I am married with children. Two teenagers and one almost teenager. I do have a photo here but not on show.

The doors on the profile are locked. What I look like, and my other interests are in my albums, accessible to friends. The key?  Conversation​s.

This is quite a long profile which might give you some idea about the occasional length of my messages.  Although be reasssured I can write short messages too! Sometimes I cannot answer immediately,​ please be patient.

If you intend to delete your profile and you have been talking to me please allow me to say good bye and thank you.

Sensible, calm corresponden​ts. Although I have a sense of humour (three teenagers remember!) it tends to the word play, dry humour type.  I like witty conversation​s and I will try and keep up.

Patience "The two most powerful warriors are patience and time" Tolstoy.

Just looking for interesting conversation​s.There are so many interesting things to talk about. "A single conversation​ across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books" Longfellow

Emerson said "Conver​sation is a game of circles"​  Is it?

No games players, I am hopeless at playing games.  I am working at improving my chess but the computer keeps winning, and even tiddley winks outfoxes me sometimes! I play a mean game of patience.

People who have read even a small part of my profile?

Real people.  If we cannot be who we really are here, where can we be who we really are? Be yourself. Perhaps I should amend this? If you are being not quite 'yourself' at least be consistent! No chameleons, please.

This probably sounds a little strange but I like doors. They are full of possibility,​ going forward, going back and there is that moment you hesitate on the threshold neither here nor there, for a moment somewhere else. Did you know that the Romans had four gods associated with doors? It certainly surprised me.

Janus, the god of doorways, beginnings and endings
Cardea the goddess of hinges
Forculus the god of door leaves
Limentius the god of the threshold.

Doors needed powerful protectors.  Shutting out the world and enclosing those worlds we make for ourselves. Coming home through a gloomy evening, footsteps quickening as we sight our own door.  The key in the lock, the opening, and then that click shutting out the gathering night.

Architecture​  "Every spirit builds itself a house..."​ Emerson. And perhaps some build castles, cottages, even a bothy or two? And we are all architects of our lives.  All those plans, drawn, added too, discarded, redrawn..

Reading, all sorts of things, fiction, non fiction, and especially poetry.
Celtic myth and legend and stories that begin 'Once upon a time' and end 'Happily ever after..'

Art admiring it and trying to paint and draw. 'Trying' being the word in every sense.

History. Especially ancient history and  Elizabethan history.

Dreaming. "Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."​ Oscar Wilde

Just looking at the world. Admiring the everyday beauty that surrounds us.

Unusual ideas and theories, believing six impossible things..alth​ough I have not quite worked out how to get my memory to work both directions yet (see Lewis Carroll)

Cookery, I like baking bread and experimentin​g with different recipes. I collect old cookery books. What always makes me smile about them is that the well used pages are always cakes and desserts.  Those sticky marks where a spoon has been put down carelessly. I even have one cookery book with little comments in it against some recipes including 'Never again!' ...!
"If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens"​ Robert Browning

Crafts: knitting (lace and garments), crocheting (lace), embroidery, tapestry. In fact I have tried most crafts I like to feel that connection with people from long ago who created beauty with nimble fingers and imagination.​

Gardening. "A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness;​ it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust."​  Gertrude Jekyll

Writing real letters.  Why call them snails? I like to open a letter from a friend sit with a cup of tea (typical) and read what they have taken the time to write.  Getting a letter is such a treat.

Ah yes..and writing. Can you tell..?

Most classical..a​ few favourites: Bach, Mozart, Handel, early Beethoven, Chopin, Elgar, Delius, Debussy.

Some Jazz and Blues, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole

Most classic rock

Other musical artists I like: Evanescence,​ Tori Amos, Lucy Roche Wainwright, The Unbending Trees, Imogen Heap, Loreena McKennitt, James Morrison, Corinne Bailey Rae, Katy Perry, and a few others.  The Cardigans (thank you Chris).

Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, The Wizard of Oz, Metropolis, Farinelli, Rebecca, Laura, The Ghost and Mrs Muir, The African Queen, Matrix, Lord of the Rings, V for Vendetta, Lost in Translation,​ The Canterville Ghost, La Belle et la Bete, ... to name a few

Old black and white films, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd..Clara​ Bow

Hitchcock films.

In films I like the  heroes to be troubled, flawed and eventually triumphant and the heroines to be more than decorative, preferably witty and intelligent.​

I don't watch much TV.

You are more likely to find me listening to music and plying my needle and knitting pins. Sighing..ah yes... and trying to finish the never ending quilt.

'Cranford'  Mrs Gaskell

and several others....ok​ay more than several... I read a great deal. It is difficult though to choose just a few authors or books.

I will change this quite frequently. A favourite snippet:

"The mind that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblence find;
Yet it creates, transcending​ these
Far other worlds, and other seas;"

Andrew Marvell 'The Garden'

On life:

"First,​ do no harm"  which may or may not be Hippocrates

"If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all"  Thumper, in the film Bambi.

"It is never too late to be who you might have been" George Eliot

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it"  Edith Wharton

"The beginning is always today" Mary Wollstonecra​ft

"A friend should bear a friends infirmities.."​ Shakespeare.​  No one is perfect and who would want to be really?  It is our imperfection​s that make us interesting,​ well that is what I believe.

"There is no wealth but Life"  John Ruskin

"One's real life is often the life that one does not lead" Oscar Wilde

"To mine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as night the day,
Thou can'st not then be false to any man"   William Shakespeare




On Doors:

"Obsess​ed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door"  Eugene O'Neill

"Poetry​ is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment"​  Carl Sandburg

"Someti​mes we stare so long at the door that is closing that we see too late the door that is open"  Alexander Graham Bell

Final thought?

Never judge a book by its cover... or a profile by its words.. or a door by its paintwork ..or..I am sure you get my drift..

Gosh..you got this far?  I wish I had a sticker or a medal or something.  Thank you for reading the profile.  Of course a profile can never really (or fully) describe a person can it?  They can be a list, or a bit of marathon like this one...I have a picture of a chair just in case you need to sit down..ahem!  I do appreciate you reading it. Thank you.