Month: February 2024

So Much Stuff!

On By samanthaIn FAMILY2 Comments

Stuff – if you are fortunate enough to live in a first world country the chances are you own too much of it. I seemed to spend my twenties, thirties and forties accumulating things and now I am trying to get rid of most of it. What a colossal waste of time and money. In my dining room I have an ugly silver tray with three crystal decanters I received as a wedding gift displayed on it. I have never once used any of them in the twenty nine years that I’ve owned them. I only notice them when I’m dusting. Somebody, I can’t remember who, probably spent a lot of money on them and it makes me feel guilty to think about lugging them all to a charity shop, I doubt I’d be able to sell them . Who uses decanters anymore? My husband is decorating my daughter’s bedroom and, even though she is not an acquisitive person and has lots of her possessions with her at university, the clutter is spilling over into the rest of the house. Fleecy blankets, toiletries, sporting trophies, odd bits of jewellery are on every surface and it is driving me mad.

Every year at about this time I start decluttering. Three years ago I made it a serious project and I am pleased to say I still have empty cupboards where I have resisted replacing any of the items I got rid of. Anytime I am going to the local high street I make a point of having a look around the house first for items to donate to one of the many charity shops. My wardrobe is still full to bursting with clothes that I never wear though. The more I have spent on an item the more reluctant I am to let it go. I have two pairs of leather boots that I have worn about twice because they are too wide at the calves and it is really time to say goodbye to them. I tried selling them for a bargain price on the local Facebook page but the woman who said she was going to buy them didn’t turn up and they have languished at the bottom of my wardrobe ever since. I also have a collection of worn-once evening dresses that really need to go along with the various strappy heels I bought to wear with them. My feet hurt just looking at them.

Something I did manage to part with was the collection of Lladro ornaments I had received from a particular relative over a number of years (I hope she never reads this!). I bit the bullet and dropped them all at the charity shop. Our local British Heart Foundation shop now emails once a bag of donations has been sold letting the donor know how much it raised. This is such a good incentive. A recent bag of paperbacks and scarves I dropped in raised an impressive £19.

My project for March is to have a ruthless clear out of my clothes, towels, bedlinen and paperwork. My coat cupboard is full of similar black padded coats, some I have had for twenty years. I need to give most of them a quick rinse in the washing machine and then drop them off at the Salvation Army collection point. I will report back once my decluttering project is underway. In the meantime, if you are in need of any boots….

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Onur Bahçıvancılar on Unsplash

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This Week I Have Been…

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

Reading – Babysitter by Joyce Carol Oates

I love Joyce Carol Oates’ short stories but her novels are often too disturbing for me. I don’t tend to enjoy anything that has an ongoing threat of of violence and that is one of Oates’ specialties. Her short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, is one of the most menacing tales I have ever read. Second in the unsettling stakes only to Shirley Jackson’s horror, The Lottery. Oates is an extremely prolific writer having published over seventy books. Her short story collection Evil Eye is outstanding, the ending of the title story being something of a conundrum . I went straight back to the beginning and reread the whole thing but was still confused by the ending. If you haven’t read any of her work that would be an excellent place to start.

Babysitter, set in Detroit during the 1970’s is based loosely on the still unsolved serial killings of children that took place there during the time. These murders ae something of a background story to the domestic drama though. The story centers around Hannah Jarrold, an affluent housewife, approaching her fortieth birthday, who is married to Wes, a successful executive, they have two young children. It is clear from the beginning that Hannah has suffered some trauma at the hands of an abusive father she thinks of a “Joker Daddy”. It seems as though this is a part of her life that she has compartmentalised and Wes seems unaware of her past, in fact Wes really doesn’t seem to notice his wife at all anymore. One evening, while at a charity gala, where Hannah gives a speech and Wes is hoping to do some social-climbing, Hannah has a brief encounter with the enigmatic man she comes to know as YK.

Hannah seems to go through life in a state of permanent brain fog. She sleepwalks through her days making increasingly disastrous and irrational decisions. Although she has moments of complete clarity she does not have the emotional capacity to deal with anything unpleasant and pretends it is not happening. YK is about the worst thing that could happen to any woman and it is clear to the reader from the outset that he is a dangerous predator. No matter how brutal he is, Hannah simply thinks of him as her lover. She is grateful for the attention. YK’s “fixer”, Mikey, otherwise known as Ponytail, is an interesting character and he recognises pure evil when he sees it but is always there with his camera, ready to do YK’s bidding.

Wes feels that the country is on the brink of a race war and is keen to blame any crime on people who are not white. It conveniently fits his agenda and he doesn’t seem to much care about the truth of these accusations or the devastating impact they may have. An incident he has misunderstood, involving Hannah, is stoking his hatred of black people and his indifference to his wife.

I simply could not put Babysitter down, I found it absolutely riveting and found myself muttering warnings to Hannah under my breath as though she could somehow hear me through the page. It is extremely dark and the subject matter does not make for relaxing reading but it is the most compelling book I have read in a while, Domestic Noir at its finest.

Watching- Lover, Stalker, Killer on Netflix

This is a true crime documentary about Dave Kroupa a mechanic who finds himself newly divorced in his thirties. In 2012, like so many people, he goes online to look for a partner. He quickly meets Liz who he has a real connection with and they soon begin to spend quite a bit of time together. Liz, we are told, is a single mum who loves animals and is good with computers. Although Dave likes Liz he makes it clear that he is not ready for a serious commitment. Then Dave meets Cari who is a customer at the auto shop where he works and they begin a fast-moving romance. Cari is also a single mother. One evening, Liz turns up at Dave’s apartment as Cari is there and things begin to go very wrong.

Dave begins to receive hundreds and hundreds of threatening texts from multiple numbers as does his ex-wife and Liz. It s clear that the unhinged person sending the messages is constantly watching either him, Liz or his ex-wife and children. Dave finds himself on the edge of a nervous breakdown fearing for his family’s safety. Then things really escalate. Liz, herself the recipient of hundreds of threatening messages begins to fear for her life but where is Cari, she appears to have disappeared off the face of the earth. The policeman investigating is determined to find her.

I won’t give anything more away about how the story unfolds but, safe to say, it is full of twists and turns and the outcome is jawdropping and also very sad.

Listening to – Alligator Candy on Apple Itunes

This is a devastatingly sad podcast, narrated by David Kushner who, in October 1973, when he was four years old, asked his eleven year old brother, Jon, to bike to the local store and buy him some “Snappy Gator Gum”. The Kushners lived in a suburban area of Tampa, Florida and the nearest 7-Eleven store was at the other side of a woods populated by palm and cypress trees. For local children it represented adventure and freedom. Tragically Jon, a little red headed boy on his red bicycle headed off and was never seen alive again. Sadly he had run into the worst type of people, Johnny Paul Witt and Gary Tilman. More monsters than human beings. They were only arrested because Witt confessed to his wife who turned them into the police.

This is a very intimate podcast and David interviews his mother and other brother, Andy. They all seem such like lovely, kind people and the love that they have for eachother is evident Although Jon has been dead for fifty years it is clear that he is still much loved and remembered and Andy, a musician, performs a song he has written for his dead brother, it is incredibly moving.

David, only a tiny child when this happened, has blamed himself for half a century for asking his brother to go and buy the Snappy Gator Gum. The whole family have had to live with the knowledge that the worst type of nightmare can descend at any time. Although the subject matter is depressing, there is so much goodness and love in the Kushner family that it almost cancels out the horror. As David says, Jon was a boy on his bike, alone and independent, cycling through the woods. In the moments before his death he was happy. I hope that writing his book and making this podcast has helped David Kushner heal from this tragic and traumatic experience.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Heading Back To University – Part Two

On By samanthaIn FAMILYLeave a comment

It is early February and my daughter is returning to university after eight months at home, six of which she has spent on work placement in London. It has been lovely to have her at home and it almost felt like she’d never been away. When she first came home, in June, she didn’t seem entirely happy to be back. I think she had become used to eating what and when she wanted, coming and going as she pleased and now a little of her independence was gone upon her return.

Because she is doing a Business degree, two years of which involve work placements, she was unable to share a house with the friends she had made during her first year as they were all at university full time and I do think she felt that she was missing out socially. The Business students in Year Two and Year Three share the same student houses for a year. The Year Three Students have it for the first half of the academic year and the Year Two Students for the second half. In my daughter’s case, the contract with the landlady is for twelve students, it is all very complicated. Fortunately my daughter has made good friends with some people on her course and it is these girls she is now sharing with. In fact, this week, that are all heading off to Poland for somebody’s twenty first birthday. 

One of my work colleagues manages some student housing in the city where my daughter attends university and she said they won’t enter into such a complicated arrangement and a friend said they discounted letting their son do a course with a work placement because of the difficulty with finding housing. To be honest, it really hasn’t been a big deal, this particular university offer a lot of courses with work placements and the students always find housing but their choice may be a little limited. 

When I visit my daughter I usually take the train. It takes almost exactly the same amount of time as driving and you just step off the train into the heart of the city. Parking is near-impossible in this particular place as my husband and I found out the first time we drove. There are usually queues to even enter the car parks and, when you do, they are full, and roadside parking is mostly for permit holders only. This time we have to drive because my daughter is taking all her belongings back. Bed linen, pots and pans, clothes, sports equipment etc . I do wonder what students do if they have no access to a car. You can purchase bedding and kitchen sets from the university and arrive with just a suitcase but then all the household stuff will need to be stored somewhere during the summer. Or perhaps students enlist a parent or friend to help them carry it home on public transport. I’m probably overthinking it!

We arrive at the house, which looks small from the outside but the landlady has crammed six bedrooms in. The whole house is freshly panted in white and looks reasonably clean at first glance. My daughter’s is filled with furniture that most charity shops wouldn’t accept and the drawers and wardrobe are covered in grime, inside and out. We have to wipe down everything. There is a frayed extension cord and a filthy mirror which isn’t really a mirror but foil over some hardboard. The staircase down to the kitchen in the basement is a slippery death trap and nobody over 5’9″ can stand up straight in the communal living area. Even crouching, my husband hurts his head on the smoke alarm attached to the already low ceiling. The downstairs floor is uncovered concrete with an oily stain. My daughter is paying a small fortune in rent as are the other students and I feel that the landlady has done the bare minimum make the place comfortable. I am surprised the stairs even passed building regulations. I can see my agitation is annoying my daughter, she doesn’t want her friends to hear my complaining, so I keep quiet.

My daughter has chosen some bed linen from Urban Outfitters so we remove the existing, disgusting mattress cover and replace it with a new one. The room looks better once the bed is made. The wardrobe appears to have come from a 1930s boarding school and has hardly any hanging space but lots of shelves. Somehow we manage to find a home for everything. There are no locks on any of the internal doors, even the two bathrooms which are both downstairs, and my husband is understandably not happy about this. What if one of the other students has a party and my daughter is out. What is to stop anybody rummaging about or even stealing her things. Or worse still, coming into her room uninvited when she is there? He asks her to email the landlady and request locks but my daughter and her friends seem reluctant. 

My husband orders a new extension cable and we take my daughter into town for lunch. We have to keep moving the car throughout the day as the only parking spaces we can find are for a maximum of two hours. After lunch we go to Lidl and buy my daughter some groceries. She buys mushrooms and peas neither of which she will eat at home!

When my daughter was on campus she had everything on her doorstep but now she either has to walk or take the bus. If she just has one lecture it is a lot of effort for an hour. She plays a lot of sport and has said it is a pain going back and forth . Some of the friends she shared accommodation with last year are in the next road which is nice. She will be in this house until June when she will be home for the summer. She will then return to the same house in September until around Easter next year when her second work placement will begin. I spoke to her today and she seems to have settled in happily enough and had just cooked herself some sort of pasta dish with the peas and mushrooms. They must taste different when she cooks them!

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Windows on Unsplash

Perfume Pretenders

On By samanthaIn HEALTHLeave a comment

My twenty year old daughter had some friends round and one of them walked into our house on a cloud of what of what I assumed was Chanel’s CoCo Mademoiselle. I have a love-hate relationship with this particular fragrance. I love it on anybody else but it smells slightly sour on me and is guaranteed to give me a migraine. There is a note in many Chanel fragrances that gives me a headache, I can really only wear Chance. My daughter’s friend said no way could she afford Chanel, they are all students, she was wearing Soft Iris by Marks & Spencer.

On my next visit to M & S I found the scent, priced at £10 and sprayed a tiny amount onto my wrist. An hour later it smelled prettier on me than Madomoiselle and, more importantly, no migraine! I bought a bottle. The range also includes a few other well-known perfume “dupes”. Pink Pepper is apparently a dead-ringer for Lancome’s La Vie Est Belle, a wildly popular and very sweet perfume . Fresh Mandarin supposedly smells like Caroline Herrera’s Good Girl. The girls in Ms Herrera’s fragrance campaign have to be good while the boys get to be bad, rather unimaginative gender-stereotyping in my opinion but that is beside the point, the CH perfume is lovely and it comes in a high-heeled shoe shaped bottle. There is also a Jo Malone wannabe in the range, Sea Salt and Neroli . M & S sell a pack of all the various testers for £5 which is fantastic value. I think this would make a nice little gift for a teenage girl.

Perfume is one of things that is so easy to get wrong and is is an expensive mistake if you end up with a £75 bottle of something that you no longer like after a couple of days. I have re-sold so many used-twice bottles on eBay over the years. Now I generally buy Chanel body sprays, which are around £30, because they are less strong than even the EDTs and are not headache inducing. They last for ages too as you only need to spray a tiny amount. If I am considering a new fragrance I will usually buy a sample on eBay and wear it for a couple of weeks or so before committing to a fully sized bottle but, most days, I don’t bother with perfume anymore.

While in Marks and Spencer I also bought a small make up bag for my handbag, a bargain at £6, and a delicious bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich!  

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

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A Trip To The Theatre – The Mousetrap

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

My friend Helen and I like to go out somewhere nice every few months or so. In between these trips we will go for walks to the cinema or just have a coffee but we both work hard and like to treat ourselves to a theatre trip or visit a nice restaurant once in a while. Just for a change of scene as much as anything else I think. It’s also nice to have a catch up during the train journey into London.

This time we decided to go and see the long-running play The Mousetrap. Based on the famous murder mystery by Agatha Christie, it is the longest running play in the West End, showing since 1952 . I was in two minds about going to see this because, thanks to an unwelcome spoiler on a radio arts show, I already knew whodunnit but it seemed like something we would both enjoy and reasonably priced tickets were available.

We decided to go for dinner before the show and I booked a table at a small restaurant called Violas in Tavistock Street. As seems to be the case nowadays I had to provide my card details when booking online and was informed that, in the event of us not attending, I would be charged £40. This is the steepest no-show fee I have encountered but I suppose it is Covent Garden. Anyway, Violas is very prettily decked out with lots of artificial flowers everywhere (must be a nightmare to dust) and there are faux fur throws on the back of each chair. The staff were unsmiling apart from the French manager who was running up and down the stairs to the kitchen every five minutes and apologetically explaining to customers that there would be at least a twenty minute wait for their food. This obviously isn’t ideal if you have to be at the theatre at Seven O’Clock and the party on the table next to use took their food away in take-out boxes and asked for the service charge to be removed from the bill. 

I ordered the Black Truffle Pasta which was absolutely delicious . Helen wanted the Salmon but this wasn’t available so she ended up with the Prawn Pasta. Her dish was a plate of tagliatelle with a few prawns, one sliver of aubergine and not much else. Disappointing. We both had a coke to drink and the bill, including tip was about £50. I would have liked a desert but we ran out of time.

Thanks to the miracle that is Google Maps and Helen’s navigational skills we found our way in the nick of time to St. Martin’s Theatre in West Street. We had paid £40 for each of our tickets and we were sitting very high up in the Upper Circle, the stairs are very steep and quite deep. There was a long queue for the two cubicles in the ladies toilets which would have benefitted from a freshen up. We decided not to have a drink during the interval although we did go into the tiny bar which is right behind the light-up sign. The window was open and it was nice to get some fresh air as I had an immovable migraine. As is typical of these old theatres, there is very little leg-room between the seats. It would have nice to have had the option of borrowing some of those little binoculars, or Opera Glasses, to see the actor’s faces more clearly. 

Although I already knew who the villain was, I knew very little about the story itself. Set in a guest house called Monkswell Manor, it tells the story of the two young guest house owners who find themselves hosting an odd assortment of strangers during a snowy night. There has been a shocking murder nearby and investigations have led the local police sergeant to their door. I thought the actors were speaking too quickly at the beginning and it took me a while to settle into the story which, to be honest, was a bit daft but enjoyable. Another friend coincidentally went to see The Mousetrap the night before us and she described it as “a homely play” and that seems quite an apt description.

The woman sitting next to me kept whipping out her iPhone and checking her social media. She was in her fifties, old enough to know better and I found it very distracting. She also kept muttering the dialogue under her breath. She seemed a bit strange so I just tried to ignore her.

We enjoyed The Mousetrap but I was pleased we hadn’t spent a lot of money on the tickets and it definitely isn’t something I would want to see twice. We walked back to Charing Cross station where a train was already waiting on the platform. Towards the end of the journey a very drunk man walked through the carriage asking the other passengers for money. This can be very intimidating, especially if you are travelling by yourself. He didn’t cause any trouble though. We were back in our home town by ten forty five.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

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This Week I Have Been…

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

Reading – Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

I have read all of Sittenfeld’s books, my favourite being Sisterland her brilliant novel about twins. I also would also thoroughly recommend her very witty short story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It. Partly set during the pandemic, Romantic Comedy is a story about Sally, a writer for a late night comedy sketch show and Noah, a successful and handsome pop star. Noah appears on the show Sally writes for, Night Owls, as a guest host and asks Sally to help him finesse a sketch he has written himself. Like many of Sittenfeld’s female characters Sally pulls off an epic act of self sabotage putting the brakes on any burgeoning romance between her and Noah. She can’t bring herself to believe that he could be interested in her. Then the pandemic hits and they being to exchange emails. Sally’s surname is Milz and her email address is Smilz (Smiles – get it?) little details like this are so beautifully thought out

Romantic Comedy is brilliantly funny and very touching. Sally and Noah are such lovely characters that I found myself really caring about what happened to them. I also particularly liked Jerry, Sally’s step-father and his pet beagle, Sugar. This is a long story but, like any book by Sittenfeld , it is well worth the effort

Watching – Expats on Netflix

Expats, based on the novel by Janice Y.K. Lee, stars Nicole Kidman as Margaret and Ji-young Yoo as Mercy. Margaret’s husband, Clarke, played by Brian Tee, is offered a chance by the big conglomerate that he works for to relocate to Hong Kong for three years. His company put in place a generous package including private school for the children, a maid and chauffeur and they move into a spacious apartment. The chauffeurs are privy to all the comings and goings and private conversations, they are so quiet their passengers seem to forget they are even there. The family, including Margaret and Clarke’s three children, Daisy, Philip and little Gus find themselves amongst the the community of other wealthy ex-pats including neighbours Hilary and David who seem to have a complicated relationship to say the least. Life seems to be a round of glamorous but dull dinner parties and Margaret, who is a landscape gardener, has no real purpose. She looks down on the other women who are just “wives” despite being one of them herself. Then, on one such social occasion taking place on a boat, Margaret and Mercy cross paths. Three year old Gus is being a terror and Mercy steps in and helps. Margaret offers her an evenings trial as a nanny as she feels that the children are becoming too devoted to their current “help” , Essie. Mercy and Margaret take the children to visit the busy night-market and life changes forever.

I know that Kidman has won Oscars but, it seems to me, that she often plays the same person over and over. Margaret has stiff mannerisms, is uptight and is rather brittle with her speech. Kidman, aged fifty-six, is also too old to be playing the mother of a three year old. For some reason, when she is dressed to go out for an evening her hair is styled like a WWII evacuee. I have watched the first three episodes, it is a little slow but, no doubt, I’ll finish the series now.

Listening to – Hunting Warhead Podcast on Apple Music

Hunting Warhead tells the story of the Australian Police’s investigation into a huge child pornography website and the peadophile responsible for running it, Canadian, Benjamin Faulkner. The host is Daemon Fairless who sounds uncannily like Alec Baldwin. He is very sensitive in his presentation of the case and in his interviews with the people involved including the mother of one of the infant victims.

The subject matter definitely makes for difficult listening. The lengths some of the investigators go to to identify children at risk are extraordinary. The victims can be absolutely anywhere in the world and there is a huge market in supplying horrifying, exploitative content. The investigators refer to such websites as child abuse sites, not pornography. The website featured in this particular investigation, Child’s Play had over a million subscribers. It is staggering to think how many people get gratification from looking at images that most of us would find sickening. 

One of the guests on Hunting Warhead is a psychologist specialising in peodophilic behaviour and he explains that often a person will realise that they are attracted to children at around the time they are twelve or thirteen years old. If that person wants help with controlling their inappropriate feelings they are usually met with a brick wall, there is little research on curtailing this type of impulse. They grow up ashamed with nowhere to turn to for help. Most of these people realise that it would be wrong to act on the attraction they feel but some, of course, do go on to abuse children. The psychologist states that not all child abusers are peodophiles and not all peodophiles are chid abusers. Faulkner himself states that he was madly in love with a four year old. It really is horrifying to listen to his interviews, he is not remorseful at all. Had he been detained in Canada he would have received a relatively light sentence but Faulkner was arrested in Virginia and will serve thirty five years in prison.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha

Cover Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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Heading Back To University – Part One

On By samanthaIn FAMILY1 Comment

Yesterday my husband and I took my daughter back to university to begin her second year of studies. She had been at home for eight months, six of which she spent on a work placement in London. She is doing a four year Business degree with two, six month placements, one at the beginning of Year Two and one at the end of Year Three. My daughter was fortunate to find a work placement fairly quickly but, nevertheless, I think the application process is very stressful for the students. They cannot remain on the course if they fail to find a placement and it has to be a role which is relevant to the degree. It puts them under a lot of pressure at a time when they also have exams to sit.

The Placement Officers at the university released the available opportunities on a spreadsheet and then it was up to the students to send off their CVs and covering letters. Of course they were all applying for the same positions and it was difficult for them to see their friends being offered a placement before themselves. There were one or two roles on the list that we didn’t feel were necessarily right for my daughter, we didn’t want her to work for a company that didn’t even have a functioning website and was located in a not particularly safe area for example. I assume the university do their due diligence when sending these opportunities to the young students. A number of the placements were overseas, quite a few in Germany, so these were ideal for students with proficient language skills. There was one placement right in our town which would have been lovely and convenient but another student secured that.

Nearly all of the employers required online applications to be submitted, most of which take at least an hour to be completed. The covering letters of course have to be tailored to each position, it is all very time consuming. The interviews were all online, most students had at least two interviews for any role they were considered for.  My daughter was fortunate to be reasonably well paid for her placement but, by the end of the application process, some students accepted unpaid positions. As we live within easy commuting distance of London my daughter moved back home but students who live further afield also had to arrange and pay for accommodation near their temporary workplace. Living in any city is enormously expensive and I imagine it was difficult to make last-minute arrangements. I know all of my daughter’s friends were hugely relieved when they had secured their placements. 

I bought my daughter a couple of trouser suits for her placement, one from Next and one from Top Shop (still available at ASOS) but she didn’t wear either of them. The dress code in the office of the huge corporation she was working for was supposed to be Business Casual but it was actually extremely casual. My daughter, not someone who is particularly interested in clothes, wore some three quarter length trousers from Zara most days paired with a little shell top or cotton blouse. She just wore loafers on her feet. When it got colder she bought some wide leg trousers from Pull & Bear and wore a slim fit jumper on top. She said lots of people wore trainers in the office. Things have certainly changed since I worked in The City in the 90s.

For the first couple of weeks my daughter had to go into the office every day which, even with a 17-25 railcard is a huge expense. After the initial training period she was able to work from home for three days a week. She said there were days when she was the only one in her department who had gone in and that some people never seemed to put in an actual appearance at the office. 

My daughter was really well looked after during her placement and learned a lot. There were three other students from her course working in the same department. She said that the staff were very welcoming and patient if anybody needed any guidance. The students were expected to work hard and my daughter often had a long list of tasks to complete. They did a little bit of socialising after work but not as much as they would at university. I think it was a very positive experience for her. The company said they were delighted with my daughter’s performance and were sorry to see her leave. Unfortunately she can’t go back to the same place for her next placement so we will have to start the application process all over again.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

Cover Photo by Windows on Unsplash