Please support Asthma UK's "Putting Asthma in the Limelight" Campaign

From 2 to 10 May Asthma UK is having a fundraising week - please take time to see whether there are any local fundraisers.
On Tuesday 5 May 2009 it is World Asthma Day. This year the focus is on children and young people with asthma.

I was one of the 40 percent of asthma sufferers diagnosed in adulthood - my diagnosis was last year. Although I’d guessed what might be wrong with me, I was a little afraid to find out. After all, having asthma puts limits on what you can do, right? Well, no actually! Having uncontrolled asthma is horrible, as I found out, and it’s quite risky too, but daily medication and a few sensible precautions have made all the difference.
I’m lucky because I don’t have severe symptoms. Since my diagnosis I feel healthier, happier, more active and have even discovered gardening! I know that my asthma won’t get in my way and that, as long as I take it seriously, it won’t define who I am.
1 million kids in the UK have asthma, but one third say they don’t know what to do if they have an attack. If this happens when they’re alone, or with someone who doesn’t know what to do, their attack may become more severe until they have to be hospitalised. Having an asthma attack, even a mild one is very scary because, although symptoms vary between individuals - wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and so on - you are effectively trying to breath in and out through a space that is only a fraction of the size it should be -imagine a drinking straw compared to a hosepipe!
This week’s fundraising is called “Putting Asthma in the Limelight” so that all kids with asthma know what to do in an attack and that more adults understand how they can recognise, and assist during, an asthma attack. If you do not know what to do in an asthma attack, please visit the Asthma UK website where you can find lots of important and useful information that might help you help someone else. Since there is a person with asthma in one in every five households in the UK you probably know someone with asthma.

You can also make a donation on the website and find out about other initiatives (such as the Kick Asthma Holidays for kids and the campaign to get the UK Government to supply asthma medication free of charge for those with long-term requirements).

Sometimes a pancake is just a pancake!

I had an email today - from Ocado as it happens- reminding me to "get everything you need for Pancake Day". Good advice, I thought, although since Shrove Tuesday has long been one of the highlights of my culinary year, I seldom forget. What I couldn't quite believe was the accompanying suggestion for 'ginger nut pancakes'. Now, believe me, I am the last person to call into question any recipe concocted by that doyenne of the culinary arts - Marguerite Patten - but tell me, just what do fancy, dancy, exotic crepes have to do with Shrove Tuesday? On any other day I might give them a try, but on Pancake Day?
In the UK we eat pancakes on that one day a year in recognition of the last day before Lent. In the olden days, when everyone was considered Christian (whether they wanted to be or not) the Church required that the six weeks of Lent (the 40 days not counting Sundays that lead up to Easter Sunday) was a time of abstinence. The point of the pancakes was to use up leftover fat and eggs that were forbidden during Lent. Simple pancakes are simple for a reason. OK, you might argue that few of the people who eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday are devoutly Christian, and that even fewer actually observe abstinence of any kind throughout Lent, therefore a bit of tinkering with tradition is just fine. Perhaps it is, but for me it's the continuation of tradition, the ritual if you like, that is so important. It just doesn't seem right - some things are just better left alone. We now live in a world where even hot cross buns are available year-round, and in a variety of flavours too – from traditional to chocolate chip. Cabdury’s Crème Eggs have been transformed into a chocolate bar and M & S have started selling mince pies that expire in mid-October! The thing is: once the tradition goes, so does the significance of these special foods. We all have access to all kinds of foodstuffs regardless of the local growing season, is it too much to ask that we hold on to some of our culinary heritage? This year I've decided enough is enough. There'll be only sugar and orange juice on my pancakes and absolutely no hot cross buns until Good Friday.
Somebody has to make a stand and it might as well be me!

New day, new start!

It all began with making marmalade. Well, actually it didn't - it began with the news that, along with a great many others, my services were no longer required. For the past few years I've been writing freelance and one of my regular customers has been my local newspaper. The writing, so to speak, had been on the wall for a while now. Many of us had been told to cut back on our submissions, full-time employees were being laid off - it was clearly only a matter of time. And sure enough, yesterday as it happens, the axe fell on my last remaining contribution. Now normally we writers - particularly the freelance ones - have fragile egos. Our professional 'worth' horribly yo-yoing from week to week but, given the times in which we live, and the cut-backs every industry seems to be struggling through, my ego has remained, more or less, intact. After all, it was one knock-back that was more of a redundancy than a rejection.
So, as I started to regroup I returned to my personal therapy of choice - cooking. Being a freelance writer means I'm used to the ebbs and floes of work, to the intensity of producing a book and the contrasting calm in between times. For me, it's time in the kitchen that fills those gaps and finds our pantry piled high with preserves, the freezer topped up with pies and the fridge laden with soups. But the thing about that kind of cooking is that it requires attention, it occupies your mind and body, it isn't particularly difficult, and it reaps wonderful, delicious rewards.
Of course all that stirring gives you time to think and, by the time I had finished over my cauldron (there is, after all, just a touch of magic in cooking!), I had put all the day's disappointment behind me and begun to see, not a loss or an end, but a new, fresh beginning. And jars and jars of marmalade!