Month: March 2012

Dear World,

I have not published many of your comments on my blogs and here is why…

I seem to be getting thousands, which is great, but most of them are spam, and bare not relation to my blogs, are about completely different websites and are bunging up my emails!

To those of you wonderful folks who have sent genuine comments, I thank you! I will eventually get to your words, but at the moment I am trawling through the crap!

To those of you who are sending out the crap, or have programmed your computers to do it for you… May I please, politely, ask you not to! GO AWAY! I am now NEVER going to look at your website/blog/product you are trying to sell because you have gone completely the wrong way about getting my attention!

 

There, that’s off my chest! Sorry, but it has been bugging me for ages! I am now going to make myself a soothing cup of tea…well, I am British, after all!!

 

Lxx

This week I have had a visitor to stay. This one was special as it was one of my Twitter friends  We had met at #thebreakfastclub and chatted, then at the Breakfastclube live event in London.  Both of us had friends and family who thought we were nuts to meet and said “How do you know she’s not a mass murderer?”

I decided to take the risk, and invited her down to stay for a few days. It could have been a disaster! We could have discovered we hated eachother in ” real life”. As it was we hardly stopped laughing! Some sentences got finished by the other person, and as we are both the same size we swung on the garden swing beautifully!  I showed her the local towns, and she introduced me back to Panto…lots of laughing, screaming, booing and generally trying not to have an embarrassing accident!!

We went to see another of our Twitter friends where more raucous laughter rocked the countryside, and at one point tears fell as we laughed and I couldn’t breathe!

I am so glad I took this leap of faith and invited her to stay! It proves I can trust my gut feelings about folks, and how great laughter is for the soul…not to mention tummy muscles! Boy, do mine ache after all that laughter! And I swear the old tummy looks flatter!! No, really!

I had discovered a new good friend, who I hope will remain a good friend, despite the distance …that’s where Twitter helps! we have the same senses of humour, and outlook on life, and we can disagree without falling out! Which is amazing!

Wonder what my next leap of faith will bring me?! Any ideas?

Lxx

 

I’ve just come home from watching a wonderful performance of the Wizard of Oz! With Kate Richards as a fab Wicked Witch, and “Tracy Beaker” as Dorothy, and Bobby Davro as the brilliant Scarecrow! My sides are sore from laughing, and the make-up is long gone from the tears! It was the first night at Dorking and there were some wonderful mistakes that just helped the show be a success!

After the show, due to the fab Jackie 495, who is staying with me, we got to meet Kate, who also directed it. She very kindly came outside after taking off the makeup and signed autographs for the little ones! She must have been exhausted, and they are driving up to Northampton tonight!

I had such fun, and it really reminded me how much I loved doing armature dramatics a few years back…it really was the rehearsals I loved the most, although the audience response in some plays was amazing. I was lucky, and was given some wonderful parts…my first was the Marquessa in Liaison Dangereours, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing was another fab one! W had such fun preparing for the shows, even being yelled at by the odd director for not learning our lines in time! It was the sense of being part of a team, laughing and suffering together, all,working towards the one goal of the perfect performance.

Yep, I do miss it, but think that perhaps it is too late to go back to it…not many roles for 50+ and roly poly…apart form the innkeeper in Falstaff!!

Never mind, I’m so tired now that I don’t think I could do several performances a week again! So instead I’ll stick to The Breakfast Club on Twitter thanks!

Night night

Lx

I’ve just come home from my first meeting of our area group to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust. I am buzzing! If you’ve read my Ally blog you will know that we lost our 15year old daughter to adult liver cancer. During the 7 months we nursed her she went into 3different hospital cancer wards. Each was differentwatches first amixed age children’s ward froparrot little babies up to 17yolds olds who need their own space, to adult cancer ward with the elderly dieting all around her. She hated it all so much! We were lucky in a way that we were able to give her her chimo at home, but she asked us to support Teenage Cancer Trust after her death assupply are building special wards for teenagers and young adults in hospitals which provide the sort of areas that teenagers need…. Please follow the link on my main menu to find out more about the Trust’s work!

I had thought this evening would be the usual dull committee stuff with perhaps someone putting themselves forward as ‘chairman’ etc…all very formal; and we’d be talking about rattling buckets etc. Boy, was I wrong! One of our guys, Michael, has already started organising a black tie event in November and sold 70 tickets!! What a guy! He is spookily like my late father-in-law in mannerisms!! I also re-met the wonderful chap whhere built my cottage, and gave me the wonderful kitchen I’m sitting in! He has lost a kidney to cancer, and is a friend of Michael, so it was great to meet him again!

Strangely, today I have been talking to someone about needing to find my motivation, and that I was slightly dreading this evening’s meeting. Well, I think it’s safe to say the motivation is coming back! Not only am I buzzing about doing something for TCT again, but I almost single-handedly built my harden swing!! Yes, it has arrived! I have built the side A frames, put all the hooks on,mbut have fallen at the task of putting up the very heavy cross bar from which the seat will hang! In fact I have let it hit me on the head as I tried to fit it into the gaps left in the top of the A frames! No, not on purpose! And yes, it did hurt! So, maybe I do need some help on this one! I will ask my gardener to help me tomorrow morning after the Breakfast Club. I’ll bribe him with the promis of coffee whilst swinging on it! Think that will do it? I hope so!

So, it’s off to be early for me, and probably with a notebook to jot down anything that springs to mind about fundraising!!

Sleep well, folks!

L xx

First let me say I hope all you mothers out there had a great day and were spoilt rotten! If not, Why not???

I knew this was going to be a difficult day from the start! Son’s card had not arrived in Saturday’s post and Hubby was going to play golf all day in a competition. I had planned to be either in the garden or at least doign the laundry to keep me busy with the odd walk on the beach to feed the soul and keep the dog happy.

Well, it was a beautiful day, weather-wise. I managed to get all the washing and ironing done…there is nothing like a large pile of freshly laundered clothes and bed linen to make me smile – sad, I know, but there it is! I watched Anonymous on Box Office, which was just a superb film, great acting, and thought provoking…and as was alone there were no interruptions!

All was well until the late afternoon. I realised my mood was going downhill. Everyone on Twitter was having a great day, lovely things had been said about my sentiments on there; perhaps I shouldn’t have read all my time line! As  my mother would have said “The Black Dog was on my shoulders”.

I should have gone for the walk; I should have gone for a bath; I should have phoned a friend…isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? I did none of these things and by the time Hubby got home I was very low. Bless him, lots of hugs were given to me, but sometimes these things just have to take their path and pass. A few tears relieved the tension, and admitting it had been a tough day too.

SO, it is over for another year. It turns out son forgot to post the card, and so did the friend he called to do it for him…the friend even forgot to send his own mother a card! But instead I have had 2 phone calls from Son in 2 days which is so much better than  card!

SO today, I know I am loved, I have a great week ahead of me, and the sun is shining! Now, if only I could find the important papers I have mislaid…..!!!

Lx

Hi, Folks. Sorry I have not blogged for a bit, but I’ve been off in Spain visiting the In-Laws. This is my first visit since my Father-in-law’s funeral, so it was extra special.

We flew out on an economy airline, which wasn’t too bad at all this time, and hired a car when we got there. After one evening with Mum-in-law we drove sis-in-law and her daughter(aged 9) up to the Sierra Navarre near Granada. Such fantastic scenery both on the way across the Plain of Spain (no rain!) and going up the mountains. On the Plains you see rows and rows of olive trees, uniformly planted in what looks like very poor soil. There are also the odd acre of what looks like sliver birch…. I wondered if these are grown for the building trade to use as scaffold/props etc?

Then began three days when I learned a great deal about skiing!

We started skiing quite late in life, about 10 years ago, Hubby and I. We learned mainly in Steamboat, Colorado from an amazing guy called IJ Fisher. He was so patient with me as I had no confidence at all for a long time. My Sis-in-law started last year in Andorra and has had one week so far. We have gone most years to see IJ and sometimes have been lucky enough to fit in the odd long weekend in Europe. So I have progressed to where I have done a black and a set of bumps, neither of which needs to be repeated!!! I am happy on Blues and Reds and love the odd Green for fun. So when SIL said could she follow me down a green run to see how I did it I thought it would be OK but didn’t think shed learn that much from me…oh boy! We had such fun and from then on she followed me listening to my shouts of “keep your hands in front…don’t spill the G&Ts!” and “Crush that Grape”, “up and swoooop round, pat that dog!”…. all these might be familiar to you skiers, to those of you who don’t ski, please don’t think we are totally nuts! All of these instructions help the skier keep at the right angel to the slope when turning to go downhill, to help push the knees into the slope so that the ski carves the perfect arc in the snow and helps us get over the nasty icy bits and get out of the way of the boarders rushing down the slopes! When you watch the beautiful skiing of Bode Miller or Shemi Alcott on TV just watch out for those tell-tale signs!

Now, what did I learn??? Actually, trying to show S-I-L how to get down a slope made me think more about what I was doing myself! There was no being pushed by Hubby to come down a slope I was not too happy about, I was in my comfort zone the whole time, and it was such fun!!! ! made sure I was doing everything I was telling S-I-L to do, and really enjoyed seeing her following and making some beautiful turns.

 

So through helping someone else I was really helping myself! Isn’t that one of Life’s best lessons?

click here to see what the area looks like.IMG_0117