Looking forward to 2017

Losing my amazing eldest daughter, after her hugely courageous eight-year fight against breast cancer that had spread just everywhere, ensured that 2016 would be the so far worst-ever year of my life. So much has been chaotic, exhausting and depressing. While I can hear her darling voice saying: 'Get a grip, Mum. Get a grip!' . . . and carry on . . . there have been so many days when I haven't wanted to emerge from under the duvet. I've found my job to be both a saviour and a source of stress-

A Relevant Quote for Today

The reward of a thing well done is having done it. Ralph Waldo EmersonThis is something I tell the kids from time to time in order to (or try to!) motivate them.I know how appropriate this quote is for us at WA.

The wonderful advantages of WA

This won't be a long blog post. I know that I had a rave about the annoying upsellers who try to squeeze dollars from our slim wallets, and that I was almost caught be one recently. There must be, potentially, thousands of people who have never heard of WA, and who part with far too much money. I think I need to be a bit more mindful about putting my WA link out there!During my 'flirtation' with this entity, I watched a 'webinar' about keywords. There was LOTS of sales talk, lots of talk about

My thought for today-well, not 'mine' really . . .

. . . is from Denis Diderot. 'People stop thinking when they cease to read.'And how interesting is it that in every repressive regime, books are burnt.

A certain type of scammer

In WA, I think perhaps all of us are careful about the writing on our blogs. Some of us are confident writers; others not so much. There are numerous entities out there who offer writing courses and e-books. Whilst many of these are worthwhile and will not insist that you part with loads of cash, there are others one should avoid like a crocodile whose teeth have been dipped in cyanide.Whilst not being the sort of scam where you part with thousands of dollars, I still consider this sort of thin

Sheer chaos!

Gosh I hope 2016 improves! Nothing can take away the grief for my daughter Samantha. She would have been 49 on 18/08/2016, so Thursday will be a difficult day.Some 'dreaded lurgi' has been doing the rounds at school and I have had several days off--going back tomorrow,And on Saturday, 20th, my daughter Jessie, her two boys and I are moving into a beautiful rented house in a great suburb--and the house is directly across the road from the school both boys attend. No more missed buses! But what

The very worst

So--I headed off to London, arriving there on the afternoon of 22nd June--a month ago today. My ex-husband was meeting me at Heathrow and we planned to go to the hospice and see Samantha. In the queue at immigration, I activated my mobile phone and checked that Michael was waiting at the gate. He was. Then I checked Facebook, and the first thing I saw was a post from my youngest daughter, beginning 'RIP my sister . . . 'I had not anticipated this, though I was aware that her condition was deter

The saddest journey

This time next week, I shall be aloft in a JAL flight to London via Tokyo. I have never been to Japan, though I know it to be one of the safest (barring earthquakes) and friendliest countries in the world. Ordinarily, I would take a stopover of a few days at the very least, on either the outward or inward journey. Apart from an enforced 18-hour layover in Tokyo, I'll not be doing any exploring--because this trip is different. I am, in effect, going to London to say goodbye to my eldest daughter

The Dreaded Spam

One of my blogs/web pages has taken off nicely in that people are looking at it, reading the material, and making comments. When this started to happen, I was utterly thrilled and excitedly connected so I could respond to comments--over 150 of them! Sadly, perhaps two thirds of those messages were spam. Some of them were touting sites and products that were not very nice. I'm going to have to work out how to discourage or prevent spam. Is there some tool I do not know about?Hope I won't have ye

No fool like an old fool?

After I discovered WA, I thought my days of being scammed were well and truly over. Not so! I got sucked in this afternoon.I received an email from a respectable (I thought) source, telling me of a new opportunity, so I clicked on the link. Yes. I smelled a rat immediately because what I saw was a long, long spiel from some American woman calling herself 'Jenny', telling of how money could be made by reading supplied scripts. I decided to buy the product as it was not too expensive--and if ther