Summer Loving..and its going to fast

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Can't believe how fast summers flying in. The boys have had a full on summer so far of running wild in the low country and camping by Fermanagh Lakes.  Cole even managed to get him self on a billboard advertising the Ulster Museum. 

Still have football club back in Tyrone next week to look forward. We might try camping at Benone this weekend if its not too wet. If not we'll just have to enjoy some of the fantastic things happening in the Craft month and in  the 2013 City of Culture.

What a great honour for our City.

It has certainly Derrys' year. for a change, for change.

Firstly the Saville report and now a real opportunity to really put the place on the map. Lets hope the few prehistoric idiots that want to drag us back into the dark ages don't get away with it.

Well done to all involved in sealing the bid.
Now how can I make this work for me....?
Answers on a postcard please.

Are we really connected?

I have been a month with out internet. This is my account of how my family and I survived the long deep dark nights and weekends.

Tuesday 25th May, Day One, week one. Internet went down, apparently our contract had ended and without so much as a nod in our direction our friendly service provider ceased to provide service. Cue (or should I say queue) many phonecalls and hanging on the telephone for hours on end listening to terrible music...much later, an operater eventually promised us full restoration by end of week one.

End of week one arrives. No sign of the three green lights, hence many more hours listening to music I don’t like.  It soon surfaced that  apparently, it was too late to restore our services, it had alreadly been taken off the system. No amount of talking was getting us anywhere. Husband angrily declares to take our business elsewhere.

At this point kids are waxen and pale and climbing the walls. 

What is happening in Club Penguin? How can we see missed episode of Dr Who?  

I myself am having hot flushes hoping nobody's tagged unflattering pictures of me in Facebook?

Think of all the lost jobs and missed opportunities and still there seemed to be no light at the end of our modem. 

Friends  and family really reached out in these darkest hours and let me check my email. The library too became a favourite haunt but as my membership had ran out I used the kids computer IDs.

There.. I was to be found hovering above the little people in the little peoples section checking email to my hearts content. One of the kindly librarians once led me to the big people section and signed me on as a guest. Yippee! no parental control on computor! I could check FB, Twitter and go surfing, where ever I wanted.

Week Two, Husband priced around all internet providers and found the one we were with was best value. Decided we would go back, but not without a fight, well at least if I could have got speaking to someone that had any power to fight with. Many calls later and finally secured a name and number of a real person.

Week Three.

Between stolen visits to library on pretence of educationally expanding my childrens' minds, I start leaving messages on real persons answering machine. In the nicest possible way I explained the situation and apologised for leaving so many messages, I told the real persons answering machine I really didn’t want to be be clogging up his answering maching inbox but I really needed to speak to real person. I rang and told the real persons machine this every couple of hours.

Finally, real person has had enough, he phones back and apologises for knocking us off system, promises to restore all with no connection fee as we shouldn’t have been disconnected in first place, but we’d have to start from scratch as if we were just taking out new contract, this would take some time.  It was not a matter of switching on a switch apparently. So we knuckled down for the longhaul.

To be fair the real person also phoned back every couple of days to update us on our postion in line, to let us know he was thinking about us, to give counsel and support to us, to talk us through cold turkey. He also credited account £20 for inconveinence. The only thing he didn’t do was check my email and de-tag my FB photos.

Week 4

At this pont Kids have gone from waxy pale to a healthy freckly brown and  are scaling the climbing frames almost daily in the park. I have stopped wasting hours looking at sites that tell me how to make pretty things and have started making pretty things. I’ve started running, husbands started cycling again! The world outside is wide. Do we really want to be caught back in a web?

Friday May 26th. The Internets back on!! After inital flurry of excitement has died down, and everyones had their fix, (some puffles did run to the wild in Club Penguin, no horrendous photos appeared on facebook and only one last minute job was lost), only then I start to hark back on the long dark days with nostalgia. Maybe they weren’t so dark. You know it was good not to be connected in one way, we finally did things that we were always putting off doing. The kids have been outside more, the weather was actually sunny and the days long.

So it is with some intrepidation that I dip my toes back in to the virtual world. But I think this time I will restrict myself, and If I find I’m  on Facebook or looking at the lovely things in Etsy I will stand up switch it off, go outside and stand on terra firma once more, unless its raining then I’ll go back in switch it on an look at nice exotic locations whilst dreaming of getting away from it all, and who knows maybe even take up some real surfing.

Vintage Musings

Vive La MODE Vintage Clothes & Accessories Fair

Yes, a vintage and vintage inspired fair coming to the City Hotel on Sunday the 16th of May. I’m so excited I’m taking a stand. I don’t mean that by taking a stand that I’m in any way responsible for the fair. What I mean is I’m taking a stand! I’m selling at a table. Some old things, some made things, some lovely reproduction prints and some fabulous beautiful vintage inspired jewelry (pictured). I can’t wait. Something different.

I for one am fed up with our homogenius society, the same shops in every city, the same copied items in all of the shops and everyone looking the same, albeit depending on the outlet, some people pay more money to look more the same than others. Wandering through the town, (city?) last week I saw one particualar white teeshirt adorned with distinctive colourful butterflies. I thought it was quite nice as I have a thing about butterflies, that is unto I undertook a whirlwind ‘look-see’ tour of the City Centre (namely Foyleside and the Richmond centre) and saw numerous variations of the same t-shirt complete with similar/same butterfly design, in all of the usual outlets. The only disparging difference was the price.

My teeanage self…(yip she’s still in there somewhere beneath the so called years of wisdom and wrapped in layers of mature folds) would have despaired. As a teenager I dared to be different, I wouldn’t have comptemplated gracing the door of ‘Next’ or ‘Gap’ or any High St store apart from a few furores into “Topshop’. Not for me. In the main I made my own clothes. I trawled the vintage and charity shops, I spiked my hair and thought I was ‘hell’ so cool, so unique..so individual….well me.. along with thousands of other ‘alternative indie ‘ teenagers who flocked to the likes of  ‘Clubland’ ‘the Coach’ and ‘Kellys’ that is!

‘We’ liked ‘different’ music, music that we thought no-one else knew, we where the underground, the artists, the postmodernists and the true disciples of John Peel. Ah, homage to that great Guru of the airwaves, who formed all the musical tastes of many an impressionable ‘indie’ child, introducing us all to an alternative world regaled with cool bands, live music and angst ridden lyricists. Ok, so maybe we weren’t so original afterall, but at least we tried to veer away from the middle road, we caused the neighbours to talk, we got reactions.

When, I did once in the early 90’s veer of the indy path and in a much maligned moment of madness parted with a hard earned £50 note, for a hideous heavy knit distintively stripy cardigan from ‘Next’ I quickily learned my lesson. I still remember the horror of wearing it on its maiden voyage down ‘Eglantine Ave’ only to spy a mirror reflection walking towards me.  We couldn’t avoid each other, there was no where to run, no where to hide, instead we both reacted the only way we could,  with steely resolve, to walk by each other and sturdilessly avoid eye contact, pretending it was not happening. If we didn’t think it was happening, then maybe nobody would notice.  My ‘inner cool’ self, with hot cheeks,  pledged then and there never to buy anything distinctive from the High St, ever again, which is a great excuse to always wear black.

My ‘teenage self’ should in theory be really happy now, as the ‘actual’ city centre in Derry is practically completely comprised of charity shops, once a mecca for the likes of me in my misled youth, (ah, where is he now?). But somewhere along the line I’ve become too much of a snob to darken their doors. Actually that’s not really true. In reality, my youthful trawlings back in the heyday was carried out like a military operation in places that buzzed, such as a vibrant Stranmillis, a cultured Lisburn Road, the vintage markets in London and Paris and I also often frequented the more upmarket café societal suburbs of Dublin. Of course there was also the designated cool shops, who could forget American Madness or Liberty Blue when it was a vintage shop, now a gorgeous vintage inspired retreat, (the fact it belongs to my sister and brother in law is by no way bias).

Hence the quality of my past ‘finds’ the rich trove of textile treasures that were unearthed, were reflective of a more affluent society. Sadly, I fear now I will not uncover a little Chanel number generously given, a once cherished saville road shirt or a casually discarded Oscar de La Renta here in our own ‘wee’ charity shops. A sign of the times.

It’s now online shopping that has become the hunting ground for pre-loved bargainisters, once again we can find something different with the added luxury of shopping from the comfort of your own home…..gone is the humilation of squeezing into a cubicle 2 sizes two small for you…. Now, its the excitement of the last minute steal from ebay and the opportunity to sell it on after you’ve enjoyed its company for a few (and these days far between) outings. But sometimes the pictures don’t endear you to the object, don’t convey the quality or alas lack of it in the seams. Nothing beats, feeling, seeing and physically handing over dosh knowing you’ve picked up a gem. So that’s why I’m so excited about the Viva La Mode Vintage Clothes and Accessories Fair!

This event is scheduled to start at 12:00 on 16 May 2010 at City Hotel, Queens Quay, Derry.