Saturday 31 May 2008

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

Sunday 11 May 2008

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