Christina Hollis: Of Blind Dates and Rearranged Fixtures...

The Perfect Blind Date...

It's been quite a week. On Monday, OH and I appeared on BBC Radio Gloucestershire. Then on Tuesday, the spotlight swung right away from us, as Son No. 1's much delayed visit to his prospective university went ahead at the third attempt. 

During the first week of April, I got an email from the team at our local radio station, BBC Radio Gloucestershire. They were planning a feature on blind dates. That's how I met my husband, and I'd included the detail in my LinkedIn Profile. A researcher picked up on it, and they contacted me. 

Led to this...

We were asked to get to the studio before 11am. It's near Gloucester Royal Hospital—a journey I've been making every couple of months for the past ten years to take our son for consultants' appointments. The journey is always a nightmare, so we set off at 9.45am to make sure we wouldn't be late. Wouldn't you know it? The traffic was so light, we arrived just after twenty past ten. That was a whole forty minutes early for our interview. Talk about looking keen!

Luckily, the studios of the BBC turned out to be a mini version of St Mark's Square in Venice—the place was full of  interesting people. Two guests came and went during our self-imposed wait, and both were fascinating.  Darren had been invited to talk about the difficulty disabled people face when trying to get tickets for, and decent access to, live music events. Stuart was an historian, working on the history of businesses in the area of Cheltenham around the Bath Road known as the Suffolks and Tivoli.  

While we chatted the waiting time flew by, and then we were led into Anna King's studio to take part in the live broadcast. I've often listened to Anna's morning programme, so appearing on it was a real treat.  Here's the link to the show. Anna has a great taste in music, and all the features are interesting. The blind date section starts at 2:10 on the slider. The Vox Pops and emails about people's romantic experiences are really worth hearing. Most were funny, but it was lovely to hear that Barbara from Cheltenham was married to her blind date for sixty happy years, and they had a large family together. 

Now Our Son's Heading Off To This!

Our own happy family is getting to the stage where the children are spreading their wings. On Tuesday, I took Son No. 1 to view the University of Gloucestershire's computing division. He's got his heart set on going there, but our first two attempts to visit the place were jinxed. Along with everyone else, we were snowed in on the original date of the University Open Day. A revised date was set...and we were snowed in on that day, too! This week we made it, at the third attempt. We had a good look round the campus and halls of residence, and we were impressed. Our son was pretty convinced it was the right place before we went. Now he's certain. That's good news for him, but it's bittersweet news for us. It doesn't seem like five minutes ago we were waiting for him to be born. That happy event happened in Gloucester too, so it's obviously a lucky place for our family.

Christina's next book, Women’s Lives In Bristol 1850-1950 will be published by Pen and Sword Books early next year. As well as her local history work, Christina Hollis writes contemporary fiction starring complex men and independent women. She has written eighteen contemporary novels, sold nearly three million books, and her books have been translated into twenty different languages. When she isn’t writing, Christina is cooking, walking her dog, or beekeeping.

You can catch up with her at https://christinahollisbooks.online, on Twitter, Facebook, and see a full list of her published books at christinahollis.com

Her current release, Heart Of A Hostage, is published by The Wild Rose Press and available at myBook.to/HeartOfAHostage  worldwide.