General Chat

Oops, sorry but the day simply flew by because....I went in the garden and stayed there in the sunshine forvaround 4 hours, then had to finish the house work, prepare our evening meal, check my bank card as it was refused a few days ago, could find nothing amiss, so took out some money!

Then went to a bar for about half an hour as OH wanted a beer whilst out . We came homecaround an hourvago and OH is now watching football England v Ghana, so takingbthis opportunity to say hello and goodbye

Will be back tomorrow



22.10 hrs Spain

Just a quick visit before I get myself something to eat.
Will try to come back later today (or tomorrw) to talk about my mums housework experiences.

Tess

Hi All

Hope you are all ok. It seems ages since I added to this thread. Finally arrived back from UK on Friday having had to extend my visit by 3 days due to my mom being poorly and not safe to leave on her own. I went to Cornwall thinking I would have some quality time with my mom but in fact I ended up as a nurse - probably not that good either. I had the NHS running around in circles - out of hours doctor, locum doctor and even the district nurse - not to mention the receptionists and doctors at the surgery. My mom is still not right but she did tell me yesterday she got dressed for the first time in weeks.

The weather in Cornwall was much better than here in Spain - hubby told me it was rather dull, windy and wet - yet the sun was shining in Bodmin.

Saw my two sons and daughter in law which was good, also my neice came over one day and we managed to escape and had lunch out. Youngest son was very good he picked me up from airport and took me down to Cornwall then when my plans changed had to change his days off so he could pick me up and take me to Bristol airport for my return journey. It is amazing how your children grow up and end up looking after you!!

By the time I landed at Alicante airport I was shattered - not slept much the night before and when my flight was announced I had to walk for what seemed like miles to gate no. 13 - carrying my hand luggage which although not that heavy it has made my right hand inflammed so I have had to take my rings off - I feel naked !!!

I landed in the new terminal at Alicante which seems to be much better than the old one. Even car parking is much easier. Hubby then took me out for a meal - it was great to see him.

Well I have ironing to do so must be off.

Take care and enjoy the rest of your day

Love Mary xx

Hello, 11.30 a.m. here. Have had problems with the internet again to-day, the cable is "down" again, it seems to be "down" more than anything else!

Quite a nice day to-day.

My great-niece has completed her degree and will be graduating next weekend. Her parents have asked us to attend the graduation ceremony with them and we are hoping to be able to do so. She and her brother are my brother's grandchildren but have been like our own. This year she is doing her Honours.

I am still waiting for the electrician to come and put in the new light fitting, somehow when we need a job done we are never first on the list!

Iam now off to the Mall to see if I cvan find a nice blouse to wear next weekend, hopefully I will be lucky.

Till next time.



Val.

Good morning everyone. lots to write about today so will be be back later
have a good day everyone

09.15hrs Spain

I thought that I had posted here earlier today but obviously not. Lovely to hear from Berona and Val.


Berona
Very pleased to hear that your workmen came back and that they have finished all they needed to do. Very pleased that you are not in the area where the dreadful fires have been. We do not seem to hear anything now about what has happened to all those who lost their home etc. I often think about them and wonder how they are managing.
You are quite right the boards do tend to be rather quiet whereas when I was an at Home mum, many years ago I would have been on here at weekends, no school runs to do, no taking part in Cricket meets etc

Valerie
Obviously you are similar to me, in so far as I thoroughly enjoy that quiet time of the day when I can look across the sea, and often watch the sunrise, and the amazing colours in the sky.
I have managed to get all my washing and have even ironed that which needs Ironing and it is all now in the right place.
Hope that you have managed to get your Sunday Newspaper subscription so you can continue withe the paper and your crosswords.

I was delighted when the son of a lady I cared for in the UK came to see OH and myself today. He has a house about 50mins from where we live and he was on his way south to see someone about a painting they have commissioned. We had a lovely chat and OH got along with him very well so he is visiting us again later in the year when we have promised to show him around the castle etc.

Well we are having Curry tonight so I must check that everything is simmering nicely

Bye for now

18.50hrs Spain

Good morning, 7.08 here.
I was up at 5.30 a.m. SA time, it was still quite dark, there was an orange patch on the horizon as the sun was just beginning to rise. I sat in the lounge to have my coffee and as it got lighter I looked out of the window and could see the sea was quite calm. There were a couple of flashes of lightning. My first load of washing is hanging on the line.

To-day I must be off to the bank and then go along to pay my annual subscription for the Sunday newspaper otherwise I will not have any crosswords on Sunday!



Val.

Good morning from what looks like being another pleasant Autumn day here in Oz. I suppose everyone is heading for bed after losing an hour! We go back an hour next weekend.

Yes, the workmen came back early on Saturday morning and worked until almost dark (which is 7pm DST at the moment) and finished the job - fourteen villas and townhouses. (ten single-storey villas and four 2-storey townhouses).
We are not bothered by fires here and trees have gradually disappeared to make way for these complexes, but this was the first time the gutters were cleaned in the four years that the complex has been here, so a certain amount on "gunk" had collected in them.

Everything was very quiet on these boards at the weekend. I suppose the Brits were taking advantage of the brighter weather and working in their gardens.

Hello, 13.30 here, a warm. windy day.

Penny the computer bits and pieces are for a computer my daughtyer is building for a customer. She has a workshop attached to our house and runs a small business , computer sales, repairs, upgrades etc. She started this about 10 years ago after she was retrenched and could not find employment. Prior to opening the business she did a technicians course. Unfortunately she does not repair laptops - too specialised she says- so the set-up she has for me is working well I
shall stick to it for now. I managed to find a light fitting must now get the
electrician in next week to do the fitting as I want the light moved.

Thanks for the piece on housework Tess, makes interesting reading.

Berona that is so familiar about workmen, thy must be the same all over.
Well done Bridget on coming third!.

Paid are usual Saturday visit to our friends and then went out for something to eat , am now home and feeling thoroughly lazy so will settle down with the Saturday paper and the crossword.

Enjoy the rest of the day.



Val.

Just for information which I thought may be of interest

The history of daylight saving time

In 1907 an Englishman, William Willett, campaigned to advance clocks by 80 minutes. He proposed four moves of 20 minutes at the beginning of the spring and summer months, and to return to Greenwich Mean Time in a similar manner in the autumn. The following year, the House of Commons rejected a Bill to advance the clocks by one hour during the spring and summer months.

Summer time was first defined in an Act of Parliament in 1916. The clocks were moved one hour ahead of GMT from the spring to the autumn.

During the Second World War, double summer time (two hours in advance of GMT) was introduced, lasting until July 1945.

Since the 1980s, all parts of western and central Europe have co-ordinated the date and the time of their clock changes.

I have just had an unexpected call from someone I got y=to know quite well when caring for his grandmother when I was last in the UK. I represented the home by going to the funeral and became quite close to the family.He is a fairly well known modern artist and when I learnt that he lives not far away from my home in Spain I told him and the family that if they were near bye to come and see me. yesterday I found myself thinking about his mother and lo and behold this morning I had a call from him.he is in Spain, has to go south for a few days and is coming for coffee on Monday!

I am really pleased because they are a delightful family.

12.35hrs Spain


Bridget

Irish Gaelic: "Dia dhuit ar maidin." (good morning)
This is one of the few bits of the Irish language that I can recall from the days I had to learn as a small child. My father was adamant that we had to learn this dying language and actually i rather enjoyed doing so. Somewhere tucked away in one of my boxes is the original book I had to learn from and possibly some of my efforts of writing as well!!l

Tess so many of the things you mention brought back amazing memories for me. I used to spend nearly a large chunk of my school holidays in Finglas Ireland from around 1954 onwards. Life was hard but the freedom to roam, going scrumping, helping to brush the floors help with the mangle, picking fruit and veg remain with me forever.
I look back and realise that at a difficult time for my parents, low wages .poor living conditions and war damage all around us I was a very lucky child. some holidays in Finglas and at other times with my maternal grandparents in Fingrinhoe Essex.
what a lovely surprise it is to have come on here this morning and see so many postings, just as it used to be,

we had a pleasant day yesterday, the sun came out , the temp went up to 20c and my mood went up as well! not that I have been feeling unhappy but we should be having good weather here at this time of the year.
we went out for Lunch Fish & chips, English style and there were about 35-40 people there , live music, a speech from the local branch of ;;;well actually I cannot recall what they are called but they raise funds for a few charities and thankfully this year they are donating a percentage to Help for Heroes so will be well used by them to help our lads and lasses in the forces.
Amazingly we sat at a table with people we had not met before and low and behold the lady and I had lived in the same places in the UK and at the same time but never met before. Now I am not talking about the Centre of London or any other large place but small country places where generally speaking everyone new everyone else except us!!! We talked and talked and exchanged email addresses so i am sure you can guess what I shall do in the next day or two.

Berona, I am sure that your entry about the workmen sounds very familiar to most of us.I hope that the work is done quite soon. You mention that you live in/on, never quite sure which word is correct. I have never lived on a complex although we did look at some here in Sppain before we bought our hose, The Houses were beautiful but generally on or connected to Golf Courses and as neither OH or I am into golf so really they were not for us.

If I haven't thanked everyone it isn't because I have forgotten BUT because I need a Coffee!! so bye bye for now, enjoy your day and I hope to be back later today.

07.35 Spain

Just looking in before I go to bed.
I keep forgetting to say Hi to Penny so... Hi Penny!!!
I live in Birmingham. Have been here for most of the last fifty years.

I will add to the Housework discussion. But forgot to say that the main fuel (beside wood and waste that couldnt be recycled) was turf (I think that it is called peatr over here).

Many households wouldhave their own area of land where they could dig the turf, this would have to be dug ages before use, then stacked till it dried and could be used on the fire.

Tess

Good evening all, hope everyone is well. Yes technology carries the can for mistakes these days, am sure that they think we are all a little thick not to see through the excuse!!
Val hope you had a successful trip to Port Elizabeth, and got all you need. Are the computer bits to get yours up and running again?
Weather here today not been quite as nice as yesterday, and this evening it has gone chilly, will have to wait to see what tomorrow brings.
Tess so you are in the W Mids, where abouts may I ask,I am also in that area so we cant be too far away from one another.
Glad the quiz night went well Bridget, and that you had some fun, great place to come 3rd, dont want to look too keen do you he he.
Well not a lot else to add today, just done housework and washing and that's about it.
Til tomorrow then. All take care. Penny

That's a bit like the favourite. 'It is a computer error'. Hmmm somebody has to input information or in your people's case forget to input information!!!!

Good evening all. Good morning Saturday where I am in Oz. Typical Autumn day coming up - overcast but still quite warm.
Arrangements were made for yesterday to clean out the roof gutters in our villa complex. A team of three arrived at 2pm after a phone call was made and we were told they "forgot"! An email also arrived with the following excuse -

" Although we were aware of the scheduled clean, unfortunately due to the recent heavy rains we have been inundated with leaks & we have had to prioritise our work load with emergency repairs, we also updated our iphones last week & we are now aware that we have lost our alerts."

It seems that we now have another excuse to use - technology! Well, it sounds better than the earlier one ("he forgot"). This is the first time I've heard of blaming the iphones!

A sunny and mild day here in the West Midlands in England. Managed (with my son's help) to collect my prescription from the Chemist. As often happens when I am at a low point, I had run out of my anti-depression meds. Not good news for my son, who is living with me at the moment, as this makes me VERY irritable.

Bridget, the housework I was going to talk about was from the 1920's ((I hope that this is okay.

Like a lot of people, I just wish I had asked more questions of my mum and her siblings.

My Maternal Grandmother was born c1879 in Co Limerick in Ireland.
My Mum was born in 1920 in Co Tipperary in Ireland.
As a child I was able to visit both the home my mother was bought up in and the home my grandmother was bought up in.

My Nan (Ellen) moved back to her childhood home in her later years and it is here that I associate her with, as this is where I visied her.

My Mums Dad died when she was a few monthes old so poor Ellen (her Mum) had to go out to work to keep the family fed.


The housework would therefore have been shared amoung the older children. Mum recalls the hens coming into the house and messing up the floor.!
A stone floor, with only rag rugs, no real carpeting.
Water fetched from a local spring, and in later years (after pressure from my uncle) a pump was installed, for the use of five (or was it six ) houses.
There was also a rain barrel, water from this was used for washing.
Water had to be heated on an open fire.

so household duties would be ... Light the fire, fetch the water, feed the chickens, look for the eggs. etc.

Clothes would have been washed in a sort of half barrel (I vagually remember seeing one somewhere) I just don't think I ever asked wht they used for soap. (For laundry, people, pots and panns etc.)

The floor would have been some sort of stone floor. This woild have been brushed out every day. It must have been mopped friquently to, but I don't know what sort of mop was used.
They baked their own bread (Irish soda bread) and had a garden where they grew their own veg, esp potatoes and cabbage.
The family had to try to be self sufficient, as so little money was coming into the house.
A very hard life in a rather poor household.
The war-time slogan of "make-do and mend" would have been part of the family way of life long before the war.

New clothes would have been a rarity, in fact very little would have been shop bought, (excepting tea and sugar).

I will try to find out of any of my older cousins know more than me about this time in our Ancestors lives.


Tess

Good morning from a Grey damp morning, How I long for hose days when I am up early, make a coffee, and sit on one of the veranda's, and am able to write about the wonderful views, the peace & quiet setting, describe the sun raising and the fishing boats going out to catch the daily quota....

I did venture out about 30 mins ago but the damp atmosphere is not pleasant, the sky & sea are the same shade of grey, a few birds could be heard twittering but I could not see them the only good thing was the quietness and the tranquil atmosphere. I just had a very strange thought as I was writing " the good thing was actually waking up"!! What a strange thought.

It felt good this morning finding 3 entries already on here, so thank you all.
Tess, what a marathon you have completed,reading all the entries and I trust that you mostly enjoyed them. I never thought that this thread would last so long, but I am so delighted for a number of reasons that it is still going.
I am looking forward to reading your memory about Housework from the 1950s. Do you know that there is another interesting thread all about food and recipes which I started, it is called Culinary Delights, just drop by and have a read there are some really good things on there. BUT still stay here. do you have any suggestions for another topic for April?

Penny.
Enjoy the good weather whilst you can is my motto. Thank you for your comments about my twins, I learnt last night that the one who has the new job also has a new girlfriend and she is accompanying him too the Church Blessing of his twin brother and his wife in May.......At last he seems to be having a good time...fingers crossed!

Val
Not many people at the quiz last night just three tables which meant that there were 12 people, however we still had some fun. We think the poor turnout was due to the weather, quite a few people who normally come live further inland and the roads are not good in many places and it was a very wet evening as well. However in good Dunkirk spirit we sat at our respective tables and had a good time. My OH has 5 rounds of 12 questions and then we have a break for 15 mins. the landlord provides some sandwiches and last night we also had some home made Bread pudding which was delicious,..just as well that the portions were not too big! Then we have another 5 rounds and then my OH tells us all what the answers were. Oh yes forgot to say each team can also choose one set of questions as there Joker round and that means that they score double points for that round.
OH then gathers them all, checks them and announces the winner....This team is then presented with 4 bottles of wine from the landlord. There is a lot of banter going on by now and it is all just a bit of fun.
We came third of the three, sounds so much better than last!!

£300 ponds to repair a computer, wow!!! Here in Spain and in the UK you could buy a new computer for that amount of money, no wonder you are using the computer your daughter has set up for you and how fortunate that you daughter can, hopefully, repair your own comp....OOH I am still in shock
What a delightful piece of news about the singer, and how wonderful that someone recognised his talent and helped him on his way. do keep us up to date with his career.

Well I have exhausted my news and views for the time being, and today I am going to try and write another piece of my story.

Bye bye for now and you are all in my daily thoughts and positive thinking,

Bridget

08.06 hrs Spain

Goodmorning people, 6.45 a.m ,temperature supposed to be 27 here to-day.

Oh dear my maths really left me in the lurch yesterday! The exchange rate is about R10 to a pound so that should have read 300 Pounds! Sorry about that. Costs keep rising but unfortunately pensions don't! The interest rate on investments is also not good so there isn't much to add to the pension, but still we are fortunate to have a house which was paid for years ago.

A singer from Cape Town who won the SA's Got Talent last year is touring SA with Andre Rieu. This chap was discovered by a Cape Town resident while he worked as a dustman, she heard him singing while he worked and then sponsored singing lessons for him. He later studied in Germany for a time before returning to S.A, I think this all started for him about 20 or so years ago. I actually watched the finals of the competition on TV and he really does have a lovely voice.

We are off to Port Elizabeth this morning - to fetch computer components for our daughter and to look for a new light fitting for the dining room, haven't been able to find one which I like at the local shop.

Hope you had fun last night Bridget.



Val.

Hi all, hope you are all well. Another beautiful day here very warm for the time of year, but about to change tomorrow by the sounds of it!!!
Congrats on your sons new job Bridget, hope his twin is safe on his hols.
Val, said quickly no £30 does not sound a lot, but with bills as they are these days and a fixed income, it gets harder to find. I dont suppose things are any different in SA.
Hope the quiz went well Bridget, do you have prizes?
Not a lot done today, a bit of household shopping & a meal out in the local pub with friends, which was very pleasant.. Well ladies til tomorrow, take care. Penny

Wee, have now managed to read this up to date. Had to have a few breaks while doing so, especially yesterday.

Will be back tomorrow to chat about housework. Will be starting with a brief description of what it was like when my Mum was growing up in Ireland......

Meanwhile I have looked up Bobotie on the internet, looks really good. Will have to write down (or print off) a receipe for future use.

Tess