Memoirs Of A Mother

Cars I Have Owned

2010-09-25T00:37:00.005+02:00

What inventions have particularly changed your "lifestyle"? How?

2009-06-05T00:12:00.001+02:00

There are two inventions that have changed my current lifestyle. One is my iPod and a docking station, which means that in my new job I can listen to decent music, not the same tired old playlist they trot out every day on Heart FM, Cheltenham’s radio station.

The second invention has apparently been around for a long time, I’ve just never seen one and I think it’s cool, although you’d probably think I’m sad for thinking that!

It’s called a potato ricer – it’s like a giant garlic press that you stick boiled ptatoes in, squash them, and hey presto – mashed potato! No lumps either!

See, I have a sad life – I really should get out more!

Did you ever receive a detention or other punishment at school, and if so, what for?

2009-03-29T01:50:00.003+01:00

Although I wasn't the best behaved child at school, I rarely received formal punishments.

When I was at prep school I fell out with the music teacher, I can't remember why, and he threw me out of the choir and the orchestra! I was a bit pissed off, because I really enjoyed them, but the worst thing was still to come. We were doing a school production of Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat. I had been cast as one of the brothers (due to a shortage of boys in our year who could sing), and my role was taken away from me! I ended up being an adoring girl, which is sooo not me! That annoyed me!

The following year though, we had a new music teacher so I was reinstated in the choir and the orchestra!

When I went to senior school in Edinburgh, I was a bit more badly behaved, as you may know! I got detention a few times, but I can't remember what for. The bad kids had to go to the library and sit there for an hour doing whatever they liked, but quietly! I think I read books mainly! It didn't have any lasting impact on me!

At school in Dumfries I only got one actual punishment. I was in a french class, which was taught by a bloke so young he must have been a college leaver, and didn't really have a clue how to control a class. I was talking too much, so he gave me a punishment exercise to do. He picked out the longest passage in our text book and told me to translate it, and give it to him when it was done. He didn't realise at this point that French was my best subject, and by the end of the class I not only handed him my class work, but also the punishment exercise completed and correct! I did feel smug about that one - I must have been a real pain in the arse for him!

Another time, some friends and I were caught smoking byt the headmaster, and we ran away. We were called to his office, and given a strict talking to, and all the while another friend was outside his window making funny faces at us! We were trying to look contrite, whilst simultaneously trying to hold in our laughter!

I never really worked very hard at school - languages came naturally to me, so I coasted through those exams. I did study for Biology and Chemistry, but I got bored with them and ended up re-reading all my Famous Five Books! I worked damned hard for Geography - we had a project to do which counted towards our final marks. I quite enjoyed doing it, but the teacher, who was disgusting (he once picked his ear and flicked the wax at a pupil in my class) went through my project, made corrections and suggestions and told me to edit it on the computer. He was most put out when I told him we didn't have a computer - he obviously thought that everyone did, and thought we weren't normal. This was 1993 - it wasn't that common then. My dad had typed it out for me, so we had to re-type the whole thing. That teacher's attitude stank.

I didn't get many punishments at school on a whole, apart from my one major low point which is in an earlier post either in this blog or the other one.

I was either pretty well behaved, or too smart to get caught!

You decide!

What was your school food like?

2009-03-23T01:01:00.000+01:00

My school food varied a lot. When I was at school in Malawi, I didn’t eat school meaks because we finished for the day at lunch time. At primary school in Scotland it was so-so as far as I remember – most of the time I took a packed lunch, which has left me with a life long hatred of sandwiches containing either tomato or cucumber, as they make the bread soggy!

When I started to be a weekly boarder at prep school I was introduced to some truly horrible school food! The yolks of boiled eggs could be used as bouncy balls! We had semolina and rice pudding which just looked like a dish of vomit with a bit of jam in the middle! Delicious!

Sometimes I could wake up in the morning and know what was for breakfast just by the smell that permeated the entire building. Kippers were particularly bad, as was eggy bread. I’m not a big fish eater, and if you read my other blog you’ll know how I feel about eggs! The smell was indescribably bad!

We did get some good meals, although these were few and far between. So few, that I actually can’t remember any of them! On our birthdays though, we were allowed to choose the pudding for that day. I always chose trifle, because the cooks were really good at that! There was very little custard used (which was great because I’m not a big fan), and tons of dream topping! We had to drop a little note outside the Headmaster’s flat the night before, so that he could inform the kitchen staff of our choice. It was the one nice thing about that school – a touch of home.

At senior boarding school in Edinburgh, the food was marginally better, although I tended to eat salads a lot because they were nicer than the normal main courses! We used to get these sticky buns, which are particular to Scotland I think. They were like bread rolls, with sticky pink icing on top! Sounds weird, but they were actually really nice.

Once I went to school in Dumfries, the quality of school meals dropped slightly. I’m sure there were other things on the menu, but I always had baked potato and cheese, or occasionally chips and cheese! Very healthy! Sometimes I wouldn’t eat anything because I’d spent my lunch money on cigarettes, but that’s another story!

All in all, I would say that my school meals were generally crap, and it didn’t matter whether it was a state or private school – it was still crap! Obviously, the massive fees that are paid by parents for their kids to get a good education, don’t make their way to the dining tables.

Were you often into mischief as a child? How strict were your parents?

2009-03-15T02:25:00.001+01:00

I didn’t get into much mischief when I was small. Incidentally, doesn’t it drive you mad when people say michievious instead of mischievous? It really irritates me!

Anyway, as I was saying, I was a pretty good kid. My parents weren't too strict – we lived in a small village, so until I could drive, having a curfew wasn't exactly an issue. And after that I was old enough to do what I wanted. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started getting into a bit of trouble.

The first time I was in serious trouble was at the private school in Edinburgh. Four of us were caught for smoking on the roof at night time. Some parent had driven past the school and seen four girls on the roof all smoking. Our dormitory was called down to the housemistress’s (complete and utter bitch) flat and we were made to confess our sins! She did that old psychology trick – “I know who it was so you may as well own up”. We did as well…what a bunch of mugs! Anyway, we were marched off to the sanatorium because we had to be quarantined for our badness! It might be catching! Our parents were called, and they came to get us the next day. We all had to go an see the headmaster, which was a bit of a waste of time – I can’t even remember what he said now. We had to pay a fine of £30 each (well, our parents did) which allegedly went to Cancer Research. I bet it didn’t though – it probably went to line the school coffers – grasping bunch of bastards. More on that in a sec. Anyway, it was the week before half term, so the four of us got two weeks instead of just one! Our names were read out in Chapel the following morning because we were so bad, and our names were up on the message board.

What drives me mad about that school, is that they keep sending me begging letters. Please donate to a scholarship fund, please donate to this, that and the other bloody fund. I wrote back to them last week telling them not to send me any letters as I wouldn’t donate to any fund in order to put someone else through the misery I suffered there.

That was my one major transgression. My mum told me that I should tell the housemistress when I got back to school that I had been to confession and that I had done my penance and that the priest had absolved me from my sins!

I was pretty good after that – the rest was general teenage stuff. I remember one weekend I stayed with my best mate in Dumfries. We went out for the evening, and because we were skint we went into the local off licence and bought cheap wine and sat by the river drinking it and getting pissed. We had told her dad we were at the pictures! Apparently we were late home, so he had gone out looking for us, and ended up following us back up the road. We were staggering and falling over and being generally pissed and extremely silly! We crept into the house, supposing that he was in the sitting room. My mate went off to the bathroom, and her dad knocked on the bedroom door. I opened it, holding myself up by the door handle on one side and the radiator on the other. He started to ask me about the film we had seen so I spouted some shite about a film I had read about, knowing full well that he knew I was lying but couldn’t seem to stop myself. He asked me if I expected him to believe me – that he’d been a justice of the peace for years and he could tell when someone was lying. So I admitted it and my mate came back into the room then – her dad said it would be a long time until we spent another weekend together. I was back the next weekend – but we were a little better behaved – or maybe we just hid it better!!

I think that’s the worst trouble I ever got into when I was younger – like I said, I was generally very well behaved, but even the best behaved kids can be a bit bad sometimes!!

A few questions for you.

2009-03-13T01:44:00.002+01:00

1. How old do you look? I think I probably look my age – 31.
2. Where do you live? SW France
3. Are you waiting for something? Yes, a job! Oh, and Mr Right would be nice too!
4. What’s one pet peeve of yours that is not common? The sound of other people eating.
5. Do you want/have kids? I have one amazing nine yer old daughter, and I would dearly love another child, but we’ll just have to wait and see!
6. Have you ever thought about converting your religion? No, I'm not too keen on the one I was baptised into – would never consider another one.
7. Last shocking news you heard? I couldn’t possibly tell you that – I know someone who would kill me – yes, you know who you are!!
8. What was the last thing you drank? Diet Coke – well, Diet Pepsi really because at the moment it’s so much cheaper – credit crunch and all!
9. Who do you most look like in your family? My mum
10. If you could have something right now, anything, what would it be? Some money so I could book my flight back from UK in April.
11. Where does most of your family live? All over the place – we are in France, some are in England, some in Jersey and some in the middle east.
12. Where did you grow up? Portsmouth, Malawi and SW Scotland
13. Where do you want to go on vacation? Anywhere that isn’t here really! I would love to go back to Japan and spend longer there, hire a car and get to see more than what we managed (admirably!) to squeeze into two weeks!
14. Have you ever had a panic attack or asthma attack? Panic attack no, asthma attack yes.
15. What can’t you wait for? At the moment I can’t wait for my little working holiday – a change of scenery will be fab!
16. When’s the last time you told someone you loved him or her and meant it? I tell Isla I love her all the time, and mean it obviously!
17. Have your parents ever smoked pot? My parents?? I don’t think so! My dad ate some by mistake in some brownies once – didn’t realise until someone told him afterwards!
18. Want someone back in your life? I would love someone in my life, but someone back in my life?? Nah, I don’t think so.
19. What do you order at the bar? Diet Coke, or occasionally Smirnoff Ice
20. When was the last time you cried really, really hard? Watching The Tudors, when Sir Thomas More was executed. I haven’t cried hard about anything personal for a long time.
21. Where were you on July 4th, 2008? I was dogsitting at the house of the shagging lovebirds.
22. What are your nicknames? Mummy, KTB, KatduGers
23. If you could go back in time, how far back would you go? Well, I’ve already been back to the 18th century this year – well, the way of living anyway when we had the storms ! I don’t think I’d have been much good before at least the sixties, as women were meant to be much more subservient then, and that just isn’t me! Never liked authority! Yeah, I think the sixties would have suited me – long hair, hippy tops, folk music – groovy!

Did you ever attend, or act in a play?

2009-03-07T17:27:00.002+01:00

When I was younger, my dad was in an Amateur Dramatics society in Malawi. The play I most remember him being in was Fiddler On The Roof, in which he was the Rabbi’s son – a not exactly major part, but one for which he had to grow his beard really long! All I can remember about it was that it was good, and that I spent most of the times being shushed by my mumbecause I kept singing along!

We used to go to pantomimes staged by the same AmDram Society, and they would always make cracks about having the world’s most unpopular man (my dad – the tax inspector!!) in the audience! It was all in good fun though!

I didn’t go to plays when I was at primary school in Scotland, but when I moved to the prep school we did school plays. I narrowly missed out on The Pirates Of Penzance, as I arrived a term after they had done that! The first play I had anything to do with was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – I was the understudy for the housekeeper and in charge of props! Not the most fulfilling role, but I made the fairy cakes that were used as props, so I got to eat them too! That fulfilled me enough! It might be sour grapes, but it seems to me now, that it was always the favourite kids who got the roles. It probably was too.

The year after that, we did Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat. This time I actually did get a decent role – I was meant to be one of the brothers, but I fell out with the music teacher so he demoted me to one of the Adoring Girls, and I had little more to sing than la la la! Bastard!

We didn’t get to go and see other plays at that school very often. I remember going to see a school production of My Fair Lady at a senior school in Edinburgh – I can’t for the life of me remember which one – and it was brilliant. The only downside to that was that we were put to sleep in their San (sick bay), and the mattresses in there were made or horse hair! I’m allergic to horses, so I had a great night’s sleep!! We did go to Edinburgh occasionally to see concerts in the Usher Hall – classical music mostly, and not hugely thrilling, but a good excuse to escape the confines of the school for a while!

At senior school I was sort of involved with a nativity play – I played my flute in the little orchestra that was accompanying some girl playing Mary singing some psalm or something. My memory on this is a little hazy – my best friend at the time and I had snuck off during the break, nicked a bottle of wine, necked it and staggered back to our places! So you’ll forgive me if my memory of that night isn’t quite as clear as it could be. At least I could sit down and pretend to play my flute – my mate had to stand on stage, and very wobbly she was too!!

As for what I went to see, the only one I remember is Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw. It was quite good, but I don’t remember the story. I think we also went to see Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard – but couldn’t swear to it!

At some point during this time – I can’t remember what year exactly – we went to a local village to see our local pantomime. It was dire – in fact, if you didn’t know better, you would have thought they were taking the piss. The highlight of the evening was winning a box of Black Magic in the raffle! I have never before seen anything so embarrassingly bad!

Once I was at school in Dumfries, that was it…no more plays! I was at a proper school – i.e. one that didn’t have its head up its own arse!

The only time I have been to the theatre since, was to the opera with my friend Moses – we went to Toulouse and saw The Marriage Of Figaro.

It was brilliant – I was amazed! I’ve never been a fan of opera, but I think what impressed me was that we got our own box for about €20 each, there was a small screen above the stage with subtitles so that we could understand, and I actually knew some of the music from it! I was pleasantly surprised!

I would love to see a West End show – Mamma Mia, Joseph or My Fair Lady would be brilliant.

Did you participate in any type of recreation or athletics?

2009-03-05T00:56:00.005+01:00

Surprisingly enough, the answer is yes! I was quite slim when I was younger, particularly when I was at school. My thyroid didn’t go up the creek until after my pregnancy!

When I was at primary school in Malawi I learnt to swim. Ever since, I’ve loved the water, and I’m an extremely strong swimmer. We used to have inter-school swimming galas, and they were great fun.

When I went to primary school in Scotland I played football, for a very short while! They always used to put me in goal, and I wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t enjoy it much! I played for the under tens Threave Rovers! I’ve got a medal somewhere, but I don’t know where. I mentioned this to my mum the other day, and she has no recollection of it at all! I thinked I only played once or twice!

When I went to prep school, I did lots of sports. I was brilliant at netball – again, I was always put in as goal keeper, but I was a pretty good goal shooter too. Occasionally I managed to play as Goal Attack, but it was more often goal keeper. I found it boring though, as I rarely got control of the ball. In the summer we used to play rounders, and I was bloody brilliant at that! I could whack the ball like the proverbial off the shovel, and earned the nickname Basher! Not very ladylike perhaps, but then I’ve never been what you’d call ladylike! I loved rounders! We also played tennis a bit, and I could hit the ball, but was never too sure of the rules! We had a swimming pool at that school, but in my years there it was more like a dark green pond! It was nasty, but on hot days, after a particularly sweaty game of rounders, we were all delighted to jump in and cool off. I also did some athletics – not the running around stuff – that’s never really been my thing – but more the field events. I was great at high jump, in particular, and long jump and shot putt. I could also do the 100m sprint, as it wasn’t too far! We did cross country there, and I truly hated it! My friend and I used to treat it as a country stroll! There would be these kids who would run around the course, and complete it in 11 minutes, but we’d be happy if we came in under half an hour!! We were never last though – there was always this other kid lagging behind us! My school report said "She is keen NOT to be known as an athlete"!!!!
At senior school (the private one) we did hockey and lacrosse, and I hated both of them. I couldn’t see the point of playing a stupid game, which made no sense to me, outside in the sun, rain or snow – and I mean that literally. I suppose it was meant to be character building – stern Scottish private school and all that! Well…bugger that for a game of soldiers!I was on the swimming team for that school though, and swam in quite a few matches. I narrowly missed out on a school trip to swim Lake Como in Italy because there wasn’t enough interest.

At my school in Dumfries we didn’t do a lot of sport. We had PE, and it always seemd to be tennis or badminton. My friend Lara and I used to play for a little while, and then sneak out the back to have a sly fag! Not very health conscious!!

Since school I haven’t participated in any team sports, unless you count darts which I don’t! I do a lot of swimming in the summer, and try to swim at least a kilometre a day, but preferably a mile. I walk the dogs around a local lake, and sometimes (but not as often as I should) work out on the cross trainer and exercise bike.

Swimming is best though!

What sports did you do, and which ones did you love or hate?

NB. Pictures Not My Own Work.

Where do all your blog readers come from?

2009-02-24T03:27:00.002+01:00

To see where all my visitors come from, take a look at this post on my other blog, Random Ramblings and Recipes.

If you had the opportunity to change anything in your life, what would it be?

2009-02-24T02:01:00.000+01:00

Ooh, is this a bit like “What would you do it you won the lottery?”!!

Well, my perfect life would be…

Enough money to be comfortable – not having to worry about where the next penny is coming from.

Isla and I would live in Scotland during the summer and autumn, and somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere during the winter. I would have found the perfect man who loves me desperately, and adores Isla as if she were his own. We would also maybe have another couple of children by then. I already have a boy’s name figured out, so I’ve made one tiny step towards that goal!!

During my time in Scotland, I would donate my time to walking dogs from shelters. I would also be able to reconnect with old friends, and make new ones.

Not sure what I would do about Isla’s schooling in this dream existence, but it’s a dream, so reality isn’t important!

I would have a few dogs – a black lab, and golden lab, a golden retriever and maybe a Bernese Mountain Dog. Which obviously would have passports and get used to flying a lot!

It’s a dream right…none of it absolutely HAS to make sense!

Do you enjoy participating in music, art, gardening, needlework, sewing, carpentry, mechanics, etc.? Which members of the family did these activities?

2009-02-21T02:43:00.007+01:00

I’ve never really been one for hobbies and the like – mainly because none have ever appealed to me enough to spend very much time doing them!

I learnt various musical instruments when I was younger – see here for my post on that. I was never passionate about any of them though.

My mum has always been good with a sewing machine, and has done various things with one, the most recent being a pool cover for our neighbour and friend, and recovering the armchair in my bedroom. She’s very clever with it, and can do beading and all sorts of things! I’ve never had the inclination to learn – I don’t have the patience for that sort of thing. She also knits, and does a very natty line in Arran jumpers, which I lived in when I was younger, and Isla had loads when she was smaller. She hasn’t knitted for a while – but is hopefully going to knit new jumpers for Isla and me for next winter.

My dad is great at carpentry. He makes great cupboards and wardrobes, and the next project I think will be new cupboards for the kitchen – which is in serious need of work! The only thing we’ve done to the kitchen since we’ve been here is to plaster and paint it – we are lacking in cupboard space and work surface! It’s amazing what we manage to do, cooking wise, in there, but it would be fab to have a lovely new kitchen!

I do the odd bit of gardening – as in, not very much at all! Every spring I buy new herb plants, because I love cooking with fresh herbs. The taste is so different to dried ones. I would also love to know more about herbal remedies. I have tried a couple before – and infusion of rosemary for a headache made me seriously ill, and an hot oil treatment for my hair left me smelling like a roast lamb! Sharpens the appetite, but only for food! Not exactly an attractive fragrance unless it’s emanating from the oven! Anyway, I plant my herbs out every year, and sometimes they grow, and sometimes they don’t! I don’t exactly have green fingers. I always say to people when I’m house sitting that I’m good with animals, but plants have a tendency to commit suicide when I’m around!

Something I don’t mind doing is card making. My mum makes lovely cards, for all occasions, should you ever need one! She can sit for hours and make cards, whereas I need to wait for inspiration and can do it for maybe an hour. All our Christmas cards are homemade, and that’s a mega marathon in about November. The card below is one I made for Isla's 9th birthday last year. She adores Hello Kitty!

My favourite thing, although I wouldn’t class it as a hobby, is photography. The reason I wouldn’t class it as a hobby is that I have had some paid work, so I would say I’m about 5% professional! For an example check out this website of a gîte I photographed nearby. It’s a beautiful house, in a lovely area. Go on, check it out and book a holiday. I dare you!

My favourite photography subjects are people. I love natural photography - none of that studio stuff, and I use natural lighting, mainly because I can't afford anything else! The photo I'm posting below is of a close friend of mine - she won't mind me posting - she signed a model release years ago! She's one of the most photogenic people I know.
I also spend hours photographing Isla, and she gets so sick of it! The dogs are great subjects too, but it takes ages to get great photos as labradors and newfs rarely stay still! The picture below is one of Isla at about 3 or four, and one of our old Pyrenean Mountain Dog, Ben.NB. All Photographs My Own Work except Thyme and Basil.

Describe the saddest time in your life.

2009-02-20T02:51:00.000+01:00

The saddest time of my life was probably 1992. I was 15, and at school, in my Standard Grade year.

My grandfather had two cousins, J and E. Grandma worked with J during the war, which was how she met my Grandad. She got to know E and they were all great friends. When my grandparents were overseas, and my mum and her brother were at boarding school, they used to stay with Aunty J during their half terms. Aunty E had a husband and daughter of her own, but AJ and her husband had never been blessed with children, which was a great pity as she would have been a truly wonderful mother.

So, AJ and AE were always known as Aunties – and they were much loved by all of us. For me, it was like having two extra grandmothers. In 1992 AE discovered that she had cancer. She got sicker and sicker, and eventually she couldn’t live alone any more. Her daughter, L, was living with her husband in Scotland, quite near to us, by then, so it was decided that she should come up to Scotland to spend her final months. My mum and L went south to collect her in our Ford Sierra estate. They had discussed her being transported to Scotland by ambulance, but the logistics of that were just ridiculous. They would have had to change ambulance at EVERY county border, and it wasn’t feasible. They put down the back seats in the Sierra and put a mattress, duvet and pillows in there for AE. They then gave her sleeping tablets so that she could sleep for most of the 8hr journey. It went without a hitch, and they reached Scotland safely.

While AE was in Scotland, her sister, AJ, came up to visit her, along with her 84yr old live in lover, UC. She had discovered, while all this had been going on, that she too had cancer and it was terminal. I think they both had stomach cancer. She stayed with us while she was there, as it would have been too much for L to deal with.

AE died in August. I didn’t go to the funeral – I discussed it with my mum and she said she didn’t think it was necessary that I went, but it was up to me to decide. She was cremated, and I’ve always hated the idea of cremation. I didn’t think I could deal with that, so I didn’t go. I think I made the right decision.

After the funeral, my mum talked with AJ to find out what she wanted to do. They discussed her going home to her flat in the south of England, with no family around to support her and an overloaded health care system as opposed to her staying with us in Scotland, with all her family around and an excellent health care system. We all decided, as a family, including AJ and LIL UC (live in lover UC), that she would stay, and I think that she was relieved by the decision.

However, it meant a shift around in bedrooms. My mum asked Grandma to stay to help her (remember, I was only 15), so she had the small bedroom upstairs. I still had my room, as my mum thought it was necessary to try to preserve some normality for my sake. We transformed the study downstairs into a bedroom for AJ and UC, and they had sole use of the living room. Sole use mainly because there was no way we could listen to the TV at the same volume as UC, or put up with him squeaking his shoes or listen to his squealing hearing aid, which obviously didn’t work. We sat every evening on stools in the kitchen, or I went to my bedroom.

They stayed with us for five months. It was hard. This much loved aunty was dying before our eyes, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. She had several heart attacks, and stayed several times in the terminal ward in the local hospital, which was fantastic. Her care couldn’t have been better. Our doctors were fantastic, and close to the end, we had a Marie Curie nurse come in overnight to make sure she was ok. Several times, I went straight from school to the hospital to meet my mum there.

There were some “up” times during this period. I remember when it was UC’s birthday – I promised to make him a birthday cake, and duly set about doing it. I had all the ingredients in the bowl of the Kenwood Chef, went to get a couple of eggs from the fridge, cracked them into the bowl only to discover that they were hard boiled!! If you read both of my blogs, you will understand how I feel about eggs, so this was a major disaster! I literally had to start again, as I couldn’t make a cake that had been contaminated with cooked eggs! It gave everyone a good laugh!

Also, UC was a bit forgetful I think, and a couple of times a week he would bung me a fiver! He kept me in cigarettes all that time, and I have to say I did need them to stay sane. I know, I was only fifteen, but I think it kept me calm. My mum had no idea at the time, although she does now.

I must have been more stressed than I realised, because I didn’t have a period during the whole time they were there. I was delighted at the time, but looking back, it shows that I was actually having a tough time, only not admitting it.

We did try to make their time with us a bit fun – we took them to some local botanical gardens and various other places, and made sure we got out and about a little, while AJ was still up to it.

It about October, my mum contacted a few family members to tell them to come now, if they wanted to see her. They did come – my aunt came back all the way from Saudi Arabia, and AJ knew nothing about it, until she walked into her hospital ward. She was so pleased – she kept telling all the nurses how far her niece had come to see her. She must have known why, but as far as I know, she always tried to keep her spirits up. Possibly, alone with UC or my mum she didn’t, but I was never aware of it.

She died in November, 13 weeks after AE had died. My mum had asked her what she wanted, and it was to be buried in our local cemetery, which was outside the village, in the most peaceful spot imaginable.

We had the church service in our local town, and the man that did the eulogy was UC’s son, who she had known since he was a little boy. It was possibly the best thing he ever said. By the time we got to Abide With Me, no one could sing.

In the cemetery quite a few people from the village had come, as well as family, to pay their respects, although no one knew her well because she hadn’t been there that long. It was a sunny day, but absolutely freezing – that Scottish cold that goes right through to your bones.

L had a headstone erected a little while later, which had both AJ’s and AE’s names on it. Simple, but lovely.

I have never experienced anything that was as hard to go through, or as sad, as those few months, and I hope I never do again. Is was exceedingly painful for the entire family, not only because we lots both of them within such a short time of each other, but because it was long and protracted, and they went through such pain.

I think it made all of us stronger. Some good came out of it – my mum went back to redo her nurses training after almost thirty years. Unfortunately, she didn’t quite get to qualify as her back let her down, as it had done thirty years before. But, she’s an almost nurse, and much better and more empathetic than any nurse I have seen. She’s a born nurse, and it’s a great pity that twice, she didn’t get to complete her course.

Did you learn a hobby or craft as a child or teenager? Did you continue to use it as an adult?

2009-02-19T03:33:00.002+01:00

When I was a child, I was never any good at art. I couldn’t draw to save myself – still can’t! I could, however, do calligraphy. I can’t remember how old I was, possibly around 10 or 11 – my mum and dad bought me some calligraphy pens and some beautiful paper to practice on. I got quite good, and could do several styles of font I suppose you’d call it.
Eventually, instead of making me draw or paint in Art class at prep school, the teacher gave in and let me design the signs for open days, parents’ evenings and school plays etc. I was delighted with this, because it was something I could do and I didn’t feel like such an idiot.

I don’t do it now though. Computers come with so many fonts, and you can always download them free, so there’s really little point. It was a nice skill to have acquired though.

When I was in my teens, and new ice rink opened up in Dumfries. So, for a few moths it became the cool place to be seen, and every Friday and Saturday night it was full of teenagers trying to look cool while falling over on the ice!I loved it so much that my Grandma gave me a pair of ice skates for either Christmas or my birthday one year. The only problem was that I was crap at skating! I could skate around the rink ok without falling over, but I could do the cool skiddy stop thing, like all the little kids who’d whizz past me if I was daft enough to go during the day. As far as I was concerned, that what the walls were for – crashing into!
The fad only lasted a few months – I eventually sold my skates and gave it up. It knackered my ankles, and kind of stopped being the cool thing to do. In fact, I think we graduated from the ice rink to the pub!

Did you or any of your family sing or play musical instruments?

2009-02-17T01:17:00.004+01:00

When I was little and at primary school I learnt the recorder like everyone else did! I was rubbish though! I found it really hard to learn to read music, and consequently I was always about half a note behind everyone else. I used to sit next to my best friend, and I always watched what she did so that I could do the same. It didn’t matter – no one noticed – the music teacher was completely tone deaf! Bizarre – I can’t understand why a tone deaf person would become a music teacher!
I remember when I was about 7 or eight, we were doing a school play, and the recorder group were playing. The teacher asked us if any of our parents played, and to my mum’s abject horror, I put my hand up and volunteered her! She hadn’t played for about 30yrs. To make matters worse, she had to play a tenor recorder which, although it has the same fingering, is about twice the size of a normal descant recorder! She wasn’t best pleased! On that night, there were two of us half a note behind everyone else!

When I got a bit older, once we were back in Scotland, I started to learn the clarinet. I hated it. Every time I played it I ended up with a headache, and I hated the feel of the reed, so I gave that up pretty soon.When I moved school though, to the prep school, I started to play the flute, which I quite enjoyed. Oh, I also started piano lessons, but I hated the teacher, couldn’t get my hands coordinated enough and used to hide my music and pretend I had lost it! I gave it up after a term!I carried on with the flute though. I moved to senior school in Edinburgh and carried on learning there, with a wishy washy teacher who again I didn’t like much, but it wasn’t worth trying to run rings around her! When I went to school in Dumfries I couldn’t carry on with it, so my mum found the phone number of my original flute teacher from my prep school, and she taught me and a couple of friends privately. She was a great teacher, and made me want to learn. I got up to Grade 5, by the skin of my teeth! She told me that when I went into the exam, the first thing I should do, before even getting my flute or music out, was to put my inhaler on the music stand! I’ve always had very mild asthma, and the only thing it has ever really affected was my breathing when I played the flute. Anyway, the ruse worse, and I scraped a pass. I didn’t carry one after that, mainly because I had to study (ahem) for my Highers and after Grade 5 you have to learn theory as well and take a test on that, but also because I really wasn’t that good. I had finally learnt to read music though!!

I still play sometimes, although it must be over two years since the flute saw the light of day. It normally happens if I’m drunk, and it’s really not very impressive!

My dad used to play the guitar, sort of! He played it so often that when we left Malawi we gave the guitar to our gardener who then taught himself!He also played the banjo when he was much younger, and played in a skiffle group. This was well before he met my mum though.
I often wish I had learnt to play the guitar – it a much cooler instrument than the flute! I love singing, and, well, it’s a tad hard to sing when you’re playing the flute. I think being able to play the guitar is a real asset.

NB. Photos Not My Own Work.

Did you like to read? What were your favourite books as a child? As an adult?

2009-02-11T14:54:00.007+01:00

I have always loved to read – I am a voracious reader. When I was young I read all of the Famous Five books, and most of Enid Blyton’s other books. My favourites were the Adventure books, Mr Galliano’s Circus books and the Faraway Tree books. Pure fantasy and well written enough to grab the attention of a child!

I had very few other things to entertain me, so reading was a lifeline. I have always been able to completely lose myself in a book, especially if it is unputdownable! To such an extent that I actually lose consciousness of the world around me and lose myself in the world of the book!

After Enid Blyton I read a couple of Michele Magorian books – Goodnight Mr Tom and Back Home. They were excellent. And like most girls of my age at the time, I loved Sweet Valley High! Such great teenage books!

My favourite books now are written by Diana Gabaldon. To learn more about them, go to her website, blog or Compuserve forum. They are brilliantly well written, and make you laugh, cry, sit on the edge of your seat, and, just occasionally, totally sob your heart out! If you don’t believe me, give them a go. You won’t regret it, I promise! All are available from most bookshops, except An Echo In The Bone which has yet to be published - Autumn 2009 hopefully.

I also like Lesley Pearse, Jilly Cooper and Jackie Collins (for pure trash!)!

What were your favorite foods?

2009-02-11T14:15:00.001+01:00

I’ve had lots of favourite foods over the years! I think my most favourite meal must be a full roast dinner – beef or chicken. Complete with roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, stuffing and vegetables and gravy.
I also really like samoussas – see my other blog for recipes – and Chinese food. And Italian!

What neighborhood gatherings do you recall?

2009-02-08T10:00:00.001+01:00

In the village where we lived in Scotland we had a ceilidh at Christmas time, in the village hall, for a couple of years. A ceilidh is a social gathering, involving traditional music and dancing. In history, it was any social gathering, but nowadays there is generally music and dancing.These were brilliant. We would have a band on the stage, with a caller. The caller explains the dance to the party goers, and talks them through it until they have got the hang of it. If you have never had the opportunity to do Scottish Country dancing, I suggest you give it a go. It is fun. I don’t normally dance – I hate discos etc because I can’t dance. However, Scottish Country dancing has rules and particular steps and involves flinging your partner around as hard as possible, and the more alcohol you consume, and the more dances you do, the more bruises you will end up with at the end of the night!

We also had a couple of village fêtes – these were held in a field at the bottom of the village. All I can remember about this is that we played a game called nurdling. You get a biggish log, and lie a long stick across it. With another stick you whack the sticking up end of the stick across the log, and the person who whacks it the furthest, wins.

We also used to go out Christmas carolling every year. There were four of us who played the flute, and my uncle played guitar. We would go up and down the village every Christmas Eve for about 5 or 6 years playing and singing carols, and collecting money for our local Adult Training Centre which was for disabled people.

Apart from that, there really weren’t any gatherings. Villages these days don’t seem to have the community spirit of years gone by, which is very sad.

What cars have you owned or driven?

2009-02-07T16:32:00.010+01:00

Renault 11 - this is the car I learnt to drive in. It was a crappy old car - if you accelerated too hard the accelerator would stick - instant cruise control!! To unstick it you had to put the clutch down and rev it really hard!

Austin Metro - this was my first car. It cost me £500 and lasted for about two years before it blew up! Might have had something to do with the fact that it was only a 1 litre engine, and I could get speeds of up to about 95mph out of it before it started shuddering too much!

Ford Ka - my first decent car. I used money that Grandma had saved up for me since I was born to go towards the deposit, and the first year's finance was paid for as my 21st birthday present. Lovely little car, but difficult to get a baby car seat and buggy in and out of!

Vauxhall Frontera - my dad's 60th birthday present. Great car, great workhorse, and by the time it got taken away last year to a scrap yard it didn't owe us a thing.
Vauxhall Corsa - my mum's old driving school car. I also had this car in Edinburgh when they moved to France, as it was more convenient and practical with a baby being a five door car. This is the car I mainly drive now, and is also the car that I will take back to UK if/when I go back.

I had an MG Midget briefly. Well, I had it for about three years, spent an absolute fortune on it, and eventually decided to sell it as it was costing me far too much to run. I loved it, but couldn't afford it - it was too high-maintenance! I sold it on eBay, complete with loads of photographs, explaining that yes it did have rust - being a 30 year old car an all. Some bloke in Ireland bought it, I had it transported back to Scotland, he turned up to collect it and refused to. Apparently it was not roadworthy, desite having the French equivalent of an MOT. So, I ended up getting it scrapped in Scotland, but I did keep the guy's deposit. I complained to eBay, but nothing happened. So my lovely little sports car ended up as a small chunk of metal. Ah well, such is life! It was a nice fun car to have for a while, but I wouldn't have a classic car again. Too much like hard work, and too expensive.
Peugeot 807 - our family car now. It doesn't currently look like this, being bereft of a windscreen thanks to Hurricane Klaus! Lovely car to drive, comfortable and great on fuel. We don't have the seven seats, just five, as for us it isn't a people carrier, but a puppy carrier! The boot is a great size for 1 Newf and 2 Labs - gives them plenty of space to lie down comfortably.

So, what cars have you owned?

NB. Photographs not my own work, except the MG Midget.

Are there any special heirlooms, photos, bibles or other memorabilia that have been passed down in your family?

2009-02-07T16:15:00.002+01:00

I have done quite a lot of research into our family tree. I was inspired by all the family photographs that we have, dating back to 1895 – my grandmother’s father at about 5 years old. Grandma had all these photos in her flat, and a few years ago my mum went through all of them with her and put them all in to date order, worked out who was who and put them all into albums. It’s an amazing piece of family history. Grandma also has a lot of family birth certificates I think, and I’m sure she has more old photographs in her flat.
Apart from that, we don’t have anything that’s been passed down. We don’t have any antiques or heirlooms or legacies or anything.

But I think the photographs are amazing, and wouldn’t swap them for some old bit of tat masquerading as an antique!!

Are there any physical characteristics that run in your family?

2009-02-07T16:02:00.001+01:00

There are no particular attributes that run in our family – nothing like big noses or anything. Most of us have hazel eyes, but that’s about it. Our family genes are very strong though – when members of our family have children it is almost always our genes which are the dominant ones. Thank goodness, or Isla would have ended up with a big nose!!

The Great Storm

2009-01-27T02:18:00.001+01:00

Thank you to Joocey, who updated my blogs for me while I was off the grid! To find out about The Great Storm, go to my other blog, which you will find here!

Memoirs of a Mother will continue, just as soon as I have got rid of this rotten cold!

Stormy Weather

2009-01-25T16:59:00.000+01:00

I'm writing this on behalf of Mademoiselle duGers, since she has not a jot of electricity, water or telecommunications. (Thanks to those infernal nasty storms that have been battering France and Spain.) Hence she has nothing with which to access her internet. Poor thing. Its a bit like the 18th Century, by all accounts, except that she does have a rather handy swimming pool to get water from, and a gas cooker to boil some water. So at least a cup of tea (albeit slightly chlorinated) is possible.

Fear not, though - I'm sure normal memoirs service shall return shortly.

When did you first drive a car? Officially and unofficially?

2009-01-18T02:28:00.003+01:00

We used to go into the Forestry areas regularly to “borrow” wood for the fire! We never took logs from piles, but instead took the bits that the Forestry Commission didn’t want. The wood was pine, so it burnt fast and hot, so we had to use coal as well.

I’m getting away from the point though!

We would drive up into the forests, with the dogs. We went wood hunting in all weathers, but made a dog walk out of it as well. From the age of about 12, our outings became driving lessons as well. Because the forests were empty at the weekends, and had extremely well maintained dirt roads, it was a perfect place to learn the basics of driving. Within just a few weeks, I was driving quite happily (albeit only up to 3rd gear!) through the Forestry Commission forests.

When I got to 17 (UK legal driving age), and started driving lessons I could already drive, but had never had experience on actual roads. So the basics could be skipped. My mum had actually been a driving instructor when I was a baby, so what I had learnt was the right and proper way to drive. All I needed lessons for was for confidence, and to learn the manoeuvres that would enable me to pass my test. My mum insisted that I learnt to drive in Dumfries, rather than our more local town of Castle Douglas, as it was a bigger town and had more than one zebra crossing and set of traffic lights! Castle Douglas is a pretty basic town!

I had lessons on and off for just over a year – depending on whether we could afford the lessons or not! Every day though, I drove into Dumfries where I went to school, and my dad worked. I got loads of practice.

I passed my test not long after I was 18, and got my first car a few months after that, thanks to some money left to me by an aunt. It was a banger, but I firmly believe that everyone’s first car should be a banger, because everyone knackers their first car, and I was not different!

That’s for another post though I think. Cars I have owned!

What about you? What age did you start driving and what was your first car?

NB. Photographs Not My Own Work

Have any recipes been passed down to you from family members?

2009-01-16T23:58:00.002+01:00

My dad has an ancient, probably antique, Good Housekeeping recipe book – it is in a red cover, and is like my bible! There are loads of great recipes in there, mostly traditional, and I have taken loads of my recipes from there.

As you know, I was a chef, and still am occasionally, and still, I refer to this to check on cooking times for meats etc.

There are a few others that have been passed down to me like the Chocolate Fridge Cake, which is a recipe that was given to my mum years ago by a friend in South Africa. There’s also gingered cucumber, salmon mousse, and a lovely one that was a recipe of my dad’s cousin who died 9 years ago with coconut and jam! It’s very tasty. Most of my cooking skills were taught to me by my mum as my Grandma has never liked cooking. She was a very good cook – I have never tasted, or never liked any mashed potato but hers! Even I can’t get it that good! Grandma still cooks for herself, but only simple things as she’s getting older, her sight is getting worse, and she doesn’t like cooking with oil.

I remember when I was little, she had this really cool thing given to her by, I think, the Blind Society – whatever it’s real name is! Royal National Institute for the Blind or something. It was a little yellow thing, longer on one side, that you popped into a cup and when you had filled the cup up with boiling water is made a bleeping sound to show that it was full enough. She hardly ever used it, but I thought it was cool!

Anyway, to get back to the topic, here is a link to just some of my recipes.

Who was the oldest relative you remember as a child? What do you remember about them?

2009-01-06T00:13:00.002+01:00

The oldest relative in my family is, and always has been, my Grandma. She’s still around, at 88, and going strong despite fracturing her hip last year.

I’ve always taken a great interest in talking to her about her life, and about her parents and what she remembers about other relatives. I’m quite keen on genealogy – I love to know how we became who we are and where we came from. I’ve got back to about the beginning of the 1800’s, and can’t get any further without consulting parish records in Devon, of all places.

Anyway, my Grandma was born in Ireland in 1920, less than two years before the civil war. Her mother was a teacher, who married an English soldier. To be fair, I don’t think he was a soldier when they married, I think he was working for Ford by that time, but even so…she was bloody brave to marry an Englishman at a time when they were hated so much.

They lived in Ireland until Grandma was about 6, and moved back to England, because her father could get a better job there.

They lived in Devon for a while, but ended up living in Portsmouth, and were living there by the outbreak of WW2. Portsmouth was one of the most bombed places in Britain, due to the fact that it has (had?) the largest Naval dockyard in the country. Grandma was evacuated out to W Sussex, to an old country house, along with the rest of the staff from her office. It was something to do with the war office. They were meant to do the fire watch every night, but ended up going to the pub instead! Who knows what would have happened if a stray incendiary had dropped and a fire had happened – “oops, sorry sir, we were in the pub”! What I want to know is why the hell did they have someone on fire watch who couldn’t see! Grandma is registered blind now, but her sight has never been good!

She met my Grandad through a friend in the office, and within six weeks they were engaged. It must have been awfully romantic at the time. It wasn’t done in haste for any other reason apart from the fact that they were in love. The war was over (anyway, the furthest overseas my Grandad went was the Isle of Wight!), and she was a good girl!

They had three children, and lived in Singapore, where my Grandad was a teacher working as a civilian within the RAF. They lived at a place called Seletar and my mum went to Changi Grammar School – this was in the 60’s. Then they moved on to Tanzania, then Malawi, then back to UK. This was how my mum met my dad, and ended up going back to live in Malawi.

Anyway, Grandma spends quite a lot of time with us, and it’s really good to get her talking about “the olden days”. It’s interesting, and I love hearing about what she got up to during the war, what it was like to live through that, and what it was like then. If we don’t ask her, there is no one else to tell us from a personal perspective. Books are all very well, but they lack the personal glimpse into another life.

How is the world today different from what it was like when you were a child?

2009-01-02T23:58:00.006+01:00

The world today is so completely different to the one in which I grew up that it is almost unrecognisable, at least in terms of communication and travel.

Obviously, on sight, most things look much the same, but scratch just below the surface and things are completely different.

When I was growing up, life for children was very innocent. Maybe that was because of my circumstances – living an expatriate life and growing up with children only from my parents’ peer group and social strata probably created quite a protected and privileged childhood. We weren’t aware of bad things happening – life was just fun and we didn’t have to think about anything more important than the fact that it was difficult to get toys there. We didn’t even have television, so world news didn’t impinge upon our lovely, happy little world.

Now, I would say that almost everyone has a telephone, most people have mobile phones, and most people have the Internet and email, so contact is instantaneous. Everyone has a means of accessing the latest news, up to the last minute, be it on satellite TV, the internet or mobile phone access. The world has become a much smaller place than it used to be – when I was small one could write a letter, post it, it may take weeks to reach its destination, then the recipient had to reply, post and again it may take weeks to reach the recipient. Now, one writes and email, it is delivered instantly into the recipients inbox, whereupon he/she reads it and replies. It can now be done in less than five minutes.

Other areas of technology have improved as well. When I was small, the idea of a videophone was very futuristic and space age, but now with the advent of applications like Skype and MSN, it is in every day use.

My parents used to listen to music on vinyl records and on reel to reel tapes. In my life we have moved on to cassette tapes, cd’s and mp3’s, and then onto mp3 players and iPods that even show photos and videos. We didn’t even have a video player until I was about 8, and it was rare that people had them. Now, most people have dvd players, or watch films on their computers or online. We had a ZX Spectrum 16k – now we have computers with more power and space than was ever dreamt of back then. Even my mobile phone has more memory on it than our first proper pc.

Travel is also easier and cheaper than it was. When I was small it was a big thing to move overseas, or even to holiday abroad. I had friends at school in UK who had never left the country. Now, I would say that most people have been on holidays abroad, even if it’s only to France or Spain. It’s not even that big a deal to move overseas permanently, with people leaving Britain in droves.

Life for me now, is completely different to life for my parents. If there is something I want to buy for Isla that I do not have access to here, I can go online and order it. My parents couldn’t do that.

All in all, I think that technology has helped our lives in so many ways. Yes, it is a very different life, but it is better. In my opinion.
NB. Photographs Not My Own Work

Do you remember any fads from your youth? Popular hairstyles? Clothes?

2009-01-02T22:51:00.005+01:00

Legwarmers Earmuffs Slouch Boots Snap bracelets Denim shorts with black tights

(never a good look!) Tie dye

(I still like it, but then I think I was a hippy in a past life!)

Smurfs Wacaday and Timmy Mallett

Theer were some pretty terrible hairstyles around in the 80's, when I was growing up. One of the worst was the Deirdre Barlow bubble perm (Coronation Street), especially when twinned with the massive specs and sunglasses that were so "in" then!

Some other terrible ones I remember were the mullet (obviously), the side pony tail, crimped hair and BIG hair complete with Farrah Fawcett syle flicks, although that may have been more seventies than 80's!

I missed out on a lot of the fashions, toys and programmes from the 80's because we didn't have TV in Malawi - in fact it tok a long time to learn anything from the outside world (before the days of the internet etc and the telephone was extremely expensive - we didcn't find out about the Falklands Was until it was over), so I only remember from 1986 onwards, but that's enough to know that the 80's were a completely taste free decade!

NB. Photographs Not My Own Work

Did you have family chores? What were they? Which was your least favorite?

2009-01-02T01:34:00.003+01:00

I certainly didn’t have to do any chores when I was very small – up to 9yrs old anyway! In Malawi we had servants. Malawi had a very poor economy (it’s much worse now than it was 20 odd years ago) and most expatriates had servants. We had a garden boy and a house boy – god, it sounds so un-pc now!

Julio was the house boy/cook and he was great. He actually started as our gardener, but when we sacked the old house boy that my dad had before we arrived (I think it was after he managed to serrate all my mum’s Sabatier knives and scrubbed the Teflon coating off the sandwich toaster as well as loads of other things) Julio got promoted! My mum taught him how to cook and he was brilliant. Raymond was our gardener and he was about 7’ tall with feet about size 14 (UK size). There were servants quarters away from the house, and they lived there with their wives and children. They were paid a wage, they had a home and my mum and dad paid all of their medical bills, paid school fees for their children and paid for food and clothing. My mum also told them that if they stole from them they would be sacked, but if they were hungry or needed anything, all they had to do was ask.

Anyway, to get back to the point, I never even made my bed until I was 9 and we went back to UK! My mum would tell me to tidy my room, and Julio would step in and do it, telling my mum that I was only a little girl!!

Moving to UK was a shock to the system – suddenly I had to do things for myself! I had to learn how to make a bed, didn’t have anyone else to tidy my room, and as I got older I obviously had to do more and more things for myself! Looking back, it’s probably a good thing that we left when I was that age, otherwise I’d have become a real spoilt brat, unable to do anything! Maybe it’s why I’m still quite messy though!

When my cousin and I were about 11 and 12 we got rabbits. He was living with us during term time then as we were both weekly boarders at a nearby prep school, and his parents were overseas. We begged my mum one day if we could have a rabbit each, and to our immense surprise, she agreed! We had to clean those cages once a week, and it was a horrible job. That’s the main reason I’ve never bought Isla a rabbit – I hated the cleaning so much! NB. Photographs Not My Own Work

Happy New Year, Bonne Année, Feliz Año, Prosit Neujahr, Gelukkige Nuwejaar, Bliadhna Mhath Ur

2009-01-01T02:13:00.001+01:00

Have a Wonderful, Happy & Prosperous 2009!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noël, Feliz Navidad, Fröhliche Weihnachten, Geseënde Kersfees & Nollaig Chridheil!

2008-12-25T01:55:00.001+01:00

Merry Christmas Everybody!

What was your favorite thing to do for fun (movies, beach, etc.)?

2008-12-15T00:10:00.000+01:00

We had so many things to do for fun when I was growing up.

As I have mentioned (possibly in my other blog, Random Ramblings and Recipes) we often went to the Lake for a weekend, or more sometimes. That was fantastic – it was like a paradise. There were two or three cottages we used to stay in – one was the Namingomba Cottage, another the Cook’s Cottage, and the third was the Brown and Clapperton’s Cottage.

In the latter we had to make sure all the doors and windows were closed otherwise the monkeys would get in and steal our food! They also had three geese (or ducks, but if they were ducks they were bloody massive!) who always walked around as though they were one! At breakfast time the cook would go out to the back of the house and pick the grapefruit, and at drinks time he would go out and pick the lemons.

The beach at that particular cottage was entirely private, surrounded by rocky outcrops. We had it all to ourselves. It was magical, and it was truly a paradise.

Apart from going to the Lake, we would also go to game reserves, but that was more a passion of my dad’s at the time. Had I been the age I am now I would have appreciated it so much more – I could have waited for hours in hides just to get that perfect shot – photographic, not bullets!

We also went to the drive-in cinema quite often. We had a VW Combi, which was incredibly cool and…oh god, I just realised it probably wasn’t that retro then – I must be getting old! Anyway, it had an extended roof on it, so you could actually stand up inside to your full height. It didn’t fit through the barrier at the drive-in, so we had to go in the exit. It was great though, because all around us (well, in front of us, we had to go at the back being the biggest vehicle) there were people in cars, sitting in car seats being not very comfortable really! Whereas we had beds in our combi, plus a fridge, so we could have ice cold drinks. The adults could watch the film while drinking G&T’s with ice and lemon! It was all very civilised! And when it got too late for little me, I would just go to bed!

There was a great caterer at the drive-in too – we would have piri piri chicken, which was beautiful!

The only downside to the drive-in experience was that the sound quality was crap, but hey…I’ve experienced what most people only see in American teen movies! Only I was a child at the time, so there was no getting on at the drive-in!

We also went swimming a lot and had parties at different peoples’ houses.

All in all, it was a fun childhood really!

I will find some photos to post on here. I’m sure there must be some somewhere!

What kind of games did you play growing up?

2008-12-10T22:18:00.005+01:00

When I was growing up, skipping was still quite cool – well, in primary school anyway! It’s probably not allowed now in case a skipping little girl gets caught up in the rope and throttles herself!

Anyway, every break time we would get out the big, long skipping rope and skip. We could even skip with two ropes being swung in opposite directions – if that makes any sense!

There was also this toy that I begged for months to be able to get – they were so cool at the time! I can’t remember what they were called, or even what happened to mine, but they were big balls with a sort of disc thing around the middle. Basically, you stood on the disc bit and bounced up and down – sort of a pogo ball! It was so cool, and if you didn’t have one then you really weren’t worth knowing! Maybe it was just my school…!

How cool is that – I found one for you! Mine was a yellow ball with a black disc.
I just found this site which reminded me of a lot of the toys that I had growing up in the 80’s – I even recognised some of the glow worms – I had totally forgotten about them! I also had My Little Ponies and She’Ra toys!

I played with Sindy’s a lot – in those days they were much better than Barbies. My cousins had Action Men – they were a bit the worse for wear though! One of them had his foot held on by some string wrapped around it! Obviously, my Sindys and their Action Men were married!

The games I played with my friends were pretty normal – judging by what isla says they still play the same sort of things now – mummies and daddies, playing teacher etc! Also, in France they still do hopscotch (called La Marelle here) – I have no idea if they still do that in UK or not. Probably not – hopping’s probably banned as a dangerous sport! I do know that in a lot of places in UK, playing conkers is banned – ridiculous!

NB. Photograph not my own work

Were there any special items in the house that you remember?

2008-12-10T22:01:00.001+01:00

The only item I remember, that has made a lasting impression on me, was a lamp owned by my Grandma. She still has it in her flat now. It was bought in Singapore, when they lived there, and is an abacus, with a square red lampshade with a Chinese character on it. No idea what it says though!

I suppose the bed that is now mine is a memorable one. My mum and dad bought it in Malawi for themselves. It is made from cedarwood, and has a very intricately carved headboard. It’s very comfortable too!
We’ve never had antiques or anything like that – I don’t know why anyone would want to spend thousands on other peoples’ second hand tat!

New Christmassy Templates

2008-12-07T03:05:00.000+01:00

I love these templates! I found the link bar (which you will see in icky orange at the top of my page) on someone else's blog tonight, clicked on it and found Christmas templates! Which, given my Christmassy feeling, seemed like the perfect thing to do to my blogs!

Click here if you want your blog to look all Christmassy and groovy! It tells you how to change the template too - it's complicated html stuff, but not that hard.

Beware though, you will lose all your widgets. What I did was to save all the html detail on word, and then copy and paste it back into new gadgets.

What was the house like that you grew up in?

2008-12-02T19:59:00.005+01:00

The first house I lived in as a child was in Portsmouth – Cosham to be exact. It was a typical 1920’s/30’s style end of terrace house. There was a small, walled patch of garden in front, and quite a long garden at the back. I will post a photo when I can find one. Downstairs there was a hallway, a long kitchen, a dining room and quite a large sitting room. There was also a cupboard under the stairs. Upstairs there three bedrooms – one large one at the front of the house, and two smaller ones at the back. There was also a bathroom, and it had glass in the door – you know the sort of glass that is patterned so you can’t see through it. I only lived there until I was 3½ but Grandma and Grandad had bought it I suppose in the early 50’s. I don’t remember much about it apart from the fact that it always felt like a home, but I suppose that’s because my mum, aunt and uncle had all spent a large part of their growing up years there, and even though they were overseas a lot, it was always home to them when they came back.

When we lived in Malawi we lived in a rented house that my dad already had. It was a bungalow with a corrugated iron roof – bloody noisy in a rainstorm! As you want through the front door off the khonde (veranda) you stepped into a very large room which was, to the right a sitting room and to the left the dining room. Off the dining room end, to the right, was the kitchen and pantry. At the back of the kitchen there was a small area where the Rhodesian boiler was which was used to heat the water. More on this later. At the end of the dining room there was a door which led into quite a dark corridor – it seemed dark, but maybe that’s just because the doors were shut! The first door on the left was my bedroom which was a light, airy room. On the right there was another bedroom which always seemed quite dark to me. At the end of the corridor was my mum and dad’s room, which was another light airy one with lots of windows and a frangipane tree outside. Just before you got to their room in the corridor, on the right was the bathroom and a separate toilet.
The garden was massive. There was a vegetable garden, a large chicken run where we also had ducks, and a wooded area. I loved playing in that wooded area – it was “my” forest! The front part of the garden was terraced and there was a swing, which I loved. There was also a seesaw to start with. It was a cool seesaw, which not only went up and down, but round and round too! Unfortunately, after one little girl broke her arm at a birthday party the seesaw was put away, and never again saw the light of day.

When we moved back to Scotland in 1986 we lived in a typical Galloway cottage which was between 300 and 350 years old. It was beautiful, made from granite, and had originally been two cottages, presumably tied cottages for farm labourers. You can see quite clearly in the stonework on the front of the house that there were originally two front doors. On the right hand side of the house (from the front) was an extension which had been added in 1865 to accommodate the village post office. By the time we moved there it hadn’t been the post office ofr a very long time, but there were the odd clues as to it’s former occupation – the floor was concrete in that room, rather than the wood of the rest of the house, because it had housed the post office safe which needed a solid floor. It became our study.
Anyway, as you walked in the front door, you came into a hallway. To the left was the sitting room with a granite fireplace that we built ourselves, replacing the ghastly green faux marble one that was there when we moved in! In the hallway itself were the stairs and the bathroom which was partly under the stairs. To the right was the dining room (which became a sitting room in the winter as it had three inside walls and was much cosier). At the back of the dining room was a door into the kitchen, and on the right of the dining room was a door into the study.
Upstairs there was a landing with airing cupboards. On the left was my bedroom and on the right was a small box room, converted into a cute one person bedroom with a skylight window. Also on the right was my parents’ bedroom. Both of the bigger bedroom were a good size, with lovely dormer windows.

The garden was a large one, for a village house, and went all around the house, which was detached. The garden was surrounded at the front and one side by a hedge, along the other side by a dry stone dyke (dry stone wall), and along the back by a fence. Our view out of the kitchen at the back of the house was just fields full of sheep or cows, a small forest of pine trees, an old motte and far in the distance a large hill (not quite a mountain) called Carsphairn. It was beautiful, and we used to watch the lambs playing in the spring.
When I was a student, I lived in halls at Heriot Watt, Edinburgh for the first year. I had a room which had a single bed, a desk and a wash basin – and that was it!

After that, I moved into digs in town which was ok. It was a town house in a quiet street just off the Dalry Road near the Haymarket. Downstairs there were offices, and a kitchen which I could use, and upstairs there were three large bedroom rented out. It was comfortable, and eventually Colin moved in with me there. We only moved out because I got pregnant, and we couldn’t comfortably stay there.

We moved from there into a flat in Moredun. Not the most salubrious of places, and we were on the 10th floor! We had a fantastic view over the city – we had an almost 360° view from the Pentlands, across the city with Edinburgh Castle and Arthur’s Seat all the way across the Firth of Forth. The flat itself was quite nice, and we decorated it and made it homely. The kitchen was a bit crappy though! As you walked in the front door immediately in front was a large walk in cupboard, which quickly became a dumping ground for junk and boxes! Then there was a hallway – the first bedroom on the left was Isla’s, once she was born. The second room on the left was our bedroom. On the right was a small bathroom. There was also a cupboard on the left for linen etc. Then there was a very large sitting room, and the kitchen. It wasn’t the best area in town, but it was ok.

Then I came to France. Our house now is a lot different to what it was then . When I first arrived there were the four of us in the same bedroom, but quite quickly we renovated another room for me and Isla.

Now we have three bedrooms, and a hallway! From the front door you enter the sitting room with big old beams, and a massive fireplace with a woodburning stove. To the right is a door into the kitchen. To the left is a door which goes into a hallway. The first door on the right is my bedroom, which has a door into Isla’s room. The second door on the right goes into the bathroom, which also leads into Isla’s room. The door on the left goes into my mum and dad’s room, which is in the process of being plastered and decorated. There are another couple of big rooms downstairs to be renovated, and two large rooms and a massive balcony upstairs to be done.

The garden is massive, with a few straggly vines at the back, loads of fruit trees and the pièce de résistance – the pool!

What would you like your epitaph to say?

2008-11-13T10:00:00.000+01:00

I’ve never really thought about it! I like Billy Connolly’s idea – he said that his would be written in tiny words on his gravestone so that the reader would have to go right up to it to read it. It would say “You’re standing on my balls”! For obvious reasons, that would not be suitable for me!

I do know what I want my funeral to be like. None of this bright colours and celebrate my life rubbish – I want people to MOURN me! Black bombazine for a year at least!

My hymns will be Abide With Me and The Day Thou Gavest Lord Is Ended.
The poems will be Remember Me by Christina Rossetti, and Funeral Blues by WH Auden.

My wake will be full of drink and people wailing – if there are not enough of these (although There bloody well should be or I’ll haunt you all!) then you can hire professional mourners. You know, the type that wail hysterically and for prolonged periods!

Seriously though, I would just want something simple. Something that means something to those that are left. Something like “Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep”! Something to comfort those who loved me.

Tell me something you think I won’t know about you.

2008-11-12T10:00:00.000+01:00

When I was about 4 or 5 years old I shoplifted. I have no idea what possessed me to do it. We were in the Central Bookshop on Victoria Avenue in Blantyre, Malawi (as opposed to Blantyre, Scotland as some of my readers are in Scotland!). I was an ambitious shoplifter – I took a bookmark!! My mum discovered what I had done when we were half way down the street. She was furious, and marched me straight back up to the bookshop to confess my sin and apologise for it. We went into the bookshop, and I had to explain to Hamid (the owner) what I had done, and that I was extremely sorry for it, and I would never do it again!

I was ashamed and mortified, although he was very nice and understanding about it. My mum’s methods had their desired effect though – I never again stole anything!

With hindsight what would you do differently?

2008-11-11T10:00:00.000+01:00

When I left school I went to university. I had good grades for my Highers, and I thought it was expected of me – in fact as I have said before, I expected it of myself.

Looking back now, and looking at the various things I have done for jobs, I should have gone to catering college on leaving schools. Although I have worked as a chef, I am not qualified. All that I know is self taught (and taught by my mum), and I have experience. I have experience of working in busy kitchens, catering for parties at home, being a personal chef to large families, and pre-preparing meals for peoples’ freezers.

When I left school I didn’t even think of becoming a chef. It didn’t occur to me until I was working in a pub, and desperately wanted to work in the kitchen because, I believed, I was a much better cook that the person who was there! Which I was – modest too!

If I had gone to catering college I could have ended up with a much better job, with better pay. However, working in that trade is never well paid. And the hours are terrible, especially for a single parent.

I have also thought that I should have gone into nursing. Not from any overwhelming need to help people, but because when my mum went back to studying in her 40’s I helped her a lot. I learnt all that she learnt just from helping her study, and it would have been nice to have benefitted from that! The wages and hours are crap again though!

Back to the drawing board I guess!

What is the biggest regret in your life? Can you do anything about it now?

2008-11-09T23:24:00.000+01:00

I don’t actually have very many regrets in my life. There are things that I would like to have done, but that’s not really the same as regretting what I did or didn’t do.

The only thing I do regret is not having had more children. I know I’m only 31, and I do still have time (dependent on finding some nice man somewhere), but I do regret not having had a brother or sister for Isla close to her age.

I was an only child and, although I was brought up closely with my cousins, it wasn’t the same as having a brother or a sister. On the other hand, it did mean that I have never had to deal with sibling rivalry – at least not first hand – and have never had to put up with the fights that can only happen between sisters. For some reason, I think that only sisters can hurt each other like no one else can.

I regret not having more money, but that’s something that we all regret!

What have you found most difficult in your life?

2008-11-05T10:00:00.000+01:00

I think the most difficult times I have had in my life were when I was at boarding school and university.

My mum and dad first sent me to boarding school because the local primary was rubbish. The teacher I had was ignorant – had I stayed another couple of years I would have got a brilliant teacher, but my mum and dad decided they couldn’t wait that long, and sent me to the local prep school – thanks to a very clever headmaster who managed to get me an assisted place along with the scholarship that I had already won. I liked the teachers, and the work was ok, it was just that I didn’t like staying away from home. I would have loved it there if I could have been a day pupil, but boarding made me miserable.

From the prep school I won a scholarship to Fettes College in Edinburgh. This soon turned into the most miserable and difficult time I have ever had in my life. The work was hard – as I have said before I have only really been good at languages, and I got into trouble for not doing well in other subjects. I started to misbehave – just a little! I started smoking – not because it was cool I don’t think, just because I felt like it. A friend and I would meet another friend in the woods and smoke there. We got a little more adventurous after a while, and snuck out of our bedroom windows with a couple of older girls and sat on the ledge, three floors up at night! It wasn’t long until we were caught. One of the mothers had driven past at night, seen our glowing cigarettes, reported us, and our house mistress called the whole dormitory for a meeting. She explained how it had been reported, that cigarette ends had been found below the windows, and that the people responsible had to own up or everyone would be punished severely – typical adult threat – she couldn’t really have punished all of us, but the main threat was that if we didn’t own up and we were found out we would be expelled. So, the four of us owned up. We were then packed away to the Sanatorium (sick bay) for the night, while our parents were informed that we had been suspended. They were to come and collect us the next day. We had a wicked night locked away in the San that night! We laughed and joked and took pictures, but the next morning when we woke up we were all quite subdued. We had to go and see the headmaster, who gave us a stern talking to, talked a lot about responsibility etc, and that as well as suspension we had to pay a £30 fine which would be sent to Cancer Research – no idea if it ever was sent.

My mum and dad hit the roof. My cousin was staying with us at the time, he was at my old prep school, and had apparently also been playing up a bit at the same time. His parents were overseas at the time. The way I saw it, I got an extra week’s half term – my mum and dad didn’t quite see it the same way. After a couple of days it all calmed down, and by the time I went back to school we were quite light hearted about it. My mum said that if the housemistress gave me a hard time I should tell her that I’d been to confession, confessed my sins and been absolved by the priest, so if God had absolved me there was nothing she could do about it!

I really did try to buckle down after I went back to school. I tried to work hard. I arranged with the English teacher I’d had the previous year for some extra lessons – that was wrong as he wasn’t the teacher I had for that year. I didn’t get on with my current teacher, and got on great with the last teacher, who also happened to be the deputy head, and was lovely and more than willing to help me. The housemistress said I had to cancel the lessons – I did, and he wasn’t at all happy with what I had been told to do. She used to delight in upsetting me and making me cry, to then accuse me of putting it on, and only crying “crocodile tears”. I got more and more miserable, and spent hours on the phone to my mum crying my eyes out. Eventually my mum had enough of this, and phoned the housemistress to try to find out exactly why I was so unhappy. The housemistress said that she couldn’t possibly spare the time to talk to her as she was late for lunch, and put the phone down on her. My mum was hopping mad, turned up at the weekend to take me out for the weekend, and the only time I went back was to pack all my things up.

After that I went to school in Dumfries, and, once I had made the friends that became friends for life, I was extremely happy there.

University was another matter. I went because I thought it was expected of me. Certainly my teachers expected it, I thought my parents expected it, and I definitely expected it of myself. It was not at all what I imagined. I thought I was studying languages, which would have been fine, but there were all these modules I had to take like Business Studies, Economics and Accounting which I just couldn’t get my head around. In fact, despite the fact that my dad used to be an accountant and tried to help me, I failed Accounting about 5 times!

I got very depressed at uni, and ended up taking anti depressants for a while, which didn’t actually help the situation. Also, I was working at two part time jobs to make ends meet, and I just couldn’t do it any more. At the end of second year I decided to drop out and work full time, which was a good decision, even with hindsight.

I have had other difficult periods of my life, but none that made me as miserable as boarding school or university.

If you won the Lottery, what would you do with the money, and why?

2008-11-04T10:00:00.000+01:00

If I won the lottery – and I’m talking a big win here, like £50 million or so I would do so many things! The first thing I would do is have a massive party! Then I would give my parents a LOT of money to finish the house and then do whatever they liked.

I would buy myself a house in Scotland and a fab car, and I would have lots of dogs. Isla would go to a good state school – none of those private schools! I would donate money to the SSPCA and would dog walk for them – just for a reason to get out of bed every day!

We would have fantastic holidays every year to the Caribbean, or Australia.

There would be none of this “money won’t change the way I live” crap. It certainly would change the way I live – I’d have a blast!

If you were an animal, what type of an animal would you be, and why?

2008-11-03T10:00:00.001+01:00

If I was an animal I would be one of my own dogs – spoilt and loved!

Tell me about the dreams you have for your life.

2008-11-03T10:00:00.000+01:00

I dream that one day I will meet the man of my dreams. He will be tall, dark and handsome. He will want children, and be fantastic with Isla. He will want to sweep me off my feet. We will live in Australia (where there are miraculously no beasties any more – it’s a dream remember!) and go to the beach every day à la Home and Away! OR, we will live somewhere like Devon or Cornwall, in a little stone cottage with roses around the door with our own private little beach OR we will win the lottery and live in a Scottish baronial castle OR we will live in a croft in the highlands cut off from everything except the phone and internet. Actually that last one is probably more likely when tall, dark and handsome buggers off and I’m left all depressed and cocoon myself away from the world in my little croft milking the cow, collecting eggs and spinning wool. I will be surrounded by cats and dogs, as they are more reliable than men!

Seriously though, I would just like to meet someone who could make me and Isla happy, and who would like more children as well. In the Gers??? Nah, I don’t think so, hence the need to go back to UK at some point!

Describe something you still want to achieve in your life.

2008-11-02T09:00:00.000+01:00

I want to have achieved something worthwhile in my life. The only thing I have done so far is have Isla. That is, in itself, worthwhile, but I want to leave something else behind me. I want people to be able to say about me “she did what she set out to achieve, and she made a difference”. I don’t know how to do that yet, but I’ll think of something. I’m hoping that if I can get into the training for the RSPCA that could be a start.

Describe the greatest changes that you have seen in your lifetime so far.

2008-11-01T16:06:00.006+01:00

When I was little there were things in science fiction that I really thought would happen. Like, but the year 2000 we would all be wearing shiny suits, and eating food pills! I also thought we’d all be speaking on video phones and flying around in spaceships. Well, not a lot of that has happened! We don’t wear shiny suits (well apart from Jonathan Ross), we don’t eat food pills and the great majority of us don’t fly around in spaceships. We do, however, have the video phone, sort of. When I was little it was the stuff of dreams; now we just switch on our computers, turn on Skype or MSN and chat to our friends around the world, face to face, and free.
When I think how things have changed just in my lifetime it amazes me. What will things be like when Isla is my age – how will things have changed by then?

When I was small, my parents listened to records on a turntable – since then we have had tapes, cd’s, mp3’s. I listened to music and stories on a walkman, now Isla listens on an iPod!
TV was non-existent when I was growing up in Malawi, and when we finally did get one there it was only with a video player. When we got back to UK, TV was a huge novelty. We had a TV and a video in Scotland, and technology didn’t really change for quite a long time. There were people who had satellite TV back then, but I don’t think it was really worth what they paid for it then. Now satellite TV is commonplace, with boxes with built-in hard drives – Sky + - TV has never been so cool!

It wasn’t until after we moved to France that dvd’s appeared. We had come to France with a pile of videos, knowing that if we wanted to buy any new ones, we’d have to ask other people to buy them, as even internet shopping wasn’t common then.Now we have dvd’s, we can buy them almost anywhere as they are multi language, and if you have a multi region player you can get them from anywhere in the world. Things have gone even further now with blu-ray (not really sure what that is) and you can even watch video files on your computer or your iPod!

Cameras have changed too – my mum and dad had 35mm cameras when I was smaller, and in fact when I started to own cameras they were still using the same type of film.Now I have a great digital camera, and film is nowhere to be seen!
Computers too have changed beyond all recognition. When I was small we had a ZX Spectrum 16k. You attached a tape recorder to the computer, and all the games and programmes were on the tapes! You could also type in lots of garbage and end up with a square on your screen – you could change the colour of the square and if you were really clever you could make the square stripy! This was cool!

We didn’t get another computer for a long time. Eventually we bought one from my dad’s office which was an Amstrad 286 I think, with Windows 3.1.We thought it was great! The next one was a 1gb computer with Windows 95 – it was state of the art for a little while. What makes me laugh is that now my phone has a larger memory than that!!

Which brings us rather neatly onto mobile phones, whilst skipping our more recent computers which aren’t that interesting because they’re modern with Windows XP.
The first mobiles I saw were massive! You had to lug a massive battery pack around and the only place they were really useable was the tops of hills!
Now they’re small and funky, with built in cameras, mp3 players and massive memories! You can send video messages, picture messages and sound clips to people.

You can do your email, watch films, listen to music all on one little piece of kit. How cool is that!

Describe your memories of some major world events that have happened in your lifetime…Part 2

2008-10-28T10:00:00.000+01:00

September 11th, 2001 is a date that no one will ever forget. It will go down in history – in fact has already done so.
I was working that day for a former British cabinet minister, from Mrs Thatcher’s time, who shall remain anonymous. He was staying at a château near here, and I was their chef for their holiday.

I was in the kitchen cooking, with the radio on. As the news came on, I was only half heartedly listening, and wasn’t quite sure that I had heard right, or even understood correctly.

The minister man came into the kitchen and asked me if I had heard the news. I said I had, but I wasn’t sure I had understood right and he explained it to me, and I went to watch on the television.

We saw the plane going into the first tower and that was incredible enough, but when the second plane went into the second tower – it defied belief. All I remember feeling is complete disbelief and thinking “oh my god, I’m watching history in the making”. It was complete shock and terror. If they can do that, what else are they capable of? The terror of knowing that so many hundreds of people were trapped in there, seeing scenes of people fleeing through the streets terrified for their lives – it was simply unbelievable.
The one thing I found very hard to understand was that some people there actually had the presence of mind to whip out video cameras to film the whole thing as it happened. I would not have been able to do that – I would have been running fast in the opposite direction with all the other people.
I don’t know how anyone could have got over being involved in that – either first hand or second hand if they had lost someone that day.

The scary fact is that it could happen again. Indeed it did happen in London in 2005 when they tried to cripple the capital with several bombs. Luckily, security had been tightened up to such a degree that what happened in London was by no means as catastrophic as what happened in New York, but they still caused devastation.

Describe your memories of some major world events that have happened in your lifetime…Part 1

2008-10-27T10:00:00.002+01:00

The two major world events that I can remember are the death of Princess Diana and the collapse of the twin towers.

I was 20 when Princess Diana died. I had been out on the Saturday night in Dumfries and stayed over at my then boyfriend’s (Jamie) house. On the Sunday morning, I got up quite early and a friend and I nipped out to Tesco’s to get some sausages and bacon for a proper fry up. When we got to the supermarket there were rows and rows of newspapers with the headline “Diana Princess Of Wales 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997”. I didn’t believe it – I thought it was some sick jokes dreamt up by the media. We got back to Jamie’s flat and the first thing I did was turn the TV on. I can’t remember if we ever actually got our fry up because we just sat staring at the TV watching the reports coming in about her death. I drove home somehow to find my mum, dad and Grandma doing the same thing – just transfixed by everything we were seeing. What amazed me was the public outpouring of grief. I didn’t think that we, as a nation, had that sort of public grief within us. The sea of flowers around Kensington Palace was incredible and it struck me that Diana herself would probably have preferred people to make donations to the charities of which she was patron (or any charity really) rather than spend the fortune that must have been spent on those beautiful flowers. The tide of grief that swept through the country even had an effect on the Royal Family themselves, shaking them out of their private grief because the public needed to see that they cared. Public pressure on them was incredible.

I remember the funeral very clearly. Everyone in the country had the day off work, so everything was shut, at least for a half day. I think there were probably very few people who didn’t watch the funeral. The moment that really got to me was seeing the coffin being transported through the streets with wreaths on top, and a white envelope with “Mummy” written on it. Of course, after that I cried throughout the funeral service. I understand why I cried at the envelope – two small boys had just lost their mother – it was sympathy with them. But why did I cry watching a funeral of someone I never knew and never met? I’ve never particularly been a royalist, or an anti royalist – it doesn’t mean a lot to me.

Maybe it was because she was such a public figure – the poor woman had lived her life in the spotlight and she eventually learned how to use that spotlight to her advantage to help causes that she believed in. I think she was a good person, and too young to die. And I think it was because those two little boys were left without a mother. Diana Princess Of Wales

1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997

What are a few of your favourite things?

2008-10-26T10:00:00.000+01:00

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…”

Hmmmm, dogs obviously.
My favourite things presumably means inanimate objects though so:-
iPod
mobile phone
laptop
sweeties
ice cream
Diet Coke!

What are the happiest or greatest memories of your life?

2008-10-25T10:00:00.000+02:00

The happiest and greatest memory of my life is obviously having Isla. Not that I remember much about the actual moment!

Other happy memories I have are to do with my childhood and family (which is expanded on in my Random Ramblings and Recipes blog. I also have many happy memories about various pets etc.

Other things that I’m sure will become happy memories to look back on – at least once a week I try to make sure that Isla and I snuggle up to watch something together, every Saturday night we have Saturday Night Party Night playing board games and eating party food, on the run up to Christmas we lie in bed having a cuddle singing Christmas carols very quietly to each other!

Is there anything you would like to change about me?

2008-10-24T10:00:00.001+02:00

Not yet, but ask me again when she’s a teenager!!

Describe what you like about me…

2008-10-24T10:00:00.000+02:00

I like that Isla is a very happy, well balanced little girl. Despite the fact that there is no Daddy around these days she is very happy and has no lack of male influence in her life as she has my dad – her Dandad!

She is a very bright child – and I mean that in every sense. She’s not only intelligently bright, but also has a bright, sunny personality, with a little bit of cheek and mischief thrown in!

What were you most proud of about me when I was at school?

2008-10-23T19:00:00.000+02:00

The one achievement I am most proud of is Isla’s ability in French. She started school at three years old – they can start as young as two if they are dry during the day. The first three years in school are dedicated to learning skills like co-ordination, speech, the correct way to hold a pencil – basic life skills really. And then the hard work starts after that. She found it really hard going to start with, as she could only count up to ten and say I need a pee in French! The teacher had very little English, so it really was sink or swim. Complete immersion. And it worked. Within two years she was completely fluent – her teacher told me that her level of French was no different to that of her classmates. People who say their kids were fluent within a couple of months are lying – it takes a lot longer than that, but it’s worth the tears and trials and tribulations. So yes, Isla’s greatest single achievement so far is becoming completely bilingual.

Also this year I have been very proud because she was finally brave enough to master riding her bike!

What attributes did I have as a child that I still have now?

2008-10-22T19:00:00.001+02:00

Again, Isla is still a child. She’s quite a mature child though, and I don’t mean in a precocious way. As I said before, she is good company because she can hold an intelligent conversation. But she still loves her barbies and Playmobil. She’s a very cuddly little girl, but she’s got to the stage where holding hands in the street is just so not cool Mummy! She’s very loving though, and will often come into my bed in the mornings for a cuddle, or into my mum and dad’s bed for a cuddle with them.

She has a few funny little quirks that make me cringe in recognition! On the odd occasion she will come out with the weirdest expressions, and I suddenly remember that I say that, it just sounds weird from a nine year old! I swear she is also the clone of her great grandmother – obsessed by the weather forecast – she went through a stage of getting up early just to watch the météo on French TV! She can also be pedantic and pernickety!

But she’s great and I wouldn't change her for anything!

What was I like when I was a child?

2008-10-21T19:00:00.000+02:00

Well, obviously Isla still is a child! She’s very sweet, polite and well behaved most of the time, but she has that cheekiness and mischievousness that makes a child good fun to be with. I love spending time with her. I can’t understand the parents who dread the holidays and spending all that time with their kids. I’m the opposite – I dread term time coming around again because I miss having her around all the time. I actually enjoy my nine year old daughter’s company – and I don’t know many other parents who do.

Describe some of the favourite memories you have of me.

2008-10-20T00:32:00.000+02:00

I have so many memories of Isla that are favourites, I don’t think I could number them all here! I love it when she is delighted about something. You know sometimes you watch something or someone? And you get this little bubble of happiness welling up inside you? That’s how I feel about Isla all the time. I can’t think of specific memories, apart from obvious ones like Christmas or birthdays – my favourite memories happen every day.

What was the first word (or words) you remember me saying?

2008-10-18T19:00:00.000+02:00

The first word Isla said was, as is apparently normally the case, Dada. Colin was well chuffed, until the Health Visitor told him it was just because that was the easiest sound to make! Mama came pretty closely after, but the first real word was pub! This is not as bad as it sounds!! My life at the time revolved around the pub (again, not as bad as it sounds) because I was working 50 – 70hrs a week. We were short staffed, and at the time I was the only one, apart from the kitchen porters, working in the kitchen. A couple of times, when I got begged to come in on a day off, I would take Isla and stick her in her car seat on top of the deep freeze. Not the most sensible thing to do, but rather than paying childcare for a couple of hours it seemed to work. She got lots of attention and cuddles and tickles each time someone walked past her.

So, it was no wonder her first word was pub!

Before I was born, what other names had you thought of calling me?

2008-10-17T19:00:00.000+02:00

If Isla had been a boy, she almost certainly would have been called James Gordon. James after Colin’s father who died when Colin was only about 6yrs old, and because I always liked the name anyway. The Gordon part was after both my dad and my Grandad.

We spent a few evenings sitting with friends going through the baby name book – it was quite fun actually to see what horrific names came up in the books! Colin came up with Samantha…while I have nothing against the name itself (it’s actually quite a nice name) there was no way I could call my child that! In the village we lived in in SW Scotland, the was a mum across the road who would open her door every night and scream out of it “Smamfa” – so there was no way I could use the name after that! Hearing it now still makes me think of Smamfa!

We came up with quite a few traditional Scottish names for her, and eventually settled on Alannah (which is more Irish than Scottish), only for it to be changed when she was born! Ah well, she wouldn’t have suited the original one anyway!

What was my nickname before I was born or when I was young?

2008-10-16T19:00:00.000+02:00

When Isla was a tiny baby I used to call her Smiler, because once she could, she didn’t stop! I loved it once she got to the age of baby giggling – too cute.

What did I look like when I was born?

2008-10-15T19:00:00.000+02:00

What were my statistics when I was born? Time of birth, weight, height etc…

2008-10-14T19:00:00.000+02:00

Due Date – 26/05/1999
Birth Date – 02/06/1999
Place of Birth – Simpsons Memorial Maternity Pavilion, Edinburgh
Time of Birth – 01.32
Weight – 7.03lb, 3190kg
Height – 56cm
APGAR – 1minute test score of 2
5minute test score of 8

What did you think when you first saw me after I was born?

2008-10-13T19:00:00.000+02:00

When Isla was first born I actually couldn’t think straight. I had been given pethidine and god knows what else and I was flying high! I mumbled her name to Colin, well what I thought was her name – turned out it was completely different to what we had decided between us, but we both liked it anyway so we kept it! Because she was born by C-section due to being distressed during labour, she was whisked up to the Special Care Baby Unit. Also, she scored really badly the first time they did the APGAR test – luckily the second time she got a great score. She had also swallowed some meconium during labour, so had an infection. All in all, she really wasn’t very well. I don’t know why, but it didn’t occur to me to be worried – it was like I knew she would be just fine. The nurses from the SCBU took a Polaroid picture of her for me, and every time I awoke from my morphine-induced stupor I looked at the picture and thought “Abigail” and then thought, “No, that’s not it, oh, it’s Isla!” Funny what drugs can do!

So, my first thought was Isla’s name, which wasn’t the planned one, then it was Abigail, and then, once the drugs wore off and I could think straight, it was just love.

How long had you known each other when you decided to have children, and how did you feel when you found out you were going to have a baby?

2008-10-12T19:00:00.000+02:00

Well…we didn’t exactly decide – it was decided for us! I found out I was pregnant about a month after we moved in together. The timing wasn’t perfect, but we were both happy with it, despite the initial shock and panic!

My main worry was telling my mum. I don’t know why I panicked, it was stupid! She had always told me to do things the right way round – ie. Find a man, marry him, and then have kids – not to do it all the wrong way round like she did. So I worried…and worried…and worried! My mum and dad came up to Edinburgh for the day with my baby nephew, and I spent the whole time trying to break the news. I still didn’t manage it.
I eventually took the coward’s way out. I went home one weekend, and on the Monday morning I wrote a letter, put it in a envelope with the picture of the first scan, and ran away! I told everyone at work to say we were busy so I wouldn’t have to talk to them on the phone, and when I got home I unplugged the phone! I eventually spoke to them the next day, and they suggested that the two of us came home even if just for an overnight to chat about everything. My dad said to me “Be careful on the icy roads…there’s three of you now.” That made me cry.

Once we got home the next evening, we walked into the house, and my mum and dad got the champagne out. They berated me for not telling them sooner, but were happy about the baby.

What was “your song”?

2008-10-11T19:00:00.000+02:00

I don’t think we ever had a particular song that meant something to us. I listened to music all the time, Colin did sometimes. The song that always makes me think of him is the Ally MacBeal song, because he loved it.

Isla had a song of her own. When she was tiny, I listened to a lot of music channels on cable TV. My favourite channel that summer was VH1, and there were a lot of good songs released that year – 1999, I still listen to some of those songs! Every time this song would come on, Isla would sit upright in her bouncy chair, stare at the TV, and sort of boogie along to it – it was Mambo Number 5!

What would you do for a night out when you were dating?

2008-10-10T19:00:00.000+02:00

A lot of our social life revolved around the pub, as I worked there, he worked just up the road and it was easy.
However, our first proper date was going to Edinburgh Zoo – something I now do every time I go back to Edinburgh. I also went up to the Hillend Ski Centre where he worked one day and we went up on the ski lifts to see the panoramic view of the city and the Firth of Forth. It was amazing, and really quite romantic! We also went to a great Chinese on Lothian Road once. We didn’t really have many “dates”, but we did have fun.

How did you meet your child’s Father?

2008-10-09T19:00:00.000+02:00

I met Colin just before I left university, when I was working at the Fairmile Inn in Edinburgh. I was working behind the bar then, and we got chatting. It was his 29th birthday and he was celebrating with friends. I finished early and had a few drinks with them, and we got on really well.

After about three months together we decided we were in love and moved in together. I’m not sure we ever were really in love, or should just have been friends. However, I can’t regret a thing about it, because I ended up with Isla – the most precious person in my life.

What age were you when you started work? What jobs have you had?

2008-10-08T19:00:00.000+02:00

Because I lived in the countryside I didn’t start working until I had passed my driving test. I was 18, and the first place I worked was a restaurant/bar at a caravan site near Kirkcudbright (pronounced Kirkoobree for those who don’t know!!) in SW Scotland. I was basically a general dogsbody and the wages were beyond awful! I waited on tables, I worked behind the bar, and I did washing up. I was only there for a couple of months, and by the time I finished there I had such bad dishpan hands that they were bleeding! That was the first time I discovered the wonders of E45 cream! It was a really crappy job.

The second place I worked was at the Co-Op in Dumfries. I was a checkout bimbo! I was also at uni, so I only worked at the weekends, and during the holidays. Occasionally I was asked to work Sunday, which was great as it was a relatively short day but I got paid double time. I worked there for about two years – it gave me enough money to go out every weekend, which was fine for me at that point!

I then got a job at a Mackay’s clothes store at the Gyle shopping centre in Edinburgh. It wasn’t the best job I have ever had, and the manager was an old harridan. Also, she insisted on shortening my name, which I hated and it irritated me beyond belief! The worst thing was that most of my time was spent folding up tops as customers love to come in and just mess things up! Sometimes I would have to work in the teenage section of the shop which was great. All the things in there were trendy – the adult section was dull! The baby section was great too because a lot of the people who came in were excited about new babies – that was fun.
I worked at Mackays during the week while I was at uni in Edinburgh, then at the weekends it was back down to Dumfries so my mum could do my washing and I worked at the Co-Op on the Saturdays!

Not surprisingly, my uni work suffered because I was working too much. I hated university anyway, but I liked living in Edinburgh. I got a full time job at a pub on the outskirts of town – The Fairmile Inn – and quit the Co-Op and Mackays. Oh, I also quit university as I hated it. I couldn’t afford to stay at university anyway without working full time, and I liked working. I started at the pub as a waitress, but quickly moved to the bar. I really loved that, although it was hard work with late finishes. But, my social life and my work life were one and the same and it was great. After a while, due to staff shortages, I ended up working in the kitchen and within the year I was the Head Chef. This was when I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I had always been a very good cook, I was taught by my mum from a young age, and cooking under pressure was such a buzz for me. I stayed there for two years, and the only reason I left was because we got a new manager who brought his own Head Chef with him (who liked ordering pre-prepared meals, not making fresh food) and he wanted to cut everyones’ hours back to 20 a week. At that point I was working about 70hrs a week, and could barely afford the childcare on that. So, I spent a day looking for another job in local pubs, and got one just down the road at the Stable Bar as 2nd Chef. I was happy enough with that, but I was only there for about three months as it was around that time that things went wrong in my life and I moved to France.

The ease of finding jobs was over.

When I got to France I tried very hard to find a job, but after three years of no practice my French wasn’t exactly tip top! I did eventually find a job though, as a barmaid and waitress at a local restaurant. Most restaurants around here are straightforward, serving local produce with no pretensions. This was a very pretentious restaurant, and very expensive. I started on one day at about 10am. There was no discussion about wages or hours, but I assumed they would get around to it. I didn’t have the French to argue at that point. I didn’t get home until 2am. The next day was the same – still no word about money or hours. I went home at about 2am again, and cried all the way home from sheer bloody agony because my feet were red raw and bleeding from blisters. Even working 70hrs a week in a kitchen with lots of responsibility was not as hard as this. I never went back, and never got paid.

The next job I had lasted for two years, despite the fact that I hated it. It was a doddle really, I taught English to kids from 8 to 16 in a variety of local schools. It was great money for the amount of hours I did, but after two years, I really didn’t want to do it any more.

After that, I worked for a friend of ours who had bought a house to renovate and then sell. I painted windows, walls, shutters, you name it – if it stood still it got painted! The money was fantastic – I had never earned so much in my life. I worked for him for probably about 3 or four years. Eventually I had other worked, so gradually stopped working with him. Also, around that time France started to attract the Czechs and Slovaks who came here for work, and were extremely cheap labour.

Two years ago I started working for a local estate agent – part of a massive global chain. This too was short lived. It was commission only. I thought I’d give it a go, but I did not realise it would be so expensive. The company did not pay fuel allowance, even though their staff have to take clients out and about to view properties. In a very rural area you cover a lot of miles. They also did not give any allowance for mobile phones, although they had to be used. In short, there were no allowances for anything, and after I figured out that those three weeks had cost ME €300, I decided it was not worth it. It might be a good job if you have a few thousand behind you to start with, but not for anyone else. Even if I had sold a house within those three weeks, no money would have come through for at least three months.

Anyway, shortly after I left I broke my leg. Lucky I left when I did otherwise it could have cost me even more to earn nothing!!

In between all these jobs I was still doing decorating and gite changeovers with my mum, so there was a little money coming in.

Since the estate agent job that is pretty much what I have been doing, and it now includes gardening as well, which I really quite enjoy. I have been lucky enough to get a few photography jobs – mainly photographing gites for websites, and doing a few portraits.

So, now I am a chef/gardener/cleaner/decorator/photographer. Oh, and a short film maker, but that’s for another post!

Describe any family traditions you had or may still have.

2008-10-07T19:00:00.000+02:00

We have never had any particular traditions within our extended family. In our immediate family unit we take birthdays very seriously. A lot of people I know give each other maybe one or two presents on their birthdays. I have never worked on my birthday – I have made a point of it (bar one exam at uni that I couldn’t postpone just because I turned 21!). This goes for all of us! We go way overboard with presents. Birthdays are important because each person only has one special day per year that is all theirs so I think you have to make the most of that. For me, I share my birthday which in one way makes it more special, and in another doesn’t! It’s great that Isla was born on my birthday, but also it means I have to share my special day. So we make sure it is a brilliant day for both of us.

Christmas Day is another day when we have our little rituals. When Isla wakes up (normally not too early – around 8am) she wakes us all up excited because she has found a stocking (now how did that get there!!!). So, we do stocking presents all sitting on the bed. Then, it’s shower time for everyone. We also have a full, cooked breakfast before the presents under the tree are allowed to be opened. Oh, the tree is another tradition – it always has to go all the way up to the ceiling and across a foot or so! So, once we’ve all showered, got dressed in our finery, eaten a good breakfast, poured the drinks (champagne, Baileys, sherry etc) we are allowed to start opening. My dad acts as Father Christmas handing out the presents. In the last few years (since she learned to read) Isla has helped him – she has a habit of only finding the ones with her name on though!!!!!! The present opening can take around two hours – we really do go bananas on presents! After that, there’s normally a toy to build – oh joy! Then we get the roast on – never turkey as none of us like it, so it’s normally lamb but sometimes it’s beef. Grandma is normally with us and doesn’t like beef.

Then in the afternoons the TV normally goes on to watch whatever crap is on, and we sit and play with our new toys – for me it’s usually some new gadget!

I love Christmas and birthdays, and I’ve never quite lost the childish excitement – I think I get even more excited now because I can’t wait to see Isla’s face when she opens her presents and realises that she’s got what she asked Father Christmas for in the letter she sent up the chimney!

I think she may have cottoned on about him, but is just humouring me now!!

What music would you choose for your personal Top 10?

2008-10-06T19:00:00.000+02:00

Ok, so I had a real problem doing this one. I went through iTunes and picked out the tracks that have really meant something to me throughout my life. I thought I was being ruthless until I realised that my Top 10 had become my Top 28! I have narrowed it down to a Top 15!

In no particular order:

I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) / Letter From America – The Proclaimers
- Obviously no one who comes from Scotland could dislike The Proclaimers – it’s like saying you don’t like Irn Bru!

Goodbye To Love – The Carpenters
- I adore this song because it has one of the best guitar solos I have ever heard.

Zombie – The Cranberries
- The first song I ever did on karaoke!

Song For A Small Man – Billy Connolly
- This isn’t a comic song. It reminds me of a man I used to know who was an extremely dear family friend.

There Were Roses – Cara Dillon
- This song is about the futility of the Troubles in Ireland

Sweet Child o’ Mine – Guns ‘n’ Roses
- Fabulous song!

Layla – Eric Clapton
- Again, fab song!

Sweet Home Alabama – Lynrd Skynrd
- Probably my favourite song ever, possibly because a friend of mine plays the solo so amazingly well!

Foolish Games – Jewel
- One of those songs that can put a tear in your eyes.

A Case Of You – Joni Mitchell
- I just love the sentiments in this one. Joni Mitchell’s lyrics are like poetry.

Caledonia – Dougie Maclean
- The best song about Scotland ever written.

Flower Of Scotland – The Corries
- Obviously!

The Bell (Tubular Bells 2) – Mike Oldfield
- I’m a big Mike Oldfield fan, but Tubular Bells 2 was brilliant.

Au Fond Du Temple Saint (from The Pearl Fishers) – Bizet
- I don’t know what it is about this particular piece of music, but it just moves me.

Clarinet Quintet (I Allegro) – Mozart
- The reason for loving this piece is not at all highbrow or cerebral! It is used a lot in the final episode of M*A*S*H. I had never heard it before seeing this episode, and it is just a beautiful piece of music.

What was the first piece of music you bought?

2008-10-05T19:00:00.001+02:00

I don’t know if it could be classed as “a piece of music” exactly – there’s certainly nothing highbrow or clever about it, and you have to remember I was only ten at the time! The first record (see, that’s how old I am!) I bought was Kylie Minogue’s first album – the one with I Should Be So Lucky on it! Not long after, I bought the single of Especially for You by Kylie and Jason!!

Sad eh?!

Did you have an idol when you were young? Tell me who and why.

2008-10-05T19:00:00.000+02:00

I never had any idols that I looked up to when I was younger. I had pin-ups obviously – only they weren’t the normal ones like Tom Cruise (short arse little twerp now) or whoever else the teeny boppers liked. On my walls, I had massive posters of Axl Rose, Slash, Eric Clapton and Mel Gibson! I loved Mel Gibson, and my dad actually went into the local newspaper office and acquired some movie stills for me! I was well chuffed!

I have never really had anyone who I’ve looked up to that much, or who I would like to be like. I think probably now, one of my main idols would be Joni Mitchell, but that’s just because I love her early music.

What were your favourite hobbies when you were young?

2008-10-04T19:00:00.000+02:00

I don’t remember having any hobbies as such when I was a child. There were things I liked to do, but nothing I was passionate about, and I kind of think the word “hobby” implies passion about one particular thing.

I played the recorder – badly! I used to watch the person next to me as it took me years to be able to read music, and consequently I was always about half a note behind everyone else! Not that it mattered; the music teacher was tone deaf anyway!

I swam a lot – our school had swimming galas every year, and it was something I was actually very good at. I did get my bronze ASA award (can’t remember what it stands for), which taught you haw to life save and swim long distances. I didn’t do the silver award, as I couldn’t be arsed!

Ah, I think I’ve thought of one. I was passionate (and still am) about reading. As we didn’t have TV in Malawi when I was small, and until much later we didn’t even have TV and video (there was a local video club – people would go back to UK on holiday, tape loads of things and put the tapes in the video club) I was a voracious reader. Every time we had to have the rabies vaccines I got a new book. My mum always said I could have a new book if I managed not to cry! I always did cry, but I still got the book! And I would have finished it by the time we got home! I have always been an extremely fast reader – I don’t skim, I do read properly, but I have never met anyone who reads as fast as me.

I don’t understand people who don’t read – I’ve always felt rather sorry for them. They are missing out on a whole different world. I love to open a book, and lose myself within its pages.

Who was your best friend as a teenager…and why?

2008-10-03T19:00:00.001+02:00

I had a few best friends when I was a teenager. When I was at Fettes my best friend was called AB – and we got into loads of trouble together. I lost touch with her after I left, and am sort of in touch with her again now on Facebook.

When I moved to school in Dumfries it took me a while to make the really good friends who I am still friends with today. It takes me a while to get to know people well – I’m really quite a shy person. I’d hang out by the school gates smoking before school and during break times, and got to know Lara and S (who I later had a relationship with – S, not Lara!)

I don’t remember how I got to know Colette. Maybe it was because we caught the same bus home. Anyway, she and I became best buddies, and through her I became friends with Lyndsey and Joocey (real name not supplied as she’s another blogger).So there was a little group of us. None of us were the “popular” kids, but we weren’t the unpopular ones either. I would say within our year group we were pretty average. The popular ones were all pretty bitchy anyway, and quite a few of them never made it into 5th or 6th year as the rest of us did. We were all just pretty damn clever!

Anyway, I’m still very close to Joocey and Lara although we don’t see each other very often. I haven’t seen Joocey since my Japan trip in April last year, and I haven’t seen Lara for years, but we keep in touch all the time through emails, blogs, facebook and msn. When Joocey and I get together it’s as though we only saw each other yesterday, and I’m sure when Lara and I manage to see each other it’ll be the same!

What did you want to be when you grew up?

2008-10-03T19:00:00.000+02:00

I can’t really remember having any fixed idea about what I wanted to do when I grew up. My friends and I played teachers, doctors and nurses and mummies and daddies obviously! I think probably being a teacher scored pretty highly, at least until I grew up enough to discover that teachers are just big whining kids who have never left school in their lives and have no idea what living in the real world entails.

I know I wanted to be a mummy – I know that sounds completely lacking in ambition! But I was only small!

When I was older and choosing where to go to university I decided that what I really wanted to do was to become an interpreter. I hated every minute of university. To be fair, maybe it was the course. I should have accepted the offer from St Andrews, which would not have meant doing awful courses like economics, accounts and business studies. That was just a straight French degree. But it’s easy to say in hindsight. If I had completed my degree my French would not have been any better than it is now – I could speak it before I moved to France, and can speak it much better now, and have a much larger vocabulary. A degree could not have improved on practical usage.

So what do I want to do with the rest of my life now?

I’m damned if I know!

What were you best at when you were at school?

2008-10-02T19:00:00.000+02:00

Believe it or not, when I was very small at primary school my best thing was sport! Not the running around type – oh no! But I adored swimming, and I was very good at it. I was also really good at high jump and long jump – again, two sports that don’t require a lot of running! I used my asthma as an excuse for the rest of them!

I can’t remember any subjects I was really good at when I was small, except for reading and spelling. I was a champion speller! I have always been a very fast reader, and when I left the school in Malawi the headmaster was delighted because I had read all the books in the school library! Not many people can claim to have read Dickens by age 9 – abridged or not!

When I got to secondary school it quickly became obvious that I was very good at modern languages. For my Highers I did English (B), French (A), Spanish (A), Italian (A) and Modern Studies (D). I have never counted the Modern Studies, as I’ve always considered the D to be a fail – but people have got into universities on D’s! I only took the subject to fill in my timetable – there was nothing else I was capable of doing. I did pass all my Standard Grades which included sciences etc, but I had to have a tutor for maths. I did pass maths, quite well, but if you asked me to explain a quadratic equation I wouldn’t have a clue! Seriously, languages were it for me!

Lucky really, seeing as I now live in France!

What sort of pets did you have when you were young?

2008-10-01T19:00:00.000+02:00

Ever since I can remember we have had dogs in our family.

When I was born we lived in Portsmouth. My mum had a Golden Retriever called Honey who was lovely. We also had a large golden Labrador called Linus who actually belonged to my aunt and uncle (R&D). He chewed all my toys! We also had a cat – a big ginger tabby called TC – very imaginative – he also belonged to R&D.

When we moved to Malawi we had to leave Honey with my gran – and Linus too obviously, as he wasn’t ours anyway. My dad already had two dogs there – a Rhodesian Ridgeback called Henry, and a golden retriever crossed with god knows what called Eska.

My dad had a cat called Bert – he had sort of Siamese/Burmese colouring and was a cool cat – he ate spicy food and his favourite was samosas!

I’m not too sure on the chronology of the next lot of dogs, but after that we had Koma (beautiful in Chichewa – the local language), a Red Setter puppy. He was very sweet and his favourite pastime was chasing butterflies! He died at about a year old from rabies. He had what is called dumb rabies, which means that the dog becomes paralysed from the muzzle backwards. So, there was no danger of being bitten, but the worst thing was that to prove it was rabies (to qualify for the vaccine ourselves) we had to wait until he died from it. He could not be put down. Luckily, I don’t remember any of it – I was only very small. He did eventually die, and it was proved to have rabies. He must have been bitten by a rat or a mongoose or something in the garden. I do remember that we were all heartbroken.
We then had to organise vaccines, and not just for us. We were told to count all the people who had been in our house for the past three weeks (not sure of timescale but something like that). All these other people had to have the vaccine too. Some of them were kids who were at boarding school in UK, and had been out on holiday. So, their parents had to contact the school and get them to organise it – easier said than done, especially then. I mean, this must be around 25 years ago at least. The vaccines hurt – big time. They were in the underside of the forearm, the needle went in quite shallowly, and you ended up with like a big bubble under your skin. It hurt like hell, and for a while I think we had to have one a day, then one a week, then a yearly booster. Something like that anyway – it may have been less, but it was a traumatic experience and I just remember tons of them. My mum used to buy me an Enid Blyton book each time – I got quite a collection! It left me with a complete phobia of needles though, which I have to this day.

Anyway, back to pets. I have no idea when any of the earlier pets died, except for Koma, but I was only very small. At some point we got a cat – he was sort of a black tabby I think, and we called him Huggy Bear after the character in some TV show. I don’t know much about 80’s TV either because we just didn’t get that in Malawi! He was a cool cat. We also got a German Shepherd puppy who we called Kali (fierce in Chichewa). She was a big softy, and slept on my bed.
A while after we got her, some friends of ours left, and they had a big, fierce German Shepherd called Samson. We had to travel up to Lilongwe (the capital) to collect him, and he had been doped up for the journey. When we got home, and the drugs wore off he was a completely different dog. All the ferociousness had disappeared (apart from when he was being a guard dog!), and he followed my mum everywhere, even crying outside the toilet if she was in there!
Also, around this time, we rescued another Red Setter, an elderly dog, called Tasha. She was very sweet, but totally dippy!

When we left Malawi, we just had Kali, Samson and Tasha left. We homed Tasha with my friend R’s parents, and Kali and Samson went to my other friend L’s parents. So it worked out beautifully all round.

When we got to Scotland it took a little while to get a dog. All our belongings were being transported across the high seas in a crate, so there wasn’t much we could do until we had turned our house into a home. When it finally did arrive, and everything felt right, my mum and dad came home one day with a tiny black Labrador puppy. He was adorable. He was (technically) my dad’s dog, and he named him Chaka Zulu, after the biggest, blackest bugger he could think of. That’s not meant to be un-PC at all by the way! Anyway, my dad was the only one who ever called him Chaka – his name very quickly got shortened to Lulu – not very butch for the big, black dog he turned into. But he was Lulu until the day he died – now more commonly known as Saint Lulu! He was definitely the most intelligent dog I have ever had – I swear he knew everything you were talking about, and during my teenage years I quite often sobbed out my woes to him, and he’d put his head on my knee and look up at me with those big dark brown eyes and make me feel all better!
At about the same time as we got Lulu, we also got Bracken, a Golden Retriever puppy. She was lovely, and we tried to have puppies with her, but in the end only two survived. She died herself at two years old from cancer. It was really my first experience of death.

We got another retriever quite a while later. She was a Camrose retriever, which meant she was almost white instead of golden. She was lovely, although she definitely had a mind of her own! We eventually tried the puppy thing again with her, but again it didn’t work. Out of 10 puppies, only one survived, so of course, we kept him and called him Harvey. He was very sweet, but a total mummy’s boy! He would hide behind her if he thought he was in trouble – even when he got bigger than her!
These three dogs, Lulu, Barley and Harvey, lasted well into my adulthood, and we actually brought them to France with us. Barley got tick fever after six months here and died. She could have been saved, as we have since found out, but the vet did not want to do anything to save her, as she was 12yrs old. Then, two months later, Lulu had a stroke and died. He was 14 and a half.

Left on his own, Harvey stopped eating because he was pining for his mum and his friend. We ended up going to the SPA to rescue a dog, and rescued two! We got a Pyrenean Mountain Dog who we called Ben – of indeterminate age, and an 8-month-old pup who was a spaniel up to his knees and an Alsatian on top! We called him Fleet. The SPA told us that Fleet had kennel cough, but he was dead within 10 days – our new vet said it was not kennel cough after all, but distemper – a highly infectious canine disease. We had to bleach the entire house to ensure that Ben and Harvey didn’t get it. That was awful.
After a couple of years I got a golden Labrador puppy, and called her Champers, because she was Champagne coloured! Then we got another golden Labrador called Islay – yes, the same as Isla – she was about 6yrs old when we got her, so it was much too late to change her name!!
Anyway, Ben died suddenly one day – the vet said it was probably a heart attack, and we never knew his age exactly, but giant dogs don’t have a very long lifespan.

We now have Islay, Champers and Murphy – a dopey Newfoundland.

We also have several cats now – Pepper, Spice, Stompy (their kitten – the others we found homes for), Thomas (Isla’s cat) and two gentleman callers that we have called Ralph (pronounced the posh way – Rafe) and Julian because they seem like a pair of cads!

This has gone way beyond my childhood animals, but once I started I couldn’t stop until I got to the end!

What do you remember about your holidays as a child?

2008-09-30T19:00:00.000+02:00

When I was very small we went to Ireland and the Scottish Highlands on holiday. I don’t remember anything of either holiday, apart from when we went to Scotland we stayed in a big house near Drumnadrochit and the tablecloth on the big kitchen table was the same pattern as my swimming costume. Oh, I also remember that my mum and I shared a massive (well it felt massive!) brass bed and went to sleep holding hands! Come to think of it, that should have been in my earliest memories!

Once we got to Malawi, holidays became a little more interesting and exotic. When I was about 4, my two stepbrothers (RB & DB) came out for a holiday. We had an old VW Combi – it was so cool – wish we had kept it! We went on holiday through Zambia and Zimbabwe, in the days when it was still pretty safe to do so, providing you had fags with which to bribe border guards – always worked, it was a failsafe plan!
Anyway, the main thing I vaguely remember was being ill. My mum knew I wasn’t well – I was being sick etc, so after one particularly bad spell, she took me out of the car in order to clean up, put me on the side of the road and I just crumpled to the floor. I was so dehydrated that if she pinched my skin, it stayed pinched. The found a hospital eventually – the Wankie Colliery Hospital, run by nuns. Turns out I had a bad case of dysentery, and no one knew why, because we had brought all our drinking water with us, and hadn’t touched any other water on the way. Anyway, apparently the nurses upset me as they gave me a suppository! They did spoil me though, because I was the first child who had ever stayed in the hospital, and once I was better they would take me out and buy me ice cream! I was extremely upset though, because while I was in there, the others saw giraffe and a cheetah. To this day I have never seen a cheetah – in the wild or otherwise. By the time we got home to Malawi, I had Bilharzia, so all in all, it wasn’t a great holiday for me! The others enjoyed it though!

We had several trips up to the lake, and they were always great holidays, but the next big one was in 1983 when my dad’s contract ended and we went on leave before the new one started. We had a very imaginative travel agent, so when we were given the allowance for the trip, she could stretch it to include several places. So, we started off going to Johannesburg where some friends of ours lived – I had been friends with their daughter in Reception and Standard 1. They actually lived in Rustenburg, roughly 100km NW of Jo’burg. We went to this cool swimming pool place – I think it was called the Kloof or something…anyway, they had three pools there. One was COLD, one was warmish and the other one was HOT! It was brilliant!

After South Africa, we flew to Rio De Janeiro. We went up on the funicular railway to Corcovado (the massive statue of Christ), so I have actually stood right next to it! We also got a cable car up to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and went to an emerald and diamond merchants. Not sure why, as my parents choice was a beautiful emerald necklace, or buying a house in UK! They did buy my BMX there though.

From there, we went to Florida, and went to Walt Disney World in Orlando. Now that was the most thrilling experience of my little life – I was only six at the time! I was terrified of the characters walking about, but I did talk to Mickey Mouse. He asked for my address, I gave it to him, and the bastard rodent never bloody wrote to me! I was heartbroken! We were there just before Christmas, and the Christmas tree they had there was incredible – it must have been at least 20m tall – just stunning! We also went to the Epcot Center, which was still very new, and to Cape Canaveral to see the rockets at the Kennedy Space Center.

From there we went to Washington, drove down to Annapolis and saw the Chesapeake Bay and the bridge, and also went to George Washington’s house at Mount Vernon in Virginia. I don’t remember much about that though – I mean it couldn’t compare to the wonder of Disney World!

From there, we went back to UK for Christmas. Just after that, we went up north to see the friends in Scotland, and that was when my mum and dad bought our house.

We went back to Malawi for another three years, and during that time we went to the lake some more, went to South Africa again a couple of times (including one trip to Sun City) but nothing was like that wonderful and amazing holiday we had when I was six.

Tell me about your best friends as a young child.

2008-09-29T19:00:00.000+02:00

I had two best friends when I was at primary school in Malawi, besides my cousins. They were RP and LC. We all lived pretty much next door to each other, and our parents were also good friends.

LC lived diagonally to the right of us, and the easiest way to get to their house was over the fence in the bottom corner of the garden. My parents eventually got a step ladder made especially for both sides of the fence, as it was much easier to climb over a ladder than a fence when they’d had a few! I used to sit on our veranda practicing my recorder, and I would hear LC practicing as well!

RP lived at the other bottom corner of the garden. You had to walk behind the servants’ quarters (I’ll explain that another time!), and go through a gate into her garden.

In fact, we were all such good friends that when we left RP’s parents took our Irish setter, and LC’s parents took our two German Shepherds.

What were your favourite childhood toys?

2008-09-28T20:41:00.000+02:00

I loved my Barbies and Sindys – yes, I am officially sad! I wasn’t a particularly girly girl – I hated wearing dresses with a passion! My aunt and uncle lived just a few miles from us, so I was brought up with my two boy cousins (G and S) almost as brothers and sister. In fact, our parents shared a nanny. This was in Malawi. I had lots of Barbies and Sindys, and my cousins had Action Men. Obviously Sindy and Action Man were husband and wife!

I don’t remember other toys really. I loved Play Mobil, but can’t remember specific toys.

There was a wooded bit in our garden and it was *my* forest! I loved it in there, and the boys and I would play for hours in there. I also had a bike – a BMX that we had bought in Brazil on leave as it was dirt cheap there. I used to ride up and down the driveway all the time. I thought the drive was really long; it was probably only half a kilometre there and back! I also had a swing in the garden, and spent hours on it.

When we got back to Scotland, my mum and dad bought me a Sindy house, and I had a Sindy Range Rover and a couple of horses for them too! It was fab! Unfortunately I grew out of them pretty quickly then.

What do you remember about the places you lived when you were a child?

2008-09-27T19:00:00.000+02:00

When I was born we lived in Portsmouth, Hampshire. I don’t remember much about it from then, as I was only 3½ when we left.

After my parents got married we moved to Malawi in Central Africa. I don’t remember the move at all. It must have been some shock to a small child, particularly the climate, but I don’t have a clue!

I started school at four in the Reception class, and about the first thing I learnt was a poem called “Little Arabella Miller”.
Little Arabella Miller
Saw a hairy caterpillar
First it crawled upon her mother
Then upon her baby brother
“Ach” said Arabella Miller
“Take away that caterpillar”.

Apparently I came home from school that day and recited the poem in a beautiful South African accent! It didn’t stick though – my accent now is sort of English with a gentle Scottish burr I would say.

Anyway, Malawi was fabulous – the bits I remember anyway! We had friends down on the tea estates, we would go to rock pools at Mulanje (the highest mountain in the country), we went to a swimming pool down where they grew sugar cane – I loved raw sugar cane, and have never had it since. We went to the Lake pretty often too. Lake Malawi is (or was) one of the most unspoilt paradises on earth – a freshwater lake 365 miles long and 52 miles wide. We used to stay at a cottage owned by the tea estate where our friends lived and worked. The beach was golden and it truly was a paradise. We just had to watch out for hippos and crocs; although they didn’t come near the beach during the day, you could hear the hippos on the lawn late at night. I learnt to play darts as a small child at the lake! Also, sometimes when my mum picked me up from school we would go to the club for lunch. We would sit by the pool with our salads or whatever, and as my dad’s office looked out on to the club swimming pool, she would wolf whistle, and he would come down and join us.

School was pretty good too, most of the time. It started at 07.20 and finished at 12.00. As this was normal, I obviously didn’t complain! It wasn’t too far from our house, and occasionally, like when there were petrol shortages, I used to walk to school with my dad and he would carry on to work.

There were a lot of shortages. Petrol shortages were a common occurrence, and you could queue up for hours. Another time we had a toilet roll shortage – god knows what caused that one! Misunderstandings were quite common too, with amusing results! One year at Christmas time, the local supermarket thought it had done a fabulous job with its decorations – Christmas tree, chains across the ceiling etc. The problem was that the chains, rather than being normal paper chains, were made out of sanitary towels, as were the baubles on the tree!

On Christmas day, every year, we had local dancers on the front lawn. I presume they went to every house hoping for some food or something – I didn’t pay much attention to the details only being small, but it was amazing to see them doing their tribal dance.

We eventually left due to a variety of circumstances, two being my dad’s contract ending, and the fact that we had been burgled four times in four months, the last time resulting in the dogs being drugged with sleeping pills. It was becoming a place where it was no longer very safe to live. I’m glad we left when we did, as I think it would have become harder and harder, and all the things that we loved about the country were slowly disappearing.

From there we moved to Scotland when I was nine. We had been home on leave in 1983 and visited friends in Scotland. My mum and dad fell in love with the place, and bought a house there. We rented it out while my dad finished his final contract, and finally moved back in 1986. I went to several different schools there – which no doubt will be expanded on later.

I loved Scotland. I spent most of my life there. It’s hard to explain, except that it is part of my soul. A Celt anyway (the family originally comes from Devon, Ireland and Somerset - according to the research I have done), it appealed to me in a way that nowhere else ever has. Where we lived was very pretty, rolling hills, very very green land, lots of sheep and cows, and beautiful lochs. But if you drove just half an hour up the road towards Edinburgh the scenery became majestic and awe inspiring. Add to that, the pure, clean air and total lack of pollution in the country areas, and some of the most beautiful cities in the British Isles – it’s no wonder it is one of the most beautiful and loved countries in the world.

And now France. But that’s for another post.

What interesting information do you know about other people in our family?

2008-09-26T19:00:00.001+02:00

The only really interesting snippet I know is that my dad’s grandfather emigrated to Australia in the 19th century, allegedly intending on sending for his family, but he never did. I’m not sure how long he was there before he died, but it was a good few years I think. Anyway, there is a large area of Perth that is called Beldon, which is quite cool I think!

Ooh, I’ve just thought of two more.

Both my dad and my uncle have been jailbirds in Africa!

My uncle was driving with his mate, from Nairobi back to Britain; a journey which I am sure was fraught with difficulties. I must get him to tell me all about it one day. Anyway, they were driving in the Central African Republic and got caught in a convoy, which turned out to be a Presidential convoy. He was stopped, and a policeman asked him if he was a spy. “Of course I am” he replied sarcastically. Never use sarcasm to an African policeman – it doesn’t work. Into the slammer he went, and paid his way out of it with cheap fags!

My dad’s jail spell happened before he and my mum got married. The Queen was visiting Malawi, and the President was driving through the town. All shops, offices – basically every person in every building – had to turn out to see the drive by. He was standing by the side of a road when a policeman asked him to move.
He said “I’ll stand where I want to wave to my Queen.”
The policeman asked him “What about our President?”
My dad replied “Oh, I’ll wave to him too…if he’s there!”

Again, into the slammer! It was only a police cell, and they let him go. Lucky for him – in those days you could get deported for less than that.

What do you think your parents thought of you as a child?

2008-09-25T19:00:00.000+02:00

This is a really hard question. I have no idea what my parents thought of me as a child. I know they loved me. They thought I was cute and bright and funny and clever – all the things that parents usually think about their children.

I know they worried about me, especially when I became a teenager and started to become rebellious! But, compared to many other kids, I gave them very little trouble.

Tell Me About Your Mum and Dad.

2008-09-24T19:00:00.000+02:00

Now this is a difficult one!

My biological father I know almost nothing about, apart from the fact that he came from Somerset and worked in an off licence at one point. The Somerset bit obviously explains my slight tendency towards madness!

My real dad, my proper one – the one I grew up with – I know a lot about, obviously! He had known my mum long before I was born, and in fact happened to be in the UK when I was born, so was one of the first people to see me. He was on leave from Malawi, and as they were old family friends he popped into the hospital to se my mum. In fact, years before in Malawi, he had gone out with my mother’s sister! Luckily for us it didn’t work out! He came back on leave three years later, met up with my mum again, they fell in love (at least I assume they did!!) and got married on Hogmanay that year, and we all left the UK two days later. I apparently made Grandma cry buckets because I said I’d see her tomorrow! I was only three and a half!

Anyway, my dad is a pretty chilled sort of person, most of the time. He’s 70 now, 13yrs older than my mum, but he looks much younger than his years. He was married before, and got divorced about 5 or so years before he and my mum got together. He has two sons from that marriage Richard and David – 10 and 13 years older than me. I don’t know them that well because I didn’t grow up with them, and we have never spent a lot of time together.

My mum is pretty laid back as well. Most of the time we get on brilliantly. She is a good laugh, we get on well, she helps me out with Isla all the time, and most of the time we are good friends as well as mother and daughter. We have our blow ups, but they are usually over pretty quickly.

And both my mum and my dad adore Isla so much it is unbelievable.

What are your earliest memories?

2008-09-23T19:00:00.000+02:00

My very earliest memory is of sitting on a stool in the kitchen eating my breakfast. It was some kind of cereal, and I remember my mum saying “Hurry up and drink the milk out of the bowl before Grandma comes down”! My Grandma was always pernickety about little things, and my mum was a lot more relaxed than her.

Another early memory I have is probably from when I was about 3. G (my cousin) was pulling my hair and screaming that he wanted to play with my Fisher Price “Par Cark”.

I don’t remember much else from my very early years – my long term memory has never been brilliant, and for some odd reason these two memories stand out.

Tell me about the time and place you were born.

2008-09-22T19:00:00.001+02:00

I was born in St Mary’s hospital in Portsmouth, Hampshire. The day I was born was the day of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. My mum apparently received lots of free baby food and goodies.

Portsmouth is a big naval city on the south coast of England, and although it’s not my favourite place in the world – it really is one of the ugliest cities – containing the world’s ugliest building “The Tricorn” – I love it anyway! The Tricorn has now been knocked down – I think it’s a shame – it should have stood as a testament to how not to design buildings!
My mum was a single mother. From what I can gather, she had a brief relationship with my biological father. She even went as far as going down to Somerset to meet his parents. They were engaged because of the baby. While she was there she thought she was having a miscarriage – she was five months pregnant. She was rushed into hospital in Taunton, where the doctor there told her not to worry – she was young and had lots of time to have “plenty more babies”. Luckily for me, it turned out that she had a bad kidney infection, and I stayed put until about a week past her due date. Her due date was 26th May and I was born on 2nd June. When I had Isla my due date was 26th May, and she was born on 2nd June too. Isla’s father, Colin, was due to be born on 2nd June, but was in fact born on 18th May – 2nd June is obviously a pretty auspicious date.

Not long after this suspected miscarriage my father did a bunk. I never have quite found out why. I know he had a daughter from a previous relationship, so somewhere I have at least one half sibling.

My mum had a hard time telling her parents that she was pregnant – this was 1976 when she got pregnant remember, and being a single mother was still frowned upon. Her mother took it quite hard at first, wondering what she had done to deserve this. Why is it that the older generation always think everything reflects back on them? My grandfather was a tower of strength, and very quickly, so was my grandmother. In fact, as it turned out, I was a godsend for her. My grandfather died from a stroke two months before I was born, so as soon as I was born my mum had to go out and work to feed all three of us, as my grandmother didn’t work. She became my daytime carer, and my mum took over when she got home. I think the responsibility saved my grandmother from sinking into depression.

I was born after a fairly long labour (I think) during which my mother discovered that the gas mask she had been handed was, in fact, not connected to anything at all! She threw it across the room! My grandmother did not want her to “let herself down” by screaming and shouting during labour. I think she did anyway!

2nd June 1977
N°1 Single - I Don’t Want To Talk About It/First Cut Is The Deepest – Rod Stewart
N°1 Album – Arrival – ABBA

Prologue

2008-09-21T20:14:00.000+02:00

For my dad’s birthday, from his eldest son R (my stepbrother), he received a book called “Dear Dad – From You to Me”. The book is full of headings such as “tell me about the first time you met my mother”, or “what were your favourite childhood toys?” The idea is that my dad has to fill in the book with all his memories, and send it back to R.

I decided to take the headings in the book, relate them to myself, and write my history to give to Isla.

So, here goes.