Canny Granny's Advice to the Young

This week a young man was rightly hauled over the coals for putting a photo of a suicide victim on social media.  I am now going to tell you about a death I witnessed, but this is not a gruesome attempt to interest you in the macabre, but a chance to tell you about the death of my father. I witnessed him pass from this life to eternity. He had been in hospital for about two weeks suffering from sepsis, very poorly and we had been told he that if he survived he would not be able to interact with us.  This proved to be false and we had several conversations with him.  He was a Christian.  He was troubled about things that he had done in his youth, but I was able to reassure him that as he believed in Jesus what Jesus had done on the cross was far stronger than all his sins and they were forgiven.  After this he was never troubled by these fears. One day I went to visit him in hospital and spoke to him.  He opened his eyes and said,"Oh, I was just going to be ...

I am very keen to get started with giving English lessons.  I have already been helping a young Russian with her university studies in English,on Skype, but I am also keen to help beginners.  My fees are very good. For more details email me on english.lessons1077@gmail.com. Then we can discuss why you want to learn English.  You may be in Britain already and want to improve your job prospects.  I'm sure I can help you with this too. I have been trained to make learning fun, but will also deal with grammar, but still in a fun way.  Most of all I will encourage you to speak as much as possible in lesson time, correcting you as necessary. So email me today and we can discuss what you need.

I have told you before to use your brain.  The most dangerous thing people can do is to accept what they are told by others, especially in authority, as this can lead to  being led blindly down a no through road.  Always question what you are told.  Make sure you get it right.  Of course that also applies to what I tell you.  Anyone who knows anything about Jesus knows that He would not be in favour of consumerism, gluttony and teaching our children to want more and more things. So why are we doing this and pretending it is to honour Him?  Let's look at the Bible record of His birth, which is of course very important.  The main feature is that He was born of a virgin ( who incidentally did not remain a virgin, but had at least seven more children, all documented in the Bible.) He was and is the Son of God, co-equal with the Father and the Spirit.  So when was He born?  No competent shepherd keeps his sheep out on the hills in Bethlehem a...

I recently qualified as a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language. I am keen to get started.  I live on the Devon/Somerset border so if you live near and would like some help to improve your English I would love to hear from you.  My dedicated email is english.lessons1077@gmail.com. No matter where you live I can offer you lessons on Skype.  In the past I have taught piano and violin so I have plenty of experience in teaching.  I am excited to be starting a new career. No doubt all the Christmas activities will be getting your attention at the moment so you can wait till the New Year to contact me, but I would be happy to hear from you sooner if you wish, when we can discuss your particular needs.  I trained with tefl.org.uk so I thought I should wave the flag for them. I am happy to teach any standard.

This weekend I spent some time with some dear friends who made me very welcome. The wife is almost exactly the same age as me.  Let me tell you how we spent the weekend.  We had dinner and a quiet evening in the first evening.  The next day we went around the town looking in the many charity shops. If you have read my blog recently you will not be surprised at that!! I found a warm moss green cardigan, a purple hand bag, a furry hat with ear pieces and ties under the chin, that was only 50p. Then I found a pale furry hat, one of those that is a band with no middle.  We did have fun.  My friend bought me a book of crochet shawls, in very good condition.  This kind of book is the sort of thing people buy because the pictures are all so gorgeous, but then realize they can't actually make them!  However I will make some of them, having had experience previously.  From another time I own two folders packed with exciting crochet patterns.  It was a...

People say to me, "Oh Russian's a difficult language." I'm not brilliant yet but I don't really find it particularly difficult, after all millions of Russians can speak it so why not me.  I know they have a head start on me but I'm game to give it a go.  People say,"But what about those funny letters?" Well the funny letters are really the easy one's because you don't already have a known sound for them.  The difficult ones are "o" which mostly sounds more like"aw" or even "a" to us. Also their G looks like an r to us and usually sounds like"g" but sometimes "v".  What looks like a B to us is a v.  As I said not really difficult!! No it's great fun and I love it.  The best bit is spending time with my teacher because she makes me speak the language as much as possible during the lesson.  sometimes we meet at a friend's house but when she is busy we meet in an old fashioned tea room. Th...

Because I am saving money to go to Russia again I decided that when appliances broke down I would not replace them.  So my hair drier stopped working. Now I dry my hair under the fan heater in the bathroom. My microwave went up in flames, so now I remember to get things out of the freezer in time for them to defrost naturally.  Microwaves can be very good and save you money, but I didn't want the expence of getting a new one. My home phone broke recently but I had a spare very basic version in a cupboard.  O.K. so I can't walk across the room with it and it doesn't have an answer machine or remember numbers, but for Russia putting up with that nuisance is worth it and I'm used to it already. I suppose I'm on the road to being a minimalist. My carpet was looking shabby, but instead of spending out hundreds of pounds on a new one I bought some cheap rugs and the room looks so much better. Be creative, save your money for what you really want.  Be disciplined about you...