Please – Never again!

I have been tagged by Scarlet “to write a list of once in a life time experiences that I wouldn't like to ever, ever experience ever again... ever. “

1 Sitting in Mrs Chadwick’s class – aged five or six – staring at the brown oily canvas covers of the atlas which was being splashed by tears as it became obvious ( I was wearing a pale green dress with frills) that the syrup of figs my mother had given me the night before was working.

2 Telling my husband of 28 years that I was leaving. I’m eternally grateful that we managed the whole divorce without acrimony and with some humour. My solicitor told me the main bones of contention were usually money and the children . Our children had left home and I didn’t want any money.

3. Running out of petrol very late at night after ceiling painting at the club - paint spattered and in scruffy clothes and being treated like a drop out by a police man.

4. The day of ‘ the big stuff’ on a climbing course in Snowdonia - on the end of a rope on a traverse over a 300’ drop when the only way was up.

5 Getting acute Delhi Belly in Jaipur – just wanting to die and knowing I was far from an airport and a long wearisome flight from home.

6. When no-one could find the poison cupboard keys in theatre and it was discovered that I had locked them in the poison cupboard which the engineer had forced open.

7 Trying to keep a straight face in a tragedy where I was playing the lead and an elderly man in the front row farted very loudly. I kept my face straight but the eyes gave me away.

8 Having to miss my mother’s funeral in Portugal and my brother’s in the north ( they died within ten days of each other) with my leg in plaster. Months later with my family, we scattered their ashes in a favourite spot of theirs – a rocky hillock overlooking Ennerdale Lake where my mother’s father played as a lad.