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IMPORTANT POST UPDATE!

The seesaw/teeter-totter debate has been resolved - in words by Jill and an actual picture of me USING one in August 1976, aged nearly two! Do have a look - scroll down to the bottom of the post!

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TBH, my heart was in my mouth for Mrs. Duck. Thrilled to see the featherlings cuddled together.

Very very sweet.

Surely Terry will approve...

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Aren't they gorgeous, Prue?! 🐥

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I'll have to think about that

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About whether the ducklings are gorgeous, Terry, or whether you will approve? 🤔

I'd say (hope!) at least the first will be a slam dunk(ling)!

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Oh well you know I'm a big softie, so ducklings are a no-brainer. I even go gooey when I see baby hippos and baby rhinos 😃

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Ooooooh! Your potholes are obviously inhabited by creatures far more impressive than humble ducklings, Terry!

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😂 You're insane!

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I don't deny it! 😊

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May 3, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

ha ha ha ha ha ha

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I would have been happy to be in front of such a picture.

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"Trench foot, perhaps," Rebecca, I was laughing out loud! I LOVE this! I totally had trench feet after the marathon on Sunday. HA!! Oh and those ducklings are adorable. I love Spring too. Thank you for sharing your letter to Terry. Hugs from across the pond.

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LOL - thanks, Julie! I'm so glad you enjoyed this post! I'm not surprised about your feet on Sunday - that rain looked torrential! 🤣

I guess when I was still running I preferred rain to a hot sunny day... but only within reason! 🤣

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I hear you! :)

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You're right, these ducklings are incredibly cute.

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From the top of the teeter-totter, (fronted adverbial?) I fell, narrowly avoiding crushing a brood of ducklings on their way to swim in the pothole.

By the way, I'm from the US and we always called them see-saws too. Thanks Rebecca, always enjoy these letters!

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Ah, such brilliant use of the fronted adverbial, Jim!

Really good to know that a seesaw IS a seesaw over the pond! Teeter-totter is such a tongue-twister... too many plosives strung together for a start, and FOUR syllables to boot!

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Rebecca, you don't need to do my advanced drivelling course. I shall respond in due course. You have bin warned😈

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You're agreeing with me that I'm already suitably qualified...?! AWESOME! 😁

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It is not necessarily a compliment 😂

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😉

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Love those baby ducks. We have a pond nearby that we on occasion kayak at. If there are baby ducks around, I'm like a kid, I find myself paddling to be near the babies. Rick has to scold me, "STAY AWAY from the ducklings!" Oh, and I love the drink station at your camping spot! 💜

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They're so cute, Sue! I love that ducklings - and ducks! - are always smiling. As are elephants, pigs and dolphins. I'm sure there are other animals, too, with a natural smile!

Those ducklings as kayaking company probably enjoy your attention - how wonderful.

And yes: we always have supplies on board. I mean, tea first, of course... but the back-up stuff is always with us too! 😉

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Sounds like my kind of camping, except the tea. I keep trying to like tea, but it just never sticks. 💜

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We can still be friends, Sue! What's your hot beverage of choice? I used to like coffee a lot more than I do now (Covid lockdowns broke my almost-daily 'I'll just stop here for an Americano' habit), but as you already know, tea is in my veins...! 🇬🇧

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See, honesty is always the best choice. I knew you would forgive me my shortcomings. I am actually almost 50% British, you'd think I'd have a proclivity toward tea drinking. In my defense, I only discovered my true ancestry a few years back, so maybe I'm just catching up with myself. I did last week attend my first high tea, and I actually enjoyed it very much. But for now, my morning drink is a splash of coffee in my cream. 💜

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Coffee in your cream!

Brilliant! 🤣🤣🤣

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This too much to bear: a semi-Brit not having tea intravenously? Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, I am undone etc

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🤣

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A semi-Brit?!? I love that description. I'll take it, and to celebrate I'll make myself a cup of tea. 💜

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May 3, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

What exactly is that back up stuff I wonder ... you know, for the non-tea drinker who might just stop by? Jammie Dodgers? Laphroaigh?

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No Laphroaig in the selection of drinks shown, Sharron - but there's absolutely a cheeky bottle of Tamnavulin and some sauvignon blanc!

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May 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

That'll do nicely. Thank you

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🥃

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May 3, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

I am LOVING these letters, Rebecca. Today I learned what a fronted adverbial is -- apparently I use them all the time, but it is nice to know what I am doing occasionally. I learned rooster-speech in three languages. Mexican roosters, by the way, say ki - kiri -KÍ and the hens say cara cara cara. Although French hens say clo clo clo! No clucking of an kind. I was captivated by the duckling photo - thank you! But best of all was the passive road sign - "failed road surface". No one to blame - it just failed, spontaneously, on its own! Reminds me of our children saying "It got lost" "It got broken". No guilty party. Thanks for cheering my morning - every time.

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Thanks, Sharron - I love your comparison of the 'Failed Road Surface' sign with what your kids used to say!

LOL re French hens saying 'clo clo clo'! In German, that would translate as 'loo loo loo' (loo as in toilet: das Klo)!

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Most people wouldn't know a fronted adverbial even if it asked them to dance

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💃🤣🕺

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May 3, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

Have SUCH strong feelings on this but teeter-totters and seesaws are not the same!! I grew up in America and we had one of each in the garden. The teeter-totter was a suspended swing/see-saw thing that, like the swings, hung from a crossbar but two people could ride it at once while facing each other and swinging back and forth. And the seesaw was, well, a seesaw. The defence rests. Loved this piece Rebecca ❤️

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Jill, you're a HERO! I've updated my post - I've found a picture of me sitting on exactly what you're describing as a teeter-totter! Thank you so, so much for this clarification!!! 😘

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May 5, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

I agree with you, this part is great. It broke my head. And then I saw these cute ducklings.

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😁

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The ducklings are a delight! We had mallards on our pond but they seem to have migrated elsewhere when all the geese came through :-( I love the translations of chicken speak! And I’ve never heard anyone call it a teeter-totter (not to mention, that seems like a tongue-twister for a small child.) We always called it a seesaw. Maybe it’s a regional thing?

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Thanks, Jacquie - I'm now absolutely fascinated by the teeter-totter debate! In fact - by sheer coincidence - a picture that I was so delighted to find last week when I was looking for one showing me with a hen SHOWS me on just such a contraption! I've updated this post by adding the pic - do have a look! 😊

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What a cool pic! That takes me back to a very similar swingset my dad installed in our backyard when we were kids :-) I think that's what we call a "glider." So many terms to keep straight, haha.

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A 'glider', gosh! We used to call ours a seesaw... while knowing that it wasn't exactly a seesaw...! 🤣

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Now you're blowing my mind ;-)

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🤣

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May 4, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

YES!!! That’s the one. Amazing! That pic could have been me in our back garden circa 1989, we had an identical one. ❤️ Love this SO much

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I can't BELIEVE it, Jill! When I found the picture of me with the hen to use in last week's post I had been so thrilled to find one of Teddy Edward - whom I'd written about last month - on the facing page. Little did I know - until thanks to you, last night! - that that picture would be so relevant to THIS post too! #spooky 👀

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We called it a teeter-totter during my childhood. I don't think I ever went on one though.

This constant talk about potholes has me thinking about the potholes I used to encounter on my travels every day. It would take them forever to fill them. And then the filling would come out and we would have to endure months of trying to miss them. One road was notorious for this and recently they have repaved the whole road.

Love to see the cute ducklings.

I think the cockerel with the book is hilarious. Definitely a laugh there.

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LOL - I had fun with that picture, Matt!

Potholes are an absolute scourge, aren't they? I remember there being a lot of talk in the news in the late 80s and early 90s about how our road bridges would need to be strengthened to stand up to extra freight lorry traffic once the Channel Tunnel opened. I'm not sure anybody thought about the roads - and things seem to be going from bad to worse...!

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May 5, 2023·edited May 5, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

Growing up in small-town rural Michigan, seesaw and teeter totter were used interchangeably. It was a wooden board balanced on a sturdy sawhorse and the edges where people sat were rounded for safety. I remember getting splinters in my hands, and the thumpy landing if one didn't stop the seesaw from touching the ground by stopping it with a firm stance. This link has a picture of the seesaw/teeter totter of my youth.

https://minneapolisparkhistory.com/2012/09/24/now-thats-a-teeter-totter/

Love this post, Rebecca. :-) The ducklings are the cutest, the pothole part was funny, too.

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Oh wow, Mary - that's brilliant! Thank you for the link - gosh, those seesaws/teeter totters look like absolutely deathtraps - the seesaws in public playgrounds over here when I was a child didn't go nearly so high!

I'm so pleased you enjoyed this post - thank you! What I really enjoy about my letters to Terry is that I get to write about all sorts of stuff that I otherwise probably wouldn't - and in this case it's also taught me a lot about playground equipment! 🤣

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May 5, 2023Liked by Rebecca Holden

What an interesting discussion of terminology! Indeed, why say "swings" when "teeter-totter" is better. I don't know why, but I find it interesting to read about how you talk about how rooster cries are translated into different languages.

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Thanks, Sabrina!

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Springtime camping and ducklings. My day is made. 🤗🤗😘💕🎉

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🤣 Yay Beth! How lovely - thank you! Have a great weekend! 🐥

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"Kikeriki" reminded me of this exceptionally funny German children's song - Das Kleine Küken Piept

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjBCjfB3Hq8

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Soooooo niedlich! Ever so cute, Punit - thanks so much for this link! 🤣

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