Intermission...

I had planned to continue with more theatrical tales, but as various Blogger hiccups have interrupted my thinking, and my latest post , which I have now returned to DRAFT , a short intermission will now be in force. Watch this space...

Not Quite Treading The Boards

"Come with me?"
"I'm no actor! I can't do that."
"Let's go and see what it's all about,  please? You might enjoy it..."

The Festival Theatre had  plans for a peripatetic production which would need some 200 people, mostly extras, amongst whom a few would have to sing folk songs and do country dances.
For my singing buddy, the very word 'theatre' sent her blood racing, and I had to admit the mention of folk music had got me interested....

So one early summer evening found us in a large marquee with a crowd of oddly assorted people lured by that same word. We learned that several well known playwrights had each been asked to write one scene of a play, based on true historical events around Chichester.

The extras would be responsible for their own seventeenth century style costumes, and the directors needed about 50 or so people to learn a country dance, and a smaller group to sing a mix of hymns and folk songs. They showed us patterns for the type of clothes we'd need, and I was hooked!

Before I knew it, I'd 'volunteered' for both the singing and dancing, and couldn't wait to start on our costumes...We had to invent characters for ourselves, too, for we were told it would help us to be 'believable' to the audience. Thus let me introduce... 

"My Lady Anne, sister of the Bishop, and her maidservant, Prudence." 

No prizes for guessing who I played!
 

Sepia Saturday's prompt has stirred up more memories. To be continued... 

WARNING!  between 11 p.m. last night and 6.46 a.m. this morning, I have a total of eight 'Anonymous' comment emails showing in my in box for this post. If you are trying to leave me a comment, I suggest you use your own blogname, then I might read it! At the moment, every anonymous comment will go straight to my junk folder. If you are a spammer- go away!

Stage Struck

Or rather, back stage struck! For a couple of years, between 1986-88, I was heavily into costume making for various theatrical productions, one at Chichester Festival theatre, in which I took part, and the rest for Bosham Players' open air productions at West Dean.

I was given a budget of £200 to clothe the caste for As You Like It - almost everyone with several changes of costume to boot. The director chose to set it in the Edwardian era, so it was no mean task.

The Women's Institute in Chichester had a wonderful costume 'warehouse' at the time, and hired out articles for amateur theatricals, but I did design and sew many myself for this particular play.
My children and one of their friends spent an afternoon modelling some of the outfits for me, like so:-

And the most beautiful garment I hired was this vintage, crochet jacket which my daughter is wearing in this next photograph, together with a skirt and top made from our old, satin, bedroom curtains!

I seem to remember there were complimentary noises made about the entire production, which made all the hard work worth while, of course.

'Theatre' was the choice of subject at Sepia Saturday this week. And there's more theatricals HERE.

Sorry, Not Sepia!

But, here's a black and white version instead. It's Christmas 1968, and my small niece, in her dressing gown and sleep suit, is getting my Mum (her Granny) to sort out her doll and pram for her. Still in its box at the front of the picture is one of those 'magic' feeding bottles which appear to empty as the 'baby' gets fed. I imagine the photo was taken by my brother in the morning, for there's a carpet sweeper in evidence, and Mum is wearing a nylon overall that I'm sure would have been discarded if it had been later in the day.
Before I started looking through my collection for Sepia Saturday's request for doll related pictures, I didn't think I'd be able to find any, so thanks again to my Bro for supplying me with this one!

Discovery!

 N.B. If you choose 'Full Page' option for how you would like your comment box to be displayed, it seems that the annoying 'Reply' buttons disappear from your Blogpage...

I Saw...

And so did everybody else this week, that Blogger has decided to add reply buttons for comments, willy-nilly. For some time, there has been an option given for this in the design features, but now our choice is removed.

It has long been my practice to have comment notifications sent to my email inbox, from where I've replied to those Blogpals who allow their email address to be shown, and who have thus become buddies as a result of our 'behind the scenes' communications.

I've experimented on my previous post, with replying 'on blog' as opposed to 'in email', but have decided to revert to my former way of communicating, mostly because using a reply button results in yards and yards of scrolling down the page to find the comment box!

I've decided to link this to Susannah's 'I Saw Sunday' as we've all experienced the same phenomenon this week, but maybe not with the same reaction...Can't wait to see!

No Hats - Yet!

Sepia Saturday featured a hat extravaganza photo this week, which set me thinking of 'costumes'. My latest acquisitions, shown here, are heading for one, if not several, changes of costume before they are much older!

They were a totally unplanned purchase, which you can put down to my having reached my second childhood, I guess. Thanks to January Sales, they were almost half their original price, and I shall secrete then away (eventually) until smallest granddaughter has grown to the same size as them - which could take a few years!

But in the meantime, I intend to enjoy myself to the full, by making/acquiring/collecting alternative costumes for the Sam and Sally dolls I'd have loved to own when I was young.

The clothes they have now are trendy to look at, but poorly designed. The hoods are too small  to  pull up over their heads, and the Velcro fastenings at the back stick like glue to the doll's soft bodies when you undress or dress them. And why give dolls clothes that are difficult to take off and put on?

I was horrified, too, by the wire and plastic restrainers that held each doll in their box. Neck, torso, arms and legs were shackled with lethal looking bonds, that took me, an adult, a fair amount of effort to remove. No child could have coped. So, in the interest of preserving the original boxes to store the  'twins' safely, I have replaced plastic with good old fashioned string, which I can untie whenever I want to try on a new outfit for either of them! I shall have a lot of fun with these two, before they get handed over for good...

'Ready to take you on and on'

It's the early hours of the morning, and the clock face shows you the time I took the shot. On a ribbon attached to the tiny HMS, red nosed blob sailor you see on top of this Ikea cabinet, are printed the words you see in my title.
I suddenly thought how appropriate a phrase it was for all intrepid Bloggers everywhere...

But why am I taking pictures and writing posts at this godforsaken hour? A tickle cough, stuffy nose and voice box which emits sounds like a foghorn, has been plaguing me for the past two weeks, and the hours between three and five are when it plagues me most.

The germs have got into a routine of driving me downstairs at silly o'clock for a steam inhalation, a hot honey and lemon drink, and an interminable wait for the coughing to subside. So what's an old lady to do but BLOG IT, before going back to bed for stage two of a long night...

And For My Next Trick....

Here are the squares I mentioned in my previous post.  They sat and taunted me until I put them together, as a lap rug for one of my erstwhile singing pals. She is inordinately fond of all things black, so I chose the border to complement her addiction - and my bright colours- in the hope it would give a stained glass window effect.

 My shaggy carpet did it no favours, when I tried to lay the crochet down on top with no wrinkles, but it gives you the idea of the colours, and the fact that each square manages to be different, despite a limited range of yarn shades. Now I shall sit  back and wait for your verdict! LOL

A Good Yarn?

Is worth its weight in gold...especially if it's this kind of yarn!

The urge to crochet comes upon me with a vengeance at times, to the exclusion of all else, and my pre-Christmas snowflakes whetted my appetite.

I knew I wanted to make a Napple Blanket for my newest grandchild, and, relatively quickly, I'd produced fifteen, eight inch squares to kick start the project. BUT...the sixteenth put a stop to everything. It was made up of the yarns in this photo, and once I saw the colour combination, that was it. Back to the drawing board, in a manner of speaking, to produce a further set of twenty squares, all the same. Tedious to do, but worth it once I finished this at midnight, last night!

 The downside of this escapade, is that I now have fifteen, brightly coloured squares tucked in a plastic bag, all clamouring at me to get stuck in, and make another throw. If I obey the summons, I could be away from Blogland for quite some time...

It's Here!

One
One
Two Oh One Two !

I wish the best to you...
and you...
and you and you
and us and them -
it's "Happy New Year" time again!

Angel or Fairy?

I've been saving this up  for Christmas week, but I leave you to choose the correct word for this vision in pink!

You can see my great niece chose her ensemble with great care, as is her wont, and you will understand the seriousness of the occasion if you pop over here to read the back story of the doll and scissors... But perhaps I should give you a clue...


I can see her as a doyen of the fashion scene for years to come - if she isn't too busy writing books...Go for it, girl!

I'm going to link this to I saw Sunday and Monday Toads, simple because this little madam is a poem in her own right.

Two Times Fifty Five Is Twice As Nice

Having been talking about cards and Round Robins, I shall continue with a Bah Humbug slant on the Festive Season, especially for Mr Know-it-all's Friday 55 challenge. Except that I have written two co-joined 55's,  hence my post title!

Decorations, trees and cards

greet us on every hand.

I think it’s time we all rebelled

and let sense take a stand.

In olden days, a card was made

by one, to give another.

A special thing, a work of love

to give a dad or mother,

sibling, friend or relative

or possibly a lover.

Now cards are often ‘tit-for-tat’

dispatched with little thought,

‘cept moaning about postage

which costs more than it aught!

And presents? Well, a nightmare!

for costs get out of hand;

children want the ‘latest thing’

to hit the adverts stand.

Here’s to a different Christmas,

where love, not money rules.

Do Have  A  Happy Yule!

Epistles

At this time of year, many of the Christmas cards being trundled around the world, contain, inside their glitter sprinkled fold, an epistle. For what better name is there to describe the annual letter which regales us with the sender's highs and lows since this time last year?

Don't get me wrong, a real letter with a card enclosed, is welcome at any time, for the letter is the main attraction, and the card and additional extra. But once the letter takes second place to the card - it's time to beware. I'm sure you'll know the kind I mean - more like a mail shot than a letter written to an individual! Informative, maybe, but soulless...


However, the Wednesday challenge  on Imaginary Garden today is to write an epistle. They ask us to choose a character or characters from literary history: a fictional character or the person of a poet, author or artist, and to write a poem in letter form (or a letter in poem form), either to, or from the character of your choice.

The Jinksy sense of humour took over at this point!  LOL ♥

Not What It Looks Like

Not a night sky, not a pseudo Christmas tree with candles, not a Jinksy graphic - merely a collection of crochet snowflakes I took to my classmates this morning, to thank them for the fun we've had this term at our creative writing class. I let them cho0se one each.

And over on Fridge Soup, I offered to send one or two to the Blogger who left the cleverest, or funniest caption for the snowman cartoon I'd found on Google.  As ever, you have to be in it to win it, so why not put your thinking caps on? See if you can captivate me with your offering, and I promise to post you a non-melting, everlasting snow flake to say thanks!

Cream Anyone?

cookalmostanything.blogspot.com

Stephen Hayes asked for a recipe for Clotted Cream to go with the scones I showed in the previous post.  So here's one that I'm sure will work, as I once watched, and sampled, cream being made in the same way.

Cornish Clotted Cream Recipe:

To make this you need full cream jersey or a similar milk. The quantity can vary to suit the size basin one uses, with a minimum of 1 litre or 2 pints to make it worthwhile. Pour milk into a basin and leave in a cool place (not freezer) for at least 8 hours until the cream has risen to the top. Then put the basin carefully over a saucepan of boiling water - not letting any water get into the milk. A pudding basin will rest on the rim of the right sized saucepan. Let the water simmer on a slow boil until the cream begins to show a raised ring around the edge and the surface begins to bubble. When sufficiently cooked in about 3/4 - 1 hour take off heat - lift basin carefully and place in a cool place. Skim cream gently off the surface into a dish and enjoy it!


This cream recipe was found here and I've added a recap photo of the scones that rhyme with 'gone ' as Doctor FTSE so kindly explained with this verse:-
 
"I asked the maid in friendly tone
to order me a buttered scone.
The foolish girl has been and gone
and ordered me a buttered scone."  

 I'll email the scone recipe to anyone who asks...and that's still 'scone' as per 'gone', if you're wondering...

And for some glorious sights that were to be found outdoors this week, I suggest you pop HERE  for a Susannah's eye view of her world!

Done To a 'T' (for tea)

This afternoon I suddenly got the urge to make some scones to go with my afternoon cuppa. They are the first ones I've made for years, literally, and I wondered whether I'd have lost the touch!

I think they could have done with a smidgen more kneading, as in retrospect the tops appear a little rougher than usual, but the taste and inner texture were exactly right. From start to finish they took about twenty five minutes - and that can't be bad!

The aerial view doesn't do justice to the luscious depth of these quick-fix scones. By dividing the dough in this way, rather than cutting into rounds, there are no oddments to reshape, as these 'seconds' tend to end up tougher, because of the extra handling.

Every portion is ready to go into the oven at once.

All that's missing is some jam and cream and seven Blogpals to join me in eating them!

I'll email the recipe to anyone who asks...

Ever Hopeful

My garden comes to kiss my feet, when it thinks I am going to set it to rights! LOL

Imaginary Garden  with real toads called us to its aid, this Open Link Monday. You can tell my garden is begging me to work in it, too!

Should This Go On Fridge Soup?!

Maybe as the one that got away? Hehehe! This post is coming hot off the presses- or even, hot off my gas stove. How many of you have never been faced with a similar ghostly image on the bottom of a saucepan which has burnt dry, but whose contents  have not gone beyond the edible point? If you can honestly say 'No' to my question, I salute you.

However, here's how today's picture post came about...

I diced six ounces of vegetables - marrow, leek, onion and tomato, to be precise - covered them in water and popped in a 1/4 of a stock cube, before setting my ringer for a time when I judged the veg would be cooked, and I would be able to adjust flavour/seasoning etc before consuming my lunchtime soup du jour.

However, before the ringer alerted my ears, my nose alerted my brain. All was not well.  I hurried towards the kitchen. With a muttered "Oh, No!", my hand reached for the steam-emitting saucepan lid even as the ringer rang...

With great presence of mind, I scooped the vegetables (which now resembled pulpy ratatouille) into a dish (after I'd tasted a sample to make sure they had no lingering burnt twang) only to discover this wonderful image on the base of my pan. With hot saucepan in the sink, instead of  turning the tap on it, I dashed for my camera to record its beauty! LOL

Perhaps I should think about writing a 'How NOT To Cook Book'...

Due to the amazing colours I achieved, I'm going to link this to Sepia Saturday! Hehehe! And now, to I Saw Sunday,  as well...
To make the most from the least , I've just written a Sunday160 for Monkey Man, as he chose cooking for his subject today, too, but of the successful variety!

Cooking is an ancient art with plenty of scope for accidental mistakes. The saving grace is laughter. Its spice can rescue any recipe with the magic of humour!

Still Our Dad

Only much younger! Following on from last week's Sepia Saturday, where, in a comment, Nancy asked for more of a background story, I've found something I wrote shortly before I started blogging, and give it here now, with apologies for its great length! I called it Nautical Notes.

                   My Dad was in the Royal Navy for 22 years, so I think the sea was in my blood from birth.   He was born in Birmingham, and because he was a very gifted  artist, he wanted to go to art college, but his Mum said 'No', so into the Navy he went, at the tender age of 16…

I remember the lovely, tarry smell of his naval uniforms, but I didn't like the attendant cigarette and smoke smell.  Sailors used to get cheap cigarettes, and he used to have one hanging out of the corner of his mouth nearly all day long, when I was little, with resultant hacking cough first thing in the morning, that I listened to in horror whenever he was home.

For years after the war, the annual trip round the Dockyard during Navy Days was a regular family outing, until one year, when there was a submarine in dock that was open to the public. We queued up for ages for the privilege of getting escorted on a tour through this amazing vessel. I remember it being somewhat claustrophobic because of the limited space inside, but my Bro was even more affected than me, and caused a great commotion when he got panic-stricken and Mum insisted on getting him off, or out, rather,  half way through the trip. It caused havoc with the one way flow of traffic the submariners had so carefully planned. You try going up against a crowd of  moving people in the confines of a submarine's tiny passageways!

We used to enjoy the Searchlight Tattoos at the Marine Barracks in Eastney, though, as well as demonstrations of the Gun Run on Whale Island. Several teams from local barracks would compete against one another, with the victors going on to compete at the Royal Tournament in London.

Dad actually  used to be a member of  a Field Gun Crew, and I still have a medal awarded to him the year his team won. Over a measured distance, sailors have to race with a huge gun mounted in a gun carriage, dismantle it and take it across a 'chasm' with the help of slings and pulleys, then reassemble the whole thing and race on the outer side of the course, dragging everything back to the start, when the gun has to be fired to prove it still works. Very exciting to watch, and quite dangerous to take part in. Other nautical sports, like tug of war and rowing, were also activities he enjoyed as respites from the more arduous duties of the engine room, where he was a Chief Stoker PO.

He served on destroyers or minesweepers in the war, and when the ship had to stop engines to keep silent, whenever there was a threat of hovering submarines, if he was off duty, he'd sit and draw, and I still have some amazing sketches he did under those trying conditions.
Apparently, he used to be the wardroom barber, too, and I can still feel the pinch of his clippers running up the back of my neck to trim wispy bits of hair when I was about eleven, and had suffered a disastrous hair cut at Treloggan's, a hair dressers in one of the side roads off North End.

Sometimes the men in the mess took turns with the cooking,  and 'Brum', as he was known, was always welcomed, when it was his turn, as he was a great cook. His suety-duff or spotted dick became the stuff of legends. He did try to join the Navy as a cook, but they didn't need any more at the time he enrolled, so he ended up in the engine room.

He must have retained a lingering soft spot for enormous engines, for he always took me to see the engine rooms of the Isle of Wight or Gosport ferries whenever we travelled on them. Best of all, many years later, was the trip on the old paddle steamer, The Waverley. I peered at its gleaming pistons and breathed in the hot, oily fumes, and remembered childhood. 

 N.B. Dad never went to sea in a submarine!! Some comment(at)ors seem to have got the wrong end of the stick!

Our Dad

I'm still finding gems among the pictures my brother took way back when. Many of them need painstaking touching up, due to various hazzards of travelling to the other side of the world at some point in their existence. So when I found this portrait today, I sorted its annoying, white dots and now here's Dad, unspotted! It's a wonderful character study, and I couldn't resist offering it up for Sepia Saturday, without more ado, as the 'hundreds' (?) of tiny blemishes I removed make it a fitting tribute to their 100th post!

*Smiles*

                 
Thanks to an email from the lovely Marian this evening, I discovered this happy clip, just in time for the Wednesday mid-point-doldrums of this rather grey-gloom week. Enjoy!

Late Edition Extra ! Now it's Sunday, I had to have another look/listen to this, as I suddenly realised it should go well on Susannah's I Saw Sunday, as a tongue in cheek addition to the day! LOL Sorry, folks...

Another Number Seven Today

Over on Alias Jinksy, yesterday's post brought into focus  the number seven, so it seems fitting this Monday morning, the seventh of November, to carry on the same train of thought. It is a significant date for me, for I married my Mr Smith on that day in 1964.

As is the way with many things in life, it didn't exactly turn out the way we imagined, and it ended in divorce, but not until after twenty seven and a half years - we didn't give up lightly!  From this point, until his death in 2000, we were better friends, if you can understand that?

This morning, while reading a poem by Lawrence Durrell entitled 'Bitter Lemons', four lines in particular set me thinking. The major factor which ended our marriage, was lack of communication, and, as often happens when you least expect it, my muse prodded me to write a poem on the subject, which I share with you now.

Non-Communication

Your silence echoes in my head,
circles round the words, like lead
encircling stained glass shapes
of thoughts unspoken. What makes
depression's dark descend,
brings conversations to an end
in anger's fizzing, flurried flame
that douses my soul, damns my name?

Better leave the rest unsaid
keep its calms like tears unshed
where the moon's cool fevers burn
in an island of bitter lemons.

These last four lines, although shuffled, are credited to Lawrence Durrell, with my thanks, and may be found in their right order in 'Bitter Lemons.' Sorry I can't find the poem on the internet, to give you a link... 

Late Edition, Friday... Doctor FTSE has kindly written it out as a comment, which I now copy for you here.

 "In an island of bitter lemons
where the moon's cool fevers burn
from the dark globes of the fruit,
and the dry grass underfoot
tortures memory and revises
habits half a lifetime dead.
Better leave the rest unsaid.
Beauty. Darkness. Vehemence -
Let the old sea-nurses keep
their memorials of sleep
and the Greek sea's curly head
keeps its calms like tears unshed,
keeps its calms like tears unshed."

Poppies In Winter?

They will be blooming in advance of Remembrance Sunday next week, though I've  only seen ones on television so far this year. November has many associations with death - think of Halloween and the Day of The Dead, as All Saint's Day is known in some countries.

So it is no surprise to see that Tess at Magpie Tales has chosen a photograph of a tombstone for her prompt today, nor will it be a surprise that I've chosen to play with its colours before  writing the following tanka, in suitably lugubrious vein. Even a Jinksy clown has serious moments.

And we remember
at the dying of the year
those dead in battles
long since past, in far off lands -
but closer to home, this day.

Kissin' Cousins

Thanks to my brother for this picture!

Okay, even the best photographer has an off day! I forgive my Bro for cutting off our children's feet in this one, taken aboard a Hoseason's cabin cruiser on the Norfolk Broads in 1973. 

The girls look happy, but it seems my son was not quite as cheerful. It could be because his yellow life jacket was slightly different from those of the girls, and it had been a struggle to get it over his ears. It had turned them bright red in the process, and caused a few tears.

I'm glad to say they soon recovered their normal colour, and remain firmly attached to his head to this very day.

Once again, it's a colourful offering from me for Sepia Saturday this week.

Clock This!

It's an appropriate title in more ways than one on this day when the  clocks get turned back by an hour.

Instead of half six this morning, I was up and about when the clock faces were telling me it was five thirty. 

Now here's a less than perfect snap, taken  at 5.30 this afternoon, and what happened to the twelve hours in between?! Not a lot, as a good portion of it was taken up by my sneezing and blowing my nose, accompanied by sporadic swallowing of mugs of hot, fruit tea to ease the tickle of my tonsils.

This week's creative writing class came with a free gift of a cold, I think, as the tutor complained of feeling one degree under as we clustered round the tables, wielding our latest magnu(s)m* opus. Or opusses, or opi...What is the Latin plural? Tell me somebody, do.  * thanks RWP.

Anyhow, several of the time pieces scattered about the house are clever enough to  adjust themselves. But not this one. It came as a free gift with some catalogue purchase, years ago. It sits atop a wooden, six drawer storage unit, full of Useful Things, which live beside my computer. It objected to my disturbing it, as usual; I have got used to its complaints. 

After adjusting the hands, I popped its plastic dome back on, but could tell it wasn't happy, as the second hand went on a go slow, before shuddering to a grinding halt. 

"New battery needed!", says I, hopefully but unconvinced. Then I noticed the short hand had no control at all - it fell from the fifteen to the twenty five mark in a flurry of movement. So what did Jinksy do? Why, unpicked as much of it as possible, and reassembled it in reverse order. End result? Success! Its happy quartz tick is tocking merrily, and its 'arms' have now found enough strength to keep its hands under control!

I think this will have to link to Susannah's 'I Saw Sunday', don't you?

Exodus?

Today, I wanted to drop a coat into the cleaners, but was told they were not taking any more incoming goods, in readiness for the whole business to be shipped right across to the other side of Havant, close to the enormous, revamped Tesco supermarket.

Havant itself is a dying town. Every time I wander around, there seems to be another shop that’s closed, its windows plastered with glossy photographs of what a shop could look like, if there was one still there!   It makes the place appear attractive by disguising the empty premises, but it makes shopping  a bit of a nightmare.

Everything is being geared to the needs of car owners. Little old ladies like me have to like it or lump it – or perhaps that should read ‘learn to yomp it’, for I can see hiking boots becoming compulsory footwear for shopping…Unless you want to go to Tesco's, when you can take one of these...

...which happens to fit with today's Sepia Saturday subject!

Productive Procrastination?

I guess by now, nobody is ever surprised at what peculiar subjects I choose to blog about from time to time. Here's one such. Having begun tipping out the cupboard under my stairs on Friday with a view to a massive recyle-or-bin-it project this weekend, I'm now going to confess. A large portion of my Saturday was involved in - ready for this? Shortening a scarf. There... if you were in doubt as to my sanity, this is probably a clincher in the thumbs down department.

This crochet creation I manufactured a year or two back had  s t r e t c h e d to an unprecedented length - enough to be a danger to life and limb if it unwound itself  to hang down on either side of my neck, instead of remaining neatly wrapped around it.

So, despite having a hall floor dotted with heaps of 'stuff', I decided action was needed. I laboriously unknotted the  hand tied fringe, carefully sliced about eight inches worth of stitchery from the remaining length and re-attached the now wonky looking tassels. Anything, in fact, to avoid dealing with the 'stuff'.

Today, I have not only avoided it again by constructing this blogpost, but for good measure, have also opted out of ironing, cooking and cutting my hair... Wonder what else I will manage to ignore before bedtime? Procrastination is an art I believe I have perfected...

I've decided to belatedly link this to Susannah's I saw Sunday, for it will certainly make all the other contributors think themselves so industrious, by comparison! Well done, Blog Pals!

Well, Well, Well!

Some of you may remember my earlier post about a free newspaper that lost the fight with my letterbox a couple of weeks back? The saga continued last Thursday, for I caught the paperboy in the act of cramming the next edition through.

I quickly opened the door, and called to him "Cooee! Can I have a word please?" as I beckoned him back to my pathway. Calmly, and pleasantly, in the circumstances, I gave a swift demonstration of how his life would be easier if he followed my simple method of folding the paper widthwise to make a short, stiff bundle , easy to push through the toughest letterbox flap.

He was a fairly good looking youngster - but spoilt by the scowl on his face, and his grumpy "So what?"attitude. "It's only a free paper, what does it matter?"

"True, but you are getting paid to deliver it, and the people who advertise in it are paying for those ads. Besides, you'll find it far more satisfying if you always try to do your best, no matter how ordinary you think the task is that you're given." He went off muttering.

But this evening, this picture shows he may have been listening despite himself. Of course, I shall have to look out next Thursday, to see if it is the same lad - I hope it will be...Then I can thank him.

Old And Battle Scarred?

I'm talking about the photo, although probably I would now fit into that category, if I'm honest. However, this is another of my Bro's 'Candid Camera' shots which has survived the rigours of its trip to New Zealand, and its immersion in his flooded basement at some point. It's badly discoloured and spotted, but I've gently touched up the faces, so that my daughter and I don't look as though we have some kind of white measles.

I was searching for a suitable picture for Sepia Saturday this morning, and happened upon this relic before looking at the subject they'd chosen. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I'd actually chosen a compatible theme - sort of. 'Wars, cooking, chairs or fires', were the subjects on offer.

Fires I can discount totally - the one in Mum and Dad's sitting room would be behind you, as you look at the screen! But how's this for the rest?

• I was born in the war.
• There's a high chair  and a piano stool in view.
• What looks like remains of a Christmas Pudding sit on a dish in the foreground, in the shambolic aftermath of some large family gathering.

The cards and presents on the top of the piano suggest the Festive Season.The year has to have been 1968, when daughter was just one year old (bless!) and still tiny enough to wear a matinée jacket she'd had since birth!

On the tray of the highchair, that striped, fluffy thing was Wol, without whom we never went anywhere. He was made from strips of sheepskin glued onto a roll of corrugated cardboard, and had a dear little owl face with two large beady glass eyes and a cheeky expression, if only you could have seen it in this photo.

You will understand the colours are totally false when I tell you, at that age, daughter's hair was the brightest of bright copper - like a new penny- while mine was never more than mouse...