The story of MY LIFE 

Part One 

(1941 – present)

I was born during an air raid when the house next door was being bombed.  My father was a doctor who worked for the university. My mother was a nurse who was  an auxiliary who as kept busy serving tea to the airgun crew during the war.My earliest memory was that of a small boy running round the table in the dining room, when I tripped over the electric kettle lead, which had just come to the boil, and received burns to my body  which necessitated a visit to casualty!

I was a very slow learner as a child, and didn’t talk until I was four, when I amused my mother by saying  “Do not say Aha, say Yes John!” which were my first words.

As the first school I attended was called Denham Green, and was a preparatory school for Edinburgh Academy, where I moved to at the age of six, and stayed until I was eight, when my parents sent me to Wester Elchies, the bottom of a chain of three the most important one being Gordonstoun.  These schools were in Nairnshire, on the river   Spey.  I had a very checkered history at this school, having to march around the front of the school for three quarters of an hour every Saturday morning.  That was for the first three misdemeanours of the week, the rest being served by copying out of a book, a quarter of an hour for every bad point gained during the previous week.  I felt that this was counter productive, as, on the rare occasion when I behaved myself, I got really bored on Saturdays, and determined  to make up for it the next time.   I went through one period in which I was determined to behave myself, and try and gain promotion to a prefect, but on completing the required time of good behaviour, I still wasn’t promoted, so I went back to my old ways again.

One of the things that a sticks out in my memory from this time was that I was more at home chopping wood for the fire than ever I was in the classroom!

It was while I was at this school that I knitted my first sleeveless jersey, (my mother taught me to knit when I was eight)  and I was asked to go up in front of the school and be congratulated for making it!   One of the most boring things from this period of my life was the production of a puppet show of Peter and the Wolf EVERY year, the same old thing was trotted out for Halloween night when we used to get  together with the middle school, Aberlour House, and when you had seen it once, in the opinion of most of us, that, should have been  that.

I attended the above school for three years, when my parents came to he conclusion that they were wasting their money, and I left.   This left us with the dilemma of what should they do with me.  I could perhaps attend the local council school, or I could go to a school in the Perthshire Highlands, in Glen Lyon, near where my Dad had his country cottage.  I found this period of my life very trying as I had been brought up to be a snob, and to think of my position in life as being more important than the commoners around me.  This thinking was to bug my early life, and make things very difficult for me.

Having settled in during the first term, I made it very hard work for Mrs Gillespie, the school teacher with whom I was lodging, but I gradually mellowed, and stayed on over the summer holidays, when a t1ransformation took place in my life, and I felt  accepted for who I was.  Mr Gillespie was made my tutor, and I stuck in over the next eighteen months, and also kept the fires going with wood which I brought down from the forest above where we were staying.

At the end of this period of time, my father took me away from the Gillespie’s, and I  revolted on being sent to Rudolf Stiener school in Edinburgh.  I was determined to go back to the Gillespie’s with whom I had been getting on very well, and the outcome of this was that I was asked to leave after having stuck it for two terms.

The story of MY LIFE - Part Two

There followed a period in which I was most unhappy, when I was sent down to a childrens home in Torcross, Devon, where I was to stay for three months.   The one thing I did like about my stay there was that I went horse riding every week.  One of my worst memories of that time was of being shut in my room for three days because I didn’t know the meaning of a word.   I think it was vivacious, which I now know means to look happy!  During this stay in Devon, in order to get me over my fear of snakes, the lady in charge of the children’s home, who was called Ginny  Vigers, arranged for me to have a pet grass snake, which I kept in my room.  I must admit to never liking the poor animal, and as soon as I got back to Scotland, I let it go in the garden.  Ginny had a batman who was devoted to her, and had been with her since she served in the 1939 45 war.

Having gone back to Scotland, my parents deliberated as to what to do with me, and as I said that I wanted to go back to the Gillespies, I was sent there.  This takes me up to the age of fourteen. 

Shortly after that I started to work at the farm a mile up the road, and went there before and after school, for eighteen months until I was sixteen.  The  farmer was called Mr Kenneth MacCall, and had served in the army before becoming a farmer,and he used to wear a kilt as normal everyday dress.  I enjoyed my life at  this stage, and would gladly have stayed there, but it was not to be,  My Dad wanted me to go and stay in Kenya, with my uncle and aunt, who was his sister, as they were childless, and maybe I could make a life for myself out there.  I must admit I did go with a bad grace, as my heart was really in the first farm where I was sure I would have preferred to stay, but I did what I was told and went to Africa.   

Having arrived in Kenya, I went to stay on a farm on Mount Elgon, twenty one miles from a  town called Kitale, which was on  the Kenya  / Uganda border.  I learnt to speak some Swahili, the  communal language spoken by all the different  tribes on the farm, where there were twenty one different  languages spoken.  My Uncle Guy was a Boer farmer, who believed in using the whip, and gave two Africans a severe beating in the six week period I knew him, one for beating his wife, and the other for saying that he would be back on a certain day, a Friday, and not turning up till the Tuesday!  On both occasions he had other Africans hold the culprit down while he administered “justice”.  I believe this led to a curse being  put upon the farm, as when I went out for a walk one afternoon I met a witch doctor and his cronies dancing and chanting on our farm road.  My uncle, who had gone on holiday to South Africa, became over jealous with the gin, and was seldom sober after that.  In fact that is what precipated my leaving Africa, as my aunt had to go down to Mombasa, where my uncle was in a drunken stupor, and bail him out.

After that I went to work for a six week period, picking potatoes for the Co-op who had a few farms in the vicinity of Edinburgh… 

This led on to a job working at a dairy farm in New Cumnock, Ayrshire, where I got the sack for telling the bosses brother to “go to hell” after three months working there.  I had to muck out all the dairy cows and young stock before breakfast every morning, and did not do it quick enough to keep the farmer happy.  They had a herd of pedigree Ayrshire cattle and used to breed bulls.  The main stud bull was a ferocious creature, who was kept  in a special pen by himself, and when we were cleaning this out  the bull would knock at the door of the pen with his horns, in an attempt to  get to us.   One time a young bull got out of his pen, and I was asked to go and get him in again, the bull charged us and I took to my heels, but the bosses brother, who was an experienced stockman, stood his ground, and so saved the day.  Motto, Never  run from danger, always face it head on!

That takes me up to the time I was sixteen.

The next summer and autumn was spent at work on a farm on Iona.  It was the biggest farm on  the island, and I was not very happy there.   The thing I liked most about the job was that it involved working with horses, a couple of Clydesdales.  Gary was the younger of the two horses, who did most of the work, and Betty helped out when we needed to use two horses, in jobs such as ploughing and reaping.  I was not very well treated on this farm, as I was kept in a small shed outside, and not allowed in the house.  My food was passed out to me and I had to shift for myself as best I could.  I even had to go to the toilet outside, and didn’t even have any toilet paper to use.

I was not paid for the whole time I was there, and I never did get paid from that job.  Being on an island I had no other choice, and I did not want to go home in disgrace again.   I stuck this job from March till Christmas, when I went home, and then my Dad pulled some strings and got me into agricultural college, in Edinburgh, where I was for a term.

  In the Spring of that year, I would be seventeen at that time, I went to work on a very large sheep farm in the Argyllshire Highlands.  This farm was an extremely rough one, and I was not really happy there.  We had to gather sheep from about twenty square miles, and once when I was miles from the farmhouse, I got within a few feet of a deer calf suckling a hind.  It just stood and looked at this strange animal, me, not many of them seen thereabouts!   One problem that I had at this time was of water in my scrotum, which the shepherds tried to remedy one wet day by turning me upside down and pretending to operate on me with a knife!   I was  to get this problem rectified when I returned to Edinburgh.   One of the worst things about this farm was that we had the same dinner every day.   Every autumn a few of the most ancient sheep were singled out and fattened for home consumption, and the ones left alive in the Spring were salted and hung up in the kitchen for our daily consumption as salted mutton.  It didn’t taste very nice, but it was that or nothing!  I had an old dog which used to go round from carcase to carcase gorging itself on dead sheep.   It only “worked” for me once, when it went round to get a sheep from the top of a cliff, and the poor animal got such a freight that it jumped to its death, bouncing on rocky outcrops till it finally came to rest many feet below.

In the autumn of that year I went back to the agricultural college in Edinburgh, where I stayed for the next six months. 

My next job was on a farm on the Ayrshire / Renfrewshire border, called Mid Floak,  a mixed farm, which proved a very rough place to work.  There was the boss, Mr Meikle, and his sons Gavin and Thomas.  Gavin had left school, and helped me work on the farm, and Thomas was a twelve year old, but an expert on the tractor.  He used to do a lot of the more technical driving jobs, and was seldom off the tractor when he was at home,   This farm had a herd of milking cows, and another of beef cows, a flock of sheep and about one thousand battery hens.  These latter were kept in appalling conditions, the water troughs were seldom cleaned out and quite often kept so many to a cage that they  didn’t have room to move.  I had it out with Mr Meikle at one time pointing out that he would get more eggs from his hens if only they were kept a bit cleaner.  He said that he would pay me a bonus if I could get more eggs out of the hens, so I got to work and made a spotless job of cleaning the pens, and water troughs, with the result that the number of eggs doubled, but at the end of the time the boss got angry with me because I was not out in the fields working as I should have been!   We worked very long hours on that farm, starting at six and finishing about eight o’clock in the evening.  We had such heavy work to do that when I went home for a weekend I used to sleep the whole time and only woke up when it was time to go back to work.  My hands were continually red raw, and cracked, so much so that I could not open them fully.  This farm had a windmill for suppling the water, and when there was no wind I used to have to pump the water manually, which took over half an hour a time, on top of all the other work we had to do.  One of the heaviest jobs that I have ever had  to do was on this farm.   We had a green crop loader which was pulled behind a tractor and trailer and I had to stand on the trailer and stack the green grass as it came up the loader, we would be going along about seven miles an hour, bumping all over the place, and I had a job to keep my balance.   Once loaded we had to take it to the silage pit and off load it by hand.  The hill on this farm was very boggy, and we never went there without getting stuck in the mud.  It was so bad that one time the boss said to Thomas that he was to drive the tractor towards him.   They were only ten yards apart.  Having got half way the tractor got stuck again, right up to its axles! 

I kept this job for eighteen months, when my father  who had been holidaying up in Shetland, arranged to buy a croft for me on the South Mainland at a place called Maywick, which was some eighteen miles south of the capital, Lerwick.   It was about forty  acres of very steep land, and had two houses and some outbuildings.  There were two other occupied houses in the hamlet  one, the Gilbertsons  were and old crofting lady called Betty, her daughter and daughters children, the husband was never at home as he was a sailor and travelled the world.  Towards the end of my stay there he was working on the oil prospecting boats in the north sea.  The other house was occupied by two elderly ladies, Minnie Sinclair and Jessie Manson  Jessie was a captains widow, who had travelled quite a lot with him, and Minnie was a simple soul who had rarely been as far as Lerwick   The ladies here spent a lot  of their time knitting on machines, and finishing the garments by hand.   I took to this, making a lot of gloves, but not very well, and was the bane of  the ladies (who were my neighbours) life with  trying to help me get them ready for sale.   It was not till later on that I started making jerseys, and I found that this suited me better.   The first year I was there we got some pedigree Shetland sheep, five, and this made up the total of  my flock..   I also applied to my uncle in Shropshire for a cow, and he sent me a pedigree dairy shorthorn, called Alveley Bright Eyes. This was to prove a great mistake, as the whole of the Shetland period was, as I could never get it to keep calf, and it was a disaster.   I would have been a lot better to have got one of the native cows, at least  it would have been  more at home in that situation.

On one or two of the summers I worked in a fish factory which was in Lerwick the capital town in Shetland doing  night shifts from ten in the evening till six the next morning, working on my croft during the day, and this made me very tired.  We were handling herring normally about four hundred boxes a night.  I was given the job of distributing the fish once it was washed to a row of machines which deboned the fish, and then it  was wrapped and frozen in readiness for being sent away to the market.  On occasion  we used to make them into kippers, for which another machine was used which used to take the guts out, but leave the bones in, then they were put in a large tank full of vegetable fat in liquid form, then hung  up in trolleys and put into a smoke chamber to smoke for four and a  half  hours.

At one time I took about twelve acres in out of the common grazing which was at the top of my hill.  This meant carrying about four hundred and fifty  fencing  posts nineteen strainers nineteen rolls of plain fencing wire, five rolls of barb wire, and five ten foot wooden gates on my back up to the top of a five hundred foot   high  hill, it remains a memorial to my strength as a young man,  I got the idea from a book I had been reading which told of Nepalese who carried heavy loads over mountainous terrain and so if  they could do it, so could I.!

The story of MY LIFE - Part Three

Things were not working out for me in Shetland, and it was obvious to everybody that I could never make my living on the land I had at that time, and so, having struggled with it for three  years. I finally gave it up and returned to Scotland, where I soon got a job working on a farm in Dumfriesshire.  This was a mixed farm, with a dairy herd of Ayrshires, and a beef herd of Shorthorns, They also kept  turkeys for the  Christmas market.  I kept this job for about  six months, when I decided to get  a job nearer home, so applied for a dairymans job at Haddington East  Lothian, which was about twenty  miles from home.  This proved a complete disaster, as I didn’t really have a clue and things went from bad to worse.  I stuck it out  for three months, and then applied for a pigmans job which was down near Chester.  This also proved a mistake, and I got the sack in three weeks from starting.  I felt that I had had enough of the farming life, and applied for a room in the YMCA in Chester, where I was to stay for the next six years.  I then applied for and got  a job as a bin man with the Cheshire county council, where I lasted for another six weeks, before I decided  to go back to farming, working  in a pig farm in Barrow, which was six miles from Chester.  I stuck this for a few months, during which time I lived in the YMCA where there were two Christian lads staying.  These lads Maurice Mankelow and Robert Thompson were involved in a group which did coffee bar evangelism in a local Baptist church, and so I went along   with them, and eventually responded to the Christian message.  As you can tell from the above, I was not doing much good with my life, and really needed to make a new start, I gave my life  to Jesus, and have not  looked  back on that  decision since.

One of the leaders of  the coffee bar evangelism group was a  landscape gardener called Ian McKenzie who offered me a job working for   him.  I had  this job for eighteen months, and found it  more to my liking, although I did not like the problem of having to work miles from home and having to miss my meals at the YMCA, as I did not  get home until after the kitchen staff  had finished work.  I then took a job working with the Chester Parks department, and eventually was given a job as a bowling green keeper.   This job meant that I could now go back to the YM in plenty of time for my dinner, and although I got bored stiff with  looking after the bowling green, at least I was working on my own.   I then started a correspondence course in gardening, and got my certificate of gardening, which was one step in  the right   direction.   I then applied for and got a place in  the Welsh college of Horticulture where I worked for my National Certificate in Horticulture. for which I got a pass.

Now to go back a few years, to the time of my conversion..   After having given my life to Jesus, I got very interested in missionary work as a prayer supporter, and this was to lead on to great things. I was especially interested in the work of    the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship, now known as Interserve.  I used to go to the annual conference which was held at Swanwick in Derbyshire.  This is where I first saw my wife, although  I did not speak to  her  there.   She was to go out to Nepal as a missionary, but, unfortunately her health broke down, and she had doctors orders to come home after having stayed  there  for three months.

It was on a November day  that they  held a missionary meeting at St Georges crypt in Leeds, and I went to it from Chester.  It meant catching the quarter to seven train to Leeds, and I got through by eleven o’clock.. for a meeting at two.. I also had a difficult journey back not arriving in Chester until after eleven at night, but I knew  that I was meant to go in the divine providence of things, and I met and first got to know Maureen then.   Coming  home on the train afterwards I dedicated myself to supporting  Maureen by prayer, and this led to a bond between us.

After I had finished at college I went to stay with Maureen in Coventry, having married her as soon as I stopped at college as she had her own flat in Coventry.    This was a really grotty place and on occasion we would come out to see chip paper blowing around in the wind all over the place.

We stayed at the flat (26, Culworth Court) for the first six month and then moved to our first house which we bought from a member of the church we attended, (Meredith Road Baptist’s).  It was a terraced house, 62, Shakespeare Street, and I got a job with Coventry  City Parks.   It was here where our three children were born.

I stayed with  the Parks department for the next three years, getting more and more fed up with the bonus system that necessitated filling out pages of details of what I had been doing during the day and  making sure that it didn’t go over 75 minutes an hour which was an acceptable level of work, it was during the very  hot summer of 1976 that I finally got so fed up with the system that I started looking seriously for another job.  A tractor had been sent to finish off the job I was doing three times ( grass hooking) and I thought that it was a bit much as there was not a lot of work to do, every thing being burnt  up by the sun.

I started my next job on the fifteenth of September 1976, and was to work there for the next fifteen years, until I was 50.  It was working in a stationary warehouse for the City  Council, and although I did find  that I was not really suited to it I managed to  hold it down by the skin of my  teeth. It  was within easy cycling distance from home and involved working week and week about as a driver delivering stationary goods to the council schools and colleges, and working inside putting up orders for them.

During this time my mother died and left me a legacy of twenty nine thousand pounds which enabled us to look for a bigger house in Kenilworth a town about five or six miles south of Coventry so we went house hunting and found a beautiful four bedroomed terrace house which was within very easy reach of all aminities, especially church but Maureen took an instant dislike to it.   To me it was the ideal house, apart from the distance from work which was some five or six miles away at one end of the Warwick by-pass, but  it was an easy bike ride which took me forty minutes on my push cycle.   The management didnt like me going that way to work and I was told not to use the motorway as it was too dangerous so I tried to use the bus but having tried it for a week I found it was hopeless and reverted to the bike until I retired.  On reflection it would have been a lot better if my sisters  had taken my share of the legacy as I had asked   them to before it came to me, and then we would have stayed in Coventry, which  would have been a good thing as we both liked the Shakespeare house,  Maureen often wishes she was back in it, and it would have suited me well.  As it was we were living in a house which she didn't like and we lived there for fifteen years until just after I retired.  When I retired she really stuck her heels in and forced us to sell up, and we came up to Yorkshire to live.    During my last working year Ruth took her on a holiday to Yorkshire to sus out the area and they came home full of enthusiam I must admit that I have never given up thinking that we made a mistake coming up here when we could have remained in Regency Drive which in my opinion was tailor made for us!!!

 During my stay at Kenilworth I took up canoeing, starting with racing k 1's starting in division 9 and being promoted twice, ending in division 7, then I went on to open canoes coming in second in a 27 mile race on the river Severn, finishing in a time of four  hours fifty five minutes.  The river was full  having  had 24 hours solid  rain just before  the start.    I started a annual event for guide dogs for the blind which was a eighteen mile paddle from Leamington to Stratford which  I ran for eleven  years and managed to send a cheque for over two thousand pounds every year bar one  or two.   I got a Jack Russell puppy from NCDL and took him with me when I was on the water, and got a plaque made with the words DOGGY PADDLE  JOHN on it, so doggy (Charlie) paddle, and JOHN were in the boat and  on the boat!!!!   Also when I went racing I would take Charlie along as my  second paddler, and at the end  of this I was told that it wasn't allowed.   I replied that it would be a good question to ask at a Christmas party quiz " What was strange about paddler "C Verney"  Answer  "He was a dog"!!!!!!    I then went on to canoe sailing and joined the Open Canoe Sailing Club who held meets once a month at various venues up and down the country, and learnt to sail.  There is a hard core of professionals in the group and one has to admire how perfect these people are in handling their equipment, I felt very  second class as no matter what I do it always looks very amature; and no matter what I do I seem to be bugged with this.  I also joined the canoe camping club, and David and I went on various weekends away doing the Kennett and Avon canal. parts of the river Severn above Worcester,  the Lancastershire canal, and Maureen and I went on various weekends away with the Dandy club, after I had bought myself a new Dandy trailer tent.   We went away to meets such as the Hereford race course, where we were entertained by a fantastic display of percision kite flying which had to be seen to be believed!!!!    The trouble with that type of trailer tent was that it really needed two people to put it up, and the main bars were 6 feet  long which got bent out of shape if you only lifted one side at a time.  I should have bought a Conway which is a lot easier for one person to erect or in other words, when Maureen was with me I should                 have made more use of her, but I am such  a bull headed chap that it was not until I was taken ill with Parkinsons that I realised what a jewel I had in her!!!!  I now need to rely much more on her, and I would not like to be without her!!!

Having reached the age of fifty, I qualified for early retirement, and so I started to thnk about earning my own living as a    self employed window cleaner, and built up a sizable business by going round the houses near where I lived, and became well known in Kenilworth.   I could not get on with using a blade, and found the best way of doing it was to use two clothes of  hessian, commonly known as scrim in the trade.   This was a lot slower but I felt it was a lot cleaner except when it was sunny and warm or the other extreme too cold and frosty, I just couldn't get it right in those conditions.    I started at half past seven in the morning, took an hour off for lunch and finished by four o'clock and then I went out to  collect money every evening..  This occupied all my time up till Christmas time 2002 when I took some time off to help David with  a scheme of his which was to produce music CD's to sell, but as with everything else, it was destined to fail.  When I eventually got back to work I found I had lost my nerve, and I had lost my drive to get through my work.   My head was singing louder than ever, which was caused by the tinitus which I have been suffering with  for many years, hence the name Meniers ( which  it is known by in medical circles) is certainly lived up to in reality!!!   To help me pass the time I joined up with The Red Cross who had a shop in Kenilworth.  The work was a bit mundane, and it involved sorting and steaming clothes and putting them on trolley  racks ready  for  taking  into the shop for the public's perusal.   This kept me going until we went up  to Yorkshire which was on the 7th of June 2002.  During this time I saw various experts who were not very helpful, and were very baffled as to what was wrong with me, but whatever it was it was NOT Parkinsons, as my limbs were not trembling uncontrolably, as they  would if it was.  It was not until we came  to  Yorkshire and I went to see Dr Mamood, that he gave me a thorough examination lasting three quarters of an hour, at the end of which  he told me to see him next time at ward three in a few weeks time.    When I went there he told me that he wanted me to go in as a patient for a few days, I replied that as it would mean leaving Maureen who was blind to look after herself and the dogs, I could not go, but                                                                                       the Lord had other  ideas, as a short time after this I collapsed in the kitchen, and Alistair, who was with me in the house, called for an ambulance which took me into Goole hospital where the doctor who saw me said he wanted me to go  into Ward 3 for a few days and after consulting Maureen, she agreed with the doctor and I was admitted into the ward. where I spent the next five weeks.  This was probably a fortnight longer than I would  have needed as Dr Mamood went away for a fortnight's holiday, and I wish I had the forsight to get myself insurance to cover a stay in hospital.

During my stay in hospital David took over looking after Mum and the dogs so this took a weight off my mind.

As soon as Dr Mamood got  back from his holiday he arranged for me to go down to Addenbrook's hospital in Cambridge for a Pet scan , which is the most  up to date scanning machine which scans the patients brain and this showed conclusively that I DID have Parkinsons disease. Since then I have slowed down a lot especially in my eating and typing which has meant that my  writing has gone to the wall, and instead of being first to finish at meal times I take twice as long as anyone else to finish my meals.  My hand writing has also gone to the dogs and I am unable  to read my own writing and I am unable to  hold a conversation with any one.  When I try to speak the stock answer is "I can't understand you, John" and that is as far as it goes.

After being in Yorkshire for about three years Maureen and the children decided that they preferred to stay                                     in  Warwickshire and both boys got accomodation from MIND and went to stay in Stratford-upon-Avon where David seems quite settled but Ali still went on pining for Coventry and at the time of writing, is awaiting word about a room in a shared    house with a friend he had known for some time. ( Ali was given a flat - 19 Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry, in early  September 2007)  We put the house on the market again and had a lot of difficulty in selling it, probably owing to the large polytunnel I had put in the back garden after my stay in hospital, but eventually our home help's daughter, Keeley and Simon Hall approached us and we agreed to sell  it privately             

The polytunnel was nearing the end of its useful life and was looking a bit tatty.  I  have had a lot  of difficulty in getting good results from it, and it was not until this year  that I managed to get good results from it, largely owing to a change of production methods, in that I started to use trays and capillary matting so I could water the plants from the bottom instead of the top which was overwhelming the newly pricked plants and so I was loosing the majority of the work I was doing,    With watering from the bottom I am able to obtain professional results and it is beginning to look really good

Now , to go back to when I came to Yorkshire, we bought a very nice bungalow in a village called Hook, which had a run down garden which gave me a challenge to use my horticultural skills, which I had learnt at college.  There was a very nice bush in next doors garden which I   took some cuttings off, and got them going over the next winter.   The doctors surgery had a nice little hebe which  I was able to get cuttngs off, so I put a small ornamental hedge in the front garden, and   there was a  golden privet sticking through next doors fence, which I also succeeded with, and Maureen was taken very ill with ruptured bowel which meant she had to go into Scunthorpe hospital for a colostomy during which time she was taken so ill that she had to go into intensive care, the doctor told us that there was a fifty/fifty chance of her pulling through).      There was a very thriving cotoneaster in the  hospital car park, which I took cuttings from, and these really surprised me in rooting in twelve days. I also sent away  for some chrsyanth cuttings   This gave me a basic stock with which to get going, and with wallflowers which I grew from seed I started to attend table top sales which  were held in the local village halls, but except for this year, without much success. Not having a car means that I have to go to church locally, and so I have become better known locally, and this has repercussions when it comes  to table top sales.  I do hope that I         will be able to join in with table top sales within my local community, to  that end I am building up my stock of house plants.

When I came up to  Yorkshire I used to drive a Seat Ibiza car, but I really wanted a Robin Reliant, which, in my opinion has far more character than any of the others, so I swopped it, and drove it quite happily until after the morning service at church one Sunday, on coming out of a side street beside church, it  was hit  on the side by a passing  car which failed to stop, and  the damage was so great that it had to be written off.  I  must admit that I am very thankful to the Lord that it was hit at that point and not a foot or two further back as if it had been I would not be here to tell the tale!!!  We had to get a coursity car, and this proved to be a brand new Nissan Micra.    I liked the car, and on reading the local paper, I noticed an advert for a new one offered with £1,000 off it, so  I jumped at the chance of getting it while the offer lasted.  as time went on this was to prove a mistake as it spent most of it life when I had parked on my drive and out of action, I eventually sold it for half what I had  paid for it, to a young girl from Hull, who had just passed her A levels and was about to go to Southampton university as a phsiotherapy student.  She spent the whole of her first years grant money on it.   I felt  very sorry for her as the poor girl wouldn't have realised what a millstone she was putting round her neck at the beginning of her adult life, she would never get over it.    I was very thankful to give the car up as my driving was getting very errattic, and I was getting involved in too many scrapes.     I have never been good at  taking things in quickly, and it is one of the most important things to be able to do when driving.    The main trouble with me is that my head never stops ringing and  it feels as though it is under water with constant high pressure blowing its top all of the time it is really unbearable.