Donna Matthews

Author: DM Matthews

  • Cornwall in March

     

    We have returned from a wonderful weekend in Cornwall. When the weekend began we were not at all convinced that it would indeed be wonderful. Our dear friends had booked a cottage in the lovely village of Port Issac. However they warned us in advance that the cottage came recommended to them by one of their sons who has a different view of “warm and cosy”, so we were all a bit tentative. Our Sat Nav did a brilliant job getting us to the village and on to the street leading to the cottage. As we were approaching the address the street was getting more narrow by the foot. By the time we arrived at the front door the street was only wide enough for one car and there was nowhere to park and we had two cars to unload! Quickly we devised a plan and assigned tasks. We all grabbed bags and coolers and dropped them in front of the cottage. Pam and Helen went in search of parking while Ann and I took everything in and had our first look around our home for the weekend. The kitchen was okay and there was a log stove in the dining area. Two small chairs with throw covers stood near the fire. In general it appeared tired and worn. Mind you, it was probably built in the 1600’s. We head upstairs to look around. Things up here are not as pleasant as downstairs. The bathroom had a toilet, tiny sink and a shower that you had to turn sideways to enter. There was a further flight of stairs leading to the bedrooms. Overall it was bare and not overly comfy looking let alone “warm and cosy”. Ann was fearing the worst as she thought Helen would not want to stay in this dreary little place. So, we set to trying to make it feel more like home. We put away the vast amount of food that Ann and Helen brought. (We were under strict orders not to bring anything as this was their treat for us). Ann started to work her magic on the kitchen. The intrepid travellers took ages to return from the parking wilderness. They were both keen to make the cottage liveable for the weekend mostly because there was no way they were walking back to the cars again that night! Helen hit the kitchen to prepare dinner, Ann opened the wine, I set out to build the fire and Pam was unpacking. Fire now built using paper and a fire lighter, I was ready to light it. First small hurdle, no matches. We look through all the drawers and cupboards but no matches or lighters anywhere. Helen heads over to the pub in search of matches. She returns holding a small dish with a lit tea light in it, shielded by a newspaper. Owing to the fact that pubs are non-smoking now finding matches wasn’t so easy. Fire now roaring our first night was a success. In the morning Pam and I come down to a beautifully laid table for breakfast. Ann and Helen are there and announce that the one item that somehow missed the journey south was the tea bags! Pam says “no problem the pasty shop has coffee and biscuits for sale in the window I’m sure they also sell tea”. Off she goes…about five minutes later Pam returns empty handed saying “she does not sell tea bags and told me to go to the Co-Op”. Pam said it is at the top of the village on the left and according to Mrs. Pasty all roads in the village lead to the Co-Op. Fine, we settle for coffee instead saying we will buy tea bags when we go out. Breakfast finished we head out for a day of adventures. As we pass the pasty shop Helen says “hey look it says they serve fresh coffee and tea.” At the same time we all think the same thing, why didn’t Mrs. Pasty offer to se cups of tea to take away? We will never know the answer to that one. Needless to say we did not return to the pasty shop gain. We hit the road looking for the Co-Op on our way out. We reach the next village and Pam asked “did anyone see the shop?” none of us had seen it, this shop that all roads led to. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the rest of our weekend.

  • Alarm didn’t go off, no time for coffee then fog!

    You know when it is going to be one of THOSE days.  As you can tell from the title of this post I am having one of those days today.  It started with the failure of the alarm to go off.  Pam said “wow, it is really light outside”.  At that point my internal alarm went off…”oh &^%$£  I’m late!”  In the shower, get dressed look at the clock and realise there is no time to even make my “in the car” coffee let alone breakfast.  Go outside and have another surprise…fog.  We are still at the farm so we are in the hills of Hereford so I’m talking mega fog.  Simon comes out and says that it should be better when I get down the hill.  (Keep in mind I have to navigate their little lane, dodging sheep, geese and Guinea fowl for 1 1/2 miles before I even get to the road.)  I finally hit the main road and the fog has not changed.  As I approach the bottom of the hill towards the A40 I see that the fog is even denser!  All I kept thinking was “just get the office and soon it will be 9:00 and the coffee shop will be open”.
    So, here I am with my coffee in hand and a day full of meetings ahead.  I’m hopeful that I have had my fill of bad stuff for one day.  I’ll let you know.

  • What’s in a name?

    Recently my partner and I formed our Civil Partnership. One of the things that you have to consider is whether or not you want to change your name or title.  I liked the idea of having the same name but then had to think about the pros and cons like “would I lose my identity?”  Well, I have had the same name my whole life!  So, then I thought about changing my title so the world would know I was in a Civil Partnership.

    Why is this important?  Well, let’s think about this…when you first meet someone (personal or business) you try to figure them out.  Things run through your head as you are talking to them “is this person single, married, have kids or maybe divorced”.  Why do we ask ourselves these questions (other than because we are generally nosey by nature).  We  endeavour to find some common ground without having to ask personal questions.  At the same time the other person is doing the same thing to us.  Then the moment comes when you have to refer to your partner in conversation.  (If you are heterosexual you probably will not have even thought about this let alone experienced it.)  For those of us who are not heterosexual we have to make a snap decision.  “Do I try to stay generic and say ‘my partner’ instead using her name?”  “Do I jump right in and say ‘she’ where they would be expecting ‘he’?  See, I’ll bet for many of you this type of decision never crosses your mind.  I am proud to have Pam as my partner however,  I am sensitive to the fact that not everyone is comfortable with our relationship.  This take us back to the question of title.  Yes, changing my title would tell people what my status was and it would be out there…the uncomfortable point in the conversation won’t be an issue.  But here is the problem.  There is no title that describes a Civil Partnership.  Your choice is to go from Miss to either Ms or Mrs.  I have been trying to come up with a suitable title that is intuitive and represents a Civil Partnership.  I have not come up with anything clever yet so I am opening it up to you.  If you have a suggestion please post a comment.  Let’s come up with something that I could propose on behalf of the people who have taken their Civil Partnership vows.

  • New Lambs

    The first two arrivals

    Update on the lambing progress…when I went to bed last night there were still just the two lambs who were born over the weekend.  This morning  I packed up the car and then snuck to the lambing shed to take a look.  I saw all the expectant mums sleeping and the two weekend arrivals in a small pen with their mum.  They were sooo cute now a few days old.  Then I looked further to my right and there was another small pen with  residents!  (The newborns get moved into separate pens with their mums to keep them safe.)  There were two more little faces looking up at me.  These two were so small  but absolutely perfect and they were only about 3 hours old!  Mum was snoozing after her ordeal.  She will certainly need her rest with these little ones to look after!    I can’t wait to get back there this evening to see what has transpired while I’ve been at work.

  • Lambing begins

    It is the end of February and time for the lambs to start arriving at my step son and daughter-in-law’s farm. I love all things to do with the farm and I’m always excited to learn. This week Pam is helping out so I’m going to work in the morning and then going to the farm for the evening. So far there have been twins born (a boy and a girl) but that was over the weekend. Now we are waiting for others to make their grand entrance. I will most definitely volunteer for bottle duty in the evenings. Notice I said evenings because this is a 24 hour job. Every two hours the lambs that need special care must be checked and bottle fed. If that doesn’t sound hard enough consider that these two young people also have a 9 month old! So, whatever help we can offer we will give. I’ll keep you posted on the lamb count.

  • 42-15 Tigers!

    The anticipation of going to Welford Road was well worth the wait! The Tigers were in a word “awesome”. Consider the fact that the team are a bit depleted owing to international duty and injuries. Yes, I realise we were playing the struggling Newcastle but still it was a good win with a bonus point. Okay, those are the game facts, the fun stuff is always off the pitch. We start with the error on my part for trusting in technology. Before the game I looked up the postcode of the car park, plugged that into the sat nav and away we go…and go and go. We get to Leicester city centre and out the other side. Things start to look a bit rural. I double check the postcode and notice it is LE11 and normally you would expect a city centre postcode to be a bit lower on the number scale. Back to the search function on the sat nav only to find it should be LE1 not 11. No panic yet, we still have an hour before kick off and the scenic tour of the rural villages of Leicstershire was pleasant. We now have to do a 180 and try to find the stadium again and hope there is still at least one parking space open. The car park now in sight we are cruising. Find a spot and out on the street we go. One question looming, where exactly is the stadium? Matt and I look at each other and shrug. Luckily a kind seasoned visitor to this grand rugby ground tells us to turn right and follow the crowd. True to his word we turn right and looming ahead is the stadium. A quick stop in the team shop, shirt, for me, shirt for our granddaughter and a scarf on board we are ready to enter the Tigers den. Thank you Matt for enduring our side trip to Loughborough and my overflowing excitement. What a day!

  • New PainScale

    When you suffer from a pain disorder the doctors and health care staff always ask you To rate your pain.  This normally consists of the standard 0-10 scale with 0 being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you can imagine. I would like to propose a more intuitive scale, a bit more user friendly perhaps. A number just doesn’t sum it up.  Here are a few of my top pain analogies that I think are better than the number scale.

    First, we start with the “I feel like I’ve just come out of the tumble dryer.” Which is marginally better than the “I feel like I’ve been thrown down a flight of stairs.”. At other times the pain is more specific  an example of this would be “someone is using me as a Voodoo doll!”  I think you will agree this type of description far exceeds the traditional number scale.  If you have any other suggestions I will happily add them this new system.

  • I could never be a weather person

    Being the control freak that I am I could never do a job where I knew I was going to be wrong the majority of the time, no matter what I said!  Why the weather theme today?  Well, we were told just yesterday that we were “officially” in a draught (in our part of England).  Today I am sitting in an office on the corner of building and I’m surrounded by huge windows.  Watching the wind  whip the RAIN into a frenzy.  It is lashing so hard against the windows that if feels more like a car wash than an office!  I am grateful for the rain, as I don’t want us to be in a draught but I started thinking about those poor buggers who have to try to predict what Mother Nature is going to do.  It seems she does have a good sense of humour though.  I’m sure she was thinking “okay, official draught well that means rain is on the agenda for tomorrow, let’s see what they do with that!”  I wonder what Mother Nature has in store for this weekend because the weather people have called for “balmy temperatures”.  Bets anyone?

  • Welford Road…at last!

    I am finally going to see the Leicester Tigers play a Premiership game.  I’m going this Saturday with my step  son…wow that still sounds strange when I say it.  We are going to the temple of British rugby and I cannot wait.  You know I love my rugby and I am prone to shout at the telly when something exciting happens.  If you watched last Sunday’s game you can imagine what was happening in our living room.  The Tigers were down by 2 points and they waited until the clock had 83 minutes on it, (for non rugby people this is 3 minutes into extra time and one dead ball ends the game), before they attempted a drop goal.  The Captain stepped up and took the kick himself (I love good leadership).  I held my breath as the ball wobbled over and they won 20-19.  I finally exhaled and felt exhausted from the effort of watching this heart stopping match.  As exciting as it was I’m not sure my blood pressure could take another one of those this week.  Watch this space for the update after Saturday’s match.

  • Grrrrrr

    You  may be able to tell from the title of this post that I am not a happy bunny! I had to make the trip into London today.  Now I have worked out a method that allows me to make this journey without completely kicking my butt on the physical front. I take the train from from my local station right into St Pancras no issue here it is a breeze. Then I take a cab from St Pancras to Waterloo to avoid the tube and the 1 mile walk from St Pancras. I then take a train from Waterloo to Richmond (this is where my office is located).  So, the last leg of the trip from the station to the office is a 10-12 minute walk for the average person. However, for those of us who use a cane or other device to assist our walking it is a difficult walk.  Loads of cobblestones and old pavements (sidewalk) for the American readers. I opt to take a cab the short distance to be safe. The issue arises here. Due to the fact that this is a very short trip for a cabbie many of them are not very happy to take me. Some of the drivers have even been rude and borderline abusive, today I got one of those guys. I am always nice and I apologise in advance for the hassle. This I still not enough for some people. My driver today told me sarcastically that I “had mad his day!” (which is ironic considering my earlier post this morning), he went on to say he had waited at that rank for an hour and now what was he going get for it? “nothing!”  I apologised again but it made no difference. Besides being polite I also always pay them more than the metered fare.  I’m not sure what more I can do. I need a cane to walk, believe me if I had a choice I would love for it to be otherwise. Also, there are parts of all of our jobs that we don’t like but you deal with them. How many of us could get away with complaining to a customer for giving us business regardless of the size of the job. If we did complain I’d hazard to say we wouldn’t have that job for long.  So, what did I do.? Did I give the guy my standard over the odds fare? Or did I give him some abuse back, which would have been difficult as he was still complaining! I chose to take the higher road. The fare came to £3.40 so I gave him £10.00 in the hopes that he stops to examine his behaviour and doesn’t treat the next disabled person or anyone else that way in the future. I was hoping that when I gave him the tenner that he might say something.  Bets please…what do you think he said? Drumroll please…he said NOTHING!!  As I stood there with my mouth hanging open I thought “so much for teaching this guy a lesson” and I felt like a total prat. Upon reflection though I still think it was the right thing to do any who knows maybe he did think about after he drove off…I sure hope so.