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30/09/2011
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The average Brit will spend over two hours glued to a phone or computer screen this Christmas Day
Nearly half of the 2,000 Brits questioned will check their emails on the big day, while time on Facebook, surfing the web and shopping online will feature heavily amid festivities.
Meet our new Cookery expert
After a career in both education and health, Julie Austin has realised a long held ambition to set up her own catering company –ExperTeas. She works with her business partner, friend, and cordon bleu trained chef, Claire Dainton, to provide superbly cooked and beautifully presented food throughout Devon, Dorset and Somerset.
After her daughter’s recent diagnosis with coeliac disease, Julie became driven to cook for those on special and restricted diets. This led her to set up a mail order cake company providing cakes and sweet treats for those unable to tolerate gluten and wheat. Products for those on a range of other special diets may also be provided for on request.
Older Brits amongst Europe’s most Web-savvy
Age UK’s myfriends online week shows older people the social benefits of being online. People aged 55-74 in the UK are amongst the most prevalent older Internet users in Europe and, according to Age UK, feel more connected to their loved ones because of it.
The statistics come during Age UK’s myfriends online week 2011, which encourages older people to use the Internet to connect with friends and family.
Brief Lives - Remembered
It was during a visit to Australia in 2003, when I first heard the names Zoe and Clive Gentle during a conversation with a friend. It was to be a conversation that was to change my life in so many different ways.
Clive and his family had lived in the Hampshire area until they immigrated to Australia when he was still a small boy. Clive who at the time was 43 years old had just discovered that he was a twin and that his twin sister had died as a baby. Clive expressed a wish to find out where Zoe is buried and although we knew very little about Zoe, I agreed to find out what happened all those years ago. Just before Christmas that year, I discovered that Zoe is buried at Aldershot Military Cemetery.
Fond memories of our combo!
My Dad, Leonard Passfield, had a couple of 'combos' during the late fifties and sixties and many are the tales I could tell.
His first was a 600 Panther with a child adult sidecar, and come Sunday, if Mum and Dad had 10 shillings to spare, we would load up and go to the coast for the day. My brother Terry and I in the sidecar.
Half a million older people helped with the switch to digital
The number of older and disabled people who have received help to switch to digital TV this week passed the half a million mark, the BBC-run Switchover Help Scheme has announced.
The 500,000th Switchover Help Scheme customer had their digital TV equipment installed this week, about two and half years after switchover started in earnest.
My family's cars
I was lucky when I was a lad, as my father could afford a car. We were the only family in the street with a car. He needed a car for his job with the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works, MPBW to some, so he also got a petrol mileage allowance. In the late 1940s I was carried about in a mid 1920s Morris Cowley. Neil Cairns shares more of his motoring memories.
More motorcycle memories!
I only recently sold off my two Matchless motorcycles, both of which was used to carry a sidecar. In the first instance I learned how to drive a 600cc Matchless twin with an attached sidecar. This machine was purchased for just £40.00 ! After some years as first a learner then a qualified driver, I drove the sidecar around to work and also to Dymchurch for long weekends.
American generosity remembered
When President Obama met Prime Minister Cameron in June the American leader stressed the continuing significance of the so-called special relationship between our two countries. There is one group of people who have never doubted that fact. They are the more than three thousand ‘sea-vacs’, Brits who spent anything from two to six years in the United States during World War II. They will never forget the generous way American homes were thrown open to British children in 1940.
Windmills are here to stay!
Mention the word ‘windmill’ and we, of the older generation, probably hold a mental picture of Dutch windmills; while our younger generation would immediately visualise a present day wind farm.
Love them or hate them, windmills are here to stay. It may surprise you to know they’ve been around for about 5000 years in one form or another and records show of their existence for helping in the manual effort for grinding cereals or raising water levels.
Dr Carrot is Back!
During the Second World War, the Ministry of Food developed a cartoon character called Dr. Carrot as part of an educational campaign to show people how to eat healthily during rationing. Today as we struggle against an obesity epidemic and harsh economic times, The British Carrot Growers’ Association has decided to follow in the footsteps of Dr. Carrot and work with TV’s Dr. Christian Jessen to echo his words of advice.
Wanted - Cats' Tales!
Cats Protection is seeking feline tales for its 2011 writing competition, the winner of which will be published in the charity’s magazine, The Cat.
'Goodbye Old Chap' - A life at sea in peace and war
When I retired from journalism, friends told me how important it was to keep the 'grey cells active' - as Poirot would have said. For me, this was the excuse that I needed to keep writing, albeit as a hobby. My father, Captain Stanley Algar, was born in 1899, saw service in the Merchant Navy in both world wars and kept diaries, some of which were written in a German Prisoner of War camp and hidden from the enemy
First ever Family History week launched in UK
The 26th December 2010 will see the launch of the UK’s first ever family history awareness campaign, Start Your Family Tree Week, at a time when family is at the forefront of the nation’s minds. Start Your Family Tree Week is supported by findmypast.co.uk, GenesReunited.co.uk, the Society of Genealogists and Martha Lane Fox.
