Much of a muchness

I try not to use this blog too often as a personal forum for all my pet peeves, personal traumas and disasters however, every once in a while something happens and I just have to explode! Back in April, I thought I was being very clever and bought some garden furniture from an eBay shop. It was a very good price (but still quite expensive -£600 or so). I still haven’t received the furniture.

Here we are at the beginning of July and my garden is still bare. I am furious. Particularly as the company that sold it to me (Land of Sofas based in Poole - be warned!) are now no longer registered as an eBay seller and do not communicate with me at all, and all their contact details are no longer available on eBay.

I managed to track them down and have contacted them several times. The girl I spoke to (Gemma) is always very short with me and seemed irritated I am bothering her. She has given me several dates for delivery, which have passed with no apologies or explanations, so I opened a dispute with PayPal and they are investigating the situation but as time goes by and our very short summer whizzes past, I am still furniture-less. My lovely big sons keep offering to go round and sort her out, as Poole isn’t too far from where I live (she signed off with her home address when she initially contacted me after the sale) but I am resisting their offer and attempting to do things through proper channels but if all else fails, I may go round there myself (with sons and a couple of their taller, even more scary friends) to discuss my refund!

The annoying thing is that the seller does appear to have lots of positive feedback but on closer investigation, most of it is for selling some sports drink bottles. All the feedback for the garden furniture they have sold in the past, says how long they had to wait for delivery and a lot of those people demanded refunds. The lesson from all this is to read the feedback properly. Don’t just look at the high positive feedback score and assume all is well. That’s the end of the lesson, I’ll keep you posted with any developments.

Anyway, rant over. A nice thing this week, has been reading the new ‘Top 101 Artists’ Blogs’ list over at Kim’s blog. Kim very deservedly (especially since her blog redesign) is at number 1, Emila’s lovely blog is at number 2 and guess who is number 3? Yes, moi! It’s such a phenomenal amount of work to update this list every month (particularly given the vagaries of Technorati) so I do recommend you head over there to check out some great art blogs. Kim was also sweet enough to pass on to me one of the many awards she has received recently - the Friendly Blogger award - well I try to be! Thanks Kim!

I’m going to pass this on to a couple of new commentators here at ‘Much of a muchness’ , 70’s teen and Daddy Papersurfer. If you read their blogs you will see why I enjoy reading them so much. And they are indeed, very friendly bloggers :-)

As I write this, there are gale force winds and rain sodden grey skies above, but does this stop #2 son from lighting the barbecue and cooking the ribs he so lovingly prepared last night? Indeed it does not. He is outside wearing shorts, a jacket and a woolly hat, cooking our lunch before we settle down to watch the tennis at Wimbledon (ladies final - the Williams sisters - should be a good one).

After the tennis, #2 son is going out (to play golf would you believe!) and I am settling in to watch Doctor Who - series finale, cliffhanger ending last week, Martha, Rose, Donna, Daleks, Davros  and all the Torchwood team, especially lovely John Barrowman aka Captain Jack - I can barely wait - 5 hours 20 minutes to go……

I was supposed to be going to a picnic at Mapperton listening to Cuban Salsa music tonight but that is looking like a non-starter so more TV it is….and then tomorrow, the Men’s Final, Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal, the dream final! Woo hoo!

Couch potato? Moi?

I was tagged by Mimi over at Mimi writes… to take part in this meme, she tagged a whole lot of people and I noticed I was included over at Kim’s. Mimi was originally tagged by Travis, who created this - just as well, as a Mimi meme is too much of a mouthful :-)

Here are the instructions for Trav’s Staying Out Of The Dungeon Trivia Meme:
He said: A meme needs ’structions.OK…here’s your ’structions:
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to:
1. Choose a category from one of these: Television, Stage & Screen, Nightly News, Publishing, Lives & Times, Music
2. Find 8 bits of trivia about your selected category
3. Be sure to let me know when…ok, if…you decide to play along so I can see what you come up with.
4. You may tag, or simply offer the meme for borrowing or stealing as you like.

So here we go. My chosen topic is Stage and Screen.

1 Tom Selleck was the original choice to play Indiana Jones. He turned the part down as he was too busy with ‘Magnum PI’ and it went to the lovely Harrison Ford.

2 Daniel Craig is the first actor to play James Bond, who is younger than the series itself.

3 Johnny Depp only had 169 words to learn in ‘Edward Scissorhands’.

4 Daniel Day Lewis and Russell Crowe were considered for the part of Aragorn in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. Even though he had never read any of the books, Viggo Mortensen took the part, after being persuaded by his son who loved them.

5 ‘The Last Samurai’ was not only Ken Watanabe’s first American Film, it was also the first time he had spoken English in a film. Tom Cruise took no ‘up front’ salary for making this film and trained for two years before film making began, learning sword fighting and taking Japanese language lessons.

6 Bette Davis was the original choice for the lead role in ‘Mary Poppins’. Danny Kaye and Fred Astaire were considered for the role of Bert, which was played by Dick van Dyke (and his atrocious Cockney accent….)

6 In the Coen Brothers film, ‘Intolerable Cruelty’, George Clooney plays a talkative character who is vain about his teeth. In his previous Coen Brothers film, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, he plays a talkative character who is vain about his hair.

7 Only days before the role of Batman was cast in ‘Batman Begins’, eight actors were asked to audition for the part. The actors were Christian Bale, Joshua Jackson, Eion Bailey, Hugh Dancy, Billy Crudup, Cillian Murphy, Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal. While Bale won the part, Christopher Nolan liked Cillian Murphy’s audition so much, he cast him as Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow.

8 Due to his part in ‘The Machinist’, Christian Bale was vastly underweight (about 120 pounds on his 6 foot+ frame) when he was under consideration for the part of Batman in ‘Batman Begins’. After being cast, he was told to become as “big as you could be” by Christopher Nolan, the director. Bale underwent a dietary and exercise regimen and ending up weighing about 220 pounds (about 40 pounds above his normal weight). It was decided that Bale had became too large (friends of his on the film’s crew dubbed him “Fatman”) and he quickly shed about 20 pounds to have leaner, more muscular frame.

So there you have it, 8 perfectly random facts (largely culled from the Internet Movie Database) and a wonderful excuse to have a look at some of my favourite movie actors. Yum!

I’m not going to tag anyone as it’s quite task compiling this list but if you’d like to have a go, please feel free!

While I’m at it catching up on tags and things, Dunn over at Simply Dunn, passed on this lovely award, which she received from Crissy, called the ‘Arte Y Pico’ award. Thank you so much, Dunn!

Arte Y Pico Award rules :

1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award through creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

2. Each award should have the name of the author with a link to their blog.

3. Award winners have to post the award with the name and link to the blog of the person who gave them the award.

4. Please include a link to the “Arte Y Pico” blog so that everyone will know where the award came from.

I would like to pass this on to

Astrid

Rhonda

Teresa

Pete

Paul

I’ve tried to find out what ‘Arte y Pico’ means but the nearest I can get from my translator widget is ‘art and tip’ (which makes no sense) I think it means like a tip of a mountain (the peak) so maybe it means ‘the peak of art’. I’d be glad for a good translation….

The weather here has been glorious, we had a wonderful weekend and I went to my first barbecue of the year on Sunday. It was a gorgeous afternoon and we played croquet which was great fun. Not quite like this game though.

I played tennis yesterday and today and have even been doing some gardening (not my forte, I must confess) but it is so wonderful to be outside in the warm sunshine. Needless to say, it is going to get cooler after today so I have been making the most of it - hence the lack of both bookbinding and blogging. I’m sure normal service will be resumed very soon.

Just a very quick post to show you this book and to tell you I’m not going to be around for a week or so. I’m off on an adventure - I’m flying to Geneva with a friend and we are then driving to Barcelona and catching a ferry over to Mallorca. We are then going to spend a few days at her apartment before flying back to the UK next week. I’m looking forward to the trip - Thelma and Louise eat your heart out! On second thoughts, that didn’t end too well, so maybe not :-)

As I will be traveling around, I won’t be taking my laptop so I’ll be having an enforced break from blogging, so apologies if I don’t visit yours for a while. I’ll catch up on my return. In the meantime, Kim over at Laketrees is having a little competition and is inviting people to vote for their favourite art work. I rather foolishly entered a book and it is up against some stiff competition - mostly (if not all paintings). If you are feeling kind and generous, and like my books I’d appreciate a vote or two so I don’t end up as a complete ‘Billy No-Mates’ over there. Thanking you kindly….

I like this paper. Despite being a Japanese chiyogami paper, it’s a very tribal or ethnic design and according to the latest edition of the fashion magazine I subscribe to, that is one of the trends for the summer. We should all be wearing dresses made out of fabrics like this book. Well, all you ladies should - guys, it’s optional :-)

Guess what? This is my 200th post. 200! Whoever would have thought when I first started this blog 14 months ago that I would have so much to say? Certainly not me! I used to be incredibly shy and spent my teens hardly speaking to a soul. Things did improve as I got older, largely due to my (then) husband who made a point of making me speak up for myself at parties and the like. It was far too easy otherwise to let him do all the talking. At the time I thought he was being really cruel but with hindsight I see that it was just what I needed.

I remember the moment when I realised I wasn’t shy any more, vividly. I had enrolled on a course designed to get women who had taken time out to raise their families, back into the work place. We were asked to describe how we saw ourselves and how we saw everyone else on the course. Describing me, I came up with shy, lacking in confidence, quiet, reserved. All the other 20 or so people on the course said talkative, confident, friendly, outgoing. And in one of those Damascene moments, I realised I had been talking my socks off and joining in happily for the entire week! I do still find some occasions where I revert to crippling shyness and become awkward and tongue tied, but they are few and far between these days.

This was my anthem in those days - I give you Kajagoogoo - I had a huge crush on Limahl, my world fell apart when I discovered he was gay…..

Check out those hairstyles and fashions - hilarious!

Now to celebrate my 200th post, I thought I would say a little thank you to some of the regular visitors to Much of a Muchness who take the time to leave a comment. I always try to visit their blogs in return but sometimes I don’t manage it as often as I would like. So this is for you

Kim - wonderful artist and all round lovely person. She regularly updates the ‘101 Top Artists’ Blogs’ and is quite justifiably at number 1 in the rankings. (The fact I am number 3 has no influence on this list at all - honest) A labour of love if ever there was one. I won one of her portraits in one of her regular competitions, it is quite wonderful.

Paul - also known as Struggling Writer. Read his blog for snippets of his wonderful stories and news about his toddler daughter, ice hockey and his play off beard. Manages to be first to comment so many times it’s uncanny….

Creechman - what can I say? He loves actresses, TV, tennis, movies and his dog Emerson. He is a semi-rocket scientist from Houston. He seems to like English accents.

Teresa - sometimes her comments are funnier than my posts, but I forgive her :-) Her blog is full of news about yummy food, home schooling her lovely boys and birding amongst lots of other things.

Durano Lawayan - always has a pithy amusing comment to make. His blog is so full of wonderful, insightful posts about the world and all it’s many vagaries and absurdities which he brings to our attention with superlative skill.

RennyBA - everything I know about Norway I have learned from Renny! He is a ‘network evangelist’ and his mission is to introduce the food, customs and people of Norway to the rest of the world in a fascinating way. He succeeds admirably!

Diane CA - is Renny’s wife, her relatively new blog is full of insights into her interests in social work, her life as an American living in Norway and her views on the world around us. Her description of herself as ‘if I were any more of an extrovert I would turn inside out’ made me laugh!

Peteej - takes amazing photographs using his mobile phone camera and even is kind enough to give tutorials showing how he achieves such wonderful results. He also publishes photographs from other mobile phone photographers (ahem, mentioning no names but someone not too far from here was featured a while back…..)

Kylee - makes beautiful jewellery out of gemstones and polymer clay. She is an expat living in a beautiful part of France and I must warn her, one day I am going to arrive on the doorstep of her studio to see it properly! I have always vowed to visit Carcassonne and she lives quite close by…..

Astrid - is a German book artist who is talented and thoughtful enough to write her blog twice, once in German and then in English. I will confess to shamelessly stealing ideas from her and slavishly following her advice. A leading light over at the Book Arts Forum too.

Lord Likely - what can I say about Lord L that he hasn’t said himself? And in a much more - how can I put this? - outrageous, outré fashion than I could ever dare to….

Daddy Papersurfer - he thinks I’m scary. But perhaps not as much as his lovely wife, Lo the Terrible Goddess, who tries to keep him under control - with varying degrees of success it seems….

70’s teen - the diaries of a Manchester girl growing up in the 70’s. Strikes so many chords with me it’s scary. She is going to send me food parcels containing Northern delicacy, Hollands steak puddings - hurrah!

AmyH - I think Amy lives in a space -time continuum where she has 48 hours in each day - she has two small children and manages to make books, crochet, cook, read and do a million and one other things which totally puts me to shame….

Lady Banana- just loves to blog, in fact she thinks she may be addicted to it…. and I suffer from widget envy whenever I visit her blog. She loves photography and her life in London and it’s always fun to visit her wonderfully yellow blog.

Jenny - writes funny comments and has a blog to rival Lady B’s for widgets and an enthusiasm for life that leaves me breathless, Jenny’s blog contains the immortal truth ‘Drink coffee - do stupid things faster with more energy’ - that must be where I am going wrong. Memo to self - drink coffee!

And now to finish, a thought for the day.

Me? I’d be 21 again. But still with my lovely sons, (not sure how that would work as they are older than that!) but with the benefits of hindsight and experience…and better judgement as far as the opposite sex are concerned….. :-)

It must be the Oscar’s ceremony which has inspired so many awards recently and just like buses, along come another batch all together!

Kim at laketrees has not only sent THE sweetest little award winging my way but has tagged me in the ‘Message in a Bottle’ meme. First, the award, how cute is this?

I love this award ’so much’ too. I think it was originated by Emila at Emila’s Illustrated Blog and came to Kim via Mellanie at See it. Draw it. Share it. I’m going to pass it on to

Clara Teresa Dunn Astrid and Kylee

The ‘Message in the Bottle’ meme is quite complicated. Lots of instructions, so deep breath - here goes.

**** START COPY****
In a Bottle across the Blog Ocean. Leave a message in the sand or on the bottle. Write anything you wish. Be a pirate or a poet. Serious or silly. Anonymous or not.What message would you like to send out to the universe?
Mimi’s Message In a Bottle Meme
1. Compose a message to place in your virtual bottle.
2. Right click and SAVE the blank graphic below

3. Use a graphics program of your choice to place the message on the picture
4. Post the Message In a Bottle meme and your creation on your blog along with these rules
5. Tag a minimum of 5 bloggers - or your entire blogroll - to do the same. Notify them of the tag. Your virtual bottle will remain afloat in the blogosphere ocean for all blogernity (That’s a Mimism for blog + eternity.)

Mimi says: “ADD your site to the Mr. Linky list and place your blog’s name and url in a comment HERE TO LET ME KNOW YOU’VE COMPLETED THE MEME. I will add it to the master list of message bottles. Email mimiwrites2005 at yahoo.com if you have questions.”
Go HERE to see all the bottles floating in the blog ocean. The site is called Message In a Bottle.
***END COPY****

So basically, copy, paste and follow instructions…..hmm. Even I should be able to manage that…

In the spirit of irony, here’s my ‘Message in a Bottle”

Kim tagged the following people

Anand Archie Art News Blog Ascender Blog Elf Boyd Catsy Colin Cooper Corrine Debbie Deborah Diane DouDy Drowsey Monkey Durano Ev Fruity Hanna Janette Jeremy John Jos Kimmy Kris Leigh Life cruiser Lisa Lyn Lynda Lindsay Manuel Mary Ann Meg Megan Mel Mellanie Michelle Netster PALMA Pet Monologues Pearl Renny & Diane Santa She Walks In Beauty Shoshana Should Be Famous Snoskred Speedy Sue Sugar Queen Sully Suzanne The Artist’s Magazine Vin Walter williebaronet

So as you can see it’s getting hard to find people who haven’t already been tagged for this so I’m tagging anyone in my blogroll who fancies doing this one but particularly Struggling Writer, Pete at myGPScamera, Mike at The View From Here, Lord Likely or his friend Andy Fanton. As writers/Photoshop whizzes I’m dying to see what you come up with! Of course, it goes without saying only do this if you want to - no pressure!

A while back I resigned from my role as Founder over at Go! Smell the Flowers (pressure of work, artistic differences, leaving to spend more time with my family and other tried and tested excuses). I still pop over there on occasions, usually when I hear that things are kicking off again (which happens regularly - never a dull moment over there!) They are just in the throes of turning their blog into a full blown community with its 18 ‘founders’ (there were 20 but two, Drowsey Monkey and Olga the Travelling Bra, have also just resigned - see their blogs and GSTF for the reasons why). It’s a very lively place with humour, insults and serious debate flying around - every day brings several new posts and apart from never knowing what is coming up next - you also never know what the regular commentators are going to say next. Fur can fly and frequently does.

Jim & Em who started GSTF have given me a Flower Smeller badge, to read about this please go here. In their words :

‘This badge serves to acknowledge others who are, in their own way, smelling the flowers. They maybe regular visitors to this blog, one of the 18 founders blogs or someone that could contribute here who is yet to visit! Maybe they have recovered from an illness, written a book, made waves in the blogosphere, won the lottery, made a major shift in their life, won promotion, quit the rat race, raising a family, discovering their greatness and on it GO!s as more examples from around the world start to surface’.

I shall have to ponder on who to recommend for one of these badges….they will need to be hardy souls :-)

Any volunteers?

And now as a reward for anyone who has made it this far (thank you) here is a video clip. This is the beautiful song ‘Falling Slowly’ which won the Oscar for best song at this years Oscars. It comes from the film ‘Once’ a small budget, Irish film which has won many prizes and plaudits - you may remember I raved about it some months ago. It is now out on DVD so there is no excuse not to see it. It is quite simply fab.