Let's see if anyone still reads this!

Wow... Long time no blog and A LOT has happened! Fortunately, I doubt anyone still reads this so I can sort of start anew and if I bother updating more often then maybe I'll mention to people that I'm writing again.

(I figure anyone who knows me is aware of the changes in my life, like returning to England, getting engaged etc... so I shan't bother with a long life update, although I may return to those things later on)

As a way to get re-immersed in the blog-o-sphere, I'm filching something of a blog one of the girls from my Church writes, which is "30 days of blogging". Now, I doubt I'll write these on consecutive days because I am running around A LOT in the next couple of weeks, but I'll endeavour to write one on every evening that I'm home in my flat. This is what's coming :

Day 01 — Your favorite song
Day 02 — Your favorite movie
Day 03 — Your favorite television program
Day 04 — Your favorite book
Day 05 — Your favorite quote
Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 — A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 — A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 — A photo you took
Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 — A fictional book
Day 14 — A non-fictional book
Day 15 — A fanfic
Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 — A talent of yours
Day 20 — A hobby of yours
Day 21 — A recipe
Day 22 — A website
Day 23 — A YouTube video
Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 — Your day, in great detail
Day 26 — Your week, in great detail
Day 27 — This month, in great detail
Day 28 — This year, in great detail
Day 29 — Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy

Could be dull, could be interesting. But would you really be reading this if you weren't kind of bored already?

Cat xxxxxxxxxx

Adventures galore

So, as probably most people who read this already know, I had a little *incident* a couple of weeks ago. Got a little bit stabbed while trying to avoid football riots. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say!

The way it happened was something like this...

I’d been out to visit a family in a nearby village (well, sort of near, just over an hour’s drive on a good day) and it was wonderful! It’s the rainy season so there’s green everywhere and we had a lovely time, eating, siesta-ing, and chatting. The problems began on the way home... We knew that there was a football match that evening and actually went back a little late so that we’d avoid the crowds. That was the plan. But the best laid plans and all... What we hadn’t realised was that it was a very important football match, one of those make-or-break ones. And it was a break. We lost and that caused some, ahem, consternation! We were on a Diague Ndiaye, which is a public transport kind of like a car rapide but for longer distances (see a post aaaaages ago about transport systems). Anyway, this was fun; I was having a nice chat about how fast I can text with one hand and not looking at the phone, with the guy next to me and ignoring comments from my two companions about the destination of the afore-mentioned texts. We’d reached the outskirts of Dakar when we started to notice large crowds of people, wearing footballs shirts, pouring out of the city. This was the first sign that things might be a bit different to normal. The second sign was when traffic going in slowed to a halt and we realised that there were no vehicles coming out! The third, and arguably most worrying sign was when a couple of truckloads of riot police zoomed past us on the other side of the road and our Diague Ndiaye driver asked us all to get off as we weren’t moving and I suppose he wanted to go home! We could easily sympathise with that.

So, there we were, unsure as to how far we were from home, with no clear way of getting there. At night, with football rioters possibly heading our way. It wasn’t the best situation to find ourselves in, to say the least. We decided to get off the main road in an effort to avoid large crowds, as we’re always told to, and wandered around a bit until we were fairly sure that this wasn’t a terribly safe option either. We did meet some lovely people who told confirmed this – ‘it is not safe for you here’ is a pretty direct translation of what they said to me. So, we were very glad when a taxi appeared out of the night. We hopped in and he headed off to find a different way into the city as that one was blocked. We were rather relieved at this turn of events – heading away from the trouble and in a car rather than on foot. We all breathed a sigh of relief and turned our thoughts homewards.

Alas! We relaxed too soon. We’d just reached the other main road into the city when traffic again slowed to a standstill. This is fairly standard for trying to get into Dakar of an evening so we weren’t too worried –it was mostly cars etc now rather than crowds of disappointed football fans, what could possibly go wrong? Well, someone could yank open the back door of the taxi and try to take my friend’s handbag. And did. I looked around from the other side of the back seat and saw her pulling away from some random guy so I leaned over to help push him off, realising that he had a knife as it slid into my arm! Fortunately, our taxi driver then noticed the commotion, looked around and leapt into knight in shining armour mode! He exited the taxi in one fluid motion, grabbing the baseball bat he had concealed down the side of his seat and chased off our attacker – what a hero! We locked ourselves in (admittedly something we should have done before and normally remember) and headed home to put antiseptic on our wounds! Luckily, the knife, if it even was a real one, was terribly blunt and we each escaped with two tiny puncture wounds which we antisepticked with three different kinds of ointment and went on to eat the pizza and chocolate thoughtfully provided by our wonderful Acting Director. All’s well that ends well they say, and we have amazed and confounded many people by how remarkably unfazed we were by the whole experience. My lasting feeling is one of relief that it wasn’t worse and slight disappointment that I’m not even going to have a scar! Most people are very sympathetic about the whole thing, in a manner most amusing to us as they generally seem more traumatised than we do, but there are the odd few who see our wounds and say ‘is that it?!’ Someone described mine as ‘pathetic’. And I have to admit, I quite agree. I’ve had worse injuries from mosquitoes. As proof, here’s a little challenge for you! Which of these pictures do you think is the real stab wound...?

Okay, the bruise may have given it away. ‘Twas the second one. And this is what it SHOULD have looked like (thanks to some wonderful photoshopping from the talented Rachel).

Impressive, huh? No prizes for guessing which one I’m going to show my grandkids when I’m telling them stories of my adventurous life!

Plumbing

Most of my life I have been blessed with what my Dad calls 'brawn' in various shapes and sizes; that is, people - usually men, who come charging to my rescue whenever I'm faced with an unpleasant situation such as heavy bags and steep stairs at train stations, various DIY/house upkeep tasks, and of course car stuff such as oil and water checking. Now, to satisfy all the feminists reading this I know I can do all these things myself, but frankly I prefer not to have to. Unfortunately as most people are aware I currently live in Africa and most of the people I might usually call upon to perform such tasks are either on furlough or live on a different continent. I have previously proved my worth as a flatmate when I managed to fix our gas bottle when it wasn't sending the gas to our stove (although admittedly that was partially on the advice of a 'brawn' and the guy from the shop carried the gas bottle upstairs for us). Today was another opportunity for me to prove my previously hidden gifts for independence as I was fairly fed up with waiting three hours for the kitchen sink to empty of water. So, I rolled up my sleeves (metaphorically of course, real sleeves in this heat would be ridiculous) and took the pipe-thing out, cleaned it and fixed all our problems with just a nailfile and a roll of kitchen roll. And it worked! The water drains and everything, although the nailfile is ruined. I'm feeling very pleased with myself right now. I wonder what I'll amaze myself with next... Maybe I can make shelves or something?

Anniversaries

It has come to my attention that today is something of an anniversary: exactly one year ago today I disembarked from the Doulos and headed home (rather traumatically as anyone who's heard about my airport fiasco will know).
I can't believe it was only a year ago - it feels like another world.
I like lists so here is one of some of the things I miss about the ship:
1. My wonderful friends
2. Being rocked to sleep by the waves
3. The luuurve factory
4. Exploring all the new countries
5. Bookshop - especially after closing when we turned the music up and partied it up shift 2 style
6. Tea parties
7. 'Cat Halford, dial 9, Cat Halford, dial 9' - so much more exciting than regular phone calls
8. Carpet parties - Asian instant noodles with chopsticks, yum!
9. The Panic.
10. "Attention Ship's Company, there is now free ice cream in the coffee bar, please remember to bring your own mug". Mmmmmboy

Leaving on a jet plane...

Look, I'm posting two days in a row. I think we all know that's not going to last...
So, in 25 days I shall be leaving Senegal, on a jet plane, for England! It's nice because I'll be coming back so have no sad 'when will I see you again?' goodbyes or anything like that; just a nice uncomplicated holiday. Well, not entirely uncomplicated as I have lots of people I want to see and very little money with which to do it. Still, I'm extremely excited about it - I started a list, it got extremely long but here are the current top 5 things I'm looking forward to:
1. Ellen's wedding - the official reason for my return
2. Seeing my wonderful friends from near and far (well, everyone's far from me but some are coming further than others and I'm VERY excited)
3. British weather - rain, low humidity, what more could a girl ask for?
4. GREEN. I like Senegal, but I was not born to live in a desert city.
5. No strangers proposing to me on the street for almost four weeks. Heaven.

British food should be up there by rights but that would be a whole new list.

Most romantic song ever...

So, I have to steal the blogging of another - my wonderful ex-roomie posted this and I have to say, I could not agree more. Romance doesn't come any better than this

http://justrachet.blogspot.com/2008/08/all-you-need-to-know-about-me.html

http://justrachet.blogspot.com/2008/08/amendment-to-all-you-need-to-know-about.html

Especially for Liz...

You see, if you complain that I haven't posted for three months then you might just get a posting all to yourself. Which may or may not be a good thing. Although, sorry Liz, you only actually get a subject heading. And you may not like the content of this post...

So, what's new in Cat-land? Well, just that actually - a cat. A kitten to be more precise. She's a cat of many names, christened 'Rosabelle' by the small child that found her (two days before going on furlough, hence the game of pass-the-kitten we've been playing) this was deemed too big a name for such a small creature by the first family that took care of her in her owner's absence who proceeded to call her by the (highly imaginative) name of 'Kitty'. I was next in line to take charge of her well-being - a task some might deem me unsuitable for as I promptly renamed her 'Kebab', which is what I have been threatening to make with her if she gets annoying. However, I am fast coming to the conclusion that kebabbing is too good for the little demon. She's small, grey, stripy and demon-possessed at least 95% of the time. If L.M.Montogomery hadn't got there first (see Rilla of Ingleside) I would be calling her 'Jekyll&Hyde', heavy on the Hyde.

Now, I do not have any pictures of her in the act of attacking - I'm usually far too busy trying to get her off to find my camera but I do have a picture of her looking cute and then the damage she's done to my arm so far.




I used to have a book called '100 ways to kill a cat'. I may still have it but it'd be in England so not a whole lot of use to me. If anyone has any ideas... Or recipes...