Random questions to get a dinner conversation going...

Found some random questions to get a dinner conversation going...and added a few more...so recording them here for reference.  (Am convinced my laptop is going to turn up its toes and die soon, so best to store online!)

1. What is your favorite color?
2. If you could teach a dog a new trick, what would it be? 
3. Do you enjoy singing? How about just in the shower?
4. If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be?
5. Can you do a cartwheel?
6. What is your favorite sound?
7. What would you do with £30.89?
8. Do you have any weird tricks? (i.e., double jointed? wiggle your nose?, etc.)
9. If you had to give up one of your five senses, which would it be and why?
10. Do you have a favorite Bible verse? What is it?
11. Which do you prefer: car, boat, or airplane? (money is no object)
12. What is your earliest memory?
13. Why did you come here today?
14. Who do you most admire, and why?
15. Where would you like to live?

May I remember May...

May began with a long-awaited event - since May last year, to be precise. New Wine Guernsey.  I always love it - modelled on the week long event in Somerset but held over a weekend. This year, speakers were Greg Haslam from Westminster Chapel and Mark Bailey from Trinity Church, Cheltenham. Both fantastic speakers. The music was excellent but most encouraging was seeing 700 Christians from across the island gathered together to worship. Just a wonderful weekend.
Liberation Day - annniversary of Guernsey's relief from the German Occupation - with friends.
New Wine Training Partnership morning - I have, at the moment, no intention of taking on this rigorous part-time study but the morning of teaching from Chris Pemberton on leadership was thought-provoking and inspiring. And then a lovely afternoon tea with friends from my Ladies Breakfast group...
A full day's course to support my job as PHSE coordinator...much to think about; a wedding in the UK - and then, on my return, I started to think about School Reports. In intentional capital letters.
By the time I had finished, I had written approximately 8500 words.
Hmmm.....

Pickle performs

'Down!'

'Praise the Lord!'

'Let's dance!'

'Give paw', 'Sit' and 'Stay' coming later...

Diamond Jubilee celebrations



Our floral display and decorations at the front of the school as our street party starts.



Gilli's wonderful celebration cake.

My wonderful friend Gilli who organised it all with incredibly efficient planning and a whole heap of hard work.

Account of a wedding - and nostalgia

Just back from a wedding in Shropshire. Lovely country hotel, beautiful flowers, great weather and all the usual wedding trimmings.

Patrick and Janine with Patrick's family

Janine and Patrick - R's nephew - were very sweet and obviously enjoyed their day. They had organised it all in minute detail, with thoughtful reply cards included in the invitation, a welcome letter as the day approached, and a theme of sunflowers and ladybirds. The wedding was held in a pavilion in the garden of the Elizabethan house, complete with red carpet. The bride wore a pretty embroidered and ruffled organza dress, the bridesmaids wore simple dark blue and the flower theme was huge sunflowers and even bigger blue hydrangeas!

Cake!

Really lovely and unusual. Each place was set with a little bag of sweets - a cream egg and jelly beans - and a perfectly formed tiny wooden top, handmade on a lathe by the groom, for each guest. Such fun!

our table

There were around 40, maybe less, for the actual wedding – a simple civil ceremony, with just a reading and entrance music. Then Pimms, photos and reception in a marquee – sit down, 3 course meal, all very lovely – and then their friends came for the evening dance. 

Richard SOOO disapproved of the ‘wedding dance’  - not the dance that P and J did, just the concept - but he did actually dance with me for an interminable enjoyable 5 minutes. Amazingly, we managed to keep in step with one another though it must have looked quite funny – especially as he kept trying to remember the salsa steps and do those to pop music! This was an improvement - the last time we danced, he performed a Scottish jig to waltz music...Perhaps we should try to learn ballroom dancing?

There were of course relatives, friends and acquaintances from decades long gone. Much catching up. We met a girl from Kenya, a twin a couple of years older than Cat and Jonny; I remembered we bought a double buggy from her mother when they were born. Cat is bridesmaid to a school friend this summer; this girl knows the other bridesmaid, from Cardiff, well. Common wisdom has it that there are no more than 7 links between any two people: this was only 4, but across two continents...

Richard with his sister Sarah

The next day, wedding over, we pootled slowly up to Manchester – our return flight left in the evening, so we had time to kill. So we stopped in Audlem, where we had visited a pub next to the canal with my parents, when the children were small: they had helped open the locks, which are very narrow there. We walked along the canal a bit, and nostalgia began to kick in. I spent much of my childhood and teens walking along the canal - the Grand Union - which circled our town, revisiting it much later when we returned from Kenya, exploring the history. It still fascinates...the technology and engineering needed nearly 300 years ago, skills which have stood the test of time. 

After that we went past Northwich, in Cheshire, where my parents had lived in a Victorian cottage overlooking another canal - the Trent and Mersey. The house was next to the pub at  Broken Cross and so we had a drink at the pub and a nose at the cottage, sold last year – the kitchen is being gutted and a lot of work done on the inside but the garden looked just the same. My mother had created a beautiful flower garden, filled with sweet-smelling shrubs and the roses she loved.

So then we went to see my mother, who knew me – and seemed to know Richard, too, at first anyway. She was in good spirits, laughing and joking though got very firm with one of the other residents (not right in the head) who came up. She looked well and was quite satisfied with a short visit – we stayed about 20 minutes in the end until she indicated that we should leave. It was a relief to see her so well - previous visits had been uncomfortable and strange, as she had been too confused to know who I was.

And so I am afflicted by nostalgia, and a wish to remember only the good, the happy. And for some absolutely unaccountable reason, I remembered this song from the 1940s which my father used to sing to me when I was very small: Mairzy Doats:

Memory is a strange thing...

Pickle and the pond

Friends have a beautiful pond with decorative antique glass floats adding an intriguing touch. We have some of these lovely fishing floats, too, so thought we'd add them. Pickle did NOT approve...

Aargh! Scary scary scary...

What on earth could this monster be? 

Don't like the look of his eyes...

Neema House

What an inspiring evening yesterday with Joshua and Miriam Mbithi. They run Neema Children's Home in Eldoret, Kenya; a home for children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Love just shines out of these two.The story of how they started - and continue, by faith - is amazing.

Watch this short clip about their work.

Here is their brochure. Read more here and here