draliman on life

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

Do you prefer a slice of cake from a larger one or an individual item like a bun, scone or Danish pastry?
I’m good either way. Bring it on.

Do you like sugary items such as doughnuts, gateau with cream, cupcakes or fruit cake?
I’ll have all of that except the fruit cake.

Can you bake a cake?
I’ve only ever tried the one type of cake, but I guess that’s a yes. I went hunting through my photos and found a picture.

Care to share a favourite cake recipe?
Just the one for the cake above, a standard dead easy sponge – self-raising flour, eggs, caster sugar, baking powder, mix and cook.

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

What is your favourite Christmas (or traditional) memory?
Gran always visited from Scotland, and we used to have lots of fun going around the place. We also used to go for a lovely walk on Christmas Eve, all together.

Do you think merchandise is sold too early for these celebrations?
Yep. The only reason there’s no Easter Eggs in the shops yet is because they’ve been full of Christmas stuff since October.

Do you decorate your house with ribbons, streamers, tinsel etc?
Not very much, a couple of strips of tinsel and some flashing coloured lights.

What is your least favourite Christmas song?
I was struggling to decide which one is the absolute worst, but Dawn reminded me that it’s “Last F*cking Christmas” by Wham.

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

Do you like snow?
I do, in theory. I like walking out in it. I hate it if I’m out somewhere, it starts to snow and I have to drive home. That’s frightening.

However we never had much snow here and even less in recent years.

Did you build a snowman as a child and dress it with coal eyes, a carrot nose etc?
I think we built rather half-hearted snowmen but never got as far as dressing them up. They were pretty poor anyway, given the amount of snow we had to work with.

Did you have snowball fights?
Yep 🙂

Did you have a sleigh?
I had neither sleigh nor sled, due to the afore-mentioned lack of snow. Snow which actually settles for more than 10 minutes once every 5 years doesn’t make it worthwhile.

I remember once we borrowed food trays from Mum and slid down a steep road on them. That’s as far as we got, sled-wise.

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

What brings you the most comfort: food, friends, a good movie, pets, a walk on the beach/in the park, something else?
Yeah, I’ll have all that lot please. And chuck in “something else” too thanks, why not.

Most of us love our food. Is there something you like but know you shouldn’t have it?
All the tasty stuff I eat.

It’s a simple rule of thumb – if it tastes great, you shouldn’t be eating it. If it tastes like a mouldy old sock, it’s doing you the world of good.

Do you prefer a garden of flowers or growing vegetables, or do you not have a garden?
A garden of flowers, I mainly have little bushes in mine as flowers need a lot of tending. Most of the flowering stuff in my garden are technically weeds.

Would you like to be rich, I mean REALLY rich?
It would make a lot of stuff meaningless – saving for retirement, working at all and so on. On the other hand, BRING IT ON!

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

If reincarnation exists, would you like to come back as a domestic pet or a wild animal?
If I was a domestic pet, it would have to be a cat. You get independence while still being looked after. Otherwise, a wild animal.

Do you think Zoos are a good idea?
They’re okay these days. When I was a kid it was a case of big animals in little cages but these days the animals have more freedom and there’s breeding programmes trying to look after endangered animals.

Have you ever been to a safari park?
Yes, in Aviemore in Scotland decades ago.

Have you visited an oceanarium?
I think I’ve been to an aquarium a long time ago, but I’m not positive. I was very young so I could be mis-remembering.

I had the week off last week and went for a few walks in various woods.

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

Do you like fireworks?
Not really. I like to see all the exploding colours but I don’t like the loud noise. I don’t like any loud things, which is why I never do the vacuuming or grass cutting 😉

Do you think fireworks should only be used by professionals?
Definitely. I think outside of professional displays they should be treated as explosives. Because that’s what they are.

Do you think today’s fireworks are value for money?
I don’t know how much they cost, but probably not.

The best bit about fireworks night is when they tell you how many tens of thousands of pounds the display cost. Because I’m sure all the homeless people far prefer seeing lights in the sky in the distance to having all that money spent on feeding and housing them.

What is your favourite and least favourite firework?
I don’t know anything about types of firework. I would prefer ones with lots of colour and not much bang.

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

How would you describe a wicked witch?
Pointy hat, pointy nose, warts, broomstick, cauldron and unfortunate victims bubbling away in the cauldron.

What would scare you most, a ghost or a headless horseman?
A ghost I think. At least with a headless horseman there’s some substance there to hit.

If you were attending a Halloween themed fancy dress party, what would you go as?
Myself. Scary stuff.

Do you have many Trick or Treat visitors on October 31st?
I had my godson (accompanied by his Mum) and another pair of kids with their Mum came along at the same time so knew they could come too. Then I had a couple of older girls a bit later. I don’t put out a plastic pumpkin though, which is the accepted signal that you’re open for business.

Mainly the kids troop round with their Mums and visit the houses of their friends from the local primary school.

I bought a whole tub of Heroes mini-chocolates, so I’m happily working my way through the rest 🙂

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

Growing up, did your parents take you to visit your uncles, aunts and grandparents regularly?
Just my paternal grandmother. Any other relatives we were properly in touch with lived hundreds of miles away.

If so, did you enjoy those visits or try to get out of them? If not, did you parents take you on outings (the zoo, beach etc).
As a little kiddie, I wasn’t massively happy to go! Apart from that we had lots of days out during school holidays. While Dad was working Mum often took my brother and me to various coastal villages with a little picnic.

What kind of holidays did you have with your parents?
We always visited my maternal Gran up in Scotland, every summer. That was a grand adventure!

Did you have pets of your own, or just a family pet?
We didn’t have any pets. Apart from the occasional “fun fair goldfish”.

It was a lovely day yesterday so I went for a walk along country roads and across fields.

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

Do you watch black and white movies?
Not recently. I watched a fair number of old Tarzan films and Cary Grant films when I was younger. They often showed them on Saturday mornings, just before lunchtime.

Did you date your brother’s/sister’s friends?
No.

Did your mother ever wear high heels?
Not that I remember. I probably wouldn’t have really noticed, though.

Can you remember the washing powder your mother used for the laundry?
I can sort of remember her using powder. It was something she could use in the sink, which is where she did the laundry. I had a washing machine long before she did.

And here’s a couple of photos I took during my walk at Cardinham Woods last week.

Here is my post for Share Your World, hosted by Di.

What do you miss most from your childhood?
More energy, lack of aches and pains and no responsibilities.

Would you like to relive parts of your childhood?
Yes, bits here and there, but most definitely not all of it!

As an adult, did you pass on any of your childhood traits to your children/nephews/nieces?
Nope. I have none of the above relations.

Were your parents strict but fair in their discipline?
Yes. I don’t remember any unfair smackings. They were all definitely warranted 😉