Farewell to a friend

Its with great sadness that I have to say Ziggy passed away last Saturday evening.  He’s been frail and suffering with digestive problems for quite some time now.  He seemed to be choking on something on Saturday night which he just couldn’t clear, by the time we’d spoken with the vet to arrange to meet at the surgery, Ziggy had unfortunately passed away (a huge thank you to Smith Ryder Davies by the way for calling us back for our emergency!).  He’d had a similar choking problem a few weeks ago but managed to clear it then.  He was 6 years old though which is very old for a piggy apparently.  John and I will miss him greatly…

Ziggy

The Book Meme

Well it’s seems I’ve been tagged by a fellow blogger to carry out “The Book Meme”.  What’s that I hear you all ask…  Well, I’ve taken the instructions from Simon’s blog so see below:

The rules for this meme thing are :

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

So, the book my hand went to is called “Haunted” by James Herbert and the fifth sentence on page 56 is:

“There was no disturbance in those murky depths, merely a stirring of its surface.”

Hmm, quite a thought provoking sentence when its on its own don’t you think?!

As Simon has mentioned in his blog about the book meme I’m now supposed to ask 5 bloggers that I know of to do the same.  Like Simon I don’t know of 5 fellow bloggers but the three people I do know with blogs are listed below:

• Steve’s Techie Bible
  
• Lord Celery’s Little Brother
• Lord Celery
  

Learning to walk

I’ve been taking lessons over the last few weeks/months to learn the Alexander Technique.  My reason for doing this was to try and improve my posture but mostly to eliviate neck pain.  My understanding of the Alexander Technique is that it should help to improve general well-being, eliviate back/neck pain, muscular tension, stiffness and even improve breathing to name but a few.  Essentially you learn how to move muscles and joints more freely and easily. 

So far the lessons have been going well, they usually include being aware of how to stand properly, the mechanics of how to sit and there’s an exercise which involves you lying down and putting a thought process into lengthening the muscles and freeing the joints.  However, my last lesson I learnt how to walk again!  I had no idea I had the mechanisms of the process so wrong!  It did seem very odd to start with but over the last couple of days I’ve practised the technique on and off and its becoming more natural.

Now to be honest I’ve found it difficult to remind myself during an average day of how to move using the Alexander Technique, especially when busy at work.  The more lessons I have though the better I’m becoming at remembering the movements to use and I’m putting them into practice more.  I’ve also found myself at the beginning having negative thoughts regarding the technique and wondering if its worth continuing, but each time I go to the lesson I find it so invigorating I book the next lesson.

If you’re interested in the Alexander Technique, take a look at my tutor’s website (link below)!

http://www.alexandertechnique-ipswich.co.uk/

FM Alexander

“The Chain” from Lord Celery’s blog

I enjoyed reading my friend’s blog regarding quirky character traits so much I decided I’d participate as suggested.  So below are my six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about myself:

1.  I hate, hate, hate the taste of Licorice.  I’ve always managed to avoid the stuff quite well until I recently bought a bag of assorted toffees.  Of course the bag didn’t say what the various wrapping colours meant and so one of them ended up being Licorice.  I was so annoyed I felt like complaining to the large supermarket in question (although I never did find the time of course!)

2.  I learnt to play a clarinet while at secondary school.  This was mostly to please my father.  I kind of enjoyed it at the time but as soon as I left school, I’ve barely taken the thing out of its case.  I’ve always been average at the clarinet, I definately don’t have a talent for it otherwise I might be more enthusiastic.

3.  I’m terrified of small children and babies.  Yes its absolutely true I’m afraid.  I’ve never had much contact with small children and babies and as a consequence I feel terrified when I’m near them.  A couple of weekends ago I went to a family party of my in-laws.  One of my husbands cousins has a child which took a fancy to me (must have been the leather motorbike pants – thought I looked like a power ranger apparently), needless to say I was running on adrenaline the whole time.  My close friend is expecting her first baby very soon and no doubt I will have the same feelings again – I just hope she’s patient with me.

4.  Every time John and I go on holiday, I spend most of the time worrying about the pets back home.  I’ve always loved animals since a very young age and finally having some pets of my own is the best thing in the world to me.

5. I developed an annoying habit which I simply haven’t managed to quit.  This habit formed while I worked with Lord Celery’s husband at Saffery’s in London, so its been with me for over 10 years now.  Every so often during an email I end a sentence with dot dot dot, as if the sentence could continue.  Whenever I see I’ve typed it in an email I think of it as bad english…

6.  I came 1st in the 1500 metre race while at Junior School during Sports Day one year.  Its the one and only time I’ve ever come 1st in any athletics event.  Every year on Sports Day (even in secondary school) I always came 2nd to a girl called Samantha, but this one year I managed to get off the line quicker than her.  I rarely do anything that energetic these days but I remember being very pleased with myself at the time, I even still have the little yellow metal badge I was awarded.

As Lord Celery has said in her blog, I’m not going to tag anyone in the usual “Chain Letter” fashion.  If anyone wants to participate though please do let me know as I’m as curious as Lord Celery.

Thanks for reading!

The bike upgrade….

John and I had been riding around and visiting a few bike dealers over the last month odd as I’d started to get a little bored with the performance of the CB500.  I hadn’t really wanted to change my bike till much later in the year, or even early next year but then I saw this beautiful bike which caught my eye.  Once I test rode it, I just had to have it.  So, I’m now the proud owner of a Suzuki SV650S.  When I took it home it hadn’t even done 2k miles – its in excellent condition.  Called into the bike shop last Saturday for a tank pad for the new bike and low and behold, there was my old CB500 outside having just been purchased!  Felt a pang of guilt actually for only owning it for 6 months, but I’m enjoying the SV650S so the guilt trip didn’t last too long

 

Give blood…

I went along to the Blood Donor centre the other day after reading a friend’s blog.  He’s currently going through chemotherapy for Mantle Cell Lymphoma and suggested to those who said “if there’s anything I can do…” to go along and consider donating blood – so I did.  I have to say they were very efficient.  The parish hall was constantly buzzing with people but I didnt sit around for long before being spoken to by one person or another making sure I knew what was involved etc., etc.  So, anyone considering giving blood, here’s the website to take a look at!

http://www.blood.co.uk/

A question?

I’ve been looking to see if its possible to update this Blog by sending in an email – so far I’ve not found any useful hints on the wordpress website telling me how to achieve this but if anyone knows the answer, please let me know!

How long?

Crickey, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on this blog…. So much to catch up on, where to start?

Well, in January I passed my Direct Access test! YAY!! So now I can ride any size motorbike I like. Currently I have a 6 year old Honda CB500. Advice from friends led me to buy a bike similar to that I’d passed my test on until I’ve got some serious riding experience under my belt at least. My other half decided to go for a slightly different option, he bought an old Kawasaki GPZ 500 which needed lots of work. Its through the MOT now and we’ve been out on our respective bikes together numerous times now, all good fun. We’re planning to ride to BikeFest at Donnington in June, that will be my longest journey so far.

Frustrating Planet continues….

Well I’ve finally received the 2nd part of my order from Telescope Planet. I originally ordered the Solar Filter (now refunded) and a Telescope Oberseration Hood on 12th June. I was told originally that the hood was out of stock and would take a while to come in, which was fine. However, I emailed them for a progress report on 17th July which was ignored, tried again on 20th July and had a response saying “These come in Today YAY. Please give me your address to confirm and I will make sure one gets sent out.” So all sounded promising and I replied confirming my address that same day. However, nothing came through the post after a couple of days so I sent ANOTHER email asking if it had been shipped (this was the 25th July). Their reply was “Will be sent out today. So will probably get it tomorrow. Sorry for the delay”. At last today (27th July) its arrived in the post.

While I did accept that the item was going to be a while in arriving I didn’t expect to have to chase the supplier several times to remind them I was still waiting. Its a shocking way to treat customers if you ask me and I certainly wont be using their services again!

CBT (but not the computer based training kind!)

My better half and I did our motorbike CBT course last Saturday. I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the event but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I feel now like I have a whole new world opening up before me. The staff at were extremely thorough with their training and although it was a long and hot day, I felt that they’d certainly earned their wages that day. Lots of credit to them, I felt reasonably relaxed throughout the day with the tasks at hand and it was all thanks to them.

So the next stage now is for John and myself to get some practice in with our newly acquired Yamaha YBR125, then to book ourselves some lessons to prepare for Direct Access.

So to finish off for now and as all sensible riders say “stay safe”!