I laughed until I cried

 . . . and that's not something I have done many times in my life.  I can remember watching a programme with my dad about the old silent movies, the ones so ludicrously daft that you couldn't keep a straight face. It was Bob Monkhouse's Mad Movies. Buster Keaton was it? where a house falls down and he escapes being flattened by being where the window falls.  Was it Laurel and Hardy who were at the end of a fire-engine ladder as it went around a bend, fast, and the ladder swung out with them hanging on practically by their teeth? Or was it the Keystone Cops?  So many stunts - and they didn't have stunt doubles in those days.  Anyway, dad and I were both crying with laughter and this was how I was last night when I watched a compilation on Instagram of people falling over on ice. By the time it got to people (in Japan?) slipping on a long flight of steps outside in a forested area, and one went from top to bottom, knocking others down on their way, I had lost it completely.  I went to bed still giggling!  Laughter is so good for you.

I woke up to snow, but only this much and the other side of the lane, in the fields, there was none.  Apparently Brecon town and the Beacons had about 5" and, if you check my photos from my walk this morning, we had more on higher ground.

Home-made soup for lunch.  It used up a small portion of Spag. Bol from the freezer, a tin of Canneloni beans, a tin of tomatoes, an onion, a manky carrot which needed cooking or chucking, and some fresh green beans and cauliflower.  Very tasty and hit the spot on a cold day like this.

I've only been down the town for a prescription, some choccy bars (cold weather demands treats!), a gift for a friend's birthday, and some expensive cat food to try and tempt L. Whale into eating his medication as he left it at breakfast time . . .  He ate the new stuff, eventually, but I rather think had been hoovering up leftover biscuits in the night, so was stuffed anyway.

Now I will bake something as I have two ageing bananas to use up or compost.  Roll on Spring, say I.

Baking done and bananas used up, along with some blueberries from the freezer.  I will take half a dozen down to my friends 2 doors away, as a thank you for inviting me down for Shrove Tuesday pancakes (nice to be cooked for!)  I think I need to do a Quality Test first though!  Tomorrow I will bake Chocolate Apple Cake as Tam and Rosie here for the weekend.

A worrying day

 I didn't sleep well last night, as I had L. Whale shut in the living room with an ablutions tray, as he was due at the vets this morning, to have his claw treated.  He didn't want to go in the car carrier and I had to upend it and pour him in.  I've just picked him up now, and he was yowling for sympathy on the way back, but the moment I let him out in the kitchen, he hobbled (he has a dressing on) across to the nearest feed bowl and stuffed his face.  I have now lifted him up onto the sofa.  He has a limp but not surprising as the outer claw removed and proud flesh treated, under anaesthetic.  I asked them to trim all his other claws too, as he's not keen on letting me near!!

We have a threat of snow.  I do hope they are wrong!  I want spring!! 2 minutes later - it's sleeting!  

I have hardly been at home all day as I have been backwards and forwards to the computer repair place as well as the vet's.  My computer had acquired a pretend McAfee threat, so needed sorting, and I have had to move to Chrome for browsing as for some reason Google Blogger had had a hissy fit and we couldn't work out why the photos wouldn't present as they should so I could load them.  So I spent the hour or so I did have at home knitting and have done E. Bunny's other ear and sewn the inner and outer together and now I'm on the other arm.  I watched another repeat of Ben Fogle's New Lives in the Wild, and was just starting on the 2nd half of the Great British Throw Down when I had to go and collect my computer.  Some more of that tonight and carrying on with the Roman Empire by Train with Alice Roberts.

Tea tonight is the other half of last night's boughten chicken curry.  Just the thing for this perishing weather.  

Anyway, one more photo from Brecon Museum and I will put some more up in the morning.

This modern carving of Red Kites in flight, has Ogham on the side (the straight bars) and is a nod to the Early Christian Monuments upstairs.

Be patient!

 

I am still having to guess at what picture is what.  Plus I can't get into my Google account until the computer is fixed.  Taking it to Tam's when I go to help out today and hoping Jon can fix it for me.  Hoping to be back to normal soonest, as I am lost without my computer.

Brecon Museum

 This is a two post day because I have been having really annoying McAfee pop-ups which I tried to sort out through settings, but think I pressed something to do with the cookies, which have made signing into my blog difficult.  Eesh.  It can't be fixed until Tam is over next.  Just checking to see if I can access photos and no, I can only see the number of them and not what they look like.  

I have had to do the first room just from counting and comparing to my photos on my phone.  You will get the idea though, and these stunning love spoons must have been so cherished through the generations.

A lovely Welsh dresser with various dairy and kitchen bowls made from Sycamore (which has a natural disinfectant), and a spoon rack bottom right.

The links of the chains for these love spoons etc are all carved from a single length of wood . . .

Such a beautiful sampler sewn by Mary Thomas, age 17.

Miniature furniture, beautifully worked.  Young men had such wonderful skills making treen pieces like these.

Sarah Jones clearly had wonderful needlework skills, despite her young age.  She was taught well.

This is Mary Lewis's work, also aged just 10.

I took lots more, and really loved seeing the ECM's upstairs, which include the original Neuadd Siarman's stone.  I was talking to the chap on the till in Aldi, and he had never been in there and had zero curiosity about it.  I guess that's why he works in Aldi . . .

Hoping Tam can help me put my computer to rights . . .  I am cross with myself for even trying.  Not sure if I can reply to your comments at the moment either, as several attempts have not been posted.  Sorry.

Now that was a bad idea . . .

 Unsurprisingly, it rained all morning.  Around lunchtime it cleared up and there was an encouraging 10 minutes of sunshine.  I had been planning to walk down to our little church, to see the Snowdrops there, so I set off around 12.30.  I didn't push myself as I am still SO unfit from being laid up December/January.  It was VERY wet when I got to the trackway beside the pond.

I had to climb up onto the grassy bank and even that was pretty soggy underfoot.

There was a long stretch of this moss-covered hedgerow.  It was so pretty.

I had nearly reached the church - I was crossing the field to it in fact - when the first spots of rain began to fall.  I got to the church and sat inside the porch and looked dismally at the rain . . .  How typical, I was as far as I could be from home, and it starts to pour.

The replica of the Neuadd Siarman Cross which was first recorded in 1809, built into the wall of a cottage known as Neuadd Siarman (Jarman's Hall).  It was mentioned later in 1929 when the farmer had removed it and put it in a crate with the intention of selling it.  Fortunately it was scheduled as an Ancient Monument and transferred to Brecknock Museum.  It has been dated to the 9th - 10th C and is one of the finest in Wales.  

The beautiful memorial stained glass window, in memory of Winifred Margaret Woosnam, who died aged just 13 in 1897 I think it was.

Beautiful snowdrops but I didn't linger to enjoy them as the rain was even rainier - pretty heavy in fact and I made haste across the field and tracks, but by the time I had reached the lane, the rain turned to hailstones and was lashing across the valley.  My jeans were wet, my socks were wet, my jacket was soon saturated and I could feel wet shoulders and elbows.  I cursed the weather.

Fortunately, just around this corner a passing farmer stopped and asked if I would like a lift?  Well, I accepted with great alacrity but when I sat down, my saturated coat then transferred itself to my jeans and underwear. Yuk!!  When I got indoors I got out of my sopping wet clothes, put all bar the jacket into the washing machine and hung the dripping jacket over a radiator.  Then I had a soak in a hot bath to get rid of the chill.  How typical though, the longest walk I've done for ages and the weather had it in for me!

Anyway, I had a pleasant evening watching Small Prophets, Mackenzie Crook's new series.  I got through 3 1/2 episodes and will finish it tonight.  I carried on with E. Bunny's Bonnet, but will need to do some modifications with a darning needle and the wool where I managed to muck up the increased by 10 stitches bits over the earholes, even though I did it exactly as the You Tube video showed.  Hopefully I will never need to do that again.

It is, of course, raining again, but I have a yen to visit Brecon Museum and see the real Neuadd Siarman Cross in the flesh, so to speak, along with its friends.  Life is too short to sit in the house all day long.

P.S.  Note to self - life is too short to keep watching gratuitous cat pictures on Instagram, but hey, I love them anyway :)

St Afan's Church, Llanafan Fawr

 

Back to church bothering again, having been inspired by the Vicar's tales of dastardly forbears on Friday night.  Plus - notice - it was DRY! with blue skies, but very cold first thing, and when I went out to the car, I had ice on the inside of the windows too which when I scraped it off, fell like snow!

I had a lovely cross country drive to this church (which is about 8 miles from home, much less as the crow flies).  The lanes were well marked, but the Romans had got there before me . . .

There are two stretches of Sarn Helen (which automatically says Romans to me, from my degree days).  One is North-South, from Aberconwy to Carmarthen, and nearer the coast, whilst the other stretch (East-West) is between Neath and Brecon.  This one is marked Roman Road on my map and comes up from Beaulah, pencil straight, and then on to Glandulas, and then it has a short stretch of what is footpath now, ending at Sarn Helen. (It will have come from the Roman camp at Llandovery). Beyond that there is a Roman Camp and stretch of Roman Road above Rhayader near St Harmon, and I will assume that it goes on to the Cambrian Mountains where there are lead and silver mines. I think this Sarn Helen is a hamlet of the name, close to the old road.

Inside the porch, the original stoup survived.  I am a clot for not looking this one up in my Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones etc (Vol. 1) BEFORE I went, as then I would have been aware of the porch containing several elements of the original much earlier church - the site harks back to the 6th/7th Centuries and St Afan is buried here to the S-E of the church.  To the right of the stoup is one of the earlier relics of the original church, a sort of leaf shaped pattern, though it is described as a cross with a herringbone pattern, and this design can be compared with decorated Irish slabs from Rathmichael and Ballyman, Co. Dublin.  The Irish influence is to be seen in churches across Mid-Wales from St Dogmael's Abbey (where there is a lovely collection of ECM's) and being celebrated by the Irish kings settling in Llangorse, where they had crannogs in the lake there (9th-10th C).  King Brychan, from whom Breconshire got its name, and who fathered a quite amazing number of children who all became Saints (of course!) in Wales and Cornwall.  But I digress . . .

A plain and simple church internally, having been rebuilt (and smaller) in the 1880s.  The roots of the church go back to the 7th - 9th C.

There was a whopping organ, so they clearly put a great emphasis on hymn singing in this church, although the parish would appear to be fairly sparsely occupied.

A clearly Victorian crisply-worked font.

There were several Price memorials (it was a Thomas Price who was murdered).  I noted that their son died in Whitechapel, Middlesex and so perhaps they were not so parochial as many in the area.

A rather odd affair holding up the roof.  Not a clue as to the architectural term for this design.  Any idea, Billy Blue-Eyes?

  

Here's what put a smile on my face.  This may have been found embedded in the church wall during its restoration in 1887.  However, according to a chap called Rodger (surname) this stone was at Llaneleu.  I assume this is the Llaneleu near Talgarth - again, an Irish stronghold, and King Brychan, his 3 wives, and 24 sons and 24 daughters (said he was prolific) lived in Talgarth in the 5th C.  Again, there are design similarities with crosses in a group of grave slabs from the Dublin area.

Plus a 13th C font.  So glad it survived.  Presumably in use until Victorian times when they upgraded.

In memory of the fallen of the parish . . .

Sundial on the tower (built 1765 but with medieval foundations).  The plaque reads:  "This church was rebuilt at the expense of this parish AD 1814.  Thos. Prichard, Wm. Jones, Churchwardens, John Davies, Undertaker."

I scoured the churchyard for sign of the little and large headstones, of the murderer and his victim, and this was probably them, but they were rendered illegible by generous coverings of lichen.  

One of the more unusual tombstones in the churchyard. 

 

Across the road, and sadly now permanently closed, is the ancient building which was a popular pub until Covid.  It dates from 1472 and has a cruck frame internally.  HERE is an excellent link which tells you anything I omitted, and has some super photographs.

Enjoy your Sunday.

An Evening Out

At the Burger King car park in town, masses of early blossom on a Blackthorn tree.  I have seen the first lambs too, and there are lots of Snowdrops out and I have wild Primroses all along the bottom of my holly hedge.  Now they are threatening snow again - it was snowing up in the Cambrian mountains yesterday afternoon (the route I take to Tam's at Aberystwyth).  Just clear skies and a frost here overnight though.

A bit of luck with my Word Puzzle yesterday morning.

I found out a You Tube "how to" on increasing stitches over a gap so did a little practice.  Will do a couple more practices and get back to the bonnet.  Whoever wrote the pattern assumed a lot more knitting knowledge than I have.

I had an impromptu visit from my new neighbour yesterday and we chatted for nearly an hour.  I sent him home with a still-warm chunk of the loaf I'd just made.  He has promised me Leeks in return.

My evening out was just down in the town, at a Builth Wells Heritage meeting, where a retired Vicar gave a really interesting talk about his ancestor, the Murderer!  It was someone I had read about in a local history book.  A bit of a dastardly bloke and he was the last hanging in Brecon Jail (a very popular day out for the populace of Brecon too).  Now I need to visit Llanafan Fawr church again and find the gravestones of the Murderer and his victim, which are next door to one another.  The vicar was very entertaining, and had us in fits when he was telling us, after his talk, about  when he and 3 other lads (two in the room last night) were in a band together, and the problems they had to solve with the old bangers they were driving to get to a gig!  A good evening out which really cheered me up.  It's good to hoot with laughter.

This afternoon I plan to go to Llandod to try and get my craft light repaired as the cable has been broken on it (possibly Rosie as she's always turning the lights on and may have been a bit rough with it).  I am lost without it and it wasn't a cheap one to buy either.  Keith, of course, would have had it mended in ten minutes.  

Another big unexpected bill coming next week as I've just had to book L. Whale in to have the wonky claw pulled again.  £150+ . . .

Have a lovely weekend, all.