Hello from the Highlands of Scotland!

[SuzanneBosworth]

Hello all!

Just found this site yesterday and am looking forward to getting involved in selling articles and photographs! Oh and joining in the forum of course I really like the set up here and the writers look so well looked after by the admin team it's wonderful to see.

It's also wonderful to see good rates being quoted for good work. Love it.

Good to meet you all and looking forward to enjoying your company!

[Celeste Stewart]

Welcome!

[SuzanneBosworth]

Thank you Celeste

[Debbi]

Welcome, Suzanne!

My stepdad was a Sutherland and always proud of his Scottish heritage. My stepbrother made sure there were bagpipes at his memorial service. It was a little screely but very inspiring.

Are you a native Scotswoman (or however that's said)?

If you haven't already read all the FAQs, guidelines, and as many forums as you can stand, I think you should. And maybe just submit 1 article and get it approved before you get too eager and fill up your 3 at a time quota. After you've had one accepted I think the quota goes up. The standards are high so best to be cautious.

Debbi

[SuzanneBosworth]

Hello Debbi!

Thank you for the warm welcome

How lovely that your stepdad had pipes - they are very appropriate for Scots and they stir the blood. Actually I was born in England but I have Scots blood from my grandfather and it has an incredible pull! So here I am in Scotland now, and loving being here. It feels like home.

These days someone would say that he or she is a Scot. It's not so common to hear variations. Scotch, of course, applies only to the whisky!

Thank you for the advice and I shall certainly read as much as possible. I really like the fact that the standard is high and I shall make sure I submit the best writing I possibly can.

[Debbi]

Suzanne,

I am a huge Anglophile and read and watch everything from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand that I can. Right now I'm watching a detective series through Netflix called "Wire in the Blood". I devoured Frances Hodgeson Burnett, A.A. MIlne, Lewis Carroll, Kipling, and E. Nesbitt as a kid, then graduated to Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Margory Allingham. It was Roald Dahl for my kids and J.K. Rowling for my granddaughters. Fawlty Towers, Red Dwarf, Rumpole, Duchess of Duke Street, on up to Doc Martin, Monarch of the Glen, Vicar of Dibley, Inspector Frost, and the Last Detective. Gah, I could go on forever but it would exhaust me.

I stopped in London for a few days when I was 8 and remember these salient details: the toast was put in little racks on the hotel dining tables and was cold; my sister and I flushed the toilet 100 times so we could pull the chain; the Buckingham Palace guards were scary; our taxi driver swore at us when my dad made him rush to the airport then didn't tip him much. That's about it, heh.

My mom got to visit Scotland with my stepdad about two years before he died and said it was the most gorgeous place she'd ever seen. I'd love to visit there someday, if only to hear the poeple talk. And Wales too, the Welsh (at least the ones I've seen on TV) have such a lovely lilt to their speech.

Speaking of Lewis Carroll, I memorized Jabberwocky when I as little and still remember it word for word. "Twas brillig and the slithy toves........"

[SuzanneBosworth]

LOL Debbi! You know, I hate that about toast racks. I want my toast piled up on a plate and still hot so the butter melts! Whenever I go to a hotel now I ask the restaurant staff very nicely not to bother with the toast rack and just to slap it on a plate (well, not those exact words .. hehe) and they have a quick giggle with me and slide it on to my table as though they're passing laundered money .. I mean, I know the toast rack means that the steam escapes and doesn't make the toast soggy, but I like my toast soggy! And hot! Plus there's never usually enough and if I'm having breakfast I'm having breakfast. With porridge and everything!

Scotland is stunning, Debbi. Every day I thank the universe for letting me be here. Scottish mountains may not be high in comparison with the Swiss Alps, for instance, or the majestic mountain ranges in North America, but they're so beautiful, and ancient, and powerful. I lived in London previously and of course this is a massive culture change - for one thing you can walk down the street and have a chat with perfect strangers, which you just wouldn't do in Inner London. I can sit at a bus stop and just start yakking to people and they will yak back and we just carry on yakking until we get to where we're going on the bus!

Love the list of writers. And yes - Jabberwocky in the slithy toves! - and how fab that you can still recite it from memory.

What a friendly, helpful place this is. I feel so welcome and at home already. Thank you

[Debbi]

Wow, I'm glad to hear that the toast rack was not just a kid's crazy memory. That was over 40 yars ago and I wasn't sure it was real. Toast needs to be hot, I agree!

We were in England on our way to the Sudan and that was also so British. The traffic roundabouts we'd never seen in the States, tea time, driving on the opposite side of the road (for us), and lots of British biscuits (cookies to me) in little open air stalls with corrugated tin rooves. My sister went to a British missionary pre-school while I went to the Amercian embassy school, and she developed such an English accent she was put in speech therapy when we came back to the States. I was surrounded by everything Brit for two impressionable years, no wonder I turned out this way!

Can't wait to hear about you getting your first acceptance and then sale!

[eek]

Welcome, Suzanne!

Another lover of all things British here. That list of authors contain some of my absolute favorites. Still read A. A. Milne to my kids, even though the oldest is almost 16, and I christened a small bit of woods on our property The Hundred Wooded Acre (because really, it was ridiculous to think it could qualify as Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood). My kids & I were just last night discussing that 1999 movie version of Alice in Wonderland, which also covers Through the Looking Glass, and how most of it made absolutely no sense - beyond the intended nuttiness. I'm sure someone who grew up in England might get a few more of the double meanings. Our favorite poem is the Walrus and the Carpenter. I like to recite it to my 8-yo boy, in my own version, to tell him what to do. "The time has come, the mommy said..."

We lived in Cyprus (Greek side) where we attended a small ex-pat church with a number of retired British couples, all of them sweet and charming characters in their own way, but one was the quintessential couple from somewhere in Scotland (they had kids who lived on the Isle of Mann, but I'm sure that was not their home). His job was to introduce the service and also anyone who might be visiting that weekend. He was horribly deaf, and so he always jotted the names down wrong. Then the visitors would try to correct him and of course he couldn't hear them at that distance at all, but he did try and his attempts were SO funny. Ah... they were wonderful people. But I'll bring them back to life in the-book-in-my-head some day.

Wish you the best here, and hope to see you around on the forum.
Emma

[SuzanneBosworth]

Debbi what an amazing time you must have had. Travel is such a spectacular experience for kids and I'm glad that the UK was part of that! hehe.. and yes I hate toast racks. As for the traffic roundabouts I'm convinced many British drivers have never seen them before either. LOL!

Thank you again for the big welcome and yes, looking forward to the first! Am going to upload a pic I think and wait for that to be passed and then upload another couple.

Eek thank you for your lovely welcome too! I loved your description of the couple - well the guy - from Scotland. I can picture it so well and what a wonderful time you must have had.

Yes - the book in the head. It will come out, it has to!

Yes, see you on the forum!

[SuzanneBosworth]

Gosh - long time no see, everyone. I lost my nerve and didn't dare upload an article til now! (What a maroon ..) Anyway I have uploaded one finally after having read everything in the help section forwards, sideways and backwards, and now I sit back and chew my nails to the elbow.

Good to be back among a crowd of fab scribblers. Some I think I will probably know from Suite! (waves)

[edit] Did anyone else get that sickening feeling when they uploaded their first article, when they realised they'd made a (gulp)mistake?? (Deleted, corrected and resubmitted .. gahhhhhh )

[jak]

Hi Suzanne from the other end of the UK. I'm now living on a peninsula sticking into the top of Poole harbour. Best of luck with CC.

[SuzanneBosworth]

Hi Jak! Poole, eh? Beautiful part of the country. Mind you, it's beautiful here too. If I look out of the front window here I can see snow covered mountains.

Thanks for the best wishes