365/155 Gate.

I haven't really been out today, bar playing teen-taxi as I call it and it's been a quiet day here, I appreciate all the fuss everyone is making of the Jubilee and I think it's great that everyone has embraced it across the country, but personally I am left a bit numb about it all.. perhaps I have done too many fetes, too much organising of charity events and cake stalls and I am now just a jaded and tired old boot.. I dunno! 

My favourite bit so far was the old singles Jeremy Vine played on his show while I was taxi-ing.. 1964's 'You Are My World' (when Prince Edward was born by all accounts) and 1969's 'If Paradise is Half as Nice' (Man landing on the Moon and incidentally me buying this as my first single ever.... my dad had died earlier in the year and the outpouring of effort to make life a little nicer for me brought me a Dansette Record Player, second hand from ETS, via my dear Uncle Owen..oh and we got TV and a cat..!)

But I digress..

There is a live music thing in town tonight and the best bit sounds like the tribute band doing Blondie, the Clash and stuff, so maybe we will drag ourselves there and retrieve the moment.. bah, humbug!  It's Col's birthday Tuesday and he is in danger of having a ten minute home-made card and a jumper if enthusiasm levels don't improve.... maybe I just used up all my enthusiasm points for May while the family had its' get togethers!

And so to 'Gates'.. I played lazy I'm afraid and opted for a nice oldie.. it beat this little picture of 'White Gate' in Penberth, which in fact is not much of a gate picture, in that it is obscured by wild rhubarb plants and only those in the know (Penny and Sarah) even know what I am on about....oh yeah, you can just see the corner of the gate.... it was a point in the road used by Teddy and I when doing bike races and stuff.. and where I fell in the river once.. on his bike!

 The chosen pic also beat this one which for a moment was going to be 'the gate picture' because it was funny for a moment to have a snow pic today.. in June... but not so far off the mark, it is grey and windy outside in fact!

So here we are.. (this fairly famous picture now.. amongst those of us who collect such memorabilia about our homeland.. haha, home cove maybe)..our beloved Auntie Elsie outside her cottage with my brother Ken and cousins Mark, Keith and Penny. 

She was the lovliest lady, from Co. Durham and that lovely accent. I think she had been a school teacher and then married my Dad's Uncle, and cared for his mother for many years. She loved to have us kids around and she used to let me wash her step and clean all the amethysts and semi-precious rocks beside the step.  The house was full of stuffed birds, foxes and other small animals, probably trophies of hunting done by the men..I think she must have been sad not to have her own children but was like a favourite Gran to me, and was such as your Gran should always live just up the road shouldn't she?

I think Auntie Elsie was probably only in her 50's here as it was in the 1960's and she was still alive and well and teaching herself Russian when I last saw her when Ross was a baby in about 1987.  Amazing what fashion and hair dyes have done to make us ladies keep hold of the years now eh?

My other abiding memory of the house was the outside toilet with wooden bench type seat with two openings, I remember thinking it must be very odd if two of you were in there at the same time!!

(Well must go, the intention was a quick picture and note, I've now droned on for an age but somehow I feel like I have done the virtual nostalgia tour.. and I am heartened.. xx)