Challenge within a challenge: No lights, camera, action in 2016

Everyone remembers one of their first trips to the cinema, what was yours? Mine was The Little Mermaid, and I remember having a mars bar on that trip. Now my mum says I have a habit of making up my childhood so you may need to double check this is correct with my mum.

Going to the cinema is one of my favourite things to do, and in 2015 I went to the cinema around 17 times. This along with adverts equals roughly to 2 sold days sitting in a dark room. It also roughly cost over £100.

People have asked me in the past why I don’t have a Cineworld card (because I love films so much) and the truth is a) from working out how much I spent on the cinema in 2015, and how much a card would cost for the year, I would actually lose money (around £75.) I don’t really want to see bad films just to make up the cost and overtime knowing I would see them for free. And b) my favourite cinema is my beloved Broadway in Letchworth. It’s a great independent cinema, you can’t hear another film in the screen you’re in (unlike Cineworld) and the snacks are pretty cheap. The staff are friendly and the place has character thanks to its art deco design.

I was watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was a great film and a question thought in my head. What if I didn’t go to the cinema? Would I miss the rustling of the popcorn, or the half an hour of trailers before a film starts? Or the impact a big screen could have on a film? I guess there’s only one way to find out and that would be to not go to the cinema. Which is what I’m going to do in 2016. And with Star Wars being the last film I see for a year, it’s a pretty good film to finish on the big screen.

There’s only going to be one time I’m going to go and that’s to go to a movie marathon or all-nighter at the Prince Charles Cinema. I said to my friend Rachel for her 30th I would take her to one of these things. I don’t like going against my word, so I'm going to go through with that trip, but apart from that I won’t be making any trips to the cinema.

I guess I’ll just have to think of other things to do with my friends apart from going to the cinema and that can only be a good thing. With every film I want to see but won’t in the cinema I’ll read an autobiography. The reason being is I’ll still get to experience a story, just a real one instead which may contain more twists and turns then a film may have.

So here’s to 2016, a year with no stories on the big screen, just stories on the small screen or on a page.

Thoughtful presents: Wedding Flowers

My friend Louise who I did gluten free baking with recently got married in September after being with her fiancé Grant for 10 years. They had their wedding reception in October and it was great fun. The venue was nicely decorated and at the end of the night Louise told us all to take home flowers which were in gold sprayed beer bottles. I remember loading my car with as many as I could.

I wondered what to do with them, and had an idea to dry a few out and press them. Looking on trusty Pinterest, probably at 3am in the morning when I woke up in the middle of the night, I found an idea.
I decided to put the pressed flower on a tray. So a few weeks ago on a trip to the Tiger shop with my friend Laura I bought a metal tray for which was a good practical size. My friend Ann Marie does a lot of craft and I explained the idea and she said I needed Mod Pudge to glue the flowers down. I bought some from Hobby Craft and I applied it to the tray and flowers.

Worried that I’d stink out the flat, instead of leaving it to try in the living room, I stupidly thought to leave it in my bedroom. Only left it there for 30 minutes before realising the hallway outside the flat was probably the best place. Thing is I didn’t get much sleep because I was worried I’d get damaged in some way by the fumes that were still lingering in my room, haha.

Once the Mod Pudge dried off I think the end result looked okay. The purple colour faded from some of the flowers, but apart from that I think it worked.

Louise loved it and said that she pressed a few flowers from her flower crown, so it was a perfect addition to that.

At weddings, flowers are always given away, so as an additional gift for the bride try making the tray, it’s very easy to do.

Challenge within a challenge: A song a day playlist; Tracks 1-5

My friend Linsey and I are nearing the end of our song challenge. It’s been great fun. Sometimes we miss the odd day, but we catch up the next. The music has been so varied. Linsey's choices are typically rocky and mine are just a mixture. Although quite a few of the songs I pick Linsey says they could be in movie soundtracks, so I guess that’s my screen writing instincts right there!

So here are the first five of themes and choices.

Day 1- A song that makes you happy
Linsey- Vertigo, Mini Mansions ft Alex Turner
Me- Mr Blue Sky, ELO. I used to play this song in my first year of uni at the end of a Thursday after my last lecture of the week at uni. It was a sign that the weekend had begun.

Day 2- A song that helps you clear your head
Linsey- 3am, Hamilton Leithauser
Me- Life is life, Noah and the Whale. When I was running regularly, this would be the first song on my playlist to set me off at a good pace.

Day 3- A song that makes you laugh
Linsey- Vicar in a Tutu, The Smiths
Me- Red Solo Cup, Toby Keith. The lyrics are funny and it always reminds me of going to Nashville with my sister Lisa. It was the theme song, although we only sang the chorus over and over.

Day 4- A song that reminds you of something sad
Linsey- Broken, Jake Bugg
Me- Granpa theme music. Forget Titanic, forget The Notebook. Grandpa is the saddest film ever. Yes it’s animated, yes it’s only 30 minutes long but my god I'm in tears almost immediately. And then the last 10 minutes I'm in bits and crying for 10 minutes after its ended. It’s about a Grandpa and his granddaughter and the adventures they take. It was shown to me when my Grandpa died when I was 3, and I watch it every few years as I think I'm getting older and more mature, I should not be crying at a cartoon. But I still do!!

Day 5- A song that has a new meaning every time you hear it
Linsey- Air Balloon, Lily Allen
Me- Escape, chase and goodbye, John Williams
I love film soundtracks and the ET one is one of my favourites. I got it for my birthday at uni and I’ve only seen the film 3 times I think, but listened to the soundtrack way more. Escape, chase and goodbye, although classical has so much narrative I go into a different time zone and narrative made up by my imagination every time I hear it. 15 minutes of sheer perfection.

Challenge within a challenge: Dresses 2 and 3 work party and family outing

Tis the season to be merry, dance and keep up traditions and last weekend I did all three. I had my work Christmas party on the Friday night and I was so busy having a good time that I forgot to take a picture of me in my dress.

I did take a picture earlier in the week when deciding on which dress to choose. So this is what I went for. A little black dress from Jane Norman which had sheer sleeves with black polka dots. Friday was Text Santa, so I donated £5 to the appeal. I donated an extra £5 as well as it was Christmas jumper day at work and I couldn't find the donation buckets.

The next day I met my family at 9.30 which was very early considering I went to bed around 2 am. We went to London as for the past few years we go and watch a play before Christmas. Last year it was The Railway Children, and the year before it was a play at The National Theatre. I remember talking to an elderly lady in the interval of that play and then sitting with her for the second half as she was on her own. She came from Wales and was house sitting for her son in London while he was skiing.

Back to present day, we had a look round the Southbank, had Brussel Sprout pizza for lunch (as you do,) saw Ronan Keating do some filming (as you do) and then saw the Ballad of Robin Hood which had Brian Blessed’s  daughter in it (as you do.)

The play was entertaining, however I was really struggling to stay awake. I had to fidget the whole way through, and as it was in the round, there was nowhere to hide if I nodded off! Thankfully it was only 1 hour and 15 minutes.

This is the dress I wore, and it was a bit confusing as to which way round it should be on.
What do you think?

In terms of a donation to charity, I actually did this buying another dress! In Festival Hall they had a little charity shop exhibition where they were selling Christmas jumpers and dresses. I saw a great one for New Year’s Eve and so I bought it there for £10.99. I bought the dress from Traid. Traid is a charity which is turning clothes waste into funds to reduce the environmental impact of our clothes.
The New Year dress will be on the blog in the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait to wear it!

Challenge within a challenge: Minimalism challenge progress

I started the minimalism challenge last Wednesday and I’ve only done a few of the 30 things. So I need to step it up a gear!

Last Wednesday afternoon to last Thursday afternoon I stayed offline. I didn’t check emails, texts, Facebook, Instagram and any Watsapp messages. It wasn’t too bad to do. The Watsapp part I struggled with a little as I was tempted to reply to the odd message but I didn’t. Over the time period I received the following:
1 text message
5 Watsapp messages
81 emails
6 Facebook notifications
3 Linked In notifications and messages
And a partridge in a pear tree

The second part of the challenge I completed was downsizing my beauty collection. For this I sorted out my beauty products and toiletries I had. Over the years I've received lots of toiletry and beauty sets and quite a few of the sets had body lotion and body butter. Here’s the thing I've kept the body lotion and body butter products in the hope that I’ll be someone that uses them, but I think I've come to realise that it’s just not me. So out they went.

                                 
                                                                   Before sort out

After sort out

As you can see I got rid of quite a lot of products, and in a way it is like a weight has been lifted. And for future reference, can I not be bought body lotion. However Benefit make up I am a fan of, so I’d happily accept those products!

The third part of the challenge was to unfollow and unfriend. Unfriending people on Facebook isn't something I normally do, as I feel like in some ways it’s deleting some of my past. I've got 456 friends on Facebook and I went through and deleted 14, including a guy who told me to lower my standards, a monkey picture, 2 friends ex’s and 3 people I met on nights out.

Instagram wise I was following 168 people/accounts and now I’m following 160. So not a dramatic decrease but still a fair few.

With the Christmas holidays coming up I’m sure I’ll have more time to practice minimalism!

New experience and Challenge within a challenge: Dress 1, may the force be with you!

On Wednesday I had some annual leave to use up, so I took the afternoon off and headed to London. I went to see Bend it Like Beckham the musical which was great. I also got my seat upgraded so instead of being at the back of the theatre, I was fourth row from the front!

Later in the evening I went to the Prince Charles Cinema to see Home Alone 2 which was great fun. It felt like I was at a pantomime as there was booing, singing and shouting out lines.

For the middle part of my afternoon and evening in London I went to Leicester Square as there was a premiere for a little film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. You may have heard of it???

It was pure coincidence that the premiere was happening the same day as I was going to London. I only found out the day before it was taking place. One of my colleagues suggested I should dress as Princess Leia, which would help the dress challenge and it was a great idea.

I teamed up a basic cream dress from H&M but from Dave’s stall, along with a brown leather jacket, brown knee high boots and Princess Leia hair buns.

I hadn't been to watch a premiere before and when I got to Leicester Square, the main area was blocked off with high screens, so you couldn't see much. There were walkways around and it was here that I saw lots of lookie likes. I had my picture with a few of them. All 3 cinemas in the square were doing screenings, so it was a good idea to have the characters around.

I walked around a bit and eventually found a place where I had a good view of the big screens near the red carpet, and it was here I got talking to a guy called Alex. So we talked Star Wars trivia and got talking to a security guard called Asha and a policeman called Matt. He was great fun, we made jokes with him and he had a great sense of humour. He even put the Leia hair buns on top of his helmet when I asked him!

On the tube on the way back I saw an advert to donate £3 to Unicef’s Christmas appeal, which was to help provide thermal blankets to Syria. I text blanket to 70099 and this started off my charity donations for each time I wear a dress.

Challenge within a challenge: 30 Day Minimalism Challenge

My friends and family know all too well that I have way too much stuff. I have massive sort outs, but I still have lots of stuff afterwards. I’d love to have not many posessions, the question is how?

While on Pinterest I stumbled across the 30 Day Minimalism Challenge, and while not everyday is chucking out things, it will put me in the right frame of mind to let go of things….I hope!

I try to do challenges as they are set out, but with this one I’m too eager to get started so I’m going to mix the order up a bit.

Day one of the challenge which I’ll start tomorrow is stay offline for a day. Now with my work, it’s impossible to do that as my work is all through email. However I have got tomorrow afternoon and Thursday morning off work. So I’m going to use that time period as day 1, starting tomorrow lunchtime. It couldn’t have come at a better time as for personal reasons I might find tomorrow pretty tough, so a day offline would actually be a great benefit.

So bring on minimalism! Like all my 30 day challenges I take on I won’t blog about this everyday, just every so often. It will be interesting as well to see if it changes my perspective on life also. Only time will tell I guess.

Challenge within a challenge: 27 dresses plus a few (a dozen or so more perhaps)

I was a tomboy growing up. There’s a picture of me in the local paper when my mum won me a bike and I'm wearing fake Adidas tracksuit bottoms, trainers and a grey hoodie. All baggy as I was told to get clothes a bit bigger so I’d have room to grow. I would be the one at school with an Adidas sports bag as my school bag, but it was big enough to take for a weekend away, and I remember it squeaked whenever you carried it.

I'm not sure when I got into wearing dresses, but it might have been around the time that I started watching teen flicks and chick flicks (yes there is a difference.) My two favourites were She’s All That and Never Been Kissed. I really did think I was Laney Boggs and Josie Grossie. I remember for my year 11 prom and probably the start of my downfall in Maths I would talk endlessly about the prom and the dresses and the shoes. Our prom was in May and I got my dress back in November/December time.

My dress collection has since grown and grown. It doesn't help that one of the main places I get clothes from is a guy called Dave who runs a market stall in Hitchin. He sells end of line high street clothes for £5 or less. A couple of months ago I got a Monsoon evening dress for £4. It’s just a shame that he doesn't provide storage.

At last count I had close to over 40 dresses; a mixture of work ones, day and evening dresses. And so this challenge is simple, wear all my dresses! I’d like to be able to wear them all in one year, but that is quite ambitious. So we’ll see how long it will take me. And with going to 3 weddings next year alone, I might wear dresses more then I realise.

To make things a little different with this challenge within a challenge, I'm going to make a small donation to charity each time I wear a dress. It will be a different charity each time, so if you have a favourite charity, let me know why and I’ll donate to it!

Challenge within a challenge: Journo Girls take on the Gilmore Girls

My friend Hayley and I are big Gilmore Girls fans. If you haven’t seen the show I highly recommend it, they do talk very fast, but it’s funny and witty as well.

One of the main characters Rory is very smart and in the show she dreams of going to Harvard or Yale. She’s very well read and is always reading classic novels.

Since starting the Five Score and Five blog I decided to look at Pinterest for some challenge ideas, and I found a great one to do with Gilmore Girls.

Somebody has created a list of all the books that either Rory read or mentioned in the show and there are over 300! Blogs of a Bookaholic featured the list in full. I sent the list to Hayley and I asked if she would be up for working through the list. She said yes and said she always wanted to be part of a book club. So I guess this is our very own Gilmore Girls book club.

As there are a lot of books, we’re going to be resourceful. Using our local library and virtual ones (finally getting regular use of a kindle I bought years ago) and borrowing books from family and friends that have copies. I’ve already been through the family book shelf and found the below off the list.

Like I said it is a long list to go through, so I'll update here from time to time what books we've read. There's no deadline on this challenge, so it will probably keep us entertained until we have zimmer frames!

Hayley’s fiancé Jonathan who is pictured above picked the first book at random Hayley and I are going to read, and it’s The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I haven’t read any Sylvia Plath before. All I know is that she had a tumultuous marriage to Ted Hughes and I think she gassed herself. So it will be interesting to see how the book is!

New Recipes: Bake off final buddies!

My friend Michelle (Mish) and I have been saying for a little while that we should have a baking session. And last Sunday we finally got round to baking! We are both fans of bake off and in the final Tamal did an amazing sticky toffee pudding cake. As that is one of my favourite desserts, we just had to give it a try.

I hadn't cooked with Mish before and it was great fun. We made a great team, from getting the ingredients, to dividing up what we had to do, it just worked like clockwork.

The recipe wasn't that complicated which was surprising as I thought because it was in the bake off final it would be. The only complicated bit was the spun sugar decoration but we didn't have enough time to do that. Also I reckon it would have been seriously messy, so we gave it a miss.

The most exciting part was making the toffee and using the sugar thermometer, the excitement built as we waited for it to reach 115 degrees! It finally did and it was a great feeling as it hadn't burnt and was just the right consistency.

Mish had to leave once we got the cake and sauce made, so I did the finishing touches and cut the cake and spread the toffee sauce between the two cakes as well as spread it on the top.

By far it’s the best cake I've ever made, and definitely the best cake co-baked. The cake mixture had lemon and orange zest which gave it even better flavour than normal.

We've already planned what we want to bake in our next baking session, so hopefully it will feature on here in a few weeks’ time.

New Experience: A play on the big screen

Last Saturday my evening plans fell through, but I still wanted to do something instead of just staying in. So I checked out my local cinema’s site to see what was on. The Broadway is a great local cinema, although it only has 4 screens, they still put on quite a variety and from Monday to Friday it’s only £5.

Like quite a few cinemas in the country the Broadway show a few plays, some are broadcast live and when it’s a big play they show it in all 4 screens. My parents went to see Swan Lake and the whole place was packed.

I saw advertised a while ago that they were going to show the Broadway (New York Broadway) production of the John Steinbeck book Of Mice and Men. It starred James Franco and Chris O’Dowd and was originally put on last year, so this was a recording.

I wanted to see the play as I studied the book at school and really liked it, so when my plans fell through this was the perfect plan B.

Seeing a play in the cinema is actually pretty good, for one thing you've got the best view in the house as you can see their emotions up close. There was also the added extra of in the interval they showed interviews of the cast and the director, which gave you extra context to the play.

The play was well acted and seeing something on my own is something I've done plenty of times before. However it was the first time I saw a play at the cinema. I had a nice chat with the old man who sat next to me during the interview. I didn't get his name but he was on his own too as his wife didn't want to see the play. He liked his plays and had seen a lot of Shakespeare, and he was going to New York for the first time in April, so I gave him some suggestions of where to visit while he was there.

Seeing a play in the cinema was not only considerably cheaper than the theatre itself (my ticket was £10) but you got more than you would see if you went to see it live. I’ll definitely see more plays at the cinema in the future.

Thoughtful gifts: Housewarming

This weekend my friend Carmella, otherwise known as CDL had a housewarming for her new place. I couldn't go as it was too far and petrol would've cost a lot for an overnight trip. But I still wanted to send something as a housewarming gift.

CDL is very stylish and I know with moving into your own home you want things to be in your own style and have it look just right. So buying a furniture piece or a personalised piece for someone might not go with the décor.

So what I did was very simple. I used one of the gift boxes I got from my shopping spree at Tiger the other week and filled it with Thorntons chocolates which I bought in a Christmas bundle as presents for friends and family.

Chocolates are always a winner and CDL could either have them for guests on arrival or to keep her going when tidying up the morning after.

Challenge within a challenge: Was the routine of success a success?

On Friday I completed the Routine of Success Challenge. The final week I did 62 things which meant it was my most productive week. By the end of the week I’d had enough of getting up before 6am and really struggled on the final day. I also had a drumming parade on the Friday evening, so after having a 20 minute power nap I was good to go.

So what have I learnt? Well the main thing is that you can get a lot done before breakfast if you put the time in and are organised. Usually before work I have to get up an hour before because I take my time getting ready, but with the challenge having a list of things I had to get done meant I had some purpose.

I'm not sure I’ll continue with the meditating. You’re supposed to do it in a quiet space, but as I live right by a bus stop, the buses start arriving from about 5.30ish onwards, there’s no chance of quiet. Also the final day of meditating the video I was watching mentioned a random phrase which I realised was a lyric in the Full House theme song I heard years ago, and then I got that in my head and meditating sort of went out of the window.

Writing what you were grateful for in my opinion didn't really work. I get while people do it, but I found it a bit cringy. It comes up a lot in gratitude challenges, but it’s just not for me.

One thing I did like doing was in the final week I found a great playlist of 5 minute exercise videos from POPSUGAR Fitness and I did like doing them first thing in the morning, so when I can I'm going to do them.

For a person who isn't great at maths I do love a good stat. There were 210 things to do in total over the 3 weeks and I did 143, so nearly 70% of what I set out to do, which isn't too bad.

Did I gain any success out of the 3 weeks? Not really, I was just more productive with my time. It was an interesting 3 weeks, but I’m really looking forward to getting up after 6!

New recipes: Gluten free baking

Every year my school friends and I have a girlie Christmas get together. We do meet up throughout the year as well. I had the idea last year that instead of Secret Santa presents, we do Secret Santa experiences. So we each pick a name and then an experience. Then you’ll do that experience with that person. It also meant you got two presents each as I didn’t fully think through how the whole thing had worked.

The idea I thought was a good one, but with all of us being so busy, I’m the only one that has done both my activities so far. The first was months ago and it was painting nails with my friend Rachel.
The second was to do baking with my friend Louise and last Sunday I went over to her house and baked in her very stylish kitchen. She runs Whimsical Wonderland Weddings, a very successful wedding blog, so if you’re getting married anytime soon, check it out for inspiration.

We made a pavlova which I had already done before, coincidently for my 29 challenge earlier this year. And we also did some gluten free baking, which I hadn't done before.

The mince pies we made were gluten free, and all that was different in the baking was the flour we used. There was a slight difference when rolling out the pastry as it wasn’t as strong and broke when rolling it out thin. But we got there in the end, and as you can see the results aren’t too bad. They tasted pretty good as well!

Challenge within a Challenge: Song sisters

This week I will be starting another challenge, and this one will be with my pole sister Linsey! If you were a 29 challenge blog reader you may recognise her as she was involved in quite a few of the categories.

While thinking of challenge ideas I thought I’d check out Pinterest to see what they suggested for 30 day challenges. After trawling through all the 30 days to a better butt challenges I came across a site called Thought Brick. This site is brilliant and gave a list of 100 challenges you could do in 30 days, that weren't about better abs.

I’ve taken quite a few from this site, so they’ll feature on here in the future. But the first one I’ll be doing is listening to a new song everyday. To make it more interesting I got Linsey to take part as well and so we are listening to new songs, we’ll listen to each other’s choices.

So what songs do we pick? Well after more googling I found Heck Yeah Tumblr challenges had a great list. I won’t put the full list here, as I’ll put it in full at the end of the challenge, along with my choices. But here are the first five.

A song that makes you happy
A song that helps you clear your head
A song that makes you laugh
A song that reminds you of something sad
A song that has a new meaning to you every time you hear it

This is going to be a fun challenge and just picking the first song alone, I've changed my mind half a dozen times already. It’s like I’m picking songs for my own Desert Island Discs! It will also be really interesting because as Linsey put’s it we’re going to learn a lot of random stuff about each other.

Try thinking what you’d song you’d have for the first five songs; it might be as easy as you think.

Random act of kindness and thoughtful presents: Baking exchange

For Halloween last year Charlotte and I held a party, and to warn our neighbours that there would be noise, we did the smart thing and invited them to the party.

One of them called Laura showed up and she brought along some cake-pops which she baked. I pointed out that Charlotte and I also like to bake, and jokingly said that if she needed a tasting panel to let us know.

Imagine our surprise when 2 days later I come home from work to find a foil package on our doorstep which was warm banana bread in! It tasted great and so a few days after I returned the gesture with some pumpkin pie that I had made.

Just over a year later and the exchange is still happening. There’s no rota, it’s all very sporadic which makes it even better as you never know when there’s going to be some cake on the doorstep!

Thoughtful presents: Silver lining

I've been friends with Humaira aka Di-Lowe since the final year of uni when we both took extra shorthand classes. And since then our friendship has grown and strengthened. Our job hunting journeys parallel each other’s for quite some time, so it was always good to have someone to turn to who was in the exact same situation.

About a month or so ago she text me saying that she had some jewellery stolen and for a friend to have things stolen it is an awful thing.

When friends have something bad happen or are going through a low period I immediately think what I can do to make them happy. And often I find that the smallest gestures are the most meaningful. So I went on one of my favourite sites Not on the High Street and bought Humaira a bangle to restart her collection which was stolen.

Humaira and I love a good quote and it would've been good to have our favourite quote on the bangle, but it was too long. Our favourite quote is: ‘Friendships don’t magically last forty years, you have to invest in them.’ So I settled on key words that mean a bright future.  And I don’t think it looked too bad.

Challenge within a challenge: Routine of success week 2

So it’s the end of week 2 and going into the third and final week, I’m getting more tired. I haven’t told all my friends about the challenge, so I still get texts when I’m trying to get to sleep.

Being tired also reduced my productivity because in the first week I did 44 things, and in the second I did 37.

I abandoned writing down the things I was grateful part, because I didn't feel I was getting anything from it. With planning and making a strategy for the day ahead, I do this on the drive to work, so it’s nothing new. So I feel no need to write this down.

And at the end of the week I did some actual networking before breakfast, rather than just reading LinkedIn articles. I emailed several connections with some career advice. So far I've had one response that is really useful.

Going into the final week I’m going to try and do the one thing I haven’t done off the list….exercise.
I’m sure sleep-running is a thing right?

New Experience and Challenge within a challenge: Things got heated

Last week I mentioned in a blog post that I was doing a sponsored firewalk, and yesterday I did it!
Going in I had no fear about it. I figured that getting over a broken heart, you’re in pain for a lot longer, and the walk was from first impressions would last a minute tops to complete. A minute in your life is nothing really in the grand scheme of things.

Like the large majority of my challenges, I was flying solo on this one. In fact I was the only one from the company I work for. I was surprised about this as the company is big on charity work.
I had 2 hours of training and people asked me what was involved in the training? Well it was all about focus and mind over matter. There were different exercises you could do as part of it, although I just watched people walk over broken glass and breaking an arrow.

When it came to firewalking you had to walk with purpose, as if you have 5 minutes left on the carpark, but you didn’t know whether you have 5 minutes left, or whether you’re 5 minutes over. You start to panic and speed up in walking. We also had to pick a word to repeat every step you took. The one most people used was yes, and add to that looking at the trainer while walking, that is how you firewalk.



So how was the walk? Well it was hot! Which is what you expect, and a bit prickly. But it didn’t hurt! Once I did it I thought, is that it? It was over in seconds. I then had another go as we started early and my friend Laura and her husband Rob hadn’t arrived, and I didn’t want them to have a wasted trip. So with most of the others we had a second go. The second go I did exactly the same as the first walk, kept saying yes, but on the last step instead of looking at the trainer I looked down, and it started to hurt. The trainer even knew once I finished.

My feet were a bit sore today, but only had one little scratch which I was surprised at as I thought my feet would be battered and bruised.

It was a great experience and I’m proud that I did it. The trainer said I had a very determined look in my face. I’m even more proud and surprised that I smashed my sponsoring target, which never normally happens. My target was £150 and so far I’ve raised £330! As it’s payday, if you feel like being charitable, feel free to make a donation on my Justgiving page.

Now what could my next physical challenge be???

Challenge within a Challenge: E=C?

There are 3 types of people in my view; one’s who are good at creative subjects, one’s who are good at logical and methodical ones like maths and science, and people who are equally good at both.

I am good at the creative subjects and my sisters are the ones who are equally good at both. At school I got two D grades at science and an E grade at maths. The E grade has been an issue ever since I got it in 2002 and it even stopped me studying journalism at central Lancashire University (even though the journalism course I did never once featured maths.)

To be honest I've been seeing how long I can get without having to retake maths, and I don’t think I've done too badly over a decade later. I use maths every day at work, so it’s not as if I’ve been avoiding it. I think I said it once and only once about retaking my maths GCSE to get it to a C grade. My Grandad and my Dad both remember me saying it and just like if I said I was going to lose weight, you’d always get questions asking how it’s going.

For years I've had the same question; when are you going to retake your maths? With the never ending job hunting I've endured since graduation, I've always put it off. But the questions are starting to grate, so I'm doing something about it.

You would think it would be easy to retake the GCSE, it actually isn't. At the local college you need a D before you can retake, which I find little odd and family members are a bit bemused by it, but those are the rules! The college offer life skills classes in maths which you can take in order to get up to the D grade in order to retake.

I had an assessment to see which level I could work for and out of 25 questions I got 23 correct, so something must have stuck! The tutor was equally bemused when he was filling out my form because for education I was one level away from the highest qualification level, by having a degree.

With doing the assessment I was now ready to start classes, and tonight I did my first class. We were learning about fractions, percentages and decimals and converting all of them. There were only a couple of bits I found a bit challenging, but the rest I could do before the class.

I started the course nine weeks in, so I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. The tutor has asked me if there are any troublesome parts in the stuff they covered prior to me starting, but on the list there’s nothing standing out in the list.

So the maths journey has begun and who knows I may get the all-important C grade. Maybe then I’ll feel fully smart.