"What have you eaten" Parallel Chat

[Zhnyaka]

I have recently achieved one of my goals though - to buy a headstone for my husband's grave (with space left on it for me, of course).

I hope you won't use your space soon. Happy birthday to you! 80 is not the limit. Your eyes are lying to you, only your heart is sharp-sighted, so you're not an old woman.

At the moment I am writing down all the stories I can think of from the past generations of my family - as well as those that I can find out about ancestors (Thomas ap Rhys, Elizabethan poet and privateer, Thomas Harding, Lollard and the last person to be burned at the stake for that, and so on. That's where that old "Headless Coachman" story comes in). What the generation before me did in WW2. Silly little memories about what we did in childhood. How we all went to sea with my husband. Things like that. These are all for Emily's benefit, to give her an idea of what life was like 2 or more generations before her.

I am still hunting for important documents which I seem to have put away somewhere safe but unidentifiable, along with some jewellery. When I do find them, I have a really safe and identifiable place to put them. Neil has just given me a 19th century "strong box". A bit beaten up, which is fine by me, shows it has a history, but too big to lose easily and very strong/heavy steel. Now, where did I put those papers?

we would also read it with interest. During your childhood, the phrase "fly to the moon" was synonymous with flying pigs, and now we use a satellite to communicate on this forum. Isn't that amazing?

 

[Annb]

It's so annoying when you can't find things. I'm famous for going up the stairs then not remembering what I was there for. I have to go back down before jogging my memory. Wishing you a very happy birthday.

Thank you @DougDyl. I do that all the time - not up the stairs - our house is all on one level, but I can't even get across the room without forgetting what I was going to do.

 

[Annb]

I hope you won't use your space soon. Happy birthday to you! 80 is not the limit. Your eyes are lying to you, only your heart is sharp-sighted, so you're not an old woman.



we would also read it with interest. During your childhood, the phrase "fly to the moon" was synonymous with flying pigs, and now we use a satellite to communicate on this forum. Isn't that amazing?

Thank you @Zhnyaka. It absolutely is amazing. I remember when the first astronauts flew - even the first dog into space; then Yuri Gargarin; then the American men on the moon. Before that, it was all fantasy land. Telephones were in red boxes around towns and villages, if your car would do 45 mph (downhill) you thought it was wonderful. Petrol was 6p a gallon (my Dad thought that was exorbitant).

I wish I had asked my Dad, or my Mum, about many more things from their youth, but I didn't think to do so at the time. For example, I have a silver cup belonging to my Dad which is engraved with "Civil Service, Junior Boxing Champion 1932". In 1932 my Dad was 17 and the trophy was obviously his. I am trying to find out more about the competition and his part in it, but can't find it anywhere. I was going to write to the Who Do You Think You Are magazine, but I have already asked them several questions and they'll stop being helpful soon. I do know that Dad was a swimming champion, a prize winning cricketer and a champion boxer, in his youth, but I have no records to show for it. Pity.

 

[Annb]

I hope you won't use your space soon. Happy birthday to you! 80 is not the limit. Your eyes are lying to you, only your heart is sharp-sighted, so you're not an old woman.



we would also read it with interest. During your childhood, the phrase "fly to the moon" was synonymous with flying pigs, and now we use a satellite to communicate on this forum. Isn't that amazing?

The story I have been working on today was an ancestral one but the subject may not be much more than a legend. My grandmother appears, to some sources, as a descenden t of Ceol Hen ap Tegfan (4th century- 5th century) who was later immortalised as Old King Cole. I've been putting together all that I can find on him. Of course - like others that far back, he may not have existed but his daughter was Gwawl verch Coel. Verch means "daughter of" so there was someone called Coel or she wouldn't have been his daughter.

 

[Zhnyaka]

The story I have been working on today was an ancestral one but the subject may not be much more than a legend. My grandmother appears, to some sources, as a descenden t of Ceol Hen ap Tegfan (4th century- 5th century) who was later immortalised as Old King Cole. I've been putting together all that I can find on him. Of course - like others that far back, he may not have existed but his daughter was Gwawl verch Coel. Verch means "daughter of" so there was someone called Coel or she wouldn't have been his daughter.

I've never heard of Old King Cole. who is it? Some kind of legendary figure like King Lear? I'm not very good at British history, and my knowledge of myths is even worse, although I love English literature.

 

[Annb]

I've never heard of Old King Cole. who is it? Some kind of legendary figure like King Lear? I'm not very good at British history, and my knowledge of myths is even worse, although I love English literature.

Old King Cole was the subject of a little song we learned as children. It was a kind of nursery rhyme and it has been around since time immemorial. Well since the early 18th century at least:

"Old King Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he.
He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl
And he called for his fiddlers three.

Every fiddler had a fiddle so fine
And a very fine fiddle had he.
There's none so fair as can compare
With King Cole and his fiddlers three."

But there does seem to have been a king/warlord called Coel - as far as I'm aware, the fiddle didn't exist way back in the 3rd century.

 

[Annb]

Breakfast was 21g of carbs in the form of Jacob's Cream Crackers with salmon pate piled onto them.

2nd meal was vegetable soup using a pack of frozen vegetables, some frozen potatoes, a handful of crispy fried onion and some miso stock cubes. Tasted fine. Loads left for the next 2 or 3 days.