I'm the last person to reply to the most recent topic and it stays like that for ages. I begin to think, "What did I say?". I've been posting on forums for years and I still get insecure about what I've effectively published. Mind you, I don't worry about it so much on this one - much prefer this to any of the others I've posted on - not only because there's a relatively small number of active posters, but because the majority are male. Before you get your knickers in a twist, girls, it's because on every female dominated forum I've frequented, there has always been some major nasty blow-up - don't know whether it's because of the female hormones, or just that most of them had a wider section of the community posting, with some not very nice people included. Here, nothing ever gets beyond the odd bit of ragging, which is a big relief. You men are probably all bitching behind the scenes, but that's fine - just keep it there.
See, this is one of the advantages of Facebook - you can pick who reads what you say and with whom you associate. I've just spent the weekend having a family photo fest with my cousin who lives in Geneva. Before she joined Facebook I'd spoken to her once in about the last 30 years. Then my other cousin's daughter who lives in Oregon in the US joined in and her mum (my cousin) and dad just happened to be visiting from the UK, so she showed them the photos and I got to see all the ones of them. Meanwhile, another cousin's son in Helensburgh showed his parents the photos and I got to see the photos he'd taken of them and his sister and her kids who are visiting from Dubai. We're a pretty far flung bunch of Scots - this is my mother's side of the family - there were 8 female cousins and I was the baby - the rest are all a lot older than I am (yes, that is still possible) so I didn't really see a lot of them once they moved and settled down. It's great to have this contact again, especially to see their children's families and be able to talk 'live' when we happen to be there at the same time.
If you're interested, this is the earliest photo we have of the family. There were 11 children - only 10 in this photo, the last one wasn't born yet, poor great grandmother. She looks pretty good for having had 10. They were staunch protestants too - must have been the Victorian thing. Look at the age difference between them. Mum used to have some letters great grandfather wrote to the ones that were away from home - interesting, but he was a pious old bloke - always lecturing them and quoting the bible, which was probably par for the course, but extremely annoying to us - my Mum got so angry when she read them. Funny thing was my grandfather (on the left with his arm resting on the chair) was nothing like that. I'll just put the link in and then if you want to have a look, you'll get all the info.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2358036&l=ab0d5ab413&id=565053498
