General Chat

Logarithms I'm fairly sure I've never used.

Ha ha Fiona/Ruby that made me laugh and reminded me- my Mum was so good at needlework, made all my clothes, and I was fine doing all the pretty embroidery stuff we learnt first, but once it came to making something proper I was hopeless. I can do stuff if I have to but prefer not to have to. So glad my daughter is now old enough not to need me to make costumes any more for school productions etc. My aunt taught me to knit and crochet and I can do that very well, but again rarely do. Not got to the stage of needing to knit a layette for grandchild yet. Kids are grown up but not that grown up quite yet.

I'm really appreciating the weather beginning to improve as it tempts me out into my garden. Do you like gardening/have a garden?

I no longer have a garden but do enjoy,tidying,weeding and planting though not digging now lol.I do a little bit in the church garden and at my daughters but thats it. I do have lots of pots and baskets in my yard.
Do you ever take flowers to a grave or put flowers in a vase at home in memory of someone?

Yes , my late family are all buried in their local church cemetery where I lived as a child, hubby's late family are buried in a cemetery in their location.
I put flowers on all of them. ( Mum loved flowers )

Do you have or like conifers growing in your garden..?

We don't have conifers in our garden although we do have a number of mature shrubs and trees. Both neighbours have one or two conifers in their boundary with our garden. They can deplete the soil around their base for a large distance and when we lived in London, with a fairly average sized garden out the back of a 3 bed semi, one neighbour had two on our side of their garden. The grass wouldn't grow properly and I had difficulty working out which plants would tolerate it under/near there. Now our garden is a good deal larger, and in the countryside, so we don't notice the problem so keenly. One neighbour likes them a lot as they are evergreen and so don't drop leaves for him to have to sweep up (he hates our mature weeping willow, but since it's been there longer than he has and it's one of the reasons we moved here it stays) so he has more of them, thank goodness not leylandii. However there are certain birds that particularly like conifer so I do like to have them in the mix of trees round here. A few gardens away there is also a huge wellingtonia which is in lots of historical photos of the area.

Do you like to watch and feed the birds visiting your garden?

yes although I only have a back yard I put food out for them.I love to watch their antics.
Have you ever owned a cage bird?

No. Somehow I'm not happy with having pets that you need to keep caged. Also I have 3 cats and a dog, and have always had cats, dogs or both since a child so keeping a caged bird probably wouldn't be very fair.

Do you have any pets at the moment?

yes 2 German shepherds.A 10 yr old and a 6 month old.
What type of music do you like to listen to?

It's actually quicker to say what music I don't like as I really enjoy most types of music. There are only two kinds of music I'm not keen on. The first is opera which as a whole I don't appreciate, but even then there are some of the famous arias and choruses that I'll happily sing along to such as the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi's Nabucco. I also positively dislike free jazz. My husband plays it sometimes and I wonder if it's free why on earth did he pay for it! To me there's nothing to commend it at all, I haven't yet heard a piece that makes me think differently. I feel like an elderly mother to teenage son when I just want to say to him "Turn that row off."

I sing in two town choirs that OH calls my proper choir and my glee choir. In proper choir we sing classical and sacred choral music. Where we used to live I was in my church choir (my church sadly doesn't have one here) and I do love a good requiem, and a bit of Gregorian chant. In my glee choir we sing current and recent chart music, we have an Abba number, one from Red Hot Chilli Peppers, another from Sugababes and so on. It's a new choir and our repertoire is still small so at present we do little fill-in slots at local events. This one I have to say is pure fun.

Are you a member of any local group (performing or otherwise)?

apart from our women's auxiliary group at church nothing else just now.
I have been in craft groups .
Have you tried your hand at painting (water colour,oils etc) ?

I did Art and Pottery at A level, then in college, many yrs ago.
Haven't done any in the last 5 yrs.

I love good handwriting.
Have you ever done calligraphy ?

had a little go one afternoon about 3 yrs ago at a "taster session" for various
arts and crafts but that's it. My handwriting has never been very neat.
Have you ever had a pen pal?

yes many years ago when I was at school we had a pen pal club and I got a boy Pen pal from Malaysia, he lived in Kuala Lumpur his name was. Lakari Ben Ishmael
not sure if that's the right spelling? he used to call me little missie, we wrote for a couple of months then one day I heard there had been some trouble in Kuala Lumpur on the news, fighting among the people, and then I heard nothing from him again, so i don't know if he anything had happened to him or not.

Are you at the moment taking any form of exercise to keep fit ?

Nothing specifically for keeping fit, but I do walk the dog for a couple of hours a day. At the moment I'm looking on the OS map and walking a different circular route each day round the local public footpaths. I'm only repeating at the weekend if I find somewhere really special to show OH. It can be amazing what you don't know about in your local area and a
brilliant way to find out.

Do you like walking and how do you look for new places to see?

I walk the dogs and have 4 different routes which I like to alternate but don't go more than a mile away as have had panic attacks and like to stay in my safe circle.I do love noticing how the scenery changes with the seasons and there is always something new to see.
Do you ever see / feed horses when out and about?

Surprisingly, given that I live in an area that sociologists describe as 'inner city', there are horses within a few hundred yards of my home that belong to a long-standing community of Travellers. Although, having said that, I've rarely seen them as Sainsbury's is in the other direction!


Are there anything interesting near your home that you've never actually got around to seeing/visiting?

The Roundhouse Towers at Nantyglo...just googled it.
Built by the tyranny industrial brothers Crawshay and Joseph Bailey in 1816 as a fortification for fear that the workers would revolt against them.
Just over 5 miles away , I guess.

Do you like tattoos ..?

only the edinburgh one lol. I actually hate tattoos.My older brother has some.My dad didn't like them and neither do my husband or son and as far as I know my younger brother hasn't any.Even worse I hate to see them on women.
Are there any corner shops left in your area?

I now live on the edge of a small Wiltshire town and we still have our post office stores from when my area was a village in its own right. In the town there are a mixture of chain and independent stores, a weekly market bringing in goods from the local area, and monthly farmers market - we also have lots of farm shops nearby. Some of the town businesses are thriving and some struggling although things seem to be beginning to get a little better.

I visit my old area in west London quite frequently and the shops at the end of the road seem to be blossoming. There is a pub, good butcher (always much cheaper and nicer than the more distant supermarkets), two "open all hours" shops, a good pet shop, two hairdressers, a hardware store, a good greengrocer, a cafe, two takeaways, a doctor's surgery, a pharmacy and a dentist. If ever I was unwell but needed to buy food I could get all I needed and more at the top of the road.

And over the hill there was a longer stretch of local stores with other types of businesses too. All that before you got to the town centre.

Do you prefer to shop in the supermarkets and chains or do you like to support the local businesses?

Both , I like to keep local businesses going, nearest town is about 2 to 3 miles away, but there aren't many shops there...hairdressers, chain store bakers..yuk, chemists, opticians . Not a lot there really:(
The supermarket is slightly out of town , but as son still has a seasonal job from his Uni days , for food I use that as I have 10% discount .

Do you know what your Body Mass Index is , and are you around about the figure..?

I do know what my BMI is and I wish I didn't :(

Do you read the ingredients on processed food packets because there a particular foodstuff/additive you wish to avoid, eg, nuts, gluten etc