Well, here goes......

Where do I start ... I seem to spend most of my life staggering from one crisis to another ...one catastrophe to the next .... so this will be random because that's me ... not in any order or format ....

Just the one story to start with and as its 10 pm it will have to be something quick..

Start with a childhood memory ... My Mum was a Brown Owl ... so I was a Brownie and think my 'six' was the Gnomes... nothing ladylike or pretty like the Fairies but a Gnome... as my Mum went to Brownies,  I suppose I had no choice ... There was a family connection with Baden Powell in the house as both my brothers were Cubs and moved to the Scouts when they were older, but when I joined, I remember, I was so excited, and when I finally was able to be enrolled ... and stand surrounded in the brownie ring and get my badges and make my promise .... I got more and more excited ... as always, I also got nervous ... I can remember that we turned up to the pack with me in my little brown dress, probably second  hand, a lot of my childhood clothes came from the thrift shop which was another institution, my Mum had her civic minded fingers in.

No baseball caps or sweatshirts in those days, brown dresses with brown leather belts and brown berets.  

I should have gone before the ceremony but no, I just wanted to get on with it ... so a few newbies went before me and then my moment came - I was summoned to the centre of the ring by Brown Owl, aka Mummy, and stood to make my promise and as the nerves overtook me and my cup of tension overflowed ... well not quite my cup ...more my bladder of tension overflowed and I wee...'d all down my legs and all over the imposing paper mache toadstool in the middle of the brownie ring....the ever growing pool of urine on the floor was mortifying but the damp paper mache of our red and white toadstool was a everlasting memory of the indignity of childhood incontinence from which I have never quite recovered and although I've not given it much thought until now, I'm sure Brown Owl never lived down the embarrassment of her daughter urinating all over that symbol of our sisterhood and changing the bright white paint to a different hue (perhaps more in keeping with the brown theme of the night) .....