NUMBER 15 – DONE
Yes, it’s true. Almost 40 years old and I
can’t drive. Ridiculous, isn’t it? I can make all the excuses I want, but I
suppose behind it all is a certain amount of laziness and stubbornness. I’m not
a very good pupil as many of you will know and patience certainly not being one
of my virtues and as a result, I have never learned to drive. I also think I am
scarred by a childhood incident where, while sitting on my mothers lap, I
turned off the lights of our car, plunging us into darkness on a fairly rural
road and nearly plunging most of my family into the ditch. I was reminded about
that on a regular basis as a child. Anyway, having it put on this list has
meant that my stubbornness is working to my advantage this time and forced me
to actually apply for my license. I am very pleased to say that I have it in my
possession and so now just need to actually take some lessons and learn to
drive so I can tick off number 16! No one minds if you drive while on Valium,
do they? I mean its not as if I would be drunk….
NUMBER 18 – DONE
I deliberated long and hard about what
classic I should read and eventually settled for The Picture of Dorian Gray by
the great Irish author Oscar Wilde. I suppose it could verge on a modern classic,
having been published in 1890, my initial thoughts being with some Jane Austen,
having been (un)fortunate enough to skip those in school. I was also helped in
my choice by the fact that it was the only classic that I had on my bookshelf
and came to being there courtesy of Belinda and Chris Adams (and indeed Sophie
Cotton…ahem). Belinda and Chris had a book for everyone on the table at their
wedding and clearly not happy with my choice of much ado about nothing, I
decided I would procure Sophie’s version of Dorian Gray as well. Read it I did,
expecting it to be a little tedious if truth be told, but in fact it tripped
along nicely with the flowery language I would expect of such a dandy of the
time. In particular I found the last section immensely riveting – one of those
times where you don’t actually want the tube to stop so you can keep on
reading. The parts where you can almost feel the chaos going around in Dorian’s
head when he is at the absolute end of his tether with how he has been living
his life were dark, gripping and yet prompted a certain amount of sympathy for
this man who had lived such a hideously decadent and irresponsible existence
until that point. A fine read indeed and am very glad to have chosen this as my
classic book to read. Snaps for Mr. Wilde.
NUMBER 39 – a sad note to report
Some of you may remember my gorgeous cat
Josephine Baker whom I fostered for a couple of years (about 2005 – 2007). She
was a real character, nervous around people (which she showed through stress
incontinence), she didn’t like to be alone (again, stress incontinence) but at
the same time was so much fun. I had to give her away as I was traveling too
much at the time and so I gave her back to her daddy Rickey-Dean. I missed her
quite a lot and have been saying that I should go see her again and so stuck it
on the list. Unfortunately, she had to go to the big litter tray in the sky on
the 11th of April this year, so I didn’t get to see her again. She was in her glamorous middle age when
I had her and bless her, she lived to the ripe old age of 17 years, 1 month and
11 days old. In place of seeing her, I am going to make a donation to a cat
shelter in her memory and hopefully will see lots of cats do well. She wouldn’t
have been pleased about that of course
- she didn’t really like other cats…
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