Having the ability to say No

Do you have the ability to say no?

My husband would agree that I often say no, I'm not doing that, I'm not going there, I'm not saying that!

Stubborn apparently!

However until a year or so ago I found I couldn't say no to other people! Would I like to be on a committee? Yes

Could I help out doing this? Yes

The words just slipped out of my mouth so easily, after all I do like helping people and I do like being involved in a lot of things.

Anyway about 18months ago I just felt the time had come to say no. It was hard at first but I carried on with my previously agreed commitments but said no to new ideas and opportunities.

To be honest I was so busy it felt very liberating to say no, I had a bit more time for me.

But this year I've decided it's time to become involved with stuff again, say yes , but only a little bit!

So yes,yes,yes, I've already said yes!  And now I'm wondering what on earth I've done!

I'm an active committee member for the local branch of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) and love being involved and doing my bit. This year however my bit just got a wee bit bigger!

Every year we organise a Fish and Chip supper, last year about 90 people attended. We have a guest speaker, usually on a nautical theme, who gives a talk for about 45 minutes and then we serve fish and chips from a local fish and chip shop. It's a great evening and we raise a lot of money for the RNLI.

This year I've agreed to be the guest speaker! Me! I'm it! Eeek!

To be honest we were desperate, a few people we had in mind weren't able to help us out so it was suggested that as I had had a nautical career it would be interesting to talk about it.

So I've got 44 days to prepare a talk about my life at sea. So what would you want to hear about if you came to hear me talk?  Help, if you were my audience what would interest you?

All comments welcomed

New Year, New challenges

Firstly Happy New Year!
It's only taken me a week to finally get round to my blog again.
After a lovely Christmas and new year  spent with family, celebrating Christmas and a special 1st birthday on Christmas Day  for our grand daughter, life has returned to 'normal'.
Hubby is back at work and I've started this year with a more positive attitude than 2012 ended.
I've got a new business idea which I've decided to research  and see if its viable and today I went to my first ever  art class!
I've always had a romantic yearning to be able to paint but a box of watercolour paints which hubby bought for me about 8 years ago have been sat waiting to be used.
The wife of one of my patients has been telling me about a class she goes to in a local hall and when she reminded me about it last week, I decided that today was the day.
The group of 7 were a lovely bunch, very friendly and this week they were trying their hand at still life painting.
I set to and was pleasantly surprised when the tutor came round the group and said, ' oh yes, you can draw',
The two and a half hours flew by and I came away with a good drawing ready to be painted and a lovely glowing sense of achievement.

The still life subjects

An almost complete drawing

Knitting projects

This week I've been suffering with the dreaded lurgy. Hubby kindly passed it on before he went back to sea. I felt the tickle at the back of my throat and started with the Strepsils and Lemsip Max.
The next thing to do was cancel all my appointments for the week. Luckily my week wasn't going to be too busy anyway but as most of my patients are elderly I refuse to go and visit them when I'm ill.
To be honest I didn't feel like doing anything. Poor Maisie dog has had very few walks, a quick run around the field has had to suffice.
So once I had got myself out of bed, I made sure the heating was on and settled in front of the TV. I can endure daytime telly but only if I have something else to keep me occupied. So this week I've been finishing off some of those knitting projects which I've started but never quite finished.

I've been knitting flower fairies recently, Christmas presents for little family members. I've done three and am thrilled with them.



Meet Rose, Daisy and Tulip.
I'm so pleased with them, I've had lots of lovely comments about them and several people have asked how much I would charge for them.

My second unfinished project to complete was this circular shawl.







This made from one giant ball of yarn i bought in Aldi ages ago. i often see wool i like and just buy it without a clue of what I'm going to do with it. I found the pattern for this on a knitting website and think it will look great over a dark or even pink polo neck.

So now I'm onto the final project. I'm knitting a jumper for my brother. I'm not normally a big project person mainly because I get bored and want a quick result. Anyway I was given a fabulous Kaffe Fassett knitting book, it's very 'eighties' - bat wing jumpers and huge bright designs. However my brother spotted a design he liked so after finding some suitable yarn I started.




This is the back, I'm half way through the front now. It's a great challenge! Not sure how much I'll do before I get bored and go onto something else . I've got a beautiful cross stitch project I have been doing for about 10 years! Yes 10 years! It's big but I think it's about time I finished that!

Anyway I'm feeling a lot better today so I've rescheduled my appointments for next week.


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A weekend away in Tenerife

I've never done it before and it sounded so outrageous when I told someone I was going to Tenerife for a long weekend that I didn't bother telling anyone else.
There was a simple reason.
Hubby was there and I was going to visit him.
After a truly awful three weeks away at sea, hubby came home and uttered the dreaded words, " I need to go away, can you get some time off",
As hubby works away on a ship he is out of the UK for over half the year, and so is in the fortunate position to be able to claim back the tax he has paid. He keeps a very careful eye on his 'in' and 'out' days because once you have more days in the UK than out then that's it, you can't claim your tax back.
Every now and again, the numbers get a bit low and he declares that we have to go away, now, anywhere out of the UK. That's all well and good if only I could just turn round to my foot patients and say, 'sorry, I'm off on holiday for a few weeks, your feet will just have to suffer until I come back". Sorry but that ain't going to happen! I wouldn't have a business to come back to if I kept doing that. Anyway we are fairly good and plan ahead as much as we can so i know in advance when we are going away and just don't book people in.
Anyway this trip away saw hubby's ship have a major mechanical failure which saw them alongside for repairs in the UK and then him and his entire crew were transferred to another ship, which had been laid up due to no work in May. The company wanted them to bring this ship back out into working order because the repair time estimate on his ship is five weeks! Five weeks is a long time to have no ship working!
So they spent almost all of his three weeks away in the UK getting this other ship ready to sail.
You can't just turn up, put the key in, start her up and off you go though. Oh no, there are surveys to do, inspections, certificates to be re issued, crew safety inductions to do, fire drills, engine testing, everything basically!
So when he came home I wasn't surprised to hear that panicked, "we'll have to go away somewhere, now"
'Well, you'll have to go on your own' I said, 'as I've got patients to look after, they need their feet doing and I can't postpone them all at the last minute,
So he organised a two week holiday for himself to Tenerife and then when he noticed I had a four day gap in my diary he booked me a flight to go out and join him, he is a lovely man, isn't he?
Never before have I flown to Tenerife for a long weekend, it seems rather extravagant really but when I reasoned in my head that if I was to go to London for a weekend it would take as long, I decided that I didn't mind after all.
We had a lovely weekend although it has rained most days, very unusual for Tenerife apparently. We had hired a car so we drove to the other so of the island and enjoyed the sun over there instead on one of the days. Sadly hubby got the dreaded sickness/diarrhoea stomach bug whilst I was there so spent yesterday in bed while I went out between showers to explore a little.
I felt awful leaving him this morning as I knew he didn't feel 100% yet and was going to go back to bed.
Anyway we had a great time together, catching up really. We won't have seen much of each other in this three weeks before he is off again back to sea. The good point is that in three weeks he'll be back home again and it'll be Christmas!!!!! Joy!
But before that I've arrived home to a house with no heating, hot water bottle tonight, sort it out in the morning.
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American Adventures - part 3

Fast forward 16 months and here I am back in the same waiting room. No one tells you anything! That's because apparently no one knows!
There are signs everywhere telling you not to use mobile phones which is a bit inconvenient given that I am the only one with a phone to contact my cousin who was meant to meet us outside. We are already an hour and a half later than planned.
I switch my phone onto silence and then whilst rummaging in my bag I manage to send a quick message to my cousin, letting him know that yet again I was being detained.

After about ten minutes the Scottish lady who we had been speaking with in the queue appeared in the room. She came and sat next to me, she'd been brought in because of a problem with her fingerprints!

We sat and chatted and even though we asked a couple of times how long we may be in this place, back came the standard answer," I'm sorry, I don't know".

Eventually, after one and a half hours, my passport was picked up from the pile, stamped and I was called to the desk and it was handed over. No apology, no explanation, so no idea why I was there and to be honest I was just relieved to get out of there and get on and enjoy my holiday!


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