1st September - Last day of my week's challenge and a new challenge starts!

Today is the first day of September and it is beginning to feel Autumnal too :(
Today is the last day of my week's challenge - portraits in B&W............and
Today is the start of my yearly challenge for September Learn Something New Each Day, you can find it here I have today's prompt so very excited as it is several years since I did the last Sept challenge and I think this may get my mojo ready for the next few months, we shall see!!

So back to my B&W this photo was done by a friend of Zac's Mum I cannot take credit for it!

and here is my avator in B&W, I prefer the colour one

To finish my catch up with Nostalgia  about my jobs

I started doing holiday jobs when I started at Teacher training college at 18. These were all the jobs I did during the 3 years

Christmas postman ...each Christmas the PO took on extra staff mainly students to deliver the post!

Laundry room in a hotel ... this was ironing and starching all the bedlinen that had been washed!!

Waitressing at the local theatre cafe each summer.

Fruit picking raspberries and strawberries . This was before PYO started

I was at college training to be a Home Economics teacher for 1963 - 66

 Here we are taking turns to demonstrate to a pretend class how to make jam!

This is the only photo I have of my year 5 (now yr11) class with their Christmas cakes in 1968

I had a very varied career in Education from age 21 - 60

Home Economics teacher ffrom 1966 - 1986 During this time I stopped work for 9 yrs to have my 2 sons but returned as a single Mum when my first husband Andrew left me.

Primary School teacher of all subjects from 1988 - 1995

SENCO from 1995 - 2000 I retired on a half pension at 55yrs

Worked for LEA in Special needs as an advisor form 200 - 2005 when I was 60 and got my state pension

I never wanted to be a teacher!! I wanted to be a hairdresser but my parents would not allow me to leave school and do this and was told by them "that to be a teacher for a women would be good if I ever had children because of the school holidays"  I suppose they were quite right and I did enjoy parts of my teaching career but to be totally honest was really glad to finish and now very grateful for a teachers pension as well as a state pension!!

Thank you Kathi for your challenge a week ago and sorry I had to do it with mine this week!!

31st August - More job nostalgia in B&W

Today it is Peter's turn to tell you a little of his family and their working lives

Peter does not know who his father was. His mother was on;y 16 in 1935 when he was born. Thankfully he wasn't adopted and until the age of 19 lived and was brought up by his grandparents.
His grandfather was a fishermen well known in the local fishing industry and in the old town of hastings as 'Quiddy' Mitchell, All the fishermen had nicknames.
Life was hard and rough and when there was fish caught there were pennies to be spent on ale. Peter at 6 would be sent with a jug for the ale for his grandmother and she was frequently drunk and when Quiddy came home drunk from the pub, the couple would physically fight while Peter hid away. His grandmother would take in washing to was and iron for extra money!

Quiddy in the Royal Navy Reserves

Quiddy with other Hastings Fishermen

Whilst Peter was doing his national service his grand mother died and a few months later so did his grandfather. 

Peter left school at 15 and started his 5yr apprenticeship as a printer locally. After his national service he joined the largest printing firm in Sussex. He worked on the Goss headliner (3 unit printing press) until the firm was bought out in1985 and he had to train to use Web- offset machine with colour. His wage started at 1pound   30 shillings and when he retired at age 57 he earned £350 a week and could also buy shares in the firm EMAP

Life with his late wife was comfortable they both worked for the printing firm until their children were born, then she worked later at their junior school as a dinner lady. They started married life in a flat which cost 24shillings a week (Peter earned £10 a week in 1969.) They bought their first house in 1962 it cost £2,500!

Both these photos were in colour and I have altered each into B&W The photos were taken in1984 and 1988

Peter working on the Goss at FJ Parsons Hastings

 Working for a subsidery of EMAP at Burgess Hill on web-offset machine

When he retired he thought about another job until he received his state pension at 65 and wanted to be a traffic warden. He didn't get the job and ended up taking over his step dad's job as a part time filing clerk in a small family solicitor firm....... 21 yrs later he is still there working 3/4 mornings a week at the minimum wage per hour!. He loves going in and shopping for the 'girls' (the secretaries),  walking his boss's dog Lister on the beach,( he is a real 'goffer')   He can take holiday whenever and always has one morning a week off for us to have a day out....the perfect retirement job. He has tried to leave several times when we have been away for very long holidays (eg 3 mths in N Zealand) Always his job and work was waiting for him on his return

30th August - Surprise 40th Birthday trip!

Well 2 days have past by and lots has happened. Zac and Xanthe's Mum was 40 on 29th and we surprised her by going up to nr Taplow where she and her family were spending the day at Clivedon NT. My son had planned a afternoon river trip on the Thames with afternoon tea for the 11 of us on the 100yr old boat. It was a long journey for us via M25 /M4 but well worth it to have such a lovely day weather wise and with the right company too!!
Sorry to have so many of the day
This is an aerial photo of Clivedon and the river Thames, there are many  woodland walks. A courtesy car took us from the house (which is now a hotel) to the river, a 5 min drive!

The house has a very long and interesting history. The Astors lived there and it was the scene of the weekends away for Christine Keeler and Stephen Ward in the Profumo affair!!

There were some slides and a maze in the grounds which the children loved and spent a long time at! Just love Zac's face in this photo!!

A B&W photo of us waiting for the courtsey car at the hotel/house

 Me in colour waiting on the steps of the hotel

Some of the family waiting too

The car arrives Perdita still doesn't know what we are doing!

This was our boat for 2 hrs with the first group of our party having a little trip without the rest of us!

 Tea is served

 by a very young waiter!!

Food is served

 Scone for madam?

 and more food

 one tired young lady asleep!

28th August- More Nostalgia and Black and White1

I seem to have missed blogging Zachary's 9th Birthday last Friday!! So here he is with a Lego model he had just made.The Black and White really isn't the same is it!!

To continue with family and jobs it is now my ex husband turn!

My ex Andrew came from quite a poor family. His father and mother came from Thornton Cleverley and after the war they moved to Clacton on sea and lived in one of the prefabs built after living in a caravan. I am not sure what his Dad did then but they kept chickens for eggs but couldn't buy them proper food so shells were collected on the beach and ground and given to the chickens so there were shells on the eggs!! When shoes had holes, newspaper/cardboard was put in the soles. Father in law became a local busdriver and when I was around he was a coach driver for Eastern national and just started to abroad taking passengers on holidays. Sadly he died from cancer before retiring shortly after my Father. My mother in law wasn't working when I met Andrew but when he was at school his mother was a waitress at a local hotel to earn extra money.
Andrew left school and worked in London for the Prudential Insurance and then at 21 started work in Barclays Bank locally in Clacton on sea. I met him when I was at teacher training college in Clacton in my 2nd year and on finishing college I got a job in my home town Hastings and Andrew got a bank transfer to Barclays there. We got a bank mortgage on a 3 bedroomed house with a very large garden out in the country in a village called Guestling with which was rather above our budget £3, 500!! I earned £1000 a year and Andrew £600 a year, it was 1966. We married in March 1967 and we could only afford to have carpet in the lounge and our bedroom .The rooms upstairs we tarred the floor boards and I made rag and wool rugs for the spare room. We had to chose whether to run a car or have a telephone..we chose the car!
No luxuries until we had a twin tub, fridge, carpet on the stairs hall and landing and dining room and finally a television yet we were happy. Very different from today's materalistic world of must have!!
Andrew continued to work for the bank until the night my dad died, he had just been transferred to Northampton head office and we were moving to Nether Heyford. We decided we needed to stay in Hastings where my mother was so he left the bank, got another mortgage and he got a job with the Inland Revenue. This was when he met the lady who broke up our marriage 3 years later!! He stayed as a 'tax man' until he retired at 60. 2 years ago he died of lung cancer aged 68. yes he had smoked cigarettes and a pipe!!
Just to finish I lived in the same house we bought in 1966 , I bought my ex out with my parents money and on marrying Peter in 1985 we continued to live there for another 10years before selling it (for a lot lot more money than £3,500) and downsized to where we live now so we could retire early and pay off our mortgage...more about our jobs tomorrow!!

28th August - Quotation week - Black and White photo challenge

I had just done another animal and view in colour and B&W so here they are

View of our family's road

and the kitten Flump that we are feeding as well as a cat and a rabbit!!

Interesting how B&W changes a photo isn't it

Now to my quotation this week which was so similar to Anne's impromptu post ..great minds think alike!

"When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. 

But when you photograph people in Black and White you photograph their souls"    Ted Grant"

I am cheating now by finding some old photos of my father which I had ready for last week challenge about jobs and how things have changed over the years

The 3 photos show 3 stages in my Father's working life.. His father (my grandfather who I never knew) was superintendent of Cheltenham Baths (no longer existing) and his mother (my Grandmother) never worked.(and never liked my Mother and always called her that women. They never met!)

 After training he started his teaching career and at the beginning of the war he and his school were evacuated to Ware in Herts. Herts was so badly bombed the schools from Hastings returned as it was seemed safer on the coast at Hastings than inland!

1 He was called up into the Airforce in 1941? and my Mother (they were married) went back to live with her parents in Morley Yorkshire and returned to her old job as a secretary. He Father was a manager of the town's Co op so during the war I think life was really OK for them with food and away from the bombings.

2. I was born at the end of the war Sept 1945 and my father was demobbed and we returned to hastings where he returned to his primary school to his old job. My mother never worked again. I think a teacher's pay wasn't very good so to supplement his salary my father became head of evening classes during the fifties. These classes were vocational and were very popular to learn dress making, wood work and cookery, not sure what else was offered!

3 The last photo was taken a week before his sudden death at 60 (a massive coronary  in Nov 1975), one term before he was due to retire. (this photo was found in his briefcase ready to give my Mother at Christmas...it had been taken professionally during school photos.)  

He had worked at the same school as Deputy head for over 30 years and was a strong NUT rep for Hastings,  One thing I remember him supporting very strongly was for teachers to have a paid lunch break and not to have to do dinner duty, this was when Dinner ladies were appointed!

Who these days stays in the same job for more than 30yrs and can retire with a full pension, lump sum and my mother still got his lump sum after his death and a very good widow's pension from his job too!

Sadly she died 3 yrs later of a massive stroke as did her Father.  I was only 33yrs old 

Bank Holiday Monday - Lucky Snapping prompt

Something must have happened to my quotation week. I sent it to Jenni last week and because she was busy this weekend it was sent on to Kathi to put up for you all. Thank goodness Anne put an impromtu challenge up this morning. I think it was very similar to mine too!!
Here is my person in colour and B&W - my eldest grandson eating breakfast at 11am

Here is my animal(s) in colour and B&W - our cats florrie and Mae

Kathi sorry I haven't blogged nostalgia yet but promise I will one day this week!

18th August - S for Sunday, Sunshine and Scrapping

Today is the end of Anne's week of Silver Linings, I started the week with I for Irrelevent. We also had the additional challenge of a letter for each week

Today is S for the lovely sunny day we have had here

I have also made this little minibook this weekend, S for scrapping

Thank you Anne for your challenge and hope you got away and found some sunshine?

17th August - Saturday so S for....Spending and Shorter hair!

This is was I SPENT my money on yesterday
Another shopping bag, a top to go over long sleeved T shirts

 and a dress for hols in Oct...stomach in!!!

S again for SHORTER hair!

How difficult it is to take a self portrait!! not my best photo, no make up so bags under the eyes!!

16th Aug - It's Friday so the letter F

Woken to a cloudy morning but warm and bright so sun is slowly pushing through though there seems to have been a lot of showers in UK!

F for Favourite has to be Marmite  (I love it!) I had it for breakfast with Laughing Cow light cheese triangles

 I took my plaster off this morning as I wanted to see if stitches are ready to come out! Today is nearly 7 days so think by Sun or Mon my ex GP friend can take them out, though it was a straight cut, didn't realise it curved LOL!! You can see where the edges were glued!!

Off to town after a lovely shower, yes will cover up the wound! Wonder if I will purchase anything????

15th August - T for TOMATOES

Another dry sunny day in this part of the country!

I realised that yesterday I should have done W for weigh in as I went to WI at SW instead of Monday and lost 2.5lbs and now have lost 1st .5lbs. How could I have forgotten when I blogged!!

Today is T again so my word is Tomatoes

This was our lunch , tomato salad

I bought these at Lidl's since our toms haven't ripened yet!

This afternoon I did the weekly challenge on UKS. It had to have 50% white space, at least 2 different papers, stitching real or faux, diecut or punched shapes

This was our sky through our patio door this evening, rather like the way we have grape ivy from the hedge has travelled across and over the door, it should be cut back but we are leaving it at the moment.

I will leave you tonight with a silly photo of Peter, caught him looking in the mirror like this with his bowls hat!!!...silly man!!

14th August - Another sunny day and W for WICKED or WEEDS!

Irrelevant is definitely my ironing as it is still at the same stage as the other day, going to have to hide the ironing in spare room and put the ironing board and iron away for another day :)  Today is perfect for weeding but don't want to do that either. Just going to flick the duster around the main room and vac the carpet. Did the toilet this am so smelling sweet and clean:)

Have enjoyed prepping the meal for tonight as my friend Carol is coming with her man friend Dave, they now live mainly down in Wilts. Will take some photos tonight.

it is a warm very sunny day and dying to get into the garden with my book, might in a few mins

W is for Wicked...was going to take a photo of cream cakes as I really don't use the word as younger people do for good/great. But I am going to say that a friend posted this idea on FB this morning, a great idea or let's say wicked ( sorry Borqna don't try to translate this and do hope you are having a fab holiday too xx)

Use a glass cake stand and pretty jam jars/ ribbons to make this flower arrangement, thank you Shirley xxx

Joy you asked about our summer school hols, our children don't go back to school until the beginning of Sept, as Zac told me another 3/4 weeks for him!!!