Carry on County Hall..

Whilst working for the local authority - I had a job at a lovely Georgian building in the centre of Exeter - although it came with its small idiosyncrasies, I have since realised that it added to the charm and was so much better than the alternatives.  I worked with the fore-mentioned Debra who was a Receptionist and I  was responsible for facilities, post, overseeing Reception, Fire Officer, First Aid - all that kind of stuff.  Along with Debra's need to shout at anyone whose first language was not English, we seemed to find things to amuse us on regular occasions.

We got used to familiar delivery men and postmen and picked up each others work if it was needed.  One morning Debra was sat at her desk and as I was passing the small hatch, when the postman arrived, I took over.  The regular post had been delivered and this was one of the continuing stream of delivery men, who punctuated our day.  He put his parcel down and started entering the information on the electronic reader that he carried.  I smiled, said Good Morning and moved the parcel to the side of the hatch to enable me to sign the usual documentation.

Now before I continue - I have to explain that we were in the process of changing our name badges to the ones that were used over the rest of the Education department - these would carry our pictures and enable us to gain access via the smart readers located in various council buildings, and this must have been playing on my mind.

So when the delivery man looked up and said, No I need to scan that - I thought, for some reason, that he meant my name badge which was always pinned to my chest.  So without much thought I pushed my non - inadequate bosom, through the hatch.  The postman firstly looked confused and then horrified at the ever approaching bust and shouted - "No! Not that! - the parcel" ........ I could hear Debras explosion of laughter from behind and as the blush grew up my neck to my face - he rushed to leave, never to return.

Although, Debra did point out that 20 different men did .........

Vicar of Where?

Some years ago I lived in a small Wiltshire village with my husband and two sons. It was idyllic in some ways and seemed to be paving the way for the lifestyle I wanted.

I've always been involved in community groups such as the PTA or the church groups so it was not an unusual event for me to be invited to the Church Fete committee.  The venue for the meeting was the Manor House in the village, and as we sat there around the large breakfast table resting our note pads on copies of the Horse and Hounds, the meeting seemed to be progressing in its normal way.

The group consisted of the owners of the Manor House, the vicar and his wife and a few older stalwarts of the village which included various retired military men and their memsahibs, who punctuated those rural counties.  As a member of the 'also rans', I, along with the School Secretary, certainly occupied the second rank whose job was to support the choices made by the hierarchy and to do the donkey work when required.

The meeting was discussing the advertising strategy for the annual fete and the possibility of posters being positioned on the roads into the village heralding the village fete and its attractions ... I'm sure we've seen them all .... They are aimed to catch the eye of passing motorists ... and display such statements as ' Village Fete here today', 'All the fun of the Fair' and 'Cream Teas at the Manor House', and there seemed to be some chatter about the practical application of displaying those posters.  Suddenly, aiming to solve the display problem, came a statement from the end of the end of a table

Commander Taylor RN (retired) stood to attention and declared loudly in a voice that should only be used on the Poop deck and I might say, with some pride.  "I have a rather large erection, the size of a house".

The shocked silence was palpable and as everyone seemed to fleetingly stare open mouthed, my colleague and I retreated into an episode of 'Carry On Village Fete',  Before we burst into uncontrollable laughter, we glanced around the table for some kind of action that would bring the proceedings back to normality.  The vicar seemed to be ignoring it completely, a few of the ladies of the table were looking at Commander Taylor in a new, admiring light but my friend and I lost the plot completely giggling uncontrollably and as the majority of the group had decided, if they understood the double entendre, that they were going to ignore it, our laughter landed in the same social realm as giggling at funerals.  I think the collective decision to cover over it made it worse, we were both red in the face and holding our cheeks, no reader! don't go there again - the cheeks on our face, I was pressing my thumb nail into my finger in an effort to stop, my friend had decided to drop pens so that she could climb under the table and control herself, but the shaking from both our bodies was making it more and more difficult to return to a dignified silence.

The vicar bought the meeting to order, gazing over his glasses at us to ensure that we knew he meant us to cease, and gradually after a few throat clearances, we began to breathe slowly.

This would have been the end of the story but after five minutes of trying to work out how we attach the notices to Commander Taylors impressive erection and a few smaller decisions having been made, someone else decided to bring us back to the realms of Sid James and Barbara Windsor.

The talk had moved on to the minutiae of the stalls - bric a brac, catch the rat and the cakes, when a really annoying busy body in the village, I forget her name, declared with no shame that if anyone wanted to store their home made cakes that they were very welcome to store them in her back passage.


To which ... meeting over.... plot officially lost........

A short one - thank god' comes the reply .......

I like to talk ... I will talk to strangers and share quite intimate secrets and I also like to make people feel good, sometimes I have been warmed by the passing compliment of a stranger so think others must feel the same way, but really should do the proverbial ..... gears in place before mouth in action..... so when I got on the bus on a cold autumn day and was followed by an amazonian lady wearing the most beautiful cerise coat, I felt the need to comment.... the colour was wonderful on her and complimented her dark hair and creamy skin colour ...and when the days turn darker it was a wonderful flash of 'feel good' colour ... so when I smiled at her and commented, I was attempting to convey the brightness she had shared with me.... My words were meant to expose my lack of courage and habit of wearing dark colours - ranging from Navy to Black and back again maybe stopping at a mucky brown.... what came out of mouth can only be excused by its good intentions.....

 'Oh what a wonderful coat - I wouldn't have the nerve to wear it !!'

Her expression can only be described as crestfallen followed by confusion and a flash of anger returning to confusion - I then lost all the power of speech ... if only it had happened before and failed to explain why I felt the need to insult a stranger before I had to leave the bus trying to express my apologies by a glance up the bus before stumbling off and resisting the temptation to crumble to the floor and place my head between my legs moaning .... in the style of Basil Fawlty.

Tourettes ....maybe?

My friend Debra passed away four years ago now .... she was a lovely lady who I only knew for a short time but we shared many good times together and I wish that we could have shared more - we shared a memorable Christmas 'do' at the Russian Restaurant in Exeter, the first Christmas we worked together, drinking flavored vodka, we shared a very amusing evening at the Firehouse drinking nameless gin and we shared a few evenings at Oldtimers putting the world to rights - we also spent time at Michael Caines drinking Champagne where she entertained me with stories of her previous life as an arms dealer ...ok,  she worked for the Armaments department of the MOD but she did travel extensively around the world and it was fun to introduce this five foot cockney lady as a gun runner.
Now, you may recognise a theme in these recollections, and yes, we did like to share the odd small Amontillado if the occasion called for it.

So the Christmas before she left us, we decided to meet up for a meal before the year ended.  We arranged to meet at 12.30 and I, having taken the whole day off and it being a Friday, decided to have my hair done and was wearing a faux fur coat as it was cold and icy and had snowed the previous week . Definitely first impressions were 'Ladies that Lunch' - if only. I can't completely remember where we started but feel it commenced with the best intentions, with a small glass of bubbles in the Champagne Bar of Abode.  We continued with the full intention of finding somewhere to eat but after Coolings and Oldtimers and The Angel and Chaucers, lunch didn't seem to be as important anymore.

By around 7 o'clock we were a little 'tired and emotional' OK! OK! we were legless ... not appropriate for ladies I know but we didn't see each other often and we were fully capable of getting ourselves home safely, as we had proved on many occasions but it does seem that the weather was against us and the melted snow had turned to ice on the pavements.  So as we made our way along the High Street, speech seemed pointless and our sole intention was to reach our respective bus stops, Debra was slightly ahead of me so her fall was, as is often the case, a slow motion event unfolding in front of my eyes, her legs went up and she went down on her bottom, I rushed to her aid, and bent forward to help her up, when my feet went from under me. The next voice I heard was someone saying 'Oh my god - Don't move - there's lots of blood' and I answered ' Why? wheres Debra and whats happened to her?'   But when I looked up there seemed to be a crowd around me looking down at me, and insisting that I didn't move.  So realising that I had perhaps hurt myself, I kept still but continued to ask about the welfare of my friend. Within seconds it seemed that an ambulance turned up and took me to the hospital, I still didn't quite realise what I had done to myself but the ambulance men were very insistent that I remain still. I continued to ask about my friend as she wasn't with me, I thought she must be in another ambulance recovering from her fall, but there was no answer.

Once I arrived at the hospital, the nurse informed me I had a head injury and told me that I needed the expertise of a Maxio Facial specialist to stitch me up.  I realised that I wasn't exactly ok - and my question - 'Is it bad?' was met with a slow nod and 'Yup!'
After about three hours I was collected from hospital by my eldest son after 7 stitches to the bridge of a broken nose, and an additional diagnosis of a fractured skull and fractured cheekbone.

That might be the end of the story but what happened to my friend Debra, she wasn't in the hospital and the staff said they had no record of her being brought in.  I took it that she had been told to return home and was waiting for news so Nick 'my son' rang her house to tell her that I was in hospital but OK. Her partner was somewhat surprised to receive the call and said that Debra had returned home, staggered upstairs and was sleeping soundly and snoring loudly.

I was discharged from hospital and went home and later on that weekend, I went to see Debra, who was mortified to see my blackening eyes and the hole in my forehead,  it appears she had stood up from her fall, brushed herself off and oblivious to the events unfolding behind her had teetered down the High Street to catch her bus safely home.

Who needs enemies eh?

I miss her, her infectious sense of humour, her outlook on life and know that she would have smiled had she joined me at the Rugby Club dinner the following weekend where I displayed bruises that any front row would have been proud of.

Map Reading Exercise

When I joined the army, during our six week basic training we were required to undertake a map reading exercise, so on one fine summer afternoon, after having been issued with the appropriate kit, combats (it was unusual in those days for nurses, even Army Nurses, to be issued with camouflage equipment as standard), black boots, a compass, a plastic covered map, chinagraph pencils and I seem to remember having an orange woolly hat.  We certainly looked the part and had spent an hour or so learning how to read the maps so we were all ready.

We set off from Royal Pavilion, the picturesque setting for the training centre and headed into the outskirts of Aldershot in a military vehicle and were dumped at a position on some fields from the back of a lorry.  We had been given map references for our intended destination and were put into groups of two or three.  Huddled over our map, I felt quite confident in my map reading skills ... as I, of course, had an exceptional guiding career to hold me in good stead. We worked out where we were meant to be heading with the aid of our compass and my colleague and I set off (I think her name was Pat). It wasn't a hard walk, probably some vast training ground as Aldershot was primarily taken up with military pursuits, and the walk was interspersed with breaks where we referred back to our map, made notes with our chinagraph pencils and checked the compass to ensure that we were heading in broadly the right direction.  We chatted all the way and it was a pleasant way to escape from other parts of our training and at least we weren't getting shouted at.  We only began to worry slightly when we were still walking after a couple of hours, the impression imparted by our squad Sgts was that it wouldn't take us much more than the two hours we had already been involved in.  Perhaps I should have taken more notice of the butterflies that were starting to flutter as the terrain became more undulating and less grassy, we climbed the now sandy mounds and even after checking our co-ordinates struggled over a few hedges.  Although we only made fleeting references to the unexpected length of time it was taking, I'm sure Pat joined me when I took a large gulp of air swallowing my concerns as we assisted each other dealing with a barbed wire fence, but we hadn't yet reached the collection point and our map reading was instructing us to carry on.  But as we moved towards our fourth hour, we heard a slight rumbling ... it was a vaguely familiar sound and comforting to know that we weren't completely detached from civilisation.  I shared my thoughts that the noise resembled childhood memories of tractors.  The rumbling got louder as we stood in the centre of a giant sandpit and finally turned around to find a large Chieftan tank grinding to a halt in front of us.  The top opened slowly and a head popped out .... and although difficult to pick out the gist of his message from the Mancunian accent and the selection of obscenities punctuating it my overall impression was that we weren't meant to be there. As Pat and I gazed upwards at the driver ... is that what they're called, we waved our compasses and attempted to explain why two inept women soldiers were in the middle of a restricted area.  We were instructed to move to a safe position nearer the fence and not to move, which not unsurprisingly, we did. Shortly, although it seemed like an age, a Military Police vehicle arrived and the Mancunian tank driver left in his Chieftan.  The MP indicated that we should get in the back of his landrover and we were driven in silence back to our barracks to be met by the Regimental Sergant Major and QM who shook their heads silently before subjecting us to an 'interview without coffee' and a telling off directly proportionate to the strength of their embarrassment in having us returned to the barracks under those circumstances.  

And to add insult to injury ... we could the see the hillock that we were meant to travel to from our starting point ... if only we'd known eh?

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) .....