Quick and Dirty

This one is quick and dirty, and is about how I plan to spend my money this Spring!

On these shoes by Irregular Choice


And these dresses by Fever

Jeanne Maxi Dress

Ocean pocket dress

Aaaah, mentally spending the money I haven't yet been paid. Internet shopping at its finest!

Esther! I wouldn't marry her if you paid me in swans!

Hello to everyone! Even though it is a grey old Monday and I am tired already (I blame the long commute I have to make on a Monday morning for that!) I am feeling pretty cheery. I hope all you lovely readers are as well!

I had a nice extended weekend. I took Friday as leave because it was so icy and the thought of getting stuck on the way home from London was not appealing. So instead I had a bit of a lie-in, then had a nice breakfast and pottered around listening to Radio 4 and doing some householdy stuff while Nic worked. I think that means I am definitely getting older, because it made me very happy to be listening to the radio while doing the washing up!

When the wardrobe rail collapsed last week it prompted Nic and I to rethink some of our furniture arrangements. When we moved into our flat it was unfurnished and we didn’t have a car, so we bought all of our furniture from Ikea. We don’t have much storage apart from the wardrobe so we decided on Friday to go to Ikea again and get another bookcase for the living room and some drawers for the bedroom. Early afternoon seems to the time to go to Ikea because there was hardly anyone there, it was excellent. We had something to eat in the Bistro and then took our time getting what we needed. At the moment I don’t mind the fact that nearly all of our furniture comes from Ikea because it suits us, and most of it looks good in our little flat, but of course in the future I’d like to diversify a bit! We bought a red Billy bookcase to put in the living room and it does look nice with our red sofa, so it’s all good.

After Ikea we had dinner in Nando’s and a drink in Browns before attempting to get home on the train. It started to snow while we were having dinner and all of the trains in and out of Coventry station were severely delayed. It was extremely cold and although I was wearing my wellies, I’d forgotten to layer an extra pair of socks over my tights so my feet were freezing. Nic and I moved to wait in the waiting room, but unfortunately it was occupied by one of those people who make me want to eat my own ears so that I don’t have to listen to them any more. She was talking on her mobile phone, using a handsfree kit so that, to start with, I thought she was talking to herself. Now, I know that any conversation that you can only hear one side of is going to sound tedious but this one was just genuinely tedious. And it just wouldn’t end! It really seemed to me as if she was just talking to fill the time while waiting for the train. I know that there is nothing wrong with that, and waiting for a train that keeps on being delayed is really boring, so I’m trying not to be too judgmental here. I hate talking on my phone in a public place (especially trains) and so I find it very irritating when other people do. Still, I like to have some time with my thoughts when there is an unexpected gap in the day, and it is people like this girl droning on about which of her friends is the prettiest, that makes that difficult to achieve. I really pitied the woman sitting next to her, who was struggling to concentrate on reading her book.

We made it home eventually and spent the rest of the weekend in a very domesticated manner. We built the bookcase and filled it with the stray books that have been in heaps on the floor, or on top of other books in our other bookcases. Sugar Plum and her husband N came round for dinner, and N very kindly offered to fix our broken wardrobe for us. He did this on Sunday, and although the estate agent still needs to send someone to reinforce the rail and the shelf, I was able to unpack my dresses from their boxes on the floor and (very gingerly) hang them up once again. This took ages because I have so many dresses and also because I took the opportunity to organise them. I’ll have to do this again later in the week when the contractor comes round again but it was worth it all the same! Maybe Nic and I will be hip young things next weekend to make up for the fact that this past weekend was spent rearranging our books and DVDs (him) and clothes (me)

I learned from Friday’s mistake and put a pair of socks on over my woolly tights before putting my wellies on for the walk to the station this morning. My feet were lovely and warm the whole way down to London. Nic thinks it’s starting to thaw a bit in Leamington, and although I have enjoyed the snow (and the snow days) very much I’ll welcome it getting a little bit warmer. This is purely superficial, because I have three new pairs of shoes that I haven’t had the chance to wear yet and it’s also been a bit too cold to wear my new coat (I know that sounds stupid, but it’s more a winter into spring coat) I don’t want to invoke the ire of this blogger though, so I’ll just point out that I don’t expect the climate to bend around my new (and fairly impractical) shoes or anything. I’ll carry on wearing them to do the washing up until I can wear heels outdoors without risking a major injury!

Some people think I'm a tube fer NAT smoking? Aye, Dead On!

The lovely Caroline from Second Hand Shopper put out a call yesterday for writers and bloggers to have a go at writing guest blogs for the Macmillan Dictionary Blog about their English. I felt very inspired by this, having both taught English and being very interested in language in general.

As most of you probably know, I'm from Northern Ireland. Or, Norn Iron as we like to call it at home. Although English is my native language, I was lucky enough to be able to learn Irish (Gaelige - rather than the Scots Gaelic. They are similar, but separate languages) and studied the language all the way to A-level. Moving to England to come to university here, and subsequently becoming an English teacher, made me love and value my own language and idiolect even more, which is what I'm going to have a go at writing about today.

This online dictionary of Northern Irish usage might be useful to you in reading this entry. In fact, I contributed to this!

I think Northern Irish English is a very rich, highly expressive, and very funny language. Although Gaelige has become very rare outside of the political 'jailtacht' use (former terrorists who learned how to speak Irish in prison) it has had a lasting effect on the way we speak and the phrases we use. A good example of this would be in describing someone who was in a bad mood. You might say they had "an oul head on them" and this construction comes from the Irish way of describing emotion. To say that you are angry you say "Tá fearg orm" - there is anger on me. I particularly like this construction because I think it reflects the way in which moods and feelings are often fleeting, they settle on you or you wear them, and then they move on.

As with any regional dialect, the most interesting words and phrases are often the most insulting ones. Lots of people have a giota beag (small bit) of Irish, and that small bit is usually 'Póg mo thóin' (kiss my ass) I think Northern Irish English has a real richness and humour in insults as well. I always enjoy hearing someone being described as a dose - "Isn't Kevin's wife an awful oul dose?" means exactly what you would imagine, she's as much fun as a dose of salts, or she'd put you to sleep like a dose of something strong. The great English insult "She had a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp" never quite took off in NI but we have a good variety of similar insults. A fairly indecipherable but pointed one is "She has a face like a fur hatchet" and one I've heard used often to describe someone looking glum or sour is "He had a face on him like a well-chewed chip". I'm not going to even attempt to find a provenance for those expressions but I think their meanings are fairly clear!

As most of Ireland is still very rural, a good deal of our language comes from the agricultural life. The word 'Culchie' is a well-used one in both Norn Iron and The South/The State/The Free State (all various ways for NI people, especially those of us on the border, to describe the Republic of Ireland) but its meaning in Northern Ireland is a little bit different. In the South it's a good deal more insulting, referring to anyone from outside of Dublin (see this episode of the wonderful Soupy Norman to get an idea of how insulting it can be.) In NI, the term is usually more affectionately meant and refers to country people. In Northern Ireland we're all country people, though, so it really isn't very offensive at all. It's unclear where exactly the word comes from. It could be from the Irish 'Coillte', to describe people living in the woods, or it could just be from the word 'agriculture'. There isn't really a clear translation for this word, but "Ye big Culchie ye!" can be used to describe anyone who doesn't live in a town.

I'll bring this to an end by giving all of you non Norn Irish folk some of my favourite NI words and phrases. Nic is English, and every time he has visited my family in Tyrone (yes, they are Culchies!) he has picked up some new words and phrases to enjoy. He's trying hard with the accent as well! Here are some that he has learned, and some of my favourites.

Quare - this is used in a variety of ways, but usually as a superlative e.g. "That's a quare nice car you've got there, is she an '09?" or "He's the quare lad" or "That's a quare day, isn't it? The sun's splitting the trees, so it is!"

'Bout ye? - This is a standard NI greeting. You can precede it with the word 'Well' if you like e.g. "Well, our lad, 'bout ye?"
Tayto crisps have sort of adopted this as a slogan recently, and Nic is the proud owner of a 'Bout ye?' t-shirt!

Boke - this is one of my all-time favourite words, and it means to vomit, e.g. "Holy god, I was so blootered last night I boked all over myself". I like to use it as an expression of disgust as well, and I'm not alone in this - "Did ye see that Sherrie Hewson on 'Come Dine With Me'? BOKE!" In some parts of Northern Ireland you can describe a boring or offensive person using the word 'boke' e.g. "He's a dry oul boke, so he is" but this isn't something I would say. I might describe someone as "A dry shite", though, and that's roughly the same.

Eariwig/ Earywig - an earwig. I don't know why we put the extra letter into it. You can also use this as a synonym for eavesdrop e.g. "I caught that sleekit wee bitch eariwigging on me."

Slippy-tit - this one isn't all that common, but I love it anyway. It means someone who is sneaky, or can be used to describe someone who is trying to wheedle something out of you e.g. "He was slippy-titting about trying to get out without me noticing"

Hoke - to root around for something e.g. "Hi Grainne, wid you quit hoking around in there!" A friend once asked my Daddy "Here Eugene, have you ever been caught bin-hoking?". Daddy said no, and the friend retorted "You must be wild good at it then!"

One final thought aboout how we speak our language in Northern Ireland. We love adding things on to the end of sentances:

"That's a brave nice day, hi!"
"Aye, she's a great going wee car, boy!"
"And she was late to meet me, but!"
"I'm away to get my messages, so I am"
"I'm not being charged, ampninat?"

Listen, to be believable you have to get a furry hat and a snow machine!

Snow day!

Well, almost. There is a lot of snow in Leamington, and I've spent the day at home. I had planned to work from home anyway, so I didn't quite have the excitement of waking up and realising I could stay at home, but I'm not complaining. I got sent home from work early yesterday, so it's all good. The snow is very exciting, and Nic and I braved it earlier to go to the post office and do a few other chores in town, as well as taking some photos:



Like most of us, I'm a big child when it comes to the snow, so I was unreasonably excited to lean out of my bedroom window last night and watch the snow falling on my street. Oh, and also I was excited to experiment with making my clothes winter appropriate. Well, almost. I got out one of my favourite summer dresses and put it together with the jumper Nic bought me:
I wasn't sure about the combination of a v-necked jumper under the straight neck of my dress, so then I tried it this way:
I'm not sure if it is better, but I couldn't be bothered changing it back. I think the first look is a little bit What Katie Wore, or at least it would have been if I'd had some nice big plastic jewellery to go with it! When I went out I put on my red cowboy boots and red beret, overall I think I like the effect. I've been inspired by the way Katie puts her outfits together so I have been trying to be more thoughtful about the combinations I make. I had poor Nic tortured, asking for his advice and then getting him to take the photos. He's very good about it, I must say!

Unfortunately, our Vax vacuum cleaner dream might have to wait until next month. When Nic got home yesterday, he hung up his coat in our wardrobe, and the wardrobe collapsed! It's a built-in wardrobe, and the rail holding the clothes (which is also attached to the shelf above it, which holds almost all of our other crap) pulled away from the wall. It's not something we can fix, and the estate agents can't have someone out to fix it until tomorrow. At the moment all of my dresses are in boxes on the floor, which is very sad. Anyway, we've decided to go to Ikea and buy some more furniture instead, it's more pressing at the moment. So, no Vax or Henry or Hetty for us until February, I think. But we will have another much-needed bookcase, and some drawers so all is not lost. It was pretty stressful, though, and the estate agents had the joy of coming into the office this morning to find a cross message from me on the answering machine!

After folding up all our clothes and putting them into boxes, Nic and I went round the corner to see Sherlock Holmes in the cinema. Tuesday evening is apparently a good time to go, the cinema was almost empty so we didn't have to deal with other people being irritating. I really enjoyed myself. They showed loads of trailers, including one for Clash of the Titans - I can't find the cinematic trailer online, but it made me laugh so much. In fact, they showed it twice. It looks like Lord of the Rings, but even more lame, and with Liam Neeson and Pete Poselthwaite in it. I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes even more than I enjoyed the trailers (a considerable amount) I'm not normally the least bit interested in action films, but this was just so much fun. It was very funny and, while I could have done with a lot less of Guy Ritchie pratting around with slowing things down and then speeding them up, I thought it was very well directed. And, even though I normally hate Jude Law, I thought he was excellent. In fact, I think he was my favourite thing about the film. The relationship between him and Holmes was so good, and he limped well, and I thought his comic timing was excellent. I'll definitely be buying this when it comes out on DVD. I did have a moment when walking back when I thought about how amused I was by Nic looking at vacuum cleaners - me praising a Guy Ritchie film, and praising Jude Law? The Roisin of 8 years ago would be so disgusted with me right now!

Bouncy castles! Make sure you get a go on one of those, they're excellent. So bouncy.

I hadn't really planned to write a blog entry today but the heavy snow in Birmingham meant that we got sent home from work early. There isn't much snow in Leamington but it is very cold, so I'm sitting on my bed, wrapped up in blankets and doing a wee bit of work. It's all good.

Yesterday was my first day in my new job. I had to get up much earlier than normal (and much, much earlier than I had been getting up over the holidays) to be in London for an early meeting. It's hard to say how the day went because it was a bit of a blur. The floor my new department is on is a secure floor, and my pass hasn't been programmed to let me in yet so once I was in I stayed in - it was a bit like being under house arrest! I got a better idea of what I'm going to be doing and I think it'll be very different to the work I was doing in my last job. There'll be some of the same finance and admin stuff but a lot more project management, which will be interesting. It's very high-stakes work for our organisation so I'm happy to be part of it, and I'm interested to see how the next few weeks go. I'll doubtless blog about it here anyway!

Nic and I had a very quiet weekend. We had a look again in the sales on Sunday as I need a new coffee machine and thought it would be a good time to get one. The machine I have works fine, but it is pretty old and it leaks water from the tank any time I make coffee, which is a pain. The problem is, I couldn't find another coffee machine I liked as much. This one is just a plain old filter machine, and it has been discontinued. I couldn't find one I liked because none of the ones I was looking at were my coffee maker, how sad is that?! They were either very cheap and ugly, or more expensive but with features I just wouldn't use, like a timer or a bean grinder. I'll have to do a bit more research into it and come to terms with the death of my coffee maker, because the constant leaking is wrecking my head.

Nic spent ages looking at vacuum cleaners as well, which amused me very much. We have a vacuum cleaner, but it's crap. The main attachment doesn't work, so to get any kind of a job done you have to just use the metal tube and it takes ages. I spent an hour vacumming our bedroom on Saturday. Given that I don't live in Southfork, that seemed a bit excessive! Anyway, one of the shops near us has Vax vacuum cleaners at half price and Nic and I spent a good half an hour looking at them on Sunday. I know on its own that fact isn't very interesting but it did make me laugh - when I first met Nic at university years ago, and even when he and I got together a few years after that, he was a bit of a wastrel and now the two of us are spending time debating the relative merits of vacuum cleaners! We are getting old, I think! Still, a new vacuum cleaner would be nice and I don't have any kind of sentimental attachment to get over before buying a new one.

Well, on that note, it's time to get back to work (and to researching possible coffee makers on the internet. It's all glamour here, don't you know?!?

They say he's capable of boiling an egg in less time than it takes to boil an egg!

I haven't done one of those '2009 Highlights' blogs. I tried to plan one out in my head last night when I was going to sleep but, well, I fell asleep. Then I had a dream about a girl I used to know from university giving me a cupcake, and all of my ideas were lost. And Nic woke me up before the dream version of me could eat the cupcake, which was very sad!

I hope you all saw in the New Year happily. I got back to Leamington on Thursday morning and our wee flat was freezing. I had to go and collect parcels from both post offices and do some shopping, and then I huddled under blankets with a fan heater on until Nic arrived home. I had planned to have a romantic reunion at the railway station but that went awry, but once I got some pizza into me it was fine. As I wrote in an earlier blog, my plan for New Year was to have a wee party at my house with some good friends. The organisation of this turned out to be very stressful at the last minute, but it all went ahead and our little living room was very full of joy at midnight. Also, the party food I bought from Marks and Spencers was extremely tasty! I've never really been much of a one for celebrating the New Year, but it's a good excuse to get friends together and have a laugh.

I spent the first day of 2010 very lazily with Nic, only leaving the house to go to watch Doctor Who and Gavin and Stacey with Tom. It's only in recent years that I have started to watch Doctor Who and that has mainly consisted of watching all of the old serials that Nic has on DVD. I thoroughly enjoy the concept of the show, but haven't been able to get on at all with the revamped Who of the past few years. Big CGI effects leave me cold, and the injection of obvious emotion (and by obvious emotion, I mean obvious to the point where a million violins play every time the Doctor so much as looks at his companion, who is of course in love with him) robbed the Doctor-Companion relationship of its subtlety, I think. I didn't watch the first part of Tennant's swan song on Christmas day, watching last year's Christmas special had been enough for me. I won't write a review listing all of the things I didn't like about the episode, but I hope that Stephen Moffatt has more self-control than RTD. David Tennant's Doctor was the only one to have made such a meal of his regeneration, and it nauseated me. To end on a positive note, however, I loved all of the millions of John Simms everywhere. Especially all of the background ones who were tapping away on computers. That was very funny, and I liked his performance a lot. I very much enjoyed watching the last episode of Gavin and Stacey as well, particularly the choice of music for Nessa's wedding to Dave Coaches. I love Dave Coaches!

In previous years I have made some sort of attempt at New Year's Resolutions. Sometimes I have kept them (I haven't bought a copy of Heat magazine since I resolved not to at the beginning of 2006, for example) and sometimes I haven't, and I'm not sure of the wisdom of making them. I have been thinking about the things that I would change from 2009 instead and wonder if a better thing to do would be to make an effort to right those things in my life. I have spent a lot of time in 2009 worrying and feeling unhappy about various friendships and relationships and I think 2010 might be a good time to take more control of my life and my feelings. A number of years back I had to come to the realisation that an important relationship in my life had changed, and that I could only keep that friend in my life if I adjusted my expectations of what that friendship could give. You can't force people to care about you, is what I reasoned. It was the right thing to do, and I have hardly worried about it since. I'd like to be able to be that clear-headed about the things that cause me grief and worry now, so I'm going to try to be. People change and relationships change, and that doesn't have to be a bad thing. I'd do well to remember that.

I'd also like to be more creative in 2010. Nic and I have great creative ideas, and I'd like to do something with them. I'd like to do something with the ideas that have been bubbling away in my mind for the past few months, so I'm going to try to be disciplined and set time aside for that too. 2009 was a very good year, and I would like 2010 to be even better.

He'll be up to his hoop in DeLoreans. 12, to be precise.

I have been trying to get the time to write a blog post for the past few days, but every time I've had the time to do it, the internet hasn't been working. The fog breaks the wireless signal, or something. I don't know. Anyway, I should be getting to bed early because I have to get up at 5 am but still. Here I am.

I can't believe I'm heading back to Leamington tomorrow, the time at home has gone by so quickly! I've had a really good time, and hopefully I'll get back again in February. On Sunday, my parents and I went to Lisburn to have a wee look in the sales. As I'm sure many of you have noticed, the sales have been shite this year! I bought a cute wee Max C bag in TK Maxx, and some tights, which was good but unexciting. It was good to get out of the house and get some fresh air though, I was starting to get Cabin Fever. I had a bit of a headache, though, after drinking too much champagne with Emma the night before. Some extra strength paracetamol and a lunch at Harry Ramsden's helped to sort me out. YUM!

On Monday morning Daddy, Kelly and I took the dogs to Monaghan for a sponsored dog walk. It was extremely cold, with freezing fog, so walking through a forest park was pretty treacherous underfoot, but it was lovely, and so beautiful! The park had three lakes, all of which were frozen over:

The dogs were hilarious. Paddy barked with excitement the whole way there, and it was all my sister and I could do to stop him from climbing into the front of the car to sit on Daddy's lap:
Paddy in the back of the car

Minnie and me pre-walk

After the walk we dropped the dogs off at home and headed over to Cookstown - the peanut butter and banana bagels in Streat are so good that my Dad will drive 20 miles to get one! Today my parents and I went down to Belfast to have a wee look in the sales there - again, nothing special. I bought a cardigan - highly exciting, isn't that right?! Actually, I was very pleased with the cardigan as it was exactly the one I've been after - a size smaller than I would have liked, but I wanted to have it small-fitting anyway so that's fine.

It has been really good to be at home. All of my siblings had time off too so it was really good to get to spend time with them. It was excellent to see Emma and her family, even if I did have a horrible hangover the next day! Oh, I also had lots of time to finish the blanket I've been making for my mum. She loves it, and it looks excellent on her bed:


Unfortunately, it hasn't all been good. Some really bad behaviour from extended family has meant that my parents have been pretty stressed for the past few days and I don't know how that's going to get resolved, and I'm sad that I'm not going to be here to support them. I'm just going to have to make sure to be more conscientious about ringing home, I think.

I am really looking forward to getting back to Leamington to see Nic, and I'm not afraid to say it. I have missed him, and I have missed my own bed. And, cute though the dogs are, I am really looking forward to being able to wear dog-hair-free clothes! Right, now I'm away to bed. I have to get up much too early tomorrow!