Going Gently set a Challenge...

Fans of Owl Wood please read! Going Gently, here is my two-pennyworth





10 Things You Don't Know About Me

• At the age of 15, while living in the Western Isles, I played the part of The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, on a carnival float. Owl Wood, (he was once a child, shock, horror)was an extremely cute Little Jack Horner, one of my children! There he is with a peach-coloured hat and a pretty neck bow on his broad white collar. He was a good sport! Bribery may have had something to do with it.

• I cannot tell left from right. I have tried. I try every day. Some days I know I have finally got it figured out. Those are usually the days when I am dangerously wrong.

• I used to be quite good at milking cows - by hand. I love the sweet smell of cows.

• I won a scholarship to a rather posh high school (they must have been short of applicants). I used to get straight A's in elocution class. I was amazingly good at 'Hot coffee from a proper copper coffee pot' and nonsense such as 'Betty Botter bought some butter, but, she said, this butter's bitter, if I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter, so Betty Botter bought some butter better than the bitter butter...'you get the idea. Such a useful skill!!

• My husband and I met on a blind date. I almost didn't go, because the same couple who organised it had previously set me up with some dreadful man who had spent the evening trying to show me photographs of nude women. I was not amused and left quite quickly!

• When I was 16 I fell off a horse and was made to get back on; later it was discovered I had broken two bones in my neck. I am still passionate about horses, but I don't ride.

• I cannot ice-skate, I just seem incapable of staying upright. I dread icy pavements, I have the same problem on them!

• In my youth I was tickled pink to find that Donovan (remember him?) would be on board the same small light aircraft as my mother and I - disappointingly, he had his wife with him.

• I used to be able to take shorthand dictation at 200/210 wpm. No wonder my handwriting is so abysmal these days, my mind is always racing ahead of my longhand writing.

• On my way home from work, about 12 years ago, I slipped and hurt my ankle. I sort of knew I had really hurt it. However, I had slipped in a public place right next to my car, so, being very stupid - stiff upper lip and British - about it, highly embarrassed, I got into the car, assuring kindly and concerned witnesses that I was fine, then drove home. It was my left ankle (yes, I am sure about that one - well, if it wasn't the left it was the right..) so I had to press the clutch pedal with it. Home was 5 miles away, through the middle of town, up dale and down dale (lots of gear changes, hill starts, ouch, ouch) I made it. It turned out that it wasn't sprained, it was broken... Dumbo me!