Elephants

Some fountains are majestic, some are dainty, others are modern and flashy. This fountain doesn't quite fit any of those descriptions. It's fun. It's unique. It's the sort of fountain you have to visit more than once [and I did. I dragged Mr A back there several times during our brief stay in the town.]

The elephant fountain is in Chambery, a lovely French town at the foothills of the Alps. We stayed there overnight on our way by train to Italy last year. [You can just see the French Alps rising up at the end of the street behind the fountain.]

My Mum loved elephants. She used to collect them. At one point most of the surfaces in her house were covered with elephants of various colours and sizes. As she downsized to a care home and then to a nursing home she discarded all but a few and finally lost interest in them altogether.

I've kept some of her elephants to remind me of her, not that I need elephants to help me remember, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to part with them.

Do you cherish an item that belonged to someone close to you?
 

What People do for Charity

I’ve been watching with a certain degree of ghoulish fascination as David Walliams completed his gruelling eight-day, 140 mile charity swim along the River Thames. He’s suffered from ‘Thames Tummy’ [all that raw sewage - yuk!] He’s been bitten by water-fleas and attacked by swans. He’s saved a dog from drowning and almost passed out from hypothermia but he has managed to raise over £1,000,000 for Sport Relief. Amazing!

We did our bit for charity last night. We went out for a curry. It was Mr A’s first visit to an Indian Restaurant since he had his stem cell transplant last year. The dietary restrictions were over long ago but we just hadn’t managed to get out for an authentic curry. [Apparently mine don’t count!] He seems to have survived the meal. He had a tender tummy this morning but nothing on the scale of Walliams’ troubles. The evening was in aid of Save the Children so it was worth a bit of a rumbling tum. Our friend regularly organises events for this charity and last night raised over £700. Excellent!

A charity that’s very close to my heart has a special event coming up. On Friday 30th September The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning will be held by Macmillan Cancer Support. 

I’ve decided that this year I’m going to organise...

   ~ a virtual coffee morning ~

The added advantage is that my sister, Hilary, can join me. Well she does live 200 miles away and this is the nearest thing we’ll get to doing anything together this autumn!

I’ll be posting up more about the event next week but we’ve already set up a page for donations to Macmillan Cancer Support in memory of our mum and we’ve said a few words about her so please go along and visit our page by clicking the following link...

Rosalind and Hilary's page in memory of Frances Denning

The coffee morning will last all weekend [that’s the great thing about being virtual!] so if you can’t make it on the Friday or Saturday then you can join in the fun on Sunday. There’ll be lots of cake [guaranteed edible unlike my non-virtual ones!] and a continual supply of freshly ground coffee, plus de-caff if you prefer. I’ll be wearing fancy dress [more about that next week] and there’ll be awards given out [more about that next week too] but above all it’ll be about raising money to help people with cancer and right now I can’t think of a more worthy cause.