Challenge 31 - DO AN ART COURSE

Je ne regrette rien........except not taking on this challenge about 30 years ago before my eyesight started to fail and my hand to shake.  I have yearned to paint for all of my life, and yet always come up with a plethora of excuses to prevent me putting brush to canvas.  Not any more.  Thanks to the generosity of my brother and sister-in-law, I took myself off for a day of botanical painting under the tutelage of the extremely talented Siriol Sherlock and in the company of my lovely friend Ann.  We were the novices of the group - Ann didn't know one end of a paintbrush from the other, and I didn't know a daisy from a dandelion!  What we lacked in experience, expertise, skill, talent, we more than made up for in enthusiasm, perseverence and good humour!  Siriol made it look so easy - it wasn't!  With a few flourishes and flicks of the wrist, she created a masterpiece, and we produced something that wouldn't look out of place on the wall of my Year 1 classroom.  After six hours we headed home with a portfolio of paintings, inspiration and pride.

I'm off now to my garret, dressed in a smock, in search of creative genius.  It's never too late - non, je ne regrette rien!

Challenge 30 - CREATE A MOSAIC

On the psychiatrist's couch.......

"Help me, help me, doctor.   Why do I feel compelled to take something perfect (and often expensive) and smash it with a hammer into millions of pieces, and then spend an obscene amount of time trying to put it back together again?  Is it normal to feel an overwhelming rush of adrenalin when you find the perfect piece for a specific hole?  I confess that I have been doing the same with fabric and scissors for years, but now I have moved on to tiles and crockery.  Nothing is safe in my world any more - cups, plates, mirrors are all at risk from my hammer and my creative urges.  Does this stem from my childhood?  Have I been disproportionally damaged by losing a piece of a jigsaw when I was young?  Or is it a dysfunctional personality trait revealing a scrambled mind searching for order?  Or am I a Roman from a previous life?

What should I do, doctor?

a)  Should I walk away from the hammer?

b)  Should I redirect my creative urges into something without a destructive element?

c)  Should I get a life?

d)  Or should I embrace my new obsession and mosaic everything that stands still long enough?"

Doctor says (d) - hurray!  Message to family - don't expect any housework to be done again, and keep moving!

Challenge 29 - RUN 5KM!

I do not run; I have never run; running is not what I do; I am not a runner. And these are the reasons (ok, excuses) why:

1        Hips are too wide
2        Boobs are too big
3        I am not in a hurry
4        It gives me heart attacks (plural)...
5        and a stitch...
6        and palpitations...
7        and sometimes a bit of sick in my mouth...
8        and extreme perspiration....
9        and an unsightly bright red face..
10      I am too old, and always have been
11      I pronate (if you don't know what that means, watch Countdown and learn!)
12      I am too busy (tea/lunch/shops/Bargain Hunt/Countdown/sleep)
13      I am already a finely tuned athlete
14      It makes my hair curl
15      I can't talk when I run and I miss it
16      It is too windy...
17      or rainy....
18      or hot.
19      I hate Chariots of Fire...
20      and Forrest Gump...
21      and energy drinks...
22      and bananas.
23      Chaffing hurts.
24      I can't be bothered.

However, this is not the year for NO, NEVER, NOT-ON-YOUR-NELLY, so when Denise (fitness instructor/pilates teacher/all-round physical guru) offered me her services as a birthday present, I embraced the challenge, and together we took to the roads of Barton.  She motivated and inspired me through the 'wall' which with me usually occurs about 100m from home, refusing to accept curly hair or heart attack as an excuse.  Day by day we built up our distance until today when ....

I RAN 5.61KM WITHOUT STOPPING OR DYING!!!!  Might seem pathetic to some, but to me it is a marathon and I am thrilled.  Now I can say...

I do run; running is what I do; I am a runner; ..............  and always will be! RUN, JEN, RUN!

Challenge 28 - ROLLER-BLADE

Over 50?  Slowing down?  Worried about your mobility?  Forget granny-scooters!  Forget zimmer frames!  Forget stairlifts! Think ROLLER-BLADES!  The perfect choice for the young-at-heart-but-old-in-leg.  Get to Bingo quicker! Be first in the pension queue at the Post Office!  Leave your friends standing by the bus stop!


So that is what I did.  With 4 little wheels attached to each foot, and clutching the arm of my support-worker, Lauren (friend, not daughter), I gingerly stepped, or rolled, out onto Barton sea-front.  I wobbled, and screamed, and teetered, and squealed, and stumbled, and yelped my way to the cafe, where I stopped briefly to embarrass my son, before continuing on my faltering journey.  Before long however I was whizzing along, with the wind in my hair and the rain on my face.  Nothing could stop me....... except perhaps an errant twig on the pavement or a threatening manhole cover or a clumsy lamppost......... and then I panicked and cried.

Confidence was building as I glided along dreaming of sunshine and LA and humming 'what a feeling, being's believing'.  Feeling bold I even dabbled in the little known sport of 'rollerblading ballet'.

I returned to the safety of my friend's house feeling 30 years younger and with all bones and pride intact. Result.

Final score =  no falls, and no refusals.....


.......until I stepped inside the porch
.......and fell flat on my backside
.......with style of course
.......and with a smile on my face!

Challenge 27 - THROW A POT...

.....not at Iain for a toilet seat misdemeanor
.....not at the children for a wet-towel-on-bed-for-3-days misdemeanor
.....not at the cat for a litter tray miss-demeanor

.....but rather on a potter's wheel, with the intention of creating something useful and artistic out of a dollop of grey clay.   And I did!  13 times!  I now have 13 bowls/vases/plates/ dishes/receptacles waiting to be fired and glazed, and possibly to be wrapped up and offered to friends and family for Christmas.  You have been warned - make room on the shelf!

This most delightful challenge was suggested to me by the lovely Rose, as a way of celebrating both our 50ths.  We took ourselves off  early on Saturday to David Rogers Pottery Studio in Milford (www.davidrogerspottery.co.uk) with high anticipation of a possible 'Ghost' moment, but low expectations of what we might achieve.  Needless to say, the 'Ghost' moment didn't happen (David had too much decorum, sense and professionalism!!), but we exceeded our expectations in what we produced - not an amorphous 'ash-tray', but a range of kitchen-ware, individual in design and fit for purpose.  So chuffed and so smug - I need an adult version of 'show and tell'!


The experience was wonderfully creative, strangely meditative, physically demanding, childishly messy and at times highly entertaining - despite our best efforts, we could not stifle our school-girl titters when learning how to mould the clay into phallic-shaped cones.  I blame Rose - she took on this task with particular relish and an alarming degree of aplomb!




 A huge thank you to David for his wonderful skill and patience, and to his wife Lucy for a lovely lunch.  Highly recommended.

Photos of glazed pots will follow in a post entitled 'blowing my own trumpet!'.

Challenge 26 - LEARN TO SWIM FRONT CRAWL

Being of a certain age, my learning to swim experience was not of the 'singing-nursery-rhymes-while-playing-with-colourful-toys-buoyed-up-by-inflatables' variety, but rather of the 'throw-her-in-the-deep-end-and-shout-loudly-till-she-comes-to-the-surface' variety!  As a result I learned the breast stroke and stuck with it, as a means of getting from A to B (where A is one side of the pool and B is the other, and not where A is Dover and B is Calais!).

I have however always harboured a burning desire to swim like a pro, ie front crawl, and if ever there was a time to address a burning desire, it was this year.   So... I enrolled for swimming lessons at my local pool.

Now, thanks to the patience and perseverance of my two teachers (yes, one fled the profession half way through - I wonder why), I can now swim a length of front crawl with some degree of style and control.  The more difficult challenge has been putting up with the taunts and ridicule of the 5-6 year old bystanders waiting for their lessons - many of whom are in my class at school!

How many months have I got to practise before August 2012?!?!  Must get to work on the cellulite - it won't look good on the podium or on the front page of the national press!

Challenge 25 - GO TO A FESTIVAL..... (AND REMEMBER IT!!!!)

Strictly speaking, I have been to a festival before - Knebworth 1980 to be precise, -  but apart from a very vague recollection of Santana singing Black Magic Woman, and of getting very wet,  I have absolutely no memory of the occasion.  I thought my 50th year was an ideal opportunity to revisit this experience...... and this time if I didn't remember it, it would be more down to Alzheimers than alcohol abuse.

So off to the Isle of Wight we went... with my one concession to my advancing years being a pre-booked tent/airbed/sleeping bag pitched in the idyllic sounding Tangerine Fields.  I mistakenly thought this constituted luxury camping or even glamping, but fear not - the experience was much more authentic than I intended it to be - in other words I did have to pee on a pile of excrement poking out of a hole in a bench in a portaloo.



My observations are as follows:  being at 'festival' is the only place on earth where:

- you pay nearly £200 to live like a refugee in a third world country
- your response to having a beer glass full of pee poured over you is a mere shrug of the shoulders and a  'cheers mate'
- you spend 90% of your time looking for friends/family etc and 10% listening to music
- you can watch Chase and Status, followed by Tom Jones, and then the Foo Fighters within half an hour of each other and without moving more than 50m
- you would pay the equivalent to a house mortgage for a flushing loo, or failing that, an Immodium
- you can sit on a 'beach' in the middle of a field in the Isle of Wight at 9.30 am drinking mojitos and watching middle aged men in budgie-smugglers playing beach volley ball.
- you get convinced that it is perfectly reasonable to pay a complete entrepreneurial stranger £5 to write your memories down on his 'white board' for posterity!!!!!
- a 50 year old can feel both 20 years old and 100 years old in the same minute.
- a love of live music can unite a crowd of 70,000 diverse and bonkers people, and smooth out any disharmony, conflict or aggression (and yes, I know I sound like a hippy, but it was true!)
- after 3 days of being cold, wet, unwashed, smelling of urine (and not my own), I am contemplating doing it all over again next year!



Thanks to my lovely family for sharing this one with me, and for allowing this prematurely retired hippy to relive her youth.





See you all there next year......