Sunday, June 14, 2015

Picking mandarins


Well, she won't get run over by a bus in that outfit, I hear you say! Last Monday, Queen's Birthday holiday for us, we went to a local orchard we had seen advertised, to pick mandarins. So did at least 236,421 other carloads of people, which meant the first few hours were spent in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam. We eventually managed to get into an orchard and it was fun picking bucketsful of fruit. One week on, we are all a slight mandarin colour.

Have been very busy practising the piano and tracking down ancestors these past weeks, and am very pleased with success in the latter department. I am concentrating on my paternal grandmother's siblings, and have found a great uncle - son of her youngest sister - his daughter, granddaughter and grandchildren. They are spread from Hawaii to NZ, and used to live in Alaska. I have also come across relatives from further back, one in Scotland and the other in an as yet unnamed foreign place but with a daughter living in Sydney.

I need to work out a way of organising all the papers I've printed from Ancestry.com, and get the hundreds of ancestors into some form I can handle.

I sent off a sample to have my DNA tested. So far, almost all ancestors are from England. What I'm hoping is that there will be some evidence of my Jewish grandfather, whose ancestors came from Poland (that's if I've got the right bloke).

I am not exaggerating when I say I find playing the piano EXTREMELY difficult, so am doing an online uni course on improving my ability to learn. Hope it works!

Interesting what you say about British and American Englishes, Winifred. I'm not surprised they are difficult to understand. When I went to Scotland I could barely understand a word, and had to keep on asking the locals to repeat what they'd just said. One thing I notice about listening to the BBC every night is that almost all the announcers speak very, very fast and I have great difficulty understanding them.

1 comment:

Winfix said...

Sorry to be a bit slow to comment but we are having a nightmare or two emptying the
attic and fighting with Georgina who falls upon everything as though it is the very thing she has wanted all her life - it is usually old though not in the valuable old but old as in junk! I have to make secret trips to the tip but she appears to have a sixth sense that some old toy or book that she hasn't seen for years has gone. I am convinced she will turn into one of those poor people who fill their homes with so much stuff there is no room for them. I love her dearly as you know and I really do think that the problem she and Max share about throwing anything away stems from losing their mummy so suddenly. She put them to bed and when the woke up the next day they did not have a mummy so everything has to be kept close to them and not
allowed to disappear. Time has healed them in many ways so time will eventually heal this I'm sure.