Somebody that I used to know…. Me

 

This morning I pulled our very first photo album down from the top shelf in the back room where it was gathering dust. I was looking for a particular memory. The one that I was searching for escaped this mornings search but I pulled a few others out to re-photograph to use for my Daf’s Diary page today. My life has been everything except boring! There has been variety galore and I found evidence that whatever changes I have made in my long and mostly happy life, that I have worked at those changes. When I have taken up a new hobby or pastime I have tried to improve as much as I can, so really there is very little to regret, though of course as the song goes ‘Regrets I have a few but then again too few to mention.’ So whilst I am dragging songs out of the air, here is another one: ‘Now you’re just somebody that I used to know.’ And that is who all of my former selves are, part of my foundation, part of the base on which my present self is built, but left behind as part of my interesting memories yet mostly they are memories that I still hold dear; held forever in my heart.

 

 

Steve and I celebrated our 37^th wedding anniversary in May this year though we have actually been together for nearly 40 years. After our first year of moving from place to place frequently, about a dozen times in our first year together, we settled down into a farm house with a couple of acres. There, apart from me learning gradually about Steve’s Antiques export business, we started working on a bit of farming in very small way. We both loved keeping the animals; we farmed rabbits and also kept a goat, chicken, a couple of pigs and a Shetland pony that Steve drove in a small trap that he bought.

 

 

 

 

In that same period we grew most of our own food. We added too many cats to count, a dog and some birds. It was a bit of a mad house. Some years later our circumstances changed and the number of animals we kept gradually reduced. Now we do not have any animals at all apart from my daughters dog Louis now and again, when she and her husband take a holiday abroad. We sadly lost our last few cats with a virus and three of them died quickly one after he other. It hurt us both so much that we vowed not to have any more animals. So far we have stuck to that. 

 

 

We started going on ski holidays and worked hard at improving our skiing. We still go on an annual winter holiday to Switzerland and love every moment of those short days. I have not skied for about five years because the last couple of times I hurt myself, which in turn stopped me from indulging in my triathlon activities for too many weeks and so I chose not to take that risk any more. Steve still goes out on the slopes but only on nice days now because he is more wary too. He has also ridden the Cresta Run a number of times; well pretty much every holiday for a while but it was so horrendously expensive, more a rich mans sport. We have both taken a few rides on a four man bob, and loved that too but again just a holiday treat, in St Moritz and I think the other time was in Igles in Austria.

 

 

The one shot we took at white water rafting did not go well! After very little training…. About thirty minutes in fact, we set off on the River Inn with a bunch of other amateurs and only one guy with us who half knew what he was doing. In the middle of the white water section, we hit some sort of big bump and everybody on that side was catapulted out of the boat. I thought my number was up when I could  not find my way up to the surface, even though I did have a life jacket on and could swim. Thank the good Lord and all the angels; I was eventually able to pop to the surface coughing, spluttering and bleeding a little. I was thrown a life ring by a passing boat and hauled in. I still have a small scar from that experience and have not tried it again. Steve was also thrown out and looked for me for a long time and seeing nothing began to think that he had lost me forever. He could not believe that I had been held under by swirling water that long and survived; I don’t understand that either.

 

 

The folk dancing and the guitar classes were at about the same time and I loved them both. My daughter Jakki joined me on the guitar lessons. The Folk Dancing club meetings were on Friday nights and Steve would drop me there on our way home from work. I would arrive tired out from a hard weeks work and when he picked me up at 10pm I was completely refreshed, it was such great fun. I have loved dancing my whole life. As a child my mother went out to work just to pay for my dancing lessons. I did Ballet, Tap (English and American), Acrobatics, Greek and National dancing all through my childhood years. As a teenager I took up Jive, ballroom and Olde Time dancing and I belonged to Worthing Musical Comedy Society and was often seen in the front row of the chorus then. They were very happy days, I had a lot of fun then.

 

 

Way before most of the other stories here in the period of my first marriage, I took up riding with my little girl who always loved horses and had several of her own over the years.

 

 

I still enjoy my moments of activity and get plenty of those with the swimming, biking, running and walking that is still a big part of my present life; but the farmers wife, the folksy singer/player, the skier and most definitely the white water rafter are just ‘Somebody that I used to know’. The old me; the person I was once long ago, but a person I am happy to have been.