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Shoe Repairs And Several Other Things When I Was 7

Shoe Repairs And Several Other Things When I Was 7
My Dad repaired most of our shoes believe it or not, I can hardly believe it myself now. With 7 pairs of shoes always needing repairs I think he was quite clever to learn how to “Keep us in shoe Leather” to coin a phrase!

He bought several different sizes of cast iron cobbler’s “lasts”. Last, the old English “Laest” meaning footprint. Lasts were holding devices shaped like a human foot. I have no idea where he would have bought the shoe leather. Only that it was a beautiful creamy, shiny colour and the smell was lovely.

But I do remember our shoes turned upside down on and fitted into these lasts, my Dad cutting the leather around the shape of the shoe, and then hammering nails, into the leather shape. Sometimes we’d feel one or 2 of those nails poking through the insides of our shoes, but our dad always fixed it.

Hiking and Swimming Galas
Dad was a very outdoorsy type, unlike my mother, who was probably too busy indoors. She also enjoyed the peace and quiet when he took us off for the day!

Anyway, he often took us hiking in the mountains where we’d have a picnic of sandwiches and flasks of tea. And more often than not we went by steam train.

We loved poking our heads out of the window until our eyes hurt like mad from a blast of soot blowing back from the engine. But sore, bloodshot eyes never dampened our enthusiasm.

Dad was an avid swimmer and water polo player, and he used to take us to swimming galas, as they were called back then. He often took part in these galas. And again we always travelled by steam train.

Rowing Over To Ireland’s Eye
That’s what we did back then, we had to go by rowboat, the only way to get to Ireland’s eye, which is 15 minutes from mainland Howth. From there we could see Malahide, Lambay Island and Howth Head of course. These days you can take a Round Trip Cruise on a small cruise ship!

But we thoroughly enjoyed rowing and once there we couldn’t wait to climb the rocks, and have a swim. We picnicked and watched the friendly seals doing their thing and showing off.

Not to mention all kinds of birdlife including the Puffin.The Martello Tower was also interesting but a bit dangerous to attempt entering. I’m getting lost in the past as I write, and have to drag myself back to the present.

Fun Outings with The camera Club
Dad was also a very keen amateur photographer, and was a member of a camera Club. There were many Sunday photography outings and along with us came other kids of the members of the club.

And we always had great fun while the adults busied themselves taking photos of everything and anything, it seemed to us. Dad was so serious about his photography that he set up a dark room where he developed and printed his photographs.

All black and white at the time. He and his camera club entered many of their favourites in exhibitions throughout Europe. I’m quite proud to say that many cups and medals were won by Dad. They have been shared amongst all his grandchildren which I find quite special.

He liked taking portraits of us kids too, mostly when we were in a state of untidiness, usually during play. Dad always preferred the natural look of messy hair and clothes in the photos of his children.

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Web Site Promotion – Keyword Secrets

What is the secret of finding the right keywords for your web site promotion? The quality of your keyword research will be directly reflected in the quality of your web site promotion. Quality research requires the right tools. The more tools in your web site promotion toolbox,the more information you will access. There is no such thing as too much information when it comes to keywords. The more informed you are about your keywords, the better chance you have to make your web site promotion a successful one.Keyword research is a unique form of market research. It is always dynamic, as are Google and the Internet itself. Keyword research skill should evolve and grow along with Internet marketing skill. It will correlate closely with your success as an Internet Marketer. Every owner of an Internet business should understand the importance of keywords and keyword research to their success.You don’t have to limit your choice of keywords only to a specific business you want to promote on the Internet. Your web site promotion could be a blog about something that interests you, and a subject on which you are knowledgeable. It may be possible to garner enough traffic to produce profitable results from a blog about almost any subject that you are interested enough in to write about. Your writing subject does not have to promote only your business opportunity. There are many examples of profitable blogs and web sites that started from a personal interest or hobby.Where can you find the right tools to research your web site promotion keywords ? A good place to start is with a simple Google search. Take a look at the numbers in the upper right hand corner of the results page from any Google search. This number indicates the total indexed number of web sites that have those keywords on their web site. Even though the number may seem very large, many of the sites just mention the keywords without specifically targeting them.It is important to know where the keywords appear on the site. Sometimes keywords may appear in the URL, (Internet address), in the title, or simply in the text of the page. A search for keywords in web page URL’s would be inurl:keyword where your keywords would substitute for the word “keyword”. A search for intitle:keyword would indicate which web pages used the keyword(s) in the title of the page. A search for intext:keyword would reveal the pages that listed the keyword(s) somewhere on the page in readable or visible text.By the way, one of the most important things on any web site in terms of search engine optimization is to use keywords in the title of the page. Note: search engine optimization or SEO, is the practice of using knowledge of Google to gain a high search engine position or ranking.For much more specific information on traffic volumes for particular keywords, there is a great tool from Google called Google AdWords Keyword tool. This is a free Google service that supplies a wealth of information. You can get a good idea of the traffic for your keywords in the previous month, and the average monthly traffic for the previous year. It also provides a long list of related or additional keywords, and the corresponding traffic levels.Another free tool you can use is the free keyword suggestion tool from Wordtracker. Note: the paid version is even better. This is a very interesting web site promotion tool that gives you a weighted number that indicates the value and level of competition for a particular set of keywords. A number between 75 and 100, or higher, usually indicates that your chosen keywords are good ones. A number closer to zero, indicates less desirable keywords.An additional tool available at no charge is the keyword discovery tool. It gives you one hundred of the best keywords related to your keywords. It claims to look across various search engines to give a broad view of search engine results. There is also a paid version that gives you a twelve month history.There are also various types of software that do keyword research. If you decide to invest in this type of software, it is recommended to find companies that offer a trial version. There are some software programs of this type that are merely marketing tools to sell search engine optimization services. Caveat emptor is the word here. (Buyer beware.)This it just a brief overview or introduction to keyword research. Any web site promotion effort should prioritize thorough keyword research, and recognize it as an essential element of success.

Last Minute Travel And How To Find The Best Cheap Travel Deals

Sometimes if time is on your side the very best way to travel is Last Minute Travel. You can often find the very best cheap travel deals this way. Often you can find many such deals to even faraway places like Malaysia or Singapore or even some of your other dream locations. In fact more often than none the faraway places offer the best value for money when it is a last minute travel deal.Reasons Why Last minute travel deals are so good include:-

Because someone else has already paid for an expensive travel deal you can reap the rewards and even grab a bargain, because the travel company has already made their monies. The original buyer has canceled, thus the travel company no longer needs to make such a huge profit on the holiday as they have already made these profits from the original buyer. This is one of the ways you can grab great holidays at bargain prices.
You can often also benefit from holidays in 4 or even 5 star resorts, often at 2 star prices
There is also another very good reason why you would choose last minute travel over regular travel and this is because you can often get great travels deals to those far and away dream locations for small monies, that would usually only pay for a short stop holiday.
You can also usually get lots of extras thrown in for no extra monies like free transfers to and from the airports or even extra baggage allowances.
Disadvantages of Last minute travel include:-

You are limited to which hotels and resorts that you stay at due to the holiday usually being someone else’s booking.
Often the prices don’t include hidden costs including airport transfers and extra luggage costs
The dates are usually restrictive, because the holiday was previously booked for someone else’s timetable; these dates are not negotiable because they are the only ones available for the stated price.
Often the prices are based on 2 or 4 people sharing, Depending on how the original buyer booked their holiday will usually dictate on the board basis. Sometimes the prices stated are based on 2 people or even 4 people sharing and sometimes this can even be 6, however in this case they will usually allow the holiday to be split into 2 groups depending on how the accommodation was originally booked in the first place.
Even though Last Minute travel can sometimes be a little restrictive it can often be a very convenient and very cost effective way of traveling, as you can see above there are some very good reasons why people choose to travel at the very last minute, sometimes even booking the same day of travel. So if you are brave enough and you have a flexible holiday schedule at work or school why not try and book a holiday the last minute travel way and save yourself and your family a small fortune.