Too many people are posting onto facebook "I have done my christmas shopping, and I've wrapped it up, and my bank account just texted me to say that I've got £15,000 left in my current account...and our holiday in Barbados is booked... and my children just got a letter from Mandela asking them for drinks on Christmas eve..."
It's not right. Stop these postings. In this time of cut backs and hard times, joblessness and frost, please, I beg, can you stop your smug postings?
Even if your life sucks in all other areas, just please. Spare a thought for those of us who haven't started Christmas shopping, and those of us who don't even know what their husband wants for Christmas (other than for no purchases to be bought on Amazon or coffee breaks during shopping to be taken at Starbucks).
It's not big and it's not clever.

So I was going to say something really important, and I had it all mapped out in my head. You'd be rolling off your chairs with laughter. And I'd have a surge of new followers... But now I've forgotten what my hilarious story was, there'll be no surge and no falling off of chairs. But I was hugely distracted by these postings of smugness on facebook. Would it make me feel better to whip out my sharp tongue and 'comment' on said smug postings, to put these smugnesses into their place? Probably, but  I'll leave it there. I would let it lie. Vic and Bob wouldn't let it lie. But I do.

Last week was a momentous week down here in the country.
Husband received an early Christmas present from my parents. Can you guess what all new (male) country dwellers need to go in their shed? Oh yes! Nothing less than a chain saw. Vrrrrrrooom. Chainsaw massacres. 
So, on Sunday we tore the village peace and quiet up as Husband sliced through log after log, sawdust flying with careless abandon in the waning afternoon light. I was half waiting (half hoping...) for a nice concerned elderly resident to come round and lodge a polite complaint but no one did. In Germany it is against the law to use chainsaws on Sunday's. But as we all know, Hampshire isn't Germany.

Log after log after log, 'Keep em coming!' yells husband, who has a demonic look on his face... I keep em coming to avoid him mistaking my legs for tree stumps... At the end of 20minutes solid sawing, there is a heap of sawdust on one side (and all down the inside of my wellies, and all over Husbands clothes - he resembles a sawdust-man-hybrid) and on the other side, logs. Logs. LOGS.
Husband draws in a big proud breath, 'For t'fire' he says with a rough voice. His accent has suddenly become rural, and I notice that there is a checked shirt tail hanging out from under his Barbour  and in another moment a golden labrador leaps out from behind him, with a pheasant hanging from it's mouth, My girls appear from a nearby tree on ponies, they have blond plaits in their hair, and Hunter wellingtons on and the ponies are whinnying softly to each other; and before I can say, agh, what the fucks happening, I realise I am holding a huge steak and kidney pie and a piece of straw falls from my hair which is tied back loosely with a length of floral ribbon.


I wake up to the sound of John Humphreys, it's dark outside. And I realise it's all just a dream, until I walk downstairs to make some tea and see this almighty red machine, covered in sawdust, sitting happily on the floor of the hall...