Calling hairdressers to save my cut hair and make a wig

What they should do is save your hair for a wig. Every hairdresser should offer you the change to save your hair - and pay them to order a wig. Get it done when you are young, when your hair is long, or every time you change hairstyle or colour. When you are old and bald or have cancer or an accident, or don't like your new too short haircut, you can wear your wig and say, "Yes, it's my own hair."

Sober thoughts on drinking at the Mandarin Oriental hotel

I don't know how my drinking family and friends and colleagues manage to cope with such quantities of alcohol and still function to travel and work. I missed my planned afternoon out at an exhibition whilst trying to sober up after all the food and drink and lunch and get back my energy to travel on to my next evening event.

For those whose expense accounts allow for a door to door taxi costing nearing £100 to go from the Mandarin Oriental hotel opposite Harrods, to another suburban hotel or nearby city, or one as far away as Reading, is fine. The decision is after during dinner, before and after, between lunch and dinner, either drink more - alcohol or water -  and take taxis, or walk more.

Some people in my family count the costs, the calories, and increase their exercise with long walks from one meeting to another, along the Thames, plotting their route by satnav.

For me, I suppose a leisurely walk in the fresh air or a stroll along Hyde Park might be the answer. For my next visit to a London hotel, if I am invited again, I shall have to opt for less alcohol or more exercise.

Next time I must say firmly to the waiter, "I've had enough alcohol, thank you. I won't be able to function if I drink any more. Can you suggest a coffee, tea or non-alcoholic drink?"

I'm having a dry day today, recovering.

When to hold a dinner party or attend a wine tasting?

Wine days and fruit days - see the calendar.

Two questions arise. Which wines should you drink on which days - therefore

1 Choose the day on which to serve a favourite wine to guests at a dinner party.

2 Choose the day to attend (or hold) a wine tasting.

3 If you cannot change the day to suit the wine, change the wine to suit the day.

This is assuming you believe it's true. Read more details in my post under my blog on travel.

Where are my glasses? Solution below

I just found my missing glasses. On top of my head.

Chocolate Weighty Question

Now they say chocolate can help you lose weight.

No they don't, what they say is that a little of what you fancy does you good. But too much is bad for you. So is trying to do without altogether. Hm?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2771008/Good-news-slimmers-Eating-bar-chocolate-HELP-lose-weight.html

Publishing an ebook: why, how, first steps

I want to turn my books into ebooks. I have met lots of people who are interested in my books such as Quick Quotations but don't buy. Two reasons are:

1 It's too expensive as a print book.

Even if they don't say this, although some claim that they don't have cash on them but will buy next time.) I can't reduce the price of the print book unless  I run at a loss because I have to pay for the printing as well as the postage and packing. So an ebook would enable me to offer a better price.

2 I don't want to buy a book.
They might be travelling home and not want heavy luggage. The airline has a weight limit. It's a strain on their back to buy books.

3 I'd rather buy an ebook, later. Can you give me the details.
Some might be unsure. If I gave them the ebook details they might later decide to buy or to recommend the book to a friend.

I am considering using the various systems. Lulu.com  Amazon. Others.

We had talks on this offered at both Writers' Holiday and Writers' Summer School.

But the easiest way is to start with lulu.com because my books are already on their system.


http://connect.lulu.com/t5/Video-Tutorials/Video-Tutorial-How-to-Publish-an-eBook-on-Lulu-com/ta-p/175739

Lulu.com have two home tutorials. One is on headings.

Evening Primrose for perfumed evenings - a favourite fragrant flower

An eye-catching yellow flower in a friend's garden was evening primrose. It opens in the evening, between 7 and 9 pm, sometimes so fast you can almost watch it moving like time-lapse photography.

But here it is, bright and beautiful, after lunch, mid afternoon.

If you are out in your garden early, before lunch, you might spot a flower called Jack-go-to-bed at noon, also known as goat's beard. The scarlet pimpernel is said to open early and close between noon and 2 pm. 

You might like to read an amusing article Flowers to set your watch by online in the telegraph.

www.telegraph.co.uk/9391722/Flowers-to-set-your-watch-by.

Many British gardens close for the winter. But a few remain open, especially around the larger stately homes which welcome visitors all year. Check out the National Trust sites for opening hours. You can also look at flowers in Garden Centres. (See my post about Squires Garden Centres in my blog on travel.) 

Evening primrose oil is sold in health food shops, large stores,  pharmacies and supermarkets such as Boots and Tesco. 

If you've got a few seeds to spare, send some my way. I'm on the lookout for fragrant flowers. 

rhs.org.uk told me the heights of three kinds of evening primrose, asked whether I wanted annuals, biennials or perennials, did I want a garden centre to visit within one mile, ten miles, or further, or would I like mail order, and found me 11 mail order suppliers of fragrant evening primrose in the UK. The fragrant one is called oenothera biennia.

Picking green figs - what to do - what not to do

Our tree produced lots of little hard green figs. Researching on the internet we found out that you need to cut back the tree so its energy goes into the buds and not new branches. So I am off into the garden to pull off the figs (one of the recipes for sweet syrupy figs - not the pickled sour recipes). I'm getting white sticky sap from the figs where I break them off, also the leaves I pull off.

I thought I had only half a dozen figs, not enough for the recipe. But this year for the first time, I have a bag full.

The tree is growing like Jack and the Beanstalk, overshadowing everything else, threatening nearby trees, plants, and the conservatory built on the back of the house which is now a lot nearer the fig than the house was when I first planted the fig. (So when planting, think whether your future conservatory or patio might be near that baby 'tiny' tree you are planting.)

I took the precaution of wearing a gardening glove on my right picking hand, with a plastic bag to gather fruit in my other hand. Should have worn the old gardening shoes too. Not just the dew on the grass, or the mud. Nor the insects. Falling sap.

I should have worn a disposable plastic hat. What sort? One of those blue show covers from swimming pools.

My arrive back in the kitchen and I am warned, "Wash your hands and arms now. I've got an allergic reaction to the irritation of the sap on my wrists."

It's hard to get off. I wash the gardening glove as well.

Back in the kitchen I am called, "Got any gloves for cutting up the fruit?"

Yes, I have a box of disposable gloves. Not very thick, but at least they are disposable. You could wear one pair under a glove to protect your skin, another over it to protect the glove.

Now the chopping board will be full of the sap. Should have covered the board and the work surface too.

My family tell me they removed the fig sap in the kitchen with lighter fluid. Really. Good thing I've got a fire extinguisher. Better check the fire extinguisher expiry date - fire alarm batteries, fire extinguishers - all these things expire.

I am going off this fig fruit idea. Now I know why my late mother got tired of making strawberry jam when I was a child and made my father dig up the slug bed, I mean, strawberry bed, and plant flowers.

Next time I'll get the gardeners to pick the fruit. They are already wearing gardening gloves. We have enough fruit to take to our friends we are seeing for lunch. No, we won't take them unripe figs - we like our friends too much, and we want to stay friends.

I have a new swear word. Oh, fig. Fig it.

My travel posts will tell you where to buy jams and chutneys and wines.

Green figs not ripe

Found a forum about recipes from unripe green figs.
gardenweb.com

You could take your fig into your nearest garden centre and ask what's wrong.
Could be plant saving energy because of lack of water or nutrients, pests, winter frost, needs pinching out new growth, cut branches not bearing fruit, wrong type of fig needing pollination.

Recipes from Greece and South Africa. Decide sweet or sour. Pickle or turn into sweet jam.


See my travel blog post about Squires Garden centre; and my posts on that blog on vineyard tours and wine tasting.
Books by Angela Lansbury on Lulu.com and Amazon.
Also see me on Facebook, linkedIn and Youtube.

To be a chicken keeper or not to keep chickens? Which came first the desire for the chicken or eggs?

As a child I won goldfish at the funfair but the fish died. I kept tropical fish. They died. (When I was away in India.) No it was not the cat. I did not have a cat. Unfortunately I was allergic to cat and dog hair as a child.

Every now and then we discuss how nice it would be to keep a cat or dog. My first desire was to keep a cat or a dog, only later did I want to keep chicken which laid eggs. Why keep a cat or dog? My late father's family had a working cat to catch mice - also a working dog to patrol the local church and catch or better still deter would-be thieves.

I like cats, or at least pictures of cats, For five minutes. I have no desire to keep a cat in the house to catch mice because we have no mice, as far as I know.

My relatives had a cat. They moved house and spent days hunting for their cat which went missing. It turned up in their old garden.

What about a dog? First there is house training. The cost of the food.  Finding somewhere to park your dog, or pay for kennels, every time you want to travel has never been an option for my family who are frequent flyers.

We started buying farm eggs. We went to a talk at a Science fair about breeding chickens to lay eggs.

Then I thought, why not keep a chicken and get fresh newly-laid eggs every day? it surely won't be miserable without me if I have to go away for the weekend.

I thought I'd research it. The knowledge might be useful for my novel starting in 1880.

I quickly went off the idea. To keep birds outdoors you have to register with the government. Government websites tell you what to do if your birds get bird flu and what to do about it. How do you recognise bird flu? Bits of your chicken turn swell up and or turn blue. They stop laying eggs and die.

Meanwhile, back in the supermarket, those half a dozen eggs no longer seem so exorbitantly priced. Quite a bargain really. Saves me such a lot of trouble looking after hens.

A post about a poltergeist

Ants, flies, mice, moths, pigeons, spiders, termites; cooling, condensation, draughts, heating, minor earthquake, sloping shelves, vibration from elevators, vibration from underground trains - watch out for sinkholes next year, caused by large ghosts. 

Hall of Heroes in Find My Past

Find my past emailed me about their Hall of Heroes. The only one I already knew was Edith Cavell in WWI. The others included stories involving Wales, the Basque children, the Irish, and Serbia.
findmypast.co.uk

Saving Photos and Finding Lost Photos for blogs, books, emails, greeting cards, cakes and memories

Writing a blog about preparing for Chinese New Year in 2015, I was hunting for my old photos showing hotel decorations with red lanterns, Chinese dragon dances outside restaurants, Orchard Road and Shopping Malls decorations. My laptop ran out of photo storage space so all my photos are lost on a disc storing them somewhere in the office. I could not find my old Chinese New Year photos in my Facebook pages. I found some photos in Wikipedia but it's a whole hassle and delay trying to check whether you have to credit the author and how do you spell their name, can you copy it, do you run the danger off copying the link but not the actual photo.

Facebook For Storing Photos
I found old photos of me and my books and myself in libraries with children on Facebook. But not Chinese New Year in Singapore.

Photos saved in Emails
Finally I checked my own emails with the search for the word Chinese New Year.

Success! Hooray! I had sent photos of Chinese New Year in Singapore to friends.

So now I can stop complaining that gmail has stored over 7,000 emails in the cloud and insists on trying to send me the lot every time I log in. I am truly grateful to gmail for storing my emails forever.

Whatever happens to my laptop, lost, stolen, upgraded, my photos in old emails and still intact and recoverable. So now anything I want to be sure not to lose, I shall email to another member of the family.

Here's an old photo. It has to be one of mine before I found the editing programme I bought for iPhoto which enables you to correct the horizontals.
Orange lanterns for Chinese New Year and a lion.

For my posts on travel go to my blog Angela Lansbury author travel.
You might also like my books on lulu.com

Ghosts and mental health

Adding further to scientific evidence for experiences of ghosts being not ghosts but having other causes from outside the person claiming to experience the ghost or inside their head. Even intelligent people can be fooled into thinking that they have met and spoken to people who cannot be caught on camera, seen by others, nor found next day in broad daylight.

Apparently ghost companions are a real, recognised danger when people grow light-headed on mountains and imagine phantom friends or enemies.

Here is an example of a fit, resourceful man, who in the night has a conversation with a man in his tent who is not there next day.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2745714/My-battle-death-angry-hungry-polar-bear.html

Cuddle cots for the stillborn - what about mourning for mothers? Last photos? Hospital photographers?

Cuddle cots. Any new idea which helps grieving families is welcome. I do wonder about the hygiene of adults and children (siblings of the stillborn) touching a dead baby. I also wondered why a mother of three healthy children would go on to have three stillborn babies. I suppose you keep hoping that the next live birth will replace the feeling of loss and write over the memory of the baby which died with the memory of a baby which lived.

Why would anybody want to keep cuddling the baby for 48 hours? Maybe it takes 48 hours to accept that the baby is dead and you can do no more for it.

Some people never move on. They keep the bedroom the same. They keep the photos on the wall. One family, the Alexander wine company, keep on a wine bottle the photo of Alexander, the father of the current (writing this in 2014) company owner's father.

People try to keep the name of the dead person, calling all children, grandchildren, or future sibling by the name of the ancestor or deceased relative.

That's what a graveyard is for. Even if you don't think that on the day of judgement the bones will all jump out of the graves. The authorities just want the name on the gravestone and the date of death in case the police need to exhume the body. But the family often wants a poem or picture. They vista the graves of the dead.

I have moved from mourning a stillborn baby, which doesn't happen to every family, to losing a parent, to anybody living a full lifespan. Now what about increasing number of people whose elderly mothers die in hospital? Should they have cuddle cots?

The mother of a stillborn baby might be in a hospital bed. But what about the widower with the walking stick, worrying about his car getting fined in the hospital car park, or the daughter of pensionable age herself has no chance to rest in hospital before seeing the body for 15 minutes in a morgue (queue and wait for your body's 15 minutes in the morgue bed) or getting the body back in a coffin.

In Victorian times when most people died at home, the dead baby was set up on the mother's knee or in her arms for a first and last photo. The Japanese still have open coffins. (One can still hope that the body will revive. It happened twice in South America in the last couple of years.)

Maybe we are moving slowly, gently, in that direction. Next we will have hospital photographers to take photos of the family with the recently deceased, propped up in bed.

Newspaper story on cuddle cots in Daily Mail online.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2744458/Meet-parents-using-refrigerated-cuddle-cots-buy-time-stillborn-babies.html

Read more quirky, thoughtful and informative posts by Angela Lansbury on travel, restaurants and other subjects.
Quick Quotations by Angela Lansbury in Lulu.com

Blue eyes began only up to 10,000 years ago. Oops - no blue eyes in the bible

If blue eyes started maximum 10,000 years ago everybody in the bible, old and new testaments, had brown eyes. So any oil paintings in the national art galleries showing blue eyed saints and prophets and biblical scenes will need to be re-painted or given texts on the walls explaining the artist's mistake.
(Research reported in Daily Mail online about findings from university of Pittsburgh.)

Ghosts and Macular Degeneration

   I've never believed in ghosts and used to think ghosts were explained by the usual suspects: People in white sheets play pranks. Miss a night's sleep and you are open to suggestion. Trees backlit by street lights cause shadows on the bedroom wall. After somebody dies you keep seeing them, wishful thinking. But now there's a sensible explanation.
   I had read about this just after my late father's death. He was an optician. I scanned through all the copies of optical journals he'd saved because he was not a saver and I thought they might have something vital. One of the journals had an obituary of a friend of his. Another had an article on macular degeneration being a suspect you test for if a patient confesses to seeing worrying images.
   if I remember the article correctly, it suggested that large heads and large hats might be blurred after images or negative images, especially if you sees white light in darkness with a silhouetted of a person or tall object and then turn to the light, you see the reverse.
  But now, out in the daily newspapers, to reassure everyone, are accounts of sensible people suffering from Charles Bonnet syndrome. Add on a new theory. That when you have a blank in the middle of a picture, caused by deterioration of the eye, your brain tries to fill the blank with familiar images.
   The eye and brain are amazing. You know if you acquire bifocals, invented by American Benjamin Franklin, or trifocals, you may have difficulty seeing through them. However, if you persist, as I did, some time between three days and a week, you will find you automatically adjust.
   Back to the eyes and ghosts. The trick in life is not to allow yourself to believe that weird forces are performing spiteful or unpredictable random acts. Most of nature and science follows regular patterns. If you find a regular problem, a pattern, persist long enough until you find the pattern which provides the answer. That's what I learned today.

Wine and Dine At Home Club Events

We started in the lounge with smoked salmon on brown bread cut into tiny squares, and the same with a platter of pate, plus two white wine aperitifs.

Small glasses - the bottles were shared between 10-12 people. We planned on having two wines with each course, so a eight quarter glasses of wine is two glasses of wine each. 

We drove there car sharing, so we had one driver who had to limit his drinking, three non-drivers who had only their health and waistlines to worry about.

Cheeses with grapes.

Cheeses with grapes, celery, assorted biscuits and crackers.

A sweet finish. Muscat or any sweet wine from your local supermarket.

Dessert of pavlova with strawberries and cream brûlée. Yummy.

Many groups of friends meet in the UK and Singapore.

Central London Wine society.

Hertfordshire wine society runs Grand Cru suppers. Prices are about £35 per person which includes food and wine. To join you need to be able and winning to take your turn hosting a dinner, which means cooking a three course meal for up to 14 people, including cold starters to serve for the stand up reception in the same or another room, and having space for one or two tables seating the 14 diners, and be willing to supply the two starter wines. 

To save the burden on the host, one of the guests or organisers supplies the other bottles of wine and the wine glasses. You need two glasses per person as you usually have two wines to compare.

The comparison might be a pair of wine both using the same grape, or similar style but a French or European contrasting with a New World wine, such as USA or South American or Australian or New Zealand. Often one wine will be cheap and/or recent, the other will be older and more expensive. You end by voting which you preferred. If you keep your own notes, you can go home pleased to have tried a good wine and seen how much better it was. Or, you will have preferred the cheaper wine and be glad to know you can save your money and get the same or more enjoyment.

Dr Page from the uni of Hertfordshire has designed a mini home you can build at the end of your garden which needs no more skill to build than an IKEA flatpack. (I do hope it comes with good instructions. I had a lot of trouble with some of my flatpack chairs, from IKEA - and more so from elsewhere.)
 
It's fine for the agile twenty something year olds - so long as they are not drunk and don't roll over in bed. Now please design a granny flat which somebody with bad legs or a wheelchair could live in. Then young families will have a built-o babysitter at the end of the garden. Add a version for a single Mum with a baby. (Single bed please. No room for a second baby.

Could I save the money I spend on writing holidays by sitting in my DIY shed home for a week and finishing my novel. It would be a great hobby home, for a writer or painter. Plus a bed if you sit up all night finishing the novel or poem or painting or composing a song or opera. And the bed for an afternoon nap, the day after you sat up all night. Or just for meditation.

I won't mention the orgy or the brothel. Let's just stick to the novel - and let the novel include the more adventurous ideas.

I dream of a bed
In a little garden shed
Where I wrote my great novel
That at least one person's read.
Angela Lansbury
Copyright May 10 2014

Harrow Writers' Circle & Pinner Writers' Short Story Competition Winner

The subject for the short story competition was revenge. Here's the winner.

We had several entries from both clubs. Each club chose the top three stories from the other club's entries. Then the six winners were read to an audience of members. We voted for the first and second choice. The score was two points for the stories a voter thought was first place, one point if the story was considered second place. 

After the interval the writers of the winning first and second place stories were announced. Two of the runners up stories were read. One of the runners up was Brian who is a member of both Harrow Writers' Circle and Watford Writers, another group with whom Harrow writers organises competitions.

The story subjects included an illegitimate daughter returning to get revenge on the father who had abandoned her mother, and a vengeful date who was not the wife but the sister-in-law. Lovely cakes were provided for everybody to enjoy by Julia seen in red at the front of the picture. She made chocolate cake, carrot cake with white icing on top and fruit cake. 

Pinner writers meet in Pinner library and a member's home. Harrow writers meets in Harrow Arts Centre and a member's home.

For more details of club meetings look on the web.

Why didn't I win? Revenge is not really what I'm after. I'm too kind.

That reminds me - I should publish my short stories in a collection and expand one of my short stories into a a children's book.

You can see my recent books on lulu.com

Angela Lansbury 

Author, Poet, Speaker

More details from

harrowwriterscircle.co.uk

Scio Will Change Our Lives For The Better

Scio, invented in Israel, analyses everything from the food in your shopping basket to bodily fluids. this is the invention of the century. What can it do?

The Cure For Sickness
   The medical advances will be marvellous. Find out whether somebody has meningitis. Stop sick people getting on a plane unless in a quarantine section or on a special hospital plane.
   Put a plaster on a scratch as soon as you need to and prevent problems. Spot sickness soon enough to cure it. Call the family if somebody is seriously ill. Save hospital queues at self-analyse machines in hospital.

Shopping and Cooking Transformed

   Everyday life will be transformed. Shopping and shipping. All food fresh.
   Calorie count your meals for your diet. Shop sensibly.
    No more horse meat in food when you are paying premium prices. No mistakes in supermarkets when marked down food has already gone off. Spot the worm in the apple.

People and Pets
   Animals, pets. Know if your dog will hurt anybody, or the dog in the street. Identify a lost pet and return it to the overjoyed owner.
   And maybe pick a healthy husband. Or, if you are the nursing nurturing type, find somebody who needs your loving care and appreciates being looked after.

Recycling - growing food in gardens, landscaping edible gardens, recycling teeth and hair

I just did a survey on Survey Monkey on recycling and natural foods and protecting the environment. Some of these companies in your survey are USA and I'm in the UK. the survey could do with a box Add 'don't know' (US stores in UK). Please tell Survey monkey. thanks.

What do I want more of? I was hunting for natural food colour, having watched a YouTube video on home made Turkish Delight using red food colour. I know that beetroot and raspberries are good red colour. (Whatever causes unwanted stains, can be used deliberately to dye food or if edible to dye foods.)

Suggestions I read were cranberries, beetroot powder, or buying from suppliers of natural products.

More Recycling
 I'm also interested in using non damaging food colour and saving your teeth from decay by not eating sugar, not pulling teeth out and not inserting putting in metal nor mercury fillings.

I don't see the point in destroying things. I'd rather save elephant tusks than destroy them which just makes the few we have left more valuable and rare. Better to make plastic ones so widespread that it's not worth the bother of catching them.

People want to donate their own human organs after they die. We should be reusing our milk teeth.

What about saving hair cut at the hairdressers.

Also running classes on recycling - reusing clothes. Schools should teach recycling. In domestic science classes, more on using leftover food, storing leftover food.

Also growing plants from the prune stones and avocado stones we throw away. Turning rose petals and flowers into edible dishes. Growing more in gardens.

A few minutes after this blog I read the news and discovered a group of Chinese women called the Long-horn Miao save their mother's and grandmother's hair to make head dresses. 

Seven a day - portions of fruit and vegetables - how?

    Seven a day seems a lot. We heard rumours years ago that seven was the ideal but that we were told five because seven would seem such a large jump that the majority of people would not even try or would try and give up.
     Cut Sugar Desserts - Eat Fruit Salad
     My late father was late onset diabetic and when he was alive and came round for a bridge evening our system was simply to have fruit salad for dessert.      
     Later another member of my family had a cancer scare. We in my family tried to follow the recommendation on the cancer research sites, UK and worldwide. the cure worked.
     Now we are back to the simple rule that everybody should eat healthily to prevent problems. But we already have a system in place for five. This is it.

Five Portions of Fruit Or Vegetables Each Day
   Breakfast - fruit salad with porridge (add because porridge anti-cholesterol)  1 portion of fruit
   Lunch - meat or fish or egg(s) with 2 vegetables and 1 fruit salad -
   Dinner - meat or fish or egg(s) with 2 vegetables; desert is and either fruit salad or half portion of cake/ dessert or fruit salad and a chocolate or small crackers with cheese
 
For elevenses and tea time either two dried apricots or a spoon of cream cheese and a glass of water. Cut out sugar in coffee. Drink semi-skimmed milk.

   On the five a day system we were indulging in extra sugar from a glass or two of wine, cheese after a meal as well as or instead of fruit, sometimes a meal out including a dessert. We weighed ourselves and if the weight went up after a meal out we were back on fruit the next day, or day three if we divided up a take away dessert.

This was adopted as a diet. I have lost weight slowly. 2014 March my weight is 64.8 which is 10 stone 3 lbs. I have to lose another half stone or stone.  I should have achieved that by the end of the year.

In terms of gym and swim, I am doing aqua swim once a week. I would lose weight faster if I went twice a week or better still every day, if I had access to an indoor pool or an outdoor pool and good weather - no snow, no rain, no smog.

Seven A Day
  Our / Your Choice
Breakfast - 1 portion of fruit.
Lunch - 2 vegetables 1 fruit
Dinner 2 vegetables 1 fruit.

You can weigh your fruit and vegetables or just go by the guidelines of one large fish sized piece or a selection of smaller ones.  Ideally have more vegetables than fruit because of the sugar in fruit.

Tips

Buy fruit and vegetables from a shopping list.

Send your most rule-following person to buy food.

Go straight to the fruit and vegetable area in the supermarket and by-pass temptation.

Order online delivery so you are not tempted.

Cut cakes into finger-size portions like a chocolate to have with coffee.

Share desserts, cakes and biscuits and bread rolls between two or three.

Restrict alcohol to after six pm, like most working Americans.

Drink only at weekends.

Cut out drink except for evening birthdays and New Year's Eve.

Restrict drinking - have a January dry month. 

Give up drink for Lent, Ramadan, Passover, whatever.

  

Moth Orchid, blue

My favourite pot plants are orchids. 

More Garden Flowers in Orange and Yellow

What is it? Coffee maker part

I should start a new blog called what is it.

Every so often I find an item I cannot identify.

Today I recognised one. It was a square plastic tray with the corner cut out. It was the drip tray from the back of the base of a coffee maker, where it catches the coffee capsules. Mystery solved.

What's the problem? What's bleeping in the kitchen?

What's bleeping? Your microwave? Your oven. Your watch. Your phone. The smoke detector? A reversing vehicle? The fridge door left ajar - that was it!

Cakes with marzipan and icing top needed for a photo cake for a birthday

Fruit cakes with marzipan topping and white icing like wedding cakes are widely available at Xmas. I looked at my favourite supplier, Marks & Spencer, because I wanted a proper fruit cake with marzipan and solid icing on top so I could order an edible photo and put it on top.
   I have a supplier of a sponge cake, plain sponge or chocolate sponge, with a great photo. But the topping is solid sugar and it's really not ideal in a family where people have had diabetes and cancer caused by a high sugar and junk food diet. Anyway, I just like nuts and marzipan.
   I found a German maker of marzipan cakes in Lubeck, a city known for marzipan, but the reviewer said the cake is tiny, only a one person size, not a birthday cake size for four or more people. So I am still searching.

   

Birthday cakes - more research on ice cream

   For another birthday and a wedding anniversary this year I am continuing to research birthday cakes.

   Baskin Robbins in the UK makes cakes. Today they showed me the latest which is a small ice cream cake in four slices of separate colours (and I presume different flavours). That costs about £21 on special offer as it has just been introduced in March 2014.
   You can order a cake and have a special message on it. 72 hours notice is needed.

More information from www.baskinrobbins.co.uk

For cakes with marzipan see next blog.

Dog Walking: Samoyed; Cockerpoodle; Tibetan Terrier

You don't need to walk a dog to meet dog-owners and get chatting. All you need is a camera. I say, "Oh, what a lovely dog. May I take a photo? "

The reply is, "Of course you may."

What kind of dog is this beauty?

A samoyed.

What kind of dog is this one?

A cross between a cocker spaniel and a poodle.

Called a cocker poodle or cocka-poo.

Look at the camera!

(No, this ball is much more interesting.)

And what is this little darling?

A Tibetan terrier.

Making Popcorn - Easy!

 Are you at home watching a movie? or just wanting a quick snack?

 I was amazed how easy it is to make popcorn. Buy corn in a supermarket or deli or ethnic food shop.

Store in a lidded container in your fridge because a spoon of it goes a long way.

My chef gave me these instructions:

"Put the oil in the pan, maybe with butter for more flavour. Put the pan at the back of the hob, heat it gently. Get a pan cover ready and gently slide in the corn. Don't turn the heat full on yet because you don't want it to shoot out into your eye and all over the floor. Cover pan with a glass lid and turn up the heat until the corn starts popping. Don't let it get too hot - once the first ones are popping turn the heat down so they don't burn and go black. If you can see lots have not popped, give the pan a gentle shake in case they are in a cold spot. Some won't pop. When you have finished popping turn off the heat and wait a minute or two until you are sure the popping has stopped. Then pour out your corn. You can add salt or sugar after. Don't remove the lid while corn is popping - it's too dangerous." 

Chew carefully - some half cooked bits may be hard and you want to preserve your teeth. Enjoy.  

Photo Birthday Or Mother's Day Cakes & Edible Printing

Wedding caterers at wedding shows in hotels in springtime show elaborate cakes, often three tiers or round or square cakes. I saw three round cakes mounted on top of each other (no wobbly pillars!). Around the outside was a spiral chute turning the cake into a helper skelter (what the Americans calla   with Ice mountains on a sloping cake and teeny model skiers - that's what I ordered for my son's thirteenth birthday cake. Photo cakes can be made for your family or business all over the world.
I've mislaid the old photo so I looked on the web. I found a spiral bar mitzvah ski cake from sweet grace.net of New Jersey, USA.
        

When I was organising a family 60th birthday party in Singapore I asked the caterer for a cake featuring the four hobbies or interests of the birthday boy - motorcycling, mountains (climbing/trekking), playing cards (bridge), and running through jungles (Hash House Harriers paper chase).
          I thought I would get a slope or conical tower with tiny models of motorcyclist as the bottom, and climber half way up, and a playing card such as the King of hearts on the top. However, the caterer asked me to send me photos. He wanted my chosen mountain, which was Everest. The correct motorcycle.
         My first thought was that the ideal bike would be a Harley. However, my biker had never owned a Harley. So he considered a that novelty bike for showoffs.  Instead, to be safe and certain of pleasing him, I needed a picture of the current bike. But birthday to be boy was either between bikes or the bike was in the garage for repairs. Or he was elsewhere, or the bike was in another country to the birthday boy. So I opted for an old picture showing birthday boy on his most recent bike.
       Next, which card. Surely, just any pack of cards. No. The caterer did not want to show a pack of cards but just one desired card. I had to specify which card.
     What about the birthday date, day or month? Some think 13 is unlucky, so is 4 which is unlucky in Chinese. In Chinese 8 and 88 would be lucky.After many more phone calls and conversations we opted for an ace. Ace of hearts was too girly for our boy. But I had to avoid the Ace of Spades symbolising death.   That left the ace of clubs.    Birthday boy could respond to the demand to cut the cake and answer the call for 'Speech!' by mentioning playing cards, and membership of a club.
      To my surprise the cake was just an oblong cake with one photo on the top showing my own four pictures. I had wanted a 3D cake but everybody seemed happy with the result. The flat top layer was removed and saved for later, whilst the oblong cake was cut up to eat. It was  a huge cake. We put the leftovers in the freezer and went on eating a tiny finger size slice for tea at Sunday lunch on weekends for months afterwards.
    When it came to my recent birthday in 2014, in the previous days I had seen lots of cakes featuring the birthday girls. I wanted a birthday cake with a photo of myself with one of my books.
    As an author I wanted a cake in the shape of a book - quite a common design, I thought, which would be widely available, for weddings and bar mitzvahs.
   The birthday cakes made like wedding cakes with fruit cake containing fruits and nuts, with marzipan on top, were three figure sums

For my birthday I asked for a cake with a photo of myself and my books. Time was running out. I settled for a card showing books, and my face on a cake.

   Now I'm investigating photo cakes and edible photo machines. Here are some findings:

Edible printer
www.sugarshack.co.uk
Printer, ink, and edible sheets £150-£175.
Packs of edible icing sheets (25 in a pack) £25
Edible inks £45.
Customer Service: 44 (0)20 8204 2994

So if you have three or more celebrations in a year, it might be worthwhile investing in a kit.
Read more by Angela Lansbury, author, poet, travel writer:
YouTube; LinkedIn; Facebook; Lulu.com

Never mind Pythagorus. Please Pension us in school maths lessons and exams.

   How many people use Pythagorus at least once after leaving school? Did you, do you or will you? How many have a pension after leaving school? Did you, do you or will you? How many do a tax return? Did you, do you or will you?

   Never mind pythagor-us. Let's have pension us. Teach pensions in maths lessons at school. Keep exam questions all about managing your money.
   I've just retired. I had hoped to do nothing. But I'm totally baffled by a tax return. Please teach us about pensions and tax returns in school. And when unemployed. And when retiring. 

What women really want?

Warning - spoiler. Fifty Shades of Grey ends with the shy girl thinking she's had enough and walking out. Violence and pain is not what she wants, just love and attention and stimulation, so the minute he stops sticking her to her fantasy and goes into his own and hurts her - she's out.

Mother's Day photo cakes from caketoppers

You can buy a whole flat top cake printed with a photo of the mother, or her with the family, or a collection of cupcakes. I had the sponge cake with a photo on top for my birthday. Many people would prefer a chocolate cake.

My cake came with discount code card which had to be used soon afterwards. So if you've another birthday or arriver say coming up, wait for your discount card and then order again from the same people. They also do corporate cakes.

Here's my birthday cake.

If you slice off the top, you can keep it for a second party next day or for two parties, one of adults and one for children.
more details from
www.caketoppers.co.uk
For books by Angela Lansbury go to Lulu.com
I also have several blogs, one on travel, more books, and videos on you tube. I am on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Birthday cake showing photo of Author Angela Lansbury

We ordered the birthday cake from caketoppers.co.uk because I wanted a cake with a photo on top. The cake cost about £30. It was sent with a code for a discount off another order within a month. The choose of cakes was plain sponge or chocolate sponge. I would have preferred a fruit cake or a healthier cake with an almond marzipan but we opted for the cheapest cake with a photo on top, as my first choice was a cake in the shape of a book, but you had to pay at least a hundred pounds for the ones we found on line and all I wanted was an amusing cake with something personal on it for my birthday. I could have ordered or bought a second cake made of fruit with a marzipan topping and served that separately, or moved the cake topping onto another cake.

More information on cakes from: cake toppers.co.uk

More information on Angela Lansbury author on Facebook, linkedIn, You Tube and books by Angela Lansury on Lulu.com

Beds and mattresses needed in a hurry

Lots of sites offer next day delivery of beds and mattresses. But you may have to order before midnight, before 6 pm, or before 4 pm,or before 11 am. You might have to pay extra for weekend delivery. If you want something special such as a 7 foot mattress, they may need two or three weeks as it may be made specially.
   One of my favourite shops is IKEA. But not ideal for beds, if you are moving into a new place and need a bed tomorrow.

Angela Lansbury's note
Yes, I sometimes upload posts and revise and update the same day.

    You may wonder why I did not wait until I had finished, then put up a proper post. That's because first time around I spent ages checking facts and revising.  But then a timeout or failure meant I lost all my work. I had wasted time.
   So now I upload early, so if I lose a connection or get called away, at least some of my post. If you come back later you may be rewarded by updates.

Write Your Life Story And Obituary

I just read that Walter George Bruhl Jnr surprised his family by writing his own obituary. Great idea. Write your own obituary and life story. That way you can save everybody time, get the facts right, and know what will be said about you. 
    By the way, my obit in summary: great author, 20 books, blogs, witty, wonderful, reliable family member and friend to the world.

Pancakes

THE HISTORY OF PANCAKE DAY
Why make pancakes on Pancake Day? If you are religious, it is a religious Christian custom to give things up for Lent. You give up goodies for Lent by having them for the last time the day before, called Shrove Tuesday.
    I watched a Discovery programme about the Ten Plagues and Pharaoh and the death of the first-born. Detectives were brought in to analyse why the firstborn died. Impossible for assassins to have entered every house, undetected, and never to have killed anybody else. That leaves disease and poison. Poison could be deliberate or accidental.
   Why would a poison affect the firstborn more than others. Firstborn are older, often one year, two years, or four years older. They are given double portions, the only portion if there is not enough food to go round. (And it occurs to me that toddlers and babies may be drinking milk only, breastfeeding, in Ancient times.)
    Why would one group be affected and not another? Different grains eaten. The rich in one area eat one type of stored grain. The poor slaves living in another area eat another grain and do not grow or gather or save enough to have stores.
    What causes widespread poisoning? In the USA rural communities in previous centuries suffered from St Vitus dance. This was caused by a ind of mildew affecting stored grain when you had an unusually rainy season.
    Farming communities learned to clear out the old, diseased grain in the spring before the new harvest.
   In ancient times you could not persuade people to follow health and safety rules. They were lazy or thought if they could get away with ignoring the rule once they would try to get away with ignoring the rule as often as they could. The only way to make them obey a safety rule was to make the rule a ritual, a habit, a rule, a superstition. God said do it. You did it to celebrate a famous event.
   So the ancient Hebrew communities celebrated not dying from the plague by have the Seder night. Seder means order. Passover - when the angel of death passed over. You get rid of all the flour in the house. (You can't eat moist bread. Only matzoh, dry flat crackers.)
    The Last Supper of Jesus was according to some historians a Passover meal.
    When Christians took over the custom, they gave it a new meaning. Lent. You may or may not like this version of the history of pancake day. If you have an alternative version, and/or more stories to add, I'd be glad to hear them.
 
ANY CHILD CAN MAKE PANCAKES - MY CHILD DID!
    Belatedly I celebrated pancake day with pancakes for breakfast. the recipe for pancakes is easy. My son learned it from his maternal grandmother, my mother. He was a schoolboy. He asked a friend's mother for pancakes and she apologised because she had run out of pancake packet mix. He claims he astonished her by making up pancake mix and cooking her family pancakes.
   As keen cooks will know, the main ingredients of pancakes (like the four ingredient quick sponge cake) are flour, milk, egg, with a little oil. (If you like, add a pinch of salt. Or oil. We are going easy on suspect salt and sugar.)

PANCAKE INGREDIENTS
   I egg, 150 ml/gram milk, fifty mil/gram for flour.

A millilitre is a thousandth of a litre (litre ending re in England er in America), a centilitre is hundredth and a decilitre is a tenth. Wine bottles are 75 cl, three quarters of a liter - the word is abbreviated to make more room on the label.
   For water or milk you can say mils or grams. Depending on density - mil is a volume, and a mil of water weighs a gram. But a mil of light, less dense oil weighs less than a gram. Oil may look thick, but oil spills float on the sea. If you have a balsamic vinegar mix, the ingredients separate and the oil floats on top of the vinegar. A mil of honey weighs more than a gram. Vinegar is the same density as water and goes to the bottom of your sauce jug.

PANCAKE TOPPING(S)
Lemon
Sugar
Cinnamon
Jam
Or other sweet/savoury topping
Traditionally lemon juice and white sugar. But the latest research suggests that for health and dieting sugar is bad whilst cinnamon is good. You might also like to use up old jam.

Utensils needed:
Bowl for flour.
Weighing scales (We use a flat scale.)
Stirring spoon
Sieve
Non-stick frying pan (the size of pancake)
Non stick spatula for turning pancake
Plate (dinner plate or at least the size of frying pan for serving pancake
(Smaller side plate will do if you serve the pancakes folded)
Knife and fork to eat pancake
Small spoon to serve jam from jar

METHOD
1 Sieve your flour into a bowl so flour does not make lumps.
2 Stir in egg. Mixture becomes thick like a solid dumpling.
3 Add milk slowly, stirring gradually to be sure you do not make lumps. I got fed up with this and used a blender.
4 Add small amount of oil to frying pan. Pour back excess and/or wipe off excess.
5 Turn heat under pan to low.
6 Pour in enough batter to cover surface.
7 When batter is turning solid, turn upside down with non-stick spatula in order to cook the other side.
8 When both sides are cooked, turn off heat.
9 Remove pancake with spatula to plate.
10 Add topping to pancake or serve to guests and allow them to choose their own toppings.
11 Host/cook. Ask guests to help clear and wash up. (Or say, 'Don't worry. I'll clear up.')
12 Guest. (If it's your turn to be the guest. Compliment cook and thank host/householder. Smile at children and nudge or tap their toes to encourage them to copy your thanks. Nod and grin when they do!)

   Can you store extra/surplus pancake mix? It contains fresh egg.
Some people make a stack of pancakes and turn them into a cake, with chocolate or other sandwiching ingredient. Or serve with fruit after dinner.

Crying Babies

You can silence a crying baby but keep it alive. A crying baby wants attention, warmth, rest, distraction, food or drink. You hug it, keep it warm, jiggle it, wave something in front of it, feed it milk. Put a finger or nipple or baby milk feeder or pacifier in its mouth to give it something to suck.

Mother's Memories - Widowed 1941

  Harry Godfrey of 38 Squadron died 21 June 1941.  I remember that my mother said others in the plane had survived.
   If he wasn't the pilot, he might have been the rear gunner. They are the two people most vulnerable at the front and the back and who stay in the plane, if it is shot at and damaged, until after the others have jumped out.
   The survivors would have formed a new team. My mother was upset that she was avoided afterwards. She felt they were unsympathetic, unhelpful unkind, no longer interested.
   A woman I met a few years ago told me that avoiding the family or widow of a deceased airman would have been normal. Other crew members and their girlfriends or wives were not merely embarrassed because they could not think what to say.
   The feeling was stronger than that. They wanted to maintain morale.
    More importantly, they were superstitious. They did not want to be associated with somebody who died, which was bad luck.   Instead, they wanted to not think about it, just move on with a new group hoping for better luck.
    My father was my mother's second husband. After she died, I had to help him deal with all the paperwork, her birth certificate and marriage certificate to show her records and that my father was her next of kin.
     She was listed on her second marriage certificate to my father as a widow. I had previously thought she might have concealed her first marriage from him. But she was listed on the second marriage certificate as widow. I asked if he could remember anything she had said about her previous husband in WWII.
   My father was more concerned that he had just become a widower. He shrugged, "It was a long time ago."
   My first thought about her being described on the marriage certificate as a widow was how unkind. Why did they have to say that?
   A minister of religion pointed out that it was a legal requirement. You could not marry a woman a second time if she already married somebody else. She had to show that she was either divorced or widowed.
   The only picture I have is of the Alamein Memorial from the CWGC website.
He had a father called John and a sister.
   I am still haunted by the mystery. What did Harry Godfrey look like?
Angela Lansbury I am still hoping that somebody, somewhere will have a record of his family and a photo of him - better still a photo of him marrying my mother.

Researching WWII records
   I have the notification of the death of Harry Godfrey at El Alamein in 1941 sent to his widow, my late mother. She had married him, I believe, in a register office near where he was stationed/trained before he was sent overseas. She was widowed within a year.

    I have no photo of him. She said after she received a black-edged telegram/letter, her father went to see his parents to tell them the bad news. They asked if she had any photos of him. She gave them all her photos. She told me, "I could get another husband but they could never get another son." I think he was in twenties, so his mother would have been in her forties or older, too old to have more children.  
    Searches online bring up dozens of young men called Godfrey, or Harry Godfrey. I would like to know more, even his birthdate would help. Are there any surviving blood relatives of his, such as a nephew or niece?
  My mother was his next of kin, but I am the child of her second marriage. Although I've inherited the documents and her memories of him, I think the RAF records offices data protection are not allowed to give me more details, nor put me in touch with other members of his family. If you can help I'd be grateful, and I thought that if you are also searching records, or simply curious about how it is done, here are my searches so far.
   A few years ago I phoned the Runnymede memorial and found out some details which I have mislaid. I seem to remember he was in his twenties when he died.
   Looking back at my document I found his service number:  906079. I had previously regarded this number as rather uninteresting. However, it is vital when you seek information.
   An online search in Feb 2014 revealed, to my surprise and delight, a reference to the name and number which popped up immediately with a link to Find a grave and he is mentioned at El Alamein.
  The Alamein Memorial website, by the CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) says he was in the 38 Squadron.

Useful WWII Sources
1 RAF Cranwell Disclosures, Lincolnshire.
Sends application form, but most information is only given out to next of kin for data protection. Admin fee you must pay is £30.
Application form will ask name of person whose details are sought and their RAF number if known and your relationship if next of kin, official organisation, whatever.

(No public visitors allowed. Small office within a camp can take up to 16 weeks replying to backlog of queries in date order of receipt of query.


Casualty Records
RAF Air Historical

2
RAF News, 100b Greenwood, Walters Ash, High Wycombe, Bucks HP14 4XW.
Tel:?
email?

3 Commonwealth War Graves

4 Forces United

5 British Legion

6 Find a Grave

7 Ancestry.com

(I'll update this with my further research or your aid so come back later to check this blog.

Hoarders - cause - cure?

CAUSES
   I used to think that I'd inherited my parents' view that you must save everything from the times of the WWII when you could not buy new goods, only Utility furniture. My late father grew up in the Nineteen Thirties when you have little money. You would make do and literally mend, mend shoes, darn socks.
   Then I learned about birds and nests. Feathering your nest. Saving for a rainy day.
   A third psychological factor, on Myers Briggs personality type, the fourth pair of contrasting types, the perceiver (I call it procrastinator) versus the judger.
   On retiring, or losing a job, or divorcing, when your source of income disappears, some types tend to cling onto objects with the excuse that they have no money to replace. The other partner may take the opportunity to downsize, and cast off clutter.)
   Now I've learned of another explanation. A blow to the head (trauma from outside), or narrowing of arteries - food inside causing blockages - can slow the movement or water and oxygen to the brain so that people suffering from strokes and dementia find it hard to make decisions. So deciding to tidy, to sort, to get things in order, to throw away, to clean, to do anything, becomes a chore, a struggle.

CURES
  An American TV programme on hoarding is showing how a team in Philadelphia is throwing away a man's possessions, clutter, a health risk, too heavy for the building.
   What a pity to throw everything away. What about recycling! Surely the Antiques Road Show could be brought in. There should be a museum which rescues things by era, a bit like the statistics of economics, for each year or decade, one umbrella, one teapot.
  There must be, or should be, museums of umbrellas, museums of teapots and china, museums of radios and electrical equipment. The Smithsonian museum should have a branch in every state.
   Some items could be sold to help the owner. Others could be donated to charity, or recompense the local authority and taxpayer.
    A few items of sentimental value such as photos, passports, ID cards, wartime records, wedding photos, could be saved and cheaply framed or recorded on the internet on ancestry .co and find a grave.

Give police access to parking fine records

Missing woman found dead in Philadelphia, USA, under books, in car with tinted windows, under snow, with numerous parking tickets. I've read about several similar cases. Parking wardens and police both have dabbles but not linked up. It's time that parking warden databases and police were linked. If you don't want the parking wardens to have access to police records, give police access to parking warden records to do searches for missing cars. The person inside could be a murder victim, drugged or sick but still alive needing help, or dimply have died at the wheel - or of cold. I read lots of excuses, why it was hard for the police and parking wardens to identify the car or the occupant. Yet a passer-by did it. A simple computer search could have solved the problem in seconds.

Man jumps into tiger's cage, mauled, in China

Some zoos in Asia and elsewhere have a double barrier between animals and people. If you fall or jump or try to retrieve a dropped hat you are in a ditch below and away from the animal. The animal cannot reach and grab you. That seems fairer to both the human visitor and the animal which might otherwise by put down or injured in the attempt to rescue the human.

Ghosts In Hospitals, Night Nurses, Lights, And The Afterlife

Alec Guinness, the actor, thought he saw the ghost of a woman in white in hospital.
1When I recovered from appendicitis in hospital I thought I had died and I saw an angel in white. I asked her, "Are you an angel?" She replied, "No, dear, I'm the night nurse."
2 After my late father died I discovered old copies of his opthalmic magazines. One edition had an article about patients claiming to see large head and faceless figures with large hats. This is a recognised medical condition. It's the result of the after image anybody gets when they stare at something and look away. A patient in hospital will stare up at a nurse leaning over them, surrounded by white light. The reverse image is a white figure against black. The large head is the distorted image of some eye conditions.

How to indent a blog post

   Have I solved the problem of indents on blogger? My posts were being printed without indents at the start of paragraphs.

   I tried typing in three spaces before the line I want to indent.

Now I’m writing my blog in pages on a laptop and transferring them to my blog hoping it will copy the code.

Potholes and crumbling cliffs

What do I see in my area, the next area and far away: potholes in the roads, libraries shut, hospital waiting lists, no money for pensions, police stations closed, coastal areas flooded, cliffs and houses falling into the sea, not enough money, money being sent overseas.

Build a mini-house for one or two, costing under £10,000, in one week - housing problem solved

Set up a field on a bus route to railway station. Get all immigrants and students and gap year visitors to spend a week building one. School-leavers could do it for work experience. Solve the housing problem. It only works for those agile enough to climb a step-ladder. But a parent or grand-parent could sleep on a convertible sofa on the ground floor. Teenagers, young couples, or young men could sleep above.
   Build another one for use as a school for teaching English. Or have two adjoining for a larger home for an extended family.
   Like caravans, have a shower block in the centre. And a corner shop. Link the lot by covered walkways.
tinyhouse.co.uk

Saving Suicides

A person sits on a ledge reportedly for up to three hours before jumping. (New York.) She was recovering from anaesthetic after a facelift. What can we do to prevent it happening again?
Please can a bright person in a school or 6th form college devise a large butterfly net or similar device. How about some net swung from a helicopter to scoop to safety a person dangling on a ledge. Or suspend a hammock underneath the ledge to catch them. Raise the net to just underneath them.
In addition build or insert a safety device like a net balcony. I agree we need escapes, but just a fire escape, under all escape windows and rooftops.

What can you say to talk somebody down? Jonny Benjamin was talked down by somebody (Neil Laybourn) who started by asking why he was on the Waterloo Bridge, London, and just got a conversation going. But the pivotal phrases were, "You can get through this,' and 'Things will get better'. This happened in 2008. In 2014, six years later, Jonny is still alive and started a twitter hunt and found the person who had saved him.


If you need to talk in the UK please contact The Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 or via email jo@samaritans.org.

US - Call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK

In the USA

www.ncsp.org/samaritans.
samaritansusa.org

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2547684/TWO-senior-American-bankers-working-London-commit-suicide-just-two-days-one-jumped-500ft-death-JP-Morgan-skyscraper.html#ixzz2rnpN3Uki
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

USA

National Suicide Prevention Helpine on 1-800-273-8255 or go to www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2570920/Person-falls-death-luxury-hotel-New-Yorks-Times-Square.html#ixzz2ujI3X8Gs
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