Cheese Rolls and Marmalade...

This term cookery club has started and Miss M loves it. Last week was the first session so I did not have to be at the school to collect her until 4.30pm. This is strange in so many ways. I worry that I will nod off to sleep and be late so on Sunday night that was my nightmare. I didn't nod off and I was in the school yard when she bounced out of the door.
"What did you make?" I asked as we walked down the path, "Cheese rolls and marmalade" she replied. I managed not to stop dead and stare at her. "Really? was is nice?" I asked, thinking that my mother would be proud of my self control.
"I liked most of it but not the mar...marmalade." "Good" said I, "Mummy will be interested too."
The conversation went onto what someone else had done and how her best friend had forgotten it was cookery club so she had gone home at 3.30 with her Grandad.
When Mummy came home from work she was very intrigued to hear about the cheese roll and marmalade but she said she would ask the teacher on Wednesday after Rainbows. It seems that the teacher's little girl goes to Rainbows too.
I waited eagerly for Wednesday evening and took Miss M over to the hall. Mummy arrived home from work and then popped across the road to collect her.

When she came back she was grinning from ear to ear. It was cheese whirls and marmite. Such an easy mistake to make when you are nearly seven with a head full of fairies.

This week was easy - pitta bread pizza. As you can see from the picture she didn't manage to eat all of it in school so she had to finish it at home. Ham, pineapple, cheese and tomato and she ate all of it except the "red lumps, Grandma, I don't like the red lumps." She picked those off and gave them to the chickens, the rest she ate

A little bit Spooky

doorstop

I was looking for something in the Fornow room last week, you know the room I mean don't you? It's the one where everything goes because you say "I'll put this in here, for now".
So, I was looking for some cut out cats. I had cut them out when I was still sewing. They were going to be doorstops when they were sewn up and stuffed but I hadn't got that far with them and the pieces were languishing in a bag in a box somewhere in the Fornow room and I had this idea of using the cutouts for applique on cushion covers as presents for Christmas - I know, I know but I like to be prepared.
I didn't find them, but what I did find was a camera that had belonged to my mother. it is one of those 110 cartridge cameras that came along after the fantastic Instamatic cameras that I loved.
I checked it and to my surprise there was a film in it. To wind it on to the end I had to take the remaining pictures - around 10 of them - and then I could remove the cartridge from the camera. I was going to look online to see if there was somewhere to send it but before that I asked my son-in-law if he could take it into the camera shop in town and see if they still developed that type of film. He said he would take it on Saturday.

Mum age 22

However, due to circumstances he couldn't take it until Monday morning. I bet you are wondering just when I will come to the point aren't you? Stick with me because this is good. Well, I think so.
He came back from town with the film and said that none of the places did that kind of film any more and the best camera shop in town suggested that we look online. So I did.
I found several places and they were all quite expensive - around £25 per film but there was one, Honiton Photographic Ltd, that was an eBay shop that was £9.99.
I took a look at them but there was no feedback so I was a bit wary, you just have to be don't you? They had a website so I took a look and there they had a phone number so I called it.
I talked to a very nice man called Andrew who told me about the company and I explained that I had found the film and would like to know if there is anything on it and he said that it was a bit spooky because on Saturday he had set up the eBay shop for just that reason. He said the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling because it was such a coincidence.
I totally spooked him out when I explained that I found the film last week and my son-in-law should have taken it to town on Saturday which was why I didn't bother to look online before. I clicked on the buy now button and today the film was posted to Honiton and as soon as it gets there Andrew will develop it and send me the prints back post free. I wonder if the pictures on the camera will still be ok, it will be exciting to find out...

Anyone read blogger for dummies?

I have noticed on a few blogs here on blogger that some people have tabs at the top of their blog and a reader can click on them to see other pages and blogs by the same person.
I thought they were a good idea and I would like some.
I can't work out  correction I can't find out how to do it so now, of course, I simply must HAVE those tabs at the top of my main blog that link to my other blogs. Does anyone know how and would be prepared to email me step by step destructions?
I an right on the verge of drumming my heels and holding my breath until I go blue in the face and it is just because I don't know how to do it. Daft? me?
Well, I have been ill. I had the cold. You know that Christmas cold? there was only one copy in this house this time and even though I told Mr M he could keep it all for himself he simply had to share it. Wasn't that kind?
He had it for New Year and I received the first draft of my share on Wednesday last. By Saturday I managed to creep down stairs and huddle, wrapped in misery and tissues, on the settee. By Sunday night the worst was over and today I am improving every hour. My nose is still a neon red and very tender to touch but the cotton wool has gone from between my ears and the TV sound is no longer fuzzy and I don't need it to be on full volume just to hear it.

Our road, with just two of the horse chestnut trees left
in the school grounds. they were planted in 1910

In other news I won a prize on Wednesday. There was a Start Your Family Tree Week competition run by Brightsolid, the company that run Scotlandspeople and FindMyPast.co.uk and Genesreunited. They wanted stories that linked the place you are now with an ancestor - or something like that - so I wrote about the house I live in now being opposite the gates of the school my father went to when he was 5. I told the story of his stepmother and the nun - I will save it for storytelling Sunday - and I was told that I have won a year's subscription to the British Newspaper Archive!
This is just so good! For those who don't do family history it might not seem too exciting to have access to the digitised pages of more than 10,000 newspapers. Some of them dating back to the 1700s. Trust me, if you have ancestors like mine who were actors and travelled about a lot then access to the local papers from small towns all over Great Britain and Ireland is essential and prior to November 2011 I would have had to travel to Colindale in North London to look at each and every paper individually. Oh, and to do that I would need to know which papers to want to look at in the first place.
I was fortunate to have been in on the beta testing of the website and I knew then that it was going to take me a long time and cost a lot of money to get every scrap of information. Now I have a year, paid for, to transcribe all those adverts and reviews. Just bloomin' marvellous.

Story Telling Sunday - Checking it Twice

I am changing the names to protect the innocent here, and this is a summer story but it is the one that has been clog dancing in my mind for a week so here we go.

me and my cousin

When I was a teenager I went on holiday with my Aunty Mary, Uncle Bill and cousins Eve, May and Charlie. It happened a lot in our family - I am an only child in a huge family of cousins - "company for the girls" was how Aunty Mary put it. This was a posh holiday in a caravan not like with Mum and Dad in a tent!
There was a ritual that Aunty Mary used to go through every time she left the house. She would lock the door, walk down the steps to the pavement and then go back up the steps, unlock the door and just check that the gas stove was totally turned off. Then she would lock the door, go down the steps, go back up the steps and tug on the letterbox (In the UK most letterboxes are actually in the front door) to ensure the door was shut before reluctantly leaving to go shopping. These days we would mutter things about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but then we just put it down to her being a worrier.
Going on holiday for two weeks brought its own fears and so the ritual was extended to include windows and water and electricity, because heaven forbid that the electricity should leak while we were away!
We four children - ages 16, 15, 15, and 10 are squashed into the back of the car amongst the soft luggage, watching this intricate dance unfold. Aunty Mary is in the passenger seat and she is giving instructions to Uncle Bill
"Just nip sharply up and check the water is turned off, Bill."
To do this he has to go up the steps, unlock the front door, go through the house to the kitchen where he must get down on his knees and retrieve the back door key from its hiding place. Next he must unlock the cupboard in the hall and get the key to the coal-house. Then he must unlock the back door, unlock the coal house, get the key to the outside lavatory, unlock the lavatory door and check that the stop tap is turned off.
Next he re-locks the lavatory door, puts the key in the secret place in the coal-house, locks the coal-house brings the key in and puts it in the cupboard in the hall. Then he locks the back door, checks the gas stove because he knows she will ask, checks the windows for the same reason, hides the back door key, comes out through the front door, shuts it firmly and puts his hand through the letter box and tugs the door a couple of time to make sure.
Still with me? good, we were bored. We had watched the original ritual and this was a second run through for Uncle Bill so time was pressing and we were eager to see our caravan home.
"Oh Bill, you'd better check the gas stove!"
"I've done that," he sighed, waiting to see what else she would think of.
"Oh, and the windows"
"Yes, done that"
"The electric?" Now Uncle Bill could never lie to aunty Mary, he did try and it was the slight hesitation that gave him away. She pounced!
"Just get in there and check the electric and while you're there do the windows upstairs"
Uncle Bill sighed, unlocked the door and disappeared. He had to go through the same ritual again because the electricity meter was in the outside toilet. He was gone a while before we saw him checking all the front windows.
He came out through the door and was so obviously at the end of his patience because he grabbed the letter box and slammed the front door really hard.
And that's when the letterbox came off in his hand.
There was a further delay because, of course, it had to be fixed because burglars would "get in through that great hole"
This story has been brought to you through the Storytelling Sunday project begun by Sian at fromhighinthesky  Please visit her blog and take the time to read the other wonderful sotries gathered for our entertainment. Thank you for reading my story.