Storytelling Sunday -on Monday

I haven't joined in with Sian's Storytelling Sunday for a couple of months and I wanted to take part this week but Sian suggested the idea of something we think about when we are far from home, a talisman or a lucky charm for this months' theme. This is not something I  have ever had. there are very few 'things' that I really attached to.

 Both my children have special teddies they won't sleep without but I never did. I had a 'cuddly', a manky length of tore sheet until I was 11 but it got lost at the end of my sleeping bag on my first Guide camp and I never used it again.

Anyway, I can't write a blog post about a piece of sheet.

Sian wrote a lovely story about the thoughtful gift her sister gave her when she went away to university. By the time my parents got home from dropping me off in halls in Chichester my younger brother had stripped the pink wallpaper off my bedroom wall and started moving his stuff in. I had a greed that I would live in his horrible boy bedroom in the college holidays but I do remember having a tantrum the first Christmas because there was no bookcase for my Engllish Literature books.

I can't write a blog post about my college life either - no 'Precious' inspiration there.

When I went away to the Czech Republic to work after graduating the one thing I really missed was the food. I lived in a Student dorm and ate school dinners. Lots and lots of stodgy dumplings and thin soups. All I had by way of self catering was a toaster and a single electric ring so my Mum sent me postal parcels of dehydrated pasta meals, chocolate bars and jars of Marmite. It was not great, but it kept me going (and I was the thinnest I have ever been before or since while I was living there)

I'm not sure Marmite can be considered 'Precious' either, but it looks as though I have written a blog post after all. To catch up with some more Precious stories, visit Sian at High in the Sky.

Pick Your Precious 3 - Guiding 1910 and Then

This used to be my "chosen specialised subject" if I ever went on Mastermind, although I'm not sure how well I'd do now. I was in Guiding all my life until M was born - as a Brownie (there were no Rainbows then), a Guide, a Young Leader and finally a Guider. I was Tawny Owl with a Brownie pack while I was at college, Assistant Guider with my local Guide company and then, briefly, Unit Guider.

                           

The badges on this camp blanket  represent my Guiding all the way. I recently got it out to show R. He had just gone up to Scouts and seen his Leader's blanket so he expressed an interest in starting his own. Although I haven't looked at this for 6 years, every badge brought back a memory.

The 3 scarves in the centre are especially precious. The one in the foreground showcases my own Guide badges (although some of the interest badges are missing). I was evidently Seconder of Snowdrop patrol and Patrol Leader of the Poppies.
The lilac scarf represents my first international camp-in Sicily, Italy. I was 17 and it was a fantastic experience. I slept under the stars in an olive grove on the side of a mountain, I climbed Mount Etna and visited Taormina. I sang campfire songs in 2 languages and swapped these badges with the Italian scouts.
The dark blue camp scarf was the one I wore for GOLD 1992. There, I spent 2 weeks teaching English on a camp in the then Czechoslovakia. This was only 3 years after Communism had fallen in the Eastern Bloc and during all that time Guiding/Scouting had been forbidden. It was incredibly moving to hear the elderly Czech leader tell us how she had kept the Unit's flag hidden for 40 years at significant personal risk. It made me thankful that I had never had to fight for this hobby which was so big a part of my life. I blame GOLD totally for the fact that 2 years later I went back to the Czech Republic to teach at a grammar school and have spent my career teaching English ever since!

Many of the other badges were bought at various camps and events I attended as a Guide or Guider and the rest are swaps, exchanged with girls/women I met around the country./ Without a doubt, Guiding gave me opportunities to do things I would never otherwise have done. Camping in the rain, abseiling and pot holing are not activities I wish to repeat, but I'm happy to say I have tried them. On the positive side, sunny camps are one of life's luxuries, I have dabbled numerous crafts, learned a wide repertoire of songs and  developed a lifelong preference for burnt sausages. I'm proud of the time I spent Guiding and, although I have packed the camp blanket away again for the time being, I'm sure I will return to it when M is a little older.

 

This post was brought to you in conjunction with Sian's Storytelling Sunday Pick Your Precious, and was in fact inspired by her post about her Guide uniform last month. 

 

Pick Your Precious 2 -

This little lady is currently called Eileen and she is 40 years old.

I can't remember what I called her when she was mine, but she is now Eileen because my paternal grandmother, Eileen Ruth Shaw nee Mitchell, knitted her fetching blue outfit for me all those years ago.

                                           Nanny Eileen (for a while known as Black Nanny because she died her hair a very deep black) was a dab hand with the knitting needles and made most of my jumpers when I was young. She always seemed to have just enough wool left over to make a matching one for my dolly. So, although sadly I don't have a photo to prove it, I'm certain I wore a handknitted jumper in these colours.
The tiny plastic dummy is the original as well.

And it makes me happy to see M playing with her, even though she never knew my Nanny who died a couple of years before she was born.

To read about other people's precious possession or share a story of your own , head over to see Sian at http://fromhighinthesky.blogspot.co.uk/

Storytelling Sunday

My son has just got back from a week-long school trip to the Isle of Wight. He returned home full of tales of the adventures he's had and it got me thinking about the trips I went on as a child.

In what would now be Year 6, the same age R is now, we went to a youth hostel in Llandrindod Wells in North Wales. I remember little about the activities, although I'm fairly sure it rained a lot, but I do clearly remember the disco on the last night.
On the coach that afternoon, as pre-teens will, Derek Chandler's best friend asked my bestie if I would dance a slow dance with Derek. She convinced me that it was a wind-up so I said yes. I was mortified when I realised Derek (the class geek) was serious.
I was all dressed up in my sparkly ra-ra skirt (this was 1980) but I spent most of the night in hiding. Eventually Derek and I were pushed together and I endured the whole of 'Tru' by Spandau Ballet in his arms. I still can't hear that song without shuddering!

We also went to the Isle of Wight while I was at Primary School, though just for the day I think, and I remember being insanely jealous of Queen Victoria's children who had a whole Swiss Cottage to play in at Osbourne House!

 
When I started learning French in Year 8 we spent a day in Cherbourg in France, and all I recall of that was buying long strips of boiled sweets in various fruit flavours to take home.

My family couldn't afford the annual ski trip so, other than that French day trip, the first time I went abroad with schoolmates was in the 6th Form, when we visited Woking's twin town, Amstelveen in The Netherlands. It was a deeply boring town; the highlights of the trip were visits to the town hall and a brewery. Unfortunately, my exchange partner, Cristina and I did not have much in common but she tried to entertain me with cycle rides and smoked fish and . I have never enjoyed cycling and I hated the fish, but I did discover something hugely cool and new - chips with mayonnaise!

I must have photos of Amstelveen , and probably the sparkly disco skirt too, but I can't lay my hands on them, so for today my words must speak louder than pictures. Head over to Sian at High in the Sky for some more Sunday Storytelling.

 

 

Storytelling Sunday - my embarassing sporting life

I always hated school sports with a passion. I'm just not built for speed or strength. I can't do it. My brother is quite a good sportsman and when he joined my  secondary school the year I left, he denied being related to me!

I spent most PE lessons in my final year practising my guitar. I can't claim to have been very talented at that either, but I was less of a danger to myself and others in a warm practice room than on a muddy athletics field. Although at the time I believed that I was putting one over the teachers,  in retrospect I'm sure they turned a blind eye out of sympathy!

My most (in)famous incident was during Year 9 Cross Country, an activity I loathed more than anything else. Donna Scully and I were, as usual, a long way behind the rest of the group, sauntering rather than jogging through the woods near our school. At a certain point along the route, there was a left turn to get back to the playing field. Everyone else was well out of sight, including the sports teachers, and we completely missed this turning.

We realised, after about half an hour, that even at our pace we should have completed the course by now and that we were totally lost. It was a cold, drizzly day (yet another reason to hate X-country) and there were not even any dog walkers about so we just kept walking until eventually we reached the canal and knew where we were.

We arrived back at school over an hour late (the alarm had been raised by then) cold, aching and very VERY embarrassed.

We were marched, trembling, to the Headmaster. His office in those days still featured a cane prominantly displayed in the corner, though it had not been used in my living memory. I assume we must have managed to convince him that it had been a genuine error, not an attempt to bunk off, because we weren't punished. However our friends and the sports staff never let us live it down.

This story was brought to you as part of Sian's Storytelling Sunday. It's a scheduled post so I hope I've got the right date! Would someone mind linking me up please, as I'm not here to do it. Thanks ever so!

Storytelling Sunday - the Second

I do enjoy Sian's Storytelling Sundays. I had only just started working my way through them when I read Susanne's story about her Dad's head for numbers.
That got me reminiscing again so here is another little memory:

Maths was never a strength of mine, but my dad, like Suzanne's, was great with figures. He worked in the Finance Department of the Country Council from the age of 16 until his retirement.

At the time of the story he was very recently retired and had agreed to audit the accounts for the Girl Guide Unit I ran. As we were going through the books, I borrowed my Dad's rubber (eraser) It was a hard shiny little thing which just smudged the page but he was very offended when I said so.

"I've had that rubber since I started work", he said.

He couldn't have made many mistakes in 45 years!

Storytelling Sunday - An English Girl Abroad

Straight after university in the early 90s, rather than joining my classmates in the competitive race for a teaching job in the South of England, I applied for a post as a Native Speaking English Teacher in the Czech Republic. I'm not proud to say I told my Mum over the phone instead of face-to-face but, to her credit, she was excited for me, and so I embarked on the most formative 2 years of my life.

 I arrived in the small Czech town of Humpolec a pretty naive 22 year-old (despite having spent 4 years away at college, I was still a light-weight in the drinking stakes and had never had a serious boyfriend).
I worked in the Gymnazium (grammar school) where I taught every pupil aged 11-18 through the medium of English. No translation allowed. Although I was a qualified English teacher, I had had no TEFL training and very few printed resources were available. I reinvented the wheel in many lessons, spending hours coming up with imaginative ways to put across the intricacies of English grammar. It was quite gratifying when I came back to Britain and got a TEFL-teaching post in a language school here to find so many of 'my' ideas in the resource books.

Some of my best memories of my life still stem from my time in Humpolec: I spent a Sunday making Christmas biscuits with the womenfolk of one of my colleagues' families. Several hours in a hot kitchen with 6 non-English speaking women eventually produced in excess of 300 cookies which would be consumed over the Christmas period. They were delicious.

Christmas is a special time in the Czech Republic (as you know, I'm a Christmas addict anyway): I was fascinated by the live carp splashing in barrels of water at the market waiting to be taken home and kept in the bath until they are cooked on Christmas Eve.

Mikulas (Dec 5th) is when St Nicholas goes around the houses accompanied by an angel and a devil to check whether the children have been good all year.

It was common for townspeople to own small country cottages (Dacha) and I passed many a weekend by the lake Tanavka. My enduring memories are of copious quantities of locally-brewed lager (I still hate the stuff so I quickly learnt to provide my own beverages) and vodka consumed round a roaring fire on which a whole suckling pig had been roasted. There were always one or two guitarists present and we would sing long into the night. One of the many thing I love about the Czech culture is that everybody - young and old- knows the same traditional folk songs. I even learned a few myself.

I attended several graduation balls during my 2 years. They were very formal occasions, opening with a display dance by the graduating class followed by a parents' waltz and -horror!- a teacher's dance. The students were then presented with their leaving scrolls and showered with small coins which they swept up for luck. It was apparently bad luck to count it until after the last exam was finished.
After the formalities, the evening quickly dissolved in yet more lager and vodka.

There is no doubt - the Czechs can drink. they are one of the most gentle and hospitable peoples I have ever known, but it is literally NEVER too early for alcohol! In the winter it was perfectly normal for the teachers to share a shot of vodka before their first class at 8.15am, and everyone's name day or birthday had to be toasted. This was quite an eye-opener for me and I never really learned to like it. The local regarded my non-alcoholism as just a mildly amusing English trait - a bit like drinking tea with milk!

My 'bar Czech' became pretty good quite quickly though. 'Jeste Jedno' (one more) means another beer. You have to specify if you want any other beverage. 'Na Zdravi' (Cheers) was one of the first things I learnt to pronounce, having been told that Bill Clinton had toasted Preseident Havel with 'Nadrazi' (railway station)!

I could witter on for hours about my memories of this amazing country, but I think I might save it for another Storytelling Sunday, or you won't have time to visit Sian and catch up with everybody else.

Storytelling Sunday - Thank you for calling Wickes, how may I help you?

I actually answered our phone at home like this a couple of times, I said it so often at work. My Saturday job while I was doing my A Levels was in the very unglamourous Wickes DIY store! 4 of my college friends and I  started there when a new store opened near my home. We were there begging for autographs at the grand opening with Chris Tarrant and his then Capital Radio sidekick, Kara Noble. Every Saturday, and 2 evenings a week, I dressed in my gorgeous red jumpsuit and went out on the shop floor. Sitting on the tills and counting bricks was tedious. Shelf filling was boring, but at least provided the opportunity to slacken off and have a chat. The worse job of all was cleaning the kitchen and bathroom displays. At least once a month a toddler would mistake the display toilet for a functioning one!

No, I absolutely DO NOT have a picture of myself. They seem to have updated the uniform a bit since my jumpsuit!

 It was much more interesting when I became senior enough to work the phones and deal with queries on the customer service desk, even though most of the queries were complaints. One customer came up to me on a Saturday and placed a small box on the desk
"I bought this box of 100 nails on Thursday." He announced
"Yes, Sir?"
"There are only 96 in there. What are you going to do about it?"
When I stopped laughing, I gave him his 4 nails!

Another day, on the tills, a customer approached with half a dozen boxes in his trolley. They said 'White Downlighters. £4.99' and at the time I knew the product code off by heart. I picked one up and opened it to make sure it was intact. Oh dear. There was a brass downlighter inside. Not what the customer wanted, I innocently assumed. I opened another. Another brass one (price £9.99). All 6 boxes had been opened and the contents deliberately replaced with the more expensive item. Funnily enough, the customer didn't wait around for me to ask the manager to get the white ones for him!

I worked at Wickes for 2 years, but left when I moved away to college. Then, going from the sublime to the ridiculous,  I landed my dream holiday job. In A Chocolate Shop! Posh, handmade Belgian chocolates, no less. My name is Kirsty and I am a chocoholic. I was in heaven!

Every Christmas, Easter, Valentines and Mother's Day for the next 4 years I worked there, hand-wrapping beautiful boxes of luxury chocolates. I worked hard; there were always queues out of the door at peak times, but I revelled in it. The smell of cocoa, the pretty lengths of ribbon.  I learned to wrap and decorate a box in under a minute. I can still wrap a mean birthday present, as long as it's square! I even I got 50% discount, and I was encouraged to try all the produce so I could give the customers helpful advice!

Those are the only non-teaching jobs I have done. What about you? Any work experience to share? or any other stories? If so, head over to Sian's Storytelling Sunday and link them up.

Storytelling Sunday - an English girl in Morocco

Aged 20, as part of my degree, I got the chance to join a field trip to Morocco. Amazing! We stayed in a Berber village in the High Atlas Mountains for 3 days during which I danced (badly) to traditional music, ate delicious tagines with my fingers and used the other hand to wipe my bum. A caravan of muleteers took us on a 2-hour ride up narrow mountain paths to the highest souk in North Africa. I had only ever been pony-trekking before this and the nimble mules were not built for comfort, but it was the most amazing journey. However, shortly after we set off it started to snow (apparently almost unheard of in December in this part of the world, and you can see from the picture below what the weather was like before we left) and by the time we reached the souk it was a near white-out. There was no way the muleteers were going to entrust their livelihoods to inexperienced Europeans on the treacherous return journey so we agreed to walk and they led their precious beasts. Halfway down however, as the snow turned to a blizzard, one muleteer took pity on me. He allowed me to mount the mule, covered me completely with a waterproof djellaba( long coat/cloak) and I spent the last hour of the trip blinded and shivering as he led me back down the mountain to the village. Never have an open fire and a hole-in-the-ground toilet been more welcome!.

The last two days of our trip were spent in a 2-Star hotel in Agadir, after we had walked for 3 hours to get back to civilisation because the snow-covered mountain was inpassable for the minibus which had taken us up there. Oh! The joy of a shower and clean hair! Then out into town to explore. At the time, I had long hair and I had left it loose to dry after my shower. Everywhere I went, Arab men would reach out and stroke it, which thoroughly unnerved me, but I did not feel really threatened as it was broad daylight and I was with a mixed group of friends. We wanted to shop, but we were all nervous about haggling. Stopping to examine a tempting display of beaded jewellery outside a small shop , we were ushered inside by the owner. It was lined with beautiful fabrics and kaftans. I didn't even ask the price - I was sure I couldn't afford any of the gorgeous embroidered kaftans, but the owner had seen my interest and insisted on showing me how to wear one.

 I couldn't find a photo of me wearing the kaftan I eventually bought so I will have to try to explain it to you. Remember I was with friends, not alone, and I was wearing jeans, which I didn't take off. The short Arab man, with enthusiastic gestures, tied the ribbons on a long piece of  black fabric with  gold embroidery around my bust. He then took the end and brought it down my body, fed it between my legs and showed me how to put my arms through 2 armholes at the back. I felt throughly embarrassed, and, as no price had yet been mentioned I was worrying how he would react when I couldn't afford to buy the kaftan.
'How much?' I asked again
'How much you have?'
'100 dirhams (about £5) and £10 in English money. We go home tomorrow'. I thought this would sound more convincing. Of course it was not all the money I had. I was naive, but not stupid! And I still didn't think it would be anywhere near enough.
To my great surprise, he agreed without haggling. I must have overestimated the price by some way, but it was definitely worth a lot more than £15 to me., and I was relieved to get out of there without upsetting the Moroccan shopkeeper.
I wore the kaftan to several college formal events after that, and I still have it, but I have put on too much weight for it to look good now. I am keeping it until my daughter is tall enough to wear it. I wish I had a photo to show you.

I scrapped my photos from Morroco when I first started scrapbooking, but I think I might revisit this now and do a new page with more of the story. Thanks, Sian, for encouraging me to get these old pages out. I'm off to visit some more Sunday Storytellers now. Defintely looking forward to some more School Stories from Miss Smith.

Oh, and to make it easier for you, I have turned off Blogger's pesky Word Verification once and for all. (I hope, do please let me know it that hasn't worked)

Storytelling Sunday - the (slightly disappointing) story of my first computer

Yes, I know it's Monday, but it's a Bank Holiday so it counts as an extra Sunday in my book!! I want to join in with Sian's Storytelling Sunday more often this year. And  if Uncle Dave says every story is worth telling, then that's what I'm going to do. In our house,  the teacher is always right!

P has just bought himself a Blackberry Playbook; an astonishing piece of technology which reminded me of the story of my very first computer. 

It was a Commodore Vic 20 ( not top of the range even then as my parents were not wealthy and it probably cost them much more than I appreciated at the time) and the most impressive thing I could do was program it in Basic to scroll my name diagonally across the screen.

I was 12 or 13  that Christmas so my younger brother, G would have been 8, and 8 year olds in the 1970s did not get given computers for Christmas as a matter of course. (By contrast my 7 year old nephew received a X BOx Kinect this year)

It was meant to be a shared present. But Mum wrote G's name on the tag because I was supposed to be 'old enough to understand'.

I'm ashamed to say I wasn't then, and still am not. Green suede pixie boots, though exactly what I wanted (why?!) did not equal a computer.

'It's not fair' I cried.

'Life's not fair', Mum and Dad replied.

No it isn't, but you're not supposed to find that out at Christmas when you're only 12. It has taken me several decades to conquer my jealousy of my brother (this was not the only example of what I perceived as unfair treatment) but I do try to remember how I felt when I opened those boots as a reminder to myself to treat my children fairly.

I don't think treating them fairly means necessarily treating them the same. There are 5 years between my R and M and they are very different people, but I would be horrified if either of them thought I loved them more or less.

This story does not paint  me in a particularly good light, but it's true, and it's part of what I want to do with my blog in 2012. No less crafty prettiness, but a bit more honest everyday life as well. If you don't want  to read about that, please comment and let me know because, as Sian's Uncle Dave also said "a story doesn’t become a real story until someone hears it or reads it".

Storytelling Sunday

                                                        

                
This is not my story, but it deserves to be told, especially at this time of year.

You may know that I teach English to Speakers of Other Languages, many of whom are Muslims. More and more, in recent years,  the British Government has been misguidedly trying to avoid giving offence to non-Christians by denying the religious significance of Christmas. However, I have never had a Muslim student who is offended by my Christianity. In fact, I have received more Christmas cards (and gifts, including bottles of wine) from my Pakistani students than any other ethnic group I teach.

My story concerns a 24-year old Saudi woman, whose name I am sorry to say I have forgotten. I'll call her Saha.

Several years ago, I was teaching in a private language school and running the children's summer school programme. The school was exclusive and expensive and the management rubbed their hands in glee when an eminent Saudi family signed up their 5 children for 3 weeks.

They arrived with their father and mother, who wore a black veil from head to toe. With her eyes cast down, she did not speak a word and left her husband to make all the arrangements. Then he returned home. However, she was staying with the children as the youngest was below our minimum age.

As soon as he left, Saha came to me and asked if she could join the English classes as well. I had no idea she spoke even a word of English, but of course I agreed.  Asking the usual questions to assess her level of English I found out that aged 24, she was a second wife (his first wife lived with them) and already had 5 children. She was worried that her husband was considering taking a 3rd and that would make her life more difficult.

I placed Saha in an adult intermediate class and over the next 3 weeks, she joined in all the summer school activities. Still wearing her full length black veil, she ice-skated, played football, watched cartoons and visited museums. She had the time of her life and was so friendly and open with me that I know she couldn't wait to return  the following year.

Fast forward a year to the beginning of July. I was looking foward to meeting Saha again. However neither she nor any of their chidlren came back to Summer School. I don't know, of course, but my gut feeling is that she enjoyed herself too much and that her husband disapproved. I hope I'm wrong.

For more Sunday-told Stories, go and see Sian at High in the Sky

Storytelling Sunday - The Magic Teapot

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Kirsty. She had a granny called Nanny Linda (she still does, Nanny Linda is 90 next Spring) who was very fond of a nice cup of tea. Kirsty often visited Nanny Linda and quickly also learned to enjoy a nice cup of tea. This is also where Kirsty got her love of chocolate from as Nanny Linda worked in a Newsagent and regularly bought all her grandchildren big boxes of Cadbury chocolate buttons and Sherbet Dips. She still never visits her great-grandchildren without bringing a sweet treat for them.

The Little Girl - Me!  c1975

Nanny Linda and my Grandad with my Mum c 1960

Nanny Linda lived in a pretty little bungalow all by herself, as Grandad had died when Kirsty was only small. She had lots of beautiful things which Kirsty loved to look at: collections of blue and green Wedgewood  porcelain, a Chinese tea set in a shiny glass cabinet and lots of family photos in polished silver frames. Most special of all, though, was Nanny Linda's Magic Teapot. The first thing Nanny did after giving Kirsty a kiss and a bar of chocolate was to make a pot of tea.
And this teapot was never empty! There was always enough for another 'cuppa'.
Always.
Throughout Kirsty's childhood she never saw the Magic Teapot run dry! She believed in the Magic Teapot with the same fervour as she believed in Father Christmas.

Nanny Linda and my Mum 1982

 Nanny Linda, aged 89, still lives by herself in a pretty little bungalow, only a few doors away from where she lived then, although she has married and buried a second husband in that time. She is independent and capable, not only does she still drive but she acts as chauffeur for several other 'Old Dears', who are all a decade younger than she is. Her collections has expanded to include Lladro, spoons, and tiny decorative teapots. She will still offer tea and cake as soon as anyone enters the house. The little girl is all grown up now and her own son and daughter are adored and spoilt by Nanny Linda.

4 Generations

 (Brought to you as part of Sian's Storytelling Sunday - the first time I have joined in. Go over here to read some more stories.)