Progress 5 and Ellis Brook Bushwalk

Now that I can walk a bit further each day, I can go along the river under the Causeway Bridge towards South Perth.  This lovely flame tree is at its best just now.  After a month of wet and windy weather, Spring is definitely in the air! I have bought myself another Fitbit to give myself a bit of encouragement.

Sunday was such a beautiful day, I decided to see if I was up to joining my bushwalking group again.  The walk was one I had done several times, but I had forgotten how challenging it was: only 11 kms but consisting of many steep ups and downs, with stony tracks and hazardous gravelly slopes. My calf muscles are still feeling it two days later!  However, I'm glad to say that my hip wasn't unduly affected - though I felt really tired and generally unfit after several months of not doing very much strenuous exercise.  The best part of the day was the profusion of wildflowers. C, E and I set off before the main group in order to tackle the first climb to the top of the waterfall at a slow pace and this enabled us to photograph the flowers on both sides of the track. C and E had agreed to come along on the day in case I needed extra help to cope with the rigours of the walk, but I'm glad to say that I was quite OK, except for running out of water on a day that reached 24 degrees!

Ellis Brook Falls

Donkey Orchids

Margaret's school photo

Fast forward 25 years: my first year at Grammar School.  We were very proud of our distinctive uniforms. The girls wore bottle green gymslips and ties.  The school blazers were red and green stripes: you couldn't miss them!  It was an expensive exercise getting kitted out for "Honley Grammar" and my Grandad paid for most of it.

I was the youngest in my class, mainly because my primary school headmaster had put me in early for the Eleven Plus exam. (He was a friend of my Grandad's!)  My schooldays were very happy, as I remember, though I couldn't do Maths or Latin very well, but loved History and English. In our class was an African American girl, Loma Brown.  It was the first time any of us had met a black person in the flesh. She was very clever and hard working.  This was before the mass migration of Pakistanis into Huddersfield.

That's me: middle row, 2nd from the left

Frank's school photo

Dad is on the far right of this photo.   In the front row, on the right of the girl with the sign, is his twin sister and to the right of her is Joan, who became my sister's mother-in-law. She is now in a care home costing 700 pounds a week, so her house is being emptied and sold, which is how these old photos came to light.  Nearly all the girls had the same short hairstyle with a fringe. Now all the girls in my granddaughter's class have long hair.

Dad was full of mischief as a boy.  A few years after this photo, he tried to climb onto the back of a lorry for a free ride. Before he could get his foot out of the wheel, it set off taking his foot round and round.  He ended up with a long stay in hospital, where they inserted a metal plate into his ankle.  There was also a deep hole which remained there for ever, but amazingly he walked without a limp.

All this saved him from being conscripted into the armed forces, so he spent the war in Dad's Army, mainly spending nights watching out for German bombers heading over the Pennines for Manchester.  The planes were navigating using the moon shining on reservoirs in the area.

Both my parents worked in one of the West Riding's textile mills, producing high quality worsted suiting.  I was born in December 1944.