Guest of The Long and the Short of It Romance--Part 5

Grandpa

My grandson, Daniel is six and like every other six-year-old, he can in turn seem two or twenty. Quite early on in life he decided that Grandpa (or Grumpy Gramps as he is frequently called) was going to be his idol. Wherever Grandpa is, so is Daniel and quite frequently, when out shopping, we hear this child’s voice shouting GRANDPA! and see him dragging his mummy toward us. Not that Grandpa is averse to all this attention – in fact, he revels in it, the outcome of which is that, at sixty-three, he finds himself in all sorts of situations.

Daniel thinks of Grandpa as a constant activity centre. Last week, whilst on holiday, he was expected to swing from tree to tree on the ropes of an assault course, ride his bike over an obstacle course, race down huge aqua slides, balance on revolving barrels and swing on tyres tied to trees. Whatever energy he had left was reserved for table tennis, ten-pin bowling, the Wii and general racing and wrestling games with his grandson. Grandpa sixty-three? Nah! He’s six, like Daniel!

This article originally appeared at The Long and Short of It Romance site in July 2008.

Guest of The Long and the Short of It Romance--Part 4

Have You Ever Had One Of Those Days?

Have you ever had one of those days? We just did! We arrived home from a great holiday with our daughter and her family – the first thing we noticed was the puddle of water on the kitchen floor. Before going on holiday, we had had a new kitchen fitted with new appliances and, in our absence, the freezer had decided to stop working – hence the puddle and no usable food! Opening a can of soup, my husband turned on the microwave which spat a few times and died.

Undaunted, we went to collect the dogs from the kennels – Mollie, the pup, was limping. She had decided to remove the stitches from her paw a little earlier than planned, so, back to the vet. She came home with the stitches replaced and the usual plastic bucket on her head. She was not happy!

By this time, it was getting quite late and we thought nothing else could happen. Wrong! My tooth fell out!

Definitely one of those days! LOL

This article originally appeared at The Long and the Short of It Romance site in July 2008.

Guest of The Long and the Short of It Romance--Part 3

The Haunting

Do you believe in haunted houses? No? I must admit that I didn’t either, that is, until we went to live in our previous house. It was a large semi-detached house built sometime in the 1930’s. A very elegant house positioned overlooking a beautiful park full of flowers.

As you might guess, as an author, I have a very vivid imagination and it was to this I attributed the noises and strange happenings in the house. They happened when I was alone. Small things at first, what sounded like birds scuttling across the attic in the middle of the night (quite feasible). A freezing spare bedroom, even when the heating was full on. A weird odour on the landing, that only I could smell. Then the crashes and loud bangs began and they were not so easily ignored. Lights went on and off (again quite feasible) and taps turned on of their own accord. Sounds of a child running around in the bedrooms when our own child was fast asleep, and frequently footsteps on the stairs during the night. You would wonder how three people could live in such a house, all hear the noises, yet say nothing to each other for fear of seeming a fool.

It was the knocking on the bedside cabinet when I went to bed alone that finally drove me downstairs to tell my husband and he admitted to hearing and seeing similar events but saying nothing for fear of unnerving me. Even the dog would no longer go into the bedrooms.

The climax came when I way lying awake one night and I heard the footsteps on the stairs. My husband still slept but a dark figure came into the bedroom and walked around to his side of the bed. I was terrified and just peeped over my husband’s half-turned shoulder. The form stood silhouetted between the bed and the window, then disappeared.

We moved house!

This article originally appeared at The Long and the Short of It Romance site in July 2008.

Guest of the Long and the Short of It Romance--Part 2

You Cant Teach An Old Dog New Tricks – Or Can You?


I was being made redundant from work and my husband said that I needed to learn to use a computer.

“Not me! I hate computers,” I said. “They terrify me!”

“Won’t you just look at them?” asked a very patient husband.

“No!”

I was taken to the computer store and given a tour around all that was on offer. He chose one – I ignored it. He bought it home – I ignored it. He set it up, and I refused to have anything at all to do with it. He set me in front of this ominous looking thing and told me to just switch it on and play around with it.

It didn’t inspire me that he hadn’t a clue how it worked either, but I persevered and got some interesting results. I’m a trained typist so the keyboard didn’t intimidate me and I realised just how easy it was to create a document in Word.

I found an old manuscript of mine that needed re-writing and realised what a laborious task it would be to do it by hand – voila! the computer would allow me to make light work of such a task. I had found a use for it after all.

The rest is history. I live on the computer and my young son-in-law rings me when he has problems with his processor. I have suddenly become a font of knowledge for all things connected with the computer.

Perhaps you can teach an old dog new tricks after all!

This article originally appeared at The Long and the Short of It site in July 2008.

Guest of The Long and the Short of It Romance -- Part 1

This is the first in a series of five guest articles I provided to The Long and the Short of It Romance site during my July virtual book tour to promote His Shadowed Heart. These five short blurbs are inteded to help readers get to know more about me.

Regards,

Hazel

No More Dogs!

No more dogs! Definitely no more dogs! These were my husband’s words and I have to admit, to a certain extent, I agreed with him. Ten-year-old Lucy was to be our last dog. I am sixty-two and my husband is a very active sixty-three and we thought our dog walking days were behind us. We knew Lucy had a terminal illness and we treasured her all the more for it and remained firm in our resolve.

It took one phone call, just one phone call to put that resolve clean out of our heads. Pam, who had bred our first Lab, Tara, twenty-two years ago, phoned to say that her dog had had a litter. There was a shocked silence – we both knew what was going through the others head.

“OK, when do we go to look at the pups?” our daughter asked.

“We’re not!” I replied firmly.

Mollie arrived two weeks later. She is a little devil and a pure delight and Lucy adores her. Who said we were too old to have a new puppy? My husband? Me? Never!