Journal Jar Q97: Write About Something You’ve Done That You Never Thought You Could Do

I’ve been looking at this question for ages, putting off answering it because I wasn’t really sure what to write about.  So I’m now sitting in front of my keyboard, with a self-imposed time limit of 20 minutes, so I guess I’d better start answering!

The first thing that springs to mind that I’ve done recently that I probably wouldn’t have done if I’d thought about it for longer than a nanosecond, was saving a slow worm from the jaws of the cat.

As I parked my car in the drive on Monday afternoon, I saw Reg had caught a biggish slow worm, and that it was still alive.  I shooed Reg away, picked up the slow worm from the patio in my bare hand (if you knew how terrified I am of snakes, you’d realize how impressive this actually is), took it away and put it into a flower bed, where it dug itself under a bush into the soil.

Snorkeling is another thing I’ve done (twice.  Very briefly) which I never thought I could do.  I wrote about it in 2010 here.

And flying.  Eugh, I HATE flying.  Hate hate HATE it.  The slightest bit of turbulence has me gasping and shrieking to the extent that people around me edge nervously away.  Sometimes, if it’s really bad, it makes me cry.  But I don’t let the fear put me off, and I average about eight flights a year generally.  Last year, for the first time for ages, I actually flew on my own, so maybe I’m getting better at it.

I guess in its essence, this question is all about stepping out of your comfort zone, isn’t it?

And I have very, very early plans afoot to do just that, as I am vaguely – very vaguely at the moment – thinking about foregoing our annual two weeks of lying in the sunshine in five star luxury in Greece next year.  And going backpacking around SE Asia for a month. (I told some friends about this last Friday night, and they literally couldn’t stop laughing at me for about 10 minutes!).

I love the Far East, and would really like to show some of the sights to William while he still wants to travel with us, and see some new ones.  I’ve long had a hankering to visit Vietnam and Cambodia …  And one day, Ashley and I will be too old to even think about doing such a thing.

And if that’s not stepping out of my comfort zone, I don’t know what is.

Right, my 20 mins are up, so I’m going to scan this for spelling and press publish.  Would love to know what you do to step out of your comfort zone.

 

 

99. If You Had £1m To Donate To Any Charity , Which Would It Be?

Imagine how lovely it would be to have £1 million to give away to do some good – that really is life-changing money.  Ideally, I would like to spread it around two or three different charities, possibly including a smaller, less well-known one, but if I had to nominate just one, it would have to be Cancer Research UK, which is my ‘favourite’ charity, and one to which I have a direct debit every month.

I think we all know at least one person whose life has been touched by cancer, and I’ve written before about my best friend Linda, who died of cancer when we were 16, which is probably the main reason that this is a charity close to my heart.  My father-in-law also died of cancer three years ago, and watching him slowly lose his battle with this terrible disease was very distressing.

So yes, my £1 million would be put towards trying to find a cure for cancer.

I was reading a news story last week about Mandy Smith (former ‘child bride’ of Rolling Stone Bill Wyman), and her ex-WAG sister being investigated as to the whereabouts of £250,000 they raised for a children’s hospital in Birmingham, after it transpired that only £8k was ever handed over to the charity, and it appears that they paid large amounts to themselves in ‘consultancy fees’.  If this is true, it’s absolutely disgraceful – how could anybody possibly do this – it’s just the lowest of the low as far as I’m concerned, and should be punishable with a custodial sentence.

Another charity I support regularly is Kiva, which I love because it’s all about helping people to help themselves, and you get to see exactly where your money’s going and who it’s helping.

The idea is that you lend money to people in third world countries to set up or expand their small business, and you can choose from a large number of requests on the site at any one time.  Loans are made in increments of $25 US dollars, and are repaid over a period of months.  I have made several loans over the last three years, all to businesses/co-operatives run by women.  My current loan is to a lady in Kenya, who runs a cosmetic store – this is her profile on the Kiva site:

“Caroline is a 35 year old lady from Homabay town, in western Kenya. She is married to Geofrey, and they have children aged six, nine and twelve years.

Caroline operates a cosmetics shop, a business she has been running for the last 10 years and which earns her a monthly income of KES 10,000. She will use the loan to buy stock of hair products and other beauty products. Her profits will be used to educate her children. Her dream is to enlarge her business.”

I think it’s a brilliant way of giving to charity and I highly recommend it to anybody who may be interested.

Which charity would you give £1m to?

Journal Jar Q18. Have You Ever Had A Pet Die?

I’m very much a cat person rather than a dog person – I don’t much like dogs at all (all that having to walk in all weathers and pick up and carry dog poo in a bag isn’t for me, I’m afraid.  And I have a friend who has three huge hound type dogs, who all absolutely stink – the smell in her house is so bad you can smell it from the end of the drive – no exaggeration.  I don’t go and see her at home very often, and I NEVER accept a lift in her car!).

Anyway, back to this post.  My brother and I each had a cat for our birthdays one year (can’t remember how old I was – maybe 8?).  My cat was Samson, and he had a lovely friendly personality and loved being around people.  He was jet black.

Samson lived a fairly long and happy life, and unfortunately had to be put to sleep as he had liver cancer, while I was away working at sea, when he was around 12.

Since moving to Devon some 17 years ago, we’ve had five cats – Dennis, Douglas, General Maximus, and our current two, Ron & Reg.

Dennis moved to Devon with me from Bournemouth – he was a big ginger tom cat, but a real softy.  Ironically, he lasted for several years living in a relatively busy part of Torquay traffic-wise, but was killed by a car after we’d moved to a small village in the countryside, when he was about six and I was pregnant with William.

I’ve only seen my husband cry three times in the time we’ve been together, and I remember him digging a hole in the garden to bury Dennis with tears rolling down his cheeks.  We were SO upset to lose him.

Sadly, over the next five years, we lost two more cats to drivers on that same road – Douglas and General Maximus.  General Maximus was a beautiful Maine Coon cat, the best cat we’ve ever had, and was only just over a year old when he was killed.  I often like to say that he was ‘the light that burned twice as bright, but half as long’.

It wasn’t even a parrticularly dangerous road – plenty of people who lived there had cats, but it just seemed that we were unlucky with ours.

Only a few days after Maximus died, we moved to our current home, which is further away from the road than our previous house, with a long drive, and we decided to get two new cats – Ron & Reg (they’re brothers), who have now been with us for six years.  They are chalk and cheese in personality, often bicker, but mostly get on well, and never a day goes past when they don’t give us something to talk about or some sort of entertainment.

 

I hope I’m never without a cat in my life.

 

Journal Jar Q58. Describe Your First Home As A Young Couple

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I spent ages last night looking through old photo albums to try and find a photo of our first house in Torquay, but couldn’t find one.  This morning, I have discovered that I can embed photos from Google Street View into my blog by copying a nifty bit of code, which has pleased me no end.

I moved to from Bournemouth to Torquay to live with Ashley in 1995 – to this blue terraced house in a not-very-nice part of Torquay very close to Torquay United’s football ground.  Ashley had owned the house for several years, and had let out rooms to various friends and friends of friends to help pay the mortgage.

Before I moved in, I put my foot down regarding the tenants and made him get rid of the last two who were still living there.  I didn’t want to start life as a couple of living together feeling like I was going back to being a student in a shared house! When I moved in, I think the house would probably have been described by an estate agent as ‘having bags of potential’ or ‘a good buy for a DIY enthusiast’.

It had no central heating, a 1950s kitchen (no longer at its best), a downstairs bathroom, and next door neighbours on both sides who were, how shall I put it, interesting characters.  Housework was not Ashley’s strong point (still isn’t, funnily enough) and I remember spending DAYS scrubbing and cleaning and mopping (with his mother, who came to help me – we got on better in those days) just to make the place habitable.

But despite the basic accommodation, I have some happy memories of our time living at St Edmunds Road, and I remember a couple of great parties we had, too!  I can’t say I was sorry, though, when we moved to a cottage in the country in 1997.

Ashley still owns the house – it’s been rented out since we moved out – and it is the only house in the street still with its original windows and front door.  It still doesn’t have any central heating, but we have updated the kitchen, put in a shower room upstairs and had it re-roofed a few years ago.

It does look as if the outside needs painting, though, judging by this picture.  Must mention it to Ashley!

Journal Jar Q24. How did you like being the oldest child? What were the advantages/disadvantages?

This is a weird question, because being the elder/younger sibling just is what it is, isn’t it?  How do you know if you’d prefer being the other, when the only experience you have is of being the one?  Does that make sense?

Anyway, I have one brother, Nick, who’s four years younger than me, and I think it’s fair to say we have always had a fairly volatile relationship.  We didn’t get on at all well as children or teenagers, and even now at the ripe old ages of 43 and 39, we can revert to squabbling kid mode in a matter of seconds.  Thankfully, it’s far rarer these days, though.

Also thankfully, we both tend to blow up, say what we have to say, then forget it ten minutes later.  I can’t bear people holding grudges for ages and being moody.

Nick married a friend of mine, who he met at our wedding, Amanda, which I think has served to bring us closer together as well over the years.

So in answer to the actual question – I don’t know if I preferred being the older child or not.

And here, for your delectation and to make you laugh, are three photos of Nick and me in the early 80s (even more funny in light of yesterday’s post).  He’s gonna kill me ….

I bought those trousers on holiday in Turkey.  I wonder what happened to them.

Oh.  My.  God. (Wayne and Waynetta, eat your heart out)

I look OK, but Nick seems to be off to a line dancing class.

 

Journal Jar Q20. Describe Your Sundays as a Child

Obviously, Sundays were very different back then – the shops weren’t open, for a start!  It’s almost impossible to imagine that now, isn’t it?  Weird.

But it was kind of nice – Sunday really was far more of a ‘day of rest’ than it seems to be these days.

I don’t really remember specifically what we did on Sundays when I was young, although I did go to Sunday school for a while at Pinehurst Road Chapel, which is still there today.  I’m not quite sure what brand of Church it was, but from memory it was a bit ‘happy clappy’ – I remember learning a hymn to the tune of the Match of the Day theme tune!  I can even remember the words – amazing what the brain retains, isn’t it?

I also remember a period when we used to go for walks along the Dorset coast on a Sunday, and take a picnic lunch, which was fun.

And look at the photos – when I was a child, the weather really was always warm and sunny!

Journal Jar Q2: What Memories Have Of Being Ill As A Child?

As a young child, I don’t really remember being ill very much at all.  I do remember,  however, trying to pull the wool over my mother’s eyes and telling her I felt poorly when I fancied a day off school, though!

Never worked – you’d have had to be practically dying to be allowed to ‘pull a sicky’ in our household back in the day.

Mind you, I’m just the same with William now!

One thing I do remember about being ill was lying on the sofa with a pink blanket and eating soup and toast soldiers.  There wasn’t much in the way of daytime TV then, though, so I don’t know why I was on the sofa rather than in bed.

When I was about 15, I had glandular fever, and was really quite ill for a few weeks, and lost quite a bit of weight.  It was the only time in my life I could ever have been described as ‘thin’!

Typically, I was ill during the summer holidays – so once again, didn’t manage any time off school!

Journal Jar Q46. What’s The Best Present You’ve Received As An Adult?

Despite the fact that I’ve had some lovely presents over the years – diamonds and designer handbags spring to mind – my best present ever, received from Ashley for Christmas about 8 years ago, was my Dyson washing machine!

And before you – like all my friends did at the time – say ‘God, I’d KILL my husband if he bought me washing machine for Christmas’ – I did actually ASK him to buy it for me for Christmas.  And I was thrilled with it.

I could wax lyrical for hours  - and bore you rigid, no doubt – about the contra-rotating drums, the huge wash capacity which means I only have to do one whites and one coloureds wash most weeks, the pretty colours etc etc.

But I won’t.

I’m sure you’re all suitably relieved about that.

PS My iPad was a close second!

Journal Jar Q32. Did You Have A Part-Time Job As a Teenager?

My first part-time job was working in a small (and rather grotty) hotel in Bournemouth in 1984, the summer I did my O Levels.  I was a waitress/chambermaid/general dogsbody.

A school friend of mine, Frances, also worked there, and I remember when we used to finish work, we’d go shopping in town or to the beach, both of which were within walking distance.

I’ve just Googled the hotel, which was called The Silver How, and amazingly it is still there and still has the same name.  The dining room looks much the same as it did in my day, though it appears the bedrooms have (thankfully) been updated somewhat.

We used to get our wages – in cash – in little brown envelopes on a Friday morning after the breakfast shift, and it always felt great knowing I’d earned my own money.  I can’t remember exactly what we got paid per hour, but I think it was around the £2 mark.

That job only lasted for the summer season, as the hotel was closed in winter, and in September I started my A Levels, along with a job on the till in Safeways Supermarket (now Morrisons).  I worked two evenings after school from 4 till 8 and Saturday.  I loved that job, as there was always some sort of gossip going on in the staff canteen, lots of raucous nights out, and – as I recall – rather a lot of good-looking boys stacking shelves to ogle from my seat on the checkout!

Happy Days!

Journal Jar 37. Do You Believe in Astrology & Horoscopes?

Short answer: no.

Many years ago, my mother had a job in London working for an  “astrologer” who wrote the daily horoscopes in the Evening Standard.  There were many occasions, so my mother tells me, when he told her to reuse previously used horoscopes, or worse, write them herself!

So no, I definitely don’t believe in the predictions that appear in newspapers and magazines, and can honestly say that I haven’t read one for YEARS.

On the other hand, until today, I have always thought that there may be a grain or two of truth in the fact that our star signs (Virgo, if anybody’s interested) could be linked to certain character traits.

However, having done some very brief research on this,  I’m far less inclined than I was yesterday to even believe this any more, due to the hugely varied interpretations: one list of Virgo characteristics says I am ‘practical, methodical and organised’, while another says I am ‘untidy and creative’.

Hang on a minute – aren’t they the exact opposites of each other?! (I’m more like the first description, than the second, just for the record).

Another reason I haven’t got a lot of time for horoscopes is that the people who are keen on them tend to be wishy-washy-liberal-knit-your-own-yogurt types, who write things like this (taken from a website which shall remain nameless):

“Creative and sensitive, Virgos are delicate people who, like rare and special orchids, require individual treatment to fully blossom into their true unique beauty.”

Which just makes me want to stick a fork in my own eye, quite frankly.