I might have only just started out on this year’s summer holiday but I’m already getting ideas for next year.
I’ve been following Helen Lloyd’s blog on her travels to Central Asia which have included getting the Trans-Siberian Express and going to Mongolia, and this has got me wondering if, in six weeks, I would have time to get the Trans-Siberian Express from Moscow to Beijing and the Trans-Mongolian Express for the return journey, whilst still having time to actually see things. If it’s possible I would get to tick two challenges off my list in one go.
Yesterday morning I was chatting to an Austrian women at the campsite in Yell. She has travelled all over Europe in her van and this includes Norway. She told me I shouldn’t be worried about Norway being expensive as the UK is the most expensive place she has travelled in. She said fuel is more like regular European prices than UK prices (we seem to pay in pounds what others pay in euros) and it’s easy to wild camp and many towns have council provided showers. Taking my van I’d be able to take a lot of my own food and so wouldn’t have to worry too much about food prices. So now I’m also thinking about Norway for next summer. Of course if I go to Norway I have to go to Hell and so that would also be a challenge ticked off my list.
Finding inspiration in a chocolate factory and a brewery.
When I’m at school, I get so overwhelmed with the amount of things I need to do and the amount of my time that is taken up, and I’m so ‘in the moment’, life outside of school seemingly ceases to exist and all the plans, ideas and hopes I have come to a standstill. As soon as I take time off, get away, give myself chance to meet interesting people (actually, ordinary people like myself except they have done something with their dreams, instead of just filing them away) and before I know it, I’m filled with inspiration and ideas are buzzing inside my head and what’s even better, they all seem feasible.
Foord’s Chocolate Factory
Today I’ve had two inspiration boosts. Firstly, I visited Foord’s Chocolate Factory on Unst. This in itself is inspiring – an English couple started a connoisseur chocolate factory in buildings which are part of the old Saxa Vord complex. (Saxa Vord was built as an RAF base in the days of the cold war.) Not content with merely making delicious chocolates, they have made the most of both their product and their location by making themselves very attractive to tourists. It’s possible to wander down the corridor in the factory observing the chocolate making as it happens. There is a room with a display on the history and geography of chocolate and the chocolate making process. Another room taps into the historic associations of their location and has a big display on the RAF connections including uniforms and lots of photographs. At the front of the factory is a cafe selling not only chocolate experiences, but also a range of savoury food. On an island with not many places to grab lunch (the hotel has a restaurant and two of the shops have cafe areas where you can get a cup of instant coffee, a bowl of soup or heat up a pie from the pie counter), and since the Northern Lights Cafe and Bistro closed down (please, somebody buy it and re-open it in exactly the way it was before), having a cafe here is a good way of attracting extra business.
Chocolate Experience
But this wasn’t the main source of my first bout of inspiration today. No. At the back of the factory is a room where they sell locally made crafts. Two years ago, on the day I was leaving Unst, I was at the Skibhoul shop and bakery stocking up on their wonderful, thick, chilli-flavoured oatcakes (special ingredient: sea water) and I spotted an old, but very well kept Morris Minor in the car park. I have a thing for Morris Minors having grown up with one. If I was in the position of being able to own a fleet of cars, and if I had the knowledge, time and ability to ‘do up’ and maintain old cars, I would definitely have one. Along with an old Landrover Defender and an ancient VW combi. But I’m not and I don’t. But that just means I’m even more fascinated when I see other people with them. As I left the shop a lady was unpacking her shopping into the Morris Minor. Of course I went over to admire her car and, as happens in places like Unst, we ended up chatting for quite a while.
Heather had recently moved to Unst from Nottingham having taken early retirement from her teaching job. She seemed disillusioned with the way teaching and schools in general were going, and so with redundancies and early retirements on offer, she jumped. Along with her husband, she’d bought a house in Westing on the west side of the island called ‘Da Peerie Haa’ – Shetlandic for ‘the small manor house’. When I met her she was about to leave on a long drive in her Morris Minor to the Isle of Wight. She was doing it for charity and referred to it as ‘Westing to Wight’ – sounds much better than John O’Groats to Land’s End. Being unsure as to whether or not the Morris Minor would make actually make it, her husband was driving a campervan as a back up vehicle. Although I read something about the trip in the Shetland Times that week, I never found out the end of the story. I don’t know if the Morris Minor made it or how the journey was.
Heather had told me to pop in next time I was in Unst, so I decided to take her at her word as I really wanted to know how the story ended. I drove out to her house yesterday but no-one seemed to be about and there was no sign of the Morris Minor. Was this a bad sign? Did it mean that the Morris Minor hadn’t made it and was now relegated to life on a scrap heap? Or did it mean that the dream retirement on Unst wasn’t so dreamy after all and they’d returned to the mainland (as in mainland UK and not mainland Shetland)? The lady in Skibhoul told me she was still living on the island though she didn’t know if she was at this moment in time. She also didn’t remember if the Morris Minor had made it to the Isle of Wight.
Today, in the craft room at the Foord’s Chocolate Factory, I looked round the handmade scarves, hats, gloves and so on, and was just about to leave when I spotted an interesting stand half hidden behind the door. The stand was displaying an array of colourful knitted bags, each one individual. The sign at the top said ‘Bags by Heather’ and there was a woodcut of her house which was labelled ‘Da Peerie Haa’. It had to be the same Heather, it had to be. I bought a very unusual bag for £10 and asked the man (Mr Foord?) if she was on the island at the moment. She’s not because she’s back in Nottingham for a wedding in which the Morris Minor is being used as a wedding car. So I know she’s still living here and I know the Morris Minor is still living here. I also know it made it to the Isle of Wight because Mr Foord told me so. What I don’t know is how the journey went. As she’s not due back until early August I’ll probably miss her (unless it’s very early August, as in tomorrow, aka August 1st).
So this was my first bout of inspiration today. She’s been living here for over two years, has started a little business and has completed her dream ‘expedition’.
Leaving the chocolate factory, I headed for the brewery (is this a dream island or what? Lightly inhabited, stunning views, amazing wildlife, fascinating history and geology, pretty much as isolated as you can get in the UK (apart from Foula and Fair Isle) and yet it has its own chocolate factory and its own brewery. And there’s talk of a distillery setting up too. Should it be renamed Paradise Island?).
The Valhalla Brewery, Shetland’s one and only, has moved since I was last here. Owner, Sonny Priest, has expanded from a barn outside his house into much bigger premises at Saxa Vord. He makes six beers and I always buy a selection to take home. I called in on the off-chance that he would now take card payments (he never did before) and I could stock up now to save coming back later. He doesn’t. But I was just in time to go on a tour (£4.50 including a bottle of beer of your choice at the end). It was interesting to see the workings and hear how the six beers are made with different combinations of the various grains. But his own story of how he came to own a brewery is what provided me with my second bout of inspiration for the day.
He left school at 15 with no qualifications and trained as a joiner. After several years of joinery he went to sea for three years on a North Sea trawler. This was followed by a job at Baltasound Airport (a tiny strip of runway with a few sheep grazing on it and not much else) and in the attached firehouse. Redundancy led him to to wondering what to do next with his life. He toyed briefly with the idea of opening a launderette, but following a drinking session with some of his soon to be ex-workmates, he found himself promising to start a brewery in order to keep them drinking. This may have been a drunken comment but the seed (of barley presumably?) had been sown and it germinated and lo and behold, he found himself in 1997 setting up a brewery and hiring a master brewer as he had no idea about brewing himself.
I’m planning my hostel and planning a sandwich bar / coffee shop, and all these other things and I keep on planning and not doing, as I feel I’m not ready; I don’t know enough; I don’t have the right skills; I need more money; and excuse after excuse. Here’s a guy who didn’t have a clue about the business he was starting, but jumped in, did what he needed to do to get it up and running, and learnt what he needed to know as he went along. I am most definitely inspired by this. Now, I only have to keep hold of all this inspiration once I’m back at school and getting bogged down in marking, planning and bureaucracy.
I emailed Learndirect about my being unable to access the online Sage course I’d bought from them and it took them a few days, but they did get back to me. I got a message on my phone telling me that the course won’t work with any browser other than Internet Explorer and it won’t work with Internet Explorer 10. So now I have fiddle with my computer and uninstall my current IE and try to download an older version. I can’t say I’m particularly happy about this. It’ll be good if it works of course, and I’m glad they got back to me, but Learndirect is hardly some tiny company. Surely they should be able to update things at their end so their courses work on up-to-date software!
I’ve only ever bought two deals from Groupon: a flying lesson and a Learndirect course on Sage.
The flying lesson deal I bought almost a year ago and had to give four weekend dates when I would be available. They would then contact me approximately 15 days beforehand to let me know it was happening. All year I’ve made sure I’ve kept those weekends free. The dates I had given came and went and, apart from a ‘Merry Christmas, we’ve not forgotten you’ email, I heard nothing.
Next weekend is the fourth and final weekend date I had given. Time to get excited, it has to be this one! A few days ago I still hadn’t heard anything, so emailed the company. The reply I received was that they are no longer doing that deal and they will arrange a refund. How long have they known this? I could have done other things with those weekends. And would they have let me know if I hadn’t contacted them first? As I said in the title, it’s all a tad annoying …
The Sage course I bought last September. I’d like to learn something about accounting software as, as well as gaining a new skill, it could be useful when I finally get around to starting my business. I downloaded one of Learndirect’s free courses first to make sure it worked on my computer and that I liked the presentation style of their courses. Everything was fine and so I bought the Sage course. I knew I wouldn’t have time to do anything with it there and then, but it’s valid for a year, so that wasn’t a problem.
I decided to start the course this weekend, but what happens? It no longer works on my computer. I get a message telling me I need some sort of update, but when I click the update button it tells me the update can’t be done. There are a few instructions on things I can try, but when I follow them through, all the correct boxes are ticked and enabled anyway. The link they provide to a help page is broken. I’m really quite upset about this, as I finally get time to do something about the course and it is no longer working. A colleague has had a similar problem. She was part way through one of their courses a few weeks ago and she lost access for the same sort of reasons. Apparently Learndirect have made some sort of changes and this has effected users. I really don’t understand how they can do this??? I’ve contacted them asking them to either sort it out quickly or send me a refund. I’d still like to do the course so I hope they sort the problem out. I wait with bated breath …
A week spent driving on the wrong side of road has led me a long way towards completing this challenge.
A couple of weeks ago I went a long way (literally and metaphorically) to achieving this goal.
I’d been asked by a friend if I’d like to spend half term visiting her new caravan in the South of France. The catch was that I’d share the driving and help move the contents of her old caravan in Normandy to the new one in Serignan Plage. I jumped at the chance. Not only did I get a very cheap holiday and got to see some new places, I also got to work on one of my challenges.
Margaret picked me up at about 1.30am after a busy last day at school on the Friday. Who needs sleep? We spent the night driving down to Portsmouth for the early morning ferry. I took my first turn at driving her car and was pleased to be able to get used to it whilst there wasn’t much traffic about and whilst still driving on this side of the road.
We boarded the ferry and went straight to our cabin to get a few hours sleep. Once we landed 5 or 6 hours later in Caen we had to drive for another hour or two to get to our hotel near the campsite where the old caravan had been. We had time for a look around Granville before going for dinner and getting to bed.
Next morning, after the what must be the world’s nicest croissants and baguette for breakfast we went to the lock-up where her stuff was stored. Once we’d succeeded in the challenge of getting the door unlocked (hitting the lock with a stone eventually worked) it took us a few hours to load up the car and roof-rack.
Then it was a VERY long drive down to the south coast. We took turns in driving and I was surprised by how quickly I got into it. It was a Sunday so was fairly quiet and we were mainly on the motorway, so all I really had to do was point the car in the right direction and drive, but even so. By the time we arrived I was feeling quite happy with myself.
During the week and on my last day when we drove to Spain so I could fly home from Girona airport I had a few more goes at driving and this time experienced traffic lights, roundabouts, traffic jams, and so on. As my last challenge I made sure it was my turn to drive as we drove over the Pyrenees and across the border into Spain.
I haven’t quite decided whether to tick this challenge off as complete yet. I specifically want not just to have a go at driving on the wrong side of the road, but to be able to say I can do it confidently. Although I felt fine driving over the week I was in France, I’m not sure I would be as confident if I suddenly had to do it again in a year’s time. I think I’d need some time to get used to it again. Also, I haven’t driven alone yet, and it’s very different not having a second pair of eyes to look out for potential hazards. So at the moment I’m thinking of leaving this one as an ‘in progess’ rather than considering it completed.
A boring but interesting day. At least I got to pick up some film-making tips.
After a lot of procrastination I decided that spending up to 12 hours at the Britain’s Got Talent audition would be a good use of my Sunday.
Alex had come over from Amsterdam just before Christmas when I was in the middle of all my building chaos because he’d got an audition for the show. This was a first round audition which I think is fairly easy to get. Auditions were held at various locations around the UK and he’d picked Manchester so he could combine it with a visit to see me. The audition went well and soon afterwards he was called and told he’d got through to the second round. This was before Christmas. He’d not heard anything more so had kind of written it off, but then he was called again on Wednesday and told he needed to be in Manchester on Sunday. A quickly booked flight and a phone call to me and before he knew it, he was on his way over again. He arrived on Saturday and I met him in Manchester after my NUT meeting.
Early breakfast in my kitchen
Sunday morning we were up at 6am. I made sandwiches whilst he did his make-up. By 7.45 we were on the road to the Lowry in Salford Quays ready for the 8.30 appointment. He’d gone to the first audition alone, but as the second round is televised the auditionees (is that a word?) are asked to bring friends and family members with them to make up the audience and provide ‘background crowd’ for the interviews. I was quite interested in going and wanted to be there to give moral support, but hesitated when he was warned that we’d probably be there for 12 hours.
In the end I decided to go as I’ll probably never get another chance to do something like this and I might pick up tips for making films myself or tips to help me as a drama teacher (this is what I spend a large chunk of my time teaching even though I know nothing about the subject and have no dramatic ability myself).
We sat for a few minutes with a few other contestants in the foyer before being called to the registration area upstairs. Registration involved sitting around for a while and then all lining up in front of the registration desk. One by one the contestants went forward to register and be filmed for the first time. The friends, family and other contestants made up the crowd scene backdrop.
Once registered we were taken to another building across the way. Before we could get out of the doors however, Alex was whisked away to do the first of many interviews and I was escorted alone to the other building. People were just starting to filter in and the crew were buzzing around setting up lights and cameras. One of the crew members ‘Lilly’ spoke to us all and asked us to take coats and scarves off. As the show will be aired in May we needed to look a bit more summery. She also reminded us that cameras were running all the time and so we should look cheerful and alert and definitely not look as though we’d got up at 6am on a Sunday morning!
The holding room
Alex was brought over, but didn’t have much time to tell me about his interview before he was called for another one. This was filmed in the main holding room (see how I know the lingo?) and so I stood alongside and watched. The interviewer was asking questions from a clipboard which obviously held all the information from the long questionnaire he’d had to complete before Christmas. He was coached into answering in full sentences, encompassing the question as he answered. For example, if asked what his favourite colour was, rather than answering ‘blue’, he would have to answer ‘my favourite colour is blue’. Presumably this interview will be edited into a monologue.
Throughout the day Alex was repeatedly taken away by different people to do interviews or to be filmed walking about (including walking slowly round the holding room) or to have stills taken. Each time he was gone, I either sat reading or stared around me. The room had filled up and it was interesting to try to guess what the different acts entailed. Some of the costumes looked great: a dance troupe with black and gold costumes and make-up looked sophisticated and exciting; the dance troupe in the American flag dresses less so. On the whole, the people who were wearing costumes of one type or another looked good, whereas the people who just looked ‘dressed up’ seemed quite tacky: wrong shoes; wrong skirt lengths and styles for their legs: frizzy hair and make-up that looked as though it had been drawn on with crayons.
Finally, late on into the afternoon Alex was called over to the theatre to do his audition. I couldn’t go with him, but was told to wait and I’d be taken over just before he went on stage. It was quite a long wait and I did wonder if I’d been forgotten. I was waiting with and talking to a woman who was there supporting her husband and we’d seen them on and off all day. Her husband had been taken over at the same time as Alex.
Eventually we were led across to the theatre and told to wait outside. A few minutes later we were ushered in and instructed to sit in aisle seats close to the stage. The audience was quite large, presumably with people who’d applied for audience tickets. Just as we got inside the judges (minus Simon Cowell who’d called in with a sickie) decided to take a break. We sat for quite while with not very much happening. The odd person would walk across the stage and move something, but that was it. Then someone came to us and said the running order had been changed and we’d have to go back to the holding room. Not to worry, we’d be brought over again when the auditionees we were supporting were due to go on.
The stage and the empty judges’ chairs
So we sat, we chatted, we looked at our watches, we waited. Then I saw Alex walk in. He came straight over: ‘Where were you? Why weren’t you in the audience?’
Turns out he’d been on and I hadn’t been there.
He said he’d barely got into the first line of his song when he was buzzed off. They’d said he was singing out of tune. Being a fair sort of bloke he said he had to believe them as he couldn’t hear himself to know if it was true or not. Many of the other acts had been allowed to do a sound check, but he hadn’t, so when he got on stage this was the first time he’d heard the volume at which his backing track was played.
When speaking to him after rejecting him the judges made a big deal about something quite minor he’d mentioned in his application. Throughout the day this had been referred to in interviews as well. He found it quite strange and more than a little annoying that this was what they’d fixated on rather than the many other much more relevant details he’d provided. They’d also asked him if there was anyone in the audience who supported him and thought he should have a second chance. Of course, no-one said anything and so he’d said ‘Anne, where are you?’ but of course I wasn’t there.
We couldn’t go home straight away as he still needed to do another interview and so we needed to wait around for that. As we discussed what had happened, it did seem like a bit of a set-up. Why hadn’t he been allowed to do a sound check? Why had I been taken out of the audience just before his audition? Why had they fixated on this one particular detail from his questionnaire?
Talking about it afterwards, I got the impression that he was glad to have had the experience of taking part and of having got to the second round, but was disappointed to have fallen foul of what seems to have been some hidden agenda.
As for me, it was a boring day but interesting at the same time. It’s not something I’d want to do again, but I am glad I decided to go along today and have the behind-the-scenes experience.
I’ve been thinking about my job and how I’m in need of a change. The job I’ve got now is the longest job I’ve ever had and I’m definitely getting itchy feet. This started me thinking about my skills which led to me thinking about all the different jobs I’ve had.
So many kids at school say they know what they want to do when they leave and that’s the only thing they’re going to do for the rest of their lives and therefore they most certainly don’t need to learn whatever it is I’m trying to teach them as it’s not relevant to them and they’ll never need it. It’s so frustrating trying to convince them that they probably won’t do the same thing all their lives and also quite sad that their aspirations are so low they think they’ll be happy doing the same thing day in, day out for the rest of their working lives.
When I was 15 I knew I wanted to have a varied life and do different things, but not even in the wildest depths of my imagination could I have thought up even half the things I ended up doing.
Here are 10 relatively normal jobs I’ve had:
School teacher
English as a foreign language teacher
Manager
Waitress
Cook
Au pair
Barmaid
Call centre phone person
Receptionist
GCSE examiner
And here are 10 slightly more unusual jobs I’ve had:
Selling burgers and chips from a shed on a market
Milking cows
Making wheels in a wheel factory
Picking kumquats
Cleaning chicken sheds
Debt collector
Market research, going door-to-door with a large bag stuffed with special pad samples trying to interest women in talking about their bladder control problems
Sandwich technician
Having my face painted in order to be an extra in a Persil Automatic advert
This could be my favourite music video ever. It’s basically just a walk round Amsterdam, a city I love and feel I know quite well. I don’t take many photos when I’m there as I feel I’ve taken them all before. However, when I go back at Easter I was thinking of experimenting with my video camera and trying to capture some of the spirit of the city on film. I’m going to be studying this music video pretty closely for tips.
The twelfth and final review of my 2012 Twelve challenges.
At the end of the year when I look back on my 2012 Twelve list I can’t exactly say it was a roaring success.
However, when I look back on the year as a whole I feel I did achieve rather a lot: I ticked a few of the major challenges off my 60 before 60 list (Womad, St Kilda, Northern Lights) as well as either achieving or making headway towards a few of the others.
I’ve also finally got my house pretty much finished which gives me headspace as well as time and money to think about other things. I’ve started planning my business and getting my book collection better organised. I’ve also had a few great holidays and explored a lot more of this fascinating and beautiful country of ours. Add to this some achievements at work that enable me to feel I’ve done what I’ve set out to do there and I really feel that the past 12 months have really been a strong building block towards the future I want to have.
Floating in a floatation tank (I’m hoping to do this in London during the February half term)completed
Reading at least 10 books from the BBC Big Read list (if I read 10 a year, I’ll have the whole 200 knocked off in the next 12-13 years!)– only one I got round to reading was Swallows and Amazons
Taking at least one photo every day of the year (this will improve my photography skills, be a photo-diary of ‘year in my life’, and help me to learn to use my new camera) – more days than not I completely forgot about this
Coming up with a fitness plan and sticking to it (the start of my training for Kilimanjaro, though I may not actually climb it for several years yet) – been really bad at this and have probably ended the year with the lowest fitness level I’ve ever had!
Leading at least 4 of my own walks (good practice for my walking group leader’s qualification) – very little walking done compared to how much I used to do. At least I’ve got involved with the Duke of Edinburgh Award which is a step in the right direction
Buying another house (need to get my finances in order first) – this seems to have morphed into a ‘starting my own business’ task instead.
Learning to use at least 3 new pieces of technology or computer programmes (not counting my new camera) – I could claim to have completed this if I use the term ‘learning to use’ very loosely. I had a lesson on using a new whiteboard software package but haven’t yet made much use of it. I’ve kind of got to grips with using my Kindle and netbook/tablet, though I still don’t think I use them to anywhere near their full potential
Doing a writing course (depends on the length of the course whether I’d complete it in the year or not) – as with going to the gym, I keep making plans to knuckle down and do this, and this something gets in the way.
Getting at least one piece of writing published (paid or unpaid, as long as someone else makes the decision to publish it and it’s not self-published) – completed
Making a start on sorting out my photos (putting the prints that are currently still stuffed in packets into albums and getting all my photos scanned into the computer – no way will this be completed in a year, but I’ll feel good even if I get started on it) – I’ve started and been concentraring on a book database instead
Buying a car/van that I can sleep in (and doing any necessary conversions/adaptations) – I’ve got the van but conversions have been on hold whilst I did work on my house, but I’m now ready to start thinking about my van again
Getting into cycling (even if it’s just short cycle rides along decent paths) – Ive been trying to get into the mindset – buying panniers, reading cycling blogs and so on, but haven’t actually done any cycling
A fascinating glimpse at life on an Antarctic base. Don’t think they get that many murders on a regular basis though.
14 souls were left to winter-over on Britain’s largest Antarctic Base. Nearly six months into their winter, all contact was lost. When a party was sent in to investigate, no one was found alive …
Cut off from the outside world, the small community gradually become fractured and antagonistic. From out of this dark crucible of malcontent, a killer emerges. In the isolated and disparate group, members are picked off one by one, paranoia ensues and no one is safe.
So reads the blurb on the back of this DVD.
The film is entirely set in Antarctica and was written, filmed and produced by a group of over-wintering scientists and support staff at a British base. During the long winter months no-one can get in or out and the base staff are at a minimum. Some of the staff decided to take the concept of making their own entertainment a step further than usual and created an entire feature film.
The resulting horror is predictable and at times the acting is a little wooden. If this was a Hollywood blockbuster I wouldn’t rate it. However, bearing in mind it’s an amateur film, filmed in limiting circumstances (can’t just nip out to the shop to buy another bottle of ketchup when you run out of blood), I think it’s bloody brilliant. Very bloody in fact; the killings get more macabre and by the end I could understand why it is certificate 18.
I also liked the film because I got to see the inside of one of the Antarctic bases. Spending time in Antarctica is one of the things I would really love to do, but may be one of the challenges on my list that I end up doing half-heartedly (a quick visit rather than living there for a while). If I was younger and commitment free I’d be applying for jobs and focusing on making sure I got one. But my current circumstances prevent me from being able to do this and I don’t see it changing in the forseeable future. A film like this, that shows me glimpses of life on a base, keeps the dream ticking over. As far as I know, there aren’t a lot of murders in Antarctica and there are no records of there ever having been a serial killer, so I think I’d be safe on that score.
