The end of a majestic era

11 Oct 2022 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

I haven’t written in this blog for quite some time, I been busy collecting experiences to turn into blog post fodder for my merry band of followers.

But before I start to write and publish all the posts I have in my head at the moment, I just need to write this very special post.

This summer I was lucky enough to be a volunteer medic at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, but before I write about that due to the death of our beloved Queen I wanted to reflect on my amazing time at the Glasgow Commonwealth games in 2014. I was a field of play volunteer first aider for the opening ceremony, the Queen opened the games. My first aid partner, Scott, and I were positioned at stage left at the side of the track with a fantastic view of the performance, which is obviously why we were there, but also of the Queen as she was driven past. We were rewarded by her dazzling smile and a flash of her legendary bright blue eyes.

Up to now I had never given it a thought that there may be any footage of me at the games, but I wanted to double check whether the Queen was in a car or something else. So imagine my surprise when I discovered a Youtube video of the start of the Queen’s journey around the track with me and Scott in position.

This was a truly fantastic night and now that the Queen is dead it was the one and only time I sang the national anthem in her presence and it was an absolute honour to do so.

On Saturday 17th September I was one of the thousands of people compelled to join the queue to see our Queen lying in state. I travelled up from Bristol alone, but shortly after arriving in Southwark Park at the very start of the epic journey I made friends with my fellow queue dwellers, Amy, Emma, Sharon, Steffi and couple Amanda and Scott. Very quickly 7 strangers became friends, I set up a Whatsapp group so we could look out for each other on coffee and toilet breaks, we talked about everything and anything and supported one another for 10 hours as we weaved through the back streets and along the Thames to our final destination.

The first 8 hours went surprisingly quickly, but the last couple of hours in the organised queuing system outside Westminster Hall was soul destroying. We were definitely less animated as we inched along, our feet were numb, our joints were screaming and our backs felt like they were breaking, but we were determined to see it through together as a group. The feeling of relief was immense when we finally got through the security and into hall.

Although we only had 2 minutes to view and walk past the coffin, it was the moving and overwhelming experience.

When I left for London in the morning I had no plan for after I got out of the hall as I didn’t know how long I would be in the queue. Luckily I was rescued by my good work friends who happened be staying in Twickenham for the weekend, they gave me a place to sleep for the night when I couldn’t face arriving back in Bristol in the early hours.

So on Sunday we had a meander around Green Park to look at the lovely floral tributes and the wonderful messages left by children.

It was an amazing weekend and I’m so happy I decided to go and pay my respects to our fabulous Queen. I was so impressed with the organisation, everyone was so friendly and there was a lovely atmosphere. But mostly it was so heartwarming how strangers can become good friends.

Tracks of Carole’s years: part 5.

01 Jan 2022 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

My ninth song choice is Rhythm of my heart by Rod Stewart.

In 2014 I was a volunteer first aider at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. I was lucky enough to have my first 3 shifts as field of play for the rehearsal and the actual opening ceremony. It was a spectacular show and among the many performers was Rod Stewart who brought the crowd to life with this song. It was also the first time I had sung the National Anthem in the presence of the Queen.

I had the most amazing time and met so many fabulous people who I am still friends with. It definitely gave me the large sporting event volunteering bug and in 2017 I was a volunteer nurse at the World Athletic Championships in London.

I have recently had an interview to volunteer in the medical team in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022, I should find out in January the outcome of that one.

My final song is How long will I love you by Ellie Golding.

I absolutely love the film About Time and in the the film the song is actually sung by Jon Boden, Sam Sweeney and Ben Coleman as buskers in the London underground.

For those of you who haven’t seen this amazingly touching film I’ll give you the gist; The main character, Tim, is told by his dad that the men in their family can travel back in time. His advice to him is to use it to go back and re live his day to make it better or more meaningful. Sadly his dad dies, but Tim is still able to go back in time and visit him after his death. But here’s the rub, Tim can’t go back beyond his children’s birth or the child would be different every time he came back. This is ok until his wife wants a third child, Tim knows he won’t be able to keep visiting his dad in the past and there’s a really lovely and tear-jerking scene when he goes back to spend one last walk along the beach with his dad just before his third baby is born.

At the end of the film Tim says that he didn’t use his ability to go back in time much at all, he lived his life as if he had deliberately come back to that day and recommends we do our best to relish this remarkable ride.

Now we don’t have Tim’s super power of time travel so I think it’s a really good idea to make the most of every single moment, every experience big or small, every encounter ….. We don’t get a second chance, we need to appreciate this great gift of life and live it to the full.

12 'About Time' Quotes | 12 Best Romantic Quotes From Movies

Tracks of Carole’s years: part 4

31 Dec 2021 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , ,

My seventh song selection is These are the days of our lives by Queen. As I’ve written about before in this blog, I am a massive Queen fan, I have been since I first saw them on Top of the Pops performing Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975. But I think I first fell in love with Freddie when I saw him on the Crazy Little Thing called Love video.

He was such a force of nature and one of the greatest entertainers that ever lived. He had the most amazing vocal range and stage presence, you only need to watch his Live Aid performance to confirm this. That is what makes the video for this song so upsetting, to see how frail and weak Freddie was while trying so hard to perform for the camera. According to his bandmates and close friends, Freddie was in a lot of pain on the day of shooting but was determined to put on his best performance.

My youngest son, Jake’s, birth was incredibly traumatic and after 30 years I can still remember every minute of it. I was in hospital for 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after he was born. On the day we were finally discharged from hospital the papers were full of the headline “Freddie has AIDS”. He very sadly died the next day.

This incredibly sad event will be forever linked with my overwhelming sense of relief that Jake and I survived and the joy of welcoming a new and healthy son against all the odds

These Are The Days Of Our Lives (Penampilan Terakhir Freddie Mercury di Depan Kamera) ~ QUEENINDO (The Indonesian Queen Fan Club)

Song number 8 is There’s a Kind of Hush by the Carpenters. In my humble opinion it’s one on the best songs by this very talented duo. Although they didn’t write it themselves, they have the most wonderful vocals and completely make it their own.

The saddest memory of this song is Karen’s appearance when she sang it on the video. She suffered from an eating disorder for a large proportion of her very short life. Tragically she died of heart failure, a complication of her long battle, at the age of 32.

Karen’s story resonates with me as I have been struggling with an eating disorder on and off since I was 16. It’s been a constant battle for many years and sometimes a coping mechanism in times of extreme stress. Severely limiting the amount I eat helped me regain the control I felt I lost. As a healthcare professional it doesn’t make any sense to, at times, starve my body of nutrition.

So at the grand old age of 54 I decided to address my issues with food and attempt to get my head straight. My first point of call was a nutritionist and those appointments were invaluable. I have a little way still to go but she has guided me in the right direction by essentially giving me “permission” and the strength to begin to eat more.

Tracks of Carole’s years: part 3

06 Dec 2021 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

My 5th song is Way Down by Elvis Presley. Most of my childhood was spent listening to Elvis’s music as my dad was a huge fan. So I quickly joined him in that love of the great man.

Most people can recall where they were when we learnt of his death, we were on holiday in Weymouth when we heard the news on the radio in our guest house. At the age of 10 I don’t think I realised at the time how big a deal it actually was, but it was the first time I saw my dad cry.

Way Down was the last single released by Elvis before his death, it’s one of my favourites.

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The 6th song on my list is Good day sunshine by The Beatles. In my final year of primary school I had the most fantastic teacher, Mr. Parkin. He was so creative in the way he structured his lessons, helping us to learn with competitions and quizzes, he read us books like The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. He also set up a disco every Friday afternoon.

Music and dance was very important to him and he created a dance group, I remember watching them perform in assembly and thought I definitely wanted to be a part of that. So when I was finally in his class I jumped at the chance to join when he set up a new group. We did a dance routine to this song.

I will never forget Mr. Parkin, he was the best teacher I ever had and I still remember a lot of what he taught me, even after 44 years! he was truly inspirational.

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Tracks of Carole’s Years: part 2

03 Dec 2021 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

My third song is Get into the groove my Madonna. I started my nurse training in 1985 initially in Weston Super Mare. Our nurse’s home was at Uphill that was just on the outskirts of the town. Being student nurses, going out on the town on a regular basis was an absolute must. Our very first weekend away from home my friend Julie and I decided to do just that. So after a few drinks in the local pubs; The Dolphin and The Ship, we made the decision to walk into town rather than waste money on a taxi. We thought it was a brilliant idea to walk in the dark along the beach, not even thinking about checking the tide times. Luckily there was no sea to contend with, but we spotted the golf course on the way and felt that would be a much quicker route. It probably would have been if it wasn’t pitch black and we could have seen the bunkers before we fell in them, but we emerged mostly unscathed and made it to the bars and nightclub to dance the night away to this tune and many other 80’s beauties.

Song number 4 is a David Bowie song, I’ve found it really hard to choose just one, but have narrowed it down to 2; Life on Mars and Star man. I’ve been a Bowie fan for a very long time and was lucky enough to see him at Wembley Stadium in 1987 on his Glass Spider tour. This of course was the old Wembley stadium and in those days you weren’t allocated seats. You had a gate number on your ticket, once you got inside you made a run for it to get you where you considered the best place to be.

We ran to the seats on stage left, we didn’t have a master plan we just thought it would be a good vantage point. Once settled in our seats we discovered that we were just a few rows away from the press and VIP section. I didn’t see them but apparently Elton John and George Michael were sat up there. But I did see, sitting just 2 or 3 rows away from me was Diana Princess of Wales, she looked relaxed, radiant and beautiful. I must admit I turn around a few times during Bowie’s performance to see her up and dancing with everyone else around her, but the chap in front me couldn’t take his eyes off her for most of the night, I think he was truly smitten.

I didn’t take this photo, but from where I sat and a smidgen of zoom I could have captured this image myself.

June 20 1987 Diana attends a David Bowie Concert at Wembley Stadium with Viscount Linley and Major David Waterhouse | Princess diana, Princess diana rare, Diana

The Tracks of Carole’s years

02 Dec 2021 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Music is so emotive and conjures up many memories good and bad. I love listening to Ken Bruce on Radio 2 and his feature The tracks of my years. Each morning for 5 days a celebrity chooses 2 songs a day and talks about the reasons they chose those particular tunes and why they are important to them.

Now I know I’m not a celebrity or famous for just doing my job like the people Ken has on his show, and no one would be particularly interested in my choices on national radio. But it got me thinking what are the songs that represent my life and could I narrow it down to 10?

Well yes I could and I have created some posts as if I was joining the lovely Ken on his radio show, although without him asking me all the questions.

Day 1

The first song on my list is We are the champions by Queen. When I was in my teens I belonged to a Scout and Guide Marching band as a Ranger Guide then as a Venture Scout. Every year we entered quite a few band competitions throughout the summer months in South west England. This particular year we won our first ever competition, also with individual section wins and first place for turn out (which we always won thanks to our army of mums who sorted our uniforms). This win kicked off a very successful summer for us and we won all the competitions that year. On the evening of that competition win there was a disco in the church hall where we practiced each week. A parent must have gone on ahead to tell them at the hall that we had won, remember this was the early 80’s there were no mobile phones or social media! When we arrived at the church hall and started unloading our equipment we could hear this song being blasted out and everyone was singing to us. It really was an amazing moment.

My second song is Grease Lightening from the musical Grease. It’s fair to say my youngest son Jake struggled at school and probably hated every minute of it. There’s no need to explain why he struggled, it’s not the point of the post. Jake went to a small primary school that encouraged the children to be creative and express themselves especially in performing arts. His good friend Holly decided to have a go at putting on her own production; Songs from the shows. She held auditions for her cast, directed and produced the the whole thing. Jake auditioned for the role of Kenickie for the opening number and for other parts throughout the show. At the time I found this very surprising as up to that point he would usually only reluctantly take part in any performances at Christmas and leaver’s services etc.

On the night of the show I have to say I was stunned at his performance, he burst onto the stage and sang and danced his heart out, as did all the kids on this stage. The whole show was a fantastic success. I do believe that this was the start of Jake’s love for performing on stage. He continued to enjoy productions at school and he went on to achieve a BTEC National Diploma in Performing Arts. He has been a member of a community theatre group for many years, plays bass guitar and sings in a band.

(very grainy old photo of Jake strutting his stuff as Kenickie!)

My Everything

29 Nov 2021 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , ,

At the moment I’m doing a rotation in the medical team in a local hospital rather then my usual prevention of admission community role. This means I can walk to work, so Radio 2 is my best friend in my head phones. On my walk home I particularly like Sara Cox and her feature ” My first and last”. She invites the listener to talk about their first and last gig/concert they went to. So I thought I would share my experiences with the group for this post.

My first concert that I went to was back in 1981, I saw Ultravox at Bristol Colston Hall with my school friend Donna. We were dressed in the most ridiculous new romantic clothes and had the most amazing time. The next day we decided that we had to meet them, so we caught the bus after school and headed for the stage door. Of course we didn’t see them and we got in a whole lot of trouble with our parents because we forgot to tell them where we were going and this was way before the birth of mobile phones.

The last concert I went to was with my two besties Bev and Deb, we went to see Il Divo at Birmingham in 2019. I’ve liked Il Divo for a very long time, but always seemed to miss out on getting tickets when they come to the UK. But I didn’t hang about that time and secured our tickets as soon as I saw them advertised. Unfortunately, although I’ve been friends with Bev for over 30 years, I didn’t know about her fear of heights and she had a bit of a wobbly getting to and initially sitting in our seats in the upper arena. But with a lot of support and distraction therapy from Deb and I, she was ok and we enjoyed the most fantastic show.

It’s the little things

28 Nov 2021 1 Comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

I’ve come to the conclusion that at the grand old age of 54 I’m finally approaching middle age. On my days off work I like nothing more than pottering around my garden with Radio 2 blasting out of my speakers. Don’t get me wrong I still love all the other free time stuff I do such as spending time with good friends/ family and travel. But gardening has become an obsession and Radio 2 is my best friend.

One of the things I love about Radio 2 are the features on the various shows throughout the day. So for the next few posts I thought I would write about a couple of them and what my answers would be if I could be bothered to call in.

The first feature I love is Claudia Winkleman’s Little Win on a Saturday morning. She invites a listener to pitch their little win against a celebrities. The little win can be anything, it just has to be something that made a difference to your day, even in a small way. Then the rest of the listening audience votes for their favourite little win.

I don’t have a celebrity to pitch against and let’s face it they are a bit overrated anyway! My little win happened at a lunch break at work; for pudding I had a Morrison’s extra luxury lemon yogurt and I found a packet of Nairn’s oat biscuits with fruit and seeds in my bag, for some reason I decided to dip one of the biscuits into the yogurt and hey presto I had lemon cheesecake and it was bloody lovely.

Most importantly it brought back memories of a short break my bestie Jane and I had in her friend’s beach chalet in Dunster. We were desperate for some pudding and didn’t think we had anything, I found rich tea biscuits, cream cheese and jam …..different components, same delicious outcome.

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Trees of life

04 Oct 2020 1 Comment

by Carole Gardiner in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

I often find the adverts while scrolling through Facebook quite annoying, but recently one caught my eye. The Woodland Trust is dedicated to the protection of woods and trees throughout the UK by planting trees, restoring and caring for woodlands, especially ancient woods. In this particular advert they were offering the opportunity to buy memorial trees in a woodland of your choice and to help fund all this amazing work.

My dad grew up in the West Midlands, in the Black Country. My grandparents eventually settled in Halesowen and every Whitsun break as a child, my family would spend a week visiting them and going on lots of day trips. Heading off in my granddad’s mini clubman, we went to Clent Hills, Kinver, Hagley woods and many other lovely places for long walks on hills, through bluebell covered woods, in land sea-less sandy beaches (Kinver). There was always time for egg and cheese sandwiches and a cuppa from a proper teapot heated up with my granddad’s calor gas cooking ring.

These were treasured times that I look back on with so much love, the countryside was so beautiful and I loved spending time with my grandparents, especially granddad.

So imagine my joy when I discovered that there was a place just 5 minutes away from my grandparents old house in Halesowen called Uffmoor Wood. I made a donation and bought 3 trees in memory of my dad, granny and granddad Gardiner, in Grove 2 of the woodland.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to go and visit along with my mum and son number two, Jake. We had a lovely walk and saw quite a few deer milling around on our way down to Grove 2.

The trees aren’t actually marked in anyway to identify who has bought which tree, you just enjoy the woods knowing that in some small way you are contributing to the vital work of the Trust.

Lost in France

03 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by Carole Gardiner in 50 Fabulous things, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,

Three years ago my good friend Annette gave me the most amazing present for my 50th birthday. In that year to celebrate becoming half a century I planned to do 50 fabulous things and this present certainly added to that fabulousness.

Annette gave me the use of her gite in the Dordogne area of France for the week and I took along 2 of my besties Bev and Deb. See what we got up to by reading this There and back again

Nestled in the heart of the Foret de la Double in the beautiful Hamlet of Chadenne are not just the one but now three gites owned by my fabulous friend. Since our visit Annette has been very busy renovating the 2 empty buildings that were next door to our gite.

In addition to Cepe, our home for the week, a 2 bedroomed perfectly formed beauty that sleeps 4, there’s Sanglier and Cert. Both have 3 bedrooms and sleep 6. All decorated to a very high and tasteful standard.

All three gites have their own private terraces and use of the communal outdoor swimming pool.

Please take a look at their website to see for yourself the wonderful photos and find all the information you need about the area and activities.

As I said in my original post, Annette is the most amazing host and as a guest you feel so welcomed in every way.

I am definitely planning another trip as there is so much more to see and do, also I really want to see the new gites and garden because Annette and her husband Peter has worked so hard to this all happen.

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