THE DAFFODILS AND TULIPS HAVE BEEN WONDERFUL, DESPITE BEING BLOWN ABOUT BY THE WIND.

 

                Broken flowers, however, provided me with some for the kitchen table! 

    My Christmas present from my son, David, was a mobility scooter. Sad to say it is Chinese, but it speaks English, with an American accent, telling me that when the slope is steep, it is reducing speed!! It also tells me when the brake is on and off, and reminds me to take the brake off if I want to move! I have named it Mildred - it was the first name that came into my mind. I've no idea why, I don't know any Mildreds and haven't been reading of any recently. Sarah thinks it suits.

I go to church on Sundays and to the town centre every market day, when it isn't raining, and have sampled a couple of town-centre supermarkets. I worry about leaving Mildred outside the shops, as she is only insured for an hour's parking. Marks and Spencer said I should bring Mildred in and park her in front of the clothes displays, while I leaned on a trolley to do a rare bit of food shopping. My last foray to M&S was to use up vouchers that were nearly two years old! 

My little front postage-stamp front garden is looking colourful with wallflowers. Sarah is jealous because hers turned out to be all the same colour instead of 'mixed'.

I've been admiring other people's spring blossoms, too. Magnolias seem to be good this year, with no frost damage. I noticed large white ones for the first time when Mike gave me a lift to the big supermarket. I can see the massive white cherry tree over my back fence; it's lovely.

The bad news this month is that two of the fences surrounding my garden have rotted. I was planning to mend the back one by wielding a sledgehammer to knock metal posts into the ground, amid the tree roots. The side fence is more complicated; it's higher and longer, on different levels, and I will have to move my shed to get at it. 

The house is now 20 years old, so I am expecting the boiler and all sorts of things to start breaking down!

I've sent £152 to Lepra from the royalties on the sale of my book. I had some good reviews, including

"You can taste it and feel it through Manya's descriptive and factual writing"."Inspirational in terms of what one individual can do in raising awareness, which is as important as the money raised for Lepra"."The illustrations are delightful." "What a powerful legacy." "A remarkable story followed by decades of voluntary work".

My aim is to sell 100 books! Any offers?



Popular posts from this blog

Manya's Blog

Image
   Hello! Welcome to my new blog! Do you remember me? Fundraising for homes for HIV orphans? Opening the Rainbow Home, and the Boys' Home for leprosy affected children, so that they could go to school like normal children? The monthly newsletters? The trips to the beach and the zoo with the Prem Nivas children? Living with the children as teacher and 'auntie'.? And if your memories go further back, to your supporting me when I did my bike ride to raise funds for leprosy treatment in 1994, and went out to work in India after I retired. It is a long time since I regularly wrote a blog. Tonight I have been looking back posts I wrote when I was volunteering for Brighter Future. I  was surprised that they were still on my computer. It was so nice to see the pictures of the children we gave a homes to, and the adults we were able to take into our hospice. We started with 5 children and soon had three homes with 100 infected orphans.  Some of the children are still in touch...
Read more
Image
 Time to get some winter colour for the urns, and for the strip of soil in the front of my house!  I'm not usually in England in the winter but now that I have officially retired I want to have something colourful to look at while I have my meals at the kitchen table, over looking the garden. We are lucky to have a twice weekly market in  Bury St Edmunds. Today I bought  wallflowers and yellow pansies for the tiny front garden patch of soil. For my back garden  I chose white cyclamen, followed by white and purple stripped crocus and double dwarf daffodils for the urns (at eye level), on either side of the steps up to the 'top garden', which gives me a view of birds splashing in their birdbath, after the giant wood pigeons have had their drink! My little garden is very green with shrubs and groundcover and is only about 25 feet square! It is very shady, a mini-jungle, with autumn colour provided by amelanchias,  alstomerias, busy lizzies and  bego...
Read more

Some things I remember of my childhood.

 I am so pleased to tell you that I am now an 'indie author'!  And I have sold 57 books!   A month or two ago, I had no idea what "indie" meant. Now I know it stands for 'independent'!  'Independent' in this case, means not supported for editing, proofreading, marketing, advice, etc. No one to hold your hand!  Recently, however, Amazon, through its USA site, has been offering these specialist services to authors, including me, as bundles from £500 to £5000. AI offered its services too, but I declined, saying that I wanted to write my book myself!   I am, however, personally very independent, usually referred to as 'stubborn', not through choice, but by necessity.   My family had been bombed out when they were living in Ilford, east of London. Mummy, my brother, 2-year-old Richard, and I were out posting a letter when the 'doodlebug' went through our house in August 1941. I was four.  Mummy and Daddy rescued a couple of rugs, a sideb...
Read more