Often, lamps come with newspapers scrunched up and used as packing. After the excitement of unpacking the lamp and having a play around with it, I find there to be a secondary 'hobby'. I like to look through the adverts in the papers to see what things are selling for overseas.
Some of the stuff my Mother-in-law had wrapped up in newspaper was dated 1953. Oldest I found wrapped around stuff from a shed was 1947. M-in-law had boxes of ancient legal documents, one on parchment with a bit of cat gut through a hole in one corner. Document was all hand written in medieval French date 1468. That went to auction and fetched a pretty penny. Mention of crosswords - I had a go at and old one just a few days ago - but got stuck as usual!
I used to do crosswords every day Jean. I hardly ever buy a paper these days. I think the thing that most annoys me about prices I see from overseas has to do with things like Coca Cola. We pay roughly $4 for a 2 litre bottle here. Fair dinkum, $2 a litre for water and some flavouring. If petrol was $2 litre everyone would be spewing. With petrol it the oil has to be found, heavily processed is heavily taxed and yet is miles cheaper than a bottle of coke. If you go into a store and get a 600ml bottle out of the fridge they want $3 plus. I'd die of thirst first!
