Fifty things

My husband and I had a plan. We called it Fifty things to do before we're Fifty. We originally gave ourselves a budget of 50 x £50 but it soon became obvious when we made the decision to send our daughter to boarding school that the budget would have to be cut (50 x 50p was more realistic!) It was supposed to be an excuse to do crazy things, have adventures, live life to the full and blog all about it. Last week, my husband turned fifty and in a few short months the dials on my age counter will click over to match his. Far from being well under way with our amazing new experiences, we haven't even managed to complete #1 on the list which was, quite usefully,  Think of Fifty Things.

Our plan failed. Fifty Things to do Before We're Fifty was a failure.

Should I let this get me down? Definitely not. Failure is just another teacher with a lesson to deliver. Failure is probably one of the most important teachers we can have.

Why did our plan fail? The simple answer is lack of time and money. Time and money are two things no-one ever seems to have enough of. The lesson learned - never waste either.

Instead of feeling down about the failed plan,  I decided to put a more positive spin on things and make a retrospective list of Fifty things we DID do before we were fifty from the time we got together in our early forties. It is colour coded - black things we did together, blue things are his achievements, pink are mine. Here is the list:

1. Meet up on a romantic trip to Paris
2. Fall in love   (  The beat, beat, beat of my heart  )
3. Ski for the first time

4.  Fly alone to see Coldplay in Barcelona

5.  Get stranded in Barcelona airport with no flights home!

6. Move job and country
7. Buy a house together   (  A tale of two plates  )
8. Make that house a home  (  Home  )
9. Have horse riding lessons
10. Buy a boat    (  Finding sea legs  )
11. Dig a fish pond (not for the boat!)
12. Fall in the fishpond
13. Fly to to Greece
14. Swim in an infinity pool
15. Go snorkelling
16. Announce a pregnancy.
17. Have a baby girl.   (  Addy  )
18. Have a naming day party for all the new Virgos   (  A year of being Virgos  )
19. Learn to dance
20.  Dance in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom   (  Blackpool  )
21. Finalise divorces
22.  Plan a wedding.
23. Get married   (  Remembering a Wedding Day  )
24. Announce another pregnancy.
25. Have a baby boy. (  Dylan's Birth Video - celebrating the children in your life  )
26. Prevent the possibility of any more pregnancy announcements  ( not for the squeamish  )
27. Start writing a blog (  One Year of QWERTY Mum  )
28. Learn to knit  (  Knitting with my mum  )
29. Knit a zombie  (  Knit your own zombie  )
30. Join a running club  (  Running Club  )
31. Run 10K  (  Market Drayton 10K Road Race  )
32 Become regular Parkrunners ( More Parkrunning  )
33. Create a vegetable garden.  (  Why I love my Garden  )
34. Watch shooting stars
35. Taste Paneer Tikka Masala ( A Curry to Remember  )
36. Have a boudoir photo shoot  (  Boudoir Photography )
37. Buy a sports car  ( Mid Life Crisis  )
38. Sell a sports car
39. Cycle to London (not through the lack of a more appropriate vehicle)  ( Men in Lycra  )
40. Alphabet Date  (pull out all the stops for A but never reach the end)  (  Aerial Adventure  )
41. Complete a triathlon  (  A Sporty End to Half Term  )
42. Swim and cycle the distances for an ironman competition.
43. Support four daughters on their journey to independence
44. Keep chickens  (  Here come the girls  )
45. Eat meat (not the chickens)  (  Gloucester Old Spot Piglets and Sausages  )
46. Deal with the loss of a loved one  (  My Mother in Law  )
47. Take part in a Colour Run  (  Color Run  )
48. Complete two Race for Life events, raising money for Cancer Research (  Race for Life  )
49. Discover Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead TV shows
50.

There were plenty of contenders for number 50 - spa days, counting blessings, appreciating the little things, falling out and making up...

I decided to leave 50 blank. There are still a few months before the deadline we set ourselves originally - midnight on 30th April 2014. I am counting on the fact that we can pull one adventure/crazy thing out of the bag before then - one amazing experience to demonstrate our commitment to living life to the full. Number fifty is hope for the future, never knowing what is around the corner, grasping opportunities, being willing to put in the effort or step outside the zone of complacency. Life's plan will unfold before me. I will be ready for it.

Miss Nunn

Last year, my husband organised and participated in an epic bike ride from  Queen's School in Chester to Buckingham Palace. This year, the team are endeavouring to cycle the length of Offa's Dyke from Prestatyn to Chepstow (some 200 miles). No mean feat - especially considering the current heatwave we are enjoying (suffering?!)

On Sunday night, I drove out to their scheduled overnight stop to show my support.

They were staying in Adcote School, a small independent day and boarding school in the most beautiful rural setting. The school itself was a gorgeous tudor style sandstone building with grand mullioned windows and set in extensive landscaped grounds. It was most impressive. Inside, the grandeur was still evident and as I walked up the main stairway, I couldn't help but notice a large oil portrait of Mrs Doubtfire!

It turned out that the costume designer on the set of Mrs Doubtfre was Marit Allen, former pupil of Adcote School. She had very clearly drawn her inspiration for the look of the character from the Headmistress whose portrait I was now admiring. The likeness was uncanny.

It got me thinking about some of the more iconic authority figures from my school career. One in particular sprang to mind. Ageing spinster, music teacher - Miss Nunn.

Miss Nunn had a face that always reminded me of the Child-catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Upon those unfortunate pointy and unattractive features she would plaster thick foundation. I would not have been surprised to discover that it was actually stage makeup that she used, such was the thickness she achieved - and it would crack - further adding to the Child-catcher illusion. I distinctly remember being fascinated by the skin/make up interface around her jawline. As a result , I am always very careful when it comes to blending my own foundation (on the rare occasions I wear it).

Despite her sinister visage, she was actually of a kindly disposition. She was passionate about her subject but had absolutely no skills when it came to classroom management. She was regularly the target of abuse from the naughty kids in class and her voice would become more and more shrill as she tried to restore order. On one particular occasion, her shrieking and the escalation of bad behaviour from one pupil culminated in a chair being thrown across the classroom at her. It did not hit her, thankfully,  but we certainly did not learn much about music theory during that session.

Miss Nunn went by the nickname Winnie. I'm not sure whether her name actually was Winifred, but apparently she was named after or adopted the name of a famous concert pianist of the time. I have Googled 'Winnie concert pianist' but it shed no light on the matter for me. The name did suit her though.

There was much speculation about romantic liaisons between Miss Nunn and an elderly divinity teacher, Doctor Davies. I doubt there was any truth in the matter but there was a very obvious match between the two distinctly 'old school' dinosaurs. Nowadays, the internet has spawned 'fandoms' in which fanatics of popular TV shows can write their own version of the shows using the established characters. More often than not, this involves 'shipping' which enables the exploration of romantic couplings between characters that wouldn't necessarily have been in the original script writers intentions. At school, we all 'shipped' Miss Nunn and Doc Davies. We never tired of it!

The most remarkable thing about Miss Nunn for me was her choice of dress. She always, without fail, whatever the weather, wore a blue woollen two piece. I have to hope that she had a wardrobe full of identical blue woollen two pieces which she alternated but to all intents and purposes it was as though she never EVER changed her clothes. This idea was leant weight by the fact that the armpits of the outfit were discoloured to the most vile shade of brown imaginable. There was nothing more horrendous than Miss Nun enthusiastically conducting the orchestra (of which I was a member with my trusty clarinet). Her arms would wave at full stretch overhead to ensure everyone could see her (she was fairly diminutive in stature)  revealing the unsanitary armpit area in all its gruesome glory.

Had I gone on to become a movie costume designer, Mrs Doubtfire may have had a very different appearance!

Although I would find it very difficult to assign an age to Miss Nunn, she surely must be long dead now.  I wonder how many of the pupils who passed through the door of her classroom have such vivid memories of her as I do. A quick search on Friends Reunited Teacher Memory proved that she certainly hasn't been forgotten:



Miss Nun

Short, big boobs, Fancied Doc Davis ? Not sure why !

MIss NUNN

2ND 3RD year RE lessons... total chaos !

Miss Nunn

Miss nunn always had a white face as if she had dipped her face in flour before coming to School

A Taste of Childhood

For Christmas, my mum bought me The Great British Book of Baking. It is the official book that  accompanied the BBC series The Great British Bake Off which she and I both enjoyed.

Mum bought me the book after I admired the copy she had purchased for herself - one of many recipe books that she treated herself to last year. The funny thing is that despite having an enviable collection of recipe books, she hardly ever cooks anything from them. She has her tried and tested recipes that she knows by heart and rarely deviates from them. More often these days, she lets my dad loose in the kitchen while she gets on with her latest knitting project or goes on her computer. Dad and recipes really don't mix.

So despite a wealth of ideas and inspiration at her fingertips, my mum's cooking repertoire remains small. She is very competent with what she does but feels no desire to get experimental.

The other odd thing about my mum's cooking, is her obssessive compulsion to have everything perfect. Biscuits must be regularly sized and shaped. Any that fail to meet her rigorous standards will be thrown in the bin (or given to dad to eat!). Choc chip cookies must each contain the same number and distribution of choc chips (she places them meticulously by hand to achieve this). I laugh about it with her but it really is very alien to me.

I love to cook. I especially love to try new things or tweak old recipes to give them a new twist. I do take a pride in the presentation but if it all goes wrong and looks like roadkill (which it often does), I am fine with it as long as everything is vaguely edible.

Recently I was reminded of a couple of old favourites of my mum when I came across a two hand written recipes. I remember her cooking these particular family favourites in the  kitchen of the house I grew up in. I had a go at making them myself.

Although the recipes couldn't possibly have belonged to my mum as they were metric - grams is a swear word to my strictly pounds and ounces mother - the taste and cooking smells were very nostalgic.

Of course, if my mum had made them, the jam wouldn't have been so blobby and uneven and the sultanas may just have been a little more evenly distributed!

Chocolate Biscuit Dispensers and other Machines

When I was a little girl, my imagination transformed a panel of the garishly patterned 70s wallpaper that adorned my bedroom walls into a Chocolate Biscuit Dispenser, from which I was able to keep my collection of teddies, gonks and dolls lavishly bestowed with sweet treats. I remember it so well.

This is not the exact design of my wallpaper but it had a similar colour palette, a floral theme and  a repeating circles pattern. My parents must have thought it quite attractive! To a child's eyes (this child's eyes at least) it was a control panel and dispensing hole for imaginary biscuits.

I was reminded of this yesterday when my 4 year old (nearly 5 actually - where does the time go?) daughter called me into the conservatory to see a 'machine' she had made. Various household items and toys had been carefully arranged to create a rather interesting construction. Nothing was randomly placed. Everything had a function and she proceeded to explain in detail what it was all about.

I love her creativity. I love her imagination. I love that she has taken my "Chocolate Biscuit Dispenser" to a whole new level. I didn't love so much that I was instructed not to dismantle the machine. The strange collection of objects now dominates my conservatory.

If it was summer, this would be more of a problem but as the conservatory does not get used very much during the cold weather, I am happy for the machine to remain. Perhaps there is something to be said for those 70s wallpaper designs though. My plain walls painted with emulsion clearly do not fire any sparks of imagination.