Going Solo

A small group of friends at a recent Ukulele Fun Night. I'm on the left,
with Cherry next to me. The lady on the far right is Jean, another
Slimming World member, so we have more than ukes in common.

Learning to play the ukulele was definitely one of my better decisions, so I remain very grateful to my cousin Jan for coming up with the idea. What a shame that she didn't carry on with it herself. Though I'm still far from being expert, I do enjoy myself immensely and my playing skills are gradually improving. 

One thing I knew nothing about when I enrolled on that Beginners' Course in 2014 was the amazing social side to ukelele playing that was about to open up. I had completed just two terms when a friend on the course invited me to an evening with my local ukulele group, The Ukes uv Azzard. Ten minutes after arriving, I was hooked.

The acceptance and encouragement that's come my way are tremendous and I've made lots of lovely new friends. In gratitude, I tried to put something back into the group by volunteering to keep our song book up to date. More recently, I offered to resurrect my former website writing skills and produce a simple site for The Ukes uv Azzard.  Click here if you'd like to take a look. 

In truth, this is far from being a great technological achievement as the program I used to write the website is very similar to the one I use to keep the songbook up to date — both Serif products (WebPlus and PagePlus). But I did have a lot of fun putting it together, finding a corner of the Worldwide Web to host it and remembering how to use an FTP program to get it from my computer to theirs. 

One skill that I definitely do not possess is that of melodious singing. In many songs I can't reach the high notes of the girls' melody line, whilst trying to join the boys doesn't feel right either, so I try to pick out an alto(ish) harmony in the middle. You will doubtless, therefore, judge that I had taken leave of my senses when I volunteered to sing a solo at a recent Ukulele Fun Night. 

The song I chose was Lamorna, from my native Cornwall, as it's quite comical and has a few Cornish pronunciations:

She said I knowed 'e well, I knowed 'e all along

I knowed 'e in the dark but I did it for a lark...

In Cornwall it's quite well known and many folk would be eager to join in the chorus; here in Gloucstershire no-one had heard it before. Being a solo, I could (of course) choose my own key, ideally 'F', but that would give me a couple of Bb chords in each verse – normally well within my playing abilities, but when standing up and singing solo...? I compromised, went up a tone and played in 'G'.

I confess that I wasn't wholly pleased with my efforts. That top 'G' would be easy when singing with others but (doubtless due to stage fright) my voice cracked a couple of times. Then I messed up the final 'outro' chord sequence. I took my seat feeling crestfallen, but I need not have worried. Janice, who organised the event, gave me an enormous hug and the following day there were messages of congratulation on Facebook:  

Ange your Cornish song tonight was fabulous, thank you for sharing it - we definitely got the wetwetwet bit of the chorus, especially given the last few days weather eh!

Thank you Angela for coming along and doing your solo spot. The song was great :-) xx

Yes, I'd been among friends; good friends. Will I try again?  Yes!.. (if they want me) though I will learn from my mistakes.  Next time I'll sit down, making it easier to play awkward chords, and I'll pitch the song safely within my vocal range. There's a humorous variation of the classic folk song To be a farmer's boy that I know and it would be fun to give it a try.

Finally, thank you Janice and Alastair for the photos, and for organising a fantastic Fun Night.

These vegetables have been murdered!

Lamb Shank and murdered beans at a restaurant in Cornwall.

It took me a long time to really enjoy eating vegetables.

The loathing probably started with school dinners. If I close my eyes I can picture them now; brussel sprouts on one side of the plate and anemic-looking carrots on the other, kept apart by a lavish helping of mashed potato. I take a fork and squeeze a sprout, which deflates as water flows out, diluting the gravy.  Giving the carrots a similarly gentle caress, I discover that watery mashed carrot, when mixed with mashed potato, is just about palatable.  Just about.

At home things weren't a lot better.  I grew up in a hotel in the 1960s, when everyone (so it seemed) liked their vegetables boiled soft.  My job was often to assist with the washing up and I remember thinking that there was as much goodness in the boiled water I was throwing down the sink as in the veg on the visitors' plates. Little wonder, then, that in my teenage years greens were endured, rather than enjoyed. The only veg servings that I really relished were mashed potato, mashed swede, peas and (of course) chips.

Botallack Count House

Eventually the light dawned.  Thanks to a friend who considered herself something of a gastronome, we discovered a delightful restaurant in West Cornwall. Today it looks like this, but before the National Trust 'restored' it to its former appearance it was the Count House Restaurant, run by Ian and Ann Long.

Ann went on to become a Masterchef, and never was an honor more fittingly bestowed.  In particular (for the purposes of this blog post) her vegetables were always cooked to perfection and, for the first time in my life, I discovered the delights of crisp courgettes, broccoli and carrots. They tasted wonderful!

Suffice to say that never again were 'soft boiled' carrots and sprouts served in my house. And over the years I've noticed that the trend in pubs and restaurants is definitely in the right direction, so that I've been able to order vegetables with my meals, with more than a modicum of confidence that they will be edible.

Which is why those murdered (or should I say 'drowned'?) runner beans in a mid-Cornwall restaurant, owned and run by a national chain of brewers, came as a surprise. Quite like old times, in fact.

Stourhead: in the steps of Miss Marple

Miss Marple (right) talks with the soon-to-be-murdered
Elizabeth Temple in Stourhead Gardens

To my mind, only one actress has convincingly portrayed Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Margaret Rutherford was comical but fell well short of the mark, not helped by some truly diabolical scripts. Geraldine McEwan was much better (which is more than can be said for her scripts, too) but her smiling incarnation of the oft-knitting, tea drinking super-sleuth never quite came up to the standard set by the queen of them all — Joan Hickson.

One of my favourites in the 1980's BBC series that stared Joan Hickson is Nemesis. Miss Marple is booked on an 'all expenses paid' coach tour of stately homes and gardens, in the hope that she can unravel the mystery of who killed Verity Hunt. If the logic of that escapes you then you'll have to get the book or lay your hands on a copy of the old programme. However, if perchance you come across the Geraldine McEwan version, just put it back on the shelf.  It's nothing like the original.

Anyway, the second stop on this carefully crafted coach tour was Stourhead, in Wiltshire. Miss Marple arrives on a miserable, rainy day, so much of the beauty of the place is lost. Whether that was intentional, a ploy to dodge the crowds or just bad luck, I know not, but it certainly adds to the gathering gloom of the plot.

Enthusiasts for the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice will also recognise Stourhead as the place where Mr Darcy proposed to Elizabeth – again in the rain. Me, I prefer the earlier series that stared Colin Firth. He's just so dishy!

When I visited, over this past weekend, I'm pleased to report that the weather was not at all Nemesis-like; quite the opposite, in fact. One of the National Trust stewards told me that visitor numbers peak at this time of the year as the autumn colours are so spectacular, and indeed they are.

I joined the crowds and ambled slowly around the lake, intending to take lots of photographs. Unfortunately, after only a couple of clicks, my camera battery signaled that it was about to expire... and oh flip, I didn't have a replacement!  Consequently, all the photos here were taken on S-'s Sony smartphone.  I suppose one might expect Sony, of all manufacturers, to have a decent camera on their smartphone, but I am still very impressed with the quality. Since returning home I've read a few reviews and yes, the Sony camera is acknowledged to be better that Samsung's, despite them both having 13 megapixel resolution. It does have it's drawbacks, compared to a conventional camera, but hey... any port in a storm, as they say.

So here, to show off the spectacular beauty of Stourhead and the excellence of that smartphone, are some views, taken on my circuit of the lake.

Miss Baggy

Every year Slimming World present a Miss Slinky award to the slimmer who had made the most impressive transition from Tubby to Slinky.  You can read about Megan McGee, the 2016 winner, here.

The chance of anyone from our little group winning a national award is remote indeed, but this hasn't stopped Debra, our consultant, organising an award for the Whitecroft group. Among the nominees was little me, and I was asked to bring along a couple of 'before' and 'after' photos to impress the group.

Dear me; I used to think that the left hand photo was rather a good one.  Now I'm less than impressed and much happier with the one on the right, in which I've shed 2 stone. Even my smile has improved.

I didn't win Miss Slinky; indeed, I never expected to as a couple of ladies in our group have lost many, many pounds in weight over several years.  You really do have to admire their resolve, and the results are stunning. But those who know of my life's journey will understand that just being nominated for so feminine an award was a terrific boost to my ego.

In truth, I think I should have been nominated for Miss Baggy since most of my clothes are, to put it mildly, somewhat loose on me.  Last week I donned an old size 18 fitted skirt, zipped it up, let go and it promptly fell to the floor!  T-shirts that once were snug fits now hang limply on my shoulders and the neck lines droop to expose the top of my bra.

I've made myself a Christmas Promise —  My Christmas gift to me is to be eleven stone three. Right now I'm about 1lb heavier than I should be to hit that target on time, so I need to say 'no' to a few more glasses of fine wine. If I succeed then I'll be charging around the January Sales with an enthusiasm that friends and family have never seen before. It could be an expensive New Year.