scurvyelephants

Scurvy Elephant Incident In The Doctor's Waiting Room

A well qualified Scurvy Elephant for sure!

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Note. The image above which tells the tale of the elderley man in a doctor's waiting room came to us via email with no copyright information.  If you own copyright of this image, please contact us.

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Jane Tomlinson – Challenging the perceived limitations of terminal cancer diagnosis

We would like to pay tribute to Jane Tomlinson who died recently aged 43. Jane was originally treated for breast cancer in 1991 at the age of 26, however, the disease returned and in spite of undergoing further treatment she was told in 2000 that the disease had spread to her bones and lungs and was given about 12 months to live.

Her reaction was to embark on a series of marathons and athletic challenges to raise money for charity, she completed the appropriately named “Race for Life” in May 2001 and went on to complete both the London marathon and the London Triathlon in 2002, becoming the first person with incurable cancer to do so. She took up endurance cycling going from John o’ Groats to Land’s End and Rome to Leeds, distances in excess of 1000 and 2000 miles respectively. Her final major challenge was to cycle 4200 miles across the U S in 2006. 

In total she raised more £1.5 million for charity. She has received many awards over the last six years for her outstanding efforts and example to us all. She is an outstanding example of the power of the mind to overcome limitations of the body and to confound the expectations of others. I can think of no other story better able to inspire positive beliefs and action when faced with a terminal diagnosis. In her words “Death doesn’t arrive with the prognosis.” 

Go to www.janesappeal.com should you wish to make a donation or find out more about her life.

Whose Peace Is It Anyway? by SES Member Georgina Perkins

Now don't get me wrong - I loved being in the police, I loved policing and by and large I loved police officers; the vast majority of whom join because they want to change things for the better, and believe they can.   

As a young police officer in Newbury a regular duty was to assist the local counil temprarily "evict" the women from the peace camps around Greenham Common.  Long before I learned the theory of building rapport I worked out that finding common ground with those not necessarily predisposed to bond with the constabulary was a good safety precaution.  It also built unlikely firendships.  I remember comparing notes with a young protester who had given up her A levels and University place to study law.  She had no doubt at all that she was playing her part in creating world peace and helping to bring about Nuclear Disarmament.  I joined the police to make a difference, to keep the peace.  In fact the police role during evictions was strictly keeping the peace at Greenham Common.  How much more ambitious, more effective and more of a scurvy elephant was she? 

It was perhaps my inner Scurvy Elephant that finally led me to leave policing after fifteen years, and six years on I now help other people to step off the treadmill and free their own Scurvy Elephant!   

Georgina Perkins
www.steppingoff.co.uk
Life-Change Consultants and experts in helping you regain your work/life balance, live your life a different way or downshift.

Scurvy Elephants in the Garden?

Headed over to the Mouse and Trowel Awards voting area today to vote for my new friend Heather Gorringe's company Wiggly Wigglers. (That's Heather left, winning another award.)

Her team are up for Best Gardening Podcast - and so, so deserve it. Check it out here.  Actually, Heather is a total Scurvy Elephant - must tell her to join us here...

anyway... came across a site called the Renegade Gardener... I reckon that's another Scurvy Elephant right there in Don Engebretson, an award-winning Minnesota garden writer and designer - you absolutely must read his story...

Are you a Scurvy Elephant? Join us here and let us share your Scurvy Story with the world.

My scurvy elephant ejection story...

I've just recently relocated to Cardiff after 17 years in London. I've lived in Cardiff before - as a 21 yr old student at the then Welsh College of Music and Drama where I was on the 3 year acting course.  I only lasted 2 terms - got ejected you see. Quite an achievement really.  They said that I 'over-intellectualised' and that's why I had to go. I asked for clarification and they said, "This is a college about doing, not thinking, and you think too much.'  I have my own theory: I had the wrong sort of accent - posh (I was much plummier back then) and I was just way to scurvy for them...

So this is 19 years ago, back in the days when students got grants. I thought myself extremely lucky to be getting a grant at all - given that honing my performing arts skills was hardly as useful to society as training to be a doctor, a teacher, an engineer etc.  I'd been fortunate enough to have a private secondary education too, so the concept of spending 3 years doing what I loved and being supported through it was just wonderful.

Do Scurvy Elephants make better leaders?

I didn't pay much attention to History in school, so I am shamefully weak on most  periods in history and have to confess to not really knowing who Theodore Roosevelt was, other than a president of the USA. But this quote really caught my interest:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and come up short again and again - because there is no effort without error or shortcoming - but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the

Points of Leverage – the power of St Michael and Playboy!

I learnt a very valuable lesson as a teenager on VSO...

My interest in chemistry waning, and inspired by a visiting 'old boy' who'd spent a year on the Solomon Islands, I had decided to apply for VSO and defer my place at Oxford for a year.  With a vision of grass skirts and coconuts vividly in my mind when I completed the form, I specified “small tropical island” in the preferred location box.

A military public school in India was not the anticipated posting but I set off full of the spirit of adventure.  On arrival at the school it quickly became clear that there was some significant clash of expectations between a headstrong 18 year old full of the freedoms of the sixties and the rigid regime of an Army dominated school with rules and harsh punishments for any transgressions by the cadets.  I felt it my 'duty' to compare and contrast the life of a teenager in the UK and that experienced by the cadets and wrote a number of articles for the school newspaper which did nothing to endear me to the principal.  The situation was compounded by my failure to

Brian Haw - Peace Protestor

Brian Haw (pictued left) is the man who has been protesting on a spot in Parliament Square since June 2001.

I'm not entirely sure what I think of Brian. I sway between admiration of his absolute conviction and dedication to his cause and, if I'm totally honest, disdain.

The thing I can't work out, is why I feel disdain. On his website, www.parliament-square.org.uk, he's quoted as saying,

"I want to go back to my own kids and look them in the face again knowing that I've done all I can to try and save the children of Iraq and other countries who are dying because of my