General Chat

Hi all,
Well the computer is up and running again, with lots of extras which I will gradually have to learn about, but for now I can do what I want normally.
I read about "the good old days"when you went picking blackberries. Oh, how I remember it well. My mother, brother and I, armed with sticks to reach the unreachable blackberries, spent Autumn days on Hampstead Heath gathering this fruit ready for my mother to turn into jam.
We had a bus journey first from where we lived in nw London to Golders Green, and to save the odd penny had to walk one bus stop. We had then a long walk from Golders Green up to Hampstead Heath. We did, however, have to go past my grandmother's house, so more often than not there was a stopover there. We always took sandwiches and a flask of tea with us. No luxuries for us.
The blackberries had to be cooked and then drained all night through a muslin cloth. It was actually blackberry jelly which we had and not jam with all the seeds in it.
I could never get my husband to go blackberry picking, but my youngest daughter and her husband do go.
My curtains for our bedroom are now finished so my help can clean the windows on Monday and we can hang the bright new curtains up.
I bought some asparagus today - the white sort. It is a lot cheaper this year. I suppose because the month of April was so warm. I now want to have asparagus with ham on Sunday and also make asparagus soup. They call the white asparagus "white gold"here as it is always a luxury food item.
Now everybody keep well, see you tomorrow.
Sylvia xxx

morning everyone ,and how's the tum after that great sounding meal Dorothy,i havn't had veal for years but i can remember how tender it was and how tasty.
It,s still veeeery windy here ,and i have warned the boss NOT to put her washing outside today ,i was in the greenhouse early this morning putting my orange tree into it's new home ,and am i glad i shut the door on my way in,there was a gust of wind that strong that it rattled all the glass ,and i watched the walls flexing ,i got out between gusts pretty quick i can tell you.
I am chuffed to bits with the tree ,it has it's first tiny branches showing ,and is now about 1/12" tall but ,as yet is still green.
I have to get on line this morning to Telewest and arrange my paper free billing ,doing my bit for the envirioment and saving myself a couple of £ a month[weeeell, i have scot's ancesters you know lol].
Gonna have a play with the puter now that Liz is on the other one ,to see just how fast the download speed is he he ,boys and their toys ya know ,Fred.

hi good to see you all back on line I tried last night and again this morning but could not gene's to open its site but her I am now brenda I finished neils book yesterday it is set near pendle hill and the witches of pendle theme runs through it I thought it was good a little blood thirsty in parts but all in all an enjoyable read, sorry to hear about your windmills going away without leave fred it must have been quite a windstorm, the soup and pease pudding that liz made sound great, I actually had a good supper?dinner to-night I did a vealcutlet with mushrooms and green peppers and sauce with broccoli and sliced sauted spuds with onion and red pepper. Isobelle should be arriving about 8pm her son is driving her up. so to-morrow she wants to go shopping at one of the big stores up here and then for a little 20 dollar flutter at the casino (last visit she won 600 dollar) so we shall see if she gets lucky, had the car in for an oil change yesterday and had a couple of little things done and she is running like a char. Sunday is mothers day over here and the former husbands birthday I think that andrew is bringing him up from the city for the day so we celebrate the two things to=-gether I guess. we have just had a wild down pour of rain but the sun is out again and everything is dry again looks like a nice evening for isobelle's drive up the highway bye for now dorothy

Afternoon one and all ,and a special one for our Brenda who seems to be having trouble with a new mouse and keyboard.
What system are you running Brenda? windows xp and vista should pick up your software as soon as you plug it in and install it automatically assuming its pnp,if not you should have the driver it came with.
and you may then have to try installing it again.
Mine for the xp tower i got from Netto,just a mouse with a mouse mat that is magnetic and the mouse picks up it's power from the mat itself ,no wires ,and no batteries, brilliant.
For my laptops i have trust brand wireless mousessssss he he ,that work via two little batteries for power and a dongle that plugs into the usb port,no wires ,so easy to use on holiday with the laptop.no hassle and wires dragging after the mouse.
I have had a pretty lazy day , put the last of the bought bedding plants in the front borders ,did a little work in the greenhouse finishing potting on the veggies,and inspecting the veggie patch ,and ,wahey ,all the tomato seedlings have taken and are doing well ,the cucumber are all through ,as are the melon plants,my carrots in the boxes are through as are the parsnip ,so ,i am well away,and chuffed to bits.
Must remember to water the new plants in tonight and sprinkle a few slug pellets around ,bird friendly ones too ,before any of you bend my ears lol.
Woulon,t have thought i would have had so much bother with a new bird table either ,five stores so far ,and still no luck,i wan't a flat pack type that i assemble myself when i get home ,but no ,all the ones i have come across are ready made and i do not have a pickup to get one in the back of,mutters under breathe he he.
Have a nice little job this evening ,the new wireless modem has just arrived ,yippee ,now i can even use the lappy in the garden if i wan't,and on a 10 mg hookup as well, tooooons of speed lol.
My son had a go at telewest for me ,large tv package now,10 mg wireless broadband ,free weekend and evening calls,and all for £35 a month with on line billing ,just the ticket for watching films in the evening in my lazy moments.
Liz bought home a lovely ham shank from the town yesterday ,and made six tubs of pease pudding for the freezer,and is now making the home made northern soup with split peas ,leek ,carrot ,potato ,onions and parsnip in [drool ] guess what's for tea lol,there is a ton of ham left too,so that will turn in to ham and egg pies ,the more the merrier he he.
Hope all are starting to look forward to the weekend,catch ya later,Fred.

Hello .have 10 minutes left from lunch to check my emails,seems everyonr is busy .hope you all enjoy what ever you are doing .See you tomorrow.
Brenda

Hi All hope this message does not end up in cyberspace ,can not get the new keyboard to install and this keyborad has a mind of its own.
Have been hoping to get Neils book locally Dorothy,but have not seen it yet and the library have not got it ordered yet,hope you enjoy it.Did not get to Bury will be going a week on Friday ,with my sister,I hope
Will hope full get on tomorrow lunch at work .Take care Brenda.

I did post a reply yesterday Dorothy ,but when i clicked submit ,the posting went walkabout in the ether ,and i was due out to take the daughter and bairn home . so ,i hadn,t time to do it again.
Well ,the fences and greenhouse were atill up this morning and i have to admit i was a little suprised after the winds we had overnight.
When i looked out of the window this morning ,three of the little windmills i use to scare the pigeons away were three gardens away lol ,they must have taken off like little helicopters and floated over the six foot fences in their travels.
I have managed to do a little more work in the greenhouse this morning but i am now running out of space,so ,something is going to be put out into it's growing positions very shortly ,come what may..
Back soon ,messages to reply to ,Fred.

goodness everyone must be busy no postings for 3 days hope all of you are well, brenda neil's new book arrived in the mail yesterday started it last night have some shopping to do to-day so I have put it down for the moment have to take the car for an oil change, we have had some nice weather the last few days but still some frost at night so I have not bought any plants as yet , my company arrives to-morrow evening just a short visit but it will be good to have the company bye for now dorothy

hi just read the postings from sylvia, kathleen, fred and brenda what good reading sylvia I have to agree with you I watched the broadcast of your queen and she lookes so sad and older a very dreadful thing, kathleen I hope your grandaughter gets well soon she can't fool around with pneaumonia but as you say you can't tell the young ones sometimes, I loved reading about the primroses and picking the fruit in places that you were not supposed to go yes we did have more fun as children I think even though they may have more technical things , brenda glad you had an easy day at work and fred you amaze me with your knowledge of computors , to-day I put out the furniture on the balcony and my solar lights I have a butterfly and dragon flies and sun's and moons, at night they look great, I brought the dragonflies over to anne and she put them in the garden , it was 62 to-day but on the cool side as we had quite a wind. I was pleased with the tennis results to-day as andy murray has moved up to no.3 in the world long may it last . enjoy the rest of the bank holiday bye for now dorothy

Hi Everyone,well I have read your messages and think you are all so good being busy with so much.Sylvia hope the curtains look good,two or three of my friends always make their own curtains and they are in their late sixties early seventies.
Kathleen hope your grandaughter gets well soon,she could end up in hospital with pnuemonia,it happend to my sisters ,sister in law.who is in her 30's.
Fred i will take a bow ,but with a smile,it was really quite at work and John had the dinner ready on the table when I got home,still I am tired now so will be sat reading my book soon,Have the new keyboard to install but it will do tomorrow...Have you heard from Bill lately!!!!
Brenda.

Good morning all ,cor ,eck ,Fred has one heck of a sore back ,my own fault for going mad in the garden while the weather lasted ,but i have had to give myself the day off to recover a little.
Poor old Sylvia ,been there ,done it and got the tea shirt to prove it .
I hope you won't think me cheeky if i pass on a little advice i got from Bill,in oz years ago when i kept getting bother with an early tower on xp pro,get yourself an external hard drive lass ,put all your programmes and files onto it for safe keeping ,and put it in a safe place,any trouble in future ,and you can be back up and running in a few hours.
Following mate Bills advice again i systamaticaly,starting with a boot up floppy disc,going on to a windows 98 disc,a xp pro disc ,and finally a vista premium disk,i got all the gear to restore my own puters.
All the new puters now come with windows installed ,and it should only be a matter of running the factory install programme to put things right, a word of warning though ,if you are not conversant with the computer operating system ,leave well alone and get someone to do it for you,otherwise you can screw the puter up to the stage where it needs a full windows re install, and for that you need to remove the hard drive partition and reboot from a disc reformat and re install windows,not for the faint hearted.
The weather here today is a right mix,i am waiting fora dry half an hour to put the weedkiller on next doors garden for her,her son is not a garden person so i said i would see to it for her,and make sure i was on hand to watch him putting the turf down,havind sait that ,he has done a great job of laying her patio for her ,it must just be that he is NOT green fingered lol.
I have just incurred the wrath of my boss [ooooops] in that i sent her an email that i sent to others this morning which needs power point to open,forgetting that i had not put microsoft office 2007 0n the xp [ooooops again] i will have to do it this afternoon before the stick comes out.
Hope everyone is relaxing over the long weekend ,for most of us [commiserations to our country wide library staff ] who i notice are open all over the holiday,with the lousy wage ,and long hours it has to be a labour of love [take a bow Brenda]
Have a great holiday all ,catch you later ,or tomorrow,Fred.

Hi everyone, good to see you back Sylvia but what a shame you have lost so much from your computer. I do hope you manage to get it sorted out, losing all your e-mail addresses is such a nuisance, that happened to me a few years ago when we had big problems with the computer. Luckily one of my sons had copied a list of them for me - and all my bookmarks as well. I was so relieved when he gave it to me as some of the websites I had bookmarked were so useful but I would never have remembered them without his list.
Well, g.daughter's chest infection still didn't clear so I took her to the doctors again a third course of stronger anti-biotics and sent for an x-ray. Seems poor thing has pneumonia so doctor doubled her dosage of the antibiotics and will see her again next Thursday. Strict instructions to stay indoors - but she went to work today (Saturday) because she said she needed the money - now this evening she is in pain again and coughing badly. She is 18 - you can tell them but will they listen? At that age they seem to lose all common sense but I think she will do as she is told now. She certainly won't be going to college next week.
Reading about the trips to Blackpool brought back memories of living in Preston and the occasional trips to Blackpool, usually with my friend whose father worked for a film company and sometimes had to travel there so he would take his family and invite me along. It was usually out of season and also the early days of the war so was a bit dreary and not the busy place I remembered from trips with my parents before the war when it was full of people and seemed a much brighter place. I recall then that the beach was lovely silvery, fine sand and seemed very clean.
We came back to London at the end of 1940 and I have never been back to Preston where we lived. Bet it has all changed a lot now.
I used to walk to school across the fields where later, after school we could go and get lots of wild rhubarb and later in the year pick loads of lovely blackberries and raspberries. The best blackberries grew on the other side of the railway track which we were forbidden to cross - of course we did but I have to say we were very careful. It was possible to see a long stretch of line in both directions and we would listen carefully and never, never run across. In the same area we could pick lots of wild primroses as well, they grew under the trees in a large area of woodland on the other side of the river. Out all day, we would come home, tired, very grubby and very proud of our haul of fruit and flowers. We thoroughly enjoyed eating the pies our mothers made with it and of course the elderflowers and elderberries which my mother made into cordials (think she might have even made some elderberry wine for the adults). It was a carefree time, we had so much more freedom back then todays children miss out on so much.
Well I didn't start out to write an "all our yesterdays" message but the memories are such happy ones I got a bit carried away.
I have a new gt.niece or nephew due to be born on 5th, he/she will share a birthday with big sister who is 5 on that day. Was due to arrive on 17th but Mummy is having some problems so the birth has been brought forward. Hope it is a little man as they have two little girls and it would be nice for my nephew to have another male in the family. At the moment he says it is just him and his dog against all the females around him!!
John I hope your wife has been able to start her treatment now and that all is going well with you both.
Take care
Love
Kathleen

Hi all,
Yes, Dorothy I was very upset about what happened here on the queen's birthday when some anti-royalty maniac ploughed into the crowd at top speed in his car . To date, 7 dead, some injured still. Unfortunately the driver killed himself too, so he can never be put on trial. Apparently he was a bit of a loner who had just lost his job, 38 years of age. The aged look on our queen's face when she gave a speech in the evening was saddening to see. It seemed to have put years on her. It all happened before the royal crowd who were all sitting in the bus waiting to take them to Palace het Loo for the final celebrations of the day.
We now have Remembrance Day on Monday evening and Day of Freedom on Tuesday, so hope these events will still go on.
Fred, where on earth do you get all your programmes from?
The people who repaired our pc took lots of things off our computer. I now have to upload WORD and EXCEL. I had Norton anti-virus. l had paid up til next March, and they have taken this off too and put another make on.
I hope my ex son in law can get the CD of WORD and EXCEL for me as if I have to buy these it will cost me a lot of money.
I baked yet another apple tart today as I have visitors myself. Since last Saturday I have now baked 4 apple tarts.
I must get down to making some new curtains for our bedroom. I had crotcheted curtains for the whole flat, but they are beginning to show wear.
I don't take them down to wash. I have bought the curtain material, just need the urge to get behind the sewing machine.
Have a nice evening everybody.
Sylvia xxx

hi brenda so this week-end is a bank holiday at home hope you all have a good time yes the fish dinner went well last night and the gelato he decided on was watermelon we ended up sharing it as it was a very large serving I dont like watermelon as a rule but this was good, then we wandered around chapters book store Ian bought a book with some of his birthday money and of course brenda I ended up buying two paper back books I am not to be trusted in a book store can't resist books, I bought unforgotten by clare francis I am pretty sure I have not read this in hard backnad lamb to the slaughter by aline templeton have not seen this author on the shelves before so thought I would give her a try. recieved an e-mail from amazon uk there is a delay in sending me neil's new book now to arrive between may 7th-25 so here's hoping it arrives soon. ;off to see a lady this morning who would like me to do some work for a local charity ie on the phone they pick up used clothing and small pieces of furniture she asked me about a year ago but then they went under a lot of changes so they seem to have got it all to-gether so I will go and see what she is offering it is a paid position and involves just a few hours a day before you would work out of the office but now it iis done from your home, it is a well recieved charity as all the items are picked up at a time convienant to the home owner so the calls are not considered an intrusion as I say I will see what she has to say in the past I have found her a bit wishy washy anyway if you go tot he market to-morrow brenda and happen to pass the cheese stall think of me and the lancashire cheese with garlic just the thought of it makes my mouth water bye for now dorothy

Hello everyone,We have some warmish sunshine today ,pity I did not put my washing out to dry.!! Have 7 minutes of lunch time left,so cannt say much as I have to do a few other things.Hope the fish and chips go well Dorothy,we are out for a Chinese lunch on Monday for my friends 65th birthday .We are trying going out for lunch instead of an evening meal, will let you know how we go.Speak wiyh you tomorrow.Take care ,Brenda

goodmorning well I have just read on the line the english papers and was so sorry to hear about the incident inholland yesterday I am sure that sylvia is upset by this what a horrible thing to happen to innocent people. I have spent the last two days helping out with the children after school and this evening I am taking Ian for his special birthday dinner he has changesd his mind on the place now we are going to jimmy's fish and ship resturant they also serve gelato ice cream we have not been there before but he has heard about it from friends he loves fish and chips his favourite place is down east charlies fish and chips which has a great reputation in the eastern provinces, when he was 7 he said that after university he was going to move there and work at charlie's, so I hope this place pleases him. all the acceptance papers came inyesterday for his move to the new school in sept for the programme he is keen to follow french imersion part of the day and then the gifted education part for the other. I have a friend coming to visit next week for a couple of days so that will be fun. bye fornow dorothy

Hello All,well its cold again and it has been raining in the night,just the weather for sitting at the pc doing some research or by the fire with a good book.
Off work agai today so been shoppinh and will be ironing shortly,working tomorrow so not sure when I will get on here.
Probably be back Saturday unless we go to Bury Market.its May day bank holiday on Monday so hope the weather picks up.Brenda

Good afternoon folks from a very sunny but chilly Manchester,no rain today but pleanty in the night.Did not stop John going to golf!
Its my day off today but I am not going out as I had a few jobs that i keep leaving and wanted to get finished,have managed a couple as I was doing some washing and tidying up in between.
Hope you get your email addresses Sylvia,I kknow what it is like to loose them ,I have most of mine in an ordinary address book as well as on the p.c .
John has just come home and has made a hot drink so i will go and have it now.
Dorothy I have to be in the mood to iron but I know at least three people who love it like you do.
Take care ,Brenda

hi sylvia your pies sound great would love to try one and I would not mind helping with the ironing my friends all tease me as they call me an ironing freak as I iron everything, I know that with the newier fabrics one does not have to iron as much but I like how things look after you are finisned with them. had an e-mail from fred this am re the little girl that is missing over here another sad situation after three weeks you tend to think the chances of her being alive are not good bye for now dorothy

Hi all,
Well I am still learning about my pc all over again. How I miss my e-mail addresses. I hope friends will send me theirs as soon as possible.
Lovely weather although very cold again.
I t's our ex queen's birthday and everybody is still celebrating her birthday - this year 100 years. it is a holiday for everybody and there will be festivities everywhere.
I have been baking lots of apple tarts. Last Saturday I made one for my son in law and today for the 9 year old daughter of my household help. I must make another one for somebody who has given us a lot of help with our digi camera. Didn't know what else to give her.
I have piles of ironing. Anybody got a spare pair of hands?
I think I'll go and do an hour's ironing now as it is only 21.45.
See you tomorrow.
Sylvia xxx