Getting organized

 Today is NOT the day for an enjoyable walk as it is blowing a hooley (N-Easterly I think) and I have had to lock the catflap because it was blowing that open and there was a heck of a draught around my ankles in the kitchen.  Apparently there is a Yellow wind warning for much of Wales . . .  Pippi not impressed by being kept in but she is not being indulged today.

I have been down to Hay & Brecon Farmers and bought a bag of compost for planters and tubs.  That feels very positive - though it's staying in the back of the car for the moment.  It is NOT a gardening day either!  I took a pile of old books (language primers of Tam's, old paperbacks and books I know I won't ever read) plus some clothes Tam had turfed out to the Charity shop too.  Another positive. 

I have looked long and hard at two things in the living room.  One I have had perhaps 10 years and still love but I don't NEED it. I have checked it out with Lens, and it is a late 19th C Italian Giulia Mangani hand-painted enamelled porcelain urn.  It is SO pretty, but I need to be reducing my personal "stuff".

It is so delicately painted.

It will go to the next Fair with me and look good on the top table.

Then there is this painting which I have had a couple of years, and which has really grown on me.  It's the little soft turquoise door which draws you in.

So to the Fair it will go.  Keith's Lufwaffe photo album is being auctioned next week, so let's hope that does well.  They have really gone in positively with the description.

Oh, and that ring with the orange stone?  Tam checked it out and says it must have been my aunty's, as it's dated 1974, and is silver gilt, and the orange stone is paste . . .  Ah well.  I can now share what it looks like, now it's not worth robbing me for!

Tea tonight is going to be a chicken casserole.  This is not salad weather here!

Sunshine and birdsong

 Another Positive Post.  We have had a dry day with Sunshine! Yippee.  There was birdsong.  I went to Llandod.  Just to Tesco as I only had a few things to get, then on to Screwfix for a replacement toilet seat.  Tam now fretting that I might have bought the Wrong One!  I pulled over to plug in my phone so I could listen to the last couple of hours of one of my Audible books - Conspiracy by S J Parris.  I can really recommend her novels.  As I looked up from that, the sun was shining through a couple of bare branched trees, but they had been colonised by a fine mossy lichen and glowed green around branches and twigs.  SO pretty.  I listen to Audible when I am out walking too.

Then out for a - short - walk.  Only 1/4 mile or so each way, but so lovely to be out in the fresh air, and looking at what was to be seen in the hedgerows, and what birds were about - some very smart looking Chaffinches for starters.  Snowdrops only just coming through the ground on the first bend, and so I won't walk down to the church yet to see if they are putting on their annual display.  Early February I think that will be.

A touch of colour on some lichen-clad twigs.  First tentative leaves of Cow Parsley, and one - just ONE - small Celandine leaf!

Low cloud in the direction of Hundred House.

I was lucky to find a Derek Tangye book, Monty's Leap, in the Tesco book recycling bookcase.  Years ago (1960s/70s/80s) I read all of his novels, which were about his and his wife Jeannie's life in the far west of Cornwall, near the Minack Theatre, in a tiny cottage with land and glass houses where they grew daffodils on the cliffs, and made early spring posies, both of which they sent up to London.  They grew potatoes too.  I loved reading about their cats and donkeys and lifestyle.  I shall enjoy re-reading this one too.

I have had a letter from a penpal of over 50 years' standing too, and also found a little stitch kit which I got from a charity shop in Llandod last year.  It had got covered in fabric, so I have liberated it to stitch.

Tea tonight is going to be two large Tesco cod fish fingers, with some home-made chips and peas.  I've not had fish for a while.  I bought a tray of chicken breast for the freezer too.  Plus some of those giant spring onions, a red pepper, a nice head of garlic, Maris Piper potatoes, 2 cucumbers, and some nice on the vine tomatoes.  Topping up store cupboard items this week were Plain and S-R flour and a big 3 Kg bag of Allison's bread flour.  

Possible snow again in the offing - "the Beast from the East - a 656 mile wall of snow" is apparently heading our way in a couple of days.  Deep joy, not!  The entire country will be a whiteout.  Anyway, I had half a tank of heating oil at Christmas, and now 3 weeks on will have used a chunk in the cold weather, so have just ordered 500 L.  That will be around £270 as it's 54p a L at the moment.

New jets on car this week - £150 or so also out, and it's time for the central heating boiler to be checked for the year . . .  Food spending will have to go down to the minimum, but can't match the Frugal Sue's out there!!  

Home alone again

 Tam and Rosie were here not much longer than 24 hours, but the house feels "right" with them here, and so empty now they have gone home again.  I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of weeks I have lived alone in my life, before Keith died.  I don't enjoy living alone, hence trying to keep myself busy and doing little things that give me pleasure.

Yesterday I had a very short walk up to the junction, by which time my legs were saying that was it for the day, as I had already been doing housework and tidying things up before T&R got here.  

I wanted to help a friend, and did a "paying it forward" when I ordered her some multivitamins (just as D had done for me).  My friend doesn't eat a great deal (think miniscule amounts) and I know her diet is lacking in essential vitamins and minerals, so I hope that these will help her and she will carry on and buy some more, although she isn't good at spending money on herself.

Rosie has been a joy.  She regularly speaks in short sentences now and is always asking for a hug.  She made us laugh by pointing and saying "It's a monster" - didn't know where that came from until we heard it on one of the tv programmes Tam lets her watch (Tam is very careful with screen time and content).  She's very observant too - having watched me check under the recliner chair in case one of the girls had gone under there, she came to tell me when Lulu went under there so I could get her out!  "Grandma, Lulu under chair".

Tam has been crocheting a beautiful cape and hood I think it is, with a zigzag border to it.  Really pretty yarn too.  She's nearly finished it now.  She doesn't get much time to work on it as Rosie's bedtimes are so irregular, what with going to the child-minder a couple of times a week.

It has been lovely having them here, but now my glance keeps falling on the NHS envelope on the side, with several pages about my "procedure" on Friday, and I am really dreading it. 

I have continued to put the secateurs in my pocket whenever I go outside (and it's dry!) and have been doing some more tidying up.  Just 5 or 10 minutes makes me feel better.  Today I tackled my Jude the Obscure rose as it had grown so much last summer and was about 8 feet tall.  I now have all the others to sort out.

I hope you've all had a good weekend.  

 

 

When you pull open a drawer in this house . . .

Tam and Rosie here, so all is well with my world :)

Freedom!

Right I thought, this morning, I've had enough of this.  I am OUT today.  I set off for Carmarthen at 9.30, and achieved all my tick list bar going to Tesco for more on-offer cat biscuits.  Will do that next week and hope they are still on offer. I went through Abergwili and picked up some good fresh fruit from Chris Thomas (how I miss their warehouse).  

New shoes (slightly too tight) returned to shop, and a replacement pair a size larger ordered - also in purple.  They are v. slightly too big so will need a little tab stuck into the heel.  

3 bags of small Russets £1 per bag, a bag of 5 oranges (£1) and a punnet of Nectarines (not in photo) £1.25.

As I walked through Carmarthen, I noticed vaping shops and side by side gents hairdressers where proper shops used to be.   I remember reading somewhere recently that many of these places are a front for money laundering . . .  I do not miss Carmarthen at all.  It hasn't improved with keeping.  I went into M&S to get some of their Posh Prawn Sandwiches for my lunch, and a can of Brazilian orange fizz.  That was a special treat.

I went to The Works for colouring pens and pencils to go with the Brambly Hedge colouring book I treated myself to (encouragement from Susan there!), and the health food shop for organic Mung Beans to sprout (encouragement from Thelma).  It was a good walk up the town and my body needed it.  Will try and get going every day now.

Then finally to see my friends P&D, for a good natter.  I'd not seen them, apart from extremely briefly to drop presents off at Christmas, for months.  It was good to catch up.

Spoilt . . .

Downhill after that!

 Yesterday?  A write off.  Tam did say that I could well have an off day on the back of my good one and she was right.  I can only assume that my body got hit by suddenly having no steroids.  I didn't even go outside - just so tired and had to sleep morning and afternoon too.  The steroids have brought my appetite back and I have suddenly put on 3 lbs almost overnight, which I could do without.  

I was in bed by 8.30 p.m. and STILL AWAKE at midnight.  Bladder in overdrive too.  Awake at 3 a.m. and now downstairs (4.40).  I am so fed up.  Can we fast forward to Spring please?  

I discovered a new-to-me programme on tv, Great British History Hunters, and watched a couple of episodes of that yesterday.  It deals with the finds of metal detectorists, and boy are there some lucky ones out there!  Imagine finding this:

The amazing Shropshire sun pendant, a Bronze Age piece which was cast into a bog 3,000 years ago and found by a lucky detectorist in 2018.  For some reason this had not crossed my horizon.  Just look how skillfully it had been worked and by a master craftsman who had only his sharp eyesight and skill to make it.  (Photo copied from Portable Antiquity and Heritage Issues Blog).  

At least these programmes cheered me up a bit.  I am just so cheesed off with being stuck in the house and can't even drive far until washer jets sorted.  

Anyway, some very good news for Wales, as the Tour de France is returning to the UK and the route through Wales comes down from Newtown to Cardiff, via Llandod and Builth!!!  Not till 2027 but that will be something exciting to look forward to.  

More of the Pippi picture has been sewn, and I am on the pond now.  I will have to measure it up and look for a little frame for it in the charity shops.

So, not a lot to report.  I hope I will feel a bit more with it today - despite the lack of sleep.  

What a positive day

 I had, in the end, just 4 1/2 hrs sleep last night.  I fully expected to crash on the sofa after breakfast.  But I didn't.  I washed my hair, which made me feel brighter.  I did a small load of washing and hung it up.  I took dried washing upstairs and put it away.  I decided to take some of my sewing projects up to the Craft Room.  That set off a trail of events which had me tidying away Christmas material, picking up several small bags of scraps and putting them into one big bag, then I unpinned a Kantha lap quilt I had started to lay out.  I didn't like the colour combos I had put together.  Then I had to go in search of my tins of pins, as they weren't upstairs.  Then I did a bit of ironing, since I was up there. 

I decided no way could I suffer beneath the Really Hot Duvet any more, so began to strip my bed.  Then I saw the amount of dust on all my furniture and decided I would get that sorted and the room got 3/4 of a deep clean, with me vacuuming round, and vacuuming the mattress.  Then the bed was made up again with a bit of help from Pippi (as always).  I stopped now and again to look at the frosty landscape, and the rolag of mist over the river and quarry.

Whilst dusting, I opened my grandmother's (probably g.grandmother's) box of goodies which my cousins had given me.  Nothing very valuable, just bits of Victorian family jewellery and wot-nots which mean the world to me.  Judging by the over the top hat-pins, granny had style!  There is one Edwardian ring I need to research, which has a central stone that is orange, and so it is probably an orange (hessanite) garnet.  What an unusual colour to choose.  I don't think I've ever seen an orange ring before.  I've had the loupe to it, and can't see any chips, so am pretty sure it isn't glass.  

There were a couple of other little keepsakes too, single enamel cufflinks kept for the pretty pattern, single shoe buckles, some silver Art Deco brooches, and a brooch in the form of a sabre which you can take the blade out of.  It has "mother" on it and dates from about 1910.  There were several Victorian hat pins and brooches in a horseshoe.  This is one of them. It made me feel very close to my grandparents and g. grandparents. 

 

I wrote a bit more of my penpal letter, and then did some family history work, filling in names and dates on the family history paper tree, which will make it easier for Tam, who will carry on the research in future.  I put right a couple of mistakes I'd made on the Ancestry tree too.  

Then it was time to make tea, the stir fry, and oh my goodness, it tasted SO good.  Like proper food has always done in the past.  I ate it down to the last grain of rice!  

I will have the other half tomorrow night.

Here are photos of current reading, first of all, upstairs pile: 

Then the downstairs pile:

I have to say, watching Lucy Worsley's Blitz Spirit the other day, I am enjoying both the WWII MO books, two different writing styles, of which Vere Hodgeson's is the more enjoyable, but I am learning a lot from both.

So, a really positive and enjoyable day and I felt happy and I felt better.  OK, I couldn't go to Carmarthen as planned, but hopefully will manage it tomorrow or Friday.

It is good to feel more like my old self again.  Sewing tonight I think!