It's that time of year...

This weekend I was a very happy bunny….this was the weekend I’d been waiting FOUR months for, in fact it was probably longer. The first few weeks were twitchy…constantly looking for my next fix…then the “stuff” ran out and there was months of relative silence. Now, the time had come….

it was…

Grand Prix Time!!!

Yes, ok, I’m sad. I have been following F1 since I was little. One of my early memories of F1 was when I gave my “boyfriend” (well I was only eight) a John Player Special car for Christmas. I still remember buying it in Woolies with my Mum, secretly hoping that she’d let me keep it. The car became his….I got a Strawberry Shortcake set more fitting of an eight year old girl. I still love that car.

I was Team Lotus until I moved with Senna to McLaren in 1988, and have been with McLaren ever since, although I’m pleased to see Lotus back (again)

I know… for most people, mention F1 and their eyes glaze over, their feet shuffle and they try to get away as soon as possible without being obvious. But I LOVE it. The sound of the engines, the bravado of the drivers and the spectacular driving (no, I don’t watch the races for the crashes, there have been too many fatalities for me to really enjoy the bumps that happen).

The drivers are some of the fittest men on the planet, they need to be to be able to stay alert in a car whizzing round a track at nearly 200mph for two hours. If you managed to catch the documentaries on BBC4 this weekend, you may have been amazed at the courage of the early racers. They knew that there was a high chance of a crash during the race, and that death was a very real prospect, they knew they were risking everything when they got in the car, and yet still their love of the sport drove them on. There have been so many deaths it’s heartbreaking, but thankfully today the sport is as safe as it possibly can be. Mind you, who could forget seeing Jos Verstappen engulfed in flames during the German race in 1994 when the fuel pipe leaked over him and his car during a fuel stop? Or the first race of that season in Brazil when Eddie Irvine taught his car to fly? Olivier Panis broke both his legs in an horrific crash in 1997 (yet he still returned to driving) and most recently Felipe Massa suffering massive head injuries after a bolt flew of Barrichello’s car in front? Much of the safety as it stands today is due to the deaths of Senna and Ratzenburger in one weekend 1994, I’m not even going to go there, but their legacy is one of improved safety and the fact that a car can now go flying and its driver can walk away. Injuries are rare these days, so we can enjoy the race knowing that those shunts will be mostly harmless for the drivers, even if they are less so for the hugely expensive cars.

My Team

But I digress….see I can see your eyes glazing already!

There’s danger, yes, but there is also humour (Mansell running out of petrol…ok I found it funny), feuds (Senna & Prost, Schumacher & Hill the most prominent), industrial espionage (oops don’t mention McLaren & Ferrari) and the glitz and glamour of the whole F1 scene.

Jack Brabham says that its too easy today and with too much money, but I’d rather watch a Grand Prix race than any other sport, and for me the drivers, and the teams behind them, are worth their weight in gold.

The F1 season  is upon us again...I'm very happy (just dont try to contact me during a race!).

Visit my team’s website and marvel at the wondrous things

I was tagged...now my poor brain hurts

Right....so I have been tagged by the wondrous Stupidgirl (one thing she definitely isn't!) on her GenerationWhyNot blog.  Easy peasy thought I...but answering these questions actually isn't easy. I've realised I don't tend to think about myself much these days...perhaps I've turned into a wandering zombie?

Right here goes....



I am... oh here's that identity thing again. I am a collection of atoms, with a sprinkling of stardust, wobbling around my patch of the universe and trying to make some sense out of existence. Or perhaps I'm the deranged figment of a Llama's imagination as it stands high up in the Andes, chewing on a bit of tree as it looks down on the ruined stones of a lost civilisation. Then again I may be the ghost of a lost identity, in a place where time has lost all meaning, in a house on a hill as the wind whips through the trees and the crows sing their melancholy song to the waves in the bay beyond the fields. Or I may just be a Yorkshire lass, on the wrong side of forty, living in the back of beyond with a family and a house full of mad animals.

The bravest thing I have ever done is... I dont think I've ever done anything brave. I've never actually been in a situation where bravery was required...at least I dont think so. The nearest you can get, I suppose, is being brave enough not to move when I fell off a cliff on a school skiing trip. Yes..I fell off a cliff in the alps. I suppose it was serious at the time...we were skiing off-piste and had rounded a bend, and as I was the last in the group all the snow had been moved from the path to reveal a layer of ice... muggins here just slid off the edge. I was lucky, I landed in fresh snow...but the instructor told me that I mustn't move as that would plunge me further down the cliff-side. I stayed still as they managed to drag me back up onto firmer ground using my ski-poles...I remember the look in their eyes was panic at the thought of a child being lost... I just thought it was funny. I have a bit of a wierd sense of humour obviously. The sad thing is, if I remember rightly, this wonderful instructor died in an avalanche the following year. I probably owe him my life (or that could just be my melodramatic side coming out )

I feel prettiest when... I have my eyes shut? I dont think I've ever felt pretty.

Something that keeps me up at night is... nowt much. Great telly and a good book probably. I don't tend to lose sleep over the bad things in life....that's not saying that on occasion I haven't spent nights worrying over what might be, but we all do that. I think I may just have become a fatalist.

My favourite meal is... oooh now we're getting there! Food...it depends on my mood, but you can't beat a roast dinner and a chocolate fudge cake. A restaurant in Inverness (Girvans) does a fabulous pan-roasted salmon fillet on a bed of crushed potatoes that is just heavenly too. And my macaroni cheese is divine...but has enough cheese in the sauce to be coronary inducing.

The way to my heart is... ok...get a scalpel and some rib spreaders.....(see, wierd sense of humour?)

I would like to be... a good mother, a good wife...blah blah blah (insert all the usual stuff here). But I'd also like to be ...I don't honestly know. My career is unsatisfactory, and I don't honestly know what I'd "like to be"...I do know that "I would like to...."

1.   write a bit more and be good at it,
2.   be able to afford nice things (although I have no idea how I will manage
      that!),
3.   have a sense of style (that's one thing I have always lacked...unlike my
      sister who would look good in a tatty sack)
4.   be truly good at something (anything...I dont mind but I dont think baking
      counts)
5.  stop being a facilitator for others and start being one for myself. You know
      what I mean...I'm the one who will often volunteer when other's wont, will
      give people the information they need, or find out where they can go for it
      (librarian training coming out here). I spend so much time doing things for
      other people that I leave no time for myself...and when I do have the time
      to myself I have no idea how to fill it.

Hmmm perhaps after all that I do have an answer... 
I would like to be... ME  (I'll let you know if I ever find out who that actually is!)


So there you have it...some searching questions for a Saturday morning...as I was tagged I should tag others...but instead I'm going to leave it open to you dear reader...if you haven't been tagged, please answer these questions on your blog and link to it below. I'm nosey....I want to know. Now over to you.

There are bargains to be had...

This morning I woke to snow...and lots of it.

Ok, so it was expected but I didn't quite think that there would be tons of the stuff, there was so much that we thought that perhaps the schools would shut. To make my morning more exciting, when I carefully drove home my poor knackered old car managed to skid while turning a corner. No biggie, I'm used to driving in horrible conditions, but when your car decides it wants try a 360 spin onto the opposite side of the road when the car coming towards you decides not to slow down...well lets just say it's a shock to the system! Don't they know how to slow down in snow??. But hey ho, my driving skills would have delighted the Top Gear team as I controlled the skid and resumed my onward journey with nary a finger to the offending oncoming traffic.

As you'll all be aware by now, the news that greeted me when I popped on the radio was somewhat more earth shattering. As I sat glued to the screen of my computer the bbc news streamed through images of a devastated Japan and I thought that perhaps I shouldn't update this blog in quite the frivolous way I had intended. Then I saw footage of the people of that great nation just carrying on as usual and thought, "hell, why not?". So here is the post I'd planned ....ladies and gentlebeans I give you the cheery world of bargains (subtitled How to spend less than a tenner and have pretty things to look at)

*******

Last week a rare occurence happened in Caithness...there was a car boot sale. We do have them every now and then, and being honest for the most part they are just jumble sales with not a car nor a boot to be seen. Tat in all shapes and sizes is there for the taking, usually not being taken by me. However, there has been a tat shaped gap in my life since the local auctions shut down a few years ago, so with darling daughter in tow I decided to make a day of it. First to the car booty, then for lunch (Houstons in Wick do a mean mince pie and chips), then a quick wander around the charity shops in the vast metropolis of Wick.

First off the car boot sale (when exactly did people stop calling them jumble sales?). As I walked around the hall there were stalls selling, lets be honest, total rubbish. But the first stall had some pretty shiny things on it. I saw a ring (as did d. dtr) but walked on nevertheless. The mother-in-law chose this time to phone me from a PROPER shop offering to entice me with a new hoover...but I dodged that one admirably. Anyway, after buying a book dated 1799 for less than a fiver I went back to the first stall...and found a ring, a bit grubby looking but chunky and sparkly. I bought it along with a crystal bracelet that needs a new clasp. This my dears is the ring...

Ok, its not a great photo but it is quite heavy and is copper coloured. I have no idea what its made of, it may even be copper, but for some strange reason this one doesn't turn my finger green...usually I only have to look at cheap jewellery for my fingers to turn a lovely zombie green colour. A snip at 20p...yes twenty whole pence! Bargain. (If you're wondering the bracelet cost me the princely sum of 50p). It's very pretty on...I'd show you a picture but my gnarled old fingers would put you off your coffee.

So, happy with cheap purchases, we stopped for a very unhealthy lunch and a mooch around the tat shops. I was actually quite shocked by the prices in the charity shops...genuine pieces of pottery tat at antique shop prices. No thanks, I'll go to an antique shop.

BUT.....I did bag a second bargain of the day....

Pretty isnt it? I've been after a martini glass for ages, but I wanted to find "The One". This is it..I don't think its old, but the gold is in perfect condition and the glass has a nice weight to it. Not bad for 10p. Yup...you read right...ten of the queen's pennies.

So I managed to have a fab day out with the ever suffering daughter and my purchases cost me the grand old sum of £4-80. I'd put up a picture of the book but you'd probably die of boredom! The lunch...well that's another thing altogether, but sometimes you just HAVE to have lunch out.

As a parting shot, to show that sometimes I do pay more for things, I managed to buy this about a month ago...

It's a tiny little cameo...the orange stone is a real stone (goodness knows what stone...carnelian perhaps?) and the black stone may just be jet. I know nothing about this brooch though, it's tiny, the pin and chain appear to be gold but the metal of the main thing is strange. I've looked at it under my eyeglass and it looks as though someone has tested the bottom corner as it's slightly uneven...to me it looks like coated silver, perhaps silver gilt? It does have age to it, but could probably be dated anytime from late Victorian onwards. However I honestly dont care what its made of and how old it is, it's really pretty. And cost me £6. Yes, I splashed out on this one!

And now I'm going to stop boring you with inane twaddle... there's a cheap 1920's cocktail ring on ebay!