To Sue and family

I was so sorry to hear your sad news.  My thoughts are with you.   Love, Jennie 

Last Saturday at Builth Antiques Fair & Fleamarket

Last Saturday it was the big antiques fair and fleamarket at Builth Wells.  We were a little late getting there as we stopped off at the Vintage Fair in Llandeilo first, for a wander round.  Builth was busy and VERY hot.  Our eldest daughter Tam was with us and we had a lovely SLOW wander round all the stores, the posh ones as well as the ones in the back sheds and outside.  No bargains to be had as the wheeler-dealer trading happens on a Friday.

At one stall was this contraption, which I guessed was a flatten-a-mouse trap, but turned out to be for rats instead, which would also have been flattened!  I think it was probably for Continental rats.

Poor stag - I bet he didn't want to end up in a laundry tub . . .

An absolutely fabulous old oak gateleg table on sale with a friend of ours.  You can just about see the curve in the central plank which gives it such character.

On the same stand, some more lovely rustic pieces.  The spinning wheel is very unusual because of the candle sconce on the top.

Someone had taken a great deal of effort to make this old bath attractive, but sadly the paint was starting to peel on the bottom of the bath inside.

I loved the paintings above and below, but they were priced as about £895 each, so they stayed there!  The light in them was just amazing.  I see "modern art" sometimes in galleries and have a ??? really ??? moment.  I like to see something skilfully depicted and which draws me in.  These fit that bill.

They were filming Bargain Hunt whilst we were there.  Here they are at fellow-dealer Jason's stand.

The lovely Eric Knowles doing his piece for camera.

One of the few quilts on offer.  I took a photo as I quite liked the offset stars and wanted to see how they were done when I got home.

We had a very early tea at Builth - we each had a big pulled pork roll, so we didn't have to bother with cooking a meal when we got in.  

Have a lovely weekend.

Why we moved to Wales - Part VI

I can remember one of the first exploring journeys we took, driving along a narrow steep-sided lane and then through someone's FARMYARD.  They must have been moving sheep or something as we had to open and shut the gates either end of the farmstead (which had buildings both sides of the road) and it felt like we were trespassing! There was nothing like that where we came from in Dorset.

We used to get lost sometimes, particularly when the children were school age, and we had to take them to their friend's houses.  None of this "just along the road" round here - schools had quite big catchment areas and housing is dispersed in the countryside. Sleepovers were the norm. We had to learn where to shop for things, as Carmarthen was a very quiet little market town, with a tiny Tesco's, and a bigger Woolworths, and then individually owned shops with a few chain shops like W H Smith, and shoe shops.  Quite often, if we wanted anything remotely out of the ordinary, we had to drive 25 miles to Swansea for it.  We grew very used to long trips to buy "things" or quite often, went without. Ah, the days before the internet . . .  When you are ten miles from the town, and living on a budget, if you have run out of something then it just has to wait until next week.  Making a shopping list of items the moment they got low became a necessity, and I soon learned to keep one spare.  I still do.

Ah yes, keeping a store cupboard was also something I learned early in our time here, as when the nearest shop is a 10 mile round trip and it only stocks essentials anyway, you need to be a little self-reliant for when circumstances - a broken-down car, icy roads, flooding, keep you within your own four walls.  You do NOT want to run out of loo-paper if you are snowed in!

We had to get used to the mud too.  When you live next door to a working dairy farm, then mud - and worse - are a daily part of your life.  A hundred or so cows puddling past your front gate twice daily make for mess.  

We soon realized just what a bad state of repair the house was in.  One of the jobs we had to have done, under the terms of our mortgage, was to treat all the beams etc for woodworm, which it had had in the past.  We had a company in to do the work before we took up residence.  Then we worked on a room at a time, taking down the horrid pine "ceilings" - when the house has been "modernised" in the 70s, all the ceilings, beams and all, had been covered in tongue and groove - that was great for firewood when we took it down - and in later years, when we took down the plasterboard to reveal the joists and rafters, we treated those ourselves.  In what became our bedroom, we just covered over the tongue and groove with huge sheets of plasterboard, and I can still remember one end of the sheet being held up with an Acro whilst I supported the other end with a broom and my husband fixed it to the ceiling.  

Unfortunately, he was still struggling with the health problems which had dogged him before we left Dorset, and could only work for short periods.  If he overdid it, he was back to square one with his blinding headaches, and then had to rest for weeks on end.  Progress was slow, both with his health and the work on the house.

Sadly, it wasn't just woodworm (and downstairs, Death Watch Beetle) which were problems in the house.  The roof needed replacing, and a main beam where two stretches of roof joined in a gulley, had been leaking for years and the big beam beneath it was weak with wet rot.  Every time there was a bad storm we held our breath, praying that the roof wouldn't collapse in that corner.  We made sure we slept in the bedrooms away from it!  As it turned out, it held on for 8 years, when we had a large Council Grant for restoration works.

Yet those first couple of years were so happy - if incredibly busy, as I was proof of the old saying: "New house, new baby" and our middle daughter joined us at Christmas the year we arrived.  I also started a business . . . and we had three horses and two ponies stabled at one point.  I never had a spare moment. . .

Then we hit hard times, and everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong.  We had by that time bought my mum a lovely cottage about 10 miles away, between us and Cross-Hands.  The garden was a bit big for her so we decided to apply for planning permission on part of it, and easily found a buyer.  Then the green stuff hit the fan and it turned out that there was a second mortgage on the property which had not been discovered by our conveyancer - not entirely his fault since the Vendor's solicitor should not have handed over the documents of sale.  But he did - and subsequently did a runner with £100,000 from the kitty of the company where he worked . . .  Sorting all this out took time and we lost the buyer for the plot, who was a builder and wouldn't wait.  We were finally able to put it back on the market - 6 weeks after the country fell into the deepest recession for generations.  The money from it was meant to go towards repairs on the house.  Well, that didn't happen . . .   It would be 9 years before we sold that plot. 

So the horses had to go.  That in itself was traumatic.  We found a super home for our TB broodmare Rou, and her foal Rosie, who went together to a private home in Monmouthshire.  We were desperate to sell Rou's 2 year old daughter Tiffin, but there was no interest in my advert and we had to take her to Brightwell's auction at Malvern.  We just missed the H.I.S. sale (she was by an H.I.S. stallion) and the transport company who had brought Rou and Rosie back from stud, and who we thought were reliable, double booked the horse lorry.  She was due to go at 10.30 in the morning, and at 2.30 we will still waiting.  An hour later the box turned up - a gigantic cattle truck with a slippery steep metal ramp - not the old wooden horse box with the gentle slope of wood we had ordered.  We loaded Tiffin, all bandaged up to protect her legs when travelling, and set off behind the box for Malvern, with two wee girls and an overnight bag.  I was pregnant at the time too.  

It was dark (a November evening) when we finally got there and Tiffin couldn't see properly to come down the ramp.  She panicked and leapt off the side, hitting her hock on the ramp and cutting it.  With the aid of a torch I managed to clean off the cut, which didn't seem too bad, and then we left Tiffin munching on a huge haynet and went in search of B&B.

The next morning she was lame.  I got the Auction vet out to look at her and he said it was probably nothing much, but he couldn't guarantee her OK for the sale, and we had no option but to remove the £1500 reserve we had on her. It had cost £150 to get her to the sale, and we didn't have the money to bring her back again. She sold for half that, to a horrid rat-faced dealer from the Forest of Dean.  To say I was heartbroken was an understatement.  She was a beautiful filly, my pride and joy.  I hadn't wanted to sell her but distress sellings are like that.  On the way home I was shaking so much I had to ask my husband to pull into a pub where I had a brandy to calm my nerves.  After that, I had depression and was in a bad way for months - until our son was born.   My husband insisted I made a claim through my horse insurers against the transport company, and this carried on for months, with each letter bringing back all the memories and unhappiness of that sale.  We won, eventually, but it didn't bring Tiffin back.

In those early years, I can remember trying to keep house with a dustpan and brush when our vacuum cleaner bit the dust.  Finances were very tight - almost non-existent in fact - and when we planned to paint a room, we had to save up for a can of paint.

I can still remember wearing a mask (I am allergic to dust) and taking a stiff brush to the hideous nylon carpet up the stairs, which used to cling on to the bristles of the brush.  If you can imagine the colour of the mud outside the front gate, mixed with a Saturday night pavement between the boozer and the takeaway, you have a rough approximation of the carpet underfoot when we arrived.  You have no idea of how ECSTATIC I was when that sh*tty carpet finally went!  I felt pretty much the same when we had finally saved up for a new vacuum too!

When I see blogs with "Frugal" in the title these days, I know exactly where they are coming from . . .

We're off the market - time for a rest

We came home today to find a reply from our estate agent (I had asked for their advice on trying to find the right buyer because of the last two viewings both mentioning the farm buildings) suggesting we dropped the price yet another £75,000 (that would be a total of £125,000 less than the original valuation done by them) in order to get a sale.  I could see they wanted us off their books, and so I have said to take us off.  We will have a break, get the walls done, hopefully get planning for and relocate the driveway and then go back on next spring with one of the agents who has called us and WANTS us on their books AND offers a free floor plan.  I should be relieved, but am just a bit hornswoggled . . . having worked SO HARD recently to try and make everything perfect here it is going to be hard to readjust to having the occasional half an hour off!

A very brief breath of sea air

Llansteffan again.  The default setting for sea air.  Also, today, the default setting for most of Carmarthen town and environs as it was choc-a-bloc with people.  We managed to get the (last) parking space at the top end of the beach and had a little stroll.  We had taken the cool box and bought cheap choc ices from Tescopolis, so our ice cream treat cost us something like 10p a head!  We don't often have crap ice cream but when it's hot . . . anything will do.

We are just waiting for our neighbour with the digger business to come and take the grass off the big area of chippings we had years ago when we were doing work.  Now it's grown over (and the hard core strip across the paddock where the lorry goes for emptying the septic tank) it is long overdue a sort-out and then it will be used (the stony bit) for parking again.  When Tam and her boyfriend come down in his van, they need to be off the driveway so we can get in and out easily.  One job ticked off my to do list.

I woke early and we both got up about 5.30 a.m. and started on jobs that needed doing.  I gardened in the yard, digging over the triangle for the Marigold patch, until it got too hot.  Then I went and ripped up grass and weeds from the top end of the garden behind the apple tree.  That is looking much tidier now but needs grass roots and that awful Yellow Archangel which has romped EVERYWHERE.  Why did I ever buy THAT?!  I will pot some roots up and see if I can tempt some car boot buyers to help me in my hour of need!

Right, time for a cuppa.  Back later.  Meanwhile, this is the lovely Cheesy Asparagus Tart (like a quiche) I made last week.

Looking back up the Towy.

Odd "crop marks" - I thought for a moment they had finally knocked down Iscoed mansion (where General Picton lived) but that is higher up.  Perhaps they have put in drains or something recently?

Why We Moved to Wales - Part V - "It's got a lot of Potential"

 "It's got a lot of potential" - that's what people used to say when they visited - looking back, they must have had SUCH a shock.  We were living in a complete and utter DUMP.  There were no two ways about it, the house had seen better days and it would be a good few years before we could do more than just do the minimum to put it right.  For the first few years we didn't even dare to apply for a Council Grant to improve it for fear they would condemn the place!

The top photo shows my dear husband (Hah! when he still had black hair!) showing you just how damp our sitting room was - and how excruciating the wallpaper!  You can see the awful fireplace too - that was one of the first things to go.  As you can see, wallpaper stripping was extremely easy . . .

Here he is reading little T a bedtime story (a Puddle Lane one, judging by the cover).  Look at the concentration on her face : )  As you can see this was before there was a fireplace revealed, so the grotty old Stanley (?) stove sat out in the room.

As you can see the decor of the kitchen left something to be desired . . .  Looking back, I honestly can't remember it being quite so truly awful . . .  As you can see, some foodstuffs had to be hung from the beam so that the mice didn't get them . . .

Here's a close-up.  My ma-in-law had a fit of the vapours when she came to visit and for years said we would never get our money back on the house!  She also insisted I put curtains up at her bedroom window because she knew for a fact that UFOs had been spotted in Wales, and "they took you up into the spacecraft and carried out very painful experiments on you."   !  And she was an intelligent woman . . . supposedly . . .

It was just as well really, that she wasn't here when the workmen came to excavate the old fireplace so the Hergom stove could go in.  We reinstated the beam, as it was missing, and I can remember driving around the Welsh lanes and seeing a falling-down barn and then trying to find out who it belonged to so we could negotiate to buy the beams in it to do up our house . . .

This was the rather grandly-named "Morning Room" which overlooked the paddock.  The wall to your left had quite a damp problem (down the chimney) and eventually we had to have the plaster hacked off and replaced, and it was only about 3 years ago that my husband and grown-up son (not even a twinkle in his daddy's eye in this photo!) also replaced the beautiful dentil coving - hand-made by my husband.  Then, and only then, did the roll of carpet we had bought at auction some 15 years earlier, finally get laid . . .

Outside was still pretty grim too, as the limewash soon got washed off by the blasts of winter wind and rain.  About all that has happened in this photo is a brick path has been laid across the yard and we appear to have painted over the chocolate brown paint around the windows.

However, it wasn't all doom and gloom, as here you can see T's first pony, Jo-Jo, a little section A Welsh mare who we bought aged 11 from a showing family near Sennybridge.  Unfortunately she'd had Laminitis very badly and had dropped soles but she was 100% reliable in every way, and although we always had to watch her weight, she taught all the children to ride, and we had her for many years.  You can see from this photo that the "garden" was a tad . . . basic too!

Here is T, aged nearly 2 1/2 with two of Blackberry's kittens who we kept - Sooty and Bumble.  Gosh, that takes me back.

So, do you think we were completely and utterly bonkers?  I think most sane people would have thought twice before taking THIS house on!

In which WE go and view properties for a change.

A busy week (again!)  We have our eldest daughter staying with us at the moment, as she has started a new job with a Carmarthen charity and is on an induction week.  She will be going back to Yorkshire on Sunday though, and work from home then.

We took time out on Tuesday and drove over to the Brecon/Hay-on-Wye area to view 3 properties.  Of course, what looks good on paper, does not necessarily work out so well "in the flesh".  Our first property was the "sensible option" - to see if it would work for us - a bungalow, with stupendous views (the one above is of the same view taken a couple of miles up the road).  I have to say, whilst the building worked size-wise and had good storage, the garden was NOT my sort of planting (straight lines and "easy maintenance" shrubs and conifers, and nowhere to plant fruit trees or fruit bushes.  It had a small swimming pool - a waste of time in our climate, and maintenance we wouldn't want to have to add to our list of outgoings.  However, it was rather cheek by jowl with other properties and lacked privacy for me, plus it was a little gloomy inside and I really hanker for a light airy house after years of the gloom here!




Above and below:  views taken driving through the Black Mountains to the next property, which was absolutely STUNNING, suited me to the teeth, but the Mr didn't like the beautiful natural garden due to the fact that there was a steep bank to mow (or leave, as I would - I'd plant it with wild flowers). The garden sheds were . . . well, we'll call them petite (blardy useless for us anyway!)

The cottage, however, was TEENSY upstairs - two bedrooms so small that once you got a double bed in there was room for nothing else, so storage was at a premium.  They would need knocking through to make one half decent sized room, but even so when you consider all our big lumps of furniture here, we would have needed to get rid of just about everything we owned to fit in there!  As I said, what looks "doable" on paper, falls flat when you see it with a practical eye.  Plus broadband would be expensive as it was by satellite only, due to the mountains, and there was no shop in the village (again, you don't find this out until you view).  Plus it was ALL the money (and more) and if you wanted the Aga, or various other free-standing bits of kitchen fitting, all were extra by negotiation!

We had lunch in Hay, and then had a little time to kill before the final viewing, so did a drive-by of it, and explored the nearby lanes.  It was very handy for Brecon and had nice views again, and super walking in the area.  I liked it a lot - a little on the small side but just about doable and it was the right price, so you could always put a small extension on.  Once again, my wretched husband was sniffy (HE liked the bungalow because it was bigger), and said it had no character, but I always think you can put that right with a little less beige paint (throughout!) and your own nice pieces of furniture and paintings.  It's academic anyway, since it will probably sell very quickly (it is a good buy) and we don't have another viewing for a month now - even supposing they might offer, which the way things are going at the moment, seems unlikely!

Still, we may have to bite the bullet about relocating the driveway, so watch this space.

Above and below:  views near the last cottage.

Gosh, my walking feet wanted to be up and doing!

Anyway, we shall see.  A couple of other possibles have come onto the market which we may check out - one is particularly nice and has storage.  We'll see.