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The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.
Comments
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I just asked Siri "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood", and he referred me to "The Woodchuck Getting Started Guide"!
Feeling a tad bored were you?
Did the Getting Started Guide give you the answer, or weren't you quite bored enough to look?
:rotfl:0 -
Feeling a tad bored were you?
Did the Getting Started Guide give you the answer, or weren't you quite bored enough to look?
:rotfl:
I keep hoping he'll turn out to be like Data on STNG, but he never does.(I just lurve spiders!)
INFJ(Turbulent).
Her Greenliness Baroness Pyxis of the Alphabetty, Pinnacle of Peadom and Official Brainbox
Founder Member: 'WIMPS ANONYMOUS' and 'VICTIMS of the RANDOM HEDGEHOG'
I'm in a clique! It's a clique of one! It's a unique clique!
I love :eek:0 -
Just heard from the chap who's been restoring my bureau. His hand has fully recovered from the injury he suffered in December, he's finished the job, and will be able to deliver it next Monday.
Now I need to clear space in my bedroom for it.
It was my grandmother's - not sure who she got it from. I loved it when I was little, so when my mum inherited it from her mum, she promised it would come to me eventually, and then when Aged P was trying to choose what furniture to take to his new flat and what to let go of, he decided it could come to me now. It had a few places where it was in need of repair, so I've been having it restored. I tried to collect it from Aged P's house to bring it home, but it wouldn't fit - there was plenty of room in the boot for it once I'd taken the back seats out, but it wouldn't fit through the tailgate of the car because the little sticking out ledges that the parcel shelf is supposed to rest on made the opening just too narrow. So I got the furniture repair chap to collect it from Aged P's house himself (with an extra consideration for the extra petrol, natch) and so haven't had it in my house yet.
Funny how things change... as a kid I loved it and never envisaged a desk as needing to accommodate anything other than writing with a pen, then in my 20s I wondered what use I'd be able to make of it in due course, since it clearly didn't have space for a desktop computer with (CRT) monitor etc, but by the time it was time for me to have it, I could see that it would be a great place to put a laptop.
It's a lovely link to my grandmother, who was such a positive influence when I was little. She visited frequently, and Mum used to call her in whenever one of us was ill, so that Granny could look after the ill one while Mum kept the show on the road with the other three healthy children. She was very patient and sympathetic, and read stories for hours. She was also, for each of us, our first experience of staying the night away from home without parents. She wore tweed skirts, and a selection of brooches to cover the top button of her blouses.
She'd lived an interesting life, having been born in India to parents who were there as part of the Raj and had something to do with setting up the railway network, I think. She went to boarding school in England without seeing her parents at all for several years, but spending her holidays with her brother in visiting her grandmother, and then returned to India not long before WWI. (There was a photo in one of her albums of her and several other upper class young ladies in long white dresses and wide brimmed hats serving tea to rows and rows of troops somewhere in India.) She travelled home to Blighty once war broke out and got a job as secretary to a politician, where she earned enough respect to be entrusted with speech writing. She married a widower who was something to do with setting up the national grid by day, and a writer by night, and thus acquired a step-daughter before going on to have 3 kids of her own.
When I knew her she was a widow, and had downsized from the big country house where she had once lived with a huge number of people (herself and husband and three kids, her elderly parents, the step-daughter and her husband and their four kids) and was living alone in the same English village where she used to go to stay with her own grandmother, in a modern house with old furniture, massive paintings in oils, and old fashioned habits - a dining table with a velvet tablecloth that had to be brushed with a special curved brush and a wooden thing a bit like a dustpan for catching the crumbs. We walked up the hill and down the other side to the farm she bought her eggs from, and swam in the river. It's a lifetime ago. She died in 1990, at the age of 95, in a nursing home in the same village where that house was.
It's an amazing piece of craftsmanship - multiple secret compartments, beautiful detailing, dated to "circa 1735" by someone who did some repairs on it 50 years or so ago. The bloke who's been restoring it now says he's found evidence of earlier repairs, but they've been done very well, and also very sympathetically to the origins of the thing.
I'm excited it's finally going to arrive!Do you know anyone who's bereaved? Point them to https://www.AtaLoss.org which does for bereavement support what MSE does for financial services, providing links to support organisations relevant to the circumstances of the loss & the local area. (Link permitted by forum team)
Tyre performance in the wet deteriorates rapidly below about 3mm tread - change yours when they get dangerous, not just when they are nearly illegal (1.6mm).
Oh, and wear your seatbelt. My kids are only alive because they were wearing theirs when somebody else was driving in wet weather with worn tyres.0 -
Lydia, it sounds lovely!
I love secret drawers and things!
And I have one of those wooden curved brushes and dustpan things!
I also have a metal version.
Bought them aeons ago in flea markets.(I just lurve spiders!)
INFJ(Turbulent).
Her Greenliness Baroness Pyxis of the Alphabetty, Pinnacle of Peadom and Official Brainbox
Founder Member: 'WIMPS ANONYMOUS' and 'VICTIMS of the RANDOM HEDGEHOG'
I'm in a clique! It's a clique of one! It's a unique clique!
I love :eek:0 -
Lydia, it sounds lovely!
I love secret drawers and things!
And I have one of those wooden curved brushes and dustpan things!
I also have a metal version.
Bought them aeons ago in flea markets.
Thanks Pyxis. In all that houseful of beautiful things, there were three that I particularly liked and would have loved to have had to remember her by. There was an enormous musical box with a faded inlaid top and a big brass cylinder that could play 6 different tunes from 19th century operas on a long row of metal teeth that covered several octaves, which went to my uncle when she died, so I imagine his widow or one of his kids has it in Australia now. There was a tiny blue enamel travelling clock in a leather case that opened with tiny little double doors, which went missing when she had Alzheimer's and nobody ever found out what happened to it. But the bureau is mine, and it means a lot to me.Do you know anyone who's bereaved? Point them to https://www.AtaLoss.org which does for bereavement support what MSE does for financial services, providing links to support organisations relevant to the circumstances of the loss & the local area. (Link permitted by forum team)
Tyre performance in the wet deteriorates rapidly below about 3mm tread - change yours when they get dangerous, not just when they are nearly illegal (1.6mm).
Oh, and wear your seatbelt. My kids are only alive because they were wearing theirs when somebody else was driving in wet weather with worn tyres.0 -
The bureau sounds lovely and it is understandable that you have such an emotional attachment to it.
I have an old bookcase that my grandfather made from planks of deep skirting board, it lives in my shed and is full of gardening things, packs of rose feed and such like. I remember it from my childhood and have painted it several times over the years. I have probably owned it since the late 70s. It is nowhere near as grand as your Georgian bureau but has a similar connection of belonging to a long deceased ancestor.
Would love to see a photo of it when it arrives .0 -
Loanranger wrote: »The bureau sounds lovely and it is understandable that you have such an emotional attachment to it.
I have an old bookcase that my grandfather made from planks of deep skirting board, it lives in my shed and is full of gardening things, packs of rose feed and such like. I remember it from my childhood and have painted it several times over the years. I have probably owned it since the late 70s. It is nowhere near as grand as your Georgian bureau but has a similar connection of belonging to a long deceased ancestor.
Would love to see a photo of it when it arrives .
Sounds a great way to remember him. I'll post a photo of mine "elsewhere" when it gets here. Are you a member over there, Loanranger?Do you know anyone who's bereaved? Point them to https://www.AtaLoss.org which does for bereavement support what MSE does for financial services, providing links to support organisations relevant to the circumstances of the loss & the local area. (Link permitted by forum team)
Tyre performance in the wet deteriorates rapidly below about 3mm tread - change yours when they get dangerous, not just when they are nearly illegal (1.6mm).
Oh, and wear your seatbelt. My kids are only alive because they were wearing theirs when somebody else was driving in wet weather with worn tyres.0 -
No, have never been invited but would accept if asked.0
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Lydia, thank you for your post about your special Grandmother and your bureau that once belonged to her. It made me think of my Dad's mother, and cry. Gran only lived round the corner from us, my guess is she moved there to be close. But we only did the duty Sunday afternoon visits to her.
I think my mother hated her for some reason that I don't understand. But among my parents' papers I found after they died there was evidence that she cared for me a lot. That I didn't know about. I'm so very glad that on my wedding day I gave her my bouquet. It was the last time I saw her before she died.0 -
ukmaggie45 wrote: »Lydia, thank you for your post about your special Grandmother and your bureau that once belonged to her. It made me think of my Dad's mother, and cry. Gran only lived round the corner from us, my guess is she moved there to be close. But we only did the duty Sunday afternoon visits to her.
I think my mother hated her for some reason that I don't understand. But among my parents' papers I found after they died there was evidence that she cared for me a lot. That I didn't know about. I'm so very glad that on my wedding day I gave her my bouquet. It was the last time I saw her before she died.
How special about the bouquet.
My grandmother lived long enough for me and my mum to argue about whether she should be invited to my wedding or was too far gone with the Alzheimer's for it to be possible, but died 8 months before I got married, so that settled that question.Do you know anyone who's bereaved? Point them to https://www.AtaLoss.org which does for bereavement support what MSE does for financial services, providing links to support organisations relevant to the circumstances of the loss & the local area. (Link permitted by forum team)
Tyre performance in the wet deteriorates rapidly below about 3mm tread - change yours when they get dangerous, not just when they are nearly illegal (1.6mm).
Oh, and wear your seatbelt. My kids are only alive because they were wearing theirs when somebody else was driving in wet weather with worn tyres.0
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