Touch

Adding Touch to our list of must watch programmes.  I thoroughly enjoyed Tim Kring's previous serious Heroes so Touch already had my attention.

Having watched two episodes now I have to say I am hooked.  

Touch follows the story of Martin Bohm, a man widowed during 9/11 and left to care for his autistic son Jake, whom he is devoted to but unable to connect with or really understand.

I'm not a massive Keifer Sutherland fan and I am struggling to find him terribly believable as the devoted father in touch but the story itself has me so captivated I can let that pass.

The young male actor chosen to play Jake is one of the most beautiful children I have ever seen, his eyes seem to portray all the emotion that as an autistic child he is unable to share. So if he's good as a child when he reaches adulthood his career is going to be worth following.

What drew me to this series originally was the ideas behind it... that there are these tiny moments in time that seem so unimportant, like tiny ripples in a pond, they mean nothing to us but that those ripples radiate outwards and connect us all in ways we can't see or appreciate.  It's made me wonder does coincidence actually exist or is there a plan?  Are there really invisible strings that draw us all together and does everything we do, everything we say, every call we make or thought we have connected and important?

The other aspect of the show that has captured me is the love,  I wasn't expecting that.  The absolute unconditional love this man has for this child who does not connect with him, who cannot say I love you dad and cannot bear to be touched, who doesn't "give back" to this parent all the moments we parents cherish and yet, this man fights to keep his son, fights to understand him and is prepared to take the leap of faith to follow the map his child is setting him. 

If you haven't seen the show, I would recommend that you find it and watch it.  But be prepared, having tissues because you will cry... ok maybe you won't, but I blubbed like a baby. 

Catch Touch Tuesdays 8pm on Sky 1

New Shoes!

I imagine there are some women ... but I don't know them LOL... who don't go a bit gaga over a pair of divine shoes, even if they are ridiculously high and not all that comfortable to walk in.  

So why do we do it to ourselves?  Well because they make us feel good, they make us feel sexy, they make us walk with a bounce and give us looooong legs and pert bums and can make us feel like the goddesses we know we are on the inside.

I fell in love with a pair of shoes...I had to have them, no clue when I am ever going to wear them but god they are gorgeous and they make me feel good and I just enjoy wandering around the house in them pretending I am Britains Next Top Model. 

Don't they  make you just go oooooooooooooh!

Stitch & Craft Show - Olympia March 2012

What a day.... in order to be able to go to the Show it meant going in to London with my hubby, a 6am start!!! Horrors! Haven't seen that time of day for a while... well not since my last doll show... ok really that wasn't that long ago LOL

Once I got on the tube at Park Royal I thought ok this isn't so bad... until I got to Earls Court to discover there were no trains to Olympia... What??? Apparently London Underground were uninformed that there were any shows on at Olympia.... don't think the hundred or so ladies standing on the platform were terribly impressed.

So I had to get a bus, yes a bus! Haven't been on one of those in donkeys years, not since I moved out of London anyway. So that was an adventure, have to admit the bus wasn't as bad as I remember, at least it didnt smell the way I remembered buses smelling.

I met up with my friends Ceinwen and Donna at the venue and when I say the place was teeming with women I am not jesting, it was wall to wall women all dying to get their hands on the many goodies that were on offer. 

I loved the quilt display on the 3rd floor, there was some A-MAZING work up there, 

 

I came home with some goodies thanks to my lovely parents in law who gave me a lovely birthday present. 

Some of my purchases!

As soon as I saw this range of Cross Stitch kits I thought mmmmmmm yes have to have some of those!  I love the designs, I would love to see these done in Silk Painted form... ohhhh there's an idea!

Some gorgeous fabrics, and boy was it ever difficult to choose, if I had had a donkey to carry it all home I probably would have come home with a lot more!

And I just had to have some more of this thread, I bought some a few years ago, it cross stitches up into some gorgeous cards, space dyed silk threads.

It's the Little Things

Every now and again I am surprised by the things that make me smile, even when I am having a crappy time of it a little ray of light pops up and makes me think "you know things aren't always so bad".  In this case happiness is a spotty red toilet seat.

I recently broke the loo seat in our bathroom, no i wasnt tap dancing on it, I sat on it in the middle of the night and ooops the seat hinge just snapped.  I can't tell you the hilarity this caused, the other half was highly amused. But serendipity struck, we were going to replace the loo seat with an ordinary white one but as we wandered around Wilkinsons we spotted this wild red toilet seat with white spots, very much in the style of Minnie Mouse, although I won't be wearing Minnie Mouse ears to use it, I am however tempted by the hair bow.

We were however forced to buy a matching mat, toilet roll holder and toothbrush holder.... well, it would have been rude not to really! 

So in the new year there has got to be a revamp of the bathroom, I am thnking white walls (they are blue currently), with white and red lino, hopefully something with really small tiled squares and a new blind in red and white... we will see.

In the meantime everytime I open the door to the smallest room in the house a spotty toilet seat makes me smile... long may that continue.

Strike, Hikes and Freezes

With the country struggling along under the weight of the global recession it's tough out there for everyone.  I do find it highly amusing that when the current government came into power they used the whole "we're in this together" line to try and make us all believe they were on our side and now that the chips are down the truth really does come out.  Really the Conservatives have just not changed, its still a party of dissention and division, now trying to create division within our nation, pitting Private Sector against Public Sector. 

Why?  At a time when we should all be appreciating each other and understanding that we all have a place within society and we all have a role to play to get through, what is going to be, a very difficult trying time.

Demonising a specific portion of our society is not the way to go.

I was very supportive of the industrial action that the Public Sector took this last week, in my opinion they were pushed into an action that none of them actually wanted to take but felt that they had nowhere else to turn.

There is this attitude that the Public sector doesn't earn its way... but the truth is the Public sector isn't supposed to, the Public sector supports the Private Sector, the Public sector feeds the Private sector, without one the other would struggle to survive.  The Public sector provides the education, the medical support, the training, the infrastructure that allows the Private Sector to exist and prosper. 

The Public Sector is the foundation of our society and the people that train our future workers should be valued, supported and praised instead of bullied, demonised and blamed for the poor financial choices made by successive governments and the banking sector. 

A huge proportion of the Publc Sector are women, these attacks by the government are being aimed at women but then so far in the Conservative history when hasn't it been women they attack? Women are encouraged and bullied into going back to work before they are even ready, blamed for not leaving their children and taking on low paid jobs, women are blamed for leaving their children to go to work and for the subsequent behavioural issues that pop up from that lack of one to one supervision by a parent.   The blame for the large numbers of single parent families... you got it, laid at the woman's door. 

What this Government is forgetting that women are also their voters and that really these endless attacks on women will come back to bite them... in the ballot boxes.

Big Girls Paper Dolls

How much fun is this site??? Ohhhh so much fun.

When I was a girl... all them years ago one of my favourite things to do was design dresses, I would spend hours and hours drawing figures and designing clothes, quite often I would make them for my Sindy's,  never had a Barbie,  only ever a Sindy and Pippa's but every spare moment found me drawing, cutting and sewing.

So coming across this site was such a delight. Looklet is a big girls paper doll where you can pick your doll (model)  background, outfits, accessories... give it a try you'll see. 

 

You can create your own lookbooks and share them with your friends.

Have a go yourself, check out Looklet

Bunratty Castle

We popped along to Bunratty Castle in County Clare during our weeks holiday visit to my in-laws. The castle is inside a heritage site which includes a folk park of historial buildings like a fishermans cottage, a peat cutters cottage, an old school building, a recreation of a whole street of shops. 

Bunratty Castle itself is an amazing building,  there has been dwellings on the site since 970 but the first defensive building was built in 1270, since then there had always been a castle of some sort on the site.   The present castle was built in 1425 and was occupied  pretty consistently until 1804 when the building was left and fell into disrepair. 

In 1954 the Castle was bought and restored to its present condition by the 7th Viscount Gort and his wife.   Having walked around the place I doubt that they restored it to live in as it didn't seem particularly cmfortable a place to live. 

Plaque commemorating the restoration by Viscount Gort

The Castle itself was very very busy, it's obviously a very popular tourist destination as I was hearing lots of accents and languages from the people walking around. 

Highly recommended as a place to visit but be warned the whole park is quite big,  we didn't manage to see it all as with a 5 year old with us it got quite tiring and both he and I were pretty shattered by the time we had done the castle and the village. I think we will be going back again during another visit to see all the bits we missed out. 

There's plenty of information available about the castle, the folk park, opening times etc on the Shannon Heritage website 

Tapestry inside the main Hall of the Castle

Inside a cottage recreation

All of the buildings in the Folk park have been brought to Bunratty stone by stone and rebuilt from sites all over Ireland including one from Shannon Airport when a runway was being put in.  It's a fascinating look at how people lived.  I wouldn't have made a very good early Irishwoman that's for sure... the peat fire really irritated my eyes.

But I was really impressed by the level of detail put in to recreating the cottages, including photographs, chinaware and all the paraphanalia of family life.

This statue was hidden away in some trees and hedges mostly unnoticed but it caught my attention.