Set in your ways? Adaptable? Eccentric?

Yes she brought her fairy lights to Birmingham. It's true.

Greatnan if jeni made it to the top, you could give her a piggyback ride down to the bottom of the mountain. What a delightful sight...whoooppppeeee!

I love the idea of climbing the ski slopes with you panting behind me, jeni!

And Seven for - OOPS! That was too close for comfort.

I give 3 short blows on my hooter ie, my nose!
One for starboard (R)
Two for port (L)
Five for GET OUT OF MY WAY. DANGER

But jeni how do people know when you are reversing ..

Only two! Green and red , that's so that people know which way I'm going!
Remind me, must remember to pack them!

jeni I don't think having fairy lights – several sets I believe – on your crutches can possibly be considered sensible. That a very silly thing.

absent ...

I'm a one-off, slightly-wacky, unconventional, oftimes shy and retiring non-team player. Happy with my own company, providing I've you lot to share groans and giggles with.

I'm sorry, but most people describe me as zany. I think it is because I have a strange sense of humour. I can't help it. I don't do silly things apart from being independant and going cruising on my own. I think in some ways I'm like an unfit version of greatnan . If I was fit I'd probably be following in her footsteps. In fact I'm

I am not the least bit eccentric. It's everyone else who is odd.

Good for you greatnan - I 'get' you LOL.

jessm we also have a car valet service with all Eastern European men (and women!) who are so keen and hardworking. Sometimes I have the car valeted when it doesn't really even need it - "wealth redistribution" not that I am wealthy ... but it makes me and them happy! It pierced my heart one day when I saw them all comparing their Lotto tickets.

Watch out for CCTV cameras!

Yes well your whole head moves smart****.
But your face stays facing the front.
ho hum.
It has to be done. i have to try to get the car valeted. I promised. There is a local company that employs lots of eastern european men that don't speak English. They work very hard. i assume employment legal as the business is very visible. They have a waiting room where i can surreptiously do both neck and p. floor exercises.

Anyone tried the tennis ball trick in a cafe?
For pain in the lower back, legs or shoulders.
Stand with your back against a wall and put the ball where the pain is. Then roll the ball around between you and the wall by wriggling.
You can also do it while sitting on the floor.
I only do it at home, never in a cafe. It works.
Ken was told this trick by a chiropractor.

I can't raise my ears independently Grace can, but she's a dog. I am sitting here pulling weird faces and wondering what the other people in the cafe are thinking as they watch you doing this exercise, jessM. It reminds me of trying to do my pelvic floor exercises while waiting for a bus - as recommended by midwife - DH thought I just needed the loo

OK Came to the cafe to do some work, but you have lured me back.
The exercise is a safe kind of neck stretch learned from my QiGong obsessed son. Keeping your face forward, raise one ear towards the ceiling then return to mid line and raise the other one. It is an upwards movement, not letting your head flop over . It stretches and strengthens the sides of the neck.
The tricky bit is keeping your face in the same plane while you do the movement. So stand with the tip of your nose touching the wall and your knees slightly flexed (or the edge of a door frame is better) and do the movement while maintaining that light contact between nose and wall/doorframe.
I think I a fairly adaptable - as evidence I offer coping with prolonged stays in the DSs homes in S hemisphere. Including the 6 month stint as flatmate to 2 "lads" in NZ when DS2 was ill. The hardest bit I find is cooking in other people's kitchens. (what you mean you haven't got a spoon with holes in?)
I agree about some people who present themselves as "scatty" or zany - it is sometimes an excuse for considerable failings or child like behaviour. Maybe true eccentricity is having the confidence to do just what you blooming well want without worrying about what others will think?
You would be most likely to think i am eccentric if you spotted me somewhere like HK airport, home of lots of flash shops - Gucci etc. Most people just waiting to get back on another plane.
I'd be the one sitting on the floor doing yoga.

Me too , Grannyknot. I have changed my country of abode several times and each time I have given all my possessions, apart from my clothes, books and photographs, to my two daughters and started again from scratch. I have bought/rented fully furnished apartments - it doesn't bother me in the least to live with somebody else's choices.

ella haha. I gave all my possessions away (apart from 2 suitcases of stuff I really couldn't part with) - when I was in my early 50s. Does that make me an eccentric? It was great by the way.

Me too Greatnan. I always feel as if I am writing my life in black and white but some b****r is filming it in colour.

JessM Do own up. I am getting worried about Bags's nose.

I have to agree with you all about people who call themselves zany etc. I think that is why i won't join the red hat ladies, because their 'eccentricities' seem to me (from the outside) to be somewhat staged.

I'm not mainstream where I live, because I'm an immigrant with a funny accent, a very left wing Labour party member unafraid to voice my opinions, completely indifferent to fashion, and utterly indifferent to two important Australian issues - cars and sport. I don't drive - that is worse than being illiterate here. Also, I have nerdish tastes in entertainment - Doctor Who (I have a photo here of me with the Tardis), Star Trek, Harry Potter, Scandinavian crime drama, Big Bang Theory, and most good British drama.

I love to meet people who are different in some way - I was brought up to welcome diversity and now I feel threatened by massed mainstream society. I was once persuaded into a charismatic church's Christmas Pageant put on by Assemblies of God. It was a lovely production - costumes, camels, choral music etc, but something bothered me all the time I was there. Couldn't put my finger on it till I realised everyone there was white establishment! Not a dark face anywhere! Not a poor person to be seen. Not a handicapped person, not a gay person - no-one who was not utterly mainstream. It was WASP central. Scary!

Me too Ella but presumably, if we were, we wouldn't know so it would be a
waste really.

I am really rather conventional, I suppose, but I am endlessly adaptable and cope with most changes fairly easily but that must be a product of having 5 children, 4 s/din-laws, 8 grandchildren and a mother. Or did they happen because I am adaptable?

I'd love to know about the neck thing, too, Jess, one of the worst things about aging is the loss of flexibility especially round the neck and shoulders.

I don't think you can decide to become eccentric - you either are or you are not!
I always have half my clothes in bin liners in a cupboard, as I don't have room for more than one season's clothes at a time. It is quite a big day when I decide it is time to put away the winter weight trousers and get out the light cotton stuff.
I have never fitted in easily to any group, starting at about five years old. I have always felt that I was dropped into a play where everybody else knew the script. I now have self-diagnosed and come to the conclusion that I am mildly autistic but I have found things easier as I have got older. I am now more outgoing and interested in other people, even though I often don't have personal contact with anybody for several weeks. I find forums such as this, a couple of ex-pat forums and Facebook are excellent ways of getting involved in other people's lives and taking part in discussions.