Internet Friends

The last section of a post from Painting New Memories made me reflect on friendships I’ve made on-line and reminded me that I’ve been rather lax in correspondence lately.

In November 1994 I started using Compuserve, an Internet Provider with forums covering many interests.  Compared to the sophisticated Internet we have now, back then it was slow-running, but there was always excitement when the little yellow flag on the Compuserve mailbox icon went up.

I signed onto the Genealogy Forum and the Practice Forum.  This is where my e-mailing started and I was amazed at how I could send a recipe for a Christmas cake to someone in Wyoming and seemingly overnight they had baked it!  Friends here wondered why on earth I wanted to send electronic messages across the world and that makes me smile because they’re all doing it now.

So, I “bumped” into two Americans online on 22 November 1994 who told me all about Thanksgiving and on The Genealogy Forum I “bumped” into another American with my surname.

Since that dark dreary November evening 14+ years ago, I have met all three of these lovely people.  My children and I visited Wyoming for a month to stay with one friend and her family.   My friend drove 6 hours to Denver to collect us and was so kind and patient with us and when we met for the first time I felt I knew her so well. So, if you are reading this, thank you C, it was SO appreciated.

I visited South Dakota to stay at the house of another friend,who took us to Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and a rodeo at Rapid City – thank you D.

A few years ago the third friend and his wife came from Texas to Britain for a holiday and stayed in Bath.   They popped over on the train to our home and we had a traditional Roast Beef dinner with Yorkshire puddings and Spotted Dick Pudding – a fact which he mentioned in his e-mail last week. Thank you D and D.

I’ve been to Wyoming 3 times now,  borrowed my friend’s tent to camp in, been to Montana with her family as well as the Crow Fair and the Wind River Indian Reservation Pow Wow where the above photo of my daughter was taken – the other is of me and my rental car at Moneta, Wyoming, population 10!

I’ve been so fortunate to come across these very generous friends in America and will never be able to thank them enough for their hospitality and patience.  I would never have had these opportunites were it not for them … and the Internet of course.

Oh, then there’s the lovely couple from Adelaide … but that’s another story for another time.

Thank you Lajoni for your post ….

Death of Handwriting?

I was very interested to read today’s BBC online article on the slow death of handwriting .

It brought to mind the School National Handwriting Competition we HAD to take part in every year during the 1950s/60s. My primary school teacher used to comment that my handwriting was “rather large and sprawling” and so I addressed this by writing in a barely legible teeny weeny script! It didn’t last though as my handwriting today has reverted to its natural state.

I’ve just found the very school report from 1962.

Over the years, I have been guilty of typing letters rather than hand writing them due to speed and legibility and blogposts are typed so my handwriting is restricted to cards, postcards, shopping lists and my diary.

According to the BBC article …

Perhaps the best argument for keeping our pens is that otherwise, in a society that is recorded in more detail than any which came before it, we will leave plenty of data but very little of our personalities behind.

Our descendants may struggle to read our letters, but they’ll never even see most of our texts and e-mails.

So here is the pangram in that article to add a bit of hand-written personality to this blog.

See … it’s still rather large and sprawling.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Miss Dancing!

I hope you have a WONDERFUL day.

lots of love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A Sunny Afternoon in Bath

It was a glorious day for February …  we set off for Bath Rugby Ground in good time for the match but there were absolutely no parking spaces to spare today.  Everyone had decided that, after weeks of grim weather, they too would venture into the city.

We parked high up Widcombe Hill and trekked in, passing the travel writer Simon Calder on the way and eventually arrived 15 minutes after kick-off.  Fortunately I hadn’t lost the plot, they were still running up and down the pitch with that odd-shaped ball!

I had a wonderful view from my seat, the crowd bathed in sunshine, a hazy view of Bath Abbey and The Empire Hotel with its distincive roofline, the backs of Georgian town houses and of course the dashing figure of Mr Incredible!

By half time, Bath were winning but after the break London Irish regained a hold and the score finished at 20:20.

We ambled back in the watery winter sunshine along Great Pulteney Street where the numerous chimney pots were outlined by brilliant blue sky.  Then it was a climb back up Widcombe Hill, to the little church and the grand house in front of which we had parked the car.