General Chat

Evening All,

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

I'm the same Jane, checking and double checking everything before I go away and then for the first 15 minutes after we set off I'm still wondering if I've forgotten something!! :-S I hope you have a nice time and I'm sure Chester will be fine once you have given James the instructions!! lol At least he seems to be eating what you are giving him and I bet he loves his blanket. Hopefully Chris is feeling better now too.

Nice to see you back William and that you got through what must have been a very upsetting day. Thanks for the photos of little Grace, or should I say THB!! She is like a little doll isn't she, I can see she must be a real pick me up.

I love the idea of 'pots' Mandy. lol. I hope they don't all catch it or it will be itch, itch for weeks. :-( Do they still have a market at Stalham? I remember going there as a teenager and it had all sorts for sale, lots of farming stuff then. An old boy turned up in his pony and governess cart!

Well, I managed to change things over for the computer and the laptop is also now connected to the internet at last!!! It took me a while to sort out the cables, but I managed with the instructions and managed to load Office on it like we have on the other as well. I ended up with a headache, but that was from OH being a pain and impatient (as I knew he would be whatever he said!!) He said to tell you he's been in the doghouse!! lol :-)

I've just been to the shops taking things back today and picking up a few groceries. The shops were much quieter than I expected, but I went nice and early. My heel was playing up again the last few days, but was much better today. I think I did something that set it off again but I will be more careful now! I think it will just need time to right itself, but I'm wearing spongy soles for the time being.

I hope Fiona will soon improve and that David's recovery is on track. He must be fed up of hospital by now I would think and Ellen must be toing and froing a lot.

We never do much at Easter as OH has footie matches on Saturday and Monday, but to be honest I don't often fancy going out as the weather is often poor and it can be very busy at some of the attractions.

I didn't get off to sleep till after 4.00am this morning and was hoping for a lie in this weekend.........but we are losing an hour!! :-S

Morning/Evening All
I'm sitting in bed all showered and hair washed and am waiting for my nail varnish to dry??I see its snowing!!Hopefully it won't come to much.there is a fair bit coming down at the moment though.
Yes the camera is ready??I think my nails are done now so better get a move on.I need to get that list done for James.

Have a lovely Weekend everyone.See you tomorrow afternoon sometime.

Morning All and Evening Kim,

How are we all on this Easter morning?

It's nice and bright but still cold here today.

Dermot I got my son's cot and highchair from Green Shield Stamps and many other things too. The cot was lemon in colour and very nice for one that came from there.

Sauspans too and i used to put my spamps on a sponge to stick them in the book as I can't lick stamps. My then hubby was a mini cab driver and used to get them from the petrol stations. Sometimes when he was on the lorries he would get double stamps and come home with yards and yards of them and we would fill books at a time.

I was very young when I was born & remember very little. On the other hand, my mum remembers everything - very clearly, she used to remind me.

There was no measuring tape to hand - so a piece of string was used to measure my height. Unfortunately, the string was not long enough to assess the size of my head. Here, you should think of Homer Simpson's head for comparison.

I felt neglected as a youngster. The farm animals always got seen to first. What food was available was always fresh though. One of my tasks was to monitor the chickens & bring in the eggs as soon as they were laid - still warm. There was no need to check the 'sell-by-date'.

Usually, the cat had to disappear from my cot to allow my mother to put me to bed. But, of course, he'd always sneak back later & there we both slept happily till dawn. The only time the cat might stir was when a visiting mouse would show his head around the corner. Such noise with cat chasing the mouse hotfoot out the half-door & through the chicken coup - poor chickens, no eggs for a while after their frightening intrusion. There was no sympathy for the mouse because he was obviously a stranger to the area.

Our poor dog ignored the goings-on because he was blind. He wore a white bandage around his back leg following that unfortunate incident. One day, he thought he was chewing a bone & when he got up, his left leg fell off. His hearing was fine & was always happy to hear the sweet consoling words from us and every passer-by.

By-the-way, happy April Fools' day for Monday.

Afternoon all, I'll get this out now while I have chance.
Since 9.30 last night, poor Carmel has been so ill. Not nice to relate, but I've never known anyone vomit so much and so forcefully, then all over again in the small hours, so not much sleep. It's also affecting 'the other end' too, so I can only put it down to the bereavement and the oh so cold weather we experienced. I'm OK so I know it's not the food. She is finally off to sleep now so I hope that will help her feel a lot better. 12.30pm so I'll grab some lunch while I can.

I have to apologise that I can't get the floral photos out on email yet. I'm waiting to get them on the computer so please bear with me. Just lately nothing is going to plan.

I bet you'll all be glad to get the old cheerful me back again. I feel like a Job's comforter!

I'm going to backtrack and read some of your posts now.

Dermot has just cheered me up with his last post. He said he was 'very young when he was born' - I certainly hope so Dermot, bless you .

No need to lick so many stamps,wipe them on moist sponge :-)

Afternoon everyone,

Looking up at the weather vane on the church i see we have a north wind ....made me think of ..The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow and what will poor robin do then !!
The verse is right as it is snowing here today ,just a few light showers then the sun comes out .

Ann , i don't know about Stalham market i don't think we've ever been to that one , Swaffham market was the one to see all the country folk !! lots of old farmers came to that market ,they also had the auctions there too ,you had to be quick if you wanted to bid for any thing ,that was if you could understand what he was saying as he gabbled so quickly , lots of things sold by the box , you might see some thing you wanted in the box but you had to have all the rest of the rubbish in the box too !! :-( :-D

Hope Jane gets some photo's and they both enjoy the time away , i think they both need it after one thing and another .

Oh Dermot i do love your tales , made hubby laugh when i read about the dog chewing his leg :-S :-

Oh William so sorry to hear Carmel is poorly , when you are low like she must be you can easily pick these bugs up , she has had so much to cope with poor thing , well you both have , lets hope you don't come down with it too, love to you both <3

Hi to David , how are things with you ? any sign of being discharged from hospital yet ?

I think we might be doing a trip to the tip soon ,where does all this rubbish come from , gathered over the years a suppose .

Shirl i see you have changed your photo , is it OG ? hows the decorating going the rooms must be looking good now, is the new loo in yet ?

BBL

Afternoon All,

We had a few little flakes of the white stuff earlier, but nothing now.

Oh dear poor Carmel, she's had quite a week hasn't she and now this. I hope her tummy is feeling more settled now William so she can at least have sips of water.

Mandy, you have made me wonder if it was Swaffam we went to now. I think it must have been an auction as nothing had any prices! It was all in a field, clumps of rusty metal implements, metal animal feeders, statues, troughs, furniture, all sorts of things in boxes, pictures etc and fascinating to look at. I thought it was Stalham, because that was near where we used to stay at Bacton and Walcot, but it's possible it was Swaffam.........I am sure it began with an 'S' though!! lol. :-)

I hope Jane has a good time and nice meal with Hannah and John. I wonder how busy it will be in London with it being Easter.

We have to clear out the garage this year......not looking forward to that, well not the doing of it anyway!! Like mandy says, where does all the stuff we keep come from. :-S

I was another saver of the Greenshield stamps! They were a pain to lick and stick in the books. I remember getting things for when I got married, saucepans with copper coloured lids was one. I also used to save the pink S & H stamps as well and got my big Mrs Beeton's cookbook with those! I still have it and use it sometimes now, but it is beginning to fall apart. I also remember saving coupons or something like that from the Jet garages. I got some glasses with those and still have the pack of playing cards I got.

I remember the tiger tails from the 60s too, but a lot of them around here got tied to the end of car ariels.

I hope Shirl has decided on her paint colour for the bathroom........it's always nice when the bathroom is spruced up or new!

We used to write and send out dozens of letters each day at work in the 70s and 80s and they all had the most foul tasting (and probably the cheapest!) glue!! We had a moist sponge in a dish we could use David, shared between about a dozen of us, but that was disgusting to use as well with all the people using it. I can remember taking a domestic paintbrush to use with a pot of water at certain times when we sent more post. You could line up a pile of envelope flaps on your desk and moisten the lot in seconds with a brush. We used to enclose labels to lick and stick on the same envelope for the replies then too. You don't see that these days, probably cheaper to make a reply envelope than a gummed label, but it was all about saving trees then!

You lot have been busy posting.

Love to David as I spied he had popped in. Hope your on the mend now David.

William poor Carmel it is just one thing after another for her at the moment. Boil some water and cool it for her to drink as she wishes. Much better for the tum than tap water or even bottled, but do boil it first. As Ann said plenty of sips of that as we don't want her getting dehydrated. I remember when my son was very ill when we were staying in Devon on holiday one year. He was only about 2 or 3 and he went down with the most awful bug the day after we arrived. I took him to a clinic in the village and the doc told me to give him boiled water with a teaspoon of salt in it and for him to drink as much as he needed an dalso lemonade!! He was in a really bad way and sweating and delerious and I really thought I was going to lose him. I am glad to say I did'nt and even though we don't talk now I still have my memories of his childhood up to the age of 20 odd.

Where is Frank today?

When did he say he was going out to family?

It is very quiet without our Jane. I hope she has a good trip to London.

I think Frank said he was going to Rutland today Mel, so that's probably why we haven't heard from him! He doesn't always take the laptop does he.

Has Hogwart slimmed down a little now? He's going to be living 'Chez Vous' for a while longer if this cold weather keeps up. :-(

Did anyone see in the paper today about a new kind of Petunia that has been bred that will stand temperatures down to -10 degrees? I don't think they will be available for a year or two though.

We had chicken fillets and veg with a bought honey and mustard sauce, with some rice tonight. I did far too much so have frozen some, it will be nice with a jacket potato in the week. :-)

I was thinking today about when I got a doll's pram for Christmas. It was before my parents moved from the prefab into the bungalow they bought (according to the date of the change of address on my ration book!!) so I must have been aged 3. I can remember looking at it and remember it being cream with a maroon hood. My 3 wheeler bike I had later was the same colour, so mum must have liked those colours. After I had looked at it, without touching it, I walked away and mum had to tell me it was mine!! lol

Hi Everyone

Happy Easter <3 <3

Many houses built in the Irish countryside usually had a belt of trees partially surrounding them. This, I think, was mainly to provide some shelter from the prevailing winds. However, there was another (maybe unintended) side effect in that most of these trees had bird nests of all shapes & sizes.

The house I grew up in had a few sycamore trees around the back & side, two evergreens to the front as well as a few apple trees in the side garden. This basically meant that there was never any need for an alarm clock in the morning. The chorus of birdsong would waken the dead or even the heaviest sleeper - of whom I was one. In the summertime, the birds would start tuning up anytime from 6am. There were no union working-time directives for them to obey.

In addition, some of us decided to keep a few songbirds in a wire cage inside the house as well. The younger readers of this missive, and there must be one or two, might find it hard to believe but these ‘wanted’ birds were easy enough to catch. A trap, which we called a ‘bird cradle’ was one way or we simply went out at night & caught them up in the trees.

Now, you should ignore the ‘old wives’ tale of shaking a pinch of salt on their tails to relax the birds. Rubbish - that's just an April Fool's joke. A dark windy evening in wintertime, when there was plenty of background noise caused by the rustling branches, was ideal for the task.

With the tree branches swaying back & forth in the breeze, we dazzled the little creatures with a torch. They seemed paralysed & unable to move in the light. You only had to reach out behind the beam to catch them, You could feel their tiny hearts pounding. Many lived for several years in their new surroundings well catered for in terms of food, drink & warmth. Their cage was hung up high to avoid our pesky cat's attention. The poor cat spent many a happy but unsuccessful hour hovering around in anticipation of a feast.

Oh, did I mention anything about ‘health & safety’ guidelines concerning youngsters scrambling up tall trees during a stormy winter’s night in the middle of the countryside & no street lights to aid our endeavour? No - that’s ok because there were none. Bumps & scratches were commonly accepted as a way of our young lives.

Life is always awesome to the young & good luck to them!

While the staf nurse wa cleaning the dressinngs arond the pinns and bolts on the Gizmo around my leg she implied I might be home by next weekend.

Thanks for all these memories Dermot, it really takes us back in time to how we could play as children without H&S spoiling all our fun. Obviously boys can't go catching birds anymore, yet many more must be harmed or killed these days by pesticides or loss of food or habitat. At age 15 I inherited a pretty Goldfinch that belonged to the grandfather I only ever saw once. It didn't have a ring and that grandfather had romany roots a couple of generations back, so goodness knows where he got it from. The Goldfinch was called Joey and we had him for a few years before he died and he sang so beautifully it made you stop in your tracks at times.

Hello David, that sounds like good news if you might be home next weekend. You must be ready for a change of scene by now I would think. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!! :-) Are you managing to sleep ok with that gizmo on your leg...... I imagine it must be sore where the bolts go through the skin. :-(

Thank you Ann,yes it is sore.The bolts and pins go into my tibia conecting various fractured bones together.The arrangement will be I wll be dischargedd wearing this Gizmo which I must wear for another 2 months until the next operation.A nurse will visit me on a weekly basis to clean the dressings.No crutches yet, using a walking frame.

Morning all and happy easter.

That is good news that you will soon be home David...its always better to be able to recupiate in your own home..All those bone in that traction.

My husband broke his femour before I met him and had a long metal bar with a big nut and bolt joining the bones together.. under the skin..He has a very long scar down his thigh...You could feel this though the skin...When it was time to have it removed they opened the same scar up...This was due from a motor bike accident...

William I hope carmel is feeling a lot better this morning....It isint very nice to lose a child..We lost our 8 year old grandson 2 years ago..Very hard on all the family..I lost so much weight at the time.

Dermot...your tales make me laugh....I suppose I could go back on the games and put my two pennyworth in..