This week’s Flickr meme is to pick things or events you remember from each year of your life – #1 through 12? it could be anything: who your best friend was when you were 6; your pet when you were 10; a teacher when you were 12; your favourite toy at age 3 — you get to come up with the item for each of the numbers … or just use random years here and there with the big highlights of your life! Here’s a second selection covering some key times in my life to date.

1. -2 weeks; I arrive 2 weeks early; I’ve been early ever since.
2. 11; I go to grammar school and get an excellent all-round basic education; we were stretched all the time; and it must have been one of the few co-ed grammar schools in the country.
3. 17; started going out with Jill, my first proper girlfriend; we broke up at the start of our second year as undergraduates.
4. 18; off to university in York to study Chemistry; glorious campus but not the formative years they are for many (they came later as a post-grad).
5. 23; I lose my virginity to Faith; she’s 9 years older than me, and taught me a lot!; yes I was a slow starter.
6. 25; somehow I’m awarded my PhD from University of East Anglia; and yes I’ve got one of these super velvet Tudor bonnets too!
7. 25; and I immediately start working for IBM.
8. 28; Noreen and I marry; we met in Norwich and have known each other for about 4 years, but have been going out less than a year — oh and we’re still happily married almost 30 years later (and long may it be so)!
9. 30; we buy our house just as mortgage rates go through the roof!
10. 32; I have an affair and glandular fever at the same time; Noreen knows about both! Duh!
11. 49; I’m one of the founders of the Anthony Powell Society.
12. 58; just waiting for retirement; so much I want to do outside work.

As always the photographs are not mine (except #9 which is) please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. The Holiday Guests Arrive Early Singing Carols, 2. Leeds Grammar School, 3. Jill, 4. Heslington Hall, 5. IMG 088, 6. Congrats! You made it!, 7. IBM Hursley, 8. The House Opposite, 10. Eve – glandular fever test, 11. ANTHONY POWELL, NOVELIST, AT HOME IN SOMERSET, 28 DECEMBER 1983., 12. Two at the Shoreline

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

Ye Olde Tea Drinker, originally uploaded by kcm76.

July self-portrait for Flickr 12 Months group.

This week’s Flickr meme is to pick things or events you remember from each year of your life – #1 through 12? it could be anything: who your best friend was when you were 6; your pet when you were 10; a teacher when you were 12; your favourite toy at age 3 — you get to come up with the item for each of the numbers … or just use random years here and there with the big highlights of your life! Here’s my selection up to the age of 12 (but not one per year, I don’t remember that much that well, and not in order).

1. Being stung on the big toe by a bee when I was about 6. I trod on it in the garden; it hurt; and my mother told me off for walking about in bare feet — didn’t do any good ‘cos I still do!
2. Summer holidays camping at nudist club when I would have been about 9-10.
3. Staying in my grandmother’s flat in Canterbury for summer holiday; guess I was about 6.
4. Finding abandoned duckling (aged 6) …
5. … and releasing it a year later as a handsome Mallard drake. We didn’t have a single slug in the garden that year! My grandmother (she of the flat in Canterbury) hated the duck ‘cos it nibbled at your ankles when you walked down the garden — which I thought was really funny. But then I thought my grandmother was a sour old bag: she was but at least I now understand why.
6. Derek Part who was my best friend when I was 10 or 11. His brother (who was 16) was drowned swimming in one of the local gravel pits. His mother kept a boarding kennels for dogs down next to the piggery. They moved to Liverpool soon after this.
7. Seeing Cliff Richard’s film Summer Holiday as soon as it was released in 1963 (I was 12). Cliff was a local boy (real name Harry Webb); The Shadows used to practice in the boy’s club which backed onto my primary school playing field.
8. Going to my primary school’s football trials at 10 or 11 … and failing miserably.
9. Fresh bread delivered by the bakers roundsman when I was about 4. I always wanted the crust — buttered! At first I think he had an electric hand-cart but later one of these Morris vans, only red. Oh and the bakers was Hill’s.
10. Getting concentrated orange juice & cod liver oil from the welfare clinic when I would have been 1 or 2; I guess this was just before rationing finished.
11. Going to Cub camp at Whitsun half-term when I was 11, and my parents coming out to tell me I’d got into Grammar School.
12. Smelly. dirty suburban steam trains to London; they finished when I was about 8 or 9 and were replaced by first by boring diesel and then even more boring electric trains.

As always the photographs are not mine (except #2 which is from my photostream) so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. Bee Sting!, 2. Mother & Son, 3. Canterbury, Weavers, 4. The duckling, 5. Mallard Drake on Ice, 6. Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage, Dungerness, Kent, 7. Cliff Richard, 8. How to penetrate the defense?, 9. HCVS London to Brighton 2009 – 1955 Morris J Type Van, 10. Wartime Rationing, 11. mega080024, 12. PADDINGTON STATION 1940

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys

This week’s Flickr meme is to pick one of a pair; we were given a long list of pairs and allowed to choose our own 12. Here’s my selection; you probably don’t have to know me very well to predict most of these:

1. Pink or Green. Green; much more subtle and interesting than pink as well as being restful on the eyes.
2. Clothed or Nude. Nude; clothing is nothing but a conventional fetish; nudity is natural.
3. Boys or Girls. Girls; well now there’s a surprise.
4. Cat or Dog. Cat; lean, keen killing machines that they are.
5. Beer or Wine. Beer; such endless variety; and thirst-quenching.
6. Theist or Atheist. Atheist; God is another of our unnecessary (and divisive) fetishes.
7. Heaven or Hell. Hell; see above; much more interesting.
8. Bat or Ball. Ball; he who has the ball is in control!
9. Hairy or Shaved. Hairy; unless we’re talking about faces when I prefer them shaved.
10. Gold or Silver. Both; let’s be greedy!
11. Pen or Pencil. Pencil; old habits die hard; as a one time programmer I was brought up to work in pencil; I still do much of the time, using an automatic pencil with soft 2B leads.
12. Sun or Moon. Moon; endlessly fascinating to look at.

As always the photographs are not mine so please click on individual links below to see each artist/photostream. This mosaic is for a group called My Meme, where each week there is a different theme and normally 12 questions to send you out on a hunt to discover photos to fit your meme. It gives you a chance to see and admire other great photographers’ work out there on Flickr.

1. green/purple, 2. Underwater Nudes, 3. Rainbow Girls, 4. Cat’s eye, 5. Beer Bottles, 6. Atheists, 7. Wanna go to Hell?, 8. plazma ball green and blue, 9. Hairy backside, 10. Silver & Gold Oak Ring, 11. Pencils, 12. Harvest Moon

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys