Sorry for the long gap in posts. Internet trouble etc. I seem OK now, at last. For everyone who has had an iffy day at orchestra practise, click on this wonderful site. http://www.thereallyterribleorchestra.com/ . Their rendition of "Yellow Submarine" will gladden your heart. Read the page about some of the members and you will discover they are just like us - middle aged and over, and wonderfully optimistic!
I was tagged a long time ago and have been thinking about it . Seven things are rather a lot, but here goes!
1. I was born in Middlesex, North West London, daughter of an industrial chemist for Eastman Kodak and a domestic science teacher.
2.One of my first memories is sitting in a deckchair - the old fashioned sort that amputated fingers rather frequently - in our back garden and watching Dad launching our chickens over the washing line "to give them some exercise". I also remember helping my mother feed them whisky to make them drunk just before Dad wrung their necks! She wanted them to die happy.
3. I went to at least three church meetings every Sunday and on one memorable occasion wet my nickers during Sunday School! When I think of it now, I die a little!.
4. The three best things I ever did were a) become a Christian at about 14yrs, b) marry my husband, and 3). produce our 3 children.
5. There are too many "worst things" but 3 that come to mind are
a) the first intramuscular injection I ever gave unsupervised as a junior nurse. It was Streptomycin - a thick white liquid that needed a huge No 1 needle. It bounced off the poor man's upper outer quadrant of right buttock and I slowly ground it in at the third attempt and felt the needle hit bone. Aaaaghh! Back to the Jaffa oranges for more practise!
b) There was a registrar on night duty who always demanded, without a please or thank you, a drink of Horlicks, very strong, and without fail, however busy we were. One night we put Dulcolax and Lactulose into it, and we also injected his orange with Liquid Paraffin, and he was off with a tummy upset the next night! Result!!
c) When I was about 10yrs I looked up in the telephone directory the name Smelly, phoned the poor individual and said "Are you Smelly? What are you going to do about it then?" In those days you were safe from being traced.
6) Our first house was a converted barn in Somerset overlooking the wonderful cathedral town of Wells. You approached through a short tunnel in the bank on the Bristol Hill and came out onto a 10 acre meadow, with cows and flowers and a single palm tree that was all that remained from a big house that had been burned down years before. In Spring it was like Heaven.
7) What shall I say for my last item? There is no mystery lurking in my family, but a curious fact emerged about my father after he died. His old secretary phoned my mother and referred to the "MI5 episode" and "x"(she mentioned a name we knew from Dad's work) being sent to meet someone on a train on the Continent! We had no idea what she meant and when she realised my mother knew nothing she would not elaborate! Was my Dad a secret agent? We will never know!
l
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
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3 comments:
I enjoyed your list, especially the image of your father giving the chickens exercise and your mother giving them whiskey. What fun!
When I was little, a friend gave us chicks for Easter. We tried to help them fly too, but my parents were spoilsports and insisted we donate them to the farm down the road. :-)
My grandfather used to force-feed cognac to the turkey in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. He called it nature's tenderizer.
I remember being surprised at the bland (cognac-free) taste of our first "store-bought" turkey.
Cognac sounds better than my mother's choice of whiskey, probably because of the orange base. I knew an old midwife once who used to stuff her Christmas turkey in the time honoured wayand then plug the said orifice with a large blood orange. Enough to bring tears to the eyes!
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