“There has been only one hurricane in the known history of the island – Janet – which occurred in 1955. We do not expect a repeat visit for another five hundred years or so.”
[Grenada’s main guidebook – printed 2002]

At 3.30pm on September 7, 2004, Hurricane Ivan struck Grenada with full force. It was the worst hurricane in living memory and one which claimed 39 lives. Travelling at 125 mph, it tore through Grenada, leaving behind a wasteland of flattened houses, twisted metal, and splintered wood.

During the 6 hours of hurricane force winds, 90% of homes were damaged or destroyed and 40% were left totally uninhabitable. The entire island lost its electricity connection and drinking water was unavailable for several days. Telephone services were cut and there were shortages of food. The Prime Minister, Keith Mitchell, declared a national disaster.

The storm destroyed schools, churches, the island’s prison and one of the island’s two hospitals. The island's extensive public health system collapsed and people were left without medication. Only two of the island’s 75 primary and secondary schools were left in a useable condition. In the aftermath of the hurricane, widespread looting occurred and troops had to be brought in from surrounding countries to restore order.

The hurricane had sucked up seawater and blown it across the land. As a result the remaining trees and vegetation appeared to be scorched and brown. Inland, the rainforest suffered extensive and severe damage. Half of the trees were left lying on the ground and the other half lost all their leaves.

The economy suffered a devastating setback. 80% of Nutmeg, Cocoa, banana and other agriculture trees were destroyed and 70% of the island’s tourist infrastructure was damaged with hotels left needing extensive repairs and rebuilding.

The following are eye-witness accounts of the hurricane and its aftermath:

“As the wind blew on my roof it sounded like I was in a washing machine. The next thing I remember, I was lying on the floor with the roof on me.”
James

“In the area where I live, as far as my eye can see, every building lost their roof including mine. It all happened so quickly that all one could do was to stay where they were, covering themselves. When my roof disappeared, I went underneath a step in the basement together with my five-year-old daughter, sheltering from the rain underneath a piece of thick canvas. We stayed there for about 2.5 hours as the wind howled and roof tops came tumbling down the hill and crashing into our house.”
Ernest

“When the eye of the storm came, we left the house and went outside. It was very quiet. There was no wind. It felt surreal, as if we were experiencing something extreme and on the edge of human existence. Outside, it was as if a giant had trampled through the area. Trees were flattened and the buildings looked like they had been abandoned years ago and left to ruin. When the wind started up again, the gusts picked up all the loose debris and threw it against the house we were in. This included huge water tanks, big branches and the roof of a neighbouring house.”
Heather

“In Grenada food is desperately short, and serious health problems are imminent due to lack of sanitation and clean water. Distribution of relief is hampered by lack of vehicles, and roads are still impassable.”
Nicola

“Almost all of the house roofs are gone, debris litters the streets and the most prominent sound that you can hear is the sound of chain saws as people try to clear the wreckage. On our way out of town we were stopped by soldiers who wanted to search us for looted materials, they eventually allowed us to continue but warned us that their orders were to arrest people on the streets.”
Leslie

During our time in Grenada we have learnt a great deal about the effects Hurricane Ivan, many of which being felt (and can still be seen) over two years on. My next blog entry will talk more about this........

PLEASE can someone save my sanity by helping me to understand why I can't post any photos in my blogs suddenly??!!!

I have a blog entry waiting to publish but I need the photos to go with it and for some reason they just won't appear. I have the images hosted at www.imageshack.net and I normally put the direct URL for the photo into the box as requested, after clicking on "insert photo".

Now when I do this, it says the image is being uploaded, then tells me that it HAS been uploaded and I can return to view my blog. But when I do this....there is nothing there!

I have also tried adding photos direct from my computer (by clicking "Browse") but these do not appear either.

Anyone who can help me out here will be richly rewarded with a coconut and a bottle of Carib Beer. Yes, I know its a big prize, but since I've been struggling with this all yesterday evening and this morning, I think it's worth it. Now please form an orderly queue........................

This blog entry is a copied account of what I wrote this afternoon whilst lying on the beach:


There can be no more relaxing and soul-enhancing ways of spending time than a Saturday afternoon on a tropical beach.

Lying here comfortably on my sunbed, I take in the surroundings and the atmosphere. The waves gently crash on the soft sandy beach – a constant, gentle, and eternal lullaby.

A gentle breeze sways the coconut palms – their fronds gently lifting and dancing in the warm air and dappled sunshine.

Voices and laughter drift through the air – so many people out enjoying their weekend. The local children giggle and shriek as they play in the water and run up the beach, a sound like a bubbling stream of pure joy and happiness.

A group of lads are enjoying their afternoon together. They sing, they shout and they laugh. Now and then they run along the sand before performing back flips and somersaults into the sea.

The leaves of the trees shading me rustle and flutter as the breeze caresses my back.

Round the bay the land curves, a crescent of greenery with little white buildings nestled amidst the rolling hills. The multiple clustered buildings of the town snuggle together, tumbling down towards the harbour.

The blue sky stretches far above. Laughter and voices float across. The sea continues its constant and unchanging melody.

Two beach sellers pass by calling out “Coral! Beautiful coral!” and “T-shirts! Buy some T-shirts!” and quickly they are gone again, moving further off along the beach.

The sun’s rays are becoming longer as the afternoon drifts on. Above me a bird sings his heart out in the tree. The dappled sunshine dances through the broad green leaves and flutters through the fringes of the coconut palms.

The sun begins to set behind the hill and a warm pink light suffuses the surroundings. People still splash about in the gently rolling sea and sit together on the sand. It’s been a great Saturday afternoon.

I am having a sulk at the behaviour of my laptop. Which I think is totally justified considering it isn't working. Hurrumphh.

I am therefore getting behind at updating my blog which I am not impressed with either, so I am going to have to find someone to fix it in the next couple of days.

In the meantime I've just got a few minutes left in a local internet cafe, so I thought I'd put up a quick post. This place is called "TJ Chillaxinn" and according to the wooden sign outside, you can get an interesting assortment of things here:

Restaurant and Bar
Internet
Massages and Tattoos

The internet room is out the back and is actually quite nice as it has air-conditioning and three computers.

Right, I must go and pick my Mum and Dad up from the airport as their flight will be arriving in 5 minutes YAY!!! I'm so looking forward to seeing them. Shame they couldn't bring Daisy out here too though!

I will leave you with a great quote that I saw yesterday. All the buses here (which are actually minibuses) have names and also usually a quote written across the back windscreen. The one I saw yesterday was called "Real Stable" and had the following quote, which I found pretty meaningful on a lot of levels:

"Each tree of success has roots of stability that run deep"

Grenadian Car!

Emma, James and Puppy

Town of Sauteurs



Hmmm, I haven’t blogged for four days now and as a result I’m not entirely sure where to begin on catching things up. Do I start from yesterday and work backwards or start from Friday and work forwards? See that’s the trouble with blogs, once you’ve started them you need to maintain them and I find myself entering a total state of blogheadedness…..

“Ooooh, I must take a photo of that for my blog!” (cue instructing Brad to screech to a stop on a blind bend to facilitate photo-taking-ability) or “Oh no! It’s 1 am and I’m knackered and my feel shite but I haven’t blogged about how I went and bought a cheap skirt in a shop today!”

The first photo in this entry was taken during one of these blogphotomoments. I find it amusing to drive around the tiny villages on the island and see cars in various states of decay, just happily residing alongside the road, with plants and climbers and assorted vegetation happily winding around them to make quite an interesting display. I guess there aren’t too many scrapyards on an island this size, so they tend to just become part of the roadside undergrowth. The best one I saw was a Volkswagen Mini Van with no doors, which, as well as taking on the role of artistic vegetative display, was also housing a donkey inside it. Now that’s what I call resourceful!

I’m sure the man standing beside the road was extremely intrigued why these strange tourists would want to stop in the middle of the road and begin photographing a rusty old banger instead of the beautiful countryside….but that’s blogging for you!

There are two things that I enjoy most about travelling. The first is exploring the “true” country, away from the tourist areas, and the other is talking to the people of that country about their lives and their views on things. We spent Friday doing just that and although it was a very long and tiring day, it was well worth it.

We decided to cut right through the middle of the country and go up to the very northern part. If you look at the map above, we are living down in the south-west coast in the area called Lance Aux Epines and we wanted to drive up through St George’s (the capital), go across the centre of the island and up to Sauteurs. This is a distance of approximately 35 miles which we anticipated would take a couple of hours each way. Ha! Not quite!

As I’ve mentioned before, driving in Grenada is very different from driving in the UK, apart from the fact that both countries drive on the left. Apart from in the southwest of the country (near the capital), the roads are very small, narrow, very winding and often very potholed. And that’s the main roads! The biggest problem however is finding the way to where you are going if you are not intimately aquainted with every area of the island. The map is often of little help because there are no signposts letting you know which direction each road is going in, and there are no names on any of the villages that line the way one after the other. So every few minutes we will arrive at another point with four apparently identical roads going off in opposite directions (three will just take you further into the village and only one will take you through the village but you have no way of knowing which one of the four that is) and we will spend 20 minutes taking each one in turn, eventually finding that the first three take us on a 5 minute route that suddenly turns into grass and the final one (sod’s law it always IS the final one!) will get you to the next village along the route, where the process will begin again. Oh and of course you also don’t know which village you are now at as you had no idea what the last village was called, or the one before that, or the one before that……

Usually the easiest solution is to stop and ask people the way as you pass through the villages. There are always plenty of people about…workmen on the roadside, people cutting down vegetation with machetes, people walking home from work or school, and friends sitting on the front porch of their house or in a shack bar chatting together. The only problem with this solution is that you need to be able to make yourself understood and also to understand the response. It’s not normally a problem (after all the national language is English) but in some of the more rural areas, the accent can be very thick and difficult for us to understand, and naturally they have the same difficulty in understanding us. This doesn’t just happen when you ask for directions. Grenada is such a friendly place that people will call out to you as you drive by or stop to share a joke with you through their car window as you pass in the road. Often we just have to smile, nod and laugh along and hope we are making the right noises in the right places!

Because of the difficulties in navigating the route and the time spent going round and round in circles hopelessly lost, as well as the need to stop for calls of nature and food, the journey to the north and back home took us a staggering 8 hours!!!! It was utterly exhausting physically with all that driving, but also mentally since I spent most of that time peering at the map and trying desperately to fathom out where on earth we could be. However we did see so much of the country and learnt so much about the way of life away from the capital city area, that it was definitely educational and worthwhile.

Driving along these roads one passes through a village and then shortly after, another village and so on, all the way. Many of these houses are tiny and built simply of wood, with just a couple of rooms inside. Others are bigger and built of cement blocks. All of them tend to have a front porch facing the road, where people can sit out and watch the world going by as they chat with friends or braid each others hair etc. There is often washing hanging on lines merrily waving in the breeze, or sometimes it is laid out over the bushes around the house to dry in the hot sun.

There are dogs wandering around the houses and roads. Often these dogs will lie in the middle of the road and be reluctant to move! It is very sad to see that many of the dogs are very thin and occasionally limping. I want to take them all home and look after them! We saw two dogs who had obviously recently given birth and the tiny little puppies looked so adorable sitting by the side of the road with an expression of bemusement at the world around them! There are no noticeable breeds of dogs here like there are in the UK. Dogs here seem to belong to people but are not treated as “pets” in the same way as they are at home. They all look quite similar….basically short haired, brownish “Heinz 57” varieties!

As you drive along, you see goats every now and again, tethered to the verge by the road. We also stopped abruptly along one road when faced with a big brown bull in the middle of the road staring at us! Thankfully he didn’t seem to be in the least bit aggressive and after a couple of toots on the horn, he ambled to the side of the road where he was tethered to a rock.

There is a noticeably poorer standard of living when you start driving up into the villages inland and away from the main towns. People still have food and clothing and the children go to school etc, but there are many smaller wooden houses, people are working with machetes to cut down vegetation and in one area we noticed that people were collecting their water from standpipes alongside the roads.

We eventually decided to stop for lunch at another point where we had found ourselves lost and pulled into a bar/restaurant called “Daw’s Café”. Here we were greeted by a really nice guy called Wade who proceeded to cook us some lunch. We were the only people in the place and it consisted of one large room with a single table and a wooden bar. The food was absolutely delicious...chicken cooked over a BBQ, rice, pasta salad and green salad. This was washed down with a fresh fruit punch and the whole lot came to the grand total of £3.50 each!

We finally reached our destination on the north coast…the town of Sauteurs (pronounced “So-tairs”). As with our trip to Grenville, we arrived at school leaving time and one of the busiest times of the day. The town was pretty small and basic, but we wanted to visit a place there called “Carib’s Leap”. This is the edge of a cliff above the town itself where, in 1650, forty Carib warriors threw themelves off into the rocks and angry waters below, rather than surrender to the French who were invading their island. The actual spot was less dramatic than anticipated when we arrived and was now part of a rather unkempt graveyard belonging to the church that is now on this area of land.

After a brief drive around Sauteurs and the north east coast of Grenada, and having taken some photos, we decided to make our way back to the south of the island. We thought that having finally found our way up the route to the north, we would find it easier to get back again….not quite as easy as anticipated, especially since the sun was now going down and there was no light in the car! Having found ourselves going in the wrong direction, we eventually stopped back at Daw’s café again for refreshments and (mainly!) for a desperately needed toilet stop. I think Wade was somewhat surprised to see us back again a few hours since our last visit. We’d told him we would come back soon, but I doubt either of us was expecting it to be that soon!

We went inside and had some drinks and some of the cake he had just taken out of the oven (still warm!). Whilst there we met his two year old son, James, who must have been at nursery when we had stopped off for lunch. James was full of beans and, although we could barely understand what he was saying and he could barely understand us, we had fun playing with him whilst his Dad was in the kitchen. He particularly enjoyed us showing him how to take photos on our camera! Wade’s family have two dogs, one of which is a young puppy. Both were fairly thin and the little puppy looked so cute and sad that I picked him up and spent 20 minutes cuddling him on my lap…he really was adorable!

By now all the light had gone (the sun goes down very quickly here and by 6pm each day it is completely dark) and we had to make our way back the rest of the way with me trying to read the map by the light on my mobile phone! Thankfully we did remember most of the way from here on and the journey back was a bit less stressful that on the way up!

Phew! That was another massive bog entry! I’m not sure whether anyone will actually read all that, but it’s nice for me to have a record of my time here for the future so I’m glad I got it all down in writing. It has been very cloudy all day today, which is a first since we got here but actually makes a nice change! It rained very heavily in the night and a short while ago we had another big downpour, which I guess isn’t too suprising since we are at the end of the rainy season here. It is still nice and bright though, so I’m not complaining!

I’m off to get something to eat for lunch now and may be have a swim later. It is Sunday here, so all the shops are shut and people are at the beach or “liming” with friends (liming means chilling out and spending time together). Sounds like the best way to spend a Sunday to me!

I







I am sitting indoors at the moment having my nebulisers. It seems even hotter than normal today and its only 10am! I’m also feeling a bit rough today so I’m not looking forward to moving everything over to the apartment in a couple of hours, one of the hottest times of the day! Everything is packed now and ready to go, apart from all the food in the fridge and freezer which will have to come out at the last moment.

The apartment looks nice but it’s very small compared to having the space of a house – just a bedroom, lounge/kitchenette and a bathroom. However it does have the most stunning view of the sea, which I will take some photos of. It is part of the house where the owners of this villa live and we will share their pool and garden. The biggest benefit to it though it that we can have it free! Then after a week there we can move back to this villa for the final two weeks.

Now there aren’t many downsides to being in a tropical country, but there are a few. Many of them take the form of insects! Thankfully Grenada does not have such delights as poisonous spiders or scorpions, but the little pests can still cause trouble and sometimes a fright.

I have just counted my mosquito bites and they now number over 20. The mosquitoes here also seem to have developed the skill of making their bites as large and ITCHY as possible! I seem to be constantly scratching or trying desperately not to scratch. I’ve tried three different natural insect repellents now (I don’t like using the powerful toxic sprays as they are absorbed by the body through the skin). Yesterday we bought a new one that it made on the island and contains essential oils of citronella, eucalyptus, pennyroyal and cedarwood. When the sun went down I stood in the kitchen spraying it non stop all over my legs in an exceptionally liberal fashion.

The first thing I noticed was that Brad seemed to be on the verge of passing out from the fumes. The second thing I noticed was that the spray was an oil and I now looked like a ready-basted chicken. The third thing I noticed was that the oil had spread out in pools around my feet and been walked around the tiled floor, thus rendering it as lethal as an ice-rink. Undeterred, I declared to Brad (once I had resuscitated him) that there was no chance of a mosquito eating ME tonight and went skating of along the floor to sit outside and eat dinner. But guess what? This morning I have another bite right where I had sprayed my foot. I just hope that after eating me the flipping thing had severe indigestion from all the oils…..

I had another encounter with a couple of unpleasant insects on the second evening we were here. Firstly I padded out across the patio in my flipflops to hang a wet swimming towel on the washing line. Suddenly underfoot there was the most enormous SCRUNCH! Thinking I must have stood on one of the little frogs that seem to be everywhere in the evening, I did what any sane and rational woman would do….i.e. panicked, stood on one leg and yelled for Brad to help. However it was not a frog that I had stood on, it was the most spectacular sized cockroach, equipped with antennae about a foot long. At least it had been. Now it was on its back and dead as a doornail. Funny isn’t it, how they say that cockroaches would be the only creatures to survive a nuclear holocaust, and yet at the sight of my flipflops they go all pathetic and die?

About an hour later, and having recovered from this introduction to Grenadian insect life, I went into the kitchen from the bedroom to get a drink. This time I was in bare feet and as I padded across the kitchen I froze as my mind made sense of the fact that there was a long black wiggly thing about a foot long, beside my feet. The fact that it had more legs that you could shake a stick at, hastily informed me that this was either a centipede or a millipede. I guess I could have worked out exactly which it was had I had the inclination to kneel beside him and attempt to count his legs (“9,835….9,836…..9,837….oh shit he’s moved!”). However at that particular moment analysing the mathematical arrangement of the hugewigglything’s legs was very far from my mind.

Having clearly learnt how to deal with such situations from the encounter with the cockroach an hour earlier, I clearly handled this matter in a far more sane and rational manner…..I sped across the kitchen, leapt onto a high bar stool and screamed for Brad at the top of my voice. Brad’s response was something along the lines of “Oooh hello, that’s interesting” at which point I informed him that no, it wasn’t at all interesting, it was quite frankly horrible and scary. So there’s me stood on a barstool being hysterical and making girly sounds like “Ooooooh it’s horrible! It’s horrible!” and there’s Brad with his caveman instinct coming out, trying to protect his over-sensitive woman by encouraging the hugewigglything to climb onto a magazine so he could move it outdoors.

Now I had read that the millipedes on Grenada are harmless but that the centipedes can bite, and are distinguishable because they are segmented. I decided to helpfully inform Brad of this fact (from the safety of my bar stool) and called out “Brad! Brad! It might bite. Is it a centipede or a millipede?” At this point there was a thwack and the reply came back “I’ve no idea but it’s a squashedpede now”.

Sadly I have no photos of centipedes, millipededs or even squashedpedes to delight you with, nor even giant cockroaches or teeny mosquitoes. So you’ll have to make do with the photo of the impressively huge cricket that decided to spend some time indoors with us yesterday evening instead. Enjoy!

Today we have decided to spend the day chilling out at the villa before we have to pack everything up later, ready to move to the apartment in the morning. I am sitting here on top of the roof terrace, one of my favourite places. The roof terrace is quite large and partly covered by a pergola so it’s nice and shady. There are potted tropical plants around the terrace and bright blue railing surrounding it.

In front of me I have a gorgeous view of the sea, some rooftops of other villas, a huge expanse of sky and a couple of palm trees gently swaying in the breeze. To my left and right are large expanses of green trees and tropical fern leaves growing up from the garden below.

The sky has gone quite overcast above the sea at the moment, though behind me is still bright blue sky and little white fluffy clouds. I think we may have some showers in a minute. I don’t mind the rain at all in Grenada as it’s completely different from in the UK. Here there are short sudden downpours of rain and within a short time the sun is back out and everything quickly dries. Tropical showers are also nice and warm, very different from the rain at home where there may be days of endless gloom and drizzle, not to mention the cold!

The sounds I can hear are the singing of birds, the distant sound of workmen talking and working as they build a new house nearby, and a very occasional car driving up the road. The villa is situated in a quiet, affluent part of the island, and there are quite a lot of ex-pats here, mainly Americans and British. The houses here are mostly large, with good-sized gardens and beautiful sea views. Some of the houses are palatial, but ours is quite small and sweet. I wouldn’t want to be rumbling around in a mansion personally!

There is a noticeable difference in wealth of the inhabitants of the island as you drive around. Here in the area around St George’s (the capital) you find all the hotels, banks, businesses, shopping malls, University, etc. Many of the people here are better off and have big houses. Once you venture away from the south-west corner of the island, you tend to find a more traditional way of life and generally a poorer standard of living.

I had a bit of a sad moment earlier when I was sitting up here on the roof terrace eating my breakfast. I was looking at the view and thinking how much I love it here. Then I got to thinking about how I’ve always wanted to live abroad, ever since I spent a year in South Africa. Sadly I don’t think this is a dream that will ever be realised, at least not somewhere far from home. Whilst I can forget about having CF a lot of the time, it does interfere with wanting to live abroad, especially now that my health is becoming more problematic. If it wasn’t for CF I really do think that Brad and I would both choose to focus our lives on travelling and living abroad.

I also got to thinking about something that has been on my mind since I got here, which is will I ever be able to come back to somewhere like this again? The flight over this time really took it out of me and was the maximum I could possibly have pushed my lungs to. By the time we arrived I had a temperature and my lungs began bleeding, but more than that I was utterly exhausted. For the next couple of days I was so breathless that Brad was even having to help me with tasks like getting dressed. Thankfully I am feeling loads better now, but with having to have oxygen when I fly now and particularly with the impossibility of getting travel insurance, it does make me realise that my ability to travel to places like these may be becoming very difficult. That’s quite a sad thought really at the age of 32.

Anyway, these thoughts only lasted a few moments and when I have them I just think how incredibly lucky I am to be here right now and get on with enjoying the time I am here and making the most of every day in this paradise place. I love the brightness here, the sunshine, the blue skies, the bright colourful flowers, the relaxed way of life, the gorgeous white sand beaches, the people, our swimming pool, everything! Even going food shopping is a fun experience!

I think a lot about Emily while I am here and how sad it is that she can’t experience these things at the moment. When I’m swimming in the pool or the sea, or walking around the town, or seeing new places I think of Emily and how much she would love to be able to do what I’m doing now. It makes me appreciate what I have and am able to enjoy, and also how fortunate I am to be here. And Emily, I know you will be reading this, so just think of what you will be able to do and see and experience once you have those new lungs which you WILL get soon, I promise!

Wow, that was a long blog entry! Whilst I’ve been writing it the grey clouds have moved away and the view in front of me is now of a bright blue sky and a lovely blue sea. There is a beautiful breeze keeping me cool and the pink bourganvillea is gently swaying in the air. I’m off to eat some toast and then jump in the pool to cool off! Byeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Today we decided to explore some more of Grenada, so headed off along the coast road that winds along the south coast and then up the east side of the island. In Grenada it takes a very long time to travel a fairly short distance because the roads are very narrow and continually twist in and out as they snake along the coast and wind in and out of the hillsides. A lot of the roads further away from the capital of St George’s are also quite rough and potholed, which makes for a rather bumpy ride at times!

The route weaved through one little village after another. These villages usually have a couple of wooden shack mini-marts and bars, a church, sometimes a school and the occasional small business repairing tyres or selling car parts. There are people out walking down the roads, dogs trying to find patches of shade or food, school children playing on their way home, the occasional tethered goat and a gentle trickle of activity as you drive through.

Our destination was Grenville, the main town in the parish of St Andrew’s, the largest producer of Grenada’s main export crops – cocoa, nutmeg and bananas, as well as spices, vegetables, coconuts, fruit and flowers. Last time we visited Grenada (in 1999) we visited the nutmeg station here and had a tour of the factory where the nutmegs and mace (outer covering of a nutmeg that is also used as a spice) are purchased, separated, dried and prepared for shipment.

Grenville (pictured above) is a bustling old town and was particularly busy when we arrived as school had finished for the day, so the roads and pavements were full of schoolchildren. Here all children wear very traditional, smart school uniforms, even the older pupils. The small girls look particularly cute in their little red and white checked dresses with their hair plaited neatly with big white ribbons.

We parked up in the centre of Grenville and had a walk around in the heat of the baking sun. The strangest thing was being the only two white people we saw in all the crowds of people going about their daily lives in the town. There is no problem with safety as everyone is very friendly. It just makes you feel really self-conscious that you can’t blend into the background and that you are so clearly the odd ones out!

We bought some delicious bags of peanuts from a street seller who was roasting them in honey and spices over an open grill. I’ve never tasted peanuts as delicious as those…and at only 20p per bag they were a total bargain too. We also went into quite a few little shops selling a whole variety of items from homewares to clothes to toys. They are all quite dark inside as they have no windows so that the sun is kept out.

I saw some pretty skirts in one shop and we went in to find out how much they were. They were hanging up on the ceiling and the lady had to get a big stick to get down the one I liked. She asked if I’d like to try it on, so I said that would be a good idea, and she took me to a very unique changing room. There was a make-shift wooden door along the back wall of the shop and she opened it up for me to go inside. Once in there I could hardly move…it was smaller than our cupboard at home where we keep the vacuum cleaner! “Good job I’m not on the large size” I thought. There was a mirror in there but due to the fact it was completely dark (apart from the light coming over the top of the door) it was a bit difficult to tell what the skirt looked like, but at least I could tell it fitted before reversing back out of the tiny partition and at £9 it was a bargain too.

By now we were melting in the heat and stopped off at a bar down a side street for a cold drink. It was a typical street bar, with a lino floor, a few wooden tables covered with flowery plastic tablecloths and plastic potted plants on top. It actually seemed hotter than outside as there was no breeze in there, but a couple of ceiling fans slowly rotated, moving the heavy warmth around a bit. A handful of people were watching American Football on the TV, which seems to have quite a big following here. I did try to use the “washroom” but finding that, like the changing room, it had no source of light, I decided that whilst I could just about manage to put a skirt on in complete darkness, I’d rather not try and use a tiny cramped toilet in the same circumstances!

After we got back in the car we tried to find the alternative route back, through the interior rainforest of the country instead of along the coast. However this proved very difficult due to the problems of navigating in Grenada. Having a map is only a certain amount of help on the island because there are no signs anywhere! This means that the roads have no names, there are no signs saying what each village is called, and there are no road signs pointing out which direction you are heading! Add this to the fact that there are no obvious main roads - just lots of narrow windy lanes with varying amounts of potholes – and you can end up hopelessly lost!

In the end, after half an hour of weaving up and down steep tracks, we found our way back to the sea and decided to just stick with going back the way we had come. At least if you keep near the sea you only need to worry about whether it is on your right or your left! After an hour we were back in the capital of St George’s, a distance of about 20 miles. We stopped of at a supermarket for some meat, flour and bread and then headed home for a rest.

Tomorrow we are going to spend the day mainly in the villa relaxing and swimming in the pool, as we will have a busy day on Thursday since we have to move all our stuff to the nearby apartment we are renting for next week. The following week we will be moving back to the villa for the last 2 weeks of our stay here. It’s certainly going to take a bit of work packing up everything as we now have a fridge and cupboards full of food!

It is 8.30pm here and I’m typing this outside on the terrace. The tree frogs are cheeping their hearts out, the mosquitoes are making their regular evening attempts to munch me and I’m going to go and have a swim in the pool now to cool off! Byeeeeeeeeeee!

Welcome to Grenada!

Well the title of this blog is “Take me to the Caribbean” and when I thought it up I wasn’t sure when or if I would ever get to go back to this wonderful part of the world which I love so much and which holds so many special memories (including my wedding day!)

But finally, here I am! Living on the beautiful island of Grenada for a whole 4 weeks….and believe me, I really do know just how lucky I am. Over the next few weeks I will try to write lots about what it is like here and what I’ve been up to. But first I thought I’d start with a small introduction to the island itself.

Grenada is a Caribbean island and lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, north of Trinidad and Venezuela. The island is 21 miles long and 12 miles wide which doesn’t sound that big, but because of the little windy roads around the island and because there is so much to see and admire, it takes a long time to travel a fairly short distance.

Grenada has numerous beaches, warm blue sea, the prettiest harbour in the Caribbean and a mountainous rainforest interior with lush vegetation and dramatic waterfalls. The land is very fertile and produces bananas, mangoes, cocoa, papayas, etc. However the biggest export here is spices and this is why Grenada is called the “Spice Isle”. Spices cultivated here include nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and ginger but nutmeg is the most important, with Grenada producing 40% of the world’s nutmeg supplies!

The temperature here is roughly 30°C all year round and the people are as warm as the sunshine….friendly, smiling and helpful and truly lovely to meet.

Grenada was devastated by Hurricane Ivan in September 2004. It left more than half of Grenada’s 95,000 people homeless, damaged 90% of the buildings and decimated the island’s nutmeg industry. However, thanks to the dedication of the local and international community, the island has made – and is continuing to make – an excellent recovery.

Well that’s it for a short explanation of the beautiful island where I am spending November. From tomorrow I will start to write more about my experiences here and my travels around the island. Right now I’m off to bed for a nice long snooze!

High powered business negotiations

Brad and I have spent today and yesterday with Emily Wemily and her lovely man. I really love the weekends we spent with our two special friends and we always have such a nice time. It tends to consist of a lovely assortment of eating yummy food, talking, laughing and plenty of general silliness. Whenever we arrange one of these weekends Emily and I always like to pretend beforehand that it will be a fantastic opportunity to "have indepth business meetings" and "do some brainstorming". I think we just like the sound of saying this really and it makes us feel important. The reality is that we have never yet actually done any of these things during our weekends together. However agreeing this in advance makes us feel highly professional and so without fail I will arrive with my work bag full of files, notebooks, and carefully sharpened pencils. The fact that I have never yet even got as far as unzipping the bag does not dampen the enthusiasm for this decision in any way.

Actually the truth is that we do chat about ideas, make plans for the campaign, discuss ongoing projects, etc but it just isn't in a form that most people would instantly recognise as a business meeting. This may be because to an outsider it appears that most of the time is spent playing with Daisy (my dog), eating food and dozing. But that's what is such fun about what we do and also, I believe, why it works so well. An "Em'n'Em" style work process goes something like this:

Sunday:

1. Arrive at Emily's house. Dispense virtual hugs to each other and blow plenty of kisses across the room.

2. Have a cup tea and a slice of pink cake with obligatory sweetie bobbles

3. Sit for an hour admiring Daisy (my dog) and discuss such essential matters as the fluffiness of her nose or squidgyness of her paws.

4. Debate whether it is normal for a child to eat a dictionary, four glue sticks and a swimming float

5. Time for us both to have a sleep

6. Panic when phone rings at 8pm in case it is Harefield calling Em for transplant (sadly not)

7. Eat gorgeous supper whilst gossiping and putting the world to rights

8. Eat delicious fruit pie and custard whilst debating the value of the mince pie as a quintessential part of the festive yuletide culture in Britiain in the 21st centuary.

9. Sleep

Monday:

1. Arrive at Emily's in time to consume mid-morning rations of chocolate croissants and tea

2. Discuss organ donation issues, research on internet, debate ways of taking campaign forward

3. Get exceptionally over-impressed with ourselves for our productivity and decide that we are both worn out so decide to continue the high level discussions in a horizontal position with our eyes shut and without speaking (some may call this sleeping but they are so ill-informed...)

4. Eat lunch

5. Debate what a potato galette is

6. Drink tea and eat more cake whilst looking through photos

7. Leave dispensing profuse quantities of virtual hugs and kisses

Now I think that this method of working is actually highly productive whilst being very employee friendly so I think that Em and I should become the founders of a radical new style of management theory. We will call it the "Pink and Sparkly Management Technique" and will advise all managing directors to ensure the following working conditions:

- Continuous supply of pink cake and cups of tea

- Allow employees to snooze whenever and wherever they choose

- Ensure a small and cute dog in every workplace to provide cuddles on demand, regular employee exercise (via squeeky ball playing) and general counselling skills

- Encourage employees to congratulate themselves at every opportunity and award themselves self-made gold stars for even the tiniest amounts of productivity and upon thinking of every new idea

Hmmm, actually think Em and I should publish a new management guru stylee book called "Who moved my pink iced cake?" It can become the management bible of the 21st century and will be sure to make us a million. Wow, I'm exhausted from such a great idea. Time I joined Emily in another snooze......

Last Wednesday saw me back up at the hospital at clinic, where it was decided that I needed another 2 week course of IV antibiotics. The appointment involved having my lung function tested, seeing the consultant, waiting to have an IV line inserted and the accumulation of five carrier bags of drugs/syringes/needles/etc, which meant that I was at clinic for five hours, during which I engaged in some very interesting people watching activities. Let’s face it, no one really wants to hear about the other stuff do they? So here goes…

This entry is about the McSmellers family, who I had the joy of spending a (far too lengthy) period of time sitting opposite as I waited for an hour after having my first dose of IV’s (the hospital prefer you to be in the waiting room rather than on the M4 if you are going to have an anaphylactic shock reaction for some reason…).

Now I have to admit here to some use of poetic licence, as I have no idea what their real names were. But I have called them the McSmellers family because, basically, they smelt. A lot. A sort of unwashed stinky smell. There were three members of said family present that afternoon…Mrs Mcsmellers, Mr Mcsmellers and Master Mcsmellers.

Mr and Mrs Mcsmellers were both in their late fifties and were, not to put too fine a point on it, huge. Now I’m not fattist or largist (or even enormousist) at all, but I need to paint a picture here, so forgive me for a slight lack of political correctness. Mrs McS was so wide that she had to sit with her legs a mile apart to accommodate her enormous belly and Mr McS looked like he had been inflated with a bicycle pump and was shoe-horned into a wheelchair. Strangely enough Master McS (who was in his 20’s) was the opposite….thin, pale and gaunt looking, sporting a hoodie and a distinct attitude problem.

Now our clinic is very small…just a little waiting room with the basic NHS chest clinic entertainment matter for members of the public who find themselves stuck there. These comprise: a tatty copy of Readers Digest from Xmas 1987, a free local newspaper from August 2003, plenty of leaflets on the British Lung Foundation, and an assortment of posters all around the walls on the dangers of smoking and where to get advice on giving up.

Always eager to engage with the NHS in its patient-entertainment provision, I had started with the Readers Digest and spent a while trying to decide between the relative merits of the “Wendy” slipper (pink floral pattern with clever opening Velcro top) or the “Susan” slipper (blue floral pattern with free matching shower cap). I’d then avidly analyzed the debate over the proposed closure of Kwik Save in West Chinsingbury (and oh the suspense that three years on I still don’t know the outcome!) before moving on to researching Sarcoidosis, courtesy of the British Lung Foundation. After whiling away at least 47 seconds in this way and having found the reading matter somewhat sleep-inducing (probably the intention) I opted for resting my head on Brad’s shoulder and closing my eyes. But only for a second.

“Are you a sleeper too then?” came a voice from opposite me. Ever so slightly opening one eye, I saw the voice had come from Mrs McS herself who was having a good old stare at me. For some reason the image of a railway sleeper popped into my head, which confused me somewhat, as I was aware this was unlikely to be relevant given the current circumstances.

“She falls asleep all the time” added in Mr McS helpfully. “I had to come with her today because she falls asleep on the bus”.

“No I don’t” retorted Mrs McS

“Yes you do” snorted Mr McS, breaking wind purposefully and following it up with a timely belch.

Somewhat bemused by the angle of this conversation, I indicated that no, I was not an associate member of the sleeper club and attempted to shut my eyes again. However any hope of peace was shattered by the various bodily noises that were being emitted from the McS family. Clearly there was a wind problem affecting all its members and this was made clear by the varying assortment of trumps and burps that were manifesting themselves into the environment of the clinic.

“Which of us was it that was farting at the bus stop earlier?” piped up Mrs McS.

“Not me” muttered her son

“Not me” muttered Mr McS, “must have been someone else”

I was at this point having difficulty in maintaining a look of peaceful slumber as the corners of my mouth were contorting into strange twitches which I had to conceal as that well known “itchy mouth” syndrome. Silence fell across the waiting room again.

“Least I’ve never fallen asleep in my dinner” piped Mrs McS

“Yes you have” retorted her husband and son in unison.

“Have I?” gasped Mrs McS, clearly mortified by the idea that she might have missed out on a mouthful of food.

“Yeah you did it the other night” mumbled Master McS, whilst leafing through his copy of Nuts.

There was a long pause while Mrs McS considered the full implications of this news.

“Wow that could have been really dangerous” pronounced Mrs McS with concerned dismay.

The itchy mouth syndrome began to cause me problems again as I imagined Mrs McS snoring gently whist face down in a plate of beef curry.

“I’ve got a headache” muttered Mr McS, yawning and emitting another series of trumpets.

“Want some Tramadol Dad” asked his son helpfully.

Tramadol?! Blimey what else did this kid have on him? I wondered. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Tramadol is a painkiller from the opiate family (a narcotic). Not the sort of thing the Boots pharmacist would sell you over the counter, though clearly this guy could supply it as one of his stock items from within a pocket of his hoodie.

I was slightly relieved when Master McS then thought better of this idea, though not for the reasons I would have anticipated (i.e. supply of illegal drugs in a hospital environment).

“Actually, best not Dad. I wouldn’t know if it contained dairy products”

Ah yes, dairy products. How nice to find a drugs pusher with a conciencse.

“Here you go mate, nice bit of crack for you. But I have to warn you, it may include traces of nuts as it’s been in my pocket with a half-eaten packet of KP dry roasted peanuts”

By now even the McSmellerson family were growing bored of the chest clinic’s charms and for a minute or two silence descended on the room. A silence broken only by the gentle chorus of burps and trumpets from three of its inhabitants.

However Mrs McS had now moved onto the NHS chest clinic’s final source of entertainment…the posters on the wall. And this is where she had found herself personally affronted. You see the staff in hospital chest clinics feel that it is important to educate their patients on the dangers of smoking. This seems pretty reasonable to me since if it weren’t for smoking, half of their patients wouldn’t be there and they could all go and do something much nicer like have longer lunchbreaks or an extra half hour in bed.

However Mrs McS was having none of this nonsense….

“Always going on about the danger of smoking on these posters aren’t they? Look at this one: “Secondhand smoke kills” Hurrmph! You can die of lung cancer if you live on a farm all your life”
A minute later she was off again….

“I’m fed up of these posters. Always going on aren’t they? I’ll smoke if I want to”

“I ain’t never givin’ up smokin’” retorted her son defiantly

“No, I don’t blame you either, you do what you like” Mrs McS replied.

A minute later the posters were still playing on her mind and now she was really getting into her stride.

“Just look at them! All going on about the dangers of smoking. They should take them all down. I don’t want to have to sit here looking at them, that’s for sure”

I had a quick peek at the various posters that were causing her so much concern. There was a blue and yellow cartoon with a picture of a cartoon man with a cigarette for a head that announced “Butt Head!”, a picture of a cigarette rolled open with fat as its contents and an advert for NHS Quit Smoking Services. All seemed very dull and uninspiring really.

But clearly Mrs McS had more on her mind that just the artistic quality of the posters. After another minute’s silence she announced:

“These posters are just getting on my nerves. Always nagging at me wherever I look. You know what this preaching is?" Here she paused for dramatic effect. "It's an infringement of my CIVIL LIBERTIES that's what it is!"

At this point my itchy mouth syndrome became particularly severe and I had to rub my cheeks vigourously and stare intently at the floor. Fortunately at that point the nurse walked in and asked Mrs McS to go into the doctor’s room. Where presumably he was about to interfere still further with her civil liberties by suggesting that in order to get better she might be advised to lose weight, give up smoking and engage in some physical activity.

Ah, the world’s a funny old place isn’t it?!

I have been spending hour after hour this week creating a slide-show to raise awareness of the desperate need for more registered organ donors in the UK. During this time I have been reading lots of letters to Donor Families from receipients, that are viewable on the internet. All the letters spoke of such heartfelt gratitude, but I think this one sums it up more than any other, so I've copied it down here. Wouldn't it be amazing to think that we had each left a gift like this behind?

Dear Donor Family,

" Thank You" these two words seem so inadequate for the gift of life you have given to me.

You have given me a second chance to live and many tomorrows.

I will be able to see the sun rise and set, feel the rain and sun on my face, hear the wind in the trees, and listen to the birds sing.

I will be able to hug and be hugged.

I must offer my deepest sympathy for your loss, mere words from a stranger, but heartfelt just the same. Perhaps, in your generous donation your family and mine will be able to "Celebrate the Life" of loved ones both past and present.

I know nothing about the donor only that they must have been kind, caring, compassionate, and generous, something they had to have learned from you, their family.

I feel that each new day has endless possibilities, and that my horizons are without bounds.

I only hope that I am able to justify the use of this wonderful gift.

I could make you promises of what I would do to make our world a better place, but we all know that promises tend to be broken and time can cause us to forget. But know this, not a day, not an hour, or a minute will go by without my thinking of the donor and their family without whom I would not have had a chance to live.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
The recipient

Yesterday we went to watch the filming of the Sharon Osbourne Show in London. Brad and I had been invited along as guests of the family of Lucy Pearson, who were appearing on the show. For those of you who don't know of Lucy, she is 6 years old and several weeks ago she was dying from end-stage heart failure, having been born with nearly every heart abnormality that it is possible for a baby to be born with. She had been waiting for 8 months on the waiting list and time really was running very short for her and things looked very bleak. Then she got the call that was to not only save, but totally transform her life and she was rushed to Great Ormond Street Hospital to undergo a six hour heart transplant. The transformation in Lucy is just incredible and she is suddenly now full of colour, lively, full of energy, able to run around and so well that it is almost unbelievable.

The Sharon Osbourne Show had arranged to interview Lucy's family before she got her transplant. The hope was that by appearing on the show, it would help to raise awareness of the desperate shortage of organ donors and the situation of the families of children who are waiting. They had already filmed Lucy and her family for a full day at home when she got her call and once Lucy was discharged from hospital it was decided to still go-ahead with her appearance, so as to show the amazing transformation that organ donation can bring about.

So off we headed to London for a second day running (I really should live in London the amount of time I spend there these days!). The plan was that we would meet up with our fab friend Clare at Waterloo Station and all make our way to the studio. Then we would report to the doorman at the front of the queue for the audience seats and be ushered through! Well the meeting at Waterloo station all went to plan but then, having decided that Clare and I wouldn't be able to walk the 3/4 mile to the studios, we opted to get the bus. So we waited and waited and waited.....and waited. No bus appeared. Did a bit more waiting, and more, and more.....still no bus. We even resorted to taking photos of ourselves at the bus stop to relieve the boredom.

An hour later we concluded that the bus really wasn't planning on assisting us with our journey towards our momentous TV audience appearance, so decided to find a taxi rank. Strangely enough there was a long queue at the taxi rank. A queue that proceeded to grow and grow, whilst the road was totally deserted without a taxi insight. This indicated one thing...a security alert. Eventually we found out that the whole area had been closed due to a suitcase left under Westminster Bridge. This left only one option....walking. So with a determined air and we headed off for the studios. Funnily enough, as we passed the entrance to the station we bumped into Lucy's family, all just arrived off the train from Southampton and decided we would all make our way down together.

I was expecting South Bank TV studios to be really impressive looking, but actually it looks very much like any other city office block. There was a massive queue already curling its way along the pavement and after waving goodbye to Lucy's family (who were going in through reception) we marched up to the head of the queue and announced with an air of great self-importance that we were "with the Pearson family". However, for some reason (clearly a technical error) the red carpet didn't immediately appear infront of us, nor we were ushered in through some back door with big beefy security guards to keep the crowds from mobbing us. In fact (oh the indignity of it all!) we were told to "wait over there behind the Gala Bingo party" haha!

There then ensued a wait. A long wait. A very long wait. An incredibly long wait. Did they not know who we were?!!! We ended up taking more rather boring photos of ourselves with against a brick wall (who says showbizz isn't glamarous?) After nearly an hour I really couldn't stand any longer and my IV's were also due. Clare and I decided to play the CF card, which did get us just inside the foyer door to sit on a couple of old seats behind the security desk. I proceeded to do my IV's (that got some interesting looks) and Clare proceeded to quiz the security staff on whether they reckoned "Shazza" would like her letter inviting her for squash and biscuits at her new Uni accomodation (quite a normal conversation for Clare, honest....)

Finally 2 hours after we had arrived the word was out that we were going to be let in! I guess I can forgive the fact that they still forgot my red carpet at this stage considering things were running very late. I felt really sorry when I heard that they were going to have to turn away about 200 of the people towards the end of the queue with tickets because too many had turned up! We were very hungry and thirsty by now but finally we were in the building and it was all rather exciting, even though you couldn't see much except big wharehouse-type coridoors and lots of black curtains. We were directed through a set of curtains and there was the stage, with the audience seating infront. It was much smaller in there than I had imagined and the set was incredibly glamarous looking with chandeliers and fancy sofas and pictures on the wall.
I did feel quite important to see we had designated seats in the second row back for our group due to our connection to Lucy's family. I wanted to take pictures, but sadly these were all banned.

Once everyone was seated, we were given our complex instructions on the pivotal role we were to play in the proceedings. This basically consisited of being able to clap. But not just clap, to start clapping when indicated and to stop clapping when indicated. I must admit, I did feel a bit overqualified for this role, but in showbizz I guess you have to be prepared to muck in haha! Whilst all the camera crew and production staff then busied themselves with preparations, we were then subjected to probably the worst warm-up comedian I have ever seen and that (please god) I will ever see again. Unfortunatley he was to continually make appearances throughout the entire filming (during breaks etc). His jokes might have been funny 30 years ago during the quiet season on Worthing Pier, but he clearly hadn't realised that a continual repetoire of jokes about old people, gay people, disabled people and any other minority group in existence, doesn' really suit an audience in 2006. Not only did he manage to be un-funny to the point of extreme irritation, but he made sure he offended nearly every sector of society in the process. It was the kind of toe-curling, cringe-worthy comedy that you might find yourself subjected to by a distant family relative on Boxing day afternoon after half a bottle of sherry.

It was very interesting watching the show being filmed. There was quite a small production team and camera crew involved and it all seemed much more basic in real life than a show appears on a TV screen. There were quite a few retakes of each part, as Sharon kept fluffing her lines and then going "Oh F****!" There was also a somewhat sleep-inducing interview with a member of the audience who had given birth at her local bus stop. She had been flown down from Scotland along with three week old baby to make her TV debut telling Sharon about the baby's momentous arrival at a said bus stop. However she only seemed to be able to answer "Errr yes", "Errrr no" or (most popular) "Errr dunno" to every question Sharon asked her. It has to be said it wasn't that exciting a story to begin with, but thanks to the small range of answerable options, it was worse than watching paint dry. In the end even Sharon had enough and walked off exclaiming "Oh for goodness sake! This is worse than pulling teeth" (which to be fair it was). Sadly I think the woman lost her chance to appear in the Bill on the strength of her performance.

It was great watching Lucy and her family being interviewed on the sofas. Sharon started by introducing each member of the family and, upon reaching 3-year old Ben said "And here's the baby of the family...little Ben!" "I'M SUPERBOY!!!" announced Ben very loudly in reply!! Next they played the film footage taken before Lucy had her transplant, which was very moving indeed. On returning to the studio, Sharon turned to Lucy and said "And Lucy.... What have you got now that you didn't have before?!" "A BOUNCY CASTLE!" exclaimed Lucy, which wasn't quite the answer Sharon had been looking for! It was wonderful to see Lucy wearing her Live Life Then Give Life T-Shirt on the show. It's the first time one of our T-shirts has ever been shown on national TV and was a very proud moment for me. Bev, Lucy's Mum, had wanted to wear hers too, but wasn't allowed to due to TV regulations, but Lucy flew the flag for the LLTGL campaign with true style...Go Lucy!

Finally, two hours after filming began, we were all ushered out onto the street again. I did leave with a feeling that audiences for these shows are treated with contempt. We never even got offered access to a cup of tap water from when we joined the queue at 3pm until we left the studios at 7.30pm. Plus that two hour queue with elderly people and disabled people not even offered the chance to sit down anywhere...thank goodness it wasn't pouring with rain! I know they are offering the chance to watch a TV programme being filmed but it would be nice to feel that they appreciated the audience a bit more (lets face it, they couldn't film without one!) and all of our non-stop clapping and being askd to cheer and laugh at all the right moments. However, seeing Lucy and her family being filmed made it all worthwhile and despite being very achey and exhausted today, I'm glad I went. The show goes out tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5pm on ITV1, so make sure you tune in!

Today has been an amazing day...full of fun, laughter, emotion and friendship, and one I will remember for a very long time. Today was the day of the Women's Hydroactive Challenge in Hyde Park and I felt truly priviledged to be an honoury member of the Emily's Angels' team who were taking part in aid of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. I say honoury because I wasn't actually able to take part in the race (I'd decided that being carted off on a stretcher half way might just have detracted a wee bit from the attention that was quite rightly Emily's today!). I had decided however, that I would do my part by handing out organ donation leaflets to as many unsuspecting spectators in Hyde Park as possible, in the hopes that it would help Emily trade her old lungs in for a sparkly pink new pair as soon as possible. Having said that, her itsy bitsy current lungs need a real moment of appreciation for just what amazing work they performed today, but more about that later...

Anyway, I'd decided that as an Emily's Angel I should look the part and had spent the last week creating my "Rainbow Fairy" outfit (well fairies and angels are pretty similar). Emily actually commented that I looked like a giant sweetiebobble today, which I was incredibly pleased about, because anyone who knows Emily will understand that this is probably the highest compliment one can ever receive. I had spent lengthy amounts of effort this week on such complex tasks as sticking coloured stars on my shoes, customising fairy wings designed for 3-6 year old to fit me (well why on earth don't they extend the age range a bit, come on...don't all 32-year olds want to dress as fairies?!), ensuring that hair bobbles, tights and wands all co-ordinated and even managed to whizz up a pink and fluffy IV line cover last night in a moment of sheer genius.

When I got out of the car opposite the park I certainly attracted a few looks. May be multi-coloured fairies don't normally make their way out of Vauxhall Omega's on Sunday mornings in London. I was busy in the boot of the car ensuring that my pink and fluffy angel rucksack (with its own wings baby!) was well stocked with organ donation promo items when a man approached and asked what I was dressed up for. Actually he asked what "event" I was going to, as if I might not just be off to buy a Sunday paper and a pint of milk. I explained I was going to a fun run (which made me feel seriously sporty for a moment) and he said "Oh right! You look very...um....bright". I'm not sure if he was commenting on my attire or my mental faculties at that point, but seeing as I looked ever so slightly loopy, I sadly doubt it was the latter.

Isn't it how strange that when you are doing something for charity, all the normal rules of behaviour can go happily out the window? I mean, how many times normally would I take off down a busy main road in a capital city dressed like an 5 year old off to a fancy dress kids party having being overdosed on growth hormones? Even when my very short skirt proceeded to keep exposing my pink-and-gold striped bottom (my tights I should point out, I hadn't had it tattooed especially for the occasion...even charity has its' limits....) every time a gust of wind came along, it was all met with a very relaxed and jolly attitude on my part "Ooops! Isn't it windy eh? I've just shown my bum to everyone in Hyde park haha!". I noticed other people sucumming to this "charity loss of inhibition" during the run itself. There were women running for Breast Cancer just wearing their bras. Actually, that's not quite right...they had clothes on the bottom half (think it best I point that out) but just their bras on top. If they had been sauntering through Hyde park on any other Sunday dressed like that, they might just have been arrested.

For some reason, when you are doing something for charity you don't mind making a spectacle of yourself or approaching total strangers in order to make the event worthwhile. I managed to hand out loads of leaflets on organ donation (each one with a donor card inside) simply by launching myself into peoples' paths, smiling sweetly and saying "Can I give you a leaflet please?" whilst making it clear that actually refusing one was not an option. I even gate-crashed whole private picnics mid-conversation by just walking on in and trampling on their sandwiches. You can get away with a lot when you look like a psychedelic bumblebee and are linked to a charity. "OOOOOH I'm so sorry about the sarnies everyone! Never mind, how do you fancy donating your organs when you go? No need to pop your clogs right now, please finish your picnic first. Isn't it a lovely day!" and off I would swoop leaving stunned looks, silenced conversation, a slightly puzzled people clutching leaflets that they never realised they wanted, but which they might just read and fill in after realising that they weren't actually hallucinating......

When we arrived at Hyde Park, we realised we had come in the gates right beside where all the participants were standing, waiting to begin the run. Despite having been advised to avoid this area as it would be congested, it was actually so well organised that I was able to walk along the pavement beside the queue of those taking part, in the hopes that I might spot Emily and her team of 60 Angels. Considering that there were 20,000 people taking part I thought this would be a very unlikely possibility, although I knew that this would be the section to find them if possible, since they were in the "walking pack" towards the end of the huge sea of people. Suddenly I caught sight of a big area of pink on the opposite side of the road. There they were! A very pink and very eye-catching group ladies, all sporting pink wings, tutus, and lots of other angel-esque paraphenalia. After much mad waving and Brad's calling across to them, Emily's Mum noticed us and everyone looked over. But I still couldn't see the leading lady as she was sitting in her wheelchair. I was determined I was simply NOT moving until I had seen her and - with a lot of balancing of tiptoes and craning of both our necks - we managed it and much enthusiastic joint wand-waving and grinning commenced, whilst we communicated telepathic hoops of joy!

We then made our way to meet up with Andy, Lisa and Rachel by the Diana Memorial Fountain. By now my little fairyfeet were feeling a bit fed up and I was exhausted. We managed to get some lunch at a nearby cafe and then Brad and I decided to head over to find the finishing line as we were desperately hoping to catch Emily doing her amazing walk of the final stretch for which she had been training so hard. It's strange how when you are determined to do something, you can ignore your body's normal level of complaining. I've no idea how far it was to the finishing area but it seemed miles to me and I was struggling a bit by the end, but I was so determined I was going to be there that I just didn't care.

We wiggled our way through to get a perfect view of the walkers crossing the finishing line and were just wondering if we could possibly have missed the Angels when suddenly across the tannoy came the announcement "And here come Emily and Emily's Angels! Well done ladies and well done Emily! Emily is in fact waiting for a double lung transplant and she and her team have raised over £10,000!" I screamed "Oh it's them Brad!" and promptly threw everything I was holding at him and grabbed the camera (thereby scattering organ donation leaflets far and wide). I could see a few pink ladies heading towards us but I just couldn't see Emily. Then suddenly I saw that most of the sea of participants had stopped and there was an opening being created in the road, with people standing back in preparation. And suddenly THERE SHE WAS!!!!!!!!! My special, wonderful and totally amazing little friend, dressed head to toe in bright pink, with her oxygen mask on, purposefully and determinedly heading for that finishing line. To say it was emotional is an understatement. Everyone around us seemed to be cheering and shouts of "Emily! Emily" rang out. A moment later there she was, arms in the air, crossing that finishing line!!! I just felt really overcome by it all. One small human being showing the world that she wasn't going to be beaten, no matter how hard things were. Little Emily showing that if she had made her mind up to be the brightest and pinkest fairy in the world and walk that last stretch, then she jolly well would, even if it defined all medical odds in the process. All I wanted to do was run over and give her a massive hug, but I couldn't so I just waved madly and took loads of pictures. That image of Em walking that final stretch will stay with me forever. She really made us all proud.

After a good rest, some restorative chocolate cake and meeting up with my Mum, Dad and Daisy dog, we then made the way all the way back to the fountain to meet Clare, before heading over to where all the Emily's Angels team had gathered for a picnic. It was really wonderful to finally meet so many special friends who I have got to know online but never met before. There was a wonderful sense of camaraderie and friendship, the sun was shining, everyone was smiling and we were in a beautiful setting. Then came the main entertainment show....Behold! Andy dressed as a fairy in order to raise another £600 for the CF Trust! Andy was a real sport and it was a fantastic element to the after-show picnic. It has to be said he was very brave and really entered into the spirit of the occasion...and doesn't he make a beautiful angel too!!!

Finally it was time for everyone to make their way home. I'm sure that, like me, everyone left with memories of a very special day. I always feel there is an extended family relationship between people with CF and their families. We are linked by the fact that we all share a faulty gene, that we all follow complex treatment regimes and we all fight a daily battle against a very challenging illness. However, whilst being brought together by something very serious and often tragic, we were at the same time sharing a wonderful special day of sunshine and laughter, team spirit and friendship, determination and good humour. It was a day that I personally wouldn't have missed for the world.

Twelve hours after I set off for the hospital I am finally home! I can't wait for my transfer to Bristol CF centre because these long days to and from the hospital every month are really starting to get to me. It was made worse today by the fact that our car is in the garage and we got a courtesy car from them which is really old and grubby, without a CD player or A/C and with a pants radio...grrrw! When we got home there was a message from the mechanic on the answerphone saying "Can you ring us? I'm afraid we need to speak to you about your car" Hmmm...that's sounds good doesn't it?!

Anyway...back to today. I wasn't particularly impressed to be going up for my third lot of IV's in four months (definitely not a track record I intend to maintain) but I was actually really desperate to get on with them this time because I've been feeling really poo and breathless this last week. When I'm sitting in the X-Ray department thinking that if they don't hurry up I will resort to having to lie on the floor, its probably a good indication that I could really do with a spring clean. I also realised just how bad and out of sorts I felt when Brad and I got in the lift after the X ray and bloods and I stepped backwards and then got very irrated with Brad's foot for being there when, to be fair, it wasn't really his fault that his foot comes attatched to his leg.

Anyway, lung function was down somewhat, white blood count a bit raised, chest more crackly and sats lower than normal so the doctor said she agreed IV's were called for. The first attempt at getting the line in was somewhat comical. The needle took some getting in (apparently I have tough rhino skin....nice compliment) but once it was in she couldn't get it into the vein properly and proceeded to wrestle with my arm whilst shouting "It's running away, it's running away!!!!" Once I had established that she was referring to my vein and not my arm as running away it made a bit more sense, but I wasn't quite sure how a vein can run very far whilst its in an arm anyway. She then started to break out in a sweat whilst still shouting about it "running away" and seemed to be getting a bit steamed up about the whole thing, which confused me as I actually wan't in any pain (for a change) and as she was dealing with the underside of my arm I was at a loss as to what was actually going on down there. It reminded me of a particular Monty Python sketch and I imagined my veins being bombarded with coconuts whilst yelling "Run Away! Run Away!" to each other. In the end she gave got it in but the line wouldn't feed up, so she removed it, seeming to be pretty emotionally drained by the whole experience. She then tried the other arm and this time managed to find a vein that was happy to sit still rather than attempt the 100m sprint. She had also managed to find a vein no one had discovered before, tucked away under my forearm which meant that it went in very nicely and without much pain . I can't wait to get my port! Having now handled one and properly understood how they work, I can see that they really do make the whole process so much simpler.

Having arrived at Midday and the line having been sited by 4pm I was hopefully of leaving before too long. Big mistake. Pharmacy were working at their usual pace (i.e. slower than Mr Slow from Slow Land as a certain person's Mummy would say) so eventually it was decided to use ward stocks to get the process going in the hope that I would be home before Christmas. Then my vein decided that, seeing as someone had sneakily managed to slip a line in it whilst it was off having a cup of tea and a piece of Battenburg cake, it would make up for that afront by only allowing the drip to go in at a rate of 1ml a minute. As a result, an hour and a half later I was still lying there frowning at it. By then the whole ward was not only empty and most of the staff gone home, but I had also had the pleasure of watching the cleaners not only start but finish their rounds (and I must say I was impressed by standards on that front). The other drug was then put through (thankfully with a syringe this time) and by shortly after 6pm it was all done.

However the rules are that that you may not leave until an hour after the dose in case of anaphylactic shock, which is never a good thing to have on the M25. The last two nurses were supposed to be in the pub celebrating someones' Birthday by now and were actually discussing whether it they would be breaking with hospital policy if they took me to the pub with them for an hour! Whilst I quite liked the sound of that (especially if it meant I got free drinks on the NHS as part of my treatment) I said that I would actually like to go and see EmilyWemily who was on the ward below me and asked if I could do that whilst I waited my "hour". They seemed quite pleased by this plan of escape and after a couple of phonecalls I was told I could do providing I promised not to abscond once their backs were turned (would I?!!)

It was so fab to see Emily and have good old natter again. By the time we had finished the hour was almost up (well may be my watch was just a little fast *ahem*) and I finally left just before 7pm and got back home at 10 pm YAY! Better get on with preparing the next lot of IV's now but thought I'd update my blog since its been dormant for far far too long. I'm looking forward to a nice weekend of sleeping, although if I feel up to it I'll be going to a friend's 21st Birthday celebrations on a river cruise in Oxford on Sunday which should be fun...providing it manages not to rain!!! Toodle pip!

Morning has broken (as have my eardrums....)

There are a variety of sounds that can gently lull you into awareness after a night's sleep. A couple of generations ago it would have been the clinking of the milkman doing his rounds, the rattle of a newspaper or letters through the letterbox or the hissing of the Teasmade (if you don't know what one is don't ask as it will accentuate my age compared to yours and I may have to hit you....). These days there are still pleasant sounds to awaken to... birds singing, people walking by on their way to work, the beep of a mobile phone message from a friend.

But let me assure you of one thing....one sound that I can say with all certainty that you DON'T want to wake up to is what I was dragged kicking and screaming from my slumber from this morning. An octagenarian recorder ensemble. Or to be more precise, an octagenarian and tone-deaf recorder ensemble accompanied by an octagenarian percussionist with a rhythm bypass.

Now I sleep well believe you me. In fact I doubt that there is much I couldn't sleep through. May be that's why by the time I became aware of a very discordant sound reaching the recesses of my brain, Brad had decided there was some urgent work needing doing in the garden and the dog was hiding behind the sofa with her paws over her ears.

Now I'm not being discriminatory here but there are very few people who should be playing the recorder. Its not well-known as the most attractive sounding of all instruments but at least when its played badly by a five year old during their first school concert, there can be something endearing about the sound of someone puffing down a piece of warbling plastic. When its played by a contingent of 80-year OAP's whose hearing aids need new batteries, it really starts to lose any "Aaaah" factor.

And I really ought to know, living as I do in a terraced house that shares a joining wall with one such 80-year old recorder-playing athsmatic (we'll call her Doris). I've even grown accustomed to the steady stream of local elderly folk hobbling past the window on a daily basis and to partake of Doris' very special own brand of rudimentary recorder tuition. And I'm even starting to get used to the fact that she has taken it upon herself to set herself up as the local version of Jules Holland by recruiting a whole band of these geriatric disciples twice a week with whom to engage in regular jamming sessions next door. They make quite a sight congregating at Doris' house. There's Marge with the dicky heart, Ena whose just recovering from a stroke, Agnes with her steel hips, the list goes on. All presided proudly over by athsmatic Doris whose whistle-blowing is noticeable by the fact that she runs out of puff every few notes and takes a breather to recover before coming in again at the wrong place.

But this morning there was something different. Not only did we have the full recorder contingent doing a discordant rendition of something that sounded distinctly like "London's Burning" (at least it went round and round and round in a similar fashion) but we also now appeared to have the added bonus of a percussionist. Not just any old (pardon the pun)percusionsist but one who seemed to possess only one type of drum and proceeded to bang it repeatedly in a way that was so methodically out of synch with the music that I must say it must actually have indicated a certain level of talent. In fact it was so totally detatched from any hint of being part of the same piece of music that I actually thought it was someone doing building work nearby and banging something to start with.

I had to laugh the other day when Doris announced they were off to do a gig. Well actually she termed it a "recital". I have to admit (*blushes*) that I actually wished I knew where it was happening so I could go along and watch the audience's reactions. Apparently one piece they were doing was going to last 7 minutes. Mind you may be it would normally last 1 minute but they had to allow for incontinence breaks and a quick hip replacement during the pauses?

Oh dear I probably seem really ageist now...I'm not really, honest! In fact as you will see from my next blog entry (YES! I've got the next one in mind already!) I actually spent last night rescuing my lovely elderly neighbour (Max this time not Doris) after he had a nasty fall. I love old people. Just not when they play recorderd VERY badly with terrible drum accompaniments and wake me up. I tried to drift back to sleep after but it was so bad it kept infiltrating my brain and I ended up dreaming I was round at Doris' house and she was teaching me to play the electric drums via a tiny keypad whilst her elderly possy were mashing it up in the lounge around me. At least I think that was a dream......

Well I have been very slack at updating this blog since my first post and Emily has been nagging (ooops I mean encouraging!) me to update so here we go....

A few days after getting back from France I went up to the Brompton Hospital to start on IV's. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, it involves having a very fine tube inserted into a vein in my arm, which then remains in place for 2 weeks during which I administer diluted drugs straight into my bloodstream. I am on two antibiotics during this time and they are given three times a day.

It was really difficult getting the line in, as my veins are very scarred from 14 years of doing this to them! It took four exceptionally painful attempts at different sites to find a vein that the line could be inserted into. This took about an hour and during that time I think I crushed Brad's hand to pieces, but eventually it went in and it has thankfully lasted nearly 2 weeks without packing up, so at least I haven't had to go through putting another one in as well!

The side effects of the drugs have been really bad this time round. For the first 48 hours I had temperatures and had to lie down all the time because otherwise I fainted. After that the temperature dropped but I felt like I had flu for a week and could hardly do anything. The last few days have been a bit better, but I've still not been out really and I am soooo tired! Tonight I feel so tired I can hardly function...it feels like I'm too tired to breathe. I can't wait until I finish the course and remove the line tomorrow, and can start to feel better YAY!

The one day out I have managed in the last 2 weeks was to see Emily WOO HOO!!! We had such a fantastic day and I really enjoyed it. We decided to make a giant pink sugar mouse in the garden (looooong story!) and it involved a great deal of mess and laughter. Emily kept trying to insist she knew exactly what she was doing (when clearly she hadn't a clue) and the picture of us makes it look like we are escapees from a hospital (which actually is probably worryingly close to the truth given our totally mad behaviour....)

On Friday it was Daisy's 2nd Birthday!!! Daisy is my doggy for anyone who doesn't know, and she is simply the cutest and loveliest little thing in the world. She has the ability to make me smile even when I feel really sad, just by looking at me with her huge eyes and wagging that tail madly. We decided to spend the afternoon in the park with my Mum and Dad, and had a barbeque. It was such a lovely day..the sun shone all afternoon, Daisy played with her new football and lots of food and drink disappeared. My Mum (bless her) even made Daisy a Birthday cake out of her dog food and chicken...which disappeared in about 1 minute flat!

On Tuesday we are off to Barcelona for two nights to celebrate our anniversary (although its not until May 29th, so a little early). On the Wednesday night we are seeing Il Divo in concert there and I can't wait! It will be the second time we have seen them and I love them and their music to bits, so it will be an amazing night. We have booked a really nice hotel and I think it has a spa that you can pay to go into, so we are hoping to spend Wednesday afternoon there!

I have been studying in the garden today and I studied all afternoon yesterday too, but I'm still really behind on my course. It's so difficult to keep up because I'm supposed to put 12 hours work in a week, and what with feeling rubbish and sleeping loads and trying to do stuff for the campaign, it's nowhere near that! Anyway, I'm just going to keep at it and accept that if I can't get it finished this year, I'll just have to carry it on through next year. At the moment I'm doing a block all about the structure of planets and the Earth itself (including volcanoes, earthquakes etc) and I'm really enjoying it...much more than the last block which was all about climate change and nearly drove me insane!

Things are still going well with the campaign. Emily appeared on ITN lunchtime news on Thursday and was an absolute star! The feature was about how 41% of families refuse consent for their loved ones' organs to be donated and about how the UK has one of the lowest rates of organ donation in Western Europe. I'm so desperate for Emily to get her transplant. Every time the phone rings late at night I think it might be a phonecall to say she has been called. Knowing that Emily needs this transplant so much is what spurs me on to keep doing all we can with the campaign.

Well I think that's about it for this update. I am definitely going to post more often as it takes ages to go through 3 weeks worth of news! Hopefully next time I'll be able to write all about a lovely time in Barcelona. Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! xxxxxxxxxxxxxx