If I were in charge in 2013.....

A few things I'd do if I were in charge next year....

Shops would be shut from 12 noon on Christmas Eve until 27th December, and also shut the whole of Easter Weekend from 5pm on the Thursday before Good Friday, until the Tuesday after Easter Monday.

Sales would NOT be at Christmas, but only be permitted in March and September.

Sunday opening would be banned for all except essential services.

Trains would be equipped with external coatings to repel mobile phone signals, returning them to peace and quiet, and they would have windows that open to give you fresh air.

Car radios and personal music players would have a legal upper decibel limit so others are not forced to listen to tinny overspill or thumping bass beats.

Voting at elections would be mandatory - it's no use moaning if you haven't exercised your democratic right.

Immigration would be curbed to protect our environment and reduce the burden on the state which we all pay for, and probably stopped for the foreseeable future. Immigrants would have to demonstrate why they would benefit our society to be granted a permit to live here.

The Health and Safety Executive would be disbanded along with vast number of ludicrous H&S laws and restrictions (retaining those that are of real value only) and we would return to an era of common sense and allowable risk.

The Human Rights Act would be repealed, because it has become an excuse to avoid the consequences of your actions for all sorts of villains and terrorists, and replaced with something more measured and sensible.

Learning to clean, cook and do DIY would be compulsory in schools, to equip young people with the skills they need for life.

Old fashioned respect for others and consideration for other people would be drummed into kids from an early age to prevent them becoming the selfish neanderthals I seem to meet every day, and parents would have to properly answer for their children instead of abdicating responsibility as many do.

Everyone would have to do something for their livelihood, even those on benefits, provided they were physically able. Why should we pay people to sit on their arses and do nothing when there are roads to be mended, graffiti to be cleaned up, drains to be unblocked and schools to be maintained?

Glitter is good, drab is bad!

People (including The Hubby) take the piss out of me because I like glitter. For me, the more the better.

I can't help it. I'm drawn like a magpie to things that sparkle and shine and because of that, Christmas is a wonderful time. I love the fact that not only can I deck out my house with an inordinate number of sparkling lights, tinsel and shiny streamers, but it becomes socially acceptable to wear large amounts of glitter as well.

The world is a drab place by and large, and a little bit of glitter makes me feel better. A large amount, even more so. I know if we had it all the time it would become commonplace and therefore not be so uplifting, but it's a pretty harmless thing to love and definitely, for me, makes the world a nicer place.

I've never been a minimalist in anything I do. If you're going to do something, you might as well really go for it. Therefore when I decorate my house at Christmas, not for me the tasteful string of beads and homespun looking tree decorations make of old bits of sack and gingham cloth, so beloved (I assume) by the earth mother NCT brigade. My tree has enough silver tinsel, and so many baubles and glittery snowflakes on it that it makes you feel frosty cold, and the light reflects and dances round the room where the coloured fairy lights catch them.

The dining room is festooned with shiny streamers (this year, to my delight, I found an old stack of unopened ones we bought from Woolworths several years ago and then never used, in gold and bronze foil), a second tree and a fibre optic twig tree that twinkles at you in a rainbow of colours. It's all staggeringly bad taste, and I love it.

Perhaps because of my overboard approach, my daughters sadly don't much go in for ornament at all, although they will wear a bit of sparkly eye shadow on occasion when they go clubbing. I have seven different shades of glitter eye shadow in my make up box, glitter eye liner and two or three different glittery nail varnishes. Originally I bought them for doing shows, but I like them so much they have migrated to my day to day make up box and I use them when we go out to dinner.

I think the world would be a much better place if we all adopted this approach, and in fact if I were in charge I'd love to pass a law about it and make it compulsory. so vote for me, the Glitter Party, if you want the world to be shinier and happier!

Too busy too blog!

I haven’t blogged for a while now, because life has been somewhat busy.

Principally, my time and mind has been occupied with a very unwell little puppy. Coco is a typical Labrador – always grubbing in the hedgerows and digging stuff up, then eating what she finds. Most often it is something totally unsuitable such as cat poo or her particular favourite, horse poo. But she’s not overly fussy and by and large will pick up and eat anything.

This time she clearly ingested something which disagreed in the most violent fashion with her insides. Normally a ravenous eater, she wouldn’t touch food nor, more worryingly, water, for two whole days. We came down one morning to find the carpet covered in vomit and bloody faeces, and throughout the day she was listless and sick even when she sipped water or had a few grains of rice. Desperately worried, we took her to the vet, who didn’t seem worried at all (presumably sees it all the time) and gave us some anti biotics and sent us on our way.

Things didn’t improve and the next day we took her back to the vets where she was kept in and put onto a drip, by this time fairly severely dehydrated. The nasty specimens we had scraped up from the rug have been sent off for analysis, and we don’t yet know what she ate although I’m sure we will soon. It could be anything, on walks we are always taking things out of her mouth that shouldn’t be in there and goodness knows what she digs up when she’s mooching round the garden. And there are definitely toadstools out there somewhere – no matter how many times you try to get rid of them they spring back up.

The vet, an infinitely patient man, checked her over for anything and everything including various canine ailments I rang up to suggest having looked them up on Google (which must be the bane of his life) and after 24 hours when she had stopped emitting foul fluids and seemed more herself and we had had enough time to steam clean the carpets, she came home. Apart from a raspy sore throat caused we think by the pipe put down her throat while she was sedated, she seems absolutely fine. It is an incredible relief, and I don’t think I have been so worried even when my children were ill.

The cost of all this of course, has been astronomic. X-rays, drugs, diagnostics and veterinary time are ridiculously expensive. Thank goodness we took out pet insurance, for which we pay a measly £12 a month and which we are just about to claim against for almost £600. It has made us think that perhaps we better investigate taking out insurance for the moggies, who fortunately have never been really ill or cost me much beyond their annual jabs.

On top of everything else it snowed the other day, and you will know if you read this blog last winter how much I hate the snow, hate being cold and hate being wet. It actually made people on the train speak to one another, mostly in horror, at whether they were going to get home and asking “this wasn’t forecast was it?” looking out of the window with worried eyes.

I’m supposed to be avoiding stress to bring the old blood pressure down. Recent events can’t have done it any good, and it had gone up to treatable levels when I last saw the doc before all this happened so I am now taking tablets every day (someone asked me what drug it was and not remembering exactly, I said "Ritalin" which made them snort with laughter. It isn't, of course). I have had to resort to buying one of those old people’s pill boxes with the days of the week on it so I remember whether I’ve taken them or not – of everything that is going on, that is the one thing which has made me feel oldest!

To finish it all off nicely, my own work has gone crazily busy and The Hubby has been job hunting like mad. On that front at least we have some good news in that he has some temporary work for a few months, which will keep the wolf (or at any rate the debt collectors) away for a little longer.

It seems like it was time someone gave us a break, it’s been a pretty tough year whichever way you look at it.