New Term, New Shoes!

One of the disadvantages of being a supply teacher is sitting waiting for someone to give you some work whilst you watch your bank account empty and worry about paying the bills. September tends to be a horribly lean month as teachers return refreshed from the holiday and less likely to go off sick and they don't go on many courses as they want to stay in school and get to know their new classes.

So, I was delighted to be asked to work on the very first teaching day of the new term and in fact have worked all but the two Fridays. In addition to this I've had a bit of a tax rebate, enough to pay some bills and have a couple of treats. This all makes me very happy! And what did I want to buy as a treat? Why shoes of course! Now, as I have previously mentioned I am quite a practical person. Much as I love the killer heels you see on the catwalk, I realise I wouldn't be able to walk to the bus stop in them or spend a day in the classroom. So when I look for beautiful shoes, I look for beautiful, comfortable shoes. And I found them.

Now, I'm not sure that this picture does justice to their plummy beauty so I'll take some pictures of my feet when they arrive (my local shoe shop didn't have an eight in stock so I've ordered them). I am ready to fall in love with them.

I also got a pair of trainers to wear to the gym but that's a whole other story...

Reading Lists

I don't tend to do book reviews as I think there's a limit to how many detective novels you want to hear about and because, despite my love of reading, I'm not going to impress anyone with my reading list. Unlike this young man...


A dictionary, an encyclopedia, The Bible and Batman! Wow!

Back to Work!

I love my job, most of the time, and hate the holidays, partly because I love teaching and partly because I don't get paid. Today was the first time ever that I've had a supply day on the fist day of term and it was wonderful to be back in the classroom. Even better I'm booked for three days a week at the school closest to my house right up until half term. Now if I can just fill the other days, get my tax rebate and get my ex-husband to cough up the money he owes me I might manage to be able to afford a new winter coat this year (last year's coat was cancelled when the cat got ill and I needed the money for vets' bills).

Lost in Translation.

It was my nephew's nineteenth birthday last week and he's soon to join me in God's Own Country when he starts University in York next month. I've promised him the birthday present of a trip to the shops for mugs, bowl, signs that say "Keep Off!" and anything else he finds he needs in Halls. I'm looking forward to going over for the day and taking him out to lunch; I may even attempt to be a cool aunt, a role I've never really managed as I've always been practical aunt.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm incapable of being cool aunt, I was born sensible! In any case, my youngest sister is his cool aunt (she wanted to get him a games console) and my brother is undoubtedly cool uncle and gave him a bottle of good aftershave and a fantastic card his beautiful Spanish partner had made. It's this card I want to show you. Some of the subtleties of the English language have been lost to her since their return to Andalusia a few years ago!

My Favourite Shop

Ok, so maybe not the shop I most like to buy things from (step forward John Lewis, Waitrose, Monsoon, Paperchase, VV Rouleaux, Cath Kidston, Emma Bridgewater, The Conran Shop, Ikea, Carluccio's, Mana Tree, etc, etc.) but I love this shop we found in Venice, especially as they have a plastic Fox Terrier dressed as a Gondelier in the window.

My Twin

My family used to be seen as a bit odd. My adoptive father was a widower with three small children when he met my single-mother mother and they married and had a baby. I grew up with adoptive brother and sisters and a half sister in a town where there was only one child of a "broken home" in my entire school. It didn't make me feel bad; I valued our unusual set-up.

There were some disadvantages. I don't look like my siblings and that can be surprisingly difficult when trying to work out where you belong. The journey back to Ireland in the summers was always wonderful as the ferry from Holyhead was always filled with people who had the same dark hair, blue eyes and milky skin as I have and I'd spend weeks in a country full of people who think the same way I do.

A few years ago, just south of Dublin, I had the interesting experience of being in a pub waiting for a funeral to start next door (in a church, not a pub, don't be thinking this is some tale of Paddywhackery) and seeing a group of women walk in who looked so like me it was uncanny. I heaved a sigh of relief and homecoming and turned to my Mammy to comment on it when I realised my cousin Paddy was with them and these were his sisters who I've never really known very well as they were always away when we visited. After years of looking nothing like my family (except the aforementioned Mammy, talk about "Send in the Clones")this was an amazing feeling and despite the sad occasion it was a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by my "kin".

"This is all very well," I hear you say, "but where is the promised twin?" Hold your horses, I'm getting there...

During those trips to Ireland we would often stop and visit my Mammy's cousin and family and I would be expected to pal around with my second cousin J and her younger brother B- who is tragically no longer with us. CousinJ is a year older than me and I was hopelessly intimidated by her and her big city glamour but we met as adults after nearly twenty years and there was an instant recognition. After we'd admitted our mutual intimidation (she thought I was the sophisticated English girl) we realised we looked alike and thought alike, and forged a relationship much closer than you'd expect from girls with a relationship no closer than a shared great-grandparent.

She lives in England now though we don't see each other as often as we'd like thanks to my precarious financial situation. I can talk to her about things I can't share with my sisters and she understands me instantly. She makes me laugh and provided my favourite quote for the Overheard Exhibition. She understands my issues with food and I was delighted to be able to steer her away from Lighter Life and toward Beyond Chocolate. She and her husband are a dreadful influence on me at family parties and it's their fault that I've now made two speeches whilst a little drunk. Take away the difference in our accents and you'd have difficulty telling us apart when we speak, save she says "Grand" and I say "Fantastic". I have no hesitation in saying that I love her dearly and plan to retire to her spare room from whence I will emerge to join her in a double-act that leaves her husband breathless and laughing that,
"You two are so alike".

We are, and I love it!

Beyond Chocolate- After

Things I have realised since "doing" Beyond Chocolate.

1. Food is not a substitute for sleep, an extra jumper, asthma drugs, company, approval, love or anything else. If I tune in to what I really need I sometimes find it is food but just as often I need a nap, or a blanket or to just get myself out of the house for a while, not to distract myself from hunger (that's diet talk my friend) but because that's what I really need.

2. When I can't stop thinking about a food there's no point in eating other things as substitutes; a low-fat chocolate drink is not a substitute for a piece of chocolate melting in your mouth and will not satisfy me. And I won't stop at the drink, I'll keep eating and drinking because I'm not satisfied. I want the chocolate, or cheese, or pasta, or mango, or big plate of vegetables. Oh, and the diet club leader who advised me to have a chocolate bubble-bath when I fancied chocolate was deluded.

Which brings me to...

3. Diet Club leaders do not know my body. The leader who told me that "steroids do not make you put weight on, eating makes you put weight on" has obviously never coped with prednisolone side-effects; the leader who told me to "feed a cold" hadn't understood the proverbs; the leader who boasted she'd lost weight whilst on an all-inclusive holiday but failed to mention the dysentery, who asked if we'd rather have "sod-it" night or another pound off a month was, quite frankly, dealing with an eating disorder. I will not apologise for using butter instead of low-cal spread and for eating a Mars Bar after a massive asthma attack.

4. My ex's issues with sex are nothing to do with me. When he told me I was,
"Too fat to fancy" (or worse) he was trying to hide any number of problems that he has and behaviours of which he is ashamed. Nothing, certainly not my weight, excuses the way he treated me. I will not allow him to blame me.

5. I do not have to finish every bit of food on my plate. Finishing every bite will not benefit the starving of China; it will not shorten the years of rationing this country went through; it will not make my dad love me more.

6. I did not fail at diets, diets failed me. The entire diet industry is not designed to benefit womankind; it's designed to make money. I am no longer prepared to be part of it.

7. Comparing myself to my sisters or other slim women is ridiculous. I am an attractive, sexy woman. Yes, I would like to be slimmer but I do not need to wait until I am slimmer to have nice clothes and to value my looks.

8. I need to value myself more.
I need to look after my body; I need to feed it wholesome, tasty, satisfying food (and some fun junk!), rest it, move it and tend to it with the right asthma and eczema drugs.
I need to remember that there are people who love me and value me for my many qualities and that the ways I was treated by the ex, his friends and his family should not, and will not, overwhelm that.

9. Sorting out my relationship with food has been far more valuable and lasting than all those times I lost all that weight.