Category: Journal

I cant believe my mum is 50!

I mean, I know I was 30 almost two years ago now, but it just seems kind of weird that my mum has hit the half century.

I think it’s because she’s always been so full of life and fun that she doesn’t seem to have aged to me. I’m aware that I’m getting on a bit, but my mum just seems to have been stuck in a timewarp for the last fifteen years or so, where I’ve always just though of her as “around 40-ish”.

Sadly, being so far away, there wasn’t much we could do for her birthday other than ensure that she got her card on time and some flowers to go along with it. Next month Fliss and I will be up in Scotland for week, so we’ll be able to treat her to something more lavish while we’re there.

And she deserves it too – bringing up me couldn’t have been a walk in the park, it’s amazing that she doesn’t look twice her age! ;o)

Hope you have a great day mum!

After a hiatus of several months, I’m back eating cereal again in the mornings. Toward the end of last year I managed to eat myself sick of Rice Crispies after consuming several extra large boxes in the space of a month or so. Admittedly that was partly due to a promotion where you got these Cartoon Network bobblehead things and I was trying to decorate my monitors at work with them. I collected five of them during my Rice Krispie fest, which although two of them are doublers, gives some idea of the consumption rate.

Anyhow, new to the extreme breakfasting menu is Frosted Shreddies – a food product not exactly aimed at my age group (hey, neither are rice crispies), but very tasty all the same. I’m nearing the end of my first box and I’m still enjoying them, although all that sugar coating cant be too good for my teeth. I may switch to the regular version for my next box to save my teeth, but that would be kind of like Baywatch without the hot chicks – what would be the point?

The only downside is the promotion toys – they’re characters from Disney’s Brother Bear which looked like yet another of their formulaic morality tales from what I can remember of the trailer. Regardless of that, the quality of the toys is poor. Not that I’ve come to expect highly detailed, hand-crafted workmanship from toys found in a cereal box, but the bear I got has a facial expression indicating severe constipation (or rapid intrusion of the same region, it’s hard to tell) and the mold lines are painfully obvious.

Fortunately there’s not much room left on the top of my monitors anway, so the saving grace of Shreddies may well be their taste rather than their freebies.

Last night we went to bed kind of late – around midnight or there abouts. When the tv went off and the lights were out, darkness fell and I got into my regular falling asleep position. It was then, in the silence of the night, that I became aware of an erie sound coming from outwith the walls of our house.

At first I was sure it was a bird, like an owl or something, but as it continued I couldn’t help but think the cry was one of distress. I lay still, piercing my ears against the background noise from the main road, trying to make out the muffled wail more clearly.

After ten minutes or so Fliss got up to better listen for the sound and discovered that it wasn’t an animal, but a woman in the house next door apparently crying, sobbing even, and in what seemed like great distress.

Once we knew what the noise was it became all the more disturbing. Why was the woman next door crying? Why was she crying at half past midnight on a Sunday at that? Not to mention that she was sobbing with the heart rending despair usually associated with bereavement.

We know the man next door only as Mike, and although we’ve exchanged pleasantries in passing, while washing the car, that kind of thing, we’ve never really gone beyond that. He keeps himself to himself, we do the same and I guess that aside from the lack of interaction he’s the perfect neighbour. But now the woman who lived with him was crying, wailing even, and for what reason?

As the crying went on for twenty minutes, half an hour, and beyond, I wondered what could be wrong. Could something terrible have happened to Mike?

Just the thought that kind of thing had my mind racing for so long that, before I realised it, the sobbing had subsided and an uneasy silence had fallen upon the darkness. It wasn’t the kind of faux–silence we get every other night, with the drone of the nocturnal traffic and the occasional distant roar of a departure from the airport. This was the kind of silence where I could feel every second ebbing away, and the knowledge that someone nearby was in the kind of distress only eased by the comfort of sleep only served to bring a troubled sleep for myself.