Why We Moved to Wales Part IV

A photo of the Cothi in spate.  I think you get the general idea . . .

"I can still recall our last night in our old house in Dorset, left with just a mattress and bedding to sleep on, a cot for little T, breakfast and a kettle.  Scary.  We were going to live in what was basically another country, as although we hadn't realized it at the time, Welsh was the primary language spoken in Carmarthenshire.

The journey seemed to take forever.  There was none of this "Collect the key from the agent at X o'clock" - we just picked up the key from the Farmer at his house.  We were there sooner than the two removal vans - neither of which could fit across the narrow bridge over the river, and one of which promptly broke down on the spot at the thought of it!  That was still there the next morning, when it finally got fixed and brought in another way.

Needless to say, dusk falls early in March, and so we found ourselves unloading furniture and belongings in the dark.  Only the barest basics were sorted that first night - T's cot put up (in the little room where I type this) and our bed in the larger of the two front bedrooms, next door.  At some time in the past, someone had put up a shelf on the wall in this bedroom, using 6 inch nails and not much else.  There was a carrier bag on it.  We were beyond noticing the niceties by this point and fell into bed, exhausted.  In the wee small hours I was woken by the sound of a carrier bag rustling.  Well, more than rustling, something was making quite a racket.  Somehow a mouse had scaled the wall into the carrier bag (or perhaps it had set up home there) and was doing a Jane Fonda style workout. Keith finally lobbed a shoe at the wall and silence descended again.

Next morning, Keith and Tamzin fed, I set off up the hill to give my old dog Tara a walk.  I can still remember reaching the top and looking at the view across the Cothi valley, towards Black Mountain in the distance.  It quite took my breath away - and still lifts my spirits today.

So we set about getting the essentials sorted.  We had a Rodent Problem in our new house.  One night that first week I was sat in the very green bath in the very green bathroom and a mouse came out of a hole in the wall and began a wash and brush up.  If it was aware of me, it wasn't the least bit bothered - talk about bold as brass!  Oh, and those baked bean tin lids on the skirting boards?  That was to stop the rats coming out into the room!!!  Sadly, all the cats we had in Dorset had died on the main road in front of the house. I might add, all those cats came unbidden to us (much as they do here in fact) - I would never have chosen to have cats on such a busy road.

So we went on a visit to one of the many rescue centres in our area, Ty Agored Animal Sanctuary near Cribyn.  We picked out a - very pregnant - black tortoiseshell queen that we called Blackberry. The Sanctuary said that they would rehome the kittens for us, and subsequently did so.  Whilst we were there, looking at cats and trying to make up our minds, we were aware of a very loud purring from a box which turned out to be coming from a small scruffy hairy black and white cat.  "Oh that's Grandma" one of the helpers said, laughingly, and later told us she had been with them a week or so and because she wasn't a pretty - or young - cat they expected to have her forever.  Instead, she came home with us, and with Blackberry.

Above, Blackberry and below, dear old Tatty.

One of the first things we did in the house was to reinstate the bricked-in fireplace in the kitchen.  We always call it an inglenook, although really it isn't wide enough.  Anyway, it took a lot of work digging it out and finding a replacement bressamer beam.  That was it being excavated anyway. (Apologies for sideways photo).

Anyway, this was a year or so on from moving in, and I know that because Blackberry's gorgeous big ginger son, Bumble, was curled up in front of it.  The Hergom stove was multi-fuel then and we burned anthracite and big logs in it, to run the central heating, but boy, did it gobble up wood and Keith found he was forever cutting up logs for it.  After a few years we had it converted to oil (it seemed like a good idea at the time . . .)

What we HADN'T realized until we got here was that the weather was quite a bit different to Dorset.  There was a bit more rain for starters . . .

This is the lane in front of our house, and what happens when it rains so hard that the run-off from the fields turns it into a fast-flowing stream . . .  It doesn't happen very often, and soon abates, but it looks dreadful at the time.

Sorry about the glare from the window in these, but I think you can get the gist.  Below is the river far right, with the run-off water a foot or more deep, hurtling into the river at the bottom of the hill.

Below - this is flooding further downstream at Pontargothi.

Yes.  We were beginning to find that life here was quite . . . different!"

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I'm just off to bed now, but I had a reasonable day today, despite the tears.  I did a little housework;  painted one of my display shelves which desperately needed it; picked a few blackberries to freeze; cooked a big enough main meal to make two more for the freezer - just mince/veg/rice and a good helping of curry powder for flavour; I did some more tidy-up gardening, this time the other side of the house.  I need to be out there days at a time though.  I've researched some of Keith's wall muskets, which need to be sold.  

I baked the Rhubarb and Custard cake first thing and it looks really good.

Now I'm more than ready for bed.

Why we moved to Wales III

 

We drove up the steep zig-zag hill, and on the bend was a farm and the farmhouse, looking grey rather than white in the rain, which was falling steadily (the shape of things to come!) and here was the house we had fallen in love with . . . on paper at any rate.

The farmer met us and told us to go on in and look around for ourselves, but to make sure we shut the gate, as there were calves grazing in the . . . "garden".   A wide Georgian glazed door led into a wide long hall tiled with black, red and primrose yellow tiles.  To the left, a narrow Victorian panelled door led into a big kitchen.  What colour the stick-on floor tiles were was hard to see as they were just lighter and dark, and covered in what we could only (rightly as it turned out) assume was cow muck.  The "chap who milked" was currently living in just two downstairs rooms, this and the sitting room.  It was dark and gloomy.  A bay window shed diffused light at one end and very much smaller window looked across the yard.  Washer-uppers had an uncompromising view of the back wall.  Mouse-droppings were across all the work-surfaces which were extremely dated and needed replacing.  A once-beamed ceiling was covered completely with pine tongue-and-groove panelling.  The fireplace was bricked up and a tacky-looking stove sat out into the room.  A little door led off into a storage area.

The sitting room opposite was even worse.  A truly awful wallpaper was clinging damply to the walls - the sort that is the cheapest you can buy even in a DIY store sale.  The sort that makes you want to leave home to avoid it!  A beige-tiled 1940s fireplace hid the original blocked-up one.  Black and red quarry tiles provided the flooring.  Once again, the beams were covered in tongue-and-groove - this, we were to discover - was a feature throughout the house dating from the 1970s "modernisation".  

Back in the hallway, one side led into a small cloakroom, then a solid door on a Suffolk latch opened onto a . . . space.  You could hardly call it a room although it had a window at the back - which reached right up to the cat-slide roof.  It had obviously been tacked onto the earlier building and the original doorway into the room next door had been blocked up perhaps two centuries earlier.  This "room next door" was enormous - 16 feet square - with a huge window taking up half of the wall space on one side, and overlooking the paddock with its tall apple tree (a "Leatherjacket" Russet).  There was dentil freeze moulding around the room, obvious damp in the fireplace wall, and the greying magnolia paint did nothing for the room.  However, where the doorway had been blocked up, was a big arch-topped recess which added to the character of the room.

The old "Leatherjacket" Russet apple tree in the paddock.

There was a "below the room next door" too.  We walked down to find two ruined rooms and an even more ruinous staircase which had been blocked by the cloakroom.  A vast inglenook fireplace and bread oven,  with a brick arch above it was in the kitchen.  There were flagstones on the floor, and it was filthy and festooned with cobwebs and dirt.  Next door was a room with an ancient cobbled floor and blocked-in windows.  We could just make out the shapes of shallow slate dairy troughs.  The doors were rotten at the bottom and hanging on their hinges, but here the huge beams had been left alone . . . to rot and to provide homes for Death Watch beetle and woodworm.  We looked out into the yard, where there was a row of 3 calf sheds, an old cart shed with pigsties behind it, and another lean-to building beside it.  The old Ty Bach can be seen in the photo below - in use until the 1970s when a loo and bathroom were put in the house.

The yard, with the remains of the little Ty Bach (outside toilet, across the stream) and on the right, the Dairy which became mum's flat.  

Up the wide shallow Georgian stairs were four bedrooms and a door that opened onto a little storage platform beneath the cat-slide roof, and over the void below which was the non-room. We were intrigued to find the skirting boards had the tops of baked bean tins tacked onto them at intervals . . .  All fireplaces had been blocked up.  All beams covered in tongue-and-groove. 

The bathroom was uncompromisingly slurry green, from walls to bathroom suite.  It was akin to walking into a silage clamp . . .

Another door on a Suffolk latch led to more stairs (and more spiders,  festoons of filthy cobwebs) to the rotting flooring of what had once been the attic where the farm servants lived.  Several of the rooms, we noticed, had chains on - just a couple of links, so from the outside you could lock them with a bar going through.  Strange . . .

Outside, we looked at the land through curtains of rain.  The field behind the house had a fair slope to it, but was still quite good grazing, and had a belt of woodland in one corner.  With a small daughter in tow (she wasn't even a year old then) we decided not to explore further. There was a shared water supply located . . . "in the field behind the house" . . .  There should have been alarm bells ringing but they were silent.

The "garden" as it was in 1988 . . .

We should, of course, have walked away, smelling the damp, noticing the woodworm, the need to re-roof, replace doors and rotting windows, reinstate derelict rooms, and having a reality check when we saw just how much work there was to do to bring it back from the brink.  How much MONEY needed to be spent. But of course, we didn't.  We drove straight up the hill to see the farmer and offered him the full asking price (were we MAD?!!!!)  He accepted our offer.  We drove home.  We didn't even have a second viewing.  Then suddenly TWO people wanted to buy our house and before we had a chance to have cold feet or even misgivings, we found it was all systems go on moving to Wales.  I think you can honestly say - it was MEANT TO BE . . .  We stayed for 32 years.

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The family have all gone home now.  Yesterday was a bitty day, trying to sort out Official Paperwork (which I loathe - Keith always dealt with that but now I am stuck with it).  I had to phone the Bank as I couldn't get in to check our joint account and to cut a long story short, had to take all sorts of ID to the bank in Brecon.  We arrived 5 mins before closing, having thought it was open until 4.30, not 3.30.  According to the helpful lady dealing with us, my joint bank account card had been cancelled last year. REALLY?  It was news to me.  I should have been sent a new one, but obviously that never reached me - or was never sent.  No wonder I couldn't access the accounts.  So, all that way for nothing.  She got another card issued but won't be able to get the number until Monday, so I have to go back then. There is a travelling "Percy" Natwest van which comes to the Co-op ca park every other Monday.  It will not be THIS Monday of course!  I was hoping to get the worrying demands for money out of the way soonest, but clearly this won't be happening. I can't send my completed form back to the Army Pensions people until I get a copy of the Death Certificate authenticated (fortunately the Bank can do it), so that will have to wait until Monday too.  I haven't helped matters by losing our copy of the Will.  I sent a copy to Tam, and then obviously tidied it away somewhere so safe it is going to mean a morning's searching to relocate it.  I got nowhere with that search yesterday. 

When I sat down last night I looked across at Keith's ashes, and the memories flooded back and I cried and cried.  It's the last few days I can't get out of my head, and it's so hard to live with that.  Last night I watched several videos from Kate at The Last Homely House, which are soothing, then the 2nd episode of Celebrity Race Around the World (not that I recognize any of the celebrities). That's why I try to keep busy.  There have been more tears this morning, intense grief of the howling kind.  It's like disappearing down a vortex.  I need distraction so I think Edward Rutherford's The Forest will be back on shortly.  I'm greatly enjoying that. 

Today I need to bake a cake (Rhubarb and Custard it will be) as I have a friend coming to visit tomorrow.  I had better do some housework too.  As it's not very warm, and I don't want to waste heating oil yet, I may do some ironing to warm me up.  

I need to advertise Keith's expensive wheelchair on Facebook Marketplace without somehow announcing it IS a wheelchair as apparently that infringes their safety parameters.  That should be fun.  I also need to advertise his Mobility Scooter, and both sets of ramps (one set we used internally).  I am a devil for "putting things off" and really MUST step up to the mark with these today.

The gloomy weather outside reflects my mood.

Why we moved to Wales II - updated with photo of house, barns and yard.

 

Our wild river valley in Autumn.  This is the view we had as we dropped down the little hill that first time.

"We really DID search all over for houses.  We viewed a lovely farmhouse in Altarnun, near Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.  There was a lovely level field with a stone wall on one side of it, and a big fireplace in the kitchen with a massive granite lintel over.  It was very promising, but there was a Radon Gas scare at the time and Keith wouldn't contemplate it once he knew there was granite in the fabric of the house (and probably underneath it too as bedrock).  (The irony of this was unknown to us, there was a similar state of affairs in Wales, but we didn't find this out until we were house-hunting 4 years ago . . .  On the form we filled out when buying this house, there was a disclaimer about it!)

We travelled up to the Lake District too, and viewed a lovely old house in a little hamlet just above Ullswater. There were only 3 or 4 houses there, and they were all cheek-by-jowl.  There was no land, and the garden was small and bisected by a footpath, but it had a lot of character and  we liked it well enough to offer on it.  There was a "sealed bid" situation and we missed it by £10,000 . . .  Another, near Appleby, was in  truly beautiful spot, with views across to the Fells, and a big barn, but it had been modernized beyond belief.  The vendors actually apologized for the one tiny bit of wood left in a wall beneath a window, saying that it was supporting the wall and they couldn't remove it!

We looked all along the Welsh marches too, booking several viewings in a day on our way from Dorset to see Granny C up in Manchester.  One half-timbered cottage just outside Ludlow looked lovely on paper.  We arrived there very late as we had underestimated the time it took to view and travel onwards in unknown territory.  It was TINY.  I think the agent must have written down the room sizes from memory as no way would we have gone to look if we'd known you couldn't even FIT a cat in a room, let alone swing one!    The garden was long and thin and overlooked by half a dozen other properties, so no privacy whatsoever.

Another I can actually remember the name of - it was the Bell House, Wooferton.  It had a lot of charm, but the land was very over-used from ponies and other livestock.  I think we did well to discard it, as looking at the map, it is very close to the A49.

So, we returned back to Dorset despondent.  There was nothing which really ticked the boxes in Devon - well, not in our price range anyway.  There were a few properties in Wales we liked the look of - especially the one in Carmarthenshire.  We made a few phone calls and set off one September day to Wales to view . . . 

The first house was a bit too close to the Welsh Valleys for us.  It was by Llanhilleth, near Pontypool - and below Ebbw Vale.  I didn't know it at the time, but it was close to where my maternal grandfather had been a coal miner before the First World War.  His half-brother ("Uncle Will" to my mum) - his widowed mother had remarried - had moved to Aberbargoed and was a miner, with a wife and two daughters.  

The coal mine on the opposite hillside to the house had closed and was going to be "landscaped" but it still looked bleak enough.  There was a steep and winding driveway to the house, which had once been the Mine Owner's, and it looked like it wouldn't be navigable if it was icy.  

The house was close to a modern bungalow and the land that went with it was the far side of the bungalow and was rank grass and rushes - the sort that you get on acidic peat upland soils.  The fencing was sagging barbed wire.  The view from the field looked across to the steep terraced houses of Llanhilleth, which looked very alien to my Southern English  eyes . . .  Which was a pity as the house inside had great possibilities, with good room sizes, an impressive staircase, and a huge Edwardian greenhouse at the back, though sadly-neglected over the years.

With the bridge across the Severn at our backs, we drove even deeper into Wales, excited at the prospect of the house which had leapt off the page at us, and the prospect of viewing a Welsh long house afterwards.  We had a gut feeling about the first property.  The directions were quite accurate, apart from the distance from the main road to the turning we needed.  We dropped down a little hill and the magic of the river valley took our breath away.  Even though it was raining, the view on the bend looking up the river valley was stunning.  We drove on, past a little mill on the river bank, then across a narrow iron bridge which looked like the Army had built it during the war and never come back from it.  We followed the lane up a steep zig-zag hill and there it was, gleaming white despite the rain as it had just been newly-whitewashed to impress buyers (hum - that was a waste of time!) and with the paintwork in a chocolate brown which had also been used down at the Mill.  There must have been a job lot doing the rounds . . . We never bothered with going on to view the Welsh longhouse - we had found our dream home."

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Back in Builth Wells now, and I actually managed to get out in the garden yesterday and do some tidying up in the main garden.  Enough to fill 3 barrowloads anyway.  Danny went home at teatime, but Tam and Rosie are still here.  I made a big chicken curry for our evening meal, so have two good portions to put in the freezer.  

Tomatoes in the greenhouse are starting to go over now (it's cold at nights already).  I've put the heating on for an hour as I did a load of Rosie-clothes along with my stuff yesterday and it needed to go back home with Tam dry.  It was still quite damp from hanging in the Utility overnight.  Plus Tam and Rosie would have felt cool in the living room - Tam doesn't have the covers above her waist at night, as they co sleep on a mattress on the floor, and although Rosie is in a little baby sleeping bag, it's not that warm.

We had a wander round the charity shops in town yesterday and Tam found some really lovely 3-6 mths baby grows and vests yesterday.  Such pretty prints on them.  They went in the wash straight away.  

I finally got my ear re-pierced this week and he only charged me £10 as it was just a case of piercing through a little bit at the back where it had closed over.  I have a pair of stainless steel studs which I must wear for the next month.  

Yesterday was a day of official phone calls and sorting out pension overpayments.  Fortunately the DWP one can be repaid from Keith's bank account, but I have to cough up on the smaller Army pension overpayment.  Let's hope I have a good Fair.  I've ordered a new folding table - a 6ft one - as people don't seem to pay much attention to anything that is on the floor.  Hopefully that will arrive soon.  Nothing exciting is happening, but I have a friend visiting on Sunday so I will make that Rhubarb and Custard cake as a special treat for us.

Have a good weekend.

Why we moved to Wales, revisited

 This is a post from April 2018, when I had my small business and Keith and I were happily selling in Hay, set up as windbreaks in the old Butter Market.  

To set the scene, back in 1987, Keith and I were living in Dorset.  Sadly, the house was on a very busy main road (the A350) and we wanted to get away from that and get an old farmhouse to do up, or at any rate, somewhere quieter deeper in the West Country.  We had bought - for just £1! - a big old mirror at Cottees' auctions in Wareham, and could just see that up on the wall in this old dream house . . .

"Last weekend we were back in Hay-on-Wye, selling our wares, and a lovely old lady came in and was asking K if she could hold one of his muskets as she wanted to see how heavy it was.  She had a lively and enquiring mind, and we fell into conversation.  Her name was Jenny Green, and she began to tell me how she and her family had come to live in Wales.  She was a real kindred spirit and we got on like a house on fire and chatted non-stop for about half an hour.  It transpires she had written a book about her experiences and to cut a long story short, a little while later she came back with a copy which I promptly bought from her and read non-stop with great delight.  I can't recommend it enough.  

With the exception of keeping goats, her life has been VERY similar to mine, and when she was wine-making, bread-making, jam-making, foraging, hand-sewing patchwork quilts and growing food, I was right there beside her.  In the early days, frugality and self-reliance also loomed large (fortunately for Jenny, her husband Gordon was a great one for his practical inventions - I could do with borrowing the Gordon Green Patent Roof Tile Replacer right now in fact!!  If you can find this book (there are a couple on Amazon and Ebay), I know you will greatly enjoy reading her story.  I look forward to meeting her again and she knows when we are next likely to be in Hay.

Of course, this has taken me back down Memory Lane 30 years and more, and I have found a few posts from 2012, where I wrote about us moving to Wales.  Revisiting them won't go amiss.  


WHY WE MOVED TO WALES . . .



As I was reading my long-desired book "The Unsought Farm" by Monica Edwards, it occurred to me that she had much to do with us ending up here in Wales.  Her books, house prices going MAD back in 1988 when we finally sold our house in Dorset, and a chance holiday in Carmarthenshire with a penpal back in the early 1970s.

As a child, I had pretty well all of Monica Edwards' childrens' novels, both the Westling ones and the Punchbowl Farm series.  I absolutely adored the Punchbowl Farm books, and wanted to be the heroine, Lindsey.  I wanted to live in an old farmhouse with a double bridle hanging from one of the kitchen beams, and the soft light of oil lamps, and Jersey cows to milk, and have the footings of an old wing of the farmhouse where I could open a long-forgotten door and step straight back through time to the 17th Century.  I wanted Siamese cats, and ponies in Barn Field, and a yew tree to play my recorder in.  As you will probably realize, living in a house on a bus route in suburban Southampton (for all the wild land down the back) didn't quite fit the bill.  It was too late though - I was programmed for life.  Hardwired to country living and historic houses, sloping floors and crooked doorways, still rooms and cellars.  To baking my own cakes and making my own bread.  I am still a dreamer . . . but I have LIVED the dream.

The holiday with the penpal really opened my eyes to what living in the country proper could be like.  She had a sweetheart of a donkey, and a pet sheep called Primrose who had arrived as a lamb to be bottle-fed and stayed forever.  We walked on the marshes beside the estuary, visited the ruins of the once-grand house that was now just soaring brick walls and blind windows, with pigeons nesting where bedroom fireplaces had once been, and a smell of decay.  I remember looking across the estuary through their telescope and watching the Welsh world go by so slowly, ponies at the riding stables across the river being caught up for work, and cows meandering across pastures to be milked.  I recall seeing stars in an inky sky unsullied by neon lights.  No sound of traffic, only the occasional moo of a cow or the hoot of an owl.  Sheepdogs that ran out to attack the tyres of the car as we drove past.  Verges that were a mass of wild flowers I had only seen as occasional specimens, not by the 100 yard length.  The nearest town (Carmarthen) had a market, and no big shops at all, and I was amazed to find that the juke box in the pub we went in had records of HYMNS!!  Being a 20 year old townee, this was really quite a shock!  This really WAS the back of beyond!

When my husband and I decided to move away from the busy main road we lived on in Dorset, our intention was to stay in the West Country, and we house-hunted in Devon and the Cornish borders for an old place with a bit of land, "to do up".   So did the world and his wife!  

We found and fell in love with a small cottage near Beaworthy.  Whilst not the "farmhouse", it was everything I had ever dreamed of - a long driveway planted with Snowdrops and Daffodils, a pretty garden bordered by a stream; a little barn; a greenhouse; an outbuilding just perfect for Keith's woodworking; an acre and a half and buzzards wheeling overhead.  We had a buyer.  We had our offer accepted on the cottage.  We lost our buyer.  And another.  The lady with the cottage HAD to sell.  I broke my heart over that little house.  I kept the details - and the photos taken the weekend we stayed there to cat-sit for the owner whilst she went up to her brother's.  I found them recently, and there was still the pang of loss, although looking back now, it WAS small and we would have had to extend or move on once T had her sister and brother.

Anyway, glumly, without a buyer, we watched house prices rise by the week in the West Country until the sort of property we were looking for was becoming beyond our range, as our house price had stayed the same.  We searched further afield, in the Welsh Marches, Lancashire and what used to be Westmoreland.  "Wales is lovely," I told my husband.  He agreed to include this in our remit, and we sent off for various house details.  One enterprising estate agent in Carmarthen sent a printed brochure of all the properties on its books - and there were SO many.  Then it happened.  We turned a page and a photo of an old shabby white farmhouse literally LEAPT off the page at us.  It had land - 5 1/2 acres - and outbuildings.  The rooms sounded HUGE.  It had potential (a term we were to hear regularly mentioned down the years).  We contacted the estate agent one September day and arranged to go and view it . . ."

Family time - and ancient photos of moi

  I shall be quiet for a couple of days (unless, of course, I am wide awake in the middle of the night again . . .)  as Danny's here, and Tam and Rosie.  Danny's working from home, but came for moral support as Tam brought Keith's ashes back with her today.  I fully expected to be totally in pieces but no, I am glad he is home, and there has been a little Gallows type humour.  I dare say the grief will hit me later, but today I have them here, in a beautiful wicker basket, and am fine.  Gabs phoned me from Greece to see if I was OK.  She said it's REALLY hot there - 32 deg C or so - about 90 deg F.  TOO hot for me.  

The lovely grey pony had been a stallion till he was about 8.  He was a Norfolk Trotter - a really rare breed.  Anyway, he ended up gelded, as a super riding pony.  I remember he had the softest coat I have ever felt on any horse.  We were having a talk on conformation here and I was talking about heart room and him being deep through the girth.

I remember temps that high back in 1976, and again in another couple of not recent summers.  Pony Club Camp one year had temps like that and I had to instruct wearing rubber riding boots and start the day with my jacket on too, for Inspection.   We were staying in the accommodation block which the grooms used (it was Salisbury Racecourse) and there were bedbugs and my legs were bitten to pieces and I was going mad with itching when the boots went on.  There was no hot water, and I was having 3 cold showers a day. It would have been 1980 or 1981 I think, when I was working for Price Waterhouse and spent my summer holiday at PC Camp.  Happy times.  There's an article featuring me in their in-house magazine - I still have a copy each for the kids upstairs.  I look very young and very slim . . . about 8 1/2 stone I think.

Looking in an antique shop window in Fisherton Street, Salisbury.  I remember I used to collect little sifter spoons (50p a time they were then) and micromosaic pieces - small brooches mainly, which didn't cost much more.

Gosh, that's been a real trip down Memory Lane.  A couple of years later, I met Keith . . . and that's another story.  Have I told you about the £1 mirror?

The Bloody Ploughman . . . and something for the Stash . . .

 . . . apple that is, an heirloom variety from Scotland.  At Malvern Flea yesterday, a charity was selling organic plums, Bloody Ploughman and James Grieve apples from her orchard yesterday.  She planted a heritage orchard many years ago when there was funding available to establish it.  £1 a bag (4 big apples) and £2 for a punnet of plums.  I got two lots of James Grieve, one lot of Bloody Ploughman and some plums.  YUM.

Not for me . . . and I have to say an awful lot of the stalls (99% of them in fact) also weren't for me yesterday.  Plenty of stalls, but it wasn't as big as it usually is. Not as car bootish as it's been though.

This is what I mean about "not for me" - nothing on here appealed.

Nearer the mark, but not unusual enough for me.

I had a lovely chat with the guy that brings these over from Turkey.  I have several pieces of his already though.

Some quilts - The good old English hexagon . . .

I bet the one using woollen? coat remnants was heavy on a bed.  A modern version I think, of what women used in the past to make up a warm winter quilt as this one is cut very regularly, not using such scraps as were available.

I have to say a kilt and a fur coat is not a good look!  His mate also sported a kilt.

The light wasn't very good - the little owl on the left had a nice look, as did the lion? on the right.  I didn't ask the price as they had Nice Stuff so I knew there wouldn't be dealer prices in my range!  I did ask the price on a couple of other stalls as I could hear Keith's voice saying, if you don't ask, you won't know!  I think he was there with me yesterday.  One stall had books and militaria which would have really interested him, and I approached thinking, oh, I'll get that book for Keith, before the realisation hit home . . .

Isn't this fun?  He had £60 on it and would have done a deal, but I would have needed to have found this before he did to make it profitable.  I wish I'd had something like this as a child, but if it didn't come out of mum's Morse's Catalogue, I didn't get it!

See what I mean in "not much for me this time" . . .A steam punk chest of drawers isn't really my scene.  The stuff in the background too - also not for me.

It was a long day (I was up just after 4.30 a.m. after a restless night's sleep).  I got there a smidge after 7.30 a.m., walked around for 2 hours doing the outside stalls and then came back to the car for breakfast.  I did another 2 1/2 hours revisiting the outside stalls, and then doing the Avon Hall and the Sheds.  I saw a couple of friends who didn't know about Keith's death, so telling them was difficult.  I was tired from the get go and tears kept pouncing on me as I was driving to Malvern, then were twice as bad on the way home, so I think that tiredness is definitely a contributing factor to how well I cope.  (I slept for 10 hours last night, which is unheard of.)

I had time to please myself after Malvern and decided to seek out a little church (Bromesberrow) about 5 miles away which had two small English Civil War flags (known as Cornets).  I shall do a post about that later.  There can't be many of those surviving, that's for sure.  It was good to be able to enjoy my interests again and not have to rush back home.

When I did get back, and unpacked, I had a cup of tea and then HAD to go and lie down on the sofa.  I put Heartbeat on in the background and was out for the count for an hour and a half.  Normally it's about a 10 minute nap I have, so that shows how shattered I was.  My injured foot has been complaining too - all that walking (17,000+ steps) and the driving have irritated it no end.  I hope it will soon settle down again.

I bought just 8 things and 5 of those were from a lady with a set price for everything.  I've bought from her before and done well from these set prices.  Unusual things too.  I also bought two interesting horse bits for my collection, and these may just have come home with me . . .

A rather gloomy photo of some gorgeous Liberty fabrics, prices £1.50, £2 and £4 . . . well, I couldn't leave those behind could I?

I pounced on these too!  I am thinking Rosie-Posy quilt of course!  Some really beautiful fabric scraps.  The lady selling them had sadly lost her sister to early-onset Alzheimers and made things to sell to support the Charity.  These were offcuts.

Finally, from another stall that had lots of bigger lengths of patchwork and dressmaking material.  About a metre here for £3.

It will need something to tone it down, but those colours put a smile on my face.

I shall take things quiet today, don't worry.  I'd better put the recycling out though, before I forget.

 

Knee-high Dandelions!

 

I drove to Aber yesterday, firstly to meet up with Ruta, who lives there and had bought one of the Smoker's Bows from me and then to meet up with Tam.  I had a lovely chat with Ruta, and am about to add her blog to my Blog-list.

When Tam, Rosie & Jon arrived we went to Crown (no B&Q in Aber) to get my lovely green paint.  We found that their Crystal Mint was a very close match.  Their prices though!  Just as well they gave a hefty discount as paying the full £60 for it would have really hurt.  As it was, £42 for 2.5 L was bad enough.  Ouch!

Then we went to Tam's allotment.  It is just half a plot, and very overgrown - several people took a look and turned it down, so Tam got offered it. She reckoned they weren't proper gardeners if a few weeds put them off it! She had cleared some, but obviously Keith's illness and having baby Rosie making a fuss each time they went there was a big spanner in the works and she was so disheartened to find the area she'd cleared had come back with knee-high Dandelions. There were also BUSHES of Figwort (Scrophularia nodosa).  I have it here, on discrete and almost gracile stems.  I generally let it flower as the bees love it.  On Tam's plot though it was as tall as us, and about as big round.  Not sure if there is a domesticated variety but by gum, this liked where it was growing!  Even the side stems were as thick as my thumb.  Apparently it has medicinal uses, in reducing inflammation, fighting infection and helping wounds heal. It was once used for treating Hemorrhoids.

Lots of gone-over Willowherb too, but not much grass, which was good (here, I have grass and wild raspberries).  One more session should finish the clearing and I am happy to help again.  There is a sitting area, and a bench at the back, and a polytunnel which needs a new plastic cover, but all in all they have a good little plot as the soil is wonderful.  You may have seen Monty Don thrusting a fork or a spade into his soil and it damn near disappears (oh how envious I am of soil like that - my fork goes in and hits rubble from the demolished mansion).  Well, the soil at Tam's allotment is like that and has obviously been given LOTS of FYM and TLC down the years.  She's got a good one.

Jon's mum came along too, and held Rosie, who was as good as gold, having slept practically through the night before, and we all had a picnic after, sitting in the area by the polytunnel, and munching broken biscuits, chocolate and Jelly Babies.  That hit the spot.  I picked up a handful of windfall apples too, so will cook those up today and bake a cake to take for friends tomorrow.

I drove home through the mountains in wonderful sunshine, really pleased I had been able to help Tam and make a difference.  Today I shall be in my own garden.  Ed bought me up some more stable manure and I can carry on clearing the soft fruit area on the bank.  I think I have lost the baby Japanese Wineberries, but no huge loss there.  I will probably transplant the 3 Rhubarb plants to the bottom triangle, where there is a good depth of soil from rotted leaves from the beech trees.  

I need to clear the rest of the overgrown bits in the garden too, the annual autumn tidy up but that will take me through September.  

Well, this won't do.  Onwards and upwards.

A Stormy Old Night

 4.25a.m. and I came downstairs after waking at 3 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep.  My fault for being tired out at 9 o'clock again.  I can hear the wind thrashing the trees around and two wet boy-cats were very glad that I did come down, so they could come back indoors.  Autumn has arrived early it would seem.

The other part of our Dunelm order arrived yesterday.  Tam had cot sheets, a pretty speckledy green plate and a useful container for baby bitsandbobs. I had my wallpaper.  This is it.  We love it.  Tam found it and knew the colour I was planning for the walls in there.  It is a sunny bright south-facing room (guest bedroom) and I like cheerful colours.  Stuff the Magnolia . . .

Tam calls this Arsenic Green. I've been cherishing this page for a couple of years.  This is the tongue and groove panelling we have on the walls throughout upstairs.  Dado rails in the bedrooms mean it is broken up a bit.  The wallpaper will just go below the dado rails, so more painting than papering.  I will take this page  when I go to Aber tomorrow and get the paint scanned and mixed.  I got ridiculously excited when Tam found the wallpaper :)  I know the colours aren't to everyone's taste but tbh, I don't give a damn!  I'm living here after all.

This was the progress the other day.  As you can see, it's going to be a long old job.

I have yet to tackle . . .  SO many wild raspberries in there which will have to come out.

It's the Truck Fest down on the showground this weekend.  Here's a photo I took from the orchard, showing folk getting set up with their weekend accommodation down there. Not my scene, I have to say.

Curtain rings anyone?  As you can see, there was a lot of cleaning and polishing to be done.

You will be glad to hear that I rested yesterday.  I went out for groceries in the morning, as the fridge was looking very bare and I needed some Treats as well.  I also did some family history on Keith's Manchester roots, whilst I still have Ancestry.  My membership ends 6th September. I found some more Non-Conformists (no great surprise) - Primitive Methodists again.  Some of his Yorkshire folk were PMs too.  I think that mindset was passed on to Keith as I can truly say he was non-conformist with the way he lived his life and good for him say I.  My lot seem to have been biddable Anglicans . . .

Audible keep giving me unbeatable offers (half price for 3 or 4 months), but I have enough books to go on with for the moment so have resisted that.

After lunch I had a nap on the sofa - fell straight into a deep sleep for 3/4 hour, and then watched racing and did a little x-stitch on the Clover Fairy, now that I have bound the edges of the Aida fabric in blanket stitch.  I managed half of Vera before I had to go to bed.  Now I am paying the price for going up so early.

Santana is the only tree with more than a couple of apples on, but they are getting well established and growing tall. 

Well, will I get to sleep now?  We shall see . . .