Are there any activities or hobbies you’ve outgrown or lost interest in over time?

I wasn’t read to as a child..boo hoo! And I didn’t grow up with my mom, double boo hoo…but I did inherit her love of reading. Especially as I got older we both shared a love of auto/biographies. She was so easy to buy for on special occasions, I would simply visit the book shop and see what was new.

Weekly comics; The Beezer and Sparky were bought for me by a lovely elderly lady who looked after me on a regular basis, and the Famous Five books really captured my Imagination.

The comics were replaced by magazines for teenagers like Jackie and I loved the little booklets that were readily available which had the lyrics of all the latest pops songs in.

Then came the glossies; Cosmopolitan,She, Marie Claire, Red, Elle, I loved them! Eventually they became really quite expensive and worse was the increasing amount of ads. Full pages and lots of them.

I then got into novels, especially historical ones, where I could learn something. There is an author Annie Murray who writes about stories around Birmingham, like the Cadbury’s factory and the Jewellery Quarter. Fabulous.

And then the World Wide Web was launched..and it changed everything, and books were laid aside.

I mourned the loss of interest in books. I would pick them up and try, but I simply couldn’t get into them…..and this went on for years, too many years.

Then recently out of the blue a book in Waterstone’s caught my eye. I was in there buying Christmas presents for other people. That day I left with a book for myself and so my love of reading rekindled.