I had the best, sweetest little old man come to my talk today!

He'd come to my talk a while ago, around the winter time i think and returned with presents for me!
He'd found this old bok, from the 70's, pre-decimalisation anyway, which mentioned my boy and photocopied some pages for me, with a picture of his younger brother from the newspaper propaganda and a picture of all the medals that he'd been awarded posthumously and showed me his VC that either his Dad or Granddad had won in ww1 and seeing as they dont give them out that often, it was so cool to feel it!
Bless him to think of me and return to show me and give me his goodies!

I'll be recording a shortened version of my talk, later this week hopefully so you'll have more of an idea what i'm whittering on about!


Also I gotta give a special mention to the two girls who came in and looked a punchbowl and then asked "is that a real bowl?" I was SO tempted to say "No its a frog"

Its Cherry Blossom time again.
I love cherry blossom time, it makes me all nostalgic and i think back to when I was small, back in Primary school and the hardest thing ever to deal with was learning to colour in the lines.
We had a Cherry tree in the middle of our cul-de-sac. It never produced fruit but was so immense that even now I dont think I could put my arms around it.
We were banned from climbing it and plucking the blossom but each spring brought about the resumption of a game we invented and played. Me, OF, Brat and her sister and brother.
A complicated game using the fallen flowers, we'd pick a particularly good looking flower each day and have that as our "mayor" of "Blossomtown" We'd have solemn funerals for the wilting, brown petals and fill our bike baskets with them and ride around and around as fast we could trying to revive the blossom, convinced that the rush of air helped.
We protected our tree from invaders from other parts of the estate who'd come and climb and break branches and steal our flowers.
We'd dangle and shake the branches and pretend the petals that fell were snow or confetti in our hair.
Seems a silly game now but it makes me smile remembering it, looking at the pink and white blossom now. I wonder if the others remember it with as much fondness as I do at this time of year?

So lastn night we did the Charing Cross part of the Monopoly board. It was good, bit bad planning as we discovered several bars on our route had no disabled acess and we had Wheely H with with us so we had to lift her and her chariot up into some bars.
I think we did 6 or 7 stops, I was rather good and paced myself by only having the one drink in each bar as we were on a time limit to get round, so I didnt wanna end up getting to the bar and getting another drink in and then holding everyone else up by waiting for me to finish up.
I think I stayed rather sober too, well you'd have to check that with Welshy who I badgered into coming to meet me at Leicester Square and came with us to two bars, before his lack of ID meant we couldnt get into the final one and we went home early via Burger King.
I *think* i was on the happy giddy side of drunk before it descends into ramble, violent actions and abuse (on my part)
I did berate a man on the tube who was talking about TV detectives and had forgotten the greatest one of all - Mark Sloan on Diagnosis Murder!

And I had another nutter come after me! Oh yes, not satisfied with being harassed by TrainMan on Saturday I had a mental Big Issue Woman chase me into a bar at Covent Garden, claiming "I'm gonna start a riot with that whore!"

All I did was say to her "I don't want a Big Issue, Goodbye!"

Not quite sure it was deserving of being called a whore and threatened several times! And its good to know that the three guys I was with leapt to my defence with a "I'm not sure that's needed?" before fleeing into the bar with me!