MM Links December [Week 1]

crofter | 08:45 Sat 05th Dec 2009 | Quizzes & Puzzles

39 Answers

First of all, I must thank ‘crofter’ who has guided me through the process of running MM Links, he has been far from well since returning to this ‘cold country’, as he puts it. That is one of the drawbacks of going to a warmer climate for a break and then breathing in all manner of nasty germs on the flight home. Many thanks to him for posting this on my behalf today. To be honest, I am between ISP’s and reliant on poaching from unknown neighbours for their unsecured wifi, which tends to be rather unreliable. This should be a temporary arrangement and (as I didn’t want to spoil the fun for all you ‘linkers’) he has kindly agreed to do the honours. Hopefully, all will be back to normal next week.

Crofter has opted to adorn me with the honorary title ‘Princess Di’, but you will know me better as ‘grannydi’. As a relative newcomer, I am delighted to be setting the clues for the next month to lead you all up to the festive season and bring 2009 to a close. I’m afraid I don’t match the beauty of my namesake, the other Princess Di, but I hope you will find that I do have other attributes.

Times

DT GK 44D

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crofter

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This year, I officially became a septuagenarian and I am proud to be so! I was born at the end of September 1939 in a village in Leicestershire as the middle child of three. My father was Cockney and mother is a Geordie, so I have something in common with crofter. Although I was born at the beginning of WW2, I don’t really remember very much about the war, as we were only troubled by bombers on one occasion. My husband-to-be had a very different experience, since he spent most nights of the first 3 to 4 years of his life sleeping in an air-raid shelter in the back garden of his home on Tyneside. The dockside of Newcastle was a popular target for bombing raids.

Like many people of our generation, I had a fairly carefree childhood; living in a close-knit village community, playing without fear anywhere we chose and quite often getting into mischief. As for food, we had a decent-sized garden and Mum worked very hard providing us with vegetables all year round. I also recall raising chickens as a valuable source of eggs and -- when they were past laying – we had a steady supply of lovely plump chickens destined for the pot. This was no time for sentiment. As a result, we never went hungry. Although this was an Age before Refrigeration, food was never wasted, but would appear and reappear several times in various forms, eventually ending up in a mash to be fed to the chickens and the food chain would begin the cycle once again. In similar fashion, surplus eggs were pickled and used for baking whenever the hens were “off the lay”.

crofter

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Much bartering was done with produce and coupons. Mum would trade tea coupons for sugar, which was then used to preserve fruit and make jam from the many varieties of fruit grown in the garden. Dad was fond of lots of sugar in his tea, but Mum insisted he use saccharine instead. I remember once she was busy making yet another batch of jam, when she asked me to put the newly purchased packet of saccharine into the pot. She meant the pot used to store the saccharine of course, but young Di put the lot into the jam pan. We eventually managed to eat it up, but it wasn’t very nice. However nothing could be wasted in those days!

Down to the business in hand! As far as my MM Links are concerned, needless to say, I shall follow the rule on word length adopted by crofter. Each of my chosen link words contains at least four letters and at most eight. Stray outside this range and you will be wasting one of your attempts! Each of my selected words may go in front of or after my challenge word. The competition will officially close at 7.00pm on Sunday evening when crofter shall disclose my selected words, then apply the same rules for awarding points that have been applied during all MM Link Games in the past.

My first set of four words to have their links predicted will appear below at 9.00am.