Seven things you didn't know about me!

Both Monica at http://gardenfaerie.blogspot.com/ and Happy Mouffetarde at http://inelegantgardener.blogspot.com/ have nominated me to take part in the 'seven things you didn't know about me' meme - thanks girls! Having never been nominated for anything in blogland before, I got quite ridiculously excited about it - but then realised I'd have to come up with some interesting stuff!!!

Anyway, to participate in the Meme Award, you need to:

- link back to the person who gave you the award;

- reveal seven things about yourself;

- choose seven other blogs to nominate and post a link to them

- let each of your choices know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog;

- and finally let the tagger know when your post is up.

So, down to business!

1. I was both an accident and born 5 weeks premature!

I was born at home and came out at great speed - the midwife only just arrived in time and the doctor didn't. If I'd have been born that early and at that weight (5lb 5 oz) nowadays I'd have been taken straight to SCBU for a couple of weeks and also been closely monitored for the first couple of years of my life. Back then, I didn't even get a hospital visit!

(My parents were convinced I was going to be a boy and had planned to call me Peter. I didn't find this out until I'd had Last-Born - I was convinced I was carrying a boy and we had decided to call him ......... Peter! How weird is that?!)

Here's me at about 18 months old with my brother and sister. Don't you just love the curl?
Do you remember the rhyme:
There was a little girl who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good, she was very, very good
and when she was bad, she was ...........horrid!


2.I was South Yorkshire's first female Queen's Scout.
This is the highest level of achievement and takes lots of hard work over about two years. The reward is to take part in the annual Queen's Scout parade at Windsor castle, where I got to meet the Queen, who was taking the parade that year. She is even smaller than me - and I'm not exactly known for my vast height!


The writing hasn't come out very well as it has a plastic sheet over it - which I didn't dare remove due to the great age of the article! Sorry!

3.I got my glider pilot's licence when I was 20 through a joint programme between the Scout Association and the RAF.
My RAF wings were on my Venture Scout uniform. That is how I got to meet the Queen - she spotted my wings and came to ask me about them. We had a nice little chat. I still have my uniform and the shirt still fits!
(Jackie, who is in the picture with me is still one of my dearest friends nearly 30 years on!)

This is the glider we flew in ....... it was called 'the barge' and it was made up from bits of other old gliders. It didn't so much fly as lumber through the air somehow defying gravity. I cannot describe the sheer joyous excitment and pure adrenalin rush of being taking up to do aerobatics in one of the RAF gliders one day!!!
I still look up at the sky some days and long to fly again.


4.My first marital home was a Land Rover.
We took a year out and drove through Pakistan, India and Nepal - and back again, obviously! The Land Rover had all mod cons - a bed, cooker, lights, music, curtains, filtered water through a tap and a washing machine! Well, okay, so it was a lidded beer brewing tub fastened into the back corner with seat belt strapping, but it worked well. We put the clothes, soap powder, water and a few stones in then drove to our next destination, rinsed everything out and hung it out to dry. Easy!

This is what our family and friends did to Fred (the Land Rover) for our departure. Subtle, eh?! We did clean it off before we got to Customs at the docks.



5.I spent my 27th birthday under arrest in Nepal.
We had an accident and hit a cyclist who turned into our path ......... quite how he didn't hear our very loud truck horn remains a mystery. Anyway, the law in Nepal is that the biggest vehicle is automatically at fault and if a foreigner is involved, then they are definately at fault because if they hadn't been there the accident wouldn't have happened! I can sort of see their logic, but it wasn't funny at the time.

Most of our photos of the trip are on slides, but this is one that I had printed years ago and I love it - Himself and I had driven 300+ miles up the stunning, starkly beautiful Karakorum Highway to the Pakistan/China border (which had only just opened again in May after the Winter snows!). This is the border marker.


6.I HATE spiders. But , when the Gnomelets were little and in order not to pass on my irrational fears to them, I held a tarantula. It was awful - it moved and everything! I'd had no problems with the Falcon or the snake, but it was only the prospect of a free cream tea that stopped me from dropping the dratted thing! It didn't work either - my fixed grin and glazed expression didn't fool them and they're nearly as bad as me about spiders. *sigh*

7. I would love to go white water rafting down the Grand Canyon.

Anyway, that's all the stuff about me (- except that if I had to have an 8th thing, it would be that no matter how filthy, dirty or grotty the job is, I always wear girlie earrings!)

My nominations for continuing the meme go to .............. (cue dramatic drum roll)

Carolynn at A Glowing Ember - because her eloquent writing frequently moves me.
Matron at Down on the Allotment - because she grows wonderful veg and shares some great growing tips.
Kathryn at My Roots Run Deep - because it is such a lovely blog - and she grew multicoloured carrots!
Rob at Our French Garden - because I love where he lives and the photos he takes and, okay - I'm nosey ..... I want to know more!
Camellia at motstrvigtragardsdesigner - because despite English not being her native language, she writes beautiful evocative posts.
Irena at Plant Whatever Brings You Joy - because her posts are always thought provoking and informative, especially her recent ones on butterflies.

and last, but by no means least
Mrs Robinson at Mrs Robinson Presents - because her lovely sweet posts on a huge variety of subjects always make me smile.

Enjoy!

11-09-09
Ooops ......... I've just realised that I've messed up the links for 'My Roots Run Deep' and 'Plant Whatever Brings You Joy' - they're the wrong way round. I am a bit of a plonker sometimes!!!
Strongest apologies to Kathryn and Irena ...... grovel, grovel :)