Its never too late to follow your dreams

karaoke being a cumbernauld

and how did that happen in 2013

i was a three 70 year old weather woman

i had just lost my husband after 50

years of marriage

we’d celebrated with golden wedding

anniversary in the

february and he passed away in the april

and he’d always been my rock and i

didn’t know how i was going to

manage without them i even wrote a poem

about it

anyway i have um

a very loving family i’ve got five sons

10 grandkids and my youngest son

still lived with me so he was there with

me all the time

and then my granddaughter my oldest

granddaughter

she gave me a lot of support and i gave

her a lot of support

because she was very close to her

granddaughter so her and i

get even closer so

visiting back and forward um and she

arranged for me to have a tattoo done on

my 55th wedding anniversary

but just before that i’ve had to move

out of the house

that we’d lived in because alan had a

decided that him and his girlfriend was

going to buy a house

and i was going to be left in this big

five-bedroom house on my own

so um i decided to downsize

the five bedrooms was just far too much

for me

so we i downsized and i moved in

a one bedroom uh flat

and it was a combined living room

kitchen

with a bedroom and a bathroom and it was

just

absolutely ideal so as i say on

the 16th of february nicole took me

to get my tattoo um

a golden red anniversary rose was the

the name of the song that my husband

loved me singing

as part of the tattoo so

life was just going on as normal but i’d

get back to

my own social life and things like that

but now because i had moved away from my

area

um i was just things weren’t

the same as they’d always been so

and at the end of 2018

my cousin was home for australia on

holiday

and i’d always wanted to go to australia

because i had

friends all over australia and at family

in new zealand

and i had been researching the family

tree and had

come across a cousin who lived

outside perth and i’d been in contact

with her

so everybody was yeah quite happy for me

to come and visit

uh so i booked it flew out

on my own um brave anna

just no problem got to pass went to see

edward stayed there with him for about

um eight days and met up with this

cousin

christina who actually was a second

cousin her

grandfather was my grandfather’s brother

so after doing all the family training

caught up with her i then moved went

from there

to sydney where i had a friend who had

moved out

in a 1954.

um i’d seen her once since then she’d

been home in holland in 1974

and they had visited with her then um

but we kept in contact so anyway um

she hadn’t been very well and she had

arranged

for me to go and stay with her sister

and her husband no i thought this was

only for like an overnight stay

but they actually looked after me for

the full time that i was there they took

me back

forward to see casey whenever i could

but

they took me everywhere they took me to

the

sydney opera house they just everywhere

they even took me to where they

filmed home and away which i’m a good

fan of

so i went there and i saw the filming

being made

then i moved from there to a

brisbane where my husband’s old uncle

lived

but unfortunately i couldn’t stay with

uncle bill because he was 97

didn’t have facilities for me to live

with him

and his family were all out working so

they could i couldn’t go and stay with

them i’d never met them

so anyway um i booked any hotel

and my granddaughter contacted friends

who were living in brisbane and

they came and took me out and my son

stephen his best friend one of his best

friends

mark he came and took me out for a drink

and

had a great time in brisbane

but i i then

had to finish up flying for there

to a new zealand on my own

my cousin’s family lived there so i had

an absolute fantastic time because all

these people were making a fuss in me

and i was being treated like

royalty actually i was having a

fantastic time

so when i came back i’d been

over there for six weeks between

australia and new zealand

came home after six weeks and decided

right away

i was going about to go to um canada and

america

where i also had family in canada

i had a cousin that again that i had

found through

doing the family research and i went to

visit her and her husband and they took

me on

the media the the lock on the the

niag they’re false the niagara falls

niagara falls yeah anyway they took me

there

and they i had a fantastic time with

them they took me to seaport stanley

they took me to seaport glasgow

um i just and they were so so so so nice

i had never met them in my life before

and they wouldn’t let me spend a penny

it was absolutely fantastic

so when i left them i went to boston

and the usa met up with an old-school

friend

and my sister’s and she had actually

worked with my husband and i

we’re two years where uh worked on the

buses i was a clippy

and he was a bus driver so um

i went to visit with her and a couple of

friends

i had been in contact with through the

internet

singing they um

they came to visit me and they took me

to salem

then i went from boston to a

nashville meet up with some friends of

the family there

they again i i i was just treated like

royalty everywhere i went

they took me to the grand old opry

and i had a wee a short

singing on one of the pubs in nashville

then i went through there to a alabama

to meet my husband’s sister my

sister-in-law

a lorraine and her husband jess and

their family

and we had a great time catching up with

everything that had happened in the

family and then they took me to new

orleans

and i actually sang in a pub in bourbon

street

in new orleans it was absolutely

fantastic

on the road to the airplane report when

i was going back i was picking cotton

it was it was such an experience it was

absolutely

brilliant and that’s me i had spent

another six weeks

in the u between canada and the usa

so when i came home i thought i’ve had

such a good time

i’ve got to start getting out and

getting in amongst people again

because i was starting to kind of

stagnate before i had went

so i decided that i was going to get a

hold of myself

and i found this um website are quite

good with computers

so i found this website where

um that it was called meet up

um no it wasn’t a dating thing it was

like an umbrella

uh meet-up thing

named um where they had different groups

where you would be interested in um

people that wanted to go for walks

people that wanted to go any quizzes and

things like that so i joined this group

called older and bolder and it was for

people over 50 which was

fine with me but is this it say it

wasn’t a date nothing like that

what we would do was we’d be meet at

meet up in glasgow

once a fortnight go to this pub

have a meal a drink and make up

teams would maybe be 12 years there and

we’d make up a couple of teams there

would be a quiz

and we would take part in the quiz which

i thoroughly enjoyed i love quizzes

anyway i also joined this other group

called widowing widowers

and um got together with um

lots of new friends made loads and loads

of new friends

of both male and female but mostly

females

and they we would go out for nights out

and things like that and we decided

that we were going to go to krakow in

march

we were going to go and see the

concentration camps

so um we got it all booked paid up and

everything

um everybody was excited about it and

then

covert has covered 19 hours and we were

all

floored we couldn’t go anywhere we were

stuck in the house getting

a groups on whatsapp and meeting up with

people you know

keeping in contact with each other

through that but

we couldn’t meet face to face and it was

really

annoying because we were getting on so

well and i made so many really good

friends

so i was stuck in the house um didn’t

even know what to do with myself

and then my granddaughter nicole

she started up this group called

cumbernauld

covert 19 looking for volunteers

to help people who were safe

self-isolating

and taking their dogs for walks and

getting shopping for them getting their

prescriptions and things like that

and um i was i was desperate to help

but there was no way i could help do any

of that because i was self-isolating as

well

so i thought and i thought and i thought

what can i do

what can i do and the only thing that i

know i can do

is i can talk and i can sing

i might not be the best thing about but

i love to sing

ever since i was a wee girl family

parties

everybody had that party piece my mother

was a fantastic yodler

all the family my granny and granddaddy

harmonized my mother and father

harmonised

and my father encouraged me to sing

and i would start singing and he would

say to me if you sing a song right

through anna

i’ll give you a half a crown and i

thought

right okay half a crown was a lot of

money then

so i would sing my wee heart but every

song i sang he’d have an excuse

nobody gave him a half a crown he would

say oh you went off

tune there he sang it wrong words there

so

but it didn’t bother me because i

actually loved singing

i love to sing and i’ve always loved to

sing i sang in a karaoke for

years years so i started i found out

that you could do this

um streaming video

on facebook

and i’m quite good with computers so i

had a weird look and i found out that i

could do it

um on the 19th of march

i started singing online

and i got such a great response oh i’ve

been on for about half an hour or

something

and i got this great response for people

saying you’ve cheered us up anna

you’ve really cheered us up you’re doing

really well so that was all i needed

so every night then from that then on

i would because i had an audience it

gave me incentive

to make sure that um i put some makeup

on

did my hair got the earrings on got

glammed up before they would go online

and meet up with these people they

couldn’t talk to me they could type in

but they couldn’t

talk to me i was the one that was doing

all the singing and they were sending me

requests and

i’ve got a fan a fan base

so it was really great and i kept on

doing it

right up until the 23rd of august when

um my sister who lived in manchester um

had a stroke and i went down in

manchester

for um a couple of weeks at

to spend some time with her

unfortunately unfortunately she actually

passed away on the 29th of august

and we had our funeral on the 11th of

september

so and all that time i hadn’t went

online

but after this funeral on the 11th of

september

i went back online and i dedicated that

show to elizabeth

and a lot of them were friends elizabeth

because she’d been watching my show and

her and i had been interacting

so it was great that we were and i was

singing a lot of her favorite songs

so i got

no long after that i get a call from

one of the presenters on cumbernold fm

106.8 to ask me if i would

let them interview me and i said

why would you want to interview me

because you’ve been doing this all that

time i said

yeah no problem i’d love that always

wanted to be a star

so anyway um i went to the station

and they interviewed me and i had a

great afternoon talk

i didn’t go to the station sorry they

phoned me and done the interview over

the phone

and it was great i thoroughly enjoyed it

and i got a lot of good remarks about it

and about a week later they contacted me

and asked me if i would like to do a

show of mine

on the radio and i thought

a radio star i’d love to do that

so what can i show would you like me to

put on whatever you want anna it’s up to

you you can do what you want

and i thought well i don’t want to do

one where i’m singing

i want to do one where i’m aiming for

the more mature

um listener so i decided

that i would go on for an hour in a

wednesday night at 6 00 p.m

and play a lot of a old songs

songs that brought back memories for

people and

it was uh it was

things that they gave them memories of

when they were young when they’d get

married and things like that

and i’d ask for requests so

i started getting requests and i decided

that i was going to call a show memories

of the way we were

and so until now

every wednesday night i go on there and

i start off

with me singing a wee bit of

memories like the corners of

my mind misty watercolored memories

of the way we wear

so now i’m a radio star

i’m a facebook star at my age

i’m a karaoke queen of cumbernauld

and i’m loving it so just remember

don’t put off until tomorrow what you

can do today

and you’re never too old to follow your

dreams

thank you very much