General Chat

I just looked at the meaning of Arcadia, it says ' a place of rustic innocence and simple quiet pleasure ' and it was . :-)

Yes Mel its a little river and we use to have wooden planks to drive over ,when I could see dad coming down the hill I would run to meet him and ride on the running board of the car ,just over the right hand side of the river was a well and beyond that was dad's allotment ,we use to have geese running about and I hated them as they chased me and pulled my hair .
When we had the house it was called Arcadia .

We nipped out to Tesco's and then called in to see son for a coffee had a good chat and came home, nowhere to park to go into Boots so we'll walk up tomorrow.

Morning all,

Cloudy here this morning and its 18 degrees .

Shopping day so I must get my box and sack barrow out so the driver can load it for me.

I opened a bottle of tonic water last night and the top was so tight I had a job to get it off. This morning the two middle fingers on my right hand really ache and are very stiff. I know how I did it and must remember not to do it like that again. They say we learn by our mistakes and its true.

Mandy the house looks lovely and do I see a little brook running by that you had to have a little bridge to drive in over? A lovely place to grow up in.

Woke at 6am for the loo and went back to bed and woke again at 9.12am so I am all behind today.

Gosh It is lovely Mandy, I could live there (if I could afford it). Still it is sold as no longer on the market.

Morning all ,

Cloudy here this morning but should get out and be about 23 degrees, then tomorrow should be up to 27 .
I have two bags to go to the clothing bank which we'll take today and I need to call in to tescos to fetch a few bits .
If I can park in town on the way back I can go I to boots for our tablets ,it's market day today but last week we only had the fish man ,I did read that they are reducing the cost of having a market stall I suppose they are hoping to get some market traders back but I think its a bit late they should have done that years ago before they all decided to go .

A day of memories then Anng make them all happy ones <3

Mel we had a willow tree in the front of the house ,dad made me a swing from some rope with a wooden seat and hung it in the willow tree and mum use to stand my pram ubder it and i would lay watching the leaves swaying in the breeze ,that tree has gone now but there is another over to the right of the house ,have a Google of the house its Brook Cottage Washbridge dereham .

Lots of memories today. It would have been our 64th wedding anniversary.

Good morning all. 15 degrees here and the sun is just coming up. Yesterday was a lovely day. I did manage to spend half an hour pottering in the garden, cutting off some of the large tomato leaves so the fruit could get more sun, and cutting down my large fuchsias because I think they have been attacked by fuchsia Gall mite. I wondered what was wrong with them as the plants have hardly flowered this year and Monty don showed us gall mite. I am hoping it will die off in the winter, if not the plants will have to come up next year,

I can't imagine what it would be like to live in the area that you grew up in. I have lived in 4 different counties, one of those twice. We/I have lived in my first home until marriage 20 years, then first year of marriage same town four different flats, Since then; six different houses. Hampshire, (two towns), Essex, Gloucestershire, Bedfordshire/Herts border, Gloucestershire. Longest house lived in is my current one (32 years). The minus to all the moving, and to being an ex Royal Navy wife, is that friends are scattered.

Picked Blackberries this afternoon and took them up to my neighbour with some apples. Then went and picked more plums and rang my other neighbour from the plum tree which is not far behind her grden. Had to walk round the front as I could'nt get past the stinging nettles to he back gate which opens onto my field. Went in and had a chat and a look round her garden which she has been changing this year. They have grassed the raised beds up the top of the garden and she now has dark green rectangles in the grass.

I think we all had such freedom when we were young. Behind the houses in Roding lane Souyth past the shops there was rough ground that a friend and I would spend hours. it back onto gardens of the house in the road and one had the most enormus willow tree and we played under that as the branches reached the ground. That was one of our dens over there. Another was under an Elder tree growing by the little stream that ran through and that too was a favorite. I always wanted to live in a house with a stream running through the garden but never have.

Evening all,

It's been a lovely day little bit of cloud at times but warmer than yesterday .
We weeded the front garden this morning and cut the grass ,talking to our neighbour and she said we have a hedgehog with three little ones coming into the gardens ,I had seen one on the camera but not the little ones ,she said it was about ten at night when she saw them so she put some of her cat food out and they gobbled it all up
This afternoon Colin had his hearing test and has his new hearing aids in ,they seem much better than his old ones .

I had a lovely childhood running over the meadows picking the wild flowers and I would be gone all day never gave it a thought as to what the time was mum or dad would come after me when it was bedtime ,I would take my jamjar on a string to catch tge stickle backs in the little ditches that ran by the lane beside the house and was always told not to go over the other side of the river where the bog was ,I remember mum sinking in when she was picking the watercress that grew near the river .
I had a Google and the house where I was born came up as it had been for sale ,it seems strange looking at the rooms in the house and it's now called Brook Cottage
The house is only a five minute walk from where we are now and I've passed it so many times walking the dog and shown the grandchildren the house .
It's also just down a hill from the school where son now works and where I and Colin went to school and son to ,seems strange he now working at the school he went to.

I keep thinking this is Sunday, it will be a short week this week with the holiday day, must remember ths bin goes out a day later .

Afternoon All,

It's been sunny all day here despite a wet forecast. OH was out weeding the front for an hour before I got up and, apart from digging up a cordyline that is making a vigorous comeback and a self set Buddlia, plus digging up a few more plants I'm moving into the back garden he's finished the weeding there and it looks a lot better. He's gone to a local match now. He rang me to say old age is catching up with him and he's going to sit in the stand as his hip is hurting!

Even when I was in my 20s we rarely went out on bank holidays, maybe just to the county show to watch the events and see in the tents. Since I met OH we have never bothered. I hate crowds and queuing, he hates traffic jams and would rather go to the quieter footie matches.

Yes, there were lots of things my friend and I didn't tell our parents because we feared not being allowed to go to places again if we did. As a girl about 7-8 while playing on my own on the big hill near where we lived I saw a man I thought was having a fit lying among the bracken and gorse bushes. I just ran by quickly and it was only years later I realised what he was doing! Mum never got to know about that! Also a friend and I decided to collect some blackberries we saw growing in a wood. We didn't know it was private land as a big gate was open. We ran for our lives when we heard a gamekeeper shouting and running towards us. We managed to outrun him but never told our mums. We never told our parents we used to dare each other to wade through the water in our wellies into the old air raid shelters at the side of a factory not far from where we lived and go round the corners in them into the dark. It's a wonder we didn't pick something nasty up in the stagnant water.

When I occasionally stayed at my grandmother's, even at the age of 5-8 I would just go off and play where I liked. There was a meadow near the houses where she lived and she would get me a butterfly net and send me off there. I also used it to go fishing in the canal at the bottom of her road. I would be told to keep away from any men and not accept any sweets and to be home before dark. When we moved to the city it was to be home before the street lights came on.

I'm having trouble with the Asda site on my usual browser because of Asda's cloudflare security system they are using now. It let me in today and I thought the issue was solved, but then when I tried to add groceries it blocked me from the site altogether. Now it says to contact the site owner, so another job for the 'to do' list! It works fine on another browser that seems to not have cloudflare, so it's a bit odd!

I see Sven has now passed away.

Still great out plenty of the yellow stuff and now its 19 degrees.

Just going to put a wash on the line. I have fed the birds and cleaned the loo. Hoover next on the list.

Morning girls,

Nice bright sunny morning here too and pc says 16 degrees and mostly sunny. There's still a bit of wind as I can see the trees moving, not been out yet as I had a lie in this morningtill 9.15am.

Nothing planned here either and we never went out on bank holidays either Anng. I shall probable do some painting of my minitures as I need some pretty bits on Ebay.

Good morning all nice bright sunny morning here but only 12 degrees. Absolutely nothing planned for today so I shall see what the day brings. would not want to be out on the roads today, If everyone who headed West on Friday is heading home later today, the roads will be chaotic.

Oh yes, as teens we would meet down by the creek and the boys would jump out of a disused warehouse into the creek.

The things we did when the parents did'nt know where we were or what we were doing.

I too lived in a bungalow off Roding lane and then the river was on the other side of the road past the allotments. As teens we met down the river and one of the gang had a wind up record player so we could have music down there. We had a large thick rope one of the boys had put up in the big tree and it had a tyre on the end so we could swing on it. Sometimes we we meet by the bridge nearby and just laze around on the grass and talk. Many hours of fun was had by the river.

She's been in touch with me today. Father has cancer so she's been tied up but will send me the extra postage.

When I look back on my childhood taking it from about the age of seven or eight, I had quite a bit of freedom.
We lived in a bungalow built in 1939 bought by my parents new and a bit battered by the war.. our estate was on the edge of fields and farmland that spread for miles in all directions with the addition of HMS Collingwood and Fort F******.
From the age of seven I had a friend whose bungalow was right next to the first field, we were allowed to roam, play build dens all over this field just going home for midday dinner and tea.
As I got older with friends of whom there were quite a lot, I roamed a bit further making for a lily pond by the farm and various other small ponds for tadpoles and newts taken home to be looked at and subsequently released back into ponds.

We often used to meet up with other friends and one odd meeting place was the small (but large to us) crater left when a bomb fell nearby. I can still remember that we sat on an old trailer dumped in there.

I do remember that I was always warned not to speak to strange men, so there must, even then have been concern in that respect.


As we got older wandering got more adventurous I remember aged twelve or thirteen getting into Fort F****** and chatting to soldiers sunbathing on their
break. No my parents never knew.

I'm late on parade today. It was chilly first thing and I needed a jumper but it warmed up by mid-morning and has been quite pleasant all day, apart from the strong winds this afternoon. We had an earlier lunch than usual and I didn't do my usual Sunday roast. Instead we had a veggie quiche with lots of extra roast veg, followed by strawberries and cream. Very tasty it was too.

This afternoon we went for tea and cake with our friends M & V. We have seen them a fair bit recently but always in a group so it was nice to have a chat with just the four of us. There are things we would tell each other that we wouldn't want to broadcast to everyone in the group. OH offered to get the car out but it is well under a mile to their house so I said we would walk. We didn't so much walk as battle into the wind going and get blown along from behind coming back. I was wearing quite a thin blouse so I was glad I had taken a jacket but at least I got a bit of exercise. All in all, it was a very pleasant afternoon.

Your early childhood, before you moved to a town, sounds wonderful as well Annx. Your OH is working hard in your garden. You won't dare complain when he's off to more football matches as he's earned lots of brownie points ;-)

I don't feel I have done very much at all today but I am definitely not going to start h/w or gardening now. I think I'll have a go at some of the crosswords and puzzles that come with the Saturday and Sunday papers.

Afternoon All,

It was a windy morning but has calmed down now and the sun's gone in.

Glynis your childhood was one I would have loved, especially with the sea nearby. I had a look online at the village and it is still just as you say with the sea at each end of the road through it. It still looks very unspoiled and natural as well, away from any crowds. I love the Gower peninsular in Wales, which has kept a lot of it's wildness too and have stayed there a couple of times. I lived in sight of the Cannock Chase forest and opposite a farm I would play at till I was about 9 years old. A school in the next village I'd walk on a public footpath across fields to. It had two classrooms with 15 in my class and outside soil toilets that stank to high heaven. Take a breath, hold your nose while you dashed in and were as quick as you could be before dashing out to breathe again! The smell of bracken and pine trees was everywhere. Then we moved to a city, almost at the end of a road with a dual carriageway at the end of it. I'd never seen a dual carriageway before and the noise at night from traffic kept me awake after living somewhere quiet. The classes at the new school were twice as big as I was used to and I'd never seen so many children. Play then was at a local park like Vera, but a friend and I would walk along the canal and river a 15 minute walk away and swimming baths were nearby and a cinema, well it was called a Kinema. It was new having pavements after being used to pea gravel paths with grass edges and they were great for roller skating on.

I will look at bulb sizes AnnG and the varieties, as I would like some bigger flowered ones, so I'll read the labels. Lodges can be very comfortable can't they? We like them since staying in one at a golf course near Exeter and then in Cornwall. We had a bad one in Norfolk that wasn't clean, but mosquitos were a pain there as it was next to a lake, so we wouldn't book a lodge near water again.

OH went out and pulled the remnants of weeds I weedkilled a fortnight ago out of the gravel this morning so it's all looking much better on the front now. There's still plenty to do and he's started pulling out the cotswold stone rocks that edge the borders there and that we will replace with slate rocks. The old rocks quickly discoloured and split with the frost but it is over 20 years since I set them in place..

Yes she's paid.

Suns out here but it is very very windy. 15 degrees so nt very warm out. Barometer has gone up today.