life

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question……..

/ Dee / 2 Comments

Why would you want to send out little tweets to people you don’t know and probably never will know, is it in the hope that you will get lots of followers and so think you are a mini celebrity?  Or is it that you are so frustrated with your life, that you want to invent a new you, that could be anything you wanted it to be. Or is it that you have things to say that need saying and Twitter is the only place you can get your voice heard? Whatever the reason, there are millions of twitterers out there, sending millions of tweets every hour.

I started tweeting a few months ago to see what it was all about and found, to my surprise, that within a few days a lot of people were following me.  I had no idea how this came about and still don’t, but then I found that I too was following people and I haven’t a clue how that works either.  Some of these people are just blatantly selling themselves or their business and it all seemed to be about self promotion. Not many want to comment on what’s happening in the world, if they aren’t telling me about what they can do, they seem quite happy to retweet others’ comments or links to articles in the press. 

 Perhaps I am missing the point, or expecting too much. I do exchange regular tweets with some great people who are in the same time zone as me.  We send tweets on all sort of things, but the time difference means I miss a lot of what happens from my followers and followees on the other side of the world.  That said, I have found that even though I am not sure how it all happens, I do enjoy tweeting and probably that’s what it is all about, so I shall carry on and hopefully one day I will find out how it all works

Halloween or Hallowe’en

/ Dee / Leave a comment

Well the clocks have gone back one hour, so I guess that summer has offically ended and that is where, according to history, Halloween has its’ origins. It is from the old celtic festival know as “Samhain” which is derived from Old Irish and means roughly “summers end”

All sorts of celebrations have taken place down the ages at this time of year. The ancient Celts for instance, belived that the borders between this world and the Other World were particularly “thin” at this time of year and the spirits, both harmless and harmful, could pass back through. The family ancestors were honoured and welcome, but harmful spririts were warded off, it is thought, by wearing masks and strange costumes. It was also a time to take stock of food supplies for the coming winter and celebrate the harvest.

The name Halloween or Hallowe’en is shortened from All Hallows Eve which is the night before All Saints Day on 1 November. All sorts of traditions have been handed down through the ages, but nowadays most involve dressing up in scary costumes and masks, carrying lanterns made out of pumkins with faces carved on them and enjoying time eating and drinking with family and friends. Orange and black seem to be the colours associated with Halloween and you see lots of different shaped cookies and cakes iced in this way

A lot of sweetstuff and candy are eaten at  Halloween and I have a couple of family recipes to share – mainly for the children:

Toffe (Candy) Apples

12 ripe eating apples

400g granulated sugar

100g butter

30ml water

oil for greasing

12 wooden skewers

Wash and dry the apples and push a large wooden skewer through the centre of each one. Put the sugar, butter and water into a heavy based saucepan and dissolve the sugar very slowly over a low heat. Once dissolved, bring to a fast boil and continue to boil until the small crack stage (140 degC)  Dip apples one at a time into the toffee and place on a greased plate and leave to set.  Red apples look wonderful coated with shiny toffee, you can also sprinkle them with coconut or crushed nuts before the toffee sets

Treacle Toffee (Bonfire toffee)

Oil for greasing

100g butter

100 black treacle

150g soft brown sugar

30ml water

Pinch of Cream of Tartar

Grease a 15cm square tin, Put the butter, treacle, sugar and water into a heavy based saucepan and let the sugar dissolve over a low hest. Add cream of tartar, bring to the boil and boil to hard ball stage (120degC).  Pour the toffee into the prepared tin and, when beginning to set, score the surface deeply making squares.  When set, break up, wrap in waxed paper and store in an airtight tin. (Cooking time approx 20 minutes)

Hope you all have a great time celebrating with friends and family!

Well it’s Wednesday

/ Dee / Leave a comment

Where did the weekend go? It disappeared in a whirl of shopping and houswork that’s what! And the dog isn’t any better yet either, she is still coughing and sounds like an old smoker on a 50-a-day habit!

I have been watching some of the Tory Party Conference and listening to the changes they plan for the country if they win the next election. That something serious needs doing is in no doubt. The Labour government has lost it’s way, trying to be all things to all men with a one-size-fits-all approach was never going to work.

Now it is very easy to sit in your chair and moan about the state of the economy and politics in general and a very different story to have to actually do something about it, I fully appreciate that, but where do some of the ideas these politicians expound actually come from and what is the reasoning behind them?

I never understood why education had to be  messed around with as much as it has; my generation grew up with standards that have held fast for forty years and most of them were learned at one education establishment or another from teachers who were free to do their job and not worry about budgets and balance sheets! I learned respect for people and I grew up with a strong work ethic, instilled in me by both my parents and this is something I have passed on to my children.  What worries me, is what is going to happen to the “lost generation” who have never had a job and see no sign of getting one any time soon.

Someone once said ” a country gets the government it deserves” in that case, heaven knows what we have done, but we surely deserve better

Friends Reunited

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Just heard the news that ITV has sold Friends Reunited to the company who owns findmypast.com, so the Genes Reunited part will fit in alongside that quite well. Friends Reunited was one of the first social networking sites, but seems to have lost ground to newer sites such as Facebook and certainly got to look a bit old fashioned in my opinion.

It was a brilliant idea and I certainly used it to find my old school friends, to see what they were up to and where they had ended up. It produced a lot of memories and it was good to catch up with people who had meant so much, when we were all starting out on the road to becoming an adult. I hope it continues and, perhaps like me, it just needs a revamp!!

Yesterday was a sad day…

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We went to the funeral yesterday of a very dear friend. It was a sad day. It was a Humanist Funeral, I have never attended one before and at first found it strange that there were no hymns to sing, no vicar or priest to offer prayers. But rather a service dedicated to my friend, a tribute to his life and achievements and to what he had meant to his family, friends and colleagues.

Gradually, as the celebrant read out the memories, told to her by his family, in a warm and sincere way, I came to accept that this service was just what he would have wanted. He was not a religious person, yet the service did not give any offence to those in the congregation who were; merely just telling the story of his life and the things he loved and held dear and helping us all to understand that though he was no longer living with us, our memories of him will keep him “alive” for ever.

There was a mixed reaction afterwards, some people didn’t like it at all, some, like me were at first a bit unsure but then came to realise that it was perfect for our friend. It suited his personality, the quiet unassuming way he always had in life had been continued in celebrating him in death.

It was something rather special.

Some thoughts on retirement

/ Dee / 1 Comment

I still enjoy working and had not thought about retiring and what that could mean, until just recently. My husband took early retirement three years ago without a backward glance, or any real thought as to how he would fill his time once he was no longer at the beck and call of the alarm clock! During the past year the discussions (arguments really) as to when I think I will retire have increased; although I am not ready to give up my job just yet, I have been giving it some thought.
According to many reports in the press, there are more people over sixty now than ever before and coupled with this is the recognised fall in the birth rate – think about the reports from China where the burden on the work force of looking after elderly relatives appears to be a real problem. So if all the babyboomers, of which I am one, who were born in the years immediately after the end of World War Two and are now coming up to the usual age for retirement actually do so, there is going to be a big hole in the workforce.
We are better educated than our parents and certainly live a more healthy lifestyle in most cases, which is borne out by the fact that we are living a lot longer, so what are we all going to do with our time? What happens to all the experience we have accquired during our working lives? Why should be have to retire at a set time? Why can’t we ease into retirement in a more gradual way if we wanted to by say, cutting down the number of days we work, then the hours etc etc. There are not enough of the younger generation coming along to take our place as the days of couples have lots of children have long gone. Perhaps it is time governments took a look at the present legislation and woke up to the fact that unless they alter the retirement age there are going to be huge problems for the economy in the very near future. Some companies have already realised the advantages of bringing older people back into the workforce and this seems to bring benefits to both sides, perhaps others will start to follow this lead. As for me, well, the jury is still out………….