My Tasty Travels

Wow, yesterday the TV programme I took part in with Lynda Bellingham was on TV. Having told all my friends and family about it so they could watch-I started to have a bit of a panic. What if I made a complete fool of myself or worse-what if I was edited out!!!!!!

I watched it with mixed feelings. The film scenes of the farm were amazing and beautiful, making the place look inviting. Fantastic advertising for Cogges. There were also a lot of fantastic shots of various locations around Oxfordshire.

Finally the moment of truth arrived. Myself and other volunteers were filmed walking to the table on which the 2 pies that we were to taste had been dished out. It's a strange feeling seeing yourself on TV when you're not used to it. I was relieved to see that I hadn't done anything to embarrass myself lol. They even kept in my comments about the pies hee hee.. :)

When the credits began to roll my phone went crazy with texts from friends and comments on face book. a friend from Scotland that I hadn't seen for years sent me a text saying 'I've just seen you on tv'! Later on that evening at choir practise a new member speaking to one of my friends pointed at me and said, 'I saw that lady on TV at tea-time'. Ah, fame at last!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's just as well that I'm off on holiday tomorrow to allow all the attention to die done. Just kidding! I don't think Meryl Streep or Nicole Kidman need worry about me being their competition yet ha ha. it was great fun having my 15 minutes of fame.

Tomorrow I'm off to Venice to join a cruise ship for 10 nights. So no blogs from Flashmob Granny until then. Although I'm sure that cruising around Greece and the Greek islands should lead to more adventures on my 'New Beginnings'.
The link is no longer available on ITV player, but I've made a recording for posterity.

Video - ITV Player

www.itv.com

The official ITV home of Video. Visit itv.com for Video.

Flashmob Granny

Letting go.

This blog is about my 'journey', and part of being able to move on is to let go. Like a lot of things in life that sounds easier than it is. Something that many people will have found out as they try to make sense of this world. What things we need to let go depends on our circumstances but I'm sure if we were to compare notes there would be a common thread running through them.

There are few of us who manage to go through life without experiencing loss of some kind. Whether it's the loss of a job,  your health, a loved one one or ones, it is never easy and can be a very long, painful process 'getting over' and 'coming to terms' with that loss. I've used inverted commas around these phrases as in my experience they are very frequently used by people who haven't a clue what it's like as they have been fortunate to never have experienced such a loss in their life- yet. I've repeatedly had people come up to me years later and apologise for things they have said or done or even expected me to be doing at the lowest points of my life, because they themselves have since experienced something similar. 

What losses am I talking about? In my blog on September I mentioned that I was extremely ill following the birth of my eldest son. What I didn't mention was that he had been born with a complete heart block as a result of my having Lupus. He was ok though, his heart was coping and the doctors said that he would be fine. In a manner of speaking he is. He's now an adult, married with his first child on the way, but at age 11 he had to have the first of many pacemakers put in. I am so grateful to the wonders of modern science that he is still with us today.

The losses I'm talking about are the 2 beautiful babies I had who were not so lucky. As the doctors thought that my son would be ok and after deciding that what had happened to me after he was born was not directly related to the birth, I was told that if I wanted to get pregnant again, I could. Little did I know that this would plunge me into years of coping with tragedy and ultimately depression. I very soon became pregnant and despite regular visits to the hospital I was extremely happy.

This all changed when at 25 weeks a scan showed that the baby, a little boy, had died in utero. Anyone who has miscarried at this stage will know that you have to still have to go ahead with labour. My husband was out of the country so I delayed being induced for 24 hours so that he could be there with me. What followed was a complete nightmare, made worse by the fact that I was in the same area as women giving birth to live babies. Afterwards the doctors said that they thought it was 'just one of those things,' unrelated to the Lupus.

2 years later we decided to try again. Once again I was regularly monitored and at 21 weeks another scan showed that the babies heart was damaged but the doctors thought that just like my son, she would be ok. But this was not to be. At 23 weeks her heart went into failure and despite my being given drugs which stopped the heart failure and kept the pregnancy going until 35 weeks, my beautiful little girl was born but died 17 days later due to the brain damage caused by the lack of oxygen around the time of her birth. I written another blog describing my feelings about what we had to do. http://isabelj327.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/dont-you-think-youve-had-enough-now.html No words are enough to describe the pain and grief that both my husband and I experienced for a very long time. Even today when they would have been 24 and 22 years of age it sometimes feels as if it was only yesterday.

I've chosen this picture of a rainbow as to me a rainbow is a sign of hope, the 'sunshine after the rain'. They say that time heals and in a way it does. But during that time there is a lot of heartache, anger and tears that have to be gone through. There are no shortcuts and none else can really help, they can support you and listen when you need to talk. Talking is very important. It can't change the past or even help to make sense of what's happened, but I found it was instrumental in helping me to let go. It was only by letting go of my babies that I was able to move on with my life and start to dig my way out of the deep depression I was in. It wasn't easy and took a long time.

This doesn't mean that I've forgotten them. I'll always love them and they'll always be in my heart. When I look at my sons,( I did eventually have another child but that's a story in itself), I think of my 2 little angels and wonder what they would look like or be doing if they had lived. My new beginnings required me to let go but by living my life to the full I feel that I am honouring their existence, as having known them for the short time that I did has helped to make me who I am today. I also believe that the best way to honour their lives is to live mine to the full.

Photographs:- Isabel's own.

Isabel Johnstone 2013 ©

Update on Dame Edna.

Anyone who may be reading these blogs will remember that I wrote one about making a scarecrow for a Scarecrow Festival to be held over the the August bank holiday weekend. For some bizarre reason I decided to do a 'Dame Edna Everidge Scarecrow! Dame Edna then featured in 2 adverts on Witneytv to publicise the festival. The second ad was hilarious! Cogges had decided to run a competition for people to email pictures of their scarecrow. To advertise this Laura, the Operations Manager at Cogges and Barry from Witneytv were filmed with Dame Edna in the background. Unfortunately in the move from the barn, where she had been created, to the doorway of the stable where the filming took place, her tiara had gone wonky as had her specs. She looked as if she had been out on the tiles the night before. Never the less, she did her best to be dignified as Laura and Barry gave the details of the competition.

If only she'd left it at that! As the credits rolled the camera was directed at the door to the stable which was now empty, although Laura could be seen in the background looking over her script to see how much of it she had forgotten. The credits were coming to an end and I thought that despite her slightly dishevelled state she had carried it of quite well. But then from the left hand side of the doorway Dame Edna was observed slowly leaning to the right until you could see as far as her waist. Then as if that wasn't bad enough she decided to shake her body a little bit before slowly retreating back out of sight. I wasn't there at the time or I could have tried to preserve her dignity. But I must admit it was very funny. That woman is a comic genius!

You might by now be thinking that this woman is absolutely barking mad! Me that is not Edna. You may well be right, but I was not the only one to end up falling under her spell and almost believing her to be real.

Laura decided that Dame Edna should be placed outside the reception area to greet all the visitors and advertise that the festival was taking place. The weather forecast for the Saturday wasn't very good. I awoke early that morning and lay in bed worrying about Edna being out in the wind and rain as she was very fragile. Then I had a eureka moment. If I took the parasol and base from our patio table it would both provide a secure structure to help her stay upright while at the same time sheltering her from the rain. My long suffering hubby was dispatched to Cogges with these items and strict instructions on making sure that Edna's tiara and specs were in their proper place. I wasn't going along until lunchtime so couldn't do it myself.

When I arrived Laura called me into the office and gave me a bunch of Gladioli that one of the volunteers had bought for Dame Edna. Apparently it would not have been right for her to be seen in public without a Gladioli! See what I mean about me not being the only one to come to think of her as real! My first task then was to find a means of attaching a Gladioli to her hands, which were actually only just a pair of rubber gloves, the rest of the flowers I put in a jug that was placed on the ground beside Dame Edna. As her social secretary I penned a thank you note to the very kind, considerate, if slightly mad like me, volunteer.

Well Dame Edna went down a storm. I think she has been photographed almost as much as the real Dame. Everyone who visited the farm that weekend had their picture taken with her, adults as well as children. Even today almost 2 weeks after the festival Dame Edna is still greeting visitors to Cogges although she is now safe and warm inside the reception area. I was supposed to bring her home at the the end of the festival but Laura asked me if she could stay a bit longer. Everyone, well at least a significant number of people, love her.

Goodness knows how long she'll stay at Cogges. but I haven't the heart to take her away from her adoring public. If anyone reading this wants to see Edna in action, google Witneytv and search the archives for either Cogges Scarecrow Festival or Cogges Scarecrow Competition.

Flashmob Granny!

When I think of September

The lovely Lisa has set us a challege of writing a blog about what we think of when we think about September. This might not be what she meant but here goes.

The first memory I have when I think of September is of a friend's wedding where I first realised that I wanted to be more than just friends with the man who was to become my husband. Our friends had been trying to pair us up for about a year and I was furiously resisting! Unfortunately my change of heart happened just as he started dating someone else! But the path of true love doesn't run smooth, so it is said. About 3 weeks later we had a bit of a 'heart to heart' and I told him how I felt and the rest, as they say, is history.

My next September memory is of my wedding day 2 years later. I was to leave from the flat that we had bought as our first home. It overlooked Easter Road football ground the home to Hibs football team. When they were playing at home our street became a sea of bodies as eager fans made their way to the ground. As the wedding was at 3 o'clock, to allow for this crush, we arranged for the car to pick me up early. What we should have done was check the football fixtures first. As it happened, Hibs were playing away that Saturday and to avoid being the only bride in history to be really early for her wedding, the chauffer took me for a drive through the Queen's park in Edinburgh, which lies under the shadow of Arthur's Seat. It was quite amusing to be chauffer driven in all my finery being observed by tourists and picknikers alike.

Of course, not all my September memories are pleasant ones. Life is not like that, unfortunately. In 1983 I spent my wedding anniversary waiting to be admitted to hospital for a week of tests. Following the birth of my lovely son, a couple of months earlier,  I had become increasingly unwell, being unable to swallow food and even struggling with liquids. Eventually the doctors decided to take me in for investigative tests as, by this time, I kept passing out every time I tried to stand up. This week turned into 10 weeks during which time I developed a clot in the main vein leading to the heart and had a stroke among other problems I won't go into at this time. When this happened the doctors called my family into the hospital as I was so weak they didn't think that I would last through the night.  As I'm writing this blog, you can see that I did make it and 2 weeks later I was home, very thin (I weighed just 6 1/2 stone), very weak, but very happy to be alive and reunited with my baby. I was also now diagnosed as having SLE more commonly known as Lupus. This Lupus was to lead to other times in my life when things were not brilliant, but that is for another time.

My final September memory is of last weekend when I celebrated my 34th wedding anniversary. Can you believe that? I can't! Inside I don't even feel as if I'm 34 years old, let alone old enough to have been married that long. We started off the celebrations on Friday with a meal of Duck in Cherry sauce and a bottle of champagne. On the Sunday morning I came down to find a lovely bouquet of flowers in various shades of pink, my favourite colour. Then after breakfast we went to see Highclere Castle, the setting for Downton Abbey. We had been before to a Help For Heroes fundraising day, but hadn't been able to see inside the house on that occasion. Mind you I did get the chance to meet some of the cast of Downton and managed to make a fool of myself. by opening my mouth without thinking. But again that's a story for another day! After a lovely day out, we came home and had a Chinese take-away washed down with some Sauvingon Blanc to round off the celebration.

Hopefully there will be other September memories and I'm sure if I gave it more thought I'd be able to think of some more. but I think that this is enough for now. I must remember to make a note of all the points I've mentioned here to be explored further later lol!