Past Times week at Lucky 7's

So I set a 'past times' challenge over at Lucky 7's and as has become the norm I am busy writing my offering all in one go on a Sunday evening.  

It is Father's Day here in the UK, we have not done much. Colin celebrated by doing chores in his own Dad's house for most of yesterday and part of today... and also by showing what a great Dad he is by sorting out the double puncture Jordan got less than a mile form home before we had even got out of bed!

But with the prompt as well it has been a bit of a Nostalgia day for me.... and you know how I love a bit of 'how it was, way back when...'  My Dad died when I was only 8 and half years old so my memories are few and quite hazy really, though made vivid by the number of times I have recounted them and by my Mother's own translation of how Dad was, and remains, in my mind as a consequence.  

(No thoughts of my dad are ever not followed by the satisfaction that he and my Mum loved each other so much that little money, a simple existence and a cantankerous father-in-law living with you could diminish..)

My cousin Neil met me at his own Dad's funeral about 10 years ago. We were both in our late 40's and Neil observed that when my Dad died at 47 ('our age') he seemed old then, but there we were almost 40 years later at his own dad's funeral, my dad's best friend, and we didn't feel anywhere as old as we thought my Dad had been.  

Do you ever feel the age you are? 
Do you get stuck in an 'age' and is that dependent on the life chances and changes you have? I for sure log most events in my life as before or after the prime dates in my life : 1969 Dad died, 1973 we moved to Mousehole, 1992 Zac was born, 1997 we moved to our current home with all our family, 2008 Mum died.

So.. to my Past Times offering for the week:

A wedding (or two) of the past

Mum & Dad 1946

Joe & Leo Warren
Mum's parents
1916

Cars of yesteryear

We didn't have a car in our family until my brother had one when I was about 8.  I think it was like this one.. >>>

My Uncle was the family 'driver' and would do the honours if anyone needed to go anywhere. He was a mechanic and always had a car with leather seats, but certainly not a new one. It would squeak as you drove along and the indicators were orange wing lights which came out between the doors!

It was about 15 miles to the nearest town, a bus journey of almost an hour so you had to be content where you lived. But we were, we didn't know anything else. that's why today we all want more, because we know about it and we 'can'

Toys & hobbies

Banana Box cooker

My favourite thing to play with was a large banana box which on the odd occasion Mum would get from the Grocery Van which used to come by our house twice a week.

I had a plastic cooking set and tea set and would play for hours with a few rings drawn on top and the door on the side. 




Clothes we had to wear

Pinafore & pretty blouse
had been for Ken's wedding

1969

Just about whatever we got given.. 

..usually something Mum may have bought at a jumble at school, sometimes it came from the girls up the road and had been donated!

 If we had new it was for best and probably too big at first, then once it fitted or got too small it was for every day and you finally loved it!  




You can see knitted jumpers and short second hand bits in all these pics.. sometimes I got boys things.. and shoes.. as in the 60's somehow they seemed much harder wearing!

How towns change
I have really enjoyed looking at some of those Ghost pages you get on facebook, especially the ones from D-Day where they ghost old images in the context of the new.
I especially wanted to share this old footage of fishing life in Mousehole in the 1940's.
Thought it might be interesting. My step-dad would have been in his 20's then and a local fisherman whilst many men went away to war, fishermen did not have to as they were part of the home front war effort.

Mousehole archive

Vintage look

This is a cravat I have in my drawer which Mum gave me, it belonged to my Dad and I think it would look just fine if I wore it now.

May even try it tomorrow..might look good with a navy dress?






A new picture vintage-d

23 years on.. mine and Colin's wedding, pictures at the Minack Theatre which doesn't seem to change .. ever!

Doesn't feel vintage to me ;-)

December Daily : Day 22

Holly Tree day...We cut it, arranged it and my niece Tegan came by to help decorate. We are officially festive!

It was great having Tegan here as I could tell her all the nostalgia stuff without her rolling her eyes and having heard it all before...though I think maybe she did lose interest after the third or fourth decade of tales!

...how my folks used to decorate the Holly on Christmas Night as an extra gift from Santa

...how my brother 'heard' Santa as the bell decorations were being put on the tree.

..how I still have very threadbare tinsel which is almost 65 years old..and how Col says it looks like it!

..ahhh how I love Nostalgia and also making new nostalgia for my children's future xx

Oh and amazingly we have scooped two hampers the past 2 hours .. one via Sainsbury's and none from our train trip last weekend.. how cool is that!

December Daily : Day 17

Well our Zac is in dry dock in Vancouver with his cruise ship the Grand Princess this week. He has managed to call and we got a decent connection using his mobile..usually we settle for the cheaper Satellite connection but a good long technical chat is a bit overdue.

I love to hear Col on the phone to Zac..He loved working on big boats and now loves to share stories and hear tales from Zac's trips. Me, well I like to check he is well and having a healthy safe time ...oh and all about the dancing girls. .

Col used to work away himself and once got a radio guy out of his bunk to make the ship to shore connection on Christmas Day.  His parents and brother were surprised to hear from him and all passed the phone around wishing him Happy Christmas but not getting deep into conversation.  They said goodbye, wished him all the best and the call was over .

The radio guy, still weary from broken sleep, disconnected the call, turned to Colin and told him the length of the call.. 1 minute 25 seconds ...
'Worth it was it ?' he asked...
...'Not really'..said Col and went back to his single bunk in the North Sea to enjoy the rest of his Christmas Day...;-(

Funny stories..experiences..offshore life is all about them..

..We have sent two packages out to Zac for him to collect after Dry Dock when he goes down to San Francisco to get the Christmas contingent of cruise guests. I hope they all get through.. Some of the customs side of trying to get things to the USA is quite difficult. .so Jordan and I have taken pictures of the gifts to send him on 25th just in case they never turn up..It is the thought which counts ..isn't it?

December Daily : Day 16

So when my Mum was widowed at the age of 44 my godmother, one of Dad's cousins was a good friend to her and as my brother married soon after it meant I had two grown up ladies to hang out with.

On special occasions..I guess probably winter evenings close to Christmas they played Jim Reeves records and had a few drinks..often a Dubonnet and Lime (urghh) or maybe  port. I was sometimes allowed one too.. a lot more lime than Dubonnet.

So when I have a port and bitter lemon I always think of Mum..she would love one too..xxx

More food!

Just catching up and reviewing my weekend, the thought came to me that once again the world in this household seems to revolve around food, lurching from one mealtime to another!  

I guess years ago when my Mum didn't go out to work and was raising us kids the same went for her.. a bit of washing, prepping for dinner and then later on for tea.  dad and Ken used to go to sea from Spring to Autumn and also fitted in the needs of the violet growing, but with the tides sometimes they went to sea twice a day.  maybe they went out at 4am and then in late morning, a bit of food, sleep and back out for the evening tide.  There was always a meal to be had and although there was only four of us it did seem like family time.


Dad and Ken used to tease me, what else do you do to a little girl as she is growing up. Ken once told me that because I had swallowed a prune stone that I might grow a tree out of my ears.. and promptly went outside to get a bit of bush to show me how I would look...not impressed, I can see the face I must have pulled in the grandchildren now when they get teased!

Mum made proper food, no tins and nothing pre-made. We had no fridge until I was about ten years old, we had solid rings on the cooker so it was hard to heat oil to be hot enough for chips, so they were a rarity too. On the odd occasion Mum did cook fish and chips Ken and Dad were known to have stood outside our back door and pretend they were waiting in line at a chip shop as the visitors to our little cove went by!

Favourites were Rice Pudding and Junket.. well junket wasn't that favourite but it was a kind of regular Sunday lunch dessert, light and milky, made to set by adding rennet (an enzyme from a cow's gut, the same thing that we have that sets milk in our gut when we are babies!)
The only bit I liked was the sprinkled nutmeg and sugar on top! 

Dad and I loved the skin which formed and caramelised around the edge of the rice pudding tin and we would both try and get that bit at the end of the pudding... I think Mum made a pint at a time, I always make two pints as Kate, Ross and I love it so much! One day recently someone in our house put the pan to soak and I missed the sticky edgey bit and I was really peeved!

Lyons Chocolate Cupcakes were such a treat when I was young. Not the BakerBoys ones they only seem to sell now, but the Lyons ones, with chocolate sponge and thick fudge. 

I think one day I had a huge debate with my brother about who could have the spare one as there were only three of us who would eat them. He was such a tease big brother.. and I guess maybe I was a whinger baby sister... just the same every generation!


School dinners were okay, except that they made you eat everything, the only way to get round it was to ask to not have something you disliked!  I loathed grated carrot in salad but it was already set out in the salad so no luck there. Many a time I have forced it down disguised in the mash we got given with salad!   



Pasty pie and bread pudding were school dinner favourites. I always recall seeing a small plate with a spoon of each food that was saved in case there was a case of food poisoning, a solitary plate left on the clean table behind the cooks!

Parttttaaaaayyyy!

Well I couldn't begin to tell you all about the weekend, but this is the potted herb history..

Thursday... Zac's friends staying, curry night, 'getting to know you'

Friday ... fancy dress hunting for wig (and then the one I ordered (unwittingly from China) arrived in the post after I got home; Tesco 'big shop' arrived at teatime, men spent evening carpet laying and we ladies cleared 'stuff' for the space we would be using and prepped the bunting and photos for the slide show!

Saturday .... making food, food, more food.. fruit, sandwiches, soup to sustain us til the evening, boys on electrics and us girls titivating the place!  Loving it! The camaraderie and banter of getting ready for the party is almost as good as the do itself. Everyone was so good,so helpful and we are so grateful to all our family and especially their friends who came along but pitched in on the jobs as well.

Saturday night .. about ten days early, but Happy Birthday Col!  We all dressed in a theme of his life and loves, plenty of scope as he is a child of the 60's, loved Thunderbirds, Punk Rock and all things marine and technical.. 





I donned a blonde bob and a gooey pink blancmange of a dress and came as Lady Penelope goes to the Ball, while Pops came as a Thunderbird and Col came as a young Jacques Cousteau whose dive programmes inspired his whole way of living.  He made a fantastic aqualung for his outfit and even fake tanned up (wash off-able) and Kate was proud of him.. me too! 

The kids were great too... Kate as Baywatch / Bondi Rescue (well she had to have a girlie outfit) JB as Dad's Safety Girl (she is so inventive!), Ross & Zac as Saudi Arabians, paying tribute to Col's time in Saudi on dive jobs.. Lisa and Co came as Beatles and glam rock, they both looked great in blue satin and the babes as little policewomen..awhhh
April came as Cinderella and was in bed before the rest of us as she had work the next day, so she didn't end up doing her Cinders trick on the dishes for once!

Later on we sang Happy Birthday and (Zac) Mr Blobby made an entrance with the last of Jordan's huge array of cupcakes and buns.

A whole bunch of people came dressed as motorbikers, safety folk, divers, heroes of the 60's and of course the odd Scouser / Liverpool footie fan! It was lovely to see people we had been meaning to see for ages. 

Sunday we had lots of clearing up to do but the sun shone too and we sat in the garden (oh after doing breakfast for 15!) .. then a nice walk at Marazion with friends who came down from up north, the kids had gone out on the boat and it was great to know they are wise enough now to go it alone.. well four of them are training to be Officers of the Watch and the other a Paramedic, plus JB and there's not a daft head in that group  so we were very relaxed.    

More barbecue eats and chat last night before a lazy day back to rain today.. so glad it is a Bank Holiday though and only four days work ..

...and I have just worked out that we have good excuses for parties the next few years too.. Pops is 80 next year, then Kate 18 / JB 21 and then Ross 30 before we rock up in 2017 with our Silver Wedding!

The day the police came to my party!

When I was a kid I used to really look forward to my birthday parties.. and then as soon as we had eaten the birthday tea and everyone was running about I would find myself a book and wish they would all go home!  

Mum always did me a lovely spread, party games and if it was fine us kids often had parties on the 'lawn' which had once been a grass tennis court in the cottage next door. 

I remember a blindfolded game where they made you think you were flying off a pile of cushions, I have no idea what it aimed to be / do, but it is a big memory of a tall pile of cushions and having to trust the grown ups not to let you go!

We were a small fishing cove a long way from town and only ever had the rare visit from a policeman on a motorbike about once every 6 months. P C Glover was a kindly man and used to drop in to ours and Mum would always make him a cup of tea (it was her true vocation, making people at home, making them tea and cake!)

One year my birthday party, probably my 6th or 7th..was in full flow, ten or twelve kids all shouting and reaching for their favourite food from a huge table full of goodies (this was when a party was extra special and we didn't eat party rings all year round!)  
Quietly PC Glover appeared in the door and the place fell silent.. well apart from my cousin Neil who had his back to the door and was last to notice the presence of 'the Police'..  his face was a picture and he soon stopped yapping!  
The grown ups loved it, very amused.

Half an hour later PC Glover came back again, he had been up the road to buy me a box of chocolates for my birthday.  Not bad community relations huh?

I don't have any pictures of those parties I can add here but it seems fair to add this lovely shot of me at about four outside our house with Ted (Neil's dad) and his brother Bobby George; they were painting the outside of our house and once again Mum had done the tea making duties!  Loving the big cup!  (thanks Sarah for the pic)

Party time at ours..

I was browsing through my photos and thought I would share the flavour of 'party time' with the Jones' household!

If we go out to eat it is usually to St Ives, this is the dessert plate Seafood Cafe gave Lisa on her 21st.

April & Ross bought me this lovely scribble plate and when all else fails to inspire for tea we chop up lots of crunchy stuff with humous and it certainly feels more like a party than boring old 'teatime'!

Back in the day.. well August 1998 to be precise, we were running a Wreck & Rescue Centre in a local fishing village, it made the perfect venue for Col's folks Ruby wedding party.

Lots of friends and family came from as far away as Holland and Liverpool (!) and everyone took on board the Maritime theme.  



The next day we were meant to have a barbecue and bouncy castle day but it rained cats and dogs so we managed to run an impromptu party with magic show in our workshop!  Ahh even my big kids were impressed by it... shame when they all get older and it takes so much more to get an oooo and an ahhhhh!


..amazing to see pictures of Kate with her gingery ringlets and JB looking a lot like our Lilly.













This was Lilly's 'party' cake over at ours a couple of years ago, three years old.. why it seems like she has been here forever, she will be five in July!

Sorry the picture is a bit duff!
I love the bunting on this layout..mental note.. must get more scrapping done..Sooooon!

Jordan's 18th.. another trip to Seafood. There were about 12 of us, immediate family.. we are a party on our own without inviting anyone!

She is such a Daddy's girl.. x

Anyway that's a flavour of parties at ours, I should have some nice pics of Saturday's do by the end of the week.. and who knows, maybe even a story or two!

Nostalgia tracks..

Well the week has flown by again and even as host this week it has been hard to get and blog (especially as I do not have sound on my office PC) ....so here I am! 

We have had a great week, finished in good time several days and went for a walk by the sea at Marazion and in St Ives, just makes for a nicer end to the day than falling across the yard from office to cooking the tea!  Col is cooking me a meal this evening, it's our 21st wedding anniversary on Tuesday and we both feel it is kind of special this year, maybe as the kids are older and it's the start of some more us-time?

My Bonnie..
This is one of the first songs I remember. My great Aunt Elsie who was like a stand-in Gran to me was always singing it to me and in turn I sang it lots to JB and Kate when they were young... they loved it too..

Auntie Elsie also used to sing me this.. she was from Northumberland and her lilt was perfect and it brought back memories when there was a series called 'When the Boat Comes In'..I liked this video too.. guess this is why she sang it me..

So, I got older, my brother had big influence on the tunes which stayed with mefrom my early years.. like this one .. Bits & Pieces. I used to bang on the wall to let him know it was on.. it may not even have been his favourite, who knows!

So I grew up to a teenager and a new influence, my pal Teddy from over the road.. he again was a bit older and didn't really have conventional pop music interests..so alongside my love for David Cassidy,  I loved and still shiver at the opening bars of Life on Mars and pretty much anything David Bowie turned out in the early 70's.. yes I just felt it again!!!

Thriough my Uni years and early days of motherhood I kind of went with the flow, loved most things once I had been exposed to them for a while.. Madonna, Cher, Eurythmics etc..but then once again my kids got older and some of their much played tracks have stayed with me and despite some troubled years with teens the theme songs they played don't hurt at all... Pink's Family Portrait..and Trouble  ..

Life relaxed a little and I loved, all on my own Norah Jones and Adele.. yeah, predictable current stuff.. 

... oh and I cannot, just cannot end this offering without two or three of the most moving songs I have in my life.. I won't get into details but they both move me..

and last but by no means least..my song for Zac..never far from home my love..

... just love them all...... hope you guys do too.. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

5 minutes of fame!

When Karen revealed that she once worked for the Queen Mother and it got me to thinking about how we sometimes have a brush with celelbrity, our own five minutes of fame, or more likely a tenuous link with someone ala 'tenous link' made popular by Chris Evans in his Radio 2 breakfast show. 

My best non-claim to fame is that I babysat Thandi Newton, she of Mission Impossible fame. Her lovely Mum was a health visitor / district nurse where I was working in reception and one afternoon I took Thandi and her brother to the park.. yeah, that's about it!

Then a few years later I worked for a MSC (Manpower Services Commission aka 'job creation scheme') encouraging volunteer activity through a local Radio station. Being as how I lived in Mousehole and they had a 'do' there I got asked to help out, being on the inside of the cordon to stop crazy public getting close to .. yeah, right.. Buck's Fizz who made an entrance to Mousehole by sea.. oh the glamour!! It made me look carefully at it and realised that all the fuss is very strange, they are real people in an unreal situation, despite being all made-up, thick glossy tights (on the girls!) etc, they still looked darned chilly and full of false smiles.. all for the pennies and as puppets to their management no doubt!

My step-dad Phil Wallis was a Mousehole fisherman and often had minor celebrities on his shark fishing boat.. Keith Floyd, Tom Mangold (Newnight?) and others. Phil was into birdkeeping and had been a budgie / canary keeper and local judge for these breeds and later he was into boxing training.  When one of my nephews got into bird keeping (pigeons this time) and later boxing, Phil had no qualms about phoning famous names and asking favours.

I remember he once rang a boxing shop owned by Dave 'Boy' Green and asked to speak to Dave.. he spoke to him like he was an old freind and got a good deal on boxing gear and used to chat to him regularly like they were mates, he had no question of their importance, he just thought he was just as great!
Another time he called the top pigeon breeder in the country and told him 'I used to be a Western Counties Judge (not mentioning it was for canaries and not pigeons!) and got lots of well bred birds for Carl to add to his collection.

One of my favourite famous moments was when I was in Florida with Ross & Lisa Feb 1991, we had escaped the snow here, only to be in Sea World in a real cold snap. In the cafe Ross spotted Lionel Blair and kept telling me 'that's the man from Give Us a Clue'  Eventually we smiled and spoke, he asked if we too had gone to Florida thinking we would be avoiding the cold weather!!

Well there's more, but they get more tenous so I will spare you those for the minute!!

A Big Influence.. the biggest maybe.

Well over at Lucky Snapping I suggested we share some things we may not know about each other.. so far I have talked about where I was born and that as a family we all vary in our degrees of being 'Morning People'

Now for my Big Influence!  This man here.. Malcolm Dewar...( I got the screen shot from Friends Reunited , amazing someone snapped him just walking up to 'new Block' where he spent most of his days in .. Room 15  think!)

He was a teacher at my secondary school and took my form for geography in the first year (now called Year 7); he was dead scarey to us and story has it we were the first and last first years he took, then he settled down to take O level groups and be form teacher to the fifteen year olds.. the girls who had gotten used to school and could handle a curmudgeonly geography teacher as they edged towards full on puberty!  .

I was lucky enough to be in the fifth form he took during my year, 5 Dewar. We all kind of dreaded being the form which got him but once you were there you got to know him better and realised he was actually very real and such a cool guy, he didn't run with the stress as most of the 'lady' teachers did and you knew where you stood. He had five children, walked to school every day, had a huge collection of ties and kept a few pages ahead of us (not that I knew that til afterwards!) He wrote very small, never got the glasses he so obviously needed and had his hair cut once a year. Only the girls who did his subject really felt at ease with him, so optional Current Affairs which he also took meant a few hours to get him telling us all the non-geography stuff he knew.. stories of the police, Freemasons and corruption were my favourites!

I had to stay on into Sixth Form as I wasn't quite 16 at the end of the year and met him while in town after the O level results came out. We chatted about the next step and he told me I should start A levels even if I didn't really want to.. so I did.. I took A's with him.. Geography and then Geology and Sociology (just when that subject became a real option, but only just, he was teaching it at evening class, but school let him supplement it and even entered us for the exams for free)

Then there was the A-level field trips.. the first to the Lizard, discoveries of pebbles in a field way up above sea level and studies of the unique metamorphic  serpentine on the Lizard.. it would have been an earthquake Zone once you know!
Yes, it all sunk in and much of it stayed there. I was in awe..I even believed him the day he began talking about treacle mines, well it all sounded so plausible after discussions about magma and hot lava, treacle is sugary sticky stuff too isn't it and why shouldn't you mine it.. must have been April 1st and Kathi on gullible mode as ever!

Next there was the S Wales trip..the less said about that the better, I can't imagine why he put himself through it, especially arriving with a party of girls at Cardiff Uni halls of residence, just as the Coal Board boys were having their last night party ... we drank way too much and looking back we must have been real liabilities but he was still cool, making us cringe when we spoke the morning afters about whether or not we had been sensible!! 
But still we learnt and grew.. U shaped valleys, mature rivers and town planning in Cardiff.

I guess I should have gone on to do geography but I wasn't sure what I'd end up doing with it.. the decisions after A levels were much less stressful than our kids have today. My folks had not had a long education, you didn't back in 1940's unless you were dead smart and / or rich, so when my time to make decisions came they didn't have the experience to draw on. 
Mr Dewar would wander into Thursday form period, the UCCA book under his arm, the bible of all Uni courses..and there they were, the Social Admin courses, not quite pure Sociology, not too focused on just work, a good compromise for an argumentative 17 year old who liked a debate and soaked up information like a sponge (that was me, in case you are asleep or lost!) 
He talked to us all about courses to suit, most of the kids still listening to him at this point were those who knew him best, the dozen or so girls doing his subjects..we ended up doing everything from Art at teacher training to Mining Geology .. my choices were going to be at Canterbury (sounded posh and nice but soooo far away in my mind) or Exeter.
I pondered many times, he always quietly hung out for me to go, never pressurising but gently leaving that book about and the information settled in my head..

I didn't apply the last year as most did, I had delusions of a marriage and working in a bank but decent A levels results (all thanks to him, taking us step by step through many an essay and giving us that perk up at the end, an almost A grade essay the month before the exams, the perfect incentive to work a bit harder..).. and the resurgence of an old flame who snuffed out the current beau..made me try and get to Uni through clearing.. alas I needed a language O level that year, but hey, come to us the next.. so there it was, he had succeeded, I was off to Uni after all.

A year into my course in Exeter I went back to see him, the school was now a Sixth Form college, he and one of his pals he had mentored were bunked up in an outrigger Humanities building and rarely set foot in the progressive main building, he was contented to work his last few years playing the system, reading the Times every day and staying those few pages ahead on the Curriculum. I amazed myself by realising he didn't know everything, I had learnt about new things he hadn't heard of and I was kind of sad, but it was a big lesson. He invited me to go teach a couple of hours for him about Unemployment and it was great, maybe I should have taught after all (I do love my red pen even now!)

Sadly not too many years later, perhaps when I was about 28 he collapsed and died at school. His friend said at his funeral that  a few months before he had taken himself off when on a field trip to London to go search out the East End haunts of his youth (oh yes, he was an expert on Jack the Ripper), as if knowing he would not be going back again. He was that kind of person, did his own thing, pleased himself, unconventional but gave everyone the opportunity to learn and share his knowlegde, but in a quiet way, he was the kind of person in your past you think would always be there, larger than life, or to be fair, larger than death. 

Shame, but a big thank you.. I would probably have not had many of the thoughts or experiences I had as a young adult without his influence.. and my kids will tell you even know.. Mum loves Geography!

Mornings..

Ross should be a Gemini! Come the morning he is either dead miserable, taking a good while to 'come to', we call him Cornflake Man, you know the one who is like a caveman growing more like us as he eats his Kelloggs... or he is so perky he makes you want to lamp him!

I came down yesterday morning and he was on perky mode; to be fair he has been this way since he started his school job, it is a half hour drive in and he likes to be on time, so he gets going early...unlike the rest of us..urghhh,especially when you have had a late night over the weekend! Kate in particular isn't great in the mornings, school days especially, so tMonday she was chasing Ross about giving him grief for being so awake!

Famous for her dry sense of humour Kate observed as she was eating breakfast..

'if Monday were a pair of shoes it would be a pair of Crocs!' 

(Now I know they are very light, very versatile and an addiction once you have some..I may have alienated myself from half my 'readers'  but you have to admit it was funny!,)

I think they take after me, I never was a morning person, always got in trouble with Mum for saying some of the words you shouldn't say when we overslept and I was grumpy!

This morning I woke early, unusual for me, but it was a lovely morning, lovely enough to take this picture across the yard..I made a coffee and went back to bed for half an hour, suddenly I get why people like waking early.

This is the view from my other bedroom window, down into the extension. Concrete for the slab arrives Thursday and you can just see the utility around the corner..can't wait.. well, yes I can.. that's something I have learnt about myself., that whilst I feel nervous and excited about something and think that maybe I just can't do it, (childbirth, moving homes, dentist, anything which gives you that unknown pit-in-your-stomach kind of feeling), but when the time draws very close a kind of composure sets in and I can !!!                                                                        

                    

West of Hayle River..1 of 5

Well I thought I'd show willing and be amongst the first to share some of my 5 things you may not know about me..  but as you may expect I will make the fact which is actually quite simple into rather a ramble..

I was born in Redruth! 

There , I said it.. I am not proud of it, but the fact remains and I cannot lie!

There is a great book about the far west of Cornwall called 'West of Hayle River' and it says that in some people's opinion you are not truly Cornish unless you were born 'west of Hayle River' ... I quietly tend to agree but then on the same hand disagree as it makes me not eligible!  But proudly I can announce that all my children are.. just!

I grew up, the formative first thirteen years of my life, in my special special place, a fishing cove way out west, decidedly Cornish by this definition.  But in 1960 the nearest maternity ward was in Redruth Hospital. It must have been a busy place as ladies came from as far apart as Newquay, the Lizard and Land's End, in fact Mum made a lifelong friend in one of the ladies, Hazel Broad of Manaccan, she had a son the day after Mum had me... and hey, they discovered that they also had wedding anniversaries on consecutive days..in December about nine months before we were born!

It must have been a trek to visit as well, about 25 miles each way. Dad didn't drive but I guess with the goodwill of friends visited Mum for three evenings after the Wednesday (when her waters broke after a short sharp shock of an iron burn on her arm my Godmother suspected) with no baby appearing, until eventually on a Saturday night he got a call just when he got home to say I was in the world! They say he didn't see me awake for a week until they brought me home, but seems he heard me then pretty good! 

Mums and babies were transferred after delivery to a maternity ward for a few days, Mum told me that they were in a room where they climbed out through a window and handed babies out afterwards, to get to the ambulance which took them.  Not sure why, maybe it was to short circuit the trip through the hospital?
Redruth for those of you who don't know is a more industrial town in our area, the kind of place which suffered a lot of depression in the years when trendy towns were booming and good old fashioned moning and industry was being replaced by service jobs..  the kind of place they joke about having a million pounds worth of improvements after the recent floods..or where they had a proposal for development, bulldoze a local peak called Carn Brea into the town and raise it to the ground!  so you can imagine thta it does grate rather to say that technically I was born there whilst feeling I really 'belonged' and grew up in a picturesque fishin cove.. but hey, fifty-few years later I can live with it... (the hospital is gone now, new housing sits teasingly where the grey dull building once taunted me.. )

Love Songs and latest!

Well I did get here again before February Week 3 was over..it's been a busy few days in trolley world and the Jones household! 

 The builders are coming! Currently next Wednesday is the most up-to-date arrival date, but my porch is empty and ready to be knocked down after 16 years, ready for our new space .. and hopefully before the year end, my new kitchen. It's not that it will take til December but we are thinking that maybe we will live with the space a little while til we decide how we want it.. lots of cupboards and storage but it is going to be our family space for the next 15 years so kind of a big deal.

Col has gone off today, he is seeing distributors in France and Belgium and I am going up to meet him and see Zac on Thursday, out to see Al Murray (the Pub landlord comedian) on Friday and then a lazy trip home by Sunday.  It always takes a bit of organising, in my head as much as logistically with the kids etc, but I am looking forward to it. As they say a change is almost as good  as a rest!

Ross, April, Pops and I were out in the garden a bit this weekend, it doesn't happen often but we were all pleased with what we did, we all like to see results, what with gardening not being 'our thing'.  Lots of weeding, removal of the detritus of many years and consequently some extreme barbering of the bushes! I am glad Ross isn't looking to have a career in hairdressing, everyone would be on a Number 1 short back & sides.

and this was just the start of it!



Clearing up.. for now!

The front garden has old walls and pathways hidden under many years of overgrown woody bushes, brambles and ivy so we have decided to tackle it, so a tidy up job turns out much larger, just hope we manage to see it through.

Needed to give you a couple of sunset shots Kate took in the car the other day, I was saying to her how you can understand seeing that why the pagans worshipped the sun. Imagine not really knowing how the world was but realising that this huge orb of warmth would disappear each night and reappear next morning, the days gradually getting longer and then shorter again.   In tropical countries when you are on holiday sunsets seem to take on a big significance too, maybe it's just the honeymoon romantics..
  

...talking of romance, here is mine and Col's 'love song'. It's really a little cheesy and not very well known, but it is probably the only single he ever gave me, I think it was on cassette.  He was a big fan of Feargal Sharkey, he was the lead for the Undertones (think Teenage Kicks, My Perfect Cousin .. Col's era, even if I was a bit of a Motown Girl!)

Well in 1991 I was 30 years old, married, not particularly unhappily, but kind of treading water with two young children.  I spent a lot of time alone with the children as their Dad worked away and when he was home family-time was not the easiest option for him, being not a very relaxed or emotionally settled kind of person, often I would tell him to go scuba-diving or something if he needed to get his head straight after being away, after all I was operating pretty much as a single parent most of the time in any case.. (he was a saturation / deep-sea diver which involved living in a chamber for several weeks at a time, and it wasn't an easy transition for him when he came home) 

Add to this the fact that I had been 18 when we started out, ended up being 30 years old and not exactly the person he wanted 'in the box' he had allocated me ( ;-) )  I think I wanted more children, a full family and this wasn't on his agenda, he always wanted 'this phase' to be over so we could do one or other of the wonderful things which would be on the greener side of life, you know over the hedge, where everyone else appeared to be living.

Well we had a few close friends, one of them was a lady who I knew he liked, this made me see things more clearly, she was nothing like me, I was never going to fit in the box was I ? (Nor was she as it happened..)  The other pal was Col. He had known us since he moved to Cornwall around the time we got married. He used to go sport diving with my husband and then come home and hang out with us, often chatting to me about this and that while 'he' had his head in a book..I think it suited him to have someone to amuse me and we were a happy band of pals.  Col helped out a lot, house moves, looking after stuff if we were away, he even saw Lisa first and collected her Dad from the airport when he got home...

As time passed I tried to find Col a girlfriend amongst my pals, usually they had a ready made family, but I wanted him to find someone amongst our crew.  We talked a lot and it emerged that his ideal girl was .. well.. very like me.  Now my self-esteem wasn't so great and I didn't quite get it, but I did eventually. You see, I had to fill the space I had been trying to fill with some of my pals! We talked loads, Col was really honourable but it was clear to him I wasn't getting the care I needed (nor were the children in my friend's opinions afterwards, which was interesting).  I examined my current existence (and to be fair it wasn't much more, school, toddlers, mumsy chat and the domestic routine..) and I wasn't really 'looked after' in the way I wanted, emotionally..

One thing led to another, many hours of soul searching, putting it right in my head, justifying that this was going to be an okay decision for others as well as me..   Until this point we had never been together, despite some people thinking it was odd how friendly we were, but within four months it was done and dusted, I moved out with the children and into a rented house.  Col joined us and it seemed auspicious that even the first day the kids didn't bat an eyelid about me having him there. I think the fact that Col also worked away and I was the constant parent, things didn't really upset them too much.

Well ... it was a little more complicated, and to be truthful, quite hard at times, but we were meant to be together...one day before I left I was having a real tough time making sense of the potential anguish everyone would suffer, Col even suggested I stay put for a few months to be sure it was the right call for me, but I was anxious that we never had bad history, you know, when you look back and there is a period you wish was more positive and no room for recrimination..he told me that whilst we might not always have lots of money, might not always have it settled and easy, might have some ups and some downs,  he would always look after me and put me first..( I did ask a few times in the first ten years when the ups were coming .. but they did, we worked hard together and I think that working together for the same aims if the best way to grow together in the same direction)

This is the song he bought me in the first few months we were together.. 

..I think that's all for now!