearing 3/4 combats and a huge black Linkin Park t-shirt.

#1: *sigh* I’m STARVING

Me: Do you want a sandwich?

#1: (from inside fridge): Nah.  Sandwiches are boring.  *Sigh*.  I think I’ll have soup.

Me: Okay, well there’s loads in the cupboard.

#1 (rummaging in cupboard dropping stuff all over the floor - Bert runs for cover as tins roll in all directions): Oh why have we got all this crappy lentil stuff?  You know I like mushroom…why haven’t we got any mushroom soup? *sigh*

Me: Passing irritating child a tin of mushroom soup ‘What, you mean THIS mushroom soup?’

#1: Oh.  Well it was at the back.  *Sigh*.  Why do you always put the stuff I like at the back?

Irritating child now proceeds to pop the toaster up every two seconds to check whether his toast is done.

#1: This toaster is CRAP!  It’s hardly done at all!

Me: No, it’s perfectly okay, just leave the bloody bread in there until it pops up.

#1: *sigh* There’s no milk.  Why is there never any milk

Me: Something to do with the fact that you’ve drunk three pints already this morning?

#1: Well it’s ridiculous, I mean fancy not having enough milk in the fridge *sigh*

Me: I humbly apologise, I am a crap mother.  Next time I will buy much more milk.  Ok?

#1: Oh this crappy toaster!  My toast is burnt now!

Me: That’s because you put it back on when the toast was half done - it’s on a timer.

#1(scraping black bits off toast and on to every surface in the kitchen and into the butter dish that he’s left open: well it’s crap.  Stupid toaster.

Me: Clearing up growing carnage in kitchen left in the wake of irritating child: Jesus, sit down and eat before I beat you to death with a rolling pin.

#1: *sigh* you’re just grumpy ‘cos you’re hungover.

Arrrggghhhhhhhhh!

So it was the Disreputable One’s birthday on Sunday.  And seeing as his other half is in the process of dragging him kicking and screaming into the 21st century, she suggested that he might like a digital camera.  So I set about contacting my siblings.

Me (via text): Alright siblings!  Any chance of us clubbing together and buying Dad a digital cam 4 his birthday THIS SUNDAY?

Mad Uncle A (via text): Alright saves me a job. U get it send it & I’ll send u the cash. Don’t spend too much I’m not f*ckin Bill Gates.

Sensible Uncle I (via text): Fine.

Well, he’s a man of few words.  So, great, I thought, might have known as the token female I’d get lumbered with the shopping, so off I go, spending a happy afternoon researching cameras on the internerd… and finally I come up with an absolute corker.  Hubby is a Fuji man (he’s got one of those great big black yokes like the paparazzi are always sticking up Britney’s skirt), and my little red Fuji Q1 is fantastic, so I settled on a really flash new black Fuji Finepix one at 7dayshop.com - less than 2cm thick (ooer!), equipped with a 2.5″ LCD screen, 7 million pixel CCD sensor (no, I don’t know what that is either), a 3x optical zoom, image stabilising system, face detection and an infrared transmission system (not that I expect he’ll be transferring his photos wirelessly but hey, it’s there if he needs it) and an extremely fast shutter speed to ensure his photos come out clear and bright even with a little alzheimers-induced hand wobble (just joking Dad).  Anyhoo, I couldn’t get my order to work on 7dayshop, it kept asking me to login again, but Pixmania.co.uk had it too so I sent off my order and sat back all smug.  How easy was that?

So you know this is going to go all pear-shaped, don’t you.  Two days later, I got an email saying it was out of stock and would be delivered as soon as possible.  Poo!  I fired off a quick email: ‘No! It has to be delivered by Sunday.  It’s my Dad’s birthday!  Can’t you find something similar that you DO have in stock?’.  Another day goes past and, finally, I get an email back: ‘the black’s out of stock, but we do have Wasabi Green (oh dear), Sunburst Orange (oh dear again) and Cherry Red in stock.  Quick text to Dad’s other half and we settle on the red, which I order with another ‘please, please hurry up and deliver by Saturday’ message.

Long story short - Dad’s birthday came and went with no camera in sight - in either black or cherry red.  Sensible Uncle I sent him a card saying ‘hope you enjoy the camera’ (oops, that buggered that surprise then), but still nothing.  Then this morning, I check my email to find, completely out of nowhere - a completely new  ’thank you for your order’ email from Pixmania, saying that my black camera will be delivered in 3 to 5 working days.  Give me strength.  Next time he can have his usual port and stilton and bloody lump it.