Away from it all, close to home#2

The previous post is still there so I am going to be ambitious and add a few photographs to this one.

The farm cottage that we stayed in last week, just 22 miles from home, is one of a small complex of converted barns.

There was a photographic display of the derelict buildings before the work started in 1988 and the progress through the next year to bring them to the current state of luxurious comfort. The grounds are lovingly tended and there are ponds and woods and many interesting walks.

Since our main purpose in choosing such a venue was some R and R, we spent a lot of time reading. We had, of course, taken our own books but it is always interesting to see what other people have on their shelves. The dedicated "quiet room" had a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction for all tastes and ages but our cottage also had a full bookcase:

I was intrigued when I saw twenty diaries, covering the years 1989 to 2009, on the bottom shelf. I assumed that they were there for us to read and settled down with a cup of tea and the first volume. The entries began in April 1989 with the first guests to stay in the cottage. There was a note from the owner, inviting guests to record their activities during their stay, to tell a little about themselves, to mention places they visited and to recommend pubs and restaurants. It made for fascinating reading.

1989 was the year that we moved from Hampshire to Devon. It was an exceptionally warm and dry year; we arrived in January and spent the first few days on the beach instead of unpacking! That summer, like this year's, was glorious and we had lots of visitors to help us explore our new surroundings. Reading the diary entries, I was reminded of that time and the fun we had with our children and their cousins and friends; we were discovering the same places as those written about in the diaries. We always kept journals and scrapbooks, sitting round the table after dinner to write and draw about what we had done during the day.  The cottage guests did the same thing - there were entries from different family members who, like us, made recording the day's adventures an adventure in itself.

The first few diaries are quite full with visitors entering wholeheartedly into the exercise of building a history of these refurbished ancient buildings. Then I noticed a gradual decline in the amount that was written and in the number of people who would write anything at all. The 2000s saw fewer and fewer entries and in 2009 the owners must have decided to give up the idea and no more diaries were left with that kindly invitation to add to the records. I was saddened to think of what has been lost to our social history by the lack of interest in writing nowadays. I suppose future generations must look to Facebook and (dare I say it?) blogs to find out about everyday life in the 21st century.

This  made me nostalgic for the holidays we recorded when the children were small. I dashed off to get some of the scrapbooks down from the shelf where thay have been undisturbed for quite a few years. I realise how few photos there are, we didn't have digital cameras in those days. We enjoyed doing our own writing and illustrating.(Click on the pictures to see them more clearly)

This is a book from a holiday in Cornwall in 1984 when Andrew was 7 and Tanith 4 (and a half!) Andrew wrote about the game we played in the evening:

and Tanith drew a picture of the game of crazy golf we'd had:

One morning, my husband found a dormouse when he was on his early morning run and woke the children to admire it before returning it to the bushes:

Do you remember those long country walks I shared with you some time ago? The scrapbook from our Easter holiday in 1986 gives my account of one, alongside  my husband's illustration:

Now I remember why my son and daughter groan whenever LCWs are suggested! It is good to have these prompts to take us back to happy times. I am grateful to those families who took the trouble to fill in the diaries at Ham Farm, their memories are now part of the history of that time and place.

The lost post

I put together a post called Away from it all, close to home, yesterday. It appeared on the blog for a few hours and Val left a comment and I responded. Then, somehow it disappeared completely. I spent an hour or so reading all the help, advice and discussions on Blogger but I could not find any way to retrieve a lost post. Sorry, Val and sorry Dewena for your fruitless efforts. I'm going to write a little post now and hope this one stays put!

It has been a very lovely but also very busy summer.  We have had many visitors:19 in all but, I'm pleased to say, not all at once. The house has been filled with fun and laughter, a welcome distraction from the anxious waiting for my husband's test results. (Thank you for the messages and enquiries, it has taken a long time but the worst case scenario has now been ruled out but spinal surgery is required.)

Family members from Lancashire, Oxford and Bristol: brother, sister, nieces, great-nephews and a dog came to stay at various times as well as our son and his family and our daughter and hers. Happy chaos has reigned and the sun shone all the time! There have been barbecues and picnics, days on the beach, days on the burrows, hide-and-seek in the garden and a great deal of family time. It has all been wonderful but now I am exhausted!

My husband's doctor suggested we have a holiday while waiting for an appointment at the spinal clinic, which could be a long wait. He couldn't manage a long journey so I looked for some peace and quiet with a touch of luxury within a 25 mile radius of home and here we are in a farm cottage on the edge of Dartmoor. Apart from a young honeymooning couple, we have the whole farm to ourselves as the owners are themselves on holiday and the summer season is almost over. Tranquility is what we needed and that is just what we have. 

I posted a lot of photographs yesterday but I won't do that now in case they disappear again. As I have been typing this, a message that an error has occurred while saving has appeared at regular intervals. I will click on the Publish button and hope for the best. If this succeeds, I will try another full post later in the week.

A lovesome thing

It has been something of a tough time here in recent weeks.  My poor husband has been undergoing various therapies for his back problem, each of them causing him more pain and decreasing his mobility. We have  spent a great deal of time in hospital and doctors' waiting rooms but now, having eventually made our way past what my son calls 'the gatekeepers,' he is being treated by an excellent spinal consultant. The NHS works really well once one gets into the system, it is the frustrating period of procedure-following that lets us down. We are now waiting for lots of test results to come together and  then the consultant should come up with a solution or at least a plan.

My respite from all the anxiety and frustration has been my garden, which may not be the biggest or the best in the world but it is my 'lovesome thing' and the glorious weather that we are enjoying has made it possible for me to spend most of my free time out there. I'm afraid that I haven't been able to concentrate on writing or even reading; I'm sorry if I haven't called in on you for a while but I will catch up eventually.

A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern'd grot—
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

Thomas Edward Brown

 The white lilac is the highlight of the garden for a very brief time. I love to go out at night to see it glow in the moonlight. Alas, it has already turned brown but the birds love to sit and sing in it and it is now covered in honeysuckle so its glory changes rather than fades.

I don't have a rose plot but there are a few lovely roses, each with a particular memory attached, dotted around the garden. These three were given to me by my pupils when I retired.

 As it is a cottage garden, I can have anything in it and I do! Here is just a fraction of what is in bloom just now, there is no order or planning, I just put in what I like!

I keep a lot of pots by the kitchen door so that I have easy access to the salads, tomatoes  and vegetables; just enough for our needs, I have to buy more when we have visitors.

In the few days that have passed since I took these photos, everything has grown at an amazing rate. The tomatoes are in flower, the peas and beans are producing a daily crop and the potatoes are ready to pick.  If I get to them before the birds, I even manage to add a few strawberries to my breakfast cereal. The  pots of flowers are for my pleasure and for the local bee population to enjoy. I planted up a number of pots with Sarah Raven's pollinator friendly seeds last year and this year they have produced a splendid array of wild flowers.

'When the eve is cool,' I walk around my garden with watering cans in hand and I feel the peace and appreciate the beauty of this lovesome place.

In a golden coach

What were you doing on 2 June 1953? I was an over-excited seven year old, crammed with dozens of other children into a neighbour's living room, watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth on a nine inch television screen. The  country hadn't seen such festivities since VE Day, eight years earlier. Our streets were decorated with red, white and blue bunting, interspersed with gold coloured cardboard crowns. We had street parties and games and the whole world seemed to be a happy, fun-filled place, especially as sweet rationing had ended a few months earlier and we children were given bags of sweets and chocolate.

The young queen brought hope to the nation still suffering the after-effects of war. The ubiquitous song of that time sounds corny now but it really was on the lips of everyone from schoolchildren to bus conductors, shopkeepers and roadsweepers.

  Of  course, the television coverage that we watched was in black and white and the tv screen was tiny but it was still magical. We were to see the splendid colourful spectacle in the cinema later. 


Coronation fever seemed to last for months. Our school year always ended with a "Field Day." We walked in procession with brass bands, banners and morris dancers to a field several miles away where our parents had been busy erecting stalls for the sale of cakes, fizzy drinks and ice cream. There were swing boats and roundabouts, coconut shies and hoopla. We had dancing displays and races; it was one of the highlights of our year. My class was chosen to present a pageant of the coronation. The golden coach was replaced by a flatbed trailer. Bernadette Beasley was chosen to be the Queen and I was one of her six ladies-in-waiting. (That's me standing behind her majesty)

The pictures, like me, show signs of their age but they bring back very happy memories of a lost time of simple, innocent enjoyment. I lost touch with all the other children in these photos when I moved to a different school but I know what the real queen has achieved in the 60 years of her reign; few people can match her devotion to duty - all her promises fulfilled. 

A bit of a grumble

I am feeling just a tad negative at the moment. I have just cancelled the long-planned holiday in Austria that we should be flying out for in a few days time. I can't direct any grumbles at the cause of the cancellation because that would be adding insult to the injury my husband has suffered to his back but we are both very disappointed and that makes other things seem more irritating than they would normally appear.

Therefore, I'm going to do a 'grumpy old woman' moan about something other than cancelled flights, travel insurance that isn't worth the paper it is printed on and the lost delights of visiting my brother and walking in the Alps. I turn my attention instead to Amazon and the Royal Mail.

My electric toothbrush died and I saw a really good offer on Amazon and ordered one. An email told me that it would be sent by Royal Mail's tracking service and would arrive on Saturday 23 May. Fine. Saturday passed with no delivery but it was the May Bank Holiday so I thought it was not unreasonable for it to be delayed until Tuesday 28th. As Tuesday wore on with no delivery, I checked the tracking status on my Amazon account and saw that the package had supposedly been delivered on Saturday. Here is where my grumble begins.

The Amazon Help page told me that if a package has not arrived but shows as having been delivered then it is up to the customer to contact the carrier. Why, I ask? Amazon took my money, surely Amazon should ensure the goods are delivered. At this point, I was just a little miffed.

The Royal Mail website had my package registered as having been delivered and signed for on Saturday 23 May at 1.30pm. (A time when both I and my incapacitated husband were at home). The Royal Mail Help page informed me that I should check with my neighbours to see if one of them had taken in the package. Miffedness grew as I trudged around the neighbours in the pouring rain and found no-one had taken in the package. Back to the website help page to find out what to do next: check with the person who signed for the package. Ha, ha. No helpful information on how to find out who had signed for it and no card left by the postman to say where he had left the parcel.

Tetchiness setting in now as I try to locate a phone number for Royal Mail and then spend 45 minutes working my way through their lists of options and recorded messages telling me how wonderful  their service is and how I could find all the help I needed on their website. Eventually, I arrived at a human voice, the very carefully chosen voice of Royal Mail's Complaints Department. A voice that undoubtedly belongs to the most handsome, caring and charming young man in the world. How could one possibly feel aggrieved or angry or even the teeniest bit annoyed? Well done, Royal Mail; you should be put in charge of peace negotiations around the world!

Handsome Young Voice apologised profusely and assured me that all would be sorted. And lo, it came to pass that a Royal Mail van arrived this morning, with a Royal Mail postman bearing my package. Would you believe it (well, would you?), it had been delivered to a house in a completely different street on Saturday, the homeowner had signed for it, presumably she had been expecting a parcel from Amazon, had the same name as me and didn't notice the wrong address on the label. Then, this morning she rushed out of her house, hailed the passing post van and handed in the parcel. And here it was, better late than never! Oops.

Displaced frustration, I know. But little things niggle when you are feeling out of sorts. And anyway, shouldn't we expect more than and inefficiency and blustering excuses from the Royal Mail and shouldn't Amazon have chased up that non-delivery?

Fine china

Everything today seems to be high speed, top volume and low maintenance.  I admit that I was glad of many modern conveniences when I was a busy, working mother. Retirement means I have time to make real bread, real coffee, real porridge, to hang the washing on the line instead of putting it in the tumble dryer, to pick flowers for the house and generally surround myself with lovely tastes and smells. It really is worth the time and effort!

However busy I used to be, I would always lay the dining room table properly for our evening meal. Sitting down to eat together has always been an essential feature of our family life, a time to catch up on news, to sort out problems and to add to the repertoire of family jokes. The children have left home but they come to visit and the table has had to grow to accommodate the new family members but we can't imagine life without it.

My work used to take me into the homes of many young parents and I was at first surprised and then saddened to find that few of them owned a table. Lots of modern first-time houses are too small to have a separate dining room or even a kitchen/diner. People seem to eat from trays in front of the television - not a good scenario for encouraging language development in the deaf children I worked with! Deaf or hearing, children learn an enormous amount from the interaction of families and sitting in a row in front of a TV does not provide that. My husband, a maths teacher, wants a campaign to bring back multiplication tables; I want a campaign to bring back dinner tables!

My online friend, Dewena, takes great care over her table settings. Go over and see the lovely china and table linen she uses. We both think that it is worth the effort, even when we are left with only two at the table. I haven't asked, but I imagine she must have lots of cupboards to store all her china, something that I am sadly lacking. Our house is crammed with books and bookshelves and a china collection would be difficult to accommodate. 

I inherited an Edwardian teaset from my mother-in-law and it is still in a box, almost two years on. Inspired by Dewena, I took it out and washed it a few days ago. It is fine bone china, hand painted and heavily decorated:

There are 34 pieces altogether: 12 teaplates, 9 cups and saucers, 2 cake plates, a milk jug and a bowl. Mother-in-law, who inherited the set from her mother, kept it in a display cabinet and never used it. Afternoon tea parties went out of fashion in the 1940s and I don't have a display cabinet to show off that Edwardian splendour; what to do with it? I took the photographs to the local antique shop, which specialises in fine china, to get some idea of the value. I thought I might sell it and buy something I would like to use instead. I am glad that I took photos and not the box of china as I might have dropped it when I heard the valuation! £20 is the current value of this 110 year old set. There is no market for fine china.

What will I do? I will establish a new fashion for afternoon tea. I'll bake cakes and scones and make dainty cucumber sandwiches and lay the table with my best cloth and napkins and my fine china. You're invited!

A late arrival

I have been humming a certain tune under my breath for many weeks as the winter dragged on and on and on. I usually think of versions of this song by Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan but, following news of her death a few weeks ago, I'd like to play Deanna Durbin singing Spring will be a little late this year.


I thought that the garden would never recover from the long months of rain. I watched in dismay as the topsoil was daily washed down onto the yard below, forming a sludge that had to be removed quickly before it could get into our narrow drains. Local farmers said the crops this year, if they could ever get them planted, would be poor in quality as well as late because the soil's nutrients had been washed away by the floods. Imagine my happy surprise, therefore, when I returned from my peregrinations to find the sun shining and the garden bursting with blooms!  Cue another song:


Here are a few of my garden delights:

 The last of the camellias sit next to the first signs of the magnolia and lilac flowers against a remarkably blue sky.

 Spring flowers are coming into their own at last.

 and the shrubs and apple tree are all in blossom.

I have started to plant up my patio pots, only five weeks later than usual! I had this little companion throughout, almost pushing me away when he caught sight of a worm.

Today, the rain has come back and the temperature has plummeted; gale force winds are forecast for tomorrow. Perhaps our late spring will have lasted for just a few days but it was worth waiting for and perhaps the garden will survive yet again.

Peregrinations

Since last sitting at my desk, I have been travelling around Britain and generally having a good time. There has been a lot of cake:

 

Lots of memories:

April 1973

Revisiting of special places:

Hawk and Buckle April 2013

Swallow Falls 1973

Caernarvon Castle 1973

The MM and I were celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary. Our plan had been to have a quiet weekend away but our son and daughter had other plans and we were swept away in a whirl of gatherings, champagne, dinners and visits. After a weekend of fun here with the family, they packed us off to 

in North Wales to stay in the seventeenth century coaching inn where we spent the first few days of our honeymoon. The mountains, castles and coast looked the same and, as long as we avoided mirrors and shop windows, we imagined we were the same young people who went there in 1973!

Hints of spring

At this time last year, the garden was a mass of blooms and we were eating all of our meals on the patio. Spring and summer rolled into one glorious month and then were washed away by months of unprecedented rain. The floods have now cleared but winter, apparently, has not yet ended. More rain, followed by icy winds and wintry showers are to come BUT today the sun is shining and the temperature is a very mellow 11 degrees (51 Fahrenheit).

When I went out to fill the bird feeders this morning, I noticed lots of signs of spring emerging and, knowing this might be my last opportunity for a while, I fetched my camera and recorded a few of them.

The dwarf daffodils have been open for a week now but today I spotted the first of the regular daffodils.

The camellia shrubs have also been in flower for a while, the earliest harbingers of spring in my sheltered garden. Lots of the outer flowers have fallen but I spotted one deep in the foliage and a whole lot of buds waiting to open and delight.

 Another early show comes from the pulmonaria, which I call pandemonium because of its tendency to run riot in the garden.

 I am reluctant to pick spring flowers because I know the early bumble bees need them but I know that these beautiful tulips will be eaten by mice overnight if I don't get them first, so I'll be out later to gather them:

If you look carefully at the next picture you might spot a dragon. He is one of the pets we have for the grandchildren. He's rather fond of hellebores and snowdrops.

Spring was the theme for our writing group this week and we heard a selection of poems, each of them inspiring but we did not use my personal favourite so here it is:

Nothing is so beautiful as spring --
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

The lushness of Hopkins' spring hasn't arrived in my garden yet but there are definitely some early hints of what is to come.