Jill Sparrow

There was a lot of corporal punishment at Berridge but I never fell foul of it None whatsoever at Manning...just psychological warfare there. Much worse! Only way to survive was to keep a low profile and live in your own head. Have done so ever since. Perfectly sane, I am....it's everybody else,

Me too. Loppy! Or a solitary moggie in my case!

Have you always been a masochist, our Ben? Got to be easier ways to earn a crust!

The penultimate one looks as though she's had a few too many! Not our Margie! Unless she's been fibbing about her age!

Or, in Ben's case, a world without females!

Not a George Orwell fan then, Ben? He allegedly named it after a room at The BBC where he worked. My favourite Orwellian novel is Animal Farm! No surprises there!

I shall be living in a hermitage with many moggies. The world can get on with its crazy ideas. I don't want to know!

We now have male maternity wards in this world..all for diversity me! Certainly. Let blokes have the babies...and everything else that goes with it. They can have my share and welcome!

Remember my mum buying deckchair canvas from Cravens in Hockley. It was rolled up in brown parcel paper.

Was not Barnes Wallis involved with the design of the R101. Geodetic design before he turned his attention to the Wellington bomber, etc. It's one for Chulla! Apparently it was R100 which was a Vickers project and thus the brainchild of Barnes Wallis. As an aside, I once worked with a girl whose family had lived best door to Wallis. Although elderly by then, he used to help her with her maths homework!

Too right, Trogg. I'm not exactly sweetness and light first thing in the morning at the best of times but deny me my coffee and I'd likely go for your jugular, At least they got what they wanted first shot! I am needle phobic...not that I get any sympathy. Better now. Breakfast scoffed!

Starving blood test this morning. No breakfast, no coffee...in short, nowt! Quick trip round Morrison's. Could have eaten every loaf in the bakery but, no, have to come back home and take my thyroxine...then wait 45 minutes before anything else passes my lips! Ground coffee, yogurt, granary toast and honey coming up!

I don't share my cheese with anyone...except the cats who do appreciate a taste now and then. I have a nice ripe camembert which I shall sample with a good red wine later this evening after another day battling with the bathroom ceiling! Grrrrrr! Hope your mum has a lovely birthday, Nonna.

Don't apologise, Trogg! My age is on my profile for all to see! It seems that Gerrard and Lindley's are two separate entities. I do vaguely recall my mother mentioning, while we were watching the 1963 fire, that it had happened before.

That would be the fire I watched as a child. Thanks.

Must have been a different fire, Trogg, because I wasn't born until November 1957. The fire I remember occurred in the early to mid 60s.

I'm confused here. Was Gerrard's also known as Lindley's? As a small child, I remember watching a serious fire from a bedroom at the back of our house in Bobbers Mill Road and seeing the flames lick around a tall chimney. My parents said it was Lindley's factory on fire. I was also told that my paternal grandma, the volatile Kate Hudson, had worked at Lindley's as a girl but she was a silk worker. Perhaps it had once been used for textiles? I do recall my sister going on a trip to Gerrard's when she was at Peveril. She came home with lots of free samples but

Yes, indeed, CT. I have a photo somewhere of the two of us when we were toddlers, taken in his grandma's garden!

I wonder if she sees herself as the new Audrey Hepburn? Dress by Givenchy, former actress, looking to carve a niche in the charitable ambassador field? Sadly, there's only one Audrey Hepburn and her life was more tragic than most people realize but something shone out of her that few others possess. That's why she's one of my icons.

Won't be any worse than David, Prince of Wales in the 1920s, telling out of work Welsh miners that "Something must be done!" After which he went home, put his best togs on and went out on the town. The man was a hypocrite and we should thank the avaricious Wallis for his abdication. Don't get the idea I'm left wing! . I'm not!

I don't know any big words like that, FLY! what I do know is that anyone with enough gin inside them looks happy! If I were HMQ and 92, I'd be looking forward to leaving em all to get on with it and putting my spiritual feet up for a few centuries!

No, I haven't got Alzheimer's and started repeating myself! Mods, delete please.

Camilla is rapidly turning into the Queen Mother. I think she's even wearing her old clothes and hats! I know Charles loved his granny but that's ridiculous. I didn't watch the wedding. Got rid of my tv some years ago. I've been papering the bathroom ceiling! Don't ask!

Do you mean Godber's, jonab? They were there for many years. I used to know Marian Godber.

But Rasputin had a way with the ladies, Ben. You might be related!