Hello and welcome to my blog.  As with most blogs it is a completely and utterly shameless attempt to witter, piffle, bullshit, talk bollocks and generally impose my random mindjunk (the posh term is “stream of consciousness”!) on the unfortunate reader.  Occasionally there might be something of interest, or something that merely entertains.  As the title suggests, the main focuses (or foci, if you are a pedant like me)  are my current passions of bonsai and bicycles.  But, since I’m a faddist, these will be added to at some point, and already I am planning pages on Running, Music, and the mighty Greenock Morton. No doubt other issues will come out over the course of time. 

 

A little bit about me:  I spent my early employment years (what seemed like an eternity ago) working for youth training programmes, culminating in 16 years with Glasgow City Council’s Parks department where I ran the Horticultural Training Centre.  In 2005 I decided to make a career shift and, after a year off learning Scottish Gaelic, I retrained as a high school English teacher. However after recognising that the formality and rigid rules of the high school system were not for me, I went back to the FE sector as a lecturer in English and Communication. That’s where I am just now – teaching born and bred English speakers how it should be spoken and written and waging a one-woman war against aberrant apostrophes and all sorts of orthographic offal served up as the native language.  Oh now you’ve got me started!!!  Actually… there’s another page just appeared in my head. 

 

But quite apart from all the boring biog crap,  I am a wee west of Scotland wumman for whom life didn’t begin so much at 40 as at 50.  This Blog is essentially an account of the ways in which my refusal to grow old gracefully (or indeed at all) is manifesting itself.  It arises from several things:  a tendency to loquacity which has resulted in my Facebook no longer being enough for me, a  tenacity of spirit, a degree of hyperactivity, a quest for fitness, but most notably my total dismay at young colleagues who see anyone over the age of about 35 as ancient of days and in need of being put out to pasture. I do derive a fairly high degree of satisfaction from being able to outwalk, outrun, outswim, outcycle people half my age. And… I’m a damn sight better at pub quizes than them too!!

 

Do feel free to do all the blog stuff with comments etc.