Hobbies and recreationOur main hobby would have to be stamps and philately, which has interested us for more than 30 years and we are still not bored with it. Probably the main reason for this is the sheer variety of subjects of interest. The seed was sown in 1964, with the Great Britain set issued for the 400th Anniversary of Wm. Shakespeare. Since that time we have collected such diverse countries/interests as :-Ghana (lovely looking stamps) New Zealand, N.Z. dependencies, Nauru, Pitcairn, Antarctica, Australia, mini sheets, Chinese Lunar Years and many others. Sadly most of those have moved on to other hands. The commemorative issues of Great Britain got too much for us around the mid 1970's so we drew a line there but continued with definitives. Living in Australia made it difficult to keep up with the issues so the 'normal' Machin collection ceased around the early '90's and now we keep up only the counter and machine vended stamp booklets and Prestige Booklets.As anyone else on a limited budget will know, there are restrictions as to which items you collect. Postal History crept in some ten years later than Shakespeare and that is now the main focus of our interest, along with the mint stamps of G.B. especially the uncommon or unusual items such as booklets, coil leaders. Besides G.B. we are still interested in Antarctica, Gary Pierson's site, Australian booklet issues, booklets of the world, minisheets and Chinese Lunar Years. Sports/recreation 10pin bowling in the Seniors League, which means we are beaten regularly by the 80-year olds, the halt and the lame ! social badminton, swimming, walking, and cycling (if the terrain is flat and the tyres are not!). Indoors we play cards and scrabble and Rummycube, which is a kind of rummy but played with numbered tiles from 1 to 13 in 4 different colours. Eunice is a jigsaw freak. FUNNYBONE SECTION , including reading- Humour - this is a big part of our life, and we have books, records, audio tapes both open-reel and cassette, video tapes and now dvds.
Computers
Probably the most productive use of the computer for us is the E-mail - definitely the best thing since
sliced bread. We are on about 10 different mailing lists covering our different interests, and we have made
such terrific contacts many of whom have turned into real friends. We would not have been in contact with
Anne or Marjie if we had not been on these mailing lists. We average 2500 messages a month incoming and about
300 outgoing. The thought of the cost of 300 messages being snail-mailed out to destinations round the world
is frightening. Also, we have made contact with far-spaced relatives who, for some odd reason, will not
write, but will use the e-mail. That's enough about us, but E-mail Us if any of these subjects ring your bell.
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