My acting career

My first public performance was on national television.

Our kindergarten teacher managed to get us a spot on the television show called "Cabby".  We performed a puppet show of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" with the song "If you go down to the woods today".  My role was prop manager.  I set out the tables and chairs and removed them.  It was a very responsible position.  I did not have stage fright, and somehow did not even connect that I was on national television, and being watched by thousands of people.

That was a hard act to follow.  The next year in Junior school, we performed "The Little Red Hen" and I was the duck.  I held a duck mask up in front of my face, which meant I did not see the audience.   This meant I was again without fear.  When the little red hen asked us who would help her make her bread, the lazy dog, the sleepy cat and the noisy yellow duck would each reply in turn, "Not I".  I couldn't figure out why each time I answered, the audience roared with laughter.  It was only afterwards that I learned that I had been saying "Not-tie!" with two syllables on the "tie".  Ah well, my career as an entertainer was launched.

The following year, under my mother's tutelage, I wrote a play, which was subsequently acted by our class.  I helped make the props, and had the role of narrator.  Imagine my surprise when the teacher introduced it, saying, "This play was written, produced and narrated by one of our own pupils."  Wow.  I had no idea!  So now my career had blossomed into production!

My mother also tried her hand at writing plays, and wrote one for my sister and I to perform. We acted as  "Noddy and Bigears" holding a conversation about the teachers in our school, making puns out of their names.  They had such colorful names as Mrs Flanders (a poppy), Mrs Bell, Mrs Archer, Mr Fish, Mr Crabbe and Mr Schooler.  Seems like these names just lent themselves to such puns!  I remember it being a great success.

In High School I was becoming positively cocky about my acting ability.  I performed several dialogue parts, until the inevitable happened.  I was getting so confident, I made the mistake of not allowing myself to feel nervous before the performance.  I thought I had totally conquered my fears.  So when I got out on the stage, the nerves hit full force - and I went down in a cloud of humiliation!  Unfortunately I did not climb back on that horse, and that pretty much spelled the end of my glorious acting career.  I still wonder where I would be today if I had not given up so easily.

Horses and me

My very earliest memory is of me on horseback.

And I was dead scared of falling off!  I was so scared in fact, that I was grabbing hold of a big, red pole, and holding on for dear life.  Yes, I was on a merry-go-round, the pole was actually a normal diameter pole, and I was two years old.

I saw a slide of this event years later, and there I am, chubby cheeks, blond hair, and the biggest, bluest, scaredest eyes you have ever seen!  I looked at this, and thought, I remember that!!

This fear of falling off a horse never left me.  And yet, despite this, my sister and I were both horse-crazy.  Every birthday and Christmas, our lists were written in order of preference:   Horse, piano, bicycle, and finally those items we would realistically get.  We never gave up hope.  And we never got a horse.

The closest  my parents came to giving us our much longed for dream, was when my dad took two planks, nailed ropes on for reins, made wire stirrups, and placed them on our verandah wall.  We added thick cushions as saddles, and painted manes and tails.  For hours at a time, Wendy and I would ride the trails, trotting, galloping, giddy-upping and woahing.  I was not so scared of falling off these horses as the ground was not far beneath our feet.

When  I was about five, I finally had my chance to get on a real, live horse! I went to a birthday party at Colleen Lemon's house.  She had a beautiful gray mare, and her parents were giving all the kids rides.  I hung back until everyone else had had a turn, and finally when it was my chance - I chickened out!!  I was so mad at myself!  Finally I had been given the chance to fulfill my dream - and I was too scared!  I promised myself then and there that the next time I got the chance, I would get up on the horse.

That day finally arrived.  We were in high school when we made the acquaintance of Cherry Bowen-Davies.  She lived over the hill from our house, and wonder of wonders, the Bowen-Davies owned not one, but two, horses.  A large pinto named ... Pinto, and a smaller brown horse named Fleck.  Cherry was kindness itself, and happily invited my sister and I to come and ride whenever we liked.  Oh boy!  We would have been there every day if our mom had allowed us.  But we had to limit our visits out of politeness.

It was always an adventure catching these two horses.  They would be out in their field, and the last thing they wanted was to be caught and saddled.  So we would go out armed with treats and try and bribe them to come.  It would take us ages.  Those horses were not stupid.

As soon as I was sat on the back of a real horse, I discovered a disturbing fact:  you are way off the ground!  Way high!!  I was not so sure I liked this.  If you fell, it was a long way to fall.  And I had no intention of falling!  So the fastest I ever dared to go was a trot.  One day we were on an out-ride, riding in the streets and fields around the houses.  Wendy was on Pinto and Cherry and I were walking behind.  We were going through a field and had made a wide circle and were now actually heading in the direction of home.  We hadn't realised it - but Pinto had.  All of a sudden, he started trotting and then galloping.  Cherry and I started running and yelling, and were horrified at the fact that Pinto was heading towards a busy main road.  Wendy was not able to stop him, and let out a frightened scream.  I screamed back, at the top of my lungs.  "Wendy!!!"  Helpless to save her, Cherry and I were desperate.  Then the unthinkable happened:  Wendy started to dismount at full gallop!

She landed  safely, without injury, and wonder of wonders, Pinto stopped after a few more paces and started calmly eating grass. Wendy explained that she had read somewhere that if a horse was running away with you, this is what you should do.  Needless to say, when our mother heard about this incident, our horse-riding days were over.  Neither of us seemed to  mind too much, we had pretty much been cured of our obsession with horses.  From now on, my birthday wish list would simply begin with a piano.

Don't write to me in that tone of voice!

"Hallelujah!"

How did you just read that word?  Were you singing it with the strains of "Handel's Messiah" ringing in your head?  Or was it with a frustrated tone, as in "Finally!"?  Or maybe you have just woken up and are still getting through your first cup of coffee, and so it was merely a flat monotone!

I put a lot of expression into my writing.  Lately I have been feeling very lighthearted and on top of the world, and so my tone in my letters has been very chirpy.  However, it suddenly occurred to me that if the recipient were not feeling so chirpy, in fact maybe they are downright sullen and serious, then they would read my writing in a totally different tone of voice!  And how that would change the way they heard it.

It reminds me of this great quote:  "I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."  So what counts is not actually the way you or I wrote something, but actually the way the other person read it.  And the frustrating thing is - we have no control over that!

What love is. Not!

"Dixie I love you so much!!  Mmmmm!"  This was from my youngest daughter who was showering love and kisses on our hapless Beagle.  It went on for quite a while.  This reminded me that the dog had not been out for her run yet, and was probably standing with her legs crossed.  So I asked our youngest please to put the dog out.  She replied, "I love her too much to put her out!"

I soon sorted that one out!  The dog went out.  But it set me thinking.  Her idea of love was kissing and hugging.  When it came to giving the dog what it really needed - in order to survive - she didn't see that as love. 

Now I love that dog.  Truly.  The fact that she is still alive gives testimony to that!  She should have died many times.  Like the time she stole a Kingsize bar of dark chocolate out of our guests' suitcase!  And ate the whole thing.  We have heard that one or two squares of dark chocolate is enough to poison most dogs; Dixie survived.  True, she did look a bit ill, and she did wake me up at 3am scratching to go outside and empty the contents of her stomach.  I got up and let her out (because I do love that dog!) and decided that because it was 3am and no one else would be up, I would just stand at the front door in  my pyjamas, while she threw up her guts.  I couldn't believe it when I saw - walking down the street - a man with his dog!!  At 3am!!  Of course it took Dixie two and a half seconds to see them too, and she quickly forgot that she was supposed to be spilling her guts and went to bark at them.  I yelled at her at the top of my lungs in my best sargent major voice - greeted the neighbor with a cheery "Bonsoir Monsieur!" and then grabbed Dixie's collar while muttering "I'm going to kill you dog!" 

So you see, the fact that Dixie is alive and well today is proof that I really do love that dog.  With a love that means business.  Not a kissy, mushy love, but one that gets up at 3am and doesn't kill the object of the love! Isn't that reminiscent of God's love for us??  Oh I'm sure there are many times He longs to take us in His arms and love on us, and shower us with kisses, but I am sure there are many, many more times that He has to grit His teeth and say to Himself  "A thousand and three, a thousand and four..."  And we are not struck down by a bolt of lightning; we do in fact live to see another day.  And THAT my friends, is true love!

Reflections from an experienced woodcutter

Whenever my husband travels, this strange compulsion comes over me to "do the man's job". In France it used to be pruning hedges, or digging up tree stumps. Now that we have a whole forest in our back yard, I have taken to chopping down trees.  Well not exactly chopping them "down".  More like cleaning up the trees that are dead and have fallen down.  And then dragging them to the wood pile.  And today was the first day I attempted this.

Of course I know better than to use a power tool while my husband is away.  Hello! So I went out armed with an axe and a hatchet.  I cleaned off the first tree, and began to drag it to the woodpile.  I learned something very quickly.  You can't turn corners when you are dragging a tree through a forest.  The average tree is about a hundred feet long, and the trees grow close to one another, about ten feet apart.  If you want to change direction by a few degrees, you are going to have to walk several miles.  I figured that, in order to turn my tree at right angles, I would have had to walk in a circle for about a hundred miles!

So I dropped the tree, and that was when these words from Ecclesiastes flashed into my mind:   "Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there will it lie." Our pastor had quoted this verse last Sunday in his sermon. He had not elaborated on it, and I assume that is because he is not a seasoned woodcutter.  Like me. 

What the writer of Ecclesiastes failed to mention, is that the woodsman's camp was lying in an easterly or westerly direction from where he was collecting wood, and as he dropped the tree in frustration, just as I had, what he actually said to himself (no doubt) was:  "In the place where the (expletive) tree falls, there let the (expletive) thing lie."  But as we all know, the Bible cannot quote expletives, so we only get the sanitary version.

Sometimes verses like these can seem so puzzling, simply because we don't understand the context.  It seems that the writer had something in mind - and we are left trying to work it out, all the days of our lives.  At least it keeps us busy guessing - like this one Bible commentator:  "If a tree about to fall lean to the north, to the north it will fall; if to the south, it will fall to that quarter. In whatever disposition or state of soul thou diest, in that thou wilt be found in the eternal world."

Now I don't know about you, but I haven't a clue what he just said!!  Personally, I think the writer needs to get away from his books and out into the fresh air.  Do something physical.  Like cutting wood.

Our modern lives can be so removed from the day in which the Bible was written, we often have to do some serious research to discover it's original meaning.  Or we have to do some serious hard labor - like cutting wood..

In this passage in Ecclesiastes, it seems that the writer is just making very obvious observations about life:
"If clouds are full of water, they pour rain upon the earth." Wow. Deep. Very deep.  And "Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap."  The equivalent in our modern society would read something like: "If you go to the mall on the first day of a sale, you will get crushed.  If you go on the second day you will miss all the great bargains.  Your choice."  These are really what I would call "duh" statements. 
And now that I am a seasoned woodcutter, you will hear me say "Buddy, I don't care if that is the perfect tree.  It's lying the wrong way.  Just leave it there, it ain't worth it.  Go find yourself another tree.  One which fell the right way! Trust me. And by the way, what I just said - it's in the Bible!  Ecclesiastes 11:3."