Not at my best

A new vista has arrived up the valley, where the tree fellers have been in and felled the conifer plantation there.
 

I had a busy morning yesterday, a sort of bum up/head down sort of morning, first of all cleaning and polishing lots of Victorian wooden curtain rings (to take to the Antiques Fair next month - I have no use for them here).  I was bending a lot until it occurred to me to get a chair and sit down!  Then I went up on the Bank for an hour or so, clearing around the soft fruit which had disappeared entirely in the long grass and Sorrel and Willowherb.  It's hard to tell what are the planted raspberries from the many wild ones.  The planted ones have name tags but have they spread down the bank or not?  I suspect NOT - the wild raspberries are all over the place.  Anyway, I have been getting all the grass roots out (or as much as I can find) and putting down cardboard and well rotted stable manure, and will go back to putting some membrane down - I was given a roll - and mulching the area.  I haven't been able to get out there at all since spring really, because of caring for Keith, and if I don't get on top of it by the end of May, that's IT - everything grows and smothers the soft fruit.  Hopefully next year I will be able to keep it tidy.

I began to feel dizzy after that, and a bit sick and thought it was probably from all the bending.  I spent the afternoon on the sofa, mostly asleep, with the racing from York on in the background.  I couldn't face a meal and tea was a cup of tinned Chicken soup and dry bread.  I was in bed not long after 8.30 and slept till 3 a.m. when Alfie and then Little Whale decided that they wanted to Go Out Please.  Of course, having slept a good while I was awakened properly by getting up to let them out.  

My ear piercing got cancelled until next Wednesday, which was a PITA as I just want it done.

I finally measured and cut out the other two border pieces, and now have to do the batting and backing and mark them up ready to hand quilt.  In hindsight I should have sewn them to the main quilt first and then quilted in situ, but hey ho, I will have to add them afterwards which will not be so easy.  

My new craft book is in the post to me, so I shall be eagerly awaiting its arrival.  My Dorset friend G has sent me several books recently, the main one of which is Barbara Erskine's The Story Spinner, which I was able to sit down and read yesterday evening when I was resting.  I love her stories, especially when they are set fairly locally to here, as this one is.

Well, this won't do.   I will go back to bed and hope to drop off again.

A trip to Hay-on-Wye

 Yesterday Tam was going to Hay to meet up with her friend and her little baby.  I didn't take any photos - I was too busy chatting to Tam and Rosie and looking in shop windows (most of them don't open on a Monday).   Here, however, is one of Tam and Rosie when we sat down for cake and a hot drink.

I managed to cut the top off of Tam's head but it was a happy smile of a photo - the other one I took showed them looking more serious.

There were LOTS of super craft books to browse through - patchwork were on another shelf and I forgot to take photos of the titles, just some from inside one of the books.  I spent some 20 minutes browsing - there were also some Liberty fabrics/packs, bolts of linen, wool, embroidery floss and fine wool for tapestry work.

I've put these ones on my Christmas list, but found this top one at £12 on line.  Do I treat myself now, or do I carry on being Very Careful with my money?  If I have a good Fair, I may treat myself.  UPDATE:  I told myself I deserved a little treat and I've just ordered it . . .

Below - some ideas in a patchwork book I wasn't going to buy, but got the general gist of some pretty things for nothing.

Today Gabby is here too.  Rosie has had a long sleep so is biddable and Tam is taking advantage of this by having a shower and a hair wash whilst Aunty Gabby babysits.

So, I came out empty handed and pleased with my self-control . . . you know me and books!

Amazingly I shed not a tear all the time I was there.  Yet it was the place Keith and I were hefted to, and had nearly 35 years of the happiest memories attached to it.  I was expecting to cry all the way round, but just got a bit choked when I was talking to our friend Rob about Keith.  Strange the way grief works.

The photos from our Hafod walk

 With Tam here, I thought, great she can sort out the problem I had with needing ID and what have you to load my photos from my camera.  Would you believe, when I tried yesterday they loaded straight away, no ID needed! Typical . . .  So here are some of them from our lovely walk - I took lots so won't overload you with all of them.

As you can see, Thomas Johnes had a fairly remote setting in the Cambrian mountains with the Hafod estate.  It was close to the Lead mines which he owned and which obviously gave his family a good income.  He had connections with Croft Castle, which I visited last year.  As his mother was Elizabeth Knight of Croft Castle.  The upstairs of the house was totally given over to illustrations of the house and estate at Hafod.

Much of the estate had clearly been planted with conifers, which would have hemmed in the walks and vistas designed by Johnes, but this area has now been logged and just stumps are left.  We took what they called the Ladies' Walk, along by the river.  

Tam and Rosie by the entrance to Mrs Johnes' garden.

This reminded me of some Scottish rivers - shallow and open.

By the ruins of the house - demolished totally in 1956, and literally just a huge pile of rubble, with only slabs of dressed stone suggesting its grandeur.  What a loss.  I don't know who this figure represented, but since Johnes' daughter's name was Mariamne, a Biblical name (she was Herod's wife), and his book and ancient manuscript collection (sadly destroyed in the fire of 1807) was second to none, one may assume this could be a Classical figure.

However, the lovely stables remained and you can make yourself tea, coffee or squash in what was the tack room. We desperately needed a cold drink by then and proper swigged down a glassful each.  When I worked with horses near Salisbury, we had these stable blocks and boy were they difficult to clean out - I can remember a stiff broom, Jeye's fluid and a hoofpick being used, but my bosses were very impressed by my stable management and said "you could eat your dinner of Jennie's stable floors"!!!

In the walled garden outside, this lovely yellow rose was blooming.  I assume it is an old variety, but haven't discovered which it might be.

Looking back towards where the house once stood.  What a view it had.

This is the view going back towards the church.  Just superb.  Tam loves this area she's moved to.

Below: a model of the stunning Gothic house which was Hafod Uchtryd.

Inside the church (which was rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1932).  Apparently it was down to the central heating - a length of piping from the boiler was full of soot (it was somewhat circuitous in its leaving the building) and this caught fire.

The sad remains of (below) the incredibly detailed monument in memory of Thomas and Jane Johne's only daughter, Mariamne, who died aged just 26, after a short illness.  Apparently she had suffered from ill health most of her life.

How sad that Thomas Johne's grieving head is now tucked on the base of the memorial.

It was such a beautiful house.

Fragments of the Dutch stained glass from the fire-shattered windows have been reinstated into these.

The stunning font survived. 

Having Tam and Rosie arrive yesterday cheered me up.  I tried a new recipe in the morning from a carefully saved copy of Baking Heaven magazine upstairs (sadly, that didn't survive being published throughout Covid).  The recipe is for Carrot Cake Scones but mine look rather more like large cookies :)  Yet they taste good and are very filling.  I didn't bother with the cream cheese and icing sugar icing.  For tea I made a batch of cheese pastry, baked a pie case blind and then filled it with a tin of good Stewing steak (I used to get it for Keith) and put a lid on it.  This hit the spot and we have the other half for tonight.

We had a stroll with Rosie, and spotted some lovely big blackberries up the lane so I went back and picked those.  Just under a pound have gone into the freezer.  

Then we had fun looking at the contents of one of the bags of Tam's "stuff" and there is some gorgeous deep red Medieval style curtain/upholstery fabric which she got from a Charity shop.  Sadly I have nothing to reupholster and my windows are too big/too small/it's the wrong colour for the rooms . . . so she'll have to Fleabay it and a smaller length of dark red and gold patterned fabric.

Now we are choosing wallpaper for the guest bedroom and have found a fabulous one in Dunelm.   I took a page out of a magazine which has exactly the colour green I want in there - and it's on tongue and groove walls as we have in parts there.  Looks great.  Will have to get it scanned and matched . . .  More of this later.  It has got me quite excited and given me something to look forward to.

D has been in touch and the furniture arrived safely and looks great in her house.  I'm so pleased they went to the right new forever home.

Ambushed by grief

 I gave myself a day off today and went to Tretower Court, as the Marcher Stuarts were there this weekend. Sadly a depleted force there - just 3 people - and the ladies I wanted to speak to were elsewhere.  I know they also appear at agricultural shows etc in the summer.  I enjoyed wandering around, taking photos, and as I have a CADW pass for this one property, I got in free.  Here are a few photos.

Soapwort (Saponaria).

Green Alkenet (a dye plant).

Valerian.  Used to treat insomnia (had better lay in a store, as I write this at 1 a.m. having awoken 6 times already tonight), stomach cramps, fatigue and migraine.

Toadflax.  It always takes me back to my childhood as it used to grow on the "wild" side of our garden.

By the pond, Codlins and Cream (foreground on R) and Purple Loosestrife.

Mulberries.

An old apple variety with long almost square apples which later fill out.

Views near Bwlch.

I drove home via Brecon, and stopped at Aldi to do next week's shop, which frees up a morning.  I wasn't expecting to get ambushed by grief as I drove into Brecon though. I glanced across at the canal, and the words "so many happy memories" came into my head and tears sprung in my eyes.  I was like that on and off all the way home then.  

I made things a whole lot worse by noticing the fan on the floor in the front bedroom, and the memories associated with its use in Keith's final hours flooded back and I was inconsolable for a while.  I've put it by the attic door and never want to see it again.

Tam and Rosie are arriving today to stay for two nights, Gabby's visiting on Tuesday and Danny's here first thing Wednesday and staying over, working from home.  I shall have to cook!!

On a positive note, I finally (been planning this all year) rang the Tatooist's doorbell down the town, and have made an appointment for Wednesday to have my closed-up ear repierced.  Shouldn't be too painful as half the hole is there anyway and they use a sharp needle rather than the blunt trauma I experienced when they pierced my ears at the jewellers all those years ago.  That will be £15well spent.

Well, back to bed now and hoping I will stay asleep now.  I've been awake every half an hour or so since going to bed at 9.30 p.m. (awake since 4 a.m. and up at 10 to 5). 

Getting things tidier

I've had a useful couple of days, sorting things out, moving them around, giving stacks of magazines away and moving books so I no longer have piles on the floor in the Library.  Heck - even the Christmas decorations finally made it upstairs!!  You can actually see the carpet in there now!  It had become a dumping ground for "stuff" as it was just a room that we moved through rather than lived in.  Having taken Danny and Emma's books from one of the bookshelves on the half landing, I was able to fill it with my Church books from the kitchen, and some of the books I had picked up from the Co-op Book Donation table.  I know - it's unlikely I will ever read through all of them (some for the 2nd or even 3rd time, in the case of Jean M Auel's The Plains of Passage and Edward Rutherford's London, and 3 of Ken Follett's great epic novels - all doorstop size though!) Yet they are there if we have a hard winter and I need entertaining. (Yes, I'm missing Sky already . . .)

More books are now gone from the table and the head with the Boudoir cap on is now over by the window.  The bearded head with the helmet was another of Keith's favourite things and he'd bearded and painted the head himself - it tickled him pink to have a "Viking" showing off that helmet!  Some of the folk viewing our old house thought it very odd, as he always pointed it out (for badness, as he could tell they were the sort who wouldn't be buying Ynyswen), but hey ho, that was my darling man, who didn't give a sh*t what other people thought.

The little settle which we bought locally has replaced the large oak 1740 coffer which has gone to D in Dorset.  This will probably go in time too, when I get a Unit and can put a decent price on it.  No rush though. It's too big for me to take to Fairs. It's late 17th/very early 18th C.  I will give it a good polish today.

Here is the lovely old coffer which has gone down to Dorset.  Thereby hangs a tale - Couriers turned up.  Told it was a "two man carry" he bought his wife . . .  They came from Birmingham and when there was an immediate problem as English was not his first language and we had difficulty in understanding one another.  Seeing the two mouse-nibbled sun loungers in the yard, he pointed and said "these?".  No, I told him, it's a big and heavy coffer.  Obviously he had never come across antiques before as they carried it out but then stood it on end to travel.  I tried to get across to him it had to stand on its feet but to no avail.  I had to phone D and tell her what he'd done, and how it left here in perfect condition but travelling like that could well loosen joints. Hell, it's nearly 300 years old and deserves respect.  She was going to phone the hauliers and insist it went back onto its feet . . .  I will worry until I hear it's arrived as it left here.  The chair just got strapped to the wall of the truck!  Yeesh.

I got a good walk in around lunchtime, just a couple of miles, but there are hills there and back so it's a good workout.  I do 15,000 steps or so most days now.  All along the lanes, but I need to start checking out more footpaths in the area now I'm a bit fitter and have the time.

I had official post this week - 4 pieces which all arrived on the same day.  Two were a case of reading, and putting on one side until I heard from them again - HMRC being one and pensions the other.  One was a form to fill out for the Hospice who supplied the overnight nurse.  I forced myself to sit down and fill it out yesterday and got it in the post teatime yesterday.  The final one was from Army Veterans about Keith's pension, and whether I am entitled to any (according to K, I should get 1/8, as we married after he left the Army so he only had 6 years' pension entitlement to cover me.)  So, we'll see.  If I do qualify, I shall go for the lump sum rather than a little dribble of money each month.

I also set to with the glue yesterday, and fixed a couple of things which had become loose, and also filled in the holes drilled in one of the low-back Windsor chairs (screws put in to fix wobbly arms at some point in its history).  It was an honest obvious repair, but a bit unsightly.  The glue has settled so I need to add more, with a little bit of the sawdust Keith saved to do little repairs like this.  The little apprentice-piece Welsh settle with its beautiful carvings is also repaired now - the little bobbin in the middle of one arm had come off (and been put inside it for safe keeping) and I'd put off sorting it for years.  Now it's fixed and can finally go to the Fair.  It's a real quality piece and someone should love it. Gorilla Glue rules :) :)

Well, I woke at just gone 4 a.m., was up at just before 5 a.m. and now feel shattered.  I think I will get the heated throw we bought Keith and lie down on the sofa for a bit and get some more sleep before I am off to Tretower Court. The re-enactors (Marcher Stuarts) are there this weekend and I want to go and have a chat and see if they still want me to join them.  With this in mind, when I spotted some lightweight dark emerald velvet at the car boot sale last week (about 1.5metres of it), I paid my £2 and bought it.  I haven't done any dressmaking since I was pregnant with Tam and hat's 38 years ago now!

Have a good weekend all.

A visit to Hafod, and the recipe for Manderin Orange Cake and a Witch

See end of post for a witchy explanation . . .

 First, the recipe:

MY OWN MANDERIN ORANGE CAKE

4 oz (113 g) butter or margarine

6 oz  (170 g) castor sugar

2 beaten eggs

Grated rind of one large (or 2 small) Manderin oranges, well washed

1small tin canned Manderin Oranges (drained, reserve the juice)

7 oz (200 g) Self Raising Flour, sifted

1 tablespoon fresh orange juice or milk (I use the juice from the tin)

Cream butter, sugar and rind until fluffy.  Gradually beat in eggs.  Mix in flour and orange juice alternately to soft dropping consistency.  Add Manderin oranges and beat well to incorporate and break up.  Grease and line an 8" (20 cm) cake tin.  Bake at 350 deg F/180 deg C/Gas mark 4 for 45-50mins until firm and golden and shrinking away from sides of tin.  This is a lovely soft and moist cake and one I make regularly.

                                        *            *          *

Yesterday I went to see Tam and Rosie for the day, taking the above cake.  When Rosie was fed and fettled, we drove the 15 mins or so to the Hafod estate, properly Hafod Uchtryd which is in the upper Ystwyth valley and within the ancient boundaries of Strata Florida.  

We chose to do the Ladies Walk, which was about 2 1/2 miles (though it felt twice as far on a hot day, with the ups and downs at the end).  This largely followed the river, and was a beautiful walk.  We had it mostly to ourselves though caught up with other folk when we stopped for a much-needed cold drink at the old stables, which are beside the ruins of the house, demolished in 1956.  It had been SO beautiful in its glory and it was sad to see it reduced to a pile of overgrown rubble, punctuated by trees. A later owner added an Italianate tower which I think did it no favours.  The man who built it was Thomas Johnes, who seemingly spent every last penny on it and was bankrupted as a result.  That said, he did his best for his tenants, and encouraged farming improvements and rewarded his tenants for good crops etc, as well as himself winning awards for tree planting on his estate.  (Please follow the links to learn more about him and the house and many thanks to Wikipedia and the Dictionary of Welsh Biography).  

Rosie was as good as gold 2/3 of the way round, then cried non stop the rest of the way.  She was hot and didn't want to be carried against her mum, she wanted OUT!  Who can blame her?!

I took no end of photos, but they are on my mobile phone, and damned if I have the technology to transfer them.  It doesn't recognize my password, and thinks I must have fingers like a Gorilla if they are to touch 4 dots to do fingerprint ID.  Yeesh.  I shall try again later, when my brain is working a little more efficiently.

It was a beautiful drive to and from Aberystwyth, but held sad memories of 6 days earlier when we had driven along there to Keith's funeral.  I was listening to Diana Gabaldon's Tell the Bees etc on my phone, but on the way back home it got to the part where Roger is involved in a battle scene, easing the passing of dieing men - far too many of them for my liking - and I couldn't stop the tears then.  

Then when I got home, there was a parcel waiting for me from my dear friend N. When I opened it, I found a lovely metal witch - meant to hang outside, but it's in my kitchen, even though  it's stolen the place where I had the big cart costrel.  I will have to put that where a repro Medieval helmet is (there are three surplus to requirements to go to the Fair). 

If you are thinking ????? a witch?  N said that what she remembers most about our old house was the witch hanging in the kitchen and the suit of armour at the end of the hall.  She couldn't run to a suit of armour, but she hoped that the witch would make me smile.  It did, but then tears soon followed of course, as I was already an emotional wreck.  Only Keith liked the wooden witch in the kitchen.  I think it had been a Charlies Halloween type of figure, sitting on a broomstick of course!  The rest of us thought it was daft, but Keith being Keith, loved it!  Eventually I prevailed upon him to sell it, after a lady viewing the house had hit her head on it, recoiled and then got stuck on the fly paper.  I mean, HOW do you tell a viewer not to move, I have to remove the flypaper from your hair?!  Happy memories at that, but how I wish - in the cold light of day - I hadn't put my foot down and we still had that daft witch.

Anyway, the couriers are coming for the coffer and the chair tomorrow, so I have a date with tidying up the Library, which meant first I have to finally get around to vacuuming the front bedroom where Keith spent his last months. That was hard.  As I folded up the green blanket he'd had on his bed, tears overwhelmed me again.  I can't bring myself to wash it.  It isn't dirty, but still reminds me so much of Keith it will just go in the cupboard as is.  So, I get my sewing room back again, but how I wish it had been another way.

The tidying up still continues, so that will help me through the day.  At some point I need to ask Ed to give me a hand moving the chair I had loaned Tam for breast feeding in the early days.  It's in the back of the car and is too heavy for me to manage on my own.  The contents of the coffer (all Charity shop buys of Tam's) need to be stowed away upstairs too.  Ah well, I'll get there, though it's not going to look tidy. . .