You know that feeling you get, the blanket of disappointment when you find out, actually, he isn’t.

My weekend = that.

I’m not normally one for charities.

When I see a chugger dancing towards me (as they invariably do, I think it’s to make the poor unsuspecting public think they’re friendly and genuinely after a chat as opposed to grabbing your money) I walk a little quicker, I put my head down and I mumble. It tends to do the trick.*

I don’t like the fact that I’m giving money into a vast organisation which, inevitably, won’t go to help the people I want to help but will actually pay for the charity’s bubbly at the end of year bash. Or worse, paying some “consultant” to help “rebrand” the charity in order to get “optimized [of course, with a z] output from the consumer base” or some such.

However, sometimes, very rarely, I come across a charity that I can believe in, that I can give money to and that I know will actually make some real sustainable difference.

Nancy Crooks moved to Africa with her husband, Howard, at the age of 27. Newly married, with two small sons, she threw herself into enhancing the life for women and children in Africa. Over the next 53, Nancy ran many different projects, all of which focused around eduction and sustaining the environment. Nancy always enjoyed starting new ventures, getting them operational, and then handing them over to others to perpetuate.

 Her work in Africa spanned over 50 years until, last year, Nancy died of lung cancer, leaving behind a husband, family and many, many friends.

I was lucky enough to know Nancy throughout my childhood in Kenya and so know first hand how dedicated she was to making the world a better place. As you can imagine my delight when I found out that a foundation had been set up in her name: the Nancy Ellen Crooks Foundation.

The foundation is committed to continuing Nancy’s work and emulating her devotion to supporting, implementing and developing self-sustaining projects that hold the possibility of improving the lives of women and children in Africa. Currently, the foundation is focusing on two of Nancy’s pet projects: education and solar cooking.

So what can you do help? Please, spread the word. The foundation is unfunded, is not aligned to any political or religious establishments and relies on donations and grants in order to do its work. In order to get this money, I need to help spread the word. This is something I really believe in, hence me taking a break from the normal banality of this blog and requesting your assistance.

Read the website: www.nancyellencrooksfoundation.org

Become a friend on facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Nancy-Ellen-Crooks-Foundation

Follow us on twitter: www.twitter.com/TheNECF

Keep an eye on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/TheNECF

Have a look at our photos: www.flickr.com/photos/nancyellencrooksfoundation/sets/

Make a donation www.nancyellencrooksfoundation.org/contactus.html

*Note: This is a nuttycow endorsed method. No stealing y’all.

For the last week or so I’ve been thinking really hard about where I want this blog to go, what I want to get out of it.

I love writing here and I love the feeling I get when I get comments. I’m also skint.

It’s not been an easy decision but I’ve decided to make parlezvousmoo a subscription only blog.

Over the next few days, you’ll see a number of changes to the layout and access. For each post you want to read, I’ll ask you to make a donation of 50p. This money will go directly into my savings account thereby helping me save up for the future. I don’t think it’ll take too long.

Thanks for being so understanding!

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We all know the period after Christmas can be a bit of a downer. It’s January, the weather’s a bit rubbish, you have no money etc.

Well, to make it better, I’ve decided to run my own competition. Huzzah!

It’s point? To make you feel better about yourself.

All you have to do is send me a representation of yourself and how wonderful you are. What special talents do you have? Why are you so fabulous? (Because let’s face it, you are)

 It could be a photo, a drawing, a wikipedia entry, your obituary, a diary entry… anything.

Email it to me at nuttycow@gmail.com and then, on 5th January (or there abouts), I will pick a winner and send you a fun and exciting prize.

I haven’t decided what yet but believe me, it’ll be lovely. Promise.

I am Nicole, an 18 year old idealist with a lefty poet boyfriend. The year is 1942. The place is Casablanca, in the latest days of Vichy – America has just entered the war and next month US troops will land in Casablanca, but for now, France rules this corner of North-West Africa.

I’m getting a little bit too excited. I think it’s because I have images of myself looking like this:

We all know that’s not going to happen.

However, I do need your assistance oh lovely people of the interwebs. I’ve done some research but I’d like you to do some too. I need links for the following:

• 1940s fashion – what did people wear, prints, colours, style, handbags, jewellery
• 1940s hair – how was it worn, how do I do it (preferably with pictures and detailed instructions)
• 1940s makeup – what, how
• 1940s vocabulary – any particular words which were tres fashionable in 1942

Any help or tips you can give would be great. Have you ever done one of these before? What are they like? What happens if it turns out you are the murderer?

“Mind the mummy gap:

I have slipped into that gap before. Not so deeply nor so suddenly that I could not clutch the edge on my way down and haul myself back up, scrabbling undignified and tearful.

But when my mum fell into it, when the precious little bits of her life began to slide through her fingers so that she lost her grip, she plummeted into the dark, so low we could not reach her. So low it took her months and months to clamber back to the light.

She skirts an abyss. And we watch ever fearful that she might fall again. She does from time to time. I wonder: had she seen the gap coming, had somebody warned her, preferably some time before my youngest sister left home for boarding school: hey, look out, there’s a sodding great hole there, mind you don’t fall into it, would she have navigated her way around, left herself a wide enough berth that even if she stood back unaware, in an unguarded moment, it’d still be far enough away not to pose a threat?

I know how chilly its unfathomable depths are because Mum has described them to me, ‘It’s cold’, she has said, ‘and dark’. I only know that I need to watch my step because of her. It doesn’t mean I won’t fall too. But if you have been cautioned, Mind the Gap, you might, just might, have time to plot a course around it.

I’m working on a story. About gaps and direction, madness and motherhood. If you, any of you kind readers, could bear to link to this, I’d love to hear from anybody who is familiar with sidestepping gaps. Or not.”

If you’re interested, or know someone who might be, please get in touch with RM at:

mindthemummygap@yahoo.co.uk

Symptoms vary from woman to woman but, for the most part, everyone who has PCOS suffers with weight. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a complete heifer (excuse the pun) but I could do with losing a couple of pounds.

Katy et al at a Lard off my mind do a fabulous job of helping each other with the weight loss and so, it comes to the plea… does anyone want to be my diet buddy? I tend to shy away from scales (they scare the hell out of me and I’m convinced I have “big bones”) but, I plan to take a leaf out of The Modern Gal’s book (blog?) and do it via photos.

Anyone want to play?

Hello

I’ve recently come to realise that blogging – which is to say, the way people blog and the reasons people blog and the things people blog about – is a complicated and profound and endlessly fascinating thing. So, because I’m an inquisitive beast, I’ve compiled a questionnaire about that very thing and I’d be honoured and thrilled if you’d fill it in for me.

If I don’t know you personally by the way, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to. For the moment, I’m probably virtual friends with one of your other virtual friends. I did a little two-degree roll-trawling to get what I hoped would be a willing sample. Fingers crossed.

Of course, if you’d rather have your corneas scraped with poison arrows than answer a bunch of questions about your private blog habits, then please delete this email at once and I’m genuinely sorry to have bothered you.

If you do fancy it however, splendid! All information proffered will be treated with complete confidentiality and all results will be attributed anonymously. Unless of course, you tell me something particularly juicy, in which case I will contact you and ask your permission to single you out for special praise.

Oh, this is fun already.

Right. The survey is here:

http://www.polldaddy.com/s/33F57E9A1193D2A4/ 

Feel free to circulate…

Cheers!

Stan

Well? What are you waiting for? Get!