Another musical memory from me, this time a song from 1988 by Fairground Attraction, titled ‘Perfect’. I thought it might make a perfect response to today’s Word of the Day Challenge: Attraction 🙂
Tag: Word of the Day
I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost
My kids loved the original Ghostbusters movie made way back in 1984, and also the sequel from 1989, so occasionally I’ll give them a whirl when on TV, just for kicks.
Last night I saw that Ghostbusters was going to be on so I thought I’d give it a go, but it was actually the 2016 reboot, which I’d deliberately never seen. I’m not always keen on movie remakes, but I figured what the hell, there was nothing else on I wanted to watch. And to my genuine surprise I really enjoyed it!
It was goofy and over the top with a same-but-different story-line to the original, altered enough to make it work as a stand-alone, and I loved the nod to the old fire-station premises, the wacky Ghostbusters car, and the awful beige boiler suits. And the couple of cameo appearances from both Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd definitely made me smile – particularly Dan (as the New York cabbie) saying ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghost’.
I mean, to be perfectly honest the movie couldn’t in any way compete with the crazily original supernatural-comedy vision of the 1984 version or its sequel, but to my surprise it genuinely wasn’t as bad as I was expecting… 🙂
Not a Penitent Man
Watching Boris Johnson being questioned live on TV by the Parliamentary Privileges Committee regarding the whole No10 Covid rule-breaking scandal… Oh dear, one thing’s for sure – whatever conclusion the committee decide on at the end of it all, Boris is certainly not a penitent man!
Detective Dramas
I love TV detective dramas in all guises – from lighthearted to seriously dark.
Off the top of my head and in no particular order my current favourites are Endeavour, Vera, and also the recent remakes of Van Der Valk (set in Holland) starring Marc Warren, not the original 70s version starring Barry Foster. And Brokenwood Mysteries, set in New Zealand, is always fun to watch. But I also like Inspector George Gently, set in 1960s Durham.
And of course when it comes to period detective dramas, both Poirot and Miss Marple always have to be up there in my top ten.
Moves Like Jagger
When I saw today’s Word of the Day Challenge prompt word was Maroon, the first thing I thought of was Maroon 5’s banging tune ‘Moves Like Jagger’ from years ago, so had to share the video below… Enjoy!
Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall
I’m not a great one for clothes shopping, but today I went into town to buy a new sports bra – well, a pack of two, to be accurate. Not for doing sports, of course, just for being comfy gardening in, as I find I can move my shoulders and arms better in a sports bra and the straps stay up when I’m weeding and moving about a lot. The current twin-pack sports bras I have been wearing for gardening are years old, so old that the elasticated fabric is actually perishing. Not a great look.
Although I already know what size I take I do like to try on all bras before I buy them, for comfort-checking as much as anything else, but I must admit bra fitting rooms are not ever my favourite place to be. There’s just nowhere to hide from your flaws as you find yourself – in fact not just one but a veritable multiplicity of selves – reflected from all angles in what has to be the harshest lighting on the planet. Take a deep breath, undress, promise to be kind to my ageing self…
Part of me tells myself not to look too closely at my skin-sagging flab, usually hidden so helpfully under layers of comfort clothing, but another part of me is the tiniest bit curious to see in exactly what myriad ways the ravages of time have done their worst since my last fitting room fiasco. Seeing myself from so many unflattering angles is an unwelcome novelty and as ever – oh, how the naked truth hurts! Back fat is not a pretty sight.
I can see in the multiple mirror configuration that basically I have twin underarm muffin tops bulging out over the back wing of the bra, one on each side, ungainly and impossible to ignore, so I stare at their fleshy fatness in fascination, watch them undulate as I move, intrigued by always having such visible voluptuousness behind me. Because after nigh on half a century of bra-wearing, I see they remain willfully in place even when nothing else is, a kind of backwards parentheses of stubborn skin-folds.
I do know they are there all the time, these bra-bulging jowly bits, but I suppose it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind. So with a resigned yet relieved sigh I gratefully put all my clothes back on and decide to buy my new, nicely-fitting sports bras. And I’m now perfectly happy to be home once more where mirrors are placed in positions where they are much kinder to me, allowing me some illusion of dignity by skillfully avoiding highlighting too much of my inevitably-ageing nakedness and all its hidden foibles… 🙂
Dig Around
The thing about one word prompts is that you sometimes get perfectly normal, everyday words that are easy to post about, but at other times really off-the-wall oddities like ‘intransitive‘… Hmm… I suppose I could dig around to find something that works after a fashion, or I could just give up! 🙂
(Dis)Qualifier
I’ve never had a profession, or a chosen career to have a pinnacle of, no shining goal of achievement at the top of the pile to aim for. Instead I’ve had a series of low-paid, low-status jobs, some full time and some part time, and intermittent periods of staying at home in between. I’ve been a mum since I was 18, and became a working single mum at 24 when my marriage to my kids’ dad broke up… or is it broke down?
Anyway, the point is, with no child maintenance paid at all on their father’s part, ever, I necessarily worked around whatever fitted in with the needs of the kids’ schooling to pay our way as best I could, so over the years I’ve worked variously in retail, hospitality, healthcare, the civil service, and education. And as a mature student I also studied for a degree, although I’ve never actually used it. My kids are long grown up, in fact two out of three are parents themselves, and I’m married again – happily, this time.
So here I am at 59, having been made redundant in January for the second time in two years, currently just a housewife. But I’m annoyed at myself for habitually using such a pejorative qualifier – ‘just’ is such a judgemental, limiting term, more of a dis-qualifier, really? I mean, what’s wrong with running a home, cooking and cleaning and nurturing and loving both a living space and the people who live in it?
For some working people there may be paid-for cleaners, or gardeners, or childminders to help them with the upkeep of their home and family, they may live off takeaways and home delivery services, or they may even rush around like lunatics trying admirably to do it all themselves. But the point is someone has to do it, sadly there’s no magic housework fairy that waves her sparkly wand and suddenly it’s all done for you.
Right now I’m in the lucky position of being able, however unfortunate the circumstances that caused it, to afford to stay at home for a few months and enjoy being a housewife for a while, so why do I feel the need almost to apologise for it? Even there I wrote ‘just’ again, so I went back and took it out. Why do I feel so guilty about it, and try to assuage that guilt somehow by effectively demeaning and negating my current life choice?
Who gets to decide which life choices are worth something, and which are not? There’s got to be more to societal value than monetary worth and financial gain, and yet those seem to be the only recognised criteria that count? It’s a bit of an uneasy bugbear of mine, reducing everyone down to a basic profit and loss measure and which side they find themselves positioned on in life’s arbitrary balance sheet? Especially when I’m the one effectively doing it to myself… Grrr…
Conjuring Up the Past
When I saw the Word of the Day today was ‘balsam’ I immediately thought of Alberto Balsam shampoo, which I used to use years ago. I looked it up on Google to check if you can still get it and yes, apparently it’s still widely available here in the UK.
One of the ‘flavours’ available is green apple, and that reminded me of the Woodleigh Green Apple shampoo I used in the late seventies – it truly had a strong green apple fragrance, and left my greasy teenage hair feeling so soft and smooth. I looked that up too, but no, sadly it seems it’s no longer around.
But then I got to thinking about Norsca anti-perspirant with its forest fresh pine fragrance, which I also loved at the time – that too feels very seventies, and I haven’t seen it for years although there does seem to be some rather more masculine version still available online?
So that was me in my early to mid teenage years, smelling regularly of green apples and forest fresh pines. And now? Well, today I used Palmers coconut-scented shampoo, and a Sure spring-bouquet-scented anti-perspirant, but I find I tend to chop and change these all the time.
Isn’t it funny how decades later the long-gone scent of something from the past can be conjured up so readily just by the name?
Crochet Blanket, Work in Progress
Ordinarily I would try to find something more interesting to post about, but right now this is the best I can come up with… a pic of my latest crochet blanket, still a current work in progress but thankfully a little further on than before… 🙂
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