My Birthday Week...

It’s my birthday!

By Bronwen Evans

I’ve turned another year older this week and I confess that I almost forgot! And no wise cracks about forgetting because I'm getting old.

It’s hard for me to forget, or perhaps I should say it’s bad when I forget, because I’m a twin. So it’s not just my birthday and I definitely have to get a present for my sister, Leigh.

I have my friend to thank for alerting me to our birthday.

I had a lovely day out yesterday with my best friend, Alison. She’s house hunting and I love going in and looking at other people’s homes. So when she asked if I’d come along, I quickly said yes.

Anyway, afterwards she gave me a card and I thought that’s a bit over the top, giving me a card for helping her house hunt, and I sort of looked blankly at her. She laughed and said, “Have you forgotten it’s your birthday on Wednesday.“ By golly I had. I usually do forget when Easter falls in the way.

So, to celebrate my birthday week (I always have a week) I’m giving away an eBook copy of To

Challenge the Earl of Cravenswood, to one lucky commenter who tells me what they want for their birthday.

To live happily ever after...

Henry St. Giles, the Earl of Cravenswood, longs to find his soul mate. Now that his two best friends, both reformed rakes, are happily married, the need becomes an obsession. When they challenge him to find a wife by the end of the season or marry his neighbor, the innocently alluring Lady Amy Shipton, he can’t believe his luck. He wins, either way.  But a darkened garden, a case of mistaken identity, a drunken kiss, and a dropped emerald earring, leads Henry on a Cinderella hunt. He knows the woman he held in his arms could be the one he's searched for all his life. He just has to find her.

Lady Amy Shipton is determined to marry for love instead of sharing her husband like her mother did. So why did she let her handsome neighbor and romantic fantasy, the Sinful Saint as he's called for his bedroom prowess, seduce her in his garden? And what can she do when in the middle of their passionate encounter; he whispers another woman's name. Now Henry is hunting the owner of the earring Amy left behind, and she's determined to retrieve it before her identity is revealed. She's not about to give her father the ammunition he desperately wants to force her down the aisle.

I confess that since I can’t have Hugh Jackman, I’d love a new lemon tree in a nice big pot for my courtyard. My current lemon tree has sadly died and I miss not being able to pick lemons when I want them, especially with winter coming on. I love hot lemon and honey drinks.

www.bronwenevans.com

MARGARET TANNER'S UNSUNG HEROINE

ONLY THE STRONG WOULD SURVIVE

I have no portrait to post with this. There are no newspaper cuttings, no articles in magazines or books. Few even know this lady’s story.

Born in a family ravaged by the Great War (1914 -1918), her father had his lungs poisoned by mustard gas in France in 1917. He returned to his farm, but never recovered, thus dying young and leaving a widow with 8 children to struggle on alone. Where were the male relatives, the uncles and brothers who might have helped out? Sadly, the battlefields of France and Belgium had taken their lives or their health.

For years this lady and her older sister milked 40 cows in the morning before riding their bicycles 8 miles into the nearest town to work, and after they returned home in the evening, they milked 40 cows again and did other farm chores. Needless to say, they handed their weekly pay packets, unopened, to their mother.

Years passed, and when the younger siblings were old enough to help things became easier. The lady was able to enjoy a social life.

As the black clouds of World War II hovered overheard, she became engaged to a young man before he marched off to war. And she waited, like thousands of other women, for her man to return, stoically working in the munitions factory and helping with the war effort.  Soon the love letters stopped, her soldier was listed as Missing In Action, believed Prisoner Of War. For two years she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead, but finally the news came. He had escaped his captors.

On his return home they married, had three children and settled into suburbia. Money was tight, but having been trained at a young age to be frugal, she managed to keep things going, and all was well.

But fate had another cruel card to play. A slow moving muscle wasting disease. But did she give up? No. She enjoyed her children and grandchildren, took holidays with her husband and did charity work. All the while this hideous disease spread it’s ugly tentacles throughout her body, sapping her strength, but never breaking her spirit.

After her husband died, she stayed in her own home for a few more years.  The disease spread, hungry and evil, it could not be stopped.  Finally, when she could no longer walk, she bravely set about finding a suitable nursing home.

Thankfully, she died before she had to leave her beloved home and cherished memories.

How do I know all of this? The lady was my mother.

My message to everyone is – cherish your mother, because the world is a sad and lonely place without her.

 

Please raise your cyber glasses of champagne, and drink a toast to yet another unsung heroine.

 

http://www.margarettanner.com/

 

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