Phases

Ok, so I dunno whether it's the summer approaching or a hankering for yesteryear but I have found myself travelling down the road of reminiscence lately, and particularly watching the early seasons of Sex and the City. Please don't laugh. It represents a time in my life where I was so carefree and self-indulgent - a fact which I quite freely admit! I've re-watched Seasons 1 and 2 to date and every so often I catch a glimpse of how my life has been shaped by this show - this may sound mad, but the spirit behind the lives of these fictional 4 women I find awesome and fascinating and utterly desirable. Yes I know it's rude and full of things 'people don't talk about' but OMG how refreshing! Desperate Housewives doesn't even come close. I recall the nights in with the gals @ the granny flat - Abs, Hann & Anna, sucked into a world of glamourous New York where you can wear dresses all the time and go out for cocktails - thus began our love affair with cocktails at the Dock! We saw the show as educational, an easy way we could find out answers to the questions we were all afraid to ask! Those were the months of Rose wine and cosy girl times. Now we're all married I kinda miss that. It's not the same!

I also find myself giggling at how Carrie Bradshaw has shaped my fashion sense over the years...every so often there is a scene where she'll be wearing an outfit or toting a bag or accessory that I scoured shops all over Liverpool to find lookee-likees - from the horseshoe necklace to full circular skirts, to high high heels, to a big white Fulton umbrella, to 50's tea length dresses and ballet dancer buns, to clutch purses, to ponchos and so much more. Funny how we (or maybe just me??) are shaped by popular culture. I won't ever forget those days and how much fun it was to dress up and go drink champagne. Right, that's it, I'm invoking the days of yore, rallying the gals and getting our asses out on the town. Pronto!

Have a Cosmopolitan on me!!

Jamie Oliver triumphs again!

So, last night the Kennaughs & Stoff and Sarah ventured to the Walls for good food, good wine and GREAT company (even if we do say so ourselves)!! Luce kicked off the proceedings with a fabulous Bruschetta and a bouteille de Beringer (pink and fizzy - YUM!) and I followed it with a 5-hour slow roast beef with veggies, red wine gravy and crusty bread for dunking. I was very nervous for it to work and be tasty, not least because Lucy's nickname is 'Gordo' after Gordon Ramsay!! She is such a talented chef I was worried the main course wouldn't work. But work it did - Praise the Lord for Jamie Oliver! We all agreed it was yummy. Then after a long rest and trying not to slip into a food coma, we partook of Sarah's AWESOME chocolate/blueberry Pavlova - WOWEE it was gorgeous! After dinner it was coffee and sophisticated conversation (for the girls - the boys practiced their WWE moves on one another) (*rolls eyes*) A really great night with wonderful friends and one that we need to repeat more often - thanks guys for coming over, you're fabulous!

And so to today, relaxing, looking for holidays on t'internet, watching the Monaco Grand Prix (Please God can we go there one day!) possibly venturing over to the Barnes' later on - Bank Holidays are where it's at!

Over and out xxx

PS - Happy Birthday Wen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hallelujah!

Today I handed in my Portfolio. Come July I will be an officially qualified counsellor. OH-MY-GAH! That thought is simultaneously enthralling and frightening! Seems like I've been working for sooooooooooooo long for this, and it's finally within sight. YAY! Not entirely sure how it'll pan out in terms of usage...I'm thinkin' maybe a Masters, part time obviously, whilst I am still working for the Local Authority.

Had my first impassioned work-rant at a rather high up dude t'other day. What I find so utterly frustrating is the lip-service that is paid to Children's Rights. People are all so 'Yes yes we're all about the kids' when really what they mean is 'Yes yes we're all about the kids up to a point but at the end of the day we don't really give a stuff about the rights of young people in the Care system and we don't care about communicating openly and honestly with them when decisions are being made about them that will affect their lives. Yes we recognise that BY LAW they have a right to be involved in decisions about their lives, but actually it gets in the way of us doing our job as the professionals we are' It's such bullshit.

My entire role revolves around a need to be transparent and to be able to openly communicate with and on behalf of the young people I represent. If 'professionals' are going to begin censoring what they say to young people via me then the role is obsolete and actually we haven't progressed at all in terms of how we involve young people and encourage them to engage in their own lives. The statistics for 'Looked After children' SUCK - in terms of achievement, mental health, education, employment, drugs, alcohol, crime, teenage pregnancy. At almost every turn they are a vulnerable demographic. So, why aren't we doing more?

Sometimes things just get my goat.

(Paulo is that enough about my 'real life' for ya??!! :)

The Maeve Binchy Code

Have been to see it. Quite good I thought, though it has been subjected to the 'great' and time-honoured American cinematic treatment of grossly over-explaining anything and everything that is significant and central to the plot. I appreciate that it's a difficult novel to dramatise (which may, peut-etre, beg the question why bother trying to at all!!), but Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon was tremendous in his over-enunciation of 'Fleur de Lise' and "'Neath ancient Roslin lies...' etc etc - just in case the Yanks didn't get it! Haha.

All in all a good film though, don't really see what the big Christian hoo-haa has been about, I reckon it's a well plausible theory! Not saying I think it's true or my faith has been shaken to the core or anything, just that it's a fantastic theory. (AND a GREAT book!!)

LOVED the Disney movie/Post-Modern-approach-to-faith ending 'What it comes down to Sophie is what you believe. Why couldn't Jesus have been a good man and a father?...' (I paraphrase but it was sommat like that, all soft focus and violins...) And as for the 'Nope, maybe I'll do better with the wine' bit, all I have to say is 'Gawd Bleyss Ameryica'!

BUT Paul Bettany was whoop-de-do brillo, dead evil and his eyes were especially good. Thought Audrey Tatou aka Amelie (GREAT film!) was great, and Tom Hanks was ok but not massively believable as Robert Langdon. Gandalf as Lee Teabing was ace.

Et voila my review!

My verdict: READ THE NOVEL!

When I grow up.....

....I wanna be just like Dr. Tanya Byron. Wowee, whatta gal! She is a true genius and spends her days sorting out problem parents who reckon that their KIDS are the ones with the issues! PAH!Thanks to Dr. T terms such as 'rapid return' and 'sliding in' have become commonplace. Parents around the globe are having their lives revolutionised by her interventions and I am hopelessly addicted to seeing what happens. I often find myself agreeing smugly with Dr. T and her expert observations, and then yelling at kids when I'm at work. Oopsie, my bad! But what I am so riveted by is how it's actually all common sense, and often all we need is someone who is impartial, independent and unconditional, who provides us with the right conditions for us to explore our behaviour and idiosyncrasies and ultimately to grow and change. Now, I know she's not God, but she's kind of like God in that we, as human beans, respond well to boundaries and being allowed to change when someone unconditional lets us....bit of a spacky analogy but hopefully you get what I mean. Dr. T is cool, God is cool. I've developed an addiction to 'House of Tiny Tearaways' and I'm supposed to be doing an essay.

See God? I need boundaries!

Over and out.

Little Ted being dead cute!!!

'Nuff said!!

CoNgRaTuLaTiOnS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here she is! The bride-to-be, Ms. Ulrike Hirsch! Yep indeedy, Rikes has gone and got herself all engaged! Hearty congrats to Craig and Ulrike, I love you guys and I'm so happy for you! Bring on the wedding! Masses of love, me xxxx

What a game!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nice one Liverpool - you ROCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sucks to be West Ham!

Tonight, tonight.....

Ladies and Gentleman, Mr Dave Matthews!!!!

*thunderous applause*

Yep indeedy people, tonight's the night we shall sojourn to fair Mancland to the Academy to witness the musical marvel, nay, miracle, that is this wondrous and talented chap! Needless to say there is MUCH excitement in the house of Wall...

Can't think of anything deep and meaningful to say so this'll have to do...

Love y'all...

PS - CATE! I would LOVE it if you came to Port Sunshine - just say the word and we can arrange it!

Issues

If people don't get commenting soon, I ain't gon' post no more.....

And finally....

Three posts in one day! Look at me 'doin a Tim'!! Anyways, couldn't blog sans mentioning that at long last WE HAVE TICKETS TO SEE DAVE MATTHEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Live, in the flesh, in Manchester, in 2 weeks.....ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHH! (I may pee my pants with excitement!) Granted, Mr Matthews will be without the rest of the band, Carter et. al, however he himself will be here and we CANNOT WAIT!

Ahhhhhhhhh, Dave.................. *sighs with happiness*

Oh Happy Day!

Sunday April 30th, 2006 was our first wedding anniversary - a whole year appears to have flown by without us really noticing! We celebrated in style with a weekend in Pwlhelli (or however you spell it) and dinner at The Mariner (yummy Welsh steak restaurant). REALLY good to get away, AND a convenient Bank Holiday too which makes future anniversaries tres bon. Hard to believe this time last year we were swanning around Barcelona, with all the smugness of just-marrieds! Thanks to all of you who were with us for the Big Day and who have supported and loved us through our first year! And most of all HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to my lovely hubby! I love you...

The littlest Heywood...

Well here he is folks! No longer going by the moniker 'Vincent', Edward 'Little Ted' Heywood is home from the hospikal and settling into life chez Heywood! He is soooooooo cute and teeny tiny he freaks me out ever so slightly - but I am pleased and proud to report that K & A are ever-so natural parents - ducks to water and all that jazz. I quickly got over my 'I might break him' fear and he happily let me feed him his bottle which was really rather cool! The most splendid news of all is that Rich and I have been asked to be god parents - signalling significant goings-on in the spiritual lives of my family! - and naturally we have accepted with glee and are bursting with pride!

See you soon Little Ted, maybe we need to get you a blog??!!

Hmmm, I have been somewhat blog tardy in recent days. I humbly apologise and shall attempt to rectify said situation immediately! (Thanks for the gentle reminder Wenhams!!)

Been a fabulous week - job is really starting to take off and more and more young people are seeking out the service and exposing all sorts of holes and gaps in the 'Care' system - obviously I can't write about specific cases but I'm finding the challenge of mediating between a mightily- pissed-off-and-not-without-good-reason young person and a Social Worker with a HUUUUUUUGE ego ....interesting to say the least!

I also love that my office is by the seaside so I can go and look at the sea and walk along the prom at lunchtime. Makes me feel very free and not at work at all! Good God times. I love that there's a road called 'Smuggler's Way' and I have taken to providing my dad with a daily text service as to the state of the river and whether there are any Neptune's White Horses! (like in the Rupert books)

Thursday brought the super-exciting news that Baby Heywood has at long last graced us with his presence. No longer dubbed 'Vincent', Little Ted weighed in at 8lb 13 (That's nearly 9 bags of sugar GOOD LORD!) Mum and I went to see him and his proud padres last evening. CONGRATS Kathy and Andy! Edward is so beautiful that I cried all over him as he snuggled in my arms and went to sleep. Entirely unprepared for the emotion he provoked in me...what the..?! But he ROCKS and I managed to smuggle champagne for K&A past the nurse...mwah hahaha.

Rich has been away this weekend at the usual post-Easter Lake Bala Youth Camp where he is speaking and leading a group and doing programme and seemingly everything else. So, Friday night I settled down with Party of Five Season One (CATE! Come home already!!) and watched it till my eyes went all gozzy! No cries of 'Turn it off', just pure, unadulterated, ME time! Woot woot!

Saturday was almost summer-like so I met the mother figure for 'cawfee' and we shopped our asses off! LOVE IT when I make her buy things - this week's offering was a pair of chocolate brown leather open toe wedges, but of course she plumped for the black ones...still needs working on that woman! ;)

I, however, spent y0nks being a super sleuth to find an Alexander McQueen Pirate print scarf - a rip off one, naturally. And figured the best place to begin would be 'lovely' St. John's Precinct....questioned about 5 classic Liverpool lasses and they suggested Primark (nope, know their stock inside out, defo not there), The Market (so trawled round there but to no avail) and finally one suggestion....TOPSHOP! Blinkin' TopShop! MAN ALIVE! So needless to say we zoomed to aforementioned establishment and FOUND IT! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! Not only did I find the scarf, I also made the hilarious discovery that TopShop now do a line in....wait for it....can you guess?.....DOG FASHIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG! I couldn't BELIEVE IT (in Victor Meldrew stylee) -yup, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie and Coleen McLoughlin types can now purchase fashions for their 'Itsby bitsy doggies' (quote P!nk) from my beloved Top of the Shops! What is the world coming to?....

Saturday night was spent in the most awesome company of my dear Abigail watching HILARIOUS 'Dr 90210' on Sky and talking about our new fave subject of giving birth - no, we're not 'with child' but man alive it's a whole new world of conversations...Abbi thought 'cervix' was a bone and I was HUGELY misinformed on the matter of 'dilation' PENNY! I think we need a seminar from you! hahaha!

So that's a brief catch up.....this week's fun include reminiscing about how mental I was this time last year and looking forward to our first wedding anniversary on Sunday 30th April - yikes, where has that year gone!!!??? Rich also starts his new job tomorrow AND I think the Dunnett/West nuptials are happening soon if not this weekend?! CONGRATS to you! AND as if all that were not enough, there's yet another Bank Holiday coming up- WOOT WOOT!

Right, I'm off to tidy and clean and try to fit in the gym AND 'Shipwrecked'!

BIG LOVE Y'ALL! xxxxx

What ho, old chaps!

Been a while.......here's the 411...

- my back hurts
- my legs hurt
- my triceps hurt
- my biceps hurt
- my lats hurt (and I don't even know what they are)
- my butt hurts
- my knees hurt


I WANNA QUIT THE GYM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To cheer myself up I purchased the staple product to herald the coming of summer! BODY SHOP FAKE TAN BABY! As I type I am bronzed and fabulous, dahling! Woot woot bring on the sun! AND I'm having 'me hair done' on Saturday - these sure are girlie times!

Happiness is four day weekends. Thanks Jesus for the Friday off AND Monday too - you rock!
I sent Easter cards for the first time ever this year (only 8 - don't get your hopes up) mostly to what Wez would call 'nonnies' - spread the love, the ultimate love hey...

Have a wonderful Easter time, whatever you get up to...just think how mad it is that the most goodest man that ever lived died the most awfulest death imaginable...just for you, yes you. And me. And everyone. No matter what. Amen.

Mind-blowing stuff that.

bonafide barfarama

Currently I am engaged in a puke-a-thon. Not very nice. I've thrown up 6 times since 4am this morning. What the bleep is going on?

In other news, I am very much looking forward to the return of Ms. Cate Thornton & also to the arrival of my Party of Five Season 1 box set. The two are sure to go well together (what say you Cate?!)

It's Abbi's bday tomorrow - happy birthday Mrs Murph!

Also I have FINALLY finished Season 4 of 24 - woot woot! Bring on 5!!!

Big love to all the homies, soz for the randomness of this entry. (not really, my blog, I can be as weird as I like, so there.)

Gym jams

Today I cunningly created a playlist on my ipod just for the gym, a series of up tempo numbers to run to....can't believe it's never occurred to me to do that before. So today I tested myself on running 5k...think I wanna do that 'Race for Life' thing in honour of my lecturer, Audrey, who has breast cancer. Good news is that I managed to run the 5k, bad news is now I'm cream-crackered.

Still, things could be worse.

It baffles me how come some people just look soooooooooooooo good in their gym gear, whilst I end up looking a bugger. Why is that?

Also I nearly tripped tonight as I saw Sally W on the treadmill in front of me! I was concentrating so hard on trying to see if, indeed, it was her or merely a doppleganger (yes I know there's no reason she would be in the Oval, Bebington, on the Leisure Peninsula, but I was having runner's hallucinations, clearly.) that when she abruptly jumped off the treadmill and went onto the next thing, I went all giddy as a kipper and nearly came a cropper. Thankfully I righted myself pretty sharpish! Phew! Anyhoo, Sal, you have a scally twin!

In other news, I spent a splendido evening hier soir avec Mrs Lucy Kennaugh drinking a bottle of faux champagne (on a Monday night I hear you gasp! Well so what!) Let me explain what led us to such a state: We were WWE widows for the evening, on account of Rich and Gary being obsessed with Wrestlemania 22 that they recorded on Sunday night. I know, how sad. Still, it was awesome to hang out with Luce and set the world to rights. Thank Luce, you rock!

Managed to impress the fam on Sat night - Mexican food, Lazy Daisy cake and coffee and malteser cake to polish off the evening. Dave + guitar+ trollied family members made for a fabby event. Yay me!

Right, that's quite enough blogging from me, I can hear Heat magazine and the OC calling me - gah I LOVE Tuesdays!

Ciao Bellas xxx

power to the PEOPLE!

And the fridge is fixed! They're replacing it for free! Free I tell you!!

AND LIZZIE WINS!!!!!!!!!!!


I thank you.

Could this family BE any cuter???!!!

Ladies and gentlemen......I give you.....THE WENHAMS!

(who - or is it 'whom'? - I love to the moon and back, several times)

old

I'm concerned I'm old before my time. Haven't been out for ages....simply ages I tell you. Not, like, on an all nighter-get-a-taxi-home-dance-until-you-drop-visit-the-lobster-pot-after-Walkabout kinda vibe. I miss those days (good grief Liz they were only a year ago, stop being so melodramatic) HANNAH! We need to get our party frocks on the go! Either that or we need to get our asses off to Tenereefee for some fun in the sun sans boys.....ooooh, is that allowed when you're married? Should I even WANT to go on holidays with just the girls now I am a wife?? I don't personally see why the heck not, but maybe there are, like, rules or something?!

I hate being old.

I am annoyed today because the freaking fridge/freezer is knackered. It's only 14 effing months old and quite frankly ought not to be on the blink, but it very much is. And what's the answer from the halfwits at Zanussi? "It's not under warantee" SO FREAKING WHAT!? If it were a toaster I could pick it up, put it in the car and take it to Comet (who are PANTS btw) and demand an exchange. So why are fridges different? The rule is, if it's damaged goods then you get a replacement right? So how come it applies to Topshop and not Comet.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR and GAH at the injustice of it all. Plus, it cost £450 smackeroonies and is going to cost an estimated £357.56 to repair, which is obv. not worth it, so we should replace it, right? Only trouble is.......WITH WHAT!?