I don't know anything about Mr Murphy and his Law but I guess that with a name like Murphy he has to be Irish.
This would probably explain why when one thing goes wrong..it follows that everything else does as well.

I have always known it as Sod's Law but I have no idea who Sod is either but I don't think that he is Irish..probably English!

So whether it was Mr Murphy or Mr Sod..when things go wrong all at once it follows that the whole day will collapse into disaster....it's Sod's Law!

The one experience which changed my life was ...being born!

I must admit that I do not remember a lot about this great happening in my life but I do know that it was indeed the beginning of the experience surpassed by no other. Living!

It was all a very long time ago...1939...some of you were not even a twinkle in your daddy;s eye then.

I arrived on Friday 23 November in the early morning. My place of birth being was my Grandfather's wooden bungalow in a small sleepy little village of Basildon in Essex. Maybe calling it a village is a bit of an exaggeration. It was a hamlet..just a few house scattered in the countryside.

I was a skinny baby. Maybe it was the lack of good food as the war was about to start so maybe food was a bit scarce. Anyway there I was, a new arrival into this great big world.

I don't remember staying with my Grandparents for very long because my Mother had to get back to London to go to work so I assume that she took me with her.

The place where we lived in London was Upton Park , very near to the West Ham Football Stadium. It was a dingy basement flat with a small concrete back garden and a toilet outside. I only know this because my Mother told me.
The years from birth to three years of age I cannot recall but at 4 years of age I was in St Michael's Boarding School Leigh on Sea Essex.

So , yes I would say that the biggest experience of my life was being born. I have had many other experiences since then , some good some bad, but I have always plodded on.
Now I am approaching the Autumn/Winter of my life and I can honestly look back and think what an incredible experience it has been.

I wasn't going to write about this subject as it did not really apply to me. Being retired, the last thing you want to spend time thinking about is 'going out to work'

But here it is , Sunday afternoon , I am bored...so I was flicking through my WordPress site and came across my last years' progress report. I have proof that I am making progress but what caught my eye was the list of people who have visited my blog the most and how they got there.
There was the usual..WordPress, Facebook, The Laughing Housewife (thank you TillyB) and next was ARS....Animal Rescue Sofia. That was indeed a surprise....
I spent the next hour looking through all the animals rescued by ARS in the past year. I did not see a picture of Benji but I did see loads and loads of other beautiful dogs, puppies, cats and kittens..all happily rehomed.
Al lkinds of dogs big ones, medium ones, small ones and weeny-teeny ones have all found happy forever homes. I think the different kinds of dogs are as numerous as the different types of people who adopt them and yet the dogs and people seem to match perfectly.
It reminded me of what a really spendid job these dedicated workers do for the stray, abused and abandoned animals of Bulgaria and in particular Sofia.
Animal welfare is not the priority in Bulgaria as it might be in other countries and animals are , on the whole , not treated well. In fact it is only in the last decade that anyone has done anything at all to help the poor helpless creatures.

Wherever you go in Bulgaria you will see stray dogs. Some of them have been neutered and released again. These dogs have coloured tags in their ears and because of this they are to a degree protected.

Only once have I seen an animal so emanciated that there was hardly any skin left on the body. It really was just a skeleton covered by thin layer of skin. I did try to entice it to me but it ran off into the bushes and I could not find it again.

So having seen such suffering..I am even more in praise of those volunteers who spend their time helping the animals...so if I was asked to describe my ideal job..I would reply .....working in an animal shelter.
If I did not live so far away from Sofia or Varna I would definitely give my services to help but I cannot do that so i do it financially instead.
With 4 rescue dogs and three rescue cats I think I have a mini rescue home and that is as far as Neville , my husband will let me go......
So I am content to be as I am. Even I cannot rescue every animal in the world even though that would be my dearest wish.

So if you, yes you, are in the position where you know of abuse or starvation or neglect..please do something about it...do not leave it to someone else!