Celebrating Cally

More sad times chez FSH I'm afraid. Really heartbreakingly sad.

A truly wonderful, full of life, amazing, kind, wise, intelligent and simply gorgeous friend of mine, Cally Robson, passed away in early May. Cancer got the better of her. And it would seem of all of us.

Her funeral will be held towards the end of this month and the next week her family will hold a celebratory church service where all who wish to can share thoughts & memories of this wonderful woman, followed by a tea party full of cake & tea & cheer.

I will attend both but I doubt I will have the strength to speak, despite the fact I have so many lovely memories.

She leaves behind her husband & their 11 year old daughter Edie. Hubby has asked us all to bring mementoes for a memory box he is creating for Edie so I will spend the next few days fossicking though photo albums and ensure I give the best away.

Never ever thought I'd quote Billy Joel but here we go.


Only the good die young.




Happy Hong Kong days

Live & Let Die

A very sad time has been had chez the FSHousehold recently. My seemingly indestructible, funny, warm, kind, generous 93 year old mother in law passed away at the beginning of February - God rest her wonderful soul. FSHubby  was / is devastated - even when you know something will happen, is inevitable, in fact must happen, it can still be a shock. So we had the trek North to attend the funeral and stayed on a week to start clearing out a house that contained a lifetime plus of memories, art, antiques  ... alongside huge amounts of utter cr*p!


She was of a generation that threw NOTHING away. The war babies (she was born in 1921 and lived through WW2, marrying an ex intelligence officer in 1949) held onto everything just in case. We found 100+ bars of soap! Wardrobes rammed with clothes - both hers & her husbands (who had passed away 18 years earlier ..!), 10 hat boxes each containing at least 2 big blousy (signature!) hats. Every drawer of every piece of furniture was rammed with a mix of critically important paperwork, empty envelopes and blank postcards, birthday cards & Christmas cards. We found boxes & boxes of slides from the '30's & the stereoscopic viewer on which to view them. Children's toys & Blue Peter Annuals from the 70's.  In the pantry we found out of date rusting tins and half empty biscuit packets, We found broken tools and Tupperware containers full of bolts & screws. Just in case....you never know!

But we also found photo album after photo album, faces from the past and from our recent history smiling up at us. Grainy black & white images of the father in law I never met as a young man, sailing a Dhow down the Nile in the summer of 1943. Grinning, skinny & shirtless with his intelligence corps comrades in Aden in 1941. Beaming clutching my mother in laws hand on their wedding day. Then the images burst into colour as we hit the 50' & 60's. He & my mother in law cuddling  FSHubby as a chubby baby, images of them sailing his yacht on the local reservoir and finally of him very ill cuddling a baby FSTeen. And the photos continued, right up until a month before my mother in law passed - family weddings, christenings, school photos, school plays, holidays, lunches & teas all the houses we've lived in - a whole family history.

So after numerous tip trips and charity shop runs we carefully packed up the memories as we prepared to head home. But when we got home I noticed FSHubby had inherited the 'keep the crap' gene ... I discovered broken toys and bits of seemingly pointless scrap paper and all manner of ancient oddities alongside the precious memories in the 4 big boxes that now languish in a garage ...  Will get ruthless one day.

May you live in interesting times ..

The title of this little post is a curse in China. It means may everything change, be different, challenge you, shake up the status quo and be - well - interesting!

I always thought I had led quite a simple life really - possibly a bit dull but generally happy, typically far away from the interesting times the Chinese curse about. But today I was asked to do a potted biography and to list a few interesting things about myself. And it transpired I have actually done one or two quite interesting things ...

I did the CV type stuff, you know, I've worked in the business I am in for 25+ years. Listed a few clients, then thought oh yes, I used to live in Hong Kong. And also briefly in Vietnam. That's quite interesting I guess.

Then, staring out onto my lovely garden, I chewed my pencil some more & racked my brains & remembered ...

I sang backing vocals on a Samantha Fox single in the late 80's - a track called I Promise You .. boyfriend at the time was a record producer & they needed a backing singer pronto so I was wheeled in!

I had a job as a hand model when I was in Hong Kong .. I held chopsticks for a print ad!

I am a fully qualified scuba diver & have done wreck diving in Bermuda & dived the coral reefs off the Cayman Islands & Tiomann Island.

I've appeared on prime time TV - I was interviewed by Fiona Philips on GMTV in 1999, we were discussing advertising cars to women - and specifically a Citroen ad where Claudia Schiffer was naked!


And there's more ... I was taught to dance by Holly & Paul from Frankie Goes to Hollywood ... have been a vegetarian for 34 years ... I once 'broke into' the rooftop pool of a hotel in Barcelona at 5AM & skinny dipped ... I have had a machine gun pointed at me through a car window when I was in Russia, en route from Rostov on Dom to Krasnodar  .... I have had my taxi break down in deepest Malawi & had to pay for the puncture repair by letting the locals touch my skin (they had never seen anyone as white as me before! I was fuming as I thought I had a lovely tan!) .. I was hit on by the boss of MTV when I was at a big awards ceremony in Mumbai (I was oblivious, it had to be pointed out to me) and I once slept in Michael Hutchence's bed (sadly he wasn't there too).

Making up is hard to do

I have had a couple of very early morning starts in that London recently meaning have had to join the bleary eyed unhappy ranks of 'The Commuters'. Frankly I cannot blame anyone who has to, every day (and FSHubby is included here) fight their way on to an inevitably late train, fight again for a seat and then get slowly more & more crushed as impossible numbers of heavily coated / suited / booted people squeeze onto the train for being unhappy - it's ridiculous!

However even more ridiculous than the overcrowded train & the level of discomfort & misery was the huge number of women putting a full face on whilst squished onto a seat, standing in the aisle or even standing on the platform! Seriously what is it with that? I really honestly don't get it. Aside from the obvious perils of sticking a mascara wand in your eye if the train lurches or indeed shoving lipstick up your nose, why do something as intimate as your make up in front of a whole train of strangers?

Is this the new way? No discretion, nothing private, everyone can see everything I do? I remember as a chid peeking in on my mother & her friends transforming from ordinary women to goddesses sat at mirrors in curlers with bright lights shining ensuring everything was perfect before they even came downstairs let alone leave the house! It was magical & mysterious. Now these girls get on the train as pasty faced spotty herberts and get off, one make up bag later looking human - but 100 people have seen their tricks!

Why? From what I can tell they take no more than 5-10 minutes to do their faces why can't they get up 10 mins early & spare me the on train make up lesson. What next, bringing your toothbrush & a plastic bag & cleaning your teeth on the train? Rolling your deodorant under your blouse? Or even getting out the wet wipes for a bit of a top & tail - doesn't matter I don't know anyone on the train .. Really. Please. Some decorum!

PS there is even a website http://womendoingtheirmakeuponthetube.tumblr.com/ where I nicked these fab images from - with acknowledgements to the website people & I am pleased it's not just me!

New year, new me??

So here we are a brand new year to play with - 2015. And the Chinese year of the Sheep will unfold towards the end of February so it's time to dust off those resolutions!

I had a completely stationary & overindulgent festive break, thanks to first a ripped calf muscle the week before Christmas (I heard it go pop - it was nasty!) and second a vile cough that has sat on my chest for 3 weeks, meaning I have wolfed chocolate (feeling sorry for myself) and guzzled vino (feeling VERY sorry for myself) and due to the injury & illness I have eschewed the joys & benefits of the magnificent XTrainer and BOY am I feeling it.


This morning, acres of wobbly fat stared back accusingly at me in the Gerry Weber changing room as I tried to nab some bargains in the sales. Yes in changing rooms where the light is supposed to be flattering & make you feel good & want to buy everything . It was so off-putting I couldn't bear to try any more clothes on (after I'd nabbed a stunning silk shirt & some "drop a size" black jeans. I really hope the XL baggy top grabbed from Episode sale rail fits ... !)

So - the resolutions:

First one is easy & I've started - Dry January; the Dryathlon as it is pretentiously called. With an average of 285 calories in half a bottle of wine, by staying dry for a month & drinking diet coke or water or some other low calorie stuff  I am saving approx. 8,885 cals. Tick.

Second is simply eat less. FSHubby & I do tend to eat out a lot when we are on jolly hols (he had the 2 Christmas /NY weeks off) and the portions in restaurants are crazy and he gets sulky if he doesn't have a starter - even at lunch!! - so I can only imagine the calories I will save getting back to soup for lunch. And not as a first course! Tick.

Third is get my lardy arse back on the XTrainer. I have my final post calf rip physio apt tomorrow & should be given the "go for it girl" all clear so Wednesday will see me huffing & puffing to the Doris Day film I had all lined up on the day of the "rip" - The Thrill of it All. Again Tick.


Fourth is to sign up to the back injury Pilates class that has started 5 mins down the road from me at 9.30 on a Monday morning - which is perfect as I can't do the XTrainer on Mondays as the cleaner is here all AM so taking myself off then to a class specifically designed for people like me with rubbish backs  is ideal! Tick Tick!


And Fifth is a basic MOVE MORE. Whilst trotting downstairs to my home office is a true utter joy and I wouldn't change it for the world, I have days when I really hardly move more than a total of 50 metres in the day and that is NOT good. I will walk to the local shops if I am not getting too much to carry & encourage my neighbour to come with me so I have someone to talk to. And another Tick.

So there we are. Not impossible, not startling but hopefully all good & will see me in much better shape by the middle of the year!!