Findmypast.com and Ancestry.co.uk have trial subscriptions for a couple of weeks or so. You have to register a card but can cancel during the trial and you don’t get charged. That way you can see if it’s for you before you commit to a subscription charge.

Adam Walker is a disgusting, anti-British traitor. Apparently he’s married to a Japanese woman so that is probably why he is so fond of them, and seemingly prefers to honour their war dead when the people of Britain commemorated those who had fought against the Japanese (and the innocent British civilians who had also been imprisoned in Japanese torture camps).

While we’re on the subject of demonising parties, what about the other “main” parties who have convicted paedophiles and expenses fiddlers in their midst?

Not forgetting the Catholic church and the fact that they covered up disgusting child abuse by their own priests.

This is slightly related to my line of work. Whilst I cannot give advice to people wanting to work with adults, if you would like to work in children’s care, you could try starting out as a sessional worker. They work with parents who are having contact meetings with children who are in foster care, supervising the meetings (at least in my area) and then reporting to the social workers in charge. This can sometimes lead to a job in childrens social care, as I know some who have come into the job from being taken on as sessional workers.

All our family would watch the snooker when he was playing, he was our favourite player, and his Championship win of 1982 was superb.
RIP.

I have had many fantastic holidays, to pick out the best is not easy.

The worst place I have ever visited is Paris, I hate the place and I was just counting the days to when I could go home again.

I have enjoyed many holidays in Iceland (before it became touristy like it is now) and fun internal flights on Fokker 27s and 50s into very remote airports.

I enjoyed visiting Finland and touring round on a Finnrail pass (based in Helsinki we travelled to places such as Turku, Tampere and Joensuu – all very different to anywhere I’d been before).

LA has been fun, hot and hectic. Hawaii was just hot. New Zealand was beautiful and I wish I could have seen more, likewise Australia.

Some of my most enjoyable holidays have been in Belgium – had several trips there each year since 2000 (with the exception of our holiday last year which was ruined by the breaking down of a badly-designed French train which seemed to have a problem operating in snow). Instead of doing the usual thing which Brit tourists do (ie visiting Brussels, Brugge, Gent and Antwerp and occasionally Ieper then mistakenly believing they’ve seen the whole of Belgium) we buy a Rail Pass and catch the train to wherever takes our fancy (and many places which the average Brit tourist either completely overlooks or has never even heard of). To date in Belgium we have visited: Brussels, Brugge, Gent, Antwerp, Oostende, Ieper, Poperinge, Mons, Veurne, Lier, Eupen, Spa, Liege, Oudenaarde, Kortrijk, Tournai, Knokke, Blankenberge, De Panne, De Haan, Genval, Hasselt, Tongeren, Mechelen, Kortenberg, Dinant, Namur, Leuven, Damme and Zeebrugge. Those are what I call fun holidays – the best beer in the world and food which is hard to beat in places where you see very few other tourists and certainly won’t bump into folk you know.

I think I’ll pass on the deep fried spiders and bulls private bits but guinea pigs and rats? Why not? Most of us don’t bat an eyelid at the thought of eating rabbit so I don’t see the difference really! Perhaps they could be presented in a more appetising way though!

Paul – Now heading to LBA to take plane photos after having good old traditional fish and chips….

The horrible diseases rats carry would put me off eating one, plus I can’t imagine there would be much meat on one (not as much as on a rabbit – same goes for guinea pig).

I can’t bring myself to eat snails when we go to Belgium, my Mum keeps telling me how nice they are and how much I’d like them but I just can’t! I remember ripping one out of its shell when I was a kid and I always remember how gross it looked with the innards hanging down, I’ve never eaten anything like that since.

This year we’re planning to tackle andouillette sausages – which have strips of pigs guts inside them and are supposed to stink like a farmyard. I have no idea what they’ll be like.

I support every country which plays against France :diablo: Love it when the chickens lose 😀

(Chickens because their national emblem is a chicken!)