Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Guest Post – #Life – I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now! by Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Uncategorized 2 Minutes

Lovely Sally Cronin from Smorgasbord Blog Magazine is running a series of posts entitled I wish I knew ten what I know now! It really is an interesting and entertain series and I am really enjoying it. Sally kindly invited me to write a guest post for this series and you can read it here: https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2022/05/31/smorgasbord-blog-magazine-guest-post-life-i-wish-i-knew-then-what-i-know-now-by-roberta-eaton-cheadle/

My big take away from writing this particular post is that if you are to focused on a particular life plan, you can miss out on opportunities that you don’t appreciate for what they are due to being single minded. Sally is a person who has grabbed opportunities and her life has been a great adventure of ups and downs. It provides for very interesting reading and my favourite of Sally’s wonderful books is Just an Odd Job Girl which depicts a woman who was adventurous and had a lot of great jobs prior to marrying and having a family. After her husband divorces her, she rediscovers the job of living.

My review of Just an Odd Job Girl

Imogen has been rejected by her husband of 20 years. She discovers that he has been having an affair, that the woman has become pregnant and that he wants a divorce all in one go. It is devastating to Imogen who has devoted her life to building her home, raising her children and being a good wife and mother. Somehow, along the way, Imogen seems to have lost all her vitality and spunk and changed into another, less vivid, version of herself. Although she knows this, Imogen struggles to overcome her depression and feelings of inadequacy until she makes a impulsive decision to go for an interview with a placement agency for older women and find herself a job.

The man who interviews Imogen is interested in her and her past jobs and life. He spends time talking to her and draws her out of the shell she has crawled into. As Imogen starts to remember her previous challenges and triumphs in her jobs as a younger person, her resilient character and determination start to resurface. Imogen embarks on a wonderful make-over and shares her numerous entertaining jobs with the reader. They range from a young girl selling trinkets on the beach, to the resourceful manageress of a steakhouse and lastly, to the manageress of a hotel in Cornwall [which I have not been to but which sounded quite rural and remote to me and the thought of arriving on my own at such a place, by train and late in the evening, gave me the shivers], with many other interesting experiences in between. Things in Imogen’s varied roles don’t always go smoothly and her mishaps and slightly reckless decisions will have you howling with laughter.

I really enjoyed this book and reading all about the various odd jobs Imogen had in her youth. The ending is very satisfying and leaves you with a very happy and uplifted feeling.

You can purchase Just an Odd Job Girl on Amazon US here: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Odd-Girl-Sally-Cronin-ebook/dp/B00M10F4O4

You can find Sally Cronin’s other books here: https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/my-books-and-reviews-2019-2022/

Published by robertawrites235681907

I am a writer of young adult fiction and poetry

Published

61 thoughts on “Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Guest Post – #Life – I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now! by Roberta Eaton Cheadle”

  6. I am always learning something new about you Robbie! I think you know how to make the most of every opportunity that comes your way.

    Imogen sounds like an inspiration in that department too. (K)

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. I knew Robbie was good for something besides self promotion! This is how I found out about “The Hat”. Now, if we could only suppress her lingering Victorian era genderizing and let women stand as managers, as they do musician, poet, artist, chef, pilot, detective… I’m certain she’d rebel at “authoress”. BTW this book is an excellent paean to a lost time of what self discovery really is all about.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  14. What a lovely way to share your feature on Sally’s blog. It was a wonderful look into your past and what makes you tick. And Just an Odd Job Girl was the first book of Sally’s that I read, and I loved it.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. HI Diana, I try to be just like Sally with my blogging and if I have an opportunity, I always like to share about her and her fabulous books. Just An Odd Job Girl is wonderful, Imogen’s life was so different from mine and I am admiring.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s