First Primroses and Celandines

I will post properly tomorrow about today's walk, but the new header photo is one of the first Primroses I saw today. Isn't it beautiful? Made me smile. I saw the first Celandine too.

This and that and Radio 4

A view across some different fields on a short walk last week. This is near Court Henry.



Today is a catch-up day. I have spent the morning baking (Pineapple Applesauce Cakes - pictures and recipe to follow), preparing 6 x large green mangoes for Mango Chutney (they were 29p each at Lidl last week) and listening to Radio 4, which has provided a morning of absolute pleasure. I particularly enjoyed Womens' Hour, which based its entire programme on the 1930s. There was a fascinating piece for the History of the World in 100 objects - todays' was the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. Then there was Writing the Century, where two girls hear about the Aberfan disaster. I was moved to tears by this and remember it vividly, how people dug with their bare hands to try and rescue the children - people leaving their shifts -miners, office workers, everyone - and forming human chains to move the coaldust, hoping against hope that not all the children were dead.

There was a great wildlife programme too (A Local Patch), talking about the wildlife in your "patch" be it your garden, or an area visited very regularly by you and which you know intimately and have perhaps recorded. One man from Newton Abbot had recorded nearly 4,000 different butterfly and moth species in his urban garden (have to say, they were mostly moths by several thousand! Only about 17 different butterflies, but even that is pretty good going). I have just registered with the British Trust for Ornithology in order to join in their Garden Bird Watch, but unfortunately you have to join the BTO before you can take part, and money is tight right now. Perhaps when we move . . .




Here are two photographs of the beautifully embroidered woolwork cushion cover I paid just 50 pence for at the Car Boot Sale on Sunday. It looks to be 1950s from the design. I love the fluffy cut-wool flowers. It needs some gentle cleaning but then I will put it to use in the sitting room.

Oh, and Aromatic has tagged me to take part in a MeMe telling you 7 things you might not know about me:

1. I hate milk after being forced to drink it (it was going off - YUK) when I was about 6 years old.

2. Until 2 years ago I was convinced that I didn't like custard. I then discovered I was wrong.

3. I am afraid of heights.

4. I am frightened of the dark.

5. Were it not so far away from my family, I would move to Scotland tomorrow.

6. My step-grandmother had one brown eye and one grey.

7. I have a natural talent for copying drawings (this is through one line of my Devon ancestors - my paternal grandmother's.)

A wee ghost story to start the week

I never used to believe in ghosts. I was, shall we say, open minded but sceptical. Not to say that I didn't find the subject - and other peoples' experiences - fascinating. When we viewed this house, back in the 1980s, we fell in love with it. That we would end up living here was no foregone conclusion as we had offered on other houses elsewhere, but after losing several buyers on our house in Dorset, it came to pass that this rambling old Welsh farmhouse was where we ended up. It was, in the words of estate agents at the time, ripe for renovation. In other words, it was semi-derelict . . .

We moved in here with our eldest daughter who was about 15 mths old then. Her bedroom (the nursery) was the little room overlooking the front garden where I sit typing this. Initially our bedroom was the one next door. Life was hectic as we began the first renovations - unblocking fireplaces, including the inglenook in the kitchen, and reclaiming the "garden" which was just grass with a path up the middle and a couple of apple trees.

It wasn't until I was pregnant with our middle daughter and we moved along the hallway to the big bedroom where we still are, that I noticed an atmosphere on the landing outside our bedroom door. It wasn't threatening or scary, it was just "there" and it was an unhappy feeling. I put it down to the hormonal fancies of being pregnant. However, when my husband had to go away overnight to see his elderly mother in Manchester, I was left here alone. To be honest, I got myself so worked up that I was scared to spend the night here alone, and I called some neighbours who brought sleeping bags and camped out in a spare bedroom. Our old bedroom - the one with the chain lock on the door . . . Several doors had these simple locks. We wondered why?

We would occasionally hear footsteps, but my husband (sensibly) put them down to it being an old house creaking, although there was one occasion when I heard his footsteps coming up the stairs (as did my m-in-law who was in a bedroom backing onto the staircase) and yet my husband was in bed beside me at the time! I had to invent a story about him going back downstairs for something to my m-in-law as she was very nervy and would never have visited again (as it was she expected aliens to abduct her from her bed as "flying saucers have been seen in Wales you know" . . .)

Over the years I came to terms with the atmosphere - it was just "there". Then I came home one day to find that my husband had taken a hammer and crowbar to the planks and doorway which had blocked the stairs to the (then derelict) attic - a doorway with the stoutest lock yet. With the dark doorway gone and the stairs returned to their original form it looked so much better - and then I noticed that the atmosphere had gone too. For some reason we decided to spend that Christmas in the big back room beneath our bedroom which is called the Morning Room. It enabled us to have a huge tree and the children (by then we had 3) thought it was great. However, I noticed . . . an atmosphere . . . and spent the entire day in there desperate to get away from its gloom. The room quickly became a junk room . . .

We gradually got to grips with the work to be done on the house and my mother came to live with us in what had been the dairy in the very bottom of the house (it's built into a slope so on 3 1/2 levels). We reclaimed the attic too, and all of a sudden the housework doubled! The children became teenagers and the ante was upped for the ghostie.

Now we had banging too, sudden footsteps on the floor above - 2 or 3 steps, then nothing. It seemed to keep Middle Daughter company, and although she is used to it, Eldest Daughter gets freaked and has asked can we please NOT have a haunted house next time! It began to move around a bit, and I think for a while, we ended up with two of the perishers, after buying two big cupboards from the very haunted Theatre of Adelina Patti at Craig-Y-Nos. Shortly after those arrived, I woke in the wee small hours one morning to hear the most beautiful woman's operatic voice singing down in mum's. My mum was very deaf, and sound asleep, and I am afraid I just pulled the bedclothes up over my head and didn't go and investigate! Just that one occasion . . . but the other cupboard which was in another junk room at the back of the house, also seemed to have an occupant, and my eldest daughter would never play the piano in there unless someone was in keeping her company as she complained that she could feel eyes boring into her back . . . Probably those of an angry Adelina Patti for the piano was TOTALLY out of tune! Those cupboards have now gone to auction and been sold and hopefully someone else has a haunted cupboard in their house! I got totally freaked out the night I watched Most Haunted and found it was from Craig-y-Nos though!!!

Things really came to a head, ghostwise, when we had some friends visiting, and the gentleman was a medium. He said yes, we had an entity here, but it wasn't a ghost as such, it was just "here" - that was my "Atmosphere". That night, after they had left, I was sat here typing away (pretty much as I am doing now) and I heard a heavy breathing behind me. Strangely I wasn't scared. It was the ghostie playing up again. My son, up in the attic, also heard the same thing. Anyway, I went to bed and at 3.20 a.m. in the morning, I suddenly woke. I was laying facing our big window, which overlooks the paddock and then a hilly field beyond. There is a trackway down off this field onto the lane, and sometimes this is used by a neighbour when he goes lamping for rabbits. As I lay there I saw a bright light. I assumed it was Jim out in his Landy with a couple of dogs and a gun. But the light didn't move left with the track, it came straight towards the window, which seemed odd. Then it burst through the curtains in the form of an orb and dissolved in front of my eyes! Again - I wasn't frightened - though I had no great inclination to go to the bathroom on my own that night . . .

The next morning, I was out on the landing by our bedroom, telling my husband and son what I had seen that night, but trying to explain it away. As we stood there, the strongest smell of peardrops surrounded us. We all smelt it. There was no explaining THAT away and it was the Atmosphere telling us it was still there, and perhaps asking when was the nice man (our medium friend) coming back again?!

It obviously picks up on emotions as I can remember spending a very restless night waiting for my son to come home from his School Ball. I was worried as the roads were icy. The hours passed slowly. I tossed and turned, and then, joy of joys, though I hadn't heard the door, I could hear his footsteps coming up the stairs, and then on the stairs up to his attic bedroom. I was SO relieved. Half an hour later, still awake, I saw car headlights past our bedroom window, heard the slam of a car door, the screech of the gate, and then D WAS home and walking up the stairs. Explain THAT!

It moved around the house after that, taking up residence in wherever was the quietest part of the house. That is currently the bit under the eaves which hides the water tank and next to where Middle Daughter has her bed. It occasionally bangs on the wall when she's home, and it has a great liking for anything electrical. It frequently turns on her computer in the wee small hours, and at Christmas it turned her alarm on at 2 a.m. (probably with great glee!) and she couldn't make it turn off again so had to unplug it. . . .

We think it is connected with the sad case of two occupants of the house from the 1881 census, who were adult, but had "IDIOT" written down beside their names in the Handicap section of the census. I don't doubt that they were locked in various places whilst their elder sister, who had charge of the farm after her parents' death, and the rest of the family had to be at work outside. I think they were usually in the attic, but probably sometimes in the other front bedroom too, the one with the lock (a simple chain link and catch with a peg through it). I know they must have been very lonely and unhappy.

By now, you probably think that this is purely the workings of a fevered imagination and yet, when some previous occupants of the house (a Dutchman and his wife) called last year, they happened to mention the Atmosphere too. She used to be scared to cross the landing in the middle of the night (if her husband was in the yard with a difficult calving), so our wee ghostie has been here quite some while . . .

I am now tuned in to the blighters too, as when a friend and I visited Breamore House a couple of years ago, we went into a bedroom and you could have cut the atmosphere in there with a knife. Something was in there and it did NOT want a gaggle of Dutch ladies in there with it (we had inadvertantly joined a coach party by mistake). I couldn't stand the atmosphere which said "GET OUT OF MY ROOM" as clearly as if it had been screamed, and I went outside. My friend, who felt it too, said she wasn't going to be pushed about by a ghost!

We passed into the next room - a beautiful pale blue room with a double aspect. Thank heavens I thought, what a lovely atmosphere this room has. I walked down to the far end to examine some embroidery. I was standing close to one of the windows. I became aware of the most dreadful draught and thought, with all the money they must be taking here, you would think they'd sort the windows out! Anyway, I stepped away from the window, but the cold followed me. It was icy now, and starting to invade my body from behind. I could feel it creeping into my legs and lower back. I shot across the room like a scalded rabbit and said to Trish, "Whatever you do, DON'T go by the window, as there's another ghost there." Anyway, the guide who was doing the tour, gathered the group down that end and inadvertantly Trish stood by the window. I could see by her face that she was feeling what I had felt, and indeed all the hairs on her arms were stood up on end and she was covered in goose-bumps. I can only surmise that the combined (happy) energy of all those ladies had been all that the ghosts needed to be able to manifest themselves. Odd - I've been to Breamore several times before and noticed nothing . . .

Recipes

Firstly, I am delighted to say that my kitchen is featured on Rhonda's wonderful Down to Earth blog today, as part of her series about You, Me and the Kitchen Sink. So if you are at all nosy to what my farmhouse kitchen looks like, take a peep . . .


I kept threatening to add these recipes, and as Sunday is a quiet day for blog-visiting, I can slip the post in now.

I meant to add this one at the beginning of January, which is when I made it, using some carrots I had languishing in the bottom of the fridge, and a large Parsnip, left over from Christmas.

SPICY CARROT SOUP

2 oz (50g) butter
1 lb (450g) onions, peeled and thinly sliced
1 tblspn plain flour
1 1/2 lb 9700g) carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
3 pints (1.7 litres) stock (I used a couple of veggie stock cubes and a tblspn Bouillon powder)
salt and pepper
2 tsps of curry powder
2 tblspns water
Cauliflower sprigs, blanched, for garnish (didn't bother!)
Croutons for garnish (ditto)

Heat the butter in a large heavy-based saucepan. Dust the onion rings with the flower and cook them gently in the butter, stirring well, until they are soft and golden after 10-15 mins.

Add the onions and stock and season with salt and pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer with the pan uncovered for about 30 mins, or until the carrots are soft.

Pass the sup through a sieve or food mill and return it to the pan. Mix the curry powder tto a smooth paste with the water. Stir it into the soup and simmer gently for 15 mins. Serve hot, garnished with cauliflower sprigs and croutons.

This was a lovely warming soup for a cold winter's day.

(Slight cheat on the picture, as these aren't Plum Muffins, but they ARE Muffins and I did make them . . . !!!)


PLUM MUFFINS

275g/10 oz plain flour
1 tblspn baking powder
115g/4 oz caster sugar
225ml/8 fl oz milk
2 tspn vanilla essence
3 large eggs, beaten
115g/4 oz butter, melted
5 plums, stoned and cut into chunks
950g/2 oz sugar cubes crushed - I omit this as OH doesn't like sweet things)


Preheat oven to 200 deg. C/400 deg F/Gas mark 6. Line a muffin tin with 10 paper muffin cases. Sift the flour, baking powder and caster sugar into a mixing bowl. In a jug, lightly beat together the milk, vanilla, eggs and melted butter until smooth and creamy. Pour the egg mixture onto the dry ingredients and lightly stir to make a thick batter, then carefully stir in the plums. Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases (and sprinkle over the crushed sugar if using). Bake for 25 mins or until well-risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack.



CHEESE AND MUSTARD SCONES

225g/8 oz self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
50g/1 3/4 oz butter, cut into small pieces
125g/4 1/2 oz mature (sharp) cheese, grated
1 tsp mustard powder
150 ml/ 1/4 pint buttermilk
grated pepper

Lightly grease a baking tray. Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingers until mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the grated cheese, mustard and enough milk to form a soft dough. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough very lightly, then flatten it out with the palm of your hand to a depth of about 2.5cm/1 inch.

Cut the dough into 8 wedges with a knife. Brush each one with a little milk and sprinkle with pepper to taste. Bake in a preheated oven, 220 deg. C/425 deg. F/Gas mark 7, for 10-15 minutes until scones are golden brown. Transfer the scones to a wire raack and leave to cool slightly before serving.

Cook's tip: The scones should be eaten on the day they are made as they quickly go stale.

A Sunny Saturday

My friend Jane, over at Winds of Change blogspot, has asked me to take part in a favourite song meme. Well, it didn't take too long for me to put my thinking cap on as it was a choice of two hot favourites, and this one won:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA

I fear I have totally given my age away now, but what the heck! It brings back SO many memories of going dancing at the Royal Pier in Southampton, and this often being the last slow number, and the lights shining on the mirrored ball which reflected round the dance floor, and Manhattan perfume, mini skirts (I was a size EIGHT then, jeepers!), pale tights, Mods and Rockers, scooters with chrome, parkas, sending lads to the bar for illicit Vodka and Limes, a smudge of grey eyeshadow and a lipstick called The Palest (I thought mascara was only for tarts!!) Then walking up the High Street to catch the Last Bus Home (at just gone 11 p.m.)

Now, to think of a few lovely people who might like to take part (though you don't HAVE to). The one who immediately springs to mind is my musical mate Al over at his BLOG,
crivens, jings and help ma blog. He has a wide and eclectic taste in music. . .

Then there is another good friend at Mornings Minion. She's busy packing at the moment, but if you can spare a moment to take part, that would be lovely.

To have a younger input than me, perhaps Preseli Mags might join us.

If you are not too busy Rowan, would you like to join in? Rowan's blog is Circle of the Year.

Last but not least, I am sure Snowgoosey has a favourite tune.

If you are to busy to join in, I understand.

For once, I am stuck for a suitable photo to accompany this too!

Today we have had sunshine, and I have gardened - now my body is protesting at stretching over and pulling out half a mile of grass runners from the island bed in the stable yard . . .

Friends

This afternoon I have been looking through the beautiful book of Mary Webb's Poems and prose (The Spring of Joy) I found in the Laugharne bookshop 2 years back. Sadly, not just for pure pleasure, but to try and find a special poem for a close friend of mine whose best friend has just passed away. I just cannot imagine the immense pain of losing my best friend, of how I would cope with such a loss. We see such close friends as an extension of ourselves, a sibling, almost a mirror image. To have them snatched away in mid life with still so much to give and to live for is almost like a game where you are playing fair and by the rules, and suddenly Death cheats and wins.

So, for J, in memory of J, this is the nearest I can come to a poem of condolence:

THE HILLS OF HEAVEN

We were in the hills of heaven
But yesterday!
All was so changeless, quiet, fair,
All swam so deep in golden air;
White-tapered chestnuts, seven by seven,
Went down the shady valleys there
Where daffodils are, and linnets play;
And singing streams of yellow and brown
Through golden mimulus ran down.
Ah, haunted were the hills of heaven,
Where no tree falls and none is riven,
Where the frail valley-lilies stay
Becalmed in beauty, every leaf
and every flower! Ah, bitter grief -
Remembering the hills of heaven
And yesterday!

Doodles and Fiery Jack . . .

I have been having a tidy-up of papers in my office today and found an e-mail sent to me by a lady in Canada, who took it upon herself to do some research on my behalf, 9 years ago now. I had quite forgotten it until I found her e-mail which I'd printed but now it has inspired this post.

My husband's maternal line comes from Scarborough in North Yorkshire. This seaside town has been the destination for several camping holidays when our children were younger. I can remember walking along the Marine Drive skirting North Bay with my family, rounding the corner and all the glories of the fair hove into sight. "This is MY sort of town" my son announced (he was about 8 at the time). Had my husband's grandmother (Maria Margaret) married Doodles the Clown , his family would doubtless still be there - and I would probably never have met my husband in fact, as he wouldn't even be the person he actually is! I suppose Doodles and Fiery Jack, his clown sidekick, must have been working a travelling circus which came to Scarborough. By the time Gracie Fields filmed "Sing as we Go" in 1934, they were at the Tower Circus, Blackpool.

Curiously, it was a circus which killed - albeit indirectly - my husband's g. grandmother. She had quite an unhappy history and she, along with her mother, were the two skeletons in my m-in-law's cupboard that she was unhappy about - one only surfacing as a deathbed confession and the other being a total shock to her when our family history revealed it! Anyway, in late Victorian times, once a woman had a family - and particularly if she had parted from her difficult husband - finding work to keep the wolf from the door was never easy, and so my husband's g. grandmother took in washing. She lived in a little back street in Scarborough, a terraced house that even more than 100 years on is pretty well unchanged I should think from when she lived there (apart from the yellow paintwork). When we found it and crossed the street to take a photo, an irate occupant came out to tell us to scarper! I think she thought we were taking incriminating evidence or something!

These were little houses with just a couple of bedrooms and a scullery behind, where all the washing was done in a copper built into a brick base in a corner of the room. Delicate things were washed by hand. The huge cast iron mangle stood in the small yard out back, the yard being backed by a thin brick wall which ran along the length of all the properties in the road. This house had a resident ghost, which appeared at the top of the stairs. My m-in-law said her mother would tell it to "get behind, Mrs Grey".

The circus regularly came to town. Whether or not Maria Margaret went to see the circus - had a free ticket perhaps? - or just met the circus people when dealing with the washing, I don't know. Anyway, she got to know Doodles well enough for him to propose - and she turned him down. Perhaps she was in love with her fisherman then (he is mentioned in passing in family history) - she had a little piece of jewellery of the cheapest kind that was a sweetheart's gift, and she kept it all her life. Perhaps he was drowned. We will never know.

Anyway, around 1900 the circus washing brought in more than just dirty clothes. It carried Smallpox, and Emma caught it. She was very ill and only the kindness of neighbours, including red-haired Aunt Sally with her screeching parrot, who lived opposite out-back, but a couple of doors up, kept her alive. They would cook meals and then push the plate along the wall with a long stick and it would be taken indoors by Maria Margaret. I suppose the same plate was used each time and scalded clean with boiling water. Emma's son George had by that time gone for a drummer boy with the "Death and Glory Boys" - the 17th Lancers and was in the Boer War. Maria Margaret nursed her mother as best she could. Emma never really recovered though. The Smallpox left her with severely weakened kidneys and she died of kidney failure in 1901. There was no money for a headstone.

Whenever I hear the name Scarborough, the family historian in me pricks its ears up, and I think of Scalby, and North Bay, and South Bay, and the lovely beaches, and the steep narrow pathways up from the shore to the town. The steep bit at the Scalby Mills end of North Bay where my late m-in-law, aged only 7 or 8, and in charge of her baby brother and sisters whilst her mum worked at the local laundry to pay for their holiday, once let go of the pram and her baby sister in it went shooting down the hill and ended up ploughing into the beach . . .

I think of them all trailing, tired little mites, with their mother, on a hot summer's day - probably around late August 1916. She is dressed in the deepest mourning. Her hair has turned white overnight after hearing within the space of two weeks, of the death of her brother and then her film-star-handsome husband. She is pushing a wisp of white hair off her forehead, sticky with sweat, the dust her boots kicked up from the dry trackway turning her hem grey. The pram jolts the baby, who is teething and grumpy, and the toddler on her hip wriggles as she walks, whilst the two eldest plod behind her, too tired to be interested by the butterflies fluttering along the wayside flowers. She is going to see the sisters B**dy, closely linked to the family, and living by that time, probably in genteel poverty, in a little run-down cottage in the lanes beyond Scalby. Little A, her eldest, at 6 years old, is looking out to sea and watching the war ships of WWI anchored off-shore and, the concept of death being alien to her, wondering if her daddy is ever going to come home . . .


HERE is a link to the Creative Commons pictures of Scarborough . . .