P&O Cruisers - What are things like where YOU are?

[Eglesbrech]

2 hours ago, indiana123 said:

Are you up early or going to bed late Eglesbrech?  It's the  latter for me.   Goodnight.

 

Not sure it's worth it now though, not tired yet.

Up early. I got a few hours sleep then that was that. 
 

OH is still happily snoring away. I do envy those who get a good. Ight sleep every night which i seldom do now.

[kalos]

10 hours ago, grapau27 said:

We took our Sarah out for a meal tonight.

I deleted the photos because I don't appreciate a laughing response.

 

Hope you had a pleasant evening ,even though I never saw the post ,thanks for 

sharing Graham 🙂

[kalos]

Morning 5.c dull and wet here today .

I read somewhere yesterday that Spandau Ballet are thinking about 

re releasing one of their old records ?

I hope it isn't true 🙃😉

 

Have a good day guys 🙂

[P&O SUE]

Morning all.

 

Goodness Brian, what a story! Surprised to hear you’re selling your place in Italy but your reasons make sense!

 

I, too, thought that was a strange ‘Long lost family’ where they contacted the ‘donor’ fathers, that wasn’t what they signed up for! Even though the siblings got on well together they weren’t siblings in the true sense of the word!

 

Our council doesn’t charge for collecting garden rubbish here but they’re ‘broke’ so perhaps they will soon 🙄

 

 

[purplesea]

Morning all,

Bright and sunny but the sky is looking very dark out the back.

I went to bed early last night as I was cold and shivery, but got up a couple of hours later for a few hours before heading back. I still don't feel right, so am thinking of taking myself back again.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

[Eddie99]

Hope you’ll be fine

[Ilovemygarden]

Good morning from a grey and damp Glasgow.  I returned from two weeks on Azura last Saturday to four beautiful sunny days so a start was made on the garden.   I suppose now I should do some ironing with the disappearance of the gardening weather!   Anyone else surprised we haven’t heard anything of ICF’s adventures on Arvia?   

[Josy1953]

1 hour ago, kalos said:

 

Hope you had a pleasant evening ,even though I never saw the post ,thanks for 

sharing Graham 🙂

+1

I don't understand why someone would laugh at photos of your meals.  I always like to see them.

 

[Megabear2]

8 minutes ago, Ilovemygarden said:

Anyone else surprised we haven’t heard anything of ICF’s adventures on Arvia?   

Yes. I was looking forward to that and hopefully a report from his Azamara African adventure.  Perhaps he's been busy - they were doing VAT on their flight out.

 

I hope you had a great holiday too.  

Edited March 9 by Megabear2

[grapau27]

2 hours ago, kalos said:

 

Hope you had a pleasant evening ,even though I never saw the post ,thanks for 

sharing Graham 🙂

Thank you Kalos.

I will post it again my good friend.

I posted it on Dani Negreanu daily on RCL last night  but the same person decided to laugh at it there but it was to late to delete.

Our Sarah's dad died this morning so I will be absent today.

[Angel57]

@grapau27 Oh no. I’m so sorry to hear Sarah’s Dad has died.
My sincere condolences to you all……

Gill x

[P&O SUE]

12 minutes ago, grapau27 said:

Thank you Kalos.

I will post it again my good friend.

I posted it on Dani Negreanu daily on RCL last night  but the same person decided to laugh at it there but it was to late to delete.

Our Sarah's dad died this morning so I will be absent today.

sorry to hear your sad news Graham.

[Eddie99]

Oh, sad news Graham

My condolences 

[Presto2]

Our condolences on the sad news Graham. 

[kalos]

6 minutes ago, Angel57 said:

@grapau27 Oh no. I’m so sorry to hear Sarah’s Dad has died.
My sincere condolences to you all……

Gill x

 

My sentiments too  ,sad news🙁

[Josy1953]

20 minutes ago, grapau27 said:

Thank you Kalos.

I will post it again my good friend.

I posted it on Dani Negreanu daily on RCL last night  but the same person decided to laugh at it there but it was to late to delete.

Our Sarah's dad died this morning so I will be absent today.

I am so sorry to hear that Sarah's dad has passed away.  Thinking of you all.

[zap99]

25 minutes ago, grapau27 said:

Thank you Kalos.

I will post it again my good friend.

I posted it on Dani Negreanu daily on RCL last night  but the same person decided to laugh at it there but it was to late to delete.

Our Sarah's dad died this morning so I will be absent today.

Graham. She is lucky to have you and Pauline.  Another Mum and Dad.

[lindylooellalouise]

33 minutes ago, grapau27 said:

Thank you Kalos.

I will post it again my good friend.

I posted it on Dani Negreanu daily on RCL last night  but the same person decided to laugh at it there but it was to late to delete.

Our Sarah's dad died this morning so I will be absent today.

Very sad news Graham sincere condolences 

[twotravellersLondon]

21 hours ago, bobstheboy said:

Yes, I found it very strange. My brother was a member and one of his daughters, neither responded. My sisters were not, it was my cousin James I found out about other family members. He has done a lot of research and traced my paternal ancestry back to the late 1700's, from the Rhonda, Wales. My great grandfather left in 1895 and settled in Ohio. 

 

We spent years researching our family history. We don't find it surprising that some folk are wary! It's not for sissies!

 

One of us found that found that the direct line went back to an ennobled Italian family... a younger son had joined a great European crusade led by William, the Duke of Normandy, against the Anglo-Saxon, Harold Godwinson, who'd taken the throne of England. After a well-known battle at a place called Hastings, that young Italian was rewarded with a small parcel of land and a mill on a manor just north of London and after half a millennium his descendants rose to the dizzy heights of Lord of a neighbouring Manor... but they were on the wrong side during the times of Cromwell and the family were then decimated by the plague and left virtually penniless.

 

The other traced a descent through fisherman, farmers, and the estate managers of great pre-independence Scottish estates... la number of them left thousands of letters, signatures and details in what is now the Records of Scotland. Before that the family were the lieutenants of one of the last great Lowland Scottish Earls of Pictish descent... the title is now held by Prince William. The medieval bell of the family church is now in a museum in Edinburgh. That side of the family were also decimated by the Scottish plague in the late 1500s and early 1600s. They lost their lands, home, status, influence and virtually their identity. Only to bounce back generations later and found what's now one of the most important medical institutions in the North of England.

 

On the way we came across many a tale and evidence that left us... shaking to the core. Whether it be the part played by the family in revolutions... the father and his sons decapitated by the guillotine in front of the Bastille... a will signed by a trembling hand on a plague death bed and witness by ten relatives... none of whom survived. Or the part played by these two families over the last 1,000 years in all manner of events that we're unwilling to discuss on a public forum.

 

Our researches changed us both. Some of the information delighted friends and family... some of the information had the opposite effect. Whether it be an involvement in smuggling, the family's faith at any time on their rather tenuous links to well known people of centuries ago... some folks were shocked. 

 

For instance... one branch of the family have an unusual surname... traced and deciphered it's an adopted puritan name based on now obscure scripture and very specifically linked to one estate and one incumbent of that estate... but nobody in that family today want to live with the idea that they are most certainly descended from someone who joined the mob that destroyed the local churches, smashed the stained glass, ripped the brasses from the chapel floors, beheaded the effigies, scrubbed the medieval wall-paintings from the cathedral walls or smashed the tombs of the saints.

 

Genealogy is unpicking the lock on a preverbal Pandora's box. As well as the hatches, matches and dispatches, the high-days and holidays and the passion... that will make people laugh, cry and shed a tear... it may also reveal the pride and the prejudice and all manner of other things that people may well take to heart... and once released from the historical time capsule of "Pandora's Box" it may be regarded as a ticking time bomb that can never be put back.

 

If folk buy into real genealogy the best advice is  “Caveat emptor!” (Buyer beware!")🙈🙉🙊 

 

And to always but always... think hard and respect the beliefs and feelings of others before sharing.

 

 

[lancashire_cruisers]

@grapau27 condolences on your sad loss and hugs to your lovely Sarah ❤️❤️

 

I hope the person who laughed (and we can see who it is!) feels suitably ashamed of themselves!

[lincslady]

Very sorry to read your news, Graham.  I know your Sarah is thought by all three of you to be essentially a daughter to you, so she will still have you two to care for her,  which I know you will.  

[Megabear2]

Graham, I'm very sorry to hear the sad news of Sarah's father passing.  I'm sure that having you and Pauline will be a great strength to her.  I send my best wishes and prayers to you all.

[Adawn47]

@grapau27

I'm so sorry to hear of the loss of Sarah's father. I'm sure that the love of both you and Pauline will be a great strength and comfort to her during this sad time.

The meal out together last night was a good thing, and the photos were lovely.

My deepest condolences to you all. x

Avril

[twotravellersLondon]

2 hours ago, grapau27 said:

Thank you Kalos.

I will post it again my good friend.

I posted it on Dani Negreanu daily on RCL last night  but the same person decided to laugh at it there but it was to late to delete.

Our Sarah's dad died this morning so I will be absent today.

 

We never, ever take a plate of food... or even a shared picture of food... for granted. It represents care, hard-work, compassion, love, achievement, warmth and a natural heart-filled generosity. It has special meaning.

 

We were both brought up in the dire days just after the end of WWII... when the menu of the day was "Eat it or Starve." Times were tough... never enough to eat... despite a mother and father who worked every single hour that God sent.

 

For me growing up... Food was an achievement... obtained by hard graft, timeless dedication, raking the rocks for buckies (winkles), searching the hedgerows for berries. Sometimes fisher-cousins would give us some codlings... too small to sell... to help us out. 

 

We spent school holidays gathering seaweed from the shore and dragging it up the cliff to use a green fertiliser for the garden, gathering seafood by the hundred weight to sell to the fishmongers and then loading onto the train that would take them all the way to Billingsgate Market in far, far off London.

 

Sometime I would crawl on my hands and knees through the shallow water of the sea sloughs with a crab pole... sometimes I would be lucky... most times not.

 

At weekends, I would walk eight miles to and from a neighbouring village to buy some roasting beef and some eggs from a local butcher who would sell them cheap. (He was a distant cousin... and sometime my lovely great uncle would give me some strawberries from his garden.) My father earned £5,00 a week... the food budget was 10/- (ten shillings in 1960 would only be worth about £14.50 today)... five growing children to feed!

 

In the spring we would walk the fields planting potatoes, in the summer we would gather beans, strawberries and raspberries for the local farmers (30 mile round walk there and back) In the autumn (holidays) we would collect the potatoes that we'd planted in the spring. That was a great time... part of the "pay" was to be able to take away as many spuds as we could carry at the end of each day... and if we were very ,very lucky a farmer would allow us to take what remained of the leftover turnips over (grown as cattle fodder). In wintery weekends... the ones that Burns described as "An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin, Baith snell an’ keen! An’ weary Winter comin fast," we gleaned the fields wearing hand knitted woolly mittens..

 

The spuds were what kept the family going; that was our staple; that's what we stored all winter and it was our wages that helped put the food on the table... me and my two younger sisters... in all weathers including ice and frost and snow... that and double digging a huge garden and eating kale, kale, kale and (you've probably got it... more kale!  All supplemented with a tablespoon full of NHS cod-liver oil every morning.

 

The treat in the sock at Christmas was for all of this backbreakingly hard-work was... one apple and one orange. I was 10! 

 

So married and decades later... we both consider food as a precious item. It's still an achievement to put a fresh healthy meal on a table and to be invited to eat with friends and family at their home or in a restaurant is a privilege that we personally can never, ever take for granted. Sharing food brings people together, it creates and strengthens bonds, forms unbreakable friendships. Nothing brings people together like good food and it always tastes better when eaten with friends and family.

 

Even better? The warm-hearted, generous folk who are willing to befriend us, share their food with us, to engage in convivial conversation and to make life so much more enjoyable for all concerned. In today's world... it's good to see folk enjoying themselves, having something nice to eat and a having happy family time... nothing can be better. 

[Peanut006]

4 hours ago, kalos said:

 

Hope you had a pleasant evening ,even though I never saw the post ,thanks for 

sharing Graham 🙂

I didn’t see the post either but I love your food photos

 

Michelle