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Our 1996 This is a quick summary of what we have been doing this year, with apologies if it sounds like a circular, which it is. |
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Iain: Burst through the six foot barrier in April, has added two more inches since then, and is concentrating hard on being shorter than the standard door. Not good qualifications for a bus conductor, but had a fortnight of work experience in the summer with the Sheffield Bus-Stop Management Department, organised by school. Is still at Tapton school, twenty minutes walk down the hill, but uphill home. Now doing second year of GCSE (fifth form in old money), and if successfully completes all the coursework and stops playing computer games long enough for the odd moment of homework, hopes to do A-levels next year. Science, Maths, Computing look the best options. Fencing on a Thursday evening: that is swords rather than posts. |
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Peter: 1996 started with commuting to Crawley to work for the Paymaster General every Monday morning. The trusty alarm-radio burst into life with "this is the BBC World Service at oh-four hours GMT"; staying in a hovel for the week and setting off back around the orbital car park (aka the M25) on a Friday evening, catch up with mending the week's light bulbs until early-to-bed on the Sunday evening. The Good News is that the Driving Standards Agency in Nottingham were persuaded to let me run their computing department from April. So I now worry about driving test organisation; nights are at home and my driving is just the 40 miles each way to Nottingham: an hour on a good day. |
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Elaine: Still sorting out the sewers of Rotherham, but only for three and a half days a week at the moment. Tatting, reading, and ringing occupy the rest of the time. Yoga, for the exercise, occupies Monday evenings. Not to forget the lavender boat collecting rubbish and elsans at the Waterways rally in Birmingham in August, when the tent had its annual outing as the eldest on site: but it kept the rain out. |
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Canalling: Odyssey is seventy foot and red: Copperkins is almost sixty and green. We have managed seven trips this year, and one weekend talking to the others who co-own the boats. About 700 miles and 700 locks for the year and another few hundred photographic slides to add to the previous 11000. |
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Ringing:
Iain reluctantly joins us at Ranmoor on Tuesday evenings and sometimes is dragged from bed on Sunday morning. The handbells spend most of their time in the cupboard, but usually see the light on Sunday afternoon. About a dozen Quarter Peals for the year altogether. |
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House: is still cluttered, the grass is too long and we are crowded out by the books. Iain's floor has an undergrowth of discarded clothes and books, and is fearful of the day of the vacuum cleaner. Lunatic house-builder has completed mansion on the previously overgrown allotment next door: our modest abode is now shown off in its full modesty. And so to 1997 |
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