Life thoughts from the last two weeks.

I have been a little bit depressed over these past couple of weeks, mainly because a good friend and former workmate, died recently aged 31. I first met Laura when we were both working at Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park, Scotland in the mid 1990's. Laura was one of the sessional leisure assistants and always full of mischief, giggles and laughter. She was very popular with everybody, and an excellent sailor and kayaking instructor. She met her husband there too [ whom I also worked with] and they got married in 1995.
She left CMRP for 'pastures new' on the job front, and the next time we worked together was in December 2000 when she asked if I could come and help her out at the Forth and Clyde Canal Community Project for a few weeks! [It was supposed to be six weeks and I was there until April when it amalgamated with the Nolly Barge Project - also based on the Forth and Clyde Canal.] Laura was alway keen on sports and represented the United Kingdom at Atlanta in wheelchair basketball at the special Olympics. She never let the fact that she had to use a wheelchair ever hold her back - and often did a lot more than the average 'able-bodied' person.

Laura was a lovely person and generated respect, from all those who knew her, for her honesty, her passion and her sense of fun and for 'living the moment'. She will be greatly missed, especially by her friends and family.


I had been planning to go away for the last couple of weekends but an unexpected and rather large repair bill for my car meant that I indulged in a little bit of 'green tourism' and stayed at home - enjoying some peace and quiet and wonderful weather in my garden!! I also tackled a couple of small jobs in my house which I had kept putting off - painting a fireplace surround, and going through a couple of boxes of my late husbands papers and things [which was the second reason that I was a bit depressed - it has been just over a year since he died of Cancer and I still think of him and miss him, every single day.] I did enjoy just being able to sit back and feel the sunshine warming my body, listening to the birdsong [Robins have started singing again to mark out thier winter territories and the local Mistle Thrush is trying to keep the nearby Yew tree and Hawthorn berries for itself and is chasing any other birds away] and feeling warm breezes on my skin. I was reading an article which asked 'do you recognise when you are happy' and it said that sometimes just savouring the smaller pleasures in your life can raise your general feeling of happiness - so I have been trying to do that over the last couple of weeks too, - I think I would have been really down if I hadn't done that.