Tiger Woods Car Accident

Tiger Woods and his lovely family

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Thankfully, this is not another one of those celebrity false death rumours. The Internet is today buzzing with news of Tiger Woods’ car accident.


It’s reported that while leaving his home in Florida in the early hours of the morning, Tiger Woods was injured when he crashed into a fire hydrant and a nearby neighbour’s tree.

He was later treated in hospital for minor injuries, including lacerations on his face. In news of Tiger Woods’ injury updates, there are all sorts of speculations of why he was leaving his home at that time of day. We all know how these things escalate.

Of course these are all false rumours and odd speculation, but I’ve read reports that claim this accident was a direct result of his alleged friendship with socialite and business woman Rachel Uchitel (below). There are even bizarre claims that the cuts he sustained on his face were actually made by his wife’s fingernails before she attacked his SUV with a golf club (what else). This, it is claimed, is what caused the unfortunate accident.

Rachel Uchitel

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Whatever the situation, I’m sure that all his fans, friends and family are wishing him a speedy recovery. Once again, the web has got its sharp teeth into a story that it won’t let go without a fight.

So, how was your thanksgiving? Any fights and altercations with your relatives?

What are my recycled items used for

Have you joined the movement yet? Do you know where the items you recycle go and what they’re used for?

Mobile phones

Many people change their mobile phones every year. Don’t just knock them around in drawers at home. Get them to a proper mobile phone recycling unit. Sometimes you can be paid for handing over your old phones, but even if you don’t, Oxfam and Action Aid will take them off your hands and see that they’re put to good use.


What are they used for


Mobile phones can become other phones or can be turned into semi-precious stones. The plastic outside the phone can be re-used for various plastic toys and other household plastic items.

Computers

Don’t dump your old computers. Get rid of them responsibly. In some areas local councils will even pick them up for free. Hundreds of thousands of computers go to our landfills each year. How can we possibly store them all when families sometimes have several in one home?





What are they used for


Companies like Computer Aid works on old computers and refurbishes them before sending them off to developing countries. This is a good deed done on your behalf.


Your recycled computers are sometimes also reused for making circuit boards.


Plastic bottles

Rinse your plastic bottles and take them to a recycling unit for responsible recycling. Manufacturing plastic means we’re using up more and more of our ever decreasing store of fossil fuel. Stripping our world bare of fossil fuel is not good news for future generations where renewable energy is concerned.


What are they used for

They’re made into garden furniture and a wide range of other plastic bottles. They’re also used to make fleeces and bags.


Clothes

If you can’t hand down your clothes to younger members of your extended family, donate them to charity shops. If you think your clothes are not in good condition to pass on, take them to a clothes recycling unit near you.


What are they used for


Old clothes are used to make dusters, mops, and padding for cushions. They’re also reprocessed to make new thread. The better garments are sent to poorer countries and distributed to people who have none.


Glass jars and bottles

Clean these out and if possible, remove paper labels, tops and corks and leave out to be picked up by your local council.


What are they used for
They’re made into new bottles and jars, but also processed into sand for golf bunkers. When you recycle one glass bottle, you’ve saved 15-20 minutes of energy for your computer.






Cardboard

Rotting cardboard in landfill sites have a negative impact on our environment because they produce methane gas into our air. This is easily recyclable, as your paper/cardboard gets picked up by the local council on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

What are they used for

More paper, cardboard, newspaper, tissues, toilet roll, books and kids toys.

If you haven't started yet. Join the movement and help save our planet. It doesn't cost anything but a minute of your time.

How To Cook Human Flesh

I’ve noticed a weird trend on my blog during these last few months. More and more searches for ‘How to Cook Human Flesh’ are being sent here by Google. Allow me to give you a background to this. As most of my regular readers know, this blog started as a site for me to talk about, and post excerpts of my book, Sunday’s Child. It has evolved since then and I’ve started two other blogs and written several other books along the way.

One of my uploaded excerpts (named after a chapter in the book) is called, ‘How to Cook Human Flesh.’ It’s about my experience of being burned on my hand by my grandmother. You can read it here if you wish.

After a few months of posting this excerpt, I learned that Google was sending specific searches my way. Some of them are, ‘How to cook a human,’ How to cook a person,’ and How to cook human flesh.’ What I want to know is who’s conducting these searches and why. Are there people somewhere in the world with plans to cook another human? Have they got dead bodies stored in their refrigerator and are looking for ways in which to cook them to a tasty finish?

Now I know that this is hardly news. After all, it’s got nothing to do Oprah quitting The Oprah Winfrey Show (the news which is spreading like a wild fire on the Internet). But as far as I’m concerned, this is a very fascinating subject because I can see the frequency at which people from all over the world search for directions on how to cook a human.

Am I the only one that thinks this is a bit spooky? Have I got to watch my back or be eaten? :-)

Photo Books and Wedding Albums

Here in the UK, it’s time again for new class photos to be purchased. I don't buy them all every year, but I make an effort to get the ones that stand out in quality and pose. I've already got a large amount of pictures and photo albums and the kids are still young. I often wonder where and how we'll store all the photos we have in eighteen years' time. With wedding albums, birth, anniversary and graduation pictures, you wonder how one has storage space for anything else.

Even with the introduction of the digital age, there's still nothing that capture the moments as splendidly as Photobooks.

So, on school photo days I make sure the kids’ collars are straightened, their hair brushed neatly, and uniforms in tip top shape.

When I get the proofs back, something is invariably out of place. My youngest has the most flyaway hair that's ever graced the head of a little girl. A feature that’s always very noticeable in our Photobook albums. We’ve decorated our walls and albums with school pictures of the kids, many of which I’m not totally crazy about.


Well, the photos were taken two weeks ago. My son, at 10 years old, is in year 6 which is his last year in Primary school. I suppose this means that I have to buy his school pictures this term. I’ve sent back the proofs with the cheque and await yet another school photograph to add to the wheelbarrow of pictures we carry from place to place when we move house.

Are you one for keeping real pictures in albums like we do, or are you one of the new-age babies who store all your pictures digital-style?

A Chance to go Back in Time

If you had the chance to go back in time, where would you go and what would you change?

For most of us, life is a maze of constant transformations. We win, we lose, then we lose some more. The things we’ve lost and those we’ve won combine equally to make us the person we are.

If we like who we’ve become, then taking away the pain and suffering we’ve experienced is taking away a large part of who we are. It’s hardship that produces patience. If we’ve never had to wait for something we desperately needed we would never learn how to be patient. We would, therefore, not have the courage to hope for things and dream big dreams. How could we, if we didn’t know that great things happen only after gruelling preparation?

We also know that it’s this hardship-produced patience that cultivates determination. Life is nothing without willpower. Would you take away the grit you now have by changing the bad things that happened to you in your past?

This is a difficult question to answer. Many of us have been through unspeakable hardship, and have experienced terrible pain and suffering in our lives. Of course we would like to go back to wipe all the tears away and heal all the bruises before they were given. If I was able to go back in time and change something of the past, hard as it was, I don’t know if I’d have the courage to delete the hurt away.

Would you?

Letting Go Of My Baby's Things

I was having a little rummage around our loft (attic) recently and was surprised at all the baby furniture we had kept throughout the years. I couldn't remember that we even had all of them in the first place.



I have always been diligent and generous in giving away the toys, clothes and other baby gear we accumulated with the three kids, but there were some pieces I just never got around to handing over to anyone else.


I suppose I’ve put off passing on some of the larger pieces because I’m aware that when you have to shop for all the things you need for a new arrival, pieces like baby cribs can seem very expensive. I also wanted to give ours to someone very close to me. I mean, my sisters have had babies, but since they all (apart from one) live so far away from me, the big handing-over has so far not occurred.


I’m still secretly waiting for my sister (the last one left to have a baby) to get a move on with it already. As far as I know, she’s not even dating anyone, so I suppose I still have a long wait ahead of me. Kids’ furniture like high chairs, walkers, cribs and car seats don’t come cheap. I don’t mind waiting a few more years to hand them over to someone I love.

Do you find it hard handing over your baby's things?

Best Christmas Presents For Boys

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Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? Terrible, isn’t it? Those of us who have to shop for boys. I always come up with great ideas of what to buy for my sister, my mother-in-law, (my mother – when she was alive), and my girls.


However, it’s a long hike through thick, muddy puddles when making Christmas shopping lists for my son, my husband and his dad. I took over shopping for his parents years ago, when it became clear that my husband didn’t have a clue about what to get. Added to this, he waited until the 24th of December before going into town and racing around through the dense crowds like a madman on coke.

So, not only is it difficult to shop for boys, it’s also difficult for them to shop for anyone else. This is why I composed a list of items in '10 Best Presents For Boys' that they would love to have under their Christmas trees this year. I haven’t included a lot of toys because these are obviously taken for granted.


In addition to this list, don’t forget to add chocolates, savoury snacks, swimming vouchers and tickets to games they like to watch. They can dip into these until the new year, and best of all, you don’t have to fund another storage tower to stack yet another year’s worth of toys he never uses.

Back, Back to The Start

It occurred to me that I was doing a lot on this blog lately, but what I set it up to do. I thought that today I would go back to why I started it in the first place and bring you another excerpt of Sunday’s Child. This is a pretty special piece because it’s the beginning of the book. After years of writing and editing, this is where my story begins.


CHAPTER 1


JONESTOWN, GUYANA, AND THE CHASE


My usual shortcut through the building site for the new school seemed like a good idea, on account of it being so late and all. The evening sunlight glowed orange, signalling that dusk was crouching round the corner.


Piles of rubbish and concrete were scattered everywhere, but the men weren’t working anymore – something about shortage of materials or other. Even the grass had packed up and left the parched ground, leaving the entire site something of a mountain of brown and grey mess.


I mustn’t get home late, but with after-school lessons every day, I don’t know how I could help that. At least I only have one more year at primary school, after which . . .


A noise behind me snapped me out of my thoughts. It was coupled with panting – loud panting – and heavy, running footsteps on the hot, hard concrete.


The familiar, large hands of fear grabbed hold of my insides and squeezed them like play dough. It took me just one tiny instant to look behind me, but before I did I knew – I just knew I was in trouble.


When my head finally creaked around, the man’s eyes were dead set only on me.
That dreaded, unforgettable, dirty red cap!
Those blood shot eyes.
The mad stare.
I and all the other girls my age had seen him a hundred times before, slinking around the village.
Looking at us.
Looking for us.
Oh no!


My heart spilled over itself for one breathless moment. I took a hesitant intake of hot air before my whole body bulleted forward.


‘Please God, don’t let him catch me. Please don’t let him catch me.’


The pounding footsteps grew louder. I didn’t want to, but I had to take another glance – just a little one – over my shoulder. He was not alone! There was now a second man.
I sprawled on the ground when my knees buckled under me, and as I clawed the crisp grass to try to scramble up, I took another look back but I still couldn’t get up for crippling fear. I started to crawl away. Getting up was no good. I couldn’t use my dead legs anymore.

Dirty Red Cap, who was closer to me, turned, looking back when the second man yanked his belt off with a mighty swish. The bald man behind him raised his hand above his head and swung his belt as Dirty Red Cap straightened his body and picked up his speed.


Swoosh!


Dirty Red Cap stopped and grasped his whipped arm. His eyebrows shot up, as his mouth began to form an ‘o.’ Snarling, he barely ducked the second blow then darted back and ran away in the direction he came from.


He would live to fight another day,
And wait to catch me another way.


The other man looked in my direction then walked towards me, but the only message showing up in bright letters behind my eyes was, I should really go back to get my school bag.
“Child!” he shouted. “Yuh alright?”
“Yeah, Mister,” I whispered.
“Do you know who that is,” he asked, while picking up my old, green hand-bag-turned school sac.
“Yes, Mister.”
“He’s always hanging round here,” he said as he handed me my bag. “They can’t lock him up because he’s proved insane. Doan walk through here anymore. It not safe at all. I doan want to think what couldda happened to yuh if I wasn’t ‘round here. Brush yuhself off and tell your parents what happened when you get home. What’s yuh name, eh?”
“Ann.”
“You shaking real bad, Ann. Look, I’ll hold your bag and walk you out of the site, right?”
“Thanks, Mister.”
“Make sure you tell your parents when you get home,” he said again.

I had a feeling that if he had been looking at me when he said this instead of buckling his belt around the tyre in his belly, he would’ve seen through the emptiness in my words when I said, “Yes, Mister, I will.”


A minute later I was boring through the hole in the fence and walking away in the dry dust, legs still porridge-like. I was already making notes in my head of the details I would leave out when I did my nightly letters entitled, ‘Dear Aunty or Mister,’ to no one and everyone.


In the two minutes it took me to walk to the house I wished I didn’t live in, I tried to work out where the bald man had come from and why he was there. He had to have been an angel. Maybe even children who get themselves attacked have angels to save them.


I was really sure of this, just like I was sure that I had to stand under the house until I stopped shaking. Today, Red Cap was not the only bolt that penetrated through to the insides of my senses. At least it was lighter on my chest than the message I was carrying which hung like a sandbag from my stomach. This bag had started to fill up at lunchtime over at Aunty Meena’s house with something I heard on the radio.