The Kitchen Delivery, and What I'll Miss When We Move

 

Late yesterday morning the kitchen was delivered.  

At the moment it's all safely boxed and/or wrapped up, but peeking into the visible bits it's already looking good and just as we wanted it.  So for the rest of today Alan is grouting the floor tiles at the kitchen end of the living room ready for the kitchen to be installed on top of them starting next Tuesday.

Alan worked like a trouper on Monday and Tuesday tiling the whole of the living room as there was a chance we would be needed to help my younger son move into his new home on the Wednesday.  He's a big lad and he did have his partner and her brother to help with the lifting and shifting, but after having a biopsy last week he still had stitches in his stomach so he had to be very careful. I thought it best to leave them to it if they could manage, as it is a big sense of achievement to move into your first purchased home together without the parents.

 Happily he managed everything he wanted to do and we weren't needed, so Alan had a well earned day off and we went out for lunch ... still on standby, just in case.  😊

Somehow it got me thinking about what I will miss when we move, so I went around the annexe snapping at the things I thought I would miss most.

High on the list is my beloved SMEG fridge freezer.

It's been my best ever purchase, and while they are expensive to buy they do keep food amazingly well.  I must have recouped a lot of the money spent on this beautiful appliance in non-wasted food costs over the years I've had it.

I couldn't make my mind up over whether I will miss the little half sized section of my kitchen sink.  

We both made the joint decision to have a one bowl stainless steel sink at the bungalow, as this is what we were used to before we moved here.  Having a plastic bowl in the sink means that you don't really need the centre section much, as you can pour things down the side of the bowl if you need to drain them.  

Having a bowl in the sink is the usual way of doing things in the UK.

I will definitely miss my radiator cover.

It's been good to have a sort of seasonal change of my favourite things on top of it, making me smile daily, and looking lovely when it's all illuminated at Christmas time.

I will also definitely miss having actual radiators.  They are very handy for quick drying of things that you need in the Wintertime when the heating is on.

I will miss having the two sets of French doors.

 I currently have one set in the living room, and the ones in this photo are in the bedroom.  On a hot day it's great to fling them all open and let air circulate.  Ginger has never quite got used to the doors looking identical, but leading him into different rooms when he comes in from the garden. 😺

At least we will have one set in our living room at the bungalow, letting lots of light flood in.

Something I thought that I would have to let go was this useful little drawer unit.  It's currently being well used in the kitchen of the annexe, but in the bungalow it might fit into my bathroom where it would be extremely useful.  I have my fingers firmly crossed.  🤞

What would you miss most if you had to move house and leave  something behind?

Sue xx

Memories ... and Blog Posts

 

Isn't it nice when you are sorting through things, to find something that you haven't seen for ages that brings back happy memories. Clearing the decks ready for the photos of the house and annexe meant that I was going through some of my box files in a bid to make a bit of space in my few cupboards ... and I came across these two photos.

The top one is us not long after we got married taken outside my tiny little shop in Ulverston, Cumbria.  It would have been sometime early 2008, probably when I was just setting things up as I was still working for the Hospice when we got married in December 2007.  Yes, my neighbour was the Laurel and Hardy Museum when it was in it's old location, and next to them on the corner was The Chippy Bank, the best chip shop in Ulverston.

Don't ask me how many times I had a 'chip barm' for my dinner while I had the shop.  😁

 

Luckily this photo is clearly dated, or I wouldn't have had a clue.  

My Dad with the rest of his class in 1938.  He would have been seven years old then as his birthday was right at the end of the year ... he was born in 1930 ... so I don't know how their class numbering system worked.  It obviously had changed by the time I went to the same school in 1965 as I was in Class I at five.  I'm guessing it's something to do with school leaving ages, Dad left school at 14 and I left at 16.

Mum must have had trouble recognising him on the photo as she wrote his name under him.  💖

I'm getting really annoyed with Blogger again at the moment.  

Instead of updating the blogs in my sidebar, and on lots of other people's sidebars, and showing the title of the newest post that I, or they have written, it seems to be lagging far, far behind.  I am trying to get into the habit of clicking on the blog title and not the 'latest post', which is now frequently found not to be the latest post at all.  I am having to do a numerous day catch up every now and then as I just hadn't realised they had published a newer post.

Don't mess with my coffee or my blog reading.  😠

Sue xx

Peter and Paul

 

'Two little dicky birds sitting on a wall ... '

Or as was the case yesterday 13 little dicky birds sitting on a roof.  

They were there for quite a while, more than enough time for me to go in and pick up my camera, and then suddenly they were gone.  But I had the proof.  

I loved this nursery rhyme as a child, and then in a weird twist of fate I married a Peter and my best friend married a Paul.  We laughed many times about our little annoying 'dicky birds' and how we wished on occasion that they would fly away.

It took me 26 years to fly away from mine.  😄

Sue xx

Catching Up - Bread, Doughnuts, Fights ... and Experiments

 

It was a tough visit to Mum on Sunday so the doughnut on the way home at the service station, eaten after the lovely, and for once hot, vegan sausage roll was definitely needed ... although, wow, they are super sickly sweet.  Thank goodness for a lovely black coffee to take the edge of it.

We both ate up, and then sat and people watched for a good ten minutes just to decompress.  You do see all sorts of folks at the service station, I do still get cross with the messy ones though, especially when they have children with them and just wander off leaving all their mess for someone else to clean up.  Just what sort of an example are they setting for their kids?  

Yes, I will be turning into a loudly tutting old lady soon.  😞

We got home on Saturday after a couple of hours picking up building supplies ... yes most weekends are now spent browsing the delights of Wickes or B&Q ... to find that Ginger had just been in a spat with another cat defending his garden.  His poor little nose was dripping blood and over the course of the afternoon his face swelled up quite alarmingly.  He looked like he had done a round or two with Mike Tyson.  I had washed it thoroughly, he's a gentle cat and he let me do it with only a minor wriggle and complaint, and we both spent the rest of the day monitoring it closely.

By bedtime he could see out of his eye again, and these photos were then taken the next morning so I can monitor if any infection sets in.  I think for his first ever cat fight he has gotten off quite lightly.

19th  Booths - £1.60

This was literally my only shopping for this week, and sadly it is not very nice bread.

As they were much larger slices than the bread that I usually buy, I thought I would have a little play this morning.  I made myself three mini 'quiches'.  I cut out circles, pressed them into my muffin tin and left them in the warming oven, while I chopped some pepper and let an egg come to room temperature.

You can see each stage in this photo.  First chopped pepper dropped into the lightly toasted bread base, then a little sprinkle of cheese, and then finally one beaten egg divided between all three.

It made for a very tasty little breakfast, eaten an hour after my Weetabix, yes I am still on Hobbit breakfasts.  😄

I've been doing quite a bit of playing with my food just recently, and it's always nice when it works out.  

Sue xx

Connie Onnie Butties ... and Other Memories

 

My brother, my Dad and me, around 1971 or 72

It's hard to date some photos isn't it, I tend to look at what I'm wearing, how old my brother looks as he's four years younger than me and then where we are.  This was taken at Pontins, the Middleton Towers camp I think, we only ever went to two of their camps, but this was my parents favourite one.

I went down a rabbit hole of thinking about the past yesterday after watching the YouTube channel British Nostalgia while I ate my breakfast.  They are good videos if you can get over the AI voiceover that occasionally gets his words wrong and puts emphasis in the wrong places, and if you just laugh at the photos not always matching the commentary.

This is the video that I watched.

https://youtu.be/bKSB3X1kXWU?si=rwyhxygZ_By1xL9c

It was very true of a lot of the meals we ate back in the 60s and 70s in Manchester, England.

It's funny, as children we never thought of ourselves as poor, although we lived in just three rooms.  They were the downstairs rooms of my Nana's house.  We shared the bathroom that was upstairs and had to be quiet so as not to disturb her whenever we used it, but I never minded that. When I was thirteen in 1973 we got a brand new council house and moved out ... much to my Mum's relief.

We ate simply and cheaply, and I could cope with most foods, although even then I hated meat.  But I was forced to eat it, we always had to clear our plates ... 'or the starving children in Africa would be upset'.  Even as a child I thought that Mum's statement was ridiculous.  Mum was not a good cook, which was slightly ironic as she was a school dinner lady!  We ate the most basic foods, overcooked to within an inch of their lives, hence my hatred of Brussels sprouts to this day ... and my brother's pea phobia .

So watching this YouTube video brought back a lot of memories, good ones and bad ones ... liver and onions when overcooked would be useful for a cobbler, he would be able to resole leather shoes with the liver glued on with the gloopy onions.  Well my Mum's version anyway. 😖

But one thing we never had, but my ex-husband did, was Connie Onnie butties, or sandwiches if you from the posh end of the street. 

 It was simply condensed milk spread on white bread and topped with another slice, and eaten over a plate or at the very least away from your clothes as they dripped.  My ex also regularly lived on 'sugar butties' as a child, just as it sounds they were simply buttered white bread with a spoonful of sugar sprinkled over the butter, then the two slices pressed together, usually taken outside to be eaten while you played or just sat on the front doorstep.  No wonder he had so many missing teeth even when we first met!  My cheap sandwich of choice was a salad cream butty, just that bread and salad cream, they were very tasty, but Mum didn't really approve.

Of course it was the days of corner shops and very small 'supermarkets' when they first arrived.  Our local corner shop had illusions of grandeur when it purchased two shopping trollies.  With only two narrow aisles and the meat and cheese counter at the end of the shop, if someone had a trolley in use anyone else shopping with the more usual wire basket, had to follow the trolley pusher around until they finally reached the till, or else try and squeeze past if the person stopped at the meat counter.  Luckily I think we were a lot more patient back in the day. 😄

What 'poor food' did you have as a child, or were you 'proper posh'?

Sue xx

Not Normal Service

Morning Coffee    by Mary Bradish Titcomb 1858-1927

Mum was rushed into hospital once again, in the early hours of Sunday morning this time with breathing difficulties.  We were literally ten minutes away from visiting her at her care home on Sunday morning, at the more respectable time of 10am, luckily we were still on the motorway when my brother phoned to say that a voicemail message had just come through on his phone, it had been left in the middle of the night but he has his phone off then.  My phone is always on, but for some reason this time they didn't call me. 😕

Anyway a quick re-programme of the Satnav and we were headed for the hospital where after a lot of chasing round departments and wards, as she had only just left the A&E department, we finally found Mum looking very frail and very confused.

We are quite confused too, as there is nothing they can do for her except make her comfortable and give her oxygen, something they could very easily have done at her care home, especially since she has instructions on her paperwork not to send her to hospital except in a real health emergency.  Which happened a few weeks ago when she had yet another bowel blockage.  They are a nursing and hospice type care home as well as residential, so they have a lot of very qualified staff.  

We were most concerned that the hospital seemed to know nothing about her.  Luckily we arrived just as the cutlery was being delivered to the beds ready for lunch, she was about to be given a 'normal meal', something she cannot eat now as she is on a NHS Level Five diet.  They also didn't realise that she is completely bedbound, doubly incontinent and has dementia, so is unreliable to ask any medical questions of, hence them being told by her that yes she can have any sort of food.

I had a good chat with her nurse and then we had to come away as you can't visit during lunch time.  You wouldn't think that this was that stressful really, well I wouldn't have years ago, but when it's been going on in one form or another for over two and half years on a very regular basis it's starting to have a real build up effect.

I sent an email to the care home when I got home, not complaining as such but asking why I wasn't phoned this time, and also suggesting they had some sort of Patient Passport type document, just a photocopy from their file, that could travel to hospital with residents when necessary to give the nursing staff at least a head start.  It would save a lot of stress.  It turns out they have this in place already, although the system keeps letting them down and the document goes missing somewhere between the paramedics and the A&E staff and then never makes it to the ward.  They are now going to be raising this matter urgently.

I needed to get all this down in writing so that I have it for future reference, and my blog seemed as good a place as any. 

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.  😄

Sue xx

Acquiring Things, and Letting Things Go

Mum's windowsill in her care home room holds her most treasured possessions, not that she knows they are, but I can talk to her about the memories behind them over and over ... and then they make her smile. Her walls are full of family photos, and we regularly go over and over who the people are with her when she asks, but she sees no one except for me, Alan and my brother, so she really is losing track if we talk about anyone else.

It makes me realise that not acquiring things, as we have purposefully done for the last few years, (apart from a few special things), has been a really good move.  We don't need any souvenirs from our holidays apart from a few photographs, there are no fridge magnets or little jars of sand to remind us where we have been.  Just the memories and some photos to jog those memories, in case they start to slip away in the future.

When we enter the world we come with nothing, and then immediately start acquiring things, at first via our parents and relatives, and then with great gusto and lots of relish when we are independent adults striking out for the first time.

Of course while I have donated most of my randomly acquired things and ornaments in a bid to declutter my life over the years, there are some still things in the 'memory box' that I have. It being a memory in it's own right as it was made for me by a blogging buddy when we moved onto our very first farm.  I may even need to revisit that at some point and photograph the 'things' and just have them that way.  We'll see in the run up to our move what will happen.

Of course I have lots of books, but even my book buying has almost ground to a standstill.  I have paused my Amazon Prime membership. With no deliveries and little on Prime that I wanted to watch on television there didn't seem any point in supporting a huge company with a multi-multi billionaire at it's head.

Taking my life down to a simple level, and a much more satisfying stage seems to be such a good idea.  One day I too might only need a windowsill to display my possessions. 

Sue xx

Taking Five Minutes

 

The River Wyre

I had to go into town yesterday to pick up my new reading glasses, after about five years my prescription had changed enough to warrant a couple of new pairs.  It meant that I had to pay for an hour on the car park even though I would only be ten minutes, so I made good use of the ticket and sat by the river for a few minutes.

Sometimes you have to take five minutes in the fresh air for your sanities sake.

I had been woken at 4.30am with my phone ringing on my bedside table.  Mum had taken a turn for the worse and the care home were calling for an ambulance so they rang to tell me.  Then an hour later I was woken again by the ambulance crew telling me that a visit to hospital was deemed necessary.  I don't cope well with being woken from a deep sleep and having to make serious decisions, so the rest of the day saw me in a pretty much zombie-like state.  Thank goodness I was only picking my glasses up and not having to choose any.

Another thing to hit Facebook Marketplace, to boost my food shopping budget this week was this little cupboard.

 I bought it off FB Marketplace in 2021, and posted about it HERE.  It was just before we completed the move into our current home, and while I have loved having it, it just won't go anywhere in our new bungalow, it was a bit of a clutter-gatherer anyway but it was lovely. 

I decluttered it a lot for the FB Marketplace photos and have managed to sell it for £20, just a bit less than I paid five years ago.  It's going to be someone's bathroom cabinet in a little old cottage, above an old fashioned sink set into a little sideboard.  

I'm happy it's going to a good home.

Sue xx

That Was a Week That Was

 

It's been a funny old week and weekend, both weatherwise and family wise.

The weather can't quite make it's mind up, one day we have glorious sunshine taking the edge of the cool breeze and I can get washing dry on the line, the next the skies are grey the wind is howling and then it's starts to sleet ... and once again I put off actually digging out my Summer t-shirts and tops from under the bed.

In the first of the family news, my brother visited Mum on Saturday, she got very angry with him and then fell asleep and didn't wake up again.  We went yesterday and she slept through the whole visit, even with us both being very noisy in a bid to wake her up sensibly.  Graham went back again this morning for another visit ... he only lives ten minutes away from Mum's care home ... she said hello and then fell into a deep sleep.  A lot of this is obviously expected at this stage of events but it's still a bit discombobulating.  Luckily our three hours on the motorways was much quieter than usual and our pit stop at Greggs on the services was very tasty on the return journey.

The other family news, in the much wider family was a very sudden and shocking death, publicised in the local news in Manchester and all over social media.  As a Mum it's really shaken me and made me really sit and think about how easily things can change for us all.  Just when we think life is ticking along relatively nicely, life stops us in our tracks and shows us that it's best not to assume anything.

To round the weekend off nicely, two of the guys were in the bungalow building the bedroom wall this morning ... and it collapsed.  Luckily neither of them was injured, but one guys toolbox suffered complete destruction.

'It's life Jim, but not as we know it!!'

Sue xx

Memories of Easters Gone

So many memories tied up in photographs.

Every Easter when we were children we would go round to visit my Gran.  She was my Mum's Mum, and gosh I loved her to bits.  Mum criticised her all the time to my Dad in the hearing of me and my brother and I never understood it or thought it fair even as a child.  Now as an adult a lot of the things that she said and did still seem so unfair, especially considering that my Mum is so like her in so many ways.

We are stood outside her large four story rented house in this photo, she was relocated there after the family home was totally flattened by a bombing raid during World War 2, and she stayed there until she was rehoused in the early 1970's.  As a child I loved the old house, but found parts of it very spooky as it was very gloomy in all but the front 'best' room, hence the photo being taken outside on the street.

It was about a forty minute walk to get to Gran's house, but back in the day we were all used to walking much longer distances weren't we and it just seemed normal.  Gran would walk round to ours most Saturdays as she loved to watch the wrestling on the television, she refused to have a tv in her house until her dying day, she thought that they would burst into flames willy nilly.

I have to say none of mine ever have.  😁

 We didn't have to travel any where near as far to visit my Nana, Dad's Mum.  We lived downstairs in her house.  So we would get our new Easter clothes on and troop upstairs to receive an Easter egg and have our photo taken.  I loved my Nana, just as much if not more, although sitting and posing for a photo with her seemed strange.

I would go upstairs and watch television with Nana most nights, our favourite evenings together were Mondays, when it would be at least one quiz show, usually University Challenge ... Nana did like Bamber Gascoigne ... and then Opportunity Knocks.  A highlight of watching tv upstairs was that I got to sit on a chair, downstairs we only had two armchairs so me and my brother would sit cross legged on the floor when we watched anything.

It's funny, but oh so nice, how two photos can bring so many memories flooding back.

Wishing a very Happy Easter to all my readers, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.  Perhaps you are making memories for the future, or simply reliving lovely ones from the past.  Both are wonderful things to do.

Sue xx

Food, Family and Footings

 

My mission ... and I have chosen to accept it ... is to use up as much of my outdated spaghetti as I can over the coming few weeks.

I tend to eat between 80g and 100g for a simple spaghetti meal, so every time I cook any sort of pasta I cook up twice as much as I need.  Cooling the half to be saved under running cold water in a colander before storing it in the fridge.

The first day with this batch was with a simple pesto from the fridge.

Two days later I thawed out one of the tubs of my homemade pasta sauce, it was very good, and to save on washing up I ate it out of the storage box after zapping it in the microwave. 😁 

A couple of days ago I did exactly the same, but this time I decided to use a jar of bought pasta sauce from the cupboard.  In a fit of time saving enthusiasm I emptied the whole jar of sauce into the whole double portion of spaghetti in the pan, and put half of it to cool while I ate my tea.

Big mistake, the sauce was awful, anyway I persevered and ate the portion in my bowl, but then thinking about it later, still with a nasty taste in my mouth, I decided to throw the rest away. 

What a waste of good spaghetti, I mean I know I have lots but I still do not like wasting food.  I will not be buying that particular Marks and Spencer pasta sauce again for sure.

In other news ... my middle grandson Kyle, had a milestone birthday on Saturday, reaching 21 on the 21st.  He partied with family and friends before hitting the town with more friends to keep the celebrations going into the wee small hours, oh the stamina of youth.  He spent a good proportion of his family party teaching his younger brother Oscar, on the far right of this photo, how to dance.

In renovation news, the gaping holes that were the two gable ends of the bungalow, have now been bricked up securely and all the windows of the bungalow now have proper concrete lintels, ready for new windows to be fitted in a couple of weeks.  So no more drooping and cracking of the brickwork below.

If you are interested here is the latest walk-through, it's just a quick one this time.

https://youtu.be/851gKzufm7I?si=H5ZVM-PWsT90yGf5

This shows the newly laid footings for the wall that should hopefully be going up this week, which will separate the bedrooms.  This is a supporting wall that we needed to move over by about three foot to equalise the bedroom sizes a bit, thus the Acro props and standing pieces of wood that you can see in the video that are temporarily supporting the joist in the loft above.  The bathroom walls are non-supporting so do not need their own little 'foundations'.

Alan has been really impressed with the progress this week, he is still loving it ... luckily. 😄

Sue xx

  

Presents, Meals and Progress

 

My elder son and his fiancée called on Saturday for a coffee, they were on their way back from their yearly visit to Mum.  He had already sent me a box of 'Letterbox Flowers' ... not that any of our postmen have ever realised that the box will fit through the letterbox, they always knock on the door ... luckily the flowers were just starting to open out so he got to see them looking good.  They are even better today, fully open, really filling the jug and looking so fresh.

Alan got back later bringing me some sparkling water and some paracetamol ... oh he knows the way to a girl's heart.  😄

I've been trying to use a few things from the freezer this week, so my lunch was a bowl of the soup that I made here and half of one of the garlic breads that I bought here.  There's something very luxurious about a garlic bread dipped in a tasty homemade soup.  The soup gets a bit more garlicky with each dip.

A bang up to date progress report of the bungalow.

 Alan sent me this photo of the opened up loft space late afternoon yesterday.  We aren't using the loft for living space, there isn't the head height to add rooms as it is at the moment, and anyway we like the fact that our bungalow is a 'true' bungalow.  But we are having to have both the gable ends taken down and rebuilt as the wooden lintels above the windows below have all rotted.  We are putting in all new lintels above the windows and doors.  It's not a huge problem really as we are changing the sizes of all but one of the windows, so it would have made sense to change them anyway.

Alan got the photo because he was also up in the loft working to make a wooden pathway to the front of the roof space for access to what will be the solar installation panel.  He said at it's busiest there were six workmen and himself all getting on with various jobs.  

He is absolutely loving it.

Sue xx

Final February Shopping - Blowing the Budget ... and Family News

My final shopping of February, and sadly I really blew the budget this month with a total spend of £70.07, meaning an overspend of £17.70 ... there are far too many sevens in that little round up.  😄

For the first time that I needed to buy toilet rolls the ones I like weren't on special offer.  I honestly can't remember when I have got my timing wrong before.  But hey, I bought them because I needed them and happily I have my emergency Facebook Marketplace sales money to top up my usual monthly budget money.

Happily it's a new month and a fresh £50 for my purse on Sunday, where on earth is the time going!!

It's been a day of bad news today, so my blowing the budget is neither here nor there really.  My eldest grandson found out his fiancée, who is the mother of his two younger sons, was cheating on him and they have split up, with her throwing him out of their home.  My second eldest grandson has split from his long term girlfriend just before his 21st birthday, in a fit of spite (I don't know what happened as she dumped him), she cancelled all his birthday party plans and his Mum had to ring around everywhere to reinstate things.  Then to cap it all my older son's fiancée's grandad died last night so she is devasted.

On the bright side my younger son and his partner have just had their offer accepted on a lovely little bungalow in Thornton-Cleveleys, their first ever home purchase.  Their survey is taking place today.

There are always chinks of light even on the saddest of days, you just have to look for them and cling on.  

Now after all the phone calls ...

Sue xx

Oh Woe is Me!!

 

Just me, stood on my doorstep, pondering life.

Sorry to be missing in action, but Mum's care home went into lockdown due to Norovirus on Monday, one day after we visited on Sunday.

Guess what?

Yep, we both started with it simultaneously on Monday teatime ... thank goodness we have separate bathrooms.  Ginger started the next day, poor thing.  There's nothing worse than listening to your beloved pet yowl while jettisoning liquid from both ends.

On that note I will leave you, I'm not a sympathy seeking person. 😷  

See you next week, when hopefully I have more energy and brain power to write a proper blog post. 

 You would not believe the amount of corrections I have had to make on this little post!!

Sue xx

Blogmas Day Twenty Five - Happy Christmas to You All

 Wishing all my readers, friends, family and blogging buddies the very happiest of Christmases.  

May your day be everything that you want it to be.

And always remember the very best present we can give ourselves and our loved ones is time.

Take time for yourself at some point today and breathe in the wonder of the season, or just of a simple December day.  

However you celebrate, or chose not to celebrate, take part of this day for yourself.

Happy Christmas from Sue, Alan and Ginger xx

Blogmas Day Twenty Four - Christmas Memories

 

Christmas is the time of year that memories come flooding back.  Of good Christmases and bad, hopefully the good outweighing the bad.  We have had many and all of them hold a place in our hearts.

Our Christmas Piggies always used to make me smile when we lived in Wales, and this photo reminds me of the many family get togethers at Christmas time, with food being laid out buffet style so that there was no pressure for anyone to arrive at set times.

I saw this photo on social media and it reminded me immediately of the year me and my brother got a mesh stocking each in the mid-sixties.  The first year they were filled with the plastic toys that they had come with, which I thought was brilliant.  Then in subsequent years my Mum and Dad filled them with little toys and things that they had bought specially for the stockings.  But as a child I had loved the plastic 'tat' of the first year the best.  😄

Each year we would get a selection box, always a real treat to have all those lovely sweets all at once.  Oh how I loved Spangles.  Look at the prices in this image, we were obviously just into decimalisation!

Me and my brother posing with our presents in the late 1960s.  We opened everything in our bedroom and then later had to put everything under the tree for a photo opportunity ... my Dad loved his camera.  It also kept us out of the way while Mum cooked the Christmas dinner in the tiny kitchen/living/dining room.  

We lived in just three rooms for the first thirteen years of my life, while I think of them as reasonably happy years my Mum's memories were always very different.  But I do remember the stress she felt, the anger of cooking a full dinner and my brother refusing to eat any vegetables.  So when I had children of my own I always made sure that they shared the preparation in some small way and shared in every part of Christmas Day ... I do hope they have good memories of that time.

It's lovely to have time to think about Christmases past, be they good, bad or indifferent they were all a turning point in the year and a very special celebration.

A little smile for Christmas Eve.

Sue xx