Fifty things that make me happy

1. Talking to my siblings on the phone
2. Earning a bit of extra money
3. A cup of coffee
4. Anticipation
5. Pretty dresses (mine)
6. Compliments
7. Seeing my friends happy
8. Laughing at a stupid joke
9. Making a good joke
10. Writing
11. A journey
12. Shiney wet roads
13. Stars
14. My leafy waterproof
15. Hearing other people's beautiful things
16. Letters
17. Stamps from abroad
18. Hedgerow fruit
19. Overhearing conversations
20. Rainbows
21. Oddities
22. A good sunset
23. Watching insects
24. Strootching in leaves
25. Jumping in puddles
26. A good pen
27. Dinner invitations
28. Gossip
29. Seeing how I have improved at something by looking at earlier attempts, or talking about what it was like when I started out
30. Finding a book I want
31. Greenness
32. The smell of rain on dry earth
33. Central heating
34. Clean hair
35. A light suntan
36. Beaches
37. The wind in my face
38. The colours of embroidery thread or beads
39. Ice cream and a hot pudding
40. Martini
41. A few olives
42. Unexpected guests
43. Children playing
44. Sparrows
45. Crabs on a beach
46. Short stories
47. A parcel of books
48. A clean fridge
49. The smell of baking
50. Imaginary lands
    

Page 123

This is a meme and it came from Elspeth Thompson, who has mentioned me in her book, and has the same name as my cousin (but my cousin uses her other first name).

Pick the nearest book about a foreign place. Go to page 123. Count down five sentences and then type up the next three. Here are mine.

They, too, had been attacked by typhus fever and smallpox. I said farewell, and, mounting my horse, heard angry words behind me. Turning round I found that some of the lepers wanted to near to speak to me, and the Yakuts were driving them away in horror, fearful lest they might catch the disease.

Kate Marsden: On sledge and horseback to outcast Siberian lepers. In Mary Morris (ed): The Virago Book of Women Travellers. Virago Press 1996.

My colleagues gave me this book for my birthday after I returned from a 10-week holiday in Africa. I have always loved travel books (particularly historical ones) and in the pages I ran into some old friends (Christina Dodwell, Dervla Murphy, Mary Kingsley) as well as some new companions (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who created a scandal in Turkey, and Eliza Farnham, who was 'determined to decrease misery in the world').

I tag: Ellouisestory