Time to take things to a slightly more serious place than they have been lately.

I’m not sure what the statistic is, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that one in three people has lost someone they care about to cancer, or knows someone who has fought cancer. For me, there were three people:
My friend Lily, who was brave beyond belief, and fought acute recurring leukemia throughout her life, sadly to die before her 13th birthday.
My Aunty Helen, who died of skin cancer, leaving behind two children, a husband, a sister, and an extended family who all loved her very much.
And my beloved Grandad, who finally stopped fighting on the 17th of September 1996, after stomach and bowel cancer had come back one time too many.

It’s been ten years (and more) now, but I still I remember them all every day, not for how they died, but for how they lived. They filled not only my life, but the life of everyone they met, with love, hope, and happiness. I will never forget them, and I will do everything in my power to try and make sure other people get as much help as possible to fight cancer in all its forms.

Cancer Research UK is the UK’s leading charity dedicated to cancer research and for the past 12 years one of their annual events has been the women-only Race For Life. So far over £100 million has been raised, and this year the aim is for £46 million to be raised across the country.

Last year I raced for life, and you all helped me raise an amazing £182.72. I’m doing it again this year on the 16th of July, and I would love to equal, or better, that total.

So I am asking you, readers of Bright Meadow, to sponsor me in my frankly silly plan to run 5 km round the Southampton Common on what is likely to be a blazing hot Sunday afternoon in July. Whether you decide to give 50p, £50, or just good wishes, I greatly appreciate it. If there is anyone you would like me to run in memory or honour of, let me know and I will add them to the sign I will be wearing on my back.

Sponsoring me couldn’t be easier. Just go to http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/BrightMeadowYearTwo, click on the pink “sponsor me now” button at the bottom of the page, and follow the instructions. If you are a UK taxpayer, don’t forget to select the gift aid option so the nice government can give a further %28 on top of your donation. There’s also always a link in the sidebar of the blog, so you’ll have no excuse 😉

Thank you all in advance,
Claire Louise

p.s. Pictures from last year are still online.

One last request – if there’s anyone who’s gonna be in Southampton on July 16th, I’d appreciate being met at the finish line with a large bottle of water!

I love it when I rediscover an artist I had forgotten about. I used to be a big fan of Pink and for a while had her first album “Can’t Take Me Home” on constant playback. I loved her lyrics, I loved her music, I loved her attitude. I loved that people just couldn’t conceive of me enjoying this music (I was a very, very boring, quiet, and ordinary 18/19 year old who worried far too much about conforming).

Then, as often happens, I just stopped listening to the album. I had other things to listen to and I was just a bit too familiar with the tracks. Pink fell into the blackhole that is my iPod (7GB + of music and I still only listen to about five bands regularly) and, though tracks occasionally would appear on random playlists and I would think “Oh, I love this!”, I somehow never got reacquainted with her music. Two albums (Misundastood and Try This) passed me by. I rarely buy new music, and when I did update my collection it was with Matchbox Twenty, John Mayer, or Jack Johnson. Not Pink.

Then “Stupid Girls” and the I’m Not Dead album were released. I saw the Stupid Girls video and laughed so hard I nearly choked on my cup of tea. Even my brother, one of the most vocal anti-Pink people from the first time around, grudgingly admitted she had a bit of class and was ok. Still this wasn’t enough to make me buy the album. I will willingly impulse buy DVD’s, but for some reason not CD’s. An odd kink in my brain.

But I was in Virgin! on Monday and I had a voucher for £10 of a purchase… I had planned to get the Nerina Pallot album Everybody’s Gone To War but right next to it on the shelf was I’m Not Dead. Nerina Pallot was £7.99. Pink was £9.99 – It was Pink that made it home with me.

Love at first chord.

Once again, I love her lyrics, I love her music, I love her attitude. I love that people aren’t surprised that I like Pink any more (I’ve clearly got over my desire to be overly conforming). What’s more, it is a kick-ass album for the gym. A strong beat that makes it easy to get into a rhythm on the treadmill or cycle, and some wonderfully assertive lyrics that are perfect to keep you going that last 100 metres. Even listening to it now I am jigging in my seat whilst I type and might have to get up in a moment to have a quick dance around my room. In fact…

*dances around the room*

So yes, rediscovering an artist is one of the things in my life I take great pleasure in. And now I’m off to the library to see if they have her middle two albums – chances are, I think I might like them as well.

Oh, and if you get a chance, listen to the track “Dear Mr. President” (or at least find the lyrics online). This is one of the reasons I like Pink – her music isn’t just fun to listen to, it makes you think.

I was going to post another episode of the BrightCast today, but I’ve lost my voice. It’s bad enough that my work colleagues are laughing at my pathetic croaking, without exposing myself to the ridicule of the entire bloody ‘Net, so you’re gonna have to wait a few days till the sandpaper wielding gremlins have given up their attack on my larynx.

In the mean time, I have a question for you – what would you do if it was your last day on earth? ^*1*

In the office today we got talking today about it being the 6th day of the 6th month of the 6th year an all that jazz. Now, I’m such a lapsed Christian that I am pretty much approaching it from the other side, and none of us were too clear on the significance of the day, but we were all under the general impression that it wasn’t a good day. Birth of the anti-christ, general badness, that sort of thing.

So I got thinking about this whole superstition about numbers. Everyone says 13 is such an unlucky number – well, my brother was born on the 13th, so it wasn’t too bad for him (though through the years I might have cursed his birth a time or three. He is my older brother, after all, and was a right sod when we were growing up). As far as I’m concerned it’s not the date that’s significant, it’s the people. As Jack points out, 6th of June 1944 saw the beginning of the Allied invasion of Europe – if I have to remember a day, I’d far rather celebrate it because of something positive (as much as war ever can be positive), than fear it mainly because of a horror film has pushed a day into the zeitgeist.

Despite not actually believing the world was about to come to an end, one other thing we were all pretty certain on in the office was that, if this was to be the end of the world as we know it, none of us would choose to spend it making bus passes. Or in my case fighting the printer and our CMS – when it goes down (as it does, constantly) it’s our very own little doomsday scenario.

Whilst we knew what we wouldn’t want to do if it were to be the end of the world, thinking what we would want to do was surprisingly much harder. If you had just 24 little hours left… Well, you wouldn’t want to waste it, would you?

I was thinking of all the things I enjoy doing, trying to decide what I enjoyed most, and drew a blank. The weather today has been absolutely gorgeous, which made me think that, boring though it sounds, what I’d most like to do is to sit in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey, basking in the sun, reading a book. Or maybe that teeny beach on the northern tip of Borneo we found that summer… I wouldn’t want to be talking necessarily, but I’d like for my family and friends to be around as well. What I’d most like is to be sitting to one side, watching them all have fun, knowing I could join in if I wanted to. Yeah. That sounds good to me.

So what how would you choose to spend your last day on Earth? The scenario isn’t that at the end of the 24 hours you are going to die horribly, or a giant asteroid is going to hit, or anything equally nasty. You are just gifted (as is everyone else) with the knowledge that in 24 hours things are going to end. Have a good think, as I am genuinely curious – how are your last hours going to be spent? Major party time? Confessing your sins? Getting married? Getting divorced? Doing that skydive you always promised yourself you would but never got around to? Or just having a normal day?

Endnotes:
^*1*Now, the last time this question got posed to me was by a counsellor, who was asking me it in an effort to see what career I would like to do. My response then was “er, if I had a day left on earth, I’d be having fun, not thinking about a job!” As a side note, I didn’t go back to this particular lady – I think I lasted about 15 minutes before stalking out of the room in frustration. Silly woman. ^Back

A while back, Jay was kind enough to share with us one of his recipes for cheesecake. Since I’ve run out of Battlestar Galactica episodes to watch ( 🙁 ), and was bored, I decided to give the recipe a whirl.

Whilst it is a simple recipe, it does take a bit of time, so pop a good album on the stereo – I find John Mayer is rather good – and settle in for an fun afternoon in the kitchen. By the way, I’m a convert to the American way of measuring. Cups are just so much more fun than boring grams! But for those of you who don’t have the benefit of a flatemate who lived in Canada for two years, and so have cup-measures in your kitchen cupboards, here are some handy conversion tables

Basic cheesecake recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups Graham or Oreo crumbs
• 2 Tbsp. melted butter or margarine
• 3 pkg. [8 oz. each] cream cheese – softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 3 eggs

Instructions:

1. Beat the crap out of some biscuit till they are even crumbs, and melt the margarine
2. Mix the butter and the crumbs and press that into a 8 or 9 inch springform pan – this recipe is scaled for a 9 inch tin. I had 8 inch tins and ended up making one and a half cheesecakes.
3. Mix the cheese and sugar, get it smooth.
4. Add one egg at a time, mixing just till blended.
5. STIR in the vanilla – which is optional – at this point you can add just about any flavouring you want, like 6-8 oz of melted chocolate for example, in which case I’d still add the vanilla.
6. You can add some sort of liqueur as well, like 1/4 of Kahlua, Tia Maria, Ameretto or Bailey’s… you get the idea!
7. Bake at 350°F for about 45-50 minutes. The centre will still be a little bit “jiggly”, it’ll continue cooking even when it’s out of the oven.
8. Run a knife around the edges and let it cool… shove it in the fridge for at least 4 hours.
9. You can put whatever you want on top, fruit, whipped cream, chocolate ganache, coulis, melted chocolate… again, you get the idea, it’s very versitile.

A few extra pointers:

• Due to a distinct lack of interesting biscuits in this country, I opted for the old family favourite of a blend of shortcake, gingernut, and chocolate digestive biscuits for the base.
• 1 1/2 cups of crumbs very roughly equates to about 200g of biscuits. How many you use also depends on the size of your tin and how deep you want your base to be. What we do at home is keep a tub of biscuit crumbs for any excess – that way we always have crumbs on hand to make cheesecakes (or to feed the birds) and nothing gets wasted.
• Beating the crap out of biscuits (especially gingernuts) is hard going. If you’ve got a small child handy, pass them the rolling pin and let them at it! I always had an absolute blast breaking up the biscuits when I was a kid – how many times are you told you are allowed to hit things, hard? Failing small children, rope in a flatmate or spouse, or anyone else unlucky enough to wander through the kitchen. Unless of course you’ve been lazy and not gone to the gym, because it sure is a good workout for the arms!
• I also melted a 125g block of Green & Blacks Maya Gold chocolate (dark chocolate and ginger) and added this at the same time as the vanilla. Three tips here:
  1) let the chocolate cool slightly before you add it to the mix, and add it slowly, or else you might curdle the eggs.
  2) don’t try and melt this chocolate in the microwave. The ginger burns! Much better to do it slowly in a bain marie (that’s a bowl over simmering water). I’d start it melting before you do anything else.
  3) I wouldn’t personally recommend a chocolate with ginger bits in it. It tastes nice, just I wouldn’t do it again. Also, one block of chocolate wasn’t quite enough for a really rich flavour.
• “Jiggly” in the centre is hard to judge – I took it out when the the majority was solid and it was just starting to noticeably darken in the middle. This was actually at 40 minutes, so cooking time depends on your oven, size of dish and… oh, what way the wind is blowing! Cooking is half making it up as you go along anyway. So long as you enjoy it, that’s all that matters 🙂

Again, not exactly the healthiest thing I’ve ever cooked, but fun. This was the first time I’d baked a cheesecake and it felt odd putting it in the oven, but it worked and I will certainly be playing with this some more 😀

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Ok, got Thunderbird receiving all of my email (I hope), so normal service on that front is resumed. So normal service comprises me not responding to emails, but at least you’ll know I’ve got the email now 😀

Um, excuse me whilst I go and have a sit down in a darkened room for a moment…

*comes back*

Er, yes.

Well, as you can see, my customary fluency has deserted me somewhat at the moment. Partly this is due to a hard night out last night saying goodbye to the Boy Temp (picture me all 🙁 – work just won’t be as much fun without his tall gingerness to liven things up) which has left me a bit cream-crackered, a feeling not helped by then going out tonight with illyna and the rest of the Collective. It is also partly due to something I just spotted in my RSS feed.

The list for selected sites for Round 4 at 9rules.

I have checked the list. Twice.
I have texted illyna to get her to check the list. Twice.
I was notified to the link from Tyme by Technorati.
I’d get Moose to confirm it as well, but I don’t think she’d appreciate being woken up.

So there you have it. Out of the 700 who submitted, 111 have been preliminarily accepted, and it looks like Bright Meadow is one of them. I keep thinking this is some kind of elaborate practical joke – keep hitting “refresh” just to make sure my name is still on the list.

Holy Batman on a motorcycle! ^*1*

And if that wasn’t enough firsts for the night, the Crazy Canalman has made his first ever comment on the blog. Not totally convinced that letting my father have the URL was a good idea, but he kept asking about what I was doing with my time, and I let slip about this website I wrote. He somehow managed to comment as me (I corrected it), but I think that might be because I signed into the blog on his laptop the other week to do some admin stuff… However it happened, he commented, and then emailed me to say how much he liked it. It’s always nice when your Aged P’s appreciate what you are doing 😀

Well, because I am jabbering, I am going to take myself off to get some much needed sleep. Congratulations everyone else who has been selected by 9rules. Now it’s just wait and see what the member agreement has to say for itself.

Whatever comes next, it sure is nice to be selected. A much needed happy moment after a couple of shitty weeks. I’ve got a grin on a mile wide right now 😀

I think it was the penguins that got me in, don’t you? 😉

Endnotes:
^*1* Yes. Unimaginative, but you can’t underestimate how tired I am right now, or how much this news has completely knocked me for six. I just sat here for five minutes blinking in disbelief at the screen. I was then shaking so much it took a further five minutes to type a simple text message!