Open Book Blog Hop – 22nd April

This week the topic is:

Many of us wax poetical at the end of winter and the return of spring. Let’s swap that around. What’s the one thing about spring that you can’t stand?

Like most people I love the end of winter and the promise of long summer days to come.  The trees begin to sprout new leaves, we can all leave off layers of clothing, and Sam and I can head off down the A3 and drain up our holiday home.  However… I know full well that one thing is going to spoil my fun and put me on permanent guard.  What is it?

Aaargh!  It’s bees, wasps, and any other stinging insect.

As soon as the sun comes out, then so do the bees and wasps.  If I’m stung, I can feel my neck begin to swell on the inside straight away, and I have to run for my Prednisolone tablets which are never far away.  The sting itself will linger for days, itching and irritating my skin.

I know that bees are doing their bee thing and pollinating and honey-making and so on, but I hate the bloody things!  And another thought … what the hell are wasps for?  They hover about on our decking, and I cannot relax if I see one.

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Let’s see what other blog-hoppers cannot stand about Spring.  You can join in the fun if you like, and leave a comment or add your own blog.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

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Open Book Blog Hop – 15th April

This week’s topic is:

If you could write one new law, what would it be?

I’d make the UK dry, therefore any sale or manufacture of alcohol would be banned.  Draconian fines or even prison sentences would be put in place for anybody breaking the law.

I know it would never happen in real life, as the Government would lose too much revenue.  However, remembering the USA in the 1930s and prohibition,  I know there would soon be a proliferation of back garden distilleries mushrooming all over the country, which would make the law worthless.  But hey, I can dream can’t I?

But just imagine how much pleasanter the country would be if people didn’t try and break the law.  People older than 40 might be able to venture into town centres again at night. Accident and Emergency centres wouldn’t be filled with drunk, violent and vomiting people on Friday and Saturday nights.  Ambulance staff wouldn’t need to fear for their lives.  The NHS wouldn’t need to treat alcoholics, as there wouldn’t be any, so there might be more beds available.  Marriages might be saved, and there might be less homeless people on the streets.  People would be happy facing reality and not constantly trying to block it out.

It’s a kind of Utopia I suppose.  Will it ever happen?  Yes, if I became Prime Minister!  There would be several other laws I’d pass too, which would make me even more unpopular.  My term of office would be terribly short.

Which laws would other blog -hoppers pass?  Click on the blue button to find out, or even add your own blog.

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Open Book Blog Hop – 8th April

Tags

clairvoyance, medium, psychic

This week the topic is:

If you could trade lives with anyone for just one day, who would it be and why?

I’ve always been fascinated by the ability of a medium to be able to communicate with the spirit world.  I went to see a genuine clairaudient medium on Monday evening, Stephen Holbrook, who is amazingly accurate.  He proved to me yet again that there is life after death and that our spirits live on.

Just for one day I’d love to be able to step into Stephen’s shoes and hear those spirit voices from my long-dead loved ones and find out what it’s like to be psychic.  I’d get to meet Stephen’s spirit guide too, who is a WW1 soldier.  I could then try and bring back Sam’s father and grandfather to prove it all to Sam and stop him from being so resistant about the whole thing.

I saw ghosts when a child, and I’ll always remember it.  Our flat at the time was haunted by somebody who had committed suicide in my bedroom (we found this out years later when a family friend lived there), and Mum used to experience paranormal events there too.  My bed would often lift from the ground when I was in it and I’d dive under the covers and hide until it stopped, although due to my extreme youth I didn’t remember thinking anything was amiss at the time.  We moved out when I was 7, and after this the paranormal activity stopped.

Do you think there is life after death?  I know there is.  Leave me a comment or add your blog by clicking on the blue button below.

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

Open Book Blog Hop – March 18th

This week the topic is:

‘If your childhood had a smell, what would it be?’

There’s more than one smell that takes me straight back to my childhood.  Two aromas are still with me today in the shape of my father’s binocular case and his leather wallet.  I kept hold of both of them; the binoculars are at the van and the wallet is in my desk.  I sometimes open the binocular case and wallet and just inhale the scent of Dad, which is still there even though he died 42 years’ ago.  His wallet still bears the old ten shilling note symbol, and there’s a little note inside in his handwriting, which says he’s just gone to the library and won’t be long.

Another scent is the smell of cigar smoke.  Dad would always smoke cigars at Christmas.  Every time I smell a cigar I can still see my father sitting in his favourite armchair.
Another aroma is the earthy scent of wet leaves.  It was always my job to sweep up leaves in the garden, and also trim the ivy.  Here’s Dad in about 1944:

Strange, but there are no smells that remind me of Mum.

Let’s see what other blog-hoppers’ childhood smells are:

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Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Open Book Blog Hop – 11th March

This week the topic is:

‘When you are daydreaming, what do you dream about?’

I do the majority of my daydreaming when I’m walking about the village or at work typing clinic letters.  I know I shouldn’t, but I can listen to the dictation, type and daydream at the same time (don’t worry – I always read each letter through before I submit it!).  I tend to think about subjects for blogs or plots for books, or I have been known to think up the first few lines of a poem.  Now we have a new system starting today where I don’t even have to input anything – all I have to do is check what’s been automatically typed!

At other times I’ll be typing or walking about and singing a song to myself or classical music will be running through my brain.  I typed a 2 minute dictation on Thursday whilst singing Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Move on Up’, as I’d watched ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ the night before on TV.  I can’t actually sing it because the voice doesn’t go that high, but I can reach that top note in my head.

As you can probably tell, I’ve been doing my job for so long that I don’t really have to think about it. However, I cannot do what one of my old consultants could manage … he could take part in and listen to three different conversations all at the same time!

What do other blog-hoppers daydream about?  Click on the blue button below to find out.  You can even add your own blog to the link!

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Open Book Blog Hop – 4th March

This week the topic is:

How do you recharge?

There’s a few ways I de-stress.  The first one of course is escaping across The  Solent to the Isle of  Wight and my lovely holiday home which Sam and I come to as often as we can during the year.

If I’m at home in  Suffolk, I walk around our village and listen to the birds, or trek along country footpaths.  I also like reading, and am halfway to achieving my Goodreads reading challenge this  year of 12 books.  Since I’ve been writing, I don’t read as much as I used to, but I’m trying to rectify that.

To recharge, I need silence – silence in which to walk, sit under the parasol on my decking, or read.  As long as I have silence, I’m quite happy.  The older I get, the more I hate noise.

How do other blog-hoppers recharge?  Click on the blue button below to find out, or you can add your own blog to the link or just leave a comment.

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Open Book Blog Hop – February 25th

This week the topic is:

‘What have you done to make the world a better place?’

Hmm…I had to think about this one.  I think I’ve helped in a small way by doing the 10 things that I’ve listed below:

1. Raising two sons to adulthood to be productive members of society.
2. Never chopping down trees just because it’s  Christmas (such a stupid idea to bring what was a live tree into your living room and decorate it with gaudy trash!).
3. Filling up 4 bird feeders in our garden with peanuts on a regular basis.  Flocks of birdies have found them.  It’s a place for them to hang out.  Okay, the grass is full of shit, but hey…
4. Never embarrassing myself or my family by being drunk in a public place (or at home either).
5. Writing novels to entertain readers.
6. Helping patients whilst working as a medical secretary in a hospital for 17 years (you always feel needed and useful!).
7. Speaking the truth.  It’s solved a lot of problems.
8. Picking up litter instead of dropping it.
9. Giving a smile and a “Good morning” to people I see as I’m out walking.
10. Not driving up the exhaust pipe of the car in front to try and make them drive faster.

What have you done?  If you want to take part in the blog hop this week, here are the rules:

1.Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Add your blog below by clicking on the blue button:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

 

Open Book Blog Hop -18th February

This week the topic is ‘What was your best ‘drop the mic’ moment?’

I must admit, I had not heard that phrase here in East Anglia, UK.  I’ve heard of ‘Taking the Mick’, but not ‘Dropping the mic’.  However, my US blog-hopper friends quickly translated it for me as a kind of ‘glory’ moment that you experience when you know you’ve nailed it.

Okay, well… I had to wait a long time for my glory moment – I’d say about 20 years.  It all goes back to when my sons Leon and Marc were aged 16 and at the point of leaving school.  Neither of them wanted to go to university; in fact all Leon wanted to do was play computer games, and all Marc wanted to do was play his guitar in the garage along with several hirsute, unwashed musos that you’d never want to come across on a dark night.

I informed both boys quite sternly that they would have to do something to earn a living, and reiterated what my own father had said to me: “If you think you’re going to sit on your arse and do nothing, then you can think again.”

Leon carried on playing computer games, and Marc turned up the volume on his Mesa Boogie amp to drown me out.  I asked them how they intended to eventually keep a family and pay a mortgage, but they told me they had no intention of ever getting married and had no desire to move out in the foreseeable future.

However, I was not to be put off.  I knew the boys were not particularly academic, but they were very practical like their father.  I went along to a place in town that advertised apprenticeships for young people aged 16 -19.  I came away with a list of local apprenticeships available, and stuck them in front of Leon’s nose in 1998 and again in front of Marc and his guitar-which-needed-to-be-surgically-removed in 2001.  Both boys reluctantly picked out two each.  Then it was a case of making sure they’d filled in the application forms correctly, which unfortunately neither one was in any hurry to do.  I even posted the bloody forms as well.

About two weeks before they left school, the boys received invitations to attend for apprentice interviews.  Nervous, suited and booted, they turned up. They must have impressed the interview panel, because Leon received offers to become either a car mechanic or an air-con engineer (he chose the latter), and Marc had an offer to become a lathe operator/CNC machinist.  They left school on the Friday and started work on the Monday and were actually quietly delighted, especially when they discovered they would be paid a weekly wage and given a day off to attend college.

Twenty years on,  after many exam passes and a couple of changes of employers (but still not with any university degrees between them), Marc is the general manager of a Cambridge-based precision engineering company, and Leon is a senior manager in a nationwide building/engineering company, ever competitive, and with his sights set on getting the same title as his younger brother .  They’ve both taken time to thank me for my efforts in obtaining them gainful employment when they were 16 and didn’t know any better, which they realise eventually helped them to pay their mortgages and keep the families they said they’d never ever have!

I must admit, when my now 30-something sons thanked me and gave me a hug, I think it was my ‘Drop the mic’ moment.

What was your ‘Drop the mic‘ moment?  Click on the blue button below to discover other blog-hoppers’ moments of glory, or even add your own:

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Open Book Blog Hop – February 11th

Here’s this week’s blog topic:

Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and your pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be, and why?

That’s an easy one for me.  No, I wouldn’t save my computer, photos, books or papers.  Having suffered from thyroid cancer and had extensive treatment, I now have no working salivary glands.  So… I would save a lovely cold bottle of water from the fridge!  I have to sip, sip, sip water all the livelong day, otherwise much unpleasantness occurs, of which I’m sure you don’t want to know about.

Cheers!

But hey… it’s been two years now and I’m used to it.

Everywhere I go, my trusty bottle of water is with me.  Try carrying on a conversation with no working salivary glands, or even eating a sandwich.  It just ain’t gonna happen.  However, with a bottle of water in one’s pocket, one can sound and look reasonably human.  I need to take a sip of water about every 10 minutes all the time I’m awake.  This ensures I will never suffer from dehydration, but it also poses another problem…

One has to ensure a ladies’ room is not too far away!

I love music festivals, but surprise surprise, they don’t want you taking in your own water.  I used to jettison mine at the last ever minute before I went through the turnstiles, and then waste time queueing up to buy another one from a stall.  Now I’ve got into the habit of producing an empty water bottle at the security gate. They look at it with suspicion but they can see it’s empty, so I get to keep it.  As soon as I get to the arena I look for the free drinking water tap.

See what other blog-hoppers would save by clicking on the blue button below.  What would you save?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Click here to enter

 

Open Book Blog Hop – 4th February

This week’s topic is:

If you could make one change in the world, what would it be?

I’d like to make many changes, but the Open Book topic only gives me the chance to make one.  Therefore this is the change I’d make if I could…

I’d ban sugar!

Sugar has been added stealthily to virtually everything we eat, and it’s also in many drinks too.  I’m reduced to eating lean meat, fish, vegetables and salads and drinking either water or green tea so as not to be another victim of sugar addiction.  I’m not talking about the natural sugars in fruit, but the unnatural ones…dextrose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, corn syrup and the like. The sugars that manufacturers like to add to their products to make them more appealing and therefore increase their profits.

There are nearly 60 different names for these unnatural sugars, and they’re in most of our foodstuffs, increasing the sugar receptors in our brains and making us crave more of the stuff, which could lead to obesity and heart and joint problems in those not able to control their weight.  Too much sugar in our diets can also cause the pancreas to become exhausted, leading to Type II diabetes and its legacy of poor circulation and foot/leg ulcers or amputation, and eyesight problems.  I see the damage sugar can cause every day at the hospital where I work.

I buy wholemeal bread, and surprise surprise, it’s in there as well as caramelised sugar.  I bought some frozen vegetable chips for my granddaughters who like them, and found they were coated with dextrose.  Arrgh!  The manufacturers get babies addicted as soon as possible, by putting sugar in tins of baby food.

People all over the world would be so much healthier without sugar.  The sugar producers and probably the breweries too would be up in arms of course, but we as a nation would eventually feel the benefit.  However, it will never happen.  The Government enjoy their tax revenue from sales of alcohol too much, and all the sugar addicts would be up in arms too complaining about the mother of all withdrawal headaches and infringes of their human rights.  I guess sugar is here to stay unfortunately…

Click on the blue button below to discover the changes other blog-hoppers would make.  You can also link your own blog to this topic.