52 Week Challenge - week by week through 2013

[Sheneval]

VC - I am surprised - I thought you would have fitted in very well on any allotment site but if they were a serious lot probably not - I suspect there are a fair number of serious people on this site as well - I just happen to be surrounded by a few of nutters who enjoy a good laugh with a fair number of others, male and female, who enjoy a natter.

My Welsh neighbour did have a problem last year with a scantily clad young female on the next plot and he got sunburnt down one side and dug the same spot continuously for hours on end so that he was nearly halfway to Australia. I understand she was advised to quit her plot on medical grounds.

She was told if she didn't, the old git on the next plot was going to have a heart attack

[bearded bloke]

I was that ^^ old git

[Sheneval]

BB - I was very upset when she quit as I had booked a seat in his plot and I got his agreement before he started charging for tickets - I agreed I would bring the beer as long as he supplied the binoculars

[veggiechicken]

We had a flasher on our site - and he was one of the plot holders Don't know why he bothered He was evicted

[bramble]

Lasts week challenge completed. Tidied and planted up the graves of my loved ones and attended the mass for the deceased in the cemetary.
This week i intend to lift all the paving in my roman circle and pull all the weeds to make sure i get all the roots.
A very tedious job but it needs to be done.

[bramble]

What will I do in July.
Well my grandkids are now on their school holidays so for this month (July) and indeed August i will be trying to bring them out and about on the days i will be looking after them.
We try to take them to the zoo, picnics in the playground, the animal farm, the viking splash, the air display and anywhere else we can think of to make sure they have a good time and hopefully they will have good memories of their summer holidays with their nan and grandad.

[Hazel at the Hill]

Week 26 Challenge - sort through all my Hunter ancestry papers to enable me to respond to the query by the Australian Historian.

Papers now sorted so Challenge completed yesterday and I left a message for the Archivist at the Golf Club to say I was ready to talk.

Interestingly I found a further 3 relationship errors in the Tom Morris of St Andrews book - it is a great read but I think they must have been given and accepted false information as, whilst the Hunter ancestry is convoluted, the records are accessible - the information may have originated from Ancestry as some people put a lot of tripe on there.

Will post full list of Completed Challenges later today.

What a brilliant subject to get your teeth into! Just like the best school stuff - interesting, challenging, engaging and ultimately putting some other begger to rights!

Actually, I take that back about schools - it's such a shame that history lessons are wasted on the young. I remember thinking 'what on earth is the relevance of this??' when we were looking at Norman architecture, and Roman mosaics.

I'm fascinated by it all now, of course - not that I've done much about my interest in historical things (and my brain still struggles with ye olde history and can't quite get to grips with too far back, so the Romans are still a bit of a moot point).

But I'm tickled pink by the thought that through my very own front door here there walked in and out one Joseph Brookfield and his wife; 120 years ago. Amazing.

[bearded bloke]

Well it took 3 1/2 hours to move it about 50 feet ,but it is where she wanted it & was last night heard to be enjoying herself

[veggiechicken]

I hope it was upstairs!! Pianos sound so much better upstairs
I used to have a Boudoir grand piano and when we moved house it was the first thing to be loaded onto the removal van - which also meant it was the last thing off! I remember the men staggering up to the front door with the piano muttering, please, please don't say you want this upstairs

[bearded bloke]

We live in a bungalow VC,but the drive is about 6 feet lower than the floor level with curved steps leading up to the door,scaffold boards & waffle boards (G4 will know ) to roll it on,recovery strops & shackles attached to a Yale pullchain attached to a tree strop around a scaffold pole driven into the ground beside the front step,one winching & one guiding is the safe but slow way for a pair of near sixty year olds to move a piano uphill

[Sheneval]

one winching & one guiding is the safe but slow way for a pair of near sixty year olds

BB - Long time since I heard this word used but Congratulations - at 64 years old 'winching' is a major achievement in my book

[veggiechicken]

Do you mean "wenching"?

[Sheneval]

Hazel - I was never greatly interested in History at school and generally got poor marks for same until the last exam when, after a row from my father for a poor mark from an earlier exam, I studied for 3 nights before the exam and passed with an 89.

I am lucky that my Hunters from Prestwick were Freemen there; according to local tradition the Freedoms were awarded by Robert the Bruce for services rendered after Bannockburn. It means there are great variety of records going back hundreds of years available for study.

When my eldest grandson (11) was doing his Roman Project I took him and his younger brother to the Roman Baths at Bearsden - not only was it was very interesting but he got an A+ - this year it was Victorian Children so I took him to Scotland Street School which has a Victorian Classroom - again he got an A+

Next year I think it is World War 2 so he can include the fact that Hitler committed suicide the day I was born and his Great Great Uncle, (one of those Churchill recruited from Oxford during the War) was involved in planning the Normandy Landings. I'll need to work out best place for him to visit but his younger brother should be doing the Romans so think I'll take him to Vindolanda, (Hadrian's Wall) -it will also give him a train trip as he is train mad.

House History is a great subject - I found my earliest arrivals in Monkton Village buying their house in 1811 - unfortunately this house was demolished in the mid 1900s but the cottages round the corner owned by their children are nearly all still standing and I got a tour of one of them a few years back

[Sheneval]

VC - Quite right - I forgot that the Glasgow pronunciation and the spelling did not always match

[bramble]

Conjures up a brill pic B.B.