Interests etc ...

I enjoy many things ...

Gardening:

We have quite a large garden which we don't cope with as well as we would like. My favourite bit is the vegetable plot. Last spring we had an excellent crop of purple sprouting broccoli, but I have been too busy at work to give the veggies enough attention and the rest of the season was rather thin. Last year I thought that the rhubarb had gone to the great crumble in the sky - but since I moved it out of the shade of a large horsechestnut tree and into a patch of ground enriched with plenty of muck it has gone crazy. The year before last I put a small gooseberry bush in and a red currant. Last year we only got 3 gooseberries and a few bunches of redcurrants - but they were delicious. This year was better - a couple of dozen gooseberries but the redcurrants were a disappointment again. This year I have given them the same treatment that the rhubarb got - I've moved them into what I hope will be a more congenial position. Judith prefers the flowers.

Handymanning:

(Is that a real word? - It is now!): Although I hate getting started, I enjoy building shelves / cupboards etc, decorating and get a real buzz out of knowing that "I did that". Two year ago I did my first tiling - in the downstairs cloakroom. Good Eh? (I also built that rather stylish shelf unit).

Then we decorated the back bedroom and my new experience was to install a recessed light in the ceiling. It took a bit of courage to cut the large hole in the ceiling that it required, I can tell you.

My latest project has been a garden table with a top made out of nearly 300 year old floorboards. See the pictures!

Photography:

I am not a great photographer but I do enjoy taking photos and often take shots that please me. The kind of photo that I have the most success with is informal portraits (I am not too good at getting people to pose for me - but I can catch them off guard!)

For my 50th birthday I treated myself to a good camera (and have been struggling ever since to learn to get the best from it!). Most of the photographs on this site are mine (well, they would be wouldn't they?). I also help to run the ICTeachers Photo Library and quite a few of my photos are there.

Walking:

We like to get our boots on and walk in the great outdoors. For summer, 1998 we had a week in Guernsey (highly recommended) where we walked the well maintained and quite spectacular coastal paths. We wished we had known about Guernsey, with its clean, quite beaches, each with its cafe (many of them licensed!) and toilet, and its sunshine when the children were small.

Field Trips:

Going on residential visits is one of my favourite parts of my job. Two particular areas that I have been to many times are the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea in South Wales, an ideal and varied area to introduce children to the joy and fascination of the countryside (including walking) and the Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, less walking but endlessly fascinating. We spend a day at the Blists Hill Open Air Museum, decorate mugs at the Coalport China Museum, visit the Museum of Iron in Coalbrookdale and, of course, have a good look at the Iron Bridge itself. On the way home we stop off for the day at  the Black Country Living Museum at Dudley. I can highly recommend it.

Barn Dances:

I am a barn dance caller, working with a variety of Surrey-based bands.  I began with the school folk club at Ashfield School where I always worked with records (and never on my own). After moving to Surrey I got involved in Morris dancing with Thames Valley Morris, where I met musicians who were also involved in dance bands. I have never looked back (although I had to stop Morris dancing after a back injury.

I don't take bookings directly (I always take them through bands) but I can provide contacts to bands who would be glad to play for your PTA / sports club / wedding / anniversary / birthday / bar mitzvah. If you are a band working in the Surrey / SW London area why not contact me?

Reading:

I love reading. I enjoy all kinds of books but particularly enjoy reading SciFi, having grown up as an Eagle reader and been introduced early to Dr Who and to the works of Isaac Asimov, A E Van Vogt and E E 'Doc' Smith. Among the writers whose work I enjoy are (in alphabetical order) Penelope Lively, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman (who's books I have just discovered), Bob Shaw, Theodore Sturgeon (The Dreaming Jewels is one of my all time favourite books), Kurt Vonnegut and Jill Paton Walsh. I am also very partial to reading children's literature - my favourites include Winnie the Pooh, Dr Seuss, Leon Garfield, Kipling's Just So Stories and, of course, Lewis Carroll. One of my favourite activities, as a teacher, is reading aloud to children.