My hobbies

My hobbies are photography, family history, music and computers. I had my first camera, a folding Brownie camera way back in 1952 and I still have it and will not part with it for sentimental reasons, it was a present from my mother and father.

 At present, I have a Canon Power Shot SX 200 which I believe to be a great little camera and I have been able to take some great images, well I think so! One summer, Ronald and I went to the New Forest with Rosie, my sister and her husband, Paul. We all had our cameras with us and took lots of images. One lovely afternoon at Keyhaven, we were sitting on a bench watching some gulls flying around when I told Rosie that I wished that I could take some shots of the gulls but explained that I was not quick enough. Paul called over that he had some cold chips in his bag and that he would throw them in to the air so that I could take some shots of the gulls. My first attempt was a failure because I was not aiming my camera in the same direction as Paul was throwing the chips so we decided to have another go making sure that we both knew what we had to do. This time, I held my camera up and using the wide angle took some shots of the gulls and because of the great fixture “trimming” on my camera, with a few clicks I was able to produce some lovely close-ups.

 From this photo, I was able to obtain the following photo.

 The first time that I became interested in family history was when I was looking at some old photographs, birth, marriage and death certificates and decided that I wanted to know more about my ancestors especially my mother who died when I was thirteen years old and did not know much about her family. For a number of years I have been tracing my family history, visiting archives, libraries, and asking for help from many organisations devoted to family history. It was difficult trying to find my way around the increasing number of resources on the internet but I had a lot of help from other researchers especially Rosie.  I found that using the internet for research was very popular probably because when exchanging information with fellow researchers it was much quicker and more efficient using my computer. I have exchanged information with researched from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Channel Islands, USA, Ireland and England to mention just a few. My husband and I have been to different Archives and Record Offices, to different Churches so that we could look at the headstones and sometimes we had strangers helping us. We had lots of fun and enjoyed meeting other people who had similar interests and enjoyed talking to some of the vicars who were very helpful. We got wet many times and ended up with muddy shoes but we still had a great time. I have found lots of information regarding my family and my husband's family, and as it is an on-going project I am hoping that other family members will carry on with the work.

There is nothing I like better than to sit in a comfortable chair and listen to music particularly from the musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber. A group of us went to see “The Sound of Music” starring Connie Fisher in London, I really enjoyed it though the light conditions made it difficult for me at times otherwise it was fantastic. I have no particular favourite singer, as there are so many that I enjoy listening to such as Russell Watson, Susan Boyle, Lesley Garrett, Katharine Jenkins and Elaine Page. I do intend to have the music on too loud so have started to wear headphone that I find to be so much better.

I do not know what I would do without my computer; I enjoy surfing the web, researching my family tree, being the administrator of our private family web site and doing my blog on Blogger. There is so much that you can do and it is a lovely way to keep in touch with family and friends.