Manya's Blog!

  IN 1991  After making myself a bike out of two half bikes, bought at the Police auction of bikes found in the river, hanging on railings, and generally discarded, I taught myself how to use the gears and started riding to work in Cambridge. I was introduced to 'Sunday bike rides' by a friend and started practicing to ride further than the five miles to work.  I would practice cycling round the villages I found on an Ordnance Survey map, and I cycled to work the long-way round, which involved a hill or two.   By the end of the summer, I had done four 'rides' for national charities and raised £400 for Help the Aged, the World Wildlife Fund, British Heart, and Oxfam.    Emboldened, and always up for a challenge, I entered the 1992 London to Cambridge 'event' - a properly organised affair, going by train to the start in London, signing in, lining up at a start line, and with marshals to point out the route at road junctions.    I pedalled along...

Having started my retirement in May at the age of 88 I was determined to finish the many projects and jobs that had been left undone, abandoned or put to one side for a variety of reasons. Finishing my book was the first accomplishment. Seeing it in print was just the first step.Now if it was to help raise funds for leprosy treatment it had to be marketed and that was my responsibility. I had to find the people who had supported me when I did that 2000 mile ride thirty years ago. Before the days of emails and mobile phones!  What's more I had moved house, and parish, and given up work, for these were the three groups who had donated £10000 to Lepra on my behalf.   

  Two thousand miles! The year 2000, two thousand pounds and two thousand miles! September 25, 2025 2000, 2000, 2000! In 1991 I made  myself a bike out of two half bikes. I learned how to use the gears, and started riding to work in Cambridge. I was introduced to 'Sunday bike rides' by a friend and practiced riding further than the five miles to work.  I would cycle round the local villages after work, and get up early to cycle to work the long-way- round, that involved a hill or two. By the end of the summer I had done four 'rides' for national charities and raised £400 for Help the Aged, the World Wildlife Fund, British Heart and Oxfam.  Emboldened, and always up for a challenge, I entered the 1992 London to Cambridge 'event' - a properly organised affair, including going by train to the start in London, with marshals to point out the route at road junctions.      I pedalled along, conscious of being older than most riders. I was overtaken by ho...

 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...

   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...