Week 21 - Clean the Car

I reckon that there are two sorts of car owner in the world - the first category is those who clean the car on a Sunday, never miss a service (probably at the main dealer), check tyre pressure and fluid levels regularly and generally treat their pride and joy with respect. The car will be perhaps 3 or 4 years old, and they keep an eye out for scratches which they get fixed, so that the car keeps its value. They may even have a name for their car, and imbue it with a personality.

The second category is those who treat the car as a tool - a means to an end. They grumble at the running costs and put any essential servicing through the local grease monkey garage. They don't check under the bonnet unless a light on the dashboard comes on. They turn up the radio to drown out any inconvenient noises that the car might make, and realise that at ten years old, its resale value is negligible - and as for the odd scratch or dent, well, that's life, isn't it?

I fall into the second category, and as such, cleaning the car is the same level of priority as painting the shed. It has to be done every couple of years in order to stop it becoming a total eyesore, but it's a vile job which is to be put off for as long as possible.

But that's what the 52week challenge is all about - doing things that are different. So today, the banana car got the clean of it's life - outside a wash, rinse, alloy wheel scrub, window wash and e-cloth dry. Including sills, door frames and wheel arches.

Inside, the inventory included a lumphammer, pencil, plant labels, pair of secateurs, pliers, wire (thick and thin), string, drill, towels, two sticks of rhubarb, bradawl, sweet papers, parking receipts, a desiccated radish, two old bathtowels, a couple of rubble sacks, a potato sack, an umbrella, road atlas, cassette (no case), cd case (no cd), paintbrushes (1 for fence painting, 1 tiny thin one), 4 hooks, a 'car box' including tow rope, windscreen de-icer, 3-in-1 oil can (but no jumpleads as my brother has borrowed them), a miscellaneous round token, presumably for a parking barrier.

All that lot was cleared out, and the mats too, and I vacuumed all the inside, polished the dash, washed, dried and de-smeared the windows. Useful gardening things went back in (confined to ONE small trug which fits in the boot), along with the umbrella and the 'car box', but that's it.

Now it doesn't quite feel like I'm driving my own car.....

Week 21 Challenge: done!

Week 20 - Make Alterations to a Garment

Most clothes that I buy, I tend to wear as they come from the shop (with the exception of maybe turning up trouser legs) - I assume that I am the size and shape that Marks and Spencer decrees that I am.

Of course our bodies are all slightly different, and I am not the same uniform size and shape as everyone else who buys the same size dress in M&S - which means that I go round in clothes which more or less fit and suit, most of the time.

This is a shame as all it would take for the standard size garment to fit and 'hang' better is likely to be an easily do-able tweak - maybe a dart, maybe move a button, maybe shorten a skirt an inch - well within my capability.

Armed with this knowledge, I have this week attempted to make an alteration to a knitted dress. The dress is fantastic in all respects with the exception of the neck. I put the dress on, and I magically grow an additional number of chins. The turtle neck transforms me into Velma from Scooby Doo - not a great look.

So after a certain amount of wrangling with a pair of scissors and darning needle, I have turned the turtle neck into a crew neck - a huge improvement.

So that's my week 20 Challenge - done!

Week 19 - Read a Classic Novel

Despite being brought up in a library (mum was the librarian at a local small branch library, so school holidays were often spent there) and consequently becoming an avid reader with thousands of books at my disposal; the Classics have more or less passed me by.

One reason for this being that our 'O' level Eng Lit book was Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge - a more turgid and depressing read for a teenage girl you could not hope to find. This has served to put me off anything that falls into the category of 'school set text', which many of the Classics fall into.

Another reason is that there are so many contemporary authors who write pacy thrillers/whodunnits; absorbing travelogues; sci fi/fantasy and block busting page-turners that I just don't always fancy having to concentrate hard on a style of writing from a couple of hundred years ago.

But with mum, my colleague (also a librarian) and my big sis collectively being appalled that I haven't read any Proper Books combined with a break in the sun to fill, and - the clincher - being able to download many Classic titles onto the Kindle for free, I thought I'd better give it a go.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was suggested as a good yarn, so it came with me on holiday, and I took myself back two hundred years to Regency England to gossip with the Bennet sisters, visit the Netherfield ball, flirt coquettishly with the gentlemen and watch Elizabeth and Mr D finally get it together. Ahhhh!

I've not seen the adaptation on film/TV, so I was going in blind, so to speak, and it did take a little while to get my head around Ms Austen's looooooong sentences and slightly unfamiliar phrasing and vocabulary, but I must say that it was well worth the effort.

An excellent tale!

So that's my week 19 Challenge: done!

Week 18 - Swim in the Sea

Living smack bang right in the middle of England, I don't get to visit the seaside very often. If I want to go to the nearest beach, it's a toss-up between Western-super-Mare to the southwest, Prestatyn to the northwest or Hunstanton to the east - all a good couple of hours drive away.

Mind you, even if I was closer to the sea, I'm not sure how tempted I would be to dip more than a toe into the water - memories of our family holidays in the north of Scotland and the compulsory annual swim (a sort of ordeal-by-sibling) in the North Sea at Primrose Bay has put me off a bit.

More recent holidays abroad in warmer climes have therefore been somewhat of a revelation, and as a fairly confident swimmer, there is nothing that I like better than bobbin' about in the briny - provided that it is off a sandy beach, under hot blue skies, sheltered from too much breeze and with other swimmers not too far away.

And such an opportunity presented itself to me last week, and I enjoyed a great deal of splashing around here:

Bliss!

So, apologies for the delay, but here is my week 18 Challenge - done!

Week 17 - Have a Beauty Treatment

Although I have had a half leg wax occasionally (pros: v smooth legs, lasts a long time; cons: expensive, have to have footballer-hairy legs before you start); and eyelash dye (pros: eyelashes now dark enough to not have to bother with mascara; cons: eyelashes still 'lack body' so still have to wear mascara), I have never had a manicure or a pedicure before.

I decided that a manicure seems like a waste of time at this time of year, what with spending all that time weeding and digging at the allotment but I do like that sound of a pedicure.

We have a large hair and beauty salon up the road which was recommended to me by a friend on the rather flimsy basis that she had been in there once, for a haircut, about ten years ago; but that's good enough for me, so I set off to have my feet 'done' one lunchtime this week.

Going into a beauty salon is like going into some sort of alternative universe where the matters of the day are not e.g. economic growth forecasts, how red tape affects the small business, pound/euro currency fluctuations etc etc; but the merits of Elemis over Guinot facials; how wonderful the latest starlet looked on the red carpet, and how often nail infils are recommended.

I was expertly looked after, and pampered commendably - ending up with feet which had been soaked in a spa bath, massaged, treated with a 'scrub' & a 'deep' moisturiser; and nails which were shaped, filed, buffed and painted a pretty red.

My feet now look lovely - and not at all like mine! So I finished my coffee, paid, and went back through the doors into the real world - buying a sandwich & paper, dodging the charity fundraisers, and walking back to the office past the Sony shop having a closing down sale.

Week 17 challenge: done!

Week 16 - Give Credit Where it is Due

Even though I like to think that I am a fairly positive person, for some reason, it seems that it is easier to moan about poor service than it is to give praise when it all goes right.

I don't like to think that this is because life consists of a constant stream of disappointments, but rather that I expect people to be reasonably efficient at their jobs, and do what they are paid to do as a matter of course. 

Nonetheless, I welcome a pat on the back for doing a good job, so I'm going to try to be a bit more generous with appreciating that in others, starting with a thank you.

I bought a pair of wetshoes online the other day, through an Amazon retailer. Besides being pretty tight in the wallet department, I am also of an age that caution is the order of the day when buying on that new fangled interwebby thing - horror stories about your credit card being cloned; the goods not turning up; identity theft and all the rest of it.

However, I do buy online occasionally, so after I read the reviews of the product, and the feedback of the retailer, checked the price out, I placed the order, shortly after 3.30pm on a Friday afternoon.

Saturday morning at 8.15am the postman rings the door with the parcel. Blimey!

So after leaving feedback for the item on line, I wrote a nice thank you letter for exemplary service. Well done, Mikes Diving Ltd*

So that's week 16 Challenge: done!

*yes, the lack of apostrophe annoys me too.

Week 15 - Clean the Windows

This is one of the Challenges that I use to think of other things to add on the Challenge list - amazing what you can think of when 'cleaning the windows' is the alternative.

However, if life is like a box of chocolates, you can't always avoid that hard toffee one that breaks your teeth, so this morning I manned up, put on the waterproof apron and marigolds, and got the steps, bucket, sponge, cloth and squeegy out.

It took bloody ages to do both inside and out - I certainly had ample time to contemplate the astonishing number of windows there appear to be in but a modest end terrace (that's 10, including two Velux, plus a couple of glass doors, and the window over the top of the front door).

The weather was kind, though, the rain holding off until just after I'd finished, and the real bonus is that this time, I managed not to tip the bucket of water off the top of the steps all down my front, whilst in the front garden...

A Challenge well and truly done!