Plate smashing optional

This week, being half-term, my grand-daughter is involved in another dance festival. She is 8 now and has been dancing since she could walk. She just LOVES to dance. Today was the classical Greek section. Alan asked if we needed to provide plates for smashing, but it isn't THAT kind of greek dancing! She was just beautiful. It was her first attempt at the Greek style and she did it very well.

She made me cry, which is a bit unusual, but she was SO lovely, and I feel SO cross that I'm probably not going to see her grow up. Now I've said that, fate will intervene again and make me a liar, but I jolly don't care as long as I can stick around for another 10 years or so.

She has already done her Tap section, which she won, but has Modern, Ballet, Song and Dance and Character to go. I don't know about you, but it exhausts me just THINKING about it! I admire my daughter for her committment to this child. Every dance has its own costume and hairstyle, not to mention the make-up! (she's got more than me) and Amanda has a full-time job. She is mad, of course, but in a completely different way from me! Lucky ONE of us has some energy.

Art and crafts

Spent yesterday at a crop organised by Katie and Dave from Cre8tive Online. Good fun, good food and good chat, as always. I love listening to Katie and Dave talking to each other whilst they work. They are really funny, but I'm not sure they realise it! Dave is in charge of the shop whilst Katie teaches, and then he dashes off to collect lunch and does a mean pudding! It was good to see people and have a gossip as well as ACTUALLY COMPLETING a layout, which may be a first for me at a crop.

Today I went to help out at our local Art Show. I really only had to collect door money and talk a lot, so that was no hardship. We have a Manor House in our village which was threatened with demolition some years ago. It was bought by a couple of local people who run it as a residential home, and have formed a Trust to care for it. Since then the Trust has bought two other properties and the annual Art Show is part of their fund-raising calendar. I try to buy a picture every year, which hasn't always been easy, but this year there was an exceptionally high standard and I had a hard job chosing. Mind you there were a LOT of pictures of boats!!

I was buttonholed by the Rector, who thought he ought to know who I was. He does now! I find it quite difficult to avoid answering people who ask how I am without telling them!! Given that I have virtually no symptoms, it's a bit hard to say "Still dying" I feel a complete fraud, and yet I KNOW that I am really lucky to be alive. It's so difficult to know what to tell people when I don't really know what is going on myself. Anyway, I'll save the "Living with cancer not dying of cancer" monologue for a day when nothing else has happened! Bet you're all gagging for that one!

Rivetting stuff

Gosh, it's been a wild couple of days - not! Yesterday I spent with Beth. we have this deal whereby we do each other's housework. Don't ask me why cleaning her bathroom is more interesting than cleaning mine, it just IS, right?
Today was "lunch in the pub with the girlies" day. Great lasagne! One of said girlies, my best mate was having a birthday so she got the odd pressy. I say ODD advisedly. A money-box to save up for new shoes and a fairy dress-up doll - and the obligatory VERY rude card. She claims to be 50 this year. I invite you to disbelieve this. We reckon the picture in the attic must look pretty duff by now.

This photo was taken last year at her wedding, but she hasn't aged in 12 months!! I am working on a clippykits handbag for her birthday, which isn't actually until Monday, thank God. Mind you I haven't finished the wedding album yet. . .

Spent the afternoon with my aunt. She's number four of five sisters, my mother was number two. She has just lent me her photo albums so I have scanned everything in sight. Pictures of my mother at two and of ME at the Coronation. Told you I was old! Many layouts now in my head!

Off to a crop tomorrow. I WILL get a layout done - maybe. I talk too much and scrap too slowly.

So why Subversive Elephant?

Soon after I started University (at the advanced age of 37) my VERY conventional ex-husband chose to tell me I had turned from a "normal mother" into a "radical Marxist Feminist". I've never been altogether sure he knew the meaning of any of those terms - and I've never been a Marxist! I was telling my mother this story and I declared forcefully, "I'm sure he thinks I'm a subversive elephant!" Given that I am a lady of "traditional build" it seemed appropriate to adopt the malapropism and make it my own. Some 20 years on I am still subverting as much as possible - and I am still VERY fond of elephants.

In the beginning . . .

. . . there' s me. Minding my own business, doing my own thing. Then blogs arrive. Do I get one? Nah! Who wants to know what I think? Do I even KNOW what I think? Umm - well I'm thinking about that! And while I'm thinking I'm reading other blogs, and finding them fascinating, and helpful, and funny and sad. Bit like my life really.
So here I am. Not dead yet! I guess sharing my life might be cathartic. I'm game to give it a go!