Tangent: Top 25 movies

Another one of my new blogging friends, shakymouse, has tagged me to name my best 25 movies of all time.

Here they are in no particular order:

1.) The Piano
2.) Grease
3.) Reservoir Dogs
4.) Silence of the Lambs
5.) Schindler's List
6.) Cry Freedom
7.) Mrs Doubtfire
8.) Some Like it Hot
9.) Dirty Dancing
10.) Charlie Chaplin - Gold Rush
11.) The Pink Panther (1)
12.) Shrek (1)
13.) The Shawshank Redemption
14.) The Godfather
15.) One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

16.) The Green Mile

17.) Doctor Zhivago

18.) L A Confidential

19.) Rainman

20.) ET

21.) Four Weddings and a Funeral

22.) Gone with the Wind

23.) The Wizard of Oz

24.) Singing in the Rain

25.) Dancing with Wolves

I bet a psychologist would have a great time analysing me!

Tangent: True Blue Blogging Award

I've been awarded the True Blue Blogging Award by studiololo.
Thank you so much Laurel.


This award is given to people who stick by you in blogland and make it fun to blog, creating a ring of communication and friendship.

The past 6 months have been an incredible adventure for me with my blog. I started it for fun after watching my sons blogging away, and am now totally hooked.

I do so enjoy signing in almost every day and reading what my new friends are up to, marvelling at their artistic talents, giggling at their funny endeavours, crying with them when they are sad. I had never intended to become besotted with blogland, but I am.

I would like to present this award to the following people who have been there for me with consistently encouraging words and feelings. Laurel you are definitely one of them. I salute you.

Here are the others whose comment come straight from their hearts, who lift my spirits, who give me lots of new ideas, and who make me laugh out loud.

auntiemim's

beammeupscotty

lynn-getting my feet wet

prozacville

switchsky

teric

Supposed to be only 5, but I am cheating with 6.

You're all a bit nuts, odd, lovely and loving ( 'birds of a feather stick together').

Bingle Jells and Nealthy Yew Hear.

Tangent: Creative Blogger Award

What a thrill. Found Focus_ret has bestowed on me the title of 'Creative Blogger'.
Thank you F_r.
The rules state that I should choose 6 deserving people who might appreciate this award and pass it on.
That's easy.
Here they are:
1.) Prozacville
2.) Auntie Mim's
3.)Switchsky
4.) ElizT
5.)TeriC
6.)The Finest Muffins

You all brighten my days!

Oh, by the way, this is me striving to be better every day in every way!

Tangent: A tribute

First bath, 3 months old, (2001).

I looked down at Snuffles lying contentedly at my feet, after stumbling on Bernie's site and tears came to my eyes. There are so many selfless people in this world, and she is one of them.

They say: 'a dog is not just for Christmas, but for life'. So many people, well meaning as they might be, get a dog- either it's foist on them, or they are feeling sentimental, or accept it in a very weak moment, without realising all that this huge responsibility entails. Soon enough, this little bundle of fur has wreaked havoc in their lives causing arguments, hysteria, regret and downright anger.

These dogs, just like out children, don't ask to be born, nor can they choose the home they are in or the people who care for them. They say 'it's a dog's life' and ( as in Snuffs case) that means 'heaven, but in many of Bernie's dos' cases it means HELL.

Please take a moment to read her blog and perhaps to contribute something to a worthy cause. She is definitely on my list of charities from now on and I shall be sending any old doggie things accumulated over the years to her.

Please help.

Bernie, I honour you.

Tangent: Reading my blog

I am absolutely over the moon that someone, no make that sometwo are

reading my words.

Two people, two very kind or very bored people have actually read my stuff and have even returned to read it the next day. And then they took the time and trouble to comment. Whew. Yippee. I am famous.

Long long long ago, or should that be 'once upon a time' I wanted to write a book. It was a pre-adult dream, after having grown up with 'The Famous Five' and 'What Katy Did' and 'Tom Brown's School Days'. I was a bookworm, devouring books at the same rate I devoured cream cakes and whole loaves of bread smeared with peanut butter and syrup.

When I became a teacher this dream became even more intense. Why couldn't I be another Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss or E Nesbit? Reality struck when I realised I couldn't even draw a stick figure let alone illustrate a novel. Soon it became apparent that it was going to take all my time and energy just to keep up with my marking and daily planning, let alone write a novel.

Eventually I let it go, returning every now and then to write the odd poem or two, keep up with my penfriend on the other side of the world and write loads of cutesy notes to various boyfriends along the way.

There was that one time 10 years ago when I wrote a poem for Diana. After she died, people who wanted to write something commemorative about her were asked to do so, and various items would be chosen for a book to be sent to the Spenser family. So I did it, a 4 line poem about anorexia. Eventually a short letter arrived informing me that my poem had been chosen and I was chuffed.

A few years ago I decided that it would be cathartic for me to sit down and write a book, my memoirs, pouring out the story of my miseries, pain and angst which spanned the decades. A true saga.

This I did over a period of months reaching about 60. By then I was totally and utterly bored. The whole thing had become a drag. It lacked humour and razzmatazz. When I wanted to edit it, I would read one or two pages and think 'boooorring'. So in a fit of pique I pressed 'delete' and thought 'good riddance to bad rubbish'.

Until now. Here I am at it once more. The difference this time is I am loving it, trying to make it honest, humorous and razzmatazzic. And look, I even have two readers.

Welcome both of you and I hope you will join me on my journey and let me join you on yours.

Five: Visit a nudist beach

Obviously my 60 ideas didn't just come to me in a sudden flash of inspiration, but rather bit by bit over a few weeks, even months. It all started on my 59th birthday, when I received a pretty notebook from my son's girlfriend. The inscription read 'for thoughts. lists and other things that come to mind'.

I started with a few quotations on the first page e.g. 'Enforced rest is hard work!' and ' Hysteria camouflages' and ' Grant that I may not criticise my neighbour until I have walked a mile in his moccasins'.

My all time favourite has got to be:

'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.'

Mmm, so that was the first page. What about some almost forgotten memories from my childhood, some good ones that is? So I dribbled on for a few pages with these, but it just didn't do it for me.

Mmm, what next? Then it came to me in the middle of the night, when I do most of my important thinking. What would I really like to do this year? To achieve? To gain/ get satisfaction from? What would make me very happy?

And there it was: 'Make a list of 60 things you want to do before you turn 60'.

Why 60 ideas? Well a nice even number don't you think? Why before 60, and not after 60? Because it's so easy to put things off and this just cannot be put off. This is the most important birthday I will have.

Why is it the most important one? Let's just say that the genes in my family are pretty rotten and quite a few people including my own mother and father didn't reach this age. So, in a way I feel I am doing this partly for them too.

My body has undergone many changes and, although everything is rapidly going south, I feel the most at ease with my body now. I want to feel the freedom of walking in a public place amongst others who feel the same as me, to strip away the false facade of clothing and just 'be' for a few hours.

Who knows if I will succeed, but at least I will have wanted to, tried to, and know inside how it felt and what it did for me. Whatever happens, it's sure to be a damned good laugh. Specially if I take my camera!

Two: Write a blog

Of course this has to be near the top of the list else I wouldn't be doing this. Giggle, smirk, titter, chuckle, sneer if you like, but I reckon that if my sons can write blogs then why not me.

Let me first state that I am NOT a computer boffin, actually I don't lay claim to being any kind of boffin, but I must say with a certain amount of pride, that I became a 'silver surfer' long before they were ever heard of.

I guess in my household it was a case of 'if you can't beat them, then join them'. My husband, and two boys used to spend hour upon hour using 'Betsy' the very first machine we ever got. It was an Apple II purchased in 1979 in South Africa when the hubby decided to change careers and enter the 'computer world'. Since then we have never been without a computer in our home, and often more than two.

In watching the whole thing develop, from being able to enter data, to auditing household accounts, to one of the best forms of relaxation there is - Solitaire- I gravitated towards e mails and then actually conceding to use the bloody thing for my teaching.

Now, almost 20 years later I can no longer do without it. I am as hooked as the rest of you- particularly those 'silver surfers' who have just discovered it's magic. Compare it to when you got your driver's licence long long ago and the freedom you felt- and you'll know what I mean.

I switch it upon waking up and switch it off upon retiring, much as I would my spectacles. I fiddle with e mails and 'google' anything and everything that I think of. e.g spots on the backs of the hand, itchy palms, a sudden headache. In fact this search engine has become like my 'Black's Encyclopedia of Medicine, which I used to pour over in the pre-computer era. Of course I really wanted to be a doctor but that's another discussion for another day.

Imagine my concern and indignation when this thing goes wrong, when the page is unavailable, when the printer won't print or the saver won't save. I find myself getting into a real state about it and the day seems only partly complete if I can't have my 'first computer hit' before breakfast.

What is doubly annoying to me is that I am the very one who used to scoff at everyone around me watching their utter compulsion and mesmerised staring and chronic habitual attraction to this - what was after all - a glorified typewriter.

But like every other addiction, when it grabs you, it grabs you and I am grabbed! So I will venture forth with my very own blog, using only my two index fingers to type, at a furious pace, and hope that one day I will be offered a book deal. Grin.