You'd think they would have learnt from the high profile bloggers who in the past got the sack for blogging about their work .... but these 'face-bookers' obviously hadn't.

Crew sacked over Facebook posts

I used my pass and bussed it into town.
The place was heaving with excited kiddies on their last weekday of the half term holiday.
and giggly teenagers buying their tutus and angel wings ready for the evening's festivities.
A few years ago it was fireworks etc. for bonfire night that dominated the shop windows but today it seemed like many of the shop assistants had got the Halloween bug.

The sweet shop where I bought 'my treats' was doing a roaring trade

as was the nick knack shops selling novelty masks and wings etc.

Even ghouls and witches have work to be done

They'll probably be in here tonight

Halloween on a Friday night

I wouldn't be out on the town tonight for a king's ransom......if I was younger mind.......

It's that day again already
I've got to go out to buy some apples and sweeties before the witching hour descends.
I've long forgotten the days when I used to dress the kids up as witches and ghosts,
nowadays  I only participate by handing out a few goodies to any of the little horrors darlin's who may call!

Here's my halloween greeting's card to you all....it was taken five years ago on my 55th birthday as I was working in the supermarket foyer.
It was a promotion for packs of chocolate bars.  I was conscripted into having a polaroid photo taken in order to encourage the kiddies to follow suit.

As it happens there was a queue forming before I could say
" Hubble bubble, toil and trouble"
because they were giving away free chocolate bars to everyone who had a go

Whilst browsing round the shops in Harrogate, it was curious to come across,in this most english of towns, a Japanese shop. The window display took my eye  for on display were boxes of chocolates, (made in Japan I presume).

POCKY Chocs is the brand name and on closer inspection I discovered that there were some aimed at the children's market and presumably the milk chocs were for the ladies as the bitter dark chocolates were blatantly advertised as being for the 'men'.
"Strange" I thought "do the Japanese women not like dark chocolate"?

In case you can't read the advertising text on the box..this is what it says...

This combination of crispy pretzel
and smooth dark chocolate
brings a whole new flavour to FUN

C'mon ladies now don't be shy
buy your fella some POXY  POCKY chocolate pretzels and have some fun 

Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday greetings, I appreciate them all

In this, the final few hours of my sixth decade on this earth, I decided to make this post a frivolous one

You may know that I don't do rude postings and I don't use swear words but seeing as this could come under the category of 'culture' I might just get away with this one

I'll post it quick before Bella arrives for the weekend for if she catches me she's bound to wag her finger at me and say "MOTHER"

We were walking through the city of Valladolid when we
came across this out of the way square with a fountain
in the middle.
Two naked male statues (one each side) were strategically placed like book ends to depict a forceful push of the fountain

When we took a closer look we saw that the
*private part* of the one doing the 'holding' as opposed to the 'pushing' was shining bright...

Ahem..click to see bigger

It just made me wonder...

The shrine to the Black Madonna of Montserrat near Barcelona has a golden ball which is known to bring good luck by rubbing the shiny bit.

Could this fountain be such a shrine? The offending shiny bit could only have got that way by constant rubbing ...I was tempted to try as it was really
shining bright yellow - but I didn't dare as t'old man was watching close by and he'd think I was having a senior moment:
So unfortunately i've no way of knowing if it really does bring good luck, or maybe my imagination is running away with me and perhaps there could be another explanation for the shiny bit ? ...can't think what it could be though

I won't be around tomorrow, the girls are taking me out..

Ten years ago, before I changed departments to become a Greeter I was working in the supermarket bakery.
We were a jolly little bunch, a group of women all with a different story to tell.
There was  Janette , a pleasant ordinary looking women from a small mill town who shocked us all by running the London marathon in her late fifties... nowadays we are still theatre buddies and although she retired from work two years ago she is still running half marathons aged 63
Susan was a 30 year old unmarried mother who at age 16 when she started working as a stable hand got pregnant by an up and coming jockey who promptly dropped her when  he discovered she was with child...there is something a little sad about Susan, she has created a false Walter Mitty world for herself and we were never quite sure if what she was telling us was real or not.  She's still working in the bakery now and hasn't changed much.
Ricky, the token supermarket gay who loved to camp it up and do 'theatre' with a bunch of middle-aged women, he's now working as a trolley dolly on the railway.
There's Lynn and Jennifer, two forty something year old women who were in relationships with children, they both vowed they would never marry their partners although they did cohabit.  Well, one has since wed (in order to have the same name as her children) or so she says and the other one is considering marriage seriously now in order to reap any pension benefits it may bring.
I musn't forget to mention my pal Mary, she is the same age as me and was married to a man who, like 't'old man' wasn't interested in travelling to some of the places we would talk about while we were packing and labelling the bread week in, week out.
That was when we decided that we would live life on our terms if the men weren't interested, so me and Mary swanned off to New York  and then to Prague without them and had the time of our lives.
Later I would go to Goa with mary and 27 of her relatives to see her daughter go through a marriage ceremony in a temple over there.
The last time I went away with Mary was under sad circumstances as her husband died of a sudden heart attack whilst playing his trumpet marching through the street with his brass band.  We went to Thassos, a wonderfully quiet greek island so that she could try to come to terms with what had happened.
The last person I want to mention is Joyce.
She was well past retirement age even then but she liked to come to the bakery to work just to see her friends and to keep active.  She was a well spoken, quite refined lady and I often wondered why she would want to keep working at a supermarket in her mid sixties.  I called her 'Lady Mayoress'  as once upon a time many moons ago her husband was once Mayor of a small mining town.
Her hobby was painting, she was a member of a local art group and preferred to  work with water colours and occasionally someone would commision her to paint their dog or child.  I always meant to buy one of her works but never did, the opportunity simply passed.
We would occasionally go to the theatre together as a group or sometimes go out for a nice meal in a restaurant together but when I  left the bakery five years ago the group outings diminished.

Time has moved on and I hadn't seen 'Lady Mayoress' for a couple of years, until this week that is.
I was in town shopping, t'old man had ventured in with me but made his excuses and popped into a local hostelry for refreshment. 
I passed a building where outside there was a sign that said "Local Art Club exhibition"
I stopped and thought "i'm sure that is the art club that my old friend was a member of.
I decided to go in and look around and sure enough there was one of her paintings exhibited there in front of me, I recognised it was hers straight away for although she is only an amateur painter she had a certain style.
"Perfect"  I thought  " that's what t'old man can buy me for my birthday, a bargain at only £50"
I left the building, went into the pub and brought t'old man back to look at it and just as I had persuaded him to put his hand into his pocket  who should she walk in  but Lady Mayoress herself
The deal was struck, t'old man went back to the pub and my old friend and I had a chat and a cup of tea like it was only yesterday we last met.
Strangely enough that evening (last Monday) I had a meal at a restaurant owned by the couple who I witnessed marrying in Goa, my co-diners were four of the aforementioned ladies who I haven't socialised with for quite a few years...strange eh?

The painting is now duly hung in the second bedroom and I like it a lot

You can get an idea from this photo what the subject matter is but the colour and quality is not entirely true 'cos of the light and cheap camera.

On October 10 the Queen Elizabeth 2 left Southampton with Cunard's flagship, Queen Mary 2, for a tandem crossing to New York.
Her return passage on October 16 will be the ship's 806th and final Atlantic crossing.
In mid 2007 my daughter Lulu and her hubby tried to book a passage on QE2's final voyage from New York but the demand for places as well as the cost was prohibitive but she did manage to book a passage on the new flag ship Queen Mary 2 which is also sailing along side QE2 on October 16th.
They arrived in New York three days ago amid great excitement, the plane was three hours late for departure but at least she had the pleasure of standing in the check-in queue behind Placido Domingo who was going to New York to perform a concert...she always seems to be hobnobbing with the rich and famous when she goes on holiday, remember when she sat on the next table to Prince William in an indian restaurant in Tenby?

T'old man has just about finished glossing and emulsioning the whole of the house (Ok, it's not a huge house) and he has had a lot of help from me so much so that my fair hands are sore with all the cleaning and painting i've been doing
I mention that he has just finished decorating as he painted the kitchen ceiling today, but my work is not done as I have to wash the tiled walls down and clean the kitchen cupboards tomorrow.
I was absent without leave again today as Wednesday is my classes day...U3A spanish language class in the morning and dancing in the afternoon.

Oh yes, the next door neighbours' extension is coming along, the roofers are putting the last of the tiles on the roof and the windows are going in so that is the bulk of the external shell complete.
The wife has only five weeks to go now before giving birth but somehow I can't see all the interior work being completed before then....I bet her nesting instincts have gone hay-wire
Our satellite dish is getting moved tomorrow seeing as the extension has blocked all signals to it completely

Another lifetime ambition achieved today.....
My bus pass has arrived early!

Build your own Blingee

We'll be out on the town tonight

Hmmmm....I wonder if the bus driver will notice if I try to use it tomorrow

Saturday morning and paint fumes filled the air,
"Sorry", I said to t'old man, "I can't help you with the decorating today, i've had a better offer"
"Mmmm...Oh yeah, are you going dancing again!!"
"Better than that" I replied "I'm going to practise with  'proper' belly dance teachers' and then I get to see a fabulous performance in the evening with international stars  even!!     Here
"Well, he responded "you're just a goodtime gal"...i'll be docking your wages for no show on the job"
"Please yourself" I said "it will be worth it"

Hi ... ...i've just turned the computer on with the pretence of  checking to see if any wires have come loose!
Y'see, we are decorating.
T'old man decided, about three days ago that we would emulsion  and gloss all the rooms in the house starting upstairs just in case he gets called in for his hernia op (I tried to tell him he shouldn't be decorating but would he listen ).
Would you believe that he had a pre-op examination three weeks ago and has not heard a thing since.  I phoned the ward and the nurse said that the consultant's secretary would make the decision when to perform the keyhole surgery. 
" won't the pre-op be null and void soon" I enquired "No" she replied " we can go six months before he'll need it again!  so, next step will be to phone the consultant's secretary....but in the mean-time t'old man thinks he can have the house  re-decorated....with me as the labourer and trainee decorater  and him as the foreman it seems
Two days down and  he has painted four ceilings ( albeit two of  them  are small), he's emulsioned the two main bedrooms and is at this moment working his way down the stairs.  While I have been moving things from one room to another or abandoning them to the garage then today he nominated me to paint the box room, my computer room.
I couldn't refuse as there is only me who uses this room,  so this morning that is what I did and now i'm jiggered!!

Chow 

I've known June for 25 years now, ever since we moved into this house, she lives four doors down the lane.
She is a spinster aged 84 and is very upright and proper with a touch of eccentricity about her.
She was engaged once, to a handsome young man she said, but he died tragically young and she never bothered with suitors after that.
Instead she dedicated herself to looking after her elderly mother who suffered from alzheimers for a very long time before she died about ten years ago aged 96.
Since then June has lived alone generally keeeping herself to herself.
I have only ever been inside her house twice, the first time was when she came and called for assistance to help lift her bed-ridden mother off the floor and back into bed as she had fallen out and the second time was to return a radio to her that she had asked t'old man to repair(she didn't know that t'old man is useless with gadgets and electrical items).

She walked past our gate today and she was walking as briskly as ever but there seemed to be a far away look on her face, a look that said she didn't want to be here today.

So, it’s official, i'm well cool I am
..at least I am if a poll of more than 2,000 British people polled by Cool Brands, a group which provides consumer opinions to companies is anything to go by I am.

OK, well maybe I am not quite as cool as you 'normal' talking folk 'cos The Queen’s English, with 20% of the vote, was voted the coolest which was followed by the Scottish dialect in second place
In third place overall, but the top regional accent, was Geordie. and the infamous Yorkie drawl was fourth!!
Shame for all you uncool folk from Birmingham as the Brummy accent was voted the least cool.

.

About eighteen months ago my media was full so I opened another blog called Isasfotos just so I could put some of my snapshots up there.
Sometime later the kind people of 'blog.co.uk' kindly allocated all of us tons more media space so my need for the other blog wasn't necessary anymore.
I decided to keep it though as I sometimes post on the photography blog under isasfotos.
This caused me to muddle up profiles when I was commenting on a thread in response to XMilly's post on homelessness.
This in turn prompted me to dig out the pics in my previous post as I had provoked memories of many, many years ago when I too was homeless and like the birds appear in the photos I too appreciate the home that I have now got .................even if there is a flamin' great extension being built next door and the satellite dish isn't receiving now and t'old man's arranged for the builders to fell our chimney before it falls down.

No worries though,
I'm sat here safe and as snug as a bug in a rug (the central heating works)
so what's to be bothered about /
Isadora xx

There's no place like home