Author Archives: R Cawkwell

Hi I'm Rosemarie and I like to write. I write short stories and longer fiction, poetry and occasionally articles. I'm working on quite a few things at the minute and wouldn't mind one day actually getting published in print.

April Fool’s Day

Or as I like to think of it, ‘Where am I going to get enough birthday cards? day’. A few people have their birthdays today, which is slightly more important to me than poor practical jokes or gags on Facebook. Luckily my gran provided me with a box of cards last year so I have a selection. They’re quite pretty too.

I’m not leaving my house for another half hour at least, just to be on the safe side.

Slightly anxious today. I’ve had to ring people about various things and now my anxiety is all over the place. Is it odd that phoning people makes me anxious?

I have my quarterly landlord’s inspection in two weeks and I had to call the lettings agent to confirm that I’ll be in.

I had to ring my solicitor back after I missed his call. He’s nice but it’s a difficult thing to do; it’s technical most of the time, to do with my back injury compensation claim. We’re at an important stage.

I’m a bit disappointed as well, I thought I was seeing Dad tomorrow but now I’m not. Bit down in the dumps about it; I was looking forward to sending a few hours with him and doing some gardening.

Ah well, best be off, the dogs are demanding nose scratching.

Raided my savings

And treat myself to an Easter egg, since I haven’t got one from either of my parents this year.

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It was either that or a lindt gold bunny egg with two gold bunnies. But that was £10 so I econimised and spent £6 on a Guylian see shell egg instead. I really like Guylian sea shells. Nice treat for me tonight, after my grilled pork loin and salad.

My companions, otherwise known as the Hell Hounds

Are complete and utter cowards. It rained earlier and the sound of rain on the windows had them in fits of terror normally reservered for Bonfire Night.
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Walking pictures, or, I left the house today

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Walking back from the doctors surgery and I saw this little one flitting about. Cheered me up slightly. My anxiety and depression is playing up today and my back is painful. I’m finally getting some physio though, after four years of being fobbed off and ignored, and told it’ll fix itself if I lose weight, or it’s all in my head.
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Review: ‘Nobody said not to go: The Life, Loves and Adventures of Emily Hahn’ by Ken Cuthbertson

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I.S.B.N: 9781504034050
Publication Date: 22nd March 2016
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

Blurb
Emily Hahn first challenged traditional gender roles in 1922 when she enrolled in the University of Wisconsin’s all-male College of Engineering, wearing trousers, smoking cigars, and adopting the nickname “Mickey.” Her love of writing led her to Manhattan, where she sold her first story to theNew Yorker in 1929, launching a sixty-eight-year association with the magazine and a lifelong friendship with legendary editor Harold Ross. Imbued with an intense curiosity and zest for life, Hahn traveled to the Belgian Congo during the Great Depression, working for the Red Cross; set sail for Shanghai, becoming a Chinese poet’s concubine; had an illegitimate child with the head of the British Secret Service in Hong Kong, where she carried out underground relief work during World War II; and explored newly independent India in the 1950s. Back in the United States, Hahn built her literary career while also becoming a pioneer environmentalist and wildlife conservator.

My Review

This biography was thoroughly engaging and I read it constantly for three days. Emily ‘Mickey’ Hahn was a trailblazer: a world traveller, writer, and pioneer of sexual honesty in a world where women stayed home and had babies. And definitely didn’t talk about their boyfriends. She visited Belgian Congo at a time when white women didn’t travel alone in Africa, had a relationship with a Chinese man in 1930’s Shanghai, survived the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, had a child with a married man, and write copiously from the 1920’s until her death in the mid-nineties about her experiences, and her many interests, including apes, the early women’s movement in the U.S., biographies of the Soong sisters, among others, as well as fictionalised accounts of her time in China, depression era New York, and in Africa.

This book is a real find, and a fascinating story that needs to be more widely known, and the subject’s own writing better appreciated. This book is very well written, highly readable and as in-depth as you could want. I can’t commend it highly enough.

5/5

Storks overwintering and living on landfill

Storks normally migrate in the winter to sub-Saharan Africa, but changes in behaviour have seen them staying in Iberia over winter. More than 14,000 storks are overwintering in Portugal alone, living on open land fill sites just as seagulls do [1]. The have been witnessed waiting for the rubbish trucks and descending on the trucks as they empty

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