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About me . . .
Hi, welcome to the page that tells you a bit about me! My name is Holly and I was born and bred in Derbyshire, England. I live in the lovely, but tiny, city of Ely in Cambridgeshire [the third smallest city in England]. I was born on 13th January and I'm in my mid 60s but still young at heart. Here's a photo of me aged 18 months. I've had several jobs over the years, but since returning to work after having my sons I was mainly involved in telecommunications. I was a telecommunications manager in H.E. for 11 years until I decided that life was too short to be stuck in the same old job and feeling overworked and stressed. I've also been a voice analyst and I looked after the many telephone systems of the Bank of Scotland. I retired on November 6th 2012. I do enjoy being home and being able to have more free time to pursue my hobbies and to travel whenever I want. I have two lovely sons who each have a lovely partner. My eldest is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon. He's working in the Oxford area. He had a Fisher Price doctor's set when he was three and look where it led. He loves sport, but especially cricket which he plays very well. Here's a photo of him aged three years and one of him as cricket captain aged 15. My younger son is a computer whiz living in a Manchester suburb and working in the computer industry as a senior consulting developer for a company who do consultancy, software design, architecture and electronics design and such, all of which I don't understand. He's been interested in computing since he was 4 years old and is completely self taught. Here's a photo of him aged 5 with his beloved BBC 'B'. He helps run Pepperfish, the hosting service which support these pages, codes little bits of this and that, builds web pages, is interested in colloquy and runs the talker Meta Hills. Here's another photo of him. I have an adorable grandson who was born in February 2011 and granddaughter born 6 weeks early in September 2013. They are wonderful and as I live more thantwo hours away from them we 'Skype' a lot. The wonders of technology. I have two sweet cats, twin black sisters which I adopted from the Cat Protection League. I got them on Christmas Eve 2007. Their names are India and Inka. Hobbies and interests? Hmm, well lets see. I'm fond of watching cricket and rugby, the theatre and cinema, collecting Royal Crown Derby paperweights, watching vampire and scary films, Sci-Fi, good restaurants, small pubs, socialising with friends, photography (although I'm not very good), gravestones (for the history), English village history, social history, reading thrillers and historical novels and my BIG passion of genealogy. I have traced one line of my family tree back to 1595 but the whole process is ongoing and takes up much of my time. You can find some of my photos here. I love to travel and I've done quite a lot, including around the UK which is a beautiful and diverse place. There's been several trips to various states in the USA and I have been to the former Yugoslavia (Croatia and Slovenia), Moscow in Russia (many years ago when it was the USSR during the cold war), Spain (northern and southern), Italy - including one of my favourite cities, Venice, four times, lovely Florence and the coast. I've also been to Germany, Prague in the Czech Republic, Belgium, the Netherlands, several trips to various parts of France, Malta, the Canary Islands, Finland and Ireland. Now that I've retired I'd like to visit Australia and New Zealand, Canada, China and Alaska. Some favourite trips have been Salzburg Austria with my younger son and his partner at Christmas 2007 and in February 2009 I had a wonderful trip with my elder son, his fiancee and guests to Northern Finnish Lapland, 200 miles above the arctic circle, for their magical wedding in an ice chapel. In 2011 my sons and their partners, 8 friends and I rented the huge and beautiful 16th century Palladian villa Saraceno near Venice for my 60th birthday celebration. Fantastic! Here's a front view and here's the rear view. It was restored by the Landmark Trust. Other favourite trips were to Krakow in Poland with younger son and his partner in December 2011 and wonderful trips to the Somme, France to visit my great uncle's grave in June 2012 and 2016. I spent 6 months researching what happened to him during WW1 and managed to get the whole story from various war diaries and the private diary of his company commander. He died aged just 19 in Septemeber 1916. In October 2016 I visited Seoul in South Korea with younger son and his partner. Fantastic trip with several great days out including a tour to the DMZ (border with North Korea), Deoksugung palace and the Jaein waterfall. I have broadband at home. I gave up having a desk PC and now just have my laptop, Nexus tablet and smart phone. The wireless network works very well with excellent support from my younger son and his partner at Pepperfish. I have my storage on their system which I access via WinSCP. Finally, here are 100 random things about me [friends only].
Last updated 8th December 2016 |
