#52Stories, Week 9, What were your favourite hobbies and pastimes from childhood ? Are you still pursuing any of them ?

I'm swapping week 9 & 10 around while I do some research on what is now week 10's topic.

Pastimes and hobbies is the topic for week 9.

I collected stamps for a while, diligently soaking them off the envelopes and putting them in to a stamp album. There were lots of letters and bills arriving in people's letterboxes then. Not so much now, except at Christmas. So I imagine stamp collecting must be a fast disappearing hobby. Dad collected stamps too - there are suitcases of them waiting forlornly for someone to sort them or sell them, or just look at them without feeling overwhelmed by the sheer size of the task.

I had piano lessons, belonged to a gymnastics club and a roller-skating club. I joined Brownies.I drew house plans on the spare plan paper Dad bought home from work. I knitted, sort of. 

Mum and Nana both knitted and were willing teachers, even when I dropped stitch after stitch for rows on end and sometimes made more stitches than required instead. I think the first garment I completed myself was a striped longline jumper with an oversized polo neck when I was about 14.

I wrote letters (it fed my stamp collection) and collected penfriends around the world and across New Zealand too. Mataura, Milton, Nelson and further afield Mauritius, Switzerland, France, Japan, Rhodesia (yes I am that old - Zimbabwe now), England, USA, Australia. Apart from friends and family I only correspond with one penfriend these days. Debby from Rhode Island; penfriends for over 40 years, and yet to meet.

I tried embroidery, because Nana did some and there were some incomplete attempts of Mums in the spare room at Nana's. I embroidered the bottom of my flares - it was the thing to do in the 70's - and some of my old school shirts.

I read as many books as I could lay my hands on. We went to the library every week, and I saved money to buy my own paperbacks, or was given novels at birthdays and Christmas.

We did jigsaws and crosswords as a family, learning new words and problem solving at the same time.

What do I still do ? 

Read - not as much, but I still love getting lost in the pages of a good book (not a kindle)

I try to write letters, mostly they are typed though, not longhand, and often only at Christmas. But I am going to change that and may the postal companies remember what they are supposed to be doing.

I knit, not as much as I would like, but I do. Mostly baby things.

Embroidery is the same, and cross stitch which I taught myself and did masses of in the early 90's. One day I will have time again.

I was a Brownie, Pippin and Adult leader with GirlGuiding New Zealand for 18 years - and some days I really miss the friendship and the activities and the girls.

I make cards, although most of my making stuff is packed away in boxes, so it doesn't happen so much right now. Except for Christmas.

I bake. If I have all the time in the world there is nothing I enjoy more than baking. Actually, it's been a while since I whipped up a batch of shortbread. Hmmm, there's a plan for my next free weekend.

A bright red beetle

Reading, I really like you. I wish you were a bit more amiable about renting us somewhere to live though. I guess we'll just have to wait until we have found ourselves jobs and try again.

We decided that we should just put the whole rental hunt on hold and see other parts of the country in case we had to alter our entire plans. So we left the cramped little icky B&B we had been staying in and got another rental car. 

The B&B was well located, close to the Thames Path, so nice riverside walks and about 1km to the town centre or maybe 2km in the opposite direction to Caversham and the best pub ! Baron of Cadogan - go there. It's a Wetherspoons pub and they have a great menu for meat eaters and non meat eaters. So great that we had dinner one night, breakfast the next day and then dinner again ! Why would you go out for breakfast when you are staying in a B&B ? Because the selection was rubbish and hardly appetising. We won't go into the other negatives like the stained linen, broken shower, bathroom door that wouldn't shut and security light outside the window which was more like a strobe light - I'm saving all that for TripAdvisor. 

We collected the car. A nice red beetle ! Very cute, but not quite as easy to get all our stuff in as the last one was. But we did it. We have been through a part of a number of counties today. Berkshire (where we started), Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and finally Kent. 

As we left Berkshire we went here, no time to go in or look at the gardens this time though. Did you know filming has started for Series 5 ?

In Surrey we found Jane Austen's house in Chawton, where she lived for the last 10 years of her life with her mother, sister and a friend. It is lovely, and without the hordes of people in Bath visiting her home there.

Then on to Royal Tunbridge Wells for the night. I had never had it on my list of places to go but now that we are here I think I will have to make a return trip with more time. We chose it because it is close to Hever Castle which we'd like to visit and some places in Kent which have family associations. But there are heaps of things to do and see; castles, gardens, coastal towns, cathedrals...

We enjoyed a nice dinner at a local restaurant and are now relaxing watching the opening of the Commonwealth Games. The B&B we are staying in tonight is at least a 300% improvement on the last one. Superb host, great room, the promise of an amazing breakfast. We'll definitely be back here.