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Something very special happened to me this morning. This is something that happened only sixty two times before today. I became one day older. At 2:10 AM this morning (GMT-2) on this 23rd day of February (for the first time in my life ) I turned 63.

Yes, I know that most of you already wished me on Saturday, which technically was a false alarm but a dear friend here in Blogland was not sure if she would be able to wish me today so she though it prudent to do it on Saturday. This blog is only to set the record straight re my actual birth date and to thank each of you for the early well wishes.

I’ll had a late breakfast with some of my friends (thanks Hans) and will be entertained by the other at one of their homes for the rest of the day and early evening where we plan to make merry and to grill two large snoek (baracuta – not baracuda) on a bed of charcoal in the process.

I expect to be home by 9 PM and I will drop in for a few minutes if I am not too ‘tired’.


May your day be as wonderful as my day promises to be.

There's some weird stuff happening in UK schools and the Daily Mail has got very overexcited about it. I know it's a long blog. You can skip to the last paragraph.

The link is at the bottom of the blog but because it's the Daily Mail, and wants to make you OUTRAGED, a bit of context first ...

There's an 8 year old boy who wants to be a girl. He wants it so badly that his parents are on board with it (man, I hope some serious counselling and thought has gone into this, but the Mail ain't saying) and he's going to be starting sex-change drugs now, before puberty. The school authorities know and are being fully supportive. They even had an organization called Mermaid come in to talk about it in general terms.

(Hang on, this is so common there's an organization?? oh yes. Government funded, AND a 500K lottery grant. Yeah, I was taken aback too )

The Mail angle is that the school vicar, while on board with the sex-change, has clashed with the school over one issue so badly that he's resigned. The kid's parents, and the school, want it to be as low-key and uncontroversial as possible. Victor (not his name) will, as Victoria, use the female loos and be called she, move along folks, nothing to see here.

The vicar wants all the other parents of all the other kids to be told. Well, we all know the average parent will be supportive, will tell their own kids to take it in their stride and not give it a second thought.

I can see both points of view but then that is my curse

Here's that link, prepare to be stirred to your boots, eh?

The Mail being the Mail strongly implies the school is doing it and the kid's own parents don't know. That is Fake News. Oh and turns out the drugs aren't changing his sex just delaying puberty. Well, that's the Daily Mail for you. Read by 23.5 million people every month, too.

Colour me puzzled that there are so many kids who, before puberty, are so convinced they are the wrong gender they know it is right to change. And is it right to change? What's so bad about spending childhood being androgynous, wearing jeans and t-shirts and not confronted with having to wear frills or have skinned knees ... I was a bit of a tomboy. In retrospect, man I would not be happy now to have been hurried along the road to make a decision to change to a boy. My younger brother, frankly, a bit of a sissy as a kid. Cried every time I knocked him over, that sort of thing. Ditto.



edited this blog to say I finally got round to looking at some statistics and turns out one baby in up to 2000 births is born with "atypical" genitalia. There's a comment on the 2nd page with more detail on that. That's a small percentage, sure, but in big populations a surprising number of people where the boy/girl line is definitely blurred.

The rugby is over, my team lost and my friends have gone home. I’m too tired for another glass of wine but not tired enough for going to bed.

It was not a planned evening. Everybody just rocked up at more or less the same time with their cool boxes. Why do I smell a conspiracy? But it was a great evening. We (the men) packed a fire and parked in front of the TV to watch the first game. And what good rugby it was.

Their wives surprised us. Between the two games, we were treated on crispy barbequed muttonchops and salads. So good that we missed the first 30 minutes of the game we really wanted to see.

My supply of white wine took a good dent before they left but while we watched the remainder of the second game, the dear ladies cleaned my kitchen again. I wish I had the presence of mind to see if they wore their shoes. I don’t think any were pregnant. We’re too old for that.

And now they’re gone and I sit here alone and wonder if I should pour another glass of wine or go to bed. My empty bed does not sound very interesting at the moment, so I guess the glass of wine is going to win after all.


Bottoms up!

Today is the last day of our sheep year, it's the time for families reunion tonight and together welcome the Monkey New Year to come... It's a happy time but unfortunately that my sister disconnected with us for two years. Though I still want to take this moment to say;

Grateful to our parents for they offered themselves in fostering us...

Thankful to my friends for their support and help in my difficult time ...

I wish you all and your families a happy and prosperous Money New Year !

I decided to start aerobics. I wriggled twisted and jumped up and down for an hour.


By the time I got my leotard on, the class was over

I have mixed feelings when I read about the verdict of Bill Cosby last night. First off he is very old, second he truly symbolized the most ideal father like persona each of us had come to admire and emulate during the early 80s and on.

But in reality, I can't ever fathom what he has done and how he did it. Most evil act of manipulating and abusing his victims.

I mean, was he all that good on projecting the kind of a person as a dad and as a husband on his show just to please us for money?

I am so sad for his victims and yes, he deserves to pay the price and even that is not enough.

What a cruel world.

I watched some, not all, of a highly emotional video although I REALLY hate videos which try to manipulate my emotions which is why I didn’t watch it all and haven’t linked it.

It was a tale of abortion refused, and the year that followed. Stripped of emotional throbbing-voice content, the facts are pretty simple.

The couple had five children already. They had previous drugs and drink issues. Four – FOUR – of the children had already been taken by the state as they were judged unfit parents. She tried to get number six aborted for a very real health issue but was refused. Strike one.

That health issue - she’d fallen pregnant again when her earlier child was three months old. The embryo was embedded in the C-section scar from her last pregnancy which meant chances of carrying to term were non-existent. Chances of life-threatening complications, extreme. Not good enough reason for an abortion. Strike two.

Complications indeed but both mother and child survived emergency premature birth and the child went straight into an incubator. The closest hospital with suitable facilities was an hour away. Mother America dug deep to pay the mother the life-changing $14 a week paid to mums whose kids are in hospital at a distance, to spend as she wished.

The baby was discharged, still needing a feeding tube and specialized care, and did I mention quite severely retarded? on the first birthday of its older sister, presenting serious care issues. Too young and too disabled to be put into day-care facility, but here’s a little problem, both parents work, neither parent eligible for European-style parental leave or support. In fact, it seems the states refusing abortion ironically offer the least support to mothers of newborns. Some American logic for you. Strike three.

Well, I gave up on the video at that point. Even the American who had posted it didn’t seem to realize how shatteringly badly it reflects on you as a supposedly advanced country, it was posted as a heartwarming tale of courage in the face of adversity, to tug at the heartstrings. Aw.



I drew some conclusions, then deleted them. What's the point. Add your own if you feel a need. I do find that my interest in your Big Issues, now I've seen your ignored ones, is diddly squat.

There’s a blog at the moment mocking the way Europe tries to look after its own and hoping America doesn’t go that way. I deleted my comments on that too.

I love browsing in second hand book shops. I bought a book about magic and was leafing through it one night when I inadvertently evoked a demon from the underworld. It said it had come to carry out my bidding, but I couldn't think of anything for it to do. Actually, there are lots of little things that I would like doing, but, apparently, tidying up and going over my place with a duster lack the necessary element of evil that the demon requires of any task it is asked to perform. I told the demon I would give the matter some consideration and let it know if I thought of anything suitable for it to do. In the meantime, the demon asked where it might reside while waiting to be told my bidding. It has to be somewhere very hot, so I agreed to let it temporarily possess my central heating boiler. I really am going to have to think of an evil task for the demon to perform so that it will return to the underworld. It's nothing personal, it's just that it's playing havoc with my thermostat settings; it's like a furnace in here now.

Hello Folks,

It has been a spell since my last post on my blog to you, not that I have not been thinking about posting I just got very busy with a huge change in my life.

I have been a magazine photographer in the past, it has given many accomplishments over the years but for quite some time I have felt it is time to change careers.

My dream has always been to have a online gift shop to provide unique gifts to the consumer, that is what I have been working on since my last post on here. My designer has my website almost ready to launch online, we need to set up the personalization of my products yet before it can be open to the public. I am offering a personal touch with my products at no extra fees, the consumer can make my unique products even more unique by a free engraving to the person they are pursuing the gift for.

Over the years myself and many others I have corresponded with over the years online have been a bit frustrated on special holidays attempting to find the perfect gift for the men folks on our gift giving list. My father is my most difficult person to buy for on my list, he is 75 years old and has pretty much everything he wants in his life at this time. This gave me the idea to offer a men's gift shop online for the men and all the ladies who have men in their life they find hard to purchase gifts for, hopefully this will be a nice success in making life a little easier to shop for difficult men with everything for others in this same situation.

Wish Me Much Luck On My Gift Shop

Jeff

There have been famous multiple births in recorded history: quintuplets, sextuplets, septuplets and even octuplets. But a Malian woman recently gave birth to the first surviving set of nonuplets.

Yes, that’s nine babies at once, and the kicker is she thought she was having seven babies. Halima Cissé, 25, gave birth to five girls and four boys on May 4 in a Moroccan hospital where she’d been sent to receive special care for her high-risk pregnancy.

Two of the children had gone undetected during ultrasounds. Cissé reportedly laughed when she heard she had delivered two extra children.

Video footage from the hospital in Casablanca where the nonuplets were born showed the tiny infants moving little limbs while being cared for in incubators after their birth at 30 weeks. The footage comes from news channel France 24.