#ThisIsMS Day 2020

International MS Day is 30th May every year and last year the theme was #ThisIsMS. Normally, my mum and I would do something together, but obviously last year was somewhat different. During the pandemic many charities were losing lots of funds and so the 2.6 challenge was created. My mum is the queen of fundraising (she raised over £10,000 for the British Heart Foundation a couple of years ago!) and so she came up with our very own 2.6/26 challenge for us to complete to raise money for the MS Society. So, instead of being together, we completed thirteen #ThisIsMS activities each. We spent the day apart, but came together on Zoom at the end to share what we had been up to throughout the day (and drink our new cocktail creations!). The challenges were:

I combined these 3 to create this jazzy creation:

I made my Nana’s decadent (read calorific!) chocolate fudge cake.

This is my favourite photo (that I have on my computer!) of my mum and I jumping in the waves off the coast of Valencia...pure fun!

26 minutes of Ashtanga Yoga to finish off the day.

I really enjoyed creating this list and reminiscing about all of the amazing memories that go with each song.

1. Life on Mars, David Bowie- my dad used to play this on vinyl on many a Sunday morning when I was growing up and it is one of the most incredible pieces of music that I’ve heard.
2. American Pie, Donn McLean- car favourite from my mum’s 1980s mixtape
3. Dreams, Fleetwood Mac- I inherited a tape from my parents as they had 2 copies and I never stopped playing it!
4. Better Together, Jack Johnson- the soundtrack to the summer after my GCSEs
5. Hysteric, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs- what freedom and travelling sounds like to me.
6. Waka Waka, Shakira- my guilty pleasure that brings back happy memories from China
7. Chan Chan, Buena Vista Social Club- the soundtrack to South America and Cuba, of course!
8. You and Me, Meute- the best gig I’ve ever been to!

Luxury- Lindt Salted Caramel Dark ChocolateBook- 100 years of Solitude in Spanish You can have a listen to the playlist here.

My cocktail was a primavera (spring) mojito with spiced rum and elderflower cordial instead of sugar syrup... was very nice indeed while catching up with my mum about our 2.6 challenge day!

This was my beautifully unusual stripy and fluffy tulip that had been flowering since the beginning of lockdown in my balcony. It made me smile every day that it was flowering.

These are my all time favourite books!

1. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts in which a convicted Australian bank robber and heroin addict escapes from prison and flees to India.  The perfect book for travelling! It is a tome of over 900 pages that will keep you entertained for hours!
2. Cuentos de Eva Luna (Tales of Eva Luna) by Isabel Allende. 23 short stories embodying every kind of human emotion told by the prostitute Eva Luna to her lover in bed.
3. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende...notice a pattern appearing?! An epic journey from Chile to San Francisco with links to China, this novel was made for me!
4. House of Spirits by Isabel Allende… last one, I promise, but she is my favourite author! The story details the life of the Trueba family, spanning four generations, and tracing the post-colonial social and political upheavals of Chile.
5. Wild Swans by Jung Chang.  A family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China from the era of warlords, through the cultural revolution and ultimately Mao’s death.
6. The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre. A foulmouthed bank heist love affair set in Glasgow...one of my favourite books!
7. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. The first in her trilogy about the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII.
8. The Godfather by Mario Puzo. The novel that brought the Corleone family into our lives. If you enjoyed the film, you should definitely read the original book!
9. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larsson...I could not put these books down!
10. Marching Powder by Rusty Young. A non- fiction book that reads like fiction.  It is based on the true story of a British-Tanzanian man, Thomas McFadden, who was apprehended in 1996 at La Paz airport in Bolivia with five kilos of cocaine in his suitcase and incarcerated in the notorious San Pedro prison. Unsurprisingly this falls out of many a South American backpacker’s bag!
11. Memoirs of  Geisha by Arthur Golden. The novel, told in first person perspective, tells the story of a fictional geisha working in Kyoto, Japan, before, during and after World War II and ends with her being relocated to New York City. I must have read this book at least 4 times.
12. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I loved this book when I was a teenager and wanted to go and live in a castle and drink green creme de menthe too! The novel relates the adventures of an eccentric family, the Mortmains, struggling to live in genteel poverty in a decaying castle during the 1930s.
13. Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky. The two stories in this novel were supposed to be part of a five part suite, but tragically the author was detained in 1942 for being Jewish and was murdered in Auschwitz. Her daughters kept the manuscript and it was finally published in 2004.

This was a such a nice thing to do, especially during lockdown as it was a lovely way to connect with friends and family to let them know I was thinking about them.

My list of recommended films included: 

1. Amelie
2. Inside Man
3. Lord of War
4. Five
5. Y Tu Mama, Tambien
6. Priceless
7. Forrest Gump
8. Pulp Fiction
9. Up In the Air
10. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
11. Blow
12. Into the Wild
13. Crazy Stupid Love

Ideal viewing during lockdown!

It was such a great way to do something positive during lockdown. We managed to raise £390 from 23 amazingly generous sponsors! We will have to come up with a new challenge for this year too! Any ideas? Please share them with me in the comments below.