Snippets

(Random)Facts.

I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie and the most exciting things I’ve been fortunate enough to experience are:
1) riding (aged 12) down a 2 mile long hill on a bike which turned out to have no brakes,
2) jumping off the top of a mountain in Turkey – attached to a paraglider, and
3) the best birthday present from my children ever – a flying lesson in a WW2 Tiger Moth. It was amazingly simple to fly – very responsive to the slightest movement of the controls and a fabulous experience. (Not least because I had an uncle, who died quite a long time before I was born, but who learnt to fly in one.)

I was also privileged to take part in a Charity walk on ‘wild’ sections of the Great Wall of China – was I glad I’d taken the 16 week training programme seriously! For six+ hours per day we climbed up and down hundreds of uneven, irregular steps, through, round and over innumerable guard posts – I got stuck in one and had to be rescued – and navigated (with difficulty) the rough terrain on the sections where there was hardly any wall still in existence. It was an amazing week, the scenery was immense, and I could have stayed there, on what felt like the top of the world, for ever.

I am actually quite reserved, but people don’t usually realise that, because in a new situation (such as a conference for example) I push myself to initiate conversations and to try to involve others who may be struggling on the fringes. However within my wider family I have a reputation for general jammy-dodgery, or as I prefer to say, serendipity, but I suspect that’s because they’re jealous of, for example, my free, for the asking, brand new bed settee from MFI, and loan (from a random stranger that I’d met for 10 minutes in a library) of a beautiful harbour-side apartment and Range Rover in Boston so that I could research possible relatives… I found them in a day and a half, and then had 3 weeks fabulous holiday with them in Boston, Maine and surrounding areas. Definitely a result.