Crosswords and such

As a mother of seven our Mum was very resourceful at finding things to keep us occupied.  One of those was reading, even if it was comic books, we were encouraged to do so.

To this day we all love reading in one form or another.  A great way to keep occupied in doctors surgeries or waiting for the next flight at the airport.

Mum also loved doing cryptic crosswords.  She was self taught.  She would attempt them in the weekly women's magazine she used to buy and then when the solution came out in the next week's edition she would compare the solution to her efforts and so built up a knowledge on how to solve them.

She had an excellent knowledge of grammar, loved reading herself and kept up to date with news and politics by reading the daily newspaper, listening to the radio and watching TV.

In her latter years she loved nothing better than to nab one of her children and persuade us to learn the art of cryptic crosswords.

Linda and husband, Glynn, were converts to Mum's way and they spent many a Saturday, and other times, sharing this interest with her.

At Christmas time, she loved the bigger than usual cryptic crossword the newspapers printed for the holiday periods and they would give these their best shot.  Unfortunately, with time, these faded away but Linda found a collection of The Times newspaper jumbo crosswords and so every year Linda picks one of those and we do our best.

We share them with brother Norman in Christchurch and brother Bob in Melbourne via the internet and there is much phone calling and texting these days as we work towards a solution.  It escaped us this year (by about 8 clues) but no doubt we will be back for more next year.

Thanks Mum, the memories live on!