Exhausted . . .

I have been working so hard all week, baking, jam- and chutney-making. Yesterday's car boot sale was an absolute disaster and we barely covered our costs. The only good thing to come out of it was "Miss Read's Christmas" in paperback for 50p - prompted by my friend Ann mentionting that she was re-reading the Miss Read books again, and I had a sudden hankering when I saw this one on offer. I have been pixie-led I think! I also spent the grand sum of £1.50 on three lengths of material. Two pretty pieces which I think I will turn into make-up bags for myself and my girls, and a 3 METRE length which is bold and colourful in design, and which my eldest daughter may well turn into something, especially now I have got her an elderly but working condition electric sewing machine (car boot bargain of course).

Anyway, we set off to a different county today and had a really good day, where we sold the lovely old Windsor chair with arms we no longer needed, and I found homes for much of my now-redundant horse stuff. My husband was delighted to find a book on Green Woodworking, which he snapped up and I found, believe it or not, "Miss Read's Country Cooking (or to cut a cabbage leaf)" and also a 1967 edition of the Horseman's Companion. We snapped up an old wicker cat basket too, as we will need several more to move the cats in when we downsize.

People were friendly, chatty, polite, didn't rubbish what we were selling, and weren't haggling at an insult level for goods. Nothing annoys me more than when people belittle your best piece, just because you know the value of it and they wanted it for next to nothing to sell on . . .



We celebrated by driving to Aberaeron for a little cone of honey ice cream each, and a few minutes' leisurely sit overlooking the harbour and the multi-coloured Georgian houses. Some young starlings, very light-coloured in their plumage yet, watched hungrily in the hope we would drop them some crumbs, and a small black-headed gull sat on a light beside us, ever-hopeful. The tide was out, and someone's boat had - literally - keeled over, held tight by the rope to the quayside. People were strolling, and the car park was chock-a-block but the people must have been elsewhere around the town as the benches were all vacant.

This is now an Art Gallery I think, but judging by the pulley at the top, was once for a warehouse perhaps.



We looked over the seawall for a little while, with the sea calm as a rockpool, a couple of small fishing boats with anglers onboard enjoying the slack tide. Folk walked their dogs, and strolled enjoying the afternoon as their Sunday roasts settled. We pondered, yet again, the translation of Heol Tudur from the Welsh into the English: Waterloo Street - surely something a little amiss there . . . yet when I check it with the on-line Welsh/English dictionary hosted by University of Wales, Lampeter (my old Uni), it gives that same translation and mentiones Aberaeron. Hmmm . . .